Word: bechtel
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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...
...1950s, Bechtel developed close links with the Central Intelligence Agency. The firm and the government together sent covert operatives on overseas intelligence missions--to determine political trends in Israel and the practices of the Mossadeq government in Iran (that regime was later overthrown in a CIA-staged coup, shortly after it nationalized...
When Col. Moammar Khaddafi staged a coup in Libya in 1969, the United States determined that the new government would be favorable to oil interests, and actively encouraged Bechtel to continue its oil industry work there. In the 1970s, when the Arab boycott of Israel prompted legislation in Congress to punish companies that severed links with Israel to pander to Arab countries, Bechtel successfully lobbied against the proposed bill...
...time, George Schultz, then executive president of the Bechtel Corp., noted that even if Arab countries barred Jews employed by U.S. corporations from working at their Arab subsidiaries, it was not so serious. "Jews assigned to these places by Bechtel mostly don't want to go there anyway," Schultz is reported to have said...