APRIL 2006
More from the
"economic Hit-man"
Interview
by Amy Goodman
AMY GOODMAN: We
turn to someone on the inside who decided to speak out,
and he is John Perkins, has written the book, Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man. He came into our studios to
talk about his former work, going into various countries
to try to strong-arm leaders into creating policy
favorable to the U.S. government and corporations, what
he called the “corporatocracy.” John Perkins
says he was an economic hit man. I began by asking him to
explain this term.
JOHN PERKINS: We economic
hit men, during the last 30 or 40 years, have really
created the world's first truly global empire, and we've
done this primarily through economics, and the military
only coming in as a last resort. Therefore, it's been
done pretty much secretly. Most of the people in the
United States have no idea that we've created this empire
and, in fact, throughout the world it's been done very
quietly, unlike old empires, where the army marched in;
it was obvious. So I think the significance of the things
you discussed, the fact that over 80% of the population
of South America recently voted in an anti-U.S. president
and what's going on at the World Trade Organization, and
also, in fact, with the transit strike here in New York,
is that people are beginning to understand that the
middle class and the lower classes around the world are
being terribly, terribly exploited by what I call the
corporatocracy, which really runs this empire.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, before
we move further, your experience with it? Explain the
vantage point you come from. What does it mean to be an
economic hit man?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, what
we've done -- we use many techniques, but probably the
most common is that we'll go to a country that has
resources that our corporations covet, like oil, and
we'll arrange a huge loan to that country from an
organization like the World Bank or one of its sisters,
but almost all of the money goes to the U.S.
corporations, not to the country itself, corporations
like Bechtel and Halliburton, General Motors, General
Electric, these types of organizations, and they build
huge infrastructure projects in that country: power
plants, highways, ports, industrial parks, things that
serve the very rich and seldom even reach the poor. In
fact, the poor suffer, because the loans have to be
repaid, and they're huge loans, and the repayment of them
means that the poor won't get education, health, and
other social services, and the country is left holding a
huge debt, by intention. We go back, we economic hit men,
to this country and say, “Look, you owe us a lot of
money. You can't repay your debts, so give us a pound of
flesh. Sell our oil companies your oil real cheap or vote
with us at the next U.N. vote or send troops in support
of ours to some place in the world such as Iraq.”
And in that way, we've managed to build a world empire
with very few people actually knowing that we've done
this.
AMY GOODMAN: And you worked
for?
JOHN PERKINS: I was
recruited by the National Security Agency, the one that's
in the news so much today because of spying on people,
and I was tested by them, recruited by them --
AMY GOODMAN: What do you
mean you were recruited by them?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, while I
was a senior in business school at Boston University,
they came to me and suggested that I take their test. I
had connections through my wife with people in the
agency, and they put me through a series of tests,
personality tests, lie detector, several days, and
concluded that I would make a good economic hit man, and
they also discovered a number of weaknesses in my
character, which they could use then to hook me into the
business, and then I ended up working for a private
corporation.
AMY GOODMAN: Why didn't you
work for the N.S.A.?
JOHN PERKINS: Because these
days it's not done that way. Nobody wants to be able to
connect the dots. So the N.S.A., the C.I.A., these types
of organizations often recruit economic hit men and the
jackals, the assassins, the 007 types, but they will
recruit us, maybe train us, and then turn us over to a
private corporation, so that you really can't make the
connection, so that if I were caught at what I was doing
in one of these countries, it would not reflect on our
government; it would only reflect on the corporation that
I worked for.
AMY GOODMAN: And who did
you work for?
JOHN PERKINS: I worked for
a company called Charles T. Main, a big consulting firm
out of Boston.
AMY GOODMAN: And your job?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I
started off as economist, became chief economist, and my
job really – I had a staff of several dozen people.
