Early in 1991 the secretary unveiled a plan to reduce military strength by the mid-1990s to 1.6 million, compared to 2.2 million when he entered office. In his budget proposal for FY 1993, his last one, Cheney asked for termination of the B-2 program at 20 aircraft, cancellation of the Midgetman, and limitations on advanced cruise missile purchases to those already authorized. When introducing this budget, Cheney complained that Congress had directed Defense to buy weapons it did not want, including the V-22, M-1 tanks, and F-14 and F-16 aircraft, and required it to maintain some unneeded reserve forces. His plan outlined about $50 billion less in budget authority over the next 5 years than the Bush administration had proposed in 1991. Sen. Sam Nunn of the Senate Armed Services Committee said that the 5-year cuts ought to be $85 billion, and Rep. Les Aspin of the House Armed Services Committee put the figure at $91 billion.
Most of the contracts have been with the U.S. Army for engineering work in a variety of hot spots, including Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo and Haiti. Not surprisingly all this work stems from a new scheme to privatize operations of the U.S. military that were drawn up by Halliburton itself under contract to Cheney in 1992.
http://corpwatch.radicaldesigns.org/article.php?id=2471The U.S. military has always relied on private contractors to provide some basic services such as construction, dating back as far as the Civil War. But today as much as 10% of the emergency U.S. army operations overseas are contracted out to private companies run by former government and military officials. These private companies operate with no public oversight despite the fact that these contractors work just behind the battle lines. The companies are allowed to make up to nine percent in profit out of these war support efforts. And experience so far has shown that the companies are not above skimming more profits off the top if they can.<snip>
<snip>The new job is one of the first examples of a lucrative, new ten-year contract that Kellogg, Brown & Root won from the Pentagon on December 14, 2001 titled Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP). The contract is what the Pentagon calls a "cost-plus-award-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity service," which basically means that the federal government has an open-ended mandate and budget to send Kellogg, Brown & Root anywhere in the world to run humanitarian or military operations for profit.<snip>
The Revolving Door
Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown & Root's parent company, is a Fortune 500 construction corporation working primarily for the oil industry. In the early 1990s the company was awarded the job to study and then implement privatization of routine army functions under Dick Cheney, then secretary of defense.<snip>
When Cheney quit his job at the Pentagon, he landed the job as chief executive of Halliburton, bringing with him, his trusted deputy David Gribbin. The two substantially increased Halliburton's government business until they quit in 2000 when Cheney was elected vice-president, taking multi-million dollar golden parachutes with them. Since then, another former military office and Cheney confidante, Admiral Joe Lopez, former commander in chief for U.S. forces in southern Europe, took over Gribbin's former job of go-between the government and the company, according to Kellogg, Brown & Root's own press releases. Other close friends include Richard Armitage, the assistant secretary of state, who worked as a consultant to Halliburton before taking up his present job.<snip>
Running services at military camps is a relatively new chore for Kellogg, Brown & Root that began in 1992 when the Pentagon, then under Cheney's direction, paid the company $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies (like itself) could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world. (see related article) Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave the company an additional $5 million to update its report.
That same year, Kellogg, Brown & Root won its first five-year logistical support contract from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that would send them into work alongside G.I.s in places like Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Saudi Arabia. The Balkan contract has been the most profitable for Kellogg, Brown & Root -- the General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates that the company made $2.2 billion in revenue during the U.S. military operations there building sewage systems, kitchens, and showers and even washing underwear for the 20,000 U.S. soldiers stationed there.<snip>
The allegations in the case first surfaced several years ago when Dammen Gant Campbell, a former contracts manager for Kellogg, Brown & Root, turned whistle-blower and charged that between 1994 and 1998 the company fraudulently inflated project costs by misrepresenting the quantities, quality and types of materials required for 224 projects. Campbell said that the company submitted a detailed "contractors pricing proposal" from an Army manual containing fixed prices for some 30,000 line items.
Once the proposal was approved, the company submitted a more general "statement of work" which did not contain a detailed breakdown of items to be purchased. Then, according to Campbell, Kellogg, Brown & Root intentionally did not deliver many items listed in the original proposal. The company defends this practice by claiming that the "statement of work" was the legally binding document, not the original "contractors pricing proposal."<snip>
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