PRESIDENT SUKARNO AND THE SEPTEMBER 30^TH MOVEMENT

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Notes

1. Many Indonesians recall the army frequently using the phrase “down to its roots” at the time. For one documented use by Suharto, see Dinuth, ed., 1997, 137.

2. Wieringa 2002, 291-327.

3. Anderson 1987, 109-34.

4. See Sukarno's speeches from October 1965 to January 1967, compiled in Setiyono and Triyana, eds., 2003.

5. Sekretariat Negara Republik Indonesia 1994, 141-53. The anonymous authors of this book actually did an admirable job with the chapter on Sukarno; they excluded all the bogus claims of military propaganda and restricted their account to what was reliably known from the many eyewitnesses to the president's actions on 1 October 1965. Other chapters of the book incorporate bogus propaganda material but this particular chapter displays some care in its handling of evidence.

6. Chang and Halliday 2006, 606.

7. Roosa 2006, 276 n1.

8. Damien Kingsbury, a specialist on Indonesia politics usually critical of the Suharto regime's self-image, wrote a favorable review of Dake's book. See Kingsbury 2007, 171-73.

⁹On the debunking of Menzies’ book, see the website http://www.1421exposed.com/index.html; accessed 2 February 2008.

¹⁰The 1968 report can be downloaded at http://www.foia.cia.gov/CPE/ESAU/esau-40.pdf; accessed 2 February 2008.

¹¹The U.S.-Indonesia Society in Washington, D.C., held a book launching for Hunter's book on 10 July 2007, and issued a four-page summary of the speakers’ comments: http://www.usindo.org/publications/briefs/2007/Hunter_Book_Launch071007; accessed 2 February 2008. Hunter's article on the Zanzibar coup has been declassified: “Zanzibar revisited,” Studies in Intelligence (spring 1967). The article is available at https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelli-gence/kent-csi/docs/v11i2a01p_0001.htm; accessed 2 February 2008.

12. The interrogation transcripts were not available to the public at the time. Even today they are not readily available. Only a few can be found in the military court documents. The CIA seems to have obtained them directly from Indonesian military officers. A laudatory review of Hunter's report in the CIA's in-house journal noted that “virtually all source material used in The Coup that Backfired was obtained originally via clandestine channels.” See Pizzicaro 1969. This article was declassified in 2005. I thank Brad Simpson for sending me a copy.

13. The interrogation transcripts of Latief are as follows: Angkatan Darat, Direktorat Polisi Militer, “Berita Atjara Pemeriksaan,” 25 October 1965; Komando Operasi Pemulihan Keamanan dan Ketertiban, Team Pemeriksa Pusat, “Berita Atjara Pemeriksaan,” 21 December 1965 and 23 December 1965. In the first session, the lead interrogator was Captain Hasan Rany of the Military Police. In the second and third sessions, the interrogator was Joseph Soeriadimadja, a police commissioner. I obtained these documents from the records of the Latief military court trial archived at the Indonesian military's Satria Mandala Museum, Documentation Department in Jakarta.

14. I have two interrogation transcripts for Supardjo, obtained from the Mahmillub records at the Satria Mandala Museum, Documentation Department in Jakarta: Departemen Angkatan Darat Team Optis-Perpu-Intel, “Hasil Interogasi dari Supardjo,” 18 January 1967; and “Interogasi Supardjo di RTM,” 19 January 1967. The latter transcript mentions the existence of three earlier interrogations. A summary report by army intelligence mentions that he was first interrogated on 14 January 1967: Departemen Angkatan Darat Team Optis-Perpu-Intel, “Laporan Team Optis-Perpu-Intel,” 16 January 1967.

¹⁵The head judge asked Supardjo to explain why his statement was different than one of his interrogation transcripts. He stated that he had been questioned under “pressure” (penekanan) and had signed the transcript to avoid “trouble from the interrogators again” (repot-repot samapemeriksa lagi). The prosecutor (oditur), who happened to have been one of his interrogators, reacted furiously, insisting that Supardjo's signature signified his un-coerced acceptance of the transcript's contents. The head judge eventually stopped his lengthy questioning of Supardjo about the allegation of “pressure” during the interrogation. Mahmillub1967, 650-655.

¹⁶See the questioning of Untung in the military court, Mahmillub 1966, 31-65.

17. Latief's defense plea before the court has been published: see Latief 2000.

¹⁸See, for instance, his testimony as a witness at the Untung trial, “Gerakan 30 September” 1966, 90-120.

19. Anderson and McVey 1971. Anderson has described the writing of the report and the Suharto regime's reaction in Anderson 1996, 1-18.

20. On the career of Notosusanto, see McGregor 2007. Saleh has been a staunch Suharto loyalist since 1965. See a collection of his post-1998 newspaper editorials, many of which defended the Suharto regime's legacy and insisted that Suharto could not be brought to trial for corruption: Saleh 2005.

21. Notosusanto and Saleh 1967. On Pauker, see Budiawan 2006, 650-62.

22. Notosusanto and Saleh 1967, 119-20.

23. Dake 1973, xiv.

24. See the critical reviews by Anderson 1977, 1704-5; van der Kroef 1975, 285-87; Utrecht 1975, 99-102; McVey 1975, 770-73. Also see the criticisms by Harold Crouch, in Crouch 1979, 121.

25. One's suspicions about the reliability of the transcript are only heightened after reading its contents. Military officers interrogated Widjanarko thirteen times over a fifteen-day period (from 21 October to 4 November 1970). Being questioned nearly every day for that length of time must have been stressful.

26. Widjanarko 1988,166-86. The Indonesian historian Asvi Warman Adam claims that Widjanarko used to privately admit that he had been coerced into making statements against Sukarno. See Adam 2005. Another Sukarno aide, Colonel Saelan, states that he was punished with over four years imprisonment because he did not cooperate with the interrogators’ demand for him to implicate Sukarno. Saelan called the contents of the Widjanarko interrogation transcript “false” and “made up.” Saelan 2001, 189-91.

27. Easter 2004, 179.

28. The surviving Politburo leaders issued a self-criticism in 1966, translated excerpts ofwhich are available online: http://www.marxists.org/indonesia/indones/PKIscrit.htm; accessed 2 February 2008.

29. Nathan 2005.

30. On their methods for handling evidence, see reviews of their book in China Journal (95-118): Benton and Tsang 2006, and Cheek 2006.

31. Dahm 1969; Legge 1972.

32. I have written a detailed analysis of the Supardjo document in Roosa 2006,82-116.

33. The documents I believe to be forgeries are: Document 2, which purports to be the PKI Central Committee's “Standing Instructions,” dated 10 November 1965 (324— 27), and Document 3, which purports to be a message from the PKI Central Committee to provincial offices, dated 28 September 1965 (327-28). Both documents are written in the style of the Aidit and Njono confessions; they reflect what the army said about the PKI, not what the PKI leaders would say themselves. Fic admits he obtained both from an officer in the Indonesian military. Fic's Document 5 is also a fabrication; it is the transcript of Sughandi's alleged conversations with Aidit, Sudisman, and Sukarno — the same transcript that Hunter and Dake used.