54. Beverly Bowie, who was stationed in Romania at the same time, later wrote Wisner into the novel Operation Bughouse as a manic operative who sets up in a large madam’s house and immediately tries to declare war on the Soviet Union. See Operation Bughouse (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1947).
55. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 18.
56. Author interview with Frank Wisner Jr. in 2018.
57. The anecdote regarding the German soldiers is in a biographical sketch found in Howard Palfrey Jones Papers, Box 51, Biographical Materials, Hoover Institution Library and Archives.
58. “‘Soft-Sell’ Envoy; U.S. Accused of Meddling,” New York Times, April 5, 1962; Howard Palfrey Jones Papers, Biographic Sketch of Ambassador Howard Palfrey Jones, Box 51, Biographical Materials, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University.
59. For early childhood recollections, see Howard Palfrey Jones Papers, Box 51, Biographical Materials, Hoover Institution Library and Archives.
60. Howard Palfrey Jones, “The Life of an American Diplomat,” in Marcy Babbit, Living Christian Science: Fourteen Lives (Prentice Hall, 1975), 34–35.
61. For Wisner’s stance on the currency, see Maior, America’s First Spy, 179; for Stalin’s understanding of events in Berlin 1947–1949, see Zubok and Pleshakov, The Kremlin’s Cold War, 50–53. For the importance of the new currency in the partition of Germany, see Westad, The Cold War, 111–16.
62. Kyle Burke, Revolutionaries for the Right, 14.
63. Burton Hersh, The Old Boys, 159. Cited in Thomas, The Very Best Men, 23.
64. Author interview, Frank Wisner Jr., 2018.
65. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 207.
66. Ibid., 91.
67. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 33.
68. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 25–36.
69. Ibid., 111.
Chapter 2. Independent Indonesia
1. Francisca’s story is based on the author’s interviews between 2018 and 2020, in Amsterdam and over the phone.
2. Anthony Reid, A History of Southeast Asia (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 70–73.
3. For the relationship between the nationalist movement and Japanese occupation, see J. D. Legge, Sukarno: A Political Biography (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972), chap. 7.
4. For this reason it is incorrect to call Indonesian just “Bahasa.” There are also “Bahasa Jawa” (Javanese), “Bahasa Inggris” (English), etc. Correct usages are “Bahasa Indonesia” in Indonesian, or just “Indonesian.”
5. In the 1930 census, only 2 percent of Dutch East Indies residents spoke Malay as a first language. By 1980, Indonesian was used at home by 12 percent of the population, but by 36 percent of city dwellers and a large proportion of age groups. Now in Indonesia, almost everyone in Indonesia can speak Bahasa Indonesia to some degree, though they may speak other languages at home or in their regions. See Reid, History of Southeast Asia, 397.
6. A note on names in this part of the world: Some Indonesians have two names, and some only have one, but often, the second name isn’t a patronymic “last name,” passed down from the father. “Sukarno” is the full, correct way to refer to him, and virtually the only thing he is ever called within Indonesia. Francisca, being from the Maluku Islands (which have different naming conventions), does indeed have a surname, but because this is not universal in Indonesia, calling someone simply by their first name is very common, and in no way diminutive. I will very often refer to Indonesians only by a single name, whereas I might refer to Westerners by their surname only, for these reasons.
7. Tim Hannigan, A Brief History of Indonesia (Tokyo: Tuttle, 2015), chap. 8.
8. David Van Reybrouck, Congo: The Epic History of a People (London: Fourth Estate, 2014), 168–70.
9. Saskia Wieringa, Propaganda and Genocide in Indonesia: Imagined Evil (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 61–65. First, in 1914 Henk Sneevliet helped found the Indies Social Democratic Association (ISDV), whose name was changed to Communist Association (PKH) in 1920. Finally, they settled on Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) in 1924.
