The Corporation2003

Narrator:
For big business, despotism was often a useful tool for securing foreign markets and pursuing profits. One of the U.S. Marine Corps' most highly decorated generals, Smedley Darlington Butler, by his own account, helped pacify Mexico for American oil companies, Haiti and Cuba for National City Bank, Nicaragua for the Brown Brothers brokerage, the Dominican Republic for sugar interests, Honduras for U.S. fruit companies, and China for Standard Oil. General Butler's services were also in demand in the United States itself in the 1930s as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to relieve the misery of the depression through public enterprise and tougher regulation on corporate exploitation and misdeeds. But the country was not entirely behind the populist president. Large parts of the corporate elite despised what Roosevelt's New Deal stood for. And so, in 1934, a group of conspirators sought to involve General Butler in a treasonous plan. But the corporate cabal had picked the wrong man. Butler was fed up being, what he called, "A Gangster for Capitalism". A Congressional Committee ultimately found evidence of a plot to overthrow Roosevelt. According to Butler, the conspiracy included representatives of some of America's top corporations, including J.P. Morgan, Dupont and Goodyear Tire. As today's chairman of Goodyear Tire knows, for corporations to dominate government, a coup is no longer necessary.

Sam Gibara:
Corporations have gone global and by going global, the governments have lost some control over corporations regardless of whether corporations can be trusted or cannot be trusted, governments today do not have over the corporations, the power that they had, and the leverage they had 50 or 60 years ago. And that's a major change. So, governments have become powerless compared to what they were before.

Ira Jackson:
Capitalism today commands the towering heights, and has displaced politics and politicians as the new high priests, and reigning oligarchs of our system. So capitalism and its principle protagonists and players, corporate CEOs, have been accorded unusual power and access. This is not to deny the signifiance of government and politicians but these are the new high priests.

Marc Barry:
I was invited to Washington D.C. to attend this meeting that was being put together by the National Security Agency called, "The Critical Thinking Consortium". I remember standing there in this room and looking over on one side of the room and we had the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI, Customs, Secret Service. And then on the side of the room we had Coca-Cola, Mobile Oil, GTE and Kodak. And I remember thinking, "I am like in the epicenter of the intelligence industry right now". I mean, the line is not just blurring, it's just not there anymore. And, to me, it spoke volumes as to how industry and government were consulting with each other and working with each other.