The poor aren't connected to the power grids. They they they they don't have the skills to get jobs in industrial parks but they and the whole country are
2:58
left holding this huge debt and it's such a big debt that the country can't
3:03
possibly re repay it. So at some point in time we economic hitmen go back to
3:09
that country and say look you know you owe us a lot of money you can't pay your debt so you you've got to give us a
3:15
pound of flesh and explain your history. What made you an economic hitman? Well, when I graduated from business school at
3:23
Boston University, I was recruited by the National Security Agency, the nation's largest and perhaps most
3:28
secretive spy organization. People sometimes think the CIA is that, but the NSA many times larger. I it Yeah, it is.
3:35
It's much larger. At least it was in those days. And it's very very secretive. We all there's a lot of
3:41
rumors. We know quite a lot about the CIA, I think, but we know very very little about the NSA. claims to only
3:46
work in cryptography, you know, encoding and decoding messages, but in fact, we all know that they're the people who
3:52
have been listening in on our telephone conversations. That's come out recently. And and they're very very secretive
3:58
organization. They put me through a series of tests, very extensive tests,
4:03
lie detector tests, psychological tests during my last year in college. And I
4:08
think it's fair to say that they they identified me as a good potential economic hitman. They also identified a
4:14
number of weaknesses in my character that would make it relatively easy for them to hook me to bring me in. And I
4:21
think those weaknesses are kind of we might call the three big drugs of our culture, money, power, and sex. Who
4:27
amongst us doesn't have one of them? I had all three at the time. Um and then uh I joined the Peace Corp. I was
4:34
encouraged to do that by the National Security Agency. spent three years in Ecuador living with indigenous people in
4:40
the Amazon and the Andes, people who today and and at that time were beginning to fight the oil companies. In
4:46
fact, the largest environmental lawsuit in the history of the world has just been brought by these people against Texico Chevron. Uh and and that was
4:53
incredibly good training for what I was to do. Then while I was still in the Peace Corps, I was uh brought in
5:00
recruited into a US private corporation called Charles T. Maine Maine, a consulting firm out of Boston of about
5:07
2,000 employees, very lowprofile firm that did a
5:12
tremendous amount of work of of what I came to understand was the work of of economic hitmen, as I described it
5:18
earlier. And and that's the role I began to fulfill and eventually kind of rose to the top of that organization as its
5:24
chief economist. And how did that tie to the NSA? Was there a connection? You know, that's what's very interesting
5:30
about this whole system, Amy, is that there's no direct connection. and the NSA had interviewed me, identified me,
5:36
and then essentially turned me over to this private corporation. Um, it's a very subtle and very smart system
5:44
whereby it's the private industry that goes out and does this work. So, if we're caught doing something, if we're
5:51
caught bribing or corrupting local officials in some country, it it's
5:56
blamed on private industry, not on the US government. And it it's interesting that in the few interest in instances
6:03
when economic hitmen fail, what we call the jackals, who are people who come in
6:09
to overthrow governments or assassinate their leaders, also come out of private industry. These are not CIA employees.
6:17
We all have this image of the O7, the the government agent hired to kill. You know, we're licensed to kill. But these
6:24
days, the government agents to in my experience don't do that. It's done by by private uh consultants that are
6:32
brought in to do this work and I've known a number of these individuals personally and and still do. In your
6:38
book, The Secret History of the American Empire, you talk about taking on global power at every level. Um right now we're
6:45
seeing these mass protests taking place in Germany ahead of the G8 meeting. Talk about the significance of these. Well, I
6:52
think it's extremely significant. Something's happening in the world today which is very very important. We're
6:57
we're yeah you as we watch the headlines this morning, you know what we we can absolutely say is we live in a very
7:03
dangerous world. It's also a very small world where we're able to immediately know what's going on in Germany or in
7:10
the middle of the Amazon or anywhere else. And we're beginning to finally understand around the world, I think,
7:16
that the only way my children or grandchildren or any child or grandchildren anywhere on this planet is
7:22
going to be able to have a peaceful, stable, and sustainable world is if every child has that. The G8 hasn't got
7:29
that yet. The Explain what the group of eight are. Well, the Group of Eight are the wealthiest countries in the world. And basically, they run the world. And
7:36
the leader is the United States. And it's actually the corporations within these companies, countries, excuse me,
7:42
