The Gilchrist Indonesia Ireland Dossier

international | arts and media | news report Saturday May 15, 2004 02:28 by Captain Blue - The Captains without the Kings captainwhite at eircom dot net

Media manipulator in Ireland and Indonesia

Supporter of "a little shooting" oversaw the slaughter of up to a milion in the name of protecting western control of the principal world source of natural rubber and tin and a producer of petroleum and other strategically important commodities.

This was one of the 'silent' war crimes of the 20th Century, a silence made possible by the efforts of MI6 and Sir Andrew Grilchrist.

I had intended to put together a summary of the material I amassed on the career of Sir Andrew Gilchrist. But life is too short and it is too long. In any case, I would be accused, probably correctly, of leaving out some important detail or other. That being the case, and on the basis that the material is not easily accessible, I have included the various pieces from newspapers in Ireland, Scotland, England, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Gilchrist’s and the Foreign Office’ s role in manipulating the media (principally the BBC) so as to facilitate the coup in Indonesia in 1965 is remarkable. The figures for the number slaughtered in the course of the coup varies form 500,000 to 1,000,000 – I gave the figure of 1,000,000 above as it is the one that I had come across.

Another individual whose footprints can be seen in both Ireland and in Indonesia is the journalist Mary Holland, whose reports of the effects of unionist bigotry in the North of Ireland earned her the undying enmity of Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien, who sacked her from the Observer newspaper upon losing his seat in the 1977 General Election and on taking up an editorial position in that paper. Dr O’Brien was particularly critical of a feature Mary Holland had written on Derry’s Mary Nellis. O’Brien said that Holland was unaware of the fact that the virus of Irish republicanism was carried by the female strain and suggested that this experienced journalist had been hoodwinked by a working class mother from the Bogside in Derry. O’Brien, as was his wont, censored the article.

Anyway, here is the stuff.

The Herald (Glasgow) March 9, 1993
The best hated man in the Highlands (abridged)
Kirsty Scott

Sir Andre Gilchrist started a 37-year career with the Foreign Service, including appointments as Ambassador at Reykjavik, Djakarta, and Dublin.

He was fond of recounting to friends and interviewers that he had the unenviable record of having all three embassies burned to the ground during his tenure.

"I was not to blame for any of them," he once joked. "Just the luck of the draw. I always seemed to get the jobs nobody else wanted. Somehow or other they always turned out to be the best jobs."


The Times March 11, 1993
Andrew Gilchrist

Sir Andrew Gilchrist, KCMG, a former ambassador to the Republic of Ireland, Indonesia and Iceland, died on March 6 aged 82. He was born on April 19, 1910.

FEW diplomats fly into such turbulence as did Andrew Gilchrist. Fewer still seemed to relish the experience more than he did. The last decade of his colourful career was accompanied by the sound of breaking glass as angry mobs demonstrated against Britain. One embassy was fire-bombed, another burnt down while in Iceland his official residence was stoned.

The Observer July 28, 1996

BRITISH ROLE IN SLAUGHTER OF 500,000

Mark Curtis

Ambassador recommended 'a little shooting' for Indonesia in 1965, reveals Mark Curtis

SECRET files just declassified show that Britain aided the slaughter of more than half a million people by the Indonesian army in 1965.

The documents reveal that the then British ambassador, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, who died in 1993, wrote to London: 'I have never concealed from you my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change.'

The trouble began on 30 September, 1965, when a group of generals led by General Suharto decided to move against the powerful Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Within a few months, hundreds of thousands of PKI supporters and ordinary peasants were killed and the PKI destroyed.

The secret files reveal three crucial aspects of the British role. The first is that Britain wanted the generals to act against the PKI. The Foreign Office advised Gilchrist: 'While the present confusion continues, we can hardly go wrong by tacitly backing the generals.'

On 24 November, British officials reported that 'PKI men and women are being killed in very large numbers'. Some victims 'are given a knife and invited to kill themselves. Most refuse and are told to turn round and are shot in the back.' By mid-December the US embassy estimated that more than 100,000 people had been killed.

The second British role concerns covert operations. On 5 October, the British political adviser to the commander-in-chief in Singapore advised the Foreign Office: 'We should have no hesitation in doing what we can surreptitiously to blacken the PKI in the eyes of the army and the people of Indonesia.'

The Foreign Office accepted the proposal to 'blacken the PKI' and suggested some 'suitable propaganda themes' such as PKI brutalities and China's role in arms shipments. On 9 October, the political adviser confirmed that 'arrangements for distribution of certain unattributable material' had been made.

There is an even more sinister side to British covert operations. In 1965 Britain was helping Malaya defend the island of Borneo from Indonesian claims. But the Foreign Office 'did not want to distract the Indonesian army by getting them engaged in fighting in Borneo and so discourage them from the attempts which they now seem to be making to deal with the PKI'. Gilchrist suggested that 'we should get word to the generals that we shall not attack them whilst they are chasing the PKI'. The political adviser in Singapore suggested that 'the message should be oral (and therefore deniable)', and Gilchrist confirmed that he would 'pass a carefully phrased oral message about not biting the generals in the rear for the present'. A file from 20 October shows that 'a secret communication was made to the generals'.

The third British role concerns arms supplies. Declassified US records show that the US provided arms for the generals' campaign and gave them a hit-list of thousands of PKI supporters, who were subsequently hunted down and killed. The British files reveal close relations between the US and UK embassies in Jakarta.

The secret US files show that in early November the Indonesian generals requested from the US equipment 'to arm Moslem and nationalist youths . . . for use against the PKI'. The US promised to supply such covert aid - dubbed 'medicines'. Given their close relations it is likely that the US informed Britain of the true nature of these supplies and that they approved them.

Mark Curtis is the author of 'The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy since 1945', Zed Books, London, 1995, and a former Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

The Independent (London)

December 1, 1998

HEADLINE: How we destroyed Sukarno; Foreign Office 'dirty tricks' helped overthrow Indonesia's President Sukarno in 1966. Over the next 30 years, half a million people died.

