HALLIBURTON, THE FILE
updated Sept 2, 2002
Cheney was Chairman and CEO of Halliburton October 1,1995-August 16, 2000. Cheney's tenure at Halliburton was a disaster. He made the decision for Halliburton to acquire Dresser Industries (for $8 billion dollars), thereby acquiring Dresser's asbestos liability as well. Cheney had miscalculated the financial devastation of acquiring these claims and the massive losses were off-set on paper by fraudulent accounting procedures (see area #1), and not fully revealed until Cheney had sold his stock in Aug. 2002 (see area #5).
This file contains the following sections, each section divided by double asterisked-lines (making it easy to scroll to the desired section):
1.
Halliburton's audits which overstated revenues. I.e., creative bookkeeping (Potentially illegal.)
2. Halliburton selling Oil Equipment which can be used for development of nuclear weapons to Libya and Iraq during U.S. sanctions. (Illegal.)
3. Halliburton selling Oil Equipment to Libya and Iraq through subsidiaries after sanctions and profiting from Iranian Oil.. (Immoral, possibly illegal.)
4. Cheney becoming CEO of a company which he had rewarded as Secretary of Defense and granting large contracts to Halliburton after becoming Vice President. I.e., the revolving door of power and money and power and. . . . (Conflicts of interest. Unethical.)
5. Cheney making millions from sale of Halliburton stock prior to stock losing 75% in value (due to decisions Cheney made). Although Cheney HAD to sell the stock when he did (join W. on the ticket), the bad financial information was not made public until after he sold his stock. (Unethical, potentially illegal.)
6. Halliburton overbilled government. (Illegal.)
7. Halliburton's contributions to co-sponsors of a House and Senate bill, labeled "highly controversial" by many, to limit asbestos liability. (Unethical.)
8. Halliburton's Human Foreign Human Rights Abuses (unethical, in some cases illegal)
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On July 24, 2002, the House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee summarize the allegations in the second pdf file below (the first is the cover letter).
.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/bushcorpltr72402.pdf
www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/bushcorpltrattach72402.pdf
A handy primer by the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/articles/Halliburtonprimer.htm
–David Olive of the Toronto Star maps out the territory clearly and succinctly in this July 26, 2002, item:
Type1&c=Article&cid=1026143695396&call_page=TS_Business&call_pageid=968350072197&call
_pagepath=Business/News&col=969048863851
(You'll have to patch address back together to
receive.
Or if you prefer your background as a Q&A, try AP's
www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-wh/2002/jul/17/071700088.htm
EarthRights International look at Halliburton, primarily as a global corporate citizen, but also as a corporation that benefitted from the corporate welfare policies of the Republicans:
www.earthrights.org/halliburton/hallintro.htm
Halliburton for dummies (but misses many of the crucial issues listed below):
www1.caller.com/ccct/politics/article/0,1641,CCCT_813_1271515,00.htm
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(I.e., accounting fraud.)
The contemporary SEC probe is investigating Halliburton's listing of cost overruns as income (creative bookkeeping in some ways similar to Enron's), accounting for potential over reporting of $100 million in 1998 when Cheney was CEO). Arthur Andersen was auditor.
The House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee list who claim Cheney knew of the new (fraudulent) accounting procedures:
www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/bushcorpltrattach72402.pdf
<snip
The current CEO of Halliburton, David Lesae, has indicated that the Vice-President was well aware of those accounting practices. In addition, a 2000 memo from Terry Hatchett, the Arthur Anderson partner who managed the Halliburton account, indicates that he worked closely with the Vice-President.
<snip>
The New York Times story summarizes the story well (beyond the "snipped" section, the story quotes Halliburton's financial officer claiming that Cheney was probably not aware of the "new"–i.e.,cooked–accounting procedures):
www.nytimes.com/2002/05/22/business/22HALL.htm
reprinted here for those not registered:
www.iht.com/articles/58654.htm
<snip>
During Vice President Dick Cheney's term as Halliburton Corp.'s chief executive, the company altered its accounting policies so it could report as revenue more than $100 million in disputed costs on big construction projects, public filings by the company show. Halliburton, an energy industry services company, did not disclose the change to investors for more than a year.
At the time of the change - approved by Arthur Andersen LLP, the company's auditor at the time - Halliburton was incurring big losses on some of its long-term contracts, according to the filings. Its stock had slumped because of a slump in the oil industry. Two executives of Dresser Industries Inc., which merged with Halliburton in 1998, said they concluded after the merger that Halliburton had instituted aggressive accounting practices to obscure its losses. Much of Halliburton's business comes from big construction projects, such as natural gas processing plants, that sometimes run over budget. With the accounting change, Halliburton began to book revenue on the assumption that its customers would pay at least part of the cost overruns, although they remained in dispute.
