The Devil V.S. John Perkins

By: Jordan Tappis | August 01, 2008 | Politics Profile

John Perkins is a former economic hit man, an official job title that doesn’t begin to encapsulate the horrific nature of the actual position. Back in the ’70s and ’80s, Perkins says he was paid a fortune to coerce the leaders of resource-rich developing countries into accepting massive inequitable loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund — loans that would, if he did his job correctly, bankrupt these naive nations leaving their economies in ruin, their people impoverished and their resources (oil, natural gas, vital minerals, water, etc.) squandered. When he failed, he said the CIA would send in violent jackals to orchestrate coups, overthrow governments and assassinate leaders. The Economic Hit Man does not receive a government paycheck, but his corporate bosses are the very people that lobby to get our presidents, our congressmen and our senators elected. Perkins refers to this group as “the corprotocracy,” a clandestine group of international businessmen willing to do anything and everything to ensure that America continues to build the largest empire the world has ever known. John Perkins, a National Security Agency-trained economist, was the secret weapon of an American empire, methodically advancing the cause of corporate hegemony.

Off the heels of his phenomenally successful best-seller Confessions of an Economic Hit Man comes his controversial new book The Secret History of the American Empire, a firsthand account of America’s subversive quest to build the world’s first global empire. To be fair, nearly all of Perkins’ sources remain anonymous and government officials continue to challenge the validity of his testimony. Further, the U.S. State Department has denounced Perkins and his supposed experiences despite the fact that few can deny America has overtly supported dictators and ruthlessly destabilized obstinate governments. Nonetheless, Perkins seems at peace with the criticism. His intention is to enlighten the reader and evoke a personalized response to the injustice fueled by the subterfuge of the multinational corporations.
In many ways, The Secret History of the American Empire is a call to arms for the people of the world to stand up and change the way corporate interests blend with American foreign policy. Perkins argues that as a society we hold the keys to election results and the success of the multinational corporations, and therefore we dictate the timetable and the terms for change. Perkins provides thought-provoking alternatives and optimistic substitutes for the current corporate routine. As he said toward the end of our interview, “We are the customers, the voters and the consumers, and when we decide to speak, the corporatocracy has no choice but to listen.”
What is the purpose of the economic hit man? During your tenure, what was your primary objective? 

I think it’s fair to say that economic hit men created the world’s first truly global empire and it’s the first time in history that an empire has been formed without the use of the military. Economic hit men, employed by “the corporatocracy,” identify a Third World country with resources that corporations covet — things like oil, water, natural gas, etc., and exploit those countries by arranging huge loans from the World Bank or one of its sister companies. The money however, doesn’t actually go to the country responsible for the loan; it pays for multinational corporations to build enormous infrastructure projects that include things like power plants, oil refineries, highways and industrial parks. These infrastructure projects benefit a few rich families in that country, but the main beneficiaries are our own corporations.

The corporatocracy, which consists of a very secretive group of multinational corporations, profits from these arrangements, but in virtually every case, these loans impoverish a large majority of the population and destroy the ecosystem. Many of the people in these developing countries are too poor to buy the electricity or the cars, and they lack the skills to get jobs in the industrial parks, but they — the whole country — end up owing a huge debt, a debt we deliberately caused using a very complicated and subversive economic model. In fact, that’s the plan: to put these naive developing countries in that kind of situation. So, at some point, the economic hit men go back and say, “Listen, this is a lot of money and you can’t pay your debts, so give us a pound of flesh. Sell your oil cheap to our oil companies, vote with us on the next critical United Nations bill, allow us to build a military base on your soil or send your troops to support the United States in some place like Iraq or Afghanistan.” Most people in the United States are led to believe that all these other countries sent troops to Iraq because they believe in the cause. In reality, a great many of them are essentially blackmailed into doing it. They basically had no choice because they owed us an unbelievable amount of money. 

What happens if an EHM fails to convince a particular government to accept a loan of this magnitude?

On the few occasions when the economic hit man fails, as I failed with President Jaime Roldos of Ecuador and President Omar Torrijos of Panama, the CIA-sponsored “jackals” go in and they either overthrow the governments or they assassinate the leaders (and oftentimes the leaders’ families). When I couldn’t corrupt Roldos or Torrijos, when I couldn’t get them to accept these big loans and put their countries deep into debt, the jackals assassinated them. And on the few occasions when the jackals failed, then and only then we would send in the military. That’s pretty much what happened in both Panama (under Noriega) and Iraq (under Saddam). In this way, America has managed to build this empire, and the scary thing is that most Americans have no idea what we’ve done in the name of freedom. Most of us think we’re out there defending democracy around the world when in fact we are building the most powerful and secretive empire the world has ever known.

