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[emanParticipant]

In For Life:
In legal talk, MAIN would be called a closely held corporation; roughly 5 percent of its two thousand employees owned the company. They also make big channels. They dealt with heads of state and other chief executive officers who expect their consultants. Media talk was prohibited.
MAIN was in a league by itself. The majority of its professional staff were engineers, yet they owned no equipment and never constructed so much as a storage shed. Many MAINers were ex-military; however, they did not contract with the Department of Defense or with any of the military services. John Perkins just knew only that his first real assignment would be in Indonesia, and that he would be part of an eleven-man team sent to create a master energy plan for the island of Java. He also knew that Einar and others who discussed the job with him were eager to convince him that Java’s economy would boom and that if He wanted to distinguish himself as a good forecaster (and to therefore be offered promotions), he would produce projections that demonstrated as much.
Einar took frequent trips that usually lasted only two to three days. No one talked much about them or seemed to know where he had gone. When he was in the office, he often invited John to sit with him. John Perkins tried to learn more about Einar and what he would be expected to do in his job. But John never received answers that satisfied him; Einar was a master at turning conversations around. “You needn’t worry,” Einar said to John. “We have high expectations for you. I was in Washington recently…” Einar voice trailed off and he smiled inscrutably.
Einar said to John it’ll be a while before you leave for Indonesia. I think you should use some of your time to read up on Kuwait. After that, John spent many hours in libraries reading books. He became familiar with Kuwait as well as with many books on economic statistics, published by the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. John knew that he would be expected to produce econometric models for Indonesia and Java, and he decided that he might as well get started by doing one for Kuwait.
MAIN was a masculine corporation. There were only four women who held professional positions in 1971. One day in the BPL’s reference section an attractive brunette woman came up and sat in a chair across the table from him. After a few minutes, without a word, she slid an open book in his direction. It contained a table with the information he had been searching for about Kuwait — and a card with her name, Claudine Martin, and her title, Special Consultant to Chas. T. Main, Inc. “I’ve been asked to help in your training,” she said. John could not believe this was happening to him.
Claudine informed John that her assignment was to mold him into an economic hitman. “We’re a rare breed, in a dirty business,” she said. No one can know about your involvement — not even your wife.” Then she turned serious. “I’ll teach you all I can during the next weeks. Then you’ll have to choose. Your decision is final. Once you’re in, you’re in for life. “After that, she seldom used the full name; we were simply EHMs.
Claudine took full advantage of the personality weaknesses the NSA profile had disclosed about John Perkins. He did not know who supplied her with the information. Her approach, a combination of physical seduction and verbal manipulation, was designed specifically for him.
Claudine told him that there were two primary objectives of his work. First, He was to justify huge international loans that would funnel money back to MAIN and other U.S. companies (such as Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone & Webster, and Brown & Root) through massive engineering and construction projects. Second, He would work to bankrupt the countries that received those loans (after they had paid MAIN and the other U.S. contractors, of course) so that they would be forever beholden to their loaner, and so they would present easy targets when they needed favors, including military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources.
John’s job, Claudine said, was to forecast the effects of investing billions of dollars in a country. For example, if a decision was made to lend a country $1 billion to persuade its leaders not to align with the Soviet Union, he would compare the benefits of investing that money in power plants with the benefits of investing in a new national railroad network or a telecommunications system. Or he might be told that the country was being offered the opportunity to receive a modern electric utility system, and it would be up to him to demonstrate that such a system would result in insufficient economic growth to justify the loan.
The unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that they were intended to create large profits for the contractors and to make a handful of wealthy and influential families in the receiving countries very happy while assuring the long-term financial dependence and therefore the political loyalty of governments around the world. The larger the loan, the better. The fact that the debt burden placed on a country would deprive its poorest citizens of health, education, and other social services for decades to come was not taken into consideration. The rich get richer and the poor grow poorer. Yet, from a statistical standpoint, this is recorded as economic progress.
Within several months, John would leave for the island of Java in the country of Indonesia. Indonesia also happened to be an oil-rich Muslim nation and a hotbed of communist activity. “We must win the Indonesians over. If they join the Communist bloc, well…” “Let’s just say you need to come up with a very optimistic forecast of the economy, how it will mushroom after all the new power plants and distribution lines are built. That will allow US AID and international banks to justify’ the loans. You’ll be well rewarded, of course, and can move on to other projects in exotic places. The world is your shopping cart.” She said to John that your role would be tough. “Experts at the banks will come after you. It’s their job to punch holes in your forecasts — that’s what they’re paid to do.
One day John reminded Claudine that the MAIN team being sent to Java included ten other men. He asked the type of nature of their duties. She assured him, “They’re engineers.” “They design power plants, transmission and distribution lines, and seaports and roads to bring in the fuel. You’re the one who predicts the future. Your forecasts determine the magnitude of the systems they design — and the size of the loans. You see, you’re the key.”
One day Claudine said to John “We’re a small, exclusive club.” “We’re paid — well paid—to cheat countries around the globe out of billions of dollars. A large part of our job is 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, these leaders bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. Meanwhile, the owners of U.S. engineering and construction companies become very- wealthy.”

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