<snip>
But _did_ Cheney know of the accounting practices during his watch? Newsweek reports that he did:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/780130.asp?cp1=1#BODY
(Warning: this address keeps crashing my Netscape.)
<snip>
But in his first extensive interview on Cheney's tenure, Halliburton CEO David Lesar defended the firm's bookkeeping and said Cheney was aware that the firm was counting projected cost-overrun payments as revenue. "Thevice president was aware of who owed us money, and he helped us collect it," Lesar told NEWSWEEK.
<snip>
As does MSNBC, which also places the figure of over-reported income to be over $500 million dollars for four years:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/783040.asp?0si#BODY
<snip>
Halliburton said the debts, caused by cost overruns on. construction projects, were counted as revenue when "collection is. deemed to be probable." A company spokeswoman said Cheney. was aware Halliburton was using the new method, which was not disclosed to regulators and investors for more than a year after it was first used.
Lawsuits by investors say the accounting method improperly boosted revenue by $534 million over the past four years — which the company said is only a small part of its revenue.
<snip>
And even the Washington Times is reporting the matter as "serious":
www.washingtontimes.com/business/20020716-92569704.htm
<snip>
"This is a serious" legal matter hanging over the White House, the former SEC prosecutor said. If the charges are borne out by the SEC's investigation, they could result in civil fines and penalties for the oil company and the vice president or even an indictment on fraud charges by the Justice Department.
<snip>
DU's Oaf Of Office provided this snippet from and AP story (does someone have the link?):
<snip>
"Accountants we interviewed told us that the Times' accounting which said CPAs said that the accounting change was "stretching accounting rules" was an enormous understatement. In fact, two of three told us that reporting disputed revenues as profits is "a felony" -- plain and simple. Otherwise, corporations could simply bill customers millions, even billions of dollars and simply report them as revenue even tough knowing these funds would never be collected.
<snip>
The Judicial Watch suit covered by AP, claims a total of $445 million as over reported due to accounting fraud from 1999-2001, a portion of which time Cheney was Chairman and CEO..
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48950-2002Jul10.htm
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(Illegal.)
from the Washington Post summary:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/articles/Halliburtonprimer.htm
<snip>
Halliburton came under fire in the early `90s for supplying Libya and Iraq with oil drillling equipment which could be used to detonate nuclear weapons. Halliburton Logging Services, a former subsidiary, was charged with shipping six pulse neutron generators through Italy to Libya. In 1995, the company pled guilty to criminal charges that it violated the U.S. ban on exports to Libya. Halliburton was fined $1.2 million and will pay $2.61 million in civil penalties.
<snip>
It's important to remember that Cheney was not Chairmand and CEO of Halliburton until 1995, but _in_ that dual role Cheney struck at US sanctions against rogue nations. In a 1988 speech he claimed such sanctions as those affecting Libya and Iraq "are nearly always motivated by domestic political pressure, the need for Congress to appeal to some domestic constituency."
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(The first legal, but ethical? The second, possibly illegal.)
Nice brief summary on EarthRights International site:
http://www.earthrights.org/halliburton/hallintro.htm
<snip>
Iran: Dick Cheney has lobbied against the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. Even with the Act in place, Halliburton has continued to operate in Iran. It settled with the Department of Commerce over allegations relating to Iran for $15,000, without admitting wrongdoing.
Iraq: Dick Cheney cites multilateral sanctions against Iraq as an example of sanctions he supports. Yet since the war, Halliburton-related companies helped to reconstruct Iraq's oil industry.
Libya: Before Cheney's arrival, Halliburton was deeply involved in Libya, earning $44.7 million there in 1993. After sanctions on Libya were imposed, earnings dropped to $12.4 million in 1994. Halliburton continued doing business in Libya throughout Cheney's tenure. One U.S. Congressman accused the company "of undermining American foreign policy to the full extent allowed by law."
<snip>
Carola Hoyos, "A Discrete Way of Doing Business with Iraq," for the Financial Times, Nov. 3, 2000 (you have to subscribe–at FT.com?–to
read entire story but much, if not all, was posted at the link provided below)
www.smirkingchimp.com/viewtopic.php?topic=5678&forum=13
<snip>
Millions of dollars of US oil business with Iraq are being channelled discreetly through European and other companies, in a practice that has highlighted the double standards now dominating relations between Baghdad and Washington after a decade of crippling sanctions.
