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) 📕

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FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

approved by a committee consisting of the head of the bank and the secretaries of State, Treasury and Commerce. From here on, Kearns proudly told Bechtel, he could personally approve any request of $30

million or less.

Under Bechtel’s careful tutelage, Kearns also became an apostle and financial backer of international nuclear power. “The United States would benefit highly by offering financial assistance to the construction of [nuclear] energy-producing facilities,” Steve senior announced at one of the first meetings of the advisory committee, adding that “huge capital expenditures will be necessary. “6 Within months, Kearns was echoing the refrain, emphasizing “the desirability,” as he put it, “for the United States to be involved in as many nuclear plants as possible.”

He went on: “Any company which purchases U.S. equipment and services for a nuclear power plant should be able to obtain financing for the fuel required to operate that plant. “7

Within two years, the bank had passed the $1 billion mark in nuclear financing, much of it allocated to Bechtel-built plants around the world. The loan that pushed the bank over the $1 billion threshold was earmarked for a Bechtel nuclear plant in Brazil, the country’s first.

While Steve senior orchestrated the project’s financing, getting his old friends at Morgan to put up $33.5 million and Eximbank the remaining $107 million, Kearns himself traveled to Brazil and sold the deal to the country’s minister of Mines and Energy, Dr. Antonio Lias Liete.

The Brazil financing was a milestone for the bank, and Kearns threw a party to celebrate. At the bank’s expense, 150 of the world’s top energy and nuclear officials were flown to Washington for a black-tie dinner presided over by VicePresident Spiro Agnew. The next day Kearns told a press conference, “We welcome the opportunity to play a part in this important endeavor. And the prospect is now that we may be called upon to assist in financing $1. 5 billion to $2 billion of U.S.

exports in the nuclear field each year over the next five years.” No one welcomed Kearns’s announcement more than Steve Bechtel, Sr., whose company got the lion’s share of the work.

With Nixon’s reelection in 1972, it appeared that Bechtel would be tapping the bank’s coffers for even more funds. Shortly after beginning his second term, Nixon declared his intention of boosting U.S. exports from their current level of $30 billion to $50 billion by 1976. The principal means of accomplishing that goal, the president stated, would be loans granted by the ExportImport Bank.

Given the presidential green light, Bechtel, in partnership with Ar-160

A FRIEND IN THE WHITE HOUSE

mand Hammer, who had cemented his own ties with the administration with a recent (illegal) $100,000 campaign contribution, began laying plans for spending a goodly chunk of those loans in the Soviet Union. The centerpiece of their plans was a projected World Trade Center in Moscow, and nearly all of its $55 million cost was to be financed by loans granted by Henry Kearns. The partners sought an additional $180 million in Eximbank financing to build a series of fertilizer plants astride the Volga River. But by far the most ambitious and expensive venture was the development of the Yakutsk naturalgas fields in western Siberia. Working in partnership with the Russians and El Paso Natural Gas, Bechtel and Hammer foresaw a development worth up to $11 billion, of which Kearns promised $10 billion in financing.

The Russians were enthusiastic-“! am a supporter of contracts, contracts, contracts that lead to more contracts, contracts, contracts,”

proclaimed Soviet Trade Minister Nikolai Patolichev in a meeting with Hammer and