From the unexplained to the mundane, come join
us on a journey to the fringe. Hello and welcome
to Journey to the Fringe, where we say what others
won't. Chelsea, are you ready for it? Yeah. I
do. That's what this is that we're doing. It's
a do. You know, like the idle wasting of time,
not moving to the topic or not moving it forward?
That's what this is. Nobody says it, but we're
gonna tell ya. That's all. Now, without further
ado, we are your podcast hosts, Taylor and Chelsea,
here today reliving the past with an oldie but
a goodie that really deserves every record because
sometimes we're not great with the microphones
and audio and all the things that go along with
being a podcaster, but we do make good episodes.
So we had to relive an old one from the past,
so Chelsea? Today, we are going to get back on
our topic of that time that the head of the UN
was assassinated. Oh, yeah, I forgot what when
you're redoing. I don't think you actually remember
most of this episode. It was kind of a weird
outside of our normal like scope episode. It
was. There's also apparently I did do some free
hand while we were doing it. So I had to go look
up a few things while I was getting the script
ready. But this is a fun episode. I think it
helps us establish. There's so many conspiracy
theories about the UN. what it's trying to push
on everybody that I think it's important to actually
look at what has happened to the UN and how they
don't actually have as much power as people think.
Specifically how powers have actually pushed
them around in the past quite a lot. Now that
you say that I'm not sure exactly what they do.
I don't really hear from them ever. They pretend
to bring unity. You hear about it a lot with
regards to Israel and its treatment of Gaza and
Palestinians. Basically they always have a vote.
The entire world's on one side and the US and
maybe one or two of its allies in Israel are
on the other and they just veto everything. Yeah.
Fairly ineffective. They do have a few arms that
do well. UNESCO. I know them. They do cultural
things. Children's Emergency Fund, UNICEF, does
some good work. Oh yeah, I know them too. They
have quite a few different arms that actually
do quite a bit of good things, but overall it
was meant to be world unity and give direction
and it really hasn't been able to do that in
a long time. time and hey maybe through learning
about its history we can learn about what it
was meant to be and how it's falling short. Let's
learn about it, it being your episode. Well sure
I guess that's one way to put it. Now, you always
have to start an episode where you're talking
about the UN. You gotta start it before the UN
was a thing, because the UN's not a thing until
after two fairly significant whores, and it's
not the first attempt at a UN -like thing. Now,
the first one that really came about, Chelsea,
do you know what it is? The first UN thing? Yeah,
prior to it. No. Woodrow Wilson. It's called
a paper tiger. Okay. Well, it's the League of
Nations. Okay. Oh, right, yeah, I knew this from
the first episode. And this came after World
War I. It was born out of the destruction and
disillusionment arising from World War I, and
it was the most ambitious attempt that had ever
been made to construct a peaceful global order.
It was rooted in a comprehensive liberal critique
of the pre -war international system, which was
widely believed to have been the cause of the
carnage of World War I. Which was really, yeah.
The pre -war international system was a bunch
of brothers with Habsburg chins and hemophilia
that turned their spat into millions and millions
of people dying in trenches and of disease. So
it makes a lot of sense to think that that's
the issue. Yeah. Now the idea of the League was
to eliminate four flaws of the old European state.
In place of monarchical family spats, a world
of independent nation -states was emerging and
should, free of outside interference. The secret
diplomacy of the old order would be replaced
by the open discussion and resolution of disputes.
The military alliance blocs would be replaced
by a system of collective guarantees of security.
An agreed disarmament would prevent the recurrence
of the kind of arms races that had racked up
international tensions in the pre -war decade.
There was a previous Congress system in which
the European great powers held occasional summit
meetings to discuss issues they found urgent.
The surviving victorious great powers at the
end of the Great War, Britain and France, would
have preferred to go no further than regularizing
the old Congress system. But Woodrow Wilson had
different ideas, the president of the US at the
time. He pushed forward the creation of a more
comprehensive global organization, which would
include all independent states and in which even
the smallest state would have a voice. He would
really be pushing for that too because they're
not part of the old world hierarchy at that time,
having been across the pond and not really on
anybody's mind outside of the revolution prior
to that. Unfortunately, the way Wilson was thinking
about the way that self -determination will work
in the real world and about getting his idea
for a community of power off the ground, it remained
vague. Partly this was to avoid alarming US isolation
But in any case... When the League Covenant was
agreed at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919,
the US Senate refused to ratify it. How the League
would have worked with American anticipation
remains one of the great what -ifs of modern
history. As it was, the direction of the system
was left in the hands of states, primarily Britain
and France, who wanted that other system, whose
altruism was questionable and whose economic
resources had been crippled by the war. Yet,
the League of Nations did work surprisingly well
for about a decade, which, you know, if you raise
a child to ten year - By December of 1920, 48
states had signed the League Covenant pledging
to work together to eliminate aggression between
the countries. A series of disputes between Germany
and Poland over Upper Silesia, between Italy
and Greece, and between Greece and Bulgaria were
resolved under its auspices. These were the kinds
of conflicts that triggered World War I, so good
for them. Yeah, so they did do some good things.
