Halliburton 101
From the "Wolf Blitzer Reports" staff
CLEVELAND, Ohio (CNN) -- The H-bomb has become a major weapon in the Democratic arsenal. The "H" standing for "Halliburton."
"The only people George Bush's policies are working for are the people he chooses to help. They're working for drug companies. They're working for oil companies. They're working for HMO's. And they're certainly working for Halliburton," Sen. John Kerry said Saturday in Orlando.
Halliburton is the biggest military contractor in Iraq, and Dick Cheney was CEO from 1995 until 2000, the year he was elected vice president.
Critics have accused Cheney of steering business to his old company -- something he's persistently denied.
Immediately after the election, but before he took office, Cheney received $1.6 million from Halliburton. And he's received some $400,000 since, as part of an agreement with Halliburton made before the 2000 election.
But Cheney insists he has no financial interest in the success or failure of the company.
"What I've done is take out an insurance policy that will guarantee me the payment of what Halliburton owes me whether they succeed or fail. Whether they go belly up tomorrow it will not affect my financial status one iota," the vice president said in March.
Halliburton says it has no special relationship with the vice president.
One of the company's commercials says, "We're serving the troops because of what we know, not who we know."
One journalist who's written about Halliburton says while there may be suspicions about Cheney's relationship with the company, no one has produced a smoking gun.
"There are certainly allegations that it's a bit fishy that Halliburton got all these no-bid contracts or at least that Halliburton got some of these no-bid contracts, but nobody's come up with any proof that Cheney's office or Cheney himself arranged that or rigged that in any way," says Mark Hosenball of Newsweek.
