| 7-7-04 - DREAM - I was working in my home office,
preparing to write a letter to a TV producer to suggest some ideas for
programming.
I thought perhaps the best way to get a positive response would be
to make 'friends' with him just before making the suggestion.
While I was thinking about that, someone on TV used a very
derogatory term for doing the same thing. (It started with the letter
R_____ ).
It was almost 5 p.m. and the kids (brother and sister) weren't
home from school yet and I started to get worried, but then my brother
came home and he brought with him the neighbor's two French dogs.
The dogs were orangey colored and stood up on their hind legs at
the door and spoke English to me. They told me that I should watch a
1/2 hour of French TV every day and I would learn the language.
They said it was free, so it wouldn't cost me anything. I
turned to my right and the TV was already on, showing me a picture of
Dick Cheney in full color.
|
Dee,
I dreamed about France this morning too.
7/8/04 As I write I hear a voice say, "I got back over to the
Washington Post and Headquarters and then I see a baseball in a big
plastic garbage type bag. After I edge away from the Quality
Assurance guy I am sitting on a chair and a couple comes up and the
woman, a blonde or gray in a burgundy sweater, sits right on top of me
like she doesn't see me and pins me to the chair. It's a flexible
metal lawn type chair and I lean way back to try to get room to slip
past her -- I don't want to embarrass her by letting her know I"m
there but then I remember my manners and say, "excuse me"
anyway, as I slip out from under her.
The man sitting to her right is shadowy or dressed in a black sweater
and she says, "Okay, now lets talk about the secret things."
I become aware this is a dream and it crosses my mind that I could
listen to the secret things -- they might be about the future -- and
remember them until I wake up and write them down but this time I'm
embarrassed to eavesdrop on a privileged conversation. I
hear a voice says as I write, "the attack (on France?) came right
before."
Sheila
|
Cheney
Faces Criminal Indictments; Other Illegal Actions Raise Warning Flags at
White House
By TERESA
HAMPTON
Editor, Capitol Hill Blue
Jul 8, 2004, 04:59
Vice President
Dick Cheney faces criminal indictments for illegal activities while CEO
of energy giant Halliburton and also illegally intervened to secure
a $7 billion no-bid contract for his former employer after his election
to office, an analysis by the White House counsel’s office concludes.
The Vice President is currently under investigation by French
authorities for bribery, money laundering and misuse of corporate assets
while at Halliburton and also faces a U.S. Securities & Exchange
Commission probe of a $180 million "slush fund" that may have
been used to pay bribes.
Although the White House Counsel analysis is not available to the public
because of the secrecy of “attorney-client privilege,” it has
generated speculation among senior White House aides who suggest the
Vice President should step down as President George W. Bush’s running
mate for the November Presidential elections. Such talk has increased in
GOP circles lately with former New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato
Wednesday calling on Bush to dump Cheney.
 |
| Vice
President Cheney |
Those who have read the analysis say it presents a “devastating”
case against the Vice President and concludes Cheney has violated both
the “spirit and intent” of federal laws on conflict of interest.
Even worse, Cheney faces indictment by a French court on charges of
bribery, money laundering and misuse of corporate assets because of
fraud associated with the construction of a $6 billion petrochemical
plant built by Halliburton in Nigeria in partnership with Technip, one
of France’s largest petrochemical engineering companies.
Cheney is under investigation by Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke, one of
France’s famous investigating magistrates. Ruymbeke is a legend in
legal circles because of his investigation into French campaign scandals
in the 1990s, resulting in multiple indictments and convictions of top
officials.
Because of Ruymbeke’s work on the case, the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into a $180 million
“slush fund” that the French judge says was used to pay bribes.
London Lawyer Jeffrey Tesler, a consultant to Halliburton, admitted
under oath in May that he made payments from the fund to Albert
“Jack” Stanley, president of Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown
& Root and a longtime friend and associate of Cheney. The
payments, Tesler said, were personally approved by Cheney, who headed
Halliburton at the time.
Although Cheney left his position at Halliburton before becoming Vice
President, his financial disclosure statements show he continues to
receive dividends from stock as well as deferred compensation from the
company.
At least $5 million in payments to Stanley from the fund were wired
to a secret numbered bank account in Zurich which Judge Ruymbeke
discovered belonged to the KBR President. Tesler also testified he paid
another $350,000 to another KBR executive, William Chaudran, through
another secret bank account on the isle of Jersey.
Cheney served as CEO of Halliburton from 1995 until 2000 and approved
the Nigerian contract in 1999. Halliburton publicly announced on June 18
it was “severing all ties” with Stanley, admitting he had received
“improper personal benefits” while serving as President of KBR.
Sources within Halliburton say the company’s internal investigation
clearly implicates Vice President Cheney but acknowledge the
investigation will remain sealed in light of the company’s $7 billion
sweetheart contract with the Pentagon for work in Iraq.
French Judge Ruymbeke, however, is said to be offering Stanley a deal
if he implicates Cheney and sources within the French legal system say
the judge has more than enough to indict the Vice President on charges
of bribery, money laundering and misuse of corporate assets.
The assessment of the White House counsel’s office agrees that
Cheney faces “serious legal implications” from the pending French
indictments and add that the Vice President’s illegal and unethical
lobbying on behalf of Halliburton for the no-bid contract “raises
additional questions.”
Cheney, however, is standing firm and recently told Senator Patrick
Leahy of Vermont to “fuck off” when the Senator questioned him on
the Halliburton matters.
According to White House sources, President George W. Bush laughed
the matter off at a recent cabinet meeting.
“Fuck ‘em all,” Bush said.
The President’s bravado, however, is not shared by worried White
House aides. Some point to the last vice president to step down because
of fraud and corruption – Spiro T. Agnew, who served under President
Richard M. Nixon, another Republican forced to leave office because of
scandal.
©
Copyright 2004 by Capitol Hill Blue
|
|
Cheney,
Halliburton, Loyalty to a Company, &
Patriotism
By Syndi Holmes
Jul 1, 2004, 08:28
|
|
Mr. Farr's letter on Mr. Cheney's
pension begs a response with the facts of Mr. Cheney's
associations with Halliburton as it's CEO and as Vice
President of this country. This situation demands a
serious look at the questions of patriotism vs. profit,
about loyalty to a corporation that benefits you more than
exceedingly well or loyalty to a country when you are in a
position of trust ,and in a position to benefit your
corporation.
Some initial facts: As Halliburton's chairman and CEO,
Cheney earned a $1.3 million salary, plus bonuses that
varied from zero to $2 million During his five-year
tenure, Cheney accrued salary and stock options worth an
estimated $45 million. [AP, July 26, 2000]
In addition, upon resigning from Halliburton to run
with Bush in July, the 59-year-old Cheney received what
amounted to a $20 million parting gift. Halliburton's
board waived a requirement that Cheney would lose many of
his stock options if he left before age 62. [NYT, Aug. 12,
2000]
| When
Bush Sr. was drubbed by Bill Clinton in 1992,
Cheney decided it was high time he became a titan
of industry. With nothing but insider
Washington credentials on his resume, he became
chairman and CEO of Halliburton Corp. in 1995.
Cheney made millions leading the massive oil
industry construction company, while carefully
"tweaking" its accounting practices.
A 1998 accounting change improved the company's
revenues by $234 million over the course of four
years. Prior to the change,
Halliburton had booked sales when a client agreed
to pay for cost overruns and contract disputes.
After the change, the company took a guess at what
they'd collect and booked the sales as a done
deal. Despite the fact that the practice
looks and sounds a bit sleazy, it's fairly
commonplace in the industry. Of course,
before Enron , off-balance sheet financing was
pretty commonplace too.
The practice was
further complicated by the fact that Halliburton
was severely on the ropes at the time the change
was made. In addition to suddenly boosting
the company's bottom line just when Halliburton
was going to get slaughtered on the stock market,
Cheney and crew "neglected" to inform
the SEC about the change until more than a year
later.
When Cheney quit
Halliburton to take the vice presidential
nomination in 2000, the company offered him a $20
million going-away gift, characterized as a
"retirement package" for his many (five)
years of service in the private sector. In a
concession to public outrage and concerns that
Halliburton was buying access to the White House,
Cheney selflessly accepted only $13.6 million,
indisputably preserving the ethical integrity of
the Executive Branch.
From: http://www.tylwythteg.com/enemies/Cheney/cheney.html
|
Under the Halliburton deal, Cheney retained 400,000
unvested stock options that will "vest" in
batches over the next three years. That means their value
depends on Halliburton's stock price at the time the
vested options are exercised. Unlike other holdings,
unvested options cannot effectively be put in a blind
trust since a trustee cannot do anything with them until
after they vest, ethics expert note. In other words,
Cheney will be aware that his personal wealth will rise
and fall along with Halliburton's stock prices.
During his tenure from 1995-2000, while Dick Cheney was
CEO of Halliburton, Halliburton set up an off shore
company in the Cayman Islands called Halliburton Products
and Services, Ltd.; per a 60 Minutes' investigation this
subsidiary has no known actual office or employees and
it's mail is forwarded to Halliburton's offices in
Houston, Texas. It was created to circumvent American laws
that prevent American companies from doing business with
countries that sponsor terrorism as the law does not apply
to any foreign or offshore subsidiary so long as it is run
by non-Americans. So Halliburton Products and Services,
Ltd. began doing business with Iran, a country that has
long supported terrorist activities, a country that this
past year bought about $40 million dollars of oil
production related services from Halliburton.
On January 25, 2004, New York City's controller,
William Thompson, who oversees New York City workers' 80
million dollar pension funds, accused Halliburton of
taking blood money from state sponsors of terrorism, such
as Iran and Libya.Mr. Thompson said that city workers,
including the police and fire departments that were so
grievously injured by the attacks of 9/11 are
"outraged that their retirement portfolios include
stock in U.S. firms getting fat off contracts with rogue
nations like Iran, which funds the terror groups Hezbollah
and Hamas and is suspected of giving sanctuary to Al Qaeda
leaders."
While Mr. Cheney was still CEO, Halliburton bought
Dresser Industries which entered a joint venture agreement
with Ingersoll-Rand Co and two French subsidiaries of
these companies sold water and sewage treatment pumps,
spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to
Iran . While what Halliburton did was completely legal
(because it did it through joint ventures and subsidiaries
and within the orbit of the "oil for food"
program run by the United Nations and per the United
Nations) Halliburton and it's corporate friends earned $73
million dollars YET when interviewed on ABC's "This
Week" on July 30, 2000, Mr. Cheney said: "I had
a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even
arrangements that were supposedly legal. We've not done
any business in Iraq since U.N. sanction were imposed . .
."
