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Cheney coordinated halliburton contracts Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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E-mail revives calls to probe Halliburton, Cheney
Reuters, 06.01.04, 3:02 PM ET
By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A newly unearthed Pentagon e-mail about Halliburton contracts in Iraq prompted fresh calls on Capitol Hill Tuesday for probes into whether Vice President Dick Cheney helped his old firm get the deals.
The e-mail, reported in the latest edition of Time magazine, provided "clear evidence" of a relationship between Cheney and multibillion-dollar contracts Halliburton has received for rebuilding Iraq, Sen. Patrick Leahy said.
"It totally contradicts the vice president's previous assertions of having no contact" with federal officials about Halliburton's Iraq deals, Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said in a conference call with reporters.
"It would be irresponsible not to hold hearings," Leahy said, adding that several committees on Capitol Hill, from appropriations to governmental affairs, would have jurisdiction to convene such a probe.
The March 2003 Pentagon e-mail says action on a no-bid Halliburton contract to rebuild Iraq's oil industry was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. Cheney was chief executive officer of the oilfield services giant from 1995 until he joined George W. Bush's presidential ticket in 2000.
New Jersey's Sen. Frank Lautenberg, another Democrat, urged the chair of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Republican Sen. Susan Collins, to subpoena e-mails and any other evidence of contacts between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Cheney's office on Halliburton's Iraq contracts, Lautenberg's spokesman said.
Cheney's office denied over the weekend that it had any role in the Halliburton contract process, and a senior adviser to the Bush-Cheney campaign, Mary Matalin, repeated this on Tuesday.
"The vice president had no operational involvement with letting of any contracts," she said on NBC's "Today" show.
Lautenberg and several other Democrats have called for months for hearings into U.S. government deals involving Halliburton, the biggest contractor in Iraq.
U.S. officials have estimated the Texas company's Iraq deals, for everything from oil repairs to meals for the troops, could eventually total some $18 billion.
But only the majority party can schedule hearings, and Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, have so far refused to do so.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told reporters he was not familiar with the Time report and "it would premature for me to say whether we need hearings."
The March 2003 no-bid contract handed out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers promised the company about $2.5 billion for rebuilding Iraq's oil industry. It was replaced in January 2004 by two contracts totaling $2 billion, with Halliburton retaining work in southern Iraq for $1.2 billion.
Time said it located the e-mail among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a watchdog group. The e-mail was sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official on March 5, 2003.
It said Douglas Feith, who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, approved arrangements for the contract to rebuild Iraq's oil industry "contingent on informing WH (White House) tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's (vice president's) office."
A former deputy defense secretary, John White, said the situation revealed by the e-mail showed unprecedented political input on Pentagon contracts.
White said he could not understand why the e-mail had mentioned Feith, since Feith is undersecretary for policy and would not normally be handling contracts.
"Political officials stay away from these sorts of issues, they don't get involved in them," White, deputy defense secretary in the mid-1990s, said during the conference call with Leahy. "I've never heard of anything like this before."
Copyright 2004, Reuters News Service
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