Halliburton’s staff called to testify on Iraq

Joshua Chaffin

Washington, June 15 2004 - A group of former Halliburton employees who have highlighted the company’s wasteful practices in Iraq will be asked to testify before a congressional committee next month.

The decision to invite the Halliburton whistleblowers sets up an embarrassing public hearing for the oilfield services company formerly headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Sworn statements that they have provided to lawmakers offer salacious details of $85,000 (?70,000, £47,000) trucks that were abandoned in Iraq because of flat tyres, $100 laundry bills and other tales of mismanagement.

The whistleblowers’ pending testimony marks a victory for House Democrats, who had lobbied unsuccessfully to have them present at a hearing on Tuesday in the government reform committee that focused on Iraq contracting issues.

Tom Davis, the Republican chairman of the committee, who had held up the whistleblowers’ testimony amid concerns about their credibility, said on Tuesday at least some would be permitted to appear at a July hearing.

Mr Davis also assented to Democrats’ request to invite David Lesar, Halliburton’s chief executive, and Randy Harl, head of the company’s Kellogg Brown & Root division, to appear at the hearing, and to press the Pentagon for documents on dealings with the company not yet handed over.

Iraq contract hearings have served as the stage for a bitter partisan fight in Washington, with Democrats such as Henry Waxman, a California congressman, attacking Mr Cheney’s former company as a way to hammer the White House.

"Halliburton is gouging the taxpayer, and the Bush administration doesn’t care," Mr Waxman declared on Tuesday, noting that the company had received more than $7bn in Iraq contracts so far.

Mr Davis responded: "I’m not new to politics. I understand why others feel the need to say the word Halliburton as often as humanly possible."

During testimony, government auditors issued damning assessments of the Pentagon’s handling of contracts both to rebuild Iraq and to support its operations there. David Walker, comptroller general, claimed that the defence department demonstrated poor planning and attention to cost after the tumult of the invasion.

"The Department of Defence is an ’A+’ on fighting a war. They’re a ’D’ on economy, efficiency, transparency and accountability," Mr Walker said, when asked to grade its performance.

One of the more egregious examples cited was a contract for dining facilities in Kuwait that the army had granted to a local company called Tamimi. Costs escalated after the Bush administration turned the contract over to Halliburton when war began. According to congressional auditors, those costs then fell by 40 per cent, or $2.5m a month, after Halliburton was later removed.

"The cost of that contract declined dramatically when KBR was cut out," said Neal Curtin, director of defence capabilities at the General Accounting Office.

Mr Curtin said the Pentagon was making the same mistakes in Iraq that it made in the early days of its mission in the Balkans and that it suffered from a lack of procurement experts.

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