By Paul Lashmar and James Oliver

In autumn 1965, Norman Reddaway, a lean and erudite rising star of the Foreign Office, was briefed for a special mission. The British Ambassador to Indonesia, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, had just visited London for discussions with the head of the Foreign Office, Joe Garner. Covert operations to undermine Sukarno, the troublesome and independently minded President of Indonesia, were not going well. Garner was persuaded to send Reddaway, the FO's propaganda expert, to Indonesia. His task: to take on anti-Sukarno propaganda operations run by the Foreign Office and M16. Garner gave Reddaway pounds 100,000 in cash "to do anything I could do to get rid of Sukarno", he says.

Reddaway thus joined the loose amalgam of groups from the Foreign Office, M16, the State Department and the CIA in the Far East, all striving to depose Sukarno in diffuse and devious ways. For the next six months he and his colleagues chipped away at Sukarno's regime, undermining his reputation and assisting his enemies in the army. By March 1966 Sukarno's power base was in tatters and he was forced to hand over his presidential authority to General Suharto, the head of the army, who was already running a campaign of mass murder against alleged communists.

According to Reddaway, the overthrow of Sukarno was one of the Foreign Office's "most successful" coups, which they have kept a secret until now. The British intervention in Indonesia, alongside complimentary CIA operations, shows how far the Foreign Office was prepared to go in intervening in other countries' affairs during the Cold War. Indonesia was important both economically and strategically. In 1952 the US noted that if Indonesia fell out of Western influence, neighbours such as Malaya might follow, resulting in the loss of the "principal world source of natural rubber and tin and a producer of petroleum and other strategically important commodities".

The Japanese occupation during the Second World War, which to the Indonesians amounted to another period of colonial rule, had revitalised the nationalist movement which after the war, declared independence and assumed power. Ahmed Sukarno became Indonesia's first president. Western concern regarding Sukarno's regime grew owing to the strength of the Indonesian communist party, the PKI, which at its peak had a membership of over 10 million, the largest communist party in the non-communist world. Concerns were not allayed by Sukarno's internal and external policies, including nationalising Western assets and a governmental role for the PKI.

By the early Sixties Sukarno had become a major thorn in the side of both the British and the Americans. They believed there was a real danger that Indonesia would fall to the communists. To balance the army's growing power, Sukarno aligned himself closer to the PKI.

The first indication of British interest in removing Sukarno appears in a CIA memorandum of 1962. Prime Minister Macmillan and President Kennedy agreed to "liquidate President Sukarno, depending on the situation and available opportunities".

Hostility to Sukarno was intensified by Indonesian objections to the Malaysian Federation. Sukarno complained the project was "a neo-colonial plot, pointing out that the Federation was a project for Malayan expansionism and continuing British influence in the region.

In 1963 his objections crystallised in his policy of Konfrontasi, a breaking off of all relations with Malaysia, soon coupled with low-level military intervention. A protracted border war began along the 700-mile-long front in Borneo.

According to Foreign Office sources the decision to get rid of Sukarno had been taken by Macmillan's Conservative government and carried through during Wilson's 1964 Labour government. The Foreign Office had worked in conjunction with their American counterparts on a plan to oust the turbulent Sukarno. A covert operation and psychological warfare strategy was instigated, based at Phoenix Park, in Singapore, the British headquarters in the region. The M16 team kept close links with key elements in the Indonesian army through the British Embassy. One of these was Ali Murtopo, later General Suharto's intelligence chief, and M16 officers constantly travelled back and forth between Singapore and Jakarta.

The Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD) also worked out of Phoenix Park, reinforcing the work of M16 and the military psychological warfare experts.

IRD had been established by the Labour government in 1948 to conduct an anti-communist propaganda war against the Soviets, but had swiftly become enlisted in various anti-independence movement operations in the declining British Empire. By the Sixties, IRD had a staff of around 400 in London and information officers around the world influencing media coverage in areas of British interest.

According to Roland Challis, the BBC correspondent at the time in Singapore, journalists were open to manipulation by IRD, owing, ironically, to Sukarno's own policies: "In a curious way, by keeping correspondents out of the country Sukarno made them the victims of official channels, because almost the only information you could get was from the British ambassador in Jakarta." The opportunity to isolate Sukarno and the PKI came in October 1965 when an alleged PKI coup attempt was the pretext for the army to sideline Sukarno and eradicate the PKI. Who exactly instigated the coup and for what purposes remains a matter of speculation. However, within days the coup had been crushed and the army was firmly in control. Suharto accused the PKI of being behind the coup, and set about suppressing them.

Following the attempted coup Britain set about exploiting the situation. On 5 October, Alec Adams, political adviser to the Commander-in-Chief, Far East, advised the Foreign Office: "We should have no hesitation in doing what we can surreptitiously to blacken the PKI in the eyes of the army and the people of Indonesia." The Foreign Office agreed and suggested "suitable propaganda themes" such as PKI atrocities and Chinese intervention.

One of the main themes pursued by IRD was the threat posed by the PKI and "Chinese communists". Newspaper reports continually emphasised the danger of the PKI. Drawing upon their experience in Malaya in the Fifties, the British emphasised the Chinese nature of the communist threat. Roland Challis said: "One of the more successful things which the West wished on to the non-communist politicians in Indonesia was to transfer the whole idea of communism onto the Chinese minority in Indonesia. It turned it into an ethnic thing. It is a terrible thing to have done to incite the Indonesians to rise and slaughter the Chinese."

But it was the involvement of Sukarno with the PKI in the bloody months following the coup that was to be the British trump card. According to Reddaway: "The communist leader, Aidit, went on the run and Sukarno, being a great politician, went to the front of the palace and said that the communist leader Aidit must be hunted down and brought to justice. From the side door of the palace, he was dealing with him every day by courier."

This information was revealed by the signal intelligence of Britain's GCHQ. The Indonesians didn't have a clue about radio silence and this double-dealing was picked up by GCHQ; the British had its main eavesdropping base in Hong Kong tuned into events in Indonesia.

