BUNKER DICK STILL TAKING MONEY FROM HALIBURTON....
Remember they just LOST NUCLEAR MATERIAL IN NIGERIA!
Cheney is still paid by Pentagon
contractor
Bush deputy gets up to $1m from firm with Iraq oil deal
Robert Bryce in Austin, Texas and Julian Borger in
Washington
Wednesday March 12, 2003
The Guardian
Halliburton, the Texas company which has been awarded the
Pentagon's contract to put out potential oil-field fires in Iraq and
which is bidding for postwar construction contracts, is still
making annual payments to its former chief executive, the
vice-president Dick Cheney.
The payments, which appear on Mr Cheney's 2001 financial
disclosure statement, are in the form of "deferred compensation"
of up to $1m (£600,000) a year.
When he left Halliburton in 2000 to become George Bush's
running mate, he opted not to receive his leaving payment in a
lump sum but instead have it paid to him over five years,
possibly for tax reasons.
An aide to the vice president said yesterday: "This is money
that Mr Cheney was owed by the corporation as part of his
salary for the time he was employed by Halliburton and which
was a fixed amount paid to him over time."
The aide said the payment was even insured so that it would not
be affected even if Halliburton went bankrupt, to ensure there
was no conflict of interest.
"Also, the vice president has nothing whatsoever to do with the
Pentagon bidding process," the aide added.
The company would not say how much the payments are. The
obligatory disclosure statement filled by all top government
officials says only that they are in the range of $100,000 and
$1m. Nor is it clear how they are calculated.
Halliburton is one of five large US corporations - the others are
the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp, Parsons Corp, and the Louis
Berger Group - invited to bid for contracts in what may turn out
to be the biggest reconstruction project since the second world
war.
It is estimated to be worth up to $900m for the preliminary work
alone, such as rebuilding Iraq's hospitals, ports, airports and
schools.
The contract winners will be able to establish a presence in
post-Saddam Iraq that should give them an invaluable edge in
winning future contracts.
The defence department contract awarded to the Halliburton
subsidiary, Kellog, Brown & Root (KBR), to control oil fires if
Saddam Hussein sets the well heads alight, will put the
company in an excellent position to bid for huge contracts when
Iraq's oil industry is rehabilitated.
KBR has already benefited considerably from the "war on terror".
It has so far been awarded contracts worth nearly $33m to build
the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for al-Qaida
suspects.
Asked whether the payments to Mr Cheney represented a
conflict of interest, Halliburton's spokeswoman, Wendy Hall,
said: "We have been working as a government contractor since
the 1940s. Since this time, KBR has become the premier
provider of logistics and support services to all branches of the
military."
In the five years Mr Cheney was at the helm, Halliburton nearly
doubled the amount of business it did with the government to
$2.3bn. The company also more than doubled its political
contributions to $1.2m, overwhelmingly to Republican
candidates.
Mr Cheney sold most of his Halliburton shares when he left the
company, but retained stock options worth about $8m. He
arranged to pay any profits to charity.
· Robert Bryce is the author of Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego,
Jealousy and the Death of Enron
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