[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Obama's imperialist crew: Admiral Blair

[Patrick Bond]

Counterpunch

January 7, 2009
Obama's Bloodstained National Intelligence Chief Aided Perpetrators of 
Indonesian Massacres
Adm. Dennis Blair and the Church Killings in East Timor

By ALLAN NAIRN

Reports say that President-elect Obama wants to nominate retired Admiral 
Dennis Blair as the new United States Director of National Intelligence.

In 1999, in the midst of massacres of East Timor civilians and churches, 
Admiral Blair gave support to the perpetrators, the armed forces of 
Indonesia.

Two days after a massacre at Liquica that left flesh hanging from the 
church walls, Blair contacted the Indonesian commander, offered him US 
aid, and according to classified US cables, failed to tell him to stop 
the attacks.

Reassured by the evident support from Blair, then the US Pacific Command 
chief, the Indonesian commander, General Wiranto, escalated the attacks.

The Indonesian forces subsequently struck the Red Cross and the Bishop's 
residence, killing more than a thousand as they went, burning churches 
and raping nuns.

They were trying to derail a free election, taking place under UN 
auspices, that eventually ended Jakarta's illegal occupation of East Timor.

I disclosed the cables documenting Blair's proffers of support to Gen. 
Wiranto in a dispatch from Timor published in the September 27, 1999 
Nation magazine.

Blair did not deny the report, and when I later asked President Clinton 
about it, he also did not deny it. Instead, Clinton pleaded ignorance 
and said I'd have to ask Blair.

The Nation report is reprinted below.

(Note: Though the Indonesian military denied responsibility for the 
murders, UN and CIA reports say otherwise. One CIA cable later 
declassified at the request of Prof. Brad Simpson of the National 
Security Archives says of the Liquica massacre that "“Indonesian 
military had colluded with pro-Jakarta militia forces in events 
preceding the attack and were present in some numbers at the time of the 
killings.” It was immediately after those killings that Blair offered 
new aid to that military.)

* * *

THE NATION [US]
September 27, 1999

US Complicity in Timor

While the Indonesian military's thugs continue their rampage in East 
Timor, most foreign reporters have fled the country. As of September 7, 
frequent Nation contributor and award-winning journalist Allan Nairn was 
believed to be the only US reporter still there. Nairn left the besieged 
UN compound and walked the streets of Dili, where he hid in abandoned 
houses as he observed troops and militia burning and looting. Nairn has 
been writing about the troubles there for years. In 1991, after being 
badly beaten by Indonesian troops while witnessing the massacre of 
several hundred East Timorese, he was declared a "threat to national 
security" and banned from the country. He has entered several times 
illegally since then. In his most recent Nation dispatch from East 
Timor, on March 30, 1998, Nairn disclosed the continuing US military 
training of Indonesian troops implicated in the torture and killing of 
civilians. He filed this report by satellite telephone to The Nation 
through Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now!

--The Editors

Dili, East Timor

It is by now clear to most East Timorese and a few Westerners still left 
here that the militias are a wing of the TNI/ABRI, the Indonesian armed 
forces. Recently, for example, I was picked up by militiamen who turned 
out to be working for a uniformed colonel of the National Police. 
[Editors' note: The Indonesian government has denied any connection 
between the militias and either the police or the military.] But there 
is another important political fact that is not known here or in the 
international community. Although the US government has publicly 
reprimanded the Indonesian Army for the militias, the US military has, 
behind the scenes and contrary to Congressional intent, been backing the 
TNI.

