did lady bird johnson profit from the vietnam war

As The Washington Posts White House correspondent during the Reagan years, Lou Cannon, notes in a biography of the president, for all her talent for turmoil, Nancy became a force for peace within the White House., Tumulty writes about the power that comes with intimacythe influence of the companion who is there in moments public and private, high and lowand some of the most arresting scenes in both books capture drama unfolding in pajamas, or not even. For one thing, those big terminals, the Mina al-Bakr and the Khor al-Amaya were inviting targets. And to purchase an Austin radio station that she probably had a big hand in growing into a very successful media company. Of that Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? In all a report prepared by the Democratic Policy Committee estimates that Halliburtons overcharges in Iraq alone exceed $1 billion. During the Vietnam War, Lady Bird woke to hear President Johnson talking to himself in the early-morning darkness. ), Erasure vs. Sumud: How the Nakba Came to Define the Collective Palestinian Identity, Violence as an Investment Policy, Human Rights Violations as a Business Model, Politicians and the Anzac Tradition: a Story of Manipulation and Mythology, Her Name Was Nora al-Awlaki: The Real Reason Donald Trump Should Rot in Hell, Relocating UN Headquarters out of the United States, Nichole Stephens, Administrative Assistant. Then thirty years after they were constructed, Halliburton was hired by the Pentagon to take control of the two terminals and get them into working condition in the earliest days of the US invasion. Lady Bird feels increasing under siege, even as she vows not to retreat into a bubble in the White House. Some might remember she had a thing for wildflowers and planting them along highways. Claudia Lady Bird Johnson (1912-2007) was an American first lady (1963-69) and the wife of Lyndon Johnson, the 36th president of the United States. Of course, Cheney didnt wrest these deals from the feds alone. True to form, Johnson never tried to conceal the role his corporate sponsors played in securing the 1948 election. There were several other companies that could have done the job that was given to Halliburton. Halliburton got a $200 million cost/plus contract to work in Kosovo. But it was politically expedient since it allowed civilian officials in the Pentagon to steer billions into the coffers of favored contractors, such as Halliburton, Lockheed and DynCorp. Thats real money, even by Pentagon standards. Old hands at Halliburton remember Cheney as arrogant and inept, a clumsy autocrat. The congressman, who controlled the federal purse, was in the midst of pushing through congress the Lower Colorado River Project, a scheme to build a network of dams across the Texas hill country that would bring water to the people and millions in federal funds to favored contractors. But Cheney was no mere figurehead. As far as the Pentagon was concerned all of this was written off to carping from the sidelines by busy-bodies and tightwads at the State Department. Over the next 25 years, the company cashed in on more than $10 billion in contracts with Iran. Then in 1995, at the same time Cheney was taking over the reins at Halliburton, the Pentagon handed the company a $550 million contract to provide logistical support for US and NATOs IFOR forces in Bosnia, Croatia and Hungry. La Nouvelle billed $108 for each 15-pound bag of laundry at this base, $80 a bag more than the very same company charged at another base. Ive got to call up 6,000 boys, make them leave their homes and their families. She doubted that others understood the depth of his pain.. Recovering in the hospital, Lyndon is once again gripped by crippling anxiety and depression and this time it threatens his presidency. He can be reached at:sitka@comcast.netor on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3. On Monday, May 16, 1966, John Steinbeck and his 19 year-old son, John, visited President Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office of the White House. The civil rights movement is confronting a violent backlash, especially in the South, and despite LBJs public stance, Lady Bird knows they have a small war on our hands in Vietnam. Soon the Johnsons were rich. In a scenario that would be reprised in the Iraq war, Halliburton soon won the contract to implement the LOGCAP plan that it had devised. April 16, 1965, Lady Bird Johnson poses for Okamoto at her ranch. Why did Lyndon Johnson escalate the conflict Brown sluiced cash into LBJs campaign and he sailed to victory in a special election on May 13, 1937. In the immediate wake of the Dresser acquisition, Cheney fired 10,000 of the companys employees. Because the offshore terminals were such easy targets for Iranian gunboats, in 1981 Saddam signed a $2.5 million contract with Halliburton to build a feeder pipeline from the terminals out into the Gulf