Though legal, leading US oil service companies such as Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Flowserve, Fisher-Rosemount and others, have used subsidiaries and joint venture companies for this lucrative business, so as to avoid straining relations with Washington and jeopardising their ties with President Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad. By submitting their contracts to the UN via mainly French subsidiaries, many of which do little more than lend their name to the transaction, the companies are treated as European, rather than US or Japanese, applicants.
. . .
Halliburton, the largest US oil services company, is among a significant number of US companies that have sold oil industry equipment to Iraq since the UN relaxed sanctions two years ago. From 1995 until August this year Halliburton's chief executive officer was Dick Cheney, US secretary of defence during the Gulf war and now Republican vice-presidential running mate of George W.Bush.
From September 1998 until it sold its stake last February, Halliburton owned 51 per cent of Dresser-Rand. It also owned 49 per cent of Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, until its sale in December 1999. During the time of the joint ventures, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump submitted more than $23.8m worth of contracts for the sale of oil industry parts and equipment to Iraq. Their combined total amounted to more than any other US company; the vast majority was approved by the sanctions committee.
<snip>
In a June 23, 2001 Washington Post story, Colum Lynch reports that Cheney probably knew about the Iraq deals and that he mislead the public (and voters) as to the extent of Halliburton's dealings with Iraq:
http://gwbush.com/spots/postpage.htm
or
http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/02.03E.Hallib.Iraq.htm
<snip>
According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company.
Two former senior executives of the Halliburton subsidiaries say that, as far as they , there was no policy against doing business with Iraq. One of the executives also says that although he never spoke directly to Cheney about the Iraqi contracts, he is certain Cheney knew about them.
<snip>
Dave Zweifel, for Madison Capitol Times, reports that the Financial Times placed the figure at $23.8 million:
commondreams.org/views02/0605-02.htm
<snip>
"Of course, U.S. firms aren't generally supposed to do business with Saddam Hussein," he (Lee Martin of SF Guardian) continued. "But thanks to legal loopholes large enough to steer an oil through, Halliburton profited big-time from deals with the Iraqi dictatorship. Conducted discreetly through several subsidiaries in Europe, the transactions helped Saddam Hussein retain his grip on power."
He went on to explain that Halliburton was among more than a dozen American firms that supplied Iraq's petroleum industry with spare parts and helped retool its oil rigs after the Gulf War and after U.N. sanctions were eased in 1998.
The Financial Times of London has estimated that between September of 1998 and the winter of 1999-2000, Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, oversaw $23.8 million of business contracts for the sale of oil-industry equipment and services to Iraq through two of its subsidiaries, Dresser Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump.
<snip>
The NewsMax story "covers" the Post story but adds Cheney's public obfuscation on the issue:
www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/6/24/80648.shtml
<snip>
In a July 30, 2000, interview on ABC-TV's "This Week," Cheney denied that Halliburton or its subsidiaries traded with Baghdad. Three weeks later, on the same program, he modified his response after being informed that a Halliburton spokesman had said that Dresser Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump traded with Iraq.
Cheney said he did not know the subsidiaries were doing business with Iraqi regime when Halliburton purchased Dresser Industries in September 1998.
The firms traded with Iraq for more than a year under Cheney, however. They signed nearly $30 million in contracts before he sold Halliburton's 49 percent stake in Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. in December 1999 and its 51 percent interest in Dresser Rand to Ingersoll- Rand in February 2000, the Post quoted U.N. records as saying.
<snip>
Halliburton was drilling in cooperation with Iran as well!:
www.thedailyenron.com/documents/20020711082816-15680.asp
<snip>
According to the documents released by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, since 1998 no fewer than 86 US companies have violated the Trading With The Enemy Act, a US law that bars companies from doing business with declared enemy nations Iran, Iraq, Cuba, and North Korea. The companies were fined a combined total of $5.8 million.
Conspicuous by its absence was any mention in the Treasury documents of Halliburton Co., the Dallas-based oil-services company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney. Halliburton opened an office in Tehran in 2000, while Cheney was chief executive officer.
As has been the case with other potentially embarrassing public documents, the Treasury Department settlements were released only after a fight. The documents were released as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act filed by Public Citizen and the Corporate Crime Reporter, a newsletter.
