I need help documenting Cheney's corruption, from Burma to

[bobbyboucher]

Halliburton to the White House. His whole career. I know that fuck is the devil incarnate, but I need links, or one good summation (like that is possible) of his dirty dealings.

I need to fry his corrupt ass.

Any helpers with great sources?

[historian]

1. French Connection

The only one i can offer is for you to look for french papers online and search their databases on cheney. He is being investigated in France for bribery and other charges while heading Halliburton. I think i saw something on it with Le Monde paper - hope they have it in English - i read it in french.
good luck

[Robbien]

2. I would start with disinfopedia

It is a great source which follows his career including links

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Dick_Cheney

[bobbyboucher]

3. Thank you both!

I need to gather it all.

[Stephanie]

4. Dick! Currently, my favorite topic!

Dick Cheney - Shadow President

Did Dick Cheney’s secret Energy Task Force plan the Invasion of Iraq?

[G_j]

5. just finished reading this

may not be exactly what you are looking for, still a good article/rant about Cheney:

Time For The Buck To Stop
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_5152.shtml

[Zan_of_Texas]

6. more

Richard B. Cheney
Brief Biography - Center For Public Integrity


Under the Influence George W. Bush: Pragmatic,With Ties to Corporate America

<http://www.public-i.org/story_16_022800.htm>
The Advisers
Richard B. Cheney was President Bush's defense secretary, and is now CEO of Halliburton Co., a $9 billion dollar oil services firm based in Dallas. After a February 1999 meeting with Cheney in Austin, Bush told reporters, "Dick Cheney is a friend of mine. It's not the first time he has been down here. It won't be the last time he is down here. He is a person whose judgment I rely upon a lot." As defense secretary, Cheney directed the U.S. invasion of Panama and Operation Desert Storm, the Persian Gulf War. He also oversaw a restructuring of the Pentagon.
In 1995, after a stint at the American Enterprise Institute, Cheney became the CEO of Halliburton, which does business in at least 100 countries. In 1998, Business Week reported that Cheney had been "courting politicians and business leaders through the booming Caspian Sea region in an all-out effort to secure key political ties with Azerbaijan and Kazakstan. Accounting for the world's third-largest oil reserves, the region is Cheney's best hope to secure big contracts for a long time to come." Cheney has succeeded. Along with the heads of Chevron and Texaco Inc., Cheney sits on Kazakstan's Oil Advisory Board, which serves as a sounding board for the country's president. As Halliburton President David J. Lesar told Business Week, "Dick gives us a level of access that I doubt anyone else in the oil sector can duplicate."
Most recently, Cheney lobbied in favor of a U.S. Export-Import Bank loan to Tyumen Oil, an upstart Siberian oil company, which has hired Halliburton to upgrade the giant Samotlor field in the Caspian region. The loan is controversial because Russians were pounding Chechnya at the time the loan would have been made. It was denied in December. As CEO of Halliburton, Cheney has been a staunch critic of unilateral sanctions against Libya, Iran and Nigeria, which prevent oil and gas companies from doing business in those countries.
Cheney also sits on the boards of EDS (consulting), Hunt Oil Co., Procter & Gamble (household products), and TRW (systems integrator).

[Zan_of_Texas]

7. more 2

Bush, Cheney confront renewed interest in past business dealings
BY DAVE MONTGOMERY
Knight Ridder Newspapers
JULY 17, 2002

Knight Ridder, "Bush, Cheney confront renewed interest in past business dealings," 7/17/02
WASHINGTON - KRT NEWSFEATURES
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/politics/3679545.htm

(KRT) - In the business world, they were regarded as gregarious front men who delegated day-to-day details to others, with well-known names that added luster to their companies' portfolios.
Now, as the top two occupants in the White House, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are confronting renewed questions over their past life in the business arena, giving Democrats an opening in the forthcoming midterm elections and raising questions about the administration's commitment to dealing with America's recent wave of corporate scandals.

