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Heroic whistleblower/greedy liar? Perkins claims this to be a whistle blowing autobiography. If true, its content is explosive. He claims that in 1971, after Peace Corps work in Ecuador, he was recruited by the NSA to work undercover as an economist in a private firm of international engineering consultants (Chas T. Main Inc.) His recruiter/trainer "told me that there were two primary objectives of my work. First, I was to justify huge international loans that would funnel money back ..to US companies .. through massive engineering and construction projects. Second, I would work to bankrupt the countries that received those loans so that they would be forever beholden to their creditors.." He goes on to write about his involvement in the application of these deliberate policies to subjugate Indonesia, Panama, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ecuador, etc. In Indonesia's case he details how he produced a plan to finance electrical infrastructure that would enable a 19% growth rate when he knew that realistically the requirement was for a maximum of 5%. The US printed the dollars, the US controlled, international financial agencies lent the money. The vast proportion of the money went to the Bechtels and Halliburtons. Some of the money greased the palms of the developing countries' ruling elites. The huge mass of the populations received no benefit. They remain mired in perpetual poverty (and corporate pollution) as their nations struggle to keep up with the interest payments. Where leaders could not be suborned, as in the case of Torrijos of Panama or Roldos in Ecuador, they were eliminated and replaced with leaders more amenable to American interests. It could be, and is argued by anti-globalisation campaigners, that this impoverishment of the developing world is a lamentable side-effect of American corporate "vigour." It is however a quantum leap to make the argument that this massive, global, humanitarian disaster, (resulting in premature deaths over the decades on a far greater scale than those resultant from Stalin's policies) is the intentional outcome of a policy of economic empire being deliberately pursued by decision-maker factions within successive American administrations. The key question is whether or not the author is writing a true report of events he participated in. Though supported by ten pages of references, the book is written in a fairly lightweight, populist style. This choice of style will not give much comfort to academic readers. It could, though support the author's claim that he is writing to gain maximum public traction for his arguments for a change in US policy towards developing countries and the environment. Descriptions of the author's going through the culture barrier and losing confidence in the vision of "his country right or wrong," ring true to a reader who once found himself in a mildly analogous situation. The facts quoted that lend themselves to relatively simple verification (such as the author meeting Graham Greene in Panama City - the dates check out) appear accurate. Perkins claims that the US invaded Iraq because Saddam refused to succumb to the same inducements successfully offered to the Saudi royal family for US control over their economy in return for protection. An indication of the possible truth or otherwise of Perkin's claims can be found in a reading of the commercial legislation passed by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and which in effect handed over the Iraqi economy to the American corporates, (Orders #12, #17, #39, #40 being particularly relevant.) These early pieces of legislation would indicate that the USA, on taking control of its new conquest, though not prepared for fighting an insurgency, was fully prepared for a take over of the Iraqi economy.