Details the myriad illegal, immoral, and unethical activities of Dick Cheney when CEO of Halliburton, his obstruction of justice, and lies to the American public since his appointment as Vice President. For information on an equally corrupt politician, see link to Tom DeLay-Corporate Whore. Be sure to visit our cavernous vault of archives.

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Cheney Hypocritical In Telling Media To Check Facts

WASHINGTON -- Look who's talking.

Vice President Dick Cheney is accusing the press of "cheap shot journalism" in covering the Bush administration, claiming "people don't check the facts."

Cheney is miffed over a raft of stories about his ties to Halliburton Co., a Houston-based energy conglomerate, which is a major recipient of U.S. contracts to rebuild Iraq.

While he's lecturing about accuracy, Cheney should do some fact-checking of his own statements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction weapons. The vice president's prewar chant about such weapons helped lead the nation into war.

Now, despite an intense hunt for that arsenal since the U.S. military took over Iraq last spring, the vice president is having difficulty accepting the reality that those weapons were a fantasy of the administration's prowar hawks.

It appears that even David Kay, who heads the U.S. weapons hunters scouring Iraq, is about to throw in the towel.

Cheney gave his press critique in an interview with conservative commentator Armstrong Williams.

The vice president conceded that a free press is "a vital part of society" but added: "On occasion, it drives me nuts."

What drives him nuts, he continued, is "when I see stories that are fundamentally inaccurate."

"It's the hypocrisy that sometimes arises when some in the press portray themselves as objective observers of the passing scene, when they obviously are not objective," he declared.

"Not everybody is guilty," he said, "but it happens."

Let's see what the vice president is upset about.

Well, for one thing, the news media keep pointing out that Cheney had served for five years as CEO of Halliburton, which has received $5 billion in government contracts -- many of the no-bid variety -- for Iraqi reconstruction.

Cheney still has financial ties to Halliburton, despite his denials. He continues to receive deferred compensation from the company, including payments of about $150,000 in 2001 and $160,000 in 2002. Additional payments are forthcoming.

In addition, the vice president has about 433,000 shares of unexercised Halliburton stock options, due to expire between 2007 and late 2009. Cheney has said he will donate the options to charities. But the options will have value only if Halliburton's stock price improves.

This is the same Halliburton that has been accused by a Pentagon audit of over-billing the U.S. military by $61 million for gasoline.

"There are a lot of people in the press who don't understand the business community," Cheney said. He scoffed that only the administration's political opponents have accused Halliburton of "favoritism" in getting those contracts.

"There is no evidence to support anything like that," Cheney said, "but if you repeat it often enough, it becomes a sort of article of faith."

Cheney could have been explaining his repetitious line to the American public about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. If you repeat it enough, it becomes accepted truth.

In August 2002, Cheney told the Veterans of Foreign Wars: "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction, no doubt that he is massing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

In the same speech, he warned that Saddam, "armed with an arsenal of weapons of terror, and seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves ... could subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail."

On March 16, the vice president said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "we believe (Saddam) has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

Cheney later tried to slide off that statement. He did "misspeak," he said, and that what he really meant to say was that Iraq had "weapons capability," rather than actual weapons.

The vice president's salute to a free press is undercut by his intensive campaign to keep secret the names of those he consulted with when he was designing the administration's energy policy. This information should be in the public domain.

Conservation groups have complained that their views on energy were largely ignored.

Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club have sued for access to that information. A federal court ruled in favor of discovery and the court of appeals agreed. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear his appeal.

Maybe Cheney has forgotten that he no longer works for a private corporation and that, instead, he is a public servant, doing the public's business that should be conducted in the daylight.

Since he took office as vice president, Cheney has operated in the shadows, being very careful not to leave fingerprints.

He has little accountability and zero credibility when it comes to Iraq. He limits his public speeches to conservative groups and Republican fundraisers.

When the administration is pushing its war theme, he is farmed out to the televised Sunday talk shows to repeat his now discredited arguments for war.

And so we catch occasional glimpses of the person many people believe is the real power in the White House.

But when it comes to Cheney's advice to the media, the vice president would be well advised to follow his own recommendations.

We check our facts, Mr. Vice President. You should, too.

Helen Thomas

 
Senator defends Cheney's pheasant hunt
BY TODD J. GILLMAN
The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - When Dick Cheney and a hunting party that included several Texas Republicans, among them Sen. John Cornyn, bagged hundreds of ring-necked pheasants at a private hunting club in Pennsylvania last week, animal-rights activists denounced it as a slaughter.

They were especially outraged that the vice president shot more than 70 himself. But Cornyn said Wednesday that the birds had a sporting chance, even if they were farm-raised and released from nets for the hunters.

"It was a good shoot," said Cornyn, who figures he shot dozens of pheasants himself. He conceded that bagging the birds was so easy, at times it seemed "kind of like how Tyson's and Pilgrim's Pride and other people do it. … I must tell you that people don't necessarily hunt the same way in Texas that they hunt in Ligonier, Penn., but it was enjoyable," he said.

Two major Republican donors from Dallas, investor Jeffrey Marcus and investment banker Daniel Cook, hosted the Dec. 8 outing at the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in southwestern Pennsylvania, Cornyn said. Real estate executive and former Dallas Cowboy Roger Staubach was there, too. Marcus declined to discuss the trip; the others did not return phone messages.

Cheney hunts and fishes often, and his excursions rarely attract notice. But on this one, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that the 10-man hunting party killed 417 of 500 pheasants released from nets for the morning hunt.

The Humane Society of the United States says that smacks of a mass killing.

"These birds were just planted right in front of this group of hunters. It was a bloodbath and it was a blaze of shotgun fire," said senior vice president Wayne Pacelle.

Cheney is known as a skilled hunter, and The New York Times picked up the story this week, tweaking him as someone who shouldn't need the sort of stacked odds a preserve like Rolling Rock can provide.

Cheney aides did not return messages. Rolling Rock chief operating officer Steve Klee said club policy precludes him from discussing patrons or anything else at the 10,000-acre facility. "I can't talk about the club activities at all," he said.

One dog handler did describe the hunt for WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh last week, though he could not be reached this week and another employee declined to say if he still works there.

"We release pheasants off a hill, and they shoot them. They all stay in their blinds up ahead of us. The other guys like me, we have our dogs and we run them. We stand below [the hunters], and every bird they shoot, our dogs retrieve them," said the handler, Scott Wakefield.

When pheasants are in season, which they weren't last week, Pennsylvania sets a two per-day bag limit. Those rules don't apply at Rolling Rock and the state's 358 other private and commercial hunting clubs.

 
Deadeye Dick
Wednesday December 17, 2003
The Guardian

At the recent national Thanksgiving day ceremony at the White House, George Bush was in forgiving mood. As is traditional on these occasions, he "pardoned" the official Thanksgiving turkey, called Stars, and its partner, Stripes (the names were chosen in a poll of White House website readers, narrowly squeezing out Pumpkin and Cranberry). As governor of Texas, Mr Bush made a point of not pardoning anybody, including death-row prisoners.
Much the same attitude now applies in Iraq. Turkeys, apparently, are different. Yet the limits of presidential compassion were quickly re-established with a wisecrack at Dick Cheney's expense. Mr Bush explained that Stripes was an "alternate turkey", needed in case the number one turkey, Stars, could not fulfil his role in the ceremony. "It's kind of like being the vice-president."

Mr Cheney is not infrequently the butt of Mr Bush's attempts at humour. All he can do is grit his teeth and pretend to be amused. A sense of helplessness might explain the Veep's resort to butts of a different kind in his favourite hunting grounds of South Dakota and, most recently, at the private Rolling Rock Club in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mr Cheney downed more than 70 ringneck pheasants and an undetermined number of ducks during a shooting spree there last week. Altogether his 10-man party, whose other members remain unidentified, killed 417 birds. Mr Cheney and bulging game-bag then headed back to Arnold Palmer airport in a Humvee.

If shooting defenceless birds can be described as relaxation, it is possible Mr Cheney's expedition was cathartic. After all, he has many worries. His old firm, Halliburton, is accused of profiteering in Iraq. His private contacts with energy industry executives are now subject to a supreme court lawsuit. Far smarter than the present White House incumbent, Mr Cheney harboured presidential ambitions before his heart grew dicky. Perhaps he still does. Silently suffering his boss's unkind jibes, perhaps he secretly dreams of quite a different, higher-value target when he flicks off the safety catch.

 
Supreme Court to Hear Cheney Energy Case
Mon Dec 15
By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) agreed on Monday to hear Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites)'s arguments for keeping his energy task force papers secret, a battle he has fought in lower courts for more than two years.

The high court said Cheney's Justice Department (news - web sites) lawyers could present a detailed explanation of why he should not have to comply with a federal judge's order last year to produce details of White House contacts with the energy industry.

Justice Department lawyers say Cheney is immune to the court order on constitutional, separation-of-powers grounds.

The environmentalist Sierra Club (news - web sites) and Judicial Watch government watchdog group sued in 2001 to find out the names and positions of members of the energy task force headed by the vice president that year.

