Volume CCXXXIII, Number 33 May, 2003
Worcester, Massachusetts Since 1770
Honorable Mention, 2003 Republican Guard Award for courage
And the winner is . . .
BIG DIG BUNGLER
TURNS TO BAGHDAD
Giant contractor Bechtel hopes it will have better luck with rebuilding Iraq than with this ill-fated bridge project, for which it billed the Big Dig $1.4 billion. | |||||||
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In what had to be the least surprising news story of the week, the Bush Administration, after a worldwide search, announced that it had awarded a contract worth up to $680 million to . . . Bechtel, the politically connected contractor who brought us the Big Dig, six years late and six billion dollars over budget. It's hard to know if it was that record of achievement that gave Bechtel the edge in the secret and uncompetitive bidding process presided over by proconsuls like Don "Shorty" Rumsfeld. According to TomPaine.com, however, Little Napoleon III has been carrying Bechtel's water in Iraq since the 1980's, when he tried to persuade his ally to hire Bechtel to build a pipeline. The name of that ally was, you may recalll, Saddam Hussein. To check out the whole sordid tale, click here. It is of course pure coincidence that Reagan's Secretary of State is a Bechtel director and Ron's Secretary of Defense, Caspar "Nolo Contendere" Weinberger, was General Counsel. It is equally fortuitous that Bechtel's CEO and owner, Riley Bechtel, has done plenty of heavy lifting for the Bush Administration and California Republicans. Supposedly the money will be used for improvements to infrastructure and construction of schools and hospitals; in other words, for all the things the Bush Administration won't pay for in the U.S. But some wonder how much Bechtel will be getting and what your money will buy. The initial contract is for $35 million, but the total is expected to escalate to $680 million, which sounds like the typical cost overrun on a Bechtel job. Hell, that kind of money wouldn't buy a guard rail on the Bechtel-mismanaged Big Dig, but maybe it'll pay to push some Iraqi tanks off the highway. Bechtel's record of getting away with wasting billions in Boston has been extensively documented by the Glob, as has been Bechtel's cozy relationships with former Republican hacks like Bill "Happy Hour" Weld. Of course, Boston is a long way from Washington, at least in the narrow minds of the Bushies, so it's possible that Bechtel's sorry record on the Central Artery project isn't well known in Washington. After all how could the U.S. Agency for International Development, a branch of the State Department, be expected to follow obscure construction overruns in far off New England? It's not as if USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, who awarded the contract, had any contact with the Big Dig project. Except for the years he spent as Highway Commissioner in Massachusetts – running the Big Dig.
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