Privatisation, the CIA and the ‘evil empire’

By David Lindsay

From investigations carried out by MaltaToday, it has been revealed that one of the companies involved in the recently disappointed Alterra consortium, the Bechtel Corporation, has an appalling track record littered with environmental degradation for profit, close two-way links with the infamous US Central Intelligence Agency and deep ties to the US Republican party, the latter of which could explain the US Embassy’s close interest in the dispute.

In the government’s bid to privatise the operations of the Malta International Airport, it is interesting to note the controversy, and in some cases the lack thereof, arising from the different political and social spheres.

For starters the Malta Labour Party is calling for an independent investigation into the Malta International Airport deal and if the current administration fails to do so, it has promised to traverse that avenue itself when re-elected.

However, such criticism is only natural from a party in opposition, but when the US embassy became involved in the fray more than a few eyebrows were raised.

The Embassy’s interest in the deal, of course, is rooted in the involvement of the US company Bechtel Enterprises - the project development, financing, and ownership affiliate of the Bechtel Organisation, a corporation of enormous proportions and corporate clout, which it has never been afraid to use in the past.

Indeed, it is an open secret that Bechtel has firm and deep ties to the heavyweights in the US Republican party and the World Bank, which have both helped the conglomerate win lucrative contracts the world over.

From research carried out by MaltaToday, the Bechtel empire is also reported to have close links with the ominous US Central Intelligence Agency, which it has put to its benefit. The US Agency for International Development, an arm of the CIA, had awarded Bechtel a US$4.3 million contract to assist several third world countries such as Morocco, Bangladesh, Costa Rica and Jamaica to develop their fossil fuel resources.

It is also reported that through its close relationship with the CIA, it employed several people in many sensitive places such as Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and the Soviet Union – with the primary aim of gathering intelligence for the CIA.

Bechtel had stood to profit in all these places, with the CIA and Bechtel allegedly nurturing a reciprocal relationship, with the US government providing privileged information that has proved vital to their operations in so many countries.

Since its origins in 1906 as a railroad construction concern, the corporation has earned itself considerable wealth, large political influence and an infamous reputation in many circles. Using the influence of friends in high places, Bechtel amassed a fortune building war ships, pipelines, oil refineries, liquid gas plants, hydro-electric complexes and several nuclear power plants.

The corporation has also been involved in many privatisation processes. In a similar incident to the MIA debacle, and one that led to a similar US reaction, the bidding process for the privatisation of Panama's ports had gone against Bechtel’s favour in 1996. Panama’s US ambassador had complained that Bechtel had been required to re-bid twice on the project and that Panama's "lack of transparency has been very disappointing."

Eyebrows were also raised in the MaltaToday newsroom when local left-leaning NGOs neglected to object to Bechtel’s involvement in Malta’s privatisation process, as Bechtel is one of the international anti-globalisation and environment movements’ favourite punching bags and as such the corporation has been repeatedly singled out as an ‘evil empire’.

Bechtel is one of, if not the, largest engineering construction companies in the US. It has helped build the Alaska pipeline, the Hoover Dam, the San Francisco Bay Bridge, natural gas pipelines in Algeria and refineries in Zambia, and numerous nuclear power plants. It has also been implicated in the infamous Three Gorges Dam in China, which has caused the forced relocation of 1.3 million people and numerous other disastrous incidents, including many botched nuclear power plant construction projects across the United States.

As co-manager of the ill-fated Three Mile Island nuclear power plant disaster cleanup, Bechtel was heavily fined for deliberately circumventing safety procedures and modifications to the plant in attempts to avoid safety controls. Bechtel was cited by the US Environmental Protection Agency for 730 incidents of hazardous materials spills between 1990 and 1997.

Internationally, the company is fighting charges of human rights abuses in many places.

Bechtel built the 215 dams and dykes of northern Quebec that destroyed the traditional fishing grounds of the Cree Indians. The corporation was involved in the early stages of the Xiaolangdi Dam on the Yellow River in China, which dislocated over 80,000 people.

In 1997, Amnesty International issued a report condemning the Dabhol power plant project in India, a joint project of three US companies, including Bechtel. Amnesty said that critics of the project were subjected to "harassment, arbitrary arrest, preventive detention and ill-treatment" and placed a great deal of the responsibility on the companies themselves.

In New Guinea, Bechtel helped build, and still helps operate, the infamous Freeport McMoRan Grasberg gold mine - the biggest in the world - which has devastated the local tropical forests with its massive dumping of toxic waste.

In Papua New Guinea, the dam Bechtel was building to contain the waste from another gold mine collapsed in 1984. Twelve years later, the locals successfully sued the operators of the mine for dumping 80,000 tonnes of toxic waste daily into the Fly River.

In the kind of big business Bechtel is involved in – in which money, power and privilege are the order of the day – nothing can be underestimated, especially when the mix involves big money and diplomatic will.