The AP has a
wire story this morning on Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, procurement officer for the Army Corps of Engineers, who has been raising a mighty stink about the way Halliburton has been getting billions in non-competitive and unaudited contracts, mostly through its KBR subsidiary. And how she has been getting in hot water for doing her job:
[Greenhouse]has asked many questions: Why is Halliburton -- a giant Texas firm that holds more than 50 percent of all rebuilding efforts in Iraq -- getting billions in contracts without competitive bidding? Do the durations of those contracts make sense? Have there been violations of federal laws regulating how the government can spend its money?
Halliburton denies any wrongdoing. "These false allegations have been recycled in the media ad nauseam," the company said in response to a list of e-mailed questions from The Associated Press.
Now Bunny Greenhouse may lose her job -- and her reputation, which she spent a lifetime building.
(AP's headline is "Army Whistleblower Under Fire." Too prosaic for me.)
Greenhouse has several problems to contend with:
- She is a Black 60-year-old woman in a job surrounded by mostly white men.
- She does not suffer fools or frauds gladly.
- She is a workaholic.
- (The big one) She is not a politician and doesn't play the DC political game.
The only "game" she plays, according to the man who hired her, is trying to get the best deal for the country.
When Gen. Ballard hired her in 1997 she was overqualified -- three master's degrees and more than 20 years of contracting experience in private industry, the Army and the Pentagon.
"She is probably the most professional person I've ever met, " Ballard said. "And she plays it straight. That created problems for her after I left."
Ballard used her, he said, to help him revolutionize the Corps -- by ending the old-boys practice of awarding contracts to a favored few, and by imposing private industry standards on a mammoth, 230-year-old government agency with 35,000 workers. He felt the Corps, which had overseen everything from building hydroelectric dams to the Soo Locks to the Manhattan Project, needed a hard boot into the new age of contracting.
Greenhouse got exemplary reviews for several years - until she started questioning the KBR contracts. Then she was demoted from SES (Senior Executive Service) and told her performance was "poor," that she was "difficult" and (this one is really over the top) "nobody likes you." And she is now under a 3-month performance review.
So what had she done?
- She questioned why Halliburton got so many no-bid contracts.
- She objected to the length of one contract - 5 years - when 1 year is the usual length.
- She particularly objected to a KBR contract (for $7 billion) that was originally supposed to handle oil fires started by Saddam. When he failed to set them, the contract - over her objections - "morphed into an agreement to repair oil fields and import fuel for civilians and soldiers."
- She demanded that KBR officials be removed from a Pentagon meeting whose purpose was to discuss the Pentagon's negotiations with KBR. Yes, you heard that right:
A month before KBR got the contract -- and three weeks before the U.S. invaded Iraq -- she had demanded KBR officials be ejected from a Pentagon meeting attended by high-ranking officials from the Corps and the Defense Department. "They should not have been there," she said. "We were discussing the terms of the contract."
Needless to say in this partisan age, the Republicans have no interest in looking into this (no Democrats are involved).
In June, she was asked to testify before the Democratic Policy Committee -- formed by Democrats who said their efforts to get the Republican-controlled Congress to investigate alleged war profiteering had been repeatedly denied.
Greenhouse had plenty to say:
Later, she would tell Democratic members of Congress: "The abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have ever witnessed during the course of my professional career."
(snip)
She was joined by a former Halliburton employee who said KBR fed spoiled food to American troops and charged the government for thousands of meals it never served.
Henry Waxman is pressing her case, and she has hired a lawyer - Michael Kohn, who successfully represented Linda Tripp (!) - who has requested an independent investigation of the KBR procurements, and asked that his client be given whistleblower status. No information as to whether either has been granted. The Pentagon will say only that it does not comment on "ongoing investigations." Given the recent track record of the Pentagon investigating itself and never ever finding anything wrong, this is not a good sign.
Actually, none of this is a good sign. Even Teapot Dome wasn't this blatant. This is open corruption and theft of our tax dollars. And they're barely bothering to hide it. The response from the Pentagon has been "nothing to see here, folks, just move along" while Halliburton says "we support our troops."
Indeed.