The following is from the hit piece by Lisa Myers:
". . . Another report finding that less than half the budget for some reconstruction projects actually went to rebuild the country.
Where did most of it go? Some for security, but even more to house, feed and pay contractors while they did nothing for months. Some were in Iraq as long as nine months before significant work on projects began.
"This was a waste of money because the contractors were ordered to go to Iraq to work, but they weren't working," says Stewart Bowen, Iraq Reconstruction Special Inspector General.
Who's to blame? Investigators mostly blame the government's poor planning. But they also single out a Halliburton subsidiary — KBR.
In this 2004 letter obtained by NBC News, a U.S. official criticizes KBR for "accruing exhorbitant indirect costs at a rapid rate" and for failing to provide adequate cost information.
Government watchdogs now say Halliburton actually tried to hide data from auditors. "I believe that KBR was attempting to impede the scope of our oversight," Bowen says.
Halliburton denies doing anything improper and says it has restricted access to such data for years. But a U.S. official was sufficiently angry, that at one point, he threatened to cancel Halliburton's contract if it didn't provide information to justify costs."