Panda Leaks: The Dark Side of the WWF, by Wilfried Huismann
© 2014 by Nordbook UG (haftungsbeschrankt), Bremen, Germany
Original title: Schwarzbuch WWF - DunkJe Geschafte im Zeichen des Panda
© 2012 by Gutersloher Verlagshaus, Gutersloh, Germany
Part 1 of 2
5. It All Began in Africa
To really understand the WWF and its political role, you must go deep down into the catacombs of the British Empire, the demise of which gained momentum in the 1950s and 1960s with the loss of almost all the African colonies. Africa is the birthplace of the WWF. The prologue to its story began in the year 1940, when Great Britain declared the Serengeti the first national park in East Africa -- an area the size of Northern Ireland. The colonial authority had made the plan palatable to London on the basis of two arguments: there were no major mineral deposits in the Serengeti; and the terrain was unattractive for European settlers -- it didn't rain enough and there were too many tsetse flies. The Serengeti would become a "worldwide tourism sensation".
The only problem was: the Massai, the indigenous tribal people who for centuries had lived with their cattle herds in the Serengeti. The British decided to legally guarantee them the right to remain -- they were only herdsmen after all; they didn't work the land or hunt protected animals. The Massai were relieved. But they hadn't reckoned with the Western conservationists and the white park rangers who had nothing but disdain for the natives. Many tourists also complained about the sight of the "dirty" Massai and their "barbaric ways". In the 1950s the colonial authorities introduced a new policy, offering the Massai the option of voluntary resettlement. But the tribal chiefs rejected the offer. Where else would there be so much wonderful grazing land and rivers to water the cattle? And wasn't it their land and that of their forefathers anyway?
The conservationists ramped up the pressure, which prompted the colonial administration of the Tanganyika Territory to make a Solomonic decision: the Serengeti National Park would be reduced from 5,000 to 1,800 square miles. The Massai would then have to leave the smaller park. A storm of protest was unleashed in Europe and the USA. It would soon develop into a tornado for the British colonial authority, when German wildlife conservationist Bernhard Grzimek got involved. He showed the world how a radical PR campaign could force a political about-face. Through his Serengeti mission the celebrated director of the Frankfurt Zoo became the ideological role model of modern nature conservancy -- and the WWF.
Bernhard Grzimek on a stamp
Grzimek's Mission
Prof. Bernhard Grzimek flew with his son Michael over the Serengeti to observe the migrations of the big game animals. He published the results in his 1956 book 'No Place for Wild Animals'. It contains such apocalyptical declarations as "Africa's wild animals are doomed to extinction" with no scientific evidence to back his claims. According to Grzimek, too many people lived in the Serengeti, and the forests and steppes would be transformed into deserts because of it. He was convinced that pastoral tribes inherently destroy the ecosystems in which they live. A gross misconception, as prominent scientists of the day could have told him. Conservationist David Western for example, who lived in Kenya and had spent many years studying the Massai, had come to the conclusion that: "The herdsmen are actually the reason that there are still so many wild animals here." [5] But the ignorance of outsiders was mightier than the experience of experts on site.
In 1959 Bernhard Grzimek followed up with the bestseller: 'Serengeti Shall Not Die'. The book was translated into 17 languages and served son Michael as the template for a film of the same name, which promptly received an Oscar nomination. The Grzimeks' main message: If we want to save the Serengeti, the Massai have to go. Nature as a human-free zone -- no one formulated and propagated this mantra of an elite Western Nature apotheosis better and more incisively than the Frankfurt Zoo director. Grzimek concealed his racist-tinged views behind the stilted vocabulary of the well-meaning: "We Europeans must teach our black brothers to value their own possessions, not because we are older or cleverer, but because we do not want them to repeat our mistakes and sins." [6] The general public and Hollywood applauded, and the British colonial administration tried -- shortly before the launch of 'Serengeti Shall Not Die' -- to pull its head out of the noose.
In 1958 the colonial authorities submitted a declaration to the Massai chiefs for their signature. It stated that they and their people would agree to leave the Serengeti Park "voluntarily". 30 years later, Raymond Bonner, a New York Times reporter, tracked down one of the few surviving signatories: Tendemo ole Kisaka. The old man told Bonner how the "signing" of the contract had gone down: "We were told to sign. It was not explained to us. None of the tribal leaders could read or write." The old man then added, grinning "You white people are very tough." [7]
A people that had lived in the Serengeti for 4,000 years was expelled -- a cruel and bloody operation in which 100,000 Massai lost their homeland. From faraway London a tight group of aristocratic big game hunters-cum-nature-conservationists looked on with approval as the German zoo director carried out his plan. Grzimek's sweeping Serengeti campaign presumably inspired the elite old boys' club to come up with their own, much bigger project: the WWF -- a sort of international avant-garde advocating for the wilderness.
