Bush Thwarted Our Attempts...

Kristen Breitweiser has become one of my heros from the 9/11 tragedy. Through her zeal of seeking truth of the events that led us to 9/11, a Commission was born. I've see her on countless interviews. In a second she can recite a report and connect the dots better than most experts in the field.

I thank Kristen and the Jersey Girls for fighting to find the truth. I'm sad they had to "fight" the administration to get us there. I am thankful their persistance will bring about needed change in our country.


"President Bush thwarted our attempts at every turn"

The widows known as the "Jersey Girls" changed history by demanding an independent 9/11 investigation. Now they want to change who's president -- though some voted for Bush four years ago.

Sept. 15, 2004 WASHINGTON -- Over the last three years, the group of 9/11 widows turned activists dubbed the "Jersey Girls" have become a fixture on the Washington political scene. Some of them are Republicans, others Democrats or independents. But they are all determined to hold official Washington accountable for the attacks that killed their husbands and nearly 3,000 others. They have held news conferences, lobbied members of Congress, pored over documents, and forced the White House to accept an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Along the way, the women have learned about coverups, obfuscation, political cowardice, deceptions and the dangers of eschewing international alliances for a go-it-alone foreign policy.

And their conclusion: For the sake of the country's future, John Kerry must replace George W. Bush.

Gathering at the National Press Club in Washington on Tuesday, the widows announced their endorsement of the Massachusetts Democrat for president, a move made "in good conscience and from our hearts," as former Bush supporter Kristen Breitweiser told the news cameras. "In the three years since 9/11, I could never have imagined I would be here today, disappointed in the person I voted for, for president," she said. Added fellow Jersey Girl Patty Casazza: "It was President Bush who thwarted our attempts at every turn."

The widows said they endorsed Kerry because three years of studying the facts has convinced them he will do a better job than Bush at protecting the nation. "This was not an easy decision to make. We agonized over this," said Monica Gabrielle of West Haven, Conn., an honorary Jersey Girl. "We have always been very careful about not being partisan. We have always attempted to uncover the truth. We have always looked for the greater good." Still, the women said they expect to be trashed as partisan hacks.

"We were joking amongst ourselves yesterday that we should come down here geared up in football pads and helmets, because we were anticipating personal attacks," Breitweiser said. "Some other 9/11 family members have supported President Bush, and I think we have always been respectful of anyone's points of view. And I hope that going forward, the debate and dialogue will be about the issues and it will be respectful and lively. But most important, respectful."

The endorsement was a sword clanging against Bush's political armor. Polls show that voters rate Bush high on his handling of 9/11 and its aftermath, and Republicans have been quick to exploit that approval with television ads and their recent convention, held in Manhattan around the theme of Bush's leadership against terrorism. Meantime, the families of 9/11 victims are split on whom to support for president, with many for Bush.

The Jersey Girls' political foil is Deena Burnett, widow of Thomas Burnett, one of the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. Burnett, who lives in Arkansas, spoke to the Republican National Convention two weeks ago, giving an emotional account of her last conversations with her husband from the plane. "The heroes of 9/11 weren't created that day," Burnett told the convention. "Their actions were the result of virtues practiced over a lifetime." Delegates wiped away tears.

Watching the convention on television, Breitweiser felt not teary-eyed, she said, but frightened. She found the speakers angry and bellicose, and she worried that the Bush administration seemed to revel in war. "I am scared [by] the mentality that my daughter, who is 5 years old, is being handed a tomorrow that will be a war for a lifetime. My husband was killed on 9/11. I do not want to lose my daughter 18 years from now when she's walking or living in a large city, and it's payback for our actions in Iraq," Breitweiser said. Later she told me in an interview that she voted for Bush in 2000 because, well, she's a Republican. "I'm not a Democrat!" she said, when I asked if her endorsement of Kerry meant that she had switched parties.

