Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
John Perkins
CONTENTS
Preface ix Prologue xvi
PART I: 1963-1971
1 An Economic Hit Man Is Born 3 "In for Life"
4
Saving a Country from Communism 23
5
Selling My Soul 28
PART
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
12 Indonesia: Lessons for an EHM
II: 1971-1975
My Role as Inquisitor 37
Civilization on Trial 42
Jesus, Seen Differently 47
Opportunity of a Lifetime 52
Panama's President and Hero 58
Pirates in the Canal Zone 63
Soldiers and Prostitutes 67
Conversations with the General 71
Entering a New and Sinister Period in Economic History 76
The Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair 81
Pimping, and Financing Osama bin Laden 93
PART III: 1975-1981
17
Panama Canal Negotiations and Graham Greene
18
Iran's King of Kings 108
19
Confessions of a Tortured Man 113
20
The Fall of a King 117
21
Colombia: Keystone of Latin America 120
22
American Republic versus Global Empire 124
23
The Deceptive Resume 131
24
Ecuador's President Battles Big Oil 141
25
I Quit 146
101
PART IV: 1981-PRESENT
26
Ecuador's Presidential Death 153
27
Panama: Another Presidential Death 158
28
My Energy Company, Enron, and George W. Bush 162
20
29
I Take a Bribe 167
30
The United States Invades Panama 173
31
An EHM Failure in Iraq 182
32
September 11 and its Aftermath for Me, Personally 189
33
Venezuela: Saved by Saddam 196
34
Ecuador Revisited 203
35
Piercing the Veneer 211
Epilogue 221
John Perkins Personal History 226
Notes 230
Index
240
About the Author 248
PREFACE
Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe
out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of
huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy fami-lies who control the planet's natural
resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion,
sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and
terrify-ing dimensions during this time of globalization. I should know; I was an EHM,
I wrote that in 1982, as the beginning of a book with the working title, Conscience of an
Economic Hit Man. The book was dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had
been my clients, whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits — Jaime Roldos, president
of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their
deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of
corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We EHMs failed to
bring Roldos and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who
were always right behind us, stepped in.
I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty
years. On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events:
the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, the first Gulf War, Somalia, the rise of Osama bin Laden.
However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop.
In 2003, the president of a major publishing house that is owned by a powerful international
corporation read a draft of what had now become Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He
described it
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Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
IX
as "a riveting story that needs to be told." Then he smiled sadly, shook his head, and told me
that since the executives at world head-quarters might object, he could not afford to risk
publishing it. He advised me to fictionalize it. "We could market you in the mold of a novelist like
John Le Carre or Graham Greene."
But this is not fiction. It is the true story of my life. A more coura-geous publisher, one not owned
by an international corporation, has agreed to help me tell it.
This story must be told. We live in a time of terrible crisis — and tremendous opportunity. The
story of this particular economic hit man is the story of how we got to where we are and why we
currently face crises that seem insurmountable. This story must be told be-cause only by
understanding our past mistakes will we be able to take advantage of future opportunities;
because 9/11 happened and so did the second war in Iraq; because in addition to the three
thou-sand people who died on September 11, 2001, at the hands of ter-rorists, another twentyfour thousand died from hunger and related causes. In fact, twenty-four thousand people die
every single day because they are unable to obtain life-sustaining food.1 Most im-portantly, this
story must be told because today, for the first time in history, one nation has the ability, the
money, and the power to change all this. It is the nation where I was born and the one I served
as an EHM: the United States of America.
What finally convinced me to ignore the threats and bribes?
The short answer is that my only child, Jessica, graduated from college and went out into the
world on her own. When I recently told her that I was considering publishing this book and
shared my fears with her, she said, "Don't worry, dad. If they get you, I'll take over where you left
off. We need to do this for the grandchildren I hope to give you someday!" That is the short
answer.
The longer version relates to my dedication to the country where I was raised, to my love of the
ideals expressed by our Founding Fa-thers, to my deep commitment to the American republic
that today promises "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all people, everywhere, and to
my determination after 9/11 not to sit idly by any longer while EHMs turn that republic into a
global empire. That is the skeleton version of the long answer; the flesh and blood are added in
the chapters that follow.
This is a true story. I lived every minute of it. The sights, the people,
the conversations, and the feelings I describe were all a part of my life. It is my personal story,
and yet it happened within the larger context of world events that have shaped our history, have
brought us to where we are today, and form the foundation of our children's futures. I have made
every effort to present these experiences, people, and conversations accurately. Whenever I
discuss historical events or re-create conversations with other people, I do so with the help of
several tools: published documents; personal records and notes; rec-ollections — my own and
those of others who participated; the five manuscripts I began previously; and historical accounts
by other authors, most notably recently published ones that disclose infor-mation that formerly
was classified or otherwise unavailable. Refer-ences are provided in the endnotes, to allowT
interested readers to pursue these subjects in more depth. In some cases, I combine sev-eral
dialogues I had with a person into one conversation to facilitate the flow of the narrative.
My publisher asked whether we actually referred to ourselves as economic hit men. I assured
him that we did, although usually only by the initials. In fact, on the day in 1971 when I began
working with my teacher Claudine, she informed me, "My assignment is to mold you into an
economic hit man. No one can know about your in-volvement — not even your wife." Then she
turned serious. "Once you're in, you're in for life."
Claudine's role is a fascinating example of the manipulation that underlies the business I had
entered. Beautiful and intelligent, she was highly effective; she understood my weaknesses and
used them to her greatest advantage. Her job and the way she executed it ex-emplify the
subtlety of the people behind this system.
Claudine pulled no punches when describing what I would be called upon to do. My job, she said,
was "to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S.
commercial in-terests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures
their loyalty. We can draw on them whenever we desire — to satisfy our political, economic, or
military needs. In turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power
plants, and airports to their people. The owmers of U.S. engineer-ing/construction companies
become fabulously wealthy."
Today we see the results of this system run amok. Executives at our most respected companies
hire people at near-slave wages to
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Preface
xi
toil under inhuman conditions in Asian sweatshops. Oil companies wantonly pump toxins into
rain forest rivers, consciously killing people, animals, and plants, and committing genocide
among ancient cultures. The pharmaceutical industry denies lifesaving medicines to millions of
HIV-infected Africans. Twelve million families in our own United States worry about their next
meal.2 The energy indus-try creates an Enron. The accounting industry creates an Andersen.
The income ratio of the one-rifth of the world's population in the wealthiest countries to the onefifth in the poorest went from 30 to 1 in I960 to 74 to 1 in 1995.3 The United States spends over
$87 bil-lion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half
that amount we could provide clean water, ad-equate diets, sanitation services, and basic
education to every person on the planet.4
And we wonder why terrorists attack us?
Some would blame our current problems on an organized con-spiracy. I wish it were so simple.
Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to justice. This system, however, is
fueled by something far more dangerous than conspiracy. It is driven not by a small band of men
but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth
benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This
belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth
should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.
The concept is, of course, erroneous. We know that in many coun-tries economic growth
benefits only a small portion of the popula-tion and may in fact result in increasingly desperate
circumstances for the majority. This effect is reinforced by the corollary belief that the captains of
industry who drive this system should enjoy a special status, a belief that is the root of many of
our current problems and is perhaps also the reason why conspiracy theories abound. When
men and women are rewarded for greed, greed becomes a corrupt-ing motivator. When we
equate the gluttonous consumption of the earth's resources with a status approaching sainthood,
when we teach our children to emulate people who live unbalanced lives, and when we define
huge sections of the population as subservient to an elite minority, we ask for trouble. And we
get it.
In their drive to advance the global empire, corporations, banks,
and governments (collectively the corporatocracy) use their financial and political muscle to
ensure that our schools, businesses, and media support both the fallacious concept and its
corollary. They have brought us to a point where our global culture is a monstrous ma-chine that
requires exponentially increasing amounts of fuel and maintenance, so much so that in the end it
will have consumed even-thing in sight and will be left with no choice but to devour itself.
The corporatocracy is not a conspiracy, but its members do endorse common values and goals.
One of corporatocracy's most im-portant functions is to perpetuate and continually expand and
strengthen the system. The lives of those who "make it," and their accoutrements — their
mansions, yachts, and private jets — are pre-sented as models to inspire us all to consume,
consume, consume. Every opportunity is taken to convince us that purchasing things is our
civiJxluty, that pillaging the earth is good for the economy and therefore serves our higher
interests. People like me are paid out-rageously high salaries to do the system's bidding. If we
falter, a more malicious form of hit man, the jackal, steps to the plate. And if the jackal fails, then
the job falls to the military.
This book is the confession of a man who, back when I was an EHM, was part of a relatively
small group. People who play similar roles are more abundant now. They have more
euphemistic titles, and they walk the corridors of Monsanto, General Electric, Nike, General
Motors, Wal-Mart, and nearly every other major corpora-tion in the world. In a very real sense,
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is their story as well as mine.
It is your story too, the story of your world and mine, of the first truly global empire. History tells
us that unless we modify this story, it is guaranteed to end tragically. Empires never last.
Everyone of them has failed terribly. They destroy many cultures as they race toward greater
domination, and then they themselves fall. No country or com-bination of countries can thrive in
the long term by exploiting others.
This book was written so that we may take heed and remold our story. I am certain that when
enough of us become aware of how we are being exploited by the economic engine that creates
an insatiable appetite for the world's resources, and results in systems that foster slavery, we will
no longer tolerate it. We will reassess our role in a world where a few swim in riches and the
majority drown in poverty, pollution, and violence. We will commit ourselves to navigating a
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Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
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course toward compassion, democracy, and social justice for all.
Admitting to a problem is the first step toward finding a solution. Confessing a sin is the
beginning of redemption. Let this book, then, be the start of our salvation. Let it inspire us to new
levels of dedi-cation and drive us to realize our dream of balanced and honorable societies.
Without the many people whose lives I shared and who are de-scribed in the following pages,
this book would not have been written. I am grateful for the experiences and the lessons.
Beyond them, I thank the people who encouraged me to go out on a limb and tell my story:
Stephan Rechtschaffen, Bill and Lynne Twist, Ann Kemp, Art Roffey, so many of the people who
partici-pated in Dream Change trips and workshops, especially my co-facilitators, Eve Bruce,
Lyn Roberts-Herrick, and Mary Tendall, and my incredible wife and partner of twenty-five years,
Winifred, and our daughter Jessica.
I am grateful to the many men and women who provided per-sonal insights and information
about the multinational banks, international corporations, and political innuendos of various
coun-tries, with special thanks to Michael Ben-Eli, Sabrina Bologni, Juan Gabriel Carrasco,
Jamie Grant, Paul Shaw, and several others, who wish to remain anonymous but who know who
you are.
Once the manuscript was written, Berrett-Koehler founder Steven Piersanti not only had the
courage to take me in but also devoted endless hours as a brilliant editor, helping me to frame
and reframe the book. My deepest thanks go to Steven, to Richard Perl, who in-troduced me to
him, and also to Nova Brown, Randi Fiat, Allen Jones, Chris Lee, Jennifer Liss, Laurie
Pellouchoud, and Jenny Williams, who read and critiqued the manuscript; to David Korten, who
not only read and critiqued it but also made me jump through hoops to satisfy his high and
excellent standards; to Paul Fedorko, my agent; to Valerie Brewster for crafting the book design;
and to Todd Manza, my copy editor, a wordsmith and philosopher extraordinaire.
A special word of gratitude to Jeevan Sivasubramanian, Berrett-Koehler's managing editor, and
to Ken Lupoff, Rick Wilson, Maria
Jesus Aguilo, Pat Anderson, Marina Cook, Michael Crowley, Robin Donovan, Kristen Frantz,
Tiffany Lee, Catherine Lengronne, Dianne Platner —all the BK staff wiio recognize the need to
raise con-sciousness and who work tirelessly to make this world a better place.
I must thank all those men and women who worked with me at MAIN and were unaware of the
roles they played in helping EHM shape the global empire; I especially thank the ones who
worked for me and with whom I traveled to distant lands and shared so many precious moments.
Also Ehud Sperling and his staff at Inner Tradi-tions International, publisher of my earlier books
on indigenous cul-tures and shamanism, and good friends who set me on this path as an author.
I am eternally grateful to the men and women who took me into their homes in the jungles,
deserts, and mountains, in the cardboard shacks along the canals of Jakarta, and in the slums of
countless cities araund the world, who shared their food and their lives with me and who have
been my greatest source of inspiration.
John Perkins August 2004
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Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Preface
seo
PROLOGUE
Quito, Ecuador's capital, stretches across a volcanic valley high in the Andes, at an altitude of
nine thousand feet. Residents of this city, which was founded long before Columbus arrived in
the Americas, are accustomed to seeing snow on the surrounding peaks, despite the fact that
they live just a tew miles south of the equator.
The city of Shell, a frontier outpost and military base hacked out of Ecuador's Amazon jungle to
service the oil company whose name it bears, is nearly eight thousand feet lower than Quito. A
steaming city, it is inhabited mostly by soldiers, oil workers, and the indige-nous people from the
Shuar and Kichwa tribes who work for them as prostitutes and laborers.
To journey from one city to the other, you must travel a road that is both tortuous and
breathtaking. Local people will tell you that during the trip you experience all four seasons in a
single day.
Although I have driven this road many times, I never tire of the spectacular scenery. Sheer cliff's,
punctuated by cascading waterfalls and brilliant bromeliads, rise up one side. On the other side,
the earth drops abruptly into a deep abyss where the Pastaza River, a head-water of the
Amazon, snakes its way down the Andes. The Pastaza carries water from the glaciers of
Cotopaxi, one of the world s highest active volcanoes and a deity in the time of the Incas, to the
Atlantic Ocean over three thousand miles away.
In 2003,1 departed Quito in a Subaru Outback and headed for Shell on a mission that was like
no other I had ever accepted. I was hoping to end a war I had helped create. As is the case with
so many things we EHMs must take responsibility for, it is a war that is vir-tually unknown
anywhere outside the country where it is fought. I was on my way to meet with the Shuars, the
Kichwas, and their neighbors the Achuars, the Zaparos, and the Shiwiars — tribes de-termined
to prevent our oil companies from destroying their homes, families, and lands, even if it means
they must die in the process. For them, this is a war about the survival of their children and
cultures, while for us it is about power, money, and natural resources. It is one
part of the struggle for world domination and the dream of a few greedy men, global empire.1
That is what we EHMs do best: we build a global empire. We are an elite group of men and
women who utilize international financial organizations to foment conditions that make other
nations sub-servient to the corporatocracy running our biggest corporations, our government,
and our banks. Like our counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of
loans to develop in-frastructure — electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or
industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and construction companies from
our own country must build all these projects. In essence, most of the money never leaves the
United States; it is simply transferred from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices
in New York, Houston, or San Francisco.
Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to corporations that are members
of the corporatocracy (the credi-tor), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal
plus interest. If an EHM is completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced
to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand
our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations
votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil or the
Panama Canal. Of course, the debtor still owes us the money—and another country is added to
our global empire.
Driving from Quito toward Shell on this sunny day in 2003, I thought back thirty-five years to the
first time I arrived in this part of the world. I had read that although Ecuador is only about the size
of Nevada, it has more than thirty active volcanoes, over 15 percent of the world's bird species,
and thousands of as-yet-unclassified plants, and that it is a land of diverse cultures where nearly
as many people speak ancient indigenous languages as speak Spanish. I found it fascinating
and certainly exotic; yet, the words that kept coming to mind back then were pure, untouched,
and innocent.
Much has changed in thirty-five years.
At the time of my first visit in 1968, Texaco had only just discov-ered petroleum in Ecuador's
Amazon region. Today, oil accounts for nearly half the country's exports. A trans-Andean
pipeline built shortly after my first visit has since leaked over a half million barrels
XVI
Prologue
xvii
of oil into the fragile rain forest— more than twice the amount spilled by the Exxon Valdcz.'2
Today, a new $1.3 billion, three hundred-mile pipeline constructed by an EHM-organized
consortium promises to make Ecuador one of the world's top ten suppliers of oil to the United
States.3 Vast areas of rain forest have fallen, macaws and jaguars have all but vanished, three
Ecuadorian indigenous cultures have been driven to the verge of collapse, and pristine rivers
have been transformed into flaming cesspools.
During this same period, the indigenous cultures began fighting back. For instance, on May 7,
2003, a group of American lawyers representing more than thirty thousand indigenous
Ecuadorian people filed a $1 billion lawsuit against ChevronTexaco Corp. The suit asserts that
between 1971 and 1992 the oil giant dumped into open holes and rivers over four million gallons
per day of toxic wastewater contaminated with oil, heavy metals, and carcinogens, and that the
company left behind nearly 350 uncovered waste pits that continue to kill both people and
animals.4
Outside the window of my Outback, great clouds of mist rolled in from the forests and up the
Pastaza's canyons. Sweat soaked my shirt, and my stomach began to churn, but not just from
the intense trop-ical heat and the serpentine twists in the road. Knowing the part I had played in
destroying this beautiful country was once again taking its toll. Because of my fellow EHMs and
me, Ecuador is in far worse shape today than she was before we introduced her to the miracles
of modern economics, banking, and engineering. Since 1970, during this period known
euphemistically as the Oil Boom, the official poverty level grew from 50 to 70 percent, under- or
unemployment increased from 15 to 70 percent, and public debt increased from $240 million to
$16 billion. Meanwhile, the share of national resources allocated to the poorest segments of the
population declined from 20 to 6 percent.5
Unfortunately, Ecuador is not the exception. Nearly every country we EHMs have brought under
the global empire's umbrella has suf-fered a similar fate.6 Third world debt has grown to more
than S2.5 trillion, and the cost of servicing it — over $375 billion per year as of 2004 — is more
than all third world spending on health and educa-tion, and twenty times what developing
countries receive annually in foreign aid. Over half the people in the world survive on less than
two dollars per day, which is roughly the same amount they received
in the early 1970s. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of third world households accounts for 70 to 90
percent of all private financial wealth and real estate ownership in their country; the actual
per-centage depends on the specific country.7
The Subaru slowed as it meandered through the streets of the beautiful resort town of Banos,
famous for the hot baths created by underground volcanic rivers that flow from the highly active
Mount Tungurahgua. Children ran along beside us, waving and trying to sell us gum and cookies.
Then we left Banos behind. The spectacu-lar scenery ended abruptly as the Subaru sped out of
paradise and into a modern vision of Dante's Inferno.
A gigantic monster reared up from the river, a mammoth gray wall. Its dripping concrete was
totally out of place, completely un-natural and incompatible with the landscape. Of course,
seeing it there stlould not have surprised me. I knew all along that it would be waiting in ambush.
I had encountered it many times before and in the past had praised it as a symbol of EHM
accomplishments. Even so, it made my skin crawl.
That hideous, incongruous wall is a dam that blocks the rushing Pastaza River, diverts its waters
through huge tunnels bored into the mountain, and converts the energy to electricity. This is the
156-megawatt Agoyan hydroelectric project. It fuels the industries that make a handful of
Ecuadorian families wealthy, and it has been the source of untold suffering for the farmers and
indigenous people who live along the river. This hydroelectric plant is just one of many projects
developed through my efforts and those of other EHMs. Such projects are the reason Ecuador is
now a member of the global empire, and the reason why the Shuars and Kichwas and their
neighbors threaten war against our oil companies.
Because of EHM projects, Ecuador is awash in foreign debt and must devote an inordinate
share of its national budget to paying this off, instead of using its capital to help the millions of its
citizens officially classified as dangerously impoverished. The only way Ecua-dor can buy down
its foreign obligations is by selling its rain forests to the oil companies. Indeed, one of the
reasons the EHMs set their sights on Ecuador in the first place was because the sea of oil
beneath its Amazon region is believed to rival the oil fields of the Middle East.8 The global
empire demands its pound of flesh in the form of oil concessions.
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Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
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These demands became especially urgent after September 11, 2001, when Washington feared
that Middle Eastern supplies might cease. On top of that, Venezuela, our third-largest oil supplier,
had recently elected a populist president, Hugo Chavez, who took a strong stand against what
he referred to as U.S. imperialism; he threatened to cut off oil sales to the United States. The
EHMs had failed in Iraq and Venezuela, but we had succeeded in Ecuador; now we would milk it
for all it is worth.
Ecuador is typical of countries around the world that EHMs have brought into the economicpolitical fold. For every $100 of crude taken out of the Ecuadorian rain forests, the oil companies
receive $75. Of the remaining S25, three-quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt. Most of
the remainder covers military and other gov-ernment expenses — which leaves about $2.50 for
health, education, and programs aimed at helping the poor.9 Thus, out of every $100 worth of oil
torn from the Amazon, less than $3 goes to the people who need the money most, those whose
lives have been so adversely impacted by the dams, the drilling, and the pipelines, and who are
dying from lack of edible food and potable water.
All of those people — millions in Ecuador, billions around the planet —are potential terrorists.
Not because they believe in com-munism or anarchism or are intrinsically evil, but simply
because they are desperate. Looking at this dam, I wondered — as I have so often in so many
places around the world—when these people would take action, like the Americans against
England in the 1770s or Latin Americans against Spain in the early 1800s.
The subtlety of this modern empire building puts the Roman centurions, the Spanish
conquistadors, and the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European colonial powers to shame.
We EHMs are crafty; we learned from history. Today we do not carry swords. We do not wear
armor or clothes that set us apart. In countries like Ecuador, Nigeria, and Indonesia, we dress
like local schoolteachers and shop owners. In Washington and Paris, we look like government
bureaucrats and bankers. We appear humble, normal. We visit project sites and stroll through
impoverished villages. We profess altruism, talk with local papers about the wonderful
humanitarian things we are doing. We cover the conference tables of government committees
with our spreadsheets and financial projections, and we lecture at the Harvard Business School
about the miracles of macroeconomics.
We are on the record, in the open. Or so we portray ourselves and so are we accepted. It is how
the system works. We seldom resort to anything illegal because the system itself is built on
subterfuge, and the system is by definition legitimate.
However — and this is a very large caveat —- if we fail, an even more sinister breed steps in,
ones we EHMs refer to as the jackals, men who trace their heritage directly to those earlier
empires. The jackals are always there, lurking in the shadows. When they emerge, heads of
state are overthrown or die in violent "accidents."10 And if by chance the jackals fail, as they
failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, then the old models resurface. When the jackals fail, young
Ameri-cans are sent in to kill and to die.
As I passed the monster, that hulking mammoth wall of gray con-crete rising from the river, I was
very conscious of the sweat that soaked myclothes and of the tightening in my intestines. I
headed on down intcHhe jungle to meet with the indigenous people wrho are determined to fight
to the last man in order to stop this empire I helped create, and I was overwhelmed with feelings
of guilt.
How, I asked myself, did a nice kid from rural New Hampshire ever get into such a dirty business?
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xxi
PART 1:1963-1971
CHAPTER 1
An Economic Hit Man Is Born
It began innocently enough.
I was an only child, born into the middle class in 1945. Both my parents came from three
centuries of New England Yankee stock; their strict, moralistic, staunchly Republican attitudes
reflected generations of puritanical ancestors. They were the first in their fam-ilies to attend
college — on scholarships. My mother became a high school Latin teacher. My father joined
World War II as a Navy lieu-tenant and was in charge of the armed guard gun crew on a highly
flammable merchant marine tanker in the Atlantic. When I was born, in Hanover, New
Hampshire, he was recuperating from a bro-ken hip in a Texas hospital. I did not see him until I
was a year old.
He took a job teaching languages at Tilton School, a boys' board-ing school in rural New
Hampshire. The campus stood high on a hill, proudly— some would say arrogantly—towering
over the town of the same name. This exclusive institution limited its enrollment to about fifty
students in each grade level, nine through twelve. The students were mostly the scions of
wealthy families from Buenos Aires, Caracas, Boston, and New York.
My family was cash starved; however, we most certainly did not see ourselves as poor. Although
the school's teachers received very little salary, all our needs were provided free: food, housing,
heat, water, and the workers who mowed our lawn and shoveled our snow. Beginning on my
fourth birthday, I ate in the prep school dining
3
room, shagged balls for the soccer teams my dad coached, and handed out towels in the locker
room.
It is an understatement to say that the teachers and their wives felt superior to the locals. I used
to hear my parents joking about be-ing the lords of the manor, ruling over the lowly peasants —
the townies. I knew it was more than a joke.
My elementary and middle school friends belonged to that peasant class; they were very- poor.
Their parents were dirt farmers, lumber-jacks, and mill workers. They resented "the preppies on
the hill," and in turn, my father and mother discouraged me from socializing with the townie girls,
who they called "tarts" and "sluts." I had shared schoolbooks and crayons with these girls since
first grade, and over the years, I fell in love with three of them: Ann, Priscilla, and Judy. I had a
hard time understanding my parents' perspective; however, I deferred to their wishes.
Every year we spent the three months of my dad's summer vacation at a lake cottage built by
my grandfather in 1921. It was surrounded by forests, and at night we could hear owls and
mountain lions. We had no neighbors; I was the only child within walking distance. In the early
years, I passed the days by pretending that the trees were knights of the Round Table and
damsels in distress named Ann, Priscilla, or Judy (depending on the year). My passion was, I
had no doubt, as strong as that of Lancelot for Guinevere — and even more secretive.
At fourteen, I received free tuition to Tilton School. With my par-ents' prodding, I rejected
everything to do with the town and never saw my old friends again. When my new classmates
went home to their mansions and penthouses for vacation, I remained alone on the hill. Their
girlfriends were debutantes; I had no girlfriends. All the girls I knew were "sluts"; I had cast them
off, and they had forgotten me. I was alone — and terribly frustrated.
My parents were masters at manipulation: they assured me that I was privileged to have such an
opportunity and that some day I would be grateful. I would find the perfect wife, one suited to our
high moral standards. Inside, though, I seethed. I craved female com-panionship — sex; the
idea of a slut was most alluring.
However, rather than rebelling, I repressed my rage and expressed my frustration by excelling. I
was an honor student, captain of two varsity teams, editor of the school newspaper. I was
determined to
show up my rich classmates and to leave Tilton behind forever. Dur-ing my senior year, I was
awarded a full athletic scholarship to Brown and an academic scholarship to Middlebury. I chose
Brown, mainly because I preferred being an athlete — and because it was located in a city. My
mother had graduated from Middlebury and my father had received his master's degree there,
so even though Brown was in the Ivy League, they preferred Middlebury.
"What if you break your leg?" my father asked. "Better to take the academic scholarship." I
buckled.
Middlebury was, in my perception, merely an inflated version of Tilton — albeit in rural Vermont
instead of rural New Hampshire. True, it was coed, but I was poor and most everyone else was
wealthy, and I had not attended school with a female in four years. I lacked confidence, felt
outclassed, was miserable. I pleaded with my dad to let me drop out or take a year off. I wanted
to move to Boston and learn about life and women. He would not hear of it. "How can I pre-tend
to prepare other parents' kids for college if my own won't stay in one?" he asked.
I have come to understand that life is composed of a series of coincidences. How we react to
these —how we exercise what some refer to as free will — is everything; the choices we make
within the boundaries of the twists of fate determine who we are. Two major coincidences that
shaped my life occurred at Middlebury. One came in the form of an Iranian, the son of a general
who was a personal advisor to the shah; the other was a beautiful young woman named Ann,
like my childhood sweetheart.
The first, whom I will call Farhad, had played professional soccer in Rome. He was endowed
with an athletic physique, curly black hair, soft walnut eyes, and a background and charisma that
made him irresistible to women. He was my opposite in many ways. I worked hard to win his
friendship, and he taught me many things that would serve me well in the years to come. I also
met Ann. Al-though she was seriously dating a young man who attended another college, she
took me under her wing. Our platonic relationship was the first truly loving one I had ever
experienced.
Farhad encouraged me to drink, party, and ignore my parents. I consciously chose to stop
studying. I decided I would break my aca-demic leg to get even with my father. My grades
plummeted; I lost my scholarship. Halfway through my sophomore year, I elected to
4
Part 1:1963-1971
An Economic Hit Man Is Born
5
drop out. My father threatened to disown me; Farhad egged me on. I stormed into the dean's
office and quit school. It was a pivotal mo-ment in my life.
Farhad and I celebrated my last night in town together at a local bar. A drunken farmer, a giant
of a man, accused me of flirting with his wife, picked me up off my feet, and hurled me against a
wall. Farhad stepped between us, drew a knife, and slashed the farmer open at the cheek. Then
he dragged me across the room and shoved me through a window, out onto a ledge high above
Otter Creek. We jumped and made our way along the river and back to our dorm.
The next morning, when interrogated by the campus police, I lied and refused to admit any
knowledge of the incident. Nevertheless, Farhad was expelled. We both moved to Boston and
shared an apart-ment there. I landed a job at Hearst's RecordAmerican /SundayAd-vertiser
newspapers, as a personal assistant to the editor in chief of the Sunday Advertiser.
Later that year, 1965, several of my friends at the newspaper were drafted. To avoid a similar
fate, I entered Boston University's College of Business Administration. By then, Ann had broken
up with her old boyfriend, and she often traveled down from Middlebury to visit. I welcomed her
attention. She graduated in 1967, while I still had another year to complete at BU. She
adamantly refused to move in with me until we were married. Although I joked about being
black-mailed, and in fact did resent what I saw as a continuation of my parents' archaic and
prudish set of moral standards, I enjoyed our times together and I wanted more. We married.
Ann's father, a brilliant engineer, had masterminded the naviga-tional system for an important
class of missile and was rewarded with a high-level position in the Department of the Navy. His
best friend, a man Ann called Uncle Frank (not his real name), was em-ployed as an executive
at the highest echelons of the National Secu-rity Agency (NSA), the country's least-known —
and by most accounts largest — spy organization.
Shortly after our marriage, the military summoned me for my physical. I passed and therefore
faced the prospect of Vietnam upon graduation. The idea of fighting in Southeast Asia tore me
apart emotionally, though war has always fascinated me. I was raised on tales about my colonial
ancestors — who include Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen — and I had visited all the New
England and upstate
New York battle sites of both the French and Indian and the Revo-lutionary wars. I read every
historical novel I could find. In fact, when Army Special Forces units first entered Southeast Asia,
I was eager to sign up. But as the media exposed the atrocities and the in-consistencies of U.S.
policy, I experienced a change of heart. I found myself wondering whose side Paine would have
taken. I was sure he would have joined our Vietcong enemies.
Uncle Frank came to my rescue. He informed me that an NSA job made one eligible for draft
deferment, and he arranged for a series of meetings at his agency, including a day of grueling
polygraph-monitored interviews. I was told that these tests would determine whether I was
suitable material for NSA recruitment and training, and if I was, would provide a profile of my
strengths and weaknesses, which would be used to map out my career. Given my attitude
to-ward the Vietnam War, I was convinced I would fail the tests.
Under examination, I admitted that as a loyal American I op-posed the war, and I was surprised
when the interviewers did not pursue this subject. Instead, they focused on my upbringing, my
attitudes toward my parents, the emotions generated by the fact I grew up as a poor puritan
among so many wealthy, hedonistic prep-pies. They also explored my frustration about the lack
of women, sex, and money in my life, and the fantasy world that had evolved as a re-sult. I was
amazed by the attention they gave to my relationship with Farhad and by their interest in my
willingness to lie to the campus police to protect him.
At first I assumed all these things that seemed so negative to me marked me as an NSA reject,
but the interviews continued, suggest-ing otherwise. It was not until several years later that I
realized that from an NSA viewpoint these negatives actually are positive. Their assessment had
less to do with issues of loyalty to my country than with the frustrations of my life. Anger at my
parent, an obsession with women, and my ambition to live the good life gave them a hook; I was
seducible. My determination to excel in school and in sports, my ultimate rebellion against my
father, my ability to get along with foreigners, and my willingness to lie to the police were exactly
the types of attributes they sought. I also discovered, later, that Farhad's father worked for the
U.S. intelligence community in Iran; my friendship with Farhad was therefore a definite plus.
A few weeks after the NSA testing, I was offered a job to start
6
Part 1:1963-1971
An Economic Hit Man Is Born
7
training in the art of spying, to begin after I received my degree from BU several months later.
However, before I had officially accepted this offer, I impulsively attended a seminar given at BU
by a Peace Corps recruiter. A major selling point was that, like the NSA, Peace Corps jobs made
one eligible for draft deferments.
The decision to sit in on that seminar was one of those coincidences that seemed insignificant at
the time but turned out to have life-changing implications. The recruiter described several places
in the world that especially needed volunteers. One of these was the Amazon rain forest where,
he pointed out, indigenous people lived very much as natives of North America had until the
arrival of Europeans.
I had always dreamed of living like the Abnakis who inhabited New Hampshire when my
ancestors first settled there. I knew I had Abnaki blood in my veins, and I wanted to learn the
type of forest lore they understood so well. I approached the recruiter after his talk and asked
about the possibility of being assigned to the Amazon. He assured me there was a great need
for volunteers in that region and that my chances would be excellent. I called Uncle Frank.
To my surprise, Uncle Frank encouraged me to consider the Peace Corps. He confided that
after the fall of Hanoi — which in those days was deemed a certainty by men in his position —
the Amazon would become a hot spot.
"Loaded with oil," he said. "We'll need good agents there — people who understand the natives."
He assured me that the Peace Corps would be an excellent training ground, and he urged me to
become proficient in Spanish as well as in local indigenous dialects. "You might," he chuckled,
"end up working for a private company instead of the government."
I did not understand what he meant by that at the time. I was be-ing upgraded from spy to EHM,
although I had never heard the term and would not for a few more years. I had no idea that there
were hundreds of men and women scattered around the world, working for consulting firms and
other private companies, people who never received a penny of salary from any government
agency and yet were serving the interests of empire. Nor could I have guessed that a new type,
with more euphemistic titles, would num-ber in the thousands by the end of the millennium, and
that I would play a significant role in shaping this growing army.
Ann and I applied to the Peace Corps and requested an assign-ment in the Amazon. When our
acceptance notification arrived, my first reaction was one of extreme disappointment. The letter
stated that we would be sent to Ecuador.
Oh no, I thought. I requested the Amazon, not Africa.
I went to an atlas and looked up Ecuador. I was dismayed when I could not find it anywhere on
the African continent. In the index, though, I discovered that it is indeed located in Latin America,
and I saw on the map that the river systems flowing off its Andean gla-ciers form the headwaters
to the mighty Amazon. Further reading assured me that Ecuador's jungles were some of the
world's most di-verse and formidable, and that the indigenous people still lived much as they had
for millennia. We accepted.
Ann and I completed Peace Corps training in Southern California and headed for Ecuador in
September 1968. We lived in the Amazon with the Shuar whose lifestyle did indeed resemble
that of precolo-nial North American natives; we also worked in the Andes with de-scendants of
the Incas. It was a side of the world I never dreamed still existed. Until then, the only Latin
Americans I had met were the wealthy preppies at the school where my father taught. I found
my-self sympathizing with these indigenous people who subsisted on hunting and farming. I felt
an odd sort of kinship with them. Somehow, they reminded me of the townies I had left behind.
One day a man in a business suit, Einar Greve, landed at the airstrip in our community. He was
a vice president at Chas. T. Main, Inc. (MAIN), an international consulting firm that kept a very
low profile and that was in charge of studies to determine whether the World Bank should lend
Ecuador and its neighboring countries bil-lions of dollars to build hydroelectric dams and other
infrastructure projects. Einar also was a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.
He started talking with me about the benefits of working for a company like MAIN. When I
mentioned that I had been accepted by the NSA before joining the Peace Corps, and that I was
considering going back to them, he informed me that he sometimes acted as an NSA liaison; he
gave me a look that made me suspect that part of his assignment was to evaluate my
capabilities. I now believe that he was updating my profile, and especially sizing up my abilities
to sur-vive in environments most North Americans would find hostile.
We spent a couple of days together in Ecuador, and afterward
8
Part 1:1963-1971
An Economic Hit Man Is Born
9
communicated by mail. He asked me to send him reports assessing Ecuador's economic
prospects. I had a small portable typewriter, loved to write, and was quite happy to comply with
this request. Over a period of about a year, I sent Einar at least fifteen long letters. In these
letters, I speculated on Ecuador's economic and political future, and I appraised the growing
frustration among the indigenous communities as they struggled to confront oil companies,
interna-tional development agencies, and other attempts to draw them into the modern world.
When my Peace Corps tour was over, Einar invited me to a job interview at MAIN headquarters
in Boston. During our private meet-ing, he emphasized that MAIN'S primary business was
engineering but that his biggest client, the World Bank, recently had begun in-sisting that he
keep economists on staff to produce the critical eco-nomic forecasts used to determine the
feasibility and magnitude of engineering projects. He confided that he had previously hired three
highly qualified economists with impeccable credentials — two with master's degrees and one
with a PhD. They had failed miserably.
"None of them," Einar said, "can handle the idea of producing economic forecasts in countries
where reliable statistics aren't avail-able." He went on to tell me that, in addition, all of them had
found it impossible to fulfill the terms of their contracts, which required them to travel to remote
places in countries like Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, and Egypt, to interview local leaders, and to
provide personal assessments about the prospects for economic development in those regions.
One had suffered a nervous breakdown in an isolated Panamanian village; he was escorted by
Panamanian police to the airport and put on a plane back to the United States.
"The letters you sent me indicate that you don't mind sticking your neck out, even when hard
data isn't available. And given your living conditions in Ecuador, I'm confident you can survive
almost anywhere." He told me that he already had fired one of those econ-omists and was
prepared to do the same with the other two, if I accepted the job.
So it was that in January 19711 was offered a position as an econ-omist with MAIN. I had turned
twenty-six — the magical age when the draft board no longer wanted me. I consulted with Ann's
family; they encouraged me to take the job, and I assumed this reflected Un-cle Frank's attitude
as well. I recalled him mentioning the possibility
I would end up working for a private firm. Nothing was ever stated openly, but I had no doubt
that my employment at MAIN was a con-sequence of the arrangements Uncle Frank had made
three years earlier, in addition to my experiences in Ecuador and my willingness to write about
that country's economic and political situation.
My head reeled for several weeks, and I had a very swollen ego. I had earned only a bachelor's
degree from BU, which did not seem to warrant a position as an economist with such a lofty
consulting com-pany. I knew that many of my BU classmates who had been rejected by the draft
and had gone on to earn MBAs and other graduate de-grees would be overcome with jealousy. I
visualized myself as a dash-ing secret agent, heading off to exotic lands, lounging beside hotel
swimming pools, surrounded by gorgeous bikini-clad women, mar-tini in hand.
Although this was merely fantasy, I would discover that it held el-ements of truth. Einar had hired
me as an economist, but I was soon to learn that my real job went far beyond that, and that it
was in fact closer to James Bond's than I ever could have guessed.
10
Part 1:1963-1971
An Economic Hit Man Is Born
11
CHAPTER 2
"In for Life"
In legal parlance, MAIN would be called a closely held corporation; roughly 5 percent of its two
thousand employees owned the company. These were referred to as partners or associates,
and their position was coveted. Not only did the partners have power over everyone else, but
also they made the big bucks. Discretion was their hallmark; they dealt with heads of state and
other chief executive officers who expect their consultants, like their attorneys and
psychotherapists, to honor a strict code of absolute confidentiality. Talking with the press was
taboo. It simply was not tolerated. As a consequence, hardly any-one outside MAIN had ever
heard of us, although many were famil-iar with our competitors, such as Arthur D. Little, Stone &
Webster, Brown & Root, Halliburton, and Bechtel.
I use the term competitors loosely, because in fact MAIN was in a league by itself. The majority
of our professional staff was engineers, yet we owned no equipment and never constructed so
much as a storage shed. Many MAINers were ex-military; however, we did not contract with the
Department of Defense or with any of the military services. Our stock-in-trade was something so
different from the norm that during my first months there even I could not figure out what we did.
I knew only that my first real assignment would be in Indonesia, and that I would be part of an
eleven-man team sent to create a master energy plan for the island of Java.
I also knew that Einar and others who discussed the job with me were eager to convince me that
Java's economy would boom, and
that if I wanted to distinguish myself as a good forecaster (and to therefore be offered
promotions), I would produce projections that demonstrated as much.
"Right off the chart," Einar liked to say. He would glide his fingers through the air and up over his
head. "An economy that will soar like a bird!"
Einar took frequent trips that usually lasted only two to three days. No one talked much about
them or seemed to know where he had gone. When he was in the office, he often invited me to
sit with him for a few minutes over coffee. He asked about Ann, our new apartment, and the cat
we had brought with us from Ecuador. I grew bolder as I came to know him better, and I tried to
learn more about him and what I wTould be expected to do in my job. But I never re-ceived
answers that satisfied me; he was a master at turning con-versations around. On one such
occasion, he gave me a peculiar look.
"You needn't worry," he said. "We have high expectations for you. I was in Washington
recently..." His voice trailed off and he smiled inscrutably. "In any case, you know we have a big
project in Kuwait. It'll be a while before you leave for Indonesia. I think you should use some of
your time to read up on Kuwait. The Boston Public Librae-is a great resource, and we can get
you passes to the MIT and Harvard libraries."
After that, I spent many hours in those libraries, especially in the BPL, which was located a few
blocks away from the office and very close to my Back Bay apartment. I became familiar with
Kuwait as well as with many books on economic statistics, published by the United Nations, the
Internationa] Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. I knew that I would be expected to
produce econometric mod-els for Indonesia and Java, and I decided that I might as well get
started by doing one for Kuwait.
However, my BS in business administration had not prepared me as an econometrician, so I
spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to go about it. I went so far as to enroll in a couple of
courses on the subject. In the process, I discovered that statistics can be manipu-lated to
produce a large array of conclusions, including those sub-stantiating the predilections of the
analyst.
MAIN was a macho corporation. There were only four women who held professional positions in
1971- However, there were per-haps two hundred women divided between the cadres of
personal
12
"In for Life"
13
secretaries — every vice president and department manager had one — and the steno pool,
which served the rest of us. I had become accustomed to this gender bias, and I was therefore
especially as-tounded by what happened one day in the BPL's reference section.
An attractive brunette woman came up and sat in a chair across the table from me. In her dark
green business suit, she looked very sophisticated. I judged her to be several years my senior,
but I tried to focus on not noticing her, on acting indifferent. After a few min-utes, without a word,
she slid an open book in my direction. It con-tained a table with information I had been searching
for about Kuwait — and a card with her name, Claudine Martin, and her title, Special Consultant
to Chas. T. Main, Inc. I looked up into her soft green eyes, and she extended her hand.
"I've been asked to help in your training," she said. I could not be-lieve this was happening to me.
Beginning the next day, we met in Claudine's Beacon Street apartment, a few blocks from
MAIN'S Prudential Center headquar-ters. During our first hour together, she explained that my
position was an unusual one and that we needed to keep everything highly confidential. She told
me that no one had given me specifics about my job because no one wras authorized to —
except her. Then she in-formed me that her assignment was to mold me into an economic hit
man.
The very name awakened old cloak-and-dagger dreams. I was embarrassed by the nervous
laughter I heard coming from me. She smiled and assured me that humor was one of the
reasons they used the term. "Who would take it seriously?" she asked.
I confessed ignorance about the role of economic hit men.
"You're not alone," she laughed. "We're a rare breed, in a dirty business. No one can know
about your involvement — not even your wife." Then she turned serious. "I'll be very frank with
you, teach you all I can during the next wreeks. Then you'll have to choose. Your de-cision is
final. Once you're in, you're in for life." After that, she sel-dom used the full name; we were
simply EHMs.
I know now what I did not then — that Claudine took full advantage of the personality
weaknesses the NSA profile had disclosed about me. I do not know w^ho supplied her with the
information — Einar, the NSA, MAIN's personnel department, or someone else — only that she
used it masterfully. Her approach, a combination of physical
seduction and verbal manipulation, was tailored specifically for me, and yet it fit within the
standard operating procedures I have since seen used by a variety of businesses when the
stakes are high and the pressure to close lucrative deals is great. She knew from the start that I
would not jeopardize my marriage by disclosing our clandes-tine activities. And she was brutally
frank when it came to describ-ing the shadowy side of things that would be expected of me.
I have no idea who paid her salary, although I have no reason to suspect it was not, as her
business card implied, MAIN. At the time, I was too naive, intimidated, and bedazzled to ask the
questions that today seem so obvious.
Claudine told me that there were two primary objectives of my wrork. First, I was to justify huge
international loans that would funnel money back to MAIN and other U.S. companies (such as
Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone & Webster, and Brown & Root) through massive engineering and
construction projects. Second, I would work to bankrupt the countries that received those loans
(after they had paid MAIN and the other U.S. contractors, of course) so that they would be
forever beholden to their creditors, and so they would present easy targets when we needed
favors, including military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources.
My job, she said, was to forecast the effects of investing billions of dollars in a country.
Specifically, I would produce studies that pro-jected economic growth twenty to twenty-five years
into the future and that evaluated the impacts of a variety of projects. For example, if a decision
was made to lend a country $1 billion to persuade its leaders not to align with the Soviet Union, I
would compare the ben-efits of investing that money in power plants with the benefits of
in-vesting in a new national railroad network or a telecommunications system. Or I might be told
that the country was being offered the op-portunity to receive a modern electric utility system,
and it would be up to me to demonstrate that such a system would result in sufficient economic
growth to justify the loan. The critical factor, in every case, was gross national product. The
project that resulted in the highest average annual growth of GNP won. If only one project was
under consideration, I would need to demonstrate that developing it would bring superior
benefits to the GNP.
The unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that they were intended to create large
profits for the contractors, and to make
14
Part 1:1963-1971
In for Life"
15
a handful of wealthy and influential families in the receiving coun-tries very happy, while assuring
the long-term financial dependence and therefore the political loyalty of governments around the
world. The larger the loan, the better. The fact that the debt burden placed on a country would
deprive its poorest citizens of health, ed-ucation, and other social services for decades to come
was not taken into consideration.
Claudine and I openly discussed the deceptive nature of GNP. For instance, the growth of GNP
may result even when it profits only one person, such as an individual who owns a utility
company, and even if the majority of the population is burdened with debt. The rich get richer
and the poor grow poorer. Yet, from a statistical standpoint, this is recorded as economic
progress.
Like U.S. citizens in general, most MAIN employees believed we were doing countries favors
when we built power plants, highways, and ports. Our schools and our press have taught us to
perceive all of our actions as altruistic. Over the years, I've repeatedly heard com-ments like, "If
they're going to burn the U.S. flag and demonstrate against our embassy, why don't we just get
out of their damn coun-try and let them wallow in their own poverty?"
People who say such things often hold diplomas certifying that they are well educated. However,
these people have no clue that the main reason we establish embassies around the world is to
serve our own interests, which during the last half of the twentieth century meant turning the
American republic into a global empire. Despite credentials, such people are as uneducated as
those eighteenth-century colonists who believed that the Indians fighting to defend their lands
were servants of the devil.
Within several months, I would leave for the island of Java in the country of Indonesia, described
at that time as the most heavily pop-ulated piece of real estate on the planet. Indonesia also
happened to be an oil-rich Muslim nation and a hotbed of communist activity.
"It's the next domino after Vietnam," is the way Claudine put it. "We must win the Indonesians
over. If they join the Communist bloc, well..." She drew a finger across her throat and then
smiled sweetly. "Let's just say you need to come up with a very optimistic forecast of the
economy, how it will mushroom after all the new power plants and distribution lines are built.
That will allow USAID and the international banks to justify the loans. You'll be well rewarded,
of course, and can move on to other projects in exotic places. The world is your shopping cart."
She went on to warn me that my role would be tough. "Experts at the banks will come after you.
It's their job to punch holes in your forecasts — that's what they're paid to do. Making you look
bad makes them look good."
One day I reminded Claudine that the MAIN team being sent to Java included ten other men. I
asked if they all were receiving the same type of training as me. She assured me they were not.
"They're engineers," she said. "They design power plants, trans-mission and distribution lines,
and seaports and roads to bring in the fuel. You're the one wrho predicts the future. Your
forecasts de-termine the magnitude of the systems they design — and the size of the loans. You
see, you're the key."
Every time I walked away from Claudine's apartment, I wondered whether I was doing the right
thing. Somewhere in my heart, I sus-pected I was not. But the frustrations of my past haunted
me. MAIN seemed to offer everything my life had lacked, and yet I kept asking myself if Tom
Paine would have approved. In the end, I convinced myself that by learning more, by
experiencing it, I could better ex-pose it later—the old "working from the inside" justification.
When I shared this idea with Claudine, she gave me a perplexed look. "Don't be ridiculous. Once
you're in, you can never get out. You must decide for yourself, before you get in any deeper." I
understood her, and what she said frightened me. After I left, I strolled down Commonwealth
Avenue, turned onto Dartmouth Street, and assured myself that I was the exception.
