UN Hammarskjöld investigation: 2024 Report (just published)
Courtesy of Dr. Susan Williams:
Investigation into the conditions and circumstances resulting in the tragic death of Dag Hammarskjöld and of the members of the party accompanying him
Attached is the 2024 Report of Justice Mohamed Chande Othman, who was appointed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres to lead the investigation into the tragic plane crash in September 1961 that killed UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and the 15 people accompanying him. The 2024 Report has just been published and is available in the six official languages of the UN. The English-language version is attached.
The release of the 2024 Report is accompanied by a timely video:
The 2024 Report advances the collective state of knowledge. At this juncture, Justice Othman assesses it to remain plausible that an external attack or threat was a cause of the crash. Justice Othman notes that the alternative hypotheses that appear to remain available are that the crash resulted from sabotage, or unintentional human error.
The 2024 Report is not able to reach a conclusion regarding the ultimate cause of the crash. It states that the primary obstacle to reaching any such definitive conclusion is the lack of full disclosure of specific and crucial information by a small number of UN Member States. The report states: ‘the three key Member States that are most likely to hold significant undisclosed information, being South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, have not disclosed any new material information since 2017.’ (p 71, para 299)
The 2024 Report makes six recommendations, which are set out in the conclusion and have the support of Secretary General Guterres. The first of these recommends that the UN investigation should continue.
Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert F Kennedy and matriarch of political dynasty, dies aged 96
Ethel Kennedy’s life was famously marred by tragedy but, despite this personal heartbreak, she dedicated her time to advocating for the human rights of others. Ariana Baio and Alice Hutton write
Ethel Kennedy, the widow of former senator Robert F Kennedy and steely-eyed matriarch of America’s elite political dynasty who leaves behind her own strong legacy of human rights work, has died at the age of 96.
Her death was announced by her grandson Joe Kennedy III in a post on X on Thursday, coming just days after the family announced she had suffered a stroke and was “comfortable” in hospital.
“It is with our hearts full of love that we announce the passing of our amazing grandmother, Ethel Kennedy. She died this morning from complications related to a stroke suffered last week. Along with a lifetime’s work in social justice and human rights, our mother leaves behind nine children, 34 grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren, along with numerous nieces and nephews, all of whom love her dearly,” said the former Massachusetts Congressman.
“She was a devout Catholic and a daily communicant, and we are comforted in knowing she is reunited with the love of her life, our father, Robert F. Kennedy; her children David and Michael; her daughter-in-law Mary; her grandchildren Maeve and Saoirse; and her great-grandchildren Gideon and Josie. Please keep her in your hearts and prayers.”
Kennedy’s life was famously marred by tragedy, with the tragic deaths of both her parents in a private plane crash, her husband’s assassination in 1968, and the deaths of two of her children – one to an accidental overdose, the other to a skiing accident.
But despite her personal heartbreak, Kennedy was well-known for her dedication to advancing the human rights of others.
She founded the Robert F Kennedy Human Rights organization in her late husband’s name, advocating for better living and working conditions around the world, in part by drawing attention to the climate crisis. For decades, she dedicated her time to the high-profile public service that came with both the privileges and burdens of the famous Kennedy name.
Born Ethel Skakel on April 11 1928 in Chicago, Illinois, she was the sixth of seven children to Anne and George Skakel.
The children were raised Catholic in what was, at first, a working-class family.
Their fortunes quickly transformed when George cofounded the coke and coal business Great Lakes Cola & Coke Company with some of his coworkers on the railroad. The business took off and eventually became the hugely successful Great Lakes Carbon Corporation.
With their newfound wealth, the family upped sticks and moved to the wealthy enclave of Greenwich, Connecticut. Kennedy was just five years old at the time of the move and went on to attend elementary and secondary school there.
It was while attending university at the Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart that she then met and became friends with Jean Kennedy — the sister of her future husband Robert F Kennedy.
In 1945, Jean introduced a then-17-year-old Kennedy to Robert while on a skiing trip in Quebec, Canada.
Five years later, the two married and began a life together.
