Book accuses RI diplomats of spying for the Dutch

By Aboeprijadi Santoso

AMSTERDAM (JP): A number of Indonesian diplomats in the 1950s were involved in Dutch espionage activities during the conflict in West Irian. The information gathered was considered important, and passed on to Dutch Foreign Minister Joseph Luns, two Dutch historians say.

It is impossible, however, to say whether this affair could be considered "acts of treason".

"You would never know whether those sources were playing a double or even triple game of supplying the information to one or more sides," said Bob de Graaff, one of two authors of a new book on the Dutch Foreign Intelligence Service.

On Friday, the two Dutch authors launched the results of their research findings in a book titled Villa Maarheeze. De Geschiedenis van de Inlichtingendienst Buitenland (Villa Maarheeze. The History of the Netherlands Foreign Intelligence Service).

Dr. Bob de Graaff and Dr. Cees Wiebes, are, respectively, a researcher at the Institute for the History of the Netherlands in The Hague and a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Amsterdam. They researched the little known and long forgotten secret service institution which the Dutch government had relied on in the past.

The book relates the history of the Netherlands Foreign Intelligence Service, called IDB (Inlichtingendienst Buitenland), from its inception in 1946 to 1994 when it was dissolved.

The service operated in complete secrecy, never appearing in the press, and rarely becoming an issue of public debate. Villa Maarheeze refers to a bungalow, hidden from public view by trees, only a few meters from the official residence of the Indonesian Ambassador at Kerkeboschlaan in Wassenaar.

In general, the IDB achieved little throughout the years, the authors said. But "one of the most spectacular successes of the IDB was no doubt the recruitment of its Indonesian sources. Thanks to its agent known as 'Virgil', the Service recruited several very influential Indonesian diplomats."

The only name mentioned in the book is that of Ruslan Abdulgani, a confidant of President Sukarno and foreign minister in 1956-1957.

"The Indonesian recruits passed on vital information that helped the IDB break the code of secret diplomatic and military communications. One of these agents, in the late fifties, also passed on the Indonesian military plan for the attack on the Dutch island of New Guinea (Irian Jaya)," the authors said.

During the Dutch military aggression in 1948, the Dutch government did not allow the IDB to operate in Indonesia because the situation was considered dangerous, as the Dutch were facing Indonesian independence struggles. In the early 1950s, the relationship with Indonesia was considered "too sensitive" to allow an intelligence operation.

The Dutch espionage started informally when "Virgil", a Dutchman named J.A. Bakker, started to build his network of friends and information sources.

He met with Ruslan in 1948 when the latter was the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1954, when the conflict in West Irian (New Guinea) began between Indonesia and the Netherlands, Bakker returned to Indonesia as a so-called "industrial consultant", and resumed his relationship with Ruslan and others.

Ruslan was considered a highly intelligent politician. "He was an incredibly good source of information," De Graaff said in an interview on Wednesday. "He provided (Dutch security officers) with various kind of information, starting with the Geneva conference in 1956, on different aspects of decolonization agreements; for example, on the position of the Indonesian delegates (at the Geneva conference), to aspects of the New Guinea conflict."

This information reached Dutch Foreign Minister Joseph Luns. "The disclosures about this particular (West Irian) operation," the authors writes, "sheds a new light on the attitude of ... Luns during his negotiations with the Indonesians. It seems that during the New Guinea affair not only nationalism and stubbornness drove him. The attitude of Luns ... must also be explained because he was well aware of most of the secret plans of the Indonesian government".

Luns, according to the authors, became aware of the strong determination of Sukarno to resolve the issue by war, not only because of the intermediary mission of U.S. attorney general Robert Kennedy, but also because of Ruslan's information. "But, one might say, he (Luns) was also a victim of his own game," De Graaff adds.

The information Ruslan supplied "was of great importance not only to the Dutch government, for it (information) was shared with the CIA and the British MI6. So good was he (Ruslan) that the British agency in the mid-sixties even expressed its wish to recruit him".

So was Ruslan, a prominent politician, former foreign minister and hero of the Nov.10 Surabaya war, acting against his own government's policy? Was he involved in an act of treason against his nation?

"One should be very careful with the term 'national treason', because in the world of espionage such an operation (of providing information) could have been a double or even triple operation. I would rather refrain from any qualification," De Graaff replies. De Graaff and co-author Wiebes say that they do not know anything about Ruslan's possible motivations for providing information to his government's enemy. But one could not dismiss the possibility, De Graaff adds, that "he (Ruslan) could have been ordered by Soekarno to disseminate particular information to the Dutch".

De Graaff said that he and his co-author tried to contact Dr. Ruslan but "he did not reply".

In their book, the two authors also mention a number of senior Indonesian diplomats at the time, who played important roles in Indonesian diplomacy, such as Max Maramis and Mohammad Roem. But they were not identified as Dutch sources.

Of the Indonesian diplomats who did provide the IDB agency with "important information", there was "a diplomat, code named 'Mr.Q', who worked at the Indonesian Embassy in The Hague at the end of the fifties". He supplied the Dutch with the backgrounds of new diplomats to be stationed in the Netherlands, and reported comments made by Indonesian diplomats to Foreign Minister Luns and his staff.

"Throughout the fifties and sixties there were many Indonesian diplomats making trips to Europe and America via Schiphol (Amsterdam airport), and there Bakker met with his contacts or recruited (new agents). In this way, the Dutch acquired knowledge of some Indonesian foreign policy lines; for example, information provided by the Indonesian representatives in New York to their colleagues in Europe".

However De Graaff and Wiebes are not prepared to reveal the identities of "Mr. Q" and other Indonesian diplomats, because, to receive access for their research, they promised the Dutch government not to disclose certain information.

The Dutch also received, from Indonesian diplomats, the codes of military communications. "The Dutch officers at that time," Cees Wiebes explains, "were able to read communications between the Indonesian air force and navy because they had decoded them. They also succeeded in breaking the diplomatic codes". They did this, he says, not only by listening to information from West Irian itself, but also by listening to the communications between Indonesian embassies in Europe and Jakarta. "This was important because it enabled the Dutch (in West Irian) to acquire prior knowledge on attempts by the Indonesians to infiltrate West Irian, and it even gave them information on the departures of flights and ships. This was, of course, of great importance in the battle of New Guinea".

An example of this is the case of Commodore Jos Soedarso. "The incident of Aru fatally involved Jos Soedarso, when the Indonesian warships were hit by Dutch fire. This (happened) because the information was intercepted and read (by the Dutch), so that the Dutch knew where the ships were moving to," De Graaff explains.

Public opinion in Indonesia at the time, generally accused Air Force Commander Suryadharma for not timely or not sufficiently providing air cover for Jos Soedarso's navy mission.