Episode 138: Dag Hammarskjöld's Death - 65 Years On

September 18, 2026 is the 65th anniversary of Dag's murder. Are we any closer to knowing who is responsible? Not really. And I doubt that will happen in my lifetime. But, Occam's razor could be valid here: Instead of going down bizarre rabbit holes about the SAIMR and Keith Maxwell, it could very well be that an explanation of "elements of the intelligence agencies and mining interests were responsible and Tshombe had Fouga jets to help pull it off" is the most logical. Just a thought. 

In any case, to potentially solve Dag's murder, we must look at HIS LIFE.

Links: 

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/episodes/14198055

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/episodes/14539212

https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Chessboard-Dulles-Americas-Government/dp/0062276174/

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Sara's award-winning biography of Dag can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

Her latest project, Simply Dag, is now available anywhere Amazon books are sold: https://a.co/d/0f9PAg9g

Transcript

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Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

The discussion argues that understanding Dag Hammarskjöld’s life and values is essential to evaluating the circumstances of his death, rather than focusing narrowly on sensational conspiracy theories.

Central Thesis

• Sara contends that investigations into Hammarskjöld’s murder should begin with his life, legacy, and political significance.
• She criticizes Cold Case Hammarskjöld for shifting attention away from Hammarskjöld and toward the South African Institute for Maritime Research, Keith Maxwell, and related conspiracy claims.
• She argues that the SAIMR and Maxwell narratives may be deliberate disinformation designed to distract researchers from more consequential questions, including who benefited from Hammarskjöld’s removal.

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Dag Hammarskjöld, murder mystery, Philippa Langley, Richard III, Cold War, dark comedy, satire, disinformation, SAIMR, Keith Maxwell, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Allen Dulles, Devil's Chessboard, intelligence agencies, historical narrative.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. On September 18th, it will be the 65th anniversary of the death of Dag Hammarskjöld. At this point, are we any closer to knowing some definitive, rock-solid answer about who murdered him and why? Probably not. I hate to sound so pessimistic, but I don't really see a revelation like that happening within my lifetime. It's certainly possible, and I could be wrong. I hope I am wrong. Stranger things have happened, but sometimes it takes a lot of distance-way more distance than we will have. Anybody alive right now listening to this broadcast way more distance and time than we possess? I'm thinking, for example, of what Philippa Langley has done for Richard III. My God, that woman found his bones underneath a parking lot, underneath a space marked R. That is crazy. You cannot tell me that his spirit was not involved in that discovery happening. You don't have to believe any of that, and you can think it's all a lot of woo-woo hokum, but it's an awfully wide coincidence. If it is a coincidence, I will at some point be talking about the efforts that Philippa has done to exonerate Richard III-maybe he was the victim of Tudor propaganda-and the ideas that we've had about him all these years have been wrong. Richard III is, by the way, my first cousin. His mother, Cecily Neville, is my auntie, and then her parents, Ralph Neville and Joan Beaufort, are my great grandparents going back, you know, a number of generations? Edward the Fourth is also my first cousin, which would make the little princes in the tower, as they are called. So, like Edward and Richard would be my second cousins. So the whole thing to me has a lot of interest anyway. Like, well, what actually did happen there. That's a that's a murder mystery for the ages. But look at how far removed we are from all of that. That's been hundreds of years ago, not decades ago, but hundreds of years ago before we're even starting to crack the official narrative. And I think it's so important to look at Dag's life, not only separately from the murder, but it's like if you want to solve the murder, if you want to get closer to figuring out who killed Dag and why, you have to look at his life. That's one of the criticisms I have, for example, with Mads Bruger's documentary, Cold Case Hammarskjöld. When I first watched it, I thought, "Oh wow, this is an interesting movie. But I didn't know anything about Dag. I had not come into communion yet with his spirit. I don't even think I could sit down and watch it now. I think I would just be thoroughly repelled by it. I've written a draft of a dark comedy slash satire slash sci-fi novel about the posthumous portrayals of Dag and why all of it matters. And I was thinking a lot of Doctor Strangelove and Fail Safe, both films I've talked about on the podcast before. I'll drop some links in case you are a new tuner inner and you haven't heard those episodes from the past. They both deal with the same basic idea of what if nuclear war breaks out between the superpowers during the Cold War. Fail safe is largely forgotten. It takes the more dramatic look at the event, whereas Doctor Strangelove is an absolute classic. We remember George C. Scott hamming it up. Well, we're gonna lose 10 or 20 million people depending on the breaks, but that's just how it goes. We remember Sterling Hayden talking about precious bodily fluids and saying that he could only drink rainwater and rye whiskey to keep the commies from polluting his body, and of course Peter Sellers in his trio of roles, Mein Führer, I can walk. It's the comedy, it's that dark comedy satire that we remember much more than Fail Safe. Fail Safe is a perfectly serviceable Cold War drama, but it's Doctor Strangelove that we remember. And whenever we are looking at a topic through those lenses of dark comedy and satire, not only are are those genres heavily protected by the First Amendment, thank God, but we can also really put forth a message that we want to convey without making it so front and center, it's not preachy.

