Email Shows Cheney 'link' to Oil Contract

The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, helped to steer through a huge contract for the reconstruction of Iraq's oil industry on behalf of his old firm, Halliburton, Time magazine reported yesterday.

The report, based on an internal Pentagon email, joins a steady stream of allegations of cronyism involving Halliburton. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, the Houston company has won $17bn (£9bn) in contracts to rebuild Iraq, far outstripping its competitors.

Mr Cheney, who ran Halliburton for five years before he became George Bush's vice-president in 2000, has maintained that he severed all links to the company when he entered public life.

However, Time said it had obtained an internal email from a Pentagon official indicating that Mr Cheney's office had been intimately involved in awarding a multibillion-dollar contract for the restoration of Iraqi oil.

The email, dated March 5 last year, said that Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defence for policy and an avid promoter of the war, had approved a contract with Halliburton "contingent on informing WH [the White House] tomorrow".

The email says that Mr Feith received authorisation for the Rio (Restore Iraqi Oil) contract from the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz. The email, from an unidentified official with the Army Corps of Engineers, says: "We anticipate no issues, since action has been coordinated with the VP's office."

No other bids were sought, and Halliburton was awarded the contract.

A spokesman for Mr Cheney's office denied any connection to the contract. "The vice-president and his office have played no role in government contracting since he left private business to campaign for vice-president," in 1999, Kevin Kellems said.

But Mr Cheney has not severed his links with Halliburton. Last year, he received $178,437 in deferred compensation from the company.

Reports suggest that the process of awarding contracts has changed under the Bush administration. A report to the House of Representatives committee on government reform last week noted that $107bn in contracts had been awarded without open competition. Nearly three-quarters of those exclusive arrangements - worth about $88bn - involved work in Iraq, the report said. Halliburton has won a sizeable share of them.