An Alternative Annual Report on Halliburton
by Andrea Buffa and Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch
Contact: Pratap Chatterjee, +1 510 759 8970, pratap@corpwatch.org
May 16th, 2005
An Excerpt:
"On February 26, 2003, three weeks before the Iraq invasion, a secret meeting was held at the Pentagon. The Army Corps of Engineer’s Lieutenant General Carl Strock was present as were representatives from the State department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and others, including several representatives from Halliburton. On the agenda was the decision as to which contractor would get the RIO contract, estimated to be worth several billion dollars over five years. No announcement of the contract had been made or put out to bid, as is the normal procedure, but it was clear that Halliburton would be in the running, even though government contractors claim that other major corporations were equally capable. 6
The Army Corps’ chief procurement officer, Bunnatine Greenhouse, who was present at the meeting, was stunned. She whispered to General Strock that the Halliburton representatives leave the room. The general agreed reluctantly. (Normally protocol dictates that the contractor that draws up a plan for a project should not be allowed to bid on the job itself because they know insider details that would give them an unfair advantage).
Once Halliburton’s representatives had gone, Greenhouse raised other concerns. She argued that the five-year term for the contract was not necessary, that it should be for one year only and then be opened to competition. Strock and his colleagues ignored her opinion—when the approval document arrived the next day for Greenhouse’s signature, the terms were a sole-source contract made out to Halliburton for five years.
With war likely to take place in a matter of days, she had little choice but to sign off on the contract. But she added a handwritten note saying she felt that extending a no-bid contract beyond one year could send a message that “there is not strong
intent for a limited competition.” 7
On March 6, 2003, less than two weeks before the invasion, an email from a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official, described securing “authority to execute RIO” after “DepSecDef [ie Wolfowitz] sent us to UnderSecPolicy [Under Secretary of Policy Douglas] Feith and gave him authority to approve” (the RIO contract).8 The final contract stated that the company could be awarded as much as $7 billion in repair work.9"
$7 Billion Dollars in a no-bid, 5 year sweetheart deal for Halliburton that got shoved up the ass of the American tax payer over the stated and written objections of the Army's Chief Procurement Officer. The no-bid contract was approved by Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith longtime associates of Vice President Dick Cheney the former CEO and current stockholder of Halliburton...
Dick Cheney...The man who orchestrated the war that was "necessitated" by the lies & plans written years ago by The Project for the New American Century whose main members were... Wolfowitz & Feith... How Cozy... - Etienne