They allege that Cheney, a former energy executive, drafted energy policy by consulting industry executives such as Enron Corp.'s Ken Lay, making them effective members of his task force while leaving environmentalists on the outside.

Cheney was chief executive of energy and construction company Halliburton Co. from 1995 to 2000. His 2001 energy task force produced a policy paper calling for more oil and gas drilling and a revived nuclear power program.

Cheney has acknowledged meeting Lay, but his lawyers say the energy task force was comprised of government officials, not corporate chieftains.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case in the spring next year, with a decision due by the end of June.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the court's decision to take the case was not surprising "because the executive branch is often given deference. Cases that ought to be left out of court are given a hearing by the justices."

But, Fitton added, "We're confident in the end that the court is going to reject this unprecedented assertion of executive power and executive secrecy."

Sierra Club attorney David Bookbinder said the court's taking the case "will draw attention to the extreme positions the Bush administration has taken, essentially arguing that they are above the law."

There was no immediate reaction from Cheney's office.

Over a year ago, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered the White House to either produce documents about the energy task force, or provide a detailed list of the documents it was withholding, and why.

The Bush administration appealed the order, even though the case was not completed in the lower court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals earlier this year refused to step in, saying Cheney did not have legal standing to refuse the judge's order.

The Energy Department, the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) and other agencies have turned over thousands of pages of documents in the case, but none have come from the White House.

Justice Department lawyers argued that judicial power cannot extend to ordering the executive branch to disclose details about the way the president gets advice -- such as advice on energy policy.

Judicial Watch countered that Cheney's claims to immunity were laughable after a 1997 Supreme Court decision that discovery could proceed against then-President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) in a case brought by sexual-harassment accuser Paula Jones.

 
Pentagon: Halliburton May Have Overcharged in Iraq

Dec 11, 10:28 pm ET
By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Pentagon audit of Halliburton, the oil services firm once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, found the company may have overbilled the U.S. government by more than $120 million on Iraq contracts, U.S. defense officials said on Thursday.

Defense officials said Halliburton's Kellogg Brown and Root unit, which has denied wrongdoing, may have been overcharged by a Kuwaiti sub-contractor by $61 million for fuel brought into Iraq from Kuwait under a deal signed in March with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild Iraq's oil industry.

That no-competition deal, which has clocked up about $2 billion in business so far, is set to be replaced by two new, competitively bid contracts to rebuild Iraq's oil sector.

After several delays, a decision on those $2 billion contracts is expected by mid-January and military sources said the audit would likely be considered when Halliburton's proposal was reviewed for the follow-on deals.

Under another KBR 10-year contract to provide logistical support for troops, the auditors found what they deemed a $67 million overcharge for dining facilities throughout the region. The overcharge was denied before taxpayers were billed.

"DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) audits have found some problems that the department is addressing" with KBR, Dov Zakheim, the Pentagon's chief financial officer, said in a written statement.

Halliburton said it was supplying documentation requested by the auditors. "KBR has acted in full accordance with its fiduciary and contractual responsibilities under the contract," said Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall.

DELAYS

A senior defense official said Kellogg Brown and Root may have been paying the Kuwaiti company as much as $2.20 per gallon for unleaded gasoline, compared with $1.18 in other contracts.

KBR is not suspected of improperly pocketing any taxpayer funds in either case but may have failed to ensure its subcontractors performed as required, defense officials said.

In addition to allegations of over-pricing, auditors were also looking into delays in providing details of pricing, a military source told Reuters.

"There are significant issues regarding the timeliness and adequacy of price proposals," the source said.

So far the company has generated about $2 billion in business from the March contract and more than $2 billion from the logistics contract for which it supplies services ranging from delivering mail to doing laundry for U.S. troops.

Democratic lawmakers have complained loudly to the Bush administration about the amount of work given to Halliburton in Iraq and have accused the White House of cronyism because of Cheney's former links to the firm, a claim the vice-president has vigorously denied.

Democratic presidential hopefuls Howard Dean and Wesley Clark sought to make mileage from the audit findings.

Dean, referring to the Bush administration decision to bar Iraq war opponents from bidding on lucrative reconstruction contracts, said in a statement: "Now this president is preventing entire nations from bidding on contracts in Iraq so that his campaign contributors can continue to overcharge American taxpayers."

Clark spokesman Chris Lehane said: "George W. Bush is a president for Big Oil, of Big Oil, and 'buy' Big Oil. He is more concerned about the success of Halliburton than having a success strategy in Iraq."

 
Iraqis Shut Out of Lucrative Rebuilding Deals
Fri Nov 21, 1:58 PM ET
Peyman Pejman, Inter Press Service

BAGHDAD, Nov 21 (IPS) - U.S. officials have shut Iraqis out of the business of reconstruction contracts, many local businessmen say.

U.S. officials and the contractors working for them favor a few high-profile Iraqi companies they trust, and set excessively high contract standards that most Iraqi companies cannot meet, they say. U.S. officials have reportedly allowed some companies closely associated with the former regime to win lucrative contracts. U.S. officials deny most of the charges. They say some of the frustration comes because Iraqis do not understand legal obligations.

Reconstruction contracts in Iraq (news - web sites) are awarded through three sources: the U.S. Army, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) headed by Paul Bremer. USAID contracts are awarded through the Bechtel Corporation. Army contracts are awarded primarily through the Halliburton Corporation, which Vice President Richard Cheney headed until he moved to the White House. Some CPA contracts are awarded through Halliburton, but it has also signed some of its own agreements.

The total value of the contracts awarded has not been made public, but sources in Baghdad put the figure above $10 billion.

For most Iraqis the two primary ways of learning about new reconstruction contracts are through a website set up by the CPA, and by attending a weekly meeting at the Convention Center in Baghdad. The weekly meetings are organised by Kellog, Brown & Root, engaged by Halliburton to find subcontractors for its work. Several Iraqis say they are frustrated by the process.

"We look at the website, it has some good information about each contract, but not enough," Hend Adnan from an Iraqi engineering company told IPS. "They don't give information over the phone, so you have to come and attend these meetings to know more."

But coming to the meetings does nothing to end the Iraqis' suspicion of the process.

"In colloquial Arabic we say things are done behind doors," says contractor Haidar Abdel Kazem. "You don't 'feel' the contracts, you feel it is decided before they are announced."

Iraqis are often given less than a week to respond to bids, and asked to present lengthy documents.

"They give four, five days," says Abdel Kazem. "How are you going to prepare for it, how are you going to answer it, how are you going to get the answer to them? The period is unreasonable."

And when they do respond properly to the contracts, many say they go home empty-handed.

"I am not happy with their system," says Adnan. "My company has been coming here for four months and has responded to at least 10 bids but has not won anything. You look at the list of the companies that win and see there are a few companies that are always on top of the list."

Other Iraqis complain that U.S. officials have let firms associated with the former regime enrich themselves once more. Two such companies are Boniye & Sons and Mediterranean Global Holdings. The first belongs to an old Iraqi family which had diverse business interests during Saddam's time. The family is widely reputed to have been close to Saddam and his son Uday. The second is a London-based company headed by Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi- British businessman who left Iraq in the early 1980s and has since accumulated a fortune estimated at more than a billion dollars.

The CPA awarded Boniye "a couple of fairly large" construction contracts, says a senior U.S. official.

Auchi is said to have secured a multi-million dollar contract through associates in Baghdad to establish a mobile telephone network for central Iraq, including Baghdad.

Boniye managers could not be reached for comment. They were in Saudi Arabia for the annual Muslim pilgrimage, company officials said.

Officials at Auchi's London headquarters did not respond to emailed questions and numerous phone calls.

The question of fairness in contracting procedures has become a touchy point in Baghdad. It is likely to gain more attention as the United States plans to award about 25 billion dollars in reconstruction contracts next year, CPA officials say. Asked for an official comment, a U.S. spokeswoman said her colleagues in Iraq "have answered questions till they have become blue in the face. You want to trash them too, go ahead." She said Bechtel, KBR and Halliburton now refer all questions on contracting to their headquarters in the United States.

But the officials are more accommodating off the record. They say a part of the dissatisfaction and frustration Iraqis feel is due to misplaced expectations. All three sources of awarding reconstruction contracts receive funds from the U.S. Congress, and they are thus legally obliged to give preference to U.S. companies, they say.

But U.S. companies are encouraged, though not obliged, to hire as many Iraqi subcontractors as possible, the officials say. In USAID contracts, Bechtel and KBR have dished out half their contracts to Iraqis, and plan to increase the figure to 70 percent "soon," a U.S. official familiar with USAID contracts said.

U.S. officials concede that some contracts may have been awarded to companies associated with the previous regime. But they say a company is not tied to the previous regime just because some Iraqis say so.

About the short response period to the contracts, U.S. officials say this is in the nature of the fast turnaround work in Iraq. They say if Iraqis get short notice to respond to bids, U.S. contractors get just that much notice from their bosses.