My job was to get them, and for me to convince these
countries to accept these very large loans, to get the
banks to make the loans, to set up the deal so that the
money went to big U.S. corporations. The country was left
holding a huge debt, and then I would go in or one of my
people would go in and say, “Look, you know, you owe
us all this money. You can't pay your debts. Give us that
pound of flesh.”
The other thing we do, Amy, and
what's going on right now in Latin America is that as
soon as one of these anti-American presidents is elected,
such as Evo Morales, who you mentioned, in Bolivia, one
of us goes in and says, “Hey, congratulations, Mr.
President. Now that you're president, I just want to tell
you that I can make you very, very rich, you and your
family. We have several hundred million dollars in this
pocket if you play the game our way. If you decide not
to, over in this pocket, I've got a gun with a bullet
with your name on it, in case you decide to keep your
campaign promises and throw us out.”
AMY GOODMAN: Well, explain
actually how that plays out, because it's not really in
this pocket and that.
JOHN PERKINS: No, it’s
– what I'm saying is that, you know, I can make sure
that this man makes a great deal of money, he and his
family, through contracts, through various quasi-legal
means, and I can also – if he doesn't accept this,
you know, the same thing is going to happen to him that
happened to Jaime Roldos in Ecuador and Omar Torrijos in
Panama and Allende in Chile, and we tried to do it to
Chavez in Venezuela and are still trying – that we
will send in the people to try to overthrow him, as, in
fact, we recently did with the President of Ecuador, or
if we don't overthrow him, we'll assassinate him. And
these people all know the history. They know that this
has happened many, many, many times in the past.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what
happened to Torrijos, for example, in Panama, and what
did you have to do with it?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, this
was back in the ‘70s, and Torrijos was making a lot
of world headlines, because he was demanding that the
Panama Canal be turned back over to Panamanians. I was
sent down to Panama to bring him around, to convince him
that he needed to play the game our way. And he invited
me to a little bungalow outside of Panama City, and he
said, “Look, you know, I know the game, and if I
play it your way, I'll become very rich, but that's not
important to me. What is important is that I help my poor
people.” Now, Torrijos wasn't an angel, but he was
very committed to his poor people. So he said, “You
can either play the game my way, or you can leave this
country.”
And I talked to my bosses, and we
all decided I should stay. Maybe I could bring him
around. In the meantime, we could make some money, and so
I stayed. But I knew the whole world was watching
Torrijos because of this Panama Canal issue and that if
he didn't come around, the jackals would be likely to
come in. [inaudible] A man like Torrijos [inaudible] not
only would we lose Panama, but he would set an example
that others might follow. So I was very concerned. I
liked Torrijos, and one of the reasons I wanted to bring
him around was not just because it was my job, but
because I wanted to see him survive, and because he
didn't come around, sure enough, he was assassinated.
AMY GOODMAN: How?
JOHN PERKINS: Fiery
airplane crash, and afterwards, there was no question
that – he had been handed a tape recorder as he got
on the plane that had a bomb in it.
AMY GOODMAN: How do you
know this?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I know
the people that did the investigation afterwards, and
this is pretty well-documented in many places also, but
I, personally, was aware of what went on, and, of course,
you know, our official line here was that, of course,
that wasn't what happened. The plane simply blew up and
hit a mountain. But there was no question, and in fact we
were expecting this to happen.
Three months before this, another
president, Jaime Roldos of Ecuador, who I also was
involved in trying to bring around, he very strongly
opposed our oil companies. Not “oppose,” isn't
the right word. What he said is, “Oil from Ecuador
has to serve the interest of the Ecuadorian people.
Therefore, the oil companies are going to have to pay a
lot greater share to the Ecuadorian people or we're going
to nationalize them.” And he’d run on a very,
very strong anti-American campaign, and we knew that if
he didn't change his ways, that something would happen to
him. We were in his office making the same promises. You
know, here we’ve got a couple of million dollars for
you. Here we’ve got a bullet for you, basically.
