Who shot down the U.N. Secretary General plane in September 1961, and why is it so hard to solve? (e.g. The Hammarskjöld Commission and its reports)

The mystery may be intentional, as Susan Williams has written in a newly published Yale Review to follow-up her recent book.

First, here are her latest insightful thoughts on the crash and response timing:

…what [Justice] Othman’s inquiry has made clear is that there was a great deal of evidence that those original inquiries ignored or simply never uncovered. Most notably, the 1961–62 official inquiries con­cluded that the first sighting of the crash site was at 3:10 p.m. on September 18 by a RRAF pilot flying overhead; at around the same time, there was a report of a sighting by the two aforementioned charcoal burners. Following these reports, police vehicles and ambulances were immediately sent to the site.

But a mass of evidence has emerged that shows that many peo­ple knew that the plane had crashed—and where—long before it was officially located. Indeed, the crash site was reported to the Northern Rhodesian authorities between 9:00 and 9:30 a.m. by Timothy Kankasa.

[…]

But nothing was done. According to Kankasa, “There were no police at all, no police, no one from the army, nobody at all until the afternoon. It was not until between two and three, when at last we heard the sound of the ambulances and other vehicles going there.”

…as the Swedish doctors who reviewed the autopsy reports in 1962 on behalf of the U.N. concluded, Hammarskjöld himself survived the crash, and might have lived longer if he’d been taken to a hospital sooner.

Crashed at night and then, despite early reports, survivors were left for dead suffering all day. Does that sound to you like the kind of response adequate for the U.N. Secretary General… who apparently died as a result of intentional delays?

The article candidly points out that America also let one of their own citizens, a very well-known and respected government official (Marine veteran Harold Julien), simply die from delay and neglect after surviving the plane crash.

And second, here is the article discussing a very probable cause:

Former U.S. president Harry S. Truman is reported to have said to the press: “Dag Hammarskjöld was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said, ‘When they killed him.’”

[…]

Edmund A. Gullion, the U.S. ambassador in the Congo, sent a cable to Washington on the morning of September 18 that explicitly referred to the possibility that the plane was shot down. “Hammarskjöld’s plane believed lost in vicinity Rhodesian border near Ndola,” the cable read. “There is possibility he was shot down by single pilot [flying a CIA provided plane] who has harassed U.N. operations and who has been identified…”

…Commander Charles Southall, an American naval pilot who was working at the National Security Agency (NSA) listening station in Cyprus at the time of the crash…heard the rushing noise of an aircraft engine and the commentary of the pilot: “I see a trans­port plane coming low. All the lights are on. I’m going down to make a run on it. Yes, it is the Transair DC-6. It’s the plane.” The pilot’s voice was “cool and professional,” said Southall. Then they heard gun cannons firing—and the pilot saying, “I’ve hit it. There are flames! It’s going down. It’s crashing!”

The article wags a huge finger at both the U.S. and Britain because there still are known sealed files in these countries, and they refuse to cooperate. The CIA illegally delivered military jets to be flown by a former British Royal Air Force pilot working for Belgium as a mercenary. That’s allegedly who shot down the U.N. flight in September 1961 to kill the Secretary General along with his American guards. That’s it, that’s the story.

On 17 February 1961, a story broke in the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, that an American cargo airline was secretly shipping Fouga Magister jets to Katanga…in clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions and contrary to official US policy.

More and more people say this is simply too obvious to say it isn’t so. Yet we don’t know for sure because 60 years later the CIA and RAF still do not answer to questions. Anyone formally asking the US/UK governments about whether the Belgian military deployed an American provided French plane with a British pilot to assassinate the leader of the U.N…. gets a blank stare.

And maybe if they’re unlucky, a well known psychological warfare poker card.

…[Hammarskjöld] was found dead with an Ace of Spades mysteriously placed on his body…

The 1961 VIP plane crash investigation continues to puzzle along controversially unsolved.

There’s even a new film about it, opening this week.