Feet to the Fire

Ken Conboy, James Morrison

ISBN 10: 1682473457 / ISBN 13: 9781682473450

Published by Naval Institute Press, US, 2018

About this Item

Today the vast archipelago of Southeast Asia islands known as Indonesia is in the headlines because of political instability, religious tension, and violence in the streets. Forty years ago similar conditions led the Central Intelligence Agency to mount a top-secret covert action campaign designed to hold that nation's left-leaning President Sukarno's feet to the fire and prevent a strategic crossroad from falling into the communist camp. The Agency supported rebels with weapons, planes, and a memorable cast of bigger-than-life American agents. 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. Their work adds significantly to our understanding of the CIA and American involvement in Asia.Drawing on declassified documents and an extraordinary number of interviews with CIA and Indonesian participants, Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison reconstruct the delicate, dangerous game played by American intelligence agents across the Indonesian archipelago. This is a story of ideologues and soldiers of fortune--historic CIA legends like Allen Dulles and Franklin Wisner, and notorious special operators like Tony ""Poe"" Poshepny, whose reputation reached mythic proportions later in Laos, and Allen Pope, an indefatigable B-26 pilot who was captured and sentenced to die. But it also includes the transfixing exploits of Montana smokejumpers, Polish aircrews, Muslim anti-communist guerrillas, U.S. Navy submarine crews, and Filipino mercenary pilots flying P-51 Mustangs.With the problems in today's Indonesia far from solved and the complex U.S.-Indonesian relationship coming under close scrutiny, this fascinating account of an American covert operation gone bad will play a significant role in shedding new light on the CIA's efforts in Southeast Asia.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781682473450

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Feet to the Fire
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press, US
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1682473457
• ISBN 13: 9781682473450
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 342 grams

About this title

Synopsis

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.

Review

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