One afternoon some months later, Claudine and I sat in a win-dow settee watching the snow fall
on Beacon Street. "We're a small, exclusive club," she said. "We're paid — well paid—to cheat
countries around the globe out of billions of dollars. A large part of your job is to encourage world
leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end,
those leaders be-come ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on
them whenever we desire — to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In turn, these
leaders bolster their political posi-tions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to
their people. Meanwhile, the owners of U.S. engineering and con-struction companies become
very wealthy."
That afternoon, in the idyllic setting of Claudine's apartment,
16
Part 1:1963-1971
"In for Life"
17
relaxing in the window while snow swirled around outside, I learned the history of the profession
I was about to enter. Claudine described how throughout most of history, empires were built
largely through military force or the threat of it. But with the end of World War II, the emergence
of the Soviet Union, and the specter of nuclear holo-caust, the military solution became just too
risky.
The decisive moment occurred in 1951, when Iran rebelled against a British oil company that
was exploiting Iranian natural resources and its people. The company was the forerunner of
British Petroleum, today's BP. In response, the highly popular, democratically elected Iranian
prime minister (and TIME magazine's Man of the Year in 1951), Mohammad Mossadegh,
nationalized all Iranian petroleum assets. An outraged England sought the help of her World War
II ally, the United States. However, both countries feared that military retaliation would provoke
the Soviet Union into taking action on be-half of Iran.
Instead of sending in the Marines, therefore, Washington dis-patched CIA agent Kermit
Roosevelt (Theodore's grandson). He per-formed brilliantly, winning people over through payoffs
and threats. He then enlisted them to organize a series of street riots and violent demonstrations,
which created the impression that Mossadegh was both unpopular and inept. In the end,
Mossadegh went down, and he spent the rest of his life under house arrest. The pro-American
Mohammad Reza Shah became the unchallenged dictator. Kermit Roosevelt had set the stage
for a new profession, the one whose ranks I was joining.1
Roosevelt's gambit reshaped Middle Eastern history even as it rendered obsolete all the old
strategies for empire building. It also coincided with the beginning of experiments in "limited
nonnuclear military actions," which ultimately resulted in US. humiliations in Korea and Vietnam.
By 1968, the year I interviewed with the NSA, it had become clear that if the United States
wanted to realize its dream of global empire (as envisioned by men like presidents Johnson and
Nixon), it would have to employ strategies modeled on Roosevelt's Iranian example. This was
the only way to beat the Soviets without the threat of nuclear war.
There was one problem, however. Kermit Roosevelt was a CIA employee. Had he been caught,
the consequences would have been dire. He had orchestrated the first U.S. operation to
overthrow a
foreign government, and it was likely that many more would follow, but it was important to find an
approach that would not directly im-plicate Washington.
Fortunately for the strategists, the 1960s also witnessed another type of revolution: the
empowerment of international corporations and of multinational organizations such as the World
Bank and the IMF. The latter were financed primarily by the United States and our sister empire
builders in Europe. A symbiotic relationship de-veloped between governments, corporations, and
multinational or-ganizations.
By the time I enrolled in BU's business school, a solution to the Roosevelt-as-CIA-agent problem
had already been worked out. U.S. intelligence agencies — including the NSA — would identify
prospec-tive EHMs, who could then be hired by international corporations. These EHMs would
never be paid by the government; instead, they would draw their salaries from the private sector.
As a result, their dirty work, if exposed, would be chalked up to corporate greed rather than to
government policy. In addition, the corporations that hired them, although paid by government
agencies and their multi-national banking counterparts (with taxpayer money), would be
in-sulated from congressional oversight and public scrutiny, shielded by a growing body of legal
initiatives, including trademark, interna-tional trade, and Freedom of Information laws.2
"So you see," Claudine concluded, "we are just the next generation in a proud tradition that
began back when you were in first grade."
18
Part 1:1963-1971
"In for Life"
19
CHAPTER 3
Indonesia: Lessons for an EHM
In addition to learning about my new career, I also spent time read-ing books about Indonesia.
"The more you know about a country be-fore you get there, the easier your job will be," Claudine
had advised. I took her words to heart.
When Columbus set sail in 1492, he was trying to reach Indonesia, known at the time as the
Spice Islands. Throughout the colonial era, it was considered a treasure worth far more than the
Americas. Java, with its rich fabrics, fabled spices, and opulent kingdoms, was both the crown
jewel and the scene of violent clashes between Span-ish, Dutch, Portuguese, and British
adventurers. The Netherlands emerged triumphant in 1750, but even though the Dutch
controlled Java, it took them more than 150 years to subdue the outer islands.
When the Japanese invaded Indonesia during World War II, Dutch forces offered little resistance.
As a result, Indonesians, espe-cially the Javanese, suffered terribly. Following the Japanese
surrender, a charismatic leader named Sukarno emerged to declare independ-ence. Four years
of fighting finally ended on December 27, 1949, when the Netherlands lowered its flag and
returned sovereignty to a people who had known nothing but struggle and domination for more
than three centuries. Sukarno became the new republic's first president.
Ruling Indonesia, however, proved to be a greater challenge than defeating the Dutch. Far from
homogeneous, the archipelago of about 17,500 islands was a boiling pot of tribalism, divergent
cultures,
dozens of languages and dialects, and ethnic groups who nursed centuries-old animosities.
Conflicts were frequent and brutal, and Sukarno clamped down. He suspended parliament in
I960 and was named president-for-life in 1963. He formed close alliances with Communist
governments around the world, in exchange for military equipment and training. He sent
Russian-armed Indonesian troops into neighboring Malaysia in an attempt to spread
communism throughout Southeast Asia and win the approval of the world's Social-ist leaders.
Opposition built, and a coup was launched in 1965. Sukarno es-caped assassination only
through the quick wits of his mistress. Many of his top military officers and his closest associates
were less lucky. The events were reminiscent of those in Iran in 1953. In the end, the
Communist Party was held responsible — especially those factions aligned with China. In the
Army-initiated massacres that followed, an estimated three hundred thousand to five hundred
thou-sand people were killed. The head of the military, General Suharto, took over as president
in 1968.1
By 1971, the United States' determination to seduce Indonesia away from communism was
heightened because the outcome of the Vietnam War was looking very uncertain. President
NLxon had begun a series of troop withdrawals in the summer of 1969, and U.S. strat-egy was
taking on a more global perspective. The strategy focused on preventing a domino effect of one
country after another falling under Communist rule, and it focused on a couple of countries;
Indonesia was the key. MAIN's electrification project was part of a compre-hensive plan to
ensure American dominance in Southeast Asia.
The premise of U.S. foreign policy was that Suharto would serve Washington in a manner similar
to the shah of Iran. The United States also hoped the nation would serve as a model for other
coun-tries in the region. Washington based part of its strategy on the assumption that gains
made in Indonesia might have positive reper-cussions throughout the Islamic world, particularly
in the explosive Middle East. And if that were not incentive enough, Indonesia had oil. No one
was certain about the magnitude or quality of its reserves, but oil company seismologists were
exuberant over the possibilities.
As I pored over the books at the BPL, my excitement grew. I began to imagine the adventures
ahead. In working for MAIN, I would be trading the rugged Peace Corps lifestyle for a much
more luxurious
20
Indonesia: Lessons for an EHM
21
and glamorous one. My time with Claudine already represented the realization of one of my
fantasies; it seemed too good to be true. I felt at least partially vindicated for serving the
sentence at that all-boys' prep school.
Something else was also happening in my life: Ann and I were not getting along. I think she must
have sensed that I was leading two lives. I justified it as the logical result of the resentment I felt
to-ward her for forcing us to get married in the first place. Never mind that she had nurtured and
supported me through the challenges of our Peace Corps assignment in Ecuador; I still saw her
as a contin-uation of my pattern of giving in to my parents' whims. Of course, as I look back on it,
I'm sure my relationship with Claudine was a ma-jor factor. I could not tell Ann about this, but
she sensed it. In any case, we decided to move into separate apartments.
One day in 1971, about a week before my scheduled departure for Indonesia, I arrived at
Claudine's place to find the small dining room table set with an assortment of cheeses and
breads, and there was a fine bottle of Beaujolais. She toasted me.
"You've made it." She smiled, but somehow it seemed less than sincere. "You're now one of us."
We chatted casually for half an hour or so; then, as we were fin-ishing off the wine, she gave me
a look unlike any I had seen before. "Never admit to anyone about our meetings," she said in a
stern voice. "I won't forgive you if you do, ever, and I'll deny I ever met you." She glared at me —
perhaps the only time I felt threatened by her — and then gave a cold laugh. "Talking about us
would make life dangerous for you."
I was stunned. I felt terrible. But later, as I walked alone back to the Prudential Center, I had to
admit to the cleverness of the scheme. The fact is that all our time together had been spent in
her apartment. There was not a trace of evidence about our relationship, and no one at MAIN
was implicated in any way. There was also part of me that appreciated her honesty; she had not
deceived me the way my parents had about Tilton and Middlebury.
CHAPTER 4
Saving a Country from Communism
I had a romanticized vision of Indonesia, the country where I was to live for the next three
months. Some of the books I read featured photographs of beautiful women in brightly colored
sarongs, exotic Balinese dancers, shamans blowing fire, and warriors paddling long dugout
canoes in emerald waters at the foot of smoking volcanoes. Particularly striking was a series on
the magnificent black-sailed galleons of the infamous Bugi pirates, who still sailed the seas of
the archipelago, and who had so terrorized early European sailors that they returned home to
warn their children, "Behave yourselves, or the Bugimen will get you." Oh, how those pictures
stirred my soul.
The history and legends of that country represent a cornucopia of larger-than-life figures:
wrathful gods, Komodo dragons, tribal sul-tans, and ancient tales that long before the birth of
Christ had trav-eled across Asian mountains, through Persian deserts, and over the
Mediterranean to embed themselves in the deepest realms of our collective psyche. The very
names of its fabled islands—Java, Suma-tra, Borneo, Sulawesi — seduced the mind. Here was
a land of mys-ticism, myth, and erotic beauty; an elusive treasure sought but never found by
Columbus; a princess wooed yet never possessed by Spain, by Holland, by Portugal, by Japan;
a fantasy and a dream.
My expectations were high, and I suppose they mirrored those of the great explorers. Like
Columbus, though, I should have known to temper my fantasies. Perhaps I could have guessed
that the beacon shines on a destiny that is not always the one we envision. Indonesia
22
Part 1:1963-1971
23
offered treasures, but it was not the chest of panaceas I had come to expect. In fact, my first
days in Indonesia's steamy capital, Jakarta, in the summer of 1971, were shocking.
The beauty was certainly present. Gorgeous women sporting colorful sarongs. Lush gardens
ablaze with tropical flowers. Exotic Balinese dancers. Bicycle cabs with fanciful, rainbow-colored
scenes painted on the sides of the high seats, where passengers reclined in front of the pedaling
drivers. Dutch Colonial mansions and turreted mosques. But there was also an ugly, tragic side
to the city. Lepers holding out bloodied stumps instead of hands. Young girls offering their
bodies for a few coins. Once-splendid Dutch canals turned into cesspools. Cardboard hovels
where entire families lived along the trash-lined banks of black rivers. Blaring horns and choking
fumes. The beautiful and the ugly, the elegant and the vulgar, the spiritual and the profane. This
was Jakarta, where the enticing scent of cloves and orchid blossoms battled the miasma of open
sewers for dominance.
I had seen poverty before. Some of my New Hampshire class-mates lived in cold-water tarpaper
shacks and arrived at school wearing thin jackets and frayed tennis shoes on subzero winter
days, their unwashed bodies reeking of old sweat and manure. I had lived in mud shacks with
Andean peasants whose diet consisted almost entirely of dried corn and potatoes, and where it
sometimes seemed that a newborn was as likely to die as to experience a birthday. I had seen
poverty, but nothing to prepare me for Jakarta.
Our team, of course, was quartered in the country's fanciest hotel, the Hotel Intercontinental
Indonesia. Owned by Pan American Air-ways, like the rest of the Intercontinental chain scattered
around the globe, it catered to the whims of wealthy foreigners, especially oil ex-ecutives and
their families. On the evening of our first day, our proj-ect manager Charlie Illingworth hosted a
dinner for us in the elegant restaurant on the top floor.
Charlie was a connoisseur of war; he devoted most of his free time to reading history books and
historical novels about great military leaders and battles. He was the epitome of the pro-Vietnam
War armchair soldier. As usual, this night he was wearing khaki slacks and a short-sleeved khaki
shirt with military-style epaulettes.
After welcoming us, he lit up a cigar. "To the good life," he sighed, raising a glass of champagne.
We joined him. "To the good life." Our glasses clinked.
Cigar smoke swirling around him, Charlie glanced about the room. "We will be well pampered
here," he said, nodding his head appreciatively. "The Indonesians will take very good care of us.
As will the U.S. Embassy people. But let's not forget that we have a mis-sion to accomplish." He
looked down at a handful of note cards. "Yes, we're here to develop a master plan for the
electrification of Java — the most populated land in the world. But that's just the tip of the
iceberg."
His expression turned serious; he reminded me of George C. Scott playing General Patton, one
of Charlie's heroes. "We are here to accomplish nothing short of saving this country from the
clutches of communism. As you know, Indonesia has a long and tragic history. Now, at a time
wThen it is poised to launch itself into the twentieth century, it is tested once again. Our
responsibility is to make sure that Indonesia doesn't follow in the footsteps of its northern
neighbors, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. An integrated electrical system is a key element. That,
more than any other single factor (with the possi-ble exception of oil), will assure that capitalism
and democracy rule.
"Speaking of oil," he said. He took another puff on his cigar and flipped past a couple of the note
cards. "We all know how dependent our own country is on oil. Indonesia can be a powerful ally
to us in that regard. So, as you develop this master plan, please do everything you can to make
sure that the oil industry and all the others that serve it —ports, pipelines, construction
companies — get whatever they are likely to need in the way of electricity for the entire duration
of this twenty-five-year plan."
He raised his eyes from his note cards and looked directly at me. "Better to err on the high side
than to underestimate. You don't want the blood of Indonesian children — or our own — on your
hands. You don't want them to live under the hammer and sickle or the Red flag of China!"
As I lay in my bed that night, high above the city, secure in the luxury of a first-class suite, an
image of Claudine came to me. Her discourses on foreign debt haunted me. I tried to comfort
myself by recalling lessons learned in my macroeconomics courses at business school. After all,
I told myself, I am here to help Indonesia rise out of a medieval economy and take its place in
the modern industrial world. But I knew that in the morning I would look out my window-,
24
Part 1:1963-1971
Saving a Country from Communism
25
across the opulence of the hotel's gardens and swimming pools, and see the hovels that fanned
out for miles beyond. I would know that babies were dying out there for lack of food and potable
water, and that infants and adults alike were suffering from horrible diseases and living in terrible
conditions.
Tossing and turning in my bed, I found it impossible to deny that Charlie and everyone else on
our team were here for selfish reasons. We were promoting U.S. foreign policy and corporate
interests. We were driven by greed rather than by any desire to make life better for the vast
majority of Indonesians. A word came to mind: corporatoc-racy. I was not sure whether I had
heard it before or had just in-vented it, but it seemed to describe perfectly the new elite who had
made up their minds to attempt to rule the planet.
This was a close-knit fraternity of a few men with shared goals, and the fraternity's members
moved easily and often between cor-porate boards and government positions. It struck me that
the cur-rent president of the World Bank, Robert McNamara, was a perfect example. He had
moved from a position as president of Ford Motor Company, to secretary of defense under
presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and now occupied the top post at the world's most power-ful
financial institution.
I also realized that my college professors had not understood the true nature of macroeconomics:
that in many cases helping an econ-omy grow only makes those few people who sit atop the
pyramid even richer, while it does nothing for those at the bottom except to push them even
lower. Indeed, promoting capitalism often results in a system that resembles medieval feudal
societies. If any of my pro-fessors knew this, they had not admitted it — probably because big
corporations, and the men who run them, fund colleges. Exposing the truth would undoubtedly
cost those professors their jobs —just as such revelations could cost me mine.
These thoughts continued to disturb my sleep every night that I spent at the Hotel
Intercontinental Indonesia. In the end, my pri-mary defense was a highly personal one: I had
fought my way out of that New Hampshire town, the prep school, and the draft. Through a
combination of coincidences and hard work, I had earned a place in the good life. I also took
comfort in the fact that I was doing the right thing in the eyes of my culture. I was on my way to
becoming a successful and respected economist. I was doing what business
school had prepared me for. I was helping implement a development model that was sanctioned
by the best minds at the world's top think tanks.
Nonetheless, in the middle of the night I often had to console my-self with a promise that
someday I would expose the truth. Then I would read myself to sleep with Louis L'Amour novels
about gun-fighters in the Old West.
26
Part 1:1963-1971
Saving a Country from Communism
27
CHAPTER 5
Selling My Soul
Our eleven-man team spent six days in Jakarta registering at the U.S. Embassy, meeting
various officials, organizing ourselves, and relaxing around the pool. The number of Americans
who lived at the Hotel Intercontinental amazed me. I took great pleasure in watch-ing the
beautiful young women — wives of U.S. oil and construction company executives — who
passed their days at the pool and their evenings in the half dozen posh restaurants in and
around the hotel.
Then Charlie moved our team to the mountain city of Bandung. The climate was milder, the
poverty less obvious, and the distrac-tions fewer. We were given a government guesthouse
known as the Wisma, complete with a manager, a cook, a gardener, and a staff of servants. Built
during the Dutch colonial period, the Wisma was a haven. Its spacious veranda faced tea
plantations that flowed across rolling hills and up the slopes of Java's volcanic mountains. In
addi-tion to housing, we were provided with eleven Toyota off-road vehi-cles, each with a driver
and translator. Finally, we were presented with memberships to the exclusive Bandung Golf and
Racket Club, and we were housed in a suite of offices at the local headquarters of Perusahaan
Umum Listrik Negara (PLN), the government-owned electric utility company.
For me, the first several days in Bandung involved a series of meetings with Charlie and Howard
Parker. Howard was in his sev-enties and was the retired chief load forecaster for the New
England
Electric System. Now he was responsible for forecasting the amount of energy and generating
capacity (the load) the island of Java would need over the next twenty-five years, as well as for
breaking this down into city and regional forecasts. Since electric demand is highly correlated
with economic growth, his forecasts depended on my eco-nomic projections. The rest of our
team would develop the master plan around these forecasts, locating and designing power
plants, transmission and distribution lines, and fuel transportation systems in a manner that
would satisfy our projections as efficiently as pos-sible. During our meetings, Charlie continually
emphasized the im-portance of my job, and he badgered me about the need to be very
optimistic in my forecasts. Claudine had been right; I was the key to the entire master plan.
"The first few weeks here," Charlie explained, "are about data collection."
He, Howard, and I were seated in big rattan chairs in Charlie's plush private office. The walls
were decorated with batik tapestries depicting epic tales from the ancient Hindu texts of the
Ramayana. Charlie puffed on a fat cigar.
"The engineers will put together a detailed picture of the current electric system, port capacities,
roads, railroads, all those sorts of things." He pointed his cigar at me. "You gotta act fast. By the
end of month one, Howard'll need to get a pretty good idea about the full extent of the economic
miracles that'll happen when we get the new grid online. By the end of the second month, he'll
need more details — broken down into regions. The last month will be about filling in the gaps.
That'll be critical. All of us will put our heads together then. So, before we leave we gotta be
absolutely certain we have all the information we'll need. Home for Thanksgiving, that's my
motto. There's no coming back."
Howard appeared to be an amiable, grandfatherly type, but he was actually a bitter old man who
felt cheated by life. He had never reached the pinnacle of the New England Electric System and
he deeply resented it. "Passed over," he told me repeatedly, "because I refused to buy the
company line." He had been forced into retire-ment and then, unable to tolerate staying at home
with his wife, had accepted a consulting job with MAIN. This was his second assign-ment, and I
had been warned by both Einar and Charlie to watch
28
Selling My Soul
29
out for him. They described him with words like stubborn, mean, and vindictive.
As it turned out, Howard was one of my wisest teachers, although not one I was ready to accept
at the time. He had never received the type of training Claudine had given me. I suppose they
considered him too old, or perhaps too stubborn. Or maybe they figured he was only in it for the
short run, until they could lure in a more pliable full-timer like me. In any case, from their
standpoint, he turned out to be a problem. Howard clearly saw the situation and the role they
wanted him to play, and he was determined not to be a pawn. All the adjectives Einar and
Charlie had used to describe him were appro-priate, but at least some of his stubbornness grew
out of his personal commitment not to be their servant. I doubt he had ever heard the term
economic hit man, but he knew they intended to use him to promote a form of imperialism he
could not accept.
He took me aside after one of our meetings with Charlie. He wore a hearing aid and fiddled with
the little box under his shirt that con-trolled its volume.
"This is between you and me," Howard said in a hushed voice. We were standing at the window
in the office we shared, looking out at the stagnant canal that wound past the PLN building. A
young woman was bathing in its foul waters, attempting to retain some semblance of modesty by
loosely draping a sarong around her other-wise naked body. "They'll try to convince you that this
economy is go-ing to skyrocket," he said. "Charlie's ruthless. Don't let him get to you."
His words gave me a sinking feeling, but also a desire to convince him that Charlie was right;
after all, my career depended on pleasing my MAIN bosses.
"Surely this economy will boom," I said, my eyes drawn to the woman in the canal. "Just look at
what's happening."
"So there you are," he muttered, apparently unaware of the scene in front of us. "You've already
bought their line, have you?"
A movement up the canal caught my attention. An elderly man had descended the bank,
dropped his pants, and squatted at the edge of the water to answer nature's call. The young
woman saw him but was undeterred; she continued bathing. I turned away from the window and
looked directly at Howard.
"I've been around," I said. "I may be young, but I just got back
from three years in South America. I've seen what can happen when oil is discovered. Things
change fast."
"Oh, I've been around too," he said mockingly. "A great many years. I'll tell you something,
young man. I don't give a damn for your oil discoveries and all that. I forecasted electric loads all
my life — during the Depression, World War II, times of bust and boom. I've seen what Route
128's so-called Massachusetts Miracle did for Boston. And I can say for sure that no electric
load ever grew by more than 7 to 9 percent a year for any sustained period. And that's in the
best of times. Six percent is more reasonable."
I stared at him. Part of me suspected he was right, but I felt de-fensive. I knew I had to convince
him, because my own conscience cried out for justification.
"Howard, this isn't Boston. This is a country where, until now, no one could even get electricity.
Things are different here."
He turned on his heel and waved his hand as though he could brush me away.
"Go ahead," he snarled. "Sell out. I don't give a damn what you come up with." He jerked his
chair from behind his desk and fell into it. "I'll make my electricity forecast based on what I
believe, not some pie-in-the-sky economic study." He picked up his pencil and started to scribble
on a pad of paper.
It was a challenge I could not ignore. I went and stood in front of his desk.
"You'll look pretty stupid if I come up with what everyone expects — a boom to rival the
California gold rush — and you forecast elec-tricity growth at a rate comparable to Boston in the
1960s."
He slammed the pencil down and glared at me. "Unconscionable! That's what it is. You — all of
you — " he waved his arms at the offices beyond our walls, "you've sold your souls to the devil.
You're in it for the money. Now," he feigned a smile and reached under his shirt, "I'm turning off
my hearing aid and going back to work."
It shook me to the core. I stomped out of the room and headed for Charlie's office. Halfway there,
I stopped, uncertain about what I intended to accomplish. Instead, I turned and walked down the
stairs, out the door, into the afternoon sunlight. The young woman was climbing out of the canal,
her sarong wrapped tightly about her body. The elderly man had disappeared. Several boys
played in the
30
Part 1:1963-1971
Selling My Soul
31
canal, splashing and shouting at each other. An older woman was standing knee-deep in the
water, brushing her teeth; another was scrubbing clothes.
A huge lump grew in my throat. I sat down on a slab of broken concrete, trying to disregard the
pungent odor from the canal. I fought hard to hold back the tears; I needed to figure out why I felt
so miserable.
You're in it for the money. I heard Howard's words, over and over. He had struck a raw nerve.
The little boys continued to splash each other, their gleeful voices filling the air. I wondered what
I could do. What would it take to make me carefree like them? The question tormented me as I
sat there watching them cavort in their blissful innocence, apparently un-aware of the risk they
took by playing in that fetid water. An elderly, hunchbacked man with a gnarled cane hobbled
along the bank above the canal. He stopped and watched the boys, and his face broke into a
toothless grin.
Perhaps I could confide in Howard; maybe together we would arrive at a solution. I immediately
felt a sense of relief. I picked up a little stone and threw it into the canal. As the ripples faded,
however, so did my euphoria. I knew I could do no such thing. Howard was old and bitter. He
had already passed up opportunities to advance his own career. Surely, he would not buckle
now. I was young, just starting out, and certainly did not want to end up like him.
Staring into the water of that putrid canal, I once again saw im-ages of the New Hampshire prep
school on the hill, where I had spent vacations alone while the other boys went off to their
debu-tante balls. Slowly the sorry fact settled in. Once again, there was no one I could talk to.
That night I lay in bed, thinking for a long time about the people in my life — Howard, Charlie,
Claudine, Ann, Einar, Uncle Frank — wondering what my life would be like if I had never met
them. Where would I be living? Not Indonesia, that was for sure. I wondered also about my
future, about where I was headed. I pondered the de-cision confronting me. Charlie had made it
clear that he expected Howard and me to come up with growth rates of at least 17 percent per
annum. What kind of forecast would I produce?
Suddenly a thought came to me that soothed my soul. Why had it not occurred to me before?
The decision was not mine at all. Howard
had said that he would do what he considered right, regardless of my conclusions. I could please
my bosses with a high economic forecast and he would make his own decision; my work would
have no effect on the master plan. People kept emphasizing the importance of my role, but they
were wrong. A great burden had been lifted. I fell into a deep sleep.
A few days later, Howard was taken ill with a severe amoebic attack. We rushed him to a
Catholic missionary hospital. The doc-tors prescribed medication and strongly recommended
that he return immediately to the United States. Howard assured us that he already had all the
data he needed and could easily complete the load forecast from Boston. His parting words to
me were a reitera-tion of his earlier warning.
"No need to cook the numbers," he said. "I'll not be part of that scam, no matter wrhat you say
about the miracles of economic growth!"
32
Part I: 1963-1971
Selling My Soul
33
PART II: 1971-1975
CHAPTER 6
My Role as Inquisitor
Our contracts with the Indonesian government, the Asian Develop-ment Bank, and USAID
required that someone on our team visit all the major population centers in the area covered by
the master plan. I was designated to fulfill this condition. As Charlie put it, 'You survived the
Amazon; you know how to handle bugs, snakes, and bad water."
Along with a driver and translator, I visited many beautiful places and stayed in some pretty
dismal lodgings. I met with local business and political leaders and listened to their opinions
about the pros-pects for economic growth. However, I found most of them reluctant to share
information with me. They seemed intimidated by my pres-ence. Typically, they told me that I
would have to check with their bosses, with government agencies, or with corporate
headquarters in Jakarta. I sometimes suspected some sort of conspiracy was directed at me.
These trips were usually short, not more than two or three days. In between, I returned to the
Wisma in Bandung. The woman who managed it had a son a few years younger than me. His
name was Rasmon, but to everyone except his mother he was Rasy. A student of economics at
a local university, he immediately took an interest in my work. In fact, I suspected that at some
point he would approach me for a job. He also began to teach me Bahasa Indonesia.
Creating an easy-to-leam language had been President Sukarno's highest priority after
Indonesia won its independence from Holland.
37
Over 350 languages and dialects are spoken throughout the archi-pelago,1 and Sukarno
realized that his country needed a common vocabulary in order to unite people from the many
islands and cul-tures. He recruited an international team of linguists, and Bahasa Indonesia was
the highly successful result. Based on Malay, it avoids many of the tense changes, irregular
verbs, and other complications that characterize most languages. By the early 1970s, the
majority of Indonesians spoke it, although they continued to rely on Javanese and other local
dialects within their own communities. Rasy was a great teacher with a wonderful sense of
humor, and compared to learning Shuar or even Spanish, Bahasa was easy.
Rasy owned a motor scooter and took it upon himself to intro-duce me to his city and people. Til
show you a side of Indonesia you haven't seen," he promised one evening, and urged me to hop
on behind him.
We passed shadow-puppet shows, musicians playing traditional instruments, fire-blowers,
jugglers, and street vendors selling eveiy imaginable ware, from contraband American cassettes
to rare indige-nous artifacts. Finally, we ended up at a tiny coffeehouse populated by young men
and women whose clothes, hats, and hairstyles would have been right in fashion at a Beatles
concert in the late 1960s; however, everyone was distinctly Indonesian. Rasy introduced me to a
group seated around a table and we sat down.
They all spoke English, with varying degrees of fluency, but they appreciated and encouraged
my attempts at Bahasa. They talked about this openly and asked me why Americans never
learned their language. I had no answer. Nor could I explain why I was the only American or
European in this part of the city, even though you could always find plenty of us at the Golf and
Racket Club, the posh restaurants, the movie theaters, and the upscale supermarkets.
It was a night I shall always remember. Rasy and his friends treated me as one of their own. I
enjoyed a sense of euphoria from being there, sharing their city, food, and music, smelling the
clove cigarettes and other aromas that were part of their lives, joking and laughing with them. It
was like the Peace Corps all over again, and I found myself wondering why I had thought that I
wanted to travel first class and separate myself from people like this. As the night wore on, they
became increasingly interested in learning my thoughts
about their country and about the war my country was fighting in Vietnam. Every one of them
was horrified by what they referred to as "the illegal invasion," and they were relieved to discover
I shared their feelings.
By the time Rasy and I returned to the guesthouse it was late and the place was dark. I thanked
him profusely for inviting me into his world; he thanked me for opening up to his friends. We
promised to do it again, hugged, and headed off to our respective rooms.
That experience with Rasy whetted my appetite for spending more time away from the MAIN
team. The next morning, I had a meeting with Charlie and told him I was becoming frustrated
trying to obtain information from local people. In addition, most of the statistics I needed for
developing economic forecasts could only be found at government offices in Jakarta. Charlie
and I agreed that I would need to spend one to two weeks in Jakarta.
He expressed sympathy for me, having to abandon Bandung for the steaming metropolis, and I
professed to detest the idea. Secretly, however, I was excited by the opportunity to have some
time to myself, to explore Jakarta and to live at the elegant Hotel Intercon-tinental Indonesia.
Once in Jakarta, however, I discovered that I now viewed life from a different perspective. The
night spent with Rasy and the young Indonesians, as well as my travels around the country, had
changed me. I found that I saw my fellow Americans in a different light. The young wives
seemed not quite so beautiful. The chain-link fence around the pool and the steel bars outside
the win-dows on the lower floors, which I had barely noticed before, now took on an ominous
appearance. The food in the hotel's elegant restaurants seemed insipid.
I noticed something else too. During my meetings with political and business leaders, I became
aware of subtleties in the way they treated me. I had not perceived it before, but now I saw that
many of them resented my presence. For example, when they introduced me to each other, they
often used Bahasa terms that according to my dictionary translated to inquisitor and interrogator.
I purposely neg-lected disclosing my knowledge of their language — even my trans-lator knew
only that I could recite a few stock phrases —and I purchased a good Bahasa/English dictionary,
which I often used after leaving them.
:m
Part II: 1971-1975
My Role as Inquisitor
39
Were these addresses just coincidences of language? Misinter-pretations in my dictionary? I
tried to convince myself they were. Yet, the more time I spent with these men, the more
convinced I be-came that I was an intruder, that an order to cooperate had come down from
someone, and that they had little choice but to comply. I had no idea whether a government
official, a banker, a general, or the U.S. Embassy had sent the order. All I knew was that
although they invited me into their offices, offered me tea, politely answered my questions, and
in every overt manner seemed to welcome my presence, beneath the surface there was a
shadow of resignation and rancor.
It made me wonder, too, about their answers to my questions and about the validity of their data.
For instance, I could never just walk into an office with my translator and meet with someone; we
first had to set up an appointment. In itself, this would not have seemed so strange, except that
doing so was outrageously time consuming. Since the phones seldom worked, we had to drive
through the traf-fic-choked streets, which were laid out in such a contorted manner that it could
take an hour to reach a building only blocks away. Once there, we were asked to fill out several
forms. Eventually, a male sec-retary would appear. Politely—always with the courteous smile for
which the Javanese are famous —he would question me about the types of information I desired,
and then he would establish a time for the meeting.
Without exception, the scheduled appointment was at least sev-eral days away, and when the
meeting finally occurred I was handed a folder of prepared materials. The industry owners gave
me five-and ten-year plans, the bankers had charts and graphs, and the gov-ernment officials
provided lists of projects that were in the process of leaving the drawing boards to become
engines of economic growth. Everything these captains of commerce and government provided,
and all they said during the interviews, indicated that Java was poised for perhaps the biggest
boom any economy had ever enjoyed. No one — not a single person — ever questioned this
premise or gave me any negative information.
As I headed back to Bandung, though, I found myself wondering about all these experiences;
something was deeply disturbing. It oc-curred to me that everything I was doing in Indonesia
was more like
a game than reality. It was as though we were playing a game of poker. We kept our cards
hidden. We could not trust each other or count on the reliability of the information we shared. Yet,
this game was deadly serious, and its outcome would impact millions of lives for decades to
come.
40
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My Role as Inquisitor
41
CHAPTER 7
Civilization on Trial
"I'm taking you to a dalang," Rasy beamed. "You know, the famous Indonesian puppet masters."
He was obviously pleased to have me back in Bandung. "There's a very important one in town
tonight."
He drove me on his scooter through parts of his city I did not know existed, through sections
filled with traditional Javanese kampong houses, which looked like a poor person's version of
tiny tile-roofed temples. Gone were the stately Dutch Colonial mansions and office buildings I
had grown to expect. The people were obvi-ously poor, yet they bore themselves with great
pride. They wore threadbare but clean batik sarongs, brightly colored blouses, and widebrimmed straw hats. Everywhere we went we were greeted with smiles and laughter. When we
stopped, children rushed up to touch me and feel the fabric of my jeans. One little girl stuck a
fra-grant frangipani blossom in my hair.
We parked the scooter near a sidewalk theater where several hun-dred people were gathered,
some standing, others sitting in portable chairs. The night was clear and beautiful. Although we
were in the heart of the oldest section of Bandung, there were no streetlights, so the stars
sparkled over our heads. The air was filled with the aromas of wood fires, peanuts, and cloves.
Rasy disappeared into the crowd and soon returned with many of the young people I had met at
the coffeehouse. They offered me hot tea, little cakes, and sate, tiny bits of meat cooked in
peanut oil. I must have hesitated before accepting the latter, because one of the
women pointed at a small fire. "Very fresh meat" she laughed. "Just cooked."
Then the music started —the hauntingly magical sounds of the gamalong, an instrument that
conjures images of temple bells.
"The dalang plays all the music by himself," Rasy whispered. "He also works all the puppets and
speaks their voices, several languages. We'll translate for you."
It was a remarkable performance, combining traditional legends with current events. I would later
learn that the dalang is a shaman who does his work in trance. He had over a hundred puppets
and he spoke for each in a different voice. It was a night I will never forget, and one that has
influenced the rest of my life.
After completing a classic selection from the ancient texts of the Ramayana, the dalang
produced a puppet of Richard Nixon, complete with the distinctive long nose and sagging jowls.
The U.S. president was dressed like Uncle Sam, in a stars-and-stripes top hat and tails. He was
accompanied by another puppet, which wore a three-piece pin-striped suit. The second puppet
carried in one hand a bucket decorated with dollar signs. He used his free hand to wave an
Ameri-can flag over Nixon's head in the manner of a slave fanning a master.
A map of the Middle and Far East appeared behind the two, the various countries hanging from
hooks in their respective positions. Nixon immediately approached the map, lifted Vietnam off its
hook, and thrust it to his mouth. He shouted something that was trans-lated as, "Bitter! Rubbish.
We don't need any more of this!" Then he tossed it into the bucket and proceeded to do the
same with other countries.
I was surprised, however, to see that his next selections did not include the domino nations of
Southeast Asia. Rather, they were all Middle Eastern countries — Palestine, Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. After that, he turned to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Each time, the
Nixon doll screamed out some epithet before drop-ping the country into his bucket, and in every
instance, his vitupera-tive words were anti-Islamic: "Muslim dogs," "Mohammed's monsters," and
"Islamic devils."
The crowd became very excited, the tension mounting with each new addition to the bucket.
They seemed torn between fits of laughter, shock, and rage. At times, I sensed they took offense
at the puppeteer's language. I also felt intimidated; I stood out in this crowd, taller
42
Civilization on Trial
43
than the rest, and I worried that they might direct their anger at me. Then Nixon said something
that made my scalp tingle when Rasy translated it.
"Give this one to the World Bank. See what it can do to make us some money off Indonesia." He
lifted Indonesia from the map and moved to drop it into the bucket, but just at that moment
another puppet leaped out of the shadows. This puppet represented an In-donesian man,
dressed in batik shirt and khaki slacks, and he wore a sign with his name clearly printed on it.
"A popular Bandung politician," Rasy explained.
This puppet literally flew between Nixon and Bucket Man and held up his hand.
"Stop!" he shouted. "Indonesia is sovereign."
The crowd burst into applause. Then Bucket Man lifted his flag and thrust it like a spear into the
Indonesian, who staggered and died a most dramatic death. The audience members booed,
hooted, screamed, and shook their fists. Nixon and Bucket Man stood there, looking out at us.
They bowed and left the stage.
"I think I should go," I said to Rasy.
He placed a hand protectively around my shoulder. "It's okay," he said. "They have nothing
against you personally." I wasn't so sure.
Later we all retired to the coffeehouse. Rasy and the others as-sured me that they had not been
informed ahead of time about the Nixon-World Bank skit. "You never know what to expect from
that puppeteer," one of the young men observed.
I wondered aloud whether this had been staged in my honor. Someone laughed and said I had a
very big ego. "Typical of Ameri-cans," he added, patting my back congenially.
"Indonesians are very conscious of politics," the man in the chair beside me said. "Don't
Americans go to shows like this?"
A beautiful woman, an English major at the university, sat across the table from me. "But you do
work for the World Bank, don't you?" she asked.
I told her that my current assignment was for the Asian Devel-opment Bank and the United
States Agency for Internationa] Development.
"Aren't they really all the same?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Isn't it like the play tonight
showed? Doesn't your government look
at Indonesia and other countries as though we are just a bunch of..." She searched for the word.
"Grapes," one of her friends coached.
"Exactly. A bunch of grapes. You can pick and choose. Keep Eng-land. Eat China. And throw
away Indonesia."
"After you've taken all our oil," another woman added.
I tried to defend myself but was not at all up to the task. I wanted to take pride in the fact that I
had come to this part of town and had stayed to watch the entire anti-U.S. performance, which I
might have construed as a personal assault. I wanted them to see the courage of what I had
done, to know that I was the only member of my team who bothered to learn Bahasa or had any
desire to take in their culture, and to point out that I was the sole foreigner attending this
production. But I decided it would be more prudent not to men-tion any of this. Instead, I tried to
refocus the conversation. I asked them why they thought the dalang had singled out Muslim
coun-tries, except for Vietnam.
The beautiful English major laughed at this. "Because that's the plan."
"Vietnam is just a holding action," one of the men interjected, "like Holland was for the Nazis. A
stepping-stone."
"The real target," the woman continued, "is the Muslim world."
I could not let this go unanswered. "Surely," I protested, "you can't believe that the United States
is anti-Islamic."
"Oh no?" she asked. "Since when? You need to read one of your own historians — a Brit named
Toynbee. Back in the fifties he pre-dicted that the real war in the next century would not be
between Communists and capitalists, but between Christians and Muslims."
"Arnold Toynbee said that?" I was stunned.
"Yes. Read Civilization on Trial and The World and the West"
"But why should there be such animosity between Muslims and Christians?" I asked.
Looks were exchanged around the table. They appeared to find it hard to believe that I could ask
such a foolish question.
"Because," she said slowly, as though addressing someone slow-witted or hard of hearing, "the
West — especially its leader, the U.S. — is determined to take control of all the world, to
become the great-est empire in history. It has already gotten very close to succeeding.
44
Part li: 1971-1975
Civilization on Trial
45
The Soviet Union currently stands in its way, but the Soviets will not endure. Toynbee could see
that. They have no religion, no faith, no substance behind their ideology. History demonstrates
that faith — soul, a belief in higher powers — is essential. We Muslims have it. We have it more
than anyone else in the world, even more than the Christians. So we wait. We grow strong."
"We will take our time," one of the men chimed in, "and then like a snake we will strike."
"What a horrible thought!" I could barely contain myself. "What can we do to change this?"
The English major looked me directly in the eyes. "Stop being so greedy," she said, "and so
selfish. Realize that there is more to the world than your big houses and fancy stores. People
are starving and you worry about oil for your cars. Babies are dying of thirst and you search the
fashion magazines for the latest styles. Nations like ours are drowning in poverty, but your
people don't even hear our cries for help. You shut your ears to the voices of those who try to tell
you these things. You label them radicals or Communists. You must open your hearts to the
poor and downtrodden, instead of driving them further into poverty and servitude. There's not
much time left. If you don't change, you're doomed."
Several days later the popular Bandung politician, whose puppet stood up to Nixon and was
impaled by Bucket Man, was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver.
CHAPTER 8
Jesus, Seen Differently
The memory of that dalang stuck with me. So did the words of the beautiful English major. That
night in Bandung catapulted me to a new level of thinking and feeling. While I had not exactly
ignored the implications of what we were doing in Indonesia, my reactions had been ruled by
emotions, and I usually had been able to calm my feelings by calling on reason, on the example
of history, and on the biological imperative. I had justified our involvement as part of the human
condition, convincing myself that Einar, Charlie, and the rest of us were simply acting as men
always have: taking care of ourselves and our families.
My discussion with those young Indonesians, however, forced me to see another aspect of the
issue. Through their eyes, I realized that a selfish approach to foreign policy does not serve or
protect future generations anywhere. It is myopic, like the annual reports of the corporations and
the election strategies of the politicians who for-mulate that foreign policy.
As it turned out, the data I needed for my economic forecasts required frequent visits to Jakarta.
I took advantage of my time alone there to ponder these matters and to write about them in a
journal. I wandered the streets of that city, handed money to beggars, and attempted to engage
lepers, prostitutes, and street urchins in conversation.
Meanwhile, I pondered the nature of foreign aid, and I consid-ered the legitimate role that
developed countries (DCs, in World
46
Part II: 1971-1975
47
Bank jargon) might play in helping alleviate poverty and misery in less-developed countries
(LDCs). I began to wonder when foreign aid is genuine and when it is only greedy and selfserving. Indeed, I began to question whether such aid is ever altruistic, and if not, whether that
could be changed. I was certain that countries like my own should take decisive action to help
the sick and starving of the world, but I was equally certain that this was seldom — if ever — the
prime motivation for our intervention.
I kept coming back to one main question: if the objective of for-eign aid is imperialism, is that so
wrong? I often found myself envy-ing people like Charlie who believed so strongly in our system
that they wanted to force it on the rest of the world. I doubted whether limited resources would
allow the whole world to live the opulent life of the United States, when even the United States
had millions of citizens living in poverty. In addition, it wasn't entirely clear to me that people in
other nations actually want to live like us. Our own statis-tics about violence, depression, drug
abuse, divorce, and crime in-dicated that although ours was one of the wealthiest societies in
history, it may also be one of the least happy societies. Why would we want others to emulate us?
Perhaps Claudine had warned me of all this. I was no longer sure what it was she had been
trying to tell me. In any case, intellectual arguments aside, it had now become painfully clear that
my days of innocence were gone. I wrote in my journal:
Is anyone in the U.S. innocent? Although those at the very pinnacle of the economic pyramid
gain the most, millions of us depend — either directly or indirectly — on the exploitation of the
LDCs for our livelihoods. The resources and cheap labor that feed nearly all our busi-nesses
come from places like Indonesia, and very little ever makes its way back. The loans of foreign
aid ensure that today's children and their grandchildren will be held hostage. They will have to
allow our corporations to ravage their natural resources and will have to forego education, health,
and other social services merely to pay us back. The fact that our own companies already
received most of this money to build the power plants, airports, and
industrial parks does not factor into this formula. Does the excuse that most Americans are
unaware of this constitute innocence? Uninformed and intentionally misinformed, yes — but
innocent?
Of course, I had to face the fact that I was now numbered among those who actively misinform.
The concept of a worldwide holy war was a disturbing one, but the longer I contemplated it, the
more convinced I became of its pos-sibility. It seemed to me, however, that if this jihad were to
occur it would be less about Muslims versus Christians than it wrould be about LDCs versus
DCs, perhaps with Muslims at the forefront. We in the DCs were the users of resources; those in
the LDCs were the suppliers. It was the colonial mercantile system all over again, set up to make
it easy for those with power and limited natural resources to exploit those with resources but no
power.
I did not have a copy of Toynbee with me, but I knew enough his-tory to understand that
suppliers who are exploited long enough will rebel. I only had to return to the American
Revolution and Tom Paine for a model. I recalled that Britain justified its taxes by claim-ing that
England wTas providing aid to the colonies in the form of military protection against the French
and the Indians. The colonists had a very different interpretation.
WTiat Paine offered to his countrymen in the brilliant Common Sense was the soul that my
young Indonesian friends had referred to — an idea, a faith in the justice of a higher powrer, and
a religion of freedom and equality that was diametrically opposed to the British monarchy and its
elitist class systems. What Muslims offered was similar: faith in a higher power and a belief that
developed countries have no right to subjugate and exploit the rest of the world. Like colonial
minutemen, Muslims were threatening to fight for their rights, and like the British in the 1770s,
we classified such actions as terrorism. History appeared to be repeating itself.
I wondered what sort of a world we might have if the United States and its allies diverted all the
monies expended in colonial wars — like the one in Vietnam — to eradicating world hunger or to
making education and basic health care available to all people, including our own. I wondered
how future generations would be
48
Part II: 1971-1975
Jesus, Seen Differently
49
affected if we committed to alleviating the sources of misery and to protecting watersheds,
forests, and other natural areas that ensure clean water, air, and the things that feed our spirits
as well as our bodies. I could not believe that our Founding Fathers had envisioned the right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to exist only for Americans, so why were we now
implementing strategies that pro-moted the imperialist values they had fought against?
On my last night in Indonesia, I awoke from a dream, sat up in bed, and switched on the light. I
had the feeling that someone" was in the room with me. I peered around at the familiar Hotel
Inter-Continental furniture, the batik tapestries, and the framed shadow-puppets hanging on the
walls. Then the dream came back.
I had seen Christ standing in front of me. He seemed like the same Jesus I had talked with every
night when, as a young boy, I shared my thoughts with him after saying my formal prayers.
Except that the Jesus of my childhood was fair-skinned and blond, while this one had curly black
hair and a dark complexion. He bent down and heaved something up to his shoulder. I expected
a cross. In-stead, I saw the axle of a car with the attached wheel rim protruding above his head,
forming a metallic halo. Grease dripped like blood down his forehead. He straightened, peered
into my eyes, and said, "If I were to come now, you would see me differently." I asked him why.
"Because," he answered, "the world has changed."
The clock told me it was nearly daylight. I knew I could not go back to sleep, so I dressed, took
the elevator to the empty lobby, and wandered into the gardens around the swimming pool. The
moon was bright; the sweet smell of orchids filled the air. I sat down in a lounge chair and
wondered what I was doing here, why the coinci-dences of my life had taken me along this path,
why Indonesia. I knew my life had changed, but I had no idea how drastically.
resentment was too large an obstacle. Besides, there was so much I could not tell her. The only
person I could share such things with was Claudine, and I thought about her constantly. Ann and
I landed at Boston's Logan Airport and took a taxi to our separate apartments in the Back Bay.
Ann and I met in Paris on my way home, to attempt reconciliation. Even during this French
vacation, however, we continued to quarrel. Although there were many special and beautiful
moments, I think we both came to the realization that our long history of anger and
50
Part II: 1971-1975
Jesus, Seen Differently
CHAPTER 9
51
Opportunity of a Lifetime
The true test of Indonesia awaited me at MAIN. I went to the Pru-dential Center headquarters
first thing in the morning, and while I was standing with dozens of other employees at the
elevator I learned that Mac Hall, MAIN's enigmatic, octogenarian chairman and CEO, had
promoted Einar to president of the Portland, Oregon office. As a result, I now officially reported
to Bruno Zambotti.
Nicknamed "the silver fox" because of the color of his hair and his uncanny ability to
outmaneuver everyone who challenged him, Bruno had the dapper good looks of Cary Grant.
He was eloquent, and he held both an engineering degree and an MBA. He under-stood
econometrics and was vice president in charge of MAIN's elec-trical power division and of most
of our international projects. He also was the obvious choice to take over as president of the
corpora-tion when his mentor, the aging Jake Dauber, retired. Like most MAIN employees, I was
awed and terrified by Bruno Zambotti.
