Dozens killed in military offensive in Nigeria's restive oil region
Every step Bush takes, China is there. The United States depends heavily on Nigerian sweet crude and China plans to increase their influence in Nigeria. #msg-3143912
As China begins to revamp Nigeria’s oil sector a US defence official says the US navy is planning an unusual task force deployment off Nigeria and the West African coast.
It's all about oil.
-Am
Dozens killed in military offensive in Nigeria's restive oil region
10:26 PM EDT Jun 04 GLENN MCKENZIE AND DULUE MBACHU
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) - Soldiers in gunboats clashed with ethnic militants in the rivers of Nigeria's oil delta Friday, and militants and villagers claimed that dozens of fighters and civilians were killed. A navy spokesman denied there were casualties.
Nigeria's military regularly plays down ethnic, political and religious violence in an effort to stem retaliatory attacks. On two occasions - in 1999 and 2001 - authorities denied army massacres of hundreds of civilians until witness accounts made them indisputable.
Political, religious and ethnic unrest has killed more than 10,000 since President Olusegun Obasanjo was first elected in 1999, ending 15 years of brutal military rule.
On Friday, residents of Port Harcourt, the oil-rich Niger Delta's main city, reported hearing pre-dawn gunfire at the time of the attack. Port Harcourt is several kilometres from where the clashes occurred.
Hundreds of soldiers and police have deployed to the nearby villages of Ogbakiri, Buguma and Tombia since last week, apparently to stem months of fighting between two rival ethnic Ijaw militant factions.
Villagers in Oduoha said they woke to gunfire before dawn.
Community leader Lloyd Eyime said he went outside his house and saw soldiers in gun-mounted speedboats firing upon his riverside community.
"They have been burning houses and shooting at people, both young and elderly," Eyime said.
Residents fled into mangrove swamps and dense bush, he said.
When Eyime returned, he said, he found about 30 bodies lying about the otherwise abandoned village.
"Right now where I'm hiding I can see flames from one of my cars that was set ablaze by the soldiers. As I'm talking to you I don't even know the whereabouts of my wife and children," he told The Associated Press by phone.
Kenneth Etu, a village elder from Ogbakiri, said he saw 15 bodies.
"We were sleeping and we heard shooting," he said. "Everyone was running."
Dokubo Asari, one of the two feuding ethnic Ijaw commanders involved, said his men were fighting back.
"We shot at them and one of their gunboats sank," Asari said.
A senior navy official in Port Harcourt denied anyone had been killed or injured. Most villagers deserted their communities during fighting before security force members began arriving, he said.
"We've been sending troops there since last week. They heard we were coming and they deserted towns and villages. There has been no killings. Everything is quiet," the navy officer said, speaking on condition he not be identified.
A government spokesman for the area's River state said he knew nothing of the killings, but defended the soldiers' deployment.
"The military have had to come in because of the escalating nature of the violence by the cultists," spokesman Emma Okah said. Factions in southeastern Nigeria are often called "cults."
The clash on the eastern side of the oil-rich Niger Delta appeared unrelated to ethnic bloodshed pitting ethnic Ijaw and Itsekiri militants in the western delta. Since last year, that fighting has killed hundreds and shut wells accounting for between seven and 25 per cent of Nigeria's daily production.
Ijaws and Itsekiris pledged peace Tuesday although tensions remain high and oil companies have been hesitant to return to facilities abandoned since last year.
Nigeria is the world's seventh-largest oil exporter and the fifth-largest source of U.S. oil imports.
A US defence official says the US navy is planning an unusual task force deployment off the West African coast. Local reports quoting diplomats say an aircraft carrier will deploy to the waters off Nigeria and neighbouring countries in the strategic Gulf of Guinea.
Pentagon officials will not confirm specific plans but one official acknowledged that the US navy is planning an unusual exercise off the West African coast.
There has been talk for some time from senior US commanders in Europe of the need to focus more attention on Africa, including periodic deployments by aircraft carriers.
