Guest Contributor
Howard Riell
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Howard M. Riell is a 31-year veteran journalist, author and host of the popular “Riell Truth” radio show on The American Freedom Network, station KHNC 1360 AM in Johnstown, CO. The show is streamed live at America News Net |
An exclusive interview with John Perkins, the author of the New York Times best-sellers “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” and “The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption”.
Background: Throughout the 1970s, John Perkins was a highly paid Economic Hit Man (EHM) working for the Corporatocracy – a conglomeration of American corporate, banking and governmental interests. Perkins’ job, as he puts it, was to cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars and 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 families who control the planet’s natural resources. His tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. He was usually successful, but when he was not – as in the cases of Ecuador’s Jaime Roldos and Panama’s Omar Torrijos — his masters would send in the “jackals,” experts in destabilizing governments and, as in these two cases, assassinating uncooperative leaders. Perkins retired in 1980, published Confessions in 2004 and Secret History in 2007.
Veteran journalist and FrontPageMag contributor Howard M. Riell spoke with Perkins about how his former colleagues inside the Corporatocracy view Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In recent weeks Hugo Chavez has, among other things, seized seaports and airstrips in at least four Venezuelan states, offered Russia’s Air Force the use of an entire island to park its long-range strategic bombers, called President Barack Obama an “ignoramus” for saying he had exported terrorism and obstructed progress in Latin America. He has also severed diplomatic ties with Israel in protest of its military campaign in Gaza, and possibly arranged for the arrest and prosecution on corruption charges of his political rival Manuel Rosales.
Howard Riell: How is Hugo Chavez viewed by the Corporatocracy? When they look at him, what do they see?
John Perkins: Let’s start with the United States. We’ve made him the bad guy, basically. The press in the United States is extremely misled and misleading about Hugo Chavez. First of all, he’s often depicted in the press as ‘the dictator from Venezuela.’ He’s been democratically elected and a number of times won democratically carried out referenda, which have been overseen by international committees. And while there have been voter irregularities there are voter irregularities in every election everywhere.
Even his opponents, people who really don’t like him in Latin America – I spend a lot of time there, as you know – will tell you, ‘Yes, he’s a democratically elected president.’ In this country, though, we have tried to depict him as something other than that. The Bush Administration was particularly onerous in doing that, and I think it’s very unfortunate. I don’t particularly like Chavez’ personality, and there are many other aspects about him that I’m not very fond of. But you can talk about a politician like him in honest terms and disagree strongly with his policies, but you don’t have to misstate whether he was democratically elected or not. He was.
HR: Have you ever met Chavez?
JP: He waved around my book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, in public. On the BBC he talked about how he’d been contacted by people like me. Twice he’s invited me to be on a television show with him, and both times I’ve declined. I don’t really think it would be to either of our advantages for that to happen. Given the fact that I really want to reach people in this country — I want to reach conservatives and Republicans as well as liberals and Democrats — for me to appear on television with Chavez wouldn’t help. And I don’t really think it would help him to endear himself to certain of his opponents in Venezuela to have me on a show, either.
HR: Are you still in touch with EHMs and Jackals? If so, are you privy to any inside information from them?
JP: I do get inside information. I’m writing another book now where I talk a lot about one Jackal in particular who has become a fairly good friend of mine. He is living in Dubai right now and working in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact, I’m sitting here in my office with photographs that he took. He was involved in a big gun battle in the Seychelles back in 1981. He had come to assassinate the president of the Seychelles and hijacked an Air India 707. This is a real guy. His name is actually on the record. His real name has been in the New York Times, and he was put on trial in South Africa. He is one of a number of people like that who I keep in touch with.
Quite a few people have come out of the woodwork since I’ve written the book. One of the things I have to be careful of is, if I haven’t known them for a while or don’t know them through someone that I trust, are they pulling my leg? You get emails from people and you don’t really know if they’re for real or not. So you have to be a little bit careful about that, and I am careful.
HR: What are the Corporatocracy’s plans for Chavez?
JP: I think you’d have to say there is a lot of difference of opinion there. It’s a complex issue. The oil companies, oddly enough, want to keep him in power, as far as I can determine, even though that seems counter-intuitive. But they are frightened that they’re going to lose the oil fields of the Middle East. Therefore the oil in South America becomes infinitely more important, not only because there is a lot of oil in what’s called the Amazon Crescent, which stretches from Venezuela to Colombia to Ecuador through parts of Bolivia and possibly into Brazil, but also because it’s very close to us. Transportation is easy and safe. You don’t need all the protection that you need to get oil out of the Middle East, through the Hormuz Straights and around Africa.
So we’re being very, very careful with Chavez, and also with the other nine recently elected presidents who have taken stands against exploitation by foreign corporations — including (Rafael) Correa, the President of Ecuador, who wrote a beautiful endorsement for my last book, Secret History, Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, whom I spent New Years eve 2008 with, and the new presidents of El Salvador (Mauricio Funes), and Nicaragua (Daniel Ortega).
