Government Executive Magazine – 1/30/01 Rumsfeld faces big choices in second tour at Pentagon By George C. Wilson, National Journal
[Rumsfeld’s] first [tour as Secretary of Defense] ran only 14 months from Nov. 20, 1975, to Jan. 20, 1977…
On the basis of his 14-month tour, Pentagon reporters in a survey conducted by Armed Forces Journal in 1979 voted him the worst Defense Secretary up to that time; they voted fellow Republican Melvin R. Laird, formerly a Congressman from Wisconsin, the best.
[Rumsfeld was a congressman representing] Illinois’ 13th District (Chicago) from 1963-69. …
In 1966, he was one of only 38 Republicans to vote against increasing the minimum wage from $1.25 to $1.60 an hour. He also opposed spending federal money to establish the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, and he opposed such Great Society initiatives as Medicare, mass transit, and anti-poverty programs. …
During the Vietnam War-on Aug. 30, 1966-Rumsfeld told his House colleagues that it “is beyond me” why the huge contract awarded to Brown and Root [now a subsidiary of Halliburton!] of Houston and other U.S. firms to build air fields and other facilities in South Vietnam “has not been and is not now being adequately audited. The potential for waste and profiteering under such a contract is substantial.” [I guess he got over that.] …
He believed while a lawmaker that Congress, especially the House, should have a larger say in military and foreign affairs. He declared, for example, on March 18, 1968, while the Vietnam War was raging: “The executive needs parcels of extraordinary power to deal with extraordinary situations. However, I question whether the executive should have the range of powers in the range of situations that is the case today.” Three years earlier he said: “Congress must be able to do more than merely nod yes or no to presidential proposals-whether out of apelike obedience or uninformed obstinacy.” [Clearly, he got over this.] …
“The point, I think, that I feel so strongly about is the fact that certain people of this country, in order for them to support something, requires that there is an understanding of it,” Rumsfeld said on July 10, 1967.
Windfalls of War – The Center for Public Integrity
Kellogg, Brown & Root is the engineering and construction arm of the Halliburton Company, which calls itself “the world’s largest diversified energy services, engineering and construction company” with operations in more than 100 countries and 2002 sales of $12.4 billion.
The result, says Danielle Brian, executive director of the non-profit Project on Government Oversight, is a “pay-now, review-later” approach to contracting.
“Really what it is, is making the flow of tax payer money to these favorite contractors easier and easier with less oversight and less guarantee that we’re getting what we’re paying for,” Brian charges. “We no longer know what we’re going to get for our money. And it really opens up the government for being taken for a ride.”
NPR : Halliburton Deals Recall Vietnam-Era Controversy
By the mid-1960s, newspaper columnists and the Republican minority in Congress began to suggest that the company’s good luck was tied to its sizable contributions to Johnson’s political campaign.
More questions were raised when a consortium of which Brown & Root was a part won a $380 million contract to build airports, bases, hospitals and other facilities for the U.S. Navy in South Vietnam. By 1967, the General Accounting Office had faulted the “Vietnam builders” — as they were known — for massive accounting lapses and allowing thefts of materials.
Brown & Root also became a target for anti-war protesters: they called the firm the embodiment of the “military-industrial complex” and denounced it for building detention cells to hold Viet Cong prisoners in South Vietnam. [Brown & Root constructed the prisons at Guantanemo, too.]
Today, Brown & Root is called Kellogg, Brown & Root — a Halliburton subsidiary better known as KBR.