Search Results for: Dag Hammarskjold

UN chief: Tanzanian to lead Hammarskjold air crash review

Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press | February 10, 2017 Updated: February 10, 2017 3:34pm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Tanzania’s former chief

United Nations Secretary General, Dag_Hammarskjöld

justice to review potential new information, including from South Africa, on the mysterious 1961 plane crash that killed U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Friday that Mohamed Chande Othman, who recently retired as Tanzania’s top judge, would lead the review which former U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon called for in August and the General Assembly requested in a resolution adopted on Dec. 23.

Hammarskjold was on a peace mission to newly independent Congo when his plane crashed in what is now Zambia.

The resolution asked the U.N. chief to appoint “an eminent person” to review and assess the value of any potential new information “to determine the scope that any further inquiry or investigation should take and, if possible, to draw conclusions from the investigations already conducted.”

An independent panel reviewing new information about the crash said in July 2015 that the United States and Britain retained some classified files, and that South Africa had not responded to several requests for information.

The panel’s 99-page report put to rest claims that Hammarskjold was assassinated after surviving the crash. But it has long been rumored that his DC-6 plane was shot down, and the panel provided new information about a possible aerial attack or interference.

The wreckage of the plane carrying Dag Hammarskjöld in a forest near Ndola in what is now Zambia. Photograph: AP

Ban said in a note last August that Britain again refused to release classified material in response to U.N. requests for information. He said responses from the United States and Belgium didn’t alter the panel’s conclusion that the possibility of an aerial attack or interference should be pursued.

Ban’s note included a letter dated July 1, 2016 from South Africa’s U.N. Mission saying the government fully supports the U.N. investigation and “the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development has directed that a search be undertaken for any documents, records or information.”

The panel had cited documents from the South African Institute for Maritime Research that refer to “Operation Celeste,” purportedly to “remove” Hammarskjold with cooperation from then U.S. CIA director Allen Dulles. It was not able to conclude whether the documents were authentic.

Ban said the United Nations also received additional information about Hammarskjold’s death after the panel’s report.

Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle

The Hammarskjöld Commission – Witness Statement of Lisa Pease

My name is Lisa Pease. I am a citizen of the United States. For the past 20 years, I have been studying the history of my country’s covert activities around the globe. This began with a study of the Kennedy assassinations, but quickly broadened into a survey of various coups and assassination plots involving the CIA, both acknowledged and alleged.

In the course of my research, a set of files on a man named Bud Culligan was sent to me by fellow researcher John Armstrong. In these documents, which I have attached as Exhibit A to this statement, Culligan claims that, while working for the CIA, he was responsible for a number of “Executive Actions,” i.e., assassinations. One of the assassinations he claims he was responsible for was that of Dag Hammarskjöld.

Culligan claims that he intercepted and shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane on orders from his CIA case officer. From my own study of the Hammarskjöld case, I believed then and continue to believe, especially in the light of the new evidence reported by Susan Williams in her excellent volume Who Killed Hammarskjöld, that the best evidence indicates Hammarskjöld’s plane was indeed shot out of the sky.

I did not find the suggestion the CIA was behind such an act far-fetched, either, from my research. I wrote about Lumumba, the CIA, and Culligan’s claims about Hammarskjöld in an article in Probe Magazine titled “Midnight in the Congo: The Assassination of Lumumba and the Mysterious Death of Dag Hammarskjöld.” I have attached a copy of this article as Exhibit B. A great deal of mineral wealth was at stake in the Congo, and Hammarskjöld was one of the few supporters of Patrice Lumumba at a critical time. The CIA has since admitted its interest in removing Lumumba, although they have stopped short of admitting direct responsibility.
As you will note in my article, I think that the claim the CIA was not, ultimately, responsible for the death of Lumumba falls short of the truth, and that the evidence shows the CIA was about as directly involved as possible, given its method of using cut-outs – agents not directly linked to the Agency – to perform such tasks.
I was persuaded, upon reading the entire collection of documents attached as Exhibit A, that Culligan was telling the truth about having shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane, as well as his role in other events. Certainly, government officials appeared to have also been convinced, as these documents will show.

That said, there is one thing that Culligan says that appears not to be true. He named three people he said were shooters in the Kennedy assassination, and claims he killed them in 1965. The names he gives are:

• Manuel Buesa
• Jose Cardona
• Manuel de Varona

I believe he was referring to Manuel Artime Buesa, Jose Miro Cardona, and Manuel Antonio de Varona, aka Tony Varona. All three were involved with the CIA in anti-Castro plots and may well have been involved in the assassination of Kennedy at some level. But all three died at different times and places than what Culligan claims.