US officials say that this past April, as militia terror escalated, a 
top US officer was dispatched to give a message to Jakarta. Adm. Dennis 
Blair, the US Commander in Chief of the Pacific, leader of all US 
military forces in the Pacific region, was sent to meet with General 
Wiranto, the Indonesian armed forces commander, on April 8. Blair's 
mission, as one senior US official told me, was to tell Wiranto that the 
time had come to shut the militia operation down. The gravity of the 
meeting was heightened by the fact that two days before, the militias 
had committed a horrific machete massacre at the Catholic church in 
Liquiça, Timor. YAYASAN HAK, a Timorese human rights group, estimated 
that many dozens of civilians were murdered. Some of the victims' flesh 
was reportedly stuck to the walls of the church and a pastor's house. 
But Admiral Blair, fully briefed on Liquiça, quickly made clear at the 
meeting with Wiranto that he was there to reassure the TNI chief. 
According to a classified cable on the meeting, circulating at Pacific 
Command headquarters in Hawaii, Blair, rather than telling Wiranto to 
shut the militias down, instead offered him a series of promises of new 
US assistance.

According to the cable, which was drafted by Col. Joseph Daves, US 
military attaché in Jakarta, Admiral Blair "told the armed forces chief 
that he looks forward to the time when [the army will] resume its proper 
role as a leader in the region. He invited General Wiranto to come to 
Hawaii as his guest in conjunction with the next round of bilateral 
defense discussions in the July-August '99 time frame. He said Pacific 
command is prepared to support a subject matter expert exchange for 
doctrinal development. He expects that approval will be granted to send 
a small team to provide technical assistance to police and...selected 
TNI personnel on crowd control measures."

Admiral Blair at no point told Wiranto to stop the militia operation, 
going the other way by inviting him to be his personal guest in Hawaii. 
Blair told Wiranto that the United States would initiate this new 
riot-control training for the Indonesian armed forces. This was quite 
significant, because it would be the first new US training program for 
the Indonesian military since 1992. Although State Department officials 
had been assured in writing that only police and no soldiers would be 
part of this training, Blair told Wiranto that, yes, soldiers could be 
included. So although Blair was sent in with the mission of telling 
Wiranto to shut the militias down, he did the opposite.

Indonesian officers I spoke to said Wiranto was delighted by the 
meeting. They took this as a green light to proceed with the militia 
operation. The only reference in the classified cable to the militias 
was the following: "Wiranto was emphatic: as long as East Timor is an 
integral part of the territory of Indonesia, Armed Forces have 
responsibility to maintain peace and stability in the region. Wiranto 
said the military will take steps to disarm FALINTIL pro-independence 
group concurrently with the WANRA militia force. Admiral Blair reminded 
Wiranto that fairly or unfairly the international community looks at 
East Timor as a barometer of progress for Indonesian reform. Most 
importantly, the process of change in East Timor could proceed 
peacefully, he said."

So that was it. No admonition. When Wiranto referred to disarming the 
WANRA force, he was talking about another militia force, different from 
the one that was staging attacks on Timorese civilians. When word got 
back to the State Department that Blair had said these things in a 
meeting, an "eyes only" cable was dispatched from the State Department 
to Ambassador Stapleton Roy at the embassy in Jakarta. The thrust of 
this cable was that what Blair had done was unacceptable and that it 
must be reversed. As a result of that cable from Washington to Roy, a 
corrective phone call was arranged between General Wiranto and Admiral 
Blair. That call took place on April 18.

I have the official report on that phone call, which was written by 
Blair's aide, Lieut. Col. Tom Sidwell. According to the account of the 
call and according to US military officials I spoke to, once again Blair 
failed to tell Wiranto to shut the militias down. In fact, Blair instead 
permitted Wiranto to make, in essence, a political speech saying the 
same thing he had said before. Here is one passage from the account: 
"General Wiranto denies that TNI and the police supported any one group 
during the incidents"--meaning during the military attacks. "General 
Wiranto will go to East Timor tomorrow to emphasize three 
things:...Timorese, especially the two disputing groups, to solve the 
problem peacefully with dialogue; 2) encourage the militia to disarm; 3) 
make the situation peaceful and solve the problem." At no point did 
Blair demand that the militias be shut down, and in fact this call was 
followed by escalating militia violence and increases in concrete, new 
US military assistance to Indonesia, including the sending in of a US 
Air Force trainer just weeks ago to train the Indonesian Air Force.

Allan Nairn writes the blog News and Comment at www.newsc.blogspot.com .