By all accounts, Kennedy is said to have embraced her new identity as part of the prominent political dynasty and all the trappings of wealth, glamor and press speculation, as well as the hard work, expectations and intense pressure, that came with it.
In July 1951, around one year after the couple wed, Kennedy gave birth to their first child Kathleen.
Over the next 17 years, Kennedy would give birth to 10 other children: Joseph in 1952, Robert F Kennedy Jr in 1954, David in 1955, Mary “Courtney” in 1956, Michael in 1958, Mary “Kerry” in 1959, Christopher in 1963, Matthew “Max” in 1965, Douglas in 1967 and Rory in 1968.
In the early days of their marriage, Kennedy took on a largely traditional role, bringing up the children while supporting her husband as he pursued his political career.
But privately, Kennedy was known for her feisty personality and tough parenting style.
In the 2012 documentary Ethel, directed by daughter Rory, she was remembered for encouraging competitiveness, independence and political activism in her children from a young age.
And Kennedy also became more politically active over the years, campaigning for both her husband and brother-in-law in their pursuits in Washington.
When her husband became the chief counsel for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1957, Kennedy would often visit Capitol Hill daily to attend hearings — with her many children in tow, according to a 1987 Architectural Digest article.
Then, when John F Kennedy was elected president in 1960, he appointed his younger brother Robert as his attorney general. As a result, Kennedy and her husband bought a 13-bed mansion, Hickory Hill, in Virginia, from JFK and Jackie and their ever-expanding brood moved in.
There, Kennedy and her husband became known for hosting spirited social events.
The house would often be filled with campaign managers and speech writers who would later recall the Sound of Music-esque nightly ritual of the many children coming to bid their parents goodnight while they entertained their guests.
In 1963, the family was rocked by the assassination of JFK.
After his brother’s death, Robert pursued his own political ambitions – first with a successful run for the US senate, then with his own bid for president.
Kennedy supported him by joining him on the campaign trail — something she thoroughly enjoyed.
But, on June 5 1968, mere minutes after Robert won the California Democratic primary and celebrated his victory in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he was shot. He died from his injuries in hospital the next day.
Six months later, Kennedy gave birth to their youngest child Rory – as a widow and single mother of 11.
Kennedy declared she would never remarry due to her Catholic faith.
Instead, she dedicated the remainder of her life to honoring her husband’s memory and furthering the Kennedy clan.
Just months after Robert’s death, she established the Robert F Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights (now known as Robert F Kennedy Human Rights).
The nonprofit set out to create a team of leaders that would advocate to expose injustices, heal pain and suffering and work to enact positive change in governments and corporations around the world.
At its opening, Kennedy said: “[RFK] wanted to encourage the young people and to help the disadvantaged and discriminated against both here and abroad, and he wanted to promote peace in the world.”
For the next 50 years, Kennedy dedicated her life to doing exactly that.
She marched with Cesar Chavez, crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge with John Lewis, sat with Native Americans at Alcatraz, demonstrated outside South African and Chinese embassies, pulled tires out of the Anacostia River and more. She also co-chaired the Coalition of Gun Control.
Even at the age of 90, Kennedy joined a hunger strike in protest of the Trump administration’s policy to separate migrant families at the US-Mexico border.
Kennedy’s desire to promote peace and human rights across the globe was often seen to be, at least in part, her way of responding to the many tragedies she faces in life.
Early in her marriage to RFK in 1955, Kennedy’s parents died together in a private plane crash.
Her husband and brother-in-law were both assassinated.
Her son, David, died of an overdose while her son, Michael, was killed in a skiing accident.
Two of her granddaughters and her great-grandson also tragically died young.
But what endured throughout Kennedy’s life was the tough-as-nails personality she was well-known for.
While presenting her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the highest civilian honor – in 2014 for her dedication to social justice, then-President Barack Obama said it best:
“As her family will tell you, and they basically occupy this half of the room, you don’t mess with Ethel.”
