The death yesterday of Gerald Ford has provoked a debate over his (and his Sec'y of State the ubiquitous Henry Kissinger) relation to the 1975 Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which killed approximately 1/3 of the Timorese. The almost always reliable Juan Cole in his generally hagiographic post "Ford and Foreign policy" says about the late president:
"Ford did the country the enormous favor of allowing it to transition out of the poisonous Nixon and Vietnam eras, with a gentleman at the helm of state. I can remember the enormous relief I experienced when I saw the picture of him striding confidently once he had become president. Many of us had been afraid Nixon would stage a military coup. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, I have been told by one interviewee then in government, shared that fear and ordered the senior officers to accept no command directly from Nixon unless they checked with Schlesinger first.
"Ford was clearly unwilling to risk further military entanglements in Asia. The one exception was his aggressive response to the Cambodian capture of the Mayaguez...."
In his comment on Cole's Ford obituary post Juhani Yli-Vakkuri said...
"I think any post with heading 'Ford and Foreign Policy' should mention that this 'gentleman at the helm' of the U.S. ship of state authorized Suharto's Indonesia's genocidal invasion and annexation of East Timor in December 1975. To quote from Joseph Nevins' excellent recent book, A Not-So Distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor (Cornell University Press, 2005):
'President Gerald Ford and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, met with Suharto in Jakarta the day prior to the invasion. They were fully cognizant of Indonesia's plans to invade. According to the transcript of the meeting, Ford assured Suharto that, with regard to East Timor, "[We] will not press you on the issue. We understand ... the intentions you have."
A State Department document released in 2001 "shows that Suharto began the invasion knowing that he had the full approval of the White House."
On Democracy Now yesterday (Wed.) morning Amy Goodman interviewed Brad Simpson who Said:
"In July of 1975, the National Security Council first informed Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford of IndonesiaÂ’s plans to take over East Timor by force. And Suharto of course raised this with Gerald Ford in July when he met with Gerald Ford at Camp David on a trip to the United States. And then in December of 1975 on a trip through Southeast Asia, Gerald Ford met again with Suharto on the eve of the invasion, more than two weeks after the National Security Council, CIA, other intelligence agencies had concluded that an Indonesian invasion was eminent. And that the only thing delaying the invasion was the fear that US disapproval might lead to a cut-off of weapons and military supplies to the regime.
"AMY GOODMAN: How knowledgeable was President Ford at the time of the situation?
"BRAD SIMPSON: Well, Ford was very much aware. He was receiving hourly briefings, as was Henry Kissinger, as his plane lifted off from Indonesia, as the invasion indeed commenced. And immediately afterwards Gerald Ford flew to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, or to Guam—excuse me, where he gave a speech saying that never again should the United States allow another nation to strike in the middle of the night, to attack another defenseless nation. This was on Pearl Harbor Day, of course. Realizing full well that another day of infamy was unfolding in Dili, East Timor. As thousands of Indonesian paratroopers, trained by the United States, using US supplied weapons, indeed jumping from United States supplied airplanes, were descending upon the capital city of Dili and massacring literally thousands of people in the hours and days after December 7, 1975."
It is entirely possible to argue that the imperial presidency - brought to full flower by George W. Bush (under the aegis of Dick Cheney) - was "saved" by Ford after the "national nightmare" of the Nixon years.
Also on Amy Goodman's special Democracy Now devoted to correcting the generally rose colored history of the Ford administration Veteran Investigative Journalist Robert Parry said:
"So I think while Ford gets a great deal of credit, because he helped mend the nation's wounds over Watergate, it wasn't entirely this pleasant experience that some people are making it out to be. It was, in a sense, the incubator for the resurgence of the Imperial Presidency. People like Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney [and Paul Wolfowitz] were in the Ford White House, and many of their feelings about re-establishing that Imperial Presidency have lived to this day."
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