The discrediting of Sukarno was of fundamental importance. Sukarno remained a respected and popular leader against whom Suharto could not move openly until the conditions were right. The constant barrage of bad international coverage and Sukarno's plummeting political position fatally undermined him. On 10 March 1966, Sukarno was forced to sign over his powers to General Suharto. Now perceived as closely associated with the attempted coup and the PKI, Sukarno had been discredited to the point where the army felt able to act. The PKI was eliminated as a significant force and a pro-Western military dictatorship firmly established.

It was not long before Suharto quietly ended the inactive policy of Konfrontasi resulting in a swift improvement in Anglo-Indonesian relations, which continue to be close to this day.

From: 'Britain's Secret Propaganda War 1948-77', by Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, to be published by Sutton on 7 December

The Independent (London)

April 16, 2000

HEADLINE: MI6 SPREAD LIES TO PUT KILLER IN POWER;
REVEALED: HEALEY ADMITS ROLE IN BRITISH DIRTY TRICKS CAMPAIGN TO OVERTHROW INDONESIA'S PRESIDENT SUKARNO

Paul Lashmar And James Oliver

THE WORLD'S press was systematically manipulated by British intelligence as part of a plot to overthrow Indonesia's President Sukarno in the 1960s, according to Foreign Office documents. The BBC, the Observer and Reuters news agency were all duped into carrying stories manufactured by agents working for the Foreign Office.

Last night, Denis Healey, Labour's defence secretary at the time, admitted the intelligence war had spun out of control in Indonesia. At one point the British were planting false documents on dead soldiers. Lord Healey even had to stop service chiefs from taking military action. He said: "I would not let the RAF drop a single bomb although they were very anxious to get involved."

The left-leaning Sukarno was overthrown in 1966 and up to half a million people were massacred by the new regime. Now a Foreign Office document obtained by the Independent on Sunday reveals the full extent of the "dirty tricks" campaign orchestrated from London, and how the world's journalists were manipulated.

A letter marked "secret and personal" from propaganda expert Norman Reddaway to Britain's Jakarta ambassador, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, brags about the campaign which aimed to destabilise Mr Sukarno by suggesting his rule would lead to a communist takeover. One story "went all over the world and back again", writes Reddaway, while information from Gilchrist was "put almost instantly back into Indonesia via the BBC".

This included an allegation, with no apparent basis in reality, that Indonesian communists were planning to slaughter the citizens of Jakarta.

Reddaway, a specialist with the FO's Information Research Department (IRD), writes: "I wondered whether this was the first time in history that an ambassador had been able to address the people of his country of work almost at will and virtually instantaneously."

Showing his low opinion of journalists, he boasts that "newsmen would take anything from here, and pestered us for copy". He had been sent to Singapore to bolster British efforts to overthrow the Indonesian president and support General Suharto. His brief from London had been "to do whatever I could do to get rid of Sukarno", he revealed before his death last year. He therefore embarked on an extensive campaign of placing favourable stories with news wires, foreign correspondents and the BBC, and also used the pages of Encounter, an influential magazine for the liberal intelligentsia which, it later emerged, had been funded and controlled by the CIA.

His letter even suggests that the Observer newspaper had been persuaded to take the Foreign Office "angle" on the Indonesian takeover by reporting a "kid glove coup without butchery".

Last month, Abdurrahman Wahid, the country's current president, gave his support to a judicial inquiry into the massacres of 1965-66 and, in an interview broadcast on state television, promised to punish those found guilty.

Newly discovered cabinet papers show that British agencies, including MI6, had supported Islamic guerrillas and other dissident groups in an effort to destabilise Sukarno. The disorder fostered by the British led to General Suharto's takeover and dictatorship, and a wave of violence unseen since the Second World War. The massacre set the stage for almost 35 years of violent suppression, including the 1975 invasion of East Timor, which was only reversed last year.

The cabinet documents (which are separate from the revelations of Reddaway) were uncovered by David Easter, a historian at the London School of Economics. His research - which is published this week in the journal Intelligence and National Security - shows that the cabinet's defence and overseas policy committee asked the head of MI6, Dick White, to draw up plans for covert operations against Indonesia in January 1964. According to Dr Easter, these operations began in the spring of that year and included supplying arms to separatists in the Indonesian provinces of Aceh and Sulawesi.

These actions were complemented by a propaganda campaign run out of Britain's Far East HQ in Singapore by the IRD, which had close connections with MI6. The unit was behind stories that Sukarno and his tolerance of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) would lead to a communist dictatorship in Indonesia.

Reddaway was a key part of this. His letter, written in July 1966, was released to Churchill College, Cambridge, which holds the private papers of Sir Andrew Gilchrist.

Last night, Lord Healey owned up to the Foreign Office misinformation campaign.

Lord Healey said: "Norman Reddaway had an office in Singapore. They began to put out false information and I think that, to my horror on one occasion, they put forged documents on the bodies of Indonesian soldiers we had taken. I confronted Reddaway over this.

"The key thing here is that Indonesia was infiltrating its troops into Borneo and had organised a coup against the Sultan of Brunei with whom we had a treaty. So we reacted similarly. I think it has been long known that British Special Forces - the SAS, SBS and Gurkhas - were used to tackle the Indonesians. But everything was done on the ground. I would not let the RAF drop a single bomb although they were very anxious to get involved."

Lord Healey denied any personal knowledge of the wider MI6 campaign to arm opponents of Sukarno. But, he added: "I would certainly have supported it."

According to one of the country's leading commentators on security matters - Richard Aldrich, a professor at Nottingham University - the episode shows Britain's post-war operations at their most effective. "It represents one of the supreme achievements of the British clandestine services," he said. "In contrast with the American CIA, they remained politically accountable and low-key. Britain has a preference for bribing people rather than blowing them up."

Professor Aldrich added that modern journalistic deadlines had made today's media even more open to manipulation than it was 30 years ago.

