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Bechtel Corporation
"We are not
in the construction and engineering business.
We are in the business of making money."
CEO: Riley Bechtel
Defense Contracts, 1998-2003: $4,407,883,109
Campaign Contributions, 1998-2003:
$716,651 (Democrat),
$921,265 (Republican)
Headquarters: San Francisco, CA
Website: http://www.bechtel.com/
Overview
From the most natural
and essential resource on earth – water – to nuclear
power and weapons that can potentially cause the extinction
of all life, Bechtel Group has manipulated both elements to
build a business empire. As one of the largest construction
and engineering companies in the world, Bechtel Group develops,
manages, engineers, builds and operates telecomunications projects,
water systems, petroleum and chemical plants, pipelines, nuclear
power plants, mining and metal projects and civil infrastructure
projects.
Bechtel has offices in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada,
Chile, China, Egypt, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea,
Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates,
United Kingdom, the U.S. and Venezuela. Last year Bechtel
booked $23.3 billion worth of new business and worked off
$15.1 billion in revenue, increases of 75% and 20% respectively
(1).
Bechtel has been involved in some of the world’s largest
and most ambitious construction projects. The Hoover Dam,
the first oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia, the Alaskan oil pipeline,
and our first nuclear power plants; all constructed by the
private corporation under contracts that have been secured
through brilliant manipulation of personal connections. Since
the dawn of the nuclear age Bechtel has successfully solidified
its position as the preeminent company for building all things
nuclear. In its history Bechtel has helped to design and /or
construct 45 nuclear power plants in 22 states (2). Recent
Bechtel projects include decommissioning the Connecticut Yankee
nuclear power plant, managing ExxonMobil’s Singapore
Chemical Complex, building an oil pipeline in Mexico, the
Meizhou Wan power plant in China, the Collahuasi copper project
in Chile, Space Launch Complex in California, the Reliance
oil refinery in India, the Ragian nickel and copper complex
in Canada and the Boyne Island aluminum smelter in Australia.
One of Bechtel’s most important programs is Bechtel Nevada
which manages operations at the Nevada Test site – a test
bed for conducting defense-related nuclear experiments and national
security experiments - for DoE’s Nevada Operations Office
which recently became National Nuclear Security Administration.
The Nevada Test site is a massive outdoor laboratory and experiment
center that is larger than the state of Rhode Island. Bechtel
Nevada runs in partnership with Johnson Controls Nevada, Inc.;
and Lockheed Martin Nevada Technologies, Inc., and partners
with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National
Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories on many projects.
Bechtel Nevada also works on projects for the Defense Threat
Reduction Agency, NASA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and
the U.S. Air Force, Army and Navy.
Bechtel's Main Missions
- Stockpile Stewardship - provides experimental capabilities
necessary to maintain confidence in the safety and performance
of weapons in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. Stockpile
Stewardship is also responsible for maintaining the ability
to resume underground nuclear testing.
- Environmental Management
– responsible for Environmental Management, Pollution
Prevention, Waste Minimization, and Science and Technology
Development.
- Defense and Civil Projects
– includes Conventional Ordinance Testing which supports
the U.S. military in the research and development of new
munitions. The benefit of performing the Conventional Ordinance
Testing at the Nevada Test Site is the specialized facilities
allow live munitions to be tested by firing them at real
targets. The HazMat Spill Center (HSC) – fully permitted
to release highly hazardous chemical is a controlled environment
for experimental purposes. The X-Tunnel Demilitarization
Test Facility – an underground testing ground for
demilitarization processes including disposition of conventional
ammunition, rocket motors, and energetics.
- National Security Response
– includes several programs for crisis management,
which includes advanced technologies, terrorism-related
intelligence and remote date acquisition and analysis. Includes
Protective counter Measure/Weapons of Mass Destruction training.
Bechtel Political Connections
Bechtel’s close relationship with the Central Intelligence
Agency helped influence overthrows of several foreign governments
perceived as unfriendly to American business goals; and allowed
the company to be at the right place at the right time to
take advantage of new business opportunities with puppet regimes
(3). Close ties between Alan Dulles the CIA deputy Director
and Steve Bechtel’s financial advisor, John Simpson,
facilitated the relationship between Bechtel and the CIA.
Steve Bechtel served as the CIA’s liaison with the Business
Council and several other organizations directly linked with
the CIA (4). The ties between Bechtel and the CIA led to collaborations
in intelligence gathering that helped overthrow Iran’s
Mossadeq in 1953 and Indonesia’s Sukarno and replace
them with the Reza Shah Pahlavi and Suharto respectively,
pro-Western, pro-business allies.
Key Bechtel alumni are Reagan Secretary of Defense Casper
Weinburger former Bechtel general counsel, and Reagan Secretary
of State, George Schultz former Bechtel President, and current
Bechtel board member. W. Kenneth Davis, former vice-president
for nuclear development became Reagan’s deputy secretary
of Energy and head of the Atomic Energy Commission under Reagan.
