The meeting was chaired by Lt. General Carl Strock, a ranking official at the US Army Corps of Engineers. Soon Halliburton employees were a common sight across South Vietnam digging wells, building latrines, managing commissaries, excavating harbors and constructing barracks from Da Nang to Cam Rahn Bay. Im a foreign policy person. Halliburton charged the US Army $85.98 for each sheet of plywood it used in construction projects during Clintons war on Serbia and its aftermath. And to purchase an Austin radio station that she probably had a big hand in growing into a very successful media company. She recalled his sleepless musings in her diary: I dont want to get in a war and I dont see any way out of it. Even congress was denied a peak at the reports findings until mid-March 2005. She shored up his self-doubt and rallied his spiritsand her own. And there it sat. Halliburton agreed to acquire Brown & Root for the bargain basement price of $36.7 million, far below the market value of the company. From this position, he launched into an onslaught on Olds, smearing the former supporter of Herbert Hoover as a communist who travels with those who proposed the Marxian answer. LBJ, who only a few years earlier had used his political muscle to secure the vast public hydropower projects on the Little Colorado with the goal of providing cheap power to the citizens of the Hill Country, now accused Olds of plotting a course toward confiscation and public ownership. Julia Sweig is an award-winning author, scholar and entrepreneur. She is a senior research fellow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin and the creator, host and executive producer of the podcast In Plain Sight. Her fourth book, Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight comes out March 16, 2021 from Random House. In 1940, the former road paving firm won a huge contract to build the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, a complex of runways, hangars, barracks and command centers sprawling across 2,000 acres of swamp and scrubland on the gulf coast of Texas. The Army didnt consider it necessary to reveal the terms of the deal, a Pentagon spokesman explained to Reuters. Of course, the acquisition of Brown & Root had another great advantage for Halliburton. Instead of being administered by Douglas Feiths office at the Pentagon (as were almost all of the other Iraq contracts), the Halliburton RIO contract was pawned off on the Corps of Engineers, a remote outpost of the Pentagon known, to the extent that it is known at all, for the management of locks and dams on American rivers. But over the next five years, Brown Shipbuilding, a huge operation on the Houston Ship Channel, would build 355 ships for the Navy, specializing in sub chasers and escorts for destroyers. Im so scared, she said. He moved to Texas in the mid-1890s and opened a store in Karnack, Harrison County. And yes, of her power. Ive got to call up 6,000 boys, make them leave their homes and their families. She doubted that others understood the depth of his pain.. Why did Lyndon Johnson escalate the conflict Stevenson rushed to the courts for relief. It was a model for things to come. "Lady Bird" Johnson, the wife of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, the nation's 36th president, died Wednesday at the age of 94. And Lady Bird is even sending Lyndon Johnson notes, comments on speeches and other notes during the day written on office of the vice president stationery, which, of course, Lyndon Johnson was the vice president. Then in 1999 Halliburton struck gold once again in the Balkans when Clinton went to war against Serbia over Kosovo. Vietnams legacy may loom over Lyndon B. Johnsons family, but not as much as it loomed over the hundreds of thousands of soldiers sent to that country with I cringe every time we step out of a car. The irony, as Tumulty points out, is that in allowing the presidents schedule to be determined by an unseen stranger who would know his movements, she left him more exposed, not less. In May 1967, she testified before Congress, along with Washington D.C. youth group Rebels With a Cause, on behalf of President Lyndon B. Johnson's juvenile delinquency bill. Lady Bird Johnson subsequently invited Kitt to her Women Doers' Luncheon on Jan. 18, 1968, for a discussion of what women could do to help eradicate crime on the streets. These claims eventually totaled something on the order of $5.5 billion, an amount that threatened to bankrupt Halliburton. First ladies? Tumulty calls theirs an epic love story, an observation confirmed by the eyewitness accounts of many. Brown & Root decided there was no turning back. As a brawny member of the Naval Affair Committee, the ambitious congressman, a key southern supporter of FDRs New Deal and therefore confident of the backing of the White House for almost any pet project, steered as many big contracts to his political financiers as possible. The civil rights movement is confronting a violent backlash, especially in the South, and despite LBJs public stance, Lady Bird knows they have a small war on our hands in Vietnam. He proposed at the end of their first date, then launched a full-court press until she yielded after 10 weeks. The contract was another of the notorious cost-plus deals, where Halliburton simply faxed over receipts to the Pentagon and got fully reimbursed, along with a guaranteed 1 percent profit and performance bonuses that went as high as 8 percent of the total costs. Each haul