{"id":379124,"date":"2026-10-22T01:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T01:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/379124\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T01:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T01:34:12","slug":"how-sukarno-indonesias-first-president-asked-the-state-department-for-help-booking-cindy-adams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/379124\/","title":{"rendered":"How Sukarno \u2014 Indonesia’s first president \u2014 asked the State Department for help booking Cindy Adams"},"content":{"rendered":"

I, a very young reporter \u2014 back before the Earth cooled \u2014 lived in the Indonesia<\/a> that is now in the news under the headline: \u201cIt\u2019s a ticking time bomb.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Sukarno, a one-named former architectural student at Bandung University, had cobbled together the 17,000 disparate islands, each with its own language, into one country \u2014 then known as the Dutch East Indies \u2014 that became Earth\u2019s fourth largest.<\/p>\n

Me, a then reporter for a little news agency, had done a small interview with Sukarno <\/a>who was then affectionately called \u201cBapak,\u201d which is Indonesian for \u201cFather.\u201d Perhaps because I hadn\u2019t known better, I\u2019d made him laugh. His English was good and I asked why he always wore a military uniform. His answer: \u201cBecause I am the Father of this country.\u201d Me: \u201cI don\u2019t think so. I think it\u2019s because you know you look handsome in it.\u201d Sukarno laughed, and the interview proceeded easily.<\/p>\n

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Months later I am back in New York and the US State Department contacts me. They tell me that America\u2019s current envoy to Jakarta is Ambassador Howard Jones. And President Sukarno had told the ambassador he wanted to compile an autobiography and that \u201cmany men with fat bellies and cigar ashes\u201d down them had wanted to write his story but \u2014 Sukarno said:<\/a> \u201cI only want that lady to do it. Find her for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In my apartment vacuuming the living room when the State Department called, I didn\u2019t know Indonesia from downtown Arizona. Calls from the ambassador, our State Department, Sukarno\u2019s government never stopped. I then spent months studying Indonesia. The language, the history, the president. I finally flew over and spent the next many years with him.<\/p>\n

Sukarno was a magician. The country he created \u2014 his stage. His land \u2014 like him \u2014 understood that \u201cwhite people are boring.\u201d Spend time in this magic world and visitors soon learn efficiency is a very minor virtue. Holding a job \u2014 a novelty. I remember when I desperately needed his photograph. Files were locked up. The man in charge wasn\u2019t in. Then phone was out of order. Nine weeks to get that photo: It showed the back of Sukarno\u2019s head and only my left arm.<\/p>\n

In our own impersonal way Bapak and I loved one another. Understood one another. Laughed, then fought with one another. He, Muslim \u2014 allowed four wives \u2014 was full up. Indonesia was coffee, java, fruit, oil, wives. He is gone. His land \u2014 rich. But if you read today\u2019s headlines, it\u2019s \u201cWarning Lights Flash for Indonesia.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world\u2019s fourth most populous nation has known conflict, upheaval, disaster. I was targeted at one point by anti-Americans. It was Ambassador Jones who hustled me to safety at 5 a.m.<\/p>\n

Decades come, centuries go, I am still in touch with Bapak\u2019s family. Even stayed with them. Japanese wife Dewi lives in Tokyo. Their daughter \u2014 London. Grandson<\/a> \u2014 Midwest. If pushed I can still remember a few words of Bahasa, their native language. So terima kasih \u2014 that\u2019s thank you in their language \u2014 for reading this far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I, a very young reporter \u2014 back before the Earth cooled \u2014 lived in the Indonesia that is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[69079,9,11,10,49,51,50,299],"class_list":["post-379124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-indonesia","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}