But just as their most ambitious, controversial project is about to get underway, tragedy strikes. The 1948 election needed to be both bought and stolen. The adventurous and well-read Minnie Taylor died after a fall while pregnant. Of course, the acquisition of Brown & Root had another great advantage for Halliburton. 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. And that although she took personal risks to campaign in the south for civil rights, she couldnt quite figure out what to make of Black protests in American cities or dissent against the war. The congress granted to the administration of Lyndon Baines Johnson for 1965 $700 million for the expected ramping up of a direct American military role. We tend to date a modern shift to 1992, when Bill Clinton proposed a two-for-the-price-of-one presidency with Hillary. This thread is archived New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast 24K 675 comments I am not sure that the above answer is accurate but I can't prove it. This contract was to prove immensely profitable over the next three war-plagued decades. They hated to spend nights apart, and famously (or infamously) called each other Mommie and Daddy. Johnson had it a little easier, as his symbiotic relationship with Brown & Root occurred before campaign finance laws required candidates to reveal the sources of their Nearly every other venture racked up huge levels of debt and legal liabilities. In 1992, Halliburton won a $3.9 million contract from the Pentagon in the waning days of the George H.W. As our vision of high-level political partnership gets a reboot (the first-ever first lady whos not giving up her career, the first-ever second gentleman), it seems a good time to recall just how undefined the role of unelected spouse has been. Then an unexpected thing happened. 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. After he ascended to the Senate in 1948, she became a force in the Senate Wives Club, a group of spouses who exercised a sort of soft power in postwar Washingtons political life. But the company had an ace in the hole in the shape of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the lumbering former schoolteacher who was vying to replace the departed Buchanan. For example, Halliburton sent the Pentagon a bill for $240 million in dining hall charges for feeding 4,700 troops each day. Particularly involved in the War on Poverty, Lady Bird braved the consequences of the entire mission: The first presidential wife to act as a true surrogate, she made a whistle-stop tour of the South during the 1964 contestnot just his advocate, but his protector. In July, the Pentagon discreetly let slip that it had awarded Halliburton a fat new contract for yet more logistics work in Iraq. Even congress was denied a peak at the reports findings until mid-March 2005. Thats real money, even by Pentagon standards. Needless to say, this prospect didnt sit well with Halliburton and the consortium of British and American oil companies exploiting Irans petroleum wealth. He shed much of his New Dealer image and reemerged as a Southern populist, touting his votes against an anti-lynching bill, against Trumans bill to outlaw the poll tax, and for the union-busting Taft-Hartley Act. Two years later Saddam hired Halliburton once again. But no. For those flights, the Bush campaign reimbursed Halliburton only the cost of one first class ticket. Erle changed the name of the company to Halliburton and raked in millions from his patent. Deaver did, tooas deputy chief of staff in the governors office, he had been tasked with what his colleagues called the Mommy Watch, charged with keeping her away from others. Over the next few days, precincts across the vast state counted and recounted their votes. In southern Iraq, much of Halliburtons logistics work ended up in the hands of a Kuwaiti firm called La Nouvelle, which handled meals, sanitation facilities and laundry. In late 1940s, Halliburton began doing business in Bahrain, followed by an equally lucrative contract with the royal family of Kuwait to manage that kingdoms oil fields. At the time of the takeover, Dresser was facing more than 66,000 claims for asbestos-related health problems from its subsidiary Harrison-Walker. In fact, the company patriarch, Erle P. Red Halliburton, despised the federal government. In Iraq, LOGCAP would be a recipe for rampant fraud over the basic of services. Jeffrey St. Clairis editor of CounterPunch. He also was able to increase his wealth through various business deals and investments. Ironically, Altanmia executives griped that they were forced to charge that hefty amount in order to cover the kickbacks and bribes they were forced to pay to Halliburton officials in order to secure the contract. WebPresident Johnson and his advisers were and risk nuclear war in the interests of capitalist profit. That she was a keen political strategist -- I think the one Lyndon Johnson trusted and confided in most. And on her return to Washington, a sex scandal involving Lyndons closest aide presents an October surprise that could easily upend the election. LBJs first shot at the senate came in 1941, after Texas Senator Morris Sheppard keeled over from a brain hemorrhage. Each time they were bombed, Halliburton was called in to repair the damage. Then more ballots mysteriously materialized, and ODaniel claimed victory by 1,311 votes. 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. And there it sat. But then dissent comes to lunch at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, when singer, actor and activist Eartha Kitt participates in one of Lady Birds Doers Luncheons, and delivers a fierce critique of the war and its effect on young Black men. Im so scared, she said. Lady Bird Johnson travelled to Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines and Malaysia in 1967. First lady Lady Bird Johnson greets supporters while campaigning for her husband President Lyndon B. Johnson's bid for the Presidency in 1964. The plan came to be known as LOGCAP and Halliburton soon got an additional $5 million to flesh out the details. The justice issued an order overturning the state judges injunction and also put the brakes on a parallel investigation into vote fraud in Jim Wells County. 