Bush has been forced to again defend himself for his oft-scrutinized role as a board member for Harken Energy Corp. of Grand Prairie, Texas, before he became governor in 1995. Cheney faces a fresh lawsuit alleging he condoned fraudulent accounting practices as chairman and chief executive officer of Halliburton Corp. of Dallas before he resigned in 2000 to become Bush's running mate.
The White House, supported by some independent business experts, maintains the accusations are without substance and are part of a Democratic political assault to discredit the Republican administration in advance of the November elections.

But other analysts and watchdog groups argue that Bush and Cheney's past activities are similar to widely condemned practices exposed in recent investigations involving Enron Corp., WorldCom and other prominent companies.

"The bottom line is, you have an administration whose president and vice president were involved in some of the very practices that have become such a problem for the country as a whole," said Bill Allison of the Center for Public Integrity, which has repeatedly investigated Bush's activities with Harken. "It's a little bit hard to imagine that, given their own behavior, they're going to be zealous about going after companies accused of doing this."

more

[Zan_of_Texas]

8. more 3 asbestos

Halliburton nearly ran aground because of its asbestosis exposure. That exposure mostly came from Dresser, a subsidiary that Halliburton bought. Dresser is an old stomping ground of the Bushes.

This is a long article.

Questions on Halliburton Deal Under Cheney
By JEFF GERTH and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
NEW YORK TIMES
August 1, 2002

WASHINGTON, July 31 - With Washington focused on corporate
responsibility, Vice President Dick Cheney's tenure as chief
executive of Halliburton is under scrutiny from government
investigators and his political opponents. Most of the attention has been focused on a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into changes made by the company in its accounting practices for construction projects while Mr. Cheney led Halliburton.

But the company and its shareholders have also suffered from the
hidden costs from a deal that was, at the time, the high point of Mr.
Cheney's five-year Halliburton career: his acquisition in 1998 of
Dresser Industries. The deal, which Mr. Cheney hailed as a "win-win"
merger, ended up saddling the company with the growing costs of legal
claims from people who say they were injured by or are at risk from
asbestos in products made by Dresser and a former Dresser subsidiary
that was spun off in 1992.

Mr. Cheney's office said the Halliburton-Dresser deal was thoroughly
vetted at the time. Halliburton said the degree of the asbestos
problems could not have been anticipated at the time of the merger.

At issue now is whether Halliburton under Mr. Cheney was aggressive
enough in investigating the asbestos liabilities it was taking on in
acquiring Dresser, and whether it adequately informed shareholders of
the risks at the time they were asked to approve the deal. Previously undisclosed court documents show Dresser was notified a month before the merger that it might face greater asbestos liability from its former subsidiary than it had disclosed. Halliburton said it
was kept in the dark by Dresser about the greater risks until after
the merger was completed.

more

[Zan_of_Texas]

9. more 4 - accounting

May 21, 2002, 10:04PM

Halliburton's policy on books questioned
New York Times
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/business/1420804

During Vice President Dick Cheney's term as Halliburton Corp. chief executive, the company altered its accounting policies so it could report as revenue more than $100 million in disputed costs on big construction projects, public filings show. The Dallas-based energy services company did not disclose the change to investors for more than a year.

At the time of the change, approved by auditor Arthur Andersen, Halliburton was suffering big losses on some long-term contracts, according to the filings. Its stock had slumped because of a recession in the oil industry. Two former executives of Dresser Industries, which merged with Halliburton in 1998, said that they concluded after the merger that Halliburton had instituted aggressive accounting practices to obscure its losses.

Much of Halliburton's business comes from big construction projects, like natural gas processing plants, which sometimes run over budget. With the accounting policy change, Halliburton began to book revenue on the assumption that its customers would pay at least part of the cost overruns, although they remained in dispute. Before 1998, the company had been more conservative, reporting revenue from overruns only after settling with its customers.

Cheney declined to comment Tuesday. Andersen, which was fired as Halliburton's auditor last month, referred all questions to the company. Halliburton, which continues to follow the more aggressive policy, declined to comment. Some accounting specialists said the change stretched and may have broken accounting rules.

