Implementing the Plan

The lack of careful planning and the indifference of the leadership to military procedures resulted in a terribly bungled operation. If one were to make a film based on Supardjo’s analysis, it would not look like the film commissioned by the Suharto regime, The Treason of the Septem- ber 30th Movement/PKI (Pengkhianatan G30S/PKI). That film depicts the organizers of the action as a ruthless collection of devious schemers who plotted every move down to the last detail. Supardjo’s analysis re- veals the plotters to have been thoroughly flummoxed, indecisive, and disorganized. Rather than being ingenious villains in the tradition of espionage films, they were more like clumsy amateurs committing, in tragic fashion, a comedy of errors. For Supardjo the movement largely defeated itself and should serve as a case study of how not to carry out a

The very limited military goals of the operation were not fully achieved. The “centerpiece of the whole strategy,” as Supardjo describes it, was the kidnapping of seven generals. This failed because of the hastiness of the preparations. Supardjo, at Lubang Buaya in the early morning hours of October 1, was appalled by the chaos. Even at that late stage “various important matters had not yet been settled.” The codes had not been determined, the ammunition had not arrived, and the air force troops had arrived late. The soldiers and civilian youths were hap- hazardly divided into the kidnapping teams: “The decision about which platoons would be assigned to which targets was not done carefully. For example, it so happened that the main target [presumably Nasution] was ﬁrst assigned to a platoon of youths who had only just learned how to hold a gun, then it was reassigned to an army platoon, but then that platoon was not one that was mentally prepared beforehand for special assignments.” The team sent to kidnap Nasution was led by a private when all six of the other teams were led by a corporal, sergeant, or lieutenant. The movement leaders knew that kidnapping Nasution and Yani would be the more difﬁcult tasks since these two generals had armed guards posted in front of their residences. That is why the kidnapping teams for Nasution and Yani were substantially larger than the others; about one hundred men were sent in four trucks to capture Na- sution, compared with just nineteen men for Suprapto. The most experienced and talented soldiers were not assigned to lead the high-priority teams. Nasution escaped, and Yani was shot at his house.

Supardjo does not explain what the movement’s intention was, but one assumes that it was to capture the generals alive. The kidnapping teams used violence only when faced with resistance, and even then they do not appear to have intended to kill the generals. One soldier involved in the kidnapping, Sergeant Major Bungkus of the palace guard, told me that he assumed that the original plan was to bring the generals before Sukarno. That plan had to be abandoned because three generals were either badly wounded or dead. The movement could not drag three bloodied bodies before the president. Once the original plan was aborted, the three generals who had been taken alive were considered useless. Someone in the movement decided at that point that the best option was to kill all the generals, along with the mistakenly abducted lieutenant, and hide their corpses. The movement, however, may not have planned to bring the generals before Sukarno. Bungkus also noted that the soldiers were told during the brieﬁng sessions that these generals were about to stage a coup and that they could not be allowed to es-

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100 t The Supardjo Document

Another blunder, according to Supardjo, was that the movement did not take advantage of the bulk of its troops. The companies from the battalions of Central and East Java were not assigned to accomplish any strategic objective and wound up being useless decorative pieces. Most were ordered to guard the empty presidential palace. The troops stood idle in the field in front of the palace until the afternoon. The organizers probably knew that Sukarno was not inside the palace by about 9:30 a.m. at the latest, when Supardjo returned to Halim from the palace by helicopter. But the two battalions were not reassigned. Indeed, it appears that the leadership did not have any special purpose for them from the beginning. As Supardjo describes the plan, “It was estimated that one battalion from Central Java and one from East Java could be used as extras [ figuran].” Their task, it seems, was simply to influence the public with the psychological impact of seeing troops occupying the nation’s center of power.

As an experienced tactician, Supardjo does not fault the movement for having too few troops. He knew that troop strength was not neces- sarily the crucial factor in determining victory or defeat. Skillful deploy- ment, quick movement, and the element of surprise can compensate for the lack of troops. He notes that “one battalion that panics can be over- whelmed by just one team of soldiers.” The movement did not need vast numbers of troops, he believed, only troops that were wisely used.

Just as the movement did not take full advantage of the troops under its command, it did not take full advantage of the radio station. Su- pardjo recognized the value of radio communications in the exercise of power. Control of the nation’s radio transmitters was “equal to dozens of divisions.” Yet the movement used the radio only “to read out a few announcements.” Supardjo thought that a properly organized action would have prepared a steady stream of propaganda and would have presented a careful, detailed explanation of its goals. The public could hardly understand, much less support, the movement based on its brief, puzzling announcements. Supardjo notes this failing yet had no explanation for it.

That the movement squandered what power it did have was one problem. Another was that its power was precarious to begin with. The movement was not in command of troops that understood and sup- ported its objectives. Astonishingly enough, of all the troops involved, Supardjo thought only one company was ideologically committed to the movement: “If the movement is reexamined, it is found that, actu- ally, the only unit that was fully with us was just one company from the

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palace guard.” The other troops, such as those from the Jakarta garrison (under Latief ) and the air force (under Soejono) were simply following the lead of their commanding ofﬁcers and had little or no commitment of their own to the movement. The ofﬁcers of Battalion 530, who spent the day idling in front of the palace, agreed to defect in the afternoon and bring the entire battalion inside Kostrad, the army reserve headquarters, on the eastern side of Merdeka Square.

The desertion of Battalion 530 was not just the result of the lack of ideological commitment on the part of the ofﬁcers and soldiers; it also derived from their lack of food. It has been well known that these troops turned themselves over to Kostrad headquarters when they were suffer- ing from hunger. After being posted to guard the palace in the early morning, the troops were not given breakfast or lunch. Supardjo, whose military experience must have drilled into him the utmost importance of food supplies, stresses this error: “All the hindrances in the movement of our troops were caused by, among other things, the lack of food [under- lined in original]. They didn’t eat in the morning, the afternoon, or the night.” Supardjo mentions that the core group of plotters at Halim learned that the troops had not been fed only after Supardjo proposed they attack Kostrad: “This fact was only discovered at night when there was some thought about mobilizing troops for an attack inside the city. At that time the Central Java battalion [454] was at Halim. The East Java battalion [530] had already been drawn into Kostrad in order to eat.”

With its troops poorly deployed, ideologically unprepared, and de- moralized from hunger, the movement proved to be a disaster in military terms. It could not sustain itself long enough for anyone in the public to rally behind it. The movement announced its existence over the national radio station at about 7:15 a.m., and about twelve hours later troops loyal to Suharto retook the station and proclaimed over the airwaves that the movement had been defeated.

Implementing the Plan