As the years go by, more facts will undoubtedly become available about the coup of October, 1965, and about the events leading up to it. But what deductions can be drawn from the facts as we know them today? Who planned the coup, and why?
The possibilities are several.
The first is that Lieutenant Colonel Untung was telling the truth when he said he moved to forestall a coup by the Council of Generals planned for the vicinity of Armed Forces Day, October 5.
It is difficult to believe that Indonesia’s top generals did not in fact, have some plan laid to assume power. In the atmosphere of those days, they would have been remarkably naive if they had not made some preparations. The question is whether this was a routine contingency plan, designed to come into effect in the event of Sukarno’s death, or in the event of a lunge for power by the Communists, or whether the generals were really intending to oust Sukarno and install a military regime.
If the latter was the case, and the generals were on the eve of action, no evidence of it has come to light.
First, for men supposedly up to their eyes in a dangerous plot to overthrow the government, they were remarkably lax about their own security.
General Yani’s guard, it is true, had recently been reinforced, although the extra men mysteriously failed to report for duty on the night of his murder. General Nasution had his normal guard. On the homes of the other generals seized there were no guards at all. It can be argued that if the generals really were plotting, it might have looked suspicious if they had suddenly placed guards on their homes. Yet it is difficult to believe that generals about to embark on so hazardous an enterprise would not have taken some precautions. Nevertheless General Parman, the army’s own intelligence chief, who had been warned anew only a day or so before of a pending Communist threat to the generals, had not a single soldier at his house. All of the generals were at home and in their beds when the killer gangs came. Some were not even suspicious at first of men who came knocking in the middle of the night.
Again, if the generals, as Untung charged, were planning a coup with troops brought into the capital for the October 5 parade, they were extraordinarily inept in their selection. The two battalions from Central and East Java, the 454th and 530th, were Communist-infiltrated, and their officers had days before agreed secretly to throw them behind the September 30th Movement.
Since the coup, nobody has produced any proof that the generals were about to seize power. It can be argued that the army has had control of the communications media and could easily have stifled any such evidence. But it is an argument that does not stand up. Key figures in the coup like Untung, Dhani, and Supardjo stood trial and could have aired their evidence then. Though access to Untung’s trial was limited, foreign newsmen and almost anybody with a legitimate interest could, and did, attend the trials of Dhani and Supardjo. These were broadcast live to the nation. It would have been in the interests of the coup leaders to produce evidence of a generals’ plot if they had had it. It would have contributed to their defense by providing the justification for the actions they took. Yet none came forward with any meaningful information. General Supardjo told Sukarno at Halim on October 1 that he had proof of the generals’ duplicity. He has never come to light with it, even though he was at large for more than fifteen months after the coup, during which he apparently had channels to Sukarno through which he could have funneled his information.
If the generals had really made up their minds to topple Sukarno, another puzzling factor is the behavior of the army’s leaders since the coup. By the evening of October 1, the army had control of the situation. There was unmatched opportunity for finishing off Sukarno, if that had been the generals’ intent. Nasution, supposedly the leader of the generals’ plot, was alive, the army’s hero, and if he had been hungry for power, this would have been the moment to carry his ambitions to fulfillment.
Instead, though he later demanded a tough crackdown on the Communists, he procrastinated for months on the question of Sukarno. He it was who counseled moderation when the students, disenchanted with Sukarno, demanded the President’s dismissal. His failure to act against the President, in fact, cost him the political support of many students and others. Yet this is the man who was charged by the September 30th Movement with leading a generals’ plot against the President.
Far from moving in on the President after the coup, the whole record of Nasution, Suharto, and the army’s high command indicates that they dragged their feet, had to be prodded by the students, and finally ousted Sukarno only with reluctance, in the gentlest way they knew how.
