Episode 87: Dag Hammarskjöld & The Shadowy Web of Power

In 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld confided to his friend Bo Beskow that he'd seen evil, true evil. What did he mean? It's my contention that he'd glimpsed a part of what Peter Dale Scott refers to as the system of deep politics. 

Links:

My interview with Greg Poulgrain: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/episodes/15323199

My bonus episode from an anonymous source: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/episodes/15081017

Eyes Wide Shut: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/episodes/14166965

Dr. Strangelove: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2289560/episodes/14198055

Need more? You can visit the website at: https://consaracytheories.com/ or my own site at: https://saracausey.com/. Don't forget to check out the blog at: https://consaracytheories.com/blog. 

****

My award-winning biography of Dag is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

My forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will be available globally next summer. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

Episode Summary
Sara Causey discusses the mysterious death of Dag Hammarskjold, the former UN Secretary-General, on the anniversary of his death. She explores his optimistic nature and his final summer in 1961, where he expressed seeing true evil and losing his pet monkey, Greenback, in a suspicious accident. Causey connects Hammarskjold's death to a broader "shadowy web of power" and the system of deep politics, questioning the official narratives of his and JFK's murders. She critiques sensational theories like Keith Maxwell's involvement and emphasizes the need for justice and answers, despite the challenges in uncovering the truth.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Dag Hammarskjold, shadowy web of power, Cold War, UN Secretary General, Congo crisis, JFK assassination, deep politics, Keith Maxwell, Operation Celeste, war profiteering, bloodshed, cover-up, justice, conspiracy theory, Truman.

Welcome to con-sara-cy theories. Are you ready to ask questions you shouldn't and find information you're not supposed to know? Well, you're in the right place. Here is your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. In tonight's episode, I will be talking about Dag Hammarskjold and the shadowy web of power. This episode will be published on Wednesday the 17th, and Thursday the 18th will be the anniversary of DAGs untimely death. I hate that I'm sitting here having to discuss this topic, because it's not right and it's not fair. We should be talking about DAGs death date as dag went to his farmhouse. He lived a wonderful life in retirement. He had the opportunity to do other things and go peacefully and gently in his sleep, but instead, we're talking about DAGs murder. And even though I hate talking about it, and I never want DAGs death to overshadow DAGs life, it aggravates me that whenever someone is a murder victim, it's like everybody fixates on the absolute worst night of their life. It would be like for the JFK enthusiasts in the audience, if you only ever thought about Jack's murder and you never looked at anything that he did when he was alive, both things matter, and so in that spirit of both things matter, I want to get in today to Dag and his encounter with the shadowy web of power. What really led up to DAGs death? Why was he targeted? Why was he someone who needed to be eliminated anyway? What was going on there?

Stay tuned.

In the shadow of the Cold War, one man stood alone. Dag Hammarskjold was the world's most unusual diplomat, introspective but unflinching, poetic yet pragmatic. As Secretary General of the United Nations during one of the most volatile eras in modern history, he navigated emergencies like the Suez Canal and the Congo crisis with moral clarity and an iron spine. He made powerful enemies who preferred their wars profitable and their peace keepers obedient, but that wasn't dog ready to go deeper. Pick up your copy of Decoding the Unicorn: A New Look at Dag Hammarskjold today.

