No. 284, June 24 - 30, 2004

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NATIONAL NEWS





To read an article, click on the headline.


Military tactics against demonstrations to continue

Halliburton’s multibillion dollar war scams

Cheney in firing line over Nigerian bribery claims

 





Military tactics against demonstrations to continue

By Liz Allen

Asheville, North Carolina, June 23 (AGR) — The military tactics used at the demonstrations against the G8 in Georgia are providing a template for government to be used in upcoming events like the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention. Police from New York, Boston, and Jacksonville were present in Georgia to observe.

“Savannah’s deployments were very similar to what we’re planning on doing. I was very impressed with what I saw,” Massachusetts State Police Capt. Daniel Grabowski told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi Boghosian called the heavy military presence at the G8 part of an “increasing trend toward sending the message that exercising dissent is a criminal act.” She said the Guild is currently putting together a report about how the recent tactics used toward demonstrators — police on horses and motorcycles running into protesters, display of police training weeks before the event, no protest zones, “administrative searches” of organizing sites, preemptive arrests and requiring liability insurance for permits — are reflective of the “chiseling away of the constitution” and looming implementation of martial law.

However, she said New York will be different than the situation in Georgia because millions of people are expected.

In Brunswick, Georgia there are still six people remaining in jail; some were arrested when marching toward Sea Island during the last day of the G8 summit on June 10, others in a jail solidarity rally at the courthouse on the following day. They are refusing to give their names and four of them are on hunger strike. The hunger strike is planned to continue until their charges are dropped, they are released or they are tried.

A statement from the group reads: “We remain nameless as do the billions of people across the world who continually suffer as a result of the neoliberal and imperialistic policies of the G8….[T]hese countries are only able to continue their standard of living by keeping the majority of the world’s population either malnourished, illiterate and impoverished, or entertained and distracted.”

Boghosian said she doubts the recent Supreme Court decision that requires a person to identify oneself to police will apply to the Brunswick arrestees.

 

Halliburton’s multibillion dollar war scams

By Pratap Chatterjee

June 20— New testimony from former Halliburton workers and congressional auditors released in Washington, DC this week has revealed millions of dollars worth of wasteful practices, major over-billing, and virtually no oversight of the company’s work to support the US invasion and occupation of Iraq in March 2003.

Under an agreement for logistical support for Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a Halliburton subsidiary, has received $4.5 billion for activities in Iraq and Kuwait since the invasion, including more than $3 billion to import fuel and repair oil fields. The full contract may eventually be worth as much as $18 billion.

“We saw very little concern for cost considerations,” David Walker, head of the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, told members of Congress who attended a hearing at the Government Reform Committee in the House of Representatives. “There are serious problems, they still exist, and they are exacerbated in a wartime climate.”

Critics say that Halliburton’s contract with the military has been especially problematic because the company has what is called a “cost-plus” contract, which means the company is repaid for all expenditures, plus a percentage fee and possible bonus on top of that.

“While the Bush administration failed to adequately plan for the safety of our troops — as proven by its failure to provide sufficient body armor — it made certain that Halliburton would make a killing long before the war began,” said Jim Donahue, coordinator for Halliburton Watch, a nonprofit organization based in Washington.

Congressman Tom Davis, chairman of the government reform committee, refused to allow testimony from five former Halliburton employees who had additional evidence of waste, fraud, and abuse. Instead, Henry Waxman, the highest-ranked Democrat on the committee, released their statements to the public.

One statement came from David Wilson, a Halliburton employee charged with delivering supplies from Camp Cedar II in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda just north of Baghdad between November 2003 and March 2004. He explained that his supervisors didn’t care what was being transported, as long as the trucks drove as many times as possible from one end of the country to the other.

“The paperwork I carried had no details about the contents of our cargo — basically all they were looking for was the number of trucks with freight on them [but] a related problem was that KBR would run trucks empty quite often,” Wilson said. “One time we ran 28 trucks and only one had anything on it. There were several times when we had empty trucks both on the way to Anaconda and then on the way back to Cedar II. I don’t understand why KBR would have placed our lives in danger that way for no reason.”

He also described what appeared to be a complete lack of cost controls and systems to maintain equipment properly. “When I arrived at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait last November, I noticed 50 to 100 brand new trucks sitting there unused,” Wilson remembered. “Five months later, when I came home, a large number of trucks were still there, not being used. These are $85,000 (or more) Mercedes and Volvo trucks.

“As every other trucker working on those convoys will tell you, KBR had virtually no facilities in place to do maintenance on these trucks... I begged for [oil and fuel] filters but never got any. I was told that oil changes were out of the question… When one of our trucks got a flat tire on the highway, we just had to leave it there for the Iraqis to loot, which is just crazy. I remember saying to myself when it happened, ‘You just lost yourself an $85,000 truck because of a spare tire. We lost a truck because we didn’t have [a] $25 hydraulic line to assist the clutch.’”

Mike West, who was hired as a labor foreman at a salary of $130,000, explained he was paid despite the fact that he had no work. “I only worked one day out of six in Kuwait,” he explained. “That day, a supervisor told me to operate a forklift. I explained that I didn’t have a license to operate a forklift or any experience The response was: ‘It’s easy and no one will know.’”

