Dag Hammarskjöld

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

A
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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 17
2. The Congo, 1960–61 29
3. ‘A third world war’. Katanga and Rhodesia, 1961 43
4. Mission for Peace 55
5. Midnight Death in British Africa 67
6. ‘They killed him! They got him!’ 81
7. The White Settlers Investigate 91
8. The UN Inquiry 105
9. The Cha Cha Cha. Zambia, 2009 117
10. Big Business, Intelligence and Britain 131
11. An American Intelligence Officer: Cyprus, 1961 141
12. High Frequency: Ethiopia, 1961 153
13. The French Connection 163
14. The Hijack Hypotheses 175
15. Aerial Warfare 185
16. ‘Operation Celeste’ 195
17. Mercenaries under Apartheid 209
18. Private and Military 219
19. Secrets and Lies 231
v
CONTENTS
Epilogue 241
Notes 245
Key Archive Repositories 273
Bibliography 277
Index 293
vi
For Gervase
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 17
2. The Congo, 1960–61 29
3. ‘A third world war’. Katanga and Rhodesia, 1961 43
4. Mission for Peace 55
5. Midnight Death in British Africa 67
6. ‘They killed him! They got him!’ 81
7. The White Settlers Investigate 91
8. The UN Inquiry 105
9. The Cha Cha Cha. Zambia, 2009 117
10. Big Business, Intelligence and Britain 131
11. An American Intelligence Officer: Cyprus, 1961 141
12. High Frequency: Ethiopia, 1961 153
13. The French Connection 163
14. The Hijack Hypotheses 175
15. Aerial Warfare 185
16. ‘Operation Celeste’ 195
17. Mercenaries under Apartheid 209
18. Private and Military 219
19. Secrets and Lies 231
v
‘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 for-
tunate, 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 grati-
tude 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 Lin-
nér, 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 Uni-

versity of London, I have enjoyed enlightening discussions with Mandy Ban-
ton, 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 archi-
vists. 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 Ndi-
aye at the United Nations Archives in New York.
In addition I should like to thank Chileshe Lusale-Musukuma, Marja Hin-
felaar and Giacomo Macola at the National Archives of Zambia; Gabriella
Razzano and Fritz Schoon at the South African History Archive, Witwa-
tersrand University; Jean-Louis Moreau and René Brion in connection with
my research at the Archives Générales du Royaume in Brussels, as well as Jac-
queline Beeckmans and Bart Crois at Umicore; Ian Cooke and Marion Wal-
lace at the British Library; and the National Archives of the UK.
I should also like to thank Mary Curry at the George Washington Univer-
sity 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, Man-
chester University; Mara Kaufman at the Department of Special Collections,
Duke University; Helen Langley at the Special Collections and Western Man-
uscripts 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 trou-
ble 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. Vlad-
imir 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 impor-
tant photograph.
I thank Sigrun Mari Bevanger, Zozan Kaya Asphaug and Hans Kristian
Simensen for their translations of Swedish and Norwegian material into Eng-
lish; Vivien Burgess for her thorough newspaper research at Colindale; Anti-
gone 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 Ten-
dayi 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 for-
ward—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 Lin-
nér 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 Secretary-
General Hammarskjöld died at Ndola. He has shared with me some impor-
tant 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 fas-
cinated by the topic from the start and gave me constant, constructive encour-
agement. 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 inter-
est 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: Armée Nationale Congolaise

ANC: African National Congress (South Africa)
BSAP: British South Africa Police (Rhodesia)
CAF: Central African Federation, also known as the Federation of
Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and (more commonly) as the Rho-
desian 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: Locally Recruited Person

NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NDB: Non Directional Beacon
NIA: National Intelligence Agency (South Africa)
NRP: Northern Rhodesian Police/man
NSA: National Security Agency (USA)
OAS: Organisation de l’armée secrète (Algeria)
ONUC: l’Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo/United Nations
Organization in the Congo
OO-RIC: Registration number of Lord Lansdowne’s aircraft
PAIA: Promotion of Access to Information Act (South Africa)
PMC: Private military company
PSC: Private security company
QNH: Altitude reading above sea level
RRAF: Royal Rhodesian Air Force
SAHA: South African History Archive
SAIMR: South African Institute for Maritime Research
SAPA: South African Press Association
SAS: Special Air Service
SDECE: Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage
(French foreign intelligence)
SE-BDY: Registration number of Hammarskjöld’s aircraft from Léopol-
dville to Ndola
Sibéka: La Société Minière du Bécéca
SIGINT: Signals Intelligence
SIS: Secret Intelligence Service/MI6
SLO: Security Liaison Officer (MI5)
Tanks: Tanganyika Concessions
TRC: Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa)
UDI: Unilateral Declaration of Independence (Rhodesia)
UMHK: Union Minière du Haut Katanga
UN: United Nations
UNEF: United Nations Emergency Force
UNIP: United National Independence Party (Zambia)
UNO: United Nations Organization
UPI: United Press International
USAF: United States Air Force
xvi
ABBREVIATIONS
VHF: Very High Frequency

Z: 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 photo-
graphs, 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. 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
2. UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld answering a question from
the press at UN headquarters, 12 June 1961. UN Photo
3. 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
4. Crash site of the Albertina, 17–18 September 1961, showing the relation-
ship between the site, the airport, Twapia township and the Non-Direc-
tional Beacon. UN Map No 1356
5. 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
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 Ham-
marskjöld’s left) at UN Headquarters, 1 September 1960. Hammarskjöld
envisaged the UN as the ‘main platform’ and protector of the newly-inde-
pendent 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 Congo-
laise (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 Zam-
bia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi), in con-
versation 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 Federa-
tion [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 sta-
tion. 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
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 Lin-
nér, Officer-in-Charge of the UN mission. UN Photo
12. Hammarskjöld chats with Prime Minister Adoula (right) and Vice-Pre-
mier Antoine Gizenga (wearing glasses) at an official reception to wel-
come him to Léopoldville. 15 September 1961. UN Photo
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 Septem-
ber 1961 increased Hammarskjöld’s determination to hold peace talks
with Moïse Tshombe. UN Photo
14. The DC-6B aircraft which took Hammarskjöld and his entourage on the
fatal flight to Ndola from Léopoldville on 17 September 1961. The air-
craft, which was known as the Albertina, was owned by the Swedish com-
pany Transair and flown by a Swedish crew. UN Archives
15. 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 traf-
fic controller. This photograph was taken in the 1960s; the control tower
was replaced with modern facilities in the 1980s. The Times of Zambia
16. 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
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
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.’ [From
the Report of the United Nations Commission of Investigation]
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. From the Report of the United Nations Commission of
Investigation
22. Swedish and Rhodesian investigators into the cause of the crash. UN
Archives
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. UN
Archives
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. Time & Life
Pictures/Getty Images
25. A UN soldier in the Congo examines a captured Katanga Air Force Fouga,
1 December 1961. UN Photo
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?’ UN Photo
27. Dr Nevers Mumba, Vice-President of the Republic of Zambia, pays trib-
ute to Dag Hammarskjöld and the other victims of the crash at the memo-
rial site near Ndola, 21 September 2003. The Times of Zambia
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 naval communications facility of the
National Security Agency, Southall heard a recording of the shooting-
down of the Albertina. Southall family collection
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. Kankasa family collection
xxii
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 Sep-
tember 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 North-
ern 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 Rho-
desia, 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 neighbour-
ing French colony of Congo became independent six weeks after its own inde-
pendence, 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 (bot-
tom 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-
For Gervase
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 Brit-
ish colony of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), not far from the Congo bor-
der.1 The plane had flown from Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) and was taking
Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations Secretary-General, and his entou-
rage, 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 air-
port? 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 Secretary-
General’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 Avi-
ation set up an air accident investigation, as required by the international civil
aviation authorities. The report concluded that the approach to the airport
3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Tackling this complex, compelling, and often disturbing, story took me into
new and challenging territory—that of a historical detective. I was most for-
tunate, 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 grati-
tude 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 Lin-
nér, 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
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 Léopol-
dville 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 subse-
quent 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 Ham-
marskjöld and the other passengers and crew. Conspiracy theories have pro-
liferated—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 pos-
sibly 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 doc-
tors 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 attrib-
uted 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 expe-
rience,’ 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
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 fire-
men 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 secu-
rity 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 dis-
covered in the cockpit window frame, approximately one centimetre in diam-
eter; 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 North-
ern 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-Gen-
eral 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 hap-
pened 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: docu-
mentation has disappeared and key witnesses have passed away. But this diffi-
culty 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 Welen-
sky, who was Prime Minister of the British territory of the Central African
6
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
At my academic home, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the Uni-

versity of London, I have enjoyed enlightening discussions with Mandy Ban-
ton, 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 archi-
vists. 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 Ndi-
aye at the United Nations Archives in New York.
In addition I should like to thank Chileshe Lusale-Musukuma, Marja Hin-
felaar and Giacomo Macola at the National Archives of Zambia; Gabriella
Razzano and Fritz Schoon at the South African History Archive, Witwa-
tersrand University; Jean-Louis Moreau and René Brion in connection with
my research at the Archives Générales du Royaume in Brussels, as well as Jac-
queline Beeckmans and Bart Crois at Umicore; Ian Cooke and Marion Wal-
lace at the British Library; and the National Archives of the UK.
I should also like to thank Mary Curry at the George Washington Univer-
sity 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, Man-
chester University; Mara Kaufman at the Department of Special Collections,
Duke University; Helen Langley at the Special Collections and Western Man-
uscripts 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 trou-
ble 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. Vlad-
imir 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 impor-
tant photograph.
I thank Sigrun Mari Bevanger, Zozan Kaya Asphaug and Hans Kristian
Simensen for their translations of Swedish and Norwegian material into Eng-
lish; Vivien Burgess for her thorough newspaper research at Colindale; Anti-
gone 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 Ten-
dayi 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 for-
ward—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 Lin-
nér 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 Secretary-
General Hammarskjöld died at Ndola. He has shared with me some impor-
tant 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 fas-
cinated by the topic from the start and gave me constant, constructive encour-
agement. 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 inter-
est 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: Armée Nationale Congolaise

ANC: African National Congress (South Africa)
BSAP: British South Africa Police (Rhodesia)
CAF: Central African Federation, also known as the Federation of
Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and (more commonly) as the Rho-
desian 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
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 circum-
stances 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 suf-
fered 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 vicin-
ity. 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 weap-
ons 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 compli-
cated, 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 hol-
ster. 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 through-
out 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
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 construc-
tion, 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 dis-
charged. 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 ‘fol-
lowing 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 cham-
bers 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,’ com-
mented Mr Franks. ‘So why would they be carrying old stock 0.38 ammuni-
tion?’ Moreover, the ammunition was mixed: ‘It is normal for ammunition to
12
ABBREVIATIONS
LRP: Locally Recruited Person

NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NDB: Non Directional Beacon
NIA: National Intelligence Agency (South Africa)
NRP: Northern Rhodesian Police/man
NSA: National Security Agency (USA)
OAS: Organisation de l’armée secrète (Algeria)
ONUC: l’Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo/United Nations
Organization in the Congo
OO-RIC: Registration number of Lord Lansdowne’s aircraft
PAIA: Promotion of Access to Information Act (South Africa)
PMC: Private military company
PSC: Private security company
QNH: Altitude reading above sea level
RRAF: Royal Rhodesian Air Force
SAHA: South African History Archive
SAIMR: South African Institute for Maritime Research
SAPA: South African Press Association
SAS: Special Air Service
SDECE: Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage
(French foreign intelligence)
SE-BDY: Registration number of Hammarskjöld’s aircraft from Léopol-
dville to Ndola
Sibéka: La Société Minière du Bécéca
SIGINT: Signals Intelligence
SIS: Secret Intelligence Service/MI6
SLO: Security Liaison Officer (MI5)
Tanks: Tanganyika Concessions
TRC: Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa)
UDI: Unilateral Declaration of Independence (Rhodesia)
UMHK: Union Minière du Haut Katanga
UN: United Nations
UNEF: United Nations Emergency Force
UNIP: United National Independence Party (Zambia)
UNO: United Nations Organization
UPI: United Press International
USAF: United States Air Force
xvi
ABBREVIATIONS
VHF: Very High Frequency

Z: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
For the abbreviations used in the endnotes, see also the list of Key Archive
Repositories
xvii
Every effort has been made to get the necessary permission for use of photo-
graphs, 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. 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
2. UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld answering a question from
the press at UN headquarters, 12 June 1961. UN Photo
3. 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
4. Crash site of the Albertina, 17–18 September 1961, showing the relation-
ship between the site, the airport, Twapia township and the Non-Direc-
tional Beacon. UN Map No 1356
5. 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
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 grey-
blue 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 Secretary-
General 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, responsi-
ble, and sensitive.
He made ‘a new art of multilateral diplomacy,’ adds Urquhart, by his skill, stam-
ina, and resourcefulness: ‘He gave a fresh dimension to the task of interna-
tional 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 organiza-
tion he led reminded him of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which he arranged
17
to be played at the UN Day concert in October 1960. ‘On his road from con-
flict 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 for-
ward 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 par-
ticular 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 tak-
ing an impartial position between the principles of good and evil.’ Hammar-
skjöld ‘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 deter-
mined 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 polit-
ical decisions of individual countries. He employed this strategy for the first
time as Secretary-General in 1954–5, to negotiate the release of American sol-
diers 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 sug-
gested 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 sus-
pended 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 cen-
turies. 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 prov-
inces, like his father. Åke served as a Swedish diplomat in Washington follow-
ing 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 inter-
view 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 rad-
ical 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
a characteristic of his family’s life. An outstanding student, Dag moved seam-

lessly 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 thir-
ties 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 plea-
sure 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 aes-
thetic 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 Amer-
ican 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 body-
guard, 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 self-
discipline. 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
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 dele-
gates 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 cri-
sis, 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 some-
thing 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 dia-
logue beneath our casual conversation. The loneliness and the religious con-
cern 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 accom-
panied him on many missions as his spokesman, including his visit to the Mid-
dle 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 advi-
sor, 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
been the chauffeur and bodyguard of Trygve Lie, was Dag’s constant compan-
ion. 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 ambigu-
ity’ and mocked his brilliance—‘the only man alive who can be totally incom-
prehensible 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 Väg-
märken in 1963; the book was translated into English as Markings, although
22
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 search-
ing seemed excessively intense. John Lindberg, a distinguished Swedish diplo-
mat 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, sug-
gests 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 Decem-
ber 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 segre-
gation, 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 con-
sul in Léopoldville some years later, ‘Mr Hammarskjöld’s most vituperant oppo-
23
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 Por-
tugal—were not happy about the growing influence at the UN of the newly-
independent states. The Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias looked with
apprehension at the prospect of the Sixteenth General Assembly in Septem-
ber 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 ora-
tory 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 exert-
ing 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 interna-
tional community,’ whose independent voice in the world polity was a factor
to be reckoned with. The UN was to them their ‘main platform’ and protec-
tor, he said, as they ‘feel themselves strong as members of the international fam-
ily 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-Gen-
eralship 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
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 sharp-
ened, 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 advis-
ers 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 fre-
quently 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 hus-
bands’ 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 mys-
tifyingly abbreviated. One of them is less than a sentence: ‘and when Nefer-
titi 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
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 reas-
sures 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,
baby,
baby love.
(Copyright 1956 by Lowery Music, Inc.)
I am starting to understand that it would be a mistake to pigeon-hole Ham-

marskjöld 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; Mar-
26
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 him-
self. 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 differ-
ences 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 Stock-
holm. 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 flick-
ering 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-in-
Charge of the UN operation in the Congo at the time of the crash of Ham-
marskjöld’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 Con-
golese and were shocked when his wife invited Congolese colleagues to din-
27
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
Deployment of UN Forces in the Congo as of June 1961, also showing Ndola (bot-
tom right) in Northern Rhodesia, where Hammarskjöld’s plane crashed shortly after
midnight on 18th September 1961.
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 har-
monisation of social relations between Belgians and Congolese.’6 The Presi-
dent 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 planta-
tions. Labourers were brutally treated: death and amputation were regular
punishments. In the twenty-three years Léopold ‘owned’ the Congo, an esti-
mated 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 Bel-
gium 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 mea-
sures 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. More-
over, 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 trans-
mitted 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 Pub-
lique, 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 respon-
sible 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 addi-
tional soldiers flown out from Belgium. It looked very much, noted manda-
rins 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 for-
mer colony.11
31
Then Katanga, the southern province of the Congo, seceded. On 11 July

