http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/10/30/wus230.xml
FBI investigates contracts given to Cheney firm
By David Rennie
(Filed: 30/10/2004)
Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign yesterday seized on news
that the FBI had begun a criminal investigation into whether the
Pentagon improperly awarded multi-billion-pound Iraq contracts to
Halliburton, the firm formerly headed by vice-president Dick Cheney.
Lovefilm
Senator John Edwards, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, said
the army's awarding of "no-bid" contracts to Halliburton, in the
run-up to the war, was evidence of the Bush administration's pandering
to special interests.
The disclosure that the FBI was expanding an investigation into
Halliburton's lucrative Iraqi operations was merely the latest in a
string of unwanted election-eve surprises for President George W Bush.
Four days from the election, Mr Bush and his campaign proxies have
found themselves fighting off bad news stories, when they wanted to
focus on the strengths of the President, and their belief that Mr
Kerry was unfit for office.
The investigation refers to a no-bid contract for oil infrastructure
repairs awarded to a Halliburton subsidiary before the war without
competition. The Pentagon said Kellogg, Brown & Root was the only firm
with the expertise and security clearances to take on the work, and
that argument had largely blunted Democratic attacks on the issue.
But the new criminal investigation stems from allegations levelled by
a top civilian official in the US army, in charge of contracting
matters for the corps of engineers, and now turned "whistle-blower".
Bunnatine Greenhouse claims she was threatened with demotion after she
asked why Halliburton executives were allowed to sit in on high-level
internal army meetings to draw up terms for the contract.
She was also warned to stop interfering when she wrote a hand-written
note of reservation on the final contract, after it was extended from
one to five years.
The FBI, which was already investigating allegations that KBR
over-charged the government �34 million for fuel, is now seeking to
interview Mrs Greenhouse formally.
Campaign headlines were also dominated yesterday by the continuing
mystery surrounding the disappearance of 377 tons of high explosive
from an Iraqi bunker in the aftermath of the US invasion, even though
the Pentagon knew of the stockpile.
Mr Kerry said the case was a symbol of what he called the Bush
administration's mishandling of the Iraq occupation. The Bush campaign
and the Pentagon suggested that the explosives were moved by Saddam
before the war. The former Iraq commander, Gen Tommy Franks, was
enlisted to echo the President's assertion that Mr Kerry was
denigrating US troops by asking about the explosives, before all the
facts were available.
But ABC television has footage of US troops examining what appear to
be the explosives in their bunkers, days after the invasion.
Most bizarrely, the Pentagon held a press conference yesterday with a
blinking, stammering army officer, Maj Austin Pearson, who said he had
removed 250 tons of munitions and other material from the bunkers.
The administration said that Maj Pearson's haul might have included
the missing explosives but, under questioning, Maj Pearson said none
of the material he took bore IAEA seals or markings, apparently making
the entire press conference irrelevant.
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