HALLIBURTON

gets tag 5/14

see Blackwater on def contracting

 brooks bros jet

===

mahdi

cheney secdef 1990 got b41 to go after saddam in kuwait b/c of oil; aei kazakstan caspian pipeline operated by chevron, hallib built refineries Tengiz; azerbajan --> hallib ceo oct 1995 (he had good rel w/ saudis as secdef] 1994-2001 rev up 127%

===

---

90 pp

Juhasz, A. (2006). The Bush agenda: Invading the world, one economy at a time. New York: HarperCollins. Chapter 2 Ambitions of Empire

iraq.war.juhasz

...INTRODUCING THE AUTHORS: CHENEY, WOLFOWITZ, KHALILZAD, LIBBY, EDELMAN, AND POWELL

The clearest early rendering of the ideas that would become the Bush Agenda took shape in the 1992 "Defense Planning Guidance" (DPG), which was one of the final products of the George H. W. Bush administration (1989-1993): It provides much of the Bush Agenda's military framework. The DPG is a classified, internal planning guide for the Pentagon prepared approximately every two years. It is not intended for public consumption. It describes America's overall military strategy and represents "guidance" from the president and the secretary of defense to the four military services on how to prepare their budgets and forces for the future.

The 1992 DPG was written by six men who served in the administrations of both Bush presidents: Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Zalmay Khalilzad, Scooter Libby, Eric Edelman, and Colin Powell. These men, together with later authors of key Bush Agenda documents, have known and worked with each other, shared and sculpted ideas, and refined their positions for well over a quarter of a century.

. Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (a later author), and World Bank President and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz have worked together in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Over the years, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz have increasingly demonstrated a commitment to the combined forces of absolute U.S. military dominance and corporate -expansion that have found their fulfillment in the Bush Agenda. At age twenty-eight, Cheney began his government career as Rumsfeld's assistant in the Nixon and then the Ford White Houses, , eventually replacing his mentor as Ford's chief of staff when Rumsfeld became defense secretary.

Under Ford, Cheney established his cold-warrior credentials as a steadfast opponent to detente with the Soviet Union. In fact, the only administration official credited with being more opposed to detente at the time was Rumsfeld. When the Republicans lost the White House in 1977 to Jimmy Carter, Cheney moved to the House of Representatives, while Rumsfeld went to work for multinational pharmaceutical company, G.D. Searle, eventually becoming its CEO. Cheney maintained a consistent conservative voting record for eleven years as Wyoming's sole member of Congress. Wolfowitz, who also began his government service in the Nixon administration at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, was increasingly focusing his attention on two highly interrelated issues: U.S. dominance over oil in general, and U.S. dominance over the Middle East in particular.

In fact, Wolfowitz has shown a greater commitment to these twin modes of building the Pax Americana than to any particular party affiliation. Thus, unlike most of his fellow authors, Wolfowitz continued his government career working in President Carter's Pentagon. In 1977, two years before Saddam Hussein even became Iraq's leader, Wolfowitz conducted the first extensive study of the need for the United States to defend the Persi

...

Texan. After all, Bush was born in Connecticut, and he returned to the East Coast at age fifteen to attend the prestigious Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts, followed by college and business school at Yale and Harvard, respectively.

As a result of his loss, Bush vowed that he "would never be out-Texaned again" in his political career.21 In 1984, Spectrum 7 Energy Corporation bought out Bush's oil companies. Although both of Bush's companies had failed, they were purchased and Bush was retained as Spectrum 7's chairman and CEO likely due to the fact that his father had recently become vice president of the United States. Spectrum 7, which owed more than $3 million in debts by 1986, was saved through a merger with Harken Energy, which retained Bush as a board member and consultant.22

:{:{Tapping into his many friendly and profitable connections to the Saudi royals, Bush raised $25 million for Harken by bringing Saudi real estate tycoon Sheikh Abdullah Taha Bakhsh onto the board. Harken subsequently received a gas and oil exploration contract with Bahrain in 1989. 23 After working on his father's presidential campaign as liaison to the religious right, Bush began his second career as an owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team in 1989.}:

When he sold his shares in 1998, he earned more than $14.5 million in profit. In the interim, he was elected governor of Texas in 1994 and again in 1998. Bush's policies as governor deeply favored corporations and the wealthy. For example, in 1999 Houston overtook Los Angeles as the smoggiest U.S. city. This was due in part to Bush's decision to allow Texas's more than 800 oil refineries and chemical plants (which were contributing 900,000 tons of pollution annually) to choose whether or not they would comply with the state's clean air regulations, rather than requiring them to do so.