On Tuesday I was unable to reach Deena Burnett, whose name is not listed in the phone directory, for comment about the Jersey Girls' endorsement of Kerry. But a telephone interview I conducted with her two years ago was revealing for her lack of knowledge about the origins and funding sources of al-Qaida. Burnett is a lead plaintiff in a massive lawsuit against wealthy members of the Saudi royal family and Saudi establishment filed by South Carolina trial lawyer Ron Motley, who is trying to prove that the 9/11 attacks were financed out of the kingdom. Interestingly, many people who share those suspicions about the Saudi role in 9/11 also tend to question the Bush family's close ties to the House of Saud, but not Burnett. When I spoke with her for the profile, I expected to talk with her about the substance of the case. Instead, she directed me back to the lawyers, pleading ignorance of such details as which Saudi prince made which overtures to the Taliban. She clearly wasn't a document hound.

The Jersey Girls are. They have read seemingly every scrap of information about 9/11 and al-Qaida, from news articles to affidavits to footnotes in obscure government reports. And their command of the facts is what has made them so effective. On Sept. 18, 2002, when much of the public was still sympathetic to the Bush administration position that the attacks could not have been foreseen or prevented, Breitweiser gave a statement before the joint House-Senate investigation into intelligence lapses; it may have changed the course of history.

In a concise, straightforward manner, she laid out the facts far more effectively than had any senator or representative on the panel. She asked how, for example, the CIA could fail to locate hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, who had entered the United States despite being on a terrorist watch list, when one was listed in the San Diego phone book and both roomed with an undercover FBI informant. The day after her presentation, the White House -- once firmly against an independent commission -- reversed itself and endorsed the idea. And it was the 9/11 commission that would later find no operational ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, one of the key reasons Bush gave for invading Iraq.

On Tuesday, the widows cited the invasion of Iraq as one of their top reasons for supporting Kerry. "Unfortunately, before the work in Afghanistan was complete ... this administration moved our most precious resources, America's sons and daughters, into Iraq, without the support of our allies. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and that is what we learned from the 9/11 commission's final report," said Lorie Van Auken of East Brunswick, N.J. "Sept. 11 was an enormous intelligence failure, and yet nothing was done to fix our intelligence after 9/11, and that same intelligence apparatus took us into Iraq. So it's doubly frustrating to learn that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11." Van Auken said she is also worried that with military forces stretched thin, her 17-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter could be called up in a draft.

The women said they approached Kerry about the endorsement, not the other way around. Their requests to meet with Bush were rejected. Breitweiser and Gabrielle plan to campaign actively. In Breitweiser's case, it will be difficult, because she hasn't traveled in an airplane since her husband died. "I have serious anxiety about getting on a plane," she said. "But that's how committed I feel."

George W. Bush's Missing Year

Sept. 2, 2004 | NEW YORK -- Before there was Karl Rove, Lee Atwater or even James Baker, the Bush family's political guru was a gregarious newspaper owner and campaign consultant from Midland, Texas, named Jimmy Allison. In the spring of 1972, George H.W. Bush phoned his friend and asked a favor: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W. Bush?

"The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."

Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton "Red" Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. "I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him," Linda Allison said.

After more than three decades of silence, Allison spoke with Salon over several days before and during the Republican National Convention this week -- motivated, as she acknowledged, by a complex mixture of emotions. They include pride in her late husband's accomplishments, a desire to see him remembered, and concern about the apparent double standard in Bush surrogates attacking John Kerry's Vietnam War record while ignoring the president's irresponsible conduct during the war. She also admits to bewilderment and hurt over the rupture her husband experienced in his friendship with George and Barbara Bush. To this day, Allison is unsure what caused the break, though she suspects it had something to do with her husband's opposition to the elder Bush becoming chairman of the Republican National Committee under President Nixon.

"Something happened that I don't know about. But I do know that Jimmy didn't expect it, and it broke his heart," she said, describing a ruthless side to the genial Bush clan of which few outsiders are aware.

Personal history aside, Allison's recollections of the young George Bush in Alabama in 1972 are relevant as a contrast to the medals for valor and bravery that Kerry won in Vietnam in the same era. An apparent front group for the Bush campaign, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has attacked Kerry in television ads as a liar and traitor to veterans for later opposing a war that cost 58,000 American lives. Bush, who has resisted calls from former Vietnam War POW John McCain, R-Ariz., to repudiate the Swift Boat ads, has said he served honorably in the National Guard.