Just before lunch, I was summoned to Bruno's office. Following a cordial discussion about
Indonesia, he said something that made me jump to the edge of my seat.
"I'm firing Howard Parker. We don't need to go into the details, except to say that he's lost touch
with reality." His smile was discon-certingly pleasant as he tapped his finger against a sheaf of
papers on his desk. "Eight percent a year. That's his load forecast. Can you believe it? In a
country with the potential of Indonesia!"
His smile faded and he looked me squarely in the eye. "Charlie
Illingworth tells me that your economic forecast is right on target and will justify load growth of
between 17 and 20 percent. Is that right?"
I assured him it was.
He stood up and offered me his hand. "Congratulations. You've just been promoted."
Perhaps I should have gone out and celebrated at a fancy restau-rant with other MAIN
employees — or even by myself. However, my mind was on Claudine. I was dying to tell her
about my promotion and all my experiences in Indonesia. She had wTarned me not to call her
from abroad, and I had not. Now I was dismayed to find that her phone was disconnected, with
no forwarding number. I went look-ing for her.
A young couple had moved into her apartment. It was lunchtime but I believe I roused them from
their bed; obviously annoyed, they professed to know nothing about Claudine. I paid a visit to the
real estate agency, pretending to be a cousin. Their files indicated they had never rented to
anyone with her name; the previous lease had been issued to a man who would remain
anonymous by his request. Back at the Prudential Center, MAIN's employment office also
claimed to have no record of her. They admitted only to a "special consultants" file that was not
available for my scrutiny.
By late afternoon, I was exhausted and emotionally drained. On top of everything else, a bad
case of jet lag had set in. Returning to my empty apartment, I felt desperately lonely and
abandoned. My promotion seemed meaningless or, even worse, to be a badge of my willingness
to sell out. I threw myself onto the bed, overwhelmed with despair. I had been used by Claudine
and then discarded. De-termined not to give in to my anguish, I shut down my emotions. I lay
there on my bed staring at the bare walls for what seemed like hours.
Finally, I managed to pull myself together. I got up, swallowed a beer, and smashed the empty
bottle against a table. Then I stared out the window. Looking down a distant street, I thought I
saw her walking toward me. I started for the door and then returned to the window for another
look. The woman had come closer. I could see that she was attractive, and that her walk was
reminiscent of Claudine's, but it was not Claudine. My heart sank, and my feelings changed from
anger and loathing to fear.
An image flashed before me of Claudine flailing, falling in a rain
52
Opportunity of a Lifetime
53
of bullets, assassinated. I shook it off, took a couple Valium, and drank myself to sleep.
The next morning, a call from MAIN's personnel department woke me from my stupor. Its chief,
Paul Mormino, assured me he under-stood my need for rest, but he urged me to come in that
afternoon.
"Good news," he said. "The best thing for catching up with yourself."
I obeyed the summons and learned that Bruno had been more than true to his word. I had not
only been promoted to Howard's old job; I had been given the title of Chief Economist and a
raise. It did cheer me up a bit.
I took the afternoon off and wandered down along the Charles River with a quart of beer. As I sat
there, watching the sailboats and nursing combined jet lag and vicious hangover, I convinced
myself that Claudine had done her job and had moved on to her next assignment. She had
always emphasized the need for secrecy. She would call me. Mormino had been right. My jet lag
— and my anxi-ety — dissipated.
During the next weeks, I tried to put all thoughts of Claudine aside. I focused on writing my
report on the Indonesian economy and on revising Howard's load forecasts. I came up with the
type of study my bosses wanted to see: a growth in electric demand averag-ing 19 percent per
annum for twelve years after the new system was completed, tapering down to 17 percent for
eight more years, and then holding at 15 percent for the remainder of the twenty-five-year
projection.
I presented my conclusions at formal meetings with the interna-tional lending agencies. Their
teams of experts questioned me ex-tensively and mercilessly. By then, my emotions had turned
into a sort of grim determination, not unlike those that had driven me to excel rather than to rebel
during my prep school days. Nonetheless, Claudine's memory always hovered close. When a
sassy young economist out to make a name for himself at the Asian Development Bank grilled
me relentlessly for an entire afternoon, I recalled the advice Claudine had given me as we sat in
her Beacon Street apart-ment those many months before.
"Who can see twenty-five years into the future?" she had asked. "Your guess is as good as
theirs. Confidence is everything."
I convinced myself I was an expert, reminding myself that I had experienced more of life in
developing countries than many of the
men — some of them twice my age —who now sat in judgment of my work. I had lived in the
Amazon and had traveled to parts of Java no one else wanted to visit. I had taken a couple of
intensive courses aimed at teaching executives the finer points of econometrics, and I told
myself that I was part of the new breed of statistically ori-ented, econometric-worshipping whiz
kids that appealed to Robert McNamara, the buttoned-down president of the World Bank, former
president of Ford Motor Company, and John Kennedy's secretary of defense. Here was a man
who had built his reputation on numbers, on probability theory, on mathematical models, and — I
suspected — on the bravado of a very large ego.
I tried to emulate both McNamara and my boss, Bruno. I adopted manners of speech that
imitated the former, and I took to walking with the swagger of the latter, attache case swinging at
my side. Looking back, I have to wonder at my gall. In truth, my expertise was extremely limited,
but what I lacked in training and knowledge I made up for in audacity.
And it worked. Eventually the team of experts stamped my re-ports with their seals of approval.
During the ensuing months, I attended meetings in Tehran, Caracas, Guatemala City, London,
Vienna, and Washington, DC. I met famous personalities, including the shah of Iran, the former
presidents of several countries, and Robert McNamara himself. Like prep school, it was a world
of men. I was amazed at how my new ti-tle and the accounts of my recent successes before the
international lending agencies affected other people's attitudes toward me.
At first, all the attention went to my head. I began to think of my-self as a Merlin who could wave
his wand over a country, causing it suddenly to light up, industries sprouting like flowers. Then I
became disillusioned. I questioned my own motives and those of all the people I worked with. It
seemed that a glorified title or a PhD did little to help a person understand the plight of a leper
living beside a cess-pool in Jakarta, and I doubted that a knack for manipulating statistics
enabled a person to see into the future. The better I came to know those who made the
decisions that shape the world, the more skep-tical I became about their abilities and their goals.
Looking at the faces around the meeting room tables, I found myself struggling very hard to
restrain my anger.
Eventually, however, this perspective also changed. I came to
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Opportunity of a Lifetime
55
understand that most of those men believed they were doing the right thing. Like Charlie, they
were convinced that communism and terrorism were evil forces — rather than the predictable
reactions to decisions they and their predecessors had made — and that they had a duty to their
country, to their offspring, and to God to convert the world to capitalism. They also clung to the
principle of sumval of the fittest; if they happened to enjoy the good fortune to have been born
into a privileged class instead of inside a cardboard shack, then they saw it as an obligation to
pass this heritage on to their progeny.
I vacillated between viewing such people as an actual conspiracy and simply seeing them as a
tight-knit fraternity bent on dominating the world. Nonetheless, over time I began to liken them to
the plan-tation owners of the pre-Civil War South. They were men drawn together in a loose
association by common beliefs and shared self-interest, rather than an exclusive group meeting
in clandestine hideaways with focused and sinister intent. The plantation autocrats had grown up
with servants and slaves, had been educated to believe that it was their right and even their duty
to take care of the "hea-thens" and to convert them to the owners' religion and way of life. Even
if slavery repulsed them philosophically, they could, like Thomas Jefferson, justify it as a
necessity, the collapse of which would result in social and economic chaos. The leaders of the
modern oligarchies, what I now thought of as the corporatocracy, seemed to fit the same mold.
I also began to wonder who benefits from war and the mass pro-duction of weapons, from the
damming of rivers and the destruction of indigenous environments and cultures. I began to look
at who benefits when hundreds of thousands of people die from insufficient food, polluted water,
or curable diseases. Slowly, I came to realize that in the long run no one benefits, but in the
short term those at the top of the pyramid — my bosses and me — appear to benefit, at least
materially.
This raised several other questions: Why does this situation persist? Why has it endured for so
long? Does the answer lie simply in the old adage that "might is right," that those with the power
perpetuate the system?
It seemed insufficient to say that power alone allows this situation to persist. While the
proposition that might makes right explained a great deal, I felt there must be a more compelling
force at work here.
I recalled an economics professor from my business school days, a man from northern India,
who lectured about limited resources, about man's need to grow continually, and about the
principle of slave labor. According to this professor, all successful capitalist systems involve
hierarchies with rigid chains of command, including a handful at the very top who control
descending orders of subordinates, and a mas-sive army of workers at the bottom, who in
relative economic terms truly can be classified as slaves. Ultimately, then, I became convinced
that we encourage this system because the corporatocracy has con-vinced us that God has
given us the right to place a few of our peo-ple at the very top of this capitalist pyramid and to
export our system to the entire world.
Of course, we are not the first to do this. The list of practitioners stretches back to the ancient
empires of North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and works its way up through Persia, Greece,
Rome, the Christian Crusades, and all the European empire builders of the post-Columbian era.
This imperialist drive has been and continues to be the cause of most wars, pollution, starvation,
species extinc-tions, and genocides. And it has always taken a serious toll on the conscience
and well-being of the citizens of those empires, contribut-ing to social malaise and resulting in a
situation where the wealthiest cultures in human history are plagued with the highest rates of
suicide, drug abuse, and violence.
I thought extensively on these questions, but I avoided consider-ing the nature of my own role in
all of this. I tried to think of myself not as an EHM but as a chief economist. It sounded so very
legiti-mate, and if I needed any confirmation, I could look at my pay stubs: all were from MAIN, a
private corporation. I didn't earn a penny from the NSA or any government agency. And so I
became con-vinced. Almost.
One afternoon Bruno called me into his office. He walked behind my chair and patted me on the
shoulder. "You've done an excellent job," he purred. "To show our appreciation, we're giving you
the op-portunity of a lifetime, something few men ever receive, even at twice your age."
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Opportunity of a Lifetime
57
CHAPTER 10
Panama's President and Hero
I landed at Panama's Tocumen International Airport late one April night in 1972, during a tropical
deluge. As was common in those days, I shared a taxi with several other executives, and
because I spoke Spanish, I ended up in the front seat beside the driver. I stared blankly out the
taxi's windshield. Through the rain, the headlights illuminated a billboard portrait of a handsome
man with a promi-nent brow and flashing eyes. One side of his wide-brimmed hat was hooked
rakishly up. I recognized him as the hero of modern Panama, Omar Torrijos.
I had prepared for this trip in my customary fashion, by visiting the reference section of the
Boston Public Library. I knew that one of the reasons for Torrijos's popularity among his people
was that he was a firm defender of both Panama's right of self-rule and of its claims to
sovereignty over the Panama Canal. He was determined that the country under his leadership
would avoid the pitfalls of its ignominious history.
Panama was part of Colombia when the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, who directed
construction of the Suez Canal, decided to build a canal through the Central American isthmus,
to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Beginning in 1881, the French under-took a
mammoth effort that met with one catastrophe after another. Finally, in 1889, the project ended
in financial disaster—but it had inspired a dream in Theodore Roosevelt. During the first years of
the twentieth century, the United States demanded that Colombia sign
a treaty turning the isthmus over to a North American consortium. Colombia refused.
In 1903, President Roosevelt sent in the U.S. warship Nashville. U.S. soldiers landed, seized
and killed a popular local militia com-mander, and declared Panama an independent nation. A
puppet government was installed and the first Canal Treaty was signed; it established an
American zone on both sides of the future waterway, legalized U.S. military intervention, and
gave Washington virtual control over this newly formed "independent" nation.
Interestingly, the treaty was signed by U.S. Secretary of State Hay and a French engineer,
Philippe Bunau-Varilla, who had been part of the original team, but it was not signed by a single
Panamanian. In essence, Panama was forced to leave Colombia in order to serve the United
States, in a deal struck by an American and a Frenchman — in retrospect, a prophetic
beginning.1
For more than half a century, Panama was ruled by an oligarchy of wealthy families with strong
connections to Washington. They were right-wing dictators who took whatever measures they
deemed necessary to ensure that their country promoted U.S. interests. In the manner of most
of the Latin American dictators who allied them-selves with Washington, Panama's rulers
interpreted U.S. interests to mean putting down any populist movement that smacked of
social-ism. They also supported the CIA and NSA in anti-Communist ac-tivities throughout the
hemisphere, and they helped big American businesses like Rockefeller's Standard Oil and
United Fruit Company (which was purchased by George H. W. Bush). These governments
apparently did not feel that U.S. interests were promoted by im-proving the lives of people who
lived in dire poverty or served as virtual slaves to the big plantations and corporations.
Panama's ruling families were well rewarded for their support; U.S. military forces intervened on
their behalf a dozen times between the declaration of Panamanian independence and 1968.
However, that year, while I was still a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador, the course of
Panamanian history suddenly changed. A coup overthrew Arnulfo Arias, the latest in the parade
of dictators, and Omar Torrijos emerged as the head of state, although he had not actively
partici-pated in the coup.2
Torrijos was highly regarded by the Panamanian middle and lower classes. He himself had
grown up in the rural city of Santiago,
58
Panama's President and Hero
59
where his parents taught school. He had risen quickly through the ranks of the National Guard,
Panama's primary military unit and an institution that during the 1960s gained increasing support
among the poor. Torrijos earned a reputation for listening to the dispos-sessed. He walked the
streets of their shantytowns, held meetings in slums politicians didn't dare to enter, helped the
unemployed find jobs, and often donated his own limited financial resources to fam-ilies stricken
by illness or tragedy.3
His love of life and his compassion for people reached even beyond Panama's borders. Torrijos
was committed to turning his nation into a haven for fugitives from persecution, a place that
would offer asylum to refugees from both sides of the political fence, from leftist opponents of
Chile's Pinochet to right-wing anti-Castro guerrillas. Many people saw him as an agent of peace,
a perception that earned him praise throughout the hemisphere. He also devel-oped a reputation
as a leader who was dedicated to resolving differ-ences among the various factions that were
tearing apart so many Latin American countries: Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua,
Cuba, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay. His small nation of two million people
served as a model of social reform and an inspiration for world leaders as diverse as the labor
organizers who plotted the dismemberment of the Soviet Union and Islamic militants like
Muammar Gadhafi of Libya.4
My first night in Panama, stopped at the traffic light, peering past the noisy windshield wipers, I
was moved by this man smiling down at me from the billboard—handsome, charismatic, and
courageous. I knew from my hours at the BPL that he stood behind his beliefs. For the first time
in its history, Panama was not a puppet of Wash-ington or of anyone else. Torrijos never
succumbed to the tempta-tions offered by Moscow or Beijing; he believed in social reform and in
helping those born into poverty, but he did not advocate commu-nism. Unlike Castro, Torrijos
was determined to win freedom from the United States without forging alliances with the United
States' enemies.
I had stumbled across an article in some obscure journal in the BPL racks that praised Torrijos
as a man who would alter the history of the Americas, reversing a long-term trend toward U.S.
domina-tion. The author cited as his starting point Manifest Destiny — the doctrine, popular with
many Americans during the 1840s, that
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the conquest of North America was divinely ordained; that God, not men, had ordered the
destruction of Indians, forests, and buffalo, the draining of swamps and the channeling of rivers,
and the devel-opment of an economy that depends on the continuing exploitation of labor and
natural resources.
The article got me to thinking about my country's attitude toward the world. The Monroe Doctrine,
originally enunciated by President James Monroe in 1823, was used to take Manifest Destiny a
step fur-ther when, in the 1850s and 1860s, it was used to assert that the United States had
special rights all over the hemisphere, including the right to invade any nation in Central or South
America that re-fused to back U.S. policies. Teddy Roosevelt invoked the Monroe Doctrine to
justify U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic, in Venezuela, and during the "liberation" of
Panama from Colombia. A string of subsequent U.S. presidents — most notably Taft, Wilson,
and Franklin Roosevelt — relied on it to expand Washington's Pan-American activities through
the end of World War II. Finally, during the latter half of the twentieth century, the United States
used the Communist threat to justify expansion of this concept to countries around the globe,
including Vietnam and Indonesia.5
Now, it seemed, one man was standing in Washington's way. I knew that he was not the first —
leaders like Castro and Allende had gone before him — but Torrijos alone was doing it outside
the realm of Communist ideology and without claiming that his movement was a revolution. He
was simply saying that Panama had its own rights — to sovereignty over its people, its lands,
and a waterway that bisected it — and that these rights were as valid and as divinely be-stowed
as any enjoyed by the United States.
Torrijos also objected to the School of the Americas and to the U.S. Southern Command's
tropical warfare training center, both lo-cated in the Canal Zone. For years, the United States
armed forces had invited Latin American dictators and presidents to send their sons and military
leaders to these facilities — the largest and best equipped outside North America. There, they
learned interrogation and covert operational skills as well as military tactics that they would use
to fight communism and to protect their own assets and those of the oil companies and other
private corporations. They also had opportunities to bond with the United States' top brass.
These facilities were hated by Latin Americans — except for the
Panama's President and Hero
61
few wealthy ones who benefited from them. They were known to provide schooling for right-wing
death squads and the torturers who had turned so many nations into totalitarian regimes.
Torrijos made it clear that he did not want training centers located in Panama — and that he
considered the Canal Zone to be included within his borders.6
Seeing the handsome general on the billboard, and reading the caption beneath his face —
"Omar's ideal is freedom; the missile is not invented that can kill an ideal!" —I felt a shiver run
down my spine. I had a premonition that the story of Panama in the twentieth century was far
from over, and that Torrijos was in for a difficult and perhaps even tragic time.
The tropical storm battered against the windshield, the traffic light turned green, and the driver
honked his horn at the car ahead of us. I thought about my own position. I had been sent to
Panama to close the deal on what would become MAIN's first truly com-prehensive master
development plan. This plan would create a jus-tification for World Bank, Inter-American
Development Bank, and USAID investment of billions of dollars in the energy, transporta-tion,
and agricultural sectors of this tiny and very crucial country. It was, of course, a subterfuge, a
means of making Panama forever indebted and thereby returning it to its puppet status.
As the taxi started to move through the night, a paroxysm of guilt flashed through me, but I
suppressed it. What did I care? I had taken the plunge in Java, sold my soul, and now I could
create my opportunity of a lifetime. I could become rich, famous, and power-ful in one blow.
CHAPTER 11
Pirates in the Canal Zone
The next day, the Panamanian government sent a man to show me around. His name was Fidel,
and I was immediately drawn to him. He was tall and slim and took an obvious pride in his
country. His great-great-grandfather had fought beside Bolivar to win indepen-dence from Spain.
I told him I was related to Tom Paine, and was thrilled to learn that Fidel had read Common
Sense in Spanish. He spoke English, but when he discovered I was fluent in the language of his
country, he was overcome with emotion.
"Many of your people live here for years and never bother to learn it," he said.
Fidel took me on a drive through an impressively prosperous sector of his city, which he called
the New Panama. As we passed modern glass-and-steel skyscrapers, he explained that
Panama had more in-ternational banks than any other country south of the Rio Grande.
"We're often called the Switzerland of the Americas," he said. "We ask very few questions of our
clients."
Late in the afternoon, with the sun sliding toward the Pacific, we headed out on an avenue that
followed the contours of the bay. A long line of ships was anchored there. I asked Fidel whether
there was a problem with the canal.
"It's always like this," he replied with a laugh. "Lines of them, waiting their turn. Half the traffic is
coming from or going to Japan. More even than the United States."
I confessed that this was news to me.
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63
"I'm not surprised," he said. "North Americans don't know much about the rest of the world."
We stopped at a beautiful park in which bougainvillea crept over ancient ruins. A sign proclaimed
that this was a fort built to protect the city against marauding English pirates. A family was
setting up for an evening picnic: a father, mother, son and daughter, and an elderly man who I
assumed was the children's grandfather. I felt a sudden longing for the tranquility that seemed to
embrace these five people. As we passed them, the couple smiled, waved, and greeted us in
English. I asked if they were tourists, and they laughed. The man came over to us.
"I'm third generation in the Canal Zone," he explained proudly. "My granddad came three years
after it was created. He drove one of the mules, the tractors that hauled ships through the locks."
He pointed at the elderly man, who was preoccupied helping the chil-dren set the picnic table.
"My dad was an engineer and I've followed in his footsteps."
The woman had returned to helping her father-in-law and chil-dren. Beyond them, the sun
dipped into the blue water. It was a scene of idyllic beauty, reminiscent of a Monet painting. I
asked the man if they were U.S. citizens.
He looked at me incredulously. "Of course. The Canal Zone is U.S. territory." The boy ran up to
tell his father that dinner was ready.
"Will your son be the fourth generation?"
The man brought his hands together in a sign of prayer and raised them toward the sky.
"I pray to the good Lord every day that he may have that oppor-tunity. Living in the Zone is a
wonderful life." Then he lowered his hands and stared directly at Fidel. "I just hope we can hold
on to her for another fifty years. That despot Torrijos is making a lot of waves. A dangerous
man."
A sudden urge gripped me, and I said to him, in Spanish, "Adios. I hope you and your family
have a good time here, and learn lots about Panama's culture."
He gave me a disgusted look. "I don't speak their language," he said. Then he turned abruptly
and headed toward his family and the picnic.
Fidel stepped close to me, placed an arm around my shoulders, and squeezed tightly. "Thank
you," he said.
Back in the city, Fidel drove us through an area he described as a slum.
"Not our worst," he said. "But you'll get the flavor."
Wooden shacks and ditches filled with standing water lined the street, the frail homes suggesting
dilapidated boats scuttled in a cesspool. The smell of rot and sewage filled our car as children
with distended bellies ran alongside. When we slowed, they congregated at my side, calling me
uncle and begging for money. It reminded me of Jakarta.
Graffiti covered many of the walls. There were a few of the usual hearts with couples' names
scrawled inside, but most of the graffiti were slogans expressing hatred of the United States: "Go
home, gringo," "Stop shitting in our canal," "Uncle Sam, slave master," and "Tell Nixon that
Panama is not Vietnam." The one that chilled my heart the most, however, read, "Death for
freedom is the way to Christ." Scattered among these were posters of Omar Torrijos.
"Now the other side," Fidel said. "I've got official papers and you're a U.S. citizen, so we can go."
Beneath a magenta sky, he drove us into the Canal Zone. As prepared as I thought I was, it was
not enough. I could hardly believe the opulence of the place — huge white build-ings, manicured
lawns, plush homes, golf courses, stores, and the-aters.
"The facts," he said. "Everything in here is U.S. property. All the businesses—the supermarkets,
barbershops, beauty salons, restau-rants, all of them — are exempt from Panamanian laws and
taxes. There are seven 18-hoIe golf courses, U.S. post offices scattered con-veniently around,
U.S. courts of law and schools. It truly is a country within a country."
"What an affront!"
Fidel peered at me as though making a quick assessment. "Yes," he agreed. "That's a pretty
good word for it. Over there," he pointed back toward the city, "income per capita is less than
one thousand dollars a year, and unemployment rates are 30 percent. Of course, in the little
shantytown we just visited, no one makes close to one thou-sand dollars, and hardly anyone has
a job."
"What's being done?"
He turned and gave me a look that seemed to change from anger to sadness.
"What can we do?" He shook his head. "I don't know, but I'll sav
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Pirates in the Canal Zone
65
this: Torrijos is trying. I think it may be the death of him, but he sure as hell is giving it all he's got.
He's a man who'll go down fighting for his people."
As we headed out of the Canal Zone, Fidel smiled. "You like to dance?" Without waiting for me
to reply, he said, "Let's get some din-ner, and then I'll show you yet another side of Panama."
CHAPTER 12
Soldiers and Prostitutes
After a juicy steak and a cold beer, we left the restaurant and drove down a dark street. Fidel
advised me never to walk in this area. "When you come here, take a cab right to the front door."
He pointed. "Just there, beyond the fence, is the Canal Zone."
He drove on until we arrived at a vacant lot filled with cars. He found an empty spot and parked.
An old man hobbled up to us. Fidel got out and patted him on the back. Then he ran his hand
lov-ingly across the fender of his car.
"Take good care of her. She's my lady." He handed the man a bill.
We took a short footpath out of the parking lot and suddenly found ourselves on a street flooded
with flashing neon lights. Two boys raced past, pointing sticks at each other and making the
sounds of men shooting guns. One slammed into Fidel's legs, his head reaching barely as high
as Fidel's thigh. The little boy stopped and stood back.
"I'm sorry, sir," he gasped in Spanish.
Fidel placed both his hands on the boys shoulders. "No harm done, my man," he said. "But tell
me, what were you and your friend shooting at?"
The other boy came up to us. He placed his arm protectively around the first. "My brother," he
explained. "We're sorry."
"It's okay," Fidel chuckled gently. "He didn't hurt me. I just asked him what you guys were
shooting at. I think I used to play the same game."
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67
The brothers glanced at each other. The older one smiled. "He's the gringo general at the Canal
Zone. He tried to rape our mother and I'm sending him packing, back to where he belongs."
Fidel stole a look at me. "Where does he belong?"
"At home, in the United States."
"Does your mother work here?"
"Over there." Both boys pointed proudly at a neon light down the street. "Bartender."
"Go on then." Fidel handed them each a coin. "But be careful. Stay in the lights."
"Oh yes, sir. Thank you." They raced off.
As we walked on, Fidel explained that Panamanian women were prohibited by law from
prostitution. "They can tend bar and dance, but cannot sell their bodies. That's left to the
imports."
We stepped inside the bar and were blasted with a popular Amer-ican song. My eyes and ears
took a moment to adjust. A couple of burly U.S. soldiers stood near the door; bands around their
uniformed arms identified them as MPs.
Fidel led me along a bar, and then I saw the stage. Three young women were dancing there,
entirely naked except for their heads. One wore a sailor's cap, another a green beret, and the
third a cowboy hat. They had spectacular figures and were laughing. They seemed to be playing
a game with one another, as though dancing in a com-petition. The music, the way they danced,
the stage — it could have been a disco in Boston, except that they were naked.
We pushed our way through a group of young English-speaking men. Although they wore Tshirts and blue jeans, their crew cuts gave them away as soldiers from the Canal Zone's military
base. Fi-del tapped a waitress on the shoulder. She turned, let out a scream of delight, and
threw her arms around him. The group of young men watched this intently, glancing at one
another with disapproval. I wondered if they thought Manifest Destiny included this Panaman-ian
woman. The waitress led us to a corner. From somewhere, she produced a small table and two
chairs.
As we settled in, Fidel exchanged greetings in Spanish with two men at a table beside ours.
Unlike the soldiers, they wore printed short-sleeved shirts and creased slacks. The waitress
returned with a couple of Balboa beers, and Fidel patted her on the rump as she
turned to leave. She smiled and threw him a kiss. I glanced around and was relieved to discover
that the young men at the bar were no longer watching us; they were focused on the dancers.
The majority of the patrons were English-speaking soldiers, but there were others, like the two
beside us, who obviously were Pana-manians. They stood out because their hair would not have
passed inspection, and because they did not wear T-shirts and jeans. A few of them sat at tables,
others leaned against the walls. They seemed to be highly alert, like border collies guarding
flocks of sheep.
Women roamed the tables. They moved constantly, sitting on laps, shouting to the waitresses,
dancing, swirling, singing, taking turns on the stage. They wore tight skirts, T-shirts, jeans,
clinging dresses, high heels. One was dressed in a Victorian gown and veil. Another wore only a
bikini. It was obvious that only the most beautiful could survive here. I marveled at the numbers
who made their way to Pana-ma and wondered at the desperation that had driven them to this.
"All from other countries?" I shouted to Fidel above the music.
He nodded. "Except..." He pointed at the waitresses. "They're Panamanian."
"What countries?"
"Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala."
"Neighbors."
"Not entirely. Costa Rica and Colombia are our closest neighbors."
The waitress who had led us to this table came and sat on Fidel's knee. He gently rubbed her
back.
"Clarissa," he said, "please tell my North American friend why they left their countries." He
nodded his head in the direction of the stage. Three new girls were accepting the hats from the
others, who jumped down and started dressing. The music switched to salsa, and as the
newcomers danced, they shed their clothes to the rhythm.
Clarissa held out her right hand. "I'm pleased to meet you," she said. Then she stood up and
reached for our empty bottles. "In an-swer to Fidel's question, these girls come here to escape
brutality. I'll bring a couple more Balboas."
After she left, I turned to Fidel. "Come on," I said. "They're here for U.S. dollars."
"True. But why so many from the countries where fascist dictators rule?"
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Soldiers and Prostitutes
69
I glanced back at the stage. The three of them were giggling and throwing the sailors cap around
like a ball. I looked Fidel in the eye. "You're not kidding, are you?"
"No," he said seriously, "I wish I were. Most of these girls have lost their families —fathers,
brothers, husbands, boyfriends. They grew up with torture and death. Dancing and prostitution
don't seem all that bad to them. They can make a lot of money here, then start fresh somewhere,
buy a little shop, open a cafe — "
He was interrupted by a commotion near the bar. I saw a waitress swing her fist at one of the
soldiers, who caught her hand and began to twist her wrist. She screamed and fell to her knee.
He laughed and shouted to his buddies. They all laughed. She tried to hit him with her free hand.
He twisted harder. Her face contorted with pain.
The MPs remained by the door, watching calmly. Fidel jumped to his feet and started toward the
bar. One of the men at the table next to ours held out a hand to stop him. "Tranquilo, hermano?
he said. "Be calm, brother. Enrique has control."
A tall, slim Panamanian came out of the shadows near the stage. He moved like a cat and was
upon the soldier in an instant. One hand encircled the man's throat while the other doused him in
the face with a glass of water. The waitress slipped away. Several of the Panamanians who had
been lounging against the walls formed a protective semicircle around the tall bouncer. He lifted
the soldier against the bar and said something I couldn't hear. Then he raised his voice and
spoke slowly in English, loudly enough for everyone in the still room to hear over the music.
"The waitresses are off-limits to you guys, and you don't touch the others until after you pay
them."
The two MPs finally swung into action. They approached the cluster of Panamanians. "We'll take
it from here, Enrique," they said.
The bouncer lowered the soldier to the floor and gave his neck a final squeeze, forcing the
others head back and eliciting a cry of pain.
"Do you understand me?" There was a feeble groan. "Good." He pushed the soldier at the two
MPs. "Get him out of here."
CHAPTER 13
Conversations with the General
The invitation was completely unexpected. One morning during that same 1972 visit, I was
sitting in an office I had been given at the In-stitute de Recursos Hidraulicos y Electrification,
Panama's govern-ment-owned electric utility company. I was poring over a sheet of statistics
when a man knocked gently on the frame of my open door. I invited him in, pleased with any
excuse to take my attention off the numbers. He announced himself as the general's chauffeur
and said he had come to take me to one of the generals bungalows.
An hour later, I was sitting across the table from General Omar Torrijos. He was dressed
casually, in typical Panamanian style: khaki slacks and a short-sleeved shirt buttoned down the
front, light blue with a delicate green pattern. He was tall, fit, and handsome. He seemed
amazingly relaxed for a man with his responsibilities. A lock of dark hair fell over his prominent
forehead.
He asked about my recent travels to Indonesia, Guatemala, and Iran. The three countries
fascinated him, but he seemed especially intrigued with Iran's king, Shah Mohammad Reza
Pahlavi. The shah had come to power in 1941, after the British and Soviets overthrew his father,
whom they accused of collaborating with Hitler.1
"Can you imagine," Torrijos asked, "being part of a plot to dethrone your own father?"
Panama's head of state knew a good deal about the history of this far-off land. We talked about
how the tables were turned on the shah
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71
in 1951, and how his own premier, Mohammad Mossadegh, forced him into exile. Torrijos knew,
as did most of the world, that it had been the CIA that labeled the premier a Communist and that
stepped in to restore the shah to power. However, he did not know—or at least did not
mention—the parts Claudine had shared with me, about Kermit Roosevelt's brilliant maneuvers
and the fact that this had been the beginning of a new era in imperialism, the match that had
ignited the global empire conflagration.
"After the shah was reinstated," Torrijos continued, "he launched a series of revolutionary
programs aimed at developing the indus-trial sector and bringing Iran into the modern era."
I asked him how he happened to know so much about Iran.
"I make it my point," he said. "I don't think too highly of the shah's politics — his willingness to
overthrow his own father and become a CIA puppet—but it looks as though he's doing good
things for his country. Perhaps I can learn something from him. If he survives."
"You think he won't?"
"He has powerful enemies."
"And some of the world's best bodyguards."
Torrijos gave me a sardonic look. "His secret police, SAVAK, have the reputation of being
ruthless thugs. That doesn't win many friends. He won't last much longer." He paused, then
rolled his eyes. "Body-guards? I have a few myself." He waved at the door. "You think they'll
save my life if your country decides to get rid of me?"
I asked whether he truly saw that as a possibility.
He raised his eyebrows in a manner that made me feel foolish for asking such a question. "We
have the Canal. That's a lot bigger than Arbenz and United Fruit."
I had researched Guatemala, and I understood Torrijos's mean-ing. United Fruit Company had
been that country's political equiva-lent of Panama's canal. Founded in the late 1800s, United
Fruit soon grew into one of the most powerful forces in Central America. Dur-ing the early 1950s,
reform candidate Jacobo Arbenz was elected president of Guatemala in an election hailed all
over the hemisphere as a model of the democratic process. At the time, less than 3 percent of
Guatemalans owned 70 percent of the land. Arbenz promised to help the poor dig their way out
of starvation, and after his election he implemented a comprehensive land reform program.
"The poor and middle classes throughout Latin America ap-
plauded Arbenz," Torrijos said. "Personally, he was one of my heroes. But we also held our
breath. We knew that United Fruit opposed these measures, since they were one of the largest
and most oppres-sive landholders in Guatemala. They also owned big plantations in Colombia,
Costa Rica, Cuba, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Santo Domingo, and here in Panama. They couldn't
afford to let Arbenz give the rest of us ideas."
I knew the rest: United Fruit had launched a major public rela-tions campaign in the United
States, aimed at convincing the Amer-ican public and congress that Arbenz was part of a
Russian plot and that Guatemala was a Soviet satellite. In 1954, the CIA orchestrated a coup.
American pilots bombed Guatemala City and the democrat-ically elected Arbenz was overthrown,
replaced by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, a ruthless right-wing dictator.
The new government owed everything to United Fruit. By way of thanks, the government
reversed the land reform process, abolished taxes on the interest and dividends paid to foreign
investors, elimi-nated the secret ballot, and jailed thousands of its critics. Anyone who dared to
speak out against Castillo was persecuted. Historians trace the violence and terrorism that
plagued Guatemala for most of the rest of the century to the not-so-secret alliance between
United Fruit, the CIA, and the Guatemalan army under its colonel dictator.2
"Arbenz was assassinated," Torrijos continued. "Political and character assassination." He
paused and frowned. "How could your people swallow that CIA rubbish? I won't go so easily.
The military here are my people. Political assassination won't do." He smiled.
"The CIA itself will have to kill me!"
We sat in silence for a few moments, each lost in his own thoughts. Torrijos was the first to
speak.
"Do you know who owns United Fruit?" he asked.
"Zapata Oil, George Bush's company—our UN ambassador." I said.
"A man with ambitions." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "And now I'm up against his
cronies at Bechtel."
This startled me. Bechtel was the world's most powerful engi-neering firm and a frequent
collaborator on projects with MAIN. In the case of Panama's master plan, I had assumed that
they were one of our major competitors.
"What do you mean?"
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Conversations with the General
73
understand that most of those men believed they were doing the right thing. Like Charlie, they
were convinced that communism and terrorism were evil forces — rather than the predictable
reactions to decisions they and their predecessors had made — and that they had a duty to their
country, to their offspring, and to God to convert the world to capitalism. They also clung to the
principle of survival of the fittest; if they happened to enjoy the good fortune to have been born
into a privileged class instead of inside a cardboard shack, then they saw it as an obligation to
pass this heritage on to their progeny.
I vacillated between viewing such people as an actual conspiracy and simply seeing them as a
tight-knit fraternity bent on dominating the world. Nonetheless, over time I began to liken them to
the plan-tation owners of the pre-Civil War South. They were men drawn together in a loose
association by common beliefs and shared self-interest, rather than an exclusive group meeting
in clandestine hideaways with focused and sinister intent. The plantation autocrats had grown up
with servants and slaves, had been educated to believe that it was their right and even their duty
to take care of the "hea-thens" and to convert them to the owners' religion and way of life. Even
if slavery repulsed them philosophically, they could, like Thomas Jefferson, justify it as a
necessity, the collapse of which would result in social and economic chaos. The leaders of the
modern oligarchies, what I now thought of as the corporatocracy, seemed to fit the same mold.
I also began to wonder who benefits from war and the mass pro-duction of weapons, from the
damming of rivers and the destruction of indigenous environments and cultures. I began to look
at who benefits when hundreds of thousands of people die from insufficient food, polluted water,
or curable diseases. Slowly, I came to realize that in the long run no one benefits, but in the
short term those at the top of the pyramid -— my bosses and me — appear to benefit, at least
materially.
This raised several other questions: Why does this situation persist? Why has it endured for so
long? Does the answer lie simply in the old adage that "might is right," that those with the power
perpetuate the system?
It seemed insufficient to say that power alone allows this situation to persist. While the
proposition that might makes right explained a great deal, I felt there must be a more compelling
force at work here.
I recalled an economics professor from my business school days, a man from northern India,
who lectured about limited resources, about man's need to grow continually, and about the
principle of slave labor. According to this professor, all successful capitalist systems involve
hierarchies with rigid chains of command, including a handful at the very top who control
descending orders of subordinates, and a mas-sive army of workers at the bottom, who in
relative economic terms truly can be classified as slaves. Ultimately, then, I became convinced
that we encourage this system because the corporatocracy has con-vinced us that God has
given us the right to place a few of our peo-ple at the very top of this capitalist pyramid and to
export our system to the entire world.
Of course, we are not the first to do this. The list of practitioners stretches back to the ancient
empires of North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, and works its way up through Persia, Greece,
Rome, the Christian Crusades, and all the European empire builders of the post-Columbian era.
This imperialist drive has been and continues to be the cause of most wars, pollution, starvation,
species extinc-tions, and genocides. And it has always taken a serious toll on the conscience
and well-being of the citizens of those empires, contribut-ing to social malaise and resulting in a
situation where the wealthiest cultures in human history are plagued with the highest rates of
suicide, drug abuse, and violence.
I thought extensively on these questions, but I avoided consider-ing the nature of my own role in
all of this. I tried to think of myself not as an EHM but as a chief economist. It sounded so very
legiti-mate, and if I needed any confirmation, I could look at my pay stubs: all were from MAIN, a
private corporation. I didn't earn a penny from the NSA or any government agency. And so I
became con-vinced. Almost.
One afternoon Bruno called me into his office. He walked behind my chair and patted me on the
shoulder. "You've done an excellent job," he purred. "To show our appreciation, we're giving you
the op-portunity of a lifetime, something few men ever receive, even at twice your age."
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Opportunity of a Lifetime
57
CHAPTER 14
Entering a New and Sinister Period in Economic History
As chief economist, I not only was in charge of a department at MAIN and responsible for the
studies we carried out around the globe, but I also was expected to be conversant with current
eco-nomic trends and theories. The early 1970s were a time of major shifts in international
economics.
During the 1960s, a group of countries had formed OPEC, the cartel of oil-producing nations,
largely in response to the power of the big refining companies. Iran was also a major factor.
Even though the shah owed his position and possibly his life to the United States' clandestine
intervention during the Mossadegh struggle — or per-haps because of that fact —the shah was
acutely aware that the tables could be turned on him at anytime. The heads of state of other
petroleum-rich nations shared this awareness and the paranoia that accompanied it. They also
knew that the major international oil companies, known as "The Seven Sisters," were
collaborating to hold down petroleum prices — and thus the revenues they paid to the
pro-ducing countries — as a means of reaping their own windfall profits. OPEC was organized in
order to strike back.
This all came to a head in the early 1970s, when OPEC brought the industrial giants to their
knees. A series of concerted actions, ending with a 1973 oil embargo symbolized by long lines at
U.S. gas stations, threatened to bring on an economic catastrophe rivaling the Great Depression.
It was a systemic shock to the developed
world economy, and of a magnitude that few people could begin to comprehend.
The oil crisis could not have come at a worse time for the United States. It was a confused
nation, full of fear and self-doubt, reeling from a humiliating war in Vietnam and a president who
was about to resign. Nixon's problems were not limited to Southeast Asia and Watergate. He
had stepped up to the plate during an era that, in ret-rospect, would be understood as the
threshold of a new epoch in world politics and economics. In those days, it seemed that the "little
guys," including the OPEC countries, were getting the upper hand.
I was fascinated by world events. My bread was buttered by the corporatocracy, yet some secret
side of me enjoyed watching my masters being put in their places. I suppose it assuaged my
guilt a bit. I saw the shadow of Thomas Paine standing on the sidelines, cheering OPEC on.
None of us could have been aware of the full impact of the em-bargo at the time it was
happening. We certainly had our theories, but we could not understand what has since become
clear. In hind-sight, we know that economic growth rates after the oil crisis were about half those
prevailing in the 1950s and 1960s, and that they have taken place against much greater
inflationary pressure. The growth that did occur was structurally different and did not create
nearly as many jobs, so unemployment soared. To top it all off, the international monetary
system took a blow; the network of fixed exchange rates, which had prevailed since the end of
World War II, essentially collapsed.
During that time, I frequently got together with friends to discuss these matters over lunch or
over beers after work. Some of these peo-ple worked for me — my staff included very smart
men and women, mostly young, who for the most part were freethinkers, at least by conventional
standards. Others were executives at Boston think tanks or professors at local colleges, and one
was an assistant to a state congressman. These were informal meetings, sometimes attended
by as few as two of us, while others might include a dozen partici-pants. The sessions were
always lively and raucous.
When I look back at those discussions, I am embarrassed by the sense of superiority I often felt.
I knew things I could not share. My friends sometimes flaunted their credentials — connections
on Beacon
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Entering a New and Sinister Period in Economic History
77
Hill or in Washington, professorships and PhDs — and I would an-swer this in my role as chief
economist of a major consulting firm, who traveled around the world first class. Yet, I could not
discuss my private meetings with men like Torrijos, or the things I knew about the ways we were
manipulating countries on every continent. It was both a source of inner arrogance and a
frustration.
When we talked about the power of the little guys, I had to exer-cise a great deal of restraint. I
knew what none of them could possibly know, that the corporatocracy, its band of EHMs, and
the jackals waiting in the background would never allow the little guys to gain control. I only had
to draw upon the examples of Arbenz and Mossadegh — and more recently, upon the 1973 CIA
overthrow of Chile s democratically elected president, Salvador Allende. In fact, I understood
that the stranglehold of global empire was growing stronger, despite OPEC — or, as I suspected
at the time but did not confirm until later, with OPEC's help.
Our conversations often focused on the similarities between the early 1970s and the 1930s. The
latter represented a major watershed in the international economy and in the way it was studied,
analyzed, and perceived. That decade opened the door to Keynesian economics and to the idea
that government should play a major role in manag-ing markets and providing sendees such as
health, unemployment compensation, and other forms of welfare. We were moving away from
old assumptions that markets were self-regulating and that the state's intervention should be
minimal.
The Depression resulted in the New Deal and in policies that pro-moted economic regulation,
governmental financial manipulation, and the extensive application of fiscal policy. In addition,
both the Depression and World War II led to the creation of organizations like the World Bank,
the IMF, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The 1960s was a pivotal
decade in this period and in the shift from neoclassic to Keynesian economics. It happened
under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and perhaps the most important single
influence was one man, Robert McNamara.
McNamara was a frequent visitor to our discussion groups — in absentia, of course. We all knew
about his meteoric rise to fame, from manager of planning and financial analysis at Ford Motor
Company in 1949 to Ford's president in I960, the first company
head selected from outside the Ford family. Shortly after that, Kennedy appointed him secretary
of defense.
McNamara became a strong advocate of a Keynesian approach to government, using
mathematical models and statistical approaches to determine troop levels, allocation of funds,
and other strategies in Vietnam. His advocacy of "aggressive leadership" became a hallmark not
only of government managers but also of corporate executives. It formed the basis of a new
philosophical approach to teaching man-agement at the nation's top business schools, and it
ultimately led to a new breed of CEOs who would spearhead the rush to global empire.1
As we sat around the table discussing world events, we were es-pecially fascinated by
McNamara's role as president of the World Bank, a job he accepted soon after leaving his post
as secretary of de-fense. Most of my friends focused on the fact that he symbolized what was
popularly known as the military-industrial complex. He had held the top position in a major
corporation, in a government cabinet, and now at the most powerful bank in the world. Such an
apparent breach in the separation of powers horrified many of them; I may have been the only
one among us who was not in the least surprised.
I see now that Robert McNamara's greatest and most sinister contribution to history was to
jockey the World Bank into becoming an agent of global empire on a scale never before
witnessed. He also set a precedent. His ability to bridge the gaps between the primary
components of the corporatocracy would be fine-tuned by his suc-cessors. For instance, George
Shultz was secretary of the treasury and chairman of the Council on Economic Policy under
Nixon, served as Bechtel president, and then became secretary' of state under Reagan. Caspar
Weinberger was a Bechtel vice president and general council, and later the secretary of defense
under Reagan. Richard Helms was Johnson's CIA director and then became ambassador to Iran
under Nixon. Richard Cheney served as secretary of defense under George H. W. Bush, as
Halliburton president, and as U.S. vice president to George W. Bush. Even a president of the
United States, George H. W. Bush, began as founder of Zapata Petroleum Corp, served as U.S.
ambassador to the U.N. under presidents Nixon and Ford, and was Ford's CIA director.
Looking back, I am struck by the innocence of those days. In many respects, we were still
caught up in the old approaches to empire
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Entering a New and Sinister Period in Economic History
79
building. Kermit Roosevelt had shown us a better way when he over-threw an Iranian democrat
and replaced him with a despotic king. We EHMs were accomplishing many of our objectives in
places like Indonesia and Ecuador, and yet Vietnam was a stunning example of how easily we
could slip back into old patterns.
It would take the leading member of OPEC, Saudi Arabia, to change that.
CHAPTER 15
The Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair
In 1974, a diplomat from Saudi Arabia showed me photos of Riyadh, the capital of his country.
Included in these photos was a herd of goats rummaging among piles of refuse outside a
government build-ing. When I asked the diplomat about them, his response shocked me. He told
me that they were the city's main garbage disposal system.
"No self-respecting Saudi would ever collect trash," he said. "We leave it to the beasts."
Goats! In the capital of the world's greatest oil kingdom. It seemed unbelievable.
At the time, I was one of a group of consultants just beginning to try to piece together a solution
to the oil crisis. Those goats led me to an understanding of how that solution might evolve,
especially given the country's pattern of development over the previous three centuries.
Saudi Arabia's history is full of violence and religious fanaticism. In the eighteenth century,
Mohammed ibn Saud, a local warlord, joined forces with fundamentalists from the
ultraconservative Wah-habi sect. It was a powerful union, and during the next two hundred years
the Saud family and their Wahhabi allies conquered most of the Arabian Peninsula, including
Islam's holiest sites, Mecca and Medina.
Saudi society reflected the puritanical idealism of its founders, and a strict interpretation of
Koranic beliefs was enforced. Religious police ensured adherence to the mandate to pray five
times a day.
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Women were required to cover themselves from head to toe. Pun-ishment for criminals was
severe; public executions and stonings were common. During my first visit to Riyadh, I was
amazed when my driver told me I could leave my camera, briefcase, and even my wallet in plain
sight inside our car, parked near the open market, without locking it.
"No one," he said, "would think of stealing here. Thieves have their hands cut off."
Later that day, he asked me if I would like to visit so-called Chop Chop Square and watch a
beheading. Wahhabism's adherence to what we would consider extreme puritanism made the
streets safe from thieves — and demanded the harshest form of corporal pun-ishment for those
who violated the laws. I declined the imitation.
The Saudi view of religion as an important element of politics and economics contributed to the
oil embargo that shook the Western world. On October 6,1973 (Yom Kippur, the holiest of
Jewish holi-days), Egypt and Syria launched simultaneous attacks on Israel. It was the
beginning of the October War — the fourth and most destructive of the Arab-Israeli wars, and
the one that would have the greatest impact on the world. Egypt's President Sadat pressured
Saudi Ara-bia's King Faisal to retaliate against the United States' complicity with Israel by
employing what Sadat referred to as "the oil weapon." On October 16, Iran and the five Arab
Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, announced a 70 percent increase in the posted price of oil.
Meeting in Kuwait City, Arab oil ministers pondered further op-tions. The Iraqi representative
was vehemently in favor of targeting the United States. He called on the other delegates to
nationalize American businesses in the Arab world, to impose a total oil embargo on the United
States and on all other nations friendly to Israel, and to withdraw Arab funds from every
American bank. He pointed out that Arab bank accounts were substantial and that this action
could result in a panic not unlike that of 1929.
