US ‘could solve mystery of UN chief’s death’

America’s National Security Agency may hold crucial evidence about the cause of the 1961 plane crash which killed United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the Cold War.

A commission established to see if the case merited further investigation said key evidence may lie with America’s electronic eavesdropping agency,

Widely considered the UN’s most effective chief, Mr Hammarskjold died as he was attempting to broker a ceasefire in the newly independent Congo. The crash
of his DC-6 aircraft near Ndola Airport in modern-day Zambia has bred a rash of conspiracy theories.

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In his introduction to its report, commission chairman Stephen Sedley it was a “near certainty” that the NSA was recording
radio transmissions from the
African airfield near where Mr Hammarskjold’s plane crashed, meaning that American intelligence could help determine whether the UN chief died as a result of an accident – or of a conspiracy.

“The only dependable extant record of the radio traffic, if there is one, will so far as we know be the NSA’s,” he said. “If it exists, it will either confirm or rebut the claim that the DC-6 was fired on or threatened with attack immediately before its descent into the forest.”

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