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. In fact, at that precise moment Cheney enjoyed options on 43,300 shares of Halliburton stock and was pocketing $162,392 a year in deferred compensation from the company. Ronnie affirmed her through flirtatious quips and love letters; her love language was acts of service, chief among them the act of protection. Cheney swiftly announced two goals for the company: make it the top Pentagon contractor and greatly expand its contractual relationships with foreign governments. This article appears in the May 2021 print edition with the headline The Power of the First Lady., You Wont Remember the Pandemic the Way You Think You Will, America Never Wanted the Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses. Of course, the deal had sublime benefits for the Clinton administration as well. In the late winter of 1937, the imperious Texas Congressman James P. Bucky Buchanan, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, suddenly died in office. The company had essentially written its own job description, a scenario that would make that initial payment mushroom into the billions. When Cheney went to Halliburton he took along some of his old pals at the Pentagon with him, most notably Admiral Joe Lopez, a top Cheney aid during the Bush I regime. Still, tandem toil was one thing; staking out too much terrain for herself was another. How Lady Bird Johnson and Nancy Reagan advanced their husbands ambitionsand their own. The evidence suggests that the Pentagon used Iraqi oil proceeds to overpay Halliburton, says Waxman. By outsourcing most of the logistics work in Kosovo, the Pentagon was able to reduce its deployment by around 8,000 troops, helping Clinton and Albright to sell an unpopular war at home. In reality, of course, the privatization of military logistics operations was neither cost-conscious nor particularly efficient. Lady Bird Johnson isnt exactly an obscure figure in the life of the nation. Both Johnsons knew they had to seize the momentum of the national tragedy and rapidly push through a progressive agenda, which soon became known as the Great Society. This time the Iraq government contracted with the Houston firm to build a long oil pipeline, that would skirt Iranian bombs, running from Basra to Yanbu on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia. They figured he could do them less damage in Washington. Most notably, Halliburtons US government contracts bulged from $1.2 billion to $2.3 billion under Cheneys reign as CEO. Instead, Lt. General Strock steered the cost-plus contract into Halliburtons hands without the faintest whiff of competition. What is the birth He had a maniacal drive for money and power. He was able to increase his power and influence both domestically and internationally. Yet, instead of firing of Cheney for this calamitous mistake, the Halliburton board, now ornamented by the rotund figure of former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, awarded its chieftain a $1.5 million bonus for his decisive role in the doomed acquisition. Halliburton would continue to work on a variety of projects in Iraq right up until the first Gulf War. Although she never once called herself a feminist, in the doing, her values aligned squarely with the more outspoken feminists of the time. Gathered around that table just down the hall from the office Douglas Feith were ranking officials from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as the Pentagon. While Defense Secretary, Cheney defended this kind of military outsourcing as an efficient way to control spiraling costs. It would become the most expensive political campaign waged in Texas until George W. Bush, underwritten by the descendents of LBJs backers, defeated Anne Richards in the fierce 1994 gubernatorial campaign. Fluor-Daniel, Parsons and GSM Services were all were just as qualified for the task. During Reagans second term, she saw the peril posed by the Iran-Contra scandal and hectored a stubbornly resistant Ronnie until, in a crucial speech to the American public, he admitted to the arms-for-hostages deal, and to his own mistake. Halliburton never uttered the meekest protest about the grossly inflated fuel prices. LBJ had the good fortune to land on the congressional committee overseeing the operations of the US Navy as it prepared for World War II. In The Triumph of Nancy Reagan, the Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty likewise invokes a teammate without whom her spouse would never have been governor of California, much less president of the United States. Unlike her conflict-averse husband, she played the ruthless enforcer, conducting feuds and engineering firings. 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. In some cases, the pipes would even explode. Halliburton agreed to acquire Brown & Root for the bargain basement price of $36.7 million, far below the market value of the company. License granted by CSK Legacy, LLC, Atlanta, Georgia, as exclusive licensor of Coretta Scott King's estate. That her thing about flowers was really a cover for a pretty radical environmentalism. Often these bills exceeded the true costs of the projects by 300 or even 400 percentwith Halliburton snagging a built-in profit from the bribe-bloated contracts. Ep. 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.. But you didnt hear daily drumbeats about the outrageous rip-off on FoxNews. Halliburton failed to demonstrate its prices for Kuwait fuel were fair and reasonable', the auditors wrote in their report. Black was a New Dealer elevated to the high bench by FDR. It turns out that there wasnt much for these managers from Houston to manage. Wrong. But one might also diagnose a codependent partnership between two people who felt abandoned in childhoodReagans father was an alcoholicand formed a profoundly anxious attachment. WebJacqueline did not remain first lady. The deal was worth $2 billion. 