Colonel Towner-Watkins: The CIA Files Part 12 | Regime Change In Indonesia & The Mountain Of Gold

[00:00:00]Welcome to part 12 of the CIA files. I'm Ben Kellerin. Today we have the colonel back on to talk with us about Indonesia and the attempted coup that happened there in the uh 50s and um how that kind of resolved in the end. And we're also going to be uh talking about the Grassburg mine and the mountain of gold and um some stories about what actually was going on there. I think it's going to be pretty interesting. I'll uh have to relink that episode that I kind of talked about a while back about the history of that mine, but it's uh definitely an interesting story. We'll maybe get some extra context context on that at the end. But Colonel, thanks for coming back on.

[00:00:35]>> Thanks for having me. So, I want to start off by um [snorts] telling people kind of the the preface of the the show.

[00:00:45]So, in many of these um research projects that I've done in finding out about all of these coups and CIA activities, um it's not been an easy journey. Um Indonesia was probably one of the hardest ones because I got kind of the nuts and bolts of what we're going to talk about today. and it's a good overview from William Bloom's book um that's Killing Hope and he just kind of chronologically goes through all of the CIA's um coups which is kind of the format that we're following but Indonesia was so intriguing to me that and for every one of them I get alternative sources because I never take one author's interpretation of an event and so I started digging around about Indonesia especially this 1950s attempted coup because it was not successful. Um, and you find almost no information about it. But I did find an author um that was an Australian professor that went to live in Indonesia to research not only this attempted coup, but the actual successful one that occurs a decade later and in the 1960s.

[00:02:00]And so I was like, great, that's another book.

[00:02:04]I can just buy the book and I'll read it. The problem was you can't buy the book in the United States. And I started searching internationally for it. And the only copy that was available was like over $300 when you did the conversion and it was in Indonesia. And then you had to, you know, contact it, give them your credit card, which who who knows what's going on in Indonesia, and then pay for the shipping for it to come back to the United States. And that made me even more interested in researching um about Indonesia. So Bridget um the woman that has helped me with a lot of my research contacted the professor, got his email and so him and I started emailing back and forth and I was explaining to him what I was trying to do and he sent me a copy of the book.

[00:02:52]Um and so a lot of my other knowledge um outside of William Bloom's book comes from his book. interesting tidbit he shared with me is that when he was living in Indonesia to do the research for this book, he lived in the house next door to the house that Barack Obama lived in with his mother in the 1960s because her um the satero guy that she married was a colonel in the army that successfully overthrew Sukarno, who we're going to talk about today. So, he was part of the CIA coup while Barack Obama's mother was working for USAID, which is a CIA front.

[00:03:42]And there you have it. So, >> and then 40, 50 years later, you get the Manurion candidate. So, >> yes, exactly. So, born and bred, his dad was brought over from Kenya on a CIA scholarship. I mean, literally, he was created by the CIA. Weren't there uh connections to uh Zaron Mandani too between the Obama family and Mandani?

[00:04:04]>> Well, Mandami was his dad was brought over on a very similar um CIA front scholarship um for education as well.

[00:04:14]So, yes.

[00:04:14]>> It wasn't like they knew each other or had some >> existing relationship. I thought I had seen something like that, but I could be.

[00:04:22]>> I don't have any proof of that, but a that entire click of African future leaders um wereworked together via the CIA. So, there is a high probability that part of it is true. I just don't have any evidence of it.

[00:04:37]>> Mhm. [clears throat] >> Okay. So, where we left off um last week was with the Guatemalan successful coup.

[00:04:45]Everybody's riding a high. Um, and what we're not going to talk about that happens between the 1954 Guatemalan coup and where we're going today is the CIA tried to overthrow Costa Rica. They basically bought the um leadership in Syria um and they did several other ventures in the Middle East. um they were smaller type things. Um but the Indonesia is significant for many reasons. Number one, it was a failure.

[00:05:21]Um and it caused a lot of consternation inside the CIA for exactly how it failed. Um and it failed spectacularly as you're going to see. Um so they did a lot of lessons learned about this one which is what makes it worth talking about. um as opposed to just going to the successful one that happened in the 1960s. So anyway, um it's critical um to go through these in the details we're going to because of the pattern recognition to what's going on today.

[00:05:56]So, prior to World War II, and I got this information from that um Australian professor's book, prior to World War II in the 1930s, Indonesia is a Dutch colony, right? And the Dutch and some American um primarily the Rockefellers were doing a lot of exploration in the Indonesian area. So on two different exploratory trips, the Rockefellers discover oil and gold as does the Dutch.

[00:06:32]And there's a lot of competition for colonial assets, if you will. So, what they found in Indonesia in the 1930s was this massive um mountain of gold, like pure gold. Not like normal mountains where you have a whole bunch of ore and other things mixed in. It was described as literally a mountain of gold. And it wasn't normal gold. It was very, very pure gold of the highest quality. And they also found oil. And they didn't find just any oil.

[00:07:04]They didn't find Venezuelan oil that requires excessive processing. They found the purest oil that they had ever discovered to date. Oil that did not even need to be refined. It could be used um right out of the ground, which of course cuts all of your cost. And so the Dutch was busy doing other things.

[00:07:27]It was a Dutch colony. There's no um pressing need to go in and start extracting those. Not that they hadn't already started the oil piece of it, but the the mountain itself had not been mined. They just knew it was in their portfolio, if you will. So, after World War II, where this independence movement is um rapidly spreading across the globe and um the colonial powers are giving up their colonies, the Dutch refused to give up Indonesia because they already knew what was sitting in Indonesia. Um so there's a lot of struggle going on and um what comes to pass is and like in the Congo and several other places which we'll talk about in the future, they wanted to control who got elected during the first um election of their former colonies and they did a lot of really dirty tricks in order to try to get the person that they could control into power under basically a fake election.

