Exclusive: The U.S. mainstream media’s credulity toward today’s Official Narratives is especially troubling given the false storylines from the past, such as the cover-up of Washington’s hand in the Indonesia massacres, as Jonathan Marshall describes.
By Jonathan Marshall
Fifty-four years after the assassination of President Kennedy, historians are still waiting to see whether President Trump will approve the final release of secret records related to that crime by the Oct. 26 deadline set by a unanimous Congress in 1992 with the JFK Records Act.
Lyndon Johnson sworn in as U.S. President after John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963. (Photo Credit: Lyndon Baines Johnson Library)
Senior Republicans in both the House and Senate have called on the President to “reject any claims for the continued postponement” of declassification. “Transparency in government is critical not only to ensuring accountability; it’s also essential to understanding our nation’s history,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Just days before the scheduled release of JFK records, the National Archives — with much less fanfare — declassified nearly 30,000 pages of documents from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta from 1964 to 1968. That might seem in contrast like an obscure matter of interest only to a handful of specialists, but the period covers what the CIA once called “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century”: the massacre of half a million Indonesians, and the arrest of a million more, by the country’s army and its supporters in the name of wiping out Communism.
Whether and how the U.S. government abetted that bloodbath is as “essential to understanding our nation’s history” as learning what transpired two years earlier on the streets of Dallas. Indeed, the two events are related, as the murder of Kennedy prompted a hardline shift in U.S. policy to support a military coup in Indonesia. Yet despite the worthy new release of documents, Washington has been neither transparent nor accountable when it comes to the Indonesia massacre of 1965-66.
In particular, the U.S. government has yet to declassify any but a handful of operational files from the CIA or Defense Department. As a result, “we have only the barest outlines of what covert campaigns the CIA was undertaking and what assistance the United States was providing,” historian Bradley Simpson, founder and director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project, told me.
The Prelude to a Slaughter
The frightful massacres in Indonesia followed years of growing social, economic and political strife. Following a disastrously botched CIA coup attempt in 1958, Indonesia’s leader and independence hero, Sukarno, treated Washington with deep suspicion. All through the early 1960s, Sukarno adopted an increasingly strident nationalist stance. He flirted with Soviet Russia and even with Communist China while he threatened military confrontations with the Dutch and British, legacy colonial powers. At home, he encouraged the rising influence of Indonesia’s communist party, the PKI.
Indonesian President Sukarno.
President Kennedy tried to work with Sukarno. One of JFK’s first acts as president was to invite the Indonesian leader to the White House. Kennedy’s assassination, however, “unquestionably changed the direction of U.S. policy toward Indonesia,” writes Simpson in his authoritative account of U.S.-Indonesia relations, Economists With Guns. Whereas Kennedy was willing to expend political capital to work with Sukarno, President Lyndon Johnson dismissed him as a “bully” who, if appeased one day, would “run you out of your bedroom the next night.”
Administration leaders increasingly looked to Indonesia’s U.S.-trained-and-supplied army as a political alternative to Sukarno.
In the fall of 1964, as relations with Jakarta soured, the CIA proposed a covert action program to “build up strength” among anti-communist groups and instigate “internal strife between communist and non-communist elements.” The Agency raised the possibility of fomenting riots or other disorders that “might force the Army to assume broad powers in restoring order.”
U.S. and other Western intelligence agencies began planting stories about PKI plots to assassinate army leaders and import weapons from Communist China, elements of a “strategy of tension” that the Agency would later use in Chile to provoke the 1973 military coup.
The Johnson administration curbed economic aid — intensifying the country’s economic crisis — while continuing to train and assist the military. “When Sukarno leaves the scene, the military will probably take over,” one senior State Department official told a congressional committee in executive session. “We want to keep the door open.”
Bitter Fruit
In the fall of 1965, Washington’s strategy bore fruit when several junior Indonesian military officers, apparently with the support of certain PKI leaders, killed six Indonesian army generals in a bungled power play that remains poorly understood. The military struck back decisively. It rounded up the alleged plotters, accused them (falsely) of sexually mutilating the murdered generals, and then unleashed a nationwide campaign to murder PKI cadre and sympathizers.
