[Kabar-Irian] News: May 18-21 2006
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May 18-21 2006
KABAR IRIAN NEWS
TOPICS
* Indonesia wants Papua clause in treaty
* Indonesia seeks sovereignty clause in security treaty
* AUSTRALIA: Indonesia Seeks Clear Declaration On Papua
* New rule aims to develop Papua
* AWPA condemns proposed security treaty with Indonesia
* Pacific Caucus Statement on West Papua
* Ambushed by Timor victory
* Papuans Idle After Buzz Of Prosperity Falls Silent
* BBC world Service Programme Link - Benny Wenda
* Govt hopes to increase stake in Freeport
* United In Struggle - West Papua
* Indonesia pressing for Australian support on Papua
* Freeport History :Fact or Fiction? (1996 article but no doubt new
to many)
* Indonesia pressing for Australian support on Papua
* Downer must act on new West Papuan killings
* Protesters tried for deadly protest in Papua
* Indonesia agrees to return ambassador
* Abepura Trial Begins in Papua
* Regional Chaos Reflects Frustration
* Supreme courst wants audit of Freeport contract
* Papua's border crossers miss home
* Postpone ambassador's return to Australia: House speaker
* Freeport discloses mine shipments to refute underpayment claims
* Indonesian gov't seeks 25 pct stake in Freeport mine
* Indonesian Military Chief 'Adopted' Family
- ---
Indonesia wants Papua clause in treaty
http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/Indonesia-wants-Papua-clause-in-tr
eaty/2006/05/19/1147545508650.html
May 19, 2006 - 3:19PM
Indonesia wants a proposed security treaty with Australia to include
a clause in which Canberra rejects Papuan claims for
independence.
A draft of the treaty, seen by AAP, said both countries had an
"enduring interest" in each other's sovereignty and stability
as nations.
Indonesia's demand comes in the aftermath of the diplomatic row over
Australia's granting visas to 42 Papua asylum seekers,
which led to the recall of Indonesia's Canberra ambassador.
To help restore relations, the federal government introduced new laws
requiring all asylum seekers be sent to offshore
detention centres while their claims were assessed.
But Foreign Ministry spokesman Desra Percaya said Jakarta also wanted
a guarantee that Canberra did not support separatism in
Papua and wanted to "inject" the clause into the text of the security
treaty.
"This is because of recent developments in diplomatic relations," he
told AAP.
The clause had been agreed upon in a closed-door meeting between
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and his
Indonesian counterpart Hassan Wirajuda in Singapore.
"They discussed what we call the draft security agreement," Mr Desra
said.
"In this regard, there is a proposal, there is an idea to put and to
inject the notion of recognition of Indonesian
territory, integrity and sovereignty into that draft agreement."
Mr Desra said Jakarta would only be satisfied with a "treaty-based
assurance from Australia".
Australia and Indonesia are negotiating a security agreement which
will restore military relations cut back following the
1999 East Timor crisis, when Australia led international military
intervention that ended pro-Jakarta militia bloodshed
there.
At that time Indonesia angrily junked a security accord that had been
signed by then-Australian prime minister Paul Keating
and then-dictator president Suharto in 1994.
With Australia anxious to help Jakarta battle Islamic terrorism, the
new document will lay out a framework for a new era of
cooperation between the Australian Defence Force and the powerful
Indonesian military, known as the TNI.
Australia's government was understood to be happy to sign up to the
Papua clause, as something similar has been under
discussion for some time.
Mr Desra confirmed that Prime Minister John Howard and President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would meet in the near future, but
refused to confirm speculation that the summit would take place on
the island of Lombok.
Mr Howard has made frequent public statements supporting Indonesian
unity, but that had been only an "oral statement" and had
not been done in a formal manner, Mr Desra said.
"For Indonesia, this is not about legalities or politics, but about
the survival of the country," he said, reflecting
Jakarta's belief that Papuan independence could lead to the
unravelling of Indonesia as a nation.
The ambassador, Mr Desra said, would return to Australia ahead of the
meeting between Mr Howard and Dr Yudhoyono, as
Indonesia did not wish to be a "prisoner of problems" and wanted to
put the current spat aside.
But the head of Indonesia's parliament Agung Laksono said Jakarta
should postpone his return to emphasise anger over the visa
issue.
The Howard-Yudhoyono summit would give the two leaders a chance to
discuss the treaty draft, with the inking of the agreement
most likely to come during follow-up talks, Mr Desra said.
"I think it's too early to guess or to predict whether both will sign
it during their forthcoming meeting," he said.
The treaty will place a foundation under counter-terrorism exercises
between Indonesia's elite Kopassus commandos and
Australia's SAS, as well as closer navy ties to help combat the
problem of illegal fishing.
© 2006 AAP
- ---
ABC Online
Indonesia seeks sovereignty clause in security treaty. 19/05/2006.
ABC News Online
[This is the print version of story
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200605/s1643130.htm]
Last Update: Friday, May 19, 2006. 6:15pm (AEST)
Prime Minister John Howard and President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono signed a partnership agreement in April last year.
(Reuters)
Indonesia seeks sovereignty clause in security treaty
Indonesia says that it wants a proposed security treaty with
Australia to include a clause confirming Australia's support for
Indonesia's territorial sovereignty.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Desra Percaya said there is a
proposal to include the recognition of Indonesian
territory, integrity and sovereignty into a proposed security
agreement with Australia.
A draft of the security agreement was discussed in Singapore during a
meeting with foreign ministers Alexander Downer and
Hassan Wirajuda.
The security agreement under negotiation is intended to restore
defence cooperation between the two countries.
The proposed agreement makes no specific reference to Papua but
reiterates the message of a "Joint Declaration on
Comprehensive Partnership" between Australia and Indonesia, which was
signed by Prime Minister John Howard and President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in April last year.
That agreement states that Australia does not support separatist
movements in any part of Indonesia and that each nation
respects the other's territorial integrity and unity.
Meanwhile, Indonesia's parliamentary speaker urged the government not
to send Jakarta's ambassador back to Australia, two
months after the diplomat was recalled in the row over Papuan asylum
seekers.
The foreign ministry has said that Indonesia is considering sending
its ambassador to Canberra, Hamzah Thayeb, back.
He was recalled in March over Australia's decision to grant visas to
42 asylum seekers from restive Papua.
The speaker of the House of Representatives, Agung Laksono, said the
ambassador should only return when the dispute is
resolved.
"Not so fast. Let them (the Australians) make diplomatic moves. The
ambassador should not be sent back until the problem is
solved," Laksono was quoted as saying by the Detikcom news website.
Australia moved to heal the rift by introducing controversial
legislation this month.
It would ensure that any future boat people reaching Australia would
be sent to detention centres on distant Pacific islands
for processing.
Indonesia saw the asylum decision as tacit support for Papuan
separatism, bringing relations to their lowest point since
Australia sent peacekeeping troops to East Timor after it voted in
1999 for independence from Indonesia.
- -ABC/AFP
- ---
AUSTRALIA: Indonesia Seeks Clear Declaration On Papua
Thursday: May 18, 2006
(AAP/SMH/PacNews) -- Indonesia is demanding a clear written statement
from Australia that it rejects claims for Papuan
independence ahead of a meeting between Prime Minister John Howard
and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Mr Howard and President Yudhoyono are expected to meet next month to
end a two-month row over Australia's decision to grant
temporary protection visas to 42 Papuans.
The decision has plunged relations between the two countries to their
lowest level since the 1999 Australian-led military
intervention in East Timor.
Jakarta ordered home its ambassador to Canberra in protest.
- ---
New rule aims to develop Papua
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailnational.asp?fileid=20060518.G03&i
rec=4
Tony Hotland, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government plans to issue a new regulation to ensure the
trillions of rupiah entering Papua under special autonomy is
being spent properly, the President says.
In the form of a presidential instruction, the regulation will target
the development of infrastructure, poverty relief,
heath care and education in the resource-rich but underdeveloped
province.
The planned law is seen as a move to appease native Papuans, who are
angry at years of neglect from the central government
and Jakarta's inability to properly establish special autonomy in the
region.
Speaking after meeting Papuan leaders, President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono said the implementation of special autonomy had
faltered in Papua because of some "key problems".
Without going into detail about the instruction, Yudhoyono said the
decree would ensure the Rp 12 trillion (US$1.37 billion)
of public money now being spent annually in the province to set up
special autonomy was being properly accounted for.
Under the status, the province gets an larger share of revenues
generated from lucrative, internationally owned mining and
oil and gas concerns in the region -- all money that used to go to
central government.
"We need to ensure that the money, allotted in the state and the
regional budgets, is distributed for its proper uses," he
said.
Yudhoyono said the instruction would aim to speed up the
implementation of poverty relief, infrastructure, education, health
care programs in the province, and create a mechanism to better
measure the region's progress.
In the long term, Yudhoyono said Papuans' standard of living should
increase to at least the national average, they should
suffer less from preventable diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria
and have better access to education and jobs.
"We need to ensure that Papua has a sustainable source of food. In
infrastructure, Papua must at least have basic facilities,
like irrigation and roads, in the coming years," he said.
The President also promised the administration would ensure native
Papuans held more positions in regional and central
government and other public institutions.
"We need to empower more local people. This will require affirmative
action so that (Papuan) youngsters can take positions in
the civil service, military or police. There will always be a place
for representatives from Papua," he said.
The government would also consult more local experts when it created
policy or attempted to solve long-standing problems the
region faced, he said.
It would continue to communicate with local institutions like the
Papuan People's Council and would properly integrate the
council's powers into the national system, he said.
- ---
AUSTRALIA WEST PAPUA ASSOCIATION (SYDNEY)
Press release 21 May 2006
AWPA condemns proposed security treaty with Indonesia
Australia West Papua Association spokesperson Joe Collins expressed
grave concerns at the proposed new security treaty with
Indonesia and in particular at the Indonesian demand for a clause in
the treaty urging Canberra to reject West Papuan claims
for independence.
“The West Papuan people have a right to choose their own future. The
UN states that “all peoples have the right to
self-determination” and Australia appears to deny this right to the
West Papuan people.
Joe Collins said “there is too much secrecy about this proposed
security treaty. We do not know the terms of this agreement
or to what extend we may be pulled in”.
Recent human rights violations include the killing of two unarmed
demonstrators in Wamena.
“While West Papuans are continuing to be killed , Australia should
not be negotiating a security agreement which will restore
military relations with Indonesia in any form”.
Info. Joe Collins (+ 61 2 99601698) 04077 857 97.
- ---
Pacific Caucus Statement on West Papua.
We would like to remind Australia and Indonesia governments about the
international laws and obligations they are duty bound
to adhere to concerning the plight of the West Papua refugees.
Australian, as signatory to;
the
Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
the,
International Covenant on Civil and political rights.
the
International Covenant on Economic, social and cultural rights.
Article 1
1) All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of
that right they can freely determine their political status
and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
2) All peoples may, for their own ends, freely dispose of their
natural wealth and resources without prejudice to any
obligations arising out of international economic co-operation, based
upon the principle of mutual benefit, and international
law. In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of
subsistence.
3) The States Parties to the present Covenant, including those having
responsibility for the administration of
Non-Self-Governing and Trust Territories, shall promote the
realization of the right of self-determination, and shall respect
that right, in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the
United Nations."
In addition, we would like to a call on, Australia to;
1) respect the West Papuans right to self-determination and to assist
the indigenous native Papuans to realise their rights
under international law.
2) provide full support to refugees from West Papua.
3) condemning the violent and racist treatment of Papuans by the
Indonesian State & Military which has led to Papuans being
forced to seek refuge in other countries.
We also demand that the Indonesian state respects the rights of the
tribal peoples of West Papua, to own and occupy their
lands and that the Indonesian government stop its policy of settling
non-Papuans in Papua and displacing the Papuan peoples
from their lands.
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 2006
United Nations HQ - New York, USA
- ---
Ambushed by Timor victory
http://www.couriermail.news.com.au/story/0,20797,19187218-5003427,00.h
tml
Terry Sweetman
May 19, 2006
ALONG the road from Cairo airport, a brace of pedestal-mounted MiG
fighters soars over the wall of a Boy's Own world of guns,
tanks and other warlike instruments.
It is the October War Panorama which, proud guides tell visitors, is
a memorial to Egypt's victory over Israel in the 1973
war.
It is a fairly innocent piece of bombast that causes a raising of
eyebrows among those with a historical bent who remember it
differently.
The Egyptian forces performed astonishingly well in the early days of
the Yom Kippur War but, by the time a United Nations
imposed ceasefire took force on October 26, an Israeli riposte had
trapped their entire 3rd Army.
The war was not entirely a triumph for Egypt and its allies but the
national memory is a testament that victory is often in
the eyes of the beholder.
This is not always a bad thing as, in this case, it tended to dilute
vengeful sentiment and paved the way to what has so far
been a lasting accommodation between Egypt and Israel.
However, the fragility of such triumphalism could be a lesson for
Australia as some of its recent victories turn out to be
less than sweet.
A case in point is the Australian intervention in East Timor, which
may yet have consequences unimaginable in the heady days
of "liberation" from Indonesian rule in 1999.
Brisbane-based commentator Anthony Paul, examining our ambitious
military commitments in his column in Singapore's The
Straits Times, noted: "Australians tend generally to view this
intrusion into Indonesian affairs on behalf of a mistreated
people as a major national victory. But, despite such myth-making by
the Australian press, it was no such thing. Indeed,
there are already good reasons for saying that Australia's
intervention was a mistake. Many more such reasons are bound to
emerge in future."
