Who Killed Hammarskjold? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa 0190231408, 978-0190231408

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Half-title
......Page 3
Title
......Page 5
Copyright
......Page 6
Contents
......Page 7
Acknowledgements
......Page 13
List of Abbreviations
......Page 17
List of Illustrations
......Page 21
Note
......Page 27
The Sixteen Dead......Page 35
Prologue
......Page 37
1. ‘Bebop-a-lula’: Stockholm, 2009......Page 51
2. The Congo, 1960–61
......Page 63
3. ‘A Third World War’: Katanga and Rhodesia, 1961......Page 77
4. Mission for Peace
......Page 89
5. Midnight Death in British Africa
......Page 101
6. ‘They Killed Him! They Got Him!’......Page 115
7. The White Settlers Investigate......Page 125
8. The UN Inquiry
......Page 155
9. The Cha Cha Cha: Zambia, 2009......Page 167
10. Big Business, Intelligence and Britain......Page 181
11. An American Intelligence Officer: Cyprus, 1961......Page 191
12. High Frequency: Ethiopia, 1961
......Page 203
13. The French Connection
......Page 213
14. The Hijack Hypotheses
......Page 225
15. Aerial Warfare......Page 235
16. ‘Operation Celeste’
......Page 245
17. Mercenaries under Apartheid
......Page 259
18. Private and Military
......Page 269
19. Secrets and Lies
......Page 297
Epilogue
......Page 307
Notes
......Page 311
Key Archive Repositories
......Page 339
Bibliography
......Page 343
Index
......Page 359

Citation preview

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

SUSAN WILLIAMS

Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa

A

A Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland  Cape Town  Dar es Salaam  Hong Kong  Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2014 Susan Williams Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title Susan Williams Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa ISBN 978-0-19-023-140-8 Printed in India on Acid-Free Paper

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements xi List of Abbreviations xv List of Illustrations xix Note xxv The Sixteen Dead 1 Prologue 3   1.  ‘Bebop-a-lula.’ Stockholm, 2009   2.  The Congo, 1960–61   3.  ‘A third world war’. Katanga and Rhodesia, 1961   4.  Mission for Peace   5.  Midnight Death in British Africa   6.  ‘They killed him! They got him!’   7.  The White Settlers Investigate   8.  The UN Inquiry  9. The Cha Cha Cha. Zambia, 2009 10.  Big Business, Intelligence and Britain 11.  An American Intelligence Officer: Cyprus, 1961 12.  High Frequency: Ethiopia, 1961 13.  The French Connection 14.  The Hijack Hypotheses 15.  Aerial Warfare 16.  ‘Operation Celeste’ 17.  Mercenaries under Apartheid 18.  Private and Military 19.  Secrets and Lies

v

17 29 43 55 67 81 91 105 117 131 141 153 163 175 185 195 209 219 231

CONTENTS

Epilogue 241 Notes 245 Key Archive Repositories 273 Bibliography 277 Index 293

vi

For Gervase

‘The hardest thing of all—to die rightly. —An exam nobody is spared—and how many pass it?’ Dag Hammarskjöld, 1952, from Markings

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Tackling this complex, compelling, and often disturbing, story took me into new and challenging territory—that of a historical detective. I was most fortunate, therefore, to meet and to be helped by many remarkable and generous individuals.   First and foremost, I should like to express my very deep and sincere gratitude to Knut Hammarskjöld, Dag Hammarskjöld’s nephew, and Inga-Lill Hammarskjöld, who not only shared with me vital pieces of evidence but also encouraged my efforts with unfailing kindness.   Knut, who went to Ndola in great sorrow just days after his uncle’s death, is one of a number of people who feature in some important way in the book. Their specific contributions are described more fully at the appropriate points in the narrative, but they were all indispensable. The book could not have been written without them. In Sweden, these special individuals include Sture Linnér, Bengt Rösiö, Hans Kristian Simensen, Björn Virving and Pia Virving; in Zambia, Mama Chibesa Kankasa, Rejoice Lukumba, Michael Machena, and Jacob Phiri; in South Africa, Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza, Piers Pigou, De Wet Potgieter, Christelle Terreblanche and several key sources who prefer to remain anonymous; in the USA, Commander Charles M. Southall; in Belgium, Ludo De Witte; and in the UK, Peter Franks, Robin Ramsay, Peter Sutherst and Dr Robert Vanhegan.   I have had valuable communications with Christina von Arbin, Jean-Pierre Bat, Phoebe Clapham, Lennart Eliasson, Roger Faulques, Peter Fraenkel, ­Merran Fraenkel, Colonel Don Gaylor, Verne Harris, Anders Hellberg, Sam Lindberg, Henning Melber, Sharon Morreale, Paul Ngoma, John Pinfold, ­Bernard Porter, Declan Power, Clyde Sanger, Vivian Mwaka Sikanyeela, David Wardrop, Cynthia Zukas and Simon Zukas.

xi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  At my academic home, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London, I have enjoyed enlightening discussions with Mandy Banton, David Clover, Robert Holland and Philip Murphy; I am particularly grateful to Philip for some crucial leads.   A study of this sort is dependent on archives and the expert help of archivists. I am especially and very deeply indebted to Lucy McCann at Rhodes House, the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Oxford University; to Sandy Macmillan and Nigel Cochrane at the Albert Sloman Library at the University of Essex; to Jack Zawistowski and Jonas Nordebrand at the Royal Library in Stockholm; and to Rémi Dubuisson and Cheikh Ndiaye at the United Nations Archives in New York.   In addition I should like to thank Chileshe Lusale-Musukuma, Marja Hinfelaar and Giacomo Macola at the National Archives of Zambia; Gabriella Razzano and Fritz Schoon at the South African History Archive, Witwatersrand University; Jean-Louis Moreau and René Brion in connection with my research at the Archives Générales du Royaume in Brussels, as well as Jacqueline Beeckmans and Bart Crois at Umicore; Ian Cooke and Marion Wallace at the British Library; and the National Archives of the UK.   I should also like to thank Mary Curry at the George Washington University National Security Archive; Christela Garcia at Mudd Library, Princeton University; Ian Marson who conducted some outstanding research for me at Hull University Library; John Hodgson at the John Rylands Library, Manchester University; Mara Kaufman at the Department of Special Collections, Duke University; Helen Langley at the Special Collections and Western Manuscripts Department of the Bodleian Library, Oxford University; Bill Noblett at Cambridge University Library; Betsy Pittman at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut; Paulo Tremoceiro, Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, in Lisbon; and Ivan Murambiwa at the National Archives of Zimbabwe. I am also grateful to the House of Lords Record Office and to the Borthwick Institute at the University of York. Andrew DeRoche and David Gordon helped me in relation to the UNIP archive in Lusaka.   Tony Chafer, Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja and Maurice Frankel gave me great and valuable assistance with a Freedom of Information appeal.   A number of individuals have given help on particular topics: David Blake; Rory Carroll at the Guardian; Ray Critchell; Annica Dahlström; Pat Duggan at the Montreal Gazette; Anne Garven; Chris Hoare; Richard Hunter; Michelle Leon at the Johannesburg Sunday Times; Sylvia Lynn-Meaden; Eijvor Meijer; Jonathan Mirsky; Claire Moon; Maurice Mullay; Bodil Katarina Nævdal; xii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

James Sanders; Robyn Scott; Mungo Soggot; Jonathan Wills; and John Yeld at the Cape Argus. Paul Craddock performed a valuable forensic analysis of several sets of handwriting.   Japhet Lungu at The Times of Zambia made a major contribution to the illustrations in the book and deserves very great thanks: his enthusiasm and wide knowledge produced an original and fascinating set of photographs. The Kankasa family, and in particular Sylvia-Makole Kankasa, went to great trouble to provide the photographs for which I was searching. Jennifer Pader and Joe Davidson went out of their way to secure for me some scans of documents at the UN Archives, which were kindly arranged by Romain Ledauphin. Vladimir Bessarabov at the UN Cartographic Section went to considerable efforts to help me with maps and Veena Manchanda at the UN Photo Library has been very efficient. Lars Olsson helped me out at the last minute with an important photograph.   I thank Sigrun Mari Bevanger, Zozan Kaya Asphaug and Hans Kristian Simensen for their translations of Swedish and Norwegian material into English; Vivien Burgess for her thorough newspaper research at Colindale; Antigone Heraclidou for creating a fresh and intelligent framework for my archive sources; Anne Leonard for reorganizing the bibliography; Robert O’Hara and his team for copying a number of files at the UK National Archives; and Janet Tyrrell for copyediting the book so carefully. Stanislav Gerov and his team at Laptopa have provided prompt computer support.   I owe many thanks to the staff at the British Library and the National Library of Scotland, who helped me with great kindness and efficiency as I wrote the book in their reading rooms.   Reading a book in draft, whether in whole or in part, can be arduous and time-consuming. For this generous contribution, I thank most sincerely Tendayi Bloom, Jonathan Derrick, Michael Dwyer, Stephen Ellis, Peter Franks, Knut Hammarskjöld, Gervase Hood, Sylvia-Makole Kankasa, Rejoice Lukumba, James Mayall, Dumisa Ntzebesa, De Wet Potgieter, Piers Pigou, Gérard Prunier, Robin Ramsay, Hans Kristian Simensen, Commander Charles M. Southall, Peter Sutherst, Christelle Terreblanche, Myfanwy Williams, Dr Robert Vanhegan and Björn Virving, as well as two anonymous sources and one anonymous reviewer. All these people made important and constructive criticisms and suggestions, which moved the research and the writing forward—and made the book much, much better than it would otherwise have been.   I feel very sad that I was not able to share the finished work with Sture Linnér before his death in 2010. xiii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am very grateful to my agent, Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown. I should also like to thank Camilla Hornby and Camilla Goslett for their contributions.   I feel very honoured to join Hurst’s list of distinguished authors and have enjoyed many stimulating discussions with Michael Dwyer. Michael was faced with very real obstacles in our aim to get the book out in time for the 50th anniversary of Dag Hammarskjöld’s death, when my elbow was badly smashed in a road accident six months before publication. It is entirely due to Michael’s flexibility and patience that these obstacles became instead a challenge, which we have worked hard to meet. The calm efficiency of Daisy Leitch and Jon de Peyer have made an important contribution to this effort. For their sharp eyes and help with corrections, very grateful thanks are due to Adrian Begg, Art Cockerill, Alan James, Margaret O’Callaghan, and Charles Southall.   For the restoration of the elbow and my ability to finish the book, I am indebted immeasurably to the singular expertise and kindness of staff at St Mary’s Hospital Paddington, especially to Vicky Allbrook, Peter Reilly, and Gertrude Ross, and also to everybody else who has helped with my recovery.   Good friends have shown a real interest in the book’s developments: Joe Davidson, Theresa Hallgarten, Tony Hallgarten, Barbara Hooke, Tom Hooke, Chandrika Kaul, Jackie Khama, Mungai Lenneiye, Gugu Mahlangu, Jennifer Pader, Kate Philbrick, Tina Perry, Peter Sabina and Susan Van Gelder.   I should like to pay a special and very grateful tribute to Hans Kristian Simensen, who has participated more than any other person in the research for this book. He has a personal interest because his father, Arne Simensen, was a UN aircraft inspector in the Congo during the time when SecretaryGeneral Hammarskjöld died at Ndola. He has shared with me some important discoveries and we have had many long and valuable discussions about documents and the events of the 1960s.   My family deserves very great thanks. My sister Myfanwy Williams was fascinated by the topic from the start and gave me constant, constructive encouragement. My brother James Williams provided very helpful translations of obscure vernacular French. Josie Jackson, my niece, carefully stepped around the sea of papers on the floor and waited patiently for me to finish work. ­Benedict Wiseman, my stepson, gave warm and thoughtful support, as well as some acute insights. Tendayi Bloom, my daughter, took a real and lively interest in the book and, as always, contributed many original and very good ideas.   Finally, in recognition of his unfailing commitment and support, as well as the great pleasure of his company on our journeys of research, I unreservedly thank my husband Gervase Hood and dedicate this book to him. xiv

ABBREVIATIONS

ANC: ANC: BSAP: CAF:

Armée Nationale Congolaise African National Congress (South Africa) British South Africa Police (Rhodesia) Central African Federation, also known as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and (more commonly) as the Rhodesian Federation CIA: Central Intelligence Agency (USA) Conakat: Conféderation des Associations Tribales du Katanga DDRS: Declassified Documents Reference System (USA) DRC: Democratic Republic of the Congo (République Démocratique du Congo) ETA: Estimated Time of Arrival Eville: Elisabethville FIC: Flight Information Centre FISB: Federal Intelligence Security Branch (Rhodesian Federation) FLN: Front de Libération Nationale (Algeria) FOI: Freedom of Information FOIA: Freedom of Information Act GCHQ: Government Communications Headquarters (UK) HF: High Frequency HMG: Her Majesty’s Government (UK) IDSO: International Diamond Security Organization (South Africa) INCERFA: Uncertainty phase (in response to the failed arrival of an aircraft) INR: Bureau of Intelligence and Research, State Department (USA) Leo: Léopoldville

xv

ABBREVIATIONS

LRP: NATO: NDB: NIA: NRP: NSA: OAS: ONUC: OO-RIC: PAIA: PMC: PSC: QNH: RRAF: SAHA: SAIMR: SAPA: SAS: SDECE: SE-BDY: Sibéka: SIGINT: SIS: SLO: Tanks: TRC: UDI: UMHK: UN: UNEF: UNIP: UNO: UPI: USAF: xvi

Locally Recruited Person North Atlantic Treaty Organization Non Directional Beacon National Intelligence Agency (South Africa) Northern Rhodesian Police/man National Security Agency (USA) Organisation de l’armée secrète (Algeria) l’Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo/United Nations Organization in the Congo Registration number of Lord Lansdowne’s aircraft Promotion of Access to Information Act (South Africa) Private military company Private security company Altitude reading above sea level Royal Rhodesian Air Force South African History Archive South African Institute for Maritime Research South African Press Association Special Air Service Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (French foreign intelligence) Registration number of Hammarskjöld’s aircraft from Léopoldville to Ndola La Société Minière du Bécéca Signals Intelligence Secret Intelligence Service/MI6 Security Liaison Officer (MI5) Tanganyika Concessions Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa) Unilateral Declaration of Independence (Rhodesia) Union Minière du Haut Katanga United Nations United Nations Emergency Force United National Independence Party (Zambia) United Nations Organization United Press International United States Air Force

ABBREVIATIONS

VHF: Z:

Very High Frequency Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

For the abbreviations used in the endnotes, see also the list of Key Archive Repositories

xvii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Every effort has been made to get the necessary permission for use of photographs, images and copyright materials. The publisher apologises if any sources remain unacknowledged and will be glad to make the necessary changes at the earliest opportunity.

Frontmatter 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.



The estimated flight path of Hammarskjöld’s aircraft (SE-BDY) from Léopoldville to Ndola on 17 September 1961, showing times of contact between the aircraft and Salisbury and Ndola air control towers. The flight path of Lord Lansdowne’s plane (OO-RIC) is also shown. From the Report of the United Nations Commission of Investigation UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld answering a question from the press at UN headquarters, 12 June 1961. UN Photo Deployment of UN Forces in the Congo as of June 1961, also showing Ndola (bottom right) in Northern Rhodesia, where Hammarskjöld’s plane crashed shortly after midnight on 18 September 1961. United Nations Map No. 3952.13 Crash site of the Albertina, 17–18 September 1961, showing the relationship between the site, the airport, Twapia township and the Non-Directional Beacon. UN Map No 1356 Enlarged portion of the wreckage plan. Letter ‘B’ indicates the position of a body; letter ‘E’ represents the position of parts of the engines. From the Report of the United Nations Commission of Investigation xix

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Section 1 (between pages 102 and 103)  1. Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo (second left), with Dag Hammarskjöld at UN Headquarters, July 1960. Lumumba sought help from the UN to remove Belgian troops from the newly-independent Congo and to end the secession of Katanga. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  2. Dag Hammarskjöld and Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana (on Hammarskjöld’s left) at UN Headquarters, 1 September 1960. Hammarskjöld envisaged the UN as the ‘main platform’ and protector of the newly-independent states of the world. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  3. The Secretary-General meets with Moïse Tshombe, self-styled President of Katanga, in Elisabethville, 15 August 1960. Hammarskjöld believed that any solution to the problems of the Congo depended on ending the secession of Katanga. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  4. Prime Minister Lumumba at a press conference at UN Headquarters, conferring with Mongi Slim, UN Representative of Tunisia, on 25 July 1960. UN Photo  5. Colonel Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, leader of the Armée Nationale Congolaise (left), and Moïse Tshombe of Katanga, 1 October 1960. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  6. Moïse Tshombe inspecting his troops, including foreign mercenaries, 1 February 1961. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  7. Sir Roy Welensky, the burly Prime Minister of the British territory of the Central African Federation, comprising Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi), in conversation with Hendrik Verwoerd, the Prime Minister of South Africa, at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference in London, 8 March 1961. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  8. Lord Alport, the British High Commissioner to the Rhodesian Federation [1961]. [Impossible to trace either photographer or any source]  9. A Nigerian Police detachment serving with the United Nations Force in the Congo, photographed as their train pulled out of Léopoldville station. 1 June 1961. UN Photo 10. UN troops in Katanga arresting white mercenaries, 1 January 1961. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images 11. Secretary-General Hammarskjöld after his arrival at Léopoldville airport on 13 September 1961, less than a week before his death. At the centre is xx

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

Congolese Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula; on Adoula’s right is Joseph Mobutu. On Hammarskjöld’s left is General Sean McKeown, Commander of the United Nations Force; between Adoula and Mobutu is Sture Linnér, Officer-in-Charge of the UN mission. UN Photo Hammarskjöld chats with Prime Minister Adoula (right) and Vice-Premier Antoine Gizenga (wearing glasses) at an official reception to welcome him to Léopoldville. 15 September 1961. UN Photo Members of the Irish contingent of the UN Force, 1961. The attack on an Irish UN company in Jadotville by Tshombe’s troops on 17 September 1961 increased Hammarskjöld’s determination to hold peace talks with Moïse Tshombe. UN Photo The DC-6B aircraft which took Hammarskjöld and his entourage on the fatal flight to Ndola from Léopoldville on 17 September 1961. The aircraft, which was known as the Albertina, was owned by the Swedish company Transair and flown by a Swedish crew. UN Archives The air control tower at Ndola airport, which is eight miles from where the Albertina crashed. Communications between the tower and the aircraft were not recorded; the crash inquiries relied on a set of notes by the air traffic controller. This photograph was taken in the 1960s; the control tower was replaced with modern facilities in the 1980s. The Times of Zambia Ndola airport. This photograph was taken after independence in 1964; before independence, Africans were not permitted inside the airport perimeter. The Times of Zambia

Section 2 (between pages 228 and 229) 17. Lord Alport, the British High Commissioner, was at Ndola airport on the night of the crash and insisted that Hammarskjöld had decided ‘to go elsewhere’. This delayed the search for the plane, which was not found until 15 hours after the crash. [Impossible to trace either photographer or any source] 18. Bjørn Egge, the Norwegian head of the Military Information Branch in the UN Congo mission, talking to Conor Cruise O’Brien (left), the Irish head of the UN mission in Katanga, on 1 August 1961. Both Egge and O’Brien believed until their deaths that Hammarskjöld’s plane crashed as a result of sabotage. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images 19. Timothy Kankasa, who saw a small plane flashing lights on the Albertina on the night of the crash, and whose report in the morning hours of xxi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

29.

xxii

18 September 1961 of a crashed plane in the nearby forest was not acted on by the Rhodesian authorities. After the independence of Zambia in 1964, Kankasa became a Minister of State in the new government. Kankasa family collection A view of the wreckage of Hammarskjöld’s plane. ‘The smell of death was everywhere. Large mopani flies were beginning to settle on the bodies before they were covered by blankets and put into waiting trucks.’ [From the Report of the United Nations Commission of Investigation] The swathe cut through the forest by the Albertina as it crashed. It appeared to have executed a turn over the approach area, crashing near the end of the turn, and had sliced off the tops of the trees for about 150 yards. From the Report of the United Nations Commission of Investigation Swedish and Rhodesian investigators into the cause of the crash. UN Archives On 2 November 1961, all the pieces of the wreckage of the plane were placed in a hangar at Ndola airport, which was locked and sealed. UN Archives Conor Cruise O’Brien taking refuge in a trench from an attack by the Katanga Air Force Fouga on UN headquarters in Elisabethville on 18 September 1961, just hours after the crash of the Albertina. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images A UN soldier in the Congo examines a captured Katanga Air Force Fouga, 1 December 1961. UN Photo The funeral service for Dag Hammarskjöld on 29 September 1961 in Uppsala, Sweden, where he grew up. Members of his family stand at the foot of the grave as the coffin is lowered into it. The family wreath bore a single inscription: ‘Why?’ UN Photo Dr Nevers Mumba, Vice-President of the Republic of Zambia, pays tribute to Dag Hammarskjöld and the other victims of the crash at the memorial site near Ndola, 21 September 2003. The Times of Zambia Lieutenant Charles M Southall, Assistant US Naval Attaché, Rabat, Morocco, pays his respects to King Hassan II on 17 November 1965. Four years earlier, from the Cyprus naval communications facility of the National Security Agency, Southall heard a recording of the shootingdown of the Albertina. Southall family collection Mrs Chibesa Kankasa in the 1960s, who saw a ball of fire in the sky on the night of the crash. Mrs Kankasa was Zambia’s Minister for Women’s Affairs between 1969 and 1988. Kankasa family collection

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

30. The original drawing of the figurehead for the British clipper ship the Cutty Sark, built in 1868. The drawing is believed to have been the work of Hercules Linton, the ship’s designer. By permission of Harvey Linton Brettle, great grandson of Hercules Linton 31. One of eight documents apparently produced by an organisation called the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), describing a plot to kill Hammarskjöld in September 1961. Linton’s drawing of the figurehead for the Cutty Sark appears as a logo in the 1960s documents; it was also used by SAIMR in the 1980–90s. 32. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan lays a wreath at an annual ceremony in memory of former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and the staff members who lost their lives with him in the plane crash, 19 September 2005. The occasion took place outside the Meditation Room in the General Assembly public lobby at UN Headquarters in New York. UN Photo

xxiii

The estimated flight path of Hammarskjöld’s aircraft (SE-BDY) from Léopoldville to Ndola on 17 September 1961, showing times of contact between the aircraft and Salisbury and Ndola air control towers. The flight path of Lord Lansdowne’s plane (OO-RIC) is also shown. From the Report of the United Nations Commission of Investigation, 1962

NOTE

Ndola, where UN Secretary-General Hammarskjöld’s aircraft crashed on the night of 17–18 September 1961, was a town in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, which became independent Zambia in 1964. It belonged in 1961 to the British territory of the Central African Federation, also known as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which comprised Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi).   The Congo has changed its name several times since independence from Belgium in 1960. At first it was known as ‘Congo’; but when the neighbouring French colony of Congo became independent six weeks after its own independence, their names were distinguished by the addition in brackets of the capital city—to become Congo (Léopoldville) and Congo (Brazzaville). Congo (Léopoldville) was later called Zaire and is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (République Démocratique du Congo), often referred to in English as DR Congo or DRC.   Northern Rhodesian local time was two hours later than Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and one hour later than Congo local time. In aviation, GMT is often denoted by the letter ‘Z’, while local time is denoted by the letter ‘B’.



xxv

UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld answering a question from the press at UN headquarters, 12 June 1961.

Deployment of UN Forces in the Congo as of June 1961, also showing Ndola (bottom right) in Northern Rhodesia, where Hammarskjöld’s plane crashed shortly after midnight on 18th September 1961.

Crash site of the Albertina, 17–18 September 1961, showing the relationship between the site, the

the site, the airport, Twapia township and the Non-Directional Beacon. UN Map No 1356, 1962.

Enlarged portion of the wreckage plan. Letter ‘B’ indicates the position of a body; letter ‘E’ represents th tigation, 1962.

epresents the position of parts of the engines. From the Report of the United Nations Commission of Inves-

THE SIXTEEN DEAD

United Nations staff Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld (Sweden) Mr Heinrich A. Wieschhoff (USA), Director and Deputy to the Under-Secretary, Department of Political and Security Council Affairs Mr Vladimir Fabry (USA), Special counsellor to the Officer-in-Charge of the United Nations Operation in the Congo, l’Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) Mr William Ranallo (USA), bodyguard and personal aide to the SecretaryGeneral Miss Alice Lalande (Canada), Secretary to the Officer-in-Charge of ONUC Sergeant Harold M. Julien (USA), Acting chief security officer, ONUC Sergeant Serge L. Barrau (Haiti), Security officer, ONUC Sergeant Francis Eivers (Ireland), Investigator and security officer, ONUC Warrant-Officer Stig Olof Hjelte (Sweden), from the 11th infantry battalion stationed in Léopoldville Private Per Edvald Persson (Sweden), from the 11th infantry battalion stationed in Léopoldville

Transair crew (all from Sweden) Captain Per Erik Hallonquist Captain Nils-Eric Åhréus Second Pilot Lars Litton Flight-engineer Nils Göran Wilhelmsson Purser Harald Noork Radio operator Karl Erik Rosén Details from: ‘Special Report on the Fatal Flight of the Secretary-General’s Aircraft,’ 19 September 1961, United Nations Document S/4940/Add.5; www.un.org/depts/ dhl/dag/docs/s4940ad5ef.pdf.



1

PROLOGUE

Between ten and fifteen minutes after midnight on Monday 18 September 1961, a DC-6B aircraft crashed near the airport of Ndola, a town in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), not far from the Congo border.1 The plane had flown from Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) and was taking Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations Secretary-General, and his entourage, on a mission to try to bring peace to the Congo.2 Only one of the sixteen passengers was found alive—Harold Julien, chief of security, who died six days later.   Questions were asked as strange details of the crash emerged. Given that Ndola air traffic control had seen the plane flying overhead and had granted the pilot permission to land, why did the airport manager close down the airport? Why did Lord Alport, the British High Commissioner in Salisbury (now Harare), who was at the airport, insist that the Secretary-General must have decided ‘to go elsewhere’? Why did it take until four hours after daybreak to start a search, even though local residents, policemen and soldiers reported seeing a great flash of light in the sky shortly after midnight? Why was the missing aircraft not found for a full fifteen hours, even though it was just eight miles away from the airport where it had been expected to land?   What about the second plane that had been seen to follow the SecretaryGeneral’s aircraft? Why did the survivor refer to an explosion before the crash? Why did Hammarskjöld have no burns, when the other victims were so badly charred? How did he escape the intense blaze, which destroyed 75 to 80 per cent of the fuselage?   Two days after the crash, the Rhodesian Federal Department of Civil Aviation set up an air accident investigation, as required by the international civil aviation authorities. The report concluded that the approach to the airport

3

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

was normal and correct, except that it was about 1,700 feet lower then it should have been. It stated that the evidence available did not allow for a ‘specific or definite cause’ for the crash, because so much of the aircraft had been destroyed and there was so little information from the single survivor. While it observed that pilot error was a possibility, it was unable to rule out the ‘wilful act of some person or persons unknown which might have forced the aircraft to descend or collide with the trees.’3   This initial investigation was followed by two major public inquiries. The first was conducted by a Rhodesian Commission, which produced its report in February 1962. It concluded that the crash was an accident, caused by pilot error.4   The second major public inquiry was conducted by a UN Commission. Unlike the Rhodesian inquiry, it delivered an open verdict on the cause of the crash when it produced its report in April 1962. It argued that, as no special guard was provided for the plane prior to its departure from Léopoldville airport,5 an unauthorized approach to the aircraft for purposes of sabotage ‘cannot be excluded’: although the doors were said to have been locked when the plane was parked at Léopoldville, access was possible to the hydraulic compartment, the heating system and the undercarriage of the aircraft. The Commission added that, ‘it cannot exclude attack as a possible cause of the crash.’ Concern was expressed at the delay in the search and rescue procedures, particularly since the plane crashed not far from an airfield on which 18 Rhodesian military aircraft, capable of carrying out an air search, were stationed.6   Controversy over the cause of the crash continued. Thirty years later, international interest was revived by a letter written to the British newspaper the Guardian on 9 November 1992 by two former UN officials, George Ivan Smith and Conor Cruise O’Brien. The heading of the letter made its contents clear— ‘Hammarskjöld plane crash “no accident”.’   In order to investigate Smith’s and O’Brien’s findings, the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs authorized a further inquiry into the crash. This inquiry, which was a small-scale investigation, was conducted by Bengt Rösiö, formerly the Swedish Consul and Head of Mission in the Congo in the early 1960s and then a career diplomat in the Swedish Foreign Service. Rösiö produced a report in 1993, in which he concluded that the ‘least improbable’ cause for the crash was CFIT—‘Controlled Flight Into Terrain.’ According to this theory, the pilot made an error in judgement regarding altitude, due to a sensory or optical illusion, which made him fly too low and crash into the trees.7 Rösiö’s perception of the crash was not new, judging by a British 4

PROLOGUE

official document from October 1961. This records that after a nine day visit to Ndola, Rösiö visited the First Secretary at the British Embassy in Léopoldville and said he was ‘personally satisfied that the crash was an accident and had been due to pilot’s error.’ He then listed the reasons why Swedish experts were critical of the Rhodesian investigation. Rösiö’s purpose, reported the First Secretary to the Foreign Office in London, ‘was I believe to help us and the Rhodesian authorities … and to give us the opportunity to avert subsequent criticism, particularly by the Afro-Asians.’8   Not one of these investigations has laid to rest the continuing suspicions about the crash of the plane that ended the lives of Secretary-General Hammarskjöld and the other passengers and crew. Conspiracy theories have proliferated—in the press, in books, and especially on the internet. But, in addition, serious legitimate concerns have failed to go away, even after nearly fifty years.   In 2005, Major General Bjørn Egge, a Norwegian who had been the UN’s head of military information in the Congo in 1961, with the rank of colonel, suggested that Hammarskjöld had a round hole in his forehead that was possibly consistent with a bullet hole. Now eighty-seven years of age, he explained in a statement to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that, straight after the crash in 1961, he had been sent to Ndola to collect the Secretary-General’s cipher machine and his briefcase and had been allowed to see his dead body in the mortuary. The body seemed to have a hole in the forehead: He was not burnt as were the other … casualties, but had a round hole in his forehead. On photos taken of the body, however, this hole has been removed. I have always asked myself why this was done. Similarly, the autopsy report has been removed from the case papers. Again, I ask why?

He added, ‘When I saw Hammarskjöld’s body at the hospital, two British doctors were present, but not very willing to cooperate. However, I noticed the hole in Hammarskjöld’s forehead in particular.’9 Egge qualified his statement carefully in an interview with Aftenposten ten days later: he said there was no tangible evidence that Hammarskjöld’s death was the result of a conscious act by a third party, but that circumstantial evidence pointed in this direction.10   There have been ongoing suspicions, too, about the bullets found in the bodies of two of the security guards; the presence of these bullets was attributed by the Rhodesian inquiry report to the explosions of cartridge cases in the fire. But at the time, the bullets led to considerable suspicion, expressed in particular by Major C. F. Westrell, a Swedish explosives expert. ‘From my experience,’ said Westrell, ‘I can firmly state that ammunition for rifles, heavy machine-guns and pistols cannot, when heated by fire, eject bullets with suffi 5

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

cient force for the bullets to get into a human body.’ He based this statement on the results of some large-scale experiments to investigate the danger for firemen in approaching burning ammunition stores. His opinion was shared by Arne Svensson, chief of the technical department of the police in Stockholm, who said that if bullets were found in any of the victims of the air crash, they must have passed through the barrel of a weapon. He also said that if a security guard had had an ammunition pouch placed close to his body and the ammunition was exploded by the heat of the fire, the walls of the pouch would have diminished the power of the explosion. In such circumstances, it is almost impossible for the bullets to go through clothes.11 These suspicions about the bullets have persisted.   Questions have also been asked about holes in the aircraft: whether or not they had been caused by bullets. One of these holes was a perforation in the nose dome, with a fracture immediately below it; this was described by the Forensic Ballistics Department of the Northern Rhodesian Police as damage caused by impact, with the qualification that it was ‘extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain with absolute accuracy the cause.’ A small hole was discovered in the cockpit window frame, approximately one centimetre in diameter; after an examination by microscope, it was decided that the hole had ‘not been caused by a bullet, but most probably by an object with jagged point.’12   Some rumours relate specifically to the crash scene. According to the Northern News, the Northern Rhodesian daily newspaper, Hammarskjöld was found leaning against an ant-hill, in a seated position.13 This has been the consensus since 1961 and at the crash site near Ndola, now a memorial to Hammarskjöld, there are steps to the top of this ant-hill and a platform from which one can look out over the neighbourhood. Another rumour is that the Secretary-General survived the crash and crawled away from the aircraft, using vegetation to propel himself forward.14 *

It is important to sift through the many rumours and theories about what happened and to establish what is fact and what is myth, so far as possible. This is extremely difficult, given the passage of nearly 50 years since the crash: documentation has disappeared and key witnesses have passed away. But this difficulty was greatly diminished by the discovery of crucial archive material in the library of Rhodes House, the centre of Commonwealth and African Studies at Oxford University. This material belongs to the archive of Sir Roy Welensky, who was Prime Minister of the British territory of the Central African 6

PROLOGUE

Federation, comprising Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now independent Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi) between 1957 and 1963. The Federation had a parliamentary system but the franchise was confined to the white minority. It was under Welensky’s premiership that the Rhodesian investigations into Hammarskjöld’s death took place.   Most of the relevant files have been kept secret, but the archivists at Rhodes House decided to give me access because such a long period of time had elapsed and also because the matter of my inquiry was a serious one. These files contain documentation collected in the course of the very first investigation into the crash: a medical report on the victims, including a précis of the autopsies;15 x-rays of the bodies of the dead;16 photographs of the bodies of the dead;17 plans of the crash site;18 and the firearms report.19   It is clear from the photographs, which are in black and white, that many of the crash victims are so charred as to be unrecognizable; Hammarskjöld’s body, on the other hand, has no burns at all. There are six photographs of the Secretary-General: three at the scene of the crash; three in the mortuary. In the first three, he has been moved from his place of death and is lying on a stretcher, surrounded by scrub vegetation. He is wearing a white shirt with elegant cuff-links; his drill trousers are pale, with a slim black belt. His left hand appears to be holding some leaves and twigs and his right wrist is encircled by a metal identity bracelet. Apart from some bloody marks on his face and the fact that his tie is pulled loose to the side of his neck, he looks almost immaculate and extremely dignified.   There is an object—which looks like a playing card—protruding from the ruffled tie (or possibly cravat) around Hammarskjöld’s neck. It must have been this card that led to rumours at the time that the Ace of Spades—the ‘death card’—had been left on his body. It is not possible to identify the card as the Ace of Spades on the basis of the photograph, but a civilian photographer at the scene claimed years later to have seen it. ‘Yes! D. H. did have the Ace of Spades in his shirt collar—no comment,’ he recalled. ‘It was requested at that time not to mention this.’20 It is unlikely that a journalist placed the card in Hammarskjöld’s neck, since police officers ‘ensured that the Press touched nothing in the wreck.’21   In the three photographs at the mortuary, Hammarskjöld is laid out on a slab, undressed.   The medical report was produced by the Rhodesian pathologists H. D. Ross and J. Hillsdon Smith, and by Squadron Leader P. J. Stevens, a British aviation pathologist at RAF Halton who was sent out from Britain. It constitutes a 7

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

‘Summary and Conclusions, with Discussion,’ rather than the formal reports of the autopsies that were conducted: in effect, therefore, it is a précis of the collected data. The full autopsies themselves are not available in the Welensky archive or in any other archive that I have investigated. This summary report was given to the Medical Board of Sweden, which appointed two Swedish pathologists, Drs A. Frykholm and N. Ringertz, to examine the findings.   All this documentation is of crucial importance for any examination of the circumstances surrounding Dag Hammarskjöld’s death. However, I was aware that I did not have the skills necessary to examine and analyse this ­material. For help, I turned to three experts, all on the UK Register of Expert Witnesses. My first expert is a consultant pathologist: Dr Robert Ian Vanhegan, FRCPath, who has contributed to definitive textbooks and journals in his field and been a lecturer at the University of Oxford; he has twenty years experience of performing autopsies, including military and gunshot injuries.   For the purpose of the Hammarskjöld investigation, Dr Vanhegan examined the summary medical report. He noted, however, that this report ‘gives only a précis of each autopsy and does not include a copy of the full report’; it was possible, therefore, that important negative findings were not included. He also examined the photographs of the body of Hammarskjöld.   On the basis of the medical summary, he produced a report identifying the primary cause of death: multiple small areas of arterial bleeding within the Secretary-General’s brain and a collection of blood over the right cerebral hemisphere.22 It concludes that the Secretary-General died at the time of (or very soon after) impact, with the cessation of his blood circulation, as shown by the fact that there was minimal blood in the vicinity of his spinal and leg fractures. Substantial collections of blood would have built up had he lived. The extent of his cerebral injuries alone, as recorded in the medical report, suggests that if he had been alive for a short period of time after the crash, he would have been unconscious.   Having studied the photographs closely, Dr Vanhegan discounted the belief that Hammarskjöld was holding leaves: ‘What appears to be vegetation in association with the left hand clearly is beneath the outer surface of the fingers (i.e. not held in the palm).’ This disqualifies the theory that the Secretary-General crawled out of the aeroplane with the help of leaves and twigs. There are further reasons to reject the crawling theory: there are no stains left by crushed 8

PROLOGUE

vegetation or earth on the front of his clothing, which is pale; and he had suffered a spinal cord transaction, which ‘would have left his lower limbs paralysed and made it unlikely that he would have been able to crawl.’ Moreover, it is unlikely that he would have lived long enough to crawl away from the point of impact or subsequent fire, which would have taken some time.   Dr Vanhegan made an interesting discovery. In one of the photographs at the scene there is ‘a peculiar, almost circular, area of pallor associated with the right orbit’—that is, a whited-out area around the eye. This is seen again in one of the photographs at the mortuary: a peculiar circular area of sharply defined pallor associated with the right orbit, within which there appears to be an ‘abrasion’ in the region of the mid-eyebrow.

Unable to explain these areas of pallor in the two affected photographs, Dr Vanhegan offers an intriguing hypothesis: ‘This could be a crude attempt photographically to “brush out” detail.’ Presumably the extreme pallor has developed over the 50 years since the photographs were taken and then re-touched, if this is what happened. At the time, any such re-touching presumably achieved a natural effect, since there is no reference in any documentation to photographs with a marked contrast in colour around the right eye.   It is not possible to compare the images showing this pallor with any other image of the right side of his face, since the right side of the face is not shown in the other four photographs. The other two photographs at the scene were taken from Hammarskjöld’s left, with the effect of obscuring the right side of the face. In the other two photographs at the mortuary, one shows the back of his head and, in the other, the right side of the face is concealed by the hand of the right arm, which is raised over his shoulder; this arm, which has rigor mortis, is not in the same position as the arm at the scene, where it is at some remove from his face.   The hypothesis that these two photographs were ‘doctored’ would be consistent with Major General Egge’s concern that the Secretary-General had a round hole in his forehead, which had been removed in photographs taken of the body. In a further statement to Aftenposten, Egge stated that a Norwegian historian, Dr Bodil Katarina Nævdal, obtained a photograph of the body and had it analysed by crime scene technicians; they established that Hammarskjöld’s forehead had been touched up in the photograph.23   The theory of ‘doctoring’ would also be consistent with the experience of Knut Hammarskjöld, the Secretary-General’s nephew, who flew to Ndola immediately after his uncle’s death in 1961. The Northern Rhodesian police 9

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

gave him a set of photographs of his uncle’s body in the mortuary, which showed him with a smooth forehead; but soon afterwards, a young policeman named David Appleton discreetly took him aside and gave him another set, in a manila envelope. Appleton quietly commented, ‘You may find these interesting.’ In this set of photographs, injuries to the head were visible.24 My second expert is Peter Franks, LLB, a highly respected firearms and ballistic consultant, who is also a qualified lawyer. Mr Franks has trained military and police units around the world and is qualified to comment on all aspects of firearms, ranging from the reconstruction of crime scenes to comments on gunshot injuries.   For the purpose of his evaluation, Mr Franks studied the ballistics and ammunition report written by R. H. Els for the Forensic Ballistics Department in the Northern Rhodesia Police, which looks at the firearms and 342 bullets found at the crash site and includes photographs of the firearms and ammunition recovered. Mr Franks also examined the x-rays of the bodies with bullets and cartridge fragments; the medical report where there is discussion of gunshot wounds; photographs of the deceased; and plans and photographs of the scene.25 He was conscious, however, that he was reliant on material that was second-hand, none of which he was able to check out himself; if any of this information was inaccurate, it would affect his conclusions.   In the photographs of Hammarskjöld, he examined the visible injuries that might be construed as gunshot wounds and concluded that most of the wounds were produced by cuts or blunt trauma injury. The only visible injury which could be a bullet or projectile wound, is the one under the Secretary-General’s chin: ‘The wound under the chin is upon close examination elongated (oval) and not round, and whilst that does not preclude it from being a bullet wound I am not attracted to the idea that this was so.’26   Mr Franks noted that a Smith & Wesson (M12 airweight) revolver was discovered close to Hammarskjöld, which confirms the rumour that there was a revolver near the Secretary-General. It was strange, thought Mr Franks, that the revolver had been severely damaged by heat, yet Hammarskjöld himself was unaffected by the blaze. It was also strange that no weapon was found with Sergeant Harold Julien, chief of security.   On the matter of the bullets in some of the victims’ bodies, which are visible in x-rays, Mr Franks does not share Westrell’s view that explosions in the fire cannot cause bullets to penetrate the body. Under normal conditions when 10

PROLOGUE

cartridges are placed on or in a fire, he said, it is usually the cartridge case that will move at high velocity when the cartridge explodes; but there are circumstances when the cartridge case is restricted, so that the bullet will be propelled out of the case at some speed. He is satisfied with the verdict of the Rhodesian police report that the penetration of bullets was the result of explosions in the fire, since the bullets have no ‘stria’—that is, rifling marks showing that they went through the barrel of a gun.   But he had a number of concerns. One of these related to the injuries suffered by Serge Barrau, a bodyguard, who was severely burnt in the crash. The x-rays reveal that there were one or two cartridge percussion caps in the soft tissue of his right upper arm; a number of fragments of cartridge case in his abdomen; and a number of cartridge percussion caps in the soft tissue around the right hip. Mr Franks was at a loss to find an explanation for these injuries, since neither firearms nor ammunition were discovered in his immediate vicinity. Yet all the firearms-related projectiles in his body were percussion caps or fragments of cartridge cases—and for these small items to have enough energy to enter his body, even over a small distance, they would have had to travel at high velocity. This means that the weapons must have been nearby at the time the ammunition exploded, otherwise the objects would not have been able to penetrate the body.   Since Barrau was a bodyguard, commented Mr Franks, he would be expected to have had a firearm in close proximity—‘indeed with spare ammunition— so a holster and spare rounds on his person. This would make it possible for him to have the wounds/injuries he has.’ But, he added, ‘there were no weapons or ammunition or cartridge cases or fragments.’ The only explanation he could offer was that maybe his body was moved prior to the crash site being investigated by Rhodesian police.   In the case of Per Persson, a Swedish soldier, the picture is again complicated, since the bullets recovered from his body were all 9mm—not 0.38, the ammunition used by the revolver he is likely to have worn in a shoulder holster. However, the bullets could have come from other weapons found close to the soldier, which used 9mm ammunition.   Mr Franks examined the plan of the wreckage and plotted the approximate location of firearms and ammunition. Generally, they were distributed throughout the length of the wreckage in an explicable manner, but with two puzzling exceptions. One of these was that the two sub-machine guns at the site, with appropriate magazines and ammunition, were discovered near the two pilots— but at some distance from the two soldiers on the aircraft, Stig Hjelte and Per 11

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

Persson. This was odd, since the sub-machine guns and ammunition would almost certainly have been issued to the two soldiers on board.   A Smith & Wesson 0.38 revolver also caused Mr Franks some concern. Looking at the photograph of the revolver, showing the cylinder swung out in an open position, he noticed that there was a firing pin indent in one of the cartridges. This meant that the weapon must have been discharged and a shot fired. Franks rejected the possibility that it had been accidentally discharged, since Smith and Wesson revolvers have an in-built safety feature and cannot be fired without the trigger being pulled. ‘Not even an air crash would cause such a discharge,’ commented Mr Franks, who is an expert on the construction, components and safety mechanisms of Smith & Wesson (and also Colt).   The photograph of this weapon reveals, too, that at least one of the cartridge cases was removed from its original chamber and replaced after the gun was discharged. This is evident from an indent across the primer, caused by heat forcing the cartridge case back against the recoil shield of the weapon as it discharged. The fact that this indent can no longer be matched to the shape of the recoil shield indicates its removal and replacement.27 The only possible explanation, concluded Mr Franks, was that it was removed and replaced ‘following initial inspection but prior to the photograph being taken.’   There is reason to suspect similar tampering before the photograph of a Colt official police 0.38 special was taken. The initial explosion appeared to have opened the weapon, exposing its cylinder, so that all the cartridges in the revolver appear to have exploded from heat. Yet Mr Franks could determine that one cartridge had been moved prior to being photographed and then replaced for the photograph.   In the case of another Smith & Wesson revolver, one of the cartridge chambers is empty and there is no evidence in the chamber that a cartridge was blown out in the crash or the fire. Mr Franks was puzzled by this. He noted that it was common practice in the 1960s for bodyguards to leave empty the chamber under the hammer of a revolver, for safety purposes—but this was not necessary with this particular, very safe, revolver.   Mr Franks’s final query relates to the variety of ammunition. He noted that on the one hand, the bodyguards carried ‘up-to-date, excellent weapons.’ But some of the ammunition that was found spread across the crash site had been discontinued just prior to the Second World War, while other ammunition was from 1951 and 1956. ‘I would have expected that such a high profile VIP, with a professional unit of body guards, would have the best equipment,’ commented Mr Franks. ‘So why would they be carrying old stock 0.38 ammunition?’ Moreover, the ammunition was mixed: ‘It is normal for ammunition to 12

PROLOGUE

be issued in a batch, so I would have expected all of them to have Winchester or Remington ammunition.’ It would be extremely strange, he reflected, ‘that the bodyguard team should use various manufacturers’ ammunition and even stranger that it is quite old. There is no real explanation for that. Nor is it very professional, because older ammunition becomes less reliable.’   On the specific issue of the holes in the aircraft, Mr Franks concluded that these were not caused by bullets. He added that the photographs are not clear, even when enlarged—but even so, at this stage he ‘would have to say no.’   Finally, although it was outside his remit, Mr Franks dismissed the theory that Hammarskjöld was found leaning against an ant-hill. He pointed out the spot on the wreckage plan showing where Hammarskjöld was found; but no ant-hill is indicated there, even though ant-hills are shown on the plan. There are other indications that he could not have been leaning against an ant-hill: there is no blood on the front of his shirt, which there would have been if he was sitting up—in such a case, gravity would have caused the blood to run down his face on to the shirt. In fact, the photographs show that the blood from his facial wounds trickled down the sides of his face, towards his ears. Mr Franks made a final point on this topic: that the Secretary-General’s right arm has rigor mortis and is lifted upwards; this would not have been possible if he was leaning against an ant-hill. My third expert is Peter Sutherst, a forensic photographic expert with over fifty years of experience, who has supplied testimony in numerous police and Ministry of Defence inquiries.28   Mr Sutherst was puzzled that there is no photograph of Hammarskjöld’s body in situ. ‘You would expect to find this,’ he told me. ‘An aircraft accident investigation ought to produce photographs to show where the bodies were found.’ For an initial investigation, it is usual procedure for the bodies to be left in situ, so that there can be an examination of where the bodies are in relation to the aircraft. Then a chart is produced showing where the bodies are— ‘but they would need pictures to verify it. In the forensic service, you put a flag to show even where a bit of body is.’ In fact, there are photographs of all the bodies in situ in the relevant file—but not that of Hammarskjöld, which was photographed only on a stretcher at the crash site, nor that of his bodyguard, Bill Ranallo.   This is strange, commented Mr Sutherst, since the post mortem photographs were done professionally and all the photographs of the Secretary-General are 13

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

of high quality. The photographer was likely to have had a supply of additional film if needed and in the case of the crash scene, the photographs were evidently taken during daylight, so there would have been no need for a flash.   The lack of a photograph of Hammarskjöld’s body in situ is all the more odd given that a ‘wreckage plan’ was produced to show where the bodies were found—all of them, including those of the Secretary-General and Ranallo.   Mr Sutherst also noted that there was no mention in the medical report of the leaves and twigs, or of the playing card tucked into the Secretary-General’s neck. These findings, he argued, would be expected in a post mortem report; in any case, details are given of his appearance in other respects, such as his clothing. The careful observations made by my three expert witnesses dismiss some, though not all, of the myths, rumours and theories surrounding the crash and Mr Hammarskjöld’s death. It is easy to understand the origin of the theory that Hammarskjöld crawled out of the aircraft, since the photographs of his body on the stretcher appear to show him holding leaves and twigs; but it is now clear that this was an impression accidentally created by the photograph.   But the experts’ observations also raise some new and unexpected questions. How did the belief develop that Hammarskjöld was found leaning against an ant hill? Where was he actually found, before being placed on a stretcher? Why was no photograph taken of his body in situ, for the purpose of the investigation?   Mr Franks was struck by the anomalies in the presentation of the firearms and ammunition; he was concerned, too, that the Secretary-General’s body was close to the burnt aircraft, but not at all burnt itself; also that his briefcase and cipher machine were not even charred. ‘I could speculate forever on this,’ he commented in a note to his conclusions. ‘It does not feel right—it smells of either a cover up (for whatever reason) or just simple incompetence.’   Dr Vanhegan suggested the possibility that two of the photographs were airbrushed to conceal detail. ‘It is beyond reason,’ he noted in a discussion of the findings in his report, ‘that exactly the same sort of artefact would appear on exactly the same feature on widely separated frames (of film); and, again, even less likely had cut film or plates been used as negatives.’29  If it is the case that the photographs were ‘doctored,’ then it follows that an attempt was made to conceal some detail. But if so, what kind of detail? There 14

PROLOGUE

is no mention in the medical report of any injury in the right orbit of Mr Hammarskjöld’s face. But on the basis of the information provided by the medical report, the Secretary-General was killed by the impact of the crash—so why would there be any need to kill him? Was the evidence in the medical report altered too? Why was it decided not to include the full autopsies in the medical report? Who made these decisions?   Did any person or group of people, or any organization or political party, have a reason to want Mr Hammarskjöld out of the way? What was the political background to the sudden death of the Secretary-General and the other passengers and crew on that moonlit night in the centre of Africa?

15

1 ‘BEBOP-A-LULA’ STOCKHOLM, 2009

In 1961, the year of his death, Dag Hjalmar Agne Hammarskjöld was in his mid-fifties. But he looked much younger: slim, fit and good-looking, with greyblue eyes and straight sandy-coloured hair. He was five foot nine inches but seemed taller—so that the press frequently referred to him as ‘tall.’1 He made an immediate and strong impression on everyone he met.2   When Hammarskjöld was appointed the second United Nations SecretaryGeneral in 1953, the United Nations had been in existence for just eight years. As its leader, according to one historian of the organization, he seemed ‘to restore the soul that had somehow slipped away in the UN’s first few years.’3 In the judgement of Sir Brian Urquhart, a senior UN official who worked closely with Hammarskjöld, he was that ‘most unusual of creatures, a truly good man’: His integrity was absolute. His intellect was acute and subtle. His political judgment was by no means infallible, but he erred comparatively rarely. He was alert, responsible, and sensitive.

He made ‘a new art of multilateral diplomacy,’ adds Urquhart, by his skill, stamina, and resourcefulness: ‘He gave a fresh dimension to the task of international service by the qualities of his mind and of his compassionate nature.’4   Hammarskjöld was driven by the highest standards of duty and service. He once jokingly remarked to his friend, the poet W. H. Auden, that he regarded his job as ‘being a kind of secular Pope.’5 For Dag, the work of the organization he led reminded him of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which he arranged

17

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

to be played at the UN Day concert in October 1960. ‘On his road from conflict and emotion to reconciliation in this final hymn of praise,’ explained Dag at the concert: Beethoven has given us a confession and a credo which we, who work within and for this Organization, may well make our own. We take part in the continuous fight between conflicting interests and ideologies which so far has marked the history of mankind.

Inspired by that faith, he urged his listeners, ‘we strive to bring order and purity into chaos and anarchy.’6   Not quite four months before his death, on 30 May 1961, Hammarskjöld visited Oxford to receive an honorary degree. He used the occasion to put forward his concept of an independent international civil service as the keystone of an effective global order. The Secretary-General, he argued in his acceptance speech, ‘remains under the obligation to carry out the policies as adopted by the [UN] organs; the essential requirement is that he does this on the basis of his exclusively international responsibility and not in the interests of any particular State or group of States.’ For him, this was a question of integrity, even if that integrity drove an international civil servant into positions that were in conflict with interested parties.7   Not everyone approved of this new, autonomous importance for the United Nations. Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister, was suspicious of Hammarskjöld’s position of neutrality which, he said, ‘seemed almost like taking an impartial position between the principles of good and evil.’ Hammarskjöld ‘was a Swede,’ observed Macmillan condescendingly in his memoirs, Pointing the Way—‘and although we admired the Swedish people we could not forget their long history of skilful abstention from the great causes which had torn the world apart.’8 Here Macmillan was implicitly criticizing Sweden’s policy of neutrality, which had determined its stance through the Second World War.   But the need for the neutrality of the UN was particularly acute, believed Hammarskjöld, in the context of the Cold War. In 1954, he attempted to use the UN to counter the American-backed toppling of the democratically elected President of Guatemala, though his efforts failed to have the effect for which he hoped.9 Under the first Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, the UN had been shaken and demoralized by the excesses of McCarthyism; now Dag was determined to imbue it with a new sense of purpose and commitment to the ideals of international service.10 18

‘BEBOP-A-LULA.’ STOCKHOLM, 2009

  He had a sense that he was shaping the organization for the future. He was a keen advocate of ‘preventive diplomacy,’ as a strategy to influence the political decisions of individual countries. He employed this strategy for the first time as Secretary-General in 1954–5, to negotiate the release of American soldiers captured by the Chinese in the Korean War. In 1956, during the Suez Canal crisis, he exercised his own personal diplomacy to enable the UN to end the use of force by Israel, France and Britain against Egypt. In 1958, he suggested to the UN Assembly a solution to the crises in Lebanon and Jordan, which led to the withdrawal of American and British troops. In 1959, he sent a personal representative to south-east Asia when Cambodia and Thailand suspended diplomatic relations with each other.

Public service was at the core of the Hammarskjöld family’s ideals: his father, Hjalmar, had been a governor of the province of Uppsala and Prime Minister of Sweden, and his ancestors had served the Swedish crown for over two centuries. Dag, born on 29 July 1905, was the youngest of four sons—Bo, Åke, Sten and Dag—of whom three followed the path of civil service. The eldest, Bo, who was 14 years older than Dag, became the governor of one of the provinces, like his father. Åke served as a Swedish diplomat in Washington following the First World War, after which he was seconded to the League of Nations in Geneva; he was then appointed Secretary-General, and later Judge, of the Court of International Justice at The Hague. ‘From generations of soldiers and government officials on my father’s side,’ commented Dag in a radio interview with Edward R. Murrow in 1953, ‘I inherited a belief that no life was more satisfactory than one of selfless service to your country—or humanity. This service required likewise the courage to stand up unflinchingly for your convictions.’11   He was also influenced by his mother’s side of the family. From them, he explained in the same radio interview, ‘I inherited a belief that, in the very radical sense of the Gospels, all men were equals as children of God.’12 He loved his mother, Agnes, very deeply. On the day of her death he stated: ‘She had the qualities I admire most: she was courageous and good.’13   The lineage of the Hammarskjöld family is among the oldest in Sweden and Dag’s youth was spent in a sixteenth-century castle in the university town of Uppsala, forty-five miles from Stockholm. The castle was vast—with turrets, banqueting hall, dungeons and labyrinthine passages. But it was also austere, 19

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

a characteristic of his family’s life. An outstanding student, Dag moved seamlessly into a distinguished career in Stockholm in the Swedish civil service. With a PhD in economics, he ran the Finance Ministry while still in his thirties and coined the term ‘planned economy’ at the Swedish Central Bank. With his brother Bo, who had a similar role at the Social Welfare Ministry, he helped to launch the Swedish welfare state.14 He was committed to the extension of social services to the whole population of Sweden and cared deeply about social justice.   His genuine concern for the vulnerable and needy did not always, though, translate into a gentle manner: he was never unkind, but his manner at times was brisk and curt. His grey-blue eyes were expressive and sparkled with pleasure when something aroused his deeply ironic sense of humour. But they could also, when he felt outraged by some unacceptable behaviour, glitter with icy disapproval.15 This was perhaps the negative side of his high-mindedness and his widely praised ‘air of detachment and imperturbability.’16   Hammarskjöld derived great satisfaction from his intellectual interests, which were driven not only by his spiritual yearning but also by a keen aesthetic sense. He had an extensive and broad range of artistic friends—from the novelist John Steinbeck to the modernist sculptor Barbara Hepworth.17 The evening before leaving for Léopoldville on 12 September 1961, he gave a small dinner party in his New York apartment on Seventy-Third Street for the American painter Ben Shahn, and Carl Nordenfalk, the director of Stockholm’s National Museum, with their wives. They discussed plans for Shahn to paint Hammarskjöld’s portrait, which Nordenfalk had been trying to arrange for over two years. ‘It was an extremely stimulating evening,’ observed Nordenfalk with satisfaction afterwards.18   But Dag was no snob: he was as happy to chat about daily life with his bodyguard, Bill Ranallo, as he was to engage in an intense analysis of poetry.   According to a colleague, Dag ‘drove himself harder than any of us. He arrived precisely at the office—9.00 am I think, seldom left before 8.00 pm, never went to official cocktail parties, was at the office almost all Saturday.’ His tidiness was legendary and his walk brisk: he was a man who exemplified selfdiscipline. To one senior official, the Irish diplomat Conor Cruise O’Brien, this discipline seemed to verge on rigidity: When he was talking of the tests ahead, and still more when—as I most dreaded—he engaged in his grim, Nordic rite of literary discussion, his manner was grave and regal. But when he relaxed, one was startled as if by the snap of a spring, tightly compressed and suddenly released.19

20

‘BEBOP-A-LULA.’ STOCKHOLM, 2009

  He expected dedication from everyone. ‘Late every evening,’ said one of his senior officials, ‘when the debating halls were silent and the last of the delegates had folded his papers and departed, after the lights had gone out in the vast glass edifice, Hammarskjöld’s suite would be a hive of activity until the late hours.’ By 8 or 9 p.m., those with families left, but others remained to eat dinner with the Secretary-General and continue work. When there was a crisis, they worked on until well after midnight.20 Dag himself rarely had more than four to five hours’ sleep a night.21   Some of his peers found him distant. ‘Hammarskjöld, you know,’ reflected Urquhart in 1984: was not somebody one got to know very well. He was extremely aloof. I worked with him a great deal, but I never claim that I knew him at all. If you were on trips or something you would have a marvelous evening with him and he’d be simply enchanting, but the next day he would be the same old, slightly Garboesque Swede.22

But to others, he seemed warm and loving. W. H. Auden, for example, described Hammarskjöld as ‘a great, good, and lovable man.’23 Although their meetings were brief and infrequent, Auden said that he ‘loved the man from the moment I saw him. I felt certain of a mutual sympathy between us, of an expressed dialogue beneath our casual conversation. The loneliness and the religious concern which his diary records, I sensed.’24   The Australian George Ivan Smith, who handled public information issues for the UN at the highest level, was possibly the UN official who was closest to the Secretary-General, on a personal as well as work-related basis. He accompanied him on many missions as his spokesman, including his visit to the Middle East following the Suez Crisis. ‘I should have written to you long ago,’ wrote Hammarskjöld to Smith in 1956: first of all in order to thank you for invaluable assistance on all levels: as political advisor, as an incredibly skilled public relations man, as general caretaker of a sometimes somewhat helpless group, and a very fine, understanding and stimulating personal friend.25

He and Smith went on many holidays together and wrote to each other as ‘Flexible’ (Hammarskjöld) and ‘Fluid’ (Smith).26 Smith’s daughter remembers when Dag came to her family’s home in London for a cocktail party in 1957, when she was a teenager; he seemed to her gracious and ‘almost godlike,’ but kind and honest, with a genuine respect for young people.27   Hammarskjöld inspired intense loyalty and affection from his staff, which he reciprocated. Bill Ranallo, who had been with the UN since 1946 and had 21

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been the chauffeur and bodyguard of Trygve Lie, was Dag’s constant companion. Ranallo was tough: according to a South African newspaper covering the Secretary-General’s visit to the country in January 1961, he wore dark glasses and ‘always had a tell-tale bulge over his pocket.’28 He was also intelligent, good company and tactful, excelling in all the things for which Hammarskjöld had no time or no appetite—running the household, driving and cooking. He was devoted to his boss, as was his wife. More than anybody else, they made Dag’s life as easy and as comfortable as possible and watched over him protectively. Ranallo insisted that Dag wear his identity bracelet at all times;29 the bracelet bore the inscription ‘Grateful Bill.’30   Dag spoke four languages fluently: Swedish, English, French and German. He was also, according to the English novelist C. P. Snow, who visited him at the UN in New York at the end of the 1950s, deeply fastidious. ‘Showing us to seats on the sofas,’ recalled Snow: he was as immaculate as any man I had ever seen. He was wearing a tawny brown suit, a shade darker than his hair. He had a green tie, and socks exactly matching…. One almost forgot his physique in the perfection of his attire: but he was long-headed, with Nordic grey-blue eyes, athletically built, about five feet eight or nine.31

At times Dag was criticized for his patrician background and what was seen as an excessive refinement—that he could seem, as one colleague put it, ‘like a nobly formed Ming vase among rough clay jars.’32   In the first month of his Secretary-Generalship, rumours spread across the UN Plaza and New York that Hammarskjöld was homosexual. C. P. Snow obliquely remarked: ‘People have suggested that Hammarskjöld did not become a normal [sic] man because of the overpowering personality of his father.’ (Snow sneeringly referred to ‘the famous Hammarskjöldian ambiguity’ and mocked his brilliance—‘the only man alive who can be totally incomprehensible with complete fluency in four languages’).33 Dag tackled the rumours head on, pointing out that if there was any truth in them, he could not have accepted the office, given public opinion on homosexuality and the fact that it was illegal in the US. Some attributed his permanent bachelorhood to his high level of fastidiousness and to the fact that physical contact seemed to make him uneasy; in any case, he said that marriage and the immensely demanding post of the Secretary-Generalship were ‘totally incompatible’ pursuits.34   A different kind of rumour was triggered by the posthumous publication of Dag’s poems and prose reflections, which appeared under the title of Vägmärken in 1963; the book was translated into English as Markings, although 22

‘BEBOP-A-LULA.’ STOCKHOLM, 2009

a more literal meaning would be ‘Road Marks’ or ‘Signposts.’ He described this collection of writings as ‘a diary … begun without a thought of anybody else reading it … a sort of “white book” concerning my negotiations with myself— and with God.’35   To some of those who read the introspective Markings, his spiritual searching seemed excessively intense. John Lindberg, a distinguished Swedish diplomat and the author of Foundations of Social Survival, who had been a friend of Dag Hammarskjöld when they were at school together in Uppsala, described the journal as ‘the outpourings of a lonely man of high authority; it is sad, resigned, and carries the self-imposed burden for the household of nations. It shares with the Confessions of St Augustine a deep consciousness of guilt.’36 Some suggested that Hammarskjöld’s reflections revealed suicidal tendencies and that he was responsible for his own death in some way; others believed he had a premonition of his death.37   Dag eventually found his faith as a Christian in his late forties, though he continued to suffer from a deep sense of unworthiness. He did not participate in the liturgical and sacramental life of a church; as Secretary-General, suggests Auden, he may have felt that any public commitment to a particular Christian body would label him as too ‘Western.’ But in any case, adds Auden, he gives no evidence in his diary of desiring such a commitment.38 In 1961, the year of Dag’s death, the UN was still only fifteen years old. In that short period, there had been a dramatic shift in the balance of power at the UN because of European decolonization. For with the addition of the Congo, the Afro-Asian bloc now provided 47 UN members out of a total of 100 and the West could no longer count upon automatic majorities in the General Assembly. Sixteen African states joined the UN in 1960, so that Africa itself now provided one-quarter of its membership. Conscious of the significance of this global shift, Dag travelled through Africa for a month between December 1959 and January 1960. ‘So now you’re an African,’ wrote his friend Alexis Leger—‘ahead of the rest of the planet, as usual, by half a century.’39   Dag was particularly concerned about South Africa’s policy of racial segregation, especially after the Sharpeville massacre of March 1960. Apartheid had provoked considerable friction at UN headquarters in New York, where the newly decolonized nations were demanding that South Africa be excluded from the organization. As a result, commented Bengt Rösiö, the Swedish consul in Léopoldville some years later, ‘Mr Hammarskjöld’s most vituperant oppo 23

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

nents were, naturally, those who feared the end of what unquestionably was white supremacy in Africa.’40   The European colonial powers—notably Britain, France, Belgium and Portugal—were not happy about the growing influence at the UN of the newlyindependent states. The Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias looked with apprehension at the prospect of the Sixteenth General Assembly in September 1961: The real crisis will begin when the United Nations resumes its work within a few days. Then we are likely to see the fate of Berlin and Europe being decided by the fiery oratory of the leaders from Ghana and Liberia …41

In late 1961, the Earl of Home, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, commented acidly that the UN ‘was now run by the Afro-Asian bloc.’42 These new states were exerting an influence that would have been unheard of only a few years earlier.   In his introduction to the UN’s Annual Report of 1960, Hammarskjöld described the states of Africa and Asia as ‘powerful elements in the international community,’ whose independent voice in the world polity was a factor to be reckoned with. The UN was to them their ‘main platform’ and protector, he said, as they ‘feel themselves strong as members of the international family but are weak in isolation.’43 The Pakistani delegate to the UN was grateful for this support. ‘Your position was different to that of your predecessor,’ he wrote in a letter to Dag in February 1961, referring to Trygve Lie. This, he said, was ‘because in your case, small nations (who composed the majority in the United Nations) stood behind you and viewed you as their friend and guide and as a symbol of the United Nations in which they sought protection.’44   It was Dag’s ‘fundamental conviction,’ noted Kofi Annan many years later, ‘that the essential task of the UN is to protect the weak against the strong.’45 Annan, who began his own career at the UN within a year of Hammarskjöld’s death, drew heavily on Dag’s vision for the UN during his own Secretary-Generalship from 1997 to 2006. *

It is October 2009, 48 years and one month after the crash of the Albertina, and I am in Stockholm. I am standing on a large green space in front of the main building of the Royal Library of Sweden—the Kungliga Biblioteket. It is an imposing building, completed in 1878, which houses the documents and printed books that make up the national library of Sweden. The leaves on the trees are almost golden, dropping gently to the ground, and the air is crisp and 24

‘BEBOP-A-LULA.’ STOCKHOLM, 2009

cold with the onset of winter. From almost every window, bright lights give out a hue of warmth. But it’s an illusion—I feel chilled to the bone and hurry over to the library. I am on my way to the manuscript department, to study the Hammarskjöld papers.   Here, the pale daylight streams in through high windows, while the desks are dust-free and the walls a clean white. There are tubs of pencils, ready sharpened, and everyone speaks softly. I have ordered my files ahead of time and they are quietly delivered to me, one by one. The first contains the items Dag left in Léopoldville on 17 September 1961, the day he departed for Ndola. I see that one of the items in the file is Hammarskjöld’s wallet, which is an unusual item to find in an archive.46   In this wallet is a card bearing the typewritten names and phone numbers of the key people in Dag’s life in New York: some of them were his senior advisers at the UN, including Dr Ralph Bunche and also Heinrich Wieschhoff, the director of the UN political division, who died with him at Ndola. Dag frequently referred to the formidable Wieschhoff as his éminence grise.47 This image was not just figurative but real: pale eyes under a furrowed brow, with sparse grey hair on a bald head.48 Wieschhoff ’s wife, Virginia, was close to Dag. She once asked him to ease up on the hard-pressed staff in the Congo; some of their wives, she said, had become worried by the fatigued tone of their husbands’ letters. Dag was mortified. Although acutely sensitive to injustice, he was not always aware of the feelings of others. On his next visit to the Congo, it is said, he invited junior officials to a party and painstakingly apologized to each one of them.49   Another victim of the crash is on the card—Bill Ranallo, his bodyguard. Ranallo ‘Senior’—Bill’s father—is also there, as are the phone numbers for the Regular Cable Room, the Code Cable Room, and for Dag’s country retreat near Brewster in New York State.   Dag’s UN identity card records that in 1953, he weighed 154 pounds.50 Also in the wallet is a blood donor card—and I am not surprised to discover that Dag chose to donate blood. The card states: ‘You have RH Negative blood, a rare type.’ Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me either.   There are several newspaper cuttings in the wallet, some of which are mystifyingly abbreviated. One of them is less than a sentence: ‘and when Nefertiti murmurs, “Oh Moses, Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool,” the Bible seems a long way off.’ There must have been a good reason for Dag to keep this cutting, but it is not apparent to me. Nor is the reason for another cutting: ‘Throughout this period, the image of President Eisenhower as 25

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national leader had become blurred. He held no press conferences—his last was Oct. 30—and.’   Less baffling is a cartoon with a drawing of an umpire at a baseball game, who is upset because the baseball players are angry at him. An onlooker reassures him: ‘You’re not expected to be Dag Hammarskjöld, Potts. Just call them as you see them.’   One cutting makes me smile: BEBOP-A-LULA Bebop-a-lula she’s my baby, Bebop-a-lula she’s my baby, Bebop-a-lula she’s my baby love. (Copyright 1956 by Lowery Music, Inc.)

I am starting to understand that it would be a mistake to pigeon-hole Hammarskjöld too closely: for there is a world of difference between Beethoven’s Ninth and this popular rock-and-roll song.   Along with the wallet in this file of items left in Léopoldville when Dag went to Ndola, there are two copies of the UN Charter, in booklet form. In the same way that he saw the role of the Secretary-General as that of a secular pope, he regarded the Charter as the UN’s Bible. He was never prejudiced towards people in any way, stated a friend. ‘His real bias or partiality,’ he added, was ‘towards the Charter.’51   There are two UN passports, both out of date—one cancelled in June 1956, the other in January 1959. There is a cheque-book from the Chemical Corn Exchange, dated 1959–60, so also out of date. It is reassuring to know that even the meticulous Dag carried around useless papers and documents, just like ordinary people. The cheque-book reveals that Dag used the Waldorf Hand Laundry, read the New Yorker magazine, bought liquor now and then (though not very much), had his own tailors, bought books from the Doubleday store, transferred money to a Stockholm account, and paid the salary of Nelly, his housekeeper.   In another file are the contents of the briefcase that he took with him to Ndola: his New Testament and a book of psalms. Here too are Rainer Maria Rilke’s Elegies and Sonnets, in German; a novel by Jean Giono, in French; Mar26

‘BEBOP-A-LULA.’ STOCKHOLM, 2009

tin Buber’s I and Thou, in English, borrowed from the UN library; and the same book in the original German, inscribed to Hammarskjöld by Buber himself. Dag had also packed the writing pad on which he had started to translate Buber’s book into Swedish.52 He was very interested in Buber’s diagnosis of the political and military problems underpinning the Cold War—his belief that they were problems of trust, communication and human behaviour.   Dag also carried a cardboard time-selector, which showed the time differences between the countries of the world. This exemplified the nature of his life—based in New York, but connected to events and conditions across the globe. I leave the Royal Library for my hotel in the Gamla Stan, the old town of Stockholm. Now it is evening, and on the river the boats are twinkling with bright lights. Everyone I meet is exquisitely courteous and speaks perfect English. I am ashamed that all I can say is Tack—‘Thank you’—and Hej—‘Hello.’ I must try harder, but it is easy to be lazy in this sophisticated city.   I have arranged to meet Bengt Rösiö, the Swedish diplomat who was the Swedish Consul and Head of Mission in Léopoldville in 1961–62. It was Rösiö who delivered a report into Hammarskjöld’s death to the Swedish Foreign Ministry in 1993. We meet in the shadowy lounge of my hotel, lit with flickering candles in the Swedish style. Rösiö is charming and tells me about the difficulties of working in the newly independent Congo—the constant sense of a ‘creeping feeling of fear.’ He is very clear that the Albertina crashed as a result of pilot error, not sabotage.53   Next day I set off for an interview with Sture Linnér, who was Officer-inCharge of the UN operation in the Congo at the time of the crash of Hammarskjöld’s plane in Ndola. He is an intellectual, with a doctorate in Ancient Greek from the University of Uppsala, who translated Homer into Swedish, and became a full-time academic after leaving the UN. Dag and Sture, it turns out, quoted Herodotus to each other.   Sture is tall and handsome and supremely chivalrous; though now in his 90s, it seems to me that no man could show greater pleasure in the company of women. Like Rösiö, he tells me of the sheer terror of life in the early 1960s in Léopoldville, where he and his wife lived in a modern villa on a hill in Kalina, the elegant residential quarter that, only a year before, had been reserved for Europeans. The Belgians, adds Sture, rarely had anything to do with the Congolese and were shocked when his wife invited Congolese colleagues to din 27

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

ner. They were even more appalled to learn that she had danced with General Mobutu. Their house was surrounded by a huge garden, lush with trees and flowers, which led down to the steep banks of the Congo River. But here, as they were sitting outside one day, a paid agent of the Belgians shot at them, the bullet passing so close that it burnt his wife’s ear. The sniper was caught by one of the UN Gurkhas who were guarding them.   Of  Dag, Sture speaks with palpable emotion. Despite his shyness, he explains, Hammarskjöld was a hugely caring man who had not wanted Sture’s wife to go with him to the Congo, as he had feared for her safety. When news arrived in Léopoldville of the Secretary-General’s death, remembers Linnér sadly, it was a terrible and bitter shock—‘as if the ground disappeared beneath my feet.’54

28

2 THE CONGO, 1960–61

The Congo became independent from Belgium on 30 June 1960. But even before this, Hammarskjöld tried to support the embryonic nation. Aware that—as a result of Belgium’s failure to provide education beyond the most elementary level—there was not a single African officer in the army, not one Congolese doctor or engineer in the country, and no experienced administrators, he arranged for Dr Ralph Bunche to go to the Congo as his special representative, to be available to the new government for consultation. The Secretary-General had visited the Belgian Congo earlier that year and been horrified to see that no preparations had been made for independence in this very complex, vast country—the ninth largest in the world.1 Among 14 million people, there were only about fifteen with university training and hardly any of the Congolese had experience in governmental responsibility or as technicians.2 Its population was almost the same size as that of the Union of South Africa and, in Africa, second only to the Union in the wealth of its natural resources. These resources had so far been the preserve of Western multinationals, who were watching developments carefully: the British Consul General in Léopoldville warned the Foreign Office in London that there was little doubt that Russia and its satellites would begin to move into the Congo, quite openly, as soon as the country was independent.3   Sending a man of Bunche’s seniority at the UN—he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediating role in the Arab–Israeli war of 1948–49 (and was the first black person ever to be honoured in this way)—was a mark of the importance Hammarskjöld attached to the Congo’s success.4 Bunche was ideal for the job: now in his late fifties, he specialized in colonial admin

29

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istration and race relations and had a lifelong interest in decolonization issues.5 Hammarskjöld sent Sture Linnér, too, in whom he had great confidence and trust, to support Bunche.   In the first national elections ever held in the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, the leader of the Mouvement National Congolais, was voted into power as Prime Minister. Tall, bespectacled, and very thin, the 35-year-old Lumumba was an ardent African nationalist, influenced by the pan-Africanist ideals of Kwame Nkrumah, the first Prime Minister of independent Ghana in 1957 (President in 1960). In Congo My Country (published posthumously in 1962), Lumumba set out his dreams for the Congo’s future and emphasized the need for ‘a harmonisation of social relations between Belgians and Congolese.’6 The President was the short and burly Joseph Kasavubu, Lumumba’s rival; by nominating him to such a prominent role, Lumumba hoped to build a bridge between himself and his opponent. The new government declared a commitment to build a united Congo, undivided by tribal and racial divisions.   But at the independence celebrations in Léopoldville, an unwelcome note was introduced by King Baudouin of Belgium, who gave a speech praising the early Belgian colonizers, even King Léopold II. This horrified the Congolese, who were painfully conscious of Léopold II’s terrible record in their country. In 1885, the Belgian King had made the Congo his own personal fiefdom— what he called his ‘magnificent African cake.’ He never actually visited the country but exploited it to produce vast wealth on rubber and cotton plantations. Labourers were brutally treated: death and amputation were regular punishments. In the twenty-three years Léopold ‘owned’ the Congo, an estimated 10 million people—50 per cent of the population—died as a result of colonial exploitation.7   Baudouin listed the sacrifices that Belgium, in his view, had made for the Congo; then he declared that it was now the job of the Congolese to show Belgium that she had been right to trust them. Again, this touched a raw nerve in the experience of the Congolese people. In 1908, Léopold had been forced to relinquish control to the Belgian Parliament, which slowly introduced measures to curb his excesses. But the Congolese continued to be subjected to forced labour and to be treated as second-class citizens. Hotels and restaurants were reserved for whites only and the cities were divided along racial lines. Moreover, the great wealth generated by the country’s valuable minerals and other raw materials continued to profit large Western corporations—not the Congo.   Outside Parliament during the independence ceremony, loudspeakers transmitted Baudouin’s speech to thousands of Congolese listeners and there was 30

THE CONGO, 1960–61

much agitation. Lumumba stood up to set the record straight. ‘No Congolese worthy of the name,’ he stated firmly, will ever be able to forget that this independence has been won through a struggle, an urgent and idealistic struggle from day to day in which we did not spare our energy or our blood. We have experienced contempt, insults and blows endured morning and night; we knew law was never the same for the whites and blacks.

