The Jakarta Globe Friday, November 28, 2008
Opinion The Thinker: Adam Malik Did Lead CIA-Funded Group By Keith Loveard Former Vice President Adam Malik did work with the US Central Intelligence Agency in 1964, despite claims by Vice President Jusuf Kalla that such a link was impossible. I was told by a senior member of the Indonesian media in the early 1990s that in 1964 Malik had fronted an organization called the Sukarno Supporters Group (Badan Pendukung Sukarno - BPS) that received funding from the CIA. T.K. (Kim) Adhyatman, an Indonesian journalist who died some years ago, added that the group was ironically broken up following a report in The New York Times that alleged the BPS was actually working to erode support for then President Sukarno, not to help him. The case has resurfaced with the publication of an Indonesian version of the book "Legacy of Ashes, History of the CIA," by American journalist Tim Weiner, which includes the link to Malik in its account of CIA operations worldwide. Reports on Tuesday stated that the Attorney General's Office was looking to study the book and see if it represented any sort of threat to national unity. Vice President Jusuf Kalla, meanwhile, was reported as rejecting out of hand any possibility that Malik worked with the CIA. "First, as vice president, I regret this account. I cannot believe it. It is not possible that Adam Malik acted as is written," Kalla told journalists on Monday. To the contrary, Adhyatman told me he had helped Malik form the BPS, whose central board included a number of journalists who were able to pursue its objectives through articles in their newspapers. The aim was to protect President Sukarno from the rising power of the Indonesian Communist Party, or PKI, Adhyatman told me. "We wanted to warn him through this organization of the dangers of working too closely with the PKI. It [BPS] was supported by the military," he said. Adhyatman told me in a meeting at his house at Bukit Golf in Jakarta's Pondok Indah that the BPS was closely linked to the military and that he himself drove Malik to late-night meetings with then Armed Forces Commander Ahmad Yani. The BPS was broken up after The New York Times correspondent in Jakarta at the time, Jerry King, wrote a front-page article erroneously stating that it had been formed to attack Sukarno, he said. "[PKI leader] Aidit came with the article to Sukarno and told him people were trying to destroy him," Adhyatman stated. Sukarno then banned the BPS as well as the Murba Party, where Adam Malik was a prominent leader. BPS then came under fire for receiving CIA funds. Adhyatman admitted there was financial support from the American agency but said that it was not large. He was questioned by the Attorney General's Office at the time and laughed off reports the support ran into millions of dollars. The Sept. 30, 1965, coup attempt took place shortly after Adhyatman's questioning began and the case was then dropped, but he told me that the incident had helped to push Sukarno further into the arms of the PKI, possibly heightening the likelihood of political conflict. Rather than exposing any fault on the part of Adam Malik, the new outburst of denials over the publication of Weiner's book displays a fundamental ignorance of the history of the time. Indonesia in 1964 was locked in a battle between the military on one side and the PKI on the other, with the communists becoming extremely powerful. In the global politics of the time, it would have been perfectly normal for the CIA to look for allies to contest what it saw as a threat to another Southeast Asia domino. Opponents of the PKI within Indonesia, whether civilian or military, would have logically sought support wherever it was available and the CIA was an obvious source. Well versed in Indonesian politics, Keith Loveard is a senior editor with Globe Asia and author of "Suharto: Indonesia's Last Sultan." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