Oil-rich zone
There is particular concern about emerging terror threats in what have been called "ungoverned areas" in the region.
The Gulf of Guinea represents an area of growing strategic importance because of an increasing number of offshore oil operations.
A senior navy official said recently that a deployment to the Gulf would send a message.
More broadly, this is linked to a US navy plan to deploy seven aircraft carriers around the world in the coming months in a surge operation to demonstrate that it can still respond to different crises, despite the US military's preoccupations in Iraq.
BY GBENGA OGUNTIMEHIN, Abuja THE Chinese Government has promised to assist Nigeria with a grant of $30 million (about N4 billion) for the development of necessary economic infrastructure and manpower for the country’s downstream oil sector.
Chinese Vice-Minister of Commerce, Mr. Wei Jianguo, who made this known in Abuja at the weekend said his country would provide technical training in oil exploration and technology on yearly basis to further improve Nigeria’s revenue from oil sector.
He, however, expressed concern about Federal Government’s ban on importation of 41 products, which he said, were mostly from China.
Speaking with Commerce Minister, Alhaji Idris Waziri, during a courtesy call, Jianguo observed that both countries being members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the rule of the organisation should be followed even as he advised Nigeria to open up her market so that its action would not violate WTO regulations.
Jianguo said he had met the Economic Adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo and the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Funso Kupolokun, on the need for a long-term oil co-operation between Nigeria and China, pointing out that his country was ready to transfer its oil exploration technology to boost Nigeria’s oil sector.
He commended Nigeria’s efforts in the health sector, saying that a large consignment of malaria drugs would arrive the country by the end of June.
The Chinese minister said trade volume between his country and Nigeria stood at $1.86 billion as at the end of 2003, while there were 52 Chinese enterprises investing in the country.
He said his country was contemplating investing in such projects as electronics, textile, household utensils and other goods.
Welcoming the delegation, Waziri commended China’s achievement in economic development, assuring that the Federal Government would step up efforts to ensure co-operation between the two countries.
He said government had given priority to economic development in order to eradicate socio-economic problems like poverty, unemployment, HIV/AIDS and under-development.
He explained the ban on 41 products was not to break any trade relations with developing or developed countries of the world like China but to avoid a situation whereby Nigeria was being used as dumping ground for products which could be produced internally.
“No responsible government will put its people in squalor” Waziri remarked, stressing that the rule of WTO people through the NEEDS programme.
He said the market oriented and private sector led economy was actually aimed at improving living standard of the people, and urged the Italian government to use the opportunity to improve her trade relations with Nigeria.
According to Waziri, Nigeria has tremendous natural resources and manpower but needed support from the external world like Italy to be able to further enhance and actualise various economic measures.
He told Ricoveri that Nigeria was not begging for charity but wanted co-operation to move forward and develop at a rapid stage.
Earlier, Ricoveri said Italy realised the various potentials available in the Nigerian economy and was pursuing the needed strategy to establish a long-term economic co-operation with it.
He assured that his country would put in place tangible investment in manufacturing to strengthen the trade relationships.
Some say Nigeria could before long become the most important source of U.S. energy outside Canada – making secure flows of oil in the Gulf of Guinea as important as secure flows of oil in the Persian Gulf.
The Africa Oil Policy Initiative Group, a lobbying outfit with ties to the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, has urged the Bush administration to offer an oil-for-debt deal to Nigeria. And Israel has urged the United States to lessen its dependence on Arab oil producers since the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Nigeria is seen as a way to achieve that objective.
The Oil Policy Initiative has urged forgiveness of Nigeria's $32 billion in foreign debt, in return for Nigeria leaving OPEC. That would let Nigeria escape its OPEC production quota and move to its stated goal of producing 4 million barrels a day by 2010.
Washington is trying to work with Nigeria to reduce its indebtedness, and Nigeria is expanding its oil production capacity. But U.S. officials say Nigeria's OPEC membership has not been discussed.
