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Obama’s choice for Intel Director has dark past in East Timor
by Scott Gilbreath ~ January 9th, 2009
Admiral Dennis C. Blair has been nominated for Director of National Intelligence in the Obama administration. International news sources and bloggers are recalling his support for the perpetrators of civilian massacres in East Timor in 1999, when he was Commander-in-Chief of the US Pacific Command.
East Timor was occupied by Indonesian troops from 1975 to 1999. Even as the East Timorese people were voting for independence, Indonesia’s armed forces launched a final, intense campaign of murder and destruction.
Blair was implicated in the 1999 East Timor church massacres
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Though Blair was instructed to tell the killers — the armed forces of Indonesia — to stop, he chose not to do so. He did the opposite. He offered them support and US aid, instead, and the killings intensified. They culminated with the torching of the Bishop’s house (plus executions), a church massacre of perhaps 200, in Suai, a slaughter at the Catholic diocesan office, the rapes and assassinations of clergy, the burning of perhaps 80% of Timor’s housing, and the murders of more than 1,000 civilians.
Read the whole thing for a detailed chronology based on a UN report.
Adm Blair was the highest ranking US military official in the region during the final phase of Indonesia’s bloody occupation of East Timor. The Clinton administration tried to emphasise human rights and self-determination for the East Timorese but, according to a former US embassy official, Blair ignored his government’s foreign policy priorities.
“Admiral Blair undermined U.S. policy in the months preceding the U.S.-supported and UN-sponsored referendum in East Timor in 1999,” said Ed McWilliams, a senior U.S. embassy official in Jakarta at the time. “While senior State Department officials were pressing the Indonesian military to end the escalating violence and its support for militia intimidation of voters, Blair took a distinctly different line with his military counterparts. As Pacific Commander, his influence could have caused the military to rein in its militias. Instead, his virtual silence on the issue in meetings with the Indonesian generals led them and their militias to escalate their attacks on the Timorese.”
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“The extraordinarily brutal Indonesian retaliation against the East Timorese and the UN teams in East Timor following the Timorese vote for independence from Indonesia transpired in part because of Blair’s failure to press U.S. Government concerns in meetings with the Indonesian general,” said McWilliams.
The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) says Admiral Blair is “a poor choice for intelligence director”.
h/t: Global Voices
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January 12th, 2009 at 01:24 PM
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