A revolving door connects top Pentagon officials to the military-contracting industry.

Evidence

KBR is the latest incarnation of Brown & Root, the company that built U.S. military installations during the Vietnam War. From its beginnings in 1919, when it got its start paving roads in Texas, Brown & Root eventually grew into the largest engineering and construction firm in the United States. In 1962, it was bought by Halliburton, an international oil services company. Dick Cheney, who helped significantly increase the Pentagon’s reliance on private contractors when he was President George H. W. Bush’s secretary of defense, became Halliburton’s president and CEO in 1995. During the five years when Cheney ran the company, KBR, as it was now known, won 2.3 billion in U.S. military contracts—compared to 1.2 billion in the previous five years. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 693

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader rotation between Department of Defense leadership and defense contractors — follows the book’s thesis about how the base system serves private interests.