Perkins John. The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption

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THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE

AMERICAN EMPIRE

ECONOMIC HIT MEN, JACKALS, AND THE TRUTH

ABOUT GLOBAL CORRUPTION

BY JOHN PERKINS

Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note from the Author

Prologue

Part 1: Asia

i Mystery Woman of Jakarta

2 Pirating Lepers

3 Geishas

4 The Bugiman

5 A Corrupt and Brutal Country

6 Sweatshops

7 United States-Supported Slaughter

8 Tsunami Profiteering

9 Fruits of Corruption

10 Attacked and Beaten in Indonesia

11 Don't Become a Buddhist

12 Biological Imperatives

13 Dictatorships of Finance

14 The Quiet Giant

Part 2: Latin America

15 Hired Guns in Guatemala

16 Obsessed with Anger

17 Recruited as President of Bolivia Power

18 Maximizing Profits in La Paz

19 Changing the Dream

20 Venezuela's Chavez

21 Ecuador: Betrayed by a President

22 Bolivia: Bechtel and the Water Wars

23 Brazil: Skeletons in the Closet

24 The Beautiful Carioca

25 Taking on the Empire

26 Kindred Spirits

27 A History of Assassinations

28 Lessons from Latin America

Part 3: The Middle East

29 A Bankrupt United States of America

30 King Dollar

31 Manipulating Governments

32 Lebanon: "Stark Raving Mad"

33 USAID Speaks

34 Egypt: Controlling Africa

35 Infidel Dog

36 Iran: Highways and Fortresses

37 Israel: America's Foot Soldier

38 The Iraq-Iran War: Another EHM Victory

39 Qatar and Dubai: Las Vegas in the Land of Mullahs

40 Into the Abyss

Part 4: Africa

41 Modern Conquistadors

42 Sitting in America's Lap

43 A Jackal Is Born

44 The "Non-Peoples" of Diego Garcia

45 Assassinating a President

46 The Highjacking of an Air India 707

47 An Environmentalist Is Executed

48 The Least Understood Continent

49 NGOs: A Stake in Keeping Africa Poor

50 Laptops, Cell Phones, and Cars

51 Ex-Peace Corps Volunteers Offer Hope

52 Resolved: To Turn Things Around

Part 5: Changing the World

53 Four Essential Questions

54 Change Is Possible

55 Modern Minutemen

56 Changing the Myth

57 The New Capitalism

58 A List of Grievances

59 Facing Our Fears

60 Changing Wall Street Through Financial Leverage

61 Buying Off Third-world Debt

62 Five Commonalities

63 Times of Opportunity

64 The Most Important Question of Our Time

65 Today Is the Day

Appendix A: Organizations Described in This Book

Appendix B: Entry Points for Living Democracy

Appendix C: Recommended Reading

Notes

About the Author

Acknowledgments

This book would have been impossible without the

courageous men and women who stepped forward from the ranks

of economic hit men and jackals to share their stories; in doing so

they took personal risks and were forced to confront the darkest

aspects of their lives. I owe them my deepest gratitude.

It could not have been written without the people who

envisioned and manage the NGOs that are changing

corporatocracy policies; they, their staffs, and volunteers light a

path for the rest of us to follow. Some play a prominent role in the

pages of this book, but many remain anonymous—as do those

who donate their money to these important organizations. I thank

all of them.

And also the people around this planet who stand up to the

corporatocracy, the few whose names make the news and the

many who walk the picket lines, hang banners, speak out, send e-

mails, run for office, vote for positive change, and shop

consciously. They are the true heroes of the history that is being

written today.

Without Paul Fedorko's encouragement, neither Confessions

of an Economic Hit Man nor this book would have been

published. In addition to being my tireless agent, Paul has

"watched my back," been my confidant and sounding board.

Emily Haynes, my editor, has been a tenacious advocate,

helping me transform a raw manuscript into a book aimed at

honoring the request expressed by World Bank officials and their

children to expose The Secret History of the American Empire

and propose solutions. In addition to her, I thank all the

committed people at the Penguin Group, especially Brian Tart,

Trena Keating, Beth Parker, Lisa Johnson, and Melanie Gold.

