By Greg
Poulgrain and Edward
Curtin
Global Research, July
22, 2016
Greg Pulgrain
Theme: Crimes against Humanity, Intelligence
The truth about
Indonesian history and the United States involvement in its ongoing
tragedy is little known in the West. Australian historian, Greg Poulgrain,
has been trying for decades to open people’s eyes to the realities of that
history and to force a cleansing confrontation with the ugly truth. It is
a story of savage intrigue that involves the CIA and American governments in
the support of regime change and the massive slaughter of people deemed
expendable. In his latest book, The Incubus of Intervention: Conflicting
Indonesia Strategies of John F. Kennedy and Allen Dulles, Poulgrain
shows how President John Kennedy tried to change American policy in Indonesia
but was opposed by Allen Dulles and the CIA, resulting in JFK’s murder.
Kennedy’s death, preceded by that of UN Secretary- General Dag Hammarskjold,
then led to the US backed murder of millions of Indonesians, Papuans, and East
Timorese.
While an academic
historian with meticulous credentials, Poulgrain is also a rare bird: a truth
teller.
In this interview, he
greatly expands on many issues in his books, including Allen Dulles’s and
Kennedy’s conflicting strategies regarding Indonesia, Dulles’s involvement in
the assassinations of JFK and Dag Hammarskjold, CIA involvement in the ouster
of Indonesian President Sukarno, and the subsequent slaughters throughout
Indonesia and West Papua.
For people of
conscience, his is a voice worth heeding.
In the introduction to The Incubus of Intervention you ask the question: “Would Allen Dulles have
resorted to assassinating the President of the United States to ensure his
‘Indonesian strategy’ rather than Kennedy’s was achieved?” You say it is
up to the reader to decide and that is why you have written the book.
There is a bit of ambiguity in that second statement. What have you
concluded?
Slowly, slowly… I came
to understand the role of Indonesia in the differences that emerged between
Allen Dulles and John F Kennedy. My lecturing/research on Indonesian history
and politics, which I’ve now been doing for several decades, kept me on track.
A memorable interview with Indonesian former vice-president, Adam Malik, less
than a year before he died, left me puzzled as to why he wanted to impress on
me the importance of Indonesia in relation to the Sino-Soviet rift. I did not
realize until much later that, once the rift was detected, Indonesia was used
by Allen Dulles as a wedge to split them further apart.
Visiting Indonesia from
Brisbane is much less of an expedition than travelling from the USA so, over
the years, I’ve spoken with many people there about Sukarno and the politics of
the ‘60s. Although I include 19th and 20th century
history as part of the history I teach, my focus remains the 1950s and 60s,
when Indonesia was struggling to find its feet as an independent country. The
Dutch had remained for more than three centuries because they were presiding
over the world’s richest colony.
Before the war in
Vietnam reached full pitch, Washington’s attention was on Laos. Allen Dulles
had long been keeping an eye on Indonesia but in government policy or official
announcements Indonesia rarely received any mention at all, despite its
political volatility, its immense wealth of natural resources and the sheer
size of the country. It is many times larger in population than most countries
in Southeast Asia – the 4th largest in the world – and as the
world’s longest archipelago it is slung across the equator for a distance
equivalent to that between Los Angeles and Newfoundland.
The Indonesian populace
in 1963 considered JFK a hero, during and after his presidency; so the fact
that his strategy to bring Indonesia ‘on side’ in the Cold War is not well
known outside Indonesia really highlights our lack of
awareness of Indonesia. And how many readers are aware of Allen Dulles’ covert
operations in Indonesia? - such as in 1958, which was the largest CIA
operation outside Vietnam according to Colonel Fletch Prouty who once worked
alongside Dulles. I am assuming the reader is not familiar with Indonesia
of the 1960s and even less familiar with the respective strategies of Kennedy
and Dulles, so I really have to throw some light on these to enable the reader
to see there is startling evidence linking the two, centered on Indonesia. It
was an extraordinary political duel, and the triumph of Dulles led not just to
the death of Kennedy but to the death of millions. It is on-going…
Could you share with us
this background and their respective strategies?
The potential wealth of
the archipelago, particularly oil and minerals, caught the attention of Allen
Dulles as a lawyer in the 1920s. He was representing Rockefeller Oil interests
against Henri Deterding, the legendary oil mogul of the Netherlands East Indies.
Having first started in Intelligence at the time of the First World War, Allen
Dulles was still closely linked with Rockefeller oil interests when he became
DCI (Director of Central Intelligence) in the 1950s. His expertise was regime
change and this was his ultimate aim in Indonesia. His anti-Sukarno strategy
had begun more than three years before John F. Kennedy was elected president,
and it came into conflict with Kennedy’s pro-Sukarno stance. Kennedy’s
Indonesia strategy involved befriending Indonesia as a Cold War ally as this
was a prerequisite for Kennedy’s Southeast Asian policy dealing with Laos and
the burgeoning problem of North and South Vietnam. In 1961, Dulles did not
reveal to Kennedy the depth and intricacy of subterfuge he’d initiated with
Indonesia as the focus, nor was Kennedy aware of the extent and elaborate
nature of Dulles’ strategy.
Was Allen Dulles’s
Indonesian strategy just about Indonesian oil and mineral wealth?
The Cold War was raging
in the early 1960s with Washington pitted against the Sino-Soviet bloc. Driving
a wedge between Moscow and Beijing was one of the resolutions of the
Rockefeller Brothers panel when it met in 1958 – the panel which included
persons such as DCI Dulles and his former associate from postwar Berlin, Henry
Kissinger, whose concept of ‘limited nuclear war’ was attracting attention.
