Report: Halliburton unit exploited rules

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061027/ap_on_go_ot/iraq_contracts

Report: Halliburton unit exploited rules

By ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer 34 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Halliburton subsidiary that provides food, shelter and other logistics to U.S. troops in
Iraq and
Afghanistan exploited federal regulations to hide details on its contract performance, according to a report released Friday.


The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction found that Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown & Root Services routinely marked all information it gave to the government as proprietary, whether it was or not. The government promises not to disclose proprietary data so a company's most valuable information is not divulged to its competitors.

By marking all information proprietary — including such normally releasable data as labor rates — the company abused federal regulations, the report says.

In effect, Kellogg, Brown & Root turned the regulations "into a mechanism to prevent the government from releasing normally transparent information, thus potentially hindering competition and oversight."

is get Halliburton's snout out of the public trough. No more contracts for these pigs.

Or is that "hear, hear?" I can never remember. Anyway, you know what I mean. :)