[Zan_of_Texas]

10. more 3.5 - asbestos & Dresser

This may be the big article on this topic ---
(When Republicans said they would run government like a business, who knew they meant Enron and Halliburton?!?!?!)

Halliburton's quagmire becomes Cheney's liability
Purchase of rival mired company in asbestos woes
JAMES V. GRIMALDI <> THE WASHINGTON POST
The Olympian, Olympia Washington Sunday, August 11, 2002
http://www.theolympian.com/home/services/promotions/popups/circPromo.html

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney, who boasted on the campaign trail of his success as chief executive officer at the Halliburton Co., has watched the biggest business deal of his corporate career turn into a quagmire that could haunt the Dallas oil field services company for years.

When Cheney negotiated the $7.7 billion acquisition of longtime rival Dresser Industries Inc. during a south Texas quail hunt in 1998, he saddled Halliburton with a mammoth liability over injuries to workers using asbestos products Dresser had manufactured. Halliburton officials now say that they thought they were legally protected against the claims and were ultimately insured for their costs, but the company's protections seem to be failing. Documents related to Dresser show that Cheney and Halliburton management either underestimated, disregarded or ignored the looming legal risk in acquiring the company. Some of those risks were clearly spelled out in internal Dresser records, available in court files, that would normally be scrutinized before such a deal was sealed. When it was announced, Cheney called the merger a "win-win" for shareholders and "one of the most exciting things I've ever done." But the deal astounded trial lawyers then involved in lawsuits against Dresser and a related company.

<snip>
As Cheney last week made clear his willingness to serve a second term on the Bush ticket, Halliburton remains under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission for aggressive accounting methods used during Cheney's tenure. The company counted uncollected debt as revenue, an accounting method that it contends was widely accepted in the industry. Halliburton has said it did nothing wrong.
Halliburton now estimates its overall asbestos exposure at $2.2 billion, about $1.6 billion of that covered by insurance. Trial lawyers question the estimate, and insurance disputes raise doubts about coverage. Halliburton's stock has taken more than a $4.5 billion hit from asbestos woes, according to industry analysts.
Cheney and his management team compounded Halliburton's liability by deeply integrating Dresser into Halliburton, rather than creating a subsidiary. As a result, asbestos costs and liabilities are part of Halliburton's bottom line.

<snip>
Bush link from 1920s
Dresser had close ties to a family Cheney knew well: the Bushes. Cheney's boss while he served as Secretary of Defense, President George H.W. Bush, was once being groomed to run Dresser, a company that Bush's father and grandfather had reshaped decades earlier.
When Dresser went public in the 1920s, it turned to W.A. Harriman & Co., whose president was George Herbert Walker, grandfather and namesake to former president Bush. Prescott Bush, the former president's father, helped organize Dresser and select its new president, H. Neil Mallon. Prescott Bush eventually sat on the board and by 1941, still held 1,900 shares of Dresser stock.

MORE

[Zan_of_Texas]

11. more 5 - trifectas, revolving doors

There are two trifectas involving Cheney and Halliburton.

In Iraq and similar wars, Halliburton profits during three phases.

1. Military phase -- with its no cap logistics contract, Halliburton supplies the military with things like mess hall, food preparation, potable water, sanitation, laundry, transportation, utilities and warehousing.

2. Rebuilding phase -- with its construction division, Halliburton helps rebuild what the military destroyed.

3. Oil phase -- Halliburton is one of the world's largest oilfield services companies. When the oil fields are secured (which was done first in the Iraq war, Waaaaaay before anything else), Halliburton can get to work rebuilding the oil fields.


As for Dick Cheney, he hit the Iron Triangle trifecta. The Iron Triangle is the military, goverment, and industry.

1. MILITARY - Cheney was head of Defense during Gulf War I.

2. INDUSTRY - He went to Halliburton for about five years.

3. GOVERNMENT - Now, he is Vice President-select of the U.S.

That has worked into quite a lucrative revolving door for both Cheney and Halliburton.