I was just wondering, what did they do? They
did that. Yeah, they did that, but not major
powers, just like smaller powers in the world
at that time, and Europe still. The proliferation
of League activity, however, carried risks. As
one of its founders, Lloyd George, put it, quote,
it had weak links spreading everywhere, no grip
anywhere, end quote. Grip ultimately meant the
capacity to use force. When the crucial concept
of collective security was put to the acid test
in the 1930s, it dissolved. Once big power started
to challenge the status quo, as Japan did in
Manchuria, the League found it practically impossible
to reach a clear verdict on who was guilty of
aggression. Which, if you remember that story,
from what episode was that in where we covered
the Manchuria bombings? Japan. You can't remember,
but we did. Right, right, the history of Japan.
Yeah. I forgot we did a three -part series on
that. We did. That was fun. Japan's pretty horrible.
Or, still more disastrously, in the case of Italian
pressure on Abyssinia, the guilt was clear enough
but the key powers Britain and France were unwilling
to antagonize the guilty party because of their
wider strategic fears. Also maybe a little bit
of racism in there because Abyssinia is an African
country. A failed attempt to impose an oil embargo
on Italy demonstrated that any credible system
of economic sanctions was far away. and between
the humiliation of seeing one of its members,
Austria, taken over by Germany in 1938 without
even a formal protest, and the absurdity of expelling
the USSR after the outbreak of World War II in
1939, an event that neither the USSR nor the
League were involved in. After this, the League
pretty much ceases while World War II happens.
Oh, okay. Now, World War II happens. People believe
it's probably a good idea to have some sort of
thing like the League of Nations around once
World War II ends. And in 1945, many nations
are in ruins and the world wanted peace. Representatives
of 50 countries gathered at the United Nations
Conference on International Organization in San
Francisco. On April 25, 1945, for two months,
they proceeded to draft and then sign the UN
Charter, which created a new international organization,
United Nations Witches. was hoped would prevent
another world war like the one they had just
lived through. And hey, to the UN's credit, there
hasn't been another world war since. I was just
gonna say, have they been successful? Yes. I
think so. For the most part. Although there were
a lot of close calls like the Korean War in the
1950s. Yeah. Four months after the San Francisco
Conference ended, on October 24th, 1945, the
United Nations officially began, when it came
into existence after its charter had been ratified
by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United
Kingdom, and the United States, the five major
powers of the UN. As of April 20th, 1946, the
League of Nations ceased to exist having handed
over all of its assets to the UN and having granted
the new UN Secretary full control of its libraries
and archives. And here's just a brief kind of
explanation of the UN from the UN. The structure
of the United Nations was to give a much stronger
position to the traditional great powers through
the UN Security Council. The most significant
thing about its creation perhaps is that this
time the USA did not back away. A significant
number of the old League's aims and methods were
transmitted into the UN in 1945. Among these
were not only such low -key but effective institutions
as the International Court and the International
Labour Organization, but also the working assumption
of the Secretary and some key operations including
those that would soon come to be called peacekeeping
operations. The UN may have almost stumbled sideways
into its peacekeeping role, but the motive and
sustaining force in the process was the survival
and the strengthening of the expectations of
international involvement in the preservation
of global security. Gradually this came to include
the defense of human rights as well as the resolution
of territorial conflict. The UN's first attempt
to resolve a serious conflict in Palestine in
47 -48 was unsuccessful, even disastrous. It
failed to implement its own partition plan and
its special mediator was assassinated. Other
UN organizations had a shorter but more spectacular
life, notably the operation in Congo. We're going
to talk about that, which ends up being a big
part of this episode, from 1960 -64, which prefigured
the alarming future for to states that were dissolving
into civil war. In the Congo, the UN found itself
using military force against Katangan rebels
to preserve the unity of the state of Congo,
a departure from the principle of strict neutrality
which has usually been thought vital to the success
of its peacekeeping missions. Dealing with such
internal conflict was a far more ambitious and
demanding task than the traditional role of assisting
consenting states to observe ceasefires. In effect,
it showed the UN might need to take governmental
responsibilities in some situations. Now, The
UN, as you may have guessed, is still around.
It has 193 member states. Its purpose is to maintain
international peace and security, to promote
human rights, and to provide a forum for discussion
of global issues. United Nations Systems of Organization
is comprised of main organ specialized agencies,
programs and funds, research and training institutes,
and a variety of affiliated and related bodies.
The main organs are the General Assembly, the
Security Council, the Economic and Social Council,
the Trusteeship Council, the International Court
of Justice, and the UN Secretariat. The Charter
of the UN defines the tasks and functions of
each organ. The Secretary General is the Chief
Administrative Officer of the UN and is elected
by the General Assembly. The organization is
financed by assessed and voluntary contributions
from its member states. Just to kind of give
you an idea of how it functions today. Does that
give you a bit of an overview, Chelsea, I guess
of the whole situation with global attempts to
work together? I think so, yeah. I think I have
a general idea of it and their goals. Okay good,
because now we're going to focus more on the
man at hand that we're going to be talking about,
Dag Hammarskjöld. Now the development towards
taking responsibility in countries at risk of
disintegration was due to a dramatic increase
in the prestige and initiative of the U .S. Secretary
General. This was particularly true at the time
when the position was held by the charismatic
Dag Hammarskjöld. Mr. Hammarskjöld was a Swedish
economist and diplomat who served as the second
Secretary General of the United Nations. As of
2023, he remains the youngest person to have
ever held the post, having been only 47 when
he was appointed. He was the son of Hjalmar Hammerskjöld,
who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1914
to 1917. Hammerskjöld was and remains well regarded
internationally as a capable diplomat and administrator,
and his efforts to resolve various global crises
led to him being the only posthumous recipient
of the Nobel Peace Prize. He is considered to
be one of the two best UN Secretaries General.
and his appointment has been hailed as one of
the most notable successes of the organization.
