How did Dag die? The Indonesian connection
More than six decades after his plane crashed it
remains the great Cold War mystery: Was UN secretary-general (1953-61) Dag Hammarskjöld (above) killed by sabotage, a technical fault, pilot error or air attack? If he was assassinated who was the
mastermind?
Dr Greg Poulgrain, who
teaches Indonesian history at the University of the Sunshine Coast, suggests
the Swedish peacemaker was killed under directions from the US Central
Intelligence Agency’s hard-right director Allen Dulles (1893-1969).
The Australian academic’s theory has been given
weight by the little-noted release in August of a UN investigation into the death
of Hammarskjöld and the 15 passengers and crew on 18 September 1961.
The chartered Douglas DC-6 started from Leopoldville
(now Kinshasa) where it had been parked unattended.
It was heading to cease-fire
negotiations in Ndola between UN forces and local militia when
it smashed into a forest in Zambia (then Rhodesia) during the landing approach.
The 100-page UN report recommends further
disclosures from governments, including the US and UK which allegedly hold
unreleased air traffic records. Poulgrain
suggests the altimeter records be re-checked and technicians traced.
The UN investigation led by former Tanzania Chief Justice
Mohamed Chande Othman, was initiated by new info about the tragedy.
A 2019
Danish documentary Cold Case Hammarskjöld suggested the DC-6 was harassed
by a small fighter plane during descent, though it seems no bullet holes were
found in the wreckage.
Researchers on the
film told Othman of documents from the South
African Institute for Maritime Research. Despite the benign title, it’s claimed this
was a pro-apartheid clandestine militia linked to a foreign intelligence
agency,
This information surfaced apparently by chance during
South Africa’s 1998 Truth and
Reconciliation Commission hearings. Chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu released
a folder from the National Intelligence Agency.
Inside were letters referring to a plan to
assassinate Hammarskjöld and involving Dulles. It was called Operation Celeste
(heavenly, as in celestial).
Othman never saw the originals so they haven’t been
authenticated. This is despite several requests to SA authorities.
The UN inquiry’s other source is Poulgrain’s 2020
book JFK vs. Allen Dulles: Battleground
Indonesia.
The author interviewed two UN officials, the Irish
intellectual and politician Conor Cruise O’Brien, and Australian diplomat George
Ivan Smith, ‘Hammarskjöld’s right-hand man’.
They claimed the Secretary-General had been
intentionally killed. Smith asserted there were two CIA planes on the Ndola
tarmac waiting for Hammarskjöld’s flight, one full of communications gear,
though it’s unclear what this implies.
Poulgrain also cited 14 inquiries on US intelligence
activities led by US Democrat Senator Frank Church (1924-84). Some referred to Operation Celeste and this extract:
‘UNO is becoming troublesome and it is felt that
Hammarskjöld should be removed. Allen Dulles agrees and has promised full
cooperation from his people.’
Most theories about the plane crash involve
hostility to Hammarskjöld’s mediation
efforts during the Congo civil war (1960-65) following the new nation’s
liberation from Belgium.
Poulgrain links the alleged assassination to
Indonesia. He says Smith revealed that before
heading to the Congo, Hammarskjöld had been focused on the sovereignty of West
New Guinea.
The Indonesian Republic under first President
Soekarno wanted to seize the resource-rich western half of the island of New
Guinea, then Dutch territory.
The dispute
was eventually resolved in 1969 through a referendum (‘An Act of Free Choice’).
The Indonesian military selected 1,025 village chiefs who voted to join the
Republic.
Poulgrain suggests that Dulles as head of the CIA wanted
Hammarskjöld removed because he favoured ‘the independence of the Papuan
people.’
His policy was supported by President John Kennedy
but opposed by Dulles who was also involved with a company that had discovered
massive gold deposits in West Papua, now the Grasberg mine.
Dulles (left) was a heavy-duty anti-Communist Republican
who specialized in forceful regime changes.
Under his rule, the CIA engineered coups in Iran and Guatemala and failed assassination attempts against
Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
A US Senate investigation found Dulles responsible
for the death of Congo PM Patrice Lumumba in the same year Hammarskjöld died.
The disastrous 1961
Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by CIA-funded Cuban exiles led to Dulles forced
resignation.
Hammarskjöld was the
opposite, a poet and philosopher as well as a diplomat. He was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize.
London University
researcher Dr Susan Williams, author of Who
killed Hammarskjöld? called him ‘a
courageous and complex idealist, who sought to shield the newly-independent
nations of the world from the predatory instincts of the Great Powers’.
After the Swede’s death
Kennedy commented: ‘I realise now that in comparison to him, I am a small man.
He was the greatest statesman of our century.’
Former Democrat President
Harry
Truman told a journalist Hammarskjöld ‘was on the point of getting something done
when they killed him. Notice that I said 'when they killed him'.’ He would not elaborate.
A clearly frustrated Othman thinks the truth has
still to be found. His report urges the
UN to continue pushing its members to release info he sought:
‘The passage of time has not reduced the
significance of this matter to the families of the victims of flight SE-BDY,
who died serving the noble aims of the UN.
‘Nor has it become less important for the organization
itself that a true accounting of history be made.
‘My assessment remains that it is of the highest
probability that specific and important information exists, but that it has not
been disclosed by a small number of member states.’
First published in Pearls & Irritations 12 November 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/how-did-dag-hammarskjold-die-the-cia-and-indonesian-connection/
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