Other Arab ministers were reluctant to agree to such a radical plan, but on October 17 they did
decide to move forward with a more limited embargo, which would begin with a 5 percent cut in
pro-duction and then impose an additional 5 percent reduction every month until their political
objectives were met. They agreed that the United States should be punished for its pro-Israeli
stance and should therefore have the most severe embargo levied against it.
Several of the countries attending the meeting announced that they would implement cutbacks
of 10 percent, rather than 5 percent.
On October 19, President Nixon asked Congress for $2.2 billion in aid to Israel. The next day,
Saudi Arabia and other Arab produc-ers imposed a total embargo on oil shipments to the United
States.1
The oil embargo ended on March 18,1974. Its duration was short, its impact immense. The
selling price of Saudi oil leaped from SI.39 a barrel on January 1,1970, to $8.32 on January
1,1974.2 Politicians and future administrations would never forget the lessons learned during the
early- to mid-1970s. In the long run, the trauma of those few months served to strengthen the
corporatocracy; its three pillars — big corporations, international banks, and government —
bonded as never before. That bond would endure.
The embargo also resulted in significant attitude and policy changes. It convinced Wall Street
and Washington that such an em-bargo could never again be tolerated. Protecting our oil
supplies had always been a priority; after 1973, it became an obsession. The em-bargo elevated
Saudi Arabia's status as a player in world politics and forced Washington to recognize the
kingdom's strategic importance to our own economy. Furthermore, it encouraged U.S.
corporatoc-racy leaders to search desperately for methods to funnel petrodollars back to
America, and to ponder the fact that the Saudi government lacked the administrative and
institutional frameworks to properly manage its mushrooming wealth.
For Saudi Arabia, the additional oil income resulting from the price hikes was a mixed blessing. It
filled the national coffers with billions of dollars; however, it also served to undermine some of
the strict religious beliefs of the Wahhabis. Wealthy Saudis traveled around the world. They
attended schools and universities in Europe and the United States. They bought fancy cars and
furnished their houses with Western-style goods. Conservative religious beliefs were replaced by
a new form of materialism — and it was this materialism that presented a solution to fears of
future oil crises.
Almost immediately after the embargo ended, Washington began negotiating with the Saudis,
offering them technical support, military hardware and training, and an opportunity to bring their
nation into the twentieth century, in exchange for petrodollars and, most impor-tantly,
assurances that there would never again be another oil embargo. The negotiations resulted in
the creation of a most extraordinary
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83
organization, the United States-Saudi Arabian Joint Economic Com-mission. Known as JECOR,
it embodied an innovative concept that was the opposite of traditional foreign aid programs: it
relied on Saudi money to hire American firms to build up Saudi Arabia.
Although overall management and fiscal responsibility were delegated to the U.S. Department of
the Treasury, this commission was independent to the extreme. Ultimately, it would spend
billions of dollars over a period of more than twenty-five years, with virtually no congressional
oversight. Because no U.S. funding was involved, Congress had no authority in the matter,
despite Treasury's role. After studying JECOR extensively, David Holden and Richard Johns
con-clude, "It was the most far-reaching agreement of its kind ever concluded by the U.S. with a
developing country. It had the potential to entrench the U.S. deeply in the Kingdom, fortifying the
concept of mutual interdependence."3
The Department of the Treasury brought MAIN in at an early stage to serve as an adviser. I was
summoned and told that my job would be critical, and that everything I did and learned should be
considered highly confidential. From my vantage point, it seemed like a clandestine operation. At
the time, I was led to believe that MAIN was the lead consultant in that process; I subsequently
came to realize that we were one of several consultants whose ex-pertise was sought.
Since everything was done in the greatest secrecy, I was not privy to Treasury's discussions
with other consultants, and I therefore cannot be certain about the importance of my role in this
precedent-setting deal. I do know that the arrangement established new stan-dards for EHMs
and that it launched innovative alternatives to the traditional approaches for advancing the
interests of empire. I also know that most of the scenarios that evolved from my studies were
ultimately implemented, that MAIN was rewarded with one of the first major —and extremely
profitable — contracts in Saudi Arabia, and that I received a large bonus that year.
My job was to develop forecasts of what might happen in Saudi Arabia if vast amounts of money
were invested in its infrastructure, and to map out scenarios for spending that money. In short, I
was asked to apply as much creativity as I could to justifying the infusion of hundreds of millions
of dollars into the Saudi Arabian economy, un-der conditions that would include U.S. engineering
and construction
companies. I was told to do this on my own, not to rely on my staff, and I was sequestered in a
small conference room several floors above the one where my department was located. I was
warned that my job was both a matter of national security and potentially very lu-crative for MAIN.
I understood, of course, that the primary objective here was not the usual—to burden this
country with debts it could never repay— but rather to find ways that would assure that a large
portion of petrodollars found their way back to the United States. In the process, Saudi Arabia
would be drawn in, its economy would become increas-ingly intertwined with and dependent
upon ours, and presumably it would grow more Westernized and therefore more sympathetic
with and integrated into our system.
Once I got started, I realized that the goats wandering the streets of Riyadh were the symbolic
key; they were a sore point among Saudis jet-setting around the world. Those goats begged to
be replaced by something more appropriate for this desert kingdom that craved entry into the
modern world. I also knew that OPEC economists were stressing the need for oil-rich countries
to obtain more value-added products from their petroleum. Rather than simply exporting crude
oil, the economists were urging these countries to develop in-dustries of their own, to use this oil
to produce petroleum-based products they could sell to the rest of the world at a higher price
than that brought by the crude itself.
This twin realization opened the door to a strategy I felt certain would be a win-win situation for
everyone. The goats, of course, were merely an entry point. Oil revenues could be employed to
hire U.S. companies to replace the goats with the world's most modern garbage collection and
disposal system, and the Saudis could take great pride in this state-of-the-art technology.
I came to think of the goats as one side of an equation that could be applied to most of the
kingdom's economic sectors, a formula for success in the eyes of the royal family, the U.S.
Department of the Treasury, and my bosses at MAIN. Under this formula, money would be
earmarked to create an industrial sector focused on transforming raw petroleum into finished
products for export. Large petrochem-ical complexes would rise from the desert, and around
them, huge industrial parks. Naturally, such a plan would also require the con-struction of
thousands of megawatts of electrical generating capacity,
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85
transmission and distribution lines, highways, pipelines, communi-cations networks, and
transportation systems, including new airports, improved seaports, a vast array of service
industries, and the infra-structure essential to keep all these cogs turning.
We all had high expectations that this plan would evolve into a model of how things should be
done in the rest of the world. Globe-trotting Saudis would sing our praises; they would invite
leaders from many countries to come to Saudi Arabia and witness the miracles we had
accomplished; those leaders would then call on us to help them devise similar plans for their
countries and — in most cases, for countries outside the ring of OPEC — would arrange World
Bank or other debt-ridden methods for financing them. The global empire would be well served.
As I worked through these ideas, I thought of the goats, and the words of my driver often echoed
in my ears: "No self-respecting Saudi would ever collect trash." I had heard that refrain
repeatedly, in many different contexts. It was obvious that the Saudis had no intention of putting
their own people to work at menial tasks, whether as laborers in industrial facilities or in the
actual construc-tion of any of the projects. In the first place, there were too few of them. In
addition, the royal House of Saud had indicated a commit-ment to providing its citizens with a
level of education and a lifestyle that were inconsistent with those of manual laborers. The
Saudis might manage others, but they had no desire or motivation to become factory and
construction workers. Therefore, it would be necessary to import a labor force from other
countries — countries where labor was cheap and where people needed work. If possible, the
labor should come from other Middle Eastern or Islamic coun-tries, such as Egypt, Palestine,
Pakistan, and Yemen.
This prospect created an even greater new stratagem for devel-opment opportunities. Mammoth
housing complexes would have to be constructed for these laborers, as would shopping malls,
hospitals, fire and police department facilities, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical,
communications, and transportation networks — in fact, the end result would be to create
modern cities where once only deserts had existed. Here, too, was the opportunity to explore
emerging technologies in, for example, desalinization plants, micro-wave systems, health care
complexes, and computer technologies.
Saudi Arabia was a planner's dream come true, and also a fantasy
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realized for anyone associated with the engineering and construc-tion business. It presented an
economic opportunity unrivaled by any other in history: an underdeveloped country with virtually
un-limited financial resources and a desire to enter the modern age in a big way, very quickly.
I must admit that I enjoyed this job immensely. There was no solid data available in Saudi Arabia,
in the Boston Public Library, or anywhere else that justified the use of econometric models in this
context. In fact, the magnitude of the job — the total and immediate transformation of an entire
nation on a scale never before witnessed — meant that even had historical data existed, it would
have been irrelevant.
Nor was anyone expecting this type of quantitative analysis, at least not at this stage of the
game. I simply put my imagination to work and wrote reports that envisioned a glorious future for
the kingdom. I had rule-of-thumb numbers I could use to estimate such things as the
approximate cost to produce a megawatt of electricity, a mile of road, or adequate water,
sewage, housing, food, and public services for one laborer. I was not supposed to refine these
estimates or to draw final conclusions. My job was simply to describe a series of plans (more
accurately, perhaps, "visions") of what might be possible, and to arrive at rough estimates of the
costs associated with them.
I always kept in mind the true objectives: maximizing payouts to U.S. firms and making Saudi
Arabia increasingly dependent on the United States. It did not take long to realize how closely
the two went together; almost all the newly developed projects would require continual
upgrading and servicing, and they were so highly technical as to assure that the companies that
originally developed them would have to maintain and modernize them. In fact, as I moved
forward with my work, I began to assemble two lists for each of the projects I envisioned: one for
the types of design-and-construction contracts we could expect, and another for long-term
service and management agreements. MAIN, Bechtel, Brown & Root, Halliburton, Stone &
Webster, and many other U.S. engineers and contractors would profit handsomely for decades
to come.
Beyond the purely economic, there was another twist that would render Saudi Arabia dependent
on us, though in a very different way. The modernization of this oil-rich kingdom would trigger
adverse reactions. For instance, conservative Muslims would be furious; Israel
The Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair
87
and other neighboring countries would feel threatened. The eco-nomic development of this
nation was likely to spawn the growth of another industry: protecting the Arabian Peninsula.
Private compa-nies specializing in such activities, as well as the U.S. military and defense
industry, could expect generous contracts — and, once again, long-term service and
management agreements. Their presence would require another phase of engineering and
construction proj-ects, including airports, missile sites, personnel bases, and all of the
infrastructure associated with such facilities.
I sent my reports in sealed envelopes through interoffice mail, ad-dressed to "Treasury
Department Project Manager." I occasionally met with a couple of other members of our team—
vice presidents at MAIN and my superiors. Sincawe had no official name for this proj-ect, which
was still in the research and development phase and was not yet part of JECOR, we referred to
it only —and with hushed voices — as SAMA. Ostensibly, this stood for Saudi Arabian Moneylaundering Affair, but it was also a tongue-in-cheek play on words; the kingdom's central bank
was called the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, or SAMA.
Sometimes a Treasury representative would join us. I asked few questions during these
meetings. Mainly, I just described my work, responded to their comments, and agreed to try to
do whatever was asked of me. The vice presidents and Treasury representatives were
especially impressed with my ideas about the long-term service and management agreements. It
prodded one of the vice presidents to coin a phrase we often used after that, referring to the
kingdom as "the cow we can milk until the sun sets on our retirement." For me, that phrase
always conjured images of goats rather than cows.
It was during those meetings that I came to realize that several of our competitors were involved
in similar tasks, and that in the end we all expected to be awarded lucrative contracts as a result
of our efforts. I assumed that MAIN and the other firms were footing the bill for this preliminary
work, taking a short-term risk in order to throw our hats into the ring. This assumption was
reinforced by the fact that the number I charged my time to on our daily personal time sheets
appeared to be a general and administrative overhead ac-count. Such an approach was typical
of the research and develop-ment/proposal preparation phase of most projects. In this case, the
initial investment certainly far exceeded the norm, but those vice presidents seemed extremely
confident about the payback.
Despite the knowledge that our competitors were also involved, we all assumed that there was
enough work to go around. I also had been in the business long enough to believe that the
rewards be-stowed would reflect the level of Treasury's acceptance of the work we had done,
and that those consultants who came up with the ap-proaches that were finally implemented
would receive the choicest contracts. I took it as a personal challenge to create scenarios that
would make it to the design-and-construct stage. My star was al-ready rising rapidly at MAIN.
Being a key player in SAMA would guarantee its acceleration, if we were successful.
During our meetings, we also openly discussed the likelihood that SAMA and the entire JECOR
operation would set new precedents. It represented an innovative approach to creating lucrative
work in countries that did not need to incur debts through the international banks. Iran and Iraq
came immediately to mind as two additional examples of such countries. Moreover, given
human nature, we felt that the leaders of such countries would likely be motivated to try to
emulate Saudi Arabia. There seemed little doubt that the 1973 oil embargo—which had initially
appeared to be so negative — would end up offering many unexpected gifts to the engineering
and construction business, and would help to further pave the road to global empire.
I worked on that visionary phase for about eight months — although never for more than several
intense days at a time — sequestered in my private conference room or in my apartment
overlooking Boston Common. My staff all had other assignments and pretty much took care of
themselves, although I checked in on them periodically. Over time, the secrecy around our work
declined. More people became aware that something big involving Saudi Arabia was going on.
Ex-citement swelled, rumors swirled. The vice presidents and Treasury representatives grew
more open — in part, I believe, because they themselves became privy to more information as
details about the ingenious scheme emerged.
Under this evolving plan, Washington wanted the Saudis to guarantee to maintain oil supplies
and prices at levels that could fluctuate but that would always remain acceptable to the United
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The Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair
89
States and our allies. If other countries such as Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, or Venezuela threatened
embargoes, Saudi Arabia, with its vast pe-troleum supplies, would step in to fill the gap; simply
the knowledge that they might do so would, in the long run, discourage other coun-tries from
even considering an embargo. In exchange for this guar-antee, Washington would offer the
House of Saud an amazingly attractive deal: a commitment to provide total and unequivocal U.S.
political and —if necessary — military support, thereby ensuring their continued existence as the
rulers of their country.
It was a deal the House of Saud could hardly refuse, given its ge-ographic location, lack of
military might, and general vulnerability to neighbors like Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Israel. Naturally,
therefore, Washington used its advantage to impose one other critical condi-tion, a condition that
redefined the role of EHMs in the world and served as a model we would later attempt to apply
in other countries, most notably in Iraq. In retrospect, I sometimes find it difficult to understand
how Saudi Arabia could have accepted this condition. Certainly, most of the rest of the Arab
world, OPEC, and other Is-lamic countries were appalled when they discovered the terms of the
deal and the manner in which the royal house capitulated to Wash-ington's demands.
The condition was that Saudi Arabia would use its petrodollars to purchase U.S. government
securities; in turn, the interest earned by these securities would be spent by the U.S. Department
of the Trea-sury in ways that enabled Saudi Arabia to emerge from a medieval society into the
modern, industrialized world. In other words, the interest compounding on billions of dollars of
the kingdom's oil in-come would be used to pay U.S. companies to fulfill the vision I (and
presumably some of my competitors) had come up with, to convert Saudi Arabia into a modern
industrial power. Our own U.S. De-partment of the Treasury would hire us, at Saudi expense, to
build infrastructure projects and even entire cities throughout the Arabian Peninsula.
Although the Saudis reserved the right to provide input regarding the general nature of these
projects, the reality was that an elite corps of foreigners (mostly infidels, in the eyes of Muslims)
would determine the future appearance and economic makeup of the Ara-bian Peninsula. And
this would occur in a kingdom founded on con-servative Wahhabi principles and run according to
those principles
90 Part tf: 1971-1975
for several centuries. It seemed a huge leap of faith on their part, yet under the circumstances,
and due to the political and military pres-sures undoubtedly brought to bear by Washington, I
suspected the Saud family felt they had few alternatives.
From our perspective, the prospects for immense profits seemed limitless. It was a sweetheart
deal with potential to set an amazing precedent. And to make the deal even sweeter, no one had
to obtain congressional approval — a process loathed by corporations, particu-larly privately
owned ones like Bechtel and MAIN, which prefer not to open their books or share their secrets
with anyone. Thomas W. Lippman, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and a for-mer
journalist, eloquently summarizes the salient points of this deal:
The Saudis, rolling in cash, would deliver hundreds of millions of dollars to Treasury, which held
on to the funds until they were needed to pay vendors or employees. This system assured that
the Saudi money would be recycled back into the American economy... It also ensured that the
commission's managers could undertake whatever projects they and the Saudis agreed were
useful without having to justify them to Congress.4
Establishing the parameters for this historic undertaking took less time than anyone could have
imagined. After that, however, we had to figure out a way to implement it. To set the process in
motion, someone at the highest level of government was dispatched to Saudi Arabia — an
extremely confidential mission. I never knew for sure, but I believe the envoy was Henry
Kissinger.
Whoever the envoy was, his first job was to remind the royal family about what had happened in
neighboring Iran when Mossadegh tried to oust British petroleum interests. Next, he would
outline a plan that would be too attractive for them to turn down, in effect conveying to the
Saudis that they had few alternatives. I have no doubt that they wrere left with the distinct
impression that they could either accept our offer and thus gain assurances that we would
sup-port and protect them as rulers, or they could refuse — and go the way of Mossadegh.
When the envoy returned to Washington, he brought with him the message that the Saudis
would like to comply.
There was just one slight obstacle. We would have to convince key
The Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair 91
players in the Saudi government. This, we were informed, was a family matter. Saudi Arabia was
not a democracy, and yet it seemed that within the House of Saud there was a need for
consensus.
In 1975, I was assigned to one of those key players. I always thought of him as Prince W.,
although I never determined that he was actually a crown prince. My job was to persuade him
that the Saudi Arabia Money-laundering Affair would benefit his country as well as him
personally.
This was not as easy as it appeared at first. Prince W. professed himself a good Wahhabi and
insisted that he did not want to see his country follow in the footsteps of Western commercialism.
He also claimed that he understood the insidious nature of what we were proposing. We had, he
said, the same objectives as the crusaders a millennium earlier: the Christianization of the Arab
world. In fact, he was partially right about this. In my opinion, the difference be-tween the
crusaders and us was a matter of degree. Europe's medieval Catholics claimed their goal was to
save Muslims from purgatory; we claimed that we wanted to help the Saudis modernize. In truth,
I believe the crusaders, like the corporatocracy, were primarily seeking to expand their empire.
Religious beliefs aside, Prince W had one weakness — for beautiful blonds. It seems almost
ludicrous to mention what has now become an unfair stereotype, and I should mention that
Prince W. was the only man among many Saudis I have known who had this proclivity, or at
least the only one who was willing to let me see it. Yet, it played a role in structuring this historic
deal, and it demonstrates how far I would go to complete my mission.
CHAPTER 16
Pimping, and Financing Osama bin Laden
From the start, Prince W. let me know that whenever he came to visit me in Boston he expected
to be entertained by a woman of his liking, and that he expected her to perform more functions
than those of a simple escort. But he most definitely did not want a professional call girl,
someone he or his family members might bump into on the street or at a cocktail party. My
meetings with Prince W. were held in secret, which made it easier for me to comply with his
wishes.
"Sally" was a beautiful blue-eyed blond woman who lived in the Boston area. Her husband, a
United Airlines pilot who traveled a great deal both on and off the job, made little attempt to hide
his infideli-ties. Sally had a cavalier attitude about her husband's activities. She appreciated his
salary, the plush Boston condo, and the benefits a pilot's spouse enjoyed in those days. A
decade earlier, she had been a hippie who had become accustomed to promiscuous sex, and
she found the idea of a secret source of income attractive. She agreed to give Prince W. a try,
on one condition: she insisted that the future of their relationship depended entirely upon his
behavior and attitude toward her.
Fortunately for me, each met the other's criteria.
The Prince W.-Sally Affair, a subchapter of the Saudi Arabia Money-laundering Affair, created its
own set of problems for me. MAIN strictly prohibited its partners from doing anything illicit. From
a legal standpoint, I was procuring sex — pimping — an illegal activity in Massachusetts, and so
the main problem was figuring out
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Part II: 1971-1975
93
how to pay for Sally's services. Luckily, the accounting department allowed me great liberties
with my expense account. I was a good tipper, and I managed to persuade waiters in some of
the most posh restaurants in Boston to provide me with blank receipts; it was an era when
people, not computers, filled out receipts.
Prince W. grew bolder as time went by. Eventually, he wanted me to arrange for Sally to come
and live in his private cottage in Saudi Arabia. This was not an unheard-of request in those days;
there was an active trade in young women between certain European countries and the Middle
East. These women were given contracts for some specified period of time, and when the
contract expired they went home to very substantial bank accounts. Robert Baer, a case officer
in the CIA's directorate of operations for twenty years, and a spe-cialist in the Middle East, sums
it up: "In the early 1970s, when the petrodollars started flooding in, enterprising Lebanese began
smug-gling hookers into the kingdom for the princes... Since no one in the royal family knows
how to balance a checkbook, the Lebanese be-came fabulously wealthy."1
I was familiar with this situation and even knew people who could arrange such contracts.
However, for me, there were two major obstacles: Sally and the payment. I was certain Sally
was not about to leave Boston and move to a desert mansion in the Middle East. It was also
pretty obvious that no collection of blank restaurant re-ceipts would cover this expense.
Prince W. took care of the latter concern by assuring me that he expected to pay for his new
mistress himself; I was only required to make the arrangements. It also gave me great relief
when he went on to confide that the Saudi Arabian Sally did not have to be the exact same
person as the one who had kept him company in the United States. I made calls to several
friends who had Lebanese contacts in London and Amsterdam. Within a couple of weeks, a
surrogate Sally signed a contract.
Prince W. was a complex person. Sally satisfied a corporeal desire, and my ability to help the
prince in this regard earned me his trust. However, it by no means convinced him that SAMA
was a strategy he wanted to recommend for his country. I had to work very hard to win my case.
I spent many hours showing him statistics and helping him analyze studies we had undertaken
for other countries, including the econometric models I had developed for Kuwait while training
with Claudine, during those first few months before heading to In-donesia. Eventually he
relented.
I am not familiar with the details of what went on between my fellow EHMs and the other key
Saudi players. All I know is that the entire package was finally approved by the royal family.
MAIN was rewarded for its part with one of the first highly lucrative contracts, administered by
the U.S. Department of the Treasury. We were com-missioned to make a complete survey of the
country's disorganized and outmoded electrical system and to design a new one that would
meet standards equivalent to those in the United States.
As usual, it was my job to send in the first team, to develop eco-nomic and electric load
forecasts for each region of the country. Three of the men who worked for me — all experienced
in interna-tional projects — were preparing to leave for Riyadh when word came down from our
legal department that under the terms of the con-tract we were obligated to have a fully
equipped office up and running in Riyadh within the next few weeks. This clause had ap-parently
gone unnoticed for over a month. Our agreement with Treasury further stipulated that all
equipment had to be manufac-tured either in the United States or in Saudi Arabia. Since Saudi
Arabia did not have factories for producing such items, everything had to be sent from the States.
To our chagrin, we discovered that long lines of tankers were queued up, waiting to get into
ports on the Arabian Peninsula. It could take many months to get a shipment of supplies into the
kingdom.
MAIN was not about to lose such a valuable contract over a couple of rooms of office furniture.
At a conference of all the partners in-volved, we brainstormed for several hours. The solution we
settled on was to charter a Boeing 747, fill it with supplies from Boston-area stores, and send it
off to Saudi Arabia. I remember thinking that it would be fitting if the plane were owned by United
Airlines and commanded by a certain pilot whose wife had played such a critical role in bringing
the House of Saud around.
The deal between the United States and Saudi Arabia transformed the kingdom practically
overnight. The goats were replaced by two
94
Part II: 1971-1975
Pimping, and Financing Osama bin Laden
95
hundred bright yellow American trash compactor trucks, provided under a $200 million contract
with Waste Management, Inc.2 In similar fashion, even' sector of the Saudi economy was
modernized, from agriculture and energy to education and communications. As Thomas
Lippman observed in 2003:
Americans have reshaped a vast, bleak landscape of nomads' tents and farmers' mud huts in
their own image, right down to Starbucks on the corner and the wheelchair-accessible ramps in
the newest public buildings. Saudi Arabia today is a country of expressways, computers, airconditioned malls filled with the same glossy shops found in prosperous American suburbs,
elegant hotels, fast-food restaurants, satellite television, up-to-date hospitals, high-rise office
towers, and amusement parks featuring whirling rides.3
The plans we conceived in 1974 set a standard for future negoti-ations with oil-rich countries. In
a way, SAMA/JECOR was the next plateau after the one Kermit Roosevelt had established in
Iran. It introduced an innovative level of sophistication to the arsenal of political-economic
weapons used by a new breed of soldiers for global empire.
The Saudi Arabia Money-laundering Affair and the Joint Com-mission also set new precedents
for international jurisprudence. This was very evident in the case of Idi Amin. When the notorious
Ugan-dan dictator went into exile in 1979, he was given asylum in Saudi Arabia. Although he
was considered a murderous despot responsible for the deaths of between one hundred
thousand and three hundred thousand people, he retired to a life of luxury, complete with cars
and domestic servants provided by the House of Saud. The United States quietly objected but
refused to press the issue for fear of un-dermining its arrangement with the Saudis. Amin whiled
away his last years fishing and taking strolls on the beach. In 2003, he died in Jiddah,
succumbing to kidney failure at the age of eighty.4
More subtle and ultimately much more damaging was the role Saudi Arabia was allowed to play
in financing international terror-ism. The United States made no secret of its desire to have the
House of Saud bankroll Osama bin Laden's Afghan war against the Soviet
96
Part II; 1971-1975
Union during the 1980s, and Riyadh and Washington together con-tributed an estimated S'3.5
billion to the mujahideen.5 However, U.S. and Saudi participation went far beyond this.
In late 2003, U.S. News & World Report conducted an exhaustive study titled, "The Saudi
Connection." The magazine reviewed thou-sands of pages of court records, U.S. and foreign
intelligence reports, and other documents, and interviewed dozens of government offi-cials and
experts on terrorism and the Middle East. Its findings include the following:
The evidence was indisputable: Saudi Arabia, America's longtime ally and the world's largest oil
producer, had somehow become, as a senior Treasury Department official put it, "the epicenter"
of terrorist financing...
Starting in the late 1980s — after the dual shocks of the Iranian revolution and the Soviet war in
Afghanistan — Saudi Arabia's quasi-official charities became the pri-mary source of funds for
the fast-growing jihad movement. In some 20 countries the money was used to run para-military
training camps, purchase weapons, and recruit new members...
Saudi largess encouraged U.S. officials to look the other way, some veteran intelligence officers
say. Billions of dollars in contracts, grants, and salaries have gone to a broad range of former
U.S. officials who had dealt with the Saudis: ambassadors, CIA station chiefs, even cabinet
secretaries...
Electronic intercepts of conversations implicated members of the royal family in backing not only
Al Qaeda but also other terrorist groups.6
After the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Penta-gon, more evidence emerged
about the covert relationships between Washington and Riyadh. In October 2003, Vanity Fair
magazine disclosed information that had not previously been made public, in an in-depth report
titled, "Saving the Saudis." The story that emerged about the relationship between the Bush
family, the House of Saud, and the bin Laden family did not surprise me. I knew that those
re-lationships went back at least to the time of the Saudi Arabian
Pimping, and Financing Osama bin Laden
y7
Money-laundering Affair, which began in 1974, and to George H. W. Bush's terms as U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations (from 1971 to 1973) and then as head of the CIA (from 1976
to 1977). What sur-prised me was the fact that the truth had finally made the press. Vanity Fair
concluded:
The Bush family and the House of Saud, the two most powerful dynasties in the world, have had
close personal, business, and political ties for more than 20 years...
In the private sector, the Saudis supported Harken Energy, a struggling oil company in which
George W. Bush was an investor. Most recently, former president George H. W. Bush and his
longtime ally, former Secre-tary of State James A. Baker III, have appeared before Saudis at
fundraisers for the Carlyle Group, arguably the biggest private equity firm in the world. Today,
former president Bush continues to serve as a senior adviser to the firm, whose investors
allegedly include a Saudi accused of ties to terrorist support groups...
Just days after 9/11, wealthy Saudi Arabians, includ-ing members of the bin Laden family, were
whisked out of the U.S. on private jets. No one will admit to clearing the flights, and the
passengers weren't questioned. Did the Bush family's long relationship with the Saudis help
make it happen?7
PART III: 1975-1981
CHAPTER 17
Panama Canal Negotiations and Graham Greene
Saudi Arabia made many careers. Mine was already well on the way, but my successes in the
desert kingdom certainly opened new doors for me. By 1977,1 bad built a small empire that
included a staff of around twenty professionals headquartered in our Boston office, and a stable
of consultants from MAIN's other departments and of-fices scattered across the globe. I had
become the youngest partner in the firm's hundred-year history. In addition to my title of Chief
Economist, I was named manager of Economics and Regional Plan-ning. I was lecturing at
Harvard and other venues, and newspapers were soliciting articles from me about current
events.1 I owned a sailing yacht that was docked in Boston Harbor next to the historic battleship
Constitution, "Old Ironsides," renowned for subduing the Barbary pirates not long after the
Revolutionary War. I was being paid an excellent salary and I had equity that promised to
elevate me to the rarified heights of millionaire well before I turned forty. True, my marriage had
fallen apart, but I was spending time with beauti-ful and fascinating women on several continents.
Bruno came up with an idea for an innovative approach to fore-casting: an econometric model
based on the writings of a turn-of-the-century Russian mathematician. The model involved
assigning subjective probabilities to predictions that certain specific sectors of an economy
would grow. It seemed an ideal tool to justify the in-flated rates of increase we liked to show in
order to obtain large loans, and Bruno asked me to see what I could do with the concept.
101
I brought a young MIT mathematician, Dr. Nadipuram Prasad, into my department and gave him
a budget. Within six months he developed the Markov method for econometric modeling.
Together we hammered out a series of technical papers that presented Markov as a
revolutionary method for forecasting the impact of in-frastructure investment on economic
development.
It was exactly what we wanted: a tool that scientifically "proved" we were doing countries a favor
by helping them incur debts they would never be able to pay off. In addition, only a highly skilled
econo-metrician with lots of time and money could possibly comprehend the intricacies of
Markov or question its conclusions. The papers were published by several prestigious
organizations, and we formally pre-sented them at conferences and universities in a number of
countries. The papers — and we — became famous throughout the industry.2
Omar Torrijos and I honored our secret agreement. I made sure our studies were honest and
that our recommendations took into ac-count the poor. Although I heard grumbling that my
forecasts in Panama were not up to their usual inflated standards, and even that they smacked
of socialism, the fact was that MAIN kept winning contracts from the Torrijos government. These
contracts included a first—to provide innovative master plans that involved agriculture along with
the more traditional infrastructure sectors. I also watched from the sidelines as Torrijos and
Jimmy Carter set out to renegoti-ate the Canal Treaty.
The Canal negotiations generated great interest and great pas-sions around the world. People
everywhere waited to see whether the United States would do what most of the rest of the world
be-lieved was the right thing — allow the Panamanians to take control — or would instead try to
reestablish our global version of Manifest Destiny, which had been shaken by our Vietnam
debacle. For many, it appeared that a reasonable and compassionate man had been elected to
the U.S. presidency at just the right time. However, the conservative bastions of Washington and
the pulpits of the religious right rang with indignation. How could we give up this bulwark of
national defense, this symbol of U.S. ingenuity, this ribbon of water that tied South America's
fortunes to the whims of U.S. commercial interests?
During my trips to Panama, I became accustomed to staying at
the Hotel Continental. However, on my fifth visit I moved across the street to the Hotel Panama
because the Continental was undergoing renovations and the construction was very noisy. At
first, I resented the inconvenience — the Continental had been my home away from home. But
now the expansive lobby where I sat, with its rattan chairs and paddle-bladed wooden ceiling
fans, was growing on me. It could have been the set of Casablanca, and I fantasized that
Humphrey Bogart might stroll in at any moment. I set down the copy of the New York Review of
Books, in which I had just finished reading a Graham Greene article about Panama, and stared
up at those fans, recalling an evening almost two years earlier.
"Ford is a weak president who won't be reelected," Omar Torrijos predicted in 1975. He was
speaking to a group of influential Pana-manians. I was one of the few foreigners who had been
invited to the elegant old club with its whirring ceiling fans. "That's the reason I decided to
accelerate this Canal issue. It's a good time to launch an all-out political battle to win it back."
The speech inspired me. I returned to my hotel room and scratched out a letter that I eventually
mailed to the Boston Globe. Back in Boston, an editor responded by calling me at my office to
request that I write an Op-Ed piece. "Colonialism in Panama Has No Place in 1975" took up
nearly half the page opposite the editorials in the September 19,1975, edition.
The article cited three specific reasons for transferring the Canal to Panama. First, "the present
situation is unjust — a good reason for any decision." Second, "the existing treaty creates far
graver security-risks than would result from turning more control over to the Pana-manians." I
referenced a study conducted by the Interoceanic Canal Commission, which concluded that
"traffic could be halted for two years by a bomb planted — conceivably by one man — in the
side of Gatun Dam," a point General Torrijos himself had publicly em-phasized. And third, "the
present situation is creating serious prob-lems for already-troubled United States-Latin American
relations." I ended with the following:
The best way of assuring the continued and efficient op-eration of the Canal is to help
Panamanians gain control over and responsibility for it. In so doing, we could take
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Part III: 1975-1981
Panama Canal Negotiations and Graham Greene
103
pride in initiating an action that would reaffirm commit-ments to the cause of self-determination
to which we pledged ourselves 200 years ago...
Colonialism was in vogue at the turn of the century (early 1900s) as it had been in 1775.
Perhaps ratification of such a treaty can be understood in the context of those times. Today it is
without justification. Colonialism has no place in 1975. We, celebrating our bicentennial, should
realize this, and act accordingly.3
Writing that piece was a bold move on my part, especially since I had recently been made a
partner at MAIN. Partners were expected to avoid the press and certainly to refrain from
publishing political diatribes on the editorial pages of New England's most prestigious
newspaper. I received through interoffice mail a pile of nasty, mostly anonymous notes stapled
to copies of the article. I was certain that I recognized the handwriting on one as that of Charlie
Illingworth. My first project manager had been at MAIN for over ten years (com-pared to less
than five for me) and was not yet a partner. A fierce skull and crossbones figured prominently on
the note, and its mes-sage was simple: "Is this Commie really a partner in our firm?"
Bruno summoned me to his office and said, "You'll get loads of grief over thi- MAIN's a pretty
conservative place. But I want you to know I think you're smart. Torrijos will love it; I do hope
you're sending him a copy. Good. Well, these jokers here in this office, the ones who think
Torrijos is a Socialist, really won't give a damn as long as the work flows in."
Bruno had been right — as usual. Now it was 1977, Carter was in the White House, and serious
Canal negotiations were under way. Many of MAIN's competitors had taken the wrong side and
had been turned out of Panama, but our work had multiplied. And I was sitting in the lobby of the
Hotel Panama, having just finished read-ing an article by Graham Greene in the New York
Review of Books.
The article, "The Country with Five Frontiers," was a gutsy piece that included a discussion of
corruption among senior officers in Panama's National Guard, The author pointed out that the
general himself admitted to giving many of his staff special privileges, such as superior housing,
because "If I don't pay them, the CIA will." The clear implication was that the U.S. intelligence
community was
104 Part III: 1975-1981
determined to undermine the wishes of President Carter and, if nec-essary, would bribe
Panama's military chiefs into sabotaging the treaty negotiations.4 I could not help but wonder if
the jackals had begun to circle Torrijos.
I had seen a photograph in the "People" section of TIME or Newsweek of Torrijos and Greene
sitting together; the caption indi-cated that the writer was a special guest who had become a
good friend. I wondered how the general felt about this novelist, whom he apparently trusted,
writing such a critique.
Graham Greene's article raised another question, one that related to that day in 1972 when I
had sat across a coffee table from Torrijos. At the time, I had assumed that Torrijos knew the
foreign aid game was there to make him rich while shackling his country with debt. I had been
sure he knew that the process was based on the assump-tion that men in power are corruptible,
and that his decision not to seek personal benefit—but rather to use foreign aid to truly help his
people — would be seen as a threat that might eventually topple the entire system. The world
was watching this man; his actions had ramifications that reached far beyond Panama and
would therefore not be taken lightly.
I had wondered how the corporatocracy would react if loans made to Panama helped the poor
without contributing to impossible debts. Now I wondered whether Torrijos regretted the deal he
and I had struck that day— and I wasn't quite sure how I felt about those deals myself. I had
stepped back from my EHM role. I had played his game instead of mine, accepting his
insistence on honesty in ex-change for more contracts. In purely economic terms, it had been a
wise business decision for MAIN. Nonetheless, it had been incon-sistent with what Claudine had
instilled in me; it was not advancing the global empire. Had it now unleashed the jackals?
I recalled thinking, when I left Torrijos's bungalow that day, that Latin American history is littered
with dead heroes. A system based on corrupting public figures does not take kindly to public
figures who refuse to be corrupted.
Then I thought my eyes were playing tricks. A familiar figure was walking slowly across the lobby.
At first, I was so confused that I be-lieved it was Humphrey Bogart, but Bogart was long
deceased. Then I recognized the man ambling past me as one of the great figures in modern
English literature, author of The Pride and the Glory, The
Panama Canal Negotiations and Graham Greene
105
Comedians, Our Man in Havana, and of the article I had just set down on the table next to me.
Graham Greene hesitated a moment, peered around, and headed for the coffee shop.
I was tempted to call out or to run after him, but I stopped my-self. An inner voice said he
needed his privacy; another warned that he would shun me. I picked up the New York Review of
Books and was surprised a moment later to discover that I was standing in the doorway to the
coffee shop.
I had breakfasted earlier that morning, and the maitre d' gave me an odd look. I glanced around.
Graham Greene sat alone at a table near the wall. I pointed to the table beside him.
"Over there," I told the maitre d'. "Can I sit there for another breakfast?"
I was always a good tipper; the maitre d' smiled knowingly and led me to the table.
The novelist was absorbed in his newspaper. I ordered coffee and a croissant with honey. I
wanted to discover Greene's thoughts about Panama, Torrijos, and the Canal affair, but had no
idea how to initi-ate such a conversation. Then he looked up to take a sip from his glass.
"Excuse me," I said.
He glared at me — or so it seemed. "Yes?"
"I hate to intrude. But you are Graham Greene, aren't you?"
"Why, yes indeed." He smiled warmly. "Most people in Panama don't recognize me."
I gushed that he was my favorite novelist, and then gave him a brief life history, including my
work at MAIN and my meetings with Torrijos. He asked if I was the consultant v.rho had written
an article about the United States getting out of Panama. "In the Boston Globe, if I recall
correctly."
I was flabbergasted.
"A courageous thing to do, given your position," he said. "Won't you join me?"
I moved to his table and sat there with him for what must have been an hour and a half. I
realized as we chatted how very close to Torrijos he had grown. He spoke of the general at
times like a father speaking about his son.
"The general," he said, "invited me to write a book about his coun-try. I'm doing just that. This
one will be nonfiction — something a bit off the line for me."
I asked him why he usually wrote novels instead of nonfiction.
"Fiction is safer," he said. "Most of my subject matter is contro-versial. Vietnam. Haiti. The
Mexican Revolution. A lot of publishers would be afraid to publish nonfiction about these
matters." He pointed at the New York Review of Books, where it lay on the table I had vacated.
"Words like those can cause a great deal of damage." Then he smiled. "Besides, I like to write
fiction. It gives me much greater freedom." He looked at me intensely. "The important thing is to
write about things that matter. Like your Globe article about the Canal."
His admiration for Torrijos was obvious. It seemed that Panama's head of state could impress a
novelist every bit as much as he im-pressed the poor and dispossessed. Equally obvious was
Greene's concern for his friend's life.
"It's a huge endeavor," he exclaimed, "taking on the Giant of the North." He shook his head
sadly. "I fear for his safety."
Then it was time for him to leave.
"Must catch a flight to France " he said, rising slowly and shaking my hand. He peered into my
eyes. "Why don't you write a book?" He gave me an encouraging nod. "It's in you. But remember,
make it about things that matter." He turned and walked away. Then he stopped and came back
a few steps into the restaurant.
"Don't worry," he said. "The general will prevail. He'll get the Canal back."
Torrijos did get it back. In that same year, 1977, he successfully-negotiated new treaties with
President Carter that transferred the Canal Zone and the Canal itself over to Panamanian
control. Then the White House had to convince the U.S. Congress to ratify it. A long and
arduous battle ensued. In the final tally, the Canal Treaty was ratified by a single vote.
Conservatives swore revenge.
When Graham Greene's nonfiction book Getting to Know the Gen-eral came out many years
later, it was dedicated, "To the friends of my friend, Omar Torrijos, in Nicaragua, El Salvador,
and Panama."5
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Panama Canal Negotiations and Graham Greene
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CHAPTER 18
Iran's King of Kings
Between 1975 and 1978,1 frequently visited Iran. Sometimes I com-muted between Latin
America or Indonesia and Tehran. The Shah of Shahs (literally, "King of Kings," his official title)
presented a com-pletely different situation from that in the other countries where we worked.
Iran was oil rich and, like Saudi Arabia, it did not need to incur debt in order to finance its
ambitious list of projects. However, Iran differed significantly from Saudi Arabia in that its large
population, while predominantly Middle Eastern and Muslim, was not Arabic. In addition, the
country had a history of political turmoil — both in-ternally and in its relationships with its
neighbors. Therefore, we took a different approach: Washington and the business communityjoined forces to turn the shah into a symbol of progress.
We launched an immense effort to show the world what a strong, democratic friend of U.S.
corporate and political interests could ac-complish. Never mind his obviously undemocratic title
or the less obvious fact of the CIA-orchestrated coup against his democratically elected premier;
Washington and its European partners were de-termined to present the shah's government as
an alternative to those in Iraq, Libya, China, Korea, and other nations where a powerful
undercurrent of anti-Americanism was surfacing.
To all appearances, the shah was a progressive friend of the under-privileged. In 1962, he
ordered large private landholdings broken up and turned over to peasant owners. The following
year, he inaugurated
his White Revolution, which involved an extensive agenda for socio-economic reforms. The
power of OPEC grew during the 1970s, and the shah became an increasingly influential world
leader. At the same time, Iran developed one of the most powerful military forces in the Muslim
Middle East.1
MAIN was involved in projects that covered most of the country, from tourist areas along the
Caspian Sea in the north to secret mil-itary installations overlooking the Straits of Hormuz in the
south. Once again, the focus of our work was to forecast regional develop-ment potentials and
then to design electrical generating, transmis-sion, and distribution systems that would provide
the all-important energy required to fuel the industrial and commercial growth that would realize
these forecasts.
I visited most of the major regions of Iran at one time or another. I followed the old caravan trail
through the desert mountains, from Kirman to Bandar Abbas, and I roamed the ruins of
Persepolis, the legendary palace of ancient kings and one of the wonders of the clas-sical world.
I toured the country's most famous and spectacular sites: Shiraz, Isfahan, and the magnificent
tent city near Persepolis where the shah had been crowned. In the process, I developed a
genuine love for this land and its complex people.
On the surface, Iran seemed to be a model example of Christian-Muslim cooperation. However, I
soon learned that tranquil appear-ances may mask deep resentment.
Late one evening in 1977, I returned to my hotel room to find a note shoved under my door. I
was shocked to discover that it was signed by a man named Yamin. I had never met him, but he
had been described to me during a government briefing as a famous and most subversive
radical. In beautifully crafted English script, the note invited me to meet him at a designated
restaurant. However, there was a warning: I was to come only if I was interested in ex-ploring a
side of Iran that most people "in my position" never saw. I wondered whether Yamin knew what
my true position was. I real-ized that I was taking a big risk; however, I could not resist the
temptation to meet this enigmatic figure.
My taxi dropped me off in front of a tiny gate in a high wall — so high that I could not see the
building behind it. A beautiful Iranian woman wearing a long black gown ushered me in and led
me down a corridor illuminated by ornate oil lamps hanging from a low ceiling.
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Iran's King of Kings
109
At the end of this corridor, we entered a room that dazzled like the interior of a diamond, blinding
me with its radiance. When my eyes finally adjusted, I saw that the walls were inlaid with
semiprecious stones and mother-of-pearl. The restaurant was lighted by tall white candles
protruding from intricately sculpted bronze chandeliers.
A tall man with long black hair, wearing a tailored navy blue suit, approached and shook my
hand. He introduced himself as Yamin, in an accent that suggested he was an Iranian who had
been educated in the British school system, and I was immediately struck by how little he looked
like a subversive radical. He directed me past several tables where couples sat quietly eating, to
a very private alcove; he assured me we could talk in complete confidentiality. I had the dis-tinct
impression that this restaurant catered to secret rendezvous. Ours, quite possibly, was the only
non-amorous one that night.
Yamin was very cordial. During our discussion, it became obvious that he thought of me merely
as an economic consultant, not as someone with ulterior motives. He explained that he had
singled me out because he knew I had been a Peace Corps volunteer and be-cause he had
been told that I took every possible opportunity to get to know his country and to mix with its
people.
"You are very young compared to most in your profession," he said. "You have a genuine
interest in our history and our current problems. You represent our hope."
This, as well as the setting, his appearance, and the presence of so many others in the
restaurant, gave me a certain degree of comfort. I had become accustomed to people
befriending me, like Rasy in Java and Fidel in Panama, and I accepted it as a compliment and
an opportunity. I knew that I stood out from other Americans because I was in fact infatuated
with the places I visited. I have found that people warm to you very quickly if you open your eyes,
ears, and heart to their culture.
Yamin asked if I knew about the Flowering Desert project.2 "The shah believes that our deserts
were once fertile plains and lush forests. At least, that's what he claims. During Alexander the
Great's reign, according to this theory, vast armies swept across these lands, traveling with
millions of goats and sheep. The animals ate all the grass and other vegetation. The
disappearance of these plants caused a drought, and eventually the entire region became a
desert. Now all we have to do, or so the shah says, is plant millions upon millions of
trees. After that — presto — the rains will return and the desert will bloom again. Of course, in
the process we will have to spend hun-dreds of millions of dollars." He smiled condescendingly.
"Companies like yours will reap huge profits."
"I take it you don't believe in this theory."
"The desert is a symbol. Turning it green is about much more than agriculture."
Several waiters descended upon us with trays of beautifully pre-sented Iranian food. Asking my
permission first, Yamin proceeded to select an assortment from the various trays. Then he
turned back to me.
"A question for you, Mr. Perkins, if I might be so bold. What de-stroyed the cultures of your own
native peoples, the Indians?"
I responded that I felt there had been many factors, including greed and superior weapons.
"Yes. True. All of that. But more than anything else, did it not come down to a destruction of the
environment?" He went on to ex-plain how once forests and animals such as the buffalo are
destroyed, and once people are moved onto reservations, the very foundations of cultures
collapse.
"You see, it is the same here," he said. "The desert is our environ-ment. The Flowering Desert
project threatens nothing less than the destruction of our entire fabric. How can we allow this to
happen?"
I told him that it was my understanding that the whole idea be-hind the project came from his
people. He responded with a cynical laugh, saying that the idea was planted in the shah's mind
by my own United States government, and that the shah was just a puppet of that government.
"A true Persian would never permit such a thing," Yamin said. Then he launched into a long
dissertation about the relationship be-tween his people — the Bedouins — and the desert. He
emphasized the fact that many urbanized Iranians take their vacations in the desert. They set up
tents large enough for the entire family and spend a week or more living in them.
"We — my people — are part of the desert. The people the shah claims to rule with that iron
hand of his are not just of the desert. We are the desert."
After that, he told me stories about his personal experiences in the desert. When the evening
was over, he escorted me back to the
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Iran's King of Kings,
111
tiny door in the large wall. My taxi was waiting in the street outside. Yaroin shook my hand and
expressed his appreciation for the time I had spent with him. He again mentioned my young age
and my openness, and the fact that my occupying such a position gave him hope for the future.
"I am so glad to have had this time with a man like you." He con-tinued to hold my hand in his. "I
would request of you only one more favor. I do not ask this lightly. I do it only because, after our
time together tonight, I know it will be meaningful to you. You'll gain a great deal from it."
"What is it I can do for you?"
"I would like to introduce you to a dear friend of mine, a man who can tell you a great deal about
our King of Kings. He may shock you, but I assure you that meeting him will be well worth your
time."
CHAPTER 19
Confessions of a Tortured Man
Several days later, Yamin drove me out of Tehran, through a dusty and impoverished
shantytown, along an old camel trail, and out to the edge of the desert. With the sun setting
behind the city, he stopped his car at a cluster of tiny mud shacks surrounded by palm trees.