Again while Mr. Cheney was STILL CEO of Halliburton,
questions are now coming to light regarding a massive $180
million bribery scheme in Nigeria involving Jack Stanley,
who retired last year from Halliburton's subsidiary
Kellogg, Brown & Root. Those questions are now being
investigated in France as well as by the Securities and
Exchange Commission in New York. The French authorities
have been investigating these charges for the past year
and official documents reveal that Cheney might be among
those indicted on corruption charges. The French
investigation made front-page news in France last
Christmas but not in the United States.
Since Mr. Cheney became Vice-President,he still
receives $150,000 annually in deferred compensation from
Halliburton and holds about $18 million in stock options
per a Feb. 24,2004 article presented by Jason Leopold of
the Independent Media TV.
Since Mr. Cheney became Vice-President ,Time Magazine
is now reporting that a Pentagon e-mail said Vice
President Dick Cheney's office "coordinated" a
multibillion-dollar Iraq reconstruction contract awarded
to his former employer Halliburton. The e-mail, sent by an
Army Corps of Engineers official on March 5, 2003, said
Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, provided
arrangements for the Restore Iraqi Oil, between
Halliburton and the U.S. government . The e-mail said
Feith, approved arrangements for the contract
"contingent on informing WH (White House) tomorrow.
We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated
w VP's (vice president's) office."
Since Halliburton received their multi- billion dollars
worth of contracts, Halliburton's subsidiary, Kellogg
Brown and Root has sent empty flatbed trucks crisscrossing
Iraq more than 100 times this year, and billed the
American taxpayers while putting their drivers and their
military escorts in jeopardy of their very lives by the
possibility of insurgent attacks.
And about that multibillion-dollar contract that
Halliburton has to feed and house U.S. troops in Iraq: as
of March, 2004, Halliburton's food subcontractor, Event
Source, which serves 100,000 meals a day in Iraq ,claims
it hasn't been paid the $87 million it is owed, which
includes President Bush's Thanksgiving dinner with the
troops. Prior to this , Halliburton was accused of
overcharging the government for feeding troops and the
Pentagon says it will withhold about $300 million in
payments until they are certain that the government has
not been overcharged.
And even Kuwait as well as the Pentagon is
investigating Halliburton for allegations on the part of
KBR of fraud for the potential overpricing of fuel
delivered to Baghdad by a KBR subcontractor.
So, Mr. Farr, are you proud it is an American company
that is defrauding America?? And should the American
taxpayer pick up a fraudulent tab to make the rich,
richer? Is this WHAT YOU CONSIDER PATRIOTISM--profitting
by a war that you run, profitting off of each American
soldier's death and their suffering? If it is , then God
help America.
Syndi Holmes
Related Article:
© Copyright 2003 by Magic City Morning
Star
|
|
Cheney went to Washington in 1969 to
serve as special assistant to (fellow PNAC member) Donald Rumsfeld
in the Office of Economic Opportunity in the Nixon administration.
Since he and Bush arrived at the White
House, Cheney has managed to accomplish quite a bit. He's met with the
heads of oil, gas, and nuclear power companies, assembled their
"wish lists," and turned them into a new national Energy
Plan. Cheney's close relations with folks like Ken Lay of Enron have
made this one of the most corporation-friendly administrations in
history.
Mr. Cheney led Halliburton into the top
ranks of corporate welfare hogs, benefiting from almost $2 billion in
taxpayer-insured loans from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the
Overseas Private Investment Corp. In the five years before Mr. Cheney
joined the company, it got a measly $100 million in government
loans." (1)
Cheney in numbers:
Cheney's 2000 income from Halliburton:
$36,086,635
Increase in government contracts while
Cheney led Halliburton: 91%
Minimum size of "accounting
irregularity" that occurred while Cheney was CEO: $100,000,000
(One hundred MILLION dollars)
Number of the seven official US
"State Sponsors of Terror" that Halliburton contracted with:
2 out of 7
Pages of Energy Plan documents Cheney
refused to give congressional investigators: 13,500
Amount energy companies gave the
Bush/Cheney presidential campaign: $1,800,000
In a debate with Vice Presidential
candidate Joe Lieberman in 2000, Lieberman noted that Cheney had done
well for himself as CEO of Halliburton. Cheney responded flatly,
"I can tell you, Joe, the government had absolutely nothing to do
with it." But even a glance at Cheney's tenure at Halliburton
suggests otherwise.
During his five years as CEO, Cheney
nearly doubled the size of Halliburton's government contracts,
totaling a whopping $2.3 billion. He convinced the Export-Import Bank
of the U.S. to lend Halliburton and oil companies another $1.5
billion, backed by U.S. taxpayers. As exposed in the article below,
some of these loans went to a Russian company with ties to drug
dealing and organized crime. (2)
Cheney's rule at Halliburton was
characterized by a ruthless geopolitical strategy that put aside
political beliefs whenever they were inconvenient. In a number of
cases, Halliburton and its subsidiaries supported or even ordered
human rights violations and broke international laws. Consider the
following examples:
* Libyan dictator and suspected anti-U.S.
terrorist Moammar Gadhafi engaged a foreign subsidiary of Halliburton
company Brown & Root to perform millions of dollars worth of work.
According to the Baltimore Sun, Brown & Root was fined $3.8
million for violating Libyan sanctions. (Although Cheney wasn't
leading Halliburton when these sales started, subsidiaries' sales to
Libya continued throughout his tenure.)
* Cheney claimed that he supported the
U.S. sanctions on Iraq, but the Financial Times of London reported
that through foreign subsidiaries and affiliates, Halliburton became
the biggest oil contractor for Iraq, selling more than $73 million in
goods and services to Saddam Hussein's regime. (3)
* In Burma, Halliburton joined oil
companies in working on two notorious gas pipelines, the Yadana and
Yetagun. According to an Earth Rights report, "From 1992 until
the present, thousands of villagers in Burma were forced to work in
support of these pipelines and related infrastructure, lost their
homes due to forced relocation, and were raped, tortured and killed by
soldiers hired by the companies as security guards for the pipelines.
One of Halliburton's projects was undertaken during Dick Cheney's
tenure as CEO." (The full report is linked to below.)
Halliburton is now being investigated
by the Securities and Exchange Commission for Enron-style accounting
practices that took place while Cheney was CEO.
In late August 2001, a Los Angeles
Times article exposed the connections between Cheney's Task Force and
Bush's campaign contributors. The article described how the final
report adopted verbatim a global warming policy suggested by the U.S.
Energy Association (an energy industry group), how language was
altered to favor Halliburton, and how a company called Peabody Coal
and its affiliates gave more than $900,000 to the Bush campaign and
"gained extraordinary access" to the Task Force. (4)
While the mainstream media mostly
continue to cast Bush as the captain of his ship, hints that Cheney is
the dominant figure shaping Washington's diplomatic policy have become
too numerous to ignore. A recent Washington Post article revealed a
most stunning example of this lopsided state of affairs. According to
the Post, Bush had ordered Cabinet officials not to give any
preferential treatment to Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress
(INC) when U.S. forces moved into Iraq last spring. But soon after, in
flagrant violation of his directive, the Pentagon flew Chalabi and 600
of his armed followers into southern Iraq in early April, "with
the approval of the vice president." That was the crowd you saw
cheering in the statue toppling photo-op.
It was Cheney's choices that prevailed
in the appointment of both cabinet and sub-cabinet national-security
officials, beginning with that of (PNAC member) Donald Rumsfeld as
Defense Secretary. Not only did Cheney personally intervene to ensure
that Powell's best friend, (PNAC member) Richard Armitage, was denied
the deputy defense secretary position, but he also secured the post
for his own prot?g?, (PNACmember) Paul Wolfowitz. Moreover, it was
Cheney who insisted that the ultra-unilateralist (PNAC co-founder)
John Bolton be placed in a top State Department arms job - a position
from which Bolton has consistently pursued policies that run counter
to Powell's own views.
Cheney's chief of staff and national
security adviser, (PNAC member)I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a
Washington lawyer and Wolfowitz prot?g?, is considered a far more
skilled and experienced bureaucratic and political operator than Rice.
With several of his political allies on Rice's own staff - , including
deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Middle East
director (PNAC member) Elliott Abrams - Libby "is able to run
circles around Condi," noted a former NSC official .
According to retired intelligence
officers, Cheney and Libby played the decisive role in distorting the
intelligence used to make Bush's case for war. Libby made frequent
trips to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the run-up to the
Iraq war, pressuring analysts in include questionable evidence
supplied by the INC and Rumsfeld-led hawks.
More recently, it was Cheney who led
the effort to deny Powell the authority to negotiate a new UN Security
Council resolution that would have reduced the Pentagon's control over
the political transition in Iraq, even though the president initially
approved such a deal.
For an extensive briefing on
Halliburton and Cheney's foreign policy impact, check out this
well-written and thorough report (5)
Cheney made $36 million at Halliburton
in 2000 alone. Thesmokinggun.com has his tax returns to prove it (6)
(1) http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0610-03.htm
(2) http://www.public-i.org/story_01_080200.htm
(3) http://gwbush.com/spots/postpage.html
(4) http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0826-02.htm
(5) http://www.earthrights.org/halliburton/report.pdf
(6) http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/dicktax1.shtml
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/30/business/30HALL.html
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0882164.html
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17051
http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=2469
http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin/bulletin1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/30/business/30HALL.html
To fully
understand Cheney's role in the administraion's war profiteering
scheme, all we have to do is follow the money and connect the dots.
|
U.S. Comment
With Trembling
Fingers
Posted: 07/08
From: Rense
.com
Despite the worst
foreign policy blunder in American history, George W. Bush and
his millionaire supporters don't know the meaning of the word
shame.
I used to take a drink on occasion with a network newsman
famed for his impenetrable calm--his apparent pulse rate that
of a large mammal in deep hibernation--and in an avuncular
moment he advised me that I'd do all right, in the long run,
if I could only avoid the kind of journalism committed to the
keyboard "with trembling fingers." I recognized the
wisdom of this advice and endeavored over the years to write
as little as possible when my blood pressure was soaring and
my face was streaked with tears. The lava flows of indignation
ebb predictably with age and hardening arteries, and nearing
three-score I thought I'd never have to take another
tranquilizer--or a double bourbon--to keep my fingers steady
on the keys.
I never imagined 2004.
It would be sophomoric to say that there was never a worse
year to be an American. My own memory preserves the dread
summer of 1968. My parents suffered the consequences of 1941
and 1929, and my grandfather Jack Allen, who lived through all
those dark years, might have added 1918, with the flu epidemic
and the Great War in France that each failed, very narrowly,
to kill him. Drop back another generation or two and we
encounter 1861.