His pessimistic outlook followed the eruption of riots and an army
mutiny in East Timor.
So far, Australia has diplomatically kept its distance as East Timor
tries to work its way through its problems.
Australia may be talking softly but, after the advice of US president
Teddy Roosevelt, it is carrying a big stick in the form
of a mini taskforce assembled in Darwin for possible intervention.
The extraordinary thing is that this force – potentially the biggest
single joint services commitment since the original
Timor engagement – has been mustered with barely a ripple of public
comment, let alone dissent.
The news was even relegated to the inside pages in many newspapers.
Despite the apparent public apathy, there is a
significant body of informed – if cold-blooded – opinion that it was
an error to become involved in East Timor.
Adherents to this theory believe the Whitlam government's acceptance
of – if not complicity with – the Indonesian takeover in
1975 was realistic and correct.
They see the Howard Government's intervention in 1999 as a dangerous
reversal of what fundamentally had been bipartisan
foreign policy for more than a quarter of a century.
They may well be right. There is certainly little in recent
developments to say they aren't. However, the truth is academic
because there is no way we can unscramble the egg of regional
diplomacy.
Having been sold our involvements in East Timor and the Solomon
Islands as humanitarian missions and triumphs of good
neighbourliness, the public would hardly accept an outbreak of
hard-headed real politik and isolationism.
For better or worse, government policy and the prowess of our armed
forces have created a public opinion monster that could
speak louder than the wiser counsels of professional diplomats and
political pragmatists.
If things get ugly in Timor, it is quite possible that the electorate
will not only accept a second intervention but actually
demand it.
And the government of East Timor would be particularly obtuse if it
didn't realise that sentiment and play on it.
In fact, misplaced sentiment and shrill chauvinism could demand even
more dangerous involvements in other people's affairs,
particularly in Papua. Ham-fisted Indonesian actions to quell Papua
independence ambitions and petulance over our granting
of temporary visas to alleged political refugees is hardly likely to
encourage popular restraint.
Paul draws on the example of Singapore's then prime minister Lee Kuan
Yew who withstood demands that he extend a wholesale
welcome to Indochinese refugees in the late 1970s, saying: "Sometimes
you must grow calluses on your heart – otherwise you
may bleed to death."
Lee, of course, never had to worry about the wounds of public
opinion.
The situation in East Timor might resolve itself without our
intervention but, figuratively speaking, the Australian
taskforce could be floating around on ready alert for years to come.
That, I guess, is the price of "victory".
- ---
Papuans Idle After Buzz Of Prosperity Falls Silent
Indonesia Crackdown Ends Timber Harvest
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 21, 2006; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/20/AR2006
052000940.html?nav=rss_world/as
SIGERAU, Indonesia -- It was afternoon, and Yulianus Tiri lounged on
a shady bench next to his house, nursing a half-empty
bottle of whiskey.
Tiri recalled wistfully how the Malaysian timber merchants came to
town and paid Tiri and other native Papuans for rights to
log in jungle that their clans have long considered their own here on
the island of New Guinea, in one of Southeast Asia's
great tracts of tropical forest.
"People bought televisions, washing machines, CD players -- you could
do karaoke in your own home!" the Sougb tribe member
exulted, his bare feet swinging beneath him.
But then the Indonesian government was alerted by environmentalists
that the forests, once thick and green, were being
ravaged by the timber merchants' chain saws. So the government
cracked down last year, sent the foreigners fleeing and yanked
the licenses that had been issued by the provincial governor.
"And now -- " Tiri said, holding out his empty hands.
As the world's tropical forests shrink in the face of economic
development, many environmentalists say that the best way to
defend what remains is to give the impoverished local peoples who
live in their shadow limited rights to cut trees for their
own profit. Millions will be lifted from poverty this way, advocates
say, and will acquire along the way an incentive to
preserve most of the wood for future generations.
- From Mexico to China and Indonesia, governments are adopting this
approach. But the results can be unwelcome: scarred forests
and shattered communities. Advocates say problems arise from lack of
government foresight, unclear or conflicting laws,
exploitation by unscrupulous timber barons and the villagers' own
lack of sophistication in dealing with the outside world.
"Indonesian law recognizes traditional rights, but clear regulations
on how that's going to work have never been developed,"
said David Kaimowitz, director general of the Center for
International Forestry Research, based in Bogor, Indonesia.
Most of the world's tropical forests are government-owned and
- -managed, despite long-standing claims to the forests by local
peoples and the limited ability of governments to protect them, said
Andy White, president of the Rights and Resources Group.
It is a coalition of conservation and anti-poverty groups, including
the forestry research center, that this month launched a
global campaign for stronger community rights to forests.
Bintuni Bay, a verdant district in West Irian Jaya province, offers
lessons on the dangers and benefits of this approach.
For centuries, the Sougb people lived with the forest, sometimes
cutting trees for firewood or shelter but never taking more
than they could use, villagers here say. By the late 1960s, Indonesia
had taken away those rights, designating about 70
percent of the archipelago's landmass, including the tribal lands of
Papua, as state-administered forest area.
Following the ouster in 1998 of Suharto, the authoritarian president,
a democratizing Indonesia began to grant more power to
its provinces. A 1999 Forestry Ministry decree opened the door to
subsistence timber-harvesting by local communities. The
idea was to give native Papuans, among the poorest of Indonesians,
the opportunity to benefit from their own jungles.
- ---->By the numbers
In 2005, following an Environmental Investigation Agency report about
timber smuggling in Papua, the Indonesian government
launched a highly publicized crackdown. According to police,
Operation Forest Protection 2005 seized:
72,000 logs
20,000 cubic meters of sawed timber
850 logging trucks
The operation also resulted in about 100 court cases, mostly
involving Indonesian truck operators and crew foremen"<---
Three years later, the ministry issued a decree clarifying that it
alone had the power to issue logging licenses.
Nonetheless, Papua province claimed the authority to grant such
permission on its own.
Soon afterward, Wong Sie King arrived in Sigerau. Mr. Wong, as
everyone here calls him, is remembered as a tall,
smooth-talking timber merchant from Malaysian Borneo. He wore polo
shirts and shorts, drove a pickup and was disarmingly
direct.
"He always asked, 'What do you want from us? What do you need?'
recalled Yunos Horna, 28, a member of a Sougb clan. " 'We
will provide it, as long as you sign.' "
And sign the villagers did. At least 25 native Papuan clans in the
area set up cooperatives and signed contracts with Wong's
company, PT Marindo. It agreed to pay the cooperatives $12 to $15 per
cubic meter of merbau logs, a burgundy-grained wood
prized for use in flooring, according to villagers and copies of
contracts.
Wong didn't tell the villagers that the wood was far, far more
valuable in international markets. According to the
Environmental Investigation Agency, a Washington- and London-based
nonprofit group that has researched illegal logging in
Papua, the wood fetches $900 or more per cubic meter in China after
being processed into planks.
Still, the money Mr. Wong's operation brought to the community was
seductive. "I bought a jeep and a truck," said Tiri, who
has two wives, eight children, and never finished grade school. "All
the goods I got, I got from Mr. Wong."
Clan members rarely took part in the logging themselves. They let
Marindo's crews, which included Indonesians hired locally,
bring in trucks and chain saws and do the work.
Sometimes Marindo logged in conservation areas outside the permit
boundaries, police said. Even when they logged within the
boundaries, they took down more trees than allowed as they cleared
paths for their trucks through the forests, conservation
officials said.
But in 2004, as reports surfaced of contract violations, a provincial
police investigation scared Wong and his men off. A
police officer is now standing trial in Papua for allegedly receiving
bribes from the Malaysian. But the cooperatives,
unwilling to give up the income, struck deals with other companies
and the logging continued.
Then last year, following a report by EIA of a massive timber
smuggling operation in Papua, the central government launched a
highly publicized crackdown.
"Operation Forest Protection 2005" netted 72,000 logs, 20,000 cubic
meters of sawed timber and 850 logging trucks, and
resulted in about 100 court cases, most involving Indonesian truck
operators and crew foremen, police said.
Some researchers say that a substantial illegal trade continues,
masked by timber mills that underreport the amounts of wood
logged and processed. But police report that the rampant illegal
logging has stopped. "Generally, it was a positive result,"
said Max D. Aer, deputy police chief in Jayapura, in Papua province,
the crackdown's operational chief. "But there was an
unfortunate impact for the local community."
Aer acknowledged that left unresolved were the deeper issues: unclear
land rights and questions of whether the communities
could really manage their forests. In some cases, cooperatives were
being granted permits to log up to 37,500 acres apiece,
even though one community of several dozen families could reasonably
be expected to manage only about 1,000 acres, forestry
experts said.
Today, the national forestry ministry, local government and
nongovernmental groups are attempting to revise conflicting
forestry and land laws in Indonesia. Forestry officials are trying to
clarify overlapping land boundary claims.
Abraham Wekabury, coordinator of a tribal council of seven indigenous
tribes in Bintuni Bay district, said that villagers
planning to contract with logging companies should be guided by
community organizing groups, to ensure that village rights
are protected and that the forests aren't ravaged.
Wekabury's council tried but failed to win the clans' confidence when
Wong was courting them. He said that the communities
were blinded by Wong's easy cash and failed to grasp the need to log
in a sustainable fashion. "They just cut the trees
without understanding it's for future generations," he said.
On a forest floor near Tiri's house, giant merbau logs still lie
where the logging companies left them. Some are sawn in
half, lengthwise.
Tiri, meanwhile, rested on his bench with his bottle of whiskey. He
is waiting, he said, for Mr. Wong to return.
- ---
Benny Wenda, a tribal leader from West Papua now living in Britain,
describes what happened when his own remote community
came into contact with the outside world.
from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/outlook.shtml
- ---
Govt hopes to increase stake in Freeport
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailbusiness.asp?fileid=20060520.M01&i
rec=1
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A minister says that the government wants to increase its stake to
about 20 percent in PT Freeport Indonesia, the local unit
of U.S. mining giant Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.
"The government already owns about 10 percent of the company and is
in the process of acquiring another 10 percent," Energy
and Mineral Resources Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said Friday.
He added that his ministry had given the option to the local
administration in Papua, where Freeport operates the world's
largest gold mine, to purchase the shares in the company that are to
be divested by PT Indocopper Investama.
Freeport is 81.28 percent owned by Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold
Inc, 9.36 percent by the government and 9.36 by PT
Indocopper Investama.
"Since the government cannot afford to buy the shares, which are
worth between Rp 9 trillion (US$979.86 million) and Rp 10
trillion, we offered them to the Papuan administration some time ago
during the late governor Solossa's term," Purnomo told
reporters after opening a discussion on Freeport at his ministerial
offices.
"We haven't received any response from the administration. However, I
can assure you that about 20 percent will eventually
come into our hands."
Purnomo said that the government would continue looking for
opportunities to increase its shareholding in Freeport, which has
been operating since 1967, after reviewing the company's contract.
The planned evaluation of the Freeport contract comes following a
string of sometimes violent protests by local people
against the miner. The papuans have urged the government and Freeport
to show greater commitment to environmental protection
and improving economic development in the country's easternmost
province.
Purnomo said that in line with the plan to review the contract, the
government was currently assessing the company's overall
production levels and mining processes, community development
programs, environmental management, and contributions to the
state and security forces.
"This assessment, which has been going on for almost two months, will
be presented to the public through a series of five
discussions every Friday in my ministerial offices, starting today,"
Purnomo said.
He added that officials from various government institutions, such as
the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, Finance
Ministry, Environment Ministry, Home Affairs Ministry, Defense
Ministry and the Indonesian Military, as well as mining
experts, academics and NGOs, would speak during the discussions.
"The discussions are open to the public and their outcome will be
used as input for the government in evaluating Freeport's
contract," Purnomo said.
Freeport spokesperson Siddharta Moersjid said that the company
welcomed the open discussions on his company's performance in
order to make it more transparent to the public.
Meanwhile, Freeport disclosed the figures for ore shipments from the
Grasberg mine in Papua to rebut accusations that it has
underpaid taxes and royalties.
Freeport says it shipped 472,738 metric tons of copper, gold and
silver concentrate in the three months to March, said
Armando Mahler, deputy president director of Freeport's Indonesian
operations.
"People want us to be transparent, so we are now explaining how much
we produce and how much we sell," Siddharta said at the
Friday hearing as quoted by Bloomberg. The figures would ensure that
"people know that we pay all the taxes and royalties
required from us."
Mahler did not give output figures for last year.
Sonny Keraf, the leader of a group of legislators who take an
interest in Freeport, said May 11 that government inspections
of the mine's output were inadequate, possibly allowing
underpayments. Freeport denied the charge at the time.
- ---
United In Struggle
West Papuans’ Cry For Independence Being Heard
http://www.pacificislands.cc/pm52006/pmdefault.php?urlarticleid=0032
(Editor KI: Article includes a number of photos)
By Ben Bohane, PORT VILA
It is one of the last places on Earth - a vast primordial wilderness
second only in size to the Amazon basin.
Earlier this year came stories of a hidden valley with dozens of new
species of plants and animals discovered by scientists
that made front page news around the world.
Yet for the people of West Papua (or Papua as Indonesia now calls it)
in eastern Indonesia, their own story of struggle has
rarely seeped beyond the remote mountains and jungles that have
hidden their cries for independence for decades, since a
United Nations vote in 1963 saw the territory annexed by Indonesia.
