Halliburton Halliburton (pronounced /hlbrtn/; NYSE: HAL) is one of the world's largest[7] oilfield services companies with operations

in more than 70 countries. It has hundreds of subsidiaries, affiliates, branches, brands, and divisions worldwide and employs over 60,000 people.[6] The company has dual headquarters located in Houston and in Dubai, where Chairman and CEO David Lesar works and resides, "to focus [the] companys Eastern Hemisphere Growth."[8] The company will remain incorporated in the United States.[9][10][11] Halliburton's major business segment is the Energy Services Group (ESG). ESG provides technical products and services for petroleum and natural gas exploration and production. Halliburton's former subsidiary, KBR, is a major construction company of refineries, oil fields, pipelines, and chemical plants. Halliburton announced on April 5, 2007 that it had finally broken ties with KBR, which had been its contracting, engineering and construction unit as a part of the company for 44 years.[12]

Contents
[hide]

1 Business overview

1.1 Locations 1.2 Divisions 2.1 Early history (as HOWCO) 2.2 As Halliburton 2.3 1990s 2.4 2000s

2 History

2.4.1 PetroSkills Alliance 2.5.1 Environmental issues

2.5 Controversies

2.6 Sale of KBR 2.7 Baghdad incident

3 Subsidiaries 4 Corporate affairs

4.1 Headquarters

5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links

[edit] Business overview

Halliburton annual revenue

[edit] Locations
U.S. regional office locations are Anchorage, Alaska; Bakersfield, California; Denver, Colorado; Lafayette, Louisiana; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Farmington, New Mexico; Naples, Utah; and Odessa, Texas. Major international offices are in Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, Panama, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Gabon, Nigeria, Cameroon, Republic of Congo, Libya, Austria, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Australia, Russia, China, India, Iran, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, Singapore, U.A.E., Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Worldwide technology centers are in Duncan, Oklahoma; Carrollton, Texas; Houston, Texas; Stavanger, Norway; Pune, India; and Singapore.

[edit] Divisions
Energy Services (the company's historical cornerstone), formation evaluation, digital and consulting solutions, production volume optimization, and fluid systems are the major business segments. These businesses continue to be profitable, and the company is one of the world's largest players in these service industries; Schlumberger is a close competitor, followed by Weatherford International, and Baker Hughes.[13] With the acquisition of Dresser Industries in 1998, the Kellogg-Brown & Root division (in 2002 renamed to KBR) was formed when merging Halliburton's Brown & Root (acquired 1962) subsidiary and the M.W. Kellogg division of Dresser (which Dresser had merged with in 1988). KBR is a major international construction company, which is a highly volatile undertaking subject to wild fluctuations in revenue and profit. Asbestos-related litigation from the Kellogg acquisition caused the company to book more than US$4.0 billion in losses from 2002 through 2004. As a result of the asbestos-related costs and staggering losses on the Barracuda Caratinga FPSO construction project based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Halliburton lost approximately $900 million U.S. a year from 2002 through 2004. A final non-appealable settlement in the asbestos case was reached in January 2005 which allowed Halliburton subsidiary KBR to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy and returned the company to quarterly profitability. So, while Halliburton's revenues have increased because of its contracts in the Middle East, its bottom line continues to suffer.[14] At a meeting for investors and analysts in August 2004, a plan was outlined to divest the KBR division through a possible sale, spin-off or initial public offering. Analysts at Deutsche Bank valued KBR at up to $2.15 billion, while others believed it could be worth closer to $3 billion by 2005. KBR became a separately listed company on April 5, 2007.[12]

[edit] History
[edit] Early history (as HOWCO)
In 1919, Erle Halliburton started the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company.[6]

Halliburton Research Center in Duncan, Oklahoma, the city which was the original headquarters of Halliburton Company.

Halliburton (Oak Park) offices in Westchase and in Chinatown in Houston In 1920, he brought a wild gas well under control, using cement, for W.G. Skelly, near Wilson, Oklahoma.[15] On March 1, 1921, the Halliburton method and means of excluding water from oil wells was assigned a patent from the U.S. Patent Office. Halliburton invented the revolutionary cement jet mixer, to eliminate hand-mixing of cement, and the measuring line, a tool used to guarantee cementing accuracy.[15] By 1922, the Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company (HOWCO) was prospering from the Mexia, Texas oil boom, cementing its 500th well in late summer.[16] In 1924, the company was incorporated in Delaware, with 56 people on its payroll. The stock of the corporation was owned by Erle and Vida Halliburton and by seven major oil companies: Magnolia, Texas, Gulf, Humble, Sun, Pure and Atlantic.[17] In 1926, its first foreign venture began with sale of equipment to Burma and India.[18] Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Halliburton continued cementing across America.[16][19] In 1938, Halliburton cemented its first offshore well using a truck on a barge off the Louisiana coast.[18] In 1940, Halliburton opened offices in Venezuela and introduced bulk handling of cementing to the industry.[17] In 1947, the Halliburton first marine cementing vessel went into service.[15]

In 1951, Halliburton first appeared in Europe as Halliburton Italiana SpA, a wholly owned subsidiary in Italy. Over the next seven years, Halliburton launched Halliburton Company Germany GmbH, set up operations in Argentina and established a subsidiary in England. By 1951, HOWCO had service centers operating in Canada, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.[16] Halliburton revenues top $100 million for the first time in 1952.[16] Erle P. Halliburton died in Los Angeles in 1957. HOWCO is at this time worth $190 million with camps all over the world. The same year, HOWCO purchased Welex, which pioneered jet perforation.[16] Otis Engineering, an oil field service and equipment company specializing in manufacturing pressure control equipment for oil and gas producing wells, was acquired in 1959.
[16]

