Did the US Help Incite the 1965 Indonesia Massacre?
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Volume 13 | Issue 31 | Number 2 | Article ID 4351 | Aug 03, 2015 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Still Uninvestigated After 50 Years: Did the U.S. Help Incite the 1965 Indonesia Massacre? Peter Dale Scott It is now fifty years since the so-called “G30S” or “Gestapu” (Gerakan September Tigahpuluh) event of September 30, 1965 in Indonesia, when six members of the Indonesian army general staff were brutally murdered. This event was a decisive moment in Indonesian history: it led to the overthrow of President Sukarno, his replacement by an army general, Suharto, and the subsequent massacre of a half million or more Indonesians targeted as communists.1 It is also forty years since I first wrote to suggest that the United States was implicated in this horrendous event,2 and thirty years since I wrote about it again in 1985 in the 3 Canadian journal Pacific Affairs. The Indonesia massacre of 1965 Strikingly, there has been very little follow-up investigating these events inside the United Consider five facts about the U.S. and States. A new generation of scholars, notably Indonesia in 1965, facts that (apart from the John Roosa and Bradley Simpson, havefirst) have been little noted or greeted in documented U.S. involvement in theAmerica with silence. exploitation of Gestapu to justify the subsequent mass murder, in the massacre Fact No. 1) Prior to Gestapu, a number of project itself, and in the formation of the U.S. academics and policy intellectuals subsequent capitalist New Order.4 But there with connections to the CIA and RAND has been, I shall try to show, little or no Corporation publicly urged their contacts American response to facts I presented then in the Indonesian Army "to strike, sweep suggesting U.S. involvement in inciting the their house clean” (Guy Pauker), while specific event of September 30 itself. “liquidating the enemy's political and guerrilla armies” (William Kintner). Text of my article in Pacific Affairs In a RAND Corporation book published by Princeton University Press, Pauker, a Rand Corporation analyst and consultant to the National Security Council, urged 1 13 | 31 | 2 APJ | JF his contacts in the Indonesian legally elected communist military to assume "full government.... In the meantime, responsibility" for their nation's with Western help, free Asian leadership, "fulfill a mission," and political leaders -- together with hence "to strike, sweep their house the military -- must not only hold clean."42 [From fn. 43:] William on and manage, but reform and Kintner, a CIA (OPC) senior staff advance while liquidating the officer from 1950-52, and later enemy's political and guerrilla Nixon's ambassador to Thailand, armies." also wrote in favor of "liquidating" the Indonesian Communist Party [PKI] while working at a CIA- Reception of Fact No. 1 subsidized think-tank, the Foreign Googling for “pauker + kintner + indonesia” Policy Research Institute, on the yields many results. Of the first ten, five are to University of Pennsylvania campus. my work, and five are to works sourcing me. I failed to discover any independent discussion. Documentation in my article for Fact No. 1 But this first fact, unlike those following, was relatively widely received, because the quotations from Pauker and Kintner were Fn. 42. Guy J. Pauker, “The Role of picked up and reproduced by Noam Chomsky. the Military in Indonesia,” in John H. Johnson, ed., The Role of the Fact No. 2) Gestapu was a false flag Military in Underdeveloped operation: it claimed to have acted to Countries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton defend Sukarno, but the pro-Sukarno University Press, 1962), pp. generals in the Indonesian Army General 222-24. The foreword to the book Staff were in fact among the first to be is by Klaus Knorr, who worked for assassinated. the CIA while teaching at Princeton. The book was based on Text of my article papers delivered to a conference at Princeton in 1962 attended by military officers from other third- According to the Australian scholar world countries, including Brazil, Harold Crouch, by 1965 the whose U.S.