Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

by John Perkins

  I admitted that I had not.

  “Do,” she advised. “I read the Spanish version the other day. If it’s anything like the English one, I think you’ll find it very interesting.”

  CHAPTER 23

  The Deceptive Résumé

  While I was in Colombia, word arrived that Jake Dauber had retired as MAIN’s president. As expected, chairman and CEO Mac Hall appointed Bruno as Dauber’s replacement. The phone lines between Boston and Barranquilla went crazy. Everyone predicted that I, too, would soon be promoted; after all, I was one of Bruno’s most trusted protégés.

  These changes and rumors were an added incentive for me to review my own position. While still in Colombia, I followed Paula’s advice and read the Spanish version of my résumé. It shocked me. Back in Boston, I pulled out both the English original and a November 1978 copy of MAINLINES, the corporate magazine; that edition featured me in an article titled, “Specialists Offer MAIN’s Clients New Services.” (See pages 133 and 134.)

  I once had taken great pride in that résumé and that article, and yet now, seeing them as Paula did, I felt a growing sense of anger and depression. The material in these documents represented intentional deceptions, if not lies. And these documents carried a deeper significance, a reality that reflected our times and reached to the core of our current march to global empire: they epitomized a strategy calculated to convey appearances, to shield an underlying reality. In a strange way, they symbolized the story of my life, a glossy veneer covering synthetic surfaces.

  Of course, it did not give me any great comfort to know that I had to take much of the responsibility for what was included in my résumé. According to standard operating procedures, I was required to constantly update both a basic résumé and a file with pertinent backup information about clients served and the type of work done. If a marketing person or project manager wanted to include me in a proposal or to use my credentials in some other way, he could massage this basic data in a manner that emphasized his particular needs.

  For instance, he might choose to highlight my experience in the Middle East, or in making presentations before the World Bank and other multinational forums. Whenever this was done, that person was supposed to get my approval before actually publishing the revised résumé. However, since like many other MAIN employees I traveled a great deal, exceptions were frequently made. Thus, the résumé Paula suggested I look at, and its English counterpart, were completely new to me, although the information certainly was included in my file.

  At first glance, my résumé seemed innocent enough. Under Experience, it stated that I had been in charge of major projects in the United States, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, and it provided a laundry list of the types of projects: development planning, economic forecasting, energy demand forecasting, and so on. This section ended by describing my Peace Corps work in Ecuador; however, it omitted any reference to the Peace Corps itself, leaving the impression that I had been the professional manager of a construction materials company, instead of a volunteer assisting a small cooperative composed of illiterate Andean peasant brick makers.

  Following that was a long list of clients. This list included the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the official name of the World Bank); the Asian Development Bank; the government of Kuwait; the Iranian Ministry of Energy; the Arabian-American Oil Company of Saudi Arabia; Instituto de Recursos Hidraulicos y Electrificación; Perusahaan Umum Listrik Negara; and many others. But the one that caught my attention was the final entry: U.S. Treasury Department, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I was amazed that such a listing had ever made it to print, even though it was obviously part of my file.

  Setting aside the résumé for a moment, I turned to the MAINLINES article. I clearly recalled my interview with its author, a very talented and well-intentioned young woman. She had given it to me for my approval before publishing it. I remembered feeling gratified that she had painted such a flattering portrait of me, and I immediately approved it. Once again, the responsibility fell on my shoulders. The article began:

  Looking over the faces behind the desks, it’s easy to tell that Economics and Regional Planning is one of the most recently formed and rapidly growing disciplines at MAIN…

  While several people were influential in getting the economics group started, it basically came about through the efforts of one man, John Perkins, who is now head of the group.

  Hired as an assistant to the head load forecaster in January, 1971, John was one of the few economists working for MAIN at the time. For his first assignment, he was sent as part of an 11-man team to do an electricity demand study in Indonesia.

  The article briefly summarized my previous work history, described how I had “spent three years in Ecuador,” and then continued with the following:

  It was during this time that John Perkins met Einar Greve (a former employee) [he had since left MAIN to become president of the Tucson Gas & Electric Company] who was working in the town of Paute, Ecuador, on a hydroelectric project for MAIN. The two became friendly and, through continual correspondence, John was offered a position with MAIN.

  About a year later, John became the head load forecaster and, as the demands from clients and institutions such as the World Bank grew, he realized that more economists were needed at MAIN.

  None of the statements in either document were outright lies—the backup for both documents was on the record, in my file; however, they conveyed a perception that I now found to be twisted and sanitized. And in a culture that worships official documents, they perpetrated something that was even more sinister. Outright lies can be refuted. Documents like those two were impossible to refute because they were based on glimmers of truth, not open deceptions, and because they were produced by a corporation that had earned the trust of other corporations, international banks, and governments.