US President JFK called Hammerskjöld the greatest
statesman of our century. Ow. Yeah, he's got
fairly good credentials behind him. He gets appointed
to this role in 1953. Immediately following the
assumption of the Secretariat, Hammerskjold attempted
to establish good rapport with his staff. He
made a point of visiting every UN department
to shake hands with as many workers as possible,
eating in the cafeteria as often as possible,
and relinquishing the Secretary General's private
elevator for general use. Oh, what a good guy.
Apparently kind of liked to be around people
and not just held above them, so kind of what
you expect from a leader, I hope? I've never
even heard of a separate elevator for outside
of the regular folks. He began his term by establishing
his own secretariat of 4 ,000 administrators
and setting up regulations that defined their
responsibilities. He was also actively engaged
in small projects relating to the UN, the working
environment. For example, he spearheaded the
building of a meditation room at the UN headquarters
where people can withdraw into themselves in
silence regardless of their faith, creed, or
religion. Keep in mind, again, this is the 50s,
so fairly ahead of his time. During his term,
Hammerskjöld tried to improve relations between
Israel and the Arab states. Other highlights
included in 1955 a visit to China to negotiate
the release of 11 captured U .S. pilots who had
been serving in the Korean War, the 1956 establishment
of the United Nations Emergency Force, and its
intervention in the 1956 Suez Crisis, which I
didn't look into, I just think it's easy enough
to put in there. In 60, the newly independent
Congo asked for UN aid in defusing the Congo
Crisis. Hamasco made four trips to the Congo,
but his efforts towards the decolonization of
Africa were considered insufficient by the Soviet
Union. We'll get back to that in a bit here.
I'll take your word. In September of 1960, the
Soviet government announced his decision to send
a UN emergency force to keep the peace. They
demanded his resignation and the replacement
of the Office of Secretary General by a three
-man directorate with a built -in veto, the Troika,
they called it. The objective was citing the
memoirs of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to,
quote, equally represent interests of three groups
of countries, capitalist, socialist, and recently
independent. So they didn't like the idea of
just one person being in charge of it here in
just this one situation in the in the UN in general.
They didn't like the idea of one person being
in charge of it because they generally would
have one group's interest above all. So there
should be one who's looking out for all interests.
I get it. And then is this because of him going
to the Congo by himself? This is happening at
the same time. It's kind of something that just
springs from it. And the Soviet Union in this
situation is pro -decolonization. There could
be several reasons for it. One of them is that
the colonization of Africa was inherently exploitive
for capitalist purposes. People might just say
they were butthurt that they missed out on colonizing.
In any event, they are ethically on the correct
side, whether or not it's for ethical reasons.
So you might ask yourself, what is the Congo
Crisis? Yeah, I was also thinking that. I should
have said it out loud, but can you please tell
us now, please? The Congo was one of the parts
of Africa that was colonized. It was colonized
by Belgium. Particularly, it was a colony held
by King Leopold II. If you want extensive history
on what happened there, go listen to Behind the
Bastards. part series on Leopold II and his exploitation
of Congo. If not, here's the absolute comments
as I can give them to you. Leopold II wanted
to exploit the Congo for its natural resources
as much as possible, particularly what was there
was rubber, and he knew that he had a monopoly
on it, but he wouldn't for long, so he had to
get it out of there as fast as possible. Congolese
people were forced to meet impossible rubber
quotas under the threat of violence leading to
widespread suffering. These threats of violence
were If you don't meet your rubber quota, we
are going to cut your kid's hand off. If you
do it again, we're going to cut their other hand
off. If you do it again, we're going to kill
them. Oh no, I remember this story. Yeah. They
established a private army that used extreme
violence, including mutilation and executions,
including the cutting off of hands, ears, and
feet. These private armies were given a set number
of bullets. Basically, they're given each time
they shot a bullet. It was a part of the body
that had to show that they used it for a good
purpose. So if they used these bullets for, say,
hunting in the jungle, they would go butcher
somebody with a machete to show that they used
the bullet on that so they could get more bullets.
Like, it is super fucked up. Yeah, no kidding.
This brutal exploitation combined with famine,
disease, and forced displacement led to a catastrophic
decline in the Congolese population over Leopold's
reign. Some estimates suggest that up to 10 million
Congolese people died during Leopold's rule.
That was between the 1890s and 1908. So 10 million
people in the middle of Africa died because of
what happened there with the colonization. But
nobody knows the exact numbers. They are hotly
debated. Traditional societies and cultures were
dismantled, and local populations were subjected
to forced assimilation and exploitation. Congolese
people were treated as property with no rights
or freedoms. Women and children were particularly
vulnerable to abuse, including sexual violence.