GRAPHIC: President Sukarno before his overthrow by General Suharto; and; Denis Healey, Labour's then defence secretary, who admits British officials fed lies to the press; 'Secret and personal': memo shows evidence of press manipulation by Foreign Office

Malaysia General News

April 18, 2000

MI6 OVERTHREW SUKARNO
Wan A Hulaimi
LONDON, April 18, 2000

British intelligence orchestrated the downfall of Indonesia's former President Sukarno by waging a dirty campaign against his government.

It include falsifying evidence to whip up feeling against the Indonesian leader, according to evidence uncovered here and bolstered by admission by British Foreign Secretary at the time, Denis Healey.

According to an article by British academic David Easter, a historian at the London School of Economics (LSE), in the weekly journal "Intelligence and National Security", the downfall of the fiery Indonesian leader in the 60s was a success for British Intelligence.

They managed to dupe not only the Indonesian people into accepting that Sukarno was about to succumb to Communist pressure, but also the world's press into believing that there was imminent danger to the country.

Sukarno was ousted from power after a period of turmoil in Indonesia and widespread belief that the Partai Komunis Indonesia (Indonesian Communist Party PKI) was about to wrest power.

Former Foreign Secretary Denis (now Lord) Healey admitted in the "Independent On Sunday" here that this was an intelligence war that had gone out of control, with some half a million people massacred.

The key player in this British intelligence campaign of dirty tricks to oust the troublesome president was the then British Ambassador in Jakarta Sir Andrew Gilchrist whose role was described by British Foreign Office propaganda expert Norman Reddaway as unusual in that he was able to address the people in the country of his posting directly and at will.

Reddaway, who died last year, was boastful of his (and Gilchrist's) role in destabilising the government of a troublesome country, and of how he was able to manipulate its population and the world at large (especially the press) into believing that Indonesia was in imminent danger of being taken over by Communists.

Sukarno, who was overthrown in 1966 after waging a propaganda and military war against the newly formed Malaysian federation, was a "thorn in the flesh" of western powers for his influential role as one of the charismatic leaders of the developing world and his anti-colonialism taunts.

Himself a staunch nationalist, but not Communist, he courted the PKI and allowed them to play a prominent role in domestic politics, engaging such figures as PKI leader D.N. Aidit to be in his inner circle, and appointing PKI sympathiser Subandrio as Foreign Minister.

While debate is still raging among local historians whether the PKI was or wasn't about to stage a coup, there is evidence that British Intelligence did not believe this to be so.

And that alarm bells that were rung throughout the world was the work of the Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD) propaganda machinery.

IRD, for which Reddaway was then leading propaganda specialist, set up a special office in Singapore to spread false information about Indonesia.

So successful was this propaganda campaign that in one of his letters to Ambassador Gilchrist, Reddaway was able to say: "I wondered whether this was the first time in history that an ambassador had been able to address the people of his country of work almost at will and virtually instantaneously."

In their work they showed little regard for journalists who readily accepted whatever propaganda they were churning out, and even asking for more.

One of the conduits for their propaganda campaign was the supposedly liberal magazine "Encounter" magazine, which was regarded in the 60s and early 70s as the house-magazine of the liberal intelligentsia.

The now defunct "Encounter" has since been exposed as one of the magazines financed by the CIA in their subtle campaign during the cold war to win over "wayward" intellectuals while it was under the editorship of Melvin Lasky.

Lasky later admitted that he was not aware that money had been received from the intelligence agency.

In London, the Sunday newspaper "Observer" was persuaded to take the Foreign Office line in reporting events from Indonesia.

Before his downfall, Sukarno, who by all evidence was neglecting the economic affairs of his country, was waging a military campaign in Borneo and was threatening the stability not only of Malaysia, but also the Sultanate of Brunei.

British Intelligence dirty tricks included the planting of forged documents on dead Indonesian soldiers and using the BBC to broadcast stories fed to them by Gilchrist.

In Malaysia, many believed that the Idonesians were eating rats because its agriculture was in tatters, a story now regarded with scepticism.

British intelligence were also financing separatist groups in Indonesia, including the Achinese and Sulawesi rebels, who were eager to receive help from whatever source in their struggle.

Although Lord Healey has now been reported as saying that he did not allow the Royal Air Force to drop a single bomb "although they were anxious to get involved", it is common knowledge that the Gurkhas, British special forces the SAS, and SBS were involved in the war in Borneo.

Students of British intelligence activities during the late 60s and early 70s will find this latest disclosure of great interest as questions are still being asked about the circumstances that led to another coup at around that period which overthrew another leader deemed troublesome by the then British government, that of Milton Obote in Uganda.

Obote was overthrown by a coup led by Idi Amin while attending a Commonwelath Heads of Government meeting in Singapore.

Jakarta Post

June 2, 2002 Sunday

Soeharto and the grand scheme of things

Carmel Budiardjo

Shadow of a Revolution: Indonesia and the Generals; by Roland Challis; Sutton Publishing Ltd,; August 2001; 260 pp How better to start a review of this very committed book than to quote the author's dedication: "Dedicated with respect to the memory of more than one million Indonesians who died and are still dying because of the greed, brutality and indifference of the military, politicians, corporations and 'statesmen' of all nations."

Accounts by journalists about Indonesia are all too few and far between, as compared for instance with the flood of books that have been published in the past year or so about East Timor. That there is so much to say about East Timor following the dramatic events of 1999 is indisputable.

Yet Indonesia too has passed through many dramatic events since the 1997 financial crisis, and the removal from power in May 1998 of the dictator, Soeharto, who ran the country with an iron rod for more than three decades. Which is why this book is so welcome.

What Roland Challis has produced is not just a survey of the years under the Soeharto dictatorship, which are well covered in his concluding chapters. He has taken the trouble to set the scene of the generals' take- over in 1965 against a historical background, looking at the development of Indonesia as a nation-state which has colored subsequent developments.

