Dan Briody is the author of the books The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money (2004) and The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group (2003). Born in Ridgefield, Connecticut, he and his family now live in Bridgewater. [1]
Prior to writing about corporations and their political ties, Briody was a technology journalist, including working as an editor [2] and columnist [3] for InfoWorld . He later began writing for the magazine Red Herring , for whom he initially wrote about the Carlyle Group in 2001. [4]
Briody expanded his Red Herring Carlyle Group article, turning it into his first book in 2003. The Iron Triangle landed on several best-seller lists, [5] with The New York Times describing it as "one-stop shopping for anyone who wants a laundry list of accusations against Carlyle since its inception in 1987." [4]
The Iron Triangle put Briody in the media spotlight, commenting to audiences curious about the confluence of the military business and politics. Briody appeared in Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 9/11 , talking about how the Carlyle Group benefited from 9/11 and the Bush family's connections with the Carlyle Group and Saudi Arabia. [1] Briody has since appeared on a number of national broadcasts including The Today Show , Nightline , The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer , Countdown with Keith Olbermann , and NPR's Fresh Air .
In 2004, Briody published The Halliburton Agenda, a detailed account of Halliburton, the oil services and logistics company formerly run by Dick Cheney. In particular, he covered its subsidiary KBR (formerly named Kellogg Brown & Root).
More recently, Briody writes freelance articles for a variety of magazines, including Martha Stewart Living , Golf Digest , BusinessWeek , MSN, and Inc . He is also the founder of a communications consultancy for Fortune 500 companies.
A telecommunications company is a kind of electronic communications service provider, more precisely a telecommunications service provider (TSP), that provides telecommunications services such as telephony and data communications access. Many traditional solely telephone companies now function as internet service providers (ISPs), and the distinction between a telephone company and ISP has tended to disappear completely over time, as the current trend for supplier convergence in the industry develops. Additionally, with advances in technology development, other traditional separate industries such as cable television, Voice-over IP (VoIP), and satellite providers offer similar competing features as the telephone companies to both residential and businesses leading to further evolution of corporate identity have taken shape.
The Carlyle Group Inc. is an American multinational company with operations in private equity, alternative asset management and financial services. As of 2023, the company had $426 billion of assets under management.
Halliburton Company is an American multinational corporation and the world's second largest oil service company which is responsible for most of the world's largest fracking operations. It employs approximately 55,000 people through its hundreds of subsidiaries, affiliates, branches, brands, and divisions in more than 70 countries. The company, though incorporated in the United States, has dual headquarters located in Houston and in Dubai.
KBR, Inc. is a U.S. based company operating in fields of science, technology and engineering.
A war profiteer is any person or organization that derives unreasonable profit from warfare or by selling weapons and other goods to parties at war. The term typically carries strong negative connotations. General profiteering, making a profit criticized as excessive or unreasonable, also occurs in peacetime. An example of war profiteers were the "shoddy" millionaires who allegedly sold recycled wool and cardboard shoes to soldiers during the American Civil War. Some have argued that major modern defense conglomerates like Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Boeing, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, and RTX Corporation fit the description in the post-9/11 era. This argument is based in the political influence of the defense industry, for example in 2010 the defense industry spent $144 million on lobbying and donated over $22.6 million to congressional candidates, as well as large profits for defense company shareholders in the post-9/11 period.
Dresser Industries was a multinational corporation headquartered in Dallas, Texas, United States, which provided a wide range of technology, products, and services used for developing energy and natural resources. In 1998, Dresser merged with its main rival Halliburton. Halliburton sold many of former Dresser non "oil patch" divisions, retaining the M W Kellogg Engineering and Construction Company and the Dresser oil-patch products and services that complemented Halliburton's energy and natural resource businesses. In 2001 Halliburton sold five separate, but somewhat related former Dresser non "oil patch" divisions, to an investment banking firm. Those five operations later took the name "Dresser Inc." In October 2010, Dresser Inc., was acquired by General Electric. It is headquartered in Addison, Texas.
In United States politics, the "iron triangle" comprises the policy-making relationship among the congressional committees, the bureaucracy, and interest groups, as described in 1981 by Gordon Adams. Earlier mentions of this 'iron triangle' concept are in a 1956 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report as, "Iron triangle: Clout, background, and outlook" and "Chinks in the Iron Triangle?"
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a 2004 American documentary film directed and written by, and starring filmmaker, director, political commentator and activist Michael Moore. The subjects of the film are the presidency of George W. Bush, the Iraq War, and the media's coverage of the war. In the film, Moore states that American corporate media were cheerleaders for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and did not provide an accurate or objective analysis of the rationale for the war and the resulting casualties there.
