private key should be a PEM or plain PKSC1 terraform error using GCP provider

for some reason I can't get around this auth error using the GCP provider.

* google_compute_instance.abc1234: Error loading zone 'us-west1-a': Get https://www.googleapis.com/compute/v1/projects/xxxxxx/zones/us-west1-a?alt=json: private key should be a PEM or plain PKSC1 or PKCS8; parse error: asn1: syntax error: sequence truncated

My provider config is this:

provider "google" {
  credentials = "${file("/home/xxxxx/.gsutil/credstore2.json")}"
  project     = "xxxxx"
  region      = "us-west1"
}

and I do have valid creds in credstore2.json since I'm able to successfully use the gsutil and gcloud commands. I've also opened up the permission on that file but still get the same error.