READ MORE AT THE INDEPENDENT
Related:
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr |10 October, 2024
My mom, Ethel Skakel Kennedy, passed peacefully into Heaven this morning. She was 96. She died in Boston surrounded by many of her nine surviving children and her friends. God gave her 34 grandchildren, 24 great-grandchildren, and the energy to give them all the attention they required. He blessed her with a rich and eventful life. Even as she declined in recent months, she never lost her sense of fun, her humor, her spark, her spunk, and her joie de vivre. She wrung joy from every moment, but for 56 years she has spoken with yearning of the day she would reunite with her beloved husband. She is with him now, with my brothers David and Michael, with her parents, her six siblings, all of whom predeceased her, and her “adopted” Kennedy siblings Jack, Kick, Joe, Teddy, Eunice, Jean, Rosemary, and Patricia. From the day she met my father, her new family observed that she was “more Kennedy than the Kennedys.” She was never more enthusiastic about the afterlife than when she considered that she would also be reunited with her many dogs, including 16 Irish setters — all conveniently named “Rusty.”
The cognitive dissonance that allowed her to keep two inconsistent truths in her heart at the same time without budging made my mother a collection of irreconcilable convictions. Among these was her ironic combination of deep — nearly blind — reverence for the Catholic Church and irreverence toward its clerics. She was at once starstruck by America’s presidents, all of whom she came to know personally, and at the same time skeptical of government and toward all figures of authority. She balanced her contempt for pretension and hypocrisy with a boundless tolerance for error and mistakes in others.
God also endowed her with a perpetual attitude of gratitude that fueled her taste for adventure and an irrepressible buoyancy in a life beset by a continuous parade of heartbreaking tragedies. Her sunny optimism eventually brought my shattered father back to life following the assassination of his brother and then helped her children to thrive after her husband’s assassination five years later.
Among her most defining qualities were moral and physical fearlessness. She was a peerless equestrian and held the high jump record on horseback, jumping 7′9″ on a Quarter Horse. Critics named her among the best female amateur tennis players, and she was a competitive diver. But she did every sport well — from football to skiing, waterskiing and kayaking. Her disciplined stoicism and her deep faith in God enabled her to endure over ten years of pregnancy without complaint. She also suffered the murders of her husband and Uncle Jack, and the early deaths of two of her children. Various air crashes killed both of her parents, her brother, her sister-in-law, and her nephew John. She never enjoyed flying, but her worry never stopped her from boarding a plane. While giving short shrift to her own monumental suffering, she always showed intense compassion for others.
My mother invented tough love, and she could be hard on her children when we didn’t live up to her expectations. But she was also intensely loyal, and we always knew that she would stand fiercely behind us when we came under attack by others. She was our role model for self-discipline, for resilience, and for self-confidence. She deeded to each of her 11 children her love of good stories, her athleticism, her competitive spirit, and the deep curiosity about the world, and the intense interest in people of all backgrounds, which caused her to pepper everyone she met — from cab drivers to presidents — with a relentless cascade of questions about their lives. She also gave us all her love of language and for good storytelling. I credit her for all my virtues. I’m grateful for her generosity in overlooking my faults.
AARC STATEMENT ON SECOND ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT THIS YEAR
Sunday’s second assassination attempt against Donald Trump revives the era of assassination that existed in the United States in the 1960’s and 1970’s. We as a nation failed then to completely understand the problem and take steps to end it, and we are now repeating those tragedies. The government under both political parties has refused to release all the assassination records, or seriously study the earlier assassinations for lessons learned. In addition to protective measures, the government should engage in complete transparency related to our experience with political assassination.
Never-Before-Seen: New JFK Film Discovered
Footage Shows Frantic Moments After His Assassination
Former Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, who appears in the unearthed film clip, tells PEOPLE that the previously unreported footage is “an emotional thing” to watch six decades later
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2):format(webp)/jfk-assassination-2-97b927223c0140bf8bef77e989c86ada.jpg)
More than six decades after the murder of President John F. Kennedy, never-before-seen footage of the assassination’s immediate aftermath has come to light.
A minute-long, 8mm color film — the existence of which was previously unknown — will soon be sold through RR Auction. Online bidding is now underway, and the live auction is scheduled for Sept. 28.
