Tag Archives: FBI

Max Frei-Sulzer vs. the United Nations Commission, 1962

It is a special feeling to contribute to the efforts of Vlado’s mother and sister, who saved every newspaper clipping on the investigation into the 1961 crash, and to see these efforts pay off decades later in the most recent 2026 UN report. The NYT article shown below is the only article to mention Dr. M. Frei-Sulzer, a Swiss police official who was “appointed by the commission to examine the wreckage of the Secretary-General’s plane”. Thank you to Chief Justice Othman, and all those assisting him, who took my criticism of Frei-Sulzer seriously and found “a series of telegrams exchanged between members of the United Nations Commission[…]” giving evidence of “[…] opposition from members of the Commission to Frei-Sulzer’s conclusions and differences in views among some of them. It was questioned whether Frei-Sulzer’s report should be published at all.” Not surprising, when Justice Othman requested information in 2025 from Switzerland on Frei-Sulzer, they found “no results from searches in the Zurich City Archives.”

From “Valuing the Evidence of Harold Julien: Part Two”, published here on January 20, 2024:

NYT, 3 May 1962, “Cause of Hammarskjold Crash Still a Mystery as Inquiry Ends”:

“[…] Dr. M. Frei-Sulzer, a Swiss police official, who was appointed by the commission to examine the wreckage of the Secretary-General’s plane, which crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, attributed the disaster to the plane’s low altitude as it approached the airfield at Ndola after it had been cleared by the tower for landing.” [Note: The Albertina was equipped with radar! -T.B.] […] “Dr. Frei-Sulzer reported that “the only abnormal fact was the dangerously low altitude of the aircraft in relation to the airport elevation, probably due to human failure.” Dr. Frei-Sulzer is chief of the scientific department of the Zurich police and professor of science at the University of Zurich.” […] “The commission, which was appointed by the General Assembly last October, completed its report in Geneva March 8, three weeks before Dr. Frei-Sulzer submitted his findings to it.” […] “The [UN] commission criticized Rhodesian authorities for the fact that the wreckage was not found until fifteen hours after the crash. It said that Harold Julien, a United Nations guard who died several days after the crash, would have had a better chance for survival if the Rhodesians had shown more diligence. A report by the Royal Medical Board of Sweden said that a post-mortem indicated that, contrary to reports at the time, the “Secretary General lived for a certain period of time after the crash.” It said that he was the only person aboard the plane who had completely escaped burns.” […] “The Rhodesian and Swedish doctors agreed that bullets found in bodies of Mr. Hammarskjold’s guards had been exploded by the fire that consumed the wreckage and had not been fired from a weapon. Their findings were supplemented by Dr. Frei-Sulzer, who reported that there were no bullet holes in the plane and no evidence of explosives that would have been needed for a time bomb or other means of sabotaging the plane. However, the United Nations Commission examined at length the question whether a Fouga Magister fighter plane of the Katanga forces, “which had been operating against the United Nations in Katanga,” or some other plane [Note: De Havilland Dove. T.B.], had shot down the United Nations craft. It noted the reports of the Rhodesian inquiry board that the plane did not have sufficient range to fly from its base at Kolwezi and that the pilot had stated that it was on the ground on the night of the tragedy.”

Who was Dr. Max Frei-Sulzer? It is hard to take him seriously, considering that he investigated the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and he believed that Hitler’s diaries were real; and another case, which resulted in the imprisonment of an innocent man, who was released after 12 years!

From “Valuing the Evidence of Harold Julien: Part Three”, published here on June 11, 2024:

As I pointed out in part two of this series, Hugo Blandori was a “retired” FBI agent, turned private investigator, who was hired by the UN as a consultant to this investigation. It is extremely upsetting to me that an FBI agent was involved, not only because of the racist history of that organization, but because of the role the FBI played during the McCarthy witch-hunt on United Nations staff members in 1953. Trygve Lie, the first UN Secretary-General, gave the FBI carte blanche of headquarters “for the convenience”, and it was his successor Dag Hammarskjold who protected his staff and kicked out the FBI by November 1953. Within every organization, including the UN, there have always been members who are actively working against the good that that organization is trying to achieve, and that is how I believe Hugo Blandori got the job of consultant. This is also how Dr. Max Frei-Sulzer – a Swiss police official that believed Hitler’s diaries were real – was appointed by the UN commission to examine the wreckage of the Secretary-General’s plane, and “who reported that there were no bullet holes in the plane and no evidence of explosives that would have been needed for a time bomb or other means of sabotaging the plane”. In my view, the contributions of Blandori and Frei-Sulzer are not just highly suspect, they discredit the investigation – I believe intentionally so!

