Suharto

It was a while west when I was there in the mid 80s.

In 97 when we went back it was a different story but we were only there for 11 months and Suharto got kicked out and we had to evacuate so we came back to California.

Our life story is that we've traveled backwards and forwards.

We've lived in Indonesia, we lived in Shanghai, we lived in Michigan, we lived in Taiwan.

So if the...

Or, or Suharto similarly, his...

I feel that his, uh...

the, the end of that regime in Indonesia was kind of managed by powerful, uh, actors and done in such a way as not to really damage the Western position and, and domination of, uh, Indonesia and Indonesia's economy.

Then lived in Indonesia, where the country was going through a lot.

Like, Suharto fell from power in the late '90s, so the country-

Mm

... was just, like, kind of in tumult.

They have not seen what these men have seen.

In Indonesia, for example, before the, the coup of Suharto, the savior of Asia, um, one of the generals who took part in that coup had his little girl blown up by a communist bomb.

It was meant for him, of course.

See? They haven't, they don't know what that's like.

Somebody who's not a crypto person, uh, who has a background, I think, in intelligence, did an analysis of corrupt world leaders just in the last day or so, and took the UN's definition of corruption, turned it into eight criteria, and gave each 100 points, or, or maybe it was altogether it was 100 points, and scored the leaders, um, that history remembers for looting their countries.

So, like, uh, Marcos, Suharto, uh, Mobutu, Sembenya, uh, Putin, Biya.

Anyway, th- you know, I don't know all of these.

Um, I definitely know Suharto, though, 'cause I used to live in Indonesia.

But anyway.

So she put every president, US president since Eisenhower on the same scale, um, you know, uh, both parties.

And, um, she, uh, ended up scoring Nixon at a 41.

There was no other American president that scored a- above a 25.

By the end of the year, over 300 people had been slain in what became known as the East Java Ninja Scare.

A devastating economic crisis had triggered unrest, and in May 1998 the 32-year authoritarian rule of President Suharto collapsed amid violent riots.

Indonesia's old order's collapse left a power vacuum and lawlessness in its wake.

In this climate, social and sectarian tensions flared, and trust in authorities was badly shaken.

In this view, those who committed the slayings sincerely believed they were delivering justice and protecting their communities, no matter how horrific their methods.

The darkest theory, however, claims deliberate manipulation behind the initial outbreak of the ninja scare.

As Suharto's three-decade-old authoritarian regime fell, some suspect elements of the old guard orchestrated the ninja violence to destabilize the country.

The timing was suspicious.

And what the documents that I was given access to... from Keating and others really show the way in which they persuaded the Americans and the sceptics in the American system that APEC leaders was going to be a good thing for the American economy as well.

One of the things that you really bring out, I think, is the extent to which Suharto was important to getting the trade liberalisation agenda up.

Keating really seemed to work assiduously at that relationship, didn't he? And that seems to be...

Is it fair to say, you know, as important as his relationship with Clinton in terms of his foreign policy?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And, I mean, what's interesting is to watch the way in which Keating, in a way, sort of diplomatically seduces both Suharto and Clinton and keeps... each of them sort of engaged and informed about what the other is saying about this idea of the APEC Leaders Summit.

He knows, Keating, that he has to get Sahara on board in order to get the rest of Southeast Asia.

But even before he does that, he needs to get the Japanese Prime Minister Miyazawa signed up.