Murder at the Mine

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There is more at stake for Jakarta than just a diplomatic breach with Washington, grave though that would be. The Grasberg mine sits on the largest gold deposit and the third largest copper deposit in the world. The mine supports a company town of some 110,000 employees and residents; PTFI, its operator, is one of the largest individual contributors to the Indonesian government's coffers, paying taxes last year on a revenue of $1.9 billion. "I think a lot of people will be concerned if the people who are supposed to be protecting us turn out to be the same ones who carried out the attack," says an American PTFI contract worker who asked to remain anonymous. "Several families I know have already left, and I'm pretty ready to go myself."

In addition to paying hefty taxes, PTFI also gives millions of dollars a year directly to the armed forces in exchange for security services. The Indonesian military receives only about a third of its budget from Jakarta, so it must raise the rest by other means. A 2002 report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research institute, says the army posted in Papua derives a large portion of its income from "logging and other activities and protection fees paid by resource companies." PTFI has little choice but to boost its contribution in troubled times. In 1996, after a riot by local tribespeople halted mining operations, the company agreed to spend $35 million to construct military barracks and additional facilities, according to a report by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights.

Indeed, some foreign analysts and diplomats believe the company's deep pockets may have provided a motive for the ambush. PTFI officials decline to comment on any aspect of its security operations, but a source close to the company says PTFI had been in discussions with local military officers prior to the attack about the possibility of reducing the firm's reliance on the nearly 650 soldiers and police who guard the mine. That could have meant a sharp drop in the cash given to troops. In other words, goes the theory, the teachers may have been slaughtered by rogue elements in the military who wanted to send a message to the mining company that full payments should continue. Military officers strongly deny any connection to the killings. "I am sure my men wouldn't do that," says Colonel Mangasa Saragih, the district army commander overseeing the town of Timika near the Grasberg mine. "We do not want to cover anything up."

A U.S. official familiar with the case acknowledges that, while there are indications of military involvement, "investigators have not yet gathered enough evidence that would stand up in court." Indeed, the preliminary police report seen by Time offers no smoking gun. Dirk Burgon fears that his father's killers won't be found because the political price of justice—broken bonds between Indonesia and the U.S., embarrassment for the Indonesian government—is too high. On Feb. 20 the Bush Administration's budget package is expected to be passed by Congress. The package includes $400,000 in funding for the Indonesian military—a modest sum but symbolically important. For one thing, it would override a 1999 congressional ban on providing money to the country's armed forces—a punishment for alleged human-rights violations by troops during East Timor's drive for independence. If funding is approved, the Indonesian military might appear "to have exonerated itself of the implication that its élite special forces recently murdered two U.S. teachers," says Kurt Biddle, coordinator of the Indonesia Human Rights Network.

Burgon says that in January he met with members of the FBI, U.S. State Department and congressional aides to press for a resolution to the case. The reaction to his lobbying gave him little solace. "We were told [an investigation implicating soldiers] was not conducive to the Pentagon's goal of restoring ties with the Indonesian military," Burgon says. If so, the truth about the ambush might prove to be another casualty of America's all-consuming war on terror.