In particular, he provides a comprehensive overview of Indonesia's konfrontasi with Malaysia in the early 1960s, regarding which he is particularly well informed as he was the BBC's correspondent in Southeast Asia throughout that period.

As he shows, at a time when British forces in North Borneo were escalating operations and were given permission to carry out incursions across the border into Indonesian territory, there were two quite separate approaches being made from Jakarta to end the conflict.

One was from Sukarno, who sent senior members of his cabinet for secret talks with Malaysia, while another, dating back to mid-1964, was pursued by Soeharto loyalists behind Sukarno's back and only became public several years later.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Indonesian Kalimantan, troops that had been dispatched there were not being deployed, indicating, as Brig. Gen. Supardjo told a military court while on trial for his part in the Oct. 1, 1965 coup attempt, "that some Army leaders were not keen on the confrontation", an obvious reference to Soeharto, who was then in charge of troop deployment to the "front".

Challis also documents the fact that British military officers and the British government realized by early 1965 that Indonesian's campaign was running out of steam.

While acknowledging that many aspects of the events of Oct. 1, 1965 are still shrouded in mystery, Challis deals with the developments leading to Soeharto's formal assumption of the presidency in 1968 in three distinct stages: the coup attempt itself, the brutal extermination of communists, presided over by sections of the Army, and the gradual process of removing Sukarno from power.

However, one significant error of fact needs correcting. Challis records that the newspaper of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), Harian Rakjat, made a "misjudgment" by coming out on Oct. 2 in support of the putsch. In fact, that newspaper was the only non-Army paper allowed to appear on that day, with an editorial written while events were still unfolding, and describing them as an "internal army affair".

This editorial later enabled the Army to claim that the PKI was involved in the events and suggests that the paper's appearance was quite deliberate.

The most intriguing section of Challis' account of the 1965 events relates to the activities of the UK's propaganda agency, the Information Research Department (IRD), which set up office in Singapore less than a month after the coup attempt.

He writes that IRD head Norman Reddaway, one of the foreign office's most senior propaganda specialists, took charge, and worked in close collaboration with Andrew Gilchrist, the UK ambassador in Jakarta, in a campaign to spread lies and distortions as the massacre of hundreds of thousands of communist suspects gathered pace throughout Indonesia.

As the BBC correspondent in Southeast Asia, Challis was a prime target of this campaign and was told by Reddaway many years later, as he began to work on this book, that his terms of reference were to "do anything you can think of to get rid of Sukarno". Many of the accounts spread by the IRD to journalists in the region were simply recycled reports that had been received from the ambassador.

This even led to the ambassador complaining, according to a recently declassified letter from Reddaway to Gilchrist when the latter was writing his memoirs, that the ambassador had on one occasion complained "that the versions put back (by the IRD, and hence used in the press) were uncomfortably close to those put out by yourself (i.e. Gilchrist), and caused Reddaway to wonder "whether this was the first time in history that an ambassador had been able to address the people in his country of work almost at will and virtually instantaneously".

Challis also writes: "While MI6 agents 'came and went at will'" between Jakarta and other regional capitals, other journalists, including himself, were kept out, and forced to rely on handouts from the IRD. "The control of information was rigorous," writes Challis. "No word of the slaughter came my way."

If one casts one's mind back to those horrendous events and to the lack of reporting in the world's press about the massacre of communists, it explains why Soeharto was able to seize power with virtually no mention of the crime against humanity that eliminated a potential opposition to military power. Even today, the repercussions are evident: rarely does Soeharto's name appear when journalists or academics survey the worst cases of genocide or massacres from the 20th century.

The IRD's strategy was threefold: to target the PKI, to tar Sukarno with the communist brush and to provide documentary support for Soeharto's interpretation of the events of Oct. 1. They were stunningly successful, as Challis shows.

The second half of this highly readable book deals comprehensively with the Soeharto era. A chapter on Soeharto's Javanese empire provides an overview of the dictator's moves to exploit the fabulous natural resources in the non-Javanese regions of the republic.

Challis rightly has nothing but contempt for the term "outer islands" so often used for everything except Java (including West Java, where the people are Sundanese, not Javanese), calling it a phrase "loaded with assumptions of Javanese superiority". The conflict in Aceh led to desperate attempts, already under Sukarno, to curb secessionist sympathies though the rebel movement under Daud Beureuh in the 1950s was focused on calling for Indonesia to become an Islamic republic, rather than supporting the idea of an Islamic Republic of Aceh.

As for West Papua, western powers made no secret (in secret documents, of course) of their contempt for West Papuan aspirations, in the months preceding the so-called Act of Free Choice in August 1969.

As one British diplomat wrote, "I cannot imagine the U.S., Japanese, Dutch or Australian governments putting at risk their economic and political relations with Indonesia on a matter of principle involving a relatively small number of very primitive people".

Soeharto's unbridled exploitation of the hugely rich regions beyond Java under Javanese control are briefly covered, as well as the invasion of East Timor, shortly after Soeharto had proclaimed (as we now know, following a meeting in the U.S. in early July 1975 with President Gerald Ford and Kissinger) that independence 'was not a viable option' for the Portuguese colony.

When asked at the time what he might do if Indonesia invaded East Timor, the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Fraser replied, 'absolutely nothing'.

However, the Santa Cruz massacre in November 1991, as Challis records, caused reverberations around the world, and "started processes that would strike at the very heart of General Soeharto's military regime".

After dealing in some depth with the human rights (and wrongs) situation, the author described the dictator's strategy over the more than three decades of his rule to play military and political forces against each other, while keeping himself in power and building for himself, his family and his cronies a huge business empire.

His account of Soeharto's moves in the late 1980s to curb the military and build an alliance with Muslims, who earlier had been the target of many brutal crackdowns, are a reminder of Soeharto's shrewdness as a political operator.

For the general reader who wants to understand Indonesian contemporary history up to the downfall of Soeharto in 1998, this book is highly recommended. The reviewer is the London-based director of the human rights organization Tapol.

