ACTUALLY, THIS is an old story, one about the United States abetting Indonesia’s Suharto in his invasion of East Timor, and guaranteeing his armed forces the means to murder 200,000 people—at least a quarter of the former Portuguese colony’s pre-invasion population.

It’s a story that deserves to be revisited, partly because more light has been shed recently on the U.S. government’s role in East Timor’s horrific past, but also because it serves as a cautionary tale for our troubled times.

The National Security Archives (affiliated with George Washington University) has obtained a declassified U.S. State Department document proving that then-President Gerald Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, gave Suharto the go-ahead to invade East Timor—which the dictator did the day after his VIP guests departed Indonesia and headed back to Washington.

The document is a verbatim transcription of a conversation Suharto had with Ford and Kissinger on Dec. 6, 1975. During their meeting, the Indonesian despot eased into the topic of East Timor, saying, “We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action.”

Ford assured him that “we will understand and will not press you on the issue.”

A more circumspect Kissinger noted, “You appreciate that the use of U.S.-made arms could create problems.”

He added: “It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly. We would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens, happens after we return [to Washington]. This way, there would be less chance of people talking in an unauthorized way.”

Then the secretary of state made sure Suharto was absolutely clear on the time frame for events: “The president will be back on Monday at 2 p.m. [Indonesia time]. We understand your problem and the need to move quickly, but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned.”

As the mainstream media studiously ignored East Timor in the 1970s and 1980s (would any right-wingers like to explain why our biased, “leftist” media paid almost no attention to this story while most of the killing was going on?), Washington provided the Indonesian armed forces with nearly all the weapons they needed to fulfill their barbaric mission in the territory.

With U.S. war matériel, Indonesian troops killed tens of thousands of East Timorese in the first few months after the invasion. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Indonesia used U.S. warplanes and napalm to destroy East Timor’s agricultural base and to herd civilians into camps, where thousands perished from famine and disease.

Meanwhile, U.S. special forces and other military units were training their Indonesian counterparts in everything from close-quarters combat to psychological operations. The paramilitaries that wreaked such havoc on East Timor in 1999 after the people voted overwhelmingly for independence reportedly worked closely with an Indonesian intelligence unit that had trained with U.S. Green Berets.

Had Ford and Kissinger not given Suharto the thumbs-up to his plan to overrun East Timor—and if the United States had not helped Indonesia with weapons and an acquiescent silence—the East Timorese might not have had to endure a quarter-century-long nightmare.

That’s why the U.S. government should apologize to the people of East Timor for its complicity in Indonesia’s reign of terror. And when East Timor becomes the world’s newest nation in May, Washington should do everything it can to help the East Timorese build a prosperous and peaceful country.

Current events make it imperative that Americans recall our government’s role in turning East Timor into Southeast Asia’s “other” killing fields. The atrocities in East Timor remind us that, during the Cold War, Washington not only was willing to look the other way when client regimes were committing widespread human-rights abuses, but in some cases was even an accomplice to state terror.

Today, with patriotic bromides passing as insight and the Bush administration adopting a comic-book worldview, it’s not hard to imagine Washington giving some of our less savory war-on-terror allies (e.g., Russia, China, and, yes, Indonesia) the nod—if not the hardware—to unleash their own waves of terror.

Americans must exercise vigilance to make sure that the new war doesn’t wind up serving as cover for more East Timors.

RICK MERCIER is a columnist for The Free Lance–Star. He can be reached at rmercier@freelancestar.com.

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