Rob Kerr – From the back seat, social studies teacher Steve Emma heard what he thought were rocks striking the Toyota Land Cruiser carrying Emma and his colleagues from the Tembagapura International School on a picnic outing through the rain forest of Papua, Indonesia, on August 31, 2002.

Then the windshield shattered. Rick Spier, behind the steering wheel, jerked and pitched forward. Blood and tissue splattered onto the seat and dashboard. In the passenger seat, principal Edwin "Ted" Burgon, slumped over, moaning and gurgling.

"Get down! Get down!" Emma shouted to the two women behind the front seats. As bullets riddled the vehicle, owned by the teachers' employer, the PT Freeport Indonesia gold and copper mine, Emma peeked out the windshield. He could make out three figures. One held a rifle. He strained to see their faces. But the thick fog and cracked window glass obscured his view. "Who are you?" Emma recalled asking. "Why are you doing this?"

Today, nearly nine months later, the US government still does not know for certain who ordered or carried out the ambush in which two Americans and one Indonesian were murdered and eight other Americans were wounded. Congress has been given intelligence reports that support the conclusion of a preliminary Indonesian police investigation that found that "there is a strong possibility" the shooting was carried out by members of the Indonesian military. The military has denied involvement in the attack. The FBI is continuing to investigate.

"The preponderance of evidence indicates to us that members of the Indonesian army were responsible for the murders in Papua," Matthew P. Daley, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said in an interview. "The question of what level and for what motive did these murders take place is of deep interest to the United States." The possibility of military involvement in the attack was raised at a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 20, 2003. At the meeting, a CIA analyst reviewed intelligence reports on the murders, and also discussed intelligence indicating that military personnel were seeking to withhold evidence from FBI agents who were coming to Indonesia to investigate the crime, said several knowledgeable officials. The CIA and FBI declined to comment. The discussion prompted the committee to approve an amendment prohibiting the release of $600,000 in military training funds until President Bush certifies that the Indonesian government is taking effective measures to bring to justice those responsible for the shootings.

Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), who sponsored the amendment, confirmed the nature of the committee's deliberations but declined to discuss specifics. The amendment is expected to reach the Senate floor this summer. The Bush administration has opposed the amendment. A White House spokesman, Sean McCormack, said "it is important that we do everything possible to improve the human rights record of the Indonesian military through continued interaction with the US military."

Separately, the State Department is still debating whether to release $400,000 in fiscal year 2003 military funds to Indonesia given the incomplete status of the investigation. In December 2002, the US ambassador to Indonesia, Ralph L. "Skip" Boyce, delivered a message from Bush to Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Resolution of the case was important to overall bilateral relations, he told her, according to State Department officials.

But at the same time, Indonesia has received other funds from the United States. Since the attack, the Defense Department has given $4 million to the Indonesian military, known as TNI, or Tentara Nasional Indonesia, for counterterrorism training.

For two decades, the State Department and some in Congress have wrangled with Pentagon officials over the wisdom of providing training for the Indonesian military. US officials have long been wary of TNI's grip on political power, its vast, shadowy economic holdings and its well-documented human rights abuses – most notably in the provinces of East Timor, Aceh, Papua and the Moluccas islands.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton suspended all military aid to Indonesia after the eruption of violence throughout East Timor by disgruntled troops and army-backed militias following the territory's vote for independence from Indonesia. By the time Bush took office, only very small US military education programs had been restored.

But US policy abruptly shifted after the terrorist attacks attack on September 11, 2001. The United States made it a priority to win the Indonesian military's support in fighting al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamyiah, a militant Islamic group based in Indonesia.

Now, Congress and the administration are investigating whether the Indonesian military, an important instrument of control in the most populous Muslim country in the world, might have been involved in an act of terrorism against Americans.

A frustrating investigation

The investigation has been difficult for the FBI. When agents visited Indonesia in January, they were required to interview witnesses in the presence of Indonesian authorities and not allowed to bring forensic evidence back to the United States for analysis, sources familiar with the investigation said.

Recently, Indonesian authorities told US officials they would allow forensic evidence to be escorted by Indonesian police to the United States for analysis at some later date. The authorities also promised that the FBI could carry out unsupervised interviews with witnesses. The FBI has yet to schedule a new visit.

The preliminary Indonesian police investigation questioned 30 soldiers and 44 civilians. Under "temporary conclusions," the Indonesia police report said, "there is a strong possibility that the Tembagapura case was perpetrated by the members of the Indonesian National Army Force," according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Post. The probe was headed by veteran investigator I Made Pastika.

Among the circumstantial evidence described in the police report was the fact that the weapons used in the attack, mostly M-16s, are standard issue to the military. The killers fired more than 130 bullets, according to the document. At a Jakarta news conference shortly after the attack, the chief of the Indonesian army, Gen. Ryamizard Ryacudu, laid blame on a separatist movement, the Free Papua Movement. The group has repeatedly denied it was involved.