"A very old oasis," he explained, "dating back centuries before Marco Polo." He preceded me to
one of the shacks. "The man inside has a PhD from one of your most prestigious universities.
For rea-sons that will soon be clear, he must remain nameless. You can call him Doc."
He knocked on the wooden door, and there was a muffled re-sponse. Yamin pushed the door
open and led me inside. The tiny room was windowless and lit only by an oil lamp on a low table
in one corner. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that the dirt floor was covered with Persian carpets.
Then the shadowy outline of a man began to emerge. He was seated in front of the lamp in a
way that kept his features hidden. I could tell only that he was bundled in blankets and was
wearing something around his head. He sat in a wheelchair, and other than the table, this was
the only piece of furniture in the room. Yamin motioned for me to sit on a carpet. He went up and
gently embraced the man, speaking a few words in his ear, then re-turned and sat at my side.
"I've told you about Mr. Perkins," he said. "We're both honored to have this opportunity to visit
with you, sir."
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113
"Mr. Perkins. You are welcome." The voice, with barely any de-tectable accent, was low and
hoarse. I found myself leaning forward into the small space between us as he said, "You see
before you a broken man. I have not always been so. Once I was strong like you. I was a close
and trusted adviser to the shah." There was a long pause. "The Shah of Shahs, King of Kings."
His tone of voice sounded, I thought, more sad than angry.
"I personally knew many of the world's leaders. Eisenhower, Nixon, de Gaulle. They trusted me
to help lead this country into the capi-talist camp. The shah trusted me, and," he made a sound
that could have been a cough, but which I took for a laugh, "I trusted the shah. I believed his
rhetoric. I was convinced that Iran would lead the Muslim world into a new epoch, that Persia
would fulfill its promise. It seemed our destiny — the shah's, mine, all of ours who carried out the
mission we thought we had been born to fulfill."
The lump of blankets moved; the wheelchair made a wheezing noise and turned slightly. I could
see the outline of the man's face in profile, his shaggy beard, and —then it grabbed me —the
flatness. He had no nose! I shuddered and stifled a gasp.
"Not a pretty sight, would you say, ah, Mr. Perkins? Too bad you can't see it in full light. It is truly
grotesque." Again there was the sound of choking laughter. "But as I'm sure you can appreciate,
I must remain anonymous. Certainly, you could learn my identity if you tried, although you might
find that I am dead. Officially, I no longer exist. Yet I trust you won't try. You and your family are
better off not knowing who I am. The arm of the shah and SAVAK reaches far."
The chair wheezed and returned to its original position. I felt a sense of relief, as though not
seeing the profile somehow obliterated the violence that had been done. At the time, I did not
know of this custom among some Islamic cultures. Individuals deemed to have brought dishonor
or disgrace upon society or its leaders are pun-ished by having their noses cut off. In this way,
they are marked for life — as this man's face clearly demonstrated.
"I'm sure, Mr. Perkins, you're wondering why we invited you here," Without waiting for my
response, the man in the wheelchair con-tinued, "You see, this man who calls himself the King
of Kings is in reality satanic. His father was deposed by your CIA with — I hate to say it — my
help, because he was said to be a Nazi collaborator. And then there was the Mossadegh
calamity. Today, our shah is on the
route to surpassing Hitler in the realms of evil. He does this with the full knowledge and support
of your government."
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Quite simple. He is your only real ally in the Middle East, and the industrial world rotates on the
axle of oil that is the Middle East. Oh, you have Israel, of course, but that's actually a liability to
you, not an asset. And no oil there. Your politicians must placate the Jew-ish vote, must get their
money to finance campaigns. So you're stuck with Israel, I'm afraid. However, Iran is the key.
Your oil companies — which carry even more power than the Jews — need us. You need our
shah — or you think you do, just as you thought you needed South Vietnam's corrupt leaders."
'Are you suggesting otherwise? Is Iran the equivalent to Vietnam?"
"Potentially much worse. You see, this shah won't last much longer. The Muslim world hates him.
Not just the Arabs, but Mus-lims everywhere — Indonesia, the United States, but mostly right
here, his own Persian people." There was a thumping sound and I realized that he had struck
the side of his chair. "He is evil! We Persians hate him." Then silence. I could hear only his
heavy breath-ing, as though the exertion had exhausted him.
"Doc is very close to the mullahs," Yamin said to me, his voice low and calm. "There is a huge
undercurrent among the religious factions here and it pervades most of our country, except for a
handful of people in the commercial classes who benefit from the shah's capitalism."
"I don't doubt you," I said. "But I must say that during four visits here, I've seen nothing of it.
Everyone I talk with seems to love the shah, to appreciate the economic upsurge."
"You don't speak Farsi," Yamin observed. "You hear only what is told to you by those men who
benefit the most. The ones who have been educated in the States or in England end up working
for the shah. Doc here is an exception — now."
He paused, seeming to ponder his next words. "It's the same with your press. They only talk with
the few who are his kin, his circle. Of course, for the most part, your press is also controlled by
oil. So they hear what they want to hear and write what their advertisers want to read."
"Why are we telling you all this, Mr. Perkins?" Doc's voice was even more hoarse than before,
as if the effort of speaking and the
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Confessions of aTortured Man
115
emotions were draining what little energy the man had mustered for this meeting. "Because we'd
like to convince you to get out and to persuade your company to stay away from our country. We
want to warn you that although you may think you'll make a great deal of money here, it's an
illusion. This government will not last." Again, I heard the sound of his hand thudding against the
chair. "And when it goes, the one that replaces it will have no sympathy for you and your kind."
"You're saying we won't be paid?"
Doc broke down in a fit of coughing. Yamin went to him and rubbed his back. When the
coughing ended, he spoke to Doc in Farsi and then came back to his seat.
"We must end this conversation," Yamin said to me. "In answer to your question: yes, you will
not be paid. You'll do all that work> and when it comes time to collect your fees, the shah will be
gone."
During the drive back, I asked Yamin why he and Doc wanted to spare MAIN the financial
disaster he had predicted.
"We'd be happy to see your company go bankrupt. However, we'd rather see you leave Iran.
Just one company like yours, walking away, could start a trend. That's what we're hoping. You
see, we don't want a bloodbath here, but the shah must go, and we'll try anything that will make
that easier. So we pray to Allah that you'll convince your Mr. Zambotti to get out while there is
still time."
"Why me?"
"I knew during our dinner together, when we spoke of the Flow-ering Desert project, that you
were open to the truth. I knew that our information about you was correct —you are a man
between two worlds, a man in the middle."
It made me wonder just how much he did know about me.
CHAPTER 20
The Fall of a King
One evening in 1978, while I was sitting alone at the luxurious bar off the lobby of the Hotel
Intercontinental in Tehran, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see a heavyset Iranian in a
business suit.
"John Perkins! You don't remember me?"
The former soccer player had gained a lot of weight, but the voice was unmistakable. It was my
old Middlebury friend Farhad, whom I had not seen in more than a decade. We embraced and
sat down together. It quickly became obvious that he knew all about me and about my work. It
was equally obvious that he did not intend to share much about his own work.
"Let's get right to the point," he said as we ordered our second beers. "I'm flying to Rome
tomorrow. My parents live there. I have a ticket for you on my flight. Things are falling apart here.
You've got to get out." He handed me an airline ticket. I did not doubt him for a moment.
In Rome, we dined with Farhad's parents. His father, the retired Iranian general who once
stepped in front of a would-be assassin's bullet to save the shah's life, expressed disillusionment
with his for-mer boss. He said that during the past few years the shah had showed his true
colors, his arrogance and greed. The general blamed U.S. policy — particularly its backing of
Israel, of corrupt leaders, and of despotic governments — for the hatred sweeping the Middle
East, and he predicted that the shah would be gone within months.
"You know," he said, "you sowed the seeds of this rebellion in the
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early fifties, when you overthrew Mossadegh. You thought it very clever back then — as did I.
But now it returns to haunt you — us."1
I was astounded by his pronouncements. I had heard something similar from Yamin and Doc,
but coming from this man it took on new significance. By this time, everyone knew of the
existence of a fundamentalist Islamic underground, but we had convinced our-selves that the
shah was immensely popular among the majority of his people and was therefore politically
invincible. The general, however, was adamant.
"Mark my words," he said solemnly, "the shah's fall will be only the beginning. It's a preview of
where the Muslim world is headed. Our rage has smoldered beneath the sands too long. Soon it
will erupt."
Over dinner, I heard a great deal about Ayatollah Ruhollah Kho-meini. Farhad and his father
made it clear that they did not support his fanatical Shiism, but they were obviously impressed
by the in-roads he had made against the shah. They told me that this cleric, whose given name
translates to "inspired of God," was born into a family of dedicated Shiite scholars in a village
near Tehran, in 1902.
Khomeini had made it a point not to become involved in the Mossadegh-shah struggles of the
early 1950s, but he actively op-posed the shah in the 1960s, criticizing the ruler so adamantly
that he was banished to Turkey, then to the Shiite holy city of An Najaf in Iraq, where he became
the acknowledged leader of the opposition. He sent out letters, articles, and tape-recorded
messages urging Ira-nians to rise up, overthrow the shah, and create a clerical state.
Two days after that dinner with Farhad and his parents, news came out of Iran of bombings and
riots. Ayatollah Khomeini and the mullahs had begun the offensive that would soon give them
control. After that, things happened fast. The rage Farhad's father had de-scribed exploded in a
violent Islamic uprising. The shah fled his country for Egypt in January 1979, and then,
diagnosed with cancer, headed for a New York Hospital.
Followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini demanded his return. In November 1979, a militant Islamic
mob seized the United States Embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two American hostages for the
next 444 days.2 President Carter attempted to negotiate the release of the hostages. When this
failed, he authorized a military rescue mission, launched in April 1980. It was a disaster, and it
turned out
to be the hammer that would drive the final nail into Carter's presi-dential coffin.
Tremendous pressure, exerted by U.S. commercial and political groups, forced the cancerridden shah to leave the United States. From the day he fled Tehran he had a difficult time
finding sanctu-ary; all his former friends shunned him. However, General Torrijos exhibited his
customary compassion and offered the shah asylum in Panama, despite a personal dislike of the
shah's politics. The shah arrived and received sanctuary at the very same resort where the new
Panama Canal Treaty had so recently been negotiated.
The mullahs demanded the shah's return in exchange for the hostages held in the U.S.
Embassy. Those in Washington who had opposed the Canal Treaty accused Torrijos of
corruption and collu-sion with the shah, and of endangering the lives of U.S. citizens. They too
demanded that the shah be turned over to Ayatollah Khomeini. Ironically, until only a few weeks
earlier, many of these same people had been the shah's staunchest supporters. The once-proud
King of Kings eventually returned to Egypt, where he died of cancer.
Doc's prediction came true. MAIN lost millions of dollars in Iran, as did many of our competitors.
Carter lost his bid for reelection. The Reagan-Bush administration marched into Washington with
promises to free the hostages, to bring dowTn the mullahs, to return democracy to Iran, and to
set straight the Panama Canal situation.
For me, the lessons were irrefutable. Iran illustrated beyond any doubt that the United States
was a nation laboring to deny the truth of our role in the world. It seemed incomprehensible that
we could have been so misinformed about the shah and the tide of hatred that had surged
against him. Even those of us in companies like MAIN, which had offices and personnel in the
country, had not known. I felt certain that the NSA and the CIA must have seen what had been
so obvious to Torrijos even as far back as my meeting with him in 1972, but that our own
intelligence community had intentionally encour-aged us all to close our eyes.
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CHAPTER 21
Colombia: Keystone of Latin America
While Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Panama offered fascinating and dis-turbing studies, they also
stood out as exceptions to the rule. Due to vast oil deposits in the first two and the Canal in the
third, they did not fit the norm. Colombia's situation was more typical, and MAIN was the
designer and lead engineering firm on a huge hydroelectric project there.
A Colombian college professor writing a book on the history of Pan-American relations once told
me that Teddy Roosevelt had ap-preciated the significance of his country. Pointing at a map, the
U.S. president and former Rough Rider reportedly described Colombia as "the keystone to the
arch of South America." I have never verified that story; however, it is certainly true that on a
map Colombia, poised at the top of the continent, appears to hold the rest of the continent
together. It connects all the southern countries to the Isth-mus of Panama and therefore to both
Central and North America.
Whether Roosevelt actually described Colombia in those terms or not, he was only one of many
presidents who understood its pivotal position. For nearly two centuries, the United States has
viewed Colombia as a keystone — or perhaps more accurately, as a portal into the southern
hemisphere for both business and politics.
The country also is endowed with great natural beauty: spectac-ular palm-lined beaches on both
the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, ma-jestic mountains, pampas that rival the Great Plains of the
North American Midwest, and vast rain forests rich in biodiversity. The
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people, too, have a special quality, combining the physical, cultural, and artistic traits of diverse
ethnic backgrounds ranging from the local Taironas to imports from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the
Middle East.
Historically, Colombia has played a crucial role in Latin Ameri-can history and culture. During the
colonial period, Colombia was the seat of the viceroy for all Spanish territories north of Peru and
south of Costa Rica. The great fleets of gold galleons set sail from its coastal city- of Cartagena
to transport priceless treasures from as far south as Chile and Argentina to ports in Spain. Many
of the critical actions in the wars for independence occurred in Colombia; tor ex-ample, forces
under Simon Bolivar were victorious over Spanish roy-alists at the pivotal Battle of Boyaca, in
1819.
In modern times, Colombia has had a reputation for producing some of Latin America's most
brilliant writers, artists, philosophers, and other intellectuals, as well as fiscally responsible and
relatively dem-ocratic governments. It became the model for President Kennedy's nationbuilding programs throughout Latin America. Unlike Guate-mala, its government was not
tarnished with the reputation of being a CIA creation, and unlike Nicaragua, the government was
an elected one, which presented an alternative to both right-wing dictators and Communists.
Finally, unlike so many other countries, including powerful Brazil and Argentina, Colombia did
not mistrust the United States. The image of Colombia as a reliable ally has continued, de-spite
the blemish of its drug cartels.1
The glories of Colombia's history, however, are counterbalanced by hatred and violence. The
seat of the Spanish viceroy was also home to the Inquisition. Magnificent forts, haciendas, and
cities were con-structed over the bones of Indian and African slaves. The treasures carried on
the gold galleons, sacred objects and masterpieces of art that had been melted down for easy
transport, were ripped from the hearts of ancient peoples. The proud cultures themselves were
laid to waste by conquistador swords and diseases. More recently, a con-troversial presidential
election in 1945 resulted in a deep division be-tween political parties and led to La Violencia
(1948-1957), during which more than two hundred thousand people died.
Despite the conflicts and ironies, both Washington and Wall Street historically have viewed
Colombia as an essential factor in promoting Pan-American political and commercial interests.
This is due to several factors, in addition to Colombia's critical geographic
Columbia: Keystone of Latin America
121
location, including the perception that leaders throughout the hemi-sphere look to Bogota for
inspiration and guidance, and the fact that the country is both a source of many products
purchased in the United States — coffee, bananas, textiles, emeralds, flowers, oil, and cocaine
— and a market for our goods and services.
One of the most important services we sold to Colombia during the late twentieth century was
engineering and construction ex-pertise. Colombia was typical of many places where I worked. It
was relatively easy to demonstrate that the country could assume vast amounts of debt and then
repay these debts from the benefits real-ized both from the projects themselves and from the
country's nat-ural resources. Thus, huge investments in electrical power grids, highways, and
telecommunications would help Colombia open up its vast gas and oil resources and its largely
undeveloped Amazonian territories; these projects, in turn, would generate the income
nec-essary to pay off the loans, plus interest.
That was the theory. However, the reality, consistent with our true intent around the world, was
to subjugate Bogota, to further the global empire. My job, as it had been in so many places, was
to pre-sent the case for exceedingly large loans. Colombia did not have the benefit of a Torrijos;
therefore, I felt I had no choice but to develop inflated economic and electric load forecasts.
With the exception of the occasional bouts of guilt over my job, Colombia became a personal
refuge for me. Ann and I had spent a couple of months there in the early 1970s, and had even
made a down payment on a small coffee farm located in the mountains along the Caribbean
coast. I think our time together during that period came as close as anything could to healing the
wounds we had inflicted on each other over the preceding years. Ultimately, however, the
wounds went too deep, and it was not until after our marriage fell apart that I became truly
acquainted with the country.
During the 1970s, MAIN had been awarded a number of con-tracts to develop various
infrastructure projects, including a network of hydroelectric facilities and the distribution systems
to transport the electricity from deep in the jungle to cities high in the moun-tains. I was given an
office in the coastal city of Barranquilla, and it was there, in 1977, that I met a beautiful
Colombian woman who would become a powerful agent of change in my life.
Paula had long blond hair and striking green eyes — not what most foreigners expect in a
Colombian. Her mother and father had emigrated from northern Italy, and in keeping with her
heritage, she became a fashion designer. She went a step further, however, and built a small
factory where her creations were transformed into clothes, which she then sold at upscale
boutiques throughout the country, as well as in Panama and Venezuela. She was a deeply
compassionate person who helped me get through some of the personal trauma of my broken
marriage and begin dealing with some of my attitudes to-ward women, which had affected me so
negatively. She also taught me a great deal about the consequences of the actions I took in my
job.
As I have said before, life is composed of a series of coincidences over which we have no
control. For me, those included being raised as the son of a teacher at an all-male prep school in
rural New Hamp-shire, meeting Ann and her Uncle Frank, the Vietnam War, and meeting Einar
Greve. However, once we are presented with such co-incidences, we face choices. How we
respond, the actions we take in the face of coincidences, makes all the difference. For example,
ex-celling at that school, marrying Ann, entering the Peace Corps, and choosing to become an
economic hit man -— all these decisions had brought me to my current place in life.
Paula was another coincidence, and her influence would lead me to take actions that changed
the course of my life. Until I met her, I had pretty much gone along with the system. I often found
myself questioning what I was doing, sometimes feeling guilty about it, yet I always discovered a
way to rationalize staying in the system. Per-haps Paula just happened along at the right time. It
is possible that I would have taken the plunge anyway, that my experiences in Saudi Arabia, Iran,
and Panama would have nudged me into action. But I am certain that even as one woman,
Claudine, had been instru-mental in persuading me to join the ranks of EHMs, another, Paula,
was the catalyst I needed at that time. She convinced me to go deep inside myself and see that I
would never be happy as long as I con-tinued in that role.
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12.3
CHAPTER 22
American Republic versus Global Empire
"I'll be frank," Paula said one day, while we were sitting in a coffee shop. "The Indians and all the
farmers who live along the river you're damming hate you. Even people in the cities, who aren't
directly af-fected, sympathize with the guerrillas who've been attacking your construction camp.
Your government calls these people Communists, terrorists, and narcotics traffickers, but the
truth is they're just people with families who live on lands your company is destroying."
I had just told her about Manuel Torres. He was an engineer em-ployed by MAIN and one of the
men recently attacked by guerrillas at our hydroelectric dam construction site. Manuel was a
Colombian citizen who had a job because of a U.S. Department of State rule pro-hibiting us from
sending U.S. citizens to that site. We referred to it as the Colombians are Expendable doctrine,
and it symbolized an atti-tude I had grown to hate. My feelings toward such policies were making
it increasingly difficult for me to live with myself.
"According to Manuel, they fired AK-47s into the air and at his feet," I told Paula. "He sounded
calm when he told me about it, but I know he was almost hysterical. They didn't shoot anyone.
Just gave them that letter and sent them downriver in their boats."
"My God," Paula exclaimed. "The poor man was terrified."
"Of course he was." I told her that I had asked Manuel whether he thought they were FARC or
M-19, referring to two of the most infa-mous Colombian guerrilla groups.
"And?"
"He said, neither. But he told me that he believes what they said in that letter."
Paula picked up the newspaper I had brought and read the letter aloud.
"'We, who work every day just to survive, swear on the blood of our ancestors that we will never
allow dams across our rivers. We are simple Indians and mestizos, but we would rather die than
stand by as our land is flooded. We warn our Colombian brothers: stop work-ing for the
construction companies.'" She set the paper down. "What did you say to him?"
I hesitated, but only for a moment. "I had no choice. I had to toe the company line. I asked him if
he thought that sounds like a letter a farmer would write."
She sat watching me, patiently.
"He just shrugged." Our eyes met. "Oh, Paula, I detest myself for playing this role."
"What did you do next?" she pressed.
"I slammed my fist on the desk. I intimidated him. I asked him whether farmers with AK-47s
made any sense to him. Then I asked if he knewT who invented the AK-47"
"Did he?"
"Yes, but I could hardly hear his answer. 'A Russian,' he said. Of course, I assured him that he
was right, that the inventor had been a Communist named Kalashnikov, a highly decorated
officer in the Red Army. I brought him around to understand that the people who wrote that note
were Communists."
"Do you believe that?" she asked.
Her question stopped me. How could I answer, honestly? I recalled Iran and the time Yamin
described me as a man caught between two worlds, a man in the middle. In some ways, I
wished I had been in that camp when the guerrillas attacked, or that I was one of the guerrillas.
An odd feeling crept over me, a sort of jealousy for Yamin and Doc and the Colombian rebels.
These were men with convictions. They had chosen real worlds, not a no-man's territory
somewhere between.
"I have a job to do," I said at last.
She smiled gently.
"I hate it," I continued. I thought about the men whose images had come to me so often over the
years, Tom Paine and other Revo-lutionary War heroes, pirates and frontiersmen. They stood at
the
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125
edges, not in the middle. They had taken stands and lived with the consequences. "Every day I
come to hate my job a little more."
She took my hand. "Your job?"
Our eyes met and held. I understood the implication. "Myself."
She squeezed my hand and nodded slowly. I felt an immediate sense of relief, just admitting it.
"What will you do, John?"
I had no answer. The relief turned into defensiveness. I stam-mered out the standard
justifications: that I was trying to do good, that I was exploring ways to change the system from
within, and — the old standby—that if I quit, someone even worse would fill my shoes. But I
could see from the way she watched me that she was not buying it. Even worse, I knew that I
was not buying it either. She had forced me to understand the essential truth: it was not my job,
but me, that was to blame.
"What about you?" I asked at last. "What do you believe?"
She gave a little sigh and released my hand, asking, 'You trying to change the subject?"
I nodded.
"Okay," she agreed. "Under one condition. That we'll return to it another day." She picked up a
spoon and appeared to examine it. "I know that some of the guerrillas have trained in Russia
and China." She lowered the spoon into her cafe con leche, stirred, and then slowly licked the
spoon. "What else can they do? They need to learn about modern weapons and how to fight the
soldiers who've gone through your schools. Sometimes they sell cocaine in order to raise money
for supplies. How else can they buy guns? They're up against terrible odds. Your World Bank
doesn't help them defend themselves. In fact, it forces them into this position." She took a sip of
coffee. "I be-lieve their cause is just. The electricity will help only a few, the wealth-iest
Colombians, and thousands will die because the fish and water are poisoned, after you build that
dam of yours."
Hearing her speak so compassionately about the people who op-posed us — me — caused my
flesh to crawl. I found myself clawing at my forearms.
"How do you know so much about the guerrillas?" Even as I asked it, I had a sinking feeling, a
premonition that I did not want to know the answer.
"T went to school with some of them," she said. She hesitated, pushed her cup away. "My
brother joined the movement."
There it was. I felt absolutely deflated. I thought I knew all about her, but this... I had the fleeting
image of a man coming home to find his wife in bed with another man.
"How come you never told me?"
"Seemed irrelevant. Why would I? It isn't something I brag about." She paused. "I haven't seen
him for two years. He has to be very careful."
"How do you know he's alive?"
"I don't, except recently the government put him on a wanted list. That's a good sign."
I was fighting the urge to be judgmental or defensive. I hoped she could not discern my jealousy.
"How did he become one of them?" I asked.
Fortunately, she kept her eyes on the coffee cup. "Demonstrating outside the offices of an oil
company—Occidental, I think. He was protesting drilling on indigenous lands, in the forests of a
tribe facing extinction—him and a couple dozen of his friends. They were attacked by the army,
beaten, and thrown into prison —for doing nothing illegal, mind you, just standing outside that
building waving placards and singing." She glanced out a nearby window. "They kept him in jail
for nearly six months. He never did tell us what happened there, but when he came out he was a
different person."
It was the first of many similar conversations with Paula, and I now know that these discussions
set the stage for what was to follow. My soul was torn apart, yet I was still ruled by my wallet and
by those other weaknesses the NSA had identified when they profiled me a decade earlier, in
1968. By forcing me to see this and to con-front the deeper feelings behind my fascination with
pirates and other rebels, Paula helped me along the trail toward salvation.
Beyond my own personal dilemmas, my times in Colombia also helped me comprehend the
distinction between the old American republic and the new global empire. The republic offered
hope to the world. Its foundation was moral and philosophical rather than materialistic. It was
based on concepts of equality' and justice for all. But it also could be pragmatic, not merely a
Utopian dream but also a living, breathing, magnanimous entity. It could open its arms to
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shelter the downtrodden. It was an inspiration and at the same time a force to reckon with; if
needed, it could swing into action, as it had during World War II, to defend the principles for
which it stood. The very institutions — the big corporations, banks, and government
bureaucracies — that threaten the republic could be used instead to institute fundamental
changes in the world. Such institutions possess the communications networks and transportation
systems necessary to end disease, starvation, and even wars — if only they could be con-vinced
to take that course.
The global empire, on the other hand, is the republic's nemesis. It is self-centered, self-serving,
greedy, and materialistic, a system based on mercantilism. Like empires before, its arms open
only to accumulate resources, to grab everything in sight and stuff its insa-tiable maw. It will use
whatever means it deems necessary to help its rulers gain more power and riches.
Of course, in learning to understand this distinction I also devel-oped a clearer sense of my own
role. Claudine had warned me; she had honestly outlined what would be expected of me if I
accepted the job MAIN offered. Yet, it took the experience of working in coun-tries like Indonesia,
Panama, Iran, and Colombia in order for me to understand the deeper implications. And it took
the patience, love, and personal stories of a woman like Paula.
I was loyal to the American republic, but what we were perpe-trating through this new, highly
subtle form of imperialism was the financial equivalent of what we had attempted to accomplish
mili-tarily in Vietnam. If Southeast Asia had taught us that armies have limitations, the
economists had responded by devising a better plan, and the foreign aid agencies and the
private contractors who served them (or, more appropriately, were served by them) had become
proficient at executing that plan.
In countries on every continent, I saw how men and women working for U.S. corporations —
though not officially part of the EHM network—participated in something far more pernicious
than anything envisioned in conspiracy theories. Like many of MAIN's engineers, these workers
were blind to the consequences of their ac-tions, convinced that the sweatshops and factories
that made shoes and automotive parts for their companies were helping the poor climb out of
poverty, instead of simply burying them deeper in a type
of slavey reminiscent of medieval manors and southern plantations. Like those earlier
manifestations of exploitation, modern serfs or slaves were socialized into believing they were
better off than the unfortu-nate souls who lived on the margins, in the dark hollows of Europe, in
the jungles of Africa, or in the wilds of the American frontier.
The struggle over whether I should continue at MAIN or should quit had become an open
battlefield. There was no doubt that my conscience wanted out, but that other side, what I liked
to think of as my business-school persona, was not so sure. My own empire kept expanding; I
added employees, countries, and shares of stock to my various portfolios and to my ego. In
addition to the seduction of the money and lifestyle, and the adrenaline high of power, I often
re-called Claudine warning rne that once I was in I could never get out.
Of course, Paula sneered at this. "What would she know?"
I pointed out that Claudine had been right about a great many things.
"That was a long time ago. lives change. Anyway, what difference does it make? You're not
happy with yourself. What can Claudine or anyone else do to make things worse than that?"
It was a refrain Paula often came back to, and I eventually agreed. I admitted to her and to
myself that all the money, adventure, and glamour no longer justified the turmoil, guilt, and
stress. As a MAIN partner, I wTas becoming wealthy, and I knew that if I stayed longer I would
be permanently trapped.
One day, while we were strolling along the beach near the old Spanish fort at Cartagena, a place
that had endured countless pirate attacks, Paula hit upon an approach that had not occurred to
me. "What if you never say anything about the things you know?" she asked.
"You mean... just keep quiet?"
"Exactly. Don't give them an excuse to come after you. In fact, give them every reason to leave
you alone, to not muddy the water."
It made a great deal of sense — I wondered why it never occurred to me before. I would not
write books or do anything else to expose the truth as I had come to see it. I would not be a
crusader; instead, I would just be a person, concentrate on enjoying life, travel for pleasure,
perhaps even start a family with someone like Paula. I had had enough; I simply wanted out.
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"Everything Claudine taught you is a deception," Paula added. "Your life's a lie." She smiled
condescendingly. "Have you looked at your own resume recently?"
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 Resume
While I was in Colombia, word arrived that Jake Dauber had retired as MAIN'S president. As
expected, chairman and CEO Mac Hall ap-pointed 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 proteges.
These changes and rumors were an added incentive for me to re-view my own position. While
still in Colombia, I followed Paula's ad-vice and read the Spanish version of my resume. 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 Sendees." (See pages 133 and 134.)
I once had taken great pride in that resume 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 inten-tional 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
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resume. According to standard operating procedures, I was required to constantly update both a
basic resume 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 re-vised resume.
However, since like many other MAIN employees I traveled a great deal, exceptions were
frequently made. Thus, the resume Paula suggested I look at, and its English counterpart, were
completely new to me, although the information certainly was in-cluded in my file.
At first glance, my resume seemed innocent enough. Under Ex-perience, it stated that I had
been in charge of major projects in the United States, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East,
and it pro-vided 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; how-ever, 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 cooper-ative composed of illiterate Andean peasant brick
makers.
Following that was a long list of clients. This list included the In-ternational Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (the official name of the World Bank); the Asian Development
Bank; the gov-ernment of Kuwait; the Iranian Ministry of Energy; the Arabian-American Oil
Company of Saudi Arabia; Institute de Recursos Hidraulicos y Electrification; 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 resume for a moment, I turned to the MAIN-LINES 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 immedi-ately 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 work-ing for MAIN at the time. For his first assignment, he was sent as part of an 11man team to do an electricity demand study in Indonesia.
The article briefly summarized my previous work history, de-scribed how I had "spent three
years in Ecuador," and then contin-ued 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 Com-pany] 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 fore-caster 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; how-ever, 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
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135
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 resume 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 re-sume and on the covers of all the proposals and reports that resume was likely to grace,
carried a lot of weight in the world of interna-tional business; it was a seal of authenticity that
elicited the same level of confidence as those stamped on diplomas and framed cer-tificates
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 trav-eling 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 wras 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 fore-caster 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
deal 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 resume 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 Eco-nomics and Regional Planning could not be attributed to my capa-bilities 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
per-suading 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. After-ward, 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
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thought about the people who starved each day while my staff and 1 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 possi-ble 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
brain-washing. 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 cre-ated 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 resume
had opened a Pandora's box, and I often felt jealous of my employees for their naivete. I had
intention-ally 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 folk-lore 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 resume 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 physi-cally, 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 WTap-ping
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 resume, 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 re-sort, 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
ever}' 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
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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 WTitten words of my
resume 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 re-public, 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 promise 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 Roldos was a university
professor and attor-ney 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
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offered me a similar deal, saying that whenever I needed to negoti-ate 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 re-sponsibility of politicians to use a country's natural
resources pru-dently. When he began campaigning for the presidency in 1978, he captured the
attention of his countrymen and of citizens in every na-tion where foreign interests exploited oil
— or where people desired independence from the influences of powerful outside forces. Roldos
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, 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 en-tered Ecuador, as it had so
many other countries, under the pretext of studying, recording, and translating indigenous
languages.
SIL had been working extensively with the Huaorani tribe in the Amazon basin area, during the
early years of oil exploration, when a disturbing pattern emerged. Whenever seismologists
reported to corporate headquarters that a certain region had characteristics indicating a high
probability of oil beneath the surface, SIL went in and encouraged the indigenous people to
move from that land, onto missionary reservations; there they would receive free food, shelter,
clothes, medical treatment, and missionary-style education. The con-dition was that they had to
deed their lands to the oil companies.
Rumors abounded that SIL missionaries used an assortment of underhanded techniques to
persuade the tribes to abandon their homes and move to the missions. A frequently repeated
story was that they had donated food heavily laced with laxatives — then offered medicines to
cure the diarrhea epidemic. Throughout Huaorani ter-ritory, SIL airdropped false-bottomed food
baskets containing tiny radio transmitters; receivers at highly sophisticated communications
stations, manned by U.S. military personnel at the army base in Shell, tuned in to these
transmitters. Whenever a member of the tribe was bitten by a poisonous snake or became
seriously ill, an SIL representative arrived with antivenom or the proper medicines — often in oil
company helicopters.
During the early days of oil exploration, five SIL missionaries were found dead with Huaorani
spears protruding from their bod-ies. Later, the Huaoranis claimed they did this to send SIL a
message to keep out. The message went unheeded. In fact, it ultimately had the opposite effect.
Rachel Saint, the sister of one of the murdered men, toured the United States, appearing on
national television in order to raise money and support for SIL and the oil companies, who she
claimed were helping the "savages" become civilized and educated.
SIL received funding from the Rockefeller charities. Jaime Roldos claimed that these Rockefeller
connections proved that SIL was re-ally a front for stealing indigenous lands and promoting oil
explo-ration; family scion John D. Rockefeller had founded Standard Oil — which later divested
into the majors, including Chevron, Exxon, and Mobil.1
Roldos struck me as a man who walked the path blazed by Torrijos. Both stood up to the world's
strongest superpower. Torrijos wanted to take back the Canal, while Roldos's strongly
nationalistic position on oil threatened the world's most influential companies. Like Torrijos,
Roldos was not a Communist, but rather stood for the right of his country to determine its own
destiny. And as they had with Torrijos, pundits predicted that big business and Washington
would never tolerate Roldos as president, that if elected he would meet a fate similar to that of
Guatemala's Arbenz or Chile's Allende.
It seemed to me that the two men together might spearhead a new movement in Latin American
politics and that this movement might form the foundation of changes that could affect every
nation on the planet. These men were not Castros or Gadhafis. They were not associated with
Russia or China or, as in Allende's case, with the international Socialist movement. They were
popular, intelligent, charismatic leaders who were pragmatic instead of dogmatic. They were
nationalistic but not anti-American. If corporatocracy was built on three pillars — major
corporations, international banks, and col-luding governments — Roldos and Torrijos held out
the possibility of removing the pillar of government collusion.
A major part of the Roldos platform was what came to be known as the Hydrocarbons Policy.
This policy was based on the premise that Ecuador's greatest potential resource was petroleum
and that all future exploitation of that resource should be done in a manner that would bring the
greatest benefit to the largest percentage of the
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Ecuador's President Battles Big Oil
143
population. Roldos was a tirm believer in the state's obligation to assist the poor and
disenfranchised. He expressed hope that the Hydrocarbons Policy could in fact be used as a
vehicle for bringing about social reform. He had to walk a fine line, however, because he knew
that in Ecuador, as in so many other countries, he could not be elected without the support of at
least some of the most influential families, and that even if he should manage to win without
them, he would never see his programs implemented without their support.
I wras personally relieved that Carter was in the White House during this crucial time. Despite
pressures from Texaco and other oil interests, Washington stayed pretty much out of the picture.
I knew this would not have been the case under most other administrations — Republican or
Democrat.
More than any other issue, I believe it was the Hydrocarbons Policy that coroinced Ecuadorians
to send Jaime Roldos to the Presidential Palace in Quito — their first democratically elected
president after a long line of dictators. He outlined the basis of this policy in his Au-gust 10,1979,
inaugural address:
We must take effective measures to defend the energy resources of the nation. The State (must)
maintain the diversification of its exports and not lose its economic independence... Our
decisions will be inspired solely by national interests and in the unrestricted defense of our
sovereign rights.2
Once in office, Roldos had to focus on Texaco, since by that time it had become the main player
in the oil game. It was an extremely rocky relationship. The oil giant did not trust the new
president and did not want to be part of any policy that would set new precedents. It was very
aware that such policies might serve as models in other countries.
A speech delivered by a key advisor to Roldos, Jose Carvajal, summed up the new
administration's attitude:
If a partner [Texaco] does not want to take risks, to make investments for exploration, or to
exploit the areas of an oil concession, the other partner has the right to make those investments
and then to take over as the owner...
We believe our relations with foreign companies have to be just; we have to be tough in the
struggle; we have to be prepared for all kinds of pressures, but we should not display fear or an
inferiority complex in negotiating with those foreigners.3
On New Year's Day, 1980,1 made a resolution. It was the begin-ning of a new decade. In
twenty-eight days, I would turn thirty-five. I resolved that during the next year I would make a
major change in my life and that in the future I would try to model myself after mod-ern heroes
like Jaime Roldos and Omar Torrijos.
In addition, something shocking had happened months earlier. From a profitability standpoint,
Bruno had been the most successful president in MAIN'S history. Nonetheless, suddenly and
without warning, Mac Hall had fired him.
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CHAPTER 25
I Quit
Mac Hall's firing of Bruno hit MAIN like an earthquake. It caused turmoil and dissension
throughout the company. Bruno had his share of enemies, but even some of them were
dismayed. To many employees it was obvious that the motive had been jealousy. During
discussions across the lunch table or around the coffee wagon, people often confided that they
thought Hall felt threatened by this man who was more than fifteen years his junior and who had
taken the firm to new levels of profitability.
"Hall couldn't allow Bruno to go on looking so good," one man said. "Hall had to know that it was
just a matter of time before Bruno would take over and the old man would be out to pasture."
As if to prove such theories, Hall appointed Paul Priddy as the new president. Paul had been a
vice president at MAIN for years and was an amiable, nuts-and-bolts engineer. In my opinion, he
was also lackluster, a yes-man who would bow to the chairman's whims and would never
threaten him with stellar profits. My opinion was shared by many others.
For me, Bruno's departure was devastating. He had been a per-sonal mentor and a key factor in
our international work. Priddy, on the other hand, had focused on domestic jobs and knew little if
any-thing about the true nature of our overseas roles. I had to question where the company
would go from here. I called Bruno at his home and found him philosophical.
"Well, John, he knew he had no cause," he said of Hall, "so I
demanded a very good severance package, and I got it. Mac controls a huge block of voting
stock, and once he made his move there was nothing I could do." Bruno indicated that he was
considering several offers of high-level positions at multinational banks that had been our clients.
I asked him what he thought I should do.
"Keep your eyes open," he advised. "Mac Hall has lost touch with reality, but no one will tell him
so — especially not now, after what he did to me."
In late March 1980, still smarting from the firing, I took a sailing vacation in the Virgin Islands. I
was joined by "Mary," a young woman who also worked for MAIN. Although I did not think about
it when I chose the location, I now know that the region's history was a fac-tor in helping me
make a decision that would start to fulfill my New Year's resolution. The first inkling occurred
early one afternoon as we rounded St. John Island and tacked into Sir Francis Drake Chan-nel,
which separates the American from the British Virgin Islands.
The channel was named, of course, after the English scourge of the Spanish gold fleets. That
fact reminded me of the many times during the past decade when I had thought about pirates
and other historical figures, men like Drake and Sir Henry Morgan, who robbed and plundered
and exploited and yet were lauded — even knighted — for their activities. I had often asked
myself why, given that I had been raised to respect such people, I should have qualms about
ex-ploiting countries like Indonesia, Panama, Colombia, and Ecuador. So many of my heroes —
Ethan Allen, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Lewis and
Clark, to name just a few —had exploited Indians, slaves, and lands that did not belong to them,
and I had drawn upon their examples to assuage my guilt. Now, tacking up Sir Francis Drake
Channel, I saw the folly of my past rationalizations.
I remembered some things I had conveniently ignored over the years. Ethan Allen spent several
months in fetid and cramped British prison ships, much of the time locked into thirty pounds of
iron shackles, and then more time in an English dungeon. He was a pris-oner of war, captured at
the 1775 Battle of Montreal while fighting for the same sorts of freedom Jaime Roldos and Omar
Torrijos now sought for their people. Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and all the other
Founding Fathers had risked their lives for similar ideals.
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147
Winning the revolution was no foregone conclusion; they under-stood that if they lost, they would
be hanged as traitors. Daniel Boone, Daw Crockett, and Lewis and Clark also had endured great
hardships and made many sacrifices.
And Drake and Morgan? I was a bit hazy about that period in his-tory, but I remembered that
Protestant England had seen itself sorely threatened by Catholic Spain. I had to admit to the
possibility that Drake and Morgan had turned to piracy in order to strike at the heart of the
Spanish empire, at those gold ships, to defend the sanctity of England, rather than out of a
desire for self-aggrandizement.
As we sailed up that channel, tacking back and forth into the wind, inching closer to the
mountains rising from the sea — Great Thatch Island to the north and St. John to the south — I
could not erase these thoughts from my mind. Mary handed me a beer and turned up the
volume on a Jimmy BufTett song. Yet, despite the beauty that surrounded me and the sense of
freedom that sailing usually brings, I felt angry. I tried to brush it off. I chugged down the beer.
The emotion would not leave. I was angered by those voices from history and the way I had
used them to rationalize my own greed. I was furious at my parents, and at Tilton — that selfrighteous prep school on the hill-—for imposing all that history on me. I popped open another
beer. I could have killed Mac Hall for what he had done to Bruno.
A wooden boat with a rainbow flag sailed past us, its sails billow-ing out on both sides,
downwinding through the channel. A half dozen young men and women shouted and waved at
us, hippies in brightly colored sarongs, one couple stark naked on the foredeck. It was obvious
from the boat itself and the look about them that they lived aboard, a communal society, modern
pirates, free, uninhibited.
I tried to wave back but my hand would not obey. I felt overcome with jealousy.
Mary stood on the deck, watching them as they faded into the distance at our stern. "How would
you like that life?" she asked.
And then I understood. It was not about my parents, Tilton, or Mac Hall. It was my life I hated.
Mine. The person responsible, the one I loathed, was me.
Mary shouted something. She was pointing over the starboard bow. She stepped closer to me.
"Leinster Bay," she said. "Tonight's anchorage."
There it was, nestled into St. John Island, a cove where pirate ships had lain in wait for the gold
fleet when it passed through this very body of water. I sailed in closer, then handed the tiller over
to Mary and headed up to the foredeck. As she navigated the boat around Watermelon Cay and
into the beautiful bay, I lowered and bagged the jib and hauled the anchor out of its locker. She
deftly dropped the mainsail. I nudged the anchor over the side; the chain rattled down into the
crystal clear water and the boat drifted to a stop.
After we settled in, Mary took a swim and a nap. I left her a note and rowed the dinghy ashore,
beaching it just below the ruins of an old sugar plantation. I sat there next to the water for a long
time, try-ing not to think, concentrating on emptying myself of all emotion. But it did not work.
Late in the afternoon, I struggled up the steep hill and found my-self standing on the crumbling
walls of this ancient plantation, look-ing down at our anchored sloop. I watched the sun sink
toward the Caribbean. It all seemed very idyllic, yet I knew that the plantation surrounding me
had been the scene of untold misery; hundreds of African slaves had died here — forced at
gunpoint to build the stately mansion, to plant and harvest the cane, and to operate the
equip-ment that turned raw sugar into the basic ingredient of rum. The tranquility of the place
masked its history of brutality, even as it masked the rage that surged within me.
The sun disappeared behind a mountain-ridged island. A vast magenta arch spread across the
sky. The sea began to darken, and I came face-to-face with the shocking fact that I too had been
a slaver, that my job at MAIN had not been just about using debt to draw poor countries into the
global empire. My inflated forecasts were not merely vehicles for assuring that when my country
needed oil we could call in our pound of flesh, and my position as a partner was not simply about
enhancing the firm's profitability. My job was also about people and their families, people akin to
the ones who had died to construct the wall I sat on, people I had exploited.
For ten years, I had been the heir of those slavers who had marched into African jungles and
hauled men and women off to waiting ships. Mine had been a more modern approach, subtler —
I never had to see the dying bodies, smell the rotting flesh, or hear the screams of agony. But
what I had done was every bit as sinister, and because I could remove myself from it, because I
could cut myself off
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149
from the personal aspects, the bodies, the flesh, and the screams, perhaps in the final analysis I
was the greater sinner.
I glanced again at the sloop where it rode at anchor, straining against the outflowing tide. Mary
was lounging on the deck, proba-bly drinking a margarita and waiting to hand one to me. In that
mo-ment, seeing her there in that last light of the day, so relaxed, so trusting, I was struck by
what I was doing to her and to all the others who worked for rne, the ways I was turning them
into EHMs. I was doing to them what Claudine had done to me, but without Claudine s honesty. I
was seducing them through raises and promotions to be slavers, and yet they, like me, were
also being shackled to the system. They too were enslaved.
I turned away from the sea and the bay and the magenta sky. I closed my eyes to the walls that
had been built by slaves torn from their African homes. I tried to shut it all out. When I opened
my eyes, I was staring at a large gnarled stick, as thick as a baseball bat and twice as long. I
leaped up, grabbed the stick, and began slam-ming it against the stone walls. I beat on those
walls until I collapsed from exhaustion. I lay in the grass after that, watching the clouds drift over
me.
Eventually I made my way back down to the dinghy. I stood there on the beach, looking out at
our sailboat anchored in the azure wa-ters, and I knew what I had to do. I knew that if I ever
went back to my former life, to MAIN and all it represented, I would be lost for-ever. The raises,
the pensions, the insurance and perks, the equity... The longer I stayed, the more difficult it was
to get out. I had become a slave. I could continue to beat myself up as I had beat on those stone
walls, or I could escape.
Two days later I returned to Boston. On April 1,1980,1 walked into Paul Priddy's office and
resigned.
PART IV: 1981-PRESENT
CHAPTER 26
Ecuador's Presidential Death
Leaving MAIN was no easy matter; Paul Priddy refused to believe me. "April Fool's," he winked.
I assured him that I was serious. Recalling Paula's advice that I should do nothing to antagonize
anyone or to give cause for suspicion that I might expose my EHM work, I emphasized that I
appreciated everything MAIN had done for me but that I needed to move on. I had always
wanted to write about the people that MAIN had intro-duced me to around the world, but nothing
political. I said I wanted to freelance for National Geographic and other magazines, and to
continue to travel. I declared my loyalty to MAIN and swore that I would sing its praises at every
opportunity. Finally, Paul gave in.
After that, everyone else tried to talk me out of resigning. I was reminded frequently about how
good I had it, and I was even accused of insanity. I came to understand that no one wanted to
accept the fact that 1 was leaving voluntarily, at least in part, because it forced them to look at
themselves. If I were not crazy for leaving, then they might have to consider their own sanity in
staying. It was easier to see me as a person who had departed from his senses.
Particularly disturbing were the reactions of my staff. In their eyes, I was deserting them, and
there was no strong heir apparent. However, I had made up my mind. After all those years of
vacilla-tion, I now was determined to make a clean sweep.
Unfortunately, it did not quite work out that way. True, I no longer had a job, but since I had been
far from a fully vested partner,
153
the cash-out of my stock was not sufficient for retirement. Had I stayed at MAIN another few
years, 1 might have become the forty-year-old millionaire I had once envisioned; however, at
thirty-five I had a long way to go to accomplish that objective. Tt was a cold and dreary April in
Boston.
Then one day Paul Priddy called and pleaded with me to come to his office. "One of our clients
is threatening to drop us," he said. "They hired us because they wanted you to represent them
on the expert witness stand."
I thought a lot about it. By the time I sat across the desk from Paul, I had made my decision. I
named my price — a retainer that was more than three times what my MAIN salary had been.
To my sur-prise, he agreed, and that started me on a new career.
For the next several years, I was employed as a highly paid expert witness — primarily for U.S.
electric utility7 companies seeking to have new power plants approved for construction by public
utilities commissions. One of my clients was the Public Service Company of New Hampshire. My
job was to justify, under oath, the economic feasibility of the highly controversial Seabrook
nuclear power plant.
Although I was no longer directly involved with Latin America, I continued to follow events there.
As an expert witness, I had lots of time between appearances on the stand. I kept in touch with
Paula and renewed old friendships from my Peace Corps days in Ecuador — a country that had
suddenly jumped to center stage in the world of international oil politics.
Jaime Roldos was moving forward. He took his campaign prom-ises seriously and he was
launching an all-out attack on the oil com-panies. He seemed to see clearly the things that many
others on both sides of the Panama Canal either missed or chose to ignore. He un-derstood the
underlying currents that threatened to turn the world into a global empire and to relegate the
citizens of his country to a very minor role, bordering on servitude. As I read the newspaper
articles about him, I was impressed not only by his commitment, but also by his ability to
perceive the deeper issues. And the deeper issues pointed to the fact that we were entering a
new epoch of world politics.