would net between $40,000and $50,000 for the Johnson campaign. Thomas Jefferson Taylor II, merchant, philanthropist, and father of Lady Bird Johnson, was born on August 29, 1874, in Autauga County, Alabama, the son of Thomas Jefferson and Emma Louisa (Bates) Taylor. Halliburton never uttered the meekest protest about the grossly inflated fuel prices. Lynda Bird was the first of two daughters born to Lyndon and Claudia Lady Bird Johnson. In a way, this meeting in the bowels of the Pentagon was all for show, a kind of mating ritual between the government and its favorite contractor. Phan Rang, from which US bombers pounded North Vietnam and later Cambodia, gained a little notoriety in December 1967, when Bob Hope brought his Christmas show there featuring a sultry performance by Raquel Welch that nearly caused a riot on the base. Lyndon Johnson, an up-and-coming congressional staffer, instantly sized her up as the sort of smart, capable partner who would push him and expand his prospects. What is the birth When she called his campaign office early on, one operator said, The bitch is on the phone again. In the margins of my copy, I began tracking all the people she set herself against. This is an excerpt from JEFFREY ST. CLAIRs forthcoming book, Grand Theft Pentagon (Common Courage, 2005). Johnson They were soon one of the big players in the aluminum business, much of which they sold right back to the feds, making tens of millions in profits. It was an early lesson in the demented logic of Pentagon contracting: the bigger the cost-overruns, the juicier the profits. Needless to say, this prospect didnt sit well with Halliburton and the consortium of British and American oil companies exploiting Irans petroleum wealth. She listened, and she empathized with his agonized decisions. This thread is archived New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast 24K 675 comments The company that had prospered through the Great Depression thanks to federal dam projects was poised to make a killing from World War II, with most of the deal coming courtesy of the US Navy and its congressional overlord LBJ and the powerful congressman from Houston, Albert Thomas. Sweig posits that she coped with the insecurity by making herself increasingly indispensable. LBJ struggled with depressionLady Bird called it the Valley of the Black Pig, quoting Yeatsand more so as the Vietnam War took an immense psychological toll. My marginalia included NR v Helene von Damm (Reagans secretary in California, who rose to become a diplomat and considered Nancy a schemer), NR v Betty Ford, NR v Barbara Bush, NR v Raisa Gorbachev (an instant loathing), NR v Barbara Sinatra. Then again, she didnt really like dealing with many men: NR v Ed Meese, NR v William Clark, NR v James Watt, NR v Al Haig, NR v Pat Buchanan. At varying times, she clashed with Ronnies children from his first marriageMichael and Maureenand with theirs, Patti and Ron. She was replaced as first lady by Lyndon Johnson's wife, Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson, when Lyndon Johnson replaced Kennedy as president. And an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam begins to overshadow just about everything else. Someday, a first gentleman will be called upon to match that care and dedication. The result was not just a slow down in the delivery of fuel and military supplies, but a greatly enhanced risk to the lives of Halliburtons drivers, who were becoming easily identifiable targets for the growing insurgency in Iraq. The Browns were furious at Oldss rulings and pleaded with Johnson to defeat his renomination. The wife, your wife, is the most important asset youll have, he declared. From his early days running the Texas branch of FDRs National Youth Administration, LBJ had set his eyes on landing a seat in the US senate. Indeed, he bragged about his prowess at securing powerful and deep-pocketed backers, saying that his rise to the senate had been Brown & Root funded.. Like many other US companies that choose to turn a blind eye to the regimes more sanginary manifestations, Halliburton had been working in Iraq since the early 1970s, even though the Ford and Carter administrations had both refused to recognize the socialist government. Then an unexpected thing happened. For Johnson, the decision to continue the Vietnam commitment followed the path of his predecessors. He was committed to maintaining an independent South Vietnam and to achieving success in Southeast Asia. Hunt and Sid Richardson. He exacted revenge with a bombshell memoir revealing the extent to which the White House schedule was dictated by astrology. Unlike many others in Congress during the 1940s, Johnson wasnt rich. She also used her inheritance to finance Lyndons successful bid for a House seat in 1937 and, in the years following, helped cultivate what she termed our political machine. During World War II, when LBJ was on active duty in the Pacific, she ran his congressional office. With her familys money as a seed investment, she helped build an empire of Texas media and business holdings. WebAs of 2022, Lady Bird Johnsons net worth is under review. Nearly every other venture racked up huge levels of debt and legal liabilities. As a result, Halliburton flourished. They got all of the contracts to build all of the bases, roads, and airports in Vietnam. In 1962, Herman Brown died and his brother, George, began searching for possible corporate suitors who might take over the company. In 1973, Halliburton won a $120 million contract to build Iraqs two mammoth oil terminals in the Persian Gulf off the coast from Umm Qasr. Speaking of Halliburtons logistics work for the Pentagon in the Balkans, Cheney said, the first person to greet our soldiers as they arrive and the last one to wave good-bye is one our employees. Halliburton: the Alpha and Omega of Pentagon contractors. 