This makes sense to me, and actually adds to his credibility. I believe Culligan, like many operatives, was not telling the full truth, but giving the CIA a warning shot across the bow. I think he was naming people in a coded reference that anyone close to the JFK plot would recognize. I believe Culligan was, as he said several times in the attached letters, trying to protect the CIA to the extent possible while attempting to regain his freedom and win the retirement he felt he was owed. As he expressed several times in the correspondence that is attached, Culligan took no pleasure in exposing the Agency’s plots and his own role in those regards. He was willing to give up all the plots but the Kennedy case. That was his ace in the hole, or so he seemed to believe.

Typically, people make up such stories because a) they want notoriety, b) they want money, or c) they want both. In Culligan’s case, he was clearly motivated, as the exchange of letters attached as Exhibit A will show, by the hopes that threatening to reveal the CIA’s dark secrets could get him out of jail and put him back on his planned path to retirement. This, too, lends to his credibility.

I believe, from my 20 years of research, that the CIA was directly responsible for the deaths of both John and Robert Kennedy, which I have written about at length in the book The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X, a volume I also co-edited. I have also been published on this subject in several other outlets, and my articles have been sourced in the books of many others. Culligan’s mention of these assassinations, and his acknowledgment of Agency sponsorship in both cases, is consistent with my research.

All I know about Culligan is what appears in the attached correspondence and some additional information provided in a Steamshovel Press article, included as Exhibit C. In the Steamshovel Press article, Lars Hansson, whom I have talked to a couple of times over the years in the course of my research, fills in a few additional details about Culligan’s life. To my knowledge, and in my limited interactions with him, Hansson has never lied to me, so I trust his reporting in this piece. (By contrast, I have also met Gordon Novel, who also appears in this article, and he has lied to me and others, although he has also told me information that was both true and significant.)
In the March 5, 1976 letter in which Culligan describes how he shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane, Culligan mentions going to confession after Nasser. I don’t know what Culligan means by this – whether he is saying he killed Nasser (who reportedly died of natural causes) or whether Culligan knew or assumed that someone else had. (The CIA had weapons that could kill people and leave no trace. In a famous Church Committee moment, CIA Director William Colby introduced a dart gun that could cause someone to have a heart attack in a way that would be undetectable in an autopsy.) In any case, I think you will agree, as you read through all the correspondence, that Culligan seems sincere and credible. Again, I must stress, from my research, none of this is beyond the realm of plausibility when it comes to what the CIA did, especially under Director Allen Dulles.

You will see from the correspondence that Culligan’s material was referred to an Attorney General, a Senator, and ultimately, the Senate investigation of the CIA’s activities at home and abroad that became known as the Church Committee after its leader, Senator Frank Church. Clearly, others in high places had reasons to believe Culligan’s assertions were worthy of further investigation.

I feel compelled to note, as an addendum, that despite the press accounts to the contrary, which were spun in part by the CIA’s assets in the media, both the Church Committee in the Senate and the simultaneous Pike Committee in the House of Representatives believed that the CIA had, at times, acted as a rogue elephant, out of control. Indeed, a published account of the House Committee’s report opens with these words regarding the Committee’s experience investigating the CIA: “If this Committee’s recent experience is any test, intelligence agencies that are to be controlled by Congressional lawmaking are, today, beyond the lawmaker’s scrutiny.”
That said, under Eisenhower, two brothers ran the whole of the U.S.’s foreign policy, with John Foster Dulles at the head of the State Department and his brother Allen heading the CIA. During Eisenhower’s term, advisors created a report showing the CIA was running around overthrowing governments, and Eisenhower declined to take action. This report was presented to him yearly, yet Eisenhower either turned a blind eye or supported these measures. (This is described in historian Arthur Schlesinger’s book on Robert Kennedy.)

When Kennedy took office, he ordered his Ambassadors around the globe to rein the CIA in. This was a direct reversal of policy under Eisenhower, where the CIA was allowed to command the Embassy, not the other way around.