General Suharto attending the funerals of murdered Indonesian generals in October 1965.
The U.S. ambassador, Marshall Green, was thrilled by the opportunity to crush the communists. “It’s now or never,” he told Washington.
Green proposed fanning anti-communist violence by a covert propaganda campaign to “spread the story of PKI’s guilt, treachery and brutality (this priority effort is perhaps most-needed immediate assistance we can give army if we can find way to do it without identifying it as solely or largely US effort).”
He instructed to U.S. Information Agency to use all its resources to “link this horror and tragedy with Peking and its brand of communism; associate diabolical murder and mutilation of the generals with similar methods used against village headmen in Vietnam.”
As reports filtered in of the execution or arrest of thousands of PKI supporters by the army and allied Muslim death squads, Green said he had “increasing respect for [the army’s] determination and organization in carrying out this crucial assignment.”
The killings occurred on such a vast scale that “the disposal of the corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java and Northern Sumatra where the humid air bears the reek of decaying flesh,” reported Time magazine in December 1965, in one of the first U.S. stories on the massacre.
“Travelers from these areas tell of small rivers and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies. River transportation has at places been seriously impeded.”
Previously classified documents from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta released this week add details to this story.
We learn, for example, from one cable that as prison overcrowding became a problem, “Many provinces appear to be successfully meeting this problem by executing their P.K.I. prisoners, or by killing them before they are captured, a task in which Moslem youth groups are providing assistance.”
By December 1965, the embassy was reporting on the “striking Army success” in taking power, noting its killing of at least 100,000 people in just 10 weeks.
Yet we also learn that U.S. officials had reliable information that the PKI as an organization had no advance knowledge of or involvement in the murder of the six generals that triggered the nationwide bloodbath. A senior embassy officer also reported on the army’s “widespread falsification of documents” to implicate the PKI in various crimes.
We owe these and other revelations to the persistent efforts of human rights activists, scholars, and politicians like Senators Tom Udall, D-New Mexico, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, to promote full disclosure of U.S. involvement in Indonesia’s mass killings.
Following in their footsteps, Steve Aftergood, head of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, contacted the National Declassification Center (established by President Obama), to urge the release of more Indonesia records. Historian Bradley Simpson and the non-profit National Security Archive then teamed with the U.S. National Archives to digitize 30,000 pages of decades-old embassy files to facilitate public access to the documents.
But without CIA and military operational files, the full, ugly story of Washington’s complicity will remain obscured. Previous administrations have released deeply troubling CIA files on coups in Chile, Guatemala and Iran. Those files cast a terrible stain on our history but their release powerfully demonstrated the commitment of at least some American leaders to learn from the past. In that spirit, the time has come to open up our history with Indonesia as well.
Jonathan Marshall is author or co-author of five books on international relations and history.
Seems to me that the CIA people and conservative politicians who worked so hard in trying to pin the JKK assassination on Havana and Moscow, thanks to the set up of Lee Harvey Oswald, were so upset when it had to be scrubbed because of Governor Connally’s wounding that they took it out on other communists in revenge, and those in Indonesia were the ones most handy.
Bah, lies. All these rumors and fake archial documents are planted by Russian malware. Everyone knows the CIA was only in Indonesia to build schools and plant trees!
Is it safe to say that, since the end of WW II, the US has been on the wrong side of every foreign conflict it got involved in? Curious to hear of any exceptions.
And that’s beyond pointing out that neither the US nor any government has the right to intervene in “foreign” conflicts, which by being foreign imply that the intervening country is not under direct attack.
Is it true that the CIA was giving out names of Sukarno supporters that should be eliminated to Suharto?
Here you go, David.
“It has been known for more than 10 years that the CIA supplied lists of names for Suharto’s assassination squads.” (Isabel Hilton, “Our bloody coup in Indonesia: Britain colluded in one of the worst massacres of the century”, Guardian, August 1, 2001.)