From the 2026 report of Chief Justice Othman (A/80/815):

Page 4: “Switzerland promptly made inquiries in response to my request concerning the possible location of metallurgical test materials.”

Page 36-37; para. 158-160:

“The Mattei case and the crash of SE-BDY share several notable features. Both aircraft crashed during the landing approach with landing gear deployed. Both crashes initially received official verdicts of accident. The analysis of Mattei’s plane crash occurred despite the passage of time and despite the fact that much of the original wreckage had been destroyed by remelting, following the original court ruling of accidental death.

Additionally, both Mattei and Hammarskjöld received OAS death threats in mid-1961, and both died in aircraft crashes within approximately a year of those threats. The Mayor of Evian had also been killed by an OAS-attributed plastic explosive attack in March 1961.

The United Nations Commission’s metallurgical expert, Max Frei-Sulzer, conducted tests on recovered fragments and did not find evidence of foreign substances indicating sabotage. The forensic methodology used in the Mattei case was not available at that time. Further, limitations on Frei-Sulzer’s analysis included that it was limited to the small percentage (around 20 per cent) of the wreckage that remained after the aircraft caught fire. Additionally, as analysed in section III.D
below, it appears that the members of the United Nations Commission had different opinions regarding whether Frei-Sulzer’s report should be relied upon or agreed with at all.”

Page 37; para. 163-165:

“In contrast to the Mattei case, the SE-BDY wreckage was severely damaged by post-crash fire, which destroyed 75 to 80 per cent of the fuselage. During the initial inquiries, fused metal parts of the remaining wreckage were remelted and tested by an expert at a local foundry; evidence of suspect foreign materials was not located. A limited number of additional fragments were taken to Switzerland for analysis by Frei-Sulzer, the expert using the forensic resources of the Zurich police, with similar results. After the conclusion of the work of the United Nations Commission, it appears
that, on 22 and 23 August 1962, the remnants of the wreckage were “removed from [the] hanger and buried at Ndola airport”, where they remain. Whether any surviving fragments of SE-BDY exist in a condition suitable for analysis of the type conducted by Firrao in the Mattei case is as yet uncertain.

There have been, over time, calls for a retesting of any wreckage that remains using modern technology, such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The purpose of a re-examination of any remaining wreckage would include ascertaining whether adjoining key metal parts of the landing mechanism (including the hydraulics junction box) was affected by foreign substances that may be indicators of sabotage. For such an analysis, it would be necessary to first identify any remaining material. Given that much of the fuselage was burned in the crash and some of the remaining
wreckage melted in subsequent tests, together with the degrading effects of the passing of time since, there may be insufficient material remaining that is capable of conclusive testing and determination.

In 2025, I requested assistance from Switzerland to locate records, physical remnants or archives relating to Frei-Sulzer’s work. The request was answered helpfully, but with no results from searches in the Zurich City Archives.”

Pages 56-57; para. 282-289:

“Contemporaneous documents show that the Rhodesian authorities discussed, at the highest levels, the desirability of avoiding the convening of a separate United Nations Commission and, when it was clear that one would be convened, sought to “cultivate” the Commissioners and steer the outcome towards pilot error. Other information showed that British officials sought and obtained revisions to the draft report of the United Nations Commission in advance of its publication, with a similar
aim of ruling out sabotage or external attack as a cause of the crash. On this basis, it was established that the United Kingdom and Northern Rhodesia were concerned about ensuring that a conclusion of pilot error being the cause of the crash was reached in 1961/62, rather than merely permitting an impartial analysis to occur.

