De geheime Overeenkomst voor de Olie van Irak
Het openbare Verslag | Vier maanden vóór Verenigde Staten binnengevallen Irak, werkte het Ministerie van Defensie in het geheim met het oude bedrijf van Ondervoorzitter Dick Cheney, Halliburton Corp., aan een geheime overeenkomst die het bedrijf van de de oliediensten van de wereld tweede grootste totale controle over de oliegebieden van Irak, volgens gesprekken met meest hogere stafmedewerkers van Halliburton de zou geven.
De eerder niet bekendgemaakte documenten Halliburton die door het Openbare Verslag worden verkregen bevestigen dat het controleren van de tweede grootste de oliereserves van de wereld met hoogste prioriteit voor het beleid van Bush was. Bovendien, redde de overeenkomst tussen het Ministerie van Defensie en Halliburton eenheid Kellogg, Bruin & Wortel om de de olieindustrie van Irak in werking te stellen Halliburton van dreigend faillissement.
In Oktober 2002, werd Halliburton gezadeld met een asbestaansprakelijkheid van miljoenen dollars evenals een ernstige vertraging in binnenlandse olieproductie. De voorraad van het bedrijf daalde op het nieuws sterk dat aan laag van $12.62 in Oktober 2002 van een hoogte van $22 vallen het voordien jaar.
Een later maand, in November 2002, de financiële problemen van Halliburton verdween schijnbaar. Bij het aansporen van naamloze ambtenaren in het Bureau van de Ondervoorzitter, volgens de documenten, adviseerde het Ministerie van Defensie de Korpsen van het Leger van Ingenieurs een contract aan Kellogg, Bruin & Wortel toekennen om Iraakse oliebranden goed te doven naast de „beoordeling van van de voorwaarde van oil-related infrastructuur; het schoonmaken van oliemorserijen of andere milieuschade bij oliefaciliteiten; techniek ontwerp en reparatie of wederopbouw van beschadigde infrastructuur; het bijwonen in het maken van faciliteiten operationeel; distributie van aardolieproducten; en helpend de Irakezen bij het hervatten van Iraakse oliemaatschappijverrichtingen.“
Dat was een overeenkomst die vijf maanden vóór het begin van de oorlog van Irak wordt uitgebroed, toen het beleid van Bush openbaar zei dat het niet had gewerkt aan oorlogsplannen.
Het „feit dat de Afdeling voor de mogelijkheid plande die het zou moeten herstellen werd en continuïteit van verrichtingen van de Iraakse olieinfrastructuur voorzien geclassificeerd tot Maart 2003,“ de Korpsen van het Leger van Ingenieurs bovengenoemd op zijn website. „Dit verhinderde vroegere erkenning of aankondiging van potentiële vereisten aan het bedrijfsleven.“
6 Maart, 2003 intern Pentagoon e-mail gestuurd door een Korps van het Leger van Ingenieurs zegt de ambtenaar de „actie“ betreffende een contract Halliburton van miljoenen dollars binnen het bureau van Cheney „werd gecoördineerd“.
The e-mail says Douglas Feith, the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, received authorization from then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to “execute” the Restore Iraqi Oil contract to Halliburton in 2002.
Feith was one of the architects of the Iraq war who operated the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans that exaggerated the Iraqi threat and provided the White House with bogus information about links between Iraq and al Qaeda.
The email said Feith approved elements in the contract “contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP’s [Vice President's] office.”
Cheney, who claims he has severed all ties with Halliburton, receives deferred compensation from the company annually.
Two days after the email was sent, the Army Corps of Engineers formally awarded Halliburton the contract, without reviewing bids from other companies.
Bunnatine Greenhouse, the Army Corps’ top civilian contracting expert, has said the Halliburton deal represented “the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career.” Greenhouse, who testified before Congress in June 2005, was demoted for speaking out about contract fraud.
Halliburton spun off KBR into a separate company last year. The Army Corps of Engineers has declassified portions of some documents related to its deal with Kellogg, Brown & Root.
“The U.S. considered such contingency planning necessary because of Saddam Hussein’s actions in Kuwait in 1991, when Iraqi forces damaged 750 wells,” states documents released by the Army Corps of Engineers. “That destruction resulted in an environmental disaster as well as a tremendous blow to Kuwait’s oil production capability. The U.S. had grounds to believe Saddam was planning to destroy Iraq’s own oil infrastructure in the event of hostilities. Such destruction, especially if it extended beyond oil wells to pipelines, pumping stations, or other elements of the infrastructure, could have drastically reduced the Iraqi oil industry’s capability to produce income on which the Iraqi people depend. Destruction of the oil fields would result in potential loss of $20 to $30 billion a year in oil revenues for Iraq, as well as an estimated cost of between $30 and $40 billion to recreate the infrastructure.