When West got to Camp Anaconda in southern Iraq, he says that he didn’t have any work to do. Nor did most of the other 35 workers. The supervisors told them to walk around and look busy. Then they went to a camp in Al Asad, where they had only one day of work out of five days. They were told to bill for 12 hours of labor every day. From there, his group was sent to Fallujah for six weeks, where once again he had almost no work to do except help with security and follow Iraqi workers around to make sure they cleaned the toilets properly.

“One day, I was ordering some equipment. I asked the camp manager if it was okay to order a drill,” West said. “He said to order four. I responded that we didn’t need four. He said: ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s a cost-plus contract.’ I asked him, ‘So basically, this is a blank check?’ The camp manager laughed and said, ‘Yeah.’ He repeated this over and over again to the employees.”

In January and February 2004, a series of articles in the media, especially in the Wall Street Journal, chronicled the overcharging and fraud in Halliburton’s operations. In response Halliburton hired what it dubbed the “Tiger Team” to audit and correct problems. Marie de Young, who worked for Halliburton in Kosovo and was hired in December to help oversee Operation Iraqi Freedom contracts in Kuwait, worked closely with the team and discovered not only that it did not correct anything, but that the team continued “questionable auditing and administration practices.”

“When the Tiger Team examined a subcontract, they just checked to make sure that all the forms were in the file,” she said. “They didn’t assess the reasonableness of the price or consult with site managers. The team’s sole purpose was to close as many subcontracts as possible, under the mistaken assumption that everything that was closed prior to the arrival of the government audit team would be exempt from further scrutiny. For three months, this Tiger Team occupied waterfront villas at the Hilton hotel and shuffled papers, but did nothing to effectively clean up old subcontracts.”

De Young says that Halliburton paid the Kuwaiti subcontractor La Nouvelle $100 per bag for laundry services – four times more than they were paying elsewhere. That added up to more than $1 million per month. Another time, the company ordered 37,200 cases of soda at $1.50 a case, but was delivered only 37,200 cans, resulting in charges that were five times the normal wholesale cost for the drinks.

Halliburton housed the Tiger Team at the five-star Kempinski Hotel for $10,000 per employee per month. At the same time, soldiers were required to live in tents at a cost of $1.39 a day. The military requested that Halliburton employees move into the tents, but they refused, De Young said.

“The Halliburton corporate culture is one of intimidation and fear,” De Young said. “I had been advised by subcontract administrators who quit the company that employees get moved around when they get too close to the truth. I personally observed and experienced this as a routine company practice. Ironically, other previous managers who tolerated bad practices were promoted to better paying jobs in Iraq or Houston or Jordan.”

Source: guerrillanews.com

Cheney in firing line over Nigerian bribery claims

By Antony Barnett and Martin Bright

June 20— A British lawyer is emerging as a key witness in a $180 million bribery investigation that could lead to the indictment of US vice president Dick Cheney.

Last week, US oil corporation Halliburton cut all ties with a former senior executive, Albert Stanley, after it emerged he had received as much as $5 million in “improper personal benefits” as part of a $4 billion gas project in Nigeria. Halliburton also sacked a second “consultant,” William Chaudan, in connection with the bribery allegations. At the time of these alleged payments, Cheney was chief executive of the corporation.

French investigating magistrate Renaud van Ruymbeke is examining a stream of payments surrounding the controversial project which was built during the regime of the late dictator Sani Abacha. The judge has uncovered a $180 million web of payments channeled through offshore companies and bank accounts.

The Nigerian project to build a huge gas plant was signed with an international consortium that included Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root. Cheney retired from the chief executive post in 2000.

The French judge is considering summoning Cheney to give evidence in his probe to ascertain whether the US vice president knew about the alleged commission payments.

Van Ruymbeke has been investigating why the consortium, which built the gas plant, paid up to $180 million to a Gibraltan company set up by British solicitor Jeffrey Tesler, a partner in the law firm Kaye Tesler & Co., based in Tottenham, north London. Van Ruymbeke wants to know whether the Gibraltar firm, TriStar Investments, was used to distribute bribes to win the contracts. Tesler has declined to answer media questions about his role in the project.

The Nigerian deal to build a $4 billion liquefied natural gas plant is already subject to a formal investigation by both the US department of justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Halliburton’s decision to sever ties with Stanley and Chaudan recognizes the firm’s difficulty with the corruption allegations. When the claims initially arose in France the firm denied any improper activities. A spokesman for Halliburton said the two executives were dismissed because they had broken the firm’s “code of business conduct.”

A statement added: “While we do not know all of the facts related to the issue, we are taking these actions in response to the facts that we do have, and to protect our investors, employees, customers, and vendors as several investigations proceed.”

The acknowledgement that Stanley was receiving payments as part of the Nigeria deal brings the allegations uncomfortably close to Cheney. Stanley was chairman of Kellogg Brown & Root — one of Halliburton’s most important subsidiaries. The company denied that Stanley — who retired as chairman in December but remained a consultant — would have reported directly to Cheney.

Neither Stanley, Chaudan, or their lawyers have made any comments on the allegations and the two US directors do not currently face any legal action.

Source: Observer (UK)