Office of the Historian

103. Memorandum of Conversation0

Washington, May 18, 1958, 5:30 p.m.

PARTICIPANTS

  • Allen W. Dulles
  • General Cabell
  • [name not declassified]
  • The Secretary

We discussed the situation in Indonesia and report of an air battle that had occurred with a loss of one rebel plane with two crewmen1 and the probable destruction of three or four government planes.2 There was apparently a large government build-up and considerable pressure to get authority to strike it again.

I expressed the view that we should use our influence to prevent this, as I could not see in the long run any possibility of this being a winning course and either the political move must succeed or we would have to consider backing more overtly the anti-Communist elements in the neighborhood. [2-2/2 lines of source text not declassified]

  1. Source: Department of State, Secretary’s Memoranda of Conversation: Lot 64 D 199. Secret. This meeting took place at Secretary Dulles’ residence.↩
  2. American flier Allen Pope was one of the two crewmen shot down and captured by Indonesian Government troops on May 18. He was shot down while flying a bombing mission for the rebels over Ambon.↩
  3. On May 19 Secretary of State Dulles discussed the capture of Allen Pope in separate telephone conversations with Cabell, Robertson, and Allen Dulles. (Memoranda of telephone conversations, prepared in the Secretary of State’s office; Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, General Telephone Conversations)↩