Posted by rogerhollander in Ecuador, Latin America.
Tags: Add new tag, amazoniaporlavida, amy goodman, Bechtel, Carter Panama Canal, Casper Weinberger, Chas. T. Main, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Democracy Now, Ecuador C.I.A. infiltration, Ecuador CIA, Ecuador envrionment, Ecuador external debt, Ecuador history, Ecuador natural resources, Ecuador petroleum, Ecuador Politics and Government, Ecuador Texaco, Ecuador Yasuni, George Schultz, IMF, Instituto Linguistico de Verano, Jaime Roldos, Jimmy Carter, John Perkins, Omar Torrijos, Panama Canal, Panama Canal Treaty, Panama Torrijos, roger hollander, Summer Institute of Linguistics, World Bank, Wycliffe Bible
”La Cruda Realidad” (The Crude Reality), Foto: Lou Dematteis
I regularly receive reports from www.amazoniaporlavida.org, an environmental organization that is waging a campaign to prevent exploitation of petroleum in Ecuador’s ecologically sensitive Yasuni region.
A recent e-mail made reverence to a former U.S. agent, John Perkins, who describes himself as a former “economic hit man,” in a tell-all book.
I found an interesting interview with Perkins on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” radio program, which sheds light on the problem as seen by today’s Ecuadorian environmental and anti-neoliberal activists.
First, my translation of the “Amazonia por la Vida” Report:
“In the Agenda of the United States and Its Intelligence Services”
When John Perkins was contracted by MAIN (a CIA front) to intervene in the political economy of Indonesia, Ecuador and Panama, he was told that by using macroeconomic statistics, he should be able, for example, to inflate the rate of economic growth in Indonesia from 6% to 19%. In the case of Ecuador, where he served as an economic advisor, he was told that, by manipulating its macroeconomic statistics, he should be able to put the country in debt to the point where they are trapped with the impossibility of repayment.
The CIA succeeded in manipulating Ecuadorian macroeconomic information to the point where in twenty years the country was in bankruptcy and had to over exploit and privatize its [natural] resources in order to deal with the debt.
In defining the statistics and the conditions of work in transnational corporations at that time [the 1970s] Texaco played an essential part. The former agent [Perkins] has revealed how Texaco was able to enter Ecuador via the Instituto Lingüístico de Verano [ILV, Summer Institute of Linguistics, a U.S. evangelical missionary organization, also known as the Wycliffe Bible Translators, with ties to the CIA], with whom he was also associated.
The CIA strategy was to establish the conditions for the re-taking of natural resources after they had been partially nationalized. Texaco, the company most affected, found itself in conflict with [Ecuadorian President] Jaime Roldós, who not only expelled the ILV from the country, but also refused the conditions to which Texaco aspired. After the assisination [of Roldós], [his successor] Oswaldo Hurtado reinstated the ILV and Texaco began its greatest campaign of explorations (John Perkins, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman,” 2004).
(Table)
Evolution of the Total Ecuadorian External Debt (in millions of U.S. Dollars)
CEIDEX (Comisión Especial de Investigación de la Deuda Externa del Ecuador)
www.ceidex.gov.ec/
1970 217
1975 456
1980 3,530
1985 8,703
1990 12,107
1995 13,994
2000 13,717
2006 16,856
From: www.quiendebequien.org
Now to John Perkins:
From the prologue to the “Democracy Now!” interview:
John Perkins, was a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies.
20 years ago Perkins began writing a book with the working title, “Conscience of an Economic Hit Men.”
Perkins writes, “The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits–Jaime Roldós, 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 Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.
John Perkins goes on to write:
“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 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop.
John Perkins, from an interview with Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now!” November 9, 2004.
… I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation’s largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations.
… when the National Security Agency recruited me, they put me through a day of lie detector tests. They found out all my weaknesses and immediately seduced me. They used the strongest drugs in our culture, sex, power and money, to win me over. I come from a very old New England family, Calvinist, steeped in amazingly strong moral values. I think I, you know, I’m a good person overall, and I think my story really shows how this system and these powerful drugs of sex, money and power can seduce people, because I certainly was seduced. And if I hadn’t lived this life as an economic hit man, I think I’d have a hard time believing that anybody does these things
Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring—to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we’ve been very successful. We’ve built the largest empire in the history of the world. It’s been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It’s only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.
Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan—let’s say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador—and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure—a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you’re not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we’re going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It’s an empire. There’s no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It’s been extremely successful.
[I worked] … very closely with the World Bank. The World Bank provides most of the money that’s used by economic hit men, it and the I.M.F.