that that run it. It's not the governments. Uh because after all, the governments serve at the pleasure of the
7:49
corporations in in our own country. We know that the next two final presidential candidates, Republican and
7:55
Democrat alike, are going to each have to raise something like half a billion dollars. And that's not going to come
8:01
from me and you. Primarily, that's going to come from the people who own and run our big corporations. they're they're
8:07
totally beholden to the government. So the G8 really is this group of countries
8:13
that represent the biggest multinational corporations in the world and really serve at their behest. And what we're
8:20
seeing now in Europe and we're seeing it very strongly in Latin America. We're seeing it in the Middle East. We're
8:26
seeing this huge undercurrent of resistance of protest against this
8:31
empire that's been built out of this. And it's been such a subtle empire that
8:37
people haven't been aware of it because it wasn't built by the military. It was built by economic hitmen. Most of of us
8:43
aren't aware of it. Most Americans have no idea that these incredible lifestyles that we all lead uh are are are because
8:51
we're part of a very vicious empire that literally enslaves people around the
8:57
world, misuses people. But we're beginning to understand this. and and the Europeans are and the Latin
9:03
Americans are at the forefront of this understanding. Well, we're going to talk to you about Congo, about Lebanon, about the Middle East, about Latin America. Uh
9:10
much of what you cover in the secret history of the American Empire. Not to put up with that anymore, all of us. You
9:17
were talking to John Perkins. His book is The Secret History of the American Empire. It's the um uh 40th anniversary
9:25
of the 1967 Israeli Arab War. or you talk about Israel being uh fortress
9:31
America in the Middle East. I think it's very sad and very telling once again
9:36
that the Israeli people for the most part are led to believe that they've been given this land as a payoff
9:42
basically for the Holocaust because they they deserve to be recompensed. Of course, the Holocaust was terrible and
9:48
they do deserve to be taken care of and recompensed and have stability. But why would we locate that place in the middle
9:55
of the Arab world, the traditional enemies? Why would we locate that place in such an unstable area? It's because
10:02
it's it is serving as a huge fortress for us in the biggest oil fields known in the world today. And we knew this
10:08
when Israel was located there. And I I I think the Israeli people have been terribly exploited in this process. So
10:15
in fact, we built this vast military base, armed camp in the middle of the
10:22
Middle Eastern oil fields that are surrounded by the Arab communities. And in the process, we've obviously created
10:29
a tremendous amount of resentment and anger and in a situation that it's it's very difficult to see any positive
10:36
outcome there. But the fact of the matter is our having this military base
10:41
in Israel has been a huge defense for us. It's been a place where we could really launch attacks, rely on. It's
10:48
been our equivalent of of the crusaders castles in the in the Middle East. And
10:54
it's very very sad. I think it's extremely sad for the Israeli people that they're caught up in all of this. I
11:00
think it's extremely sad for the American people. It's extremely sad for the world that this is going on. as we
11:06
crisscross the globe, John Perkins, which is exactly what you did in your years as an international consultant,
11:12
having been groomed by the national security agency, but then being a coming uh economist and an international
11:18
consulting firm. You have also written books about shamanism. Um, you also
11:24
write about Tibet. Where does Tibet fit into this picture? Well, you know, I was just in Tibet a couple of years ago and
11:32
uh um it it it it was it was an interesting thing because I took a group of about 30 people into Tibet with me as
11:38
a part of a nonprofit organization. I was leading the trip and and some of these people that have been in the Amazon with me, been to other places and
11:45
of course Tibet right now is it's very depressing because the Chinese presence is extremely strong and you see how the
11:52
Tibetan culture has been put down and and you're there's always you're always aware that there's Chinese soldiers and
11:58
spies all around you and many of the people on the trip came to the realization, yeah, this is terrible
12:04
here. Pre-Tibet, we all know about that. But they but the ones who'd been with me on trips to the Amazon where the oil
12:10
companies and our own military are doing the same thing said, "But doesn't this remind us of what we're doing in so much
12:16
of the world?" And it's something we tend to forget. We can all wave banners about free Tibet, which we should, but
12:22
how about freeing the countries that are under our thumb, too. And certainly Tibet is not nearly Well, I hate to say
12:29
it this way because some people might disagree with me, but I think Iraq is in worse shape than Tibet is these days.
12:36
Although I wouldn't I both of them are in pretty bad shape. But so what we saw
12:41
in Tibet is that same kind of model that we're uh implementing around the world.
