Broadly speaking, all these Communist-affiliated organizations supported President Sukarno, though not uncritically. The Indonesian Women’s Movement, or Gerwani, opposed the traditional practice of polygamy, which Sukarno embraced very publicly while president. Gerwani became one of the largest women’s organizations in the world. It was organized along feminist, socialist, and nationalist lines, and focused on opposing traditional constraints put on women, promoting the education of girls and demanding space for women in the public sphere.16
In Sakono’s part of Central Java, the Women’s Movement was focused on the most basic of issues. A young woman named Sumiyati, who joined the organization as a teen in her village in Jatinom, was taught how to sing, dance, play sports, and, most of all, defend “feminist ideals, and the rights of women to fight to destroy the shackles that bound them, and our rights to learn and to dream.” On the question of polygamy in general, the movement was uncompromising in its opposition. On the question of Sukarno’s specific polygamy, it made compromises.
“No man is perfect,” Sumiyati learned. “This is a time of transition and we have to struggle for the changes we want to see. We move forward step by step, we can’t expect the world to turn over as easily as we turn the palm of our hands.”17
At absolutely no point did cheerful, studious Sakono think his leftism made him a subversive. If anything, he was almost a nerd, a kind of overenthusiastic young fan of the country’s revolution. “The Communists are the good guys,” he often thought. They were doing well in elections, and were friends with his hero, President Sukarno.
In his studies, Sakono also developed a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between economic conditions and ideology. “You see, the Communist Party in the United States never grew because it didn’t have the right roots,” he concluded. “But in Indonesia we have so much injustice and exploitation. There’s a relation between the material conditions of our society and the ideology which flowers here. And injustice is very fertile soil for its roots to grow.”
By 1957, Indonesia’s left already considered Washington an obstacle to the nation’s development, if not an all-out enemy. But soon, things got much worse. Rebellions against Sukarno’s government broke out on the “outer islands” to the northeast of Java and Bali, as well as on the island of Sumatra. The rebellions were both economically and ideologically motivated, demanding more control over the income from their regions, as well as the prohibition of communism—which greatly pleased Washington.
Because the rebels had such good weaponry, people like Sakono and his teacher believed the USA was helping them. “It’s the strategy of divide et impera,” he said, using the Latin for “divide and conquer.” “It is the Cold War,” he said. “Let me explain—‘Cold War’ is the name they have given to the process by which America tries to dominate countries like Indonesia.”
Bombs over Ambon
As the Indonesian left became more certain that Washington was somehow behind the growing civil war, Sakono’s village received a copy of Harian Rakyat with a cartoon on the front page. The headline above the illustration read “Two systems—Two sets of morals.” On the left, the Soviet Union was launching something upward: Sputnik, the first satellite ever sent into orbit by humankind, which had been a fabulous propaganda tool for global communism all year. On the right, the United States was dropping something from the sky: bombs, onto Indonesia.18
Howard Jones was working a stint in Washington as all this was going on, until he got a metaphorical tap on the shoulder. President Eisenhower asked him to return to Indonesia. This time, he would be United States ambassador. And as soon as he got there, he had to face a government that was increasingly suspicious of the United States.
Just days after Smiling Jones presented his credentials in March 1958, Sukarno’s foreign minister asked to speak with him. Subandrio, a thin, bespectacled, and thoughtful diplomat who had tried to rally international support from London during Indonesia’s independence struggle, asked the new US ambassador, as politely as possible, to explain a cache of weapons that had been air-dropped to the rebels. There were machine guns, STEN guns, and bazookas, and the weapons bore the mark of a manufacturer in Plymouth, Michigan.
Jones said he didn’t know anything about them, and pointed out that US weapons were available for purchase on the open market all over the world.
