Washington, D.C. ? The Halliburton subsidiary that provides food, shelter and other logistics to U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan exploited federal regulations to hide details on its contract performance, according to a report released Friday.

The special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction found that Halliburton’s Kellogg, Brown & Root Services routinely marked all information it gave to the government as proprietary, whether it was or not. The government promises not to disclose proprietary data so a company’s most valuable information is not divulged to its competitors.

By marking all information proprietary – including such normally releasable data as labor rates – the company abused federal regulations, the report says.

The Iraq reconstruction audits routinely have found significant problems with contracting and rebuilding in the country, ranging from high costs for security and overhead to alleged fraud and lack of oversight.