[edit] As Halliburton
On July 5, 1961, the company changed its name to the Halliburton Company. In 1963, Halliburton was the first company in Oklahoma to receive the Presidential E for Export flag in recognition of notable contributions to foreign trade.[16] Halliburton opened a 500,000 sq ft (46,000 m2) manufacturing center in Duncan, Oklahoma, in 1964.[16] The company began to experiment with new technologies to help their services for example, beginning in 1965 a pilot operation of a computer network system the first such installation in the oilfield services industry.[16] In 1966, Workers break ground for a new wing at the Research Center in Duncan that triples the space for the Chemical Research and Design Department.[16] In 1968, an automated mixing system for drilling mud is developed by Halliburton, primarily for use offshore.[16] Gearhart Industries (acquired by Halliburton Energy Services in 1989) introduced the first digital computer logging system in 1974.[16] In 1969, Halliburton began construction of a base camp at Prudhoe Bay on Alaskas North Slope.[16] In 1975, it responded to environmental concerns by working with the nonprofit Clean Gulf Associates to contain and clean up oil spills.[16] In 1976, Halliburton established the Halliburton Energy Institute in Duncan, Oklahoma, to provide an industry forum for disseminating technical information.[16]

Lincoln Plaza in Downtown Dallas, which at one time housed the Halliburton headquarters In 1980, Halliburton Research Center opens in Duncan, Oklahoma.[16] The company's billionth sack of cement for customers was pumped in 1983.[16] In 1989, Halliburton acquired logging and perforating specialist company Gearhart Industries and combined it with its subsidiary Welex to form Halliburton Logging Services. Throughout the 1980s, Halliburton's subsidiaries continued their projects around the world (under management of former CEO Brian Darcy) even in countries once considered enemies. Equipment was provided for the first multiwell platform offshore China, and an Otis Engineering team controlled a gigantic Tengiz field blowout in the Soviet Union.[16]

[edit] 1990s
Following the end of Operation Desert Storm in February 1991, the Pentagon, led by then defense secretary Dick Cheney, paid Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root Services over $8.5 million to study the use of private military forces with American soldiers in combat zones. [20] Halliburton crews also helped bring 725 burning oil wells under control in Kuwait.[21] In 1995, Cheney replaced Thomas H. Cruikshank, as chairman and CEO. Cruikshank had served since 1989.[22] In the early 1990s, Halliburton was found to be in violation of federal trade barriers in Iraq and Libya, having sold these countries dual-use oil drilling equipment and, through its former subsidiary, Halliburton Logging Services, sending six pulse neutron generators to Libya. After having pleaded guilty, the company was fined $1.2 million, with another $2.61 million in penalties.[23] During the Balkans conflict in the 1990s, Kellogg Brown-Root (KBR) supported U.S. peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Hungary with food, laundry, transportation, and other life-cycle management services.[24] In 1998, Halliburton merged with Dresser Industries, which included Kellogg. Prescott Bush was a director of Dresser Industries, which is now part of Halliburton; his son, former president George H. W. Bush, worked for Dresser Industries in several positions from 1948 to 1951, before he founded Zapata Corporation.[25]

[edit] 2000s

5 Houston Center in Downtown Houston, which at one time housed the headquarters of Halliburton

Wikinews has related news: Civilians testify to Halliburton fraud, coercion The Wall Street Journal reported in 2001 that a subsidiary of Halliburton Energy Services called Halliburton Products and Services Ltd. (HPS) opened an office in Tehran. The company, HPS, operated on the ninth floor of a new north Tehran tower block. Although HPS was incorporated in the Cayman Islands in 1975 and is "non-American", it shares both the logo and name of Halliburton Energy Services and, according to Dow Jones Newswires, offers services from Halliburton units worldwide through its Tehran office. Such behavior, undertaken while Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, may have violated the Trading with the Enemy Act. A Halliburton spokesman, responding to inquiries from Dow Jones, said "This is not breaking any laws. This is a foreign subsidiary and no U.S. person is involved in this. No U.S. person is facilitating any transaction. We are not performing directly in that country." Later Dave Lesar would book his own flights to the Tehran office through the UK arm of KBR. No legal action has been taken against the company or its officials.[26] In April 2002, KBR was awarded a $7 million contract to construct steel holding cells at Camp X-Ray.[27] From 1995 to 2002, Halliburton Brown & Root Services Corp was awarded at least $2.5 billion but has spent considerably less to construct and run military bases, some in secret locations, as part of the Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program. This contract was a cost plus 13% contract and BRS employees were trained on how to pass GAO audits to ensure maximum profits were attained. It was also grounds for termination in the Balkans if any BRS employee spoke of Dick Cheney's being CEO. BRS was awarded and re-awarded contracts termed "noncompetitive" because BRS was the only company capable of pulling off the missions.[citation needed] DynCorp actually won the competitively let second contract, but never received any work orders in the Balkans.[20] In November 2002, KBR was tasked to plan oil well firefighting in Iraq, and in February 2003 was issued a contract to conduct the work. Critics contend that it was a no-bid contract, awarded due to Dick Cheney's position as vice president. Concern was also expressed that the contract could allow KBR to pump and distribute Iraqi oil.[28] Others contend, however, that this was not strictly a no-bid contract, and was invoked under a contract that KBR won "in a competitive bid process."[29] The contract, referred to as LOGCAP, is a contingency-based contract that is invoked at the convenience of the Army. Because the contract is essentially a retainer, specific orders are not competitively bid (as the overall contract was). In May 2003, Halliburton revealed in SEC filings that its KBR subsidiary had paid a Nigerian official $2.4 million in bribes in order to receive favorable tax treatment.,[30][31] United Arab Emirates In October 2004, Halliburton opened a new 250,000-square-foot (23,000 m2) facility on 35 acres (140,000 m2), replacing an older facility that opened in 1948, in Rock Springs, Wyoming. With over approximately 500 employees, Halliburton is one of the largest private employers in Sweetwater County.[32] On January 24, 2006, Halliburton's subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build "temporary detention and processing facilities" or internment camps. According to Business Wire, this contract will be executed in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District. Critics point to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as a possible model. According to a press release posted on the Halliburton website, "The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing

