Criminal Investigations Still Needed for Architects of US Invasion of Iraq

[Kid Berwyn]

48. SECDEF Dick Cheney PRIVATIZED War in 1992.

Cheney’s Multi-Million Dollar Revolving Door

As Bush Sr.’s secretary of defense, Dick Cheney steered millions of dollars in government business to a private military contractor — whose parent company just happened to give him a high-paying job after he left the government.

by Robert Bryce
Mother Jones / AUGUST 2, 2000

Ever since George W. Bush named him as a running mate, Dick Cheney has been all smiles. And why not? Cheney has led a charmed life. His political career included stints in the White House, Congress and the Defense Department. Then he went into the private sector and got rich.

But just how Cheney got rich deserves some scrutiny. As secretary of defense, Cheney oversaw one of the largest privatization efforts in the history of the Pentagon, steering millions of military dollars to civilian contractors. Two and a half years after Cheney left his federal job, he began cashing in on the very contracts that he helped initiate.

In 1992, the Pentagon, then under Cheney’s direction, paid Texas-based Brown & Root Services $3.9 million to produce a classified report detailing how private companies — like itself — could help provide logistics for American troops in potential war zones around the world. BRS specializes in such work; from 1962 to 1972, for instance, the company worked in the former South Vietnam building roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases. Later in 1992, the Pentagon gave the company an additional $5 million to update its report. That same year, BRS won a massive, five-year logistics contract from the US Army Corps of Engineers to work alongside American GIs in places like Zaire, Haiti, Somalia, Kosovo, the Balkans, and Saudi Arabia.

After Bill Clinton’s election cost Cheney his government job, he wound up in 1995 as CEO of Halliburton Company, the Dallas-based oil services giant — which just happens to own Brown & Root Services. Since then, Cheney has collected more than $10 million in salary and stock payments from the company. In addition, he is currently the company’s largest individual shareholder, holding stock and options worth another $40 million. Those holdings have undoubtedly been made more valuable by the ever-more lucrative contracts BRS continues to score with the Pentagon.

Between 1992 and 1999, the Pentagon paid BRS more than $1.2 billion for its work in trouble spots around the globe. In May of 1999, the US Army Corps of Engineers re-enlisted the company’s help in the Balkans, giving it a new five-year contract worth $731 million.

To critics, this all adds up to classic revolving-door politics: Cheney’s work for Halliburton, they say, has allowed him to improperly profit off of actions he took and contacts he made while in government.

Continues…

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2000/08/cheneys-multi-million-dollar-revolving-door/



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