Bunnatine Greenhouse
From dKosopedia
Bunnatine Greenhouse is the Principal Assistant Responsible for Contracting in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As of mid-2005, she is a registered independent.
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Qualifications
From an AP report:
- 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."
Tasks at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
From the same report:
- 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.
Halliburton-KBR controversy
- Greenhouse has known for a long time that her days may be numbered. Her needling of contracts awarded to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) predated the war in Iraq, beginning with costs she said were spiraling "out of control" from a 2000 Bosnia contract to service U.S. troops. From 1995 to 2000, Halliburton's CEO was Dick Cheney, who left to run for vice president.
- Since then, she had questioned both the amounts and the reasons for giving KBR tremendous contracts in the buildup to invading Iraq. At first she was ignored, she said. Then she was cut out of the decision-making process.
- Last October 6 [2004], she was summoned to the office of her boss. Major Gen. Robert Griffin, the Corps' deputy commander, was demoting her, he told her, taking away her Senior Executive Service status and sending her to midlevel management. Not unlike being cast out of the office of bank president into the cubicle of branch manager. Griffin declined to be interviewed by the AP.
- Her performance was poor, said a letter he presented. This was a surprise. Her previous job evaluations had been exemplary, she said. The basic theme was that she was "difficult," and "nobody likes you," she said.
- If she didn't want the new position, she could always retire with full benefits, the letter noted.
- Over my dead body, said Greenhouse.
- "I took an oath of office. I took those words that I was going to protect the interests of my government and my country. So help me God," she says. "And nobody. Has the right. To take away my privilege. To serve my government. Nobody."
- Her contracting staff was sharply reduced, she said, and her superiors have gone behind her back, most notably in issuing an emergency waiver — on a day she was out of the office — that allowed KBR to ignore requests from Department of Defense auditors who issued a draft report in 2003 concluding KBR overcharged the government $61 million for fuel in Iraq.
- "They knew I would never have signed it," she said.
- In her job, Greenhouse is mandated by Congress to get the best quality at the cheapest price from the most qualified supplier. Over her objections, KBR was awarded three multibillion-dollar war-related contracts, two of them without competitive bidding.
- Together, they are worth as much as $20 billion — the entire cost of the Manhattan Project, adjusted to today's dollars.
- Greenhouse's most strenuous complaints were over the Restore Iraqi Oil contract, estimated at $7 billion, originally planned to handle oil field fires that might be started by
Saddam Hussein's troops. When that failed to happen, it morphed into an agreement to repair oil fields and import fuel for civilians and soldiers.
- The contract was given to KBR in March 2003. In Greenhouse's view, that process violated federal regulations concerning fair and open bidding.
- 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."
- 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."
References
- DailyKos diary by Dan K: Greenhouse in Doghouse for Blowing the Whistle on Halliburton
- AP report by Deborah Hastings: Army Whistleblower Draws Fire
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