If the generals had been about to launch a subversive plot, the leaders of the September 30th Movement who had pledged to thwart it reacted with incredible inefficiency. After they had seized the generals, for instance, they made no attempt to interrogate those who were still living when brought to Halim. There was no suggestion that the generals be brought before Sukarno to confess, and prove, their guilt. There was no grilling to find out who else was involved, or what other dangers might still lie in store for the nation. There was no attempt to extract an admission implicating the American C.I.A., which the September 30th Movement leaders charged was behind the generals. The generals’ captors in fact betrayed an extraordinary lack of curiosity about the details of a plot that they said was designed to overthrow the legitimate government of the country. Instead, all they seemed interested in doing was killing the generals and getting them out of the way.
Then again, if the President’s life was in danger from a generals’ plot about to be launched at any hour, Untung was very casual, especially for an officer of the palace guard, about protecting Sukarno. Here he had evidence, or said he had, of a pending plot. He knew that there might be gunfire in the streets that night as his own men moved against the generals. Yet he allowed Sukarno to roam the city, albeit with an escort. In fact, if the evidence emerging at the trial of Omar Dhani is correct, Untung and his co-plotters had no idea where Sukarno really was in the early hours of October 1. They thought he was at Merdeka palace, but actually he was at the house of his Japanese wife Dewi, then scurrying to the house of another wife, Haryati, and later out to Halim. Toward the man they considered in mortal danger from the generals, it was strangely unsolicitous action on their part.
As for the charges of C.I.A. implication, they have been put under the microscope by many people. No evidence has emerged to corroborate them. If the C.I.A. was involved in this operation, it must be the most brilliantly disguised secret in the entire history of the agency.
If, then, no generals’ coup was to be launched between October 1 and October 5, Untung must have mistakenly, but genuinely, believed such a coup was about to take place. Or he must have known there was no generals’ plot at all, and must have used the whole story to cover his own coup attempt.
In either event, however, it is difficult to see Untung, for all his chairmanship of the revolutionary council, as anything but a pawn in the September 30th Movement. He moved troops about, but he was not a controlling figure at Halim on October 1 when the plotters were making their policy decisions. He himself issued no political directives, nor does he seem to have been much consulted. He cut rather a forlorn character that day.
Somebody then must have influenced him, for him to make his initial drastic move against the generals. But who?
It is conceivable that the generals themselves fed him the intelligence about a Council of Generals, intending to provoke the Communist Party into action, which would provide the justification for a savage crackdown on it. Of such a trap, or the possibility of it, the Communists were aware. Since the catastrophe at Madiun in 1948, they had warned their members not to be drawn into a provocative situation that would give the army the excuse for a crushing campaign. Yet if the generals did lay a trap in this case, it sprang shut on them, too. For its success, they paid dearly with the loss of their own lives. Again, it is difficult to believe that generals about to spring such a trap could have been so lax about their personal security.
For Untung there were several other possible influences. His inspiration to act could have come from the Communist Party itself. According to his own interrogation report, Communist emissaries were present throughout the whole planning stage of his operation. It could have come from fellow officers like General Supardjo, or air force major Sujono, each with his own vested interest in a power play against the generals. Or it could have come from Sukarno himself. Untung was the commander of the palace guard honor battalion. He was close to Sukarno on many occasions. It is inconceivable, as was suggested by evidence at the Dhani trial, that Sukarno did not know Untung and had to ask at Halim who he was. Sukarno, with his fear of assassination, was ever sensitive to faces around him. It is beyond belief that he did not know the commander of his palace guard’s lead battalion. From the tapes of Untung’s interrogation following his capture later, it is evident that Untung at first refused to talk and would only repeatedly ask to be taken to the President.
If Untung was the pawn of the Communists, who really masterminded the coup launched in his name, the key question is why the party decided to move at that particular time. After all, the general course of events in Indonesia seemed to be running in the Communists’ favor. They had built their party to remarkable strength. They seemed to have Sukarno’s blessing for further advancement within the structure of government. Perhaps in a few months’ time they would have those 100,000 small arms from the Chinese Communists that Sukarno had sent Omar Dhani to talk about in Peking. Why move at that particular time, risking the party’s destruction by the army, when by holding on they might achieve their aims?
