WASHINGTON: The US military has hired Halliburton Co. for nearly $5 billion in new work in Iraq under a logistics contract that has so far earned the Texas firm $9.1 billion, the Army said on Wednesday.

Linda Theis, a spokeswoman for the US Army Field Support Command in Rock Island, Ill., said the military signed the work order with Halliburton unit KBR in May.

The new deal, worth $4.97 billion over the next year, was not made public when it was signed because the Army did not consider it necessary, she said.

“We did not announce this task order as this is really not something we ever really thought about doing,” Theis said.

Halliburton, run by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000, has been under scrutiny for its contracts in Iraq, and several US government agencies are looking into whether it overcharged for some work.

In March, a former KBR employee and a Kuwaiti citizen were indicted on charges of defrauding the US government of more than $3.5 million by inflating the cost of fuel tankers.

A top US Army procurement official said last week that Halliburton’s deals in Iraq were the worst example of contract abuse she had seen, a claim KBR rejected as “political rhetoric.”

The $4.97-billion figure represents the maximum that could be paid under the contract, with the actual amount potentially being lower because the Army hands out the work on an incremental basis, officials said.

KBR was awarded the logistics contract with the military in December 2001, for tasks that included feeding troops, delivering mail and building barracks.—Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service