[00:08:31]Not that they do that now, but [laughter] um so anyway, Sucarno gets elected as the um um president, prime minister of Indonesia and Sucarno is a nationalist. He is a threat to these people. um and they immediately um start um discussions about how they're going to get rid of him. So um he also kind of went way off the reservation when he started talking to other non-aligned countries. if I would call it the um equivalent of the bricks today. People that were um flexing their um autonomy and not going to be locked into this east and west fight. That made him very dangerous because not only was he a non-aligned person, he was actively um setting up conferences for other non-aligned to talk to each other and again very very dangerous to the oligarchs that want this one world order. So um you can imagine that he definitely had a target on his back. I want to read a quote. Um, this is from Frank Wisner. Frank Wisner is the guy that works for Allan Dulles in his it he did all covert operations.

[00:10:11]Quote, I think it's time we held Sakarno's feet to the fire.

[00:10:17]So that's his entree into, hey, we're going to take you out.

[00:10:24]>> That's before they get to the plane crashes, right?

[00:10:26]>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um that was in 1956.

[00:10:31]Whisner was speaking of the man that led Indonesia since their struggle for independence from the uh Dutch following the war. A few months earlier in May, Sucarno had made an impassioned speech before the US Congress asking for more understanding of the problems and the needs of development at developing nations. What he basically said to Congress is I have a lot of factions in my country. Um, and probably now's a good time to show the map of Indonesia.

[00:11:08]Indonesia is an archipelago and it has like thousands of islands and those islands um make up their own kind of tribal infrastructure. So it would be like hurting cats. Um, and what he was asking is for support in trying to transition them from a colony of the Dutch into a functioning country. Um, and so you can see um it goes from all the way to the Papy New Guinea. Um, it starts at the top of Somatra. It goes all the way down um the Somatra is the first island um on the left and then it goes all the way down to the main island where Jakarta is because Jakarta is their capital and then it goes all the way over and you can see some of the bigger islands up in the middle there.

[00:12:09]Um yeah, it it is a huge huge undertaking and it would be like um trying to take all of Africa and make it one country with all of the tribes.

[00:12:27]Um >> and that uh and using the technology at the time too. It's not like you had a cell phone or any of the stuff that we have today for communications. It was I mean jungles and I mean yeah very remote areas.

[00:12:40]>> Yes. And um there had been entire um villages that were set up by expacts of different countries that had came down there especially during the um Chinese war. There's a lot of Chinese um uh hereditarily um from um mainland China there during their civil war. So it's a mixed bag at best. Um, and the closer you get to Australia, um, the more um, remote it gets.

[00:13:12]And you see they're just north of Australia.

[00:13:16]So very very um, tumultuous uh, undertaking that Sarno had. And of course, we just set the ground for you.

[00:13:26]The US is not going to be helpful to them in any way. They're going to thwart every single attempt that Sucarno makes at trying to create a cohesive um government there. So the almost immediately after he um talks to Congress, there's a an American campaign set up to unseat him and he is in charge. Just to put it in perspective, Indonesia at the time was the fifth most populous country in the world. It was huge.

[00:14:06]Um so the previous year Sakarno had organized what was called the um Bandura conference as an answer to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization. And you can think of it's called STO. You can think of it as NATO. um it was set up under the same opaces of NATO in order to coersse all of the Asian countries into this treaty organization to be controlled by the west.

[00:14:38]Um Sukarno does not want to be part of STO. He wants his autonomy. He's a nationalist. Um so the opaces just like with NATO was to say hey we don't want any communist countries in Asia. um that same um mantra. So b um the bandono um doctrine was of neutrality. They proclaimed as the faith of the underdeveloped world. To the men of the CIA, Indonesia, this conference was heresy. So they're going to start sabotaging it.

[00:15:22]And if you fast forward to 1975, when the Senate was doing their investigation of all of the nefarious things that the CIA had done, um they heard testimony that agency officers stationed in the East Asian country of Indonesia had suggested that an East Asian leader be assassinated to quote unquote disrupt an impending communist country in 1955.

[00:15:54]They don't name the country, but there's no other country that was setting up a conference um during that time except for Sukarno.

[00:16:08]So, um, supposedly they said during their 75 testimony cuz it still had not been disclosed that we attempted to overthrow the government in 1956 that cooler heads had prevailed and they didn't do it. But they did, as you're going to see. So, they blatantly lied about what they were doing in Indonesia.

[00:16:34]Now, going back to that time frame, a plane carrying eight members of a delegation um that had at least two European journalists on it going to that conference crashed.

[00:16:48]Everybody um said, "Oh my gosh, it must have been a a mechanical failure." But it was not.

[00:16:56]um the Chinese government um claimed that it was an act of sabotage carried out by Taiwan and the United States. Now again, you have to understand Taiwan is um basically an underling of the CIA.

[00:17:11]Shank Kaishek is the the opium drug lord of the world at the time, providing 80% of the world's opium. And um so they believe that there was supposed to be an actual leader on that plane that was um blown up and they did later on. Um there was a chartered Air Asia plane. That's the plane that was taking off from Hong Kong. Hong Kong at the time of course is owned by the UK.

[00:17:46]So it crashed in the South China Sea and um the Chinese government citing what it said were press reports in the Times of India stated that the crash was caused by two bombs being placed aboard the aircraft in Hong Kong and that there was a mechanism that was actually discovered in the wreckage that was the detonator for it. So the British police in Hong Kong announced that they were seeking a Chinese nationalist meaning a Taiwanese to um that they believe behind the bombing. So it was confirmed that the aircraft was blown up and that these people were prevented from attending the SANO arranged conference as a result.

[00:18:39]And that this is critical to understanding how the CIA operates.