In 2026, United Nations archives staff identified additional documents of potential relevance to this inquiry. The documents do not address external influence on the early inquiries, but rather the consensus nature of the conclusions reached by the United Nations Commission. For consistency, they are considered in this section.

Documentation recently identified in United Nations archives includes a series of telegrams exchanged between members of the United Nations Commission following the publication of the Commission’s report and the subsequent receipt of the metallurgical analysis conducted by Frei-Sulzer.

The documentation records that the report of the United Nations Commission had been criticized because it declined to exclude attack and sabotage as possible causes of the crash. It outlines 10 specific grounds on which the Commission’s refusal to exclude sabotage and attack is supported by expert opinion and evidence. These include the following: (a) that the initial draft report prepared by the Rhodesian Board of Investigation had itself concluded that attack and sabotage should not be ruled out and that other possible causes should not be given a higher order of priority; (b) that
the final report of the Board also stated that the willful act of some person or persons unknown could not be ruled out, though it attributed the probable cause to other possibilities (this was a departure from the initial draft that had not been accepted by the United Nations observers); (c) that J. P. Fournier of the International Civil Aviation Organization stated categorically when interviewed by the Commission that he “did not in any way exclude the possibility of sabotage”; (d) that the Rhodesian engineering expert agreed that sabotage could not be ruled out; (e) that anonymous
threats had been made against the Secretary-General, the latest of which was reported to have been in Leopoldville in the days before the crash; (f) that an opportunity for sabotage existed when the plane was left unguarded before its departure from Leopoldville; (g) that Julien (the sole temporary survivor) spoke of an explosion; (h) that several reliable witnesses reported seeing flashes in the sky, at times varying by several minutes, with some experts raising the question of whether this could
indicate an explosion in the air before the crash; (i) that at least five persons reported seeing a second plane flying near the Secretary-General’s plane just before the crash, with some claiming the second plane was attacking it; and (j) that an attempt was later made to sabotage another United Nations plane at Kitona by filing the control lines that operate on take-off and landing.

The information thus defends the United Nations Commission’s findings, given that if the Commission had wished to take a political approach, it could have “played up” testimony that supported an external attack or sabotage. In this regard, the information indicates that an external attack and sabotage were each considered to be credible hypotheses at the time.

Frei-Sulzer’s report was received after the United Nations Commission had drafted its report. The documentation records that the Commission’s report was drafted on the assumption that Frei-Sulzer’s tests would be negative; the new factor from Frei-Sulzer’s report was “not the scientific results of his tests, but the sweeping conclusions which he drew”. The documentation records opposition from members of the Commission to Frei-Sulzer’s conclusions and differences in views among some of them. It was questioned whether Frei-Sulzer’s report should be published at all.

I am grateful for the identification of this documentation, which adds a significant primary source to the record of the United Nations Commission’s deliberations. Three matters are of particular note. The first is that the Commission faced attempted influence from Member States when preparing, and after the publication of, its report. This relates to the findings discussed in previous reports that more than one Government had sought to influence the early inquiries towards a predetermined finding of pilot error.

The second matter of note is that the findings of Frei-Sulzer were not universally accepted by the United Nations Commission members; the consensus position appears to have been to publish his report as an annexure without further commentary, rather than criticize it or otherwise reconvene the Commission to provide individual opinions about it. The telegram record confirms that at least two members were against modifying the Commission’s conclusions in light of Frei-Sulzer’s findings,
with one going so far as to prefer that the findings not be published at all.”

For Virginia Giuffre

King Pedophile is Destroying the Evidence

The man who calls himself King of America is a rapist and a pedophile, guilty of sexual abuse of children with his good friend Jeffrey Epstein – stop calling them “young women” when they were children! The president is sick and utterly depraved, we all know it, and whoever continues to protect this pedophile is guilty by association. The Republican Party is damned and already in hell for supporting this monster. The FBI is doing his dark bidding and destroying evidence of his crimes right now, they want us to just forget the Epstein files exist, but we will never forget what we have seen and heard – RELEASE THE FILES NOW!