Since then, church groups and non government
organizations claim more than 100,000 Papuans have died in their push
for independence.
OPM Commander Titus Murip surveys assembled troops at the central
command area.
[All Photos On This Page Are By BEN BOHANE]
Indonesia maintains a ban on media access and reporting in the
restive province but that has not stopped a flurry of news
emerging recently that have highlighted a grim picture of what is
going on there, from military atrocities and fleeing
refugees, to angry confrontations with the Freeport gold and copper
mine. Indeed, the wrangling over West Papua continues to
evolve into one of the most serious strategic issues facing the
Pacific.
In early January this year a boatload of 43 refugees sailed from the
north coast for six weeks until landing on Australia's
Cape York peninsula to claim political asylum. They spoke of
continuing Indonesian military atrocities and the build-up of
Islamic and secular pro-Jakarta militias that threatens to turn West
Papua into a re-run of East Timor's bloody history
before its independence. Although thousands of refugees have
routinely fled West Papua over the past four decades, most have
gone into neighboring Papua New Guinea, where 8,000 continue to live
on little more than bananas and sago along a border that
is mostly out of mind and out of sight.
Geselenia village chief with Bible and a chunk of rock representing
the wealth of their land – copper and gold.
This latest boatload is the first time that a large number have
arrived on Australian soil at once, under the glare of media
scrutiny and has triggered a wave of sympathy there. It promises to
add to the uneasy relationship between Jakarta and
Canberra; Indonesian President Susilo Bangbang Yudhoyono withdrew his
Ambassador from Canberra after the refugees were issued
with temporary visas, although Australian Prime Minister John Howard
reiterates that his government "does not support for a
minute the West Papuan independence claim."
Adding to the credibility of the refugees' claims is a statement by
the United Nations' special envoy on the prevention of
genocide, Juan Mendez, who told The Sydney Morning Herald in March
that he was "worried" about reports of abuses in the
province and the Indonesian government's ban on human rights
observers from monitoring the situation.
Said Mendez, "It's very worrying and there's evidence about violence
that's continued since 1963. It's important that we look
closely at the conflict now and make sure it's not getting out of
hand."
OPM Commander John Kokriak (left) with Bernard Mawen (right) in front
of the West Papua independence flag.
In what appears to be a change in UN policy on the issue, Mendez also
said the UN was prepared to step in and mediate a
solution to the long-running conflict. Mendez' comments follow a
number of detailed reports from Sydney University and Yale
University's School of Law, which have labeled Indonesian policies in
the province as tantamount to genocide.
Momentum is building in the U.S. where a bill before Congress to
review the now discredited UN "Act of Free Choice," which
allowed 1,025 hand-picked tribal leaders to vote for integration with
Indonesia on behalf of 800,000 Papuans, must be
investigated and signed off on by the U.S. Secretary of State
Condaleeza Rice within the next year. The review has been
endorsed by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People) and members of the Black Caucus within the
U.S. Senate.
OPM central guerrilla command in the mountains above the Freeport
mine.
One of the most outspoken Congressmen on the issue is the American
Samoan Delegate, Faleomavaega Eni Hunkin, who is also a
member of the U.S. House International Relations committee.
Faleomavaega says the UN, the U.S. and Pacific nations such as
Australia and New Zealand should support the people of West Papua
with the same opportunity given to the people of East
Timor, also a former Dutch colony.
"We've become very hypocritical. We preach democracy on one hand and
then here are these people fighting tyranny and fighting
the fact that for 40 years they've been tortured and murdered - all
forms of atrocities - and nobody pays any attention to
this," says Faleomavaega.
West Papuan leaders in Vanuatu, the only Pacific country openly
supporting them, say that getting the UN to take
responsibility for its past actions and to initiate a review of the
1963 vote is one of their key agendas.
A boat on the Fly River border between PNG and West Papua.
"The UN got us into this mess so they should take responsibility. It
was not a one-man, one-vote system," says the OPM (Free
West Papua Movement) spokesperson in Port Vila, Dr. John Ondawame.
"Also by having the UN involved, it can take some of the
blame away from Indonesia. You know, the Javanese are very proud - it
can help if we give them a face-saving way to pull out.
We are open to real negotiations, but it can only happen when there
is a complete withdrawal of TNI (Indonesian) troops from
our land."
Ondawame relates an anecdote that gives him hope: when the UN
ratified the controversial Act of Free Choice in 1969, it was
opposed by the so-called "Brazzaville Group" of 15 African nations,
on the basis that the vote was not one-man, one-vote.
Leading the Brazzaville Group was Ghana, and serving in the Ghanese
delegation was a young diplomat named Kofi Annan, now the
UN's secretary general.
"We hope that Kofi Annan today has not forgotten the principles he
once held as a young diplomat when our people were
sacrificed because of cold war politics at the time," says Ondawame.
Meanwhile, pressure mounts on the U.S.-owned Freeport gold mine after
a series of articles in the New York Times detailed its
controversial ongoing payments to the Indonesian military for
"protection" around the mine. Demonstrations in Timika closed
the mine for nearly a week in late February and the company's offices
in Jakarta were the scene of violent clashes for
several days with angry Papuan students demanding the closure of the
mine.
Clashes in mid-March reportedly led to the death of three Indonesian
policemen and an intelligence officer. Ondawame says the
OPM supports the student demands.
Traditional raincoats in the West Papuan
highlands.
"For too long Freeport has exploited the West Papuan people and our
resources. It is time to renegotiate the mining lease
otherwise we will support its permanent closure" says Ondawame, who
is also an Amungme chief. The Amungme are the traditional
landowners of the area where Freeport operates.
"We are not anti-American. On the contrary we would like the U.S. to
deal directly with OPM to create a long-term solution.
We are concerned that some extremist Islamic groups supported by
(Indonesian politician) Amien Rais, can manipulate the
situation by using Papua demands to close the mine because they are
anti-American," Ondawame says.
Pacific Magazine is published monthly by PacificBasin Communications,
Inc. Founder: Bruce Jensen. Copyright 2002, 2003
PacificBasin Communications, Inc. Editorial, advertising offices at
1000 Bishop Street. Suite 405, Honolulu HI 96813.
Telephone (808) 537-9500. Send all address changes to Pacific
Magazine, P.O.Box 913, Honolulu HI 96808 or e-mail
pmaddchange at pacificbasin.net
- ---
Freeport History :Fact or Fiction? (1996 article but no doubt new to
many)
http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collections/hidden/freeport-cuba.ht
m
[This article first appeared in Probe magazine (Vol. 3, No. 3,
March-April, 1996) and can now be found in The Assassinations.
David Atlee Phillips,
Clay Shaw
and Freeport Sulphur
by Lisa Pease
"If the CIA has taken over one large corporation, . then how many
others, perhaps smaller and less likely to be noticed,
might it already have taken over? At this moment just how many
American corporations are being used at home and abroad to
carry out the CIA's nefarious schemes?"
- - Writer and editor Kirkpatrick Sale, referring to the Hughes
Corporation, in a presentation for the Conference on the CIA
and World Peace held at Yale University on April 5, 1975, published
in Uncloaking the CIA, Howard Frazier, ed. (NY: The Free
Press, 1978)
During my recent interview of MR. JAMES J. PLAINE of Houston, Texas,
MR. PLAINE informed me that he had been contacted by a
MR. WHITE of Freeport Sulphur in regards to a possible assassination
plan for Fidel Castro.
- - New Orleans District Attorney (NODA) Memo from Andrew Sciambra to
Jim Garrison, dated 10/9/68
A memo in the GUY BANISTER file indicates that there is information
which reports that DICK WHITE, a high official of
Freeport Sulphur, and CLAY SHAW were flown to Cuba probably taking
off from the Harvey Canal area in a Freeport Sulphur plane
piloted by DAVE FERRIE. The purpose of this trip was to set up import
of Cuba's nickel ore to a Canadian front corporation
which would in turn ship to the Braithwaite nickel plant. The plant
was built by the U.S. Government at a cost of about one
million dollars. - New Orleans District Attorney (NODA) Memo from
Sciambra to Garrison, dated 10/9/68
One man whose name we first thought to be WHITE apparently is WIGHT,
Vice President of Freeport Sulphur who reputedly made
the flight. Currently an effort is being made to locate WIGHT, who
lives in New York. Despite the fact that the original
source of this information was JULES RICCO KIMBLE, a man with a
record, this lead keeps growing stronger. From the very
outset it had been reported that the flight had something to do with
the import of nickle following the loss of the original
import supply from Cuba. Recent information developed on WIGHT in a
separate memo indicated that he is now on the Board of
Directors of the Freeport Nickel Company, a subsidiary of Freeport
Sulphur. - NODA Clay Shaw Lead File note, no date
[Ken] Elliot then changed the subject and stated that he has a lot of
information that he could give to the D.A. but that
unless he was assured that he would not be publicly brought into the
investigation or be served, he would not come forward.
He stated as an example that SHAW and two other persons either
purchased or attempted to purchase a nickel ore plant in
Braithwaite, Louisiana, after the company was closed because of
broken trade relations with Cuba. At this time DAVID FERRIE
flew SHAW and his two partners to Canada in an attempt to receive the
ore from Cuba but through Canada. - NODA Memo from Sal
Scalia to Garrison, 6/27/67
Cogswell says the Bishop sketch resembles the former president of a
Moa Bay subsidiary, Freeport Sulphur of New Orleans.
Cogswell doesn't remember the name of that officer, but says he knew
he had very powerful connections and came from Texas. -
HSCA Outside Contact Report dated 7/6/78, Gaeton Fonzi's interview of
James J. Cogswell III.
Mr. Phillips stated that he "probably" did have some contacts with
someone or some persons associated with the Moa Bay Mining
Company, but he did not recall any specific names. He also "must
have" had some contact with Freeport Sulphur people. "I was
fairly socially active at the time and the name of the company is
familiar to me." - HSCA notes from an HSCA interview with
David Atlee Phillips, dated 8/24/78.
The quotes at left [above] should raise some serious eyebrows. Could
an American-based multinational corporation such as
Freeport Sulphur, now Freeport McMoRan, have been involved, however
peripherally, in anti-Castro activities in the sixties?
Could Freeport have provided cover to employees of the Central
Intelligence Agency, employees such as David Atlee Phillips?
Could we have imagined there would be a company connecting both
Phillips and Clay Shaw, the man Jim Garrison charged with
being part of the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy?
The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in the late '70s
pursued this strange lead. It seemed more than mere
coincidence that both Clay Shaw's name and that of Phillips'
purported alias, Maurice Bishop, would show up in conjunction
with a little publicized company known then as Freeport Sulphur.
Interestingly, in the last few months, Freeport has been
making headlines in the Los Angeles Times, Texas Observer, The
Progressive and the Austin Chronicle due to allegations of
human rights abuses and environmental degradation.
The HSCA suppressed the files surrounding the investigation of David
Phillips's alleged connection to Freeport Sulphur's
Cuban subsidiary, the Moa Bay Mining Company. The document quoted at
left, referencing David Phillips and Freeport Sulphur,
has been quietly circulating through the research community, although
it had been technically unreleased. The secrecy
surrounding David Atlee Phillips and every document, interview, tape
and reference to him must end. He is a key suspect,
having been fingered by several as the Maurice Bishop that Antonio
Veciana saw talking to Oswald in Texas. As the reader will
see, the connections here are too compelling to go unexplored. The
Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) must make every
effort to secure the remaining pieces of the investigation of the
Freeport Sulphur-David Phillips connection, as well as all
documents and testimony relating to the identity and role of Maurice
Bishop/David Atlee Phillips in the events surrounding
the Kennedy assassination.
Bill Davy, in his well-documented monograph Through the Looking
Glass: The Mysterious World of Clay Shaw, put forth the first
public information on Freeport Sulphur's peripheral relation to a key
figure in the investigation of the assassination of
President Kennedy. Here, we flesh out the information surrounding
this company, as it hosts a startling set of heavy hitters
whose policies crossed swords with those of President John F. Kennedy
in significant ways.
Probe is not going to state that Freeport Sulphur was in any way
involved in the planning or execution of the Kennedy
assassination. But this is a company that connects the CIA, the
Rockefellers, Clay Shaw and David Phillips. The company had
serious clashes with Castro over an expensive project, and with the
Kennedy administration over matters of great monetary
significance to Freeport. Allegations of a Canadian connection with
New Orleans, and Cuban nickel mining and processing
operations fit neatly into Shaw's reported activities. And this is a
company which had at least one director reportedly
talking about killing Castro.
Because this is such an important story, and there is so much to it,
this article has been broken into two parts, the second
of which will be in the next issue of Probe. There is no quick way to
tell this story, as the history and players all need
backgrounds to put the nature of the implications in the fullest
possible context. So we go back to the beginning.
Freeport Sulphur's Early Years with John Hay Whitney
Freeport Sulphur was born in Texas in 1912. The company later moved
the headquarters office to New York. Originally, the
principal business was mining sulphur. By 1962, Freeport Sulphur was
the nation's oldest and largest producer of sulphur. In
1962, the fertilizer industry used 40% of the sulphur produced in the
world. Other business segments that use sulphur in the
production process are chemical, papermaking, pigment,
pharmaceutical, mining, oil-refining and fiber manufacturing
industries. For most of this period, Freeport was headed by John Hay
Whitney.
