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) 📕

situation is very critical. He said, ‘You may not know it, but the Arabian army has been moved north to the border, and the tribes are all gathered for immediate action in the event that Palestine is partitioned.“‘4

State Department documents reveal that Borman was suspected of providing material help to the Saudis, notably by flying to Belgium to arrange the purchase of a shipment of arms. Borman denied the charge, but Belgian-made arms nonetheless came into the Saudi arsenal, including, according to a State Department report, “the new snub-nosed rifle made in Belgium … with grease packed around their working parts which would indicate a recent shipment.”

The arms, which helped improve Bechtel’s relations with King ibn Saud and his troublesome finance minister, Abdullah Suleiman, were of small concern to the State Department, which at the time had a heavily pro-Arab bias. Of genuine worry to State, though, was the 114

THE COMPANY AND THE COMPANY

prospect of the Soviets’ entering the conflict and gaining control of U.S. oil supplies. To guard against such an eventuality, the State Department drew up plans for Bechtel and Aramco to place explosives at all refineries and oil wells in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. According to top secret State Department documents, 5 the explosives were to be used to destroy the facilities in the event “of the Soviet Union entering the hostilities.” The plan was scotched by the National Security Council, and when war finally came, in 1948, the Soviets did not intervene.

The war itself went badly for the Arabs, and afterward, the Syrian government, furious at U.S. support for Israel, cancelled an agreement to permit the Bechtel-built Tapline pipeline to cross its borders. Had the policy stood, Bechtel would have lost millions. But in 1949, the civilian Syrian government was overthrown in a CIA-sponsored coup and replaced by a military dictatorship, friendlier to U.S. interests.

Shortly thereafter, Bechtel was granted permission to build Tapline across Syria.

Though the coup came at a most propitious moment for Bechtel, the company denied any involvement. However, State Department documents from the period state that an unidentified “multinational corporation” had indeed had a hand in overthrowing the Syrian government, notably by supplying arms and funding to the rebels. According to J. Rives Childs, U.S. minister to Saudi Arabia, the “multinational corporation” was most likely International Bechtel.

At the very least, Bechtel was heavily enmeshed with the CIA.

Among those attesting to the company’s relationship was a former Aramco executive, Michael Cheney, who after ten years in Saudi Arabia returned to the United States in the 1950s to write a book about his experiences in the Middle East. 6 Cheney was particularly withering in his assessment of the CIA, whose Saudi operatives, he asserted, were “naive young men just out of P rinceton and Yale who didn’t know the first thing about the Middle East.” The only real, effective intelligence-gathering, Cheney claimed, was being conducted for the CIA through a “large private company.” At the time, the only such company in Saudi Arabia was International Bechtel Incorporated.

In the United States, meanwhile, Bechtel’s John L. Simpson was strengthening his ties with the brothers Dulles, particularly Allen, who had bought a brownstone on Simpson’s New York block and had become a frequent dinner companion. In 1951, after British P etroleum was expelled from Iran and had asked Bechtel to