Who could forget, he asked, ‘the hangings and shootings in which perished so many?’ Now, he told the Belgian King, ‘We are your monkeys no more.’ He promised that the Congo would ‘show the whole world what the black man can do when he is allowed to work in freedom and we shall make of the Congo a shining example for the whole of Africa.’8   But just four days after independence, the great hopes of the Congolese were dashed—by a mutiny of the Force Publique, the Congo’s armed force. Soldiers were angry that there had been no change in a situation where, in an army of more than 25,000 men, the officers were still exclusively Belgian. ‘Avant l’indépendance = Après l’indépendance,’ wrote the commander of the Force Publique, General Emile Janssens, on a blackboard at headquarters.9 The mutiny unleashed chaos and cruelty.   Two days later, Lumumba declared that senior Belgian officers were responsible for the mutiny and he accused Belgium of plotting to annexe the Congo all over again. The growing crisis led to a mass exodus of Europeans, described as ‘refugees’ by the foreign press and newsreels. Many of the Belgian civilians panicked and the British Ambassador reported that: cars streamed past my residence making for the centre of the city and the dock area whence lay the way to safety and freedom across the river in Brazzaville. Houses were abandoned with dogs locked inside—sometimes with lights on or windows open—in a mad scramble to seek safety in numbers, near the site of the Belgian Embassy.

‘Fear,’ he said, ‘bred fear.’10   Belgium used the safety of its nationals to justify a swift intervention, with troops and military aircraft, even attempting to take over Léopoldville. The troops included not only men from Belgian bases still in the Congo, but additional soldiers flown out from Belgium. It looked very much, noted mandarins in London’s Foreign Office, as if the reason for the Belgian action was ‘not merely to protect Belgian lives, but to impose a Belgian solution, whatever that may be, on the Congo.’ Belgium appeared to be trying to ‘reconquer’ its former colony.11 31

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  Then Katanga, the southern province of the Congo, seceded. On 11 July 1960, just a week after the Belgian intervention, Moïse Tshombe went on television with the commander of the Belgian forces in Katanga to declare its independence—and himself as le Président. The tall, gracious Tshombe, now 43 years old, was the leader of Katanga’s dominant political party, Conakat (the Confederation of Tribal Associations of Katanga), which had been set up in 1958. Tshombe was an experienced politician, who had been educated at an American Methodist mission. He came from a royal family and his affluent father owned plantations, a hotel frequented by Europeans, and a chain of stores in the province. At the age of 20, Tshombe had gone to Brussels and passed the diploma of l’Ecole de Commerce de Belgique.12   His newly proclaimed nation, Katanga, contained more than 60 per cent of the Congo’s entire natural resources and was a major source of the world’s minerals: copper, uranium (which was used in making the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945), tin, manganese, diamonds, and more than 80 per cent of the cobalt that fed Western industry. Katanga ‘thoroughly deserves the often overworked adjective fabulous,’ commented the British Daily Express, ‘for the Belgians over the years have extracted diamonds, copper and uranium to the tune of staggering wealth.’13   This ‘staggering wealth’ was mined by the multinational corporations operating in Katanga—in particular, the Union Minière du Haut Katanga, which had its headquarters in Brussels and was closely tied to Tanganyika Concessions (Tanks), a British company that was interlinked with Anglo-American, the Rhodesian Selection Trust, and the British South Africa Company. Elisabethville, the capital of Katanga, was the centre of Union Minière’s activities in Katanga. Many assumed that these corporations had planned the secession well before the independence of the Congo. Union Minière, reported a highly connected Belgian to a British diplomat a few months before the independence of the Congo, ‘had taken up the position that under no circumstances could they envisage the Katanga being governed by a central native body. (They might accept a provincial puppet government.).’14 There were suspicions, too, of support for such a strategy from the Belgian government. A British official in Elisabethville reported to the Consul General in Léopoldville in February 1960 that: ‘The secession of the Katanga will … be inevitable and easy. Indeed, some go as far as to say that this is just the result the Belgian Government hope from a deliberate, and Machiavellian, policy.’15   Tshombe was regarded by critics all over the world as a puppet dancing to the tune of Union Minière and the Belgians. As soon as Katanga proclaimed 32

THE CONGO, 1960–61

its independence, Union Minière gave it an advance of 1,250 million Belgian francs and from 11 July, the corporation paid its taxes and contributions directly to Elisabethville; moreover, Tshombe was surrounded by a whole range of Belgian advisors.16 But this was not the full story. It was certainly the case that the interests of Union Minière, the Belgian settlers and the Belgian government were well served by the secession, protecting them from the threat of nationalization by the Congo Central Government.17 But there was also, as the historian J. Gérard-Libois has observed, an authentic Katangan separatism, which was an independent creation, so that the secession was essentially a marriage of convenience between the Belgians and Tshombe.18   In any case, Tshombe was highly ambivalent about the Belgians, as Hammarskjöld discovered when he visited Katanga in 1960 to negotiate the entry of UN troops into Katanga. There were few opportunities for the two men to talk alone and unheard, partly because of the presence of Belgian advisers and partly because of the microphones which were almost certainly placed in the house for the day’s consultations. But as they walked in the garden, well out of earshot, Tshombe took the opportunity quickly to say that he had always wished to go to university in Belgium—that he had passed the necessary exams and that his father had sufficient money to fund such a project. Hammarskjöld asked, ‘Why then did you not go?’ Tshombe’s reply was bitter: that the Belgian colonial government would not give him a visa.19   Close to Tshombe was Godefroid Munongo, his Minister of the Interior, who had created Conakat with him. Munongo was a well-educated man, from an important royal family of Katanga—and was the direct descendant of Msiri, King of Garanganze, who had been assassinated by the Belgians in 1891. Like many other Katangese, Munongo resented the fact that not only did Katanga make Belgium richer, but it also supported the rest of the Congo. He was a fervent Christian, who saw no incompatibility between the existence of the Christian God and Yeke traditions.20   After Katanga’s secession, Union Minière paid its taxes not to the Congo’s Central Government, to which they were legally due, but to the Katanga government—about £15 million a year. This was about 70 per cent of Katanga’s entire budget, which enabled Tshombe to maintain a well-equipped militia and to run an efficient administration.21 Union Minière was able to bypass any difficulties created by the independence of the Congo, by shipping all of its exports by rail in three directions: to South Africa across Rhodesia, to the port of Beira through Portuguese-ruled Mozambique, and to the port of Benguela through Portuguese-ruled Angola.22 By the same routes it imported the military and industrial supplies required by Tshombe. 33

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

  Union Minière ‘actively supports Conakat, the leading party of the Katanga,’ reported Ian Scott, the British Ambassador in Léopoldville, to London, several months before the Congo’s independence.23 Basil Boothby, head of the African Department at the Foreign Office, noted that the directors of the Société Générale (an even more important banking and holding corporation than the Union Minière but including most of the latter’s directors) had passed a unanimous resolution in favour of the creation of an independent Katanga as ‘indispensable for the security of the shareholders’ interests.’24   Katanga was also backed by the former colonial power. Belgium did not officially recognize the independent status of Katanga, but sub rosa provided all kinds of military and other assistance, including Belgian ‘advisers’ and a 7,000-man Belgian army, supplemented by white mercenaries from Rhodesia, South Africa and Britain.25 Katanga now assumed a Ruritanian atmosphere: Tshombe’s ADC was ‘dressed in ceremonial operative uniform with a sort of plumed hat and a lot of gold braid’ and even his motorcycle escort wore ‘the full Presidential outfit of third empire helmets and uniforms,’ according to one observer.26 In December 1960, Tshombe was invited to Brussels for a dinner at which the Minister of African Affairs gave him, on behalf of the King, the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Crown.27   In Elisabethville, white soldiers of fortune rubbed shoulders with Belgian businessmen and Tshombe’s coterie in the palatial Hotel Léopold II. With its marble floors and crystal chandeliers, it was known with affection as ‘Léo Deux’ and fabled across the continent for its haute cuisine—it was ‘a little bit of Belgium dropped into the centre of Africa,’ observed the Irish-born mercenary Mike Hoare appreciatively. Twice weekly, the Belgian national airline flew into Elisabethville, bringing delicacies like French cheese and wine. But on the pavement outside the hotel, reported a journalist for Time, ‘no human stirs except Moïse Tshombe’s tough, sharpshooting paracommandos in their red berets, and the grim, seasoned, Belgian-trained Katanga regulars in their steel helmets and jungle camouflage.’28   The impact of Katanga’s secession on the rest of the nation was disastrous: the Congo had no hope of surviving economically without the wealth and resources of Katanga. In this catastrophic situation, Lumumba and Kasavubu turned to the United Nations for help: to remove the Belgian troops from the Congo and to end the secession of Katanga. They had already asked for technical assistance. But now, they explained, they needed assistance to keep law and order.29 * 34

THE CONGO, 1960–61

Hammarskjöld responded immediately. He had been kept fully informed by Bunche of the deteriorating situation and as soon as the request came from Lumumba, he called for an urgent meeting of representatives of African countries on 12 July 1960; this was followed two days later by a meeting of the Security Council. After swift deliberations, it passed Resolution 143, calling on the Belgian government ‘to withdraw its troops from the territory of Congo’; it also called on the UN to assist the Congo until its own forces were able to cope adequately. Both superpowers—the US and the Soviet Union—voted in favour of the resolution; no country opposed it, though France and the UK abstained. Within a few hours of the close of the meeting, at half past three in the early hours of the morning, the mission was under way. This rapid response was a measure of Hammarskjöld’s principled and unwavering commitment to support the less powerful countries of the world.   Barely 48 hours later, the first blue helmets arrived in Léopoldville and ONUC—l’Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo—was born. Within just two days, the ONUC force numbered 3,500 men and contingents were dispersed all over the Congo, except Katanga; the men came from Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Sweden, Norway and Ireland. Hammarskjöld had instructed that they should not include troops from the great powers, nor from states that might have special interests in the crisis area. Their role, he stressed, was exclusively that of police. The British Ambassador in Léopoldville noted the calming effect of the UN military presence: ‘disciplined and well-led men,’ he said, ‘showed the disintegrating Congolese Army what they lacked.’30   A headquarters was swiftly set up in a modern seven-storey apartment building called Le Royal on the Boulevard d’Albert, the long and wide main thoroughfare running through the centre of Léopoldville. Le Royal was hot and airless, with broken lifts and an erratic telephone system that had few connections to the rest of the Congo, but morale was good. UN personnel often ate together, either on military field rations in the office or at a Greek restaurant on the ground floor of the building. The nerve centre for the mission was the briefing room, known as the ‘Snake Pit.’31   It has been argued that the Congo initiative constituted a turning-point in the history of the United Nations. For by mobilizing the UN’s resources to intervene in the Congo, Hammarskjöld was engaging the organization in the process of decolonization.32 This was a new situation for the UN—in the general spirit of the Charter, but without the benefit of experience from the past.33   But there was only so much Hammarskjöld could do—his hands were tied by the mandate of the Security Council and by the military reality on the 35

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

ground. The Belgians were still in Katanga and, on 9 August 1960, the crisis suddenly deepened—when Albert Kalonji, the nominal leader of South Kasai, declared its independence. The province of South Kasai was the centre of the Congo’s diamond wealth and Kalonji had the same kind of relationship with Forminière, a Belgian diamond company, that Tshombe had with Union Minière. Like Tshombe, Kalonji kept the Congo’s hands off the mines.34 And again like Tshombe, Kalonji relied heavily on white mercenaries to stay in power.   Lumumba now began to lose faith in the UN’s ability to hold the Congo together and protect its hard-won democracy. On 15 August 1960, he asked the Soviet Union for military assistance and just over a week later, Soviet technicians and equipment arrived in the Congo. Ralph Bunche regarded this as reasonable. ‘There is no bar at all against using equipment from the big Powers,’ he pointed out. ‘We are using a lot of American equipment.’ But the use of such equipment in a military operation, he added, might be different.35   The US government was appalled. It was still smarting from the Castro revolution in Cuba in 1959 and was determined at all costs to prevent the Soviet Union from obtaining a base in the heart of Africa. As early as August 1959, nearly a year before the Congo’s independence, the CIA had sent Larry Devlin to the Congo as its Chief of Station. Sture Linnér, who became officer in charge of ONUC in May 1961, recalls that Devlin was one of the first numerous ‘spooks’ to come to Léopoldville. His cover was that of agricultural attaché at the American Embassy, but Sture quickly discovered that he could ‘barely distinguish a cow from a horse.’36 There was no doubt in Devlin’s mind that this vast region in the centre of Africa was a strategic linchpin in the Cold War and he quickly identified Lumumba as an enemy, whose African nationalism savoured of Communism.   When Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, heard about the arrival of Soviet assistance in Léopoldville, he sent an urgent telegram to Devlin: ‘the removal [of Lumumba] must be an urgent and prime objective … this should be a high priority of our covert action.’37 The order had the authorization of President Eisenhower. Not long after, Devlin was visited in Léopoldville by an emissary, codenamed ‘Joe from Paris,’ who brought some deadly poisons to assassinate Lumumba.38 ‘He handed over several poisons,’ wrote Devlin. ‘One was concealed in a tube of toothpaste. If Lumumba used it, he would appear to die from polio.’39   It was not only the US that wanted Lumumba dead. So did mandarins in Whitehall. ‘I see only two possible solutions to the problem [of Lumumba],’ a senior civil servant at the Foreign Office observed in a written minute in Sep36

THE CONGO, 1960–61

tember 1960. The second solution was drastic enough: to strip him from power. But the first was a recommendation of murder: ‘The first is the simple one of ensuring Lumumba’s removal from the scene by killing him.’ It was decided to recommend to Edward Heath (Lord Privy Seal with Foreign Office responsibilities) that he should telegraph to the US ‘on the lines of these minutes.’40   Hammarskjöld was keenly aware of the Congo’s vulnerability as a proxy battlefield in the Cold War and shared Ralph Bunche’s view that ‘the Congo has quite enough problems without having the cold war added to them.’41 Writing about recent difficulties in the Middle East to Ben-Gurion, the Prime Minister of Israel on 29 August 1960, the Secretary-General brought up the problem of the Congo. ‘As you are well aware,’ he said: the Congo crisis is far from over. On two or three occasions it is only through the most determined and difficult action that we, through the intervention of the United Nations, have been able to avoid what I would call a Korean situation.

‘If we had not succeeded,’ he went on, ‘and if we were not to succeed, Africa might have been or be split wide open by an armed conflict. Whatever the outcome of such a conflict, one thing is certain—it would have left or leave Africa in ruins and probably also with the reintroduction of big power elements.’42 *

Just two months after the independence of the Congo, on 5 September, there was a new, dramatic development, facilitated by the CIA in Léopoldville. On the urging of Larry Devlin and with the support of Daphne Park, an MI6 official in Léopoldville, President Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba and six other ministers—members of the democratically elected government. Kasavubu’s order was firmly condemned by a joint meeting of the Congo’s upper and lower Houses of Parliament, which accorded full powers to the government of Lumumba.43   But on 14 September, Kasavubu—again directed by the US—dissolved Parliament. That evening, Joseph Désiré Mobutu, a twenty-nine-year-old colonel in the Armée Nationale Congolaise (as the Force Publique was now called), proclaimed over the radio that he was taking military control of the country. Mobutu, though impressive in his starched military uniform, was young and inexperienced. He gave the impression, observed Rajeshwar Dayal, Dag’s Special Representative in Léopoldville, ‘of Hamlet torn between opposing loyalties, unsure of himself and full of doubts and fears. His mobile face was gloomy and preoccupied, his dark glasses adding to his mournful appearance.’44 But 37

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

he had been carefully groomed by the CIA and was their favourite to take on this crucial military position.   Deposing Lumumba disabled the Congo’s fledgling steps at democracy. It also drew attention to some of the weaknesses of ONUC, which had failed to prevent the overthrow of the Congo’s government. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, sent Hammarskjöld a worried letter, expressing his misgivings, which were shared by many African and Asian leaders; and Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, called upon him to resign. This was bad timing for the Secretary-General, since the Fifteenth General Assembly was set to begin in September 1960. As the world’s leaders arrived in New York, he arranged private dinners with the leaders of the Afro-Asian bloc—Nehru, Nasser, Nkrumah, Sekou Touré of Guinea, and Prince Moulay Hasan of Morocco—to explain the urgent and continued need for their support of the UN operation in the Congo.   At the Assembly, the Secretary-General sat patiently through attacks from Khrushchev and then responded with a powerful speech that electrified the Assembly: It is very easy to resign; it is not so easy to stay on. It is very easy to bow to the wish of a big Power. It is another matter to resist. As is well known to all members of this Assembly, I have done so before on many occasions and in many directions.

‘If it is the wish of those nations who see in the organisation their best protection in the present world,’ he went on, ‘I shall now do so again.’ In this way he made clear his uncompromising commitment to the newly decolonized, less powerful nations that were represented in front of him. Then he added: Sometimes one gets the impression that the Congo Operation is looked upon as being in the hands of the Secretary-General, as distinct from the United Nations. No: this is your Operation, gentlemen.45

When he had finished his speech, the delegates rose to their feet and gave him a resounding ovation that lasted several minutes. Only Khrushchev and his advisers did not join in; they continued to sit, pounding the desks in front of them with their fists.46   ‘Roundup of a day in the cold war,’ commented Hammarskjöld drily afterwards. He was pleased that ‘all got definite proof that if the Afro-Asians stick together, or if only the Africans stick together, they represent a new big power to which certain others have to bow.’47   The stakes were high, believed Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana. The stand that he personally had taken at the General Assembly on the legitimate 38

THE CONGO, 1960–61

government headed by Lumumba, he stated on 30 September 1960, ‘was based purely on principle.’ It was not a question of whether the government of the Congo was pro-East or pro-West; the main issue was the principle of recognizing the legitimate Central Government, which had invited the UN to enter the Congo. ‘To do anything to damage the prestige and authority of that government,’ insisted Nkrumah, ‘would be to undermine the whole basis of democracy in Africa.’48   Hammarskjöld and Rajeshwar Dayal were in agreement with Nkrumah— much to the disdain of one of the commercial spies working in Léopoldville for a Western mining company involved in the diamond sector in the Congo.49 ‘The UN command here,’ complained this spy in a report dated 24 October 1960, ‘has for some fantastic reason chosen to lean now toward some form of support of Lumumba.’ To illustrate the point, he recounted a conversation he had heard between Dayal and William Anderson of United Press International (UPI), which was witnessed by Neil Bruce of the BBC: Anderson: Mr Dayal, if Colonel Mobutu goes to New York, through what mechanism will the U.N. continue to deal? Dayal: Through the only legally elected body. Anderson: Will that mean the Commissaire [illegible word]? Dayal: No … the Commissaire is solely a creation of Mobutu’s. The parliament is the only duly elected body as is the government formed under it. Anderson: You mean to say that you would then deal with Lumumba’s Government and him? Dayal: We certainly would … after all he is still the only duly elected leader here and we must proceed on the basis of democratic principle.50

  But in January 1961 Lumumba was assassinated, just seven and a half months after the first, heady day of the Congo’s freedom from Belgium. He and two senior members of the elected government—Joseph Okito, the Vice-President of the Senate, and Maurice Mpolo—were arrested by Mobutu’s army. Newsreel cameramen and photographers caught the ugly episode on film: the men being viciously beaten by the soldiers. On 17 January 1961, the three men were transferred to Katanga, and Swedish UN troops in Elisabethville saw them arriving on a plane, badly bruised. They were then tortured and executed.   It was claimed by Munongo, the Katangese Minister of the Interior, that they had escaped from captivity and were killed as a result of tribal rivalry. But as the horrifying news of their deaths spread across the world, many suspected murder by the Western powers. Accusations were hurled at the UN, which was 39

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

seen as negligent in failing to ensure the Prime Minister’s safety, and an angry crowd of demonstrators pushed their way, shouting, into the UN buildings in New York. The leaders of many newly independent nations in Africa and Asia felt betrayed by Hammarskjöld and said so, in strongly worded letters and phone calls. The Soviet Union accused the UN of being in the pocket of the colonialists and demanded the replacement of Hammarskjöld by a ‘troika’ of three members: one representing the socialist states, another the non-aligned nations, and a third the Western powers.51 Dag Hammarskjöld himself was terribly shocked by Lumumba’s death. Linnér said later that he had rarely seen him so distressed.52   The death of Lumumba forced the Security Council to review the mandate it had given to the Secretary-General. On 21 February 1961 it passed Resolution 161, which was much stronger than the previous Resolution and authorized ONUC to take all measures to restore order in the Congo and to prevent civil war—including ‘the use of force, if necessary, in the last resort.’ It also called for the immediate withdrawal from the Congo of all foreign advisers, by which it meant Tshombe’s Belgian army and his white mercenaries. The Resolution also stressed the urgent need to reconvene the Congolese Parliament under UN protection.53   More UN troops were rushed to the Congo and, by the end of February, 18 countries were represented: Canada; Ireland and Sweden from Europe; and 15 Afro-Asian countries—Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Malaya, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Senegal, Sudan, Tunisia and the United Arab Republic.54 The force commander, Lieutenant-General Sean McKeown, an Irishman from Dublin, now had 15,000 UN troops in his charge.   The strengthening of the UN mission was greatly welcomed by the newly independent nations. At a meeting of prime ministers in London on 12 March 1961, the Prime Minister of Malaya said he would support the UN operation ‘even to the extent of denuding his country of all its troops.’ Nehru was emphatic. ‘The operation must succeed,’ he insisted, ‘as otherwise the Congo would blow up and with it Africa and the UN. The Indian troops were being sent there in active support of the Secretary-General and the operation.’ He accused the British and Belgian governments of intrigue and of not supporting the UN: ‘The politicians must all be cut down to size.’ The Canadian Prime Minister, too, affirmed that Canada stood firmly behind the UN.55   In early September 1961, Dag presented one of his advisers with a draft introduction to the forthcoming UN Annual Report. ‘I don’t see what I can write,’ he said, ‘after this one.’ He described it as his testament: the way he con40

THE CONGO, 1960–61

strued the Charter. It warned that the UN was at a turning-point: that members had to choose between two concepts of the UN—as a ‘static conference machinery’, or as a ‘dynamic instrument’ by which nations could shape ‘an organized world community.’56 But the dream of such a ‘dynamic instrument’ was being severely tested in the centre of Africa. ‘It happens to be the Congo,’ wrote Dag wearily to a close friend. ‘It happens to be now; it happens to be me.’57

41

3 ‘A THIRD WORLD WAR’ KATANGA AND NORTHERN RHODESIA, 1961

On the ground in Katanga, the implementation of the 21 February 1961 Resolution—authorizing ONUC to take all measures to restore order—was the responsibility of Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien, ONUC’s chief in Katanga. A brilliant Irishman with a doctorate from Trinity College, Dublin, O’Brien was another of the intellectuals—like Sture Linnér—who had been chosen by Dag for high office. As head of the Irish delegation to the UN, O’Brien had greatly impressed the Secretary-General with his clever contributions to debates; and his book Maria Cross, an exploration of the Catholic imagination in literature, had also appealed to Dag’s interest in the interplay between religion and the literary imagination.1   O’Brien arrived in Katanga in June 1961, the same month in which Lieutenant Colonel Bjørn Egge, the tall and earnest Norwegian head of ONUC’s Military Information Branch, arrived in Léopoldville. Now, O’Brien and Egge had a major challenge on their hands—the removal of the mercenaries propping up Tshombe. Some of these soldiers of fortune regarded themselves as gentleman adventurers; others described themselves as heroes against Communism; yet others said frankly that they were in the business to get money and excitement. But whatever their motivation, they were regarded by the local population as les affreux—‘the frightful.’   They were especially frightful to the Baluba people in Katanga, who supported the Congo Central Government and opposed Tshombe. Many of the Baluba were armed only with bows and arrows against the guns and bombs directed at them by the mercenaries and Tshombe’s gendarmerie; some 35,000

43

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had fled their homes in terror for safety in a UN refugee camp. In a BBC interview in 1962, an English mercenary was asked by the interviewer, Anne Ashe, about his behaviour towards the Baluba: Miss Ashe: Did you kill anyone yourself ? Mercenary: Oh, aye—a good few … You know you couldn’t tell really because you jumped out of the jeep and you lay down on the grass and you just went ‘brrrrr’ with a machine-gun. It is an automatic rifle and you don’t know whether it’s your bullet that kills them or not… Miss Ashe: But wouldn’t they include women and children and old people? Mercenary: Not so many, our Captain wouldn’t allow it. You were supposed to shoot at them all—that was the instructions you got, shoot at the lot, destroy them, burn the village, kill the chickens and goats, chop the trees down so if they go in the jungle and come back they won’t find anything there … Miss Ashe: These were the Baluba tribesmen? Mercenary: Yes, that was the Baluba, yes. Miss Ashe: But that would mean they would starve when they came back? Mercenary: That was the idea, if you don’t shoot them, starve them to death, but our Captain was what you might call a humanitarian type and he believed in mercy, you know what I mean. Miss Ashe: Well didn’t you feel unhappy working in that kind of set-up? Mercenary: No, I thought it was a great life, mine. There were no regular hours, you were free as a bird, you didn’t clock-in or clock-out, it was nice weather, you know, you got everything provided, all you could eat, cigarettes and stuff like that. You knew all the time your money was piling up in the bank. Miss Ashe: I was just thinking, actually, of working under the instructions of people who ordered you to kill women and children and wipe out villages. Mercenary: That was the Belgians’ idea; when they said shoot everybody they said the women were worse than the men—and the kids—because they hid behind the bushes and when you were passing, you know, they would cut you with a machete. Miss Ashe: But they were fighting for themselves, you were fighting for money. Mercenary: Yes, they were fighting for themselves—I mean, the Balubas are cannibals for a start, they are savages, I mean, so you don’t class them anyway as normal people, like shooting say Irishmen or even Germans.2

  One of the results of the Security Council’s Resolution of 21 February 1961 was the return of Belgian officers and career NCOs to their duties in Belgium. Tshombe responded by replacing these men with even more mercenaries from Britain, Rhodesia, South Africa and France.3 Some were recruited through 44

‘A THIRD WORLD WAR’

Brussels, at Katanga Delegation headquarters: ‘White-helmeted police guarded the entrance. Inside, a red-arrowed sign pointed upstairs under a notice which said in French: Assembling for the Defence of Belgians in the Congo.’4 A typical recruit was John Fitzsimmons, a former paratroop officer in the British army, who was ‘ushered into a most luxurious office and told that Katanga needed capable officers for their army.’ Once he had given an assurance that he had no Communist leanings and a clean military record, he was taken on. ‘Naturally,’ said Fitzsimmons, ‘I was pleased with the pay they offered—£4,000 a year with keep. I had never heard of so much money in my life before. I signed on the dotted line there and then.’5   French soldiers of fortune had started to arrive in January 1961. Several of O’Brien’s officers had social contacts with them ‘and knew them to cherish a fanatical personal hatred for Hammarskjöld whom they believed to have undermined the French Empire in North Africa.’6 Larry Devlin, the CIA Station Chief, noted that many of them were former members of the Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS), a French right-wing group set up in France and Algeria to organize armed attacks on de Gaulle once the President’s intention to disengage from Algeria became clear. After the failure of the Algiers military putsch in April 1961, claimed Devlin, some of them were offered an eventual pardon by the French government if they would fight for Tshombe in Katanga.7 ‘They were very bad stuff,’ believed Brian Urquhart, who joined ONUC in late 1961. ‘The ordinary mercenaries were a bunch of clapped-out British, South Africans and [so on] who were mostly adventurers; this lot were, in the first place, professional soldiers and, in the second, had a huge battle experience. They had been in Dien Bien Phu, Algeria and God knows where else, were very, very good officers and were fanatical, all-white, anti-black, right-wing officers.’8 O’Brien and Egge, like Dag, loathed mercenaries and everything they stood for. O’Brien issued an order to Tshombe: to give up his soldiers of fortune and his Belgian advisers. Katanga, he instructed, must submit to the Central Government in Léopoldville. But Tshombe refused. One reason for this was the influence of Godefroid Munongo and Lucas Samalenge, the Minister of Information. Both men knew they would never be able to retain their posts if there was a rapprochement with the Central Government—for in the eyes of many Congolese, they were guilty men, responsible for Lumumba’s death.   They had reason to fear. Samalenge was found dead with gunshot wounds in his neck in November 1961, in dense bush 80 miles from Elisabethville, 45

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

allegedly on a hunting trip.9 Munongo suffered acrimonious attacks in the press on the subject of Lumumba for several decades, until finally he announced that on 28 May 1992 he would break his silence on Lumumba’s death. His statement was scheduled for 17.00 hours but at 12.30 the same day he suffered a ‘mysterious’ shortness of breath and a massive heart attack that took his life. ‘It is clear, beyond any doubt,’ one of his sons has remarked, that his planned statement ‘was going to be disquieting for some, and devastating for others. He had to be silenced.’10   When Tshombe refused to cede to O’Brien’s instructions in August 1961, UN troops responded with force. On 28 August, with the full authority of the Secretary-General, they carried out a sudden one-day operation called ‘Rumpunch,’ to round up all the mercenaries. The UN was vulnerable—its air force had only transport aircraft, while the Katanga Air Force had a Fouga Magister jet fighter and had also converted other planes into bombers. The mercenary Jerry Puren, a radio navigator, flew missions against Baluba villages that were regarded as rebel strongpoints: ‘Routinely we made our bombing runs at a thousand meters, laying our voracious cargo of eggs in neat patterns across the villages, professionally checking the damage to the target afterwards … noting the flaming huts … the destruction and death.’11   Tshombe’s forces also had machine guns, mortars, modern Mercedes armoured cars and Belgian standard NATO rifles. The UN unit of Irish troops, by contrast, had only makeshift armoured cars dating from 1949 and the Indian troops had antiquated rifles.   But the UN had planned Rumpunch carefully and quickly seized strategic points in Katanga’s capital of Elisabethville, together with crucial gendarmerie posts. They also held on to the vital Kamina air base—an enormous military base, which had been designed by the Belgians as an African headquarters for NATO and covered an area of about fifty square miles.   The Katangan government was furious and Munongo demanded O’Brien’s death in a speech outside the Elisabethville post office. Equally upset were the Belgian, French and British governments, who exerted pressure on ONUC through their official representatives in the Congo. The European consuls managed to halt Rumpunch and to secure an agreement whereby they themselves, not the UN, took responsibility for the removal of the arrested mercenaries. The mercenaries then slipped quietly back into the shadows of Katanga.   Two days after Rumpunch, a Belgian called André Crémer, who had escaped from the Katangan police, sought the protection of the UN. He had been arrested on a charge of stealing but when questioned on 31 August, he said 46

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that he had been hired by Munongo to attack UN personnel. O’Brien arranged for him to be interviewed by the press. Crémer repeated his accusation, explaining that he and his group had been instructed to kill UN soldiers, blow up ammunition dumps, intercept convoys, and also to kidnap or murder Michel Tombelaine, O’Brien’s French press assistant.   O’Brien met urgently with Tshombe and accused Munongo of a conspiracy to kill UN personnel, as well as of atrocities against the Baluba. He demanded the suspension of Munongo. But Tshombe did nothing. O’Brien was furious. He sought authority for Munongo’s arrest and announced that the UN was severing relations with the Katangese government, except for the minimum necessary for public order.   Tensions ran high. In Katanga, the local papers and Radio Katanga, the state radio station, accused the UN troops of murder, rape and pillage. UN personnel were made pointedly unwelcome in Elisabethville’s city centre, especially at the Hotel Léopold II; when they were seen by a Belgian settler on the city’s pavements, he or she would pointedly cross to the other side of the road.12   Determined to expel Tshombe’s mercenaries and foreign advisers, O’Brien and other ONUC senior officials resolved to carry out a second military offensive. They gave it the code name of ‘Morthor,’ which means ‘twist and break’ in Hindi.13 On 11 September, Vladimir Fabry, ONUC’s legal and political adviser, flew from Léopoldville to Elisabethville with five warrants—authorizing the arrest of Tshombe, Godefroid Munongo, Jean-Baptiste Kibwe, the Vice-President and Minister of Finance for Katanga, Evariste Kimba, the Foreign Minister, and Charles Mutaka, the Speaker of the Katanga National Assembly on the charge of ‘Tortures et assassinats.’ The warrants had been issued by the Congolese attorney-general on behalf of Cyrille Adoula, the Prime Minister of the Congo’s coalition government, which had been formed in August 1961.   Plans for the timing of Operation Morthor were confirmed at a military conference in Léopoldville on 12 September by Mahmoud Khiari, who had that very month become the chief of ONUC’s civilian operation.   That night in Elisabethville at UN headquarters, last-minute preparations were made in a highly-charged atmosphere. Brigadier K. A. S. Raja, the UN military commander for Katanga, smoked and walked anxiously up and down. It would be difficult, O’Brien and Khiari knew, to arrest Munongo, who lived among his henchmen in la cité—the ‘native’ neighbourhood. And it might be a mistake, politically, to arrest Tshombe: they decided instead to cut off his palace, a large suburban villa, and to seal the exits. But they were confident that 47

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UN forces could quickly occupy the Elisabethville post office, which housed the telephone exchange, as well as the radio station, the headquarters of the Katanga police and the Ministry of Information. They planned to raise the Congolese flag on all public buildings and to install a representative of the Central Government. All this, O’Brien confidently believed, could be achieved in one day.   At 04.00 on 13 September, Operation Morthor began. In the pale haze of the pre-dawn light, the 3,000 UN troops in Elisabethville were given the signal to attack, and Irish armoured cars moved quickly against the post office. But they met heavy resistance. Katangese paracommandos, who had been professionally trained by French mercenaries, mounted their machine guns on the roof and fired back. Bullets ricocheted on the road, shattering shop windows. Elsewhere in the town, Indian Dogra troops fixed bayonets and charged over open ground to capture the Katanga radio station. Several hundred Gurkhas took control of the approach to the airport. Katangan gendarmes, in white steel helmets, toured the streets in packed lorries and there was a furious exchange of tracer and machine-gun fire. There was mayhem and panic among civilians against the background of flowering bougainvillea and frangipani trees.   At 04.30 Tshombe telephoned UN headquarters, greatly disturbed by news of the offensive. ‘What does it mean? What does it mean?’ he asked anxiously. O’Brien told him to order his forces not to resist the UN. Tshombe demurred, saying that a ceasefire should be ordered on both sides. But then he agreed, promising to ring again. This second call came 15 minutes later. O’Brien asked Tshombe to order the cessation of Katangese resistance over the radio, but Tshombe said he was afraid to travel—that he needed a UN escort. This was not available and so Tombelaine, O’Brien’s press secretary, offered to collect him in his own car. He drove over to the rebel president’s palace, which was not far away. But Tombelaine came back empty-handed: his car had been shot at and not a single UN soldier, he reported, could be seen in the neighbourhood of Tshombe’s palace. O’Brien again tried to phone Tshombe, but by this time the telephone exchange was no longer functioning.   At 06.30 three foreign journalists arrived at UN headquarters for a press briefing: Ray Moloney of America’s United Press International (UPI), Dick Williams of the BBC, and Gavin Young, a stringer for the British Observer. O’Brien announced that the secession of Katanga was over. ‘It is now,’ he asserted firmly, ‘a Congolese province run by the Central Government in Léopoldville.’ The UN would force the immediate withdrawal of Belgian regulars and of mercenaries, as required by the 21 February Resolution. This was necess­ 48

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ary, he insisted, to avoid a bloody civil war, if Adoula were to send the Congolese army into Katanga.   But O’Brien was wrong: the secession had not ended. As he began his press conference, the work whistle of the giant Belgian Union Minière industrial complex rang through the air, as if to emphasize the resilience of independent, Belgian-backed Katanga.   It was true that communications had been cut, but Radio Free Katanga continued to operate, broadcasting as far as Mufulira in Northern Rhodesia: Free Katanga calling. Free Katanga is still fighting for her freedom. We still control half of Elisabethville. The United Nations, these criminals, are still holding a few parts of the city… All communications are cut. Anyone receiving this message is asked to pass it to the press in Rhodesia.

Only one minister, Jean-Baptiste Kibwe, had been captured, and O’Brien had been unable even to make contact with Tshombe. While the UN was searching all over Elisabethville for him, le Président was not in fact very far away: he was drinking a cup of coffee in the home of Denzil Dunnett, the British Consul in Elisabethville.   Prime Minister Adoula backed Morthor fully, as an operation to depose a provincial government in rebellion. He gave his own press conference, 1,500 miles away in Léopoldville. He said that, following a motion by the Congolese Parliament, he had sent Egide Bocheley-Davidson to Elisabethville with several other officials, to assume authority in the province: they would arrive by air that night and had been given full emergency powers in Katanga. The Katangese forces, added Adoula, would be integrated with the troops of the Central Government’s commander-in-chief, General Mobutu. Adoula’s Cabinet had welcomed the choice of Bocheley-Davidson for this appointment. But it set alarm bells ringing in Europe and America: for this large, courteous man was a friend and supporter of Antoine Gizenga, who had been Lumumba’s deputy prime minister and was now the leader of all those who had supported Lumumba as a political leader.   The Western powers were extremely hostile to Gizenga because of his former proximity to Lumumba and because, like Lumumba, he was very popular with the Congolese electorate. When Adoula appointed Gizenga as his deputy—in a move calculated to help unify the various political factions in the Congo—the West had been appalled. The year before, in September 1960, CIA agent Devlin had told Mobutu to arrest and murder Gizenga, but UN troops had intervened and freed him.14 One year later, as Operation Morthor 49

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

began on 13 September 1961, the West’s loathing and distrust of Gizenga were even stronger.   In Elisabethville that night, tracer bullets were streaking across the ink-black sky. From the centre of the city came the dull crump of exploding mortar shells. The suburbs and the rest of the city were blacked out. In the view of most observers there, reported Gavin Young, who was on the spot, ‘the next few days of this dying Katangan summer will be decisive. They could also be bloody.’15 At UN headquarters, a company of Gurkhas arrived to protect O’Brien. Up till now, he had refused to show any fear and had driven into town accompanied only by his Irish driver. But when Katangese forces started strafing the upper floors of the building with mortar fire, he was obliged to accept protection. For much of the night, he and his staff slept on the concrete floor of the basement, guarded by the Gurkhas.16   There was now an atmosphere of war in Katanga: with Tshombe and his troops, backed by Western governments and multinationals on the one side; and with the troops and officials of the United Nations on the other, backed by Adoula’s government. Radio Katanga broadcast a statement that President Tshombe was ‘among his people and is himself directing total war against the United Nations.’ Tshombe conveyed this statement—for release to the foreign press—to Sir Roy Welensky, the Prime Minister of the Rhodesian Federation.17 Union Minière sent an urgent message to Brussels: ‘Situation locale très grave … [Tshombe] appelle Katangais à guerre totale.’18   The Congo Parliament formally decided to invade Katanga. *

Katanga, which bordered on the Copperbelt region of Northern Rhodesia, was central to the Rhodesian Federation’s strategy for preserving white rule. Like the Congo under its Belgian masters, but with greater success, the British territories of the Federation—Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland—had resisted the advance of African nationalism sweeping down from the north of the continent. The Federation had been expressly created in 1953 to preserve white settler rule throughout British central Africa—despite strong opposition from the black population. Africans feared that it would extend to Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (as indeed it did) the racial practices and segregation of Southern Rhodesia, which were little different from those enforced in apartheid South Africa. ‘Right of Admission Reserved,’ which appeared in the windows of numerous shops, bars and restaurants in the Rhodesias, may have sounded less blunt than the signs in South Africa saying Slegs Blankes.19 But it meant the same thing—‘Whites Only.’ 50

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  There was much to-ing and fro-ing by the white communities between Elisabethville and Ndola, the chief town of the Copperbelt, which was just 10 kilometres from the Congo border. Moreover, there were 2,000 miles of open frontier between the Federation and Katanga.20 It was therefore the case, argued Welensky, that Katanga was ‘an ideal buffer between ourselves and the wilder forms of pan-Africanism to the north of us.’ ‘As you know,’ he wrote to Macmillan in January 1961, ‘we have always pinned our hopes on the survival of a strong and friendly regime in the Katanga.’ If Tshombe were ‘submerged,’ he added, ‘the alternatives are too frightful to contemplate.’ In a letter the following day to Hendrik Verwoerd, the Prime Minister of South Africa, he made the same point. This time, he described the risk in terms of having ‘a communist-penetrated country on our borders.’   The burly (nearly twenty stone) Roy Welensky, who had been knighted by the Queen in 1953, was in regular communication with Tshombe (although he did not actually meet him until late September 1961). A former engine driver and heavyweight boxer who had been the leader of the white railway workers’ union, the fifty-four-year-old Welensky had left school at fourteen; his background was therefore very different from that of the sophisticated, cultured Tshombe, who had grown up in a family of privilege and wealth. They had little in common—and because Tshombe was black, they would be unable to meet in any public place in the Rhodesian Federation without a special arrangement. But they had a strong common interest in the survival of Katanga. Now, Welensky turned a blind eye to the passage of mercenaries crossing the border from Northern Rhodesia to Katanga, in contravention of the UN Resolution.   South Africa’s ruling white minority was also very hopeful that Katanga might prove a buffer to decolonization. At a Nationalist Party meeting in September 1961, Dr A. Hertzog, South Africa’s Minister of Posts, said that he deplored the conditions prevailing in Kenya, Nyasaland and the Congo, where ‘murder and strife’ now prevailed. In Kenya, he said, Jomo Kenyatta, had not only been released from prison but—even worse—had been ‘put over white people’; in Nyasaland, Banda had been ‘put over white people.’ In Hertzog’s view, Katanga was the only ‘reasonable’ part of the Congo, because Tshombe had been taught the civilized way of life by Europeans.21   Up to 13 September 1961, the day of Operation Morthor, Macmillan had urged Welensky not to send armed forces up to Rhodesia’s border with Katanga. There was a great risk, he warned, of escalating the conflict. And since foreign policy was not an activity devolved to the Federation, but a British responsi 51

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

bility, Welensky was bound to listen. But now Lord Alport, the British High Commissioner in Salisbury, gave Welensky the go-ahead. ‘It became clear from our knowledge of the inevitable results of the United Nations’ second coup of the 13th September,’ explained the High Commissioner in a report to London on 25 September 1961, ‘that mere prudence demanded the movement of troops and aircraft to the vicinity of the frontier in order to secure their integrity.’22   Welensky swiftly deployed troops to Ndola, near the border with Katanga. Three companies of the Rhodesia Light Infantry, a new all-European battalion, were flown from Bulawayo that afternoon, armed with rifles and carrying full battle kit. As they waited for take-off, they smiled broadly at the news reporters’ cameras, giving them the thumbs-up. The elite all-white Selous Scouts, with 12 armoured cars, left Bulawayo on a special troop train.23 Roadblocks in the border zone were swiftly set up by the Rhodesian troops. The heat was baking and most of the men stripped down to their shorts; they carried rifles with fixed bayonets or Bren guns.   Practically the whole of the Royal Rhodesian Air Force, too, was rushed to the border: the Vampire aircraft of No. 1 Squadron and the Canberras of No. 5 Squadron were flown from Gwelo (now Gweru) to Ndola. The first of the fighter planes to arrive were three Provosts, with guns and tear-gas bombs slung under the wings. ‘Four rocket-carrying Vampire jets screamed over the airport before taxi-ing into the rapidly filling parking bays,’ reported the Rhodesia Herald enthusiastically. ‘Then the six Canberra bombers touched down.’24 One of the RRAF pilots posted to Ndola that day was Peter Petter-Bowyer, whose contempt for the UN was shared by many white Rhodesians. ‘Yielding to a multiplicity of communist and non-aligned demands,’ he wrote later, Tshombe’s voice of democracy was ignored and the UN, whose real character became fully revealed, systematically blocked all his efforts. The true colours of this world body were exposed … the UN implemented the most shameful abuse against the freedomseeking Katangese people.25

  Welensky announced the movement of troops to Ndola in the Federal Parliament on the afternoon of 13 September. They were necessary, he insisted, to protect the Northern Rhodesian border. He was ‘almost Churchillian’ in the way he spoke, reported the Rhodesia Herald admiringly, as he stood at the Despatch Box with his hands in his jacket pockets. Two weeks before, added the Herald, he had criticized Operation Rumpunch, which ‘exceeded the UN’s mandate.’ But now, he was a tower of wrath, standing ‘at the bar of world justice for its actions in Katanga.’ Sir Roy was followed by Winston Field, the 52

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leader of the opposition, who agreed with him on every point. ‘Insignificant as we are,’ said Field, ‘we are prepared to take whatever action is necessary to safeguard our friends.’26   There was wholehearted approval by the whites-only Parliament. A Northern Rhodesian MP, John Gaunt, compared Morthor to the crushing of the Hungarian rising in 1956 and the suppression of the revolt in Eastern Germany. ‘There is no moral justification for this act,’ announced Gaunt. ‘It is an act of legalised pillage.’ The United Nations, he concluded bitterly, had become ‘a band of mercenaries.’27   In Ndola, as RRAF Canberra bombers swept over the town, white volunteers were manning every available vehicle to pick up the Belgian refugees that were expected from Elisabethville. Buses, trucks, cars and vans streamed out to the airport to await four planeloads of white refugees, including the wives and children of the staff of the Sabena airline. In Salisbury, meanwhile, white women’s voluntary organizations were ready to swing into action if there was an influx of refugees. ‘We have been prepared since the last trouble in the Congo,’ said a spokeswoman. ‘We can have food for about 500 people ready within an hour. The ready-to-cook meals are in cartons of 50 and are based on the calorie specifications laid down by the World Health Organisation.’28   As it turned out, the reports of refugees turned out to be nothing more than rumour, and nobody arrived. But feelings were inflamed. To the whites of the Federation, as to the whites and the supporters of Tshombe in Katanga, the UN was simply the enemy.   ‘Where is all this leading us?’ Welensky asked emotionally in a letter to some relatives in America. ‘I think there can be only one answer—to a third world war.’ The United Nations troops, he went on, ‘have done things that were only equalled by the Nazis and some of the other gentlemen from behind the Iron Curtain.’ He was horrified, he said, by ‘the language used by Nehru. It’s identical with the stuff that was used by Hitler before he liberated Austria and Czechoslovakia.’29

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4 MISSION FOR PEACE

As Operation Morthor began in the early hours of 13 September 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld was flying over the Atlantic en route to the Congo. He was unaware of the start of the new offensive and the first time he heard any mention of it was during a stopover in Ghana, from one of the journalists rushing up to him at the airport in Accra. But he dismissed it as yet another false rumour about the Congo that was floating around.1   At 14.45 in the afternoon, Dag’s plane, a Pan American DC8, landed at Léopoldville’s Ndjili airport. The sun blazed down, causing a white haze to shimmer around the plane, as it taxied slowly across the runway. At this time of year, shortly before the rainy season, the average temperature was in the high 80s and at times reached the mid-90s. Even more uncomfortable was the high humidity—a wall of heavy, oppressive air. Waiting on the tarmac for the arrival of the Secretary-General was a pack of journalists, their clothes crumpled by the heat. But Dag looked cool as he stepped out of the plane, running his hand through his short hair. He was dressed in a dark double-breasted suit, white button-down shirt and dark tie.   Waiting for the Secretary-General with a warm smile was Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula, who was celebrating his fortieth birthday that day. Like Dag, he was dressed formally, in a well-cut dark suit with a white shirt and dark tie. He stood waiting with members of his Cabinet: Antoine Gizenga, the Deputy Prime Minister; Justin Bomboko, the Foreign Minister; and Colonel Mobutu. Dag walked briskly over to shake their hands, greeting them in fluent French—‘the familiar, slight, hatless figure—radiating confidence, informal and yet dominating,’ observes a biographer.2 Bill Ranallo stuck close to him, while Harold Julien and four bodyguards followed in his shadow.

55

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  Then Dag and Adoula inspected the guard of honour: a regiment of the Congolese army and a battalion of Nigerian and Swedish troops serving with ONUC. Just for a moment, Dag frowned: he loathed military protocol, which was all the more taxing after the long flight from New York.3   On the evening of 12 September 1961 before Hammarskjöld’s arrival, Sture Linnér, the Officer-in-Charge of ONUC, had invited foreign diplomats and Congolese politicians to a drinks party at his villa. From the US embassy came Ambassador Ed Gullion, who had arrived in Léopoldville earlier that month, carefully chosen by Kennedy to replace Clare Timberlake, an Eisenhower man. Another American guest was ‘Mac’ McMurtie Godley, the Chargé d’Affaires, who met with Linnér and Khiari for discussions every day.4 Larry Devlin came along, as did his counterpart in MI6, Daphne Park—both of them operating under their official covers as embassy staff. Another guest was Derek Riches, the British Ambassador, who had arrived in Léopoldville only the day before, on 11 September 1961, to start his tour of duty. Officials from the French, West German, and Belgian embassies—several of them involved in covert operations for their governments—were also invited. Bengt Rösiö, the Swedish Consul, who had arrived in the Congo in late July 1961, was another guest. He recalled later that there was a strange, heady atmosphere at the party, which he couldn’t understand.   There were few women at the party. Most foreign women had been sent home by now, even though white people were rarely attacked. But there was an atmosphere of dread, almost hysteria, among the foreign community in Léopoldville. They had little contact with the Belgians who remained—mostly plantation owners, business people and civil servants—who hung together most evenings at their club, the Cercle Albert, drinking Simba beer. A more neutral gathering place was the bar at the grand Memling Hotel in the heart of Léopoldville’s business district, which had been built in 1937 and was run by Sabena Airways. Another watering-hole was the bar at the airport, also run by Sabena, where diplomats like Rösiö went to pick up local news and useful information.5 Once Hammarskjöld had inspected the guard of honour, a UN car whisked him and Linnér to Adoula’s residence. On this, his fourth visit to the Congo in just over a year, he was reasonably optimistic and expected to start phasing out the military side of the operation. He planned to reduce the strength of ONUC—which had reached 16,814 officers and men, from twenty coun56

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tries—to 8,000 by the end of the year. He also hoped, now that the Congolese Parliament had been reconvened, that the nation would settle into a peaceful existence. This, he said to a colleague, would ‘definitely confirm the correctness of the line pursued by the UN in the Congo.’ But any permanent solution would depend on solving the Katanga problem; if he failed to achieve this, he believed that he would be unable to remain as Secretary-General and would have to resign.6   Now, with the airport reception over, Dag could get down to business. But then he was given the news of Morthor—and in a moment, all the hopes that difficulties facing him were intensified. For although he had been closely in touch with plans for such an operation and it was fully approved of and backed by Adoula, its timing was a complete shock. When the governments of Britain, Belgium and France were told of Morthor, they were furious. Prime Minister Macmillan now decided that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the 8th Marquess of Lansdowne, should leave for Léopoldville the following day, 14 September 1961.7 There had been plans for Lord Lansdowne to visit the Congo fairly soon in any case, but these were brought forward. An urgent message was sent to his home in Wiltshire—Bowood House, a magnificent mansion designed by Robert Adam in the eighteenth century and surrounded by vast grounds. The patrician George Lansdowne exemplified the Tory grandee: educated at Eton and Oxford, with ten titles to his name, and a family pedigree of high-profile politicians over the centuries. The eighth Marquess, almost fifty, had been awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’Honneur for distinguished service with the Free French forces in the Second World War.   Lansdowne swiftly prepared to leave for the Congo.   There, on the evening of the Secretary-General’s arrival on 13 September 1961, Linnér hosted a welcoming banquet at his villa in Léopoldville. It had been arranged to facilitate discussions between Dag and key Congolese leaders: Prime Minister Adoula; Deputy Prime Minister Gizenga; Jason Sendwe, the President of the Balubakat party, who was a Baluba from Katanga and a staunch opponent of secession; and Interior Minister Christopher Gbenye. General McKeown, ONUC’s force commander, and other senior UN officials were also invited. It was an ideal opportunity to discuss matters such as the UN budget for ONUC, which was to be debated at the imminent General Assembly.8 But Hammarskjöld’s thoughts were elsewhere—on the problem of Morthor. 57

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  As soon as the guests had left, the British Ambassador Derek Riches came to Linnér’s villa to deliver a frank message from the UK government to the Secretary-General. If Morthor were not immediately stopped, he warned, the UK would withdraw its support for ONUC. He also pressed for a public denunciation of O’Brien. But Hammarskjöld refused. Although severely distressed that his staff had taken this action, he defended them loyally—and he resented this attempt by Britain to influence UN policy by means of a threat. Riches’s intervention was later described by O’Brien as ‘menacing diplomacy.’9   Morthor, stated the Secretary-General, was simply a continuation of Rumpunch, the UN operation against mercenaries in Katanga carried out the month before, within the UN mandate; as such, it did not require any approval from him and he was not informed before it took place. This was the position he continued to present in public.10   As soon as Riches had left, Hammarskjöld went to Le Royal to examine and re-examine the implications of Morthor with General McKeown. He was exhausted, but stayed up until 04.00, trying to work out a solution to the crisis. The Western powers, he was aware, wanted to know whether or not he had sanctioned Morthor—or whether it had been a unilateral initiative by ONUC. But Dag was determined to shoulder responsibility for those under his command. He backed an official UN statement that its forces had launched an offensive in Elisabethville because Tshombe had rejected a forty-eight hour ultimatum to get rid of his foreign officers.11   In Washington, the State Department said publicly that it had no comment to make. Privately, though, it was incensed. Ralph Bunche reported from New York to Dag in Léopoldville that President Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk had made complaints about the UN’s failure to consult the US government before starting Morthor. Hammarskjöld was infuriated by this effort to interfere, which he regarded as an attack on the integrity of the UN. ‘It is better,’ he told Bunche, ‘for the UN to lose the support of the US because it is faithful to law and principles, than to survive as an agent whose activities are geared to political purposes never avowed or laid down by the major organs of the UN.’12   Then the crisis intensified. For worrying news came in of the Irish UN company. These men, known as A Company, had gone to Jadotville, five days earlier, in response to a request from the Belgian, French and British Consuls in Elisabethville for a garrison to safeguard the large number of Europeans living there. In fact, they were already protected by the main Katangese camp of the gendarmerie, with a garrison of 2,000 troops. When A Company arrived, the 58

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European population greeted them with hoots, jeers and missiles and did their best to whip up the hostility of the African population. ‘One thing in particular,’ recalled one of the Irish soldiers many years later, stuck in my head from that time. I remember seeing posters being put up by the white settlers after we arrived, saying, ‘A Company—Go Home!’ This struck me as a strange sort of a welcome from people we had been sent to protect. In fact, I didn’t see anyone out to welcome us. It seemed to us that all the whites there were totally against us, against the UN.13

  ONUC officials were certain that for some reason they didn’t understand, the consuls had decided to trick the UN into believing that the Europeans in Jadotville were in danger.14 They noted, too, that Union Minière had been involved in the request of the consuls, but behind the scenes.15   On 9 September, A Company had suddenly been surrounded by the ­gendarmerie, under the leadership of white mercenaries. But it was impossible to get the African troops to fight: they refused to do anything more than encircle the Irish. It was then that the French mercenary officer, Henri-­ Maurice Lasimone, a former parachutist from Algeria, thought of cutting off the garrison’s water. This was a stratagem, he told O’Brien later, under interrogation, that would never have occurred to the civilian mind—and that had done the trick. But there had been some bad moments, especially when … there had been a decline of morale and ‘black politicians’ in Jadotville had induced the African troops to fraternize with the Irish.

However, ‘fresh troops’ had been rushed in, the ringleaders among the ‘mutineers’ had been shot, the ‘politicians’ had been jailed, and by morning the situation had been restored. UN reinforcements sent out to relieve the Irish were blocked on the road by paracommandos. Lasimone’s account, believed O’Brien, was ‘substantially true.’16   Now, on 13 September 1961, the situation was deteriorating rapidly. Dag was told that A Company had been attacked at 07.30, just hours after Morthor had begun, while many of the men were attending Mass. Thus began the Battle of Jadotville, which was to last six days: In classic military mode the ground around the platoon trenches started to erupt, as the 81 mm shells came crashing down around the shoulders of the Irish. Depending on the fuse setting on the mortar bombs, some exploded after embedding themselves into the ground and others burst in the air overhead, showering the area with … white-hot deadly shrapnel …

59

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD? In addition to the mortar fire there was also a French 75 mm field gun which was trained on the Irish positions and was now busily raining shells down upon them.17

A Company had prepared well-fortified trenches with overhead cover; if they had not done so, many of them would have been killed. They flashed a message to Léopoldville: ‘We will hold out until last bullet is spent. Could do with some whiskey.’18 Swedish and Gurkha troops attempted to relieve the Irish, but they were beaten back by a large gendarmerie detachment led by mercenaries and by strafing from Katanga’s Fouga jet.   Meanwhile, UN forces were under siege at the Kamina base, where Swedish and Indian UN troops held only the airstrip and the air control system.19 Greatly concerned, Hammarskjöld appealed urgently to a number of countries, including Ethiopia, for jet aircraft capable of protecting the UN’s force from the Fouga.20 Ethiopia willingly agreed to send planes, but Britain refused to give them flying rights over British East African territory, which they needed to reach the Congo. In this tense situation, the Secretary-General resolved to use his skills of personal diplomacy to resolve the situation—to meet with Tshombe outside the bitter cauldron of the Congo and to persuade him to call a ceasefire. In the early hours of Saturday, 16 September, he summoned Lord Lansdowne for a meeting, asking if the British government would make arrangements for him to meet with Tshombe in Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. Lansdowne undertook to cable London at once.21   Deciding on this meeting lifted somewhat the tremendous burden of worry on the Secretary-General’s shoulders, according to Bill Ranallo in a letter written next day to his wife (the last one he sent before his death in Ndola). ‘The boss has been in such a depressed mood—worse than any time I have known him,’ he wrote in great concern. ‘He was much better last night because he’s set up a parley with Tshombe in Ndoula [sic] for some time today.’22   But it is not easy to establish precisely where or how the idea for the meeting originated. For one thing, Lansdowne said later that the Secretary-General’s decision to meet Tshombe was ‘largely’ Hammarskjöld’s own—so presumably not entirely so.23 For another, O’Brien had been busy trying to arrange a meeting of his own with Tshombe, as a representative of the UN. At midnight on Saturday, 16 September 1961, Denzel Dunnett, the British Consul in Elisabethville, told O’Brien that Tshombe was prepared to meet him in the Northern Rhodesian town of Bancroft (now Chililabombwe), on the 60

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Congo border. O’Brien immediately cabled to UN headquarters in Léopoldville for instructions.   But in return, on Sunday, 17 September, he got a lengthy message from Hammarskjöld to pass on to Tshombe, dated 16 September, which proposed that he—the Secretary-General himself—would meet with Tshombe in Ndola. A copy of Hammarskjöld’s letter was in the briefcase which he took to Ndola, and which was later found at the site of the crashed plane. In this letter, Hammarskjöld pointed out that Tshombe had agreed to meet with representatives of the United Nations on Friday 15 September, but then failed to turn up. Hammarskjöld now proposed a meeting between himself and Tshombe to agree on a ceasefire—anywhere convenient to the Katangan leader with the exception of Elisabethville, for obvious reasons.24   O’Brien requested permission to accompany the Secretary-General, adding a warning about the risks of meeting in white-ruled Rhodesia. But Hammarskjöld declined his offer, saying that he wished to negotiate with Tshombe ‘outside the framework of ONUC.’25   Also in Dag’s briefcase, found at the crash site, is an account, produced by Lord Lansdowne, of events on 12 and 13 September 1961. This records that on the morning of 12 September, the day before the start of Morthor, Denzel Dunnett had called on O’Brien and offered to use all his influence with Tshombe to persuade him to go to Léopoldville to see the Secretary-General. The idea of a meeting between Hammarskjöld and Tshombe, therefore, already had a precedent when Dag mentioned it to Lansdowne on 16 September, four days later.26   In fact, the British government played an instrumental role in the settingup of the meeting. This emerges from two secret reports in the private papers of Lord Alport, the British High Commissioner in Salisbury, Rhodesia, who was at Ndola airport on the night of the crash. The first report is a secret despatch by Alport to Duncan Sandys, the Secretary of State at the Commonwealth Relations Office, dated 25 September, 1961;27 the second is a 14-page appendix to this despatch by Neil Ritchie, an MI6 officer.28 Ritchie was attached to the British High Commission in Salisbury, as Lord Alport’s Foreign Office First Secretary. But this was his cover—he was an ‘MI officer,’ as Alport commented in a letter many years later.29 Ritchie’s position in Rhodesia must have been similar to that of Daphne Park at the British Embassy in Léopoldville, whose role in MI6 was revealed in 1993.30 But unlike Lady Park (as she became), who later acknowledged her role in the Congo, Ritchie appears not to have spoken about his work in the region for MI6. 61

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  His report gives a detailed account of his secret mission, which lasted six days and which began with his arrival at Ndola at 20.00 on Friday, 15 September 1961. He quickly discovered that the self-proclaimed President of Katanga had moved his headquarters to Kipushi, right on the border between Katanga and Northern Rhodesia—twenty miles from Elisabethville and some 250 miles from Ndola. He was staying in a house about 600 yards from the frontier.   Ritchie’s next task was to persuade Tshombe to meet a representative of the United Nations, who he assumed would be Conor Cruise O’Brien. The object of the meeting was to achieve a ceasefire. ‘It was clear from telegrams phoned to me from Salisbury,’ noted Ritchie, ‘that this was Her Majesty’s Government’s wish.’31   On the evening of 15 September, Ritchie was in the Northern Rhodesian town of Kitwe, a short drive from Ndola, where he had a drink with Sir Ronald Prain, the President of the Rhodesian Selection Trust, which was one of the two major foreign mining companies in the Copperbelt (the other one was Anglo American). He then met an old friend who ran a helicopter business and arranged a flight to Kipushi on the following morning: We flew at zero feet along the frontier till we reached Kipushi and spotted an air strip of sorts. Tshombe was waiting for me with Kibwe, Munongo, Kimba and some aides. He greeted me in a most friendly fashion, having remembered a previous meeting. I proceeded to invite him to Bancroft to meet O’Brien.

But the rebel president did not want to see O’Brien: ‘Tshombe wanted Hammarskjöld himself.’   Before taking off from Kipushi, Ritchie inspected the 800-yards-long airstrip. It was rough and overgrown, with ant-hills at one end, so he arranged for Union Minière to put a steamroller over it and start demolishing the ant-hills. Evidently he had ready connections and influence with Union Minière officials in the region. Strictly speaking, though, he did not have an official mandate to do this: for while the town of Kipushi was in the territory of Northern Rhodesia, the airstrip was in the Congo.   In the event, it was a straightforward matter to meet Tshombe’s demand to see the Secretary-General, since Ritchie was now told that Hammarskjöld had decided that he himself—and not O’Brien—should meet with Tshombe. Hammarskjöld had also suggested Ndola as a meeting-place. ‘I was back at Kitwe by midday on Sunday [17 September 1961],’ wrote Ritchie in his report, ‘to learn the heartening news from the High Commissioner that Hammarskjöld had decided to come himself to Ndola and that he would arrive between 14.00 62

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and 16.00.’ Ritchie chartered a Skyhawk plane and a Cessna 180, and sent a message to Tshombe that he would be returning to Kipushi at 15.00; he also sent a message to Dunnett, telling him to meet him at Kipushi.   He arrived with the two planes to collect Tshombe and his party, but there was no sign of the rebel president. He waited for a while and at 15.30, concerned that Hammarskjöld was due to arrive at Ndola at 16.00, he commandeered a car to look for Tshombe. He appears to have felt apprehensive and was relieved to see an RRAF Canberra on patrol overhead: ‘It was reassuring.’ He soon found Tshombe at his makeshift headquarters in a private house, ‘in the middle of a cabinet meeting held seated on soap boxes.’ In the same house he caught a glimpse of Henry Fortemps, Assistant Director-General of Union Minière in Elisabethville, in an ante-room. Fortemps, he guessed, must have brought Dunnett, the British Consul.   Ritchie hurried his party along to the airstrip: Tshombe, immaculately dressed as usual, and leading figures in his administration—Jean-Baptiste Kibwe, the Katangese Minister of Finance, Evariste Kimba, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Justin Meli, the head of his private office. They finally reached Ndola at 17.00 and, as they flew in to land at the airport, they were escorted by Rhodesian Air Force Canberras.   It was unusual for Tshombe to be allowed by his team of Belgian advisers to go to an important meeting without any of them in tow; this was especially strange, since the Katangese President was on his way to a major summit with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. *

Lord Alport was already at Ndola airport with his private secretary. They had arrived by plane from Salisbury at 15.00, joining Ewan Thompson, the Senior Provincial Commissioner, and the Police Commissioner. The little group of British officials walked purposefully over to the airport manager’s office, on the second floor of a small double-storeyed block near the apron of the runway, which also housed the control tower. Here they organised preparations for Hammarskjöld’s arrival. Dunnett was expected a little later, arriving by road.32   Also waiting for the Secretary-General was a group of Vampire pilots, with orders to escort the UN plane once it reached Ndola’s airspace.33 As well, there was a temporary ‘forward Federal Government Centre,’ a temporary arm of the Rhodesian Ministry of Defence, which had been secretly set up in Ndola for 17 September 1961.34 Its function, presumably, was to monitor the joint visits of Tshombe and Hammarskjöld. 63

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

  But it was not only Rhodesian and British officials who were starting to gather at this small, usually quiet airport. So too were the many local and international journalists in the region. On that same day, 17 September 1961, about thirty of them had been travelling in a pack from Ndola to Elisabethville; en route, they stopped for lunch and strung a short-wave radio round a small tree. To their astonishment, they heard on a news broadcast that the UN Secretary-General was flying from the Congo to Ndola in a bid to end the fighting between Katanga and UN forces. The journalists promptly turned round to go back to Ndola and made for the airport.35 If Dag’s flight to Northern Rhodesia was supposed to be a secret, it was one that everybody seemed to be in on.   But no reporters were allowed within the airport perimeter. ‘We were not allowed near the airport buildings,’ recalls Clyde Sanger, the correspondent for the Guardian, ‘and there were no news conferences that evening and nobody was deputed as press liaison.’36 Lord Alport was determined to keep the press away. ‘We moved a couple of 10 ton police lorries in front of the airport building,’ he reported to London, ‘in order to screen it from the inquisitive gaze of the Press and public.’37   Africans were not generally allowed inside the perimeter of the airport, so an exception had to be made that evening for Tshombe and his party. But no exception was made for the large group of Africans who were waiting with placards to welcome the Secretary-General, as a way of showing their appreciation of his work and his commitment to majority rule. They carried placards stating their opposition to the Federation and to Tshombe, and their support for a unified Congo.   According to the mercenary Jerry Puren, who was also at the airport, about 50 people were assembled there—associates of Tshombe, some mercenaries, diplomats and the curious. ‘They all,’ he recollected later, ‘knew that Hammarskjöld was expected that night.’38 None of them was mentioned by Alport in his reports to London or in his later memoir.   Puren was now working directly for Tshombe, having begun his career in Katanga as a member of the mercenary unit known as the Compagnie Internationale, a small all-white unit of about 200–250 English, South African and Rhodesian men which was not integrated with the gendarmerie (whereas other European mercenaries were integrated into mixed African-European units of the gendarmerie).39 Like many mercenaries at the time, Puren had a lively sense of himself as a secret agent and played around with pseudonyms. He occasionally passed himself off as ‘Ivan de Vlaminck’—which is Flemish for ‘Ian Fleming,’ the name of James Bond’s creator. 64

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  In his memoir, Mercenary Commander, he gives a startling description of Ndola airport that evening. He himself arrived from Johannesburg at 16.00 on a South African Airways flight and was astonished, he said, to find the airport packed with ‘scores of officers of Rhodesian Federal forces and even a few well-known and unwanted mercenary faces—people like Dick Browne and Carlos Huyghe.’   William Richard ‘Dick’ Browne had earlier been the commander of the Compagnie Internationale. He was also the brother of the Tory MP for Torrington, Percy Browne, which caused some embarrassment in Conservative circles in England—but not to the Daily Mail, which printed Browne’s photograph in April 1961 with an admiring caption: Glass in hand, Captain Richard Browne rests in Elisabethville after leading the force which captured Manono from Gizengist troops. This is the first picture of the 6 ft 2 in, treacle-voiced Englishman who commands the Katanga Government’s ‘elite corps’ of 48 British and South African mercenaries. Captain Browne, who served in the Royal Navy and later with Special Forces in Malaya, described the operation as ‘a piece of cake.’40

Dick Browne was frequently captured by UN forces, prompting O’Brien to describe him as ‘that much-expelled and ever-recurrent English mercenary.’41   Carlos (also known as Carlo and Charles) Huyghe was the Belgian chef de cabinet to the Katangan Minister of Defence and was said to be close to Tshombe. He was also involved in a South African-based mercenary recruitment agency (and had recruited Jerry Puren to Katanga); Browne, with whom Huyghe was said to have an ongoing feud, worked for the same recruitment agency.42 Huyghe was one of three foreign advisers identified by the UN, with the approval in New York of the Secretary-General, for arrest and expulsion from the Congo.43 Furthermore, he was being investigated on suspicion of participating in some way in the murder of Lumumba.44 This participation was confirmed in 2001 by the Belgian parliamentary commission of inquiry into Lumumba’s death.45   Puren insists that his own arrival at Ndola airport on that day ‘was coincidence, one of those quirks of fate.’ Now, at Ndola airport, he found his ‘old friends’: the Canadian mercenary pilot Max Glasspole and the Hungarian pilot Sandor Gurkitz, nicknamed ‘Sputnik.’ Ensconced in the airport lounge, ‘they were swapping notes with a wide circle of Katangese and Federal officials as I strode through customs and toward them. We greeted each other like longlost friends.’46 65

5 MIDNIGHT DEATH IN BRITISH AFRICA

Hammarskjöld knew nothing of the diverse groups awaiting him at Ndola as he prepared on Sunday 17 September 1961 for his flight. Early that morning he met again with Lansdowne at Le Royal and told him of his plan to meet with Tshombe. ‘His choice of Ndola as a rendezvous greatly surprised me,’ recalled Lansdowne a week later. ‘I said I would go with him on his plane— not to participate in the talks, but to help behind the scenes.’ But the Secretary-General declined the offer: according to Lansdowne, he suggested that the British Minister go on ahead to Northern Rhodesia to ensure that everything was arranged, and then ‘to make himself scarce before he arrived.’ Hammarskjöld was evidently anxious to avoid giving the impression that the UN was working closely with a government with an interest in the outcome of the crisis.1   Meanwhile, mechanics at Léopoldville’s airport were busily preparing the Force Commander’s DC-6B, to take the Secretary-General on his journey. Although it had the registration letters SE-BDY, it was affectionately known as the Albertina, after the hit song of the same name, sung by Wendo Kolosoy, the star of Congolese rumba. The Albertina was owned by the Swedish company Transair and its experienced crew of three pilots, a radio operator, a flight engineer and a purser were all Swedish, led by Captain Per Hallonquist. Harald Noork, who joined the Albertina on its flight to Ndola as the purser, turned forty on that day and was presented with a big cake with forty candles. He only managed to blow out thirty-nine of the candles and years later, a Transair engineer who had also been at the airport wondered, ‘Was this an omen?’2

67

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

 The Albertina needed some repairs: taking off early that morning from Elisabethville, it had been fired at; the exhaust pipe was hit by a bullet and had to be replaced.3 The aircraft was ready to fly well before noon, as were Hammarskjöld and his party. Lansdowne, however, who was scheduled to leave for Ndola in a DC4 with the call sign OO-RIC, accompanied by Michael Wilford, his private secretary, had not yet left.4 Sture Linnér anxiously sent reminders to Lansdowne ‘to try and push the departure,’ but for reasons Linnér did not understand, the Marquess did not actually leave for Ndola until 16.04 local time.5 This forced the Secretary-General to leave as late as 16.45. However, Captain Hallonquist was in a cheerful and relaxed mood.6   Before his plane flew off, Dag read a last-minute telex at the top of the aircraft steps.7 Linnér had disappeared into the plane, but suddenly emerged again into the bright sunlight and walked down the steps to the tarmac. Although he had expected to go on the trip, Dag decided at the last minute that Linnér could not be spared from Léopoldville.8 Now Linnér sent a telegram to UN headquarters in Elisabethville, with an instruction for McKeown, ONUC’s force commander: that he travel to Ndola by road that night or very early the following morning, so that he could return to Léopoldville with the Secretary-General.9 *

Conditions at Ndola were perfect: it was the dry season and the weather was fine, with a slight haze but no cloud. Once dusk fell just after 18.00, it was a clear and moonlit night.   The airport was ready. In comparison with many airports in tropical central Africa at that time, it was a modern, professional enterprise run by an experienced manager—John H. Williams, nicknamed ‘Red,’ a middle-aged man with iron grey hair, who had been recalled from his leave one day early to be on duty that night.10 Lord Alport bustled around, making sure that arrangements were ready for the ceasefire talks, while Tshombe had dinner—with a bottle of Burgundy—in the airport lounge.11 On the airfield were eighteen Royal Rhodesian Air Force planes and two American DC3s, one of which had been flown there by the US Air Attaché in Pretoria.   The first plane to arrive was that of Lord Lansdowne, the British UnderSecretary for Foreign Affairs, at about 22.40 Rhodesian time. Alport asked him to meet with Tshombe and at first he refused, having given his word to Hammarskjöld. But Alport persuaded him that it was necessary, to please Tshombe. The meeting lasted just a few minutes, after which Tshombe and his 68

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advisers were driven off to the Provincial Commissioner’s large and comfortable residence, not far away. Earlier that night Tshombe’s wife Louise had arrived by car to join him, with a baby in her arms and two other children.12 Several security men patrolled the grounds of the Provincial Commissioner’s house, while four police cars waited for instructions.  The Albertina was faster than Lansdowne’s DC4, but it took a roundabout route in order to avoid flying over Katanga and to avoid the notorious Fouga Magister jet fighter.13 It flew in an easterly direction from Léopoldville and, on reaching Lake Tanganyika, skirted the Congolese border on a southerly course. It maintained complete radio silence for four hours and eleven minutes until 22.02, when it called the Flight Information Centre in Salisbury to give its estimated time of arrival at Ndola—00.35 the following morning.   Just over an hour after breaking radio silence, Captain Hallonquist contacted Salisbury again: ‘We are keeping outside Congolese territory, proceeding around the border to Ndola to land at Ndola.’ Flight Information tried to extract more information—‘On arrival Ndola are you night-stopping or proceeding elsewhere?’ But Hallonquist was not forthcoming: Albertina: I’m taking off almost immediately. Salisbury: Are you returning to Léopoldville tonight? Albertina: Negative. Salisbury: What is your destination on departure Ndola? Albertina: Unable to say at present.

