Good Connections

Vice President Dick Cheney’s former employer Halliburton has made off with more U.S. government contracts in Iraq than previously disclosed, including a second deal worth over $425 million.

So says Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who last week sent a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers blasting the agency for not disclosing an “obscure but lucrative” general-service contract awarded to a Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root, back
in 2001.

The general-logistics contract, called Logistics Civil Augmentation Program III, provides “virtually limitless” troop support to the U.S. Army, including transporting materials and building bases, and has no cap on spending. So far, $425 million worth of jobs has been completed for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The contract has “allowed Halliburton to profit from virtually every phase of the conflict with Iraq, including the military buildup prior to the war, the conduct of the war and the restoration of Iraq after the war,” wrote Waxman.

Halliburton has received at least $496.3 million from the Army for Iraq-related contracts, including a much-scrutinized $71.3 million no-bid contract in March to put out oil-well fires in Iraq, which prompted Waxman and other senior House Democrats to demand a federal investigation into the bidding process.

It’s no secret that it pays to have close relationships with the White House.