In November 1980, Carter lost the U.S. presidential election to Ronald Reagan. The Panama
Canal Treaty he had negotiated with Torrijos, and the situation in Iran, especially the hostages
held at the U.S. Embassy and the failed rescue attempt, were major factors.
However, something subtler was also happening. A president whose greatest goal was world
peace and who was dedicated to reducing U.S. dependence on oil was replaced by a man who
believed that the United States' rightful place was at the top of a world pyramid held up by
military muscle, and that controlling oil fields wherever they existed was part of our Manifest
Destiny. A president who installed solar panels on White House roofs was replaced by one who,
imme-diately upon occupying the Oval Office, had them removed.
Carter may have been an ineffective politician, but he had a vision for America that was
consistent with the one defined in our Decla-ration of Independence. In retrospect, he now
seems naively archaic, a throwback to the ideals that molded this nation and drew so many of
our grandparents to her shores. When we compare him to his im-mediate predecessors and
successors, he is an anomaly. His world-view was inconsistent with that of the EHMs.
Reagan, on the other hand, was most definitely a global empire builder, a servant of the
corporatocracy. At the time of his election, I found it fitting that he was a Hollywood actor, a man
who had fol-lowed orders passed down from moguls, who knew how to take di-rection. That
would be his signature. He would cater to the men who shuttled back and forth from corporate
CEO offices to bank boards and into the halls of government. He would serve the men who
ap-peared to serve him but who in fact ran the government — men like Vice President George H.
W. Bush, Secretary of State George Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, Richard
Cheney, Richard Helms, and Robert McNamara. He would advocate what those men wanted:
an America that controlled the world and all its resources, a world that answered to the
commands of that America, a U.S. mil-itary that would enforce the rules as they were written by
America, and an international trade and banking system that supported America as CEO of the
global empire.
As I looked into the future, it seemed we were entering a period that would be very good to the
EHMs. It was another twist of fate that I had chosen this moment in history to drop out. The more
I re-flected on it, however, the better I felt about it. I knew that my timing was right.
As for what this meant in the long term, I had no crystal ball; however, I knew from history that
empires do not endure and that the pendulum always swings in both directions. From my
perspective,
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Ecuador's Presidential Death
155
men like Roldos offered hope. I was certain that Ecuador's new pres-ident understood many of
the subtleties of the current situation. I knew that he had been a Torrijos admirer and had
applauded Carter for his courageous stand on the Panama Canal issue. I felt certain that Roldos
would not falter. I could only hope that his fortitude would light a candle for the leaders of other
countries, who needed the type of inspiration he and Torrijos could provide.
Early in 1981, the Roldos administration formally presented his new hydrocarbons law to the
Ecuadorian Congress. If implemented, it would reform the country's relationship to oil companies.
By many standards, it was considered revolutionary and even radical. It cer-tainly aimed to
change the way business was conducted. Its influ-ence would stretch far beyond Ecuador, into
much of Latin America and throughout the world.1
The oil companies reacted predictably — they pulled out all the stops. Their public relations
people went to work to vilify Jaime Roldos, and their lobbyists swept into Quito and Washington,
brief-cases full of threats and payoffs. They tried to paint the first demo-cratically elected
president of Ecuador in modern times as another Castro. But Roldos would not cave in to
intimidation. He responded by denouncing the conspiracy between politics and oil — and religion.
He openly accused the Summer Institute of Linguistics of colluding with the oil companies and
then, in an extremely bold —perhaps reckless — move, he ordered SIL out of the country.2
Only weeks after sending his legislative package to Congress and a couple of days after
expelling the SIL missionaries, Roldos warned all foreign interests, including but not limited to oil
companies, that unless they implemented plans that would help Ecuador's people, they would
be forced to leave his country. He delivered a major speech at the Atahualpa Olympic Stadium
in Quito and then headed off to a small community in southern Ecuador.
He died there in a fiery airplane crash, on May 24,1981.3
The world was shocked. Latin Americans were outraged. News-papers throughout the
hemisphere blazed, "CIA Assassination!" In addition to the fact that Washington and the oil
companies hated him, many circumstances appeared to support these allegations, and such
suspicions were heightened as more facts became known. Nothing was ever proven, but
eyewitnesses claimed that Roldos, forewarned about an attempt on his life, had taken
precautions,
including traveling in two airplanes. At the last moment, it was said, one of his security officers
had convinced him to board the decoy air-plane. It had blown up.
Despite world reaction, the news hardly made the U.S. press.
Osvaldo Hurtado took over as Ecuador's president. He reinstated the Summer Institute of
Linguistics and their oil company sponsors. By the end of the year, he had launched an
ambitious program to in-crease oil drilling by Texaco and other foreign companies in the Gulf of
Guayaquil and the Amazon basin.4
Omar Torrijos, in eulogizing Roldos, referred to him as "brother." He also confessed to having
nightmares about his own assassina-tion; he saw himself dropping from the sky in a gigantic
fireball. It was prophetic.
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Ecuador's Presidential Death
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CHAPTER 27
Panama: Another Presidential Death
I was stunned by Roldos's death, but perhaps I should not have been. I was anything but naive. I
knew about Arbenz, Mossadegh, Allende — and about many other people whose names never
made the news-papers or history books but whose lives were destroyed and sometimes cut
short because they stood up to the corporatocracy. Nevertheless, I was shocked. It was just so
very blatant.
I had concluded, after our phenomenal success in Saudi Arabia, that such wantonly overt
actions were things of the past. I thought the jackals had been relegated to zoos. Now I saw that
I was wrong. I had no doubt that Roldos's death had not been an accident. It had all the
markings of a CIA-orchestrated assassination. I understood that it had been executed so
blatantly in order to send a message. The new Reagan administration, complete with its fastdraw Holly-wood cowboy image, was the ideal vehicle for delivering such a mes-sage. The
jackals were back, and they wanted Omar Torrijos and everyone else who might consider joining
an anti-corporatocracy crusade to know it.
But Torrijos was not buckling. Like Roldos, he refused to be in-timidated. He, too, expelled the
Summer Institute of Linguistics, and he adamantly refused to give in to the Reagan
administration's de-mands to renegotiate the Canal Treaty.
Two months after Roldos's death, Omar Torrijos's nightmare came true; he died in a plane crash.
It was July 31,1981.
Latin America and the world reeled. Torrijos was known across the globe; he was respected as
the man who had forced the United States to relinquish the Panama Canal to its rightful owners,
and who continued to stand up to Ronald Reagan. He was a champion of human rights, the
head of state who had opened his arms to refugees across the political spectrum, including the
shah of Iran, a charismatic voice for social justice who, many believed, would be nominated for
the Nobel Peace Prize. Now he was dead. "CIA Assassination!" once again headlined articles
and editorials.
Graham Greene began his book Getting to Know the General, the one that grew out of the trip
when I met him at the Hotel Panama, with the following paragraph:
In August 1981, my bag was packed for my fifth visit to Panama when the news came to me
over the telephone of the death of General Omar Torrijos Herrera, my friend and host. The small
plane in which he was flying to a house which he owned at Coclesito in the mountains of
Panama had crashed, and there were no survivors. A few days later the voice of his security
guard, Sergeant Chuchu, alias Jose de Jesus Martinez, ex-professor of Marxist phi-losophy at
Panama University, professor of mathematics and a poet, told me, "There was a bomb in that
plane. I know there was a bomb in the plane, but I can't tell you why over the telephone."1
People everywhere mourned the death of this man who had earned a reputation as defender of
the poor and defenseless, and they clamored for Washington to open investigations into CIA
ac-tivities. However, this was not about to happen. There were men who hated Torrijos, and the
list included people with immense power. Before his death, he was openly loathed by President
Reagan, Vice President Bush, Secretary of Defense Weinberger, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
as well as by the CEOs of many powerful corporations.
The military chiefs were especially incensed by provisions in the Torrijos-Carter Treaty that
forced them to close the School of the Americas and the U.S. Southern Command's tropical
warfare center. The chiefs thus had a serious problem. Either they had to figure out
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Panama: Another Presidential Death
159
some way to get around the new treaty, or they needed to find an-other country that would be
willing to harbor these facilities — an unlikely prospect in the closing decades of the twentieth
century. Of course, there was also another option: dispose of Torrijos and rene-gotiate the treaty
with his successor.
Among Torrijos's corporate enemies were the huge multinationals. Most had close ties to U.S.
politicians and were involved in exploit-ing Latin American labor forces and natural resources —
oil, lumber, tin, copper, bauxite, and agricultural lands. They included manu-facturing firms,
communications companies, shipping and trans-portation conglomerates, and engineering and
other technologically oriented corporations.
The Bechtel Group, Inc. was a prime example of the cozy relation-ship between private
companies and the U.S. government. I knew Bechtel well; we at MAIN often worked closely with
the company, and its chief architect became a close personal friend. Bechtel was the United
States' most influential engineering and construction company. Its president and senior officers
included George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger, who despised Torrijos because he brazenly
courted a Japanese plan to replace Panama's existing canal with a new, more efficient one.2
Such a move not only would transfer ownership from the United States to Panama but also
would exclude Bechtel from participating in the most exciting and potentially lucrative
engi-neering project of the century.
Torrijos stood up to these men, and he did so with grace, charm, and a wonderful sense of
humor. Now he was dead, and he had been replaced by a protege, Manuel Noriega, a man who
lacked Torrijos's wit, charisma, and intelligence, and a man who many suspected had no chance
against the Reagans, Bushes, and Bechtels of the world.
I was personally devastated by the tragedy. I spent many hours reflecting on my conversations
with Torrijos. Late one night, I sat for a long time staring at his photo in a magazine and recalling
my first night in Panama, riding in a cab through the rain, stopping before his gigantic billboard
picture. "Omar's ideal is freedom; the missile is not invented that can kill an ideal!" The memory
of that inscrip-tion sent a shudder through me, even as it had on that stormy night.
I could not have known back then that Torrijos would collaborate with Carter to return the
Panama Canal to the people who rightfully deserved to own it, or that this victory, along with his
attempts to
reconcile differences between Latin American Socialists and the dic-tators, would so infuriate the
Reagan-Bush administration that i would seek to assassinate him.3 I could not have known that
on an-other dark night he would be killed during a routine flight in his Twin Otter, or that most of
the world outside the United States would have no doubt that Torrijos's death at the age of fiftytwo was jusl one more in a series of CIA assassinations.
Had Torrijos lived, he undoubtedly would have sought to quell the growing violence that has
plagued so many Central and South American nations. Based on his record, we can assume
that he would have tried to work out an arrangement to mitigate international oil company
destruction of the Amazon regions of Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru. One result of such action
would be the alleviation of the terrible conflicts that Washington refers to as terrorist and drug
wars, but which Torrijos would have seen as actions taken by des-perate people to protect their
families and homes. Most importantly, I feel certain that he would have served as a role model
for a new generation of leaders in the Americas, Africa, and Asia — something the CIA, the NSA,
and the EHMs could not allow.
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Panama: Another Presidential Death
161
CHAPTER 28
My Energy Company, Enron, and George W. Bush
At the time of Torrijos's death, I had not seen Paula for several months. I was dating other
women, including Winifred Grant, a young environmental planner I had met at MAIN, and whose
father happened to be chief architect at Bechtel. Paula was dating a Colom-bian journalist. We
remained friends but agreed to sever our ro-mantic ties.
I struggled with my job as an expert witness, particularly in justi-fying the Seabrook nuclear
power plant. It often seemed as though I had sold out again, slipping back into an old role simply
for the sake of money. Winifred was an immense help to me during this period. She was an
avowed environmentalist, yet she understood the prac-tical necessities of providing everincreasing amounts of electricity. She had grown up in the Berkeley area of San Francisco's
East Bay and had graduated from UC Berkeley. She was a freethinker whose views on life
contrasted with those of my puritanical parents and of Ann.
Our relationship developed. Winifred took a leave of absence from MAIN, and together we sailed
my boat down the Atlantic coast toward Florida. We took our time, frequently leaving the boat in
dif-ferent ports so I could fly off to provide expert witness testimony. Eventually, we sailed into
West Palm Beach, Florida, and rented an apartment. We married, and our daughter, Jessica,
was born on May 17,1982. I was thirty-six, considerably older than all the other men who hung
out in Lamaze class.
Part of my job on the Seabrook case was to convince the New Hampshire Public Service
Commission that nuclear power was the best and most economical choice for generating
electricity in the state. Unfortunately, the longer I studied the issue, the more I began to doubt
the validity of my own arguments. The literature was constantly changing at that time, reflecting
a growth in research, and the evi-dence increasingly indicated that many alternative forms of
energy were technically superior and more economical than nuclear power. The balance also
was beginning to shift away from the old theory that nuclear power was safe. Serious questions
were being raised about the integrity of backup systems, the training of operators, the human
tendency to make mistakes, equipment fatigue, and the in-adequacy of nuclear waste disposal. I
personally became uncom-fortable with the position I was expected to take—was paid to take —
under oath in what amounted to a court of law. At the same time, I was becoming convinced that
some of the emerging technologies offered electricity-generating methods that could actually
help the environment. This was particularly true in the area of generating electricity from
substances previously considered waste products.
One day I informed my bosses at the New Hampshire utility com-pany that I could no longer
testify on their behalf. I gave up this very lucrative career and decided to create a company that
would move some of the new technologies off the drawing boards and put the theories into
practice. Winifred supported me one hundred percent, despite the uncertainties of the venture
and the fact that, for the first time in her life, she was now starting a family.
Several months after Jessica's birth in 1982,1 founded Indepen-dent Power Systems (IPS), a
company whose mission included devel-oping environmentally beneficial power plants and
establishing models to inspire others to do likewise. It was a high-risk business, and most of our
competitors eventually failed. However, "coinci-dences" came to our rescue. In fact, I was
certain that many times someone stepped in to help, that I was being rewarded for my past
service and for my commitment to silence.
Bruno Zambotti had accepted a high-level position at the Inter-American Development Bank. He
agreed to serve on the IPS board and to help finance the fledgling company. We received
backing from Bankers Trust; ESI Energy; Prudential Insurance Company; Chad-bourne and
Parke (a major Wall Street law firm, in which former
162
My Energy Company, Enron, and George W. Bush
163
U.S. senator, presidential candidate, and secretary of state Ed Muskie, was a partner): and Riley
Stoker Corporation (an engineer-ing firm, owned by Ashland Oil Company, which designed and
built highly sophisticated and innovative power plant boilers). We even had backing from the U.S.
Congress, which singled out IPS for ex-emption from a specific tax, and in the process gave us a
distinct ad-vantage over our competitors.
In 1986, IPS and Bechtel simultaneously—but independently of each other—began construction
of power plants that used highly in-novative, state-of-the-art technologies for burning waste coal
with-out producing acid rain. By the end of the decade these two plants had revolutionized the
utility industry, directly contributing to new national antipollution laws by proving once and for all
that many so-called waste products actually can be converted into electricity, and that coal can
be burned without creating acid rain, thereby dispelling long-standing utility company claims to
the contrary. Our plant also established that such unproven, state-of-the-art technologies could
be financed by a small independent company, through Wall Street and other conventional
means.1 As an added benefit, the IPS power plant sent vented heat to a three and one-half-acre
hydroponic greenhouse, rather than into cooling ponds or cooling towers.
My role as IPS president gave me an inside track on the energy industry. I dealt with some of the
most influential people in the busi-ness: lawyers, lobbyists, investment bankers, and high-level
execu-tives at the major firms. I also had the advantage of a father-in-law who had spent over
thirty years at Bechtel, had risen to the position of chief architect, and now was in charge of
building a city in Saudi Arabia — a direct result of the work I had done in the early 1970s, during
the Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair. Winifred grew up near Bechtel's San Francisco
world headquarters and was also a member of the corporate family; her first job after graduating
from UC Berkeley was at Bechtel.
The energy industry was undergoing major restructuring. The big engineering firms were
jockeying to take over — or at least to compete with — the utility companies that previously had
enjoyed the privi-leges of local monopolies. Deregulation was the watchword of the day, and
rules changed overnight. Opportunities abounded for ambitious people to take advantage of a
situation that baffled the courts and Con-gress. Industry pundits dubbed it the "Wild West of
Energy" era.
164 Part IV: 1981-Present
One casualty of this process was MAIN. As Bruno predicted, Mac Hall had lost touch with reality
and no one dared tell him so. Paul Priddy never asserted control, and MAIN's management not
only failed to take advantage of the changes sweeping the industry but also made a series of
fatal mistakes. Only a few years after Bruno de-livered record profits, MAIN dropped its EHM
role and was in dire financial straits. The partners sold MAIN to one of the large engi-neering
and construction firms that had played its cards right.
While I had received almost thirty dollars a share for my stock in 1980, the remaining partners
settled for less than half that amount, approximately four years later. Thus did one hundred
years of proud service end in humiliation. I was sad to see the company fold, but I felt vindicated
that I had gotten out when I did. The MAIN name continued under the new ownership for a while,
but then it was dropped. The logo that had once carried such weight in countries around the
globe fell into oblivion.
MAIN was one example of a company that did not cope well in the changing atmosphere of the
energy industry. At the opposite end of the spectrum was a company we insiders found
fascinating: Enron. One of the fastest-growing organizations in the business, it seemed to come
out of nowhere and immediately began putting together mammoth deals. Most business
meetings open with a few moments of idle chatter while the participants settle into their seats,
pour themselves cups of coffee, and arrange their papers; in those days the idle chatter often
centered on Enron. No one outside the company could fathom how Enron was able to
accomplish such miracles. Those on the inside simply smiled at the rest of us, and kept quiet.
Occasionally, when pressed, they talked about new approaches to management, about "creative
financing," and about their commit-ment to hiring executives who knew their way through the
corridors of power in capitals across the globe.
To me, this all sounded like a new version of old EHM tech-niques. The global empire was
marching forward at a rapid pace.
For those of us interested in oil and the international scene, there was another frequently
discussed topic: the vice president's son, George W. Bush. His first energy company, Arbusto
(Spanish for bush) was a failure that ultimately was rescued through a 1984 merger with
Spectrum 7- Then Spectrum 7 found itself poised at the brink of bankruptcy, and was purchased,
in 1986, by Harken Energy
My Energy Company, Enron, and George W. Bush
165
Corporation; G. W. Bush was retained as a board member and con-sultant with an annual salary
of $120,000.2
We all assumed that having a father who was the U.S. vice presi-dent factored into this hiring
decision, since the younger Bush's record of accomplishment as an oil executive certainly did
not war-rant it. It also seemed no coincidence that Harken took this oppor-tunity to branch out
into the international field for the first time in its corporate history, and to begin actively searching
for oil invest-ments in the Middle East. Vanity Fair magazine reported, "Once Bush took his seat
on the board, wonderful things started to happen to Harken — new investments, unexpected
sources of financing, serendipitous drilling rights."3
In 1989, Amoco was negotiating with the government of Bahrain for offshore drilling rights. Then
Vice President Bush was elected president. Shortly thereafter, Michael Ameen — a State
Department consultant assigned to brief the newly confirmed U.S. ambassador to Bahrain,
Charles Hostler — arranged for meetings between the Bahraini government and Harken Energy.
Suddenly, Amoco was replaced by Harken. Although Harken had not previously drilled out-side
the southeastern United States, and never offshore, it won exclu-sive drilling rights in Bahrain,
something previously unheard of in the Arab world. Within a few weeks, the price of Harken
Energy stock increased by over twenty percent, from $4.50 to $5.50 per share.4
Even seasoned energy people were shocked by what had hap-pened in Bahrain. "I hope G. W.
isn't up to something his father will pay for," said a lawyer friend of mine who specialized in the
energy industry and also was a major supporter of the Republican Party. We were enjoying
cocktails at a bar around the corner from Wall Street, high atop the World Trade Center. He
expressed dismay. "I wonder if it's really worth it," he continued, shaking his head sadly. "Is the
son's career worth risking the presidency?"
I was less surprised than my peers, but I suppose I had a unique perspective. I had worked for
the governments of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran, I was familiar with Middle Eastern
politics, and I knew that Bush, just like the Enron executives, was part of the network I and my
EHM colleagues had created; they were the feudal lords and plantation masters.5
CHAPTER 29
I Take a Bribe
During this time in my life, I came to realize that we truly had en-tered a new era in world
economics. Events set in motion while Robert McNamara—the man who had served as one of
my models — reigned as secretary of defense and president of the World Bank had escalated
beyond my gravest fears. McNamara's Keynesian-inspired approach to economics, and his
advocacy of aggressive leadership, had become pervasive. The EHM concept had expanded to
include all manner of executives in a wide variety of businesses. They may not have been
recruited or profiled by the NSA, but they were performing similar functions.
The only difference now was that the corporate executive EHMs did not necessarily involve
themselves with the use of funds from the international banking community. While the old branch,
my branch, continued to thrive, the new version took on aspects that were even more sinister.
During the 1980s, young men and women rose up through the ranks of middle management
believing that any means justified the end: an enhanced bottom line. Global empire was sim-ply
a pathway to increased profits.
The new trends were typified by the energy industry, where I worked. The Public Utility
Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA) was passed by Congress in 1978, went through a series of legal
challenges, and finally became law in 1982. Congress originally envisioned the law as a way to
encourage small, independent companies like mine to develop alternative fuels and other
innovative approaches to
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167
producing electricity. Under this law, the major utility companies were required to purchase
energy generated by the smaller compa-nies, at fair and reasonable prices. This policy was a
result of Carter's desire to reduce U.S. dependence on oil —all oil, not just imported oil. The
intent of the law was clearly to encourage both alternative energy sources and the development
of independent companies that reflected America's entrepreneurial spirit. However, the reality
turned out to be something very different.
During the 1980s and into the 1990s, the emphasis switched from entrepreneurship to
deregulation. I watched as most of the other small independents were swallowed up by the large
engineering and construction firms, and by the public utility companies themselves. The latter
found legal loopholes that allowed them to create holding companies, which could own both the
regulated utility companies and the unregulated independent energy-producing corporations.
Many of them launched aggressive programs to drive the independ-ents into bankruptcy and
then purchase them. Others simply started from scratch and developed their own equivalent of
the independents.
The idea of reducing our oil dependence fell by the wayside. Rea-gan was deeply indebted to
the oil companies; Bush had made his own fortune as an oilman. And most of the key players
and cabinet members in these two administrations were either part of the oil in-dustry or were
part of the engineering and construction companies so closely tied to it. Moreover, in the final
analysis, oil and construc-tion were not partisan; many Democrats had profited from and were
beholden to them also.
IPS continued to maintain a vision of environmentally beneficial energy. We were committed to
the original PURPA goals, and we seemed to lead a charmed life. We were one of the few
independents that not only survived but also thrived. I have no doubt that the rea-son for this
was because of my past services to the corporatocracy.
What was going on in the energy field was symbolic of a trend that was affecting the whole world.
Concerns about social welfare, the environment, and other quality-of-life issues took a backseat
to greed. In the process, an overwhelming emphasis was placed on pro-moting private
businesses. At first, this was justified on theoretical bases, including the idea that capitalism was
superior to and would deter communism. Eventually, however, such justification was un-needed.
It was simply accepted a priori that there was something
inherently better about projects owned by wealthy investors rather than by governments.
International organizations such as the World Bank bought into this notion, advocating
deregulation and privati-zation of water and sewer systems, communications networks, utility
grids, and other facilities that up until then had been managed by governments.
As a result, it wTas easy to expand the EHM concept into the larger community, to send
executives from a broad spectrum of businesses on missions previously reserved for the few of
us recruited into an exclusive club. These executives fanned out across the planet. They sought
the cheapest labor pools, the most accessible resources, and the largest markets. They were
ruthless in their approach. Like the EHMs who had gone before them —like me, in Indonesia, in
Panama, and in Colombia—they found ways to rationalize their misdeeds. And like us, they
ensnared communities and countries. They promised affluence, a way for countries to use the
private sec-tor to dig themselves out of debt. They built schools and highways, donated
telephones, televisions, and medical services. In the end, however, if they found cheaper
workers or more accessible resources elsewhere, they left. When they abandoned a community
whose hopes they had raised, the consequences were often devastating, but they apparently did
this without a moment's hesitation or a nod to their own consciences.
I had to wonder, though, what all this was doing to their psyches, whether they had their
moments of doubt, as I had had mine. Did they ever stand next to a befouled canal and watch a
young woman try to bathe while an old man defecated upriver? Were there no Howard Parkers
left to ask the tough questions?
Although I enjoyed my IPS successes and my life as a family man, I could not fight my moments
of severe depression. I was now the fa-ther of a young girl, and I feared for the future she would
inherit. I was weighed down with guilt for the part I had played.
I also could look back and see a very disturbing historical trend. The modern international
financial system was created near the end of World War II, at a meeting of leaders from many
countries, held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire — my home state. The World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund were formed in order to reconstruct a devastated Europe, and they
achieved remarkable suc-cess. The system expanded rapidly, and it was soon sanctioned by
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I Take a Bribe
169
every major U.S. ally and hailed as a panacea for oppression. It would, we were assured, save
us all from the evil clutches of communism.
But I could not help wondering where all this would lead us. By the late 1980s, with the collapse
of the Soviet Union and the world Communist movement, it became apparent that deterring
commu-nism was not the goal; it was equally obvious that the global em-pire, which was rooted
in capitalism, would have free reign. As Jim Garrison, president of the State of the World forum,
observes:
Taken cumulatively, the integration of the world as a whole, particularly in terms of economic
globalization and the mythic qualities of "free market" capitalism, represents a veritable "empire"
in its own right... No nation on earth has been able to resist the compelling magnetism of
glob-alization. Few have been able to escape the "structural adjustments" and "conditionalities"
of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, or the arbitrations of the World Trade
Organization, those international finan-cial institutions that, however inadequate, still determine
what economic globalization means, what the rules are, and who is rewarded for submission and
punished for infractions. Such is the power of globalization that within our lifetime we are likely to
see the integration, even if unevenly, of all national economies in the world into a single global,
free market system.1
As I mulled over these issues, I decided it was time to write a tell-all book, Conscience of an
Economic Hit Man, but I made no attempt to keep the work quiet. Even today, I am not the sort
of writer who writes in isolation. I find it necessary to discuss the work I am doing. I receive
inspiration from other people, and I call upon them to help me remember and put into
perspective events of the past. I like to read sections of the materials I am working on to friends,
so I may hear their reactions. I understand that this may be risky, yet I know no other way for me
to write. Thus, it was no secret that I was writ-ing a book about my time with MAIN.
One afternoon in 1987, another former MAIN partner contacted me and offered me an extremely
lucrative consulting contract with Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation (SWEC). At that
time,
SWEC was one of the world's premier engineering and construction companies, and it was
trying to forge a place for itself in the chang-ing environment of the energy industry. My contact
explained that I would report to their new subsidiary, an independent energy-development
branch modeled after companies like my own IPS. I was relieved to learn that I would not be
asked to get involved in any international or EHM-type projects.
In fact, he told me, I would not be expected to do very much at all. I was one of the few people
who had founded and managed a success-ful independent energy company, and I had an
excellent reputation in the industry. SWEC s primary interest was to use my resume and to
include me on its list of advisers, which was legal and was consistent with standard industry
practices. The offer was especially attractive to me because, due to a number of circumstances,
I was considering selling IPS. The idea of joining the SWEC stable and receiving a spectacular
retainer was welcome.
The day he hired me, the CEO of SWEC took me out to a private lunch. We chatted informally
for some time, and as we did so I real-ized that a side of me was eager to get back into the
consulting busi-ness, to leave behind the responsibilities of running a complicated energy
company, of being responsible for over a hundred people when we were constructing a facility,
and of dealing with all the lia-bilities associated with building and operating power plants. I had
already envisioned how I would spend the substantial retainer I knew he was about to offer me. I
had decided to use it, among other things, to create a nonprofit organization.
Over dessert, my host brought up the subject of the one book I had already published, The
Stress-Free Habit. He told me he had heard wonderful things about it. Then he looked me
squarely in the eye. "Do you intend to write any more books?" he asked.
My stomach tightened. Suddenly, I understood what this was all about. I did not hesitate. "No," I
said. "I don't intend to try to publish any more books at this time."
"I'm glad to hear that," he said. "We value our privacy at this com-pany. Just like at MAIN."
"I understand that."
He sat back and, smiling, seemed to relax. "Of course, books like your last one, about dealing
with stress and such things, are perfectly acceptable. Sometimes they can even further a man's
career. As a
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171
consultant to SWEC, you are perfectly free to publish that sort of thing." He looked at me as
though expecting a response.
"That's good to know."
"Yes, perfectly acceptable. However, it goes without saying that you'll never mention the name
of this company in your books, and that you will not write about anything that touches on the
nature of our business here or the work you did at MAIN. You will not mention political subjects
or any dealings with international banks and devel-opment projects." He peered at me. "Simply a
matter of confidentiality."
"It goes without saying," I assured him. For an instant, my heart seemed to stop beating. An old
feeling returned, similar to ones I had experienced around Howard Parker in Indonesia, while
driving through Panama City beside Fidel, and while sitting in a Colombian coffee shop with
Paula. I was selling out — again. This was not a bribe in the legal sense — it was perfectly
aboveboard and legitimate for this company to pay to include my name on their roster, to call
upon me for advice or to show up at a meeting from time to time, but I understood the real
reason I was being hired.
He offered me an annual retainer that was equivalent to an exec-utive's salary.
Later that afternoon I sat in an airport, stunned, waiting for my flight back to Florida. I felt like a
prostitute. Worse than that, I felt I had betrayed my daughter, my family, and my country. And
yet, I told myself, I had little choice. I knew that if I had not accepted this bribe, the threats would
have followed.
CHAPTER 30
The United States Invades Panama
Torrijos was dead, but Panama continued to hold a special place in my heart. Living in South
Florida, I had access to many sources of information about current events in Central America.
Torrijos's legacy lived on, even if it was filtered through people who were not graced with his
compassionate personality and strength of character. Attempts to settle differences throughout
the hemisphere continued after his death, as did Panamas determination to force the United
States to live up to the terms of the Canal Treaty.
Torrijos's successor, Manuel Noriega, at first appeared committed to following in his mentor's
footsteps. I never met Noriega person-ally, but by all accounts, he initially endeavored to further
the cause of Latin America's poor and oppressed. One of his most important projects was the
continued exploration of prospects for building a new canal, to be financed and constructed by
the Japanese. Pre-dictably, he encountered a great deal of resistance from Washington and
from private U.S. companies. As Noriega himself writes:
Secretary of State George Shultz was a former executive of the multinational construction
company Bechtel; Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger had been a Bechtel vice president.
Bechtel would have liked nothing better than to earn the billions of dollars in revenue that canal
construction would generate... The Reagan and Bush administrations feared the possibility that
Japan might
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dominate an eventual canal construction project; not only was there a misplaced concern about
security, there was also the question of commercial rivalry U.S. con-struction firms stood to lose
billions of dollars.1
But Noriega was no Torrijos. He did not have his former boss's charisma or integrity. Over time,
he developed an unsavory reputa-tion for corruption and drug dealing, and was even suspected
of ar-ranging the assassination of a political rival, Hugo Spadafora.
Noriega built his reputation as a colonel heading up the Pana-manian Defense Forces' G-2 unit,
the military intelligence command that was the national liaison with the CIA. In this capacity, he
de-veloped a close relationship with CIA Director William J. Casey. The CIA used this
connection to further its agenda throughout the Carib-bean and Central and South America. For
example, when the Reagan administration wanted to give Castro advance warning of the 1983
U.S. invasion of Grenada, Casey turned to Noriega, asking him to serve as messenger. The
colonel also helped the CIA infiltrate Colom-bian and other drug cartels.
By 1984, Noriega had been promoted to general and commander in chief of the Panamanian
Defense Forces. It is reported that when Casey arrived in Panama City that year and was met at
the airport by the local CIA chief, he asked, "Where's my boy? Where's Noriega?" When the
general visited Washington, the two men met privately at Casey's house. Many years later,
Noriega would admit that his close bond with Casey made him feel invincible. He believed that
the CIA, like G-2, was the strongest branch of its country's government. He was convinced that
Casey would protect him, despite Noriega's stance on the Panama Canal Treaty and U.S. Canal
Zone military bases.2
Thus, while Torrijos had been an international icon for justice and equality, Noriega became a
symbol of corruption and decadence. His notoriety in this regard was assured when, on June
12,1986, the New York Times ran a front-page article with the headline, "Panama Strongman
Said to Trade in Drugs and Illicit Money." The expose, written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning
reporter, alleged that the general was a secret and illegal partner in several Latin American
busi-nesses; that he had spied on and for both the United States and Cuba, acting as a sort of
double agent; that G-2, under his orders, had in
fact beheaded Hugo Spadafora; and that Noriega had personally directed "the most significant
drug running in Panama." This article was accompanied by an unflattering portrait of the general,
and a follow-up the next day included more details.3
Compounding his other problems, Noriega was also saddled with a U.S. president who suffered
from an image problem, what journalists referred to as George H. W. Bush's "wimp factor."4 This
took on special significance when Noriega adamantly refused to consider a fifteen-year
extension for the School of the Americas. The general's memoirs provide an interesting insight:
As determined and proud as we were to follow through with Torrijos's legacy, the United States
didn't want any of this to happen. They wanted an extension or a renego-tiation for the
installation [School of the Americas], saying that with their growing war preparations in Cen-tral
America, they still needed it. But that School of the Americas was an embarrassment to us. We
didn't want a training ground for death squads and repressive right-wing militaries on our soil.5
Perhaps, therefore, the world should have anticipated it, but in fact the world was stunned when,
on December 20,1989, the United States attacked Panama with what was reported to be the
largest air-borne assault on a city since World War II.G It was an unprovoked attack on a civilian
population. Panama and her people posed ab-solutely no threat to the United States or to any
other country. Politi-cians, governments, and press around the world denounced the unilateral
U.S. action as a clear violation of international law.
Had this military operation been directed against a country that had committed mass murder or
other human rights crimes — Pino-chet's Chile, Stroessner's Paraguay, Somosa's Nicaragua,
D'Aubuissons El Salvador, or Saddam's Iraq, for example — the world might have understood.
But Panama had done nothing of the sort; it had merely dared to defy the wishes of a handful of
powerful politicians and cor-porate executives. It had insisted that the Canal Treaty be honored,
it had held discussions with social reformers, and it had explored the possibility of building a new
canal with Japanese financing and
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construction companies. As a result, it suffered devastating conse-quences. As Noriega puts it:
I want to make it very clear: the destabilization campaign launched by the United States in 1986,
ending with the 1989 Panama invasion, was a result of the U.S. rejection of any scenario in
which future control of the Panama Canal might be in the hands of an independent, sover-eign
Panama—supported by Japan... Shultz and Wein-berger, meanwhile, masquerading as officials
operating in the public interest and basking in popular ignorance about the powerful economic
interests they represented, were building a propaganda campaign to shoot me down."
Washington's stated justification for the attack was based on one man. The United States' sole
rationale for sending its young men and women to risk their lives and consciences killing
innocent peo-ple, including untold numbers of children, and setting fire to huge sections of
Panama City, was Noriega. He was characterized as evil, as the enemy of the people, as a
drug-trafficking monster, and as such he provided the administration with an excuse for the
massive invasion of a country with two million inhabitants — which coinci-dentally happened to
sit on one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the world.
I found the invasion disturbing to the point of driving me into a depression that lasted many days.
I knew that Noriega had body-guards, yet I could not help believing that the jackals could have
taken him out, as they had Roldos and Torrijos. Most of his body-guards, I suspected, had been
trained by U.S. military personnel and probably could have been paid either to look the other
way or to carry out an assassination themselves.
The more I thought and read about the invasion, therefore, the more convinced I became that it
signaled a U.S. policy turn back toward the old methods of empire building, that the Bush
adminis-tration was determined to go one better than Reagan and to demon-strate to the world
that it would not hesitate to use massive force in order to achieve its ends. It also seemed that
the goal in Panama, in addition to replacing the Torrijos legacy with a puppet administration
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favorable to the United States, was to frighten countries like Iraq into submission.
David Harris, a contributing editor at the New York Times Mag-azine and the author of many
books, has an interesting observation. In his 2001 book Shooting the Moon, he states:
Of all the thousands of rulers, potentates, strongmen, juntas, and warlords the Americans have
dealt with in all corners of the world, General Manuel Antonio Noriega is the only one the
Americans came after like this. Just once in its 225 years of formal national existence has the
United States ever invaded another country and carried its ruler back to the United States to
face trial and im-prisonment for violations of American law committed on that rulers own native
foreign turf.8
Following the bombardment, the United States suddenly found itself in a delicate situation. For a
while, it seemed as though the whole thing would backfire. The Bush administration might have
quashed the wimp rumors, but now it faced the problem of legiti-macy, of appearing to be a bully
caught in an act of terrorism. It was disclosed that the U.S. Army had prohibited the press, the
Red Cross, and other outside observers from entering the heavily bombed areas for three days,
while soldiers incinerated and buried the casualties. The press asked questions about how much
evidence of criminal and other inappropriate behavior was destroyed, and about how many died
because they were denied timely medical attention, but such questions were never answered.
We shall never know many of the facts about the invasion, nor shall we know the true extent of
the massacre. Defense Secretary Richard Cheney claimed a death toll between five hundred
and six hundred, but independent human rights groups estimated it at three thousand to five
thousand, with another twenty-five thousand left homeless.9 Noriega was arrested, flown to
Miami, and sentenced to forty years' imprisonment; at that time, he was the only person in the
United States officially classified as a prisoner of war.10
The world was outraged by this breach of international law and by the needless destruction of a
defenseless people at the hands of the most powerful military force on the planet, but few in the
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States were aware of either the outrage or the crimes Washington had committed. Press
coverage was very limited. A number of fac-tors contributed to this, including government policy,
White House phone calls to publishers and television executives, congresspeople who dared not
object, lest the wimp factor become their problem, and journalists who thought the public needed
heroes rather than objectivity.
One exception was Peter Eisner, a Newsday editor and Associated Press reporter who covered
the Panama invasion and continued to analyze it for many years. In The Memoirs of Manuel
Noriega: Amer-ica's Prisoner, published in 1997, Eisner writes:
The death, destruction and injustice wrought in the name of fighting Noriega—and the lies
surrounding that event —were threats to the basic American principles of democracy... Soldiers
were ordered to kill in Panama and they did so after being told they had to rescue a country from
the clamp of a cruel, depraved dictator; once they acted, the people of their country (the U.S.)
marched lockstep behind them.11
After lengthy research, including interviews with Noriega in his Miami prison cell, Eisner states:
On the key points, I do not think the evidence shows Noriega was guilty of the charges against
him. I do not think his actions as a foreign military leader or a sover-eign head of state justify the
invasion of Panama or that he represented a threat to U.S. national security.12
Eisner concludes:
My analysis of the political situation and my reporting in Panama before, during, and after the
invasion brought me to the conclusion that the U.S. invasion of Panama was an abominable
abuse of power. The invasion princi-pally served the goals of arrogant American politicians and
their Panamanian allies, at the expense of uncon-scionable bloodshed.13
The Arias family and the pre-Torrijos oligarchy, which had served as U.S. puppets from the time
when Panama was torn from Colom-bia until Torrijos took over, were reinstated. The new Canal
Treaty became a moot point. In essence, Washington once again con-trolled the waterway,
despite anything the official documents said.
As I reflected on those incidents and all that I had experienced while working for MAIN, I found
myself asking the same questions over and over: How many decisions — including ones of great
his-torical significance that impact millions of people — are made hy-men and women who are
driven by personal motives rather than by a desire to do the right thing? How many of our top
government of-ficials are driven by personal greed instead of national loyalty? How many wars
are fought because a president does not want his con-stituents to perceive him as a wimp?
Despite my promises to SWEC's president, my frustration and feelings of impotence about the
Panama invasion prodded me into resuming work on my book, except now I decided to focus on
Torrijos. I saw his story as a way to expose many of the injustices that infect our world, and as a
way to rid myself of my guilt. This time, however, I was determined to keep silent about what I
was doing, rather than seeking advice from friends and peers.
As I worked on the book, I was stunned by the magnitude of what we EHMs had accomplished,
in so many places. I tried to concen-trate on a few countries that stood out, but the list of places
where I had worked and which were worse off afterward was astounding. I also was horrified by
the extent of my own corruption. I had done a great deal of soul searching, yet I realized that
while I was in the midst of it I had been so focused on my daily activities that I had not seen the
larger perspective. Thus, when I was in Indonesia I fretted over the things Howard Parker and I
discussed, or the issues raised by Rasy's young Indonesian friends. While I was working in
Panama, I was deeply affected by the implications of what I had seen during Fidel's introduction
of the slums, the Canal Zone, and the disco-theque. In Iran, my conversations with Yamin and
Doc troubled me immensely. Now, the act of writing this book gave me an overview. I
understood how easy it had been not to see the larger picture and therefore to miss the true
significance of my actions.
How simple this sounds, and how self-evident; yet, how insidious the nature of these
experiences. For me it conjures the image of a
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soldier. In the beginning, he is naive. He may question the morality of killing other people, but
mostly he has to deal with his own fear, has to focus on survival. After he kills his first enemy, he
is over-whelmed with emotions. He may wonder about the family of the dead man and feel a
sense of remorse. But as time goes on and he participates in more battles, kills more people, he
becomes hard-ened. He is transformed into a professional soldier.
I had become a professional soldier. Admitting that fact opened the door for a better
understanding of the process by which crimes are committed and empires are built. I could now
comprehend why so many people have committed atrocious acts — how, for example, good,
family-loving Iranians could work for the shah's brutal secret police, how good Germans could
follow the orders of Hitler, how-good American men and women could bomb Panama City.
As an EHM, I never drew a penny directly from the NSA or any other government agency; MAIN
paid my salary. I was a private cit-izen, employed by a private corporation. Understanding this
helped me see more clearly the emerging role of the corporate executive-as-EHM. A whole new
class of soldier was emerging on the world scene, and these people were becoming
desensitized to their own actions. I wrote:
Today, men and women are going into Thailand, the Philippines, Botswana, Bolivia, and every
other country where they hope to find people desperate for work. They go to these places with
the express purpose of exploiting wretched people — people whose children are severely
malnourished, even starving, people who live in shanty-towns and have lost all hope of a better
life, people who have ceased to even dream of another day. These men and women leave their
plush offices in Manhattan or San Francisco or Chicago, streak across continents and oceans in
luxurious jetliners, check into first-class hotels, and dine at the finest restaurants the country has
to offer. Then they go searching for desperate people.
Today, we still have slave traders. They no longer find it necessary to march into the forests of
Africa looking for prime specimens who will bring top dollar on the auction
blocks in Charleston, Cartagena, and Havana. They sim-ply recruit desperate people and build a
factory to pro-duce the jackets, blue jeans, tennis shoes, automobile parts, computer
components, and thousands of other items they can sell in the markets of their choosing. Or they
may elect not even to own the factory themselves; instead, they hire a local businessman to do
all their dirty work for them.
These men and women think of themselves as upright. They return to their homes with
photographs of quaint sites and ancient ruins, to show to their children. They attend seminars
where they pat each other on the back and exchange tidbits of advice about dealing with the
ec-centricities of customs in far-off lands. Their bosses hire lawyers who assure them that what
they are doing is per-fectly legal. They have a cadre of psychotherapists and other human
resource experts at their disposal to con-vince them that they are helping those desperate
people.
The old-fashioned slave trader told himself that he was dealing with a species that was not
entirely human, and that he was offering them the opportunity to become Christianized. He also
understood that slaves were fun-damental to the survival of his own society, that they were the
foundation of his economy. The modern slave trader assures himself (or herself) that the
desperate people are better off earning one dollar a day than no dollars at all, and that they are
receiving the opportunity to become integrated into the larger world community. She also
understands that these desperate people are fundamental to the survival of her company, that
they are the foundation for her own lifestyle. She never stops to think about the larger
implications of what she, her lifestyle, and the economic system behind them are doing to the
world — or of how they may ultimately impact her children's future.
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CHAPTER 31
An EHM Failure in Iraq
My role as president of IPS in the 1980s, and as a consultant to SWEC in the late 1980s and
throughout much of the 1990s, gave me access to information about Iraq that was not available
to most people. Indeed, during the 1980s the majority of Americans knew little about the country.
It simply was not on their radar screen. However, I was fascinated by what was going on there.
I kept in touch with old friends who worked for the World Bank, USAID, the IMF, or one of the
other international financial organi-zations, and with people at Bechtel, Halliburton, and the other
major engineering and construction companies, including my own father-in-law. Many of the
engineers employed by IPS subcontractors and other independent power companies were also
involved in projects in the Middle East. I was very aware that the EHMs were hard at work in Iraq.
The Reagan and Bush administrations were determined to turn Iraq into another Saudi Arabia.
There were many compelling rea-sons for Saddam Hussein to follow the example of the House
of Saud. He had only to observe the benefits they had reaped from the Money-laundering Affair.
Since that deal was struck, modern cities had risen from the Saudi desert, Riyadh's garbagecollecting goats had been transformed into sleek trucks, and now the Saudis enjoyed the fruits of
some of the most advanced technologies in the world: state-of-the-art desalinization plants,
sewage treatment systems, communications networks, and electric utility grids.
Saddam Hussein undoubtedly was aware that the Saudis also en-joyed special treatment when
it came to matters of international law. Their good friends in Washington turned a blind eye to
many Saudi activities, including the financing of fanatical groups — many of which were
considered by most of the world to be radicals bordering on terrorism — and the harboring of
international fugitives. In fact, the United States actively sought and received Saudi Arabian
finan-cial support for Osama bin Laden's Afghan war against the Soviet Union. The Reagan and
Bush administrations not only encouraged the Saudis in this regard, but also they pressured
many other coun-tries to do the same — or at least to look the other way.
The EHM presence in Baghdad was very strong during the 1980s. They believed that Saddam
eventually would see the light, and I had to agree with this assumption. After all, if Iraq reached
an accord with Washington similar to that of the Saudis, Saddam could basically write his own
ticket in ruling his country, and might even expand his circle of influence throughout that part of
the world.
It hardly mattered that he was a pathological tyrant, that he had the blood of mass murders on
his hands, or that his mannerisms and brutal actions conjured images of Adolph Hitler. The
United States had tolerated and even supported such men many times before. We would be
happy to offer him U.S. government securities in exchange for petrodollars, for the promise of
continued oil supplies, and for a deal whereby the interest on those securities was used to hire
U.S. companies to improve infrastructure systems throughout Iraq, to create new cities, and to
turn the deserts into oases. We would be will-ing to sell him tanks and fighter planes and to build
him chemical and nuclear power plants, as we had done in so many other countries, even if
these technologies could conceivably be used to produce ad-vanced weaponry.
Iraq was extremely important to us, much more important than was obvious on the surface.
Contrary to common public opinion, Iraq is not simply about oil. It is also about water and
geopolitics. Both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow through Iraq; thus, of all the countries in
that part of the world, Iraq controls the most im-portant sources of increasingly critical water
resources. During the 1980s, the importance of water — politically as well as economically—
was becoming obvious to those of us in the energy and engineering fields. In the rush toward
privatization, many of the major companies
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that had set their sights on taking over the small independent power companies now looked
toward privatizing water systems in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.
In addition to oil and water, Iraq is situated in a very strategic lo-cation. It borders Iran, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey, and it has a coastline on the Persian Gulf. It is within
easy missile-striking distance of both Israel and the former Soviet Union. Military strategists
equate modern Iraq to the Hudson River valley during the French and Indian War and the
American Revolution. In the eighteenth century, the French, British, and Americans knew that
whoever controlled the Hudson River valley controlled the con-tinent. Today, it is common
knowledge that whoever controls Iraq holds the key to controlling the Middle East.
Above all else, Iraq presented a vast market for American tech-nology and engineering expertise.
The fact that it sits atop one of the world's most extensive oil fields (by some estimates, even
greater than Saudi Arabia's) assured that it was in a position to finance huge infrastructure and
industrialization programs. All the major players — engineering and construction companies;
computer systems sup-pliers; aircraft, missile, and tank manufacturers; and pharmaceutical and
chemical companies — were focused on Iraq.
However, by the late 1980s it was apparent that Saddam was not buying into the EHM scenario.
This was a major frustration and a great embarrassment to the first Bush administration. Like
Panama, Iraq contributed to George H. W. Bush's wimp image. As Bush searched for a way out,
Saddam played into his hands. In August 1990, he invaded the oil-rich sheikhdom of Kuwait.
Bush responded with a denunciation of Saddam for violating international law, even though it
had been less than a year since Bush himself had staged the illegal and unilateral invasion of
Panama.
It was no surprise when the president finally ordered an all-out military attack. Five hundred
thousand U.S. troops were sent in as part of an international force. During the early months of
1991, an aerial assault was launched against Iraqi military and civilian tar-gets. It was followed
by a one hundred-hour land assault that routed the outgunned and desperately inferior Iraqi
army. Kuwait was safe. A true despot had been chastised, though not brought to justice. Bush's
popularity ratings soared to 90 percent among the American people.