Bush cut taxes on corporations and individuals and increased policies directing financial benefits to both. As a result, by 2000, Texas ranked forty-ninth among states in overall taxes collected and fiftieth in per capita state spending. Economic inequality overall in Texas rose dramatically during Bush's tenure as the incomes of those at the top soared and those in the middle and bottom either stagnated or dropped. Texas then joined Louisiana and New York as the three states with the worst income inequality in the nation.24

:{:{Bush was very good to the oil and energy sectors, and they, in turn, were very good to him. Kenneth Lay and the Houston-based energy services company, the Enron Corporation, were Bush's all-time career patrons, contributing more money than any individual and company to his political campaigns.}: That is, before Enron was found guilty of defrauding its investors, including the State of California, of billions of dollars, which led to the company's 2001 bankruptcy and Lay's 2004 indictment on eleven counts of securities fraud (for which he is currently standing trial).

In fact, Bush had an unprecedented ability to raise money for his campaigns. Charles Lewis of the Center on Public Integrity put it this way: "George W. Bush has altogether redefined the parameters of political fundraising," shattering all previous fundraising records in 1999 to 2000 and again in 2003 to 2004. 25

George W. Bush certainly had the right connections and the right politics, but, if there were any doubts that he belonged in the Pax Americana brotherhood, he put them all to rest with his 2002 National Security Strategy,}:}:

....

Before the DPG -drafters reunited in 1997 to establish a virtual Bush government in waiting with the Project for the New American Century, each man pursued the ideas enshrined in the DPG in his own way. Cheney considered a run for president against Bill Clinton. In 1993 and 1994, he formed a Political Action Committee, which included Thomas Cruikshank, CEO of the Halliburton Corporation, the Texas-based energy services giant, and Stephen Bechtel, president of California's Bechtel Corporation, the largest engineering company in the world. The "Cheney for President" buttons he distributed are still highly sought after; the same, however, was not true of his candidacy. Cheney did not despair; in 1995, he accepted his first job in the private sector in more than twenty years as president and CEO of Halliburton. Paul Wolfowitz left the government as well. Apparently, President Cl...

---

rev door mil logistic bd, hallib charged govt for meals never provided; did inyial study that said pvt cheaper but real # 2x more $

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/study-says-nearly-half-of-defense-spending-for-9-11-wars-went-to-private-contractors

Sep 13, 2021 5:58 PM EDT

Up to half of the $14 trillion spent by the Pentagon since 9/11 went to for-profit defense contractors,a study released Monday found. While much of this money went to weapons suppliers, the research is the latest to point to the dependence on contractors for war-zone duties as contributing to mission failures in Afghanistan in particular.

In the post-9/11 wars, U.S. corporations contracted by the Defense Department not only handled war-zone logistics like running fuel convoys and staffing chow lines but performed mission-crucial work like [dyncorp]training and equipping Afghan security forces — security forces that collapsed last month as the Taliban swept the country.

Within weeks, and before the U.S. military had even completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban easily routed an Afghan government and military that Americans had spent 20 years and billions of dollars to stand up. President Joe Biden placed blame squarely on the Afghans themselves. “We gave them every chance,” he said last month. “What we could not provide them was the will to fight.”

But William Hartung, the author of Monday’s study by Brown University’s Costs of War project and the Center for International Policy,and others say it’s essential that Americans examine what role the reliance on private contractors played in the post-9/11 wars. In Afghanistan, that included contractors allegedly paying protection money to warlords and the Taliban themselves, and the Defense Department insisting on equipping the Afghan air force with complex Blackhawk helicopters and other aircraft that few but U.S. contractors knew how to maintain.

“If it were only the money, that would be outrageous enough,” Hartung, the director of the arms and security program at the Center for International Policy, said of instances where the Pentagon’s reliance on contractors backfired. “But the fact it undermined the mission and put troops at risk is even more outrageous.”

At the start of this year, before Biden began the final American withdrawal from Afghanistan, there were far more contractors in Afghanistan and also in Iraq than U.S. troops.

The U.S. saw about 7,000 military members die in all post-9/11 conflicts, and nearly 8,000 contractors, another Costs of War study estimates.[total pvt out# mil 150k?]

The Professional Services Council, an organization representing businesses contracting with the government, cited a lower figure from the U.S. Department of Labor saying nearly 4,000 federal contractors have been killed since 2001.

A spokeswoman pointed to a statement last month from the organization’s president, David J. Berteau: “For almost two decades, government contractors have provided broad and essential support for U.S. and allied forces, for the Afghan military and other elements of the Afghan government, and for humanitarian and economic development assistance.”

U.S. officials after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks embraced private contractors as an essential part of the U.S. military response.

It started with then-Vice President Dick Cheney, [nope bush 41 hallib study to pvtize]the former CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton received more than $30 billion to help set up and run bases, feed troops and carry out other work in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2008, the study says. Cheney and defense contractors argued that relying on private contractors for work that service members did in previous wars would allow for a trimmer U.S. military, and be more efficient and cost effective.

By 2010, Pentagon spending had surged by more than one-third, as the U.S. fought dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a post-9/11 American, politicians vied to show support for the military in a country grown far more security conscious.

