Conclusion

Discounting the dubious confessions displayed at the post-1965 show trials, the CIA-Suharto hypothesis seems to have the following advantages over other explanations of GESTAPU:
  1. It is consistent with PKI policy and behavior before, during, and after the October 1st events. It explains PKI unpreparedness.
  2. It is consistent with President Sukarno's behavior before, during, and after the events of October 1st. Sukarno had never resorted to political murder.
  3. It explains why the coup was launched in such a disadvantageous military situation, why it was carried out with such incompetence, and why it failed so easily. GESTAPU was meant to fail, and quickly.
  4. It is consistent with expected U.S. activism. It is highly implausible that the U.S. would have passively permitted Indonesia to "go Communist." Something had to be done. A desperate situation required desperate measures.
  5. It relates the GESTAPU action to those who benefited from it.
  6. It is consistent with what we know of the backgrounds of the GESTAPU officers. They were, for the most part, Suharto's men and there is no evidence, except for that obtained through "confessions," that they had any pro-PKI inclinations.
  7. It explains why General Yani and his associates were killed (and not merely kidnapped or put on trial). There were several strong motives for the CIA and Suharto to get rid of Yani. Victims of the "PKI" were required and in the Indonesian context, Yani was a "constitutionalist," loyal to the existing regime, as General Schneider was later in Chile.
  8. It is inconsistent (a positive value) with a series of highly suspicious trials that were stage-managed by the Indonesian Army for obvious political purposes. As Justus van der Kroef wrote in 1970, "What Indonesians have been reading about Gestapu thus far is likely, in retrospect, to be more valuable as an index to the manipulation of the opinion and feelings concerning the September 30 events than as a contribution to an understanding of the coup itself." That a few trials, those of Sudisman and Sjam, impressed some foreign observers is only indicative of the fact that the state of the art has advanced since the 1930's in the Soviet Union.

The Cornell study in 1966 perceived the absence of links between GESTAPU on the one side and the PKI and Sukarno on the other and the essentially reactive behavior of the latter. The Cornell researchers concluded that the GESTAPU actors were entirely within the military establishment. A number of analysts noted the many associations between the GESTAPU officers and General Suharto. In the climate of 10 years ago, however, prior to the revelations of CIA operations, few were willing to take the next step and draw the logical connections that most adequately explain GESTAPU and its origins.