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War, War, War See other War, War, War Articles Title: Glen Clancy interviews Bali bombing investigator Robert S. Finnegan “Fool Me Twice” Producer/Director Glen Clancy interviews Bali bombing investigator Robert S. Finnegan on recent and not so recent events surrounding the October 12 2002 bombing that killed over 200 people in Kuta, Bali Indonesian forces last Saturday laid siege to a central Java residence believed to be sheltering Noordin Mohammed Top, the leading Islamic militant implicated in a series of major terrorist attacks, now including – once again - the 2002 Bali bombings that claimed more than 200 lives. The next day I spoke with colleague Robert S. Finnegan, former Jakarta Post senior editor and lead investigator on the Bali bombings for the paper. Finnegan was livid that Top is being sold to the international public as yet another “mastermind” of the Bali bombings. In early retirement and suffering from deteriorating health, Finnegan has decided to finally go on the record about previously unreported aspects of his investigation that may help rectify the case. As he talked for the first time about highly sensitive information - burdening him for the past seven years - the veteran investigator revealed stunning admissions he had vowed never to disclose. Below is our conversation. I caught up with Finnegan at his Jakarta residence, where he lives with his wife Imas Kurniawati. CLANCY: Looks like you have been pulled out of retirement once more. FINNEGAN: You already know how angry I am, I just can’t let this one pass without setting the record straight. CLANCY: You must know the first question everyone is going to be asking now: Why have you waited this long to speak again? FINNEGAN: I never really thought it would go on this long and realize now that I should have released more on this [Bali bombing]. We were so close, after we had the rug pulled out from under us by [Jakarta Post Chief Editor] Raymond Toruan and Boyce [U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia Ralph Boyce] I guess I was hoping things would fall together for the other investigators and it would come out from other sources. It’s obvious that is not going to happen now and in any event I was already in exile in the U.S. Now, on Saturday, we have what looks to be yet another intelligence failure, and I lay that failure - if there indeed was one – squarely at the feet of the foreign intelligence operatives and agencies that have been and are still screwing the Indonesian authorities and investigators and have been since day one. CLANCY: Are you serious? FINNEGAN: You are damned right I am serious. CLANCY: You are saying that the Indonesian investigators and authorities on the Bali bombings of 2002 were set up by foreign intelligence? Why didn’t you publish this information at the same time your analysis was printed? FINNEGAN: Simple. We couldn’t prove it. Still can’t. Now however… this was too much, watching history repeat itself on Saturday. More “masterminds?” They have to be kidding. Look at the 2003 Analysis Timeline.* That’s where we started with the roll-call of “masterminds.” How many now? I have to go back and count. Pastika [General I Made Pastika, lead Indonesian investigator for the “International Investigative Team”] was the broker for the so-called “international investigators” on the Indonesian side. He ultimately sealed the deal for Indonesia. Real nice: A handsome, charismatic investigator here now to lead everyone out of the wilderness, catch the bad guys, then declare victory and go home. He made the cover of the CIA publication Time Magazine. Movie stuff, except it was deadly serious and I told Pastika then in 2002 that this will come back to haunt him if it is not done correctly and questions remained. He blew me off. Really rude guy, I am glad we were running parallel investigations because I never liked him personally or professionally. He struck me as an amateur thrust into a role where he was completely out of his depth. Turns out, he was. No one even remembers his name now. So, Pastika traded his fifteen minutes of fame for a blown investigation. That’s a really bad trade-off. At the time, everyone was sick at heart following this atrocity. They wanted it [the bombing] to be over, and didn’t want to hear about it anymore. Just wanted it to go away. They certainly didn’t want to entertain the possibility that the so-called “masterminds,” – flavor of the day an illiterate motorcycle mechanic named Amrozi and his crackpot sidekick Samudra, both now dead – were not completely responsible for the entire bombing plot, even though this was impossible at the time. It was too much to take in at once. Too horrific to contemplate that the real “masterminds” were