[00:18:43]People like to say, "Oh, it's all MSAD or it's all the CIA." It's not. They work as a collective. This is basically a payback for the CIA overthrowing Iran um in 1953. You're only 3 years out from that. Not not even three. Um this is 55.

[00:19:00]This is 2 years later. And they work collectively like that in order to orchestrate this terror um in order to thwart independent leaders. And that's critical to understanding how this whole mechanism works. They work as a collective like a cartel.

[00:19:18]>> Yeah, I do I do want to jump in and ask kind of a question on like the kind of plane crash side of things. Um, obviously this is kind of one of the first big ones we talked about, maybe second, but um it definitely becomes a pattern over the next several decades.

[00:19:32]What do you think is kind of the reason for like that being one of their preferred methods to take out world leaders and um figures like that as far as like hey if you're going to go after someone like send the jackals after him as uh economic hitman likes to call it right why is uh why does it seem to be plane crashes a lot at least in this time period >> bec well um because at again back to your point this is 1950 the technology of, you know, putting aircrafts back together, doing research as to what's causing the crash is antiquated. Um, it was very easy to pass off a bomb explosion um uh as an accident, as mechanical failure. I mean, we saw that in um a few years later when in the 1960s when they blew up a plane that was carrying a guy by the name of Mate back to um Italy after renegotiation for the country of Italy's gas and oil in Africa supplies. They blew up his aircraft. He was buried. It was all a mechanical failure. And when Operation Gladio got exposed in Italy, they went back and dug up his body and confirmed that it was an explosion because they're using new technology now. And they found the bomb uh fragments embedded in his wedding ring, his gold band. And so at the time it was a very convenient way to dispose of people um because again you have people embedded in these government investigative bodies um that just claim it's mechanical failure. Write it off and the entire plane's gone. Um, it's funny because I just did a show on a a different thing about the um we we were covering a book called the Medusa Files about the TWWA800 aircraft off the coast of the United States. And we were told that was a mechanical failure. And as it turns out, um, when you go through that, that book is written by a police guy who was, um, in, um, military that did investigative type things. And he basically conclusively proves there was a missile launched. And it is still today on record. That wasn't that long ago. um it's still on record today um categorized as a mechanical failure and it 100% was not a mechanical failure. Um so it is a very convenient way of killing a whole bunch of people.

[00:22:14]>> Yeah, I think uh it it's interesting to see like how the technologies changed and how that kind of impacts some of the stuff. I'm guessing uh they're a lot more partial to what heart attack and some of these different methods nowadays. But um yeah.

[00:22:30]>> Yeah. Very aggressive cancer, too.

[00:22:33]>> Yeah. That are clot shots. But um anyway, I'll I'll try to derail us anymore here, but I figured uh that that would be a question people would be interested to hear about.

[00:22:42]>> Oh, that's a great question. Um in 1967, there was a book that appeared in India.

[00:22:49]It was called I was a CIA agent in India. It was written by John Drisco Smith. He was an American. And it was published by what was referred to as the Communist Party of um India. It was based on articles that had wr been written by Smith um after he defected to the Soviet Union in 1960.

[00:23:17]And in 1926, he had wrote that he had been a communications technician and code clerk at the US embassy in um well he didn't write it. He was born in 1926. Sorry about that. Total mistake on my part. Um he was a code clerk in the US embassy in India in 1955 which is around that time frame. and he was performing tasks for the CIA. One of those tasks, he said, was to deliver a package to a Chinese nationalist, which Smith later learned contained the two timers for the bombs that were used to blow up that Indian aircraft.

[00:24:01]There had been some contention, of course, mainly by the CIA, that he didn't know what he was talking about, but his employment in the US embassy was confirmed. He worked there from 1955 to 1959, and that was verified by the State Department's own registry.

[00:24:22]So, he definitely was there.

[00:24:26]So, also going back to that 1975 Senate Committee report, there was a quote, "Receive some evidence of CIA involvement in plans to assess assassinate President Sukarno of Indonesia," unquote, and that the planning had proceeded to the point of identifying an agent whom it was believed to have been recruited for the job. The committee noted that at one time those in the CIA who were concerned about the possibility of assassinations and appropriate methods were known internally.

[00:25:05]You can't even make this up. They called this thing the health alteration committee.

[00:25:14]That was their name for the assassin squads. Health alteration committee.

[00:25:19]Does it get any or more Orwellian than that?

[00:25:24]>> Yeah. [laughter] >> All right. And and that's very important to naming of congressional bills and everything else, you know, um the Affordable Care Act. They do this with everything. It's like a joke among themselves.

[00:25:41]Um they called the Office of P the USAD's Office of Public Safety. um it was actually a kidnap, torture and assassination crew. It was had nothing to do with public safety. So they do this all the time. It's a ongoing pattern if you will.

[00:26:01]Okay. So to add to the concern of the American leaders in the 1950s, Sucarno had made multiple trips to not just the United States, but to the Soviet Union and to China. he was going to try to play all of them against each other for the benefit of Indonesia as would any national leader um who's trying to pull all of the factions that he has under him together. So he had purchased arms from Bulgaria um which sometimes was and sometime wasn't in compliance with the Soviet Union. They did a lot of things that um the Soviet Union absolutely did not want to be involved in. So sometimes the Soviet Union didn't even consider Bulgaria part of them um because he kept pissing them off. But um he did buy arms from them. Um and that's going to be important because that furthers the CIA's um uh dialogue that there are quote unquote he's under the communist influence which becomes very important to the story. Um as it did for every one of their coups during that time as we've proven. So, um, he also was starting to nationalize much of the private holdings from the former Dutch Empire, um, to bring it under the control of the government, which would be a natural thing because it's their resources. But the most disturbing, according to the CIA, was the fact that there was actually an Indonesian Communist Party like we found in many of the others. The difference actually though is according to the professor's book, it was a viable party, but like the others, it was primarily focused on union organizing. It was a workers party. Um and thus um it because some of the islands that was the primary party because they had mining or they had some other industry that had been unionized because they had been exploited in the past as a colony. So it was a force and it was a much bigger force than um Iran and where we didn't find any of them at all in Guatemala. So to be fair, it was a force there to be reckoned with. So the CIA readily admitted, as did the State Department, that Sukarna was absolutely not a communist. He had no communist leanings at all. He was a nationalist. They all acknowledged that.