It's more like I'm going to tell you a story, and if it just so happens that you learn something from that story, cool. I feel like the situations that we get are frankly ripe for something like dark comedy and satire. We're. This bizarre story about an organization called the SAIMR, the South African Institute for Maritime Research, and its leader is this dude who looks like a cultist. There's only one known photograph of him in these naval type uniform clothing items. It smacks of L. Ron Hubbard, and I'm just like, what if all of this was fake? What if this was completely and totally disinformation that was planted on purpose to lead everybody astray and to send them on a wild goose chase? I'm not saying that that's the case. I don't know. What I am saying is that the more time that's gone by, and the more research that I've done, the less convinced I am that the SAIMR ever existed. The the less convinced I am that Keith Maxwell, as its so-called leader, ever existed. I think it might be a load of crap, and the person who suffers for that ultimately is Dag, because instead of looking at his life, his legacy, and taking a more pointed look at who would benefit if Dag was removed, and he was no longer a fly in the ointment for powerful and wealthy people, who would have benefited from that? The documents found during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and all of that, as apartheid was being dismantled, it mentions Allen Dulles, and it it gives us the viewpoint of the Symar did it, and Dulles knew and gave it the green light, allegedly. Now I'm certainly not defending Alan Dulles. The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot is an excellent book. If you have not read it, please do. At some point, I would like to do a series of episodes about just that book by itself because it is incredible, and you want to talk about sins piled on top of sins piled on top of sins. So it's not that I'm saying that if the SAIMR never existed, if Keith Maxwell never existed, if all of that was phony baloney, that it somehow exonerates Allen Dulles. That's not what I'm saying at all. I think quite possibly that whole ball of wax, leaving Alan Dulles completely out of it. I think that whole ball of wax could simply be a distraction, and it could very well be disinformation that was planted on purpose so that innocent people would find it years later and take that ball and run with it. Because if we're all looking at Keith Maxwell and the SAIMR, look at what happens, for example, in Cold Case Hammarskjöld, we're told that the documentary is going to be about Dag, but it isn't. It rapidly veers into let's talk about Keith, let's talk about the SAIMR, let's talk about this bonkers conspiracy theory, and then Dag gets left in the dirt, and I hate that. I hate that. I resent the hell out of it. It makes me mad. It makes me angry. And people get sucked into a murder mystery, and they never look any deeper. Sometimes people come to my work because of the murder mystery, and there's nothing I can do about that. As artists, as writers, as creatives, we put something out into the world, and then you don't control it anymore. You cannot control what somebody else's interpretation of your work happens to be. But it's certainly my prayer, my fervent prayer, that somebody doesn't say, "I only care about Dag as a murder victim. I don't care about his life. I don't care about his values. I just care about the scintillating and bizarre details of this story. To me, that is so tragic, and the hoopla and craziness around the SAIMR and Keith Maxwell. It just feels to me like a three-ring circus, and it feels to me like a three-ring circus that could be absolute bonkers, bullshit, fake. So what I'd like to do tonight is play an encore presentation of the most recent episode of one of my daytime podcasts, "Decoding the Unicorn, the podcast, where I talk about this very topic of if you want to solve Dag Hammarskjöld's murder, you need to look at his life. I don't want to go down murder mystery rabbit holes.

I don't want to give any more stage time, any more radio time, to oh, what if it was this guy over here, and what if it was that guy over there, because I just don't think it's serving anything except the actual shadowy web of power. Because for as long as we're going down all these little rabbit holes that lead to one war and after another after another. We're not actually looking at something that might solve the freaking mystery, like Winter Kills, for example. Even though I'm not a big fan of that novel or of that film, what happens to the protagonist there is similar, I think, to what happens when people. Go down the SAIMR slash Keith Maxwell rabbit hole, they get pulled into one conspiracy theory after another after another after another, and by the time they get down into that cubby hole, they don't even know which end is up anymore. It's like, how did I even get started with this? And they've forgotten about Dag. And hi, hello. That's the point. That's a huge point of why, theoretically, wink, wink, you know, an intelligence agency might plant disinformation like that on somebody. Just saying, it's plausible. So let's settle in tonight with a frosty beverage of choice, and I will present you with my encore performance of, in order to understand Dag's murder. We first have to understand his life.