12:49
And yet most Americans are not aware that we're doing it with they're aware
12:54
that the Chinese are doing it, but they're not aware that we're doing it on actually a much bigger level than the Chinese are. John Perkins, talk about
13:00
your transformation. Um you were making a lot of money. you were traveling the
13:05
world. You were in a position where you were meeting presidents and prime ministers of countries, bringing them to
13:11
their knees. Uh what made you change and then ultimately the decision to write
13:16
about it? You know, Amy, when I first got started, I I grew up with three 400
13:21
years of Yankee Calvinist on New Hampshire and Vermont with very strong moral principles. Came from a pretty
13:27
conservative Republican family. Um and uh all during the the 10 years that I
13:33
was an economic hitman from 71 to 81 I was pretty young but I was it bothered
13:39
my conscience and yet everybody was telling me I was doing the right thing like you said presidents of countries
13:45
that the president of the World Bank Robert McNamera patted me on the back and I was asked to lecture at Harvard
13:51
and many other places about what I was doing and what I was doing was not illegal should be but it isn't. And yet
13:57
in my heart it would always tore up my conscience. I'd been a peacecore volunteer. I saw and as time went by and
14:04
I began to understand more and more it got to be more and more difficult for me to continue doing this. Had a staff of
14:11
about four dozen people working for me. Things were building up. And then one
14:16
day I was on vacation sailing in the Virgin Islands and I anchored my little
14:22
boat in in off the St. John Island and I took the dinghy in and I climbed this mountain on St. John Island in the
14:28
Virgin Islands up to this old sugarcane plantation in ruins and it was beautiful. Bugenva the sun was setting.
14:36
I sat there and felt very peaceful. And then suddenly I realized that this
14:42
plantation had been built on the bones of thousands of slaves. And then I
14:47
realized that the whole hemisphere had been built on the bones of millions of slaves. And I got very angry and sad.
14:54
And then it suddenly struck me that I was continuing that same process and
14:59
that I was a slaver that I was making the same thing happen in a slightly in a different way, more subtle way, but just
15:06
as bad in terms of its outcome. And at that point, I made the decision I would never do it again. And I went back to
15:13
Boston a couple of days later and quit. We're talking to John Perkins. Uh worked
15:19
for Chaz Main International Consulting Firm, self-described economic hitman.
15:24
Now has written a new book called The Secret History of the American Empire. When we come back from break, we'll talk
15:30
about well from quitting uh the American Empire to taking it on. Stay with us.
15:38
Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Our guest is John Perkins. From 1971 to 81, he worked for the
15:45
international consulting firm of Charles G. Maine, where he was a self-described economic hitman. His new book is called
15:52
The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hitman Jackals and the Truth About Global Corruption. Um, let's
16:00
talk back uh going to Latin America about this Texico Chevron Chevron Texico
16:06
lawsuit. Well, it's extremely significant. When when I was sent to Ecuador as a Peacecore volunteer in
16:11
1968, Texico had just gone into Ecuador and the promise to the Ecuadorian people
16:16
at that time from Texico and their own politicians and the World Bank was oil is going to pull this country out of
16:22
poverty and people believed it. I believed it at the time. The exact
16:27
opposite has happened. Oil has made the country much more impoverished. While Texico has made fortunes off this, it's
16:35
also destroyed vast areas of the Amazon rainforest. So, the lawsuit today that's
16:41
being brought by a New York lawyer and some Ecuadorian lawyers, uh, Steve Donszinger here in New York, uh, is for
16:49
$6 billion, the the largest environmental lawsuit in the history of the world, uh, in the name of 30,000
16:56
Ecuadorian people against Texico, which is now owned by Chevron, for dumping
17:01
over 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian rainforest. That's
17:07
30 times more than the Exxon Valdis. It's and and
17:12
dozens and dozens of people h have died and are continuing to die of cancer and other pollution related diseases in in
17:20
this area of the Amazon. So all this oil has come out of this area and it's the
17:25
poorest area of one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere and the irony of that is just so amazing. But
17:33
what I think one of the one of the really significant things about this Amy is that this law firm has taken this on
17:40
not pro bono but they expect if they win the case which they expect to do to make a lot of money off of it which is a
17:46
philosophical decision. It isn't because they wanted to get rich off this. It's because they want to encourage other law
17:53
firms to do similar things in Nigeria and in Indonesia and in Bolivia and
17:58
Venezuela and many other places. So they want to see a business grow out of this of of law firms going in and defending
18:05
poor people knowing that they can get a payoff from the big companies who who have acted so terribly terribly terribly
18:12
irresponsibly in the past. And Steve Donszinger, the attorney, I was in Ecuador with him just two weeks ago. And
18:19
one of the very touching things he said is he's an American attorney with, you know, very good credentials. and he
18:25
says, "You know, I've seen a lot of companies make mistakes and then try to defend themselves and in law courts."
