The Campaign Issue That Wasn't
Here's a whopper of a story you may have missed amid the
cacophony of campaign ads and stump speeches in the run-up to
the elections. During former defense secretary Richard Cheney's
five-year tenure as chief executive of Halliburton, Inc., his oil
services firm raked in big bucks from dubious commercial
dealings with Iraq. Cheney left Halliburton with a $34 million
retirement package last July when he became the GOP's
vice-presidential candidate.
Of course, U.S. firms aren't generally supposed to do business
with Saddam Hussein. But thanks to legal loopholes large enough
to steer an oil tanker through, Halliburton profited big-time from
deals with the Iraqi dictatorship. Conducted discreetly through
several Halliburton subsidiaries in Europe, these greasy
transactions helped Saddam Hussein retain his grip on power
while lining the pockets of Cheney and company.
According to the Financial Times of London, between September
1988 and last winter, Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, oversaw
$23.8 million of business contracts for the sale of oil-industry
equipment and services to Iraq through two of its subsidiaries,
Dresser Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, which helped rebuild
Iraq's war-damaged petroleum-production infrastructure. The
combined value of these contracts exceeded those of any other
U.S. company doing business with Baghdad.
Halliburton was among more than a dozen American firms that
supplied Iraq's petroleum industry with spare parts and retooled its
oil rigs when U.N. sanctions were eased in 1998. Cheney's
company utilized subsidiaries in France, Italy, Germany, and
Austria so as not to draw undue attention to controversial business
arrangements that might embarrass Washington and jeopardize
lucrative ties to Iraq, which will pump $24 billion of petrol under the
U.N.-administered oil-for-food program this year. Assisted by
Halliburton, Hussein's government will earn another $1 billion by
illegally exporting oil through black-market channels.
With Cheney at the helm since 1995, Halliburton quickly grew into
America's number-one oil-services company, the fifth-largest
military contractor, and the biggest nonunion employer in the
nation. Although Cheney claimed that the U.S. government "had
absolutely nothing to do" with his firm's meteoric financial success,
State Department documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times
indicate that U.S. officials helped Halliburton secure major
contracts in Asia and Africa. Halliburton now does business in 130
countries and employs more than 100,000 workers worldwide. Its
1999 income was a cool $15 billion.
In addition to Iraq, Halliburton counts among its business partners
several brutal dictatorships that have committed egregious human
rights abuses, including the hated military regime in Burma
(Myanmar). EarthRights, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights
watchdog, condemned Halliburton for two energy-pipeline projects
in Burma that led to the forced relocation of villages, rape, murder,
indentured labor, and other crimes against humanity. A full report
(this is a 45 page pdf file - there is also a brief summary) on the
Burma connection, "Halliburton's Destructive Engagement," can
be accessed on EarthRights' Web site, www.earthrights.org.
Human rights activists have also criticized Cheney's company for
its questionable role in Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Croatia, Haiti,
Rwanda, Somalia, Indonesia, and other volatile trouble spots. In
Russia, Halliburton's partner, Tyumen Oil, has been accused of
committing massive fraud to gain control of a Siberian oil field.
And in oil-rich Nigeria, Halliburton worked with Shell and Chevron,
which were implicated in gross human rights violations and
environmental calamities in that country. Indeed, Cheney's firm
increased its involvement in the Niger Delta after the military
government executed several ecology activists and crushed
popular protests against the oil industry.
Halliburton also had business dealings in Iran and Libya, which
remain on the State Department's list of terrorist states. Brown
and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, was fined $3.8 million for
reexporting U.S. goods to Libya in violation of U.S. sanctions.
But in terms of sheer hypocrisy, Halliburton's relationship with
Saddam Hussein is hard to top. What's more, Cheney lied about
his company's activities in Iraq when journalists fleetingly raised
the issue during the campaign.
Questioned by Sam Donaldson on ABC's This Week program in
August, Cheney bluntly asserted that Halliburton had no dealings
with the Iraqi regime while he was on board.
Donaldson: I'm told, and correct me if I'm wrong, that Halliburton,
through subsidiaries, was actually trying to do business in Iraq?
Cheney: No. No. I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in
Iraq – even arrangements that were supposedly legal.
And that was it! ABC News and the other U.S. networks dropped
the issue like a hot potato. As damning information about
Halliburton surfaced in the European press, American reporters
stuck to old routines and took their cues on how to cover the
campaign from the two main political parties, both of which had
very little to say about official U.S. support for abusive corporate
policies at home and abroad.
But why, in this instance, didn't the Democrats stomp and scream
about Cheney's Iraq connection? The Gore campaign undoubtedly
knew of Halliburton's smarmy business dealings from the get-go.
Gore and Lieberman could have made hay about how the
wannabe GOP veep had been in cahoots with Saddam. Such
explosive revelations may well have swayed voters and boosted
Gore's chances in what was shaping up to be a close electoral
contest.
The Democratic standard-bearers dropped the ball in part
because Halliburton's conduct was generally in accordance with
the foreign policy of the Clinton administration. Cheney is certainly
not the only Washington mover and shaker to have been affiliated
with a company trading in Iraq. Former CIA Director John Deutsch,
who served in a Democratic administration, is a member of the
board of directors of Schlumberger, the second-largest U.S.
oil-services company, which also does business through
subsidiaries in Iraq. Despite occasional rhetorical skirmishes, a
bipartisan foreign-policy consensus prevails on Capital Hill, where
the commitment to human rights, with a few notable exceptions, is
about as deep as an oil slick.
Truth be told, trading with the enemy is a time-honored American
corporate practice – or perhaps "malpractice" would be a more
appropriate description of big-business ties to repressive
regimes. Given that Saddam Hussein, the pariah du jour, has often
been compared to Hitler, it's worth pointing out that several
blue-chip U.S. firms profited from extensive commercial dealings
with Nazi Germany. Shockingly, some American companies –
including Standard Oil, Ford, ITT, GM, and General Electric –
secretly kept trading with the Nazi enemy while American soldiers
fought and died during World War II.
Today General Electric is among the companies that are back in
business with Saddam Hussein, even as American jets and
battleships attack Iraq on a weekly basis using weapons made by
G.E. But the United Nations sanctions committee, dominated by
U.S. officials, has routinely blocked medicines and other essential
items from being delivered to Iraq through the oil-for-food
program, claiming they have a potential military "dual use." These
sanctions have taken a terrible toll on ordinary Iraqis, and on
children in particular, while the likes of Halliburton and G.E.
continue to lubricate their coffers.
Martin A. Lee is author of The Beast Reawakens, a book about
resurgent fascism.
His column, Reality Bites, appears every Monday on sfbg.com.