1960, just a week after the Belgian intervention, Moïse Tshombe went on tele-
vision with the commander of the Belgian forces in Katanga to declare its inde-
pendence—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 oper-
ating in Katanga—in particular, the Union Minière du Haut Katanga, which
had its headquarters in Brussels and was closely tied to Tanganyika Conces-
sions (Tanks), a British company that was interlinked with Anglo-American,
the Rhodesian Selection Trust, and the British South Africa Company. Elisa-
bethville, 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 indepen-
dence 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
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 Bel-
gian 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 nation-
alization by the Congo Central Government.17 But there was also, as the his-
torian 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 Ham-
marskjöld 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 Bel-
gian 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 gov-
ernment—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 mili-
tary and industrial supplies required by Tshombe.
33
Union Minière ‘actively supports Conakat, the leading party of the Katanga,’
reported Ian Scott, the British Ambassador in Léopoldville, to London, sev-
eral 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 Bel-
gium 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 pave-
ment 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 tech-
nical assistance. But now, they explained, they needed assistance to keep law
and order.29
34
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 coun-
tries on 12 July 1960; this was followed two days later by a meeting of the Secu-
rity 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 sup-
port 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 dis-
persed all over the Congo, except Katanga; the men came from Morocco, Tuni-
sia, 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 build-
ing called Le Royal on the Boulevard d’Albert, the long and wide main thor-
oughfare running through the centre of Léopoldville. Le Royal was hot and
airless, with broken lifts and an erratic telephone system that had few connec-
tions 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 gen-
eral 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
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 tech-
nicians and equipment arrived in the Congo. Ralph Bunche regarded this as
reasonable. ‘There is no bar at all against using equipment from the big Pow-
ers,’ 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 rev-
olution 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 Dev-
lin 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 numer-
ous ‘spooks’ to come to Léopoldville. His cover was that of agricultural atta-
ché 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 con-
cealed 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 Sep-
36
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 responsi-
bilities) 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 bat-
tlefield 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 Writ-
ing about recent difficulties in the Middle East to Ben-Gurion, the Prime Min-
ister 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 out-
come 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 offi-
cial 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 Par-
liament. 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 Spe-
cial Representative in Léopoldville, ‘of Hamlet torn between opposing loyal-
ties, 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
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 misgiv-
ings, which were shared by many African and Asian leaders; and Nikita Khrush-
chev, 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 pri-
vate 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 Assem-
bly, 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 protec-
tion 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 after-
wards. 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
epresents the position of parts of the engines. From the Report of the United Nations Commission of Inves-
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 ter-
ribly 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 Resolu-
tion 161, which was much stronger than the previous Resolution and autho-
rized 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 Parlia-
ment 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, Libe-
ria, 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 support-
ing 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 con-
40
strued the Charter. It warned that the UN was at a turning-point: that mem-
bers 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 orga-
nized 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 Res-

olution—authorizing ONUC to take all measures to restore order—was the
responsibility of Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien, ONUC’s chief in Katanga. A bril-
liant 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 Lieu-
tenant 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 prop-
ping up Tshombe. Some of these soldiers of fortune regarded themselves as
gentleman adventurers; others described themselves as heroes against Com-
munism; 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 sup-
ported 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
had fled their homes in terror for safety in a UN refugee camp. In a BBC inter-
view 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 jun-
gle 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 peo-
ple, 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
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 typ-
ical 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 under-
mined 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 Alge-
ria to organize armed attacks on de Gaulle once the President’s intention to dis-
engage 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, pro-
fessional 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 Gov-
ernment in Léopoldville. But Tshombe refused. One reason for this was the
influence of Godefroid Munongo and Lucas Samalenge, the Minister of Infor-
mation. 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
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 Brit-
ish colony of Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), not far from the Congo bor-
der.1 The plane had flown from Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) and was taking
Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations Secretary-General, and his entou-
rage, 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 air-
port? 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 Secretary-
General’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 Avi-
ation set up an air accident investigation, as required by the international civil
aviation authorities. The report concluded that the approach to the airport
3
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 sig-
nal to attack, and Irish armoured cars moved quickly against the post office.
But they met heavy resistance. Katangese paracommandos, who had been pro-
fessionally 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 neighbour-
hood 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 Léo-
poldville.’ The UN would force the immediate withdrawal of Belgian regulars
and of mercenaries, as required by the 21 February Resolution. This was necess
48
ary, he insisted, to avoid a bloody civil war, if Adoula were to send the Congo-
lese 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 con-
tinued 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 search-
ing 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 Con-
sul 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 Congo-
lese 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 Cab-
inet 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 Lumum-
ba’s deputy prime minister and was now the leader of all those who had sup-
ported Lumumba as a political leader.
The Western powers were extremely hostile to Gizenga because of his for-
mer proximity to Lumumba and because, like Lumumba, he was very popular
with the Congolese electorate. When Adoula appointed Gizenga as his dep-
uty—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
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 air-
port,5 an unauthorized approach to the aircraft for purposes of sabotage ‘can-
not be excluded’: although the doors were said to have been locked when the
plane was parked at Léopoldville, access was possible to the hydraulic com-
partment, the heating system and the undercarriage of the aircraft. The Com-
mission 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, par-
ticularly since the plane crashed not far from an airfield on which 18 Rhode-
sian military aircraft, capable of carrying out an air search, were stationed.6
Controversy over the cause of the crash continued. Thirty years later, inter-
national 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 Minis-
try for Foreign Affairs authorized a further inquiry into the crash. This inquiry,
which was a small-scale investigation, was conducted by Bengt Rösiö, for-
merly 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 pro-
duced 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 Léopol-
dville 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 subse-
quent 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 Ham-
marskjöld and the other passengers and crew. Conspiracy theories have pro-
liferated—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 pos-
sibly 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 doc-
tors 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 attrib-
uted 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 expe-
rience,’ 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
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 fire-
men 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 secu-
rity 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 dis-
covered in the cockpit window frame, approximately one centimetre in diam-
eter; 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 North-
ern 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-Gen-
eral 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 hap-
pened 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: docu-
mentation has disappeared and key witnesses have passed away. But this diffi-
culty 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 Welen-
sky, who was Prime Minister of the British territory of the Central African
6
PROLOGUE
Federation, comprising Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasa-

land (now independent Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi) between 1957 and
1963. The Federation had a parliamentary system but the franchise was con-
fined to the white minority. It was under Welensky’s premiership that the Rho-
desian 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 con-
tain 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 ele-
gant 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 immac-
ulate 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 noth-
ing 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
‘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, FRC-

Path, 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 exam-
ined 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 Sec-
retary-General’s brain and a collection of blood over the right cerebral hemi-
sphere.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 asso-
ciation 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 fur-
ther 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 suf-
fered a spinal cord transaction, which ‘would have left his lower limbs para-
lysed 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 pho-
tographically to “brush out” detail.’ Presumably the extreme pallor has devel-
oped 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 photo-
graphs 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 con-
sistent 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 Hammar-
skjöld’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
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 oper-
ations 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 coun-
56
MISSION FOR PEACE
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 correct-
ness 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 Parliamen-
tary 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 pol-
iticians 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 lead-
ers: 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
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 Sec-
retary-General. If Morthor were not immediately stopped, he warned, the UK
would withdraw its support for ONUC. He also pressed for a public denun-
ciation 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 Rum-
punch, 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 cri-
sis. 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 com-
mand. 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 com-
pany. These men, known as A Company, had gone to Jadotville, five days ear-
lier, 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
MISSION FOR PEACE
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 partic-
ular,’ 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 impossi-
ble 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 frater-
nize with the Irish.
However, ‘fresh troops’ had been rushed in, the ringleaders among the ‘muti-
neers’ had been shot, the ‘politicians’ had been jailed, and by morning the sit-
uation 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 Mor-
thor 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
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 mes-
sage 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 merce-
naries and by strafing from Katanga’s Fouga jet.
Meanwhile, UN forces were under siege at the Kamina base, where Swed-
ish and Indian UN troops held only the airstrip and the air control system.19
Greatly concerned, Hammarskjöld appealed urgently to a number of coun-
tries, 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 per-
sonal 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 writ-
ten 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 meet-
ing originated. For one thing, Lansdowne said later that the Secretary-Gener-
al’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 Con-
sul in Elisabethville, told O’Brien that Tshombe was prepared to meet him in
the Northern Rhodesian town of Bancroft (now Chililabombwe), on the
60
MISSION FOR PEACE
Congo border. O’Brien immediately cabled to UN headquarters in Léopold-

ville 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, Ham-
marskjöld 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 Hammar-
skjöld declined his offer, saying that he wished to negotiate with Tshombe ‘out-
side 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 setting-
up 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 des-
patch by Alport to Duncan Sandys, the Secretary of State at the Common-
wealth 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 com-
mented 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
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 Septem-
ber 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 Ron-
ald 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 Ham-
marskjöld himself.’
Before taking off from Kipushi, Ritchie inspected the 800-yards-long air-
strip. 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 offi-
cials in the region. Strictly speaking, though, he did not have an official man-
date 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. Ham-
marskjöld 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
MISSION FOR PEACE
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, con-
cerned that Hammarskjöld was due to arrive at Ndola at 16.00, he comman-
deered 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 run-
way, 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
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 Elisabeth-
ville; 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 North-
ern 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 build-
ing,’ 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 appreci-
ation 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 Hammar-
skjöld 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 Inter-
nationale, 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 occasion-
ally passed himself off as ‘Ivan de Vlaminck’—which is Flemish for ‘Ian Flem-
ing,’ the name of James Bond’s creator.
64
MISSION FOR PEACE
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 air-
port 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 Tor-
rington, Percy Browne, which caused some embarrassment in Conservative
circles in England—but not to the Daily Mail, which printed Browne’s pho-
tograph 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 recruit-
ment 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 par-
ticipating 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 coinci-
dence, 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 long-
lost 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 Secre-
tary-General declined the offer: according to Lansdowne, he suggested that
the British Minister go on ahead to Northern Rhodesia to ensure that every-
thing was arranged, and then ‘to make himself scarce before he arrived.’ Ham-
marskjöld 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 com-
pany Transair and its experienced crew of three pilots, a radio operator, a
flight engineer and a purser were all Swedish, led by Captain Per Hallon-
quist. 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
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 dele-
gates 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 cri-
sis, 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 some-
thing 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 dia-
logue beneath our casual conversation. The loneliness and the religious con-
cern 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 accom-
panied him on many missions as his spokesman, including his visit to the Mid-
dle 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 advi-
sor, 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
been the chauffeur and bodyguard of Trygve Lie, was Dag’s constant compan-
ion. 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 ambigu-
ity’ and mocked his brilliance—‘the only man alive who can be totally incom-
prehensible 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 Väg-
märken in 1963; the book was translated into English as Markings, although
22
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 search-
ing seemed excessively intense. John Lindberg, a distinguished Swedish diplo-
mat 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, sug-
gests 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 Decem-
ber 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 segre-
gation, 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 con-
sul in Léopoldville some years later, ‘Mr Hammarskjöld’s most vituperant oppo-
23
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 Por-
tugal—were not happy about the growing influence at the UN of the newly-
independent states. The Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias looked with
apprehension at the prospect of the Sixteenth General Assembly in Septem-
ber 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 ora-
tory 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 exert-
ing 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 interna-
tional community,’ whose independent voice in the world polity was a factor
to be reckoned with. The UN was to them their ‘main platform’ and protec-
tor, he said, as they ‘feel themselves strong as members of the international fam-
ily 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-Gen-
eralship 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
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 sharp-
ened, 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 advis-
ers 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 fre-
quently 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 hus-
bands’ 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 mys-
tifyingly abbreviated. One of them is less than a sentence: ‘and when Nefer-
titi 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
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 reas-
sures 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
baby,
baby,
baby love.
(Copyright 1956 by Lowery Music, Inc.)
I am starting to understand that it would be a mistake to pigeon-hole Ham-

marskjöld 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; Mar-
26
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 him-
self. 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 differ-
ences 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 Stock-
holm. 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 flick-
ering 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-in-
Charge of the UN operation in the Congo at the time of the crash of Ham-
marskjöld’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 Con-
golese and were shocked when his wife invited Congolese colleagues to din-
27
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 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 administra-
tors, he arranged for Dr Ralph Bunche to go to the Congo as his special rep-
resentative, 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 mil-
lion people, there were only about fifteen with university training and hardly
any of the Congolese had experience in governmental responsibility or as tech-
nicians.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 multina-
tionals, who were watching developments carefully: the British Consul Gen-
eral 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
Among the charred bodies was the only woman on the plane: Alice Lal-
ande, 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 sec-
retariat 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 respon-
sible 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 Lit-
ton, 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 wreck-
age with foam. Parts of the wreckage, he said, were still glowing and the only
77
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 posses-
sion 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 ambu-
lance men. An ambulance was being driven away, believed to be carrying Mr Hammar-
skjöld. 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 scram-
bling up ant-hills, as best as he could through the debris, he took more photo-
graphs. 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 rec-
ollection 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 prepara-
tory to landing in what he would probably have considered to be alien terri-
78
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 har-
monisation of social relations between Belgians and Congolese.’6 The Presi-
dent 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 planta-
tions. Labourers were brutally treated: death and amputation were regular
punishments. In the twenty-three years Léopold ‘owned’ the Congo, an esti-
mated 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 Bel-
gium 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 mea-
sures 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. More-
over, 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 trans-
mitted Baudouin’s speech to thousands of Congolese listeners and there was
30
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 Pub-
lique, 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 respon-
sible 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 addi-
tional soldiers flown out from Belgium. It looked very much, noted manda-
rins 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 for-
mer colony.11
31
Then Katanga, the southern province of the Congo, seceded. On 11 July

