Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the Wo by Laton Mccartney (readict .txt) 📗

deciding to single out Bechtel, though, Levi was motivated not so much by past history as by the company’s extensive ties with the Arabs, ties which included strict observance of the anti-Jewish boycott. Probing through Commerce Department records, Levi and his assistants discovered that Bechtel’s contracts and manifests in Arab countries reflected the boycott’s terms almost verbatim. Typical was a July 18, 197 4, agreement between International Bechtel Incorporated and the Egyptian government, which stipulated: Bechtel International does not possess any plant, firm or branch in Israel … does not have any agreement for manufacturing, assembly, license or technical assistance with any firm or person or resident of Israel … has never participated in the boosting of Israeli products

… does not use David’s Star in connection with its products or trademark … has no board members [who are] members of the Joint American-Israeli Chamber of Commerce.

Bechtel states it uncovered the employees’ alleged misdoings itself and turned the case over to government authorities.

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Though Levi’s attorneys found at least eleven other firms that routinely incorporated similar restrictions in their contracts, Bechtel was the only one of them privately owned-an important consideration in targeting the boycott suit. As one Justice Department attorney put it: “The fact that Bechtel wasn’t a publicly traded company meant that no little old ladies were going to get up at stockholder meetings and claim they were being deprived of their dividend checks because of our action.”8

Another factor in deciding to go after Bechtel was its visibility: with George Shultz at the helm, it had a far higher profile than any other firm complying with the boycott. But what clinched Levi’s decision was information the Justice Department had received from Jewish groups charging that Bechtel was discriminating against its Jewish employees.

Characteristic of the complaints was one forwarded by the Houston office of the Anti-Defamation League, which reported that a Bechtel procurement manager named Peter Fischer had been dismissed from the company just as his division was about to take on a big job in Saudi Arabia. Wrote Fischer: It was common knowledge within the procurement area that purchase orders on this job were to be limited to companies that had no Jewish or Israeli participation. Those companies invited to bid could have no direct dealings with Israel or Jewish founding presidents or Jewish members of the board.

As for my personal predicament, my present work load dictated that my next logical assignment [would be] to the [Saudi Arabia]

job …. I feel that my termination served the best interests of [the Arab Boycott and) Bechtel’s face-saving. I fear that this kind of supine weakness in the Bechtels of this country foments anti-Semitism. It seems economics dictates morality. 9

Similar allegations were later made by other Jewish Bechtel employees, including a member of the company’s New York staff named Rita Cheren. In a complaint filed with the ADL, Cheren, a college graduate who had worked for the Republican majority leader of the New York Senate before going to work for Bechtel in 1969, claimed that Bechtel had hired her not realizing she was Jewish. “I think they simply assumed I was not Jewish because my name doesn’t sound Jewish, I came from upstate New York and had been associated with the Republican party,” she stated. “However, the first year I worked there, I asked to take the Jewish holidays off.”10 Specifically, Cheren alleged 186

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that because of her religion she had been denied a managerial title even though she held managerial responsibilities and trained men for managerial positions above her