Most indigenous tribal languages have no word for "wilderness". They simply exist, as do the plants and animals with and from which they live. "Environment" is the material basis of all life: no indigenous people on earth would ever dream of willfully destroying the wilderness. Their "nature conservation" is an organic outgrowth of the oneness of man and nature. For Western conservationists, on the other hand, the "virgin forest" is a nostalgic notion; the dream of a paradise lost -- Europeans and North Americans have, of course, long since thoroughly annihilated their own primeval forests. A subconscious collective sense of guilt now motivates us to try to save the last remaining "paradises" in the Southern Hemisphere, whatever the indigenous people think of the methods. Indigenous peoples and the vast majority of Western conservationists do not speak the same language.
The expulsion of indigenous tribes on the grounds of nature conservancy is a US American invention, introduced in practice for the first time in 1851 in Yosemite Valley, in California, when Governor Peter Burnett threatened the local Indians in the valley with a "war of extinction". Major James Savage, who went on to execute the plan, spelled out exactly what the governor's statement meant: "Satan entered paradise and did all the mischief he could. I intend to be a bigger devil in this Indian paradise than old Satan ever was." [8]
Some Native Americans managed to survive the asymmetric war. But then naturalist John Muir, founder of The Sierra Club, the world's first nature conservancy society, came along and took care of them, too. Muir knew the Yosemite Valley from his own wilderness wanderings. He, too, expressed revulsion for the indigenous people there. He found them to be "unclean", and was repulsed by their eating habits: a fruit and vegetable diet supplemented with protein from flies and ants. John Muir pressured the federal government in Washington to rid the valley of "such debased fellow beings", and to declare it a US National Park. He maintained the Indians were just "nomads" passing through and had never had permanent settlements in the valley. That was an outright falsification of history: for about 4,000 years the Yosemite Valley area had been a cultural homeland and botanical breadbasket of the Miwok, Yokut, Paiute and Ahwahneechee tribes -- with fields, meadows, fruits and medicinal herbs.
In 1964 the Wilderness Act was signed into law in the USA giving legal footing to the romantic fiction of a nature paradise untouched by humans. The text of the act defines wilderness as ': .. an area where the earth and its community of life are untrampled by man, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain". Yosemite National Park has served as a model for the WWF and other major conservationist organizations, such as Conservation International, who have exported the scheme throughout the world. Since the founding of the WWF, the national park ideology has led to mass resettlement in the name of nature conservancy. An estimated 20 million people worldwide have fallen victim to these initiatives. These conservation refugees are without exception people of color: First Nations; black tribes; Adivasi, Pygmy; Dayak and Papua peoples.
Prince Philip Comes Aboard
A final impulse for the establishment of the WWF came from Sir Julian Huxley, evolutionary biologist and president of the British Eugenics Society. In his view "The expansion of humanity is secondary to the preservation of other species." [9] Apparently that was especially applicable when the humans poised for "expansion" were black. Huxley also held a post at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, a foreign policy think tank that looked at population control, and how the Empire could continue securing natural resources long-term after the loss of its colonies.
In 1960 Huxley headed for Africa to see how the national parks were doing. In some countries the park grounds, with their valuable game stocks, covered more than 20 percent of the nation's total surface area. For three months Huxley travelled through eastern, central, and southern Africa and came to the conclusion that the nascent black governments were ruining the game reserves and national parks. He wrote articles about his observations for The Observer: In Kenya, Tanganyika and Rhodesia the wild animals had all but disappeared, he claimed: "Throughout the area, cultivation is extending, native cattle are multiplying at the expense of wild animals, poaching is becoming heavier and more organized, ... large areas are being overgrazed and degenerating into semi-deserts, and above and behind all this, the human population is inexorably mounting to press even harder on the limited land space." [10]
Huxley turned to Max Nicholson for help. The founder of the British organization Nature Conservancy was equally concerned about the developments: "We felt that under the African governments, all prospect of conservation of nature would be ended." [11] The two joined forces with respected ornithologist Peter Scott and together came up with the idea of founding a supranational organization that would use powerful financial backing and structural dominance to save the last of the African wilderness paradises that the white man called his own.
