Reuters:
Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.
One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton…
http://katrinacoverage.com/2005/09/10/firms-with-bush-ties-snag-katrina-deals.html#commentsWhat’s Allbaugh Doing For Halliburton?
The AP reports that Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary that came under fire for its reconstruction work in Iraq, “has begun tapping a $500 million Navy contract to do emergency repairs at Gulf Coast naval and Marine facilities that were battered by Hurricane Katrina.”
Under fire for mistreatment of whistleblowers and under investigation in Nigeria, France, and the U.S. for allegedly paying kickbacks and performing a variety of other corporate misdeeds, Halliburton’s past performance raises serious concerns about whether they’re the right company to help pull the Gulf Coast out of what may end up being the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history.
The appropriation of hurricane recovery funds also highlights Halliburton’s special interest connections to the White House. On February 1, 2005, The Allbaugh Company, under the name of M. Diane Allbaugh, registered to lobby for Kellogg, Brown & Root. The lobbying registration form lists Joe M. Allbaugh, former 2000 Bush campaign manager and former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as KBR’s official lobbyist.
The purpose of the lobbying agreement between Allbaugh and Halliburton was ostensibly to “Educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues affecting Kellogg Brown and Root.” Just last week, the Wall Street Journal reported, “Senate Appropriations staffers warn business lobbyists are maneuvering to tack on special-interest amendments” to the hurricane supplemental spending bill.
Was Allbaugh one of those maneuvering behind the scenes to get Halliburton a piece of the $10.5 billion pie that Congress recently passed for hurricane disaster relief?
If so, it wouldn’t be the first time Allbaugh used his links to Bush to profit off a disaster recovery. On Sept. 29, 2003, the New York Times reported that Allbaugh had set up a consulting firm, New Bridge Strategies, to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects.
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/09/06/allbaugh-halliburton/Allbaugh, from my 2004 book:
One of the groups who hope to benefit from the blood and sacrifice of our soldiers and from our nation's garnished wages is named, New Bridge Strategies. The lobbying is headed by Joe Allbaugh, Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000. Among the other members of this vulture's club are Edward Rogers and Lanny Griffith, lobbyists who were assistants to president George Bush I and now hope to exploit their close ties to the White House.
The company's website states that, "The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in Washington, D.C., and on the ground in Iraq. (None? No Iraqi firms?)
"(New Bridge) will seek to expedite the creation of free and fair markets and new economic growth in Iraq, consistent with the policies of the Bush Administration."
"Consistent with the policies of the Bush Administration." That's clear enough. New Bridge boasts of its, "25 years of experience in Iraq and throughout the Middle East and the political experience of some of the most successful government and political professionals in Washington, D.C., and London."
They openly hawk their public policy experience, their "positions in the Reagan Administration and both Bush Administrations", and their relationships with "international agencies in the Executive Branch; DOD and the USAID (reconstruction's bank), and links to Congress.
Joe M. Allbaugh, the director of New Bridge, is the CEO of the Allbaugh Company, LLC. Allbaugh is one of many opportunists who have set up shop to take advantage of his old boss' confederation's global power agenda. Allbaugh was gifted with the prime position of director of FEMA after he ran Bush-Cheney's national campaign in 2000.
The money dispersed by FEMA has, in the past, been regarded as a slush-fund by Republican administrations to pimp for votes in communities which declare emergencies. Portraits of presidents peering out of rain-slicked helicopter windows as they survey the damage of devastated communities grace the local headlines and evening news and make for good propaganda in an election year or draw attention from scandals.
Allbaugh's appointment to FEMA- a traditional reward from the president for a campaign job well done- was second in political patronage to the secretary of commerce position, which went to the president's old friend and oil roughneck, Don Evans.
The glow of government appropriation power lasted until March 2003, when Allbaugh decided to abandon the scrutiny of his public office and leech onto the new defense money pie from outside of government, behind a slick web page; as a faceless opportunist in the short line for the new appropriated largess.
To support his scheme to hijack the next-generation of defense dollars, which our soldiers desperately need, and our country can scarcely afford, he conspired with Ed Rogers, vice chairman of Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Inc., the firm he founded with Haley Barbour in 1991.
Rogers had been deputy assistant to the president and assistant to the White House chief of staff. He also was the senior deputy to the master of wedge politics, Lee Atwater.
Lanny Griffith is another Barbour bandit who is trolling for the new defense dollars. He hopes to trade on his Bush I appointment in '91 as assistant secretary of education for intergovernmental and interagency affairs from November 1991 until January 1993. He also served in the White House as special assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and was the political director for the 1988 Bush-Quayle campaign.
Intergovernmental affairs is just another name for the White House fixer; a vote counter in Congress, and an arm twister in and out of government for favored legislation. New Bridge promises, "When Iraq is ready to rebuild, we will be there."