U.S. officials concede that setting high standards for winning contracts is true for "sophisticated" engineering and construction contracts.

"We are here trying to do a good job and build things that will still be standing 50, 100 years from now," says a U.S. official. "Sorry if we are trying to do too good a job for people who have been deprived of it for so many years."

 
Their Master's Voice
by Maureen Dowd

WASHINGTON — It must be the voice.

It is the basso pretendo profundo voice of the dean of boys in a strict private school. At the tables of power, he speaks so sparsely and softly in that low hypnotic monotone, with that lower jaw tilting to the side in a self-assured "I only talk out of one side of my mouth" kind of way, that others at the table have no choice but to listen up. He is the one who must be obeyed.

Dick Cheney's dry Wyoming voice has the same effect on some male Republicans, starting at the very top, and even some journalists, that a high-pitched whistle has on a dog. How else to explain the vice president's success in creating a parallel universe inside the White House that is shaping the real universe?

Congressman Charles Rangel of New York introduced a resolution this week urging President Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld for misleading the American public about how well the war and the occupation are going, and for sending American forces into battle "without adequate planning" and showing "a lack of sensitivity" about U.S. casualties.

Certainly, Rummy is a worthy target. But maybe Mr. Rangel should aim higher. If the Pentagon is responsible for mismanaging the occupation in Iraq, it is the vice president's office that is responsible for the paranoid vision — the "with us or against us" biceps flex against the world — that got us into this long, hard slog.

This week's Newsweek cover story on the vice president characterized a recent article by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker as raising the question of whether "Cheney had, in effect, become the dupe of a cabal of neoconservative full-mooners, the Pentagon's mysteriously named Office of Special Plans, and the patsy of an alleged bank swindler and would-be ruler of Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi."

Mr. Cheney's parallel universe is a Bizarro world where no doubts exist. He indulges in extremes of judgment, overpessimistic about our ability to contain Saddam and overoptimistic about the gratitude we would encounter as "liberators" in Iraq.

In Cheneyworld, the invasion of Iraq has made the world a safer place (tell it to the Italians), W.M.D. are still concealed in all those Iraqi basements, every Iraqi insurgent is a card-carrying member of Al Qaeda, and the increase in attacks on Americans reflects the guerrillas' desperation, not their strengths. Guerrilla attacks on American soldiers are labeled acts of terrorism rather than acts of war, even though the official U.S. definition describes terrorism as attacks on civilians.

As Eric Schmitt reported in The Times this week, Mr. Cheney has implied in recent speeches that Al Qaeda is responsible for the major attacks in Iraq this past summer, even though senior military and intelligence officials say there is no conclusive evidence for that. Clearly, Mr. Cheney remains oblivious to the fact that the president has already had to correct the vice president's previous assertion that the government did not know whether Saddam Hussein had a connection to the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Bush conceded that "no, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th."

But while some have suggested that the president feels let down by Mr. Rumsfeld, he still seems seduced by the siren call of that deep Cheney voice and lugubrious Cheney world view. As Newsweek suggested, quoting those who know him: "Cheney has always had a Hobbesian view of life. The world is a dangerous place; war is the natural state of mankind; enemies lurk."

Mr. Cheney's darkness ends up dominating Mr. Bush's lightness.

As Newsweek noted, the vice president cherry-picks the intelligence, then feeds his version of reality to Mr. Bush. The president leaves himself open to manipulation because, by his own admission, he doesn't read the papers and relies on his inner circle to filter information to him.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported yesterday that the C.I.A. had issued a top-secret report from Iraq, endorsed by Paul Bremer, warning that growing numbers of Iraqis are concluding that the U.S. can be defeated and are supporting the insurgents.

The question is whether other voices can ever break through that sonorous ominous murmuring in the president's ear.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

 
High Court Asked to Reject Cheney on Energy Report

Reuters
Friday, October 31, 2003; 3:04 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney should be forced to divulge information about his energy task force, a government watchdog group told the Supreme Court on Friday, arguing that his claim of immunity was laughable.

In papers filed with the top U.S. court, Judicial Watch, said Cheney should be made to comply with a lower court order to release information about the task force's contacts with the energy industry in 2001.

Cheney has made "repeated attempts to transform the actual issues ... into ones of urgent constitutional concern," lawyers for Judicial Watch said, but: "No such issues exist."

Cheney's claim to be immune from having to produce documents was "risible" after a 1997 Supreme Court decision that discovery could proceed against then-President Clinton in a case brought by sexual-harassment accuser Paula Jones, Judicial Watch said.

Judicial Watch sued two years ago to find out how the vice president's energy task force operated in 2001 and the role of industry groups in shaping administration policy.

Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia ruled that Cheney should obey a lower court order to release some documents in the case.

Justice Department lawyers then asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, saying judicial power cannot extend to ordering the vice president to disclose details about the way the president gets advice.

The Supreme Court is expected to act on the government's request by the end of the year.

Judicial Watch and the environmentalist group Sierra Club contend that Cheney consulted with industry executives like former Enron Corp. chief Kenneth Lay, making them effectively members of the energy task force, while ignoring environmentalists.

Cheney was chief executive of energy and construction company Halliburton Co. from 1995 to 2000. His task force, which announced its policy in the spring of 2001, called for more oil and gas drilling and a nuclear power revival.

Cheney has acknowledged meeting Lay, but his lawyers say the energy task force was comprised of government officials, not corporate chieftains. The Bush administration has released thousands of pages of information from agencies involved in drafting the energy policy, but none from the White House.

In their filing with the Supreme Court, Judicial Watch argued that Cheney's lawyers had not shown he would suffer any harm by releasing White House papers, and were transparently trying to delay the case while the Bush administration's energy policy moved through Congress.

 
Reps: U.S. Overpaying Halliburton for Gas
Wed Oct 29, 7:24 PM ET Add Politics to My Yahoo!

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government is paying Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites)'s former firm Halliburton (NYSE:HAL - news) "enormous sums" -- $2.65 a gallon -- for gasoline imported into Iraq (news - web sites) from Kuwait, two lawmakers charged on Wednesday.

Democrats Rep. Henry Waxman of California and Rep. John Dingell of Michigan said this gross overpayment was made worse by the fact that the U.S. government was turning around and reselling the gasoline in Iraq for four to 15 cents a gallon.

In a letter of complaint sent to President Bush (news - web sites)'s national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites), the two lawmakers said experts they consulted think the cost of buying and transporting gasoline from Kuwait into Iraq should cost less than $1 a gallon.

The Iraqi oil company SOMO is paying only 97 cents a gallon to import gasoline from Kuwait to Iraq, they said.

Waxman added in a statement: "We know that someone is getting rich importing gasoline into Iraq. What we don't know is who is making the money, Halliburton or the Kuwaitis?"

Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, which defends its pricing as fair, has a contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to rebuild Iraq's oil sector. This has included importing oil products in short supply as the oil-rich nation's refineries are brought back into production.

As of Oct. 19, Halliburton had imported 61.3 million gallons of gasoline from Kuwait into Iraq, and the company was paid $162.5 million for an average price of $2.65 a gallon, Waxman and Dingell wrote.

"The $2.65 per gallon is grossly excessive," they said. "Experts we consulted stated that the total price for buying and transporting gasoline into Iraq should be less than $1.00 per gallon."

The U.S. government was then selling this gasoline inside Iraq for just four to 15 cents a gallon, subsidizing over 95 percent of the cost of gasoline consumed by Iraqis, they said.

"The U.S. government is paying nearly three times more for gasoline from Kuwait than it should, and then is reselling this gasoline at a huge loss inside Iraq," the lawmakers wrote.

Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall defended the company against what she said were "false statements" about its efforts in Iraq, adding that wartime work was expensive and Halliburton only recovered "a few cents on the dollar" for fuel costs.

"Four types of fuel are being purchased: gasoline, kerosene, LPG and diesel," Hall said in a statement. These fuels had different prices, she said, but gave no details.

"It is expensive to purchase, ship and deliver fuel into a wartime situation, especially when you are limited by short duration contracting," she said.

"The costs for the fuel are 'pass-through' costs because Halliburton only recovers a few cents on the dollar for this expense," Hall said.

Cheney was Halliburton's CEO for five years before running for vice-president in 2000.

Waxman wrote earlier this month to the White House Office of Management and Budget to complain that Halliburton's subsidiary was overcharging for petroleum products, saying it was billing an average price of $1.59 a gallon.

A Waxman spokeswoman said new information the lawmaker has received since then was broken down into gasoline from Turkey and gasoline from Kuwait, revealing the price for gasoline imported from Kuwait to be much higher.

Halliburton was charging only $1.22 per gallon to import gasoline from Turkey into Iraq, Waxman and Dingell said.

 
Cheney's Hawks 'Hijacking Policy'
by Ritt Goldstein

A former Pentagon officer turned whistleblower says a group of hawks in the Bush Administration, including the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, is running a shadow foreign policy, contravening Washington's official line.

