Word: bechtel
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...weeks ago is one of the true anomalies of American business, a globe-girdling behemoth that operates throughout the U.S. and 20 foreign countries, but a company so private and unobtrusive in its ways that most people have never even heard of it. Yet the privately owned and operated Bechtel Group Inc. of San Francisco (1981 billings: $11.4 billion) has probably done more to transform the landscape of America and the world than any other company of this century. Among their many engineering extravaganzas, Bechtel's master builders have helped to design and construct everything from the Hoover...
...private, family-run corporation, Bechtel has maintained a cloak of secrecy rivaled only by modern-day monarchies. Still, some new insights about this prodigious builder are almost certain to emerge during Shultz's Senate confirmation hearings later this month. Most of the attention is expected to focus on Bechtel's longstanding ties to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, which helped the company to land the job of construction manager on the Saudis' gargantuan Jubail development project (see following story...
...help nurture its friendships both in the U.S. and abroad, Bechtel over the years has benefited from the aid of a stunning array of officials and advisers with excellent Government contacts. At one time or another, these have included: John McCone, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and later head of the CIA under John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson; Parker Hart, former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia; and Charls Walker, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury under Richard Nixon. Today two powerful members of the Reagan Administration are former top Bechtel officers: Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Deputy Secretary of Energy...
...Often Bechtel's blue-ribbon executives are in a position to provide insights and spot opportunities that give the company a jump on its competitors. For example, last week Company Chairman Stephen Bechtel Jr. recalled that ex-CIA Chief Richard Helms, a Bechtel consultant, was able to help it head off potential losses in Iran in the late 1970s...
Despite its reputation for finishing complex jobs on time and under budget, Bechtel has occasionally stumbled. Some employees were publicly involved in a bribery scheme ten or twelve years ago over the construction of a New Jersey pipeline. The firm was further embarrassed in 1977, when it installed a 420-ton nuclear-reactor vessel backwards at a San Onofre, Calif., power plant...