Cheney had no hand in Halliburton award, officials say

Six senior officials from the Defense Department and the Army testified under oath Tuesday that neither Vice President Dick Cheney nor officials from his office had any contact with them about the award of a multibillion-dollar contract to repair Iraqi oil fields.

The officials told members of the House Government Reform Committee that they and their staffs had no communication with Cheney, and that he and his subordinates didn't influence the selection of oil services firm Halliburton for the work, which is worth up to $7 billion. Cheney was the company's chief executive officer before becoming vice president, and controversy has dogged the award of the contract to his former firm for planning before the war and the eventual repairs to the damaged Iraqi oil infrastructure.

The responses were prompted by questioning from Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the committee's ranking member, who has examined a number of issues related to how Halliburton won contracts for troop support and various reconstruction tasks in Iraq. Waxman made several references to Michael Mobbs, a political appointee and assistant to Defense Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, whom Waxman said headed the Energy Infrastructure Planning Group, a Defense group charged with developing a plan before the U.S. invasion of Iraq to secure and repair its oil facilities. Officials worried that Saddam Hussein's army could set fire to wells, significantly impairing the U.S.-led military effort and the eventual reconstruction of the country.

Mobbs, as part of his preparatory planning, sought the advice of an executive branch deputies' committee whose members included Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Waxman said. But the panel of Defense and military officials, which included the department's senior procurement executive, Deidre Lee, said they had no knowledge of any role Cheney's office played in making the decision to award the contract to Halliburton. Mobbs had identified two other companies capable of doing the oil work, Flour Corp. and Parsons Corp., Waxman said.

Lee said it's not uncommon for Defense officials to notify members of Congress or the administration before career contracting officers make a decision to award a contract. But they take that step only as a formal matter and a courtesy, to give officials advance warning before a public announcement, Lee said.

None of the officials could attest that Mobb's communications about the oil contract with Libby or others was done as a matter of course. The Army, however, released a statement from Stephen Browning, the director of regional programs with the South Pacific Division of the Army Corps of Engineers, that in early March 2003 he met with Feith and members of his staff and asked them to declassify certain facts regarding the Pentagon's plans to fight oil-well fires and assess damage to the infrastructure in the event of a war in Iraq. The Army Corps eventually awarded Halliburton the oil contract, and was involved in pre-war reconstruction planning as early as February.

"Mr. Feith concurred with the requirement [to declassify] subject to informing Congress and the White House prior to the decision being announced," Browning said in his statement. "My understanding was that the Office of the Vice President had been previously informed. My understanding and sense of the meeting was that this 'coordination' was simply to inform those offices in anticipation of a press release" announcing the selection of the oil services contractor. Halliburton announced March 24 that it had won the contract.

"At no time did I ever perceive or note any attempt by the Office of the Vice president or anyone else in the administration to influence the course or direction of this contract," Browning said. "I want to be clear on this point; to my knowledge, there was absolutely no influence or pressure exerted by anyone in the administration regarding this contract action."

It was an e-mail from Browning, first reported by Time magazine this month, that touched off the most recent questions about the vice president's role in the contract award. In it, Browning said Feith had received "the authority to executive RIO," an acronym for operation Restore Iraqi Oil, from Paul Wolfowitz, the magazine reported. Time also reported, "The e-mail says Feith approved arrangements for the contract 'contingent on informing [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinate [with Vice President's] office." The Army Corps awarded the RIO contract to Halliburton three days later.

A Defense spokesman told Time that the e-mail was sent "in anticipation of controversy over the award of a sole-source contract to Halliburton."

"We wanted to give the vice president's staff a heads-up," the spokesman said.

In his statement, Browning said since he was preparing in March to deploy to Kuwait in the first wave of a reconstruction team, he sent the e-mail message to his division "and others to let them know the status of the declassified action." He said he "would not have an opportunity to communicate with the [Army Corps] team working this issue" after he left the United States.