A Pentagon e-mail said US Vice President Dick Cheney's office "coordinated" a multibillion-dollar Iraq reconstruction contract awarded to his former employer Halliburton, Time magazine reported on Sunday.
The e-mail, sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official on March 5, 2003, said Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, provided arrangements for the RIO contract, or Restore Iraqi Oil, between Halliburton and the US government.
The newsweekly said it was three days later that Halliburton won the contract, although no other bids had been submitted.
The e-mail said Feith, who reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, approved arrangements for the contract "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's [vice president's] office."
The e-mail was sent "in anticipation of controversy over the award of a sole-source contract to Halliburton, we wanted to give the vice president's staff a heads-up," a Pentagon spokesman said.
Feith was handed the job of coordinating the contract by Wolfowitz, Time said. Feith, Wolfowitz and Cheney, along with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, form the core of Bush administration "hawks" who most actively promoted the war in Iraq.
A spokesman for Cheney said his office had no role in the contract process. "Vice President Cheney and his office have had no involvement whatsoever in government contracting matters since he left private business to run for vice president," said spokesman Kevin Kellems.
An administration official familiar with the e-mail, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the memo merely mentions the fact that the White House had been given a courtesy call notifying it that a contract decision had been made and was being publicly announced soon.
Cheney was Halliburton's CEO from 1995 until he joined candidate George W. Bush's presidential ticket in 2000. The Texas oil services firm has been accused of war profiteering after winning billions of dollars in contracts from the US military in Iraq.
The company has strongly denied it obtained favorable treatment. Time said the Pentagon e-mail was located among documents provided by Judicial Watch, a watchdog group.
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