At 23.32, Flight Information in Salisbury handed the Albertina over to Ndola. ‘If you can get any information from [the pilot] as to his future movements,’ said the Salisbury air traffic controller, ‘I’d be most grateful.’   Although the control tower should have been equipped with a tape recorder, according to international regulations,14 apparently there were no tape-recording facilities at Ndola that night. This meant that communications were not recorded between A. Campbell Martin, the traffic controller on duty, and the Albertina. But Martin kept notes, which he wrote up the next day. According to these notes, the Albertina gave him its estimated time of arrival, using Greenwich Mean Time: Albertina: Estimate abeam ND [Ndola] at 47, ND at 20. Ndola: Roger, confirm ETA [estimated time of arrival] ND in 20 minutes, or at 2220. Albertina: 2220.

69

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD? Ndola: Roger. Ndola weather wind 120/7 Knots. Visibility five to ten miles with slight smoke haze. Control QNH [altitude reading above sea level] 1021, QFE 877mb. Duty R/W 10. At what time do you wish to make your descent? Albertina: Roger. On your watch, request descent clearance at 57. Ndola: Roger. No traffic in area, at 57 clear to descend to 6000 feet on QNH report top of descent.

Martin had as little success as Salisbury Flight Information in obtaining any information from the UN plane about its destination: Ndola: Are you proceeding Salisbury after landing Ndola? Albertina: Negative. Ndola: Roger are you night-stopping Ndola? Albertina: Negative. Ndola: Due parking difficulties would like your intentions. Albertina: Will give them on the ground. Ndola: Roger. Albertina: Now abeam ND. Ndola: Roger. Report top of descent. Albertina: Roger. Ndola: Will you require refuelling at Ndola? Albertina: Standby … May require a little. Ndola: Roger.

  Then—at ten minutes after midnight—the Albertina saw Ndola airport. ‘Your lights in sight overhead Ndola, descending,’ reported Hallonquist: Albertina: Confirm QNH. Ndola: Roger. QNH 1021 mb, report reaching 6000 feet. Albertina: Roger 1021.

But no record of reaching 6,000 feet was ever sent—this was the last message ever received from the Albertina. Lord Lansdowne took off from Ndola for Salisbury at about fifteen minutes after midnight. As he walked across the tarmac apron to his aircraft he was told that the Albertina had communicated with Ndola control tower—but that contact had now been lost. This worried him and, once in the air, the pilot tried in vain to contact the Secretary-General’s plane.15 70

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  Lord Alport, in contrast to Lansdowne, appeared to feel no concern about the failure of Hammarskjöld’s plane to land. He assumed, he said, both at the time and later, that Hammarskjöld had left Ndola airspace to go to Elisabethville, in order to obtain a first-hand account of the situation on the spot. The airport manager Red Williams said he shared this view.   At 02.20, air traffic controller Martin issued an INCERFA—uncertainty— signal to Salisbury, stating that SE-BDY had reported overhead Ndola at 00.10, but failed to land or to send any further communication. He also issued a signal asking for any information from flight information centres in Salisbury, Léopoldville, and Lusaka. Salisbury and Lusaka reported nil news; Léopoldville did not reply.   At 03.00 in the morning of Monday, 18 September, Williams and Alport gave up for the night, even though they had still heard nothing from the Albertina. Williams went to the Rhodes hotel in Ndola, where he was staying, and the High Commissioner walked over to his aeroplane, which was parked on the airfield, to get some sleep. About ten minutes after Alport had left the terminal building, Martin contacted Flight Information in Salisbury by teleprinter, asking for permission to close the control tower for the night. No answer arrived, but Martin interpreted this as permission to leave the airport: he closed down the runway and put out the lights in the tower, leaving on duty a Communicator (that is, a radio operator who receives and transmits messages but does not initiate them).   The airport was now silent.   Meanwhile, a police officer called Marius van Wyk had hurried into Ndola Central Police Station and, rather excited, told another officer, Adrian Begg, that he had seen something very strange in the sky. Van Wyk had been on guard duty at the Provincial Commissioner’s house, where Tshombe and his party were staying; but as he went back to the police station, at about 03.30 hours, he saw a ‘tremendous flash of light in the sky.’ He had heard an aircraft similar in size to a Canberra going in the direction of Mufulira, a small Northern Rhodesian town near a copper mine. Then, ‘about 3 or 4 minutes after hearing it overhead he saw a flash, deep red in colour spread over a sector of about 40 degrees. There was no bright centre to the flash.’16   Begg had been on duty at Ndola airport with a squad of other officers. He explained later that a plane had landed, bringing Lansdowne, followed by the arrival of another plane over the airport at around midnight local time. ‘From where I was standing near the boundary fence, parallel with the runway,’ observed Begg years later, ‘it was low enough to see the cabin and navigation 71

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lights, all of which were on. It headed away towards the west. Some time later the runway lights were turned off and a senior officer … came out of the airport building to tell the police on duty outside that we could stand down.’ When the officers asked why the plane hadn’t landed, ‘he just shrugged and said that apparently Hammarskjöld had changed his mind and gone elsewhere which, we learned later, was the official line set by Lord Alport.’17   When Begg heard what van Wyk had seen, he speculated that something had happened to the plane and phoned the airport to give a report. When he failed to get through, he and another officer, Keith Pennock, drove to the airport which was then in darkness and apparently deserted (it was after 3am): ‘We went to the control tower, which was open, and found the radio operator asleep. We woke him, told him of our concerns, and he said we should tell John Williams, the airport manager, who had just returned from an overseas holiday and was staying at the Rhodes Hotel in Ndola. We rang the hotel but got no answer, so Pennock and I then drove there.’ Williams was not very pleased at being woken up and Begg can still, over 50 years later, recall his exact words when they told him of their concern that Hammarskjold’s plane might have crashed: ‘That just doesn’t happen. VIP planes don’t crash.’ Williams added that nothing could be done in the middle of the night and there would be no point ordering an air search before first light.   Begg and Pennock were unhappy about Williams’s lack of concern and phoned the Mufulira police station, to suggest they send out a road patrol in the area indicated by van Wyk. They also phoned one of their senior officers to report developments and to get permission for Ndola police also to send out a road patrol. Given that Begg was only 20, Pennock was 21, and van Wyk was about 22, recalled Begg later, they took ‘quite a lot on themselves’ in going against the advice of an experienced airport manager. He regretted that their patrols failed to find the crash site that night, ‘as we might have been able to save the life of Harold Julien, who was still alive at that time, and perhaps even Hammarskjöld himself, who according to some sources, may have survived for a short time after the crash.18   In the morning, more reports came in of strange events during the night, including the sighting by a ‘European’ Police Officer in Mufulira of a flash in the sky towards Ndola at half past midnight. Drillers in a camp east of Mokambo heard an explosion at the same time, in the direction of the Ndola road.19 During lunchtime, new reports arrived of flashes seen in the sky the night before, including one from the Rhodesia Light Infantry. When Mr D. E. Peover reported seeing a flash, a police officer went to his residence to take a bearing. 72

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Then came a call from the municipal security guard at the Ishik Lake Pump Works, saying that sometime after midnight he had seen a flash on a line between the pumping station and the New Lime Works. He was brought to the RRAF Operations Room to give a report, in which he described an aircraft flying over Ndola: its navigation light appeared to go out and within a minute of its clearing the airport vicinity, he saw a flash in the sky.   A similar account came from R. A. Phillips of the Vacuum Oil Company, who was on duty at the airfield at the time and reported seeing the aircraft pass overhead. He lost sight of it, noise from the aircraft ceased and then, shortly afterwards, he saw two flashes, one big and one small. Mr Phillips had such a firm mental picture, it was stated in a report, ‘that if allowed to fly, he was convinced that he could show the exact line.’20 By the early hours of the morning—04.30 on 18 September—air traffic controller Martin was back at the airport. He contacted Salisbury Flight Information Centre: ‘Good morning to you. I’ve nothing on [the Albertina].’ But he did mention the report by the policeman Van Wyk.   ‘It may sound a little pedantic,’ said Salisbury air traffic control about 40 minutes later, ‘but would you check that police and various other organisations are working on this aircraft?’ He repeated the question: ‘I say again would you just confirm that the police organization, etc., is working on this aircraft, this missing aircraft. Over.’ Ndola replied that he didn’t know. ‘I thought security was bad but not as bad as that,’ commented Salisbury Flight Information ruefully. ‘It’s a complete blanket is it?’ Ndola didn’t reply.   Meanwhile air traffic control in Salisbury was seeking to contact Nairobi, Johannesburg, Léopoldville and Elisabethville airports, in case they had any news. Nairobi and Johannesburg had no idea; and the Congolese airports failed to reply.   Salisbury Flight Information Centre appears to have been worried by the apparent inaction at Ndola: Salisbury: Keith, I was just wanting to check that the local Copperbelt police had all been put in the picture. Over. Ndola: We haven’t advised any other police stations but presumably since this report came from the police in the first place they have alerted their other Copperbelt police stations. General opinion seems to be that he’s turned back—I don’t think there’s probably anything in this report. Over. Salisbury: Roger, Keith. I’ll keep it short. I just sent a signal to you now-now-now replying from Leo with nil contact with them on any point-to-point frequency … Nil news.

73

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD? Ndola: Roger. Thank you. We have of course aircraft available here for search if necessary. Salisbury: Roger, Keith. Thank you.’

Léopoldville airport finally communicated at 07.42 to report a total lack of news. There was no communication from Elisabethville until 08.16.   In the early hours of Monday 18 September, Ndola airport was almost deserted. A little after 07.00, a UN plane flown by a Norwegian crew landed at Ndola; they had been on a mission in Katanga when suddenly they were redirected to Rhodesia, to help search for the Albertina. But as soon as they landed they were sent to a corner of the airport, under arrest.21   Nearly all the reporters hanging around outside the perimeter had disappeared, because Alport had sent them on a hunt for news in the direction of Mufulira, on what Clyde Sanger later described as a ‘wild goose chase.’22 At 09.00, Red Williams returned to the airport to resume duty. This was three full hours after first light—so three hours since the time which he had indicated to Van Wyk would be the right moment to start investigations. But he had done nothing.   At 09.42, Ndola received a signal from Salisbury control tower, with the instruction that the Royal Rhodesian Air Force planes parked at Ndola should begin searching for the Albertina. The search began at 10.00. ‘Reference the search,’ Salisbury Flight Information told Ndola control tower, ‘the aircraft will be one Provost to the South and one Canberra to the North … in a fifty miles radius …’ The communicator at Ndola misunderstood. ‘I can understand within a fifty mile radius—and—up to the Congo Pedicle,’ he replied. ‘Is this correct?’ At this point an air traffic controller at the airport of Lusaka, about 170 miles away, intervened. He had been listening in to the conversation and explained to Ndola: ‘No. He said fifty miles to north and fifty miles to south. The other way it takes them over the Congo border.’ In other words, the search was initially limited to the north and south of the airport, even though the approach route of the plane would have been from the west.   Meanwhile the American Embassy in Léopoldville arranged for Colonel Benjamin Matlick, the USAF Air Attaché in the Congo, who was currently in Elisabethville, to fly to Ndola to command USAF and UN aircraft in a search. He arrived at 13.30 and took responsibility for the search to the west and the east, including over the Congolese border.23   Flight Information in Salisbury maintained contact with Ndola and gave details about one of the RRAF pilots in the search. ‘He’ll probably be quite close in before he contacts you, Bud,’ said Salisbury to R. Budrewicz, on duty 74

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in Ndola. ‘He’s descending to I think to about 3000 feet AGL [aircraft ground light] to have a look for this queer job.’   In the middle of the afternoon, it was reported that Jerry Craxford, the pilot of one of the RRAF aircraft, had sighted the Albertina: ‘The air search sub­ sequently undertaken by Flying Officer Craxford on instructions given at 12.45 (2.45 pm) succeeded in locating the crash site at 13.10 (3.10 pm).’24 ‘The wreckage has been located,’ reported Martin immediately to Salisbury. ‘Will advise later.’   At 14.30, three charcoal burners had reported to the police district office that they had seen a crashed aircraft in the forest next to Twapia township and eight miles from the airport. Then, at about the same time that the wreckage was sighted from the air, Ndola Police Operations reported that an African charcoal burner from Kamalasha village, in the charcoal-burning area of Ndola West, had seen the wreckage near the Dola Hill Forest Station. He was positioned at the signpost to this station to await the arrival of the ground party, to direct them to the crash.25   Police cars rushed to the scene, where the crashed plane was still smouldering in the baking sun. It appeared to have executed a turn over the approach area, crashing near the end of the turn, and had sliced off the tops of the trees for about 150 yards; a great swathe had been cut through the forest. Fuel from the right wing had poured over the main wreckage and caused a fire, melting 70–80 per cent of the plane and more than three-quarters of the fuselage. At one end of the clearing, looking like one of the giant ant-hills, was what was left of the aeroplane: It seemed like dozens of smoking tree trunks had been collected together by a giant scoop, and been deposited, together with unrecognisable pieces of metal, into an untidy pile. Behind the pile lay the tail, pointing the wrong way. There were two engines on either side of the pile, propellers twisted as they performed their last few revolutions against splintering wood. The outer engines had gone on tumbling and lay beyond the clearing … Scattered about the area cleared by the aeroplane lay a great many unspent cartridges and some brand new spark plugs for the engines. We found a watch strap and a piece of shoe.26

 Later examination of the wreckage revealed that the aircraft’s engines were under power at the time of the crash and that the landing gear was fully lowered and in the locked position. The way in which the flap control quadrant was bent around its lever indicated that that there were thirty degrees of flap 75

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at the time of impact, which is a normal amount of flap of an aircraft in the process of landing.   It was estimated that the crash had taken place between 22.10 and 22.15 GMT, or between 00.10 and 00.15 local time, based on four watches that had stopped within less than two minutes of each other—almost immediately after Captain Hallonquist had reported his sighting of the Ndola airport lights.   It had taken more than fifteen hours for the Albertina to be found—nine hours after first light on 18 September. This was all the more surprising, given that the plane lay in the direction of the normal approach to the airport, just eight miles away.27 * Michael Cary, Assistant Superintendent of the Northern Rhodesia CID, looked for survivors at the crash site and instructed his officers to do the same. Despite the urgency and shock of the situation, he maintained the racial divisions of this British territory: ‘Africans present were instructed to search surrounding bush.’28   Harold Julien, the head of security, was found alive. According to the post mortem report, Julien was lying outside the charred area, but suffering firstand second-degree burns over his face, nearly all his back, and over the front and back of both arms and legs; in all, 55–60 per cent of his body surface was badly burnt.29 He was not delirious and gave clear information about himself, in the manner of a trained soldier: ‘I am Sergeant Harry Julien, Security Officer to the ONU. Please inform Léopoldville of the crash. Tell my wife and kids I’m alive before the casualty list is published. My wife is Maria Julien and she is in Florida, Miami.’ He then gave his full address.30 Julien was given morphine and water and driven to Ndola hospital, where his condition was considered ‘critical’ but not ‘desperate’: doctors expected him to live, since he had no other injury apart from a broken ankle. He died, however, six days later.   It quickly emerged that, with the exception of Julien, all the passengers and crew were dead. The body of Hammarskjöld, in contrast with all the other victims, had no burns. As many bodies as possible were covered with sheets found in the wreck and blankets from an ambulance. Hammarskjöld was placed in the ambulance with another body and taken to Ndola.31 Shortly afterwards, Rhodesian officials—from the department of civil aviation, the RRAF and the Federal Army—arrived at the scene. Colonel Matlick and two USAF airmen also arrived, but the Americans ‘were not allowed in the area of wreckage.’32 This meant that the only men to participate in the search for bodies were white Rhodesians. 76

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 Among the charred bodies was the only woman on the plane: Alice Lalande, a Canadian woman in her late forties from Montréal. A high-powered bilingual secretary, she had joined the UN secretariat in 1945 and had already seen service on the UN’s front line, working for six years in the Palestine secretariat and then serving in the Gaza Strip. From there she had gone directly to Léopoldville, to work as Sture Linnér’s personal secretary and to be responsible for the operation of the cipher machine.   The other passengers were Heinrich Wieschhoff, Dag’s adviser on African affairs; Vladimir Fabry, a Czech legal adviser who had defected to the US; and Bill Ranallo, Dag’s devoted bodyguard. Ranallo’s St Christopher medallion— in which he had placed his faith for safe travel—was found around his neck. One side of the medallion bore the inscription ‘St Christopher protect us’; the other side read ‘from Mum and Dad, 12–25–56.’ Apart from this, there were no distinguishing signs on the remains of his body.   There were four other UN guards: Serge Barrau from Haiti; Francis Eivers, an Irishman; and two Swedes—Stig Olof Hjelte, twenty-one years of age, and Per Edvald Persson, just twenty. Barrau’s corpse was found in the cockpit. Also killed were the Swedish crew. Captain Nils-Eric Åhréus was later identified by means of a platinum ring with an inscription of his wife’s name; also recovered with his body were a UN armband and a Transair eagle badge. Inscriptions on rings, referring to their wives so many thousands of miles away, were also used to identify Captain Hallonquist, Karl Erik Rosén, the radio operator, Lars Litton, the second pilot, Nils Göran Wilhelmsson, the flight engineer, and Harald Noork, the purser.   The Deputy Chief Fire Officer was asked to dampen down part of one of the bodies, which was completely disintegrated and still burning.   Not long after the Albertina was located, journalists reached the site. A woman reporter from the Northern News, a Northern Rhodesian broadsheet,33 was the first journalist on the scene. A friend in the forestry department had telephoned to say that the aircraft had been found and offered to take her there in his Land-Rover, with a guide. Grabbing her notebook and pen, she raced off to meet him. They drove for over an hour, bouncing along the elephant tracks, when suddenly the forest gave way to a clearing and the burnt wreck of the Albertina. Charred human remains were mingled up with the blackened grass, leaves and dirt. ‘The smell of death was everywhere,’ she recalled later. ‘Large mopani flies were beginning to settle on the bodies before they were covered by blankets and put into waiting trucks.’34   A South African reporter arrived to find firemen still spraying the wreckage with foam. Parts of the wreckage, he said, were still glowing and the only 77

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way of recognizing it was an aircraft was by the four blistered engine cowls and an elevator. For the rest, he added, it was just a mass of rubble and splintered aluminium. The only articles he saw intact were a table napkin some yards away on the scorched ground and a roll of paper. The silence was overpowering: the only noise to be heard was the dull scraping of metal as pieces of the aircraft were pulled aside. When police reinforcements arrived, they set up roadblocks across all the tracks leading to the crash site.35Assistant Superintendent Cary found a cipher machine at the site and instructed an inspector to take possession of it.36   The first press photographer to arrive had been given the scoop by a police officer—just ten minutes’ start. ‘I had a Wolseley car at the time,’ he recalled many years later, ‘and believe me! It was foot to the floorboard all the way. Turning right along the path, as indicated, I hardly reduced speed … damage was caused to the bottom of the car … I knew I had to get to the scene before the others.’ Once there, he witnessed the enormity of the situation: Yes! Others from Ndola had arrived before me. These were the police and the ambulance men. An ambulance was being driven away, believed to be carrying Mr Hammarskjöld. There were bodies … laid in a row just away from the scene of the crash. I was there to take photographs. Light was fading fast … directly in front of me was one of the engines, still burning. All around there were pieces of the aircraft.

The fuselage of the plane, bearing the United Nations crest, was wedged between two saplings. ‘To give the picture impact,’ said the photographer, ‘I placed a pair of shoes together with a tie. A sombre sight.’ Climbing and scrambling up ant-hills, as best as he could through the debris, he took more photographs. When he left the site, it was totally dark. There was a certain eeriness about the place. Whilst there, I did but notice the way in which the trees, mostly saplings, were cut through. It was as if the aircraft was making a perfect landing.37

  But there was still a body at the site which had not been found. Next day, on Tuesday 19 September, police officer Adrian Begg volunteered to assist the team working on the search of the wreckage. While he was searching he found another body, which was hidden beneath debris and had been overlooked. ‘The body had what appeared to be bullet wounds,’ recalled Begg later, ‘and my recollection is there was a 9mm sub-machinegun in the wreckage nearby, which we surmised was the cause. He could well have been holding the weapon on his lap when the plane crashed or maybe even have been loading it preparatory to landing in what he would probably have considered to be alien terri78

MIDNIGHT DEATH IN BRITISH AFRICA

tory.’ It was thought that the victim was a soldier or security guard; however it seems possible that this was the body of Karl Erik Rosén, the radio operator.38 *

Dread and apprehension had been growing through the night of 17–18 September at UN offices in New York, Geneva and Léopoldville, once news had arrived of the Secretary-General’s disappearance. Brian Urquhart had just gone to bed when he was called up by Ralph Bunche: He said, ‘You’ve got to come into the office immediately, because I just know something terrible has happened. We are without news of the Secretary-General; he’s overdue at Ndola and I think you’d better come in at once.’ So I came in at about 4 o’clock in the morning, I remember, and then we sat around for about six hours desperately trying to find out what had happened.’39

  Telexes exchanged between UN offices grew increasingly anxious. ‘I simply cannot give up hope,’ wrote one of the Secretary-General’s colleagues: that this man with whom we have been privileged to work and is so sorely needed by the cause of peace and the entire world will be found and will live to carry on his dedicated effort.

‘I know you share my feeling,’ he went on, ‘that Dag is one of the greatest men of our times and undoubtedly one of the truly great men in all history.’ Messages went back and forth across the vast distance—nearly 8,000 miles— between Léopoldville and New York. ‘The most profound hope despite all, the news may still miraculously be good.’40   Then Linnér in Léopoldville received a report of the crash. He immediately sent a telex to New York: ‘I do not know yet for sure. I simply refuse to believe it until I get everything in black and white.’ Then another: ‘Stand by please and be prepared for the worst.’ This was swiftly followed by confirmation that the Secretary-General was dead: ‘Local police and assistant US Air Attaché at crash scene and confirm UN aircraft. Positive identification that VIP was killed.’41

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Radio stations all over the world broke into live programmes to announce the shocking death of the UN Secretary General. At UN headquarters in New York, the blue and white flag of the organization flew at half-mast and the flags of the ninety-nine member nations were taken down. One UN official just sat down and clasped his hands to his head.1 Kofi Annan, who was not yet working at the UN but had come to visit someone there, recalled later that on his way up in the elevator, someone cried out, ‘They killed him! They got him!’ He said it was a very moving experience: one of those things that you remember where you were, when it happened.2   It was an ‘enormous emotional shock,’ said Urquhart—‘that this absolutely extraordinary person should have simply gone in that grotesque way. It was a terrible blow.’ It was felt, he added: to an extraordinary extent throughout the Secretariat and the delegations. Even people who didn’t like Hammarskjöld very much suddenly realised that they’d seen the last of someone who was totally unique; that there was never going to be anybody like that again. It was awful. That really was a very low point.3

Hammarskjöld’s death, mourned the New York Times, ‘is an incalculable loss. He had built himself and his office into one of the great hopes for world peace. He came to represent what was honourable and rational in a chaotic world full of hate and suspicion.’4   The Sixteenth UN General Assembly in New York reconvened on 20 September, two days after the crash, and for almost four hours eulogies were offered by world leaders and delegates, one after the other.5 Tributes from newly inde

81

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pendent nations were especially poignant. ‘Whether this was due to accident or some kind of sabotage,’ reflected Nehru sadly, ‘I do not know.’ Conditions in the Congo, he pointed out, ‘are such that anything is possible.’6   The Prime Minister of the Congo, Cyrille Adoula, had met with Hammarskjöld in Léopoldville just hours before the crash. Now he praised ‘this great man’ and his colleagues. Hammarskjöld, he said, had visited the Congo at the invitation of the Central Government, despite a crushing burden of work. He was a man, he added, who had ‘successfully borne up under great strain and had remained the link between East and West and the guardian of the interests of small States threatened by the Western imperialists and neo-colonialists.’ It was Adoula’s firm opinion that Hammarskjöld had ‘fallen victim to the shameless intrigues of the great financial Powers of the West’ and been murdered. ‘How ignoble is this assassination, not the first of its kind perpetrated by the moneyed powers,’ he said bitterly. ‘Mr Hammarskjöld was the victim of certain financial circles for whom a human life is not equal to a gram of copper or uranium.’7   In order that the Congolese nation might ‘demonstrate publicly our indignation at the scandalous interference in our affairs by certain foreign countries,’ the government proclaimed Tuesday 19 September 1961 a day of national mourning. Flags would be flown at half mast throughout the ­country, instructed Adoula.8 Scores of demonstrators paraded through Léopoldville’s streets and shouted anti-Western slogans outside the British and Portuguese embassies.9   It was not only Adoula who suspected that the crash was not an accident, but an assassination. This was ‘history’s No 1 international murder,’ judged the Ghanaian Times in Accra.10 Some parties blamed the Soviet Union and Khrushchev, and in New York more than 50 anti-Communist European exiles picketed in the rain outside UN headquarters. They carried signs and placards that read ‘Dial K for Murder’ and ‘Who Shot Down Dag’s Plane?’11   But most fingers across the world were pointed angrily at the white rulers of the Central African Federation. ‘The whole world wanted to know how and why it had occurred,’ observed Sir Roy Welensky years later. ‘The wildest accusations were flung at the Federation and at me personally. In Léopoldville there was an immediate demand for war against the Federation as a punishment for the “murder” of the Secretary-General.’ This was taken up, he added, in Accra, Lagos, Delhi and Cairo and by the African nationalist leaders in the Federation itself.12   There was widespread suspicion that Britain had been critical of the UN mission in the Congo and had backed Katanga’s secession, so accusing fingers 82

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were pointed in London’s direction, too. ‘Never even during Suez have Britain’s hands been so bloodstained as they are now,’ wrote Joshua Nkomo, a freedom fighter in Southern Rhodesia.13 It was reported from New Delhi that a wave of ‘anti-British hysteria’ had broken out in Indian newspapers, which was unequalled since the Suez crisis. ‘Britain is outdoing herself in hypocrisy,’ observed the Bombay Free Press Journal. ‘Hammarskjöld’s death,’ it added darkly, ‘was no accident.’14   The British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, resented these accusations. ‘It is hard indeed,’ he wrote sympathetically to Welensky, ‘that you should have to endure suggestions from various quarters that Hammarskjöld’s death was in some way brought about by a plot organised by us, for which you provided the means.’15 Edward Heath, Lord Privy Seal, felt obliged to issue a denial that Britain was in any way involved in the Secretary-General’s death, referring to the accusations as ‘scandalous’ and ‘unthinkable.’16   From Salisbury, Alport sent a confidential telegram to London urging the Commonwealth Relations Office to mobilize world opinion against the UN. It should be possible, he argued, ‘to establish [an] atmosphere in which a public and independent enquiry into alleged brutalities against e.g. Indian troops could be set up. I suggest that the evidence of the surrender of the [UN] Irish and the document signed by the Irish Commandant might also be used in this connection.’17 In central Africa, reactions to Hammarskjöld’s death differed widely. The African population in and around Ndola were ‘furious’ when they heard news of the crash and many wept tears of anguish. It seemed, recalls one of the freedom fighters of the time, as if all hope had been lost for the time being. Dag’s mission, she says, was ‘good for us’—and ‘not good for them,’ by which she means the whites who wanted to consolidate minority rule. The significance of this event in Zambia’s history is reflected in the fact that a number of babies born around that time, especially boys, were named ‘Hammarskjöld.’18   The Northern Rhodesian Northern News reported on 20 September 1961 that nine African women had been arrested in the Copperbelt town of Kitwe for carrying placards accusing Welensky and the British government of causing Dag’s death. Other signs declared: ‘Tshombe Welensky’s dog,’ ‘Adoula is the rightful leader of the Congo,’ and ‘Black continent will deal with Welensky.’19   Meanwhile, many whites in central Africa rejoiced. When Bengt Rösiö, the Swedish Consul in Léopoldville, rushed to Ndola immediately after the crash, he found ‘gaiety’ among the whites and ‘raw flaming hate’ against the UN.20 83

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Sture Linnér, the Officer-in-Charge of ONUC, was shocked by the behaviour he found in Ndola—especially that of Roy Welensky and Lord Alport: ‘Their attitude and badly hidden scorn of what had happened, cynicism masked in different ways in elegant phrases, were so terrible that I can’t help believing that there were British, Belgian and even French interests behind what happened.’21 In Léopoldville, Linnér was horrified to receive invitations from Belgians to celebrations and parties.22   Lord Alport in Salisbury laid the blame for the crash firmly at the door of the UN itself. He referred to the organization’s ‘complete failure to understand the conditions existing in Central Africa,’ which were ‘better left to Europeans with experience of that part of the world.’ Responsibility for Hammarskjöld’s death, he added, should be placed ‘fairly and squarely on the Afro Asian elements in the United Nations.’23   Moïse Tshombe was given the news by Ian Colvin, the correspondent for Britain’s Daily Telegraph, shortly after the crashed plane had been found. ‘Monsieur le Président,’ he said to Tshombe, ‘Mr Hammarskjöld is dead. His body lies not far away in the wreckage of his aircraft.’ Colvin claimed later that he made a point of watching Tshombe carefully as he said this: Tshombe’s face was puffy from lack of sleep, his eyes red from the strain of the past seven days. As the news sank in, said Colvin, dismay and disappointment cast a shadow over his face. He answered Colvin at once, in a statement that the press conference was meant to hear: ‘I regret it very much, if what you say is true. He was a man who enjoyed the respect of many African nations, and I had hoped to reach an agreement with him that would leave Katanga free.’24   However, Colvin was not necessarily a reliable witness. He had been allowed to fly in an aircraft officially participating in the search—a remarkable scoop for a newspaperman. He was a personal friend of Roy Welensky and shared his hatred for the UN. Shortly after the crash, when Colvin was sitting in the dining-room of the Savoy Hotel in Ndola and some UN guards came in with sidearms, he swiftly rose and shouted, ‘Expel those mercenaries!’25   In any case, Tshombe and his advisers and ministers directly benefited from the crash. The planned peace talks, in which Hammarskjöld wanted to persuade Tshombe to agree to his terms, were replaced by talks between Tshombe and a deeply discouraged Mahmoud Khiari, the UN mission’s chief of civilian operations, which led to a severe compromise for the UN. They started on Tuesday 19 September, after Tshombe and his advisers—who had returned to Kipushi—flew back to Ndola, escorted by RRAF Vampires; they were greeted at the airport by Lord Alport and Sir Evelyn Hone, the Governor of North84

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ern Rhodesia. Khiari and his team, however, had a far less enthusiastic welcome when they arrived at Ndola: when they went to the Savoy hotel for a meal, some mercenaries there—with Katanga emblems on their jackets—got the police to remove them.   By night-time next day, the peace talks reached a seven-point agreement and copies were signed by Tshombe and Khiari on a table draped with the red, white and green Katanga flag. According to Colvin, Khiary grimaced as he signed for the United Nations. Tshombe, however, looked over at the British reporter with his exuberant smile and clasped his hand, exclaiming: ‘This is the end of the war.’26   Alport and other British officials celebrated the agreement as a great step forward.27 Macmillan wrote to Welensky to thank him for the part he had played in the ceasefire, while Welensky himself described it as ‘the bare minimum that Tshombe could offer and keep his self-respect.’28   But although it was a ceasefire of sorts—the end of the eight-day battle of Katanga at a minute past midnight—there was no question of the disbandment of Katangan forces and Tshombe was given an assurance that the UN would not obstruct the Katangan gendarmerie. In effect, this was the very ceasefire offered a few days earlier by Tshombe to Hammarskjöld, which the Secretary-General had rejected. From Accra, Nkrumah condemned it as a dangerous development. There should be no ceasefire in Katanga, he argued, until it had been ‘absorbed completely into the Congo as a unitary and sovereign state.’29   The agreement resolved none of the more fundamental, political issues, affecting the role of the Western powers, Western businesses and mercenaries, that Hammarskjöld had wanted. It is true that Tshombe declared a willingness to enter into talks with Adoula—but he had done so before, with no obvious result. With good reason, Tshombe regarded the ceasefire as a victory, which was celebrated as a national holiday in Katanga on 21 September. Now, he had even less reason to come to terms with the Central Government. The only real achievement of the UN was the agreement that the Irish troops in Jadotville would be freed in exchange for Katangese prisoners. *

It is 2009 and I have come to Sweden to speak to Knut Hammarskjöld, Dag Hammarskjöld’s nephew. Knut was personally involved in the sad events surrounding Dag’s death: he went to Ndola on Tuesday 19 September to represent his family in their grief. He also acted on behalf of the Swedish Foreign Office, relaying facts back and forth between Stockholm and Ndola to help with the identification of the victims. 85

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  Knut has been a Swedish diplomat and the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA); at the time of his uncle’s death, he was deputy director general of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Now retired, this dignified and gentle man was 39 when he flew to Ndola on Tuesday 19 Sep­ tember 1961. From the age of 15, when his father, Åke Hammarskjöld—the second of the four Hammarskjöld brothers—died in his mid-forties in 1937, his uncle Dag had been an important paternal figure. Dag took Knut to art exhibitions, concerts and the theatre, as well as skiing, hiking and cycling trips, sharing with him his love of the outdoors and fresh air. As he grew older, Knut visited Dag in New York, where he joined his uncle and other UN officials for meals in restaurants—in simple places, which Dag always preferred.   Arriving at Ndola in September 1961 with Pier Spinelli, the Italian Director-General of the UN European Office at Geneva, Knut was in a state of acute sorrow and shock. It is painful, even now, for Knut to speak about the episode and his voice shakes.   He and Spinelli found an atmosphere of ‘organized disinterest’ by Rhodesians and by the British, which astonished them. Alport and Lansdowne had left for Salisbury shortly before, but the High Commissioner returned to Ndola the following day, to supervise the lying-in-state of Hammarskjöld’s body at the small and austere St Andrew’s United Church, from noon to 14.00. Swedish UN soldiers and Rhodesian troops stood guard. ‘The coffin was carried into the church by three RRAF officers, a White police officer, a Native soldier and a Native constable,’ reported a Cape Town newspaper, with an apartheid-style eye for skin colour.30   Knut laid a wreath of flowers on the coffin, which was draped with the blue and yellow flag of Sweden. He was followed by Spinelli, Alport, Sir Evelyn Hone, and Tshombe, who laid a wreath of white lilies. ‘Looking very tired,’ reported the Rhodesian press, Tshombe ‘stood still for a moment, bowed slightly, then turned away.’31   Knut tells me that the pathologists did not begin their work on the dead until two days after his arrival in Ndola. Dag’s body was kept in the hospital morgue, while the others were kept in fridges obtained from a fruit and vegetable company called Sunspan Bananas Ltd. The bodies were brought to a large marquee in the garden of the Ndola hospital for the pathologists’ examination and the process of identification was conducted in the marquee by three specialists using information obtained by telephone and telegraph, relating to the victims’ dental and other medical records. The work finally ended with two victims who could only be identified through a process of elimination, because 86

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one was a man and the other was a woman—and there was only one woman on board the Albertina, the Canadian Alice Lalande from Montréal.   During my preparations for the meeting with Knut, I studied a letter he sent from Stockholm to a friend on 12 October 1961, headed ‘Top Secret,’ just weeks after his uncle’s death. ‘Details that I have noticed on those police photographs I got from Ndola,’ wrote Knut, ‘have made me change my mind on an important point in connection with the accident.’ Formerly, he went on, ‘both Pier Spinelli and I believed that all loose papers, briefcases, etc., had been taken by the flames after the accident.’ But various circumstances had led him to question this: My suspicion is confirmed by the fact that Dag’s briefcase did not have any traces of being burnt by the fire at all. So simply it must be that either the Northern Rhodesian police or others have taken care of a lot of papers and baggage at the scene of the accident.

It is odd that the Secretary-General’s briefcase was not burnt—or even slightly charred. According to Alport’s memoir, the briefcase was ‘found intact at a short distance from the crashed plane.’32   Knut makes another point in his letter: ‘You cannot do anything but react towards how slowly the local authorities responded when we asked for Dag’s briefcase.’33 I already know about this slow reaction from reading the memoir of Lord Alport, the British High Commissioner, who went to painstaking trouble to get hold of the briefcase after the crash and to keep it from Mahmoud Khiari and from Colonel Egge. Alport said he was anxious ‘that any personal documents should be available to Hammarskjöld junior, without delay.’ But because of Alport’s own actions, it took some time for ‘Hammarskjöld junior’—by which Alport meant Knut—to obtain the briefcase, which Alport had handed over to the Northern Rhodesian Police Commissioner. It would have been far more appropriate to give the briefcase to Khiari or Egge, as senior UN officials. It was finally given to Pier Spinelli, the highest ranking UN official present in Ndola.   Alport had taken an instant dislike to Egge, whom he described in his memoir as ‘a rather self-assured, plausible young man in a T-shirt and dirty trousers.’ Egge had explained that he had lost all his clothes and uniforms in the Katangese air raids on Elisabethville—which was a perfectly reasonable explanation—but Alport was unimpressed. In any case, Egge was hardly young; he was middle-aged and not much younger than the High Commissioner (though slim and fit, with a more youthful appearance than the greyhaired High Commissioner). Alport was especially annoyed when Egge drove 87

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after him, in a frantic car chase round Ndola, in an effort to get hold of the briefcase.   ‘It is difficult,’ argued Alport, ‘to explain the desperate anxiety to get possession of Hammarskjöld’s papers. Perhaps it was assumed that they contained material likely to justify or prejudice one or another of the UN factions’ policies and actions.’ But whatever it was, thought the British High Commissioner, ‘it seemed to me fully to justify our previous suspicions regarding relationships within the United Nations in the Congo.’34   It was wholly inappropriate for Alport to keep the personal effects of the Secretary-General from senior representatives of the UN. But was this simply because he was overbearing and officious? I soon discover from Knut that he had little respect for Alport. I sit quietly with him and his wife at a table with a view of the dark blue sea; on the windowsill nearby are photographs of Dag with his beautiful, creased smile. It’s growing dark outside, even though it’s only the middle of the afternoon, but bright candles burn steadily in front of us. Here in the Swedish autumn it seems a very long way, both in time and in distance, from Ndola airport in September 1961.   Knut remembers vividly the day when the victims of the crash left central Africa to be returned to their countries of citizenship. He was waiting at Salisbury airport as the 16 coffins arrived from Ndola on a VC10, to be transferred to a Pan American DC8. Their heavy weight and the steep steps down from the VC10 and then up to the Pan Am DC8 made the transfer difficult and slow, which Knut found unbearable. Standing next to Welensky, he suggested the use of a forklift truck, which was immediately brought to complete the task. All the speeches were given by whites; all the dignitaries were white; even the boys’ choir was white. But hundreds of Africans had come to pay their last respects. As I have seen in photographs, the balcony at the top of the airport— the only place where Africans were allowed—was packed with mourners. The Swedish national anthem was played as the Pan Am plane took off.35   The plane stopped first at Léopoldville airport at 19.45, in the dark. It taxied up to the control tower very slowly and the captain cut the engines. Bengt Rösiö, the Swedish Consul, was at the airport and he noticed that at that moment: something very strange happened. Everything was silent. Thousands of people stood there, mechanics, press photographers, airport officials, diplomats, journalists, the pub-

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‘THEY KILLED HIM! THEY GOT HIM!’ lic, but nobody moved, nobody said a word. Everything was quiet at Ndjili [Léopoldville airport], not a sound and not a movement—and that is something extremely rare in Africa.36

A huge guard of honour drew up around the plane, made up of UN troops mixed with soldiers of the Congolese Army. Kasavubu, Mobutu and foreign diplomats took flowers to the plane, in the glare of the flickering searchlights— filling the plane with the scented blossoms of central Africa. A Congolese band solemnly marched past, playing Chopin’s ‘Funeral March’ on instruments draped in mourning black and tuned for minor keys. ‘The Last Post’ and ‘Reveille’ were sounded and the plane slowly lifted off into the sky.   Over the next four days, the plane delivered the bodies’ remains. It went to Geneva first; then to Malmö, the operational base for the Swedish air crew of the downed plane. Over Swedish territory from Malmö to Stockholm, the DC8 was escorted on its left and on its right by Swedish air force fighter planes. Reaching Stockholm, it found a city in total mourning, with portraits of Dag in shop windows, draped in black. The plane went on to Dublin, where the remains of Frank Eivers were received with full military honours; and then to Montréal, the home of Alice Lalande. The journey finished in New York, where the last of the victims was delivered home.   A state funeral was held for Hammarskjöld in Uppsala, where Dag had spent his childhood. Tens of thousands lined the route as the Secretary-General’s coffin was brought under police escort to Uppsala Cathedral. King Gustaf Adolf and Queen Louise led mourners from all over the world in the funeral service, while others thronged on a low hill nearby. Finally, the coffin was taken to the grave of the Hammarskjöld family in the cemetery. There, in the shadow of the castle, a choir of sombre Uppsala students sang a Swedish hymn in Latin. The coffin was blessed as it was slowly lowered into the grave.   The family wreath bore a single inscription: ‘Why?’37

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On 19 September 1961, the Rhodesian Federal Department of Civil Aviation set up an internal investigation into the technical cause of the crash, in accordance with the procedures required by the international civil aviation authorities. It was headed by Colonel Maurice Barber, the ruddy-faced Director of Civil Aviation, and comprised two other Rhodesian flying experts and also a British member—Wing Commander E. Evans of the RAF, who was Lord Alport’s Air Adviser at the British High Commission in Salisbury. Representatives from the UN and from organizations relating to aviation were invited to participate in the inquiry as observers. The Swedish government also sent representatives, including Otto Danielsson, a senior member of the Swedish Criminal Investigation Department; Barber was annoyed that a criminal specialist had been sent, regarding this as inappropriate to the concerns of the inquiry. Bo Virving, who was the chief engineer of Transair in the Congo in 1961–62, also went as an observer.1   About a week after the establishment of this investigation, Roy Welensky wrote to Harold Macmillan, as one prime minister to another, to report that Barber had studied the evidence available so far and drawn the opinion that ‘the cause of the accident was an error of judgment on the part of the pilot.’ He added that there were no signs of an internal explosion.2 If Macmillan thought it was rather early to draw such a conclusion, since the inquiry had barely started and the crash had occurred just eight days before, he did not say so in his reply to Welensky, which was generally supportive.3 But he might have been surprised to read a personal letter written by Welensky to close relatives in the USA on 19 September, the day after the wreckage was discov

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ered, which gave two explanations for the crash. The first was pilot error—but the second was the possibility of a bomb. ‘The second possibility of course,’ he wrote, ‘is that someone may have put a little package on board at Leopoldville. You see the plane never touched down on Rhodesian territory or in the Katanga.’4   The inquiry was a daunting task, since 70–80 per cent of the Albertina was burnt and there was not much left to investigate—about one-fifth of the original total of its material.5 All the fused metal recovered from the crash was broken up by hammer into pieces about eight inches square. The Swedish observers asked for these pieces to be remelted, in order to see whether any projectile could be found. But Barber’s team refused. ‘We considered carefully whether the melting of all this wreckage was justified,’ they reported, ‘and decided that it was not.’   All the officers leading the investigation were white, even though the majority of people living in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland were black. This was consistent with the workings of the Rhodesian state, where Africans were excluded from the professions and from positions of any importance. There are explicit racial divisions in the photographs of the inquiry that are collected in the Welensky Papers in Oxford: white men in shorts and long socks, which was the customary outfit of white Rhodesian men, standing around with hands on hips, giving orders to teams of African workers dressed in rags, sifting the residue of the aircraft wreckage. In photographs of African policemen, whites are still in charge.6 This racial hierarchy even extended to the classification of the crash victims. All the bodies were listed according to their nationalities—but not Serge Barrau, who was from Haiti. His body is simply labelled: ‘Coloured.’   Throughout the process of the inquiry, Rhodesian and British officials were irritated by the attitude of the Swedish observers, especially Otto Danielsson and Bo Virving. In a report sent by Alport to London, Wing Commander Evans complained that these men ‘spent most of their time looking through the wreckage for bullet holes, strange bullets, shell pieces, parts of grenades, rocket parts, evidence of internal explosion and fire in the air.’ Evans added that Dr Eyvind Bratt, the Swedish envoy to South Africa, had been offensive to members of the board of inquiry with his accusations of incorrect or inefficient investigation procedures. Bratt had been especially concerned to discover the reasons why Serge Barrau, the bodyguard, had been found at a place outside the aircraft, indicating that he could have been in the cockpit at the time of the crash, and asked: 92

THE WHITE SETTLERS INVESTIGATE Why was Barrau in the cockpit during the landing procedure? Why was he not in his chair with his safety belt fastened where he should have been? Was it possible that Barrau made some observation through the cabin window, i.e. that he had seen a foreign aircraft in the vicinity—attacking or not attacking—and that the reason for his presence in the cabin was to warn the crew?

Evans dismissed these questions as irrelevant and also warned against the risk of swaying the judgement of witnesses, ‘particularly African witnesses.’7   The board sat until 2 November 1961. Its report included a medical précis of the post mortems, a summary of statements from more than 130 witnesses, and an account of the technical examinations. On the last day of the investigation, all the pieces of the wreckage were placed in a hangar at Ndola airport, which was locked and sealed.   The report concluded that the approach of the Albertina to Ndola airport was normal and correct, except that it was about 1,700 feet lower then it should have been. It also stated that the evidence available did not allow for a ‘specific or definite cause’ for the crash. While it maintained that there was likely to have been a straightforward explanation, such as the misreading by the pilots of the aircraft’s altimeters, it was unable to rule out the ‘wilful act of some person or persons unknown which might have forced the aircraft to descend or collide with the trees,’ because so much of the aircraft had been destroyed and also because there was so little information from the one survivor.   Significantly, this set of conclusions did not back the claim made by Welensky in his letter to Macmillan a week after the crash. *

Although the report of the Federal Civil Aviation Department is held in the Welensky Papers in Oxford, the statements taken from witnesses and experts are missing from the files. But there is good news for my research: for it emerges that Bo Virving kept all the material pertaining to the investigation. When he died, his son Björn Virving found the box and has carefully looked after all the documents. One day I got an email from Björn, who had been told about my research by Sture Linnér. Would I like to see his father’s papers?   I visited Björn and his wife in Stockholm. They were generous with their time and happy to let me stay all day, reading and studying this important set of papers. The most exciting component is a thick pile of 126 witness statements: I had seen fragments of one or two of these statements in various different archives, but nowhere this complete set. It is an important find: fresh testimony, collected very shortly after the crash. The transcripts are typed but 93

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not dated: there is no information about the questions the witnesses were asked, with a couple of exceptions.   But one thing is clear: this is essential material for any study of the crash of the Albertina and of the inquiries that followed it.   One of the witness statements is by the Northern Rhodesian policeman Marius van Wyk, who saw a great flash in Ndola’s sky on the night of the crash of the Albertina. ‘Some time after midnight,’ he said in his statement, ‘about 20 minutes after, I heard an aircraft start up but not take off. I heard an aircraft approaching. I looked for it and saw a steady red light travelling in which I now judge to be a direction of 295 degrees True approximately.’ He watched the light for about 30 to 60 seconds: ‘The aircraft appeared to be in level flight and to be at a height which I would expect it to be in the vicinity of an airfield. The engines sounded smooth while I heard them and it was definitely a multiengined aircraft.’ Eventually, he went on, the steady red light disappeared behind trees, but the noise of the engines continued and diminished gradually. This is what he would have expected, he added, from an aircraft flying away from him. Then, about three or four minutes later: I saw an unusual deep red glow of light spreading upwards into the sky. I could not see the source of the light but it appeared to be on a bearing of 306 degrees True from me. There were trees between the glow and me and the glow covered an arc of an estimated forty-five degrees. At first I thought it was a car, but I realised that it could not be. It was the first time I had seen a light like that. The glow lasted for a few seconds only.

Van Wyk recorded in his evidence that he immediately tried to initiate a search of the area but failed to convey his own sense of urgency to the airport manager.   Strange lights in the sky that night were also mentioned in the testimony of Timothy Jiranda Kankasa, who lived in Twapia, the African township which lay beneath the Albertina’s flight path. It is in Twapia that the Non-Directional Beacon (NDB) is located, giving the pilot a marker for an instrument-landing approach. Many of the men living in Twapia in 1961 were coal burners, who made charcoal out of the wood in the forest surrounding the township. Kankasa himself was the secretary of the Twapia Township’s management board—a role similar to that of town clerk. Three years later, after the British territory of Northern Rhodesia had become independent Zambia in 1964, he was to become a Minister of State in the new national government.   On the night in question, Kankasa saw two aircraft in the sky. ‘On Sunday night 17th September,’ he said, ‘I was out on a road in Twapia town when I 94

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heard a noise which sounded unusual. I am not an expert but it sounded like two airplanes. The bigger one was low. The smaller one not low.’ He looked up and saw a flash of light twice, which ‘seemed to come from the small aircraft and go to the big aircraft. The big aircraft went on towards the North West and the smaller one seemed to go towards the North East.’ The bigger one, he added, ‘seemed to be flying level. The noise was very loud. He was sure the time was before 22.50, as he was walking home and, after his arrival, listened to the 11 o’clock news from Radio South Africa. On the big aircraft, he said: I saw a bright white light shining forwards just like a car headlight. I saw no other lights on the aircraft. On the other aircraft I couldn’t remember what lights I saw. I didn’t hear anything that sounded like a jet. I know the sound of jets.

Next morning, between 11.00 and 12.00, he reported what he had seen to the District Officer, Mr Garfitt.   William John Chappell, in his flat in central Ndola, also witnessed strange events in the sky that night. At about half past midnight, he heard the noise of ‘a heavy aircraft passing over in a North Westerly direction. I saw 3 lights, one white, one red and one green and they were steady.’ He added that the engine noise sounded normal and the aircraft appeared to be in normal flight; he believed that it was preparing to land. Then, he went on: The aircraft went out of sight and about fifteen or twenty minutes afterwards I heard a double bang and then a single bang. The reports were sharper than blasting—more like cannon shots. They were louder than a backfire. At about the same time as the aircraft passed by I heard the sound of what I thought was a jet aircraft in the air.

He explained that from his flat it was possible to hear aircraft engine noise from the airport.   A marginal comment was made on Chappell’s transcribed testimony by Wing Commander Evans, the British member of the board of inquiry. ‘During the recording of the statement of Mr W. J. Chappell,’ noted Evans, ‘he was heard to say that he would not know the difference between the sound of a jet aircraft and a piston engined aircraft.’ At the conclusion of his evidence, however, he was asked if he had heard more than one aircraft in the air—and he answered that he had also heard the sound of what he thought was a jet aircraft. ‘These two remarks,’ commented Evans firmly, ‘were not consistent.’   A policeman named P. Pratt also gave evidence on the basis of his questioning of whites in Ndola. He reported that a Mrs Lee heard an aircraft approach Ndola at 23.45 and return a little later; she then heard a thump which she 95

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thought was a motor vehicle crashing into a tree. Another woman, Mrs Alexander, told him that at 23.15 she heard a noise ‘which sounded like a MetroGoldwyn Meyer gong.’ Africans in the vicinity of the crash, added Pratt, were ‘reluctant to say anything.’   Red Williams, Ndola’s airport manager, gave a witness statement too. He said that he returned from three months’ leave in England on the night of Saturday 16 September 1961, and was called in to a meeting the next day with the Senior Provincial Commissioner to make arrangements for the forthcoming meeting between Hammarskjöld and Tshombe. The airport was not operating normally, ‘in that security guards were in control of a series of executive offices, the RRAF were in full occupation of my briefing section, and I was fully occupied in assisting Lord Alport.’ He was defensive about his lack of concern over the UN plane’s failure to land and he justified his lack of interest in van Wyk’s report of a flash in the sky on the grounds that there were so many bush fires and freak lightning effects at that time of year. He had plenty of aviation experience: ‘I flew transports, fighters and bombers in the RAF from 1937 until just after the war.’   The witness statements collected by the board of inquiry included several by the nurses who looked after Harold Julien, the survivor, whose wife Maria had flown from Florida to be at his bedside. ‘In the last hour, an hour before he died,’ stated Nurse Phyllis B. Phillips: he said to his wife, ‘Honey take me home. We must get out of here quickly. You will take me home?’ His wife reassured him. Then he seemed to be very anxious and was searching. ‘Where’s the book?’ he said; after a pause, he called again, ‘the book,’ and yet again, more agitated, ‘the book.’ His wife said she had it, and Mr Julian [sic] then relaxed.

It is unclear what Julien meant by ‘the book,’ but it may have been a reference to the cipher machine carried on the plane or to the table of cipher codes.   According to Nurse Angela McGrath, Julien stated in her presence while she was on duty: ‘I was the only one that got out, all the others were trapped. We were on the runway when Mr Hammarskjöld said go back, then there was an explosion.’ Nurse Barbara Sims said that she believed that Julien fully understood the meaning of discussions in his hospital room. On one occasion, when she was giving a report to her relief, he pleaded several times, ‘Don’t go, don’t go!’ Another nurse, Joan M. Jones, stated that Julien said ‘Sparks, sparks in the sky’ and also referred to someone called ‘Bob,’ repeating the name some time later. 96

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  Virving’s collection of testimonies includes a report by Squadron Leader J. Mussell, who was the officer commanding the RRAF detachment in Ndola and who organized the search mission for the Albertina on the morning of 18 September 1961. This report reveals that although airport manager Williams had not been concerned by the failure of the Albertina to land, the Duty Operations Officer, Flight Lieutenant J. Fidlin, was so worried about it that he rushed over to the control tower to check the estimated time of arrival. He then remained in the tower. Mussell himself arrived at 07.00 in the morning; having considered all the available information, he assumed that the aircraft had set course for a new destination.8   All this material kept by Bo Virving reveals that on the night of 17–18 September 1961, numbers of people in and around Ndola witnessed strange events in the sky. Bo’s son Björn felt a responsibility to put this information into the public domain. An engineer by profession, he scrupulously presented all of his father’s material in a book called Termitstacken, which he published himself. This translates from Swedish into English as ‘The Ant-hill’—referring to the ant-hill into which the left wing of the aircraft smashed, causing the aircraft to twist and to plough crosswise through the forest, slicing the fuselage into small pieces. If this had not happened, there may have been more survivors. Termitstacken is a compelling and important book. *

On 22 September 1961, a few days after the setting-up of the investigation by the Federal Department of Civil Aviation, the Rhodesian Ministry of Transport announced that there was going to be a full-scale public inquiry, to be chaired by Sir John Clayden, the Chief Justice of the Federation.9 Clayden’s Commission was directed to inquire into The cause or causes of and circumstances surrounding the accident involved aircraft SE-BDY near Ndola during the night of the 17th September, 1961, including any matter or circumstances relating to the preparation for and flight of the aircraft, the accident, the deaths of the occupants, and the conduct of any person or authority concerned before, during and after the accident.

  The public inquiry was advertised in the local press and on the radio. It heard evidence from witnesses over four days in mid-January 1962 at Ndola’s high court, and for a week at the end of the month. Some of the witnesses had already given testimony to the technical investigation and others were speaking for the first time. All evidence was given under oath and questions were asked by coun 97

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sel representing the Swedish government, the British government, the Federal government, and the United Nations.10   No interpreters were provided for witnesses whose first language was not English.11 Bo Virving, who was present at the hearings, was disturbed at the way African witnesses were interrogated, being rushed into ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers on complex questions. They were not referred to as ‘Mr,’ like Europeans, he complained, but as ‘African’—as in ‘African Buleni.’12   Several witnesses came from Twapia African township. No Europeans lived in Twapia, which had been built on the outskirts of Ndola in the early 1950s, as a way of segregating blacks from whites and keeping them out of the town when they were not at work for white employers. In this way Twapia conformed to the racial policies of the white-controlled Federation: its origin is comparable to that of South African townships, such as Soweto. Other townships, too, known as ‘locations,’ were built for Africans outside Ndola; additional separate residential areas were built for Asians and for so-called ‘coloureds.’13   One of the witnesses put on the stand was Timothy Kankasa, the secretary of the management board of Twapia, who repeated his assertion that he saw a small aircraft flying above the Albertina and that it was ‘beaming lights on the bigger plane.’ His testimony was reported in the Northern News under the title ‘African Says Smaller Plane Flew Near Hammarskjöld’s,’ which reflected the Northern Rhodesian attention to race when discussing people who were black (it is unlikely that, had Kankasa been white, the article would have referred to any racial characteristic).14 Kankasa’s evidence was roundly rejected by the government attorney. ‘What you have told us about the two planes,’ he told Kankasa, ‘is completely unacceptable … you made a mistake.’15 But Kankasa is likely to have been a reliable witness: he had served in the armed forces during the Second World War as a signalman and had seen aircraft flying in formation at night.   Kankasa’s testimony was discounted in the inquiry report, on the grounds that it could have no reference at all to the time of the arrival and crash of SEBDY. This was a reasonable point: if he saw the activity of the two aircraft in the sky on his way home and then listened to the 11 o’clock news from Radio South Africa, there could be no link between the crash of the plane and what he saw. However, it is possible that Kankasa heard a later news bulletin; he himself wondered if he had listened to Radio Brazzaville, which would have explained the time—since Congo Brazzaville was one hour later than South Africa.16   Some charcoal burners from Twapia who were working on the night of 17–18 September in the forest where the Albertina crashed, gave testimony 98

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that was similar to that of Kankasa. At about midnight, said Davidson Simango, he saw two aeroplanes flying closer together than was usual. The noise faded but after a few minutes it grew louder again, when he saw one aeroplane coming back—after which there was a flash, and the plane went down. Then there was a very loud explosion, followed by smaller ones.   Dickson Buleni, another witness, was afraid to give evidence at first but was put under pressure to do so by a Swedish trade union official working near Ndola.17 Buleni explained that he was sitting outside his home in the charcoal burners’ compound that night with his wife, when they were surprised to see a large plane with a small plane flying above it. He saw a ‘fire’ coming from the small plane to the roof of the big plane, when he heard the sound of an explosion. Then the big plane fell down and crashed. After circling once, he said, the small plane flew off in the direction of Kitwe to the west. There were a number of groups in the compound, added Buleni, and nearly everyone was shouting that a plane had come down. People were frightened and many ran into the bush; someone shouted that maybe the Katanga war was coming to their compound.   All these witnesses were challenged by the Federal examiner. Afterwards, Bo Virving followed Buleni and Simango from the court and interviewed them privately about what they had seen. They repeated their claim that they had seen two aircraft and not just one but were reluctant to talk too much to Virving, as they were being observed by a white police officer. According to Virving, their answers were reliable and tallied exactly with his own technical calculations.18   As well as collecting new information, the Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry relied on the findings of the initial air accident investigation led by Colonel Barber, and also a summary of the communications exchanged between Salisbury Flight Information Centre, Ndola Control Tower, and SE-BDY. This was produced from transcriptions of tape-recorded radio telephone communications between SE-BDY and Salisbury, flight progress strips, copies of telegraphic and teleprinter messages and witness statements. But since there was apparently no tape-recorder at Ndola airport, the only record of communications between Ndola and the Albertina was an account by Martin, the traffic controller, which he wrote up thirty-two hours after the accident. ‘The flight strip confirms his evidence in part,’ commented the Rhodesian Commission, ‘and is in no way inconsistent with it.’ But without a tape recording, no verifiable record exists of communications between Ndola and SE-BDY. * 99

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At the end of the inquiry, counsel summed up the issues and the evidence and a report was submitted on 9 February 1962 to the Earl of Dalhousie, ‘Knight Grand Cross of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, upon whom has been conferred the Decoration of the Military Cross, Governor-General and Commander-in-Chief in and over the Rhodesian Federation.’   The report did not give the evidence of witnesses in full, but only a short summary and evaluation of some selected statements. All testimony that referred to a second plane or a flash in the sky was dismissed for one reason or another. Buleni’s evidence, for example, was discounted on the grounds that he was ‘not a reliable witness.’ The report added, ‘There was a beer drink in progress’—but Buleni later said he was teetotal.19 Davidson Simango’s description of the sequence of the flash and crash was said to be ‘very vague.’   Mr Farie Mazibisa, President of the United African Charcoal Burners Association, was described by the report as ‘not impressive.’ In his first statement, Mazibisa said he had seen ‘lights in the sky which he thought were two aircraft, about 100 yards apart, one behind the other coming from the north,’ followed a few minutes later by ‘a horrible noise,’ when he saw a very bright light on the ground. When giving evidence in court, he said that at midnight he heard the noise of two aircraft and looked up and saw the lights of two aircraft; after a few minutes he heard a ‘very big bang and saw a very big light. Then there were a number of smaller explosions.’ But to later questions, objected the report, he said merely that he had seen the ‘shapes’ of two aircraft; then he said that it was the spacing of the lights which had made him think there were two aircraft.   The report also discounted the evidence of whites who claimed to have seen two aircraft in the sky and to have heard an explosion: Of Mr Chappell’s evidence: This witness was completely unreliable. He contradicted himself again and again, and gave evidence in a most unconvincing manner. We do not propose to examine his evidence. Of Mrs Y. Joubert: If [the explosion she said she heard] had been so loud as to be heard at that distance it is strange that no one else heard it…. It seems probable that there has been imaginative reconstruction.

‘There were many people on duty in Ndola on that night who heard SE-BDY,’ states the report, adding firmly, ‘But no one heard another aircraft at that time.’   The journalist James McKenzie Laurie had been very clear that he heard a second aircraft over Ndola airport at 23.40, sounding like a DC3; it continued to drone very faintly, he said, around the vicinity of the airport for 20 min100

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utes. But this was flatly rejected by the report: ‘If there was another aircraft overhead at 23.40 it is strange that no one else heard it.’   The Commission reported on the evidence of police officer van Wyk in some detail. However, it omitted one part of his witness statement to the technical investigation: that ‘Some time after midnight, about twenty minutes after, I heard an aircraft start up but not take off.’   The report stated that Major Joseph Delin of the Katanga Air Force gave sworn evidence that he did not fly the Fouga Magister on the night of the crash. Delin, it commented approvingly, came voluntarily to give this evidence; we had no way to compel him to do so. In addition, when information was given to the Commission which might have indicated that his evidence was not true, he returned to give further evidence. We found no reason to doubt his evidence.

However, Delin was not in fact a pilot and so did not fly the Fouga Magister; he was simply the supervisor of the Kolwezi base in Katanga. The pilot of the Fouga was a Belgian mercenary called José Magain, who had flown in the Belgian Air Force; on some flights, Delin went along for the ride.20   Delin was quoted in the commission report as saying that the Fouga was based at Kolwezi and that its effective range was 135 nautical miles. This meant that it would have been impossible for the Fouga to reach Ndola and then return to base, since Kolwezi was 230 nautical miles away. At that time, added the report, ‘Kolwezi runway was not then equipped for night take-off or landing, and in fact obstacles had been placed on the runway on the night of the 17th/18th September.’ These obstacles, however, were oil drums, which were pushed on to the strip if any UN aircraft tried to land there and could be pushed off easily.21   One explanation for the crash that was put forward by civil aviation director Colonel Barber was that SE-BDY’s pilots had not used Ndola’s chart for landing, but the chart for Ndolo, which was Leopoldville’s former airport and at a lower altitude. Because of the similarity in names, he argued, Ndolo in the Congo could have been easily confused with Ndola in Northern Rhodesia.22 This theory was examined carefully but rejected in the inquiry report: ‘We do not consider that the pilots were misled by an Ndolo chart.’   The last words spoken by Harold Julien (whose name is misspelt in the report as Julian) were given very careful attention by the inquiry. This is hardly surprising, since he stated that the Albertina blew up in the sky before it crashed. The report recorded a conversation between Julien and Senior Inspector Paddy 101

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Allen of the Northern Rhodesia police, as the injured man was taken to hospital. Bent over Julien’s stretcher, Allen explained to him where he was and then asked some questions: Allen: The last we heard from you, you were over Ndola runway. What happened? Julien: It blew up. Allen: Was this over the runway? Julien: Yes. Allen: What happened then? Julien: There was great speed. Great speed. Allen: What happened then? Julien: Then there was the crash. Allen: What happened then? Julien: There were lots of little explosions all around. Allen: How did you get out? Julien: I pulled the emergency tab and I ran out. Allen: What about the others? Julien: They were just trapped.

  As he was the only person left to describe what had happened, Julien’s recollections were crucial. They were also reliable, according to Dr Mark Lowenthal, who had treated Julien and who stated at the hearings that Julien was ‘lucid and coherent’; Lowenthal volunteered to give this evidence and was described as a ‘very impressive’ witness.23 Inspector Allen, too, took the view that Julien ‘seemed to be understanding.’   Sergeant Julien gave the same account as the one he gave to Allen—almost word for word—to a police official, Senior Inspector Trevor Wright, who visited him in hospital. According to Wright in the public hearings, Julien’s statement was ‘rambling.’   The commission report dealt with Julien’s reference to an explosion before the crash by stating that such a theory would be evaluated later—and then proceeded thoroughly to discount the possibility. It also dismissed the statements of a nurse who had heard Julien referring to sparks in the sky: ‘No attention need to be paid to remarks … about sparks in the sky. They either relate to the fire after the crash or to a symptom of his then condition.’ The report also noted a nurse’s statement that according to Julien, the Secretary-General said ‘Go back’ or ‘Turn back.’   Doctors had expected Julien to survive but that he would need to spend three months in hospital.24 Just six days after the crash, however, he was dead. 102

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According to the report, he developed renal failure and died from uremia. No one was left alive to tell the story of the last few minutes of the flight of the Albertina. *

Like Welensky’s letter to Macmillan of 26 September 1961, the report of the Rhodesian public inquiry blamed pilot error for the crash. ‘The conclusion to which we are forced,’ it stated, ‘is that the aircraft was allowed by the pilots to descend too low so that it struck the trees and was brought to the ground.’ This conclusion was ‘more precise,’ claimed the report, than that of the technical investigation. It was certainly much stronger: for the initial board of inquiry had found itself unable to apportion blame or to identify any clear cause, because of the great extent of the burning of the wreckage and the lack of survivor evidence.   From the start, the proceedings of the Rhodesian Commission had been based on the premise that the crash was an accident. ‘At the outset,’ stated the report firmly, ‘we would say that no reason was suggested, and we cannot think of one, why anyone who might have been able to attack this aircraft from the air should ever have wanted to attack it as it carried Mr Hammarskjöld on the mission he was then undertaking.’   The report did, however, acknowledge the delay in the implementation of the search and rescue procedure, with the result that the wreckage was not located for 15 hours after the crash and more than nine hours after first light on 18 September 1961. ‘It would appear clear,’ commented the report tersely, ‘that a landing of the aircraft at or about 22.20 should have been contemplated.’ But responsibility for the delay was put entirely on the shoulders of Red Williams, the manager of the airport.

103

1. Patrice Lumumba, Prime Minister of the Congo (second left), with Dag Hammarskjöld at UN Headquarters, July 1960. Lumumba sought help from the UN to remove Belgian troops from the newly-independent Congo and to end the secession of Katanga.

2. Dag Hammarskjöld and Kwame Nkrumah, President of Ghana (on Hammarskjöld’s left) at UN Headquarters, 1 September 1960. Hammarskjöld envisaged the UN as the ‘main platform’ and protector of the newly-independent states of the world.

3. The Secretary-General meets with Moïse Tshombe, self-styled President of Katanga, in Elisabethville, 15 August 1960. Hammarskjöld believed that any solution to the problems of the Congo depended on ending the secession of Katanga.

4. Prime Minister Lumumba at a press conference at UN Headquarters, conferring with Mongi Slim, UN Representative of Tunisia, on 25 July 1960.

5. Colonel Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, leader of the Armée Nationale Congolaise (left), and Moïse Tshombe of Katanga, 1 October 1960.

6. Moïse Tshombe inspecting his troops, including foreign mercenaries, 1 February 1961.

7. Sir Roy Welensky (right), the burly Prime Minister of the British territory of the Central African Federation, comprising Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi), in conversation with Hendrik Verwoerd, the Prime Minister of South Africa, at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference in London, 8 March 1961.

8.  Lord Alport (centre), the British High Commissioner to the Rhodesian Federation [1961].

9.  A Nigerian Police detachment serving with the United Nations Force in the Congo, photographed as their train pulled out of Léopoldville station. 1 June 1961.

10. UN troops in Katanga arresting white mercenaries, 1 January 1961.

11. Secretary-General Hammarskjöld after his arrival at Léopoldville airport on 13 September 1961, less than a week before his death. At the centre is Congolese Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula; on Adoula’s right is Joseph Mobutu. On Hammarskjöld’s left is General Sean McKeown, Commander of the United Nations Force; between Adoula and Mobutu is Sture Linnér, Officer-in-Charge of the UN mission.

12. Hammarskjöld chats with Prime Minister Adoula (right) and Vice-Premier Antoine Gizenga (wearing glasses) at an official reception to welcome him to Léopoldville. 15 September 1961.

13.  Members of the Irish contingent of the UN Force, 1961. The attack on an Irish UN company in Jadotville by Tshombe’s troops on 17 September 1961 increased Hammarskjöld’s determination to hold peace talks with Moïse Tshombe.

14. The DC-6B aircraft which took Hammarskjöld and his entourage on the fatal flight to Ndola from Léopoldville on 17 September 1961. The aircraft, which was known as the Albertina, was owned by the Swedish company Transair and flown by a Swedish crew.

15. The air traffic control tower at Ndola airport, which is eight miles from where the Albertina crashed. Communications between the tower and Albertina were not recorded; the crash inquiries relied on a set of notes by the air traffic controller. This photograph was taken in the 1960s; the control tower was replaced with modern facilities in the 1980s.

16. Ndola airport. This photograph was taken after independence in 1964; before independence, Africans were not permitted inside the airport perimeter.

8 THE UN INQUIRY

On 26 October 1961, the UN General Assembly decided unanimously to hold its own official investigation into the crash of the Albertina. A UN Commission of Inquiry was established and a meeting was held in New York two months later, electing Rishikesh Shaha from Nepal as chair, and Raul Quijano from Argentina as rapporteur. Other members of the panel were Justice Samuel Bankolé Jones from Sierra Leone, Justice Emil Sandström from Sweden, and Nikola Srzentíc from Yugoslavia. This mixture of international backgrounds contrasted sharply with the whites-only Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry. So did its scope. For whereas the Rhodesian Commission was conducted as a ‘run-of-the-mill’ investigation, as if there were no special circumstances,1 the terms of reference given to the UN Commission were centred firmly on the death of the UN Secretary-General and his fellow victims—to investigate the ‘conditions and circumstances resulting in the tragic death of Mr Dag Hammarskjöld and of members of the party accompanying him.’2   The Commission began its hearings in Léopoldville in January 1962, where it heard evidence from witnesses. In February it went to Salisbury for more hearings and then to Ndola, where it heard further witnesses, including the doctors who had taken care of Sergeant Julien. It met again in Salisbury, followed by a session in Geneva between February and March, where it heard statements from people who were based outside Africa.   The UN hearings in Rhodesia followed hard upon those held by the Federal Inquiry and the two Commissions sought to give the impression that they were cooperating with each other. In any case, both were dependent for basic data on the findings of Maurice Barber’s initial investigation.

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  Unlike the Federal inquiry, the UN Commission could not compel the appearance of witnesses or require them to speak on oath. This worried Welensky. ‘The Commission cannot take evidence on oath,’ he complained to the British Foreign Secretary. ‘They will merely take unsworn statements.’ There was therefore, he argued: no legal sanction against lies. We know that already some hair raising evidence has been admitted at the Léopoldville hearings. The Commission is advertising here for witnesses to come forward and we can expect deliberately false statements to be made by UNIP [an African nationalist political party in Northern Rhodesia] supporters at Ndola.