1: Fourteen DaysIn her first-ever diary entry, recorded eight days after President John F. Kennedy is assassinated, Lady Bird presents a dramatic, cinematically detailed moment-by-moment account of those terrible hours in Dallas, and the days that follow. She was quick to suspect that aides might be serving their own interests before hisand she wasnt always wrong. Fifty-two years later, Halliburton offered its corporate jets for use by George Bush and his campaign team during the 2000 campaign and subsequent tumultuous Florida recount. Plus American exclusion, Zoom justice, Andrew Yang, puberty TV, first ladies, giant closets, and more. Unlike her conflict-averse husband, she played the ruthless enforcer, conducting feuds and engineering firings. The situation had gotten so dire that the US Embassy in Baghdad, then under the command of John Negroponte, issued what is known as a Cure Notice, a stark warning to Halliburton executives that if the companys performance didnt improve the $1.2 billion contract would be terminated. Halliburton acquired Dresser for $7.7 billion, which proved to be at least 16 percent more than the companys actual value. He can be reached at:sitka@comcast.netor on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3. Most notably, Halliburtons US government contracts bulged from $1.2 billion to $2.3 billion under Cheneys reign as CEO. In this busy milieu, Lady Bird was, she said, so happy being the wife of the senator from Texas., Julia E. Sweig: The lost story of Lady Bird, So happy was sheand so aware of how her husband would chafe at a subordinate rolethat when John F. Kennedy drafted LBJ as his running mate in 1960, she made the case for not accepting. The Defense Contract Audit Agency report comes on top of previous investigations tagging Halliburton, and its Kellogg, Brown and Root subsidiary, for more than $442 million in unsupported billings for its work in Iraq, including charges for meals that were never served, $45 cases of pop, unnecessary heavy equipment, tailoring fees and $152,000 for movie screenings. In the end, the Naval Air Station cost the Pentagon more than $125 million. Halliburton, which employed thousands of foreign-born subcontractors, even went so far as to operate segregated dining facilities and Americans Only bathrooms. Lady Bird Johnson greets supporters during a westward trip while campaigning for her husband Lyndon B. Johnson's presidential bid, in 1964. During World War II and Korea, Brown & Root made billions building bases and ships in the US. Victoria Thompson and Eric Johnson are executive producers and Suzie Liu is a producer with ABC News. The company made a cool $500 million from the deal. Brown & Root also understood that government contracts are a lot easier to get if you have a politician on retainer. Halliburton quickly moved to replace those revenues with an equally rich stream from Irans neighbor and blood enemy, the Baathist republic of Iraq, now under the grip of Saddam Hussein. Halliburton failed to demonstrate its prices for Kuwait fuel were fair and reasonable', the auditors wrote in their report. She and Nancys feckless biological father had effectively separated before their daughter was born; in early girlhood, Nancy was lodged with an aunt and uncle while her mother sought gigs. The 1948 election needed to be both bought and stolen. Ronnie affirmed her through flirtatious quips and love letters; her love language was acts of service, chief among them the act of protection. But thats only a rough opening bid for the true scale of the looting, in large part because the companys indefatigable stonewalling. Why? This time his opponent was Coke Stevenson, rancher, bigot and anti-communist. We tend to date a modern shift to 1992, when Bill Clinton proposed a two-for-the-price-of-one presidency with Hillary. But what I am certain no one knows is that she was arguably the most influential member of the Johnson administration. Emhoffs little side step of uncertainty got raves. It seems that a certain Luis Salas, following the suggestion of a Brown & Root lawyer, began scouring the courthouse for a missing box of ballots. Ep. Nearly 40 years ago, Halliburton faced almost identical charges over its work for the U.S. government in Vietnam -- allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts As the war drew to a close, Brown & Root went from building ships to melting more than 20,000 surplus airplanes they bought on the cheap from the War Assets Administration. Lady Bird feels increasing under siege, even as she vows not to retreat into a bubble in the White House. (There was also yellow, for iffy ones.) The GAO audit should have given the company a black eye and caused the government to reconsider the outscourcing of wartime logistics work, but the prophetic report was buried by the Pentagon and ignored by the press. If theyve read any of the LBJ histories, they might remember that she used her inheritance to finance Lyndons first congressional campaign. When the oil boom hit Texas, the wildcatters and other drillers quickly began experiencing problems with their deep shafts. Soon