But if this is not the worst year yet to be an American, it's
the worst year by far to be one of those hag-ridden wretches
who comment on the American scene. The columnist who trades in
snide one-liners flounders like a stupid comic with a tired
audience; TV comedians and talk-show hosts who try to treat
2004 like any zany election year have become grotesque, almost
loathsome. Our most serious, responsible newspaper columnists
are so stunned by the disaster in Iraq that they've begun to
quote poetry by Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen. They lower
their voices, they sound like Army chaplains delivering
eulogies over ranks of flag-draped coffins, under a hard rain
from an iron sky.
Yeats' "blood-dimmed tide is loosed." The war news
had already deteriorated from bad to tragic to
pre-apocalyptic, which left no suitable category for these
excruciating reports on the sexual torture of Iraqi
prisoners.Fingers, be still. In less than a year, the morale
of the occupying forces had sunk so low that murder, suicide,
rape and sexual harassment became alarming statistics, and now
the warriors of democracy--the emissaries of
civilization--stand accused of every crime this side of
cannibalism. Osama bin Laden has always anathematized
America's culture, as well as its geopolitical influence. To
him these atrocities are a sign of Allah's certain favor, a
great moral victory, a vindication of his deepest anger and
darkest crimes.
Where does it go from here? The nightmare misadventure in Iraq
is over, beyond the reach of any reasonable argument, though
many more body bags will be filled. In Washington, chicken
hawks will still be squawking about "digging in" and
winning, but Vietnam proved conclusively that no modern war of
occupation would ever be won. Every occupation is doomed. The
only way you "win" a war of occupation is the
old-fashioned way, the way Rome finally defeated the
Carthaginians: kill all the fighters, enslave everyone else,
raze the cities and sow the fields with salt.
Otherwise the occupied people will fight you to the last
peasant, and why shouldn't they? If our presidential election
fails to dislodge the crazy bastards who annexed Baghdad, many
of us in this country would welcome regime change by any
intervention, human or divine. But if, say, the Chinese came
in to rescue us--Operation American Freedom--how long would
any of us, left-wing or right, put up with an occupying army
teaching us Chinese-style democracy? A guerrilla who opposes
an invading army on his own soil is not a terrorist, he's a
resistance fighter. In Iraq we're not fighting enemies but
making enemies. As Richard Clarke and others have observed,
every dollar, bullet and American life that we spend in Iraq
is one that's not being spent in the war on terrorism. Every
Iraqi, every Muslim we kill or torture or humiliate is a
precious shot of adrenaline for Osama and al Qaeda.
The irreducible truth is that the invasion of Iraq was the
worst blunder, the most staggering miscarriage of judgment,
the most fateful, egregious, deceitful abuse of power in the
history of American foreign policy. If you don't believe it
yet, just keep watching. Apologists strain to dismiss
parallels with Vietnam, but the similarities are stunning. In
every action our soldiers kill innocent civilians, and in
every other action apparent innocents kill our soldiers--and
there's never any way to sort them out. And now these acts of
subhuman sadism, these little My Lais.
Since the defining moment of the Bush presidency, the
preposterous flight-suit, Fox News-produced photo-op on the
Abraham Lincoln in front of the banner that read "Mission
Accomplished," the shaming truth is that everything has
gone wrong. Just as it was bound to go wrong, as many of us
predicted it would go wrong--if anything more hopelessly wrong
than any of us would have dared to prophesy. Iraq is an epic
train wreck, and there's not a single American citizen who's
going to walk away unscathed.
The shame of this truth, of such a failure and so much deceit
exposed, would have brought on mass resignations or votes of
no confidence in any free country in the world. In Japan not
long ago, there would have been ritual suicides, shamed
officials disemboweling themselves with samurai swords. Yet up
to this point--at least to the point where we see grinning
soldiers taking pictures of each other over piles of naked
Iraqis--neither the president, the vice president nor any of
the individuals who urged and designed this debacle have
resigned or been terminated--or even apologized. They have
betrayed no familiarity with the concept of shame.
Thousands of young Americans are dead, maimed or mutilated,
100 billion has been wasted and all we've gained is a billion
new enemies and a mouthful of dust--of sand. Chaos reigns, but
in the midst of it we have this presidential election. George
Bush has defined himself as a war president, and it's fitting
that he should die by the sword--in fact fall on it, and
quick. But even now the damned polls don't guarantee, or even
indicate, his demise.
Conventional wisdom says that an incumbent president with a
$200 million war chest cannot be defeated, and that one who
commands a live, bleeding, suffering army in the field is
doubly invincible. By this logic, the most destructively
incompetent president since Andrew Johnson will be rewarded
with a second term. That would probably mean a military draft
and more wars in the oil countries and, under visionaries like
Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, a chance for the United States
to emulate 19th-century Paraguay, which simultaneously
declared war on Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay and fought
ferociously until 90 percent of the male population was dead.
What hope then? Impeachment is impossible when the president's
party controls both houses of Congress, though Watergate
conspirator John Dean, who ought to know, claims in his new
book that there are compelling legal arguments for a
half-dozen bills of impeachment against George W. Bush. Peer
pressure? At the White House, world opinion gets no more
respect than FBI memos or uncomfortable facts. Many Americans
seem unaware that scarcely anyone on the planet Earth
supported the Iraq adventure, no one anywhere except the 40-50
million Republican loyalists who voted for George Bush in
2000.
Among significant world leaders he recruited only Great
Britain's Tony Blair--whose career may be ruined because most
Britons disagree with him--and the abominable Ariel Sharon,
that vile tub of blood and corruption who recently used
air-to-ground missiles to assassinate a paraplegic in a
wheelchair at the door of his mosque. (Palestinians quickly
squandered any sympathy or moral advantage they gained from
this atrocity by strapping a retarded 16-year-old into a
suicide bomber's kit. Such is the condition of the human race
in the Middle East, variously known as the Holy Land or the
Cradle of Civilization.) Says Sharon, oleaginously, of Bush:
"Something in his soul committed him to act with great
courage against world terror."
The rest of the known world, along with the United Nations,
has been dead set against us from the start. But they carry no
weight. Thanks to our tax dollars and the well-fed, strong but
not bulletproof bodies of our children--though mostly children
from lower-income families--George Bush and his lethal team of
oil pirates, Cold Warriors and Likudists commands the most
formidable military machine on earth. No nation, with the
possible exception of China, would ever dare to oppose them
directly.
But the Chinese aren't coming to save us. Nothing and no one
can stop these people except you and me, and the other 100
million or so American citizens who may vote in the November
election. This isn't your conventional election, the usual
dim-witted, media-managed Mister America contest where
candidates vie for charm and style points and hire image
coaches to help them act more confident and presidential. This
is a referendum on what is arguably the most dismal
performance by any incumbent president--and inarguably the
biggest mistake. This is a referendum on George W. Bush,
arguably the worst thing that has happened to the United
States of America since the invention of the cathode ray tube.
One problem with this referendum is that the case against
George Bush is much too strong. Just to spell it out is to
sound like a bitter partisan. I sit here on the 67th birthday
of Saddam Hussein facing a haystack of incriminating evidence
that comes almost to my armpit.
What matters most, what signifies? Journalists used to look
for the smoking gun, but this time we have the cannons of
Waterloo, we have Gettysburg and Sevastopol, we have enough
gun smoke to cause asthma in heaven. I'm overwhelmed. Maybe I
should light a match to this mountain of paper and immolate
myself. On the near side of my haystack, among hundreds of
quotes circled and statistics underlined, just one thing
leaped out at me. A quote I had underlined was from the
testimony of Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials, not long
before Hitler's vice-Fuhrer poisoned himself in his jail cell:
"It is always a simple matter to drag people along
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a
parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice,
the people can always be brought to the bidding of the
leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they
are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the
same in every country."
Goering's dark wisdom gained weight when a friend called me
and reported that Vice President Cheney was so violently
partisan in his commencement speech at Westminster College in
Missouri--so rabid in his attacks on John Kerry as an
anti-American peace-marching crypto-communist--that the
college president felt obliges to send the student body an
e-mail apologizing for Cheney's coarseness.
If you think it's exceptionally shameless for a man who dodged
Vietnam to play the patriot card against a decorated veteran,
remember that Georgia Republicans played the same card,
successfully, against Sen. Max Cleland, who suffered multiple
amputations in Vietnam. In 2001 and 2002, George Bush and his
Machiavelli, Karl Rove, approved political attack ads that
showed the faces of Tom Daschle and other Democratic senators
alongside the faces of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. And
somewhere in hell, Goering and Goebbels toasted each other
with a schnapps.
Am I polarized? I've never been a registered Democrat, I'm
sick of this two-party straitjacket, I wish to God it didn't
take Yale and a major American fortune to create a
presidential candidate. The only current Democratic leaders
who show me any courage are Nancy Pelosi and old Bob
Byrd--Hillary Clinton has been especially cagy and gutless on
this war--and John Kerry himself may leave a lot to be
desired. He deserves your vote not because of anything he ever
did or promises to do, but simply because he did not make this
sick mess in Iraq and owes no allegiance to the sinister
characters who designed it. And because his own "place in
history," so important to the kind of men who run for
president, would now rest entirely on his success in getting
us out of it.
Kerry made a courageous choice at least once in his life, when
he came home with his ribbons and demonstrated against the war
in Vietnam. But Sen. Kerry could turn out to be a stiff, a
punk, an alcoholic and he'd still be a colossal improvement
over the man who turned Paul Wolfowitz loose in the Middle
East. The myth that there was no real difference between
Democrats and Republicans, which I once considered seriously
and which Ralph Nader rode to national disaster four years
ago, was shattered forever the day George Bush announced his
cabinet and his appointments for the Department of Defense.
I'm aware that there are voters--40 million?--who don't see it
this way. I come from a family of veterans and commissioned
officers; I understand patriots in wartime. If a spotted hyena
stepped out of Air Force One wearing a baby-blue necktie, most
Americans would salute and sing "Hail to the Chief."
Cultivating these reliable patriots, President Bush cultivated
his patriots by spending $46 million on media in the month of
March alone. Somehow I'm on his mailing list. (Is that because
my late father, with the same name, was a registered
Republican, or can Bush afford to mail his picture to every
American with an established address?) Twice a week I open an
appeal for cash to crush John Kerry and the quisling liberal
conspiracy, and now I own six gorgeous color photographs of
the president and his wife. I'm sure some of my neighbors
frame the president's color photographs, and fill those little
blue envelopes he sends us with their hard-earned dollars.
I struggle against the suspicion that so many of my fellow
Americans are conceptually challenged. I want to reason with
my neighbors, I want to engage these lost Americans. What
makes you angry, neighbor? What arouses your suspicions? Does
it bother you that this administration made terrorism a low
priority, dismissed key intelligence that might have prevented
the 9-11 catastrophe, then exploited it to justify the
pre-planned destruction of Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to
do with al Qaeda? All this is no longer conjecture, but direct
reportage from cabinet-level meetings by the turncoat insiders
Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill.
