50 years ago UN SEC. GEN's plane crashed. He dared support revolutionary African leaders.

[Distant Observer]

UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold served in the tumultuous period during which the colonial empires in Africa were being dismantled. He became known for bucking Western interests and for seeking conciliation with revolutionary pan-Africanist leaders.

In September 1961 the plane carrying the Secretary General and a delegation on a peace mission to the Congo exploded en route, killing all 16 aboard.

----------
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/17/dag-hammarskjold-un-secretary-general-crash

Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down

Eyewitnesses claim a second aircraft fired at the plane raising questions of British cover-up over the 1961 crash and its causes

New evidence has emerged in one of the most enduring mysteries of United Nations and African history, suggesting that the plane carrying the UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld was shot down over Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) 50 years ago, and the murder was covered up by British colonial authorities.

A British-run commission of inquiry blamed the crash in 1961 on pilot error and a later UN investigation largely rubber-stamped its findings. They ignored or downplayed witness testimony of villagers near the crash site which suggested foul play. The Guardian has talked to surviving witnesses who were never questioned by the official investigations and were too scared to come forward.

The residents on the western outskirts of the town of Ndola described Hammarskjöld's DC6 being shot down by a second, smaller aircraft. They say the crash site was sealed off by Northern Rhodesian security forces the next morning, hours before the wreckage was officially declared found, and they were ordered to leave the area.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/154384.stm

The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission has released documents which it says point to a possible international plot to kill the United Nations' Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold in 1961.

Mr Hammarskjold and 15 other people died when their plane exploded just before landing in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia. He had been trying to mediate a peace agreement between Congo and the breakaway province of Katanga.

The commission says eight letters it uncovered during its investigation into apartheid-era crimes suggest South African, British and American secret services might have been involved.

BBC Correspondent Greg Barrow in South Africa says that at the time of the crash the Cold War superpowers were jostling for influence in the Congo and western governments were not entirely comfortable with Mr Hammarskjold's conciliatory approach to the demands of revolutionary African leaders.

'Hammarskjold should be removed'

The letters are said to record meetings between the South African military, the American CIA and Britain's MI5 security service. The letters are headed the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR) - thought to be a front company for the South African military.

One of the letters says: "In a meeting between MI5, special ops executive and the SAIMR, the following emerged _ it is felt that Hammarskjold should be removed." The undated letter says: "Allen Dulles has promised full co-operation from his people."

Another document gives details of orders to plant explosives in the wheel bay of an aircraft. It says they were primed to go off as the wheels were retracted on takeoff.

[DrunkenBoat]

1. Doesn't surprise me a bit. I wonder about Olaf Palme, too.

A pivotal, renowned, and polarizing figure domestically as well as in international politics since the 1960s until his death, Palme held steadfast to traditional Swedish non-alignment juxtaposed to vocal, political, and financial support of third world liberation movements following the process of decolonization, including, most controversially, several Marxist and totalitarian regimes. In 1975, he was the first head of a Western democratic government to visit Cuba after its revolution, holding a speech on Plaza de la Revolución praising Fidel Castro's government.

Frequently a critic of US and Soviet foreign policy, he resorted to vocal and often harsh criticism to pinpoint resistance towards imperialist ambitions and authoritarian regimes, including those of Francisco Franco of Spain, Gustav Husak of Czechoslovakia, and B J Vorster and P W Botha of South Africa. Palme's steadfast opposition to apartheid has made theories of South African involvement in his death some of the most prolific, even a quarter of a century after his assassination. His murder on a street in Stockholm on February 28, 1986 was the first of its kind in modern Swedish history and had a great impact across Scandinavia...

Shortly before his assassination, Palme had been accused of being pro-Soviet and not sufficiently safeguarding Sweden's national interest. Arrangements had therefore been made for him to go to Moscow to discuss a number of contentious bilateral issues, including alleged Soviet submarine incursions into Swedish waters (see U 137).

Security had never been a major issue, and Olof Palme could often be seen without any bodyguard protection. The night of his murder was one such occasion. Walking home from a cinema with his wife Lisbet Palme on the central Stockholm street Sveavägen, close to midnight on February 28, 1986, the couple was attacked by an assassin. Palme was fatally shot in the back at close range. A second shot was fired at Lisbet Palme, the bullet scratching her back. She survived without serious injuries.

Two years later, Christer Pettersson (d.2004), a small-time criminal and drug addict, was arrested, tried and convicted for Palme's murder. Pettersson's conviction was later overturned on appeal to the Svea Court of Appeal. As a result the crime remains unsolved and a number of alternative theories as to who carried out the murder have since been proposed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olof_Palme

[Distant Observer]

4. But of course, our folks always tell the truth. NOT!

[DrunkenBoat]

5. Closer to say they never do. Congenital liars, you know, lie just for the hell of it

even when there's nothing to lie about.

Not to say the other team(s) are any better.

[Distant Observer]

10. Of Course, the US denied any involvement in overthrow of Congo's Lumumba - then the DOCS leaked

Patrice Lumbumba was the inspiring revolutionary leader of newly independent Congo who passionately championed self-reliance and pan-African unity. After his overthrow, a puppet regime was installed, the mineral wealth of the Congo was raped, MILLIONS DIED in subsequent factional wars and social turmoil.