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Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. Welcome to episode 49 of Decoding the unicorn, the podcast. I appreciate you tuning in, and I'm glad you're here. On September 18th of this year, we will be at the 65th anniversary of the death of Dag Hammarskjöld. Naturally, there is one question that continues to dominate the discussion of that 1961 plane crash at Ndola: Who killed Dag Hammarskjöld. It's an understandable question, but it's not actually the best place to begin. If we want to understand what happened to Dag in the early morning hours of September 18, 1961, we should ask a different set of questions. Who was Dag Hammarskjöld? How did he understand his office? What principles governed his decisions? How did he exercise power at the United Nations? And what was he trying to accomplish in the Congo? And who stood to lose if he succeeded? Stay tuned. 

September 18th marks the anniversary of Dag Hammarskjöld’s death. Remember the tragedy. Remember the unanswered questions, but don't remember only how he died. Remember how he lived. Read more about Dag at decodingtheunicorn.com.

As of this recording, there's no definitive, agreed-upon answer vis-a-vis who killed Dag Hammarskjöld and why. It's important for us to remember that Harry Truman, shortly after Dag's death, Harry Truman, who was a friend to both Dag and JFK, the sitting U.S. president at the time, Truman said quite plainly, Dag was on the verge of getting something done when they killed him, when journalists asked him to elaborate on who's they when they killed him, they who, and killed how? What we thought it was simply a plane crash. What do you mean? He refused to elaborate. Nevertheless, even back in the 60s, there were people skeptical of the official idea. The official idea, by the way, is that the poor pilot flew too close to the ground, too close to the forest, and crash landed. He simply misread the altimeter. He shouldn't have been flying late at night anyway in hostile airspace because they want to make sure that the victim, i.e. Dag, is blamed. He should not have been flying at night. He shouldn't have been going to see Moise Chombi anyway, and so it's kind of sort of his own fault that this happened, and it's kind of sort of his fault that all the other victims on the plane perished as well. But still, yet it's an accident, and so don't lose any sleep over it. Don't worry about it, and we didn't lose anything important anyway. This is what the shadowy web of power does to men of peace. Why does Dag Hammarskjöld’s life matter so much to the investigation? Dag did not die as a private citizen traveling for personal reasons. He died while serving as the second Secretary General of the United Nations during one of the most dangerous international crises of the Cold War. We have to remember that the Cold War was everywhere all the time at this point in history, and it was dangerous enough. But we add to that the Congo crisis, and we really have quite a diabolical situation. Dag was flying to meet Moise Tshombe, who is the president of the secessionist province of Katanga, and more than likely backed up by Western interests, we have to remember that Union Minier was a very wealthy company at this point in time. Adjusted for inflation, it would be billions, billions of dollars, changing hands: copper, diamonds, uranium, cobalt, and so forth. Dag is trying to negotiate an end to the fighting in the Congo crisis. There was bloodshed and warfare every day, and we cannot separate Dag's death meaningfully from the work that he was doing or the purpose of him being there in the first place. Even so, discussions of Dag's death can become heavily concentrated on the mechanics of the plane crash itself, the flight path, the wreckage, possible gunfire, intelligence activity, communications, photographs, autopsy evidence, etc. And I certainly won't say that those questions don't matter because they do. The public deserves to know who murdered Dag Hammersholt and why, and if anyone is still alive, that person should be prosecuted. After all, there is no statute of limitations on murder. The gory details might answer primarily how Dag Hammarskjöld died. But his life helps us approach the other important question: Why? What did Dag Hammarskjöld believe the United Nations should be? To understand the potential motives surrounding Dag Hammarskjöld's death, it's necessary to understand his conception of the UN. Dag did not view the Secretary General merely as an administrator carrying out instructions from the more powerful member states. During his tenure from 1953 until 1961, he helped transform that office into something far more consequential. We must remember that Dag was called, unironically, the president or prime minister of the entire world. Dag believed the international civil service had obligations of independence and impartiality. The Secretary General, in his estimation, served the purposes and principles of the UN Charter rather than the national interests of any particular government, and that distinction matters. A Secretary General who simply follows the wishes of the great powers is predictable. An independent secretary general is not. 

