The following was a letter to the editor published in our local Whidbey News-Times, written by Al Williams. The letter was concerned with the war against Irag but the first paragraph related an interesting experience with a company that used to be run by our vice-president.

For the past 20 years I have had a trucking business that has taken me all over the country. Some years ago I delivered in the oil fields of Utah and Wyoming where employees of the Halliburton Oil Exploration Company laughingly told me that what they were doing was as "crooked as hell" They said that their CEO, a former Secretary of Defense (if I remember right) of the Reagan Administration had lobbied Congress so that they would be reimbursed for dry well holes. They went on to say that oil exploration had become such an exact science that they knew with near pinpoint accuracy where the oil was, would drill just short of it, declare a dry hole, get paid taxpayer bucks for it, and move on only to return later to finish the job and reap the benefits.