This Saturday at the West Park Presbyterian Church on 86th Street and Amsterdam Ave. in NYC, the event HR14.org will be taking place with former Economic Hitman, John Perkins as a keynote speaker. Perkins is best known for his book, Confessions of an Economic Hitman which came out in 2004.
In this shocking memoir, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins tells of his own inner journey from willing servant of empire to impassioned advocate for the rights of oppressed people. Covertly recruited by the United States National Security Agency and on the payroll of an international consulting firm, he traveled the world—to Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other strategically important countries. His job was to implement policies that promoted the interests of the U.S. corporatocracy (a coalition of government, banks, and corporations) while professing to alleviate poverty—policies that alienated many nations and growing anti-Americanism. Within a few weeks of its release , Confessions of an Economic Hit Man landed on The New York Times Bestseller List, then 19 other bestseller lists including theLos Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today,Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. The author has been interviewed repeatedly on national radio and television shows, including Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, CSPAN’s Book TV, and PBS’ Now with David Brancaccio. And now the book is being published in 9 languages around the world. According to John Perkins, “It is accomplishing an important objective in inspiring people to think and talk and to know that we can change the world.”
Perkins began writing CoaEHM in the 80’s but, threats or bribes made to him made him stop.
I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation’s largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations. The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950s, Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of Teddy, who overthrew the government of Iran, a democratically elected government, Mossadegh’s government who was Time‘s magazine person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed—well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man was an extremely good one. We didn’t have to worry about the threat of war with Russia when we did it this way. The problem with that was that Roosevelt was a C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee. Had he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government.
— November 4, 2004 interview
This Saturday’s event, H. RES 14 aims to declassify and release 28 pages that were redacted (or actually excised, according to Rep. Steven Lynch) from the “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001” which is an 860 page report written in 2002, prior to the formation of the 9/11 Commission. Former Senator Robert Graham, (D-FL), who was chair of the Joint Inquiry, has been demanding its release since 2003, including FOIA requests to the Obama administration — all to no avail. A group of 9/11 families filed suit in hopes that its contents would be revealed. Now in the wake of this action in Congress, they have filed an amended complaint. This law suit will benefit greatly from the release of the 28 pages.
To be specific, Rep. Walter Jones, (R-NC) and Steven Lynch (D-Mass) have drafted this resolution named H. RES. 14. As of this date 18 members of Congress have signed on as co-sponsors. The underlying purpose for the release is (1) government must be more transparent, (2) the families deserve to know, and (3) releasing the redacted section is necessary to better manage our current national security.
Consider the following statements these Congressmen made after reading the 28 pages:
Rep. Steven Lynch: “The 28 pages show the extensive advance planning before 9/11…”. He alludes to collaboration “with other governments” — not just Saudi Arabia — and “government agencies.”
Rep. Walter Jones: “I was absolutely shocked by what I read. What was so surprising was that those whom we thought we could trust really disappointed me…It does not deal with national security per se; it is more about relationships. The information is critical to our foreign policy moving forward and should thus be available to the American people.”