Reports of these atrocities by activists like
Edmund Dean Morrill and Roger Casement led to
international condemnation. And in 1908, Leopold
was forced to cede the control of Congo to the
Belgian state, which was not perfect, but it's
at least better than what he was doing. 1908
to 1960, Belgium's ruling it, Congo wants to
be its own independent state. That's this yearning
from post -World War II around the world that
people have a right to self -determination, which
Congo finally gets in June of 1960. However,
this new country, the country of Congo... is
immediately descended into a political chaos
which is known as the Congo Crisis. On July 11th
of 1960, less than two weeks after the country
formally gained independence, a politician named
Moïse Tishombe declared that the southernmost
province of the Congo was an independent nation
known as the state of Katanga. Katanga is the
copper belt and a very lucrative mining operation
was located there and it was the wealthiest province
of the Congo. The Belgians, French and British
wanted influence in this wealthy region and they
supported Katanga's movement in practice, if
not in name, because they couldn't be attached
to it because Europe technically was hands -off
at this time. Now despite UN regulations forbidding
countries from directly supporting the secessionists
in Congo, members of the European Armed Forces
became hired mercenaries in Katanga's army. This
is in direct conflict with Patrice Lumumba, who
was the Prime Minister of Congo at the time.
He appealed to the UN for forces to end the secessionist
movement of Tishange. The UN initially refuses
this, considering the rebellion an internal issue.
Patrice Lumumba had managed to acquire Soviet
weapons for the Congolese army before he was
deposed as Prime Minister by Mobutu Sese Seko
in November of 1960 and killed in early 1961.
This led the UN to pass Resolution 161 which
authorized the UN force to take quote all appropriate
measures and quote to prevent civil war in the
Congo. Essentially they authorized the UN to
take offensive measures against the Katongan
state. The conflict came to a close in January
of 1963 after the UN and US forces over during
this time the UN sent nearly 20 ,000 strong peacekeeping
forces to restore order in the Congo Kinshasa
region. Hammerskjöld's refusal to place peacekeepers
in the service of Lumumba's constitutionally
elected government provoked a strong reaction
of disapproval from the Soviets. In February
of 1961, the UN authorized the peacekeeping forces
to use military force to prevent the civil war.
In the Blue Helmets' attack on Katanga caused
Tashambe to flee to Zambia, Hammerskjöld's erratic
attitude in not providing support to Lumumba's
government, which had been elected by popular
vote, drew severe criticism among non -aligned
countries and communist and socialist countries
and in the end his actions were supported only
by the United Nations and strangely enough Belgium.
This is going on this ends up getting dealt with
and the Congo of course famously very prosperous
after this all took place. It's one of the most
prosperous nations on earth. I may be mixing
it up with the African nation from the Marvel
comics though. That's over my head unfortunately.
Okay. I don't know what that means. But while
this is all going on, September 18th, 1961, Hammerskjöld
was en route to negotiate a ceasefire between
the United Nations Operation the Congo Forces
and Katongi's troops under Moise Tashambe. Okay,
hold on. I have a question. I thought that other
countries didn't like him going in on his own.
They wanted other people to be represented. Oh,
do you mean the Soviets? Yeah. They never quite
liked how the UN was set up. Again, they said
that there should be three people that headed
up called the Troika, which is a group that represents
the capitalists, a group that represents the
socialists and the group that represents the
unaligned. That doesn't happen. It never happens
in the UN. So this guy's still here. So he's
still ahead of us. Yeah, nothing changes, it
never does. On December 18th, 1961, Amherst Guild
was en route to negotiate a ceasefire between
the U .N. Operation and the Congo forces and
Katongi's troops under Moise Deshambé. His Douglas
D6 airliner, SABDY, crashed near Nidola, northern
Rhodesia, which is now Zambia. Hammerskjöld perished
as a result of this crash, as did all the 15
other passengers. Hammerskjöld's death set off
a succession crisis at the UN, and as there was
no line of succession and the Security Council
had to vote on its successor. A 1962 Rhodesian
inquiry concluded that pilot error was to blame.
While... A later UN investigation could not determine
the cause of the crash. A CIA report claimed
the KGB was responsible. So as is going on, nobody
knows what happened to the plane. There's gonna
be a lot of accusations thrown out there. The
day after the crash, former US president Harry
Truman commented that Hammerskjöld quote was
on the point of getting something done when they
killed him. Notice that I said when they killed
him. In 1998, documents surfaced suggesting CIA,
MI6, and or Belgian mining interests involvement
via a South African paramilitary organization.
The information was contained in a file from
the South African National Intelligence Agency
turned to the South African Truth and Reconciliation
Commission in relation to the 1993 assassination
of Chris Hany, leader of the South African Communist
Party. These documents included an alleged plot
to remove Hammerskjöld and contained a supposed
statement from CIA Director Alan Dulles that,
quote, Dague is becoming troublesome and should
be removed, end quote. Hammerskjöld's mission
to end war over the mineral rich Katongi secession
from the newly formed Republic of the Condo was
contrary to the interests of those organizations.
However, these documents were copies rather than
originals, precluding substantiation of authenticity
through ink and paper testing. So no way to tell
if they're actually real. But what is that? four
accusations already we've got pilot error we've
got potentially KGB and then we got CIA MI6 and
Belgian mining interests that all could potentially
have brought this plane down plus this South
African paramilitary organization which have
the papers that may or may not be real it just
seems like he's a highly killable guy at this
point like Nobody quite likes what was going
on there, and everybody had their own reasons
for not liking Hammerskjöld's involvement. Yeah.
