did lady bird johnson profit from the vietnam war

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. Even here Halliburton benefited. But Johnsons Vietnam War forever changed the role of Pentagon contractors, and Halliburtons Brown & Root subsidiary lead the way. Indeed, a few weeks before Saddam sent his tanks into Kuwait, the Iraqi government had paid Halliburton $57 million for its work on the Mina Al-Bakr terminal and a seismographic project to help the Iraqi Oil Exploration Company enhance its exploration technology. The remarkable thing is that Halliburtons looting of Iraq and the US treasury happened in broad daylight, right under the nose of the press, the Democrats and Michael Moore, who made Dick Cheneys former company the bete noir of his film 9/11. Nothing deterred the company from capitalizing on the war it helped orchestrate. Birds a true believer in progressive causes -- civil rights, environmentalism -- but shes also the product of her own generation and background. With the bulk of the Pentagon contracts cashed in and government investigators closing in on all fronts, Halliburton placed Kellogg, Brown & Root on the market, looking to squeeze one final payout from its golden goose. Lady Bird Johnson Net Worth 2022: Money, Salary, Bio 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. Ep. Jacqueline had a very full life. But you didnt hear daily drumbeats about the outrageous rip-off on FoxNews. We tend to date a modern shift to 1992, when Bill Clinton proposed a two-for-the-price-of-one presidency with Hillary. 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. It was a medium size construction company in Texas. 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 also was able to increase his wealth through various business deals and investments. The company had essentially written its own job description, a scenario that would make that initial payment mushroom into the billions. 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. In fact, the contract was secretly handed to Halliburton in May, but the Pentagon kept it underwraps for more than a month. 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. WebLyndon B. Johnson: Foreign Affairs. The Brown & Root Company shared Halliburtons antipathy toward organized labor, but realized early on that there was a fortune to be made through outsourced government work. At least he didnt see himself that way. This prototype evolved to become the Bell Model 47---the first helicopter to receive FAA Certification. Only six months into the occupation of Iraq, Halliburtons fleets of trucks began to breakdown due to lack of spare parts and shoddy upkeep. LBJs ambush of Olds was scripted by none other than Brown & Roots lawyer, Alvin Wirtz. The damning investigation by the Defense Contract Audit Agency was completed in early October of 2004 and shipped up the line to Pentagons dark triumverate, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. Someday, a first gentleman will be called upon to match that care and dedication. Johnson bought them in San Antonio and southern Texas, while ODaniel, called the greatest campaigner in Texas history, purchased them throughout east Texas. Welcome to the club, any number of women might have told him. 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. 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. Halliburton won another $6.3 million contract to service US troops stationed at the air base in Aviano, Italy, from which US jets launched bombing raids on Yugoslavia. Tumulty credits her with appreciating the full potential of his powers of persuasion, and pushing him to negotiate with Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War. 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. Now that Ive spent more than five years learning her story and telling it for you here and in my book "Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight," I also see how the tendency to look at the infidelity piece of the Johnson marriage winds up demeaning her and stripping her of substance. Halliburton failed to demonstrate its prices for Kuwait fuel were fair and reasonable', the auditors wrote in their report. In 1943, the year Lady Bird Johnson purchased KTBC, the Federal Communications Commission, which reviewed all broadcast-license transfers, was close WebLyndon and Lady Bird Johnson and their connections to Bell Helicopter? 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.. n Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents, Remembering Akbar, Iran, and Other Gnarly Things Like Revolution, The Real Reason Disney is Defying DeSantis, Australia: Outsourced to the US Military Establishment, To End the Gerrymander Wars, Get Algorithmic, How the War on Crypto Triggered a Banking Crisis, The Curious Species Politics of Dinotopia, May Day and the Murder of William McKay: 100 Years Past, How a Tribal Rights Lawyer Is Winning Back the Rights of Nature, We Must Not Dance to the Billionaires Beat, Bushs Mission Accomplished, 20 Years Later, Anxiety as Socialism: AI Moratorium Fantasies, Final Demand Remains Strong, But Inventories Drag Down First Quarter GDP Growth, Not the Last White Man In San