10. We’ve been unable to confirm that the Patrice Lumumba was in Hungary at the time, so it’s possible this memory is apocryphal, or that there was simply someone else with a similar name she met from the Congo that year. In any case, when she began reading about events in that country later in her life, she immediately connected them to her experience with this man in Hungary.
11. Washington P. Napitupulu, “Illiteracy Eradication Programme in Indonesia,” presented at the workshop on Planning and Administration of National Literacy Programs, Arusha, Tanzania, November 27–December 2, 1980.
12. Harian Rakjat archives, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.
13. Westad, The Cold War, 161; Michael J. Seth, A Concise History of Modern Korea (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan & Littlefield, 2010), 88.
14. Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2010), subsections on “The Cheju Insurgency” and “The Yosu Rebellion,” chap. 5.
15. Ibid.
16. Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 54.
17. On the famine, see Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, 81; and for the James A. Bill quote, see Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2006), 122.
18. For an overview of CIA activity in Iran, see Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, chap. 9; For Roosevelt’s threat against Iranian agents, see Kinzer, Overthrow, 127.
19. Lansdale cited in Westad, The Global Cold War, 115; for Lansdale as the model for Burdick and Lederer’s The Ugly American, see Thomas, The Very Best Men, 57.
20. Westad, The Global Cold War, 117.
21. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 57.
22. For Iran, see Harian Rakjat, August 18, 21, 22, and 24, 1953. The front page on June 26, 1954, reports on use of napalm in the Philippines. University of Malaya archives, Kuala Lumpur.
23. For Wisner’s successful efforts to control the press in the United States, see Maior, America’s First Spy, 197–98.
24. Author interview with former Harian Rakjat employee Martin Aleida, Jakarta, 2019.
25. For background on the Guatemalan revolution and presidency of Juan José Arévalo, see Ralph Lee Woodward Jr., A Short History of Guatemala (La Antigua, Guatemala: Editorial Laura Lee, 2008), chap. 7; and Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), chaps. 2–3.
26. Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York: Norton, 1993), 120–21; Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, 51–53, 58.
27. United Fruit’s lobbying operation in Washington is detailed in Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, 88–97. United Fruit also held extensive direct ties to key individuals in the Eisenhower White House: both John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles had carried out legal work for United Fruit through its subsidiary, International Railways of Central America (IRCA). The family of John Moors Cabot, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, owned stock in United Fruit, and his brother Thomas served as president of the corporation in 1948. US Ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge was also a stockholder, and Eisenhower’s personal secretary, Anne Whitman, was the wife of United Fruit’s director of public relations. Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith was seeking an executive job with United Fruit at the same time as he was helping to plan the coup against Árbenz. Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, 106–07.
28. Ibid., 101.
29. The first coup attempt, Operation Fortune, in 1952, was aborted after Dean Acheson convinced Truman to withdraw his support; the second, which involved using United Fruit money to support disgruntled right-wing officers in the Guatemalan army in staging an uprising in Salamá, failed. Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, 102–03.
30. Ibid., 132.
31. Ibid., 183–90.
32. Author interview with Miguel Ángel Albizures, Guatemala City, November 2018.
&n
bsp; 33. Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, 195–98.
34. Ibid., 205–08.
35. Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 66–67. For details on Peurifoy’s insistence that this be done as well as Anticommunism Day, see Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, 207–16.
36. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 124.
37. Harian Rakjat, June 21, 1953; June 23, 1953; and June 25, 1953. Harian Rakjat archives, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.
38. These assertions were repeated throughout New York Times coverage. See, in particular, editions from June 20, June 29, and July 1, 1954. I compared this coverage extensively to Harian Rakjat issues viewed in Malaysia and made my own judgment based on my knowledge of current historical consensus.
39. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 117. See also Schlesinger and Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, 154–55, and Maior, America’s First Spy, 198.
40. Harian Rakjat, June 26, 1954.
41. “Memorandum by Louis J. Halle, Jr. of the Policy Planning Staff to the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Bowie),” Washington, May 28, 1954, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 1952–1954, Vol. 4, The American Republics (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1983).
42. Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–54 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 366.
