did lady bird johnson profit from the vietnam war

Julia Sweig's fourth book, "Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight" comes out March 16, 2021 from Random House. This coincided with the assassination of Diem (with American collusion) and subsequent chaos in the South Vietnamese government, administration and army. The GAO audit should have given the company a black eye and caused the government to reconsider the outscourcing of wartime logistics work, but the prophetic report was buried by the Pentagon and ignored by the press. With her familys money as a seed investment, she helped build an empire of Texas media and business holdings. But Johnsons Vietnam War forever changed the role of Pentagon contractors, and Halliburtons Brown & Root subsidiary lead the way. Return the national parks to the tribes, how well remember the pandemic, a kidnapping gone wrong, and the women reinventing the Western. The 1948 election needed to be both bought and stolen. Five days after the election, an amended return came in from Jim Wells County in the southern outback of Texas. 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. The contract was another of the notorious cost-plus deals, where Halliburton simply faxed over receipts to the Pentagon and got fully reimbursed, along with a guaranteed 1 percent profit and performance bonuses that went as high as 8 percent of the total costs. Brown & Root also understood that government contracts are a lot easier to get if you have a politician on retainer. "Lady Bird" Johnson, the wife of former President Lyndon B. Johnson, the nation's 36th president, died Wednesday at the age of 94. 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 6: BlindsidedBy the mid-60s, you can hear a growing distance between Lady Bird and the protest movement thats sweeping the country. And then there was NR v Donald Regan, the White House chief of staff she managed to oust after much mutual combat. Hunt and Sid Richardson. Each time they were bombed, Halliburton was called in to repair the damage. In the end, the Naval Air Station cost the Pentagon more than $125 million. (There was also yellow, for iffy ones.) Worldly and colorful, even late in life, Edie was not above using a word like cocksucker (in this case, to describe Barry Goldwater). 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. And it made me think: How many other women are in plain sight, women in powerful positions and many more unseen women whose stories likewise make up the fabric of who we are and who we will become as a society. I always wanted someone to take care of me, someone I could take care of, she said, a yearning fulfilled when she met Ronnie, in 1949. In 1995, the State Department hit Cheneys Halliburton with a $3.8 million fine for violating the trade embargo with Libya. Soon there were other summonses from the Middle East. They hated to spend nights apart, and famously (or infamously) called each other Mommie and Daddy. In late 1940s, Halliburton began doing business in Bahrain, followed by an equally lucrative contract with the royal family of Kuwait to manage that kingdoms oil fields. Feeling the urgency, Lady Bird is looking for ways to make beautification have more impact for the people who need it most. When it came time to select a space for its corporate offices to oversee the new Iraq contracts, Halliburton decided not to bunker down inside the Green Zone in Baghdad. The former majority leaders power shrank while Lady Birds official ambit expanded to include public appearances, both on the campaign trail, where she stood in for a pregnant Jackie Kennedy, and as second lady. While Defense Secretary, Cheney defended this kind of military outsourcing as an efficient way to control spiraling costs. 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. Did Lyndon B. Johnson profit financially from the Vietnam War? The purpose of this conclave was to devise a project that would come to be known as RIO or Restore Iraq Oil. And an increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam begins to overshadow just about everything else. The Army didnt consider it necessary to reveal the terms of the deal, a Pentagon spokesman explained to Reuters. In the ever-expanding universe of Pentagon contracting, cost is never the problem, public exposure is. 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. In the late winter of 1937, the imperious Texas Congressman James P. Bucky Buchanan, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, suddenly died in office. The congress granted to the administration of Lyndon Baines Johnson for 1965 $700 million for the expected ramping up of a direct American military role. Ep. On February 26, 2003, less than a month before the invasion of Iraq, a meeting was convened in the inner sanctum of the Pentagon. She was quick to suspect that aides might be serving their own interests before hisand she wasnt always wrong. Unlike her conflict-averse husband, she played the ruthless enforcer, conducting feuds and engineering firings. He and Lady Bird fretted about money during the early years of their marriage. He got a state judge in Texas to place an injunction against the ballots from Alice. And then the company and the Pentagon sought to hide the evidence of these overchages from the international auditors.. Shes a presidents wife. Cheney pursued a company that no one else really wanted and to compound his blunder he paid an