When an ideological split between Moscow and Beijing was confirmed in the early
1960s, Dulles regarded this intelligence as so vitally important that he
informed neither the ailing incumbent president, Eisenhower, nor the Secretary
of State who took over in 1959 from John Foster Dulles (Before dying of cancer,
John Foster refused his younger brother Allen the privilege of stepping into
his shoes as Secretary of State, Allen’s lifelong ambition.)
Nor did Allen Dulles
inform the new president, John F Kennedy, that the Sino-Soviet split was real.
During his first year in office in 1961, Kennedy all too soon became Dulles’
nemesis. During the second year, with Dulles still as powerful as ever but no
longer DCI, the Cold War reached its apogee with the Cuban missile crisis. In
the third year of Kennedy’s presidency he intended to implement his Indonesia
strategy so as to justify his intervention in the New Guinea sovereignty dispute.
In essence, this involved pouring in US aid in order to turn Indonesia towards
the West. Kennedy had intended using the same Indonesian army officers which
Dulles had been training at US bases since 1958, training in readiness to
assume power. Kennedy’s intention to utilize these same troops for massive
civic aid programs was the very opposite of Dulles’ intention. But most of all,
Kennedy intended to keep Sukarno as president whereas in Dulles strategy
Sukarno was the arch-enemy. Under the aegis of Sukarno’s radical nationalism,
the Indonesian communist party had been gathering millions of members, driven
by poverty and the attraction of owning a small patch of land to grow rice.
I am reminded of
how Dulles, who was so treacherous, also didn’t inform Kennedy that the CIA had
learned that the Soviets knew of the date of the Bay of Pigs invasion more than
a week in advance and had informed Castro. So Dulles knew the invasion would
fail but went ahead with it anyway. He then blamed Kennedy. He was
devious beyond belief.
A former head of British
intelligence once described Allen Dulles as the “greatest intelligence officer
who ever lived” and while this comment referred to his activities in the 1940s
his Indonesia strategy certainly supports the accolade. Dulles became aware of
the bonanza of minerals and oil in Netherlands New Guinea before the Japanese
wartime occupation of Indonesia. In the mountains of New Guinea one of the
Rockefeller companies discovered the world’s largest primary deposit of gold.
In addition to this, the oil that was discovered in record quantity was free of
sulphur (so oil-refining was not required).
However, to gain control
over these natural resources, first the Dutch colonial administration had to be
removed. When Dutch colonial rule in the Netherlands East Indies ended in 1949,
the Dutch retained New Guinea and stayed another twelve years. Dulles helped
Kennedy to choose in 1962 between Dutch or Indonesian rule over the Papuan
people – he chose the latter- by ensuring the UN option would not occur.
The UN option involved secret discussions in 1961 between Kennedy and the UN
Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold. Kennedy favoured intervention by the UN
because it meant he would not have to choose between Indonesia (whom he needed
as a Cold War ally in Southeast Asia) and the Dutch (who were NATO allies).
Hammarskjold was going to deny both Dutch and Indonesian claims to sovereignty
and instead grant the Papuan people independence.
The thought of Papuan
independence must have incensed Dulles.
‘The Incubus of
Intervention’ shows how and why Allen Dulles prevented Dag Hammarskjold from
using the United Nations to bring the New Guinea sovereignty dispute to an end.
Dulles’ intervention and the death of Hammarskjold is a ghastly precedent for
the tragedy that occurred when JFK’s proposed visit to Jakarta was stopped in
Dallas.
Kennedy’s visit – as Dean Rusk explained to me in a hand-written
letter – was to bring Malaysian Confrontation to a halt and this would only
have reinforced Sukarno’s position as ‘president for life’. Kennedy’s proposed
visit meant the death of Dulles’ Indonesia strategy.
Had the vast gold and
copper deposits in the mountains of West New Guinea (West Papua) remained under
the control of President Sukarno, they would have been used primarily to
benefit the Indonesian people. The opposite occurred once Indonesia was under
the control of General Suharto – indeed, outside the building in Jakarta when
the contract was signed with the Rockefeller company, Freeport Indonesia, army
tanks were heard patrolling the streets. Vast oil deposits in Sumatra, and oil
in other parts of Indonesia, were also exploited. Two of Dulles’ close
associates later benefited from the bonanza of natural resources – Admiral Arleigh Burke of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Kissinger joined the Freeport
board of directors. When the price of gold was at its height several years ago,
the size of the Freeport mining operation could be gauged by the annual
turnover which was almost $20 billion.
Do you think Kennedy’s
Indonesian strategy would have worked?
Kennedy’s Indonesia
strategy would have worked: that was the problem facing Allen Dulles. Stopping
Malaysian Confrontation quite possibly may have landed him a nomination for the
Nobel Peace Prize. Had he not attempted to secure his Indonesia strategy – that
is, had he not been prepared to go to Jakarta to stop
Confrontation in order to get Congress to resume US aid to Indonesia, winning
the 1964 presidential elections would have been next to impossible. His major
foreign policy move in Southeast Asia would have been deemed a failure, so he
had no option.
