NSA files may hold key to ex-U.N. leader’s death
LONDON – The United States’ National Security Agency may hold crucial evidence about one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the Cold War: the cause of the 1961 plane crash that killed United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, a commission of prominent jurists says.
Widely considered the U.N.’s most effective chief, Hammarskjold died as he was attempting to bring peace to the newly independent Congo. It’s long been rumored that his DC-6 plane was shot down, and an independent commission set up to evaluate new evidence surrounding his death on Monday recommended a fresh investigation, citing radio intercepts held by the NSA as the possible key to solving the case.
“The only dependable extant record of the radio traffic, if there is one, will so far as we know be the NSA’s,” Commission Chairman Stephen Sedley said in his introduction to the report. “If it exists, it will either confirm or rebut the claim that the DC-6 was fired on or threatened with attack immediately before its descent.”
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Hammarskjold was flying into a war zone infested with mercenaries and riven by Cold War tension. Congo won its freedom from Belgium in 1960, but foreign multinationals coveted its vast mineral wealth and the country was challenged by a Western-backed insurgency in Katanga, which hosted mining interests belonging to United States, Britain and Belgium. They were also jockeying for influence with the Soviet Union, which was trying to spread communism to the newly independent nations of Africa.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/sep/10/nsa-files-may-hold-key-to-ex-un-leaders-death/
= new reply since forum marked as read
has some interesting tweets on the subject...
"When pressed to say to whom 'they' referred, Truman replied: 'That's all I've got to say on the matter. Draw your own conclusions.'"
Dag Hammarskjold was UN Secretary during the crisis in the Congo. Western interests were trying to break off mineral-rich Katagana Province.
Dag Hammarskjold wanted the Congo people to control their resources, and had backed Lumumba, whom CIA assets had killed earlier that year.
Hammarskjold stood in the way of rapacious western companies seeking Congo's mineral wealth.
So it appears the CIA under Allen Dulles saw to it that Hammarskold was removed as an obstacle.
A CIA operative named Bud Culligan told the Church Committee he had participated in CIA "EA's" - "executive actions," i.e., assassinations.
Culligan claimed he shot down Dag Hammarsjkold's plane. And there is a lot of correspondence that makes Culligan look credible re this.
When former Warren Commission member, President Ford made the comment that Rockefeller Commissioners would hide "assassinations" ...
... Daniel Schorr asked then CIA director William Colby about assassinations, Colby said "foreign." "Dag Hammarskjold?" was Schorr's guess.
9 Sep 2013 https://twitter.com/lisapease
BTW thanks for the kind words Octafish.
