Where
Was Cheney? *
Retribution from Cheney's Halliburton *
A top Army
contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract
with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday
for what the Army called poor job performance. The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, has worked in military procurement for 20
years and for the past several years had been the chief overseer of
contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that has
managed much of the reconstruction work in Iraq. . . Ms.
Greenhouse's lawyer, Michael Kohn, called the action an "obvious
reprisal" for the strong objections she raised in 2003 to a series
of corps decisions involving the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg
Brown & Root, which has garnered more than $10 billion for work in
Iraq. Dick Cheney led Halliburton, which is based in Texas,
before he became vice president
Erik Eckholm, NY
Times 8/29/05
MORE
Halliburton Today *
* Halliburton
is currently being investigated by the US Federal Bureau of
Investigations and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additionally,
the US Department of Justice is investigating Halliburton's work in
Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, and the Balkans.
War
Profiteers, 5/16/05
MORE
Cheney's
Halliburton's $80M from Iran*
Halliburton
Co. will pull out of Iran after its current contracts there are wound
down, its chief executive said Friday. "The business
environment currently in Iran is not conducive to our overall strategy
and objectives," Chief Executive Dave Lesar said in a conference
call. . .Halliburton said in July that it had received a subpoena
seeking information about operations in Iran of its Cayman Islands
subsidiary, Halliburton Products & Services Ltd. The company
has argued that using a Cayman Islands subsidiary exempts it from a
U.S.-imposed trade embargo against Iran, which is accused of seeking
nuclear arms and funding terrorist networks. Halliburton provided no
details on when its current contracts in Iran would be completed or on
the value of the work. The company generated about $80 million in
revenue in Iran in 2003 .
Reuters, 1/29/05 MORE
Halliburton and the "Merchant of Death* *
In an effort
to crack down on one of the world's most notorious international
criminals, President George W. Bush last summer signed an order
barring U.S. citizens from doing business with Russian arms trafficker
Victor Bout. But not long afterward, U.S. officials discovered Bout's
tentacles were wider than anticipated: for much of this year, NEWSWEEK
has learned, a Texas charter firm allegedly controlled by Bout was
making repeated flights to Iraq—courtesy of a Pentagon contract
allowing it to refuel at U.S. military bases. One reason for the
flights, sources say, was that the firm was flying on behalf of
Kellogg Brown & Root, the division of Halliburton hired to rebuild
Iraq's oilfields. U.S. officials say Bout—once dubbed a
"merchant of death" by a British foreign minister—built an empire in
the 1990s flying weapons to the Taliban and African dictators
Michael
Isikoff,
Newsweek 12/20/04 Issue
MORE
$10
Billion for Halliburton*
Halliburton
Co. has passed the $10 billion mark in work orders from the Army for
services supporting U.S. troops in Iraq. The Army Materiel
Command has ordered $8.3 billion in work from Halliburton under a
contract to support troops with meals, laundry, housing and other
services. The Army Corps of Engineers awarded an additional $2.5
billion to Halliburton under a no-bid contract to fight oil fires and
help restore Iraq's crumbling oil industry infrastructure.
Allegations of financial misdeeds, including corruption and
overcharging, have led to criminal, congressional and Pentagon
investigations of Halliburton's work in Iraq. Congressional
critics say the Bush administration is going easy on the oil services
company, which Vice President Dick Cheney ran from 1995 to 2000.
Cheney and Halliburton deny any preferential treatment.
AP, 12/10/04
MORE
Current Halliburton Investigations
The
investigations of Halliburton's work in Iraq include: .
AP 10/4/04
MORE
3
Halliburton Grand Juries*
T he
legal hurdles which has attended Halliburton's over work in Nigeria,
Iraq and Iran continues to mount following the company's latest
filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission which disclosed
that a federal grand jury is probing possible criminal wrongdoing
regarding payments to secure construction work in Nigeria.
Halliburton reported for the first time that "payments may have been
made to Nigerian officials" by an agent representing Halliburton and
three other construction firms who are building the liquefied natural
gas plant. Another grand jury is hearing evidence in Houston
about the company's dealings in Iran, and a third is meeting in
Illinois to look at Halliburton's contracts with the Pentagon for work
in Iraq .
Hector Igbikiowubo,
Agency, 11/16/04
MORE
KBR:
Worth Investigating*
" Let's say a
major corporation with ties to the second-highest official in the U.S.
government gets a no-bid, multibillion-dollar contract. Then the
company bungles the deal, and perhaps gouges taxpayers in the process.
Isn't this arrangement worth scrutinizing?. . The FBI then began a
probe into suspicions that Halliburton and its subsidiaries
overcharged for goods and services. Now that probe has been expanded
to include the process used to award the no-bid contracts in the first
place. . . Greenhouse, the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting
officer, admitted her agency may not have followed rules in awarding
no-bid contracts to KBR." South
Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board 11/6/04
MORE
FBI
Investigates Cheney's Halliburton*
The Federal
Bureau of Investigation is investigating whether the Army's handling
of a large Iraq contract with the Halliburton Company violated
procurement rules, according to lawyers for an Army official who made
the charges of improprieties. . .