Allen Behm, a former top Australian Defense Ministry official with extensive contacts in Indonesia, said he believes the Free Papua Movement could not have mounted such an assault. "The separatists simply don't have the motivation or the type of ammunition that was used," Behm said.

The ambush occurred about 500 yards from a major military post, along a steep, winding road between Tembagapura, a Freeport company mining enclave, and Timika, a town built by the company. Drivers and passengers are required to use plastic security cards to drive on the road and must stop at three manned checkpoints along the way, each time sharing identification and stating a reason for travel to the Freeport security guards.

Since 1967, New Orleans-based Freeport McMoRan Cooper & Gold has owned and operated the major share of the world's largest gold mine there. The open pit Grasberg mine looks like a ragged bullet wound in the middle of a lush green carpet. Trucks with six-foot-high wheels run 24 hours a day hauling out some of the mine's estimated 53.3 billion pounds of copper and 62.2 million ounces of gold.

To attract employees, of which there are nearly 9,250, the company has its own airline and port and has built a $400 million community in Kuala Kencana, complete with luxury hotel, golf course, schools, health clinics and power plants. The school teachers and principal were contract employees, educating the 74 children of Freeport's American, British and Australian employees.

Freeport's exploitation of Papua's rich resources and 700,000 acres of surrounding land has generated deep resentment among local people, many of whom live in poverty and were relocated as the mine grew. In 1996, a riot by local residents halted mining operations. In response, Freeport began to hire many more soldiers from the Indonesian military to protect the mine.

The company paid $35 million for military barracks and other facilities and equipment. Over the years, the military, police and Freeport's security detail grew from 200 people to 2,000, according to a Freeport report. The company and its partners in the mine paid the military and police $5.8 million in 2001 and $7 million in 2002, according to the company. Most of the money went for food, housing and vehicle maintenance, a Freeport official said.

Providing security for the mine has become a lucrative enterprise for the military in Papua, where it also has other money-making enterprises, such as export of tropical birds and tree resins as well as logging and mining. Overall, only about one-third of the military's budget comes from government funds. The rest comes from a vast network of side businesses.

According to press reports at the time of the attack, the company had discussed reducing the number of soldiers and police who guard the mine and facilities. Freeport said no such discussions took place, and there are no plans to change the security arrangements.

The FBI still is investigating the possibility that the ambush was designed to persuade Freeport to increase its payments to the military, according to sources close to the investigation. "Freeport has been trying to wean the military off the corporate nipple for a long time," said Chris Ballard, who used to work for Freeport and is now a professor at the Australian National University.

Human rights groups have accused Indonesian soldiers and special forces of killing or kidnapping tens of thousands of Papuans in the last three decades. In November 2001, seven soldiers in Kopassus, the Indonesian special forces, were convicted in connection with the killing of a Papuan independence leader, Theys Eluay.

US officials said they believe elements of the military may have wanted to frame the separatist group, Free Papua Movement, in the hope of prompting the State Department to add the group to the department's terrorist list. If the separatists were listed as a terrorist group, it would almost guarantee an increase in US counterterrorism aid to the Indonesian military, the officials said.

Steve Emma, still immobilized by his injuries and suffering debilitating flashbacks, said Bush should apply his with-us-or-against-us formula on terrorism if the Indonesian military was involved. "This was an outrageous act of terrorism," he said of the attack.

Denver resident Patsy Spier, wife of murdered schoolteacher Rick Spier, has walked Capitol Hill for the last six months, campaigning for a cutoff of US military aid to Indonesia pending the outcome of the investigation. Her flowing, strawberry blond hair, bright green eyes and often cheery manner mask the pain of 70 pieces of shrapnel lodged in her torso from the attack.

Spier carries a primer, "Congress At Your Fingertips," in her big purse, to help her figure out how Washington works. She has wrangled meetings with top US officials, including Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, the US ambassador in Jakarta from 1986 to 1989, who still is a major influence on US policymaking toward Indonesia.

Wolfowitz declined several requests for interviews. But at a meeting with Asian defense ministers in Singapore in May, he defended continued US military assistance to Indonesia. "I think it is important to understand ... that the issue of [military training] at times is too often, I think, made the one point on which we use to indicate our dissatisfaction over issues... I believe exposure of Indonesian officers to US [military personnel] has been a way to promote reform efforts in the military not to set them back."

Spier is not convinced. "I have led a very fortunate, happy life, and so has Rick," Spier said at the end of her first trip to Capitol Hill in January. "It's because of his life that I can't let this horrible act happen to anyone else ... someone's got to learn something from this. Something positive has got to come from this whole thing."