"What these people are doing now makes Iran-Contra [a Reagan administration national security scandal] look like amateur hour. . . it's worse than Iran-Contra, worse than what happened in Vietnam," said Karen Kwiatkowski, a former air force lieutenant-colonel.

"[President] George Bush isn't in control . . . the country's been hijacked," she said, describing how "key [governmental] areas of neoconservative concern were politically staffed".

Ms Kwiatkowski, who retired this year after 20 years service, was a Middle East specialist in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, headed by Douglas Feith.

She described "a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress", adding that "in order to take that first step - Iraq - lies had to be told to Congress to bring them on board".

Ms Kwiatkowski said the pursuit of national security decisions often bypassed "civil service and active-duty military professionals", and was handled instead by political appointees who shared common ideological ties.

There was speculation earlier this year that such an ideologue group had emerged, and that it was behind the US attack on an Iraqi convoy in Syria in June.

The New York Times quoted Patrick Lang, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) official, as saying that many in the Government believed the incursion was an effort by ideologues to disrupt co-operation between the US and Syria.

Ms Kwiatkowski said there was an extra-governmental network operating outside normal structures and practices, "a network of political appointees in key positions who felt they needed to take some action, to make things happen in a foreign affairs, national security way". She said Pentagon personnel and the DIA were pressured to favorably alter assessments and reports.

In a separate interview, Chalmers Johnson, an authority on US policy, said that the Administration's neo-conservatives had in effect seized power from Mr Bush.

Dr Johnson said the neo-conservatives had pursued an agenda outlined in the controversial 1992 Defense Planning Guidance. That document, drawn up at the direction of Mr Cheney when he was Defense secretary, said the world's only superpower should not be cautious about asserting its power.

Copyright © 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald

 
Employees urged to defend Iraq contracts

Suzanne Goldenberg
Monday October 27, 2003
The Guardian

US vice-president Dick Cheney's former employers at the defence contractor Halliburton have called on staff to phone their local newspaper to stem criticism about the firm's activities in Iraq.
The public relations offensive comes at a time of intense public scrutiny of Halliburton, which was awarded billions of dollars in no-bid contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq.

In recent days, congressmen, news organisations and technical experts in Iraq have become increasingly critical of favouritism and corruption in the awarding of contracts.

Such discussions often involve Halliburton and a subsidiary, KBR, which were major benefactors of the Bush administration's policy of awarding reconstruction contracts without a process of competitive tender.

Several congressmen have asked what Halliburton has done with the money from the contracts. Mismanagement and corruption in the rebuilding of Iraq are the topic of this week's cover story in Newsweek magazine.

Among the lucrative business opportunities in Iraq's reconstruction, KBR has been paid $1.59bn (£938.5m) to refurbish Iraq's oil installations. It has also been awarded projects to rebuild Iraqi schools.

In a memo entitled Defending Our Company, dated October 17, Halliburton's president, Dave Lesar, said critics were "distorting our efforts" to restore Iraq's oil industry and provide other services to the US military.

"Now I'm asking you to help by writing a letter to the editor of your newspaper," he wrote, going on to provide talking points about Halliburton's activities.

Mr Lesar's message was leaked to a website called misleader.org, which says it is dedicated to revealing the distortions of the Bush administration. The website said KBR had a history of overcharging the US government for contracts.

The memo was written before it emerged that Halliburton had charged the US-led occupation authority $1.59 a gallon for imported petrol - several times the cost of Iraqi petrol - costing the US taxpayer about $300m.

But it was reminiscent of a public relations offensive by Washington earlier this month in which Mr Bush and others accused the media of screening news from Iraq through a negative filter.

Such similarities are bound to be of interest to critics of the reconstruction effort. Officially, Mr Cheney severed his links to Halliburton when he ran for election in 2000. But Democrats have questioned whether the Bush administration has shown favouritism to the Houston-based firm.

 
Halliburton Gouging In Iraq?

WASHINGTON, Oct. 16, 2003

"The overcharging is so extreme that one expert has privately called it 'highway robbery.'"
Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and John Dingell, D-Mich.

(CBS/AP) Two senior Democratic lawmakers say Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, is gouging U.S. taxpayers while importing gasoline into Iraq. The Houston-based company contends it is paying the best price possible.

The New York Times reports that in a letter to the White House budget office, Reps. Henry Waxman of California and John Dingell of Michigan contended that, "Halliburton seems to be inflating gasoline prices at a great cost to American taxpayers."

"The overcharging is so extreme that one expert has privately called it 'highway robbery,'" the lawmakers said in the latest Democratic attacks against the Houston company that received a no-bid contract.

Waxman and Dingell said Halliburton's KBR subsidiary is billing the Army between $1.62 and $1.70 per gallon, while the average price for Middle East gasoline is 71 cents.

They also complained that Iraqis are charged between 4 cents and 15 cents at the pump for the imported gasoline.

The charges cover the purchase and transportation of the petroleum from Kuwait and other countries.

Halliburton, originally hired to extinguish oil fires, has received the expanded role of restoring Iraq's oil industry. The company has been paid $1.4 billion through September for its work.

"KBR is not responsible for establishing the price Iraqi motorists pay for gasoline at the pump," Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said.

She said the company negotiates "fair and competitive prices" with suppliers outside Iraq and must transport the gasoline in a hostile environment.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which chose Halliburton, has received bids for a replacement contract that could be awarded this month.

Corps spokesman Robert Faletti said he could not confirm the figures that Waxman and Dingell cited in a letter to Joshua Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

He said, however, that the contract is being audited by Congress and the Army.

In a further move against Halliburton, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., announced Wednesday he would propose barring the government from awarding Iraq reconstruction contracts to companies that maintain close financial ties to the president, vice president or members of the president's Cabinet.

Lautenberg wants the measure added to an $87 billion reconstruction bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Cheney receives deferred payments from Halliburton and also has stock options.

Cheney's office has said the vice president had no role in the contract and that the deferred payments were for his services while he headed the company. He has said he would give the proceeds to charity should he profit from the exercise of stock options.

 
Dick Cheney Does His Part to Set the Stage for the Bush Administration's Horrible Pre-election Event

Cheney defends U.S.-led war in Iraq
Speech part of Bush administration's PR effort
Friday, October 10, 2003 Posted: 1:19 PM EDT (1719 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Friday that terrorists are "doing everything they can" to get weapons of mass destruction that could kill hundreds of thousands of Americans "in a single day of horror."

"Terrorist enemies of our country hope to strike us with the most lethal weapons known to man...

Cheney called the possibility of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction "the ultimate nightmare" that "could bring devastation to our country on a scale we have never experienced. Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives in a single day of horror. ...

..."there's no containing a terrorist who will commit suicide for the purposes of mass slaughter."

 
Suit against Cheney energy task force goes to US Supreme Court
Wed Oct 1, 6:11 PM ET Add Politics - AFP to My Yahoo!

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House has asked the US Supreme Court to shield it from having to turn over documents to advocacy groups who claim in a lawsuit that corporations swayed Vice President Richard Cheney's energy task force.

Solicitor General Theodore Olson, in a 25-page petition filed with the high court Tuesday, said a US district judge's order to turn over records of energy task force meetings would "open the way for judicial supervision of internal executive branch deliberations."

"Legislative power and judicial power cannot extend to compelling the vice president to disclose... details of the process by which a president obtains information and advice from the vice president," Olson added in the document.

The Sierra Club (news - web sites) environmental group and Judicial Watch, a conservative legal pressure group, are seeking the documents in a lawsuit alleging that Kenneth Lay, then chairman of failed energy trader Enron Corp., and other corporate executives and lobbyists unduly influenced the task force which drew up recommendations for a national energy policy.

The task force produced a May 2001 report calling for increased oil and gas drilling, including on previously protected public lands, and changes in regulations that would spur growth in nuclear power generation.

The administration of President George W. Bush (news - web sites) had sought to block the document disclosure but a federal appeals court rebuffed it, setting the stage for the Supreme Court petition.

The Sierra Club has described the administration's energy policy as irresponsible and polluting and is challenging the legality of the process by which it was drawn up.

Along with Judicial Watch, the environmental group has argued in court that the Cheney energy task force constituted a de facto federal advisory committee and therefore was required by law to be open to public scrutiny and comment.

The Bush administration has maintained the task force was an informal working group and that officials were within their rights to seek confidential advice from interested parties.

The Justice Department (news - web sites), citing policy, declined to comment on Olson's petition.

A federal judge last year dismissed a separate but similar case brought by the General Accounting Office (news - web sites), the investigative arm of Congress, for access to Cheney task force documents.

Many of the energy task force's recommendations have been snarled in Congress, which is expected to vote on energy legislation in coming weeks after protracted, heated debate.

 
Iraq, 9/11 Still Linked By Cheney
He Just Won't Stop Lying

By Dana Priest and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, September 29, 2003; Page A01

In making the case for war against Iraq, Vice President Cheney has continued to suggest that an Iraqi intelligence agent met with a Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker five months before the attacks, even as the story was falling apart under scrutiny by the FBI, CIA and the foreign government that first made the allegation.