It’s particularly important to note that while CIA employees have said that Kennedy ordered the assassination of Castro, the declassified CIA Inspector General report on the Castro plots, which was classified at least in part until the late 1990s, states, unequivocally, that the CIA did not receive authorization from the Kennedys to kill Castro, and that the CIA had only briefed Robert Kennedy on plots that had ended, not on plots that were continuing. If the report was written to protect Kennedy, why was it kept secret until long after his death? It makes more sense that it was kept secret until the mythology that Kennedy had ordered Castro’s death was so ingrained that no release of a document would change that. And sadly, for the most part, it hasn’t.

As another example of CIA insubordination, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy ordered the CIA to stop running raids against Cuba. But these operations did not cease, and Kennedy eventually had to send the FBI to raid a CIA training camp in Louisiana to shut down some illegal operations regarding Cuba.

Similarly, the New York Times reported on April 28, 1966, that in 1962, Kennedy had learned that CIA agents had tainted a shipment of sugar leaving Cuba bound for the Soviet Union. Kennedy was furious and managed to prevent the sugar from reaching the Soviets. In other words, the CIA, despite a mandate to the contrary, ran operations ordered by people at some level under the President. They may have been following orders, but they did not come from the man at the top.

I say this to show that, although Hammarskjöld was killed during Kennedy’s presidency, there is evidence that the CIA was running around plotting assassinations and other illegal activities that were neither ordered nor sanctioned by President Kennedy. And after 20 years of reading a great bit about both Kennedy brothers, not only is there no hint they would ever have ordered a hit on Hammarskjöld, there is evidence that both were firm supporters of what Hammarskjöld was trying to do in the Congo. It would be a crime against history if the Commission were to blame the plot on Kennedy.

I’d be very wary of if any CIA agents came forward, at this late date, to claim that Kennedy was in any way involved. It was a high-level CIA officer named Sam Halpern who has polluted the historical record by telling people Kennedy was behind the Castro plots, something we only belatedly learned was false.

Additional miscellaneous notes:

• Exhibit A proved too large to transmit as a single file, so I have broken it into two pieces – Exhibit A Part 1 and Exhibit A Part 2.

• I do not know who Christopher Farrell is. Farrell works tirelessly, as these letters will show, on behalf of Culligan in his attempts to free Culligan from jail, efforts which ultimately proved successful, which also lends credence to Culligan’s claims. I can only assume he was a friend or associate of Culligan’s.

• Elliot Maxwell, mentioned within, was a staff counsel on the Church Committee.

• One man referred to is Lt. Gen. Clay Odum. I believe that the spelling of the last name should be Odom, not Odum.

• I believe, but have not confirmed, Roland Culligan died in Florida in September of 2010 in his 80s.

• A number of tapes were made of Culligan discussing these events. I do not have a copy nor have I listened to any of them.

• One of the attached documents mentions that Culligan indicated he was a “con man.” I’ve never met a CIA field operative who was not a con man. It’s an essential job qualification. You have to be able to convince people of things that are not true in order to perform that job.

• You can find a copy of the letter from Culligan to Jorge Hyatt that is dated December 6, 1975 or 1976 (I think 1976, from the content, but it’s hard to tell) at this URL on the Mary Ferrell site, (https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=107278&relPageId=24), where scans of many Church Committee and other government documents have made available. I believe you could find all of the documents in Exhibit A somewhere on that site, but the search feature is not at all perfect, so absence of evidence should never be construed as evidence of absence.

• I have included the “RIF” sheets – record identification forms – from the National Archives that were forwarded to me by John Armstrong. Most of these have no content attached, because many of the documents related to Culligan had not, at that time, been released. I suspect some of these additional documents may now be available. I moved all the RIF sheets for which I had no attachment to the back of Exhibit A. I had separated RIF sheets from the content when I first got these documents because at the time, I was pursuing my own personal interest in this case. It was only later, as I learned more, that I realized others may eventually need to be able to match up the content to the RIF sheets. I have tried to reinsert the RIF sheets in the proper position where possible. For the ones where I had no corresponding documents, I simply arranged them in chronological order. I apologize in advance if I have attached any to the wrong record.

This statement, dated December 9, is made to the Commission on the understanding that:

(a) It is accurate to the best of the maker’s knowledge and belief;
(b) It is made voluntarily, the Commission having no power to take sworn or affirmed evidence;
(c) It will be stored by or on behalf of the Commission;
(d) In due course it may be published or referred to in part or in whole by the Commission within or by reference to its report; and
(e) It will form part of an electronic and paper archive which will be passed to the United Nations or otherwise dealt with as the Commission in due course decides.

