DAS: Confidential Memoranda

THE RECENT controversy over whether the Development Advisory Service should keep its confidential memoranda out of public hands has gained little for those who wish to be better informed about that agency's widespread activities. The protest has subsided, and the documents remain private privilege. But what the episode has shown clearly is that DAS activities must not be assessed, nor can they be blindly defended, in connection with the free pass of knowledge which is commonly regarded as essential to the academic process.

Two weeks ago, DAS officials announced to a group of SDS demonstrators that they would not release their internal reports on the grounds that such memoranda are generally the right of any self-respecting agency. "The same situation obtains for any organization in or outside Harvard, whether it be an undergraduate House, the Dean's office or an underground newspaper," a printed statement said. "If the authors knew that their reports and letters would be available to a wide audience, a sense of responsibility would require that they be less frank, comprehensive, and communicative." The DAS thus asked the rest of the University to take the word of the Administration and a handful of Faculty committees that its operations are a "suitable function for a university... and a suitable function for Harvard in particular."

That argument by itself is a miserable failure. Student organizations, Harvard personnel offices, and underground journals are not engaged firsthand in the manufacture of public policy. The DAS, on the other hand, conducts cabinet-level activity in five underdeveloped countries. Unless one adheres to the memoir theory of history, which deems it permissible for top-level government decisions to be made in secret only to have them surface years afterward in the form of personal remembrances, then it is difficult to regard the DAS' reticence with anything but skepticism or distrust.

A second explanation given by the DAS seems at first glance to make more sense. If the reports were made public, "personal reputations would be unjustly damaged." The statement implies that lengthy portions of the confidential reports are character evaluations of individual DAS advisors or their host colleagues, and that release of the reports would unnecessarily drag purely private matters into the public domain.

But on the basis of several private DAS papers made available to the CRIMSON last month, this second claim is found to be equally misleading. Those reports-which concern the DAS' work in cooperation with General Suharto's military regime in Indonesia-paint a far clearer picture of what is actually meant by "personal reputations" than what is hinted at in the DAS statement. In none of those documents is any DAS member singled out for description; the only intimation of "personality" is made in connection with the DAS team as a whole, and these passages describe how the group stands in relation to the Indonesian leadership and to other organizations working that country, such as the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. The few "personal" remarks are made in connection with top-level Indonesian officials, and those brief passages do no more than to describe their administrative virtues or failings.

TO STATE that such information is "personal" and not political is to do no more than provide a cover explanation for why the DAS does not wish its activities to be disclosed in greater detail. Perhaps more than anything else, a thorough understanding of how the DAS field teams relate to the varying levels of officialdom in the host governments is essential to any appraisal of that agency's goals and effectiveness. This information is not available in any of the published research carried on by the DAS in Cambridge, nor is it provided by the so-called "substantive documents," which are dry, characterless statements of economic theory or of single policy recommendations rudely dislodged from the decision-making context in which they evolved.

It is the statements which describe the origin or meaning of policy decisions which make the confidential reports the most "frank, comprehensive, and communicative" set of documents concerning the work of the DAs. For example, the public pronouncements of the DAS' have deliberately created the impression that the agency's orientation has been strictly economic in nature, and that there is little intention among DAS officials of contributing to the political needs or desires of any given regime. But the field report concerning the first 13 months of DAS work in Indonesia, discussing a development plan which had been prepared with DAS assistance, states approvingly that "the political leadership has made considerable use of the plan to rally support and encourage the people that conditions will improve in the future."

THE CONFIDENTIAL documents go on to make some even more surprising statements concerning the influence of the DAS and of other "international consortium" groups on the decision-making process within the Indonesian government. Earlier this fall, former DAS director Gustav Papanek said that that government was "one of the most self-assured and independent-in the economic sphere-that I know of," and added in particular that the early advice provided to the regime by the International Monetary Fund had never been pivotal in nature. But in a confidential memorandum circulated within Harvard in the fall of 1968. Papanek stated that "relations between the Indonesian government and the IMF had undergone a substantial, subtle change. The Indonesian economic team had gained self-confidence and was no longer as ready as in the past to take IMF advice as gospel." One possible implication of Papanek's statement is that consortium groups have exerted a far more central role in Indonesian policy planning than the DAS is publicly willing to admit.

