Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the Wo Laton Mccartney (surface ebook reader .TXT) 📖

Government, and the politics that went with it, had been in Weinberger’s blood since boyhood, when for a bedtime story, his father would recount the tale of the Constitutional Convention. His allegiance to the Republican Party began when, at the age of 7, he listened to the proceedings of the 1924 Democratic Convention on the radio.

The 103-ballot struggle that produced the presidential nomination of John W Davies was, Weinberger averred, “exciting,” but, on the balance, “I thought the whole proceeding untidy and disorderly. “1

Weinberger’s fascination with politics continued through high school, where he read the Congressional Record every day, and as an undergraduate at Harvard, where he served as editor of the Crimson, writing editorials he later characterized as “heavily Republican in na-175

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ture.” Despite the prominence his position on the paper gave him, Weinberger experienced some unpleasant moments at Harvard, where he suffered from being a public-school boy, a Westerner and most conspicuously, the bearer of a Jewish surname. On more than one occasion, Weinberger, a practicing Episcopalian, found anonymously written anti-Semitic notes stuffed in his mailbox. In his senior year, he was also passed over for election to any of the college’s socially prestigious “final clubs. “2

Academically, however, his record was exceptional and, after graduating in 1938 magna cum laude and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, he was admitted to Harvard Law. Following wartime service as a member of Douglas MacArthur’s intelligence staff, he returned to San Francisco, where he entered law practice and soon was involved in local politics. “I became interested in the new group that was formed in San Francisco to do something about the moribund state of the Republican Party,” he recalled. “We formed a group that ultimately won … a little more than half the seats in the election for the Republican County Committee in San Francisco. Then I became increasingly active in that committee. Ultimately, one of the [state] assembly seats of San Francisco became vacant. … People asked me to run, and I agreed, and that’s how it all began. “3

Elected to the state assembly in 1950, Weinberger was originally counted as a liberal Republican and a comer in state politics. That reputation was enhanced when, with A. Alan Post, the state’s legislative analyst, he orchestrated an investigation of California’s corrupt liquor-licensing practices, then centered around a powerful political figure named W illiam Bonelli. Largely as a result of Weinberger and Post’s efforts, Bonelli and a number of his associates were indicted on charges of giving and receiving kickbacks. “It was real major corruption,” Weinberger boasted. “Old-fashioned Tammany Hall-style corruption of a really major sort. “4

Emboldened by his success as a graft-fighter, Weinberger in 1958

resigned his assembly seat to declare his candidacy for state attorney general. He seemed a formidable candidate on the basis of his assembly record. His primary opponent, however, turned out to be even more formidable, and after a lackluster campaign, Weinberger was swept to defeat. He showed no more political aptitude four years later by advising former vicepresident Richard Nixon to challenge California governor Pat Brown. Nixon took the advice, ran and was clobbered, nearly ending his political career.

Meanwhile, Weinberger’s own forays into politics were proving di-176

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sastrous. An example of the latter came in 1964, when Weinberger favored the presidential candidacy of Nelson Rockefeller-thus infuriating the state’s conservative Republican leaders. Two years later, he blundered