  This was especially true of the résumé because it was an official document, as opposed to the article, which was a bylined interview in a magazine. The MAIN logo, appearing on the bottom of the résumé and on the covers of all the proposals and reports that résumé was likely to grace, carried a lot of weight in the world of international business; it was a seal of authenticity that elicited the same level of confidence as those stamped on diplomas and framed certificates hanging in doctors’ and lawyers’ offices.

  These documents portrayed me as a very competent economist, head of a department at a prestigious consulting firm, who was traveling around the globe conducting a broad range of studies that would make the world a more civilized and prosperous place. The deception was not in what was stated, but in what was omitted. If I put on an outsider’s hat—took a purely objective look—I had to admit that those omissions raised many questions.

  For example, there was no mention of my recruitment by the NSA or of Einar Greve’s connection with the Army and his role as an NSA liaison. There obviously was no discussion of the fact that I had been under tremendous pressure to produce highly inflated economic forecasts, or that much of my job revolved around arranging huge loans that countries like Indonesia and Panama could never repay. There was no praise for the integrity of my predecessor, Howard Parker, nor any acknowledgment that I became the head load forecaster because I was willing to provide the biased studies my bosses wanted, rather than—like Howard—saying what I believed was true and getting fired as a result. Most puzzling was that final entry, under the list of my clients: U.S. Treasury Department, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

  I kept returning to that line, and I wondered how people would interpret it. They might well ask what is the connection between the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps some would take it as a typo, two separate lines erroneously compressed into one. Most readers, though, would never guess the truth, that it had been included for a specific reason. It was there so that those in the inner circle of the world where I operated would understand that I had been part of the team that crafted the deal of the century, the dea
l that changed the course of world history but never reached the newspapers. I helped create a covenant that guaranteed continued oil for America, safeguarded the rule of the House of Saud, and assisted in the financing of Osama bin Laden and the protection of international criminals like Uganda’s Idi Amin. That single line in my résumé spoke to those in the know. It said that MAIN’s chief economist was a man who could deliver.

  The final paragraph of the MAINLINES article was a personal observation by the author, and it struck a raw nerve:

  The expansion of Economics and Regional Planning has been fast paced, yet John feels he has been lucky in that each individual hired has been a hard-working professional. As he spoke to me from across his desk, the interest and support he holds for his staff was evident and admirable.

  The fact was that I had never thought of myself as a bona fide economist. I had graduated with a bachelor of science in business administration from Boston University, emphasis on marketing. I had always been lousy in mathematics and statistics. At Middlebury College, I had majored in American literature; writing had come easily to me. My status as chief economist and as manager of Economics and Regional Planning could not be attributed to my capabilities in either economics or planning; rather, it was a function of my willingness to provide the types of studies and conclusions my bosses and clients wanted, combined with a natural acumen for persuading others through the written word. In addition, I was clever enough to hire very competent people, many with master’s degrees and a couple with PhDs, acquiring a staff who knew a whole lot more about the technicalities of my business than I did. Small wonder that the author of that article concluded that “the interest and support he holds for his staff was evident and admirable.”

  I kept these two documents and several other similar ones in the top drawer of my desk, and I returned to them frequently. Afterward, I sometimes found myself outside my office, wandering among the desks of my staff, looking at those men and women who worked for me and feeling guilty about what I had done to them, and about the role we all played in widening the gap between rich and poor. I thought about the people who starved each day while my staff and I slept in first-class hotels, ate at the finest restaurants, and built up our financial portfolios.

  I thought about the fact that people I trained had now joined the ranks of EHMs. I had brought them in. I had recruited them and trained them. But it had not been the same as when I joined. The world had shifted and the corporatocracy had progressed. We had gotten better or more pernicious. The people who worked for me were a different breed from me. There had been no NSA polygraphs or Claudines in their lives. No one had spelled it out for them, what they were expected to do to carry on the mission of global empire. They had never heard the term economic hit man or even EHM, nor had they been told they were in for life. They simply had learned from my example and from my system of rewards and punishments. They knew that they were expected to produce the types of studies and results I wanted. Their salaries, Christmas bonuses, indeed their very jobs, depended on pleasing me.

  I, of course, had done everything I could imagine to lighten their burden. I had written papers, given lectures, and taken every possible opportunity to convince them of the importance of optimistic forecasts, of huge loans, of infusions of capital that would spur GNP growth and make the world a better place. It had required less than a decade to arrive at this point where the seduction, the coercion, had taken a much more subtle form, a sort of gentle style of brainwashing. Now these men and women who sat at desks outside my office overlooking Boston’s Back Bay were going out into the world to advance the cause of global empire. In a very real sense, I had created them, even as Claudine had created me. But unlike me, they had been kept in the dark.

  Many nights I lay awake, thinking, fretting about these things. Paula’s reference to my résumé had opened a Pandora’s box, and I often felt jealous of my employees for their naiveté. I had intentionally deceived them, and in so doing, had protected them from their own consciences. They did not have to struggle with the moral issues that haunted me.

