ON WALL STREET: History has a way of catching up with Dick Cheney, writes Conor O'Clery. His critics like to recall that the US vice-president, in his time, rejected a resolution calling for Nelson Mandela's release from prison, spoke out against the Equal Rights Amendment and the Clean Air Act, and opposed a Bill outlawing "cop-killer" armour-piercing bullets.

But all of these are less contentious for the former defence secretary in today's post-Enron climate than a seemingly innocuous statement he made in 1996.

On videotape, Mr Cheney sings the praises of Arthur Andersen, which until April audited the books of Halliburton, the big oil services company he ran from 1995 to 2000.

"One of the things I like that they do for us is that, in effect, I get good advice, if you will, from their people based upon how we're doing business and how we're operating, over and above the, just sort of the normal by-the-books audit arrangement," said Mr Cheney.

Advice from Andersen "over and above" normal auditing is a common thread in all the big scandals, from Enron to WorldCom. Now Halliburton is entangled in an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about whether its Andersen-aided accounting practices helped make Mr Cheney and other Halliburton executives very rich while manipulating the books.

The vice-president made about $45 million (€44.5 million) from running Halliburton, a company bigger than McDonalds, which provides half the world's ammonia for fertiliser, is the world's biggest provider of oil field services and builds everything from prisons to stadiums (it constructed Enron Field in Houston).

The bulk of this, about $28.5 million, came from stock sales and stock option profits as he was leaving in August 2000. The stock price then was $54 a share. Today it is $13, dragged down in part because of a deal made by Mr Cheney to take over rival Dresser Industries, which turned out to have huge asbestos-related litigation problems.

The SEC wants to know if the Halliburton stock price was inflated while Mr Cheney was boss by dodgy accounting that boosted profits.

Specifically, the SEC is looking at how the Dallas company booked overrun expenses. From 1998 the company listed huge projected overrun reimbursements as expenses on the balance sheet while the work was under way and no money had been collected. This considerably boosted revenue and therefore profits and therefore stock price.

As chief executive, Mr Cheney signed Halliburton's 1998 and 1999 financial statements.

Halliburton's current chief executive, Mr David Lesar, told Newsweek on Monday that Mr Cheney was aware the projected overruns were booked as expenses but the company had always accounted for overruns that way; it was just that the amounts were insignificant before 1998.

"The vice-president was aware of who owed us money and he helped us collect it," he said.

The SEC will decide if the company accounted for these revenues properly.

But the perception of chicanery is enormously damaging to the White House as Americans fume with indignation over corporate scandals - especially the 80 million with shareholdings.

It is unusual for chief executives to get on the White House ticket - Wendell Willkie was chief executive of a utilities company when he ran for president in 1940 and Ross Perot ran twice as a third-party candidate against Bill Clinton.

When Mr Cheney chose himself as Bush's running mate (he was in charge of the selection process), it must have seemed such a good idea to the Republican Party at the time. Wall Street was red hot and the titans of corporate America were the masters of the universe.

Now Mr Cheney is an embarrassment to the administration. He is a chief executive who got enormously rich while Halliburton shareholders got stiffed.

He is associated with what late-night talk-show host Jay Leno calls the Arthur Andersen crime family. Judicial Watch, the group that took more than 100 legal actions against the Clinton White House, has filed a suit alleging that investors were defrauded by Halliburton's accounting.

Prior to this development, Mr Cheney's infrequent appearances were attributed to his low-key style. Now, however, it looks as if he is hiding or being kept hidden. He was conspicuously absent when President Bush launched his SWAT team to combat corporate fraud last week.

The nightmare for the White House is that when he does appear, it will be as a defendant in a law suit.