Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War

Pratap Chatterjee—one of the world’s leading authorities on corporate crime, fraud, and corruption—shows how Halliburton won and then lost its contracts in Iraq, what Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld did for it, and who the company paid off in the U.S. Congress. He brings us inside the Pentagon meetings, where Cheney and Rumsfeld made the decision to send Halliburton to Iraq—as well as many other hot-spots, including Somalia, Yugoslavia, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and, most recently, New Orleans. He travels to Dubai, where Halliburton has recently moved its headquarters, and exposes the company’s freewheeling ways: executives leading the high life, bribes, graft, skimming, offshore subsidiaries, and the whole arsenal of fraud. Finally, Chatterjee reveals the human costs of the privatization of American military affairs, which is sustained almost entirely by low-paid unskilled Third World workers who work in incredibly dangerous conditions without any labor protection.

Halliburton’s Army is a hair-raising exposé of one of the world’s most lethal corporations, essential reading for anyone concerned about the nexus of private companies, government, and war.