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

worked, and how, given vision on both sides, it might work in the future. Suleiman and the other court ministers might question the king’s enthusiasm for the railroad, as had Bechtel’s Earl English, but Steve could readily grasp the project’s significance. As for the pipeline, ibn Saud didn’t seem overly concerned about it, and after Bechtel pledged not to hire “Jewish elements”3 and to switch the pipeline’s terminus from Egypt to Lebanon, readily gave the project his assent.

Indeed, Bechtel and ibn Saud got along so splendidly that by the end of the audience, the king, helped along by an offer of a $10 million loan Bechtel had promised to secure through the U.S. ExportImport 85

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Bank, had commissioned IBI to build not only the railroad, but a port facility at Damman, a modern pier at Jeddah and the electrification of the entire city of Riyadh as well. Afterward, U.S. minister J. Rives Childs cabled Washington: “STEPHEN BECHTEL INFORMED ME TODAY

HIS FIRM HAS ASSOCIATED ITSELF FOR EXTENSIVE OPERATIONS NOW

PLANNED IN THIS COUNTRY …. BECHTEL STATES WORK CONTRACTED

FOR WILL REQUIRE AT LEAST 2000 AMERICANS AND 10 TO 20 THOUSAND

SAUDIS AND PLANS ARE BEING MADE TO GO AHEAD FORTHWITH.”4

On his return to San Francisco, Bechtel himself called the pipeline project “the biggest news since Boulder Dam” and claimed that the 30-inch, 400,000-barrel-per-day line “will be the mightiest ever laid.

In the Middle East program,” he continued, “I cannot help but foresee tremendous possibilities pointing towards the biggest development of natural resources ever undertaken by American interests. “5

In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, work on the pipeline and the king’s railroad had commenced simultaneously. Like different divisions of the same army, the Bechtel crews-“Camel Legionnaires,” they called themselves-and thousands of Arab laborers pushed across the desert, laying down pipeline and railroad tracks along the routes ancient caravans had traversed for thousands of years. It was an expensive undertaking-the transportation and housing costs for each American alone amounted to $5,000, and in addition, Bechtel paid workers who completed their eighteen-month tour the bonus equivalent of a year’s salary-and for the workers, who labored ten hours a day in 100-degree-plus heat, a backbreakingly dangerous one as well. Traffic accidents in which Arabs, unaccustomed to the presence of motor vehicles, were struck by speeding, often inexperienced American drivers were frequent-so frequent that Bechtel developed an unofficial compensation policy. As a memo from the American Consulate in Dhahran explained it: “Such cases are usually settled with company cooperation by a payment or bribe to the Arab, the amount varying with the degree of his mental or physical health. “6

Within the work camps, which were fitted out like self-contained

“Little Americas,” drunkenness and brawling were a constant problem, despite the presence of Bechtel’s own armed force of security men. One IBI worker, Robert W Agnew, became so unsettled by the conditions that he demanded to be sent home, with full pay, fifteen months before his contract was up. His charges that the company condoned violence, gambling and drunkenness were largely ignored until he threatened to sue and put together a rambling brief detailing what he claimed were 86

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regular beatings, forced labor and general abuse of Arabs, including depriving them of water. Before the document could be made public it fell into the hands of the American consulate, which reported to the State Department that Agnew was “either mentally unbalanced or attempting to extort money from his employer.” As for Agnew’s charges, the consulate conceded that many of them