after Eisenhowers election, Anderson, who had funneled more than $200,000 into the Eisenhower-Nixon campaign, was invited to join the administration as a consultant to the National Security Council. They owned a few congressmen, but an obedient senator was the key to a higher order of riches. Thats real money, even by Pentagon standards. LBJs first shot at the senate came in 1941, after Texas Senator Morris Sheppard keeled over from a brain hemorrhage. In the spring of 2005, the Bush administration over-ruled its own auditors and awarded Halliburton a $9.4 million bonus for its work in Afghanistan and Kuwait, operations which the Pentagon described as excellent.. Brown sluiced cash into LBJs campaign and he sailed to victory in a special election on May 13, 1937. Yet, even the most forgiving analysis of the Yale dropouts leadership of Halliburton must admit that the Cheney years were marked by a series of staggering false moves and financial missteps that nearly crippled the company. The most peculiar billing found in this limited series of transactions was a $27.5 million charge for shipping cooking gas and heating fuel that the Pentagon auditors valued at $82,000. The higher the costs, the bigger the profits. Finally, he was able to use the war to further his political career and gain more control over the government. Nancy longed for a more conventional home life. This neat trick was followed by a huge cost-plus contract to build the US military base on Guam in the south Pacific, a deal that started out with a price tag of $25 million but soon ballooned to more than $250 million. Negroponte followed up his threat by recruiting the Parsons Corporation, Halliburtons archrival, to execute some of the remaining work in the south. Parsons had previously been awarded the $800 million contract to repair and manage the oil fields around Kirkuk in northern Iraq. The Clinton years were very good to Halliburton right to the final days. We just have to look. Ep. A GAO investigation also revealed that Halliburton was billing the Pentagon for cleaning offices in US bases the Balkans four times a day. Of course, the deal had sublime benefits for the Clinton administration as well. Return the national parks to the tribes, how well remember the pandemic, a kidnapping gone wrong, and the women reinventing the Western. This prison, which serves as the torture and interrogation center for Bushs wars, was originally designed to hold Haitians and, according to some sources, Cubans, in the event of the collapse of the Castro government. When Halliburton bought Dresser, it also acquired the companys enormous asbestos liability, a burden which Cheney assured company stockholders would be resolved without material effect. Its the kind of casual lie covering a metastasizing problem that would become a Cheney signature as vice president. TSHA | Taylor, Thomas Jefferson II The Corpus Christi Naval Air Station was one of the first cost-plus contracts, a sweet deal where the government simply pays every bill the contractor submits. WebMoreover, the enormous financial cost of the war, reaching $25 billion in 1967, diverted money from Johnsons cherished Great Society programs and began to fuel inflation. When Mossadegh moved forward with his plans, the oil companies appealed to President Eisenhower to intervene, who turned the matter over to his National Security Council. In the stunned aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, she sought out Jackie: I tried to express something of how we felt. If I asked, say, a few hundred people anywhere over 25 or 30 years old, its a good bet theyd know a few things. A few months after La Nouvelle took over, the tab soared to $1.2 million a month. It informed Halliburton that the company no longer had to submit a public record of the fuel purchases. Bob Gomel/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images. In addition to Brown & Root, the Brown family also owned the Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation, then the nations biggest natural gas pipeline company. The most surprising moments from LBJs secretly recorded calls Sweigs writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, the Nation, the National Interest and in Brazils Folha de So Paulo. Working together, LBJ and Thomas convinced the Navy to give Brown & Root a lucrative shipbuilding contract, even though, as investigative reporter Robert Bryce notes, up until that point the company had never built so much as a canoe.. Francis Miller/The LIFE Picture Collection via. WebJacqueline did not remain first lady. Halliburton got a $200 million cost/plus contract to work in Kosovo. Three New Revelations About Cheney didnt have much experience in the corporate world before becoming Halliburtons chieftain and his tenure there shows it. They also followed a familiar contour: the contracts were awarded without competitive bidding and on a cost-plus basis with a guaranteed profit built-in. During the Vietnam War, Lady Bird woke to hear President Johnson talking to himself in the early-morning darkness. When Eartha Kitt Disrupted the Ladies Who Lunch | The New Yorker While millions were splurged on opulent accommodations for its executives, bribes and kickbacks and scandalously inflated laundry bills, Halliburton skimped on the maintenance of its vehicles, which were transporting fuel and supplies on the dangerous desert roads from Kuwait to the US bases in Iraq.

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