[00:28:43]Who had crushed the Communist Party in his 1948 secession to power. Um, so when the Dutch decided they were going to um formally make that a country, they actually had kind of a minor civil war of waring factions, as you would imagine, because they're made up of a whole bunch of different islands. Um, Sukarno had crushed them. Um, and so he was definitely flexing his muscle um, and trying to control that faction of the country. Um, so the of course the US's um, uh, proposition to him before they gave him any aid or arms or anything else is that no part of the PKI, which was what their party was called, could be in the um, government at all. And you can't do that because you had an entire islands that were the PKI dominant party. So you had to include them if you're going to have an inclusive um government. So of course he like um uh uh Mosedc in Iran said, "No, I'm not going to do that. I have to have them in my government. I can control them." Um so Carno's actual quote, "I can't and won't ride a three-legged horse."

[00:30:10]That's [clears throat] his words. Okay.

[00:30:13]So that's not going to work in Washington.

[00:30:19]They decided that immediately word goes out to all the media. It's a crisis.

[00:30:26]There's total chaos in Indonesia um to build up the mechanism to um inter intervene in Indonesia.

[00:30:38]And in 1955 during the national election in Indonesia, the CIA had been given a million dollars to fund the opposing party. It it was described by the CIA as a centrist coalition of Muslim organizations because Indonesia's primarily Muslim country.

[00:31:02]um they did it in order to try to defeat Sukarno's nationalist party. They failed. And according to a former CIA officer, Joseph Burkeholder Smith, the project provided for a complete write off of the funds. In other words, they had no clue where those funds went. Kind of like what we see today when we just dole out all that money to Ukraine and we have no clue where it went. Same thing happened in 1957. The CIA decided that the situation called for direct action. It was difficult to find an Indonesia an Indonesian colleague um that they could then promote that was satisfactory to army officers. Um the army officers primarily were uh loyal to Sucarno. Um and that's what they like to do. They like to install a military dictatorship. Um they found a few derelcts um primarily on the island of um uh Sumatra. Um so that was going to be their um focal point for the um destabilization.

[00:32:20]The military operation the CIA was opting for this time was the largest they'd ever done and it necessitated the Pentagon to be roped into this entire thing. Now, of course, the Pentagon is told that they're battling communist, that everybody in um Indonesia is a communist and Sukarno is a communist, and therefore um that was kind of what got briefed at the National Security Council to the Pentagon to warrant their involvement. They know this is not true.

[00:32:53]>> The Pentagon knows it's not true.

[00:32:56]>> No, >> the C the CIA knows it, but the Pentagon is >> correct. They're told unequivocally, we're going into, you know, the whole containment philosophy.

[00:33:07]>> Yeah.

[00:33:08]>> Um, yeah.

[00:33:09]>> I guess as a a side question, is there a point in history where the Pentagon kind of figures out at the highest levels that the CIA is basically just making up as it goes along?

[00:33:20]>> Well, that's an interesting question. Do I have any proof of that? No. Um, I can tell you unequivocally, um, sitting at a four-star command on 911 that what was briefed and there's a CIA liaison sitting in a chair in the general the four-star general staff meeting and there's an FBI guy there that's a liaison officer. Um, what was briefed after 9/11 was exactly what you guys were told nationwide that there's a bunch of, you know, Bin Laden um, Muslim terrorists that attacked the United States.

[00:34:03]>> Yeah, it's definitely not Israel and it's definitely not Saudi Arabia.

[00:34:07]>> Um, yeah. So, now again, this is hindsight.

[00:34:14]Do I think that as a four-star general during your grooming process, because for those who are not from a military background, everything changes after you make colonel. Everything um the schools you go to, the groups you're invited into, all of that stuff. There's a lot of military at the CFR. Um, there's a lot of military representatives in different forums like Bilderberg and that type of thing. Do I think that there is a group of senior military officers like the Millies um that was calling China saying, "Hey, I'll tip you off." Um, do I think there's a group of those types of people that are sedicious, if not treasonous? Yes, I do.

[00:35:01]Um because you cannot and the the one that's the most glaring to me is General Richardson. It's a female general that was in charge of Southcom that um on a briefing that was covered nationwide says that her job is to ensure Latin America is receptive of US business interest.

[00:35:29]That is not your job.

[00:35:31]That's not your job as a military officer. That's not your job as as and she was sitting in the Southcom which is the Latin America um combatant commander. That is not your job.

[00:35:43]And so do I think that um by their own um words they know exactly why they're there? Yes. Um but that is not um known primarily. Now, I do know in the intelligence world, um, as we're seeing play out right now, that and and it happened to General Flynn when he was at DIA, um, he understood what the basis of of al-Qaeda and ISIS were, even if he didn't know that they were created by the CIA. He knew what their um capabilities were. and his comment to Congress which got him fired was that they are not a JV team. They are to because that was the mantra of the Obama administration and his um resistance to go along with the narrative that was coming out of the CIA got him fired.

[00:36:42]And that is what happens to senior officers when you don't go along with the CIA's intelligence.

[00:36:50]So um you're walking a very um sharp edge of a sword um in that community that you either go along or you will be discarded. Um and you we see what happened to him. I mean he was persecuted um falsely um arrested and all that other stuff. So they have means to back up if you get off the reservation.

