It was a medium size construction company in Texas. 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. Of the many images that lingered after the January inauguration of President Joe Bidenthe twinkling hand gestures of the poet Amanda Gorman, the rakish eyebrow-waggling of the second daughter, Ella Emhoffone of the more subtly significant was the scene of Doug Emhoff trying to figure out which side of his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, to stand on. But the company had an ace in the hole in the shape of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the lumbering former schoolteacher who was vying to replace the departed Buchanan. Drawn from over 123 hours of the former first ladys mostly unheard daily audio diaries, the podcast presents a surprising and original portrait of Claudia Alta Lady Bird Johnson, told in her own words. This article appears in the May 2021 print edition with the headline The Power of the First Lady., You Wont Remember the Pandemic the Way You Think You Will, America Never Wanted the Tired, Poor, Huddled Masses. Not necessarily the company that would do the best job, but the one that would charge the most for the work, since Halliburtons built-in profits came as a fixed percentage of the costs. Cheney swiftly announced two goals for the company: make it the top Pentagon contractor and greatly expand its contractual relationships with foreign governments. In all a report prepared by the Democratic Policy Committee estimates that Halliburtons overcharges in Iraq alone exceed $1 billion. Then an unexpected thing happened. She currently Sure, beautifying highways mattered, but when she was in office, her real focus was on what we now call environmental justice, especially in American cities and on bringing democratic access to nature to people of color especially. In the fall of 1979, the Iranian revolution led to the expulsion of Halliburton from the lucrative sinecure it had enjoyed under the Shahs dictatorship. But the most majestic profits, as always, were to be made during wartime and LBJ gave them a big one. 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. But a review by Pentagon auditors found that the bill was inflated by nearly 200 percent, since the company never served more than 2,500 soldiers on any single day. Julia Sweig is co-executive producer, writer and host of the project. The centerpiece of this enterprise was the Marshall Ford Dam outside Austin and the company that had won the contract to build the dam was none other than Brown & Root. The former majority leaders power shrank while Lady Birds official ambit expanded to include public appearances, both on the campaign trail, where she stood in for a pregnant Jackie Kennedy, and as second lady. Once again, Johnson faced a popular and reactionary governor for the Texas senate seat, vacated when Pappy ODaniel (grew bored of living in DC. 4: EntangledNetwork television comes calling for Lady Bird, as the president of ABC News convinces a reluctant first lady to host a documentary about her beautification work in DC. Astrology was a compulsion, and the attempted assassination of her husband traumatized her, understandably, leading to even more hypervigilance. But over the next five years, Brown Shipbuilding, a huge operation on the Houston Ship Channel, would build 355 ships for the Navy, specializing in sub chasers and escorts for destroyers. In southern Iraq, much of Halliburtons logistics work ended up in the hands of a Kuwaiti firm called La Nouvelle, which handled meals, sanitation facilities and laundry. Luci Johnsons wedding in Washington, DC becomes the setting of dramatic anti-war protests, and Lady Bird herself is the target of a bomb threat. Ill never forgive Lyndons boys for turning my environmental agenda into a beautification project, she said. LBJ, serving out Audio diaries reveal Lady Bird Johnson's unseen influence in War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq - CounterPunch.org 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. Try $5 billion. (A later analysis by Johnson biographer Robert Caro showed that 220 names had been added to the voters list after the polls had closed.). 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. First lady Lady Bird Johnson is at work seated at her desk in the White House in Washington, D.C., 1964. There were also numerous allegations of human rights violations by Halliburton workers, including mounting claims of racial discrimination and sexual harassment in the Balkans. LBJ also enjoyed free access to a DC3, courtesy of Brown & Root, which would rush him across the vast Texan plains for as many as 10 appearances in a single day. In late 1963 the North Vietnamese greatly increased supplies of weapons and equipment to the Vietcong and infiltrated regular army units into the South. In the run up to the 64 election, Lady Bird makes a Whistle Stop tour of the South her home turf to try to keep Southern Democrats from defecting over Civil Rights. Letter from President Johnson to John Steinbeck Call it the Oil-for-Contracts scandal. Halliburton continues to garner millions from its drilling technology, from Saudi Arabia to the Amazonian rainforest. In a memo to Lyndon just five months into his presidency, Lady Bird predicts how the Vietnam war will derail his administration, and proposes a