18:31
And he said, "That's one thing, but in this case, Texico didn't make mistakes. This was done with intent. They knew
18:37
what they were doing to save a few bucks. They killed a lot of people." Uh, and and now they're going to be forced
18:44
to to to pay for that, to take responsibility for that, and hopefully open the door to make many companies
18:50
take responsibility for the want and destruction that's occurred. Let's talk about Latin America and its leaders like
18:56
Haime Raldos. Talk about him and his significance. You wrote about him in your first book, Confessions of an
19:01
Economic Man. Yeah. Haime Raldos was an amazing man after many years of military
19:06
dictators in in Ecuador, US puppet dictators. There was a democratic election and one man, Haime Raldos, ran
19:14
on a platform that said Ecuadorian resources ought to be used to help the Ecuadorian people and specifically oil,
19:20
which at that time was just coming in. This is this was in the late '7s. And I was sent to EC Ecuador and I was also
19:27
sent at the same time to Panama to work with Omar Trios to bring these men around to corrupt them basically to to
19:33
to change their minds. They you know in the case of Haimey Raldos he won the
19:38
election by a landslide and now he started to put into uh action his policy
19:44
his promises and and was going to tax the oil companies if they weren't willing to give much more of their
19:49
profits back to the Ecuadorian people then he threatened to nationalize them. So I was sent down along with other
19:55
economic hitmen. I played a a fairly minor role in that case and a major one in Panama with Trios. But we were sent
20:01
into these countries to get these men to change their policies, uh, to go against
20:07
their own campaign promises. And basically what you do is you tell them, look, you know, if you play our game, I
20:13
can make you and your family very wealthy. I can get make sure that you get very rich. If you don't play our
20:18
game, if you follow your campaign promises, you may go the way of Aende in
20:24
Chile or Abins in Guatemala or Lumba in the Congo. On and on. We can list all
20:29
these presidents that we've either overthrown or assassinated because they didn't play our game. But Haimey would
20:35
not come around Jaime Raldos. He he stayed unccorruptible as did Omar toos.
20:41
And both of these and and from an economic hitman perspective, this is very disturbing because not only did I
20:46
know I I was going to I was likely to fail at my job, but I knew that if I failed, something dire was going to
20:52
happen. The jackals would come in and they would either overthrow these men or assassinate them. And in both cases,
20:59
these men were assassinated. I have no doubt. They died in in airplane crashes two months apart from each other in
21:05
1981. Single plane, their their own their own private planes. Explain more what
21:10
happened with Omar Trios. Well, Omar again was very very stalwartly standing
21:15
up to the United States demanding that the Panama Canal should be owned by Panameanians. And and I spent a lot of
21:21
time with Tios and I liked him very very much as an individual. He was extremely charismatic, extremely courageous, and
21:28
very nationalistic about wanting to get the best for his people. And I couldn't corrupt him. I I tried everything I
21:35
could possibly do to bring him around. I And as I was failing, I was also very
21:42
concerned that something would happen to him. And uh sure enough, it it it was
21:47
interesting that him rolled plane crashed in May. and and to said got his
21:56
family together and said, "I'm probably next, but I'm ready to go. We've now got
22:03
the canal turned over." He had signed a treaty with Jimmy Carter to get the canal in Panameanian hands. He said,
22:09
"I've I've accomplished my job and I'm ready to go now." And he had a dream about being in a plane that hit a
22:15
mountain. And within two months after it happened to Raldos, it it happened to to Rehos also. And you met with both these
22:22
men? Yes, I met with both. What were your conversations like? Well, especially with Tihos. I spent a lot of
22:29
time with him in some formal meetings and also at cocktail parties and barbecues. He was big on things like
22:34
that and it was constantly trying to get him to come around to our side and letting him know that if he did, he and
22:41
his family would get some very lucrative contracts, would would become very wealthy, and you know, warning him. And
22:48
he didn't really need much warning because he knew what would be likely to happen if if he didn't. And his attitude
22:53
was I just I want to get done what I can in my lifetime and then so be it. And
22:59
it's been interesting Amy that since I wrote the book Confessions uh Mara Raldos who's who's Haime's daughter has
23:06
come to the United States to meet with me and I just spent time with her in Ecuador. She's now a member of of parliament in in Ecuador, just elected.
