Confessions of An Economic Hitman
John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman details Perkins’ life and career with the Boston-based engineering firm Chas. T Main (Charles T Main), and how the Central Intelligence Agency has infiltrated many of these global engineering and finance firms. As a result, there is a shadow finance organization in place, working in concert with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, behind the scenes to topple regimes and extend American empire through economic warfare.
Recruited by the NSA in 1968, while still in business school, Perkins was identified as a good candidate for an economic hitman. During a three-year stint in Brazil with the Peace Corps, Perkins was contacted by the vice president of Chas. T Main, a major consulting firm, who offered Perkins a job with the implied understanding that he would be working as a member of the NSA as an economic hitman.
Chas. T Main was an engineering-slash-construction firm on paper, but their job was to convince developing states to take out massive construction loans from the World Bank for infrastructure projects, which they would facilitate by convincing the World Bank to make the loan. That money, often billions of dollars, would then make its way back to the US in the form of contracts with major US construction companies to build the projects. The purpose behind this is to place the developing country in a situation where they are unable to pay their debt. When a state is unable to pay their debts, quite often they have little recourse but to sell off their resources and assets at fire-sale prices, and US corporate interests are more than happy to step in with the required capital. These resources may be oil, like in Ecuador; or physical property, such as the Panama Canal. In this way, US interests are able to effectively destroy a nation, without firing a shot.
According to Perkins, if the economic hitmen fail then the CIA sends in the ‘jackals’—whom he describes as “CIA sanctioned trouble-makers”—operatives tasked with generating disturbances, civil unrest, and coups if necessary. If indirect intervention by the jackals proved ineffective, then the jackals would arrange for an assassination of the contentious leader. Successful operations include the assassinations of Omar Torrijos of Panama and Jaime Roldos Aguilera of Ecuador, the military coups that ousted Jacobo Arbanz of Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile, just to name a few. According to Perkins, the invasion of Iraq is due—in large part—to the fact that both the economic hitmen and the jackals were unsuccessful in their efforts to get their hands on Saddam Hussein’s oil. When the hitmen and jackals fail, the US sends in the military under one pretense or another.
One of the most troubling aspects of Perkins’ account is when he discusses how the CIA decided that Islam, and not communism, was the real threat to capitalism because communism did not have a spiritual component. Islam, in contrast, is a belief system built on a sturdy framework of social justice and equality, which are two ideals that capitalism likes to pander to, despite the fact that Keynesian neoliberal trade and global economic policies do not allow room for justice or equality, at least not on a global scale. The global economic policies on the post-WWII years have created a world-wide system of inequality, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) playing the role of enforcer. When a state can no longer pay its debts, the IMF will provide conditional loans for the state to pay its debts. The problem is that the conditions attached have far-reaching and long-lasting ramifications, from structural re-adjustment, to elimination of all trade barriers and the creation of so-called “free trade zones”, duty free areas where foreign corporations can set up assembly/manufacturing facilities—quite often with heavy tax breaks from the host government—where they can import unfinished materials, assemble their product using cheap, exploitable local labor, and then turn around and export finished products without having to pay any duty fees. There is no shortage of tales of worker abuse in various free trade zones around the world. Ultimately, these global economic policies benefit the most powerful Western nations, while seriously undermining developing nations around the globe.
Perkins details the methods through which the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is able to identify and train these types of unique covert operatives by acknowledging the fact that money, power, and sex are highly effective tools for corrupting weak-willed individuals. John Perkins was no exception, and he freely admits his shortcomings and weaknesses. He is quite candid about his past, and he makes no attempt to re-write his history in a more positive light, but it is his criticisms of the very system that he was recruited to serve that make for such an important topic.