ERIK ECKHOLM, NY Times,
10/29/04
MORE
Halliburton's Crooked Contracts*
The
top civilian contracting official for the Army Corps of Engineers,
charging that the Army granted the Halliburton Company large contracts
for work in Iraq and the Balkans without following rules designed to
ensure competition and fair prices to the government, has called for a
high-level investigation of what she described as threats to the
"integrity of the federal contracting program.". .In an Oct. 21 letter
to the acting Army secretary, Ms. Greenhouse said that after her
repeated questions about the Halliburton contracts, she was excluded
from major decisions to award money and that her job status was
threatened. . .The contracts to Halliburton, a Houston-based
conglomerate headed by Dick Cheney before he became vice president, .
. .involving work for more than $10 billion, have also been dogged by
charges of overbilling and waste
ERIK ECKHOLM, NY Times,
10/25/04
10
Issues for Cheney*
[H]ere
is a list of ten questions that ought to be directed to Dick Cheney:
John Nichols, The Nation,
10/3/04
MORE
Cheney
and the $132m Bribe*
A lawyer, based in offices in a run-down part of north
London, worked with three British executives from the US construction
group Halliburton to pay at least $132m (£73m) in "unjustified" fees
to contacts in Nigeria. These payments, many of which occurred
when Halliburton was being run by Dick Cheney, now the American
Vice-President, helped a consortium including the US group to win a
$12bn contract to build a gas terminal at Bonny Island in Nigeria. .
.Richard Northmore, a sales manager for MW Kellogg, a Halliburton
subsidiary based. . ., signed contracts with Mr. Tesler for the
consortium, according to testimony seen by The Independent on Sunday.
. . . For its part, Halliburton has fired one senior executive, Jack
Stanley, who it said received improper payments from Mr. Tesler. Mr.
Stanley had been appointed to his senior role at Halliburton by Mr.
Cheney when he was chief executive between 1995 and 2000.
Solomon Hughes and Jason Nisse,
The Independent (UK) 1/3/04 MORE
Cheney's
Halliburton, Corrupt & Inept*
No
corporation has gained more from the invasion of Iraq than
Halliburton. Since the war began, it has moved from No. 19 on the U.S.
Army's list of top contractors to No. 1. Last year, the company
pocketed $4.2 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars. And that's merely the
take so far; the company's Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) subsidiary has
collected what the Washington Post describes as "one of the
contracting plums of the war: a classified no-bid deal worth up to $7
billion to do the restoration work." Yet, by any measure,
Halliburton and KBR have done a horrible job of managing the
occupation and the reconstruction. The company has been investigated
and fined for wrongdoing on the ground, and few days go by without new
evidence surfacing to suggest that Halliburton is either massively
corrupt or massively inept - or, and this is the most likely
explanation, a messy combination of the two.
John Nichols,
Capital Times, 9/28/04
MORE
NeoCons:
On Which Side?*
FBI
counterintelligence investigators have in recent weeks questioned
current and former U.S. officials about whether a small group of Iran
specialists at the Pentagon and in Vice President Cheney's office may
have been involved in passing classified information to an Iraqi
politician or a U.S. lobbying group allied with Israel. . .The
investigators have asked questions about personnel in the office of
Pentagon . . .Douglas J. Feith as well as members of the influential
Defense Policy Board, . . .Investigators have specifically asked about
a group of neoconservatives involved in defense issues,. . .Iran has
been a particularly controversial issue within the Bush
administration, which still does not have a formal policy more than 3
1/2 years after taking office. . . Rep. John Conyers Jr. . .said the
role of U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty in the case has "obvious
political implications"
Wash. Post, 9/4/04
MORE
Cheney's
Nigerian Bribe*
Cheney Fools Halliburton Investors*
Cheney’s Halliburton used accounting sleight of hand to fool investors
. . . The commission says the undisclosed accounting change
caused Halliburton’s public statements regarding its income in 1998
and 1999 to be materially misleading, boosting Halliburton’s profits
on paper by $120 million. . .[Halliburton CEO David] Lesar says
“Cheney knew that the firm was counting projected cost-overrun
payments as revenues, “The vice president was aware of who owed us
money, and he helped us collect it,” Lesar told Newsweek. . . In a
separate but equally corrupt act of corporate malfeasance, a French
judge is pouring over evidence to determine whether Cheney may have
been responsible . . . for at least one of four bribery payments
exchanged between a Halliburton subsidiary and Nigerian officials to
obtain contracts for liquefied natural projects.
Jason Leopold, Bellaciao,8/19/04
Bush Calls for Accountability,
but not from Cheney's Halliburton*
When it
comes to logistical help for U.S. troops in Iraq, Halliburton is the
biggest game in town. Under a wartime contract that's $7 billion and
growing, it's serving the needs of 200,000 troops. But the
Houston-based conglomerate once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney
is neck-deep in allegations of waste and fraud . . ."It costs $110 to
house one KBR employee per day at the Kempinski, while it costs the
Army $1.39 per day to bunk a soldier in a leased tent," DeYoung said .
