WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials have acknowledged that a political appointee was behind the controversial decision to have Halliburton Inc. plan for the postwar recovery of Iraq's oil sector and had informed Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff before finalizing the deal, a Democratic lawmaker said Sunday.
The decision, overruling the advice of an Army lawyer, eventually resulted in the awarding of a $7-billion, no-bid contract to Halliburton, which Cheney ran for five years before he was nominated for vice president.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), who was briefed by Pentagon officials last week, issued a letter to the vice president Sunday demanding full disclosure of the secretive process that led to granting the contract to the Houston-based oil services giant.
"To help clarify these important matters, I urge you to disclose all contacts between your office and the Defense Department relating to the Halliburton contracts," Waxman wrote.
The congressman's account of the Pentagon briefing -- along with recently released Pentagon memos obtained by the nonprofit group Judicial Watch and a draft General Accounting Office report obtained by the Los Angeles Times -- offers the most complete picture to date of the unusual procedures behind the decision to award the contract without the competitive bidding usually required to protect taxpayer dollars.
The revelations follow a series of Democratic attacks against the Bush administration on the Halliburton issue.
Cheney repeatedly has denied having any influence over the decision to award the massive contract in March 2003. "As vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts let by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" last fall.
Cheney's staff stood by that statement Sunday.
Pentagon officials also have said that Cheney did not influence the assigning of the contract. According to them, officials with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, who was responsible for overall postwar planning, spoke with Cheney's office as a courtesy to warn of a potentially controversial decision.
A Defense Department official contacted Sunday said that Feith's office, working with other agencies, "recommended" that Halliburton get the contract because of the company's "unique capability" to carry out oil field operations in a war zone. He also said that bidding on a subsequent contract was later opened up to other companies.