Signed: Lisa Pease
Dated: 12/9/2012

President Kennedy’s Address Before the 18th General Assembly of the United Nations, 20 September 1963

Veteran JFK researcher and blogger Bill Kelly has written about the principles of homicide investigation that he learned from his father, a Camden, New Jersey police detective trained in homicide investigation. This training teaches that it is imperative to carefully review the events in the victim’s life in the period leading up to the murder. Special attention must be paid to unusual events or personalities appearing in the narrative. With those principles in mind we offer President Kennedy’s final speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 20, 1963, two months and two days prior to his assassination. The speech is a remarkably clear statement of President Kennedy’s foreign policy objectives and the principles that supported it. The President repeatedly calls for a reconsideration of the Cold War, and states that a continuation of the Cold War would be a failure of his policy. This address was a tour de force on the world stage by the man that CIA codenamed GPIDEAL for a reason. The speech was a challenge to then prevalent Cold War ideology by the one man under our democratic system who held the power to initiate such a policy change. As a Congressional task force begins a new investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy, we ask them to apply the time honored principles of investigation of homicides.

Address before the 18th General Assembly of the United Nations, September 20, 1963

Listen to the speech. View related documents.

President John F. Kennedy
New York
September 20, 1963

Mr. President–as one who has taken some interest in the election of Presidents, I want to congratulate you on your election to this high office — Mr. Secretary General, delegates to the United Nations, ladies and gentlemen:

We meet again in the quest for peace.

Twenty-four months ago, when I last had the honor of addressing this body, the shadow of fear lay darkly across the world. The freedom of West Berlin was in immediate peril. Agreement on a neutral Laos seemed remote. The mandate of the United Nations in the Congo was under fire. The financial outlook for this organization was in doubt. Dag Hammarskjold was dead. The doctrine of troika was being pressed in his place, and atmospheric tests had been resumed by the Soviet Union.

Those were anxious days for mankind–and some men wondered aloud whether this organization could survive. But the 16th and 17th General Assemblies achieved not only survival but progress. Rising to its responsibility, the United Nations helped reduce the tensions and helped to hold back the darkness.

Today the clouds have lifted a little so that new rays of hope can break through. The pressures on West Berlin appear to be temporarily eased. Political unity in the Congo has been largely restored. A neutral coalition in Laos, while still in difficulty, is at least in being. The integrity of the United Nations Secretariat has been reaffirmed. A United Nations Decade of Development is under way. And, for the first time in 17 years of effort, a specific step has been taken to limit the nuclear arms race.

I refer, of course, to the treaty to ban nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and under water–concluded by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States–and already signed by nearly 100 countries. It has been hailed by people the world over who are thankful to be free from the fears of nuclear fallout, and I am confident that on next Tuesday at 10:30 o’clock in the morning it will receive the overwhelming endorsement of the Senate of the United States.

The world has not escaped from the darkness. The long shadows of conflict and crisis envelop us still. But we meet today in an atmosphere of rising hope, and at a moment of comparative calm. My presence here today is not a sign of crisis, but of confidence. I am not here to report on a new threat to the peace or new signs of war. I have come to salute the United Nations and to show the support of the American people for your daily deliberations.

For the value of this body’s work is not dependent on the existence of emergencies–nor can the winning of peace consist only of dramatic victories. Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures. And however undramatic the pursuit of peace, that pursuit must go on.

Today we may have reached a pause in the cold war–but that is not a lasting peace. A test ban treaty is a milestone–but it is not the millennium. We have not been released from our obligations–we have been given an opportunity. And if we fail to make the most of this moment and this momentum–if we convert our new-found hopes and understandings into new walls and weapons of hostility–if this pause in the cold war merely leads to its renewal and not to its end–then the indictment of posterity will rightly point its finger at us all. But if we can stretch this pause into a period of cooperation–if both sides can now gain new confidence and experience in concrete collaborations for peace–if we can now be as bold and farsighted in the control of deadly weapons as we have been in their creation–then surely this first small step can be the start of a long and fruitful journey.

The task of building the peace lies with the leaders of every nation, large and small. For the great powers have no monopoly on conflict or ambition. The cold war is not the only expression of tension in this world–and the nuclear race is not the only arms race. Even little wars are dangerous in a nuclear world. The long labor of peace is an undertaking for every nation–and in this effort none of us can remain unaligned. To this goal none can be uncommitted.

