Incredible that CHENEY continues to get 100's of thousands of dollars from Halliburton....
Payments to Cheney Questioned
Deferred compensation to vice president from his former employer, Halliburton Co., stirs complaints from Senate
Democrats.
From Reuters
WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney, a former CEO of
Halliburton Co., has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the
company since taking office while asserting he has no financial interest in the
company, Senate Democrats said Tuesday.
The Democrats demanded to know why Cheney claimed to have cut ties with
the oil services company, involved in a large no-bid contract for oil
reconstruction work in Iraq, when he was still receiving large deferred salary
payments.
Senate Minority Leader
Tom Daschle (D-S.D.)
and Sen. Frank
Lautenberg (D-N.J.)
said the revelations
reinforced the need for
hearings about the
no-bid contracts
Halliburton received
from the Bush
administration.
"The vice president needs to explain how he
reconciles the claim that he has 'no financial
interest in Halliburton of any kind,' with the
hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred
salary payments he receives from Halliburton," Daschle said in a statement.
On NBC's "Meet the Press" program on Sunday, Cheney, who was Halliburton's chief executive from
1995 to 2000, said he had severed all ties with the Houston-based company.
"I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years," he
said.
Cathie Martin, a Cheney spokeswoman, confirmed that the vice president has been receiving the
deferred compensation payments from Halliburton, but she disputed that his statements on "Meet the
Press" had been misleading.
Cheney had already earned the salary that was now being paid, Martin said, adding that once he
became a nominee for vice president, he purchased an insurance policy to guarantee that the deferred
salary would be paid to him whether or not Halliburton survived as a company.
"So he has no financial interest in the company," she said.
But Lautenberg said that Cheney's financial disclosure filings with the Office of Government Ethics listed
$205,298 in deferred salary payments made to him by Halliburton in 2001, and another $162,393 in
2002. The filings indicated that he was scheduled to receive more payments in 2003, 2004 and 2005.
"In 2001 and 2002, Vice President Cheney was paid almost as much in salary from Halliburton as he
made as vice president," Lautenberg said.
The U.S. vice president's salary is $198,600 a year.
The financial disclosure forms also said Cheney continued to hold 433,333 unexercised Halliburton
stock options, with exercise prices below the company's current stock market price.
Cheney's spokeswoman said he had placed these options in a charitable trust, and no longer had
control over them.
On "Meet the Press," Cheney also said he had no involvement in the awarding of government contracts
to Halliburton.
"As vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape
or form of contracts let by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government," he said.
In March, Halliburton was granted, without competition, a contract by the Army Corps of Engineers to
repair and restore Iraq's oil fields. The corps says the cost of this contract to taxpayers is about $1
billion.
Under a second military support contract, Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root unit has racked up over
$1 billion in expenses in Iraq, according to the U.S. Army Field Support Command. |
