Sabocat
28th January 2004, 12:43
Will Vice President Cheney be indicted—and will the US media report it?
By Patrick Martin
28 January 2004
A French investigation into $180 million in bribes paid by oil companies to government officials in Nigeria threatens to implicate US Vice President Richard Cheney, according to reports in the French and British press. The conservative French daily newspaper Le Figaro wrote last month that “the Paris court contemplates an eventual indictment of the present United States’ vice president, Richard Cheney, in his capacity as former CEO of Halliburton.”
The American media, however, has been all but silent on the subject. The first reference to appear in a major US daily occupied all of nine brief paragraphs in the Washington Post January 21. The newspaper buried on page A23 a report that the second highest official in the US government was under investigation for authorizing bribes. The Post article made no mention of any possible indictment of Cheney, only noting that the bribes were allegedly paid while he was Halliburton’s chief executive, from 1995 to 2000.
The case arises from the awarding of a multi-billion-dollar contract to build a new natural gas production facility on Bonny Island in the eastern part of the Niger River delta. The contract was won by a four-nation consortium headed by Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), Halliburton’s construction arm. Its partners were Technip of France, the Italian firm Snamprogetti, and JGC of Japan.
The rest: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/.../chen-j28.shtml (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/chen-j28.shtml)
By Patrick Martin
28 January 2004
A French investigation into $180 million in bribes paid by oil companies to government officials in Nigeria threatens to implicate US Vice President Richard Cheney, according to reports in the French and British press. The conservative French daily newspaper Le Figaro wrote last month that “the Paris court contemplates an eventual indictment of the present United States’ vice president, Richard Cheney, in his capacity as former CEO of Halliburton.”
The American media, however, has been all but silent on the subject. The first reference to appear in a major US daily occupied all of nine brief paragraphs in the Washington Post January 21. The newspaper buried on page A23 a report that the second highest official in the US government was under investigation for authorizing bribes. The Post article made no mention of any possible indictment of Cheney, only noting that the bribes were allegedly paid while he was Halliburton’s chief executive, from 1995 to 2000.
The case arises from the awarding of a multi-billion-dollar contract to build a new natural gas production facility on Bonny Island in the eastern part of the Niger River delta. The contract was won by a four-nation consortium headed by Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), Halliburton’s construction arm. Its partners were Technip of France, the Italian firm Snamprogetti, and JGC of Japan.
The rest: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/.../chen-j28.shtml (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/chen-j28.shtml)