where the crude oil could be safely sluiced into wary tankers. In 1943, the year Lady Bird Johnson purchased KTBC, the Federal Communications Commission, which reviewed all broadcast-license transfers, was close In this busy milieu, Lady Bird was, she said, so happy being the wife of the senator from Texas., Julia E. Sweig: The lost story of Lady Bird, So happy was sheand so aware of how her husband would chafe at a subordinate rolethat when John F. Kennedy drafted LBJ as his running mate in 1960, she made the case for not accepting. Then, in the mid-1940s, opportunity came calling when KTBC, Austins first radio station, went on the market. And yes, of her power. Someday, a first gentleman will be called upon to match that care and dedication. Thanks to her tapes, Lady Bird brings alive aspects of American politics that are highly relevant today: Race, political polarization, inequality and how Americans use their power abroad, often at our own peril. Shes a first lady -- with never a hair out of place on her petite frame. Almost immediately, Cheney began poking his fingers into the Halliburton corporate machine, with, it must be said, less than glamorous results. Sweig posits that she coped with the insecurity by making herself increasingly indispensable. LBJ struggled with depressionLady Bird called it the Valley of the Black Pig, quoting Yeatsand more so as the Vietnam War took an immense psychological toll. In her East Wing policy shop, Lady Bird began to build a portfolio of environmental policies, working with Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. Jeffrey St. Clairis editor of CounterPunch. Emhoff joined a long line of female political spouses who have struggled, in a larger sense, to figure out where they should be and what they should do. Of course, Cheney did deliver some morsels for the shareholders. But there were two problems left by Buchanans ill-timed passing: the money for the dam hadnt yet been approved by congress and the land at the dam-site wasnt owned by the federal government. On a trip to two New England colleges to give speeches supporting their new environmental studies programs, Lady Bird is confronted by outspoken dissent from both students and faculty who walk out of her speeches, picket her presence and circulate letters denouncing the war in Vietnam. The LOGCAP deal was sanctioned by none other than Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. Welcome to the club, any number of women might have told him. Pentagon auditors concluded that La Nouvelle was overbilling for its laundry services alone by at least $1 million a month, with Halliburton enjoying its slice of the profits without even having had to break a sweat. The adventurous and well-read Minnie Taylor died after a fall while pregnant. In late 1940s, Halliburton began doing business in Bahrain, followed by an equally lucrative contract with the royal family of Kuwait to manage that kingdoms oil fields. As LBJ said, Finally, I was a millionaire. Cheney also approved a legally dubious scheme to set up dozens of offshore shell corporations designed to exploit Enron-style accounting hijinks in order to make Halliburtons bottom line seem more robust than it really was. Cheney swiftly announced two goals for the company: make it the top Pentagon contractor and greatly expand its contractual relationships with foreign governments. No, and he even lost his job because of the Vietnam War. A later probe found that the company had bought the plywood for $14 per sheet. and in my book "Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight,", Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. When she called his campaign office early on, one operator said, The bitch is on the phone again. In the margins of my copy, I began tracking all the people she set herself against. Its just so cute! exclaimed Jessica Jones, a viewer who entertainingly narrated the viral moment on TikTok. LBJ, serving out JFKs term, did not have a VP. Then more ballots mysteriously materialized, and ODaniel claimed victory by 1,311 votes. In return, the Shah soon signed over control of Irans oil resources to a consortium of western oil companies, lead by Exxon, Mobil and Texaco. Im sort of an archive geek, so when I heard that Lady Bird had recorded her own White House tapes, the idea of getting to know her and her story didnt sound so far-fetched. The biggest project by far was its $220 million contract to build the mammoth Air Force Base at Phan Rang, which Halliburton constructed on top of some the most beautiful Cham temple complexes in Vietnam. Bush administration to a develop a scheme for outsourcing to private corporations much of the logistics and construction work previously handled by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Cheney, as is his natural inclination, continues to deny any involvement, direct or implicit, in the Pentagon deals that have sent billions in no bid contracts to his former