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

The dinner was a longish, self-congratulatory affair, with the usual cigars and brandy and talk of business deals to come. After the hellish last few years, Bechtel was glad to be with such friends again, and gladder still that several of them would be sending business his way.

The company, he privately confided, had turned an important corner.

It was on its way again, back toward the heights it had climbed once before. Indeed, even now his son Riley was preparing to leave for the Middle East sheikdom of Qatar to arrange a deal for developing what geologists claimed could be the largest naturalgas reserve in the world.

Potentially, billions were at stake, and Bechtel had few doubts that his company would claim the lion’s share of them.

The next morning, Steve returned to San Francisco, where there were smiles on his employees’ faces as well. The annual survey of the world’s leading engineering firms conducted by Engineering News Record, the bible of the construction industry, was out , and after a three-year absence, the Bechtel Group once again topped the list. It was cause for celebration, and to mark the occasion, Stephen D.

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THE NEXT GENERATION

Bechtel, Jr., boss of this most private of companies, did something quite unusual. He ordered the lights in the skyscraper he had built to be lit that night in a pattern, a twenty-three story announcement the world could not help noticing. It spelled out a single numeral: the number “1.”

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NOTES

CHAPTER O NE

The account of Stephen Bechtel, Jr.’s, visit to the Bohemian Grove in July 1982 is based on interviews with Bohemian Club members and their guests who were present at the 1982 encampment. Also useful was the 1982 Bohemian Club list of the lodges and their members and guests.

Numerous accounts of The Grove have appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times (8/14/77), The Christian Science Monitor (8/22/81), The San Francisco Chronicle (9/16/81) and Newsweek (8/2/82). At least two books have been done on The Grove as well: The Bohemian Grove and Other Delights: A Study in Ruling Class Cohesiveness, G .. William Domhoff, a-nd The G-,.eatest Mel?S

Party in the World, John van der Zee.

I. Off-the-record interviews with Bechtel family members.

2. The Reagan-Nixon meeting has been well chronicled in such publications as the San Francisco Chronicle, 7116/81.

3. Interview, John D. Erhlichman, July 1982.

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NOTES

CHAPTER TWO

T he account of Warren A. Bechtel’s career and the Bechtel family’s origins is based on interviews with surviving family members, including Warren’s middle son, Stephen D. Bechtel. In addition, I have relied on the privately published story of W A. Bechtel, A Builder and His Family ( 1948) by Robert L. Ingram, as well as other company records. Warren Bechtel’s achievements and background were also chronicled at some length by the Oakland Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle (both 8/29/33) after his death.

1. A Builder, Ingram, 3.

2. Ibid., 5.

3. Ibid., 9

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., 11.

6. Ibid., 13.

7. Interview, Stephen D. Bechtel, July 1984.

8. Fortune, “The Earth Movers,” August 1943.

9. SOB interview.

10. Fortune, op. cit.

CHAPT ER THREE

1. The Kaiser Story, privately printed, 1968, 18.

2. Fortune, August 1943.

3. Ibid.

4. Interview, Stephen D. Bechtel, July 1984.

5. Fortune, op. cit.

6. Ibid.

7. Bechtel News, January 1982.

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FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACE S

8. New York Times, 8110/31.

9. New York Times, 8/19/31.

10. New York Times, 4111132.

11.