King Leopold II, who was also a white supremacist and a pedophile, had the entire Congo State archives burned before he left the colony to Belgium in 1908. From Adam Hochschild’s “KING LEOPOLD’S GHOST”, chapter 19, “The Great Forgetting”:

“The Congo offers a striking example of the politics of forgetting. Leopold and the Belgian colonial officials who followed him went to extraordinary lengths to erase potentially incriminating evidence from the historical record. One day in August 1908, shortly before the colony was officially turned over to Belgium, the king’s young military aide Gustave Stinglhamber walked from the Royal Palace to see a friend in the Congo state offices next door. The midsummer day seemed particularly warm, and the two men went to an open window to talk. Stinglhamber sat down on a radiator, then jumped to his feet: it was burning hot. When the men summoned the janitor for an explanation, he replied, “Sorry, but they’re burning the State archives.” The furnaces burned for eight days, turning most of the Congo state records to ash and smoke in the sky over Brussels. “I will give them my Congo,” Leopold told Stinglhamber, “but they have no right to know what I did there.”

“At the same time the furnaces roared in Brussels, orders went from the palace to the Congo commanding the destruction of records there. Colonel Maximilien Strauch, the king’s long-time consigliere on Congo matters, later said, “The voices which, in default of the destroyed archives, might speak in their stead have systematically been condemned to silence for considerations of a higher order.” Seldom has a totalitarian regime gone to such lengths to destroy so thoroughly the records of its work. In their later quests for a higher order, Hitler and Stalin in some ways left a far larger paper trail behind them.

“The same kind of deliberate forgetting took place in the minds of the men who staffed the regime. Forgetting one’s participation in mass murder is not something passive; it is an active deed.”

*From a rally in 2018. Other than ordering the protester thrown out, notice how quiet and angry he is about seeing his picture with his good friend Jeffrey?

Trump freaks out when photo of him and Epstein appears at MAGA rally in 2018
byu/Aggravating_Money992 inWatchPeopleDieInside

Valuing the Evidence of Harold Julien: Part Two

Here are more newspapers from New York, from September 19, 1961 to May 3, 1962, which support the evidence of the only survivor of the Albertina, Sgt. Harry Julien. For context of these events, please read Susan Williams’ most recent essay, published in The Yale Review, “Revisiting Dag Hammarskjold’s Mysterious Death”. Part one of this series can be found here.

The NYT, 19 September 1961. From article “Hostile Jet Cited in Crash”: “Jacques Poujoulat, personal assistant to Dr. Sture C. Linner, chief of the United Nations mission in the Congo, described the circumstances off the ill-fated flight. He said he “could not answer” when he was asked whether the possibilty that the plane might have been shot down could be ruled out. He declared, however, that the United Nations had been “unable to make daylight flights” because of constant attacks by enemy jet aircraft. He said that the timing of the Secretary General’s night flight to Northern Rhodesia was “at least partly” because of the attacks by enemy aircraft.”

The NYT, 19 September 1961. “[Poujoulat] said that seven hours after the plane took off from Leopoldville yesterday an “unidentified aircraft” flew over Ndola airport and that at about the same time the police reported a “flash in the sky.”

The NYT, 19 September 1961. “The jet fighter has been the greatest single threat to the United Nations troops in Katanga, the pilot, who flies two planes alternately, has been strafing and bombing United Nations forces in Elisabethville, Kamina and Jadotville every day. United Nations officials believe that one of the two planes is being reloaded and refueled while the other is in action. The United Nations announced yesterday that three Ethiopian jet fighters were “on their way” to Katanga to oppose enemy fighter planes. Today it was learned from qualified sources that the planes had not arrived because British authorities in Uganda had refused to let them make a refueling stop.”

New York Herald Tribune, 19 September 1961. From article “Survivor Says Blasts Shook Plane”: “The wreck was reported first spotted by a Negro charcoal burner, then by a Royal Rhodesian Air Force crew. It was still smouldering when a ground search party arrived in mid-afternoon.”

New York Mirror, 19 September 1961. Col. Don Taylor is a typo for Col. Don Gaylor, who was sent to Ndola by the Pentagon on September 15. “Col. Don Taylor[sic], U.S. air attache in Pretoria, South Africa, who circled the wreck area until ground parties arrived, said it seemed obvious the plane was making an approach to Ndola Airport when it crashed about six miles away. Taylor said it looked to him as though the pilot misjudged the height and that the plane’s undercarriage caught in tree tops.”