The British government, he insisted, must send its own representative. ‘To leave it to the Federal Government alone to challenge such evidence,’ he went on, ‘is in my view unreasonable. Moreover the presence of an eminent legal representative for the British Government would also tend to have a restraining influence on the Commissions themselves.’3 Lord Alport weighed in with his own arguments for a UK representative, who was duly sent.   Altogether, the UN commission heard ninety witnesses, of whom twentyfive had not previously given evidence. Additional people were found through an appeal in the Rhodesian press, over the radio, and in posters which were displayed and distributed in and near Ndola; wherever possible the appeal was presented in the local African languages as well as in English. Some Africans who now came forward as witnesses had not wanted to give a statement before, they said, because they distrusted the white-ruled government of the Federation.   Some of the new witnesses shed fresh light on the events of the night of 17–18 September 1961. A. J. Lemonson Mpinganjira, formerly Provincial President of the Malawi African Congress, explained that he saw two small planes in addition to a big one. He had been erecting a charcoal kiln with a companion, Steven Chisanga, when they saw two small aircraft: one flying very high, the other low. Just as the big plane was turning back to land at Ndola, the lower of the small aircraft overtook it, flying just above—and then there was a red flash on the big plane, which dipped down, to the sound of a loud explosion and then a series of smaller ones. The little plane circled and flew off. Mpinganjira said that he thought that Tshombe had come to invade Northern Rhodesia.   Frightened, he and Chisanga took cover behind a large ant-hill. About half an hour later, they saw two Land-Rovers, each one with two ‘Europeans’ inside, dash to the scene at breakneck speed over a bush road that was in good shape 106

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at that time of year. After ten to fifteen minutes, there was a sudden, huge burst of flames and the Land-Rovers returned, at the same speed. ‘I have no doubt,’ stated Mpinganjira, ‘that they had something to do with increasing the flames.’   About a mile away from Ndola airport was the African Ex-Servicemen’s Club. From here, one of the ex-servicemen, Davison Nkonjera, a storeman, saw an airplane arrive from the north, circle the airfield three times, then fly off towards the west. While the plane was circling, the lights at Ndola airport went off both in the tower and on the ground. He heard two jets, which he believed had taken off from Ndola airport in darkness and which proceeded to follow the bigger plane. He got on his motor scooter and started off for home, which was in the direction of the planes. Then he saw a fire or flash coming from the jet on the right, landing on the big plane. This was also seen by the watchman at the African Ex-Servicemen’s Club, M. K. Kazembe.   Although the spirit of the UN inquiry was more inclusive than that of the Rhodesian one, the proceedings were still clouded by an atmosphere in which Africans were treated in a condescending, even intimidating, manner by some of the Rhodesian officials. C. S. Margo QC, for example, who had already appeared as counsel on behalf of the Federal government during the Rhodesian inquiry and was performing the same role in the UN proceedings, crossexamined some witnesses aggressively. Mpinganjira complained that he had been ‘pinned down in a corner’ by him. Kazembe was defiant: Mr Margo: Why did you not give evidence before? Mr Kazembe: I was reluctant because I was afraid I would be killed the same way. Mr Margo: So you felt a crime had been committed by the Federal Government that had to be kept secret? Mr Kazembe: I attributed the crime to the government and was afraid I would be killed.

‘All the evidence about jets firing at a large plane,’ Margo told a Northern News reporter with disdain, ‘proves there is an organised attempt by a political group to discredit the Federation.’4   Witnesses were in no way to be compelled to answer questions, ruled the UN Commission. Moreover, it did not dismiss the evidence of witnesses who said they had seen or heard a second, or even a third, aircraft flying near the Albertina and had heard an explosion. Their testimony was taken seriously and was printed in some detail in the final report. This approach was also applied to evidence that had been heard by the Rhodesian Commission and made available to the UN.   The UN Commission supplemented its findings by employing a consultant named Hugo Blandori to carry out some background research in Ndola. This 107

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research was summarized by Blandori in a memorandum dated 21 February 1962—which was yet another great find in Virving’s archive.   On 6 February Blandori met with Dr Mark Lowenthal, who had treated Harold Julien. Lowenthal told him that he wished to clarify two points. The first, he said, was that while he was performing a transfusion on Julien’s right arm, his position enabled him to be very close to Julien’s mouth—so that he was able to hear him speak very distinctly, without any need for him to raise his voice. By the same token, he himself could talk directly into Julien’s ear. Dr Lowenthal emphasized that in view of the close proximity between Julien and himself, their conversation might well not have been overheard by anyone else in the room. Lowenthal’s second point was that their conversation occurred during a plasma transfusion and before an injection of pethidine, which meant that Julien had not at the time been sedated; he wanted to make this distinction, he said, because the Federal hearing appeared to have assumed that his conversation with Julien took place while he was under sedation. The doctor added that he had been at the Ndola airport bar on Sunday 17 September, where there was a great deal of security; he had departed from the bar at around midnight. He ‘felt a sense of personal loss at the death of the late SecretaryGeneral’ and it was for this reason that he had attempted to elicit information from Julien.   Hugo Blandori also interviewed James McKenzie Laurie, the reporter for the Northern News who had heard a plane flying low over the airport shortly after midnight. Laurie said he had mentioned this odd occurrence to a person with whom he was speaking over the telephone. He even placed the mouthpiece of the phone to the window of the phone booth, so that the other party might hear the noise of the plane.   A fellow reporter, James Baxter, added Laurie, came to the airport to see what was happening and while the two men were sitting in his car and chatting, they now heard the drone of a plane circling the airport. ‘This was around 1.40,’ reported Blandori, ‘and lasted for approximately fifteen minutes.’ They could not actually see the plane and attached no importance to it, believing that it must be Hammarskjöld’s plane waiting for clearance to land. Asked if he could identify this plane, Laurie answered that it was a piston aircraft, possibly a DC3.   Blandori also contacted Lemonson Mpinganjira, who took him on 14 February 1962 to the place in the Ndola West Forest Reserve from where he and Steven Chisanga had witnessed the passage of the Land-Rovers. He gave substantially the same story he had given before the UN Commission, relating to two small aircraft following a larger one between 21.00 and 22.00, followed 108

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by an explosion of the big plane between fifteen and thirty minutes later. After some initial hesitation, Mpinganjira identified to Blandori the ant-hill from which he had seen the Land-Rovers; Chisanga had identified the same ant-hill to Blandori the previous day. Mpinganjira said that the Land-Rovers passed his view some forty-five minutes after he heard the crash: they were driven by Whites who were visible because the interior light was on. As he pointed out before the Commission, shortly after they passed in the direction of the crash there was an increase in the size of the fire. Some ten minutes later the Land ­Rovers sped back in the direction of the Mufulira Road. He described the Land Rovers as being grey in colour and definitely not Police Land-Rovers, because these are painted black.

Blandori noted that the passage of Land-Rovers along the track would have been easily visible from the anthill, since the clearing was extensive.   Mpinganjira added that he and Chisanga remained behind the ant-hill until midnight local time approximately, when they left to get some supper. At daybreak, suspecting that something strange was going on, Mpinganjira decided to go to Ndola to buy a newspaper. He walked into town, which took two hours. After purchasing the Northern News, he was given a lift by a lorry and arrived at the turn-off to Ndola West from the Mufulira road at about 10.00. Here, he said, the entrance was obstructed by police officers who prevented his going into the area, even though he explained that he was on his way to work. He retraced his steps to Ndola, from where he took a footpath which brought him to his kiln.   Blandori included in his memorandum some observations on the appearance of Bo Virving at the Commission hearings. Virving, he reported, had put forward the theory that the Albertina had been shot down or forced down by a plane above it. He based his theory primarily on the statements of African witnesses and told Blandori that he believed the Rhodesian authorities had suppressed their evidence.   It was Blandori’s view that the Africans giving testimony had no experience of aircraft, so didn’t know what they were talking about. But this was not the case. For one thing, the witnesses lived very near the airport and had daily experience of the comings and goings of planes; and for another, some of them, such as Timothy Kankasa, had worked with planes during the Second World War.   The testimony of whites seemed more reliable to Blandori. However, he was doubtful about the statement of an orderly steward, B. R. D. Eccles, with whom he spoke at Ndola hospital on 16 February 1962. Eccles had been in charge of 109

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the ambulance that arrived at the scene of the crash at around 15.55 on 18 September, when he found the Secretary-General lying on a stretcher. His arms were outstretched and hung beyond the shape of the stretcher, so Eccles moved his arms closer to the body, in order to get the stretcher into the ambulance. It occurred to him then that the arms were not as rigid as they should have been, had rigor mortis set in. He observed, too, that there was a playing card in the Secretary-General’s left hand and beside him a 0.38 calibre revolver. Eccles then described in detail the condition of his body and emphasized a small round wound under his chin, to the right of the windpipe. This, he said, meant that ‘suicide cannot be ruled out.’ He subscribed completely, he said, to the conclusions of the Federal Commission.   Blandori noted that Eccles had been described as ‘a bit odd.’5 However, it is noteworthy that this is the only source in the available documents that describes the wound under Hammarskjöld’s chin, to the right of his windpipe, which is visible in the photographs held in the Welensky Papers; it is not even mentioned in the post mortem. *

The final report of the UN Commission was released in April 1962. It delivered an open verdict.   A month before, a memo had been sent by a senior UN official to Ralph Bunche, one of Hammarskjöld’s closest advisers, to bring him up to date. ‘The Swedish Govt,’ it stated, ‘is very interested in a preview and also the UK Government. May I suggest that [illegible] give a copy on a purely personal and confidential basis, but not to the UK.’6 Evidently the UN high command suspected that the British government would not respond favourably to their forthcoming report—and they were proved right. The Foreign Office privately deplored the fact that the UN Commission had reached an open verdict, rather than holding the pilot responsible. ‘The purpose of an investigation in this country,’ commented a Foreign Office official irritably, ‘is to learn lessons for the future—therefore the most tenable thesis is usually put forward rather than an open verdict which can be of no help.’7 The Foreign Office News Department moved quickly to develop off-the-record lines for government spokesmen that would neutralize any potential criticism of the UK government’s behaviour in relation to the crash.8   The UN report pointed out that as no special guard was provided for the plane prior to its departure from Léopoldville airport, an unauthorized approach to the aircraft for purposes of sabotage ‘cannot be excluded.’ It added 110

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that although the doors were said to have been locked when the plane was parked at Léopoldville, access was possible to the hydraulic compartment, the heating system and the undercarriage of the aircraft.   Particular concern was expressed by the UN Commission at the delay in the search and rescue procedures. It noted that the plane had crashed not far from an airfield on which eighteen military aircraft capable of carrying out an air search were stationed and also that Ndola was an efficient airport, using modern technology and staffed by well-trained professionals. In the Commission’s view, the Federal Department of Civil Aviation had overall responsibility for this failure—the very department that was headed by Lieutenant Colonel Maurice Barber, who led the initial investigation into the crash of the Albertina.   The delay in the air search was attributed, as in the Federal report, to the ‘attitude of mind’ of the airport manager, Red Williams. But the UN Commission did not blame him for this. Rather, they blamed two key sets of circumstances: first, the lack of information surrounding the flight of the Albertina; and second, Lord Alport’s insistence that Hammarskjöld had decided ‘to go elsewhere.’ This second set of circumstances was condemned especially vigorously by the UN Commission, as a ‘groundless impression’ that was given ‘undue weight’ and led to the closing down of the airport.

Lord Alport sought, a week after the crash, to justify his claim that Hammarskjöld must have gone elsewhere. ‘I thought it possible,’ he said, ‘that something had occurred in Elisabethville or that Mr Hammarskjöld had received a message from Léopoldville or New York which made him decide to postpone his meeting with Mr Tshombe and to go elsewhere.’ He had even, he said, speculated on whether Mr Hammarskjöld had not suddenly decided to return to New York since some of the dialogue between the control tower and the pilot of the plane, sketchy and uninformative as it was, indicated the possibility that Mr Hammarskjöld still had in mind some alternative destination.

As a further explanation, Alport said that the Albertina appeared to be transmitting messages to some other destination, possibly a USAF Dakota parked on the ground at Ndola, which had a powerful radio on board and was being used for the transmission of messages to Léopoldville, Elisabethville and elsewhere.9 111

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  But it appears that Alport may have had some misgivings about the matter. For, three days later, when he was asked for a statement on oath by Barber’s air accident investigation, he made no reference whatsoever to a wish by Hammarskjöld to ‘go elsewhere.’ His testimony is just three sentences long, stating that he had ‘no direct knowledge of Mr Hammarskjoeld’s intentions.’10   In any case, Alport’s speculation on Hammarskjöld’s plans had no bearing on the need for a search and rescue operation. When it was clear that the plane had failed to land, despite the pilot’s clear statement of intention to do so, Ndola air traffic control should have initiated a series of prompt procedures, which were—and are—strictly required by international aviation rules. The staff at Ndola would have been well versed in these rules and many of them had considerable aviation experience from the Second World War. Martin would have known, too, that as air traffic controller his departure was forbidden by international airport rules, which required him to remain in post so long as an aircraft, with which he had been in touch, had not yet landed or reported that it was leaving the radio frequency.11   But the procedures were all but ignored by Ndola airport staff. Instead, the airport manager, Williams, deferred to Lord Alport for instructions. *

Balding and avuncular—some said pompous and overbearing—the 49-yearold Lord Alport is turning out to be a central character in events at Ndola airport on the night of the crash. Known as ‘Cub,’ Cuthbert James McCall Alport had strongly felt ideas on the future of Africa and he thought that British colonies were moving towards independence too hastily. African society, he believed, needed to be brought ‘up’ to the standards of Western societies through a multi-racial ‘partnership,’ before being given any responsibility for themselves. In his view, they did not yet qualify for democratic rights: he was critical of Africans who wanted a future ‘exclusively on their own terms,’ on the basis of ‘one man, one vote.’12   This ideological view was entirely consistent with that of the white-ruled Federation. On the one hand, Welensky frequently and loudly drew attention to Rhodesia’s racial practices, which he insisted were more progressive than those of South Africa. But these practices were riddled with contradictions, as was neatly manifest in the ceremony at which Welensky received the Freedom of Kitwe in March 1961, ‘in recognition of his distinguished and eminent services to all races in the Federation.’ For as photographs of the event show, the only race that was represented was white.13 112

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 Moïse Tshombe, believed Alport, was superior to Africans in general. Even so, he did not meet Alport’s condescending standards: ‘His conversation was subject to those long pauses which I find extremely trying, but which are a characteristic of Africa. His manner displayed a certain lassitude.’ The African, regretted Alport, ‘does not, unhappily, possess in many cases sufficient moral courage or breadth of mind to enable him to surmount the obstacles’ of relationships with people of a different colour.   Alport’s archive of personal papers at the University of Essex offers some unexpected insights into the confusion and anxieties besetting the Rhodesian Federation in the early 1960s. One of these is an envelope marked ‘Diary (Secret)’ by Lady Alport, containing scraps of paper on which she scribbled down an account of the stress she endured from 18 to 23 June 1961, when Cub was involved in emotional negotiations with Welensky and with London. ‘As I write this,’ she begins, ‘we are again in the same or at any rate similar state of tension, awaiting vital telephone calls, that we were last weekend.’ She gives a day-by-day account of Cub’s ‘seething anger’ at Duncan Sandys, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, his need to rush to Salisbury airport in full evening dress in order to stop Welensky from flying to London to remonstrate with Sandys, and his regret at having to ‘stay sober’ for yet one more hour on a particularly hectic evening. She herself can do nothing but watch, take telephone messages and ‘sit round the tea tray with Nannie.’14   There is another nugget in Alport’s 56 boxes of papers: a brief typed memorandum of just a page and a quarter, written by Alport after he had read Bengt Rösiö’s report of 1993 to the Swedish Foreign Ministry, entitled ‘The Ndola Disaster.’ The memorandum is dated 8 February 1993; it has no title and bears minor corrections in ballpoint pen. It seems to be an aide-mémoire, setting out the former High Commissioner’s perspective on what happened at Ndola 32 years earlier. It contains a statement that is most intriguing: It is in any case very unlikely that the rescue party could have got to the site of the accident in time to save Hammarskjöld who was very seriously injured and died shortly after the crash.15

This conflicts with the insistence of the Rhodesian inquiry report that Hammarskjöld died ‘instantaneously.’ Why? Was Alport privy to information that was not included in the report?   I know from a despatch sent by Alport to the Commonwealth Relations Office in London one week after the crash, that Squadron Leader P. J. Stevens, the RAF pathologist who was sent out to assist the post mortem on Hammar 113

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skjöld and the other crash victims, called on the High Commissioner that very afternoon in his office in Salisbury. Did they talk about whether or not Hammarskjöld had initially survived—and how long it was before he died? Their discussion was wide-ranging: Alport reported that Stevens had conducted ‘the principal examination of the bodies’ and had concluded that the crash had ‘all the hallmarks of a genuine accident’ and that the cause was likely to be pilot error. Stevens was returning to London the next day, said Alport, adding that the pathologist had asked not to be quoted at this early stage of the investigation—that if the information provided was used, it should not be attributed to him.16   The concluding sentence of Alport’s memorandum insists on pilot error as the cause of the crash: ‘I have not the slightest doubt that the Ndola accident was caused through pilot error, the pilot in this case having been heavily stressed by long flying hours without a proper rest and being unaccustomed to flying in African conditions.’17 It exonerates Alport from the accusation by the UN Inquiry Report and by Rösiö that it was he who had delayed the search for the Albertina. It was not for him to give orders to the Rhodesian air force or the traffic controller, argues Alport defensively, ‘since I had no standing as far as that was concerned.’ This is true: from a professional point of view, he did not have such a standing. But the lack of this standing did not apparently prevent him taking charge of all the Hammarskjöld-related activities at the airport that night.   Alport was evidently needled by Rösiö. ‘You appear to think,’ he complained in a letter, that I sat with the Airport Manager in his office during the hours in which we awaited the arrival of Mr Hammarskjöld. In actual fact the Manager vacated his office completely and handed it over to me in order to arrange for the conference between Mr Tshombe and the Secretary-General and conducted his operations from the main airport building which was more than 100 yards away.

As far as he could remember, he went on, I only saw the Manager on a couple of occasions… I was extremely careful during the whole of this period not to interfere in any way with the operation of the airport or with the activities and policies of the Northern Rhodesian and Federal government authorities. Of the details of the messages received by those authorities by the airport I never had the slightest idea.18

If this had been the case, it would have been the correct approach for him, as British High Commissioner: for he represented the British government and 114

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was concerned with international affairs. Running the airport, on the other hand, was the responsibility of the Federal government and its airport staff. Evidently Alport felt no shame in scapegoating Martin for the failures of Ndola airport that night.   But just three days after the night of 17–18 September 1961, Alport gave an altogether different account in a report to Duncan Sandys. Once the Albertina had been finally cleared to descend, he explained in this report, ‘Thereafter it was in communication with Ndola, in the course of which an aircraft was heard overhead.’ He himself was at that time ‘in the airport manager’s office at Ndola, which was in contact with [the] control tower.’19   A couple of weeks after writing his memorandum of 1993, Alport sent Rösiö a justification for his behaviour at the airport. He had assumed, he said, that Hammarskjöld had left Ndola airspace to go to Elisabethville, in order to obtain a first-hand account of the situation on the spot. After all, he went on: I cannot conceive that anyone in his position and with his responsibilities would have started a negotiation with Tshombe without first consulting his political and military representatives in what was the United Nations front line.

‘It is something,’ he insisted, ‘I would never have done myself with such military and political experience that I possessed at the time.’ He also criticized the lack of experience of the UN authorities in the Congo, and the over-working of their pilots, who were unfamiliar with air transport conditions in central Africa. ‘I am well aware,’ he told Rösiö, ‘that the Swedish authorities at the time, and subsequently, have been anxious to convince themselves that the death of Mr Hammarskjöld was not a result of a pilot error by a Swedish pilot, piloting a Swedish plane.’20 Alport was clearly on the defensive. Perhaps this is why he wrote in his memoir that the UN inquiry into the crash of the Albertina came to ‘more or less’ the same conclusion as the Rhodesian inquiry— that the cause was ‘pilot error.’21 This was not the case, which Alport must have known.   Alport clung for the rest of his life to his statement that the Secretary-General must have decided to go elsewhere when SE-BDY failed to land at Ndola. In a letter to Rösiö in 1993, he pointed out that his deputy, David Scott, had reached the same conclusion that night from as far away as Salisbury.22   But this idea never occurred to Lord Lansdowne and his private secretary, Michael Wilford, who—like Alport—were at Ndola airport on the night of Hammarskjöld’s death. In fact, they sought to dissociate themselves from Alport’s claims. When Lansdowne was asked to submit a report to Barber’s 115

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initial investigation, Wilford wrote a draft that was specifically designed ‘to scotch the idea that Mr H had decided to divert elsewhere and would have done so without telling Ndola had he not crashed.’ Basil Boothby, the head of the African Department at the Foreign Office, sympathized with this wish. ‘I can only say,’ he minuted, ‘that it seems inherently unlikely Mr Hammarskjöld would have run out without sending a message.’   In the event, Lansdowne chose not to express an opinion on Hammarskjöld’s alleged intention to divert elsewhere. But he made his scepticism of Alport’s position very clear: From what I knew of Mr Hammarskjöld’s plans after two long talks with him on 16–17 September, I am convinced that if he had for some reason at the last moment decided not, repeat not, to land at Ndola but to divert elsewhere, he would not have done so without sending a message to M Tshombe to explain his non-arrival.

‘I know how determined he was,’ added Lansdowne firmly, ‘not to prejudice the chances of a cease-fire.’23

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Officially, the wreckage of the Albertina was found at 15.15 local time on 18 September 1961. But in fact, it was sighted and reported in the morning, many hours earlier. According to an interview given 18 years later by Timothy Jiranda Kankasa, the board secretary of Twapia Township in September 1961, he told the Northern Rhodesian authorities about the burning plane at least six hours earlier. Kankasa explained in the interview that some charcoal burners had come across the burning plane in the morning and, in great concern, rushed over to tell him. He immediately went to the site of the crash and then returned to contact the police, between 09.00 and 09.30. The men had reported the crash to him, rather than to the police, because they mistrusted and feared the white authorities.   This startling discovery emerges from the transcript of an interview with Kankasa that was conducted in Lusaka in October 1979 by Ettore Botta, a Swede working for Gunnar Möllerstedt, who was producing a television documentary on Hammarskjöld.1 Kankasa told Botta of his horror that nothing was done: ‘There were no police at all, no police, no one from the army, nobody at all until the afternoon. It was not until between two and three, when at last we heard the sound of the ambulances and other vehicles going there.’ Even when he told the police the exact site of the crash, he said, ‘they still insisted on going around the Mufulira roads to reach the site. In our opinion, it would have been easier to go by the Kanrancha site, Lotsobe, which is nearer.’2   Kankasa remembered the policeman to whom he had made the report: he was a white man, in charge of the Western Division in the Copperbelt, and

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was someone with whom he, as Twapia secretary, had had some dealings in the past. ‘There was no reason for him not to believe me,’ pointed out Kankasa, ‘because whenever I had any problems I telephoned him and the police came to my aid. Always.’ Kankasa was baffled and appalled by the failure of the police to investigate. ‘I believed someone should have come,’ he insisted. ‘We could not understand why they did not respond.’3   The fact that charcoal burners went to the scene of the crash in the morning was recently confirmed by Margaret Ngulube, a resident of Twapia who was living there in 1961, when she was 23. Speaking to the Times of Zambia in 2005, she recalled the night: ‘It was a terrible experience. I saw a ball of fire in the sky and later on heard a loud bang. When I saw the fire in the sky, I realized something was wrong. Most of us thought the plane was shot or faulty somehow.’ Twapia residents, she added, ‘were not allowed to rush to the scene by the then township secretary Timothy Kankasa,’ and it was not until morning that several people went to the scene of the crash. ‘We found bodies mutilated,’ she told the Times. ‘Only Hammarskjoeld’s body and that of his other counterpart was intact, but the rest were cut into pieces.’4   On first reading Kankasa’s interview with Botta, I wondered why he did not include this information in his testimony to the Rhodesian inquiry in Ndola. Botta asked the same question, to which Kankasa replied that he had indeed included it: ‘I am repeating exactly what I said in my testimony. The evidence I gave was detailed and it is very surprising that most of what I said was not reflected in the report. We don’t know why.’ As it was, Kankasa’s testimony at Ndola’s high court was ridiculed by the South African lawyer C. S. Margo, to the disgust of the many spectators who had come to listen to him.5   Kankasa was surprised that a white farmer whose house was near the site was not called to testify, nor were his employees. ‘I didn’t see them come forward as witnesses,’ he told Botta, ‘and their names do not appear in the report.’ It was ‘incredible,’ objected Kankasa: that all the black witnesses were supposed to be unreliable. And the white witnesses, those who gave evidence, if they gave evidence in favour of the fact that there was nothing fishy, that it was pure accident, were reliable. But some of the people who gave evidence were nowhere near the site of the crash. I sincerely believe that I and the charcoal burners were the reliable witnesses.

Some of the whites who gave evidence, he added, did not state the facts accurately and he suspected that ‘big interests’ were involved: for example the Federal government, for example mining companies at the time both in Zambia and in Zaire [as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was called under

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THE CHA CHA CHA. ZAMBIA, 2009 Mobutu’s rule]… Perhaps some people were protecting their own interests. People like myself and the charcoal burners had nothing to protect but the truth.

‘Perhaps that’s the reason,’ he concluded, ‘why the evidence we gave was not accepted. Or that the little that was accepted, which was put into the report, was distorted. Not presented as it had been given.’   Mr Kankasa is a reliable witness: he had a good working relationship with the local police and was respected by everyone as a politician, a union leader and a family man. He was also held in high esteem for his role in the freedom struggle against British colonialism and white settler rule: in 2004, he was chosen as one of the heroes to be memorialized in a statue at Heroes Park in Lusaka. In 2006, Levy Mwanawasa, then President of Zambia, conferred a posthumous gold medal on him for his ‘immense contribution.’ After independence in 1964 he became a minister in the new government and was later Zambia’s Ambassador to Zaire.   Botta also interviewed Dickson Buleni in Ndola in 1979. Buleni had given testimony to the Rhodesian and UN inquiries and he now repeated what he had seen on the night of the crash: that a small plane had ‘dropped something that looked like fire’ on top of the big plane, which was then in flames in the sky, before it hit the ground; this account is consistent with the recollection of the official survivor, Harold Julien, that the plane blew up before it crashed.6 Buleni added that he was one of the people who went to the crash site the morning after, where he saw that the plane was still smouldering and that Hammarskjöld was not burnt.   Botta’s interviews with Kankasa and Buleni in 1979 shed a fresh and disturbing light on the case of three charcoal burners—D. Moyo, L. Daka and P. Banda—who were accused of going to the site in the early hours of the morning after the crash and stealing a cipher machine, which they allegedly mistook for a typewriter and tried to sell at the local market. The Rhodesian commission of inquiry blamed the men for not reporting their discovery of the wreckage; this was ‘regrettable,’ commented the report, ‘but is no doubt explained by the theft of a supposed typewriter from the wreckage.’ But clearly the three men were not the only people to find the wreckage in the early morning, which in any case was duly reported to the authorities.   Looking at the material collected by Botta, Möllerstedt wondered if Moyo, Daka and Banda had been accused of looting in order to discredit their witness statements to the Rhodesian inquiry.7 The Rhodesian inquiry report stated that the men were sleeping in the bush about 2.5 miles away. At midnight local time, Moyo 119

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD? heard a sound as of a gun and later saw something burning. He said that Daka woke him up. Daka said that at about 01.00 he was woken by a noise as of something exploding. He then saw a lot of fire. He said that he also saw something coming down and breaking the trees. He awakened Moyo.

Banda was also awakened by Daka who said: ‘Wake up, listen, and hear what has exploded.’ He then heard sounds as of a gun going off many times and saw a fire through the trees.   At dawn next day, they discovered the crash.   There is reason to suspect that these men may have been wrongly imprisoned: for evidence given by Assistant Superintendent Michael Cary of the Northern Rhodesian police, who was sent to the crash site as soon as it had officially been located on the afternoon of 18 September 1961, said that a cipher machine was found there. ‘On the advice of the RRAF Officers,’ he stated, ‘I instructed Insp. Johnston to take possession of one cryptos [sic] machine found at the scene.’8 We know that Alice Lalande was issued with two cipher machines, but the only one that was officially found was the one that was allegedly stolen. Significantly, Cary’s testimony is not used or mentioned in any form in the Rhodesian report.9   Moyo, Daka and Banda were imprisoned for eighteen months with hard labour. According to the Rhodesian inquiry report, Banda stated that he had been beaten, but this was officially denied by the commission. All three witnesses were dismissed as unreliable. *

In the course of my research I am very fortunate to meet Rejoice Lukumba, who is the press secretary at the Zambian High Commission in London. Rejoice used to be a journalist on the Times of Zambia and is well informed about the legacy of Dag Hammarskjöld in his country. During one of our discussions, I mention my regret at not being able to talk to Mr Kankasa, who passed away in 1982. He then makes an excellent suggestion: that I speak to Mr Kankasa’s widow, Mama Chibesa Kankasa, who is herself a heroine of the freedom struggle. He offers to put me in touch with her and is as good as his word: just a few weeks later he telephones from Lusaka. He is with Mama Kankasa, he explains, and puts her on the line. ‘Of course I will help you, my dear,’ she says. ‘Come and see me.’   I leave for Zambia a few months later. It is August 2009: nearly fifty years since the death of Secretary-General Hammarskjöld. 120

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  From the moment of my arrival, I understand the importance of Dag Hammarskjöld in the history of this country. My husband and I have flown from Johannesburg and land at Lusaka International Airport in the late evening.   As we walk down the steps of the plane and then over the tarmac to the airport building, the air is heavy with humidity and somewhere in the darkness is the humming of thousands of cicadas. I’m worried that we might be turned away. We never quite got round to obtaining visas to Zambia before leaving London and I am hoping fervently that we will be able to acquire them at the airport.   At the immigration desk, I explain our difficulty. The official looks at me sternly over her glasses. I feel foolish and mutter something about being busy and disorganized. Then she asks, ‘Why have you come to Zambia? For the Victoria Falls?’   ‘No, I’m sorry. We’re here for something else.’   ‘What is that?’   ‘We have come to find out about Dag Hammarskjöld. We want to go to the Memorial Site in Ndola.’   The official’s look of disapproval disappears instantly. ‘Welcome! You are welcome to Zambia!’   I am astonished. In Britain, my own country, few people know even the name of the second UN Secretary-General.   There is no problem getting a visa.   We take a taxi to our hotel. Next day, we are up early for breakfast, where we join a throng of Non-Governmental Organization experts, mostly from the West. All these men and women are carrying laptops around with them and many are gazing at their screens while they eat. Some of them ask us why we are in Zambia and, when I explain, they look at us in disbelief.   We have an appointment to visit Mama Chibesa Kankasa, who moved to Lusaka from Ndola after independence. When we get into our taxi, no address is needed: just the name of Mama Kankasa. Everyone seems to know who she is and the work she has done for Zambia. After her contribution to the struggle for independence as a young woman, she took a prominent role in the social and economic development of Zambia, especially for women and children—maternity protection, girls’ education, and women’s rights. She was Zambia’s Minister for Women’s Affairs between 1969 and 1988 and has represented Zambia all over the world. ‘Mama Kankasa’s life,’ stated First Lady Maureen Mwanawasa in 2006, at a party to celebrate Mama Kankasa’s 70th birthday in 2006, ‘was an extraordinary story, which showed how women 121

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could balance their professional and family roles with dignity and honour.’10 Most impressively, she has founded schools for orphans from HIV/AIDS— the T. J. Kankasa Basic School and the Galilee Day Care Centre. These schools are next to her home.   The driver parks in the shadow of a tree, from where we can see the T J Kankasa Basic School. Some teachers are standing on the red verandah of Mama Kankasa’s house, waiting to welcome us. There are colourful flowers everywhere and children in uniform move about purposefully. Mama Kankasa is now in her seventies. Because I know about the remarkable things she has achieved, I expect to be intimidated, but she is so friendly—and laughs so much—that she quickly puts us at our ease. She wants us understand why Dag Hammarskjöld matters so much to Zambia.11   She herself was at Ndola airport on the evening of 17 September 1961 as part of a massive group, carrying placards with messages welcoming the Secretary-General. At the time she was 25 and had been married for nine years, with children and a home to look after, but she found time to participate in the liberation struggle. In 1961, she explains, the African nationalist movement in Northern Rhodesia had become very active and the political party UNIP—led by Kenneth Kaunda, who became the first president of independent Zambia in 1964—orchestrated a civil disobedience campaign called the Cha Cha Cha. Its name came from the hit Congolese jazz song of 1960— Indépendance cha cha cha.   The disobedience campaign quickly took hold, especially in Zambia’s Copperbelt, as thousands of people insisted on being served in shops that were ‘whites-only.’ They also burned the chitupa—the identity pass that the government required them to carry. The Federal government likened the Cha Cha Cha to the Mau Mau movement in Kenya and cracked down severely: by September 1961, about 3,000 members of UNIP were in prison.   Zambians were determined to bring an end to the Federation, which had been created in 1953 against their wishes. The colour bar had been a dominant feature of Northern Rhodesian life ever since the British arrived, removing power and land from Africans and causing inequity, poverty and humiliation. But it became even stronger when Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were joined to Southern Rhodesia, to form the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The political atmosphere of all three territories was now dominated by Southern Rhodesia, where the all-white legislature had a solid—and shocking—record on the issue of land. In Southern Rhodesia, the Land Apportionment Act of 1930 had allocated 50 per cent of the country, including all the 122

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best land, for white settlement. In 1960, 234,000 Europeans had the right to hold 48 million acres of the territory, which were the most fertile, while 3.5 million Africans held only 42 million acres of poor-quality land.12   Africans across the Federation were horrified when Welensky started in the mid-1950s to articulate a demand for independence from Britain. His plan was for the Federation to become a Dominion—like Canada, Australia and New Zealand—but under white minority rule. Welensky was furious when Britain rejected the plan.   In 1959, the British Conservative government set up a commission, under the chairmanship of Lord Monckton, to assess the opinion of the people of Northern Rhodesia and of Nyasaland about the future of the Federation. It produced a report in October 1960, which described the opposition of the majority of people as ‘widespread, sincere and of long standing.’ As a consequence, the British government produced proposals in February for self-government in Northern Rhodesia. These proposals were welcomed by nationalist groups but rejected in fury by Welensky, since the white Rhodesians’ plans— and the maintenance of their privileged lifestyle—depended on the mineral resources of the Copperbelt of Northern Rhodesia. Welensky insisted that the British government produce revised, watered-down, proposals. These were met with deep disappointment by the African population and led to increased militancy—in the form of the Cha Cha Cha.13   Army units were stationed in the Copperbelt to check the disturbances. These included the 1st Battalion of the Northern Rhodesia Regiment and the 2nd Battalion of the King’s African Rifles, which were staffed by African troops with European officers. Two units of the all-white Northern Rhodesia Territorial Force were now on four hours’ standby. ‘So the place was hopping!’ recalled Clyde Sanger some years later, who was then the regional correspondent for the Guardian.14   On 13 September 1961—the day that Hammarskjöld arrived in Léopoldville, just four days before his death—Iain Macleod, the British Colonial Secretary, announced that he was reopening talks on the Northern Rhodesian constitution. Welensky was outraged. The British government, he thundered, were acting in the ‘tradition’ of Munich and giving in to violence.15 Welensky was angry, too, that the British were not supporting Tshombe and his rebel government in Elisabethville.   On 17 September 1961, recalls Mama Kankasa, the radio news announced that UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld would arrive that evening. She and some thousands of people came to the airport with placards declar 123

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ing their opposition to the Federation and to Tshombe, and their support for a unified Congo. They did this ‘so that the Secretary-General could know,’ as well as showing their appreciation of his work for the world and his commitment to majority rule.   We discover that Mama Kankasa herself saw a ball of fire in the sky on the night of the crash, as well as two small planes flying away. Her husband had just escorted a friend on part of his way home and as he returned to their house, he cried out to her to come outside, then pointed up to the sky. He told her what had happened and they knew then, she said, that Dag had been killed. Now Mama Kankasa draws a map for us, so that we can see the journey of the Albertina—in the flight corridor passing by Twapia and their house. She also gives us more details about the morning of 18 September, when her husband reported the sighting of the crashed Albertina to the authorities. In the early hours, she says, eight charcoal burners came to their house to say they had seen a plane burning in the forest. They said, too, that one man was still fighting for his life. Mr Kankasa immediately made a report, but nothing was done. It was not until after 15.15 that an ambulance was heard going to the scene of the crash.   Kankasa did not want his wife to have to testify in public. As a result, a group of UN officials and a Rhodesian detective came to visit her in Twapia. When they turned up, she says, she had just come back from a meeting of the Women’s League, of which she was constituency chairman. She told them what she had seen on the night of the crash, which the Rhodesian detective disputed; but the UN officials took her seriously. They asked if they were now in the house outside which she had seen the fire in the sky; when she explained that it was not that house, they all went to the original house and Mrs Kankasa showed them where she had stood—the very place. At this point Mama Kankasa interrupts her account and looks directly at me. ‘You must go there,’ she says. ‘When you go to Ndola, you must go to that house in Twapia so that you too can see where I was standing, when I saw that event in the sky.’   Now Mama Kankasa quietly suggests that we close our eyes and pray. In her prayer she remembers Dag Hammarskjöld and his work for the people of Africa. She then prays to the ‘angels of truth’ to keep us safe and to help me in my work: to find out what happened to Dag and to write about it in my book.   We take our leave. But first, Mama Kankasa takes us to a building site nearby, where a chapel is being built for the school. She would like to take us to the classrooms, but the children are taking exams and she doesn’t want to disturb them. As we walk around, she talks to us about the need for men to wear con124

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doms. I find this extraordinary: a deeply religious woman in her seventies talking matter-of-factly about the importance of safe sex. It is an impressive response to Zambia’s serious problem of HIV/AIDS. But Mama Kankasa is not satisfied simply with good sense. She is also working to end the stigma attached to those who are suffering from the disease. She makes a point, she says, of hugging the children who are sick, so that they will know they are loved and others will know they are not infectious.   Mama Kankasa has suggested that we visit the National Archives in Lusaka, which hold a number of unpublished memoirs by freedom fighters. One of the memoirs we read is by J. M. Sokoni, who became prominent in Zambia’s foreign service after independence. ‘Our leaders spent the whole of the first half of 1961,’ he writes, ‘flying between Lusaka and London to try and pump the non-violence senses into the mind of Victoria’s son (Roy Welensky), but all in vain.’ They were fighting, he added, against three governments: the Federal government, the colonial government, and the British government, ‘all of which had rooted interests in this country.’ Sokoni discovered to his horror that in one area near Ndola during the Cha Cha Cha, not only were men being beaten by police but some had their penises tied to heavy stones for many hours. A typical case, according to one witness, was that of a man who was arrested for not carrying his chitupa: One day we went to attend the court and there were cries and groans from the prison cells. Then one of the assessors who seemed to enjoy these shrieks and groans told the people that the reason why the poor fellows were crying was that Heavy Cement Blocks were tied to their penis [sic].16

Sokoni’s file in the archives also contains his typescript of ‘The Causes of Cha cha cha,’ which describes the taxes that Africans were required to pay. ‘THIS PALE MAN,’ he records, ‘is satanic. I even had to pay tax for my dog which never was attended to by his veterinary officer.’ He also had to pay tax on his bicycle, ‘which never made a pothole, let alone a scratch on the highway.’ No wonder, he concludes, that a political volcano exploded in 1961.17   I know from the Welensky Papers in Oxford that people had good reason to fear the Rhodesian state—and even the Prime Minister. In October 1961 Welensky wrote to the director of the Federal Intelligence Security Bureau to report the ‘disappearance’ of two supporters of the nationalist movement. ‘For your information,’ he reported, ‘quite recently two gentlemen on the teaching staff who were being recalcitrant quietly disappeared. I am told it has had the most salutary effect on the rest of the teachers.’ No wonder that, as one Zam 125

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bian woman recalls from the Federation era, any person who was mean or violent was called a ‘Welensky’.18 Some days after our visit to Mama Kankasa in Lusaka, my husband and I take a little plane to Ndola, which is the second largest airport in the country. All around is dry grass, yellow under the shimmering heat. As we land, I am conscious that Dag never made it, all those years ago in 1961. It’s very hot, but nowhere near as hot as it would have been when Dag’s plane was on the way to Ndola. For now it is August, which is dry and relatively cool. September is extremely hot and humid in the build-up to the rains and is sometimes referred to as ‘suicide’ month.   We are staying at the Mukuba Lodge just outside Ndola. The rooms are cool and spotless and mosquito coils have been provided to supplement the net over the bed. Next morning at breakfast in the dining-room, a Christian radio station exhorts good behaviour and kindness. It’s Sunday and, as we leave, a waitress asks us if we plan to go to church. I mumble something incoherent. ‘You should go!’ she admonishes me firmly, with a smile.   Our priority is to visit the Memorial Site: the place where the Albertina crashed. We arrange for a driver, Michael Machena, to take us there—first to town, where we go past Dag Hammarskjöld Drive, then down the highway to Kitwe. On this road from Ndola to Kitwe there is a tree called the ‘slave tree,’ which provided shade for a slave-trading centre. In town there is another ‘slave tree’—a fig tree known as Umukuyu, which is represented in Ndola’s coat of arms.   We pass Twapia and then turn off to the right, going down an avenue that has been planted with Swedish pine trees on either side. It is achingly beautiful under the bright sun and clear blue sky. Then we pass near the Dag Hammarskjöld Living Memorial School and soon reach the site, which is known locally as ‘Sweden.’   The memorial site is a national monument. There is a mound of stones at the centre of the area where the plane crashed, surrounded by a green lawn and an outer circle of shrubs and trees. As we walk over, we are welcomed by the curator, Mr Jacob Phiri, who shows us the large ant-hill against which the body of the Secretary-General was supposed to have been leaning when he was found. He invites us to climb up some steps to the top of the ant-hill, where there is a platform from which we can look out over the neighbourhood. ‘Over there,’ says Michael, pointing to the hills beyond, ‘is the Congo. Only nine kilo­metres 126

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away.’ He shakes his head sadly and refers to the bitter troubles of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. ‘Imagine,’ he adds, ‘what a different history it would have been if Dag had lived!’   Mr Phiri has many local stories to tell us about what was going on in Northern Rhodesia at the time of the crash—that the Cha Cha Cha campaign was like a war. He tells us, too, about the crash of the Albertina. All the trees in the vicinity were cut down afterwards, he says, which some people suspected was to conceal the evidence of bullet holes in the trees. An African freelance photographer visited the site, but his pictures were apparently taken by the police and he was beaten.   In 2005, two old women and a local farmer came to visit the site; in 1961, they were in their twenties, when they were living in Kabushi, near Ndola airport. One of them said that she had noticed the Albertina because she was used to looking at the planes in the sky; she also saw another plane take off from Ndola, after which the lights of the airport were switched off. They then saw a glare in the sky and feared it was the Cha Cha Cha.   Visitors to the site have included John Mussell, the Royal Rhodesian Air Force commander, who led the team of Rhodesian pilots searching for Dag’s plane and now lives in South Africa. He has been to the site twice in the ten years since Mr Phiri has been working there.   Jacob Phiri is an earnest advocate for the remembrance of Hammarskjöld and is delighted to hear of my research and the book I plan to write. He takes us to the site museum, which contains photographs of Dag and his family and of the places in Sweden where he grew up. When we leave the site, we shake hands firmly and promise to stay in touch.   Now Michael takes us to Twapia to look for the house of the Kankasas. It isn’t difficult to find because Mama Kankasa gave us detailed instructions and the tiny houses, built by the Rhodesian government for African labourers, are laid out in a grid pattern. Michael, who is as interested as we are, asks the family in the house for permission to stop there to look up at the sky—and the children think we are mad. But no one minds and many of the people around wave in a friendly way. We stand on the very spot from where the Kankasas saw the blaze in the sky on 17 September 1961. In the evening, I phone Mama Kankasa to tell her we have visited her house. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ she says. ‘Now you are starting to understand and you will work out what happened.’   Next day Michael drives us past the golf course on the edge of Ndola, so that I can see the Provincial Commissioner’s house, where Tshombe stayed with his advisers on the night of 17–18 September 1961. It is a large colonial 127

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building at the end of a long driveway, surrounded by ant-hills and spreading trees in spacious grounds.   Next we stop in the town centre for a cold drink at the Savoy Hotel. Built in 1956, it has a suspended swimming pool on the mezzaine floor and must have been the height of modernity in the 1960s. I think of Knut Hammarskjöld and Pier Spinelli staying here when they came to Ndola in 1961. I recall, too, that according to the memoir of the mercenary Jerry Puren, he and Max Glasspole stayed here on the night of the Albertina’s crash. It was also home for a short while to the international visitors who came to Ndola for the hearings of the UN Inquiry in 1962.   We then visit the bars of two hotels which were favourite haunts for mercenaries from Katanga in the early 1960s. First we go to the Royal Hotel, which was called the Coppersmith Arms in colonial times; next we visit the Ambassador, which used to be called the Elephant. The Elephant was owned by Len Catchpole, who was a former mayor of Ndola and was captured as a mercenary in Elisabethville by United Nations soldiers.19   I want to know what it was like to live in Ndola in 1961, so Michael takes us to meet an elderly man in the town centre. His response is a quizzical look. Then I ask him if he was at the airport on the night of the crash. ‘Ha!’ he exclaims bitterly. ‘Africans were not allowed at the airport terminal! We weren’t allowed anywhere where whites were,’ he answers. ‘Whites treated us like dogs—like monkeys—like baboons. It was a time of great injustice.’ He was not allowed, he adds, to enter hotels or bars. Nor could he enter shops, but had to make purchases through a small window. He gestures to a butcher’s over the road—‘like that shop. It had a small window for Africans.’ Other people join in and discuss the colonial colour bar. There were two hospitals: one for the small number of Europeans, with good facilities; and a far more rudimentary one for the much larger number of Africans. Similar divisions occurred with education, except that there were also separate schools for Asians and for ‘Coloureds.’   Over the next few days Michael takes us to the airport, where he arranges for us to meet the airport manager and the air traffic control officer. We learn that the airport was built as a military installation in 1937 and became a civilian airport in 1957. The control tower that is now in use was built in the 1970s, so they take us across to the congested set of Nissen blocks on one flank of the airport, where the original tower was housed. The tower itself seems to have been dismantled, but we visit the small room where Alport made arrangements for Tshombe to meet Hammarskjöld. It is hot and stuffy, so I can understand why Tshombe told Ritchie he was feeling unwell. On the ground floor are the 128

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same bar and restaurant that were used in the 1960s, where Dr Mark Lowenthal waited for Hammarskjöld’s arrival on the night of 17 September 1961 and Jerry Puren and his mercenary friends swapped stories and drank beer.   We also climb up to the new air-conditioned control tower and look out over the breadth of the airport. The air traffic control officer is happy to discuss the Albertina’s approach to the airport. An approach procedure using the Non Directional Beacon, he explains, takes about ten minutes; it takes two extra minutes for Ndola because the NDB at Twapia is not well aligned. If the plane reported that it was overhead at 24.10 and it then crashed at 24.15, as estimated from the victims’ watches, then it could not yet have started its approach to the airport.   A few days later we return to Ndola airport to fly to Johannesburg, en route for London. We walk across the tarmac to the aircraft and I suddenly recall that the wreckage of the Albertina had been locked in a hangar at the airport. I have seen photographs in the Welensky Papers of the storing of the pieces of the crashed plane and of the day in which the hangar was finally sealed. Is the wreckage still there? Could the hangar be opened up?

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The Congolese Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula gave his approval to Hammarskjöld for the plan of a meeting with Tshombe. But when he heard later that the British had provided aircraft to take Tshombe to Ndola, he regarded this as yet another example of their bad faith. He said that the aircraft had violated Congolese sovereignty by landing at Kipushi, since the airstrip is on the Congolese side of the border. British words, he asserted to Lord Lansdowne, did not square with British deeds. Yet another example of their bad faith, he said, was the Rhodesian Federation’s bellicose acts in moving troops—including fighters and bombers—to the Congolese frontier.1   Adoula had good grounds for his suspicions about British policy. On the one hand, Harold Macmillan was a champion of decolonization. ‘The wind of change,’ he affirmed in a speech in Cape Town in February 1960, ‘is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact and our national policies must take account of it.’ Then he set out Britain’s position: We reject the idea of any inherent superiority of one race over another. Our policy therefore is non-racial. It offers a future in which … all play their full part as citizens … and in which feelings of race will be submerged in loyalty to new nations.2

 But Macmillan wanted some control over the direction in which that wind of change was blowing. In the case of the Congo, he welcomed its independence from Belgium in 1960 and publicly expressed regret at the secession of Katanga. He frequently articulated his wish to see a united, federal Congo and Britain voted for the UN Security Council Resolution 161 of 21 February

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1961, authorizing the UN to take all measures to restore order in the Congo. Behind the scenes, however, British policy was rather more complex and ambivalent. At a Cabinet meeting on 12 September 1961, Macmillan argued that if Tshombe were defeated, ‘the collapse of his administration [would] be in itself a harmful development.’ He believed that the aim of the UN should be to bring Tshombe round to cooperation with the Central Government, but without unduly weakening the power of Katanga.3   Britain may have supported a federal Congo—but ‘federal’ can have a range of meanings. Macmillan, clearly, conceived of a federal Congo in which Katanga would retain considerable autonomy. On the day after the 12 September Cabinet meeting, Morthor—the campaign by UN officials in Katanga to expel the remaining mercenaries—began and Macmillan was appalled. Hammarskjöld, he wrote in his diary, had ‘either blundered, or his agents have acted without his authority.’ What was even more dangerous, he added, was that Gizenga was growing powerful in the Central Government and that ‘a Communist African’—the Commissaire d’Etat, Egide Bocheley-Davidson—had been sent to ‘govern’ the Katanga province. ‘Unless we and the Americans act quickly and resolutely,’ he reflected, ‘we shall have undone in a week all we have done—at huge expense—in a year’: Congo will be handed to Russia on a plate. The Union Minière properties will be ‘nationalised’ and run by Russian Communists, and a most dangerous situation created in Africa—as well as [a] great financial and moral blow to the West and especially European civilization.4

Prime Minister Nehru angrily accused the British government of trying to sabotage resolution 161. But, he insisted, the operation ‘must succeed, as otherwise the Congo would blow up with Africa and the UN.’5   In the wake of Morthor, some British officials in Rhodesia and Katanga described their position as if, like Tshombe and Welensky, they too were at war with the UN. ‘Telephone contact with Elisabethville has been cut off,’ reported Alport in an urgent telegram to London, ‘but Consulate still have R.T. [Radio Telephone] contact with Provincial Commissioner’s Office, Ndola. Reception is very bad, probably due to interference by United Nations.’6 When this means of contact soon proved inadequate, MI6 agent Neil Ritchie turned to Union Minière for help. ‘Unfortunately, in the absence of an official wireless set,’ he reported to the Commonwealth Relations Office: H M Consul was entirely without communications with the outside world. Union Minière accordingly came to our aid. They smuggled an R T set over the border and

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Ritchie told him ‘not to use RT except in the last resort for fear of interception, but to perfect carrier communications which would lead to the desk of Maurice van Weyenbergh in Elisabethville, top UMHK man in Katanga.’7 Messages sent in this way could then be taken to Dunnett, the British Consul in Katanga, since the head office of Union Minière du Haut Katanga in Elisabethville was across the road from the consulate.   More information about Britain’s collusion with Union Minière is available in the archives of the Société Minière du Bécéca, known as Sibéka, which are held in the Belgian state archives in Brussels. One thick file contains the duplicates of telegrams and telexes exchanged in September 1961 between Union Minière in Elisabethville and its headquarters in Brussels, which give details of the delivery of the radio telephone set and the arrival of the expert, as reported by Ritchie to London. They also record the failure of the first attempt to get the apparatus to Kitwe from Jadotville, when the party bringing it was ‘arrested and sent back’—presumably by UN officials. But the next attempt succeeded.   The telegrams also reveal that the engineer from Brussels, whose name was Loeb, arrived first in Salisbury, where he was assisted by Anglo American—a huge multinational company based in South Africa and with offices in the Rhodesian capital. Anglo American mined gold and diamonds in South Africa and was also active in the Northern Rhodesian Copperbelt. At the time of the Morthor crisis its director was Harry Oppenheimer, who was also chairman of De Beers. ‘We are pleased to report that Loeb arrived in Kitwe last night,’ reported a telegram from Anglo American to Union Minière in Brussels, on 15 September 1961. ‘We were able to assist him on from Salisbury. The equipment to be installed has arrived in Kitwe. We shall be glad to help you in future whenever required.’ In this way Anglo American demonstrated its support for Union Minière and, also, for officials of the British government.   The messages refer to a range of concerns triggered by Morthor, including the pay of Union Minière agents, the safety of personnel and the functioning of mines and installations. They are phrased in terms resonant of a state of war between Union Minière and the UN and they appear to have been sent in code; some of them, though deciphered, are mystifying. There are a number of cryptic references to ‘our friends,’ but there is nothing to indicate who these friends are. 133

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  References to Hammarskjöld and to his visit to Ndola are veiled and brief. ‘Ce matin 17,’ wrote Loeb on 17 September 1961, ‘amorce négociations deux parties’—‘This morning on the 17th, the two sides start negotiations.’ On the following morning, a telex reported a message from Loeb, in Kitwe: ‘Tshombe is in Ndola, but it is not known where Mr H is.’ Later that day, Paul Gillet, the chairman of Union Minière, currently in Elisabethville, sent a telex to Edgar Van der Straeten, the vice chairman: Your radio received all our people save [sic] in Katanga. Mines and plants in working order and are working except Lubumbashi. Other news and scarce and contradictory. For further news telephone Union Minière 13.60.90 at nine o’clock your time.8

It can be safely assumed that the whereabouts of Hammarskjöld—and the issue of the ceasefire talks—were in the forefront of the minds of Union Minière officials. This may explain the suggestion to phone later for ‘further news.’ *

In public at least, Macmillan distanced himself and his government carefully from the interests of big business in Katanga and from Tshombe’s war against the UN. But a powerful group on the right wing of the Tory party—known as the Katanga Lobby, an informal group in the style of the Suez Lobby— showed no such delicacy.   The Katanga Lobby was led by ‘Bobbety,’ the Marquess of Salisbury, and by Captain Charles Waterhouse, Chairman of the British-African giant, Tanganyika Concessions (‘Tanks’), and a member of the board of Union Minière. (He was known as ‘Slasher’ Waterhouse, because as a Tory MP he advocated drastic cuts in public spending.) British government documents record Waterhouse’s visit to John Profumo, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, when he ‘painted a bright picture of the Tshombe regime’ and asked the government to give it ‘sub rosa encouragement.’ When Profumo pointed out that the recent elections had shown majorities supporting the Lumumba government, ‘Captain Waterhouse manifested a humorous contempt for arguments based on the suffrage and implied that the Union Minière had a short way with difficulties of this sort.’ Waterhouse added: ‘After all Tshombe himself was a man of no personality and slender capabilities but there he was, firmly in the saddle.’9   Influential directors of Tanks included Lord Clitheroe (Ralph Assheton before he was ennobled), who was formerly Chairman of the Conservative Party. In May 1961 he joined the board of the Benguela Railway, which ran from Katanga to the coast in Angola, carrying much of its mineral produc134

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tion. Other directors were Sir Tufton Beamish MP and Sir Charles MottRadclyffe MP.   As well as Waterhouse, Lord Selborne, a cousin of Lord Salisbury, and Sir Ulick Alexander, a courtier and soldier, were also on the board of Union Minière. Despite the chaos triggered by the independence of the Congo in 1960, Union Minière had been able to work consistently and in 1961 the year’s output was about the same as the year before. They had a trump card—their lines of communication with ports of shipment by the Benguela railway to Lobito and the Rhodesian system to Beira, neither of which crossed any part of the other Congo provinces. What was more, Union Minière’s concessions were set to run until 1990.10   Some members of the Katanga Lobby believed that, as argued in a propaganda leaflet circulated by a public relations firm in Salisbury, ‘U.N.O. is waiting its chance to seize the Katanga and its copper profits.’11 The Katanga Lobby was further strengthened by vigorous advocates of white rule in Africa and by members of the Monday Club, which had been set up in order to oppose decolonization, as a direct response to Macmillan’s ‘Wind of Change’ speech (the name of the club deriving from the fact that Macmillan had given his speech on a Monday). These opponents of decolonization included Major Patrick Wall and a number of other right-wing Conservative MPs—John Biggs-Davison, Anthony Fell, Paul Williams and Neil ‘Billy’ McLean. The attitude of this group was neatly described by a Labour MP, Harold Wilson, in the House of Commons in December 1961, when he referred to the ‘doctrines and pressures of the Katanga lobby below the Gangway and behind them.’ The House, he said, was familiar with the old ‘Suez Group’: ‘We know that only the slightest stimulus is needed to bring out in them their old built-in atavistic reflexes— Suez, Cyprus, Kenya, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and now the Congo.’12 The Katanga cause generated an alliance between John Biggs-Davison and George Kennedy Young, the very tall and red-haired Deputy Director of MI6 from 1958 until late 1961. Young was so far to the right politically that the Director of MI6, Dick White, believed that appointing him had been ‘my worst mistake.’ He was looking for an opportunity to dismiss Young, especially when he approved a killing in Iran contrary to his orders.13   On 21 October 1960, Young wrote to Biggs-Davison from ‘Room 9, Foreign Office’ to thank Biggs-Davison for letting him see a letter from the Member for Yarmouth, ‘the contents of which I passed on to one of our people who 135

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is going to be dealing with Katanga.’ The Secret Intelligence Service ‘was well aware,’ he went on, ‘of the deficiencies in official sources of information and you will be glad to hear that this is going to be remedied on our side.’ How it was going to be remedied, he does not say.   Young expressed his pleasure that Tshombe seemed well installed ‘and at least the Russian penetration of the Congo has been blocked for the moment.’ But, he added, there was ‘no doubt that Hammarskjöld’s minions are going all out to try and get Mobutu out and Lumumba back in. Some of their motives are difficult to understand but this bodes no good for the long-term future if we are going to depend on UNO in the Congo.’14 He ended his letter with an invitation to lunch.   Six months later, Young was writing to Biggs-Davison from his home address in London and giving vent to his dislike of Hammarskjöld and the UN: ‘Hammarskjöld is quite blatantly relying on India, Egypt, and the group of Afro/ Asian countries who always lead the hue and cry against European interests wherever they are.’ He feared that the Secretary-General was ‘blandly’ giving way to the clear intent of Nehru and of Dayal, an Indian who at that time was Hammarskjöld’s special representative in the Congo, to crush Tshombe. ‘The main obstacles to carrying out their plan,’ he believed: are the European cadres of Tshombe’s forces so that in following the letter of the UNO Resolution we are lending ourselves to the destruction of the only stable part of the Congo and will bring the tide of chaos lapping against the frontiers of British Central Africa.

‘I find it quite extraordinary,’ he added, ‘that on one hand it is said to be HMG’s [Her Majesty’s Government’s] interest to maintain Tshombe and on the other we lend ourselves to tactics designed to overthrow him.’   This distrust of Hammarskjöld was not a new phenomenon at MI6. In September 1956, MI6 had advised Eden that the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mahmoud Fawzi, could not be counted on to stick by the principles on passage through the Suez Canal, because he was ‘too close a friend of Hammarskjöld.’15 But by the time of the Katanga crisis, at least in the case of George Kennedy Young, this distrust of Hammarskjöld had evolved into an emotional loathing.   Young made plans to use the press to influence the public. ‘If articles are submitted by Kithima for Commonwealth Digest,’ he wrote, referring to Kithima Bin Ramazani, a close ally of Mobutu, ‘we are prepared to take care of that.’ Since Biggs-Davison was an MP, he imagined it would be better ‘if we make 136

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the arrangements with a member of the Digest staff. Let me know as and when you get the first article so that I can fix up matters.’16   By August 1961, Young had resigned from MI6 (to White’s great relief ) and gone to work for Kleinwort Benson, the merchant bankers. Even so, he was continuing to meddle in Katangese affairs. On 11 August, he wrote to Biggs-Davison about their plans for Kithima Bin Ramazani. ‘Ref Kithima, I spoke to my recent employers,’ he wrote, presumably referring to MI6, ‘and the chap who will deal with you is JOHN TAYLOR also to be got on [telephone number] WHI:0191. I reckon that quotations from his paper would be an excellent subterfuge.’17 There are some marginal notes on this letter, in which Biggs-Davison records that he had asked Kithima for an article and also phoned John Taylor.   Meanwhile Biggs-Davison was in contact with some mercenaries from the Congo. In January 1961 he invited Captain John ‘Congo’ Roberts, recently expelled from the Congo by the UN, to lunch at the Junior Carlton Club, an exclusive Conservative gentlemen’s club on Pall Mall.18 Roberts was known to the British Embassy in Léopoldville: a couple of weeks earlier, the Ambassador had sent the Foreign Office a memorandum to warn that Roberts had been invited to return to the Congo by Kalonji, the self-styled President of the seceded province of Kasai. ‘May I hope,’ he ventured, ‘that it will be possible to prevent his return to the Congo.’ The Foreign Office official who handled this memo made a curt note in the margin: ‘Can we stop him? There are enough lunatics without him going back.’19 He did in fact go to Kasai, where he was responsible for the recruitment and training of Kalonji’s army.   The Tory MP Anthony Fell was vituperative about the role of the UN in Katanga. ‘I have repeatedly warned that U.N., so far from fostering world peace,’ he wrote in a letter to Macmillan after the start of Morthor in September 1961, ‘is actively assisting the breakdown of law and order. The latest action of the UN, waging war against the only stabilizing force in the Congo, Tshombe’s democratically elected Government of Katanga, confirms this.’ He called on Parliament to be recalled to persuade the UN to reinstate Tshombe.20   Fell visited Rhodesia and Katanga in September 1960. To his surprise, he met Neil ‘Billy’ McLean on his journey. McLean, a former member of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a vocal member of the Suez Lobby and a Scottish Conservative MP, was involved in a number of shadowy and paramilitary activities, some of them linked to George Kennedy Young.21   In 1963, Young—according to his own testimony—proposed McLean when Mossad approached him to find an Englishman acceptable to the Saudis to 137

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run a guerrilla war against the left-wing Yemeni regime and its Egyptian backers. ‘I can find you a Scotsman,’ replied Young, who then over lunch introduced McLean to Dan Hiram, the Israeli Defence Attaché. The Israelis promised to supply weapons, funds and instructors who could pass themselves off as Arabs, and the Saudis ‘eagerly grasped’ the idea. ‘McLean’s irregulars,’ records Young, forced Nasser to pull out his troops.22 These irregulars included Roger Faulques, the French veteran of Algeria, who played a leadership role in the war against the United Nations in Katanga in 1961. Billy McLean’s activities abroad were secret and unorthodox. According to his biographer, he received a letter from Macmillan in 1979 stating: ‘You are one of those people whose services to our dear country are known only to a few.’23   Fell described his unexpected meeting with McLean in a letter to Paul Williams—another Tory MP with links to Katanga;24 he asked Williams to show Biggs-Davison his letter. Writing the letter in a ‘Plane from Salisbury to Bulawayo’ on 23 September 1960, he recounted that on the night before he was due to go to Elisabethville: Billy McLean phoned me from Ndola having just arrived there from Addis Ababa. Well, when I had got over the shock, we decided to go in together. I had had an invitation to dine with Tshombe. We drove in car provided by Cecil Burney ( JBD knows him), splendid type, via Kitwe, Chingola, across border and 64 miles to Elizabethville, where we saw the British Consul, a man called Evans who seems a good type of retired policeman.

Moreover, he said, the Foreign Office had sent ‘Bruce (35-ish) to help or perhaps to keep an eye on the non-Etonian Consul. Bruce is a typically UNO minded sissily-cultured weak one who might do well as lesser clerk at UNO.’   Next day, Fell and McLean were taken by Evariste Kimba, the Foreign Minister of Katanga, for lunch with Tshombe. ‘Tshombe is no-one’s puppet,’ claimed Fell, ‘except that of course he gets taxes from Union Minière.’ His plan, he added, was ‘to become leader of [the] whole Congo. I think he may if UNO does not find a way of discrediting him.’ McLean, it emerged, was planning to stay in Katanga for a week, but Fell had to leave.25   McLean continued to take an active interest in Katanga and on 16 September 1961, three days after Morthor and one day before the death of SecretaryGeneral Hammarskjöld, he attacked the UN in a speech in Inverness: The present armed intervention in the internal affairs of Katanga by the UN forces under Mr O’Brien on the flimsiest, indeed almost non-existent legal pretexts, is a cynical act of power politics which has shocked many of us here in Britain and is bringing grave discredit upon the United Nations.

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Both O’Brien and Hammarskjöld, he went on, ‘must bear direct and individual responsibility’—because by ‘their prejudiced and ill-considered interpretation of the resolution’: they are guilty of spreading into hitherto peaceful Katanga the anarchy, murder and bloodshed which engulf the rest of the Congo and which may now spill over into Northern Rhodesia as well unless the strongest possible counter-measures are taken.26

 Overwhelmingly, the Katanga Lobby was seeking to preserve white rule in the Rhodesias—and when Smith proclaimed UDI in 1965, they were his most loyal supporters in Britain. In 1961, they wanted to see the independence of the Rhodesias under white minority rule, which Welensky was unsuccessfully demanding from Macmillan.   Julian Amery, a former operative of MI627 and in 1961 the Secretary of State for Air, was a fervent advocate of this policy; he was a Conservative politician with strong imperialist convictions. He articulated his views in a letter to Lord Alport in January 1962, written while flying across the Atlantic. ‘Lord knows,’ he said, ‘things look dark enough in Central Africa just now… My own feeling is that the first essential is to maintain some kind of stable government in the Katanga if this is still humanly possible … if chaos once spreads to the Northern Rhodesian border, I don’t see how it can be effectively contained.’ Then he asked: Isn’t the time coming when we should pay Welensky for any further concessions to the Africans by the promise of very early Independence? It seems rather absurd to hand Independence out all over the place with very dubious safeguards for the minorities and yet to hold it up indefinitely in Central Africa.28

Alport sympathized with this view, but feared that if the Federation were to become independent just then, it would collapse.29 His own plan for the region was the slow development of a multi-racial partnership. In the meantime, the majority population of Africans would be dependent on, and subservient to, the white minority.   Amery made the position of the Katanga Lobby very clear in a speech in the early 1960s. ‘The prosperity of our people,’ he argued, ‘rests really on the oil in the Persian Gulf, the rubber and tin of Malaya, and the gold, copper and precious metals of South and Central Africa.’ As long as the British had access to these, he went on, ‘as long as we can realize the investments we have there; as long as we trade with this part of the world, we shall be prosperous.’ If, on the other hand, the Communists or anyone else were to take them over, ‘we would lose the lot’.30 139

11 AN AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICER CYPRUS, 1961

Ndola in 1961 was a small African town on the periphery of the British Empire. But the events in Ndola’s airspace on the night of 17–18 September were witnessed 3,000 miles away—on Cyprus, in the eastern Mediterranean, which had been independent from Britain for just over a year. From here, a young American naval pilot, Charles M. Southall, heard a live recording of the shooting-down of the Albertina. He was stationed at the Cyprus naval communications facility of the American National Security Agency (NSA), the cryptologic intelligence agency of the US government, and had been unexpectedly called in to work.   I first came across Charles Southall’s name in the Hammarskjöld archive at the Royal Library in Stockholm. He is the subject of a four-page report by Bengt Rösiö, written in Casablanca and dated 13 March 1994. It is written in Swedish, but my attention was caught by quotations from Southall in English— phrases like ‘I’ve hit him’ and ‘it’s going down.’1 I immediately began to hunt for this intriguing source and it was not long before I tracked him down to the USA and sent him an email. Within a few days, I received a friendly reply: he was shortly going to pass through the UK, and would I care to meet for coffee at his club in London, the Travellers on Pall Mall? We arranged a time.   Before meeting him, I did some background research. Southall, I discovered, is a career intelligence officer, who trained as a navy pilot and has the rank of Commander in the US Naval Reserve; he is fluent in French and certified in Arabic as an interpreter and translator. He was an outstanding student and obtained a degree from the American University of Beirut in 1954, followed

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by an MA and MBA from universities in America. He joined the US Navy, where he learnt to fly, and then served as a naval aviator at Iwakuni and Okinawa in Japan, in a squadron of patrol bombers in the Taiwan Straits hostilities. For most of the 1960s he worked in covert intelligence collection for the Defense Intelligence Agency, based in Nicosia and Rabat; his cover in Rabat was as Assistant US Naval Attaché.   Since 1969, he has been a commercial intelligence officer, with deep operational experience in secret activities across the globe. Commercial intelligence, I gather from an interview with Southall by the magazine of the American University of Beirut in 2009, ‘is not the spy work of political and military intelligence officers.’ Instead, his company deals with ‘counterfeiting, piracy, fraud, embezzlement, and a wide range of improper activities that companies seem to get themselves into.’2   Armed with this information, I arrive at the Travellers Club in good time. This is just as well, since there is no name at the entrance and I walk right past it several times before figuring out which of the elegant nineteenth-century buildings on Pall Mall is my destination. It is an exclusive club, founded in 1819 for British gentlemen with a yen for travel, as well as for foreign visitors and diplomats; today, it counts many high commissioners and foreign ambassadors among its membership. There is a special category of membership for particularly well-travelled men, such as the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and the journalist John Simpson. But to the outside world, the club is probably best known as a haunt of spies—where James Bond is recruited over lunch in Jeffrey Deaver’s 007 novel, Carte Blanche (2011).   The atmosphere is formal and there is a dress code: jacket and tie or national dress, no trainers or denim. Women are not allowed to join; they can visit as the guest of a member, but are prohibited from the male preserves of the Smoking Room and the Cocktail Bar.   I give my name to the hall porter. ‘The Commander is expecting you, Madam. He is in the Outer Morning Room.’ I follow his direction into a large room with high ceilings overlooking the street, resplendent with polished mahogany and plush velvet armchairs. I feel decidedly out of place.   But Southall is a genial and friendly man. He is waiting in a chair by the window and stands up, with an open smile, to welcome me. As we shake hands, I notice the brightly coloured little fish on his yellow tie, which cheer up the stuffy, old-fashioned atmosphere. I address him as Commander, but he quickly insists that I call him Charles. Almost immediately, our conversation turns to flying—clearly a favourite subject. He continued to fly after leaving the Navy, 142

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he says, and has 6,000 hours of flying time, much of it multi-engine, pilot-incommand. For many years, he flew his own company aircraft. ‘Flying an approach on a dark and rainy night to a remote airstrip in the boondocks,’ he tells me, ‘is my idea of fun.’3 Another hobby is amateur radio, though I am already starting to suspect there is very little that is amateur about Charles.   Then we get on to the subject of the National Security Agency, to which Charles was posted by the US Navy in May 1961 from Okinawa. The NSA was set up in 1952, he explains, five years after the creation of the CIA, and is far less well known. Its espionage field is cryptography, like the British GCHQ, and it has a vast network of communications facilities in different parts of the globe, directed from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland, close to Washington, and known as the ‘Puzzle Palace.’ This is the mysterious world of SIGINT—Signals Intelligence.   The NSA is assisted by the cryptologic sections of the three US armed ­services: the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force. That’s why Charles was on Cyprus—because the listening-post there was operated by the Navy. It had no particular naval purpose, but served as the Navy’s turn to deliver on its obligation to the NSA.   Charles fills me in on the history of global eavesdropping. Following the end of the Second World War, he says, the world was divided up by the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. While the British counterpart, GCHQ, for example, covered Jordan, the US covered Syria. Both the NSA and GCHQ had listening-posts in Cyprus: the former near Nicosia, the latter outside Famagusta. Very occasionally they shared intelligence, but much of it was either ‘UK Eyes Only’ or ‘US Eyes Only.’   Sometimes Charles had occasion to go to Famagusta, where he was always struck by its stillness and quiet. This was because British operatives used pencils and carbon paper; whereas at the American post, typewriters clattered all day long. The monitoring conducted at Famagusta was so acute that they could listen to taxis in Kuwait and military vehicles in Algeria. There were monitoring stations all over the world, staffed in some countries by two or three people working at the American consulate, but without the involvement of the consul. Nowadays, adds Charles, there is no need to have staff in the monitoring stations, since they are led from US satellites.   The NSA listening-post in Cyprus in 1961 was a major communications relay station. It was just ten minutes’ drive from Nicosia, outside the city walls, on the upper floor of a huge square cement block with no windows and a carefully guarded entrance. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence and scrub, with 143

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an antennae field nearby. The CIA had the ground floor, but there was no communication between the two agencies. Charles doesn’t seem to have much respect for the CIA, which he describes as a ‘most risk-averse social club.’   Every day, Charles and his fellow Navy personnel climbed up an outside staircase to the Navy intercept site. The intercept operators worked in a vast room, crammed with all kinds of equipment for intelligence gathering, and about 100 desks; during the day, about eighty men—no women—were working at any one time, listening to voice communications and telephone conversations and copying Morse code transmissions. Some of the messages coming in to Cyprus were in plain language; others had to be decrypted from cipher, though not all of them were readable by the NSA. Communications filtered in from all over the world and were transmitted to Washington, with the officials’ assessment of them. Charles was in charge of processing and reporting. It was the job of his team to process the incoming intercepted messages: to decrypt them if that could be quickly done in the field, to translate them from their mostly Arabic originals, attach a header showing the date and the time when it originated, then send it off to the NSA near Washington and to authorized consumers.   Fair-haired and blue-eyed, Charles was twenty-seven years old at the time, with a wife and young family. He relished the outdoor life on this sunny, beautiful island and, as the only American pilot on Cyprus, was made welcome at RAF Nicosia by the British officers, with whom he played tennis and went sailing from the ancient harbour of Kyrenia. The work itself was interesting and he enjoyed the company of his fellow workers—‘good people.’ They dressed informally in khaki trousers and open shirts and the atmosphere was low key. In the summer he worked tropical hours, from 06.30 to 13.00.   But about three hours before midnight on 17 September 1961, something very unusual happened. The Communications Watch Officer telephoned him at home and said, ‘Hey! Get yourself out here tonight! Something interesting is going to happen.’ It wasn’t a command—more of a friendly invitation to come along. Charles was intrigued and quickly got in his car, to drive to the Naval Communications Facility. Looking back, says Charles, it was extraordinary, because this was the only time he was called in at night during the whole of his time on Cyprus.   Shortly after midnight, he and about four or five other officers found themselves clustered round a loudspeaker, listening to a recording. They heard the 144

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rushing noise of an aircraft engine and the commentary of the pilot: ‘I see a transport plane coming low. All the lights are on. I’m going down to make a run on it. Yes it is the Transair DC6. It’s the plane.’ The pilot’s voice was ‘cool and professional.’ Then they heard gun cannons firing—and the pilot exclaiming: ‘I’ve hit it. There are flames! It’s going down. It’s crashing!’ At this point, noticed Charles, the voice had some ‘excitement.’ He had the impression that the pilot was ‘expecting the plane.’   The communication was one-sided—a ‘cockpit narrative,’ with only the pilot’s voice and no response from the field command station. There may have been some answering noise but if so, ‘it wasn’t important and wasn’t recorded as such.’ In Charles’s opinion, the communication must have been transmitted to a field command post on Very High Frequency (VHF); a communications technician would have stuck a header on it and then retransmitted it on High Frequency (HF) to Nicosia, for relay to Washington.   Somebody made the point at the time, recalls Charles, that the recording was only seven to eight minutes old when it came through—it was ‘history in the making.’ It would have taken this long to arrive because of the relay factor. He does not remember whether it was in French or English, since he is fluent in both languages, but he believes it was in French. And although he has a sense of having heard the pilot’s voice, there is a very slim chance that he read a transcript; it was a long time ago and it is difficult to be sure. But in any case, a tape is logical. Charles recalls, too, that the Communications Watch Officer or another officer cried out something like, ‘It’s the Lone Ranger! We know him! He must be waiting for Hammarskjöld’s plane!’ This pilot was known to the intelligence community, comments Charles, and there was a dossier on him marked ‘L.R..’   Charles has clearly thought hard in the intervening years about what he heard that night in Cyprus. The pilot must have been communicating with the CIA, he believes, or with some other Katangese, Rhodesian or British base, which was cooperating with the CIA. In plain English, he adds, the shootingdown of Hammarskjöld must have been a CIA-sponsored operation—‘If the CIA didn’t order Hammarskjöld’s death, at least they paid for the bullet.’ But he has never been able to understand why the recording came through the NSA listening-post, rather than the CIA operation downstairs. Furthermore, there must have been two identical recordings: ‘The one we heard, which was picked up by CIA intercept systems and must be in existence in NSA files or CIA files. The other—which was heard by the field command post.’   Ever since, Charles has wondered why he was brought in on this event. Normally he did not work at night and communications like this were outside the 145

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area of his responsibility. It was often the case, though, that there was a heightened level of activity at the post when dramatic incidents were expected or actually breaking.   Nor was he the only witness. There were several other men with him, including Wat T. Cluverius IV, a naval officer who was slightly junior to Charles and a good friend. Wat went on to have a distinguished career in the American diplomatic service, most notably in the Middle East. A few years ago, Charles tells me, he telephoned Wat in Rome, where he was Director-General of the Multinational Force and Observers, which was overseeing the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. He asked Wat to think back to that night: ‘Why were you and I called out one night to process something that was going to be coming through?’ But Wat said he had no memory of such an event. Perhaps he had forgotten about it, comments Charles; or perhaps he had reached such a high level in his career that he did not consider it a suitable topic. He may have been conscious that he was speaking from a UN headquarters, with an open telephone line, rather than from the secure office of an American diplomat.   However, there was no classification on what Southall heard, as far as he knew; if it had been classified, he would not have spoken about it to anyone. As it was, he had readily mentioned it to anyone who was curious, ever since the night of the event, and had always been surprised by the lack of any official interest.   Now Charles stops talking to me and picks up a manila envelope from the table. ‘Have a look at these,’ he tells me. ‘They’re letters between me and State.’ Surprised, I open the envelope and glance quickly through the papers, which are mostly copies of correspondence from the 1990s between Charles and the US State Department.   ‘Take them away and photocopy what you like.’ He would be back in London in a week, he adds, when I could give him the documents back. The first document in the series is a letter sent to Charles on 8 December 1992 by Karen L. Enstrom, the Nordic Analyst at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (known as the INR), which analyses intelligence at the State Department. Getting straight to the point, Enstrom asked Southall if he had any information about the crash of the Albertina. ‘The Government of Sweden,’ she told him, ‘has found new information which indicates that Hammarskjöld’s plane may have been shot down’—but offered no details. The letter was sent care of the Bureau of Naval Personnel but was not sent on from the Bureau until three months later, on 4 March 1993. 146

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  Charles received Enstrom’s letter on Saturday 21 March and he sent a prompt reply on Monday. ‘Your letter of 8 December,’ he explained, had only just reached him. But, he added, ‘I have been expecting it for thirty years.’ Then he went on: This is a sensitive matter, both for itself and for spillover into other covert projects which would still concern the US and friendly governments. My own personal safety is a real but secondary matter. There are individuals and governments who would not welcome this enquiry.

