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The United States: Halliburton and the Vice-President |
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Saturday, 24 June 2006 |
I was not in the mood during the last four weeks to write an update to this blog. I was very tired, my blood pressure and my arthritis were murdering me on top of my worries over the condition of my son, which is still very critical with the long hoped for miracle failing to materialize. The other reason for my failure to update was the still very dangerous and unpredictable situation in our country with the daily murders, kidnappings and destruction of property at an all time high and with the services and the provision of the essentials at an all time low which is making talking about the subject very agonizing. The last reason was my reluctance to relegate the latest piece, a message of hope and faith to a second place after the great interest and enthusiasm it generated. On the other hand I have always and from the start of this letter been totally committed intellectually and psychologically to its viability and progress and feel a great debt to the amazing people from so many countries who with their support and enthusiasm have helped make a modest dream a very serious reality, the number of our website visitors have a long time ago passed the 100,000 mark so I am back today with a new piece on Halliburton and Vice-President Cheney.
An official White House biography of the vice president which was posted on his website traces his remarkable and highly unusual career which has culminated in his current job as vice-president of the United States, he is described as one of the most active and powerful vice presidents in recent years. President Bush described the relationship between him and his vice president as that of a chief executive of a large corporation [himself] with that of the chief operating officer of the corporation [Mr. Cheney]. This same biography fails to describe in a reasonable detail the five years he spent prior to his election to the vice presidency as the chairman and chief executive of Halliburton which was very lucrative and extremely rewarding, it simply described him during those years as a businessman. Halliburton is the world's largest oil and gas services company and a privileged contractor to the Pentagon providing planning and support for military operations abroad. Tasks like preparing food, transportation, laundry and caring for the hygiene of the bases and camps and in that capacity Halliburton is now the biggest private contractor for the American forces currently in Iraq and has received contracts worth billions of dollars for their work there. Halliburton is listed in fortune’s 500 as a major market leader in the energy sector, but it is becoming increasingly accused of unlimited corporate influence huge conflicts of interest and a very powerful lobby which has very strongly influenced the Bush administration's policies towards Iraq before and after the invasion and in the process it has turned into a symbol in rallying the opposition to that war.
Richard "Dick" Cheney Jr. was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1941 and grew up in Caspar, Wyoming. The vice president himself has described his early years as those of someone who was heading down a bad road; he has been arrested twice and was tried and convicted on the two occasions for driving intoxicated by alcohol and on both occasions he was found guilty. He was fined and his driving license was temporarily suspended, but these were his only troubles with the law. He was of military age during the Vietnam War and a supporter of the war, but he did not serve. He was able to get several deferments, which allowed him to escape the dangers, and the harshness of the war. The Washington Post asked him in an interview in 1989 about these deferments, he said I had other priorities in the sixties than military service. His earlier convictions and his experience during the Vietnam War have been a great lesson. In 1991 he said in an interview in the New Yorker he found himself working building power lines having been in a couple of scrapes with the law but those scrapes with the law must have taught him a great lesson and building power lines must have been greatly rewarding because his career from then on was amazing and very spectacular.
Earle P. Halliburton and his wife founded the New Method Oil Wells Cementing Company in 1919. In the beginning the Halliburtons failed to find work cementing oil wells in Texas. In 1920 they moved their business to Oklahoma and in 1921 they reorganized into what was called the Halliburton Cementing Company which in 1957 was renamed a Corporation and was listed on the New York Stock exchange. In 1960 the name was shortened to Halliburton and its headquarters moved to Dallas, Texas. The Halliburton's were very shrewd and extremely good operators, but also very aggressive and single minded in the mould of the other giants of the late 19th and early 20th century Rockefeller, Henry Ford and the rest of them, they were able to cement the position of their company very solidly in the oil and gas sector and started from early on a process of active acquisition of major players in that sector and constantly reorganizing their business a process, which has guaranteed their current number one position in that sector. A multinational corporation which operates in more than a 120 countries, employing more than a 100,000 people, which has brought it a revenue of more than 20 billion US dollars in 2005. It was not always easy and peaceful, the company was accused over the years of unethical and illegal practices some of which undoubtedly stemmed from jealous competitors because of its dominant position and also from politicians, but some of these accusations were proved in court and the company had to answer for them, like the two examples I will mention next. The company was found in the early 1990s to have been in violation of the federal trade barriers imposed on Iraq and Libya having sold to these countries dual use equipment through one of its subsidiaries sending 6 pulse neutron generators to Libya, the company pleaded guilty and was fined $1.2 millions with another $2.61 millions in penalties. It was reported in 2001 by the Wall Street Journal that another subsidiary of the company has opened an office in Tehran when Iran was under sanctions and that the subsidiary was offering services from the mother company's units world wide through its Tehran office, the allegations created a huge uproar and in the beginning the company denied any wrong doing but they were finally and after very long court battles forced to accept a settlement of the issue by paying a $7.5 million in fines in 2004, during this episode Mr. Cheney was Vice-President.
In 1968 the young Dick Cheney arrived in Washington, he was a Political Science graduate student, he was granted a congressional fellowship with a congressman from his own state who was a very pro Vietnam War. One of the young student's assignments was to visit college campuses were anti war protests were disrupting classes and assesses the scene. After the scholarship Cheney did not return to graduate school and was offered a job as deputy to Mr. Rumsfield, yes our Mr. Rumsfield who was appointed by president Nixon as director of the Office of Economic Opportunity Federal Agency, which has been established by President Johnson but was not looked at with affection by the Republicans. The new management got about very quietly sterilizing the place, in one very subtle move they were able to send home a 180 senior career civil servants who were all Democrats, after that he served during the few months of Gerald Ford's presidency as the White House's chief of staff and then he went to congress to serve as a representative from his own state during most of the 1980’s, but in 1988 after the election of the senior Bush to the presidency he was appointed secretary of defense. As a defense secretary he was not greatly impressed by his previous congressional colleagues but he developed a great affinity to business, the meetings with businessmen were the ones that really got him pumped a former aide said, after the Clinton victory in 1992 he spent few years deciding about running for the presidency he formed a political action committee and criss crossed the country making speeches and raising money. He also became strongly affiliated with a very strongly conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute. In 1994 he decided that he does not really enjoy being at the center of attention he preferred to work silently behind the scenes, he has not raised enough money for a presidential campaign. In 1995 he was offered the job of chief executive and a CEO of Halliburton, which he accepted, in the spring of 2000 Halliburton allowed its chief executive to serve as George W. Bush's vice presidential committee and after few exhausting months he selected himself.
Life has been very kind and generous to Mr. Cheney and Halliburton when they knew each other and co-operated. Mr. Cheney retired from Halliburton during the 2000 US presidential campaign with a severance package worth $20 million dollars, as of 2004 he has received almost $400,000 in compensations from the company while vice president, he retains an unexercised stock option at Halliburton which has been valued at $8 million, his net worth is estimated to be between $40-100 million, which are largely derived from his association with Halliburton. This association has also been greatly rewarding to Halliburton, Under Mr. Cheney's tenure the number of the companies’ subsidiaries in offshore tax havens increased from 9 to 40. In Iraq alone Halliburton contracts have generated more than $17 billion and by the time they expire in 2006 their subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root has contracts worth $18 billion including a single no bid contract known as restore Iraqi oil which has an estimated worth of 7 billion and this is only the beginning. Iraq is a huge prize, which is worth at least $20 trillion.
Najeeb Hanoudi
Saturday, June 24, 2006
Baghdad/Iraq
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