Francisco: a Conversation with Artist Charles Albert, Its the Class War, Stupid: An Evening with Noam Chomsky, Demagogues Three: Charles Foster Kane, Willie Stark, and Tucker Carlson, Not Even a Win: The Malevolent and Misogynist Mifepristone Mess Moved to May, As American Life Expectancy Plunges, Political Bigwigs Stay Busy Not Noticing, Letters From Saudi Arabia: Toward the Hejaz, Shivas Bouncing Ball: the New Push for Uranium Mining, Here Come the Militarized Robots (But There Go Our Civil Liberties), Emergencies: Delusions of Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Innocence in Elite Groups, The Rise of China (and the Fall of the U.S.? He won round one. Sure, beautifying highways mattered, but when she was in office, her real focus was on what we now call environmental justice, especially in American cities and on bringing democratic access to nature to people of color especially. Dave Gribbin, one of Cheneys closest aides, left his position as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs for a slot as one of Halliburtons top lobbyists. 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. The $10 million dam deal was the biggest Brown & Root contract to date. I have to admit -- if you had asked me 10 years ago if I could see myself spending more than five years writing about Lady Bird Johnson, and another five months producing a podcast about her, I would have thought I was the wrong woman for the job. LBJ, serving out Brown sluiced cash into LBJs campaign and he sailed to victory in a special election on May 13, 1937. Mossadegh was arrested and thrown in to jail and Reza Pahlavi was re-installed on the Peacock Throne as the Shah of Iran. The deal was worth $2 billion. Halliburton, the signature corporation of the Bush-Cheney onslaught on Iraq, didnt start its corporate life on the government dole. In Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight, Julia Sweig argues that for all her mid-century Betty Crocker flip curls, Bird (as her husband called her) had a disarmingly modern partnership with the president. The Pentagon rejected 12 separate requests from Congressman Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who has spearheaded the ad hoc congressional inquiry into Halliburtons contract abuse, seeking to examine the internal audits of Halliburtons $2.5 billion contract for fuel supplies and other services to the US military and occupation government in Iraq. 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. 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. 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. They hated to spend nights apart, and famously (or infamously) called each other Mommie and Daddy. Two years later, Halliburton won the 5-year renewal of this deal, valued at $180 million. Suddenly, it was. There was an even uglier problem with the Dresser deal that somehow escaped Cheneys notice. In a memo to Lyndon just five months into his presidency, Lady Bird predicts how the Vietnam war will derail his administration, and proposes a clear end-date for his time in office -- fully four years before he shocked the nation with his announcement in March of 1968 that he wouldn't run for reelection. The final fix may have been made by a cabal of Texas oil men and ranchers who wanted ODaniel out of Austin. Lyndon B. Johnson - Election and the Vietnam War | Britannica The Johnson family grew accustomed to the patriarchs dedication to his country, and adapted to the ever-changing, politically-charged atmosphere of Washington. Meanwhile, in that same crucial year of 1919, the other half of Halliburton was also beginning to take shape as two friends from San Marcos, Texas, Herman Brown and Dan Root, formed a road paving company that would eventually become one of the worlds largest construction firms. Amid this turmoil, Lady Birds ideas about her own work are changing -- what started as planting flowers in underserved DC neighborhoods is growing into an agenda that brings environmentalism and social justice together in Americas cities. Francis Miller/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images. Ep. As if they were rerouting an river in the Smokeys, the quick-fix generals at the Corps of Engineers simply reconfigured the terms of the Halliburton contract, changing it from putting out oil well fires to hauling fuel for US military operations. He later served as a key figure on the Bush-Cheney transition team. Audio diaries reveal Lady Bird Johnson's unseen influence in In addition to Brown & Root, the Brown family also owned the Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation, then the nations biggest natural gas pipeline company. This coincided with the assassination of Diem (with American collusion) and subsequent chaos in the South Vietnamese government, administration and army. Brown & Root: A Company with a History | History News Fluor-Daniel, Parsons and GSM Services were all were just as qualified for the task. It was courtesy of LBJ, and his privileged position in the congress, that Brown & Root got into the Pentagon contracting business in a big way. La Nouvelle billed $108 for each 15-pound bag of laundry at this base, $80 a bag more than the very same company charged at another base. ABC News will kick off Womens History Month with its new podcast "In Plain Sight," co-produced with Best Case Studios and hosted by author Julia Sweig. Johnson 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. Old hands at Halliburton remember Cheney as arrogant and inept, a clumsy autocrat. We just have to look. 