I want to first say that if you missed the episode that I recorded with Dr Greg Poulgrain last summer. I'll drop a link to it. He's the author of JFK versus Allen Dulles battleground Indonesia, and in that book, there's an entire chapter about dag hammer, which I was absolutely delighted to see. I'm so glad that somebody was remembering Dag and whenever Greg and I were sitting down to record that episode. We were chewing the cud for a little while before I ever hit the record button. And I just remember telling him, somebody killed dag like they killed DAG. We come to accept in American history that from time to time, presidents don't make it. It's not right, it's not a good course of action. We just know that historically, it has happened more than once. But DAG, somebody killed DAG. I mean, it's still It boggles my mind that somebody would would do that to him, and then, whenever I was in the process of researching my first book, decoding the unicorn, I received an anonymous audio file. To this day, I have no idea who the person was, and I'm and you know what? I'm not going to probe. Just to be honest with you, I'm not going to probe. I like being alive, and I don't want to be un alive, if you catch my drift. But I received this audio file from an anonymous source somewhere near indola, and this man on this recording said quite clearly that they shot him down in the night. His plane was interfered with. It was shot down, and he was also talking about Lumumba being dissolved in acid to the point where a few bones and some teeth were the only things left. And I was like, my god, this is harrowing. So if you missed either of those two episodes, I will drop links for them here. I don't claim to know the veracity of the person on the recording. Mean, there's no way for me to fact check anything, because I don't know who it was it, just consider it information for your perusal. That's that's about the most I can say about that. Now the shadowy web of power nearing the end of his life. So was the last summer that dag was alive, which would have been the summer of 61 he had told his friend Bo Beskow some disturbing things, because part of this, what we have to do is think about DAGs normal temperament, his normal nature, which was calm and optimistic. I think that in order to do the kinds of diplomatic engagements that dag was required to do. A certain level of optimism is necessary for the job. You have to believe that peace is possible. You have to believe that resolution is possible. If you don't, if you go to the negotiating table with a cynical attitude, you're probably not going to be very good at your job. So it's really not that dag was a Pollyanna, and he thought that everything all day was sunshine and roses. It certainly wasn't like that. He just had a somewhat notorious optimistic outlook. He really believed that if enough time and enough effort was put into untangling a knot it could be untangled. That's just how he was. And so he would generally tell Beau these optimistic things, like, I really believe it'll work out. I think that things will be okay. I think we're headed in the right direction. But in that summer of hell. In 1961 when Beau came to visit him, he had asked DAG, do you still believe in the goodness of man? Are you still feeling optimistic about the world? And dag was like, No. And in fact, he told him, I've seen evil. I've seen true evil. And and he Beau was very clear to call out that dag had used the term evil, and that's intense for somebody like DAG. So dag tells Beau like, I've seen true wickedness, I've seen true evil, and I have come to believe now that there are some human beings that are evil all the way through. They're not redeemable, they're not going to change. They're just plain evil. And Beau was like, Whoa, this is not DAG. This is not what I normally hear from him. Dag had always felt like, if you get people in a mob, if you get the mob mentality going and you have a rabble that's yelling and screaming and throwing things. You're probably not going to be able to negotiate with the rabble, but if you're talking to people one by one, you can, and you'll find that most people just want peace. They want to be left alone. They want to live their life in peace. And that's that, certainly in my life, over the course of time, as I've done foreign language exchanges with people all over the globe. That's what I've always found to be true. They want to live their life, to be in peace, to have a chance for happiness. It's kind of like life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's really what people want. They don't want the permanent state of warfare. They don't want a lot of bickering and partisan politics. They just want to raise their family work, some kind of job that they find meaningful and be left to hell alone otherwise. But dad had come to this conclusion that there was something evil. He had glimpsed something evil, and it wasn't just human beings and a mob. It was people that really wanted bloodshed. They didn't want peace, they didn't want harmony, they didn't want problems to be solved. They wanted warfare and bloodshed. They wanted conflicts to keep going. And it disturbed him. Also