- - - - -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A35560-2002Jul20¬Found=true


http://www.africaresource.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=764:opening-the-secret-files-on-lumumbas-murder&catid=141:politics&Itemid=350

Opening the Secret Files on Lumumba's Murder

Wednesday, 07 July 2010 05:37 Africa
E-mail Print

By Stephen R. Weissman

Washington Post, July 21, 2002

In his latest film, "Minority Report," director Steven Spielberg portrays a policy of "preemptive action" gone wild in the year 2054. But we don't have to peer into the future to see what harm faulty intelligence and the loss of our moral compass can do. U.S. policies during the Cold War furnish many tragic examples. One was U.S. complicity in the overthrow and murder of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

Forty-one years ago, Lumumba, the only leader ever democratically elected in Congo, was delivered to his enemies, tortured and summarily executed. Since then, his country has been looted by the U.S.-supported regime of Mobutu Sese Seko and wracked by regional and civil war.

The conventional explanation of Lumumba's death has been that he was murdered by Congolese rivals after earlier U.S. attempts to kill him, including a plot to inject toxins into his food or toothpaste, failed. In 1975, the U.S. Senate's "Church Committee" probed CIA assassination plots and concluded there was "no evidence of CIA involvement in bringing about the death of Lumumba."

Not so. I have obtained classified U.S. government documents, including a chronology of covert actions approved by a National Security Council (NSC) subgroup, that reveal U.S. involvement in -- and significant responsibility for -- the death of Lumumba, who was mistakenly seen by the Eisenhower administration as an African Fidel Castro. The documents show that the key Congolese leaders who brought about Lumumba's downfall were players in "Project Wizard," a CIA covert action program. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and military equipment were channeled to these officials, who informed their CIA paymasters three days in advance of their plan to send Lumumba into the clutches of his worst enemies. Other new details: The U.S. authorized payments to then-President Joseph Kasavubu four days before he ousted Lumumba, furnished Army strongman Mobutu with money and arms to fight pro-Lumumba forces, helped select and finance an anti-Lumumba government, and barely three weeks after his death authorized new funds for the people who arranged Lumumba's murder.

[DrunkenBoat]

14. seems like hammarskold's assassination was prelim for the congo wars which continue to the present

[Distant Observer]

16. The Interim was a 30 yr rule of one of the worlds most brutal and rapacious dictators

Thirty two years of rule by CIA puppet Mobutu Sese Seko made him one of the world's wealthiest heads of state, and perhaps the most brutal of dictators.

His personal appetite for luxury and wealth spawned a system of official corruption so rapacious that he left behind a country in ruin, where vast revenue from lucrative mines has all been squandered or squirreled away in private foreign bank accounts, never to be recovered.

[pnorman]

11. American Socialist Michael Harrington's biography, "The Other Amerifcan"

It's related than when Michael came to Sweden to visit Olaf Palme, he was startled at the total absence of "security", as well as lack of formality of any sort.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. a lot of this crap has been going on for like ever

not surprising.

[Distant Observer]

3. This historical anniversary should remind of the logic of the UN role and Western interest in Liby...

[malaise]

15. DIng ding we havve a winner

Nothing has changed except back then it was covert -now they don't fugging care.

[War Horse]

18. Would have rec'ed if not for this...

Hammarskjöld was a great man. Neither you nor I have any idea what he would have thought about the Libyan intervention.

[Distant Observer]

19. Understand, of course. We do know that he opposed Western powers trying enforce policy in Africa

[Art_from_Ark]

6. Dag was a good man

[Distant Observer]

7. He actually tried to push the avowed vision of the UN. Today as SEC Gen dares not do so.

[Distant Observer]

12. Weird thing was that all happenned under Kennedy, who supposedly decried it all???

Kennedy reportedly cried when he heard of Lumumba's torture and murder -- But it later came out that the CIA was working hand in hand with the Belgian secret forces who engineered the coup, torture and secret execution.

[Octafish]

17. Perhaps CIA wasn't paying attention to Kennedy?

For years, the agency's friends in the media have repeated the lie that it was JFK who ordered the hit on Castro. But, it was Eisenhower and Nixon who OK'd the plot in 1960, so the agency approached the mafia for the expertise.

Same goes for Vietnam. A hell of a lot of people have repeated the lie that JFK woulda done what LBJ did. The record is now clear: 'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam

I wish more people knew these facts -- and I certainly expect more Democrats to know them.

[blindpig]

8. UN Sec Gen, head of state, all grist for the mill...

Stay out of the way of the imperialists if ya know what's good for ya....

[court jester]

9. interesting wiki stuff

"President of the United States John F. Kennedy called Hammarskjöld “the greatest statesman of our century".



"...At the time of Hammarskjöld's death, Western intelligence agencies were actively involved in the political situation in the Congo,<9> which culminated in Belgian and American support for the secession of Katanga and the assassination of former prime minister Patrice Lumumba.

...Belgium and the United Kingdom had a vested interest in maintaining their control over much of the country's copper industry during the Congolese transition from colonialism to independence. Concerns about the nationalization of the copper industry could have provided a financial incentive to remove either Lumumba or Hammarskjöld.<9> Belgium has since publicly acknowledged and apologized for its negligence in the death of Lumumba..."

(there's a "conspiracy theory" that turned into "conspiracy fact")

..."On 19 August 1998, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), stated that recently uncovered letters had implicated the British MI5, the American CIA, and then South African intelligence services in the crash.<16>...

..."In his speech to the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly on 23 September 2009, Colonel Gaddafi called upon the Libyan president of UNGA, Ali Treki, to institute a UN investigation into the assassinations of Congolese prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, who was overthrown in 1960 and murdered the following year, and of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961.<19>..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dag_Hammarskjold

[Odin2005]

13. K&R