It’s done a lot more subtly than that, but that's
the short version. And three months before Torrijos, his
airplane also exploded.
AMY GOODMAN: And what did
the investigation reveal in that case?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, if
you're talking about F.B.I. investigations, it revealed
that there was an airplane that exploded in both cases.
If you’re talking about local investigations and
investigations that were done by many international
journalists, there were explosives on those planes, both
of them. And, you know, it's relatively easy to get to
assassinate one of these presidents who has a security
force that's well armed, that surrounds him all the time,
and in the case of both Roldos and Torrijos, those
security forces had been trained primarily at the School
of the Americas, a U.S. training camp for South American
armies. It’s well known that when --
AMY GOODMAN: Which used to
be in Panama, actually?
JOHN PERKINS: Used to be in
Panama, right, and it's well known that people that are
trained this way stay pretty loyal to their trainers. And
they didn't make a lot of money, and so if one of their
trainers went back and said, “Hey, would you mind
handing this tape recorder to Jaime Roldos?” And the
security guy may very well know that there's a bomb in
it, and I'm going to pay you several hundred thousand
dollars or maybe in this case it's only $100,000, because
these guys were not very well paid, or, “simply look
the other way while we plant something on the
plane.”
That's an easy thing to do, and
incidentally, we also tried to do that to Saddam Hussein.
When he didn't come around, the economic hit men tried to
bring him around. We tried to assassinate him. But that
was an interesting point, because he had pretty loyal
security forces, and in addition he had a lot of
look-alike doubles, and what you don't want to be is a
bodyguard to a look-alike double and you think it's the
president and you accept a lot of money to assassinate
him and you assassinate the look-alike, because if you do
that, afterwards your life and your family's isn't worth
very much, so we were unable to get through to Saddam
Hussein, and that’s why we sent the military in.
AMY GOODMAN: Although
Saddam Hussein was in the pocket of the U.S. for many,
many years.
JOHN PERKINS: He was and
– but we wanted that final deal, similar to the one
we’d struck with Saudi Arabia. We wanted to get
Saddam Hussein to really tie in to our system, and he
refused to do that. He accepted our fighter jets and our
tanks and our chemical plants that he used to produce
chemical weapons that we knew were being used against the
Kurds and the Iranians. He accepted all that, but he
wouldn’t quite tie into our system in such a big way
that he would bring in the huge development organizations
to rebuild his country, as the Saudis did, in a Western
image. And that's what we were trying to convince him to
do and also to guarantee that he would always trade oil
for U.S. dollars, instead of Euros, and that he would
keep the price of oil within limits acceptable to us. He
would not go along with those things. If he had, he would
still be president, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: As a
consultant, you did work in Saudi Arabia, John Perkins?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, yes, in
fact I put -- I was one of the ones responsible for
putting together the main deal there in the early
‘70s. As you may recall, Amy, OPEC decided that they
were going to clamp down on us, shut off our oil
supplies. They didn't like our policies towards Israel,
and so in the early ‘70s, the supply of oil was cut
way back in this country. We had long lines of cars at
the gas stations, and we were afraid we were going to go
to another depression like the one that started in 1929,
so the Treasury Department came to me and some other
economic hit men and said, “Look, this is
unacceptable.” And I give all the details of this in
the book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, but
the short version is, they said, “Make sure that
this doesn't happen again,” and we knew that the key
to stopping this sort of thing was Saudi Arabia, because
it controlled more oil than anyone else and the Royal
House of Saud was corruptible.
