“…Bush climbed through Republican politics to become Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Ford Administration. After spending four years displaced by the Carter Administration, Bush was now Reagan’s Vice President with Executive Order authority for the National Security Council (NSC) and U.S. intelligence and enforcement agencies. Bush’s new authority was married with expanded powers to outsource sensitive work to private contractors. Such work could be funded through the non-transparent financial mechanisms available through the National Security Act of 1947, and the CIA Act of 1949.
This was a secret source of money for funding powerful new weaponry and surveillance technology and operations owned, operated or controlled by private corporations.3 Carter’s massive layoffs at the CIA had created plenty of private contractor capacity looking for work.4 An assassination attempt on President Reagan’s life two months after the inauguration meant that Vice President Bush and his team were called on to play an expanded role. Meantime, Nicholas Brady continued as an intimate friend and collaborator from his position as Chairman of Dillon Read.5
In April of 1981, Bechtel, working through the Bechtel private venture arm Sequoia, bought the controlling interest in Dillon Read from the Dillon family, led by C. Douglas Dillon, former U.S. Treasury Secretary6 and son of the firm’s namesake, Clarence Dillon. This was a time when Bechtel was facing increased competition globally while experiencing a decline in the nuclear power business that they had pioneered.7
We found ourselves with new owners whose operations were an integral part of the military and intelligence communities and who had demonstrated a rapacious thirst for drinking from the federal money spigot.[8] George Schultz, former Secretary of the Treasury during the Nixon Administration, and now Bechtel executive, joined our board…”