The secret history of the American empire: the truth about economic hit men, jackals, and how to change the world

371 Pages·2008·0.96 MB·English

by  John Perkins

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.
XV
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
3
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
4
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.