Bestseller Reveals Dealings of an Economic Hit Man

February 22, 2005

John Perkins tried for a long time to get Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Berrett-Koehler) published. In fact, versions of the book were rejected by about 20 of the largest publishing houses -- "with amazing letters that said things like 'this book is riveting, but it's not quite right for us now,'" Perkins told BTW in a recent interview. "My agent, who used to be president of William Morrow, said, 'What they're really saying is we don't dare to do it.' And one publisher said to me over dinner, 'I don't dare do it because I'm owned by a big international conglomerate. I could lose my job.'"

But Hit Man finally got published, and it reveals in startling fashion, and sometimes with the suspense of a Graham Greene novel, what Perkins' work as an economic hit man entailed. "Economic hit men," he writes, "are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. Their tools include fraudulent reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortions, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as the Empire itself, but one that has taken on terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization."

John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

As the book reveals, Perkins was covertly recruited to be an economic hit man (EHM) by the U.S. National Security Agency, during his last year at Boston University's School of Business Administration, in the late 1960s. Working for the international consulting firm Chas. T. Main from 1971 to 1981, he convinced underdeveloped countries to accept massive loans for infrastructure development and ensured that the projects were contracted to multinational corporations. The countries acquired enormous debt, and the U.S. and international aid agencies were able to control their economies.

The countries' indigenous natural resources, cultures, and people would ultimately suffer terribly. Perkins writes that now "we see the results of this system run amok." Among the consequences he notes, people work for near-slave wages under inhuman conditions in sweatshops, and oil companies unleash toxins into rivers that kill people, animals, and plant life. "The U.S.," he writes, "spends over $87 billion [now it's much more] conducting a war in Iraq, while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet."

Early in the book, Perkins reveals how the work of EHM affected Ecuador: "[The] only way that country can buy down its foreign obligations is by selling its rainforests to the oil companies. Indeed, one of the reasons the EHM set their sights on Ecuador in the first place was because the sea of oil beneath its Amazon region is believed to rival the oil fields of the Middle East." Perkins continues, "Nearly every country we EHM have brought under the global empire's umbrella has suffered a similar fate."

In one of the most significant projects of his EHM career, Perkins helped orchestrate the laundering of billions of dollars of Saudi petrodollars to construct a massive infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. The operation's success insured the longevity of the House of Saud and allowed the U.S. to set up military bases and other projects in Saudi Arabia.

"It also, of course, set a model that we then tried to replicate in Iraq," Perkins told BTW. "The Saudi model was so successful that we tried to replicate it with Saddam Hussein, and he didn't buy. If he bought it, he'd still be head of state, we'd be selling him all the tanks and airplanes he wants, but he didn't, so we sent in the [CIA-sanctioned] jackals, and they failed too, because his security forces were too good and he had too many doubles, and so we sent in the military."

The economic hit man model was devised after the government evaluated the work of CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt, a grandson of Theodore Roosevelt. Perkins describes in Hit Man, how, in the early 1950s, Iran rebelled against a British oil company that was exploiting Iranian natural resources. The democratically elected Iranian prime minister (and 1951 Time magazine Man of the Year) Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized all Iranian petroleum assets, but that outraged England and her ally the U.S.

"Mossadegh wanted more of the money given back to the Iranian people, and the British and the Americans decided he had to go," Perkins said. "Iran was the on border of Russia, which was emerging as our very dangerous number-one enemy because they had nuclear weapons. The last thing we wanted to do was send in military forces that might create a nuclear war. The idea was to give it a try with Kermit Roosevelt." The U.S. dispatched him instead of the Marines, Mossadegh went down, and in came pro-American dictator Mohammad Reza Shah.

"At this point, everybody looks around at each other and says this is the way to go," he explained. "It's cheap, it's safe, but the only problem is, this guy is a CIA agent and if he had gotten caught, we would have all been implicated. So in the future, let's do it with private contactors."

Perkins expressed his belief that the majority of "foreign aid" actually doesn't really benefit the people living in their homelands, and that many Americans aren't aware of this.

"It's amazing how many people believe that foreign aid is used altruistically, but for the most part, it isn't. They don't realize that that the money is going to a few corrupt leaders who get very wealthy, and to our own corporations," said Perkins, who, following his EHM work, founded Independent Power Systems, an alternative energy provider. Perkins is now president of Dream Change Coalition, a nonprofit organization working with Amazonian and other indigenous people to help preserve their environments and cultures. "As I travel around the world, I find that people know that their country just received a billion dollar loan, for example, from the World Bank and that American corporations are there benefiting from the loan, but that their own lives are getting worse," he said.

These days, Hit Man is doing pretty well for a book that 20 publishing houses turned down. It is on the Book Sense Bestseller List, has appeared in the top-10 on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Bestseller List, number five on the Times Hardcover Business Bestseller List, and held high spots on other prominent lists.

"What's very interesting now is that a lot of major publishers have submitted very significant bids for the paperback rights," Perkins said, "and we're negotiating those rights now.... Now that the book is a big success, they're stumbling over themselves to buy the rights, which I think tells you an awful lot about the system we're caught in." --Jeff Perlah

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