In 1927, Payne Whitney, one of America's richest multimillionaires,
died, leaving his only son and future Freeport president
an estate valued at over $179 million. At the young age of 22, John
Hay Whitney became one of the country's richest men.
Nonetheless, "Jock," as the press later called him, took a job at Lee
Higginson and Co. on a salary of $65 a month. There, he
made a fateful friendship with another onetime Lee Higginson employee
named Langbourne Williams. Langbourne's father had
originally founded Freeport Texas, then lost control of the business.
Langbourne enlisted Jock's boss at Lee Higginson-J. T.
Claiborne-to help in a proxy fight for control of Freeport. Claiborne
urged the young Jock to join their efforts. Jock did-to
the tune of a half a million dollars. By 1930, the
Claiborne-Williams-Whitney team had won control of Freeport.
Without Jock Whitney's influence-and of course, money-the future of
Freeport may have been gravely different. The Whitney
family fortune was legendary not just for its size, but for the power
that the Whitneys wielded with it. Republican Whitney
money, for example, founded The New Republic. Carroll Quigley, in
Tragedy and Hope, has written:
The best example of this alliance of Wall Street and Left-wing
publication was The New Republic, a magazine founded by
Willard Straight, using Payne Whitney money. . . . The original
purpose for establishing the paper was to provide an outlet
for the progressive Left and to guide it quietly in an Anglophile
direction. . . . The first editor of The New Republic, the
well-known "liberal" Herbert Croly, was aware of the situation. . .
Croly's biography of Straight, published in 1914, makes
perfectly clear that Straight was in no sense a liberal or a
progressive, but was, indeed, a typical international banker and
that The New Republic was simply a medium for advancing certain
designs of such international bankers, notably to blunt the
isolationism and anti-British sentiments so prevalent among many
American progressives, while providing them with a vehicle
for expression of their progressive view in literature, art, music,
social reform, and even domestic politics. . . . The
chief achievement of The New Republic, however, in 1914-1918 and
again in 1938-1948, was for interventionism in Europe and
support of Great Britain.
Put another way, the Whitney family was accustomed to covert uses of
corporate institutions, and especially the media.
The Whitneys had also been powerful within the government. Whitney's
grandfather, for example, had served under President
Grover Cleveland as Secretary of the Navy. Jock Whitney himself
followed the path of his predecessors, joining with Nelson
Rockefeller in 1942 to take charge of American WWII propaganda in
Latin America through the Rockefeller-controlled Office of
the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA). Due to the
confluence of interests and the similarity in substance, at one
time, there was talk of merging the Rockefeller-Whitney CIAA
operation with the OSS (Office of Strategic Services). Nelson
Rockefeller, however, did not wish to relinquish his fiefdom, and the
merger never happened. (The history of Nelson
Rockefeller's Latin American operations are well detailed in the book
Thy Will Be Done, by Gerard Colby and Charlotte
Dennett.)
Whitney himself had significant ties to the OSS and the CIA. During
World War II, Whitney had been temporarily detailed to
"Wild Bill" Donovan of the OSS. During this time, he was captured by
the Nazis, but escaped in a daring jump from a moving
train.
Whitney was second cousin to the famous CIA officer Tracy Barnes,
known in the agency as Allen Dulles's "Golden Boy." Barnes
eventually headed the CIA's Domestic Operations Division long before
it was legal for the CIA to operate domestically.
Whitney and Barnes became friends while both were attending the Army
Air Corps' intelligence school in Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania.
Another lifelong Whitney friend and business associate was William H.
Jackson, who briefly served as second in command at the
newly formed CIA as Deputy Director under Walter Bedell Smith.
Perhaps it was these associations, or perhaps it was his relationship
with the CIA-involved Nelson Rockefeller which
persuaded Whitney to collaborate with the Agency on several
occasions. For example, the Whitney Trust was financed in part
with money from the Granary Fund. The Granary Fund was a CIA conduit.
Another of Whitney's many companies, the Delaware corporation Kern
House Enterprises, housed the CIA front company Forum
World Features, a foreign news service used to disperse CIA
propaganda around the world. Forum writer Russell Warner stated
that Forum World Features was "the principal CIA media effort in the
world." As for Kern Enterprises, in The Cult of
Intelligence, by John Marks and Victor Marchetti, chapter five begins
with a comment about Delaware corporations.
"Oh, you mean the Delaware corporations," said Robert Amory, Jr., a
former Deputy Director of the CIA. "Well, if the agency
wants to do something in Angola, it needs the Delaware corporations."
By "Delaware corporations" Amory was referring to what are more
commonly known in the agency as "proprietary corporations"
or, simply, "proprietaries." These are ostensibly private
institutions and businesses which are in fact financed and
controlled by the CIA. From behind their commercial and sometimes
non-profit covers, the agency is able to carry out a
multitude of clandestine activities-usually covert-action operations.
Many of the firms are legally incorporated in Delaware
because of that state's lenient regulation of corporations, but the
CIA has not hesitated to use other states when it found
them convenient.
The present incarnation of Freeport Sulphur, Freeport McMoRan, is
incorporated in Delaware.
In keeping with the Whitneys' long-standing British proclivities,
Forum World Features was run with the "knowledge and full
cooperation of British Intelligence." Whitney's friendliness with the
British ultimately led to his appointment as Ambassador
to Great Britain in 1957. At that time Whitney also controlled, as
publisher and later as Editor-in-Chief, the New York
Herald Tribune. Whitney worked media deals with Katherine Graham of
the Washington Post, and Graham held a 45% share of the
New York Herald Tribune's stock, with an option for 5% more upon
Whitney's death.
John Hay Whitney and Freeport Sulphur
Whitney's solid Eastern Establishment credentials, as well as his
cooperation with the CIA, make his long tenure at Freeport
Sulphur-both as Director and eventually Chairman of the
company-rather interesting. It was Whitney who pushed for
diversification of Freeport Sulphur into other concerns. The first
diversification move Whitney put through was the purchase
of the Cuban-American Manganese Corporation and its manganese
reserves in Cuba. Manganese oxide production there ran from
1932-1946, at which point the reserves had been exhausted by the war
effort. In late 1943, Freeport opened its Nicaro Nickel
Company subsidiary in Nicaro, Cuba. Through its Cuban-American Nickel
Company subsidiary, Freeport also developed another
subsidiary: Moa Bay Mining Company.
By the early '60s, Freeport had divisions and subsidiaries that were
diverse and profitable. Freeport Oil Company, a division
of Freeport Sulphur, racked up $1,122,000 in 1961, over and above its
$772,000 earnings the year before. Freeport
International, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Freeport Sulphur,
set out to explore and develop new industrial ventures
overseas in Europe, Australia, India and elsewhere. With one other
company, Freeport Sulphur shared equally in a 95 per cent
share in the National Potash Company, whose earnings in 1961 were
triple that of the previous year.
A company with the diverse assets of Freeport Sulphur, with the
ability to provide cover to agents worldwide, would naturally
be of intense interest to the CIA. Not surprisingly, there have been
allegations of CIA involvement with the Moa Bay Mining
Company, Freeport's Cuban nickel mining subsidiary.
Nickel Mining in Cuba, Processing in New Orleans
According to Cuban lawyer Mario Lazo, whose firm represented Freeport
Sulphur in Cuba, the Nicaro project was conceived just
two months after Pearl Harbor. The strange Cuban nickel-cobalt ore
required a special extraction process. Freeport had
developed a new chemical process-and Washington approved the
financing-to aid the development of nickel (used in the
manufacturing of steel) for the war effort. The Nicaro nickel plant
cost American taxpayers $100,000,000. At one point, the
plant produced nearly 10% of all the nickel in the free world.
Whitney, the Ambassador, and Batista's Tax Break for Freeport Sulphur
Sidebar Here
<http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collections/hidden/whitney.htm>
New Orleans became home to a special plant Freeport set up just
outside the city to process the nickel-cobalt ore. When the
Moa Bay Mining project was conceived, Freeport Nickel, a wholly owned
Freeport Sulphur subsidiary, put up $19,000,000 of
$119,000,000 to develop the Cuban nickel ore. The rest of the money
came from a group of American steel companies and major
automobile makers. (Freeport's pattern of putting in a small portion
of total cost is a recurrent one.) $44,000,000 of the
original funds went into Louisiana for the development of the New
Orleans nickel processing facility at Port Nickel.
Batista, Castro and the Moa Bay Mining Company
In 1957, two things happened that allowed Freeport to develop nickel
not just through the government-owned Nicaro nickel
plant, but for itself. The first was a break on taxes, won through
negotiations with Batista, for the proposed Moa Bay Mining
Company. The second was a government contract in 1957 in which the
U.S. Government committed itself to buying up to
$248,000,000 worth of nickel. Both of these would lead to public
criticism of Freeport in the years to come. The tax break
led to charges that the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba and Langbourne
Williams of Freeport Sulphur made a special deal with Batista.
(See the box on page 19.) The contract would eventually lead Freeport
into a Senate investigation and a confrontation with
President Kennedy over the issue of stockpiling.
Phillips, Veciana, Moa Bay Mining Company and Cuba
During the Church committee hearings, Senator Richard Schweiker's
independent investigator Gaeton Fonzi stumbled onto a vital
lead in the Kennedy assassination. An anti-Castro Cuban exile leader
named Antonio Veciana was bitter about what he felt had
been a government setup leading to his recent imprisonment, and he
wanted to talk. Fonzi asked him about his activities, and
without any prompting from Fonzi, Veciana volunteered the fact that
his CIA handler, known to him only as "Maurice Bishop,"
had been with Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas not long before the
assassination of Kennedy. Veciana gave a description of Bishop
to a police artist, who drew a sketch. One notable characteristic
Veciana mentioned were the dark patches on the skin under
the eyes. When Senator Schweiker first saw the picture, he thought it
strongly resembled the CIA's former Chief of the
Western Hemisphere Division-one of the highest positions in the
Agency-and the head of the Association of Former Intelligence
Officers (AFIO): David Atlee Phillips.
In an HSCA interview of David Phillips, an unnoted committee member
wrote-in a document circulated throughout the research
community-the following:
When asked about his relationsip [sic] with Julio Lobo, he became a
bit upset and said he thought he had covered that
adequately in his deposition. He says as far as he can recall he met
Lobo only one time, perhaps it was even in Madrid and
not Havana, he doesn't recall, and he had no substantial dealings
with him.
Julio Lobo was a Cuban banker and sugar king who later lived in
Spain. He was also Veciana's employer at the time Veciana
first met Bishop. He gave funding to the DRE, set up by a man named
Ross Crozier for the CIA as part of the operations
against Cuba. Crozier says he did not, however, set up the New
Orleans branch and that that was run by Carlos Bringuier.
Crozier, referred to as "Cross" by the HSCA, was one of the people
who identified David Atlee Phillips as Maurice Bishop.
With this established, Phillip's next recorded comment immediately
after being asked about Lobo is significant:
He [Phillips] wanted to know if Veciana's story about Bishop is still
being considered and if any decision about his being
Bishop had be [sic] conclusively arrived at. He said he doesn't like
living under the fear and tension of possibly being
called before the television cameras and having Veciana suddenly
stand up and point his finger at him and say that he is
Bishop and that he saw him with Oswald.
Why would Phillips be so worried if there was no chance he was
Bishop?
Veciana, in his earliest interviews, spoke of receiving his
intelligence training in an office building in which a mining
company's name was displayed and which also housed a branch of the
Berlitz School of Languages. Could that mining company
have been Nicaro Nickel, or Moa Bay Mining Company? And in one of
those curious coincidences that infest the Kennedy
assassination, Steve Dorrill, a writer for the British magazine
Lobster, noted that in Madrid, a recent director of the
Berlitz School of Languages was CIA officer Alberto Cesar Augusto
Rodriguez, who was also the man responsible for the
photographic surveillance of the Cuban Embassy at the time of the
"Oswald" visit there. Recall that the CIA sent the Warren
Commission pictures of a man who could never be mistaken for Oswald
as evidence that Oswald had been to the Cuban embassy.
Probe recently interviewed a former CIA pilot who knew Veciana from
the Miami area and reported that Veciana was a guy whose
word among the exile community was "as good as gold." Fonzi felt that
Veciana-by that time well out of prison and eager to
get back into anti-Castro action-might lie out of loyalty to his
greatest benefactor, "Maurice Bishop." Veciana gave
indications that Phillips was Bishop, but refused to identify him as
such. (For yet another identification of David Atlee
Phillips as Maurice Bishop, see the sidebar at right.)
Perhaps because of the following account, David Atlee Phillips was
questioned by the HSCA about his possible relationship
with both Freeport Sulphur and Moa Bay Mining Company. While working
for the HSCA, Fonzi interviewed James Cogswell III, in
his home in Palm Beach, Florida. Cogswell presented Fonzi with
various leads he felt were important to the case, one of which
was the following:
Cogswell says the Bishop sketch resembles the former president of a
Moa Bay subsidiary, Freeport Sulphur of New Orleans.
Cogswell doesn't remember name of that officer, but says he knew he
had very powerful connections and came from Texas.
When Phillips, who came from Texas, was asked about Freeport, the
HSCA staffer noted this response:
Mr. Phillips stated that he "probably" did have some contacts with
someone or some persons associated with the Moa Bay Mining
Company, but he did not recall any specific names. He also "must
have" had some contact with Freeport Sulphur people. "I was
fairly socially active at the time and the name of the company is
familiar to me."
