THE Cobbold Commission which preceded the IGC has been characterized by Dr Stanley Bedlington, the Cornell scholar as a “British contrivance activated and organized by British officials.” (Stanley S. Bedlington, Malaysia and Singapore: The Building of New States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978)
The SAIMR documents are dynamite if they are authentic. They discussed the method of getting rid of (UN-Sec-Gen Dag) Hammarskjold in a way that fits in with the fate of the plane, and also implicated Allen Dulles of the CIA. This was the first time that solid evidence of CIA involvement in the crash has surfaced after evaluation of all evidence by the three boards of inquiry although the CIA should have been the logical target of suspicion following the murder of Lumumba. One of the SAIMR documents was very explicit:
“UNO is becoming troublesome and it is felt that Hammarskjold should be removed. Allen Dulles agrees and has promised full cooperation from his people…..Please see that Leo airport as well as Elisabethville is covered by your people as I want his removal to be handled more efficiently than was Patrice [Lumumba]..” The suspicion that the CIA was behind it was further given credence in Dr Greg Poulgrain’s book, ‘JFK vs Allen Dulles, Battlegrou
THAT Macmillan was capable of initiating some kind of covert action should not be doubted now with the revelation in The Times’ 8th August, 1986 article, “Liquidating Sukarno”, in which a CIA document reveals that Macmillan and Kennedy in April, 1962, in Washington, talked about “liquidating” the troublesome President Sukarno of Indonesia
GEORGE John Charles Mercer Nairne Petty-Fitzmaurice, the 8th Marquess of Lansdowne (1912-1999) Minister of State for the Colonies (April, 1962-October, 1964) is perhaps better known in Sarawak and Sabah as Lansdowne, Chairman of the Inter-Governmental Committee (IGC). The IGC was tasked to prepare a blue print to lay the groundwork for the merger of the Borneo territories with Singapore and Malaya.
The IGC Report purported to articulate among other constitutional matters, safeguards for the Borneo territories. However, it did not go to the extent of delineating the right of these territories – as prospective equal partners – to secede from the proposed federation despite a strong representation made to the Cobbold Commission for such right (Para. 47, Report of the Commission of Enquiry, North Borneo and Sarawak, June, 1962)
THE recent announcement by the United States, United Kingdom and Australia of a regional defence pact (AUKUS) which includes the sale of American-made nuclear submarines to Australia caught the French by surprise. France, which had contracted to build conventional diesel submarines for Australia, now effectively lost a contract worth 66 billion dollars. It was “a stab in the back,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. It was not the first time the French had been played out by the Americans.
The American Trap by Frederic Pierucci (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2019) tells of cooperation between the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the energy giant General Electric (GE) to waylay and buy out French premium company, Alstom, and how the author was made a pawn in the whole exercise