clear end-date for his time in office -- fully four years before he shocked the nation with his announcement in March of 1968 that he wouldn't run for reelection. Needless to say, this prospect didnt sit well with Halliburton and the consortium of British and American oil companies exploiting Irans petroleum wealth. The episode tracks the 14 days from the murder of the president to when the Johnsons move into the White House, days filled with tragic ceremony and heartfelt moments of solidarity between Jackie Kennedy and Lady Bird. Brown & Root decided there was no turning back. And that throughout it all, she was a journalist and historian in her own right, as her tapes clearly demonstrate. Even congress was denied a peak at the reports findings until mid-March 2005. Like Lady Bird, Nancy served as a mood regulator: She knew how well Reagan could perform when confident and relaxed, and her presence improved his performance. Old hands at Halliburton remember Cheney as arrogant and inept, a clumsy autocrat. Witness Cheneys disastrous decision to acquire Dresser Industries, another oil services and engineering company. The Clinton years were very good to Halliburton right to the final days. The plan came to be known as LOGCAP and Halliburton soon got an additional $5 million to flesh out the details. Ep. As LBJ said, Finally, I was a millionaire. Johnson As the war drew to a close, Brown & Root went from building ships to melting more than 20,000 surplus airplanes they bought on the cheap from the War Assets Administration. Did lady bird Johnson travel to Vietnam during the war? WebPresident Johnson and his advisers were and risk nuclear war in the interests of capitalist profit. But in exchange, Halliburton executives agreed to let Brown and his colleagues run the new Brown & Root subsidiary as a quasi-independent arm of Halliburton. They just arent. First lady Lady Bird Johnson greets supporters while campaigning for her husband President Lyndon B. Johnson's bid for the Presidency in 1964. 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. If the current second gentleman, or a future first one, wants advice on how to do it, and how not to, he has plenty of history to consult. Instead, the company opted for posh offices at the Khalifa resort on the beaches of the Persian Gulf a few miles from Kuwait City. He proposed at the end of their first date, then launched a full-court press until she yielded after 10 weeks. And there it sat. LBJs ambush of Olds was scripted by none other than Brown & Roots lawyer, Alvin Wirtz. 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. When Halliburton bought Dresser, it also acquired the companys enormous asbestos liability, a burden which Cheney assured company stockholders would be resolved without material effect. Its the kind of casual lie covering a metastasizing problem that would become a Cheney signature as vice president. In Iraq, LOGCAP would be a recipe for rampant fraud over the basic of services. She is a senior research fellow at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin and the creator, host and executive producer of the podcast In Plain Sight. Her fourth book, Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight comes out March 16, 2021 from Random House. Johnson bought them in San Antonio and southern Texas, while ODaniel, called the greatest campaigner in Texas history, purchased them throughout east Texas. Halliburton acquired Dresser for $7.7 billion, which proved to be at least 16 percent more than the companys actual value. Lady Bird decides to use the opportunity to launch a full PR blitz to take her message to America. Amid this turmoil, Lady Birds ideas about her own work are changing -- what started as planting flowers in underserved DC neighborhoods is growing into an agenda that brings environmentalism and social justice together in Americas cities. Bell set-up a design shop in Garden Park, NY where the first Bell Helicopter was built. She was quick to suspect that aides might be serving their own interests before hisand she wasnt always wrong. As Halliburton executives and managers dispensed and received millions in kickbacks, the company itself simply wrote the dispensations directly onto the invoices submitted by the subcontractors. Halliburton got a $200 million cost/plus contract to work in Kosovo. In reality, of course, the privatization of military logistics operations was neither cost-conscious nor particularly efficient. But Cheney was no mere figurehead. Three New Revelations About 2: Thank You, Mrs. Vice PresidentThere are moments in Lady Birds audio diaries that truly re-write the known history of LBJ's presidency. There was an even uglier problem with the Dresser deal that somehow escaped Cheneys notice. Over the next few days, precincts across the vast state counted and recounted their votes. But one might also diagnose a codependent partnership between two people who felt abandoned in childhoodReagans father was an alcoholicand formed a profoundly anxious attachment. In 1943, the year Lady Bird Johnson purchased KTBC, the Federal Communications Commission, which reviewed all broadcast-license transfers, was close But you didnt hear daily drumbeats about the outrageous rip-off on FoxNews. Negroponte followed up his threat by recruiting the Parsons Corporation, Halliburtons archrival, to execute some of the remaining work in the south. Parsons had previously been awarded the $800 million contract to repair and manage the oil fields around Kirkuk in northern Iraq. If theyve read any of the LBJ histories, they might remember that she used her inheritance to finance Lyndons first congressional campaign. When he ran again in 1948, Johnson almost certainly lost the vote, but stole the election, abetted by Brown & Root, the companys lawyer Alvin Wirtz, and newspaper tycoon Charles Marsh. 