The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

by John Perkins

In every case, a key condition of such loans was that the projects would be built by our engineering and construction companies. Most of the money never left the United States; it simply was transferred from banking offices in Washington...

Despite the fact that the money was returned almost immediately to the corporate members of the corporatocracy, the recipient country (the debtor) was required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM was completely successful, the loans were so large that the debtor was forced to default on its payments after a few years.

This often included one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources such as oil. Of course, the debtor still owed us the money — and another country was added to our global empire.

I had to take responsibility for my life, for what I was doing to myself and to those people and their countries.

My family was cash starved; however, we most certainly did not see ourselves as poor. Although the school’s teachers received very little salary, all our needs were met at no charge: food, housing, heat, water, and the workers who mowed our lawn and shoveled our snow.

I used to hear my parents joking about being the lords of the manor, ruling over the lowly peasants — the townies. I knew it was more than a joke.

My elementary and middle school friends belonged to that peasant class; they were very poor. Their parents were farmers, lumberjacks, and mill workers.

At fourteen, I received free tuition to Tilton School. With my parents’ prodding, I rejected everything to do with the town and never saw my old friends again.

I was determined to show up my rich classmates and to leave Tilton behind forever.

“What if you break your leg?” my father asked. “Better to take the academic scholarship.” I buckled.

Middlebury was, in my perception, merely an inflated version of Tilton — albeit in rural Vermont instead of rural New Hampshire.

I wanted to move to Boston and learn about life and women. He would not hear of it. “How can I pretend to prepare other parents’ kids for college if my own won’t

stay in one?” he asked.

I have come to understand that life is composed of a series of coincidences. How we react to these — how we exercise what some refer to as free will — is everything; the choices we make within the ...

Halfway through my sophomore year, I elected to drop out. My father threatened to disown me; Farhad egged me on. I stormed into the dean’s office and quit school.

I found myself wondering whose side Paine would have taken. I was sure he would have joined our Vietcong enemies.

Uncle Frank came to my rescue. He informed me that an NSA job made one eligible for draft deferment, and he arranged for a series of meetings at his agency,

Under examination I admitted that, as a loyal American, I opposed the war, and I was surprised when the interviewers did not pursue this subject.

I was amazed by the attention they gave to my relationship with Farhad and their interest in my willingness to lie to the campus police to protect him.

It was not until several years later that I realized that, from an NSA viewpoint, these negatives actually were positive.

Anger at my parents, an obsession with women, and my ambition to live the good life gave them a

hook; I was seducible.

I also discovered, later, that Farhad’s father worked for the US intelligence community in Iran; my friendship with Farhad was therefore a definite plus.

A major selling point was that, like the NSA’s, Peace Corps jobs made one eligible for draft deferments.

To my surprise, Uncle Frank encouraged me to consider the Peace Corps.

He confided that after the fall of Hanoi — which in those days was deemed a

certainty by men in his position — the Amazon would b...

“Loaded with oil,” he said. “We’ll need good agents there — people who un...

I was being upgraded from spy to EHM,

I had no idea that there were hundreds of men and women scattered around the world, working for consulting firms and other private companies, people who never received a penny of salary from any government agency and yet were serving the interests of empire.

He was a vice president at Chas. T. Main, Inc.

and was in charge of studies to determine whether the World Bank should lend Ecuador and its neighboring countries billions of dollars to build hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure projects.

“None of them,” Einar said, “can handle the idea of producing economic forecasts in countries where reliable statistics aren’t available.”

“The letters you sent me indicate that you don’t mind sticking your neck out,

even when hard data isn’t available.

but I had no doubt that my employment at MAIN was a consequence of the arrangements Uncle Frank had made three years earlier,

Discretion was their hallmark; they dealt with heads of state and other chief executive officers who expected their consultants, like their attorneys and psychotherapists, to honor a strict code of absolute confidentiality.

I knew only that my first real assignment would be in Indonesia, and that I would be part of an eleven-man team sent to create a master energy plan for the island of Java.

also knew that Einar and others who discussed the job with me were eager to convince me that Java’s economy would boom, and that if I wanted to distinguish myself as a good forecaster (and to therefore be offered promotions), I would

produce projections that demonstr...

In the process, I discovered that statistics can be manipulated to produce a large array of conclusions, including those substantiating the predilections of the analyst.

“We’re a rare breed, in a dirty business. No one can know about your involvement — not even your wife.” Then she turned serious. “I’ll be very frank with you, teach you all I can during the next weeks. Then you’ll have to choose. Your decision is final. Once you’re in, you’re in for life.”

that Claudine took full advantage of the personality weaknesses the NSA profile had disclosed about me.

Her approach, a combination of physical seduction and verbal manipulation, was tailored specifically for me, and yet it fit within the standard operating procedures I have since seen used by a variety of businesses when the stakes are high and the pressure to close lucrative deals is great.

Claudine and her superiors knew from the start that I would not jeopardize my marriage by disclosing our clandestine activities.

First, I was to justify huge international loans that would funnel money back to MAIN and other US companies (such as Bechtel, Halliburton, Stone & Webster, and Brown & Root) through massive engineering and construction projects. Second, I would work to bankrupt the countries that received those loans (after they had paid MAIN and the other US contractors, of course), so that they would be forever beholden to their creditors and would present easy targets when we needed favors, such as military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources.

Specifically, I would produce studies that projected economic growth twenty to twenty-five years into the future and that evaluated the impacts of a variety of projects.

Or I might be told that the country was being offered the opportunity to receive a modern electric utility system, and it would be up to me to demonstrate that such a system would result in sufficient economic growth to justify the loan. The critical factor, in every case, was gross national product. The project that resulted in the highest average annual growth of GNP won.

The unspoken aspect of every one of these projects was that they were intended to create large profits for the contractors, and to make a handful of wealthy and influential families in the receiving countries very happy, while assuring the long-term financial dependence and therefore the political loyalty of governments around the world. The larger the loan, the better. The fact that the debt burden placed on a country would deprive its poorest citizens of health care, education, and other social services for decades to come was not taken into consideration.

Claudine and I openly discussed the deceptive nature of GNP. For instance, GNP may show growth even when it profits only one person, such as an individual who owns a utility company, and even if the majority of the population