wikipedia | McCone was born in San Francisco, California.
His father ran iron foundries across California, a business started in
Nevada in 1860 by McCone's grandfather. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1922 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering,
beginning his career in Los Angeles' Llewellyn Iron Works. He rose
swiftly and in 1929, when several works merged to become the Consolidated Steel Corporation, he became executive vice president. He also founded Bechtel-McCone.[2]
A prominent industrialist,
McCone also served for more than twenty years as a governmental advisor
and official, including head positions at the Atomic Energy Commission
and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He also worked for the ITT corporation. In 1946, Ralph Casey of the General Accounting Office
implied that McCone was a war profiteer, testifying that McCone and his
associates of the California Shipbuilding Corporation had made
$44,000,000 on an investment of $100,000."[3] McCone's political affiliation was with the Republican Party.[2]
In 1958, he became chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission.
According to journalist Seymour Hersh, in December 1960, while still
Atomic Energy Commission chairman, McCone revealed CIA information about
Israel's Dimona nuclear weapons plant to The New York Times. Hersh writes that President John F. Kennedy was "fixated" on the Israeli nuclear weapons program and appointed McCone CIA director in part because of his willingness to deal with this and other nuclear weapons issues – and despite the fact that McCone was a Republican.[4]