The reduction of global tension must not be an excuse for the narrow pursuit of self-interest. If the Soviet Union and the United States, with all of their global interests and clashing commitments of ideology, and with nuclear weapons still aimed at each other today, can find areas of common interest and agreement, then surely other nations can do the same–nations caught in regional conflicts, in racial issues, or in the death throes of old colonialism. Chronic disputes which divert precious resources from the needs of the people or drain the energies of both sides serve the interests of no one–and the badge of responsibility in the modern world is a willingness to seek peaceful solutions.

It is never too early to try; and it’s never too late to talk; and it’s high time that many disputes on the agenda of this Assembly were taken off the debating schedule and placed on the negotiating table.

The fact remains that the United States, as a major nuclear power, does have a special responsibility in the world. It is, in fact, a threefold responsibility–a responsibility to our own citizens; a responsibility to the people of the whole world who are affected by our decisions; and to the next generation of humanity. We believe the Soviet Union also has these special responsibilities–and that those responsibilities require our two nations to concentrate less on our differences and more on the means of resolving them peacefully. For too long both of us have increased our military budgets, our nuclear stockpiles, and our capacity to destroy all life on this hemisphere–human, animal, vegetable–without any corresponding increase in our security.

Our conflicts, to be sure, are real. Our concepts of the world are different. No service is performed by failing to make clear our disagreements. A central difference is the belief of the American people in the self-determination of all people.

We believe that the people of Germany and Berlin must be free to reunite their capital and their country.

We believe that the people of Cuba must be free to secure the fruits of the revolution that have been betrayed from within and exploited from without.

In short, we believe that all the world–in Eastern Europe as well as Western, in Southern Africa as well as Northern, in old nations as well as new–that people must be free to choose their own future, without discrimination or dictation, without coercion or subversion.

These are the basic differences between the Soviet Union and the United States, and they cannot be concealed. So long as they exist, they set limits to agreement, and they forbid the relaxation of our vigilance. Our defense around the world will be maintained for the protection of freedom–and our determination to safeguard that freedom will measure up to any threat or challenge.

But I would say to the leaders of the Soviet Union, and to their people, that if either of our countries is to be fully secure, we need a much better weapon than the H-bomb–a weapon better than ballistic missiles or nuclear submarines–and that better weapon is peaceful cooperation.

We have, in recent years, agreed on a limited test ban treaty, on an emergency communications link between our capitals, on a statement of principles for disarmament, on an increase in cultural exchange, on cooperation in outer space, on the peaceful exploration of the Antarctic, and on temporing last year’s crisis over Cuba.

I believe, therefore, that the Soviet Union and the United States, together with their allies, can achieve further agreements–agreements which spring from our mutual interest in avoiding mutual destruction.

There can be no doubt about the agenda of further steps. We must continue to seek agreements on measures which prevent war by accident or miscalculation. We must continue to seek agreements on safeguards against surprise attack, including observation posts at key points. We must continue to seek agreement on further measures to curb the nuclear arms race, by controlling the transfer of nuclear weapons, converting fissionable materials to peaceful purposes, and banning underground testing, with adequate inspection and enforcement. We must continue to seek agreement on a freer flow of information and people from East to West and West to East.

We must continue to seek agreement, encouraged by yesterday’s affirmative response to this proposal by the Soviet Foreign Minister, on an arrangement to keep weapons of mass destruction out of outer space. Let us get our negotiators back to the negotiating table to work out a practicable arrangement to this end.

In these and other ways, let us move up the steep and difficult path toward comprehensive disarmament, securing mutual confidence through mutual verification, and building the institutions of peace as we dismantle the engines of war. We must not let failure to agree on all points delay agreements where agreement is possible. And we must not put forward proposals for propaganda purposes.

Finally, in a field where the United States and the Soviet Union have a special capacity–in the field of space–there is room for new cooperation, for further joint efforts in the regulation and exploration of space. I include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon. Space offers no problems of sovereignty; by resolution of this Assembly, the members of the United Nations have foresworn any claim to territorial rights in outer space or on celestial bodies, and declared that international law and the United Nations Charter will apply. Why, therefore, should man’s first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction, and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of our two countries–indeed of all the world–cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending someday in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representatives of all of our countries.

All these and other new steps toward peaceful cooperation may be possible. Most of them will require on our part full consultation with our allies–for their interests are as much involved as our own, and we will not make an agreement at their expense. Most of them will require long and careful negotiation. And most of them will require a new approach to the cold war–a desire not to “bury” one’s adversary, but to compete in a host of peaceful arenas, in ideas, in production, and ultimately in service to all mankind.