. .At one site, taxpayers reportedly paid $100 for each 15-pound load
of wash - $1 million a month in overcharges. . . overcharging is the
subject of one federal investigation and there are separate probes for
alleged bribery and kickbacks.
CBS, 8/17/04
Gross
Goss Nomination Helps Cheney*
Were the
Senate to go along with the Administration's provocative nomination of
Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) for CIA Director, it would mark a cowardly
capitulation to the stonewalling of any investigation of the crimes of
Vice President Dick Cheney and his cronies in the Bush Administration.
The Administration's obstruction has been aided greatly by the
Republican leadership of key Congressional oversight committees, and
in this, no one has exceeded the role played by Porter Goss, as
chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
* The
illegal disclosure by White House officials, of the identity of CIA
covert operative Valerie Plame .
Edward
Spannaus
Why
Was Valerie Plame Outed?*
The possibility that VP Cheney was
hoping to derail a sting operation involving Valerie Plame . . . does
explain why VP Cheney would condone the breaking of the federal law,
and risk the most serious scandal that this administration faces.
Further research by an ad hoc DU "think tank" has identified possible
connections between businesses connected to VP Cheney that may be
associated with the sale of WMD components to countries in the Middle
East. It is our belief that this theory and the evidence that supports
it needs a more in-depth investigation,
The Waterman Paper,
Democratic Underground, 7/24/04
Bush
Keeps Halliburton Secrets*
The Bush
administration is refusing to release information about Iraq-related
contracts worth more than $1 billion, awarded to Halliburton without a
bidding process. Auditors working for the International Advisory and
Monitoring Board (IAMB), a UN-sanctioned panel charged with overseeing
the management of Iraqi’s oil revenues, have repeatedly asked the US
for internal audit information related to a "no-compete" Halliburton
contract worth $1.4 billion. But the Bush administration has refused
all such requests. An official with the IAMB says the US has also
refused to turn over a list of other companies awarded no-compete
contracts by the Coalition authority in Iraq. The money for the
contracts is being drawn from the Development Fund for Iraq, an
account holding proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil,
Chris Shumway, The
NewStandard, 7/20/04
Cheney Checked*
The leaders
of the [9/11] commission . . .disputed Vice President Dick Cheney's
suggestion that he probably had access to more intelligence than the
commission did about possible ties between the Qaeda terrorist network
and Iraq. In a one-sentence statement, the panel's chairman and
vice chairman said that "after examining available transcripts of the
vice president's public remarks, the 9/11 commission believes it has
access to the same information the vice president has seen regarding
contacts between Al Qaeda and Iraq prior to the 9/11 attacks." . .
.The commission chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor
of New Jersey, and the vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton,. . . called on
Mr. Cheney to turn over any reports that would support the White
House's insistence of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
PHILIP SHENON, NY
Times, 7/7/04
Iraqi
Money Funds Halliburton*
The
occupation authorities "came here and spent a lot of our money but
very little of theirs," said a senior Iraqi official,. . .The CPA
appears to have earmarked more than $6 billion of the Iraqi funds over
the past two months alone, as it prepared to hand over political
authority -- and control over the development fund -- to the interim
Iraqi government . . . One of the principal beneficiaries of the
development fund money was Halliburton Co., which was paid hundreds of
millions of dollars to truck gasoline and other fuels into Iraq
. . .Two former CPA officials involved in contracting issues said the
CPA spent money from the development fund faster because it was not
governed by the same rules requiring competitive bidding as the money
from Congress was. . . .efforts to audit the process were stymied by
the CPA,
Rajiv Chandrasekaran,
Washington Post, 7/4/04
Cheney: NeoCon Godfather*
It was
Cheney who said to United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix as he
embarked on his mission to Iraq, "We will not hesitate to discredit
you"; Cheney who personally tried to force the CIA to give credence to
Ahmed Chalabi's fabricated and false evidence on WMD; Cheney who,
along with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (to whom he was deputy
in the Nixon White House), undermined Secretary of State Colin Powell
at every turn; and Cheney who is the neoconservatives' godfather. .
.Even before his outburst in the Senate, Cheney had come to stand for
special interests, secrecy and political coercion. Under the stress of
Bush's falling polls, Cheney cracked.
Sidney Blumenthal, Salon,
7/1/04
What
Halliburton Whistle Blowers Say*
In testimony
submitted to members of Congress, one [Halliburton] truck driver
explained in detail how taxpayers were billed for empty trucks driven
up and down Iraq and how $85,000 vehicles were abandoned for lack of
spare tires. A labor foreman said dozens of workers were told to "look
busy" while doing virtually no work for salaries of $80,000 a year. An
auditor related how the company was spending an average of $100 for
every single bag of laundry and $10,000 a month for company employees
to stay in five-star hotels. "We saw very little concern for
cost considerations," David Walker, head of the General Accounting
Office, the investigative arm of the Congress, told members of the
Congress who attended a hearing at the Government Reform Committee in
the House of Representatives. "There are serious problems, they still
exist, and they are exacerbated in a wartime climate."
Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch
June 16th, 2004
Cheney, "f--- off"
Leahy and other
Democrats have called for congressional hearings into whether the vice
president helped the firm win lucrative contracts in Iraq after the
U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein.
MSNBC,
June 24, 2004
Cheney/Halliburton Corruption 2
*
Pentagon
officials have acknowledged that a political appointee was behind the
controversial decision to have Halliburton Inc. plan for the postwar
recovery of Iraq's oil sector and had informed Vice President Dick
Cheney's chief of staff before finalizing the deal, a Democratic
lawmaker said Sunday.
Christian Miller. LA
Times, 6/14/04
The
Securities and Exchange Commission has launched a formal investigation
of the company for possible violation of antibribery laws. The probe
focuses on payments made years ago [while Cheney was Chairman] in
Nigeria by Kellogg Brown & Root ,
Melissa Davis ,
TheStreet.com, 6/14/04
Cheney
C Halliburton
For the second day running,
Democrats demanded more answers to questions raised by a newly
unearthed Army e-mail that said Cheney's office "coordinated" action
on a contract to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure that was awarded to
Halliburton. . .But Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the
Senate Governmental Affairs committee, says the panel will not be
taking any action because Halliburton's contracts in Iraq already face
probes by the General Accounting Office, defense auditors and the
Pentagon inspector general.
U.S. officials have estimated the
Texas company's Iraq deals, for everything from oil repairs to meals
for the troops, could eventually total some $18 billion .
Susan Cornwell, Reuters, 6/2/04
Cheney
"Coordinated" Halliburton Contracts*
Russert
asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those
contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not, Tim ... And as Vice
President, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of,
knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army]
Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government." . .
.The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract
"contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no
issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's]
office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave
Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids .
TIMOTHY J. BURGER
AND ADAM ZAGORIN
Mr. Cheney's
Day in Court
The Supreme
Court hears arguments today on Vice President Dick Cheney's attempt to
keep the public from knowing who met with him behind closed doors
three years ago to draft the administration's energy policy. The case
is best known for the controversy over Justice Antonin Scalia's
decision to go duck hunting with Mr. Cheney while it was pending. But
it raises important issues in its own right. The court should affirm
the decisions of the lower courts and order Mr. Cheney to disclose the
names of the participants. It should also be mindful of the role
Justice Scalia plays. There is a real danger that his participation
will damage the court's reputation.
NY Times Editorial, 4/27/04
Cheney's War *
Dick
Cheney had gotten the war he wanted. One year later, it's costing us a
staggering $4.7 billion a month, or about $157 million per day.
.
. CARL HIAASEN, The Miami Herald, 4/25/04
Criminal
Charge against Cheney*
This has
been a very good war for Halliburton, which at last count had been
awarded Pentagon contracts with the potential value of $11 billion. .
. [U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin,] has asked Attorney General John Ashcroft
to appoint a special counsel to investigate reports that Halliburton
and other U.S. companies are conducting business with governments that
stand accused of sponsoring terrorism. . . "Because these allegations
involve a company that the vice president of the United States ran
during the time of the alleged violations, we formally request that
you appoint an outside counsel to investigate ...," Baldwin wrote.
"The questions these allegations raise about the actions of a company
run by Vice President Cheney are serious and disturbing. Corporate
criminal penalties
Editorial, The Capital Times, 4/20/04
John Dean on
Cheney *
Dick Cheney
is a political disaster awaiting recognition. In the book, I set forth
a relatively long list of inchoate scandals, not to mention problems
worse than scandals. They all involve Cheney in varying degrees. Bush
can't dump Cheney, for it is Cheney, not Rove, who is Bush's backroom
brain. He is actually a co-president. Bush doesn't enjoy studying and
devising policy. Cheney does. While Cheney has tutored Bush for almost
four years, and Bush is better prepared today than when he entered the
job, Cheney is quietly guiding this administration. . . Bush
can't function without a script, or without Cheney. Bush is head of
state; Cheney is head of government.. . .I quote Cheney from his time
in the Ford White House when he said, "Principle is okay up to a
certain point, but principle doesn't do any good if you lose."
David Talbot, Salon interview of John
Dean, 3/31/04
Fox and
Halliburton Can't Get it Right*
Bill
O'Reilly, host of the most popular Fox News show, "The O'Reilly
Factor," took to the airwaves on March 4, 2003 . . . [and] stated
definitively that "a load of weapons-grade plutonium has disappeared
from Nigeria" and that the theft "should send a signal to all
Americans that a nuclear device could be planted here." . . .
David J. Sirota, Salon, 3/30/04
Beyond the
Duck Blind
As
late-night comedians have embarrassingly noted, again and again,
Justice Scalia went duck hunting with Mr. Cheney, and accepted free
rides on Air Force Two for himself and his daughter, shortly after the
Supreme Court agreed to hear the task-force case. Mr. Cheney had
appealed a lower-court's order to reveal the names of some of the
people who helped formulate President Bush's energy policies in 2001.
