On the CIA's role<\/p>\n
I thank Mr. Richardson for providing a list of names as
\nsources for his article on the CIA's crimes in Indonesia. I have
\nspent considerable time on the Internet, the only immediate
\nresource available to me, to research what these names might have
\nto say about the criminal activity of the CIA in Indonesia. In
\naddition to Peter Dale Scott's article The United States and the
\noverthrow of Sukarno, 1965-1967 at
\nhttp:\/\/www.pir.org\/scott.html, as mentioned by Mr. Rudi Wilson,
\nreaders of The Jakarta Post might want to look up Noam Chomsky's
\ndiscussion of this same topic in chapter five of his book, Year
\n501, available at http:\/\/www.lbbs.org\/chomsky\/year\/year.html.
\nJournalist Allan Nairn has a homepage at
\nhttp:\/\/www.thirdworldtraveler.com that includes his articles Out
\nof East Timor and U.S. complicity in Timor. Professor Stephen
\nShalom's homepage is
\nhttp:\/\/www.wilpaterson.edu\/cohss\/polisci\/faculty\/shalom.html and
\nincludes an article he coauthored with Cynthia Peters titled
\nTimor: Reparations and responsibility. Another important article
\nis one written by Kathy Kadane of the States News Service in 1990
\nregarding the 1965 massacre, Ex-agents say CIA compiled death
\nlists for Indonesians, available at
\nhttp:\/\/www.pir.org\/kadane.html.<\/p>\n
Mr. Richardson's comments on the 1965 attempted coup are more
\nthan just a precis of the Scott article, because Mr. Richardson's
\nconviction is hardened into blanket judgment.<\/p>\n
Mr. Richardson's article, written as an opinion piece, is
\nprecisely that, opinionated. Mr. Scott's more balanced approach
\nincludes in both its introduction and conclusion an important and
\nnecessary caveat, which I quote: \"The whole story of that ill-
\nunderstood period would transcend even the fullest possible
\nwritten analysis. Much of what happened can never be documented;
\nand of the documentation that survives, much is both
\ncontroversial and unverifiable.<\/p>\n
\"The slaughter of Sukarno's left-wing allies was a product of
\nwidespread paranoia as well as of conspiratorial policy, and it
\nrepresents a tragedy beyond the intentions of any single group or
\ncoalition. It would be foolish to suggest that in 1965 the only
\nviolence came from the U.S. government, the Indonesian military,
\nand their mutual contacts in British and Japanese intelligence.\"<\/p>\n
That said, Mr. Scott goes on to give the CIA a very strong rap
\non the knuckles for its involvement in one of the 20th century's
\nworst massacres. The CIA and State Department spokesmen may
\nflatly deny all they want, but I have little doubt from what Mr.
\nScott says in his meticulously researched article that the CIA
\nwas actively involved in contributing to the climate in which the
\nmassacre occurred. What is even worse, it is apparent from Ms.
\nKadane's article that the CIA was handing over their lists of
\nknown Communist Party members to the Soeharto regime despite
\nunconfirmed reports the U.S. Embassy possessed that the
\nSoehartoists were planning mass murder.<\/p>\n
However, the numerous facts that can be pinned down are not as
\nnumerous and extensive as one would wish for if one wants to make
\nthe sweeping, condemnatory judgement of the CIA that the massacre
\noccurred as a direct result of the CIA's planning and
\ninvolvement, as some of Mr. Scott's sources and Mr. Richardson
\nimply.<\/p>\n
Another way to look at this is to ask, if the tape of history
\nwere to be rewound and replayed with the CIA extracted from the
\npicture, would that massacre still have occurred? I think the
\nanswer is \"yes\". The massacre, after all, was carried out by a
\nlarge number of Indonesians, prompted by some very powerful
\nnational groups with guns in their hands who had much more
\nimmediate and compelling interests at stake than the CIA's. The
\nCIA, while a contributor, was neither the cause nor the catalyst.
\nAs an Indonesian Embassy spokesman says in Ms. Kadane's article,
\n\"In terms of fighting the communists, as far as I'm concerned,
\nthe Indonesian people fought by themselves to eradicate the
\nCommunists.\"<\/p>\n
RICHARD LEWIS<\/p>\n
Denpasar, Bali<\/p>", "url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/on-the-cias-role-1447893297", "image": "" }, "sponsor": "Okusi Associates", "sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com" }