From Susan Williams’ essay: “One other aspect of Gaylor’s involvement is worth noting. After the Albertina failed to land, a team of Norwegian U.N. soldiers flew to Ndola to assist in the search. Their aircraft was parked near Gaylor’s DC-3. Because of white Rhodesians’ hostility to U.N. personnel, they were not allowed to enter the airport terminal. So Gaylor’s crew invited them on board to get some food. To the surprise of U.N. soldiers, they discovered that the American plane was packed with highly sophisticated radio equipment.

“We know from other testimony that the U.S. Embassy in Leopoldville was communicating with Ndola via a U.S. aircraft, which presumably was Gaylor’s DC-3. And that may explain an intriguing aspect of the story, namely that Edmund A. Gullion, the U.S. ambassador in the Congo, sent a cable to Washington on the morning of September 18 that explicity referred to the possibility that the plane was shot down. “Hammarskjold’s plane believed lost in vicinity Rhodesian border near Ndola,” the cable read. “There is possibility he was shot down by single pilot who has harassed U.N. operations and who has been identified by one usually reliable source as van Riesseghel, Belgian, who accepted training lessons with so-called Katangan Air Force.” (The ambassador’s communique included an error — the name of the pilot in question was Jan van Risseghem.)”

The NYT, 20 January 1962. “NDOLA, Northern Rhodesia, Jan. 19 (Reuters) — Two planes passed over Ndola shortly before Mr. Hammarskjold and fifteen other persons died in the air crash near here, a witness told an inquiry here today. T. J. Kankasa, an African municipal official, told the Rhodesian federal inquiry that one of the planes had its lights on and appeared to be a transport while the other was a “smaller aircraft without lights.” “It seemed as if the smaller plane was beaming lights on the large aircraft,” he said.”

From Susan Williams’ book, “Who Killed Hammarskjold?”, pages 107 and 109: “The UN Commission supplemented its findings by employing a consultant named Hugo Blandori to carry out some background research in Ndola.” […] “Blandori included in his memorandum some observations on the appearance of Bo Virving at the Commission hearings. Virving, he reported, had put forward the theory that the Albertina had been shot down or forced down by a plane above it. He based his theory primarily on the statements of African witnesses and told Blandori that he believed the Rhodesian authorities had suppressed their evidence.

“It was Blandori’s view that the Africans giving testimony had no experience of aircraft, so didn’t know what they were talking about. But this was not the case. For one thing, the witnesses lived very near the airport and had daily experience of the comings and goings of planes; and for another, some of them, such as Timothy Kankasa, had worked with planes during the Second World War[as a signalman].”

Who was Hugo Blandori? According to this article by Jerry Dumas, “Hugo Blandori [was an] F.B.I. agent and also a YMCA regular, who died beside me on the Y handball court”. And according to this article about Anne Cioffi, who was his former secretary, Blandori was an F.B.I. agent who later became a private investigator, but I don’t know when exactly that change happened. From the article:

“I used to babysit his kids,” she said.

One day Blandori told her he needed a secretary and she took the job.

“He taught me every angle of his business,” she said, adding that was unusual in those days because women weren’t often afforded such opportunities.

Cioffi said Blandori was affiliated with former FBI agents who did private investigating all over the world and, with her as his secretary, specialized in pre-employment screenings.

“Years ago you could do that,” she said.

The company also conducted insurance and fraud investigations, and occasionally cheating-spouse cases.

“I didn’t like those very much,” said Cioffi.

She said the two worked together until the day Blandori went to play handball in Greenwich and died of a heart attack.

“He was only 50,” she said.

Cioffi said Blandori’s widow knew nothing about the business so Cioffi ran the business herself until another former FBI agent bought it.

[…]

She said her husband, Carmine, and all her connections from her time with Blandori encouraged her to get her own private investigator’s license, so that’s what she did.

“I had my own office in Norwalk,” she said saying she did a lot of work for former FBI agents and even worked on a case or two for Interpol.

