How the US uses Globlisation to Cheat Poor Countries out of Trillions

[Guest guest]

llll

 

 

 

How the US uses Globlisation to Cheat Poor Countries out of

Trillions

Mon, 3 Jan 2005 18:14:14 -0000

 

 

Tuesday, November 9th, 2004

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to

Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions

 

 

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251#transcript

 

Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3

Watch 128k stream Watch 256k stream Read Transcript

Help Printer-friendly version Email to a friend

Purchase Video/CD

 

 

We speak with John Perkins, a former respected member of the

international banking community. In his book Confessions of an

Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he

helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions

of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay

and then take over their economies. [includes rush transcript]

John Perkins describes himself as a former economic hit man - a highly

paid professional who cheated countries around the globe out of

trillions of dollars.

 

20 years ago Perkins began writing a book with the working title,

" Conscience of an Economic Hit Men. "

 

Perkins writes, " The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two

countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought

of as kindred spirits - Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar

Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes.

Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they

opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads

whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring

Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the

CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.

 

John Perkins goes on to write: " I was persuaded to stop writing that

book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On

each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current

world events: the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War,

Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes

always convinced me to stop. "

 

But now Perkins has finally published his story. The book is titled

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. John Perkins joins us now in our

Firehouse studios.

 

* John Perkins, from 1971 to 1981 he worked for the international

consulting firm of Chas T. Main where he was a self-described

" economic hit man. " He is the author of the new book Confessions of an

Economic Hit Man.

 

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

 

This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us

provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV

broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

 

AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins joins us now in our firehouse studio.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

 

JOHN PERKINS: Thank you, Amy. It's great to be here.

 

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Okay, explain this term,

" economic hit man, " e.h.m., as you call it.

 

JOHN PERKINS: Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is

to do is to build up the American empire. To bring -- to create

situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country,

to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we've been very

successful. We've built the largest empire in the history of the

world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with

very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like

Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. This empire, unlike

any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily

through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud,

through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit

men. I was very much a part of that.

 

AMY GOODMAN: How did you become one? Who did you work for?

 

JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was initially recruited while I was in business

school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the

nation's largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately

I worked for private corporations. The first real economic hit man was

back in the early 1950's, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy, who

overthrew of government of Iran, a democratically elected government,

Mossadegh's government who was Time's magazine person of the year; and

he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed -- well,

there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just

spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of

Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man

was an extremely good one. We didn't have to worry about the threat of

war with Russia when we did it this way. The problem with that was

that Roosevelt was a C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee. Had

he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have

been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to

use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential

economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private

consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so

that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Okay. Explain the company you worked for.

 

JOHN PERKINS: Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas.

T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I

became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for

me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other

countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One

of the conditions of the loan–let's say a $1 billion to a country like

Indonesia or Ecuador–and this country would then have to give ninety

percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to

build the infrastructure–a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big

ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system

or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of

the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in

those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that

they couldn't possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over

fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it

really can't do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when

we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, " Look, you're not able to

repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain

forest, which are filled with oil. " And today we're going in and

destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us

because they've accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan,

most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with

the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our

servants, our slaves. It's an empire. There's no two ways about it.

It's a huge empire. It's been extremely successful.

 

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins, author of Confessions of

an Economic Hit Man. You say because of bribes and other reason you

didn't write this book for a long time. What do you mean? Who tried to

bribe you, or who -- what are the bribes you accepted?

 

JOHN PERKINS: Well, I accepted a half a million dollar bribe in the

nineties not to write the book.

 

AMY GOODMAN: From?

 

JOHN PERKINS: From a major construction engineering company.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Which one?

 

JOHN PERKINS: Legally speaking, it wasn't -- Stoner-Webster. Legally

speaking it wasn't a bribe, it was -- I was being paid as a

consultant. This is all very legal. But I essentially did nothing. It

was a very understood, as I explained in Confessions of an Economic

Hit Man, that it was -- I was -- it was understood when I accepted

this money as a consultant to them I wouldn't have to do much work,

but I mustn't write any books about the subject, which they were aware

that I was in the process of writing this book, which at the time I

called " Conscience of an Economic Hit Man. " And I have to tell you,

Amy, that, you know, it's an extraordinary story from the standpoint

of -- It's almost James Bondish, truly, and I mean--

 

AMY GOODMAN: Well that's certainly how the book reads.

