by Sally Denton
“fierce”: Bechtel, 150.
“environmentalism, globalism”: www.bechtel.com/BAC-Stephen-D-Bechtel-Jr.tml.
“Of all the business relationships”: McCartney, Friends in High Places, 143.
“Although ben Halim was held in high disgrace”: Dowie, “Bechtel File,” 33.
“used Bechtel to build the line”: Christopher Rand, Making Democracy Safe for Oil: Oilmen and the Islamic East (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975), 257.
“Anyone on that committee”: Engineering News Record, February 21, 1974, quoted in McCartney, Friends in High Places, 154.
“The Indonesian Affair”: Alan A. Block and Constance A. Weaver, All Is Clouded by Desire: Global Banking, Money Laundering, and International Crime (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 13.
“all Western interests”: John K. Cooley, Libyan Sandstorm (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982), 13–14.
“meaning independent nationalism”: Chomsky.
“covert corporate collaboration”: Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File (New York: New Press, 2004), 97.
“hammered home”: Jack Anderson interviewed by Connie Chung on CBS Morning News, March 21, 1972, quoted in Mark Feldstein, Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 271. See also Anderson, Peace, War, and Politics, 193ff.
“that he had played the key role”: Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), 18.
For McCone’s meeting with Helms and Kissinger, see Feldstein, Poisoning the Press, 276.
“the gentlemanly planner of assassinations”: Thomas Powers, quoted in Morley, Our Man in Mexico, and in Slate. For Helms’s claims that Nixon had ordered him to instigate the coup, see Richard Helms and William Hood, A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York: Random House, 2003), 405.
“The only sin in espionage”: Helms, quoted in Annie Jacobsen, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base (New York: Little, Brown, 2011), 252.
“Kissinger asked that the plan”: “New FRUS Volume.”
“In the heady days”: Jack Devine, “What Really Happened in Chile: The CIA, the Coup Against Allende, and the Rise of Pinochet,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2014.
“virus” . . . “spread contagion”: Chomsky.
“a stretch of the geopolitical imagination”: Marchetti and Marks, CIA and Cult of Intelligence, 19.
“Why should you care?”: Ibid., 18.
“The revolving door spins so fast”: Greider, “Boys from Bechtel.”
“For a top job at Bechtel”: Hirst, “World’s at Bechtel’s Beck and Call.”
“Washington, to bring up”: Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude (New York: Crown, 2003), 50.
“Over the years”: “Bechtel Responds to Inaccuracies in Media Coverage of the USAID Iraq Infrastructure Reconstruction Program Award,” April 29, 2003, www.bechtel.com/2003-04-29.html.
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE ENERGY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
“the greatest departure” . . . “moved quickly in the Middle East”: Wiley and Gottlieb, Empires in the Sun, 40.
“twenty-year chemical fertilizer deal”: Cooley, Libyan Sandstorm, 293.
“of oilfield and fertilizer technology”: Rand, Making Democracy Safe for Oil, 255.
“You must be out of your cotton-pickin’ mind”: Jackson, quoted in McCartney, Friends in High Places, 161.
“Any company which purchases”: Kearns, quoted in ibid., 160.
“Obviously Bechtel’s firm”: Aspin, quoted by William Clairborne, “Conflict of Interest Laid to Former Ex-Im Bank Figure,” Washington Post, February 26, 1974, A2.
“an Algerian construction project”: Ibid.
“complex web of relationships”: Wiley and Gottlieb, Empires in the Sun, 38.
“what may be the largest”: Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), and Wall Street Journal, November 2, 1975, quoted in McCartney, Friends in High Places, 199.
“cover the Colorado Plateau”: Wiley and Gottlieb, Empires in the Sun, 41.
“disastrous rise”: Eisenhower speech.
“the U.S. government has not had”: Bechtel, 162.
“ ‘private sector’ ” . . . “can easily lead”: Ibid., 164.
“the most faggy goddamned thing”: Watergate tape, on YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPb-PN9F2Pc.
“Hiring people in high places”: Dowie, “Bechtel File,” 34.
