ick Cheney, the GOP nominee for vice president, came under fire from Al Gore's presidential campaign yesterday for a lucrative early-retirement deal with the oil-services giant he has led for five years as chief executive.
The board of Halliburton Co. approved the package for Cheney, the outgoing chairman and chief executive officer, on July 25, the day that GOP presidential nominee George W. Bush named him as his running mate, said J. Landis Martin, a member of the board.
The package of stock options and other compensation is worth about $20 million, The New York Times reported yesterday. A person close to Cheney said the estimate was ''on the mark.''
A Gore campaign spokesman, Doug Hattaway, seized on the report as evidence that Bush and Cheney are tools of the oil industry.
''It sounds like Big Oil is making a big investment in the Bush-Cheney ticket,'' Hattaway said. ''We knew that Bush and Cheney are both beholden to the oil industry, and this shows just how valuable the industry sees those ties.''
The Gore campaign has sought to lay some blame on Bush and Cheney for high gasoline prices this summer in the Midwest, a key battleground of the presidential race.
Karen Hughes, the Bush campaign's communications director, cast Cheney's compensation deal as a politician asset for the GOP ticket.
''I think the American people should be pleased that they have a vice presidential nominee who has been a success in the private sector, who led a company that, under his management, doubled in size and became the largest and most innovative energy service company in the world,'' she said after a Bush campaign stop in Everett, Wash.
The business ties of candidates for public office and senior government officials often raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
To deflect such concerns, Cheney has resigned as a director of EDS, a Texas technology company, because it does business with the Pentagon. He also has taken a leave of absence from the boards of two other companies, Union Pacific Railroad and Procter & Gamble.
In defending Cheney, the Bush campaign has pointed to the millions of dollars that President Clinton's former treasury secretary, Robert E. Rubin, collected from Goldman, Sachs & Co. when he stepped down as co-chief executive of the investment bank.
Cheney spokesman Dirk Vande Beek said Cheney's retirement deal would not leave him beholden to Halliburton or the oil industry if he is elected vice president.
''He's a man of high morals and high ethics,'' Vande Beek said.
Cheney, a former defense secretary, will remain on Haliburton's payroll until Wednesday, when he holds a final meeting in Houston with executives of the company, he said.
Halliburton's approval of early retirement for Cheney, 59, gives him roughly $10 million more than he would have received if the board had insisted he resign instead, said Martin, the Halliburton board member.
