Feet to the Fire; CIA Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1957-1958

More than forty years ago the Central Intelligence Agency began a top-secret covert action campaign designed to hold Indonesia's left-leaning President Sukarno's feet to the fire and prevent a strategic crossroad from falling into the communist camp. In a fast-paced, engrossing narrative evoking the novels of John LeCarré and Graham Greene, the authors provide the first unclassified, detailed case study of an operation that has escaped public scrutiny for decades.

Feet to the Fire fills a gap long closed to historians and outsiders interested in Indonesia. The authors' extensive interviews and apparent access to hitherto classified documents have filled in the lacunae on this controversial episode. The work stands alone in its detailed accounting of a controversial period in US-Indonesian relations. -- Col. John B. Haseman, USAF, Ret., U.S. Defense Attaché in Indonesia, 1990-1994

Conboy and Morrison have done masterful research, ferreting out documents and interviewing both American and Indonesian participants. A surprising number of former CIA agents appear here, and their input makes this an extraordinarily important piece of history. The authors found an exciting story, one that has never been told in this sort of detail. They know their subject matter and have produced a first rate work. -- Dale Andradé, historian at the Center for Military History and author of Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War