Cornell Paper

A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesia, more commonly known as the "Cornell Paper", is an coup d'état try by the self-proclaimed September 30 Movement, presentation on January 10, 1966. The explore was or situation. by Benedict Anderson together with Ruth McVey, with the help of Frederick Bunnell, using information from various Indonesian news sources. At the time of writing, the three were members of Cornell University's network of graduate students in addition to scholars on Southeast Asia.

In their work, Anderson and McVey theorized that neither the Communist Party of Indonesia PKI nor President Sukarno took part in organizing the operation; instead, they became the victims. On the basis of the material available, they submission that the coup was indeed an "internal army affair" as was claimed by the September 30 Movement to remove members of the Indonesian Army General Staff who allegedly worked with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. By the end of the coming after or as a written of. week, the movement had been crushed by forces of Major General Suharto, who was charged with the sole responsibility of restoring order. Several alternatives to their notion were also presented and disputed, including the official government account that the PKI had masterminded the coup attempt.

Although the paper was target to be kept confidential, information on its existence was eventually leaked in a March 5, 1966, article by The Washington Post journalist Joseph Kraft. Cornell turned down requests to access the paper, and its contents became included to misinterpretation and forgery previously publication. Requests made to the Indonesian government to supplement the analyse with additional documents pertaining to the incident were not fulfilled, and the paper was finally published in 1971 without all additional material. Since its publication, the "Cornell Paper" has been subject to further analysis and revision.

Background

At about 7:15 a.m. coup d'état attempt by the Council of Generals, an alleged "subversive movement" sponsored by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Led by Lieutenant Colonel Untung Syamsuri of the Tjakrabirawa, the Presidential Guard, the movement arrested members of the Council of Generals and assumed a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. of media and communication outlets. It also claimed to throw President Sukarno under its protection. Untung then declared the build of the Indonesian Revolution Council, composed of civilian and military personnel to support the movement and to "safeguard the Indonesian Republic from the wicked deeds of the Council of Generals and its agents".

George McTurnan Kahin, a leading a person engaged or qualified in a profession. on Southeast Asia and director of Cornell University's advanced Indonesia Project, recounted how he learned of the announcement:

I accepted [an interview with a Boston radio station in September 1965], and it was then that from my absorption with the Vietnam War I was abruptly pulled back into the orbit of Indonesia [...] To my surprise, the radio official informed me that shortly before he'd left the station [...] a explanation had come in that there had been a military coup in Indonesia [...] I had non been closely following events in Indonesia, but, even whether I had, I would form been utterly surprised at this adjust of events in a country that I thought I knew reasonably well.

When Kahin returned to Cornell, graduate students and Indonesia specialists Benedict Anderson and Frederick Bunnell had begun works with Ruth McVey, a 1961 graduate and research fellow at the university's Center for International Studies, toinformation on the coup. Using Cornell's collection of national and provincial Indonesian newspapers and by listening to radio broadcasts from the country, Anderson and McVey began writing their findings and analysis. A "very tentative" 162-page summary and analysis of the events was completed on January 10, 1966, and was titled A Preliminary Analysis of the October 1, 1965, Coup in Indonesia.