in 1961 we have to remember that there was a disturbing incident with DAGs pet. In 1960 he had been given, he was on a trip to Africa where he, like, toured basically the whole continent, and he was given as a gift of vervet monkey, and it was small and lively and friendly and tame, and dag just loved it, even though it's like DAG is this neat Nick. And that's one of the things that I think is so funny, is that sometimes dag would do things that were so undag, but yet totally dag at the same time. That's what it's like to be a biographer of somebody with a sometimes contradictory personality, you know, the DAG that's neat and clean and his clothes are always iron and his nails are always clean, and he doesn't allow a mess in the apartment. But then he adopts a monkey, you know, and the same guy. That's always very well dressed, and he cares a lot about his appearance and being well groomed. But then he also goes out to the woods and shucks his clothes off and bathes naked in a stream and eats beans right out of the can and goes feral for a week. That was DAG. And it does strike me funny that we have these academics, and we have people that, it seems to me that, in my opinion, which could be wrong, could could be wrong, could be that I'm misinterpreting the situation. But it seems to me that there are some individuals, typically more of a cold academic bend, in my opinion, who really want to keep dag as an icon, as an idol, as somebody who's carved out of soap or marble, pure as the freshly driven snow, Dag camping out in the woods, bathing naked in a stream, eating beans from A tin, Perish the thought or dag with a wild monkey in his apartment. It's like, Well, that happened, so dag has bonded with his pet, and that's one of the things about animals, right? Like, if you if you have a companion animal, then you know what it's like. You have that unconditional love and acceptance. They don't judge you. They don't care if you're having a bad hair day, they don't care if you botched a job at work or if you're mad at the world. They don't care. They just give you unconditional love and acceptance, and that feels really good. And dag was enjoying having this lively, goofy little monkey that he was bonded with, and then greenback died. Now to be clear, in DAGs journal, he wrote that greenback had somehow gotten tangled, like dag theorized that he jumped onto the curtains, he got caught in a drapery sash and suffocated when nobody was home. It's possible that it was just a really terrible accident, I would say it's also possible that foul play was involved. It is weird. The monkey has been in the apartment with no problems, and he has the habit of looking out the window. He likes to sit in the window and people watch. And he has the tendency, as any primate does to climb things, and he has hands. He has small human like, hands with opposable thumbs. Like, how would he get caught in a drapery sash and then not be able to undo himself? I'm just long pausing because I, I don't, I don't quite get the logistics of that. I'm not saying it's impossible. It very well could have been a tragic accident, and it may have been not a tragic accident. It may have been done to send a certain message to dag that is possible. But greenbacks death, whether it was a terrible accident or something more than a terrible accident, it certainly adds to DAGs SUMMER OF HELL in 1961 it leads to that feeling of being bereft, feeling like, Well, why is it that the good things in the world have to go away? Why do I feel like I'm in a dog pile from hell? And I think that's worth noting. So DAG is in this downtrodden space. But does that mean he was suicidal? Does that mean that he had some kind of a death wish and he was on a death mission when he went to Congo for the last time? No, it absolutely doesn't. Personally, based on what I have found in my research, and what I've been able to intuit from interpreting that research, I really think that dag was feeling down and aggravated, not only because he lost his pet, but because he had seen this shadowy web of power, this system That doesn't want peace, that doesn't want tranquility, that doesn't want certain problems to be solved. And Congo, in so many ways, was like this vortex. I'm thinking again, I know I quote Yates fairly often, but I'm thinking again of the Second Coming by Yates, where he talks about the gyres spinning the falconer can no longer hear the falconer, and it's like all things are going out of control. That's really what Congo had become, like. It's just death and turmoil and coups and secessions, and it was not going to be a situation that was solved in one trip. And I don't, I really do not believe that dag thought his final mission to Congo was going to solve all of the problems. I found no evidence of that. Dag wanted to get in quietly, do what he could to broker a cease fire, to try to assist a doula, because the Prime Minister Cyril a doula had. Requested that dag come and Moyse chambi, who was leading Katanga, had said he wanted a cease fire. That's what dag was trying to do, was facilitate those discussions and get a cease fire. There had been attempts to flush the mercenaries out of Congo. There had