Communists being Communists, the party almost certainly had a plan to seize power. Like the generals, they would have been foolish in the atmosphere prevailing in those days if they had not. But again, as in the case of the generals, the question is whether the Communists’ plan was a contingency one, to exploit Sukarno’s sudden death or to foil an army takeover, or whether the Communists had planned long and carefully for the coup attempt of October 1.
On the basis of their performance, it is difficult to believe the Communists were really ready for October 1. For a party that prided itself on its organization, it reacted in a sadly disorganized way. Coordination between Djakarta and the rest of the country was almost completely lacking. Communist participation in the events of October 1 had an air of desperate urgency about it. If the party had been planning a coup, it acted on October 1 like a party that had been compelled prematurely to put its plan into action.
What pressures could have impelled the Communist Party to this course?
There was, of course, the question of Sukarno’s health. Acupuncturists from Communist China had been treating him and had probably passed on to Aidit their findings. The President had had what seemed to be a bad turn early in August, but later this proved to be not as serious as many believed. Although the President’s kidney trouble could turn serious at any time, he could also, as proved to be the case, go on living a normal and active life. Would such a verdict in itself be enough to propel the Communist Party to such drastic action as that of October 1?
Then there is the possibility that the Communists themselves really feared a move by the Council of Generals before October 5 and were simply trying to forestall it. But if so, they, like the other principals in the coup, have been unable to produce any evidence since then that the generals actually were plotting. While it may be argued that the Communist Party apparatus has been smashed, there are Communists enough still at large, and channels available, through which such disclosures might be made.
Another suggestion is that the main thrust for the coup attempt came from the disloyal army men like Supardjo who were the real influence behind Untung. With the rebel officers determined to move, the Communist Party had to jump on the bandwagon. The disloyal battalions from East and Central Java were being brought to the capital, and this was the opportunity Supardjo and Untung needed to act. The Communist Party, according to this theory, might have been overtaken if it had refused to join in.
It is all possible, yet the available facts suggest that far from competing with each other, the military men and the Communists engaged in the coup attempt enjoyed close liaison. The Communists signaled Supardjo when to come to Djakarta. There are indications that Major Sujono, one of the key conspirators from the air force, had been deputed by the Communists to tutor Untung in their ideology. When the coup attempt failed, both Supardjo and Dhani were solicitous in the extreme about Communist leader Aidit, personally providing his escape plane.
A further theory is that Peking ordered the Indonesian Communist Party to move, and that Aidit was merely carrying out the instruction in a Chinese master plan.
This does not stand close examination. The Indonesian party was pro-Peking, but it was strong and independent, with its own policies. It did not dance mechanically to Peking’s tune. There are some grounds for belief that Peking was informed in advance about the pending move against the generals. Undoubtedly the Chinese encouraged it. But so far, there is no evidence that Peking’s hand was directly involved. After the coup, stories circulated that crate-loads of Chinese weapons had been smuggled into Indonesia with Chinese equipment for the CONEFO project—Sukarno’s rival United Nations, intended to house a grand Conference of the New Emerging Forces. Yet the most senior Indonesian military men I talked to admitted that they had looked for those weapons and been unable to find any trace of them. A few Chinese small arms were discovered—along with assorted weapons from every other arms-producing country in the world. If Sukarno’s secret deal with the Chinese had gone through, arms undoubtedly would have arrived from China in quantity. That they had arrived prior to the coup seems doubtful.
There is one further possibility. This is that the pressure upon the Communist Party to move came from Sukarno himself. Was Sukarno himself moving far closer to the political left, and much faster, than most people realized? Although a master of flamboyance himself, he seemed genuinely impressed by the austere achievements of Communist China. His addiction to Marxism became more pronounced, so much so that he made a point of reiterating it publicly in the months after the coup when Marxism was one of Indonesia’s particularly dirty words.
He had, it seemed, at last been compelled to face the realities of his country’s economic mess. Frustrated by Indonesia’s laggardly rate of economic advance, he gave the Communists high marks for getting out into the fields and trying to do something about it. He admired their discipline, their relative lack of corruption. Had he also decided that the techniques of Communism were the answer to Indonesia’s complex ills? If so, it would of course have been a Communism that he could bend to his own will, for he had no intention of surrendering his power.