Note that Phillips did not deny an association, but left it to the
investigators to find more. Steve Dorrill reported in the
Lobster article mentioned previously that one of the pilots of the
Moa Bay Mining Company was Pedro Diaz Lanz, a hotshot
pilot who defected from the head of Castro's air force and
subsequently befriended both Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt,
both of whom have also been closely associated with David Phillips.
Another employee of the Moa Bay Mining Company, Jorge
Alfredo Tarafa, listed Freeport Nickel Company, Moa Bay Cuba as his
place of employment from 9/21/59 to 4/8/60 on his job
resume. Tarafa was identified as a delegate of the Cuban
Revolutionary Front (FRD) in New Orleans, headed by Sergio Arcacha
Smith. The FRD was the group that E. Howard Hunt set up with exiled
Cuban leader Tony Varona to sponsor anti-Castro
activities.
Maurice Bishop and "The Spook" Reporter Hal Hendrix
Sidebar Here
<http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collections/hidden/bishop.htm>
Arcacha, Banister, and "Mr. Phillips"
Probe has turned up a long lost transcript of a deposition of a
person whose name would be instantly recognized by anyone who
has studied the Kennedy assassination. It is our hope to reveal the
source of this deposition to the ARRB if and when they
come to the West Coast.
In this deposition, we find the following startling information.
Picking up where the witness was telling how Sergio Arcacha
Smith, one of Garrison's original suspects in the Kennedy
assassination planning, had invited the witness to a meeting in Guy
Banister's office:
Q: Did you go alone to that meeting?
A: As I recall, I did, yes.
Q: Who was there?
A: Mr. Banister, Mr. Arcacha Smith, and Mr. Phillips.
Q: Do you know his first name [meaning Phillips]?
A: No.
Q: Had you seen him before?
A: No.
Q: Was he a Latin?
A: No.
Q: What was his interest in the meeting?
A: He seemed to be running the show.
Q: Telling Banister and Arcacha Smith what to do?
A: His presence was commanding. It wasn't in an orderly military
situation, you know. It was just they seemed to introduce
Mr. Phillips.
Q: How old a man was he?
A: I would say he was around 51, 52 [Note: the speaker is young.]
Q: American?
A: American.
Q: Was he identified as to his background?
A: No.
Q: Were hints dropped as to his background?
A: Just that he was from Washington, that's all.
Q: Did you assume from that he was with the CIA?
A: I didn't assume anything, I never assume anything. . . .I think
someone mentioned something about this conversation isn't
taking place.
The project that Banister and Arcacha and Mr. Phillips were working
on, according to the witness, was to be a televised
anti-Castro propaganda program, something that would have been in the
direct purview of David Phillips as chief of propaganda
for Cuban operations at that time.
The Seizing of the Moa Bay Mining Company by Castro
Unfortunately for Freeport's board (see Board members on page 24),
the Moa Bay Mining company was short-lived in Cuba. With
$75,000,000 invested in that operation, one can see how vital the
special tax exemption leftover from Batista's reign was to
Freeport's Moa Bay operation. And since the deal was negotiated under
Batista's regime, one can also see how this must have
stuck like a craw in the throat of Castro's revolutionaries as they
took control of Cuba in 1959. The Castro government
wanted to end the special tax exemption. Freeport wanted to keep it.
By March of 1960, Freeport Nickel (parent of Moa Bay
Mining, subsidiary of Freeport Sulphur) threatened the Cuban
government with an ultimatum: If their special tax status was
revoked, the Moa Bay and Nicaro nickel facilities would be shut down.
Freeport knew that Cuba needed the jobs and even partial income that
Freeport's nickel operations provided. Freeport must
have thought it could bluff this one through, largely due to the
particular quality of the Moa Bay ore. The ore was an
unusual combination of cobalt and nickel, elements which needed to be
separated through a highly complex chemical process,
handled at that time by Freeport's New Orleans processing plant.
Industry observers were quoted as saying the best thing Cuba
could do was to negotiate a compromise, because Cuba could not afford
to build the kind of plant Freeport owned. Even the
instructions for the process were not kept in Cuba.
Deliberations with the new Cuban government fell apart in August of
1960. According to an "unimpeachable source" in the New
York Times, the Cuban government felt negotiations should be
suspended because of the tense situation between Cuba and the
United States. Cuba performed what they characterized as an
"intervention," a temporary measure of stepping in and taking
control of the mining facility, rather than outright nationalization.
This was reported as Cuba trying to leave the door
slightly open for some sort of negotiated settlement. But Freeport
considered the takeover a battle cry and wanted to invoke
international law to protect its rights to the plant.
Cuba ended up retaining the plant, and the United States ending up
attempting to invade Cuba under the ill-fated Bay of Pigs
operation. One of the planners of the Bay of Pigs, as well as an
advocate for assassinating Castro, was Admiral Arleigh
Burke. Burke later become a director of Freeport Sulphur.
"Mr. White" of Freeport Sulphur
During New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of
Clay Shaw, evidence developed that connected Shaw to
Freeport Sulphur. James Plaine of Houston, Texas, told Andrew
Sciambra, one of Garrison's assistants, that a Mr. "White" of
Freeport Sulphur had contacted him regarding a possible assassination
plan for Fidel Castro. Plaine also said that he
distinctly remembered either Shaw or David Ferrie talking about some
nickel mines which were located at the tip of Cuba.
Corroboration for an association between Shaw, Ferrie and "White"
came from a witness whose CIA file has only been seen by
the CIA and HSCA: Jules Ricco Kimble. Kimble told Garrison's office
that "White" had flown with Shaw in a plane believed to
be piloted by David Ferrie to Cuba regarding a nickel deal. Another
source, a former New Orleans newscaster, told Garrison's
team that Shaw and two other persons were attempting to purchase, or
had already purchased, an ore processing plant in
Braithwaite, Louisiana in the aftermath of the U.S. Government's
decision to break off trade relations with Cuba. He said
that Ferrie had flown Shaw and two partners to Canada to attempt to
arrange for the import of Cuban ore through Canada, as
Canada was continuing its trade with Cuba.
The New York Times of March 8, 1960, confirms that the Freeport
Louisiana special ore processing plant was to be shut down:
Freeport Nickel Company, known in Cuba as the Moa Bay Mining Company,
confirmed yesterday that it was closing down operations
at its $75,000,000 nickel-cobalt mining and concentrating facilities
at Moa Bay in Cuba's Oriente province.
The company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Freeport Sulphur Company,
said a recently passed Cuban mining law together with
"other Cuban developments" had made it impossible to obtain the funds
necessary to continue operations.
Robert C. Hills, president of Freeport Nickel, said the company had
invested $44,000,000 in related refining facilities in
Louisiana. These facilities also will be made idle, as a result of
the Cuban situation, he indicated.
In this light, the most significant Garrison memo is one which says
that Freeport Sulphur, Shaw and "White" were together
going to buy the Braithwaite plant (built with U.S. government money)
to process ore that would be purchased through a
Canadian front company, and then shipped back to the Louisiana plant
for processing.
Finding Mr. Wight
Garrison finally found the key to "Mr. White," and wrote it up for
the Clay Shaw lead file under the heading "Shaw's Flight
to Canada (or Cuba) with Ferrie:"
One man whose name we first thought to be WHITE apparently is WIGHT,
Vice President of Freeport Sulphur who reputedly made
the flight. An effort is being made to locate WIGHT, who now lives in
New York, by a contact of Mark Lane's. Despite the fact
that the original source of this information was JULES RICCO KIMBLE,
a man with a record, this lead keeps growing stronger.
- From the very outset it had been reported that the flight had
something to do with the import of nickel following the loss of
the original import supply from Cuba. Recent information developed on
WIGHT in a separate memo, indicates that he is now on
the Board of Directors of Freeport Nickel Company, a subsidiary of
Freeport Sulphur.
Charles A. Wight was Chairman of the Executive Committee and a
Director of Freeport Sulphur, according to his Who's Who in
America entry from 1954-1955. Yale educated, he had previously been a
Vice President for Bankers Trust Company, first in the
London office from 1931-1935, then in the New York headquarters
office 1936-1948 (see the sidebar at right for a curious
Bankers Trust link to the Bay of Pigs operation.) The 1963 Moody's
guide lists Wight as Vice Chairman under Langbourne
Williams. Wight was a key person at Freeport Sulphur. He was still
with the company when the HSCA looked into it, in 1977.
It would be hard to imagine that Freeport, under the circumstances,
did not work any deals with members of the CIA in an
attempt to find a way around its-in the words of its president-"Cuban
situation." One should recall here that John McCone,
former CIA director and at the time a board member of ITT, told a
Senate committee quite frankly that yes, he had discussed
getting rid of Allende in Chile, when ITT's properties were at risk
due to nationalization efforts. Corporate leaders voicing
concerns and urging "executive action" against leaders in other
countries is neither new nor, unfortunately, particular
shocking. Witness the recent report (Washington Post 1/30/96) where
members of the CFR were complaining openly about
provisions prohibiting actions supportive of coup attempts against
foreign leaders and calling for the lifting of existing
restrictions on the CIA.
Given the evidence that Freeport's Wight may have been pursuing a
Castro assassination plot, we cannot overlook this item
from Peter Wyden's book Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story. According to
the CIA's own Inspector General report, Johnny Rosselli
was one of the CIA's mobsters involved in Castro assassination plots.
According to Wyden, at one of his earliest meetings
after having taken on the task of getting rid of Castro, Rosselli
told his Cuban contacts that he represented Wall Street
financiers who had "nickel interests and properties around in Cuba."
Was Rosselli ever paid by or through Freeport Sulphur or
any of its subsidiaries? Or had he just been given the reference as a
cover? Had he pulled nickel interests out of a hat?
Only more file releases on Rosselli can hope to answer those
questions.
In Thy Will Be Done, there is another startling implication of a
Freeport/anti-Castro/CIA collaboration:
Castro was targeted for assassination as early as December 11, 1959,
by Nelson's old friend from the CIAA days, J. C. King,
now the CIA's Chief of Clandestine Services in the Western
Hemisphere. Even before Castro had forced Fulgencio Batista to
flee Havana, King and Adolf Berle had met to ponder the fate of
Freeport Sulphur Company's mining project at Nicaro, in
Oriente province. Now the Nicaro deposits and sugar plantations were
facing nationalization. It was clear to King that a "far
left" government existed in Cuba. "If permitted to stand," he wrote
CIA Director Allen Dulles, it would encourage similar
actions against American companies elsewhere in Latin America. One of
King's "recommended actions" was explicit:
"Thorough consideration [should] be given to the elimination of Fidel
Castro. None of those close to Fidel, such as his
brother Raul or his companion Che Guevara, have the same mesmeric
appeal to the masses. Many informed people believe that the
disappearance of Fidel would greatly accelerate the fall of the
present Government."
Freeport Sulphur's Powerful Board of Directors
Sidebar Here
<http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collections/hidden/board.htm>
Which brings us to a crucial point. Freeport Sulphur is a company
Wall Street considers a "Rockefeller" company. There are
numerous Rockefeller ties to the board of directors (see the sidebar
at right). There is a significant tie that led to the
stockpiling investigation. And Adolph Berle and J. C. King, as well
as John Hay Whitney, were all very closely tied to Nelson
Rockefeller himself. So the revelation that J. C. King and Adolph
Berle were conversing about the fate of a
Rockefeller-controlled company is significant, credible, and
highlights the ties between these players and the CIA, where J.
C. King-and in later years David Atlee Phillips-presided as Chiefs of
the Western Hemisphere Division. In a strange twist of
fate, Rockefeller's good friend King was the authenticating officer
on a cable giving authority to kill Castro's brother
Raul. Interestingly, Whitney's cousin and friend Tracy Barnes sent
the cable rescinding the original order a couple of hours
later.
Freeport versus Kennedy:
The Stockpiling Investigation
Already reeling from its losses over Castro's appropriation of the
Moa Bay plant, Freeport found itself under attack from a
new quarter: a Senate investigation into stockpiling surpluses,
requested by President Kennedy himself.
In 1962, President Kennedy asked Congress to look into the
war-emergency stockpiling program, stating it was "a potential
source of excessive and unconscionable profits." He said he was
"astonished" to discover that the program had accumulated
$7.7 billion worth of stockpiled material, exceeding projected needs
by $3.4 billion. Kennedy also pledged full executive
cooperation with the investigation, mentioning specifically $103
million in surplus nickel.
The Senate pursued an investigation into stockpiling surpluses.
Special attention was paid to three companies in which the
Rockefeller brothers had substantial holdings: Hannah Mining,
International Nickel, and Freeport Sulphur. A December 18, 1962
headline in the New York Times read "U.S. Was Pushed into Buying
Nickel, Senators Are Told." The article opened with this:
A federal official told Senate stockpile investigators today that the
U.S. Government got a bad deal in a 1957 nickel
purchase contract with a potential $248,000,000 obligation.
John Croston, a division director in the General Services
Administration, testified that he had strongly opposed the contract
with the Freeport Sulphur Company.