If the Pentagon ever thought Saddam had "weapons of mass
destruction," it was only because the Pentagon gave them
to him. As Kevin Phillips recounts in American Dynasty,
officials of the Reagan and first Bush administrations eagerly
supplied Saddam with arms while he was using chemical weapons
on the Kurds. They twice sent Donald Rumsfeld to court Saddam,
in 1983 and 1984, when the dictator was in the glorious prime
of his monsterhood.
This scandal, concurrent with Iran-Contra, was briefly called
"Iraqgate," and, yes, among the names of those
officials implicated you'll find most of the engineers of our
current foreign policy. (They also signaled their fractious
client, Saddam, that it might be all right to overrun part of
Kuwait; you remember what happened when he tried to swallow it
all.) Does any of this trouble you? Does it worry you that
Dick Cheney, as president of the nefarious Halliburton
Corporation, sold Iraq $73 million in oilfield services
between 1997 and 2000, even as he plotted with the Wolfowitz
faction to whack Saddam? Or that Halliburton, with its CEO's
seat still warm from Cheney's butt, was awarded unbid
contracts worth up to $15 billion for the Iraq invasion, and
currently earns a billion dollars a month from this bloody
disaster? Not to mention its $27.4 million overcharge for our
soldiers' food.
These are facts, not partisan rhetoric. Do any of them even
make you restless? The cynical game these shape-shifters have
been playing in the Middle East is too Byzantine to unravel in
1,000 pages of text. But the hypocrisy of the White House is
palpable, and beggars belief. If there's one American who
actually believes that Operation Iraqi Freedom was about
democracy for the poor Iraqis, then you, my friend, are too
dangerously stupid to be allowed near a voting booth.
Does it bother you even a little that the personal fortunes of
all four Bush brothers, including the president and the
governor, were acquired about a half step ahead of the
district attorney, and that the royal family of Saudi Arabia
invested $1.476 billion in those and other Bush family
enterprises? Or, as Paul Krugman points out, that it's much
easier to establish links between the Bush and bin Laden
families than any between the bin Ladens and Saddam Hussein.
Do you know about Ahmad Chalabi, the administration's favorite
Iraqi and current agent in Baghdad, whose personal fortune was
established when he embezzled several hundred million from his
own bank in Jordan and fled to London to avoid 22 years at
hard labor? That's just a sampling from my haystack. Maybe I
can reach you as an environmentalist, one who resents the
gutting of key provisions in the Clean Air Act? My own Orange
County, chiefly a rural area, was recently added to a national
register of counties with dangerously polluted air.
You say you vote for the president because you're a
conservative. Are you sure? I thought conservatives believed
in civil liberties, a weak federal executive, an inviolable
Constitution, a balanced budget and an isolationist foreign
policy. George Bush has an attorney general who drives the
ACLU apoplectic and a vice president who demands more
executive privilege (for his energy seances) than any elected
official has ever received. The president wants a
Constitutional amendment to protect marriage from homosexuals,
of all things. Between tax cuts for his high-end supporters
and three years playing God and Caesar in the Middle East,
George Bush has simply emptied America's wallet, with a $480
billion federal deficit projected for 2004, and the tab on
Iraq well over $100 billion and running.
"A lot of so-called conservatives today don't know what
the word means," Barry Goldwater said in 1994, when the
current cult of right-wing radicals and "neocons"
had begun to define and assert themselves. Goldwater was my
first political hero, before I was old enough to read his
flaws. But his was the conservatism of the wolf--the lone
wolf--and this is the conservatism of sheep.
All it takes to make a Bush conservative is a few slogans from
talk radio and pickup truck bumpers, a sneer at
"liberals" and maybe a name-dropping nod to Edmund
Burke or John Locke, whom most of them have never read. Sheep
and sheep only could be herded by a ludicrous but not harmless
cretin like Rush Limbaugh, who has just compared the sexual
abuse of Iraqi prisoners to "a college fraternity
prank" (and who once called Chelsea Clinton "the
family dog"--you don't have to worry about shame when you
have no brain).
I don't think it's accurate to describe America as polarized
between Democrats and Republicans, or between liberals and
conservatives. It's polarized between the people who believe
George Bush and the people who do not. Thanks to some
contested ballots in a state governed by the president's
brother, a once-proud country has been delivered into the
hands of liars, thugs, bullies, fanatics and thieves. The
world pities or despises us, even as it fears us. What this
election will test is the power of money and media to fool us,
to obscure the truth and alter the obvious, to hide a great
crime against the public trust under a blood-soaked flag. The
most lavishly funded, most cynical, most sophisticated
political campaign in human history will be out trolling for
fools. I pray to God it doesn't catch you.
Comment
From itis fiesta
7-6-4
Concerning http://www.rense.com/general54/usdelr.htm
Could you please add the following to the above article :
John Kerry : "I will support the Administration's request
for emergency funds for our troops. The situation in Iraq has
deteriorated far beyond what the Administration anticipated.
This money is urgently needed, and it is completely focused on
the needs of our troops. We must give our troops the equipment
and support to carry out their missions in Iraq and
Afghanistan".
Source : http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=140-05132004
My comments : Representative "democracy" =
corruption by Big Business
The only democracy is direct democracy
By Hal Crowther,
The Independent, Durham, North Carolina
|
|
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune |
www.iht.com
| Cheney
didn't mind Saddam |
Nicholas D. Kristof
The New York Times
Saturday, October 12, 2002 |
|
Monster of the month
NEW YORK George W. Bush and Dick Cheney portray Saddam
Hussein as so menacing and terrifying that one might think
they have lain awake at night for years worrying about him.
But when Cheney was running Halliburton, the oil services
firm, it sold more equipment to Iraq than any other company
did.
As was first reported by the Financial Times on Nov. 3, 2000,
Halliburton subsidiaries submitted $23.8 million worth of
contracts with Iraq to the United Nations in 1998 and 1999 for
approval by its sanctions committee.
This was legitimate business conducted through joint ventures
that had been acquired as part of a larger takeover in
September 1998. Zelma Branch, a Halliburton spokeswoman, says
the subsidiaries completed their pre-existing Iraq contracts
but did not seek new ones.
So this is not evidence of scandalous conduct or egregious
misjudgment. But as Americans debate whether to go to war with
Iraq, it is a useful reminder of how fashions change in
perceptions of rogue states. Public Enemy No. 1 today is a
government that Cheney was in effect helping shore up just a
couple of years ago.
More broadly, the United States has a long history in which
Saddam, although just as monstrous as he is today, was
coddled. In the 1980s it provided his army with satellite
intelligence so that it could use chemical weapons against
Iranian soldiers. When Saddam used nerve gas and mustard gas
against Kurds in 1988, the Reagan administration initially
tried to blame Iran. The United States shipped seven strains
of anthrax to Iraq from 1978 to 1988.
These days it sees Iraq as an imminent threat to its way of
life, while just a couple of years ago Iraq was perceived as a
pathetic dictatorship hardly worth the bother of bombing. What
changed? Not Iraq, but rather American sensibilities after
Sept. 11.
We Americans need to be wary that we are not just pursuing the
latest fashion in monsters. Iran was the menace of the 1980s,
so we snuggled up with Iraq. The Soviet threat led us to
cuddle with Islamic fundamentalists like those now trying to
blow us up.
In 1994 the vogue threat changed, and hawks pressed hard for a
military confrontation with North Korea. America came within
an inch of going to war with North Korea, in a conflict that a
Pentagon study found would have killed a million people. In
retrospect, it is clear that the hawks were wrong about
confronting North Korea. Containment and deterrence so far
have worked, kind of, just as they have kind of worked to
restrain Iraq for 11 years.
If Washington spent money on hypocrisy detectors as well as
anthrax detectors, they would be buzzing. For example,
Republicans are trying to defeat the Democratic senator Tim
Johnson of South Dakota by running commercials featuring
Saddam Hussein.
When I was writing from Iraq lately, some peeved readers
suggested I stay there for good. The fact is that neither Tim
Johnson nor any lily-livered columnist ever bolstered Saddam's
government the way Vice President Cheney did - perfectly
legitimately - in 1998 and 1999.
Before they prepare to go to war, Americans need to take a
deep breath and make sure they are doing so to overcome a
threat that is real and enduring, not one that they are
conjuring in part out of the trauma of Sept. 11.
Old monsters like Libya, North Korea and Iran have proved -
well, not ephemeral, but at least changeable, less terrifying
today than they used to be. And the Iraqi threat, for which
Americans are now prepared to sacrifice hundreds or thousands
of American casualties, just a few years ago was simply
another tinhorn dictatorship where CEO Cheney was earning his
bonus. The New York Times
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune
|
A
cloud over Cheney
(The Boston Globe)
Friday, February 13, 2004
The Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange
Commission, French prosecutors, and the Nigerian government
are all investigating allegations that a subsidiary of the
U.S. company Halliburton paid millions of dollars in bribes to
Nigerian officials during the 1990s, when Vice President Dick
Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton.
If such payments were made and Cheney approved them, he
could be guilty of violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act. If the payments were made and he did not know
about them, he could not have been a hands-on leader of his
conglomerate. The United States, in any case, deserves answers
before it votes in November - if, as President George W. Bush
has indicated, he retains Cheney as his running mate.
The allegations grew out of a successful bid by an
international consortium to build a $4 billion liquefied
natural gas plant in oil- and gas-rich Nigeria. The leading
member of the team, which is alleged to have paid $180 million
in bribes, was a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown Root.
Other members were companies from France, Italy, and Japan.
Late last month, Halliburton said in a regulatory filing
that the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange
Commission were looking into the allegations and had asked for
information. Halliburton has hired outside lawyers to do an
investigation.
Halliburton says it is cooperating with U.S. officials
on the case and "has no basis to assume that any of its
employees, or employees of the joint venture, has violated the
U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."
Under the late dictator Sani Abacha, Nigeria was
notorious for its level of corruption. Working in such an
environment is always complicated for U.S. companies, which
are supposed to abide by the 1977 Corrupt Practices Act.
Because the Nigerian affair occurred under Cheney's
watch at Halliburton, it has the potential to have a greater
bearing on his political future than allegations of war
profiteering by Halliburton or its subcontractors in Iraq
after he left the chief executive's chair.
Last week the Defense Department said Halliburton would
reimburse it for $27.4 million in possible overcharges for
food services in Iraq and Kuwait. In January the company
itself said it would repay the government $6.2 million for
potential overcharges by a Kuwaiti subcontractor. A third
dispute involves $61 million in possibly excess charges for
fuel imported to Iraq. The price-gouging on fuel was alleged
in December. A month later, Halliburton was nonetheless
awarded a $1.2 billion contract by the Army Corps of Engineers
to restore the oil industry in southern Iraq.
