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The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (Political Economy of Human Rights)

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In '75, Gerald Ford allowed and facilitated one of the worst genocides in the history of the world to take place when Indonesia invaded East Timor. Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman detailed it at length in this book published in 1979. Theirs was a voice in the wilderness as the contemporary U.S. media totally ignored the circumstances and the carnage.

It was not until 2001 that Chomsky and Herman were once again shown to be spot on when documents in the national archives were declassified. Here's a good site that covers those latter disclosures as below: [...]

* When Suharto told Ford and (1973 Nobel Peace Prizewiner Henry) Kissinger that he was about to order an invasion, the response was only to caution that "it would be better it were done after we returned" (the invasion began the next day).
* Kissinger told Suharto that the use of U.S.-supplied arms in the invasion-equipment that under U.S. law could not be used for offensive military operations-"could create problems," but indicated that they might be able to "construe" the invasion as self-defense.
* On 12 August 1975, a few days after a coup attempt in East Timor, Kissinger observed that an Indonesian takeover would take place "sooner or later".
* Six months into the occupation of East Timor, Kissinger acknowledged to senior State Department officials that U.S. military aid had been used "illegally" and hinted at his own doubts about the invasion: Washington had "not very willingly" resumed normal relations with Jakarta.

Over half a million Timorese were slaughtered, roughly the equivalent of 170 9/11s. It should be noted that this was one of the most bloodthirsty and disgraceful episodes in U.S. history, one studiously ignored by the U.S. press for two decades.

On January 23, 1976, former Democratic Senator but then UN Ambassador Pat Moynihan, "...sent a top-secret cable to Kissinger in which he boasted about the 'considerable progress' he had made in blocking UN action on East Timor. Moynihan later wrote: 'The department of state desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective [on East Timor]. This task was given to me and I carried it through with no inconsiderable success'." (From John Pilger, 1999)