<snip>
The Wall Street Journal and others have reported on Halliburton's illegal oil dealings in Iran Here's Tamara Baker for American Politics Journal summarizing a story in Smart Money and adding her own researsh and analysis:
www.americanpolitics.com/20010226Cheney.htm
<snip>
Halliburton Co., the U.S. oil-services giant until recently headed by Vice President Richard Cheney, has opened an office in Tehran and operated in Iran in possible violation of U.S. sanctions, Thursday's (July 18, 2002) Wall Street Journal reported.
Since 1995, U.S. laws have banned most American commerce with Iran. Halliburton Products and Services Ltd. works behind an unmarked door on the ninth floor of a new north Tehran tower block. A brochure declares that the company was registered in 1975 in the Cayman Islands, is based in the Persian Gulf sheikdom of Dubai and is "non-American." But, like the sign over the receptionist's head, the brochure bears the Dallas company's name and red emblem, and offers services from Halliburton units around the world.
. . .
... a U.S. official said a Halliburton (HAL) office in Tehran would violate at least the spirit of American law. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control declined to comment on a specific company, referring inquiries to a Web site summary of Iran sanctions that bans almost all U.S. trade and investment with Iran, specifically in oil services. The Web site adds: "No U.S. person may approve or facilitate the entry into or performance of transactions or contracts with Iran by a foreign subsidiary of a U.S. firm that the U.S. person is precluded from performing directly. Similarly, no U.S. person may facilitate such transactions by unaffiliated foreign persons."
Got that? The law was written so that certain attempts to foil it, such as the transparent attempts by companies like Halliburton to create fake foreign "shell" (or "Potemkin") companies for that very purpose, would be thwarted.
Violation of the order can result in fines of as much as $500,000 for companies and up to 10 years in jail for individuals.
And guess what?
The Halliburton brochure in Tehran says the company has performed oil-drilling services on two offshore drilling contracts in the Iranian sector of the Persian Gulf. One is the Sirri field, being developed by France's TotalFinaElf SA, and the other is Phase 1 of the South Pars field. . . .
<snip>
Ms. Baker goes on to prove, to her satisfaction, that actual cooperative production went on during Cheney's watch–and the negotiations for the oil field access was certainly begun under Cheney.
Was all this going on without Cheney's knowledge or approval? Interestingly, there was a conference in May 1996 in Dallas titled "Iran in Transition." Guess whose name you'll find on the list of attendees?
www.iranian.com/July96/Opinion/Dallas/Dallas1.htm
Debbie Schlussel for TownHall.com (a conservative site) notes the parallels between Marc Rich (remember Clinton's controversial pardon) and Marc Rich, in the process quoting Cheney, showing that he knew EXACTLY what Halliburton was doing in regards to Iraq, Iran, and Libya:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/debbieschlussel/ds20010417.shtml
<snip>
And therein (Cheney's $36 million-dollar-a-year salary) lies Cheney's Marc Rich Streak. Anyone who believes that, even more repellent than Rich's status as tax evading fugitive, is his shameless trade with Iran during the hostage crisis and with most other U.S. enemies, must also be sickened by Cheney. Because he did the same thing.
Rich did a clever little thing getting around U.S. trade embargoes/boycotts of terrorist and human rights abusing nations. According to the Wall Street Journal, he used offshore subsidiaries, like Swiss Marc Rich Investment and other European-based entities, not his U.S. corporation, to do the nasty deed. "Offshore subsidiaries of some U.S. companies do business in embargoed countries, insulating employees who are U.S. citizens from the deals," the Journal reported. That includes company Halliburton, and U.S. citizen Cheney, who oversaw its subsidiaries.
Heading Halliburton, Cheney strongly supported doing business with terrorism host countries, like Libya, Iran and Iraq. In 1998, the British Globe-News quoted Cheney saying, "You've got to go where the oil is. I don't worry about it ." Citing Iran, Myanmar (né Burma) and Nigeria, Cheney complained that Congress was abig blockade to developing new business overseas. Never mind that Iran was on the State Department list of officially embargoed terrorist nations and that Myanmar and Nigeria were embargoed for egregious human-rights abuses. Cheney faulted Congress for getting tough with and boycotting these nations. "I don't agree with that approach."
<snip>
And as with Harken, there's a Halliburton-bin Laden connection. H.C. Price was under Saudi Binladin Group's Venture Partners section became Bredero-Shaw, a subsidiary of Dresser when acquired by Halliburton.
www.al.com/news/mobile/Nov2000/15-a419189a.htm
House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, in their 24 July 2002 letter to W. mention this as well, noting Cheney's "disinformation" on this issue during the 2000 campaign:
www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/bushcorpltrattach72402.pdf
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(Unethical.)