[00:37:18]So, my medical retirement may have dodged a bullet there [laughter] because I would not have been one of the go-along people.

[00:37:26]Okay, so we talked about this is going to be the biggest operation they've ever ran. Um, so they start briefing. Now, anytime the CIA uses the military, it has to be vetted through the National Security Council. um otherwise they use their proxies and their covert paramilitary capability and they keep the military completely out of it. But if you're going to have military forces, it has to be briefed at the National Security Council. And it's called the special group. It has had many different names over the years. Each president calls it something else. Um, if you run across the 5412, the 5412, that was named after the National Security Action Memorandum that was passed to create um the mechanisms for the um uh National Security Council. It was called the 5412 committee. It's been called the 303 committee. It's been it called the 40 committee and the operations advisory group. All of those things are the exact same thing. It is a group to review paramilitary operations, covert paramilitary operations that involve the Pentagon and the CIA. Um, so this did get briefed. There are declassified documents that talk about this whole thing now. Um, that has finally been released. The manner in which the agency went about obtaining approval is a textbook example of how the CIA sometimes determines American foreign policy. Joseph Burke Holder Smith who was in charge of the AY's Indonesian desk in Washington in mid 1956 to early 1958. So it included this entire period described the process in his memoirs instead of proposing the plan to Washington for approval where um premature mention might get it shot down. Instead, what they do is they begin to feed State Department, defense department, media, think tanks information for [clears throat] them to build anar a narrative. And that's why these NOS's are so critical in these think tanks. They do all of the policy papers, they do reports, they build up this entire ground swell, and it's all controlled by the CIA.

[00:39:48]um to understand Indonesia. Um basically all they're doing is propaganda to build a narrative to justify what the foreign policy is they're going to go ahead and do.

[00:40:01]So when you read through these reports that were written during the time and I've read several of them um it was basically um to use um the suggestion that they were going to co-opt a whole bunch of colonels that were disloyal to Sucarno to challenge his power.

[00:40:29]There was a method of operation which became the basis of many of the political action adventures from this one on. Um this one really set the um new um not just kind of go in and blow them away. Um the whole propaganda thing in the United States.

[00:40:51]So, in other words, the statements were all false that the the um the CIA actually um fed all of this stuff. We're going to see the same thing happen in Chile in 1973.

[00:41:06]Um, so the special group, um, in many instances, we made the action programs up ourselves after we had quote unquote collected intelligence to make them appear like it required the circumstances that they wanted to project forward. So when the Communist Party did well again in local elections in July, that just fed to this entire narrative. The CIA viewed it as a great help in convincing Washington authorities just how serious the situation was. The only person who did not seem terribly alarmed at the PKI victories was Ambassador Allison. And this again is critical to this story.

[00:41:55]Allison understood because he understood Indonesian culture what was going on.

[00:42:01]It's just labor. It's not that big of a deal.

[00:42:04]This was um all that the CIA needed to convince John Foster Dallas because Allan Dles is the CIA director at the time. John Foster is his um brother sitting in State Department. So Allan Dles picks up the phone and says that ambassador is going to be a problem for us when we do the coup. We need to get him out of there. Um so John Foster Dallas um tells John Allison that hey you're going to get a new job and they replace him with someone that was approved by the CIA by the name of Howard Jones.

[00:42:45]He was very interested in overthrowing the Sakarna government. And you're going to see um another pattern that the ambassadors like we saw with the guy in Guatemala, they are part of this operation. There is no separation between state and the CIA when it comes to these kind of operations. Um and some of the same ambassadors show up coup after coup after coup. So on 30 November 1957, several hand grenades are tossed at Sukarno. as he's leaving a school. He escapes injury, but 10 people are killed and 48 children are injured. Now, of course, the CIA immediately says they have no idea who's responsible for doing that. Um, it just so happens to be in the middle of their attempted overthrow of the government. So, um, coincidentally, it just so coincidentally had a propaganda campaign already ready to put out the story that the PKI, the communists, were behind it.

[00:43:50]And they basically blamed saying the PKKI had been ordered by the Soviet Union to assassinate Sucarno.

[00:44:03]And after all that I just told you, does that make any sense at all?

[00:44:08]If >> I I do wonder when you hear some of these things like at what point do they just start kicking out the US embassy?

[00:44:13]Like >> and they have in some cases. I mean, they did it in Venezuela. They did it in Bolivia. Um in some cases they kick out USAD. I mean Putin um kicked out USAD.

[00:44:27]Xi kicked out USAID after the TMN square. Um because that was a George Soros fiasco that had nothing to do with what they say it was at all. The whole thing was orchestrated. So um they do get smart at some point. But Sukarno is not at that point yet. Um so as it turns out it was a Muslim group. Oh, you mean the one that was paid a million dollars?

[00:44:54]Yes. That same group by the CIA that orchestrated that. Um, so there you have it.

[00:45:02]So the issue of Sucarno's um supposed hand and glove relationship with communists was pushed at every opportunity both inside [clears throat] the United States and around the world.

[00:45:16]the CIA decided to make um to create reports that um a good-looking blonde stewardist that had been aboard Sucarno's aircraft everywhere when he went on trips inside the Soviet Union was basically his mistress and they started touting this entire idea that Sucarno was promiscuous. Um whether or not he was I don't know. Um, but that became the new propaganda campaign that he was a womanizing person. And so they get the brilliant idea that they're going to be able to trap him. Um, and that supposedly the propaganda at the time was this Soviet agent that's pretending to be a stewardist is has trapped him and has him under her control. Okay? And as a matter of fact, that he's probably being blackmailed as a result of that. Now, why would the CIA suggest that unless that's exactly what they do? Um, so this formed the foundation of um what Smith, the CIA guy, said um a new plan they had and this is a quote. We had as a matterof fact considerable success with this theme. It appeared in the press around the world. And when Roundtable, the serious British quarterly of international affairs, came to analyze the Indonesian revolt in March of 1958 issue. It listed Sucarno being blackmailed by a Soviet female spy as one of the reasons that caused this uprising. Now, that's not what caused it. It's the CIA attempted coup, but that's what they passed it off as is the people were revoling um against his pro pr promiscuity.