On an excursion on the sailing yacht Sceptre in the spring of 1961 Peter Scott asked HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, if he wouldn't like to become president of the new organization. In February 2011, in an interview my colleague Tibet Sinha conducted with Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace for our film 'The Silence of the Pandas', the Prince couldn't remember if the decisive conversation with Peter Scott had actually taken place on the yacht or on land. He had a vivid recollection, on the other hand, of Peter Scott's leadership proposal, and the fact that he had himself collaborated on the WWF charter. Ah, those happy and glorious early days! His clear, lively eyes sparkled cheerfully. The WWF is Prince Philip's life's work -- the only public arena where he can move at his ease, without having to fulfill the role of Prince Consort to the Queen.
Prince Philip summed up the founding story for us in his inimitable laconic upper-crust style: "Peter Scott said: 'We're going to set this thing up, would I be president?' I said: 'Well, I'll be president of the UK thing, but I won't be president of the international.' Because I happened to be president of the International Equestrian Federation at the time, and I said: 'I can't do two international things at once.' But I said that I happened to know that Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands is very interested in wild animals and conservation, and he happens to be staying at Claridges, so if you pop along and ask him, you may get him, which is what he did."
Prince Bernhard had, in fact, agreed to take on the presidency, and threw himself wholeheartedly into the task. He and his fellow WWF founders dreamed of creating a contiguous supranational park system stretching from Kenya to South Africa -- under their control. On September 11th, 1961, in one of the last convulsions of Empire, the World Wildlife Fund was born, with headquarters in Gland, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva.
Gerti the Rhinoceros
To get the national parks of Africa whipped into tiptop shape the WWF would need a lot of money -- from rich philanthropists and the general public alike. To induce the average working stiff to donate generously, WWF PR tacticians came up with a commercial strategy that the designated Vice President Peter Scott referred to as a "shock tactic". The ad agency Mather & Crowther had apparently searched worldwide for horrifying images of animal massacres. The result was a WWF brochure entitled 'Save the World's Wildlife.'
To effectively spread its message among the common folk, the WWF did a deal with the Daily Mirror, which still had a circulation of over 5 million at the time. On October 9th, 1961 a special issue hit the newsstands: six pages chock-a-block with the most gruesome pictures from the WWF brochure. The front page sported a photo of mama Rhinoceros Gerti side-by-side with her baby, along with a dramatic appeal to the conscience of readers: "DOOMED to disappear from the face of the earth ... UNLESS something is done swiftly, animals like this rhino and its baby will soon be as dead as the dodo." The ill-fated dodo bird, that iconic poster child of extinction, was an effective reference for stirring public sympathies.
The shock treatment had encouraging results: within four days 20,000 people had donated money to the WWF to help save the endangered animals -- in the belief that their hard-earned savings would actually go to help Gerti and her kind. But according to the research of British journalist Kevin Dowling the WWF did not invest a single penny of the proceeds from this first big fundraising campaign in saving the endangered rhinos. Not until twelve years later, it seems, did WWF funds finally make their way into an initiative to help save the rhinoceros. [12] I wanted to dig deeper, so I contacted WWF South Africa, but they refused my request for an interview.
Apparently the WWF had no guilty conscience about manipulating the good will of the donors. On the contrary, it took unscrupulous advantage of people's sympathy with the plight of the animals. Clear evidence of this can be found in a lecture given by WWF co-founder Max Nicholson shortly after the first big donation drive at an event with WWF campaign managers in Zurich. Nicholson blithely enthused: "We have, therefore, good confirmation of our diagnosis of the publicity value of the world wildlife emergency and the possibilities of converting it into effective money-raising." [13]
The ploy was so effective that the WWF has continued to use it, more or less unaltered, to this day. The focus shifts every year to a different protagonist from a roster of "charismatic" animals -- tigers, whales, elephants & Co. take turns strumming the heartstrings of the public.
Oil in Their Blood
In 1962, when Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands took office as President of WWF International, he brought an old friend on board as a major sponsor: John H. Loudon, General Director of petrochemicals giant Royal Dutch Shell. That was a bonanza for the WWF, but was also the source of much friction with other nature conservancy organizations -- at the time, Shell was generating its biggest profits with patents on pesticides based on chlorinated hydrocarbons. [14]
In that same year of 1962 several scientific journals revealed that these very pesticides were extremely hazardous for wild animals. There had been repeated mass die-offs of birds that had pecked at grain and seeds treated with Shell products. Instead of a serious self-critical response to the findings, the company responded with a salvo of counter-studies from subservient scientists.