Robert Sheer's "Dick Cheney's Slimy Business Trail, " written for Salon, July 17, 2002, focuses on this conflicts-of-interest area of the scandal:
www.salon.com/news/col/scheer/2002/07/17/cheney/print.htm
<snip>
(Cheney's) journey from the public payroll to the corporate towers and back left a slimy trail of conflict-of-interest questions. For example, Secretary of Defense Cheney conveniently changed the rules restricting private contractors doing work on U.S. military bases, allowing the Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary of his future employer Halliburton to receive the first of $2.5 billion in contracts over the next decade. When Cheney left to become CEO of the entire company, he recruited his Pentagon military aide, Joe Lopez, to become senior vice president in charge of Pentagon dealings, which ultimately formed the most lucrative part of the otherwise ailing company's business.
Since returning to public office, these disturbing patterns have continued. In a scathing exposé of Halliburton's military contracts, for example, the New York Times revealed that the vice president's old company had been the main beneficiary of the Pentagon's rush to build anti-terrorism military bases around the world. This new work will cost taxpayers many billions, and, according to Pentagon investigators' estimates, without any cost controls the final bill will be considerably higher than if the military's own construction units do the work.
<snip>
And while AT Halliburton, Cheney's company was the recipient of $3.8 billion of government contracts and bank loans, as Ed Vuliamy's article for the UK Observer makes clear:
www.observer.co.uk/economy/story/0,1598,759142,00.htm
<snip>
Documents uncovered by a Washington researcher, Knut Royce - formerly with the Centre for Public Integrity - and by The Observer show that government banks loaned or insured loans worth $1.5 billion during the five years that Cheney was chief executive, compared with only $100 million during the previous five years.
The company under Cheney benefited from $3.8bn in government contracts or insured loans. Although Bill Clinton was in the White House, Capitol Hill - where the Appropriations Committee handles government contracts - was controlled by Cheney's Republican Party, to which Halliburton doubled its contributions to $1,212,000 after his arrival.
<snip>
Jeff Gerth and Don van Natta, Jr. for the NY Times, July 12, 2002, lists the rewards former associates, especially those at Kellogg Brown & Root, have reaped from current gov. contracts:
www.nytimes.com/2002/07/13/business/13HALL.htm
Pratap Chatterjee's piece for the San Francisco Bay Guardian focus's on governmental rewards given to Cheney's former associates and to Brown & Root Services Corporation, a subsidiary of Halliburton:
www.sfbg.com/36/31/cover_soldiersoffortune.htm
<snip>
"The Bush-Cheney team have turned the United States into a family business," says Harvey Wasserman, author of The Last Energy War (Seven Stories Press, 2000). "That's why we haven't seen Cheney – he's cutting deals with his old buddies who gave him a multimillion- dollar golden handshake. Have they no grace, no shame, no common sense? Why don't they just have Enron run America? Or have Zapata Petroleum build a pipeline across Afghanistan?"
<snip>
Jordan Green for the Institute for Southern Studies details the "no-cap, cost-plus-award contract" given to a Halliburton subsidiary post 9/11:
www.southernstudies.org/issmain.shtml#Commentary1
The beat goes on: a 26 July 2002 AP report of the most recent Halliburton contract to the tune of 9.7 million tax dollars:
ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAE9RDL44D.htm
War is good business.
Ron Callari for the Albion Moniter tries to tie in Halliburton with Cheney's meetings with Ken Lay and Enron, etc.:
www.alternet.org/story.htm?StoryID=12525
<snip>
It's clear the Cheney had his own conflicts of interest with Enron. A chief. benefactor in the trans-Caspian pipeline deal would have been Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline construction firm which was previously headed by Cheney. After Cheney's selection as Bush's Vice Presidential candidate, Halliburton. also contributed a huge amount of cash into the Bush-Cheney campaign coffers.
<snip>
Much more in the article about all the twisted potential connections between Enron, Ken Lay, Cheney's Energy Task Force, the Taliban, and the Unocal pipeline.
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Dana Milbank, in "Cheney Made Bundle off of Halliburton Stock," originally written for the Washington Post, July 15, 2002, points out that Cheney made have withheld information about Halliburton's poor financial situation from investors until he sold his stock. A major reason Halliburton was in financial straits was due to a decision Cheney made as CEO to acquire Dresser Industries, thereby also acquiring Dresser's asbestos liability (and leading company to inflate revenues through creative bookkeeping, see area #1).
www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1495499
<snip>
When Cheney left Halliburton in August 2000 to be Bush's running mate, the oil services firm was swelling with profits and approaching a two-year high in its stock price. Investors and the public (and possibly Cheney himself) did not know how sick the company really was, as became evident in the months after Cheney left.