[00:47:05]So, the success of this operation inspired CIA officers in Washington to carry it a little further.

[00:47:13]A substantial effort was made to come up with a pornographic film that could be passed off as Sucarno and his Russian girlfriend engaged in sexual activity.

[00:47:26]when scrutiny of available porno films supplied by the chief of police of Los Angeles failed to turn up, a couple um that could pass for Sucarno who was dark and bald and a beautiful blonde Russian woman, the CIA um decided that they were going to produce their own film. So they >> and they never got out of business since. Sorry. Correct.

[00:47:54]>> But they >> Yeah, they created a mask, a like state-of-the-art mask that looked like Sucarno and had this guy in a porno film um basically assumed the identity of a foreign head of state having sex in a movie. Then they took a bunch of steel frames of it and in walks one of the CIA's favorite proxies, Robert Mayhew, Robert Mayhew, you will hear us talk about in the future. He's a former FBI agent who was the liaison of the CIA with Howard Hughes. He was basically Howard Hughes's um right-hand man during this time frame. So, um, Mayhew's film starred an actor that resembled Sucarno.

[00:48:50]In other parts of the world at um, during this time frame, the CIA has done better in this line of work, having produced sex films of targets and subjected them to blackmail. Some of them were lured into CIA safe houses by CIA female agents.

[00:49:17]In 1960, Colonel Truman Smith, a US retired Army officer, um, writing in Reader Digest about the KGB, declared, quote, "It is difficult for most of us to appreciate its menace, as its methods are so debased as um to be all that beyond the comprehension of any normal person with a sense of right and wrong. He's basically saying this is what the KGB does knowing it's exactly what the CIA does. So whatever they do, they project on others. Um so in the Reader Digest. No. And I mean for those of you who don't know, back in the day that was like the thing to read every month. Um, so one other thing that's not in um William Bloom's depiction that's in the um Australian professor um book, they actually hired a prostitute in Los Angeles, assigned a female CIA handler to her, flew her to Indonesia during this big conference that they were having there for her to try to have sex with Sucarno and film it while they were there.

[00:50:39]So, it doesn't just stop with one or two things. It's a constant um bombardment of these types of operations when you've been targeted.

[00:50:50]So, um anyway, in November of 1957, um the CIA's paramilitary machine was put into gear because all everything else fell.

[00:51:04]In this undertaking, as with others, the agency enjoyed the advantage of the US military empire. Headquarters for the operation was in Singapore, courtesy of the British. They use their training bases to set up um paramilitary training camps. They also used the Philippines.

[00:51:24]This is another ongoing theme for Asia operations um using the Philippines. So they used um remote islands in the Philippines to set up set up terrorist training camps. They take the people out of Somatra prim primarily but they were from other islands as well. They um flew them some of them went on ship to the Philippines and trained them to basically be paramilitary terrorist against their own country. Um, air strips were laid out in various parts of the Pacific to prepare for bomber and transport missions. Indonesians along with Filipinos, Taiwanese, and Americans were all recruited as soldiers of fortune, paramilitary people. Um, they were also trained in Okinawa and the Philippines um was used as the arms and equipment depot for the entire operation.

[00:52:21]um the CIA's most ambitious military operation to date. Tens of thousands of people were trained and equipped by the US Army. They brought them back into Somatra on both um aircraft and US Navy submarines and ships. Um they put over the beach parties ashore with supplies and communication equipment. The US Air Force set up a considerable air transport force to airdrop thousands of weapons deep into Indonesian territory and a fleet of at least 15 B-26 bombers were made available to um set up a bombing campaign.

[00:53:07]In the early months of 1958, the the rebellion began to break out in one part of Indonesian's island chain, primarily Somatra. Um but it it spread to others.

[00:53:19]Um CIA pilots took to the air to carry out bombing and strafing missions in support of the rebels, their rebels. In Washington, Colonel Alex Quan Guano John, a Indonesian military ates was persuaded by the CIA to defect. He soon showed up in Indonesia to take charge of the rebel forces. Yet, as the fighting dragged on into spring, the insurgents proved unable to win any despite decisive victories or to take the offensive. Although the CIA bombing raids were taking their toll, Somatra um especially in Somatra, Sucarno later claimed that on a Sunday morning in April, a bomb a plane bombed a ship in the harbor of one of their islands and all of the the people aboard it was a civilian ship. Um they all were killed.

[00:54:18]They also hit churches. Um they demolished buildings and killed everybody inside.

[00:54:24]They stated um he stated that over 700 casualties occurred within like a two-day period of time. Um all civilian.

[00:54:36]On May 15th, um the CIA plan plane bombed a marketplace, killing a large number of civilians on their way to church. um on a um church holiday, the Indonesian government had to act to suppress public demonstrations. So, what's really important about this part of it is that um unlike Guatemala where that those bombing campaigns were going on and um the Guatemalan president didn't want to um have that large death toll and basically threw in the towel. Sucarno is not going to do that. He is going to fight fire with fire. Um, three days later during another bombing run, a CIA pilot by the name of Allan Lawrence Pope was shot down and captured. He was 30 years old from Florida. Pope had flown over 55 night missions over um uh in Korea during the 1950 to 53 Korean War for the Air Force. Later he spent two months flying um for the CIA um in support of the French at Ben Benfu. So he is both a military pilot at one point and a CIA um asset agent contract pilot.