been attempts to get all the Belgian troops out of Congo and to reunify Katanga and the main part of the government. But dag was also really clear that an internal secession was really not something where the UN needed to jump in the middle of it, like events that threatened world peace, that was one thing, but internal strife within the country that was something else. And he wasn't trying to get the UN involved in something that the charter expressly said it couldn't do. He was a stickler for the rule book, that's for sure. So dag sees people who are evil and his appraisal evil. They don't want peace. They want bloodshed. They don't want resolution and reconciliation. They want trauma and murder and genocide and strife, and it disturbs the hell out of him as well. It should. We should all be disturbed by that. I come back again. I think that Peter Dale Scott has given us such a great framework, some real nomenclature that we can put behind this. I call it the shadowy web of power. Peter Dale Scott calls it the system of deep politics. And one of the things that he questions in his work is what kind of system allows for the murder and then the cover up, a fake investigation and a cover up of a sitting president, the murder of a sitting US president, and then a botched investigation. Wink, how does that happen? How is that allowed to happen to me? That's the question, what kind of system allows for the murder of a sitting UN Secretary General, leaving apart the fact that dag was gentle and kind and really a wonderful human being. What kind of system allows for the murder of a sitting US president and a sitting UN Secretary General. People want to get in the weeds about, well, who done it? Like, which mercenary was it? If a mercenary was piloting one of Tshombe's Fouga jets and it forced the Albertina to go down, who did it? Who was the pilot? If somebody was on the ground and they planted bombs, or they murdered dag after he was thrown from the wreckage, because it was like a mafia hit who did that? And I'm like, that's way less important than trying to get to the big fish. That's that's minor stuff. Those mercenaries would have been scumbags anyway you're talking about South Africans who sided with apartheid French and Belgian mercenaries, Italians who had connections to the black shirts, Nazi expats. In some cases, these are not fine, upstanding gentlemen. They're fucking scumbags. You know, I this is a nighttime broadcast. This is where I let my hair down. So I'm just gonna say it fucking scumbags, not choir boys. So trying to figure out who was piloting the jet, who might have been on the ground to make sure everybody was dead, that's small potatoes. What? What is going on in this system of power, whether you want to call it the system of deep politics like Peter Dale Scott or you want to use my term of the shadowy web power, who are these people? They obviously have an absolute crap load of control, and that's disturbing, and then we're all expected to just look the other way, like it didn't happen. Oh, DAGs plane went down due to pilot error. It was just one of those act of God tragedies, and so don't probe. Don't ask any questions. Don't look for justice. It was just an accident. Or JFK was murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald, and he was a communist Kook. He was some kind of Marxist sympathizer and a loser and a low life, and he wanted to make a name for himself by murdering the president. And then Jack Ruby was so upset. He wanted to avenge the American people. He wanted to avenge Jackie. He didn't want a long trial where Jackie would have to get up and testify and talk about seeing her husband's head exploding in the vehicle, so he took one for the team and got rid of Oswald. And so there you go. Don't ask any more questions. It's just all very sad, and so don't ask any questions. I'm like, But wait a minute, I even when we go back to the JFK case, I'm less worried about. Oswald and Ruby and more worried about the system of power. What's going on here? What? What kind of world do we live in? Really? Those are the the deeper and more disturbing questions. I also want to revisit David Talbot amazing book, The Devil's chess board, because he talks about Truman after dag was murdered, Truman said to a group of reporters, even though he was at a completely unconnected event, Truman said to a group of reporters that dag was on the verge of getting something done when they murdered him, and then the journalists were kind of like, Wait a minute. What they who murdered him? What are you talking about? And he's sort of like, I said, what I said? I'm not going to elaborate on it, but I said, what I said, Truman was a friend of DAGs. They had a good relationship. Truman was also a friend to JFK, even though they were at odds of it during the 60 election, they became friends. They were friendly, and Truman and his wife were welcome at the White House. Several times JFK would call Truman every May 8 for his birthday. So it makes you wonder, what did Truman know? Because it definitely sounds like he knew something or he was suspicious and had a very strong hunch as to what was going on. Either way, it's interesting. 