“The U.S. embassy supplied radio equipment, walkie-talkies, and small arms to Suharto so that his troops could conduct the nationwide assault on civilians. A diligent embassy official with a penchant for data collection did his part by handing the army a list of thousands of names of PKI members. (Kathy Kadane, “Ex-agents say CIA Compiled Death Lists for Indonesians,” San Francisco Examiner, May 20, 1990)”. (John Roosa and Joseph Nevins, “40 Years Later: The Mass Killings in Indonesia”, Counterpunch, November 5, 2005.)
“In October 1965, with CIA support, General Suharto led the army in crushing Sukarno’s supporters. … U.S., British, and Australian intelligence provided thousands of names of communists, educators, and reformers to the army.” (Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick, The Concise Untold History of the United States, Simon and Schuster, 2014.)
Etc., etc.
And just like that a “massacre of half a million Indonesians, and the arrest of a million more” – Made In USA! At the snap, snap, of the assassination-and-massacre fingers of (1) “U.S. policy”, (2) “President Lyndon Johnson”, (3) “Indonesia’s U.S.-trained-and-supplied army” under “General Suharto”, (4) “the CIA”, (5) “U.S. ambassador, Marshall Green”, (6) “U.S. officials”, and (7) “the U.S. government”!
500,000 Indonesians massacred, assassinated. Happy now, America?
David Johnson, thank you for that invaluable link, and many thanks for your obvious pursuit of the truth through the years. One can only hope that in depth investigations will ultimately ensue, and your reporting will be invaluable. Thanks for your contribution here…
David Johnson:
See my paper on the 1965 events in Indonesia:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/54b/033.html
“Gestapu: The CIA’s “Track Two” in Indonesia”
Stephen Kinzer’s “The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War” has a chapter on the Sukarno story. The book is a great read and shows the beginnings of the US machinations to support US imperium as fervently brought about by the Dulles brothers, two entitled elitists from upstate New York who believed in upholding whatever was good for the American corporation anywhere in the world, using any means possible. John Foster Dulles was apoplectic about Communism, and Allen Dulles set the horrible tone of the CIA that prevails today. The chapter on Lumumba’s assassination in Congo is particularly ghastly.
I saw a Brit documentary on the CIA on Netflix in which a former CIA officer boasted about how he had helped kill the people in Indonesia. He was quite proud of his actions.
Indonesia should take great care. There is evidence USA is no longer satisfied with what it has been skimming off Indonesians since Sukarno’s ouster.
I refer to a) the Saudi financing and politicization of madrassas in the country to start an Islamic Revolution and b) the counterpart of this radicalisation in the use of special forces to launch continuous drone attacks on the country.
The main evidence for the latter is in the US Admiral’s recent speech in Australia that the fighter aircraft Washington DC has placed in Darwin are to be used against Chinese positions in the South China Sea whereas the range of those aircraft is inadequate for such long journeys but is well suited to covering all of the islands in the Indonesian chain.
Western governmental broken promises are a warning to humanity. We must all take care.
The full, sickening horror of the U.S.-sponsored and U.S.-perpetrated coups, counter-revolutions, occupations, assassinations, and flat-out extermination campaigns in so many countries, lies in that the true count of the victims extends so far beyond the millions of dead and maimed who were directly affected.
The grave-cold truth is that these interventions have robbed these nations of their futures, condemning the survivors and ensuing generations to the diminished, brutalized existence that remains once the U.S.-led capitalist hegemony has eradicated everything it loathes: democracy, diversity, egalitarianism, progressive thought, rationalism, environmentalism, art, and a humane spirit.
And in the U.S. itself, we are left shambling around in the darkness, without benefit of the example a country like Indonesia should be offering us, had it not been crushed in 1965.
Well said. The US could have lifted half the world from poverty since WWII, a true American Century, and instead, seized by the greedy rich pursuing only power for themselves, US secret interventions have cost ten million lives since WWII, have ruined the lives of at least ten times that number, and have set back the development of the world for many generations.
The US oligarchy takeover of our government since WWII has set us back centuries, for now we have no democracy ourselves, and far less chance of restoring democracy than we had in 1775, when we had only to throw off the reign of a small faraway colonial power. Truly we are “left shambling around in the darkness” by the greedy rich.