capabilities to augment existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities."[33] In February 2008, a hard disk and two computers containing classified information were stolen from Petrobras while in Halliburton's custody. Allegedly, the content inside the stolen material was data on the recently discovered Tupi oil field. Initial police inquiries suggest that it could be a common container theft operation. The container was a ramshackle in complete disorder indicating that thieves were after "valuables and not only laptops," said an expert consulted by the daily newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.[34] In 2008, Halliburton agreed to outsource its mission-critical information technology infrastructure to a Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex data center operated by CyrusOne Networks LLC.[35] On May 14, 2010, President Barack Obama said in an interview with CNN that "you had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else" when referring to the congressional hearings held during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. "The American people could not have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn't." According to Tim Probert, executive vice president of Halliburton, Halliburton, as a service provider to the well owner, is contractually bound to comply with the well owner's instructions.[36] It was anticipated that Halliburton's $2.5 billion "Restore Iraqi Oil" (RIO) contract[37] would pay for itself as well as for reconstruction of the entire country. Plans called for more oil to be exported from Iraq's northern oil fields than actually occurred. Halliburtons work on the pipeline crossing the Tigris river at Al Fatah has been called a failure. Critics claim that the oil fields are barely usable and access to international markets is severely limited. As an example, against the advice of its own experts, Halliburton attempted to dig a tunnel through a geological fault zone. The underground terrain was a jumble of boulders, voids, cobblestones, and gravel and not appropriate for the kind of drilling Halliburton planned. "No driller in his right mind would have gone ahead," said Army geologist Robert Sanders when the military finally sent people to inspect the work.[38] [edit] PetroSkills Alliance In 2001 Halliburton joined the PetroSkills Alliance. Member companies came together to create detailed skill and Competency Maps, which act as a guide for the 200+ short courses, taught to industry professionals in over 40 locations worldwide. Competency Maps are an analysis tool and software application that allows users to assess their skills base to identify gaps in their training, areas needing improvement or mastered skill areas within upstream, downstream, and HSE petroleum subject disciplines.[39]

[edit] Controversies
Halliburton has become the object of several controversies involving the 2003 Iraq War and the company's ties to former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney retired from the company during the 2000 U.S. presidential election campaign with a severance package worth $36 million. [40] As of 2004, he had received $398,548 in deferred compensation from Halliburton while Vice

President.[41] Cheney was chairman and CEO of Halliburton Company from 1995 to 2000 and has received stock options from Halliburton.[42] In the run-up to the Iraq war, Halliburton was awarded a $7 billion contract for which 'unusually' only Halliburton was allowed to bid.[43] Bunnatine Greenhouse, a civil servant with 20 years of contracting experience, had complained to Army officials on numerous occasions that Halliburton had been unlawfully receiving special treatment for work in Iraq, Kuwait and the Balkans. Criminal investigations were opened by the U.S. Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Pentagon's inspector general. In one of Greenhouse's claims, she said that military auditors caught Halliburton overcharging the Pentagon for fuel deliveries into Iraq. She also complained that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office took control of every aspect of Halliburton's $7 billion Iraqi oil/infrastructure contract. After her testimony, Greenhouse was demoted for poor performance.[44] Greenhouse's attorney, Michael Kohn, stated in The New York Times that "she is being demoted because of her strict adherence to procurement requirements and the Army's preference to sidestep them when it suits their needs."[45] On September 8, 2010, an internal report released by BP into the Deepwater Horizon Incident claimed that poor practices of Halliburton staff had contributed to the disaster. Investigations carried out by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling found that Halliburton was jointly at fault along with BP and Transocean for the spill. The cement that Halliburton used was an unstable mixture, and eventually caused hydrocarbons to leak into the well, eventually causing the explosion that started the crisis.[46] In early December 2010, the Nigerian government filed corruption charges against Cheney in connection with his role as the chief executive of Halliburton.[47][48] The case relates to an alleged $182 million contract involving a four-company joint venture to build a liquefied natural gas plant on Bonny Island in southern Nigeria.[49] Earlier in 2009, KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton, agreed to pay $402 million after admitting that it bribed Nigerian officials, and Halliburton paid $177 million to settle allegations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission without admitting any wrongdoing.[50][51] In mid-December 2010, the case was settled when Nigeria agreed to drop the corruption charges against Cheney and Halliburton in exchange for a $250 million settlement.[50] According to Femi Babafemi, the spokesperson for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the $250 million would include approximately $130 million frozen in a Swiss bank, and the rest would be paid as fines.[49] The Federal Contractor Misconduct Database details 10 instances of misconduct since 1995 under which Halliburton has agreed to pay settlements of $791 million.[52] A further 22 instances of misconduct relate to the company's former subsidiary KBR.[53] [edit] Environmental issues In 2002, Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) reports were completed to measure the amount of chemicals emitted from Halliburton's Harris County, Texas facility. The TRI is a publicly available EPA database that contains information on toxic chemical releases and waste management activities reported annually by certain industries as well as federal facilities. The facility had 230 TRI air releases in 2001 and 245 in 2002.[54] On June 7, 2006, Halliburton's Farmington, New Mexico facility created a toxic cloud that forced people to evacuate their homes.[55]

Halliburton may also be implicated[56] in the oil spills in the Timor Sea off Australia in August 2009 and in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 for improper cementing. Halliburton staff were employed on the Transocean operated Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Mexican Gulf. Halliburton staff completed cementation of the final production well 20 hours prior to the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion, but had not yet set the final cement plug.[57] Jamie Leigh Jones testified at a Congressional hearing that she had been gang-raped by as many as seven co-workers in Iraq in 2005 when she was an employee of KBR, and then falsely imprisoned in a shipping container for 24 hours without food or drink.[58][59] KBR was a subsidiary of Halliburton at the time. Jones and her lawyers said that 38 women have contacted her reporting similar experiences while working as contractors in Iraq, Kuwait, and other countries. On September 15, 2009, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Jones, in a 2 to 1 ruling, and found that her alleged injuries were not, in fact, in any way related to her employment and thus, not covered by the contract.[59] These incidents have tainted the public perception of Halliburton, with a consumer study rating it as the 5th least reputable companies in America.[60]