The contest will continue–the contest between those who see a monolithic world and those who believe in diversity–but it should be a contest in leadership and responsibility instead of destruction, a contest in achievement instead of intimidation. Speaking for the United States of America, I welcome such a contest. For we believe that truth is stronger than error–and that freedom is more enduring than coercion. And in the contest for a better life, all the world can be a winner.

The effort to improve the conditions of man, however, is not a task for the few. It is the task of all nations–acting alone, acting in groups, acting in the United Nations, for plague and pestilence, and plunder and pollution, the hazards of nature, and the hunger of children are the foes of every nation. The earth, the sea, and the air are the concern of every nation. And science, technology, and education can be the ally of every nation.

Never before has man had such capacity to control his own environment, to end thirst and hunger, to conquer poverty and disease, to banish illiteracy and massive human misery. We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world–or to make it the last.

The United States since the close of the war has sent over $100 billion worth of assistance to nations seeking economic viability. And 2 years ago this week we formed a Peace Corps to help interested nations meet the demand for trained manpower. Other industrialized nations whose economies were rebuilt not so long ago with some help from us are now in turn recognizing their responsibility to the less developed nations.

The provision of development assistance by individual nations must go on. But the United Nations also must play a larger role in helping bring to all men the fruits of modern science and industry. A United Nations conference on this subject held earlier this year in Geneva opened new vistas for the developing countries. Next year a United Nations Conference on Trade will consider the needs of these nations for new markets. And more than four-fifths of the entire United Nations system can be found today mobilizing the weapons of science and technology for the United Nations’ Decade of Development.

But more can be done.

–A world center for health communications under the World Health Organization could warn of epidemics and the adverse effects of certain drugs as well as transmit the results of new experiments and new discoveries.

–Regional research centers could advance our common medical knowledge and train new scientists and doctors for new nations.

–A global system of satellites could provide communication and weather information for all corners of the earth.

–A worldwide program of conservation could protect the forest and wild game preserves now in danger of extinction for all time, improve the marine harvest of food from our oceans, and prevent the contamination of air and water by industrial as well as nuclear pollution.

–And, finally, a worldwide program of farm productivity and food distribution, similar to our country’s “Food for Peace” program, could now give every child the food he needs.

But man does not live by bread alone–and the members of this organization are committed by the Charter to promote and respect human rights. Those rights are not respected when a Buddhist priest is driven from his pagoda, when a synagogue is shut down, when a Protestant church cannot open a mission, when a Cardinal is forced into hiding, or when a crowded church service is bombed. The United States of America is opposed to discrimination and persecution on grounds of race and religion anywhere in the world, including our own Nation. We are working to right the wrongs of our own country.

Through legislation and administrative action, through moral and legal commitment this Government has launched a determined effort to rid our Nation of discrimination which has existed far too long–in education, in housing, in transportation, in employment, in the civil service, in recreation, and in places of public accommodation. And therefore, in this or any other forum, we do not hesitate to condemn racial or religious injustice, whether committed or permitted by friend or foe.

I know that some of you have experienced discrimination in this country. But I ask you to believe me when I tell you that this is not the wish of most Americans–that we share your regret and resentment– and that we intend to end such practices for all time to come, not only for our visitors, but for our own citizens as well.

I hope that not only our Nation but all other multiracial societies will meet these standards of fairness and justice. We are opposed to apartheid and all forms of human oppression. We do not advocate the rights of black Africans in order to drive out white Africans. Our concern is the right of all men to equal protection under the law–and since human rights are indivisible, this body cannot stand aside when those rights are abused and neglected by any member state.

New efforts are needed if this Assembly’s Declaration of Human Rights, now 15 years old, is to have full meaning. And new means should be found for promoting the free expression and trade of ideas–through travel and communication, and through increased exchanges of people, and books, and broadcasts. For as the world renounces the competition of weapons, competition in ideas must flourish–and that competition must be as full and as fair as possible.

The United States delegation will be prepared to suggest to the United Nations initiatives in the pursuit of all the goals. For this is an organization for peace–and peace cannot come without work and without progress.

The peacekeeping record of the United Nations has been a proud one, though its tasks are always formidable. We are fortunate to have the skills of our distinguished Secretary General and the brave efforts of those who have been serving the cause of peace in the Congo, in the Middle East, in Korea and Kashmir, in West New Guinea and Malaysia. But what the United Nations has done in the past is less important than the tasks for the future. We cannot take its peacekeeping machinery for granted. That machinery must be soundly financed–which it cannot be if some members are allowed to prevent it from meeting its obligations by failing to meet their own. The United Nations must be supported by all those who exercise their franchise here. And its operations must be backed to the end.

