The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade And The Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World

"The CIA at one point discussed just straight up assassinating the Indonesian President in order to squash the country’s growing political left. They decided against it in favor of hiring a lookalike to film a fake sex tape. That plan didn’t work out either. Turns out the most effective strategy was a lot less outlandish – propaganda, disinformation and demonization. In The Jakarta Method, journalist Vincent Bevins uses declassified documents and one-on-one interviews to lay out in fascinating and frustrating detail how the U.S. fueled the anti-left rhetoric that led to the mass killings of anywhere between 500,000 to 1 million people in Indonesia – and then used that same playbook elsewhere in the world."