It is pertinent that the Africa Oil Policy Initiative Group with ties to the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies urged forgiveness of Nigeria's $32 billion in foreign debt, in return for Nigeria leaving OPEC.
The Bush strategy is to control Iraq, break OPEC's stranglehold on oil markets, force crude prices down and thus deny Islamist terrorism access to petro-financing. The Bush Administration is not just going after Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. It is going after OPEC and the global financial infrastructure that supports terrorism, says Giridhar Srinivasan. http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/bline/2002/09/03/stories/2002090300060800.htm #msg-2750316
Apparently Israel is behind encouraging Bush to break OPEC which was a major cause of the war with Iraq and to that same end Israel urges a forgiveness of Nigeria’s $32 billion in foreign debt.
Obasanjo said in a speech to mark the fifth anniversary of his election to power in 1999, that Western creditor nations were now using debt repayment as an issue to put political pressure on Nigeria, the biggest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa.
"They [the creditor countries] hold the debt over us like a sword, so it has become another means of intimidation and control. We reject it," Obasanjo said. #msg-3213856
-Am
African oil fields: Rewards and risks
Situation reminiscent of Persian Gulf challenges
12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, October 6, 2004
By JIM LANDERS / The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON – West African oil holds great promise for companies in search of diverse sources.
But it's giving U.S. national security planners a new Gulf to worry about: the Gulf of Guinea.
Imports from Nigeria have almost doubled in the last two years, and U.S. companies led by Irving-based ExxonMobil Corp. are beginning to produce from new fields in the deep waters off Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and further south off Angola.
Yet much like the Persian Gulf countries, the Gulf of Guinea nations harbor terrorists and insurrectionists who pose a big threat to the flow of oil, particularly from onshore fields in Nigeria's Niger River delta.
When a rebel group threatened to attack Nigerian oil installations last week, prices rose to $50 a barrel. The rebels now say they've reached a truce with the government. And fears about continued violence in Nigeria and Iraq, coupled with concerns about the slow pace of recovery in Gulf of Mexico oil output, pushed crude to $51.09 a barrel Tuesday.
Such threats are nothing new.
A third of Nigeria's average production of 2.1 million barrels a day was either shut down by rebel violence or stolen last year. Heavily-armed gangsters continue to steal oil at a rate of about 100,000 barrels a day.
A report done for Royal Dutch/Shell Group, which produces half of Nigeria's oil, found more than 1,000 deaths a year from crime and political violence in the Niger Delta, putting the region on a par with Chechnya and Colombia.
But West African oil production is expected to double by 2010, and natural gas production is quickly increasing as well.
Secure flows
Some say Nigeria could before long become the most important source of U.S. energy outside Canada – making secure flows of oil in the Gulf of Guinea as important as secure flows of oil in the Persian Gulf.
Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, deputy commander of the U.S. European Command, has made three visits to Nigeria this year to discuss oil security and terrorist threats.
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., chairman of the Senate international economic policy subcommittee, accompanied Gen. Wald in August, and said West Africa deserves a higher priority in U.S. energy security planning.
"We could be importing as much as 25-30 percent of our oil imports from the Gulf of Guinea over the next few years," Sen. Hagel said. "That certainly would rival the Persian Gulf as a supplier of crude oil."
Certainly, most analysts say oil from West Africa won't replace Persian Gulf oil in the global energy picture. Oil reserves are far larger in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
But a diversity of sources increases U.S. oil security. And West African oil is regarded as one of the few major alternatives to the Middle East for future oil production.
The Bush administration featured West Africa as a key to greater oil import diversity in its 2001 national energy plan. President Bush has met repeatedly with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, including last month at the United Nations. U.S. officials say oil security has been part of the discussion, though not the sole theme.
U.S. policy has concentrated on helping the Gulf of Guinea nations clean up corruption, which is seen as a major cause of political instability, said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Paul Simons.
