CIA backed anti-communist forces in Indonesia: Report

CIA backed anti-communist forces in Indonesia: Report

WASHINGTON (AFP): The State Department for the first time
detailed CIA covert operations in Indonesia during the 1950s when
it feared communist influence over President Sukarno, The Los
Angeles Times reported.

A 600-page documentary history released this month shows that
President Dwight Eisenhower's administration mounted major
clandestine operations to support anti-communist rebels in
Indonesia.

Until now, the official documentary histories of U.S. foreign
policy, which are called "Foreign Relations of the United
States," have been written as though the Central Intelligence
Agency did not exist.

In the Indonesia case, the United States publicly had normal
diplomatic relations with Sukarno's government but the Eisenhower
administration secretly supported military actions against him.

Then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles described Sukarno
as "dangerous, untrustworthy and by character susceptible to the
Communist way of thinking."

Those sentiments propelled the United States in 1958 to
secretly supply and support dissident military groups on
Indonesia's outer islands of Sumatra and Sulawesi, the daily
said.

Historians have long said the CIA mounted clandestine
operations in Indonesia. Their thesis was supported after
Indonesia shot down and captured a U.S. pilot, Allen Pope, who
was bombing military targets in support of the rebels.

In 1959, when it became clear that the rebels could not
succeed, Eisenhower changed course and threw support to the
regular Indonesian army in the hopes it would be a counterweight
to Sukarno and Indonesia's Communist Party.

By 1965, Indonesian military leaders lead by General Suharto
seized control of the country, edging Sukarno from power.

The U.S. Congress in 1991 ordered the CIA to cooperate with
the State Department historians by giving them complete access to
information about foreign policy decisions.

The new Indonesian volume is the first in which the State
Department reveals the CIA's full role in making foreign policy
-- with the single exception of some intelligence activities in
Vietnam, William Slany, the department's official historian, was
quoted as saying.