`Indonesiagate': Obama's Historic U.S. Embassy Family Connection--Part 2

(See below for part 1)

The role that folks at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta (where Barack Obama’s now-deceased mother, Ann Dunham, worked in the late 1960s) played in 1960s Indonesian history apparently involved some involvement in covert operations against the Indonesian people. As Pretext For Mass Murder by John Roosa noted:

“In addition to training [Indonesian military] officers, the U.S. government promoted `civic action’…

“…The Indonesian army’s…civic action program was largely under the control of Colonel George Benson whose official title from August 1962 to July 1965 was special assistant to the U.S. ambassador for civic action. Benson enjoyed the full confidence of the army commander Yani, whom Benson knew from his days as U.S. military attache’ at Jakarta embassy (1956-59), and so was allowed a free hand to work within the Indonesian army.

“One virtue of civic action was the cover it proved for covert operations against the Communist Party [of Indonesia]. The NSC [National Security Council] committee on counter-insurgency agreed in December 1961 to spend money in Indonesia `to support civic action and anti-Communist activities’ that would involve the `covert training of selected personnel and civilians, who will be placed in key positions in the [censored] civic action program.’ The many excised passages in the declassified document suggest that the civic action program involved sensitive covert operations in Indonesia…

“Trained, armed, funded and encouraged by the United States to attack the Communist Party [of Indonesia], the army high command decided in January 1965 to begin contingency plans for doing so…”

Next: “Indonesiagate”: Obama’s Historic U.S. Embassy Family Connection—Part 3