Meanwhile, U.S. military and diplomatic negotiators are arranging security assistance to guard offshore oil platforms and access to contingency staging areas if U.S. forces are sent to the region.
China's interest
China, too, is looking to West Africa for future oil needs. China has offered to invest in Nigeria's oil refineries, which U.S. analysts say are a nightmarish maze of corruption and poor maintenance.
The Africa Oil Policy Initiative Group, a lobbying outfit with ties to the Israeli Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, has urged the Bush administration to offer an oil-for-debt deal to Nigeria. And Israel has urged the United States to lessen its dependence on Arab oil producers since the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Nigeria is seen as a way to achieve that objective.
The Oil Policy Initiative has urged forgiveness of Nigeria's $32 billion in foreign debt, in return for Nigeria leaving OPEC. That would let Nigeria escape its OPEC production quota and move to its stated goal of producing 4 million barrels a day by 2010.
Unless Nigeria's quota rises substantially, some of its new deepwater oil fields could bump into production ceilings.
"The multinationals have to offset their investments with oil from those fields, which makes no sense under Nigeria's OPEC quota," said Elias Johnson, who follows Nigerian energy developments for the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Washington is trying to work with Nigeria to reduce its indebtedness, and Nigeria is expanding its oil production capacity. But U.S. officials say Nigeria's OPEC membership has not been discussed.
Supply diversity
Supply diversity is important to such U.S. giants as ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco Corp., which have invested heavily in the Gulf of Guinea to boost their global oil reserves.
ExxonMobil has helped build an oil pipeline to the Gulf of Guinea from Chad. And it has a big share of new deepwater oil fields coming into production off Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and Angola. The company's West Africa oil production has risen about 25 percent this year to 542,000 barrels a day.
Dallas-based Hunt Oil Co. signed deals with Togo, Namibia and Senegal to search for offshore oil.
The companies find West African oil commercially attractive for several reasons.
• It's much closer to U.S. refineries than Persian Gulf oil.
• Most African crude oil is lighter and has a lower sulfur content than Persian Gulf oil – qualities that increase gasoline yields and create less air pollution.
• And it is one of the few promising oil regions where companies can take ownership in reserves they discover. Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and several other big producers bar foreign ownership, and investors still face equity obstacles in Russia and Iraq.
Recent exploration in West Africa has concentrated on offshore fields, using technologies developed in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
Political violence has played a role in moving the search as much as 200 miles offshore.
"There is more piracy in the Gulf of Guinea than anywhere else in the world," said Chester Crocker, a professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University and former assistant secretary of state for Africa. "Armed pirates in pretty big boats have gone to some of the rigs near shore demanding protection money."
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
I previously posted something to this effect.
What President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria said is "They [the creditor countries] hold the debt over us like a sword, so it has become another means of intimidation and control. We reject it."
Western creditor nations were now using debt repayment as an issue to put political pressure on Nigeria, the biggest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa.
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
Tuesday, November 9th, 2004
We speak with John Perkins, 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. [includes rush transcript] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Perkins describes himself as a former economic hit man - a highly paid professional who cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. 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."
But now Perkins has finally published his story. The book is titled Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. John Perkins joins us now in our Firehouse studios.
John Perkins, from 1971 to 1981 he worked for the international consulting firm of Chas T. Main where he was a self-described "economic hit man." He is the author of the new book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RUSH TRANSCRIPT This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins joins us now in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!
JOHN PERKINS: Thank you, Amy. It’s great to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Okay, explain this term, “economic hit man,” e.h.m., as you call it.
JOHN PERKINS: 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.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you become one? Who did you work for?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, 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. The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950's, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy, who overthrew of government of Iran, a democratically elected government, Mossadegh’s government who was Time's magazine person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed -- well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man was an extremely good one. We didn't have to worry about the threat of war with Russia when we did it this way. The problem with that was that Roosevelt was a C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee. Had he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government.