Subandrio backed off, saying he did not want to imply that Washington was arming those who sought to break up Indonesia. Carefully and articulately, however, he would refer back to the issue several times, as delicately as possible. Subandrio was taking extreme care not to confront or offend the new ambassador. This is the stereotypically Javanese way of broaching sensitive topics; one dances around them suggestively, even with close friends, and this was a representative of the most powerful nation on earth. It slowly became clear to Jones that the foreign minister was convinced the rebels were receiving external support, but he wasn’t saying it outright. Finally, he did. Subandrio submitted that the Indonesians believed someone was behind the rebellion, but took his accusation no further. Jones knew his bosses were sympathetic to the rebellion—everyone did—but he had nothing to admit, and the meeting ended.
Soon after, Jones met with Hatta, the second-most important Indonesian revolutionary behind Sukarno. Like Subandrio, Hatta wore glasses and the flat peci cap, the Indonesian version of the fez—a very popular look among Indonesia’s early revolutionaries. The two men talked about the logistics of the rebellion, and Hatta made it clear he shared Washington’s commitment to fight communism. But, he said, this rebellion was an entirely different matter, and they considered it a threat to Indonesia itself. They finished the meeting. But just as Jones was turning to leave, he slipped the new ambassador a piece of information that spoke directly to his concerns.
“From the standpoint of America, you could not have a better man as chief of staff of the Indonesian Army,” Hatta said, referring to General Nasution. “From your standpoint, Nasution is fine.”
“What do you mean by that, Dr. Hatta?” Jones replied.
“The communists call me their Enemy Number One,” Hatta said. “They call Nasution Enemy Number Two.”
Jones had a revelation. “Then what has happened in Indonesia is that… anticommunists are fighting anticommunists. Communism is not a major issue of this dispute.” That was right. The Army was perhaps the most anticommunist force in the country, apart from the most radical Islamists. A few of its top generals had even studied in the United States.19
As the rebellion dragged on, protesters began to gather in front of Jones’s ambassadorial mansion, convinced the US was behind the rebels.20 The New York Times had Washington’s back, lambasting Sukarno and his government in a May 9 editorial for doubting assurances the US would never intervene in the conflict.21 Jones dealt with the protesters as well as he could. But the rebellion was not happening in the capital, where things were mostly comfortable. The fighting was raging to the west, on the large island of Sumatra, and on the smaller islands to the northeast.
Most crucially, planes were circling over Ambon, the home island of Francisca’s family, and dropping fiery death onto its residents. Day after day, bombs fell onto Indonesian military and commercial shipping vessels. Then, on May 15, the explosions hit a market, killing both morning shoppers and Ambonese Christians attending church.22
On May 18, 1958, the Indonesians managed to shoot down one of the planes, and a single figure floated slowly toward a coconut grove. His white parachute got caught in the branches of a tall palm tree, where he was stuck for a moment—then he fell to the ground and broke his hip. He was quickly found and captured by Indonesian soldiers, who probably saved him from being killed on the spot by furious locals.
His name was Allen Lawrence Pope; he was from Miami, Florida; and he was a CIA agent.23 Howard Jones didn’t know it, but Frank Wisner’s boys had been actively supporting the rebels since 1957.24 The two men, and their differing approaches to figh
ting communism, had come into direct conflict.
After Wiz returned from sick leave in 1957, he had warned the Dulles brothers that the rebellion would be an unpredictable, potentially explosive affair. They ignored his concerns, and gave Wisner the authority to spend $10 million to back a revolution in Indonesia. CIA pilots took off from Singapore, an emerging Cold War ally, with the goal of destroying the government of Indonesia or breaking the country into little pieces. They chose not to tell Howard Jones’s predecessor, John Moore Allison, about the covert action because, as Wisner put it, the plans “might elicit an adverse reaction from the Ambassador.” Instead, they transferred him to Czechoslovakia, and brought in the oblivious Jones.25
Jones was brought back so that he could keep smiling to the Indonesians while another arm of his own government dropped tons of exploding metal onto small, tropical islands. Jones noticed that the Indonesian newspaper Bintang Timur (Eastern Star) came up with a nifty drawing to illustrate this posture. They drew John Foster Dulles in a boxing ring. On one of his gloves, they wrote, “Goodwill Jones,” and on the other, they wrote, “Killer Pope.”26
Throughout the course of the CIA’s history, this dynamic would often be repeated. The Agency would act behind the back of the diplomats and experts at the State Department. If the CIA was successful, the State Department would be forced into backing the new state of affairs the Agency had created. If the secret agents failed, they would just move on, leaving the embarrassed diplomats to clean up the mess.
