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Bechtel threatened to evade
sanctions
By Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON - US construction giant Bechtel, a
firm with an enormous contract to help rebuild Iraq, had
planned to hire "non-US suppliers of technology" in 1988
in order to evade US economic sanctions imposed after
Saddam Hussein used poison gas against the restive
Kurdish minority, according to a newly declassified
government document.
Bechtel, which built Hoover
Dam and Hong Kong International Airport, maintains that
it has always respected and complied with US government
prohibitions and sanctions in Iraq. The recently
disclosed document, however, shows how Bechtel's
officials were prepared to challenge even its Washington
allies in order to retain its business.
According to a confidential 1988 State
Department cable, obtained under the Freedom of
Information Act by the non-profit National Security
Archive (NSA), US Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie wrote
that Bechtel officials threatened to bypass the
sanctions, passed by the Senate in 1988.
"Bechtel representatives said that if economic
sanctions contained in the Senate act are signed into
law, Bechtel will turn to non-US suppliers of technology
and continue to do business in Iraq," the cable said.
The document also shows further
behind-the-scenes particulars of how the US corporation,
now part of President George W Bush's project to take
democracy to post-Saddam Iraq, courted Saddam's
dictatorial regime with full knowledge of its tacit use
of chemical weapons against Iranian troops and the Kurds
- and with the approval of US diplomats.
"They
(Bechtel) were certainly well aware of what was going on
in Iraq and had no qualms about making a buck there,"
said Jim Vallette, research director at the
Washington-based Sustainable Energy and Economy Network.
"So they had no concerns over what Saddam was doing to
his own people."
Director Tom Blanton of the
National Security Archive said his organization is
trying to shed light on the context of the current US
occupation of Iraq by looking at the history of the
relationship between Iraq and the US. "What we are doing
with these documents is to try to provide some missing
context to current political decisions and current
contracting decisions," Blanton said.
Washington
has been accused of cronyism after the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded
no-bid contracts to US corporations to help rebuild Iraq
after the US-led invasion - companies of which some have
close ties to the Bush administration. In April, Bechtel
was awarded one of the largest contracts to date by
USAID for infrastructure repair in US-occupied Iraq. The
deal, worth an initial US$34.6 million, could reach up
to a total of $680 million.
US allies such as
France, Germany and Russia - all opponents of the war -
have also complained about Washington's recent decision
to allow only supporters of the Iraq war to bid for the
lucrative reconstruction contracts. That excludes those
countries, unless they agree to write off or restructure
major portions of Iraq's debt - the latest US example of
carrot-and-stick diplomacy.
Another high-profile
company - Halliburton Co, Vice President Dick Cheney's
old firm - is being accused by Pentagon auditors of
refusing to hand over internal documents that could shed
light on accounting problems related to an Iraq fuel
contract and alleged overcharging of US taxpayers by as
much as $61 million.
In the 1980s Bechtel signed
a technical services contract to manage the
implementation of Iraq's $2 billion Petrochemical
Project II. US firms, including Bechtel, won $300
million in contracts to build the plant. But the deal
was jeopardized when the US Senate wanted to penalize
Baghdad for using chemical weapons against the Kurds,
although it was well documented that Saddam Hussein had
employed such weapons against Iran in the Iran-Iraq War
for at least four years before he used them on the Kurds
in the north.
The Senate sanctions initiative
followed a series of Iraqi chemical weapons assaults
against the Kurds - most notably in Halabja in March
1988 - and US lawmakers called for strict economic
sanctions against Baghdad, including blocking all
international loans, credits and other types of
assistance. That made it impossible for Bechtel to do
business.
Iraq's then-minister of industry
Hussein Kamil, who also was Saddam Hussein's son-in-law,
told Bechtel officials he was angry the Senate passed
the "Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988", according to
the cable from then-Ambassador Glaspie in Baghdad.
The cable says Kamil "vented his spleen for one
and a half hours", adding that the proposed sanctions
legislation "caught his government completely by
surprise" because it came at a time of "improving
relations with the US". Kamil, the cable says, insisted
Washington would wrongly "mix politics with business".
Glaspie noted that as "one of Saddam Hussein's
closest advisers, some say his closest ... we take
Kamil's angry reaction ... to be an accurate reflection
of Saddam's own reaction".
Two days later,
representatives of Bechtel met with Glaspie to discuss
Kamil's anti-Senate outburst, a meeting she described in
the declassified cable. Fearing a loss of the contract,
Bechtel officials then threatened to use non-US
suppliers and technology in order to keep the lucrative
deal in place, in spite of the Senate's decision on
sanctions.
The incident, says Vallette of the
Sustainable Energy and Economy Network, clearly shows
how the company bordered on "black-mailing" Washington,
even on the rare occasion when corporate profit
conflicted with a decision by Congress. "The cable
uncovered by the National Security Archive certainly
shows that Bechtel's true practice is to go foreign
policy shopping, shifting business overseas when
Washington does not cooperate," Vallette said. "That's
the stick that the companies wield against Washington if
Washington acts against their bottom line," he added.
Director Blanton of the National Security
Archive described the document as evidence of the
complexity of the relationship between Saddam Hussein's
regime and the United States. "The whole war in Iraq is
being presented in very stark, moralistic
black-and-white terms. But the reality of history, the
reality of the relationship between the US and Iraq, has
never been in black-and-white terms," Blanton said.
"It's been very realpolitik, and concerns about Iraq's
chemical weapons are late bloomers in the list of US
worries related to Iraq," he added.
Vallette
said the document also calls into question whether
Bechtel, which chose to do business with Saddam Hussein
despite well-documented evidence he was using banned
weapons, should be allowed to continue to profit from
rebuilding Iraq.
"I think any company that
profits from dictators' brutalities should not be in
charge of allegedly helping build a democracy in Iraq or
anywhere else," Vallette said.
Click here to see the declassified
National Security Archive cable.
(Inter Press
Service)
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