UK waged 'dirty campaign' to overthrow Sukarno

UK waged 'dirty campaign' to overthrow Sukarno

LONDON (AFP): The world's press was manipulated by British
intelligence as part of a plot to overthrow Indonesia's president
Sukarno in the 1960s, The Independent on Sunday newspaper
reported here.

The weekly said it had obtained a Foreign Office document
which revealed the full extent of a "dirty tricks" campaign
orchestrated from London.

A letter, marked "secret", from a British propaganda expert to
the ambassador in Jakarta, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, boasted of the
press campaign to destabilize Sukarno by suggesting his rule
would lead to a Communist takeover, the report said.

Sukarno stepped down as Indonesian president in 1966.

"The disorder fostered by the British led to General
Soeharto's takeover and dictatorship, and a wave of violence
unseen since the Second World War," the weekly said.

Cabinet papers relating to the time were uncovered by David
Easter, a historian at the London School of Economics, whose
research is to be published this week in the journal Intelligence
and National Security.