PART TWO: THE BECHTEL CABINET, 1973–1988
The role of Bechtel principals in the Ronald Reagan presidency is a richly documented history, especially regarding Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. The overview of the years 1973 to 1988 is drawn from a vast array of sources, including nonfiction books, national and international journalism, as well as thousands of pages of US government cables, scholarly papers, State Department and Defense Department memoranda, court filings, and congressional and legal hearings. Additionally, I conducted dozens of interviews with knowledgeable government and private industry sources, most notably in California and Washington, DC.
The Iran-Contra scandal has been scrutinized by numerous respected journalists and authors, and the investigations by the Justice Department, the independent counsels, and various congressional committees have resulted in a massive archive of official records.
Bechtel Cabinet: Greider, “Boys from Bechtel.”
“Every gun that is made”: Eisenhower, quoted in Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 325.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: BECHTEL’S SUPERSTAR
Bechtel’s Superstar: San Francisco Examiner, quoted in McCartney, Friends in High Places, 219.
“If I could choose one American”: Kissinger, quoted in Bernard Gwertzman, “The Shultz Method,” New York Times, January 2, 1983.
“a Nixon-inspired boondoggle”: Dowie, “Bechtel File,” 34. Re: Shultz’s denial of his lobbying efforts on behalf of Uranium Enrichment Associates, see: “Nomination of George P. Shultz,” July 13, 1982, 54. “But in the early days of the Nixon administration, in an effort to privatize things, a decision was made—I was not a part of it . . . to encourage private companies to undertake the job of enriching uranium for the use of nuclear powerplants.”
“It was not”: Thomas C. Hayes, “Bechtel: A Reclusive Giant,” New York Times, July 8, 1982.
“I understand through Secretary Shultz”: Vasiliy F. Garbuzov to Arthur F. Burns, Chairman of the Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System. “Memorandum of Conversation,” Office of the Minister, Ministry of Finance of the USSR, May 8, 1974.
“The president is a very determined”: Arthur F. Burns to Vasiliy F. Garbuzov, ibid.
“mortally stricken”: Morris, “Specialist” (Part 2).
“one painstaking rung”: McCartney, Friends in High Places, 170.
“Buddha-like”: Gwertzman, “Shultz Method.”
“just look at each other”: Jack Lynch, quoted in McCartney, Friends in High Places, 171.
“the leading political organization”: Paretsky, 34.
“tightly interlocked”: Paretsky, 37.
“for reforming the institutions”: Ibid., 152.
“who worship at the altar”: Baer, Online review of Hoodwinked.
“An echo of long” . . . “collisions at the tips”: Hedrick Smith, The Power Game: How Washington Works (New York: Random House, 1988), 569.
“Shultz and Weinberger were long-distance runners”: Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Public Affairs, 2000), 352.
“difficult to tell”: Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York: Random House, 1999), 463.
“arguing with him”: Smith, Power Game, 581.
“all sails up”: Colin Po
well, quoted in Cannon, President Reagan, 353.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: CAP THE KNIFE
“valuable shares of Bechtel stock”: Caspar W. Weinberger with Gretchen Roberts, In the Arena: A Memoir of the 20th Century (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2001), 255.
“on the same political fast track”: McCartney, Friends in High Places, 175.
“The recruiting process”: Weinberger with Roberts, In the Arena, 255.
“On religious matters”: Ibid., 16.
“the year the United States”: Ibid., 1.
“sunny, optimistic”: Ibid., 12.
“he suffered”: McCartney, Friends in High Places, 176.
“alphabet soup of programs” . . . “best government was the least”: Weinberger with Roberts, 25.
“defeated the radical”: Ibid., 126.
“Peace, Prosperity, Progress”: Ibid., 127.
“splendid redwood trees”: Ibid., 254.
“As seemed to be the case”: Ibid., 259.
“like a men’s club”: McCartney, Friends in High Places, 191. In 1979 Bechtel settled the sex discrimination case, paying its suing female employees $1.3 million. The company settled the race discrimination case the previous year.
“about potential operating” . . . “errors in design”: Dowie, “Bechtel File,” 35. Bechtel settled with Consumers Power for $14 million in cash and a promise to remedy the plant.