 

JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, and it was, you know? And when the National

Security Agency recruited me, they put me through a day of lie

detector tests. They found out all my weaknesses and immediately

seduced me. They used the strongest drugs in our culture, sex, power

and money, to win me over. I come from a very old New England family,

Calvinist, steeped in amazingly strong moral values. I think I, you

know, I'm a good person overall, and I think my story really shows how

this system and these powerful drugs of sex, money and power can

seduce people, because I certainly was seduced. And if I hadn't lived

this life as an economic hit man, I think I'd have a hard time

believing that anybody does these things. And that's why I wrote the

book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in

this nation understood what our foreign policy is really about, what

foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money

goes, I know we will demand change.

 

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins. In your book, you talk

about how you helped to implement a secret scheme that funneled

billions of dollars of Saudi Arabian petrol dollars back into the U.S.

economy, and that further cemented the intimate relationship between

the House of Saud and successive U.S. administrations. Explain.

 

JOHN PERKINS: Yes, it was a fascinating time. I remember well, you're

probably too young to remember, but I remember well in the early

seventies how OPEC exercised this power it had, and cut back on oil

supplies. We had cars lined up at gas stations. The country was afraid

that it was facing another 1929-type of crash–depression; and this was

unacceptable. So, they -- the Treasury Department hired me and a few

other economic hit men. We went to Saudi Arabia. We --

 

AMY GOODMAN: You're actually called economic hit men --e.h.m.'s?

 

JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, it was a tongue-in-cheek term that we called

ourselves. Officially, I was a chief economist. We called ourselves

e.h.m.'s. It was tongue-in-cheek. It was like, nobody will believe us

if we say this, you know? And, so, we went to Saudi Arabia in the

early seventies. We knew Saudi Arabia was the key to dropping our

dependency, or to controlling the situation. And we worked out this

deal whereby the Royal House of Saud agreed to send most of their

petro-dollars back to the United States and invest them in U.S.

government securities. The Treasury Department would use the interest

from these securities to hire U.S. companies to build Saudi Arabia–new

cities, new infrastructure–which we've done. And the House of Saud

would agree to maintain the price of oil within acceptable limits to

us, which they've done all of these years, and we would agree to keep

the House of Saud in power as long as they did this, which we've done,

which is one of the reasons we went to war with Iraq in the first

place. And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so

successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the

economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call

the jackals. Jackals are C.I.A.-sanctioned people that come in and try

to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn't work, they perform

assassinations. or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren't able to

get through to Saddam Hussein. He had -- His bodyguards were too good.

He had doubles. They couldn't get through to him. So the third line of

defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line

of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and

kill, which is what we've obviously done in Iraq.

 

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how Torrijos died?

 

JOHN PERKINS: Omar Torrijos, the President of Panama. Omar Torrijos

had signed the Canal Treaty with Carter much -- and, you know, it

passed our congress by only one vote. It was a highly contended issue.

And Torrijos then also went ahead and negotiated with the Japanese to

build a sea-level canal. The Japanese wanted to finance and construct

a sea-level canal in Panama. Torrijos talked to them about this which

very much upset Bechtel Corporation, whose president was George

Schultz and senior council was Casper Weinberger. When Carter was

thrown out (and that's an interesting story–how that actually

happened), when he lost the election, and Reagan came in and Schultz

came in as Secretary of State from Bechtel, and Weinberger came from

Bechtel to be Secretary of Defense, they were extremely angry at

Torrijos -- tried to get him to renegotiate the Canal Treaty and not

to talk to the Japanese. He adamantly refused. He was a very

principled man. He had his problem, but he was a very principled man.

He was an amazing man, Torrijos. And so, he died in a fiery airplane

crash, which was connected to a tape recorder with explosives in it,

which -- I was there. I had been working with him. I knew that we

economic hit men had failed. I knew the jackals were closing in on

him, and the next thing, his plane exploded with a tape recorder with

a bomb in it. There's no question in my mind that it was C.I.A.

sanctioned, and most -- many Latin American investigators have come to

the same conclusion. Of course, we never heard about that in our country.

