did lady bird johnson profit from the vietnam war

The Marshall Ford Dam deal launched LBJs career a can-do politician without parallel in American politics and it set Brown & Root on course to become one of the federal governments favorite contractors. But those off-shore subsidiaries werent merely a way of hiding money from corporate auditors, the SEC and the IRS. Mossadegh was arrested and thrown in to jail and Reza Pahlavi was re-installed on the Peacock Throne as the Shah of Iran. But shes met with open hostility, and worse. Tumulty calls theirs an epic love story, an observation confirmed by the eyewitness accounts of many. Unlike her conflict-averse husband, she played the ruthless enforcer, conducting feuds and engineering firings. A company limousine met him at the airport and whisked away to the Brown & Root suite at the Lamar Hotel, where a victory party was in full swing featuring whiskey, women and the richest oil men in Texas men who were primed to get a lot richer. As the partnership between LBJ and Brown & Root propelled both the company and the politician to new heights of power and wealth, Halliburton was taking a different track: capitalizing on the globalization of the oil industry. The bagman was none other than John Connolly, the future governor of Texas and Halliburton board member. Thats real money, even by Pentagon standards. Johnson, however, flew back to Houston the night after his destruction of Olds on a private jet owned by Brown & Root. Some staffers, like James Baker, understood her influence and made a point of getting along. 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. The company made a cool $500 million from the deal. I am not sure that the above answer is accurate but I can't prove it. Call it the Oil-for-Contracts scandal. The Halliburton audits were also concealed from a team of investigators from the United Nations, which is probing profiteering from oil contracts in Iraq. The steel pipe funneling the oil up from the Permian basin and other reservoirs of crude would sooner or later develop cracks, allowing groundwater to contaminate the crude. 5: CaliforniaRiots, uprisings and protests rock the country in the summer of 1966, and despite their progress with civil rights legislation, the Johnsons cant seem to move fast enough. This contract was to prove immensely profitable over the next three war-plagued decades. Two years later, Halliburton would land the contract to build the other big torture center at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. DETAILS BELOW. This article was published online on April 20, 2021. Not necessarily the company that would do the best job, but the one that would charge the most for the work, since Halliburtons built-in profits came as a fixed percentage of the costs. We hear about the decade-long relationship between the two of them, one that dates back to the Kennedys arrival in Washington in the mid-50s, and hear fascinating observations these women make about each other. Olds, a former muckraking reporter, was appointed by FDR to head the commission, which set power rates and regulated natural gas prices. Im so scared, she said. 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. 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. In 1900 he married Minnie Lee Patillo of 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. Lady Bird would later describe the day, according to Gomolak: Person after person plucked at my sleeve and said, I wouldnt be here today if it wasnt for him. In the summer of that year, George Brown worked out a strange deal with Halliburton, which was looking to diversify its operations. On August 19, 1953, the CIA launched its coup. Someday, a first gentleman will be called upon to match that care and dedication. This thread is archived New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast 24K 675 comments At an October 2002 meeting, Michael Mobbs, an assistant to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, parlayed with Cheneys chief of staff Lewis Scooter Libby to personally deliver the jubilant news that Halliburton had gotten the RIO planning contract. If theyve read any of the LBJ histories, they might remember that she used her inheritance to finance Lyndons first congressional campaign. 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. Halliburton spent more than $73 million a year just to house its executives in Kuwaitthats $73 million a year billed to the Pentagon, plus a two percent profit tacked on for good measure. In the immediate wake of the Dresser acquisition, Cheney fired 10,000 of the companys employees. One former Halliburton employee said that the company had inflated costs on 224 different projects in Kosovo. The unusually frank assessment accused Halliburton of undocumented cost overruns totaling tens of millions of dollars and generally poor performance.. In June 2004, the company eased out Jack Shanley, chairman of its Kellogg, Brown & Root subsidiary, for having received improper benefits from this very account. 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. 3: RenewalFresh from landslide victory in the 1964 election, Lyndon and Lady Bird shuttle back and forth between Washington, DC and Texas as they make plans for their first full term in office. On September 29, 1948, Black came through. Before La Nouvelle picked up the subcontract to do the laundry at a US military base near Basra, the monthly cleaning bill had averaged around $62,000. By the end of March 2005, more than 65 Halliburton employees had been killed in Iraq and more than 200 injuredthe most of any private contractor in the war zone. Then in 1995, at the same time Cheney was taking over the reins at Halliburton, the Pentagon handed the company a $550 million contract to provide logistical support for US and NATOs IFOR forces in Bosnia, Croatia and Hungry. 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. 