[edit] Sale of KBR

On April 15, 2006, Halliburton filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell up to 20 percent of its KBR stock on the NYSE under the ticker symbol "KBR", as part of an eventual plan for KBR to be a separate company from Halliburton.[61] In November 2006, Halliburton began selling its stake in KBR, its major subsidiary, and by February 2007 had completely sold off the subsidiary. In June 2007, several days after Stewart Bowen, the Special Inspector General, released a new report, the Army announced that KBR would share another $150 billion contract with two other contractors, Fluor and Dyncorp, over the next 10 years.[62]

[edit] Baghdad incident

In accordance with the law of armed conflict and to maintain non-combatant status, Halliburton does not arm its truck drivers. Trucks are often the target of insurgent attacks. On September 20, 2005, a convoy of four Halliburton trucks was ambushed north of Baghdad. All four trucks were struck by improvised explosive devices and were disabled. Their US National Guard escort was thought to have abandoned the disabled vehicles, leaving the drivers defenseless. Three of the four truck drivers were killed by the insurgents while the surviving driver, Preston Wheeler, caught the event on video. Although the trucks had military camouflage paint, the drivers were civilian. The US military returned to the scene 45 minutes later.[63] However, in a statement by senior military officials in Iraq, an investigation revealed that troops did not abandon the civilians and they were all exiting the "kill zone" during the ambush.

Corporate accountability Accountability overview:

For coverage of Halliburton and its KBR subsidiary's involvement in Iraq and other corporate accountability, see Halliburton Watch, which links to numerous reports by CorpWatch, congressional committee investigations, related books etc. Bribery Halliburton officials have been accused of coordinating a scheme to bribe Nigerian government officials over a period of years in association with the Bonny Island liquid natural gas (LNG) project. Bribing foreign governments is a criminal offense under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Albert Jack Stanley, a company official who was later fired by Halliburton after investigators say he received $5 million in "improper" payments from an outside attorney working for the company -- Jeffrey Tesler. The Independent (UK) reported that "Mr Stanley had been appointed to his senior role at Halliburton by Mr. (Dick) Cheney when he was chief executive between 1995 and 2000." (The Independent, Oct. 3, 2004.) The Wall Street Journal confirmed that Cheney "named Mr. Stanley to a top post at the company in 1998." (Wall Street Journal, Sept. 29, 2004.) Stanley reported to David Lesar, then Halliburton's president and chief operating officer, and currently the company's CEO. Lesar reported to Cheney when Cheney was chief executive. (Dallas Morning News, Sept. 8, 2004.) (Important Note: Lesar is an accountant and former Arthur Andersen partner, meaning he may have been in a position to ask about the purpose of payments to Tesler when they occurred.) According to the Dallas Morning News, "Mr. Cheney ran Halliburton when one of four suspicious payments occurred." (Dallas Morning News, Sept. 8, 2004.) For a detailed timeline of the Nigeria Bonny Island bribery case, see Halliburton Watch.org. Tax issues: On March 4, 2004, Senators Levin (D-MI) and Dorgan (D-ND) released a GAO report on tax avoidance by federal contractors. At the time, Halliburton had 17 subsidiaries in tax haven countries, including 13 in the Cayman Islands which does not impose a corporate tax. In 2002, Citizen Works Citizen Works found that Halliburton ranked 8th Among the Fortune 500 companies with the most offshore tax haven subsidiaries. Dorgan, who chairs the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, has also noted that Halliburton avoids accountability by hiring employees under its subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven country in the Caribbean, which allows for avoidance of U.S. tax, worker safety and other laws. "We've had a report showing a large percentage of corporations doing business with the federal government that are creating subsidiaries in tax haven countries," he said. "They want all of the largesse of contracting with our government and none of the responsibilities of paying taxes." During Dick Cheney's tenure as Halliburton's CEO, the number of company subsidiaries located in offshore tax havens increased from 9 (in 1995) to 44 (in 1999). One of these subsidiaries (Halliburton Products and Services Ltd.), was incorporated in the Caiman Islands, and was used to get around sanctions on doing business in Iran. (Erwin Seba, Reuters, March 20, 2003) When Halliburton announced it was relocating its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, critics suggested the move might help the company avoid paying its fair share of taxes. Martin Sullivan, contributing editor at the nonpartisan Tax Notes magazine, told MSNBC that relocating to the no-tax jurisdiction of Dubai would change Halliburton's tax situation

"significantly" even though the company would still be registered in the US. By re-locating its CEO and other top executives to Dubai, Halliburton can argue that a portion of its profits should be attributed to the no-tax jurisdiction, he said. Members of Congress called for an investigation. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said, "I want to know, is Halliburton trying to run away from bad publicity on their contracts? Are they trying to run away from the obligation to pay US taxes? Or are they trying to set up a corporate presence in Dubai so that they can avoid the restrictions that currently exist on doing business with prohibited countries like Iran?" Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said, "This is an insult to the US soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no-bid contracts and endured their overcharges for all these years." And Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asked Halliburton to explain the reasons for the move. "I want to understand the ramifications for U.S. taxpayers and national security," he said. Also see "Halliburton's Tax Haven Explained" by HalliburtonWatch.org. Labor: Much of Halliburton/KBR's government business in Iraq and Kuwait, already worth tens of billions, is being carried out by the world's poor people. Many of these people are underpaid, working for wages that are one-tenth of what U.S. workers receive, thereby creating more profits on the margins for Halliburton and its subcontractors. For example, NPR reported in October 2007 a Pakistani dishwasher at a forward operating base in Diyala was being paid $1.25 an hour for two years work for the Saudi-based food-services firm, Tamimi, a KBR subcontractor. Much of Halliburton's work is conducted by foreign subsidiaries, which means that even U.S. employees may find it difficult to file claims against the company for break of contract in places like Iraq should they wish to do so. Under Texas law, employees may not be entitled to unemployment benefits who were employed by a Halliburton subsidiary that is incorporated in a "foreign" nation. In one case, the Texas Workforce Commission ruled against a former Halliburton employee by concluding: "The claimant is not entitled to unemployment benefits because [Halliburton's foreign subsidiary] does not satisfy the definition for an 'American employer' under the [Texas] statute." Political influence: Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC's Meet the Press "I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts" that Halliburton received in Iraq. But an internal Pentagon email later obtained by Time magazine indicates that months before the war "action" on the Iraqi oil contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. Two months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Wall Street Journal reported, "The Bush administration is eager to secure Iraq's oil fields and rehabilitate them, industry officials say. They say Mr. Cheney's staff hosted an informational meeting with industry executives in October, with Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Texaco Corp., ConocoPhillips and Halliburton among the companies represented. Both the Bush administration and the companies say such a meeting never took place." (Thaddeus Herrick, "U.S. Oil Wants to Work in Iraq," Wall Street Journal, Jan. 17, 2003.)