23:14
And she married Omar Trios's uh nephew. And it's really interesting to hear
23:20
their stories about what was going on. She was 17 at the time. Her parent her her her mother was also in the plane
23:26
that her father died and the two of them died in that plane. And then to hear her talk about how her her husband uh Omar's
23:35
ne nephew was in that meeting when the family was called together and and and and Omar said, "I I'm probably next, but
23:42
I'm I'm ready to to go. I've done my job. I've done what I could do for my people, so I'm ready to go if that's
23:47
what has to happen." So what were your conversations at the time uh with other so-called economic hitman in I mean you
23:55
became the chief consultant at Charles Mine chief economist right chief uh economist right uh well you know when I
24:03
was with other people that we could be sitting at a table say in the hotel Panama uh knowing that we're both here
24:11
to win these guys over but we also had the our official jobs which were to do
24:17
studies on the economy me to show how if the country accepted the loan, it was going to improve its gross national
24:23
product. We would talk about those kinds of things. It's I suspect a little bit like if two CIA agents, spies get
24:30
together or have a beer together, they don't really talk about what they're really doing beneath the surface, but
24:35
they they've got an official job, too. And that's what you focus on. And in fact, the two in my case are very
24:41
closely linked. So we were producing these economic reports that would prove to the World Bank and would prove to
24:47
Omar toos that if he accepted these huge loans uh then his country's gross
24:52
national product would just mushroom and pull his people out of poverty and it would you we produce these reports which
25:00
made sense from a mathematical econometric standpoint. uh and in fact it often happened that
25:07
with these loans the GMPP the gross national product did increase the but
25:12
what also was true and what Omar knew and Haime Raldos knew uh and I was
25:18
coming to know very strongly was that even if the general economy increased the poor people with these loans would
25:25
get poorer the rich would make all the money because most of the poor people weren't even tied into the gross
25:31
national product they a lot of them didn't even make income they were living off subsistence farming. They benefited
25:36
nothing. But they were left holding the debt. And because of these huge debts, their country in the long term would not
25:43
be able to provide them with health care, education, and other social services. Talk about Congo.
25:50
Oh boy. The whole story of Africa and the Congo is such a devastating and and sad one. And and it's it's the hidden
25:57
story really. We in the United States don't even talk about Africa. We don't think about Africa. You know, Congo has
26:03
something called colan, which probably most of your listeners may may not have even heard of, but every cell phone and
26:10
and uh and laptop computer has colan in it. And uh several million people in the
26:17
last few years in the Congo have been killed over Colan because you and I and
26:23
all of us in in the G8 countries demand low or at least we want to see our
26:30
computers inexpensive and our cell phones inexpensive. And of course the companies that make these sell them on
26:36
that basis that oh here mine's $200 less than the other company. But in order to
26:42
do that, these people in the Congo are being enslaved. The miners, the people mining coland, they're being killed with
26:48
these vast wars going on to provide us with cheap coal hand. And I have to say,
26:53
you know, if we want to live in a safe world, we need to be we must be willing. In fact, we must demand that we pay
27:01
higher prices for things like laptop computers and cell phones and that a good share of that money go back to the
27:07
people who are mining the coal tan. And and that's true of oil. That's true of so many resources that we are not paying
27:14
the true cost. And there's millions of people around the world suffering from that. Roughly 50,000 people die every
27:21
single day from hunger, hunger related diseases and and curable diseases that they don't get the medicines for simply
27:28
because they're part of a system that demands that they put in long hours and get very very low pay so we can have
27:35
things cheaper in this country. And Congo is an incredibly potent example of that.
27:40
You talk about the so-called defeats in Vietnam and Iraq
27:46
and what they mean for corporations. Yeah. Well, that's Yeah, we you and I
27:52
look at them as defeats perhaps and certainly anybody who lost a child or
27:57
sibling or a spouse in these countries look at them as disasters, as defeats.