When news of the deal surfaced five years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers was criticized by Washington lawmakers for awarding the no-bid contract to Brown & Root because of the company’s strong ties to Cheney. The Army Corps of Engineers told lawmakers that Kellogg, Brown & Root would do nothing more than extinguish oil well fires. Brown & Root was chosen, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, because the company could be “deployed” on short notice.
However, according to a report in the magazine Fortune, Halliburton employees were working out of a hotel room in Kuwait City as far back as November 2002 assessing Iraq’s oil infrastructure and mapping out plans for operating Iraq’s oil industry.
“From behind the obsidian mirrors of his wraparound sunglasses, Ray Rodon surveys the vast desert landscape of southern Iraq’s Rumailah oilfield. A project manager with Halliburton’s engineering and construction division, Kellogg Brown & Root, Rodon has spent months preparing for the daunting task of repairing Iraq’s oil industry. Working first at headquarters in Houston and then out of a hotel room in Kuwait City, he has studied the intricacies of the Iraqi national oil company, even reviewing the firm’s organizational charts so that Halliburton and the Army can ascertain which Iraqis are reliable technocrats and which are Saddam loyalists,” states the April 2003 report published in Fortune.
“Rodon represents the vanguard of what is expected to be a growing army of Halliburton employees in Iraq, where the U.S. is preparing to embark on the grandest exercise in nation building since its occupation of Japan after World War II. At the center of that undertaking will be U.S. companies, with Halliburton probably chief among them,” Fortune reported. “Indeed, Texans wearing KBR baseball caps are arriving by the planeload at Kuwait’s airport. Some will support the military directly–KBR employees already handle the meal service, laundry, and garbage pickup for several military camps in Kuwait and will do the same as U.S. units establish bases in Iraq. But after the war most hope to be involved in the multibillion-dollar task of rebuilding Iraq: its roads, electrical grid, water supply, ports, airports, and, most important, oil facilities.
“The liberation of Iraq couldn’t come at a better time for Halliburton, whose business has been dogged by a host of troubles–from a slowdown in domestic oil production to nightmare asbestos litigation. Last year revenues declined 6%, to $12.6 billion, and the company reported a net loss of $984 million. But CEO Dave Lesar, who took over when his predecessor Dick Cheney went to Washington, is starting to put Halliburton’s problems behind it. He has cut costs, sold unproductive assets, curtailed money-losing overseas operations, and devised a bold plan to settle asbestos-related lawsuits.”
In a March 2003 news release, Halliburton said it first began working on a plan to repair Iraq’s oil infrastructure at the request of the Defense Department.
“The DoD, through its US Army Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) III contract with KBR, tapped the company in November 2002 to develop the contingency plan. Implementation of the plan is being executed through a separate contract [Kellogg, Brown & Root] now holds with the US Army Corps of Engineers,” the news release says.
Perhaps what has been troubling about the lucrative contracts Halliburton has been awarded is the company’s history of overcharging the federal government by millions of dollars. On at least one occasion, overbilling took place while Cheney was chief executive of the company.
In 2002, KBR agreed to pay the U.S. government $2 million to settle allegations it defrauded the military during Cheney’s tenure. KBR was accused of inflating contract prices for maintenance and repairs at Fort Ord, a now-shuttered military installation near Monterey, Calif. The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento, alleged KBR submitted false claims and made false statements in connection with 224 delivery orders between April 1994 and September 1998. KBR and Halliburton has also paid out settlements to end investigations and lawsuits on half-a-dozen other occasions.
So how does the company continue to win such lucrative contracts with the federal government in spite of its shady record?
“KBR was selected for the [Iraq contract] based on the fact that KBR is the only contractor that could commence implementing the complex contingency plan on extremely short notice,” Halliburton said in a March news release.
Army Corps of Engineers spokeswoman Carol Sanders said Iraqi people urgently needed cooking oil and gasoline as they began rebuilding their country. Given the need to boil water to prevent disease, it was not feasible to competitively bid the work. She rejected claims that Cheney’s role as Halliburton’s former chief executive in the 1990s had an impact on the contract.
“We made the contract broad enough so we could handle issues just like this,” she said.
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