outrageous price for it. An extraordinary group of Black women helped propel the civil-rights movement. Needless to say, this prospect didnt sit well with Halliburton and the consortium of British and American oil companies exploiting Irans petroleum wealth. If the current second gentleman, or a future first one, wants advice on how to do it, and how not to, he has plenty of history to consult. In the stunned aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, she sought out Jackie: I tried to express something of how we felt. He proposed at the end of their first date, then launched a full-court press until she yielded after 10 weeks. Johnson bought them in San Antonio and southern Texas, while ODaniel, called the greatest campaigner in Texas history, purchased them throughout east Texas. With good reason. For all their differences, what Lady Bird and Nancy sharedand Michelle Obama later struck the same notewas an abiding concern for the presidents well-being and very life. Phan Rang, from which US bombers pounded North Vietnam and later Cambodia, gained a little notoriety in December 1967, when Bob Hope brought his Christmas show there featuring a sultry performance by Raquel Welch that nearly caused a riot on the base. There were several other companies that could have done the job that was given to Halliburton. But Cheney was no mere figurehead. For a moment, it looked as if Halliburton might be left out in the cold. Instead of being administered by Douglas Feiths office at the Pentagon (as were almost all of the other Iraq contracts), the Halliburton RIO contract was pawned off on the Corps of Engineers, a remote outpost of the Pentagon known, to the extent that it is known at all, for the management of locks and dams on American rivers. Nancy longed for a more conventional home life. 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. Erle changed the name of the company to Halliburton and raked in millions from his patent. The vice president demurred, as if the very name of the company was unfamiliar to him. Welcome to the club, any number of women might have told him. Olds, a former muckraking reporter, was appointed by FDR to head the commission, which set power rates and regulated natural gas prices. WebEartha Kitt confronts President Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson about the Vietnam War at a White House luncheon. The wife, your wife, is the most important asset youll have, he declared. Instead, the company opted for posh offices at the Khalifa resort on the beaches of the Persian Gulf a few miles from Kuwait City. Waxman charged that the Pentagon withheld the damaging reports at the behest of the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton. As for Dillon Anderson, Ike soon elevated the Yale-trained lawyer from Texas to the position of National Security Adviser, where he served until 1957. 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. I think a womans real happiness and fulfillment is found in her home., Read: Nancy Reagans real role in the AIDS crisis. Friend, ally, savior: Revealing LBJ's Jewish ties J. Im a foreign policy person. This bizarre and secret waiver of standard Pentagon accounting practices was signed by the Corps top contracting officer, Gordon A. Sumner, on December 19, 2003stymieing the pending congressional and Pentagon investigations in contract fraud by the company. But Nancy had no appetite for cozy calm in the White House. It turns out that there wasnt much for these managers from Houston to manage. 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. As The Washington Posts White House correspondent during the Reagan years, Lou Cannon, notes in a biography of the president, for all her talent for turmoil, Nancy became a force for peace within the White House., Tumulty writes about the power that comes with intimacythe influence of the companion who is there in moments public and private, high and lowand some of the most arresting scenes in both books capture drama unfolding in pajamas, or not even. Once again, Johnson faced a popular and reactionary governor for the Texas senate seat, vacated when Pappy ODaniel (grew bored of living in DC. Moreover, US government financing for Halliburton projects in the Third World soared soon after the Wizard of Wyoming took control of the company, ballooning from $100 million in the five years prior to Cheneys arrival to more than $1.5 billion during his time at the helm. 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. Sweigs writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, the Nation, the National Interest and in Brazils Folha de So Paulo. In her East Wing policy shop, Lady Bird began to build a portfolio of environmental policies, working with Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. Halliburton, which employed thousands of foreign-born subcontractors, even went so far as to operate segregated dining facilities and Americans Only bathrooms. There was another curious hitch to the Halliburton RIO deal. Right before our eyes. Francis Miller/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images. Nearly 40 years ago, Halliburton faced almost identical charges over its work for the U.S. government in Vietnam -- allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts Cheney didnt have much experience in the corporate world before becoming Halliburtons chieftain and his tenure there shows it. Claudia Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007) was