In addition, Cheney has resisted public requests for disclosure of documents relating to his secret Energy Task Force that proved he was investigating Iraq's oil fields prior to the war. Some of the documents were released only after a judge ordered Cheney to make them public. Whether or not Cheney's office influenced the decision to give KBR a no-bid contract to repair Iraq's oil infrastructure, the Army Corps of Engineers top civilian contracting official, Bunnatine Greenhouse, told a congressional committee that "[T]he abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career." (Greenhouse was demoted after blowing the whistle, despite a stellar work performance record.) KBR, Inc., won more than $16 billion in U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2006far more than any other company, according to "Windfalls of War II", a 2007 analysis by the Center for Public Integrity. For details about the waste, fraud and other abuses committed by KBR/Halliburton through its war-related contracts, see Halliburton Watch.org, CorpWatch, The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,and The Senate Democratic Policy Committee. For information on Halliburton's lobbyists, visit Halliburton Watch Other Examples Soon after Hurricane Katrina, former FEMA head Joe Albaugh, a Halliburton registered lobbyist, encamped in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, "helping his clients get business from perhaps the worst natural disaster in the nation's history." (Washington Post September 8, 2005; Page A27) Charles Domini, a retired three-star general hired by Cheney in 1995 to work as vice president of business development for Kellogg Brown & Root, has been on both sides of the revolving door between Halliburton and the military. He was a general with the Army in 1992 when it first awarded Halliburton its most lucrative contract, known as LOGCAP. Then, after Halliburton was fired by the Army in 1997, Domini was an employee of Halliburton when the Army re-hired the company to handle the LOGCAP contract. Domini is only one example of the symbiotic relationship between Halliburton and the military. His promotion to chief lobbyist in 2001 occurred because the former chief lobbyist, Dave Gribbin, retired from Halliburton to join Cheney in the Bush administration. Gribbin has a long history with Cheney that includes working for him in Congress, the Pentagon, Halliburton and now in the White House.

Brief company history: Halliburton's history began in the Texas/Oklahoma "oil patch" shortly after the end of World War I. Earl Halliburton of Tennessee came to Oklahoma to develop and refine a new process known as "oil well cementing." The process involves sending cement down an oil well to create a wall to seal-out water and other unwanted contaminants. The oil well cementing process, still used today, stabilizes the oil well and thereby allows drillers to extract oil more easily and efficiently. Brown & Root, was established in 1919 and incorporated in Delaware in 1924. Two brothers, George and Herman Brown, and their brother-in-law, Dan Root, started the firm by paving roads.

It was basically a cement company and nothing more. But the brothers soon began manufacturing complex oil platforms, dams and Navy warships. Starting in the 1930s Brown & Root hitched its fortune in part (and vice versa) to the career of Lyndon B. Johnson, then an ambitious young congressman who helped the company secure federal contracts for a dam project back in Texas. Halliburton and Brown and Root merged in 1963 under the name Halliburton, maintaining separate businesses inside one loose corporate structure -- the engineering and contracting side (Brown & Root) and the oil services side (Halliburton). In the late 1970s and early 1980s oil price fluctuations forced the company to more fully integrate the disparate operations into one streamlined firm. Brown and Root rode LBJ's coattails into the Vietnam War, where it obtained numerous military construction contracts, including a contract to construct the infamous "tiger cages." The arrival of Dick Cheney as CEO in 1995 helped the company climb the ladder of the largest federal contractors from number 73 before his arrival to the 18th-largest defense contractor. Under Cheney's tenure as CEO, Halliburton's revenue from federal government contracts nearly doubled. Government-backed loans from the Export-Import bank increased from $100 million to $1.5 billion. Halliburton saw its revenue increase 30 percent to $16 billion in 2003, largely because of its military contracts in the middle east. Halliburton was the number one U.S. Army contractor in 2003 with the total value of its Army contracts valued at $3,731,725,648. Dan Briody, in his book The Halliburton Agenda, described Halliburton's relationship with Cheney as "the embodiment of the Iron Triangle, the nexus of the government, military, and big business that President Eisenhower warned America about in his farewell speech." Halliburton and KBR separated once again in 2006, with Halliburton focusing on oil services and KBR continuing as a separate entity focused on engineering, construction, and military supply contracting. Halliburton moved its operational headquarters to Dubai, while remaining incorporated in Delaware and retaining offices in Houston. (A number of books provide useful explorations of Halliburton's history, including "The Halliburton Agenda" by Dan Briody, "Cronies" by Robert Bryce, and "How Much Are You Making in the War, Daddy?" by William D. Hartung).

The Halliburton Scandal: Business as Usual

By David May In the latest in the long line of corporate scandals involving the Bush Administration, Halliburton, the energy giant formerly run and still largely influenced abd controlled by VicePresident Dick Cheney, has announced that it will repay the US government over $27.4 million after it was discovered that it had grossly overcharged for the meals it supplies to the US military in Iraq. This follows on the heels of the discovery of bribery on the part of Halliburton agents who overcharged the military $6.3 million for fuel delivered to bases in Iraq and Kuwait. These glaring cases of graft and bribery may seem outrageous, but they are only the tip of the capitalist iceberg just business as usual for US imperialism. These kinds of practices are in no way unique to Halliburton, or even the Bush Administration. The interconnections between capital and the state run deep, not just in George W. Bushs America but in all capitalist countries.