Carrying this theme significantly further, the September 1969 field report implies strongly that a host of other groups, foremost among them the DAS, has leapt in to fill the position of influence vacated by the IMF. It says in part that "among the diverse programs of assistance to [the planning agency]... a natural division of labor has emerged, and the various efforts have so far exhibited a high degree of complementarity. The DAS concentrates on broad policy; the [World Bank] team on sector programs and project development; the Tinbergen [Dutch] team on three specific subject matters-regional-planning, manpower, and aid management..." This report also suggests, but leaves unstated, something that Papanek had spelled out clearly in his 1968 memorandum: Suharto pays close attention to his economists and "approves their recommendations in almost every instance."

IN SHORT, the DAS representatives in Djakarta, far from being "students of the development process," have probably played an important role in helping to shape the present Indonesian economy. And as the foregoing material suggests, the net effect of the DAS in that country cannot be considered outside the context of the Indonesian political situation. In late 1965, there occurred an armed uprising which the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) supported but in which the extent of their role is still highly unclear. That uprising was directed not against the rule of the Sukarno government, whose reaction to the event was ambiguous, but against a group of high military officials and their supporters. General Suharto immediately instigated a coup (or counter-coup) and seized control of the country. Sukarno himself became a mere figurehead and was dislodged from office in 1966.

DAS representatives, under the auspices of the Ford Foundation, had functioned briefly in Indonesia during the Sukarno period, but they worked in an academic training program alongside economists who disagreed with Sukarno and many of whom later ascended to key posts under Suharto's rule. The Harvard agency was then far from the helm of government policy-making and, if not directly antagonistic to Sukarno, did not occupy a position of influence or provide the government with support as it did under the succeeding leadership. The DAS withdrew from Indonesia in early 1965 as a result of intensified crisis conditions, but administered a training program for Indonesian economists in the United States until shortly before its own return to Djakarta in mid-1968.

MEANWHILE, the new government had outlawed the two-million member PKI and embarked on a massive pogrom which resulted in the slaughter of an estimated 500,000 Communists and suspected sympathizers. After the mass murders, Suharto imprisoned more than 100,000 others for alleged political offenses. Arbitrary arrests continued to be common, and last November the government began settling the prisoners as "colonists" in outlying areas of the country. Reported conditions of starvation and torture in Indonesian jails have been the subject of international protest, and even outside prison walls, local military officials have enforced systematic discrimination against politically uncooperative citizens, terrorizing their families and barring their children from attendance at school.

Economically, the government has reversed Sukarno's policy of isolationism and re-integrated his country with the extensive cash-and-trade nexus of the West. The government has become increasingly dependent on massive inputs of American aid, and has encouraged an immense flow of foreign investment, which is thus far concentrating on oil, timber, and minerals. All of these actions have incidentally benefited the American corporate community, many of whose members have eagerly flocked to the area.

It might be wrong to glorify the late Sukarno regime and assume that the new government is the root of all evil in present-day Indonesia. Sukarno, too, imprisoned political enemies, though his attitude toward dissent never approached the intolerance or brutality of the present leadership. And Sukarno's economic policies were disjointed, self-centered, and in many areas non-existent. The new regime has succeeded in completely stopping an 800 per cent annual inflation and in formulating a centralized, functioning economic structure. Several Indonesian students at Harvard have said that they feel their country is now better off materially than it ever was under the Sukarno regime.

It is unclear, however, that either Suharto or international capital has the best interests of the Indonesian populace at heart, or that another, perhaps socialist, form of economy might not better serve the needs of most people living in that country. It seems unlikely, too, on the basis of past conduct, that the Sukarno regime will countenance any change in policy besides any which it itself desires.

DAS officials have publicly justified their presence in Indonesia on the simple grounds that the present economic structure of that country is a vast improvement over anything in the past. But the contents of confidential memoranda on their project in Indonesia demand that they shift their argument to other more complex grounds. The DAS should, in all honesty, state its case in political as well as economic terms. And it should provide the University with a far more complete description of its activities than it has offered so far.

THAT, of course, would mean releasing all internal communications on its operations abroad. If any guiltless individuals are to be unjustly harmed by such publications, it would be perfectly possible for their names only to be deleted; the availability of the reports should be for purposes of policy appraisal, not for those of needless vilification. It is essential to recognize, however, that the official activities of prominent individuals and organizations, such as General Suharto or the DAS, are not a matter of private privilege but legitimate public concern.

It would be foolish to think that, even with the release of these documents, the work of the DAS will have been unfolded in every detail. The papers do not by themselves describe the impact of the agency where it has functioned or the innermost thoughts of those who have taken part in it. But as members of an academic community and, presumably, an open society, DAS officials should feel obligated to offer their public every possible criterion for appraisal and judgment.