When Dick Cheney was on Meet the Press last fall, he categorically denied having ties to Halliburton, the company he led before becoming vice president.
“[S]ince I left Halliburton to become George Bush’s vice president, I’ve severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests,” Cheney said. “I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven’t had now for over three years.”
Even at the time, the denial smelled funny. Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s (D-N.J.) office explained that Cheney still has substantial financial interests in Halliburton, including deferred compensation and more than 433,000 stock options.
I guess we could debate the meaning of “financial interests,” but does Cheney really want to go there?
Complicating matters, of course, is the fact that $178,437 of the Cheneys’ $813,226 income from last year came from Halliburton, the company to which Cheney claims to have no ties and the company which is reaping a windfall of money in government contracts in Iraq.
The White House defense is not, however, entirely without merit.
Cheney’s office said that his deferred compensation from Halliburton last year was part of a five-year, “unalterable” agreement reached at the end of 1998.
“The amount of deferred compensation received by the vice president is fixed and is not affected by Halliburton’s current economic performance or earnings in any way,” the vice president’s office said in a statement.
So if I’m hearing this right, Cheney doesn’t want Halliburton’s $178,437, but he has no choice but to take it. After all, he entered into an “unalterable” agreement. Halliburton is insisting that he take the money; Cheney’s hands are tied.
Fine; let’s give Cheney the benefit of the doubt. The American Prospect’s Garance Franke-Ruta has a terrific suggestion on what Cheney can do next.
So Vice President Dick Cheney received $178,437 in deferred compensation from the Halliburton oil-field services company last year. Today we also learn that there are some families of Halliburton contractors in Iraq who have in all likelihood just lost their chief wage earner. I suspect they could probably use some help in the months ahead. And there are more than 600 military men and women who have lost their lives over the past year, as well. Their families would doubtless also be grateful for some additional assistance.
Richard Clarke has said he’ll donate most of his book royalties to families of the victims of September 11; Cheney would be well advised to follow suit. By giving his Halliburton dollars to the families of those who died in Iraq, he’d be doing something genuinely charitable and decent with that money, instead just of looking like a war-profiteering hack.
How about it, Dick? Care to give that money you don’t want to a worthy cause?