So Truman becomes publicly critical of the Charlie India alpha. And as David Talbot points out, this makes Allen Dulles angry, because Truman is publicly saying, like, wait a minute, things, things have gone way overboard. After the murder of JFK, Truman is out saying, like things have gone way overboard. This is not what I had in mind when the agency was created. This is not what I fucking had in mind. I want to quote just briefly from the devil's chess board after the Bay of Pigs, Truman had confided in writer Merle Miller that he regretted ever establishing the Charlie India Alpha. I think it was a mistake, he said. And if I'd known what was going to happen, I never would have done it. Eisenhower never paid any attention to it, and it got out of hand. It's become a government all of its own and all secret. That's a very dangerous thing in a democratic society. He goes on to write a letter to the managing editor William Arthur of Look magazine in June of 64 and he again makes it clear that the agency was supposed to get information relevant to intelligence and counter intelligence and send it to the President. It was not intended to go rogue. It was not intended to operate as, quote, an international agency engaged in strange activities. Dulles gets pissed, and he decides to paint Truman as a senile old man. So it's like, whenever Dulles goes to Truman and strong arms him a little bit like, Hey, you didn't really mean that you're making us look bad. Maybe you should walk it back. And Truman's like, fuck off. I'm not going to do that. Then Dulles is like, well, I'm going to smear you in the media. Then I'm going to I'm going to make you sound like a daughtering old man who doesn't know any better. Just go back and eat your gruel, Grandpa, you don't know what you're talking about. I'm bringing this up because, in my opinion, it's germane to the shadowy web of power when it comes to the death of Dag hammerschol, I think sometimes people go down this rabbit hole of Keith Maxwell in the symar That's certainly what we see happening in a documentary using air quotes Here, a documentary like cold case hammershould, where ostensibly, we're going to learn about, well, what really happened to dag who killed him? What are the possibilities here? But then the documentary turns into, well, let's talk about Keith Maxwell in the cymar. I get that that's a sensational story. Please don't get me wrong. It is a wild story, because you have Keith Maxwell, who's allegedly this kooky quack doctor, and also allegedly he is infecting black Africans with HIV. And then there are documents connected to something called Operation Celeste, implicating both the symar and Allen Dulles in the murder of dag hammer. I have not been able to examine any of those documents myself, and so far as I know the original. Documents are no longer in existence all. The only thing that exists now are like photocopies, or maybe photocopies of photocopies. So trying to figure out the veracity and and the authenticity is tough. It's not that it's impossible for them to be true. It's that we have to be careful of red herrings and weird rabbit holes. This is one of the things that I think Richard Condon actually does point out in winter kills what I don't like about that novel and then the subsequent movie is, I feel like it takes a lot of pot shots at JFK, and I don't really get the necessity of that. It also takes a lot of pot shots, frankly, at the conspiracy theory community. And it's as if to say you're never going to know anyway, and you're not going to change anything. Oh, and he was kind of a scumbag. So go on with your life and quit messing with this. Well, I don't appreciate that, and I think it's really a slap in the face, considering that JFK played an important role in having Richard Condon's other novel, The Manchurian Candidate, made into a film. He enjoyed the novel, and he was helpful in getting it made into a movie. So it's like, what's your beef? Richard Condon, jeez. Anyway, that's a digression with a point. It's not insane to say, wait a minute, some of the rabbit holes that you can go down are not worth your time, not all, not not every lead is created equal. And as time has gone on, I've just gotten a little bit more suspicious of that whole Keith Maxwell, symar orbit, which is not to say that they didn't exist, and it's not to say that they couldn't have played a role. I just there's something in my gut that's sort of like, is this a red herring? Is this something that's meant to throw everybody off from the real scent? That's just my opinion, and it could be wrong, but that's my gut instinct, is that there's something about all of that that just doesn't sit right. It doesn't there's there's something missing there. I've been watching this murder mystery documentary, and I'll record an episode about it later, but it's about this weird murder that took place in New Jersey back in the 80s. And as I've been watching the documentary, I'm not going to spoil it for myself, because I'm really trying to solve the riddle before we get to the last episode of the series. But I'm like, This doesn't make any sense. The person they're saying is the murderer. I don't think it's it's him. I just, I don't know. My gut instinct is is triggered in the same way with this deal with Keith Maxwell and the Samara. I'm like, This feels like sensational tabloid stuff, and I'm not sure how true it actually is. It's a flashy distraction, and it's one hell of an interesting, entertaining distraction, but I think that may be all it is. It's just a fucking distraction. So going back to the shadowy web of power, and DAGs comment about some people are evil, evil, through and through evil, I believe that what dag saw, I don't think he saw in whole. I think he saw in part the shadowy web of power. I think that's what did it. Because when you get up close enough to see evil like that, and you're a good, decent person, it's it's gonna mess with your head. Man, there's no way it doesn't again, that's not saying that he was suicidal or he was some schizophrenic megalomaniac, the way that he was portrayed in fact magazine. What a title for a magazine that is fact magazine. Anyway, I can let my hair down again, since this is a nighttime broadcast, but it's like, wow, what a title. And then, and then, to not give facts, you can't make this stuff up. Man, you cannot make this stuff up. It's just so absurd. I believe that's what he saw, and it was incredibly, deeply disturbing. We have a little bit of that with something like Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. That was one of the first episodes that I ever did on this podcast. I'll go back through and drop a link to that episode as well, if you missed it, what a disturbing movie. And then disturbing subject matter as well. And then you go back and you see these pictures of like the Rothschild ball, or you watch another film, like the ninth gate. Polanski is moving the ninth gate. Excuse me, I'm trying to lose my voice. Hold on a second. Okay, I think it's better now. It's just very disturbing to think about rich aristocratic people engaged in these arcane rituals and calling upon demons and spirits. It's like, Wait a minute. What? What? What is really happening here. And I'm not saying that that's the kind of thing that dag saw. I really feel that what he saw was more political in nature, that the part of the shadowy web of power that he glimpsed was the war machine, war profiteering, bloodshed, genocide and so forth. The point that I'm making is I feel that Kubrick was trying to show us another side of that coin. He He shows us the war machine and the complete embrace of genocide in Dr Strangelove. That was also an early episode on this podcast. I'll drop a link to that as well. But the Kubrick explores that now, He does it through the lens of satire and dark comedy, but nevertheless, you know, you have George C Scott's character, like, well, we're probably going to lose 10 or 20 million people, depending on the breaks, but, you know, that's an acceptable loss. It's totally fine. Like, what? I really feel that that's the kind of thing that dag saw, and it shook him to the core. And then years later, of course, Kubrick explored the more sexual cult like and occult nature of the shadowy web of power. It's disturbing. It is so incredibly disturbing. And I wish that I had some answer for you. You know, I'm recording this episode on Tuesday the 16th. Some of the episodes that I have in queue were recorded a long time ago, and some of them are more current. It really just depends on my workload and what I have going on and what I have time to do.

