We come to Bechtel today - the #1 nuclear profiteer and leading beneficiary of the Iraq war and corporate globalization . Through its sordid corporate history and 100 years of revolving-door relationships with government, Bechtel illustrates the connections between profiteering and war, nuclear power and nuclear weapons proliferation, free trade and the exploitation of indigenous peoples, and corporate power-brokers and decision-makers at the highest levels of government.

Bechtel had a hand in developing the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now it's receiving over $20 billion to manage such National Nuclear Security Administration facilities as

-Y-12 National Security Complex and Oak Ridge National Lab in TN
-Pantex Plant in Texas
-Savannah River Site in South Carolina
-Kwajalein missile range off the Marshal Islands
-Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico
-Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in Pittsburgh.

Bechtel has built the majority of nuclear power plants in the U.S. and around the world (often violating safety guidelines doing so). Now it is “double-dipping” by earning billions of dollars to clean up the radioactive waste its plants generate. For example, Bechtel has a $1.9 billion contract to build the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository on Western Shoshone lands; the Shoshone worry that the waste will contaminate their groundwater (which Bechtel earlier polluted in its goldmining operations). Now Bechtel is poised to rake in more money as the Bush administration paves the way for the construction of more nuclear power plants, at the further expense of the environment and indigenous peoples.

Like the octopus we carry today, Bechtel is a master of disguise; it has unleashed incalculable venom into our world; its tentacles are everywhere apparent and destructive; its suckers do not miss an opportunity to latch onto whatever will enrich its CEOs; the truth of its work is hidden "in the dark" like the black ink of the octopus; its brain is scattered and it is all squish and change, adapting to whatever circumstance will enrich its executives and stock holders.

More - the octopus' ability to regenerate a lost appendage has nothing on Bechtel.

It is no problem for the Bechtel to get the money to regenerate a lab, a weapon, a new program, new weapons materiel, new rationalizations for its deadly work. " The need is clear for a revitalized nuclear weapons complex that will be able to design, develop, manufacture, and certify new warheads in response to new national requirements; and maintain readiness to resume underground testing if required ." There's gold in that sentence. A revitalized nuclear weapons complex, means more than a billion-dollar jump in spending. It's the ultimate white-collar welfare; the weapons complex is a jobs program for private military contractors. And BECHTEL is all over it.

When will the American people say: "TOO MUCH!" NO MORE""

August 7, 2007 Jonah House, Dorothy Day Catholic Worker