The alleged meeting in Prague between hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraqi Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani was the single thread the administration has pointed to that might tie Iraq to the attacks. But as the Czech government distanced itself from its initial assertion and American investigators determined Atta was probably in the United States at the time of the meeting, other administration officials dropped the incident from their public statements about Iraq.

Not Cheney, who was the administration's most vociferous advocate for going to war with Iraq. He brought up the connection between Atta and al-Ani again two weeks ago in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" in which he also suggested links between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Cheney described Iraq as "the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11." Neither the CIA nor the congressional joint inquiry that investigated the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon found any evidence linking Iraq to the hijackers or the attacks. President Bush corrected Cheney's statement several days later.

Cheney's staff also waged a campaign to include the allegation in Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's speech to the United Nations in February in which he made the administration's case for war against Iraq. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, pressed Powell's speechwriters to include the Atta claim and other suspected links between Iraq and terrorism, according to senior and mid-level administration officials involved in crafting the speech.

When State Department and CIA officials complained about Libby's proposed language and suggested cutting large sections, Cheney's associates fought back. "Every piece offered . . . they fought tooth and nail to keep it in," said one official involved in putting together the speech.

The vice president's role in keeping the alleged meeting in Prague before the public eye is an illustration of the administration's handling of intelligence reports in the run-up to the war, when senior officials sometimes seized on reports that bolstered the case against Iraq despite contradictory evidence provided by the U.S. intelligence community.

Cheney's office declined to comment. Mary Matalin, a former senior aide to Cheney who still provides the vice president with advice, said Cheney's job is to focus on "the big picture." His appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14, she said, was intended to "remind people that Iraq is part of a bigger war that will require patience and sacrifice."

Cheney does not fully vet his speeches or public statements with the CIA or the wider intelligence community for accuracy, according to several administration officials, but usually gives the CIA a list of possible points or facts that might be used in a speech or appearance.

Matalin said Cheney "doesn't base his opinion on one piece of data," but has access to information that cannot be declassified because it would harm national security or compromise sources. "His job is to connect the dots in a way to prevent the worst possible case from happening," she said, but in public "he has to tiptoe through landmines of what's sayable and not sayable."

The claim that Atta, an Egyptian and Sept. 11 hijacker, had met with al-Ani in early April 2001 has been a constant element of the vice president's case against Iraq. Surveillance cameras at the Radio Free Europe building in Prague had picked up al-Ani, an intelligence officer at the Iraq embassy, surveying the building in April, five months before the Sept. 11 attacks. The tape was made available to Czech intelligence. Al-Ani was expelled at the U.S. government's request soon afterward for conduct incompatible with his diplomatic status.

In October 2001, after pictures of Atta had circulated publicly, an Arab student who worked as an informant for BIS, the Czech Security Information Service, told the service he had seen Atta meeting with al-Ani in April.

That November, Stanislav Gross, the Czech Republic's interior minister, said publicly that al-Ani and Atta had met in Prague. A short while later, Czech Prime Minister Milos Zeman told Powell that the two had discussed targeting the Radio Free Europe building, not the Sept. 11 targets.

On Dec. 9, 2001, Cheney said on "Meet The Press" that "it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack."

But that same month, Czech President Vaclav Havel was retreating from the more definitive accounts provided by his government, saying there was "a 70 percent" chance the meeting took place. Indeed, while Czech officials never officially backed away from their initial stance, officials at various agencies say that, privately, the Czechs have discredited the accuracy of the untested informant who came to them with the information. According to one report, Havel quietly informed the White House in 2002 there was no evidence to confirm the meeting.

The Czechs had reviewed records using Atta's name and his seven known aliases provided by the CIA and found nothing to confirm the April 2001 trip. Meanwhile, CIA and FBI officials were running down thousands of leads on Atta and the other 18 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11 plot.

U.S. records showed Atta living in Virginia Beach in April 2001, and they could find no indication he had left Virginia or traveled outside the United States.

Even so, on March 24, 2002, Cheney again told NBC, "We discovered . . . the allegation that one of the lead hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had, in fact, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague."

A few weeks later, in April, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told a San Francisco audience, "We ran down literally hundreds of thousands of leads and checked every record we could get our hands on, from flight reservations to car rentals to bank accounts." The FBI, he said, could find no evidence that Atta left or returned to the United States at the time.

In May, senior FBI and CIA analysts, having scoured thousands of travel records, concluded "there was no evidence Atta left or returned to the U.S.," according to officials at the time.

But on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney, again on "Meet the Press," said that Atta "did apparently travel to Prague. . . . We have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer a few months before the attacks on the World Trade Center."

"What does the CIA say about that?" asked host Tim Russert. "Is it credible?"

"It's credible," Cheney replied. "But, you know, I think the way to put it would be it's unconfirmed at this point."

As war loomed closer, the Atta allegation generally began to disappear from the administration's public case against Iraq. Bush did not mention Atta or the Prague meeting in his Jan. 28 State of the Union address, when he sought to show Iraq's links to terrorism.

But behind the scenes, the Atta meeting remained tantalizing to Cheney and his staff. Libby -- along with deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, a longtime Cheney associate -- began pushing to include the Atta claim in Powell's appearance before the U.N. Security Council a week after the State of the Union speech. Powell's presentation was aimed at convincing the world of Iraq's ties to terrorists and its pursuit of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

On Jan. 25, with a stack of notebooks at his side, color-coded with the sources for the information, Libby laid out the potential case against Iraq to a packed White House situation room. "We read [their proposal to include Atta] and some of us said, 'Wow! Here we go again,' " said one official who helped draft the speech. "You write it. You take it out, and then it comes back again."

Libby described the material as a "Chinese menu," simply the broadest range of options, according to several administration officials. "The papers were designed to assist [Powell's] preparation by organizing a lot of materials so that he could choose the order and evidence he found most compelling, although some of it, in the end, could not be declassified," said one administration official.

But other officials present said they felt that Libby's presentation was over the top, that the wording was too aggressive and most of the material could not be used in a public forum. Much of it, in fact, unraveled when closely examined by intelligence analysts from other agencies and, in the end, was largely discarded.

"After one day of hearing screams about who put this together and what are the sources, we essentially threw it out," one official present said.

Cheney's staff did not entirely give up. Late into the night before Powell's presentation, Libby called Powell's staff, waiting at the United Nations in New York, to question why certain material was not being included in the terrorism section, according to two State Department officials.

Earlier this month, on his most recent "Meet the Press" appearance, Cheney once again used Atta to subtly suggest a connection between Iraq and Sept. 11, 2001.

"With respect to 9/11, of course, we've had the story . . . the Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we've never been able to develop anymore of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it."

Defense and intelligence officials say al-Ani, who was apprehended by U.S. forces earlier this year, has denied meeting with Atta.

Research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.

 
Cheney's ties to Halliburton draw more scrutiny
By Dave Montgomery
Star-Telegram Washington Bureau

ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Vice President Dick Cheney warned about the threat posed by Iraq during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Jan. 30. Cheney has stock options and draws a deferred salary from Halliburton Co., which is helping to rebuild Iraq.

WASHINGTON - The renewed uproar over billions of dollars in government work awarded to Texas-based Halliburton Co. is forcing the Bush administration to defend itself against accusations of conflict of interest and sweetheart deals as it struggles to maintain public support for U.S. involvement in Iraq.

At the center of the controversy is Vice President Dick Cheney, who was Halliburton's chief executive from 1995 to 2000. He still holds Halliburton stock options and draws a deferred salary from the Houston energy and construction company.

Cheney says he no longer has an active financial interest in the company and dismisses critical remarks as "political cheap shots" from Democrats.

But his former Halliburton ties have heightened scrutiny over more than $1 billion awarded to Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, to aid the recovery of Iraq's battered oil industry. All told, Halliburton's government work in Iraq now totals nearly $2 billion.

"I think we ought to ask a lot of tough questions here, especially since the vice president has a deferred compensation package from Halliburton," said Rep. Martin Frost, D-Arlington, dean of the Texas congressional delegation.

Kellogg, Brown & Root, the engineering and construction arm of Halliburton, has considerable experience with big projects in energy and construction. The company has performed billions of dollars of work for the U.S. military since it won its first defense contract in 1940.

It is believed to be the biggest U.S. government contractor in postwar Iraq. In addition to the oil field contract, the Halliburton subsidiary provides a broad range of military logistics, from building bases to serving chow and delivering the mail to the troops.

Halliburton has a work force in Iraq of more than 4,500 people. But company spokeswoman Wendy Hall countered assertions that the contracts grew out of political influence or ties to the administration.

"Certainly, it's easier to assign devious motives than to take the time to learn the truth," she said. "Our Halliburton people are sharing the hardships and the risks."

Three Halliburton workers, she said, have been killed, including one mail handler who died in an explosion and another caught in a crossfire. The third died in a car wreck.

