No wonder John Kerry emphasizes the White House’s Halliburton ties at every possible opportunity: there’s just so much to work with.
The latest embarrassing revelation for Cheney’s former company that keeps winning lucrative no-bid contracts from the administration is word that a grand jury in Texas is investigating Halliburton’s business dealings with Iran, the same country with suspected ties to al Queda and the 9/11 terrorists.
In a filing Monday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Halliburton revealed that a federal grand jury for the Southern District of Texas has subpoenaed documents related to Iran, a country long suspected of sponsoring terrorism.
Federal law prohibits U.S. companies from trading directly with Iran. But foreign subsidiaries are allowed to do business with rogue states as long the foreign entity is truly independent of the U.S. operation.
This could represent a whole world of trouble for Halliburton and plenty of political troubles for Dick Cheney, who was CEO of the company when it started doing business with Iran.
Halliburton’s foreign subsidiary that dealt with Iran is called Halliburton Products & Services Ltd, which is registered in the Cayman Islands but headquartered in the United Arab Emirates.
The federal investigation has apparently been ongoing for a while now.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control began to inquire about the operation registered in the Cayman Islands three years ago.
The federal agency that enforces commercial trade bans, however, took no other known action until CBS News’ 60 Minutes visited Halliburton Products & Services’ address in the Caymans and questioned whether any business was actually being conducted there.
Then in January, the Office of Foreign Assets Control demanded additional information. Halliburton responded in March, but Treasury Department officials referred the matter to the Justice Department.
If you thought Halliburton was playing a big role in the campaign before, it’s about to grow considerably. Cheney, after all, has some explaining to do. As David Sirota noted, the VP has been in the middle of this mess from the beginning.
During the 2000 election, Cheney openly acknowledged that “Halliburton did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries.”
According to the Forward, Halliburton and Cheney have argued that, despite Iran’s suspected ties to terrorism, U.S. sanctions against Iran do not cover “independent foreign subsidiaries,” a description that they say applies to the Cayman Islands-based subsidiary.
As CEO of Halliburton, Cheney actively lobbied for the U.S. to lift sanctions on Iran, despite its suspected ties to terrorism.
Earlier this year, the New Yorker reported “The United States had concluded that Iraq, Libya, and Iran supported terrorism and had imposed strict sanctions on them. Yet during Cheney’s tenure at Halliburton the company did business in all three countries” – even though Cheney specifically claimed during the 2000 campaign “I had a firm policy that we wouldn’t do anything in Iraq, even arrangements that were supposedly legal.”
One last thing. Consider, just for a moment, what the GOP would do if John Kerry’s running mate ran a company that did business in Iran and pushed for lifting sanctions on the country despite its sponsorship of terrorism. The TV attack ads alone boggle the mind…