28:03
But we the corporations made a huge amount of money off Vietnam, the the military industry, uh the huge
28:10
corporations, the construction companies, and of course they're doing it in a very very big way in Iraq. So
28:16
the corportocracy, the people that are in fact are insisting that our young men and women continue to go to Iraq and
28:22
fight, they're making a tremendous amount of money. These are not failures
28:28
to them. They're successes from a very strong economic standpoint. And I know that sounds cynical. I am cynical about
28:35
these things. I've been there. I've seen it. Uh and you know, we must learn not
28:40
to put up with that anymore. All of us. His second book on the issue of economic
28:46
hitmen is called The Secret History of the American Empire.
28:52
John Perkins is a New York Times best-selling author. His book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman, uh
28:58
took this country by storm. So you quit, but that was one step. Writing about it
29:06
was another. Talk about your attempts over time. Oh, yes. It's um after I quit, I I I I
29:15
tried several times to write the book that became Confessions of an Economic Hitman. And each time I reached out to
29:24
other economic hitmen I'd worked with or jackals to try to get their stories. The word got out and I was threatened. I had
29:31
a young daughter at the time. She's now 25. And I also was offered some bribes.
29:36
In fact, I accepted a bribe of about a half a million dollars. Um, and it's it's what's called a legal bribe, but
29:44
it's a bribe. And it was it was given it was given to me with the condition that I not write the book. There was no
29:49
question about that. I describe it in detail. And I assuaged my guilt by putting a lot of that money to
29:54
nonprofits I'd formed, Dream Change and Patchamama Alliance that uh are helping
30:00
Amazonian people fight oil companies. So it assuaged my guilt some uh but I
30:06
didn't write the story and this happened a number of times and I would find one
30:12
excuse or another and and and I wrote other books about indigenous people. I worked with these people. I I I wrote
30:17
the books you mentioned earlier about shamanism and so forth and and uh so I kind of you know distracted myself and
30:24
assuaged my guilt and and went on with this and then on 911 I was in the Amazon
30:31
with the Schwah people had taken a group of nonprofit people and to learn from
30:36
indigenous people in the Amazon but shortly after that I came up to New York to ground zero and as I stood there
30:43
looking down into that terrible pit that smoldering and it still smelled of burning flesh. I I realized I I I had to
30:52
write the book. I could no longer defer that the American people had no understanding of why so many people
30:58
around the world are are angry and frustrated and and terrified and that I
31:03
had to take responsibility for what happened at 911. And in fact, we all have to take a certain responsibility, which is not in any way to condone mass
31:10
murder by anybody ever. I'm not condoning that in any way. But I did realize that the American people needed
31:16
to understand why there's so much anger around the world. I had to write the book. So this time I didn't tell anyone
31:23
I was writing. And even my wife and daughter, they knew I was writing something, but they didn't know what. I didn't reach out to other people. It
31:29
made it a little more difficult to write it. But finally I got it in the hands of of a very good New York agent and he
31:36
sent it out to publishers. At that point, this manuscript becomes my best insurance policy because at that point,
31:43
if something strange happens to me, including now, uh, suddenly the book
31:48
will sell, even though it's been a bestseller for a long time, it will sell a lot more copies if something people sometimes laugh and say, do you worry
31:54
that your publisher may be trying to assassinate you because it would certainly help book sales. I don't worry
32:00
about it, but uh, you know, so at that point, once I got the manuscript there, it it became my insurance policy. it it
32:06
became my insurance policy. You write um a jackal is born about Jack Corbin. Who
32:13
is he? Well, Jack Corbin and and and that's that's not his real name, but he's a real person. He's he's alive and
32:19
well today working for us in Iraq. But uh he he is a jackal. He's he's a he's
32:24
an assassin. And uh one of the most fascinating stories I think is involves
32:30
Seyals, which is a small country, an island country off the coast of Africa. And it happens to be located where Diego
32:37
Garcia, one of the United States's most strategic air bases, is located. There's a long history behind Diego Garcia. But
32:44
in the late '7s, Seyials had a had a president that was very friendly to us, James Mansion, and
32:51
he was overthrown in a bloodless coup by Francis Renee, a socialist. And Francis Renee threatened to get us out of Diego
32:57
Garcia, to expose the real facts behind the terrible things that went on to put us in Diego Garcia. And it's a lot of
33:03
details that I won't get into now. In any case, I I was called down to Washington to meet with a bunch of
33:09
retired generals and admirals who were trying to who who who were all working for as economic hitmen for consulting
33:15
