Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 3rd Edition, 3rd Edition

22The Fall of a King

One evening in 1978, while I was sitting alone at the luxurious bar off the lobby of the Hotel InterContinental in Tehran, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see a heavyset Iranian in a business suit.

“John Perkins! You don’t remember me?”

The former soccer player had gained a lot of weight, but the voice was unmistakable. It was my old Middlebury friend Farhad, whom I had not seen in more than a decade. We embraced and sat down together. It quickly became obvious that he knew all about me and about my work. It was equally obvious that he did not intend to share much about his own work. He told me that something “dangerous” was about to happen and that it was his responsibility to see to it I left the country. At that ...