In its effort to fend off the unpleasant truth Shell could rely completely on the help of the WWF. Prince Bernhard himself distributed an argument paper from Shell boss John H. Loudon to the WWF Board of Trustees. In his paper, Loudon asked the WWF to refrain from expressing criticism about the hazardous substances. He emphasized the "humanitarian usefulness" of the pesticides, which lay in their ability to prevent famine in the world. [15]
Sir Peter Scott, the renowned British bird lover, was the only one at the meeting of WWF leadership elite to raise a voice of dissent against the audacious argumentation advanced by Shell. Sir Peter said that, in truth, "greed" and the "total disregard of the natural environment" posed the largest threat to life on earth. But he, too, failed in the end to insist on a public condemnation of WWF sponsor Shell. It was agreed that a decision on the matter be postponed -- in fact, the WWF remained silent on the subject in the years that followed. The silence lasted until the mid-1970s, when the subject of CHC pesticides conveniently took care of itself: they were finally banned in the USA and most other countries on earth.
Over the years there were repeated debates in the WWF Executive Committee about whether they should be accepting financial contributions from "irresponsible" businesses. After protracted consideration, in the early 1980s the committee finally arrived at the definitive decision: better not to be so strict. It was "difficult to impossible" to make a moral judgment about a company. According to the minutes of an Executive Committee meeting, one member even quoted the Church as a precedent: "It was observed that no church refused donations from sinners." [16]
Three years after the pesticide scandal the relationship with the oil multinational had grown even closer. In 1966 John H. Loudon, by that time no longer General Director of Shell but Chairman of its Supervisory Board, became a member of the Executive Committee of WWF International, on the recommendation of Prince Bernhard. The oil industry could now have an even more direct influence on the environmental strategy of the biggest nature conservancy organization on Earth. That would payoff just a year later.
On March 18th, 1967 the oil tanker Torrey Canyon ran aground on a reef in the English Channel. The supertanker, which was chartered by British Petroleum (BP), broke apart; 200 kilometers of British and French coastal areas were contaminated by a massive oil spill -- the first in post-war history. 15,000 seabirds died an agonizing death, and the oil industry came under massive public fire. The WWF alone showed polite restraint. The International Executive Committee decided not to join other environmental groups in their condemnation of BP and others "as this might compromise further fund-raising efforts and approaches to certain industries, particularly in the United States."' [17] The WWF top brass made only one concession, allowing the British section to launch a "seabird appeal", which went on to raise 5,000 pounds sterling. The money was used to support the de-oiling and resettlement of the birds. The WWF contented itself with cleaning up the mess made by its industrial partner. A business model with a future?
Old Pals
In 1975 a US Senate sub-committee led by Senator Frank Church was convened to investigate alleged illegal payments by the arms manufacturer Lockheed. The hearings revealed that the US firm had also arranged for bribery payments to Prince Bernhard, in exchange for orders by the Netherlands for Lockheed's Orion fighter jets. In its own investigation report from August 1976 the Dutch government acknowledged that the corruption charges had been founded.
Denial would have been folly anyway, as Prince Bernhard had left an all too obvious trail of evidence behind -- including a handwritten letter to the arms company in which the Prince petitioned them for two million dollars commission. Too much, said the Lockheed bosses and sent manager Roger Bixby Smith to the Netherlands. At a meeting with the Prince at Soestdijk Palace they agreed on a compromise: Lockheed would transfer one million dollars for Bernhard to a numbered account in Geneva, on the condition that the Dutch government ordered at least four Orion jets. When the story eventually came to light, Prince Bernhard said in his defense that the money had all been for a good cause -- the WWF. However, he was never able to prove this.
In 1995, while researching the history of the WWF, British journalist Kevin Dowling discovered that Prince Bernhard had acted as a lobbyist for the US Lockheed concern since 1959 -- long before the bribery scandal. Dr. Max Ilgner, an old friend from the Nazi era, had brokered the contact. The former management board member of the notorious IG Farben chemical company had done his time for war crimes, and was now working for Lockheed. At IG Farben Max Ilgner had headed the NW7 department (industrial espionage), among other things. One of his subordinates had been Prince Bernhard zur Lippe-Biesterfeld, who worked as an assistant manager at the Paris branch. [18]
In 1937 the Prince left the company to marry the Dutch crown princess Juliane. Prince Bernhard hadn't just been an IG Farben spy, but a member of the elite Nazi cavalry regiment, the Reiter-SS, as well -- a biographical detail that he prudently withheld from the Dutch.
