The World War II era saw the further entrenchment of Bechtel's financial and political clout. The federal government turned to Bechtel to construct warships for both the British and American fleets. And after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Secretary of War Henry Stimson literally ordered Bechtel to build the Alaska Oil Highway.
Towards the end of the war, a Bechtel subsidiary, Bechtel-McCone, started building bomber planes for the U.S. military. Afterwards, workers involved testified in court that Bechtel was guilty of war-profiteering, for adding fictitious overhead costs to the government's airplane bill. The charge was thrown out on a technicality.
Following the war's end, it was the barren deserts of the Middle East that yielded Bechtel's biggest prize to date--oil. The company seized upon the opportunity by building much of the Arab world's modern oil-producing infrastructure. McCartney reports that even as Bechtel was working hard to establish cozy ties with Saudi Arabian King Ibn Saud, former employees of the company were involved behind the scenes. Several worked for the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a government agency that subsidizes American corporate ventures abroad, to facilitate financing for the enormous projects.
In the 1950s, Bechtel developed close links with the Central Intelligence Agency. The firm and the government together sent covert operatives on overseas intelligence missions--to determine political trends in Israel and the practices of the Mossadeq government in Iran (that regime was later overthrown in a CIA-staged coup, shortly after it nationalized oil).
When Col. Moammar Khaddafi staged a coup in Libya in 1969, the United States determined that the new government would be favorable to oil interests, and actively encouraged Bechtel to continue its oil industry work there. In the 1970s, when the Arab boycott of Israel prompted legislation in Congress to punish companies that severed links with Israel to pander to Arab countries, Bechtel successfully lobbied against the proposed bill.
At the time, George Schultz, then executive president of the Bechtel Corp., noted that even if Arab countries barred Jews employed by U.S. corporations from working at their Arab subsidiaries, it was not so serious. "Jews assigned to these places by Bechtel mostly don't want to go there anyway," Schultz is reported to have said.
Also in the 1970s, Bechtel started working in the nuclear industry and soon dominated nuclear construction projects in the United States. But Bechtel's reputation for product quality in developing oil pipelines was not matched by its performance in building nuclear waste disposal facilities. The leaky Taranpur nuclear facility in India is one example. To help cover up the problem, Bechtel hired Indian workers to spread radioactive waste with bamboo poles.
And because Bechtel has operated unchecked by the government--or, for that matter, public interest groups and the mainstream media--its influence has waxed to dangerous proportions often.
This brings us back to the present and to the matter at hand. What do we make of the Weld connection to the powerful Bechtel Corp.? We can guess at the fate of the drawn-out Central Artery Project. And, though it may be too soon to tell whether the relationship Bechtel enjoys with the Weld administration has further significance, voters would do well to be inquisitive.
More importantly, the significance of Berlandi's Bechtel link goes beyond the campaign and the election. The fact that Berlandi works for Bechtel is not a cause, but a symptom, of a larger problem, for which the governor is not solely responsible.
How to prevent companies like Bechtel from taking advantage of the U.S. political system in the future is the larger dilemma. As far as that issue is concerned, Bill Weld and Paul Berlandi are small players in a much larger game.
Deborah E. Kopald '95 spent the summer researching energy issues pertaining to the Former Soviet Union for a Cambridge-based consulting firm.