The leak of the so-called “Kissinger Cables” has shown that while the US expected Indonesia would invade what was then Portuguese Timor in 1975, it did not wish to be implicated in the affair. A cable dated August 16, 1975 said that the US’ “only secret” regarding Portuguese Timor was its desire not to become involved.

The cable stated that while Indonesia’s “incorporation” of Portuguese Timor would be the outcome most “beneficial” for locals and the most likely to ensure regional stability, the “decision … is not for us to make, and we are determined not to become involved in the process”. The cable noted that if Indonesia used aggression in the incorporation, it could have negative repercussions for military support for Indonesia.

The cable appears to show little understanding of events in Portuguese Timor at this time, given that the local UDT party, influenced by Indonesian disinformation, had attempted to stage a coup on August 10. By August 16, Fretilin forces had all but defeated the UDT and its pro-Indonesia Apodeti allies.

Perhaps the most importand aspect of the leaked cable is that it confirms the expectation of Indonesia’s invasion, more than two weeks before another leaked cable, on September 4, 1975, said that Indonesia’s then acting foreign minister, Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, acting on behalf of president Suharto, had proposed that Australia join with Indonesia, Portugal and Malaysia in sending UN-sanctioned peace-keeping troops to oversee Portuguese Timor’s decolonisation. The cable says the Australian embassy in Jakarta had responded negatively to the suggestion, given that then prime minister Gough Whitlam had previously refused to consider such an overture from Portugal.

By September 4, UDT and Apodeti forces had been defeated and already retreated across the border into West Timor, where they were re-organising with the support of — and as a front for — the Indonesian military. By September 4, too, Australia almost certainly knew that the Indonesian proposal was intended to obscure its intention to invade Portuguese Timor. It was already known by Australian diplomats that Indonesia’s military intelligence had been fomenting a disinformation campaign about the dominant Fretilin party since earlier in the year, and promoting its local front party, Apodeti.

“The decision … is not for us to make, and we are determined not to become involved in the process” — leaked US cable

A Jakarta think-tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, closely linked to the Indonesian military and the generals who later led the invasion, had already drawn up plans for Portuguese Timor’s “integration” into Indonesia. The CSIS had close relations with Australia’s ambassador to Jakarta, Richard Woollcott, who in August 1975 recommended that Australia should accept the inevitability of the impending Indonesian invasion.

Whitlam had told parliament on 2 September that no definite proposal for including Australian peace-keepers had been put which, at this stage, was correct. The cable, however, reveals a more nuanced and considered response from Whitlam than has previously been portrayed by what appeared to be his acquiescence to, if not promotion of, Indonesia’s takeover of Portuguese Timor. A September 3 cable says that Australia could consider humanitarian assistance to Portuguese Timor, which Indonesia had earlier rejected. But it showed Whitlam would not countenance anything that had a “colonial character”, such as sending troops.

Whitlam’s concern at this time reflected the method of Indonesia’s incorporation of West Papua in 1969, through a much-criticised show of hands by 1025 hand-picked tribal leaders. It also reflected Whitlam’s support for the subsequent “Barwick Doctrine” of Australia not involving itself in prolonging unsustainable colonial arrangements.

The leaked cables add detail to understanding the events that led to Indonesia’s invasion of Portuguese Timor, which had unofficially begun in early October 1975 and officially on December 8. Most notably, they show how poor much US information was on relevant events at this time.

Almost four decades later, and more than a decade after Timor-Leste “restored” its independence, the cables are an awkward footnote to the now surprising closeness of relations between Timor-Leste and Indonesia.

* Deakin University’s Professor Damien Kingsbury is co-editor of The Politics of Timor-Leste: Democratic Consolidation After Intervention’(Cornell UP 2013) and is author of East Timor: The Price of Liberty (Palgrave Macmillan 2009).