But, he said, officials in the agency "knew that the contract was in
the bag from the beginning." Pressure for it, he said,
came from the Office of Defense Mobilization, then headed by Arthur
S. Flemming.
Dr. Arthur S. Flemming was regularly a part of the National Security
Council under Eisenhower. Right after Ike's election, in
November of 1952, Dr. Flemming served with Ike's brother Milton on
the three-member President's Advisory Committee on
Government Organization, headed by Nelson Rockefeller. Perhaps it was
his friendship with Nelson that caused some to accuse
Dr. Flemming of some arm-twisting on Freeport's behalf. The New York
Times (12/19/62), reported:
The subcommittee was told yesterday by officials of several
Government agencies that they opposed the contract because they
felt the need for nickel was exaggerated.
These officials said, however, that Dr. Arthur S. Flemming, then head
of the Office of Defense Mobilization, was determined
that the contract be signed.
One witness said Mr. Flemming had indicated that competition aginst
the International Nickel Company, the giant in the field,
should be encouraged.
But what Flemming apparently didn't know, or hadn't shared if he did,
was that both Freeport and International Nickel Company
(INCO) shared some of the very same investors: the Rockefellers.
Croston said he had opposed the contract with Freeport from the
beginning, stating "there was no real shortage of nickel at
any time" and that cobalt "was running out of our ears." Freeport's
earlier 1954 contract with the government caused the U.S.
to spend $6,250,000 to help build that special Louisiana
nickel-cobalt ore processing plant so necessary to the Cuban mining
operations. Another contract obligated the government to buy up to
15,000,000 pounds of nickel at a premium price, as well as
15,000,000 pounds of cobalt.
The committee's head, Senator Stuart Symington, reported that it was
John Whitney who exerted his influence from Freeport's
end to get the government contract for the nickel.
Freeport's Chairman, Langbourne Williams, defended the contract,
claiming the contract had saved the Treasury money, and had
not been entered into for the purposes of stockpiling, but rather to
increase nickel production capacity. He contended that
the government ended up not having to purchase any nickel under the
contract because Freeport had been able to sell to other
buyers the nickel and cobalt produced at Moa Bay before Castro took
it over.
But the controversy flowed over into 1963, and Press Secretary Pierre
Salinger stated that the Kennedy administration planned
to make stockpiling an issue in the 1964 campaign. As we know, JFK
didn't live long enough to fulfill that promise.
JFK, Indonesia,
CIA & Freeport Sulphur
by Lisa Pease
What is Past is Prologue.
Inscribed on the National Archives, Washington, D.C.
In Part One of this article (Probe, March-April, 1996) we talked
about the early years of Freeport up through the Cuban
takeover of their potentially lucrative mine at Moa Bay, as well as
their run-in with President Kennedy over the issue of
stockpiling. But the biggest conflict that Freeport Sulphur would
face was over the country housing the world's single
largest gold reserve and third largest copper reserve: Indonesia. To
understand the recent (March, 1996) riots at the
Freeport plant, we need to go to the roots of this venture to show
how things might have been very different had Kennedy
lived to implement his plans for Indonesia.
Indonesia Backstory
Indonesia had been discovered by the Dutch at the end of the 1500s.
During the early 1600s they were dominated by the Dutch
East Indies Company, a private concern, for nearly 200 years. In
1798, authority over Indonesia was transferred to the
Netherlands, which retained dominion over this fifth largest country
in the world until 1941, at which time the Japanese
moved in during the course of World War II. By 1945 Japan was
defeated in Indonesia and Achmed Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta
rose to become President and Vice President of the newly independent
Indonesia. But within a month of the Sukarno/Hatta
proclamation of independence, British army units began landing in
Jakarta to help the Dutch restore colonial rule. Four years
of fighting ensued. In 1949, the Dutch officially ceded sovereignty
back to Indonesia, with the exception of one key area -
that of a hotspot which is now known as Irian Jaya or, depending on
who you talk to, West Papua.
Authors Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, in their book Thy Will Be
Done, explain the situation in what was then called
Dutch New Guinea:
To Westerners, New Guinea was like a gifted child pulled in opposite
directions by covetous guardians. The Dutch clung to the
western half as the sole remnant of their once-vast East Indies
empire. Their longtime British allies, acting through
Australia, controlled the eastern half. Neighboring Indonesians, on
the other hand, thought that all New Guinea was part of
their national territory, even if it was still colonized by
Europeans.
Dutch New Guinea, or West Irian as the Indonesians called it, was
populated by native tribes not far removed from a stone age
culture, such as the Danis and the Amungme. When Indonesia fought to
claim independence from the Dutch, West Irian became a
symbol for both sides that neither wanted to relinquish. It would
take the efforts of President Kennedy to eventually pass
control of this area to the newly independent Indonesians, removing
the last vestiges of Dutch colonialism.
Indonesia experienced various types of government. When Sukarno first
rose to power in 1945, foreigners pointed out that
Sukarno's rule appeared "fascistic," since he held sole control over
so much of the government. Bowing to foreign pressure to
appear more democratic, Indonesia instituted a parliamentary system
of rule and opened the government to a multiparty system.
Sukarno related what followed to his biographer (now cable gossip
show host) Cindy Adams:
In a nation previously denied political activities, the results were
immediate. Over 40 dissimilar parties sprang up. So
terrified were we of being labeled "a Japanese-sponsored Fascistic
dictatorship" that single individuals forming splinter
organizations were tolerated as "mouthpieces of democracy." Political
parties grew like weeds with shallow roots and
interests top-heavy with petty selfishness and vote-catching.
Internal strife grew. We faced disaster, endless conflicts,
hair-raising confusion. Indonesians previously pulling together now
pulled apart. They were sectioned into religious and
geographical boxes, just what I'd sweated all my life to get them out
of.
Sukarno related that nearly every six months, a cabinet fell, and a
new government would start up, only to repeat the cycle.
On October 17, 1952 things came to a head. Thousands of soldiers from
the Indonesian army stormed the gates with signs saying
"Dissolve Parliament." Sukarno faced the troops directly, firmly
refusing to dissolve parliament due to military pressure,
and the soldiers backed down. The result of this was a factionalized
army. There were the "pro-17 October 1952 military" and
the "anti-17 October 1952 military." In 1955, elections were held and
parliamentary rule was ended by vote. The Communists,
who had done the most for the people suffering the aftereffects of
converting from colonial rule to independence, won many
victories in 1955 and 1956. In 1955, Sukarno organized the Bandung
Conference at which the famous Chinese Communist Chou En
Lai was a featured guest. During the 1955 elections, the CIA had
given a million dollars to the Masjumi party-an opposition
party to both Sukarno's Nationalist party and the Communist party in
Indonesia (called the PKI)-in an attempt to gain
political control of the country. But the Masjumi party failed to win
the hearts and minds of the people.
In 1957, an assassination attempt was made against Sukarno. Although
the actual perpetrators were unknown at the time, both
Sukarno and the CIA jumped to use this for propaganda purposes. The
CIA was quick to blame the PKI. Sukarno, however, blamed
the Dutch, and used this as the excuse to seize all former Dutch
holdings, including shipping and flying lines. Sukarno vowed
to drive the Dutch out of West Irian. He had already tried settling
the long-standing dispute over that territory through the
United Nations, but the vote fell shy of the needed two-thirds
majority to set up a commission to force the Dutch to sit down
with the Indonesians. The assassination attempt provided a much
needed excuse for action.
The victories of the Communists, infighting in the army, and the 1957
nationalization of former Dutch holdings, led to a
situation of grave concern to American business interests, notably
the oil and rubber industries. The CIA eagerly pitched in,
helping to foment rebellion between the outer, resource rich,
islands, and the central government based in Jakarta, Java.
Rockefeller Interests in Indonesia
Two prominent American-based oil companies doing business in
Indonesia at this time were of the Rockefeller-controlled
Standard Oil family: Stanvac (jointly held by Standard Oil of New
Jersey and Socony Mobil-Socony being Standard Oil of New
York), and Caltex, (jointly held by Standard Oil of California and
Texaco.) In Part I of this article we showed how heavily
loaded the Freeport Sulphur board was with Rockefeller family and
allies. Recall that Augustus C. Long was a board member of
Freeport while serving as Chairman of Texaco for many years. Long
becomes more and more interesting as the story develops.
1958: CIA vs. Sukarno
"I think its time we held Sukarno's feet to the fire,"
<http://members.aol.com/bblum6/indo1.htm> said Frank Wisner, then
Deputy Director of Plans for the CIA, in 1956. By 1958, having failed
to buy the government through the election process, the
CIA was fomenting a full-fledged operation in Indonesia. Operation
Hike, as it was called, involved the arming and training
of tens of thousands of Indonesians as well as "mercenaries" to
launch attacks in the hope of bringing down Sukarno.
Joseph Burkholder Smith was a former CIA officer involved with the
Indonesian operations during this period. In his book,
Portrait of a Cold Warrior, he described how the CIA took it upon
themselves to make, not just to enact, policy in this area:
before any direct action against Sukarno's position could be taken,
we would have to have the approval of the Special
Group-the small group of top National Security Council officials who
approved covert action plans. Premature mention of such
an idea might get it shot down ...
So we began to feed the State Department and Defense departments
intelligence ... When they had read enough alarming reports,
we planned to spring the suggestion we should support the colonels'
plan to reduce Sukarno's power. This was a method of
operation which became the basis of many of the political action
adventures of the 1960s and 1970s. In other words, the
statement is false that CIA undertook to intervene in the affairs of
countries like Chile only after being ordered to do so
... In many instances, we made the action programs up ourselves after
we had collected enough intelligence to make them
appear required by the circumstance. Our activity in Indonesia in
1957-1958 was one such instance.
When the Ambassador to Indonesia wrote Washington of his explicit
disagreements with the CIA's handling of the situation,
Allen Dulles had his brother John Foster appoint a different
Ambassador to Indonesia, one more accepting of the CIA's
activities.
In addition to the paramilitary activities, the CIA tried
psychological warfare tricks to discredit Sukarno, such as passing
rumors that he had been seduced by a Soviet stewardess. To that end,
Sheffield Edwards, head of the CIA's Office of Security,
enlisted the Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department to help with
a porno movie project the CIA was making to use against
Sukarno, ostensibly showing Sukarno in the act. Others involved in
these efforts were Robert Maheu, and Bing Crosby and his
brother.
The Agency tried to keep its coup participation covert, but one
"mercenary" met misfortune early. Shot down and captured
during a bombing run, Allen Lawrence Pope was carrying all kinds of
ID on his person to indicate that he was an employee of
the CIA. The U.S. Government, right up to President Eisenhower, tried
to deny that the CIA was involved at all, but the Pope
revelations made a mockery of this. Not cowed by the foment, as
Arbenz had been in Guatemala, Sukarno marshalled those forces
loyal to him and crushed the CIA-aided rebellion. Prior to the Bay of
Pigs, this was the Agency's single largest failed
operation.
1959: Copper Mountain
At this point, Freeport Sulphur entered the Indonesian picture. In
July, 1959, Charles Wight, then President of Freeport-and
reported to be fomenting anti-Castro plots and flying to Canada
and/or Cuba with Clay Shaw (see Part I of this article)-was
busy defending his company against House Committee accusations of
overcharging the Government for the nickel ore processed at
the Government-owned plant in Nicaro, Cuba. The Committee recommended
that the Justice Department pursue an investigation.
Freeport's Moa Bay Mining Company had only just opened, and already
the future in Cuba looked bleak. In August, 1959,
Freeport Director and top engineer Forbes Wilson met with Jan van
Gruisen, managing director of the East Borneo Company, a
mining concern. Gruisen had just stumbled upon a dusty report first
made in 1936 regarding a mountain called the "Ertsberg"
("Copper Mountain") in Dutch New Guinea, by Jean Jacques Dozy. Hidden
away for years in a Netherlands library during Nazi
attacks, the report had only recently resurfaced. Dozy reported a
mountain heavy with copper ore. If true, this could justify
a new Freeport diversification effort into copper. Wilson cabled
Freeport's New York headquarters asking for permission and
money to make a joint exploration effort with the East Borneo
Company. The contract was signed February 1, 1960.
With the aid of a native guide, Wilson spent the next several months
amidst the near-stone age natives as he forged through
near impassable places on his way to the Ertsberg. Wilson wrote a
book about this journey, called The Conquest of Copper
Mountain. When he finally arrived, he was excited at what he found:
an unusually high degree of mineralization ... The Ertsberg turned
out to be 40% to 50% iron ... and 3% copper ... Three
percent is quite rich for a deposit of copper ... The Ertsberg also
contains certain amounts of even more rare silver and
gold.
He cabled back a message in prearranged code to the soon-to-be
President of Freeport, Bob Hills in New York:
... thirteen acres rock above ground additional 14 acres each 100
meter depth sampling progressive color appears dark access
egress formidable all hands well advise Sextant regards. </P><P>
"Thirteen acres" meant 13 million tons of ore above ground. "Color
appears dark" meant that the grade of ore was good.
"Sextant" was code for the East Borneo Company. The expedition was
over in July of 1960. Freeport's board was not eager to go
ahead with a new and predictably costly venture on the heels of the
expropriation of their mining facilities in Cuba. But the
board decided to at least press ahead with the next phase of
exploration: a more detailed investigation of the ore samples
and commercial potential. Wilson described the results of this
effort:
[M]ining consultants confirmed our estimates of 13 million tons of
ore above ground and another 14 million below ground for
each 100 meters of depth. Other consultants estimated that the cost
of a plant to process 5,000 tons of ore a day would be
around $60 million and that the cost of producing copper would be 16¢
a pound after credit for small amounts of gold and
silver associated with the copper. At the time, copper was selling in
world markets for around 35¢ a pound. From these data,
Freeport's financial department calculated that the company could
recover its investment in three years and then begin
earning an attractive profit.