That’s what happened with Jones. For reasons we still don’t understand, Allen Pope was carrying identifying papers when he was captured. He was put on trial, and he became a very potent symbol of US involvement in the rebellions, and apparent proof that the Indonesians—especially the left—had been right all along. Even so, Ambassador Jones received orders to issue categorical denials that the US had controlled any missions that impinged on Indonesia’s sovereignty, including Pope’s.
Not long after, Jones was authorized to offer Indonesia’s prime minister thirty-five thousand tons of rice if the government “took positive steps to curb Communist expansion within the country.”27 Taken together, it was a carrot-and-stick approach, but with the stick very poorly hidden.
The 1958 operation in Indonesia was one of the largest in the CIA’s history, and it was patterned on the successful coup in Guatemala—in other words, it was exactly what the People’s Daily writers such as Zain had been worried about four years earlier, as they carefully reported on the events in Central America.28
But this one failed. The Indonesian Army put down the rebellions, greatly increasing their power within the country as a result, and no more US military missions were uncovered.
Sukarno, of course, felt deeply betrayed. He put it in very personal terms. He said, “I love America, but I’m a disappointed lover.”29
Jones did not enjoy the position that Wisner’s CIA operations put him in one bit. Reflecting later on the tragic, absurd failure of the operation, Jones turned back to the nature of his country to find an explanation. “Washington policymakers had not been privy to all the facts nor really grasped the inwardness of the situation, but had proceeded on the assumption that Communism was the main issue,” he wrote. “This was the all too common weakness of Americans—to view conflict in black and white terms, a heritage, no doubt, from our Puritan ancestors. There were no grays in the world landscape. There was either good or evil, right or wrong, hero or villain.”30
Jones stressed that the Indonesians only turned to the Communist Bloc for economic and military aid after they had exhausted their attempts to get the same kind of help from America.31 In 1955, the Soviet Union had offered substantial aid, but Indonesia, pursuing a strictly neutral position, said it wouldn’t take any more than the Americans offered. Even then the government hesitated, unsure if it should take anything from the Soviet Union at all—until 1958, the year Allen Pope and other CIA operatives burned Indonesians alive, when they took it.
The playbook that Wisner’s team had developed in Iran and Central America had failed badly in this much larger country, one that was playing a fundamental role in global affairs. In the most credible way possible, Washington had been exposed in Asia as an aggressor against one of the world’s leading neutral powers. Very little of this made the news back home, but people in the Third World knew.
Frank Wisner began to act increasingly erratically toward the end of 1958. Sometimes he would appear too excited, talking too quickly. Sometimes his eyes would just glaze over. Back in Georgetown, he saw a psychiatrist. He was prescribed a generous dose of psychoanalysis, and underwent shock therapy.32
Jones, along with the US military attaché in Indonesia, took Subandrio’s advice. He emphasized to Washington that the United States should support the Indonesian military as a more effective, long-term anticommunist strategy. The country of Indonesia couldn’t be simply broken into pieces to slow down the advance of global socialism, so this was a way that the US could work within existing conditions. This strategic shift would begin soon, and would prove very fruitful.
But behind the scenes, the CIA boys dreamed up wild schemes. On the softer side, a CIA front called the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which funded literary magazines and fine arts around the world, published and distributed books in Indonesia, such as George Orwell’s Animal Farm and the famous anticommunist collection The God That Failed.33 And the CIA discussed simply murdering Sukarno. The Agency went so far as to identify the “asset” who would kill him, according to Richard M. Bissell, Wisner’s successor as deputy director for plans.34 Instead, the CIA hired pornographic actors, including a very rough Sukarno look-alike, and produced an adult film in a bizarre attempt to destroy his reputation.