[00:56:07]Um now his luck had run out. He spent four years as a prisoner in Indonesia before Sucarno accepted a request from Robert Kennedy for his release. Pope, and this is a very important story. Pope was captured carrying a set of incriminating documents, including those that established him not only as a pilot for the United States Air Force, but also a CIA asset flying for the Civil Air Transport, which is CAT is a CIA front company.

[00:56:42]So, I want everybody to understand when you go on one of these missions as a pilot, you are strip searched. You are put into like what you when you're arrested here where they take all your clothes off and you know do a cavity search or whatever. That's what you go through. Um because deniability is the number one thing for these missions.

[00:57:06]They want you to have no documents whatsoever on your body um in your possession that in any way indicates that you're CIA.

[00:57:17]He not only had his CIA documentation, he had his military documentation with him. His position, as he later said, was that he knew damn good and well, if he did not have that, he was dead because he's just some job blow pilot. But he knew if he had it, he was an asset to the foreign government for embarrassing and, you know, being able to hold him up. They're not going to kill him. In other words, yeah.

[00:57:50]>> Is going to be a very valuable asset.

[00:57:53]And that speaks volumes about what your government will do to you and what some people will do to themselves by contracting with these nefarious people.

[00:58:04]Um even though again these people are all told what they're doing is to fight communism, right? They have no idea they're just going to knock somebody off because he's not a communist. They just don't like him and they want the golden oil.

[00:58:18]>> Yeah. So it uh turns out it's not a no man left behind type approach.

[00:58:24]>> Yeah. So um in order to make himself a valuable commodity, he somehow I don't I don't want to know what cavity he put them in. I don't know, but he had the documentation. Um somehow he was able to do that. The Indonesian government um derived immediate material concessions from the US as a result of this incident. Sucarno was smart enough to wait.

[00:58:50]He did not immediately come out and say, "Hey, we got one of your boys." He waited long enough for every official in Washington DC to make official statements.

[00:59:04]And on May 27th, the pilot and his documentation was presented to the world at a news conference, thus contradicting every single official statement.

[00:59:19]And that's so here's what Eisenhower said on 30 April before all of the stuff was released. quote, "Our policy is one of careful neutrality and proper deportment all the way through so as not to be taking sides where it is none of our business."

[00:59:43]He authorized the basic overthrow of Indonesia and he is lying his ass off to the American people. All right, let me tell you another one. In a nine May editorial in the New York Times, this is a quote. It is unfortunate that high officials of the Indonesian government has given further circulation to the false report that the US government was sanctioning aid to Indonesians rebels.

[01:00:11]Not sanctioning aid, they're freaking killing them and trained them and equipped them. The position of the United States government has been made plain again and again. The Secretary of State, John Foster Dolls, was emphatic in his declaration that this country would not deviate from a correct neutrality. The United States is not ready in step to step in and help overthrow a constituented government. Those are the hard facts.

[01:00:44]Jakarta does not help its case by ignoring them." unquote.

[01:00:50]And again, after he gets them all on record, he slaps down the paperwork proving that the pilots of the aircraft are CIA and US military.

[01:01:04]So with the exposure of Pope and the lack of rebel success in the field, the CIA decides that in light that in those light, it was no longer worth it and began to curtail its support. By the end of June, Indonesia's army troops loyal to Sukarno had effectively crushed the resistance military. The Indonesian leader continued his balancing act up until 1965 when they came at him again and that time they were successful. Um, and another very very um to me um important point in this which always gets overlooked in the media is tens of thousands of those rebels were killed, rightfully so for sedition.

[01:01:59]And so all of the and and they fled. So again, another pattern you're going to recognize. Their senior leaders were saved by the CIA. Where do you think they came?

[01:02:13]To the United States.

[01:02:16]The CIA has a classified number of um passport uh visa authorizations to bring these treasonous, sedicious trained resources that work for them into the United States and put them in communities next to you.

[01:02:43]>> Tax dollars hard at work. That's uh I mean it's frustrating when you kind of see some of these things, but it does I mean kind of keep reinforcing the pattern that like hey if you're a nationalist we're going to call you a commie and try and overthrow you like that seems to be the the playbook. So um if you want we can get into uh the mountain of gold and the grasp mine the zsburg mine to kind of start to wrap up here. But um for anyone that's interested, I'll put uh link to the video kind of does like a I think it's like 45minute recap of like how they built the Earthber mine, Grassburg mine, how long it took, like the windy roads, the crazy logistics. um which is very interesting from a mining standpoint, but I think you have some uh additional color to add to that as far as um like maybe some of the kind of backroom politics and dealing going on as far as what what uh what happened behind the scenes.

[01:03:40]>> Yeah. So, the the Australian author um traveled to Europe. um he was able to dig up a lot of the 1930s archives on the Indonesians discovery of that gold mountain and um he also did a lot of digging into the mathematics behind it, it was fascinating. So, um if you go back and you look at the purity of the gold and you do the math of what was being reported um by the mining authority um that had gotten the the concession, which at the time was a Dutch company, they were reporting um and I'm not going to be able to recall the numbers off the top of my head, but let's just say they were saying it was like 90% pure and they were reporting And I think at the a the average at the time was 40 to 50% pure.

[01:04:35]So they basically go by weight um in the mining of gold. And so they were giving the Indonesian government um the the guy Suarto that replaces the criminal um the CIA supported um that gets installed in the 1965 coup that was successful. Um, and it's confusing because their names are so similar, but Suarto is the bad guy. So, they were paying him basically under the table to not question any of the math. So, as they're mining the gold, they're reporting that by weight only 50% was pure gold when in fact it was like in the 80 percentile. And and again, I'm just pulling those numbers out, but it was that drastic of a difference. And so they basically were obscing gold out of Indonesia and using the difference in the amount of gold um to siphon off money to pay Suarto um for allowing them to steal basically Indonesia's gold.

