Foreign Aid: Hoodwinked

Of the 79 nations receiving help under the U.S. foreign aid program, none is so exasperating as Indonesia. Despite $881 million in U.S. handouts since 1946, Indonesia is an economic shambles. Factories lie idle for lack of spare parts, roads go unrepaired, and harbors clog with silt. “In Indonesia,” the saying goes, “chaos is organized.” Only Communist-coddling President Sukarno’s 400,000-man military force seems to thrive.

Indonesia has thus been a prime target of foreign aid critics on Capitol Hill—and last week they were really steamed up. Released was testimony taken last June in a closed-door hearing before a House Appropriations Subcommittee. It nailed down the fact that Sukarno’s luxury-loving government had purchased three jet airliners from the U.S.’s General Dynamics Corp. for $20 million—only a day before the U.S. granted Indonesia a $17 million “emergency” loan. The loan, Assistant Aid Administrator Seymour J. Janow told the subcommittee, was to help the “general stabilization of Indonesia’s econ omy.” Aid officials, Janow explained lamely, had not known about the airliners when the loan was negotiated.

The committee members were furious. Ohio Republican William E. Minshall stormed that the U.S. had been “hoodwinked.” Subcommittee Chairman Otto Passman, a longtime foreign aid foe, laid the loan to the “gullibility of Uncle Sam” and said acidly: “I would certainly discount any justifications you people make for any type of loan to Indonesia if you do not know any more about what is going on than that. I am just wondering if we could not find some friends to whom to give our money instead of to that country.”