firms. And they were prepping me to go in and corrupt um Francis Renee and
33:21
bring him around to our side. But before doing that, they wanted to find out whether he was really corruptible or
33:26
not. And it was sort of interesting that they one of these generals had a young protetéé, a young man who and and and
33:32
the general had noticed that a high diplomat from Satials in Washington had a young wife who was not very happy. So
33:39
this young man was sent in to seduce the wife and compromise her and and get
33:44
information from her, which is a fairly common tactic. Sex is a big thing in in this game of diplomacy and economic hit
33:51
people. And it's sort of an interesting buy story here is that one time at lunch
33:56
this general came back and he said, you know, I think you economic hitmen have a much tougher job than your women
34:02
counterpart because he said, now this this woman that the diplomat's wife is is buying into this with the young man,
34:07
but she wants to be convinced that he loves her. Uh he said, you know, my god,
34:13
you know, I' I'd give the keys to the Pentagon to a young lady just for some good sex. I don't need to be convinced
34:18
that that she loves me, but I guess that's the difference between men and women. That's what he said. Kind of
34:23
interesting. Anyway, in the end, uh, the young man did get the information from
34:29
the wife and the information was that that, uh, Francis Renee was not corruptible. There was no point in even
34:34
trying. Well, also Diego Garcia is very significant because of as a military base. Extremely significant. And it's it
34:41
was used it's being used in Afghanistan and Iraq and any sort sorties that we fly in from to to Africa or any part of
34:48
that any that part of the world. In any case, I was called off the job and uh a
34:55
little while later, a team of assassins, which was sent in from South Africa, uh
35:00
45 46, I can't remember the exact number, were sent in as a rugby team to bring in Christmas gifts to the children
35:07
of the Syials, but their real job was to overthrow the government and assassinate
35:12
Renee. Uh at the time, I didn't know these individuals. Now, I know Jack Corbin, I know him very well personally.
35:18
I've met him since Araya's cross back then, but we didn't know each other. What exactly did he do? Well, the team
35:24
the team went in and they were apprehended at the airport. A security guard discovered a hidden
35:31
weapon on one of them. A huge gun battle broke out at the Mahi airport and these mercenaries were surrounded by perhaps a
35:38
thousand soldiers on the outside. Jack told me it was one of the few times in his life where he figured he was going
35:44
to die and had time to think about it. He's many times he could have died but he just reacted quickly and they didn't
35:50
know what to do. Uh but eventually a an Air India 707 came into view and asked
35:56
permission to land and they gave it permission to land. As soon as it landed they hijacked it and they flew it back
36:03
to Durban, South Africa. Uh and I'm now watching this on the national news. is
36:08
now on US national news and and I'm I'm I'm knowing that this is I didn't know what was going to happen when I was
36:14
called off the case but now I'm seeing it unfold and to the world what we saw is this plane Air India 707 flies into
36:21
Durban South Africa surrounded by South African security guards the men on the plane give themselves up they're marched
36:27
off they're they're sent they're sent to court uh and then sentenced to to prison
36:33
and some at execution and that's the end of the story as far as we Now, now that
36:39
I know Jack, uh, what actually happened was when the plane was surrounded, the security forces got on the telephone
36:44
with the plane and discovered it was their good friends, their teachers, in fact, on the plane. They worked out a
36:49
deal. The men gave themselves up. They did spend 3 months in prison. They had
36:55
their own wing with television, etc., and then were quietly released after 3
37:00
months. A lot of those same men, that team, a lot of them today are in Iraq working for us there, doing things that,
37:07
you know, our soldiers are forbidden from doing, and they're making very good money doing. Who is this man, so-called
37:12
Jack Corbin, working for today in Iraq? Well, he works for a private company in Iraq that has a contract, you know, that
37:19
comes through the Pentagon, CIA, one one of those organizations like so like so much of this work. There's a tremendous,
37:25
as you've reported on this program, a tremendous number of these mercenaries there. Jack Corbin and his people are at
37:32
the very top of that level. They're the they're the extremely skilled ones who do the really delicate work. We've also
37:38
got a lot of people working for Blackwater and others that, you know, are not quite as skilled and are just out there doing kind of the grunt work.
37:44
But there's all kinds at that level. Beal, Bolivia, the water wars. You're
37:51
based in the Bay Area where Bechal is based and you're the continent you know
37:56
best, South America. Yeah. Well, you know, Bectal was given the franchise to
38:04
own and operate the water system of Coachabama, Bolivia, third largest city
38:10
in that country. And the World Bank forced this to happen.