Whether you say it's the USSR saying they don't
like the idea of Hammerskjöld, or you say it's
the European special interests who want their
mining rights, or whether you say it's South
Africans who just don't like the idea of Congo
being an independent state like that. Yeah. But
Chelsea, this keeps going and we keep getting
newer and newer information out of this. So in
2014, a newly declassified document revealed
that the American ambassador to the Congo sent
a cable to Washington, D .C. warning that the
plane had been shot down by Belgian military
pilot Jan van Rizegum, commander of the small
Contonghen Air Force. Van Rizegum died in 2007.
Hold up, what's his name? Jan van Rizegum. On
March 16, 2015, UN Secretary -General Ban Ki
-moon appointed members to an independent panel
of experts to examine new information related
to Hammerskills death. The three -member panel
was led by Mohammed Shande Othman, the Chief
Justice of Tanzania, and included Karen McCauley,
Australia's representative to the International
Civil Aviation Organization, and Henrik Larsen,
a ballistic expert from the Danish National Police.
The panel's 99 -page report was released in July
of 2015 and it assigned moderate value to nine
new eyewitness accounts and transcripts of radio
transmissions. Those accounts suggested that
Hammersfield's plane was already on fire as it
landed, and that other jet aircraft and intelligence
agents were nearby. In 2016, the original document
from the 1998 South African investigation surfaced,
and those familiar with the investigation cautioned
that even if authentic, the documents could have
been initially authored as part of a disinformation
campaign. Which just adds so many wrinkles to
what the hell that means. What year did he die?
What year did the plane fall? 61. It was I believe
October of 61. Oh, and this is pretty recent
in comparison to 61. Yeah, 50 years later. 55
years later. In 2019, the documentary film Cold
Case Hammerskjöld by Danish filmmaker Mads Brugge
claimed that Jan van Rysighem had told a friend
that he shot down Hammerskjöld's aircraft. This
went against the official stance maintained by
van Rysighem's family that he was not involved
in the death of Hammerskjöld. According to an
interview with van Rysighem's wife, He was in
Rhodesia negotiating the purchase of a plane
for the Katongan Air Force, with logbooks providing,
quote, proof that he was not flying for the Katongans
at that time, end quote. The documentary crew
interviewed multiple colleagues of von Riesigam
for the film, all of whom supported their theory.
In an interview with Swedish historian Leif Hellström,
van Riesigam claimed that he was not in southern
Africa at the time the crash happened and dismissed
the idea of this being potentially involved as
fairy stories. I guess that's what they call
them. in Belgium. Previously unpublished documents
continue to emerge from the UN or National Archives,
one found in France amidst the Franz Foucault,
the National Archives and Pierre Fitt. In November
of 2021 is a death warrant for Hammerskjöld,
signed by the infamous OAS, the secret organization
that was built in the French army at the time
of Algeria's War of Independence. Super, super
racist group. The document reads, quote, it is
high time to put an end to his harmful intrusion
This sentence common to justice and fairness
to be carried out as soon as possible." The source
was revealed by French journalist Morin Picard,
according to whom the links between the white
mercenaries in Katanga and OAS are overt. As
years keep coming, more people get implicated
as to who wanted him dead. My name isn't in this,
is it? I don't know. I wasn't alive. Just give
it a few more years. I wasn't alive. There's
a fairly good article on foreignpolicy .com just
about this. It's called Digg Hammerskjöld's plane
crash. What really happened to the UN chief that
we're going to read an excerpt from. This is
from February 15th, 2022, and it is written by.
Column Lynch, which, I don't know, that sounds
like a fake name. It really does. Investigators
fear they are running out of time to get to the
bottom of what happened. Key witnesses from the
time are dying off, and the UN inquiry led by
former Tanzanian Chief Justice Mohamed Chande
Othman is set to conclude in September without
having established conclusively the circumstances
of how the plane crashed. Othman has been investigating
the case on and off for the UN since March of
2015. Over the years, Othman has amassed a significant
amount of evidence, including the testimony of
African eyewitnesses, suggesting foul play was
largely ignored by early investigations in the
1960s. That goes against claims by British colonial
authorities in northern Rhodesia at the time
that Hammerskjöld's death was an accident. Othman
has explored a theory that a mysterious aircraft
may have either fired on Hammerskjöld's plane
or harassed the pilot, causing it to crash, or
even that the plane may have been sabotaged by
South African mercenaries, allegedly with the
aid of the CIA and other Western intelligence
agencies. The CIA previously denied involvement
in the alleged operation Celeste. Bothman said
in his two previous reports, issued in 2017 and
2019, that the burden of proof was on member
states to demonstrate that they have conducted
a thorough review of their records and archives,
particularly from their intelligence agencies.