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. But the most majestic profits, as always, were to be made during wartime and LBJ gave them a big one. LBJ did more than that. The bagman was none other than John Connolly, the future governor of Texas and Halliburton board member. 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.. That she understood early on that the Vietnam War might well destroy her husbands presidency. 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. These claims eventually totaled something on the order of $5.5 billion, an amount that threatened to bankrupt Halliburton. Feeling the urgency, Lady Bird is looking for ways to make beautification have more impact for the people who need it most. Let me take the tough ones, she said, shouldering what was arguably the hardest, most thankless, and personally riskiest task of the campaign, Sweig writes, given the hate and outrage among many white southerners after the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Another Cheney veteran worked along side Lopez to keep the government contracts flowing to Houston. Cheney didnt have much experience in the corporate world before becoming Halliburtons chieftain and his tenure there shows it. The congressman, who controlled the federal purse, was in the midst of pushing through congress the Lower Colorado River Project, a scheme to build a network of dams across the Texas hill country that would bring water to the people and millions in federal funds to favored contractors. Even here Halliburton benefited. 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. Altanmia charged Halliburton a hefty $2.65 per gallon, roughly the price charged at the pump in Washington, D.C. Brown & Root also understood that government contracts are a lot easier to get if you have a politician on retainer. With good reason. The Army didnt consider it necessary to reveal the terms of the deal, a Pentagon spokesman explained to Reuters. Soon there were other summonses from the Middle East. Moreover, US government financing for Halliburton projects in the Third World soared soon after the Wizard of Wyoming took control of the company, ballooning from $100 million in the five years prior to Cheneys arrival to more than $1.5 billion during his time at the helm. As for LBJ, he later said that Wirtz was like a daddy to me. WebEartha Kitt confronts President Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson about the Vietnam War at a White House luncheon. A little more than a week after having arrived in DC, the freshly hatched congressman had engineered congressional approval for both the appropriation and the land purchase. For a moment, it looked as if Halliburton might be left out in the cold. 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. Several of the subcontracts in Iraq were doled out accompanied by the judicious application of cash bribes. He and Lady Bird fretted about money during the early years of their marriage. She listened, and she empathized with his agonized decisions. 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. Regan, it emerged, had been obliged to devise a color-coded calendar signaling good days (green) and bad ones (red) for trips and meetingsbased on consultations Nancy conducted with a San Francisco stargazer. Indeed, a few months earlier Halliburton had already been paid $1.9 million to draft a plan for how to implement RIO. As far as the Pentagon was concerned all of this was written off to carping from the sidelines by busy-bodies and tightwads at the State Department. Mossadegh was arrested and thrown in to jail and Reza Pahlavi was re-installed on the Peacock Throne as the Shah of Iran. This coincided with the assassination of Diem (with American collusion) and subsequent chaos in the South Vietnamese government, administration and army. This time his opponent was Coke Stevenson, rancher, bigot and anti-communist. While the US oil companies were later given the boot by the Saudi royal family, Halliburton continued to prosper, constructing pipelines, refineries and oil terminals. Tumulty calls theirs an epic love story, an observation confirmed by the eyewitness accounts of many. "Lady Bird" Johnson, the wife of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, the nation's 36th president, died Wednesday at the age of 94. She doesnt really like dealing with women, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver noted, in an understatement. In an email documenting a meeting between Altanmia executives and officials at the US embassy in Kuwait City an Altanmia manager is quoted as saying that anyone visiting their [i.e., Halliburtons] seaside villas at the Kuwaiti Hilton who offers provide services will be asked for a bribe.. I needed to take a look at the topic of women and power and the questions that are asked and answered in telling stories, writing about and making history. President Johnson profited from the Vietnam War in many ways. Anderson was a partner in the Houston law firm of Baker Botts, the family firm of James A. Baker, III, which had represented Halliburton for many years. 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. He also courted cash from every corporation and mogul he could find, promising to return their investment tenfold. In 1948 it was also this same DC-3 that made emergency flights to Austin and Dallas in search of cash from the accounts of Brown & Root. 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. Johnson also prevailed upon the Bell Helicopter Company, which would soon relocate to Texas, to loan him a chopper for his campaign. Using money from Lady Birds inheritance and generous infusions of cash from Brown & Root, the Johnsons bought the station, made major upgrades in its operations and squeezed federal broadcast regulators into allowing it to expand its output and change its location to a more central place on the dial. 4: EntangledNetwork television comes calling for Lady Bird, as the president of ABC News convinces a reluctant first lady to host a documentary about her beautification work in DC. Drawn from over 123 hours of the former first ladys mostly unheard daily audio diaries, the podcast presents a surprising and original portrait of Claudia Alta Lady Bird Johnson, told in her own words.