----
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030418/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_bechtel_4
Bechtel's Political Clout Helps Land Bid Fri Apr 18, 3:36 PM ET
By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer
[..]
After serving as treasury secretary in the Nixon administration, George Shultz was Bechtel's president for seven years before he left in 1981 to become secretary of state in the Reagan administration.
And Casper Weinberger was its general counsel and served on the company's board from 1975-81 before becoming secretary of defense under Reagan.
While Shultz was America's top diplomat, the U.S. government tried unsuccessfully to persuade Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) to let Bechtel build a pipeline to carry Iraqi crude oil through Jordan to the Red Sea port of Aqaba.
In 1983, Rumsfeld, while working as a special U.S. envoy in the Middle East, traveled to Baghdad to discuss the pipeline with Saddam and Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, according to memos in the National Archives.
Iraq nixed the pipeline idea in 1986. Shultz has since returned to Bechtel's board of directors.
Bechtel Wins Iraq Reconstruction Contract
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
[...]
President Bush (news - web sites) named Ross Connelly, a former Bechtel executive, as executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Overseas Private Investment Corp. - the agency that supports U.S. investment around the globe.
[...]
The San Francisco Chronicle reported in January that Bechtel and least one other U.S. company sold Iraq technology that helped build up its military in the 1980s. The story attributed the information to a German journalist with access to a document on Iraq weapons that was turned over to the United Nations (news - web sites).
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (news - web sites), asked about the story, said that the focus at the time was on the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran and "different administrations, beginning with President Carter, reached different conclusions about the level of military cooperation vis-a-vis Iraq."
Bechtel spokesman Jeff Berger said it was "absolutely false" that the company aided the Iraqi military. The company worked on two projects in Iraq in the 1980s: a hydroelectric dam and a petrochemical plant that was to make a "garden variety" of products including plastics and synthetic rubber, he said. The plant was under construction when Bechtel's involvement ended, Berger said.