So again, the short version is we
put together a deal whereby the House of Saud agreed to
send almost all of the money it made from selling oil all
over the world back to the U.S., invest it in U.S.
government securities, the interest from those securities
was used by the Treasury Department to hire U.S.
companies to rebuild Saudi Arabia, power plants,
desalinization plants, in fact, entire cities from the
desert, and in the process, to westernize Saudi Arabia,
to make it more like us. And the other part of the deal
was the House of Saud agreed to keep the price of oil
within limits acceptable to us, and we agreed to keep the
House of Saud in power, and that deal still holds. It's
been holding for a long time. There's a lot of blowback
right now that's occurring around it, but from our
standpoint as economic hit men, it was an extremely
successful deal, and it’s the one we tried to
replicate with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: John
Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
We’ll continue with our conversation in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We
return to our interview with John Perkins, author of Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man. I asked him if he was the
first person to coin the term “economic hit
man.”
JOHN PERKINS: I think I may
have been the first to use it in print, but we used it
back in the ‘70s. We called ourselves -- and it was
sort of a tongue-in-cheek term. Officially, I was chief
economist, but we used that sort of tongue-in-cheek,
because it described was we did. Since the book came out
on hardback – yes, and there’s a new epilogue
in the paperback, which covers a lot of the new material
-- a lot of people have stepped out of the shadows and
approached me and talked to me, high people in
governments and other economic hit men and jackals and
wanted to share their story. A lot of them want to do it
anonymously, which is a little tricky for a writer these
days, as you know, but it's been fascinating to me how
many have stepped out.
I also have seen, Amy, I think, a
tremendous change in attitude around the world. We're
seeing people really rebelling and saying, you know, we
understand what's going on. And to be honest with you, I
attribute a great deal of that to your show and other
shows like it. You're reaching people. The internet, for
example, is working wonders. And there’s a lot of
books, there’s a lot of movies like Syriana
and Hotel Rwanda and Good Night, and Good Luck
and so on and so forth. So, the information is getting
out. And I think once Americans understand what we're
doing in the world and how much hatred this is
generating, we will demand change. And I think history
has proven that when we demand change in any area,
eventually -- it takes a little time -- but we do get it.
So I’m very hopeful.
AMY GOODMAN: And these
people who have come forward, are they active today?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, yes,
very much so. One of them – you know, there was a
president elected, the President of Ecuador, Gutierrez, a
few years ago and he ran on a very, very strong anti-U.S.
ticket. And he said that if he was elected, he would make
sure that the people of Ecuador get the fair proceeds
from Ecuadorian oil. As soon as he was elected, he was
visited by an economic hit man, whom I know personally,
and read the Riot Act, told the things we mentioned
earlier, you know, “I’ve got money for you or a
bullet.”
Within a month, he came to
Washington. There was a famous picture shown all over
Ecuador of him sitting, holding hands with George Bush.
And very soon after that, he went against everything in
his campaign promises. He cut sweet deals with the oil
companies. He went back on the indigenous peoples, whose
lands in the Amazon area he had promised to protect. And
the Ecuadorian people went wild. They took to the
streets. They protested and demonstrated and eventually
threw him out of power.
So this particular one backfired.
But what -- the economic hit man did his job right.
Gutierrez came around, and then the Ecuadorian people
understood what was going on. I have good friends in
Ecuador who called me shortly after that and said,
“You know, when we elect someone democratically to
do something and he doesn't do it, democracy requires
that we throw him out. Why don't you the same thing in
your country?”
AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins,
what about Evo Morales? You talk about Gutierrez.
JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, I spent
a lot of time in Bolivia. In fact, at one time, I was
offered the job as president of Bolivian Power Company,
which is the second most important job in Bolivia,
actually, behind the President. And Bolivia has this
– and it was an American-owned company,
incidentally. Bolivia has this long record of giving into
the I.M.F. and the World Bank, privatizing their
resources, like their power company and their water
company. And the people of Bolivia were fed up with this.
They had been exploited and exploited and exploited. And
so Evo Morales ran on this ticket that said,
“I’m not going to put up with this
anymore.” And, of course, he's getting a bad name in
the U.S., because we want to portray him as a
cocaine-raising farmer who's all in favor of Castro and
socialism and communism and cocaine. The fact is he did
raise coca. He was a coca farmer. Coca's a very
legitimate product in Bolivia that is not just used for
cocaine. It's used for many other things.