Here is Perkins’ blood chilling account of the alleged assassination of Panama’s Omar Torrijos:
“Omar Torrijos, the President of Panama. Omar Torrijos had signed the Canal Treaty with Carter much—and, you know, it passed our congress by only one vote. It was a highly contended issue. And Torrijos then also went ahead and negotiated with the Japanese to build a sea-level canal. The Japanese wanted to finance and construct a sea-level canal in Panama. Torrijos talked to them about this which very much upset Bechtel Corporation, whose president was George Schultz and senior council was Casper Weinberger. When Carter was thrown out (and that’s an interesting story—how that actually happened), when he lost the election, and Reagan came in and Schultz came in as Secretary of State from Bechtel, and Weinberger came from Bechtel to be Secretary of Defense, they were extremely angry at Torrijos—tried to get him to renegotiate the Canal Treaty and not to talk to the Japanese. He adamantly refused. He was a very principled man. He had his problem, but he was a very principled man. He was an amazing man, Torrijos. And so, he died in a fiery airplane crash, which was connected to a tape recorder with explosives in it, which—I was there. I had been working with him. I knew that we economic hit men had failed. I knew the jackals were closing in on him, and the next thing, his plane exploded with a tape recorder with a bomb in it. There’s no question in my mind that it was C.I.A. sanctioned, and most—many Latin American investigators have come to the same conclusion. Of course, we never heard about that in our country.”
Posted by rogerhollander in Ecuador, Latin America.
Tags: CIA in Latin America, Colombia FARC, Colombia invasion Ecuador, Colombian military, Ecuador C.I.A. infiltration, Ecuador Government, Ecuador military, Ecuador police, Ecuador politics, Ecuador politics government, Latin America, Latin America military, Latin America politics government, Raul Reyes, roger hollander, U.S. military support to Colombia
An Ecuadorian government agency, the Commission to Invistage Police and Military Intelligence Services (Comisión para la Investigación de los Servicios de Inteligencia Militares y Policiales) has issued a report accusing the United States government of illegal interference with its internal security (El Universo, Guayaquil, November 1, 2008).
The Commission’s report has been backed by Ecuador’s Minister of Defence, Javier Ponce, who has called for an investigation to determine those responsible for turning information over to the C.I.A. Ponce further supports the Commission’s eleven recommendations, which include the restructuring of the nation’s intelligence apparatus. He also has called for the dismissal from Ecuador’s intelligence service those who were directly involved with the actions of Colonel Mario Pazmiño. Colonel Pazmiño, former Director of Ecuador’s intelligence service, was accused of withholding from the government intelligence about Franklin Aisalla, an Ecuadorian with alleged connection with the Colombia guerrilla army, FARC (Aisalla was killed earlier this year along with 15 others in a Colombian military raid on a FARC camp within Ecuador’s territory where they successfully assassinated FARC number two leader, Raúl Reyes). It is assumed that he had passed this information on to the C.I.A.
The Commission’s report alleges that the Ecuadorian Police’s Special Investigations Unit (Unidad de Investigaciones Especiales – UIES) is financed and controlled by the U.S Ambassador to Ecuador and that Ecuadorian military officers acted in the interest of the United States in order to conceal information, make evidence disappear, and confuse the government with respect to the Colombian incursion into Ecuador’s territory in March.
Ecuador’s National Police Commander, Jaime Hurtado, has denied that his organization turns over information to the C.I.A., and admits only that a collaboration does exist between the Ecuadorian National Police and foreign authorities, especially with respect to anti-drug investigations. He added that he had no information about Ecuadorian police turning over information [to the United States], but should such evidence come to light, he would take the proper steps against those responsible.
Heather Hodges, the United States Ambassador to Ecuador has refused to comment on matters of intelligence, but she did add that the U.S. has and will continue to work with the Ecuadorian Police and Military on matters of mutual security.
The Crude Reality: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions November 14, 2008
Posted by rogerhollander in Ecuador, Latin America.Tags: Add new tag, amazoniaporlavida, amy goodman, Bechtel, Carter Panama Canal, Casper Weinberger, Chas. T. Main, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Democracy Now, Ecuador C.I.A. infiltration, Ecuador CIA, Ecuador envrionment, Ecuador external debt, Ecuador history, Ecuador natural resources, Ecuador petroleum, Ecuador Politics and Government, Ecuador Texaco, Ecuador Yasuni, George Schultz, IMF, Instituto Linguistico de Verano, Jaime Roldos, Jimmy Carter, John Perkins, Omar Torrijos, Panama Canal, Panama Canal Treaty, Panama Torrijos, roger hollander, Summer Institute of Linguistics, World Bank, Wycliffe Bible
add a comment
”La Cruda Realidad” (The Crude Reality), Foto: Lou Dematteis
I regularly receive reports from www.amazoniaporlavida.org, an environmental organization that is waging a campaign to prevent exploitation of petroleum in Ecuador’s ecologically sensitive Yasuni region.
A recent e-mail made reverence to a former U.S. agent, John Perkins, who describes himself as a former “economic hit man,” in a tell-all book.