Critics, however, argue that the perception of special treatment toward Halliburton, whether accurate or not, undercuts President Bush's efforts to shore up public support for the U.S.-led military presence in Iraq. It could also complicate his request to Congress for an additional $87 billion to pay for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some Republicans have begun to question the $20.3 billion in the package to be set aside for rebuilding Iraq. But the questions about Halliburton's deals have been raised primarily by Demo-crats and public watchdog groups.

Halliburton's role was first questioned last year after it became clear that the company and its subsidiaries were getting millions of dollars in new government work in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.

But the controversy has flared anew in recent days as Bush began pressing for additional funds.

"The situation in Iraq is challenging enough without the bureaucrats causing additional problems by awarding a contract to the vice president's former company," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a public watchdog group that supports Bush's Iraq policy but has long sparred with Cheney.

Judicial Watch won a court order last year forcing the administration to release documents relating to an energy task force run by Cheney. Also last year, Judicial Watch filed suit accusing Cheney and Halliburton of misleading investors. The suit was dismissed this month.

Halliburton's presence in Iraq evolved from a broad-ranging Pentagon contract that the company has held intermittently since 1992, according to officials with Halliburton and the Army. The contractor provides the Army with virtually every conceivable logistical need in hot spots around the globe.

The oil field contract has drawn the most controversy because it was awarded on a no-bid basis with a ceiling of $7 billion over two years. Kellogg, Brown & Root has fulfilled five postwar work orders totaling $1.2 billion since receiving the contract March 8, just before U.S. troops invaded Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Robert Flowers, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, has said that military planners gave the oil-repair job to Kellogg, Brown & Root because the Texas company held the wider Pentagon contract and "was already very familiar" with operational plans.

At that point, he said, U.S. plans to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure were classified, and conducting a bid competition would have undercut both speed and secrecy.

But Rep. Henry Waxman of California, senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee and a frequent critic of the administration, said a staff inquiry into the contract suggests that the Halliburton subsidiary received favorable treatment from the Pentagon because it got the job without competition.

The contract reimburses Halliburton for its expenses, plus a fee based on 7 percent of the total cost of the job. The terms give the company little incentive to control costs, Waxman said.

"They have, I fear, given Halliburton a blank check," he told the Star-Telegram last week.

Officials with the Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing oil field renovation, said the no-bid contract was a transitional step to get the work started. The Corps is soliciting bids for two new contracts, totaling $1 billion, which will phase out the existing contract held by Kellogg, Brown & Root. Companies in more than 20 countries are eligible to compete for the contracts, to be awarded in mid-October.

Although Waxman has avoided suggestions that Halliburton landed the contract because of the company's ties to Cheney, others have shown no such hesitancy. Democratic leaders in Congress as well as some of the 10 Democratic presidential candidates are hammering away at Cheney's Halliburton connections to bolster a pet theme that the Bush administration is a captive of big corporations.

Cheney, a former defense secretary and Republican congressman from Wyoming, headed Halliburton for five years until he was tapped to become Bush's running mate in 2000. The 84-year-old company was based in Dallas before moving its headquarters to Houston in midsummer.

The vice president told NBC's Meet the Press on Sept. 14 that he had no influence on Halliburton's current contracts in Iraq, never lobbied the Defense Department on behalf of the company and has no financial interest in the company.

But the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress that provides research for members, said in a report released Thursday that Cheney's deferred salary and stock options constitute a "financial interest" under federal ethics standards. The report was released by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., one of the most vocal critics of the Halliburton contracts.

The vice president's aides say Cheney received $147,579 in deferred compensation in 2001 and $162,392 in 2002 under a binding arrangement he made with Halliburton in 1998. The annual payments, which can vary, will continue through 2005.

Cheney has said he has sought to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest by taking out an insurance policy guaranteeing that the deferred salary would continue, regardless of what happened to Halliburton. The intent was to free Cheney from being tied to Halliburton's fortunes so he would have no interest in trying to protect the company through his government position.

Cheney also holds 433,333 Halliburton stock options, but his office says that the options are controlled by an administrator and that after-tax profits go to charities.

"The vice president has no financial interest in Halliburton, and the allegations are irresponsible and baseless," said Cheney's spokeswoman, Cathie Martin.

Cheney took over at Halliburton after serving as defense secretary during the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and led the company through substantial growth. The Center for Public Integrity, a watchdog organization in Washington, reported in 2001 that Halliburton nearly doubled its government contracts during Cheney's tenure, to $2.3 billion, from $1.2 billion.

With 96,000 employees working in more than 120 countries, Halliburton is the world's largest supplier of products and services to the petroleum and energy industries, and it has a widening expertise in military logistics.

Kellogg, Brown & Root specialists have installed and maintained bases in Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti, often deploying within 72 hours of notification.

Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va., said Halliburton's skills in energy and construction give the company an edge over many competitors.

"It's very hard for outsiders to evaluate the criteria that led to some of the Iraq reconstruction awards," Thompson said. "There are only a handful of large international construction companies that have the skill to do these kind of large reconstruction jobs."

Cheney made the same point during the NBC interview, while emphasizing that he had "no idea" why Halliburton got the no-bid oil field repair contract.

"There are few companies out there that have the combination of the very large engineering construction capability and significant oil field services," he said.

 
Cheney payments under fire
Democrats want Halliburton probe
Reuters News Service

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney, a former CEO of Halliburton Co., has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the company since taking office while asserting he has no financial interest in the company, Senate Democrats said Tuesday.

The Democrats demanded to know why Cheney claimed to have cut ties with the oil services company, involved in a large no-bid contract for oil reconstruction work in Iraq, when he was still receiving large deferred salary payments.

Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle of South Dakota and New Jersey Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg said the revelations reinforced the need for hearings about the no-bid contracts Halliburton received from the Bush administration.

"The vice president needs to explain how he reconciles the claim that he has `no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind' with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred salary payments he receives from Halliburton," Daschle said Tuesday.

On NBC's Meet the Press program last Sunday, Cheney, who was Halliburton's CEO from 1995 to 2000, said he had severed all ties with the Houston-based company.

"I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years," he said.

Cathie Martin, a Cheney spokeswoman, confirmed that the vice president has been receiving the deferred compensation payments from Halliburton, but she disputed that his statements on Meet the Press had been misleading.

Cheney had already earned the salary that was now being paid, Martin said, adding that once he became a nominee for vice president, he purchased an insurance policy to guarantee that the deferred salary would be paid to him whether or not Halliburton survived as a company.

"So he has no financial interest in the company," she said.

But Lautenberg said that Cheney's financial disclosure filings with the Office of Government Ethics listed $205,298 in deferred salary payments made to him by Halliburton in 2001, and another $162,393 in 2002. The filings indicated that he was scheduled to receive more payments in 2003, 2004 and 2005.

"In 2001 and 2002, Vice President Cheney was paid almost as much in salary from Halliburton as he made as vice president," Lautenberg said.

The vice president's salary is $198,600 annually.

The financial disclosure forms also said that Cheney continued to hold 433,333 unexercised Halliburton stock options, with exercise prices below the company's current stock market price.

Cheney's spokeswoman said he had placed these options in a charitable trust and no longer had control over them.

On Meet the Press, Cheney also said he had no involvement in the awarding of government contracts to Halliburton.

"As vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government," he said.

In March, Halliburton was granted, without competition, a contract by the Army Corps of Engineers to repair and restore Iraq's oil fields. The ACE says the cost of this contract to taxpayers is about $1 billion.

But under a second military support contract, Halliburton's KBR unit has racked up over$1 billion in expenses in Iraq, according to the U.S. Army Field Support Command.

 
Cheney link of Iraq, 9/11 challenged
By Anne E. Kornblut and Bryan Bender , Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, 9/16/2003

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney, anxious to defend the White House foreign policy amid ongoing violence in Iraq, stunned intelligence analysts and even members of his own administration this week by failing to dismiss a widely discredited claim: that Saddam Hussein might have played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Evidence of a connection, if any exists, has never been made public. Details that Cheney cited to make the case that the Iraqi dictator had ties to Al Qaeda have been dismissed by the CIA as having no basis, according to analysts and officials. Even before the war in Iraq, most Bush officials did not explicitly state that Iraq had a part in the attack on the United States two years ago.

But Cheney left that possibility wide open in a nationally televised interview two days ago, claiming that the administration is learning "more and more" about connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Sept. 11 attacks. The statement surprised some analysts and officials who have reviewed intelligence reports from Iraq.

Democrats sharply attacked him for exaggerating the threat Iraq posed before the war.

"There is no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11," Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat running for president, said in an interview last night. "There was no such relationship."

A senior foreign policy adviser to Howard Dean, the Democratic front-runner, said it is "totally inappropriate for the vice president to continue making these allegations without bringing forward" any proof.

Cheney and his representatives declined to comment on the vice president's statements. But the comments also surprised some in the intelligence community who are already simmering over the way the administration utilized intelligence reports to strengthen the case for the war last winter.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism specialist, said that Cheney's "willingness to use speculation and conjecture as facts in public presentations is appalling. It's astounding."