AMY GOODMAN: Like?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, for
example, high altitude sickness. Coca tea is perfectly
legal in this country, too, and it's very effective
against high altitude sickness, and derivatives of coca
are used for many medicines. They're very effective. But
the reason he was elected had nothing to do with any of
that. It simply has to do with the extreme frustration
and anger of the Bolivian people, of how they've been
exploited and how the I.M.F. and the World Bank have
insisted that they turn their resources over to foreign
corporations. And also, you know, part of the World Trade
Organization policies is that we insist that countries
like Bolivia not subsidize their local industries and
products, but that they accept our subsidies of them, and
that they not erect any barriers against our goods coming
in there, but they accept the barriers that we erect
against their goods. And people around the world, Amy,
are getting fed up with this. 300 million Latin Americans
-- South Americans out of 360 million, over 80% have
voted for these types of candidates.
AMY GOODMAN: Not to be
ethnocentric about it, but America is a tremendous power,
especially military power. It has been diverted now to
dealing with Iraq. President Bush declaring war on Iraq,
not exactly officially declaring it, but engaging in it.
Do you think that that has something to do with what is
happening in Latin America, not to take power away from
the people and what they are doing there?
JOHN PERKINS: Well,
certainly, I think that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela might
not have survived his presidency. His presidency might
not have survived had we not been in Iraq and
Afghanistan, that we were so diverted. We -- the economic
hit men tried to overthrow him, you know, a few years ago
and were successful for about 48 hours. But then he had
control over the oil company, and he was very, very
popular. So he got back into office. At that point, had
we not been involved in Iraq, I strongly suspect that we
would have done something much more aggressive, as we've
done so many other times. When the economic hit men fail,
we take more drastic steps. Because we were so involved
in Iraq, we didn't do that.
This gave great support to all of
the other movements in Latin America. And these other
candidates, people like Evo Morales, really looked to
Hugo Chavez as an example of someone who’s had the
staying power. He’s been able to stay there, despite
the fact that the administration has spoken so strongly
against him and is so angry.
The other side of the coin is that
Brazil is a world power. It's one of the largest
economies in the world, and it produces a tremendous
number of military weapons that are used worldwide. And
Lula, of Brazil, he’s backed off a bit. And
there’s an interesting story that I know behind
that.
AMY GOODMAN: What?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I'll
get into that. But he's backed off a bit. But he still
– he’s made alliances with Chavez, with
Kirchner of Argentina, with Morales of Bolivia.
They’ve all agreed that if the United States does
anything drastic, they'll stand together and oppose us.
So there is this coalition that's happening. It's quite
loose. But nonetheless, there's a tremendous amount of
support there.
AMY GOODMAN: Lula, what do
you know?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was
one of the speakers at the World Social Forum in Brazil
in last February, and a man asked to meet with me who was
a very high advisor to Lula. And he said, “You know,
what you say in your book is all very true, but you just
-- that's just the tip of the iceberg.” He said,
“You know, from the time I was a very young man, I
was quite radical. And it was interesting to me, as I was
going through university, how much sex, drugs, booze were
available to me in the parties that I was invited to, and
so on. And now that I’m in this position of power, I
discover that somebody was taking pictures of all those
things, that there's a record of this.”
And he says, “You don't
realize how all-pervasive your Secret Services are. It's
recruiting, in their own way, young people, even those
that are extreme socialists and communists. Your people
befriend us from very early ages and get a lot of
information on us. So when we become high up in the
government, they basically –” And I said,
“They blackmail you?” And he said, “Well,
you could use the word ‘blackmail,’ but I think
I would prefer that’s ‘modern U.S.
diplomacy.’”