an American first lady (1963-69) and the wife of Lyndon Johnson, the 36th president of the United States. But it was politically expedient since it allowed civilian officials in the Pentagon to steer billions into the coffers of favored contractors, such as Halliburton, Lockheed and DynCorp. Not to worry. In the fall of 1979, the Iranian revolution led to the expulsion of Halliburton from the lucrative sinecure it had enjoyed under the Shahs dictatorship. The apex political fixer Thomas Tommy the Cork Corcoran later observed that LBJs whole world was built on that dam. TSHA | Taylor, Thomas Jefferson II Bird Johnson In 1962, Herman Brown died and his brother, George, began searching for possible corporate suitors who might take over the company. The auditors report accuses Halliburton of misleading the government inspectors at nearly every turn. 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. She was replaced as first lady by Lyndon Johnson's wife, Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson, when Lyndon Johnson replaced Kennedy as president. But forswearing potentially polarizing talk of urban renewal and land stewardship, Lady Bird spoke of beautification, though she had mixed feelings about the word. In May 1967, she testified before Congress, along with Washington D.C. youth group Rebels With a Cause, on behalf of President Lyndon B. Johnson's juvenile delinquency bill. Lady Bird Johnson subsequently invited Kitt to her Women Doers' Luncheon on Jan. 18, 1968, for a discussion of what women could do to help eradicate crime on the streets. And so it came to pass. 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. Claudia Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007) was an American first lady (1963-69) and the wife of Lyndon Johnson, the 36th president of the United States. A strong believer in her husbands political talents, Lady Bird used her own inheritance to fund his early campaigns, and overcame her aversion to public speaking to become one Bob Gomel/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images. Brown sluiced cash into LBJs campaign and he sailed to victory in a special election on May 13, 1937. 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. One of the first politicians to use the newfangled machine, Johnson would descend upon his campaign venues with the Yellow Rose of Texas blaring from loudspeakers attached to the landing gear a prelude for the Wagner-screaming choppers in Apocalypse Now. When someone finally leaked the audit to Waxmans office, the documents disclosed a thick wad of Halliburton billings that the Pentagon bookkeepers deemed illogical.. Lady Bird Johnson soared as quiet, determined First Lady 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. It seems that a certain Luis Salas, following the suggestion of a Brown & Root lawyer, began scouring the courthouse for a missing box of ballots. She brought Jane Jacobs to the White House, and conferred with other urban planners and environmental thinkers. Luci Johnsons wedding in Washington, DC becomes the setting of dramatic anti-war protests, and Lady Bird herself is the target of a bomb threat. Again, the race was ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court by the intervention of a single justice, Hugo Black. 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. Julia Sweig is an award-winning author, scholar and entrepreneur. But the most majestic profits, as always, were to be made during wartime and LBJ gave them a big one. 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. The final fix may have been made by a cabal of Texas oil men and ranchers who wanted ODaniel out of Austin. The initial price-tag was pegged at $23.5 million, with Brown & Root guaranteed a profit of $1.2 million. But there were two problems left by Buchanans ill-timed passing: the money for the dam hadnt yet been approved by congress and the land at the dam-site wasnt owned by the federal government. She wrapped a towel around herself and got Ronnie out of the shower; dripping, they both stood watching TV as the news sank in that he had won in a landslide. The Pentagons civilian leadership mothballed the explosive report for more than five months, until after the election, the inauguration, the State of the Union Address and the Defense Department budget request had all safely transpired. 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. The Corpus Christi deal initiated Brown & Root into the risk-free fraternity of favored Pentagon contractors. 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. I have no financial interests in Halliburton of any kind, Cheney said flatly. LBJ got the NYA position, at the age of 29, through the intervention of Alvin Wirtz, the lead attorney for Brown & Root and a noted fixer. Shes from Texas. I said, Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, you know we never even wanted to be Vice President and now, dear God, its come to this.. Letter from President Johnson to John Steinbeck For the first time, the Pentagon began to privatize construction and logistics operations during wartime in the war zone. 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. When the oil boom hit Texas, the wildcatters and other drillers quickly began experiencing problems with their deep shafts. 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,
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