Whether through serendipity or shrewdness, Cheney made an $18.5 million profit selling his shares for more than $52 each in August 2000; 60 days later, the company surprised investors with a warning that its engineering and construction business was doing much worse than expected, driving shares down 11 percent in a day. About the same time, it announced it was under a grand jury investigation for overbilling the government.
. . .
The developments at Halliburton since Cheney's departure leave two possibilities: Either the vice president did not know of the magnitude of problems at the oil-services company he ran for five years, or he sold his shares in August 2000 knowing the company was likely headed for a fall.
<snip>
Much of his profit in his stint with Halliburton came from his stock sales in Aug. 2000, Newsweek reports in its July 22, 2002 issue:
www.msnbc.com/news/780130.asp?cp1=1#BODY
(Warning: this address crashed my Netscape twice. I had to hit the stop button before it was finished loading to read the article.)
<snip>
Cheney made about $45 million in just under five years at Halliburton. Almost two thirds of his total take—$18.5 million in stock-option profits and about $10 million from stock sales—came in August of 2000, after he'd resigned from Halliburton. When Cheney left on Aug. 16, 2000, Halliburton stock fetched $54.02 a share. Friday's close: $13.52. At that price, all of Cheney's options would have been underwater and his stock would have fetched only about $2.5 million. Selling when he did, in order to avoid conflict-of-interest accusations, left him $26 million better off than he'd be today. Meanwhile, investors have seen the value of their shares plummet.
<snip>
Or maybe we should be asking the big question. Are the new Halliburton contracts with the US government a pay-off. A way of assuring no current Halliburton employee talks negatively about Cheney to the SEC investigators, and that no untoward documents fall into their hands:
www.thedailyenron.com/documents/20020729082640-13097.asp
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(Illegal.)
The Feb. 9, 2002 AP story on the announced $2 million settlement:
www.nytimes.com/2002/02/09/national/09FRAU.htm
<snip>
The suit, filed in Sacramento, said the company submitted false claims and made false statements in connection with 224 delivery orders between April 1994 and September 1998.
<snip>
www.sltrib.com/2002/May/05262002/commenta/739730.htm
<snip>
Cheney's Halliburton paid $2 million for defrauding the overnment by inflating what the taxpayers had to pay for contract maintenance and repairs at Fort Ord in California. Very likely, that $2 million was less than Halliburton profited from the scheme.
<snip>
And, in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10129-2002Jul15.htm
<snip>
(Halliburton) agreed to pay $2 million to settle the accusations from a former employee of Halliburton's Brown & Root subsidiary who said his superiors told him to bill the government for work not performed at the military base (Fort Ord) from 1994 to 1998.
<snip>
At least a portion of the current (July-Aug. 2002) SEC investigation seems to revolved around this issue of over billing:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020814/bs_nm/energy_halliburton_sec_dc_1
<snip>
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Halliburton Co. said on Tuesday that the Securities. and Exchange Commission ( news - web sites) has made two requests for. information as part of its probe into the accounting practices at the oil field services firm, according to a filing with the SEC.
The agency opened a preliminary investigation in late May and issued a request on June 11 for documents related to cost overruns on construction projects, the company said in its quarterly earnings filing with the SEC.
<snip>
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(Unethical.)
In an attempt to promote legislation which would limit Halliburton's liability on asbestos claims, which nearly doubled after its misguided (Cheney's decision) acquisition of Dresser Industries, the company lavished campaign contributions to House and Senate co-sponsors of that legislation, a bill labeled "highly controversial: by many.
Andrew Schneider and Lise Olsen's report for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Aug. 4, 2000:
seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/hall04.shtml
<snip>
Dick Cheney and the giant energy company he will leave to run for vice president have contributed more than $150,000 to members of Congress who sponsored legislation that would limit the ability of workers to sue companies for asbestos exposure.
. . .
At the end of 1999, 107,650 suits for damages were still pending, including 46,400 new suits filed against the corporation last year, according to the firm's annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
. . .
"Our PAC has made contributions without regard to the pending asbestos legislation. Any similarities between the supporters of such legislation and the recipients of contributions from our PAC is purely coincidental," Zelma Branch, a company spokeswoman, said today.
. . .
Halliburton has spent $99 million to settle or dispose of 129,650 asbestos suits, according to company records.
