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

hearings, McCone defended himself by saying that the scientists were “using their position in the institute” to “inject themselves into what appeared to be a political argument.” Apparently satisfied, the Senate quickly confirmed McCone.

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FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

nuclear plants. Paying such subsidies, he argued, would make up all or more of the difference between the cost of nuclear plants and the lower price tags for conventional oil-or coal-fired plants, hastening the nuclear industry on its way. Another decision McCone made was to halt uranium-buying from foreign sources; henceforth radioactive ore was to be obtained exclusively through U.S. companies, principally Union Carbide (a major customer of the McCone-and-Bechtelowned Joshua Hendry Corporation), Kaiser and Utah Construction.

Next, he appointed three executives from Standard Oil of California and the president of PG&E-all of them major Bechtel customers

-to study the question of federal subsidies for reactors, such as those being built by General Electric. Not surprisingly, the resultant study called for “a vigorous [government-supported] developmental program.”

All these measures were taken without much critical comment.

Then, in June 1958, McCone overstepped himself.

What proved his undoing-at least in terms of public embarrassment-was a contract let by the U.S. Maritime Commission for the operation of the $40 million S.S. Savannah, the world’s first -and, on the basis of the Savannah’s costly experience, last-nuclear-powered commercial merchant ship. Operating the Savannah, which Hyman Rickover later branded “a huge boondoggle,” was rightly counted as a financial plum, and lest there be any hint of impropriety, the Maritime Commission appointed a professional selection board to sort out the qualifications of six bidders, among them States Marine Line, a company in which McCone and Bechtel had a working partnership through Joshua Hendry shipping.

When the rankings were announced, States Marine placed next to last, trailed only by yet another McCone entity, U.S. Lines, and just below still another, Pacific Far East. Thereupon, Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks, a friend of both Bechtel’s and McCone’s, overrode his own board and directed its members to reconsider. They did, and bumped States Marine up three slots to second place. At that point, ferocious lobbying commenced, and when it was over, States Marine had won the contract.

Despite being pilloried by the likes of public-affairs columnist Drew Pearson, McCone shrugged off the incident, though, under pressure, he did agree to place his various shipping interests in an irrevocable trust. In any event, the Savannah affair did nothing to diminish 110

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McCone’s enthusiasm for nuclear power. W ith the approval of Congress and the administration, he began spreading U.S. nuclear technology overseas, providing foreign aid in the form of experimental reactors to a host of countries large and small. The idea, as McCone explained it in an interview in 1974, was to give these countries reactors “so they would become accustomed to the operation of a reactor and to the handling of radioactive material. We did that in a great many countries,” McCone went on. “Some were not prepared to enter the field, such as Vietnam, Korea, other less advanced countries. I’ve forgotten how many of these reactors were set up around the world, but maybe a hundred of them. I think that, in retrospect, we went a little too fast on that. “18

McCone was equally zealous in his support of U.S. nuclear-arms development, but here Eisenhower finally drew the line in late summer 1958, when