did lady bird johnson profit from the vietnam war

In the first six months of the war, Pentagon auditors estimated that Halliburton had overcharged the US Treasury by at least $61 million for its fuel deliveries. There was another curious hitch to the Halliburton RIO deal. In the Democratic primary, Stevenson steamrollered Johnson by more than 70,000 votes; yet in a crowded field, the governor didnt top 50 per cent, forcing a run-off election in the fall. Altanmia charged Halliburton a hefty $2.65 per gallon, roughly the price charged at the pump in Washington, D.C. Cheney swiftly announced two goals for the company: make it the top Pentagon contractor and greatly expand its contractual relationships with foreign governments. 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. They figured he could do them less damage in Washington. For her part, Lady Bird discovered that marriage promised her broader horizons than the teaching job she had envisioned. The Army didnt consider it necessary to reveal the terms of the deal, a Pentagon spokesman explained to Reuters. Born in 1912 and 1921, respectively, Lady Bird and Nancy both belonged to a generation sandwiched between two feminist movements. 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. It is estimated that 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. After he ascended to the Senate in 1948, she became a force in the Senate Wives Club, a group of spouses who exercised a sort of soft power in postwar Washingtons political life. Julia Sweig is an award-winning author, scholar and entrepreneur. It informed Halliburton that the company no longer had to submit a public record of the fuel purchases. Ep. Finally, he was able to use the war to further his political career and gain more control over the government. Fluor-Daniel, Parsons and GSM Services were all were just as qualified for the task. Soon there were other summonses from the Middle East. It is startling to realize that, for the 14 months from November 1963 to January 1965, Lady Bird Johnson effectively was the vice president. Erle changed the name of the company to Halliburton and raked in millions from his patent. They were soon one of the big players in the aluminum business, much of which they sold right back to the feds, making tens of millions in profits. I have no financial interests in Halliburton of any kind, Cheney said flatly. Halliburton, which employed thousands of foreign-born subcontractors, even went so far as to operate segregated dining facilities and Americans Only bathrooms. Several of the subcontracts in Iraq were doled out accompanied by the judicious application of cash bribes. His distaste for Uncle Sam was matched only by his ferocious hatred of Mexicans, blacks and labor unionists. Try $5 billion. Lady Bird Johnson travelled to Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines and Malaysia in 1967. In 1999, Cheney urged Lopez to leave the Pentagon and join Halliburton. Both Johnsons knew they had to seize the momentum of the national tragedy and rapidly push through a progressive agenda, which soon became known as the Great Society. 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. Yet, instead of firing of Cheney for this calamitous mistake, the Halliburton board, now ornamented by the rotund figure of former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, awarded its chieftain a $1.5 million bonus for his decisive role in the doomed acquisition. But Nancy had no appetite for cozy calm in the White House. Once I listened to her often riveting, unique and surprising diary accounts -- accounts of some of the most iconic moments in our countrys history -- I began to see that all of the volumes of history and journalism written about the 1960s -- Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam, Civil Rights, and the Great Society -- suffer from a pretty big gap without her voice, without an idea of her influence. ABC News will kick off Womens History Month with its new podcast "In Plain Sight: Lady Bird Johnson," co-produced with Best Case Studios and hosted by author Julia Sweig. Im so scared, she said. By the end of March 2005, more than 65 Halliburton employees had been killed in Iraq and more than 200 injuredthe most of any private contractor in the war zone. Its just so cute! exclaimed Jessica Jones, a viewer who entertainingly narrated the viral moment on TikTok. In the ever-expanding universe of Pentagon contracting, cost is never the problem, public exposure is. The apex political fixer Thomas Tommy the Cork Corcoran later observed that LBJs whole world was built on that dam. 