GPO May (or May Not) Recall
State Department Document
The Government Printing Office seemed to be rethinking its recall from depository libraries of one volume of a monographic series documenting U.S. involvement in the overthrow of Indonesia’s first president, Achmed Sukarno. “Government documents librarians over the years have learned that sunshine is the best thing,” Bernadine Abbott-Hoduski, ALA Council member representing the Government Documents Round Table, told American Libraries August 2. Explaining that the GPO has yet to send libraries a formal recall letter, she credited the agency’s hesitation to librarians across the country spreading the word about the recall to each other—and to the press.
“They’re trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube,” Tom Blanton, director of the nonprofit National Security Archive, said in the July 28 Washington Post two days after his organization posted Foreign Relations of the United States 1964–68, Volume 26: Indonesia, Malaysia-Singapore, Philippines on its Web site.
The recall originated with the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, which blamed the GPO for issuing the volume without final clearance. “We did not inadvertently release this history,” GPO spokesperson Andrew Sherman told the Associated Press July 28, explaining that the agency had received the go-ahead in April.
The document includes a December 2, 1965, cable from the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia to Assistant Secretary of State William P. Bundy confirming payment of 50 million rupiahs ($1.1 million U.S., at the official exchange rate at the time) to a paramilitary group to fight the Indonesian Communist Party. An April 15, 1966, memo to Washington estimates the number of communists assassinated as between 100,000 and 1 million, but recommends erring toward the lower figure, “especially when questioned by the press.”
News of the recall was issued within days of Sukarno’s daughter, Megawati Sukarnoputri, taking office July 23 as Indonesia’s president.
Posted August 6, 2001.
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