 

AMY GOODMAN: So, where -- when did your change your heart happen?

 

JOHN PERKINS: I felt guilty throughout the whole time, but I was

seduced. The power of these drugs, sex, power, and money, was

extremely strong for me. And, of course, I was doing things I was

being patted on the back for. I was chief economist. I was doing

things that Robert McNamara liked and so on.

 

AMY GOODMAN: How closely did you work with the World Bank?

 

JOHN PERKINS: Very, very closely with the World Bank. The World Bank

provides most of the money that's used by economic hit men, it and the

I.M.F. But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story

had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of

what the economic hit men are doing. And the only way that we're going

to feel secure in this country again and that we're going to feel good

about ourselves is if we use these systems we've put into place to

create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do

that. I believe the World Bank and other institutions can be turned

around and do what they were originally intended to do, which is help

reconstruct devastated parts of the world. Help -- genuinely help poor

people. There are twenty-four thousand people starving to death every

day. We can change that.

 

AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, I want to thank you very much for being

with us. John Perkins' book is called, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

 

To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here

for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359.

[Guest guest]

Hello,

 

Mr Mahathir, the former president of Malaysia said about globaisation:

- it is for the profit of few and the destruction of many

I say to globalisation

- it will destroy many cultures which are hundreds or thouands of years

old destoy human heritage where it is not yet recognized as valuable

and press all people in one way of thinking, feeling and living in the

total mainstreamdictatorship! Unfortunately the USA is powerful enough

to do such a disaster.

To fight globalisation is one of the great challenges I see. But how to

win against so much money, weapons a such sohisticated lying and

cheating machinery.

 

It does not matter, it must be fought. People who want do this must get

together.

 

Randolf

 

, " califpacific "

<califpacific> wrote:

>

>

> llll

>

>

>

> How the US uses Globlisation to Cheat Poor Countries out of

> Trillions

> Mon, 3 Jan 2005 18:14:14 -0000

>

>

> Tuesday, November 9th, 2004

> Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization

to

> Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions

>

>

> http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?

sid=04/11/09/1526251#transcript

>

> Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3

> Watch 128k stream Watch 256k stream Read Transcript

> Help Printer-friendly version Email to a friend

> Purchase Video/CD

>

>

> We speak with John Perkins, a former respected member of the

> international banking community. In his book Confessions of an

> Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he

> helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions

> of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay

> and then take over their economies. [includes rush transcript]

> John Perkins describes himself as a former economic hit man - a highly

> paid professional who cheated countries around the globe out of

> trillions of dollars.

>

> 20 years ago Perkins began writing a book with the working title,

> " Conscience of an Economic Hit Men. "

>

> Perkins writes, " The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two

> countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and

thought

> of as kindred spirits - Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar

> Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes.

> Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because

they

> opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads

> whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring

> Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the

> CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.

>

> John Perkins goes on to write: " I was persuaded to stop writing that

> book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On

> each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current

> world events: the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War,

> Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes

> always convinced me to stop. "

>

> But now Perkins has finally published his story. The book is titled

> Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. John Perkins joins us now in our

> Firehouse studios.

>

> * John Perkins, from 1971 to 1981 he worked for the international

> consulting firm of Chas T. Main where he was a self-described

> " economic hit man. " He is the author of the new book Confessions of

an

> Economic Hit Man.

>

> RUSH TRANSCRIPT

>

> This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us

> provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV

> broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.

> Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...

>

> AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins joins us now in our firehouse studio.

> Welcome to Democracy Now!

>

> JOHN PERKINS: Thank you, Amy. It's great to be here.

>

> AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Okay, explain this term,

> " economic hit man, " e.h.m., as you call it.

>

> JOHN PERKINS: Basically what we were trained to do and what our

job is

> to do is to build up the American empire. To bring -- to create

> situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country,

> to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we've been very

> successful. We've built the largest empire in the history of the

> world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with

> very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like

> Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. This empire, unlike

> any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily

> through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud,

> through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit

> men. I was very much a part of that.