Allison's account corroborates a Washington Post investigation in February that found no credible witnesses to the service in the Alabama National Guard that Bush maintains he performed, despite a lack of documentary evidence. Asked if she'd ever seen Bush in a uniform, Allison said: "Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way." Allison also confirmed previously published accounts that Bush often showed up in the Blount campaign offices around noon, boasting about how much alcohol he had consumed the night before. (Bush has admitted that he was a heavy drinker in those years, but he has refused to say whether he also used drugs).

"After about a month I asked Jimmy what was Georgie's job, because I couldn't figure it out. I never saw him do anything. He told me it basically consisted of him contacting people who were impressed by his name and asking for contributions and support," Allison said.

C. Murphy Archibald, a nephew of Red Blount by marriage and a Vietnam veteran who volunteered on the campaign from September 1972 until election night, corroborated Allison's recollections, though he doesn't recall that the Bush name carried much cachet in Alabama at the time. "I say that because the scuttlebutt on the campaign was that Allison was very sharp and might actually be able to pull off this difficult race" against the incumbent Democrat, Sen. John Sparkman, Archibald said. "But then no one understood why he brought this young guy from Texas along. It was like, 'Who was this guy who comes in late and leaves early? And why would Jimmy Allison, who was so impressive, bring him on?'"

Bush, who had a paid slot as Allison's deputy in a campaign staffed largely by volunteers, sat in a little office next to Allison's, said Archibald, a workers compensation lawyer in Charlotte, N.C. Indeed, when Bush was actually there, he did make phone calls to county chairmen. But he neglected his other duty: the mundane but important task of mailing out campaign materials to the county campaign chairs. Archibald took up the slack, at Allison's request. "Jimmy didn't say anything about George. He just said, 'These materials are not getting out. It's causing the candidate problems. Will you take it over?'"

While Kerry earned a Silver Star and a Bronze Star after saving a crewmate's life under fire on the Mekong River in Vietnam, by contrast, the Georgie that Allison knew was a young man whose parents did not allow him to live with the consequences of his own mistakes. His powerful father -- whom the son seemed to both idolize and resent -- was a lifeline for Bush out of predicaments. After Bush graduated from Yale in 1968, his slot in the Texas Air National Guard allowed him to avoid active duty service in Vietnam. The former speaker of the Texas state House, Democrat Ben Barnes, now admits he pulled strings to get Bush his coveted guard slot, and says he's "ashamed" of the deed. "60 Minutes" will air an interview with Barnes next Wednesday, but George H.W. Bush denounced Barnes' claims in an interview aired on CBS. "They keep saying that and it's a lie, a total lie. Nobody's come up with any evidence, and yet it's repeated all the time," the former president said, in what could just as well describe the playbook for the Swift Boat Veterans ads.

Yet, after receiving unusual permission to transfer to the Alabama Guard from Texas, Bush has produced no evidence he showed up for service for anything other than a dental exam. Later, Bush would trade on his father's connections to enter the oil business, and when his ventures failed, trade on more connections to find investors to bail him out. Linda Allison's story fills in the details about a missing chapter in the story of how George Bush Sr.'s friends helped his wastrel son. The Bush campaign, decamped to New York for the convention, did not return a phone call by late Wednesday.

A graceful blonde with a Texas drawl, Linda Allison now lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in an apartment decorated in the dusky tones of Tuscany with a magnificent view of the high-rises framing Central Park. I visited her there Monday on the opening night of the Republican National Convention as she related publicly for the first time her long and ultimately painful history with the Bush family. On the table between us were two photographs of her late husband -- an elfin man with curly hair, shown in animated conversation. From her drawers she pulled out old letters and notes from Barbara Bush, George H.W. Bush and even one from George W. Bush, written to Jimmy in 1978 as he was dying of cancer.

Jimmy Allison's family owned the Midland Reporter-Telegram and other small-town newspapers, and they were part of the establishment in the West Texas oil town where Bush senior made his fortune and Bush junior grew up. Still, Allison has been almost completely forgotten in the semi-official stories of the Bush dynasty's rise; his role as political fixer and family friend has been airbrushed out of Barbara Bush's autobiography and other accounts. But he was one of the originators of what evolved into the GOP's "Southern strategy," helping George H.W. Bush win election to Congress in 1966 at a time when Republicans in Texas were virtually unheard of.

