posted 09-23-2003 04:41 PM            

Two quotes:

“I'm not saying that it's illegal. These guys wrote the laws. They set up the system for themselves. Of course it's legal,” says Lewis.

"Halliburton nearly doubled the value of federal contracts it received – from $1.2 to $2.3 billion – during the five years Cheney was its CEO."

Some additional quotes:

“This is not about the revolving door, people going in and out,” says Lewis. “There is no door. There's no wall. I can't tell where one stops and the other starts. I'm dead serious.”

“They have classified clearances, they go to classified meetings and they're with companies getting billions of dollars in classified contracts. And their disclosures about their activities are classified. Well, isn't that what they did when they were inside the government? What's the difference, except they're in the private sector.”

Richard Perle resigned as chairman of the defense policy board last month after it was disclosed that he had financial ties to several companies doing business with the Pentagon.

But Perle still sits on the board, along with former CIA director James Woolsey, who works for the consulting firm of Booz, Allen, Hamilton. The firm did nearly $700 million dollars in business with the Pentagon last year.

Another board member, retired four-star general Jack Sheehan, is now a senior vice president at the Bechtel corporation, which just won a $680 million contract to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq.

That contract was awarded by the State Department, which used to be run by George Schultz, who sits on Bechtel's board of directors.

“I'm not saying that it's illegal. These guys wrote the laws. They set up the system for themselves. Of course it's legal,” says Lewis.