(WMR)—Borrowing a page from the CIA’s book in the months before it overthrew President Sukarno, the Obama administration has opted to use growing Chinese-Indonesian ties as a reason to step up internal political pressure on the Indonesian government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The Obama administration is copying the Lyndon Johnson administration by ratcheting up tensions with Beijing in East Asia, using Indonesia as a proxy battleground.
In 1965, the CIA seeded a bogus news story in the Asian press about the secret supply of Chinese weapons to the PKI [Indonesian Communist Party] for a communist revolt. The phony article first appeared in a Malaysian newspaper, citing unnamed sources in Bangkok, who heard the story from Hong Kong sources who, in turn, picked up the information from contacts in mainland China.
In a 2009 replay, Obama’s then-ambassador to Beijing, Jon Huntsman, now a GOP presidential candidate, wrote in a cable to the State Department that “the PRC [People’s Republic of China] was increasingly assertive in its interactions with Indonesia.” It was such “intelligence” about Chinese influence in Indonesia that was used to justify the 1965 coup against Sukarno, one which Obama’s Indonesian step-father participated, and the succeeding genocide waged against Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese and PKI members, a bloodbath in which Obama’s mother participated as a CIA agent providing ethno-political intelligence under US Agency for International Development (USAID) cover.
The PKI is long since gone but Obama is now using the specter of Indonesian jihadists as a reason to apply pressure on Indonesia. WMR’s sources in Indonesia report that a number of Islamic radicals trained by the CIA in Afghanistan and Pakistan are active with elements of the Indonesian military to stoke up tensions between Muslims and other religions in Indonesia and carry out limited terrorist attacks against Christian churches and Buddhist temples. The CIA operation is intended to destabilize Indonesia and force a pro-U.S. strongman like Suharto, the CIA-funded army chief who took over from Sukarno after the 1965 coup, to come to power in Jakarta. A pro-U.S. dictator in Indonesia would be expected to veer Indonesia away from lucrative oil, natural gas, and mineral deals with China and put the nation’s natural resources into the hands of the United States and Australia.
On March 24, 2011, WMR reported: “Fears that a possible coup against Yudhoyono is being planned by right-wing active duty and retired Indonesian army elements are being fueled by an Al Jazeera report that a cabal of Indonesian generals have held secret meetings with leaders of Indonesia’s radical Islamist groups to help plan terrorist attacks in the country that would then be used as a pretext for an army coup against Yudhoyono. The generals would claim that the ouster of the president was necessitated by his weak leadership in the face of terrorism. In fact, the renegade generals consider Yudhoyono to be too much of a reformist.”
The Obama administration is also upset about Yudhoyono’s close ties to Russia and Iran. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation and, as such, is a prime intelligence target of the neocons and Zionists who continue to dominate the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. Israel continues to be upset that Indonesia decided not to establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state after the ouster of Suharto in 1998.
Our March 24 report continued: “The rumors of a planned coup against Yudhoyono come amid the publication by WikiLeaks of U.S. embassy Jakarta cables that report alleged widespread corruption, personal enrichment, nepotism, and spying on political opponents by Yudhoyono’s administration.
WMR’s Jakarta source confirms the Al Jazeera report that the Islamist provocateur groups, led by retired Army Chief of Staff General Tyasno Sudarto, is involved in planning for a series of ‘false flag’ terrorist attacks. The Islamist groups have been recruiting new members since January and are now boldly calling for a revolution in Indonesia, the removal of Yudhoyono, and the formation of an Islamic state. Sudarto has called for Indonesian youth movements to align with the Indonesian armed forces (TNI) and he has accused Yudhoyono of weakening the army.”
The Huntsman cable suggested that Indonesia was loathe to interfere with China’s “core interests” in Asia, interests that are at loggerheads with U.S. interests in the region, particularly disputed South China Sea islands, Tibet, and Taiwan. It was Sukarno’s support for China on the international stage, such as Indonesia’s withdrawal from the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund over their anti-China stance, that precipitated the CIA’s coup and removal of Sukarno from power. U.S. embassy cables from Jakarta have suggested that Yudhoyono is protecting wealthy Chinese-Indonesia business interests and “criminals.” The U.S. embassy has also charged that Yudhoyono is protecting from corruption charges Taufik Kiemas, the husband of former President Megawati Sukarnaputri, the daughter of Sukarno. WMR learned in Jakarta that the CIA arranged for the poisoning death of Sukarno in 1970 while he was under house arrest. In 1970, Obama was attending the Menteng state elementary school in Jakarta while his step-father was working for the CIA under the non-official cover of government relations officer for UNOCAL and while his mother was under non-official CIA cover working for the Institute of Management Education and Development in Jakarta.
The word from Jakarta is that Obama has given a green light for the CIA to do anything necessary to bring Indonesia firmly into the U.S. orbit and, with it, Indonesia’s vast energy and mineral resources.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2011 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