>

> AMY GOODMAN: How did you become one? Who did you work for?

>

> JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was initially recruited while I was in business

> school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the

> nation's largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately

> I worked for private corporations. The first real economic hit man was

> back in the early 1950's, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy,

who

> overthrew of government of Iran, a democratically elected

government,

> Mossadegh's government who was Time's magazine person of the

year; and

> he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed -- well,

> there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just

> spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of

> Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man

> was an extremely good one. We didn't have to worry about the threat

of

> war with Russia when we did it this way. The problem with that was

> that Roosevelt was a C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee.

Had

> he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have

> been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to

> use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential

> economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private

> consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so

> that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the

government.

>

> AMY GOODMAN: Okay. Explain the company you worked for.

>

> JOHN PERKINS: Well, the company I worked for was a company

named Chas.

> T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees,

and I

> became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for

> me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other

> countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay.

One

> of the conditions of the loan–let's say a $1 billion to a country like

> Indonesia or Ecuador–and this country would then have to give ninety

> percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to

> build the infrastructure–a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big

> ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system

> or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of

> the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in

> those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that

> they couldn't possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over

> fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it

> really can't do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when

> we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, " Look, you're not able to

> repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain

> forest, which are filled with oil. " And today we're going in and

> destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us

> because they've accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan,

> most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with

> the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our

> servants, our slaves. It's an empire. There's no two ways about it.

> It's a huge empire. It's been extremely successful.

>

> AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins, author of Confessions

of

> an Economic Hit Man. You say because of bribes and other reason you

> didn't write this book for a long time. What do you mean? Who tried to

> bribe you, or who -- what are the bribes you accepted?

>

> JOHN PERKINS: Well, I accepted a half a million dollar bribe in the

> nineties not to write the book.

>

> AMY GOODMAN: From?

>

> JOHN PERKINS: From a major construction engineering company.

>

> AMY GOODMAN: Which one?

>

> JOHN PERKINS: Legally speaking, it wasn't -- Stoner-Webster. Legally

> speaking it wasn't a bribe, it was -- I was being paid as a

> consultant. This is all very legal. But I essentially did nothing. It

> was a very understood, as I explained in Confessions of an Economic

> Hit Man, that it was -- I was -- it was understood when I accepted

> this money as a consultant to them I wouldn't have to do much work,

> but I mustn't write any books about the subject, which they were

aware

> that I was in the process of writing this book, which at the time I

> called " Conscience of an Economic Hit Man. " And I have to tell you,

> Amy, that, you know, it's an extraordinary story from the standpoint

> of -- It's almost James Bondish, truly, and I mean--

>

> AMY GOODMAN: Well that's certainly how the book reads.

>

> JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, and it was, you know? And when the National

> Security Agency recruited me, they put me through a day of lie

> detector tests. They found out all my weaknesses and immediately

> seduced me. They used the strongest drugs in our culture, sex, power

> and money, to win me over. I come from a very old New England

family,

> Calvinist, steeped in amazingly strong moral values. I think I, you

> know, I'm a good person overall, and I think my story really shows

how

> this system and these powerful drugs of sex, money and power can

> seduce people, because I certainly was seduced. And if I hadn't lived

> this life as an economic hit man, I think I'd have a hard time

> believing that anybody does these things. And that's why I wrote the

> book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in

> this nation understood what our foreign policy is really about, what

> foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money

> goes, I know we will demand change.

>

> AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins. In your book, you talk

> about how you helped to implement a secret scheme that funneled

> billions of dollars of Saudi Arabian petrol dollars back into the U.S.

> economy, and that further cemented the intimate relationship between

> the House of Saud and successive U.S. administrations. Explain.

>

> JOHN PERKINS: Yes, it was a fascinating time. I remember well, you're

> probably too young to remember, but I remember well in the early

> seventies how OPEC exercised this power it had, and cut back on oil

> supplies. We had cars lined up at gas stations. The country was afraid

> that it was facing another 1929-type of crash–depression; and this was

> unacceptable. So, they -- the Treasury Department hired me and a

few

> other economic hit men. We went to Saudi Arabia. We --

>

> AMY GOODMAN: You're actually called economic hit men --e.h.m.'s?