Amen. The whole world’s future has been stolen. It’s what Chomsky means when he says the U.S. really won the Vietnam War. It didn’t get its maximal goal of a puppet regime, but it so devastated the country that it could never realize its national potential independent from the Western military-financial hegemony.
Here’s a recent piece making the point for Indonesia:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/11/52-years-after-fascist-genocide-indonesians-scared-of-communist-ghosts/
I don’t know the country well enough to vouch for the details, but the larger point is beyond dispute.
Thanks, David, a good article on a shocking matter.
The “Great Game” turns out to be as ugly as human beings can get. If we have lost the capacity to be ashamed of ourselves for these horrors, then we are doomed – and rightly so.
#MeToo – A Course In Deductive Reasoning: Separating Fact From Fiction Through The Child Exploitation Of 8 Year Old Bana Alabed
https://clarityofsignal.com/2017/10/19/metoo-a-course-in-deductive-reasoning-separating-fact-from-fiction-through-the-child-exploitation-of-8-year-old-bana-alabed/
We can see with the CIA’s destabilization ideas the seeds of future Color Revolutions. What later transpired was the literal implementation of the “Better Dead Than Red” mantra. The Asian Holocaust–Japan, Korea, Indochina, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia–perpetrated by the Outlaw US Empire far surpassed the one engineered by Hitler by a 3/1 margin; and the death toll escalates daily, lasting for generations until the carcinogens finally become inert.
Thank you CN, for bringing This and other informative articles minus The usual “official” narrative BS.
In case any of you CN followers have missed these documentaries, I would suggest checking out Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing. It has interviews with the people that took part in the massacres in Indonesia during that time. I am yet to see his follow up – The Look of Silence.
Thanks to Jonathan Marshall and Robert Parry for the timely reminder of this crucial document release. For those of us that have passionately followed each insight into the JFK administration and then LBJ’s reaction to it, this is a crucial period with great potential to sum up the many themes that have been playing out in the post Assassination years. Researchers have done a great job piecing together policy and decision making within JFK’S whitehouse through his Library, Congressional Special Commissions, and FOIA requests but the critical summation of who initiated JFK’S Assassination and who specifically carried it outs remains to be worked out.
We cannot adequacy describe who we are as a Country until we get a better sense of our critical history and this is the crucial time to begin that process. I will include a link to the Mary Farrell Foundation which has been a reliable source for many years.
http://jfkfacts.org/tag/mary-ferrell-foundation/
From all you know about what the US has done from it’s inception, and has been verified, do you need more information as to who we are? We finally owned up to what we did in overthrowing Mohammad Mosaddegh which also used negative propaganda to topple his democratically elected presidency. It would be good to have documentation as to what happened in Indonesia, but I have no doubt that we engaged in negative propaganda, encouraged the Indonesian military to go after the PKI and those who supported them, as is our habit, and are directly responsible for the carnage that ensued. What is unfortunate is that the American people seem to insist on remaining ignorant of who we are, and unless the people of this country have the courage to face the truth, nothing will change. Even when informed the American people tend to make excuses, or refuse to believe it. To simplify things, we know that Columbus enslaved native inhabitants of the West Indies, forced them to convert to Christianity, and subdued them with violence in an effort to seek riches.Yet he still gets a parade.
Annie you make a good point and valid one at that. Although I feel that in order for the American people to wise up, it will take a huge and possibly horrific event, or series of events to make the ignorant public stand up and take an interest. America is a preoccupied society it seems, and with little interest as to our admitting to our nation’s many war crimes. Funny thing is, that kneeling during a flag ceremony is what fellow soldiers do out of respect for their fallen comrades, but in our environment of political nonsense you would never know it. Joe
Joe, we have initiated multiple wars in the last 15 years. We are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not well over a million. We have destroyed whole countries, and all in breech of international law. We created a horrific immigration crisis as a result of our assault on Libya, and yet people are quick to believe mass media propaganda on just about everything. Almost everyone I know, and most are well educated, believe Russia sabotaged the presidential election as they continue to read the NY Times, and listen to MSNBC, which for most is their sole source of information. We are escalating tensions with Russia to the point that people do feel a sense of dread on this issue, but they blame Russia and Trump. They reside in a black and white world, with a lack of knowledge about their own country’s history. The so called liberals and progressives in this country, most of whom are tied to the democratic party, are actually complicit in pushing more lies. I for one have little hope that things will get better.
