Gerald Ford: an alternative perspective

When former President Ford died at the end of the year he was farewelled with full pomp and ceremony and praised as ‘gentlemanly’ leader. It is time now for a rather more critical evaluation of his role in world history. The US Government documents of the time, many of them now declassified and archived on the internet by the Washington based National Security Archive tell a different story.

On President Ford’s watch nuclear weapons increased in numbers and lethal efficiency and the sober Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of their doomsday clock forward three minutes to nine minutes to midnight. The SALT talks with the Soviet Union were ostensibly aimed at limiting long range nuclear weapons but instead the negotiations served as a fig leaf to hide an ongoing arms escalation.

The record shows that behind the scenes Secretary of State Kissinger and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld (in his first stint at that role) were busy discussing nuclear strategy refinements including a hair-trigger ‘launch on warning’ proposal for intercontinental missiles.

Latin America was ensnared in the grip of ruthless military regimes relying on the tactic of “dirty war” to rid themselves of hundreds of thousands of opponents and civilians. President Ford’s administration welcomed the 1976 military takeover in Argentina and turned a blind eye to its sequel, “Operation Condor”, a joint effort of the secret police services of Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia, Uruguay and Brazil aimed at ensuring that no critic could escape the net of persecution.

However Secretary Kissinger was concerned because he feared Congress would not agree to American backing for a campaign based on repression and state terror. So Kissinger advised haste. In June 1976 he told the Argentine Foreign Minister: “If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly.” By the end of 1976 10,000 Argentines had been ‘disappeared’ or assassinated.

Haste was also the order of the day when President Ford and Henry Kissinger visited Jakarta on 6 December 1975 just twenty four hours before Indonesia launched a full scale naval and air invasion of East Timor. Indonesia had earlier pledged to use United States weapons ‘solely for legitimate national self-defence’ but Secretary of State Kissinger suggested a way around these legal obstacles as he explained to President Suharto: ‘it depends on how we construe it, whether it is in self-defence or is a foreign operation.’

He went on to emphasise that ‘It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly. We would be able to influence the reaction if whatever happens, happens after we return ... We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after we returned.’

This notorious episode is sometimes described as the ‘the big wink’ but of course Indonesia had been sounding out President Ford and his officials for a year prior to the invasion. The documents of the time show that President Suharto was a ‘dove’ compared to his military and intelligence ‘hawks’ until he was persuaded of US backing.

There can be little doubt that without US support the invasion could not have succeeded. Less than a week after the invasion the United States National Security Council prepared a detailed breakdown of all the United States equipment used. Some ninety per cent of all the naval air and ground force equipment was supplied by the United States. This included destroyers used in coastal shelling, landing craft, and the C 47 and C 130 aircraft that dropped Indonesian paratroopers. The paratroop jump masters had been US trained and their weaponry was supplied by the United States.

Even so, the invasion of East Timor did not succeed quickly as Ford and Kissinger had hoped and over the nearly twenty four years of Indonesian rule US administrations kept Indonesia supplied with weapons, training and economic aid.

It would be unfair to attribute the full blame to President Ford who lost office after the US elections of November 1976, but it is unjust to the memories of nearly 200,000 Timorese to wipe this crime from his record.

Sadly, New Zealand’s role although on a smaller scale, was no less sinister. Our Government was fully in the know about Jakarta’s plans to invade and was communicating closely with Australia and the US State Department. But instead of supporting the East Timorese, successive Prime Ministers were carefully briefed by officials to say as little as possible and to couch their statements in deceptive and reassuring terms. Immediately post invasion Prime Minister Rowling even welcomed Indonesian Foreign Minister Malik's assurance that ‘the people of East Timor should be permitted to exercise their right of self-determination’.

Indonesia was most appreciative when we abstained or voted against the UN resolutions condemning the invasion and rewarded our diplomats with privileged access to East Timor. Even the deaths of New Zealanders – journalist Gary Cunningham was one of the five journalists murdered at Balibo in October 1975 and human rights activist Kamal Bamadhaj was killed in the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre - barely ruffled the surface of the bilateral relationship.

New Zealand did its bit to help Indonesia’s military as well. At the same time as the period of the main Indonesian invasion of East Timor, six army personnel from the First Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment visited Indonesia to conduct a course of instruction in small arms shooting.

Timor-Leste today is one of the world’s poorest nations and deserves great praise for a remarkable report documenting the work of its Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. Some of the Commission’s research relied on government documents supplied by New Zealand, and the conclusions clearly identify those western nations whose support was so crucial to Indonesia. Both the United States and New Zealand owe reparations and neither country’s politicians should be allowed to wipe this black story off the record.

ENDS

© Scoop Media