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Files Show New Details of US Support for Indonesia Bloodbath


FILE - Members of the Youth Wing of the Indonesian Communist Party (Pemuda Rakjat) taken to prison in Jakarta, Oct. 30, 1965, after an abortive coup against President Sukarno's government earlier in the month.
FILE - Members of the Youth Wing of the Indonesian Communist Party (Pemuda Rakjat) taken to prison in Jakarta, Oct. 30, 1965, after an abortive coup against President Sukarno's government earlier in the month.

Declassified files have revealed new details of U.S. government knowledge and support of an Indonesian army extermination campaign that killed several hundred thousand civilians during anti-communist hysteria in the mid-1960s.

The thousands of files from the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta covering 1963-66 were made public Tuesday after a declassification review that began under the Obama administration. The Associated Press reviewed key documents in the collection in advance of their release.

The files fill out the picture of a devastating reign of terror by the Indonesian army and Muslim groups that has been sketched by historians and in a U.S. State Department volume that was declassified in 2001 despite a last-minute CIA effort to block its distribution.

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