John Perkins was covertly recruited to be an economic hit man (EHM) by the US National Security Agency during his last year at Boston University's School of Business Administration, in the late 1960s.
Following his EHM work, Perkins founded Independent Power Systems, an alternative energy provider that successfully changed the US utility industry. He is now president of Dream Change Coalition, a nonprofit organization working with Amazonian and other indigenous people to help preserve their environments and cultures. 'As I travel around the world, I find that people know that their country just received a billion-dollar loan, for example, from the World Bank and that American corporations are there benefiting from the loan, but that their own lives are getting worse,' he says.