Published on Tuesday, July 16, 2002 in the Los Angeles Times <http://www.latimes.com>

Cheney's Grimy Trail in Business
His career offers a textbook example of shady doings.
by Robert Scheer.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0716-04.htm

...Defense Secretary Cheney conveniently changed the rules restricting private contractors doing work on U.S. military bases, allowing the Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary of his future employer, Halliburton, to receive the first of $2.5 billion in contracts over the next decade. When Cheney left to become CEO of the entire company, he recruited his Pentagon military aide, Joe Lopez, to become senior vice president in charge of Pentagon dealings, which ultimately formed the most lucrative part of the otherwise ailing company's business. Since returning to the public office, these disturbing patterns have continued. In a scathing expose of Halliburton's military contracts, for example, the New York Times revealed that the vice president's old company had been the main beneficiary of the Pentagon's rush to build anti-terrorism military bases around the world. This new work will cost taxpayers many billions, and, according to Pentagon investigators' estimates, without any cost controls the final bill will be considerably higher than if the military's own construction units do the work. Cheney denies having a role in securing those recent contracts, as he does knowledge of Halliburton's alleged accounting improprieties.

[Zan_of_Texas]

12. more 6 - covert?

Cheney at the Helm
At Halliburton, oil and human rights did not mix

By Wayne Madsen
The Progressive http://www.progressive.org/wm0900.htm

Dick Cheney, George W. Bush's running mate, is a far cry from the "aw, shucks" kind of Wyoming cowboy-politician painted by Republican strategists. When he was at the helm of the Dallas-based oil services giant Halliburton, Inc., from 1995 until his nomination, the company and its subsidiaries--Brown & Root and Dresser Industries--were deeply enmeshed in the military-intelligence complex.

<snip>
During a 1998 speech in Corpus Christi, Texas, Cheney conceded that his top job at the Pentagon stood him in good stead at Halliburton. "In the oil and gas business, I deal with many of the same people," he told the convention of the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies.

"Cheney delivered fast, embarking on months of globe-trotting that got Halliburton top-level attention from prime ministers and oil sheikhs from Riyadh and Baku to Lagos and Caracas," The Washington Post reported. "Soon he was on a first-name basis with oil ministers all over the world, building on the ties he had developed in the Middle East during his Pentagon days."

The Pentagon itself has been a huge boon to the company. "Halliburton eats at the trough of government contracts," says Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program, noting that the company's two largest government contracts are with the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defense.
Cheney's links to defense contractors and the intelligence community have made him suspect among human rights activists. Halliburton and Brown & Root have played a role in some of the world's most volatile trouble spots. These include Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Burma, Croatia, Haiti, Kuwait, Nigeria, Russia, Rwanda, and Somalia.

In 1998, while I was in Rwanda conducting research for my book, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999 (Edwin Mellen, 1999), a number of U.S. military personnel assigned to that country raised questions about Brown & Root's activities. "Brown & Root is into some real bad shit," one told me. The U.S. Army Materiel Command has confirmed that Brown & Root was in Rwanda under contract with the Pentagon. One U.S. Navy de-mining expert told me that Brown & Root helped Rwanda's U.S.-backed government fight a guerrilla war. Brown & Root's official task was to help clear mines. However, my research showed it was more involved in providing covert military support to the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Army in putting down a Hutu insurgency and assisting its invasion of the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (Cheney and Halliburton declined numerous opportunities to comment on this story.)
MORE

[Zan_of_Texas]

14. 7 - the cartoon

Go here for the Fiore animation.

http://www.markfiore.com/animation/reconst.swf

[bobbyboucher]

13. Thank you all very much, this should

give me a solid foundation when ostrich friends attempt to defend his sorry ass.

[G_j]

15. good stuff: bookmarked n/t

[gristy]

16. Here's a Doonesbury strip making a good point about Cheney's

corrupt company - Halliburton: http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20040216