1960, just a week after the Belgian intervention, Moïse Tshombe went on tele-
vision with the commander of the Belgian forces in Katanga to declare its inde-
pendence—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 oper-
ating in Katanga—in particular, the Union Minière du Haut Katanga, which
had its headquarters in Brussels and was closely tied to Tanganyika Conces-
sions (Tanks), a British company that was interlinked with Anglo-American,
the Rhodesian Selection Trust, and the British South Africa Company. Elisa-
bethville, 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 indepen-
dence 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
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 Hammar-
skjöld 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 inter-
ests of small States threatened by the Western imperialists and neo-colonial-
ists.’ 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 mur-
dered. ‘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 cop-
per or uranium.’7
In order that the Congolese nation might ‘demonstrate publicly our indig-
nation at the scandalous interference in our affairs by certain foreign coun-
tries,’ 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 Khrush-
chev, and in New York more than 50 anti-Communist European exiles pick-
eted 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 accu-
sations 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 Federa-
tion 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
‘THEY KILLED HIM! THEY GOT HIM!’
were pointed in London’s direction, too. ‘Never even during Suez have Brit-
ain’s hands been so bloodstained as they are now,’ wrote Joshua Nkomo, a free-
dom 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 pub-
lic 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 Afri-

can 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 free-
dom 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
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 hap-
pened.’21 In Léopoldville, Linnér was horrified to receive invitations from Bel-
gians 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 Europe-
ans with experience of that part of the world.’ Responsibility for Hammar-
skjöld’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. ‘Mon-
sieur 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 con-
ference 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 din-
ing-room of the Savoy Hotel in Ndola and some UN guards came in with side-
arms, 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 per-
suade 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 North-
84
ern Rhodesia. Khiari and his team, however, had a far less enthusiastic wel-
come 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 mini-
mum 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 disband-
ment of Katangan forces and Tshombe was given an assurance that the UN
would not obstruct the Katangan gendarmerie. In effect, this was the very cease-
fire offered a few days earlier by Tshombe to Hammarskjöld, which the Secre-
tary-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 sur-
rounding Dag’s death: he went to Ndola on Tuesday 19 September to repre-
sent 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
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 Direc-
tor-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 Rhode-
sians 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. Swed-
ish UN soldiers and Rhodesian troops stood guard. ‘The coffin was carried
into the church by three RRAF officers, a White police officer, a Native sol-
dier and a Native constable,’ reported a Cape Town newspaper, with an apart-
heid-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 vege-
table 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 spe-
cialists 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
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 pho-
tographs 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 Rhode-
sian 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 Mah-
moud Khiari and from Colonel Egge. Alport said he was anxious ‘that any per-
sonal 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 offi-
cial 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 Commis-
sioner (though slim and fit, with a more youthful appearance than the grey-
haired High Commissioner). Alport was especially annoyed when Egge drove
87
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 pos-
session of Hammarskjöld’s papers. Perhaps it was assumed that they contained
material likely to justify or prejudice one or another of the UN factions’ poli-
cies 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 Sec-
retary-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 win-
dowsill 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 Septem-
ber 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 Salis-
bury 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 tax-
ied 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-
88
lic, but nobody moved, nobody said a word. Everything was quiet at Ndjili [Léopold-
ville 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 ‘Rev-
eille’ 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 cof-
fin 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
89
7
THE WHITE SETTLERS INVESTIGATE
On 19 September 1961, the Rhodesian Federal Department of Civil Aviation

set up an internal investigation into the technical cause of the crash, in accor-
dance with the procedures required by the international civil aviation author-
ities. 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. Represen-
tatives 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 spe-
cialist 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 rel-
atives in the USA on 19 September, the day after the wreckage was discov-
91
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 Leopol-
dville. 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 orig-
inal total of its material.5 All the fused metal recovered from the crash was bro-
ken 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 major-
ity 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 ineffi-
cient investigation procedures. Bratt had been especially concerned to discover
the reasons why Serge Barrau, the bodyguard, had been found at a place out-
side 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 Bar-
rau 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 pres-
ence 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 investi-
gation, 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 per-
son 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 Wel-
ensky 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 state-
ments: I had seen fragments of one or two of these statements in various dif-
ferent 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
had fled their homes in terror for safety in a UN refugee camp. In a BBC inter-
view 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 jun-
gle 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 peo-
ple, 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
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 typ-
ical 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 under-
mined 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 Alge-
ria to organize armed attacks on de Gaulle once the President’s intention to dis-
engage 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, pro-
fessional 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 Gov-
ernment in Léopoldville. But Tshombe refused. One reason for this was the
influence of Godefroid Munongo and Lucas Samalenge, the Minister of Infor-
mation. 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
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 state-
ment 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 ‘Rum-
punch,’ 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 Magis-
ter jet fighter and had also converted other planes into bombers. The merce-
nary 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 … not-
ing 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 man-
aged 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
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, explain-
ing 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 conspir-
acy 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 person-
nel 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 offen-
sive. 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—authoriz-
ing the arrest of Tshombe, Godefroid Munongo, Jean-Baptiste Kibwe, the
Vice-President and Minister of Finance for Katanga, Evariste Kimba, the For-
eign 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
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 sig-
nal to attack, and Irish armoured cars moved quickly against the post office.
But they met heavy resistance. Katangese paracommandos, who had been pro-
fessionally 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 neighbour-
hood 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 Léo-
poldville.’ The UN would force the immediate withdrawal of Belgian regulars
and of mercenaries, as required by the 21 February Resolution. This was necess
48
ary, he insisted, to avoid a bloody civil war, if Adoula were to send the Congo-
lese 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 con-
tinued 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 search-
ing 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 Con-
sul 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 Congo-
lese 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 Cab-
inet 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 Lumum-
ba’s deputy prime minister and was now the leader of all those who had sup-
ported Lumumba as a political leader.
The Western powers were extremely hostile to Gizenga because of his for-
mer proximity to Lumumba and because, like Lumumba, he was very popular
with the Congolese electorate. When Adoula appointed Gizenga as his dep-
uty—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
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 accompa-
nied 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 protec-
tion. 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 Brit-
ish 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 prac-
tices 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 Rho-
desias, may have sounded less blunt than the signs in South Africa saying Slegs
Blankes.19 But it meant the same thing—‘Whites Only.’
50
There was much to-ing and fro-ing by the white communities between Elis-
abethville and Ndola, the chief town of the Copperbelt, which was just 10 kilo-
metres 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 Mac-
millan 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 follow-
ing 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 commu-
nist-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, cul-
tured 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 Sep-
tember 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
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 battal-
ion, 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 Road-
blocks 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 car-
ried 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 Her-
ald 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 freedom-
seeking Katangese people.25
Welensky announced the movement of troops to Ndola in the Federal Par-

liament 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 jus-
tice for its actions in Katanga.’ Sir Roy was followed by Winston Field, the
52
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 North-
ern Rhodesian MP, John Gaunt, compared Morthor to the crushing of the
Hungarian rising in 1956 and the suppression of the revolt in Eastern Ger-
many. ‘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 volun-
teers 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 iden-
tical with the stuff that was used by Hitler before he liberated Austria and
Czechoslovakia.’29
53
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 men-
tion 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 Dep-
uty Prime Minister; Justin Bomboko, the Foreign Minister; and Colonel
Mobutu. Dag walked briskly over to shake their hands, greeting them in flu-
ent French—‘the familiar, slight, hatless figure—radiating confidence, infor-
mal and yet dominating,’ observes a biographer.2 Bill Ranallo stuck close to
him, while Harold Julien and four bodyguards followed in his shadow.
55
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.
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 mes-
sage 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 merce-
naries and by strafing from Katanga’s Fouga jet.
Meanwhile, UN forces were under siege at the Kamina base, where Swed-
ish and Indian UN troops held only the airstrip and the air control system.19
Greatly concerned, Hammarskjöld appealed urgently to a number of coun-
tries, 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 per-
sonal 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 writ-
ten 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 meet-
ing originated. For one thing, Lansdowne said later that the Secretary-Gener-
al’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 Con-
sul in Elisabethville, told O’Brien that Tshombe was prepared to meet him in
the Northern Rhodesian town of Bancroft (now Chililabombwe), on the
60
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 Septem-
ber 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 Ron-
ald 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 Ham-
marskjöld himself.’
Before taking off from Kipushi, Ritchie inspected the 800-yards-long air-
strip. 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 offi-
cials in the region. Strictly speaking, though, he did not have an official man-
date 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. Ham-
marskjöld 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
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 Elisabeth-
ville; 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 North-
ern 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 build-
ing,’ 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 appreci-
ation 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 Hammar-
skjöld 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 Inter-
nationale, 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 occasion-
ally passed himself off as ‘Ivan de Vlaminck’—which is Flemish for ‘Ian Flem-
ing,’ the name of James Bond’s creator.
64
8. Lord Alport (centre), the British High Commissioner to the Rhodesian Federation [1961].
5
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 Secre-
tary-General declined the offer: according to Lansdowne, he suggested that
the British Minister go on ahead to Northern Rhodesia to ensure that every-
thing was arranged, and then ‘to make himself scarce before he arrived.’ Ham-
marskjöld 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 com-
pany Transair and its experienced crew of three pilots, a radio operator, a
flight engineer and a purser were all Swedish, led by Captain Per Hallon-
quist. 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
10. UN troops in Katanga arresting white mercenaries, 1 January 1961.
advisers were driven off to the Provincial Commissioner’s large and comfort-
able 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 min-
utes 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 con-
tacted Salisbury again: ‘We are keeping outside Congolese territory, proceed-
ing around the border to Ndola to land at Ndola.’ Flight Information tried to
extract more information—‘On arrival Ndola are you night-stopping or pro-
ceeding 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-record-
ing 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 Green-
wich 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
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 Elisabeth-
ville, 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 sig-
nal asking for any information from flight information centres in Salisbury,
Léopoldville, and Lusaka. Salisbury and Lusaka reported nil news; Léopold-
ville 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 Alber-
tina. 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 ter-
minal building, Martin contacted Flight Information in Salisbury by tele-
printer, 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 mes-
sages 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 Rho-
desian 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
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 Sep-
tember 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.
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 posses-
sion 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 ambu-
lance men. An ambulance was being driven away, believed to be carrying Mr Hammar-
skjöld. 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 scram-
bling up ant-hills, as best as he could through the debris, he took more photo-
graphs. 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 rec-
ollection 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 prepara-
tory to landing in what he would probably have considered to be alien terri-
78
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 Commis-
sion 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 Sam-
uel Bankolé Jones from Sierra Leone, Justice Emil Sandström from Sweden,
and Nikola Srzentíc from Yugoslavia. This mixture of international back-
grounds contrasted sharply with the whites-only Rhodesian Commission of
Inquiry. So did its scope. For whereas the Rhodesian Commission was con-
ducted as a ‘run-of-the-mill’ investigation, as if there were no special circum-
stances,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, fol-
lowed 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 Fed-
eral 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.
105
6
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 work-
ing 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 remem-
ber 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 peo-
ple 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 Sep-
tember, 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
THE UN INQUIRY
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 com-
ing 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 Rhode-
sian inquiry and was performing the same role in the UN proceedings, cross-
examined 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
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 distinc-
tion, 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 Secretary-
General’ 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 mouth-
piece 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 Feb-
ruary 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 sub-
stantially 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
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 Hammar-
skjöld 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 inter-
ests of small States threatened by the Western imperialists and neo-colonial-
ists.’ 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 mur-
dered. ‘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 cop-
per or uranium.’7
In order that the Congolese nation might ‘demonstrate publicly our indig-
nation at the scandalous interference in our affairs by certain foreign coun-
tries,’ 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 Khrush-
chev, and in New York more than 50 anti-Communist European exiles pick-
eted 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 accu-
sations 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 Federa-
tion 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
were pointed in London’s direction, too. ‘Never even during Suez have Brit-
ain’s hands been so bloodstained as they are now,’ wrote Joshua Nkomo, a free-
dom 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 pub-
lic 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 Afri-

can 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 free-
dom 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
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 hap-
pened.’21 In Léopoldville, Linnér was horrified to receive invitations from Bel-
gians 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 Europe-
ans with experience of that part of the world.’ Responsibility for Hammar-
skjöld’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. ‘Mon-
sieur 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 con-
ference 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 din-
ing-room of the Savoy Hotel in Ndola and some UN guards came in with side-
arms, 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 per-
suade 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 North-
84
ern Rhodesia. Khiari and his team, however, had a far less enthusiastic wel-
come 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 mini-
mum 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 disband-
ment of Katangan forces and Tshombe was given an assurance that the UN
would not obstruct the Katangan gendarmerie. In effect, this was the very cease-
fire offered a few days earlier by Tshombe to Hammarskjöld, which the Secre-
tary-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 sur-
rounding Dag’s death: he went to Ndola on Tuesday 19 September to repre-
sent 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
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 Direc-
tor-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 Rhode-
sians 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. Swed-
ish UN soldiers and Rhodesian troops stood guard. ‘The coffin was carried
into the church by three RRAF officers, a White police officer, a Native sol-
dier and a Native constable,’ reported a Cape Town newspaper, with an apart-
heid-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 vege-
table 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 spe-
cialists 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
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 pho-
tographs 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 Rhode-
sian 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 Mah-
moud Khiari and from Colonel Egge. Alport said he was anxious ‘that any per-
sonal 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 offi-
cial 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 Commis-
sioner (though slim and fit, with a more youthful appearance than the grey-
haired High Commissioner). Alport was especially annoyed when Egge drove
87
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 pos-
session of Hammarskjöld’s papers. Perhaps it was assumed that they contained
material likely to justify or prejudice one or another of the UN factions’ poli-
cies 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 Sec-
retary-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 win-
dowsill 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 Septem-
ber 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 Salis-
bury 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 tax-
ied 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-
88
lic, but nobody moved, nobody said a word. Everything was quiet at Ndjili [Léopold-
ville 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 ‘Rev-
eille’ 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 cof-
fin 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
89
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 morn-
ing 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 real-
ized 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 morn-
ing that several people went to the scene of the crash. ‘We found bodies muti-
lated,’ 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 for-
ward 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 noth-
ing fishy, that it was pure accident, were reliable. But some of the people who gave evi-
dence 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 accu-
rately 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
118
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 cho-
sen 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 Ambas-
sador 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 Ham-
marskjöld was not burnt.
Botta’s interviews with Kankasa and Buleni in 1979 shed a fresh and dis-
turbing 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 morn-
ing 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 commis-
sion of inquiry blamed the men for not reporting their discovery of the wreck-
age; 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 wit-
ness 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
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 explod-
ing. 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 impris-
oned: 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 wit-
nesses 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 dis-
cussions, 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
From the moment of my arrival, I understand the importance of Dag Ham-