of foreign origin and still out there. At the time of the bombing, Kuta was flooded with spooks. I spoke with a few of the guys on the inside and they were dismayed at the way the FBI, BATF and AFP – to name a few - were running roughshod over the investigation and destroying critical evidence. Just look at what they did [the international investigation team]. For example when you have a major airline crash, or any crash for that matter, investigators painstakingly gather the evidence after sealing the crash site, going to great lengths in the recovery process to assure that all evidence still available is collected and sealed in a chain of custody. In Bali, the so-called “international investigators” did exactly the opposite: From a legal standpoint they fatally contaminated gathered forensic evidence and then dumped it in the ocean [off Benoa Harbor, Bali]. They were not sharing any information, as though the Indonesian investigators were merely spectators. The information that the Americans and Australians were sharing was for the most part bogus, and forced the Indonesian investigators to waste time and resources they didn’t have to waste on wild goose chases. CLANCY: So you are blaming the FBI, BATF and AFP for purposely trashing the investigation and hanging it on the Indonesian investigators? FINNEGAN: Since day one. Every chance they had, the so-called “International Investigation Team” trashed the work of the Indonesian team, using them as fall-guys for anything that went wrong with the investigation, and then keeping them in the dark as to what was really happening while at the same time spreading bogus rumors that the Indonesian police and military were somehow involved, without making any concrete accusations. You can bet if the U.S. and AFP had any hard evidence [of Indonesian involvement], they would have already cut it loose in public. I have never to this day come across ANY solid evidence supporting claims that the Indonesian authorities were ever involved in any way with these bombings except as investigators. This needs to be recognized once and for all and acknowledged. So back then and leading up to today, it is my firm belief that the Indonesian investigators have been and still are getting screwed by the Americans and the Australians. There is no nice way to put it. I also believe that any intelligence failures that the authorities here have been experiencing regarding international/domestic terrorists and terrorism are the direct result of bogus information that is still being funneled to them through these international agencies. It was common knowledge back then and I don’t see why the media has not reported on it. So I am. CLANCY: Wait, wait a minute. What are we talking about now, the entire investigation or a part of it? FINNEGAN: I am talking about the events on Saturday are a replay of events at the very beginning of the Bali bombing investigation and how it is my belief that the Indonesian authorities have been taken advantage of and betrayed by Western intelligence, the FBI, BATF and others. How in the hell can they be expected to do their jobs when they are consistently being lied to by what should be their American and Australian colleagues? They have been screwed from the beginning by these assholes. That's my take on it now, and it was then. I’m also talking about Damaso Reyes’ penetration of Ngurah Rai Airport, when he managed to get copies of the altered tower and apron logs for the 12th and 13th. This was the culmination of the case, where we lost them. We have since spoken with a Qantas medivac flight stewardess who was there that verified the Dash-7 sitting on the apron preparing for takeoff. She also said the cabin crew and Captain noticed it also and how they all thought it was very odd, – the airport was closed – and then everybody clammed up. Refused to talk about it. Footnote that Wayne Madsen article on it,* this is too much to go into here and has already been published. CLANCY: You have never stated who you thought was flying the aircraft… FINNEGAN: And you are forgetting that I have stated that the reason was we had no concrete proof, or at least not enough. What the hell, you want me to speculate now? O.K., I, myself, along with some of the other investigators firmly believe it was a CIA flight. There. You happy? CLANCY: I had to verify… FINNEGAN: And so did we. That’s why it never went to print, why I nor any of the other team members have ever spoken of it. Would you have me telegraph to these assholes exactly what our game plan was? Hell no you wouldn’t. We were hoping something would eventually float to the surface, help us ID the aircraft but it didn’t happen and I was stuck holding the bag. Still am. The plane [DeHavilland Dash-7] along with the bodies it was flying