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.. But the most majestic profits, as always, were to be made during wartime and LBJ gave them a big one. Finally, he was able to use the war to further his political career and gain more control over the government. Shes a presidents wife. I think a womans real happiness and fulfillment is found in her home., Read: Nancy Reagans real role in the AIDS crisis. It was a political partnership and a powerful one at that. Stan Wayman/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images. In 1900 he married Minnie Lee Patillo of 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. 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. Did Lyndon Johnson escalate the Vietnam War for personal profit? While Defense Secretary, Cheney defended this kind of military outsourcing as an efficient way to control spiraling costs. Once I listened to her often riveting, unique and surprising diary accounts -- accounts of some of the most iconic moments in our countrys history -- I began to see that all of the volumes of history and journalism written about the 1960s -- Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the Great Society -- suffer from a pretty big gap without her voice, without an idea of her influence. In all a report prepared by the Democratic Policy Committee estimates that Halliburtons overcharges in Iraq alone exceed $1 billion. The wife, your wife, is the most important asset youll have, he declared. The money was delivered in $100 bills stuffed into grocery bags. Letter from President Johnson to John Steinbeck How fat? There was another curious hitch to the Halliburton RIO deal. He also courted cash from every corporation and mogul he could find, promising to return their investment tenfold. In the spring of that year, young LBJ met several times with Herman Brown, vowing to make congressional approval of the dam project his top priority. 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. Another Cheney veteran worked along side Lopez to keep the government contracts flowing to Houston. LBJ, serving out JFKs term, did not have a VP. But shes met with open hostility, and worse. So she swam laps and hiked.) But the most majestic profits, as always, were to be made during wartime and LBJ gave them a big one. It is startling to realize that, for the 14 months from November 1963 to January 1965, Lady Bird Johnson effectively was the vice president. Witness Cheneys disastrous decision to acquire Dresser Industries, another oil services and engineering company. In the immediate wake of the Dresser acquisition, Cheney fired 10,000 of the companys employees. The fraying of the social contract the Johnsons were so vital in knitting together 50 years ago. 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. It was a model for things to come. For the first time, the Pentagon began to privatize construction and logistics operations during wartime in the war zone. Still, tandem toil was one thing; staking out too much terrain for herself was another. 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. Tumulty calls theirs an epic love story, an observation confirmed by the eyewitness accounts of many. The plan came to be known as LOGCAP and Halliburton soon got an additional $5 million to flesh out the details. Right before our eyes. In late 1963 the North Vietnamese greatly increased supplies of weapons and equipment to the Vietcong and infiltrated regular army units into the South. 6: BlindsidedBy the mid-60s, you can hear a growing distance between Lady Bird and the protest movement thats sweeping the country. WebLyndon Johnson. In 1995, Halliburton hired Dick Cheney as its CEO. Nearly 40 years ago, Halliburton faced almost identical charges over its work for the U.S. government in Vietnam -- allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts diaries reveal Lady Bird Johnson Best Case Studios' Adam Pincus is executive producer and Anne Carkeet is a producer on the project. 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. Lady Birdthe youngest child and only daughter of a wealthy East Texas businessmantook refuge, Sweig writes, in a rich inner life that taught her how to take emotional sustenance from nature and books. An excellent student, she earned a history degree in 1933 from the University of Texas at Austin, in an era when only a small percentage of women graduated from college; she then spent a year completing a journalism degree. Johnson vowed to learn the lessons of his defeat. 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. 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. Return the national parks to the tribes, how well remember the pandemic, a kidnapping gone wrong, and the women reinventing the Western.
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