  I also thought a great deal about the idea of integrity in business, about appearances versus reality. Certainly, I told myself, people have deceived each other since the beginning of history. Legend and folklore are full of tales about distorted truths and fraudulent deals: cheating rug merchants, usurious moneylenders, and tailors willing to convince the emperor that his clothes are invisible only to him.

  However, much as I wanted to conclude that things were the same as they always had been, that the facade of my MAIN résumé and the reality behind it were merely reflections of human nature, I knew in my heart this was not the case. Things had changed. I now understood that we have reached a new level of deception, one that will lead to our own destruction—not only morally, but also physically, as a culture—unless we make significant changes soon.

  The example of organized crime seemed to offer a metaphor. Mafia bosses often start out as street thugs. But over time, the ones who make it to the top transform their appearance. They take to wearing impeccably tailored suits, owning legitimate businesses, and wrapping themselves in the cloak of upstanding society. They support local charities and are respected by their communities. They are quick to lend money to those in desperate straits. Like the John Perkins in the MAIN résumé, these men appear to be model citizens. However, beneath this patina is a trail of blood. When the debtors cannot pay, hit men move in to demand their pound of flesh. If this is not granted, the jackals close in with baseball bats. Finally, as a last resort, out come the guns.

  I realized that my gloss as chief economist, head of Economics and Regional Planning, was not the simple deception of a rug dealer, not something of which a buyer can beware. It was part of a sinister system aimed not at outfoxing an unsuspecting customer, but rather at promoting the most subtle and effective form of imperialism the world has ever known. Every one of the people on my staff also held a title—financial analyst, sociologist, economist, lead economist, econometrician, shadow pricing expert, and so forth—and yet none of those titles indicated that every one of them was, in his or her own way, an EHM, that every one of them was serving the interests of global empire.

  Nor did the fact of those titles among my staff suggest that we were just the tip of the iceberg. Every major international company—from ones that marketed shoes and sporting goods to those that manufactured heavy equipment—had its own EHM equivalents. The march had begun and it was rapidly encircling the planet. The hoods had discarded their leather jackets, dressed up in business suits, and taken on an air of respectability. Men and women were descending from corporate headquarters in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, London, and Tokyo, streaming across every continent to convince corrupt politicians to allow their countries to be shackled to the corporatocracy, and to induce desperate people to sell their bodies to sweatshops and assembly lines.

  It was disturbing to understand that the unspoken details behind the written words of my résumé and of that article defined a world of smoke and mirrors intended to keep us all shackled to a system that is morally repugnant and ultimately self-destructive. By getting me to read between the lines, Paula had nudged me to take one more step along a path that would ultimately transform my life.

  CHAPTER 24

  Ecuador’s President Battles Big Oil

  My work in Colombia and Panama gave me many opportunities to stay in touch with and to visit the first country to be my home away from home. Ecuador had suffered under a long line of dictators and right-wing oligarchies manipulated by U.S. political and commercial interests. In a way, the country was the quintessential banana republic, and the corporatocracy had made major inroads there.

  The serious exploitation of oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon basin began in the late 1960s, and it resulted in a buying spree in which the small club of families who ran Ecuador played into the hands of the international banks. They saddled their country with huge amounts of debt, backed by the promi
se of oil revenues. Roads and industrial parks, hydroelectric dams, transmission and distribution systems, and other power projects sprang up all over the country. International engineering and construction companies struck it rich—once again.

  One man whose star was rising over this Andean country was the exception to the rule of political corruption and complicity with the corporatocracy. Jaime Roldós was a university professor and attorney in his late thirties, whom I had met on several occasions. He was charismatic and charming. Once, I impetuously offered to fly to Quito and provide free consulting services any time he asked. I said it partially in jest, but also because I would gladly have done it on my own vacation time—I liked him and, as I was quick to tell him, was always looking for a good excuse to visit his country. He laughed and offered me a similar deal, saying that whenever I needed to negotiate my oil bill, I could call on him.

  He had established a reputation as a populist and a nationalist, a person who believed strongly in the rights of the poor and in the responsibility of politicians to use a country’s natural resources prudently. When he began campaigning for the presidency in 1978, he captured the attention of his countrymen and of citizens in every nation where foreign interests exploited oil—or where people desired independence from the influences of powerful outside forces. Roldós was the rare modern politician who was not afraid to oppose the status quo. He went after the oil companies and the not-so-subtle system that supported them.

  For instance, I heard that he accused the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), an evangelical missionary group from the United States, of sinister collusion with the oil companies. I was familiar with SIL missionaries from my Peace Corps days. The organization had entered Ecuador, as it had so many other countries, with the professed goal of studying, recording, and translating indigenous languages.