Lange’s dangerous gamble
After a military coup and a hijacking in Fiji, why did the Prime Minister order armed troops be sent there?
After a military coup and a hijacking in Fiji, why did the Prime Minister order armed troops be sent there?
That David Lange moved in mysterious ways was known to everyone who worked with him. Strangely, though, the oddest and most dangerous mystery of his time as Prime Minister is little known. In 1987, he ordered armed troops to fly to Fiji and risk a possible confrontation with the Fiji army. Why has never been satisfactorily explained. In May that year, the newly elected Government of Fiji was overthrown by the army, to everyone’s surprise including New Zealand’s. The assessment of our Intelligence Committee, which I chaired, had just concluded, cautiously, that the new Government was unlikely to last its term. Cabinet minister Richard Prebble, who had better Fijian sources than we did, sent me a note to say that it would go within a month. A few days later, we got a flash to say that armed soldiers were entering Parliament, and Lange announced the coup to the world.
The hijacker appeared in the cockpit at the end of refuelling, with four sticks of dynamite around his waist while smoking a cigarette.
While we were still reflecting on how best to respond to this, an Air New Zealand 747 flying home from Tokyo was hijacked during a refuelling stop in Nadi. I was told at 8am and went straight to the Beehive to tell the Prime Minister and arrange for the Terrorism Emergency Group to be convened in the basement. We had practised for managing a hijacking as for other emergencies. Meeting in the basement where there were good communications was the best way of co-ordinating the work of key ministers and officials from the police, Defence and Foreign Affairs.
So I reported cheerfully to the PM that the lights were up and the kettle was on downstairs ready for the Terrorism Emergency Group to
start work. What followed is the first mystery. He said he did not wish to convene the group. Startled, I said that this would make it impossible to co-ordinate the response to the hijacking. “You’ll manage it,” he said and turned to something else.
FOG OF WAR AND HIJACKING
What followed was the sort of chaos that only he could create. With no time to do anything else, the hijacking had to be managed from the PM’s outer office where all three phones began ringing simultaneously. I jumped from one to the other trying to discover what was happening in Nadi while attempting to keep my colleagues informed. When Police Minister Ann Hercus passed by and offered to help, she picked up one of the ringing phones and found herself talking to her own commissioner. I quickly gave up co-ordination and concentrated on talking to Nadi.
By a happy chance, we had good communications with both the airport and the plane itself. The control tower, now manned by a competent policeman, Inspector Govind Raja, could talk to the cockpit through a loudspeaker heard by everyone on the flight deck, including the hijacker.
The pilot could also talk more privately through a single-sideband radio with the airline in Auckland and through them with us.
The fog of war is matched by the fog of hijacking – the painful first hour or so when you are groping to discover who and how many the hijackers are, what they want, what support they have and how credible their demands are. The hijacker appeared in the cockpit at the end of refuelling, with four sticks of dynamite around his waist while smoking a cigarette so as to be able to ignite the fuses if necessary. He demanded to be flown to Libya.
The plane had begun boarding, but a resourceful aircrew member, noticing that something was wrong, had got the passengers away. This was a relief. The hijacker controlled those on the flight deck, but otherwise it was only an empty plane, which at least reduced the risk if our negotiations failed.
The final word lay with the pilot whose own life was at risk, but I urged the critical importance of keeping talking and avoiding a take-off. In the air with a full load of fuel, the plane could go anywhere and we would lose what tenuous control we had of the situation. So I suggested undertakings and promises for the pilot to pass on, and the discussions – including rambling sermons from the hijacker about the iniquities of Australia and the US – went on for an hour.
By then, we were getting a grip on the situation. There was only one hijacker, Ahmjed Ali, though there was a brother mournfully prowling the airport. We made an important psychological breakthrough when he began to change his demands, asking that letters be passed to several leaders, including Lange, and that the plane fly to Auckland instead of Libya. And with only one hijacker, time would in due course solve the problem, unless we made a fatal misstep.
Then we nearly did. Inspector Raja came on the air to say that he had the hijacker’s parents in the tower. Would it help to put them on the cockpit radio? I thought it an excellent idea and said go ahead. It was nearly a disaster. Mum came on the air, not to urge her son to give up but to say, “Oh son, you have brought eternal shame on us; nothing can wipe out the stain of your deed.” The hijacker became agitated and his cigarette was straying towards the fuses. The pilot’s desperate voice came on the private radio – “Get her off” – and Mum’s broadcast came to an abrupt end.