“Any member of Congress who doesn’t vote for the funds we need to defend this country will be looking for a new job after next November,” the study notes Harry Stonecipher, then the vice president of Boeing, telling The Wall Street Journal the month after the attacks.[up 3-5% /yr soon to hill trillion; reconciliation 3.5 trill over 10 years so this is 2x?!]

And up to a third of the Pentagon contracts went to just five weapons suppliers. Last fiscal year, for example, the money Lockheed Martin alone got from Pentagon contracts was one and a half times the entire budgets of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to the study.

The Pentagon pumped out more contracts than it could oversee, lawmakers and government special investigators said.

For example, a Florida Republican Party official made millions on what lawmakers charged were excess profits when the U.S. granted a one-of-a-kind contract for fuel convoys from Jordan to Iraq, the study notes. The electrocution of at least 18 service members by bad wiring in bases in Iraq, some of it blamed on major contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root, was another of many instances where government investigations pointed to shoddy logistics and reconstruction work.

The stunning Taliban victory last month in Afghanistan is drawing attention now to even graver consequences: the extent to which the U.S. reliance on contractors may have heightened the difficulties of the Afghan security forces.

Jodi Vittori, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel and scholar of corruption and fragile states at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was not involved in the study, points to the U.S. insistence that the Afghan air force use U.S.-made helicopters. Afghans preferred Russian helicopters, which were easier to fly, could be maintained by Afghans, and were suited to rugged Afghanistan.

When U.S. contractors pulled out with U.S. troops this spring and summer, taking their knowledge of how to maintain U.S.-provided aircraft with them, top Afghan leaders bitterly complained to the U.S. that it had deprived them of one essential advantage over the Taliban.

Hartung, like others, also points to the corruption engendered by the billions of loosely monitored dollars that the U.S. poured into Afghanistan as one central reason that Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government lost popular support, and Afghan fighters lost morale.

Hillary Clinton, while secretary of state under President Barack Obama, accused defense contractors at risk in war zones of resorting to payoffs to armed groups, making protection money one of the biggest sources of funding for the Taliban.

The United States also relied, in part, on defense contractors to carry out one of the tasks most central to its hopes of success in Afghanistan — helping to set up and train an Afghan military and other security forces that could stand up to extremist groups and to insurgents, including the Taliban.

Tellingly, Vittori said, it was Afghan commandos who had consistent training by U.S. special operations forces and others who did most of the fighting against the Taliban last month.

Relying less on private contractors, and more on the U.S. military as in past wars, might have given the U.S. better chances of victory in Afghanistan, Vittori noted. She said that would have meant U.S. presidents accepting the political risks of sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, and getting more body bags of U.S. troops back.

“Using contractors allowed America to fight a war that a lot of Americans forgot we were fighting,” Vittori said.

no lnx

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-september-14-2021/

==

Combs, Trump’s nominee to be assistant secretary of the Interior, is just one of the grifters in the Trump administration.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross spent much of his first year in office as a business partner with the Chinese government even as he negotiated U.S.-China trade relations.Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke started a foundation that helped a developer backed by the chairman of Halliburton, the oil -services firm that could benefit from Interior decisions.

==

==

https://www.ecowatch.com/ryan-zinke-investigation-doj-2616779372.html

...These are the three investigations that might get Zinke in criminal trouble:

1. Grand Staircase Escalante: When Zinke redrew the boundaries of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, he drew them around a piece of land belonging to a state lawmaker, prompting concerns that he was trading public lands for political favors.
2. Halliburton Deal: Zinke has met with Halliburton Chair David Lesar while in office and discussed a Montana real estate development owned by Lesar's son that might include a brewery that the Zinke's would run and could increase the value of land nearby owned by the Zinke's foundation. The DOI is involved with regulating Halliburton.
3. Connecticut Casino Controversy: Connecticut lawmakers asked for an investigation into Zinke's handling of a potential Native American casino project. He met with lobbyists opposed to the project, but refused to meet with proponents and may have given false information to the tribes involved.
4. ...

==

==

4/15 whistleblower now ok

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/02/halliburton-gulf-oil-spill_n_5751914.html

NEW ORLEANS (AP) —Halliburton's agreement to pay more than $1 billion to settle numerous claims involving the 2010 BP Gulf of Mexico oil spillcould be a way for the company and victims of the spill to avoid years of costly litigation — if all the pieces fall into place

A federal judge still has to approve the settlement. That same judge has rulings pending on the extent to which parties, including Halliburton, were negligent in the deadly explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig. Those rulings could affect plaintiffs' decisions on whether to participate in the settlement, which was announced Tuesday.

==

InNorth Carolina, Halliburton and other fracking industry interests helped write a fracking chemical disclosure bill.  But when that bill ended up requiring disclosure of harmful chemicals to the state environmental agency, the bill was killed and replaced with one that further limited disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking.

A cache of emails obtained by Greenpeace has revealed the cozy relationship between the hydraulic fracturing industry and North Carolina’s Mining and Energy Commission.

