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

taking Maguire’s statement, Hangari had the American placed under protective custody in a Tripoli hotel. Several days later, after Maguire had been secretly flown to Italy in the care of a Libyan plainclothes officer, Hangari launched a confidential investigation. His aim was to put Armand Hammer in jail.

But before anything could come of Hangari’s probe, Libya was overtaken by the “inevitable blowup” Jerry Komes had predicted to Steve junior nine years before. On the night of September 1, 1969, a group of young colonels-preempting a similar move about to be made by court minister Shelbi-overthrew the regime of King Idris and proclaimed themselves Libya’s masters. The new “Revolution Command Council,” as it was dubbed, was headed by a then-obscure young officer from the area where the French had gained their oil concessions.

His name was Muhammar al-Qaddafi.

Tipped by the CIA that a coup was imminent, Mustafa ben Halim and the executives of most American companies, including those of Occidental and Bechtel, had by then left the country to take refuge in Rome. Senior U.S. officials soon assured them there was no cause for worry. The young officers, the U.S. embassy cabled Washington would prove to be important assets in the struggle to keep Soviet influence and Communism out of the Arab world. Already, the cable continued,

According to U.S. government sources, Halim left Liby a on a Saudi passport provided him by Bechtel and the CIA. Eventually, he settled in London, where he became a financial consultant to various Saudi Arabian interests, as well as paymaster for anti-Qaddafi exile groups. In 1976, while on a business trip to Beirut, Halim was kidnapped by Palestinians in Qaddafi’s employ and stuffed into the trunk of a Mercedes, which the Palestinians then proceeded to push off a cliff. Luckily for Halim, the car got stuck on a promontory and did not crash and bum as planned. After several day s of being trapped in the trunk, Halim was finally rescued and returned to London, vastly amused by the incident. His humor began to wane during the middle 1980s, when Qaddafi dispatched assassination squads to various European capitals, intent on eliminating exiles like himself. Eventually, Halim fled to an affluent suburb of a major U.S. city, where, guarded heavily, he continues to reside today.

150

LIBYA

Qaddafi had promised to protect “all Western interests, including the pumping of oil. “7

Taking the State Department at its word, Bechtel and Occidental returned to Libya, and within a month, crews from both companies were back at work. They would remain there doing business, at least until 1971, when Libya nationalized the assets of foreign oil companies. They would build more pipelines, more refinery facilities, more of everything connected with oil. It was a profitable enterprise for all of them.

151

CHAPTER

l 4

A FRIEND

IN THE WHITE HOUSE

W hile the

tunity Bechtel

in

Corporation

Libya, Lyndon

was making

Johnson had the most

been

of its

having a opporrather

more difficult time in the White House-all of which was fine with Bechtel.

Despite the posts and contracts that had occasionally come their way, Steve junior and his father had never much cared for Johnson, who was a Democrat, sometimes confused which of them was who and, worst of all, was bound body and soul t<!> their chief business rivals, the Texasbased construction giant Brown and Root. It was Brown and Root that had gotten most of the choice projects during LBJ’s administration, from constructing the Space Center in Houston to building the infrastructure for the Vietnam War. Bechtel, by contrast, had come away with only comparative crumbs, and in one instance, namely Libya, had been pressured by the White House to take on Brown and Root