The overcharging discovery involves Kellog, Brown & Root, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Halliburton. In a controversial no-bid contract, KBR was awarded a total of $8 billion to provide laundry, food supply, and build bases for the US military in Iraq. This also includes $1.2 billion to restore production in the southern Iraqi oil fields. It just so happens that Vice-President and major Halliburton stock-holder Cheney was directly involved in the awarding of rebuilding contracts in Iraq! That is not to say that only Halliburton got a share so did major Bush-backer Bechtel, the construction firm, and of course a Texas-based company by the name of ExxonMobil. Of course, this is not the first time US companies, whether they contribute more to the Republican or the Democratic Parties, have cashed in on US foreign policy. In fact, the US government operates several banks and organizations, all tax-funded, to spur on and assist US foreign investment. The foremost of these organizations are the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Import-Export Bank of the United States, and last but not least the International Monetary Fund, based in New York City. The OPIC assisted the now defunct Enron Corporation by granting it $2.4 billion in its venture to open a massive natural gas power plant in Nagpal, India, between 1992 and 2000. Halliburton is currently under investigation by French courts over $180 million paid in bribes to Nigerian government officials in its bid to win a gas plant deal along with partners Technip (France,) ENI SpA (Italy,) and Japan Gasoline Corporation. Imperialist wars have always provided ample business opportunities - and the current war in Iraq is no exception. This is a defining feature of capitalism, specifically capitalism in its era of imperialism and decay. The following quote from a former US Marine general sums it all up: I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Cuba and Haiti a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American Republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. (General Smedley Butler, from a speech in 1933.) Lenin, in his major work Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism explains that modern imperialism develops as a struggle between the most advanced capitalist countries over markets, resources and spheres of influence due to the constraints and narrow limitations of the nationstate. The capitalists of the largest imperialist countries compete with one another to gain access and control over any and all markets. For this they are reliant upon the state, which under capitalism is in reality nothing other than the executive committee of the ruling class the bourgeoisie. In pursuing the interests of its own national bourgeoisie, the state necessarily comes into conflict not only with the colonial and third world countries it sets out to financially and politically dominate, but its imperialist rivals as well. As a result of this historical situation, the state and capital fuse together more and more. Due to its role in society the state appears to remain above society, yet it is by no means an impartial arbiter between the classes. The states role is to defend and pursue the interests of the dominant class in society. In the United States this congealing of the state and the business world is so developed that the small groups of individuals who control most of the nations wealth are also the same individuals who hold the most powerful offices within the state. George W. Bush provides a fine example. After graduating from college he was given an oil services company by his oil tycoon / Congressman father, George Bush senior. After running his first company into the ground, he was given a position in another of his fathers companies. After

a less than stellar performance in the business world, George Junior entered politics. He was later elected Governor of Texas for two terms, in the process earning the state a record for its number of executions and the amount of industrial pollutants released into the air, water and the ground. In the meantime, when he wasnt busy slashing Texas educational budget and making the state a capitalist wonderland of industrial deregulation, he managed to visit Argentina, where he threw around his family name on behalf of friend Ken Lays Enron Corporation, winning the company its first Argentine contract. As a result of Argentinas own deregulation spree in the late 1990s, the country sank into an economic crisis it has yet to emerge from. Finally, George Junior was to follow his fathers footsteps into the White House in 2000, in large part due to the election ballot fiasco and voter registration sabotage in the state of Florida, governed by George W. Bushs brother, Jeb. The interconnections between the bourgeoisie and the state run deep. The Bush family is just one of the more well-known political families. We should not forget the Democratic Kennedy family has been represented in Congress since the 1950s, and can lay claim to initiating broader US involvement in the Vietnam War and the attempted invasion of Cuba in 1962. John Kerry, one of the members of this extensive family, is putting himself forward as the Democratic candidate for the 2004 elections. However, some family traditions run deep, and Kerrys campaign proposal to increase the number of US troops in Iraq is unsettlingly reminiscent of John F. Kennedys escalation of American involvement in Vietnam. Last but not least, Mr. Kerrys campaign is being financed not by public campaign funds, but rather with his own personal fortune derived from his marriage to cketchup heiress, Theresa Heinz. The Bush and Kennedy families are but two of the 150 families that control the vast majority of the wealth in the United States. The state, far from being an impartial mediator between the classes, is the state of the capitalists. It defends their interests at home and abroad, domestically with laws, the courts, police, and prisons; abroad with trade pacts, embargoes, subsidies, tariffs, and imperialist wars. Not only that, but the captains of industry regularly pass over to leading positions in government and then back again. Halliburtons outright scamming of othe military in Iraq should not surprise anyone it is only a more glaring example of the capitalists plundering of the state and the workers taxes that fund it. I n the past decade and half, the Federal and State governments have continually slashed the budget on all programs and services needed by the working class, while cutting taxes for the rich. Transportation, education, health programs, public workers salaries, workplace safety inspection and a host of other services have been continually cut to the bone. The slashing of the education budget, and the introduction of religious creationism into the public schools has given American education a serious blow (what happened to the separation of church and state?). Many American students today cannot even find Canada on a map! The wages and salaries of public workers are at their lowest in a quarter century. Tens of thousands of workers are killed or maimed on the job each year. Worst of all, the gradual destruction of health services for the young, elderly, and the poorest US citizens has created a tremendous crisis in which millions are unable to get medical treatment or necessary medication. Last summer, the movie John Q., in which a working class father holds an entire hospital hostage in order that his dying son can receive a heart transplant, was a box office smash for obvious reasons. The looting of the public by companies like Halliburton is clear evidence that there is no longer anything historically progressive in capitalism, it is played out. Instead of developing and revolutionizing production as it did 200 years ago, it now is so feeble that it has to feed off of its own state. Capitalism cannot offer us anything more than worsening living conditions and wages, wars of imperialist

plunder and crises. We are living through a spiral of capitalist crises, and we require a socialist solution!