Quote, the continued non -disclosure of potentially
relevant new information in the intelligence
security and defense archives of member states
constitutes the biggest barrier to our understanding
I mean, they're putting the onus on countries
to investigate their own... Not investigate themselves,
turn over any documents they have. Yeah. And
they have documents, we know it. They keep accidentally
coming out. Now, let's get through this. Zambia,
and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have
appointed high -ranking figures including Sidney
Sikaramia, a former Zimbabwean defense minister,
to oversee the search for documents and provide
full access to their archives. Belgium. France
and Sweden have also granted extensive access
to their security files, but the US and Britain
have been less forthcoming, appointing relatively
low -level officials to manage the search for
relevant evidence and releasing the occasional
confirmation of evidence brought to them by the
UN. So basically, if the UN uncovers something,
they'll be like, oh yeah, that checks up with
something we found. But that's all they turn
over. The air tragedy unfolded against the background
of a bloody civil war that followed Congo's independence
from Belgium. The war pitted Congolese nationalists
against a secessionist rebellion in the mineral
-rich state of Katanga, which had the backing
of Belgian Western mining companies, European
mercenaries, and the CIA. Hammerskjöld was en
route to Ndola and northern Rhodesia to negotiate
a ceasefire with secessionist leader Moez Tashambe.
The United Nations sent peacekeepers into Congo,
where they ultimately found themselves at war
with Katanga. separatists and European mercenaries
who were backed by Western mining interests.
That's fun, isn't it? I mean, that's the definition
of fun. Yeah. A Rhodesian commission of inquiry
found that the pilot had miscalculated the height
of the tree line and plowed into the forest canopy.
A subsequent UA inquiry could not establish the
cause of the crash, leaving open the possibility
that Hammerskjöld could have died either as a
result of an accident or foul play. Eyewitnesses
in the area recall seeing a small plane approach
the Albertina before there was a bright flash
in the sky, then watching the flaming aircraft
plunge into the forest, instantly killing everyone
on board except the delegation's acting chief
security officer, Harold Julian, who died from
his injuries nearly a week later. Before his
death, Julian, a former U .S. Marine, quote,
suggested a threat or attack as the plane approached
Nidola, possibly involving a sudden explosion,
end quote, according to Othman's reports. Quote,
this evidence was augmented in 2018 -19 by information
from Zimbabwe that showed that Northern Rhodesian
authorities had tried to those statements of
Julian from being made public, end quote, Othman's
report found in 2019. It's not suspicious. Othman
has cited documents indicating that British officials
had intervened behind closed doors to persuade
the UN to alter the conclusion of the report
to rule sabotage as an external attack. In 1992,
two of Hammerskjöld's top advisors, Conor Cruz
O 'Brien and George Ivan Smith, wrote in The
Guardian that they had evidence that their boss's
plane had been shot down by accident by mercenaries
in the employ of Belgian, American, and British
mining interests, which feared Hammerskjöld's
peacemaking would jeopardize their business interests.
Which again just a whole other different option
like why is that even an option now that like
okay they might have done it but it was by accident.
Goran Bjorkdahl, a Swedish national whose father
worked in the region, began researching the UN
chief's death and conducting interviews with
local charcoal makers who had witnessed Albertina's
final descent. Rhodesian and UN investigators
at the time largely dismissed the testimony of
black African eyewitnesses. Of course they would.
The case received a boost when Susan Williams,
a British scholar who grew up in Zambia, revisited
the crime. unearthing previously unseen documents
from the archived papers of Lord Cuthbert Alport,
who was the British High Commissioner in Rhodesia
in 1961, who was at the Ndola airport on the
night of the crash, including a secret report
by Neil Ritchie, an MI6 agent who organized a
planned meeting between Hammerskjöld and Deshambé.
Williams' 2011 book, Who Killed Hammerskjöld,
the UN, the Cold War, and the White Supremacy
in Africa, helped spur the establishment a year
later of the Hammerskjöld Commission, a voluntary
body of international jurists and lawyers. chaired
by a British judge, Stephen Sedley. Williams
has since fed documents to the UN investigators.
Quote, the response of the US and the UK to Judge
Othman have been appalling and arrogant, end
quote Williams told Foreign Policy in an email.
Quote, but they are entirely consistent with
the behavior of those states at the time of the
crash. When Britain was the colonial and racist
ruler of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, and the
US was interfering in. the process of decolonization
of Africa. Both the UK and the United States
stated that all relevant information had already
been made available, but this was not true in
either case." The Hammerskill Commission concluded
in its final 2013 report that there is persuasive
evidence that the aircraft was subjected to some
form of attack or threat as it circled to land
in Ndola. It is highly likely that the entirety
of the local and regional Ndola radio traffic
on the night of the 17th and 18th of September
of 1961 was tracked and recorded by the NSA and
possibly also by the CIA." These findings prompted
the UN General Assembly in 2015 to adopt a resolution
calling on then UN Secretary General Ban Ki -moon
to create a panel of experts to examine the case
and determine whether there was enough evidence
to merit further investigation. Bann appointed
Othman, who is expected to conclude his report
in September. At the time of Hammersgold's death,
US and Britain had extensive intelligence assets
in the region including CIA agents and NSA surveillance
capabilities. But much of what the UN has learned?
