Zeitgeist
Addendum
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Zeitgeist: Addendum - Part Two - Page 2
This is the second page of part two in my series of articles on Zeitgeist: Addendum. Please refer to the introduction if you were lead to this page.
Iran, 1953
The precedent for economic hit men really began in the early fifties, when democratically elected Mossadeq, who was elected in Iran. He was considered to be the hope for democracy in the Middle East and around the world, he was Time Magazine's "Man of the Year."
Except, not really. He was "democratically elected" in the sense that the Shah backed Parliament voted him to be Prime minister after the Shah had appointed Mossadeq to the Premiership[14].
But, one of the things that he'd run on and began to implement was the idea that foreign oil companies needed to pay the Iranian people a lot more for the oil that they were taking out of Iran, that the Iranian people should benefit from their own oil.
He wanted to nationalize oil so that foreign countries could not directly make money on it any more and would have to pay wholesale to Iran as they have been to other countries[15][16].
Strange policy. We didn't like that of course. But we were afraid to do what we normally were doing, which was to send in the military. Instead we sent in one CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt's relative...and Kermit went in with a few million dollars and was very, very effective and efficient, and in a short amount of time he managed to get Mossadeq overthrown and brought in the Shah of Iran to replace him, who always was favorable to oil, and it was extremely effective.
The Shah was already in power in Iran but his influence was being pushed out by Parliament and Mossadeq; what the US did was help consolidate that power into a dictatorship[17].
Revolt in Iran
Mobs overflow Tehran. Army officers shout that Mossadeq has surrendered and his regime as virtual dictator of Iran is ended. Pictures of the Shah paraded through the streets as sentiment reverses. The Shah is welcomed home.
[Perkins]
So back here in the United States in Washington people looked around and said, wow, that was easy. And cheap. So this established a whole new way of manipulating countries, of creating empire. The only problem with Roosevelt was that he was a card carrying CIA agent, and had he been caught, the ramifications could have been pretty serious. So very quickly at that point the decision was made to use private consultants, to channel the money through the World Bank or the IMF or one of the other such agencies, to bring in people like me who work for private
companies, so that if we got caught there would be no governmental ramifications.
So the government could overthrow governments with the CIA with money funneled through the World Bank/IMF, but at the same time not overthrow them and use people like Perkins to extort them with money that was given to them/investors and not the CIA? This guy can't seem to keep the story straight.
Guatemala 1954
When Arbenz became president of Guatemala, the country was very much under the thumbs of United Fruit Company, the big international corporations, and Arbenz ran on this ticket that says you know, we want to get the land back to the people, and once he took power he was implementing policies that would do exactly that, give land rights back to the people. United Fruit didn't like that very much, and so they hired a public relations firm, launched a huge campaign in the United States to convince the United States people, the citizens of the United States, and the press of the United States, and the congress of the United States that Arbenz was a Soviet puppet, and that if we allowed him to stay in power the Soviets would have a foothold in this hemisphere, and that at that point in time was a huge fear on everybody's mind, the red terror, the communist terror...and so to make a long story short, out of this public relations campaign came a commitment on the part of the CIA and the military to take this man out and in fact we did. we sent in planes, we sent in soldiers, we sent in jackals, we sent everything in to take him out, and did take him out. And as soon as he was removed from office, the new guy that took over after him basically reinstated everything to the big international corporations, including United Fruit.
The CIA already had files on Arbenz and speculated about his communist ties. The campaign from the United Fruit Company was really the nail in the coffin as far as Eisenhower and the CIA were concerned[18]. The reason the CIA suspected his communist ties to begin with is because he legalized the Party of Labor which was a communist political organization. Out of fear that there wasn't enough evidence that Arbenz did have connections to the USSR a fake weapons cache was created in Nicaragua. The CIA really did a number on Arbenz to get rid of him[19][20]. However unlike Perkins says, we didn't send in much of anything. In fact, the Guatemalan Army did most of the work. We did supply them with weapons bought from Czechoslovakia; they were barely functioning German weapons from World War II[21]. There was more involved with the CIA and government, but you can read about that on your own time at your local library or some place on the Internet.
All this being said, what does any of this have to do with the World Bank/IMF or economic hit men? Aside from the fact that the United Fruit Company was angry about the land seizures, the CIA was already underway with ousting Arbenz, they just helped pick up the pace and get presidential approval. The United States clearly has the ability (at least in 1954) to act on its interests without the World Bank, IMF, or economic hit men.