NYT: Bush Got $500,000 From Companies That Got Contracts, Study Finds
Executives, employees and political action committees of the 70 companies that received government contracts for work in either Iraq or Afghanistan contributed slightly more than $500,000 to President Bush's 2000 election campaign, according to a comprehensive study of the contracts released on Tuesday.
The overwhelming majority of government contracts for billions of dollars of reconstruction work in Iraq and Afghanistan went to companies run by executives who were heavy political contributors to both political parties.
Though the employees contributed to both parties, their giving favored Republicans by a two-to-one margin. And they gave more money to Mr. Bush than any other politician in the last 12 years.
Among the biggest contributions to Mr. Bush's election and re-election efforts were those from executives and employees of Dell Computer at $113,000; of Bearing Point, a business consulting firm, at $119,000; of General Electric at $72,000 and of Halliburton Inc. at $28,000, according to the report.
Nine of the 10 biggest contractors — the biggest of which were Bechtel Corporation and Halliburton, either employed former senior government officials or had close ties to government agencies and to Congress.
[Buried in the article was this...]
The State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, told reporters on Thursday that "the reason that these companies get the contracts has nothing to do with who may have worked there before."
He added: "The decisions are made by career procurement officials. There's a separation, a wall, between them and political-level questions when they're doing the contracts."
One of the report's most basic conclusions is that neither the Pentagon nor the State Department or the Agency for International Development were eager to provide comprehensive or accurate information about contracts that total about $8 billion over the past two years.
Ellen Yount, the spokeswoman for the Agency for International Development, disputed that claim and said her office had cooperated with the center and that requests for proposals for Iraq contracts had been publicly available on the agency's Web site for more than six months. "I found the report sloppy and inaccurate in many instances," she said
Get the rest of the story from the "Paper of Record," the New York Times.
Matt's Chat
The Times is not at all partisan. I have no idea why anyone would think there isn't a liberal slant in the media. To borrow from my collegue, here we go again floating black helicopter theories.Mark's Remarks
Let's look at this closely....the key people awarded contracts contributed to BOTH parties...although some favored the republicans....wow...I guess selling our national security and missle codes for Chinese campaign contributions is nothing compared to governmental contracts? Nope, who cares if the Chinese and North Koreans get our missle technology, but by God, we have to make sure haliburton has no advantage....
And for heaven's sake, the report showed that there are walls between buyers and procurers...But facts never get in the way of the New York Times Liberal slant....
