When I joined Halliburton, I knew I was gonna work on
some big things.
We put out a few fires at work, once ran into a small challenge of
getting some supplies for our troops.
But the biggest thing, serving our troops good
old American food, so they’d feel just a little closer to home.
How come you don’t go to the chow hall?
How much time you spend on line?
At least, at least--
An hour?
An hour.
An hour for food?
Hour, hour in the sandstorm for food.
Tell me about that line over there.
What, what line am I looking at right now?
That line is for the chow hall, where you eat.
Several times dining halls were attacked.
All it takes is one Iraqi
that’s an insurgent.
And because they knew what times we were gonna eat every day,
they knew when to expect to hit.
And that happens because KBR won’t go to a 24 hour
feeding schedule where they just always have food ready.
They won’t do it because it
saves them money, because they get paid by how many soldiers they feed, not by how
many soldiers they save.
Feeding the troops.
The Pentagon has found
some serious problems with Halliburton’s work on that contract
as well.
Pentagon auditors found that a Halliburton contract to provide food and
housing for American troops had a staggering 1.8 billion dollars in unsupported costs.
It was all a scam, Halliburton was charging $45 dollars for a six
pack, can of like, coke or Pepsi, that they give us in the military free in the mess hall.
Now these sodas were made right there in the desert, it’s not as if
they were brought over from the United States, these sodas were made with Arabic
wraps, you know, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-cola, whatever, right there in the desert.
So it’s not
as if they had an exorbitant transportation rate.
They had the, the little mobile units that we had to put our clothes
in, like a net duffle bag, Halliburton charged the government $100 dollars for every bag
of clothes they washed.
Whenever we got our laundry back, it felt worse than when we
turned it in.
Everything was still grimy.
I stopped taking my laundry into KBR and
instead I was washing it in the sink.
And I was told by my chain of command that I was
not allowed to wash my laundry on my own, I had to take it to KBR to have it washed.
Even though we all knew that they were doing a horrible job.
Because they get $99
dollars a bag, for a bag of laundry that I could do at home for $3 dollars.
The legal way of stealing from the government, our taxpayer’s money.
The Pentagon audit released last night, they found the company is
overcharging tax payers.
Halliburton company billed tax payers for its contract work in Iraq.
It is your money that’s being used.
These contracts are managed under a system called cost plus,
which is the opposite of trying to save money, it guarantees that everything that you buy
will be paid back and reimbursed if it’s seen as justified, and you’ll be given a
profit in addition.
A cost plus arrangement, the critics say leaves little incentive to save.
The
more tax payer dollars Halliburton spends, the more Halliburton makes.
Cost plus encourages you to run up the costs of a program because
you are gonna get a percentage of the, the end result and so there’s no incentive to
stay at Motel 6, stay at the Ritz Carlton uh, in Qatar, folks.
The place that they chose for orientations
in Kuwait was a huge resort set right on the ocean, had I think
3 swimming pools.
So it was better than the Wyndom in Texas
or the Ritz.
It was fancied up.
Marble floors, mahogany woodwork, it was just beautiful.
They had Seadoos, jet skies they could use.
You could go and rent wave runners and go out and play in
the water.
We were renting wave runners and we got paid
by the hour to do it.
I was told this, don’t question it, enjoy
it.
Several government agencies are currently investigating if
Halliburton overcharged for work already completed in Iraq.
They had five star meals catered in every day.
It was so lavish.
Rows of vegetable platters, beef platters, fish platters.
It’s a cost plus contract.
KBR looked at it, the more money
we spend, that’s more money we get in our pockets.
We had it made over there compared to the military.
I mean those guys
were living in tents and we had air condition and private hooches.
The tents that we were staying in were completely moldy and
everybody was getting sick with respiratory infections, they’re getting paid millions
of dollars, why can’t they even give us a tent
that doesn’t make us sick to live in it.
The soldiers are sleeping on these little cots out in the middle of
the desert, while these KBR executives are driving these $40,000 dollar vehicles.
They and their secretaries are driving at least a $30 to $40,000
dollar vehicle.
This secretary lives in this complex, eats her meals in this complex, has
her laundry delivered to her, has no reason to go anywhere at any time, but has a brand
new, top of the line Ford or Chevy pick-up with everything imaginable on it that you
could put on it.
Chrome rims and leather interior and CD players and all these
extra amenities that you know, you don’t really need in the war time.
Why do they need an H2 Hummer?
Why do they have Cadillac
Escalades in Iraq for Halliburton managers?
What is the purpose?
One invoice that I saw was for about $7,000 dollars for one month,
for a SUV on a lease.
It was a three year contract, comes up to uh, roughly $250,000.
A vehicle that you and I could purchase at the local dealership for probably top
of the line $45,000 dollars.
And to the taxpayer, he goes, yeah, $250,000 dollars, and
never did own the vehicle.
They got the wrong equipment, ordered the wrong stuff, computers
still in boxes, new vehicles, ‘cause they’d push them out in what they call burn pits.
And they just set it on fire, claim it as a loss,
get more money for the right equipment or the
right stuff they needed.
Why would you need to order somebody else’s wrong equipment just
because somebody pays you to do it, and you burn it and destroy it?
You got brand new trucks over there, and there, y-, there’s not even oil
filters.
So when the motor blows, what do you do?
Buy a new truck and bill the government.
$75,000 dollar truck, they wouldn’t have
a spare tire to fit it and we had to blow it up.
And they didn’t care,
Halliburton didn’t, because the government’s paying for it.
We knew that everyday that a vehicle broke down, we would
have to destroy it.
And these are maybe $80,000 dollar vehicles, maybe $100,000
dollars, you know, they’re expensive trucks.
We’re burning fuel in front of Iraqi people,
we’re not really doing anything to help and we just have to follow the orders.
As a truck driver in the mail department, they’d send me to these
camps with one bag of mail.
Now that’s risking my life just to deliver one bag of mail.
To escort entire convoys where every flatbed truck was empty.
The allegations come from 12 truckers complaining that the company was
wasting government money by running empty trucks on the convoys and billing the government
for them.
It seems senseless to travel up and down the road and taking the
chance of losing your life when there wasn’t no purpose in it.
When you went up empty
and you come back empty.
I went to make a better life for my family, always have a roof over
their head and not have to worry about where their next meal’s coming from.
It wasn’t that fun with him gone.
We missed him and all that stuff.
I couldn’t do stuff with him.
Didn’t have nobody to throw a baseball with, did you?
I was gonna take you fishing, ‘cause mama scared you’d
fall in and get drowned, wasn’t she?
Yeah.
I went over there and I got my health messed up and got shot,
braked, knocked down, everything else.
I felt like not only I can make a decent living for
my family and better myself, but I’d be doing something for my country, you know what
I’m saying?
I’m supplying to military and these guys where they can eat and help
fight when they have to.
But then you know, you’re
looking and you’re going up and down the road empty.
Halliburton’s charging the
government for every camp they go by and your buddy’s getting killed for un-, for
no cause at all, not even as much as a Band-Aid on the truck, that’s how Halliburton was
making a killing, making their money.
It's a legal way of stealing from the American citizen
and the military.