After that, we made some progress, with the hijacker seemingly dropping his demand to take off at all. It began to look as if patience and further talking would bring things to a peaceable end.
MYSTERY NO 2
Would it help to put the hijacker’s parents on the cockpit radio? I thought it an excellent idea and said go ahead. It was nearly a disaster.
Then Lange revealed his second mystery. When I ducked into his room to report that the situation was coming under control, he instructed me to go to Nadi. Startled once again, I demurred, pointing out the need for someone in Wellington to co-ordinate tactics with Air New Zealand, that Raja was handling the negotiations very well in Nadi and there was no sense in my turning up as a redundant negotiator. After he repeated his request twice, I had to comply, still baffled about its purpose, and went home to get some clothes and catch the flight the airline had arranged.
As I left his room, I caught the tail end of a conversation he was having with his advisers John Henderson, the head of his office, and Tim Francis, the deputy secretary of Foreign Affairs, about sending a planeload of troops to Nadi. My hair stood on end at the effect this could have on the delicate
negotiations. I stepped back into the room to get the Prime Minister’s assurance that no troops would be sent while we were talking the hijacker down. He agreed at once.
While I was on the plane and out of the action for three hours, both Defence Chief David Crooks and Defence’s head of operations, Donald McIver, were trying to find me in the hope of learning what was going on. They had been directed by their minister to send a plane and troops to Nadi as soon as possible but were mystified as to what it meant. Into the air commander’s office in Auckland came an agitated brigadier in combat dress requiring a Hercules to be made immediately available, and soldiers from the SAS were made ready to board.
No one knew what these troops were supposed to do. When Crooks finally got to the PM’s office, where the numbers had now swelled to eight, he asked for something in writing. Lange gave him a directive saying that sufficient troops were to be despatched “to act as required to protect New Zealand’s interests in Fiji”.
What actions might be required was never spelt out. When he pointed out the delicacy of sending armed troops to a foreign country, he was assured that the Fijian Governor-General – who at that stage controlled nothing beyond Government House – had given his permission.
TEACHER’S WHISKY TO THE RESCUE
This extraordinary adventure was ended by a legal technicality. The Chief of Air Force recalled that New Zealand troops could be deployed overseas only by a decision of the little-known Defence Council. By the time the council could be got together after lunch, the hijacking was over. As I stepped on to the tarmac, the hijacker, who had been hit on the head with a bottle of Teacher’s whisky by the flight engineer, was being wheeled away unconscious on a stretcher.
It brought to an end what would have been the rashest military venture in New
Zealand’s history. The Cabinet was never consulted or even informed. No military advice was sought in planning the venture and no clear orders spelt out what the force was to achieve. Years later in a brief comment, Henderson strongly rebutted the view that the troops were intended to overturn the coup. This is entirely believable – a planeload of soldiers was not going to defeat the Fijian army – but no one has ever said what the troops were to do.
An assault on the hijacked plane was by then clearly unnecessary. The risks of storming a plane are so great that by common consent, it is only undertaken when lives have been lost. In any case, it seemed odd to discuss sending troops for a possible assault out of the hearing of the person co-ordinating the response to the hijacking.
POTENTIALLY HUMILIATING OUTCOME AVOIDED
Lange later spoke vaguely of protecting the High Commissioner and the New Zealand community, but it was hard to see how landing in Nadi could help the High Commissioner and most New Zealanders who were in Suva. There was no evidence at that stage of any threat to either, and the New Zealand office was, in any case, guarded by sailors from the frigate Wellington in Suva Harbour.
When I landed, Nadi Airport was garrisoned around its perimeter by a full battalion, not the poorly armed “territorials” mentioned by Henderson but experienced reservists who had served with peacekeeping forces overseas. They were not equipped or deployed for a hijacking. They may have been there to secure the airport after the coup five days earlier or they may have been reinforced after a warning from Suva that New Zealand might attempt to land a force.
What was clear was that sending 50 lightly armed troops from New Zealand was a highly risky gamble. If there was any misunderstanding, they would have ended up disarmed and under arrest, a humiliating outcome that might well have ended Lange politically. Why he wished to make the gamble is the biggest mystery of his time as Prime Minister.
After hearing Lange talk about sending a planeload of troops to Nadi, my hair stood on end at the effect this could have.