Slaughter in Indonesia: Britain’s secret propaganda war

Declassified documents reveal how in 1965 a shadowy dirty tricks arm of the Foreign Office incited anti-communist massacres that left hundreds of thousands dead

In early 1965 Ed Wynne, an official from the Foreign Office in London in his late 40s, arrived at the door of a two-storey villa set in the discreet calm of a genteel housing estate in colonial Singapore.

But Wynne was no ordinary official. A specialist from the Foreign Office's cold war propaganda arm, the Information Research Department (IRD), he had been assigned to lead a small team. A junior official, four local people and two IRD ladies", seconded to the unit from London, would join him.