The unearthed footage, in two parts, shows the president’s motorcade driving in downtown Dallas and then speeding toward Parkland Hospital as Clint Hill, Jackie Kennedy’s Secret Service agent, shields both her and the president.
After the first shot rang out on Nov. 22, 1963, Agent Hill leapt onto the back of the presidential limousine and placed his body spread-eagle over the back seat.
Now 92, Hill tells PEOPLE that the discovery of the film is “an emotional thing for me because I know what has happened. I know what I’m seeing in that film is a dead president.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x0:751x2):format(webp)/jfk-assassination-footage-5-090324-822d5d7d501a443fa3fcb00a563f3597.jpg)
The footage was shot by Dale Carpenter Sr., a local Dallas truck driver who filmed from Stemmons Freeway. Carpenter’s grandson, James Gates, tells PEOPLE that the film landed in his possession when his mother handed down family mementos sometime after his grandfather’s death from Parkinson’s disease.
“She gave me several reels of family films and audio recordings, a projector and the reel-to-reel audio recorder,” Gates says. “The film was stored in a plastic Dean Foods milk crate and had been in my closet for several years before I decided to put it in a fire safe.”
Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction, says, “Unlike any other footage known to exist, this film captures a segment immediately following the Zapruder film, providing a fresh perspective on one of the most analyzed moments in history.”
“Once you see it,” Livingston adds, “you’ll never forget Clint Hill’s heroic efforts to protect Mrs. Kennedy, racing at 80 miles an hour in a desperate attempt to save the president’s life as they sped to Parkland.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(479x529:481x531):format(webp)/Clint-Hill-Jackie-Kennedy-12-101822-c826ad4d05b249c6b4cf75cad634fb78.jpg)
The Zapruder film, taken by clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder, as the presidential motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza, is considered the most complete — and graphic — footage of the assassination, whereas the new footage depicts the aftermath as the presidential motorcade races to the hospital and Mrs. Kennedy leans over her wounded husband.
“It brings it back so vividly,” says Agent Hill’s wife, Lisa McCubbin Hill, with whom he wrote Mrs. Kennedy and Meand three additional bestsellers.
“It really brings the moment to life,” she continues. “When you see the president’s limousine, you see Clint on the back of the car. To see the speed of the car and how precarious that was — Clint is still trying to protect the president and Mrs. Kennedy from whatever else might be coming. One slip and he would have gone flying off and he would have been killed.”
There are two segments to Carpenter’s film. PEOPLE obtained the first segment, which can be seen below, that shows the presidential motorcade before it arrived at Dealey Plaza.
As Hill explains, Carpenter “initially missed seeing the president in his open top car, but he captured the rest of the motorcade. You see the back of the follow up car and then he made his way to Stemmons Freeway because the president was on his way to the Dallas Trade Mart to give a speech.
The second segment of the film shows the motorcade’s dramatic race to the hospital after President Kennedy was shot.
Not knowing at that point that Kennedy had been injured, Carpenter stood on the shoulder of the Stemmons Freeway hoping to catch a glimpse of the president. That’s when he captured the footage showing the first lady wearing her now-iconic bright pink suit, draped over the wounded president.
Gates decided to track Agent Hill down around 2012 to let him and his wife know that his grandfather had been holding onto private footage from the assassination.
“About 10 years or so ago, I started to research the JFK assassination, knowing I had something possibly of some historical value,” Gates says. “I found Clint and Lisa, but it wouldn’t be until another 10 years when I made the decision to properly preserve and archive the film.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(678x422:680x424):format(webp)/clint-hill-obit-tout-032624-b8e75abb225d490889f17d509f8c0656.jpg)
The Carpenter film will now be included in an upcoming documentary about Hill called Agent Number 9: The Clint Hill Story, which is set for release in 2025.
As remarkable as the film is, Hill says matter-of-factly, “It doesn’t change anything for me.” Nor does it bring the events of that horrible day back any more than usual.
“I’m back there all the time anyways,” he says.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 57
- Next Page »