-backed army coup in Indonesian Army General Staff was 1964 preceded Indonesia’s by a split into two camps. At the center year. were the general staff officers appointed with, and loyal to, the Fn. 43. William Kintner and Joseph army commander General Yani, Kornfeder, The New Frontier of who in turn was reluctant to War [London: Frederick Muller, challenge President Sukarno's 1963], pp. 233, 237-38): "If the PKI policy of national unity in alliance is able to maintain its legal with the Indonesian Communist existence and Soviet influence party, or PKI. The second group, continues to grow, it is possible including the right-wing generals that Indonesia may be the first Nasution and Suharto, comprised Southeast Asian country to be those opposed to Yani and his taken over by a popularly based, Sukarnoist policies.5 All of these 2 13 | 31 | 2 APJ | JF generals were anti-PKI, but by down" Gestapu, are mutually 1965 the divisive issue was supporting lies.11 Sukarno. The simple (yet untold) story of Sukarno's overthrow is that in the fall of 1965 Yani and his inner circle of generals were murdered, paving the way for a seizure of power by right-wing anti-Yani forces allied to Suharto. The key to this was the so-called Gestapu coup attempt which, in the name of supporting Sukarno, in fact targeted very precisely the leading members of the army's most loyal faction, the Yani group.6 An army unity meeting in January 1965, between "Yani's inner circle" and those (including Suharto) who "had grievances of one sort or another against Yani," lined up the victims of September 30 [the Yani faction] against those who came to power after their murder [the anti-Yani faction including Suharto].7 Not one anti-Sukarno general was targeted by Gestapu, with the obvious exception of General Suharto, the beneficiary of the Gestapu plot Nasution.8 But by 1961 the CIA operatives in Washington had Documentation for Fact No. 2 become disillusioned with Nasution as a reliable asset, because of his "consistent record Fn. 5. Harold Crouch, The Army of yielding to Sukarno on several and Politics in Indonesia (Ithaca, major counts."9 Relations between New York: Cornell University Suharto and Nasution were also Press, 1978), pp. 79-81. cool, since Nasution, after investigating Suharto on Fn. 6. In addition, one of the two corruption charges in 1959, had Gestapu victims in Central Java transferred him from his (Colonel Katamso) was the only command.10 non-PKI official of rank to attend the PKI's nineteenth anniversary The duplicitous distortions of celebration in Jogjakarta in May reality, first by Lt. Colonel 1964: Mortimer,Indonesian Untung's statements for Gestapu, Communism, p. 432.5 Ironically, and then by Suharto in "putting the belated "discovery" of his 3 13 | 31 | 2 APJ | JF corpse was used to trigger off the off all aid to Indonesia purge of his PKI contacts. unconditionally was quietly killed in conference committee, on the Fn. 7. Four of the six pro-Yani misleading ground that the representatives in January were Foreign Assistance Act "requires killed along with Yani on October the President to report fully and 1. Of the five anti-Yani concurrently to both Houses of the representatives in January, we Congress on any assistance shall see that at least three were furnished to Indonesia" (U.S. prominent in "putting down" Cong., Senate, Report No. Gestapu and completing the 88-1925, Foreign Assistance Act of elimination of the Yani-Sukarno 1964, p. 11). In fact the act's loyalists (the three were Suharto, requirement that the president Basuki Rachmat, and Sudirman of report "to Congress" applied to SESKOAD, the Indonesian Army eighteen other countries, but in Staff and Command School): the case of Indonesia he was to Crouch, The Army, p. 81n. report to two Senate Committees and the speaker of the House: Fn. 8. While Nasution's daughter Foreign Assistance Act, Section and aide were murdered, he was 620(j). able to escape without serious injury and supported the ensuing Text of my article: After March purge. 1964, when Sukarno told the U.S., "go to hell with your aid," it Fn. 9. Indonesia, 22 (October became increasingly difficult to 1976), p. 165 (CIA Memorandum of extract any aid from the U.S. 22 March 1961 from Richard M. congress: those persons not aware Bissell, Attachment B). By 1965 of what was developing found it Washington’s disillusionment with hard to understand why the U.S. Nasution was heightened by should help arm a country which Nasution's deep opposition to the was nationalizing U.S. economic U.S. involvement in Vietnam. interests, and using immense aid subsidies from the Soviet Union to confront the British in Malaysia. Reception of Fact No. 2 Thus a public image was created Not mentioned, as far as I know, in the United that under Johnson "all United States. States aid to Indonesia was Fact No. 3) The Johnson Administration stopped," a claim so buttressed by misled members of the 88th US Congress, misleading documentation that in order to continue aid to the Indonesian competent scholars have repeated 74 army following a Senate amendment it. In fact, Congress had agreed prohibiting it. to treat U.S. funding of the Indonesian military as a covert matter, restricting congressional Footnote 75 to my article: A review of the president's Senate amendment in 1964 to cut determinations on Indonesian aid 4 13 | 31 | 2 APJ | JF to two Senate committees, and the House Speaker, who were concurrently involved in oversight of the CIA.75 Ambassador Jones' more candid account admits that "suspension" meant "the U.S.