It was easy for
Kennedy’s detractors to depict his Indonesia strategy as driven by personal
political ambition, because the key factor was that he was supporting President
Sukarno; and because Sukarno had received such bad press in the USA, such a
move by Kennedy seemed fraught with political danger. Sukarno throughout his
entire political career back to the 1920s had promoted nationalism but still he
was branded by some as a communist, or communist sympathizer; even Kennedy, for
that matter, was labelled by some extremist media as a communist. For Dulles’
Indonesia strategy to receive sufficient support from persons in the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Kennedy’s personal ambition was seen as cutting across the
national interest, disrupting the strategy of using the Indonesian army as a
political vehicle against the Indonesian communist party, the PKI. Both
Moscow and Beijing were endeavouring to gain influence on the PKI, the latter by
promoting the PKI role in Malaysian Confrontation, and the former by
discouraging the PKI from participating; instead, Moscow preferred elections to
be held so the numerical advantage of the PKI could be brought to bear. The
rivalry between the two was intense, and ideological disputes were increasingly
evident. Kennedy’s visit would have closed down the opportunity to use the PKI
as a wedge to drive the Sino-Soviet dispute into open hostility.
After the PKI was
decimated in late 1965-66, under orders from General Suharto’s military
cohorts, open hostility flared in the form of tank battles along the
Sino-Soviet border. Had Kennedy proceeded with his visit to Jakarta and his
Indonesia strategy succeeded, we can only surmise whether or not the Sino-Soviet
dispute would have turned into such open conflict or whether the tragic turn of
events in Indonesia, 1965, would ever have occurred. Or would General Suharto
like a toadstool have found another way to surface.
You do not say if you
have concluded that Dulles had JFK assassinated because of the Indonesia
issue. What is your position on that?
Have you seen that
50-minute interview on Youtube by Colonel Fletcher Prouty where he says his
former CIA boss, Allen Dulles, in his last few year as Director, was organizing
assassinations so regularly and so ruthlessly that Prouty called it “Murder
Incorporated” ?
Yes. Prouty’s
insights are invaluable.
For example, take the
plane crash which killed UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold in the Congo in
1961. Last year, 2015, a UN investigation finally decided his death was
political assassination. Playing a crucial role in this investigation were
documents (ten letters by a South African intelligence agency) unearthed by
Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the late
1990s. The name of Allen Dulles was directly linked with the plane crash.
The interview I
conducted with Hammarskjold’s right-hand man, George Ivan Smith, which is
included in ‘The Incubus of Intervention’ introduced another motive – Indonesia
rather than the Congo – for the involvement of Allen Dulles in the tragic
death of Hammarskjold.
Can you talk about that
interview? What you write about the Hammarskjold assassination, JFK, and
Indonesia is new and very important.
George Ivan Smith
explained that Hammarskjold was planning to make an historic announcement in
the General Assembly when he returned from the Congo – which he never
did. The announcement he had intended was for the United Nations to
intervene in the long-running dispute between Indonesia and the Netherlands
over sovereignty of West New Guinea. Had Hammarskjold done this, he would have
totally disrupted the ‘Indonesia strategy’ of Allen Dulles. The CIA had alreadyassassinated the first president of the Congo after being granted independence:
this is what the US Senate investigated in 1975 and found Allen Dulles was
directly involved in instigating this assassination.
What George Ivan Smith
told me – combined with the evidence from Bishop Tutu – provided a motive for
Allen Dulles’ involvement in the death of Hammarskjold that was centered on
Indonesia rather than the Congo.
What I am saying is that
in 1961 Hammarskjold unwittingly threatened Dulles strategy and that in 1963
Kennedy also threatened Dulles strategy without being fully aware of what
Dulles was planning or the years of covert scheming that had gone into that
planning. This is what I have labelled the ‘Indonesia strategy’ of Allen
Dulles. By 1963, with Netherlands New Guinea and its unannounced bonanza of
natural resources now a part of Sukarno’s Indonesia, Dulles’ strategy was on
several levels which I’d like to restate:
1) It involved using
Indonesia, or the Indonesian communist party (PKI) as the ‘wedge’ to widen the
rift between ‘Moscow and Peking’ (Beijing)
2) Dulles’ intervention
in Indonesia in 1958 led to full-scale training in the USA of two-thirds of all
Indonesian army officers, in readiness for regime change (which came in 1965)
3) Exploitation of the
world’s largest primary deposit of gold (and copper) in West New Guinea, and
the world’s purest oil, with no sulphur, was a boost for Rockefeller
companies (linked with Dulles since the 1920s.)
So the answer to your
question is ‘yes’ – Indonesia offered immense benefits in terms of the Cold War
struggle, and (when regime-change took place in Indonesia) immense benefits in
terms of gold, copper and oil. (West New Guinea also has one of the world’s
largest deposits of natural gas.)
Neither Hammarskjold nor
Kennedy was aware of how high the stakes were and neither had more than an
inkling of how ruthless Dulles could be. The Indonesia context, firstly in 1961
and then again in 1963, provided a motive for murder – first Hammarskjold and then
Kennedy.
I have often
thought of Kennedy and Hammarskjold as linked by a certain astute intelligence
and a spiritual dimension. So Dulles had them both killed?
Official records show
DCI Dulles often used gambling metaphors when weighing up the chance of success
for correctly predicting what some foreign leader would do, or predicting the
outcome of one of Dulles’ own projects. For instance, he’d say there was
a “better than even” chance of success. After Hammarskjold’s plane crash in
1961 prevented the UN Secretary-General from interfering in the Indonesia
strategy which Dulles had set in motion five years earlier, inexorably moving
towards regime change, by 1963 the cumulative evidence confirming the rift in
the Sino-Soviet bloc made a successful outcome of this strategy even more
critical. In 1963 Kennedy’s proposed visit to Jakarta, while threatening to
undo years of intelligence work on the massive amount of natural resources in
Indonesia that would be accessible after regime change, also threatened Dulles’
Cold War machinations. Had Kennedy proceeded, the current Dulles’ strategy of
using Indonesia as a wedge in the Sino-Soviet split would be undermined.