The Blount Senate campaign he ran against the Democrat, Sparkman, in 1972 was notable for a dirty racial trick: The Blount side edited a transcript of a radio interview Sparkman had given to make it appear he supported busing, a poison position at that time in the South. When Sparkman found an unedited script and exposed the trick, the Blount campaign was finished. But it was an early introduction for Bush to the kinds of tricks that later Republican strategists associated with the Bush political machine, from Lee Atwater to Karl Rove, would use against Democrats, often to victorious effect.

After Bush won a House seat in 1966, Allison followed his patron to Washington as the top staffer in his congressional office and served as deputy director of the Republican National Committee in 1969 and 1970 under President Nixon. It was Allison who advised George W. Bush to return to Midland after Harvard Business School to seek his business fortune in the booming oil industry, advice that Bush recalled fondly in a 2001 speech in Midland. When Allison died at age 46, after an agonizing battle with lymphoma, both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush served as pallbearers.

"Aide, confidant, campaign manager, source of joke material, alter ego -- Allison and Bush were bonded by an uncommon loyalty," former Reagan White House deputy press secretary Peter Roussel, who got his start in politics when Allison invited him to work for Bush's 1968 congressional reelection campaign, wrote in a 1988 newspaper column dedicated to Allison.

Linda, too, had a long, though not as close, relationship with the Bushes. She remembers watching Bush in 1964 at a campaign appearance at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, when she was 32 years old and he was running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. "He was so appealing to me. He said all the things that I believed in, and he wasn't like all the other Republicans running in Texas at that time, who were real right-wingers. He had a bigger vision of what the Republican Party could be. I volunteered for his campaign that day, and that's how I ended up being his Dallas County headquarters chairman." Over the years, Linda kept volunteering with the local Republican Party. "And they gave me bigger and bigger things to do. They appreciated me. And I felt like I belonged to something," she said.

But it was also this sense of being connected to a larger, more powerful force that seduced the Allisons -- a trap that many aides and friends of important politicians fall into. The dynamic allowed the Bushes -- Barbara especially, Allison said -- to manipulate the friends and supporters they needed to further their ambitions, a lesson she says could not have been lost on the young George. "They had a way of anointing you, then pushing you out," she said. "It was like a mind game. It was very subtle, very hard to describe. But when you were out, you wanted desperately to be let back in." It was how she and Jimmy felt when, in 1973, they experienced a strange and, to Allison, never fully explained rupture with the Bushes, which took place against the backdrop of boorish behavior by their son that persisted during the time he was nominally under the Allisons' care.

The break happened not long after a boozy election-night wake for Blount, who lost his Senate bid to the incumbent Democrat, John Sparkman. Leaving the election-night "celebration," Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he'd yelled obscenities at police officers that night. Bush left a house he'd rented in Montgomery trashed -- the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. "He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people's possessions," Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house, told the newspaper, adding that a bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid. And a month later, in December, during a visit to his parents' home in Washington, Bush drunkenly challenged his father to go "mano a mano," as has often been reported.

Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. "He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn't get past," Allison recalled. "He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too."

Jimmy, meanwhile, had larger issues on his mind. According to Linda, he was hoping to use the visit in Florida to convince Bush to turn down the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee because he didn't trust Nixon or his palace guard. "He had been so appalled at the Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Colson group, and he thought they'd sacrifice George. He just wanted to warn him, as a friend," Allison told me.

Apparently, Jimmy Allison's advice was not appreciated. In Hobe Sound, Bush senior kept trying to avoid talking with Jimmy about the RNC, Allison said. Then later, as the Allisons took their leave, Barbara "thanked" them for their Christmas present with unexpected cruelty. "She said, 'I'm so sorry, but we've been so busy this year that we didn't have time to do anything for our political acquaintances.' I swear to God, I'll never forget those two words as long as I live. For her to say that was absolutely appalling. Mind you, Jimmy was an old, old friend. And I had stayed as a houseguest with the Bushes, been invited in my pajamas into their bedroom to read the papers and drink coffee while Bar rode her exercise bicycle.

