U.N. Chief Calls for New Inquiry Into 1961 Plane Crash That Killed Dag Hammarskjold
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Version 0 of 1. UNITED NATIONS — For more than 50 years, the death of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold of the United Nations has been shrouded in mystery and a fair bit of conspiracy theory. On Monday, the United Nations’ current secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, announced that the plane crash that killed Mr. Hammarskjold should be reinvestigated after a panel he appointed had uncovered enough new information to suggest that the plane, which went down in late 1961 in Africa, could have been the target of an aerial attack or some other interference. Mr. Ban said the panel had put certain theories to rest, but had raised questions about others. He called for a new inquiry to “finally establish the facts.” In a cover letter attached to the panel’s report and released Monday, Mr. Ban called on governments to share information they might have about what happened the night of the crash. The panel was unable to persuade either the United States or Britain to make classified files available. Mr. Ban called it “our shared responsibility to pursue the full truth concerning the conditions and circumstances resulting in the tragic death of Dag Hammarskjold and the others accompanying him.” Mr. Hammarskjold, a Swede, was killed with 15 others in the crash on the night of Sept. 17 to 18, 1961, in a forest in the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia, an area that is now part of Zambia. Mr. Hammarskjold was on his way to broker a truce in the mineral-rich Katanga Province of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mr. Hammarskjold was awarded the 1961 Nobel Peace Prize after his death. There have been several investigations into the crash by both the United Nations and the authorities in the area where the plane went down. The three-member panel, which Mr. Ban appointed in March after a request by the 193-member General Assembly, interviewed new witnesses who said they had seen two planes in the sky, one of which caught fire in the air before crashing into the bush. The panel also considered testimony from two former United States officials who said they had listened to or read radio intercepts that suggested that Mr. Hammarskjold’s plane had been attacked. The report also said that the provincial government in Katanga, aided by foreign troops, may have had “air capability.” Mohamed Chande Othman, a Tanzanian prosecutor, led the panel, which included Kerryn Macaulay of Australia and Henrik Larsen of Denmark. The report said the panel had spoken to, among others, four charcoal burners who were in the forest the night of the crash, as well as to Susan Williams, a British academic and the author of a book on the disaster, and Paul Abram, a former United States military official who had been monitoring several radio frequencies as part of his assignment at a National Security Agency listening post. Mr. Abram told the panel that he remembered hearing that the plane had been shot down by ground fire. The charcoal burners described slightly different memories of seeing two planes in the air and one of them catching fire. The report also said the panel had learned that the cryptographic machine used by Mr. Hammarskjold had been “intentionally designed” to allow the N.S.A. and “other select intelligence agencies” to listen in. The panel dismissed an abiding suggestion that Mr. Hammarskjold had been assassinated after the plane crashed. It concluded, too, that there was only “weak” evidence that someone had planted explosives on the plane. Addressing a theory about crew fatigue, the panel wrote that it “does not, in and of itself, explain the cause of the crash or the extent, if at all, to which fatigue was a contributing factor to the crash.” In its recommendations, the panel urged Mr. Ban to urge concerned governments to “disclose, declassify or allow privileged access to the secretary general to information they may have” regarding Mr. Hammarskjold’s death. |