Too often a project is undertaken in the excitement of a crisis and then it begins to lose its appeal as the problems drag on and the bills pile up. But we must have the steadfastness to see every enterprise through.

It is, for example, most important not to jeopardize the extraordinary United Nations gains in the Congo. The nation which sought this organization’s help only 3 years ago has now asked the United Nations’ presence to remain a little longer. I believe this Assembly should do what is necessary to preserve the gains already made and to protect the new nation in its struggle for progress. Let us complete what we have started. For “No man who puts his hand to the plow and looks back,” as the Scriptures tell us, “No man who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God.”

I also hope that the recent initiative of several members in preparing standby peace forces for United Nations call will encourage similar commitments by others. This Nation remains ready to provide logistic and other material support.

Policing, moreover, is not enough without provision for pacific settlement. We should increase the resort to special missions of fact- finding and conciliation, make greater use of the International Court of Justice, and accelerate the work of the International Law Commission.

The United Nations cannot survive as a static organization. Its obligations are increasing as well as its size. Its Charter must be changed as well as its customs. The authors of that Charter did not intend that it be frozen in perpetuity. The science of weapons and war has made us all, far more than 18 years ago in San Francisco, one world and one human race, with one common destiny. In such a world, absolute sovereignty no longer assures us of absolute security. The conventions of peace must pull abreast and then ahead of the inventions of war. The United Nations, building on its successes and learning from its failures, must be developed into a genuine world security system.

But peace does not rest in charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. And if it is cast out there, then no act, no pact, no treaty, no organization can hope to preserve it without the support and the wholehearted commitment of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper; let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace, in the hearts and minds of all our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings.

Two years ago I told this body that the United States had proposed, and was willing to sign, a limited test ban treaty. Today that treaty has been signed. It will not put an end to war. It will not remove basic conflicts. It will not secure freedom for all. But it can be a lever, and Archimedes, in explaining the principles of the lever, was said to have declared to his friends: “Give me a place where I can stand–and I shall move the world.”

My fellow inhabitants of this planet: Let us take our stand here in this Assembly of nations. And let us see if we, in our own time, can move the world to a just and lasting peace.

Gallery

Following is a collection of art pieces–paintings, murals, sculptures, engravings, monuments, political cartoons–which are an important expression of how society processes and responds to political assassination. Such artistic depictions serve the essential purpose of accurately representing our turbulent history, and they attest to our humanity as memorials in truthfully conveying our story to future generations. [CLICK on images to expand]

Mural honoring President John F. Kennedy in the Irish Quarter of Birmingham, UK. Courtesy of Dr. Susan Williams.

‘A MAN MAY DIE NATIONS MAY FALL BUT AN IDEA LIVES ON’

John F. Kennedy fountain (Kennedy Space Center)

James Crespinel.

MLK, Jr. Washington, DC

RFK & MLK Landmark For Peace, Kennedy-King National Commemorative Site. Indianapolis, IN. Designer, Greg Perry.

Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. These are the Judy Baca murals in the library.

Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, Los Angeles, CA (2010)

Hugh Haynie.

X by Ads Libitum.

Courtesy of James H. Lesar.

Jim Bama.

Bill Mauldin.

Assassination of President Lincoln lithograph by Currier & Ives (1865).

The “bullet,” with which our martyr President A. Lincoln was assassinated by J.W. Booth, as seen under a microscope (1865). Source: Library of Congress.

Assassination of President James Garfield. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.

Assassination of President William McKinley. Achille Beltrame.

Hy Rosen.

Mahatma Gandhi.

John Lennon 1940 – December 8, 1980. Pete Kreiner, 8 December 2019.

United Nations PEACE WINDOW Dedicated to Dag Hammarskjöld and to all those who had lost their lives to the cause of Peace. Marc Chagall.

USSR Commemorative Stamp – Patrice Lumumba (1961)

Alt-History of Kaiser Cat Cinema: Third in the Second American Civil War Series, the Union State poster features Howard Langdon, a character from The Divided States inspired by the real-world Louisiana senator Huey Long: ‘Every Man a King’

The Broken Obelisk sculpture, located outside the Rothko Chapel in Houston’s Museum District, is dedicated to the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mural by the street artist Jorit Agoch, depicting Martin Luther King Jr., in the Barra district of Naples. (Photo by Marco Cantile/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Courtesy of Charles Drago; Artwork by Phil Dragoo.

