Life and career
Perkins graduated from the Tilton School in 1963. He subsequently attended Middlebury College for two years before dropping out. He later earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from Boston University in 1968. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador from 1968 to 1970. He spent the 1970s working for the Boston strategic-consulting firm Chas. T. Main; he claims to have been screened for this job by the National Security Agency (NSA) and subsequently hired by Einar Greve, [2] a member of the firm (alleged by Perkins to have been acting as an NSA liaison, a claim that Greve has denied). Perkins claims that he was seduced and trained as an "economic hitman" by a mysterious businesswoman named Claudine, who used his NSA personality profile to manipulate and control him. [3]
As chief economist at Chas. T. Main, Perkins claims to have advised the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, and countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Perkins alleges that he worked directly with heads of state and CEOs of major companies. [4] Perkins's time at Chas T. Main provides the basis for his subsequent claims that, as an "economic hit man", he was charged with inducing developing countries to borrow large amounts of money, designated to pay for questionable infrastructure investments, but ultimately with a view to making the debt-laden countries more dependent, economically and politically, upon the West. [4]
In the 1980s, Perkins left Main and founded and directed an independent energy company. Perkins implies in New Confessions of an Economic Hitman, published in 2016, that he was poisoned in 2005 on behalf of the NSA or CIA. Doctors diagnosed him with diverticulosis. [3]
Controversy
Sebastian Mallaby, economics columnist of the Washington Post , reacted sharply to Perkins' book: [5] describing him as "a conspiracy theorist, a vainglorious peddler of nonsense, and yet his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, is a runaway bestseller." Mallaby, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, holds that Perkins' conception of international finance is "largely a dream" and that his "basic contentions are flat wrong". [5] As an example, Mallaby states that Indonesia reduced its infant mortality and illiteracy rates by two-thirds after economists persuaded its leaders to borrow money in 1970. [5]
Articles in the New York Times [6] and Boston magazine [7] have referred to a lack of documentary or testimonial evidence to corroborate the claim that the NSA was involved in his hiring by Chas T. Main. After an extensive investigation, the New York Times concluded that "the arc of Mr. Perkins's career seems to be described accurately", although they did not find evidence to support "some of his fancier claims," including those involving the NSA. [6]
Chas. T. Main's former vice president Einar Greve, who first offered Perkins a job at the firm, [4] : 10 agreed that foreign debt represented a poor economic strategy for developing nations: [8]
Basically his story is true.… What John's book says is, there was a conspiracy to put all these countries on the hook, and that happened. Whether or not it was some sinister plot or not is up to interpretation, but many of these countries are still over the barrel and have never been able to repay the loans.
However, Greve denied many aspects of Perkins' claims, such as the NSA having any links to Main, or that Perkins was seduced by Claudine Martin, saying that he believes that Perkins has convinced himself that his story is accurate. [7] BostonMagazine noted that Perkins can provide little documentation to support his claims of international intrigue, describing a largely unconvincing "flimsy package of materials." [7] A number of Perkins' former colleagues disagreed with his perspective on the company and contradicted specific claims he made; Frank Fullerton, one of his supervisors, stated that Perkins left Chas T. Main because he "thought he was worth more than he was". [7]
In a 2006 statement, the American State Department stated that much of the book "appears to be a total fabrication ... the National Security Agency is a cryptological (codemaking and codebreaking) organization, not an economic organization ... Neither of [its] missions involves anything remotely resembling placing economists at private companies in order to increase the debt of foreign countries." [9]
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