“there is likely to be”: Dr. Stephen Hanauer, quoted in McCartney, Friends in High Places, 199. The problems with Tarapur were first reported by Paul Jacobs, journalist, activist, and one of the founders of Mother Jones magazine. See Paul Jacobs, “What You Don’t Know May Hurt You,” Mother Jones, February 1976.
“doesn’t own the plants”: Dowie, “Bechtel File,” 35.
“Bechtel sometimes likes”: Ibid., 35–36.
“a builder is measured”: www.bechtel.com/BAC-Stephen-D-Bechtel-Sr.html.
“No longer would utilities”: Nies, Unreal City, 202. The FTC issued an order and decision that Kennecott’s purchase of Peabody violated federal antitrust laws, putting too much control of the nation’s coal reserves in the hands of a single company. Kennecott was ordered to divest itself of all interests in Peabody in June 1971. Then, in April 1974, the US Supreme Court declined to review the decision of the US Court of Appeals that upheld the FTC’s order that Kennecott divest itself of Peabody. In June 1977 the FTC approved Kennecott’s sale of Peabody Coal to Peabody Holding Company, a consortium made up of Newmont Mining Company (27.5 percent), Williams Companies (27.5 percent), Bechtel Corporation (15 percent), Boeing company (15 percent), Fluor Corporation (10 percent), and Equitable Life Insurance Company (5 percent).
For the company’s version of Jubail, see the Bechtel website, www.bechtel.com/BAC-Chapter-5.html.
“What you really need”: Weinberger with Roberts, In the Arena, 258.
“a myriad of closely held”: Dowie, “Bechtel File,” 30.
“In all the expansive”: Time, July 12, 1982, quoted in McCartney, Friends in High Places, 208.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE ARAB BOYCOTT
“He’s a Jewish fellow”: McCartney, ibid., 184.
“ran deep with Aryan blood”: Margaret Lucas Montgomery, quoted in McCartney, 183.
“who repeatedly”: Ibid., 184.
“by the loss of old Jerusalem”: Robert Lacey, The Kingdom (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1981).
“It will do grave damage”: Kissinger, quoted in Memorandum of Telephone Conversation.
“The Jews would oppose you”: Kissinger, quoted in Memorandum of Conversation, January 7, 1976.
“It amazes me”: Ford, quoted in ibid.
“in areas and in ways”: Washington Post. “The Boycott Issue.”
“The Saudis have thrown”: Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 9, 1978.
For details about the “Church Committee” hearings and published volumes, see the Assassination Archives and Research Center, www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/contents.htm.
For details about “The Family Jewels,” see the 1992 declassified documents obtained by the nongovernmental National Security Archive, “Family Jewels.” Memorandum for Executive Secretary, CIA Management Committee, May 16, 1973, declassified June 2007, National Security Archive.
“Despite its [Bechtel’s] prominent”: Thomas J. Lueck, “Bechtel Loses Another Officer to Reagan’s Cabinet,” New York Times, June 26, 1982.
The case brought by Attorney General Edward Levi was eventually settled by consent decree, although Congress considered—unsuccessfully—going further and imposing criminal penalties against companies and executives who observed the boycott.
“With the benefit of hindsight”: Bechtel.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE PACIFIC REPUBLIC
“Reputed to be” . . . “grandfather of corporate”: Paretsky, 107–8.
“What John Connally stands for”: Ibid., 113.
“we create a United States oil company”: Ibid.
“aimed mainly”: Paul Burka, “The Truth About John Connally,” Texas Monthly, November 1979.
“candidate of the oil interests” . . . “smacks of trading” . . . “more like an energy program” . . . “represents a fundamental shift” . . . “is not a bargaining chip” . . . “rehashing the stale”: Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 15, 1979.
had become “acute”: Cannon, President Reagan, 202.
“how the federal government worked”: Shultz, quoted in ibid., 202.
“Cap’s being at Bechtel”: Mayman, quoted in McCartney, Friends in High Places, 218.
“Republicans as well as Democrats”: Hedrick Smith, Who Stole the American Dream (New York: Random House, 2012), 8.
“The lack of a US energy”: www.bechtel.com/BAC-Chapter-5.html.