I found an interesting interview with Perkins on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” radio program, which sheds light on the problem as seen by today’s Ecuadorian environmental and anti-neoliberal activists.
First, my translation of the “Amazonia por la Vida” Report:
“In the Agenda of the United States and Its Intelligence Services”
When John Perkins was contracted by MAIN (a CIA front) to intervene in the political economy of Indonesia, Ecuador and Panama, he was told that by using macroeconomic statistics, he should be able, for example, to inflate the rate of economic growth in Indonesia from 6% to 19%. In the case of Ecuador, where he served as an economic advisor, he was told that, by manipulating its macroeconomic statistics, he should be able to put the country in debt to the point where they are trapped with the impossibility of repayment.
The CIA succeeded in manipulating Ecuadorian macroeconomic information to the point where in twenty years the country was in bankruptcy and had to over exploit and privatize its [natural] resources in order to deal with the debt.
In defining the statistics and the conditions of work in transnational corporations at that time [the 1970s] Texaco played an essential part. The former agent [Perkins] has revealed how Texaco was able to enter Ecuador via the Instituto Lingüístico de Verano [ILV, Summer Institute of Linguistics, a U.S. evangelical missionary organization, also known as the Wycliffe Bible Translators, with ties to the CIA], with whom he was also associated.
The CIA strategy was to establish the conditions for the re-taking of natural resources after they had been partially nationalized. Texaco, the company most affected, found itself in conflict with [Ecuadorian President] Jaime Roldós, who not only expelled the ILV from the country, but also refused the conditions to which Texaco aspired. After the assisination [of Roldós], [his successor] Oswaldo Hurtado reinstated the ILV and Texaco began its greatest campaign of explorations (John Perkins, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman,” 2004).
(Table)
Evolution of the Total Ecuadorian External Debt (in millions of U.S. Dollars)
CEIDEX (Comisión Especial de Investigación de la Deuda Externa del Ecuador)
www.ceidex.gov.ec/
1970 217
1975 456
1980 3,530
1985 8,703
1990 12,107
1995 13,994
2000 13,717
2006 16,856
From: www.quiendebequien.org
Now to John Perkins:
From the prologue to the “Democracy Now!” interview:
John Perkins, was a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies.
20 years ago Perkins began writing a book with the working title, “Conscience of an Economic Hit Men.”
Perkins writes, “The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits–Jaime Roldós, 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 Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.
John Perkins goes on to write:
“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 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop.
John Perkins, from an interview with Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now!” November 9, 2004.
… I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation’s largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations.
… when the National Security Agency recruited me, they put me through a day of lie detector tests. They found out all my weaknesses and immediately seduced me. They used the strongest drugs in our culture, sex, power and money, to win me over. I come from a very old New England family, Calvinist, steeped in amazingly strong moral values. I think I, you know, I’m a good person overall, and I think my story really shows how this system and these powerful drugs of sex, money and power can seduce people, because I certainly was seduced. And if I hadn’t lived this life as an economic hit man, I think I’d have a hard time believing that anybody does these things
Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring—to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we’ve been very successful. We’ve built the largest empire in the history of the world. It’s been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It’s only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.
Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan—let’s say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador—and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure—a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you’re not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we’re going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It’s an empire. There’s no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It’s been extremely successful.
[I worked] … very closely with the World Bank. The World Bank provides most of the money that’s used by economic hit men, it and the I.M.F.
Here is Perkins’ blood chilling account of the alleged assassination of Panama’s Omar Torrijos:
“Omar Torrijos, the President of Panama. Omar Torrijos had signed the Canal Treaty with Carter much—and, you know, it passed our congress by only one vote. It was a highly contended issue. And Torrijos then also went ahead and negotiated with the Japanese to build a sea-level canal. The Japanese wanted to finance and construct a sea-level canal in Panama. Torrijos talked to them about this which very much upset Bechtel Corporation, whose president was George Schultz and senior council was Casper Weinberger. When Carter was thrown out (and that’s an interesting story—how that actually happened), when he lost the election, and Reagan came in and Schultz came in as Secretary of State from Bechtel, and Weinberger came from Bechtel to be Secretary of Defense, they were extremely angry at Torrijos—tried to get him to renegotiate the Canal Treaty and not to talk to the Japanese. He adamantly refused. He was a very principled man. He had his problem, but he was a very principled man. He was an amazing man, Torrijos. And so, he died in a fiery airplane crash, which was connected to a tape recorder with explosives in it, which—I was there. I had been working with him. I knew that we economic hit men had failed. I knew the jackals were closing in on him, and the next thing, his plane exploded with a tape recorder with a bomb in it. There’s no question in my mind that it was C.I.A. sanctioned, and most—many Latin American investigators have come to the same conclusion. Of course, we never heard about that in our country.”