The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World

by Vincent Bevins

When Jones finally met Presiden Sukarno—as he is called in Indonesian—he was deeply impressed. He wrote: “To meet him was like suddenly coming under a sunlamp, such was the quality of his magnetism.” He quickly noticed, he said, Sukarno’s “enormous brilliant brown eyes, and a flashing smile that conveyed an all-embracing warmth.” He would watch, amazed, as Sukarno spoke eloquently on “the world, the flesh, and the devil: about movie stars and Malthus, Jean Jaures and Jefferson, folklore, and philosophy,” then wolf down a huge meal, and dance for hours. Even more impressive to Jones, who had lived a relatively comfortable life, was that this remarkable man—about the same age as Jones—learned to eat this way, and became so steeped in knowledge, while spending years behind bars for opposing Dutch colonial rule.48 Along the way, he had learned to speak in German, English, French, Arabic, and Japanese, in addition to Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, and Dutch.49