Annie if I didn’t know any better I would swear by your account that you and I most definitely have the same well educated friends. So, I’m sure you are use to your smart friends gasping as you try and catch them up on the real skinny in regard to our world news events, as we know them, or as in this case some don’t know them. How many times has a friend out of exasperation of your telling of the news, will finally say, ‘now Annie where do you read this stuff’? When this kind of stuff happens then just be glad your friends don’t do an MSM intervention on you.
You are right Annie about all these illegal war crimes, and with all of the tragedy that the U.S. and it’s coalition of crazies are dishing out, it’s a wonder how many people still buy into the MSM narratives. Seeing how the general public is so misled by the events of the world by how they are reported, just goes to show you how mass mind control really works, and yet most Americans would say I’m way off base making such a statement. Only Putin has that power to take control of your brain, and if you doubt it, then doubt it no more just ask Rachel or Joy Anne.
Annie think of how much time you spend reading, and trying to keep up on all of these happenings the U.S. gets involved in, and then ask your best well educated friend how much time they spend seeking out the truth. If you come away with the answer I get, most of your well educated friends, if they are like my well educated friends, will just say, ‘I don’t have as much time as you do to constantly read articles on the internet’. So Annie there you have it, while you and I goof off surfing the Internet for conspiracy theories to unravel, our intelligent friends, whom we love dearly, are doing more important things. I’m glad my friends are busy holding up their end of the world, while I play around here writing comments to other crazy tinfoiled hat people like me. It beats weaving baskets, and tying moccasins together to make a shoe.
This is why Annie I hug this website, and respond to the articles with my comments. Even though none of us will ever, more than likely, ever meet each other that’s okay, because I feel a certain bond has been made with the many of you since we all pretty well agree on the details of each reported news event, as we do. Naturally this doesn’t always mean that we will all agree with each other, but at least we get to debate with one another issues based on the same details of a reported news account….what a relief.
Okay Annie good of you to respond, and thanks for that. Joe
In case any of you have ever wondered to why I sign my name to the end of these comments I post, it’s becsuse in my career I was the one in the room who said pride is putting your name on it….so okay I’m screwy. Once again Joe.
People who are generally prosperous have short memories. Ask people why America invaded Iraq, they will tell you (most people) “because of 9/11.” The “yellow cake” speech, WMDs, the invasion and search for WMDs, and that none were found. All of it lost to time, no one remembers, and nobody cares. The news media, entertainment industries, and academia took us to war on the pretext of preventing Saddam Husein an eminent nuclear weapon (WMDs), all of this subsequently proved bullshit. Although it is plain to many of us, that the established news media is complicit with finance, industry and military to manage our perception of reality, we had to give up our belief that everything that comes from our government officials, and news sources is irrefutable. It is a tough pill to swallow.
I once mentioned on this site that I attended a lecture in a library located in a prosperous area, and most in attendance were well off, and highly educated. Although the lecture was on Alexander Hamilton, the cause for our going into Iraq came up, and almost all there stated that it wasn’t a lie that led us into the war, but Saddam simply got the weapons of mass destruction out of the country before they could be found. Most, if not all, who were present were democrats, so no party allegiance there, but the lies of this country are working for them, so lets keep them going.
Thank you Annie I assure you that I feel your impatience and, of course, you’re correct. This is a very important “data dump” that even now can be thwarted so by making a wider audience aware that this is an important moment, one not to be missed we can go a long way to bringing more people into the conversation and that is the ultimate key to success. Much work and understanding needs to happen to get America aware and acceptant of our actual past. We are unique in that way plus a society of immigrants. The Indian Nations are becoming more vocal all the time about their heritage and injustices; we will have to hear about that and hopefully respond with wisdom and patience. Exactly as we will need to understand what Our government did in places like Iran and Iraq so that some sense of justice can advance.