“We found ourselves”: Catherine Austin Fitts, “Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits,” 2006, www.dunwalke.com/introduction.htm.
“little acorns”: www.bechtel.com/BAC-Chapter-6.html.
“We can afford”: Shultz, quoted in Forbes, December 7, 1981. (See McCartney, Friends in High Places, 220.)
“less often mentioned” . . . “Through the holding” . . . “The booklet is long”: “Bechtel’s Dance of the Seven Veils,” Economist, May 18, 1981.
“Pacific Republic”: Wiley and Gottlieb, Empires in the Sun, 76.
“Ronald Reagan represented” . . . “The West was”: Ibid., 304.
“Republican presidents”: “The Workhorse Returns,” Economist, July 3, 1982.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE BECHTEL BABIES
“When Reagan named” . . . “the hard-eyed” . . . “He is one of the few”: Brownstein and Easton, Reagan’s Ruling Class, 433–34.
“had heard”: Gwertzman, “Shultz Method.”
“not really one company”: Mark Dowie et al., “Bechtel: A Tale of Corruption,” Multinational Monitor 5, no. 5 (May 1984).
“Literally at the moment”: Alan Friedman, Spider’s Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), xvi.
“In an administration”: H. W. Brands, The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 169.
“pro-Arab disposition”: Stephan B. Zatuchni and Daniel B. Drooz, “Back Door to the PLO,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, August 2, 1982.
“seemed to go out of his way”: Oliver North with William Novak, Under Fire: An American Story (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 154–55.
“Caspar Weinberger has reversed”: Biden, quoted in Zatuchni and Drooz, “Back Door to the PLO.”
“Weinberger had almost a visceral dislike”: Hilary Leila Krieger, “Former Senior U.S. Defense Official Korb to Make Case for Pollard’s Release at Knesset,” Jerusalem Post, December 19, 2010.
“predilection to support Saudi Arabia” . . . “Weinberger believes”: Zatuchni and Drooz, “Back Door to the PLO.”
“Weinberger’s anti-Israel tilt”: Joe Conason, “ ‘Most Antagonistic’
Toward Israel? That Would Be Ronald Reagan’s Defense Secretary,” Creators Syndicate, January 10, 2013, https://www.creators.com/liberal/joe-conason/-most-antagonistic-toward-israel-that-would-be-ronald-reagan-s-defense-secretary.html.
“Others believed it was more complicated”: Ibid.
“redirect” . . . “seem to have differing assessments” . . . “of being hostile” . . . “neglected its ties”: Bernard Gwertzman, “Reagan Aides at Odds,” New York Times, February 15, 1982.
“Bechtel oil group”: Kondracke, quoted in Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 18, 1981.
“Cap, you talk about”: Kirkpatrick, quoted in Howard Teicher and Gayle Radley Teicher, Twin Pillars to Desert Storm: America’s Flawed Vision in the Middle East from Nixon to Bush (New York: William Morrow, 1993), 204.
“The AWACS deal”: Bechtel letter, quoted in McCartney, Friends in High Places, 223. See also “Nomination of George P. Shultz.”
“This was a policy in which”: Angelo M. Codevilla, a former senior staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and professor of international relations at Boston University, quoted in Rebekah Israel, “American Responses to Israeli Foreign Policy Initiatives” (unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Hotel Intercontinental, New Orleans, LA, January 7, 2009), http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p273901_index.html.
“the Bechtel Babies”: Shaw, Miscarriage of Justice, 129.
“the sale to Iraq”: Michael Dobbs, “U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup: Trade in Chemical Arms Allowed Despite Their Use on Iranians, Kurds,” Washington Post, December 30, 2002.
“activist CIA director” . . . “the Israelis began”: Joseph J. Trento, The Secret History of the CIA (New York: MJF Books, 2001), 445–46.
“the boys from Bechtel”: Greider, “Boys from Bechtel.”
“tough-talking”: Shultz, quoted in John Boykin, Cursed Is the Peacemaker: The American Diplomat Versus the Israeli General, Beirut 1982 (Washington, DC: Applegate Press, Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, 2002), xii.