The Mining and Energy Commission (MEC) was set up after an errant vote by a state senator legalized fracking in North Carolina. Because the state had not seen oil and gas drilling in recent history, the Mining and Energy Commission was tasked with writing oil and gas regulations, specifically for fracking. The 15 members of the MEC propose regulations for fracking, which are then passed on to the North Carolina legislature to be turned into law.

Emails and meeting schedules from members of the North Carolina’s Mining and Energy Commission reveal how various fracking companies and national lobby groups, including America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), Energy in Depth (EID), Halliburton, and Koch Industries, influenced the Mining and Energy Commissioners, in regards to disclosure of chemicals used in fracking.

Halliburton’s Hand

Halliburton has played a significant role in shaping potential fracking regulations in North Carolina. In March of 2013, the Commissioners approved a chemical disclosure bill in committee which would have required fracking companies to disclose to the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) the chemical ingredients in fracking fluid, many of which are extremely toxic. However, Halliburton, a major fracking services company, raised some reservations which killed the bill, as AP reporter Michael Biesecker confirmed:

In an interview with AP, Mining and Energy Commission Chairman Jim Womackacknowledged that before deciding to delay the vote, he spoke with a senior Halliburton executive.

“They indicated to me in a phone conversation that there may be other options than what was written in that rule,” Womack said.

The bill was taken off the agenda by Womack, and sent back to be rewritten by the chemical disclosure committee.

Commissioner Womack himself is not worried about water contamination from fracking. He once said:

“You’re more likely to have a meteorite fall from the sky and hit you on the head than you are to contaminate groundwater with fracking fluid percolating up from under the ground.”

Halliburton has always cast a long shadow over the MEC. CommissionerVikram Rao was at Halliburton for over 30 years, ultimately as the company’s Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer.  He maintains a significant financial stake in Halliburton, and also has over $10,000 invested in BioLargo, a company involved in disposal of fracking wastewater.

Rao has also called the idea of disclosing the contents of frackfluid “a joke.”

Documents obtained by Greenpeace also reveal that the shale industry was close with one commissioner in particular.

George Howard, the pro-fracking conservationist

George Howard serves as vice chairman of the MEC, and as the chairman of the chemical disclosure committee, which is tasked with creating regulations for frack fluid and other fracking chemicals. He was appointed by North Carolina’s Senate President Pro-Tem Philip E. Berger to serve in one of two “conservation” slots on the MEC. Berger received $46,700 in campaign contributions from fracking interests between 2009 and 2011.

In his tenure as Mining and Energy Commissioner, George Howard has been astrong proponent of hydraulic fracturing. He has said that public fears around fracking are exaggerated and that responding to public pressure is “pandering.” He has also claimed “it is physically impossible for hydraulic fracturing – the full industry term for fracking – to contaminate underground aquifers.”

In addition to serving as commissioner for the MEC, Howard is the founder and CEO of Restoration Systems, an environmental remediation company. Through Restoration Systems, Howard has a significant financial stake in the fracking industry, including a multi-million dollar shale play project in Pennsylvania. Howard has also invested in the area of North Carolina most likely to be leased by fracking companies.

Howard is connected to other top regulators, especially John Skvarla, the Head of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental and Natural Resources (DENR), who was president of Restoration Systems before becoming an environmental regulator. DENR would be the agency responsible for enforcing fracking laws recommended by the MEC.

Halliburton/Koch Industries Lobbyist Pushed ALEC fracking bill

Documents obtained by Greenpeace include correspondence between George Howard and various representatives of the oil and gas industry during the creation of the first chemical disclosure bill. Howard had multiple meetings with the American Petroleum Institute (API) and spoke with high-ranking members of the American Natural Gas Association (ANGA). Howard specifically requested help from Energy In Depth (EID), an oil and gas front group run by the PR firm FTI Consulting and funded by the fracking industry. Howard asked Steve Everley, the spokesman for EID and an FTI Consulting operative, to help him prepare for a MEC meeting on chemical disclosure.

Bowen Heath

Although George Howard met with and solicited information from multiple shale industry groups, one lobbyist was particularly influential.  Bowen Heath, who represents Halliburton, Koch Industries, and various other oil and gas interests for the lobbying firm McGuireWoods, had unparalleled access to the Commission. Emails reveal a chummy relationship between George Howard and Heath, who spent evenings together and went for beers in the afternoons.

Heath used that access to advocate for a fracking chemical disclosure system that allows generous exemptions for chemicals that companies deem “trade secrets.”

Heath provided a fracking chemical disclosure bill to Howard that the shale industry and its political allies previously passed in Colorado. The Colorado bill was based on a model bill from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate-funded group dedicated to passing legislation approved by ALEC’s corporate funders, including fracking companies like Chesapeake Energy. Bo Heath has longstanding ties to ALEC, and has attended ALEC annual meetings.

A New York Times investigation found that the Colorado chemical disclosure bill was the handiwork of one ALEC funder in particular, ExxonMobil.