Dag Hammarskjöld developed diplomatic practices that expanded the practical reach of the office, helped shape modern peacekeeping, relied upon quiet diplomacy, and resisted attempts to turn international civil service into an instrument of individual governments, these were not abstract ideas to Dag; they affected how he governed, and eventually they affected the interests of very powerful and very wealthy people. The Congo crisis placed Hammarskjöld’s philosophy of international service under extraordinary pressure. When Congo became independent from Belgium in 1960, the new nation rapidly descended into political and military crisis. The mineral-rich province of Katanga seceded under Moise Tshombe, while Belgian, Western, corporate, Cold War, and African interests converged around the conflict, Katanga was not simply another patch of territory on a map. Its enormous mineral wealth made control of the province economically and strategically significant. Dag's approach increasingly placed him in conflict with people and institutions that had their own ideas about what should happen in Congo, and this is where biography becomes investigative evidence. To understand who might have benefited from Dag Hammarskjöld’s removal, we need to understand what Dag was attempting to prevent and what kind of Congo he believed the United Nations had a responsibility to protect. There's a temptation to remember Dag Hammarskjöld primarily as a serene moral figure, the contemplative statesman, the author of markings, the quiet Swedish diplomat who spoke about service, integrity, sacrifice, and faith. And yes, that Dag existed, but he was also a formidable political operator. He could be stubborn and extraordinarily determined. He understood institutional power and knew how to use it. When he believed a principle was at stake, pressure did not necessarily make him retreat, and that combination is important. Dag's values were not confined to private meditation. His inner principles had external political consequences. Independence meant refusing to become someone else's instrument. Impartiality meant resisting demands for preferential treatment. Internationalism meant challenging the assumption that powerful states should automatically determine the destiny of weaker ones. Loyalty to the UN Charter could mean standing in the way of governments, corporations, intelligence services, political factions, or individuals pursuing objectives incompatible with Dagg's understanding of the organization's responsibilities. Seen from that perspective, studying Dag Hammarskjöld 's personality is not a detour from studying his death. It is an integral part of the investigation. The question, cui bono, who benefits, is useful, but only if we first understand what changed when Dag Hammarskjöld died. That requires reconstructing the world immediately before his death. What policies was he pursuing? What negotiations were underway? What did he intend to accomplish in Katanga? Whose objectives did his policies obstruct? Who regarded the United Nations operation in the Congo as a threat, who regarded Dag Hammarskjöld personally as an obstacle, and perhaps most importantly, what became easier once Dag Hammarskjöld was gone? None of these questions by itself identifies a murder. Per se, but naming the means, motives, and opportunities has always been part of a serious investigation. Dag Hammarskjöld’s biography helps establish the political landscape in which those questions must be asked. There is another complication in understanding Dag Hammarskjöld. For many readers, their introduction to him comes through markings, his posthumously published collection of private reflections found after his death. It is an extraordinary journal, but it is not a complete biography. Reading markings without studying Dag Hammarskjöld in his totality can produce a strangely disembodied version of the man, spiritual, introspective, lonely, and philosophical. The Secretary General operating inside the UN was all of those things and much more. He negotiated, maneuvered, made enemies, defended his authority, endured attacks from some of the most powerful political figures in the world, and made decisions with consequences for governments, armies, corporations, diplomats, intelligence services, and populations struggling to emerge from colonial rule. If we separate the contemplative Hammarskjöld from the Secretary General Hammarskjöld, we lose the connective tissue that may be most important to understanding his death. The question is larger than who killed Dag Hammarskjöld. There is good reason that the circumstances surrounding Dag's death continue to receive international scrutiny, but the mystery should not reduce him to the role of sad historical murder victim. I absolutely hate that reduction. Dag Hammersholt had a life before Ndola, and a planned retirement at his farmhouse Backakra. His work as UN Secretary General created the circumstances that brought him to Ndola on that hot September night. 

Anyway, he had beliefs about international service, ideas about the independence of the United Nations and a distinctive understanding of the Secretary General's responsibilities, and he had taken consequential positions during decolonization and the Congo crisis. He had supporters, critics, allies, opponents, and enemies. By September 1961, all of those forces were converging. The wreck at Ndola therefore represents only part of the story. To understand Dag's death, follow his life. The investigation into the murder of Dag Hammarskjöld examines the aircraft, the documents, witnesses, communications, and forensic evidence, but there's additional information often left behind. Dag Hammarskjöld himself study what he believed, how he governed, and the decisions he made. Examine the principles he would not abandon. Consider the interests those decisions threatened. Look at what he was doing in Congo, and think about what Dag hoped to accomplish when he boarded the Albertina for Ndola. Then ask who needed a different outcome. The mystery of Dag Hammarskjöld's death did not begin in the sky over Central Africa on September 17 of 1961, only to end shortly thereafter on September 18th. No, it began long before that. And if we genuinely want to understand why Dag Hammarskjöld died, his life may still be one of the most important pieces of evidence we have. Take good care of yourself, and I'll see you in the next episode. 

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