The Jakarta Method

A modern classic, and should be mandatory reading. Despite covering historical material, author Bevins' background as a journalist serves the subject matter well. In the spirit of what investigative journalism should be, Bevins performed extensive interviews with the (surviving) people effected by mid-20th Century anticommunism in Indonesia, Brazil, and Chile. Despite being an American, Bevins outlines the history of the early CIA's covert operations and counterintelligence scheming with the dispassionate perspective of an outsider, an angle that is all too rare in such works. The sheer ruthlessness and brutality of the events of the anti-communist killings are haunting and stomach-turning, but the urgency of understanding the logic and circumstances that can allow individuals and interest groups to perpetrate such violence cannot be overstated. With this book, Bevins performed the important work of demonstrating the way that global anti-communists collaborated and shaped their own plans based on the experiences of others, and it would serve any politically motivated person well to read The Jakarta Method and know what you may one day be up against.