# Halliburton Halliburton is the Texas-based oilfield-services giant that, through its then-subsidiary KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root), became the single most recognizable symbol of war profiteering in the [[Iraq War]] and the most cited exhibit in the vault's [[Military-Industrial Complex]] and [[Elite Impunity]] files. ## Corporate History The company's roots run deep in the intersection of oil, construction, and government contracting. Brown & Root started paving roads in Texas in 1919 and grew into a major construction firm with close ties to [[Lyndon B. Johnson]], helping build military bases and infrastructure during the [[Vietnam War]]. Halliburton, an international oilfield-services company, acquired Brown & Root in 1962. The merged entity — later rebranded KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root) — straddled two industries: commercial energy services and government military logistics. ## Cheney's Company [[Dick Cheney]] became Halliburton's CEO in 1995 after serving as Secretary of Defense under [[George H.W. Bush]], where he had helped accelerate the Pentagon's reliance on private contractors. During his five years leading Halliburton, the company expanded its government-contracting portfolio and acquired Dresser Industries, deepening its oilfield-services footprint. Cheney received a retirement package reportedly worth $34 million when he left to become [[George W. Bush]]'s vice president in 2000 — and retained deferred compensation and stock options in the company throughout his vice presidency. The optics were devastating: the vice president who was a chief architect of the [[Iraq War]] — alongside [[Donald Rumsfeld]] and [[Paul Wolfowitz]], whose [[Wolfowitz Doctrine]] and [[Neoconservatism]] provided the intellectual framework, channeled through the [[Project for the New American Century]] — had a direct financial stake in the company that won by far the largest wartime contracts. The Cheney-Halliburton circuit is the vault's single cleanest illustration of the [[Revolving Door]] between the [[Military-Industrial Complex]] and the officials who start wars. ## Iraq War Contracts After the 2003 invasion, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded KBR a no-bid, open-ended, cost-plus contract to extinguish oil-well fires and restore Iraq's petroleum infrastructure. The contract had no time limits and no dollar caps — the company was guaranteed to recover all costs plus a profit margin on top. Under the LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) umbrella, KBR became the go-to contractor for virtually every aspect of troop support: portable toilets, dining facilities, Internet cafes, fuel supply, base construction, and mail delivery. KBR collected tens of billions of dollars across Iraq and the [[Afghanistan War]]. Government audits and inspector-general reports repeatedly documented overcharging, waste, and poor performance. KBR was found to have overcharged for fuel deliveries, served contaminated water to troops, and billed for meals never served. Multiple employees and subcontractors were convicted of fraud. Yet the contracts continued — the military's dependence on KBR's logistical infrastructure was so deep that termination was operationally impossible, a dynamic that critics described as institutional capture. ## The Broader Pattern Halliburton's Iraq-era role illustrates several vault themes simultaneously. The no-bid contracting model connects to the vault's tracking of contemporary no-bid deals. The company's journey from Cheney's CEO suite to the vice presidency to wartime enrichment is a case study in [[Corruption]] laundered through legal structures. The fact that no senior official faced accountability for the conflicts of interest maps directly to [[Elite Impunity]]. KBR was spun off as an independent company in 2007, separating the government-contracting arm from the oilfield-services parent — a move widely interpreted as an attempt to insulate Halliburton's commercial reputation from the contracting scandals. Halliburton continued as a major oilfield-services firm, one of the three largest in the world alongside Schlumberger and Baker Hughes. The company relocated its corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai in 2007 — a move critics read as a further step away from U.S. regulatory and tax jurisdiction, and a literal relocation to the region whose oil reserves had underwritten the company's growth. ## Legacy and Vault Connections The Halliburton story connects forward to the vault's [[Military-Industrial Complex 2.0]] tracking: the same contracting patterns — no-bid awards, cost-plus structures, revolving-door executives — persist in the current defense-technology ecosystem, now with Silicon Valley firms alongside the traditional primes. [[Blackwater]] (later Academi) played the private-military-contractor role that complemented KBR's logistics role, and both fed into the [[War on Terror]] infrastructure that included [[Abu Ghraib Torture Scandal]], [[Guantanamo]], and the [[USA PATRIOT Act]]. The [[Bush Family]] dynasty's intertwined oil, defense, and political interests provide the dynastic backdrop. [[Liz Cheney]]'s later break with the [[Republican Party]] over [[Donald Trump]] added an ironic coda: the daughter of the man who most embodied the military-industrial [[Revolving Door]] became, briefly, the party's most prominent internal dissident — on democracy grounds, not war-profiteering grounds. ## See Also - [[Dick Cheney]] · [[George W. Bush]] · [[Donald Rumsfeld]] · [[Paul Wolfowitz]] - [[Iraq War]] · [[Gulf War]] · [[Afghanistan War]] · [[War on Terror]] - [[Military-Industrial Complex]] · [[Military-Industrial Complex 2.0]] · [[Blackwater]] - [[Elite Impunity]] · [[Revolving Door]] · [[Corruption]] - [[Neoconservatism]] · [[Project for the New American Century]] · [[Bush Family]] - [[Iraqi History Hub]] · [[Coalition Provisional Authority]]