Bechtel Group, Inc.

Bechtel is a large construction company and defense contractor with very strong political ties and "a long history of doing business in Iraq, including an unsuccessful pipeline deal that at one point involved a meeting between Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the secretary of defense, and Saddam Hussein. That project later drew scrutiny from a special prosecutor looking into allegations of impropriety involving Edwin A. Meese III, the former White House counsel and attorney general in the Reagan administration." [1]

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker writes about the connections of Bechtel, the bin Laden family, and Bush, and past, administration officials, "The bin Ladens have a ten-million-dollar stake in the Fremont Group, a San Francisco-based company formerly called Bechtel Investments, which was until 1986 a subsidiary of Bechtel. The Fremont Group's Web site, which makes no mention of the bin Ladens, notes that 'though now independent, Fremont enjoys a close relationship with Bechtel.' Mayer further writes, "One Fremont director, Riley Bechtel, is the chairman and chief executive officer of the Bechtel Group, and is a member of the Bush Administration: he was appointed this year to serve on the President's Export Council. In addition, George P. Shultz, the Secretary of State in the Ronald Reagan Administration, serves as a director both of Fremont and of the Bechtel Group, where he once was president and still is listed as senior counsellor."[2]

"Former Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, was vice president and general counsel of the Bechtel Group before going to Washington in 1980."[3]

"Daniel Chao, a Bechtel senior vice president, serves on the very same advisory committee of the Export-Import Bank of the United States while Ross J. Connelly, a 21-year veteran of Bechtel Group, is the chief operating officer for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the other major source of funding from the federal government for American companies overseas."[4]

"Jack Sheehan, a senior vice president at Bechtel, is a member of the Defense Policy Board ... Andrew Natsios, the administrator of USAID, which awarded the reconstruction contract for Iraq, was overseeing Bechtel just two years ago as the chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which hired the company to complete the Boston Central Artery project."[5]

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The Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is operated by the Midwest Research Institute (MRI), Battelle, and Bechtel.[6]

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Other Related SourceWatch Resources

• BWX Technologies Inc.
• defense contractors
• Military-industrial complex
• nuclear weapons complex
• Post-war Iraq
• Post-war Iraq contractors

External Links

• Overview in Rumsfeld/Hussein History, NY Times, 14 April 2003
• Iraq Reconstruction Contract, Washington Post, 17 April 2003
• "Bechtel Has Ties in Washington, and to Iraq," The New York Times, 18 April 2003.
• Pratap Chatterjee, Bechtel's Friends in High Places, CorpWatch, April 24, 2003.
• David R. Baker, USA: Bechtel to Rebuild Iraq. Politically Connected Firm Wins $680 Million Bid, San Franciso Chronicle, April 18, 2003.
• Pratap Chatterjee, Bechtel Wins Iraq War Contracts, CorpWatch, April 24, 2003: "Soon after Riley Bechtel was appointed as an advisor to Bush, on April 21, Terry Valenzano, the man who ran Bechtel's construction business in Saudi Arabia, flew into Kuwait city to meet with Jay Garner, the Pentagon official appointed to oversee Iraq. The two men met at the Hilton resort to plan the reconstruction of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government."
• Jane Mayer, "Dept. Of Connections: The Contractors," The New Yorker, April 28, 2003.
• Pratap Chatterjee, Bechtel's Nuclear Nightmares, CorpWatch, May 1, 2003.
• Pratap Chatterjee, Bechtel's Water Wars, CorpWatch, May 1, 2003.
• Pratap Chatterjee, Bechtel drums up war business, IPS on Asia Times, May 22, 2003
• "War profiteering and political cronyism is just part of this story", CorpWatch, June 5, 2003; "These case studies reveal a legacy of unsustainable and destructive practices that have reaped permanent human, environmental and community devastation around the globe."
• U.S. Government's Iraq Infrastructure Reconstruction Program, with August 19, 2003 Project Update and List of Awarded Subcontracts (since April 25, 2003) for USAID Contract EEE-C-00-03-00018-00.
• Karim El-Gawhary, Bechtel Fails Reconstruction of Iraq's Schools, corpwatch, December 2, 2003.