Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story—the Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World by Laton McCartney

Abstract

702 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE contributions of Americans such as George W. Ball, a future under­ secretary of state, whose shrewd counsel led to employment of the traffic engineers on whose favorable assessment banking support largely depended. Even the “mousehole”—the single-tunnel proposal so ably described in Bonavia’s chapter 15—had a transatlantic history: this concept helped revive diplomatic contacts after the British government abandoned the project and halted construction in 1975. The book is excellent in its treatment of the influence of British in­ sular psychology on the decisions, at the highest level, affecting the “fixed link” with the Continent. On a financial level, it can be said that a project estimated to cost $100 million in 1959 is now destined to cost much more than fifty times that (without allowing for the effects of in­ flation). But viewing the matter more broadly, future historians may regard the decision to proceed with the channel tunnel as a harbinger of intercontinental tubes for trains racing at supersonic velocities— perhaps from Liverpool to Boston, as Jules Verne once speculated in a short story in The Strand Magazine. A proliferation of intercoastal as well as intercontinental “fixed links” will have a profound effect on ev­ eryday life on whatjay Forrester has called ”our tightly coupled planet.” This useful book, while not definitive, can help us understand the dynamics of an era when macroengineering, while not always wel­ comed, offers portentous options. Frank P. Davidson Dr. Davidson was American cofounder of the Channel Tunnel Study Group and remains president of Technical Studies, Inc., U.S. participant in the group. He has written articles on this project for Foreign Affairs, Technology Review, and, most recently, the IATSS Journal (the journal of the International Association of Traffic and Safety Sciences). Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story—the Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World. By Laton McCartney. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988. Pp. 273; illustrations, notes, index. $19.95. The Bechtel Corporation and Brown and Root, Stone and Webster, Morrison-Knudsen Co., and a number of other large engineering firms that work on an international scale are quite clearly not only technological but also economic, political, and even diplomatic forces to be reckoned with. Not one of them, let alone such firms as a group, has been the subject of a scholarly historical monograph. This is perhaps not surprising since Bechtel, at least, is a privately held company and thus fails to generate much of the public record of firms traded on the stock market. It is, however, a great pity, because as intersections of power they are important foci at which we can discover how much of our society came to be as it is. Warren A. (“Dad”) Bechtel began the construction business on his own in Oakland, California, in 1906. His operation grew largely on TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 703 railroad and highway construction, and in 1921 he entered into partnership with the young Henry J. Kaiser. The senior Bechtel’s greatest triumph (as a partner in Six Companies, Inc.) was Boulder Dam. In the Second World War, under his son Stephen D. Bechtel, the firm was heavily committed to the building of Liberty ships and undertook the infamous Canol oil pipeline to Alaska. It also became involved in oil work in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Near East. During the 1950s, Bechtel heavily committed itself to nuclear power, and it has built many plants around the world. In 1983, still a family-led firm, the company had revenues of $14.1 billion. One key to Bechtel’s success was that it discovered early the attractiveness of turnkey operations. The company was pleased to build entire facilities and simply turn them over to clients, ready to go. This service included the necessary bribes to Arab princes, lowinterest loan arrangements from the Export-Import Bank, changes in presidential policy, and enthusiastic projections by “disinterested” think tanks. Bechtel was able to make these delicate arrangements because the family had “friends in high places,” as the title has it. John McCone, for example, was a classmate of Steve Bechtel at the engineering school of the University of California...