people who work for the Rand Corporation, a nortorious counter-insurgency "think tank" for the Pentagon, and who attend Defense Department-sponsored meetings where such topics come up as "Can we find out what effect increasing police density or ear-cutting, or other negatives have on villager attitudes? " (This statment was made at a June 19-July 6, 1967, seminar of the Defense Department's Project Jason in Falmouth, Mass., attended by Sharp, Long and Moerman.)
Sharp and Ness wrote a report on the Ann Arbor meeting, entitled "Rural Development in Thailand:  Research Strategies, " which said, "A basic and important short run goal is the problem of security. . . We believe there is a connection between the economic development to which we are directing our immediate attention, and security. " Since the 1966 meeting, Beers has done further work with SEA-DAG1 s Rural Development Seminar and its Indonesian Seminar.
He says he is unaware of counter-insurgency efforts by any of the agencies and foundations he has been associated with, including UK's projects in Thailand and Indonesia. Unlikely as it may seem, such a thing is possible given the nature of the way those bodies operate.
¢ mmED approached UK about the Thailand project mainly on the strength of the two programs Kentucky had just completed in Indonesia.   UK signed a contract with AID's predecessor, the International Cooperation Administration (ICA), to develop what was to become the Institut Teknologi Bandung in 1956 and a year later another contract with ICA to build the Institute Pertanian Bogor. Bandung and Bogor are both cities on the island of Java.
At the time the two projects were begun, the last remnants of Indonesia's Dutch colonialization period were being swept away.   The departure of Dutch professors from Indonesia's underdeveloped centers of higher education, however, posed a serious problem. That was remedied by the bringing, in. of contract teams by the ' U.S. government and the foundations from American universities, including Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Berkeley and several others.   The University of Kentucky drew the task of building an engineering and scientific research and training center at Bandung and an agricultural center at Bogor.
In the early years of the projects, members of the Kentucky contract teams were virtually sequestered in their respective cities after nightfall because of the presence of roaming armed rebel bands. There were periodic protests against the projects and demands that the UK teams be sent home--some of the protestors being students at the two schools.   Toward the end of the projects, the Kentucky people could not even be seen with their Indonesian friends lest they cast political suspicion on them. The political turmoil was so great, in fact, that the projects were forced to close in February, 1967, instead of July, as was scheduled (the team members' dependents had been evacuated the preceding November).
Despite the politically charged atmosphere, the Kentucky teams were able to complete their missions as planned.   They established research centers and training facilities and sent a total of 468 Indonesian students to American universities (about half of them to UK) for advanced study and research so they could replace the Kentucky professors at the schools (We're here to work ourselves out of a job" was the by-word of the projects.) During the 11 years of Kentucky's efforts in Indonesia, a total of 110 contract team members, although not all of them came from UK, worked there.   At the end of that period, as one of the final reports proclaimed, the two schools had been "Indonesianized by Americans! "
However, once again, things are not as simple as they may seem.   The university personnel working in Indonesia were deceived into serving purposes most o{ them had no idea they were involved with.
David Ransom's story in "Ramparts" details the International Capitalist Conspiracy they had unwittingly participated in.   When UK and all the other universities came to Indonesia at the behest of the foundations and the U.S. government, Sukarno was maintaining a precarious balance between the right-wing Army generals and the strong Communist party elements in the country.   Sukarno was a
blue-tai
wily nationalist who had led his country to independence and had little desire to fall under the hegemony of the Communist bloc or suffer economic exploitation and domination at the hands of Western corporate expansion. He considered the former the lesser of the two evils, though, and was more oriented toward Peking than Washington.
Sukarno was rightfully suspicious of the myriad programs designed to aid his country.   A Ford Foundation scheme had decided his regime had to go if "modernization" were to proceed.
Dr. Beers, of UK's Center for Developmental Change, was asked if the UK teams had any associations with foundations in Indonesia -- such as Ford.
"I always considered the Ford Foundation as a friend of our project, " he answered, "but I don't really know of any examples of actual participation in our project. They had their own fish to fry and so our relationship was only cordial. "
As it turns out, the catch sizzling on Ford's burner was a plan to work with Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, a former Minister of Trade and Industry and also Economics Dean at the University of Djakarta, who had participated in the abortive 1957 Outer Islands Rebellion (with CIA support) when Sukarno nationalized Dutch holdings. After this fiasco, Sumitro had gone into exile in Singapore.
But Ford worked with him in setting up a program at Sumitro's old Faculty of Economics to offer advanced studies to Indonesian economics students at Berkeley, and to send a Berkeley contract team to Djakarta. The students educated at Ford's expense received a heavy dose of Western economic philosophy.   This was in line with Ford's better idea of creating what it called a "modernizing elite" for Indonesia.
Ford went even further, though, by integrating the top Berkeley-educated economists with high-ranking Army officers by bringing them together at the Indonesian Army Staff and Command School (SESKOAD) in Bandung to draw up contingency plans to "prevent chaos should Sukarno die suddenly. " In other words, post-Sukarno economics.
Among those attending these sessions were Indonesian senior faculty members from UK's Bandung Institute of Technology project.
The upshot of all this is that now Sumitro and five Berkeley-educated economists were named to Suharto's "Development Cabinet" in 1968 after he had replaced Sukarno.   Those five ministers (Dr. Beers refers to them as the "Fabulous Five"; in some Indonesian quarters they're known as the "Berkeley Mafia") now control Indonesia's foreign investment policies.   Those policies are more than generous to American corporations.
As an interesting footnote, Suharto earlier (Oct. 14, 1967) had named two men connected with the UK projects to his cabinet. As Minister of Plantations, he appointed Tojib Hadiwidaja, formerly the Dean of Agriculture at Bogor, and as Minister of Mines, he named Soemantri Brodjonegoro, a former dean at Bandung.
It's not difficult to see how UK's projects fit in with Ford's "modernizing elite" plan.   Because of the generally reactionary Dutch education policies during the colonial period, only the children of Indonesia's elite had the education to enter an institution like Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB).   And preparing these students for scientific and engineering fields was certainly a modernizing factor.   Whether the University of Kentucky realized it or not, it was perpetuating an elite class and preparing a ready-made managerial class for the American corporations, which weren't long in coming.
In the early part of the Bandung project, the ITB received a $10, 000 grant from the Asia Foundation to purchase needed library books.  And the money was used to buy books.   The Asia Foundation, however, was later exposed as a conduit for CIA funds and was banned from Indonesia by Sukarno.   The fact that the foundation thought the Bandung project was worth $10, 000 of its imperialistic dollars is an indication of how important it was considered to be in the general scheme of things.
continued on page 17
fly/7