Malaysian Confrontation, by sending the Indonesian economy into screaming
inflation, was working in two ways for Dulles: while it set the scene for the
exit of Sukarno, at the same time, it added to the rift and rivalry between
Moscow and Beijing. As such, Kennedy’s visit to Jakarta could be seen as
contrary to the national interest, and for the Joint Chiefs of Staff this
carried far more weight. Stopping Kennedy became an imperative for
Dulles. Having removed Hammarskjold, Dulles’ options now – to use his own
inimitably callous metaphor – were “double or nothing.”
Could we jump ahead to
the 1965-6 period when regime change took place and the slaughter commenced?
What can you tell us about the killing of the generals, where the blame lay,
Suharto’s links to the CIA, etc.? I know you have delved deeply into that.
Killing the army
generals (rather than kidnapping and taking them to Sukarno to explain rumours
of a coup) was not on the agenda of the 30th Sept Movement,
according to one of the key persons in the Movement, Colonel AbdulLatief. Killing them changed everything – changed Indonesian history, led
to General Suharto taking power and wreaking mayhem, one of the largest
mass-murders in the 20thcentury. The Indonesian Communist Party
(PKI) under DN Aidit was the largest communist party outside the Sino-Soviet
bloc, and its decimation was a turning point in the Cold War. The serious
discord between Moscow and Beijing, identified six years earlier and closely
monitored by the CIA, was made far worse by the fate of the PKI. What had once
been described as a monolithic communist bloc now had Moscow and Beijing
hurling blame and abuse at each other and this soon led to open hostility (eg.
tank battles on the Ussuri River.) The continued war in Vietnam, despite US
losses, served this same end. In the early 1970s, the population of Beijing was
even subjected to trial-runs in the event of nuclear attack from the Soviet
Union involving mass-evacuation of the streets into underground shelters.
I know you spoke to
Latief. What did he tell you?
My interview withColonel Latief was in Cipinang prison a few days after Suharto resigned. I’d
arrived in Jakarta in May 1998, just after the rioting and burning had started
– the last person through the airport before it was closed - and became
involved in the supply-chain delivering food to the 60,000 Indonesian students
who were occupying the parliament building. Student protest did much of the
work (up to the final thumbs-down by US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright)
which forced the resignation of Suharto. One of the students who also delivered
food to persons in prison – such as Latief, who had been in prison for 30 years
– helped me into Cipinang.
The three main army
persons in the 30th Sept Movement were Latief, Untung and
Supardjo. Latief was commander of the Jakarta military command. It was
essential to have him on side for the plan to kidnap half a dozen generals.
“There was no plan to kill the generals, no plan to kill anybody,” Latief
repeated to me several times. The person described as head of the Movement was
Lt. Colonel Untung, commander of the palace guard; but the highest ranking
officer was Brig-General Supardjo, based in Pontianak, Kalimantan, as part of
the on-going confrontation with Malaysia. He’d been asked over to Jakarta by
General Suharto (who was running the Confrontation campaign) but the first
person he visited when he arrived was Sjam (full name Kamaruzaman) who was the
actual leader of the Movement. This visit by Supardjo was only two days before
the kidnapping began. His higher rank as general added respectability to the
Movement and he acquiesced in the plan to move against the ‘Council ofGenerals’ accused of planning a coup against President Sukarno. He could see
the Movement lacked any coherent strategy or military planning, but as such an
urgent threat needed immediate response he was willing to let it proceed. It
cost him his life.
John Roosa’s book, Pretext for Mass Murder, confirms Sjam was the leader of the Movement. Roosa
explains Sjam’s role in relation to the Special Bureau, a covert group within
the PKI which Aidit started in late 1964 to befriend persons in the armed
forces who might have been supportive of the PKI. Since the early 1950s, Aidit
had known of Sjam’s skill in becoming involved in an issue from both sides of
the political fence and obviously thought he was the man for the job, even
though he had no formal military training. Apparently what Aidit did not
know was that Sjam’s military experience during the 1945-49 struggle for
Indonesian independence against the Dutch involved close contact with Suharto.
Nor did Aidit realize the implications of this military bond which predated his
own link-up with Sjam: indeed, it should raise serious questions about Aidit’s
control over Sjam in the Special Bureau when Sjam’s ultimate allegiance was to
Suharto.
Did Suharto support this
group?
Among the members of the
30th Sept Movement, there was no question that Suharto
discretely supported the group but it did not dawn on them that Suharto and
Sjam may have been operating together as one unit.
So why did they trust
Suharto?
When I asked Latief why
the Movement trusted Suharto so much before the fateful night when the generals
were kidnapped, he answered as follows: “He was one of us”…..
Latief and Suharto were close friends. They had family links and military ties
that went back to the 45-49 independence struggle, where Latief briefly met
Sjam for the first time, but the Suharto-Sjam link during the 1950s leading up
to Sjam’s role in the Movement remained unknown to Latief – until it was too
late and the killings had occurred. Latief said when he was thrown into prison,
the bullet shot into his knee was left untreated, and he was also stabbed with
a bayonet. At first he was left without food in prison; he told me he was
so hungry he caught a rat and ate it.
