Abstract:
I wrote that in 1982, as the beginning of a book with the working
title, Conscience of an Economic Hit Man. The book was dedicated to
the presidents of two countries, men who had been my clients,
whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits—Jaime Roldós,
president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both
had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They
were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate,
government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We
EHMs failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type
of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind
us, stepped in.
I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more
times during the next twenty years. On each occasion, my decision to
begin again was influenced by current world events: the U.S. invasion
of Panama in 1989, the first Gulf War, Somalia, the rise of Osama bin
Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop.
In 2003, the president of a major publishing house that is owned
by a powerful international corporation read a draft of what had
now become Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. He described it
