Bud Culligan

Bud Culligan (whistleblower, spook?)
Born	6 June 1926
Died	September 2010 (Age 84)

Roland "Bud" Bernard Culligan Jr was a US citizen who claimed to be a CIA operative, and to have been involved in CIA assassinations, which he called “executive actions” or “EAs”. Asked to list those EAs, Bud Culligan mentioned Dag Hammarskjöld and described the plane, the route and how he shot Hammarskjöld’s plane, which subsequently crashed.

Hammarskjöld Commission

In her testimony to the Hammarskjöld Commission, Lisa Pease said:

“You will see from the correspondence that Bud Culligan’s material was referred to an Attorney General, a Senator, and ultimately, the Senate investigation of the CIA’s activities at home and abroad that became known as the Church Committee after its leader, Senator Frank Church. Clearly, others in high places had reasons to believe Culligan’s assertions were worthy of further investigation.”

Times of Israel

In January 2019, the Times of Israel reported:

We come to Roland “Bud” Culligan, who claimed he had been a contract assassin in the service of the CIA for 25 years and his victims included Hammarskjöld. Lisa Pease has been following his story for years and she testified at the UN inquiry. He died circa 2010.

Culligan had been thrown in jail in 1970 on a charge of alleging passing bad cheques. When the Church Committee began its hearings, he decided to come forward. This was what Pease wrote in an article about Culligan.

Lisa Pease: “In 1976, Roland “Bud” Culligan sought legal assistance. After serving the CIA for 25 years, Culligan was angry. He had performed sensitive operations for the company and felt he deserved better treatment than to be put in jail on a phony bad cheque charge so the agency could ‘protect’ him from foreign intelligence agents. He had been jailed since 1971, and now the agency was disavowing any connection with him. His personal assets had mysteriously vanished, and his wife Sara was being harassed. But Culligan had kept one very important card up his sleeve. He had kept a detailed journal of every assignment he had performed for the CIA. He had dates, names, places. And Culligan was a professional assassin.

“Culligan sought the aid of a lawyer who in turn required some corroborative information. The lawyer asked Culligan to provide explicit details, such as who had recruited him into the CIA, which was his mutual friend Victor Marchetti, (executive assistant to the deputy director of the CIA) and could he describe in detail six executive action (EAs) assignments? Culligan answered each request. One of the executive actions he detailed was his assignment to kill Dag Hammarskjöld.

“Culligan described first in general terms how he would receive assignments:

“‘It is impossible, being here, to recall perfectly all details of past EA’s. Each EA was unique and the execution was left to me and me alone. Holland (identified elsewhere as Lt. Gen. Clay Odom) would call, either by phone or letter memo. At times I would be ‘billed’ by a fake company for a few dollars. The number to call was on the ‘bill.’ I have them all. I studied each man, or was introduced by a mutual friend or acquaintance, to dispel suspicion. I was not always told exactly why a man was subject to being killed. I believed Holland and CIA knew enough about matter to be trusting and I did my work accordingly. By the time I was called in, the man had become a total loss to CIA, or had become involved in actual plotting to overthrow the US government with help from abroad. There were some exceptions.

“‘When an EA was planned, I was given all possible details in memo form, pictures, verbal descriptions, money, tickets, passports, all the time I needed for plan and set up. I and I alone called the final shot or shots.’”

“Culligan matter-of-factly described five other EAs. But when he told of Hammarskjöld, it was out of sequence and in a different tone than the other descriptions.

“‘The EA involving Hammarskjöld was a bad one. I did not want the job. Damn it, I did not want the job. I intercepted DH’s trip at Ndola, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Flew from Tripoli to Abidjian to Brazzaville to Ndola, shot the airplane, it crashed, and I flew back, same way.”

“Culligan did not want his information released. He only wanted to use it to pressure the CIA into restoring his funds, clearing his record, and allowing his wife and himself to live in peace. When this effort failed, a friend of Culligan’s pursued the matter by sending Culligan’s information to Florida Attorney General Robert Shevin.

“Shevin was impressed enough by the documentation Culligan provided to forward the material along to Senator Frank Church.”

“Culligan was scheduled to be released from prison in 1977. He wrote the CIA’s general counsel offering to turn in his journal if he was released without any further complications. But once out of jail, Culligan found himself on the run continuously, fearing for his and his wife’s life. A friend continued to write public officials on Culligan’s behalf, saying.

“‘There are forces that operate within our government that most people do not even suspect exist. In the past, these forces have instituted actions that would be repugnant to the American people and the world at large. I have always wanted to see this situation handled quietly and honourably without a lot of publicity. Unfortunately, the agencies, bureaus, and services involved are devoid of honour. This story is extremely close to going public soon and when it does, I fear for the effect upon our country and her position in the world community.’”

“The story never did go public, until now. And this is only a piece of what Culligan had to say. You can’t see all of what he had to say. These files remain restricted at the National Archives, withdrawn by the CIA, unavailable to researchers. Not even the (Church) Review Board could pry forth the tape Culligan made in jail detailing his CIA activities.”

Culligan did not always tell the truth in relating his exploits. He mentioned three names elsewhere to someone else which Pease determined he could not have killed because they did not die together and when they did, it was on dates different from what he gave. But in supplying information on the six victims including [Hammarskjöld]] to his lawyer, which he said Marchetti could confirm, he would not be playing games for whatever reason he was playing games in the other cases.

So whodunit? Unless the filmmakers can get Van Risseghem to the scene of the crime from Paris, and he undoubtedly had to make the same number of hops as Culligan did, and these would have been by prop planes, pinning the assassination of Hammarskjöld on Van Risseghem is an unconscionable act. They are passing fiction off as fact. Someone knows whodunit, as in the British, the South Africans, and the Americans, but none of them are talking to the UN investigation team or anyone else.

FBI investigation

The FBI conducted an investigation into Bud Culligan's claims but did not verify them. It concluded:

"This matter is considered closed by this Service."

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:The Hammarskjöld Commission – Witness Statement of Lisa Pease	Statement	9 December 2012	Lisa Pease	Bud Culligan claims that he intercepted and shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane on orders from his CIA case officer. From my own study of the Hammarskjöld case, I believed then and continue to believe, especially in the light of the new evidence reported by Susan Williams in her excellent volume "Who Killed Hammarskjöld?", that the best evidence indicates Hammarskjöld’s plane was indeed shot out of the sky.
Document:The Mysterious Death of a UN Hero	Article	16 September 2013	Lisa Pease	Former President Harry S. Truman was convinced Hammarskjöld had been murdered. A Sept. 20, 1961 New York Times article quoted Truman as having told reporters, “Dag Hammarskjöld was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘When they killed him.’”

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