Defense Department officials owe it to taxpayers to make
sure Halliburton does not get one dollar more than it
deserves. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange
Commission officials owe it to voters to determine as quickly
as possible what role if any Cheney had in any Nigerian
bribes.
- The Boston Globe
|
|
Halliburton
breaks with 2 executives over plot
|
|
Simon
Romero NYT
|
Saturday, June 19, 2004
|
HOUSTON
Halliburton said Friday it was severing all ties with Albert
Stanley, until recently one of the company's highest-ranking
executives, after discovering he had improperly enriched himself by
channeling about $5 million from an elaborate payment scheme for a
Nigerian energy project to a secret Swiss bank account.
Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil-services companies, also
said it was cutting ties with another executive involved in the
scheme, William Chaudan. The two men had retired from KBR,
Halliburton's large engineering and construction unit, but continued
to work as consultants for the company. Stanley was chairman of KBR
until last December and kept an office at its headquarters in
Houston until this week.
The dismissal of the two executives is the latest development in
investigations underway in France and the United States that have
uncovered a $180 million web of payments in connection with efforts
to win contracts to build a $4 billion natural gas complex in
Nigeria. Some of the payments were made while Vice President Dick
Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive, a position he retired from
in 2000.
Investigators are seeking to determine whether the payments made by
Halliburton and its partners in the Nigerian project, in which the
French construction group Technip participated, essentially amounted
to illegal commissions for Halliburton's own executives and for
Nigerian officials. Stanley's dismissal illustrates how
uncomfortable Halliburton has become in attempting to defend the
actions of its executives in Nigeria.
Reynaud Van Ruymbeke, the French judge investigating the matter, has
not ruled out summoning Cheney to France to determine whether he
knew anything about the payments. Halliburton's senior executives
braced their staff on Friday for the fallout from the investigations
and the fall from grace of one of its most powerful executives.
"Unfortunately, these events will heighten and exaggerate the
political attacks on our company," Dave Lesar, Halliburton's
chief executive, said in an internal e-mail addressed to the
company's employees on Friday. "Criticism on an issue such as
this one is expected."
Halliburton has also enlisted James Doty, a lawyer in the Washington
office of the law firm Baker Botts, to oversee an internal
investigation of the Nigeria payments. The company said it did not
believe it had violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which
prohibits American companies from bribing foreign officials to win
business, but said that there could be "be no assurance that
the government or the company's internal investigation will not
conclude otherwise."
In addition to cutting ties with Stanley and Chaudan, Halliburton
said it was immediately terminating all services of Tri Star
Investments, the Gibraltar-based company that has been called the
mastermind of the scheme. Tri Star is controlled by Jeffrey Tesler,
a British lawyer with extensive dealings in Nigeria.
Halliburton said it would pursue legal action against Tri Star.
Chaudan, the former KBR executive involved in assembling the
natural-gas project in Nigeria, had identified Tesler as the key
intermediary in coordinating the payments, according to a letter
written by Chaudan and obtained by the French newspaper Le Figaro.
Chaudan also said Tesler had a working relationship with KBR dating
to the 1980s.
The M.W. Kellogg Company became part of the payments scheme in the
mid-1990s, though the payments continued well into the period after
Kellogg was absorbed into Halliburton through the acquisition of
Kellogg's parent company, Dresser Industries, in 1998. The Nigeria
payments are reported to have been made from 1995 to 2002, or well
after Kellogg was combined with Halliburton's Brown Root unit to
form KBR.
According to findings of Van Ruymbeke's investigation that have been
reported in French newspapers, KBR essentially coordinated the
activities of TSKJ, a consortium based in Madeira, Portugal, and
formed by KBR and three partners - Technip, Eni of Italy and the JGC
Corporation of France - to carry out work on the Nigeria project.
Stanley, the former chairman of KBR, could not be reached for
comment and his lawyer, Lee Kaplan, did not return calls seeking
comment. Chaudan also could not be reached.
Halliburton's decision to cut ties with the two men is a reversal
for the company, after it had dismissed suggestions for several
weeks that they had been involved in improper or illegal activities.
"While we do not know all of the facts related to the issue, we
are taking these actions in response to the facts that we do have
and to protect our investors, employees, customers and vendors as
several investigations proceed," Lesar, Halliburton's chief
executive, said in a statement on Friday.
The New York Times
|
The Paper Trail
Did Cheney
Okay a Deal?
By
TIMOTHY J. BURGER AND ADAM
ZAGORIN
Vice President Dick Cheney was a guest on NBC's Meet the
Press last September when host Tim Russert brought up
Halliburton. Citing the company's role in rebuilding Iraq as
well as Cheney's prior service as Halliburton's CEO, Russert
asked, "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of
those contracts?" Cheney's reply: "Of course not,
Tim ... And as Vice President, I have absolutely no
influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape
or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or
anybody else in the Federal Government."
Cheney's relationship with Halliburton has been nothing
but trouble since he left the company in 2000. Both he and
the company say they have no ongoing connections. But TIME
has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army
Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by
the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney's
arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5,
2003, the e-mail says "action" on a
multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was
"coordinated" with Cheney's office. The
e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got
the "authority to execute RIO," or Restore Iraqi
Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S.
awarded to Halliburton last year.
The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the
contract "contingent on informing WH [White House]
tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been
coordinated w VP's [Vice President's] office." Three
days later, the Army Corps of Engineers gave Halliburton the
contract, without seeking other bids. TIME located the
e-mail among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a
conservative watchdog group.
Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems says the Vice President
"has played no role whatsoever in government-contract
decisions involving Halliburton" since 2000. A Pentagon
spokesman says the e-mail means merely that "in
anticipation of controversy over the award of a sole-source
contract to Halliburton, we wanted to give the Vice
President's staff a heads-up."
Cheney is linked to his old firm in at least one other
way. His recently filed 2003 financial-disclosure form
reveals that Halliburton last year invoked an insurance
policy to indemnify Cheney for what could be steep legal
bills "arising from his service" at the company.
Past and present Halliburton execs face an array of
potentially costly litigation, including multibillion-dollar
asbestos claims.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1101040607-644111,00.html
|
|
Helvetica">Halliburton Seeks Distance from Bribe Inquiry
|
| International Herald Tribune - Wednesday, June 16, 2004 |
|
Halliburton has sought to distance itself from a report
that investigators in France are close to completing an
inquiry into payments on a project in Nigeria that might
have enriched a former executive.
Investigators in the United States, France and Nigeria
have been examining accusations that KBR the Halliburton
engineering and construction unit that was formerly
called Kellogg, Brown & Root was involved in making
$180 million in illegal payments in the 1990s to win a
contract to build a natural gas complex in Nigeria.
Halliburton disclosed on Friday that the Securities and
Exchange Commission had begun a formal investigation
into the payments.
French investigators are reported to have uncovered
evidence showing that about $5 million of payments
related to the Nigeria project were deposited into a
Swiss bank account controlled by Albert Stanley, the
former chairman of KBR.
The French weekly Journal du Dimanche reported on Sunday
that investigative specialists in France had compared
the payments to those in a scandal involving Elf, the
French oil company at the center of bribery accusations
associated with its ventures in Africa.
"We have not seen the documentation of such alleged
accounts or transfers," Wendy Hall, a Halliburton
spokeswoman, said on Sunday.
"Halliburton never authorized any such accounts nor
any transfers to such accounts," she added,
referring additional questions on the matter to Stanley
and his lawyer, Lee Kaplan.
Stanley retired as KBR's chairman last year, but he
still works as a consultant for the company and
maintains an office at its headquarters in Houston. He
did not return calls on Sunday to his office and home.
Kaplan acknowledged that he was representing Stanley,
but said in a telephone interview on Sunday that he was
"unable to make any comment at this time."
The Swiss account belonging to Stanley was reported this
month by the French newspaper Le Figaro to have received
3 percent to 5 percent of the $180 million of payments
made to TSKJ, a consortium formed by KBR and three
partners, Technip of France, Eni of Italy and the JGC
Corp. of Japan, to carry out work on the Nigeria
project.
In a statement issued on Friday, Halliburton said
company representatives had recently met with Reynaud
van Ruymbeke, the French magistrate investigating the
payments. Halliburton also said it did not believe that
it had violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which
prohibits U.S. companies from paying bribes to win
business abroad, though "there can be no assurance
that government authorities would not conclude
otherwise."
The payments in the Nigeria project are said to have
been made from 1995 to 2002, but were initiated before
the M.W. Kellogg Co., a unit of Dresser Industries, was
absorbed into Halliburton through its acquisition of
Dresser in 1998.
Kellogg, which was part of the original TSKJ venture,
was combined with Brown & Root to form KBR.
Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton's chief
executive at the time of its acquisition of Dresser,
before stepping down from the company in 2000.
Halliburton has sought to distance itself from a report
that investigators in France are close to completing an
inquiry into payments on a project in Nigeria that might
have enriched a former executive.
Investigators in the United States, France and Nigeria
have been examining accusations that KBR the Halliburton
engineering and construction unit that was formerly
called Kellogg, Brown & Root was involved in making
$180 million in illegal payments in the 1990s to win a
contract to build a natural gas complex in Nigeria.
Halliburton disclosed on Friday that the Securities and
Exchange Commission had begun a formal investigation
into the payments.
French investigators are reported to have uncovered
evidence showing that about $5 million of payments
related to the Nigeria project were deposited into a
Swiss bank account controlled by Albert Stanley, the
former chairman of KBR.
The French weekly Journal du Dimanche reported on Sunday
that investigative specialists in France had compared
the payments to those in a scandal involving Elf, the
French oil company at the center of bribery accusations
associated with its ventures in Africa.
"We have not seen the documentation of such alleged
accounts or transfers," Wendy Hall, a Halliburton
spokeswoman, said on Sunday.
"Halliburton never authorized any such accounts nor
any transfers to such accounts," she added,
referring additional questions on the matter to Stanley
and his lawyer, Lee Kaplan.
|
|
Democrats want Cheney-Halliburton probe
Republicans dismiss questions about contract
Tuesday, June 1, 2004
|
Vice President Dick Cheney was chief
executive officer of Halliburton before he
became George Bush's running mate.
|
|
|
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A
Democratic senator Tuesday called for a congressional
investigation into whether Vice President Dick Cheney
had a role in awarding a no-bid contract in Iraq to
his old company, the oil-services giant Halliburton.
"It's a legitimate question," said Sen.
Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate
Judiciary Committee. "It raises the real
question, can the American people trust their
government to do the right thing? We have very real
rules here."
Cheney's office has said repeatedly that the vice
president has no role in government contracting and
has severed all financial ties with the Texas-based
Halliburton.
Cheney was chief executive officer of Halliburton
from 1995 to 2000, when he became George Bush's
running mate.
Time magazine raised the issue again this week,
citing a March 5, 2003, e-mail from an Army Corps of
Engineers official to another Pentagon employee.
