Declassified documents reveal extent of US support for Timor invasion

The United States knew well in advance of and explicitly approved Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975, newly declassified documents say. Released last week by the independent Washington-based National Security Archive , the documents showed US officials were aware of the invasion plans nearly a year in advance. They adopted a "policy of silence" and even sought to suppress news and discussions on East Timor, including credible reports of Indonesia's massacres of Timorese civilians, according to the documents. Thirty years after the Indonesian invasion, the formerly secret US documents showed how multiple US administrations tried to conceal information on East Timor to avoid a controversy that would prompt a Congressional ban on weapons sales to Indonesia. "I'm assuming you're really going to keep your mouth shut on the subject," then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told his staff in October 1975 in response to reports that Indonesia had begun its attack on East Timor. The administration of President Gerald Ford knew that Indonesia had invaded East Timor using almost entirely US equipment, and that the use of that equipment for that purpose was illegal, the documents showed. In 1977, officials of the Carter administration blocked declassification of an explosive cable transcribing President Ford and Kissinger's meeting with Indonesian President Suharto. At the meeting in December 1975, they explicitly approved of the East Timor invasion, according to the documents. The National Security Archive had provided more than 1000 formerly classified US documents to help an East Timorese commission of inquiry into human rights abuses that occurred between 1975 and 1999.