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Another former Halliburton employee, Mike West, said that prior to Halliburton, he had working as an area manager for Valero Energy with a yearly salary of $70,000. "When I heard about a chance to earn more with Halliburton, I called them up," he said. "After just a few minutes, the woman said I was hired as a labor foreman at a salary of $130,000. I didn't even have to send in a resume."
When he arrived, West explained he was paid despite the fact that he had no work. "I only worked one day out of six in Kuwait," he explained. "That day, a supervisor told me to operate a forklift. I explained that I didn't have a license to operate a forklift or any experience The response was: 'It's easy and no one will know.'"
When West got to Camp Anaconda in southern Iraq, he says that he didn't have any work to do. Nor did most of the other 35 workers. The supervisors told them to walk around and look busy. Then they went to a camp in Al Asad, where they had only one day of work out of five days. They were told to bill for 12 hours of labor every day. From there, his group was sent Fallujah for six weeks, where once again he had almost no work to do except help with security and follow Iraqi workers around to make sure they cleaned the toilets properly.
"One day, I was ordering some equipment. I asked the camp manager if it was OK to order a drill," West said. "He said to order four. I responded that we didn't need four. He said: 'Don't worry about it. It's a cost-plus contract.' I asked him, 'So basically, this is a blank check?' The camp manager laughed and said, 'Yeah.' He repeated this over and over again to the employees."
As a Halliburton employee, I was disappointed by all of the company's lies and disorganization. As a taxpayer, I'm disgusted by all of the money spent by Halliburton to pay employees to do nothing."
A third person who submitted testimony to Waxman's office was Marie de Young, who had previously worked for the military for 10 years, rising to the level of captain. De Young, who had also authored two books about women in the military, worked for Halliburton in Kosovo and was hired in December to help oversee Operation Iraqi Freedom contracts in Kuwait.
"I soon discovered that there was not a complete up-to-date list of all of the sub-contracts.. also, the document control department had provided incorrect lists to all of the task order managers from an inaccurate database," she said.
In January and February 2004, a series of articles in the media, especially in the Wall Street Journal, chronicled the overcharging and fraud in Halliburton's operations. In response Halliburton hired what it dubbed the "Tiger Team" to audit and correct problems. De Young worked closely with the team and discovered not only that it did not correct anything, but that the team continued "questionable auditing and administration practices."
"When the Tiger Team examined a subcontract, they just checked to make sure that all the forms were in the file," she said. "They didn't assess the reasonableness of the price or consult with site managers. The team's sole purpose was to close as many subcontracts as possible, under the mistaken assumption that everything that was closed prior to the arrival of the government audit team would be exempt from further scrutiny. For three months, this Tiger Team occupied waterfront villas at the Hilton hotel and shuffled papers, but did nothing to effectively clean up old subcontracts.
"We were instructed to pay invoices without verifying whether services were delivered. I personally told a KBR Tiger Team member not to pay an invoice that I knew was a double billing (but) the long term KBR employee told me I didn't know what I was doing."
De Young says that Halliburton paid the Kuwaiti subcontractor La Nouvelle $100 per bag for laundry services--four times more than they were paying elsewhere. That added up to more than $1 million per month. Another time, the company ordered 37,200 cases of soda at $1.50 a case, but was delivered only 37,200 cans, resulting in charges that were five times the normal wholesale cost for the drinks.
Halliburton housed the Tiger Team at the five-star Kempinski Hotel for $10,000 per employee per month. At the same time, soldiers were required to live in tents at a cost of $1.39 a day. The military requested that Halliburton employees move into the tents, but they refused, De Young said.
"The Halliburton corporate culture is one of intimidation and fear," De Young said. "I had been advised by subcontract administrators who quit the company that employees get moved around when they get too close to the truth. I personally observed and experienced this as a routine company practice. Ironically, other previous managers who tolerated bad practices were promoted to better paying jobs in Iraq or Houston or Jordan."
In an email, Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall told reporters: "We take any charges of improper conduct seriously… . We will look into these assertions. If issues arise, we are committed to addressing them forthrightly and openly.
"Halliburton believes its actions in Iraq are designed to deliver the best quality products and services on the best terms available as called for in our contract. We will work with the committee to assist them in fulfilling their important oversight functions.''
Meanwhile, top executives of Halliburton have been asked to testify next month before another congressional committee investigating potential favoritism and waste in Iraq reconstruction contracts.
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