43. Author interview with Frank Wisner Jr., July 2018.
44. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Back on the Road: A Journey to Central America (London: Vintage, 2002), 67.
45. Howard P. Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution, 1971; fourth printing, Singapore: Toppan Printing, 1980), 38–40.
46. This quote is drawn from a draft chapter of Jones’s autobiography. Draft book manuscript, Box 51, Folder 1, Howard Palfrey Jones Papers, Hoover Institution Archives and Library (herein HI). Interestingly, the first draft was savaged by an unidentified critic who wrote in the margins that it “shouldn’t be published.”
47. Ibid.
48. Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream, 47–49.
49. Arnold M. Ludwig, King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2004), 150.
50. Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream, 49.
51. On Sukarno’s early life, see Legge, Sukarno, chap. 1.
52. For identification of socialism and independence, see McVey, Rise of Indonesian Communism, 20; for Muslim communist thinking, see 171–76.
53. Ibid., 73.
54. Legge, Sukarno, 97–98.
55. The PKI signed off on Pancasila in 1954. Rex Mortimer, Indonesian Communism under Sukarno: Ideology and Politics 1959–1965 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 66–67. For D. N. Aidit’s tortured theoretical justifications, see also 92.
56. When I first started covering Southeast Asia, I was shocked to find that in Malaysia, Malays speak Malay, ethnic Chinese speak a Chinese dialect, and “Indians” speak Tamil. There is no language that everyone speaks fluently, at least not compared to Indonesia. Similarly, I was taken aback to learn that Duterte does not even speak Tagalog fluently—he gives his national addresses in English, which not every Filipino speaks.
57. Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream, 42–44.
58. Legge, Sukarno, 260–61.
59. Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream, 80.
60. Christopher J. Lee, “Between a Moment and an Era: The Origins and Afterlives of Bandung,” in Making a World after Empire: The Bandung Moment and its Political Afterlives, Christopher J. Lee, ed. (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2010), loc. 217 of 4658, Kindle.
61. I’m using the official transcript, which can be found in many places online, such as www.cvce.eu/content/publication/2001/9/5/88d3f71c-c9f9-415a-b397-b27b8581a4f5/publishable_en.pdf. However, in the video of the original speech (easily found online as well), he stops himself at this point and says, “… so-called colored peoples.”
62. Lee, “Between a Moment and an Era,” loc. 195 of 4656, Kindle.
63. Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Legacies of Bandung: Decolonization and the Politics of Culture,” in Making a World After Empire, loc. 641 of 4658, Kindle; Richard Wright, The Color Curtain: A Report on the Bandung Conference (Jackson, MI: Banner Books, 1956), 158–65.
64. Prashad, Darker Nations, 12, 33, and 68 for discussion of Bandung nationalism, Sukarno’s plan, and terms of trade goals, respectively.
65. Harian Rakjat, April 18, 1955, and April 19, 1955. Harian Rakjat archives, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur. Coincidentally, the paper did promote cure-all tablets and medicines in the back section. No matter how communist they were, it seems they could use the advertising revenue.
66. Wright, The Color Curtain, 12.
67. Ibid.,16, 35–60.
68. Ibid., 78, 103.
69. Ibid., 180–81. Wright says the book was Bahasa Indonesia, compiled by S. van der Molen (and adapted to English by Harry F. Cemach).
70. See James R. Brennan, “Radio Cairo and the Decolonization of East Africa, 1953–1964,” in Making a World After Empire.
71. Van Reybrouck, Congo, 233.
72. Laura Bier, “Feminism, Solidarity, and Identity in the Age of Bandung,” in Making a World After Empire, loc. 1789 of 4685, Kindle.
73. Ibid., loc. 1695 of 4685, Kindle.
74. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 157.
75. John F. Kennedy, Remarks to the US Senate, July 2, 1952, www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/united-states-senate-imperialism-19570702.
76. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 157–58; Jess Melvin, The Army and the Indonesian Genocide: Mechanics of Mass Murder (New York: Routledge, 2018), 7.