The e-mail -- first obtained by the conservative
watchdog group Judicial Watch under the Freedom of
Information Act -- stated that Pentagon official
Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for
policy, approved the arrangement to award a
non-competitive contract to Halliburton.
It reported the contract was "contingent on
informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no
issues since action has been coordinated w(ith) VP's
office."
John White, a Pentagon appointee in the Clinton and
Carter administrations, said the e-mail suggests an
"unprecedented" level of involvement by
senior Pentagon officials in the awarding of
contracts.
"I've never seen of anything like this --
never heard of anything like this," White told
reporters in a conference call with Leahy. "I
think the vice president's office has a lot of
questions to answer, as does the Pentagon."
But a senior administration official told CNN the
e-mail is a typical "heads-up" memo from one
government agency to another that "a decision has
been made," and disputed suggestions that the
e-mail was evidence of Cheney's involvement in the
matter.
With both houses of Congress controlled by
President Bush's fellow Republicans, the prospect of
any Cheney-Halliburton hearings appears unlikely.
"For me, not having seen any of the
accusations or read Time magazine today, it would be
premature for me to say we need hearings on it,"
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, said
Tuesday.
Leahy, D-Vermont, faulted Republicans for not
wanting to examine the issue.
"This is the same Congress that during the
Clinton administration would have five new
investigations started by midday Monday, and just add
to them all week long," Leahy said. "Now
they won't hold hearings, no matter what it is -- if
you have cost overruns or anything else -- they just
refuse to hold hearings, but of course they
should."
Halliburton's involvement in the Iraq
reconstruction effort has been controversial since it
won a multi-billion no-bid contract in 2003. The U.S.
Defense Department is investigating whether
Halliburton overcharged for the fuel delivered to
Iraqi civilians, and its Kellogg, Brown and Root
subsidiary agreed to refund $27 million for potential
overbillings at five dining halls in Iraq and Kuwait.
"This is a politicizing of Halliburton, which
is a shame," said Mary Matalin, a former Cheney
aide now working as a senior Bush-Cheney campaign
adviser.
"Halliburton itself has lost close to three
dozen workers over there in Iraq," Matalin told
NBC's Today show. "I mean, just let it go."
CNN's Robert Yoon contributed to this report.
|
|
|
| Pentagon to Withhold Halliburton Payments |
| thursday March 18, 2004 4:48am |
|
Washington (AP) - Halliburton, founded in 1919
and headed for five years by Vice President Dick Cheney, has said any
mistakes in estimating the number of troops came from having to
operate in a war zone where the numbers changed quickly and
unpredictably. KBR has been doing business with the government since
World War II when it built ships for the Navy. A letter from Pentagon
comptroller Dov Zakheim to Army contracting officials, dated last
month and released Wednesday, cited the "possibility of
substantial overcharges" on KBR's meal contract.
"It is imperative that these allegations of overcharges be
investigated and the best interests of the government are
protected," Zakheim wrote in the letter, which also was signed by
Michael Wynne, the acting Pentagon contracting chief.
The possible overcharging for meals is just one of Halliburton's
troubles with its work in Iraq and Kuwait. The work also includes a
contract to rebuild the dilapidated oil industry in southern Iraq.
Halliburton's other problems include:
- Allegations of a kickback scheme by two former workers in Kuwait
that prompted Halliburton to reimburse the Pentagon $6.3 million.
- Faulty cost estimates on the $2.7 billion contract to serve troops
in Iraq, including failing to tell the Pentagon that KBR fired two
subcontractors. KBR admitted those mistakes in a letter to the Defense
Contract Audit Agency.
- A separate DCAA audit that accused KBR of overcharging by $61
million for gasoline delivered to serve the civilian market in Iraq
last year. Halliburton has said the charges were proper. |
| Guess
how much Halliburton paid in taxes |
Bob Herbert NYT
Saturday, January 31, 2004 |
NEW YORK Can you spell Halliburton? R-i-p-o-f-f. War-torn Iraq
has been a gold mine for Halliburton, yet another treasure trove of
U.S. taxpayer dollars for a company that has no peer in the fine art
of extracting riches from the government.
But if you go through some of Halliburton's filings with the
Securities and Exchange Commission over the past several years, as I
have, you'll see a company that goes to great lengths - literally to
the ends of the earth - to escape paying its fair share of taxes to
the government that has been so good to it.
Annual reports filed with the SEC since the mid-90's - when Dick
Cheney took over as chief executive and wrote the game plan for
garnering government goodies - showed Halliburton subsidiaries
incorporated in such places as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Trinidad
and Tobago, Panama, Liechtenstein, and Vanuatu.
Vanuatu? Who knew? Vanuatu is a mountainous group of islands in the
South Pacific. Its people support themselves mostly by fishing and
subsistence farming. "Additional revenues," according to the
Columbia Encyclopedia, "derive from a growing tourist industry
and the development of Vila (the capital) as a corporate tax
shelter."
Halliburton, in an SEC filing in 2000, duly noted that it had a
subsidiary incorporated in Vanuatu called Kinhill Kramer (Vanuatu)
Ltd. The company adamantly denies that its offshore subsidiaries are
used to shift income out of the United States. But it's indisputable
that somebody is doing a dandy job of limiting Halliburton's tax
liability. When I asked how much Halliburton paid in federal income
taxes last year, a company spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said, "After
foreign tax credit utilization, we paid just over $15 million to the
IRS for our 2002 tax liability." That is effectively no money at
all to an empire like Halliburton. Less than pocket change. Dick
Cheney must be having a good laugh over the way his old company,
following his road map, is taking the United States for such a ride.
In the early 90's, when Cheney was defense secretary under the first
President George Bush, he hired the Halliburton subsidiary Brown Root
to determine what military functions could be outsourced to private,
profit-making companies. Brown Root came up with myriad ideas in a
classified study and was handed a lucrative contract to carry out its
own plan.
Cheney took over as chief executive of Halliburton in 1995 and the
defense contracts just kept on coming. When he returned to government
as vice president in 2001, no firm was better positioned than
Halliburton to cash in on the billions of dollars in contracts that
resulted from the war on terror and the conflict in Iraq.
Halliburton is bound so intimately to the defense establishment it
might as well be an adjunct to the military. (Cheney still receives
deferred compensation from Halliburton but insists he has no role in
the awarding of contracts.)
Halliburton is an organization that has the reach of a multinational
and the eyes of a Willie Sutton. Through its subsidiaries, it has done
work with countries the United States has accused of supporting
terror. It was accused of overcharging the U.S. government for work
done in the 1990's, and in 2002 it agreed to pay a $2 million
settlement in response to accusations that it had defrauded the
government. The Pentagon is currently examining allegations that the
Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown Root overcharged the government
by $61 million for gasoline imported into Iraq from Kuwait. Last week
the company acknowledged that at least one employee had participated
in a $6.3 million kickback deal with a Kuwaiti company. That money has
reportedly been repaid to the government.
What we have here is a private, profit-making multinational company
with no particular allegiance (other than contractual) to the U.S.
government. Nevertheless, through its powerful allies in the
government, Halliburton enjoys extraordinary influence over national
defense policies and has its own key to the national treasury.
If it's at all grateful, it hasn't shown it. The United States is at
war. The government is running record deficits. Money is tight
everywhere. But Halliburton won't even kick in its fair share. It
continues to benefit from the nation's largess, while scouring the
world for places to shelter as much of its American riches as
possible.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune |
Halliburton fuel prices fair despite questions
08-01-04 An Army Corps of Engineers official overseeing
Halliburton's imports of fuel into Iraq from Kuwait found that the
company has "continued to negotiate the best price possible"
for the fuel and has provided information indicating that the prices
paid are "fair and reasonable."
Halliburton, a Texas oil services company formerly headed by Vice
President Dick Cheney, has been under fire since the disclosure last
month that Pentagon auditors had found evidence that its Kellogg Brown
Root subsidiary allowed a Kuwaiti subcontractor to overcharge the
government by at least $ 61 mm. Halliburton did not profit from
overcharges, officials have said, but the disclosure has led to calls
for the company to repay any overcharges.
But on Dec. 19 -- after the disclosure of the auditors' preliminary
findings -- the head of the Army Corps signed a waiver allowing
Kellogg Brown Root to continue to buy fuel from the Kuwaiti
contractor, Altanmia, without submitting the cost and pricing
information that otherwise would be required by federal contracting
rules. The waiver, signed by Lieutenant General Robert Flowers.
Officials with the Army Corps cautioned that the waiver did not
absolve Halliburton of liability for any overcharges.
"We're still awaiting the outcome of the audit to see what
they've determined," said a spokeswoman for the Army Corps, Carol
Sanders. "The waiver does not relieve KBR of their responsibility
to charge the government a fair and reasonable price for the fuel
purchases."
Gordon Sumner, the Army Corps contracting officer who found that
the prices were "fair and reasonable," wrote in the waiver
request that officials at Kuwaiti Petroleum had blocked efforts to
import gasoline and other fuel into Iraq from Kuwait using anyone
other than Altanmia, even though other firms made more favourable
proposals.
Altanmia has refused to provide cost and pricing information because
doing so would violate Kuwait law, according to the Army Corps.
Earlier, the deputy director of the Defence Contract Audit Agency,
Michael Thibault, said the draft report by the agency recommended that
the Army Corps seek reimbursement. The preliminary findings, he said,
involved "potentially very substantial" overcharging.
The audit agency said that the Army Corps had "promised" to
provide auditors with information establishing that the prices paid
for the subcontracted fuel deliveries were fair and reasonable. Once
that is received, "that will conclude the DCAA audit work on this
issue," the statement said. Democrats in Congress attacked the
waiver, saying it would sabotage efforts to recover improper
overcharges.
Source: The International Herald Tribune
|
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald
Tribune | www.iht.com
| Cheney
didn't mind Saddam |
Nicholas D. Kristof The New
York Times
Saturday, October 12, 2002 |
|
Monster of the month
NEW YORK George W. Bush and Dick Cheney portray Saddam Hussein
as so menacing and terrifying that one might think they have lain
awake at night for years worrying about him. But when Cheney was
running Halliburton, the oil services firm, it sold more equipment to
Iraq than any other company did.
As was first reported by the Financial Times on Nov. 3, 2000,
Halliburton subsidiaries submitted $23.8 million worth of contracts
with Iraq to the United Nations in 1998 and 1999 for approval by its
sanctions committee.
This was legitimate business conducted through joint ventures that had
been acquired as part of a larger takeover in September 1998. Zelma
Branch, a Halliburton spokeswoman, says the subsidiaries completed
their pre-existing Iraq contracts but did not seek new ones.