<snip>
for details on the contribution themselves:
seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/hallchart04.shtml
Aside: How stupid was Cheney to buy out Dresser Industries?? Newsweek's report include the following:
www.msnbc.com/news/780130.asp?cp1=1#BODY
(Warning: Netscape crashed twice when I tried to access this page. In order to read it, I had to click Stop before it was fully loaded.)
<snip>
Cheney's backers and some industry experts say he's not to be blamed for the asbestos problem, which exploded after Halliburton bought Dresser. But it's not clear how much time, if any, Halliburton spent checking out the asbestos question beyond talking with Dresser. Halliburton won't discuss how much it investigated the potential threat. "There's no benefit in trying to look back," says Lesar. Asbestos and bankruptcy experts say Halliburton messed up. "No one with a scintilla of sense would have bought a company with asbestos problems in 1998," says Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy professor at Harvard Law School.
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And an illuminating New York Times (July 31, 2002) item by Jeff Gerth and Richard W. Stevenson, on the lack of "due dilligence" on Halliburton's part in the merger with Dresser. (The deal put together over the smell of shotgun shells during a quail hunt.) It follows the liability-trail clearly.
www.nytimes.com/2002/08/01/business/01HALL.htm
Ain't you happy the country's in such good hands???
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Cheney's rebuttal of the Wall Street Journal report on Halliburton's relationship with a brutal junta government in Myanmar:
www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/10/28/cheney.king/
Halliburton and human rights in Burma:
www.earthrights.org/halliburton/hallintro.htm
Wayne Madsen for The Progressive, cites Cheney's and Halliburton's possible role in covert military operations in Central Africa
www.progressive.org/wm0900.htm
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Halliburton and Brown & Root have played a role in some of the world's most volatile trouble spots. These include Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Burma, Croatia, Haiti, Kuwait, Nigeria, Russia, Rwanda, and Somalia.
In 1998, while I was in Rwanda conducting research for my book, Genocide and Covert in Africa 1993-1999 (Edwin Mellen, 1999), a number of U.S. military personnel assigned to that country raised questions about Brown & Root's activities. "Brown & Root is into real bad shit," one told me. The U.S. Army Materiel Command has confirmed that Brown & Root was in Rwanda under contract with the Pentagon. One U.S. Navy de-mining expert told me that Brown & Root helped Rwanda's U.S.-backed government fight a guerrilla war. Brown & Root's official task was to help clear mines. However, my research showed it was more involved in providing covert military support to the Tutsi-led Rwanda Patriotic Army in putting down a Hutu insurgency and assisting its invasion of the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (Cheney and Halliburton declined numerous opportunities to comment on this story.)
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much more . . .
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OTHER
Halliburton/Cheney's possible involvement in a Kazahstan oil bribary case:
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Chin051602/chin051602.htm
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The activities of ExxonMobil, BP Amoco and Kazakh officials (and James Giffen) prior to September 11 continue to be scrutinized by the grand juries. What demands immediate attention were the activities of high-ranking members of the current Bush administration—and how these activities are connected to the Bush "energy policy" and the 9/11 War itself. Investigative reporter Michael C. Ruppert is currently exploring these connections.
Of significance:
1. During the period in which the bribery and oil swaps occurred, Vice President Dick Cheney was the president of Halliburton, the world's largest oil-service, exploration and engineering firm.
Halliburton, which is heavily involved with Exxon Mobil and BP Amoco ventures in Kazahstan, is a member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kazakhstan.
According to its official web site, "Halliburton is serving the needs of the Kazakhstan oil industry along with our subsidiaries Baroid, Sperry Sun, Landmark Graphics, Brown & Root Engineering Services, and we have locations in Almaty, Atyrau, Aktau and Aksai."
2. The Bush administration energy task force led by Cheney is currently the center of a constitutional battle for the release of records. Does the insistent Bush/Cheney secrecy and stonewalling have something to do with Kazakhstan?
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Why did Cheney insist on the merger with (buy out of) Dresser? Just bad business?
AP's most recent (2 Sept. 2002) stories goes into a bit of detail:
enquirer.com/editions/2002/09/02/fin_cheney_left.htm
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The burgeoning asbestos problem has caused critics to question the hallmark of Cheney's five years at the helm of Halliburton: the $7.7 billion acquisition of rival Dresser Industries Inc. in 1998.
The deal doubled Halliburton's size overnight and allowed it to claim it was the world's leading oilfield-services company. But most of Halliburton's current asbestos claims were inherited from Dresser. Lesar said Halliburton investigated Dresser's asbestos liability before the acquisition. The company just didn't count on a surge in asbestos claims, which he blamed on the bankruptcy of other asbestos defendants, leaving Halliburton as a tempting target.
