Cheney is still paid by Pentagon contractor

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Halliburton, the Texas company which has been awarded the Pentagon's contract to put out potential oil-field fires in Iraq and which is bidding for postwar construction contracts, is still making annual payments to its former chief executive, the vice-president Dick Cheney.
The payments, which appear on Mr Cheney's 2001 financial disclosure statement, are in the form of "deferred compensation" of up to $1m (£600,000) a year.

When he left Halliburton in 2000 to become George Bush's running mate, he opted not to receive his leaving payment in a lump sum but instead have it paid to him over five years, possibly for tax reasons.

An aide to the vice president said yesterday: "This is money that Mr Cheney was owed by the corporation as part of his salary for the time he was employed by Halliburton and which was a fixed amount paid to him over time."

The aide said the payment was even insured so that it would not be affected even if Halliburton went bankrupt, to ensure there was no conflict of interest.

"Also, the vice president has nothing whatsoever to do with the Pentagon bidding process," the aide added.

The company would not say how much the payments are. The obligatory disclosure statement filled by all top government officials says only that they are in the range of $100,000 and $1m. Nor is it clear how they are calculated.

Halliburton is one of five large US corporations - the others are the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp, Parsons Corp, and the Louis Berger Group - invited to bid for contracts in what may turn out to be the biggest reconstruction project since the second world war.

It is estimated to be worth up to $900m for the preliminary work alone, such as rebuilding Iraq's hospitals, ports, airports and schools.

The contract winners will be able to establish a presence in post-Saddam Iraq that should give them an invaluable edge in winning future contracts.

The defence department contract awarded to the Halliburton subsidiary, Kellog, Brown & Root (KBR), to control oil fires if Saddam Hussein sets the well heads alight, will put the company in an excellent position to bid for huge contracts when Iraq's oil industry is rehabilitated.

KBR has already benefited considerably from the "war on terror". It has so far been awarded contracts worth nearly $33m to build the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for al-Qaida suspects.

Asked whether the payments to Mr Cheney represented a conflict of interest, Halliburton's spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said: "We have been working as a government contractor since the 1940s. Since this time, KBR has become the premier provider of logistics and support services to all branches of the military."

In the five years Mr Cheney was at the helm, Halliburton nearly doubled the amount of business it did with the government to $2.3bn. The company also more than doubled its political contributions to $1.2m, overwhelmingly to Republican candidates.

Mr Cheney sold most of his Halliburton shares when he left the company, but retained stock options worth about $8m. He arranged to pay any profits to charity.

The Book=>Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron

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LA Times=>Gauging Promise of Iraqi Oil

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And so ... what ELSE is new?

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Well, I for one don't think this information can be dismissed as casually as all that. After all, talking heads like bowtie boy on Crossfire regularly call such suspicions about Cheney "ridiculous" and "irresponsible to say".

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I'm no fan of Cheney, but receiving deferred compensation per legal agreement is cool, as far as I'm concerned. Cheney has no decision making responsibility with either his former employer or The Defense Department. Knowing what I do of politically motivated lawyers (which group includes some 80% of our Legislative Branch), were there true impropriety, it would be in court, not in "reports".

timber

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timberlandko wrote:

I'm no fan of Cheney, but receiving deferred compensation per legal agreement is cool, as far as I'm concerned. Cheney has no decision making responsibility with either his former employer or The Defense Department. Knowing what I do of politically motivated lawyers (which group includes some 80% of our Legislative Branch), were there true impropriety, it would be in court, not in "reports".

timber

So, I take it that you think there must be no "there" there, or the lawyers would pursue the Vice President?

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Actually, snood, that's pretty much what I think. The Dem's have plenty of lawyers in both Houses, and they have plenty of lawyer-buddies in the private sector. Just talk from the House or Senate floors about "Looking into" initiating "Official Investigation" would be sign of substance, yet no Legislative uproar exists. As desperately as the Dems are seeking substantive issues, that they have not siezed on this leads me to conjecture "This" ain't "There".

timber

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...all God's cilluns got conjecture. Mine is that there might be something stinky there indeed, but that battles with masters of dirty tricks must be carefully chosen.

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The Halliburton Company is benefiting very directly from the United States efforts to combat terrorism. And will benefit even more from a ware against Iraq and later maybe Iran, Syria, Cuba ....

From building cells for detainees at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to feeding American troops in Uzbekistan, the Pentagon is increasingly relying on a unit of Halliburton called KBR, sometimes referred to as Kellogg Brown & Root.

Although the unit has been building projects all over the world for the federal government for decades, the attacks of Sept. 11 have led to significant additional business. KBR is the exclusive logistics supplier for both the Navy and the Army, providing services like cooking, construction, power generation and fuel transportation.

The contract is described in Pentagonese as a "cost-plus-award-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity service." Translation: a contract that has no time, material or dollar limits, with profits figured as a percentage--usually 9 percent--added onto the amount spent.

In other words, the more that KBR spends, the more the company makes in profits. This is a common feature of Pentagon contracts.

Initially, the contract for the Navy is for five years and for the Army a highly unusual 10 years. It makes KBR the only private supplier of Army logistic services over the next decade.