In particular, current intelligence officials reiterated yesterday that a reported Prague visit in April 2001 between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent had been discounted by the CIA, which sent former agency Director James R. Woolsey to investigate the claim. Woolsey did not find any evidence to confirm the report, officials said, and President Bush did not include it in the case for war in his State of the Union address last January.

But Cheney, on NBC's "Meet the Press," cited the report of the meeting as possible evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link and said it was neither confirmed nor discredited, saying

: "We've never been able to develop any more of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know."

Multiple intelligence officials said that the Prague meeting, purported to be between Atta and senior Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, was dismissed almost immediately after it was reported by Czech officials in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and has since been discredited further.

The CIA reported to Congress last year that it could not substantiate the claim, while American records indicate Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va., at the time, the officials said yesterday. Indeed, two intelligence officials said yesterday that Ani himself, now in US custody, has also refuted the report. The Czech government has also distanced itself from its original claim.

A senior defense official with access to high-level intelligence reports expressed confusion yesterday over the vice president's decision to reair charges that have been dropped by almost everyone else. "There isn't any new intelligence that would precipitate anything like this," the official said, speaking on condition he not be named.

Nonetheless, 69 percent of Americans believe that Hussein probably had a part in attacking the United States, according to a recent Washington Post poll. And Democratic senators have charged that the White House is fanning the misperception by mentioning Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks in ways that suggest a link.

Bush administration officials insisted yesterday that they are learning more about various Iraqi connections with Al Qaeda. They said there is evidence suggesting a meeting took place between the head of Iraqi intelligence and Osama bin Laden in Sudan in the mid-1990s; another purported meeting was said to take place in Afghanistan, and during it Iraqi officials offered to provide chemical and biological weapons training, according to officials who have read transcripts of interrogations with Al Qaeda detainees.

But there is no evidence proving the Iraqi regime knew about or took part in the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush officials said.

Former senator Max Cleland, who is a member of the national commission investigating the attacks, said yesterday that classified documents he has reviewed on the subject weaken, rather than strengthen, administration assertions that Hussein's regime may have been allied with Al Qaeda.

"The vice president trying to justify some connection is ludicrous," he said.

Nonetheless, Cheney, in the "Meet the Press" interview Sunday, insisted that the United States is learning more about the links between Al Qaeda and Hussein.

"We learn more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s," Cheney said, "that it involved training, for example, on [biological and chemical weapons], that Al Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems."

The claims are based on a prewar allegation by a "senior terrorist operative," who said he overheard an Al Qaeda agent speak of a mission to seek biological or chemical weapons training in Iraq, according to Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement to the United Nations in February.

But intelligence specialists told the Globe last August that they have never confirmed that the training took place, or identified where it could have taken place. "The general public just doesn't have any independent way of weighing what is said," Cannistraro, the former CIA counterterrorism specialist, said. "If you repeat it enough times . . . then people become convinced it's the truth."

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

 
Appeals Court Stays Out of Cheney Case

Sep 11, 10:18 PM (ET)

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court rebuffed Vice President Dick Cheney, refusing to intervene in a lawsuit delving into the role of business executives and industry lobbyists in formulating the Bush administration's energy plan in 2001.

The administration won only three votes in favor of rehearing the request to step into the case in which Cheney and his energy task force are being ordered to turn over a large number of documents to the conservative group Judicial Watch and the environmental group Sierra Club. The request for a rehearing went to nine appeals court judges.

The rejection Wednesday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit leaves the Bush administration two choices.

The first is to ask the Supreme Court to consider the case. The other is to return to U.S. District Court where Judge Emmet Sullivan says the administration must comply with requests for documents or give detailed explanations about the materials it intends to withhold from disclosure.

The administration argues that the constitutional need for the president to receive candid advice demands confidentiality.

 
Vice President Not Out of the Woods Yet: Judicial Watch Statement on Halliburton Lawsuit Developments
Monday September 8, 11:54 am ET

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, said it would "carefully consider its next legal steps" in response to a federal court's decision to dismiss its shareholder lawsuit against Vice President Cheney and Halliburton for alleged fraud. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton issued the following statement in response to the judge's decision:
"Judicial Watch has various legal options it can take to hold the Vice
President and Halliburton accountable for their alleged corporate fraud.
It is important that Halliburton, which has massive government contracts
(including for the rebuilding of Iraq), not get away with Enron-style
accounting tricks and alleged misdeeds. Mr. Cheney is certainly not out
of the woods yet."

Reportedly, the Securities and Exchange Commission continues to investigate Judicial Watch's allegations against Mr. Cheney and Halliburton.

 
GAO's Final Energy Task Force Report Reveals that the Vice President Made A False Statement to Congress
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Aug. 29, 2003

This month, the General Accounting Office (GAO) - the investigative and auditing arm of Congress - issued a report that contains some startling revelations. Though they are couched in very polite language, they are bombshells nonetheless.

The report - entitled "Energy Task Force: Process Used to Develop the National Energy Policy" - and its accompanying Chronology strongly imply that the Administration has, in effect, been paying off its heavy-hitting energy industry contributors. It also very strongly implies that Vice President Dick Cheney lied to Congress.

The Background: How Cheney Stonewalled GAO

In a sense, this story begins during the close 2000 Presidential election, when energy industry special interests were big-dollar contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. (In 2004's re-election campaign, they will doubtless be called upon once again.)

After he was elected - and very much beholden to those contributors - Bush put Cheney in charge of developing the National Energy Policy. To do so, Cheney convened an Energy Task Force. (Details about the Task Force can be found in my prior column.)

Cheney's selection alone was ominous: He had headed Halliburton, just the kind of big-dollar Republican energy industry contributor that had helped Bush-Cheney win the election in the first place.

The Energy Task Force might have operated in absolute secrecy, were it not for GAO. GAO is a nonpartisan agency with statutory authority to investigate "all matters related to the receipt, disbursement, and use of public money," so that it can judge the expenditures and effectiveness of public programs, and report to Congress on what it finds.

To fulfill its statutory responsibility, GAO sought documents from Vice-President Cheney relating to Energy Task Force expenditures. But in a literally unprecedented move, the White House said no.

Amazingly, it did so without even bothering to claim that the documents sought were covered by executive privilege. It simply refused.

On August 2, 2001, Vice President Cheney sent a letter - personally signed by him - to Congress demanding, in essence, that it get the Comptroller off his back. In the letter, he claimed that his staff had already provided "documents responsive to the Comptroller General's inquiry concerning the costs associated with the [Energy task force's] work." As I will explain later, this turned out to be a lie.

In the end, GAO had to go to court to try to get the documents to which it plainly was entitled. On December 9, 2002, GAO lost in court - though, as I argued in a prior column, the decision was incorrect.

Then, on February 9, 2003, the Comptroller General announced GAO's decision not to appeal. He said he feared that another adverse decision would cause the agency to lose even more power, more permanently. Several news accounts suggest that it was the Republican leadership of Congress that stopped the appeal.

This August's Report Reveals Cheney Lied About Providing Responsive Documents

Then this August's Report was issued. It was not the thorough, comprehensive Report GAO wanted it to be. (Indeed, GAO's Comptroller General has stressed that "the Vice President's persistent denial of access to" records "precluded GAO from fully achieving our objectives and substantially limited our analysis.") But it is enough to shock, and disturb, the reader.

The Report shows that Cheney's claim to Congress, in the August 2, 2001 letter, that responsive documents were provided to GAO, was plainly false.

According to the Report, Cheney provided GAO with 77 pages of "documents retrieved from the files of the Office of the Vice President responsive to" GAO's inquiry regarding the Energy Task Force's "receipt, disbursement, and use of public funds."

To any lawyer, a mere 77-page document production seems suspiciously slim - especially when it is meant to represent information from a group of people on a fairly broad topic. Surely there were more documents that were not turned over.

Moreover, it turned out, as the Report reveals, that the documents that were turned over were useless: "The materials were virtually impossible to analyze, as they consisted, for example, of pages with dollar amounts but no indication of the nature or purpose of the expenditure." They were further described as "predominantly reimbursement requests, assorted telephone bills and random items, such as the executive director's credit card receipt for pizza."

In sum, the incomplete document production was not only nonresponsive - it was insulting. So the GAO pressed for responsive documents numerous times in different ways: letters, telephone exchanges and meetings.

Perhaps the most pointed of these was a July 18, 2001 letter from the Comptroller to the Vice President. It noted that GAO had "been given 77 pages of miscellaneous records purporting to relate to these direct and indirect costs. Because the relevance of these records is unclear, we continue to request all records responsive to our request, including any records that clarify the nature and purpose of the costs." (Emphasis added.)

Cheney's False Statement About the Responsive Documents Was Plainly Intentional

Despite receiving this letter, Cheney still claimed to Congress, a few weeks later, on August 2, that responsive documents had been produced.

Of course, Cheney is a busy man. Yet there can be no question as to whether he was aware of the July 18, 2001 letter from the Comptroller complaining about the 77 pages of documents' being unresponsive: He even attached it to his own August 2 letter to Congress, as part of a chronology. And again, he personally signed that August 2 letter.

