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U.S. relocates some people named in WikiLeaks cables
AFP/File – Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks website seen here in 2010, said Friday he had signed a book … WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States has warned several hundred people worldwide it believes may be imperiled by WikiLeaks' release of classified U.S. diplomatic cables and has so far helped a handful of them relocate to safer locations, the State Department said on Friday.
http://www.politicalhotwire.com/world-politics/4488-declassified-obama-s-ambassedor-richard-holbrooke-aided-suharto-s-genocide-east-timor.html
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Suharto: A Declassified Documentary Obit
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 242In August of 1977, then Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke traveled to Indonesia to meet with Suharto in the midst of one of the Indonesian military's brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in East Timor in which tens of thousands of East Timorese were being slaughtered. The State Department at the time wrote, â€Assistant Secretary of State Holbrooke", who is now Obama's ambassedor to Pakistan â€that this would be an unusual opportunity to press the case for human rights and self-determination for East Timor", if that had indeed been the US goal.
Instead, once Suharto was met by Richard Holbrooke, he was praised by Holbrooke for Indonesia's human rights improvements and was told that he in fact welcomed the steps that Indonesia had taken to open East Timor to the West, allowing a delegation of congressmen to enter the territory under strict military guard, where they were greeted by staged celebrations, welcoming the Indonesian armed forces.
In his meeting with Suharto, the Assistant Secretary offered no criticism of Indonesia’s human rights record while “acknowledging efforts President Suharto appeared to be making to resolve Indonesian problems,†especially on East Timor, where he “applauded†the President’s judgment in allowing Congressional members to visit the territory but remained mute on reports of ongoing atrocities. Suharto responded that Indonesia did “not seek to hide anything†in East Timor – at a time when journalists and relief organizations were banned and visitors allowed only under military escort.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/28/the_democrats_suharto_bill_clinton_richard
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January 28, 2008
The Democrats & Suharto: Bill Clinton & Richard Holbrooke Questioned on Their Support for Brutal Indonesian Dictatorship
Democracy Now! re-airs Allan Nairn’s questioning of Richard Holbrooke, who is now a senior foreign policy adviser to Hillary Clinton, and Bill Clinton on how the Carter and Clinton administrations backed Suharto despite his brutal human rights record. [includes rush transcript]
Brad Simpson, Director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archive in George Washington University. He is also Assistant Professor of US History and Foreign Relations at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County. His forthcoming book is called Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S. – Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968.
Allan Nairn, award-winning investigative journalist who has reported from Indonesia for years. He runs the web-blog “News and Comment" at newsc.blogspot.com.
AMY GOODMAN: We look at the reign of Suharto on this day that the Indonesian dictator has been buried with full military honors in Indonesia. Our guests are Galuh Wandita, who is the Jakarta director of International Center for Transitional Justice; Allan Nairn, investigative journalist; and Brad Simpson, assistant professor at the University of Maryland, director of the Indonesia and East Timor Documentation Project at the National Security Archives. Professor Simpson, talk to us about the documents that you have been able to acquire that link the United States and Indonesia.
BRAD SIMPSON: Well, these are documents that we have acquired that detail the thirty-two-year record of support for the dictator Suharto by successive US administrations. And we might go back even to 1965 and 1966 when Suharto came to power on the heels of one of the great massacres of modern history. And the documents that have been declassified by now, CIA and State Department documents, reveal that the United States was aware from the very first moment of the scale and scope of the massacres, that it encouraged the Indonesian army to engage in the widest possible activities to try and exterminate the Indonesian Communist Party and, in fact, told the Indonesian army that unless it destroyed the Communist Party and ousted Sukarno, the former Indonesian president, in addition to going after those who had allegedly carried out the coup attempt that brought Suharto to power, that US and Western economic assistance would not be forthcoming.
Over the succeeding years, the United States made it very clear that unless Indonesia reoriented its foreign policy towards the West, invited back foreign investors, and otherwise made itself amenable to the interests of the US and other Western governments, that it would literally cut off the Suharto regime at the knees and prevent it from coming to power. And we can look year by year, administration by administration, at some crucial moments that illustrate the degree to which the United States prioritized the stability of its relationship with Suharto over democracy, over human rights, and at the expense of the interests of the people of Indonesia and East Timor and elsewhere, as well as the interest of the American public.
And I would like to maybe briefly describe two instances, which I think detail this most effectively. The first is in 1977 during the administration of Jimmy Carter, which people recall was allegedly the human rights president. In August of 1977, then Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke traveled to Indonesia to meet with Suharto in the midst of one of the Indonesian military’s brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in East Timor in which tens of thousands of East Timorese were being slaughtered. The State Department at the time wrote—Assistant Secretary of State Holbrooke, who is now a leading advisor to the Clinton campaign—that this would be an unusual opportunity to press the case for human rights and self-determination for East Timor, if that had indeed been the US goal. Instead, once Suharto was met by Richard Holbrooke, he was praised by Holbrooke for Indonesia’s human rights improvements and was told that he in fact welcomed the steps that Indonesia had taken to open East Timor to the West, allowing a delegation of congressmen to enter the territory under strict military guard, where they were greeted by staged celebrations, welcoming the Indonesian armed forces. We might—
AMY GOODMAN: Brad Simpson, I wanted to go for a minute to Richard Holbrooke. In 1977, former US ambassador to the United Nations under Clinton was given an honorary degree. This is in 1997 at Brown University. He delivered an address about everything from Indonesia and Timor to Bosnia. Richard Holbrooke, the State Department officer in charge of East Asia when Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975. Allan Nairn questioned him shortly after his Brown University speech.
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- "Ambassador Holbrooke serves as a Board Member of AIG, Coca-Cola, AOL Time Warner and Human Genome Sciences. On the non-governmental organization side, he serves as Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin, a center for U.S.-German cultural exchange, and President/CEO of the Global Business Council on HIV/AIDS. He is also a member of the Board of Refugees International (and former Chairman), the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Endowment for Democracy, the American Museum of Natural History, the Telluride Foundation, the International Advisory Board, the Citizens Committee and the Africa-America Institute. Married to Kati Marton. [2] From the Perseus LLC web site.
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4. AIG features a number of luminaries on its board of directors & international advisory boards: “DAVE: ‘Tell us about some of the prominent people on the board of directors & international advisory boards of AIG.’LUCY: ‘Henry Kissinger chairs AIG’s International Advisory Board.Its board of directors includes William S. Cohen, Former U.S. Secretary of Defense & Senator, Caria A. Hills, Former U.S. Trade Representative,
Richard C. Holbrooke, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.’’ (Idem.)
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Members
American Friends of Bilderberg
The U.S. group is directed by Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Paul Arthur Allaire and Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke.- EXCERPT:
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