‘I have long believed,’ he went on, ‘that this matter should be brought to rest in the right way. I am willing to take the time to do that.’ He suggested that the State Department ask the Navy to place him on temporary active duty for one or two months, so that he could look for source material in the files and prepare a report. ‘This approach,’ he pointed out, ‘would lift the matter out of hearsay into the realm of documented, reliable information. At that point you could sanitize the subject as necessary and respond in good faith to the Government of Sweden.’4   Enstrom replied politely, saying she would refer the case to a more senior level. But there was no further communication for some time, so Charles sent a follow-up letter. ‘I have set the matter of Dag Hammarskjöld’s plane crash in first priority,’ he wrote, explaining that he needed to know what kind of schedule was involved. His clients were scattered all over the world and it was vital to make plans for his overseas travel. He assumed, he added, that the inquiry had been set in motion by George Ivan Smith’s and Conor Cruise O’Brien’s letter to the Guardian on 9 November 1992—‘Hammarskjöld plane crash “no accident.”’ Smith, now aged 77, and O’Brien, 75, had written this letter after the shooting-down of a UN plane carrying an Italian crew on a mercy mission to Bosnia; they wanted to draw attention to the risks faced by UN personnel. Their letter claimed that the European industrialists who controlled Katanga had sent two aircraft to intercept Hammarskjöld before he could meet Tshombe, in order to persuade him to cooperate. O’Brien’s particular theory, not shared by Smith, was that an agent was smuggled onto the Albertina as an added persuasion and that the final body count was in doubt. Both men believed that the rogue pilots did not intend to kill the Secretary-General, but fired a warning shot across the Albertina, hitting a wire and causing the plane to veer out of control.5   Southall had read about this letter in the New York Times and did not for a minute believe that Smith’s and O’Brien’s claims were accurate. It was time, he 147

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thought, for Hammarskjöld’s death to be ‘decently and finally brought to official knowledge.’6   About a month later, on 14 May 1993, he received a letter from a different officer at the INR—Bowman Miller. This letter explained to Southall that he could not be given any status, clearance or file access—that he must simply supply all the information he had at his disposal. The State Department, explained Miller, had been told by the Swedish government that Southall ‘may have listened to a taped conversation between an air tower and a Fouga plane that allegedly shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane.’ But Miller did not reveal the Swedish government’s source. He added that the Bureau had conducted an exhaustive search of State Department and CIA files and found ‘no evidence supporting the theory that Hammarskjöld’s plane was shot or forced down.’7   Southall could easily understand, he told Miller, why access to the files would be refused, given the nature of American activities in Katanga in 1961—‘We were scrambling to do what we could to protect our interests.’ But the files offered the best way of getting some answers: The US original recording that you refer to, or at least a transcript, should be in files not many miles from your office, along with some interesting documentation about its origin. This recording may not be the only one.

‘I do not recall,’ he added, ‘whether it is in English or French, as I speak both, but it is chilling to listen to.’8 He ended his letter by suggesting a meeting.   Some time afterwards, it was suggested to Charles that he get in touch with the Swedish newspaper Expressen, offering information for an article on the crash of Hammarskjöld’s plane. Expressen’s editor was very interested but asked Charles if his friend Wat Tyler Cluverius IV, who had also been at the naval communications facility on Cyprus on the night of the crash, shared the same recollection.   Charles then wrote to Wat, who was still working in Rome. The editor of Expressen ‘found it a bit hard,’ he told Wat, ‘to believe that I knew precisely what happened and that you had no special memory of it. I mention this only because the matter may not go away. It is possible you will find someone asking you about this, and if they do, I would be most interested to learn of that contact.’9 But there was no reply from Wat.   Two days before Christmas, Southall wrote again to the INR. He had been prompted to do so, he said, by a call the night before from a Swede who had reminded him of the ‘high level of interest’ in Sweden in Dag’s death. He was becoming wary of a pattern developing where he would be seen as ‘an intelli148

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gence officer now revealing what has hitherto been hidden.’ He offered again to help with an investigation: ‘We both have our reasons for wishing this story to either go away or get back into focus. If you wish to call me, I again will be happy to offer what help I can.’10   A week later, he decided to write to his old friend Sam Lindberg, the son of John Lindberg, a friend of Hammarskjöld from the 1930s in Sweden. Now, Charles asked Sam if he had heard of a man called Bengt Rösiö: He is the man the Swedish foreign ministry turned to in the late fall of 1992 to sort out the Hammarskjöld story. He named me in his secret report (in Swedish) to the foreign ministry as the ‘CIA-man Southall’—which is so inaccurate as to suggest a plant.

Charles added that the State Department had told the Swedish Foreign Ministry they could not locate him, at roughly the same time that they were writing to him for information. He feared they wanted ‘nothing that would disturb their story of an accident.’11   Meanwhile, Bengt Rösiö had been trying to find Charles; he had heard about him from a contact who knew Southall’s first wife, a Norwegian, who had been living with him in Cyprus.12 In February 1994, with the help of Expressen, Rösiö finally tracked Southall down in the Moroccan city of Casablanca. Here Charles was managing a private company, which was his cover for commercial intelligence, in an office building in the centre of the city. ‘Neither the US nor British authorities,’ wrote Rösiö to Southall, ‘have been very helpful and though I try to avoid believing in conspiracies, I note a marked reluctance in digging up the Ndola file.’ In his own view, he added, the crash of the Albertina had been due to a misjudgement of altitude.13   Southall disagreed. ‘It just doesn’t ring right,’ he explained carefully in his reply to Rösiö. ‘The Transair DC-6 was being professionally flown by an alert crew with established cockpit procedures on an otherwise uneventful night flight in accordance with its flight plan. Its let-down complete, the aircraft was where it was expected and was a sitting duck.’14   With the sanction of the Swedish Foreign Ministry, Rösiö visited Casablanca in the second week of March, 1994, where he met and questioned Southall on four separate occasions.   Once back in Sweden, Rösiö filed a report to the Foreign Ministry. He asserted that Southall must be mistaken in his belief that the CIA was involved in the crash, since the USA had opposed the Katanga secession. After all, said Rösiö, the Pentagon feared that an independent Katanga would increase the 149

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influence of the Soviet Union, create strong opposition in black Africa, and risk a civil war which would threaten the mining of copper, cobalt and uranium. The US government, argued Rösiö, was anxious to see Katanga incorporated into a federal and unified Congo.   This was true up to a point. When John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as President in January 1961, he signalled that he would be more willing than Eisenhower to support the UN against Belgian interference in Congo. He also publicly backed the African nationalist movement. When his Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, George ‘Soapy’ Mennen Williams, was asked in 1961 about American foreign policy, he replied, ‘What we want for Africa is what Africans want for themselves.’ This remark made headlines—‘Soapy says “Africa for the Africans!”’ It infuriated white settlers in the Rhodesian Federation and when Williams arrived in Lusaka he was punched on the nose. But he was staunchly backed by his President, who declared: The statement of ‘Africa for the Africans’ does not seem to me to be a very unreasonable statement. [Williams] made it clear that he was talking about all those who felt that they were Africans, whatever their colour might be, whatever their race might be. I do not know who else Africa should be for.15

  That was the rhetoric. But behind closed doors Kennedy had not shifted very far from the previous administration’s foreign policy on Africa, which had engineered the deposing of Lumumba and actively sought his murder. Now, in 1961, Kennedy’s administration was busily consolidating Adoula as Prime Minister, strengthening Mobutu, and marginalizing Gizenga. The priority for the White House was not what was best for the Congo, but what was best for America and how to neutralize Communism.   In any case, some very powerful interest groups in the US were sympathetic to Tshombe. One of these was led by Thomas Dodd, a Democrat Senator from Connecticut, who had substantial personal investments in Katanga. Dodd warned Congress that UN policy in the Congo would lead to a Communist takeover and when Operation Morthor began on 13 September 1961, he denounced the UN to Congress, accusing it of installing a ‘pro Communist’ government. He demanded that the State Department withdraw US financial support to the UN unless its forces reversed their action. Some of his speeches were drafted by a smooth-talking Belgian called Michel Streulens, who ran the Government of Katanga Information Service in Washington and was adept at finding allies on Capitol Hill and in the press.   George W. Ball, Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs until December 1961, believed that the American who was most sympathetic to Tshombe 150

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was Averell Harriman. On one occasion he arranged for Harriman to meet with Tshombe in Geneva—‘I can’t tell you the time sequence on that, [but] he came back with recommendations that we treat Tshombe not as a pariah. And he thought that business could be done with Tshombe.’ This view was not shared, added Ball, by Ed Gullion, the American Ambassador in Leopoldville, or by the African Bureau (by which he meant Kennedy’s ‘New Africa’ group, headed by Mennen Williams). Ball added that Richard ‘Dick’ B. Russell, a Democrat Senator from Georgia who was widely known for his opposition to the civil rights movement, was pro-Tshombe, along with Dodd.16   Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, did not pretend to share the sympathetic view of African nationalism that was articulated by Kennedy and Williams. ‘African radicals such as Nkrumah, Touré, and Keita,’ he wrote in a ‘National Intelligence Estimate’ on 31 August 1961, ‘tend to be more strenuous in trying to impose authoritarian discipline and revolutionary zeal. For them, freedom requires the elimination of all special ties to the West as the only guarantee against “neo-colonialism.”’ He was concerned, he added, that the fissures apparent among Africans were ‘bound to attract Cold War competition.’17 The activities of the UN in New York were vigorously scrutinised by the CIA, which wrote reports on the issues under discussion and also on the identities and itineraries of the various delegations visiting the Secretary-General.18   Intelligence experts in the Rhodesian Federation believed it could rely on the ongoing support of the CIA, though perhaps not of the State Department. Basil Maurice ‘Bob’ de Quehen, the head of the Federal Intelligence Security Bureau (FISB)—who until 1956 had been the regional Security Liaison Officer (SLO) for MI5—told Welensky in May 1960 that the ‘State Department (like others) goes into low gear in Presidential Election year but [the] CIA is not changed with politics and under Allan [sic] Dulles may be considered permanent and the better bet for helping us.’19   Some people suspected that the CIA in practice pursued a foreign policy of its own, which at times conflicted with the proclaimed policy of the State Department and the President himself. These suspicions grew stronger after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba on 15–17 April 1961.   The view from America on Tshombe and Katanga, therefore, was conflicted and complex. *

Over the next eighteen months I meet Charles several times, as he passes through London en route to destinations around the world. We always meet 151

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at the Travellers Club though on one occasion I am refused entry. I had forgotten the dress code and am wearing denim jeans. So we go to the café across the road.   He tells me about the world of intelligence—a ‘fun game’—and warns me to be careful. Staying alive, he says, requires looking over your shoulder at all times. I am also learning a new language: a ‘wet job,’ I discover, is a killing. When I tell him that I suspect I had been secretly taped during a recent interview in Sweden with a source, he is not at all surprised. ‘Well, of course. You must expect that. It’s a matter of course.’ I quickly look around, to see if there is a secret microphone recording our conversation. But if there is one, I wouldn’t know.   I have grown to like and respect Charles and I trust him, too. He is no conspiracy theorist, but sensible and amusing. It is clear, as well, that he is genuinely interested in unearthing the truth about what actually happened on the night of 17–18 September 1961. For this reason, he tried yet again to contact Wat Tyler Cluverius IV, but Wat was too ill to speak on the phone. Not long afterwards, Wat died.   Moreover, Charles is an intelligence insider and understands this world far, far better than I ever will. ‘My activities,’ he wrote in one of the letters to the State Department that he showed to me, ‘remain buried several layers deeper than anything that will be reflected in my service record.’20 I make a point of never asking what he is up to—or where he is going—once he leaves London.

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12 HIGH FREQUENCY ETHIOPIA, 1961

The world of 1961 seems to be getting smaller and smaller. For it turns out that not only from Cyprus but from Ethiopia, too, nearly 2,000 miles north of Northern Rhodesia, some of the airwaves used in Ndola could be heard. For in the middle of the night of 17–18 September, a few miles outside Addis Ababa, a Swedish flying instructor named Tore Meijer heard a conversation over short-wave radio between flight controllers, one of whom was at Ndola airport and expressed surprise that as far as he could tell, one plane was being unexpectedly followed by another.   Meijer was an instructor at the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force (IEAF) flying school, set up in 1946. He and his family lived in a community of about fifty Swedish families—of pilots, wireless operators and engineers—who were linked to the Air Force base at Bishoftu (later known as Debre Zeyit), a small village close to a crater lake called Hora. The Meijers lived in a house in the compound (named ‘Fairfield’ after the Emperor’s wartime home in exile in Bath, England) of Emperor Haile Selassie’s summer palace.1 By a remarkable coincidence, I discover that one of the people who founded the flying school was Bo Virving, who worked for Transair in the Congo in 1960–62 and attended the investigations into the crash of the Albertina. Virving lived with his growing family in Bishoftu. His son Björn, who has been helping me with my research, still visits today on a regular basis and supports a local school.2   Tore Meijer’s story from 1961 was dug up in March 1994 by the Swedish journalist Anders Hellberg, who then wrote an article in Dagens Nyheter, Swe

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den’s dominant and largest daily newspaper. Hellberg gave Meijer’s account of what happened that night: An American colleague of mine came home with a nice short-wave radio, a rarity, and asked me if I wanted to buy it. During the evening of 17 September I was testing the radio at about 10 p.m. (GMT). I’m testing the various frequencies and all of a sudden I hear a conversation in English, obviously from an airport control tower. I also heard the name ‘Ndola’.

Then, he said: The voice says, ‘he’s approaching the airport, he’s turning … he’s levelling’—where the pilot is approaching the actual landing strip. Then I hear the same voice saying, ‘another plane is approaching from behind, what is that?’ – The voice says, ‘He breaks off the plan … he continues.’

At this point, explained Meijer, the transmission ended abruptly.3   Next day, he reported this strange occurrence to the head of the Ethiopian Air Force and he also told the Americans he knew. ‘I may even have reported to the Swedish Embassy in Addis Ababa,’ he recalled later, ‘but I might be mistaken. Apart from that, there was nothing I could do. And I heard nothing in the transmission about the plane being shot down; only that another plane came up from behind.’4 He tried to get hold of Bo Virving, whom he knew from Bishoftu, but without success.5   Bengt Rösiö was one of many Swedes to read Hellberg’s article in Dagens Nyheter. Two days after its publication, he wrote a letter to the Deputy Assistant Under Secretary Peter Tejler at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, giving his assessment of Meijer’s claim. This letter is currently in the Swedish Royal Library, along with Rösiö’s report on Charles Southall.   ‘Brother,’ wrote Rösiö to Tejler: ‘According to Hellberg, Meijer—who the other year contacted the Foreign Ministry—listened at 22 GMT. Meijer himself claims it to be 22 local time. 22 Addis time is 21 Ndola time, at which time Hammarskjöld was about halfway. The conversation might have been regarding Lansdowne’s aircraft.’ But this is impossible, since Lansdowne’s plane arrived at 21.40 Ndola time. In any case, the time reported by Dagens Nyheter was not 22.00 local time, but about 24.00 (10 p.m. GMT), which was just minutes before the Albertina’s crash.   But I need to check whether the information in the newspaper is consistent with the facts given by Tore Meijer himself. Björn Virving tells me that Tore Meijer is sadly now dead, but his widow is kind enough to talk to me about the episode. She confirms that the story in the newspaper is accurate and recalls, 154

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too, that her husband was concerned that something was wrong on that night in September 1961. She speaks with great fondness of their time in Ethiopia: they loved the people and the country, regarding it as a second homeland.6   Bengt Rösiö also addressed the technical details in Meijer’s report: Ndola was not, as Hellberg obviously believes, a small airport out in the bush, but an international airport, evidently with VHF. The frequencies were 118 and 119 mc/s … The traffic with SE-BDY was on 119.1. The ranges on VHF senders are usually limited to 100–200 kilometres to avoid interference with other airport’s traffic.

This meant, concluded Rösiö, that Meijer must have been listening to a conversation between two people in Ndola’s tower—which would be very odd. ‘It is not very easy to understand,’ observed Rösiö, ‘why two people in the same room communicated with each other through a short-wave radio, and Meijer’s explanation is that, by mistake, a short wave radio had not been switched off.’’7   But I am starting to suspect that Rösiö does not understand the functioning of short-wave radio. I immediately email Charles Southall to ask for help. He is an expert and enthusiastic ‘ham’ radio operator, with his own call sign. If anyone can help me, it will be him. Charles, with his usual generosity, is glad to help. Rösiö, he explains, appears to have misunderstood the difference between VHF and HF. It was certainly the case that Ndola Approach Control would have been using 119.7 and the Ndola tower was on 118.3. ‘Those are line-of-sight VHF frequencies,’ adds Charles, ‘and not useful at any long distance.’ He offers a much more reasonable theory. In his view, Meijer must have been listening on High Frequency. A number of Flight Information Centres in Africa, including Addis, Lusaka, Ndola and Johannesburg, used 13336 kHz, which is a daytime frequency, and 5505 kHz, a night-time frequency. ‘This offered a good way of monitoring air-traffic over a large bit of Africa, for someone who was aviation-minded.’ What probably happened, thinks Southall, is that Meijer heard a communication between Ndola and Lusaka air traffic control on one of these shared frequencies.   According to Anders Hellberg’s article in Dagens Nyheter, Lars-Åke Nilsson, the Cabinet Secretary in the Swedish Foreign Office, was struck by a similarity between Meijer’s information and that of Southall. In fact, they were somewhat different: for whereas Meijer appears to have heard part of a conversation between air traffic controllers, Southall heard a ‘cockpit’ narrative, describing the shooting-down of a plane.   But both men heard evidence of activity in the Ndola sky that night which— from different parts of the world and thousands of miles away—supports the discounted testimony of witnesses on the ground. 155

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  Shortly after reading Hellberg’s article, I find in the UN archives in New York some corroboration of what Tore Meijer heard that night. In one thick file is a wad of telex streams exchanged on 17–18 September 1961 between Sture Linnér in Léopoldville and Ralph Bunche in New York. Linnér was collecting information from O’Brien in Elisabethville and sending it on to UN headquarters. At 09.00 local time on Monday 18 September, O’Brien reported that an official named Smith at UN base operations at Léopoldville airport had just contacted Ndola and learned that late the previous night an unidentified aircraft had overflown Ndola airport; it did not attempt to land or establish communication with the control tower.8 O’Brien did not identify Smith or his official position; but it could not have been George Ivan Smith, Hammarskjöld’s great friend, since he was in the USA at this time.   This sighting of a mystery plane was mentioned in a ‘special’ UN report on the crash, released on 19 September 1961. This brief account summarised all the available news on the crash, including the following: ‘At 09.00 hours [on 18 September], United Nations base operations at Ndjili airport [at Léopoldville] reported that an unidentified aircraft had been reported overflying Ndola airport late the previous night but that no communication contacts had been made between this plane and the control tower.’9 This information also appeared in some newspapers in southern Africa, which cited Jacques Poujelard, a UN spokesman, as their source. According to the Cape Times on 19 September 1961: A United Nations spokesman stated last night that sabotage or the shooting down of the aircraft could not be ruled out. Shortly before Mr Hammarskjoeld’s aircraft crashed, an unidentified aircraft circled the airport and the control tower could not make contact with it.

Poujelard was quoted as saying that there was something ‘very strange’ about the unidentified aircraft not replying to the control tower’s signals.10   The source for this information must have been the Ndola control tower. For only the tower would have known whether or not there was an attempt by any plane to establish communication. But no reference to this unidentified aircraft was made in any of the official inquiries into the crash. Nor did it appear in Martin’s log of activity in the control tower on the fateful night, which he wrote up the following day on the basis of his notes.   Yet another puzzling account of the night of 17–18 September 1961 turns up in the UN archives. It was given to ONUC intelligence in Elisabethville just over a year after Hammarskjöld’s death, by Cléophas Kanyinda, a Congolese man who had been a clerk with the Katangese government, paying the 156

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mercenaries their wages. He was one of a number of people who deserted Tshombe and turned to the UN for asylum.   On 25 November 1962, Kanyinda fled to the ONUC refugee camp run by Tunisian soldiers, where he divulged the names and whereabouts of several dozen mercenaries.11 Subsequently, on 14 December 1962, he supplied new testimony about the crash of the Albertina, which he signed and dated in the presence of UN officials. ‘I know many things,’ it began. ‘The United Nations and the Red Cross said that it was an accident. But I heard [otherwise] from the lips of Munongo who was returning from Jadotville where he had gone in person to give instructions to the Katangese Gendarmerie.’ Here Kanyinda is likely to be referring to a visit by Godefroid Munongo, the Katangan Minister of the Interior, to the gendarmerie encircling the surrendered Irish company. Then, recorded Kanyinda, It was probably on 18 September 1961, at about 15.00. Munongo had just landed on the Plaine de Secours, in Rhodesian territory. Mr Deloof, Councillor of the Territory of Kipushi, had come to meet him. When the gate was raised to permit the Minister’s car to pass, I got up and came near the car which had stopped under the three mango trees near the gate. Mr Deloof greeted the Minister.

Kanyinda said he heard a surprising conversation between the two men: Deloof: How are things in Jadotville? Munongo: All right! I MUST INFORM YOU THAT Mr H has been KNOCKED DOWN … WE ARE GOING TO TEACH THEM! [Je dois vous informer que M. H. a été abattu. Nous allons leur apprendre!]

Munongo apparently spoke ‘with a look of satisfaction.’ Then Deloof, who had been leaning on the door of the car where Munongo was seated, hurried to get inside the car.   ‘Following this news,’ added Kanyinda, ‘in spite of the Government’s prohibition, under penalty of prison, to listen to the radio, I locked myself in my room that evening at 18.00 and, having tuned it in very low, listened to radio Brazzaville.’ The radio announced that ‘the plane carrying the Secretary-General of the United Nations had crashed in a region adjacent to Ndola.’   Kanyinda’s statement was given in French and translated into English. The translator made a note: ‘Abattre means “to knock down.” Referring to aircraft, it is generally used to translate the English “to shoot down.” It does not however necessarily imply that the action was done by fire-arms.’12   This was not the only material relating to Hammarskjöld’s crash to emerge in 1962 and end up in the UN archives. There is also a report of an interroga 157

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tion by ONUC military information of a mercenary named John Benjamin Swanepoel, who was suspected of some kind of involvement in Hammarskjöld’s death. The investigation was inconclusive.13 But years later, in 1993, a Britishborn man with Norwegian citizenship, who had worked as a mercenary for Tshombe, said that when he was in Elisabethville he had shared house arrest with a South African by the name of Swanepoel, who claimed that he shot Hammarskjöld and a guard. The mercenary stated that according to Swanepoel, the Albertina had been forced down and men had been posted in the bush to wait for it, in order to kill the Secretary-General.14   ONUC intelligence also collected four allegations that a Belgian called André Gilson, who was working for Union Minière in the travel office with responsibility for logistics, had attacked the Albertina. All the men making these allegations worked for Union Minière. One of them was Léon Muyumba, who said on 29 August 1962 that he heard Gilson threatening to do the same thing to U Thant, Hammarskjöld’s successor as Secretary-General, as he had done to Hammarskjöld. This was echoed by a man called Joseph Tumba, who said that two days before the death of the Secretary-General, while in the Union Minière mess, he and three others overheard Gilson to say he was going to attack his plane; and some days later, Gilson asserted that he had done so. On the evening after the crash, there was a party organized in his honour, when many white people embraced Gilson.15   Joseph Ngoie, in a statement dated 10 October 1962, said that he had been informed by friends that just before the death of Hammarskjöld was known, many people were congratulating Gilson for having attacked his plane. His orders had apparently been received by telex. A further source was an anonymous letter, which was mailed in Léopoldville on 29 September and handed to ONUC on 19 October, which claimed that Gilson had attacked Hammarskjöld’s plane. According to this letter, Gilson announced that Hammarskjöld was ‘finished’ before the crash was known; and on his return to Elisabethville, he was welcomed as a hero.16   None of the witnesses gave any precise indication of the means by which Gilson might have been implicated in Hammarskjöld’s death.   ONUC reported these allegations to New York, where Bunche took a keen interest, wondering if at last some truth about the plane crash was going to emerge. He gave instructions for the new evidence to be checked out. But this was a challenge, since it was reported that Gilson ‘does not move around openly’; moreover, only a ‘tough interrogation’ was likely to deliver results, since he was a ‘tough character.’17 Interpol investigators were brought in, who 158

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carried out background research and made plans for an interrogation. All discussions on the Gilson affair were conducted by the UN in the strictest secrecy, on the grounds that this was a ‘delicate matter.’18 However, excitement was growing in New York at the prospect of some new revelations.19   Under interrogation by Interpol officers in Elisabethville, Gilson denied the accusation and supplied an alibi for 17 September 1961: that in the afternoon of 17 September 1961 he had gone to the Archbishop’s house with his brother to attend a meeting of the Belgian, French and Italian Consuls about the safety of Europeans living near the Baluba camp. At about 17.00 local time, they went to the camp and then returned to the Archbishop to provide reassurance. At 18.00, the time of the curfew, Gilson went home.   However, he confirmed that he had said to his colleagues something along the lines of: ‘Ce type (M. H.) nous a eus’—‘This guy (Hammarskjöld) fucked us over.’ This was likely, he said, since it corresponded to the opinion of most Europeans in Elisabethville. When asked if he had spoken about Hammarskjöld to any of his accusers, he answered, ‘No. Besides I never discussed politics with blacks.’20   On balance, decided the interrogators, it was unlikely that Gilson was implicated in the crash, since he was not a pilot and so would not have been able to shoot down the Albertina. They did not consider the possibility that he might have attacked the aircraft in any other way. Nor were they concerned that his alibi referred only to the afternoon of 17 September: it did not cover the morning and he offered no evidence to substantiate his claim that he had stayed home in the night, after the curfew.   A full report on Gilson was eventually produced by Interpol on 18 December 1963. It was sent to Bunche with a statement by legal counsel, which argued that the report did not constitute ‘new evidence’ requiring the investigation into the crash to be reopened, within the meaning of the third paragraph of resolution 1759 (XVII) of 26 October 1962, in which the General Assembly had asked to be informed of any new evidence relating to the death of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.   Lawyers had considered whether there were grounds for releasing the report more generally, but concluded that it ‘would probably only stir interest in these allegations and serve little purpose at the present time.’21 The decision was taken that ‘nothing further need be done at this time.’22 * The Gilson inquiry of 1962–63 was the last official attempt by the UN to investigate the crash of the Albertina. But on an unofficial basis, a senior offi 159

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cial of the UN Secretariat—Hammarskjöld’s great friend George Ivan Smith— devoted the rest of his life to a search for the truth about what happened.   Smith himself had been kidnapped by Katangese mercenaries in November 1961 and regarded himself as ‘extremely lucky to get off with three broken ribs, because most of the evening I seemed to be sitting with rifle barrels pointing at my head.’ Fourteen of his men were also kidnapped.23 The impact on his life of the conflict in Katanga was reflected in the name he chose for his cocker spaniel—‘Fouga.’24 He was devastated by the Secretary-General’s untimely death. ‘God knows I don’t devalue your troubles and sorrows,’ wrote some friends to Smith in 1962, ‘but you must cheer up, you must be yourself, you must remember Dag hopefully not regretfully, or else the good friend and good man from Australia I met thirty-five years ago will have gone into hiding. Don’t let that happen.’25   Smith’s vast archive, which was catalogued and opened at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in 2003, contains the paper trail of his thirtyyear search. Manuel Fröhlich, a German political scientist who has produced an excellent evaluative account of his archive, observed that his investigations cover some 30 to 40 years and are ‘rich with detail and different traces that he followed.’26 A British historian, Matthew Hughes, has also looked closely at the George Ivan Smith collection and concluded that although they offer no clear answers to the puzzle of what happened to the Albertina, they contain intriguing detail which seems to support the theory that the plane was forced down as a result of interference by hostile aircraft.27   Smith was never swayed from his conviction that sabotage was responsible. Shortly after the crash he went to Ndola to speak to the airport manager John ‘Red’ Williams, who had been on duty on the night of the crash; when Williams understood this was an inquiry by a personal friend of Hammarskjöld and not part of any official investigation, he was willing to be frank. ‘You are right to inquire,’ he told Smith. ‘It was not a normal flying accident.’28   Some of Smith’s friends were concerned for his safety. When John P. Nugent, chief African correspondent of Newsweek, learned from Welensky in August 1962 that he was planning to take Smith on a fishing expedition to the Kariba dam on his next visit, he wrote Smith a sardonic—but serious—warning: ‘Sounds fine to me. If however in the bottom of the boat you notice a length of rope and a sack of heavy irons, I’d make sure I had my water wings neatly folded in an innocent-looking knapsack. Things are getting real edgy in Salisbury these days and my Irish nose sniffs violence of the Mau Mau type.’29   Smith chased Welensky for help with his investigations and in 1979 asked for access to his papers. ‘If you can find it possible to give me limited permis160

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sion to study your papers in the Oxford College,’ he pleaded, ‘that would help enormously.’30 But Welensky was not forthcoming. Next month, Smith wrote again. He assured the former Prime Minister that the focus of his inquiries was the mercenary activity in the region: It was straightforward mercenary business and I have built up a very substantial amount of data. For historical reasons I think it most important that I leave in my records every detail possible to emphasize that it was the mercenaries, acting on their own, who brought this about.

‘Even Moïse,’ added Smith, referring to Tshombe, ‘had little or no control over many of their actions because in point of fact they, the mercenaries, did not want a cease-fire. Some of them wanted to go on fishing in muddy waters for financial gain but there were others from the OAS in Algiers who had a political motive, albeit one that was both crazy and unobtainable.’31   This letter was somewhat disingenuous, however, as Welensky guessed. It was certainly the case that Smith believed mercenaries were involved in the crash of Hammarskjöld’s plane, but he was also suspicious that Welensky was a decision-maker behind the scenes. Welensky was not helpful. Rather than cooperate with Smith, he evasively mocked the distress of Swedish people at Hammarskjöld’s death. ‘I understand how the Swedes feel, they really have had no heroes since Charles VIIth,’ he observed. ‘And of course, ‘ he went on, ‘it is very difficult to swallow that the death of the one man that they had produced in all these years that has hit the world scene, should have been killed as a result of the error of a Swedish pilot, it is damned difficult to swallow.’32   In 1980, Smith wrote in desperation to Welensky: Dear Roy, please help me to solve this. I now have everything except the last links and it has become a point of personal importance—as a close friend of Dag, to set the record straight … I need your help desperately on this. My health is rotten and it would mean so much for me to get this right in my own mind before I go to my fathers.33

Smith never got to the bottom of the mystery before his death in 1995.   Essentially, as Manuel Fröhlich has shown, Smith came up with an update or new version of a theory to explain Hammarskjöld’s death every ten years. None of these, as Smith himself knew, was conclusive.34 But he derived some satisfaction, at least, from knowing that he had accumulated an important bank of papers for others to consult. Anxious that the search should continue until the truth was finally known, he implored Bengt Rösiö to be cautious in his investigation of 1993—not to ‘close gates that one day others may open.’35 161

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Unexpectedly my research takes a new direction. For a new set of documents is discovered in Norway—which had been secretly hidden by Bjørn Egge, the Norwegian head of ONUC’s Military Information Branch in 1961. He died in 2007, when his papers were deposited in the Norwegian National Archives. But two years later, these additional papers, which related to his work in the Congo, were found in a cupboard by his widow, Eline Egge.   News of her find reached Hans Kristian Simensen, a Norwegian, and Sune Persson, a Swede, who are both involved in the creation of a new archive in the name of Dag Hammarskjöld for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the new Alexandria Library in Egypt. The archive is planned to include materials on UN peace keeping operations and was actively supported by Sture Linnér, the head of the UN operation in the Congo in 1961.1 Simensen has a particular and personal interest in this collection, because his father, Arne Simensen, was one of the Norwegian troops serving with ONUC in 1961–62, as an aircraft inspector. Persson, who is a political scientist, had earlier met Bjørn Egge in the course of research for his book on Escape from the Third Reich, an account of Folke Bernadotte’s rescue of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Egge, who was a prisoner of war for three years in the Sachsenhausen camp and witnessed Jews going to their death in the gas chambers, had helped to keep alive the memory of Bernadotte’s rescue through his support for the foundation, White Buses to Auschwitz.2   Simensen and Persson visited Eline Egge in Norway in March 2010 and spent several hours examining the documents. Most of them are written in English, some in French, and they include Egge’s scrawled notes as well as offi

163

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cial ONUC documents, such as telexes between Léopoldville and Elisabethville. Some are Katangese official documents. Nearly all of them relate to the foreign mercenaries working in the Congo in 1961.   As they took their leave, Mrs Egge said she would like to give the papers to the Dag Hammarskjöld Archive at the Alexandria Library. Simensen was very excited: ‘I was very surprised! I suddenly had four boxes of documents saying “Top Secret” in my car.’ Next day he drove home to Gothenburg, Sweden, where he made photocopies to use in the digitization process; he then deposited the originals in a bank box. He also telephoned Sture Linnér in Stockholm to tell him about the find—and Sture could hardly wait to see them. Simensen sent him copies immediately. But on the same day, Sture collapsed and died on a street in Stockholm, from a heart attack.3   Simensen then looked around for people who would be able to make good use of the documents. Luckily for me, Sture had told him about my book on a recent trip to Alexandria. So he emailed me to say he would be coming to London in May. Could we meet?   A few weeks later, Simensen started to email me copies of the Egge documents. It quickly became clear that they would fill a real hole in the history of Katanga in 1961: for until now, most of the information available on mercenaries has been provided by their own memoirs, which are one-sided and, often, adventure stories that bear little relation to the sad, grim reality of war.   The detective work of Bjørn Egge, on the other hand, would provide a more reliable kind of evidence. Egge was a renowned war hero, who, in addition to surviving three years in a Nazi concentration camp, was a leader in the Norwegian Resistance. He then served in the Norwegian army before flying to the Congo to join the United Nations as part of the Norwegian contingent. He went on to have a distinguished career in the Norwegian Defence Force and was at the rank of Major General on retirement; he then assumed the presidency of the Norwegian Red Cross.   At Ndola in September 1961, Egge was frankly critical of the behaviour of Rhodesian and British officials in relation to the crash of the Albertina. This made him a profound irritant to Lord Alport. He was also a thorn in the flesh of other British officials. According to the British Embassy in Léopoldville, he continued, after his return to Oslo from the Congo in October 1961, ‘to be quoted by the Press and radio as making tendentious statements on such matters as responsibility for the Ndola air crash.’4 Egge was much disliked by mercenaries, too. When the South African pilot Jerry Puren was captured by the UN in August 1961, he showed ‘a lot of hostility towards the UN. He seems to have something against Col. Egge our Chief of Mil. Info.’5 164

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  Why did Major Egge hide a cache of papers relating to the crisis in Katanga in 1961?   Over the next six months, Hans Kristian painstakingly emailed me all the Egge papers, one by one. The majority are about French mercenaries. On the one hand, this is not surprising. For, according to Conor Cruise O’Brien, Egge was threatened by one of the French officers at a 14th of July party at the French consulate in Elisabethville in 1961. The mercenary stuck a hard object in his back, saying, ‘You are betraying the last bastion of the white man in central Africa. You will get a knife in your back one of these days.’6 But all the same, surely there were too few French soldiers in Katanga to have been of any real importance? According to O’Brien, there were about thirty, though he said there was no way of knowing for certain.7   One of Egge’s spidery notes, dated 20 June 1961, is headed ‘French Mercenaries—French Influence.’ It lists some French mercenaries and—in capital letters—‘FAULQUES.’ This name—often in capital letters—appears on many documents.   Colonel Faulques was a former officer of the 11ième choc, an elite regiment in the French army which served as the armed branch of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE), France’s external intelligence agency at that time. According to Time magazine in 1961, which described the Katanga mercenaries as ‘tough babies,’ the ‘ablest’ of them all was Faulques, a thin, ascetic ex-paracommando officer and a veteran of Dien Bien Phu and Algeria.’8 Faulques, said Le Monde, ‘had won notorious fame for his role in the interrogations which took place in the Susini villa during the battle of Algiers,’ where Algerian rebels were systematically tortured during the Algerian independence struggle.9   I knew that Roger Faulques was the commander of the Shinkolobwe paracommando training camp near Jadotville. But I hadn’t taken Faulques—or any of the French soldiers of fortune—very seriously up to now. But as I study Egge’s papers alongside some UN files and memoirs of men working with Tshombe, a striking picture emerges: of Faulques in the second half of 1961 as ‘the French officer mainly responsible for such planning as there is of operations of Katangan forces.’10 Moreover, UN senior officials believed he was playing a role that was ‘semi political.’11   The French intervention in Katanga had started in earnest at the beginning of 1961 with Roger Trinquier, a French paratroop officer who had fought in Indochina and Algeria and was well known for his theories of guerrilla warfare and counter-insurgency. During his Algerian service he became infamous 165

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in international military circles for pioneering new torture methods in counter-insurgency operations.12 As a result of his opposition to de Gaulle’s Algerian policies, he was transferred from Algeria to metropolitan France. Here, in January 1961, Trinquier received an invitation from the Katanga regime to take command of its armed forces. With permission from the French Armed Forces Minister, he flew to Katanga in late January and accepted the post. He then returned briefly to France, where he told the French government that Katanga was the last bastion of the West against the Communist infiltration of central Africa.   Trinquier left for Katanga again at the end of February, this time taking with him three officers who had established their reputation in the Algerian War: Commander Faulques, Captain La Bourdonnaie and Captain Egé. They entered Katanga via Salisbury in Rhodesia, wearing fake beards to avoid being recognised, and reached Elisabethville on 7 March.13   But they were made pointedly unwelcome by the Belgian military and political advisers in Katanga, who suspected that Trinquier was organizing a coup d’état.14 Tshombe was put under pressure to get rid of Trinquier, who left on 11 March and went to Greece.15 From there, and then in France after April 1961, he drew up recommendations for the organization of Katanga’s military establishment. Faulques and the other two French officers remained in Katanga and Faulques took charge of the training centre in Shinkolobwe, assuming the role of chief of staff to Colonel Muké.16 After Rumpunch, the one-day operation on 28 August 1961 that was carried out by the UN in an effort to round up the mercenaries in Katanga, Faulques set up a guerrilla headquarters.   Trinquier was in communication with Faulques throughout this period and in his book Le Temps Perdu he quotes from their exchanges. On 29 June 1961, Faulques wrote to say that he had underestimated the determination and efficiency of the Belgians. But what shocked him, he said, was the ease with which they lied. ‘The words of an officer here are not worth ours … as to what that will produce … God only knows!’17 Faulques’s methods were resonant of the theories advocated by Trinquier in such books as La Guerre Moderne, published in 1961 and translated as Modern Warfare. Trinquier was proud of the achievements of Faulques and the French mercenaries in Katanga: ‘It’s they, brave combatants, who were on the very point of changing the course of History’ (‘Ce sont eux, combatants magnifiques, qui furent bien près de faire basculer le destin’).18   It appears likely that Trinquier and Faulques had the backing of Jacques Foccart, who has been described as the secret mastermind for Charles de Gaulle in Africa. De Gaulle was opposed to UN intervention in principle and he pro166

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posed that the Congo crisis be settled by a troika composed of Britain, France and the United States; Paris abstained on all the Congo resolutions except one and, like the Soviet Union, refused to pay its assessed contribution to the cost of the peace mission. Its position was one of non-cooperation and occasional acts of obstruction.   During the Brussels Round Table Conference in February 1960, the French Foreign Minister had informed the Belgian Ambassador in Paris that his government still considered the Ferry–Léopold II Accord of 1884 to be in force; this Accord gave France the right of first option if Belgium were to withdraw from the Congo. The historian Ernest W. Lefever is doubtful whether France seriously contemplated replacing Belgian authority with its own in the manner suggested by the nineteenth-century agreement, but it was a reminder that France was watching developments with more than a passing interest.19   In the exercise of de Gaulle’s ambitions for French influence in central Africa, Foccart was a staunch supporter of Abbé Fulbert Youlou, the President of Congo Brazzaville and one of Tshombe’s closest allies.20 But Foccart operated very discreetly. ‘Officially,’ one historian has observed, ‘Foccart is nowhere … He appears to be, thanks to his networks, everywhere!’21 He worked through his deputy in Brazzaville, Jean Mauricheau-Beaupré, who was charged with controlling the Katanga crisis and supporting Tshombe against the UN and the Central Government in Léopoldville.   Since France was not able to interfere outside its official preserve, Mauricheau-Beaupré—known as only as ‘Monsieur Jean’ or ‘Mathurin’—called on former French counter-guerrilla military specialists who had been fighting in Algeria, such as Faulques, to operate in the Congo. He also used private soldiers like Robert ‘Bob’ Denard, although they were by no means of the same calibre: whereas Faulques was a trained and disciplined officer, Denard was the type of adventurer that is usually associated with the word ‘mercenary.’ Denard entered the Congo on 6 March 1961, via Brazzaville.22   Mauricheau-Beaupré’s idea was to make the Congo into a Katanga-centred federation, with Tshombe as the leader of the whole country. This was aimed to prevent Communists—or the Americans—from taking over, which would be a calamity for neighbouring French Congo.23   About two months before Rumpunch, ONUC’s Military Information Branch became aware of an increase in French influence in Katanga and a gradual usurpation of Belgian power. On 29 June 1961, Egge protested to the Katangan Ministry of Defence at the recruitment in Paris of French officers mainly originating from Algeria. Non-military personnel were also arriving, such as a 167

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secretary called Mme Verrière, who had served for eight years with special forces in Algeria and had come to work for the Ministry of Defence.   ‘The trend,’ wrote one of Egge’s officers in a confidential memorandum, ‘is currently two fold, political and military, with probably the ultimate aim of gaining an economic foothold.’ He pointed out that France had refrained from giving either moral or material support to the UN mission in the Congo and that French political opinion was biased in favour of the secessionist state. It was understood, he added, that replacements would be recruited in the former French colonies, where French soldiers had experience of African conditions and ‘the African mind.’ The conditions of employment and pay were to be on a par with those in existence in the French ex-colonies, but with substantial bonuses. Munongo had given his Paris Chef de Mission authority to recruit French technicians and to publicize Katanga’s story in France. However, Union Minière officials in Elisabethville remained ‘adamantly pro-Belgian’ and were highly suspicious of French intentions.24   Only Trinquier, and then Faulques, were connected directly to Mauricheau; the French mercenaries’ contact in Elisabethville was the French Consul Joseph Lambroschini, who was linked to French intelligence.25 In June 1961, Egge and O’Brien called on Lambroschini to ask for his cooperation in the removal of French mercenaries, but he obstructed their efforts—very politely, and with very great charm.26   Lambroschini, along with the Consuls of Britain and Belgium, pressed the UN in September 1961 to provide a garrison to protect the Europeans in Jadotville. This led directly to the entrapment of the Irish company. It also led to Hammarskjöld’s flight to Ndola, in so far as the predicament of the Irish was a major influence on his decision to meet for peace talks with Tshombe.

In effect, Faulques was the commander in chief of the war against the UN. ‘Slap in the centre of Elisabethville,’ wrote Jerry Puren, ‘we managed to locate the command post of Colonel Roger Faulques, OC Elisabethville defences.’ Faulques, he said, ‘was one of the finest soldiers ever to serve Katanga’: We found the scarred legionnaire ensconced in his sandbagged and camouflage netted redoubt plastered with large-scale maps of the capital. Around the room, suspended from beams, on chairs, standing on the ground, were a dozen walkie-talkie radios. We were in the nerve centre of the battle against the UN. Faulques stood in the middle of the chaos.

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‘He was the perfect soldier,’ enthused Puren. ‘In the midst of all the chaos and pressure and after three days without sleep, Faulques still remained clean shaven and impeccably dressed in neatly pressed, if faded, battledress.’27   Ian Colvin, correspondent for the Telegraph and friend of Welensky, was another admirer of Faulques. As he watched Tshombe arriving at Faulques’s headquarters in the ‘native’ city of Elisabethville, he observed that President Tshombe’s car drew up in front of a barred and shuttered store in a dingy back street. Children played in the dust, and workers bicycled home … Inside the store he was met by a lean and fantastically scarred European veteran, Colonel Roger Faulques.

‘On the walls, secure from the United Nations,’ added Colvin, ‘military maps in large scale showed the United Nations dispositions, the points at which clashes had occurred between them and the Katanga gendarmeries, and defensive positions.’28   The background of Faulques’s men worried ONUC, especially that of Captain La Bourdonnaie. ‘This officer,’ wrote Egge to Linnér in L éopoldville, ‘has been identified as the same captain who was involved in Algiers extremist politics and in the procès des barricades. He is obviously a dangerous man.’29 Linnér confirmed Egge’s finding: La Bourdonnaie had been head of the Sûreté for the whole of Algeria, and for three years had been the adjutant of Colonel Godard, who was one of the leaders of the OAS in Algeria. Now in Katanga, he was close to Munongo, the Minister of the Interior.30   Conor Cruise O’Brien took the French officers very seriously, arguing that they were not so much mercenaries as ‘political fanatics, with a record of conspiracy, which was why de Gaulle sent them to Katanga.’31 They were certainly different from the standard soldiers of fortune in Katanga—British, Rhodesian and South African men out for money and adventure.   During the Rumpunch operation on 28 August 1961, many foreign soldiers were arrested by the UN—but only a couple of the French officers. According to Egge’s papers, Faulques responded to Rumpunch by immediately establishing a guerrilla headquarters in the vicinity of Kolwezi, north-west of Elisabethville. Kolwezi, a mining centre for cobalt and copper, was a large town with an airport, on the railway to Elisabethville, and was the headquarters for the west 169

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ern mining group of Union Minière. Outside UN control, it was a strategic place from which to plan and implement operations. ‘We landed at Kolwezi— new base for air operations and free from UN presence,’ recorded Jerry Puren.32   However, Faulques himself, when questioned about this alleged headquarters in Kolwezi, denied its existence. He stated that he was in Elisabethville throughout this period.33   Egge obtained his information about a ‘Faulques guerrilla headquarters’ from a woman—Thérèse Erfield, who was an LRP (locally recruited person) working for the UN on temporary duty. She came to see Egge in Elisabethville on 6 September 1961 after a breakdown in her affair with Faulques’s second in command, 41-year-old Henri-Maurice Lasimone, a former parachutist from Algeria. Before joining the Katanga forces, he had served in Kalonji’s army in South Kasai.34   Erfield had been beaten up by Lasimone and came to Egge for protection, which he readily gave, sending her by plane as soon as possible to Léopoldville. Next day, he sent Linnér and McKeown a secret telex with the information Erfield had given him about Faulques’s guerrilla group. He reported that only two French officers had left Katanga and that a number of French mercenaries had joined Faulques, some of whom had also accepted jobs in the Ministry of Information. They held regular meetings at night in Elisabethville, which were attended by Kimba, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Samalenge, the Minister of Information.   Egge’s telex contained disturbing news—that according to Erfield, the group was planning attacks with plastic bombs and silent infantry weapons against UN establishments and personnel. On their assassination list were O’Brien, his press assistant Michel Tombelaine, Egge and two others.35 But, reported Egge, the group was reluctant to carry out the actions themselves and had difficulty hiring local assassins. They planned to incite the indigenous population against the UN and Faulques had recently instigated some demonstrations of stone throwing and burning of cars.36   The indefatigable Egge produced a biographical sketch of Thérèse Erfield, who exemplified the colourful mix of cultures and backgrounds among the expatriates in Katanga at that time. She was aged 30 and had been born in Cairo to a Polish father and an Italian mother; she spoke five languages and in Cairo had been an interior decorator working for General Motors. Her passport was Greek as a result of her marriage to a Greek citizen called Zoucas, but they had divorced and he was now in Brazil. She then met Lasimone in France and they were sufficiently involved with each other to share a bank account.37 170

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Erfield appears in O’Brien’s memoir To Katanga and Back, though he incorrectly refers to her as Terry Infeld and mistakes the dates. ‘She was very pretty,’ thought O’Brien, ‘even with a black eye.’38   Then Lasimone came to see O’Brien. He regretted his impulsiveness, he said, now realizing that the Polish woman meant everything to him and that he wanted to join her in Léopoldville. Furthermore, ‘Faulques was a scoundrel and a sadist.’39 He said that he wanted to ‘come over’ either to the UN or to the Central Government, and was willing to tell the UN everything he knew. This wish to change sides, he told O’Brien, was because he had been instructed by Munongo and Faulques to carry out acts of genocide against the Baluba, which he was unwilling to do.40 But it later emerged, reported O’Brien to Léopoldville, that Lasimone simply wanted to see Thérèse Erfield: ‘He had heard she was in hospital and he wants to get in touch with her.’ O’Brien thought the French mercenary was ‘in the grip of very great tension and is probably not very well balanced.’41 In November Lasimone was arrested by the gendarmerie and left the Congo, under suspicion of being in contact with the UN. It was assumed by Egge and O’Brien that he had been arrested on Faulques’s orders.42   Erfield’s hit list of UN targets was convincing, since it was corroborated by other sources. O’Brien had already learned, on 31 August 1961, of a plan to kill UN personnel, notably his press officer Michel Tombelaine, and was aware of threats openly hurled at the UN by French mercenaries. Edgar Toupet Thomé, for example, who had arrived in mid-June as a special military adviser to Joseph Yav, the Katangese Minister of Defence, had boasted in the presence of journalists at the Hotel Léopold II that with twenty kilograms of plastic he would take care of the UN—‘L’ONU? Pas de problème! Vingt kilos de plastic et je m’en charge.’43   At the centre of the French war against the UN was Faulques, whose approach—according to Jerry Puren, in his account of a meeting with the French chef de bataillon—was uncompromising: As we came down the steps he cut short a series of exchanges over one of the radios and came limping towards us. We shook hands. ‘Thank you for your effort last night at the airfield, Major … first class.’ ‘Thank you, we were wondering if …’ Before I could finish he had spun on his heel and was shouting orders into one of the radio headphones. ‘Delta group to Rue de Vallier and Leopold. Enemy armour arriving from west. Over.’ ‘Delta … Roger … out.’

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WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD? He came back smiling wanly. ‘Pardon the interruption.’ ‘We wondered if you would like more of the same.’ ‘Yes indeed, yes indeed, Major. Give them hell. Spreads good cheer among the troops.’ He ducked sideways towards another radio. ‘Alpha here … send Lima.’ A crackle of static and then the strained voice of one of the sector commanders. ‘Two companies Ethiopians with armour support on Route 126. We have no rockets left and two injured … heavy pressure … instructions … over.’ In the background we could hear sustained gunfire. Faulques thought for a moment. Then: ‘Pull back Lima to the bakery and RV with Echo group … over.’44

  After the start of Operation Morthor on 13 September, the war between the UN and the French-led Katanga gendarmerie reached a new intensity. According to the French journalist Jacques le Bailly, who was in Elisabethville, Faulques was clearly the leader. Colonel Norbert Muké, who was officially the commander of the Katanga gendarmerie, said le Bailly, was ‘an illiterate former sergeant-major’; the real organization of the resistance was the work of Faulques. ‘In theory Faulques was Muké’s chief of staff, but in reality he was the commander.’45 Faulques had excellent intelligence and knew of the plan for Morthor before it started: a day ahead, detachments of African paracommandos in camouflage jackets trained by Faulques at Shinkolobwe were on guard round the post office in Elisabethville, to resist UN attacks. Stocks of ammunition had been placed by them in houses and offices to make sniping easier.46 Faulques and his French officers were also responsible for the encirclement of the Irish company at Jadotville.47   In the days before (and, indeed, after) the crash of the Albertina, ONUC was the subject of intensifying attacks. News of this increased threat against the UN reached Hammarskjöld, who told Lord Lansdowne in Léopoldville that there was ‘good reason to believe that resistance to the United Nations was being actively organized. There had been an increasing number of incidents directed against UN personnel.’48 On 17 September 1961, Gavin Young reported in the Observer that he had been given a tip-off in Elisabethville ‘that plastic bombs were ready, that an assassination list had been prepared and that United Nations buildings, vehicles and personnel would be attacked before the end of this week.’49 172

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  When SE-BDY took off from Elisabethville on 17 September, en route for Léopoldville to collect Dag, it was fired at and the exhaust pipe was hit by a bullet, and had to be replaced.50 Two days earlier, Captain Lars-Erik Starck, a Transair pilot flying for the UN, had been attacked by Katangese aircraft using guns and light bombs near Kamina. He discussed this with Captain Hallonquist, the pilot of SE-BDY, and they decided that their best tactic in response to such attacks was to lose height, veer and head for the airfield as quickly as possible.51   This agreed strategy may possibly offer some explanation for the low height of SE-BDY as it made its approach to Ndola—about 1,700 feet lower than it should have been.   The French onslaught after Morthor was successful, putting the UN firmly on the defensive. But Faulques, who had taken a leading role, felt dissatisfied. After all, explained Trinquier, the French had been the real victors but the Katangese claimed the success for themselves—Muké was even calling himself ‘Muké le victorieux.’ Faulques, said Trinquier firmly, was the real victor. But although he had previously been considered a saviour by Tshombe, he was now relegated to the outer circle of his advisers.52 Increasingly, Faulques felt frustrated by his position and he left Katanga in January 1962.   Faulques’s group became known towards the end of 1961 as the ‘Crash Group.’ A telex sent to Linnér in Léopoldville from ONUC in Elisabethville on 4 January 1962 stated that according to a fairly reliable source, the ‘so called Crash Group’ of some 38 mercenaries ‘was organized by two French mercenaries Baron and Hiver (presumably nom de guerre) under general supervision Colonel Faulques.’53 There are various possible reasons to explain why the name of Faulques’s group evolved from ‘Faulques’s guerrilla headquarters’ to ‘Crash Group’. Given that the name developed in the last months of 1961, it may not be far-fetched to speculate that there was an association of some sort with the crash of SE-BDY—the most high profile air crash in the region at that time.

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14 THE HIJACK HYPOTHESES

Two theories emerged in the 1960s which attributed the crash of the Albertina to a failed hijack. This is not surprising, given that aerial piracy was significantly on the increase in the 1960s, both as a means of achieving a political end and as a money-making scheme, usually through an insurance claim. During this period it was rare for actual violence to be used and killings were nonexistent; deaths usually occurred only if the hijack went wrong.1 Moïse Tshombe himself was kidnapped in a plane over the Mediterranean in June 1967 and taken to Algeria, where he died two years later.   The first of the hijack theories appeared in Notre Guerre au Katanga, which was published in Paris in 1963 and gives an account of the conflict between Tshombe’s troops and the UN. The book was produced by Roger Trinquier, Jacques Duchemin, who had previously been one of Katanga’s French advisers, and the war correspondent Jacques le Bailly.   It was Duchemin who supplied the story about Hammarskjöld’s death that appeared in La Guerre au Katanga. According to him, Tshombe was bitterly resentful of the UN, suspecting that the real reason for UN action in Katanga was that one of Hammarskjöld’s brothers was the director of a large coppermining company which was a rival to Union Minière. Tshombe therefore— apparently while shaving—concocted a plan for Hammarskjöld’s aircraft to be hijacked. He summoned a Belgian pilot called Réné Gheysels and told him that if the Secretary-General were to accept the idea of peace talks in Rhodesia and hence fly to the Federation, he should hijack his plane. He should then force it to fly to Kolwezi, which was outside UN control. Here Tshombe would keep Hammarskjöld as a hostage until he accepted a peaceful solution to the

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war on Katanga’s terms. The French mercenaries in Kolwezi would provide the necessary back-up for the plan.   According to this narrative, Gheysels duly boarded the Albertina at Léopoldville, armed with false identification cards. He then attempted to hijack the plane as it prepared to land at Ndola, but this was not straightforward and led to a struggle—in which the plane crashed. Duchemin attributed its low altitude to the fact that the pilot banked steeply, in order to throw the hijacker off balance; he also referred to the fact that bullets were found in some of the victims’ bodies as further evidence for his story.   La Guerre au Katanga has been described by Brian Urquhart, in a footnote to his biography of Hammarskjöld, as a ‘weird production,’ with ‘fantasies, bragging, and ludicrous distortions,’ giving ‘a vivid idea of the state of mind of the mercenaries.’2 But it is not completely unreliable: the photographs are high quality and striking, evoking the chaos and conflict of the war between Katanga and the UN, and at least some of the narrative has a basis in fact.   O’Brien was convinced by Duchemin’s story. In the light of ‘weighty new evidence’ concerning the circumstances of Hammarskjöld’s crash, he urged that the UN inquiry should be reopened and Faulques and others be questioned exhaustively. ‘This never happened. Notre Guerre au Katanga fell totally flat and has disappeared from “history.”’3 He himself did his best to draw attention to it, using it as the basis for Murderous Angels, a play he wrote in 1968. Here, the crash of the Albertina takes place after a man called Gheysels has been infiltrated on board by Colonel Zybre, a French adviser to the Katanga government, in order to attempt a hijack. O’Brien’s play specifically cites the account by Duchemin as the historical basis for the plot.4   Bengt Rösiö dismissed Duchemin’s story on the grounds that no seventeenth body was found, although 180 policemen were engaged in searching a wide area. But O’Brien thought this was a ridiculous objection. ‘My dear Ambassador, come off it!’ he wrote to Rösiö. ‘Those policemen were Rhodesians. If they found anything suspicious, they would not piously bring it to the attention of the UN. If they found a superfluous body they would have buried it.’5   But there are other good reasons for challenging Duchemin’s account. For one thing, he made mistakes regarding the flight path of the Albertina between Léopoldville and Ndola; he also said that the plane did not burn, whereas in fact it burned intensively. It has been argued that Kolwezi airport was not equipped for night landing and that its runway was blocked by obstacles on the night of the crash.6 But this is less convincing, since the airport was cer176

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tainly used at night and the obstacles were oil drums that were easily pushed on and off the airfield. In any case, Duchemin was not actually in Africa at the time of the crash, but was apparently told the story in Paris. Nor was Trinquier on the scene. *

A second theory involving a failed hijack emerged in the late 1960s, but with a difference: this one did not involve an additional passenger on the Albertina, but an alien plane. The story was presented on 12 January 1967 in the course of a grand ball at the Paris opera house to Claude de Kemoularia, who had worked at the UN Secretariat between 1957 and 1961 (and later served as France’s Permanent Representative and Ambassador to the UN in the 1980s).7 He was now a business executive in Paris, but spent most of his time in Monte Carlo, where he was a senior adviser to Prince Rainier of Monaco. That evening at the opera house, he was approached by Robert Ahier, a journalist for United Press International (UPI), who reported that some Belgian mercenaries had claimed they had killed Hammarskjöld. ‘Curiously,’ said Ahier, ‘I have come across a man who claims to know, or pretends to know, the truth about the events!’ De Kemoularia said he would like to meet him, as he wanted to know the truth of what had happened.   On 21 January 1967, de Kemoularia had a telephone call from a man called de Troye, during which they agreed that de Troye would come to his Paris office in an hour’s time. He turned up with a younger man, called Grant, saying that they were leaving in a few days for Angola. ‘I explained that I was leaving that evening for Nice and Monaco,’ recorded de Kemoularia. ‘Could I see them again? They said that they were leaving shortly for Marseilles where they were going to interview a few people who may be interested in going to Angola.’ De Kemoularia came to the conclusion that they were recruiting men to go with them to Angola, to fight as mercenaries for the Portuguese colonial rulers against the growing nationalist movement. He invited them to come over to Monaco when they were in Marseilles, to talk at greater length. He said he would arrange a room for them in a Monaco hotel.   The names ‘de Troye’ and ‘Grant’ were new to de Kemoularia. However, the former’s name was similar to that of the Belgian Major Jacques de Troyer, who was in charge of personnel in the Katangese gendarmerie.8 The latter’s surname was the same as that of Johan Mawer Grant, who was interrogated on 12 April 1961 at Kamina base by ONUC’s military branch; all his personal effects were at Shinkolobwe camp.9 There are files on both these men in the UN archives. 177

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  A few days later de Kemoularia was in Monaco and received a call from de Troye. De Kemoularia had a bad cold, so invited the two men to have lunch with him in his apartment. He spent all afternoon with them, taking notes.   They said that one of their colleagues, a Belgian pilot called Beukels, had unintentionally shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane. He had been given the order to intercept and redirect the plane as it flew to Ndola, where the SecretaryGeneral was supposed to be meeting Tshombe for peace talks. Beukels was instructed to divert the plane to Kolwezi, where a group of people representing various European political and business interests were waiting to meet with Hammarskjöld and to make their case about the importance of allowing Katanga to be independent. The group was apparently represented by a Mr X. ‘They would never give his name,’ recorded de Kemoularia, ‘but they told me that he was senior to the Commander of the Katangese air force and of other elements; in fact he seemed to have the role of high command based around Kolwezi. He was said to have been the effective governmental authority in Katanga behind and above Tshombe.’   The Kolwezi group was determined to prevent a peaceful mediation between Hammarskjöld and Tshombe, which they feared might be successful. ‘This Mr X represented the high Katangese command,’ said de Troye and Grant, ‘and the so-called Katangese army was in point of fact run entirely by these foreign volunteers under the direction of Mr X.’ Munongo was in close touch with Mr X and the mercenaries at all times. The men also mentioned Lieutenant Colonel Robert Lamouline, who had been a Belgian major and was now commander in chief of the mercenaries. Only a dozen people knew of the plan to divert Hammarskjöld’s plane, including Mr X and Lamouline. It was apparently not until the Albertina had taken off for Ndola that it was finally decided to put the plan into action.   When de Troye and Grant left, de Kemoularia looked out of the window and saw them driving off in an Alfa Romeo.   De Troye and Grant kept promising to bring Beukels to see de Kemoularia, but turned up at several meetings in Paris without him. De Troye accounted for this by explaining that after the accident the pilot had become psychiatrically disturbed and had dropped in weight from eighty-five to fifty kilos. Apparently he lived in misery, often drinking, and working for a construction company in Belgium.   Despite the absence of Beukels, the men continued to reveal new information. They said that Mr X’s group feared that if Tshombe came to terms with 178

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the UN, it would put in jeopardy the position of Europeans not only in the Congo, but also in the Rhodesias and in all those countries in Africa where white minorities still held immense power over the majority of Africans. They were worried not only that Hammarskjöld was going to meet with Tshombe, but that their talks would be taking place without the presence of the European advisers who normally worked closely with the control group at Kolwezi. Tshombe’s only advisers at the meeting would be a few of his African ministers.   But de Kemoularia was starting to lose patience with the continued failure of Beukels to turn up. He contacted the journalist Ahier and they agreed that stories like these needed careful checking. Ahier himself had heard another account of the crash of the Albertina from a mercenary who was now in an operation in Yemen, who said that the plane had been brought down by antiaircraft fire from the ground. Ahier thought that there was probably some kind of truth in all these stories.   Finally de Troye brought Beukels to see de Kemoularia in Paris, on 13 February 1967. They insisted on coming to his apartment and Grant or some other man stood guard downstairs, in the hallway of the apartment block. Beukels and de Troye now explained that Mr X’s control group had decided to use two Fouga Magister planes, based at Kolwezi, for the intercept operation. Each of these had two seats: one for a radio operator and one for a pilot. Each was armed with two 7.5 mm guns; one in five of the bullets that were carried was a tracer bullet, which would enable the pilot of the DC6 to understand that shots were being fired. They explained that each Fouga had 990 litres of fuel, together with a reserve of 110 litres in reservoirs on the wing tips. With this, they would be able to stay in the air for three hours at an average speed of 800 kilometres an hour, at an altitude of 9,000 metres. Keeping to a much lower altitude, they would be able to fly at 1,100 kilometres per hour. The range of the Fouga was 1,200 kilometres but could reach 1,500 to 1,600, depending on the conditions of flight.   The Fougas had sophisticated radio equipment with which they were able to make multiple connections on a wide range of frequencies, within an area of some 4,000 kilometres. This range gave them access to frequencies which were not generally used, through which they could talk secretly to their base at Kolwezi, if required. In addition, the planes had radar, which would help to locate the Albertina.   ‘There was no desire to harm Hammarskjöld,’ noted de Kemoularia after this meeting. The pilots were under the strongest instructions not to shoot the 179

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plane down but to make a formation around it and shepherd it to Kolwezi. Mr X’s group ‘only wanted to explain the situation and to give him a plan which they thought was workable. Maybe the idea was crazy, but everything told to me by these men showed no evil motivation.’   The Kolwezi group was informed from Léopoldville when Hammarskjöld’s plane left the airport; it was then kept up to date on its progress by a radio source in Ndola. The pilots were told several times of the position of the plane, which broke radio silence three times on the way down from Lake Tanganyika. Information was also provided by the Ndola airport tower, which meant that Rhodesian officials and probably Lord Alport, too, would have been closely involved in the alleged plot.   Then Beukels gave his personal account of events that night. ‘We took off,’ he began, at 23.05 local time: Fouga 1 took off first. We flew together: Fouga 1 at about 2,000 metres, Fouga 2 at about 4,000 to 5,000 metres. After about 100 kilometres, Fouga 1 went up to 9,000 metres and Fouga 2 took the same altitude. The night was very clear. Our plane lights were off, but it was so clear that we could see each other from the moonlight. A hundred kilometres from Ndola, we separated as arranged. We then continued in different directions as instructed, to search for and intercept the DC6—and we didn’t see each other again until we landed hours later at Kolwezi, after the accident. Fouga 2 never saw the DC6. I had the order to descend to 7,000 metres on the periphery of the eighty kilometres from Ndola and to contact the Ndola air traffic control tower at 11.57. The tower gave the following information about the DC6 at 11.58: that it was about 80 kilometres north-east of Ndola, with an altitude of 2,000 to 2,500 metres. Its estimated time of arrival was within ten minutes. I immediately realized that Fouga 2 had failed to intercept the aircraft. My radio operator’s conversations with the tower were on a frequency that could not be obtained or used by the DC6, but we were afraid that our conversations could be heard by America. At that time we were at 7,000 metres and I realized that I might not be able to get to a position near the Ndola airport before the DC6 had already made its descent and was about to land. Therefore the radio operator asked the Ndola tower to request the DC6 to make a further circuit about thirty kilometres around, which would bring it to the position that we could reach at the estimated moment for contact—to give the order for diversion to Kolwezi. This turn would bring the DC6 to a desirable point some thirty kilometres north-east of Ndola. The DC6 was now proceeding down from the north. We were coming up from the south and did not want to present ourselves then to the DC6, so we needed to maneuver into a position from which we were behind the DC6 for our purpose. The tower

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THE HIJACK HYPOTHESES told my radio operator to tune in on the wave-length that was carrying communications between the tower and the DC6, so as to be fully informed about the progress and positioning of the DC6. After 11.58, my radio operator suggested that I change direction and also to climb to 9,000 metres. Now we were at 7,000 metres and needed nineteen seconds to climb to 9,000 metres. I flew to the vertical point where the DC6 was supposed to be. At that moment, the DC6—with all its lights—appeared. It was 00.12. I whipped down in a dive. I thought that the DC6 was at an altitude of something like 1,800 metres. At about 00.13, we were 200 metres over the DC6, coming from behind. We were over the cabin of the plane immediately below and switched on powerful searchlights, which were underneath the fuselage. This shone a bright light down upon the cabin of the DC6. Then, on the advice of my radio operator, I went to the right of the plane. We were now flying parallel with it, but at a tilted angle. Then I bypassed the DC6 a little. The radio operator was in contact with the plane. He had been instructed to give the following message: ‘Calling DC6, calling DC6,’ then a message in French: ‘Apelle à DC6. Avisation [sic] aterrisage. Prière vous détourner sur base Kolwezi. Vous escortons. Importantes personalités desirent rencontrer personalité à bord. Si refus, avons ordre de vous contraindre par force. Si ok, répondez.’ The pilot of the DC6 said, ‘Wait. I will check.’ Then he spoke to the tower. It should have been on the tape of the tower—that would be the normal procedure—but the tape, I know, was destroyed. I had been instructed to allow only one minute to elapse from the time of giving the order to divert—after one minute, if the plane had not altered course or seemed as though it was going to continue its attempt to land at Ndola, then a warning shot could be fired. We weren’t getting any reply. I had the impression that the pilot was hesitating and might play a trick and land. So I turned on my left, always a little higher than the DC6, dropping slightly behind it, and fired warning shots. I intended the warning shots to go across the path of the DC6, so that the pilot would see the tracer bullets and understand that a landing should not be made—that the order to divert to the other airport should be followed. And that’s when I feared that one of my bullets had hit the plane—because when the bullets were finished, the DC6 began to wobble and waver. It ceased flying in a straight line. I could see that the DC6 could not finish its turn. Some part of the rear of the plane must have been hit. At that moment, my radio operator shouted at the top of his voice through the intercom, ‘Shit! You have hit it!’ My immediate reaction was to turn and leave the zone but I asked the radio operator, ‘Do you think I really hit it?’

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WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD? ‘Yes.’ Then we had a confused conversation—I was in a state of mental shock. The radio operator suggested we fly back to confirm what had happened, but I had lost sense of my bearings. So we flew in the direction we thought was right—at 1,800 metres. Then, at exactly 12.15, the radio operator saw the DC6 burning on the ground. It was a catastrophe. I immediately took the Fouga up to 9,000 metres, saying, ‘We’re going back to Kolwezi.’ The radio operator reported to the High Command at Kolwezi what had happened and we were ordered to return. So was Fouga 2. I’m sure the tower at Ndola heard everything and knew everything. But one thing is important: at no point in my briefing was I told who was in the aircraft. All I knew was that it was a white DC6, which I had to locate and divert. When we landed at Kolwezi, I realized that there was an absolute drama, judging by the angry faces looking at me. We were put on a helicopter and flown immediately to Kamina.10 We arrived at two o’clock in the morning of 18 September. Arrangements had been made for a strict interrogation. It was very tough and went on for almost two hours. It was conducted in a very large room like a conference room, like a military tribunal. The men at Kolwezi who had made the plan were there, at the table. Mr X was in a central position; Col Lamouline was there too, with his assistant. Also there at the table of judgment was Major Delin. We sat opposite them. Over in a far corner there was a group of Europeans, sitting at another table. There was no way of knowing who they were. They seemed to think that I might have shot down the plane on purpose, so I had to explain exactly what had happened. They were very angry. Afterwards, between three and four in the morning, the order was given to ground all Fougas and suspend military action by the Katangese from the air that evening. Within 48 hours all records connected with the operation had been destroyed. For ten days afterwards we were put in the room and it was terrifying—I thought we were going to be executed.