company, at the very same time Halliburton continued to sweeten his bank accounts with more than $140,000 a year. Not to worry. This time his opponent was Coke Stevenson, rancher, bigot and anti-communist. Its the contract that keeps on giving. The top priority on that February morning was to decide which US company would receive the juicy contract to put out the expected oil field fires and to rebuild and manage Iraqs oil infrastructure, from the wellheads to the pipelines to the big oil terminals off the coast near Basra. And yet, after nearly two years in office, the Johnsons still find themselves in the shadow of the glamorous Kennedys, when a high profile event at the White House brings the Johnsons their first taste of public protest and bad press. Evidence of the systematic accounting fraud at Halliburton during the Cheney years has now been marshaled into a class action suit by Halliburton shareholders that may even yet doom the company. For Nancy Reagan, we meant a combative us-against-them partnership that betrayed a different kind of insecurity, Tumultys biography suggests. Johnson Bird Johnson In June 2004, the company eased out Jack Shanley, chairman of its Kellogg, Brown & Root subsidiary, for having received improper benefits from this very account. Im so scared, she said. Ep. Ep. In 1948 it was also this same DC-3 that made emergency flights to Austin and Dallas in search of cash from the accounts of Brown & Root. Feeling the urgency, Lady Bird is looking for ways to make beautification have more impact for the people who need it most. On September 29, 1948, Black came through. In an otherwise scripted and sober ceremony, the shuffle injected a spontaneous note as the second gentleman sought his placenot sure quite what that place was. The fiercely Republican oil services company, which prospered under Eisenhower, now found many familiar doors in Washington shuttered under the Kennedy administration. He shed much of his New Dealer image and reemerged as a Southern populist, touting his votes against an anti-lynching bill, against Trumans bill to outlaw the poll tax, and for the union-busting Taft-Hartley Act. In fact, the contract was secretly handed to Halliburton in May, but the Pentagon kept it underwraps for more than a month. And behind her rightful insistence on we lay a more painful bargain. Much of the fuel those Halliburton drivers were carrying into Iraq came courtesy of a company called Altanmia, a Kuwait firm with cozy ties to the countrys royal family. As the polls closed in the Texas senate race of 1948, the margin was razor thin, with Coke Stevenson running slightly ahead of LBJ. But within a year, the cost had soared to more than $45 million, with Brown & Root pocketing more than $2.4 million in profits. Nancys mother, Edie Davis, was a stage actor whose glamorous social life included Spencer Tracy and Mary Martin. WebEartha Kitt confronts President Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson about the Vietnam War at a White House luncheon. He later served as a key figure on the Bush-Cheney transition team. The resulting media backlash, fueled by the White House PR machine, is swift and brutal, effectively derailing Kitts career for decades to come. In 1965, Halliburton formed a consortium with the Idaho-based firm Morrison-Knudsen to manage big construction projects for the Pentagon in Vietnam. Of course, the deal had sublime benefits for the Clinton administration as well. Nearly 40 years ago, Halliburton faced almost identical charges over its work for the U.S. government in Vietnam -- allegations of overcharging, sweetheart contracts In reality, of course, the privatization of military logistics operations was neither cost-conscious nor particularly efficient. With the outbreak of the prolonged Iran/Iraq, those oil terminals, Iraqs main source of getting its crude to global markets, were hit time and time again by Iranian saboteurs. The damning investigation by the Defense Contract Audit Agency was completed in early October of 2004 and shipped up the line to Pentagons dark triumverate, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. For those flights, the Bush campaign reimbursed Halliburton only the cost of one first class ticket. Still, tandem toil was one thing; staking out too much terrain for herself was another. The congress granted to the administration of Lyndon Baines Johnson for 1965 $700 million for the expected ramping up of a direct American military role. The Browns were furious at Oldss rulings and pleaded with Johnson to defeat his renomination. Nearly every other venture racked up huge levels of debt and legal liabilities. As our vision of high-level political partnership gets a reboot (the first-ever first lady whos not giving up her career, the first-ever second gentleman), it seems a good time to recall just how undefined the role of unelected spouse has been.

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