Belfast Telegraph
October 17, 2002
West has played a major role By Eamonn McCann

OVER the past few days a number of commentators have described the atrocity in Bali as the worst terrorist incident in Indonesian history.

The bomb attack which left more than 200 dead was a foul , unforgivable attack on people who bear no responsibility for whatever grievance, real or imagined, the perpetrators may have thought they were helping to remedy. But the worst atrocity in Indonesia's history it was not. Not by a long chalk.

It was, however, almost certainly, the worst atrocity in Indonesian history in terms of the number of white casualties, which is presumably what was meant.

If - this is entirely speculative - the killers were to some extent driven by anger against perceived contempt for brown-skinned lives compared to the lives of paler races, they may feel vindicated by media coverage.

In a syndicated article yesterday, a Jakarta-based commentator and adjunct professor at Deakin University, Australia, Wimar Witoelar, recited a litany of terrorist horror from the past decade. State terrorism which killed in Aceh, Lampung and Tanjung. Assaults by Islamic groups associated with "rogue" military elements which left hundreds dead in Banyuwangi. Other hundreds slaughtered in Ambon. "As the only victims were Indonesians and Al-Qaida was not headline stuff then, the world looked away. But the terror went on..."

The roots of the violence go further back. Earlier this month, the Independent carried a piece beginning: "Documents which would reveal Britain's secret role in Indonesian politics in the Sixties that led to 'one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century' and Jakarta's eventual annexation of East Timor are being kept under lock and key."

The article quoted historian Mark Curtis saying that, "Britain turned a blind eye to anti-communist massacres of 500,000 people that followed an abortive coup against President Sukarno in 1965."

Half a million...I recall the journalist Mary Holland describing the rivers of Bali choked with the bodies of the slain.

The terrifying situation in Indonesia today cannot be understood without reference to the events in the '60s when a US and British-sponsored military coup overthrew the Sukarno dictatorship - the CIA and MI6 believed he was fronting for pro-Peking communists - and ushered in 30 years of military rule which made Sukarno seem rather benign (as dictators go).

Having welcomed the new regime of General Suharto as a bulwark against communism in 1966, the West stood by as Indonesian forces consolidated their illegal occupation of East Timor by murdering up to a third of the entire population.

We have to avoid taking cynicism into overdrive, but one wonders, too, whether even the horrors of East Timor would have made it onto the main evening news had it not been that the population was mainly Christian and there was a major Australian angle to the story.

Probing the '60s events, the American investigative journalist Kathy Kadane reported in 1990 that "(US officials) systematically compiled comprehensive lists of communist operatives. As many as 5,000 names were furnished to the Indonesian army, and the Americans later checked off the names of those who had been killed or captured."

The British ambassador, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, reported to the Foreign Office: "I have never concealed from you my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change."

Roland Challis, the BBC's Southeast Asia correspondent during the period, told John Pilger. "There were bodies being washed up on the lawns of the British consulate in Surabayo, and British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits, so that they could take part in this terrible holocaust."

The conditions which facilitated the flowering of hatred in Indonesia were, in part, of Western manufacture.

This doesn't for a moment or in any human perspective excuse the pitiless evil in Bali last Saturday night. But it should encourage the British and American governments to go easy on the moralising. Not that it will.

The Irish Times

STATE PAPERS OF 1972

Embassy kept flag flying for royal birthday By DEAGLAN DE BREADUN

Despite the presence of an angry crowd of demonstrators outside, the British ambassador could not take down the union flag at the embassy in August 1969 because it was Princess Anne's birthday, State papers released to the National Archives have revealed.

The incident took place on August 15th, when feelings were running high over events in Derry's Bogside and in Belfast. Five people were shot dead in the North the previous night, four of them by the security forces.

A confidential memo by an official in the Department of External (later Foreign) Affairs reports that he had received a phone call about lunchtime from the Labour TD Mr Michael O'Leary who was inside the embassy.

"He said that a number of demonstrators were outside the embassy in an ugly mood and wanted the British flag taken down. He had seen the ambassador who said that he was in a difficulty about taking down the flag as today was Princess Anne's birthday and the flag would be flown from all British embassies.

"According to Deputy O'Leary, he was not prepared to take down the flag unless requested to do so by the Department of External Affairs.

"Deputy O'Leary asked me to request the British ambassador to take down the flag in order to avoid trouble and damage to the embassy which would almost certainly ensue if the flag were not taken down."

In response, the Department informed Mr O'Leary that "in accordance with international practice we could not ask any embassy not to fly their flag especially on some sort of a national occasion".

Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Department of Justice, Mr Peter Berry, was contacted and he advised that "there were as many police as demonstrators at the embassy and he was satisfied with the course of action we proposed".

However, at 2.45 p.m. the ambassador, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, telephoned External Affairs to report that a number of demonstrators "had climbed up on the outside of the building, had taken down the British flag, burned it, and had replaced it by the Irish flag".

According to the official who took the call, the ambassador said the Garda Siochana were "incapable" and "unwilling" to do anything about the situation, although there were "about half as many demonstrators as there were gardai".

"I asked the ambassador if he intended me to interpret his references to the gardai as implying a criticism of them.

"He replied, somewhat testily, that this was not his intention: that he realised, in fact, that it would have been difficult for them to do anything."

The British embassy was then located on Dublin's Merrion Square. Three years later, in February 1972, the building was burnt down in the aftermath of the Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry.

[Note to Indymedia readers – the following is the record of what was printed in the Irish Times print edition – the internet version different – and is what the Irish Times printed instead of a report of the “renegade.. white nigger” letter from Gilchirst to White (which letter, we now know, Professor Fanning of UCD saw, kept to himself, and decided not to report)]

The Irish Times January 3, 2000

McDowell prepared to act as 'link'

By RACHEL DONNELLY

In 1969, the chief executive of The Irish Times, Major Thomas McDowell, was prepared to be used as "a link" between the Irish and British governments and to encourage contacts between prominent people in the Republic and in the North so that a solution might be found to resolve the gathering political crisis.

