By Dan Geddes

WASHINGTON – Global leaders negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) affirmed the necessity of secret negotiations for the massive trade and “global governance” deal.

“The TPP is for your own good. Trust us,” stated senior negotiator Mickey Cantwell.

“Only highly-paid lobbyists can possibly understand the TPP text. It’s like NAFTA on steroids. I don’t think that mere journalists, ordinary consumers, or the useless eaters in Congress—let alone in flyover country—could possibly understand the TPP.”

President Obama confirmed the necessity of the treaty’s secrecy: “Yes, we could tell you what’s in the TPP, but then we would have to kill you.”

“By the same logic, if we told everyone what’s in the TPP then we would have to kill everybody,” said Obama. “And we don’t want to kill any more people than is strictly necessary. Reducing the population is a drag on the GNP. And the TPP is intended to increase GNP by introducing premium American-style pharmaceuticals to new markets.”

Other sources refused to either “confirm or deny that population reduction is part of the TPP.”

“Maybe.  Maybe not. Some of the pharmaceutical provisions could in fact lead to a population reduction in Asia. But we just can’t say at this point,” said a high-placed White House source.

Only a handful of Senators with high security clearances have been permitted to read the TPP.

Two of these Congressional TPP readers, Senator Charles Townsend (D – South Carolina) and Senator Sam Church (D-Idaho), committed suicide shortly after reading the TPP text.

Townsend and Church both used an unusual suicide technique: multiple gunshots to the head. Both also left similar suicide notes lamenting “the injustice” that President Obama had not been given “fast track” negotiation powers to close the TPP deal.

“We are saddened by the suicides of Senators Townsend and Church,” said Cantwell. “We doubt that their untimely suicides were directly related to the TPP. But perhaps they were not intellectually mature enough to read this epoch-making text.”

“Let this be a warning to other curiosity seekers in Congress,” said Cantwell. “The TPP may literally blow your mind. The Executive Branch is more intellectually equipped to handle foreign policy.”

“If you’re nice, we may let you read the agreement after it’s been signed. But we still doubt you will understand it.”

The TPP had originally been called the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere until a sharp-eyed Washington intern discovered that a similar name had been used by the Japanese Empire in World War II and rechristened it the Trans-Pacific Partnership.