John Perkins (b. January 28, 1945 in Hanover, New Hampshire) is an activist and author. His best known book is Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2004), an insider's account of the exploitation or neo-colonization of Third World countries by what Perkins describes as a cabal of corporations, banks, and the United States government. His 2007 book, The Secret History of the American Empire, makes further claims about the negative impact of global corporations on the economies and ecologies of poor countries, as well as offering suggestions for making corporations behave more like good citizens.

Perkins has also written an introduction to the 2007 book A Game as Old as Empire: the Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption (edited by Steven Hiatt), a collection of accounts from investigators, journalists and other economic hitmen. The book offers further evidence of economic hit men and rebuts some of the criticism that Perkin's book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man received.

Perkins attended Tilton School for high school, Middlebury College, and Boston University School of Management during the 1960s. He spent the 1970s working for the consulting firm Chas. T. Main, where he was employed after first being screened by the National Security Agency (NSA) and subsequently hired by Einar Greve, a member of the Firm (and alleged NSA liaison, a claim which Greve has denied). Perkins was trained early in his career by a beautiful, older woman who was armed with the psychological profile gathered about him by the NSA after many days of pre-employment screening, as one of many "economic hit men" advancing the cause of corporate hegemony.

As a former chief economist at Boston strategic-consulting firm Chas. T. Main, Perkins says that he "was an 'economic hit man' for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinational corporations cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business.

After several years struggling internally over the role he was playing in crippling foreign economies, he quit his consulting job. In the 1980s Perkins founded and directed a successful independent energy company. In the book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, Perkins states that he suspects the success of his company was due to 'coincidences' orchestrated by those appreciative of his silence about the work he did as an economic hit man. He then sold the energy company in the late 1980s. Since then he has been heavily involved with non-profit organizations in Ecuador and around the world. He continues this work today, in addition to his writing. One of his organizations, Dream Change, is dedicated to shifting consciousness and promoting sustainable lifestyles for the individual and global community.

John Perkins and his role as Economic Hitman (EHM) is the main theme in part II of the movie Zeitgeist: Addendum, released October 2008. He also appears in the documentary movie "Let's make money" (in german) by the Austrian director Erwin Wagenhofer, released October 2008.

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources. Their tools include fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization. John Perkins has lived four lives: as an economic hit man (EHM); as the CEO of a successful alternative energy company, who was rewarded for not disclosing his EHM past; as an expert on indigenous cultures and shamanism, a teacher and writer who used this expertise to promote ecology and sustainability while continuing to honor his vow of silence about his life as an EHM; and now as a writer who, in telling the real-life story about his extraordinary dealings as an EHM, has exposed the world of international intrigue and corruption that is turning the American republic into a global empire despised by increasing numbers of people around the planet.