As part of the push for the ALEC fracking bill passed in Colorado, Bo Heath arranged for Colorado ex-governor Bill Ritter to fly down to North Carolina to meet with George Howard and the MEC. The AP confirmed that Ritter’s fees and expenses were not paid by the MEC, and Bo Heath’s lobbying group refused to comment on Ritter’s funding.

Hallmarks of the ALEC fracking bill include generous exemptions from disclosure for “trade secrets,” and reliance on the FracFocus website for disclosing chemicals to the public. FracFocus’s operational costs are paid for by the oil and gas industry lobbying groups American Petroleum Institute (API) and America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA).FracFocus was found to be “severely lacking” as a regulatory tool by a recent Harvard study.

Heath continued to advocate for the industry/ALEC approach to chemical disclosure, and even brought in a key member of FracFocus, Mike Paque. Paque is the executive director of the Ground Water Protection Council (GWPC). The GWPC has long been an ally of the oil and gas industry, receiving funding from the American Petroleum Institute and other industry affiliates. Reports produced by GWPC are the backbone of the oil and gas industry’s claims about the safety of fracking. The GWPC also runs  the FracFocus website, and advocates for its use.

Taking up his drinking buddy’s suggestion, George Howard selected Paque as an expert witness for the MEC. Paque presented the industry-funded FracFocus website in an unrecorded meeting on December 18, 2012.

The New Bill Further Limits Disclosure

In the end, even though the bill that George Howard passed through committee was shot down by Jim Womack and Halliburton, it contained most of what Bo Heath and other industry lobbyists wanted. It used the API, ANGA funded website FracFocus for disclosure of chemicals, and exempted chemicals deemed trade secrets from being disclosed to the public on that website. However, Halliburton killed the bill because it required disclosure of all chemicals to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

The new bill, which has passed through the MEC committee and is headed for ratification in the State House of North Carolina, included a requirement to use the FracFocus website, following the ALEC fracking model legislation passed in multiple states. And like those states, trade secrets are not disclosed to the state, or the public.

Fleeing the scene of the crime, Halliburton has announced it is moving its headquarters from Texas to the United Arab Emirates. This move comes as U.S. authorities are investigating the company for bribery, bid rigging, defrauding the military and illegally profiting in Iran. Essential Action's edgy Halliburton Watch shines a spotlight on Halliburton's misdeeds, and is a venue for whistleblowers to call attention to the company's wrongdoing. Find out more.

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/

==

Ex-Halliburton Official Charged With Destroying Evidence In Gulf Oil Spill Disaster

BY RYAN KORONOWSKI ON SEPTEMBER 21, 2013

The the latest twist in an ongoing legal battle following the explosion that killed 11 people and resulted in the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

==

The oil giant Halliburton has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence following the 2010 oil spillin the Gulf of Mexico. Under the plea deal, Halliburton will pay the maximum fine and remain on probation for three years.

 ==

David Lesar, Halliburton CEO

Misdeeds: Oversees a company whose missions are to bribe politicians, screw taxpayers, and subcontract work to the lowest, most incompetent bidder. Faulty work by subsidiary KBR in Iraq led to the electrocution of US soldiers while they were taking showers. Charged $45 a case for Coca Cola in Iraq and $100 for a load of laundry. Halliburton knowingly used faulty cement on the Deepwater Horizon, which was a major cause of the explosion, but such is their juice in DC that even Obama is still handing them no bid contracts, even though they moved their headquarters to Dubai.

Corporate Teats: Halliburton's main teat is the Defense Department (the largest consumer of fossil fuels in the world), so the Gulf explosion was part of the company's secondary operations. Killing and environmental mayhem are their main business interests.

Most Egregious Lie: "Will things go wrong? Sure they will; it's a war zone. But when they do, we'll fix it. We always have...We're serving our troops because of what we know, not who we know." -- from an '06 Halliburton PR video

==

DISASTER PROFITEERING:

Will They Do for the Gulf Coast What They Did for Iraq?

Funds to rebuild the areas of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana hit by the storm are flowing quickly. Congress has already approved $62 billion for disaster relief, and the total price tag is expected to exceed $100 billion. "They are throwing money out, they are shoveling it out the door," according toWashington lobbyist James Albertine (John M. Broder, "In Storm's Ruins, a Rush to Rebuild and Reopen for Business," Washington Post, September 10, 2005).

Normal contracting rules have been suspended, so the majority - if not all - of the contracts for hurricane relief and rebuilding will be awarded on a no-bid, cost-plus basis. This is a recipe for fiscal disaster. As Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight has said, this process is likely to attract greedy, self-interested companies: "This is very painful. You are likely to see the equivalent of war profiteering - disaster profiteering." 

Among the politically connected firms that have already received contracts related to Hurricane Katrina cleanup and rebuilding include Vice President Cheney's former company, Halliburton (to rebuild military facilities affected by the storm and to help repair the breach in the levee); Bechtel, Fluor, CH2MHill, the Shaw Group, and Dewberry Technologies to build or repair housing in the region; and the private military company, BlackwaterAssociates, allegedly to guard local buildings. The majority of these firms have been active in the rebuilding of Iraq, where poor performance, overcharging, and outright fraud have been regular occurrences.

