Hunt's position at PFIAB may benefit a familiar entity in the Bush crony network: Halliburton, which is doing billions of dollars' worth of reconstruction and logistics work for the U.S. government in Iraq and on the Gulf Coast. Hunt sits on Halliburton's board of directors. He got his spot on the Halliburton board in 1998 while Dick Cheney was running the company. As soon as Hunt got on the Halliburton board, he was put on its compensation committee, where he helped determine Cheney's pay. Indeed, in 1998, Hunt's committee decided that Cheney deserved a bonus of $1.1 million and restricted stock awards of $1.5 million on top of his regular salary of $1.18 million.

Hunt has been on the PFIAB since 2001. Presumably, months ahead of everyone else, he had access to intelligence indicating that the Bush administration was going to invade Iraq -- information that could have been of value to certain oil service companies with operations in the Middle East.

Hunt isn't the first Halliburton board member to be tied to PFIAB. From 1982 to 1990, the PFIAB was chaired by Anne Armstrong, a wealthy Texan whose Republican ties go back to the Nixon White House. (Karl Rove now occupies Armstrong's old office in the West Wing.) During her entire eight-year stint as chairwoman of the PFIAB, Amstrong also served on Halliburton's board. In fact, Armstrong was on Halliburton's board in 1995, when the company decided to hire Dick Cheney as its CEO. Asked about it later, Armstrong said there was "instant backing" for Cheney when his name was first mentioned for the job.

Hunt can use what he learns at PFIAB to help Halliburton. Or he can help his own company, Hunt Oil, one of the world's largest privately owned energy companies. "Even without taking advantage of any particular intelligence report, the PFIAB affiliation is gold," says Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists. "It lends itself to exploitation for commercial and other interests."

Among Hunt's biggest projects is the controversial $2.6 billion Camisea liquefied natural gas project in Peru, which will soon begin delivering gas to markets on the West Coast of the U.S. Amazon Watch, a nonprofit environmental group, calls the project the "most damaging project in the Amazon Basin." It points out that the majority of the gas extraction will be done in a reserve that was set aside for local indigenous people. Similarly, Environmental Defense points out that Camisea will affect some of "the most pristine forest regions of the Amazon." In 2003, the Export-Import Bank, which was under heavy pressure from environmental groups, refused to provide financing for Camisea.

Does Hunt's position on PFIAB give him an edge in dealing with Peru and Camisea? There's no way to be certain. But it is clear that Hunt's business operations are so varied that every bit of foreign intelligence he sees at PFIAB might be of value to him.

Hunt's company is also active in Argentina, Chile and Guyana. One of Hunt Oil's most important projects is in Yemen, where his company has been producing oil for more than two decades. Hunt Oil's next Yemen project is a multibillion-dollar liquefied natural gas project on the Arabian Sea. The gas will come from Hunt's wells in the the vast desert that separates Saudi Arabia and Yemen. A 199-mile pipeline will carry it to a port on the Yemeni coast. That port is about 200 miles east of Aden, where al-Qaida suicide bombers hit the USS Cole in 2000. Of course, Hunt doesn't have to rely on just the PFIAB for intelligence. His former right-hand man, James Oberwetter, is now the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

An employee of Hunt Oil told Salon that Hunt and his public affairs representative, former ambassador Jeanne Phillips, were traveling and that a return phone call should not be expected anytime soon.

Bush also reappointed DeWitt to the PFIAB. DeWitt has raised more than $300,000 for Bush's presidential campaigns. In addition to backing Bush's failed ventures in the oil patch, DeWitt played a key role in the syndicate that Bush put together to buy the Texas Rangers in 1989. It was DeWitt who told Bush that the baseball team was for sale. DeWitt then became an investor in the syndicate that paid $89 million for the team. (In June of 1998, Dallas billionaire Tom Hicks bought the Rangers for $250 million. The sale gave Bush nearly $15 million, a 24-fold return on his investment. Nine months later, Bush announced that he was running for president.)

DeWitt did not return a phone call to his office.

A new appointee to PFIAB is one of Bush's oldest and best friends, former Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. Less than three months after leaving commerce, Evans found a new job as CEO of the Financial Services Forum, which represents 20 of the biggest financial institutions doing business in the U.S. The roster of companies includes GE, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, AIG and Morgan Stanley. According to its Web site, the forum is designed to "promote policies that enhance savings and investment in the United States, and that ensure an open, competitive and sound financial services marketplace."

For Aftergood, from the Project on Government Secrecy, the latest PFIAB appointments represent a missed opportunity to help resolve the disastrous condition of America's intelligence agencies. He says the decision to appoint Hunt, DeWitt and Evans is part of the "familiar pattern that we've seen so often with this administration: The president's pals and supporters are esteemed more highly than those who have genuine competence." He continues: "These people aren't the best and the brightest. They are the best connected. And the quality of our government suffers as a result."

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