marskjöld 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 air-
port 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 Vic-
toria 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 strug-
gle for independence as a young woman, she took a prominent role in the
social and economic development of Zambia, especially for women and chil-
dren—maternity protection, girls’ education, and women’s rights. She was
Zambia’s Minister for Women’s Affairs between 1969 and 1988 and has rep-
resented 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
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 Sec-
retary-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 move-
ment in Northern Rhodesia had become very active and the political party
UNIP—led by Kenneth Kaunda, who became the first president of indepen-
dent 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 Cop-
perbelt, as thousands of people insisted on being served in shops that were
‘whites-only.’ They also burned the chitupa—the identity pass that the govern-
ment required them to carry. The Federal government likened the Cha Cha
Cha to the Mau Mau movement in Kenya and cracked down severely: by Sep-
tember 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 domi-
nant feature of Northern Rhodesian life ever since the British arrived, remov-
ing 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 Nyas-
aland. The political atmosphere of all three territories was now dominated by
Southern Rhodesia, where the all-white legislature had a solid—and shock-
ing—record on the issue of land. In Southern Rhodesia, the Land Apportion-
ment Act of 1930 had allocated 50 per cent of the country, including all the
122
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 conse-
quence, the British government produced proposals in February for self-gov-
ernment 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 mil-
itancy—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 Terri-
torial Force were now on four hours’ standby. ‘So the place was hopping!’
recalled Clyde Sanger some years later, who was then the regional correspon-
dent for the Guardian.14
On 13 September 1961—the day that Hammarskjöld arrived in Léopold-
ville, just four days before his death—Iain Macleod, the British Colonial Sec-
retary, 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
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 commit-
ment 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 jour-
ney 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 noth-
ing 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 dis-
puted; 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 con-
124
doms. I find this extraordinary: a deeply religious woman in her seventies talk-
ing 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 satis-
fied 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 hug-
ging the children who are sick, so that they will know they are loved and oth-
ers 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 Fed-
eral 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
bian woman recalls from the Federation era, any person who was mean or vio-
lent 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 con-
scious 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 beauti-
ful under the bright sun and clear blue sky. Then we pass near the Dag Ham-
marskjöld 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
away.’ He shakes his head sadly and refers to the bitter troubles of the Demo-
cratic 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 North-
ern 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 pho-
tographer 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 air-
port. 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 fam-
ily 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
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 Hammar-
skjöld 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 hear-
ings of the UN Inquiry in 1962.
We then visit the bars of two hotels which were favourite haunts for mer-
cenaries 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 Ambas-
sador, 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 merce-
nary 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 pur-
chases 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 dis-
cuss the colonial colour bar. There were two hospitals: one for the small num-
ber 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 civil-
ian 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
same bar and restaurant that were used in the 1960s, where Dr Mark Lowen-
thal 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 dis-
cuss 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?
129
10
BIG BUSINESS, INTELLIGENCE AND BRITAIN
The Congolese Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula gave his approval to Hammar-
skjöld 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 Con-
golese 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 indepen-
dence 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
131
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.
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, Tangan-
yika Concessions (‘Tanks’), and a member of the board of Union Minière. (He
was known as ‘Slasher’ Waterhouse, because as a Tory MP he advocated dras-
tic cuts in public spending.) British government documents record Water-
house’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, ‘Cap-
tain 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 produc-
134
tion. Other directors were Sir Tufton Beamish MP and Sir Charles Mott-
Radclyffe 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 propa-
ganda leaflet circulated by a public relations firm in Salisbury, ‘U.N.O. is wait-
ing 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 decol-
onization, 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-Davi-
son, 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 pres-
sures 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 slight-
est 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, For-
eign Office’ to thank Biggs-Davison for letting him see a letter from the Mem-
ber for Yarmouth, ‘the contents of which I passed on to one of our people who
135
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: ‘Ham-
marskjöld 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 Cen-
tral 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 Sep-
tember 1956, MI6 had advised Eden that the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Mah-
moud 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 sub-
mitted 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
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 Ambassa-
dor 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 Spe-
cial Operations Executive (SOE), a vocal member of the Suez Lobby and a
Scottish Conservative MP, was involved in a number of shadowy and paramil-
itary 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
run a guerrilla war against the left-wing Yemeni regime and its Egyptian back-
ers. ‘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 Faul-
ques, 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 Wil-
liams—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 Bula-
wayo’ 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 invi-
tation 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 per-
haps 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 Min-
ister 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 Septem-
ber 1961, three days after Morthor and one day before the death of Secretary-
General 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 cyn-
ical act of power politics which has shocked many of us here in Britain and is bringing
grave discredit upon the United Nations.
138
Both O’Brien and Hammarskjöld, he went on, ‘must bear direct and individ-
ual responsibility’—because by ‘their prejudiced and ill-considered interpre-
tation 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 North-
ern 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
5. Colonel Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, leader of the Armée Nationale Congolaise (left), and Moïse Tshombe of Katanga, 1 October 1960.
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 wit-
nessed 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 shoot-
ing-down of the Albertina. He was stationed at the Cyprus naval communica-
tions 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 Swed-
ish, 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 discov-
ered, 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
141
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 Oki-
nawa in Japan, in a squadron of patrol bombers in the Taiwan Straits hostili-
ties. 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 oper-
ational 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 intel-
ligence 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 ambas-
sadors 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 Smok-
ing 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 mahog-
any 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
AN AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: CYPRUS, 1961
he says, and has 6,000 hours of flying time, much of it multi-engine, pilot-in-
command. 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 obliga-
tion 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 Fama-
gusta. 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 pen-
cils 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 monitor-
ing stations all over the world, staffed in some countries by two or three peo-
ple working at the American consulate, but without the involvement of the
consul. Nowadays, adds Charles, there is no need to have staff in the monitor-
ing 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 care-
fully guarded entrance. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence and scrub, with
143
an antennae field nearby. The CIA had the ground floor, but there was no com-
munication 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 work-
ing at any one time, listening to voice communications and telephone conver-
sations 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 offi-
cials’ 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 origi-
nals, 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, beau-
tiful 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 sail-
ing 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 extraordi-
nary, 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 them-
selves clustered round a loudspeaker, listening to a recording. They heard the
144
8. Lord Alport (centre), the British High Commissioner to the Rhodesian Federation [1961].
area of his responsibility. It was often the case, though, that there was a height-
ened 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, includ-
ing 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 dip-
lomatic 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 Multi-
national 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 offi-
cial 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 Lon-
don 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 Depart-
ment. Getting straight to the point, Enstrom asked Southall if he had any infor-
mation 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
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 Gov-
ernment 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 sched-
ule 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
thought, for Hammarskjöld’s death to be ‘decently and finally brought to offi-

cial 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 ask-
ing 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 intelli-
148
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 Min-
istry they could not locate him, at roughly the same time that they were writ-
ing 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 Casa-
blanca. Here Charles was managing a private company, which was his cover
for commercial intelligence, in an office building in the centre of the city. ‘Nei-
ther 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 Casa-
blanca in the second week of March, 1994, where he met and questioned South-
all 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
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 ura-
nium. The US government, argued Rösiö, was anxious to see Katanga incor-
porated into a federal and unified Congo.
This was true up to a point. When John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as Pres-
ident in January 1961, he signalled that he would be more willing than Eisen-
hower to support the UN against Belgian interference in Congo. He also
publicly backed the African nationalist movement. When his Assistant Secre-
tary 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 unreason-
able 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 Decem-
ber 1961, believed that the American who was most sympathetic to Tshombe
150
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 sympa-
thetic view of African nationalism that was articulated by Kennedy and Wil-
liams. ‘African radicals such as Nkrumah, Touré, and Keita,’ he wrote in a
‘National Intelligence Estimate’ on 31 August 1961, ‘tend to be more strenu-
ous 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 fis-
sures 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 Offi-
cer (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 per-
manent 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
at the Travellers Club though on one occasion I am refused entry. I had for-
gotten 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 con-
spiracy theorist, but sensible and amusing. It is clear, as well, that he is genu-
inely 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.
152
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 investi-
gations 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-
153
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 mis-
taken. 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 Assis-
tant 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 him-
self 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 regard-
ing 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
HIGH FREQUENCY: ETHIOPIA, 1961
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 lim-
ited to 100–200 kilometres to avoid interference with other airport’s traffic.
This meant, concluded Rösiö, that Meijer must have been listening to a con-
versation 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 function-
ing 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 dis-
tance.’ 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 some-
one who was aviation-minded.’ What probably happened, thinks Southall, is
that Meijer heard a communication between Ndola and Lusaka air traffic con-
trol on one of these shared frequencies.
According to Anders Hellberg’s article in Dagens Nyheter, Lars-Åke Nils-
son, the Cabinet Secretary in the Swedish Foreign Office, was struck by a sim-
ilarity between Meijer’s information and that of Southall. In fact, they were
somewhat different: for whereas Meijer appears to have heard part of a con-
versation 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
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 col-
lecting 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 uniden-
tified aircraft had overflown Ndola airport; it did not attempt to land or estab-
lish 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, Ham-
marskjöld’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 Léopold-
ville] 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 con-
tact 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 Congo-
lese man who had been a clerk with the Katangese government, paying the
156
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 Minis-
ter of the Interior, to the gendarmerie encircling the surrendered Irish com-
pany. 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 pro-
hibition, 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-Gen-
eral 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 how-
ever 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
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 British-
born 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 Swane-
poel, 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 anony-
mous letter, which was mailed in Léopoldville on 29 September and handed
to ONUC on 19 October, which claimed that Gilson had attacked Hammar-
skjöld’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
16. Ndola airport. This photograph was taken after independence in 1964; before independence, Africans were not permitted
inside the airport perimeter.
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 thirty-
year 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 Wil-
liams 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 Salis-
bury 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 permis-
160
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 polit-
ical 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
13
THE FRENCH CONNECTION
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 Alex-
andria 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 inspec-
tor. 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
THE UN INQUIRY
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 com-
ing 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 Rhode-
sian inquiry and was performing the same role in the UN proceedings, cross-
examined 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
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 distinc-
tion, 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 Secretary-
General’ 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 mouth-
piece 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 Feb-
ruary 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 sub-
stantially 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
THE UN INQUIRY
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 Rov-
ers 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 day-
break, 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 appear-
ance 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
the ambulance that arrived at the scene of the crash at around 15.55 on 18 Sep-
tember, 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 men-
tioned in the post mortem.
*
The final report of the UN Commission was released in April 1962. It deliv-
ered 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 Gov-
ernment. 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 sus-
pected 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 Depart-
ment moved quickly to develop off-the-record lines for government spokes-
men 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
THE UN INQUIRY
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 Commis-
sion’s view, the Federal Department of Civil Aviation had overall responsibil-
ity 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 Com-
mission did not blame him for this. Rather, they blamed two key sets of cir-
cumstances: 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 Hammar-
skjöld must have gone elsewhere. ‘I thought it possible,’ he said, ‘that some-
thing 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 trans-

mitting 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
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 Ham-
marskjöld 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 forbid-
den 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-year-
old Lord Alport is turning out to be a central character in events at Ndola air-
port 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 col-
onies 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 ser-
vices to all races in the Federation.’ For as photographs of the event show, the
only race that was represented was white.13
112
THE UN INQUIRY
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 rela-
tionships 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 remon-
strate 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 mem-
orandum 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 acci-
dent 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 Ham-
marskjöld 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
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 Ham-
marskjöld 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 investiga-
tion—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 com-
pletely 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 air-
port 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
THE UN INQUIRY
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 Alber-
tina had been finally cleared to descend, he explained in this report, ‘Thereaf-
ter 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 mili-
tary 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 Alber-
tina 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-Gen-
eral 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
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
116
9
THE CHA CHA CHA