Lobbyists have also hit the ground running in an effort to help their clients secure contracts.  Most prominent among them is Joe Allbaugh, who flew to the region before many FEMA officials made their way there.  Among his clients are Halliburton and the Shaw Group, both of which have rebuilding contracts already in hand....

http://www.worldpolicy.newschool.edu/wpi/projects/arms/updates/091305Katrina.html

Antitrust Probe Targets Halliburton’s Fracking Business

A federal antitrust probe into the $36 billion hydraulic fracturing market is increasing pressure on oilfield-service companies already reeling as skyrocketing competition cuts into their profit margins.

Halliburton Co. and Baker Hughes Inc. said this week the U.S. Justice Department is seeking documents for an antitrust investigation related to pressure-pumping services, which include hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Stephen Harris, a spokesman for Schlumberger Ltd., the world’s largest oilfield-services company, declined to say whether it has been contacted by investigators.

The investigation was met with widespread surprise among industry analysts and investors because it comes at a time when rising competition and falling prices have been the business’s biggest problem.

==

ABOUT HALLIBURTON

Lobbyists

Government disclosure reports show Halliburton has reduced its lobbying expenses in Washington by 50 percent since Dick Cheney became vice president (see documents below). During the last two years of the Clinton administration, Halliburton spent $1.2 million lobbying Congress and the Executive Branch. But during the first two years of the Bush administration, Halliburton spent only $600,000.

Considering that Halliburton's government contracts increased four times in value after Cheney moved to Washington, the reduction in lobbying expenses seems logical. James Thurber, an American University professor who studies lobbying, told the *Boston Globe*, "They're already in," referring to Halliburton's influence at the White House. "[T]hey don't need to lobby any more," he said.

Halliburton's lobbying expenses are disclosed in documents submitted under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, which requires Congressional and executive branch lobbyists to disclose their lobbying activities twice per year.

Despite the drop in lobbying expenses, Halliburton still maintains a lobbying staff in Washington. The company hired a new chief lobbyist in 2001, the year Cheney became vice president of the United States. His name is Charles Domini, a retired three-star general who was first hired by Cheney in 1995 to work as vice president of business development for Kellogg Brown & Root.

Domini has played both sides of the revolving door between Halliburton and the military. He was a general with the Army in 1992 when it first awarded Halliburton its most lucrative contract, known as LOGCAP. Then, after Halliburton was fired by the Army in 1997, Domini was an employee of Halliburton when the Army re-hired the company to handle the LOGCAP contract.

Domini is only one example of the symbiotic relationship between Halliburton and the military. His promotion to chief lobbyist in 2001 occurred because the former chief lobbyist, Dave Gribbin, retired from Halliburton to join Cheney in the Bush administration. Gribbin has a long history with Cheney that includes working for him in Congress, the Pentagon, Halliburton and now in the White House.

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. The Cheney-Domini-Gribbin "axis of power" has played a big role in procuring lucrative government contracts for Halliburton, both as employees for the military and for the company. And those contracts quadrupled in value after Cheney became vice president of the United States.

http://www.crocodyl.org/wiki/halliburton

...

Political influence (national and international):

Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC's Meet the Press "I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape, or form of contracts" that Halliburton received in Iraq.

But an internal Pentagon email later obtained by Time magazine indicates that months before the war, "action" on the Iraqi oil contract was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. Two months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Wall Street Journal reported, "The Bush administration is eager to secure Iraq's oil fields and rehabilitate them, industry officials say. They say Mr. Cheney's staff hosted an informational meeting with industry executives in October, with Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Texaco Corp., ConocoPhillips, and Halliburton among the companies represented. Both the Bush administration and the companies say such a meeting never took place." (Thaddeus Herrick, "U.S. Oil Wants to Work in Iraq," Wall Street Journal, Jan. 17, 2003.)

Cheney resisted public requests for disclosure of documents relating to his secret Energy Task Force that proved he was investigating Iraq's oil fields prior to the war. Some of the documents were released only after a judge ordered Cheney to make them public.

Whether or not Cheney's office influenced the decision to give KBR a no-bid contract to repair Iraq's oil infrastructure, the Army Corps of Engineers top civilian contracting official, Bunnatine Greenhouse, told a congressional committee that "The abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career." (Greenhouse was demoted after blowing the whistle, despite a stellar work performance record.)

KBR, Inc. won more than $16 billion in U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2004 to 2006 — far more than any other company, according to "Windfalls of War II", a 2007 analysis by the Center for Public Integrity.

