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

Again Shultz took a hard line, denying Bechtel had violated U.S. law, despite the fact that the company had been the subject of an antitrust suit brought by Gerald Ford’s Justice Department.

Yet another sensitive topic was raised by Alan Cranston of California, who pointedly wanted to know whether Shultz was involved in Bechtel’s promise to sell Brazil advanced nuclear technology with potential weapons application, despite U.S. policy restricting such exports. “I resent what I regard as a kind of smear on Bechtel,” Shultz bridled. “I think it is a marvelous, honorable, law-abiding company that does credit to our country here and all over the world. “7

Shultz was soon confirmed, but the media coverage of his appointment and the hearings had made Bechtel a household word-and the stuff of jokes on the Johnny Carson show. Publicly, Bechtel’s chairman professed distress at the publicity, and at the leave-taking that had occasioned it. W ith Shultz and Weinberger in Washington, he complained to a reporter that “government officials have to bend so far over backwards [in dealing with Bechtel] to be sure there’s nobody who can say there’s any favoritism at all. “8

In fact, the addition of George Shultz to the Reagan cabinet did nothing at all to hurt Bechtel’s business, or its increasingly powerful presence in Washington, where the company was now being represented by no fewer than thirteen paid lobbyists. Much of their work was focused on persuading Congress to fund what was becoming for Bechtel a new-and highly profitable-growth industry, one it had inadvertently helped create: the cleaning up of chemical and nuclear wastes. Already, Bechtel had secured a $320 million contract from the AWACS sale, which was bitterly opposed by hael and its supporters in Congress.

Meeting frequently at the Business Roundtable’s Washington office during the late summer and early fall of 1981, a Bechtel-led coalition of major U.S. corporations had mapped out a congressional lobbying strategy. In addition, Bechtel itself had sent out letters to every member of Congress, stating that “the AWACS deal is vital to the national interest as well as to the stability of the Persian Gulf.” Despite heated opposition from Secretary of State Alexander Haig, the strategy had paid off when, on October 28, 1981; the Senate voted to authorize the sale.

223

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

department of Energy to tidy up 32 sites in 13 states that used radioactive materials as part of the Manhattan Project. By the time of Shultz’

nomination as secretary of State, it was also taking in several hundred million dollars in federal funds to store nuclear wastes, making it the largest such operator in the industry. It was also one that requiredand got-extraordinary help from the Reagan administration, particularly after the accident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island.

Though Bechtel had not been involved in Three Mile Island’s design, construction or operation, the March 28, 1979, accident was to prove a decisive event for the company (which initially profited by winning the $1.5 billion contract for the plant’s cleanup) and for its chairman. “After Three Mile Island went down,” explained one senior Bechtel executive, “Steve junior became obsessed with proving that nuclear power really was safe and with keeping the industry viable. He was absolutely determined that Bechtel should devote its full resources to keeping atomic energy alive. ”9

His enthusiasm was not shared by many of his own executives, who privately thought that in the aftermath of