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[Zan_of_Texas]

Richard B. Cheney
Brief Biography - Center For Public Integrity


Under the Influence George W. Bush: Pragmatic,With Ties to Corporate America

<http://www.public-i.org/story_16_022800.htm>
The Advisers
Richard B. Cheney was President Bush's defense secretary, and is now CEO of Halliburton Co., a $9 billion dollar oil services firm based in Dallas. After a February 1999 meeting with Cheney in Austin, Bush told reporters, "Dick Cheney is a friend of mine. It's not the first time he has been down here. It won't be the last time he is down here. He is a person whose judgment I rely upon a lot." As defense secretary, Cheney directed the U.S. invasion of Panama and Operation Desert Storm, the Persian Gulf War. He also oversaw a restructuring of the Pentagon.
In 1995, after a stint at the American Enterprise Institute, Cheney became the CEO of Halliburton, which does business in at least 100 countries. In 1998, Business Week reported that Cheney had been "courting politicians and business leaders through the booming Caspian Sea region in an all-out effort to secure key political ties with Azerbaijan and Kazakstan. Accounting for the world's third-largest oil reserves, the region is Cheney's best hope to secure big contracts for a long time to come." Cheney has succeeded. Along with the heads of Chevron and Texaco Inc., Cheney sits on Kazakstan's Oil Advisory Board, which serves as a sounding board for the country's president. As Halliburton President David J. Lesar told Business Week, "Dick gives us a level of access that I doubt anyone else in the oil sector can duplicate."
Most recently, Cheney lobbied in favor of a U.S. Export-Import Bank loan to Tyumen Oil, an upstart Siberian oil company, which has hired Halliburton to upgrade the giant Samotlor field in the Caspian region. The loan is controversial because Russians were pounding Chechnya at the time the loan would have been made. It was denied in December. As CEO of Halliburton, Cheney has been a staunch critic of unilateral sanctions against Libya, Iran and Nigeria, which prevent oil and gas companies from doing business in those countries.
Cheney also sits on the boards of EDS (consulting), Hunt Oil Co., Procter & Gamble (household products), and TRW (systems integrator).