But as I'm sitting here recording this episode, there's a special news report on television about what happened to Charlie Kirk and how I guess there's going to be charges filed against somebody. And I'm just like, this is another case of who in the hell knows what's really going on. Do I trust the official story? No shit, no. Do I think something nefarious is afoot? Do I think something bad is going to come out of whatever this little spectacle is? Yeah, I do. And I'm not trying to sound like the ultimate pessimist. I just think that this is a sign of something bad coming down the pike. I don't trust the official story. I don't know what really happened. I do know that the Epstein birthday book had been all over the news, and then the Pop Pop happened, and suddenly we're not hearing about the Epstein birthday book anymore. I mean, not saying that those two things are connected. I just happened to notice that the news stories really changed, and it happened on a dime. So there is that. As I said at the start of this episode, I hate to even have to talk about DAGs murder. I would much rather focus on his life, and that's something that I have dedicated my books to. At the same time, I do intend to talk about DAGs posthumous portrayals and how and why, I think that the narrative has been shaped the way that it has, because I think it's going on for a reason, a very pointed reason, so stay tuned for that in the future.

In the meantime, I do think we should pursue justice, and I do think we should pursue answers. I don't think they're coming. I don't I don't think that we're ever going to know at some point there may be some mercenary that's offered up as this is the guy that killed DAG. Everybody should boo him. He's the worst person ever. But it's like, well, who gave him the orders? Right? Who? Who? Who is at the top of all of this? That's the question. I don't have an answer for you. I have theories, but I don't have an answer for you. I'd rather that you theorize and think about it for yourself. On that note, stay a little bit crazy, and I will see you in the next episode.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast and share it with others.