I have been an advocate of a formal Peace and Reconciliation Forum to get all of this out…
Joe, bless you you’re a treasure…
Bob I could not resist, for you started a great conversation. Also good the see you posting comments. Joe
Bob good to read your post. Here below is an excerpt from James W Douglas book ‘JFK and the Unspeakable’.
“Kennedy’s openness to Sukarno and the nonaligned movement he represented once again placed the president in direct conflict with the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA’s Deputy Director for Plans, Richard Bissell, wrote to Kennedy’s National Security Adviser, McGeorge Bundy, in March 1961: “Indonesia’s growing vulnerability to communism stems from the distinctive bias of Sukarno’s global orientation, as well as from his domestic policies . . . That his dictatorship may possibly endure as long as he lives strikes us as the crux of the Indonesian problem.”[ 221] The CIA wanted Sukarno dead, and what the Agency saw as his pro-communist “global orientation” obliterated. Still justifying the CIA’s assassination efforts in an interview long after his retirement, Richard Bissell put Congo leader Patrice Lumumba and Sukarno in the same disposable category: “Lumumba and Sukarno were two of the worst people in public life I’ve ever heard of. They were mad dogs . . . I believed they were dangerous to the United States.”[ 222]”
I recommend to everyone who’s interested in the Kennedy years, and his assassination, read James W Douglas’s great book ‘JFK and the Unspeakable’. Joe
Oh and Bob you are right, the truth shall set us free.
You are so right, Joe. JFK and the Unspeakable has a prominent place on my bookshelf. And like Douglas, I believe that book should be required reading and taught in the schools. But we both know that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Parts of the book brought tears to my eyes.
Boy Thomas I never thought of that, but what a great idea to teach ‘JFK and the Unspeakable’ to our students coming up. I recently said on a comment I wrote on this site, to how if we Americans may ever be able to reshape our country into it not being what it is today I said, we should make history the number one subject, because it’s apparent that at this moment in time that most of we Americans haven’t a clue to where we have been, which generally means we will have no idea to where we need yet to go.
John Kennedy is an enigma in the sense that he can be researched out to be a war hawk, while as more FOIA comes about, we often find that deep down JFK was a man of peace. So Thomas I agree with you more should be known, as well as more truth needs to be shouted from every roof top, because at the current rate we are all going in this country we are but destined to be just plain stupid, and with that we will all fall down and accept our own destruction.
Thanks for the response Thomas. Joe
Ah so that’s the critical bottomline to all this: “We cannot adequately describe who we are as a Country”. America, America. How about AssassiNation Nation? Or AbomiNation Nation? That “adequate” enought?
Tell that to the 500,000 Indonesians and their surviving loved ones who continue to be persecuted in Indonesia.
Historian Greg Poulgrain has written a book dealing with the role Allen Dulles in the Indonesian genocide. It’s called, “The Incubus of Intervention.” Dulles is perhaps the most amoral human being ever to command secret power as CIA director. His legacy haunts the world and the nation to this day.
Citizens should consider that:
1. Those who seek to perform atrocities to aggrandize themselves seek secret operations positions;
2. The use or direction of secret agency power leads to belief in personal infallibility;
3. The existence of secret agencies causes them to be controlled by tyrants seeking secret atrocities;
4. Any secret operations command is beyond federal powers under the Constitution;
5. A secret agency to investigate, map, and dismantle secret agencies is a top priority;
6. The State dept. has been directly involved in soliciting and paying for atrocities worldwide for generations, and has concealed its genocides from the People;
I have spoken with several of these people, and they are completely unreasonable, regard the killings as amusing tricks, select their enemies purely by social concensus-building in secret, and have no regard for their responsibilities whatsoever. They consider public office as a license for corruption at least, and for genocide at best. That is the kind of personality one gets in a secret agency operations division.
You just described a psychopath and the secrecy they like to surround themselves with. ;)
Interesting book written about these types – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_in_Suits
I should add that most casualty estimates I have read were 1 million to 2 million, typically 1.3 million deaths, not the 500K mentioned here.