out is the key to solving this case. Find the operators and you will find the real “masterminds” behind the Bali bombings. Besides, Toruan was reporting to Boyce exactly where we were going with this and Boyce was reporting it to the U.S. State Department. My source at State HAS verified this. This is why they were always at least one step ahead of us. They left us in the dust. CLANCY: How did you find this out? FINNEGAN: Do you remember that I had also been hired by Sabam Siagian (Jakarta Post Publisher) to teach the first group of investigative journalists under the new democracy? CLANCY: Yeah. FINNEGAN: One of my students was there when it went down. Let’s just say that her loyalty to me was stronger than to Toruan. She reported directly to me on when, where and what was said. She was a key player in this entire, sordid mess. I also believe that Sabam had nothing to do with my firing and was out of the loop at the time. His wife was dying from cancer in Singapore and he was spending the majority of his time there, as he should have. I have nothing but respect for Sabam. I do not believe he even knew I was gone until it was over and too late. Sabam is hands down the finest, most ethical and honest boss I have ever worked under. He puts Western agencies and publishers, CNN, BBC and the other riff-raff to shame. Sabam was the saving grace for me throughout [the investigation]. It is indeed a tragedy that things went this way. CLANCY: That must have weighed heavily on you…their safety. FINNEGAN: Some of the bravest I have had the privilege to work with in my career. Fearless. Their story remains untold, and without them there would have been no investigation. CLANCY: How So? FINNEGAN: Think about it. Here I am, an investigator who has been on the job and in-country for only a few months. I can’t speak the language yet. I don’t know any of the history of how the media works here except for watching Mel Gibson’s “A Year of Living Dangerously.” My students ran interference for us, kept their ears open, were everywhere they knew they had to be. The real heroes of this story. Reckless. It was incredible to watch. CLANCY: It would be interesting to speak to them. FINNEGAN: Forget it. Never. Anyone that goes after them has to go through me first. They don’t want that. CLANCY: You said the night you were fired Raymond Toruan confessed to working with Hermawan Sulistyo. Who is Hermawan Sulistyo and how did Toruan come to “confess” to you? FINNEGAN: Toruan was drunk, and following my firing I took advantage of this and interrogated him, scared the shit out of him. He decided he was going to talk, apparently because I looked angry enough to do physical harm to him, and the truth was he was right. He put my students at risk and trashed up our entire investigation. He betrayed me and everyone that worked on it by literally telegraphing to all parties that if something happened to us he and The Jakarta Post would not pursue it. It was an invitation to kill us all, from our Chief Editor! In order for him to get me off his back, I made him tell me about his relationship to Sulistyo, who was at that time attacking my analysis. I had never heard of this goofball before, and here he is taking potshots at me in OUR PAPER! Turns out he was in Bali at the time of the bombing, and was then added to the “investigative team!” Can you believe it! My Chief Editor handing over our battle plans to this terrorist! And then he literally drops the bomb: Toruan informs me – perhaps in an effort to intimidate me - that Sulistyo was Toruan’s former student, and Toruan says he committed bombings during the 1997-1998 riots in Jakarta at the direction of Toruan! I could not believe what I was hearing and could not believe Toruan was confessing this to me, an investigator he had just fired! CLANCY: Incredible. And this is one of the stories you were never going to talk about? FINNEGAN: Yes. Circumstances have now changed and there are other considerations driving my decision to talk. CLANCY: We’ll have to leave it there for today. This needs to be continued. Will you make yourself available for further discussions on this? FINNEGAN: Why not? CLANCY: Thanks. Talk to you soon. FINNEGAN: I’m not going anywhere. It has been eight years, a few more weeks won’t make any difference and the story of these incredible investigators – my colleagues – needs to be told. As I said, without them there would not have been an independent investigation, and the world and Indonesia would be even more in the dark as to this atrocity. Perhaps forever. END. Fool Me Twice documentary producer/director Glen Clancy is based and works in Australia. His films and published work may be accessed through Google Video and the Internet.
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