The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Panama’s Torrijos refuses to renegotiate the treaty that cedes the Canal Zone to Panama with Reagan. Like Roldós in Ecuador, Torrijos expels the SIL missionaries. Also like Roldós, in July 1981 Torrijos dies in a plane crash.

Once again, CIA foul play is suspected. Author Graham Greene speaks with Torrijos’s head of security, who declares, “I know there was a bomb in the plane, but I can’t tell you why over the telephone” (167). Nothing is ever proven, but during 1975 US congressional hearings into CIA activities, it is learned that the agency worked up plans to assassinate both Torrijos and Roldós.

Torrijos was flirting with a Japanese proposal to build an entirely new canal that would sideline major construction firm Bechtel. Two of the company’s executives, Caspar Weinberger and George Schultz, are in Reagan’s cabinet. Had Torrijos lived, he might have helped to mitigate the violence plaguing Central and South America and brokered peace between socialists and regional dictators. Torrijos would likely have worked with nearby nations to strike better deals with oil and construction companies, acting as “a role model for a new generation of leaders in the Americas, Africa, and Asia—something the CIA, the NSA, and the EHMs could not allow” (169).

In 1981 Perkins dates Winifred Grant, an environmental planner at MAIN “whose father happened to be chief architect at Bechtel” (170). Perkins and Winifred marry and have a daughter, Jessica, in 1982.

Perkins’s work calls for him to defend construction of the Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire, and once again he battles with his conscience. He discovers that alternative energy sources, including waste products, may be safer and more efficient. With Winifred’s support, Perkins quits his consultancy job and starts a company, Independent Power Systems (IPS), with a mission that includes “developing environmentally beneficial power plants and establishing models to inspire others to do likewise” (171).

Though highly risky, Perkins’s venture benefits from seemingly coincidental outside assistance. Perkins believes he is “being rewarded for my past service and for my commitment to silence” (171). Zambotti joins as a board member, several major corporations back the venture, and Congress gives IPS special tax exemptions.

IPS and, independently, Bechtel develop power systems that prove “coal can be burned without creating acid rain” (172). Meanwhile, deregulation creates a “‘Wild West of Energy’ era” (173) that creates new opportunities. MAIN, unable to keep up with all the industry changes, falters and is sold off.

A fast riser in the energy sector is Enron, which grows at an inexplicably rapid pace. To Perkins, “this all sounded like a new version of old EHM techniques” (173). Also, George W. Bush’s failing energy company, Arbusto, gets rescued by another company that also fails and must be rescued. Perkins suspects Bush’s father, Vice President George H.W. Bush, is involved in the rescue. The rescuing company, Harken, puts the younger Bush on the board, and when the senior Bush becomes president, Harken suddenly pushes oil company Amoco aside to win exclusive drilling rights in Bahrain.

Many are shocked by this brazen unfairness, but Perkins knows better: “the Bush family, just like the Enron executives, was part of the network that I and my EHM colleagues had created; they were the feudal lords and plantation masters” (175).

During the 1980s and into the 1990s, as deregulation gains traction, many large energy companies swallow up the small, innovative firms that threaten them. IPS remains independent, living a charmed life that Perkins believes is due to his “past services to the corporatocracy” (177).

During this time, a new EHM system emerges, one that depends not on international bank loans but on the company’s own resources. Regulators’ new attitude is that profit is king and corporations can better manage third-world utilities and infrastructure than governments. This greatly expands corporate options overseas, and they take advantage, overselling their projects’ benefits to small countries but abandoning them if profits slump.

One commentator writes, “Such is the power of globalization that within our lifetime we are likely to see the integration, even if unevenly, of all national economies in the world into a single global, free market system” (179).

In 1987 Perkins decides to write a book that exposes the EHM system. He contacts associates for their input and views. Soon he receives two threats on his life and that of his daughter. The following day he receives an offer to consult for a major construction company, Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation (SWEC). Mainly they want his name to add prestige to their portfolio. Perkins has been thinking of selling IPS, and this new opportunity seems interesting and enticing.

At an interview lunch, the SWEC CEO asks, “Do you intend to write books about our profession?” (181). Perkins suddenly understands that the job offer is connected to the threats on his life. He assures the CEO that he has no interest in writing a tell-all but instead would write a book about stress among indigenous peoples. Perkins agrees to strict confidentiality about his work with SWEC, feeling like he has no choice.

Panama’s new president, Noriega, works both sides against the middle, flirting with Japan on a possible new canal while helping the CIA improve its plans in the region. Noriega and CIA Director Casey become close, but Noriega’s continuing interest in building a canal without American help causes friction. Meanwhile, to the locals, “Noriega became a symbol of corruption and decadence” (184).

In December 1989 the US bombs and invades Panama City; hundreds, perhaps thousands, die. The real target is Noriega, who is captured and “characterized as evil, as the enemy of the people, as a drug-trafficking monster” (186). Noriega is brought back to the United States, where he receives a 40-year sentence.

Perkins wonders why the United States hadn’t simply assassinated Noriega, as it did other leaders it dislikes, since “now it faced the problem of legitimacy, of appearing to be a bully caught in an act of terrorism” (187). In America press coverage is scant, but elsewhere in the world anger breaks out from “this breach of international law and by the needless destruction of a defenseless people” (187). The US government ignores the protests, and the pre-Torrijos oligarchy is reinstated. Once again, the United States effectively controls the Canal Zone.

