WORLD BANK - IMF CONSPIRACY

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, U.S. Agency for International Development, 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. 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 terrifying 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 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 EHMs 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.

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.

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 as “a riveting story that needs to be told.” Then he sadly, shook his head, and told me that since the executives at world

headquarters might object, he could not afford to risk publishing it.

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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. Amore courageous

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 because only through 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 thousand people who died on September 11 at the hands of terrorists, another twenty-four thousand died from hunger and hunger related causes. In fact, twenty-four thousand people die every single day because they are unable to obtain life-sustaining food. 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.

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!”

The longer version relates to my dedication to the country where I was raised,

my love for the ideals expressed by our founding fathers, 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 during 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, brought us to where we are today, and form the foundation for 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, including published documents; personal records and notes; recollections—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 information that formerly was classified or

otherwise unavailable. Footnotes and references are provided to allow interested readers to pursue these subjects in more depth.

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,

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“My assignment is to mold you into an economic hit man. No one can know

about your involvement—not even your wife.” Then she turned serious. “Once you're in, you're in for life.” After that she seldom used the full name, we were simply EHMs.

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 was

typical of the cogs that keep the system on track. 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 interests. 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 owners of U.S. engineering and 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 toil under inhuman conditions in Asian sweatshops. Oil companies wantonly pump toxins down rain forest rivers, consciously killing people, animals, and plants and committing genocide among ancient cultures. The pharmaceutical industry denies life-saving medicines to millions of HIVinfected Africans. Twelve million families in our own United States worry about their

next meal. The energy industry creates an Enron. The accounting industry creates an Andersen. The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world’s population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest went from 30:1 in 1960 to 74:1 in 1995. The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet. And we wonder why terrorists attack us?

Some would blame our current problems on an organized conspiracy. 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 countries economic

growth benefits only a small portion of the population 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 perhaps is also the reason that conspiracy theories abound. When men and woman are rewarded for greed, greed becomes a corrupting 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

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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 the media support both the fallacious concept and its corollary. They have brought us to a point where our global culture is a

monstrous machine that requires exponentially increasing amounts of fuel and

maintenance, so much so that in the end it will have consumed everything 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 important functions is to perpetuate and continually expand and strengthen the system. The lives of those who “make it,” and their accouterments—their mansions, yachts, and private jets—are presented as models to inspire us all to consume, consume, consume. Every opportunity is taken to convince us that purchasing things is our civic duty, that pillaging the earth is good for the

economy and therefore serves our higher interests. People like me are paid outrageously 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 he 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 corporation 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. Every one of them has failed terribly. They destroy many cultures as they race toward greater domination, and then they themselves fall. No country or combination of them 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 that 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 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 dedication, and drive us to realize our dream for balanced and honorable societies.

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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 few 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 indigenous 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 cliffs 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 headwater 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 more than three thousand miles away.

In 2003, I left 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 virtually unknown anywhere outside the country where it is fought. I was on my way to meet with the Shuar, the Kichwa, and their neighbors, the Achuar, Zaparos, the Shiwiars—tribes determined to prevent our oil companies from destroying their homes, families, and lands, even if it means they must die in the process. This is a war that for them is 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.

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 subservient to the corporatocracy that runs our

biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our counterparts in the

Mafia, we provide favors. These take the form of loans to develop infrastructure—

electric generating plants, highways, ports, airports, or industrial parks. One 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 creditors), the recipient country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest.

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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, like the Mafia, we demand our pound of flesh, which often includes one or more of the following:

control over United Nations votes, the installations of military bases, or access to

precious resources, like 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 to be 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 discovered 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 of oil into the fragile rain forest—more than twice the amount spilled by

the Exxon Valdez. Today, a new $1.3 billion, 300-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. 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. As one

result, on May 7, 2003, a group of American lawyers representing more than thirty

thousand indigenous Ecuadorian people filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Chevron

Texaco 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.

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 tropical 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 me and my fellow EHMs, Ecuador is in far worse shape today than 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.

Unfortunately, Ecuador is not the exception. Nearly every country we EHMs

have brought under the global empire’s umbrella has suffered a similar fate.

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The Subaru slowed as it meandered through the streets of the beautiful resort

town of Baños, 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 Baños behind. The spectacular scenery ended abruptly. 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 unnatural and incompatible with the

landscape. Of course, seeing it there should 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 their

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 also the reason why the Shuar, the Kichwa, and their neighbors have  declared war on 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 Ecuador 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. The global empire demands its pound of flesh in the form of oil concessions.

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 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 economic-political fold. For every $100 of crude taken out of the Ecuadorian rain forests, the oil companies receive $75. Of the remaining $25, three quarters must go to paying off the foreign debt. Most of the remainder covers military and other government expenses— which leaves about $2.50 for health, education, and programs aimed at helping the poor. Thus, out of every $100 worth of oil torn from the Amazon, less than $3 goes to the people who need the money most, 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 drinkable water.

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Every one of those people—millions in Ecuador, billions around the planet—is a

potential terrorist. Not because they believe in communism or the tenets of anarchism, nor because they 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.” And if by chance the jackals fail, as they failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, then the old models resurface. When the jackals fail, young Americans are sent in to kill and die.

As I passed the monster, that hulking mammoth wall of gray concrete rising

from the river, I was very conscious of the sweat that soaked my clothes and the

tightening of my intestines. I headed on down into the jungle to meet with the

indigenous people who are determined to fight to the last man in order to stop this

empire I helped create, and I was overwhelmed with feelings guilt.

How, I asked myself, did a nice kid from rural New Hampshire ever get into

such a dirty business?