On the CIA's role
I thank Mr. Richardson for providing a list of names as sources for his article on the CIA's crimes in Indonesia. I have spent considerable time on the Internet, the only immediate resource available to me, to research what these names might have to say about the criminal activity of the CIA in Indonesia. In addition to Peter Dale Scott's article The United States and the overthrow of Sukarno, 1965-1967 at http://www.pir.org/scott.html, as mentioned by Mr. Rudi Wilson, readers of The Jakarta Post might want to look up Noam Chomsky's discussion of this same topic in chapter five of his book, Year 501, available at http://www.lbbs.org/chomsky/year/year.html. Journalist Allan Nairn has a homepage at http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com that includes his articles Out of East Timor and U.S. complicity in Timor. Professor Stephen Shalom's homepage is http://www.wilpaterson.edu/cohss/polisci/faculty/shalom.html and includes an article he coauthored with Cynthia Peters titled Timor: Reparations and responsibility. Another important article is one written by Kathy Kadane of the States News Service in 1990 regarding the 1965 massacre, Ex-agents say CIA compiled death lists for Indonesians, available at http://www.pir.org/kadane.html.
Mr. Richardson's comments on the 1965 attempted coup are more than just a precis of the Scott article, because Mr. Richardson's conviction is hardened into blanket judgment.
Mr. Richardson's article, written as an opinion piece, is precisely that, opinionated. Mr. Scott's more balanced approach includes in both its introduction and conclusion an important and necessary caveat, which I quote: "The whole story of that ill- understood period would transcend even the fullest possible written analysis. Much of what happened can never be documented; and of the documentation that survives, much is both controversial and unverifiable.
"The slaughter of Sukarno's left-wing allies was a product of widespread paranoia as well as of conspiratorial policy, and it represents a tragedy beyond the intentions of any single group or coalition. It would be foolish to suggest that in 1965 the only violence came from the U.S. government, the Indonesian military, and their mutual contacts in British and Japanese intelligence."
That said, Mr. Scott goes on to give the CIA a very strong rap on the knuckles for its involvement in one of the 20th century's worst massacres. The CIA and State Department spokesmen may flatly deny all they want, but I have little doubt from what Mr. Scott says in his meticulously researched article that the CIA was actively involved in contributing to the climate in which the massacre occurred. What is even worse, it is apparent from Ms. Kadane's article that the CIA was handing over their lists of known Communist Party members to the Soeharto regime despite unconfirmed reports the U.S. Embassy possessed that the Soehartoists were planning mass murder.
However, the numerous facts that can be pinned down are not as numerous and extensive as one would wish for if one wants to make the sweeping, condemnatory judgement of the CIA that the massacre occurred as a direct result of the CIA's planning and involvement, as some of Mr. Scott's sources and Mr. Richardson imply.
Another way to look at this is to ask, if the tape of history were to be rewound and replayed with the CIA extracted from the picture, would that massacre still have occurred? I think the answer is "yes". The massacre, after all, was carried out by a large number of Indonesians, prompted by some very powerful national groups with guns in their hands who had much more immediate and compelling interests at stake than the CIA's. The CIA, while a contributor, was neither the cause nor the catalyst. As an Indonesian Embassy spokesman says in Ms. Kadane's article, "In terms of fighting the communists, as far as I'm concerned, the Indonesian people fought by themselves to eradicate the Communists."
RICHARD LEWIS
Denpasar, Bali