"Big George was just stricken by this," Allison continued. "There was a wet bar in the hall on the way to the front door. He grabbed this moldy bottle of Mai Tai that he said had been given to him by the president of China, and he said we just had to have it. Then he plucked this ostrich egg in a beaded bag from a shelf that he said had been given to him by the ambassador to the U.N. from Nigeria or someplace, and gave it to us. Can you imagine how embarrassing that was?"

The Allisons found they were no longer being invited to the Sunday cookouts the Bushes held to chew over the week's political events. And though Jimmy had once been deputy chairman of the RNC, when Bush chaired the committee, he "couldn't even get invited to a cocktail party there," Allison said. The freeze-out was subtle and surgical. "It took us some time to realize we'd been lopped off," she said. At home, the Allisons once decided to try that dusty bottle of Mai Tai from China that Bush had thrust into their hands in Hobe Sound. They were unable to drink the liquor. "It was so foul. The smell that came out of that thing! We just looked at each other," Allison said.

By 1978, Jimmy was dying. Whether out of guilt, genuine affection for old times or a desire to maintain appearances with a revered member of the Midland establishment, the Bushes responded with warmth. Jimmy's heart soared, Allison said.

George W. Bush, then running unsuccessfully for Congress, wrote his old mentor a letter. "Every person I see in Midland asks about you and sends their regards," Bush wrote. "Like a younger brother, I have treasured your advice, your guidance and most importantly your never selfish friendship." And shortly before he died, George H.W. Bush -– by then an executive at a bank in Houston after having served as head of the Central Intelligence Agency -– invited Jimmy back to his home. Elated, Jimmy persuaded the doctors to discharge him for the visit, Linda said. But Linda, who was not consulted, was incensed. Though she drove him to the Bushes, she refused to go in. "I was so furious. I had no way to take care of him. He was so weak, and they had taken him off the morphine, and he was in great pain," she said.

In a letter to the editor of Allison's newspaper in Midland after his death, Bush recalled that day: "He swam and relaxed. He was very weak but the warm water soothed him. He gave us hope. 'I'm going to make it,' he said."

But soon after Linda picked him up, Jimmy crashed. "He was in so much pain. It was unreal." At the emergency room, he waited 10 hours for medical attention. "I begged them to do something. I begged," she said, wiping tears from her eyes. "He was in so much pain. I was so angry." Jimmy died about a week later.

More than a quarter century later, George W. Bush is running for reelection as a "war" president. At the Republican Convention, delegates pass out Purple Heart stickers mocking Kerry's Vietnam wounds as "a self-inflicted scratch," and George H.W. Bush, speaking on CNN, lauds the Swift Boat Veterans' claims against Kerry as "rather compelling." Karl Rove tells the Associated Press that Kerry's opposition to a war that Bush avoided had served to "tarnish the records and service of people who were defending our country and fighting communism." Barbara Bush tells USA Today: "I die over every untruth that I hear about George -- I mean, every one."

Linda Allison watches it all from her New York apartment. About George W. Bush's disputed sojourn in Alabama, she asks simply: "Can we all be lying?"

Salon.Com

Your Children Die, Their Profits Sky!

Are you really paying any attention America? Seems to me there are quite a few investigations surrounding Halliburton these days... well always. Let's review:

* The U.S. Department of Defense is investigating Halliburton's billing system, which it calls "inadequate." Pentagon accountants said they are uncertain as to why Halliburton's KBR unit billed the Pentagon $1.8 billion, which represent 43 percent of the $4.18 billion the company has so far billed the Pentagon for logistics work in the Middle East.


* Congressional auditors issued a report that criticized Halliburton for a variety of abuses associated with its troop support and military logistics (LOGCAP) contract. It also criticized the Pentagon for “a pattern of contractor management problems,” including ineffective planning, a poor materials requisition system and inadequate supervision of subcontractors.


