- George* and Friends of Bush have literally brought back the spoils system where supporters and campaign donors are given no bid contracts and made exempt from accountability. Others need not apply.
- Some reports indicate that "Friends of Bush*" are getting at least a third of the take....but considering that many of these contract 'awards' are done in secret or haven't been 'announced'...it's probably a good bet that it's much more.
Published on Thursday, April 3, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
Halliburton, Dick Cheney, and Wartime Spoils
by Lee Drutman and Charlie Cray
When Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle revealed that he was getting $725,000 to help Global Crossing navigate the national security issues surrounding the sale of its assets, the press jumped all over Perle, and rightly so. There was indeed something fishy about the chairman of a board that advises the Pentagon making that kind of money to help a company that was having problems with national security issues. Perle is also on the board of Onset Technology, the leading provider of message conversion technology and a major supplier to Bechtel - one of the leading candidates for rebuilding the Iraqi infrastructure.
As the Center for Public Integrity has documented, this kind of thing is quite prevalent on the Defense Policy Board, where at least nine of the 30 members have ties to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002. As more and more wartime contracts are announced, more and more conflicts of interest are coming to light. After all, the Bush administration is riddled with ties to the weapons, engineering, construction, and oil companies that have the most to profit from a war in Iraq. Perle's story is certainly not unusual.
However, of all the administration members with potential conflicts of interest, none seems more troubling than Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney is former CEO of Halliburton, an oil-services company that also provides construction and military support services - a triple-header of wartime spoils. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers awarded a no-bid contract to extinguish oil well fires in Iraq to Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The contract was granted under a January Bush administration waiver that, according to the Washington Post, allowed "government agencies to handpick companies for Iraqi reconstruction projects."
The contract, which was not announced until more than two weeks after it was awarded, was open-ended, with no time limits and no dollar limits. It was also a "cost-plus" contract, meaning that the company is guaranteed to recover costs and then make a guaranteed profit on top of that. Its value is estimated at tens of millions of dollars.
This is not the first buck that Cheney's former company has made off military conflict and likely won't be the last. KBR currently has thousands of military support personnel on the ground in Kuwait and Turkey as part of a multi-year contract worth close to a billion dollars. The engineering subsidiary was also one of a select few firms invited to bid on an initial $900 million USAID contract for rebuilding post-war Iraq. Though it didn't get that job, Halliburton says it is still in the running for subcontracts and there will likely be plenty more opportunities. After all, the American Academy of Sciences estimates the rebuilding Iraq will cost between $30 and $105 billion dollars. At a recent investor conference call, Halliburton reported a 30% increase in year-over-year revenues, to $1.6 billion, for KBR.
Cheney, who served as CEO from 1995 to 2000, continues to receive as much as $1 million a year in deferred compensation as Halliburton executives enjoy a seat at the table during Administration discussions over how to handle post-war oil production in Iraq. -
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0403-10.htm---------------------
- Other Friends of Bush*:
Top Ten Defense Contractors
Fiscal Year 2002
Lockheed Martin Corp.
$17.0 billion
Boeing Co.
$16.6 billion
Northrop Grumman Corp.
$8.7 billion
Raytheon Co.
$7.0 billion
General Dynamics Corp.
$7.0 billion
United Technologies Corp.
$3.6 billion
Science Applications International Corp.
$2.1 billion
TRW Inc.
$2.0 billion
Health Net, Inc.
$1.7 billion
L-3 Communications Holdings, Inc.
$1.7 billion
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