  Claude de Kemoularia wondered why the men had gone to so much trouble to tell him their story. He thought Beukels was sincere and perhaps wanted to talk to somebody who had been close to Hammarskjöld. Another possib­ ility was that they were expecting money, which he did not give them. But they may have hoped that if he were to endorse their story, they would get some money from Robert Ahier at UPI, to whom de Troye had gone in the first place. De Kemoularia also thought that de Troye wanted to give a dif­ ferent picture of the mercenaries—of their sense of pride—and to explain why they were in the Congo. ‘We’re not brigands,’ said de Troye to de Kemou182

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laria. ‘Among us there were excellent and good people, medical doctors, professors, ex-military officers, so we were not as bad as that. We are not interested in money.’   Beukels stated that he only came to see de Kemoularia at de Troye’s express request. ‘It was the only reason,’ said de Kemoularia. ‘I had told them that I would not act against them. I was willing to try to get the truth. It was obvious that I was not going to seek revenge, and they knew it.’ For this reason, the pilot said to him: ‘I understand why you wanted to see the man who himself was responsible for the tragic accident—who had the action in his hand.’ Most importantly, he said, ‘I hope I have convinced you that I was an instrument and nothing else.’ De Kemoularia appears to have believed Beukels. He shared his story with George Ivan Smith, who immediately seized on it as a new, compelling explanation for the Secretary-General’s death. Smith then interviewed de Kemoularia in detail about the mercenaries’ account and taped their discussion, which took up four cassettes. He produced a seventy page report on the basis of those tapes. It was typed up by a stenographer from dictation by Smith and contains some irregularities which may be attributed to difficulties in understanding his dictation and the stenographer’s fatigue: on a couple of occasions de Troye becomes ‘de Croix’ and Grant becomes ‘Grent.’   Brian Urquhart described the Beukels hijack theory as ‘nonsense’ in a letter to Bengt Rösiö. ‘I am still puzzled,’ he wrote, ‘at the motivation of de Kemoularia. Is it to attract attention to himself, or can he really have believed that there was money in it?’ He regretted that George Ivan Smith had taken up the theory and ‘got damaged in the process.’11   There are certainly problems with de Troye’s account. He claimed that the mercenaries had so much control over Tshombe that on 13 September 1961, they drove him and his advisers to Kipushi, ‘who were in point of fact in their pyjamas.’ But this is a fiction. We have reliable evidence, from the special report of MI6 officer Neil Ritchie, that in fact Tshombe went to see Dunnett and had a cup of coffee there—evidently not in pyjamas.   Manuel Fröhlich, in his thoughtful account of Smith’s archive, was impressed by the wealth of detail regarding the Beukels story. He was struck, though, by the fact that Smith was not able ‘to hear or even identify the supposedly almighty Mr X behind the alleged kidnapping at Ndola.’12 This is a valid point. Even if it was not possible to identify Mr X, however, it is the case that Neil 183

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Ritchie saw Henry Fortemps, the Assistant Director General of Union Minière in Elisabethville, in Kipushi, when he went to collect Tshombe, just hours before the crash.13   Although not mentioned by de Kemoularia, there were also powerful members of the UK Katanga lobby in the region in September 1961. One of these was Stephen Hastings, a British right-wing MP who was a former MI6 official; he was a fervent supporter of the Rhodesian Federation and bitterly opposed to what he called the ‘Disunited Nations.’14 Another was Sir Charles Mott-Radclyffe, also a British right-wing MP and a director of Tanks, who was in Katanga under the auspices of the British South Africa Company; he met with Tshombe and also Welensky in Salisbury.15 It was easy for Hastings and Mott-Radclyffe to travel freely in the region, because the borders were so porous. Mott-Radclyffe was astonished by the absence of border controls when he was offered a lift in a small aircraft from Ndola to Elisabethville. He was packed into the plane, he recalled later, without any customs formalities and by the pilot’s girlfriend, who operated in a shed on one corner of the airfield— ‘an attractive young woman wearing slacks and a filthy khaki bush-shirt.’16   One credible detail in de Troye’s account is his statement that Tshombe wanted on his own initiative to meet with Hammarskjöld. George Ivan Smith was troubled by this, since he believed it was Hammarskjöld alone who made this decision. But as Ritchie’s secret report to London reveals, Tshombe said he wanted to meet the Secretary-General before knowing of Hammarskjöld’s own wish.   It is noteworthy, too, that Alport’s statement on the night of the crash that the Secretary-General must have ‘gone elsewhere’—which was also made by his deputy in Salisbury—would make some sense, if they were privy to information about a planned hijack. Indeed, it seems to be the only situation in which such a statement would make any sense.   But perhaps the most intriguing circumstantial evidence to support de Troye’s story is that Serge Barrau was shown to have been in the cockpit at the time of the crash; it was also believed that Alice Lalande was there too. There would have been no routine reason for either Barrau or Lalande to be in the cockpit, given their respective official positions. But the explanation may lie in their first language: some of the crew and the rest of the passengers, like Dag, could speak a perfectly respectable French, but only Barrau (from Haiti) and Lalande (from Québec) were native French speakers. It would make sense for the Swedish pilots, having to deal with instructions in French from an attacking aircraft, to have maximized their chances of understanding the threat from outside by calling for help from Barrau and Lalande. 184

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Beukels’s story of a failed hijack ties in neatly with a reconstruction of the crash by Bo Virving, the chief engineer of Transair in the Congo in 1961–62, in which he argued that the Albertina was intercepted and fired upon, or possibly bombed, by another aircraft. However, Virving believed that a de Havilland Dove aircraft was involved, rather than a Fouga, on the grounds that a Fouga would not have had sufficient range.   Virving initially put forward this explanation in a report to the UN Commission of Inquiry in 1962; he rewrote it on 15 November 1967. He explained his theory to George Ivan Smith, which Smith then described in an article for the Observer in May 1980. Virving ‘showed me a map,’ wrote Smith, ‘which he had drawn up in the following way’: he took a large map of the whole area around Ndola airport, that went out beyond the crash site … He took pieces of celluloid and put marks to indicate in which direction the various witnesses saw or heard aircraft and the times. He then placed one piece of celluloid on top of another, thus building up a composite picture of the flight of the DC6 and of the attacking aircraft.

On the basis of the inquiry witnesses’ reports, added Smith, Virving ‘came up with a map showing that the attacking plane met the DC6 at the point indicated in the evidence given to Claude [de Kemoularia].’1   Bo Virving had gathered ‘overwhelming evidence,’ believed Smith, that Hammarskjöld’s plane was ‘forced down and crashed as a result of actions from an unidentified aircraft.’ This evidence was carefully explored in a series of ­programmes about Hammarskjöld which were produced by Gunnar Möller

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stedt and shown on Swedish television. Möllerstedt had spent a year gathering ­material—including the interviews with Timothy Jiranda Kankasa and Dickon Buleni.   Virving stated that there were five Doves in service in the Katangese air force in September 1961 at Kolwezi and Jadotville airports. They could stay airborne for three or four hours and their speed could match that of Hammarskjöld’s DC6 in level flight; and in a dive from above they could increase their speed. It would be possible for the crew of the Dove to drop a small explosive device on to an aircraft below, then pull out of the dive. Virving had developed this theory about a Dove because on the day that Hammarskjöld’s body was flown out to Sweden, he had seen a Dove at Ndola airport and discovered that it had a hole in its floor, which was apparently used for aerial photography. A man could lie there, he realized, telling the pilot ‘right, left, up, down’ and at a given moment let fall a small projectile.   The theory that a Dove could be used in this way was later confirmed by Mercenary Commander, the memoir of the mercenary Jerry Puren—which was published six years after Möllerstedt’s programme. With evident pride, Puren describes in this book his technique of dropping bombs through a hole in the floor of a Dove aeroplane, by means of a rack system rigged along the fuselage. The racks were fitted to take bombs of 12.5 kg, which were despatched one at a time through the hatch in the floor when a lever was pulled. A bombing crew consisted of a pilot, a bomb aimer and a bombardier; usually Puren flew on these bombing missions with his friend Max Glasspole, the gum-chewing Canadian pilot, or the Hungarian pilot Sandor Gurkitz—both of whom were at Ndola airport on 17–18 September 1961, when he arrived that afternoon from South Africa.2 According to Puren, 12.5 kg bombs were turned out by the Union Minière workshops by the thousand; each had a contact fuse in the tail section which unwound and armed the bomb when lobbed from the aircraft.3   The Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry Report acknowledged that a Dove with a bombing capacity was found in September 1961 at Ndola—but after the crash. ‘One De Havilland Dove belonging to the Katanga Government,’ it stated, ‘was after the 18th September armed by removing a door and placing a machine gun on the floor to fire through the opening.’ The Dove had not, it stated, been at Ndola on the day of the crash, but elsewhere: ‘On 17th September this and possibly another were in the hands of the United Nations at Elisabethville. Three Doves were then in the Republic of South Africa undergoing examination.’4 186

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  A Dove plane at Ndola also caused consternation at the British Embassy in Léopoldville in the week after the crash of the Albertina. Ambassador Riches sent a telegram to the Foreign Office on 24 September 1961, reporting that, according to Matlick, the US Air Attaché in Léopoldville who had just returned from Ndola, a Dove aircraft with Katangan air force markings had taken off from Ndola for Kolwezi the day before, carrying mercenaries. He had given this information to the UN, who had passed it on to Riches. ‘Report could do us serious damage here,’ warned Riches to London.5   Virving’s suspicions about the use of a Dove against the Albertina were heightened when he went to Elisabethville in 1962 and found that the Katangese Doves had disappeared during the August 1961 UN action to expel mercenaries. Significantly, their logbooks had been left behind. Then Virving found the Pretoria workshop where the Doves would normally have been serviced and sought information ‘for historical purposes’; but after two years’ wait he was told that no information could be given.   After establishing that a Dove would have been able to reach Ndola and wait in the air for Hammarskjöld’s plane for as long as an hour, Möllerstedt’s programme dealt with the question: how could the Katangese have known when to expect the UN plane? This was explained by a map and commentary. The UN aircraft broke radio silence four times after it reached Lake Tanganyika, so there was therefore ample time for a Dove to leave Jadotville or Kolwezi and take up position near Ndola in advance.   The programme discussed the type of bomb that could have been used. Samples of bombs were found at Jadotville, typically consisting of a cast-iron canister the size of a 2 lb coffee tin, filled with TNT, which was plentiful at Union Minière; the cast-iron was of a type made only by Union Minière at Kolwezi. The triggering device, a simple hand grenade, was set into the can of explosive, with the pin free at the top. A bomber would pull the pin and release the can, leaving five seconds for the explosion. In the night sky, the flash would be consistent with the ‘something like fire’ referred to by the witness Dickon Buleni. A flash and a bang were also mentioned by the survivor of the crash, Sergeant Julien, before he died. If such a device was dropped near the plane, the flash might well have been seen from the cabin. Julien said that after the ‘flash and bang,’ Hammarskjöld shouted, ‘Go back, go back!’ This could have meant, ‘Go back to the airfield over which we have just passed. Let us land.’   Virving argued that the last turn of Hammarskjöld’s aircraft was much tighter than the normal landing turn, suggesting that the pilot was under pressure to land quickly. But the plane did not have to be hit to cause the crash— 187

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the flash alone could have disturbed the pilot. Virving also claimed that an explosion a few yards from the aircraft could have dislodged vital control wires from their pulleys.   He had studied the evidence of more than 100 witnesses who saw or heard a plane or planes at that time. On the basis of this evidence, he had plotted the position of many of the witnesses on a map of the area, reconstructing the flight path of the UN plane and linking it with the evidence of those who saw flashes in the sky. From this, he said, he was able to deduce that a Dove could have made two passes: the first before the UN plane started its landing turn; the second during the turn itself.6   Bo Virving’s son Björn has shown this map to me and it is convincing. He has also shown me a photograph of a hole in the astrodome, on the top of the Albertina, which could have been caused by a splinter from the bomb. In 1961 Bo Virving showed this hole to the Rhodesian police officer who was responsible for the ballistics investigation, but the officer asserted that the hole was not from a bullet. No bullet was found, but the hole was never successfully explained. There was also a hole in the radar dome of the aircraft that was larger than a rivet hole, about which no firm conclusions were drawn by the commissions of inquiry.7 *

Much of my research into the crash of the Albertina involves an understanding of complex technical details and aviation. Luckily, Charles Southall is delighted to help me with this, despite the hectic demands of his commercial intelligence business. On one of his visits to London, he painstakingly explains to me the operation of radio frequencies. Later he sends me an approach-plate from a Jeppesen Airway Manual, so that I can understand the nature of the instrument approach to Ndola.   He has a commonsense approach to the mystery of the crash. When we talk about the lights that were flashed from a small plane on to the Albertina, according to some witnesses, I wonder whether they were tracer bullets. ‘No, no,’ he replies, shaking his head. ‘They were landing lights. If you were about to fire, wouldn’t you want to put on your landing lights first, just to check you had the right plane?’ Tracer bullets, he adds, are generally one in a series, creating the effect of sparkles—not an overall light to provide real visibility.   Then Charles offers to fly to Florida to interview Colonel Don Gaylor, the USAF Air Attaché stationed in Pretoria in 1961, whose DC3 was parked at Ndola airport on the night of the Albertina’s crash. I am extremely grateful— 188

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I have always wondered why Gaylor’s plane was at Ndola that night. It was an extraordinary meeting: between two experienced pilots who have seen service all over the world. They meet in the lobby of a hotel, where Charles tapes the interview. As I listen later to the tape, I can hear light music playing in the background and the sound of the breakfast buffet being cleared away. Against this I can hear the clear and firm voice of Colonel Gaylor; he is now 94, but very much in command of his mental faculties.   Colonel Gaylor explains his reason for flying to Ndola: ‘I was not instructed to meet with anybody, but to be available to help Hammarskjöld, when he arrived.’ Then Gaylor gives Charles some typed pages from an unpublished memoir, which supply some background to the mission. ‘We had been back from the Congo for approximately two months,’ he wrote in this memoir, ‘when I received instructions from the Pentagon to proceed to Ndola, Rhodesia, to meet UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and fly him to any area he desired to visit. We arranged our itinerary in order to arrive in Ndola the evening of September 15th.’ This is noteworthy, since Dag himself did not know at the time that he was going to Ndola—the decision was not made until 17 September.   Once the Rhodesian authorities were told of Hammarskjöld’s departure from Léopoldville and his estimated time of arrival, Gaylor went to the air traffic control tower. ‘Since I had flown in and out of Ndola many times while in the Congo,’ he explains in his memoir, ‘I had fortunately become familiar with the tower personnel, so they agreed to allow me to watch for the arrival of the Hammarskjöld aircraft from the tower.’ He adds that he was in and out of the tower all evening. This is news to me—for no mention was made of Gaylor’s presence in the tower by Alport, Ritchie, Martin, or Williams.   Once the designated time of arrival had passed, with no sign of Hammarskjöld’s plane, ‘the tower personnel were becoming concerned and began calling the aircraft flight numbers. There was no response.’ This went on, explains Gaylor, ‘way too long.’ He left the tower determined to be in the air at the crack of dawn: ‘I was resolute to see if I could find a possible crash site. Early the next morning, I took off and began to fly a reciprocal flight path that would have been a normal approach pattern from Léopoldville. I stayed on this path for a considerable amount of time without seeing any evidence of a crash site.’ Gaylor had noted the wind direction for Hammarskjöld’s flight path and figured this into his search pattern calculations. ‘We repeated this flight pattern several times in and out with no success. Then we decided to box these tracks back and forth.’ Eventually, 189

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD? we spotted what turned out to be the suspected crash site … We determined the coordinates of the crash site and its reciprocal to the airport and gave this information to the Ndola tower for the search party being organised. We continued to circle the crash site until a search party or other aircraft could appear on scene. We had been in the air four hours when a Rhodesian aircraft approached and circled the sight. We then left and returned to Ndola.

They took aerial photos of the crash site, which they developed upon their return to Pretoria.8   Gaylor’s crew stretched out a hand of friendship to the crew of a Norwegian UN plane, which had flown to Ndola to help in the search for the Albertina and had parked nearby. According to the UN pilot Helge Bjørlo, who published an account of the episode in 1995, the Norwegians were forbidden by the Rhodesian authorities to enter the airport terminal to obtain food—so the Americans invited them on board their DC3 to get some. They were astonished to discover that the American plane was packed with sophisticated radio equipment.9   Bizarrely, Gaylor’s role in the sky that morning was not mentioned by Squadron Leader John Mussell, who was the officer in command of the search, in his statement to Barber’s initial investigation into the air crash. In Mussell’s statement, the airport manager Williams and Colonel Benjamin Matlick, US Air Attaché in Léopoldville, complied with the Civil Aviation Director’s order to commence a coordinated search. It was decided, apparently, that the RRAF detachment would concentrate their search within the borders of the Federation, while the United States Dakotas would cover the Congo. But this was as late as 14.23 in the afternoon!10   As reported by Mussell, Captain Craxford in an RRAF Provost 150 sighted the wreckage at 15.10 hours. At this point he was low on fuel and returned to base. Then ‘USAF Dakota 38866 Captain Colonel J. D. Gaylor which was just getting airborne from Ndola to assist in the search, went to the wreckage to help with positive identification.’ Gaylor remained over the wreck, according to Mussell, until the ground party reached it.11 In the course of the initial investigation into the crash, led by Colonel Barber, Gaylor gave a brief statement to the effect that he was involved in the air search; however, he did not claim that his DC3 was the first plane to locate the Albertina.12 In any case, none of this information appears in the inquiry reports.   I can’t help wondering if Gaylor has made a mistake in his recollection of what happened on the morning of 18 September 1961. But there is no doubt in his mind. In early 2010, I meet Charles at the Travellers for breakfast and 190

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he has a gift for me—Gaylor’s memoir, newly published as a book entitled, From Barnstorming to Bush Pilot. This book repeats his account to Charles of the time he spent at Ndola airport tower on the night of 17–18 September 1961 and of his role in the discovery of Hammarskjöld’s plane.13 Gaylor adds that in his view, the pilot of the Albertina must have made an error and descended too low in an approach pattern for a different airport.14 This theory—that the pilots had not used Ndola’s chart for landing, but the chart for Ndolo, Léopoldville’s former airport—had been proposed straight after the crash by Colonel Barber, the Director of Civil Aviation, but was rejected by the Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry. The theory has continued to linger, however, and was put forward in 2007 by CIA agent Larry Devlin in his memoir, Chief of Station, Congo.15   The explanation of pilot error for the crash of the Albertina has caused great distress to the crew’s families in Sweden over the years. It has also provoked indignation among those who worked with Hallonquist and his crew in the Congo. Kjell Peterzén, a Transair engineer who was working at Léopoldville airport on the day the plane flew off to Northern Rhodesia, thought it was ‘absolute madness’ to blame Hallonquist. ‘Pilots don’t react like that,’ said Peterzén in an interview. ‘If you get a problem with an aircraft, the first thing you do is to get up to a stabilized altitude. If you’re not already down, you certainly don’t choose to go down, not for any price.’ If there had been a technical problem, added Peterzén, Hallonquist would have ascended and checked it; and if he could not fix it, he would have returned home—‘There is no way he would have gone down into the darkness and the woods.’ Peterzén was convinced ‘that the aircraft got some external “help” to go down … it was probably shot down. There were many good opportunities to do that. It can’t be difficult to hit a DC6 coming slowly in for landing: you just can’t miss it!’16 *

Aviation played a significant part in the troubles of Katanga and the region. Almost as soon as he arrived in Léopoldville on 13 September 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld learned of an increase in attacks by the Katanga Fouga on Congolese civilians and the United Nations forces. He sent an urgent request to several governments for jet fighter planes to supplement the UN troops—both as a form of protection and also to erode Tshombe’s substantial military advantage. The Ethiopians speedily offered to make three such fighters available, which were ready for dispatch to Kamina on 17 September 1961. But there was a problem: in order to reach the Congo, the planes would have to fly over, and refuel in, British territory in East Africa. 191

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  At his meeting with Derek Riches, the British Ambassador, on Saturday 16 September, Dag requested permission for the Ethiopian jet trainer fighters to fly over Kenya and to refuel in Entebbe, Uganda.17 He also arranged with Bunche for an urgent and formal UN request to be sent to the British through the Secretariat in New York.18 Then, in the morning hours of 17 September in Léopoldville, when he met with Lord Lansdowne to discuss his planned journey to Ndola, he impressed upon Lansdowne the importance of the immediate cooperation of the British on this important matter. Lansdowne was not persuaded, believing that it might jeopardize plans for the ceasefire. However, he grudgingly offered that British authorities would try to persuade Tshombe to ground the Fouga (which made Hammarskjöld wonder why they had not done so earlier).19 After this disappointing discussion, Hammarskjöld asked Bunche to investigate urgently whether it might be possible for the Ethiopian jets to come to the Congo via Juba in the Sudan.20 This was the last message sent by Hammarskjöld to New York before his death.21   Hammarskjöld did not give up on the British, however. Immediately after the meeting with Lansdowne, he produced a written explanation of the need for the planes, which was forwarded from Léopoldville to London. The sole reason, he insisted, was to neutralize the Fouga and for protection—not for any other purpose. The Fouga had made about fifteen raids since the afternoon of 14 September: it had bombed and strafed the UN troops in Jadotville; machine-gunned the control tower and labourers at Kamina air base; dropped bombs inside the Elisabethville city limits, such as the refugee camp and the Lido Hotel; and attacked aircraft both in the air and on the ground. Moreover, he added, the Fouga had destroyed two DC4s owned by commercial companies and hit several other planes, including a DC3. As a result of these attacks, at least three Congolese civilians had died and a number of others had been wounded.22   Macmillan’s government, however, refused to grant overflying rights, arguing that it would escalate hostilities between the UN and Katanga and spread them to the air. This was disingenuous to say the least, since the war had already spread to the air—where Katanga was the master and aggressor. The British government’s decision clarified beyond any doubt its policy in relation to the UN in Katanga: that it put Katanga’s needs above those of the UN and Congolese citizens.   The Foreign Secretary, Alec Douglas-Home, the fourteenth Earl of Home, sent an urgent telegram to Alport in Salisbury, asking him to put pressure on Tshombe to withdraw the Fouga, pending the agreement of a ceasefire. Alport 192

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was asked to use his ‘channel indicated in your telegram No 1362’—which referred to MI6 agent Neil Ritchie—to explain to Tshombe that the UN had been refused permission to fly air reinforcements via East Africa and in return, he was asked to stop attacks on United Nations Forces. ‘Message could add at your discretion,’ concluded the telegram ‘that you may shortly be in a position to make an important communication to him.’23 This last sentence is intriguing. What ‘important communication’? What information did the UK government have at this time which would be of such great interest to Tshombe? And which they would ‘shortly’ be in a position to tell him about?   Next day, the UK Foreign Office was informed that this was the Fouga’s most active day so far. At noon it attacked the UN air base at Kamina, setting fire to one aircraft and causing casualties; later it strafed, ten times, the UN relief force which was on its way to Jadotville, forcing it to return to Elisabethville.24   By mid-morning on Monday 18 September, the Foreign Secretary had decided to give the facilities needed for overflying East Africa and for refuelling at Entebbe to the three jet trainer fighters offered by the government of Ethiopia. This seemed necessary, he explained, to provide the UN with the means to defend itself against this ‘pirate.’25   Derek Riches in Léopoldville did not hear immediately of this change in policy. In the early afternoon on18 September 1961, he himself was urging the Foreign Office to change its previous policy. ‘In view of disappearance of Secretary-General’s aircraft and possibility that search may be hampered by Rogue Fouga aircraft from Kolwezi,’ he wrote, ‘I recommend most urgent reconsideration regarding over-flights of East Africa.’26 He added that the UN headquarters in Elisabethville had been bombed by the Fouga that morning. In fact, it was a targeted attack on Conor Cruise O’Brien, as newspaper coverage made clear: Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien threw himself into a slit trench outside his headquarters today as a Katanga Air Force Fouga jet fighter screamed in to dive-bomb the building. Dr O’Brien was talking to several reporters under trees. Suddenly there came the highpitched whine of the Fouga. The crowd scattered as the Fouga opened up with machine-guns. Dr O’Brien threw himself flat on the ground beneath a tree between two reporters. The ground shook as a bomb burst.

  O’Brien responded by saying, ‘We’ll have to put a stop to that little fellow.’ He strolled off and then the Fouga came diving back: ‘O’Brien again dived 193

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for cover, this time into a slit trench. Photographers walked round taking pictures as the plane dived and then swung away without attacking.’ Then O’Brien dusted himself down and smoothed his hair.27 Later, in To Katanga and Back, he recorded the episode and expressed his admiration of the press. A Life photographer, he wrote, ‘stood up on a mound of earth—the corollary of our hole—and took a picture of this scene.’ This proved nothing, he added, ‘except perhaps that diplomats are fleeter of foot than reporters, and that photographers are braver than either.’ This photograph appeared in the next edition of Life.28 ‘If the British had given clearance,’ stated a Western diplomat, who chose to remain anonymous, to the New York Times, ‘Mr Hammarskjoeld might be alive today.’ He and many others regretted that the Secretary-General had been forced to fly a roundabout journey to avoid the Fouga. They argued that if the Ethiopian jets had arrived, his plane would have been able to fly a direct route, under fighter cover.29   The Ethiopian jets arrived in the Congo five days after the crash of the Albertina, on 22 September 1961.30

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One day in July 1998 at the head office in Cape Town of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a researcher called Christelle Terreblanche was given a batch of documents to study at home for one night. They were connected to the draft she was completing for the TRC’s final report, on atrocities committed by the right wing. Her department was under tremendous pressure at the time: the TRC’s investigations into human rights violations, a momentous undertaking ever since they had started in 1995, were now being wound up.1   The file Terreblanche took home was linked to the assassination in 1993 of Chris Hani, the head of the South African Communist Party, which was being inquired into by the TRC’s investigative unit. It had been handed over to the TRC by South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency and was classified, but Terreblanche had security clearance. Later, she was to wonder why she was given this particular file, but at the time she assumed that it was because she was one of the few people in her department to have security clearance; she also thought that it was simply an additional Hani file that no one had yet seen.   But leafing through the file that night, she was astonished. For amongst the papers there were some—about 12—which referred to a bizarre but apparently successful plot to blow up the plane of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld on his visit to central Africa in 1961. This plot, which was codenamed ‘Operation Celeste,’ did not go entirely to plan: the bomb was supposed to be activated on take-off from Léopoldville, but failed to do so; however, it was activated prior to landing, killing Hammarskjöld. The documents were headed with the Johannesburg address of an organization called the South African

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Institute of Maritime Research (SAIMR), of which Terreblanche had never heard; each document had the logo of a ship’s figurehead. Most were headed ‘Top Secret’ and ‘Your Eyes Only’; some were handwritten, others typed. They represented communications between a ‘Commodore’ in Johannesburg, a ‘Captain,’ a ‘Commander,’ and someone called ‘Congo Red,’ an agent on the ground. The group of men belonged to the arm of SAIMR called ‘Delta Operations.’   According to this set of documents, Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, had promised full cooperation with ‘Operation Celeste,’ which had also been agreed with MI5 and ‘Special Ops. Executive.’ The reason for Hammarskjöld’s planned ‘removal’ was that he was ‘becoming troublesome.’ The last in the series of documents was a report on the outcome of the plot.   After the night with the file, Christelle took it back to the office and tried to work out what to do. In the course of her work for the TRC, she had become used to finding documents that were a deliberate attempt at misinformation— but she was not sure about these particular papers. She believed they should be submitted for investigation, even though the TRC was drawing to an end. After all, they related to the death of a world statesman who had been killed in the course of a mission for peace.   She tried to argue this case to her superiors. But this proved impossible, since everyone was so overwhelmed by the struggle to prepare the TRC’s final report in readiness for submission to President Mandela in October 1998. There were so many loose ends and they were also busy completing investigations into the plane crash in 1986 that killed Samora Machel, President of Mozambique, as well as into the Helderberg plane disaster in the Indian Ocean in 1987.   At this point Christelle felt scared, since she was privy to knowledge about an organization which—if it really existed—was evidently very dangerous. But courageously, she also believed that she should not ignore the documents. This conviction was strengthened by information supplied by a woman who had submitted a very late human rights grievance claim in connection with her daughter, which landed on Christelle’s desk by default. The daughter had been working in the late 1980s on AIDS research in Mozambique for the very organization that appeared to have produced the Hammarksjöld documents—the South African Institute for Maritime Research. She had told her mother that the group sent by SAIMR to do AIDS work had, she believed, been smuggling contaminated vaccines into Angola and Mozambique. She was planning to come and see her mother, to tell her the rest of the story. But before she could do so, she was shot on a visit to Johannesburg in a car hijacking, in front of the gated townhouse where she lived. 196

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  The mother’s story appeared even more disturbing in the light of interviews Christelle had carried out some months earlier, with two Afrikaans women living in poor white neighbourhoods, in connection with the Hani investigation. They had mercenary boyfriends and told strange stories about guns being delivered to airports. Christelle was chilled to learn from the mother that one of these women had worked with her daughter. Then a colleague told Christelle that he had recently bumped into someone he had known in Harare, when they were both in exile during apartheid. This man, who had been suspected of being a double agent when in exile, told him that he was now working for SAIMR. It was starting to look as if the organization really did exist, at least in the 1980s and 1990s.   Not long after finding the SAIMR documents relating to Hammarskjöld’s death, Christelle left the TRC. Soon afterwards, the documents were leaked to a journalist—though not by Christelle. At about the same time, in a step no doubt related to the leak, Archbishop Tutu released eight of the documents at a press conference on 19 August 1998, which had been set up to report on the completion of the TRC final report. The SAIMR documents, he explained, were a tangential detail pertaining to the closing-down of the TRC. All the names in the documents had been redacted, because there had not been sufficient time to contact the men who were named and to warn them (as required under TRC rules) of the implications of the allegations. Tutu added that the documents had been given to Justice Minister Dullah Omar, who stated that he had not yet had an opportunity to study them, and so preferred not to comment at that stage.2   Archbishop Tutu made it clear that the TRC was not in a position to examine the authenticity of the papers, since its mandate was fast running out. But he did not simply dismiss them. ‘It isn’t something that is so bizarre,’ he said. ‘Things of that sort have happened in the past. That is why you can’t dismiss it as totally, totally incredible.’3 But a spokesperson for the British Foreign Office swiftly ruled out the possibility of any United Kingdom involvement: ‘Intelligence agents of the United Kingdom do not go around bumping people off ’; he suggested that the SAIMR documents may have been misinformation by the Soviet Union.4 The CIA also disclaimed any responsibility. ‘The notion that the CIA was behind the death of the former United Nations Secretary-General,’ stated a CIA spokesperson firmly, ‘is absurd and without foundation.’5   Tutu’s press statement generated interest across the world; in the Belgian Senate, a call was made for a proper investigation.6 But this was not taken up. 197

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At the UN, responsibility was passed to the South African government and a spokesman stated: ‘This matter, for the moment anyway, rests with the South African authorities.’7 But if any such investigation ever took place, there is no public record of it; and Dullah Omar, who seemed to suggest that he would follow up the mystery, died in 2004.   In 2000, an enterprising Norwegian historian, Dr Bodil Katarina Nævdal, arranged for the Norwegian Ambassador in Pretoria, Per Ø. Grimstad, to obtain copies of the 1961 SAIMR documents from the TRC. Advocate Martin Coetzee, the Chief Executive Officer of the TRC, faxed photocopies of eight of the documents to Ambassador Grimstad on 29 May 2000, apologizing for their poor quality. The originals (or the original copies) had been sent back to the National Intelligence Agency—they were already months overdue when Christelle had seen the file. He explained that ‘the copies in the possession of the TRC are in no better condition.’8 That same year, Dr Nævdal reproduced several of them in her book, Drømmenes Palass (‘Palace of Dreams’), which is a portrait of the first two UN Secretaries-General, the ­Norwegian Trygve Lie, and Dag Hammarskjöld. She also discussed the documents, although she did not address the issue of whether or not they were authentic.   But the original documents appear to have disappeared. I have tried in every way possible to find them, with the help of Piers Pigou, who participated in the TRC proceedings. Piers went on to become the director of the South African History Archive (SAHA), an independent organization based at the University of Witwatersrand, which documents and disseminates archive material about South Africa’s history. He has an uncompromising commitment to transparency about the past and the importance of trying to find out the truth; he is also extremely generous with his time and energy in the pursuit of that truth. He arranged in 2009 for SAHA to submit a formal request to the Department of Justice for access to the original documents, as provided under the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA).   However, the Department responded that they could not locate the box containing the papers; SAHA thereupon submitted an internal appeal to the Justice Minister.9 ‘At best,’ explained the SAHA official working on the case, ‘this will mean they will be forced to reconsider our request, or at least go on a hunt which may bring details about what actually happened to the documents.’10 But the result was again negative. ‘The bad news,’ reported SAHA, ‘is that the DOJ have informed me that, regardless of my internal appeal, they cannot find the documents.’ An official admitted to SAHA that the Justice 198

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Department did not know whether the documents had ever come into its possession from Dullah Omar (who had died in 2004).11   Advocate Dumisa B. Ntsebeza, who served as a commissioner on the TRC between 1995 and 2001, sought to help me trace the originals.12 He told me that he had always wondered about the series of aeroplane disasters that killed opponents of white rule in Africa, such as Dag Hammarskjöld and Samora Machel. All of these crashes, he noted, were officially attributed to pilot error and in five investigations—including the Rhodesian inquiry into the death of Hammarskjöld—the South African judge Cecil Margo, QC, had been on the commission of inquiry.   Hammarskjöld had been headline news in South Africa, when he visited for a week in January 1961, eight months before his death. On arrival in Pretoria on 6 January, accompanied by Heinrich Wieschhoff and Bill Ranallo, his aeroplane had been diverted from Jan Smuts airport at Johannesburg to a military airfield, because of the huge crowds that had gathered to meet him—hundreds of both black and white South Africans who, like the Zambians waiting to greet him at Ndola, wanted to show their gratitude and support for his opposition to white minority rule.   Since the Sharpeville massacre on 21 March 1960, concern about South Africa’s racial policies had intensified at the United Nations, especially among the Afro-Asian group. On his visit to South Africa, Hammarskjöld met with Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, the Prime Minister, and criticized the ‘homelands’ policy and apartheid as both morally unacceptable and impractical. He told Verwoerd, with insistence, that he would like to meet ‘true representatives of natives and coloured,’ but the Prime Minister was unhappy with the plan; in the end, arrangements were made for the Secretary-General to meet some ‘natives,’ but not members of illegal organizations or people under a ban.13 The Rand Daily Mail reported Hammarskjöld’s visit to a township in Johannesburg: ‘The United Nation’s Secretary-General … asked his driver to stop outside a house. It was No 617 Meadowlands and “Dag” wanted to meet the African children.’ He also met with three African leaders; however, the banned African National Congress (ANC) complained that they ‘had not been truly representative of the non-White people.’14   Talks between Hammarskjöld and Verwoerd were unproductive; according to Brian Urquhart, the Secretary-General felt he was speaking to Verwoerd across a gulf of three hundred years.15   On 13 April 1961, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 1598, condemning the racial policies of South Africa and calling upon its government 199

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to bring its policies and conduct into conformity with its obligations under the Charter. *

Although it is impossible to get hold of the original documents purporting to describe ‘Operation Celeste,’ I managed to get scans of eight of them—thanks to considerable efforts on my behalf by Piers Pigou in South Africa, by James Sanders in the UK, author of Apartheid’s Friends (2006), and by Björn Virving in Sweden. The scans are of poor quality and some words are illegible, but it is not difficult to guess at the gaps.   There are two documents dated 1960, which offer a commentary from Johannesburg on events in the Congo and the secession of Katanga in July 1960. ‘We have it on good authority,’ ‘Commodore’ reports to ‘Captain,’ that ‘UNO will want to get its greedy paws on the province.’ He refers to SAIMR’s agent in the region, ‘Congo Red,’ and a possible need to bolster his force: combat units would need to be prepared to take on Baluba warriors as well as UN forces. They would be given adequate quantities of 7.62 mm FN rifles.   ‘At a meeting between M.I.5, Special Ops. Executive, and SAIMR,’ begins one of the documents, entitled ‘ORDERS,’ the following emerged: Dag has requested that blockbusters be shipped to Katanga via South Africa and Rhodesia—both Dr. V. [that is, Hendrik Verwoerd, the Prime Minister of South Africa] and Sir Roy [Welensky] have refused. UNO is becoming troublesome and it is felt that Hammarskjöld should be removed. Allen Dulles agrees and has promised full cooperation from his people. [He] tells us that Dag will be in Léopoldville on or about 12/9/61. The aircraft ferrying him will be a D. C. 6. in the livery of ‘TRANSAIR,’ a Swedish Company.

Then orders for the ‘removal’ of Hammarskjöld are given: Please see that Leo airport as well as Elizabethville is covered by your people as I want his removal to be handled more efficiently than was Patrice [Lumumba]. If time permits, send me a brief plan of action, otherwise proceed with all speed in absolute secrecy. If McKeown and O’Brien can be dealt with simultaneously it would be useful but not if it could compromise the main operation. If, and only if serious complications arise tell your agents to use telephone [illegible word] Johannesburg 25–3513. OPERATION TO BE KNOWN AS ‘CELESTE.’

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These orders reveal that General McKeown and Conor Cruise O’Brien were also targets for assassination; and there is an implicit suggestion that SAIMR may have had a hand in the killing of Patrice Lumumba.   According to another of the documents, the CIA had provided a contact, codenamed ‘Dwight,’ who would be staying at the Hotel Léopold II in Elisabethville until 1 November 1961. The password was ‘How is Celeste these days?,’ to be followed by the reply: ‘She’s recovering nicely apart from the cough.’   The agents decided to concentrate on Hammarskjöld and postpone any attempt to target McKeown and O’Brien: We have a number of problems to sort out with regard to the operation, in order to arrange for all three of the targets to be affected, an enormous amount of planning will be required, in order to ensure the success of ‘Celeste,’ and taking into account the fact that time is of the essence, I would suggest that we concentrate on D. and leave the other two for some future date, possibly as early as next week or the week after. Dag will have to be sorted out on the 17th or 18th (he has an appointment in Ndola on the 18th or 19th) all my men as well as Congo Red’s people are in position. With a little luck, all will be well. Your servant, Commander.

The operation involved the placing of a bomb, made of six pounds of TNT, on Hammarskjöld’s plane from Léopoldville to Ndola. It was to be placed beneath the undercarriage of the aircraft so that it would detonate soon after take-off, when the wheels were retracted. A major mining conglomerate was referred to as the source of the TNT and technical equipment.   But the bomb apparently failed to explode on take-off and ‘Eagle’ was despatched—presumably in an aircraft to shoot at the Albertina—activating the device prior to landing. This appeared to have been successful, so far as one can tell from the alleged report by Congo Red, which is the most difficult to read of all the documents:

1.  2.  3.  4.  5. 

Report.      Operation Celeste 18.9.61 Device failed on take-off. Despatched Eagle [illegible word] to follow and take [illegible words] Device activated [illegible words] prior to landing. As advised O’Brien and McKeown were not aboard. Mission accomplished: satisfactory. Message Ends

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  A close match to the acronym SAIMR is that of the South African Institute for Maritime Technology (SAIMT), based in Simonstown, which was set up in 1975 by ARMSCOR, the officially appointed procurement organization for the South African Department of Defence. SAIMT is described on ARMSCOR’s website as a ‘low-profile’ organization which does research for the South African Navy. This does sound mysterious: but there is no indication that it is the same organisation as SAIMR.   All that I have to study, therefore, are the documents themselves. Examining the authenticity of documents is a complex business: although one can demonstrate a forgery, it is not possible to demonstrate authenticity. To look for a forgery, one needs to conduct certain kinds of analysis. In the case of the SAIMR documents, this is virtually impossible as the originals are not available. One cannot for example, examine the paper and ink. So all I can do is conduct a textual analysis, to see if the contents and style are right for their date and to explore any anomalies.   SAIMR’s address on the letterhead is the fifth floor of the ‘Clinical Centre’ on De Villiers Street, Johannesburg—a major thoroughfare in the Central Business District, which was a whites-only area in the years of apartheid. De Villiers Street is very close to Park Station, the city’s main railway station and a hub for mainline as well as local trains.   The telephone number given for the SAIMR headquarters has six digits, as does an additional number given in the body of one of the messages. This would be correct for 1961; by 1985, the numbers comprised seven digits. Furthermore, the telephone directory for the area in 1966 (volume 1B) gives ‘23’ as the code for ‘Clinical centre (caretaker)’ at 5 Wanderers Street;16 Wanderers Street is on the corner of De Villiers Street in downtown Johannesburg. One aspect of events during Dag’s final visit to Léopoldville that fits neatly with Operation Celeste is an enforced change to his plan for leaving Léopoldville for New York. Initially he was going to take a ferry or helicopter across the Congo River to Brazzaville, in order to pick up one of the international airlines flying out of Brazzaville airport. But Abbé Fulbert Youlou, the President of French Congo, effectively prohibited his travel through Brazzaville: ‘My Government feels it would be unable to guarantee your personal safety in view of the effervescences provoked by the events in Katanga.’   Abbé Youlou made this statement on Thursday 14 September, the very day that the SAIMR Captain apparently couriered a message to Commodore, 202

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reporting that a ‘DC6 aircraft bearing “Transair” livery is parked at Leo to be used for transport of subject … Our technician has orders to plant 6 lbs TNT in the wheelbay with contact detonator to activate as wheels are retracted on taking off.’ Only a few months earlier, Youlou had welcomed Hammarskjöld on his plane and then taken him across the river to Léopoldville on the presidential speedboat.17 This new prohibition meant that when Hammarskjöld left the Congo, he would have no choice but to take a plane from Léopoldville, in which—if the SAIMR documents are to be believed—it was planned to plant a bomb.   There is some congruence between the historical reality and the documents. ‘I would suggest,’ comments the Commander in one of them, ‘that we concentrate on D and leave the other two for some future day possibly as early as next week or the week after.’ The ‘other two’ were Conor Cruise O’Brien and Sean McKeown. In the case of the former, he was attacked in Elisabethville just hours after the crash of the Albertina, by Katanga’s Fouga.18 *

The reference to ‘Eagle’ in the final SAIMR document intriguingly links up with a sheaf of papers in the UN archives about Hubert Fauntleroy Julian—a brilliant aviator dubbed the ‘Black Eagle of Harlem.’ He was believed by many to be the first African American to get a pilot’s licence in the USA, and in the 1920s, had been a vocal supporter of Marcus Garvey; he became famous after going to Ethiopia in the 1930s to command Haile Selassie’s embryonic air force. He held several records for non-stop flights and frequently flew between the Americas, Europe and Africa. But after the war, he turned to more sinister activities. He established Black Eagle Associates, which quickly evolved into an arms dealership. The CIA produced a report on his gun-running exploits to the Guatemalan government in the early 1950s, describing him as ‘a flamboyant Negro soldier of fortune who was born in Trinidad, BWI [British West Indies] of a Venezuelan mother and British father and has US citizenship.’19   Eagle first went to Léopoldville in 1960: fluent in French, he was attracted by the colour and excitement of independence. He then made a number of visits to Katanga in 1961, where he set himself up as Tshombe’s ambassador— with a special identity card—and got involved in shady public relations activities. He also organised extensive gun-running activities and in early 1962, he was captured by the UN trying to smuggle arms through Elisabethville airport.20   The mercenary Mike Hoare, who met Eagle in the Congo, described him as a character who was ‘larger than life’: he stood six foot six in his socks and 203

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about ‘two foot broad all the way up to his bull neck.’ Eagle drank no alcohol, but only mineral water, and limited himself to one meal a day. In his cravat he sported a diamond pin in the shape of a horseshoe, and in the evening he wore a three-quarter-length opera cloak fastened at the neck by a heavy silver chain and lined with red silk. He never wore a hat but sported a silver-knobbed ebony cane. In the Ruritanian atmosphere of Katanga—where Tshombe’s ADC was ‘dressed in ceremonial operative uniform with a sort of plumed hat and a lot of gold braid,’ and even his motorcycle escort wore ‘the full Presidential outfit of third empire helmets and uniforms,’ according to one UN official21— Hubert Julian must have been in his element.   It seems as if Julian was in Ndola in the weeks after the crash of the Albertina. According to a Rhodesian fireman, Ray Critchell, who was sent from Salisbury to Ndola for five weeks to help with the initial air accident investigation, an African pilot looking very much like Eagle arrived at the airport. Towards the end of October 1961 he was surprised to see a strange, Biggles looking character complete with all the leather gear, jack boots, long scarf, flying helmet and goggles landed on the grass in a light single engine plane with an open cockpit who said he had flown down from the Congo to join ‘our’ air force.

The police unbolted the propeller from the ‘Biggles craft’ and locked it in a cupboard in the Fire Station for safe keeping.22 ‘With the rarity of African pilots in those days,’ the fireman tells me, ‘the coincidence of having two in the same area of Katanga Province and our Copperbelt in the same time would, I feel, be quite unlikely.’ According to the fireman, the pilot spoke in an exaggerated Oxford English accent and, in the exotic flying gear of the 1930s, certainly fits the description of Black Eagle.23   Eagle may have been the African pilot sighted by Benjamin Matlick, the USAF Air Attaché from Léopoldville, when he came to Ndola to help with the search for the Albertina. A secret report by Matlick, written a week after the crash, stated: ‘Matlick was in Ndola and met the only Katangan African pilot named Jean-Marie NGOSA, who claimed to have been sent down to fly the Piper Cub [which had turned up on 18 September, flown by a deserting Swedish mercenary] back to Katanga.’24 Given the comment by the Rhodesian fireman about the implausibility of finding two African pilots in the same region in those days, there are grounds for suspecting that Jean-Marie Ngosa may have been Hubert Fauntleroy Julian.   In any case, it appears that Julian was in the region at the time. Moreover, he had the motive to attack Hammarskjöld: his memoir makes it very clear 204

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that he loathed both the Secretary-General and the UN. And although he was aged sixty-three in 1961, by which time he was hardly a young man, he continued to enjoy flying and daredevil stunts.25 According to Anthony Mockler in The New Mercenaries (1985), Eagle tried to rescue Tshombe after he was hijacked to Algeria in 1967—when Eagle was sixty-nine.26 *

Bengt Rösiö has dismissed the SAIMR papers as forgeries. Chief among his reasons is his belief that Hammarskjöld was not initially going to fly in the Albertina, so the alleged organization would not have been able to plan on 14 September 1961—as the papers suggest—to put a bomb on that particular plane. However, this was the fastest and most comfortable plane available to ONUC, and so was likely to have been put at the service of the Secretary-General. In any case, it returned to Léopoldville from Elisabethville on 17 September expressly to transport him to Ndola. Furthermore, the SAIMR plot was flexible: it wanted Elisabethville airport ‘covered by your people,’ as well as Léopoldville. It also dictated that six pounds of TNT, along with ‘detonators, electrical contacts and wiring, batteries, etc.,’ should be made available by Union Minière ‘at all possible locations.’   A more convincing objection by Rösiö is that the papers refer to Dag’s planned visit to Ndola before the plan was made. But even here, the picture is complex, since—as shown by the secret report by MI6 officer Neil Ritchie and the orders given to USAF Air Attaché Colonel Gaylor—plans for Dag to visit Ndola were being discussed several days before he told Lansdowne of this plan.   Brian Urquhart also discounted the SAIMR papers and is reported to have said: ‘The documents seem to me to make no sense whatsoever.’27 However, Archbishop Tutu commented that, ‘Things of that sort have happened in the past. That is why you can’t dismiss it as totally, totally incredible.’   ‘Even supposing there was any such conspiracy, which I strongly doubt,’ argued Urquhart, ‘there is no conceivable way they could have got within any kind of working distance of Hammarskjöld’s plane in time.’28 But in fact, as the UN report pointed out, the plane was left unguarded for several hours prior to its departure from Léopoldville airport, which meant that an unauthorized approach to the aircraft for purposes of sabotage ‘cannot be excluded.’ The report added that although the doors were said to have been locked when the plane was parked at Léopoldville, access was possible to the hydraulic compartment, the heating system, and the undercarriage of the aircraft.   Colonel Christian Tavernier, leader of the Belgian mercenaries, stated many years later that the plane had been tampered with. ‘I knew the people who were 205

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monkeying with his airplane before it took off,’ he said. ‘They had decided to kill him, and they did it.’29 However, I share Rösiö’s and Urquhart’s doubts about the authenticity of the 1961 SAIMR papers. For an expert’s opinion, I visit Robin Ramsay, the editor of the journal Lobster, a magazine with an interest in the intelligence services.   I show him the SAIMR documents. ‘No!’ he says. ‘I can’t believe they’re genuine!’ He points out that a few of the documents appear to be telexes and yet are headed by the logo, which is simply not possible. He also finds the titles of Commodore and Captain odd—as well as the details of the plot, which are spelt out more fully than one would expect. But it occurs to me that in the context of the Congo in the 1960s, where the CIA sent poison to Léopoldville to be mixed in Lumumba’s toothpaste, nothing would seem especially bizarre.   A particular reason for doubt is the reference to ‘Special Ops. Executive’— since SOE was closed down in 1946, after the war—and neither Robin nor I have heard of another organization with the same name. The reference to the CIA, on the other hand, is reasonable, given the range of the CIA’s activities in the region. Also reasonable is the reference to MI5, since Britain’s internal intelligence agency was operative in the British territories of the empire; a Security Liaison Officer (SLO) from MI5 was stationed in Salisbury, operating on a declared basis with the Federal Intelligence Security Bureau.30   Robin also finds it hard to understand why the documents apparently sent by Congo Red, the agent in the field, are written on SAIMR-letterheaded paper. Surely he didn’t carry a pack of the paper around with him as he carried out his secret operations in central Africa? One explanation might be that these communications were conveyed by telephone to a secretary or administrator at SAIMR headquarters in Johannesburg, then written up in the office. This would explain why these communications conclude: ‘Message Ends.’   It is always possible that the documents were forged. But what would be the purpose of such a forgery? Perhaps, suggests Robin, they were an attempt at deliberate disinformation. When I tell him that the Swedish Foreign Ministry initiated a further inquiry in 1993 into the crash of the Albertina, he wonders if some organization with something to hide forged the alleged 1961 SAIMR documents at that time, in order to draw attention away from an investigation into what actually happened. For if someone were to take these papers 206

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seriously, they would risk being mocked as conspiracy theorists who did not even know that SOE was disbanded in 1946.   We talk for hours and by the end, we are shaking our heads. The documents just don’t seem to add up.   But by the time I get home, I find an email from Robin waiting for me. It is headed ‘Spooky.’ ‘Interesting afternoon!’ starts the message. Then: ‘After you went I had a quick Google rummage. Refs to ‘Commodore’ and SAIMR! But thirty-eight years later …?????’31

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Robin’s discovery is indeed ‘spooky’—a reference to SAIMR on the website of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory. The organisation is mentioned in the transcript of the TRC questioning on 24 November 1997 of Janusz Walus, who four years earlier had assassinated Chris Hani, the leader of the South African Communist Party and of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC. In this interrogation, Walus confirmed that he applied for work as a mercenary with the South African Institute of Maritime Research at the end of the 1980s: Advocate Bizos: I want to take you back to the 26th of January, 1989, do you recall reading an advertisement in the Citizen requiring for dangerous assignment, approximately six months’ duration, salary $5 000–00 per month, send resume to the Commodore, PO Box 207, Bergvlei, 2012, do you remember reading that advertisement? Walus: Yes, Mr Chairman, I remember that. Bizos: Yes, and tell me you applied to the South African organisation, calling itself the South African Institute of Maritime Research, do you recall that? Walus: I do not recall that I applied for that to be admitted to the Maritime Institute. Bizos: But you did apply in answer to that advertisement? Did you? Walus: Yes, Mr Chairman….1

  Evidently, SAIMR did exist—at least in 1989. Robin’s finding gives weight to Christelle Terreblanche’s suspicion, on the basis of her investigations for the TRC, that the organization was operating in the later years of apartheid. It

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also offers a possible link to the fact that Christelle found the 1961 SAIMR documents in a file related to the Chris Hani assassination. Some months later, scrolling through some microfilms of old South African newspapers, I find another reference to SAIMR. It is the subject of a feature article by the South African investigative journalist, De Wet Potgieter, the author of Total Onslaught. Apartheid’s Dirty Tricks Exposed (2007), an exposé of South Africa’s security apparatus and state-sanctioned hit squads.   Potgieter’s article, with the sinister title of ‘Mercenaries for Africa,’ was published in the Johannesburg Sunday Times on 11 November 1990. It claims that an organization called the South African Institute for Maritime Research was involved in the 1980s in a number of plots in Africa, including ‘Operation Crusader,’ the codename for a planned coup to topple the Ugandan government of Yoweri Musevini and to reinstate Idi Amin. Other plots included ‘Operation Anvil,’ which was associated with the 1981 ill-fated attempt to depose the Seychelles President Albert Réné, led by Mike Hoare. SAIMR was also apparently involved in the export of gemstones from Rwanda, using South Africa as a conduit.   I meet with De Wet in the bar of a hotel in Pretoria and he is happy to tell me what he knows about SAIMR. Much of this relates to a man called Keith Maxwell, whom he interviewed in connection with his 1990 article. Maxwell claimed to have been a SAIMR mercenary in the Congo in 1964 and to have become a SAIMR ‘Commodore’, with special responsibility for ‘Delta Intelligence Operations.’ At times he used the surname Anandale, sometimes hyphenated with Maxwell. De Wet interviewed Maxwell, who gave him a copy of his typescript memoir, ‘The Story of My Life,’ which depicts SAIMR (here called the ‘Marine Institute’) as a large, effective and well-resourced organisation, run by paternalistic authority figures who were active in recruitment and training; the names of people involved in the organization are slightly altered in an attempt, presumably, to disguise their identity. According to this memoir, Maxwell’s career with the ‘Marine Institute’ began when he signed on as a mercenary at Empire Building in Johannesburg and was sent to the Congo in 1964 on medical duties, in the war against the United Nations—the ‘United Garbage Group.’2   ‘Every time I confronted Keith Maxwell of SAIMR with new information about their activities,’ reports De Wet, ‘he was always very cooperative and even went out of his way to hand over more documents about SAIMR.’ Most of 210

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these are headed with the same drawing of a ship’s figurehead as are the 1961 papers, but it is smaller in size. However, the address is different: it is the box number in Bergvlei mentioned in the TRC questioning of Walus; and the telephone number has seven digits, which is appropriate for the1980s.   ‘I knew full well,’ De Wet tells me, ‘that they were masters of disinformation and that the stuff they gave me was harmless and they were merely trying to sidetrack me.’ He was shown the institute’s charter, which states that SAIMR strives to ‘assist in preserving the ecology of the seas and their perimeters and to gather intelligence relating to the strategic waterways of the world, and to use this intelligence to promote peace between nations and preserving human rights.’ Maxwell tested De Wet’s credulity when he claimed that SAIMR was the successor of a 184-year-old organization formed by a group of British ship’s captains, who founded the ‘Amanda Recovery Society,’ which had salvaged a bullion cargo vessel off Cape Rock, near East London.   De Wet found it necessary—but difficult—to distinguish meaningful information from fantasy and fiction. Maxwell told him that SAIMR was now run on a ‘cell’ system, with small groups of men around the country operating independently, not communicating with each other, and unaware of the chain of command. One of these cells was called Echo; De Wet interviewed the commander of Echo, who asked for anonymity.   ‘I have no idea who finances the operation or who the people at the top are,’ said Maxwell. ‘Some orders come from London and others are initiated here in South Africa.’ He claimed its ‘Nato-like’ special forces would protect—by military means—both the ecological and strategic interests of friendly African states and that they would eventually be based in Somalia or Nigeria, not South Africa.   After the publication of his 1990 article, De Wet received a letter via his newspaper from someone calling himself Nick, who claimed to have fled to Botswana for safety, and who offered him more information: To open the lid and show you how seriously SAIMR should be taken, I have enclosed some of the papers that show SAIMR’s involvement in the Somali coup d’état last year. In fact SAIMR masterminded and executed the plan. Complete battle plan is in my possession. If you are interested put the following advert in the Citizen … personal column, which will appear on 31 July 1991: ‘For repair of your tumble dryer. Phone Nick on 970890.’

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  De Wet has deposited his collection of SAIMR documents in the South African History Archive (SAHA) at Witwatersrand University. They reveal that at least one member of the ill-fated invasion of the Seychelles by the ‘Frothblowers’ belonged to SAIMR—the mercenary Kenneth Hugh Dalgleish, who was a veteran of the Rhodesian Special Branch. The ‘Froth-blowers’ were caught easily, because they carried their weapons in their baggage as they flew into the Seychelles. De Wet’s papers reveal that Dalgleish and Maxwell, along with Martin Dolinchek, alias Anton Lubeck, a former South African intelligence service agent, had been involved before the invasion in setting up an alternative method of getting arms to the islands—creating a diversion by running a search for the treasure-laden vessel Santiago which would allow the arms to be taken by sea. Unfortunately for the ‘Froth-blowers,’ this was called off. Jerry Puren, who participated in the invasion, records in his memoir the horror of the mercenaries when they learned from Mike Hoare that the plot to deliver the arms had been called off.3   There is a file dedicated to AIDS in De Wet’s collection, which contains a disturbing report on biological warfare. This reminds me of Christelle’s information about the mother whose daughter worked for SAIMR, who had started suspecting that the organization was smuggling contaminated vaccines to Mozambique and Angola. Other SAIMR operations included the raising of a force to fight for Mobutu against rebels who were trying to topple his shaky regime.   SAIMR in the 1980s operated actively as a mercenary recruitment agency and had dealings in 1989 with Veterans for Victory, a recruitment outfit. One of De Wet’s files reveals that SAIMR advertised in 1989 in the Citizen for mercenaries, and in a long list of hopeful soldiers of fortune is Janusz Walus, along with his address and telephone details.   There are links between the 1961 Hammarskjöld-related documents that emerged in the TRC investigations and the later papers collected by De Wet. The most obvious is the logo. Interestingly, too, there are references to ‘Congo Red’ in both sets. One of the later documents is a memorandum of 1989 reporting an interest in a coup to overthrow Mugabe, giving the names of four men involved. It states at the bottom: ‘Info via Congo Red Harare.’   De Wet continued to monitor the organization and its operations. Then, at the time of majority rule in 1994, it appeared to shrink and change the nature of its activities; several of its administrative staff disappeared in mysterious circumstances.   SAIMR evidently existed as a shadowy, mercenary organization in the 1980s and early 1990s. But this does not necessarily mean that it existed in 1961— 212

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it is possible that the later organization provided an ideal means with which to produce disinformation about the past. And I am highly suspicious of an odd feature in some of the 1961 documents as well as in Maxwell’s later memoir: the use of a distinctive caret to introduce additional letters in order to correct spelling mistakes. *

One morning in March 2011 I receive a mysterious email from a member of staff at my university. ‘I have had several calls,’ she writes, ‘from a gentleman who wishes to speak with you—but who does not wish to leave a message. He sounds like he might be South African. What should I do?’ I immediately ask her to give him my mobile number if he calls again. But she’s a bit worried. ‘Are you sure?’   I certainly am: I suspect he may be a former member of SAIMR. Some time ago I circulated a message through contacts in South Africa, asking anyone with a connection to the organization to get in touch with me. When the phone rings, I discover that I’m right. But before engaging in any kind of conversation, the man at the other end of the line extracts a promise from me not to reveal his identity to anyone. ‘South Africa is not Europe,’ he tells me briskly. ‘There are men out here who take people out for a packet of cigarettes.’ He says that the organization still exists, though it is no longer active in South Africa.4   I promise him complete anonymity—that if he allows me to use the material he gives me, I will refer to him as my ‘Anonymous Source.’ I don’t know why he is willing to talk to me but I am very grateful—as well as slightly unnerved. Over the next few weeks, he and I communicate at length. I quickly gather that his experience of SAIMR was a difficult and complex one, which he had chosen to forget; but that now, prompted by my inquiries so many years later, he felt able to examine SAIMR’s history with some detachment and with real interest.   My source’s account of SAIMR operations in the 1980s and 1990s is entirely consistent with De Wet’s collection of papers, but he also mentions additional activities in different parts of Africa. SAIMR was not a political organization, he explains, but was concerned to defend its right to exist and to operate freely. My source believes that SAIMR’s roots are in the UK, from a very long time ago. When England had its wars with France in Napoleonic times, he says, SAIMR got involved—which Maxwell had also said to De Wet. Its elite unit was Delta, which gathered intelligence; but there were also sections dealing with history and geology, which had ‘little clue’ about what was going on, and 213

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even a para-psychology unit. There was a deep-sea diving unit: some members of the organization were very keen on sub aqua treasure hunting.   Not all operations were mercenary and commercial. Operation Armageddon was rather different: an effort to stop the trade of nuclear material for the manufacturing of missiles. Also different was Operation Dove, by which SAIMR sought to secure a ‘volkstaat’—a region of white homeland within South Africa—in order to prevent the escalation of violence in the run-up to majority rule. This was discussed with the ANC and several right-wing groups, involving a study of all kinds of maps. But SAIMR was motivated not so much by a desire for peace, explains my source, as a wish to avoid civil war—to have a stable base to operate from and increase the powerbase of others and, to a lesser extent, themselves.   SAIMR’s base during this period was in Alexandra, a black township where ‘no white person would put their head’—except Keith Maxwell, who ran the organization from his medical clinic. He had some kind of medical training, but it was not clear what this was. Maxwell is now dead, but had apparently been a ruthless, crazy, even brilliant man. He always had a black 0.38 Spec revolver in his pocket and didn’t think twice about killing anyone he regarded as a threat. According to my source, he sometimes annoyed people with his persistent ideas: ‘SAIMR was an organization of free-lancers and not everybody had the time or the inclination to go along with everything they would pipe up, unless it was really good, profitable and daring.’   My source has an explanation for the link between Walus, the assassin of Chris Hani, and SAIMR. Walus did indeed apply for a function at SAIMR, he tells me, but they suspected that there was something ‘horribly wrong’ with him: his writing had the style of a 10-year-old boy. Consequently, he was ‘never enlisted.’ As for the political right wing in 1994, he adds, they did not trust SAIMR, some groups suspecting that it was an arm of the government. ‘We were English-speaking and came out of nowhere. Who the hell was SAIMR?’   During the mid-1990s, my source tells me, SAIMR’s role in the recruitment of mercenaries dwindled to nothing. ‘It was Executive Outcomes,’ he adds, referring to a well-known private military company set up in 1989, ‘with whom SAIMR had no contacts (as far as I know) who took over. They obtained large contracts from governments and mining conglomerates.’ But what did all this have to do with the death of Hammarskjöld in 1961? As it turns out, quite a lot: my source had heard on a number of occasions that SAIMR claimed responsibility for the Secretary-General’s assassination. He 214

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was told that it was achieved by a bomb in the landing gear of the plane that did not explode on take-off, as planned, but when it came in to land.   In the mid-1990s, at a SAIMR meeting, he met a photographer who said he had been ‘directly’ responsible. He can’t remember his name, but recalls that he was about fifty-five years of age, short with a normal build, and may have been bald. The photographer, adds my source, was ‘modest—not a braggart,’ so he could see no reason not to believe him. Furthermore, he was aware that in the 1960s Africa was an ‘open playing-field for all,’ where companies such as Anglo-American and Union Minière needed mercenary organizations to defend their interests in decolonizing countries like the Congo.   I ask my source why SAIMR would want to kill Hammarskjöld, to which he replies that they had ‘good reasons’—the Secretary-General was ‘acquainted’ with Lumumba and wanted to assist him as much as he could, even after his arrest. Lumumba, he adds, was a Communist and Hammarskjöld was a ‘softy,’ blowing in any wind direction. They were both seen as very high-risk factors to the stability of the region, as well as threats to economic interests. Whether or not SAIMR had a direct hand in Lumumba’s assassination, he did not know—but there was an operation on the go at the time, gathering intelligence, which fell under ‘Delta.’ But in any case, he believed that MI6 and the CIA were responsible for Lumumba’s death.   There were strong links between SAIMR and MI5, MI6, the CIA and Mossad, as well as with mining giants and international conglomerates working in Africa. ‘This was quite normal at the time,’ he explains, ‘as huge interests were at stake and there was a cold war going on with big conflicts on the go in the southern African region (Mozambique and Angola).’ Meetings were held at the entertainment centres of Johannesburg: Hillbrow and Yeoville were hubs of espionage and conspiracy. There was one pub in Yeoville where Mossad, MI5, IRA and SAIMR would meet. Obviously not together, but who knows? Café de Paris in Hillbrow was an important ‘private’ meeting point for SAIMR because it was upmarket and quiet.

Later meetings were held there too.   My source had heard of Congo Red and wonders if he was Bob Denard, since Denard was active in the Congo and his band of mercenaries wore red berets. But he didn’t know, since this was before his time in the organization. Regarding other names, my source is not willing to help me with anyone who is still alive: ‘It’s an unwritten code of conduct.’ But he confirms some information that I have been given by another source: that the Commodore in the 1961 documents, whose name was redacted by the TRC, was a man called Bob 215

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Wagner. He was born in 1901, according to my source, so would have been 60 years of age at the time of Hammarskjöld’s death. The existence of a Bob ­Wagner in SAIMR fits with De Wet’s papers, which refer to him; it also fits with Maxwell’s memoir, which refers to a Commodore ‘Wagman’ (the name is slightly altered, like the other names in the memoir). From yet another source, I know that Bob Wagner belonged to a naval club in Johannesburg and went to its meetings at Wemmer Pan, where the South African Navy has a base.5   An important member of SAIMR, according to an informant, was Ken Dalgleish, who quarrelled with Maxwell on occasion. Dalgleish had his headquarters in Rivonia.6   One of the documents sent to me by my anonymous source lists SAIMR’s sources of income for 1982–83, which add up to just less than 900,000 Rand; it is a scrappy piece of paper, but the account has been checked and signed by two people, including the leader of the cell called Echo. The biggest sources of funds were a company in Rwanda and the sale of gemstones; the rest included a trading company with links to the Isle of Man, medical clinics, the sale of ‘Misc Information,’ a range of tourist operations specializing in yachts and sub aqua, and the Riviera Hotel in Durban—which was owned by the mercenary Ken Dalgleish.   My source has not seen the 1961 documents relating to Hammarskjöld’s death, so I give him copies of the eight that I have collected. The first few, he believes, look genuine; it appears to him that SAIMR existed at that time, with an address, and it must have had some purpose. It was relevant, too, that there was a belief in SAIMR’s involvement in the murder of Hammarskjöld that existed independently of these documents—including the claim by the photographer on the East Rand.   Most importantly, my source immediately recognized the handwriting of one of the documents as that of Maxwell. This means either that the document is a forgery, or that Maxwell was involved in Operation Celeste. The latter is unlikely. According to Maxwell’s memoir, he went to the Congo in 1964, when he was seventeen: if this was true, he could not have been either in the field at the time or in the SAIMR office in Johannesburg. My source comments that no one knew his age, because there was a rule ‘not to ever show your ID documentation or talk about your age.’ But even if Maxwell was twenty in 1961, adds my source, he was unlikely to have been given an important role in a highprofile plot like Operation Celeste: I mean: are you going to put a twenty-year-old in charge of such an operation, even if he had a high IQ and was enthusiastic in his job and showed his skills and logic? No! That was not SAIMR.

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  At this point, I am ready to conclude that the 1961 documents were all fabricated by Maxwell. But then my anonymous source sends me another document: a handwritten letter written to ‘Lieutenant’ Bob Wagner on 17 June 1947 by a man called F. Malan, who describes himself as a Commodore of SAIMR; his address is a Pretoria box number. The letter informs Wagner that Rear-Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the head of the Central Intelligence Group in the USA, was interested in events in the Union as well as the Colony (by which he means South-West Africa—today Namibia), as he felt that the ‘Russkis’ would make ‘increasingly bold attempts to undermine His Majesty’s authority in these areas.’ Malan suggests that Wagner take up an offer to travel to America and learn something from the secret service there, as a way of advancing his position in SAIMR; his cover would be that of an expert in metallurgy and Anglo-American would provide him with the required accreditation and training. This mission would be ‘Top Secret’—‘under no circumstances must your connection to S.A.I.M.R. be revealed to anybody over there.’   This letter is startling: it suggests that SAIMR may have existed not only in 1961, but even before that—as long ago as 1947. But is it genuine? Certainly the information in the letter fits the historical record. Moreover, my source also sent me the envelope in which Malan’s letter was sent to Wagner, which looks appropriate for the period: across the top is written ‘On His Majesty’s Service’ in English and in Afrikaans. It was posted in an official envelope of an Examinations Officer in the Union Department of Education in Pretoria. I can’t help wondering if Maxwell forged the letter and the envelope: but overall I think it unlikely, as he would have needed to be an expert forger to achieve such a convincing effect. Moreover, Maxwell did not even bother disguising his handwriting when producing his own fabrication.   But, most importantly, it is evident that the letter from Malan to Wagner is written in the same distinctive hand of two of the 1961 documents. One of these bears a further, stylistic, similarity to the 1947 letter from Malan: one long paragraph that is a single sentence. The other is the final report describing the success of Operation Celeste, which has the appearance of a report via telephone from Congo Red.   Does this mean that SAIMR existed in 1961 and that Operation Celeste may have been a genuine plot that did in fact kill Hammarskjöld? If so, what about the document in Maxwell’s hand? It appears possible that Maxwell fabricated ‘his’ document and then added it to the set. But why? Perhaps it was because he liked things to be complete and properly recorded. Such a characteristic would fit neatly with the carets in the typewritten documents and his 217

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own memoir, where he has corrected the spelling. On the other hand, ‘his’ document adds nothing to the plot of Operation Celeste: its contents repeat the information in the other papers in the set. My source offers another explanation: Maxwell felt that he had missed out on something that was big in his eyes, like the Congo war and DH’s assassination. Not necessarily that he did not play a part at all in the Congo, but just a minor one due to his age … It could be that he wanted to achieve similar ‘great’ things during his tenure as Commodore. So he could have forged some of the paperwork to show others how important SAIMR and he were.

But he is careful not to commit himself: ‘I really do not know.’   I don’t know either. What is clear, though, is that a proper investigation into the 1961 SAIMR documents is long overdue. At the very least, the original documents should be found and scrutinized by experts in paper, ink, typewriter letter forms, and graphology. My source tells me that he never wants to get involved in such an organization again: ‘Life is too short to get tangled up in issues you have absolutely no or very little control over.’ Some day, he says, he will tell me why he joined SAIMR. He reflects on the mercenary activity of the twentieth century, when it was easy to get a band of men together. ‘Try that today in South Africa,’ he says, ‘and you will be imprisoned. It’s good that they’ve put a halt to it as people would sell their lives and souls for a handful of dollars to be shot in some godforsaken place.’

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The logo on the SAIMR letterhead looks like a drawing of a ship’s figurehead, but on which ship? The mystery is solved by an expert figurehead historian: the logo is a copy of the drawing of the original figurehead of the Cutty Sark a British clipper ship built in Scotland in 1869. The drawing is believed to be the work of Hercules Linton, the ship’s designer, and features a young and beautiful witch called ‘Nannie,’ a character in the poem ‘Tam O’Shanter’ (1790) by the Scottish poet Robert Burns.1 Linton’s Nannie is wearing a ‘cutty sark,’ which is Scots for a short petticoat, and in her left hand is a horse’s tail, which she seized from a galloping mare while pursuing Tam.   The drawing was kept quietly in private hands until it turned up in the midtwentieth century, in connection with the restoration of the Cutty Sark in the 1950s, completed in 1957. The first documented reference to the drawing appears in the report of a meeting of the Royal Institute of Naval Architects in 1965, which records that Mrs R. E. Brettle, the granddaughter of Hercules Linton, displayed a drawing to the assembled group, along with other notes and sketches by Linton.2 It is possible, however, that Mrs Brettle brought the drawing to public attention ten years earlier. According to an article in The Times in 1955, a reproduction of an oil painting of the Cutty Sark from 1872 had prompted the discovery of the designer’s working notebook and sketches, belonging to one Mrs Brettle.3 Although the drawing is not specifically mentioned in this Times article, it seems unlikely that Mrs Brettle would have held it back from the rest of her collection. Nonetheless, it is apparent that the replica of the figurehead in the completed restoration of 1957 was made without the help of this drawing. This would have been strange, although not impossible, if the drawing did indeed turn up in 1955.

