General Dag Hammarskjöld, Cyprus and Dirty Laundry

Why is Cyprus so important? Why is the island of strategic importance not only for the Eastern Mediterranean but for the entire Middle East region and even other continents? Let us try to find the answer to this question 65 years ago. An example I shall give here regarding the extent of reconnaissance, intelligence, surveillance and recording activities—such as signals intelligence—carried out by American and British intelligence officers in Cyprus came to light by chance during the Cold War. Following the death of the then UN Secretary-General, Swedish General Dag Hammarskjöld, in a plane crash on 18 September 1961 in Northern Rhodesia (now known as Zambia) whilst travelling to the Congo to prevent the ongoing civil war and bloody clashes, investigations revealed some very interesting data. Following the crash, the UN Security Council convened an emergency session and immediately established an investigation commission. The US and the UK volunteered to join this commission, and after a lengthy investigation, the case was closed with the conclusion that the crash was caused by “pilot error, metal fatigue in the aircraft, adverse weather conditions, fatigue, fog, electronic system failure, etc.”

However, the truth is far from that. An American journalist, suspicious of what had happened, says, “There’s something fishy about this,” and secretly travels to Zambia to begin investigations at the crash site. He then interviews villagers in the area and receives extremely surprising answers from them. The plane had not crashed; on the contrary, as it was about to land at the airport, it was hit by dozens of bullets fired by another approaching aircraft and subsequently crashed near a residential area. The villagers had witnessed the events with their own eyes. Upon his return to New York, the journalist reported the situation to the relevant authorities, and a new investigation was launched.

An American intelligence officer stationed at the NSA Naval Security Group Command in the Yerolakkos (Alayköy) region west of Nicosia , whilst monitoring the world from the Balkans to the Middle East and Africa, accidentally came across the audio recordings of another aircraft approaching UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld’s DC-6 model aircraft and, in real time, heard the pilot shout “I’ve hit it.” after firing the aircraft’s weapons. Thus, the American officer monitored the incident—which took place approximately 5,340 kilometres away from his intelligence centre—moment by moment via the monitor in front of him. The UN’s official website, however, describes General Dag Hammarskjöld’s death as a “fatal plane accident”. An inquiry commission set up by the British, however, attributed the Secretary-General’s death to pilot error and closed the investigation.

Years later, a Guardian reporter’s interview with villagers who witnessed the incident in the Ndola region where the plane crashed offers a glimpse through the veil of mystery surrounding the event.

The villagers claim that a second aircraft opened fire on the plane, and that Rhodesian authorities arrived at the crash site and cordoned off the area—long before the official announcement the following day that the wreckage had been found—and demanded that the villagers leave the area. Consequently, a reality emerges that is vastly different from the report prepared by the investigation commission. The UN Security Council convenes in an emergency session once again, and the American and British experts serving on the commission are questioned. Realising they cannot escape, the American and British experts are eventually forced to confess the truth and state: “We were doing things we shouldn’t have been doing in a place we shouldn’t have been. It was precisely during this process that the downed aircraft was picked up by our technical surveillance.” they reply. Thus, it also emerges that the US and the UK were monitoring almost the entire world via the island of Cyprus, seeing, knowing and hearing everything moment by moment.

To demonstrate the power of the listening stations, it would be useful to provide the distances between Nicosia and certain capitals. Accordingly, the distances are: Nicosia–Ankara 537 km, Nicosia–Ashgabat/Turkmenistan 2,248 km, Nicosia–Astana/Kazakhstan 2,259 km, Nicosia–Athens/Greece 915 km, Nicosia–Baghdad/Iraq 1,036 km, Nicosia–Baku/Azerbaijan 1,058 km, Nicosia–Beirut/Lebanon 241, Nicosia–Belgrade/Serbia 1,530, Nicosia–Berlin/Germany 2,488, Nicosia–Bern/Switzerland 2,519, Nicosia–Bishkek/Kyrgyzstan 3,636, Nicosia -Brussels/Belgium 2,901, Nicosia-Cairo/Egypt 602, Nicosia-Copenhagen/Denmark 2,772, Nicosia-Damascus/Syria 326, Nicosia-Helsinki/Finland 2,843, Nicosia-Jerusalem/Israel 243, Nicosia-Kabul/Afghanistan 3,250, Nicosia-London/United Kingdom 3,218, Nicosia-Moscow/Russia 2,310, Nicosia-Paris/France 2,949, the distance between Nicosia and Washington DC is 9,109 kilometres. Thus, it becomes much clearer what such a capability—able to monitor events 5,340 kilometres away using technology from 65 years ago—is capable of. As can be seen, the only capital city located more than 5,000 kilometres away within the scope of this surveillance activity was the US capital, Washington DC, at a distance of 9,109 kilometres.

The next focus of the NSA’s operations, which witnessed the assassination of the UN Secretary-General moment by moment, was the activities of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Yasser Arafat’s Fatah Party, and the Black September Organisation in Palestine. An NSA agent in Yerolakkos (Alayköy), who was responsible for the PLO and spoke Arabic, described his experiences there: “The NSA would directly track the movements of suspected terrorists and send the information to the CIA. From there, it would be passed on to Israeli intelligence, and some people would die. We would receive messages suggesting this was the case or that such things might happen at Athens Airport, and then you would read in the Jerusalem Post about some poor men being killed at the airport..." Thus, intelligence information reaching the CIA headquarters in Washington DC before Cyprus was passed directly to Israel, and Israel did not delay in carrying out the necessary operations.

You cannot even imagine what those who did this 65 years ago, in an era without digital technology, could achieve today in the technological world via Cyprus.

Final Note. This massive antenna and the sturdy, imposing building located in Alayköy, Nicosia, were demolished and razed to the ground on the grounds that they created ‘visual pollution’, rather than being used as a research centre, a war museum, a school or a cultural centre.

We will continue.