ARRESTS MADE IN HALLIBURTON SCANDAL

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 In April this year, a committee was created to investigate the Halliburton scandal and the $180 million spent by the company in bribes to gain lucrative contracts in Nigeria. The Committee had 6 weeks to determine the Nigerians involved in the crime and bring them to justice. Last week, the Nigerian federal government arrested some individuals linked to the crime.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS According to news paper reports, some current Nigerian "senators" have been arrested while other high ranking officials are being interrogated for their role in the scandal. Additionally, a former Chief of Air Staff who also was a Managing Director of the defunct Nigerian Airways, A.D. Bello (rtd.),was detained because his account was used to disburse over $150 million of the bribe money to others. Also, $11.5 million of the bribe money was traced to a foreign account belonging to Ibrahim Aliyu, a former Permanent Secretary. Considering the reality of corruption in Nigeria, it can be expected that more names will be publicly tied to the scandal. Nevertheless, a court case will be necessary to determine whether these and other individuals are truly guilty of the allegations against them. WHAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN What remains to be seen is the actual prosecution and punishment of the Nigerians who knowingly accepted bribes from Halliburton. Just as was the case in the U.S. where Halliburton paid a fine for breaking American anti-corruption laws, so also should Halliburton pay fines in Nigeria. But more importantly, those Nigerians guilty of corruption must also give all monies collected from the company to the people. That money would be useful in providing basic necessities in many of the nation's public schools, for instance. These individuals are mainly well connected and even well respected members of Nigeria's political elite and for years, they and others like them have lived well off of their connections and positions while the ordinary people of Nigeria have nothing to show for the large sums of money that passes between hands due to Nigeria's ample natural resources and economic potential.

This Halliburton scandal is one of many ongoing corruption scandals that the Nigerian government is yet to adequately address. These new arrests while encouraging, unfortunately do not mean that justice will prevail particularly when viewed within the context of Nigeria's punishment problem. With regard to the current administration, President Yar'Adua failed to compel the arrest and prosecution of those involved in the nation's decrepit power situation despite very public investigations and probes carried out by the National Assembly last year. Additionally, the health-care corruption scandal which brought down former Heath Minister, Adenike Grange, and led to the temporary disappearance of Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, appears to have stalled while Obasanjo-Bello has resumed her duties in the National Assembly. There also remains the Siemens AG corruption scandal, in which 5 Nigerians have already been fingered for their role by German courts. That scandal, of which very little has been heard of, will now fall under the realm of the Halliburton investigation committee, despite its 6 week time-limit. Finally, far to many well connected Nigerians have avoided jail time via "plea bargain justice" or simply returning some of their ill-gotten wealth. These examples and the many more that cannot be mentioned due to time constraints will remain a blemish on this administration and prevent any genuine jubilation despite the arrests in this Halliburton case. That is, until justice is actually achieved and the rule of law, Yar'Adua's 'mantra', is actually followed to the letter. Will Yar'Adua manage to compel the prosecution and jail time of those found guilty of taking bribes and failing to honor their duties to the nation? Only time will tell, and while many hope for the best, the most astute observers of Nigerian politics will not take bets on that possibility any time soon.

The Cheney-Halliburton Circle of Corruption

Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense in 1991 when he created a contract vehicle for and gave contracts to Halliburton that resulted in millions of dollars of revenue. After leaving the administration Cheney served as CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. Then he became Vice President and Halliburton was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars of non-competitive contracts as part of the Gulf War in 2003. NEWS on Cheney and Halliburton The Incredible Cheney Scandals 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. * Former Halliburton accountants filed a class action lawsuit in August 2004 alleging "systemic" accounting fraud from 1998 to 2001. They are among dozens of "whistleblowers". . *Allegations of overcharging in Iraq persist: Early in 2004, Halliburton returned $6.3 million to the U.S. military, admitting that two of the company's employees took kickbacks from a Kuwaiti company. The company still hasn't repaid the $212.3 million the Defense Contract Audit Agency says Halliburton overcharged for fuel transportation in Iraq, 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 Boutonce dubbed a "merchant of death" by a British foreign ministerbuilt an empire in the 1990s flying weapons to the Taliban and African dictators Michael Isikoff, Newsweek 12/20/04 Issue
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$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: -- A criminal investigation into whether kickbacks were involved in Halliburton's use of a Kuwaiti subcontractor to provide gasoline for Iraq's civilian market. Halliburton says it notified federal authorities after an internal probe found two of its former employees may have been involved in corruption worth $6.3 million. -- A review of that fuel contract by the Defense Contract Audit Agency, which concluded Halliburton overcharged the Army by $61 million. -- An investigation by the former Coalition Provisional Authority's internal watchdog which found Halliburton could not account for scores of items in Iraq worth millions of dollars. -- A report by Congress' Government Accountability Office, which found a "pattern of contractor management problems" by the Army on Halliburton's largest Iraq contract. The nonpartisan GAO said the problems including taking more than a year to finalize the documentation on work orders worth billions of dollars. -- A Pentagon audit, which found that Halliburton charged the Army for meals it never served to troops. Halliburton said the problem was caused by the widely fluctuating levels of troops in and around Iraq. Halliburton has repaid $36 million and set aside more than $140 million for a possible settlement as it negotiates with the Army on that issue. Separately, a federal grand jury in Houston is hearing evidence to decide whether to indict Halliburton or current or former executives for violating the U.S. trade embargo on Iran. Foreign subsidiaries of Halliburton dramatically expanded their trade with Iran while Cheney headed the company. AP 10/4/04 MORE

3 Halliburton Grand Juries* The 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 nobid 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. F.B.I. agents have requested an interview with the official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, the chief of contracting with the Army Corps of Engineers, on her allegations regarding a 2003 contract with Halliburton to repair Iraqi oil fields, her lawyer, Michael D. Kohn, said in an interview yesterday. Ms. Greenhouse, in an Oct. 21 letter to the acting Army secretary, charged that officials had shown favoritism toward Halliburton, the Houston-based conglomerate

formerly led by Vice President Dick Cheney, in the awarding and oversight of the oil contract..
Times, 10/29/04 MORE