about U .S. activities in the region has come
from independent researchers, private archives,
and other governments. Othman has asked the U
.S. to provide access to intercepts and other
evidence of communications from Hammerskills
Plane or other U .S. aircrafts in the area at
the time of the crash. On the night of the crash,
there were at least three U .S. planes, including
U .S. Army and Navy attachés aircraft, equipped
with state -of -the -art surveillance equipment
at the airport in Nidola. One U .S. intelligence
official, Charles Southall, recalled in interviews
having overheard intercepts of a known European
mercenary pilot nicknamed the Lone Ranger shooting
down Hammerskjöld's plane. The U .S. Ambassador
to Congo, Edmund A. Gullian, sent a report to
Washington on the day that Hammerskjöld was killed
stating the plane, quote, may have been shot
down, end quote. Quote, the historical record
strongly suggests that governments, including
the U .S., which had a presence in and around
the Congo region at the time, may hold such evidence,
end quote, Othman wrote in an annex to his report
in 2019. But the United Nations has provided
limited confirmation for years. Washington denied
that Paul Abram, a former U .S. Air Force security
service officer, also overheard transmissions
of an attack the night of the crash, worked for
the U .S., only acknowledging that his link to
U .S. intelligence after he furnished the American
officials with his government identification.
So he was giving information they're like no
it didn't work for us and then he like literally
had to put his like badge down to show them that
he did. A spokesperson for the US State Department
said the United States takes Othman's inquiry
seriously and shares his interest in understanding
the circumstances of death of Secretary General
Dag Hammarskjöld. Quote, over the years the United
States has shared over a thousand pages of previously
classified documents with the UN inspector investigator.
End quote. The spokesperson said, speaking on
condition of anonymity. The Office of the Director
of National Intelligence, the official added,
quote, conducted yet another exhaustive search
for U .S. intelligence archives and did not find
any additional information that would shed light
on the circumstances of Secretary General Hammersfield's
death, end quote. British and Rhodesian colonial
intelligence officials were also intercepting
communication, suggesting that they may have
pertinent clues buried in their archives. Othman
is seeking access to documents describing the
activities of Ritchie, the MI6 agent, and other
British officials who were tasked with organizing
the meeting between Hammerskjold to Shambay.
Othman also saw information about a Belgian mercenary
pilot, Jan van Rizighem, who had served in the
British Royal Air Force during World War II and
is alleged by a colleague to have admitted to
flying the plane that brought down Hammerskjold's
aircraft. Pierre Coppens, a colleague of the
Belgian pilot, asserted in the documentary Cold
Case Hammerskjold that Van Rizighem was known
as the Lone Ranger. Othman is also seeking information
from the South African government about an alleged
plot by a paramilitary group known as South African
Institute for Maritime Research to assassinate
Hammerskjöld by placing a bomb in his blame before
it left the airfield in Leopoldville. Now the
Congolese capital of Kinshasa, en route to Ndola.
In a March 2019 letter to South Africa, Othman
said he understood that the South African government
had located documents detailing the plan dubbed
Operations Celeste, but those documents have
never been shared with the UN. And I think I
have two more articles quotations I need to read
from now. This one's from The Guardian. The observer
can now reveal that he had extensive ties to
Britain, including a British mother -in -wife
trained with the RAF and was decorated by Britain
for his service in the Second World War. whose
father was Belgian, escaped occupied Europe at
the start of the war to join the resistance in
England. He trained with the RAF and flew missions
over Nazi -held areas during the period he met
and married his British wife, cementing a lifelong
connection. For decades, Von Rysigam appeared
to have proof that he wasn't flying in the region
on the Night Hammerskills plane, the Albertina,
came down outside of Nidola in Zambia, then called
northern Rhodesia. Flight logs, meticulous records
of where and when he flew, appear to show Von
Rysigam was not flying for most of that month,
returning to duty only on September 20th. However,
Roger Bracco, another mercenary flying for the
Katongis, told filmmakers that his colleagues'
logbooks are dotted with apparent forgeries.
He does not believe that Von Brisingham shot
down Hammerskjöld, but when asked in an interview
for the film if he considered the logbook a fake,
he responded, I won't say so, but I didn't recognize
the story it told. No, a guy that flew with him.
Risigum unfortunately died before most of this
investigation actually happened, which is a shame
because this happened like 40 years after it
should have happened. Yeah, I mean that makes
sense that he's dead now and everyone's just
having this hearsay problem. Okay. Leafing through
the book, he later directly accuses Van Rysigam
of forgery. Quote, this is fake. End quote. Bronco
says bluntly of one flight destination and goes
on to add that some of the names listed for copilots
are not real. A friend has also come forward
to claim that less than a decade after Hammerskjold's
death, Van Rysigam told him he had attacked the
plane. Pierre Coppens met Van Rysigam in 1965
when he was flying for a parachute training center
in Belgium. Over several conversations, he claimed
the pilot detailed how he overcame various technical
challenges to down the plane unaware who was
traveling inside. And then, Chelsea, because
we're in 2025, Othman's report came out in 2022,
and I have an excerpt from it. And this is where
I'm going to end it off, is after this part of
the report. No, we're not going to cut it out
there. There might be more. I haven't looked
into it. I'm just rereading the script. So, as
mandated, I have also sought to draw conclusions
from the investigations already conducted. As
in 2019, I assess that it remains plausible.
that an external attack or threat was the cause
of the crash. However, it is not reasonable to
reach a conclusion as to the cause of the tragic
event based on presently available but incomplete
information. This is because material information
that appears to have been created or held by
member states remains undisclosed. In March of
2020, and subsequently, I sent requests for information
to four key member states that had been identified
in 2019 and that were urged by the Assembly to
engage in further process of disclosing relevant
Chelsea, do you want to guess who? But you're
Dodie. No, fucking Dodie. I knew it. The Russian
Federation, South Africa, the UK and the United
States. None of them are being helpful in any
way. The 2017 and 2019 reports concluded that
the burden of proof had shifted to certain member
states to show that they had conducted a full
review of records and archives in their custody
or possession. I respectfully submit that the
burden of proof to conduct a full review of our
records and archives resulting a full disclosure
has not been discharged at the present time.