* The Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) completed a comprehensive review of Halliburton's system for billing the government for meals served to the troops in the Middle East. The DCAA said Halliburton billed the government for 36 percent more meals than was actually served to the troops while an internal KBR report said it had overcharged by 19 percent. In May 2004, the DCAA recommended that the Pentagon refuse to pay Halliburton for the overcharges.


* An investigation by the inspector general of the now-disbanded U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) found that Halliburton lost $18.6 million worth of government property in Iraq because of mismanagement. About a third of the government items under Halliburton management in Iraq, including trucks, computers and office furniture have disappeared.


* The Army awarded Halliburton a no-bid contract in March 2003 despite a secret Pentagon report which found the company had "significant deficiencies" that could lead to defrauding the government. The Pentagon's report was given to Hearst News Service under the Freedom of Information Act over Halliburton's objections.


* The Department of Defense repeatedly warned Halliburton's subsidiary, KBR, that its food and the kitchens where it is prepared are "dirty," NBC News reported. A Pentagon report found that KBR's promises to clean up its food and kitchens "have not been followed through."


* The Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice issued a subpoena to a former employee of Halliburton's KBR unit to determine whether the company criminally overcharged for gasoline imported into Iraq. KBR, along with its Kuwaiti subcontractor Altanmia Commercial Marketing Co., allegedly overcharged the government by $61 million, but Democrats in Congress say the overcharges were closer to $167 million. KBR charged the government $2.64 per gallon of gasoline while competitors were importing gasoline for less than half that price.


* The Kuwaiti government has delayed completion of a report on its investigation of the $61 million gasoline overcharge by KBR and its subcontractor, Altanmia. The U.S. embassy in Kuwait publicly stated it will not cooperate with the Kuwaiti government's investigation. Kuwait said its investigation is delayed because the U.S. Army refuses to testify.


* The inspector general for the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) found that the United States failed to adequately control over $9 billion in international aid, including Halliburton's hotel costs in Kuwait. Halliburton charged the government $2.85 million for hotel costs, even though cheaper housing arrangements were available. For example, one CPA official lived at the Kuwaiti Hilton for almost $700 a night. The inspector general also criticized Halliburton for charging $191,000 a year for laundry services.


* The auditing arm of Congress issued a report confirming that the Pentagon had violated procurement law by issuing a "task order" to Halliburton to develop plans for extinguishing oil well fires in Iraq. The report, issued by the General Accounting Office (GAO), said the task order violated the law because it was issued under Halliburton's LOGCAP contract, which is not authorized to handle oil fires. LOGCAP is a logistics contract that requires Halliburton to feed the troops, deliver supplies in a war zone and construct military buildings. But there is no authority under LOGCAP to deal with oil well fires. The GAO said Bush administration officials “overstepped the latitude provided by competition laws” when they misused the LOGCAP contract to assign the planning job to Halliburton.


* The Pentagon admitted that a $7 billion no-bid contract to extinguish oil fires in Iraq was awarded to Halliburton after a "political appointee" from the Bush administration recommended the company for the job. Government policy forbids politicians or their appointees from taking a role in awarding contracts to private corporations. But Vice President Cheney ignored this basic principle when his political appointees were directly involved in awarding a $7 billion contract to Halliburton to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure.


* Halliburton settled an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which accused the firm of providing "materially misleading" information to investors during the period when Vice President Dick Cheney was the chief executive officer. The SEC said it settled the case after Halliburton agreed to pay a $7.5 million fine and to stop "committing or causing future securities law violations."


* Four former employees of Halliburton filed a class action lawsuit against their former employer, alleging the company engaged in "systemic" accounting fraud from 1998 to 2001. The former employees say Halliburton overbilled for services, overstated the amounts it was owed by customers and understated amounts it owed to vendors. A former employee in the accounting department said supervisors had told her to do "whatever it took" to make profit statements appear more profitable than was actually the case.


* The International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), a watchdog established by the United Nations, is investigating the management of Iraqi finances by the now-disbanded U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The IAMB complained that the CPA refuses to release documents on contracts awarded to private firms, including Halliburton. The Bush administration refused numerous IAMB requests for U.S. government reports about the payment of approximately $1.5 billion in Iraqi funds to Halliburton, which is the single largest private recipient of Iraqi oil proceeds.


