FIFTEEN: CIA/Corporate Proprietary’s

There are basically three types of private organizations that are used, a CIA proprietary-a business designed to provide a service wanted by the CIA, it is secretly and wholly owned by the CIA while disguised to appear in public as a private business. According to a foreign service officer, ―the proprietaries tend to take on a life of their own, and several have grown too big and too independent to be either controlled from or dissolved by headquarters‖. A second kind of operation is a ―front‖ an organization whose business is a sham, kept in place to provide cover for other activities, an example of which are the front companies used by Wilson and Shackley that had no real function other than cover. A third kind of organization is an independent organization closely allied to the CIA by shared ideology and mutual goals, and a staff of ex-CIA people. The Interarms Company is such an example, the world‘s largest private arms dealer is run by career CIA officer Samuel Cummings. (Kwitney COP pg100) John Perkins wrote in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (EHM), that he was recruited in college by the NSA prior to entering the peace corps. Perkins was later indoctrinated and told, ―US intelligence agencies-including the NSA-would identify prospective EHMs, who could then be hired by international corporations. These EHMs would never be paid by the government, instead, they would draw their salaries from the private sector. As a result, their dirty work, if exposed, would be chalked up to corporate greed rather than to government policy. In addition, the corporations that hired them, although paid by the government agencies and their multinational banking counterparts (with taxpayer money), would be insulated from congressional oversight and public scrutiny, shielded by a growing body of legal initiatives, including trademark, international trade, and Freedom of Information Laws.‖ Perkins was hired by an international consulting firm, Chas T. Main, Inc. (MAIN) where his specialty was falsifying economic growth estimates to validate the building of huge infrastructure projects with loans from the IMF and World Bank. According to Perkins these loans were used to enrich construction firms like Bechtel and were never intended to be paid back, but instead served to keep the host country in debt to the World Bank. He met with leaders of Third World countries and negotiated deals that in effect lined the pockets of Perkin‘s corporate clients and those of the dictator while leaving the general population in perpetual poverty. Should the leader of the sovereign nation refuse to hand over the resources to corporate interests that leader would meet with an unfortunate accident, as happened to the Presidents of Ecuador and Panama, who both died in fiery plane crashes. The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world‘s population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest countries went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995. By 1990, developing countries had accumulated more than $1.3 trillion in foreign debt. By 2000, eighty six percent of the US EXIM Bank‘s $7.7 billion in new foreign export credits and guarantees went to just ten politically influential US companies, including Enron, Halliburton, GE, Boeing, Bechtel, United Technologies, Schlumberger, and Raytheon.