Extended private socializing between a litigant and a judge poised to
hear his case triggers serious concerns, not least because it gives
one side a chance to talk about the case without the opposite side
present. . . The Los Angeles Times recently reported that he delivered
a speech to a $150-a-plate dinner of an anti-gay advocacy group in
Philadelphia even as the Supreme Court was deliberating in the Texas
sodomy case last year .
NY Times Editorial 3/15/04
Cheney's
Halliburton Punishes Honesty*
A U.S. food
subcontractor that runs 10% of the dining facilities in Iraq says it
hasn't been paid by a Halliburton Co. (HAL, news) subsidiary for
months . . .The company, Event Source, said it's owed $87 million by
Halliburton. . . .Halliburton was accused recently of overcharging the
government for feeding troops and agreed to forego further payments
until the issue is resolved. . . .Morrell said he believes Halliburton
and its other food service contractors did overcharge, billing the
government not for meals actually served, but for meals a facility
could have served, NBC reported. .
Dow Jones, 3/8/04
Cheney,
Halliburton and Nigeria*
I n
essence, an international consortium of four companies, including
Halliburton’s Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary, is suspected of having
paid a $180 million bribe to the former government of Nigeria in order
to build a liquefied-natural-gas plant in that country valued at $4
billion to $6 billion. . . .The alleged bribe has been under
investigation since last year by Renaud van Ruymbeke, a French judge .
. . Recently, the Nigerian government, the US Justice Department, and
the Securities and Exchange Commission opened their own inquiries into
the Nigerian matter. And Halliburton has retained a lawyer with close
ties to the Bush administration to conduct an internal investigation . DAN KENNEDY, Boston Phoenix, 2/27
- 3/4/04
Scalia and
Cheney*
Justice Antonin Scalia went duck hunting with Vice President Dick
Cheney in January, just weeks after the Supreme Court accepted an
important case involving Mr. Cheney. There were widespread calls on
Justice Scalia to recuse himself, which he refused. Now it turns out
that Justice Scalia accepted free air travel from Mr. Cheney, making
the case for recusal far stronger. And there are reports of
questionable contacts between Justice Scalia and another person with a
case before him. In the interest of justice, and of the court's
reputation, Justice Scalia should step aside in Mr. Cheney's case. . .
.The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that two years ago, Justice
Scalia. . . NY Times
Editorial, 2/28/04
Halliburton:
Criminal Investigation
The Pentagon
. . . opened a criminal investigation of fraud allegations against a
unit of Vice President Cheney's former firm Halliburton Co., including
possible overpricing of fuel delivered to Iraq. . .
Reuters in The Washington Post, 2/24/04
Cheney
Ignored*
Dick Cheney is a good
example of the way things go when business and government get too
close. He's been a serious power broker within the Republican Party
since he acted as Gerald Ford's de facto chief of staff. He became CEO
of Halliburton in 1995 after George Bush Sr. was run out of office
after a single term. . . .Cheney still collects a cheque from
Halliburton. I sometimes refer to him as Dick "Spiro Agnew" Cheney,
but the truth is that Spiro couldn't hold a candle to Dick. . . .
George W. Bush's Vice President made millions, may have bribed
governments, seems to have a financial connection to every major
corporate scandal in the US in recent memory, is being accused by
French officials of crimes that may include the deaths of protestors,
and the North American press has largely ignored the issue.
Reverend Blair, Vive Le Canada, 2/17/04
Halliburton
& Iran Trade Embargo*
The oil
services company [Halliburton] said it had received a letter from the
US treasury department, informing it that an inquiry into allegations
that Halliburton might have broken trade embargoes had been reopened.
David Teather, The Guardian, 2/12/04
Hard
Evidence on Cheney's Office*
Federal
law-enforcement officials said that they have
developed hard evidence of possible crimina l
misconduct by two employees of Vice President
Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA
officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing,
could
lead to indictments, a Justice Department
official said.
According to these sources, John Hannah and
Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that
Hannah was the major player in this," one
federal law-enforcement officer said. . . .
The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to
Hannah "that he faces a real
possibility of doing jail time" as a way to
pressure him to name superiors, one federal
law-enforcement official said.
RICHARD SALE, UPI, 2/6/04
Cheney the
Scornful*
the vice president has continued
to offer his gloomy world view. No one has appeared more scornful of
the United Nations or other multilateral organizations than Cheney, so
it seemed like a peace offering to the globalists when Cheney agreed
to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last
month. But Cheney seemed unrepentant and intransigent and once more
linked terrorists to the Saddam regime, despite the doubts of the
intel community. The Democrats will continue to bang away at Cheney's
ties to Halliburton, the giant conglomerate he once ran, and they hope
(though so far without evidence) that an ongoing leaks investigation
over an outed CIA agent leads into the veep's office. Tamara Lipper and Evan Thomas,
Newsweek, 2/16/04 Issue
Cheney Tilts
Justice*
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia traveled as
an official guest of Vice
President Dick Cheney on a small government jet
that served as Air Force Two when the pair came here
last
month to hunt ducks.
