The following year, the CIA received information about President Sukarno of Indonesia apparently meeting a charming woman on a visit to Moscow and beginning an affair with her. The Agency conceived of an op named Happy Days, and asked Bob to rent a movie studio in California. He was to find an actor who looked like Sukarno and produce a film ‘simulating an intimate relationship’ – i.e. a fake sex tape of a foreign president.
According to the CIA’s account, their Technical Division put together a backdrop to make it look like the tape was filmed in Moscow, and provided a suitable male employee and his fiance to star in the movie. After an extensive makeup course, Maheu himself applied the disguises to the two actors and then filmed then doing the deed. The idea was to either distribute the tape itself, or at least images from it on pamphlets, in Indonesia and try to undermine and embarrass Sukarno, or even imply he was in the love pocket of a Soviet temptress.
According to Maheu’s version, he acquired the actors through a friend in the LA County Sheriff’s department, who provided him with a blonde, female informant. For Sukarno, he used a guy who had been working for him in Tuscon. Likewise, Maheu’s somewhat elaborate (and possibly untrue) account has the CIA telling him to use Bing and Larry Crosby to help make the film, because the Agency liked their politics and had already done security checks on them.
In both versions, Maheu completed the sex tape and sent it back to CIA headquarters, but the CIA say the project was never completed, the tape or images from it were never used. Maheu claims some still images were used, which helped undermine the Indonesian president, but provides no evidence for this. Exactly why the two accounts differ so much is not clear, but this wasn’t the end of meddling with Sukarno.