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

Shultz, whose star was continuing to rise, made matters worse by taunting Weinberger-a not altogether difficult task, given Weinberger’s penchant for delivering long-winded corporate perorations.

Recalled former Bechtel treasurer Raynal Mayman, “At directors’

meetings, Cap would launch into these flights of rhetoric and Shultz would come down on him or contradict him very abruptly. He really pricked Cap’s balloon.”13 Now and again, Shultz even twitted Weinberger publicly. In an interview with a reporter, Shultz cracked, “San Francisco, Cambridge and Harvard-that’s what Cap likes. And there’s London and the countryside. He likes that, too. “14

A far bigger problem than Shultz, though, was Cap himself. Executives were wearying of what one Bechtel vicepresident described as his

“all or nothing” approach, his habit, as the vicepresident put it, of

“staking out extreme positions on legal matters and absolutely refusing to back down. “15 Even more troubling than Weinberger’s beliefs was his temperament, some of his former colleagues asserted. “Cap had an enormous temper,” said an ex-Bechtel personnel manager. “He’d direct his anger at whoever happened to be bypassing his {)ffice-often secretaries and clerks. He was impossible to deal with. “16

At the very least, Weinberger appeared to be deeply unhappy. Despite the perks, the big house in the San Francisco suburbs, the salary that topped a quarter-million per year, he conceded to friends that coming to Bechtel had been a mistake. His heart remained in Washington, where he had hoped to return, following Ford’s reelection, in a senior cabinet-level position. Jimmy Carter, of course, had put an end to that, and according to friends, Weinberger’s disappointment showed.

“After the first couple of years he lost all interest in the job,” said his predecessor as general counsel, Bill Slusser. “He was just biding his time.”17

W ith the approach of the 1980 presidential election, however, Weinberger’s mood perked up. The leading contender for the Republican nomination was Ronald Reagan, the former California governor 213

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

who had appointed Weinberger his finance chief and who, as president, could be expected to reward him again. Around the office, Weinberger started talking up the Reagan cause-and soon found that his enthusiasm for the former movie actor was not shared. Instead, the favored candidate of the Bechtel executive suite-as he was in boardrooms across Americia-was former Treasury secretary and Texas governor John Connally.

In the early going, Connally appeared to be a formidable candidate.

By November 1979, he had already raised $10 million, the overwhelming bulk of it from corporate givers, including Steve Bechtel, Jr., and his father, who, with their wives, had attended a $1, 000-a-plate dinner for Connally in California earlier that fall. As far as the Bechtels were concerned, Connally had a number of things to recommend him, not least of them his position on the Middle East. Connally spelled out that position on October 13, a month before Reagan’s declaration of candidacy, in a forceful speech at the National Press Club in Washington. Raising the specter of “the economic upheaval that would ensue if the flow of Arab oil, the lifeblood of Western civilization for decades”

were disrupted, Connally called on Israel to abandon the West Bank, return the strategic Golan Heights to Syria and give up its exclusive sovereignty in Jerusalem. The Bechtels, who had been lobbying in behalf of the Arabs for decades, were delighted-so much so that they hired the speech’s ghostwriter, a former CIA analyst and National Security Council staffer named Samuel Hoskinson. Israel’s supporters, though, reacted with fury. In The New York Times, columnist W illiam Safire blasted Connally’s address as “designed to disturb and dismay every American supporter of Israel. “18 As other publications echoed the refrain, Connally’s support began to wither, and by the time of Reagan’s upset win in the New Hampshire primary, his campaign was functionally at an