Bechtel and Nixon

Bechtel and Nixon

To understand the contracts Bechtel has undertaken in the Middle East since the early seventies, we have to look at the position of Bechtel from the time Richard Nixon was elected president onwards.   For the Bechtel Corporation and its proprietors Nixon proved to be a very good friend indeed. 

The ties between Bechtel and the new president were part the result of friendship (Steve Bechtel, Sr. had known Nixon since his days as a California congressman), in part a consequence of geography (both had a native-born chauvinism about California and the West), but mostly a matter of mutual interest.  Like the Bechtel’s, Nixon was pragmatic, internationalist and, as events would amply demonstrate, not above doing an occasional shady deal.  He was also very much interested in boosting American exports, improving relations with the Soviets and developing new sources of energy - all goals that dovetailed neatly with Bechtel’s business interests. 

Just how helpful Nixon could be in regard to those interests was demonstrated six weeks after the inauguration, when an eight-year law suit against Bechtel was dropped.  This however, was only a foretaste of favours to come.  During the Nixon presidency major government projects, from the Alaska pipeline to the Washington Metro to a raft of nuclear power plants, fairly rained on the Bechtel Corporation, which saw its gross annual revenues go from $750 million in 1968 to nearly $2 billion in 1974 - an increase of more than 150 percent. 

With the contracts came appointment of both Bechtel’s to an array of prestigious posts, including, in the case of Steve junior, membership on the Treasury Department’s Labour-Management Advisory Committee.  “Bechtel is one of the elite groups around here,” a White House aide told a reporter after Steve junior’s designation.  “Anyone on that committee had no trouble getting his views to the President.”