Who Killed Hammarskjöld?: The U.N., the Cold War, and White Supremacy in Africa (review)

For several years, many citizens of member countries of the United Nations Organization have believed that the political history of the world body can never be complete until the crucial facts about the death of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld are researched (or investigated) and made known. That is why readers should attach a lot of importance to the 2011 book Who Killed Hammarskjöld?: The U.N., The Cold War, and White Supremacy in Africa, authored by Susan Williams, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London.

Dr. Williams, out of intellectual candor, has termed the episode involving Mr. Hammarskjöld's death as a "complex, compelling, and often disturbing, story" (acknowledgements, p. xi). It is underscored in the publication that one of the outstanding mysteries of the twentieth century was the death of Mr. Hammarskjöld, whose airplane on 18 September 1961 plunged into a dense forest in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia, now known as Zambia. That ended the Swedish diplomat's mission to bring peace to Congo (now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo). Dead aboard the airplane were sixteen passengers, out of which ten were U.N. officials (including Mr. Hammarskjöld) and six Swedish-born Transair crew members. These details, as quoted by the author, were contained in the special report on the accident (U.N. document # S/4940/Add.5), published on 19 September 1961. Apart from the book's nineteen chapters, Dr. Williams provides acknowledgements, a list of abbreviations and illustrations, notes, a prologue, an epilogue, sources, a bibliography, and an index.

The author points out that, although the Rhodesian government blamed pilot error, she has reasons to believe otherwise. Consequently, her book shows that the investigation suppressed and dismissed critical evidence. While the chapters do an excellent job of discussing multiple facets of the events and scenarios, the chapter that details disturbing nuances is chapter nineteen, "Secrets and Lies" (pp. 229-237). Claiming that her research has unearthed a considerable amount of new evidence, she adds that there are compelling grounds for arguing that, as in the case of Lumumba, there should be a further, transparent , public inquiry into Hammarskjöld's death (p. 236).

Apart from accusations leveled by Dr. Williams, including conspiracy theories, she uses the epilogue (239-241) to catalogue some of the uneasy situations that existed between Mr. Hammarskjöld's United Nations and the American President, John F. Kennedy, who also met an untimely death, through his 1963 assassination. The problem, as explained in the epilogue, stemmed from U.S. opposition to the U.N.'s policy in the Congo. For the first time, readers are offered reasons for the seeming disagreement, as the author explains how Mr. Kennedy on 14 March 1962 invited to the Oval Office a U.N. official by the name of Sture Linner, who had left Congo as the U.N.'s official there to return to New York.

Among other details, Dr. Williams writes: "[President Kennedy] told Linner that he wanted to apologize for the pressure that had been put on Dag to implement US policy in the Congo—a pressure which Dag had refused to heed." It is important to learn from this portion of the book that the leader of a major power, in the midst of the Cold War, saw reason to offer an apology of any type. That, indeed, is remarkable. Furthermore, Hammarskjöld's efforts have been well documented and hailed in the book.

Toward the end of the epilogue, Dr. Williams writes about Hammarskjöld: "Tragically, he was never allowed to reach Ndola and to speak with [Moise] Tshombe. But his mission of peace and self-sacrifice offers a lesson to the world. It exemplifies a goodness and love of humanity to which Hammarskjöld though keenly aware of his own failings, consciously and determinedly...