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

bounty that was being paid for turning in war profiteers, Alexander and Ellis began collecting affidavits from Willow Run workers. One was a truck driver who said he drove the same load of gravel into and out of the plant as many as eight times a day without unloading it. Another worker, who, with a number of other laborers, was laying a concrete apron in front of one of the modification buildings, said he was told by a superintendent to throw all his tools into the concrete “to reinforce the base.” From this Alexander drew the obvious conclusion: Willow Run’s management, namely BechtelMcCone, wanted to buy new tools, which would increase the estimate for the job-and thereby BechtelMcCone’s profits.

On the basis of these affidavits, Alexander filed suit against BechtelMcCone in federal district court on July 31, 1943. Charging that the company had made “many and various claims against the government of the United States, or a department or officer thereof, knowing such claims to be false, fictitious or fraudulent,” Alexander sought to recover $2 million under the provisions ofTitle 31, Sections 231-235 of the United States Code.

Alexander’s suit soon produced a visit to Birmingham from John D.

Sparkman, then congressman, later U.S. senator from Alabama and later still, Adlai Stevenson’s vice-presidential running mate. Dispatched by a congressional investigating committee, Sparkman met with McCone and several other BechtelMcCone officials and apparently satisfied that there was no wrongdoing, returned to Washington without seeing either Alexander or Ellis, or for that matter, any worker from Willow Run. 20

In the courts, meanwhile, a Bechtel-hired lawyer had succeeded in having Alexander’s suit thrown out, on the ground that it lacked specificity. Not easily put off-“We were highly patriotic” Alexander said of himself and Ellis-Alexander secured affidavits from more Willow Run employees and on September 13 filed an amended complaint, Under these provisions, since recodified as Section 3730, a private citizen can bring a civil suit on behalf of the U.S. government against another individual for knowingly making a false or fraudulent claim to the U.S. government. If the government proceeds with the action, the person bringing the action may receive an amount the court decides is reasonable for disclosing evidence or information the government did not have when the action was brought. The amount may not b� more than 10 percent of the proceeds of the action or settlement of a claim and shall be paid out of those proceeds.

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detailing a laundry list of alleged instances of fraud and abuse.

On the face of it, Alexander seemed to have a compelling case. It hinged, though, on the provision in the contract calling for BechtelMcCone to receive a guaranteed 5 percent profit above what it estimated as its future costs. W ithout that provision, there could be no motive for committing fraud; without the motive, there could be no case. In a never-published May 17, 1943, interview with Fortune magazine, however, John McCone, who was famed for the exactitude of his memory, stated that the contract was indeed written the way Alexander claimed it was. As McCone put it: “Every six months, we estimate how much work we expect to do in the next six months and then we get a fee of five percent of the estimated amount of work regardless [author’s emphasis] of how much work we actually do turn out. “21 The contract BechtelMcCone’s lawyers presented in court,