A special word of gratitude to Peg Booth, my publicist, Debbe

Kennedy of the Global Dialogue Center, David Tucker of The

Pachamama Alliance, Llyn Roberts of Dream Change, Steve Pier-

santi of Berrett-Koehler, Stephan Rechtschaffen of the Omega

Institute, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Sabrina Bologni,

Jan Coleman, Josh Mailman, Richard Perl, Howard Zinn, John

Mack, and so many others who have dedicated themselves to

getting the word out and making this a stable, sustainable, and

peaceful world.

My deepest appreciation goes to my family—Winifred,

Jessica, and Daniel—for their support, inspiration, and love. And

to a cat, Snowball, who takes some of the loneliness out of

writing.

xiv

A Note from the Author

The people and incidents in this book are real. I have made

every effort to present them as accurately as personal records,

notes, letters, e-mails, memories, and published documents

permit. In some cases I have changed names and details for the

sake of anonymity—an important condition for many of the

people I interviewed—or combined dialogs to facilitate the flow

of the narrative, but only where this does not threaten the book's

integrity. Whenever I discuss historical events, I am guided by an

obligation to provide as accurate a record as possible, sometimes

augmenting a speaker's words with source materials referenced in

the endnotes. However, this does not include altering or verifying

details behind personal stories; when individuals describe their

roles in highjacking a commercial airliner, invading a country to

assassinate its president, bribing heads of state, profiteering from

natural disasters, seducing and extorting democratically elected

officials, and conducting other clandestine activities, I feel that I

forfeit my rights to interpret their observations. I do want to

emphasize that every major event I participated in has been

documented by other authors, historians, and journalists, or within

the archives of organizations like the World Bank; the story may

be mine, but the episodes are a matter of record.

Prologue

This book takes up where Confessions of an Economic Hit

Man left off. Back when I finished writing that book in 2004, I

had no idea whether anyone would want to read about my life as

an economic hit man (EHM). I chose to describe events that 1

needed to confess. Subsequently, traveling across the United

States and to other countries, lecturing, fielding questions, and

talking with men and women who are concerned about the future,

I have come to understand that people everywhere desire to know

what is really going on in the world today. We all want to be able

to read between the lines of the news reports and hear the truths

that are glossed over by the self-serving pronouncements of the

individuals who control our businesses, governments, and media

(collectively, the corporatocracy).

As I explained in Confessions, I tried to write that book

several times. I approached other EHMs and jackals—the CIA-

sponsored mercenaries who step in to influence, cajole, bribe, and

sometimes assassinate—and asked them to include their stories.

Word quickly spread; I myself was bribed and threatened. I

stopped writing. After 9/11, when I made the commitment to

move forward, I decided that this time I would tell no one until

the manuscript was published. At that point it became an

insurance policy; the jackals knew that if anything unusual

happened to me, sales of the book would skyrocket. Writing

Confessions without assistance from others with similar

experiences might have been difficult, but it was my safest route.

Since its publication, people have stepped out from the shadows. I

EHMs, jackals, reporters, Peace Corps volunteers, corporate

executives, and World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF),

and government officials have come to me with their own

confessions. The stories they share in the following pages expose

the facts behind the events that are shaping the world our children

will inherit. They underscore the inevitable conclusion: We must

act, we must change.

I want to emphasize that you will not find gloom and doom in

these pages. I am optimistic. I know that, although serious, our

problems are man-made. We are not threatened by a giant meteor.

The fire of the sun has not been extinguished. Because we created

these problems, we can solve them. By exploring the dark

recesses of our past we can develop a light for examining—and

changing—the future.

When you finish reading The Secret History of the American

Empire, you too will, I believe, feel absolutely confident that we

will do the right thing. You will have identified a plan of action.

Together we will utilize the resources providence has provided to

establish human societies that reflect our highest ideals.

One evening a few months into my book tour for Confessions

I found myself lecturing in a Washington, D.C., bookstore. The

woman introducing me had mentioned earlier that she expected a

number of World Bank staffers to attend.

