The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money

Author Dan Briody has written a book that goes beyond pundit finger-pointing over the controversial "no-bid" contracts relationship between Halliburton and Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a serious examination of the high-octane blend of profit and politics that fuels the Bush administration's agenda. Briody begins with an extensive history of two Texas companies, Halliburton and Brown & Root (now KBR). He deftly portrays how they made their fortunes despite Great Depression hardships, World War II and political intrigues aplenty. Briody pulls no punches while maintaining a reportorial (if not totally objective) tone, although people who hold different political views might argue with his opinions and conclusions. We recommend this saga to anyone looking for a deeper understanding of the ongoing tryst between corporate America and its politicians. While this book is not presented as a smoking gun, it portrays insider politics that smolder like an oil fire you can't quite extinguish, leaving sort of an ugly haze.

Mixed Emotions: Too Short and Surprisingly it Features LBJ (4/4 people found this helpful)

Did I get the wrong book from Amazon.com? The book is advertised to be a book about Cheney and Halliburton - it is about Halliburton but not Cheney. For example, pictures of Cheney appear on both the front and back covers of the book jacket. But that is very misleading. The book is not about Cheney per se; there are in fact only a dozen or so pages dealing with Cheney near the end of the book and he plays only a minor role; he finally appears on page 191 of the 237 added seemingly as an afterthought. Surprisingly, the dominant politician in the book is the former president and Texas native Lyndon Baines Johnson or LBJ. By my estimate and it is confirmed by looking at the index, LBJ takes up three times as much space in the book as Cheney, and furthermore he plays a much more important role in setting any "agenda" at Brown & Root - a subsidiary of Halliburton. Even though the book even if falsely promoted it is still an interesting read about two old US companies and their eventual merger; but at just 237 pages long in medium font is not a 5 star effort, just 3.5 stars, maybe only 3 stars at best.

The first company described is the oil well services company Halliburton started in approximately 1920 by Erle Halliburton in Oklahoma. Erle Halliburton died in 1957 leaving a successful and financially strong and independent business enterprise as his legacy. The second company is Brown & Root (B & R) that developed from being a Texas road construction company that was started around 1917 to become a major defense contractor. The business grew through political connections and after many decades B & R had become the largest engineering and construction company in the USA, boosted by the Vietnam war effort, and fed by a series of domestic and foreign construction and defense contracts stretching around the globe.

The book tells (very briefly) how these companies developed, merged in 1962 with R & B being bought by Halliburton, and how they became a major defense contractor. It also contains many side stories such as the influence of the rising political star LBJ in Texas, dam construction, back room operators such as A.J.Wirtz, political intrigue, the milking of Roosevelt's New Deal money, navy boat building, the fall of Leland Olds who was a bureaucrat blocking their expansion, the Johnson Space Center contract, Vietnam contracts, the LOGCAP contract, the Dresser merger, Henry Waxman's congressional charges against Halliburton and the sole sourcing, etc. Cheney appears near the end of the book and I did learn that Cheney flunked out of Yale and was arrested twice for DWI in his youth. There are a number of insights and comments on the current contracts to Halliburton. But since Halliburton had the LOGCAP contract before Cheney, it seems to me that Cheney played no more a dramatic role - I suspect - than any other good CEO or "rainmaker" might have played at Halliburton to boost its revenues.

As a book I would say it rates just 3 or 4 stars since as the author acknowledges that he uses and number of existing books such as "Erle P. Halliburton: Genius with Cement" and other publications, and most of the book is about the older history - as I said Cheney does not even appear until page 191 out of 237. So even when he appears the information is scant. Having said that it is clear the author has done extensive research, he has a nice reference section for further reading, he brings the story together, but overall it seems like a short collection of historical facts and tidbits. As it stands, it is more of a "gateway" book or introduction and it would have been a 5 star book if it was about 400-500 pages long and was more complete. But some of the references and 40 pages of notes at the back are worth a follow up read.

The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money

Dan Briody

Reader Reviews:

A corporate history powered by political fuel (0/0 people found this helpful)

Mixed Emotions: Too Short and Surprisingly it Features LBJ (4/4 people found this helpful)

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