Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the Wo by Laton Mccartney (books to read to be successful TXT) 📕

Staggered by the sudden turnabout in events, but not deterred by them, Bechtel switched its nuclear lobbying efforts to Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford. At first, the company’s prospects seemed promising.

In late September, at the behest of Steve junior, the new president flew to Detroit to address the Bechtel-organized “World Energy Conference.” In his speech to two thousand delegates from eighty countries, Ford announced the creation of “Project Interdependence,” a sort of reverse OPEC in which the United States and other oil-importing nations would band together to conserve and shan� their energy resources.

Later the same month, Ford, who had already sought Bechtel’s views on overcoming inflation, appointed Steve junior as one of eight management representatives on the newly formed White House LaborManagement Committee, “whose counsel and recommendations,”

said Ford, “will not only be sought but given to me face-to-face.”10 To no one’s great surprise, Bechtel’s counsel was for the United States to begin a crash program of building domestic nuclear power plants. He also recommended that Ford continue his predecessor’s policy of backing the commercialization of nuclearfuel enrichment.

Before long, a stream of communications, boosting Bechtel’s nuclear plans, was flowing back and forth between San Francisco and the White House. Typical was a telegram fired off to William Seidman, 203

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

Ford’s special assistant for economic affairs, by Bechtel vicepresident Cordell Hull, a distant cousin of Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of State who bore the same name, in late 197 5, protesting a rumored cut in funding for the ExportImport Bank, which had financed many of Bechtel’s nuclear projects.11 Almost apologetically, Seidman wrote back to tell Hull that Bechtel could “feel assured that necessary financial support-direct loans, discount loans and guarantees and insurancewill be available in order to maintain U.S. competitiveness in foreign markets. “12

Bechtel also enlisted Ford, as it had Nixon, in the cause of privatizing nuclearfuel enrichment. On May 30, 1975, UEA submitted to White House domestic assistant James Cannon a proposal outlining the terms and conditions under which it would proceed with the building of the Dothan plant, which had yet to be given congressional authorization. Written by the ubiquitous Ash O’Donnell, the proposal, which covered the cost of building Dothan plus two adjacent nuclear power stations, called for the U.S. government to put up a total of $8

billion in loan guarantees. It was a staggering amount, one that rendered the federal bailouts of Chrysler and Lockheed minuscule by comparison. Despite his calls for fiscal restraint, and his recent turndown of New York City’s plea for $1 billion in loan guarantees to avoid bankruptcy, Ford did not blanch. On June 26, three weeks after the Bechtel proposal reached the White House, Ford called on Congress to pass the Nuclear Fuel Assurances Act.

“Today,” he proclaimed, “I am asking the Congress to join me in embarking this Nation on an exciting new course which will help assure energy independence. I am referring to the establishment of an entirely new private industry in America to provide fuel for nuclear power reactors-the energy resource of the future. I am referring to uranium enrichment which is presently a government monopoly. “13

T he administration’s proposal-a virtually verbatim duplication of the Bechtel plan-called for the federal government to grant UEA a number of extremely generous technical and financial