When the Lockheed scandal broke in 1976 Prince Bernhard became untenable as President of the WWF and, at the request of the Executive Committee, resigned the office. His friend John H. Loudon, Chairmen of the Board of Dutch Royal Shell, followed the Prince into the post. Contrary to the fears of WWF headquarters, the Lockheed scandal in the Netherlands led to only a minor dip in donations to the WWF. It takes more than a bit of corporate corruption to shake the faith of a true Panda believer.
Prince Bernhard left a political legacy that in some ways still influences the style and internal culture of the WWF today. The Prince, for example, had a soft spot for secret societies: he founded not only the elite, and for a long time top secret, Bilderberg Group, but also the sub-rosa WWF "order" known as The 1001 Club. The Prince also introduced the exclusive honors system that continues to contribute to the elite self-image of the contemporary organization.
The highest WWF honor is The Order of the Golden Ark, awarded "in recognition of special service to the conservation of the world's flora and fauna." If someone who hasn't actually performed the special service is nevertheless dying to wear the medal to the next Panda Ball, a donation of at least 100,000 dollars will do. Several rich aesthetes, such as Laurance Spelman Rockefeller, have elected for this option to get the hardware.
The second category in the WWF honors ranking, the Gold Medal for Outstanding Contemporary Conservationists, is less expensive. The WWF didn't even have to pay for the gold the medal is made of -- the South African Chamber of Commerce donated it. Honorees in this category also get a gold Rolex watch for their troubles.
One of the first recipients of the gold medal plus Rolex was Prof. Dr. Bernhard Grzimek, also a member of The 1001 Club. The Director of the Frankfurt Zoo embodied like no other the romantic soul of the WWF. Month for month, his raspy philanthropist's voice invoked the call of the wild from TV sets and in movie theatres. Despite his key role as poster boy for the WWF, Grzimek was an exotic specimen in The 1001 Club; almost all the other members were wealthy businesspeople who responded more to the call of cash than to that of the wilderness. These global players, such as Paris born, Swiss schooled British citizen and resident of Switzerland, the billionaire and hereditary religious leader Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, knew how to harmoniously combine nature conservancy and business. The Aga Khan, too, was a member of the secret WWF club and also served as Vice President of WWF International. His mighty and ancient family clan had invested billions in African countries -- which certainly did no harm to the power base and informal political network of the WWF.
The 250 square kilometre floor of the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania is home to thousands of elephants, buffalo, rhinoceros, flamingos and lions: the crater is a veritable Garden of Eden and is known as the ''eighth wonder of the world". The Massai were allowed to resettle there after being kicked out of the Serengeti. The crater offered salt and water for the Massai cattle. Then, two years after the mass resettlement, Tanganyika became independent.
In the new state of Tanzania that was formed after unification with Zanzibar, the white WWF functionaries held powerful sway. They controlled the national parks, and thus the flow of money to Africa for the protection of the national parks from the international nature conservancy organizations and Western countries. The conservationist lobby put persistent pressure on the government of the young country to have the Massai expelled from the new settlement area as well: the Ngorongoro nature reserve was overgrazed, and the Massai used too much water. The nature conservationists achieved their aim; in 1974 the Massai were forced to clear off once again.
The government sent military troops into the Ngorongoro who proceeded to drive the people from their huts and burn them down while the inhabitants looked on. [19] The soldiers also opened the kraals -- the traditional livestock enclosures that form the centerpiece of a village -- and drove the herds out of the crater. When the cattle instinctively returned, they were shot dead. Massai who resisted were bludgeoned and thrown into jail.
As soon as the mud huts of the Massai were gone, the tourism business took over, erecting huge tent campsites where thousands of tourists were allowed to stay. Promoters such as The Sierra Club offered "campers" from Europe and the USA luxury tents with real feather beds, hot showers and ice-cold beer. The ice was produced using generators that made an almighty racket in the crater day and night, and there was no longer any mention of water shortages.
In 1992 the government finally managed to enact a prohibition against camping in the crater basin. It was a triumph for the gorongoro Nature Reserve, but it would soon prove to be a Pyrrhic victory: not long afterwards a powerful investor appeared with plans for a luxury hotel smack in the middle of the conservation area, right on the edge of the crater. The park administration vetoed the proposal but the president of the country overruled them, ordering them to issue a special permit for the project. The investor wasn't just anyone, after all, but a special "friend" of the nation: the Ismaili Muslim hereditary Imam and multibillionaire HRH Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, member of the WWF 1001 Club and nephew of WWF Vice President Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan.