In retrospect Latief’s
evidence makes a mockery of the court proceedings: after all, he had visited
the house of Suharto a few days before the kidnapping to explain to Suharto the
plan to kidnap the generals. Any such operation would have been stomped on
immediately by Indonesia’s strategic command, Kostrad, but this did not happen
because the commander of this elite unit was Suharto himself. If it could be
argued that Suharto kept this information to himself for the ultimate benefit
of Indonesia, then he must also accept responsibility for the death of the
generals – which opened the path to the presidency for none other than the
ultimate benefit of Suharto. On the morning of 1stOctober when
troops from the Movement occupied Merdeka Square, a central location in
Jakarta, the fact that Suharto’s Kostrad headquarters remained untouched even
after the first radio announcement was tantamount to a statement of alliance
between him and the 30th September Movement. On one side of the
square was the US Embassy, on another side was Kostrad headquarters, and
opposite was the Radio station from where the Movement made its first
announcement at 7.15am that a number of generals had been arrested and that an
Indonesian Revolutionary Council would be established in Jakarta. The
ten-minute broadcast gave the name of Untung as leader of the Movement.
According to another
person I interviewed, Indonesian Air Force intelligence officer Lt. Colonel
Heru Atmodjo, who was accused of involvement in the Movement and spent 17 years
in prison, the first radio announcement was written by Sjam but perused and
approved by Untung, whereas the second radio announcement just after midday was
entirely the work of Sjam. The second radio announcement was attempting a
dramatic restructuring of rank and power – while all the time holding Sukarno
as the supreme commander – and as a result of this announcement the Movement
has subsequently been labelled as attempting a ‘coup’. Only in hindsight did
Latief realize the Movement which he had supported was actually politically
motivated or – one might say – infected by the presence of Sjam.
In his defence
statement, Latief told the court not only that he visited the house of Suharto
a few days before 30th Sept and outlined the plan, but also
that they spoke again on the night of 30th September when
Suharto was visiting his son in hospital. The court dismissed Latief’s
remarkable information as irrelevant. Nor was the court told that, after
hearing from Latief that the kidnapping operation would take place that very
night in the early morning hours of 1st October, Suharto then
paid a secret visit to the official residence of Brig-General Supardjo at
Cempaka Putih, in Jakarta. (He also had a family home in Bandung.) The
late-night secret visit was witnessed by a Lt. Colonel who took note but did
not mention it, of course, during the subsequent years of terror under Suharto.
More than two years before Suharto’s resignation, a very high-ranking
Indonesian officer, together with a prominent politician, informed me of this
visit by Suharto to the residence of Supardjo. Suharto not only knew of the
plan to kidnap the generals but was accepted as one of the group.
How and when did Suharto
manipulate the kidnapping and murder of the generals as a pretext for the
slaughter of the PKI?
A remarkable PhD thesis
completed in June 2014 by J. Melvin, ‘The Mechanics of Mass Murder’, shows how
Suharto, on the morning of the 1st October 1965, had issued
orders to begin arresting and culling the PKI in faraway northern
Sumatra. Before the PKI had even been named as possible culprits –
indeed, even before it was known that the fate of the generals was not
kidnapping but murder – Suharto was blaming the PKI for the deaths of the
generals. He issued orders for retaliation against the PKI. When this gruesome
preparatory work of Suharto becomes better known (and I think John Roosa will
soon publish another book incorporating this vital information) the role of Suharto
in the death of the generals will be seen as his ‘crossing the Rubicon’ – but
in this case it was a river of blood.
Suharto’s intelligence
aide, Ali Murtopo, later tracked down two of the drivers of the trucks which
had transported the troops involved in the kidnapping and murder. Murtopo
killed both drivers a week or so later, perhaps because they had information
which, in some way, might have linked Suharto to Sjam, or information relating
more directly to the death of the generals.
Sjam admitted in court
his responsibility for the death of the generals – during the kidnapping the
last-minute orders were ‘dead or alive’ and those who survived the kidnapping
were later executed with a bullet in the head – but Sjam claimed all this was
on instructions from Aidit, bolstering the case that the PKI was responsible.
Taomo Zhou has shown in
her article ‘China and the Thirtieth of September Movement,’ (‘Indonesia’
98,October 2014) that the transcript of a discussion between Chairman Mao and
Aidit bears remarkable resemblance to what took place in Jakarta on the fateful
night when the six generals were killed – the event which Indonesian
terminology refers to as G30S. However, the transcript is historically
contaminated by the murderous events that took place on the night of 30th September.
With G30S in hindsight, Aidit’s complicity can be read into the transcript to
such an extent that kidnapping is all too readily replaced by murder. Taomo
Zhou states that “The Chinese leaders were aware of the PKI’s plan to prevent
the anti-Communist army generals from making a move to seize power “- but
murder (as Latief explained) was not on the agenda, so to attribute any more
than kidnapping into Aidit’s intention would seem to be reading into the
transcript more than intended in the original meaning. Because of the way
the term G30S is used in the summing up, Taomo Zhou implies murder was on the
agenda: “Recent research indicates that a clandestine group within the PKI,
which included Aidit but excluded other members of the politburo and the rank
and file of the party, planned G30S.” And again: ”A clandestine group within
the PKI independently made the plan, which was then shared by Aidit with the
top Chinese leaders in advance.”
If Aidit is to be held
responsible for the events which took place that night – and by this I mean the
killing rather than the kidnapping of the generals – and that Sjam was acting
on Aidit’s orders, then it would have been on Aidit’s instructions that G30S
troops did not occupy Kostrad headquarters because Suharto was
considered as one who was supporting the Movement.
Although Aidit did not
mention any name, it may well have been the highest ranking officer (ie.
Suharto rather than Supardjo) whom he was referring to when he told Chairman
Mao “we plan to establish a military committee… The head of this military
committee would be an underground member of our party.” The
duplicity of Suharto, like Sjam, went a long way back into Indonesia history.