* Nigeria bribery probe: The U.S. Department of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation into an alleged $180 million bribe paid by Halliburton and three other companies to the government of Nigeria. The alleged bribe was paid in exchange for awarding a contract to the companies to build a $4 billion natural gas plant in Nigeria's southern delta region. The bribes were paid during the time when Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened its own formal investigation on June 11, 2004.


* Nigeria bribery probe: The French government is conducting an investigation of the same Nigeria bribery allegations as the U.S. Justice Department. France is also investigating a former Halliburton executive for his role in the scheme. Investigators said $5 million of the bribes intended for Nigeria was deposited into the Swiss bank account of former KBR chairman, Jack Stanley, who retired from the company on December 31, 2003.


* The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating a second bribery case involving Nigeria. Halliburton admitted that its employees paid a $2.4 million bribe to a government official of Nigeria for the purpose of receiving favorable tax treatment.


* The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is investigating the legality of Halliburton's business dealings in Iran, a country under a U.S. trade embargo. Halliburton sells goods and services to Iranian companies through its Cayman Islands subsidiary. The OFAC referred the case to the Department of Justice, which is conducting its own criminal investigation.

Halliburton Watch.Org

The Halliburton Flip Flops of Dick Cheney

CHENEY THE FLIP FLOP KING

Cheney recently reminded America that, “These are not times for leaders who shift with the political winds, saying one thing one day and another, the next.”

FLIP....

"Government spends a lot of money, but it doesn't build factories .... The key to more jobs is not more government, but free enterprise" -- Dick Cheney

FLOP....

Halliburton took $7.8 billion in U.S. taxpayer assistance since 1992 to grow its company -- and that doesn't include money from the Pentagon.

FLIP....

“And one of the best ways to encourage stock ownership is to make sure that pension plans give workers better information, and treat them fairly.” -- Dick Cheney

FLOP....

While CEO of Halliburton, Dick Cheney took advantage of a legal loophole that robbed $25 million from the pensions of Halliburton's workers. Nine months later the company gave Cheney a $20 million pension. Experts call it "scandalous."

FLIP....

"And since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years." -- Dick Cheney

FLOP....

As vice president, Cheney continues to receive a salary of over $150,000 each year from Halliburton while maintaining 433,333 shares of unexercised stock options in the company.

FLIP....

"We are going after the terrorists wherever they plot and plan." -- Dick Cheney

FLOP....

"We'd be better off if we, in fact, backed off those sanctions [on Iran]," said Cheney when he was CEO for Halliburton. President Bush says Iran sponsors terrorism. Halliburton sales to Iran totalled $63 million in 2003.

FLIP....

"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." -- Dick Cheney

FLOP....

Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was briefed in October 2002 about a proposal to give contract work to Halliburton's KBR unit for extinguishing oil well fires in Iraq. Moreover, an internal Pentagon e-mail proves that a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded to Halliburton on March 8, 2003 was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. Pentagon officials admitted that Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith discussed the March 2003 Halliburton contract in advance with Cheney's office.

FLIP....

“I can tell you that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it,” Cheney said in answer to questions about his exorbitant personal wealth earned from Halliburton.

FLOP....

The value of Halliburton's government contracts increased by nearly 100 percent, from $1.2 billion to $2.3 billion, during Cheney's tenure as CEO. Guaranteed and direct loans from government lenders increased over one thousand percent, from $100 million to $1.5 billion.

FLIP....

"We [Halliburton] have not done any business in Iraq since U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1990, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that." -- Dick Cheney

FLOP....

Halliburton sold more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq from the first half of 1997 through the summer of 2000 -- while Cheney was chairman and CEO of the company.

FLIP....

"The cost of one attack on 9/11 was far greater than what we’re spending in Iraq." -- Dick Cheney

FLOP

The City of New York said the 9/11 attacks will cost the city between $83 billion to $95 billion. As of May 2004, the funds appropriated and requested for Iraq totalled $152 billion and are likely to approach $200 billion by the end of fiscal 2005.


Halliburton Watch.org

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