Investment in post-2003 Iraq refers to international efforts to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq since the Iraq War in 2003. Along with the economic reform of Iraq, international projects have been implemented to repair and upgrade Iraqi water and sewage treatment plants, electricity production, hospitals, schools, housing, and transportation systems. Much of the work has been funded by the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, and the Coalition Provisional Authority.
House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties is a 2004 book by Craig Unger that explores the relationship between the Saudi Royal Family and the Bush extended political family. Unger asserts that the groundwork for today's terrorist movements and the modern wars that have sprung up about them was unintentionally laid more than 30 years ago with a series of business deals between the ruling Saudis and the powerful Bush family. The Saudis received investments and military protection in exchange for cooperation on lucrative oil deals. The author claims that the result has been a shady alliance between "the world's two most powerful dynasties." Unger writes, "Never before has an American president been so closely tied to a foreign power that harbors and supports our country's mortal enemies."
Joe M. Allbaugh is an American political figure in the Republican Party. After spending most of his career in Oklahoma and Texas, Allbaugh came to national prominence working for Texas governor George W. Bush and helping manage his 2000 presidential election campaign. Allbaugh then became Bush's Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) beginning in February 2001. He served until FEMA's transfer into the newly created Department of Homeland Security, after which he resigned in March 2003. He was appointed as the interim Director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections by the state Board of Corrections, effective January 11, 2016. On July 6, 2016, the Oklahoma Board of Corrections voted unanimously to make his appointment permanent and set his salary at $185,000. Allbaugh has pointed out his department "is not a listing ship, it is a sinking ship."
Hawaiian Telcom, Inc., is the incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) or dominant local telephone company, serving the state of Hawaii. In 2005, Hawaiian Telcom Holdco, Inc., was formed by The Carlyle Group, following its purchase of the Hawaiian Telcom Inc. assets of Verizon Communications. On July 2, 2018, Cincinnati Bell purchased Hawaiian Telcom Holdco, Inc. for $650 Million,
Ralph Kimball is an author on the subject of data warehousing and business intelligence. He is one of the original architects of data warehousing and is known for long-term convictions that data warehouses must be designed to be understandable and fast. His bottom-up methodology, also known as dimensional modeling or the Kimball methodology, is one of the two main data warehousing methodologies alongside Bill Inmon.
Pratap Chatterjee is an Indian/Sri Lankan investigative journalist and progressive author. He is a British citizen and grew up in India, although he lived in California for many years. He serves as the executive director of CorpWatch, an Oakland-based corporate accountability organisation. He also works for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London. He writes regularly for The Guardian and serves on the board of Amnesty International USA and of the Corporate Europe Observatory
The Suite 8F Group, also referred to as the 8F Crowd, was a network of politically active businessmen in Texas from the 1930s into the 1960s. "Suite 8F" refers to Herman Brown's Suite at the Lamar Hotel (demolished) in Houston. Herman Brown, one of the co-founders of the construction firm Brown and Root, made his primary home in Austin until 1948. With the company headquarters in Houston, Brown typically traveled from Austin once per week, then stayed at his room at the Lamar for a few days. Yet other members of his family stayed there as well. In addition, Gus Wortham, another member of the group, lived in the room next door, 7F. Jesse H. Jones, the developer and owner of the Lamar Hotel, lived on its top floor and was also a member of the group.
Boots & Coots is a well control company and has international offices throughout the globe within Halliburton. It was founded in 1978 by Asger "Boots" Hansen and Ed "Coots" Matthews, veterans of the Red Adair Service and Marine Company. The two companies extinguished approximately one third of the more than 700 oil well fires set in Kuwait by retreating Iraqi soldiers in the Gulf War. This work was featured in the 1992 film Lessons of Darkness.
Stephen L. Norris is an American businessman, investor, and financier. He was one of the co-founders of The Carlyle Group, an American private equity firm. He was later owner and founder of Stephen Norris Capital Partners and the chairman of Gulf Capital Partners.
Randal Keith Quarles is an American private equity investor and attorney who served as the first Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve for supervision from 2017 to 2021. He concurrently served as the chair of the Financial Stability Board from 2018 to 2021.
Houston Center is a retail and office complex in Downtown Houston, Texas, United States. It is owned by Brookfield Property Partners and Spear Street Capital, LLC, and operated separately by Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) and Brookfield Property Management.
Private equity in the 2000s represents one of the major growth periods in the history of private equity and venture capital. Within the broader private equity industry, two distinct sub-industries, leveraged buyouts and venture capital expanded along parallel and interrelated tracks.