The operation proved technically difficult, involving newly invented
helicopters and diamond drills. Complicating the
situation was the outbreak of a near-war between the Dutch-who were
still occupying West Irian-and Sukarno's forces which
landed there to reclaim the land as their own. Fighting even broke
out near the access road to Freeport's venture. By
mid-1961, Freeport's engineers strongly felt that the project should
be pursued. But by that time, John F. Kennedy had taken
over the office of President. And he was pursuing a far different
course than the previous administration.
Kennedy and Sukarno
"No wonder Sukarno doesn't like us very much. He has to sit down with
people who tried to overthrow him." - President
Kennedy, 1961
Up until Kennedy's time, the aid predominantly offered to Indonesia
from this country came mostly in the form of military
support. Kennedy had other ideas. After a positive 1961 meeting with
Sukarno in the United States, Kennedy appointed a team
of economists to study ways that economic aid could help Indonesia
develop in constructive ways. Kennedy understood that
Sukarno took aid and arms from the Soviets and the Chinese because he
needed the help, not because he was eager to fall under
communist rule. American aid would prevent Sukarno from becoming
dependent on Communist supplies. And Sukarno had already put
down a communist rebellion in 1948. Even the State Department in the
United States conceded that Sukarno was more nationalist
than Communist.
But the pressing problem during Kennedy's short term was the issue of
West Irian. The Dutch had taken an ever more aggressive
stance, and Sukarno was assuming a military posture. America, as
allies to both, was caught in the middle. Kennedy asked
Ellsworth Bunker to attempt to mediate an agreement between the Dutch
and Indonesian governments. "The role of the mediator,"
said Kennedy, "is not a happy one; we are prepared to have everybody
mad if it makes some progress."
It did make everybody mad. But it did make progress. Ultimately, the
U.S. pressured the Dutch behind the scenes to yield to
Indonesia. Bobby Kennedy was enlisted in this effort, visiting both
Sukarno in Indonesia and the Dutch at the Hague. Said
Roger Hilsman in To Move a Nation:
Sukarno came to recognize in Robert Kennedy the same tough integrity
and loyalty that he had seen in his brother, the
President, combined with a true understanding of what the new
nationalisms were really all about.
So with preliminary overtures having been made to Sukarno and the
Hague, Bunker took over the nitty gritty of getting each
side to talk to each other. The Dutch, unwilling to concede the last
vestige of their once-great empire to their foe, pressed
instead for West Irian to become an independent country. But Sukarno
knew it was a symbol to his people of final independence
from the Dutch. And all knew that the Papuan natives there had no
hope of forming any kind of functioning government, having
only just recently been pushed from a primitive existence into the
modern world. The United Nations voted to cede West Irian
fully to Indonesia, with the provision that, by 1969, the people of
West Irian would be granted an opportunity to vote
whether to remain with or secede from Indonesia. Kennedy seized the
moment, issuing National Security Action Memorandum
(NSAM) 179, dated August 16, 1962:
With the peaceful settlement of the West Irian dispute now in
prospect, I would like to see us capitalize on the U.S. role in
promoting this settlement to move toward a new and better
relationship with Indonesia. I gather that with this issue resolved
the Indonesians too would like to move in this direction and will be
presenting us with numerous requests.
To seize this opportunity, will all agencies concerned please review
their programs for Indonesia and assess what further
measures might be useful. I have in mind the possibility of expanded
civic action, military aid, and economic stabilization
and development programs as well as diplomatic initiatives.
Roger Hilsman elaborated on what Kennedy meant by civic action:
"rehabilitating canals, draining swampland to create new rice
paddies, building bridges and roads, and so on."
Freeport and West Irian
Kennedy's aid in brokering Indonesian sovereignty over West Irian
could only have come as a blow to Freeport Sulphur's board.
Freeport already had a positive relationship with the Dutch, who had
authorized the initial exploratory missions there.
During the negotiation period, Freeport approached the U.N., but the
U.N. said Freeport would have to discuss their plans
with the Indonesian officials. When Freeport went to the Indonesian
embassy in Washington, they received no response.
Lamented Forbes Wilson:
Not long after Indonesia obtained control over Western New Guinea in
1963, then-President Sukarno, who had consolidated his
executive power, made a series of moves which would have discouraged
even the most eager prospective Western investor. He
expropriated nearly all foreign investments in Indonesia. He ordered
American agencies, including the Agency for
International Development, to leave the country. He cultivated close
ties with Communist China and with Indonesia's Communist
Party, known as the PKI.
1962 had been a difficult year for Freeport. They were under attack
on the stockpiling issue. Freeport was still reeling from
having their lucrative facilities expropriated in Cuba. And now they
sat, staring at a potential fortune in Indonesia. But
with Kennedy giving tacit support to Sukarno, their hopes looked
bleak indeed.
Reversal of Fortunes
Kennedy stepped up the aid package to Indonesia, offering $11
million. In addition, he planned a personal visit there in
early 1964. While Kennedy was trying to support Sukarno, other forces
were countering their efforts. Public dissent in the
Senate brewed over continuing to aid Indonesia while the Communist
party there remained strong. Kennedy persisted. He
approved this particular aid package on November 19, 1963. Three days
later, Sukarno lost his best ally in the west. Shortly,
he would lose the aid package too.
Sukarno was much shaken by the news of Kennedy's death. Bobby made
the trip the President had originally planned to take, in
January, 1964. Cindy Adams asked Sukarno what he thought of Bobby,
and got more than she asked for:
Sukarno's face lit up. "Bob is very warm. He is like his brother. I
loved his brother. He understood me. I designed and built
a special guest house on the palace grounds for John F. Kennedy, who
promised me he'd come here and be the first American
President ever to pay a state visit to this country." He fell silent.
"Now he'll never come."
Sukarno was perspiring freely. He repeatedly mopped his brow and
chest. "Tell me, why did they kill Kennedy?"
Sukarno noted with irony that the very day Kennedy was assassinated,
his Chief of Bodyguards was in Washington to study how
to protect a president. Looking to the future, he was not optimistic:
I know Johnson ... I met him when I was with President Kennedy in
Washington. But I wonder if he is as warm as John. I wonder
if he will like Sukarno as John Kennedy, my friend, did.
LBJ and Indonesia
As others have noted, foreign policy changed rapidly after Kennedy's
death. Donald Gibson says in his book Battling Wall
Street, "In foreign policy the changes came quickly, and they were
dramatic." Gibson outlines five short term changes and
several long term changes that went into effect after Kennedy's
death. One of the short term changes was the instant reversal
of the Indonesian aid package Kennedy had already approved. Hilsman
makes this point as well:
One of the first pieces of paper to come across President Johnson's
desk was the presidential determination ... by which the
President had to certify that continuing even economic aid [to
Indonesia] was essential to the national interest. Since
everyone down the line had known that President Kennedy would have
signed the determination routinely, we were all surprised
when President Johnson refused.
Someone at Freeport was so pleased with Johnson's behavior that he
supported his presidential run in 1964: Augustus C. "Gus"
Long.
Long had been Chairman at Texas Company (Texaco) for many years. In
1964, he and a bunch of other conservative, largely
Republican business moguls, joined together to support Johnson over
Goldwater. The group, calling themselves the National
Independent Committee for Johnson, included such people as Thomas
Lamont, Edgar Kaiser of Kaiser Aluminum, Robert Lehman of
Lehman Brothers, Thomas Cabot of Cabot Corporation of Boston, and
many other luminaries of the business world.
Long had two toes in the Indonesian fray-one for Freeport, one for
Texaco. In 1961, Caltex-jointly owned by Standard Oil of
California (Socal) and Texas Company (Texaco)-was one of the three
major oil companies in Indonesia forced to operate under a
new contract with Sukarno's government. Under the new terms, 60% of
all profits had to be given to the Indonesian government.
So he had two reasons to be concerned by Kennedy's support of
Sukarno's brand of nationalism, which threatened the interests
of both companies in which he had a substantial stake.
In Part I, we mentioned that Long had done "prodigious volunteer
work" for Presbyterian Hospital in New York, said by a
former employee of their PR firm, the Mullen Company, to be a "hotbed
of CIA activity." Now we add that Long was elected
President of Presbyterian Hospital two years running-1961 and 1962.
In 1964, Long retired his role as Chairman of Texaco. He
would be reinstated as Chairman in 1970. What did he do in the
interim?
In March of 1965, Long was elected a director of Chemical
Bank-another Rockefeller-controlled company.
In August of 1965, Long was appointed to the President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board, where he would approve and
suggest covert activities.
In October of 1965, covert activities sealed Sukarno's fate.
1965: The Year of Living Dangerously
After Kennedy's death, Sukarno had grown ever more belligerent
towards the West. The British were busy forming a new country
out of Indonesia's former trading partners Malaya and Singapore,
called "Malaysia." Since the area included territory from
which the CIA had launched some of its 1958 activities, Sukarno was
justifiably concerned by what he felt was an ever
tightening noose. On January 1, 1965, Sukarno threatened to pull
Indonesia out of the United Nations if Malaysia was
admitted. It was and he did, making Indonesia the first nation ever
to pull out of the U.N. In response to U.S. pressure on
Sukarno to support Malaysia, he cried, "to hell with your aid." He
built up his troops along the borders of Malaysia.
Malaysia, fearing invasion, appealed to the U.N. for support.
By February, Sukarno could see the writing on the wall:
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Feb. 23 (UPI)-President Sukarno declared today
that Indonesia could no longer afford freedom of the
press. He ordered the banning of anti-Communist newspapers. ...
"I have secret information that reveals that the C.I.A. was using the
Body for the Promotion of Sukarnoism to kill Sukarnoism
and Sukarno," he said. "That's why I banned it." (New York Times,
2/24/65)
The country was in disarray. Anti-American demonstrations were
frequent. Indonesia quit the International Monetary Fund and
the World Bank. The press reported that Sukarno was moving closer to
the Chinese and Soviets. Sukarno threatened to
nationalize remaining U.S. properties, having already taken over, for
example, one of the biggest American operations in
Indonesia, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. And then, in an
unexpected move, Singapore seceded from Malaysia, weakening
the newly formed state bordering Indonesia.
With American money interests threatened, all the usual carrots of
foreign aid shunted, no leverage via the IMF or World
Bank, and Freeport's Gus Long on the President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board, it was only a matter of time, and not
much, at that.
October 1, 1965: Coup or Counter-Coup?
INDONESIA SAYS PLOT TO DEPOSE SUKARNO IS FOILED BY ARMY CHIEF; POWER
FIGHT BELIEVED CONTINUING
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia. Oct. 1-An attempt to overthrow President
Sukarno was foiled tonight by army units loyal to Gen. Abdul
Haris Nasution, the Indonesian radio announced. ...
In Washington, a State Department spokesman said Friday the situation
in Indonesia was "extremely confused." Robert J.
McCloskey told a news conference the State Department was getting
reports from the American Embassy at Jakarta, but "it is
not presently possible to attempt any evaluation, explanation, or
comment."
Late yesterday, a mysterious group calling itself the 30th of
September Movement seized control of Jakarta.
Colonel Untung, who had announced over the Indonesian radio that he
was the leader of the movement, said the group had seized
control of the Government to prevent a "counterrevolutionary" coup by
the Generals' Council. (New York Times, 10/2-3/65,
International Edition)
In a strange, convoluted move, a group of young military leaders
killed a bunch of older, centrist leaders who, they claimed,
were going to-with the help of the CIA-stage a coup against Sukarno.
But what happened in the aftermath of this turned
Indonesia into one of the bloodiest nightmares the world has ever
seen. This original counter-coup was branded a coup attempt
instead, and painted as brightly Red as possible. Then, in the
disguise of outrage that Sukarno's authority had been
imperiled, Nasution joined with General Suharto to overthrow the
"rebels." What started ostensibly to protect Sukarno's
authority ended up stripping him of it wholly. The aftermath is too
horrible to describe in a few words. The numbers vary,
but the consensus lies in the range of 200,000 to over 500,000 people
killed in the wake of this "counter-coup." Anyone who
had ever had an association with the Communist PKI was targeted for
elimination. Even Time magazine gave one token accurate
description of what was happening:
According to accounts brought out of Indonesia by Western diplomats
and independent travelers, Communists, Red sympathizers
and their families are being massacred by the thousands. Backlands
army units are reported to have executed thousands of
Communists after interrogation in remote rural jails. ... Armed with
wide-bladed knives called parangs, Moslem bands crept at
night into the homes of Communists, killing entire families and
burying the bodies in shallow graves. ... The murder campaign
became so brazen in parts of rural East Java that Moslem bands placed
the heads of victims on poles and paraded them through
villages.
The killings have been on such a scale that the disposal of the
corpses has created a serious sanitation problem in East Java
and northern Sumatra, where the humid air bears the reek of decaying
flesh. Travelers from those areas tell of small rivers
and streams that have been literally clogged with bodies; river
transportation has at places been impeded.
Latter day thumbnail histories frequently depict the actions like
this: "An abortive Communist coup in 1965 led to an
anti-Communist takeover by the military, under Gen. Suharto."