ZAMBIA, 2009
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 doc-
umentary 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
117
14
THE HIJACK HYPOTHESES
Two theories emerged in the 1960s which attributed the crash of the Alber-
tina to a failed hijack. This is not surprising, given that aerial piracy was signif-
icantly 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. Dur-
ing this period it was rare for actual violence to be used and killings were non-
existent; 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 advis-
ers, 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 copper-
mining 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 Rhode-
sia 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
175
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 Léopol-
dville, 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 alti-
tude 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 vic-
tims’ 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 ques-
tioned exhaustively. ‘This never happened. Notre Guerre au Katanga fell totally
flat and has disappeared from “history.”’3 He himself did his best to draw atten-
tion 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 seven-
teenth 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 Rhode-
sians. 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 bur-
ied 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 cer-
176
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 eve-
ning at the opera house, he was approached by Robert Ahier, a journalist for
United Press International (UPI), who reported that some Belgian mercenar-
ies 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
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 Secretary-
General was supposed to be meeting Tshombe for peace talks. Beukels was
instructed to divert the plane to Kolwezi, where a group of people represent-
ing 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, includ-
ing 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 psychiatri-
cally disturbed and had dropped in weight from eighty-five to fifty kilos. Appar-
ently 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 informa-
tion. They said that Mr X’s group feared that if Tshombe came to terms with
178
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 Euro-
pean advisers who normally worked closely with the control group at Kol-
wezi. 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 anti-
aircraft 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 Feb-
ruary 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
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 Tangan-
yika. 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 inter-
cept 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 conversa-
tions 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 maneu-
ver into a position from which we were behind the DC6 for our purpose. The tower
180
told my radio operator to tune in on the wave-length that was carrying communica-
tions 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 search-
lights, 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 inter-
com, ‘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?’
181
‘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 Kol-
wezi.’ The radio operator reported to the High Command at Kolwezi what had hap-
pened 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 air-
craft. 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 trou-
ble 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 Kemou-
182
laria. ‘Among us there were excellent and good people, medical doctors, pro-
fessors, 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 obvi-
ous 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 expla-
nation for the Secretary-General’s death. Smith then interviewed de Kemou-
laria 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 let-
ter to Bengt Rösiö. ‘I am still puzzled,’ he wrote, ‘at the motivation of de Kemou-
laria. 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
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 mem-
bers 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 offi-
cial; 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 infor-
mation 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
15
AERIAL WARFARE
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 possi-
bly bombed, by another aircraft. However, Virving believed that a de Havil-
land 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 Com-
mission 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 indi-
cated 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-
185
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 Hammar-
skjöld 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 hear-
ings of the UN Inquiry in 1962.
We then visit the bars of two hotels which were favourite haunts for mer-
cenaries 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 Ambas-
sador, 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 merce-
nary 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 pur-
chases 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 dis-
cuss the colonial colour bar. There were two hospitals: one for the small num-
ber 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 civil-
ian 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
same bar and restaurant that were used in the 1960s, where Dr Mark Lowen-
thal 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 dis-
cuss 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?
129
10
The Congolese Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula gave his approval to Hammar-
skjöld 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 Con-
golese 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 indepen-
dence 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
131
we spotted what turned out to be the suspected crash site … We determined the coor-
dinates 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 Norwe-
gian UN plane, which had flown to Ndola to help in the search for the Alber-
tina 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 aston-
ished 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 Squad-
ron 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 state-
ment, 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 Federa-
tion, 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 inves-
tigation 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
AERIAL WARFARE
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 the-
ory—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 mem-
oir, 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 Peter-
zén 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 prob-
lem, 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 Ham-
marskjöld learned of an increase in attacks by the Katanga Fouga on Congo-
lese 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
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 ambiv-
alent. 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 Cab-
inet 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 Afri-
can’—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 cre-
ated 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 sab-
otage resolution 161. But, he insisted, the operation ‘must succeed, as other-
wise 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
132
they also sent an expert from Brussels (who happened to be on leave from the Congo
where he had spent twelve years) to help me. He arrived on Friday, 15th September.
Ritchie told him ‘not to use RT except in the last resort for fear of intercep-
tion, 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 Elis-
abethville 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 dupli-
cates 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 equip-
ment 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
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, Tangan-
yika Concessions (‘Tanks’), and a member of the board of Union Minière. (He
was known as ‘Slasher’ Waterhouse, because as a Tory MP he advocated dras-
tic cuts in public spending.) British government documents record Water-
house’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, ‘Cap-
tain 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 produc-
134
tion. Other directors were Sir Tufton Beamish MP and Sir Charles Mott-
Radclyffe 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 propa-
ganda leaflet circulated by a public relations firm in Salisbury, ‘U.N.O. is wait-
ing 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 decol-
onization, 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-Davi-
son, 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 pres-
sures 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 slight-
est 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, For-
eign Office’ to thank Biggs-Davison for letting him see a letter from the Mem-
ber for Yarmouth, ‘the contents of which I passed on to one of our people who
135
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 orga-
nization 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
‘OPERATION CELESTE’
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 investiga-
tion. 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 suffi-
cient 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 com-
ment at that stage.2
Archbishop Tutu made it clear that the TRC was not in a position to exam-
ine 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 peo-
ple off ’; he suggested that the SAIMR documents may have been misinforma-
tion 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 Sec-
retary-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
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 Mar-
tin Coetzee, the Chief Executive Officer of the TRC, faxed photocopies of
eight of the documents to Ambassador Grimstad on 29 May 2000, apologiz-
ing for their poor quality. The originals (or the original copies) had been sent
back to the National Intelligence Agency—they were already months over-
due when Christelle had seen the file. He explained that ‘the copies in the pos-
session 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 doc-
uments, 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 Afri-
can History Archive (SAHA), an independent organization based at the Uni-
versity of Witwatersrand, which documents and disseminates archive material
about South Africa’s history. He has an uncompromising commitment to trans-
parency 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 Promo-
tion 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 docu-
ments.’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
Department did not know whether the documents had ever come into its pos-
session 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 Pre-
toria on 6 January, accompanied by Heinrich Wieschhoff and Bill Ranallo, his
aeroplane had been diverted from Jan Smuts airport at Johannesburg to a mil-
itary airfield, because of the huge crowds that had gathered to meet him—hun-
dreds 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’ pol-
icy and apartheid as both morally unacceptable and impractical. He told Ver-
woerd, 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 Johannes-
burg: ‘The United Nation’s Secretary-General … asked his driver to stop out-
side 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; accord-
ing to Brian Urquhart, the Secretary-General felt he was speaking to Verwo-
erd across a gulf of three hundred years.15
On 13 April 1961, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 1598, con-
demning the racial policies of South Africa and calling upon its government
199
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 Johan-
nesburg 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 Rho-
desia—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.’
200
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 Elisa-
bethville 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 des-
patched—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:
Report.
Operation Celeste 18.9.61
1. Device failed on take-off.
2. Despatched Eagle [illegible word] to follow and take [illegible words]
3. Device activated [illegible words] prior to landing.
4. As advised O’Brien and McKeown were not aboard.
5. Mission accomplished: satisfactory.
Message Ends
201
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 ARM-
SCOR’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. Examin-
ing 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 avail-
able. 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. Further-
more, 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 Léopol-
dville 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 Presi-
dent 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
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 presi-
dential speedboat.17 This new prohibition meant that when Hammarskjöld
left the Congo, he would have no choice but to take a plane from Léopold-
ville, 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 concen-
trate 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 flam-
boyant 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 vis-
its 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
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 out-
fit 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 Alber-
tina. According to a Rhodesian fireman, Ray Critchell, who was sent from
Salisbury to Ndola for five weeks to help with the initial air accident investi-
gation, 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 exag-
gerated Oxford English accent and, in the exotic flying gear of the 1930s, cer-
tainly 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
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 con-
tinued 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-Gen-
eral. In any case, it returned to Léopoldville from Elisabethville on 17 Septem-
ber 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 com-
partment, 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
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 edi-
tor 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 espe-
cially 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 Secu-
rity 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 Minis-
try initiated a further inquiry in 1993 into the crash of the Albertina, he won-
ders if some organization with something to hide forged the alleged 1961
SAIMR documents at that time, in order to draw attention away from an inves-
tigation into what actually happened. For if someone were to take these papers
206
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
207
17
MERCENARIES UNDER APARTHEID
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 read-
ing an advertisement in the Citizen requiring for dangerous assignment, approxi-
mately 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
209
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 Min-
istry they could not locate him, at roughly the same time that they were writ-
ing 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 Casa-
blanca. Here Charles was managing a private company, which was his cover
for commercial intelligence, in an office building in the centre of the city. ‘Nei-
ther 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 Casa-
blanca in the second week of March, 1994, where he met and questioned South-
all 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
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 ura-
nium. The US government, argued Rösiö, was anxious to see Katanga incor-
porated into a federal and unified Congo.
This was true up to a point. When John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as Pres-
ident in January 1961, he signalled that he would be more willing than Eisen-
hower to support the UN against Belgian interference in Congo. He also
publicly backed the African nationalist movement. When his Assistant Secre-
tary 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 unreason-
able 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 Decem-
ber 1961, believed that the American who was most sympathetic to Tshombe
150
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 sympa-
thetic view of African nationalism that was articulated by Kennedy and Wil-
liams. ‘African radicals such as Nkrumah, Touré, and Keita,’ he wrote in a
‘National Intelligence Estimate’ on 31 August 1961, ‘tend to be more strenu-
ous 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 fis-
sures 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 Offi-
cer (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 per-
manent 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
at the Travellers Club though on one occasion I am refused entry. I had for-
gotten 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 con-
spiracy theorist, but sensible and amusing. It is clear, as well, that he is genu-
inely 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.
152
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 investi-
gations 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-
153
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 intelli-
gence, 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 work-
ing 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 infor-
mation 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
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 Max-
well’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 Dal-
gleish, who quarrelled with Maxwell on occasion. Dalgleish had his headquar-
ters 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 pho-
tographer 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 doc-
umentation 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 high-
profile 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.
216
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 mis-
taken. 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 Assis-
tant 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 him-
self 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 regard-
ing 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
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 lim-
ited to 100–200 kilometres to avoid interference with other airport’s traffic.
This meant, concluded Rösiö, that Meijer must have been listening to a con-
versation 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 function-
ing 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 dis-
tance.’ 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 some-
one who was aviation-minded.’ What probably happened, thinks Southall, is
that Meijer heard a communication between Ndola and Lusaka air traffic con-
trol on one of these shared frequencies.
According to Anders Hellberg’s article in Dagens Nyheter, Lars-Åke Nils-
son, the Cabinet Secretary in the Swedish Foreign Office, was struck by a sim-
ilarity between Meijer’s information and that of Southall. In fact, they were
somewhat different: for whereas Meijer appears to have heard part of a con-
versation 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
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 col-
lecting 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 uniden-
tified aircraft had overflown Ndola airport; it did not attempt to land or estab-
lish 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, Ham-
marskjöld’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 Léopold-
ville] 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 con-
tact 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 Congo-
lese man who had been a clerk with the Katangese government, paying the
156
The use of the figurehead drawing in the SAIMR letterhead suggests three
possibilities: first, that the drawing was known about and utilized by the orga-
nization 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 hypoth-
esis is correct, it would be consistent with the fact that an official SAIMR doc-
ument 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 counter-
intelligence 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 com-
mando, who drew attention to the ship’s restoration in the House of Com-
mons 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 minor-
ity rule against the threat of African nationalism sweeping down from the
north of the continent. He visited African countries on numerous occasions,
220
PRIVATE AND MILITARY
especially South Africa, the Rhodesian Federation, Mozambique and Angola,

producing detailed situation reports on the military resistance of these white-
ruled 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, Rho-
desia, 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 enthu-
siast 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 aero-
planes by 1992)13 and—like SAIMR in the 1980s—took an active interest in
marine diving.
221
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 organiza-
tions—which today are generally referred to as private military companies
(PMCs) or private security companies (PSCs)—tended to have their head-
quarters in Johannesburg and maintained strong links with the UK, Belgium
or the USA through business networks or government intelligence. As Mad-
eleine Drohan has shown in her book, Making a Killing: How and Why Cor-
porations 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 South-
ern Rhodesia.
One of these organizations was the International Diamond Security Orga-
nization (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 intelli-
gence 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 cen-
tre of his adventures, as recounted in this book, lay in Katanga and in the
Copperbelt of Northern Rhodesia; barely veiled references are made to shad-
owy meetings with Bob de Quehen, Welensky’s director of the Federal Intel-
ligence 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 con-
flict 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
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 air-
port, 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 expensive-
looking 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 pass-
port 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 mid-
shipman and the brother of a British Tory MP—who was living in Johannes-
burg. 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 dis-
guises 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
eign Office. Browne, he said, had been approached in South Africa by a cer-
tain 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 infor-
mation branch in 1961, harboured serious suspicions about Huyghe’s activi-
ties 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 car-
ried 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 Bel-
gian sociologist and writer, Ludo De Witte, established that the Prime Min-
ister was killed by Katangese leaders, including Tshombe, but Belgian officers
were present and subsequently destroyed his body; other Belgians were com-
plicit, 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 pathbreak-
ing book, De Moord op Lumumba, which appeared in English translation as
The Assassination of Lumumba in 2001. The book caused a sensation in Bel-
gium 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
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 tran-
sit 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 Com-
mander, 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 pur-
pose—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. Sev-
eral 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 flee-
ing, 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 Opera-
tions of the Katangese Air Force, at an impromptu parade.34
225
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-Davi-
son, 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-Davi-
son to inform him that in the course of an imminent tour of Katanga, Léopol-
dville, the Brazzaville Congo Republic, France and Belgium, Blake hoped to
visit Britain and ‘will try to contact you during the month of August to dis-
cuss 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 opin-
ion 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 con-
venience’; he asked for a reply in plain envelopes.38 Welensky arranged for his
Private Secretary to make contact.39
226
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 Wel-
ensky on clandestine missions to Katanga to gather intelligence. Meanwhile
the Prime Minister kept firm control of the FISB and its director, Bob de Que-
hen, 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 Wel-
ensky, 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 mem-
ber 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 finan-
cial 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 advo-
cacy of a qualified and elitist voting franchise firmly alienated it from the major-
ity of the population. ‘Capricorn’ became a term of abuse for most people.
David Stirling’s other creation, the SAS, flourished rather better in Rhode-
sia than the Capricorn Africa Society. In April 1961, the Rhodesian SAS was
227
reformed as C Squadron 22 SAS and was based at Ndola. When Northern

Rhodesia became independent Zambia, C Squadron moved to Southern Rho-
desia, and when UDI was declared it deployed its traditional special forces role
against the freedom fighters, using tactics—such as enforcing so-called ‘pro-
tected villages’—that had been used by the SAS in Malaya in the 1950s.49 Stir-
ling 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 instrumen-
tal 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 pub-
licly. ‘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
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
229
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.
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 for-
mer French colonies, where French soldiers had experience of African condi-
tions 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 substan-
tial 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 Jadot-
ville. 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 net-
ted 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.
168
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 headquar-
ters 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 mercenar-
ies 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 dif-
ficulty 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 pass-
port 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
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 for-
mer 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 paracom-
mandos 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 encircle-
ment 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 inci-
dents 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
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.
14
Two theories emerged in the 1960s which attributed the crash of the Alber-
tina to a failed hijack. This is not surprising, given that aerial piracy was signif-
icantly 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. Dur-
ing this period it was rare for actual violence to be used and killings were non-
existent; 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 advis-
ers, 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 copper-
mining 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 Rhode-
sia 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
175
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.
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 Secretary-
General was supposed to be meeting Tshombe for peace talks. Beukels was
instructed to divert the plane to Kolwezi, where a group of people represent-
ing 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, includ-
ing 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 psychiatri-
cally disturbed and had dropped in weight from eighty-five to fifty kilos. Appar-
ently 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 informa-
tion. They said that Mr X’s group feared that if Tshombe came to terms with
178
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 Tangan-
yika. 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 inter-
cept 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 conversa-
tions 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 maneu-
ver into a position from which we were behind the DC6 for our purpose. The tower
180
‘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 Kol-
wezi.’ The radio operator reported to the High Command at Kolwezi what had hap-
pened 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 air-
craft. 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 trou-
ble 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 Kemou-
182
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 shoot-
ing-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 Hammar-
skjöld 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.
19
SECRETS AND LIES
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 Sec-
retary-General—to welcome him and praise his support for democratic free-
dom. 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 pugi-
listic 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 Fed-
eral government’s plans for Northern Rhodesia; and against the UN and Ham-
marskjöld. 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 biogra-
pher in admiration in December 1961, ‘this man Welensky is engaged in a val-
iant 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
AERIAL WARFARE
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 intrigu-
ing. What ‘important communication’? What information did the UK gov-
ernment 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 refuel-
ling 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 cov-
erage 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 high-
pitched 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
for cover, this time into a slit trench. Photographers walked round taking pic-
tures 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 pho-
tographer, 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 photogra-
phers 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 Alber-
tina, on 22 September 1961.30
194
16
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 con-
nected to the draft she was completing for the TRC’s final report, on atroci-
ties 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 appar-
ently successful plot to blow up the plane of UN Secretary-General Dag Ham-
marskjöld 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
195
SECRETS AND LIES
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 commit-
ment to NIBMAR (No Independence Before Majority Rule). On 11 November
1965, the white Cabinet signed an illegal proclamation—the Unilateral Dec-
laration 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 dramati-
cally: 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 inter-
ests in central and southern Africa. For all these reasons, the pressures to con-
ceal 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 mate-
rial. ‘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
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 interest-
ing 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 Hammar-
skjöld, 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 Ham-
marskjöld have been handled in a curious way. When Archbishop Tutu
236
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 orga-
nization 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
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 investiga-
tion. 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 suffi-
cient 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 com-
ment at that stage.2
Archbishop Tutu made it clear that the TRC was not in a position to exam-
ine 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 peo-
ple off ’; he suggested that the SAIMR documents may have been misinforma-
tion 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 Sec-
retary-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
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 Mar-
tin Coetzee, the Chief Executive Officer of the TRC, faxed photocopies of
eight of the documents to Ambassador Grimstad on 29 May 2000, apologiz-
ing for their poor quality. The originals (or the original copies) had been sent
back to the National Intelligence Agency—they were already months over-
due when Christelle had seen the file. He explained that ‘the copies in the pos-
session 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 doc-
uments, 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 Afri-
can History Archive (SAHA), an independent organization based at the Uni-
versity of Witwatersrand, which documents and disseminates archive material
about South Africa’s history. He has an uncompromising commitment to trans-
parency 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 Promo-
tion 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 docu-
ments.’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
Department did not know whether the documents had ever come into its pos-
session 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 Pre-
toria on 6 January, accompanied by Heinrich Wieschhoff and Bill Ranallo, his
aeroplane had been diverted from Jan Smuts airport at Johannesburg to a mil-
itary airfield, because of the huge crowds that had gathered to meet him—hun-
dreds 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’ pol-
icy and apartheid as both morally unacceptable and impractical. He told Ver-
woerd, 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 Johannes-
burg: ‘The United Nation’s Secretary-General … asked his driver to stop out-
side 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; accord-
ing to Brian Urquhart, the Secretary-General felt he was speaking to Verwo-
erd across a gulf of three hundred years.15
On 13 April 1961, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 1598, con-
demning the racial policies of South Africa and calling upon its government
199
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 Johan-
nesburg 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 Rho-
desia—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.’
200
‘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 Hammar-
skjöld 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?’ Hammar-
skjöld’s life and his death, his words and his action, argued the seventh Secre-
tary-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 his-
tory. His wisdom and his modesty, his unimpeachable integrity and single-
minded 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 Secretary-
General, 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 inde-
fatigable 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 exem-
plifies 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 Ham-
marskjöld’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 Hammar-
skjöld 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, Appen-
dix 1.13 to the Civil Aviation Report, November 1961, RH, RW, 264/5.
13. Northern News, 19 and 20 September 1961.
245
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 edi-
tor 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 espe-
cially 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 Secu-
rity 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 Minis-
try initiated a further inquiry in 1993 into the crash of the Albertina, he won-
ders if some organization with something to hide forged the alleged 1961
SAIMR documents at that time, in order to draw attention away from an inves-
tigation into what actually happened. For if someone were to take these papers
206
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 (Lon-
don: 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 this-
ibelieve.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 Rho-
desian 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 Lin-
nér and Sverker Åström, UN Secretary-General Hammarskjöld. Reflections and
Personal Experiences (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, 2008), p. 24.
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).
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 Uni-
versity 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 Cente-
nary, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden, The Adventure of Peace. Dag Hammar-
skjöld 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 Sep-
tember 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 Sep-
tember 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.
5. Peter B. Heller, The United Nations Under Dag Hammarskjöld, 1953–1961 (Lan-
ham, 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 Pub-
lic 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.
30. Ian Scott, Tumbled House. The Congo at Independence (London: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1969), p. 122.
Hammarskjöld, p. 23.
32. Sten Soderberg, Hammarskjöld. A Pictorial Biography (London: Thames & Hud-
son, 1962), p. 106.
33. First Progress Report of ONUC, 20 September 1960, Security Council Docu-
ment S/4531.
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.
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.
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
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 pub-
lished 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 govern-
ment 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 Intel-
ligence 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 organisa-
tion, 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 mem-
oir, 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
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 Bro-
ken 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.
25. P. J. H. Petter-Bowyer, Winds of Destruction (2003; rpt. Johannesburg: 30^ South
Publishers, 2005), pp. 75–7.
27. Natal Mercury, 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 Mor-
thor, see Alan James, Britain and the Congo Crisis, 1960-63, pp 101–3.
3. See newsreel clip in www.daghammarskjold.se/video-audio/1959-/.
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 Feder-
ation, 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
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 mem-
oir: the use of a distinctive caret to introduce additional letters in order to cor-
rect 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 con-
versation, 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 mate-
rial 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
pp. [65–68] NOTES
43. The other two foreign advisers were Weber and Clemens. McKeown to Bracken-
bury 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 Estab-
lished 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 Interro-
gation 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; how-
ever, 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 Léopold-
ville, a report sent to the UN Secretary-General stated that OO-RIC was sub-
chartered to the Katanga government from 31 March 1961. (Testimony to Rho-
desian 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 Rhode-
sian 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).
9. Linnér to O’Brien, 17 September 1961, reproduced in Cronholm, Mordet på san-
ningen, 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
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 Max-
well’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 Dal-
gleish, who quarrelled with Maxwell on occasion. Dalgleish had his headquar-
ters 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 pho-
tographer 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 doc-
umentation 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 high-
profile 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.
216
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.
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).
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, Welen-
sky’s 4000 Days, p. 241.
29. Cape Argus, 21 September 1961.
30. Ibid.
32. Alport, The Sudden Assignment, p. 128.
33. Knut Hammarskjöld to Sverker Åström, in Stockholm, 12 October 1961, repro-
duced in Bjørlo, Bushpiloter I FN, p. 181.
34. Alport, The Sudden Assignment, pp. 131–2.
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 Ham-
marskjöld, pp. 34–40.
7. THE WHITE SETTLERS INVESTIGATE