In 1948, Suharto was the emissary sent by General Nasution to investigate the
military strength and political unity of the movement in Madiun who, apparently
under communist leadership, were steadfastly unwilling to conduct negotiations
with the Dutch. “Do you negotiate with a burglar in your house?” was one of the
rhetorical questions asked at this time. Suharto supported the
intransigence of the left-wing groups in Madiun and, according to the military
commander of Madiun, Soemarsono, (now 96 years of age and living in Sydney,
where I spoke with him three months ago) Suharto was accepted by the PKI when
he was in Madiun because of his strongly pro-left stance. Perhaps this
was why Aidit, who in the postwar days was a young left-wing figure and only
became head of the PKI in the early 1950s, was willing to accept the purported
hand of friendship Suharto offered as Kostrad commander in Jakarta in 1965.
Suharto’s deviousness is
breathtaking.
General Nasution knew
Suharto over a period of two decades, from the days of the struggle for
independence to 1965, and then for another three decades when Suharto was
president. (Nasution 1918-2000 passed away two years after Suharto resigned.)
Over a period from 1983 up to 1996, I visited Nasution many times to talk over
aspects of Indonesia history. Hanging on the wall next to where we talked
was a painting of his young daughter who was accidentally shot on the night of
30thSept 65 when troops came to kidnap him, but failed. He escaped
by climbing over the fence into an Embassy which was next to his house, but in
the fracas his daughter was killed and so too was his adjutant, Lt
Tendean. Nasution told me – without putting it in so many words – that
his wife always blamed Suharto for the death of their daughter: for the rest of
her life – that is, three decades of living in Jakarta – she never again spoke
to Suharto.
Suharto has always
claimed he had no prior knowledge of what the 30th Sept
Movement was intending to do. Indeed, according to the three-tiered system he
himself introduced to apportion blame, anything less than complete denial would
have seen Suharto himself in Category One which was ‘prior knowledge’ and
punishable by death.
What was Suharto’s
link to the CIA and the 30th September movement?
When I asked Nasution
about the role of the CIA, if any, in G30S, he told me that Sjam and Suharto
had been observed in Bandung (where the Indonesian army has an officer training
school, referred to as SESKOAD) visiting the commander of that school. The name
of the commander was Colonel Suwarto and he was closely allied with the CIA, a
detail Nasution stressed and one that is generally known by Indonesian scholars
of this period. For me, Suwarto was an interesting character – quite apart from
the fact that he had a wooden leg – because his American friend was Guy Pauker,
well known as a close associate of Allen Dulles. When I asked Pauker if he’d
met Suharto before he was president, he denied that he had. However, Pauker
commented that Allen S. Whiting (his former friend in RAND and later State Dept
Counselor) was the first person to point to the incipient split between Moscow
and Beijing as a definite schism. Even in 1963 there were still relatively few
who interpreted this split as genuine, but among those who did was Ambassador
Marshall Green. [see: footnote 65 in Harold P. Ford’s article ‘Calling the
Sino-Soviet Split’ published by CSI, Winter ‘98-99]. Having arrived in
Jakarta in 1965 only months before the 30th Sept Movement,
Green arranged for the Indonesia army to receive top-level communication gear
to coordinate the widespread massacre of the PKI. Also supplying thousands of
names, Green’s macabre contribution to the Cold War was, in effect, the
decapitation the PKI.
Nasution’s own
intelligence cohorts would have been the source of the reported sighting of
Suharto and Sjam in Bandung. Assuming this is correct and Pauker’s denial also
correct, then Suharto and Sjam might have been talking with Suwarto in one
room, with Pauker in the adjacent room: a highly improbable situation, of
course. Suwarto was the former instructor of Suharto when he attended SESKOAD,
shortly before being appointed commander of the campaign to oust the Dutch from
Netherlands New Guinea. (Today this Indonesian province, West Papua, has been
controlled by the Indonesian army virtually since the signing of the New York
Agreement in 1962, arranged by Allen Dulles’ long-term friend, Ellsworth
Bunker.)
I’d like to point out
something that emerged as a result of the interview with Colonel Latief. When
going through the court testimonial of Sjam, some details he provided deserve
closer attention as they are contradicted by Latief’s statement – and he was
very adamant when he made the statement to me in Cipinang – that he had never
seen Sjam before 30th Sept 1965. Yet in Sjam’s court
evidence, he states that when Aidit and he set up the Special Bureau to
ascertain or pinpoint persons in the army who might be sympathetic to the PKI
position, this process involved a few meetings. Sjam claimed he held
several meetings with Latief and Untung, and that the purpose of the meetings
was to plan a counter-move to the so-called Council of Generals who were
planning to move against President Sukarno. This is clearly incorrect if
Latief had never met Sjam before 30th Sept. Rather than
simply say, ‘Well, perhaps Latief is not correct,” another way to view this is
to ask, ‘How was it that Suharto was a close friend of the four main persons in
the Movement, Supardjo, Sjam, Untung and Latief?’ (Untung had served in the New
Guinea campaign to oust the Dutch in 1962, with Suharto as his commanding
officer.) Is there not also a possibility that Suharto, using his long-standing
friendship with Untung and Latief and his inside-knowledge of where their
political sympathies lay, actually suggested to Sjam (as part of his Special
Bureau work) to approach Untung. And then for Untung to approach Latief. If
this were the case, then we have a situation where Latief would have visited
the house of Suharto in the days prior to G30S, to tell him of the action the
Movement intended to take, when Suharto actually knew already. This may have
reinforced Latief’s perception that Suharto’s role was supportive only, with no
link between Sjam and Suharto, and so may have been a reason why Suharto did
not have Latief executed, as he did the others in the Movement.
So you have concluded
that Suharto was, together with the CIA, the puppeteer behind it all?