[01:05:46]>> Yeah, it looks like um Earthberg mine started in 1972.

[01:05:51]Um, so is this if you're I'm not sure if you're familiar with the exact timeline there, but would this be kind of the right ballpark for this specific one?

[01:06:00]>> Yeah, because they did the overthrow in ' 65 and that they did not want to do the mining under Su um Su Sucarno because Sucarno was much smarter um and he would have never allowed them to get so they had to wait until they installed Suarto in there because he was a crook.

[01:06:18]>> Yeah, I was looking up. Perfect timing.

[01:06:21]>> I was looking at the mine grade, too.

[01:06:22]Like the more recent annual production reports, I'm guessing, are not something you can fudge the numbers on as easily, but they uh did one and a half billion pounds of copper and 1.7 million ounces of gold in 2023 at Grassburg. And they said the grade was like I think 2 1/2% copper and like 1 g of gold which um on the earth mine but that might be wildly um underestimating based on what you're saying as far as uh the actual grade.

[01:06:54]But I do know that the uh I mean the company that basically founded has turned into like the global copper mining company. So um I think that's a big part of it. So >> which company is it? Do you know >> uh Freeport Macaran?

[01:07:09]>> See, Freeport is the one that did this um overthrow in Chile.

[01:07:14]>> Yeah, Chile's another big copper mining um area. So, I'm guessing uh that was part of it. Was that uh late 60s, early 70s?

[01:07:23]>> That was in 70. The early '7s. They started the 60s to um the first um >> the agitation and moving things along.

[01:07:32]>> Yes, it was in 60s and um then uh they they did stop Alinde from getting um the presidential nomination in the 60s. Um but then he got um the first time he ran. the second time he ran, he got it, got in and nationalized the copper mines um because uh Freeport would not allow them to unionize without trying to destroy the unions through terrorism.

[01:07:57]And as a result of that, he says, "Fine, get out of my country."

[01:08:01]>> Yeah, it's amazing seeing the >> Rio Tinto, um Freeport, there's there's just a series of these names.

[01:08:10]>> BHP, I'm guessing.

[01:08:11]>> Yes. that comes up over and over again in these destabilization um operations.

[01:08:20]>> No, I think that's uh some pretty interesting color to add to um kind of the logistics of building that mine, which if you look at the location and how remote it is, it is pretty fascinating actual just engineering achievement of it like it's uh I mean I'm amazed they did it back in the air they did kind of precomputers and right all that. So, it is it is pretty impressive what they did, even if uh they probably weren't aware of what was uh going on behind the scenes. So, >> well, it's much easier to do when you're doing it with slave labor.

[01:08:50]>> Well, but I I'm just saying specifically the it's not even a labor force thing.

[01:08:55]It was like the windy twisty roads and elevation and >> but understand that's the same thing with the Panama Canal that most people don't realize. the c the original comp company that started the Panama Canal that lost the most people as far as death rates um went broke. Um and it was all free labor because they used it was a French company that started it. They did 40% of the Panama Canal before we there was some shady dealings between John Foster Dallas and Allan Dolls um and um getting in um an American company to take over that Panama Canal build.

[01:09:35]But the majority of the loss of life was from French colonies slaves that they just voted over and made them do slave labor. And it's the same thing in Indonesia under Sukarno. If you go back, he exacerbated all of the union efforts.

[01:09:52]So, you've got a whole bunch of people to do all of the labor that you're talking about in these remote areas that they basically just put in labor camps.

[01:10:01]It it's World War II all over again.

[01:10:04]They put them in labor camps. They don't feed them and they don't give a if they all die. And so you can do any her you know um uh Hercules effort of things that otherwise would be impossible if you don't care about the people involved because you barely feed them and as they die they just attit out.

[01:10:27]Yeah, it is uh it is interesting to see like some of the ESG stuff and like the like investor presentations some of these companies will put up there. But um always interesting to like look and dig into the history of some of these like large companies that have been around for decades or maybe even longer in some cases. But are there uh any other things to add for today or any other topics to uh slide in? [laughter] >> Yeah, I think uh we are what do we have next week? What's the do do you remember what the agenda is for >> I don't off the top of my head.

[01:11:01]>> All right. I think I think we we do have to be getting close to the end of the first uh first decade after World War II as far as uh the around the world trip.

[01:11:09]>> The last one of the 1950s. Um probably the next one we're going to do is um going into the Kennedy administration.

[01:11:17]Um well, oh no, we got to do the Congo.

[01:11:19]>> That's it. Actually happened in um 1960 and ' 61. that's leading into the Kennedy and then the Bay of Pigs and that type of thing because there is um somewhat and notice that this occurs at the end of Eisenhower's um towards the end his last um coup d'etat will be the Congo. So we'll do the Congo next.

[01:11:44]>> Awesome. I'm looking forward to it. But uh for people that are listening for the first time, where should uh they look to find you? I am on Rumble um on 400 PM Monday through Friday um on spaces a and on Rumble at the Colonel's Corner. Um we're going through book after book after book. We're doing a um a heroin cocaine or a heroin um coup book right now um about the whole setup and um it basically moving from the heroin markets in Southeast Asia into the cocaine markets in Latin America. Um but we've done lots of books. If you go to my Rumble channel at the Colonel's Corner, we've got probably a hundred different books we've done. Um, and also I'm on X at Coloneltowner.

[01:12:35]>> Yeah, definitely uh go check those out if you haven't. But it's uh always interesting. I think we'll have to do at the end of the series, whenever that may be, we'll have to do like a full reading list of here is uh if you're looking for the full library collection, here's where we kind of dug all this stuff out from. So, I think that's uh going to be an interesting interesting resource for the future, just like the whole whole podcast series. So, um, definitely appreciate you coming on and taking the time. But I think with that we'll be wrapping up.