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. The higher the costs, the bigger the profits. ), 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. For Johnson, money was the route to political power. First lady Lady Bird Johnson is at work seated at her desk in the White House in Washington, D.C., 1964. Lyndon Johnson belonged to a generation of men who regarded sex as a perk of power. Each haul would net between $40,000and $50,000 for the Johnson campaign. The unusually frank assessment accused Halliburton of undocumented cost overruns totaling tens of millions of dollars and generally poor performance.. She doesnt really like dealing with women, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Michael Deaver noted, in an understatement. WebLyndon Johnson. In July, the Pentagon discreetly let slip that it had awarded Halliburton a fat new contract for yet more logistics work in Iraq. April 16, 1965, Lady Bird Johnson poses for Okamoto at her ranch. Old hands at Halliburton remember Cheney as arrogant and inept, a clumsy autocrat. Lady Bird Johnson remembers the President's pain over the war. Of course, this decision had been set in motion much earlier and by figures far loftier in the power hierarchy of the Bush administration than lowly Lt. General Strock from the bureaucratic outback of the Corps of Engineers. 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. Then in 1999 Halliburton struck gold once again in the Balkans when Clinton went to war against Serbia over Kosovo. During World War II and Korea, Brown & Root made billions building bases and ships in the US. The vice president demurred, as if the very name of the company was unfamiliar to him. So little doubt, in fact, that a Halliburton executive had been invited to attend the secret conclave. Olds, a former muckraking reporter, was appointed by FDR to head the commission, which set power rates and regulated natural gas prices. But before the year had ended that contract, covering everything from road construction, vehicle maintenance and power generation to food services, latrines and mail delivery, had generated nearly a billion dollars in revenues for Halliburton. 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. The plan came to be known as LOGCAP and Halliburton soon got an additional $5 million to flesh out the details. While Defense Secretary, Cheney defended this kind of military outsourcing as an efficient way to control spiraling costs. Thats because nearly all of Halliburtons work in Iraq was farmed out to subcontractors. Soon the Johnsons were rich. I always wanted someone to take care of me, someone I could take care of, she said, a yearning fulfilled when she met Ronnie, in 1949. I said, Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, you know we never even wanted to be Vice President and now, dear God, its come to this.. By 1968, the United States had 548,000 troops in Vietnam and had More than $1.5 billion of Halliburtons $2.5 billion deal was funded by Iraqi oil sales overseen by the UN. As the first and second couples moved to ascend the Capitol steps, Emhoff stood to her left; changed his mind and dashed to her right; then sort of bobbled, hesitating, before settling at her left. But this rate was nearly three times the 97 cents per gallon that the Iraqi Oil State Marketing Organization was paying to buy oil from Jordan and Turkey. Stevenson rushed to the courts for relief. With a key difference: For wives, the choices have almost always elicited harrumphing from some quarter or anotheras the ruckus over Dr. Jill Bidens use of her well-earned honorific served to remind us. For one thing, those big terminals, the Mina al-Bakr and the Khor al-Amaya were inviting targets. 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. The woman who becomes president will bear the usual burdens of the office, plus an added weight: In public life, men are not the lightning rod women are. Recovering in the hospital, Lyndon is once again gripped by crippling anxiety and depression and this time it threatens his presidency. 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. And she finds inspiration and an unlikely collaborator in San Francisco. 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. WebJacqueline did not remain first lady. 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. There were several other companies that could have done the job that was given to Halliburton. The bagman was none other than John Connolly, the future governor of Texas and Halliburton board member. On August 19, 1953, the CIA launched its coup. Some staffers, like James Baker, understood her influence and made a point of getting along. For all her devotion (including, or especially, when he developed Alzheimers disease), Nancy emerges in the biography as a disruptive force, to put it mildly, in the political life they shared, particularly on staffing matters. A company limousine met him at the airport and whisked away to the Brown & Root suite at the Lamar Hotel, where a victory party was in full swing featuring whiskey, women and the richest oil men in Texas men who were primed to get a lot richer. They witnessed the mortal pressures on what Nancy called the flesh-and-blood person. Both kept close watch on sleep, diet, and mental and emotional statesa wifely role, you could say, but is it? The Johnson family grew accustomed to the patriarchs dedication to his country, and adapted to the ever-changing, politically-charged atmosphere of Washington. 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.

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