Boomtime for Bechtel

After several weeks of media examination, the privately-owned Bechtel Group Inc. has emerged victorious in the somewhat questionable bidding process to reconstruct Iraq.1 Bechtel has received attention primarily for its close ties with the US government, with former Secretary of State George Schultz as a board member. It is a generous contributor to politicians, providing $1,297,465 to candidates between 1999 and 2002, with 59 percent going to Republicans.2

Although not well-known in the UK, Bechtel is one of the world's largest engineering-construction firms. According to the company's website it provides worldwide 'technical, management, and directly related services to develop, manage, engineer, build, and operate installations.'3 Bechtel has been involved in building the San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Channel Tunnel, the Hoover Dam, (Nevada), the Jubail industrial city,( a 360-square-mile industrial city of 370,000 people in Saudi Arabia) , and the Yucca Mountain nuclear dump,(Nevada), and it is part of one of the preferred bidding consortiums for the privatisation of the Tube.

A small selection of the controversies surrounding the company include:

Its handling of water privatisation in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba. A subsidiary of Bechtel, Aguas del Tunari, was given the contract and proceeded to raise the rates for water by up to 200%, literally forcing some people to choose between buying water or food. After massive protests the company eventually withdrew from the city, in what has become a landmark event in resistance to globalisation.4
Just to show who's boss, however, the company is now trying to sue the Bolivian government for a $25 million loss of income from the cancelled project, using the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an arm of the World Bank.5
The company is currently involved with the Central Artery/Tunnel project (also known as the Big Dig) in Boston, Massachussets. The Boston globe has conducted an excellent year-long investigation into the ways the company has repeatedly made mistakes and then got the government to pay for them.6
Bechtel has built or designed 45 nuclear power stations in 22 states in the US. Thanks Bechtel.7
Bechtel has also managed to make money out of clearing up the mess created by nuclear power. In 1985 the company was fined $64 000 for deliberately circumventing safety procedures, and harassing workers for reporting safety violations, during the cleanup operation after the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear disaster.8
Bechtel Nevada manages operations at the Nevada Test site, where defence-related nuclear experiments and national security experiments are conducted for the National Nuclear Security Administration.9
In July 1997 Bechtel, along with its business partners Enron and General Electric, was criticised by Amnesty Internation for its collusion in the suppression of protests against the Dabhol power plant, which was to be built by the companies in Maharashtra, India.10
George Schultz is not the only link between Bechtel and the White House.

Key Bechtel alumni are:
Casper Weinburger - Reagan's Secretary of Defence and former Bechtel general counsel.
W. Kenneth Davis - Bechtel's former vice-president for nuclear development became deputy secretary of Energy and head of the Atomic Energy Commission under Reagan.
William Casey - was chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission under Nixon, head of the Export-Import bank under Ford, Reagan campaign manger and head of the CIA under Reagan, as well as being a Bechtel consultant.
Richard Helm - was CIA director under Nixon and eventually became a Bechtel consultant.
Peter Flanigan - White House political advisor under Nixon became a senior partner in the Bechtel owned investment house Dillon, Read and Company. Robert L. Hollingsworth - AEC’s general manager under Nixon became manager of manpower services at Bechtel.
William Simon - Nixon's Treasury secretary became a Bechtel consultant.11

Such links between Bechtel and the US administration have led to allegations that it was involved in a spate of coups, firstly in Syria in1948, then in Iran in 1956 and later in Indonesia, overthrowing President Sukarno in favour of the notorious Suharto.12
Bechtel is active in West Papua, which is the site of a struggle for independence from Indonesia. The company also helped to build Freeport McMoRan's notorious Grasberg gold mine, which has devastated the nearby rainforest with toxic waste.13
The company has built countless oil and gas pipelines and is involved in the controversial Baku-Ceyhan pipeline14, along with another BP pipeline in Algeria, that haven of stability and human rights.15

There are many more than these examples, which give a good illustration of how Bechtel has positioned itself to benefit from almost any situation. Despite the US administration's excuses that Bechtel is one of the few companies with security clearance and the necessary expertise, there is no reason to believe that its operations in Iraq will not be marked by the incompetence greed which have characterised many of its other projects.

For further information regarding Bechtel see:

Vallejo for Community-Planned Renewal (2002) Straight facts about Bechtel, http://www.vallejocpr.org/bechtel/straight.html

Mccartney, L. (1989) Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story: The Most Secret Corporation and How it Engineered the World, Ballantine Books, New York

Riccio, J. (1989) Incompetence,Wheeling and Dealing: The Real Bechtel , Multinational Monitor, October 1989 http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1989/10/mm1089_08.html

Bechtel Profile, http://www.reachingcriticalwill.org/dd/bechtel2.html

The company's website:
http://www.bechtel.com

For the company's UK offices, (in London and Warrington) see
http://www.bechtel.com/country.html#uk.

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