The Pentagon did not consider any other bidders for LOGCAP, a fact that might seem a little surprising given that KBR and Halliburton were under investigation for defrauding the military on earlier contracts. To settle that case, KBR paid $2 million to the Army for work it billed but never carried out at Fort Ord, Calif.

And that's just the tip of a gigantic iceberg. In February 1997, a General Accounting Office investigation revealed that KBR was billing the Army for plywood at $85.98 per sheet that cost $14 in the United States, for a project in Hungary. KBR's estimate for the contract in 1996 was $191 million; by the next year it had risen to $461 million.

Halliburton/KBR are directly profiting from the so-called "war on terrorism," in which its former CEO is such a driving force. KBR is building and maintaining new bases in Central Asia, and, under contract with the Navy, was paid $37 million to build 816 detention cells at Guantanamo Bay for prisoners captured in Afghanistan.

Both Bush and Cheney are unquestionably guilty of corporate fraud and insider trading as defined in the "Corporate Responsibility" Act that Bush signed July 30. The fact that they still occupy plush offices rather than jail cells is due to their privileged position in class society.

But what Cheney's story shows is that the problem is not just corrupt individuals, but a thoroughly corrupt system.

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So Cheney once worked for a firm which is a world leader in its field (actually, just about without equal ... I can't think of another firm with Haliburton's expertise, resources, connections, and experience in the concerned parameters). I'm glad our government uses The Best. I would expect nothing less. As taxpayers, we should demand the best. I know my view is not accepted by lots of folks, but it is my view, and it is pragmatic.
To my mind, however, it is perfectly acceptable. Should it be PROVEN that Cheney improperly profited, or exerted undue influence on the selection of Haliburton as a contractor, I would be fully expectant of suitable prosecution. I see the flap as a manufactured issue, and one of no substance. There are many far more valid reasons to be concerned about some of our "Leaders", but pecuniary advatage-taking is highly unlikely. These guys are about power, not money.

timber

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Money is power!
Only the fact that you need several millions to even run for office

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The Bush administration has never shied away from flaunting its business credentials. But the news that Halliburton, which used to be run by Dick Cheney, is in line for a slice of a $900m (£560m) contract from the American government, now co-run by Dick Cheney, to start rebuilding Iraq raises questions that need to be answered.
That Mr Cheney left the top job at a multinational for a lessor role in a larger enterprise, America, is not the problem. The issue is whether the sensitive policy of war and peace has been bent to suit the interests of US business, especially those with close ties to the Bush administration.

If George Bush sees remaking Iraq as a possible profit-centre for American Inc, then his vice-president is ideally placed to advise him. Halliburton, under the stewardship of Mr Cheney, often dealt with governments regarded by US foreign policy and American public opinion as more foe than friend. It profited from dealings with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries and also held stakes in two companies that signed contracts to sell more than $70m in oil production equipment to Iraq in the nineties.

The use of the chaos of war to impose order on Iraq is a decision that involves weighing difficult moral, ethical and legal issues that threaten to destabilise the fragile world order. It should not become just another business opportunity.

The 25 million people of Iraq deserve better, especially considering the scope of the humanitarian assistance that will be necessary, in the event of war, to feed, house, clothe and care for refugees, the wounded and ill in Iraq, as well as those who will inevitably flee to neighbouring states. It is clear that someone, should the bombing start, will need to reconstruct Iraq, a country eking out an existence on top of the second largest oil reserves in the world. But the largest nation-building effort since the second world war should not just be restricted to American firms.

Nation-building would be better co-ordinated through the United Nations, not designed by the American government and then handed over to US firms. Democratic senator Joseph Biden pointed out this week that reconstruction would need "billions of dollars" and "tens of thousands of personnel over several years".

Victory, he told senators, would be "won away from the battlefield" and that the UN was necessary to win over hearts and minds. In an appeal to the administration, the senator hoped that "we will provide the UN with the funds necessary to do their part".

The problem is that Mr Cheney is the pointman for the president on postwar Iraq. The vice-president has been sketching out a road map for the political and economic reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq. In the long term, the thinking is that there will be an Iraqi-led government. In the short term, an American military commander will run the country, with the help of a civilian administrator.

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I find it disingenuous (sorry for the early a.m. spelling) to suggest that Cheney (or anyone else) forgets where they worked before they were elected. It only causes suspicion and distrust to allow oneself to be put in a position where one could be thought to be using one's prior connections for personal profit. You'd think politicians of all stripes would realize how bad it looks to take on postings/responsibilities which are tied to their private sector lives.

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frolic wrote:

Nation-building would be better co-ordinated through the United Nations, not designed by the American government and then handed over to US firms. Democratic senator Joseph Biden pointed out this week that reconstruction would need "billions of dollars" and "tens of thousands of personnel over several years".

Victory, he told senators, would be "won away from the battlefield" and that the UN was necessary to win over hearts and minds. In an appeal to the administration, the senator hoped that "we will provide the UN with the funds necessary to do their part".

Providing funds to the U.N. to do something that most of the world sees as being strictly a U.S./Brit responsibility? I think there are some Brit?U.S. legislators who haven't been in a china shop in a while. "You break it, you buy it."

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http://www.dubyasworld.com/cheney-bookoo-oil.jpg

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Cheney is still paid by Pentagon contractor

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