Reason #30: Presidential Payola - The (Brown and) Root of Halliburton’s Power

Dick Cheney isn't Halliburton's first friend in the White House. The company has a long history of setting up shop on Pennsylvania Avenue. One of Halliburton's main subsidiaries, Brown and Root, bankrolled a young Democratic politician named Lyndon Johnson and cashed in as he rose to become the leader of the free world. Back in the late 1930s, Brown and Root was just a backwater construction company in South Texas. But after then-Congressman Lyndon Johnson convinced the Roosevelt Administration to grant the firm a coveted dam building contract, a cataract of federal cash gushed into its accounts. In return for his help with the dam project, the company pledged to underwrite Johnson's political aspirations from then on. As Johnson rose from congressman to senator and eventually to president, its investment in him kept bringing record returns. As a US senator, LBJ steered more and more federal contracts B&R's way. And when he made it into the White House, he gave them their largest payday to date: a $380 million contract to build bases, airstrips, and roads in Vietnam. By then Brown and Root was already a part of Halliburton. Johnson's lucrative Vietnam gift launched that company's infamous career in wartime profiteering.

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