'We never felt safer'

Rick and Patsy Spier had a romantic marriage. They met at The Pits tavern in Wray, Colo., on Patsy's 25th birthday, she recalled recently. "What do you want for your birthday, Patsy?" a friend had asked her as they sat in the bar. "I want me a long, tall cowboy," she responded. Just then Rick, employed as a cowhand, walked by. Her friend called to him: "Hey Stretch, come and dance with this girl!"

After three months of dating, Patsy fell in love, she said. They eloped and a couple of years later began what would be 12 years of teaching abroad, including at a copper mine in Peru and in Khartoum, Sudan. The couple vacationed in Tasmania and Antarctica. They had just begun their third year teaching in the province of Papua, formerly called Irian Jaya. "We loved it," she said. "We were together all the time." They walked to school together and ate lunch together. "We were best friends, and we never felt safer anywhere, including America, than we did in Tembagapura."

When the teachers were unable to book rooms at the company-built hotel for the weekend because a golf tournament had filled it up, Rick Spier suggested a picnic. The surrounding area is home to the largest number of endemic species anywhere in the world, and so diverse it includes rain forests, mangrove swamps and alpine tundra covered with glacial ice.

The Spiers wanted four new staff members – Ted and Nancy Burgon, Steve Emma and Francine Goodfriend – to see the bright orchids, loud frogs, two-story waterfalls and veiny Sarracenia purpurea – fly-trapping pitcher plants – that made their isolated tip of Indonesia so enchanting. But by 12:30 p.m., a thick fog and constant drizzle drove them to cut the outing short and head back home.

Navigating around Freeport's huge dump trucks and tractor trailers slowed the vehicles to a crawl and separated the one driven by Rick Spier from the second one, driven by Ken Balk, by five to 10 minutes. Emma, who had been in Indonesia for two weeks, recalled he was asking Rick Spier and Nancy Burgon about the Papuans' tribal lifestyle when the first volley of shots penetrated the vehicle. By the third volley, he said, "I knew Ted was dead."

'They're still out there'

Emma could hear the metal rip through the vehicle. The gunfire sounded as if it came from more than one weapon, not the rat-tat-tat of an automatic weapon. After a brief silence, the shooting began again. "Oh my God!" cried Goodfriend, as bullets tore through her right side and blood began pouring from her head. "They're still out there. They're coming through," Nancy Burgon screamed.

It seemed whoever was shooting had moved around to the right side of the vehicle, which was pierced by hot lead that then broke up into shrapnel and ricocheted inside the vehicle. Burgon was grazed on the hip and metal fragments embedded in her face. Emma's upper right shoulder began burning; the heat trickled down his back. Another shot tore open his left hip and leg, sending a feeling of fire throughout his body.

Outside the Toyota, a fuel-tanker truck appeared at the vehicle's side. But bullets fired at the truck driver's neck and face stopped him, too. Emma could see fuel spraying through bullet holes in the truck's tank and onto the SUV. The vehicle's engine was still running. "It smells like gas. They're trying to blow us up," Emma recalled telling Nancy Burgon.

They debated trying to drive away, but decided it would be too risky. "We're going to blow up! We need to turn off the engine!" yelled Burgon. "I'll do it." "No, I'll do it," said Emma, just as Nancy Burgon hoisted her bloody body over Rick Spier's, and saw for the first time how gruesome his wounds were. "How do I turn it off?" she fumbled, stunned by the sight and beginning to shake. "Turn the key to the left," instructed Emma. "I can't," replied Nancy Burgon, unable to move Spier's body out of the way. "I think Rick and Ted are dead," she said. Emma nodded and grabbed her hand. "We'll get through this," he told her, and lifted himself over the seat to reach the key.

But inside, Emma could feel himself losing control and composure. Overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness and by a wrenching, unforgiving pain, Emma kicked open the back door. "God damn it! Come and get me!" he yelled. The shooting stopped briefly and then resumed. "That was a stupid mistake," Emma told himself.

From the opened back door, he could see three of the six passengers from the second SUV – Ken Balk, his wife Saundra Hopkins and their 6-year-old daughter, Taia – huddled outside their vehicle behind a tire. Balk's vehicle caught up with the first one, which was positioned headfirst in an embankment. Driving the second vehicle, Balk had noticed a Papuan dressed in military fatigues on the road just in front of the vehicle. From the front passenger seat, his wife, Hopkins, recalled seeing several Papuans, one in a black shirt, another in black camouflage pants, and a third with an ill-fitting jacket vest. As their SUV approached the scene, Patsy Spier saw two puffs of dirt on the road in back of a pickup that swept past in the opposite direction. Then everything went into slow motion.