>

> JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, it was a tongue-in-cheek term that we called

> ourselves. Officially, I was a chief economist. We called ourselves

> e.h.m.'s. It was tongue-in-cheek. It was like, nobody will believe us

> if we say this, you know? And, so, we went to Saudi Arabia in the

> early seventies. We knew Saudi Arabia was the key to dropping our

> dependency, or to controlling the situation. And we worked out this

> deal whereby the Royal House of Saud agreed to send most of their

> petro-dollars back to the United States and invest them in U.S.

> government securities. The Treasury Department would use the

interest

> from these securities to hire U.S. companies to build Saudi Arabia–

new

> cities, new infrastructure–which we've done. And the House of Saud

> would agree to maintain the price of oil within acceptable limits to

> us, which they've done all of these years, and we would agree to keep

> the House of Saud in power as long as they did this, which we've

done,

> which is one of the reasons we went to war with Iraq in the first

> place. And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so

> successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the

> economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call

> the jackals. Jackals are C.I.A.-sanctioned people that come in and try

> to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn't work, they perform

> assassinations. or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren't able to

> get through to Saddam Hussein. He had -- His bodyguards were too

good.

> He had doubles. They couldn't get through to him. So the third line of

> defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line

> of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and

> kill, which is what we've obviously done in Iraq.

>

> AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how Torrijos died?

>

> JOHN PERKINS: Omar Torrijos, the President of Panama. Omar

Torrijos

> had signed the Canal Treaty with Carter much -- and, you know, it

> passed our congress by only one vote. It was a highly contended issue.

> And Torrijos then also went ahead and negotiated with the Japanese

to

> build a sea-level canal. The Japanese wanted to finance and construct

> a sea-level canal in Panama. Torrijos talked to them about this which

> very much upset Bechtel Corporation, whose president was George

> Schultz and senior council was Casper Weinberger. When Carter was

> thrown out (and that's an interesting story–how that actually

> happened), when he lost the election, and Reagan came in and Schultz

> came in as Secretary of State from Bechtel, and Weinberger came

from

> Bechtel to be Secretary of Defense, they were extremely angry at

> Torrijos -- tried to get him to renegotiate the Canal Treaty and not

> to talk to the Japanese. He adamantly refused. He was a very

> principled man. He had his problem, but he was a very principled man.

> He was an amazing man, Torrijos. And so, he died in a fiery airplane

> crash, which was connected to a tape recorder with explosives in it,

> which -- I was there. I had been working with him. I knew that we

> economic hit men had failed. I knew the jackals were closing in on

> him, and the next thing, his plane exploded with a tape recorder with

> a bomb in it. There's no question in my mind that it was C.I.A.

> sanctioned, and most -- many Latin American investigators have come

to

> the same conclusion. Of course, we never heard about that in our

country.

>

> AMY GOODMAN: So, where -- when did your change your heart

happen?

>

> JOHN PERKINS: I felt guilty throughout the whole time, but I was

> seduced. The power of these drugs, sex, power, and money, was

> extremely strong for me. And, of course, I was doing things I was

> being patted on the back for. I was chief economist. I was doing

> things that Robert McNamara liked and so on.

>

> AMY GOODMAN: How closely did you work with the World Bank?

>

> JOHN PERKINS: Very, very closely with the World Bank. The World

Bank

> provides most of the money that's used by economic hit men, it and

the

> I.M.F. But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story

> had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of

> what the economic hit men are doing. And the only way that we're

going

> to feel secure in this country again and that we're going to feel good

> about ourselves is if we use these systems we've put into place to

> create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do

> that. I believe the World Bank and other institutions can be turned

> around and do what they were originally intended to do, which is help

> reconstruct devastated parts of the world. Help -- genuinely help poor

> people. There are twenty-four thousand people starving to death every

> day. We can change that.

>

> AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, I want to thank you very much for being

> with us. John Perkins' book is called, Confessions of an Economic Hit

Man.

>

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