Phil Dragoo.

Plane crash that killed UN boss ‘may have been caused by aircraft attack’

The Guardian| Julian Borger World affairs editor Tuesday 26 September 2017 05.41 EDT

US and UK intercepts could hold answer to 1961 accident in Africa that killed Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others

The scattered wreckage of the Douglas DC-6 carrying Dag Hammarskjöld in a forest near Ndola, Zambia.

A UN report into the death of its former secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld in a 1961 plane crash in central Africa has found that there is a “significant amount of evidence” that his flight was brought down by another aircraft.

The report, delivered to the current secretary general, António Guterres, last month, took into account previously undisclosed information provided by the US, UK, Belgian, Canadian and German governments.

Its author, Mohamed Chande Othman, a former Tanzanian chief justice, found that the US and UK governments had intercepted radio traffic in the area at the time and suggested that the 56-year-old mystery could be solved if the contents of those classified recordings were produced.

“I am indebted for the assistance that I received, which uncovered a large amount of valuable new information,” Othman said in an executive summary of his report, seen by the Guardian. “I can confidently state that the deeper we have gone into the searches, the more relevant information has been found.”

Dag Hammarskjöld was on a mission to try to broker peace in Congo when he died in 1961.

Hammarskjöld, a Swedish diplomat who became the UN secretary general in 1953, was on a mission in September 1961 to try to broker peace in Congo, where the Katanga region had staged a rebellion, backed by mining interests and European mercenaries, against the newly independent government in Kinshasa.

His plane, a Douglas DC-6, was on the way from Kinshasa to the town of Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), where the British colonial authorities were due to host talks with the Katanga rebels. It was approaching the airstrip at about midnight on 17 September when it crashed, killing Hammarskjöld and 15 others on board.

Two inquiries run by the British pointed to pilot error as the cause, while a UN commission in 1962 reached an open verdict. In recent years, independent research by Göran Björkdahl, a Swedish aid worker, and Susan Williams, a senior fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London and author of a 2011 book Who Killed Hammarskjöld?, persuaded the UN to reopen the case. A panel convened in 2015 found there was enough new material to warrant the appointment of an “eminent person” to assess it. Othman was given the job in February this year.

Among Othman’s new findings are:

In February 1961, the French secretly supplied three Fouga warplanes to the Katanga rebels, “against the objections of the US government”. Contrary to previous findings, they were used in air-to-air attacks, flown at night and from unpaved airstrips in Katanga.
Fresh evidence bolsters an account by a French diplomat, Claude de Kemoularia, that he had been told in 1967 by a Belgian pilot known as Beukels, who had been flying for the rebels as a mercenary, that he had fired warning shots to try to divert the plane away from Ndola and accidentally clipped its wing. Othman said he was unable establish Beukels’ identity in the time available for his inquiry.
The UK and Rhodesian authorities were intercepting UN communications at the time of the crash and had intelligence operatives in the area. The UK should therefore have potentially crucial evidence in its classified archives
The US had sophisticated electronic surveillance aircraft “in and around Ndola” as well as spies, and defence officials, on the night of the crash, and Washington should be able to provide more detailed information.

Othman found that earlier inquiries had disregarded the testimony of local witnesses who said they saw another plane and flashes in the sky on the night of Hammarskjold’s crash. They had also “undervalued” the testimony of Harold Julien, a security officer who survived for several days who told medical staff he had seen “sparks in the sky” shortly before the DC-6, known by its registration number SE-BDY, fell out of the sky.

“Based on the totality of the information we have at hand, it appears plausible that external attack or threat may have been a cause of the crash, whether by way of direct attack causing SE-BDY to crash, or by causing a momentary distraction of the pilots,” Othman concludes.

“There is a significant amount of evidence from eyewitnesses that they observed more than one aircraft in the air, that the other aircraft may have been a jet, that SE-BDY was on fire before it crashed, and/or that SE-BDY was fired upon or otherwise actively engaged by another aircraft. In its totality, this evidence is not easily dismissed.”

Othman argues that the “burden of proof” was now on member states “to show that they have conducted a full review of records and archives in their custody or possession, including those that remain classified, for potentially relevant information”.

The Tanzanian judge said that the most relevant pieces of information were radio intercepts and called for countries likely to have relevant information, such as the UK and US, to appoint an “independent and high-ranking official” to comb the archives.

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