As Spier, Balk and Hopkins tell the story, a hail of invisible bullets and their fiery shrapnel cut through Spier's back, exploding her 11th rib and piercing her kidney with more than 70 shards. Bullets hit their Indonesian colleague, Bambang Riwanto, who fell onto Spier, dead. Screams blended with the loud crash of shattering glass.

In the mayhem, the immediate focus was to shield little Taia, sitting behind the front passenger seat. Lynn Poston, seated next to Taia and badly wounded herself, helped push Taia to the floor and cover her with a blanket. Balk, by then bleeding profusely from bullet wounds in his right side, knee, colon and lumbar artery, got out of the vehicle and pulled his wife out. As they pulled Taia out, she was shot in the buttock.

They moved together to the ground and the three huddled behind a tire. "Gurus! Eskola Amerika! Bebe!" yelled Hopkins, who had been hit in the hip and had shrapnel lodged in her head. "Teachers! American school! Child!" As mother and father crouched on the gravel, protecting their daughter, Balk saw a pair of black boots underneath the truck, some 20 yards away. "Why are they doing this, Mommy?" Taia asked. "Shhh, be still, be quiet now," Hopkins whispered back.

Balk took another shot to his thigh, and his blood, bones and muscle splattered onto Taia. He was already drenched in blood, and was losing so much that the couple discussed what they would do if he died. "You should just go home, get off the mountain," Balk told his wife.

For what seemed like forever, the parents prayed. They tried to comfort their daughter. They both had the same fear: that they would see a pair of boots coming toward them. They also tried to talk to Poston and Patsy Spier, both still inside the vehicle. Balk feared they were going into shock. "Lynn, are you okay? Patsy, can you hear us?" he said.

Poston had become hysterical. And both of their voices were becoming audibly weaker. "They aren't going to stop," Patsy Spier thought to herself. "My God, when is this going to end?" Spier thought a lot about her husband as she sat nearly paralyzed in the second vehicle. "I had a feeling in my heart that Rick was already gone because I knew if he wasn't, he'd be trying to get me out."

Her pain and fear, like the terror described by Emma, Balk and Hopkins, overtook all other senses. Dying would end it. "I'm ready. It's okay, they can come and get me," Spier thought to herself, she recalled. "Just do it." Rescue in confusion

In a brief lull, Spier heard a distinct human imitation of a bird whistle – and a whistled response. It was not, she later recalled, the whooping calls of the Amungme tribe. They were just 500 yards from the nearest military post. How could anyone get on this road without the military or Freeport's knowledge?

Spier was shot again, this time in the foot, which made her think perhaps the shooters were under the vehicle. She apologized to Bambang Riwanto, for having to shift her weight and move him, a movement that seemed to provoke more shooting as his body came into view from the window.

Some 15 to 20 minutes into the ambush, a Freeport manager, Andrew Neale, came upon the vehicles as he drove south with his wife. He put the car in reverse and sped away to get help. At about the same time, another Freeport manager, Bob Kilborn, driving north, saw the tanker truck, two dump trucks and their injured drivers. He carried one injured man to his car and another man jumped through his window before Kilborn sped away for help, according to a Freeport security document.

When Kilborn reached the nearest military post, he ran into a group of soldiers. Some of the soldiers agreed to get in this car and head back to the ambush site. By then, Neale had arrived with soldiers, too. A brief exchange of gunfire followed before the soldiers fanned out on the road, firing their weapons. "Help! Help! We need medical care," Hopkins, bloodied and still crouching near the tire with her husband and daughter, told the first soldier she saw. He looked terrified, she recalled, and disappeared.

At the same time, Patsy Spier, inside the second SUV, heard banging on the back of the vehicle. Someone was trying to open it. They were Indonesian soldiers there to rescue her. Four of them pulled her limp body from the vehicle. They laid her on the ground. Two Papuan men sat next to her and patted her hand and put a cooler lid under her head as a pillow. "Terima kasih, Terima kasih," she whispered to them. "Thank you. Thank you."

Kilborn came over to see how she was. "What about Rick?" she asked him. "Just a minute, I'll go see," he replied, but never came back. In the meantime, an Indonesian army soldier, dressed in full camouflage, walked up and stood over her, glaring down. She looked at his black boots. "I kept wanting to touch his gun, to see if it were hot," she said. "But I stopped myself."

At the hospital in Tembagapura, Patsy Spier learned what she already sensed – that her husband was dead. "I want to see him. I have to see him," she told doctors through her sobs and shock. "And I want him autopsied. I want everyone to know he was murdered."

Around 9pm, some eight hours after she and her husband had started out on a picnic, the nurses wheeled Patsy's gurney into a room with Rick's body. He had a hunk of red cotton in his mouth. The nurse lifted his hand so she could hold it. She told him she would always love him. And she said goodbye.

[Correspondent Doug Struck and researchers Robert Thomason and Margot Williams contributed to this report.]