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

in the administration might think of him (including White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, who treated him with special condescension), Kearns had Nixon’s full confidence, and was one of the few administration officials able to drop by the Oval Office without prior clearance from Haldeman. During one such visit, Nixon revealed to Kearns that for foreign-policy and economic reasons, he wanted to greatly increase U.S. exports. Accordingly, Kearns by 1972 was to boost Eximbank loans to $10 billion.

It was a staggering sum, more than three times the total of all the bank’s outstanding loans, when Kearns assumed office-more, in fact, than the bank had lent in its entire thirty-three year history. If he was going to meet Nixon’s goal, Kearns, who had no lending experience, 155

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needed advice. He decided to seek it from Steve Bechtel, Sr.

The two had met in 1955, when Kearns was serving on the Hoover Commission on Intelligence, and Bechtel, a longtime friend of the intelligence community, had flown to Washington to kibbitz. Kearns came away from the experience impressed-indeed, nearly awedand since then, he and Bechtel had stayed in frequent touch. When, in May 1969, Kearns asked Bechtel to serve on the bank’s six-member advisory committee and Steve accepted, Kearns could not conceal his delight. In signing on Steve Bechtel, Kearns boasted to friends, he had acquired not just an advisor, but instant credibility.

Bechtel, for his part, had acquired entree into the U.S. vault.

Through the years, below-market, federally guaranteed loans like those provided by the ExportImport Bank had been one of the keys to his company’s overseas success-and Bechtel had been a master in securing them. “The South American general who needed $60 million to build a pipeline usually didn’t have any idea where to go for his financing or what elevator button to push when he got there,” said one former Bechtel director. “[Our] job was to point the way and help him put together all the necessary paperwork. “2 But for all of Bechtel’s financial finesse-and the billions that accrued because of it-never had the company enjoyed such free access to no-risk, low interest capital as Kearns was offering now. It was a unique opportunity, and while it lasted, Bechtel made the most of it.

He began by flattering Kearns’s ego-congratulating him on the fine job he was doing, and offering to help in any way possible. Knowing of Kearns’s thirst for publicity (one of his first moves at the bank had been to launch a splashy public relations campaign), Bechtel also began sending along newspaper clips about the bank’s activities, attaching to them complimentary notes. He ingratiated himself further by suggesting to Kearns that he commission a film about the bank, in which its president, naturally, would play a starring role. To make it possible, Bechtel personally undertook some low-keyed lobbying with Congress that resulted in an increase in the bank’s public relations budget.

A great believer in the value of favor-doing-“lt’s more effective to do a man a favor than to ask him for one,” Steve senior told his executives-Bechtel provided more and more as the months went by. When, for instance, a traveling Eximbank official sought an introduction in Jakarta or accommodations in Manila, it was Bechtel employees who arranged it. Similarly, when Keams or his vicechairman, Walter C.

Sauer, decided that the bank should prepare a study on a particular industry, Bechtel brought in the Stanford Research Institute or pro-156

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vided Bechtel’s own research. He was just as gracious in offering to fill in