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  The use of the figurehead drawing in the SAIMR letterhead suggests three possibilities: first, that the drawing was known about and utilized by the organization before the ship’s restoration in the 1950s; second, that the logo was triggered by the emergence of the drawing in 1955; or third, that it was a response to Mrs Brettle’s display of the drawing in 1965. If the first hypothesis is correct, then SAIMR was linked to people, or at least one person, who was knowledgeable about Linton’s designs of the Cutty Sark. If the second hypothesis is correct, it would be consistent with the fact that an official SAIMR document from 1947—the letter from Commodore Malan to Lieutenant Wagner—does not bear the logo, unlike the 1961 documents. And if the third hypothesis is correct, then the 1961 SAIMR documents cannot be genuine. But whatever the explanation may be, it is clear that SAIMR chose to present itself as a maritime-focused organization in its logo as well as its name. This could have represented a genuine interest, or it could have been a cover.   It is noteworthy that the logo is a drawing of a British ship, rather than a South African one. This would fit with the claim made by both Maxwell and my anonymous source in South Africa, that SAIMR has its roots in the UK rather than South Africa. It also fits with the provenance of the alleged 1961 papers: for these documents were sent to the TRC proceedings by a counterintelligence section of South Africa’s National Intelligence Agency, relating to possible foreign involvement in the Chris Hani assassination. If SAIMR had been rooted solely in the South African state, the papers would have been in a different section—and would possibly not have been made available.   One British maritime expert who took a keen interest in the Cutty Sark in the 1950s was Major Patrick Wall, Conservative MP and Royal Marine commando, who drew attention to the ship’s restoration in the House of Commons in 1960.4 In addition to enthusing about the clipper itself, Wall was a fervent supporter of a cause that the ship was seen to symbolize: the Cape Route between the UK and the Far East, which the Cutty Sark had sailed faster than any other clipper. For Wall, as for many others on the political right wing, it was vital to keep the Cape Route open in order to resist Soviet Communism. He vigorously defended the Simonstown Agreement of 1955 between Britain and South Africa, which gave the Royal Navy the right to continue using its former South African base to protect the Cape Route. He regarded the Cape as the crossroads of British trade and the back door of NATO.5   Africa was of great importance to Wall, who was a champion of white minority rule against the threat of African nationalism sweeping down from the north of the continent. He visited African countries on numerous occasions, 220

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especially South Africa, the Rhodesian Federation, Mozambique and Angola, producing detailed situation reports on the military resistance of these whiteruled states to the armed liberation movements in the region.6 ‘I believe,’ wrote Wall in 1971, ‘that I am the only British MP who has now covered the whole of the disputed white/black frontier in Africa from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.’ He added that he had been in Angola, Cabinda, Ovamboland, Rhodesia, Zambia and Mozambique.7   Wall’s reaction to Operation Morthor, the UN’s military offensive on 13 September 1961 against Tshombe’s white mercenaries, was one of fury. He demanded that Macmillan recall Parliament for two debates: one on UN action in Katanga; the other on the Northern Rhodesian proposals.8 Like most of the extreme UK right-wingers who belonged to the Monday Club and supported the Katanga Lobby, Wall loathed Dag Hammarskjöld.   In the early 1950s Wall bought land and property in Rhodesia and became a trusted confidante of Roy Welensky. Less than forty-eight hours after the crash of the Albertina, Welensky wrote to Wall to express his anger at Conor Cruise O’Brien in particular and at the British government more generally. He expressed agreement with Wall’s stated view that the British would endeavour ‘to string the Northern Rhodesian thing out to separate it from Katanga.’9 In a further letter on 24 October 1961, Welensky told Wall that the ‘only time’ he had ‘got really tough’ with the British government was over Katanga. ‘I’ve warned of many things on this continent, Patrick,’ he added, with at least a touch of self-pity, ‘but little attention was paid to me.’10 *

There is a large archive of Patrick Wall’s papers at Hull University, where I have tried to investigate his activities in Africa in the second half of 1961. However his files have been carefully weeded for this period in relation to Africa: the diaries covering his frequent visits to Africa in 1961 are marked by a gap between the end of May and the beginning of December;11 there is a further gap in the general file relating to his visits to Africa between July and October 1961.12   I have found no evidence that Wall was linked to an organization called SAIMR. But I do wonder: his profile fits perfectly. Not only was he an enthusiast for the Cutty Sark and a vigorous advocate of the Cape Route, but he was passionate about ships (he had a collection of 6,000 model ships and aeroplanes by 1992)13 and—like SAIMR in the 1980s—took an active interest in marine diving. 221

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  Whether or not SAIMR existed in 1961 and participated in a plot to kill the UN Secretary-General, there were similar organizations which operated in central Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. These organizations—which today are generally referred to as private military companies (PMCs) or private security companies (PSCs)—tended to have their headquarters in Johannesburg and maintained strong links with the UK, Belgium or the USA through business networks or government intelligence. As Madeleine Drohan has shown in her book, Making a Killing: How and Why Corporations Use Armed Force to Do Business (2004), these paramilitary outfits had their roots in Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company, which at the turn of the twentieth century built its own army, the British South Africa Police (BSAP), which went on to become the national police force of Southern Rhodesia.   One of these organizations was the International Diamond Security Organization (IDSO), which was set up in 1953 by Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, the founder of De Beers, allegedly to stop diamond smuggling. To set it up, Oppenheimer recruited Sir Percy Sillitoe, the newly retired head of MI5, who was already familiar with Africa from his earlier career as a policeman in Northern Rhodesia. IDSO included among its staff a half dozen intelligence officers from MI5, as told by Ian Fleming in The Diamond Smugglers (1957). One of IDSO’s agents, Captain J. H. du Plessis, wrote a memoir of his exploits under the title Diamonds are Dangerous. The Adventures of an Agent of the International Diamond Security Organization (1960). The centre of his adventures, as recounted in this book, lay in Katanga and in the Copperbelt of Northern Rhodesia; barely veiled references are made to shadowy meetings with Bob de Quehen, Welensky’s director of the Federal Intelligence Security Bureau. Du Plessis’s memoir is extremely racist in its attitude and language.   Some people took the view that IDSO was a cover for other, more sinister operations in Africa. It was officially disbanded by Percy Sillitoe in 1957, though suspicions were held that IDSO’s agents were still on the ground and that its operations continued in other forms.14   The decolonization of central and southern Africa—and especially the conflict in the Congo—was a fertile seedbed for the development of a particular kind of military company: namely, mercenary recruitment agencies. Working for such an agency were three of the mercenaries present at Ndola airport on the evening of 17 September 1961: Dick Browne, a Briton; Carlos Huyghe, a Belgian; and Jerry Puren, a South African.15 222

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  The front-men of this agency were Captain Roderick Russell-Cargill, a Scot and a former commercial traveller in the Federation, and Stuart Finley-Bissett, also a Scot, who was a Lusaka labour agent. Finley-Bissett put himself into the pages of the foreign press in August 1961 after punching Mennen Williams, the American Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, at Lusaka airport, as a way of expressing his anger at American support for majority rule and a united Congo.16   The main office for the agency was at 81 Pritchard Street in Johannesburg and there was a sub-recruiting office in Bulawayo; however, the agency either did not have a name or did not use it in any routine way.17 The conditions of service for the volunteers, reported the Rand Daily Mail in February 1961, ‘are almost as fabulous as the roll of banknotes of colourful and expensivelooking denominations, from which Mr Finley-Bissett tipped a waiter over coffee and liqueurs in a Johannesburg hotel last night.’ As well as soldiers, they were looking for jet pilots and air crew. Methods of recruitment included a newspaper advertisement offering ‘interesting work involving a certain amount of travel.’18 A typical recruit was James Hedges, a South African pilot, with experience in the South African Air Force and the RAF, including a year in action in Malaya.19 Intriguingly, while applying for the renewal of his UK passport in August 1961, Hedges produced a letter from Seven Seas Airlines of Luxembourg—which was closely associated with the CIA—describing him as one of their employees.20   Russell-Cargill was captured in Katanga by the UN, when he revealed under interrogation that he was a graduate of Sandhurst and had a commission in the Black Watch; he had also been a policeman in the BSAP. He had recruited mercenaries, he said, because he wanted to maintain Katanga as a ‘buffer state’ to cushion the impact of the Congo situation on Rhodesia.21 He added that a Belgian was also acting as an agent, in cooperation with Sabena, the Belgian national airline.22   One of Russell-Cargill’s recruits was Dick Browne—a former Navy midshipman and the brother of a British Tory MP—who was living in Johannesburg. Browne went to fight in Katanga and also worked for the recruiting agency; his wife had the paid role of providing the mercenaries with welfare arrangements in South Africa. Browne was dismissed by Tshombe, but still travelled up and down between Elisabethville and Johannesburg, wearing disguises to avoid being recognized, and dyeing his hair grey (as did Faulques on the same journey). He assured Tshombe that he was ready to serve him at any time.23 The British Consul in Elisabethville sent a report on Browne to the For 223

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eign Office. Browne, he said, had been approached in South Africa by a certain Colonel Uys of South African Military Intelligence, ‘with a request to send from Katanga intelligence, particularly of Communist activity.’ Once Browne had agreed, Colonel Uys flew to Cape Town, where he arranged for him to be provided with an exit visa authorizing him to proceed to Brussels for three months on business.24   Carlos Huyghe, the chef de cabinet to Katanga’s Minister for Defence, also worked for this recruiting agency. Bjørn Egge, head of the UN military information branch in 1961, harboured serious suspicions about Huyghe’s activities in Katanga and watched him carefully.25   In April 1961, Browne told the UN that Huyghe—also known as ‘Carlo’ and ‘Charles’—had been involved in the murder of Lumumba; he said he had been told this by his wife, who had learned of it from Russell-Cargill. Under interrogation by the UN, Browne said that he had questioned Huyghe about the allegation, to which ‘Col Huyghe admitted that he had shot Lumumba and his two companions with the assistance of a few so-called affreux.’26 Browne added that Huyghe had seen a psychiatrist since the event and now always carried a loaded pistol on his person and kept hand grenades in his bedroom. Browne claimed, too, that Huyghe was the ‘evil spirit’ behind Tshombe.27 UN officials wondered, though, if the accusation was driven by a vendetta, since Browne was embroiled in a feud with Huyghe; it was said that bad feeling had developed between the two men after Huyghe had slept with Browne’s wife on a visit to Johannesburg.   The UN had grounds for suspecting that Russell-Cargill, too, was present at the time of Lumumba’s murder; questions were also asked about a possible involvement by Browne.28 All these suspicions were raised in the course of the UN’s Commission of Inquiry into the murder of Lumumba.29   Patrice Lumumba’s death remained a mystery for many long years. But a Belgian sociologist and writer, Ludo De Witte, established that the Prime Minister was killed by Katangese leaders, including Tshombe, but Belgian officers were present and subsequently destroyed his body; other Belgians were complicit, including Carlos Huyghe. De Witte also showed that King Baudouin and his inner circle were kept informed of the plot to kill Lumumba and gave it a veiled blessing. De Witte’s research was published in 1999 in his pathbreaking book, De Moord op Lumumba, which appeared in English translation as The Assassination of Lumumba in 2001. The book caused a sensation in Belgium and as a direct consequence, a Belgian parliamentary commission of inquiry was set up. Its final report on 16 November 2001 confirmed De Witte’s findings, including the complicity of Huyghe.30 224

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  Carlos Huyghe was awarded the Order of Léopold in 2009 at the Belgian Embassy in Pretoria.31 This Order is for service to the Belgian state and was given to Huyghe as a representative of the Union Francophone des Belges à l’Etranger in South Africa.   There is no obvious reason for the presence of Browne and Huyghe at Ndola airport on 17 September 1961, unless by some coincidence they were in transit between Johannesburg and Elisabethville in the course of work for their recruitment agency.   Another mercenary linked to this agency—and recruited by Huyghe—who was at the airport that night was Jerry Puren. In his memoir, Mercenary Commander, Puren claims that he rushed up to Ndola from Durban that day as a response to the outbreak on 13 September 1961 of Morthor; at the time he was visiting his family in South Africa, having arrived on 12 September. But his arrival and stay in Ndola do not seem to have served any particular purpose—even according to his own account. Moreover, Puren’s behaviour at Ndola airport that evening seems totally out of character: for even though ‘excitement ran high, history was unfolding, and we were right on the spot,’ as he himself writes, he and fellow mercenary pilot Glasspole (who was also at Ndola airport) decided to have an early night: Shortly after 22h00 there was a rustle of excitement among the chilled gathering. Several people claimed they had heard the sound of an aircraft’s engine, others said they saw lights disappearing low in the west. We saw nothing. Eventually Glasspole and I looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and returned to our welcoming beds at the Savoy Hotel.32

 This is a very different Jerry Puren from the man of action described in the rest of his memoir: who fearlessly, for example, escaped from the UN after his capture during Rumpunch, disguised as a priest. He and a fellow mercenary, Verloo, spent several days in the home of a wealthy Belgian family before fleeing, wearing a dog collar, to South Africa. ‘Even the taciturn Belgian host,’ boasted Puren later, ‘couldn’t resist a smile as we strode into the sitting room … Verloo clutching the bulky crucifix at his side as if it was a magnum pistol and I tripping over the hem of the cassock with my military boots.’33   Puren’s and Glasspole’s unlikely early night at Ndola does make me wonder about the Dove found by Bo Virving at Ndola airport the following day—with a hole in the bottom, through which Puren and Glasspole had become adept at dropping bombs on to Baluba villages. Furthermore, Puren was rewarded by Tshombe just a few days after this episode, by being made Chief of Operations of the Katangese Air Force, at an impromptu parade.34 225

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  One intriguing aspect of Puren’s mercenary career is that he later became involved in the failed Seychelles invasion in 1981, with which SAIMR was apparently associated. *

Some mysterious organizations in central and southern Africa in the 1960s had links with the Katanga Lobby in the UK. One of these was the ‘5-Rivers Club’ in Ndola, which had apparently been formed to maintain association between those who had served or lived in British-ruled India. John Biggs-Davison, a prominent right-wing MP, was in contact with the Honorary Secretary of the Club, one A. V. Blake, at the Coppersmith Arms Hotel in Ndola. Blake wrote to Biggs-Davison on 4 May 1961, praising Tshombe and condemning the UN: It was in Katanga only that freedom existed—still exists in spite of the efforts of UNO, the Gizengists and the Afro-Asians: it was there only that banditry was kept under control: it is there that real progress exists.

He invited Biggs-Davison to join the 5-Rivers Club.35   Wearing another hat, Blake was the director of the Rhodesia-Katanga Bureau, also known as the Bureau de Solidarité, which was also based at the Coppersmith Arms Hotel in Ndola; its activities are equally obscure. On 27 July 1961, the Bureau’s Joint Secretary, Robert B. Coben, wrote to Biggs-Davison to inform him that in the course of an imminent tour of Katanga, Léopoldville, the Brazzaville Congo Republic, France and Belgium, Blake hoped to visit Britain and ‘will try to contact you during the month of August to discuss matters of interest to both of you.’ He was at that time in Elisabethville, ‘State of Katanga.’36   Matters of interest to Blake were evidently of interest to Roy Welensky as well, who asked his Private Secretary on 4 September 1961 to make contact with Blake on a ‘discreet’ basis. Blake had sent a telegram the year before to Welensky’s office, asking for permission to take some armed men with him to ‘sort the position out in Katanga’; this meant he was a ‘do-gooder,’ in the opinion of the Private Secretary.37   The Prime Minister engaged in a discreet acquaintance with a variety of ruthless white men. One of these was the mercenary Ted Galinos, who wrote to him on 28 September 1961 to disclose that he had ‘most vital information and would like to contact personally, someone close to you at their earliest convenience’; he asked for a reply in plain envelopes.38 Welensky arranged for his Private Secretary to make contact.39 226

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  Welensky relied heavily on Sir Geoffry Follows, who was discreetly described as a member of the Federal Intelligence Security Branch (FISB) ‘on special duties.’40 Aged 65 in 1961, having retired in 1951 from the civil service in Hong Kong,41 Follows evidently relished adventure: he was frequently sent by Welensky on clandestine missions to Katanga to gather intelligence. Meanwhile the Prime Minister kept firm control of the FISB and its director, Bob de Quehen, MI5’s former Security Liaison Officer (SLO) for the region. The FISB was in regular contact with MI5 and Sir Roger Hollis, Director General of MI5 until 1965, met with Welensky on a visit to Rhodesia in 1961.42   Welensky developed an interest in Colonel David Stirling, the British army officer who had founded the Special Air Service (SAS) during the Second World War. Stirling then moved to Southern Rhodesia, where in 1949 he set up the Capricorn Africa Society to ‘fight the battle of the racial gap.’43 But although Capricorn was dressed up as a liberal movement advocating an end to racial segregation, it aimed to sabotage the emergence, in Stirling’s words, of an ‘effective African nationalist movement whose purpose would be to push the European out of Africa.’44 Stirling’s ideas on race, like those of British High Commissioner Lord Alport, were no different from Welensky’s—as the two men themselves agreed. In the 1950s Stirling wrote a series of letters to Welensky, proposing that they join forces for their shared ‘long-range objectives in Africa.’45 Welensky responded with the personal touch he used for friends and useful people: ‘David, I am … pleased … I believe a joining of forces could help the cause we both hold most dear.’46 He was not bothered by Stirling’s Capricorn schemes—such as African banks—which provoked de Quehen to call him ‘that crackpot Stirling.’47   Capricorn nurtured clever, educated Africans, such as Leopold Takawira and Herbert Chitepo (who both later died in tragic circumstances associated with their resistance to white minority rule), but lost sympathy when their protégés showed political minds of their own. After Takawira’s visit to Cairo for the All-African People’s Conference in March 1961, one Capricorn member complained bitterly that ‘One little swig of the Cairo Brew seems to have gone to his head completely.’ She thought it was time to stop giving him financial support, ‘as it really is a bit much to sponsor a red hot poker.’48 It was not long before Capricorn’s support for the Rhodesian Federation and its advocacy of a qualified and elitist voting franchise firmly alienated it from the majority of the population. ‘Capricorn’ became a term of abuse for most people.   David Stirling’s other creation, the SAS, flourished rather better in Rhodesia than the Capricorn Africa Society. In April 1961, the Rhodesian SAS was 227

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reformed as C Squadron 22 SAS and was based at Ndola. When Northern Rhodesia became independent Zambia, C Squadron moved to Southern Rhodesia, and when UDI was declared it deployed its traditional special forces role against the freedom fighters, using tactics—such as enforcing so-called ‘protected villages’—that had been used by the SAS in Malaya in the 1950s.49 Stirling went on to set up other paramilitary organizations: first Watchguard International Ltd, based in London and active in the former British empire, including in Africa, and later KAS International. He was also involved in the 1960s in various secret operations for British intelligence. He was instrumental in the prosecution of a clandestine war against Egyptian forces in Yemen in the 1960s, involving Billy McLean, Roger Faulques and Bob Denard, all of whom had been involved in some way with Katanga in 1961; the operation was backed by Julian Amery and (on a deniable basis) the Foreign Secretary Lord Home.50   Prime Minister Welensky obtained secret information about the founder of the SAS. ‘My dear Bob,’ he wrote to de Quehen on 7 August 1961, ‘Thank you for your top secret and personal note on Colonel Stirling. I told you on the telephone what I planned to do so I needn’t put it on record. I will let you know the outcome of my discussions in due time.’ In the margin of the letter, he wrote that the ‘top secret and personal note’ had been put in the safe.51 *

In April 1961, months even before Rumpunch and Morthor, Welensky had threatened the British Foreign Secretary that if Britain did not intervene to protect Katanga, then he would do so: The point I now wish to make to you—and I make it in all solemnity—is that we will not stand idly by and watch Mr Tshombe destroyed. If … he is in danger of being destroyed by Afro-Asian pressures masquerading as United Nations operations I shall do everything in my power to assist his survival. I think you should know that and that I am fully prepared to accept the consequences of any action I might take.52

He made the same point repeatedly over the next months, privately and publicly. ‘I have been shocked with the views that have been expressed to me from the Foreign Office,’ he confided to Charles Waterhouse, the Director of Tanks, ‘and I’ve taken great exception to the attitude of Hammarskjöld.’53   On 23 August 1961 Welensky wrote to Pat Cochran at the Tanks office in Salisbury to reject Cochran’s suggestion of sending Federal advisers to help Tshombe. ‘The battle,’ wrote Welensky, ‘is really being fought behind the scenes 228

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and at a much higher level than that, and when I see you I will tell you the extent to which I have gone.’54   On 4 September 1961, by which time he had decided to fight ‘behind the scenes,’ he wrote in fury to Macmillan. ‘I must now,’ he affirmed, ‘reserve the right to act as I think best.’55 Four days later he told Waterhouse that he was quite sure that ‘U.N.O. are determined to destroy Tshombe.’ He was working like a slave, he added, and had had a bad time with flu, but was ‘alive and still scrapping’: Finally, I just want to say to you that I shall go on to the bitter end on this issue. I want no-one to have any illusions about where I stand.56

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17. Lord Alport (pictured here with Lady Alport), the British High Commissioner, was at Ndola airport on the night of the crash and insisted that Hammarskjöld had decided ‘to go elsewhere’. This delayed the search for the plane, which was not found until 15 hours after the crash.

18. Bjørn Egge, the Norwegian head of the Military Information Branch in the UN Congo mission, talking to Conor Cruise O’Brien (left), the Irish head of the UN mission in Katanga, on 1 August 1961. Both Egge and O’Brien believed until their deaths that Hammarskjöld’s plane crashed as a result of sabotage.

19. Timothy Kankasa, who saw a small plane flashing lights on the Albertina on the night of the crash, and whose report in the morning hours of 18 September 1961 of a crashed plane in the nearby forest was not acted on by the Rhodesian authorities. After the independence of Zambia in 1964, Kankasa became a Minister of State in the new government.

20. A view of the wreckage of Hammarskjöld’s plane. ‘The smell of death was everywhere. Large mopani flies were beginning to settle on the bodies before they were covered by blankets and put into waiting trucks.’

21. The swathe cut through the forest by the Albertina as it crashed. It appeared to have executed a turn over the approach area, crashing near the end of the turn, and had sliced off the tops of the trees for about 150 yards.

22.  Swedish and Rhodesian investigators into the cause of the crash.

23. On 2 November 1961, all the pieces of the wreckage of the plane were placed in a hangar at Ndola airport, which was locked and sealed.

24. Conor Cruise O’Brien taking refuge in a trench from an attack by the Katanga Air Force Fouga on UN headquarters in Elisabethville on 18 September 1961, just hours after the crash of the Albertina.

25.  A UN soldier in the Congo examines a captured Katanga Air Force Fouga, 1 December 1961.

26. The funeral service for Dag Hammarskjöld on 29 September 1961 in Uppsala, Sweden, where he grew up. Members of his family stand at the foot of the grave as the coffin is lowered into it. The family wreath bore a single inscription: ‘Why?

27. Dr Nevers Mumba, Vice-President of the Republic of Zambia, pays tribute to Dag Hammarskjöld and the other victims of the crash at the memorial site near Ndola, 21 September 2003.

28. Lieutenant Charles M Southall, Assistant US Naval Attaché, Rabat, Morocco, pays his respects to King Hassan II on 17 November 1965. Four years earlier, from the Cyprus listening-post of the American National Security Agency (NSA), Southall heard a recording of the shooting-down of the Albertina.

29. Mrs Chibesa Kankasa in the 1960s, who saw a ball of fire in the sky on the night of the crash. Mrs Kankasa was Zambia’s Minister for Women’s Affairs between 1969 and 1988.

30. The original drawing of the figurehead for the British clipper ship the Cutty Sark, built in 1868. The drawing is believed to have been the work of Hercules Linton, the ship’s designer.

31. One of eight documents apparently produced by an organisation called the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), describing a plot to kill Hammarskjöld in September 1961. Linton’s drawing of the figurehead for the Cutty Sark appears as a logo in the 1960s documents; it was also used by SAIMR in the 1980–90s.

32. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan lays a wreath at an annual ceremony in memory of former UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and the staff members who lost their lives with him in the plane crash, 19 September 2005. The occasion took place outside the Meditation Room in the General Assembly public lobby at UN Headquarters in New York.

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If Dag Hammarskjöld had landed safely at Ndola airport on 17 September 1961, he would have found a world not unlike apartheid South Africa: for the British colonial territory of the Central African Federation was also organized on the basis of racial inequality and segregation. No Africans were allowed inside the airport perimeter, unless they were very special cases like Tshombe and his advisers. Outside, a group of Africans hoped to catch sight of the Secretary-General—to welcome him and praise his support for democratic freedom. Inside one of the airport’s Nissen huts, drinking at the bar, were white mercenaries and adventurers like Puren, Browne and Huyghe—men despised by Hammarskjöld for their actions and beliefs.   It was in order to defend and maintain this white-ruled society that the pugilistic Welensky was fighting on three related fronts: against the Cha Cha Cha, which was campaigning to end the Federation; against the UK government, which was refusing to support Katanga openly and was obstructing the Federal government’s plans for Northern Rhodesia; and against the UN and Hammarskjöld. All three fronts represented for him a fight to the bitter end against Communism. ‘As the great convex slab of a continent lurches away from the sun towards the night of Communist-exploited racialism,’ wrote his biographer in admiration in December 1961, ‘this man Welensky is engaged in a valiant endeavour to prevent the remaining light from the guttering candle of Western democratic civilisation in Africa from being extinguished.’1   But the Secretary-General had no time for such posturing. For him, as he explained to Hendrik Verwoerd on his visit to South Africa in January that year, racism of any kind was unacceptable and against the principles of the UN

231

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Charter. Hammarskjöld repeatedly emphasized the values of self-determination for individuals and for nations. In the introduction to his last Annual Report, he argued that the international community had to follow certain key principles: equal political rights; equal economic opportunities; justice; and the prohibition of the use of armed force.2 On all four counts, the Central African Federation failed to deliver.   But Hammarskjöld may not have realized the depths of emotion behind the white Rhodesians’ commitment to minority rule. For him, going to Ndola was a focused attempt to find a way of achieving peace in Katanga through talks with Tshombe. But by flying to this small Northern Rhodesian town, he was entering hostile territory where he and the UN were loathed by the dominant group. Even after the failure of the Albertina to land and the growing awareness that it might have crashed, there was little sympathy for the United Nations at Ndola. ‘Feeling, especially in the army,’ observed Benjamin Matlick, the USAF attaché from Léopoldville, ‘is very anti-U.N.’ The crew of the three UN aircraft which landed at Ndola to help with the search were ordered not to go into the airport or the town, and Rhodesian guards were placed around the planes. In Matlick’s hearing, a Brigadier, who was Chief of Staff of the Copperbelt Brigade, gave a brisk order to an RRAF Group Captain: ‘Get those damned aircraft off the field.’ The Brigadier said that he would like ‘to take the crews of the UN aircraft and put them in gaol with the Irish.’3   The animosity of many white Rhodesians towards the UN does not, of course, mean that they were responsible for his death. But the Rhodesian officials managing the initial air accident investigation and then the public commission of inquiry were certainly responsible for suppressing and belittling the evidence of foul play. The statements of all African witnesses, even those living in close proximity to the crash site, were dismissed or disqualified.   Even the evidence of the sole survivor, the American bodyguard Harold Julien, was discounted. Julien stated that the plane blew up before it crashed; he also described seeing sparks in the sky. But these important recollections were dismissed as the ramblings of a sick man, even though his physician, Dr Lowenthal, insisted that when Julien gave his testimony, he was ‘lucid and coherent.’ Lowenthal felt so strongly about the need to establish the truth about Julien’s physical state that he participated in the hearings as a volunteer witness, but his contribution had little influence on the eventual report produced by the Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry.4   New details continue to emerge which expose the flaws in the Rhodesian investigation. Just as this book is about to go to press, Hans Kristian Simensen, 232

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who gave me access to the secret Egge papers, sends me from Sweden another crucial piece of evidence from the Virving archive: the evidence to the Rhodesian investigation of Leslie Thorogood, air traffic controller at Salisbury Airport, who was on duty as the Flight Information Centre controller on the night of 17–18 September 1961 from 19.30 local time until 06.00; he was also tower controller from 20.10 to 02.30. His testimony reveals that the official transcription of communications between Salisbury and Ndola airports was not complete.   Thorogood states that after 23.31, when the Albertina was handed over to Ndola tower, his ‘point to point R/T [radio-telephone] started fading on 6915 kc/s,’ so he alternated between that frequency and 3682 kc/s in his communications with Ndola. He then adds: ‘3682 kc/s was not tape recorded that night although I was not aware of this at the time.’ This reveals that the label given to the transcription of tape-recorded radio-telephone communications that night between Salisbury and Ndola—as ‘Frequency: 6915/3682 Kc/s’—is misleading. It also means that the transcription contains omissions, some of which may be significant.   The Rhodesian Inquiry Report states that Martin, the Ndola Airport air traffic controller, asked for permission to close the airport at about 3.10 in the morning of 18 September 1961. However, Thorogood states: ‘I did not receive any request from Ndola for permission to close the airport that night’. If he had received such a request, he adds, he would not have given Ndola permission to close the airfield: ‘I would not have done so after Ndola had originated an INCERFA [uncertainty signal] which would require any reply being addressed to that station.’ Nor did Thorogood at any time believe that Hammarskjöld had decided to ‘go elsewhere’, as did Lord Alport and the Ndola airport personnel. On the contrary, he expected the plane to land: ‘I consider that I had sufficient flight information on SE-BDY to leave no doubt in my mind that he intended to land at Ndola.’   As one of its reasons for blaming the Swedish pilots for the crash, the Rhodesian Commission pointed to the fact that Flight Information in Rhodesia was not given information about the aircraft’s itinerary. However, Thorogood did not regard this as either unexpected or a problem: ‘This is normal owing to bad communications prevalent in this area and to the North at night. It is quite usual for us not to get departure signals on civil aircraft even from Nairobi during the night. It is quite usual for us to get first contact on an arriving aircraft from the North when within VHF range (50–200 miles).’ This is exactly what happened with the Albertina. 233

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  Thorogood’s testimony gives the clear impression that he did not endorse the actions of Ndola airport that night. His testimony was not used in the Rhodesian Inquiry Report; nor was it referred to in the subsequent UN Inquiry. A variety of explanations for the crash have emerged over the years. ‘The main conspiracy theories put forward,’ comments Brian Urquhart, ‘are mutually exclusive—if one is true, all the others must be false.’5 Urquhart makes a good point. But in fact, there is probably some kind of truth in many of these stories.   Hammarskjöld may have been assassinated; or he may have been killed in a failed hijacking. But whatever the details, his death was almost certainly the result of a sinister intervention. It is most unlikely that the Albertina crashed as a result of pilot error, as claimed by the Rhodesian public inquiry of 1961– 62 and by a private inquiry for the Swedish government in 1993. The UN inquiry report of 1962, which reached an open verdict and found that sabotage or a bomb could not be excluded, has been vindicated.   Any number of men in the region—most especially the mercenaries—could have implemented a plot to kill or hijack the Secretary-General. But they would have been the instruments. Who gave the orders? Harry S. Truman, former president of the USA, is reported to have said to the press: Dag Hammarskjöld was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said, ‘When they killed him.’6

If this report is true, who did Truman mean by ‘they’? Was Welensky responsible or at least complicit? If so, did this go beyond him and certain officials of the Federation? What about Lord Alport, the British High Commissioner, who bizarrely insisted that Hammarskjöld had ‘gone elsewhere’ when his plane failed to land? What about the multinationals of the region, which cooperated intensively with British and Rhodesian officials and which had so much to lose if Hammarskjöld and Tshombe were to agree on a solution that met the terms of UN Resolution 161, passed by the Security Council on 21 February 1961? Why was a recording of a pilot shooting down Hammarskjöld’s plane transmitted to an official American listening-post in Cyprus? The Central African Federation came to an end on the last day of 1963, after ten years of a fragile and contested existence. On 6 July 1964, Nyasaland became the independent Republic of Malawi, under its first democratically elected government on the basis of one person, one vote; and on 24 October in the 234

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same year, Northern Rhodesia became the independent Republic of Zambia, on the same terms. Only Southern Rhodesia remained under British rule— where the white minority refused to accept the British government’s commitment to NIBMAR (No Independence Before Majority Rule). On 11 November 1965, the white Cabinet signed an illegal proclamation—the Unilateral Declaration of Independence of Rhodesia (UDI).   Secessionist Katanga was brought to an end in January 1963 by United Nations forces, which concluded the UN’s first peacekeeping operation in the Congo. Tshombe went into exile in Northern Rhodesia and then Spain, but returned to the Congo the following year as its Prime Minister. In 1965, he was dismissed by President Kasavubu; then, when President Joseph Mobutu brought charges of treason against him, he fled to Spain. In 1967, an aircraft in which Tshombe was travelling was hijacked to Algeria, where he was kept under house arrest until his death—apparently from heart failure—in 1969.   Since that time, the scene of international relations has changed dramatically: the Cold War, for which the Democratic Republic of the Congo was perceived by many as a proxy battlefield in the 1960s, came to an end in 1989; European decolonization has been completed; white minority rule ended in Zimbabwe in 1980, and in South Africa in 1994. Multinational interests in the region have changed beyond recognition and there are new foreign interests in central and southern Africa. For all these reasons, the pressures to conceal what happened to Dag Hammarskjöld are surely less potent.   Even so, important documentary evidence relating to Hammarskjöld’s death has not yet been disclosed in several countries—even in Sweden, where he is revered as a great national figure. In March 2011, Hans Kristian sought to obtain documentation from the Swedish Foreign Ministry regarding Bengt Rösiö’s investigation into the crash. Simensen was sent Rösiö’s 1993 report and some background information, but he was refused access to some of the material. ‘Other information,’ explained a letter from the Foreign Ministry, concerns Sweden’s relationship with other states and citizens in other states. Since it can be considered that it can prejudice Sweden’s international relations and will harm the country if the information is revealed, it is classified as secret under the Publicity and Secrecy Act (2009: 400), chapter 15, paragraph 1.7

Hans Kristian was astonished by this refusal, given that he was making his application half a century after Hammarskjöld’s death.   In America in 1993, Charles Southall applied to the State Department for access to the tape recording of a pilot attacking the Albertina, which he had 235

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heard from Cyprus on the night of 17–18 September 1961. ‘The US original recording,’ wrote Southall to the State Department, ‘or at least a transcript, should be in files not many miles from your office, along with some interesting documentation about its origin. This recording may not be the only one.’8 However, Southall has not been informed of any search for this tape.   CIA files have produced a puzzling anomaly. A CIA memorandum, dated 17 January 1975 and headed ‘Retyped Copy,’ was released into the public domain on 17 June 1982. This lists ‘a few interesting documents’ on Hammarskjöld, of which the first four listings are almost entirely blacked out, but the fifth and final one is complete: ‘The booklet Ndola Accident by Bengt-Åke Bengs which alludes to irregularities surrounding the death, but does not involve the CIA in any way (copy attached).’ This is a booklet in which Bengs attributes the crash of the Albertina to pilot error; he presents himself as an authority who served as captain on a plane chartered by the UN in the Congo, working for the SAS airline.   However, another version of this CIA memorandum exists, which is exactly the same except that the ‘few interesting documents’ are only four in number (and, as in the retyped version, are largely blacked out); presumably, this was the original, before it was retyped. There is no mention of the Bengs booklet. Both versions of the document were found on the website of the Declassified Document Retrieval System (DDRS), which offers access to the released files of various American government agencies, including the CIA; however, the original version has been removed, so that only the retyped version is now available.9   The reference to the Bengs document was presumably added at the time of retyping, when it was released in 1982—giving weight to the claim that the crash was caused by pilot error. It looks, therefore, like a deliberate effort at disinformation by the CIA. Intriguingly, Lord Alport also referred to the Bengs document in 1993, as support for his claim that the Albertina crashed because of pilot error.10   The CIA document—in both the original and retyped versions—contains a further irregularity. For it describes a CIA telegram as ‘simply a summary of the UN commission’s report that the death was probably due to pilot error (i.e. inattention to the altimeter).’ However, this was not the conclusion of the UN commission of inquiry. Rather, it was the conclusion of the Rhodesian commission of inquiry—and of Bengt-Åke Bengs.   In South Africa, the SAIMR documents relating to the death of Dag Hammarskjöld have been handled in a curious way. When Archbishop Tutu 236

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released copies of the documents into the public domain in 1998, he stated in a press release that the originals had been handed over to Justice Minister Dullah Omar. But these original documents have since disappeared, so that it has been impossible to establish whether or not, as has been alleged, they are forgeries.   Some British university archives, notably Rhodes House in Oxford and the Albert Sloman Library at Essex, have opened classified files in a judicious and timely manner. In the Alport collection of papers at Essex, I found a report by the MI6 official called Neil Ritchie, recording his behind-the-scenes mission in Ndola in relation to Hammarskjöld’s planned visit in September 1961. But I am unable to discover any further information about Ritchie’s operations in Rhodesia and Katanga. For although British government bodies are legally required to transfer their records to the national archives, the intelligence and security agencies have a blanket exemption from this obligation, for reasons of national security; any transfer is effectively up to them.11 In order to do its work, explains the website of the Secret Intelligence Service, as MI6 is officially known, ‘SIS must protect the secrets of its sources and methods.’12 For the same reason, SIS is outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act 2000; in this respect, it is unlike the CIA, which is not exempt from Freedom of Information legislation in the USA.   But, in any case, the Freedom of Information Act does not guarantee the disclosure of documents. I have applied for various government files to be opened that are listed in the catalogue of the National Archives, but most of my requests have been rejected on the grounds that the documents contain information supplied by, or relating to, bodies dealing with security matters. In such cases the material is granted an absolute exemption from the Freedom of Information Act and remains ‘Top Secret.’   In the case of one refusal, the exemption was happily a qualified one. I therefore made an appeal in 2008, which eventually reached the Information Tribunal (and was unnervingly listed as ‘Williams v Information Commissioner’). The process came to an abrupt end in late 2010, once I discovered that a copy of the same information had already been released into the public domain by a different government department. The information was not new, in any case: it revealed, unsurprisingly, that Macmillan was actively opposed to any kind of political role in the Congo for Antoine Gizenga, a supporter of Lumumba, and his followers.13 The decision to reject my Freedom of Information request probably reflected the government’s fear of offending Gizenga, who was the Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo when I made my initial Freedom of Information request. 237

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  The appeal was laborious but also worthwhile, since along the way it raised vital questions about the public interest test in relation to formerly colonized countries.14 One supporter of the appeal was Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, a leading Congolese scholar of African politics, whose research on the Congo has been ongoing since 1968 and has led to ground-breaking books such as The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History (2002), which looks at this history from the perspective of the Congolese.15 From communications with Professor Nzongola-Ntalaja, I was able to grasp the clear and powerful need of the people of central and southern Africa for more information about the 1960s. Only in this way, he said, would they be able to understand better the period of decolonization and the roles of the UK and the other European powers.   Nzongola-Ntalaja sent a strong statement to the Information Tribunal to support my case, speaking as someone who was born in the former Belgian Congo and has played a role in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s difficult transition from the Mobutu dictatorship.16 He argued that the people of the Congo are concerned to concentrate on the future rather than the past, but they need to understand that past in order to plan for the future. One particular handicap for his country, he noted, is that so much of its history has been determined by external powers—and that the documents representing that history are still in their hands. But it was necessary to establish a baseline of fact, in order to prevent misunderstanding and to build a spirit of harmony and reconciliation. In this respect, said Nzongola-Ntalaja, the recent investigation into the assassination of Patrice Lumumba has been a major step forward.17 Once the historian Ludo De Witte had published his research and the Belgian parliamentary commission of inquiry had confirmed his findings, the Belgian government offered an apology to Lumumba’s family and to the Congo for their role in the assassination.   There are compelling grounds for arguing that, as in the case of Lumumba, there should be a further, transparent, public inquiry into the death of Dag Hammarskjöld. My research has unearthed a considerable amount of new evidence, as well as clear proof that the Rhodesian inquiry, which laid the basis for the subsequent investigations, was seriously flawed by a predisposition to view the world in racist terms and by the suppression of information. It is apparent, also, that some information was tampered with, as in the case of the Rhodesian ballistics report and the air-brushing of the photographs of Dag Hammarskjöld’s body.   A fresh inquiry, conducted possibly by the United Nations with the willing and open cooperation of the nations involved, would be of significance not 238

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just to Sweden, but to all the countries for which, and in which, Dag worked as Secretary-General. It would be the first public inquiry into Hammarskjöld’s death to take place in the post-colonial period, since Zambia threw off the yoke of white supremacy. Zambia has never forgotten the UN Secretary-General who died within its borders. In 1971, the government released a set of postage stamps commemorating Hammarskjöld’s life and death ten years earlier. One of them shows a crashed plane and bears the caption: ‘Death with Honour.’ Thirty-four years later, in 2005, two further stamps were launched, this time to commemorate Hammarskjöld’s centenary.18   I had the great pleasure, while in Brussels to conduct research in the State Archives, of a long conversation with Ludo De Witte about the Congo in the 1960s. We met on a cold, wet evening in a beautiful, brightly lit bar from the 1920s, called A La Mort Subite, which is named after a famous Belgian beer— and translates into English as ‘Sudden Death.’ The name seemed most appropriate, given Ludo’s interest in Lumumba’s killing and my own in Hammarskjöld’s. Ludo offered me all kinds of good advice and help with my journey of research. He also emphasized to me that in the course of his research on Lumumba he did not so much come across any ‘smoking gun’ as provide a fuller picture of material that was already known and which he was able to substantiate. In addition, he was able to establish a meaningful relationship between the various pieces of evidence. He hoped that I would be able to achieve a similar result.19   Hammarskjöld’s untimely death was different in many ways from that of Lumumba, but there was a shared context: the decolonization of central Africa and the self-interest of the Western powers and the multinationals operating in the region. One of the 1961 SAIMR documents about Operation Celeste refers to Lumumba’s murder, by giving an order that Hammarskjöld’s ‘removal’ must be ‘handled more efficiently than was Patrice.’ Most importantly, Patrice Lumumba and Dag Hammarskjöld were both killed because they sought to protect the integrity of the Congo and the self-determination of its people— free from the greed and interference of foreign powers.

239

EPILOGUE

On 14 March 1962, six months after Hammarskjöld’s death, President John F. Kennedy invited Sture Linnér, who had by now left the Congo and was at UN headquarters in New York, to the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. He told Linnér that he wanted to apologize for the pressure that had been put on Dag to implement US policy in the Congo—a pressure which Dag had refused to heed. The Secretary-General’s strategy had been straightforward: ‘I do not intend to give way to any pressure, be it from the East or the West; we shall sink or swim.’ Equally clear were his instructions to Linnér: ‘Continue to follow the line you find to be in accordance with the UN Charter.’1   Kennedy explained to Linnér the reasons for US opposition to Dag’s policy in the Congo. For his own political survival, said the President, he had felt obliged to heed the deep aversion towards Communism and left-wing views, which even after McCarthy’s heyday played an important role in American politics. He then said that because it was now too late to offer an apology to Hammarskjöld, he wished to do so to Linnér. ‘I realise now,’ said Kennedy, ‘that in comparison to [Dag], I am a small man. He was the greatest statesman of our century.’2   Unlike Kennedy—or, indeed, the first UN Secretary-General, Trygve Lie— Hammarskjöld did not make compromises with the political establishment. On 31 October 1956, during the Suez crisis, he stated to the Security Council that in his view, ‘the discretion and impartiality … imposed on the Secretary-General’ could not be allowed to ‘degenerate into a policy of expediency.’ He reiterated this point in his introduction to the Annual Report of the UN for 1959–60. ‘It is my firm conviction,’ he argued, that any result bought at the price of a compromise with the principles and ideals of the Organisation, either by yielding to force, by disregard of justice, by neglect of common interests or by contempt for human rights, is bought at too high a price.



241

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‘That is so,’ he went on, ‘because a compromise with its principles and purposes weakens the Organisation in a way representing a definite loss for the future that cannot be balanced by any immediate advantage achieved.’3   Kofi Annan has said that he was guided by the example of Dag Hammarskjöld when he was UN Secretary-General between 1997 and 2006. There could be no better rule of thumb for a Secretary-General, believed Annan, than to ask himself, ‘How would Hammarskjöld have handled this?’ Hammarskjöld’s life and his death, his words and his action, argued the seventh Secretary-General, ‘have done more to shape public expectations of the office, and indeed of the Organization, than those of any other man or woman in its history. His wisdom and his modesty, his unimpeachable integrity and singleminded devotion to duty, have set a standard for all servants of the international community.’4   In a sense, Hammarskjöld’s unswerving high principles and his determined search for peaceful solutions contributed to his death. A different SecretaryGeneral, faced with the Katangan crisis in September 1961, might have found an easier option than flying, exhausted, to a small town in central Africa to negotiate with an enemy of the United Nations. But Hammarskjöld was indefatigable in the cause of justice and peace. ‘We can put our influence to the best of our understanding and ability,’ he stated firmly in 1953, ‘on the side of what we believe is right and true. We can help in the movement toward those ends that inspire our lives and are shared by all men of good will—in terms very close to those of the Charter of the United Nations—peace and freedom for all, in a world of equal rights for all.’5   Tragically, he was never allowed to reach Ndola and to speak with Tshombe. But his mission of peace and self-sacrifice offers a lesson to the world. It exemplifies a goodness and a love of humanity to which Hammarskjöld, though keenly aware of his own failings, consciously and determinedly aspired. This aspiration is the theme of the last entry for 1960 in Markings: The road, You shall follow it. The fun, You shall forget it. The cup, You shall empty it. The pain, You shall conceal it. The truth, You shall be told it.

242

EPILOGUE

The final verse foreshadows the night of 17–18 September 1961, when Hammarskjöld’s plane was attacked in the sky and he, with his fellow passengers and crew, crashed into the darkness of the forest below: Slutet, Du skall bära det – The end, You shall endure it.6

243



pp. [3–6]

NOTES

PROLOGUE 1. This was Rhodesian local time. For Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), subtract two hours; for Congo local time, subtract one hour. 2. The Congo has changed its name several times since independence from Belgium in 1960. See Note on p. xxv. 3. Federal Department of Civil Aviation report on accident of 17 September 1961, November 1961, p. 33, RH, RW, 264/5. 4. Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Report of the Commission on the Accident Involving Aircraft SE-BDY, chaired by Sir John Clayden, the Chief Justice of the Federation, presented to the Federal Assembly, Salisbury, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, February 1962, RH, RW, 266/3. 5. Léopoldville airport was called Ndjili or N’Djili. 6. United Nations General Assembly, Report of the Commission of Investigation into the Conditions and Circumstances Resulting in the Tragic Death of Mr Hammarskjöld and of Members of the Party Accompanying Him, 24 April 1962. UN, A/5069, pp. 66 and 40–41. 7. Bengt Rösiö, ‘The Ndola Disaster’, Report for Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Stockholm, 1992, p. 23. To support this conclusion, Rösiö drew heavily on a report by an accident investigator, Age Röed, 27 January 1993, KB, DH, L:179:232. 8. John Powell-Jones to M. Wilford, TNA, DO 195/172. 9.  Aftenposten, 18 July 2005, translated into English for the author by Sigrun Mari Bevanger. 10.  Aftenposten, 29 July 2005, translated into English for the author by Sigrun Mari Bevanger. 11.  The Times, 26 September 1961. 12. Report by R. H. Els, Forensic Ballistics Dept, Northern Rhodesian Police, Appendix 1.13 to the Civil Aviation Report, November 1961, RH, RW, 264/5. 13.  Northern News, 19 and 20 September 1961.



245

pp. [6–17]

NOTES

14. As described by Bjørn Egge in Aftenposten, 18 July 2005. 15. ‘Report on the Medical Investigation of the Accident to Transair DC 6B,’ September–November 1961, RH, RW, 266/1. 16. ‘X-rays of the victims of the crash,’ September–November 1961, RH, RW, 266/1. 17. ‘Photographs of the aircraft wreckage and of the bodies removed from it,’ September 1961, RH, RW, 266/2. 18. Included with the Civil Aviation Report, November 1961, RH, RW, 264/5. 19. Report by R. H. Els, Forensic Ballistics Dept, Northern Rhodesian Police, Appendix 1.13 to the Civil Aviation Report, November 1961, RH, RW, 264/5. 20. www.greatnorthroad.org/bboard/message.php?id=13454. 21. Statement to Air Accident Investigation by Michael Tom Cary, Assistant Superintendent, CID, Northern Rhodesia Police, n.d., BV. 22. Dr Robert Ian Vanhegan, ‘The Death of Dag Hjalmar Agne Hammarskjöld,’ prepared for Susan Williams, 11 May 2011, SW. The immediately following discussion refers to this report. 23.  Aftenposten, 29 July 2005. 24. Personal communication by Knut Hammarskjöld to the author, 2009. 25. Peter Franks, ‘Firearms & Ballistics Report. Case: Dag Hammarskjöld,’ prepared for Susan Williams, February–March 2011, SW. The immediately following discussion refers to this report. 26. Mr Franks explained his reasons: yy    No evidence from the x-rays of a projectile (if we are to believe the medical evidence); If yy     it had been a shot from a distance it is unlikely that it would have struck Mr Hammarskjöld in that location (under the chin); yy    If it had been a close range shot (a suicide) there would be blast marks from the discharge as the muzzle is invariably placed against or very close to the skin— there are none. 27. The primer is bulged back out of its pocket, as revealed by the shadow, and there is a curved mark across the head of the cartridge which obliterates part of its head stamp. But the cartridge case could not have been in that position when it discharged, since the curved line should follow the profile of the recoil shield. 28. Discussions between Peter Sutherst and the author took place at Rhodes Houre in Oxford on 1 April 2010 and subsequently. 29. Vanhegan to the author, 12 May 2011. 1.  ‘BEBOP-A-LULA.’ STOCKHOLM, 2009 1.  Johannesburg Star, 18 September 1961. 2. C. P. Snow, Variety of Men (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967), pp. 151–68. 3. Stanley Meisler, United Nations: The First Fifty Years (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995), p. 76.

246



NOTES

pp. [17–22]

4. Brian Urquhart, Hammarskjöld (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1972), pp. 596–7. 5. W. H. Auden, Foreword to Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, trans. Leif Sjoberg and W. H. Auden (New York: Knopf, 1966), p. xix. 6. Quoted in James L. Henderson, Hammarskjöld. Servant of a World Unborn (London: Methuen Educational, 1969), pp. 98–9. 7. Quoted in Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, pp. 527–8. 8. Harold Macmillan, Pointing the Way 1959–1961 (London: Macmillan, 1972), pp. 445–6. 9. Kent J. Kille, From Manager to Visionary (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1972), p. 105. 10. Rajeshwar Dayal, Mission for Hammarskjöld (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 306. 11. ‘Old Creeds in a New World,’ Edward R. Murrow, ‘This I Believe,’ online at thisibelieve.org/essay/16608/. 12. Ibid. 13. Quoted in H. P. Van Dusen, Dag Hammarskjöld (London: Faber and Faber, 1967), p. 18. 14. David Winch, ‘The Return of Dag,’ UN Special, no. 643, September 2005. 15. Indar Jit Rikhye, Military Adviser to the Secretary-General (London: Hurst & Co., 1993), p. 270. 16.  Bulawayo Chronicle, 19 September 1961. 17. George Ivan Smith to Tristram Powell, 29 May 1977, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng C 6488. 18. Arthur L. Gavshon, The Last Days of Dag Hammarskjöld (New York: Barrie and Rockcliff, 1963), p. 105. 19. Conor Cruise O’Brien, To Katanga and Back (London: Hutchinson, 1962), p. 66. 20. Dayal, Mission for Hammarskjöld, pp. 12–13; O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, p. 51. 21. Auden, Foreword to Hammarskjöld, Markings, p. 20. 22. UN oral interview with Brian Urquhart by Leon Gordenker, 19 October 1984, UN Oral History Collection. 23. Auden, Foreword to Hammarskjöld, Markings, p. xxv. 24. Ibid., p. xii. 25. Hammarskjöld to Smith, 24 May 1956, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6488. 26. See correspondence between Hammarskjöld and Smith in OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6490. 27. Sharon Morreale to the author, 10 July 2008. 28.  R and Daily Mail, 19 September 1961. 29. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 34; Knut Hammarskjöld to the author, 15 June 2009. 30. Inscription details taken from testimony by David John Appleton, Northern Rhodesian Police, to the Rhodesian Board of Inquiry, 27 September 1961, BV. 31. Snow, Variety of Men, pp. 151–68.

247

pp. [22–28]

NOTES

32. Sture Linnér, ‘Dag Hammarskjöld and the Congo crisis, 1960–61,’ in Sture Linnér and Sverker Åström, UN Secretary-General Hammarskjöld. Reflections and Personal Experiences (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, 2008), p. 24. 33. Snow, Variety of  Men, pp. 151–68. 34. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 27. 35. Quoted in Van Dusen, Dag Hammarskjöld, p. 5. 36. John Lindberg, ‘The Secret Life of Dag Hammarskjöld,’ Look Magazine, vol. 28, no. 13 (30 June 1964). 37. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 593. 38. Auden, Foreword to Hammarskjöld, Markings, p. xxiv. 39. In letter from Alexis Leger to Hammarskjöld, 26 February 1960, in Marie-Noelle Little (ed.), The Poet and the Diplomat. The Correspondence of Dag Hammarskjöld and Alexis Leger, trans. M.-N. Little and W. C. Parker (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2001), p. 100. 40. Rösiö, ‘Comments to The Ndola Disaster,’ p. 5. 41.  Diario de Noticias, 15 September 1961. 42. 10 December 1961, TNA, FO 371/154933. 43. Annual report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Organization, 16 June 1960–15 June 1961, A/4800 and Add.1. 44. Said Hasan to Hammarskjöld, 16 February 1961, KB, DH, L179:141. 45. Introduction by Kofi A. Annan to Secretariat for the Dag Hammarskjöld Centenary, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden, The Adventure of Peace. Dag Hammarskjöld and the Future of the UN (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 11. 46. The wallet left by Hammarskjöld in Linnér ’s house before flight to Ndola, 17 September 1961, KB, DH, L179:215. References to the contents of the wallet in the following paragraphs draw on this source. 47. Andrew Boyd, United Nations: Piety, Myth and Truth (rev. edn, Harmondsworth: Penguin), p. 168, note. 48. O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, pp. 51–4. 49. Association of Former International Civil Servants, New York, Memories of Dag Hammarskjöld. On the 40th Anniversary of his Death (New York: AFICS (NY), September 2001). 50. United Nations ID card issued 20 April 1953, in wallet left by Hammarskjöld (see note 46 above). 51. George Ivan Smith to Richard I. Miller, 10 July 1961, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6488. 52. Items found in Hammarskjöld’s briefcase after the crash of the Albertina, 17 September 1961, KB, DH, L179:216. 53. Interview with Bengt Rösiö by author, 7 November 2008. 54. Interview with Sture Linnér by author, 8 November 2008.

248



NOTES

pp. [29–33]

2.  THE CONGO, 1960–61 1. UN Interview with Brian Urquhart by Leon Gordenker, 19 October 1984, UN Oral History Collection. 2. Press Conference by Dr Ralph J. Bunche at UN HQ, 1 September 1960, KB, DH, L179:142. 3. Report to Foreign Office by British Consul General, Léopoldville, 22 February 1960, TNA, FO 371/146630. 4. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 389. 5. Peter B. Heller, The United Nations Under Dag Hammarskjöld, 1953–1961 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001), p. 297. 6. Patrice Lumumba, Congo My Country (London: Pall Mall Press, 1962), p. 2. 7. Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998). 8.  The Times, 1 July 1960. 9. Catherine Hoskyns, The Congo since Independence. January 1960–December 1961 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 88. 10. Ian Scott, Léopoldville, to Foreign Office, London, 18 July 1960, TNA, FO 371/146640. 11. E. B. Boothby, ‘Situation in the Congo,’ 13 July 1960; Minute by A. D. M. Ross, Foreign Office, 13 July 1960, TNA, FO 371/146639. 12. Roger Trinquier, Le Temps Perdu (Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1978), p. 371. 13.  Daily Express, 2 March 1960. 14. James [illegible], British Embassy, Bogotá, to E. B. Boothby, 2 February 1960, TNA, FO 371/146630. 15. A. G. Evans to British Consul General Léopoldville, 24 February 1960, TNA, FO 371/146631. 16. ‘At the end of 1960, there were in Katanga: 1,133 Belgian civil technicians (only 609 in Léopoldville); 114 Belgian officers and 117 NCOs and soldiers who served in the Katangese gendarmerie; and 38 Belgian public servants or police officers who worked for the Katanga government.’ For a full discussion, see O. Boehme, ‘The Involvement of the Belgian Central Bank in the Katanga Secession, 1960– 1963,’ African Economic History, 33 (2005), pp. 3–4. 17.  The Statist, 5 December 1961, p. 1063. 18. For a detailed discussion of the Katangese secession, see Jules Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, trans. Rebecca Young (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966). 19. ‘Transcript of dictation by Smith,’ n.d., p. 12, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6490. 20. The Voice of Garanganze, ‘Mwami Godefroid Munongo Shyombeka we Shalo,’ n.d., www.kingmsiri.com/eng/kings/king6.htm. 21.  Observer, 1 July 1962. 22. United Nations, Department of Public Information, The Blue Helmets. A Review

249

pp. [34–39]

NOTES

of United Nations Peace-Keeping (New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1985), p. 189. 23. Ian Scott, Léopoldville, to Foreign Office, London, 22 February 1960, TNA, FO 371/146630. 24. E. B. Boothby, ‘Situation in the Congo,’ 13 July 1960, TNA, FO 371/146639. 25.  Time, 15 August 1960. 26. Interview with Brian Urquhart by Leon Gordenker, 19 October 1984, UN Oral History Collection. 27. British Ambassador, Brussels, to Foreign Office, London, 7 December 1960, TNA, FO 371/146678. 28.  Time, 15 December 1961. 29. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 394. 30. Ian Scott, Tumbled House. The Congo at Independence (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 122. 31. Association of Former International Civil Servants, New York, Memories of Dag Hammarskjöld, p. 23. 32. Sten Soderberg, Hammarskjöld. A Pictorial Biography (London: Thames & Hudson, 1962), p. 106. 33. First Progress Report of ONUC, 20 September 1960, Security Council Document S/4531. 34. O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, pp. 210–11. 35. Press Conference by Dr Ralph J. Bunche at UN HQ, 1 September 1960, KB, DH, L179:142. 36. Interview by the author with Sture Linnér, 8 November 2008. 37. Devlin, Chief of Station, Congo, p. 63. 38. The Interim Report of the US Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Frank Church, 1975. 39. Larry Devlin, Chief of Station, Congo. A Memoir of 1960–67 (New York: Public Affairs, 2007), p. 95. 40. Minutes by H. F. T. Smith (28 September 1960) and R. Stevens (29 September 1960), TNA, FO 371/146650, no. 1. 41. Press Conference by Dr Ralph J. Bunche at UN HQ, 1 September 1960, KB, DH, L179:142. 42. Hammarskjöld to Ben-Gurion, 29 August 1960, KB, DH, L179:141. 43. Tom Bower, The Perfect English Spy (London: Heinemann, 1995), p. 223. 44. Dayal, Mission for Hammarskjöld, p. 62. 45. Quoted in Dayal, Mission for Hammarskjöld, pp. 93–5. 46. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 465. 47. Quoted in Dayal, Mission for Hammarskjöld, p. 84. 48. Statement by Nkrumah to the UN Correspondents Association, 30 September 1960, KB, DH, L179:146.

250



NOTES

pp. [39–47]

49. The spy’s reports are held in the Sibéka papers at the State Archives in Brussels; they do not reveal his name or the company for which he was working, but it appears to have had links with Maurice Tempelsman. 50. Report from Léopoldville, 24 October 1960, AGRB, Sib, 5323. 51.  Life Magazine, 24 February 1961. 52. Interview by the author with Sture Linnér, 10 February 2009. 53. Dayal, Mission for Hammarskjöld, p. 190. 54. Alan James, Britain and the Congo Crisis 1960–63 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), p. 22. 55. Rajeshwar Dayal, ‘Record of discussions with Prime Ministers … in London, 12 March 1961,’ 16 March 1961, KB, DH, L179:101. 56. Joseph P. Lash, Dag Hammarskjöld (1961; rpt. London: Cassell, 1962), pp. 295–6. 57. Smith to John Reedman, director UNIC, 27 March 1961, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng 6488. 3.  ‘A THIRD WORLD WAR.’ KATANGA AND NORTHERN RHODESIA, 1961 1. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 549. 2. Interview with a Katanga mercenary by Anne Ashe of the BBC, 19 January 1962, United Nations Archives, S-201-25-12. 3. Declan Power, Siege at Jadotville. The Irish Army’s Forgotten Battle (Dunshaughlin, Co Meath, Maverick House, 2005), pp. 76–7. 4. ‘Britons join Katanga’s recruits,’ cutting from [Rhodesian?] Herald, n.d., in TNA, FO 371/154995. 5. ‘John joins the rebels for £4,000,’ undated cutting from unidentified newspaper, HL, BD/1/30. 6. Conor Cruise O’Brien, Memoir: My Life and Themes (London: Profile Books, 1998), p. 232. 7. Devlin, Chief of Station, Congo, p. 165. 8. UN Interview with Brian Urquhart by Leon Gordenker, 19 October 1984, UN Oral History Collection. 9.  The Straits Times, 21 November 1961. 10. The Voice of Garanganze, www.kingmsiri.com/eng/kings/king6.htm. 11. Colonel Jerry Puren, Mercenary Commander, as told to Brian Pottinger (Alberton: South Africa: Galago Books, 1986), pp. 35–6. 12.  Irish Independent, 13 September 1961. 13. The following account of Morthor draws largely on O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, chapter 15, ‘The Fire in the Garage’; Hoskyns, The Congo Since Independence, chapter 10, ‘The Campaign in Katanga’; and Dayal, Mission for Hammarskjöld, chapter 16, ‘A Catastrophe which is a Triumph.’

251

pp. [49–58]

NOTES

14. Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies. The Making of an Unfriendly World (New York: Congdon and Weed, 1984), p. 67. 15.  Irish Independent, 13 September 1961. 16. O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, pp. 78 and 256. 17.  Rhodesia Herald, 15 September 1961. 18. Telex from Elisabethville to Brussels, addressed to M. Marthoz Minautka brussels [sic], 14.9.1961, AGRB, Sib. 19. One UN official was horrified to find such a sign in the window of a café in Broken Hill, Zambia, on 25 October 1964, a day after independence. United Nations Archives, S-370-39-15. 20. Press cable from Salisbury, 20 September 1961, HU, DPW/48/347. 21.  Cape Times, 18 September 1961. 22. Alport to Sandys, Despatch no. 8, 25 September 1961, ASL, CA, Box 19. 23.  Bulawayo Chronicle, 14 September 1961. 24.  Rhodesia Herald, 14 September 1961. 25. P. J. H. Petter-Bowyer, Winds of Destruction (2003; rpt. Johannesburg: 30^ South Publishers, 2005), pp. 75–7. 26.  Rhodesia Herald, 14 September 1961. 27.  Natal Mercury, 14 September 1961. 28.  Rhodesia Herald, 14 September 1961. 29. Welensky to Joe and Lila, 21 December 1961, RH, RW, 638/1. 4.  MISSION FOR PEACE 1. For the stopover in Ghana, see report by Lord Lansdowne on his visit to the Congo and the Federation, 15–21 September, 26 September 1961, TNA, PREM 11/3191. For a clear and informed discussion of Hammarskjöld’s awareness of plans for Morthor, see Alan James, Britain and the Congo Crisis, 1960-63, pp 101–3. 2. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 570. 3. See newsreel clip in www.daghammarskjold.se/video-audio/1959-/. 4. Interview by the author with Sture Linnér, 8 November 2008. 5. Interview by the author with Bengt Rösiö, 7 November 2008. 6. Interview by the author with Knut Hammarskjöld, 26 October 2009. 7. H. Macmillan to A. E. P. Robinson (Rhodesian High Commissioner in London), 13 September 1961, TNA, PREM 11/3187. 8. Gavshon, The Last Days of Hammarskjöld, p. 115. 9. O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, p. 305. 10. As stated in Report by Lord Lansdowne on his visit to the Congo and the Federation, 26 September 1961, Annex A, TNA, PREM 11/3191. 11. Gavshon, The Last Days of Dag Hammarskjöld, pp. 117–23. 12. Quoted in Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 575.

252



NOTES

pp. [59–65]

13. Power, Siege at Jadotville, p. 22. 14. ‘Transcript of dictation by Smith,’ n.d., p. 28, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6490. 15. ONUC Eville to ONUC Leo, 14 September 1961, reproduced in Carl Gunnar Cronholm, Mordet på sanningen (Lund: Cronholm & Cronholm, 1996), Bilaga 4A. 16. O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, pp. 280–2. 17. Power, Siege at Jadotville, p. 182. 18.  Time, 22 September 1961. 19.  Rhodesia Herald, 20 September 1961. 20. Hoskyns, The Congo Since Independence, pp. 424–5. 21. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 579. 22. Ibid., p. 584, fn. **. 23. Report by Lord Lansdowne on his visit to the Congo and the Federation, 26 September 1961. 24. Hammarskjöld to Tshombe, 16 September 1961, KB, DH, L179:154. 25. O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, pp. 284–5. 26. Hammarskjöld to Tshombe, 16 September 1961. 27. Alport to Sandys, Despatch no. 8, 25 September 1961, ASL, CA, Box 19. 28. Secret Report by Neil Ritchie, n.d., Appendix A to Alport to Sandys, Despatch no. 8, 25 September 1961. 29. Alport, ‘Comments on the Ndola Disaster,’ 8 February 1993, ASL, CA, Box 19. 30.  The Times, 17 July 1993; see reference to Park in Devlin, Congo. Chief of Station, p. 132. 31. The account that follows is taken from Secret Report by Neil Ritchie, n.d., Appendix A to Alport to Sandys, Despatch no. 8, 25 September 1961. 32. Lord Alport, The Sudden Assignment (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965), p. 119. 33. Obituary of Air Vice-Marshal Ian Harvey, 17 April 2006, The Times, www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article706240.ece. 34. Ministry of Defence report: ‘Katanga Situation, Sunday 17th September 1961,’ RH, RW, 261/5. 35. Clyde Sanger to the author by email, 16 May 2009. 36. Clyde Sanger to the author by post, 18 June 2009. 37. Alport to Sandys, Despatch no. 8, 25 September 1961. 38. Statement by Jerry Puren, quoted in confidential communication seen by the author. 39. Frank Villafaña, Cold War in the Congo: the Confrontation of Cuban Military Forces, 1960–1967 (London: Transaction, 2009), p. 55. 40.  Daily Mail, 3 April 1961. 41. O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, p. 182. 42. Ibid., p. 182; Puren, Mercenary Commander, p. 17.

253

pp. [65–68]

NOTES

43. The other two foreign advisers were Weber and Clemens. McKeown to Brackenbury and Egge, 1 June 1961, United Nations Archives, S-0793-14-31, and 10 June 1961, United Nations Archives, S-0793-0018-47. 44. United Nations General Assembly, Report of the Commission of Investigation Established under the Terms of General Assembly Resolution 1601(XV), 11 November 1961 (UN A/4964), pp. 52–4 and 62, UN S-0875-000-05-00001; see Interrogation of Roderick Ian Russell-Cargill, 16 June 1961, United Nations Archives, S-0793-0018-47. 45. Luc De Vos, Emmannuel Gerard, Jules Gérard-Libois, Philippe Raxhon, Les secrets de l’affaire Lumumba (Brussels: Editions Racine, 2005). 46. Puren, Mercenary Commander, pp. 35–6. 5.  MIDNIGHT DEATH IN BRITISH AFRICA 1. Report by Lord Lansdowne on his visit to the Congo and the Federation, 15–21 September, 26 September 1961, Annex B, TNA, PREM 11/3191. 2. Recollection by Kjell Peterzén, from Transair website: www.transairsweden.com/ Memories/peterzen1.php; trans. Hans Kristian Simensen. 3. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, pp. 586–7. 4. Lansdowne stated (in his report, as in note 1 above) that Hammarskjöld made a UN plane available to him for his journey to Ndola and then on to Salisbury; however, OO-RIC belonged to the Belgian International Air Services and had been sub-chartered to Air Congo. Although OO-RIC’s pilot, Captain Robert Deppe, said in later testimony that Air Congo sometimes flew for the UN at Léopoldville, a report sent to the UN Secretary-General stated that OO-RIC was subchartered to the Katanga government from 31 March 1961. (Testimony to Rhodesian Air Accident Investigation, n.d. [1961], BV; ONUC in Léopoldville to the Secretary-General, undated, BE). 5. 16.04 local time in the Congo = 15.04 GMT = 13.04 local time in the Rhodesian Federation. 6. Testimony by Sture Linnér to Rhodesian Air Accident Investigation, n.d. [1961], reproduced in Carl Gunnar Cronholm, Mordet på sanningen: Dag Hammarskjöld (Lund: Cronholm & Cronholm, 1996), Bilaga 6. 7. See newsreel clip in the film by Stig Holmqvist, Visions of a Secretary-General: Dag Hammarskjöld and the United Nations 1953–61 (Stockholm: Athenafilm, 2005). 8. Interview by the author with Sture Linnér, 8 November 2008. 9. Linnér to O’Brien, 17 September 1961, reproduced in Cronholm, Mordet på sanningen, p. 142. 10. Description in Puren, Mercenary Commander, p. 62. 11. Ian Colvin, The Rise and Fall of Moïse Tshombe (London: Leslie Frewin, 1968), p. 87.

254



NOTES

pp. [69–78]

12.  R and Daily Mail, 18 September 1961. 13. The account that follows of the flight of the Albertina to Ndola is drawn from United Nations General Assembly, Report of the Commission of the Investigation into the Conditions and Circumstances Resulting in the Tragic Death of Mr Dag Hammarskjöld and of Members of the Party Accompanying Him, chaired by Rishikesh Shaha, 24 April 1962 (UN A/5069). 14. Helge Bjørlo to Bengt Rösiö, Oslo 8 June 1993, reproduced in Bodil Katarina Nævdal, Drømmenes Palass. Trygve Lie og Dag Hammarskjöld, en beretning (Oslo: Schibsted, 2000), p. 181, trans. Sigrun Mari Bevanger for the author. 15. As stated in Report by Lord Lansdowne on his visit to the Congo and the Federation, 26 September 1961, Annex B. 16. Testimony by Squadron Leader J. Mussell, ‘Events leading up to the discovery of the wreckage of the DC6 SEBDY 18th September 1961,’ n.d. [September 1961], BV. 17. Blog article by Adrian Begg, ‘Crash of Hammarskjold’s plane in 1961: ‘VIP planes don’t crash …’, 27 January 2012, on the website of Hurst: http://www.hurstpublishers.com/crash-of-hammarskjolds-plane-in-1961-vip-planes-dont-crash/ 18. Ibid. 19. Testimony by Squadron Leader J. Mussell, ‘Events leading up to the discovery of the wreckage of the DC6 SEBDY 18th September 1961,’ BV. 20. Ibid. 21. Helge Bjørlo, Bushpiloter I FN (Sweden: Militarhistoriska Forlaget, 1995), trans. for the author by Sigrun Mari Bevanger, p. 37. 22. Clyde Sanger by email to the author, 16 May 2009. 23. UN Interview with G. McMurtrie (‘Mac’) Godley by Jean Krasno, 20 April 1990, UN Oral History Collection. 24.  Craxford was accompanied by Len Pink; www.ourstory.com/thread. html?t=310081. 25. J. Mussell, ‘Events leading up to the discovery of the wreckage of the DC6 SEBDY 18th September 1961.’ 26.  Saturday Star, 14 November 1961. 27. Bjørlo, Bushpiloter I FN, p. 39. 28. Statement to Air Accident Investigation by Michael Tom Cary, Assistant Superintendent, CID, Northern Rhodesia Police, n.d. [September 1961], BV. 29. Report of the Medical Investigation, 17/18 September 1961, RH, RW, 266/1. 30. Bjørlo, Bushpiloter I FN, p. 39. 31. Statement to Air Accident Investigation by Michael Tom Cary, Assistant Superintendent. 32. Ibid. 33. Now The Times of Zambia. 34.  Northern News, 19 and 20 September 1961; Times of Zambia, 26 April 2008. 35.  Cape Times, 19 September 1961.

255

pp. [78–84]

NOTES

36. Statement to Air Accident Investigation by Michael Tom Cary. 37. Charles Cartmill to Great North Road website, 23 December 2004. 38. Blog article by Begg, 27 January 2012, as listed above. 39. UN Interview with Brian Urquhart by Leon Gordenker, 19 October 1984, UN Oral History Collection. 40. Telexes between UN offices, Léopoldville and New York, and Geneva, n.d [17– 18 September 1961], OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6490. 41. Telexes between UN departments in New York and Léopoldville, 18 September 1961, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6472. 6.  ‘THEY KILLED HIM! THEY GOT HIM!’ 1.  Cape Times, 19 and 20 September 1961. 2. Recollection by Kofi Annan in Stig Holmqvist, Visions of a Secretary-General: Dag Hammarskjöld and the United Nations 1953–61 (Stockholm: Athenafilm, 2005). 3. UN Interview with Brian Urquhart by Leon Gordenker, 19 October 1984, UN Oral History Collection. 4.  The New York Times, 19 September 1961. 5. Van Dusen, Dag Hammarskjöld, p. 3. 6. Telexes of press reports received by UN, New York, 18 September 1960, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6490. 7.  Montréal Gazette, Thursday 21 September 1961. 8. ‘Press release dated 18 September issued by the Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville),’ Annex, UN S/4940/Add.5. 9. Quoted in George Ivan Smith, ‘Mercenaries “plotted Hammarskjöld’s death,”’ Observer, 16 May 1980. 10. Quoted in Cape Argus, 21 September 1961. 11.  New York Times, 20 September 1961. 12. Roy Welensky, Welensky’s 4000 Days (London: Collins, 1964), p. 237. 13. Quoted in Gavshon, Last Days of Dag Hammarskjöld, p. 50. 14. Quoted in Cape Times, 20 September 1961. 15. Macmillan to Welensky, 29 September 1961, TNA, PREM 11/4049. 16.  Mail, Madras, 23 September 1961. 17. Alport in Salisbury to Commonwealth Relations Office, London, 22 September 1961, TNA, BT 248/420. 18. Interview with Mrs Chibesa Kankasa by the author, 5 August 2009. 19.  Northern News, 20 September 1961. 20. Quoted in George Ivan Smith, ‘Mercenaries “plotted Hammarskjöld’s death,”’ Observer, 16 May 1980. 21. Interview with Sture Linnér by Hans Kristian Simensen, 20 July 2009. 22. Interview with Sture Linnér by the author, 8 November 2008.

256



NOTES

pp. [84–97]

23. Alport in Salisbury, to Commonwealth Relations Office, London, 22 September 1961. 24. Colvin, The Rise and Fall of Moïse Tshombe, p. 88. 25. George Ivan Smith to Bengt Rösiö, 2 March 1993, Swedish Foreign Ministry, Rösiö inquiry records, HKS. 26. Colvin, The Rise and Fall of Moïse Tshombe, p. 89. 27. As recorded by Alport in The Sudden Assignment, p. 133. 28. Macmillan to Welensky, 23 September 1961, RH, RW, 258/3; Welensky, Welensky’s 4000 Days, p. 241. 29.  Cape Argus, 21 September 1961. 30. Ibid. 31.  Rhodesia Herald, 21 September 1961. 32. Alport, The Sudden Assignment, p. 128. 33. Knut Hammarskjöld to Sverker Åström, in Stockholm, 12 October 1961, reproduced in Bjørlo, Bushpiloter I FN, p. 181. 34. Alport, The Sudden Assignment, pp. 131–2. 35.  Rhodesia Herald, 27 September 1961. 36. Rösiö to His Excellency the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stockholm, 30 June 1962, SW. 37. Association of Former International Civil Servants (NY), Memories of Dag Hammarskjöld, pp. 34–40. 7.  THE WHITE SETTLERS INVESTIGATE 1. References passim to the content of the Civil Aviation report are drawn from Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Department of Civil Aviation, Report into the Accident of 1961, chaired by Colonel Maurice Barber, Federal Director of Civil Aviation, November 1961 (RH, RW, 264/4). 2. Welensky to Macmillan, 26 September 1961, TNA, PREM 11/4049. 3. Macmillan to Welensky, 29 September 1961, TNA, PREM 11/4049. 4. Welensky to Joe and Lila, 19 September 1961, RH, RW, 638/1. 5. Testimony by Roland Adams for Swedish government, 27 January 1962, BV. 6. RH, RW, 265/1b. 7. Report by Evans sent by Alport to CRO, 6 November 1961, TNA, FO 371/155028. 8. Testimony by Squadron Leader J. Mussell, ‘Events leading up to the discovery of the wreckage of the DC6 SEBDY 18th September 1961,’ n.d. [September 1961], BV. 9. There were two other members: a barrister, G. H. Lloyd-Jacob, and J. Newton. Evidence was led by F. G. Cooke, of the Government Solicitor’s Department. References to the content of the report of this inquiry are drawn from Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Report of the Commission on the Accident Involving Aircraft

257

pp. [98–110]

NOTES

SE-BDY, chaired by Sir John Clayden, Chief Justice of the Federation, presented to the Federal Assembly, Salisbury, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, February1962 (RH, RW, 266/3). 10. Intriguingly, the Federal representative, a South African lawyer called Cecil S. Margo, QC, appeared in four subsequent inquiries into aeroplane disasters that involved apartheid South Africa and which were attributed officially to pilot error. One of them was the inquiry into the crash in 1986 that killed Samora Machel, President of Mozambique, which is still regarded in many quarters—and by his widow, Graça Machel, now the wife of Nelson Mandela—as suspicious. 11. Rösiö, ‘The Ndola Disaster,’ p. 23. 12. Comment by Bo Virving in Gunnar Möllerstedt, General Sekreteraren. En biografi om Dag Hammarskjöld (Stockholm, Sveriges Radios Forlag), 1981, p. 302 ff. 13. Kanini and Hillcrest respectively. 14.  Northern News cutting, n.d. [ January 1962], RH, RW, 267/3. 15. Ibid. 16. Interview with Thomas Kankasa by E. Botta, Lusaka, 16 October 1979, GM. 17. Transcript of interview with Dickson Buleni by E. Botta, August 1979, BV. 18.  Observer News Service press release by George Ivan Smith: ‘Mercenaries “plotted Hammarskjöld’s death,”’ London, May 16, in George Ivan Smith Papers, Ms Eng c 6490. 19. Transcript of interview with Dickson Buleni by E. Botta, August 1979, BV. 20. See Puren, Mercenary Commander, pp. 57–8; see also Jan van Risseghem to Bengt Rösiö, 23 February 1993, Swedish Foreign Ministry, Rösiö inquiry records, HKS. 21. ‘Transcript of dictation by Smith,’ n.d., p. 68, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6490. 22. Report by Roland Adams, 16 March 1962, BV. 23. Testimony by Roland Adams for Swedish government, 27 January 1962, BV. 24.  Star, 21 September 1961. 8.  THE UN INQUIRY 1. British Embassy, Léopoldville, to Foreign Office, 19 October 1961, TNA, DO 195/172. 2. References passim to the content of the UN Inquiry report are drawn from United Nations General Assembly, Report of the Commission of the Investigation into the Conditions and Circumstances Resulting in the Tragic Death of Mr Dag Hammarskjöld and of Members of the Party Accompanying Him, chaired by Rishikesh Shaha, 24 April 1962 (UN A/5069). 3. Copy of Welensky to Foreign Secretary in Commonwealth Relations Office to British High Commission, Salisbury, 6 February 1962, TNA, BT 248/420. 4. Northern News, 13 February 1962. 5. ‘ Memorandum submitted by Mr Hugo Blandori, Consultant, 21 February, A/ AC.107/R.20,’ BV.