So this is not evidence of scandalous conduct or egregious
misjudgment. But as Americans debate whether to go to war with Iraq,
it is a useful reminder of how fashions change in perceptions of rogue
states. Public Enemy No. 1 today is a government that Cheney was in
effect helping shore up just a couple of years ago.
More broadly, the United States has a long history in which Saddam,
although just as monstrous as he is today, was coddled. In the 1980s
it provided his army with satellite intelligence so that it could use
chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers. When Saddam used nerve gas
and mustard gas against Kurds in 1988, the Reagan administration
initially tried to blame Iran. The United States shipped seven strains
of anthrax to Iraq from 1978 to 1988.
These days it sees Iraq as an imminent threat to its way of life,
while just a couple of years ago Iraq was perceived as a pathetic
dictatorship hardly worth the bother of bombing. What changed? Not
Iraq, but rather American sensibilities after Sept. 11.
We Americans need to be wary that we are not just pursuing the latest
fashion in monsters. Iran was the menace of the 1980s, so we snuggled
up with Iraq. The Soviet threat led us to cuddle with Islamic
fundamentalists like those now trying to blow us up.
In 1994 the vogue threat changed, and hawks pressed hard for a
military confrontation with North Korea. America came within an inch
of going to war with North Korea, in a conflict that a Pentagon study
found would have killed a million people. In retrospect, it is clear
that the hawks were wrong about confronting North Korea. Containment
and deterrence so far have worked, kind of, just as they have kind of
worked to restrain Iraq for 11 years.
If Washington spent money on hypocrisy detectors as well as anthrax
detectors, they would be buzzing. For example, Republicans are trying
to defeat the Democratic senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota by
running commercials featuring Saddam Hussein.
When I was writing from Iraq lately, some peeved readers suggested I
stay there for good. The fact is that neither Tim Johnson nor any
lily-livered columnist ever bolstered Saddam's government the way Vice
President Cheney did - perfectly legitimately - in 1998 and 1999.
Before they prepare to go to war, Americans need to take a deep breath
and make sure they are doing so to overcome a threat that is real and
enduring, not one that they are conjuring in part out of the trauma of
Sept. 11.
Old monsters like Libya, North Korea and Iran have proved - well, not
ephemeral, but at least changeable, less terrifying today than they
used to be. And the Iraqi threat, for which Americans are now prepared
to sacrifice hundreds or thousands of American casualties, just a few
years ago was simply another tinhorn dictatorship where CEO Cheney was
earning his bonus. The New York Times
Copyright © 2002 The International Herald Tribune
|
Tuesday, June 1, 2004
Halliburton
was helped by Cheney, Time says
By AFP (AFP)
Monday, May 31, 2004
Time
reports Cheney hand in contract
(Agence France-Presse)
A Pentagon
e-mail said that Cheney coordinated a huge Halliburton
government contract for Iraq, Time reported Monday, despite his
denial of interest in the company.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Pentagon
accuses Halliburton of overcharging for meals
(The Associated Press)
Wednesday, March 10,
2004
Halliburton
feels strain
Iraq inquiries may hurt
cash holdings
(Bloomberg News)
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
Iraq
inquiries strain Halliburton cash holdings
(Bloomberg News)
Halliburton
said that an inquiry into possible overcharging on Iraq contracts
for the U.S. government might lead to a drop in cash holdings.
Thursday, February 26,
2004
Halliburton
under scrutiny
(The Boston Globe)
Accusations
that Halliburton received enormous
noncompetitive contracts in Iraq need to be addressed.
Friday, February 13,
2004
A
cloud over Cheney
(The Boston Globe)
Because the
Nigerian affair occurred under Cheney's watch at Halliburton,
it has the potential to have a greater bearing on his political
future than allegations of war profiteering by Halliburton.
Friday, February 6,
2004
U.S.
checking allegation of illegal payments by Halliburton in Nigeria
project
(The Associated Press)
The Defense
Department is also conducting a criminal investigation into the
company's contract to supply gasoline to Iraqi civilians.
Thursday,
December 18, 2003
Halliburton
units seek bankruptcy
By Compiled by Our Staff From
Dispatches (AP, Bloomberg)
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
08/03/2003
Iraq
work helps Halliburton return to a profit
Bloomberg
News
07/13/2003
U.S.
pacts give Halliburton unit an advantage in Iraq
Stephen
J. Glain and Robert Schlesinger Boston Globe
05/12/2003
Halliburton
admits bribes
AP,
Bloomberg AP, Bloomberg
A subsidiary of Halliburton Co. paid a Nigerian tax official $2.4
million in bribes to get favorable tax treatment, the company
disclosed in a federal filing.
10/29/2002
Cheney
and Halliburton seek to dismiss shareholder suits
James
Grimaldi The Washington Post
Vice President Dick Cheney and Halliburton Corp. have asked a
federal judge in Dallas to dismiss allegations that they defrauded
investors through an accounting tactic that was begun when Cheney
was chief executive of the oil services and construction company.
10/13/2002
Firm
explains Cheney role
James
V. Grimaldi The Washington Post
While serving as the chief executive of Halliburton Corp., Vice
President Dick Cheney did not play a hands-on role in an
accounting change that prompted a SEC investigation, according to
Cheney's successor at the company.
09/12/2002
Pension
cuts by Halliburton
Mary
Williams Walsh The New York Times
In June, puzzling letters began appearing in the mailboxes of
hundreds of employees of Dresser-Rand Co., saying they had become
eligible for retirement benefits even though they were still
working. To request their money, they were told to call
Halliburton Co., which acquired Dresser-Rand in 1998.
07/17/2002
Halliburton
gains most-favored-contractor status
Jeff
Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. The New York Times
Halliburton Co., the Dallas-based oil services company bedeviled
lately by an array of accounting and business issues, is
benefiting very directly from U.S. efforts to combat terrorism.
From building cells for detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to
feeding U.S. troops in Uzbekistan, the Pentagon is increasingly
relying on a unit of Halliburton called KBR, sometimes referred to
as Kellogg Brown Root.
07/12/2002
Fraud
alleged in accounting at Halliburton
The
Associated Press The Associated Press
A legal watchdog group on Wednesday sued Vice President Dick
Cheney and Halliburton Co., the oil services company he ran for
five years, alleging fraudulent accounting practices at the
company.
07/10/2002
NEWS
ANALYSIS Corporate misdeeds: Bush faces a delicate task
Dana
Milbank and Mike Allen The Washington Post
While President George W. Bush worked with aides on his coming
speech addressing mushrooming corporate scandals, a question arose
about whether the administration could look hypocritical because
of the continuing federal probe of Halliburton Co.'s aggressive
accounting while Vice President Dick Cheney was in charge of the
company.
06/02/2002
Subpoena
news hits Halliburton
Shares tumble
on SEC inquiry
Alex
Berenson The New York Times
Shares of Halliburton Co. fell sharply Wednesday in the wake of
the energy company's disclosure that it is under investigation by
the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding a change in its
accounting policies that the company made when Vice President Dick
Cheney was its chief executive.
|
Halliburton Subpoenaed Over Unit's Iran
Work
By Matt Daily
Reuters
Monday 19 July 2004
Houston - A U.S. grand jury issued a
subpoena to Halliburton Co. seeking information about its Cayman
Islands unit's work in Iran, where it is illegal for U.S. companies to
operate, Halliburton said on Monday.
The oilfield services company, formerly
headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, said it understood that the
investigation of its subsidiary's work in Iran had been transferred to
the U.S. Department of Justice from the Treasury Department, which
first initiated an inquiry in 2001.
"In July 2004, Halliburton received
from an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas a
grand jury subpoena requesting the production of documents. We intend
to cooperate with the government's investigation," Halliburton
said in a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Halliburton said it had previously replied
to requests for information from the Treasury Department's Office of
Foreign Assets Control in 2001 and again in January 2004.
The U.S. Attorney's office in Houston
declined to comment.
Halliburton's engineering and construction
unit KBR, formerly called Kellogg Brown & Root, is also the
subject of U.S. Justice Department and SEC investigations for possible
overcharges for fuel and food service contracts in Iraq, where it is
the largest contractor, holding contracts that could eventually be
worth $18 billion.
Halliburton said it would comply with the
subpoena, and reiterated it believed its links to Iran through the
Cayman Islands unit were in compliance with applicable laws and
regulations.
"It is important to understand,
especially in the current political environment, that this is not a
condemnation of the company, but a method of further studying the
facts. We welcome a thorough review of any and all of the company's
business," Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said in an e-mail.
The company said in its annual report that
revenues from its subsidiary's business in Iran amounted to about $80
million, or one-half of 1 percent of total revenues of $16.3 billion
in 2003.
In a report issued in October 2003 in
response to shareholder complaints about its Iranian links,
Halliburton said that it was not illegal for U.S. companies'
independent foreign subsidiaries to conduct business in Iran, and that
it had taken steps to isolate its U.S. operations and managers from
its work there.
U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat,
said the probe into possible sanctions violations should address the
role of the Republican vice president.
"The question must be asked: did this
possible violation occur between 1995 and 2000 while Dick Cheney was
the CEO of Halliburton?" Lautenberg said in a statement released
by his office.
Halliburton said its Cayman Islands
subsidiary, Halliburton Products & Services Limited, has its
headquarters in Dubai and is active only in Iran, where it provides a
range of services to the state-run Iranian National Oil Company (NIOC).
Members of Lautenberg's staff said his
office has passed to the Treasury Department some documents that had
been sent by NIOC's British arm, Kala, to Halliburton's subsidiary in
1997 and 1998 seeking bids for oil services work in Iran.
In addition to that subsidiary, Halliburton
has three British-based units and a Swedish-based unit that conduct
business with Iran, the company said.
The United States first imposed economic
sanctions against Iran in 1979 after the Islamic revolution when
student fundamentalists held 52 American hostages for 444 days. Those
sanctions were tightened under Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill
Clinton, although some exemptions were granted in 2000.
President Bush has included Iran in the
"Axis of Evil" for its support of "terrorist"
organizations.
Criminal violations for corporations in
violation of the sanctions can range up to $500,000, with penalties
for individuals of up to $250,000 and 10 years in jail.
|
| FRANCE
NEWSPAPERS (Mostly French language)
PARIS
NEWSPAPERS
BECHTEL
AND THE CHENEY CONNECTION
ANOTHER
PEARL HARBOR IN OUR FUTURE?
... President Bush's national security
advisor, Brent Scowcroft, reportedly "leaned
on" Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney to eliminate the
weapons in an effort ...
www.greatdreams.com/land_forces.htm
THE
LADY IN GREY - DEATH IN THE OFFICE!!!!
