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

conversation was over, and with it, seemingly, his hopes of being secretary of State. “I was never invited to join the administration,” a dazed Shultz later told a reporter. ” And I never turned it down-I never had a chance to. “24

The immediate beneficiary of this apparent misunderstanding was Bechtel, which retained Shultz-whose pain was assuaged with an increase in salary to almost $600,000 and added stock in the company, making him one of the best-paid executives in the country-and at the same time, got rid of Weinberger. “Ronald Reagan did Bechtel a huge favor by saving the company the embarrassment of having to let Cap go,” said a company executive, one of several who disliked Weinberger.

“They [Steves senior and junior] weren’t going to fire Weinberger. That wasn’t Bechtel’s style. They were just dancing him around and pointing 217

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him at the door. When it finally happened, there was an almost audible sigh of relief. “25

Ray Mayman, Bechtel’s treasurer, put it more kindly. “Cap’s being at Bechtel,” he said, “was like a heart transplant that just didn’t take. The system rejected him . “26

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much a reflection of the personality of the man the San Francisco Examiner referred to as “Bechtel’s superstar,” George Shultz.

In the six years he had been at Bechtel, Shultz had wrought a number of profound changes, not least of them the way he was perceived. Originally, he had been seen as the outsider, the avuncular nonengineer parachuted into the corporate ranks as much for his political influence as for his financial acumen. Now there was little doubt about his expertise-or of his clout. Subordinate only to company chairman Steve junior, he was the primus inter pares, the boss in fact as well as title. “George was clearly in charge,” said a Bechtel executive admiringly. “At the weekly interdepartmental meetings he chaired, the construction people and the engineers were frequently at each other’s throats. George would let them chew away at each other for a few minutes and then step in and say, ‘Now, here’s the way we are going to proceed on this, gentlemen.’ “1

Under Shultz’ leadership, Bechtel was proceeding as never before.

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FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

One notable example was diversification. Believing the company too narrowly focused on construction ·and engineering, Shultz, beginning in 1977, had initiated a program to give Bechtel equity participation in a number of other businesses, many of them energy-related. His first plunge, undertaken in partnership with W illiams Brothers, Fluor and three other corporations, was to acquire the nation’s largest coal producer, the Peabody Coal Company, from Kennecott Copper for $1.2

billion-$800 million of it in cash. That acquisition was followed in short order by several others, including WellTech, a Houston, Texasbased oil-and-gas-field services company in which Bechtel obtained half interest in 1979 for almost $100 million; the Dual Drilling Company of Wichita Falls, Texas, purchased in 1980 for an undisclosed sum, and the Becan Construction Company of Houston, bought for $9

million the same year. There were also investments in the oil industry, including a $39 million, 25 percent stake in Lear Petroleum’s undeveloped oil and gas leases, and for $60 million, a limited partnership with T. Boone Pickens’ Mesa Petroleum to explore for oil and gas on 1. 9

million acres spread across fifteen Southern and Western states.

Through Sequoia Ventures, a firm that