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