If all this is true, the Communist Party may have been obliged to run to keep up with Sukarno’s own pace, and to have embarked unprepared on an action against the army generals so stubbornly blocking Sukarno’s way.
Unfortunately for Sukarno, the actions of Untung and his fellow plotters become more credible against a background of presidential approval, if not authorization. Throughout their enterprise, the plotters acted as though confident the President would support them.
Prior to the coup, Sukarno knew that Supardjo was in town, apparently without permission to leave his post in Kalimantan. There is a possibility that Sukarno and Supardjo actually talked on September 29. After the generals were killed, it was to Sukarno that Supardjo hastened to report. Apparently at no time did Supardjo fear that Sukarno might order him arrested or punished for his action. Supardjo’s confidence was justified, for the President’s reaction was mild, perhaps even congratulatory, in that shoulder-patting incident, the significance of which has yet to be satisfactorily explained. After the coup, Supardjo represented himself as “Sukarno’s man.” He was hidden for more than fifteen months by people who claimed at his trial that he carried a letter from the President requesting protection for Supardjo. Also at the trial there was evidence that Sukarno and Supardjo exchanged letters after the coup, while Supardjo was in hiding.
Thus, to Supardjo, one of the ringleaders of the coup attempt, Sukarno seemed protective. Another principal plotter, Lieutenant Colonel Untung, also apparently counted on the President’s benevolent attitude toward him, for as we have noted, upon capture he pleaded only to be taken before Sukarno, in the belief that Sukarno would understand and forgive all. To Communist Party leader Aidit, too, the President sought to extend a sheltering wing after the coup. The army claims it intercepted letters between Aidit, hiding in Central Java, and Sukarno in which the President, far from chastising Aidit, sought to rescue him. Meanwhile, to air force chief Dhani, who feared the army’s revenge after the coup, Sukarno extended the haven of the presidential palace.
There are other factors of which Sukarno’s critics have made much. For instance, when he first got official word of the coup on the morning of October 1, it was to Halim air base that the President fled—the plotters’ command post, and the execution and burial site of the six murdered generals.
When it was clear that the coup had failed, it was to Madiun that the President considered flying, in company with the leading plotters. Sukarno could hardly have forgotten the historical implications of Madiun, the scene of the 1948 Communist revolt that failed. Yet only with some difficulty was he apparently persuaded to change his mind, disengage from the coup leaders, and go to Bogor.
When he heard the announcement of Untung’s revolutionary council, he seemed not in the least disturbed by the shunting aside of his own cabinet. Ordinarily, one would have expected the proud and dominating Sukarno to be enraged by such effrontery. Instead, he reacted hardly at all, almost like a man who knew it need not be taken seriously.
Similarly, Subandrio, who as Sukarno’s right-hand man was usually privy to the President’s innermost thoughts, reacted in leisurely fashion to the news from Djakarta of a coup and the installation of a revolutionary council that had taken over from the cabinet. A normal reaction might have been to rush back to the capital to find out what was happening, protect the President, save the government.
Instead, Subandrio dallied on his speaking tour of northern Sumatra, like a man with inside knowledge of what was happening and no fear for either the President or the government.
There is not much doubt that Sukarno did have advance warning of pending trouble. Subandrio when he came to trial later admitted that his intelligence organization had picked up rumors about the Communist plot. But he had never passed on the information to Sukarno, he said, because he was sure the President knew all about it.
If the President had missed the news, he nevertheless got warning on the very day before the coup from General Sugandhi, the same officer who had also warned General Yani that the Communists were about to strike. From the President, Sugandhi got much the same reaction as from Yani. Sukarno dismissed the story and said Sugandhi was suffering from anti-Communist phobia.
Sukarno had also, of course, listened to Omar Dhani’s warning on September 29 about trouble from the direction of the army. As General Suharto put it later, the President “paid his fullest attention” to this report about an army coup, but “did not believe in the possibility of a coup from the side of the Communists.”