So, the architects of this secret global empire, as you call it, are a bunch of economists?

Yes. Historically, most empires have been built by the military, and when you’re doing that, everybody knows about it. When the Romans, Greeks, French, Spanish and the British built their empires, they did it by sending soldiers out to conquer other lands.  They were spreading civilization, Christianity — or whatever their excuse — but they were doing it very publicly. This empire was built in extreme secrecy, and we should all be very concerned about the state of American democracy. Democracy is built on an informed electorate, and if our electorate doesn’t know our most basic foreign policy, then we’re not informed. And if we’re not informed, it’s hard to say we vote intelligently. And if we don’t vote intelligently, it’s hard to say we’re even a democracy. Simply put, if we don’t understand what we’re voting for and if we aren’t privy to what our government is doing once elected, we do not live in a democracy. It’s one of the main reasons I wrote these books: so that the American people would understand that we can’t continue to put our heads in the sand and allow this to continue. We must change it. We must turn it around and I’m very optimistic that we will.
What did the National Security Agency see in you when you were being recruited, and what kind of personality traits do agencies look for in young recruits?

When the NSA recruited me back when I was still in college, they discovered that I could be very persuasive with people. I could write very well and I could talk very well. I guess you could call it the ability to be a good con artist. They also saw that I could be easily drawn to the three big drugs of our culture — power, money and sex. In my books, I write about how I grew up as the son of a private boys boarding school teacher. Although we were technically poor, we had free housing and food, so we didn’t need much. I went to school with boys who came from fabulously rich families, kids who would vacation in Paris or Buenos Aries or New York. Because we had no money, I would be stuck in this little town in rural New Hampshire that was basically empty, and I was humiliated when the students would come back with these amazing stories about parties they’d been to, debutant balls, girls — I was also very shy with girls. Years later, the notion of traveling around the world first class, staying in the best hotels, having beautiful women at my beck and call — that was my dream — and the NSA used that hook to their advantage. There is no question that Claudine, the woman who trained me, used power, money and sex to persuade me. After I completed my training I, too, used those same hooks to persuade others.

What about the jackals?

The jackals are different. Most of the jackals come out of very elite special forces in places like Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, South Africa, [British] SAS special forces, Green Berets, CIA, MI6, etc. They are trained to be very effective killers. For many of them, the motivation comes from personal experience. A friend of mine named Jack Colby, for example, grew up in Beirut, and as a young man he was abducted and tortured by the PLO. He’s since developed a very strong anti-Muslim point of view, and he uses his experience to justify what he does today as a mercenary in the Middle East. That’s not an uncommon type of story for jackals.

How does “the corporatocracy,” your term for a group of powerful U.S. multinational corporations, fit into this equation?

The corporations are convinced that they are positively contributing to the world. When you work for the corporatocracy there is a whole system in place that helps you to convince yourself of this — human resources people, psychologists — many people can convince you of this.

In fact, if you really look beneath the surface, what you see are millions of people who are making $2 or $3 a day working in an incredibly unhealthy environment. Before that, many of these workers were living on subsistence farms enjoying a pretty good existence. They made their own clothes, grew their own food — they lived fairly well. These people didn’t have any money and then all of a sudden a corporation comes along and offers them $3 a day, which seems amazing to them. They’ve probably heard about dollars, but they never had any and they get seduced into taking a job in a sweatshop. Then they find out that they are required to work 60-80 hours a week and they can’t make their own clothes any longer and they can’t cook their own food, and they have a very hard time living off $2 or $3 a day. It becomes virtually impossible because [now] they have to buy everything, and then a year or two later that company finds out they can find cheaper labor in another country and they close the factory down, and thousands of people go unemployed. Suddenly, these people who were making $2 or $3 a day have no job at all and they can’t go back to the farm because someone else has taken it over. We are talking about mothers and grandmothers, they are left out in the cold. But there is a whole system in place to convince corporate employees that they are doing these people a favor by hiring them for this slave wage. Meanwhile, the executives are making good salaries and their kids are going to good schools, so everybody is winning. The corporations, businesses like Nike and Adidas, are constantly saying they are going to make it better next year and next year, but that hasn’t happened yet.

