Word: bechtel
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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After amassing considerable wealth during the 1920s by building pipelines for privately held oil and gas companies, Bechtel was hired by the government to build the Hoover Dam, in Boulder, Col. From the beginning, the company's business practices were suspect...
...journalist Laton McCartney relates in his 1988 book, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, Bechtel workers were overworked, illegally paid in script, and compelled to live in dangerous, unsanitary conditions. Meanwhile, Bechtel played the corporate interest game, hiring powerful Jobbyists who successfully derailed the efforts of then-Interior Secretary Harold Ickes to initiate an investigation of the firm...
...World War II era saw the further entrenchment of Bechtel's financial and political clout. The federal government turned to Bechtel to construct warships for both the British and American fleets. And after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Secretary of War Henry Stimson literally ordered Bechtel to build the Alaska Oil Highway...
Towards the end of the war, a Bechtel subsidiary, Bechtel-McCone, started building bomber planes for the U.S. military. Afterwards, workers involved testified in court that Bechtel was guilty of war-profiteering, for adding fictitious overhead costs to the government's airplane bill. The charge was thrown out on a technicality...
Following the war's end, it was the barren deserts of the Middle East that yielded Bechtel's biggest prize to date--oil. The company seized upon the opportunity by building much of the Arab world's modern oil-producing infrastructure. McCartney reports that even as Bechtel was working hard to establish cozy ties with Saudi Arabian King Ibn Saud, former employees of the company were involved behind the scenes. Several worked for the U.S. Export-Import Bank, a government agency that subsidizes American corporate ventures abroad, to facilitate financing for the enormous projects...