Bechtel: Friends in High Places

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Total Contracts in Iraq: $2,829,833,859 (Center for Public Integrity)

The heavy construction conglomerate Bechtel is a major player in the post-Iraq money pit. Sadly, Bechtel’s headquarters are based in my native Bay Area — San Francisco to be exact — often drawing those damn tree-huggin’, pot smokin’ California hippies. The company was started in 1898 by Warren A. Bechtel and is currently in its fourth generation of Bechtel leadership. It worked with other companies on a number of projects, including the Hoover Dam and the Bay Bridge, both completed in 1936, and several decades later, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) rail system. (To make BART riders feel safe, this is the same company that, in 1977, constructed a nuclear reactor backwards in California.)

Bechtel is among the most politically connected companies in the country. It enjoyed ties to several prominent politicos, including two former presidents (Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan), and two officials that served in both administrations (Caspar Weinberger and George Schultz), among many others. The company had a number of political connections into the Central Intelligence Agency through John McCone, a San Francisco native, who became CIA Director in 1961 under President Kennedy. Dr. Carroll Pursell wrote a book review that concisely showed the political ties outlined in the 1989 Laton McCartney work Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story - The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World that appeared in the July 1989 issue of Technology and Culture, Volume 30, Number 3:

Bechtel was able to make these delicate arrangements because the family had "friends in high places," as the title has it. John McCone, for example, was a classmate of Steve Bechtel at the engineering school of the University of California. They were later business partners, and McCone, of course, became director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Henry Kearns, a former Pasdena car salesman, who was appointed president of the Export-Import Bank by President Nixon, introduced Bechtel (who was on the bank’s advisory committee) to other administration officials including Labor Secretary George Schultz and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Casper Weinberger. Shultz, of course, became president of the Bechtel Corporation and Weinberger its general counsel.

Matt O.
http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/05/20/friends-in-high-places/

http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&fil=IQ

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1. Saddam, Bechtel and Rummy tied

Rumsfeld, Bechtel and Iraq

Well, the Democratic Party seems too nice or inept to do anything with it, but as the Washington Post points out, the good folks at the National Security Archive are continuing to document the long history of Republican Party coddling of Saddam Hussein, and their hypocritical winking at his use of weapons of mass destruction in the 1980s.

The Archive incidentally shows that the Bechtel Corporation actively connived to subvert 1988 Congressional sanctions on Iraq for using weapons of mass destruction by seeking non-US subcontractors. Bechtel was awarded an Iraq reconstruction contract by US AID last spring worth at least $640 million. Yup, some American corporations have long been deeply concerned about the dangers of weapons of mass destruction and the moral evil of genocide.

It turns out that Don Rumsfeld actually went to Iraq twice, once in 1983, and again in 1984. The work Rumsfeld did in 1983 of beginning a rapprochement between Reagan and Saddam was detracted from by a strong State Department condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war. Schultz told Rumsfeld to explain to Saddam that the Reagan administration did not actually, really have any serious objections to, like, exterminating Iranian troops like cockroaches with poison gas. It was just a general, unspecific blanket condemnation of that sort of thing, you know, to keep up appearances. Sort of like when the US was against genocide in general but didn't really mind so much the one conducted in Indonesia against hundreds of thousands of leftists in 1965. So, Saddam should feel comfortable about Reagan's desire to continually improve bilateral Reagan-Saddam relations at a pace of Saddam's choosing, and not be put off by the unfortunate but necessary pro forma condemnations of him as a war criminal issued at silly old Foggy Bottom.

The document also reveals two other things on which the press hasn't widely remarked. George H. W. Bush was deeply involved in this Saddamist démarche, he was the one who extended an invitation to high Baathist official Tariq Aziz to come to Washington.

http://www.juancole.com/2003_12_01_juancole_archive.html

[peacetalksforall]

2. Thanks. This company gets off easy. We, not me actually, rarely

mention them. Lately, I write about them because of their attempt to privatize water in Bolivia. Unheard of - to take the water belonging to poor Bolivians who walk over its life giving treasure and make them pay for what they already own by being a human.

Thanks for posting.