AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, talk about your experience in Panama. You had the opportunity to meet the Head of Panama before he was killed, Omar Torrijos. How did you end up there?

JOHN PERKINS: Well, Panama was one of these pivotal countries at the time and Omar Torrijos, who was the President of Panama. He followed a long line of oligarchy dictators that basically were puppets of the U.S. government that we had installed 50 years prior when we took over the country. Omar Torrijos was the first one to break that cycle, and he was a very, very popular president. He was popular throughout much of the world. Many people believed he should have won the Nobel Peace Prize and might have had he not died or been killed. He protected the downtrodden everywhere. And the United States was at the time, President Carter was negotiating a new Canal treaty with Torrijos and ultimately that Canal treaty went through. But it caused a tremendous amount of turmoil in our own country. In fact, it was passed in Congress by only one vote, that won the ratification of the Canal. So, we economic hit men were really looking beyond that process, or how we could win Panama over regardless of what happened to the Canal Treaty. I was there before the treaty was signed in 1972 and I was trying to bring Torrijos around. I was trying to catch him. I was trying to get him. I was trying to hook him the way we hooked everybody else. He arranged for me to meet with him in this private bungalow one day, and this is described in detail, the conversation, in the book. But basically what he said to me is, Look, I know the game you guys are playing. I know what you're trying to do here. You're trying to saddle us with huge debts. You're trying to make us totally dependent upon you, and you're trying to corrupt me. I know what this game is and I'm not playing. I don't need the money. I'm not looking to get personally wealthy out of this. I want to help my poor people. I want you to build the projects that you're supposed to build, that you build in other countries, but I want you to build them for our poor people, not for our rich people. And he said, if you do that, I'll see to it that you and your company get a lot more work in this country. Good work that will help our people. Well, I was really conflicted at this because, as an economic hit man, I was supposed to get him under our control. I was supposed to hook him. But as a partner in this company and as the chief economist for this firm, I also wanted to get the work for the firm, and in this case it was very obvious that the economic hit men weren't going to get through to Torrijos, so I went along with him. But at the time, I was deeply concerned because I knew that this system is built on the assumption that leaders like Torrijos are corruptible and they are all over the world for the most part. When one stands up to the system as Torrijos was doing, it's not only a threat in his country, like Panama, that we're not going to get our way there, but it also may be seen as setting a very bad example for the rest of the world that once one leader stands up -- and at that time there was another leader standing up, too, who was the President of Ecuador, Jaime Roldos. They were both standing up to the U.S. government. They were both standing up to the oil companies and the economic hit men, and it was a very big concern to me. I knew in my heart that if this continued, something was going to give. Of course, it did. Both of these men were assassinated by what we call the jackals, C.I.A.-sanctioned assassins.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. The conversation you had with Omar Torrijos as he goes through history, your conversation in the early 1970s. But talking about what happened in Guatemala, the overthrow of the democratically elected leader Arbenz by United Fruit and the C.I.A-backed coup there in 1954, and you reconstruct this conversation about George Bush's company Zapata Oil eventually taking over United Brands, which was United Fruit, and then he talks about giving your company the business, Omar Torrijos, saying that he believed the Japanese would finance the canal that would be built, though turning to your company. And he says "They provide the money, they will do the construction." And you write, "It struck me, Bechtel will be out in the cold." The biggest construction job in recent history. Omar Torrijos paused. Bechtel's President is George Schultz, Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury. You can imagine the clout he's got and the notorious temper. Bechtel is loaded with Nixon, Ford, and Bush cronies. I've been told that the Bechtel family pulls the strings of the Republican Party. You talk about the corporatocracy, the bringing together of government and corporate power.

JOHN PERKINS: Yes. Well, it got worse, of course. At that time, George Schultz was President of Bechtel. Casper Weinberger was their Chief Counsel, a senior officer in the corporation. They were opposed to Torrijos, not only on the U.S. turning the Canal over to Panama, but even more importantly perhaps because Torrijos was actively negotiating with the Japanese to build a new sea level canal. As you know, the current canal is based on locks and the larger ships in the world can't go through it. So, the idea was to build a sea level canal where every ship could go through, and the Japanese were offering to finance this. But if they financed it, it would be their construction companies, their engineering companies that would build it. Bechtel was incensed over this. They absolutely could not tolerate the idea of this happening. We knew this very strongly, we had to win Torrijos over. Now, then --