For details about the waste, fraud and other abuses committed by KBR/Halliburton through its war-related contracts, see Halliburton Watch.org, CorpWatch, The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,and The Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

For information on Halliburton's lobbyists, visit Halliburton Watch

'Other Examples

Soon after Hurricane Katrina, former FEMA head Joe Albaugh, a Halliburton registered lobbyist, encamped in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, "helping his clients get business from perhaps the worst natural disaster in the nation's history." (Washington Post September 8, 2005; Page A27)

Charles Domini, a retired three-star general hired by Cheney in 1995 to work as vice president of business development for Kellogg Brown & Root, has been on both sides of the revolving door between Halliburton and the military. He was a general with the Army in 1992 when it first awarded Halliburton its most lucrative contract, LOGCAP. Then, after the Army fired Halliburton in 1997, Domini was an employee of Halliburton when the Army re-hired the company to handle the LOGCAP contract.

Domini is only one example of the symbiotic relationship between Halliburton and the military. His promotion to chief lobbyist in 2001 occurred after the former chief lobbyist, Dave Gribbin, retired from Halliburton to join Cheney in the Bush administration. Gribbin has a long history with Cheney that includes working for him in Congress, the Pentagon, Halliburton, and then in the White House.

stratfor 

haliburton fracking http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/386876_re-frack-w-va-eyes-fluid-disclosure-quote-from-lachelt-.html

hali nigeria bribery http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/5044499_re-africa-nigeria-nigeria-frees-halliburton-staff-as-probe.html (note; fishing for biz?

http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/releasedate/2012-02-27-12-coca-cola-contracting-stratfor-to-spy-on-peta.html

Halliburton doing biz in iran, BC outlaws, 1995 so hires DC and  co creates cayman is subsid to keep doing (previously fined for violating export ban).  to be legal subsid has to be indep, but houston still ran co; iran was helping kill us troops [in iraq?] p 85 patriot acts

DC brought in fmr generals into co, rhwn they worked as lobbyists to get biz 86  also acted as booster for afgan war, as reveraled by 2008 pulitzer prize davis barstow nyt "msg machine"

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/8/pentagons_pundits_ny_times_reporter_david  

DN:

DAVID BARSTOW:I think the program had its roots in the 2002, in the run-up to, the buildup to the war in Iraq. The main architect or architects were folks inside the Pentagon, notably Torie Clarke, who was the main spokesperson for the Pentagon at the time and a former public relations executive who had some pretty sophisticated ideas about how it is that you influence the American public in a sort of spin-saturated world, where people are increasingly cynical both of journalists and of public —- the official spokespeople of the government. And her idea, the idea that she pitched to Don Rumsfeld, then the Secretary of Defense, was that the way to really influence the American public was to try and find people who were viewed as independent of both government and the media, people who were considered authoritative and expert, people who would have an ability to cut through the spin.

And the group that they began zeroing in on were all the military analysts who were being hired in droves after 9/11 by all the major TV networks. In the view of Torie Clarke and her staff, these guys were sort of the ultimate key influencers. They were seen as, most of them, retired decorated war heroes. They were, many of them, retired generals, some three— and four-star generals. They came from an institution that traditionally is extremely trusted by the American public. And they were seen by the public not really as of the media, but not of the government either....

AMY GOODMAN:According to Media Matters, the army of analysts that you identified, what, made 4,500 appearances and quotations on ABC, ABC News, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headlines News, Fox News and NPR.

DAVID BARSTOW:At least that many.

AMY GOODMAN:Give us the story, the one case study, one of the case studies you do, “One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex.” Tell us the story of Barry McCaffrey, General Barry McCaffrey.

DAVID BARSTOW:Well, General Barry McCaffrey is really one of the most sort of impressive military leaders. He was the youngest four-star Army general, I believe, in our history. He was the man who became famous during the first Gulf War for leading the left hook into Iraq. He also then became the drug czar under President Clinton.

And in September of 2001, an odd thing happened. Actually, the week before 9/11, he was asked to join the advisory — defense advisory board of a major private equity firm in New York called Veritas Capital, which at that moment, just at that moment, was making plans to invest heavily into defense contractors. Nine-eleven happened. Weeks later, General McCaffrey was hired by NBC to be its — one of its military analysts. And so, what you see happening with General McCaffrey in the years since is that he has been on, time and time again, talking about the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, but at the same time, most notably through his ties to Veritas Capital, he has been deeply involved in the business affairs of some of the major defense contractors who are operating in both of those war zones.

===

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton

In 1998 Halliburton merged with Dresser Industries, which included Kellogg. Prescott Bush was a director of Dresser Industries, which is now part of Halliburton. Former United States president George H. W. Bush worked for Dresser Industries in several positions from 1948–1951, before he founded Zapata Corporation.^{[^^26]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton#cite_note-25)

In the early 1990s Halliburton was found to be in violation of federal trade barriers in Iraq and Libya, having sold these countries dual-use oil drilling equipment and, through its former subsidiary, Halliburton Logging Services, sending six pulse neutron generators to Libya. After having pleaded guilty, the company was fined $1.2 million, with another $2.61 million in penalties.^{[^^24]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton#cite_note-23)