ERIK ECKHOLM, NY

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: 1. "We will be greeted as liberators." 2. Iraqi oil fields . . reviewed by the administration's energy task force 3. Saddam Hussein had "resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." 4. America will be more vulnerable to attack if John Kerry and John Edwards are elected 5. revealing the identity of Valerie Plame 6. billions of U.S. tax dollars to Halliburton 7. you continue to hold unexercised options for 233,000 shares 8. you received five draft deferments during the 1960s, 9. you did vote against ..unconditional release of Mandela 10. it is you, rather than George W. Bush, who is running the country John Nichols, The Nation, 10/3/04
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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 VicePresident, 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*

Halliburton Co. has acknowledged officials at M.W. Kellogg Co. discussed a scheme with their business partners to bribe Nigerian leaders to win a contract to build a huge natural gas plant. An internal Halliburton probe has uncovered notes written between 1993 and 1998 that indicate Kellogg and its three partners in the TSKJ consortium considered a plan to make illegal payments in the hopes of landing the Bonny Island project, a huge, $5.5 billion natural gas liquefaction plant. . . .the notes suggest the discussions continued until December 1998, two months after Halliburton took over. Vice President Dick Cheney was serving as Halliburton's chief executive officer at that time. . . Nigeria's parliament, meanwhile, has also weighed in, recommending Halliburton receive no further contracts. . . the Los Angeles Times reported. DAVID IVANOVICH, 9/2/04 MORE

Cheney Fools Halliburton Investors*

Cheneys Halliburton used accounting sleight of hand to fool investors . . . The commission says the undisclosed accounting change caused Halliburtons public statements regarding its income in 1998 and 1999 to be materially misleading, boosting Halliburtons 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. Goss has blocked any investigation of three critical subject-areas clearly falling within his jurisdiction: * The fabrication of intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs,

* The illegal disclosure by White House officials, of the identity of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame * The abuse and torture of prisoners in Afghanistan. Edward Spannaus
Executive Intelligence Review, 8/20/04

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 Iraqis 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. During their exchange, Leahy noted that Republicans had accused Democrats of being anti-Catholic because they are opposed to some of President Bushs anti-abortion judges, the aides said. Cheney then responded, f--- off or f--- you, two aides said, both speaking on condition of anonymity. . .According to Senate rules, profanity is not permitted in the chamber. But when the exchange occurred between Leahy and Cheney, the Senate was not in session, so there was technically no foul. MSNBC, June 24, 2004

Cheney/Halliburton Corruption2 * 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. The decision, overruling the advice of an Army lawyer, eventually resulted in the awarding of a $7-billion, no-bid contract to Halliburton, which Cheney ran for five years before he was nominated for vice president. 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

Halliburton

For the second day running, Democrats demanded more answers to questions raised by a newly unearthed Army email 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, Time, 5/30/04

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. A hefty chunk of that is being spent on support services provided in Iraq by Halliburton, the Texas company that Cheney ran before joining the Bush ticket in 2000. Cheney says he has severed his ties to Halliburton and had nothing to do with the lucrative no-bid contracts awarded to the firm. Not everyone is persuaded that the connection is merely coincidental. In any event, the money being spent in Iraq is secondary to the heartbreaking cost in casualties. The most well-trained and sophisticated fighting force in the world is once again involved in a maddening guerrilla war. . 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." . . . O'Reilly was referring to a story that week about radioactive material missing in Nigeria. But it was not plutonium,

as he claimed, or anything nearly as lethal as plutonium. It was a compound called Americium 241, wholly unsuitable for the creation of the imaginary "atomic device" . . . The compound, in fact, was misplaced by Vice President Cheney's old oil firm, Halliburton. 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. . . .we just thought that was just unethical and decided not to go down that path," NBC quoted Morrell as saying.
Dow Jones, 3/8/04

Cheney, Halliburton and Nigeria*

In essence, an international consortium of four companies, including Halliburtons 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. . . Halliburton . . .has more than $8 billion in deals in Iraq, covering everything from doing laundry, building bases and providing meals to helping rebuild the oil industry. The contracts have drawn sharp comment from Democrats because of the company's ties with Cheney, who was chief executive officer from 1995 to 2000. . . the U.S. Treasury, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into a range of issues, from whether the company paid kickbacks in Nigeria to whether it broke U.S. laws by dealing with Iran 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. The investigation relates to when Mr. Cheney was running the company. He was chief executive between 1995 and 2000 before quitting to run for office with George Bush, taking with him a $36m (19m) severance package. Halliburton said the investigation, originally begun in 2001, had been reopened but gave no other detail. Reuters quoted treasury sources saying that new information had come to light which prompted a fresh investigation. 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 criminal 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 lawenforcement 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. Highpriced 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. The violations by a Halliburton Company subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown and Root, could involve "potentially tens of millions of dollars" in overcharging for fuel that the company is trucking into Iraq under one of two contracts, said Michael Thibault, deputy director of the Defense Contract Audit Agency. In a draft report, Mr. Thibault said, the agency has recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers seek reimbursement from the company.
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. Halliburton, 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 Cheneys tenure.28 MORE. from "The Other Looting" Michael Renner, Senior
Researcher, Worldwatch Institute at Foreign Policy in Focus

The Cheney/Halliburton Scandals

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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 identity 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 criminal 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

6. 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

7. 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: 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. The investigation relates to when Mr. Cheney was running the company. He was chief executive between 1995 and 2000 before quitting to run for office with George Bush, taking with him a $36m (19m) severance package. Halliburton said the investigation, originally begun in 2001, had been reopened but gave no other detail. Reuters quoted treasury sources saying that new information had come to light which prompted a fresh investigation. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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. As a result, the company paid too much for everything from rented jeeps to cellular phones to specially embroidered towels that cost three times what an ordinary towel would, they said. Christian Miller, LA Times,
2/13/04

11. 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. So called "unbilled receivables" allowed Halliburton to carry $234 million in disputed claims in 2001 (twice the amount from the previous year). Halliburton and Andersen changed the rules on "unbilled receivables" when Cheney was its CEO. When Cheney moved to Bush's side, his second-in-command, David Lesar, took over the firm. Before Lesar joined Halliburton, he was a senior partner in Andersen.
VIJAY PRASHAD, Outlook India, 2/19/04

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