Increasingly, as further
evidence is compiled years after the event, Suharto is taking on the appearance
of the Kostrad commander at the centre of a web. He had made plans – even
before the event occurred – to strike at the PKI for the events which occurred
on the night of 30th Sept. And through Sjam he was able to
ensure the kidnapping event (as planned by Latief, Untung and Supardjo) was
turned into the murder of the generals; and through Sjam’s position with Aidit,
Suharto ensured the event was turned into a tragedy of epic proportions, from
which Indonesia has yet to recover.
So Suharto comes to
power, the massacres ensue, and West Papua is exploited by American mining
giant Freeport McMoRan. After all these years, do you see any hope for
West Papuan independence?
The main issues facing
the Papuan people in the western half of New Guinea, now two Indonesian
provinces called Papua and West Papua, all stem from the continuing presence of
the Indonesian army. Although there are Papuan regional representatives and a
Papuan governor of each province, the Indonesian army rules everyday life, as
it has since it first arrived in the territory in December 1962.
Ousting the Dutch
colonial power in 1962, the Indonesian rule arrived in the form of an army of
occupation and – although it is not as obvious to the casual observer now as it
was during the Suharto era – the mentality of occupation, exploitation and
annihilation has continued to the present day.
I am not using the word
‘annihilation’ as a simple descriptive term. The word ‘genocide’, of course, is
abhorrent, and people visiting Papua/West Papua today would see Papuans in
urban areas apparently living freely, and in the more remote regions Papuans
still live in villages much as they did during and before the brief Dutch
period. Yes, there have been some positive changes but in terms of infant
mortality and other important life-indices, the statistics for the quality of
life lived by some indigenous Papuans are worse than the worst in Africa. This
is precisely what angers the Papuan people. They are 20 times the national
average of HIV-Aids and the usual response from Jakarta is that the Papuans are
primitive and their sexual practices have led to the shocking statistics. But
the reality is – and here I can speak from personal experience having
interviewed a medical officer who had investigated the problem – the Indonesian
army has been responsible for bringing prostitutes to Papua (as part of the
varied business interests of the army in Papua) and ensuring all the
prostitutes – they came from Surabaya – were HIV-infected. The medical officer
actually interviewed the prostitutes and they said they were picked to go to
Papua because they were infected.
I am reminded of methods
used to exterminate the native peoples of North America, smallpox, alcohol,
etc.
The army even
manufactures its own brand of raw alcohol notorious for its methanol toxicity.
One morning in Nabire I remember walking along the street and coming across a
dead Papuan, dead from drinking the cheap alcohol, I was told. It has been sold
everywhere for many years, but now the Papuan governor has introduced a total
ban on alcohol. This move might have been inspired by good intentions but will
create a thriving black-market dominated by smuggling which will be controlled
by the military. Selling logs to China and other places, despite repeated
moratoriums on logging, is a business that reaps hundreds of millions of
dollars for the army in both provinces, Papua/West Papua. But this is more
ecological annihilation.
What did you mean when
you used the word genocide?
Let me return to the
question of genocide. US Congressman Eni Faleomavaega once asked me to find out
more about the killing that took place in the highlands in 1977 – mass killing.
The Indonesian army used four Bronco OV10 fighter/bomber planes, ex Vietnam,
strafing and bombing non-stop for four months in the highlands. Valley after
valley of people working in the gardens tending their sweet-potato crops,
villages that had been there for generations – suddenly attacked by the new
boss from Jakarta. A Dutch doctor in the highland town of Wamena took note of
the number of widows visiting the hospital there the following year and
calculated the death toll was above 20,000 people. I have also met Christian
missionaries who were in the area when this massive killing spree took place.
For one woman, so bad was the horror she was traumatized for the rest of her
life. During my first visit to Jayapura in 1978, I recall one night a young boy
about 12 years of age came out from under a building, pleading with me: “They
kill my mother, they kill my father, and now they kill me.” I had no idea what
he was talking about: only later I found out what had happened in the
highlands, from where the child had fled, walking for weeks.
The Dutch doctor also
noted that four plain-clothed Americans were acting as advisers for the
Indonesian pilots involved in this non-stop bombing and strafing. They were
providing advice to the pilots on how best to attain better angles and
approaches as they searched for new targets beyond the main Baliem valley. The surrounding
region which took only minutes to reach by plane took many hours to reach by
road transport. This fertile region was the most densely populated of all areas
in the entire territory and Papuan communities had lived there for centuries.
This was where Richard Archbold (a former CEO from Standard Oil in pre-war
days) landed in his giant flying-boat. He dubbed the place “Shangri-La” because
the Papuans were so peaceful – men, women and children working in the fields
until 2pm, then the men washing the children in the river before conducting
school lessons while the women retired to the village to prepare the evening
meal.
Do you have figures on
how many people in “Shangri-La” were slaughtered in this genocide?
In a land such as Papua,
because of the rugged terrain and remoteness, there is always great difficulty
in obtaining accuracy of demographic information. The figure of 100,000 Papuans
used to be bandied about as the death toll resulting from Indonesian army
repression, over the years; but this was chosen only because the Human Rights
group which promoted the figure had that number of names and addresses of
people, missing or dead. This included persons who were known to have been
dropped by helicopter over the sea, or persons forced into a latrine only to
have their head pushed under and held there until death. Two decades ago, I
discussed this very issue with prominent Papuan activists and realised, while
they knew the figure was much higher, the purpose in claiming the figure of
100,000 was because it was indisputable. To gain a better idea of the total
number, however, I checked the population figures available from the last
census held before the Dutch departed, and with it I compared the statistics
available from eastern New Guinea, populated by Papuans with similar culture
but under the former colonial control of Australia. The dividing line between
east and West Papua is simply a meridian, 141 degrees East, which was agreed
upon by the Dutch in the western half, and in the eastern half British and
German (before Australia took control after the First World war.) in places,
this dividing line which became a colonial border ran straight through the
middle of some villages.