The revelation cast further doubts about whether
Scalia can be an impartial judge in Cheney's upcoming case before the
Supreme Court,
legal ethics experts said. The hunting trip took
place just weeks after the high court agreed to take up Cheney's bid
to keep secret the details of his energy policy
task force.
The Times previously reported that the two men
hunted ducks together while the case was pending, but it wasn't
clear then that they had traveled together or
that Scalia had accompanied Cheney on Air Force Two .
David G. Savage and Richard A. Serrano,
LA Times, 2/5/04
Halliburton
& Cheney, Again*
A subsidiary of Halliburton Co. is
under scrutiny by the Justice Department over
allegations that it was involved in payment of $180
million in bribes to win a natural gas project
contract in Nigeria. Vice President Dick Cheney was
head of Halliburton at the time.
The $4 billion Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas
Plant was built in the 1990s
by a consortium that included Kellogg, Brown & Root, a unit of
Houston-based Halliburton.
Two senior Justice Department officials,
speaking Wednesday on condition of anonymity, said the
department had asked that Halliburton
voluntarily provide documents related to the allegations .
Those records, they said, could determine whether a full investigation
is launched. CURT
ANDERSON Associated Press, posted at Miami Herald 2/5/04
Cheney,
Scalia & Justice*
This month .
. . was still a bad time for Justice Antonin Scalia to hunt ducks with
Vice President Dick Cheney. Their trip came shortly after the Supreme
Court agreed to hear Mr. Cheney's appeal of an order requiring him to
disclose members of his secret energy task force. By going, Justice
Scalia raised serious questions about his ability to judge the case
impartially, and needlessly sullied his court's reputation. . . . He
compared his situation to justices' dining at the White House when a
suit involving a president is pending. But vacationing with a litigant
in a small group, outside the public eye, raises a far greater
appearance of impropriety than attending a White House dinner. And Mr.
Cheney's case involves not just any action, but one calling his
integrity into question.
NY Times Editorial 1/25/04
Cheney and
Bribery?*
A French judge is
investigating $180 million in payments connected with a huge Nigerian
liquefied natural gas plant project won in the 1990s by a joint venture that
included a subsidiary of Halliburton Co. . . .The payments were made during
the 1990s, when Vice President Dick Cheney headed Halliburton, . . . France
joined the United States and more than 30 other countries in outlawing
bribery of foreign public officials in 2000 under the auspices of a
convention negotiated through the Paris-based Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development. It makes the payment of such bribes a criminal
offense and outlaws a tax break that was once claimed by several European
companies. Such bribes have been illegal in the United States since the
mid-1970s under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act .
RICHARD WHITTLE and JIM LANDERS, The Dallas Morning News, 1/9/04
Will the
French Indict Cheney?
Yet another
sordid chapter in the murky annals of Halliburton might well lead to
the indictment of Dick Cheney by a French court on charges of bribery,
money-laundering, and misuse of corporate assets. . . three days
before Christmas, the Paris daily Le Figaro front-paged the
news that Judge van Ruymbeke had notified the Ministry of Justice that
Cheney might be among those eventually indicted as a result of his
investigation. . . .The suspected bribe money was mostly ladled out
between 1995 and 2000, when Cheney was Halliburton's CEO. The
Journal du Dimanche reported on December 21 that "it is probable
that some of the 'retrocomissions' found their way back to the United
States" and asked, did this money go "to Halliburton's officials? To
officials of the Republican Party?"
Doug
Ireland, The Nation, 12/29/03
Patriots and Profits
The story about Halliburton's
strangely expensive gasoline imports
into Iraq gets curiouser and curiouser. High-priced gasoline was
purchased from a supplier whose name is unfamiliar to industry experts,
but that appears to be run by a prominent Kuwaiti family (no doubt still
grateful for the 1991 liberation). U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
documents seen by The Wall Street Journal refer to "political pressures"
from Kuwait's government and the U.S. embassy in Kuwait to deal only
with that firm. I wonder where that trail leads. . . .They should learn
the story of Harry Truman, a congressman who rose to prominence during
World War II by leading a campaign against profiteering. Truman
believed, correctly, that he was serving his country. Krugman, NY Times, 12/16/03
Cheney's
Halliburton Scandal*
A
Pentagon investigation has found evidence of overcharging and other
violations in billions of dollars worth of reconstruction contracts for
Iraq that were awarded to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company,
military officials said today. DOUGLAS JEHL, NY Times, 12/11/03
Holiday Gift
to Bush Friends*
The
United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of
$2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel
to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in
Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show.
Halliburton, which has the exclusive United States
contract to import fuel into Iraq, subcontracts the work to a Kuwaiti
firm. . .. But Halliburton gets 26 cents a gallon for its overhead and
fee, according to documents from the Army Corps of Engineers. . . .A
company's profits on the transport and sale of gasoline are usually
razor-thin. . . Independent experts who reviewed Halliburton's
percentage of its gas importation contract said the company's 26-cent
charge per gallon of gas from Kuwait appeared to be extremely high.