Nor can there be any question that Cheney knows what it means to produce responsive documents - and not to do so. In the same paragraph of the August 2 letter in which he claims he was responsive to the Energy Task Force request, he makes a lesser claim with respect to another GAO request - stating that there, he had merely "provided substantial responses." (Emphasis added.)

Plainly, Cheney knows the difference between being responsive; offering a substantial response; and sending insulting non-responsive materials, featuring unexplained phone bills, columns of unidentified figures, and a pizza receipt.

Thus, Cheney's claim to have produced responsive documents was a false statement and, all evidence suggests, an intentional one. That means it is also a criminal offense - a false statement to Congress. (In a previous column, I discussed the false statements statute and its application.)

GAO's Polite Tone Belies The Shocking Evidence Its Report Offers

The straight arrows at GAO were no doubt horrified that the Vice President of the United States, who is the Constitutional presiding officer of the U.S. Senate, would deliberately mislead the Congress with such blatant misinformation.

Being nonpartisan, they refrained from accusing the Vice President of this crime. But as their Report shows, they included evidence that makes the crime evident for all to see. They also provided evidence of what the motive for the crime was.

The Report quietly - but tellingly - notes that the Vice President's team "solicited input from, or received information and advice from nonfederal energy stakeholders, principally petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and electricity industry representatives and lobbyists." (Emphasis added.)

In other words, if the Vice President is not trying to cover up the fact that he met with big energy interests - including past contributors - and allowed them a large role in settling our nation's energy policy, why all the secrecy ? That is what other observers have suspected - and what has been rumored from the beginning. Thanks to Cheney's obfuscation, we still can't know for certain. Yet thanks to GAO, we do now know for certain that he lied to Congress to cover up something, and there is little doubt in my mind as to what he is hiding.

 
Halliburton's Deals Greater Than Thought

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 28, 2003; Page A01

Halliburton, the company formerly headed by Vice President Cheney, has won contracts worth more than $1.7 billion under 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.

The size and scope of the government contracts awarded to Halliburton in connection with the war in Iraq are significantly greater than was previously disclosed and demonstrate the U.S. military's increasing reliance on for-profit corporations to run its logistical operations. Independent experts estimate that as much as one-third of the monthly $3.9 billion cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is going to independent contractors.

Services performed by Halliburton, through its Brown and Root subsidiary, include building and managing military bases, logistical support for the 1,200 intelligence officers hunting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, delivering mail and producing millions of hot meals. Often dressed in Army fatigues with civilian patches on their shoulders, Halliburton employees and contract personnel have become an integral part of Army life in Iraq.

Spreadsheets drawn up by the Army Joint Munitions Command show that about $1 billion had been allocated to Brown and Root Services through mid-August for contracts associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon's name for the U.S.-led war and occupation. In addition, the company has earned about $705 million for an initial round of oil field rehabilitation work for the Army Corps of Engineers, a corps spokesman said.

Specific work orders assigned to the subsidiary under Operation Iraqi Freedom include $142 million for base camp operations in Kuwait, $170 million for logistical support for the Iraqi reconstruction effort and $28 million for the construction of prisoner of war camps, the Army spreadsheet shows. The company was also allocated $39 million for building and operating U.S. base camps in Jordan, the existence of which the Pentagon has not previously publicly acknowledged.

Over the past decade, Halliburton, a Houston-based company that made its name servicing pipelines and oil wells, has positioned itself to take advantage of an increasing trend by the federal government to contract out many support operations overseas. It has emerged as the biggest single government contractor in Iraq, followed by such companies as Bechtel, a California-based engineering firm that has won hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. Agency for International Development reconstruction contracts, and Virginia-based DynCorp, which is training the new Iraqi police force.

The government said the practice has been spurred by cutbacks in the military budget and a string of wars since the end of the Cold War that have placed enormous demand on the armed forces.

But, according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and other critics, the Iraq war and occupation have provided a handful of companies with good political connections, particularly Halliburton, with unprecedented money-making opportunities. "The amount of money [earned by Halliburton] is quite staggering, far more than we were originally led to believe," Waxman said. "This is clearly a trend under this administration, and it concerns me because often the privatization of government services ends up costing the taxpayers more money rather than less."

Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman, declined to discuss the details of the company's operations in Iraq, or confirm or deny estimates of the amounts the company has earned from its contracting work on behalf of the military. In an e-mail message, however, she said that suggestions of war profiteering were "an affront to all hard-working, honorable Halliburton employees."

Hall added that military contracts were awarded "not by politicians but by government civil servants, under strict guidelines."

Daniel Carlson, a spokesman for the Army's Joint Munitions Command, said Brown and Root had won a competitive bidding process in 2001 to provide a wide range of "contingency" services to the military in the event of the deployment of U.S. troops overseas. He said the contract, known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP, was designed to free uniformed personnel for combat duties and did not preclude deals with other contractors.

Carlson said the money earmarked for Brown and Root was an estimate, and could go "up or down" depending on the work performed.

The Joint Munitions Command provided The Washington Post with an updated version of a spreadsheet the Army released to Waxman earlier this month, giving detailed estimates of money obligated to Brown and Root under Operation Iraqi Freedom. Estimates of the company's revenue from Iraq have been increasing steadily since February, when the Corps of Engineers announced the company had won a $37.5 million contract for pre-positioning fire equipment in the region.

In addition to its Iraq contracts, Brown and Root has also earned $183 million from Operation Enduring Freedom, the military name for the war on terrorism and combat operations in Afghanistan, according to the Army's numbers.

Waxman's interest in Halliburton was ignited by a routine Corps of Engineers announcement in March reporting that the company had been awarded a no-bid contract, with a $7 billion limit, for putting out fires at Iraqi oil wells. Corps spokesmen justified the lack of competition on the grounds that the operation was part of a classified war plan and the Army did not have time to secure competitive bids for the work.

The corps said the oil rehabilitation deal was an offshoot of the LOGCAP contract, a one-year agreement renewable for 10 years. Individual work orders assigned under LOGCAP do not have to be competitively bid. But Waxman and other critics maintain that the oil work has nothing to do with the logistics operation.

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 of Brown and Root's parent company, Halliburton, from 1995 to 2000, when he resigned to run for the vice presidency.

At the time, said P.W. Singer, a Brookings Institution scholar and author of "Corporate Warriors," it was impossible to predict how lucrative the military contracting business would become. He estimates the number of contract workers in Iraq at 20,000, or about one for every 10 soldiers. During the Gulf War, the proportion was about one in 100.

Brown and Root's revenue from Operation Iraqi Freedom is already rivaling its earnings from its contracts in the Balkans, and is a major factor in increasing the value of Halliburton shares by 50 percent over the past year, according to industry analysts. The company reported a net profit of $26 million in the second quarter of this year, in contrast to a $498 million loss in the same period last year.

Waxman aides said they have been told by the General Accounting Office that Brown and Root is likely to earn "several hundred million more dollars" from the no-bid Corps of Engineers contract to rehabilitate Iraqi oil fields. Waxman, the ranking minority member on the House Government Reform Committee, had asked the GAO to investigate the corps' decision not to bid out the contract.

After a round of unfavorable publicity, the corps explained that the sole award to Brown and Root would be replaced by a competitively bid contract. But the deadline for announcing the results of the competition has slipped from August to October, causing rival companies to complain that little work will be left for anybody else. Bechtel, one of Halliburton's main competitors, announced this month that it would not bid for the corps contract and would instead focus on securing work from the Iraqi oil ministry.

In addition to the Army contracts, Halliburton has profited from other government-related work in Iraq and the war on terrorism, and has a $300 million contract with the Navy structured along similar lines to LOGCAP.

Pentagon officials said the increasing reliance on contractors is inevitable, given the multiple demands on the military, particularly since Sept. 11, 2001. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is a champion of "outsourcing," writing in The Post in May that "more than 300,000 uniformed personnel" were doing jobs that civilians could do.

Independent experts said the trend toward outsourcing logistic operations has resulted in new problems, such as a lack of accountability and transparency on the part of private military firms and sometimes questionable billing practices.

A major problem in Iraq, Singer said, has been the phenomenon of "no-shows" caused by the inhospitable security environment, including the killing of contract workers, including a Halliburton mail delivery employee earlier this month.

"At the end of the day, neither these companies nor their employees are bound by military justice, and it is up to them whether to show up or not," Singer said. "The result is that there have been delays in setting up showers for soldiers, getting them cooked meals and so on."

A related concern is the rising cost of hiring contract workers because of skyrocketing insurance premiums. Singer estimates that premiums have increased by 300 percent to 400 percent this year, costs that are passed on to the taxpayer under the cost-plus-award fee system that is the basis for most contracts.

The LOGCAP contract awarded to Brown and Root in 2001 was the third, and potentially most lucrative, super-contract awarded by the Army. Brown and Root won the first five-year contract in 1992, but lost the second to rival DynCorp in 1997 after the GAO criticized the Army for not adequately controlling contracting costs in Bosnia.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company