258



NOTES

pp. [110–120]

6. [Leo] to Bunche, 16 March 1962, United Nations Archives, S-0219-004-09. 7. Foreign Office to ‘Certain of Her Majesty’s Representatives,’ 27 April 1962, TNA, BT 248/420. 8. Foreign Office to UK representatives worldwide, 27 April 1962, TNA, BT 248/420. 9. Despatch no. 8 from High Commissioner Alport to Duncan Sandys, CRO Secretary of State, 25 September 1961, ASL, CA, Box 19, File 2. 10. Statement by the Rt Hon Lord Alport, 28 September 1961, BV. 11. Bjørlo, Bushpiloter I FN, p. 36. 12. For the following discussion of Alport’s views, see Alport, ‘A Portrait in Black and White,’ chapter 7 of The Sudden Assignment. 13. As mentioned in Garry Allighan, The Welensky Story (London: Macdonald, 1962), photograph and caption opposite p. 224. 14. June 18–23rd Diary (Secret), in ASL, CA, Box 14. 15. Alport, ‘Comments on the Ndola Disaster,’ 8 February 1993, ASL, CA, Box 19; emphasis added. 16. Alport to CRO, 28 September 1961, TNA, BT 248/420. 17. Alport, ‘Comments on the Ndola Disaster,’ 8 February 1993. 18. Alport to Rösiö, 20 September 1994, ASL, CA, Box 19. 19. Alport, Salisbury, to CRO Secretary of State, 21 September 1961, TNA, BT 248/420. 20. Alport to Rösiö, 23 February 1993, ASL, CA, Box 19. 21. Alport, The Sudden Assignment, p. 134. 22. Alport to Rösiö, 23 February 1993. 23. See exchange of minutes and telegrams, 30 September 1961–6 October, TNA, FO 371/155026. 9. THE CHA CHA CHA. ZAMBIA, 2009 1. Generalsekreteraren, documentary television film produced by Gunnar Möllerstedt and released in Sweden in 1980. 2. The transcript does not read very fluently, because it is a translation from English to Swedish and back again to English. I have therefore slightly modified the translation. 3. Interview with Timothy Kankasa by E. Botta, Lusaka, 16 October 1979, GM. 4.  Times of Zambia, 29 July 2005. 5. Interview with Mrs Chibesa Kankasa by the author, 5 August 2009. 6. Interview with Dickson Buleni by E. Botta, Chifubu, Ndola, 11 August 1979, GM. 7. Möllerstedt, General Sekreteraren, p. 303. The book was based on the film (note 1 above). 8. Statement to Air Accident Investigation by Michael Tom Cary, Assistant Superintendent, CID, NRP, n.d., BV.

259

pp. [120–136]

NOTES

9. Testimony by G. Brinkman [1961], BV; the author is grateful to Hans Kristian Simensen for pointing this out. 10.  The Post, 3 April 2006. 11. Interview with Mrs Chibesa Kankasa by the author, 5 August 2009. 12. Larry W. Bowman, Politics in Rhodesia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 38. 13. See chapter 8 of Simon Zukas, Into Exile and Back (Lusaka: Bookworld Publishers, 2001), for an excellent discussion of the Federation. 14. Clyde Sanger by email to the author, 16 May 2009. 15. Richard Hall, Zambia (London: Pall Mall Press, 1965), p. 210. 16. J. M. Sokoni MS, ‘A Novel without the Last Chapter,’ n.d. [1990s?], NAZ, HM 74. 17. J M Sokoni ms, ‘The Causes of Cha cha cha,’ n.d. [but after 1983], NAZ, HM 74. 18. Welensky to director of FISB, 10 October 1961, RH, RW, 238/4; Gertrude Ross to the author, 4 July 2011. 19. British Embassy, Leopoldville to Foreign Office, 30 October 1961, TNA, FO 371/155003. 10.  BIG BUSINESS, INTELLIGENCE AND BRITAIN 1. Report by Lord Lansdowne on his visit to the Congo and the Federation, 15–21 September, 26 September 1961, TNA, PREM 11/3191. 2. Quoted in Nigel Fisher, Harold Macmillan (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982), p. 236. 3. Cabinet minutes for meeting on the Congo, Tuesday 12 September 1961, TNA, CAB 130/178. 4. 15 September 1961, quoted in Macmillan, Pointing the Way 1959–1961, pp. 441–2. 5. Rajeshwar Dayal, ‘Record of discussions with Prime Ministers … in London, 12 March 1961,’ 16 March 1961, KB, DH, L179:101. 6. BHC Salisbury to CRO, 13 September 1961, TNA, PREM 11/3187. 7. Secret Report by Neil Ritchie, n.d., Appendix A to Alport to Sandys, Despatch no. 8, 25 September 1961, ASL, CA, Box 19. 8. Gillet for Mr Van der Straeten, 18 September 1961, AGRB, Sib, file 5336. 9. E. B. Boothby, ‘British Business Interests in the Katanga,’ 20 July 1960, TNA, FO 371/146640. 10.  The Statist, 5 December 1961, p. 1064. 11. G. L. Hindley, public relations firm, ‘Report from Elizabethville,’ 6 June 1961, HU, DPW/48/347. 12.  Hansard, 14 December 1961. For an excellent account of the Katanga Lobby see James, Britain and the Congo Crisis 1960–63. 13. Bower, The Perfect English Spy, p. 239. 14. George Kennedy Young to John Biggs-Davison, 21 October 1960, HL, BD,

260



NOTES

pp. [136–149]

BD/1/30. Very sincere thanks to Philip Murphy for telling the author about the BD papers at the House of Lords Record Office. 15. Quoted in Stephen Dorril, Fifty Years of Special Operations (London: Fourth Estate, 2000), p. 636. 16.  George Kennedy Young to John Biggs-Davison, 14 April 1961, HL, BD/1/30. 17. George Kennedy Young to John Biggs-Davison, 11 August 1961, HL, BD/1/30. 18. John Roberts to John Biggs-Davison, 13 January 1961, HL, BD/1/3. 19. Ian Scott in Léopoldville to Foreign Office, 6 January 1961, TNA, FO 371/154995. 20.  The Times, 15 September 1961. 21. Dorril, Fifty Years of Special Operations, p. 685. 22. ‘The final testament of George Kennedy Young,’ Lobster, issue 19, 1990, www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue19.php. 23. Xan Fielding, One Man in His Time (London: Macmillan, 1990), p. 180. 24. With Biggs-Davison he visited Brussels in August 1960 for meetings with top people involved in Katanga, HL, BD/1/3. 25. Anthony Fell to Paul [Williams], 23 September 1960, HL, BD/1/30. 26. Quoted in Fielding, One Man in His Time, pp. 123–4. 27. Dorril, Fifty Years of Special Operations, p. 572. 28. Amery to Alport, January 1962, ASL, CA, Box 16. 29. Alport to Amery, 15 January 1962, ASL, CA, Box 16. 30. Clip from speech by Julian Amery, 1960s, in The Mayfair Set, produced by Adam Curtis for BBC 2, 1999. 11.  AN AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: CYPRUS, 1961 1.  Bengt Rösiö, P. M. angaende Commander Charles M. Southall, 13 March 1994, KB, DH. 2. Class notes, Main Gate, American University of Beirut Quarterly Magazine, vol. VII, no. 4, Summer 2009. 3. References in this chapter to comments by, and information given by, Commander Southall to the author are from meetings and email exchanges in 2009 and 2010. 4. Southall to Karen L. Enstrom, State Department, 23 March 1993, CS. 5. George Ivan Smith and Conor Cruise O’Brien to the Guardian, 11 September 1992. 6. Southall to Karen L. Enstrom, State Department, 22 April 1993, CS. 7. Bowman Miller, State Department, to Southall, 14 May 1993, CS. 8. Southall to Bowman Miller, State Department, 19 May 1993, CS. 9. Southall to Wat Tyler Cluverius IV, 28 July 1993, CS. 10. Southall to Bowman Miller, State Department, 23 December 1993, CS. 11. Southall to Sam C. Lindberg, 30 December 1993, CS. 12. Bengt Rösiö, P. M. angaende Commander Charles M. Southall, 13 March 1994.

261

pp. [149–158]

NOTES

13. Bengt Rösiö to Southall, 13 February 1994, CS. 14. Southall to Bengt Rösiö, 23 February 1994, CS. 15. G. Mennen Williams, Africa for the Africans (Grand Rapids, MI, William Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1969), p. 240. 16. George W. Ball, Oral History Interview by Larry J Hackman—JFK#3, 2/16/1968, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program. 17. CIA National Intelligence Estimate Number 60/70–2–61, 31 August 1961, Papers declassified under FOIA. 18. Declassified CIA document, ‘Memorandum for the Record. Subject: Information concerning the Accidental Death of Dag Hammarskjöld,’ 17 January 1975, C00023116, DDRS. 19. De Quehen to Welensky, 2 May 1960, RH, RW, 607/1. 20. Southall to Karen L. Enstrom, State Department, 23 March 1993, CS. 12.  HIGH FREQUENCY: ETHIOPIA, 1961 1. Eijvor Meijer, Tore Meijer’s widow, to the author by telephone, 13 October 2010. 2. Björn Virving to the author by email, 18 October 2010. 3. Article by Anders Hellberg, Dagens Nyheter, 6 March 1994; translation of article provided by Hellberg to the author. 4. Ibid. 5. Eijvor Meijer to the author by telephone, 13 October 2010. 6. Ibid. 7. Bengt Rösiö to Peter Tejler, Deputy Assistant Under Secretary, Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 8 March 1994, in Rösiö file, DH, KB. 8. Telexes exchanged between UN HQ in New York and ONUC HQ in Leopoldville, 17–18 September 1961, United Nations Archives, S-219-4-6-75/7. 9. ‘Special Report on the Fatal Flight of the Secretary-General’s Aircraft,’ released on 19 September 1961, UN Document S/4949/Add.5. 10.  Cape Times, Tuesday, 19 September 1961. 11. ‘Ref. ONUC 7361,’ 30 October 1962, United Nations Archives, S-0219004-07. 12. Statement by Cléophas Kanyinda, 14 December 1962, signed in the presence of Th. Verbrugghe, United Nations Archives, S-0219-004-07. 13. ‘Intelligence Report No. 1, Swanepoel, John Benjamin Ebenezar,’ 26 December 1962, United Nations Archives, S-0793-0019-19. 14. Bengt Rösiö to Helge Bjørlo, 11 May 1993, and Helge Bjørlo to Bengt Rösiö, 8 June 1993, reproduced in Nævdal, Drømmenes Palass, p. 181. 15. Statement by Joseph Tumba, given at Le Royal in Léopoldville, 3 August 1963, United Nations Archives, S-0219-0004-08. 16. ‘Rapport d’enquête—Affaire Gilson,’ 18 December 1963, United Nations Archives, S-0219-0004-08.

262



NOTES

pp. [158–164]

17. Gardiner to Bunche, 2 March 1963, United Nations Archives, S-0219-004-07. 18. Gardiner to Bunche, 13 March 1963, United Nations Archives, S-0219-004-07. 19. Dorsinville to Bunche, 1 June 1963, United Nations Archives, S-0219-004-07. 20. Interrogation of André Gilson by UN, signed in presence of Taramarcaz and Sauberlin, no date given [1962], United Nations Archives, S-0219-0004-08. Translation from French kindly supplied by James Williams. 21. C. A. Stavropoulos to Bunche, 6 February 1964, United Nations Archives, S-0219004-07. 22. Dorsinville and Bunche, ‘The Gilson Case,’ 13 February 1964, United Nations Archives, S-0219-004-07. 23. Smith to Clive Ogilvie, 9 April 1962, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6505. 24. Smith to Conor Cruise O’Brien, 9 April 1962, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6491. 25. Donald and Margaret Tyerman to Smith, 26 June [1962?], OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6502. 26. Manuel Fröhlich, ‘“The Unknown Assignation”: Dag Hammarskjöld in the Papers of George Ivan Smith,’ Critical Currents no. 2 (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, 2008). 27. Matthew Hughes, ‘The Man Who Killed Hammarskjöld?’ London Review of Books (9 August 2001), pp. 32–3. 28. George Ivan Smith and Conor Cruise O’Brien to the Guardian, 11 September 1992. 29. G. I. Smith to John P. Nugent, 15 August 1962, George Ivan Smith Papers, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6505. 30. Smith to Welensky, 20 October 1979, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6502. 31. Smith to Welensky, 6 November 1979, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6502. 32. Roy Welensky to George Ivan Smith, 27 May 1980, Swedish Foreign Ministry, Rösiö Inquiry records, HKS. 33. George Ivan Smith to Sir Roy Welensky, n.d. [late 1980], OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6502. 34. Manuel Fröhlich, ‘The Unknown Assignation.’ 35. George Ivan Smith to Bengt Rösiö, 2 March 1993, Swedish Foreign Ministry, Rösiö inquiry records, HKS. 13.  THE FRENCH CONNECTION 1. This project developed out of an initial plan by Simensen and Annica Dahlström to build a new peace mediator archive in the Nobel section of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. 2. BBC News, 24 August 2006, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5282326.stm. 3. Hans Kristian Simensen by email to Ludo De Witte, copied to the author, 1 October 2010.

263

pp. [164–169]

NOTES

4. British Embassy, Léopoldville, to Foreign Office, 3 October 1961, TNA, FO 371/15502. 5. ‘Puren, JC, Case file No 50,’ United Nations Archives, S-0806-2-16. 6. O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, pp. 201–2. 7. Ibid. 8.  Time, 22 December 1961. 9. See Gérard-Libois, Katanga Secession, pp. 168–9, including note 123. 10. Linnér to Urquhart, Raja, 7 January 1962, United Nations Archives, S-0793-1286. 11. Telex from Linnér to O’Brien, 3 July 1961, United Nations Archives, S-079312-13. 12. Power, Siege at Jadotville, p. 77. 13. Jean-Pierre Bat to the author by email, 14 October 2010; G. Dumontet to ONUC Leo, 8 March 1961, United Nations Archives, S-0793-19-49. 14. O’Brien and Egge to Linnér, Maceoin [that is, McKeown], 29 June 1961, BE. 15. G Dumontet to ONUC Leo, 11 March 1961, United Nations Archives, S-079319-49. 16. Ernest W. Lefever, Uncertain Mandate (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), pp. 111–19. 17. Trinquier, Le Temps Perdu, footnote 2, p. 401. 18. Ibid., p.  402. 19. Lefever, Uncertain Mandate, pp. 111–19. 20. Johnson, ‘Obituary: Jacques Foccart,’ Independent, 20 March 1997. 21. Jean-Pierre Bat, ‘French Intelligence and Political Networks in Africa (1958–74),’ 2009, www.leeds.ac.uk/history/research/africanhistory/Jean_Pierre_Bat.pdf. 22. ‘Case No 145, 30 Aug 1961, Denard Robert, Lieut Ind,’ United Nations Archives, S-0793-12-13. 23. Jean-Pierre Bat by email to the author, 14 October 2010. 24. Confidential Memorandum for the Force Commander, by G. Dumontet, 7 July 1961, BE. 25. Lambroschini was an HC (Honorable correspondant French intelligence service contact). His links were the ‘Service’ 7 and ‘African Department’ of Commander Robert at the SDECE (French intelligence). Jean-Pierre Bat to the author by email, 14 and 18 October 2010. 26. O’Brien, Egge to Linnér, Maceoin [McKeown], 20 June 1961, United Nations Archives, S-0793-12-86. 27. Puren, Mercenary Commander, pp. 91–2. 28. Colvin, The Rise and Fall of Moïse Tshombe, p. 130. 29. Telex from O’Brien, Egge to Linnér, Maceoin [McKeown], 20 June 1961, United Nations Archives, S-0793-12-13. 30. Telex from Linnér to O’Brien, Egge, July 1961, BE.

264



NOTES

pp. [169–177]

31.  Guardian, 25 September 1992. 32. Puren, Mercenary Commander, p. 64. 33. Roger Faulques to the author, 9 November 2010. 34. Jean-Pierre Bat by email to author, 18 October 2010; Bat wrote a biography of Lasimone for his PhD thesis for the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. 35. These were Mrs Berntzen and Robert Grindall. 36. Telex from Egge to Linnér, Maceoin [McKeown], 7 September 1961, United Nations Archives, S-0793-12-86. 37. Handwritten notes by Egge, 6/9–61, BE. 38. O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, p. 287. 39. Ibid. 40. O’Brien to Linnér, Maceoin [McKeown], 22 October 1961, United Nations Archives, S-0793-12-86. 41. Ibid. 42. Lasimone file, United Nations Archives, S-0793-15-30. 43. O’Brien and Egge to Linnér, Maceoin [McKeown], 29 June 1961, BE; O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, p. 202. 44. Puren, Mercenary Commander, pp. 91–2. 45. Trinquier, Le Temps Perdu, p. 112. 46. Hoskyns, The Congo Since Independence, p. 418. 47. O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, pp. 280–2. 48. Reported by Lansdowne at a meeting in Salisbury with Roy Welensky and David Scott, the Deputy British High Commissioner, in Welensky’s office on Monday 18 September 1961 at 9.40 a.m., RH, RW, 258/5. 49.  Observer, 17 September 1961. 50. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, pp. 586–7. 51. Quoted in ‘Mercenaries accused of killing Hammarskjöld,’ Observer, 18 May 1980. 52. Trinquier, Le Temps Perdu, p. 404. 53. Glasspole File, United Nations Archives, S-0793-13-41. 14.  THE HIJACK HYPOTHESES 1. David Gero, Flights of Terror (Sparkford, Somerset: Patrick Stevens, 1997), p. 49. 2. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 551, n. *. 3. O’Brien, Memoir: My Life and Themes, pp. 233–4. 4. Roger T. Anstey, ‘Murderous Angels. A Critique,’ Race, vol. 11, no. 2, October 1969, p. 217. 5. O’Brien to Rösiö, 5 February 1993, Swedish Foreign Ministry, Rösiö inquiry records, HKS. 6. Roger T. Anstey, ‘Murderous Angels. A Critique,’ pp. 217–18. 7. Claude de Kemoularia gave a full account of the story in his apartment in Paris to

265

pp. [177–191]

NOTES

George Ivan Smith in 1980 or thereabouts. Ivan Smith taped their long discussion and from that produced the written account on which this chapter draws. ‘Transcript of dictation by Smith,’ n.d., OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6490. 8. De Troyer file, United Nations Archives, S-0793-12-26. 9. John F Grant file, United Nations Archives, S-0793-13-58. 10. It has been argued that Kamina is unlikely, since it was under UN control. However, the UN by now had lost control of much of the Kamina base to Tshombe’s troops. 11. Brian Urquhart to Bengt Rösiö, 2 March 1993, Swedish Foreign Ministry, Rösiö inquiry records, HKS. 12. Manuel Fröhlich, ‘‘‘The Unknown Assignation,”’ p. 31. 13. Secret Report by Neil Ritchie, n.d., Appendix A to Alport to Sandys, Despatch no. 8, 25 September 1961, ASL, CA, Box 19. 14. Hastings, Drums of Memory, chapter 14, pp. 214–24. 15. High Commission Office, Salisbury, to CRO, London, 12 September 1961, TNA, CAB 21/5568. 16. Charles Mott-Radclyffe, Foreign Body in the Eye (London: Leo Cooper, 1975), p. 242. 15.  AERIAL WARFARE 1. George Ivan Smith, ‘Mercenaries accused of killing Hammarskjöld,’ Observer, 18 May 1980. 2. Puren, Mercenary Commander, pp. 35–6. 3. Ibid., p. 66. 4. Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry Report, p. 21. 5. Riches in Léopoldville to Foreign Office, 24 September 1961, TNA, FO 371/1555023 6. ‘Mercenaries “plotted Hammarskjöld’s death,” George Ivan Smith, London, 16 May 1980,’ press release in relation to Observer article by George Ivan Smith, ‘Mercenaries accused of killing Hammarskjöld,’ 18 May 1980, OSC, GIS, Ms Eng c 6490. 7. Björn Virving to the author, 22 May 2011. 8. Unpublished memoir by Colonel Don Gaylor, pp. 167–9, DG. 9. Bjørlo, Bushpiloter I FN, pp. 38–9. 10. Testimony by Squadron Leader J. Mussell, ‘Events leading up to the discovery of the wreckage of the DC6 SE-BDY 18th September 1961,’ n.d., BV. 11. Ibid. 12. ‘Statement by Don G. Gaylor, USAF Air Attaché, Pretoria’ [September/October 1961], BV. 13. Don Gaylor, From Barnstorming to Bush Pilot (Bloomington, IL: iUniverse, Inc., 2010), pp. 148–50.

266



NOTES

pp. [191–198]

14. Ibid. 15. Devlin, Chief of Station, Congo, pp. 167–8. 16. Kjell Peterzén to Lennart Eliasson in a video tape interview, trans. Hans Kristian Simensen, HKS. 17. Dayal, Mission for Hammarskjöld, p. 276. 18. Gavshon, The Last Days of Dag Hammarskjöld, p. 153. 19. Dayal, Mission for Hammarskjöld, p. 277. 20. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, p. 584. 21. Dayal, Mission for Hammarskjöld, p. 276. 22. Hammarskjöld to UK Ambassador Riches, Léopoldville, 17 September 1961, duplicated in Léopoldville to Foreign Office, 17 September 1961, TNA, FO 371/155023. 23. Foreign Office to High Commissioner, Salisbury, 12.10 am, 1 September 1961, TNA, FO 371/ 155023. 24. UK Mission to the UN to Foreign Office, 18 September 1961, TNA, FO 371/ 155023. 25. Foreign Office to UK Mission to the UN, New York, 10.55 am, 18 September 1961, TNA, FO 371/155023. 26. Riches, Léopoldville, to Foreign Office, 1.52 pm 18 September 1961, TNA, FO 371/155023. 27.  Bulawayo Chronicle, 19 September 1961. 28. Conor Cruise O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, p. 287. 29.  Cape Argus, 21 September 1961. 30. Dayal, Mission for Hammarskjöld, p. 277. 16.  ‘OPERATION CELESTE’ 1. The account which immediately follows is drawn largely from communications between Christelle Terreblanche and the author between August 2009 and May 2011. 2. John Yeld, Cape Argus, 20 August 1998. 3. South African Government Information, ‘Notes for Media Briefing by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chairperson of the TRC,’ 19 August 1998. 4. BBC 20 August 1998, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/154384.stm. 5. Quoted in Business Day, 20 August 1998. 6. Question 1596 de M. Vandenbroeke du 12 février 1999, Questions et Réponses, Sénat de Belgique, Bulletin 1–97, Session de 1998–1999. 7. Statement by Fred Eckhard, quoted in a release by the South African Press Association (SAPA), 3 September 1998. 8. M. Coetzee to the Ambassador, Royal Norwegian Embassy, 20 May 2000, SW. 9. Fritz Schoon to the author by email, 23 September 2009.

267

pp. [198–209]

NOTES

10. Gabriella Razzano to the author by email, 16 October 2009. 11. Gabriella Razzano to the author by email, 5 and 6 January 2010. 12. Advocate Ntsebeza provided me with a letter of introduction dated 20 August 2009, which gave me access to some key sources. 13. Transcript of meetings between Hammarskjöld and Verwoerd, 6–11 January 1961, KB, DH, L179:191. 14.  R and Daily Mail, 19 September 1961. 15. Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, pp. 494–9. 16. The full number is 23 9074. 17. Gavshon, The Last Days of Dag Hammarskjöld, p. 152. 18. Conor Cruise O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, p. 287. 19. ‘Guatemalan procurement of arms from the Soviet orbit,’ report by Frank G. Wisner, CIA, for Henry F. Holland, Assistant Secretary of State, State Department, 21 June 1954, CIA, FOIA, released 2003; www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_ 0000921490/DOC_0000921490.pdf. 20. See United Nations Archives, S-0752-0012-08 and S-201-25-12. 21. Interview with Brian Urquhart by Leon Gordenker, 19 October 1984, UN Oral History. 22. Ray Critchell, ‘Fireman in Africa,’ Part 3, www.greatnorthroad.org/boma/Fireman_in_Africa_-_Chapter_3. 23. Ray Critchell to the author by email, 4 March 2010. 24. ‘Report by Colonel B. Matlick,’ 25 September 1961, sent by J. C. Cogill, UK Air Attaché, Léopoldville, to Foreign Office, London, TNA, FO, 371/155024. 25. See Colonel Hubert Julian, as told to John Bulloch, Black Eagle (London, Jarrolds, 1964) and John Peer Nugent, The Black Eagle (New York: Stein and Day, 1971) for biographical information about Julian. 26. Mockler, The New Mercenaries, pp. 138–40. 27. Quoted in Lisa Pease, ‘Midnight in the Congo,’ Probe (vol. 6, no. 3, March-April, 1999); www.ctka.net/pr399-congo.html. 28. Quoted in ibid. 29. Quoted in ‘Rivele’s published account of the alleged Corsican connection to the Kennedy assassination, annotated by an academic,’ p. 186, footnote: www.acorn. net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/08th_Issue/misc.html. 30. Anthony Verrier, The Road to Zimbabwe 1890–1980 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1986), pp. 112–13. 31. Robin Ramsay to the author by email, 19 January 2010. 17.  MERCENARIES UNDER APARTHEID 1. www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02167/04lv02264/ 05lv02267/06lv02268/07lv02272.htm.

268



NOTES

pp. [210–223]

2. Keith Maxwell, ‘The Story of My Life,’ SAHA, DWP/SAIMR. 3. Puren, Mercenary Commander, p. 335. 4. The following account draws on communications between the anonymous source and the author, March–May 2011. 5. Confidential information from an anonymous source. 6. Confidential information from an anonymous source. 18.  PRIVATE AND MILITARY 1. The author is grateful to Richard Hunter, figurehead historian, for identifying and discussing the figurehead; correspondence between Hunter and the author, by email and telephone, 21–22 February 2011. 2. Frank Carr, The Story of the Cutty Sark (London: Pitkin Pictorials [1969]), p. 206; Jessica Beverly, Curator, Cutty Sark Trust, to the author, by email, 22 February 2011. 3.  The Times, 20 December 1955. 4.  Hansard, 2 June 1960. 5. William Minter, King’s Solomon’s Mines Revisited (New York: Basic Books, 1986), p. 226. 6. For the series of visits files in the Patrick Wall Papers at Hull University Archives, see HU, DPW/64. 7. Patrick Wall, Report on Southern Africa, April-May 1971, TNA, FCO 45/805. 8.  The Times, 15 September 1961. 9. Welensky to Wall, 19 September 1961, RH, RW, 679/3. 10. Welensky to Wall, 24 October 1961, RH, RW, 679/3. 11. The files run from HU, DPW1/63 to HU, DPW1/69—suggesting that six files are missing. 12. In DPW64/52. 13. Catalogue of Papers of Sir Patrick Wall, produced by Hull University Archives, Hull History Centre. 14. See Edward Jay Epstein, The Death of the Diamond (London: Hutchinson, 1983), pp. 127–38; also A. E. Cockerill, Sir Percy Sillitoe (London: W. H. Allen, 1975), passim. 15. Puren, Mercenary Commander, pp. 55. 16.  The Times, 13 September 1961. 17. Abbas and Mac Eoin [McKeown] to Secretary-General, 18 May 1961, BE. 18.  R and Daily Mail, 6 February 1961; Johannesburg Sunday Times, 12 February 1961. 19. UN interrogation report on James Hedges, n.d., United Nations Archives, S-0806– 2–17. 20. UK Chargé d’Affaires, Pretoria, to CRO, London, 17 August 1961, TNA, FO371/155001.

269

pp. [223–228]

NOTES

21. Interrogation Report of Russell-Cargill, 17 May 1961, United Nations Archives, S-0793–18–47. 22. The Belgian’s name is Wilmes; Egge, Memorandum for the Record, 1 June 1961, BE. 23. Browne to Tshombe, 2 July 1961, BE. 24. UK Consul in Elisabethville to Foreign Office, 23 May 1961, TNA, FO 371/154999. 25. ‘Photographs found during the Sept 1961 operation in EVILLE,’ United Nations Archives, S-0793–2–5. 26. Secret. Summary of Information, 28 April 1961, BE. 27. Abbas, Mac Eoin to Secretary-General, 18 May 1961, BE. 28. Secret. Summary of Information, 28 April 1961, BE. 29.  New York Times, 15 November 1961. 30.  Africa Recovery, United Nations, vol. 15, no. 4, December 2001. 31. The author is grateful to Ludo De Witte for the following reference: www.saafa. co.za/copy/newsletters/jhb/Johannesburg%20200907.pdf. 32. Puren, Mercenary Commander, pp. 58–9. 33. Ibid., p. 51. 34. Ibid., p. 64. 35. A. V. Blake to John Biggs-Davison, 4 May 1961, HL, BD/1/3. 36. Robert B. Coben to John Biggs-Davison, 27 July 1961, HL, BD/1/3. 37. Correspondence between Welensky and his Private Secretary in September 1961, RH, RW, 263/2. 38. For references to Galinos’s mercenary activity see Hans Germani, White Soldiers in Black Africa (Cape Town: Nasionale Boekhandel Beperk, 1967), p. 15. 39. Correspondence between Galinos and Welensky between September and December 1961, RH, RW, 384/3. 40. ‘A List of Interviews,’ n.d. RH, RW, 384/3. 41. Meeting of Hong Kong Legislative Council, 28 March 1951, www.legco.gov. hk/1951/h510328.pdf. 42. De Quehen to Welensky, 2 May 1960, RH, RW, 384/3. 43. J. T. S. Lewis to Henry Brown, 29 May 1958, BIA, CAS 87. 44. Quoted in Luise White, The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 68. 45. Stirling to Welensky, 16 September 1953, RH, RW, 673/6. 46. Welensky to Stirling, 18 September 1953, RH, RW, 673/6. 47. De Quehen to Welensky, 29 April 1960, RH, RW, 591/2. 48. Jennifer Plunket to Jeannine Scott, 20 April 1961, BIA, CAS. 49. www.rhodesianforces.org/SpecialAirService.htm. 50. Dorril, Fifty Years of Special Operations, pp. 677–99. 51. Welensky to de Quehen, 7 August 1961, RH, RW, 673/6. The ‘top secret’ infor-

270



NOTES

pp. [228–238]

mation related to ‘homo-sexual tendencies’ attributed to Stirling, reported in De Quehen to Welensky, 4 August 1961, RH, RW, 673/6. 52. Roy Welensky to Lord Home, 21 April 1961, RH, RW, 258/5. 53. Welensky to Waterhouse, 16 May 1961, RH, RW, 680/3. 54. Welensky to Cochran, 23 August 1961, RH, RW, 680/3. 55. Roy Welensky to Macmillan, copied to Robinson in London, 1 September 1961, RH, RW, 258/6. 56. Welensky to Waterhouse, 4 September 1961, RH, RW, 673/6. 19.  SECRETS AND LIES 1. Allighan, The Welensky Story, p. 303. 2. See Kofi Annan, Dag Hammarskjöld and the 21st Century (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, 2001), p. 11. 3. Report by Colonel B. Matlick, 10 October 1961, TNA, FO 371/155024. 4. For references, see chapters 7 and 8 of this book. 5. Brian Urquhart, Hammarskjöld, pp. 592–3. 6. Reported in Kenneth B. Platnick, Great Mysteries of History (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1972), pp. 25–6. 7. Berndt Fredriksson, Swedish Foreign Ministry, to Hans Kristian Simensen, 7 March 2011, trans. Hans Kristian Simensen, HKS. 8. Southall to Bowman Miller, State Department, 19 May 1993, CS. 9. Declassified CIA document, ‘Memorandum for the Record. Subject: Information concerning the Accidental Death of Dag Hammarskjöld,’ 17 January 1975; same document, retyped with additions; Bengt-Åke Bengs, ‘The Ndola Accident,’ (DDRS). 10. Alport, ‘Comments on the Ndola Disaster,’ 8 February 1993, Alport Papers Box 19. 11. They need the Lord Chancellor’s agreement, but this has always been given. 12. www.sis.gov.uk/our-history/archive.html. 13. Macmillan to Welensky, 8 September 1961, in TNA, PREM 11/3187, also TNA, CAB 21/5568. 14. I was greatly supported in this endeavour by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, Tony Chafer, and Maurice Frankel of the UK Freedom of Information Campaign. See Frankel’s valuable submission in support of the case: ‘Does the public interest case include the benefit to the public overseas?’ (September 2010); www.cfoi.org.uk/ pdf/cfoiEA20100100.pdf. 15. Professor Nzongola-Ntalaja is Professor Emeritus of African Studies at Howard University in Washington and Professor of African Studies at University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). In addition, he is acting Director of the Africa Governance Institute in Dakar, Senegal, and former Director of the Oslo Governance Centre of the United Nations Development Programme.

271

pp. [238–243]

NOTES

16. In 1991, he was a delegate to the Sovereign National Conference of Congo/Zaire; he served thereafter as Diplomatic Adviser to the Transitional Government of Prime Minster Etienne Tshisekedi, and in 1996 as Deputy President of the National Electoral Commission of the DRC and chief representative of the democratic opposition on the Commission. 17. Nzongola-Ntalaja to the UK Tribunals Service Information Rights, in the matter of an appeal to the First-Tier Tribunal, Appeal No: EA/2010/0100, 18 May 2010. 18. With thanks to David Blake for telling me about these stamps. 19. Ludo De Witte to the author, 5 December 2009. EPILOGUE 1. Quoted by Linnér in ‘Dag Hammarskjöld and the Congo Crisis, 1960–61,’ Linnér and Åström, UN Secretary-General Hammarskjöld. Reflections and Personal Experiences, p. 28. 2. Ibid. 3. Quoted in Kai Falkman, ed., To Speak for the World. Speeches and Statements by Dag Hammarskjöld (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2005), p. 71. 4. Annan, Dag Hammarskjöld and the 21st Century, p. 7. 5. Address by Dag Hammarskjöld at the American Association for the United Nations, 14 September 1953, quoted by Henning Melber in a lecture presented in London, 6 June 2011: ‘“In a Time of Peace Which is No Peace,” Peace and Development— fifty Years After Dag Hammarskjöld,’ Annual Erskine Childers Lecture 2011. 6. Hammarskjöld, Markings, p. 201.

272

KEY ARCHIVE REPOSITORIES

Belgium Archives Générales du Royaume de Belgique, Brussels (AGRB)   Government papers   Union Minière du Haut Katanga Papers (UMHK)   Sibéka Papers (Sib)

Britain Albert Sloman Library, Essex University (ASL)   Cuthbert Lord Alport papers (CA) Bodleian Library, Department of Special Collection & Western Manuscripts, Oxford University (OSC)   George Ivan Smith Papers (GIS)   Harold Macmillan Papers (HM) Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, Oxford (Rhodes House) (RH)   Roy Welensky Papers (RW) Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York (BIA)   Capricorn Africa Society Papers (CAS) British Library, London   UN reports East Sussex Record Office (ESRO)   Sir Tufton Beamish Papers (CLW) Hull University Archives, Hull History Centre (HU)   Patrick Wall Papers (DPW)

273

KEY ARCHIVE REPOSITORIES

House of Lords Record Office (HL)   John Biggs-Davison Papers (BD) The National Archives of the UK, Kew (TNA)   British government documents from:   Colonial Office (CO)   Foreign Office (FO)   Dominions Office (DO)   Board of Trade (BT)   Prime Minister’s Office (PREM)   Cabinet Office (CAB) Private Collection, Susan Williams Papers (SW)

Norway Private Collection, Bjørn Egge Papers (BE) Private Collection, Hans Kristian Simensen Papers (HKS)

Portugal Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais, Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (TT) Portuguese Secret Police Archives (PIDE)

South Africa National Archives of South Africa Pretoria (NASA)   Government documents South African History Archive (SAHA), Witwatersrand University, Johan­ nesburg   SAIMR file in the De Wet Potgieter Papers (DWP/ SAIMR) Private Collection, De Wet Potgieter Papers (DWP)

Sweden Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm (KB)   Dag Hammarskjöld Papers (DH) Private Collection, Bo Virving Papers (BV) Private Collection, Gunner Möllerstedt Papers (GM) Private Collection, Knut Hammarskjöld Papers (KH) Private Collection, Bengt Rösiö Papers (BR)

USA Declassified Documents Reference System, Gale Database (DDRS)   Declassified US goverment documents, including CIA 274

KEY ARCHIVE REPOSITORIES

George Washington University, Washington (GWU)   National Security Archive (NSA) John F Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston   John F. Kennedy Papers ( JFK) National Archives and Records Administration Washington (NARA)   Government documents, notably State Department and FBI Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York (SCRBC)   Ralph Bunche Papers (RB) Seeley G Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University   Allen Dulles Papers (AD) Thomas J Dodd Research Center, Archives and Special Collections, Connecticut (TJDRC)   Thomas J Dodd Papers (TJD) United Nations Archives and Records Centre, New York (United Nations Archives)   Congo Operation Papers United Nations Oral History Collection   Transcribed interviews: yy   Jean Paul van Bellinghen by Jean Krasno, 4 March 1991 yy   Jonathan Dean by Jean Krasno, 21 February 1990 yy   G. McMurtie Godley by Jean Krasno, 20 April 1990 yy   Edmund Gullion by Jean Krasno, 8 May 1990 yy   Sture Linnér by Jean Krasno, 8 November 1990 yy   Major General Indar Jit Rikhye by James S. Sutterlin, 26 March 1990 yy   Brian Urquhart by Leon Gordenker, 19 October 1984 Private Collection, Charles Southall Papers (CS) Private Collection, Don Gaylor Papers (DG)

Zambia National Archives of Zambia, Lusaka (NAZ)

275

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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292

INDEX

Amin, Idi: 210 Anderson, William: 39 Anglo American (mining company): 32, 62, 133, 215, 217 Angola: 33, 134, 177, 196, 212, 215, 221 Annan, Kofi: 24, 81, 242 Appleton, David: 10 Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC), Congo, formerly Force Publique: 37 Ashe, Anne: 44 Assheton, Ralph: 134; Auden, W. H.: 17, 21, 23 Australia: 123, 13

Addis Ababa: 138, 153–4, 155 Adoula, Cyrille: 47, 49–50, 55–7, 82–3, 85, 131, 150 Aftenposten, Norwegian newspaper: 5, 9 African National Congress (ANC), South Africa: 199, 209, 214 African nationalism: 36, 50, 20, 151, 220 Ahier, Roger: 177, 179, 182 Åhréus, Captain Nils-Eric: 77 Albertina (SE-BDY): 24, 27, 67–71, 73–7, 87, 92–4, 97, 99–101, 103, 105, 107, 109, 111, 114–5, 117, 124, 126–9, 141, 146–7, 149, 153–5, 157–60, 164, 172–3, 175–9, 185, 187–8, 190–1, 194, 201, 203–6, 221, 232–6 Alexander, Ulick: 135 Algeria: 45, 59, 138, 143, 165–70, 175, 205, 235 Allen, Senior Inspector Paddy: 101–2 Alport, Lord (Cuthbert): 3, 52, 61, 63–4, 68, 71–2, 74, 83–8, 91–2, 96, 106, 111–6, 128, 132, 139, 164, 180, 184, 189, 192, 227, 233–4, 236–7 Amery, Julian: 139, 228



Ball, George W.: 150 Baluba: 43, 46–7, 159, 171, 200, 225, Balubakat Party: 57 Bancroft (later Chililabombwe): 60, 62 Banda, Hastings: 51 Banda, P.: 119–20; Bankolé Jones, Samuel: 105 Barber, Colonel Maurice: 91–2, 99, 101, 105, 111–2, 115, 190–1, Barrau, Serge: 11, 77, 92–3, 184 Baudouin, King: 30, 224 Beamish, Sir Tufton, MP: 135

293

INDEX Begg, Adrian: 71–2, 78 Belgium: xxv, 24, 29–31, 33–4, 39, 44, 57, 131, 167–8, 178, 222, 224, 226 Bengs, Bengt-Åke: 236 Ben-Gurion, David: 37 Beukels,—(Belgian pilot): 178–9, 180, 182–3, 185 Bibliotheca Alexandrina: 163 Biggs-Davison, John, MP: 135–8, 226 Bin Ramazani, Kithima: 136–7 Bishoftu, Ethiopia (later Debre Zeyit): 153 Bizos, Advocate: 209 Bjørlo, Helge: 190 ‘Black Eagle’: see Julian, Hubert Fauntleroy Blake, A. V.: 226 Blandori, Hugo: 107–10 Board of Inquiry into crash of SE-BDY: see Rhodesian Federal Department of Civil Aviation, Air Accident Investigation relating to SE-BDY Bocheley-Davidson, Egide: 49, 132 Bomboko, Justin: 55 Boothby, Basil: 34, 116 Botta, Ettore: 117–9 Bratt, Dr. Eyvind: 92 Brazzaville: 31, 167, 202 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC): 39, 44, 48 Brettle, Mrs R. E.: 219–20 Britain: 7, 19, 24, 34, 44, 57–8, 60, 82–4, 121, 123, 131–3, 138–9, 141, 167, 168, 197, 206, 220, 226, 228 British South Africa Company: 32, 184, 222 British South Africa Police (BSAP): 222–3 Browne, William Richard ‘Dick’: 65, 222–5, 231

294

Buber, Martin: 27 Brussels: 32, 34, 45, 50, 133, 167, 224, 239 Budrewicz, R: 74 Buleni, Dickson: 98–100, 119 Bunche, Dr. Ralph: 25, 29–30, 35–7, 58, 79, 110, 156, 158–9, 192 Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), USA: 146, 148 Cairo: 82, 170, 227 Cambodia: 19 Cape Town: 86, 131, 195, 224 Capricorn Africa Society: 226–27 Cary, Assistant Superintendent Michael: 76, 78, 120 Casablanca: 141, 149 Catchpole, Len: 128 Central African Federation: xxv, 50–1, 82, 92, 100, 113, 122, 131, 150–1, 184, 221, 227, 231–2, 234 Central Intelligence Agency: see CIA Cha Cha Cha campaign: 117, 119, 122–3, 125, 127, 231 Chappell, William John: 95, 100 Chemical Corn Exchange: 26 Chisanga, Steven: 106, 108–9 Chitepo, Herbert: 227 Chitupa (identity pass): 122 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency): 36–8, 45, 49, 143–5, 148–9, 151, 191, 196–7, 201, 203, 206, 215, 223, 236–7 Clayden, Sir John: 97 Cluverius IV, Wat Tyler: 146, 148, 152 Coben, Robert B.: 226 Cochran, Pat: 228 Coetzee, Martin: 198 Cold War: 18, 26, 36–8, 151, 215, 235 Colt ammunition: 12 Colvin, Ian: 84–5, 169

INDEX Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), UK: 61, 83, 113, 132 Communism: 36, 43, 150, 220, 231, 241 Conakat: see Confederation of Tribal Associations of Katanga Confederation of Tribal Associations of Katanga (Conakat): 32–4 Congo (Brazzaville): xxv, 98, 167, 202, 226 Congo (Léopoldville): xxv, 3–5, 23, 25, 27–41, 43, 45, 46–51, 53, 55–57, 60–62, 64, 67, 69, 73–4, 82–3, 85, 88–9, 91, 101, 115, 118, 122, 124, 126–7, 131–3, 135–9, 150, 153, 156, 163–4, 167–8, 171, 179, 182, 185, 189–92, 194, 200, 203–4, 206, 210, 215–6, 218, 222–3, 235–9, 241 ‘Congo Red’: 196, 200–1, 206, 212, 215, 217 Conservative Party, UK: 65, 123, 134–5, 137, 139, 220 ‘Controlled Flight Into Terrain’ (CFIT): 4 Copperbelt: 50–1, 62, 73, 83, 117, 122–3, 133, 204, 222, 232 Coppersmith Arms Hotel, Ndola: 128, 226 Court of International Justice, The Hague: 19 Craxford, Flying Officer Jerry: 75, 190 Crémer, André: 46–47 Critchell, Ray: 204 Cuba: 36, 151 Cutty Sark: 219–21 Cyprus: 135, 141, 143–5, 148–9, 153, 234, 236

Daily Telegraph, British newspaper: 84, 169 Daka, L.: 119–20 Dalgleish, Kenneth Hugh: 212, 216 Danielsson, Otto: 91–2 Dayal, Rajeshwar: 37, 39, 136 De Beers: 133, 222 de Gaulle, Charles: 45, 165–7, 169 de Kemoularia, Claude: 177–9, 182–5 de Quehen, Basil ‘Bob’ Maurice,: 151, 222, 227–8 de Troye,—(visit to Claude de Kemoularia with Grant, 1967): 177–9, 182–4 de Troyer, Major Jacques: 177 De Witte, Ludo: 224, 238–9 Dien Bien Phu, Battle of: 45, 165 Delin, Major Joseph: 101, 182 Deloof, Mr, Kipushi Councillor: 157 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): xxv, 118, 127, 235, 237–8 Denard, Robert ‘Bob’: 167, 215, 228 Devlin, Larry: 36–7, 45, 49, 56, 191 Diario de Noticias, Portuguese newspaper: 24 Dodd, Senator Thomas: 150–1 Dolinchek, Martin: 212 Douglas-Home, Sir Alec, Earl of Home: 24, 27, 192, 228 Dove aircraft: 185–8 Drohan, Madeleine: 222 Dublin: 40, 43, 89 Duchemin, Jacques: 175–7 Dulles, Allen: 36, 151, 196, 200 Dunnett, Denzil: 49, 60–1, 63, 133, 183 Durban: 216, 225

Dagens Nyheter, Swedish newspaper: 153–5 Daily Express, British newspaper: 32

‘Eagle’: see Julian, Hubert Fauntleroy Eccles, B. R. D.: 109–10 Eden, Anthony: 136

295

INDEX Egé, Captain: 166 Egge, Eline: 163–4 Egge, Major General Bjørn: 5, 9, 43, 45, 87, 163–5, 167–71, 224 Egypt: 19, 136, 138, 146, 163, 228 Eisenhower, Dwight: 25, 36, 56, 150 Eivers, Frank: 77, 89 Elisabethville, capital of Katanga (later Lubumbashi): 32–4, 39, 45–51, 53, 58, 60–65, 68, 71, 73–4, 87, 111, 115, 123, 128, 132–4, 138, 156, 158–9, 164–6, 168–70, 172–3, 184, 186–7, 192–3, 201, 203, 205, 223, 225–6 Els, R.H.: 10 Enstrom, Karen L.: 146–7 Erfield, Thérèse: 170–1 Ethiopia: 35, 40, 60, 153–5, 172, 191–4, 203 Ethiopian Air Force: see Imperial Ethiopian Air Force Ethiopian jet fighters: 191–2, 194 Ethiopian UN forces serving in the Congo: 35, 40, 172 European Free Trade Association (EFTA): 86 Evans, Wing Commander E.: 91–3, 95 Expressen, Swedish newspaper: 148–9 Fabry, Vladimir: 47, 77 Faulques, Colonel Roger: 138, 165–73, 176, 223, 228 Fawzi, Mahmoud: 136 Federal Department of Civil Aviation: 3, 76, 91, 97, 111 Federal Intelligence Security Bureau (FISB): 125, 151, 206, 222, 227 Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland: see Central African Federation Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Federal) Commission of Inquiry into crash of SE-BDY: see Rhodesian

296

Commission of Inquiry into crash of SE-BDY Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Federal) Department of Civil Aviation, inquiry into crash of SE-BDY: see Rhodesian Federal Department of Civil Aviation, Air Accident Investigation Fell, Anthony, MP: 135, 137–8 Fidlin, Flight Lt. J.: 97 Field, Winston: 52–3 Finley-Bissett, Stuart: 223 5-Rivers Club: 226 Fleming, Ian: 64, 222 Follows, Sir Geoffry: 227 Force Publique: 31 Foreign Office, UK: 5, 29, 31, 34, 36–7, 61, 85, 110, 116, 135, 137–8, 187, 193, 197, 228 Fortemps, Henry: 63, 1844 Fouga Magister jet fighter: 46, 60, 69, 101, 148, 160, 179, 180, 182, 185, 191–4, 203 France: 19, 24, 35, 44–5, 57, 165–8, 170, 177, 213, 226 Franks, Peter: 10–14 Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, UK: 237 Fröhlich, Manuel: 160–1, 183 Frykholm, Dr. A.: 8 Galinos, Ted: 226 Garfitt, Mr: 95 Gaunt, John: 53 Gaylor, Colonel Don: 188–91, 205 Gbenye, Christopher: 57 GCHQ: 143 Ghana: 24, 30, 35, 38, 40, 55 Ghanaian UN forces serving in the Congo: 35 Ghanaian Times: 82

INDEX Gheysels, Réné: 175–6 Gillet, Paul: 134 Gilson, André: 158–9 Giono, Jean: 26 Gizenga, Antoine: 49–50, 55, 57, 132, 150, 237 Glasspole, Max: 65, 128, 186, 225 Godley, ‘Mac’ McMurtie: 56 Gothenburg: 164 Grant,—(visit to Claude de Kemoularia with de Troye, 1967): 177–9, 183 Grant, Johan Mawer: 177 Great Britain: see Britain Grimstad, Per Ø.: 198 Guardian, British newspaper: 4, 64, 123, 147 Guinea: 38, 40 Gullion, Ed: 56, 151 Gurkitz, Sandor: 65, 186

Harare (formerly Salisbury): 3, 197, 212 Harriman, Averell: 151 Hasan, Prince Moulay: 38 Hastings, Stephen, MP: 184 Heath, Edward, MP: 37, 83 Hedges, James: 223 Hellberg, Anders: 153–6 Hertzog, Dr. A.: 51 Hillenkoetter, Rear-Admiral Roscoe: 217 Hillsdon Smith, J.: 7 Hiram, Dan: 138 Hjelte, Stig: 11–12, 77 Hoare, Mike: 34, 203, 210, 212 Hollis, Sir Roger: 227 Hone, Sir Evelyn: 84, 86 Hull University: 221 Huyghe, Carlos, also ‘Carlo’ and ‘Charles’: 65, 222, 224–5, 231

Hallonquist, Captain Per Erik: 67–70, 76–7, 173, 191 Halton, RAF station: 7 Hammarskjöld, Agnes: 19 Hammarskjöld, Åke: 19, 86 Hammarskjöld, Bo: 19 Hammarskjöld, Dag Hjalmar Agne: xxv, 3–10, 13–15, 17–30, 33, 35, 37–41, 43, 45, 55–64, 67–8, 72, 76–9, 81–9, 96, 98, 103, 105, 108, 110–7, 119, 120–4, 126–9, 131–2, 134, 136–9, 141, 145–9, 154, 156–61, 163–4, 166, 168, 172–3, 175–80, 182, 184–7, 189, 191–2, 195–205, 212, 214–7, 221, 228, 231–9, 241–3 Hammarskjöld, Hjalmar: 19 Hammarskjöld, Knut: 9, 85–8, 128 Hammarskjöld, Sten: 19 Hani, Chris: 195, 209–10, 214, 220

Imperial Ethiopian Air Force (IEAF): 153–4 India: 38, 40, 46, 83, 136, 226 Indian UN troops serving in the Congo: 28, 40, 48, 50, 59, 60, 83 International Air Transport Association (IATA): 86 International Diamond Security Organization (IDSO): 222 Interpol: 158–9 Ireland: 35, 40 Irish UN troops serving in the Congo: 35, 40, 46, 58–60, 83, 85 Israel: 19, 29, 37, 138, 146 Jadotville: 133, 157, 165, 168, 186–7, 192–3 Jadotville, Battle of (1961): 58–60, 172 Janssens, General Emile: 31 Japan: 142

297

INDEX Johannesburg: 65, 73, 121, 129, 155, 195–6, 199–200, 202, 206, 210, 215–6, 222–5 Jordan: 19, 143 Jones, Nurse M.: 96 Julian, Hubert Fauntleroy, also ‘Eagle’ and ‘Black Eagle’: 201, 203–5 Julien, Harold: 3, 10, 55, 72, 76, 96, 101–2, 105, 108, 119, 187, 232 Junior Carlton Club, London: 137 Kalonji, Albert: 36, 137, 170 Kamina air base: 46, 60, 173, 177, 182, 191–3 Kankasa, Mama Chibesa: 120–127 Kankasa, Timothy Jiranda: 94, 98–9, 109, 117–20, 124, 125, 186 Kanyinda, Cléophas: 156–7 Kasavubu, Joseph: 30, 34, 37, 89, 235 Katanga: 32–6, 39, 43, 45–53, 57–8, 62, 65, 69, 74, 82, 84–5, 92, 99, 101, 128, 131–9, 147–51, 157, 160, 164–73, 175–6, 178, 184, 186–7, 191–2, 200, 202–4, 221–4, 226–8, 231–2, 235, 237, 242 Katanga Air Force: 46, 101, 193 Katanga Lobby: 134–5, 139, 184, 221, 226 Kaunda, Kenneth,: 122 Kazembe, M. K.:107 Kennedy, John F.: 56, 58, 135–6, 150–1, 241 Kenyatta, Jomo: 51 Khiari, Mahmoud: 47, 56, 84–5, 87 Khrushchev, Nikita: 38, 82 Kibwe, Jean-Baptiste: 47, 49, 62–3 Kimba, Evariste: 47, 62–3, 138, 170 Kitwe: 62, 83, 99, 112, 126, 133–4, 138 Kolosoy, Wendo: 67 Kolwezi: 101, 169–70, 175–6, 178–82, 186–7, 193

298

Korean War: 19 Kipushi: 62–3, 84, 131, 157, 183–4 Kungliga Biblioteket (Royal Library), Stockholm: 24, 27, 141, 154 Kyrenia: 144 La Bourdonnaie, Captain: 166, 169 Lagos: 82 Lalande, Alice: 77, 87, 89, 120, 184 Lambroschini, Joseph: 168 Lamouline, Lieutenant Colonel Robert: 178, 182 Lansdowne, George, 8th Marquess of: 57, 60–1, 67–71, 86, 115–6, 131, 154, 172, 192, 205 Lasimone, Henri-Maurice: 59, 170–1 Laurie, James McKenzie: 100, 108 le Bailly, Jacques: 172, 175 Lebanon: 19 Leger, Alexis: 23 Léopold II, King: 30 Léopoldville (later Kinshasa): xxv, 3–5, 20, 23, 25–32, 34–7, 39, 43, 45, 47–9, 58, 60–1, 67–9, 71, 73–4, 76–7, 79, 82–3, 84, 88–9, 92, 101, 105–6, 111, 123, 137, 151, 156, 158, 164, 167, 170–3, 176, 180, 187, 189–93, 195, 200–6, 226, 232 Lie, Trygve,: 18, 22, 24, 198, 241 Lindberg, John: 23, 149 Lindberg, Sam: 149 Linnér, Sture: 27–8, 30, 36, 40, 43, 56–8, 68, 77, 79, 84, 93, 156, 163–4, 169–70, 173, 241 Linton, Hercules: 219–20 Litton, Lars: 77 Loeb,—(engineer from Brussels): 133–4 London: 5, 21, 29, 31, 34, 40, 52, 60, 64, 83, 92, 113–4, 120–1, 125, 129, 132–3, 136, 141, 146, 151–2, 164, 184, 187–8, 192, 211, 228

INDEX ‘Lone Ranger’ (pilot known to US intelligence community): 145 Lowenthal, Dr. Mark: 102, 108, 129, 232 Lukumba, Rejoice: 120 Lumumba, Patrice: 30–1, 34–40, 45–6, 49, 65, 134, 136, 150, 200–1, 206, 215, 224, 237–9 Lusaka: 71, 74, 117, 119–21, 125–6, 150, 155, 223 Machel, Samora: 196, 199 Machena, Michael: 126–8 Macleod, Iain: 123 Macmillan, Harold: 18, 51, 57, 83, 85, 91, 93, 103, 131–2, 134–5, 137–9, 192, 221, 229, 237 Magain, José: 101 Malan, F.: 217, 220 Malawi (see also Nyasaland): xxv, 7, 234 Malawi African Congress: 106 Malmö: 89 Mandela, Nelson: 196 Margo QC, Cecil S.: 107, 118, 199 Markings, English translation of Vägmärken by Dag Hammarskjöld (1963): 22–3, 242 Marseilles: 177 Martin, A. Campbell: 69–71, 73, 75, 99, 112, 115, 156, 189, 233 Matlick, Colonel Benjamin: 74, 76, 187, 190, 204, 232 Maxwell, Keith: 210–4, 216–8, 220 Mazibisa, Farie: 100 McCarthyism: 18, 141 McGrath, Nurse Angela: 96 McKeown, Lieutenant-General Sean: 40, 57–8, 68, 170, 200–1, 203 McLean, Neil ‘Billy’, MP: 135, 137–8, 228

Meijer, Tore: 153–6 Meli, Justin: 63 MI6 (British Secret Intelligence Service, ‘SIS’): 56, 61, 132, 135–7, 139, 183–4, 193, 205, 215, 237 MI5 (British Security Service): 151, 196, 206, 215, 222, 227 Miller, Bowman: 18 Mobutu, Joseph Désiré: 28, 37, 39, 49, 55, 89, 119, 136, 150, 212, 235, 238 Mockler, Anthony: 205 Möllerstedt, Gunnar: 117, 119, 186–7 Moloney, Ray: 48 Monaco: 177–8 Monckton, Lord (Walter): 123 Morocco: 35, 38, 40, 149 Morthor, Operation (1961): 47, 49–50, 52–3, 55, 57–8, 61, 130, 136, 170, 219, 226 Mossad: 137, 215 Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles, MP: 135, 184 Moyo, D.: 119–20 Mozambique: 33, 196, 212, 215, 221 Mpinganjira, A.J. Lemonson: 16–9 Mpolo, Maurice: 39 Msiri, King of Garanganze: 33 Mufulira: 49, 71–2, 74, 109, 117 Muké, Colonel Norbert: 166, 172–3 Mukuba Lodge, Ndola: 126 Munongo, Godefroid: 33, 39, 45–7, 62, 157, 168–9, 171, 178 Murrow, Edward R.: 19 Museveni, Yoweri: 210 Mussell, Squadron Leader John: 97, 127, 190 Mutaka, Charles:: 47 Mwanawasa, Levy: 119 Mwanawasa, Maureen: 121–2 Nævdal, Dr. Bodil Katarina: 9, 198

299

INDEX Nasser, Gamal Abdel: 38, 138 National Intelligence Agency (NIA), South Africa: 195, 198, 220 National Security Agency: see NSA NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization): 46, 211–20 Ndjili airport, Léopoldville: 55, 89, 156 Ndola: xxv, 3, 5, 9, 25–7, 51–3, 60–5, 67–76, 78–9, 83–8, 93–9, 101–2, 105–9, 111–6, 118–9, 121–2, 124–9, 131–2, 134, 141, 149, 153–7, 160, 164, 168, 173, 176, 178, 180–92, 199, 201, 204–5, 222, 225–6, 228, 231–4, 236–7, 242; Memorial Site: 126–7 Ndolo landing chart: 101, 191 Nehru, Jawaharlal: 38, 40, 53, 82, 132, 136 Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory: 209 Nepal: 105 New York: 20, 22–3, 25–7, 38–9, 40, 56, 58, 65, 79, 81, 82, 86, 89, 105, 111, 151, 156, 158–9, 192, 202, 241 New York Times: 81, 147, 194 Newsweek: 160 New Zealand: 123, 143 Ngoie, Joseph: 158 Ngulube, Margaret: 116 Nice: 177 Nicosia: 142–3, 145 Nicosia RAF station: 144 Nigeria: 40, 211 Nigerian UN troops serving in the Congo: 56 Nilsson, Lars-Åke: 155 Nkomo, Joshua: 83 Nkrumah, Kwame: 30 38–9, 85, 151 Nkonjera, Davison: 107 Non Directional Beacon (NDB), Twapia: 94, 129

300

Noork, Harald: 67, 77 Nordenfalk, Carl: 20 Northern News: 6, 77, 83, 98, 107–9 Northern Rhodesia: xxv, 3, 6, 43, 49–53, 60, 62, 64, 67, 71, 94, 98, 101, 106, 114, 117, 122–3, 127, 133, 135, 139, 153, 191, 221–2, 228, 232, 235 Northern Rhodesia Police: 6, 9, 10, 11, 76, 87, 94, 102, 120, 222 Norway: 35, 163 Norwegian UN troops serving in the Congo: 35, 40, 163 NSA (National Security Agency): 139, 141 Ntsebeza, Advocate Dumisa B.: 199 Nugent, John P.: 160 Nyasaland: xxv, 7, 50–1, 92, 122–3, 135, 234 Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges: 238 O’Brien, Conor Cruise: 4, 20, 43, 45–50, 58–62, 65, 138–9, 147, 156, 165, 168–71, 176, 193–4, 200–1, 203, 221 Observer, British newspaper: 48, 172, 185 Okito, Joseph: 39 Omar, Dullah: 197–9, 237 ONUC (L’Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo): 35–6, 38, 40, 43, 45–7, 56–9, 61, 68, 84, 156–8, 163–4, 167, 169, 172–3, 177, 205 OO-RIC (aircraft of Lord Lansdowne): 68 Operation Celeste: 195–6, 200–2, 216–8, 239 Operation Dove: 214 Operation Morthor (ONUC): see Morthor Operation Rumpunch (ONUC): see Rumpunch

INDEX Oppenheimer, Sir Ernest: 220 L’Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo: see ONUC Organisation de L’Armée Secrète (OAS): 45, 161, 169 Oslo: 164 Oxford University: 6, 8, 18, 57, 92–3, 125, 160–1, 204, 237 Pakistan: 24, 40 Paris: 36, 167–8, 175, 177–9 Park, Daphne: 37, 56, 61 Pennock, Keith: 72 Peover, Mr D. E.: 72 Persson, Per: 11–12, 77 Persson, Sune: 163 Peterzén, Kjell: 191 Petter-Bowyer, Peter: 52 Phillips, Nurse Phyllis B.: 96 Phillips, R.A.: 73 Phiri, Jacob: 126–7 Pigou, Piers 198, 200 Portugal: 24, 33, 82, 177 Potgieter, De Wet: 208–9, 211 Poujelard, Jacques: 156 Prain, Sir Ronald: 62 Pratt, P.: 95–6 Pretoria: 68, 187–8, 190, 198–9, 210, 217, 225 Profumo, John: 134 Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA), South Africa: 198 Puren, Jerry: 46, 64–5, 128–9, 164, 168–71, 186, 212, 222, 225–6, 231 Quijano, Raul: 105 Radio Brazzaville: 98, 157 Radio Katanga, also ‘Radio Free Katanga’: 47, 49, 50 Radio South Africa: 95, 98

Raja, Brigadier K.A.S.,: 47 Ramsay, Robin: 206–7, 209 Ranallo, William ‘Bill’: 13–4, 20–22, 25, 55, 60, 77, 199 Ranallo ‘Senior’, father of Bill Ranallo: 25 Remington ammunition: 13 Rhodes Hotel, Ndola: 71–2 Rhodesia Light Infantry: 52, 72 Rhodesia-Katanga Bureau, also ‘Bureau de Solidarité’: 226 Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry into the crash of SE-BDY (reported February 1962): 4, 97, 99, 101–3, 105–6, 110, 119–20, 186, 188, 191, 199, 232–3, 236 Rhodesian Federal Department of Civil Aviation, Air Accident Investigation relating to SE-BDY (reported November 1961): 3, 92, 95–6, 99, 103, 112, 204, 232 Rhodesian Federation: see Central African Federation Rhodesian Selection Trust: 32, 62 Riches, Derek: 56, 58, 187, 192–3 Rilke, Rainer Maria: 26 Ringertz, Dr. N.: 8 Ritchie, Neil: 61–3, 128, 132–3,183– 4, 189, 193, 205, 237 Roberts, Captain John ‘Congo’: 137 Rome: 146, 148 Rosén, Karl Erik: 77, 79 Rösiö, Bengt: 4–5, 23, 27, 56, 83, 88, 113–5, 141, 149–50, 154–5, 161, 176, 183, 205–6, 235 Ross, H.D.: 7 RRAF (Royal Rhodesian Air Force): 52–3, 63, 73–6, 84, 86, 96–7, 120, 190, 232 Rumpunch, Operation (1961): 46, 164–5, 167, 226

301

INDEX Rusk, Dean: 58 Russell, Richard ‘Dick’ B.: 151 Russell-Cargill, Captain Roderick: 222–4 SAIMR (see South African Institute for Maritime Research) Salisbury (later Harare): 3, 52–3, 61–3, 69, 70–1, 73–5. 83–4, 86, 88, 91, 99, 105, 113–5, 133, 135, 138, 160, 166, 184, 192, 204, 206, 228, 233 Salisbury, Robert (‘Bobbety’), 5th Marquess of: 134–5 Samalenge, Lucas: 45, 170 Sanders, James: 200 Sandström, Emil: 105 Sandys, Duncan: 61, 113, 115 Sanger, Clyde: 64, 74, 123 Savoy Hotel, Ndola: 84–5, 128, 225 Scott, David: 115 Scott, Ian: 34 SDECE: see Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage SE-BDY: see Albertina Second World War: 12, 18, 57, 98, 109, 112, 143, Security Liaison Officer, MI5 (SLO): 151, 206, 227 Selassie, Haile: 153, 203 Selborne, Lord: 135 Sendwe, Jason: 57 Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE), 165 Seychelles, failed invasion (1981): 210, 212, 226 Shaha, Rishikesh: 105 Shahn, Ben: 20 Sharpeville Massacre (1960): 23, 199 Shinkolobwe training camp, near Jadotville: 165–6, 172, 177

302

Sibéka (La Société Minière du Bécéca): 133 Sillitoe, Sir Percy: 222 Simango, Davidson: 99–100 Simensen, Hans Kristian: 163–4, 232, 235 Sims, Nurse Barbara: 96 Smith—(UN official at base operations, Léopoldville airport): 156 Smith, George Ivan: 4, 21, 147, 156, 160–1, 183–5 Smith, Ian: 139 Smith & Wesson ammunition: 10, 12 Snow, C. P.: 22 La Société Minière du Bécéca: see Sibéka Sokoni, J. M.: 125 South Africa: 22–3, 29, 33–4, 44–5, 50–51, 64–5, 77, 92, 98, 112, 118, 127, 133, 158, 164, 169, 186, 195, 198, 199–200, 202, 209–14, 216, 218, 220–5, 231, 235–6 South African Airways (SAA): 65 South African History Archive (SAHA): 198, 212 South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR): 195–8, 200–3, 205–7, 209–222, 226, 236, 239 South African Institute for Maritime Technology (SAIMT): 202 South Kasai: 36, 137, 170 Southall, Commander Charles M.: 141–9, 151–2, 154–5, 188–91, 235–6 Southern Rhodesia: xxv, 7, 50, 83, 122, 222–3, 227–8, 235 Soviet Union (USSR): 35–6, 40, 82, 150, 167, 197 Special Air Service (SAS): 227–8 Spinelli, Pier: 128, Srzentíc, Nikola: 105

INDEX Starck, Captain Lars-Erik: 173 Stevens, P.J.: 7, 113–4 Stirling, Colonel David: 227–8 Stockholm: 6, 17, 19–20, 24, 26–27, 85, 87, 89, 93, 141, 164 Streulens, Michel: 150 Suez Canal: 19, 136 ‘Suez Group’: 135 Sutherst, Peter: 13–14 Svensson, Arne: 6 Swanepoel, John Benjamin: 158 Swanepoel,—(claim to have shot Dag Hammarskjöld): 158 Sweden: 8, 18–20, 24, 35, 40, 85–6, 105, 127, 146–9, 152, 164, 186, 191, 200, 233, 235, 239 Swedish UN troops serving in the Congo: 35, 39, 40, 56, 60

Trinquier, Roger: 165, 166, 168, 173, 175, 177 Truman, Harry S.: 234 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), South Africa: 195–9, 209, 211–2, 215, 220 Tshombe, Moïse: 32–4, 36, 40, 43–53, 58, 60–65, 67–9, 71, 83–6, 96, 106, 111, 113–6, 123–4, 127–8, 131–2, 134, 136–8, 147, 150–1, 157–8, 161, 165–9, 173, 175, 178–9, 183–4, 191–3, 203–5, 221, 223–6, 228–9, 231–2, 234–5, 242 Tumba, Joseph: 158 Tutu, Archbishop Desmond: 197, 205, 236–7 Twapia township, near Ndola airport: 75, 94, 98, 117–8, 124, 126–7, 129

Takawira, Leopold: 227 Tanganyika Concessions (Tanks): 32, 134, 184, 228 Tanks: see Tanganyika Concessions Tavernier, Colonel Christian: 204–5 Tejler, Peter: 154 Terreblanche, Christelle: 195–8, 209–10, 212 Thailand: 19 Thant, U: 158 Thompson, Ewan: 63 Thorogood, Leslie: 233–4 Timberlake, Clare: 56 Time Magazine: 165 Times of Zambia: 118, 120 Tombelaine, Michel: 47–8, 170–1 Touré, Ahmed Sékou: 38 Transair: 67, 77, 91, 145, 149, 153, 173, 185, 191, 200, 203 Travellers Club, London: 141–2, 152, 190 TRC: see Truth and Reconciliation Commission

UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence of Rhodesia, 1965): 139, 228, 235 Uganda: 192, 210 UK: see Britain UMHK: see Union Minière du Haut Katanga Umkhonto we Sizwe, armed wing of the South African ANC: 209 Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK): 32–4, 36, 49–50, 59, 62–3, 132–5, 138, 158, 168, 170, 175, 184, 186, 187, 205, 215 UNIP (United National Independence Party), Zambia: 106, 122 United Kingdom (UK): see Britain United National Independence Party: see UNIP United Nations (UN, sometimes UNO): 3–5, 17–9, 21–9, 33–41, 43–44, 46–53, 56–65, 67–8, 70, 74, 77–9, 81–9, 91, 96, 98, 101, 105–8,

303

INDEX 110–1, 114–5, 119, 121, 124, 128, 131–4, 136–8, 146–7, 150–1, 156–7, 159–60, 163–73, 175–7, 179, 185–93, 195, 197–200, 203–5, 210, 221–6, 228, 231–2, 234–6, 238–9, 241–2; see also ONUC United Nations Commission of Inquiry into the death of SecretaryGeneral Dag Hammarskjöld and others in the crash of SE-BDY (reported in April 1962): 4, 105–11, 185, 236 United Nations (UN) General Assembly: 23–4, 38, 57, 81, 105, 159, 199–200 United Nations (UN) Charter: 26, 35, 41, 200, 232, 241–2 United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution 1598, 13 April 1961: 199–200 United Nations (UN) General Assembly Resolution 1759 (XVII), 26 October 1962: 159 United Nations (UN) Security Council: 35, 40, 44, 241 United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 161, 21 February 1961: 131–2, 234 United Press International (UPI): 39, 48, 177, 182 United States of America: see USA United States Air Force (USAF): 74, 111, 188, 190, 204–5, 232 Uppsala: 19, 23, 27, 89 Urquhart, Sir Brian: 17, 21, 45, 79, 81, 176, 183, 199, 205–6, 234 USA: 91, 141, 149, 156, 203, 217, 222, 234, 237 USAF: see United States Air Force

Van der Straeten, Edgar: 134 Van Wyk, Marius: 71–4, 94, 96, 101 Vanhegan, Dr. Robert Ian: 8–9, 14 Van Weyenbergh, Maurice: 133 Verwoerd, Hendrik: 51, 199–200, 231 Virving, Björn: 93, 97, 153–154, 188, 200 Virving, Bo: 91–3, 97–9, 108–9, 153–4, 185–8, 225, 233

Vägmärken: see Markings

‘X, Mr.’ (representative of European

304

Wagner, Bob: 215–7, 220 Wall, Major Patrick, MP: 135, 220–1 Walus, Janusz: 209, 211–2, 214 Washington: 19, 58, 143–5, 150, 241 Waterhouse, Captain Charles: 134–5, 228–9 Welensky, Sir Roy: 7–8, 50–3, 82–5, 88, 91–3, 103, 106, 110, 112–3, 123, 125–6, 129, 132, 139, 151, 160–1, 169, 184, 200, 221–2, 226–8, 231, 234 Wemmer Pan: 216 Westrell, Major C.F.: 5–6, 10 White, Dick: 135 Wieschhoff, Heinrich A.: 25, 77, 199 Wilford, Michael: 68, 115–6 Wilhelmsson, Nils Göran: 77 Williams, Dick: 48 Williams, John H. ‘Red’: 68, 71–2, 74, 96–7, 103, 111–2, 160, 189–90 Williams, George Mennen ‘Soapy’: 150–1, 223 Williams, Paul, MP: 135, 138 Wilson, Harold, MP: 135 Winchester ammunition: 13 Witwatersrand University: 198, 212 World Health Organization (WHO): 53 Wright, Senior Inspector Trevor: 102

INDEX political interests in Katanga): 178–80, 182–3 Yav, Joseph: 171 Yemen: 138, 179, 228 Youlou, Abbé Fulbert: 167, 202–3 Young, Gavin: 48, 50, 172 Young, George Kennedy: 135–8

Zaire (see also Congo [Léopoldville] and Democratic Republic of Congo): xxv, 118–9 Zambia (see also Northern Rhodesia): xxv, 7, 83, 94, 117–22, 125, 221, 228, 235, 239 Zimbabwe (see also Southern Rhodesia): xxv, 7, 235

305