Indeed. Information received from other sources
under the present mandate underscores that it
is almost certain that these member states created,
held, or were otherwise aware of specific important
information regarding the cause of the tragic
event. That information is yet to be disclosed.
So the answer is probably out there written down
by one of those states and they won't disclose
it. You really think it's written down somewhere?
We shot it down. Yes, I actually do. But who
is it? What do we make of this that there's so
many different nations who don't necessarily
work together holding back this information?
And had completely different motivations for
doing it, but will not turn it over. Like Russia
has succinctly different reasons than the UK
and the US. for why they might want Hammerskill
dead. Do you think that is because each one secretly
thinks that they probably did it? I don't know
and that's such a weird thing. Like you would
think if one of these groups had the information
on the other nations they would disclose it.
It seems that's the only logical thing in my
mind is that they're not conducting it because
they like whoever you're asking is legitimately
like it was probably us so that's the only -
way it makes sense but how could it be both the
US and Russia because they wouldn't have worked
together at that time that's the only reason
I could think that they wouldn't is because they
think that it's probably them nothing else makes
sense Like, themselves. Like, the US doesn't
want to do it because the US thinks it's them.
Russia doesn't want to do it because... Do you
really think that that's what it is, is they
went to their respective spy agencies and they
said, um, hey, did we do this? And they said,
I don't know, maybe. And they said, okay, best
not to look into it. Yeah, like something like
that. It has to be. There's no other thing that
makes sense because in the way you tell it, like,
everyone did it. But not everyone would have
done it. Like, I don't see, like, Russia and
the US... or like Russia and Britain or Belgium
like worked together on doing it. I could see
like two or three of them working together, particularly
like Belgium, the U .S. and mining interests
in the area. But there's just like so many different
groups. Do you think it was like a Rube Goldberg
of assassination attempts that accidentally worked
together? Maybe. And it just, it does, that doesn't
make sense like in this. But I just, I want to
bring it back to that whole thing that in the
conspiracy world, the UN is considered like a
big boogie man. And they're asking these countries
to just nicely please turn over your records
you have for when you killed our leader. And
they're just like, nah, we don't have anything.
And the UN is just like, well, they won't give
us the documents. And that's where it ends. That's
how much power they have. Please. And they're
like, nah. And they're like, nah. Yeah, we don't
have anything. Did you look? No. OK. Okay, well...
Look, maybe we find out in like 30 years it was
Journey to the Fringe, but I don't, I just don't
know. In some weird time, it was probably us
too. Everyone did it at this point, so why not
Journey to the Fringe? Yeah, it was that time
that we had Andrew Boziago on the show in about
four years. Yeah, that was a fun time. It is
such a captivating assassination, a potential
assassination, I should say. Because there is
a chance that the plane just crashed. the end
of this but like nobody ever talks about this
one i don't think there's a potential that it
just crashed being what's at unless it is that
it just crashed and everybody's like fuck this
guy like everybody's making it more than it's
out to be so i'm just not gonna cooperate it
could actually be that these spy agencies want
to look more powerful than they are and let the
perception that they did this oh yeah playing
french on it that's a low chance but um there
that is out there i guess oh that works with
the other theory too they and let's face it it's
it's probably pretty cheap to uh go buy off the
testimony of african villagers in the middle
of the congo or in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe. Yeah,
I did that last week. To tell them, say, hey,
like you saw it get shot down. But yeah, Chelsea,
what do you think of this story? As long as it
doesn't come back to us, I think it's a lot of
twists and turns and whodunnits. Usually, as
like time goes on, especially like 50 years afterwards,
it narrows and it's just like every time there
was a story went further on, there's like, and
here's another one who might have done it. And
I did like Von Rissler's name. Big fan. It was
probably - Yann Von Rissagum. Oh, he had the
name to do it, so... Oh, it was definitely...
I'm pretty sure he was there at the time, but
whether or not he shot it down or it exploded
and he just happened to be there, I don't know.
It's so hard to say. And like then, who was he
acting for? Because it turns out he flew for
the British during World War II. It's not out
of the ordinary. I don't think it's beyond his
capabilities to have been hired by another. He
may have been approached by everybody. Maybe
that's why nobody's saying... anything. Maybe
even hammer skilled himself. Oh, nobody even
mentioned that. But in any event, that's probably
enough down the rabbit hole in that one. I love
this episode. I hope you enjoyed it the second
time around that hopefully has better sound quality.
But in any event, I have been Taylor here with
Chelsea. We are journey to the fringe. Thank
you all for listening. We'll see you next week.
Thank you for listening to Journey to the Fringe.
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