DARK HISTORY: The Death of Dag Hammarskjold

Ninetoes looks at the death of Dag Hammarskjold and comes away with more questions than answers.

Hey there, history lovers! It is your old pal, Ninetoes, coming to you from Ninetoes HQ. Today, I am looking at The Death of Dag Hammarskjold. I have coffee in my system and my thinking cap on, so let’s get to it!

Dag Hammarskjold was the Secretary General of the United Nations from April 10, 1953, until his untimely death on September 18, 1961. Hammarskjold was en route to negotiate a cease-fire between the United Nations Operation in the Congo forces and the Katangese forces under Moise Tshombe. He was traveling in a Douglas DC-6 airliner (SE-BDY) when his plane crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Hammarskjold and the other fifteen people aboard the plane died as a result of the crash.

It is not clear why the airliner crashed. In 1962, a Rhodesian inquiry concluded that the crash was due to pilot error. A UN investigation could find no definitive cause for the crash. A CIA report claimed that the KGB shot the airliner down.

On September 19, 1961, President Harry Truman remarked that Dag Hammarskjold “was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him’.”

Documents surfaced in 1998 that pointed towards a plan to kill Dag Hammarskjold called “Operation Celeste”.  This plan was backed by the CIA, MI6, and a Belgian mining interest. The assassination was to be carried out by the South African Institute for Maritime Research, a paramilitary organization. In one of these documents, CIA director Allen Dulles said, “Dag is becoming troublesome…and should be removed.” He then pledged local CIA support for this plan. The authenticity of these documents could not be verified because they were copies; more copies were discovered by the South African government in 2016.

In 2014, newly declassified documents revealed that the American ambassador to the Congo sent a message to Washington, D.C. in which he states his suspicion that Hammarskjold’s plane was shot down by Jan Van Rissenghem, a Belgian mercenary pilot. Van Rissenghem’s family has denied any involvement in Hammarskjold’s death. Jan Van Rissenghem died in 2007.

A documentary film released in 2019, Cold Case Hammarskjold, claimed that Van Rissenghem told a friend he was the man who shot down Hammarskjold’s plane. While van Rissenghem’s wife was able to provide flight logbooks that told of the Belgian pilot being in Rhodesia to negotiate the purchase of a plane for the Katanga Air Force, other members of the film’s crew interviewed van Rissenghem’s friends, who substantiated the film’s claim.

In November 2021, a document was found in France among the Fonds Foccart (National Archives in Pierrefitte) that was essentially a death warrant for Hammarskjold and contained the acronym OAS, which was a secret organization in the French army that fought during Algeria’s War of Independence. The document stated, “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 document was unsigned and appeared to be a transcription of an original document.

Dag Hammarskjold’s death is shrouded in as much mystery as the JFK Assassination, and as it stands, there is a lot of finger-pointing and no clear-cut answers.

Until the next time, I bid you successful investigations into the past!

Darren “Ninetoes” Perdue is a book and media reviewer. When he is not reading, he is watching true crime shows, cooking for his family, or working on a plan for universal domination. If you see him on his porch, say hi. He does not bite…much.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.