DON VAN NATTA Jr., NY Times, 12/10/03
Halliburton Again
In Alabama,
where the technique [hydraulic fracturing] is widely used, the owners of
a water well believed their water had been poisoned by the practice (a
"black jelled substance" started coming out of the tap, according to one
of lawyers involved). They filed a lawsuit and won, forcing the EPA to
regulate the practice more strictly in that state, and opening up the
possibility of regulation elsewhere. EPA launched a study of the issue,
resulting in a draft report which recommends, among other things, that
the industry stop pumping diesel fuel into the ground.
The agency
might have saved itself the effort. A clause contained in the House
version of a currently pending energy bill and slated to appear in the
final legislation will simply lift the issue out of the reach of federal
regulators altogether. That will end the debate, at least for a while.
It will also help out a small group of powerful oil and gas companies,
among them Halliburton, the former employer of Vice President Cheney and
the company that invented hydraulic fracturing .
Washington Post Editorial 10/19/03
Cheney Firm
Protected *
For
several years the Environmental Protection Agency has been studying
whether an increasingly popular -- but environmentally controversial --
drilling technique used by Halliburton Co. and other big oil and gas
operators pollutes underground drinking water supplies.
. . . the House-Senate
compromise on the energy bill exempts the technique, known as "hydraulic
fracturing," from some of the controls of the 1974 Safe Drinking Water
Act.
H alliburton,
which pioneered hydraulic fracturing more than 50 years ago and is a
leading provider of the service,
acknowledged
in a statement that representatives "spent time educating many members
of Congress and many staffers on the process and the issue."
Dan
Morgan
Washington Post, 10/12/03
Here is an excerpt from the 8/28/03 Washington Post
article by Michael Dobbs:
The practice of
delegating a vast array of logistics operations to a single contractor dates
to the aftermath of the 1991 Persian Gulf War and a study commissioned by
Cheney, then defense secretary, on military outsourcing. The Pentagon chose
Brown and Root to carry out the study, and subsequently selected the company
to implement its own plan. Cheney served as chief executive officer of Brown
and Root's parent company, Halliburton, from 1995 to 2000, when he resigned
to run for the vice presidency. . . .Halliburton, the company formerly
headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7
billion out of Operation Iraqi Freedom and stands to make hundreds of
millions more dollars under a no-bid contract awarded by the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, according to newly available documents.
Michael Dobbs, Washington Post 8/28/03
Excerpt from NY Times Magazine on Halliburton
business with Saddam Hussein
By July
2000, Cheney claimed on ABC's ''This Week'' that neither Halliburton nor its
subsidiaries dealt with Iraq at all. ''Iraq's different,'' Cheney said at
the time. ''I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even
arrangements that were supposedly legal.'' But in fact from 1997 to 2000,
when Cheney was running Halliburton, two of its subsidiaries sold Saddam
Hussein's government a total of $73 million in oil-field supplies. The deal
didn't violate U.S. sanctions because the subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and
Ingersoll Dresser Pump Company, were foreign.
By Dan Baum, NY Times Magazine
or for a more complete free quote click
HERE .
Cheney Connections:
What merits such generosity? Perhaps it has
nothing to do with the fact that Dick Cheney used to be the Halliburton
CEO. (Although Cheney sold his Halliburton stock when he left the company
to run for vice president, he still receives annual deferred compensation
payments until 2005. 24 )
Perhaps it's irrelevant that Joe Lopez, a military aide to Cheney when he
was defense secretary in the early 1990s and who was subsequently hired by
Halliburton at Cheney's suggestion, is in charge of KBR's Pentagon
contracts. 25
After all, the vice president's office and Halliburton spokespeople
strenuously deny that any favoritism is involved in the awarding of these
contracts.
Halliburton may be qualified for the job, but its
performance has not exactly been free of blemish. The December 2001
contract was awarded even though KBR had been sued for overbilling the
Army between 1995 and 1997, allegedly to the tune of $6 million. The
company paid $2 million to settle but did not admit any wrongdoing. 26
There have been other irregularities as well. Among them are allegations
that the company overcharged the Army for support operations for troops
deployed in Bosnia, a deal worth $3 billion so far. 27
And in 2002, Halliburton was investigated by the Securities and Exchange
Commission for alleged accounting improprieties during Cheney’s tenure. 28
MORE .
from "The Other Looting"
Michael Renner, Senior Researcher, Worldwatch Institute at Foreign Policy
in Focus
The Cheney/Halliburton Scandals
Cheney's Office may have Passed Classified Information to Israel:
FBI counterintelligence investigators have in
recent weeks questioned current and former U.S. officials about
whether a small group of Iran specialists at the Pentagon and in
Vice President Cheney's office may have been involved in passing
classified information to an Iraqi politician or a U.S. lobbying
group allied with Israel.