I was in Boston attending meetings at the time of the Iraq inva-sion — one of the few occasions
when I was actually asked to do something for SWEC. I vividly recall the enthusiasm that
greeted Bush's decision. Naturally, people throughout the Stone & Webster organization were
excited, though not only because we had taken a stand against a murderous dictator. For them,
a U.S. victory in Iraq offered possibilities for huge profits, promotions, and raises.
The excitement was not limited to those of us in businesses that would directly benefit from war.
People across the nation seemed al-most desperate to see our country reassert itself militarily. I
believe there were many reasons for this attitude, including the philosoph-ical change that
occurred when Reagan defeated Carter, the Iranian hostages were released, and Reagan
announced his intention to renegotiate the Panama Canal Treaty. Bush's invasion of Panama
stirred the already smoldering flames.
Beneath the patriotic rhetoric and the calls for action, however, I believe a much more subtle
transformation was occurring in the way U.S. commercial interests — and therefore most of the
people who worked for American corporations — viewed the world. The march toward global
empire had become a reality in which much of the country participated. The dual ideas of
globalization and priva-tization were making significant inroads into our psyches.
In the final analysis, this was not solely about the United States. The global empire had become
just that; it reached across all bor-ders. What we had previously considered U.S. coiporations
were now truly international, even from a legal standpoint. Many of them were incorporated in a
multitude of countries; they could pick and choose from an assortment of rules and regulations
under which to conduct their activities, and a multitude of globalizing trade agreements and
organizations made this even easier. Words like democracy, social-ism, and capitalism were
becoming almost obsolete. Corporatocracy had become a fact, and it increasingly exerted itself
as the single ma-jor influence on world economies and politics.
In a strange turn of events, I succumbed to the corporatocracy when I sold IPS in November
1990. It was a lucrative deal for my partners and me, but we sold out mainlv because Ashland
Oil Com-pany put tremendous pressure on us. I knew from experience that fighting them would
be extremely costly in many ways, while selling would make us wealthy. However, it did strike
me as ironic that an
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oil company would became the new owners of my alternative energy-company; part of me felt
like a traitor.
SWEC demanded very little of my time. Occasionally, I was asked to fly to Boston for meetings
or to help prepare a proposal. I was sometimes sent to places like Rio de Janeiro, to hobnob
with the movers and shakers there. Once, I flew to Guatemala on a private jet. I frequently called
project managers to remind them that I was on the payroll and available. Receiving all that
money for doing so very little rubbed at my conscience. I knew the business well and wanted to
contribute something useful. But it simply was not on the agenda.
The image of being a man in the middle haunted me. I wanted to take some action that would
justify my existence and that might turn all the negatives of my past into something positive. I
continued to work surreptitiously — and very irregularly — on Conscience of an Economic Hit
Man, and yet I did not deceive myself into believing that it would ever be published.
In 1991,1 began guiding small groups of people into the Amazon to spend time with and learn
from the Shuars, who were eager to share their knowledge about environmental stewardship
and indige-nous healing techniques. During the next few years, the demand for these trips
increased rapidly and resulted in the formation of a non-profit organization, Dream Change
Coalition. Dedicated to changing the way people from industrialized countries see the earth and
our relationship to it, Dream Change developed a following around the world and empowered
people to create organizations with similar missions in many countries. TIME magazine selected
it as one of thirteen organizations whose Web sites best reflect the ideals and goals of Earth
Day.1
Throughout the 1990s, I became increasingly involved in the nonprofit world, helping to create
several organizations and serving on the board of directors of others. Many of these grew out of
the work of highly dedicated people at Dream Change and involved working with indigenous
people in Latin America—the Shuars and Achuars of the Amazon, the Quechuas of the Andes,
the Mayas in Guatemala — or teaching people in the United States and Europe about these
cultures. SWEC approved of this philanthropic work; it was consistent with SWEC's own
commitment to the United Way. I also wrote more books, always careful to focus on indigenous
teach-ings and to avoid references to my EHM activities. Besides alleviating
my boredom, these measures helped me keep in touch with Latin America and the political
issues that were dear to me.
But try as I might to convince myself that my nonprofit and writ-ing activities provided a balance,
that I was making amends for my past activities, I found this increasingly difficult. In my heart, I
knew I was shirking my responsibilities to my daughter. Jessica was in-heriting a world where
millions of children are born saddled with debts they will never be able to repay. And I had to
accept responsi-bility for it.
My books grew in popularity, especially one titled, The World Is As You Dream It. Its success led
to increasing demands for me to give workshops and lectures. Sometimes, standing in front of
an au-dience in Boston or New York or Milan, I was struck by the irony. If the world is as you
dream it, why had I dreamed such a world? How had I managed to play such an active role in
manifesting such a nightmare?
In 1997,1 was commissioned to teach a weeklong Omega Insti-tute workshop in the Caribbean,
at a resort on St. John Island. I arrived late at night. When I awoke the next morning, I walked
onto a tiny balcony and found myself looking out at the very bay where, seventeen years earlier,
I had made the decision to quit MAIN. I col-lapsed into a chair, overcome with emotion.
Throughout the week, I spent much of my free time on that bal-cony, looking down at Leinster
Bay, trying to understand my feelings. I came to realize that although I had quit, I had not taken
the next step, and that my decision to remain in the middle was exacting a devastating toll. By
the end of the week, I had concluded that the world around me was not one that I wanted to
dream, and that I needed to do exactly what I was instructing my students to do: to change my
dreams in ways that reflected what I really wanted in my life.
When I returned home, I gave up my corporate consulting prac-tice. The president of SWEC
who had hired me was now retired. A new man had come aboard, one who was younger than
me and was apparently unconcerned about me telling my story. He had initiated a cost-cutting
program and was happy not to have to pay me that ex-orbitant retainer any longer.
I decided to complete the book I had been working on for so long, and just making the decision
brought a wonderful sense of relief. I shared my ideas about writing with close friends, mostly
people in
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the nonprofit world who were involved with indigenous cultures and rain forest preservation. To
my surprise, they were dismayed. They feared that speaking out would undermine my teaching
work and jeopardize the nonprofit organizations I supported. Many of us were helping Amazon
tribes protect their lands from oil companies; com-ing clean, I was told, could undermine my
credibility, and might set back the whole movement. Some even threatened to withdraw their
support.
So, once again, I stopped writing. Instead, I focused on taking people deep into the Amazon,
showing them a place and a tribe that are mostly untouched by the modern world. In fact, that is
where I was on September 11, 2001.
CHAPTER 32
September 11 and its Aftermath for Me, Personally
On September 10, 2001, I was traveling down a river in the Ecuadorian Amazon with Shakaim
Chumpi, the coauthor of my book Spirit of the Shuar. We were leading a group of sixteen North
Amer-icans to his community deep in the rain forest. The visitors had come to learn about his
people and to help them preserve their precious rain forests.
Shakaim had fought as a soldier in the recent Ecuador-Peru con-flict. Most people in the major
oil-consuming nations have never heard about this war, yet it was fought primarily to provide
them with oil. Although the border between these two countries was dis-puted for many years,
only recently did a resolution become urgent. The reason for the urgency was that the oil
companies needed to know with which country to negotiate in order to win concessions for
specific tracts of the oil-rich lands. Borders had to be defined.
The Shuars formed Ecuador's first line of defense. They proved themselves to be ferocious
fighters, often overcoming superior num-bers and better-equipped forces. The Shuars did not
know anything about the politics behind the war or that its resolution would open the door to oil
companies. They fought because they come from a long tradition of warriors and because they
were not about to allow foreign soldiers onto their lands.
As we paddled down the river, watching a flock of chattering parrots fly overhead, I asked
Shakaim whether the truce was still holding.
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"Yes," he said, "but I'm afraid I must tell you that we are now preparing to go to war with you."
He went on to explain that, of course, he did not mean me personally or the people in our group.
"You are our friends," he assured me. He was, he said, referring to our oil companies and to the
military forces that would come into his jungle to defend them.
"We've seen what they did to the Huaorani tribe. They destroyed their forests, polluted the rivers,
and killed many people, including children. Today, the Huaorani hardly exist as a people
anymore. We won't let that happen to us. We won't allow oil companies into our territory, any
more than we would the Peruvians. We have all sworn to fight to the last man."1
That night our group sat around a fire in the center of a beautiful Shuar longhouse built from split
bamboo slats placed in the ground and covered with a thatched roof. I told them about my
conversation with Shakaim. We all wondered how many other people in the world felt similarly
about our oil companies and our country. How many, like the Shuars, were terrified that we
would come into their lives and destroy their culture and their lands? How many hated us?
The next morning, I went down to the little office where we kept our two-way radio. I needed to
arrange for pilots to fly in and pick us up in a few days. As I was talking with them, I heard a
shout.
"My God!" the man on the other end of the radio exclaimed. "New York is under attack." He
turned up the commercial radio that had been playing music in the background. During the next
half hour, we received a minute-by-minute account of the events unfolding in the United States.
Like everyone else, it was a moment I shall never forget.
When I returned to my home in Florida, I knew I had to visit Ground Zero, the former site of the
World Trade Center towers, so I arranged to fly to New York. I checked into my uptown hotel in
early afternoon. It was a sunny November day, unseasonably balmy. I strolled along Central
Park, filled with enthusiasm, then headed for a part of the city where once I had spent a lot of
time, the area near Wall Street now known as Ground Zero.
As I approached, my enthusiasm was replaced with a sense of horror. The sights and smells
were overwhelming — the incredible destruction; the twisted and melted skeletons of those
once-great buildings; the debris; the rancid odor of smoke, charred ruins, and
burnt flesh. I had seen it all on TV, but being here was different
I had not been prepared for this — especially not for the people. Two months had passed and
still they stood around, those who lived or worked nearby, those who had survived. An Egyptian
man was loi-tering outside his small shoe repair shop, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Can't get used to it," he muttered. "I lost many customers, many friends. My nephew died up
there." He pointed at the blue sky. "I think I saw him jump. I don'tknow... So many were jumping,
hold-ing hands and flapping their arms as though they could fly."
It came as a surprise, the way people talked with one another. In New York City. And it went
beyond language. Their eyes met. Al-though somber, they exchanged looks of compassion, halfsmiles that spoke more than a million words.
But there was something else, a sense about the place itself. At first, I couldn't figure it out; then
it struck me: the light. Lower Man-hattan had been a dark canyon, back in the days when I made
the pilgrimage to this part of town to raise capital for IPS, when I used to plot strategy with my
investment bankers over dinner at Windows on the World. You had to go that high, to the top of
the World Trade Center, if you wanted to see light. Now, here it was at street level. The canyon
had been split wide open, and we who stood on the street beside the ruins were warmed by the
sunshine. I couldn't help wondering if the view of the sky, of the light, had helped people open
their hearts. I felt guilty just thinking such thoughts.
I turned the corner at Trinity Church and headed down Wall Street. Back to the old New York,
enveloped in shadow. No sky, no light. People hurried along the sidewalk, ignoring one another.
A cop screamed at a stalled car.
I sat down on the first steps I came to, at number fourteen. From somewhere, the sounds of
giant fans or an air blower rose above the other noises. It seemed to come from the massive
stone wall of the New York Stock Exchange building. I watched the people. They hus-tled up
and down the street, leaving their offices, hurrying home, or heading to a restaurant or bar to
discuss business. A few walked in tandem and chatted with each other. Most, though, were
alone and silent. I tried to make eye contact; it didn't happen.
The wail of a car alarm drew my attention down the street. A man rushed out of an office and
pointed a key at the car; the alarm went
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silent. I sat there quietly for a few long moments. After a while, I reached into my pocket and
pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper covered with statistics.
Then I saw him. He shuffled along the street, staring down at his feet. He had a scrawny gray
beard and wore a grimy overcoat that looked especially out of place on this warm afternoon on
Wall Street. I knew he was Afghan.
He glanced at me. Then, after only a second of hesitation, he started up the steps. He nodded
politely and sat down beside me, leaving a yard or two between us. From the way he looked
straight ahead, I realized it would be up to me to begin the conversation.
"Nice afternoon."
"Beautiful." His accent was thick. "Times like these, we want sun-shine."
"You mean because of the World Trade Center?"
He nodded.
"You're from Afghanistan?"
He stared at me. "Is it so obvious?"
"I've traveled a lot. Recently, I visited the Himalayas, Kashmir."
"Kashmir." He pulled at his beard. "Fighting."
"Yes, India and Pakistan, Hindus and Muslims. Makes you won-der about religion, doesn't it?"
His eyes met mine. They were deep brown, nearly black. They struck me as wise and sad. He
turned back toward the New York Stock Exchange building. With a long gnarled finger, he
pointed at the building.
"Or maybe," I agreed, "it's about economics, not religion."
"You were a soldier?"
I couldn't help but chuckle. "No. An economic consultant." I handed him the paper with the
statistics. "These were my weapons."
He reached over and took them. "Numbers."
"World statistics."
He studied the list, then gave a little laugh. "I can't read." He handed it back to me.
"The numbers tell us that twenty-four thousand people die every day from hunger."
He whistled softly, then took a moment to think about this, and sighed. "I was almost one of
them. I had a little pomegranate farm near Kandahar. Russians arrived and mujahideen hid
behind trees
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and in water ditches." He raised his hands and pointed them like a rifle. "Ambushing." He
lowered his hands. "All my trees and ditches were destroyed."
'After that, what did you do?"
He nodded at the list I held. "Does it show beggars?"
It did not, but I thought I remembered. "About eighty million in the world, I believe."
"I was one." He shook his head, seemed lost in thought. We sat in silence for a few minutes
before he spoke again. "I do not like beg-garing. My child dies. So I raise poppies."
"Opium?"
He shrugged. "No trees, no water. The only way to feed our families."
I felt a lump in my throat, a depressing sense of sadness com-bined with guilt. "We call raising
opium poppies evil, yet many of our wealthiest people owe their fortunes to the drug trade."
His eyes met mine and seemed to penetrate my soul. 'You were a soldier," he stated, nodding
his head to confirm this simple fact. Then he rose slowly to his feet and hobbled down the steps.
I wanted him to stay, but I felt powerless to say anything. I managed to get to my feet and start
after him. At the bottom of the steps I was stopped by a sign. It included a picture of the building
where I had been seated. At the top, it notified passersby that the sign had been erected by
Heritage Trails of New York. It said:
The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus piled on top of the bell tower of St. Mark's in Venice, at the
corner of Wall and Broad—that's the design concept behind 14 Wall Street. In its day the world's
tallest bank building, the 539-foot-high skyscraper originally housed the headquarters of Bankers
Trust, one of the country's wealthiest financial institutions.
I stood there in awe and looked up at this building. Shortly after the turn of the last century, 14
Wall Street had played the role the World Trade Center would later assume; it had been the very
symbol of power and economic domination. It had also boused Bankers Trust, one of the firms I
had employed to finance my energy com-pany. It was an essential part of my heritage — the
heritage, as the old Afghan man so aptly put it, of a soldier.
That I had ended up here this day, talking with him, seemed an
September 11 and its Aftermath for Me, Personally
193
odd coincidence. Coincidence. The word stopped me. I thought about how our reactions to
coincidences mold our lives. How should I re-act to this one?
Continuing to walk, I scanned the heads in the crowd, but I could find no sign of him. At the next
building, there was an immense statue shrouded in blue plastic. An engraving on the building's
stone face revealed that this was Federal Hall, 26 Wall Street, where on April 30, 1789, George
Washington had taken the oath of office as first president of the United States. This was the
exact spot where the first man given the responsibility to safeguard life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness for all people was sworn in. So close to Ground Zero; so close to Wall Street.
I went on around the block, to Pine Street. There I came face-to-face with the world
headquarters of Chase, the bank David Rocke-feller built, a bank seeded with oil money and
harvested by men like me. This bank, an institution that served the EHMs and that was a master
at promoting global empire, was in many ways the very sym-bol of the corporatocracy.
I recalled reading that the World Trade Center was a project started by David Rockefeller in I960,
and that in recent years the complex had been considered an albatross. It had the reputation of
being a financial misfit, unsuited to modern fiber-optic and Internet technologies, and burdened
with an inefficient and costly elevator system. Those two towers once had been nicknamed
David and Nel-son. Now the albatross was gone.
I kept walking, slowly, almost reluctantly. Despite the warmth of the afternoon, I felt a chill, and I
realized that a strange anxiousness, a foreboding, had taken hold of me. I could not identify its
source and I tried to brush it off, picking up my pace. I eventually found myself once again
looking at that smoldering hole, the twisted metal, that great scar in the earth. I leaned against a
building that had es-caped the destruction and stared into the pit. I tried to imagine the people
rushing out of the collapsing tower and the firefighters dashing in to help them. I tried to think
about the people who had jumped, the desperation they felt. But none of these things came to
me.
Instead, I saw Osama bin Laden accepting money, and weapons worth millions of dollars, from a
man employed by a consulting company under contract to the United States government. Then I
saw myself sitting at a computer with a blank screen.
I looked around, away from Ground Zero, at the New York streets that had avoided the fire and
now were returning to normal. I wondered what the people who walked those streets today
thought about all this — not simply about the destruction of the towers, but also about the ruined
pomegranate farms and the twenty-four thousand who starve every single day. I wondered if
they thought about such things at all, if they could tear themselves away from their jobs and gasguzzling cars and their interest payments long enough to consider their own contribution to the
world they were passing on to their children. I wondered what they knew about Af-ghanistan —
not the Afghanistan on television, the one littered with U.S. military tents and tanks, but the old
man's Afghanistan. I won-dered what those twenty-four thousand who die every day think.
And then I saw myself again, sitting before a blank computer screen.
I forced my attention back to Ground Zero. At the moment, one thing was certain: my country
was thinking about revenge, and it was focusing on countries like Afghanistan. But I was thinking
about all the other places in the world where people hate our companies, our military, our
policies, and our march toward global empire.
I wondered, What about Panama, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Guatemala, most of Africa?
I pushed myself off the wall I had been leaning against and started walking away. A short,
swarthy man was waving a newspaper in the air and shouting in Spanish. I stopped.
"Venezuela on the brink of revolution!" he yelled above the noise of the traffic, the honking horns,
and the milling people.
I bought his paper and stood there for a moment scanning the lead article. It was about Hugo
Chavez, Venezuela's democratically elected, anti-American president, and the undercurrent of
hatred generated by U.S. policies in Latin America.
What about Venezuela?
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CHAPTER 33
Venezuela: Saved by Saddam
I had watched Venezuela for many years. It was a classic example of a country that rose from
rags to riches as a result of oil. It was also a model of the turmoil oil wealth foments, of the
disequilibrium be-tween rich and poor, and of a country shamelessly exploited by the
corporatocracy. It had become the epitome of a place where old-style EHMs like me converged
with the new-style, corporate version.
The events I read about in the newspaper that day at Ground Zero were a direct result of the
1998 elections, when the poor and disenfranchised of Venezuela elected Hugo Chavez by a
landslide as their president.1 He immediately instituted drastic measures, taking control of the
courts and other institutions and dissolving the Vene-zuelan Congress. He denounced the
United States for its "shameless imperialism," spoke out forcefully against globalization, and
introduced a hydrocarbons law that was reminiscent, even in name, to the one Jaime Roldos
had brought to Ecuador shortly before his airplane went down. The law doubled the royalties
charged to foreign oil com-panies. Then Chavez defied the traditional independence of the state-
owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, by replacing its top executives with people loyal to
him.2
Venezuelan oil is crucial to economies around the world. In 2002 the nation was the world's
fourth-largest oil exporter and the number-three supplier to the United States.3 Petroleos de
Venezuela, with forty thousand employees and $50 billion a year in sales, provides 80 percent of
the country's export revenue. It is by far the most
important factor in Venezuela's economy.* By taking over the indus-try, Chavez had thrust
himself onto the world stage as a major player.
Many Venezuelans saw this as destiny the completion of a process that began eighty years
earlier. On December 14, 1922, a huge oil blowout had gushed from the earth near Maracaibo.
One hundred thousand barrels of crude sprayed into the air each day for the next three days,
and this single geologic event changed Venezuela forever. By 1930, the country was the world's
largest oil exporter. Venezue-lans looked to oil as a solution to all their problems.
Oil revenues during the next forty years enabled Venezuela to evolve from one of the most
impoverished nations in the world to one of the wealthiest in Latin America. All of the country's
vital sta-tistics improved: health care, education, employment, longevity, and infant survival rates.
Businesses prospered.
During the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, petroleum prices skyrock-eted and Venezuela's national
budget quadrupled. The EHMs went to work. The international banks flooded the country with
loans that paid for vast infrastructure and industrial projects and for the highest skyscrapers on
the continent. Then, in the 1980s, the corpo-rate-style EHMs arrived. It was an ideal opportunity
for them to cut their fledgling teeth. The Venezuelan middle class had become siz-able, and
provided a ripe market for a vast array of products, yet there was still a very large poor sector
available to labor in the sweat-shops and factories.
Then oil prices crashed, and Venezuela could not repay its debts. In 1989, the IMF imposed
harsh austerity measures and pressured Caracas to support the corporatocracy in many other
ways. Vene-zuelans reacted violently; riots killed over two hundred people. The illusion of oil as
a bottomless source of support was shattered. Between 1978 and 2003, Venezuela's per capita
income plummeted by over 40 percent.5
As poverty increased, resentment intensified. Polarization re-sulted, with the middle class pitted
against the poor. As so often occurs in countries whose economies depend on oil production,
demo-graphics radically shifted. The sinking economy took its toll on the middle class, and many
fell into the ranks of the poor.
The new demographics set the stage for Chavez —- and for conflict with Washington. Once in
power, the new president took actions
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that challenged the Bush administration. Just before the September 11 attacks, Washington was
considering its options. The EHMs had failed; was it time to send in the jackals?
Then 9/11 changed all priorities. President Bush and his advisers focused on rallying the world
community to support U.S. activities in Afghanistan and an invasion of Iraq. On top of that, the
U.S. econ-omy was in the middle of a recession. Venezuela was relegated to a back burner.
However, it was obvious that at some point Bush and Chavez would come to blows. With Iraqi
and other Middle Eastern oil supplies threatened, Washington could not afford to ignore
Venezuela for long.
Wandering around Ground Zero and Wall Street, meeting the old Afghan man, and reading
about Chavez's Venezuela brought me to a point I had avoided for many years, and it forced me
to take a hard look at the consequences of the things I had done over the past three decades. I
could not possibly deny the role I had played or the fact that my work as an EHM now affected
my daughter's generation in very negative ways. I knew I could no longer postpone taking action
to atone for what I had done. I had to come clean about my life, in a manner that would help
people wake up to the fact of corpora-tocracy and understand why so much of the world hates
us.
I started writing once again, but as I did so, it seemed to me that my story was too old. Somehow,
I needed to bring it up to date. I considered traveling to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Venezuela and
writing a contemporary commentary on those three countries. They seemed to embody an irony
of current world affairs: each had undergone traumatic political turmoil and ended up with
leaders who left a great deal to be desired (a cruel and despotic Taliban, a psychopathic
Saddam, and an economically inept Chavez), yet in no case did the corporatocracv respond by
attempting to solve the deeper problems of these countries. Rather, the response was simply to
undermine leaders who stood in the way of our oil policies. In many respects, Venezuela was
the most intriguing case because, while military intervention had already occurred in Afghanistan
and appeared inevitable in Iraq, the administration's response to Chavez remained a mystery.
As far as I was concerned, the issue was not about whether Chavez was a good leader; it was
about Washington's reaction to a leader who stood in the way of the corporatocracy's march to
global empire.
Before I had time to organize such a trip, however, circumstances once again intervened. My
nonprofit wTork took me to South America several times in 2002. A Venezuelan family whose
businesses were go-ing bankrupt under the Chavez regime joined one of my trips to the Amazon.
We became close friends, and I heard their side of the story. I also met with Latin Americans
from the other end of the economic spectrum, who considered Chavez a savior. The events
unfolding in Caracas were symptomatic of the world wre EHMs had created.
By December 2002, the situation in both Venezuela and in Iraq reached crisis points. The two
countries were evolving into perfect counterpoints for each other. In Iraq, all the subtle efforts —
both the EHMs and the jackals — had failed to force Saddam to comply, and now we were
preparing for the ultimate solution, invasion. In Vene-zuela, the Bush administration was bringing
Kermit Roosevelt's Iranian model into play. As the New York Times reported,
Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans filled the streets here today to declare their commitment
to a national strike, now in its 28th day, to force the ouster of Presi-dent Hugo Chavez.
The strike, joined by an estimated 30,000 oil workers, threatens to wreak havoc on this nation,
the world's fifth-largest oil producer, for months to come...
In recent days, the strike has reached a kind of stale-mate. Mr. Chavez is using nonstriking
workers to try to normalize operations at the state-owned oil company. His opponents, led by a
coalition of business and labor leaders, contend, though, that their strike will push the company,
and thus the Chavez government, to collapse.6
This was exactly how the CIA brought dowTi Mossadegh and re-placed him with the shah. The
analogy could not have been stronger. It seemed history was uncannily repeating itself, fifty
years later. Five decades, and still oil was the driving force.
Chavez's supporters continued to clash with his opponents. Sev-eral people, it was reported,
were shot to death and dozens more were wounded. The next day, I talked with an old friend
who for many years had been involved with the jackals. Like me, he had
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never worked directly for any government, but he had led clandes-tine operations in many
countries. He told me that a private con-tractor had approached him to foment strikes in Caracas
and to bribe military officers — many of whom had been trained at the School of the Americas —
to turn against their elected president. He had turned down the offer, but he confided, "The man
who took the job knows what he's doing.""7
Oil company executives and Wall Street feared a rise in oil prices and a decline in American
inventories. Given the Middle East situ-ation, I knew the Bush administration was doing
everything in its power to overthrow Chavez. Then came the news that they had suc-ceeded;
Chavez had been ousted. The New York Times took this turn of events as an opportunity to
provide a historical perspective — and also to identify the man who appeared to play the Kermit
Roosevelt role in contemporary Venezuela:
The United States... supported authoritarian regimes throughout Central and South America
during and after the Cold War in defense of its economic and political interests.
In tiny Guatemala, the Central Intelligence Agency-mounted a coup overthrowing the
democratically elected government in 1954, and it backed subsequent right-wing governments
against small leftist rebel groups for four decades. Roughly 200,000 civilians died.
In Chile, a CIA-supported coup helped put Gen. Augusto Pinochet in power from 1973 to 1990.
In Peru, a fragile democratic government is still unraveling the agency's role in a decade of
support for the now-deposed and disgraced president, Alberto K. Fujimori, and his disreputable
spy chief, Vladimiro L. Montesinos.
The United States had to invade Panama in 1989 to topple its narco-dictator, Manuel A. Noriega,
who, for almost 20 years, was a valued informant for American intelligence. And the struggle to
mount an unarmed opposition against Nicaragua's leftists in the 1980s by any means necessary,
including selling arms to Iran for cold cash, led to indictments against senior Reagan
administration officials.
Among those investigated back then was Otto J. Reich, a veteran of Latin American struggles.
No charges were ever filed against Mr. Reich. He later became United States Ambassador to
Venezuela and now serves as assistant sec-retary of state for inter-American affairs by
presidential ap-pointment. The fall of Mr. Chavez is a feather in his cap.8
If Mr. Reich and the Bush administration were celebrating the coup against Chavez, the party
was suddenly cut short. In an amaz-ing turnabout, Chavez regained the upper hand and was
back in power less than seventy-two hours later. Unlike Mossadegh in Iran, Chavez had
managed to keep the military on his side, despite all at-tempts to turn its highest-ranking officers
against him. In addition, he had the powerful state oil company on his side. Petroleos de
Venezuela defied the thousands of striking workers and made a comeback.
Once the dust cleared, Chavez tightened his government's grip on oil company employees,
purged the military of the few disloyal offi-cers who had been persuaded to betray him, and
forced many of his key opponents out of the country. He demanded twenty-year prison terms for
two prominent opposition leaders, Washington-connected operatives who had joined the jackals
to direct the nationwide strike.9
In the final analysis, the entire sequence of events was a calamity for the Bush administration.
As the Los Angeles Times reported,
Bush administration officials acknowledged Tuesday that they had discussed the removal of
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for months with military and civilian lead-ers from
Venezuela... The administration's handling of the abortive coup has come under increasing
scrutiny.10
It was obvious that not only had the EHMs failed, but so had the jackals. Venezuela in 2003
turned out to be very different from Iran in 1953.1 wondered if this was a harbinger or simply an
anomaly— and what Washington would do next.
At least for the time being, I believe a serious crisis was averted in Venezuela—and Chavez was
saved — by Saddam Hussein. The Bush administration could not take on Afghanistan, Iraq, and
Venezuela all at once. At the moment, it had neither the military muscle nor the
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political support to do so. I knew, however, that such circumstances could change quickly, and
that President Chavez was likely to face fierce opposition in the near future. Nonetheless,
Venezuela was a reminder that not much had changed in fifty years — except the out-come.
CHAPTER 34
Ecuador Revisited
Venezuela was a classic case. However, as I watched events unfold-ing there, I was struck by
the fact that the truly significant battle lines were being drawn in yet another country. They were
significant not because they represented more in terms of dollars or human lives, but because
they involved issues that went far beyond the materialis-tic goals that generally define empires.
These battle lines extended beyond the armies of bankers, business executives, and politicians,
deep into the soul of modern civilization. And they were being es-tablished in a country I had
come to know and love, the one where I had first worked as a Peace Corps volunteer: Ecuador.
In the years since I first went there, in 1968, this tiny country had evolved into the quintessential
victim of the corporatocracy. My con-temporaries and I, and our modern corporate equivalents,
had managed to bring it to virtual bankruptcy. We loaned it billions of dollars so it could hire our
engineering and construction firms to build projects that would help its richest families. As a
result, in those three decades, the official poverty level grew from 50 to 70 per-cent, under- or
unemployment increased from 15 to 70 percent, pub-lic debt increased from $240 million to $16
billion, and the share of national resources allocated to the poorest citizens declined from 20
percent to 6 percent. Today, Ecuador must devote nearly 50 percent of its national budget
simply to paying off its debts — instead of to helping the millions of its citizens who are officially
classified as dan-gerously impoverished.1
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The situation in Ecuador clearly demonstrates that this was not the result of a conspiracy; it was
a process that had occurred during both Democratic and Republican administrations, a process
that had involved all the major multinational banks, many corporations, and foreign aid missions
from a multitude of countries. The United States played the lead role, but we had not acted alone.
During those three decades, thousands of men and women par-ticipated in bringing Ecuador to
the tenuous position it found itself in at the beginning of the millennium. Some of them, like me,
had been aware of what they were doing, but the vast majority had merely performed the tasks
they had been taught in business, engi-neering, and law schools, or had followed the lead of
bosses in my mold, who demonstrated the system by their own greedy example and through
rewards and punishments calculated to perpetuate it. Such participants saw the parts they
played as benign, at worst; in the most optimistic view, they were helping an impoverished
nation.
Although unconscious, deceived, and —in many cases —self-deluded, these players were not
members of any clandestine conspir-acy; rather, they were the product of a system that
promotes the most subtle and effective form of imperialism the world has ever wit-nessed. No
one had to go out and seek men and women who could be bribed or threatened—they had
already been recruited by companies, banks, and government agencies. The bribes consisted of
salaries, bonuses, pensions, and insurance policies; the threats were based on social mores,
peer pressure, and unspoken questions about the fu-ture of their children's education.
The system had succeeded spectacularly. By the time the new millennium rolled in, Ecuador
was thoroughly entrapped. We had her, just as a Mafia don has the man whose daughter's
wedding and small business he has financed and then refinanced. Like any good Mafiosi, we
had taken our time. We could afford to be patient, know-ing that beneath Ecuador's rain forests
lies a sea of oil, knowing that the proper day would come.
That day had already arrived when, in early 2003, I wound my way from Quito to the jungle town
of Shell in my Subaru Outback. Chavez had reestablished himself in Venezuela. He had defied
George W. Bush and had won. Saddam was standing his ground and was preparing to be
invaded. Oil supplies were depleted to their lowest level in nearly three decades, and the
prospects of taking more from
our prime sources looked bleak — and therefore, so did the health of the corporatocracy's
balance sheets. We needed an ace in the hole. It was time to cut away our Ecuadorian pound of
flesh.
As I drove past the monster dam on the Pastaza River, I realized that here in Ecuador the battle
was not simply the classic struggle between the rich of the world and the impoverished, between
those who exploit and the exploited. These battle lines would ultimately define who we are as a
civilization. We were poised to force this tiny country to open its Amazon rain forests to our oil
companies. The devastation that would result was immeasurable.
If we insisted on collecting the debt, the repercussions would go far beyond our abilities to
quantify them. It was not just about the destruction of indigenous cultures, human lives, and
hundreds of thousands of species of animals, reptiles, fish, insects, and plants, some of which
might contain the undiscovered cures to any number of diseases. It was not just that rain forests
absorb the deadly green-house gases produced by our industries, give off the oxygen that is
essential to our lives, and seed the clouds that ultimately create a large percentage of the
world's fresh water. It went beyond all the standard arguments made by ecologists for saving
such places, and reached deep into our souls.
If we pursued this strategy, we would continue an imperialist pat-tern that had begun long before
the Roman Empire. We decry slavery, but our global empire enslaves more people than the
Romans and all the other colonial powers before us. I wondered how we could execute such a
shortsighted policy in Ecuador and still live with our collec-tive conscience.
Peering through the window of the Subaru at the deforested slopes of the Andes, an area that
during my Peace Corps days had been lush with tropical growth, I was suddenly surprised by
another realization. It dawned on me that this view of Ecuador as a signifi-cant battle line was
purely personal, that in fact every country where I had worked, every country with resources
coveted by the empire, was equally significant. I had my own attachment to this one, which
stemmed from those days back in the late 1960s when I lost my in-nocence here. However, it
was subjective, my personal bias.
Though the Ecuadorian rain forests are precious, as are the in-digenous people and all the other
life forms that inhabit them, they are no more precious than the deserts of Iran and the Bedouins
of
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Yamin's heritage. No more precious than the mountains of Java, the seas off the coast of the
Philippines, the steppes of Asia, the savannas of Africa, the forests of North America, the
icecaps of the Arctic, or hundreds of other threatened places. Every one of these represents a
battle line, and every one of them forces us to search the depths of our individual and collective
souls.
I was reminded of a statistic that sums it all up: The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world's
population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest countries went from 30 to 1
in i960 to 74 to 1 in 1995.2 And the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for Interna-tional Development,
the IMF, and the rest of the banks, corporations, and governments involved in international "aid"
continue to tell us that they are doing their jobs, that progress has been made.
So here I was in Ecuador again, in the country that was just one of many battle lines but that
holds a special place in my heart. It was 2003, thirty-five years after I had first arrived as a
member of a U.S. organization that bears the word peace in its name. This time, I had come in
order to try to prevent a war that for three decades I had helped to provoke.
It would seem that events in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Venezuela might be enough to deter us from
another conflict; yet, in Ecuador the situation was very different. This war would not require the
U.S. Army, for it would be fought by a few thousand indigenous warriors equipped only with
spears, machetes, and single-shot, muzzle-loaded rifles. They would face off against a modern
Ecuadorian army, a handful of U.S. Special Forces advisers, and jackal-trained merce-naries
hired by the oil companies. This would be a war, like the 1995 conflict between Ecuador and
Peru, that most people in the United States would never hear about, and recent events had
escalated the probability of such a war.
In December 2002, oil company representatives accused an in-digenous community of taking a
team of its workers hostage; they suggested that the warriors involved were members of a
terrorist group, with implications of possible ties to al-Qaeda. It was an issue made especially
complicated because the oil company had not received government permission to begin drilling.
However, the company claimed its workers had the right to perform preliminary, non-drilling
investigations — a claim vehemently disputed by the indige-nous groups a few days later, when
they shared their side of the story.
The oil workers, tribal representatives insisted, had trespassed on lands where they were not
allowed: the warriors had carried no weapons, nor had they threatened the oil workers with
violence of any sort. In fact, they had escorted the workers to their village, where they offered
them food and chicha, a local beer. While their visitors feasted, the warriors persuaded the
workers' guides to paddle away. However, the tribe claimed, the workers were never held
against their will; they were free to go wherever they pleased.3
Driving down that road, I remembered what the Shuars had told me in 1990 when, after selling
IPS, I returned to offer to help them save their forests. "The world is as you dream it," they had
said, and then pointed out that we in the North had dreamed of huge indus-tries, lots of cars, and
gigantic skyscrapers. Now we had discovered that our vision had in fact been a nightmare that
would ultimately destroy us all.
"Change that dream," the Shuars had advised me. Yet here it was, more than a decade later,
and despite the wTork of many people and nonprofit organizations, including the ones I had
worked with, the nightmare had reached new and horrifying proportions.
When my Outback finally pulled into the jungle town of Shell, I was hustled off to a meeting. The
men and women who attended represented many tribes: Kichwa, Shuar, Achuar, Shiwiar, and
Za-paro. Some had walked for days through the jungle, others had flown in on small planes,
funded by nonprofits. A few wore their traditional kilts, face paint, and feathered headbands,
though most attempted to emulate the townspeople, wearing slacks, T-shirts, and shoes.
Representatives from the community accused of taking hostages spoke first. They told us that
shortly after the workers returned to the oil company, over a hundred Ecuadorian soldiers arrived
in their small community. They reminded us that this was at the beginning of a special season in
the rain forests, the fruiting of the chonta. A tree sacred to indigenous cultures, its fruit comes
but once a year and signals the start of the mating season for many of the region's birds,
including rare and endangered species. As they flock to it, the birds are extremely vulnerable.
The tribes enforce strict policies forbidding the hunting of these birds during chonta season.
"The timing of the soldiers couldn't have been worse," a woman explained. I felt her pain and
that of her companions as they told their tragic stories about how the soldiers ignored the
prohibitions.
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They shot down the birds for sport and for food. In addition, they raided family gardens, banana
groves, and manioc fields, often ir-reparably destroying the sparse topsoil. They used explosives
in the rivers for fishing, and they ate family pets. They confiscated the local hunters' guns and
blowguns, dug improper latrines, polluted the rivers with fuel oil and solvents, sexually molested
women, and ne-glected to properly dispose of garbage, which attracted insects and vermin.
"We had two choices," a man said. "We could fight, or we could swallow our pride and do our
best to repair the damage. We decided it was not yet the time to fight." He described how they
had attempted to compensate for the military's abuses by encouraging their own people to go
without food. He called it a fast, but in fact it sounded closer to voluntary starvation. Old people
and children became mal-nourished and grew sick.
They spoke about threats and bribes. "My son," a woman said, "speaks English as well as
Spanish and several indigenous dialects. He worked as a guide and translator for an ecotourist
company. They paid him a decent salary. The oil company offered him ten times as much. What
could he do? Now he writes letters denouncing his old company and all the others who come to
help us, and in his letters calls the oil companies our friends," She shook her body, like a dog
shaking off water. "He is no longer one of us. My son..."
An elderly man wearing the traditional toucan-feather headdress of a shaman stood up. "You
know about those three we elected to represent us against the oil companies, who died in that
plane crash? Well, I'm not going to stand here and tell you what so many say, that the oil
companies caused the crash. But I can tell you that those three deaths dug a big hole in our
organization. The oil companies lost no time filling that hole with their people."
Another man produced a contract and read it. In exchange for three hundred thousand dollars, it
ceded a vast territory over to a lumber company. It was signed by three tribal officials.
"These aren't their real signatures," he said. "I ought to know; one is my brother. It's another type
of assassination. To discredit our leaders."
It seemed ironic and strangely appropriate that this was taking place in a region of Ecuador
where the oil companies had not yet been given permission to drill. They had drilled in many
areas around this one, and the indigenous people had seen the results, had
witnessed the destruction of their neighbors. As I sat there listening, I asked myself how the
citizens of my country would react if gather-ings like this were featured on CNN or the evening
news.
The meetings were fascinating and the revelations deeply disturbing. But something else also
happened, outside the formal setting of those sessions. During breaks, at lunch, and in the
evening, when I talked with people privately, I frequently was asked why the United States was
threatening Iraq. The impending war was discussed on the front pages of Ecuadorian
newspapers that made their way into this jungle town, and the coverage was very different from
coverage in the States. It included references to the Bush family's ownership of oil companies
and United Fruit, and to Vice President Cheney's role as former CEO of Halliburton.
These newspapers were read to men and women who had never attended school. Everyone
seemed to take an interest in this issue. Here I was, in the Amazon rain forest, among illiterate
people many in North America consider "backward," even "savages," and yet prob-ing questions
were being asked that struck at the heart of the global empire.
Driving out of Shell, back past the hydroelectric dam and high into the Andes, I kept thinking
about the difference between what I had seen and heard during this visit to Ecuador and what I
had be-come accustomed to in the United States. It seemed that Amazonian tribes had a great
deal to teach us, that despite all our schooling and our many hours reading magazines and
watching television news, we lacked an awareness they had somehow found. This line of
think-ing made me think of "The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle," which I have heard many
times throughout Latin America, and of similar prophecies I have encountered around the world.
Nearly every culture I know prophesies that in the late 1990s we entered a period of remarkable
transition. At monasteries in the Hi-malayas, ceremonial sites in Indonesia, and indigenous
reservations in North America, from the depths of the Amazon to the peaks of the Andes and
into the ancient Mayan cities of Central America, I have heard that ours is a special moment in
human history, and that each of us was born at this time because we have a mission to
accomplish.
The titles and words of the prophecies differ slightly. They tell variously of a New Age, the Third
Millennium, the Age of Aquarius, the Beginning of the Fifth Sun, or the end of old calendars and
the
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commencement of new ones. Despite the varying terminologies, however, they have a great
deal in common, and "The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle" is typical. It states that back in
the mists of history, human societies divided and took two different paths: that of the condor
(representing the heart, intuitive and mystical) and that of the eagle (representing the brain,
rational and material). In the 1490s, the prophecy said, the two paths would converge and the
eagle would drive the condor to the verge of extinction. Then, five hundred years later, in the
1990s, a new epoch would begin, one in which the condor and eagle will have the opportunity to
reunite and fly together in the same sky, along the same path. If the condor and eagle accept
this opportunity, they will create a most remarkable off-spring, unlike any ever seen before.
"The Prophecy of the Condor and Eagle" can be taken at many levels —the standard
interpretation is that it foretells the sharing of indigenous knowledge with the technologies of
science, the bal-ancing of yin and yang, and the bridging of northern and southern cultures.
However, most powerful is the message it offers about con-sciousness; it says that we have
entered a time when we can benefit from the many diverse ways of seeing ourselves and the
world, and that we can use these as a springboard to higher levels of awareness. As human
beings, we can truly wake up and evolve into a more con-scious species.
The condor people of the Amazon make it seem so obvious that if we are to address questions
about the nature of what it is to be human in this new millennium, and about our commitment to
evaluating our intentions for the next several decades, then we need to open our eyes and see
the consequences of our actions —the actions of the eagle — in places like Iraq and Ecuador.
We must shake ourselves awake. We who live in the most powerful nation history has ever
known must stop worrying so much about the outcome of soap op-eras, football games,
quarterly balance sheets, and the daily Dow Jones averages, and must instead reevaluate who
we are and where we want our children to end up. The alternative to stopping to ask ourselves
the important questions is simply too dangerous.
CHAPTER 35
Piercing the Veneer
Shortly after I returned home from Ecuador in 2003, the United States invaded Iraq for the
second time in a little over a decade. The EHMs had failed. The jackals had failed. So young
men and women were sent to kill and die among the desert sands. One important question the
invasion raised, but one that I figured few Americans would be in a position to consider, was
what this would mean for the royal House of Saud. If the United States took over Iraq, which
ac-cording to many estimates has more oil than Saudi Arabia, there would seem to be little need
to continue honoring the pact we struck with the Saudi royal family in the 1970s, the deal that
originated with the Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair.
The end of Saddam, like the end of Noriega in Panama, would change the formula. In the case
of Panama, once we had reinstated our puppets, we controlled the Canal, regardless of the
terms of the treaty Torrijos and Carter had negotiated. Once we controlled Iraq, then, could we
break OPEC? Would the Saudi royal family become irrelevant in the arena of global oil politics?
A few pundits were al-ready questioning why Bush attacked Iraq rather than funneling all of our
resources into pursuing al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Could it be that from the point of view of this
administration — this oil family — establishing oil supplies, as well as a justification for
construction contracts, was more important than fighting terrorists?
There also was another possible outcome, however; OPEC might attempt to reassert itself. If the
United States took control of Iraq,
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the other petroleum-rich countries might have little to lose hy raising oil prices and/or reducing
supplies. This possibility tied in with an-other scenario, one with implications that would likely
occur to few people outside the world of higher international finance, yet which could tip the
scales of the geopolitical balance and ultimately bring down the system the corporatocracy had
worked so hard to con-struct. It could, in fact, turn out to be the single factor that would cause
history's first truly global empire to self-destruct.
In the final analysis, the global empire depends to a large extent on the fact that the dollar acts
as the standard world currency, and that the United States Mint has the right to print those
dollars. Thus, we make loans to countries like Ecuador with the full knowledge that they will
never repay them; in fact, we do not want them to honor their debts, since the nonpayment is
what gives us our leverage, our pound of flesh. Under normal conditions, we would run the risk
of eventually decimating our own funds; after all, no creditor can af-ford too many defaulted
loans. However, ours are not normal cir-cumstances. The United States prints currency that is
not backed by gold. Indeed, it is not backed by anything other than a general worldwide
confidence in our economy and our ability to marshal the forces and resources of the empire we
have created to support us.
The ability to print currency gives us immense power. It means, among other things, that we can
continue to make loans that will never be repaid —and that we ourselves can accumulate huge
debts. By the beginning of 2003, the United States' national debt ex-ceeded a staggering $6
trillion and was projected to reach $7 trillion before the end of the year —roughly $24,000 for
each U.S. citizen. Much of this debt is owed to Asian countries, particularly to Japan and China,
who purchase U.S. Treasury securities (essentially, IOUs) with funds accumulated through sales
of consumer goods — including electronics, computers, automobiles, appliances, and clothing
goods — to the United States and the worldwide market.1
As long as the world accepts the dollar as its standard currency, this excessive debt does not
pose a serious obstacle to the corpora-tocracy. However, if another currency should come along
to replace the dollar, and if some of the United States' creditors (Japan or China, for example)
should decide to call in their debts, the situation would change drastically. The United States
would suddenly find itself in a most precarious situation.
In fact, today the existence of such a currency is no longer hy-pothetical; the euro entered the
international financial scene on January 1, 2002 and is growing in prestige and power with every
passing month. The euro offers an unusual opportunity for OPEC, if it chooses to retaliate for the
Iraq invasion, or if for any other reason it decides to flex its muscles against the United States. A
decision by OPEC to substitute the euro for the dollar as its standard currency would shake the
empire to its very foundations. If that were to hap-pen, and if one or two major creditors were to
demand that we repay our debts in euros, the impact would be enormous.
I had these things on my mind on the morning of Good Friday, April 18, 2003, as I walked the
short distance from my house to the converted garage that serves as my office, sat down at the
desk, turned on the computer, and as usual, went to the New York Times Web site. The
headline leaped out at me; it immediately transported me from my thoughts about the new
realities of international fi-nance, the national debt, and euros back to that of my old profes-sion:
"U.S. Gives Bechtel a Major Contract in Rebuilding Iraq."
The article stated, "The Bush administration awarded the Bechtel Group of San Francisco the
first major contract today in a vast re-construction plan for Iraq." Farther down the page, the
authors in-formed readers that "The Iraqis will then work with the World Bank and the
Internationa] Monetary Fund, institutions in which the United States enjoys wide influence, to
reshape the country."2
Wide influence! There was an understatement.
I linked to another Times article, "Company Has Ties in Wash-ington, and to Iraq." I skipped
through the first several paragraphs, which repeated much of the information from the previous
article, and came to:
Bechtel has longstanding ties to the national security establishment... One director is George P.
Shultz, who was secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan. Before joining the Reagan
administration, Mr. Shultz, who also serves as a senior counselor to Bechtel, was the company's
president, working alongside Caspar W. Weinberger, who served as an executive at the San
Fran-cisco-based company before his appointment as defense secretary. This year, President
Bush appointed Bechtel's
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chief executive, Riley P. Bechtel, to serve on the Presi-dent's Export Council.3
Here in these articles was the story of modern history, the drive to global empire, in a nutshell.
What was going on in Iraq and de-scribed in the morning press was the result of the work
Claudine had trained me to do some thirty-five years before, and of the work of other men and
women who shared a lust for self-aggrandizement not unlike the one I had known. It marked the
current point of the corporatocracy's progress along the road to bringing every person in the
world under its influence.