During the Balkans conflict in the 1990s, Kellogg Brown-Root (KBR) supported U.S. peacekeeping forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Hungary with food, laundry, transportation and other lifecycle management services.^{[^^25]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton#cite_note-24)

In 1998 Halliburton merged with Dresser Industries, which included Kellogg. Prescott Bush was a director of Dresser Industries, which is now part of Halliburton. Former United States president George H. W. Bush worked for Dresser Industries in several positions from 1948–1951, before he founded Zapata Corporation.^{[^^26]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton#cite_note-25)

2000s

5 Houston Center in Downtown Houston, which at one time housed the headquarters of Halliburton

Wikinews has related news: ***Civilians testify to Halliburton fraud, coercion***

*The Wall Street Journal* reported in 2001 that a subsidiary of Halliburton Energy Services called Halliburton Products and Services Ltd. (HPS) opened an office in Tehran. The company, HPS, operated on the ninth floor of a new north Tehran tower block. Although HPS was incorporated in the Cayman Islands in 1975 and is "non-American", it shares both the logo and name of Halliburton Energy Services and, according to Dow Jones Newswires offers services from Halliburton units worldwide through its Tehran office. Such behavior, undertaken while Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, may have violated the Trading with the Enemy Act. A Halliburton spokesman, responding to inquiries from Dow Jones, said "This is not breaking any laws. This is a foreign subsidiary and no US person is involved in this. No US person is facilitating any transaction. We are not performing directly in that country." Later Dave Lesar would book his own flights to the Tehran office through the UK arm of KBR. No legal action has been taken against the company or its officials.^{[^^27]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton#cite_note-26)

In April 2002, KBR was awarded a $7 million contract to construct steel holding cells at Camp X-Ray.^{[^^28]^}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halliburton#cite_note-27)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KBR_%28company%29

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/

Frederick Douglass beated at Mt Misery 

http://www.commonwealinstitute.org/archive/ghosts-mount-misery

FEMA Cronyism Led to Failure

Michael Brown, who resigned September 12, 2005, as FEMA's director, "has become a symbol of cronyism," Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times.

Brown "didn't know the difference between a tropical depression and an anxiety attack when President Bush charged him with life-and-death decisions," Maureen Dowd wrote in the Times.

"W. trusted Brownie simply because he was a friend of a friend," Dowd said. "He was a college buddy of Joe Allbaugh, who worked as W.'s chief of staff when he was Texas governor and as his 2000 presidential campaign manager."

When FEMA was "reorganized under Homeland Security, stripping it of authority," Allbaugh left the agency to become a lobbyist for companies like Halliburton, leaving behind "an eviscerated FEMA" with "his friend Brown in charge," Dowd said.

Spencer S. Hsu wrote in the September 9, 2005, Washington Post that "Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative."

"Meanwhile," Hsu reported, "veterans such as U.S. hurricane specialist Eric Tolbert and World Trade Center disaster managers Laurence W. Zensinger and Bruce P. Baughman -- who led FEMA's offices of response, recovery and preparedness, respectively -- have left since 2003, taking jobs as consultants or state emergency managers, according to current and former officials."

franken truth

Hali got 7b no bid contract coord by DC office *dc gets 12k/mo has 40ok shares (options?)  256

21 yo intern for dc and td hired for reconstruction team 257  hali could not acc't for 1.8 b 258

ivins 2006

AUSTIN, Texas (Creators Syndicate) -- The administration's competence problem is already at the yadda, yadda, yadda stage. They were supposed to protect us from terrorist attack, they said Iraq would be a cakewalk, that we only needed 50,000 troops. They failed to plan for the occupation or Hurricane Katrina or the prescription drug plan. Yadda.

But when you look at the details of what incompetence means, it becomes both chilling and really, really expensive. The Army announced this week it has decided to reimburse Halliburton for nearly all of the disputed costs in the more than $250 million in charges the Pentagon's own auditors had identified as excessive or unjustified.

According to the Pentagon's figures, it normally withholds an average of 66 percent of what the auditors recommend. In this case, the Pentagon wound up paying all but 3.8 percent of the disputed costs, a figure so far outside the norm it was noticed immediately. Rick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the New York Times, "To think that it's that near zero is ridiculous when you're talking these kinds of numbers."

You may recall Bunnatine Greenhouse, a senior civilian contracting official with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who said the Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) contract was "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career." (Greenhouse was later demoted for her honesty.) Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, said, "Halliburton gouged the taxpayer, government auditors caught the company red-handed, yet the Pentagon ignored the auditors and paid Halliburton hundreds of millions of dollars and a huge bonus." In addition to costs, the Army, which blamed the excess to "haste and the perils of war," also awarded the company additional profits and bonuses provided in the no-bid contract.

And now comes a curious new contract for KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary. The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing Immigration and Custom enforcement. It's a contingency contract -- the contingency they have in mind apparently being "in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States." Canadians drowning from global warming? Mexicans feeling the return of PRI? Ah, but the contract also specifies the detention centers are to "support the rapid development of new programs." New programs? Far be it from me to speculate....