38:15
It's so sad. When it happened, suddenly the price of water quadrupled for some
38:20
people, went up by tremendous amounts. People could no longer afford water. Coach Bomba is a pretty poor city.
38:26
There's sections of it that are extremely poor. And so the people took to the streets. They rebelled against
38:32
this. There were riots and and Beal dug in its heels. But eventually uh they
38:38
threw Beal out of Bolivia. Bechal then sued Bolivia for $50 million in a
38:44
European court because they couldn't sue in a US court because of the laws between Bolivia and the US. And then Ael
38:52
Morales was elected president of of Bolivia and very shortly after that Bectal dropped its lawsuit. But it was
38:59
interesting that the lawsuit was for lost profits that they hadn't been able to realize because they'd been thrown
39:05
out for doing things that were so honorous to the people there. John Perkins, what do you see as the
39:11
solutions right now? Well, you know, Amy, this this empire that we've created
39:16
really has an emperor and it's not the president of this country. The president serves, you know, for short periods of
39:23
time, but it doesn't really matter whether we have a Democrat or a Republican in the White House or running
39:29
Congress. The empire goes on because it's really run by what I call the corportocracy, which is a group of of men who run our
39:36
biggest corporations. This isn't a conspiracy theory. They don't need to conspire. They all know what serves
39:42
their best interest. But uh they really are the equivalent of the emperor because they do not serve at the wish of
39:48
the people. They're not democratically elected. They don't serve any limited term. They've essentially answered to no
39:54
one except their own boards. And most corporate CEOs actually run their boards rather than the other way around. Um and
40:02
they are the power behind this. And so if we want to turn this around, we have
40:07
to impact them very strongly. Which means that we have to change the corporations which is their power base.
40:13
And what I feel very strongly is that today corporations exist for the primary
40:19
purpose of making large profits making a few very rich people a lot richer on a
40:25
quarterly basis on a daily on a very short-term basis. That shouldn't be. There's no reason for that to be.
40:31
Corporations have been defined as individuals. They individuals have to be good citizens. Corporations need to be
40:38
good citizens. They need to take care. Their primary goal must be to take care of their employees, their customers, and
40:45
all the people around the world who provide the resources that go into making this world run. Uh and to take
40:52
care of the environments and the communities where those people live. We must get the corporations to redefine
40:58
themselves. And I think it's very realistic that we can do so. Uh, every
41:03
corporate executive out there is smart enough to realize that he's running a very failed system. As an economist, as
41:12
a rational person, nobody can conclude anything otherwise. If you look at the
41:17
fact that less than 5% of the world's population live in the United States and we consume more than 25% of the world's
41:24
resources and create over over 30% of its major pollution, you can only
41:30
conclude that we've created a very flawed and failed system. This is not a
41:35
model that can be sold to the Chinese or the Indians or the Africans or the Middle Easterners or the Latin
41:42
Americans. We can't even continue with it ourselves. It has to change and
41:48
corporate executives know that. They're they're smart individuals. I believe that they want to see change and when we
41:56
have really pushed them to change, we've been extremely successful. For example,
42:01
we've got them to clean up rivers that were terribly polluted in the 1970s in this country. We got them to get rid of
42:08
the aerosol cans that were destroying the ozone layer. We got them to change their policies toward hiring and
42:13
promoting minorities and women. We've gotten them to put seat belts in cars and airbags against their their initial
42:21
resistance. We've got them to change tremendously in any specific area where we've set out to do that. Now it
42:28
behooves us we must convince them that their corporations need to be
42:34
institutions to make this a better world rather than in institutions that serve a
42:40
few very rich people and their goal is to make those people even richer. We need to turn this around. We must want
42:46
to ask one uh last uh quick question on Ecuador and that is the death of
42:52
Ecuador's defense minister Guad Guadaloop Lviva who died in a helicopter
42:57
crash last year um near the Manta US air base installation. Do you know anything about that? Well, yeah. I just came from
43:04
Ecuador and everybody's talking about it because the same thing happened to Amy Raldos as Minister of Defense did before
43:10
he was assassinated and the fact that it happened next to the US air base in Mont. It was a freak
43:16
crash helicopters colliding. Uh the similarities between what happened at
43:22
Himei Rolos, people all through Ecuador are saying this was a warning to Raphael Korea, the new president of Ecuador.
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