1. References passim to the content of the Civil Aviation report are drawn from Fed-
eration of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Department of Civil Aviation, Report into the
Accident of 1961, chaired by Colonel Maurice Barber, Federal Director of Civil Avi-
ation, 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. Evi-
dence was led by F. G. Cooke, of the Government Solicitor’s Department. Refer-
ences to the content of the report of this inquiry are drawn from Federation of Rho-
desia 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, Feb-
ruary1962 (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 bio-
grafi 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 Hammar-
skjöld 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 Brit-
ish 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 Sec-
retary 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 trans-
lation.
3. Interview with Timothy Kankasa by E. Botta, Lusaka, 16 October 1979, GM.
4. Times of Zambia, 29 July 2005.
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 Superin-
tendent, 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.
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 Publish-
ers, 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.lob-
ster-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
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 organiza-
tions—which today are generally referred to as private military companies
(PMCs) or private security companies (PSCs)—tended to have their head-
quarters in Johannesburg and maintained strong links with the UK, Belgium
or the USA through business networks or government intelligence. As Mad-
eleine Drohan has shown in her book, Making a Killing: How and Why Cor-
porations 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 South-
ern Rhodesia.
One of these organizations was the International Diamond Security Orga-
nization (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 intelli-
gence 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 cen-
tre of his adventures, as recounted in this book, lay in Katanga and in the
Copperbelt of Northern Rhodesia; barely veiled references are made to shad-
owy meetings with Bob de Quehen, Welensky’s director of the Federal Intel-
ligence 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 con-
flict 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
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 air-
port, 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 expensive-
looking 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 pass-
port 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 mid-
shipman and the brother of a British Tory MP—who was living in Johannes-
burg. 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 dis-
guises 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
eign Office. Browne, he said, had been approached in South Africa by a cer-
tain 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 infor-
mation branch in 1961, harboured serious suspicions about Huyghe’s activi-
ties 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 car-
ried 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 Bel-
gian sociologist and writer, Ludo De Witte, established that the Prime Min-
ister was killed by Katangese leaders, including Tshombe, but Belgian officers
were present and subsequently destroyed his body; other Belgians were com-
plicit, 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 pathbreak-
ing book, De Moord op Lumumba, which appeared in English translation as
The Assassination of Lumumba in 2001. The book caused a sensation in Bel-
gium 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
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.
45. Trinquier, Le Temps Perdu, p. 112.
46. Hoskyns, The Congo Since Independence, p. 418.
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.
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 discus-
sion 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. How-
ever, 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.
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, ‘Mer-
cenaries 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.
18. Gavshon, The Last Days of Dag Hammarskjöld, p. 153.
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.
28. Conor Cruise O’Brien, To Katanga and Back, p. 287.
29. Cape Argus, 21 September 1961.
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 Associ-
ation (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.
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. Wis-
ner, 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/Fire-
man_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, Jarr-
olds, 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
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.
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 Expe-
riences, 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
20. A view of the wreckage of Hammarskjöld’s plane. ‘The smell of death was every-
where. Large mopani flies were beginning to settle on the bodies before they were cov-
ered by blankets and put into waiting trucks.’
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
22. Swedish and Rhodesian investigators into the cause of the crash.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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281
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292
INDEX
Addis Ababa: 138, 153–4, 155 Amin, Idi: 210

Adoula, Cyrille: 47, 49–50, 55–7, Anderson, William: 39
82–3, 85, 131, 150 Anglo American (mining company):
Aftenposten, Norwegian newspaper: 5, 32, 62, 133, 215, 217
9 Angola: 33, 134, 177, 196, 212, 215,
African National Congress (ANC), 221
South Africa: 199, 209, 214 Annan, Kofi: 24, 81, 242
African nationalism: 36, 50, 20, 151, Appleton, David: 10
220 Armée Nationale Congolaise (ANC),
Ahier, Roger: 177, 179, 182 Congo, formerly Force Publique: 37
Åhréus, Captain Nils-Eric: 77 Ashe, Anne: 44
Albertina (SE-BDY): 24, 27, 67–71, Assheton, Ralph: 134;
73–7, 87, 92–4, 97, 99–101, 103, Auden, W. H.: 17, 21, 23
105, 107, 109, 111, 114–5, 117, 124, Australia: 123, 13
126–9, 141, 146–7, 149, 153–5,
157–60, 164, 172–3, 175–9, 185, Ball, George W.: 150
187–8, 190–1, 194, 201, 203–6, Baluba: 43, 46–7, 159, 171, 200, 225,
221, 232–6 Balubakat Party: 57
Alexander, Ulick: 135 Bancroft (later Chililabombwe): 60, 62
Algeria: 45, 59, 138, 143, 165–70, 175, Banda, Hastings: 51
205, 235 Banda, P.: 119–20;
Allen, Senior Inspector Paddy: 101–2 Bankolé Jones, Samuel: 105
Alport, Lord (Cuthbert): 3, 52, 61, Barber, Colonel Maurice: 91–2, 99,
63–4, 68, 71–2, 74, 83–8, 91–2, 96, 101, 105, 111–2, 115, 190–1,
106, 111–6, 128, 132, 139, 164, 180, Barrau, Serge: 11, 77, 92–3, 184
184, 189, 192, 227, 233–4, 236–7 Baudouin, King: 30, 224
Amery, Julian: 139, 228 Beamish, Sir Tufton, MP: 135
293
INDEX
Begg, Adrian: 71–2, 78 Buber, Martin: 27

Belgium: xxv, 24, 29–31, 33–4, 39, 44, Brussels: 32, 34, 45, 50, 133, 167, 224,
57, 131, 167–8, 178, 222, 224, 226 239
Bengs, Bengt-Åke: 236 Budrewicz, R: 74
Ben-Gurion, David: 37 Buleni, Dickson: 98–100, 119
Beukels,—(Belgian pilot): 178–9, 180, Bunche, Dr. Ralph: 25, 29–30, 35–7,
182–3, 185 58, 79, 110, 156, 158–9, 192
Bibliotheca Alexandrina: 163 Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Biggs-Davison, John, MP: 135–8, 226 (INR), USA: 146, 148
Bin Ramazani, Kithima: 136–7
Bishoftu, Ethiopia (later Debre Zeyit): Cairo: 82, 170, 227
153 Cambodia: 19
Bizos, Advocate: 209 Cape Town: 86, 131, 195, 224
Bjørlo, Helge: 190 Capricorn Africa Society: 226–27
‘Black Eagle’: see Julian, Hubert Cary, Assistant Superintendent
Fauntleroy Michael: 76, 78, 120
Blake, A. V.: 226 Casablanca: 141, 149
Blandori, Hugo: 107–10 Catchpole, Len: 128
Board of Inquiry into crash of Central African Federation: xxv, 50–1,
SE-BDY: see Rhodesian Federal 82, 92, 100, 113, 122, 131, 150–1,
Department of Civil Aviation, Air 184, 221, 227, 231–2, 234
Accident Investigation relating to Central Intelligence Agency: see CIA
SE-BDY Cha Cha Cha campaign: 117, 119,
Bocheley-Davidson, Egide: 49, 132 122–3, 125, 127, 231
Bomboko, Justin: 55 Chappell, William John: 95, 100
Boothby, Basil: 34, 116 Chemical Corn Exchange: 26
Botta, Ettore: 117–9 Chisanga, Steven: 106, 108–9
Bratt, Dr. Eyvind: 92 Chitepo, Herbert: 227
Brazzaville: 31, 167, 202 Chitupa (identity pass): 122
British Broadcasting Corporation CIA (Central Intelligence Agency):
(BBC): 39, 44, 48 36–8, 45, 49, 143–5, 148–9, 151,
Brettle, Mrs R. E.: 219–20 191, 196–7, 201, 203, 206, 215, 223,
Britain: 7, 19, 24, 34, 44, 57–8, 60, 236–7
82–4, 121, 123, 131–3, 138–9, 141, Clayden, Sir John: 97
167, 168, 197, 206, 220, 226, 228 Cluverius IV, Wat Tyler: 146, 148, 152
British South Africa Company: 32, Coben, Robert B.: 226
184, 222 Cochran, Pat: 228
British South Africa Police (BSAP): Coetzee, Martin: 198
222–3 Cold War: 18, 26, 36–8, 151, 215, 235
Browne, William Richard ‘Dick’: 65, Colt ammunition: 12
222–5, 231 Colvin, Ian: 84–5, 169
294
INDEX
Commonwealth Relations Office Daily Telegraph, British newspaper: 84,

(CRO), UK: 61, 83, 113, 132 169
Communism: 36, 43, 150, 220, 231, Daka, L.: 119–20
241 Dalgleish, Kenneth Hugh: 212, 216
Conakat: see Confederation of Tribal Danielsson, Otto: 91–2
Associations of Katanga Dayal, Rajeshwar: 37, 39, 136
Confederation of Tribal Associations De Beers: 133, 222
of Katanga (Conakat): 32–4 de Gaulle, Charles: 45, 165–7, 169
Congo (Brazzaville): xxv, 98, 167, 202, de Kemoularia, Claude: 177–9, 182–5
226 de Quehen, Basil ‘Bob’ Maurice,: 151,
Congo (Léopoldville): xxv, 3–5, 23, 25, 222, 227–8
27–41, 43, 45, 46–51, 53, 55–57, de Troye,—(visit to Claude de
60–62, 64, 67, 69, 73–4, 82–3, 85, Kemoularia with Grant, 1967):
88–9, 91, 101, 115, 118, 122, 124, 177–9, 182–4
126–7, 131–3, 135–9, 150, 153, de Troyer, Major Jacques: 177
156, 163–4, 167–8, 171, 179, 182, De Witte, Ludo: 224, 238–9
185, 189–92, 194, 200, 203–4, 206, Dien Bien Phu, Battle of: 45, 165
210, 215–6, 218, 222–3, 235–9, 241 Delin, Major Joseph: 101, 182
‘Congo Red’: 196, 200–1, 206, 212, Deloof, Mr, Kipushi Councillor: 157
215, 217 Democratic Republic of Congo
Conservative Party, UK: 65, 123, (DRC): xxv, 118, 127, 235, 237–8
134–5, 137, 139, 220 Denard, Robert ‘Bob’: 167, 215, 228
‘Controlled Flight Into Terrain’ Devlin, Larry: 36–7, 45, 49, 56, 191
(CFIT): 4 Diario de Noticias, Portuguese
Copperbelt: 50–1, 62, 73, 83, 117, newspaper: 24
122–3, 133, 204, 222, 232 Dodd, Senator Thomas: 150–1
Coppersmith Arms Hotel, Ndola: 128, Dolinchek, Martin: 212
226 Douglas-Home, Sir Alec, Earl of
Court of International Justice, The Home: 24, 27, 192, 228
Hague: 19 Dove aircraft: 185–8
Craxford, Flying Officer Jerry: 75, 190 Drohan, Madeleine: 222
Crémer, André: 46–47 Dublin: 40, 43, 89
Critchell, Ray: 204 Duchemin, Jacques: 175–7
Cuba: 36, 151 Dulles, Allen: 36, 151, 196, 200
Cutty Sark: 219–21 Dunnett, Denzil: 49, 60–1, 63, 133,
Cyprus: 135, 141, 143–5, 148–9, 153, 183
234, 236 Durban: 216, 225
Dagens Nyheter, Swedish newspaper: ‘Eagle’: see Julian, Hubert Fauntleroy