These articles were about the 2003 invasion of Iraq and about the contracts now being signed,
both to rebuild that country from the wreckage created by our military and to build anew in the
mold of the modern, westernized model. Yet, without saying so, the news of April 18, 2003, also
harked back to the early 1970s and the Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair. SAMA and the
contracts flowing out of it had established new and irrevocable precedents that allowed —
indeed mandated — U.S. engineering and construction companies and the petroleum industry to
co-opt the development of a desert kingdom. In the same mighty blow, SAMA established new
rules for the global management of petroleum, redefined geopolitics, and forged with the Saudi
royal family an alliance that would ensure their hegemony as well as their commitment to playing
by our rules.
As I read those articles, I could not help but wonder how many other people knew, as I did, that
Saddam would still be in charge if he had played the game as the Saudis had. He would have
his mis-siles and chemical plants; we would have built them for him, and our people would be in
charge of upgrading and servicing them. It would be a very sweet deal — even as Saudi Arabia
had been.
Until now, the mainstream media had been careful not to publi-cize this story. But today, here it
was. True, it was a mere inkling; the articles were only the meekest ghosts of a summary, yet
the story seemed to be emerging. Wondering if the New York Times was taking a maverick
stance, I visited the CNN Web site and read, "Bechtel Wins Iraq Contract." The CNN story was
very similar to the one in the Times, except it added,
Several other companies have at various times been reported as possible competitors for the job,
either as
primary bidders or as parts of teams, including the Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) unit of
Halliburton Co. — of which Vice President Dick Cheney once was CEO... [Already] Halliburton
has won a contract, which could be worth $7 billion and could last up to two years, to make
emergency repairs to Iraq's oil infrastructure.4
The story of the march to global empire did indeed appear to be leaking out. Not the details, not
the fact that it was a tragic story of debt, deception, enslavement, exploitation, and the most
blatant grab in history for the hearts, minds, souls, and resources of people around the world.
Nothing in these articles hinted that the story of Iraq in 2003 was the continuation of a shameful
story. Nor did they disclose that this story, as old as empire, has now taken on new and terrifying
dimensions, both because of its magnitude during this time of globalization and because of the
subtlety with which it is ex-ecuted. Despite its shortfalls, however, the story did appear to be
leaking out, almost reluctantly.
The idea of the reluctant story, leaking out, hit very close to home. It reminded me of my own
personal story and of the many years I had postponed telling it. I had known for a very long time
that I had a confession to make; still, I postponed making it. Thinking back, I see that my doubts,
the whisperings of guilt, were there from the be-ginning. They had started in Claudine's
apartment, even before I made the commitment to go to Indonesia on that first trip, and the}7
had haunted me almost incessantly all these years.
I also knew that had the doubts, the pain, and the guilt not con-stantly nagged me, I would never
have gotten out. Like so many others, I would have been stuck. I would not have stood on a
beach in the Virgin Islands and decided to quit MAIN. Yet, I was still deferring, just as we as a
culture continue to defer.
These headlines seemed to hint at the alliance between big cor-porations, international banks,
and governments, but like my MAIN resume, the stories barely touched the surface. It was a
gloss. The real story had little to do with the fact that the major engineering and construction
firms were once again receiving billions of dollars to develop a country in our image — among a
people who in all like-lihood had no desire to reflect that image — or that an elite band of
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men was repeating an age-old ritual of abusing the privileges of their high government positions.
That picture is just too simple. It implies that all we need to do, if we decide to right the wrongs of
the system, is to throw these men out. It feeds into the conspiracy theories and thereby provides
a convenient excuse to turn on the TV and forget about it all, comfortable in our third-grade view
of history, which runs: "They" will take care of it; the ship of state is seaworthy and will get
nudged back on course. We may have to wait for the next election, but all will turn out for the
best.
The real story of modern empire — of the corporatocracy that ex-ploits desperate people and is
executing history's most brutal, selfish, and ultimately self-destructive resource-grab — has little
to do with what was exposed in the newspapers that morning and has every-thing to do with us.
And that, of course, explains why we have such difficulty listening to the real story. We prefer to
believe the myth that thousands of years of human social evolution has finally per-fected the
ideal economic system, rather than to face the fact we have merely bought into a false concept
and accepted it as gospel. We have convinced ourselves that all economic growth benefits
humankind, and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. Finally, we have
persuaded one another that the corollary to this concept is valid and morally just: that people
who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those
born at the fringes are available for exploitation.
This concept and its corollary are used to justify all manner of piracy — licenses are granted to
rape and pillage and murder inno-cent people in Iran, Panama, Colombia, Iraq, and elsewhere.
EHMs, jackals, and armies flourish for as long as their activities can be shown to generate
economic growth —and they almost always demonstrate such growth. Thanks to the biased
"sciences" of fore-casting, econometrics, and statistics, if you bomb a city and then re-build it,
the data shows a huge spike in economic growth.
The real story is that we are living a lie. Like my MAIN resume, we have created a veneer that
hides the fatal cancers beneath the surface. Those cancers are exposed by the X-rays of our
statistics, which disclose the terrifying fact that history's most powerful and wealthiest empire
has outrageously high rates of suicide, drug abuse, divorce, child molestation, rape, and murder,
and that like a malignant
cancer, these afflictions spread their tentacles in an ever-widening radius every year. In our
hearts, each of us feels the pain. We cry out for change. Yet, we slam our fists to our mouths,
stifling those cries, and so we go unheard.
It would be great if we could just blame it all on a conspiracy, but we cannot. The empire
depends on the efficacy ofbig banks, corporations, and governments—the corporatocracy—but it
is not a conspiracy. This corporatocracy is ourselves —we make it happen—which, of course, is
why most of us find it difficult to stand up and oppose it. We would rather glimpse conspirators
lurking in the shadows, be-cause most of us wrork for one of those banks, corporations, or
gov-ernments, or in some way are dependent on them for the goods and services they produce
and market. We cannot bring ourselves to bite the hand of the master who feeds us.
That is the situation I was pondering as I sat staring at the head-lines on the screen of my
computer. And it raised a number of ques-tions. How do you rise up against a system that
appears to provide you with your home and car, food and clothes, electricity and health care —
even when you know that the system also creates a world where twenty-four thousand people
starve to death each day and millions more hate you, or at least hate the policies made by
repre-sentatives you elected? How do you muster the courage to step out of line and challenge
concepts you and your neighbors have always accepted as gospel, even when you suspect that
the system is ready to self-destruct? Slowiy, I stood up and headed back to the house to pour
myself another cup of coffee.
I took a short detour and picked up my copy of the Palm Beach Post, lying near the mailbox
beside our driveway. It had the same Bechtel-Iraq article, copyrighted by the New York Times.
But now I noticed the date on the masthead: April 18. It is a famous date, at least in New
England, instilled in me by my Revolutionary War-minded parents and by Longfellow's poem:
Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
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This year, Good Friday happened to fall on the anniversary- of Paul Revere's ride. Seeing that
date on the front page of the Post made me think of the colonial silversmith racing his horse
through the dark streets of New England towns, waving his hat and shouting, "The British are
coming!" Revere had risked his life to spread the word, and loyal Americans responded. They
stopped the empire, back then.
I wondered what had motivated them, why those colonial Amer-icans were willing to step out of
line. Many of the ringleaders had been prosperous. What had inspired them to risk their
businesses, to bite the hand that fed them, to risk their lives? Each of them un-doubtedly had
personal reasons, and yet there must have been some unifying force, some energy or catalyst, a
spark that ignited all those individual fires at that single moment in history.
And then it came to me: words.
The telling of the real story about the British Empire and its selfish and ultimately self-destructive
mercantile system had provided that spark. The exposure of the underlying meaning, through
the words of men like Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson, fired the imaginations of their
countrymen, opened hearts and minds. The colonists began to question, and when they did,
they discovered a new reality that cut away at the deceits. They discerned the truth behind the
patina, understood the way the British Empire had manipulated, deceived, and enslaved them.
They saw that their English masters had formulated a system and then had managed to
convince most people of a lie—that it was the best system mankind could offer, that the
prospects for a better world depended on channeling resources through the King of Eng-land,
that an imperial approach to commerce and politics was the most efficient and humane means of
helping the majority of the peo-ple—when in fact the truth was that the system enriched only a
very few at the expense of the many. This lie, and the resulting exploita-tion, endured and
expanded for decades, until a handful of philoso-phers, businessmen, farmers, fishermen,
frontiersmen, writers, and orators began to speak the truth.
Words. I thought about their power as I refilled my coffee cup, walked back to my office, and
returned to the computer.
I logged off the CNN Web site and brought up the file I had been working on the night before. I
read the last paragraph I had written:
This story must be told. We live in a time of terrible crisis — and tremendous opportunity. The
story of this particular economic hit man is the story of how we got to where we are and why we
currently face crises that seem insur-mountable. This story must be told because only by
understanding our past mistakes will we be able to take advantage of future opportunities....
Most importantly, this story must be told because today, for the first time in history, one nation
has the ability, the money, and the power to change all this. It is the nation where I was born and
the one I served as an EHM: the United States of America.
This time I would not stop. The coincidences of my life and the choices I had made around them
had brought me to this point. I would move forward.
I thought again of that other man, that lone rider galloping through the dark New England
countryside, shouting out his warn-ing. The silversmith knew that the words of Paine had
preceded him, that people had read those words in their homes and discussed them in the
taverns. Paine had pointed out the truth about the tyranny of the British Empire. Jefferson would
proclaim that our nation was dedicated to the principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happi-ness. And Revere, riding through the night, understood that men and women throughout
the colonies would be empowered by those words; they would rise up and fight for a better world.
Words...
I made my decision to stop procrastinating, to finish finally what I had started so many times over
all those years, to come clean, to confess — to write the words in this book.
218
Part IV: 1981-Present
Piercing the Veneer
219
EPILOGUE
We have arrived at the end of this book, and also at a beginning. You are probably wondering
where to go next, what you can do to stop the corporatocracy and to end this insane and selfdestructive march to global empire. You are ready to leave the book behind and pounce on the
world.
You want ideas, and I could offer you some.
I could point out that the chapter you just read, about Bechtel and Halliburton in Iraq, is old news.
By the time you read it, it may seem redundant. However, the significance of those newspaper
ar-ticles goes far beyond the timeliness of their content. That chapter, I hope, will change the
way you view the news, help you to read between the lines of every newspaper article that
comes before you and to question the deeper implications of every radio and television report
you tune in to.
Things are not as they appear. NBC is owned by General Electric, ABC by Disney, CBS by
Viacom, and CNN is part of the huge AOL Time Warner conglomerate. Most of our newspapers,
magazines, and publishing houses are owned — and manipulated—by gigantic international
corporations. Our media is part of the corporatocracy. The officers and directors who control
nearly all our communica-tions outlets know their places; they are taught throughout life that one
of their most important jobs is to perpetuate, strengthen, and expand the system they have
inherited. They are very efficient at do-ing so, and when opposed, they can be ruthless. So the
burden falls on you to see the truth beneath the veneer and to expose it. Speak it to your family
and friends; spread the word.
I could give you a list of practical things to do. For instance, cut back on your oil consumption. In
1990, before we first invaded Iraq, we imported 8 million barrels of oil; by 2003 and the second
inva-sion, this had increased more than 50 percent, to over 12 million barrels.1 The next time
you are tempted to go shopping, read a book instead, exercise, or meditate. Downsize your
home, wardrobe, car, office, and most everything else in your life. Protest against "free"
221
trade agreements and against companies that exploit desperate people in sweatshops or that
pillage the environment.
I could tell you that there is great hope within the current system, that there is nothing inherently
wrong with banks, corporations, and governments — or with the people who manage them —
and that they certainly do not have to compose a corporatocracy. I could go into detail about
how the problems confronting us today are not the result of malicious institutions; rather, they
stem from fallacious concepts about economic development. The fault lies not in the insti-tutions
themselves, but in our perceptions of the manner in which they function and interact with one
another, and of the role their managers play in that process.
In fact, those highly effective worldwide communications and distribution networks could be used
to bring about positive and compassionate changes. Imagine if the Nike swoosh, MacDonald's
arches, and Coca-Cola logo became symbols of companies whose primary goals were to clothe
and feed the world's poor in environ-mentally beneficial ways. This is no more unrealistic than
putting a man on the moon, breaking up the Soviet Union, or creating the in-frastructure that
allows those companies to reach every corner of the planet. We need a revolution in our
approach to education, to em-power ourselves and our children to think, to question, and to dare
to act. You can set an example. Be a teacher and a student; inspire everyone around you
through your example.
I could encourage you to take specific actions that will impact the institutions in your life. Speak
out whenever any forum presents itself, write letters and e-mails, phone in questions and
concerns, vote for enlightened school boards, county commissions, and local ordi-nances. When
you must shop, do it consciously; get personally involved.
I could remind you of what the Shuars told me in 1990, that the world is as you dream it, and that
we can trade in that old nightmare of polluting industries, clogged highways, and overcrowded
cities for a new dream based on Earth-honoring and socially responsible prin-ciples of
sustainability and equality. It is within our power to trans-form ourselves, to change the paradigm.
I could enumerate the amazing opportunities we have available to us for creating a better world,
right now: enough food and water for everyone; medicines to cure diseases and to prevent
epidemics that needlessly plague millions of people today; transportation systems
that can deliver life's essentials to even the most remote corners of the planet; the ability to raise
literacy levels and to provide Internet services that could make it possible for every person on
the planet to communicate with every other person; tools for conflict resolution that could render
wars obsolete; technologies that explore both the vastness of space and the most minute,
subatomic energy, which could then be applied to developing more ecologic and efficient homes
for everyone; sufficient resources to accomplish all of the above; and much more.
I could suggest steps for you to take immediately, to help others understand the crises and the
opportunities.
•
Offer study groups aboutConfessions of an Economic Hit Man at your local bookstore or
library, or both (a guideline for doing this is available at www.JohnPerkins.org).
•
Develop a presentation for a nearby elementary school on your favorite subject (sports,
cooking, ants — almost anything), and use it to help students wake up to the true nature of the
society they are inheriting.
•
Send e-mails to all the addresses in your file, expressing feelings triggered by this and
other books you read.
But I suspect you have already thought of most of these things. You just need to pick a couple
that most appeal to you and do them, and to realize that all of these are part of a much greater
commitment that you and I must make. We must commit ourselves absolutely and unequivocally
to shaking ourselves and everyone around us awake. We must hear the wisdom of the
prophecies, open our hearts and minds to the possibilities, become conscious, and then take
action.
However, this book is not a prescription; it is a confession, pure and simple. It is the confession
of a man who allowed himself to be-come a pawn, an economic hit man; a man who bought into
a cor-rupt system because it offered so many perks, and because buying in was easy to justify;
a man who knew better but who could always find excuses for his own greed, for exploiting
desperate people and pillaging the planet; a man who took full advantage of the fact that he was
born into one of the wealthiest societies history has ever known, and who also could pity himself
because his parents were not at the top of the pyramid; a man who listened to his teachers,
222
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Epilogue
223
read the textbooks on economic development, and then followed the example of other men and
women who legitimatize every action that promotes global empire, even if that action results in
murder, geno-cide, and environmental destruction; a man who trained others to follow in his
footsteps. It is my confession.
The fact that you have read this far indicates that you can relate on some personal level to my
confession, that you and I share a lot in common. We may have traveled different roads, but we
have driven similar vehicles, used the same fuels, and stopped to eat at restau-rants owned by
the same corporations.
For me, confessing was an essential part of my personal wake-up call. Like all confessions, it is
the first step toward redemption.
Now it is your turn. You need to make your own confession. When you come clean on who you
are, why you are here during this time in history, why you have done the things you have — the
ones you are proud of, and those others — and where you intend to go next, you will experience
an immediate sense of relief. It may be nothing less than euphoric.
Believe me when I say that writing this book has been deeply emotional, and often a painful and
humiliating experience. It has been frightening in a way nothing I ever faced before has been
frightening. But it has opened me to a sense of relief I have never known until now, a feeling I
can only describe as ecstatic.
Ask yourself these questions. What do I need to confess? How have I deceived myself and
others? Where have I deferred? Why have I allowed myself to be sucked into a system that I
know is un-balanced? What will I do to make sure our children, and all children everywhere, are
able to fulfill the dream of our Founding Fathers, the dream of life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness? What course will I take to end the needless starvation, and make sure there is never
again a day like September 11? How can I help our children under-stand that people who live
gluttonous, unbalanced lives should be pitied but never, ever emulated, even if those people
present them-selves, through the media they control, as cultural icons and try to convince us that
penthouses and yachts bring happiness? What changes will I commit to making in my attitudes
and perceptions? What forums will I use to teach others and to learn more on my own?
These are the essential questions of our time. Each of us needs to answer them in our own way
and to express our answers clearly,
unequivocally. Paine and Jefferson and all the other patriots are watching over our shoulders.
Their words continue to inspire us to-day. The spirits of those men and women who left their
farms and fishing boats and headed out to confront the mighty British Empire, and of those who
fought to emancipate the slaves during the Civil War, and of those who sacrificed their lives to
protect the world from fascism, speak to us. As do the spirits of the ones who stayed at home
and produced the food and clothes and gave their moral support, and of all the men and women
who have defended what was won on those battlefields: the teachers, poets, artists,
entrepreneurs, health workers, the manual laborers... you and me.
The hour is ours. It is now time for each and every one of us to step up to the battle line, to ask
the important questions, to search our souls for our own answers, and to take action.
The coincidences of your life, and the choices you have made in response to them, have
brought you to this point...
224
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Epilogue
225
JOHN PERKINS PERSONAL HISTORY
1963
Graduates prep school, enters Middlebury College.
1964
Befriends Farhad, son of an Iranian general. Drops
out of Middlebury.
1965
Works for Hearst newspapers in Boston.
1966
Enters Boston University College of Business
Administration.
1967
Marries former Middlebury classmate, whose "Uncle
Frank" is a top-echelon executive at the National Security Agency (NSA).
1968
Profiled by the NSA as an ideal economic hit man.
With Uncle Frank's blessing, joins the Peace Corps and is assigned to the Ecuadorian Amazon,
where ancient indigenous tribes battle U.S. oil companies.
1969
Lives in the rain forest and the Andes. Experiences
firsthand the deceitful and destructive practices em-ployed by oil companies and government
agencies, and their negative impacts on local cultures and environments.
1970
In Ecuador, meets vice president of international
con-sulting firm MAIN, who is also an NSA liaison officer.
1971
Joins MAIN, undergoes clandestine training in Boston as an economic hit man (EHM),
and is sent as part of an eleven-man team to Java, Indonesia. Struggles with conscience over
pressure to falsify economic studies.
1972
Due to willingness to "cooperate," is promoted to chief
economist and is viewed as a "whiz kid." Meets im-portant leaders, including World Bank
president Robert McNamara. Sent on special assignment to Panama. Befriended by
Panamanian president and charismatic leader, Omar Torrijos; learns about his-tory of U.S.
imperialism and Torrijos's determination
to transfer Canal ownership from the United States to Panama.
1973
Career skyrockets. Builds empire within MAIN;
continues work in Panama; travels extensively and conducts studies in Asia, Latin America, and
the Middle East.
1974
Instrumental in initiating a huge EHM success in Saudi
Arabia. Royal family agrees to invest billions of dollars of oil income in U.S. securities and to
allow the U.S. Department of the Treasury to use the inter-est from those investments to hire
U.S. firms to build power and water systems, highways, ports, and cities in the kingdom. In
exchange, the United States guar-antees that the royal family will continue to rule. This will serve
as a model for future EHM deals, in-cluding one that ultimately fails in Iraq.
1975
Promoted again — to youngest partner in MAIN's one
hundred-year history—and named manager of Economics and Regional Planning. Publishes
series of influential papers; lectures at Harvard and other institutions.
1976
Heads major projects around the world, in Africa, Asia,
Latin America, North America, and the Middle East. Learns from the shah of Iran a revolutionary
approach to EHM empire building.
1977
Due to personal relationships in Colombia, becomes
exposed to the plight of farmers who are branded as communist terrorists and drug traffickers,
but are in fact peasants trying to protect their families and homes.
1978
Rushed out of Iran by Farhad. Together, they fly to the
Rome home of Farhad's father, an Iranian gen-eral, who predicts the shah's imminent ouster
and blames U.S. policy, corrupt leaders, and despotic gov-ernments for the hatred sweeping the
Middle East. He warns that if the United States does not become more compassionate, the
situation will deteriorate.
1979
Struggles with conscience as the shah flees his
country and Iranians storm the U.S. Embassy, taking fifty-two
226
John Perkins Personal History
227
hostages. Realizes that the United States is a nation laboring to deny the truth about its
imperialist role in the world. After years of tension and frequent sep-arations, divorces first wife.
1980
Suffers from deep depression, guilt, and the realiza-tion
that money and power have trapped him at MAIN. Quits.
1981
Is deeply disturbed when Ecuador's president Jaime
Roldos (who has campaigned on an anti-oil platform) and Panama's Omar Torrijos (who has
incurred the wrath of powerful Washington interests, due to his positions on the Panama Canal
and U.S. military bases) die in fiery airplane crashes that have all the markings of CIA
assassinations. Marries for the sec-ond time, to a woman whose father is chief architect at
Bechtel Corporation and is in charge of designing and building cities in Saudi Arabia—work
financed through the 1974 EHM deal.
1982
Creates Independent Power Systems Inc. (IPS), a
company committed to producing environmentally friendly electricity. Fathers Jessica.
1983-1989 Succeeds spectacularly as IPS CEO, with much help from "coincidences" —
people in high places, tax breaks, etc. As a father, frets over world crises and former EHM role.
Begins writing a tell-all book, but is offered a lucrative consultants' retainer on the con-dition that
he not write the book.
1990-1991
Following the U.S. invasion of Panama and impris-onment of Noriega, sells IPS
and retires at forty-five. Contemplates book about life as an EHM, but in-stead is persuaded to
direct energies toward creating a nonprofit organization, an effort which, he is told, would be
negatively impacted by such a book.
1992-2000 Watches the EHM failures in Iraq that result in the first Gulf War. Three times starts
to write the EHM book, but instead gives in to threats and bribes. Tries to assuage conscience
by writing books about indige-nous peoples, supporting nonprofit organizations,
teaching at New Age forums, traveling to the Amazon and the Himalayas, meeting with the Dalai
Lama, etc.
2001-2002 Leads a group of North Americans deep into the Amazon, and is there with an
indigenous tribe on September 11, 2001. Spends a day at Ground Zero and commits to writing
the book that can heal his pain and expose the truth behind EHMs.
2003-2004 Returns to the Ecuadorian Amazon to meet with the indigenous tribes who have
threatened war against the oil companies; writes Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
228
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
John Perkins Personal History
229
NOTES
Preface
1. The United Nations World Food Programme, http://www.wfp.org/
index.asp?section=l (accessed December 27, 2003). In addition, the National Association for the
Prevention of Starvation estimates that "Every day 34,000 children under five die of hunger or
preventable diseases resulting from hunger" (http://www.napsoc.org, accessed December 27,
2003). Starvation.net estimates that "if we were to add the next two lead-ing ways (after
starvation) the poorest of the poor die, waterborne diseases and AIDS, we would be
approaching a daily body count of 50,000 deaths" (http://www.starvation.net, accessed
December 27, 2003).
2. U.S. Department of Agriculture findings, reported by the Food Research and Action Center
(FRAC), http://www.frac.org (accessed December 27, 2003).
3. United Nations. Human Development Report. (New York: United Nations, 1999).
4. "In 1998, the United Nations Development Program estimated that it would cost an additional
$9 billion (above current expenditures) to provide clean water and sanitation for everyone on
earth. It would cost an additional $12 billion, they said, to cover reproductive health services for
all women world-wide. Another $13 billion would be enough not only to give ever)' person on
earth enough food to eat but also basic health care. An additional $6 bil-lion could provide basic
education for all... Combined they add up to S40 billion." — John Robbins, author of Diet for a
New America and The Food Revolution, http://www.foodrevolution.org (accessed December 27,
2003).
Prologue
1. Gina Chavez et al., Tarimiat — Firmes enNuestro Territorio: FIFSE vs. ARCO, eds. Mario
Melo and Juana Sotomayor (Quito, Ecuador: CDES and CONAIE, 2002),
2. Sandy Tolan, "Ecuador: Lost Promises," National Public Radio, Morning Edition, July 9, 2003,
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/ 2003/jul/latinoil (accessed July 9, 2003).
3. Juan Forero, "Seeking Balance: Growth vs. Culture in the Amazon," New York Times,
December 10, 2003.
4. Abhy Ellin, "Suit Says ChevronTexaco Dumped Poisons in Ecuador," New
York Times, May 8, 2003.
5. Chris Jochnick, "Perilous Prosperity," New Internationalist, June 2O01,
http://www.newint.org/issue335/perilous.htm. For more extensive infor-mation, see also Pamela
Martin, The Globalization of Contentious Politics: The Amazonian Indigenous Rights Movement
(New York: Rutiedge, 2002): ~Kimer\mg, Amazon Crude (New York: Natural Resource Defense
Council, 1991); Leslie Wirpsa, trans., Upheaval in the Back Yard: Illegiti-mate Debts and Human
Rights — The Case of Ecuador-Norway (Quito, Ecuador: Centre de Derechos Economicos y
Sociales, 2002); and Gregory Palast, "Inside Corporate America," Guardian, October 8, 2000.
6. For information about the impact of oil on national and global economies, see Michael T.
Klare, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 2001); Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money &Power (New York:
Free Press, 1993); and Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The
Battle
for the World Economy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001).
7. James S. Henry, "Where the Money Went,"Across the Board, March/April
2004, pp 42-45. For more information, see Henry's book The Blood Bankers: Tales from the
Global Underground Economy (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003).
8. Gina Chavez et al., Tarimiat—Firmes en Nuestro Territorio: FIFSE vs. ARCO, eds. Mario
Melo and Juana Sotomayor (Quito, Ecuador: CDES and CONAIE, 2002); Petroleo, Ambiente y
Derechos en la Amazonia Centro Sur, Edition Victor Lopez A, Centro de Derechos Economicos
y Sociales, OPIP, IACYT-A (under the auspices of Oxfam America) (Quito, Ecuador: Sergrafic,
2002).
9. Sandy Tolan, "Ecuador: Lost Promises," National Public Radio, Morning Edition, July 9, 2003,
http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/ 2003/jul/latinoil (accessed July 9, 2003).
10. For more on the jackals and other types of hit men, see P. W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, NY
and London: Cornell University Press, 2003); James R. Davis, Fortune's
Warriors: Private Armies and the New World Order (Vancouver and
Toronto: Douglas & Mclntyre, 2000); Felix I. Rodriguez and John Weisman, Shadow Warrior: The CIA Hero of 100 Unknown Battles (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1989).
Chapter 2. "In for Life"
1. For a detailed account of this fateful operation, see Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah's Men: An
American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
2003).
2. Jane Mayer, "Contract Sport: What Did the Vice-President Do for Hallibur-ton?", New Yorker,
February 16 & 23, 2004, p 83.
Chapter 3. Indonesia: Lessons for an EHM
I. For more on Indonesia and its history, see Jean Gelman Taylor, Indonesia:
230
Notes
231
Peoples and Histories (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003); and Theodore
Friend, Indonesian Destinies- (Cambridge MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University, 2003).
Chapter 6. My Role as Inquisitor
1. Theodore Friend, Indonesian Destinies (Cambridge MA and London: The Belknap Press
ofHarvard University, 2003), p 5.
Chapter 10. Panama's President and Hero
1. See David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the
Panama Canal 1870-1914 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999); William Friar, Portrait of the
Panama Canal: From Construction to the Twenty-First Century (New York: Graphic Arts
Publishing Company, 1999); Graham Greene, Conversations with the General (New York:
Pocket Books, 1984).
2. See ''Zapata Petroleum Corp.", Fortune, April 1.958, p 248; Darwin Payne, Initiative in Energy:
Dresser Industries, Inc. 1880-1978 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979); Steve Pizzo et al.,
Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans (New York: McGraw Hill, 1989); Gary
Webb, Dark Al-liance: The CIA, The. Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York:
Seven Stories Press, 1999); Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennet, Thy Will Be Done, The
Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (New York:
HarperCollins, 1995).
3. Manuel Noriega with Peter Eisner, TheMemoirs of'Manuel Noriega, Amer-ica's Prisoner
(NewYork: Random House, 1997); OmarTorrijos Herrera, Ideario (Editorial Universitaria
Centroamericano, 1983); Graham Greene, Conversations with the General (New York: Pocket
Books, 1984).
4. Graham Greene, Conversations with the General (New York: Pocket Books, 1984); Manuel
Noriega with Peter Eisner, The Memoirs of Manuel Noriega, America's Prisoner (New York:
Random House, 1997).
5. Derrick Jensen, A Language Older than Words (New York: Context Books, 2000), pp 86-88.
6. Graham Greene, Conversations with the General (New York: Pocket Books, 1984); Manuel
Noriega with Peter Eisner, The Memoirs of Manuel Noriega. America's Prisoner (New York:
Random House, 1997)Chapter 13. Conversations with the General
1. William Shawcross: The Shah's Last Ride: The Fate of an Ally (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1988); Stephen Kinzer, ^4?? the Shah's Men: An Ameri-can Coup and the
Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003), p 45.
2.
A great deal has been written about Arbenz, United Fruit, and the violent
history of Guatemala; see for example (my Boston University political science professor) Howard Zinn,^4 People's History of the United States (New
York: Harper & Row, 1980); Diane K. Stanley, For the Record: The United
Fruit Company's Sixty-Sit: Years in Guatemala (Guatemala City: Centro Impresor Piedra Santa,
1994). For quick references: "The Banana Republic: The United Fruit Company,"
http://www.mayaparadise.com/ufcle.html; "CIA Involved in Guatemala Coup, 1954,"
http://www.english.upenn.edu/ ~afilreis/50s/guatemala.html. For more on the Bush family's
involvement: "Zapata Petroleum Corp.," Fortune, April 1958, p 248.
Chapter 14. Entering a New and Sinister Period in Economic History
1. "Robert S. McNamara: 8th Secretary of Defense,"
http://www.defenselink.mil (accessed December 23, 2003).
Chapter 15. The Saudi Arabian Money-laundering Affair
1. For more on the events leading up to the 1973 oil embargo and the impact
of the embargo, see: Thomas W. Lippman, Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with
Saudi Arabia (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 2004), pp 155-159; Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The
Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (New York: Free Press, 1993); Stephen Schneider, The Oil
Price Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); Ian Sey-mour, OPEC:
Instrument of Change (London: McMillan, 1980).
2. Thomas W. Lippman, Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia
(Boulder CO: Westview Press, 2004), p 160.
3. David Holden and Richard Johns, The House ofSaud: The Rise and Rule of the Most
Powerful Dynasty in the Arab World (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1981), p 359.
4. Thomas W. Lippman, Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia
(Boulder CO: Westview Press, 2004), p 16?.
Chapter 16. Pimping, and Financing Osama bin Laden
1. Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Oil (New
York: Crown Publishers, 2003), p 26.
2. Thomas W. Lippman, Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia
(Boulder CO: Westview Press, 2004), p 162.
3. Thomas W. Lippman, Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia
(Boulder CO: Westview Press, 2004), p 2.
4. Henry Wasswa, "Idi Amin, Murderous Ugandan Dictator, Dies," Associated Press, August 17,
2003.
5. "The Saudi Connection," U.S. News & World Report, December 15, 2003, p 21.
6. "The Saudi Connection," U.S. News & World Report, December 15, 2003, pp 19, 20, 26.
7- Craig Unger, "Saving the Saudis," Vanity Fair, October 2003. For more on the Bush family's
involvement, Bechtel, etc., see: "Zapata Petroleum Corp.," Fortune, April 1958, p 248; Darwin
Payne, Initiative in Energy: Dresser Industries, Inc. 1880-1978 (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1979); Nathan
232
Notes
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
233
Vardi, "Desert Storm: Bechtel Group Is Leading the Charge," and "Contacts for Contracts," both
in Forbes, June 23, 2003, pp 63-66; Graydon Carter, "Editor's Letter: Fly the Friendly Skies..."
Vanity Fair, October 2003: Richard A. Oppel with Diana B. Henriques, "A Nation at War: The
Con-tractor. Company has ties in Washington, and to Iraq," New York Times, April 18, 2003.
Chapter 17. Panama Canal Negotiations and Graham Greene
1. See for example: John M. Perkins, "Colonialism in Panama Has No Place in
1975," Boston Evening Globe, Op-Ed page, September 19,1975; John M. Perkins, "U.S.-Brazil
Pact Upsets Ecuador," The Boston Globe, Op-Ed page, May 10,1976.
2. For examples of papers by John Perkins published in technical journals, see: John M.
Perkins et al., '"A Markov Process Applied to Forecasting, Part I —- Economic Development"
and "A Markov Process Applied to Forecast-ing. Part II — The Demand for Electricity," The
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Conference Papers C 73 475-1 (July 1973) and
C 74 146-7 (January 1974), respectively; John M. Perkins and Nadipuram R. Prasad, ''A Model
for Describing Direct and Indirect Interrelationships Between the Economy and the
Environment," Consulting Engineer, April 1973; Edwin Vennard, John M. Perkins, and Robert C.
Ender, "Electric Demand from Interconnected Systems," TAPPI Journal (Technical Associ-ation
of the Pulp and Paper Industry), 28th Conference Edition, 1974: John M. Perkins et al., "Iranian
Steel: Implications for the Economy and the Demand for Electricity" and "Markov Method
Applied to Planning," presented at the Fourth Iranian Conference on Engineering, Pahlavi
Uni-versity, Shiraz, Iran, May 12-16,1974; and Economic Theories and Applica-tions: A
Collection of Technical Papers with a Foreward by John M. Perkins (Boston: Chas. T. Main, Inc.,
1975).
3. John M. Perkins, "Colonialism in Panama Has No Place in 1975," Boston Evening Globe, OpEd page, September 19,1975.
4. Graham Greene, Getting to Know the General (New York: Pocket Books, 1984), pp 8,9-90.
5. Graham Greene, Getting to Know the General (New York: Pocket Books, 1984).
Chapter 18. Iran's King of Kings
1. William Shawcross, The Shah's Last Ride: The Fate of an Ally (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1988). For more about the Shah's rise to power, see H. D. S. Greenway,
"The Iran Conspiracy," New York Review of Books, September 23, 2003; Stephen Kinzer,vl// the
Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley
& Sons, Inc., 2003).
2. For more about Yamin, the Flowering Desert project, and Iran, see John
Perkins, Shapeshifting (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1997).
Chapter 20. The Fall of a King
1. For more about the Shah's rise to power, see H.D.S. Greenway, "The Iran
Conspiracy," New York Review of Books, September 23, 2003; Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah's
Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 2003).
2. See TIME magazine cover articles on the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
February 12,1979, January 7,1980, and August 17,1987.
Chapter 21. Colombia: Keystone of Latin America
1. Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennet, Thy Will Be Done, The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson
Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), p 381.
Chapter 24, Ecuador's President Battles Big Oil
1. For extensive details on SIL, its history, activities, and association with the
oil companies and the Rockefellers, see Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennet, Thy Will Be Done,
The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (New York:
HarperCollins, 1995); Joe Kane, Savages (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995) (for information on
Rachel Saint, pp 85,156, 227).
2. John D. Martz, Politics and Petroleum in Ecuador (New Brunswick and Oxford: Transaction
Books, 1987), p 272.
3. Jose Carvajal Candall, "Objetivos y Politicas de CEPE" (Quito, Ecuador: Primer Seminario,
1979), p 88.
Chapter 26. Ecuador's Presidential Death
1. John D. Martz, Politics and Petroleum in Ecuador (New Brunswick and Oxford: Transaction Books, 1987), p 272.
2. Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennet: Thy Will Be Done, The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson
Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (New York, HarperCollins, 1995), p 813.
3. John D. Martz, Politics and Petroleum in Ecuador (New Brunswick and Ox-ford: Transaction
Books, 1987), p 303.
4. John D. Martz, Politics and Petroleum in Ecuador (New Brunswick and Ox-ford: Transaction
Books, 1987), pp 381, 400.
Chapter 27. Panama: Another Presidential Death
1. Graham Greene, Getting to Know) the General (New York: Pocket Books,
1984), p 11.
2. George Shultz was secretary of the Treasury and chairman of the Council
on Economic Policy under Nixon-Ford, 1972-1974, executive president or
president of Bechtel, 1974-1982, secretary of state under Reagan-Bush,
1982-1989; Caspar Weinberger was director of the Office of Management
and Budget and secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under Nixon-
234
Notes
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
235
Ford, 1973-7-5, vice president and general counsel of Bechtel Group, 1975-80, secretary of
defense under Reagan-Bush, 1980-87.
3. During the 1973 Watergate hearings, in his testimony before the U.S. Sen-ate, John Dean
was the first to disclose U.S. plots to assassinate Torrijos; in 1975, at Senate inquiries into the
CIA, chaired by Senator Frank Church, additional testimony and documentation of plans to kill
both Torrijos and Noriega were presented. See, for example, Manuel Noriega with Peter Eisner,
The Memoirs of Manuel Noriega, America's Prisoner (New York: Random House, 1997), p 107
Chapter 28. My Energy Company, Enron, and George W. Bush
1. For additional information on IPS, its wholly-owned subsidiary Archbald
Power Corporation, and former CEO John Perkins, see Jack M. Daly and Thomas J. Duffy,
"Burning Coal's Waste at Archbald," Civil Engineering, July 1988; Vinee Coveleskie, "CoGeneration Plant Attributes Cited," The Scranton Times, October 17,1987; Robert Curran,
'"Archbald Facility Dedi-cated," Scranton Tribune, October 17,1987; "Archibald Plant Will Turn
Coal Waste into Power," Citizens Voice, Wilkes-Barre, PA, June 6,1988; "Liabilities to Assets:
Culm to Light, Food," editorial, Citizen's Voice, Wilkes-Barre, PA, June 7,1988.
2. Joe Conason, "The George W. Bush Success Story," Harpers Magazine, Feb-ruary 2000;
Craig Unger, "Saving the Saudis," Vanity Fair, October 2003, pl65.
3. Craig Unger, "Saving the Saudis," Vanity Fair, October 2003, p 178.
4. See George Lardner Jr. and Lois Romano, "The Turning Point After Coming Up Dry,"
Washington Post, July 30,1999; Joe Conason, "The George W. Bush Success Story," Harpers
Magazine, February 2000; and Sam Parry, "The Bush Family Oiligarchy — Part Two: The Third
Generation," http://www.newnetizen.com/presidential/bushoiligarchy.htm (accessed April 19,
2002).
5. This theory took on new significance and seemed ready to fall under the
spotlight of public scrutiny when, years later, it became clear that the highly respected
accounting firm of Arthur Andersen had conspired with Enron executives to cheat energy
consumers, Enron employees, and the American public out of billions of dollars. The impending
2003 Iraq war pushed the spotlight away. During the war, Bahrain played a critical role in
President George W. Bush's strategy.
Chapter 29. I Take a Bribe
1. Jim Garrison, American Empire: Global Leader or Rogue Power? (San Fran-cisco: BerrettKoehler Publishers, Inc., 2004), p 38.
Chapter 30. The United States Invades Panama
1. Manuel Noriega with Peter Eisner, TheMemoirs of Manuel Noriega, Amer-ica's Prisoner (New
York: Random House, 1997), p 56.
2. David Harris, Shooting the Moon: The True Story of an American Manhunt Unlike Any Other,
Ever (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2001), p 31-34.
3. David Harris, Shooting the Moon: The True Story of an American Manhunt
Unlike Any Other, Ever (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2001), p 43.
4. Manuel Noriega with Peter Eisner, TheMemoirs of Manuel Noriega, Amer-ica's Prisoner (New
York: Random House, 1997), p 212; see also Craig Unger, "Saving the Saudis," Vanity Fair,
October 2003, p 165.
5. Manuel Noriega with Peter Eisner, TheMemoirs of Manuel Noriega, Amer-ica's Prisoner (New
York: Random House, 1997), p 114.
6. See www.famoustexans.com/georgebush.htm, p 2.
7- Manuel Noriega with Peter Eisner, TheMemoirs of Manuel Noriega, Amer-ica's Prisoner (New
York: Random House, 1997), p 56-57.
8. David Harris, Shooting the Moon: The True Story of an American Manhunt Unlike Any Other,
Ever (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2001), p 6.
9. www.famoustexans.com/georgebush.htm, p 3.
10.David Harris, Shooting the Moon: The True Story ofan American Manhunt Unlike Any Other,
Ever (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2001), p 4.
11. Manuel Noriega with Peter Eisner, TheMemoirs of Manuel Noriega, Amer-ica's Prisoner
(New York: Random House, 1997), p 248.
12. Manuel Noriega with Peter Eisner, The Memoirs of Manuel Noriega, Amer-ica's Prisoner
(New York: Random House, 1997), p 211.
13. Manuel Noriega with Peter Eisner, TheMemoirs of Manuel Noriega, Amer-ica's Prisoner
(New York: Random House, 1997), p xxi.
Chapter 31. An EHM Failure in Iraq
1. Morris Barrett, "The WTeb's Wild World," TIME, April 26,1999, p 62.
Chapter 32. September 11 and its Aftermath for Me, Personally
1. For more about the Huaoranis, see Joe Kane, Savages (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).
Chapter 33. Venezuela: Saved by Saddam
1. "Venezuela on the Brink," editorial, New York Times, December 18,2002.
2. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, directed by Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain (in
association with the Irish Film Board, 2003). See www.chavezthefilm.com.
3. "Venezuelan President Forced to Resign," Associated Press, April 12, 2002.
4. Simon Romero, "Tenuous Truce in Venezuela for the State and its Oil Com-pany," New York
Times, April 24, 2002.
5. Bob Edwards, "What Went Wrong with the Oil Dream in Venezuela," National Public Radio,
Morning Edition, July 8, 2003.
236
Notes
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
237
6. Ginger Thompson, "Venezuela Strikers Keep Pressure on Chavez and Oil Exports,"New York
Times, December 30, 2002.
7. For more on the jackals and other types of hit men, see: P. W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca NY and London: Cornell
University Press, 2003); James R. Davis, Fortune's War-riors: Private Armies and the New
World Order (Vancouver and Toronto: Douglas & Mclntyre, 2000); Felix I. Rodriguez and John
Weisman, Shadow Warrior: The CIA Hero of 100 Unknown Battles (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1989).
8. Tim Weiner, "A Coup by Any Other Name," New York Times, April 14, 2002.
9. "Venezuela Leader Urges 20 Years for Strike Chiefs," Associated Press, Feb-ruary 22, 2003.
10. Paul Richter, "U.S. Had Talks on Chavez Ouster," Los Angeles Times, April
17, 2002.
Chapter 34. Ecuador Revisited
1. Chris Jochnick, "Perilous Prosperity," New Internationalist, June 2001,
http://www.ne-wint.org/issue335/perilous.htrn.
2. United Nations. Human Development Report (New York: United Nations, 1999).
3. For additional information on the hostage situation, see Alan Zibel, "Na-tives Seek Redress
for Pollution," Oakland Tribune, December 10, 2002; Hoy (Quito, Ecuador daily newspaper)
articles of December 10-28, 2003; "Achuar Free Eight Oil Hostages," El Commercio (Quito daily
newspaper), December 16, 2002 (also carried by Reuters); "Ecuador: Oil Firm Stops Work
because Staff Seized, Demands Government Action," and "Sarayacu — Indigenous Groups to
Discuss Release of Kidnapped Oil Men," El Uni-verso (Guayaquil, Ecuador, daily newspaper),
http://www.eluniverso.com, December 24, 2002; and Juan Forero, "Seeking Balance: Growth vs.
Culture in the Amazon," New York Times, December 10, 2003. Current, updated information
about Ecuador's Amazonian people is available at the Pachamama Alliance Web site:
http://www.pachamama.org.
Chapter 35, Piercing the Veneer
1. National debt statistics from the Bureau of the Public Debt, reported at
www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm; national income statistics from the World Bank at
www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/GNIPC.pdf.
2. Elizabeth Becker and Richard A. Oppel, "A Nation at War: Reconstruction. U.S. Gives Bechtel
a Major Contract in Rebuilding Iraq," New York Times, April 18, 2003,
http://www.n>1:irnes.corn/2003/04/l8/international/ worldspecial/18REBU.html.
3. Richard A. Oppel with Diana B. Henriques, "A Nation at War: The Con-tractor. Company Has
Ties in Washington, and to Iraq," New York Times, April 18, 2003,
http://www.mtimes.com/2003/04/18/international/ worldspecial/lSCONT.html.
4. http://money.crLn.com/2003/04/17/news/companies/war-bechtel/ index.htm.
Epilogue
1. Energy Information Administration, reported in USA Today, March 1, 2004, p 1.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Perkins has lived four lives: as an economic hit man (EHM); as the CEO of a successful
alternative energy company, who was re-warded for not disclosing his EHM past; as an expert
on indigenous cultures and shamanism, a teacher and writer who used this ex-pertise to
promote ecology and sustainability while continuing to honor his vow of silence about his life as
an EHM; and now as a writer who, in telling the real-life story about his extraordinary deal-ings
as an EHM, has exposed the world of international intrigue and corruption that is turning the
American republic into a global em-pire despised by increasing numbers of people around the
planet.
As an EHM, John's job was to convince third world countries to accept enormous loans for
infrastructure development — loans that were much larger than needed — and to guarantee that
the develop-ment projects were contracted to U.S. corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel.
Once these countries were saddled with huge debts, the U.S. government and the international
aid agencies allied with it were able to control these economies and to ensure that oil and other
resources were channeled to serve the interests of building a global empire.
In his EHM capacity, John traveled all over the world and was either a direct participant in or a
witness to some of the most dra-matic events in modern history, including the Saudi Arabian
Money-laundering Affair, the fall of the shah of Iran, the death of Panama's President Omar
Torrijos, the subsequent invasion of Panama, and events leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In 1980, Perkins founded Independent Power Systems, Inc. (IPS), an alternative energy
company. Under his leadership as CEO, IPS became an extremely successful firm in a high-risk
business where most of his competitors failed. Many "coincidences" and favors from people in
powerful positions helped make IPS an industry leader. John also served as a highly paid
consultant to some of the corpora-tions whose pockets he had previously helped to line—taking
on this
role partly in response to a series of not-so-veiled threats and lucra-tive payoffs.
After selling IPS in 1990, John became a champion for indigenous rights and environmental
movements, working especially closely with Amazon tribes to help them preserve their rain
forests. He wrote five books, published in many languages, about indigenous cultures,
shamanism, ecology, and sustainability; taught at universities and learning centers on four
continents; and founded and served on the board of directors of several leading nonprofit
organizations.
One of the nonprofit organizations he founded and chaired, Dream Change Coalition (later
simply Dream Change, or DC), be-came a model for inspiring people to attain their personal
goals and, at the same time, to be more conscious of the impacts their lives have on others and
on the planet. DC seeks to empower individuals to create more balanced and sustainable
communities. DCs Pollution Offset Lease for Earth (POLE) program offsets the atmospheric
pol-lution we each create, helps indigenous people preserve their forests, and promotes earthhonoring changes in consciousness. DC has de-veloped a following around the world and has
inspired people in many countries to form organizations with similar missions.
248
About the Author
249
During the 1990s and into the new millennium, John honored his vow of silence about his EHM
life and continued to receive lu-crative corporate consulting fees. He assuaged his guilt by
applying to his nonprofit work much of the money he earned as a consultant. Arts &
Entertainment television featured him in a special titled "Headhunters of the Amazon," narrated
by Leonard Nimoy. Italian Cosmopolitan ran a major article on his "Shapeshifting" workshops in
Europe. TIME magazine selected Dream Change as one of the thirteen organizations in the
world whose Web sites best reflect the ideals and goals of Earth Day.
Then came September 11, 2001. The terrible events of that day convinced John to drop the veil
of secrecy around his life as an EHM, to ignore the threats and bribes, and to write Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man. He came to believe in his responsibility to share his insider knowledge
about the role the U.S. government, multinational "aid" organizations, and corporations have
played in bringing the world to a place where such an event could occur. He wanted to expose
the fact that EHMs are more ubiquitous today than ever before. He felt he owed this to his
country, to his daughter, to all the people around the world who suffer because of the work he
and his peers have done, and to himself. In this book, he outlines the dangerous path his
country is taking as it moves away from the original ideals of the American republic and toward a
quest for global empire.
Previous books by John Perkins include Shapes/lifting, The World Is As You Dream It,
Psychonavigation, The Stress-Free Habit, and Spirit of the Shuar.
To learn more about John, to find out where he is lecturing, to order his books, or to contact him,
please go to his Web site:
www.JohnPerkins.org.
To discover more about the work of Dream Change, the 501(c)3 nonprofit that is transforming
global consciousness, please visit:
www.dreamchange.org.