This explanation by Suharto was given in the course of his address to the People’s Consultative Congress gathered in showdown session in 1967 to oust Sukarno from the presidency. Suharto, it must be remembered, was playing politics at the time. He was attempting to head off harsh Congress action against Sukarno for fear it might spark civil war throughout the country. Thus he told the Congress delegates that Sukarno was not “the direct instigator, or the mastermind” behind the coup. However, he hedged by saying that this was the army’s conclusion “unless there are indeed still facts we haven’t been able to find until this very day.”
Nevertheless, Suharto admitted there were “very many actions and attitudes of the President hard to understand,” which gave rise to “suspicion, and distrust of the President, because the President seemed to defend or favor” the coup forces.
Coup figures like Dhani and Supardjo went to extreme lengths to keep Sukarno’s name clean when they eventually came to trial. There was even evidence that Supardjo while still free had been in touch with Dhani, in prison awaiting trial, enjoining him to keep Sukarno out of it all.
Despite all this, and despite Suharto’s exoneration of Sukarno as the mastermind behind the coup, it is difficult to exempt Sukarno from involvement in it. This is not to suggest that Sukarno wrote out an order for the generals’ removal. It does not mean the plotters came to Sukarno, asked for his assent, and got it. In Indonesia, things are not done that way. And in any event, Sukarno had proved himself too wily and experienced a politician for that.
But Sukarno was surely also too wily a politician not to have guessed from Supardjo’s presence in the capital, from his talk with Omar Dhani, and from the information of his own excellent intelligence system, what was in the wind.
With that remarkable Javanese capacity for evasion of direct issues, there would have been no need for Sukarno to signal in actual words his blessing for the arrest of the generals. But from the behavior of the plotters it seems clear they believed they had either received such blessing or would undoubtedly be given it.
There is no question, of course, that the Indonesian Communist Party was up to its neck in the coup attempt. But still open to debate is whether the Communists planned the whole thing and gave the actual signal to jump, or whether the Communists jumped at somebody else’s beckoning.
My own belief is that several groups were party to the coup attempt for different reasons. The Communists, I believe, threw their weight behind it because they believed circumstances compelled them to. They must have had misgivings about its timing. They would have been better organized had they waited. But they gambled on the operation’s success. Under Aidit, the party had achieved great success by riding close to Sukarno’s coattails. In backing the coup they believed they were following out that policy. The disadvantage of being left behind, and having their party overtaken, must have seemed greater than the hazards of plunging forward into the coup.
The military men among the plotters were, I believe, motivated by various reasons. Untung was the unfortunate tool, though of whom is still not entirely clear. Some of the other military men, like air force Major Sujono, were straight Communists. Supardjo, it seems to me, was ideologically attuned to the Communists, but was also militarily ambitious and saw great advancement for himself in a successful outcome to the plot. Omar Dhani was a politically unsophisticated man whose vanity and opportunism led him down the road to disaster.
Sukarno himself, I believe, wanted his obstructive generals out of the way. He did not seek revolt, or the destruction of the army. Nor, in fact, did the plotters attempt to do other than remove the army’s existing command. Sukarno wanted the army retained, but he wanted it led by generals pliable to his own will, rather than generals of stubborn independence like Nasution and Yani, who thwarted him.
Sukarno’s involvement in the coup will be debated for years. But whether he authorized the generals’ removal or not, the coup of October 1, 1965, was for him the crisis point. It marked the beginning of his decline and fall as a demigod.
1 President Sukarno at a palace ceremony, Djakarta
2 The Indonesian Communist leader, D. N. Aidit, receiving Japanese visitors in the days before the coup.
3 General Suharto and President Sukarno in happier days.
4–7 Four of the army leaders murdered in the September 1965 coup: Brigadier-General Sutojo (4), Lieutenant-General Yani (5), Major-General Harjono (6) and Brigadier-General Pandjaitan (7).
8 Diver about to descend the well at Crocodile Hole, where the bodies of murdered generals were found.
9 Sealing the generals’ coffins at Crocodile Hole.
10 Para-commandos bury their generals.
11 General Nasution throws earth into the grave of his murdered five-year-old daughter.
12 The widow of General Yani receives a decoration from President Sukarno.