William Casey, 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 was also
a Bechtel consultant.
Richard Helm was CIA director under Nixon and eventually
became a Bechtel consultant. White House political advisor
Perter Flanigan 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. Nixon Treasury
secretary William Simon became a Bechtel consultant. Additionally,
numerous friends of Bechtel, too long to list, many working
in the AEC eventually ended up with Bechtel. The close collaboration
between the AEC and Bechtel was "so incestuous it is impossible
to tell where the public sector begins and the private one
leaves off" (5).
Bechtel’s political influence does not stop close
relationships to people in power. The company also lets its
money to the talking. In the last ten years, Bechtel has contributed
almost a million dollars to election campaigns of members
of Congress.
Since Bechtel remains a private corporation the company
has been quiet about its connections with the current Bush
Administration. Considering Bechtel’s cozy relationship
with past Republican Administrations and President Bush’s
trend of recycling former politicos, it is more than likely
that Bechtel has formed strong ties with Bush. Bush’s
energy plan is corporate friendly and nuclear friendly, a
formula most likely very attractive to Bechtel.
Subsidiaries and other
relationships with other corporations
Some among the many Bechtel alliances and joint ventures are
Bechtel Bettis, Inc – a subsidiary that manages and
operates the U.S. navy Nuclear Propulsion Program Bettis Atomic
Power Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy. InterGen
– a joint venture with Shell to develop, own, and operate
state-of-the-art power plants and related fuel and energy
infrastructure around the world. International Water, Ltd
(IWL) An international water development service company owned
jointly by Bechtel Enterprises and Edison S.p.A. Lectrix,
A joint venture of American Electric Power (AEP), Bechtel
and Siemens to provide industrial power quality solutions
transmission network enhancements (6).
For longer version of this factsheet click
here.
This research and report
was compiled by Dena Montague of the Arms
Trade Resource Center, with
special thanks to
Antonia Juhasz of Global
Exchange, and
Pratap Chatterjee of CorpWatch.
Footnotes:
(1) Bechtel Global Report 2000
(2) Riccio, Jim. "Incompetence, Wheeling and Dealing: The
Real Bechtel" Multinational Monitor October, 1989.
(3) McCartney, Laton. Friends in High Places The Bechtel Story:
The Most Secret Corporation and how it Engineered the World.
Simon & Schuster, 1998, p. 115.
(4) ibid 119
(5) ibid 104
(6) Bechtel Global Report 2000
Aerospace
This information is also available as
a printable, PDF
fact sheet!
Programs &
Products:
When it is not building nuclear power plants, Bechtel is heavily
involved in constructing Ballistic Missile Defense System command
and control centers, and maintaining support structures at these
bases. In Fort Greeley, Alaska, Bechtel has completed
construction of the initial phase of the Ground-based
Midcourse Defense system, which is the heart of the US missile
defense system.
The Ground-based system is designed to intercept long-range
missiles headed for the continental US. However, it is
theoretically
dual-use, as it will be capable of shooting down satellites
– “a task that is considerably easier than shooting
down an intercontinental ballistic missile because satellites
travel in regular, predictable orbits.” However,
serious technical issues have plagued the Ground-based Midcourse
Defense system. In tests,
the incerceptor rockets have failed to make it out of the launch
tube, and the kill vehicles (the component designed to take
out the incoming missile) have failed to separate from their
rockets.
These failures are not necessarily surprising, given that the
same company that built the missile defense control centers
also designed the ceiling of Boston’s Big Dig tunnel that
collapsed
and killed a mother of three in July 2006.
Bechtel also manages the operation of a missile defense test
range at Kwajalein
Atoll in the Marshall Islands, under the charge of the US
Army Space and Missile Defense Command. The work
conducted there plays a central role in the development
of the next generation of US long-range missiles and nuclear
delivery systems. Both ballistic missiles and ballistic
missile interceptors are tested
here: missiles are launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base
in California 7000 kilometers from the Marshall Islands, while
interceptors are launched from the Kwajalein site.
It is worth noting that the Marshall Islands is also where the
US conducted 67 nuclear weapon tests between 1946 and 1958,
leaving behind a legacy of radioactive poisoning.
Bechtel is also one of three corporations that joined with the
University of California in 2006 to manage
and operate the Los
Alamos National Laboratory, under a contract
worth up to $79.7 million per year. The Laboratory’s
Center
for Space Science and Exploration is currently developing
nuclear power and propulsion systems for outer space exploration. It
also builds small satellites and satellite instruments that
are used for space surveillance of threats to the US’
space assets.
This research and report was
compiled by Ray Acheson of Reaching
Critical Will in February
2007 in coordination with the Secure
World Foundation.
For More Profiles:
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IBM
Lockheed Martin
Mitsubishi
Northrop Grumman
Raytheon
Siemens
University of California
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