Phyllis Oakley Warned Massive Sweep Could Cause Significant Deaths
By Harlan Pryce ·
Pro-independence activists risked significant deaths or disappearances in a projected massive sweep by the Indonesian military, potentially operating without Jakarta's acquiescence.
April 30, 1999. Assistant Secretary of State Phyllis Oakley sends a memo to Ambassador Scheffer. The subject is the volatile situation in East Timor, a territory that the public record identifies as the eastern half of Timor island, comprising the coastal exclave of Oecusse and the islands of Atauro and Jaco.
We do not have the full pages of the memo here. What we have is the archive's curated description of the document, held by the National Security Archive. That catalogue entry records a bleak forecast. It states that the memo outlines "possible worst-case scenarios" for the region, focusing specifically on the actions of the Indonesian military.
"Significant deaths or disappearances"
According to the file's catalogue entry, Oakley's primary concern was the possibility of the Indonesian military deciding to "keep the province at all costs." The description notes that the memo envisioned a scenario where the military would "undertake a massive sweep against pro-independence activists and sympathizers."
In the lexicon of internal security, a "massive sweep" is rarely a surgical operation. The archive's description is explicit about the projected human cost of such a campaign, noting that Oakley believed this course of action "could result in significant deaths or disappearances."
For a diplomat, the word "disappearances" carries a specific, heavy weight. It suggests a process where individuals are removed from the public eye by state actors, leaving families and international observers with no record of their fate or location. By framing this as a "worst-case" scenario, the State Department was quantifying the risk of a total collapse of order on the island, where the drive for independence clashed with the Indonesian military's desire for territorial retention.
Document imagery from nsarchive.gwu.edu From the files: nsarchive.gwu.edu
Jakarta's political acquiescence
One of the most critical distinctions made in the record is the relationship between the soldiers on the ground and the politicians in the capital. The archive's description of the memo indicates that the military might act "with or without Jakarta's political acquiescence."
This suggests a tension within the Indonesian power structure in early 1999. The memo implies that the military—the TNI—might have been operating on its own internal timeline or logic, potentially ignoring or overriding the political leadership in Jakarta. Whether the government in Jakarta would actively support a "massive sweep" or simply look the other way while it happened was, at the time of the memo, an open question.
This nuance is where diplomatic reporting often lives. The focus is not just on the act of violence, but on the chain of command and the level of authorization. If the military acted without political acquiescence, it represented a rogue element; if they acted with it, it represented a state policy of repression.
April 30, 1999
The timing of the memo is precise. It was written as the push for East Timorese self-determination reached a fever pitch. The public record shows that the country, now the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, eventually achieved its independence, with its capital at Dili. However, the path to that independence was paved with the very risks Oakley described.
While this specific memo provides a glimpse into the State Department's anxiety, it is only one piece of a larger, fragmented puzzle. Related files exist in other repositories that provide the broader context of the era. The US National Archives holds "East Timor Files" under NAID 7830207 and "Portugal Subject Files" under NAID 1609077. Further diplomatic history is preserved in the State Department's Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, including records of visits by President Jose Alexander (Xanana) Gusmao and documents covering Southeast Asia and the Pacific from 1977 to 1980.
There are also digital footprints of the era's discourse, such as the "Nettalk" archives from 1997 and 1999, which capture the real-time flow of information and opinion regarding the territory's struggle.
The catalogue entry for the Oakley memo leaves us with the central tension of the spring of 1999: the fear of a military that felt it had a mandate to hold the province "at all costs." The record describes the danger, but it does not provide the resolution. It leaves open the question of whether Jakarta ever truly acquiesced to the sweeps, or if the military simply acted while the political center remained silent.