AMY GOODMAN: Okay. Explain the company you worked for.
JOHN PERKINS: 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.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. You say because of bribes and other reason you didn't write this book for a long time. What do you mean? Who tried to bribe you, or who -- what are the bribes you accepted?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, I accepted a half a million dollar bribe in the nineties not to write the book.
AMY GOODMAN: From?
JOHN PERKINS: From a major construction engineering company.
AMY GOODMAN: Which one?
JOHN PERKINS: Legally speaking, it wasn't -- Stoner-Webster. Legally speaking it wasn't a bribe, it was -- I was being paid as a consultant. This is all very legal. But I essentially did nothing. It was a very understood, as I explained in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, that it was -- I was -- it was understood when I accepted this money as a consultant to them I wouldn't have to do much work, but I mustn't write any books about the subject, which they were aware that I was in the process of writing this book, which at the time I called “Conscience of an Economic Hit Man.” And I have to tell you, Amy, that, you know, it’s an extraordinary story from the standpoint of -- It's almost James Bondish, truly, and I mean--
AMY GOODMAN: Well that's certainly how the book reads.
JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, and it was, you know? And 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. And that's why I wrote the book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in this nation understood what our foreign policy is really about, what foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money goes, I know we will demand change.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins. In your book, you talk about how you helped to implement a secret scheme that funneled billions of dollars of Saudi Arabian petrol dollars back into the U.S. economy, and that further cemented the intimate relationship between the House of Saud and successive U.S. administrations. Explain.
JOHN PERKINS: Yes, it was a fascinating time. I remember well, you're probably too young to remember, but I remember well in the early seventies how OPEC exercised this power it had, and cut back on oil supplies. We had cars lined up at gas stations. The country was afraid that it was facing another 1929-type of crash–depression; and this was unacceptable. So, they -- the Treasury Department hired me and a few other economic hit men. We went to Saudi Arabia. We --
AMY GOODMAN: You're actually called economic hit men --e.h.m.’s?
JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, it was a tongue-in-cheek term that we called ourselves. Officially, I was a chief economist. We called ourselves e.h.m.'s. It was tongue-in-cheek. It was like, nobody will believe us if we say this, you know? And, so, we went to Saudi Arabia in the early seventies. We knew Saudi Arabia was the key to dropping our dependency, or to controlling the situation. And we worked out this deal whereby the Royal House of Saud agreed to send most of their petro-dollars back to the United States and invest them in U.S. government securities. The Treasury Department would use the interest from these securities to hire U.S. companies to build Saudi Arabia–new cities, new infrastructure–which we’ve done. And the House of Saud would agree to maintain the price of oil within acceptable limits to us, which they’ve done all of these years, and we would agree to keep the House of Saud in power as long as they did this, which we’ve done, which is one of the reasons we went to war with Iraq in the first place. And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals. Jackals are C.I.A.-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn't work, they perform assassinations. or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren't able to get through to Saddam Hussein. He had -- His bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldn’t get through to him. So the third line of defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and kill, which is what we’ve obviously done in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how Torrijos died?
JOHN PERKINS: 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.
AMY GOODMAN: So, where -- when did your change your heart happen?
JOHN PERKINS: I felt guilty throughout the whole time, but I was seduced. The power of these drugs, sex, power, and money, was extremely strong for me. And, of course, I was doing things I was being patted on the back for. I was chief economist. I was doing things that Robert McNamara liked and so on.
AMY GOODMAN: How closely did you work with the World Bank?
JOHN PERKINS: Very, 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. But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing. And the only way that we're going to feel secure in this country again and that we're going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we’ve put into place to create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do that. I believe the World Bank and other institutions can be turned around and do what they were originally intended to do, which is help reconstruct devastated parts of the world. Help -- genuinely help poor people. There are twenty-four thousand people starving to death every day. We can change that.
AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, I want to thank you very much for being with us. John Perkins' book is called, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
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