CHENEY COVERUP

LIES BEGAN IN 2000 CAMPAIGN
MISSING VEEP'S CREDIBILITY ZERO
POLITICAL SITUATION WORSENS

(WASHINGTON, D.C., January 22, 2002;)

As financial analysts grew panicky today over the imminent release of Halliburton Company's quarterly earnings report, the scandal over Vice President Dick Cheney's ties to the firm mounted.

In what could turn out to be the biggest cover-up story since the Iran-Contras scandals, evidence has surfaced that Cheney has been lying and deliberately misleading both officials and the public for more than a year about his money-making at Halliburton and about the firm's immense government contracts.

Cheney has said that while he and Halliburton got extremely rich during the prosperity of the 1990's, "the government had absolutely nothing to do with it."

In fact, records show that, during the five years that Cheney was its CEO, Halliburton aggressively pursued federal government contracts, taxpayer-backed loans and other breaks. In contracts alone, the company brought in $2.3 billion, nearly double the amount of government business the company did during the five-year period before before Cheney arrived.

All told, under Cheney, Halliburton's raked in some $3.8 billion in government funds.

Over the same period, Halliburton's political contributions more than doubled, reaching $1.2 million. Its lobbying expenditures rose at about the same rate, reaching $600,000 in 1999.

Business analysts observe that Cheney's position as former Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush helped gain Halliburton favorable treatment in Washington, especially for lucrative defense contracts.

"Absolutely nothing"?

All the more embarrassing for the press is that the Cheney cover-up began in earnest on national television during the 2000 presidential campaign -- in the plain view of millions -- and yet no one covering the campaign caught on.

On October 5, 2000, debating Cheney in Danville, Kentucky, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Lieberman made a straightforward campaign pitch, with a mild zinger quip attached:

"I think if you asked most people in America today that famous question that Ronald Reagan asked, 'Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?' most people would say, 'Yes.' And I'm pleased to see, Dick, from the newspapers, that you're better off than you were eight years ago, too."

As the audience laughed, Cheney, on the defensive, stumbled a second, started his response, with some words about "most of it," then changed direction.

CHENEY: And most of it and I can tell you, Joe, that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Cheney's riposte got the biggest laugh-and-applause line of the night.

Unfortunately, his joke was also a baldfaced lie -- as becomes all the more apparent when viewing videotape of the exchange.

Cheney wanted, in a jokey way, to mislead the voters and the press into thinking that the government had had nothing to do with his and his company's skyrocketing success. It was an appeal to rugged individualism, to the sort of Western tough-guy loner image that the G.O.P. has cultivated so assiduously since the Reagan era.

And it was totally false.

Democrats did complain at the time, but there was hardly any reporting of the incident. What little there was emphasized Republican dismissals, and suggested that the Democrats were trying to distract voters from the supposedly weighty issue of Al Gore's "exaggerations" about the Internet and "Love Story."

Then-Bush-Cheney campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer waved off the charges, saying "the worse [the Democrats] are doing in the polls the more they exaggerate and make things up."

White Ayres, a Republican pollster, told the New York Times that the Gore campaign should have tried another tack. "The accusation isn't going to fly," he said. "They would have been better off counterattacking on anything which voters already suspect is true."

There was not a single national newspaper story on the actual substance of Cheney's Halliburton connection and how it reflected on his veracity. The voters suspected nothing because the news media had said nothing -- and would say nothing.

But now, thanks to the Halliburton decline of 2001, that is about to change -- nearly a year and a half late.

With Halliburton hanging by a string, the Cheney cover-up is on the verge of being exposed for what it was and what it is.

Developing ever more furiously....

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/11/politics/11DEMS.html http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm?ID=3728

Transcript:
http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,238990-412,00.shtml

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), January 24, 2002

Answers

Cherri, checked the 3 sources listed and none had but anecdotal info vaguely referenced in the fevered article above. Where did the article come from? Is it a kind of a club or something? Serious inquiry here. Would like to read firsthand where and from whom this spew flows.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), January 25, 2002.

Honestly, this is so sad to watch.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeeD@yahoo.com), January 25, 2002.