153–5 Eccles, B. R. D.: 109–10
Daily Express, British newspaper: 32 Eden, Anthony: 136
295
INDEX
Egé, Captain: 166 Commission of Inquiry into crash of

Egge, Eline: 163–4 SE-BDY
Egge, Major General Bjørn: 5, 9, 43, Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland
45, 87, 163–5, 167–71, 224 (Federal) Department of Civil
Egypt: 19, 136, 138, 146, 163, 228 Aviation, inquiry into crash of
Eisenhower, Dwight: 25, 36, 56, 150 SE-BDY: see Rhodesian Federal
Eivers, Frank: 77, 89 Department of Civil Aviation, Air
Elisabethville, capital of Katanga (later Accident Investigation
Lubumbashi): 32–4, 39, 45–51, 53, Fell, Anthony, MP: 135, 137–8
58, 60–65, 68, 71, 73–4, 87, 111, Fidlin, Flight Lt. J.: 97
115, 123, 128, 132–4, 138, 156, Field, Winston: 52–3
158–9, 164–6, 168–70, 172–3, 184, Finley-Bissett, Stuart: 223
186–7, 192–3, 201, 203, 205, 223, 5-Rivers Club: 226
225–6 Fleming, Ian: 64, 222
Els, R.H.: 10 Follows, Sir Geoffry: 227
Enstrom, Karen L.: 146–7 Force Publique: 31
Erfield, Thérèse: 170–1 Foreign Office, UK: 5, 29, 31, 34,
Ethiopia: 35, 40, 60, 153–5, 172,
36–7, 61, 85, 110, 116, 135, 137–8,
191–4, 203
187, 193, 197, 228
Ethiopian Air Force: see Imperial
Fortemps, Henry: 63, 1844
Ethiopian Air Force
Fouga Magister jet fighter: 46, 60, 69,
Ethiopian jet fighters: 191–2, 194
101, 148, 160, 179, 180, 182, 185,
Ethiopian UN forces serving in the
191–4, 203
Congo: 35, 40, 172
France: 19, 24, 35, 44–5, 57, 165–8,
European Free Trade Association
170, 177, 213, 226
(EFTA): 86
Evans, Wing Commander E.: 91–3, 95 Franks, Peter: 10–14
Expressen, Swedish newspaper: 148–9 Freedom of Information (FOI) Act,
UK: 237
Fabry, Vladimir: 47, 77 Fröhlich, Manuel: 160–1, 183
Faulques, Colonel Roger: 138, 165–73, Frykholm, Dr. A.: 8
176, 223, 228
Fawzi, Mahmoud: 136 Galinos, Ted: 226
Federal Department of Civil Aviation: Garfitt, Mr: 95
3, 76, 91, 97, 111 Gaunt, John: 53
Federal Intelligence Security Bureau Gaylor, Colonel Don: 188–91, 205
(FISB): 125, 151, 206, 222, 227 Gbenye, Christopher: 57
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland: GCHQ: 143
see Central African Federation Ghana: 24, 30, 35, 38, 40, 55
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Ghanaian UN forces serving in the
(Federal) Commission of Inquiry Congo: 35
into crash of SE-BDY: see Rhodesian Ghanaian Times: 82
296
INDEX
Gheysels, Réné: 175–6 Harare (formerly Salisbury): 3, 197,

Gillet, Paul: 134 212
Gilson, André: 158–9 Harriman, Averell: 151
Giono, Jean: 26 Hasan, Prince Moulay: 38
Gizenga, Antoine: 49–50, 55, 57, 132, Hastings, Stephen, MP: 184
150, 237 Heath, Edward, MP: 37, 83
Glasspole, Max: 65, 128, 186, 225 Hedges, James: 223
Godley, ‘Mac’ McMurtie: 56 Hellberg, Anders: 153–6
Gothenburg: 164 Hertzog, Dr. A.: 51
Grant,—(visit to Claude de Kemou- Hillenkoetter, Rear-Admiral Roscoe:
laria with de Troye, 1967): 177–9, 217
183 Hillsdon Smith, J.: 7
Grant, Johan Mawer: 177 Hiram, Dan: 138
Great Britain: see Britain Hjelte, Stig: 11–12, 77
Grimstad, Per Ø.: 198 Hoare, Mike: 34, 203, 210, 212
Guardian, British newspaper: 4, 64, Hollis, Sir Roger: 227
123, 147 Hone, Sir Evelyn: 84, 86
Guinea: 38, 40 Hull University: 221
Gullion, Ed: 56, 151 Huyghe, Carlos, also ‘Carlo’ and
Gurkitz, Sandor: 65, 186 ‘Charles’: 65, 222, 224–5, 231
Hallonquist, Captain Per Erik: 67–70, Imperial Ethiopian Air Force (IEAF):
76–7, 173, 191 153–4
Halton, RAF station: 7 India: 38, 40, 46, 83, 136, 226
Hammarskjöld, Agnes: 19 Indian UN troops serving in the
Hammarskjöld, Åke: 19, 86 Congo: 28, 40, 48, 50, 59, 60, 83
Hammarskjöld, Bo: 19 International Air Transport Associa-
Hammarskjöld, Dag Hjalmar Agne: tion (IATA): 86
xxv, 3–10, 13–15, 17–30, 33, 35, International Diamond Security
37–41, 43, 45, 55–64, 67–8, 72, Organization (IDSO): 222
76–9, 81–9, 96, 98, 103, 105, 108, Interpol: 158–9
110–7, 119, 120–4, 126–9, 131–2, Ireland: 35, 40
134, 136–9, 141, 145–9, 154, Irish UN troops serving in the Congo:
156–61, 163–4, 166, 168, 172–3, 35, 40, 46, 58–60, 83, 85
175–80, 182, 184–7, 189, 191–2, Israel: 19, 29, 37, 138, 146
195–205, 212, 214–7, 221, 228,
231–9, 241–3 Jadotville: 133, 157, 165, 168, 186–7,
Hammarskjöld, Hjalmar: 19 192–3
Hammarskjöld, Knut: 9, 85–8, 128 Jadotville, Battle of (1961): 58–60, 172
Hammarskjöld, Sten: 19 Janssens, General Emile: 31
Hani, Chris: 195, 209–10, 214, 220 Japan: 142
297
INDEX
Johannesburg: 65, 73, 121, 129, 155, Korean War: 19

195–6, 199–200, 202, 206, 210, Kipushi: 62–3, 84, 131, 157, 183–4
215–6, 222–5 Kungliga Biblioteket (Royal Library),
Jordan: 19, 143 Stockholm: 24, 27, 141, 154
Jones, Nurse M.: 96 Kyrenia: 144
Julian, Hubert Fauntleroy, also ‘Eagle’
and ‘Black Eagle’: 201, 203–5 La Bourdonnaie, Captain: 166, 169
Julien, Harold: 3, 10, 55, 72, 76, 96, Lagos: 82
101–2, 105, 108, 119, 187, 232 Lalande, Alice: 77, 87, 89, 120, 184
Junior Carlton Club, London: 137 Lambroschini, Joseph: 168
Lamouline, Lieutenant Colonel
Kalonji, Albert: 36, 137, 170 Robert: 178, 182
Kamina air base: 46, 60, 173, 177, 182, Lansdowne, George, 8th Marquess of:
191–3 57, 60–1, 67–71, 86, 115–6, 131,
Kankasa, Mama Chibesa: 120–127 154, 172, 192, 205
Kankasa, Timothy Jiranda: 94, 98–9, Lasimone, Henri-Maurice: 59, 170–1
109, 117–20, 124, 125, 186 Laurie, James McKenzie: 100, 108
Kanyinda, Cléophas: 156–7 le Bailly, Jacques: 172, 175
Kasavubu, Joseph: 30, 34, 37, 89, 235 Lebanon: 19
Katanga: 32–6, 39, 43, 45–53, 57–8, Leger, Alexis: 23
62, 65, 69, 74, 82, 84–5, 92, 99, 101, Léopold II, King: 30
128, 131–9, 147–51, 157, 160, Léopoldville (later Kinshasa): xxv, 3–5,
164–73, 175–6, 178, 184, 186–7, 20, 23, 25–32, 34–7, 39, 43, 45,
191–2, 200, 202–4, 221–4, 226–8, 47–9, 58, 60–1, 67–9, 71, 73–4,
231–2, 235, 237, 242 76–7, 79, 82–3, 84, 88–9, 92, 101,
Katanga Air Force: 46, 101, 193 105–6, 111, 123, 137, 151, 156, 158,
Katanga Lobby: 134–5, 139, 184, 221, 164, 167, 170–3, 176, 180, 187,
226 189–93, 195, 200–6, 226, 232
Kaunda, Kenneth,: 122 Lie, Trygve,: 18, 22, 24, 198, 241
Kazembe, M. K.:107 Lindberg, John: 23, 149
Kennedy, John F.: 56, 58, 135–6, Lindberg, Sam: 149
150–1, 241 Linnér, Sture: 27–8, 30, 36, 40, 43,
Kenyatta, Jomo: 51 56–8, 68, 77, 79, 84, 93, 156, 163–4,
Khiari, Mahmoud: 47, 56, 84–5, 87 169–70, 173, 241
Khrushchev, Nikita: 38, 82 Linton, Hercules: 219–20
Kibwe, Jean-Baptiste: 47, 49, 62–3 Litton, Lars: 77
Kimba, Evariste: 47, 62–3, 138, 170 Loeb,—(engineer from Brussels):
Kitwe: 62, 83, 99, 112, 126, 133–4, 133–4
138 London: 5, 21, 29, 31, 34, 40, 52, 60,
Kolosoy, Wendo: 67 64, 83, 92, 113–4, 120–1, 125, 129,
Kolwezi: 101, 169–70, 175–6, 132–3, 136, 141, 146, 151–2, 164,
178–82, 186–7, 193 184, 187–8, 192, 211, 228
298
INDEX
‘Lone Ranger’ (pilot known to US Meijer, Tore: 153–6

intelligence community): 145 Meli, Justin: 63
Lowenthal, Dr. Mark: 102, 108, 129, MI6 (British Secret Intelligence
232 Service, ‘SIS’): 56, 61, 132, 135–7,
Lukumba, Rejoice: 120 139, 183–4, 193, 205, 215, 237
Lumumba, Patrice: 30–1, 34–40, MI5 (British Security Service): 151,
45–6, 49, 65, 134, 136, 150, 200–1, 196, 206, 215, 222, 227
206, 215, 224, 237–9 Miller, Bowman: 18
Lusaka: 71, 74, 117, 119–21, 125–6, Mobutu, Joseph Désiré: 28, 37, 39, 49,
150, 155, 223 55, 89, 119, 136, 150, 212, 235, 238
Mockler, Anthony: 205
Machel, Samora: 196, 199 Möllerstedt, Gunnar: 117, 119, 186–7
Machena, Michael: 126–8 Moloney, Ray: 48
Macleod, Iain: 123 Monaco: 177–8
Macmillan, Harold: 18, 51, 57, 83, 85, Monckton, Lord (Walter): 123
91, 93, 103, 131–2, 134–5, 137–9, Morocco: 35, 38, 40, 149
192, 221, 229, 237 Morthor, Operation (1961): 47,
Magain, José: 101 49–50, 52–3, 55, 57–8, 61, 130,
Malan, F.: 217, 220 136, 170, 219, 226
Malawi (see also Nyasaland): xxv, 7, Mossad: 137, 215
234 Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles, MP: 135,
Malawi African Congress: 106 184
Malmö: 89 Moyo, D.: 119–20
Mandela, Nelson: 196 Mozambique: 33, 196, 212, 215, 221
Margo QC, Cecil S.: 107, 118, 199 Mpinganjira, A.J. Lemonson: 16–9
Markings, English translation of Mpolo, Maurice: 39
Vägmärken by Dag Hammarskjöld Msiri, King of Garanganze: 33
(1963): 22–3, 242 Mufulira: 49, 71–2, 74, 109, 117
Marseilles: 177 Muké, Colonel Norbert: 166, 172–3
Martin, A. Campbell: 69–71, 73, 75, Mukuba Lodge, Ndola: 126
99, 112, 115, 156, 189, 233 Munongo, Godefroid: 33, 39, 45–7,
Matlick, Colonel Benjamin: 74, 76, 62, 157, 168–9, 171, 178
187, 190, 204, 232 Murrow, Edward R.: 19
Maxwell, Keith: 210–4, 216–8, 220 Museveni, Yoweri: 210
Mazibisa, Farie: 100 Mussell, Squadron Leader John: 97,
McCarthyism: 18, 141 127, 190
McGrath, Nurse Angela: 96 Mutaka, Charles:: 47
McKeown, Lieutenant-General Sean: Mwanawasa, Levy: 119
40, 57–8, 68, 170, 200–1, 203 Mwanawasa, Maureen: 121–2
McLean, Neil ‘Billy’, MP: 135, 137–8,
228 Nævdal, Dr. Bodil Katarina: 9, 198
299
INDEX
Nasser, Gamal Abdel: 38, 138 Noork, Harald: 67, 77

National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Nordenfalk, Carl: 20
South Africa: 195, 198, 220 Northern News: 6, 77, 83, 98, 107–9
National Security Agency: see NSA Northern Rhodesia: xxv, 3, 6, 43,
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty 49–53, 60, 62, 64, 67, 71, 94, 98,
Organization): 46, 211–20 101, 106, 114, 117, 122–3, 127, 133,
Ndjili airport, Léopoldville: 55, 89, 135, 139, 153, 191, 221–2, 228, 232,
156 235
Ndola: xxv, 3, 5, 9, 25–7, 51–3, 60–5, Northern Rhodesia Police: 6, 9, 10, 11,
67–76, 78–9, 83–8, 93–9, 101–2, 76, 87, 94, 102, 120, 222
105–9, 111–6, 118–9, 121–2, Norway: 35, 163
124–9, 131–2, 134, 141, 149, Norwegian UN troops serving in the
153–7, 160, 164, 168, 173, 176, 178, Congo: 35, 40, 163
180–92, 199, 201, 204–5, 222, NSA (National Security Agency): 139,
225–6, 228, 231–4, 236–7, 242; 141
Memorial Site: 126–7 Ntsebeza, Advocate Dumisa B.: 199
Ndolo landing chart: 101, 191 Nugent, John P.: 160
Nehru, Jawaharlal: 38, 40, 53, 82, 132, Nyasaland: xxv, 7, 50–1, 92, 122–3,
136 135, 234
Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory: Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges: 238
209
Nepal: 105 O’Brien, Conor Cruise: 4, 20, 43,
New York: 20, 22–3, 25–7, 38–9, 40, 45–50, 58–62, 65, 138–9, 147, 156,
56, 58, 65, 79, 81, 82, 86, 89, 105, 165, 168–71, 176, 193–4, 200–1,
111, 151, 156, 158–9, 192, 202, 241 203, 221
New York Times: 81, 147, 194 Observer, British newspaper: 48, 172,
Newsweek: 160 185
New Zealand: 123, 143 Okito, Joseph: 39
Ngoie, Joseph: 158 Omar, Dullah: 197–9, 237
Ngulube, Margaret: 116 ONUC (L’Organisation des Nations
Nice: 177 Unies au Congo): 35–6, 38, 40, 43,
Nicosia: 142–3, 145 45–7, 56–9, 61, 68, 84, 156–8,
Nicosia RAF station: 144 163–4, 167, 169, 172–3, 177, 205
Nigeria: 40, 211 OO-RIC (aircraft of Lord Lansd-
Nigerian UN troops serving in the owne): 68
Congo: 56 Operation Celeste: 195–6, 200–2,
Nilsson, Lars-Åke: 155 216–8, 239
Nkomo, Joshua: 83 Operation Dove: 214
Nkrumah, Kwame: 30 38–9, 85, 151 Operation Morthor (ONUC): see
Nkonjera, Davison: 107 Morthor
Non Directional Beacon (NDB), Operation Rumpunch (ONUC): see
Twapia: 94, 129 Rumpunch
300
INDEX
Oppenheimer, Sir Ernest: 220 Raja, Brigadier K.A.S.,: 47