"It's easy to second-guess everything about the asbestos issue now," he said.
For many years, Halliburton settled cases for modest sums — 214,000 claims for $173 million, including $101 million paid by insurance, leaving Halliburton's out-of-pocket cost at $336 per claim.
But last year, Halliburton was hit with verdicts in Texas, Mississippi and Maryland totaling $152 million. The last verdict triggered a sell- off that sent Halliburton shares plunging 40 percent in one day because investors feared it was the tip of the liability iceberg.
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James Grimaldi of the Washington Post, in an Aug. 11, 2002 story discusses the liability for Halliburton in the merger and notes the Bush family connections with Dresser:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3845-2002Aug10.htm
and:
www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/front/1511818
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John Wall, an attorney who represents a number of laid-off workers at a Halliburton oil-field products plant in suburban Dallas, questioned why Cheney would approve a merger that brought such financial liabilities with it.
"Why buy something that has so many obvious problems?" Wall asked. "Mr. Cheney is by all accounts a smart man. How could such a smart man make such a foolish mistake?"
Wall noted that Cheney chose to merge Halliburton with a company that had ties to the Bush family. The president's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was the banker who was instrumental in getting Dresser started. He also served on the company's board.
Bush's father, the former president, also worked for Dresser for a short period and got his start in the Texas oil business with the help of former Dresser President Neil Mallon.
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Background on Cheney himself:
http://www.moveon.org/moveonbulletin//bulletin1.htm
An extensive background report on international impact of Cheney's Halliburton by Kenny Bruno and Jim Vallette for EarthRights International, esp. the subversion of democracy (a pdf file):
http://gwbush.com/spots/postpage.htm
Document: Cheney's "Executive Employment Agreement":
www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=32712&forum=DCForumID35
(You'll need to paste address together to use.)
Document: report on Cheney's tax returns for 2000 (the year he sold his Halliburton stock and options):
www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/dicktax1.shtml
Cheney blue-skying Halliburton in front of The Cato Institute, June 23, 1998 during the acquisition of Dresser:
www.cato.org/speeches/sp-dc062398.htm
You can watch Cheney in the Arthur Andersen ad here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/video/38127000/rm/_38127586_andersen-promo_vi.ram
Halliburton as a corporate welfare client:
http://www.earthrights.org/halliburton/hallintro.htm
(Chapter 4)
and
http://www.public-i.org/story_01_080200.htm
The result of Cheney's stewardship of Halliburton?
www.thedailyenron.com/documents/20020723101112-28603.asp
Judicial Watch's complaint against Haliburton, Cheney, et al.:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/cases/92/complaint.htm
Halliburton's response to such complaint:
www.halliburton.com/news/corpnws_071002.jsp
Of course, they can't get you if they can process you:
www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=\Politics\archive\200207\POL20020726c.htm
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1510450
And now we learn that Halliburton, with Enron, aided the Bush recount efforts in Florida!:
www.thedailyenron.com/documents/20020730085550-68379.asp
ad_position1_windex&box=ad_box_all&tag=worldnews&middle=ad_frame2_windex&s=APUp3YxWTQnVzaCBD
(You'll have to paste the above http address together to go to directly.)
Oh, yes, let's not forget Halliburton's use of off-shore tax-havens (perfectly legal, of course):
biz.yahoo.com/djus/020801/200208011423000809_1.htm
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Citizen Works said Wednesday that an analysis of Halliburton filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that while Cheney was at the helm, the number of Halliburton units incorporated in "offshore tax havens" rose to 44 from nine.
Halliburton said Thursday that its non-U.S. units were formed to manage its business operations outside the U.S. and for no other reason. The company also said its tax payments from 1996 to 2000 were proper.
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Don't, at least, miss the graph of Halliburton's stock price from mid 1997 to present:
www.thedailyenron.com/documents/20020723100415-24334.gif
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According to papers filed with the. IRS on July 15, nearly $14 million magically poured into the Bush/Cheney Florida recount effort -four times the amount raised by the Gore/Lieberman camp.
The money flowed in so fast, and in such enormous chunks, that Bush campaign officials - unaccustomed to Bush's perennial good fortune - were dumbfounded. "I think we were a little bit stunned by the amount we received," Benjamin Ginsberg, a Bush attorney for the recount, told USA Today.
According to IRS documents, the Bush campaign took in $13.8 million, most in large contributions. Listed among those large contributors were Bush and Cheney's two most reliable genies - Enron and Halliburton.
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Sweet little contemporary overview:
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/07/28/MN32571.DTL