“It worked out very well.”

The NYT, 3 May 1962, “Cause of Hammarskjold Crash Still a Mystery as Inquiry Ends”: “[…] Dr. M. Frei-Sulzer, a Swiss police official, who was appointed by the commission to examine the wreckage of the Secretary General’s plane, which crashed near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, attributed the disaster to the plane’s low altitude as it approached the airfield at Ndola after it had been cleared by the tower for landing.” [note: The Albertina was equipped with radar!] […] “Dr. Frei-Sulzer reported that “the only abnormal fact was the dangerously low altitude of the aircraft in relation to the airport elevation, probably due to human failure.” Dr. Frei-Sulzer is chief of the scientific department of the Zurich police and professor of science at the University of Zurich.” […] “The commission, which was appointed by the General Assembly last October, completed its report in Geneva March 8, three weeks before Dr. Frei-Sulzer submitted his findings to it.” […] “The [UN] commission criticized Rhodesian authorities for the fact that the wreckage was not found until fifteen hours after the crash. It said that Harold Julien, a United Nations guard who died several days after the crash, would have had a better chance for survival if the Rhodesians had shown more diligence. A report by the Royal Medical Board of Sweden said that a post-mortem indicated that, contrary to reports at the time, the Secretary General “lived for a certain period of time after the crash.” It said that he was the only person aboard the plane who had completely escaped burns.” […] “The Rhodesian and Swedish doctors agreed that bullets found in bodies of Mr. Hammarskjold’s guards had been exploded by the fire that consumed the wreckage and had not been fired from a weapon. Their finding were supplemented by Dr. Frei-Sulzer, who reported that there were no bullet holes in the plane and no evidence of explosives that would have been needed for a time bomb or other means of sabotaging the plane. However, the United Nations Commission examined at length the question whether a Fouga Magister fighter plane of the Katanga forces, “which had been operating against the United Nations in Katanga,” or some other plane [note: **De Havilland Dove**], had shot down the United Nations craft. It noted the reports of the Rhodesian inquiry board that the plane did not have sufficient range to fly from its base at Kolwezi and that the pilot had stated that it was on the ground on the night of the tragedy.”

New York Herald Tribune, 3 May 1962, This article continues the narrative of down-playing and discounting the testimony of Sgt. Harry Julien, “Dag’s Death Probe: Still a Whodunit”: “Sgt. Harold Julien, Mr. Hammarskjold’s chief security officer, was the single survivor found when the search party reached the area. He lay tortured in the hot tropical sun for twelve hours of daylight. **Badly injured and under heavy sedation, he gave some sketchy and inconclusive information before he died** three days later. With his death disappeared any apparent chance of solving the mystery of the crash.”

New York Herald Tribune, 3 May 1961. From the same article, “Dag’s Death Probe”: […]In the last glimmering of first-hand information on what happened in the final moments of the accident, this conversation was reported between a Northern Rhodesian police inspector, A. V. Allen, and Sgt. Harold Julien who was semi-coherent at best. Allen: “The last we heard from you, you were over Ndola runway. What happened?” Julien: “It blew up.” Allen: “Was this over the runway?” Julien: “Yes.” Allen: “What happened then?” Julien: “There was great speed. Great speed.” Allen: “What happened then?” Julien: “There were lots of little explosions all around.” Allen: “How did you get out?” Julien: “I pulled the emergency tab and I ran out.” Allen: “What about the others?” Julien: “They were just trapped.”

First United Nations Staff Day 1953

Dag Hammarskjold with Danny Kaye, Marion Anderson and Ezio Pinza
First United Nations Staff Day, 8 September 1953, UN photo

Vlado’s invitation, from the personal collection

If anyone deserved a special day of recognition, it was the UN staff of 1953, who had been slandered by the U.S. federal grand jury on 2 December 1952, saying that there was “infiltration into the U.N. of an overwhelmingly large group of disloyal U.S. citizens”. Secretary-General Trygve Lie gave the FBI carte blanche of New York Headquarters “for the convenience” – and this was after he gave his resignation, on 10 November 1952; which he gave under pressure of McCarthyism, and the Soviet Union’s refusal (for years) to recognize him as Secretary-General because of his involvement in Korea. Hammarskjold was sworn in on 10 April 1953, and he did all he could to defend and support his UN staff, and managed to get the FBI removed from UN Headquarters by November 1953.