In a confidential letter from W.K.K. White, an official at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to the British ambassador to Ireland, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, written in November 1969, he described Major McDowell's "feelings of duty and anxiety that many who are emotionally both British and Irish must now be experiencing".

The meeting took place over lunch on October 30th and White told the ambassador that Major McDowell wanted to help foster Anglo-Irish and North-South relations. He was "willing to be used as a link", White said. "McDowell himself said he had hitherto, for obvious newspaper reasons, tried to keep free of those constraints that follow if a newspaperman forms an honourable alliance with the official world, but the present situation was so serious and so different he thought he ought to offer his services."

Major McDowell's qualifications, he pointed out, "are his contacts in both capitals and his acceptability, in Whitehall terms, through his service in the Judge Advocate General's department". White advised the ambassador that it would be "useful" to keep in contact with Major McDowell, "to keep him briefed in general terms, and to encourage him to forward the moderates' cause in his paper".

The two men had lunch again on December 12th and White again wrote to the ambassador to inform him of their conversation. On December 29th, White wrote that Major McDowell was "still anxious to help, though still without any precise ideas". However, White was interested in Major McDowell's proposal that The Irish Times might sponsor a gathering of prominent people North and South to bring the two sides together. Major McDowell told White that The Irish Times would be happy to contribute its name, finance and administrative assistance, but that the paper would be prepared to remain in the background, if London thought it better.

White noted that Major McDowell seemed at first sight to be well placed "to get things moving if both sides prove either reluctant to issue an invitation or too scared of their extremist fringes to accept an invitation form the other government".

[Below, the infamous anonymous Irish Times story, printed oned day after the Sunday Independent broke the story, and 17 days after the Irish Times had received a copy of the “renegade.. white nigger” letter from Jack Lane]

The Irish Times January 27, 2003

Major McDowell rejects UK envoy's claim
By IRISH TIMES REPORTER

The former chairman of The Irish Times, Major Thomas B. McDowell, has denied that he described Mr Douglas Gageby, editor of the newspaper for 20 years, as a "white nigger" during a discussion on Northern Ireland in 1969 with the then British ambassador in Dublin.

The allegation was made by Sir Andrew Gilchrist in a confidential letter which he sent on October 2nd 1969 to Mr Kelvin White of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office's Western European Department.

Sir Andrew reported meeting Major McDowell for lunch that day and discussing The Irish Times's coverage of the North.

The ambassador wrote: "McDowell is one of the five (Protestant) owners of the Irish Times, and he and his associates are increasingly concerned about the line the paper is taking under its present (Protestant, Belfast-born) editor, Gageby, whom he described as a very fine journalist, an excellent man, but on Northern questions a renegade or white nigger.

"And apart from Gageby's editorial influence, there is difficulty lower down, whereby sometimes unauthorised items appear and authorised items are left out."

Major McDowell said yesterday, however, "I have never used the words 'white nigger' in my life about anybody. I have always had the highest respect for Douglas Gageby, both as a person and as a journalist."

Rejecting the letter's suggestion that he may have sought to interfere with editorial policy, Major McDowell added: "My only interest at that time was to help solve the problems in Northern Ireland. I asked No 10 Downing Street if The Irish Times Ltd could contribute towards a peaceful and satisfactory outcome."

Major McDowell, who served as chief executive of The Irish Times between 1962 and 1997, retired as chairman of the trust in December 2001, when he was awarded the honorific title of President for Life of the Irish Times Group.

UK State papers released in January 2000 revealed that Major McDowell was, in 1969, prepared to be used as "a link" between the Irish and British governments and to encourage contacts between prominent people in the Republic and in the North so that a solution might be found to the growing political crisis.

The October 2nd letter, which was published yesterday in the Sunday Independent, was included in the documents released three years ago under the 30-year rule.

Sir Andrew preceded his comments about Major McDowell's view of Irish Times editorial policy with an explanation for their meeting. "It is all about something he mentioned to me before, but now he is hotter under the collar about it."

The ambassador said: "McDowell went on to say that he now felt that a certain degree of guidance, in respect of which lines were helpful and which unhelpful, might be acceptable to himself and one or two of his friends on the Board; this was what he had had in mind in telephoning to No. 10."

Sir Andrew wrote that he was destroying the correspondence relating to the matter, adding that Major McDowell's "present approach requires rather careful handling and I shall discuss it in London next week. I am writing this letter merely in case you wish to brief No. 10 and to assure them that we will do what we can to exploit this opening."

A reply from Mr White to Sir Andrew, dated November 1969, noted Major McDowell had offered to help as a "link", because "the present situation was so serious and so different".

Of Mr Gageby, who was editor of The Irish Times in 1963-1974 and 1977-1986, Major McDowell said yesterday: "The success of The Irish Times was entirely due to his editorial judgment, with which there was no interference from me or other persons on the board.

"He set The Irish Times on the path of being a newspaper for all of the people of the island of Ireland and this policy was enshrined in the objectives of the Irish Times Trust when it was established in 1974 to protect the editorial independence of the newspaper.

"Almost 30 years later, his successor, Conor Brady, played a major role in supporting the Hume-Adams dialogue, leading to the peace process of today," said Major McDowell.

The Irish Times

January 3, 2000

Bernadette Devlin fails to impress diplomats despite media attention

By JOHN BOWMAN and RACHEL DONNELLY

The young Bernadette Devlin (now Ms Bernadette McAliskey) figures in many of the files just opened in Dublin and in London. At a time when she was being feted by the international press, she failed to impress many Irish diplomats.

Following her sensational taking of the Mid-Ulster seat at Westminster and her part in the Battle of the Bogside in August, she became a world figure. On her US tour, she was given an audience by the UN secretary-general, U Thant.

The State's permanent representative at the UN, Mr Con Cremin, reported to Dublin that "the interview was largely a monologue on the part of Ms Devlin, with the secretary-general being unable to say anything until she paused for breath!" A British official reported to London that if U Thant "had not brought the interview to an end, Bernadette Devlin would have gone on indefinitely".