Wash. Post, 9/4/04
MORE
VP
Cheney "Coordinates" Halliburton Contracts:
The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract
"contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no
issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [Vice President's]
office." Three days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave
Halliburton the contract, without seeking other bids .
Time Magazine
Halliburton in Nigeria #1:
French Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke recently
threatened to subpoena U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney over a
massive corruption scandal involving Halliburton's operations in
Nigeria in the 1990s.
Charlie Cray,
South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 1/22/04
Halliburton in Nigeria #2: Halliburton is already facing a separate investigation in Nigeria
and the United States after disclosing that some employees in
Nigeria paid $2.4 million in bribes to a Nigerian who claimed to be
a tax consultant and turned out to be a tax official. JIM LANDERS and RICHARD
WHITTLE, Dallas Morning News, 1/24/04
Confirming Identity of a CIA Operative:
By validating the [classified] article and the
letter's contents, Cheney has confirmed the accuracy of classified
information – a possible violation of federal law Progress
Report , 1/26/04 Update:
Prosecutors investigating whether someone in the Bush administration
improperly disclosed the identity of a C.I.A. officer have expanded
their inquiry to examine whether White House officials lied to
investigators or mishandled classified information related to the
case, lawyers involved in the case and government officials say.
DAVID JOHNSTON and RICHARD W.
STEVENSON, NY Times, 4/1/04
Now, we have another cancer on the presidency.
It began in
July when it was learned that "two senior White House officials" many have
pointed fingers at Karl Rove, some at Dick Cheney -- had leaked to
journalists the dentity
of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame (a felony, perhaps treason)
Alan
Bisbort , The Hartford Advocate, 1/8/04.
UPDATE:
Federal
law-enforcement officials said that they have
developed hard evidence of possible crimina l
misconduct by two employees of Vice President
Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA
officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is
continuing, could
lead to indictments, a Justice Department
official said. RICHARD SALE, UPI, 2/6/04
Scandalizing the Supreme Court.
This month may have been duck hunting season
in Louisiana, but it was still a bad time for Justice Antonin Scalia
to hunt ducks with Vice President Dick Cheney.
Their trip came shortly after the Supreme
Court agreed to hear Mr. Cheney's appeal of an order requiring him
to disclose members of his secret energy task force. By going,
Justice Scalia raised serious questions about his ability to judge
the case impartially, and needlessly sullied his court's reputation.
NY Times Editorial, 1/24/04
Commerce with U.S. Enemies.
Halliburton is the company that Vice President
Dick Cheney used to run. He was CEO in
1995 to 2000,
during which time Halliburton Products and Services set up shop in
Iran. Today, it sells about $40 million a year worth of oil field
services to the Iranian Government . 60 Minutes, 1/25/04.
UPDATE:
T he oil
services company [Halliburton] said it had received a letter from
the US treasury department, informing it that an inquiry into
allegations that Halliburton might have broken trade embargoes had
been reopened. David Teather, The Guardian, 2/12/04
A grand jury
issued a subpoena to oil field services company Halliburton Co.
seeking information about its Cayman Islands unit's work in Iran,
where it is illegal for U.S. companies to operate, Halliburton said on
Monday. The company [was] formerly headed by Vice President Dick
Cheney. . . Halliburton's engineering and construction unit KBR,
formerly called Kellogg Brown & Root, is also the subject of U.S.
Justice Department and SEC investigations for possible overcharges for
fuel and food service contracts in Iraq, . . . In a report
issued in October 2003. . . Halliburton said it was not illegal for
U.S. companies' independent foreign subsidiaries to conduct business
in Iran, and that it had taken steps to isolate its U.S. operations
and managers from its work there .
Matt Daily, Reuters,
7/19/04
Kickbacks from Kuwait.
Halliburton Co workers may have taken kickbacks from a Kuwaiti
subcontractor supplying US troops in Iraq, causing a potential US$6
million overcharge to US taxpayers, the company said on Friday .
Reuters, 1/25/04
Overcharging U.S. for Oil .
the
Halliburton Company, overcharged by roughly a dollar a gallon on
gasoline trucked in from neighboring Kuwait. Its total skim: $61
million. And now Halliburton officials acknowledge that two of its
managers have pocketed a total $6 million in kickbacks for
subcontracts. Lionel Van Deerlin, San Diego
Union-Tribune, 1/28/04
Cost-Plus Scam.
Referring
to Halliburton's "cost-plus" contract, which allows the company to
charge the U.S. a fixed percentage fee on top of whatever price it
pays for goods, the former employees told Waxman that supervisors
ignored prices when making purchases.
Christian Miller, LA Times, 2/13/04
Accounting Scam.
In the Fall
of 2001, both Halliburton and Enron lost value on the stock market,
both availed themselves of Arthur Andersen's special skills, and both
seemed poised for trouble. Andersen, it turned out, helped Halliburton
boost its books by postponing losses and counting uncollected money as
revenue.
VIJAY PRASHAD, Outlook India, 2/19/04
See the American Progress Fact Sheet:
"Cheney, Halliburton & the Government"
