Just days after Smiling Jones presented his credentials in March 1958, Sukarno’s foreign minister asked to speak with him. Subandrio, a thin, bespectacled, and thoughtful diplomat who had tried to rally international support from London during Indonesia’s independence struggle, asked the new US ambassador, as politely as possible, to explain a cache of weapons that had been air-dropped to the rebels. There were machine guns, STEN guns, and bazookas, and the weapons bore the mark of a manufacturer in Plymouth, Michigan.
