Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957-1958 (Special Warfare) [Hardcover]

Kenneth Conboy (Author), James Morrison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1999 | Series: Special Warfare

The first unclassified study of the CIA campaign to prevent a strategic crossroad from falling to communism.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Feet to the Fire fills a gap long closed to historians and outsiders interested in Indonesia. The authors' extensive interviews and apparent access to hitherto classified documents have filled in the lacunae on this controversial episode. The work stands alone in its detailed accounting of a controversial period in US-Indonesian relations. -- Col. John B. Haseman, USAF, Ret., U.S. Defense Attaché in Indonesia, 1990-1994

Conboy and Morrison have done masterful research, ferreting out documents and interviewing both American and Indonesian participants. A surprising number of former CIA agents appear here, and their input makes this an extraordinarily important piece of history. The authors found an exciting story, one that has never been told in this sort of detail. They know their subject matter and have produced a first rate work. -- Dale Andradé, historian at the Center for Military History and author of Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War

Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: US Naval Institute Press; First Edition edition (October 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557501939
• ISBN-13: 978-1557501936
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,389,734 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The truth IS stranger than fiction, January 10, 2000

By 

J. Moran (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957-1958 (Special Warfare) (Hardcover)

"Feet to the Fire" is a well documented, unbiased account of CIA shenanigans in Indonesia during a brief period in the 1950's. (At least it seems to me to be well documented and unbiased but I have no first-hand knowledge of any of the events described.) To me, the story is fantastic and so is the cast: scheming Indonesian politicians, indecisive Indonesian colonels, CIA employees cast from the Felix Leiter mold, CIA contractors playing cowboys and Indians with very dangerous toys, a prevaricating ambassador, and gray-haired old men in Washington pulling the strings.

Of special interest to me were the detailed, almost day-by-day descriptions of events put together by the authors from as many sources as they could access. They begin to give a picture of a "day in the life" of at least some people involved in covert action, with secret supply missions by the Navy, flights to clandestine air strips, a sub popping up off the coast of Sumatra to rescue five CIA men, and a C-46 flying another bunch to safety at Clark AFB. As an American who has lived overseas for many years and met such people, I have long been curious about just what they do. (You can't ask them.)

No individual is portrayed in great depth and it is just as well since most are rather unappealing, coming off as either connivers or flakes, or both. One character that did catch my attention was Fravel "Jim" Brown, a CIA careerist who was present when rebels he was supporting were captured by government paratroopers taking an airfield. He walked up to the paratroopers' commander, introduced himself as "Brown from Caltex," made some small talk, then slipped away. A few days and hundreds of kilometers away Brown was in a rebel-held port as it too was captured, by the same paratroopers. Once again he slipped away. Is there a name for that personality trait, extremely valuable for people in certain professions, that combines chutzpah with blarney?

As an American living in Indonesia, I found the book interesting and very readable. However, I suspect that readers with no knowledge of Indonesian political history or geography will find the narrative a bit tedious unless they are fervent espionage afficionados.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, crucial history, December 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957-1958 (Special Warfare) (Hardcover)

The real story of Sukarno's reign in Indonesia has been largely forgotten in the West, but I for one continue to be interested in the 1965 military coup, as I don't think any book I've yet read has got to the bottom of that tangled plot. "Feet to the Fire" covers the CIA's efforts in 1957-58 to exert pressure on Sukarno by supporting rebels in Sumatra -- "supporting" seems too mild a word when virtually the only casualties inflicted came as a result of American air-power, which was, under Allen Dulles, meant to be deniable but was not. An American pilot was shot down, kept prisoner until 1962. The history recounted here starts slowly, as perhaps a few too many Indonesian names are thrown at the reader early on, but things clear up fairly soon, and the story really does become quite gripping. And this is history that has never before been revealed! Some of the notes are worth pursuing in the back, also, by the way.

1.0 out of 5 stars About trees and forests, November 27, 2009

By 

F. J. Van Velsen (Holland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Feet to the Fire: CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957-1958 (Special Warfare) (Hardcover)

Again a deception of a kind that I had several times now: authors who do not make the difference between a book meant for reading and a textbook. I managed 40 pages before definitely abandoning it. At least 25 caracters had by then been introduced by the authors giving a cv or at least a resumé of each and every one of them, thus killing the storyline. As long as it concerns keyfigures it is of course allright. But if applied to every caracter, even the most furtive ones, it is inadmissable. If an Indonesian officer meets an OSS-agent, the reader is interersted in the object and result of the meeting, not in the man's place of birth; the school he visted and the various positions he held before becoming what he was at the time of the meeting. This information should be footnoted, not used as disruptive 'filler' in the story. By describing every tree, the reader looses sight of the wood, he was interested in.