L’Organisation des Nations Unies au Ramsay, Robin: 206–7, 209
Congo: see ONUC Ranallo, William ‘Bill’: 13–4, 20–22,
Organisation de L’Armée Secrète 25, 55, 60, 77, 199
(OAS): 45, 161, 169 Ranallo ‘Senior’, father of Bill Ranallo:
Oslo: 164 25
Oxford University: 6, 8, 18, 57, 92–3, Remington ammunition: 13
125, 160–1, 204, 237 Rhodes Hotel, Ndola: 71–2
Rhodesia Light Infantry: 52, 72
Pakistan: 24, 40 Rhodesia-Katanga Bureau, also ‘Bureau
Paris: 36, 167–8, 175, 177–9 de Solidarité’: 226
Park, Daphne: 37, 56, 61 Rhodesian Commission of Inquiry into
Pennock, Keith: 72 the crash of SE-BDY (reported
Peover, Mr D. E.: 72 February 1962): 4, 97, 99, 101–3,
Persson, Per: 11–12, 77 105–6, 110, 119–20, 186, 188, 191,
Persson, Sune: 163 199, 232–3, 236
Peterzén, Kjell: 191 Rhodesian Federal Department of
Petter-Bowyer, Peter: 52 Civil Aviation, Air Accident
Phillips, Nurse Phyllis B.: 96 Investigation relating to SE-BDY
Phillips, R.A.: 73 (reported November 1961): 3, 92,
Phiri, Jacob: 126–7 95–6, 99, 103, 112, 204, 232
Pigou, Piers 198, 200 Rhodesian Federation: see Central
Portugal: 24, 33, 82, 177 African Federation
Potgieter, De Wet: 208–9, 211 Rhodesian Selection Trust: 32, 62
Poujelard, Jacques: 156 Riches, Derek: 56, 58, 187, 192–3
Prain, Sir Ronald: 62 Rilke, Rainer Maria: 26
Pratt, P.: 95–6 Ringertz, Dr. N.: 8
Pretoria: 68, 187–8, 190, 198–9, 210, Ritchie, Neil: 61–3, 128, 132–3,183–
217, 225 4, 189, 193, 205, 237
Profumo, John: 134 Roberts, Captain John ‘Congo’: 137
Promotion of Access to Information Rome: 146, 148
Act (PAIA), South Africa: 198 Rosén, Karl Erik: 77, 79
Puren, Jerry: 46, 64–5, 128–9, 164, Rösiö, Bengt: 4–5, 23, 27, 56, 83, 88,
168–71, 186, 212, 222, 225–6, 231 113–5, 141, 149–50, 154–5, 161,
176, 183, 205–6, 235
Quijano, Raul: 105 Ross, H.D.: 7
RRAF (Royal Rhodesian Air Force):
Radio Brazzaville: 98, 157 52–3, 63, 73–6, 84, 86, 96–7, 120,
Radio Katanga, also ‘Radio Free 190, 232
Katanga’: 47, 49, 50 Rumpunch, Operation (1961): 46,
Radio South Africa: 95, 98 164–5, 167, 226
301
pp. [22–28] NOTES
32. Sture Linnér, ‘Dag Hammarskjöld and the Congo crisis, 1960–61,’ in Sture Lin-
nér and Sverker Åström, UN Secretary-General Hammarskjöld. Reflections and
Personal Experiences (Uppsala: Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, 2008), p. 24.
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).
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 Uni-
versity 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 Cente-
nary, Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden, The Adventure of Peace. Dag Hammar-
skjöld 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 Sep-
tember 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.
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 Sep-
tember 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
INDEX
Starck, Captain Lars-Erik: 173 Trinquier, Roger: 165, 166, 168, 173,
Stevens, P.J.: 7, 113–4 175, 177
Stirling, Colonel David: 227–8 Truman, Harry S.: 234
Stockholm: 6, 17, 19–20, 24, 26–27, Truth and Reconciliation Commission
85, 87, 89, 93, 141, 164 (TRC), South Africa: 195–9, 209,
Streulens, Michel: 150 211–2, 215, 220
Suez Canal: 19, 136 Tshombe, Moïse: 32–4, 36, 40, 43–53,
‘Suez Group’: 135 58, 60–65, 67–9, 71, 83–6, 96, 106,
Sutherst, Peter: 13–14 111, 113–6, 123–4, 127–8, 131–2,
Svensson, Arne: 6 134, 136–8, 147, 150–1, 157–8,
Swanepoel, John Benjamin: 158 161, 165–9, 173, 175, 178–9,
Swanepoel,—(claim to have shot Dag 183–4, 191–3, 203–5, 221, 223–6,
Hammarskjöld): 158 228–9, 231–2, 234–5, 242
Sweden: 8, 18–20, 24, 35, 40, 85–6, Tumba, Joseph: 158
105, 127, 146–9, 152, 164, 186, 191, Tutu, Archbishop Desmond: 197, 205,
200, 233, 235, 239 236–7
Swedish UN troops serving in the Twapia township, near Ndola airport:
Congo: 35, 39, 40, 56, 60
75, 94, 98, 117–8, 124, 126–7, 129
Takawira, Leopold: 227

UDI (Unilateral Declaration of
Tanganyika Concessions (Tanks): 32,
Independence of Rhodesia, 1965):
134, 184, 228
139, 228, 235
Tanks: see Tanganyika Concessions
Uganda: 192, 210
Tavernier, Colonel Christian: 204–5
UK: see Britain
Tejler, Peter: 154
UMHK: see Union Minière du Haut
Terreblanche, Christelle: 195–8,
Katanga
209–10, 212
Thailand: 19 Umkhonto we Sizwe, armed wing of
Thant, U: 158 the South African ANC: 209
Thompson, Ewan: 63 Union Minière du Haut Katanga
Thorogood, Leslie: 233–4 (UMHK): 32–4, 36, 49–50, 59,
Timberlake, Clare: 56 62–3, 132–5, 138, 158, 168, 170,
Time Magazine: 165 175, 184, 186, 187, 205, 215
Times of Zambia: 118, 120 UNIP (United National Independence
Tombelaine, Michel: 47–8, 170–1 Party), Zambia: 106, 122
Touré, Ahmed Sékou: 38 United Kingdom (UK): see Britain
Transair: 67, 77, 91, 145, 149, 153, United National Independence Party:
173, 185, 191, 200, 203 see UNIP
Travellers Club, London: 141–2, 152, United Nations (UN, sometimes
190 UNO): 3–5, 17–9, 21–9, 33–41,
TRC: see Truth and Reconciliation 43–44, 46–53, 56–65, 67–8, 70, 74,
Commission 77–9, 81–9, 91, 96, 98, 101, 105–8,
303
INDEX
110–1, 114–5, 119, 121, 124, 128, Van der Straeten, Edgar: 134
131–4, 136–8, 146–7, 150–1, Van Wyk, Marius: 71–4, 94, 96, 101
156–7, 159–60, 163–73, 175–7, Vanhegan, Dr. Robert Ian: 8–9, 14
179, 185–93, 195, 197–200, 203–5, Van Weyenbergh, Maurice: 133
210, 221–6, 228, 231–2, 234–6, Verwoerd, Hendrik: 51, 199–200, 231
238–9, 241–2; see also ONUC Virving, Björn: 93, 97, 153–154, 188,
United Nations Commission of 200
Inquiry into the death of Secretary- Virving, Bo: 91–3, 97–9, 108–9,
General Dag Hammarskjöld and 153–4, 185–8, 225, 233
others in the crash of SE-BDY
(reported in April 1962): 4, 105–11, Wagner, Bob: 215–7, 220
185, 236 Wall, Major Patrick, MP: 135, 220–1
United Nations (UN) General Walus, Janusz: 209, 211–2, 214
Assembly: 23–4, 38, 57, 81, 105, Washington: 19, 58, 143–5, 150, 241
159, 199–200 Waterhouse, Captain Charles: 134–5,
United Nations (UN) Charter: 26, 35, 228–9
41, 200, 232, 241–2 Welensky, Sir Roy: 7–8, 50–3, 82–5,
United Nations (UN) General 88, 91–3, 103, 106, 110, 112–3, 123,
Assembly Resolution 1598, 13 April 125–6, 129, 132, 139, 151, 160–1,
1961: 199–200 169, 184, 200, 221–2, 226–8, 231,
United Nations (UN) General 234
Assembly Resolution 1759 (XVII), Wemmer Pan: 216
26 October 1962: 159 Westrell, Major C.F.: 5–6, 10
United Nations (UN) Security White, Dick: 135
Council: 35, 40, 44, 241 Wieschhoff, Heinrich A.: 25, 77, 199
United Nations (UN) Security Wilford, Michael: 68, 115–6
Council Resolution 161, 21 Wilhelmsson, Nils Göran: 77
February 1961: 131–2, 234 Williams, Dick: 48
United Press International (UPI): 39, Williams, John H. ‘Red’: 68, 71–2, 74,
48, 177, 182 96–7, 103, 111–2, 160, 189–90
United States of America: see USA Williams, George Mennen ‘Soapy’:
United States Air Force (USAF): 74, 150–1, 223
111, 188, 190, 204–5, 232 Williams, Paul, MP: 135, 138
Uppsala: 19, 23, 27, 89 Wilson, Harold, MP: 135
Urquhart, Sir Brian: 17, 21, 45, 79, 81, Winchester ammunition: 13
176, 183, 199, 205–6, 234 Witwatersrand University: 198, 212
USA: 91, 141, 149, 156, 203, 217, 222, World Health Organization (WHO):
234, 237 53
USAF: see United States Air Force Wright, Senior Inspector Trevor: 102
Vägmärken: see Markings ‘X, Mr.’ (representative of European
304
INDEX
political interests in Katanga): Zaire (see also Congo [Léopoldville]

178–80, 182–3 and Democratic Republic of
Congo): xxv, 118–9
Yav, Joseph: 171 Zambia (see also Northern Rhodesia):
Yemen: 138, 179, 228 xxv, 7, 83, 94, 117–22, 125, 221,
Youlou, Abbé Fulbert: 167, 202–3 228, 235, 239
Young, Gavin: 48, 50, 172 Zimbabwe (see also Southern Rhode-
Young, George Kennedy: 135–8 sia): xxv, 7, 235
305

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WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

WHO KILLED HAMMARSKJÖLD?

The Sixteen Dead 1

The Sixteen Dead 1

At my academic home, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the Uni-

I am very grateful to my agent, Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown. I should also

ANC: Armée Nationale Congolaise

LRP: Locally Recruited Person

VHF: Very High Frequency

Section 1 (between pages 102 and 103)

Congolese Prime Minister Cyrille Adoula; on Adoula’s right is Joseph

Section 2 (between pages 228 and 229)

Ndola, where UN Secretary-General Hammarskjöld’s aircraft crashed on the

Between ten and fifteen minutes after midnight on Monday 18 September

At my academic home, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the Uni-

I am very grateful to my agent, Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown. I should also

ANC: Armée Nationale Congolaise

LRP: Locally Recruited Person

VHF: Very High Frequency

a characteristic of his family’s life. An outstanding student, Dag moved seam-

a more literal meaning would be ‘Road Marks’ or ‘Signposts.’ He described this

national leader had become blurred. He held no press conferences—his last

I am starting to understand that it would be a mistake to pigeon-hole Ham-

‘Fear,’ he said, ‘bred fear.’10

Then Katanga, the southern province of the Congo, seceded. On 11 July

its independence, Union Minière gave it an advance of 1,250 million Belgian

Hammarskjöld responded immediately. He had been kept fully informed by

‘A THIRD WORLD WAR’

On the ground in Katanga, the implementation of the 21 February 1961 Res-

One of the results of the Security Council’s Resolution of 21 February 1961

Brussels, at Katanga Delegation headquarters: ‘White-helmeted police guarded

Between ten and fifteen minutes after midnight on Monday 18 September

Federation, comprising Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasa-

My first expert is a consultant pathologist: Dr Robert Ian Vanhegan, FRC-

Unable to explain these areas of pallor in the two affected photographs, Dr

Once Hammarskjöld had inspected the guard of honour, a UN car whisked

A Company had prepared well-fortified trenches with overhead cover; if they

Congo border. O’Brien immediately cabled to UN headquarters in Léopold-

In his memoir, Mercenary Commander, he gives a startling description of

Dick Browne was frequently captured by UN forces, prompting O’Brien to

MIDNIGHT DEATH IN BRITISH AFRICA

Hammarskjöld knew nothing of the diverse groups awaiting him at Ndola as

a more literal meaning would be ‘Road Marks’ or ‘Signposts.’ He described this

national leader had become blurred. He held no press conferences—his last

I am starting to understand that it would be a mistake to pigeon-hole Ham-

THE CONGO, 1960–61

‘Fear,’ he said, ‘bred fear.’10

Then Katanga, the southern province of the Congo, seceded. On 11 July

In central Africa, reactions to Hammarskjöld’s death differed widely. The Afri-

Sture Linnér, the Officer-in-Charge of ONUC, was shocked by the behaviour

A huge guard of honour drew up around the plane, made up of UN troops

THE WHITE SETTLERS INVESTIGATE

On 19 September 1961, the Rhodesian Federal Department of Civil Aviation

One of the results of the Security Council’s Resolution of 21 February 1961

Brussels, at Katanga Delegation headquarters: ‘White-helmeted police guarded

allegedly on a hunting trip.9 Munongo suffered acrimonious attacks in the press

that he had been hired by Munongo to attack UN personnel. O’Brien arranged

Welensky announced the movement of troops to Ndola in the Federal Par-

MISSION FOR PEACE

As Operation Morthor began in the early hours of 13 September 1961, Dag

A Company had prepared well-fortified trenches with overhead cover; if they

MIDNIGHT DEATH IN BRITISH AFRICA

Hammarskjöld knew nothing of the diverse groups awaiting him at Ndola as

At 23.32, Flight Information in Salisbury handed the Albertina over to Ndola.

1. UN Interview with Brian Urquhart by Leon Gordenker, 19 October 1984, UN