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. He ran on an anti-union and anti-FDR platform that appealed to rural Texas voters. Evidence of the systematic accounting fraud at Halliburton during the Cheney years has now been marshaled into a class action suit by Halliburton shareholders that may even yet doom the company. And yes, of her power. But the most majestic profits, as always, were to be made during wartime and LBJ gave them a big one. She listened, and she empathized with his agonized decisions. Her motivation was not to expand her own portfolio: She wanted only to promote her husbands well-being and success, ferociously tending him and his image. That she was a keen political strategist -- I think the one Lyndon Johnson trusted and confided in most. For all her devotion (including, or especially, when he developed Alzheimers disease), Nancy emerges in the biography as a disruptive force, to put it mildly, in the political life they shared, particularly on staffing matters. 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. Old hands at Halliburton remember Cheney as arrogant and inept, a clumsy autocrat. LBJ lived up to his obligations. 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. But what I am certain no one knows is that she was arguably the most influential member of the Johnson administration. Like Lady Bird, Nancy served as a mood regulator: She knew how well Reagan could perform when confident and relaxed, and her presence improved his performance. 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. Soon there were other summonses from the Middle East. In 1919, Red Halliburton started the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company from his home in Wilson, Oklahoma, a hardscrabble town in the oil patch. True to form, Johnson never tried to conceal the role his corporate sponsors played in securing the 1948 election. 1968: Vietnam stance was Ali's fight of a lifetime 1968 pageant proved black is beautiful A year of chaos and change Reports about the incident made it seem that Kitt, An Army Corps of Engineers email, uncovered by Time Magazine, disclosed that the initial decision to have Halliburton draft the RIO plan had been coordinated with the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight at the best online prices at eBay! For a moment, it looked as if Halliburton might be left out in the cold. Almost immediately, Cheney began poking his fingers into the Halliburton corporate machine, with, it must be said, less than glamorous results. He won round one. 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. Erle changed the name of the company to Halliburton and raked in millions from his patent. "He had no stomach for it," she told me, "no heart for it; it wasn't the war he wanted. In fact, the contract was secretly handed to Halliburton in May, but the Pentagon kept it underwraps for more than a month. In 1965, Halliburton formed a consortium with the Idaho-based firm Morrison-Knudsen to manage big construction projects for the Pentagon in Vietnam. During World War II, Halliburton was called upon to help build the infrastructure for the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, launching a profitable relationship with the petro-kingdom that persists to this day. The top priority on that February morning was to decide which US company would receive the juicy contract to put out the expected oil field fires and to rebuild and manage Iraqs oil infrastructure, from the wellheads to the pipelines to the big oil terminals off the coast near Basra. Kitt's defence of America's young soldiers elicits tears from the First Lady and results in the CIA opening a dossier on her. 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. 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. Similarly, Halliburton kept the Pentagon investigators in the dark about the prices it paid for purchasing fuel from Turkey and Jordan. 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. She currently We just have to look. 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. But within a year, the cost had soared to more than $45 million, with Brown & Root pocketing more than $2.4 million in profits. In 1995, Halliburton hired Dick Cheney as its CEO. Over the course of the fall of 2002 and the early winter of 2003, Halliburton executives met on several occasions with Cheneys staff at the White House and at the Pentagon. And yet, after nearly two years in office, the Johnsons still find themselves in the shadow of the glamorous Kennedys, when a high profile event at the White House brings the Johnsons their first taste of public protest and bad press. Pentagon auditors concluded that La Nouvelle was overbilling for its laundry services alone by at least $1 million a month, with Halliburton enjoying its slice of the profits without even having had to break a sweat. The spot was sunny, safe and expensive. Indeed, its fair to say that the only life-support for the company during those five years was the nearly inexhaustible tide of cash coming from Halliburtons Pentagon contracts. Much of the fuel those Halliburton drivers were carrying into Iraq came courtesy of a company called Altanmia, a Kuwait firm with cozy ties to the countrys royal family. It was an early lesson in the demented logic of Pentagon contracting: the bigger the cost-overruns, the juicier the profits. Brown & Root harbored similar ambitions for their man. I think a womans real happiness and fulfillment is found in her home., Read: Nancy Reagans real role in the AIDS crisis. This single invoice amounted to an overcharge of more than 335 times the value of the liquified natural gas delivered by Halliburtons subcontractors. April 16, 1965, Lady Bird Johnson poses for Okamoto at her ranch. And shes rightit was. There was another curious hitch to the Halliburton RIO deal. And to purchase an Austin radio station that she probably had a big hand in growing into a very successful media company. Lynda was born on March 19, 1944 in Washington, D.C. They got all of the contracts to build all of the bases, roads, and airports in Vietnam. So let the man use his privilege to shield and protect the woman, an old role deployed for a modern purpose. In all a report prepared by the Democratic Policy Committee estimates that Halliburtons overcharges in Iraq alone exceed $1 billion. This episode includes one of the most consequential. Unlike many others in Congress during the 1940s, Johnson wasnt rich. In the late winter of 1937, the imperious Texas Congressman James P. Bucky Buchanan, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, suddenly died in office. He was able to increase his power and influence both domestically and internationally. The final fix may have been made by a cabal of Texas oil men and ranchers who wanted ODaniel out of Austin.

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