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.