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. Each time they were bombed, Halliburton was called in to repair the damage. The apex political fixer Thomas Tommy the Cork Corcoran later observed that LBJs whole world was built on that dam. Erle changed the name of the company to Halliburton and raked in millions from his patent. In a way, this meeting in the bowels of the Pentagon was all for show, a kind of mating ritual between the government and its favorite contractor. In an otherwise scripted and sober ceremony, the shuffle injected a spontaneous note as the second gentleman sought his placenot sure quite what that place was. So she swam laps and hiked.) In the stunned aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, she sought out Jackie: I tried to express something of how we felt. Of the many images that lingered after the January inauguration of President Joe Bidenthe twinkling hand gestures of the poet Amanda Gorman, the rakish eyebrow-waggling of the second daughter, Ella Emhoffone of the more subtly significant was the scene of Doug Emhoff trying to figure out which side of his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, to stand on. 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.. They got all of the contracts to build all of the bases, roads, and airports in Vietnam. 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. The fraying of the social contract the Johnsons were so vital in knitting together 50 years ago. This is an excerpt from JEFFREY ST. CLAIRs forthcoming book, Grand Theft Pentagon (Common Courage, 2005). She shared his belief in American exceptionalism and defended his policies, digging in as protesters challenged the escalation of the war. 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. Halliburton never uttered the meekest protest about the grossly inflated fuel prices. LBJ also enjoyed free access to a DC3, courtesy of Brown & Root, which would rush him across the vast Texan plains for as many as 10 appearances in a single day. But this rate was nearly three times the 97 cents per gallon that the Iraqi Oil State Marketing Organization was paying to buy oil from Jordan and Turkey. More than $1.5 billion of Halliburtons $2.5 billion deal was funded by Iraqi oil sales overseen by the UN. All of this got LBJ close, but quite not close enough, to assure him of an outright victory. 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. He destroyed the man in a set of hearings that would lay the groundwork for the show trials of the McCarthy era. LBJs ambush of Olds was scripted by none other than Brown & Roots lawyer, Alvin Wirtz. Soon after Eisenhowers election, Anderson, who had funneled more than $200,000 into the Eisenhower-Nixon campaign, was invited to join the administration as a consultant to the National Security Council. The cost overruns in Vietnam quickly swelled and soon caught the attention of auditors with the General Accounting Office. But before the year had ended that contract, covering everything from road construction, vehicle maintenance and power generation to food services, latrines and mail delivery, had generated nearly a billion dollars in revenues for Halliburton. Johnson also prevailed upon the Bell Helicopter Company, which would soon relocate to Texas, to loan him a chopper for his campaign. Instead, the company opted for posh offices at the Khalifa resort on the beaches of the Persian Gulf a few miles from Kuwait City. 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. In 1997, the renewal of the LOGCAP contract was finally put up for competitive bid and, lo and behold, DynCorp snatched the golden egg of Pentagon contracts away from Halliburton. Thats real money, even by Pentagon standards. When the oil boom hit Texas, the wildcatters and other drillers quickly began experiencing problems with their deep shafts. Cheney swiftly announced two goals for the company: make it the top Pentagon contractor and greatly expand its contractual relationships with foreign governments. And Lady Bird is even sending Lyndon Johnson notes, comments on speeches and other notes during the day written on office of the vice president stationery, which, of course, Lyndon Johnson was the vice president. Halliburton would continue to work on a variety of projects in Iraq right up until the first Gulf War. Still, tandem toil was one thing; staking out too much terrain for herself was another. But those off-shore subsidiaries werent merely a way of hiding money from corporate auditors, the SEC and the IRS. Hunt and Sid Richardson. During World War II, Halliburton was called upon to help build the infrastructure for the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, launching a profitable relationship with the petro-kingdom that persists to this day. Im a foreign policy person. Each haul would net between $40,000and $50,000 for the Johnson campaign. 2: Thank You, Mrs. Vice PresidentThere are moments in Lady Birds audio diaries that truly re-write the known history of LBJ's presidency. Ronnie affirmed her through flirtatious quips and love letters; her love language was acts of service, chief among them the act of protection. First ladies? License granted by CSK Legacy, LLC, Atlanta, Georgia, as exclusive licensor of Coretta Scott King's estate. 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. Using a subsidiary corporation set up in Cheney time in the Cayman Islands, Halliburton had been doing business with the Mullahs of Iran since 1997, in flagrant violation of the US trade embargo. In 1965, Halliburton formed a consortium with the Idaho-based firm Morrison-Knudsen to manage big construction projects for the Pentagon in Vietnam. Drawn from over 123 hours of the former first ladys mostly unheard daily audio diaries, the podcast presents a surprising and original portrait of Claudia Alta Lady Bird Johnson, told in her own words. (You had to be wary of her, Ron said.) In return, the Shah soon signed over control of Irans oil resources to a consortium of western oil companies, lead by Exxon, Mobil and Texaco. The Corpus Christi Naval Air Station was one of the first cost-plus contracts, a sweet deal where the government simply pays every bill the contractor submits. Victoria Thompson and Eric Johnson are executive producers and Suzie Liu is a producer with ABC News. Halliburton acquired Dresser for $7.7 billion, which proved to be at least 16 percent more than the companys actual value. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? I think a womans real happiness and fulfillment is found in her home., Read: Nancy Reagans real role in the AIDS crisis. I am not sure that the above answer is accurate but I can't prove it. 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. Best Case Studios' Adam Pincus is executive producer and Anne Carkeet is a producer on the project. They hated to spend nights apart, and famously (or infamously) called each other Mommie and Daddy. 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. 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. 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. On Election Night 1980, Nancy was taking a bath, not expecting the race to be called before the polls closed in California. By 1968, the United States had 548,000 troops in Vietnam and had The initial price-tag was pegged at $23.5 million, with Brown & Root guaranteed a profit of $1.2 million. Young Claudia Alta Taylor, nicknamed Lady Bird by a nanny (or playmateexactly who isnt certain), was 5 when she lost her mother. 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. Once again, it didnt take LBJ long to pay back his political investors with interest. As did she: Our presidency, Lady Bird called it. Cheney, as is his natural inclination, continues to deny any involvement, direct or implicit, in the Pentagon deals that have sent billions in no bid contracts to his former company, at the very same time Halliburton continued to sweeten his bank accounts with more than $140,000 a year. But one might also diagnose a codependent partnership between two people who felt abandoned in childhoodReagans father was an alcoholicand formed a profoundly anxious attachment. His term expired in 1948, and Harry Truman had just announced his intention to reappoint him to the position, enraging the oil and gas industry. That marriage between the two LBJs? 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. They were soon one of the big players in the aluminum business, much of which they sold right back to the feds, making tens of millions in profits. The episode tracks the 14 days from the murder of the president to when the Johnsons move into the White House, days filled with tragic ceremony and heartfelt moments of solidarity between Jackie Kennedy and Lady Bird. We hear about the decade-long relationship between the two of them, one that dates back to the Kennedys arrival in Washington in the mid-50s, and hear fascinating observations these women make about each other. From the October 1980 issue: Looking at Reagan, Nancys wary nature did have its upsides, which Tumulty emphasizes. Lyndon Johnson, an up-and-coming congressional staffer, instantly sized her up as the sort of smart, capable partner who would push him and expand his prospects. What had suddenly looked like a sure thing, now found Brown & Root on the unnerving verge of bankruptcy. A pungent example: A team of French investigators unearthed a robust Swiss bank account harboring $5 million, which reportedly derived from bribes involving Halliburton contracts in Nigeria. 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. Similarly, Halliburton kept the Pentagon investigators in the dark about the prices it paid for purchasing fuel from Turkey and Jordan. On a trip to two New England colleges to give speeches supporting their new environmental studies programs, Lady Bird is confronted by outspoken dissent from both students and faculty who walk out of her speeches, picket her presence and circulate letters denouncing the war in Vietnam. Call it the Oil-for-Contracts scandal. For those flights, the Bush campaign reimbursed Halliburton only the cost of one first class ticket. But Nancy had no appetite for cozy calm in the White House. Lady Bird feels increasing under siege, even as she vows not to retreat into a bubble in the White House. In addition to Brown & Root, the Brown family also owned the Texas Eastern Transmission Corporation, then the nations biggest natural gas pipeline company. Francis Miller/The LIFE Picture Collection via. But after 15 years sitting around conference tables in Washington talking about global conflict, nuclear strategy or trade policy with mostly all-male colleagues, and, with some exceptions, mostly all-male bosses and role models, something started to bother me: It was the way the experiences of the people asking the questions by definition shapes those questions, and often the answers. In 1967, a GAO report on Halliburtons operations in Vietnam skewered the company for abandoning normal management controls and for wasting millions of dollars. When LBJs fortunes rose on the Hill, so did Brown & Roots. He ran on an anti-union and anti-FDR platform that appealed to rural Texas voters. But a review by Pentagon auditors found that the bill was inflated by nearly 200 percent, since the company never served more than 2,500 soldiers on any single day. Buchanan departed the living with some unfinished business of extreme importance to his political cronies. Then an unexpected thing happened. Johnson bought them in San Antonio and southern Texas, while ODaniel, called the greatest campaigner in Texas history, purchased them throughout east Texas. The adventurous and well-read Minnie Taylor died after a fall while pregnant. 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. The auditors report accuses Halliburton of misleading the government inspectors at nearly every turn. The auditors examined only a single task order in Halliburtons scandal-plagued contract with the Army Corps of Engineers, yet their report lambasted nearly every aspect of the deal, from the no-bid award to the cost-plus nature of the contract to the almost total lack of supervision of the work orders and the subcontractors. 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.
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