(Source: The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia.) But the truth is
far more complex. A persuasive indicator for this lies in the
following item, cited in a remarkable article by Peter Dale
Scott published in the British journal Lobster (Fall, 1990). Scott
quotes an author citing a researcher who, having been
given access to files of the foreign ministry in Pakistan, ran across
a letter from a former ambassador who reported a
conversation with a Dutch intelligence officer with NATO, which said,
according to the researcher's notes,
"Indonesia was going to fall into the Western lap like a rotten
apple." Western intelligence agencies, he said, would
organize a "premature communist coup ... [which would be] foredoomed
to fail, providing a legitimate and welcome opportunity
to the army to crush the communists and make Soekarno a prisoner of
the army's goodwill." The ambassador's report was dated
December 1964.
Later in this article, Scott quotes from the book The CIA File:
"All I know," said one former intelligence officer of the Indonesia
events, "is that the Agency rolled in some of its top
people and that things broke big and very favorable, as far as we
were concerned."
Ralph McGehee, a 25-year veteran of the CIA, also implicated the
agency in an article, still partially censored by the CIA,
published in The Nation (April 11, 1981):
To conceal its role in the massacre of those innocent people the
C.I.A., in 1968, concocted a false account of what happened
(later published by the Agency as a book, Indonesia-1965: The Coup
That Backfired). That book is the only study of Indonesia
politics ever released to the public on the Agency's own initiative.
At the same time that the Agency wrote the book, it also
composed a secret study of what really happened. [one sentence
deleted.] The Agency was extremely proud of its successful
[one word deleted] and recommended it as a model for future
operations [one-half sentence deleted].
Freeport After Sukarno
According to Forbes Wilson, Freeport had all but given up hope of
developing its fabulous find in West Irian. But while the
rest of the world's press was still trying to unravel the convoluted
information as to who was really in power, Freeport
apparently had an inside track. In the essay mentioned earlier, Scott
cites a cable (U.S. delegation to the U.N.) which
stated that Freeport Sulphur had reached a preliminary "arrangement"
with Indonesian officials over the Ertsberg in April of
1965, before there could legitimately have been any hope in sight.
Officially, Freeport had no such plans until after the October 1965
events. But even the official story seemed odd to Wilson.
As early as November, a mere month after the October events, longtime
Chairman of Freeport, Langbourne Williams, called
Director Wilson at home, asking if the time had now come to pursue
their project in West Irian. Wilson's reaction to this
call is interesting:
I was so startled I didn't know what to say.
How did Williams know, so soon, that a new regime was coming to
power? Sukarno was still President, and would remain so
formally until 1967. Only deep insiders knew from the beginning that
Sukarno's days were numbered, and his power feeble.
Wilson explains that Williams got some "encouraging private
information" from "two executives of Texaco." Long's company had
managed to maintain close ties to a high official of the Sukarno
regime, Julius Tahija. It was Tahija who brokered a meeting
between Freeport and Ibnu Sutowo, Minister of Mines and Petroleum.
Fortune magazine had this to say about Sutowo (July 1973):
As president-director of Pertamina [the Government's state-owned oil
company], Lieutenant General Ibnu Sutowo receives a
salary of just $250 a month, but lives on a princely scale. He moves
around Jakarta in his personal Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.
He has built a family compound of several mansions, which are so
large that guests at his daughter's wedding party could
follow the whole show only on closed-circuit television.
... The line between Sutowo's public and private activities will seem
hazy to Western eyes. The Ramayan Restaurant in New
York [in Rockefeller Center-author's note], for example, was
bankrolled by various U.S. oil-company executives, who put up
$500,000 to get into a notoriously risky sort of business. Presumably
its backers were motivated at least in part by a desire
to be on amiable terms with the general.
But beyond these dubious accolades, a hint of something else, as well
was revealed:
Sutowo's still small oil company played a key part in bankrolling
those crucial operations [during the October 1965 events.]
Given the wealth of evidence that the CIA was deeply involved in this
operation, it seems equally likely that Sutowo was
acting as a conduit for their funds.
After Sukarno's fall from power, Sutowo constructed a new agreement
that allowed oil companies to keep a substantially larger
percent of their profits. In an article entitled "Oil and Nationalism
Mix Beautifully in Indonesia" (July, 1973), Fortune
labeled the post-Sukarno deal "exceptionally favorable to the oil
companies."
In 1967, when Indonesia's Foreign Investment Law was passed,
Freeport's contract was the first to be signed. With Kennedy,
Sukarno, and any viable support for Indonesian nationalism out of the
way, Freeport began operations.
In 1969, the vote mandated by the Kennedy brokered U.N. agreement on
the question of West Irian independence was due. Under
heavy intimidation and the visceral presence of the military, Irian
"voted" to remain part of Indonesia. Freeport was in the
clear.
The Bechtel Connection
Gus Long was a frequent dinner partner of Steve Bechtel, Sr., owner
with CIA Director John McCone, of Bechtel-McCone in Los
Angeles in the thirties. McCone and Bechtel, Sr. made a bundle off of
World War II, split, and went their not so separate
ways. Writes author Laton McCartney in Friends in High Places: The
Bechtel Story,
[I]n 1964 and 1965, CIA director John McCone and U.S. ambassador to
Indonesia Howard Jones briefed Steve Bechtel Sr. on the
rapidly deteriorating situation in Indonesia. Bechtel, Socal, Texaco
... had extensive dealings in that part of the world and
were concerned because Indonesia's President Sukarno was
nationalizing U.S. business interests there. ... In October 1965, in
what a number of CIA alumni have since charged was an Agency-backed
coup, Sukarno was ousted and replaced by President
Suharto, who proved far more receptive to U.S. business interests
than his predecessor.
Bechtel was no stranger to the CIA. Bechtel Sr. had been a charter
member of the CIA conduit Asia Foundation from its
inception as Allen Dulles' brainchild. Former CIA Director Richard
Helms himself joined Bechtel, as an "international
consultant" in 1978. Said a former executive, Bechtel was:
loaded with the CIA ... The agency didn't have to ask them to place
its agents ... Bechtel was delighted to take them on and
give them whatever assistance they needed.
Bechtel Sr.'s "oldest and closest friend in the oil industry," Gus
Long, had a problem. Freeport's project was far more
difficult than they had foreseen, and they needed outside help. The
mountainous path to the "copper mountain" made extraction
nearly impossible. Freeport hired Bechtel to help them construct the
appropriate infrastructure to turn their dreams into
reality.
Bechtel came with extras. Freeport needed additional financing for
their costly Indonesian project. Bechtel Sr. had gotten
himself appointed to the advisory committee of the Export-Import
(Exim) bank after a long period of cozying up to Exim bank
president Henry Kearns. Freeport was not happy with the lack of
progress and costs of Bechtel's operation. Forbes Wilson
threatened to drop them from the project. Bechtel Sr. jumped in,
saying he would make the project Bechtel's top priority. He
also guaranteed them $20 million in loans from the Exim bank. When
the Exim bank's engineer didn't think that Freeport's
project seemed commercially viable and wouldn't approve their loan,
Bechtel Sr. called Kearns, and the loan went through over
the objections of the bank's engineer. Three years later, Kearns
would resign from the bank when it revealed the bank had
made generous loans to several projects in which Kearns was
personally invested. Although Senator Proxmire called it "the
worst conflict of interest" he had ever seen in seventeen years in
the Senate, the Justice Department declined to prosecute.
Said Proxmire:
It will appear to millions of American citizens that there is a
double standard in the law, one for the ordinary citizen and
quite another for those who hold high positions in government and
make thousands of dollars in personal profit as a result of
official actions.
Bechtel denies allegations from former employees that it spread over
$3 million in cash around Indonesia in the early '70s.
Unhappily Ever After
The tragedy of the Kennedy assassination lies in the legacy left in
the wake of his absence. Without his support, Indonesia's
baby steps toward a real, economic independence were shattered.
Sukarno, hardly a saint and with plenty of problems,
nonetheless was trying to assure that business deals with foreigners
left some benefit for the Indonesians. Suharto, in dire
contrast, allowed foreigners to rape and pillage Indonesia for
private gain, at the price of lives and the precious,
irreplaceable resources of the Indonesians. Cindy Adams wrote a book
about her experiences with Sukarno, called My Friend the
Dictator. If Sukarno was a dictator, what term exists for Suharto?
Freeport's Grasberg mine in Indonesia is one of the largest copper
and gold reserves in the world. But the American based
company owns 82% of the venture, while the Indonesian government and
a privately held concern in Indonesia split the
remaining percent.
How much influence does Freeport carry in Indonesia? Can they really
say they have Indonesia's best interests at heart?
Kissinger and East Timor
In 1975, Freeport's mine was well into production and highly
profitable. Future Freeport Director and lobbyist Henry
Kissinger and President and ex-Warren Commission member Gerald Ford
flew out of Jakarta having given the Indonesian
Government under Suharto what State Department officials later
described as "the big wink." Suharto used the Indonesian
military to take over the Portuguese territory of East Timor,
followed by a mass slaughter that rivaled the 1965 bloodbath.
Says a former CIA operations officer who was stationed there at the
time, C. Philip Liechty:
Suharto was given the green light [by the U.S.] to do what he did.
There was discussion in the embassy and in traffic with
the State Department about the problems that would be created for us
if the public and Congress became aware of the level and
type of military assistance that was going to Indonesia at that time.
... Without continued heavy U.S. logistical military
support the Indonesians might not have been able to pull if off.
In 1980, Freeport merged with McMoRan-an oil exploration and
development company headed by James "Jim Bob" Moffett. The two
become one, and Moffett (the "Mo" in McMoRan) eventually became
President of Freeport McMoRan.
Friends in High Places
In 1995, Freeport McMoRan managed to spin off it's Freeport McMoRan
Copper & Gold Inc. subsidiary into a separate entity. The
Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) wrote Freeport McMoRan
Copper and Gold that they planned to cancel their
investment insurance based on their poor environmental record at
their Irian project, stating Freeport has "posed an
unreasonable or major environmental, health, or safety hazard in
Irian Jaya."
Freeport didn't sit still over this cancellation. Kissinger executed
a major lobbying effort (for which he is paid $400,000 a
year), meeting with officials at the State Department and working the
halls of Capitol Hill. Sources close to the matter,
according to Robert Bryce in a recent issue of the Texas Observer,
say Freeport hired former CIA director James Woolsey in
the fight against OPIC.
Freeport, now headquartered in New Orleans, manages to keep friends
in high places. In 1993, the head of the pro-Suharto
congressional lobby was the Senator from Louisiana, Bennett Johnson.
Representative Robert Livingston, of Louisiana, invested
in Freeport Copper and Gold while the House debated and voted on H.R.
322-the Mineral Exploration and Development Act. And
when Jeffery Shafer, one of the directors of OPIC, recently was
nominated for an appointment to Undersecretary of National
Affairs, it was another Louisiana pol, this time Senator John Breaux,
who voted to block the appointment until Shafer
provided an explanation of OPIC's cancellation of Freeport's
insurance. Jim Bob Moffett, head of Freeport McMoRan, is listed
in Mother Jones' online "MoJo Wire Coin-Op Congress" survey of the
top 400 people who gave the most money in campaign
contributions.
Freeport's actions abroad are not the only one's worth tracking. In
Louisiana itself, Freeport and three other companies (two
of which Freeport later acquired) petitioned for a special exemption
to the Clean Water Act in order to legally dump 25
billion pounds of toxic waste into the Mississippi river. Citizens
protested, and Freeport's petition was denied. Freeport
then lobbied for the weakening of Clean Water Act restrictions.
The citizens of Austin, Texas, have fought to block a Freeport plan
for a real estate development that will foul Barton
Springs, a popular outdoor water park there.
According to a recent article in The Nation (July 31/August 7, 1995),
Freeport is part of the National Wetlands Coalition, a
group which wrote much of the language of a bill designed to
eliminate E.P.A. oversight of wetlands areas, freeing them for
exploitation. The same coalition has also lobbied to weaken the
Endangered Species Act. The Nation revealed that Freeport's
political action committee since 1983 has paid members of congress
over $730,000.
Scandal at UT
Freeport's record caused an uproar at the University of Texas at
Austin recently. The university's geology department, which
has done research under contract for Freeport, was recently given $2
million dollars by Jim Bob Moffett for a new building.
The school's Chancellor, William Cunningham, wanted to name the
building after his friend and co-worker (Cunningham is also a
Freeport Director) Moffett. Many on campus protested this
development. Anthropology professor Stephen Feld resigned his
position with the university over this issue, saying UT was "no
longer a morally acceptable place of employment." The
protests about Cunningham's conflict of interest-serving UT and
Freeport-led to Cunningham's resignation last December. He
resigned a day after Freeport threatened to sue three professors at
the University who had been loudest in protest.
Poised on the Brink
While moral victories are lauded in Texas, the real terror continues
at Freeport's plant in Indonesia.
In March of 1996, just as our last issue went to press, riots broke
out at the Freeport plant in Irian Jaya (the current name
for West Irian). Thousands were marching in the streets around the
Freeport plant, where the military had as recently as
December held and tortured in Freeport mining containers the people
who lived and protested in that region. The protests are
deeply rooted in the desire for the independence of the Papuans, the
Amungme, and the many native inhabitants of Irian Jaya
who were never Dutch, and never really Indonesian.
As we go to print, Indonesian sources report that the military has
taken over the numerous Freeport Security stations around
the mine. "Military Exercises" are intimidating the people who in
March rioted at Freeport, causing the plant to lose two
days of work and millions of dollars. Although no curfew has been
called, people report a fear of being out at night.
The native Amungme tribes, the Papuans, and others ar