Mr Eamonn Kennedy, the Irish Ambassador in Bonn, linked her to the Rev Ian Paisley as a discredited extremist. She has "proved superb at breaking bricks on the barricades; off the barricades she tends to drop them. Her childish description of our government as 'green Tories' is an indication of her sense of political realities."

Mr John Hume's verdict in late July to Mr Con Howard, first secretary in the London Embassy, was recorded for Iveagh House. "Bernadette was a disaster. She had gone wholly over to the International Socialists in Britain and lost credibility everywhere."

On August 25th, the British embassy in Washington sent a confidential memo to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London outlining Ms Devlin's media events during a fund-raising campaign which included a speech to students at Berkeley and a cocktail party at the Hunt Conrads' home on Pacific Avenue in San Francisco.

That embassy noted that Ms Devlin had made "a considerable impact as a personality and a political phenomenon" but much of the publicity she received concentrated on her as a personality and the "harrowing tales she tells" rather than on political substance.

"The press on the whole has been fairly objective about Bernadette and the Irish question, though naturally it has made quite a bit of play over Bernadette's youthful charisma."

In San Francisco, Ms Devlin's attendance at the cocktail party and her "exchange of clench-fisted salutes" with radical Berkeley students helped raise about $ 5,000, the British embassy said.

"Not bad going, I suppose," the official wrote, but he noted: "I think she was distinctly rattled by the rumours going around that some of the money would be used for buying arms for the IRA."

In Dublin later that year, the British ambassador to Ireland, Sir Andrew Gilchrist was keeping an eye on Ms Devlin's speeches and reported back to London on what he had found on December 2nd. "I enclose a few pamphlets collected by members of my staff at Bernadette Devlin's meetings. It is strange how much appeal the Maoists have in Ireland. As for the green forms, would you mind having 2,000 of them printed off, filled in with phoney names and mailed to Sinn Fein."

The green forms were Sinn Fein membership forms.

The Irish Times April 29, 2003

UK refused Irish proposal for UN in North

The Government wanted a United Nations peacekeeping force sent into Northern Ireland as it slid into chaos in 1969 - but the British would have none of it, according to official papers made public yesterday.

The then Minister for External Affairs, Dr Patrick Hillery, raised the matter at a meeting with the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Michael Stewart, on August 1st. He raised the matter again two weeks later with junior foreign office minister Lord Chalfont, this time proposing as an alternative a joint Anglo-Irish force.

But each time he was told that the British regarded the matter as for their own internal jurisdiction, according to the papers published by the National Archives in Britain.

Mr Stewart wrote in a memo to the British Embassy in Dublin: HMG (Her Majesty's Government) have considered the request of the Government of the Irish Republic that they should apply to the United Nations for the despatch of a peacekeeping force to Northern Ireland.

"They take this opportunity of reaffirming that Northern Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom and that events there are consequently an internal matter." The papers also reveal concerns of the ambassador to Dublin at the time, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, about movements of Irish troops near the Border.

In a message to London on August 14th, he reported Dublin evening paper headlines such as Irish troops on the border". He reassured London with the comment: "Most of the above now disconfirmed by government information bureau statement that no movement of troops other than necessary to set up medical units and ancillary services."

But the matter was raised at a meeting with Dr Hillery the next day, and a record of the conversation shows that the Irish minister agreed that Lord Chalfont could say that, as a result of their discussion, he was satisfied that the mobilisation in the south presented no cause for alarm to the people of Northern Ireland.

The papers also include Sir Gilchrist's musings on the deteriorating security situation in Dublin. On August 14th he wrote to London: "All in all we are in for a fairly difficult time with the Irish . . . if I were a fire insurance company I would not like to have the British embassy on my books. (Fortunately, though highly inflammable, it isn't ours)."

The next day he wrote: "After prolonged exhortations, the mob went into action with stones and we have lost some glass, most of it in my office . . . The Garda put up a half-hearted performance." But on August 17th, after a crowd again marched on the embassy he noted: "The Garda did a smart and forceful job."

Irish News April 29, 2003
Republic wanted UN force in 1969;

THE Irish government wanted a United Nations peacekeeping force sent into Northern Ireland as it slid into chaos in 1969 - but the British would have none of it - according to official papers released yesterday.

The Republic's then external affairs minister Patrick Hillery raised the matter at a meeting with the British foreign secretary Michael Stewart on August 1.

It was discussed again two weeks later with junior foreign office minister Lord Chalfont, this time proposing as an alternative a joint Anglo-Irish force.

But each time he was told that the British regarded the matter as an issue of internal jurisdiction, according to the papers published by the National Archives, formerly the Public Record Office.

Mr Stewart wrote in a memo to the British Embassy in Dublin:

"HMG (Her Majesty's Government) have considered the request of the government of the Irish Republic that they should apply to the United Nations for the despatch of a peacekeeping force to Northern Ireland.

"They take this opportunity of reaffirming that Northern Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom and that events there are consequently an internal matter."

The papers also reveal concerns of the ambassador to Dublin at the time, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, about movements of Irish troops near the border.

In a message to London on August 14 he reported Dublin evening paper headlines such as "Irish troops on the border".

He reassured London with the comment: "Most of the above now disconfirmed by government information bureau statement that no movement of troops other than necessary to set up medical units and ancillary services."

The papers also include Sir Andrew Gilchrist's musings on the deteriorating security situation in Dublin.

On August 14 he wrote to London: "All in all we are in for a fairly difficult time with the Irish. . . if I were a fire insurance company I would not like to have the British embassy on my books. (Fortunately, though highly inflammable, it isn't ours)."

The next day he wrote: "After prolonged exhortations, the mob went into action with stones and we have lost some glass, most of it in my office. At 14.10 an athletic young man shinned up a drainpipe and tore down the flag which was then ceremoniously burnt in the street."

He added: "The Garda put up a half-hearted performance."

But on August 17, after a crowed again marched on the embassy he noted: "The Garda did a smart and forceful job."