With appreciation to the author, here are excerpts from chapter 3 of Brian Urquhart’s biography of Hammarskjold:

“On January 9 [1953], President Truman, by Executive Order 10422, introduced a procedure by which the U.S. government would provide the Secretary-General with information on U.S. candidates for employment and would empower the U.S. Civil Service Commission to investigate the loyalty of Americans already employed by the UN. In the same month, the Eisenhower administration’s new representative to the UN, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., as one of his first official acts asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate all members of the U.S. mission to the UN as well as U.S. members of the Secretariat itself. For the latter purpose Lie permitted the FBI to operate in the UN Building, for the convenience, as he explained it, of the large number of Secretariat officials who would have to be interrogated and fingerprinted. To the Secretariat, the presence of the FBI in the “extraterritorial” Headquarters Building symbolized yet another capitulation to the witch-hunters.”

[…]

“Another problem inherited from Lie was the presence of the FBI in the UN Building. The extent of that agency’s activities was revealed on June 20 during an incident in the public gallery of the Security Council, when an American agent in plain clothes attempted to take a demonstrator away from the UN guards. Hammarskjold demanded a full investigation of this incident and protested vigorously to the U.S. mission. He had also learned of the case of a senior official who had been given a detailed questionnaire on his relations with various people and his views on Communism. The fact that the official had felt obliged to reply raised in Hammarskjold’s mind a serious question of principle. Did a government have the right to question a respected official of the UN with a long and good record of service on the basis solely of suspicion and rumor? Surely the proper course was for the government concerned to tell the Secretary-General of its suspicions, leaving it to him alone to decide what action, if any, should be taken and what questions should be put to the official concerned. He therefore instructed the members of the Secretariat that until he could get the FBI off the premises their reaction to inquiries about their colleagues could in no circumstances go beyond the duty of everyone to help the law. A member of the Secretariat must make it clear that there were questions that, as an international civil servant, he had no right to answer and these included questions relating to his UN work and to the activities of the UN itself, as well as the political or religious views or past relationships of himself or of his colleagues. This meant, in fact, that only nonpolitical criminal activities were a legitimate subject for investigation by the FBI. In November 1953, making use of the opportunity provided by a remark to the McCarran Subcommittee by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover that the extraterritorial status of international organizations in the United States made it impossible for the FBI to operate on their premises, Hammarskjold asked for the immediate removal of the FBI from UN Headquarters.”

But there was still the matter of the American staff members that had been dismissed or terminated by Trygve Lie because they plead the Fifth Amendment when investigated. Hammarskjold wasn’t able to make everyone happy with his decisions, but I feel he was trying to avoid giving the McCarthy crowd any kind of foothold for future harassment.

“During the summer a U.S. federal grand jury, the International Organizations Employees Loyalty Board, and two U.S. Senate Subcommittees continued to investigate present and former American Secretariat members. On August 21 the Administration Tribunal, the Secretariat’s highest court of appeal, rendered judgments in twenty-one cases of American staff members who had appealed against their dismissal or termination by Lie for having invoked the Fifth Amendment during investigations by the U.S. authorities. The Tribunal found in favor of eleven of the applicants, awarding compensation to seven of them and ordering the reinstatement of four. Hammarskjold declined to reinstate the four on the grounds that it was “inadvisable from the points of view which it is my duty to take into consideration,” whereupon they too were awarded compensation. His decision simultaneously dismayed a large part of the UN staff, who believed that their colleagues should have been reinstated, and enraged the anti-UN faction in the United States led by Senators Joseph McCarthy and William E. Jenner, who saw it as a recommendation for the payment of some $189,000 in compensation to traitors. The attitude of the senators was later reflected in the U.S. opposition in the General Assembly to Hammarskjold’s request for an appropriation to pay the compensation awards.”

For further context, you can read the speeches Hammarskjold gave to the staff in New York and Geneva in May of 1953 on the Dag Hammarskjold Library website.