The nature reserve authorities were forced to bow to their higher-ups. An ecological disaster was predictable, because after the grand opening celebrations for the Serena Safari Lodge in 1996 safari tourism kicked in big time. For 630 dollars a night in the peak season tourists can now reside in a luxury hotel with all the creature comforts, right in the middle of the wilderness. Since then, 150 jeeps a day have rumbled through the crater -- for a big game photo shoot. After the thrills of the safari there is afternoon tea at the crater's edge with live entertainment: Massai warriors in their traditional red capes perform tribal dances for the upscale ecotourists, and the hotel offers excursions to "traditional Massai villages". The noble herdsmen have become dancing beggars, living from the alms of the tourist industry.
The Aga Khan's hotel and the neighboring hotel Ngorongoro Sopa, which was built later, consume an enormous amount of water. To serve their needs they pump fresh water out of the crater, and as a result more and more salt water from the Ngorongoro salt lake has seeped into the ground water. The forests in the crater are now dying as a consequence of salinization. But the tourists needn't feel troubled because, once again, the blame for the crisis is being placed squarely on the shoulders of the Massai, although they are only allowed to enter the crater once a day to give their cattle salt and water. A third resettlement of the Massai is already under discussion. On the edge of the crater not far from the Aga Khan's hotel a pyramid of unpolished stones rises up, marking a burial site. Here lies the mortal remains of Prof. Bernhard Grzimek and his son Michael. The Serengeti crusaders are gone, but their spirit lives on.
Skeletons in the Cupboard
Any unauthorized individual who penetrates the inner sanctum of the WWF pays dearly for it, as did British journalist Kevin Dowling. In 1990 Dowling, who had first made his name with nature films, came into the possession of internal WWF documents, including the 1001 Club membership list. And he would pay a heavy price indeed. His film 'The Secret of the Rhinoceros' about the secret African life of the WWF, was never shown; the research results disappeared into the archives of English TV broadcaster Channel 4. Dowling's career was in tatters: "I didn't stand a chance, because the WWF has connections that are just too powerful." Dowling never regained a professional foothold, earning his living with articles for a provincial newspaper until he died, an ailing and bitter man, in 2008. But he had been too good a journalist to just consign his discoveries to obscurity. He had made copies of secret documents and taken precautions to ensure that, one day, they would reemerge.
I picked up Kevin Dowling's trail on the Internet. A report in the Dutch newspaper 'Algemeen Dagblad' from January 17th, 2000 caught my eye: a Dutch lawyer called J. G. G. Wilgers had won a court case against the WWF, enabling him to use the term "criminal organization" to describe the WWF without fear of further legal repercussions. I called the lawyer in Goes, the Netherlands. He was immediately on fire, and very forthcoming: "In the early days, the WWF used the cover of nature conservancy to engage in criminal activities. Did you know that a commando with WWF connections allegedly even murdered people opposing the apartheid regime in South Africa?" For a moment I seriously considered just hanging up -- the honorable attorney from Goes obviously had an overactive imagination. On the other hand: if his accusations were false, why had he been acquitted? I asked if he would be willing to repeat his assertions in a recorded interview and to provide evidence to back them up. Wilgers hesitated before answering: "I would certainly be willing, but there's someone who knows more than I do." That someone was Rene Zwaap, who lives in the center of Amsterdam near the train station. I met him as arranged at a bustling and drafty Chinese restaurant called Yan.
Rene Zwaap was a thin, slightly bent man in his mid-forties with a big bushy head of hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He greeted all the Chinese waiters present by name. Before the Peking duck had landed on our table he had already smoked three cigarettes and run me through his biography: he was currently editor of the online news site Public Affairs; before that he wrote for the hard-hitting Dutch news weekly 'De Groene Amsterdammer'; he was busy at the moment working on two documentary films about the military history of the Netherlands and on a book about Prince Bernhard.
The German prince at the side of the popular Dutch monarch Queen Juliane had really turned Zwaap's head: "Bernhard has had a greater influence on Dutch history than people think. I once researched his time at IG Farben for a Dutch newspaper. Prince Bernhard got wind of it and summoned my publisher in to see him. They had a chat and ended up becoming good pals. Later my boss showed me a postcard he had received from Prince Bernhard. On the back was written: why is that impudent guy still working for you?"