... report. LINKS ON GREATDREAMS.COM
WITH DICK CHENEY IN THEM. THE FEDERALIST
PAPERS - THE WAR OF 1812 - CONSTITUTIONAL ... .. Sworn ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/lady-grey.htm
DREAMS
AND PROPHECY OF IRAQ
... that his country would be sucked into an
attack on Iraq by saying: "We decide for
ourselves what we're going to do." Vice-President Dick Cheney
repeated the ...
www.greatdreams.com/dreams_and_prophecy_of_iraq.htm
NEW
PROPHECIES FROM JUST REGULAR PEOPLE
... During the conversation I learn that
President Bush doesn't make it out of the White
House in time to escape the attack and Dick Cheney is
sworn-in as the 44th ...
www.greatdreams.com/regular_prophecy.htm
WATER
QUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES
... cooked up this raid on the federal
treasury during hundreds of secret meetings with
Vice President Cheney's energy task force ... www.greatdreams.com/environ.htm.
...
www.greatdreams.com/water-quality.htm
IRAQ
- PART 2
... has come under strong criticism for
failing to control the pro-war hawks--centered
primarily in the offices of Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney--in
the ...
www.greatdreams.com/iraq-part2.htm
TULGHUR,
IRAN - ANOTHER WAR?
... Dick Cheney repeated the promise
to prevent Iraq, Iran and North Korea from threatening
America ... http://www.greatdreams.com/dreams_and_prophecy_of_iraq.htm.
...
www.greatdreams.com/war/tulghur-iran.htm
OIL
PIPELINES TO EXPAND
... Hoping to promote the White House plan,
Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and
five cabinet secretaries traveled around the country to emphasize
the need for ...
www.greatdreams.com/oil.htm
THE
KOREAN LEADER - ATTACK ON AMERICA?
... Dick Cheney repeated the promise
to prevent Iraq, Iran and North Korea from threatening
America ... http://www.greatdreams.com/dreams_and_prophecy_of_iraq.htm.
...
www.greatdreams.com/korean.htm
COUNCIL
ON FOREIGN RELATIONS (CFR)
... RONALD BROWN, Z. Brezindski, WILLIAM
BUCKLEY, Frank Carlucci, JIMMY CARTER, John
Chancellor, Richard Cheney, Henry Cisneros ...
http://www.greatdreams.com/nwo.htm. ...
www.greatdreams.com/cfr.htm
THE
FEDERALIST PAPERS - THE WAR OF 1812 - CONSTITUTIONAL ...
... Sworn in on the same Masonic Bible as
George Washington. 2000- Vice President
Dick Cheney. His secretary of state, Colin Powell. Confirmed
Mason. ...
www.greatdreams.com/amndmnts.htm
SUSPICIONS
OF THE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 EVENTS AT THE WORLD TRADE ...
... Rumsfeld is the former CEO of Searle
Pharmaceuticals. He and Cheney were featured
as speakers at the May, 2000, Russian-American Business Leaders
Forum. ...
www.greatdreams.com/suspicion.htm
Democrat
- Joseph Lieberman - 2003
... Lieberman critics from the Gore camp
cited his performance against Republican vice
presidential candidate Dick Cheney as representative of his
most vexing ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/lieberman.htm
THE
BLACKENED WHITEHOUSE
... destruction. Dick Cheney - August
26, 2002. Right ... true. When Wilson returned,
he reported his negative findings to Cheney's office. Despite
...
www.greatdreams.com/political/blackened-whitehouse.htm
THE
DOGS OF WAR - BLOWBACK AND THE MARBLE GAME
... I started to wake up, and I had a sudden
vision - It was the face of
Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States. A voice
...
www.greatdreams.com/blowback.html
THE
GLOBAL UNION - (NWO?)
... Vice President Dick Cheney
verified that they are on schedule when he
spoke to the Council of the Americas (COTA) May 6, 2002. David ...
www.greatdreams.com/global-nwo.htm
WESLEY
CLARK FOR PRESIDENT - 2004
... the war in Iraq that it appears his
political ambitions have superseded his principles,"
said Joe Gallant, Maine Veterans vice chairman for Bush-Cheney
'04 in ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/clark.htm
THE
ELECTION - 2000 - DREAMS AND VISIONS
... OUR NEW PRESIDENT BUSH/CHENEY.
NEWS. ... It was a false alarm.". President Bush and
Vice President Dick Cheney remained at work inside throughout
the check. ...
www.greatdreams.com/elec2000.htm
D-AY
- HISTORICAL OR FUTURE?
... Until Vice President Dick Cheney's
recent visit to the Middle East, however, the
United States had not even acknowledged the existence of the Qatar
base in the ...
www.greatdreams.com/d-day.htm
PROPHECIES
BY REGULAR PEOPLE LIKE YOU AND ME
... 24/2002 Dee777 writes: New page for
today: http://www.greatdreams.com/biologics.html ...
Bush
will not run again with Cheney, new running mate, possibly
female or ...
www.greatdreams.com/regular_prophecy2.htm
Militia
Groups
... The American Militia - Defending the
Constitution from Enemies ... God Bless George
W. Bush and Richard E. Cheney! God Bless America! ... Militia
Database. ...
www.greatdreams.com/militia.htm
THE
PUPPETMASTER
... As the ramifications of the tragedy
continue to unfold, the Secret Service has engineered
a security clampdown, relocating Vice President Dick Cheney
to Camp ...
www.greatdreams.com/puppetmaster.htm
The
Changing of the Guard: Part V: The Oracle
... brilliant innovator. (May 6) VP Dick Cheney
will announce in a few
days that he will be on the Presidential ticket in 2004. Stress ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/media05.html
BOMBING
OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER - 9-11-2001 - DAY 4
... As the second airliner slammed into the
south tower of the World Trade Centre,
Vice-President Dick Cheney was staring at a television in the
White House. ...
www.greatdreams.com/trade_day4.htm
TERRORISM
- WORLD TRADE CENTER - 9-11-2001 - PAGE 3
... general. [End report from Russia.]. FEMA
HEADLINES. FOR SECURITY REASONS
- BUSH AND CHENEY WORK AND SLEEP IN SEPARATE LOCATIONS. MORE ...
www.greatdreams.com/trade_day3.htm
The
Changing of the Guard Part Four: Secrets of Skolnick
... Daddy Bush, in various deals (some of
them through oil machinery suppliers headed
or connected to Richard Cheney), saw to it that Iraq was
flooded with ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/media04.html
Anti-War
Global rallies protest possible US war on Iraq - Oct. 26 ...
... A group of about 20 children led the
parade as protesters carried signs bearing
pictures of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary ...
www.greatdreams.com/war/anti-war.htm
KENT
STATE - PROTEST - A DREAM
... Accompanied by Secretary of State Colin
Powell, far left, Vice President Dick
Cheney and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton
(far right ...
www.greatdreams.com/kent.htm
SHOULD
THE DEATH PENALTY BE ABOLISHED?
... Through foreign units of his firm,
Halliburton, Vice President Richard Cheney
has extensive business with Iraq on oil-country machinery and such. ...
www.greatdreams.com/penaltyb.htm
SEPARATION
OF CHURCH AND STATE - THE CONTROVERSY
... FOREIGN LEADERS. The prayer breakfast,
organized by members of Congress and
attended by a diverse group, also heard from Vice President Dick Cheney.
...
www.greatdreams.com/separate.htm
THE
WEAPONS OF THE SEA
... I was reading my life story
"Terrorized", then saw a connection to greatdreams.com
... ... what we're going to do." Vice-President Dick Cheney
repeated the promise ...
www.greatdreams.com/war/weapons-sea.htm
POLITICAL
DREAMS - YEAR 2000
... http://www.greatdreams.com/lgmnwil.gif
The long man of Wilmington This is an ... 50-50,
he would have been confirmed, with Vice President Dick Cheney
casting the ...
www.greatdreams.com/pol2000.htm
BOMBING
OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER 9-11-2001 - PAGE 6
... Bush spoke with Vice President Dick Cheney
every 30 minutes, according
to TIME magazine's Monday's issue (on newsstands Sept. 17). ...
www.greatdreams.com/trade_day6.htm
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE - JAIR FARM
... In recent months, Baron says she has
received some warnings about President Bush
and Vice President Cheney, which she has passed on to federal
authorities. ...
www.greatdreams.com/war/jair-farm.htm
ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE - JAIR FARM
... In recent months, Baron says she has
received some warnings about President Bush
and Vice President Cheney, which she has passed on to federal
authorities. ...
www.greatdreams.com/jair-farm.htm
TERRORISM
- WORLD TRADE CENTER - 9-11-2001 - MILITARY PAGE 2
... Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan,
meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney
at the White House, said China ''made clear our desire and our
readiness to ...
www.greatdreams.com/trade_military2.htm
THE
PRESIDENTIAL CABINET - HILARY CLINTON VS CLONING - THE DREAM ...
... . President George Bush and Vice
President Cheney. ... When Rumsfeld was named
secretary of defense in 1975, Cheney was appointed Ford's
chief of staff. ...
www.greatdreams.com/cabinet.htm
BOMBING
OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER - 9-11-2001 - PAGE 7
... Vice President Cheney said on
NBC's Meet the Press that President Bush gave an order
Tuesday to intercept and shoot down any commercial airliners headed
for ...
www.greatdreams.com/trade_day7.htm
TERRORISM
- WORLD TRADE CENTER - 9-11-2001 - PAGE 10
... British officials said the whole focus of
the long-term American approach was being
driven by Richard Cheney, the American Vice-President, and
General Colin ...
www.greatdreams.com/trade_day10.htm
DEES
DREAMS AND VISIONS - SEPTEMBER, 2002
... I started to wake up, and I had a sudden
vision - It was the face of
Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States. A voice
...
www.greatdreams.com/sep2002.htm
BOMBING
OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER 9-11-2001
... 1610 GMT, 091101. Reports have been
confirmed that US President George W.
Bush, the First Lady, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife
are safe. ...
www.greatdreams.com/trade.htm
TERRORISM
- WORLD TRADE CENTER - 9-11-2001 - MILITARY PAGE
... Authorities hustled Vice President Dick Cheney
out of Washington, kept the New
York stock markets shut another day and slowly - very slowly - brought
the ...
www.greatdreams.com/trade_military.htm
The
Changing of the Guard: Part V: The Oracle
... mention that American firms have expressed
willingness to "assist Iraq people to
build a new, democratic nation." No mention, by name, of Halliburton
or Bechtel ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/media05.html
DIRTY
POLITICS
... during my election decision. I have
protected my friends at Enron and
Halliburton against investigation or prosecution. More time and
...
www.greatdreams.com/political/dirty-politics.htm
SHOULD
THE DEATH PENALTY BE ABOLISHED?
... Through foreign units of his firm, Halliburton,
Vice President Richard Cheney
has extensive business with Iraq on oil-country machinery and such. ...
www.greatdreams.com/penaltyb.htm
DREAMS
OF THE GREAT EARTHCHANGES - MAIN INDEX
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