Chapter 3. Feet to the Fire, Pope in the Sky
1. Nikita Khrushchev, “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences,” February 25, 1956, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/115995.
2. Suny, The Soviet Experiment, 413.
3. For the importance of the “secret speech” in laying the foundations for the Sino-Soviet split, see Lorenz M. Luthi, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), chap. 2.
4. Mortimer, Indonesian Communism Under Sukarno, 26, 36, 44–45, 57–65, 171.
5. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 145–47.
6. Westad, The Global Cold War, 125–28. According to Westad, Eisenhower opposed intervention in Egypt (in contrast to his very enthusiastic support elsewhere) for two reasons: One, he wanted to contrast US behavior with the Soviet crackdown in Hungary; and two, it seemed that Nasser wasn’t going anywhere, whether the Europeans got the canal back or not.
7. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1991), 238–39.
8. Both this quote and the claim that he was overworked and emotional are from my interviews with Frank Wisner Jr.
9. Joseph Burkholder Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1976), 205.
10. Geoffrey B. Robinson, The Killing Season: A History of the Indonesian Massacres, 1965–66 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), 43–44. On December 19, 1960, the National Security Council recognized that the PKI stood in marked contrast to the “venality and incompetence” of the non-Communist organizations. National Security Council Report, NSC 6023, Draft Statement of US Policy on Indonesia, December 19, 1960, Document 293, FRUS, 1958–1960, Indonesia, Volume XVII, at https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v17/d293.
11. Editorial Note, NSC Meeting on April 5, 1956, FRUS, 1955–1957, Vol. XXII, 254. Cited in Simpson, Economists with Guns, 32.
12. Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream, 45.
13. Spoiler alert: stop here if you don’t want to know how things go for Sakono. All information pertaining to his life comes from author interviews with him in Solo, 2018–19.
14. Mortimer, Indonesian Communism under Sukarno, 64–65.<
br />
15. In Indonesian, BTI is Barisan Tani Indonesia, LEKRA is Lembaga Kebudayaan Rakyat, and SOBSI is Sentral Organisasi Buruh Seluruh Indonesia. In English, these are sometimes translated as the Peasants Front of Indonesia, the Institute for the People’s Culture, and the All-Indonesian Federation of Workers’ Organizations, respectively.
16. Wieringa, Propaganda and Genocide, 106. For more on Gerwani, see also Saskia Wieringa, Sexual Politics in Indonesia (The Hague: Palgrave, 2002).
17. Author interviews with Sumiyati, 2018, in Solo, Indonesia.
18. Harian Rakjat, May 19, 1958.
19. Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream, 115–18.
20. Ibid., 119–20.
21. “Aid to Indonesian Rebels,” New York Times, May 9, 1958.
22. For an account of Pope’s attacks on Ambon, told from the perspective of the pilots, see Kenneth Conboy and James Morrisson, Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957–1958 (Naval Institute Press, 1999), 115–140. For the bombing of the market, killing people on the way to church, see Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream, 129. Evans says that the bomb actually hit the church itself: The Very Best Men, 158.
23. Conboy and Morrisson, Feet to the Fire, 166.
24. “Indonesian Operation—Original Concept of Operation,” CIA Library, approved for release in 2002, www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP89B00552R000100040006-9.pdf.
25. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 158.
26. Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream, 130.
27. Ibid., 135. Other accounts have put the rice figure at 37,000 tons. See, for example, Thomas, The Very Best Men, 159; and Maior, America’s First Spy, 251.
28. For the similarities in the CIA’s perception and planning in Guatemala and Indonesia, see Maior, America’s First Spy, 250.
29. Jones, Indonesia: The Possible Dream, 342.
30. Ibid., 121.
31. Ibid., 122.
32. Thomas, The Very Best Men, 160; Maior, America’s First Spy, 251–52.
33. Simpson, Economists with Guns, 29–30.
The Jakarta Method Page 33