Perkins, outraged, decides to secretly continue his work on a tell-all book. This time he concentrates on the Torrijos story. Looking back, Perkins finally realizes the full effect the EHM system has had on the world: “the list of places where I had worked and which were worse off afterward was astounding” (189). Perkins sees that, in a sense, he was a good soldier trained to do bad things; he understands how decent people can be twisted, slowly over many years, toward committing atrocities. Such loyal citizens have worked for the shah, for Hitler, and for America in Panama and elsewhere.

EHMs are, in effect, modern slave traders who trap and exploit desperately poor people, ignoring “the larger implications, the economic system behind this process—or how it will ultimately impact the future of the world’s children” (191).

In the 1980s the United States considers Iraq vital to its foreign policy; “[in] addition to having abundant oil and water, Iraq is situated in a very strategic location” (193). Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, has watched the American-Saudi miracle in the desert; if he comes onboard, he can “write his own ticket” (193). There’s just one problem: “Saddam was not buying into the EHM scenario” (194).

Hussein makes a critical error: He invades Kuwait. This gives President George H.W. Bush the excuse he needs to order “an all-out military attack” (194). Americans cheer this action, which bolsters the feeling of a powerful nation getting things done, with the “dual ideas of globalization and privatization […] making significant inroads into our psyches” (195).

Big corporations are now truly international; “[m]any of them were incorporated in a multitude of countries; they could pick and choose from an assortment of rules and regulations” (195). Corporatocracy “increasingly exerted itself as the single major influence on world economies and politics” (195).

In 1990 Perkins sells IPS to Ashland Oil and becomes wealthy. That an oil company would co-opt an alternative energy firm is, at the very least, ironic. Perkins acknowledges, “part of me felt like a traitor” (196). His light work for SWEC continues with occasional assignments. “Receiving all that money for doing so very little rubbed at my conscience”—he wants to contribute more, but this “simply was not on the agenda” (196).

Perkins starts a nonprofit, Dream Change, that brings people to the Amazon to meet the Shuar people, who believe that “your life, the world, is as you dream it” (196), and who offer environmental and health wisdom to visitors. The organization is a success; other groups start up “with similar missions in many countries” (196). Perkins works with several other nonprofits during the 1990s. One of these, the Pachamama Alliance, works “to keep oil companies off indigenous lands and to protect the rain forests” (197).

SWEC approves of these activities, which dovetail with the company’s work with the United Way. Perkins writes books on indigenous teachings; one of these, The World Is As You Dream It, generates demand for Perkins’s workshops and lectures. Still, Perkins’s guilt simmers. He realizes that his decision to remain neutral takes a considerable toll: “the world around me was not one that I wanted to dream” (198).

In 1997 Perkins quits SWEC, hoping to continue work on his tell-all book. When he informs his fellow nonprofit workers, however, they worry that speaking out will damage Perkins’s credibility and jeopardize their collective work. Once again, he relents and sets the book aside.

On September 11, 2001, everything changes.

While conducting a tour in Ecuador, Perkins learns from his native friend Shakaim that soon the Shuar will be at war with Americans who want to drill for oil nearby. The next morning, Perkins and his group learn of the 9/11 attacks on New York.

Perkins visits New York. He sees the destruction and talks to those who witnessed the attack; they speak of it in heartfelt ways. The once-dark canyon of towers, now razed, shines with unaccustomed sunlight. Perkins can’t “help wondering if the view of the sky, of the light, had helped people open their hearts. I felt guilty just thinking such thoughts” (201).

Perkins walks over to Wall Street, where the somber skyscrapers and hurrying, silent people make for a strange contrast. He sits on a stoop; a tattered man sits down nearby. They strike up a conversation. The man hails from Afghanistan, where he had a pomegranate farm that was destroyed during the conflict with Russia. The man was reduced to begging and raising opium poppies. He gets up and walks away.

Perkins rises, looks around, and realizes he has been sitting on the steps of a building once occupied by Bankers Trust, “one of the firms I had employed to finance my energy company. It was an essential part of my heritage” (203) of his time as a “soldier” for the corporatocracy.

Perkins walks down to the old Federal Hall building where George Washington took the first presidential oath of office. He then walks past the headquarters of Chase Bank, “the very symbol of the corporatocracy” (204). Perkins notices that “a strange anxiousness, a foreboding” (204) has taken hold of him.

He walks back to the devastated World Trade Center, where he thinks of Osama bin Laden accepting arms and money from a consultant for the US government. He wonders if the people walking past him have any inkling of the starvation, death, and devastation in the world beyond America.

Venezuela is one of the world’s largest oil exporters; this puts it among the wealthiest nations in Latin America. In 1998 Venezuelans elect President Hugo Chavez, who immediately toughens rules on oil companies, doubling the price of crude oil and replacing executives at the state-owned oil company with his own allies.

During the 1970s and 1980s EHMs prosper in Venezuela; international loans augment oil revenue to pay for new industry and infrastructure. Then the oil market collapses, and Venezuela can no longer make loan payments. In 1989 the International Monetary Fund “imposed harsh austerity measures and pressured Caracas to support the corporatocracy” (207). Riots break out. By 2003 the country’s income has plunged 40 percent, and many middle-class people have fallen into poverty.

In late 2002 massive strikes erupt in Venezuela against Chavez. Perkins suspects American involvement: “This was exactly how the CIA brought down Mossadegh and replaced him with the shah” (209). Perkins learns from a confidential source that private contractors have, indeed, tried to foment strikes and bribe the military to overthrow Chavez.

For a brief moment these efforts bear fruit and Chavez is ousted, but three days later he suddenly regains power and purges those disloyal to him. The United States, distracted by Afghanistan and Iraq, sets aside the Venezuela problem. In the end, “the entire sequence of events was a calamity for the Bush administration” (211).