Our oil companies, particularly, are having to be very careful. Some of the other corporations are less careful, would like to see these people gotten rid of. So there is not necessarily a consistent opinion among various members of the Corporatocracy on exactly what to do about this.
HR: Like thunder up on Mt. Olympus when the gods argue amongst themselves?
JP: Absolutely. What’s happened in Latin America is completely revolutionary. Ten countries now, representing more than 80% of South America, have democratically voted in presidents who are saying ‘No – no more exploitation. Ecuador’s oil has to help Ecuador’s poor people. Bolivia’s gas has to help Bolivia’s poor people.
There is a revolution going on, and it is not against the U.S. government. It’s not against the people of the United States. These presidents wave around our Bill of Rights and our Declaration of Independence and hold these out as great, sacred documents. And they recognize it’s not about the U.S. government, but that there are aspects of the government that get involved. That’s why people like Morales or Chavez kick some of our diplomats out periodically. But they recognize that this is really about the corporations, the Corporatocracy. They understand that it’s the corporations that dictate U.S. government policies in places like Latin America.
HR: If you were still in the business and had been given the assignment of turning Mr. Chavez around, how would you do it?
JP: I’d quit. I wouldn’t want to try and do it.
HR: Have they attempted to assassinate him?
JP: Yes, there have certainly been attempts to assassinate him. We attempted to overthrow him in the coup of 2002, but he’s extremely clever. He was a military man himself. (The coup attempt) was unsuccessful, but he learned a lot in the process.
You know, when the coup occurred in 2002 we took him out of power for almost 40 hours, but he was very, very smart. As he was being held captive his captors were also being held captive. He had his own private guards hidden in secret passageways at the presidential palace. Once his opponents had shuttled him out of there and taken over, his own guards came out of the secret passages and put their guns to the heads of the people who had overthrown him. At the same time, tens of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets, so the world saw this huge demonstration in favor of Chavez. But while that was going on, what most of the world didn’t realize was that there was also this inside counter coup executed by his own people.
Chavez is extremely clever. That’s not to say he couldn’t be assassinated, but I doubt he would ever succumb to economic hit men. I think the possibility of assassinating the man – difficult as it might be — is much more probable than the idea of bringing him around. I can’t imagine economic hit men getting through to him. I couldn’t get through to Torrijos of Panama. I couldn’t get through to Roldos of Ecuador. I was called off the case with (France-Albert) Renee in the Seychelles and the jackals were sent in because we determined that he wasn’t corruptible. When you’ve got a guy like Chavez there’s not a hell of a lot of point in continuing to try to corrupt him and bring him around in these ways.
HR: Pull out your crystal ball: what’s going to happen in Venezuela with Chavez?
JP: I don’t have that kind of crystal ball. You know, he’s just run this recent referendum. It’s the second time he went out there to try and change the law to extend the time he can be president. The first time he was voted down. He accepted it, but like any good politician he went for it a second time and this time he won. So he can run for election again.
I have no idea where he’s really coming from. I can say at this point that he is democratically elected, and he has done an amazing job for a lot of Latin America. If Chavez hadn’t been elected and hadn’t survived that coup I don’t think we’d have a lot of these other presidents in Latin America. He is also sending medical aid and money to many other countries. One of the reasons he was despised by the Bush administration was that he had ties with Cuba. Part of what he was doing was paying Cuba to send their very good medical doctors out to some extremely poor parts of places like Bolivia where they couldn’t get doctors any other way.
One reasons we hear so many bad things about him is that the majority of the Venezuelans who live in the States, speak English, and get interviewed by the press come from relatively wealthy families. For decades they did not pay taxes – or at best paid very low taxes – in Venezuela. Chavez is now forcing them to pay taxes so that the lower classes can attend schools and receive food and medicines.
And so throughout Latin America, in many, many areas he’s seen as a real hero. On the other hand, in Latin America like here people fear that he might be trying to become another Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) and create a huge dictatorship throughout Latin America. Maybe that’s his intent. Who am I to say it isn’t? I’m not his psychiatrist. But he certainly has done very little to demonstrate that that is, in fact, what he’s intending to do at this point. Who knows what comes next with him?
I think it’s fair to say that Chavez has to be a very eccentric human being, perhaps you could say bordering on some sort of unusual psychological profile. Because you don’t take on the most powerful empire in the world the way he took on the United States unless you’re a very big risk taker. He’s taken huge risks and he’s been successful so far.
What comes next? Who knows. But I will say that the continent as a whole, both Central and South America, has had tremendous, significant changes for the better for the people of all those countries. And Chavez has to get some of the credit for creating an atmosphere where that could happen.
