o Perusahaan Umum Listrik Negara, Indonesia
o South Carolina Electric and Gas Company
o Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry
o Union Camp Corporation
o U.S, Treasury Dept., Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Specialists offer MAIN's clients new services
by Pauline Ouellette
Looking over the faces behind the desks, it's easy to tell that Economics and Regional Planning is one of the most recently formed and rapidly growing disciplines at MAIN. To date, there are about 20 specialists in this group, gathered over a seven-year period. These specialists include not only economists, but city planners, demographers, market specialists and MAIN's first sociologist.
Perkins
While several people were influential in getting the economics group started, it basically came about through the efforts of one man, John Perkins, who is now head of the group.
Hired as an assistant to the head load forecaster in January, 1971, John was one of the few economists working for MAIN at the time. For his first assignment, he was sent as part of an 11-man team to do an electricity demand study in Indonesia.
"They wanted to see if I could survive there for three months," he said laughing reminiscently. But with his background, John had no trouble "surviving." He had just spent three years in Ecuador with a Construction Materials Co-op helping the Quechua Indians, direct descendants of the Incas. The Indians, John said, were being exploited in their work as brick makers so he was asked by an Ecuadorian agency to form a co-op. He then rented a truck to help them sell their bricks directly to the consumers. As a result, profits rapidly increased by 60%. The profits were divided among the members of the co-op which, after 2½ years, included 200 families.
It was during this time that John Perkins met Einar Greve (a former employee) who was working in the town of Paute, Ecuador, on a hydroelectric project for MAIN. The two became friendly and, through continual correspondence, John was offered a position with MAIN.
About a year later, John became the head load forecaster and, as the demands from clients and institutions such as the World Bank grew, he realized that more economists were needed at MAIN, "While MAIN is an engineering firm, "he said, "the clients were telling us we had to be more than that." He hired more economists in 1973 to meet the clients needs and, as a result, formed the discipline which brought him the title of Chief Economist.
John's latest project involves agricultural development in Panama from where he recently returned after a month's stay. It was in Panama that MAIN conducted its first sociological study through Martha Hayes, MAIN's first sociologist. Marti spent 1½ months in Panama to determine the impact of the project on people's lives and cultures. Specialists in agriculture and other related fields were also hired in conjunction with this study.
The expansion of Economics and Regional Planning has been fast paced, yet John feels he has been lucky in that each individual hired has been a hard working professional. As he spoke to me from across his desk, the interest and support he holds for his staff was evident and admirable.
Setting aside the résumé for a moment, I turned to the MAINLINES article. I clearly recalled my interview with its author, a very talented and well-intentioned young woman. She had given it to me for my approval before publishing it. I remembered feeling gratified that she had painted such a flattering portrait of me, and I immediately approved it. Once again, the responsibility fell on my shoulders. The article began:
Looking over the faces behind the desks, it’s easy to tell that Economics and Regional Planning is one of the most recently formed and rapidly growing disciplines at MAIN…
While several people were influential in getting the economics group started, it basically came about through the efforts of one man, John Perkins, who is now head of the group.
Hired as an assistant to the head load forecaster in January, 1971, John was one of the few economists working for MAIN at the time. For his first assignment, he was sent as part of an 11-man team to do an electricity demand study in Indonesia.
The article briefly summarized my previous work history, described how I had “spent three years in Ecuador,” and then continued with the following:
It was during this time that John Perkins met Einar Greve (a former employee) [he had since left MAIN to become president of the Tucson Gas & Electric Company] who was working in the town of Paute, Ecuador, on a hydroelectric project for MAIN. The two became friendly and, through continual correspondence, John was offered a position with MAIN.
About a year later, John became the head load forecaster and, as the demands from clients and institutions such as the World Bank grew, he realized that more economists were needed at MAIN.
None of the statements in either document were outright lies — the backup for both documents was on the record, in my file; however, they conveyed a perception that I now found to be twisted and sanitized. And in a culture that worships official documents, they perpetrated something that was even more sinister. Outright lies can be refuted. Documents like those two were impossible to refute because they were based on glimmers of truth, not open deceptions, and because they were produced by a corporation that had earned the trust of other corporations, international banks, and governments.
This was especially true of the résumé because it was an official document, as opposed to the article, which was a bylined interview in a magazine. The MAIN logo, appearing on the bottom of the résumé and on the covers of all the proposals and reports that résumé was likely to grace, carried a lot of weight in the world of international business; it was a seal of authenticity that elicited the same level of confidence as those stamped on diplomas and framed certificates hanging in doctors’ and lawyers’ offices.
These documents portrayed me as a very competent economist, head of a department at a prestigious consulting firm, who was traveling around the globe conducting a broad range of studies that would make the world a more civilized and prosperous place. The deception was not in what was stated, but in what was omitted. If I put on an outsider’s hat — took a purely objective look — I had to admit that those omissions raised many questions.
For example, there was no mention of my recruitment by the NSA or of Einar Greve’s connection with the Army and his role as an NSA liaison. There obviously was no discussion of the fact that I had been under tremendous pressure to produce highly inflated economic forecasts, or that much of my job revolved around arranging huge loans that countries like Indonesia and Panama could never repay. There was no praise for the integrity of my predecessor, Howard Parker, nor any acknowledgment that I became the head load forecaster because I was willing to provide the biased studies my bosses wanted, rather than — like Howard — saying what I believed was true and getting fired as a result. Most puzzling was that final entry, under the list of my clients: U.S. Treasury Department, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
I kept returning to that line, and I wondered how people would interpret it. They might well ask what is the connection between the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps some would take it as a typo, two separate lines erroneously compressed into one. Most readers, though, would never guess the truth, that it had been included for a specific reason. It was there so that those in the inner circle of the world where I operated would understand that I had been part of the team that crafted the deal of the century, the deal that changed the course of world history but never reached the newspapers. I helped create a covenant that guaranteed continued oil for America, safeguarded the rule of the House of Saud, and assisted in the financing of Osama bin Laden and the protection of international criminals like Uganda’s Idi Amin. That single line in my résumé spoke to those in the know. It said that MAIN’s chief economist was a man who could deliver.