Created at Bretton Woods in my home state of New

Hampshire in 1944, the Bank was charged with reconstructing

countries devastated by the war. Its mission soon became

synonymous with proving that the capitalist system was superior

to that of the Soviet Union. To further this role, its employees

cultivated cozy relationships with capitalism's main proponents,

multinational corporations. This opened the door for me and other

EHMs to mount a multitrillion-dollar scam. We channeled funds

from the Bank and its sister organizations into schemes that

appeared to serve the poor while primarily benefiting a few

wealthy people. Under the most common of these, we would

identify a developing country that possessed resources our

corporations coveted (such as oil), arrange a huge loan for that

country, and then direct most of the money to

2PROLOGUE

our own engineering and construction companies—and a few

collaborators in the developing country. Infrastructure projects,

such as power plants, airports, and industrial parks, sprang up;

however, they seldom helped the poor, who were not connected to

electrical grids, never used airports, and lacked the skills required

for employment in industrial parks. At some point we EHMs

returned to the indebted country and demanded our pound of

flesh: cheap oil, votes on critical United Nations issues, or troops

to support ours someplace in the world, like Iraq.

In my talks, I often find it necessary to remind audiences of a

point that seems obvious to me but is misunderstood by so many:

that the World Bank is not really a world bank at all; it is, rather, a

U.S. bank. Ditto its closest sibling, the IMF. Of the twenty-four

directors on their boards, eight represent individual countries: the

United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom,

Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. The rest of the 184 member-

countries share the other sixteen directors. The United States

controls nearly 17 percent of the vote in the IMF and 16 percent

in the World Bank; Japan is second with about 6 percent in the

IMF and 8 percent in the Bank, followed by Germany, the United

Kingdom, and France, each with around 5 percent. The United

States holds veto power over major decisions and the president of

the United States appoints the World Bank president.

When my formal talk was finished, I was escorted to a table to

sign books. The line snaked through the rows of bookcases. It

would be another long evening. What I had not expected were the

number of men and women in business attire who handed me

cards indicating that they held high positions in foreign embassies

and the World Bank. There were several ambassadors from other

countries; a couple of these asked me to sign books for their presi-

dents, as well as for themselves.

The last people in line were four men: Two wore business

suits and ties and two, who were much younger, were dressed in

blue jeans and polo shirts. The older men handed me their World

Bank

business cards. One of the younger men spoke up. "Our

fathers gave us permission to tell you this," he said. "We've

watched them go off to work every morning at the Bank dressed .

.."—he pointed at them—"like this. But when protesters

congregate here in Washington to demonstrate against the Bank,

our fathers join them. We watch them go incognito, wearing old

clothes, baseball caps, and sunglasses to support those people

because they believe they—and you—are right."

Both of the older men shook my hand vigorously. "We need

more whistle-blowers like you," one of them said.

"Write another book," the other added. "Include more of the

details you presented tonight, about what happened to the

countries you worked in, all the damage done by people like us in

the name of progress. Expose this empire. Spell out the truth

behind places like Indonesia where the statistics look so good and

the reality's so bad. And also give us hope. Offer our sons

alternatives. Map out a way for them to do a better job."

I promised him I would write such a book.

Before we get into the main text of that book, I would like to

examine a word he used. Empire. It has been bandied about in the

press and classrooms and at local pubs for the last few years. But

what exactly is an empire? Does America, with its magnificent

constitution, its Bill of Rights, its advocacy of democracy, really

deserve such a label—one that brings to mind a long history of

brutal and self-serving rule?

Empire: nation-state that dominates other nation-states

and exhibits one or more of the following characteristics:

i) exploits resources from the lands it dominates, 2)

consumes large quantities of resources—amounts that are

disproportionate to the size of its population relative to

those of other nations, 3) maintains a large military that

enforces its policies when more subtle measures fail, 4)

spreads its language, literature, art, and various aspects of

its culture throughout its sphere of influence, 5) taxes not

just its own

citizens, but also people in other countries, and 6) imposes its

own currency on the lands under its control.

This definition of "Empire" was formulated in meetings I held

with students at a number of universities during my book tour in

2005 and 2006. Almost without exception, the students arrived at

the following conclusion: The United States exhibits all the

characteristics of a global empire. Addressing each of the above

points:

Points 1 and 2. The United States represents less than 5

percent of the world's population; it consumes more than 25

percent of the world's resources. This is accomplished to a large

degree through the exploitation of other countries, primarily in the

developing world.

Point 3. The United States maintains the largest and most so-

phisticated military in the world. Although this empire has been

built primarily through economics—by EHMs—world leaders un-

derstand that whenever other measures fail, the military will step

in, as it did in Iraq.