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 final fix may have been made by a cabal of Texas oil men and ranchers who wanted ODaniel out of Austin. At least he didnt see himself that way. And yes, of her power. He exacted revenge with a bombshell memoir revealing the extent to which the White House schedule was dictated by astrology. It seems that a certain Luis Salas, following the suggestion of a Brown & Root lawyer, began scouring the courthouse for a missing box of ballots. With time running out, LBJs lawyers Abe Fortas (whom LBJ ultimately rewarded by putting him on the Supreme Court) and Alvin Wirtz, who was also Brown & Roots lead corporate counsel, arranged a secret meeting with Black in his chambers at the Supreme Court. April 16, 1965, Lady Bird Johnson poses for Okamoto at her ranch. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight at the best online prices at eBay! Bob Gomel/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images. They got all of the contracts to build all of the bases, roads, and airports in Vietnam. The Candidate from Brown and Root - The Texas Observer In fact, at that precise moment Cheney enjoyed options on 43,300 shares of Halliburton stock and was pocketing $162,392 a year in deferred compensation from the company. Its just so cute! exclaimed Jessica Jones, a viewer who entertainingly narrated the viral moment on TikTok. I said, Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, you know we never even wanted to be Vice President and now, dear God, its come to this.. 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. In 1943, Larry Bell who owned Bell Aerospace was convinced of a helicopter design after seeing a remote controlled model built and flown by Arthur Young. In 1995, the State Department hit Cheneys Halliburton with a $3.8 million fine for violating the trade embargo with Libya. Indeed, a few weeks before Saddam sent his tanks into Kuwait, the Iraqi government had paid Halliburton $57 million for its work on the Mina Al-Bakr terminal and a seismographic project to help the Iraqi Oil Exploration Company enhance its exploration technology. Johnson was a sneaky, back slapping, Halliburtons big innovation was something called the Cement Jet Mixer. From his early days running the Texas branch of FDRs National Youth Administration, LBJ had set his eyes on landing a seat in the US senate. The fiercely Republican oil services company, which prospered under Eisenhower, now found many familiar doors in Washington shuttered under the Kennedy administration. With her familys money as a seed investment, she helped build an empire of Texas media and business holdings. This prison, which serves as the torture and interrogation center for Bushs wars, was originally designed to hold Haitians and, according to some sources, Cubans, in the event of the collapse of the Castro government. Sweigs writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, the Nation, the National Interest and in Brazils Folha de So Paulo. Similarly, Halliburton kept the Pentagon investigators in the dark about the prices it paid for purchasing fuel from Turkey and Jordan. Recovering in the hospital, Lyndon is once again gripped by crippling anxiety and depression and this time it threatens his presidency. In the spring of that year, young LBJ met several times with Herman Brown, vowing to make congressional approval of the dam project his top priority. Cheney pursued a company that no one else really wanted and to compound his blunder he paid an outrageous price for it. But Johnsons Vietnam War forever changed the role of Pentagon contractors, and Halliburtons Brown & Root subsidiary lead the way. The unusually frank assessment accused Halliburton of undocumented cost overruns totaling tens of millions of dollars and generally poor performance.. At a time when the National Press Club barred female reporters, the Womens National Press Club provided a home for the citys contingent. Gathered around that table just down the hall from the office Douglas Feith were ranking officials from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as the Pentagon. The company had gone into debt by more than $1.5 million in order to purchase the equipment needed to build the dam. In the spring of 1949, only months after claiming his senate seat, LBJ, the former New Dealer, launched an assault on Leland Olds, the chairman of the Federal Power Commission. The GAO audit should have given the company a black eye and caused the government to reconsider the outscourcing of wartime logistics work, but the prophetic report was buried by the Pentagon and ignored by the press. Her motivation was not to expand her own portfolio: She wanted only to promote her husbands well-being and success, ferociously tending him and his image.
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