The Agency boys knew that Sukarno routinely engaged in extramarital affairs. But everyone in Indonesia also knew it. Indonesian elites didn’t shy away from Sukarno’s activities the way the Washington press corps protected philanderers like JFK. Some of Sukarno’s supporters viewed his promiscuity as a sign of his power and masculinity. Others, like Sumiyati and members of the Gerwani Women’s Movement, viewed it as an embarrassing defect. But the CIA thought this was their big chance to expose him. So they got a Hollywood film crew together.35
They wanted to spread the rumor that Sukarno had slept with a beautiful blond flight attendant who worked for the KGB, and was therefore both immoral and compromised. To play the president, the filmmakers (that is, Bing Crosby and his brother Larry) hired a “Hispanic-looking” actor, and put him in heavy makeup to make him look a little more Indonesian. They also wanted him bald, since exposing Sukarno—who always wore a hat—as such might further embarrass him. The idea was to destroy the genuine affection that young Sakono, and Francisca, and millions of other Indonesians, felt for the Founding Father of their country.
The thing was never released—not because this was immoral or a bad idea, but because the team couldn’t put together a convincing enough film.36
West New Guinea
After the Allen Pope fiasco, relations between Indonesia and the United States also took a nosedive, and it was Jones who was left to save them. With characteristic energy, Sukarno quickly set to work on befriending the cheerful new ambassador. After just a few months, in October 1958, Jones and his wife invited the president to their bungalow on the Puncak, in the mountains in West Java, for a small luncheon. To their surprise, Sukarno showed up with eighty security guards and twenty drivers, and promptly set about charming two American marines accompanying Jones.
They feasted on chicken and beef satay, vegetables and mangosteen, papayas, mangos, and rambutan, and the president asked for some music and dancing. Sukarno requested fast, Moluccan rhythms—that is, music from Ambon and the surrounding islands, the ones the CIA had just bombed. Soon, the Americans and Indonesians were all whirling, and sweating, and moving to the sounds of kettles, which they all were banging with their spoons and bayonets.37
The budding friendship hel
ped to put the attacks of 1958—which everyone knew were not Jones’s fault—behind the two of them. But that wasn’t the only issue threatening the US-Indonesia relationship.
Decolonization was far from finished in Southeast Asia. When the Dutch finally gave in to the revolutionaries in 1949, they ceded control of most of their territory to the young republic. But they did not give up their claim to a giant piece of land to the east of Java and north of Australia—that is, the western half of New Guinea, the second-largest island in the world. Indonesia as it stood was already an incredibly diverse country, but the people of Papua (or New Guinea) are visibly different both physically and culturally from people from the other islands. They are darker-skinned, with curly hair, and the Dutch colonial administration had barely penetrated into their territory (the Dutch never had the whole island—the eastern half, now Papua New Guinea, was controlled at the time by Australia).
To Sukarno, the issue was incredibly simple. The Dutch had absolutely no business being anywhere but back home in Holland. Indonesia was a democratic, multiethnic national republic. Race didn’t matter, and neither did Papua’s level of economic development. For years, his government in Jakarta tried to negotiate with the Dutch, to no avail. Then from 1954 to 1958, Sukarno argued the case at the United Nations. At home, this meant organizing protests and creating as much pressure on the Netherlands as possible. Washington, not wishing to alienate the Dutch, important Cold War allies in Western Europe, neglected to back Indonesia’s claim.
For the Indonesians, this was an issue of national pride. It was so crucial that at the end of 1957, the Indonesian government—frustrated with seven years of being ignored—expelled all the remaining Dutch citizens from the country.38 This was always going to be a blow to the economy. After only eight years of independence, and just the beginning of a public education system, Indonesia had not trained everyone needed to run the enterprises set up over centuries of colonialism.
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