U.S. knew of Indonesian anti-communist massacre as it unfolded


JAKARTA (Reuters) - The U.S. government had intimate knowledge of the mass killing of alleged communists in Indonesia in the mid 1960s even as it failed to publicly reveal the slaughter, newly declassified U.S. documents show.The documents also reveal that Indonesian army intermediaries told Western embassies they were considering toppling then president Sukarno less than a fortnight after the killing of six generals by rebel military personnel that sparked the bloodletting.

The murder of the generals on Sept. 30, 1965, is still widely depicted as an attempted communist coup against Sukarno.

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