And I asked him, I said,
“Well, is Lula a part of this?” And he
obviously didn't really want to answer this question. He
hesitated, and he said, “Let me just say that nobody
gets to power in Brazil these days without being very
willing to make compromises to your corporations and your
government.” He said, “I think Lula’s a
very, very good man, but he also has to deal with
reality. And certainly, he's been watched all of his
life, and I’m sure he's had the same temptations I
did.”
AMY GOODMAN: And he’s
also engulfed in a major corruption scandal, which, for
many of his long-time supporters, Brazilians and outside,
are raising a lot of questions.
JOHN PERKINS: And I think
the fact that the scandal has come out and has been blown
into such proportions is an indication that someone is
sending Lula a very strong message. Incidentally, the
jackal – I’ll call him – that was working
with Gutierrez of Ecuador said to me, “You know,
this isn’t limited to other countries. This happens
in your country, too. Don't you think that the
assassination of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and
Martin Luther King and John Lennon and others like that,
and the many senators that have died in airplane crashes
and other things, has sent a strong message to your
politicians? And don't you think that –”
AMY GOODMAN: Who said this
to you?
JOHN PERKINS: The same
economic hit man/jackal who visited Gutierrez and read
him the Riot Act.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you care
to share his name?
JOHN PERKINS: No. I'll let
him do that at some point, if he feels it's appropriate.
Right now, he doesn’t feel it’s appropriate.
He's still in the business. And so, many of these people
are still very -- even the ones that have retired are
getting pensions, and they’ve got loyalties, some of
them. So, they’ll talk to me on the side and say,
“I want you to put this in your book, but I’m
not ready to talk.” A couple of them I am working
with to write a book, and my literary agent is working
with them. So hopefully some of them will come clean. But
it's a slow process in making that happen.
AMY GOODMAN: And these
people you know, who you call economic hit men, who are
the first to move in to these men who gain power, where
does -- what do you know about Evo Morales now? He's just
been elected President?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I have
no doubt that he has been visited by at least one of
these men, who's known him beforehand. These are not
strangers that walk in. They’ve been hanging around
Bolivia for a while, as I did. And so, once the President
is elected, they walk into his office and shake his hands
and say, “Congratulations, Mr. President. You won.
We launched a strong campaign against you, but now you've
won. And now, I want to tell you the facts of life and
make you --”
AMY GOODMAN: And you know
someone who has talked to him in this way?
JOHN PERKINS: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: And what was
-- according to you, what was President Morales's
response?
JOHN PERKINS: Morales was
very diplomatic about the whole thing, but absolutely
stood firm and said, “You know, my people have
elected me for a reason, and I intend to honor
that.” This is what his initial response was. But
what I will say is we can't imagine the pressure now
that’s being exerted on a man like Morales, as is
true with all these other presidents. They know what's
happened before their time. And they – you know, the
pressure will be put on them tighter and tighter and
tighter.
And imagine being in that
position. Imagine being an integritous person and really
wanting to help your country, being elected with a
majority – Morales got 54% of the vote, which is
unheard of in Bolivia; he was up against many opponents
-- and then, wanting to implement the policy, and
somebody walks into your office and reminds you of what
happened to all these other presidents.
And perhaps the most scary one was
Noriega, who did not get assassinated. He wasn't a
martyr. Instead, he had to stand by and watch several
thousand innocent Panamanian civilians bombed,
slaughtered, burned to death. And then he was dragged off
to a U.S. prison, where he has been pretty much in
solitary confinement every since. Imagine thinking that
might happen to you.
And so, Evo Morales, the story has
just begun for him. I sympathize with him very deeply.
And I think from our standpoint, Amy, as American
citizens -- and I look at myself as an extremely loyal
American citizen. I believe in the principles of this
country, which I think that in the past few decades,
increasingly, we've put them way in the back burner. But
as good Americans, we need to insist that our government
and our corporations honor democracy.
AMY GOODMAN: John
Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
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"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do
everything, but I
can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I
will
not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can
do,
I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God,
I will do." - Edward Everett Hale
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