So in Netherlands New
Guinea in 1960 there was a census, and in the eastern half called Papua New
Guinea (PNG) the Australian administration also conducted a census in 1960. PNG
always had more inhabitants than the western half but it was the rate of growth
that was crucial because it gave a basis of comparison with the similar Papuan
culture in the western half. The rate of growth of the PNG Papuan population
from 1960 to 2002 was then calculated. This rate I then applied to the census
statistics compiled by the Dutch in 1960, to calculate an estimation of what
the population in the western half might be in 2002, or might have been
expected to be.
Under Indonesian army
rule for four decades, there was a remarkable discrepancy showing a population
deficit of 1.3 million Papuans. Of course, we must also include in this rough
calculation the exodus of Papuans from west to east once the terror of
Indonesian army rule became apparent, but it shows without doubt that a vast
number of Papuans went missing. This population deficit in the territory of
Indonesian-controlled West New Guinea was calculated when the differentiation
between Papuan and non-Papuan was still a feature of the census questions.
Nowadays this deficit has been more than filled by people coming to Papua from
other Indonesian islands, mainly Java and Sulawesi. These people from outside
Papua are referred to as transmigrants and, because the flow has not been
restricted, Papuans are now a minority in their own land. The figure of 1.3
million Papuans missing over 40 years of army occupation is comparable to the
figure often cited for the Armenian genocide that occurred in Turkey around the
time of the First World War, an occurrence that has never been acknowledged by
the government of Turkey. The estimate of 1.3 Papuans, and the method used for
reaching this number, was in an article I wrote for the Encyclopedia of
Genocide published by Macmillan in 2005. Papua, most of these people
would have died from disease but this still implicates the role of Indonesia in
the population loss. Even today, in some remote areas, Papuans living in
isolated regions rarely, if at all, ever see a medical doctor.
Have you traveled to
these areas to confirm this?
In 1983, I was sent to
visit the territory by the London-based Anti-Slavery International to report on
figures released by an American bishop operating in the Asmat region along the
southern coastline of West New Guinea (then called Irian Jaya.) The bishop
claimed 600 out of 1000 Papuan children under five years of age were dying in
that region. I went to check out whether this was true or not: it was true.
The unspoken tragedy
here comes from medical reports compiled in Dutch times which described this
area as a medical phenomenon because of the absence of disease. A few persons
had infections in their feet but otherwise the entire area was free of disease.
Access to the Papuan
people started with the New York Agreement in August 1962. Freeport gained
access to rich mineral deposits almost immediately and then in 1977 the
Indonesian army gained access to the indigenous Papuan highlanders. In cultural
terms these two were the complete antithesis of each other and the consequences
of this has been devastating: the Papuan population suffered an immense
depletion in numbers during the Suharto era and conditions two decades later
still have Papuans living in appalling conditions. Access for foreigners into
the territory has become less of a problem but still some journalists find
themselves on the restricted list. But in Papua the digital age has dawned and
Papuans are determined to tell the world their plight. In the same way that
Indonesian nationalists informed the world to release themselves from Dutch
colonial power, Papuans are doing likewise in the hope that the iron grip of
the Indonesian army will be released.
What’s the position of
the Jakarta government?
The Jakarta government
is faced with a stupendous task of negotiating with the Papuan people – perhaps
a process similar to the South African ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ – before any
progress can be made. The main problem, from the perspective of one who has
observed Papuan-Jakarta relations over the decades, is that Jakarta seems
reluctant to admit what the army has done, not just during the Suharto era but
also in Papua/West Papua today. There does seem to be an administrative gap
between what Jakarta says and what actually happens in terms of army brutality
in Papua. Whether or not this gap is diminishing, as it seems to be, remains
debatable. During the Suharto era, the army was utterly ruthless but in the
post-Suharto era we are told things have changed. This change can be gauged by
the discrepancy that now appears between Jakarta announcements and the reality
in Papua of life under the army, and the police. The post-Suharto era has
police in a more prominent role, of course, but this has often led to full-on
gun battles between the army and police, fighting over their business interests
in this remote corner of Indonesia.
In the first half of
2016, thousands of Papuans have been arrested for peacefully demonstrating in
the street, attempting to voice their concern about their human rights, their
culture, their lives.
Army and police- with a
few exceptions – enjoy impunity from the Indonesian judicial process. For
example, six months ago I heard how two young boys in a remote region in the
Papuans highlands had their pig killed by a passing car. Pigs are a valuable
commodity, and a fully grown one is worth two or three times the price it would
fetch in Australia because the pig is so integrated into the culture… many
forms of celebrations, weddings for example, would involve roasting a pig or
several pigs for the community, not only for the vital nutrients but as a
system of cultural bonding. So the two young boys were stopping cars on the
road and asking drivers to pay some money as compensation for the pig they had
lost. Rp50,000 (rupiahs) would be the same as $5. Two policeman drove to
investigate. As the windows were winding down and the boys were about to ask
for some money, the police simply shot both boys. Life in Papua – if you are a
Papuan – is precarious.
Thank you, Prof.
Poulgrain for this disturbing history lesson on Indonesian and American
relations.
Interviewed by Edward
Curtin
The original source of
this article is Greg Pulgrain
Copyright © Greg
Pulgrain and Edward
Curtin,
Greg Pulgrain, 2016
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