In the new book, you examine the cultural shift that enabled indigenous political leaders to regain control over Latin America. Now that a large portion of Latin America has stood up to the corporatocracy and elected an overwhelming majority of non-U.S.-sponsored officials, how has the balance of power changed, and are we witnessing the beginning of the United States of South America?

There is no question a revolution is happening in Latin America. Nine countries have voted to stand up against the corporatocracy and vote indigenous leaders into office.  When I wrote my latest book, there were eight. Now, there are nine because Paraguay joined the movement. Everyone in South America knows what is going on and most of the rest of the world is well aware, too. North American media, on the other hand, have carefully ignored the revolution, so I’m very happy you’ve agreed to write about it. As of today, we’ve got nine presidents representing more than 80 percent of the population in South America saying, “No more exploitation by the corporatocracy.” Ecuador’s oil must be used to profit Ecuador’s poor people and Bolivia’s gas must be used to profit Bolivia’s poor people. These presidents won a democratic election by overwhelming majorities and there has been no violence, this has been a peaceful revolution, and what’s fascinating is that every one of these countries up until now (at least since I was born) has been ruled by a brutal dictator who was typically a Washington puppet. You now have these very enlightened presidents and extremely diverse factions coming together to inspire a major change in culture and policy. Many of these countries have had indigenous people and military at war with each other since the time of the Spanish conquest and now, in these last elections, many of the countries’ indigenous people and military have joined forces to come together to vote on the president that they thought could best serve their self-interests. It is extremely important, and I believe it’s paving the way for a new model for the rest of the world to follow. If it can happen amongst the tribal factions of Bolivia, then [why can’t it happen in] Africa and to the Sunni/Shiites in the Middle East? Why can’t they come together to help serve their own best interests? The answer is simple: They can!

In recent history, colonialism has followed this policy of divide-and-conquer. The colonial powers, including the United States, have tried to stir up turmoil and chaos between the tribal groups in Africa, in the Middle East between the Sunnis and Shiites, and Israel and Palestine, and between these factions in Latin America, because when you have these factions fighting each other locally, you can easily plunder their resources while they are distracted. Latin America has suddenly said, “No more,” and they have been very successful. I think it’s significant to add that two of these presidents are women (in Chile and Argentina), which is monumental for myriad reasons. It’s beautiful to see what’s happening down there.

I want to talk about Hugo Chavez. Among these nine countries that have elected indigenous presidents, he is by far the most outspoken leader and has therefore been the focus of an incredible propaganda campaign perpetuated by the American media. What is Chavez’ significance in the global community and has the mainstream media accurately portrayed him?

Hugo Chavez is going to go down in history as a great, significant leader and president for Venezuela. That said, I am not particularly fond of President Chavez’s rhetorical approach. He is a wild man, but one needs to be a wild man to do what he did. Hugo Chavez came in as president of Venezuela back in 1998 following a long line of terrible presidents who corrupted the government and disenfranchised the people. Luckily, the people were fed up and they voted Chavez in overwhelmingly. At the time, Chavez wasn’t anti-American, but after 9/11 he made a statement, to paraphrase, something along the lines of: “I hope this will help America look at itself and its role in the world.” That statement really ticked off the Bush administration and they immediately went after him.  In 2002, the CIA orchestrated a failed coup attempt and Chavez bounced back into power with renewed vigor. He took to the streets to defend Venezuela. He even had his own private security forces stationed around the presidential palace. At the time, the United States was so overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan that we couldn’t do anything about it.  Normally, we’d call in the big guns and that’s that. But our hands were tied, and as a result we inadvertently encouraged other Latin American countries to run on these tickets that strongly opposed the unfair practices of the U.S. corporations.

It’s important to recognize that these presidents, for the most part, are not trying to kick foreign corporations out of their country; they are simply saying that if foreign corporations are going to exploit the people’s resources, then the people need to get a bigger share of those profits. In almost all of these cases where the South American countries have increased the taxes on foreign corporations or insisted that they pay a bigger share of their profits, the corporations have stayed there and profited along with their hosts. Chavez definitely opened the door for this to happen. Our press is the most overtly subversive arm of the corporatocracy. I read articles about the “Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez” — he is not a dictator; he was democratically elected by a much larger percentage of his population than any of our presidents have been [by theirs]. He is not a dictator, yet the media paints him in that color, which is terribly unfortunate. Chavez is a hero among the poor people of his country. Some of the wealthy Venezuelans, those with a voice, have a problem with his economic policies because they heavily favor the poor, but he is not a dictator.

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