Three weeks ago, at the vice presidential debate, John Edwards railed against no-bid contracts for Halliburton. Dick Cheney dismissed the accusations out of hand.
“Well, the reason they keep mentioning Halliburton is because they’re trying to throw up a smokescreen. They know the charges are false…. It’s an effort that they’ve made repeatedly to try to confuse the voters and to raise questions, but there’s no substance to the charges.”
Over the last 24 hours, however, we’ve learned a series of facts that point to all kinds of substance to the charges. One you’ve probably already heard about, but the other hopefully won’t get lost in the shuffle.
First, of course, is the fact that Halliburton’s lucrative deals and overcharges are now the subject of a criminal investigation.
Second, and just as important, is a front-page LA Times story today that points to previously undisclosed documents from Bunnatine Greenhouse, the top civilian contracting official for the Army Corps of Engineers. We learned this week that Greenhouse personally witnessed Halliburton officials getting special treatment in advance of their no-big contracts, but the LAT moves the ball forward in a big way.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers commanders awarded a lucrative contract extension to Halliburton Co. this month by circumventing the organization’s top contracting officer, who had objected to the proposal, according to documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.
[…]
“I cannot approve this,” Greenhouse wrote on one version of the proposal that is filled with her handwritten scrawls such as “Incorrect!”; “No! How!”; and “Not a valid reason.”
This is breathtaking. Greenhouse was responsible for approving Halliburton’s contracts. When she raised concerns, first her superiors threatened her, then they tried to demote her, and then they went around her and approved the contracts anyway. There are regulations in place to prevent such tactics, but the administration ignored them for Halliburton.
I should also note that this isn’t just about one contracting official’s complaints.
[T]he previously undisclosed documents are part of a growing body of evidence indicating unusual treatment was given to government contracts won by the Houston-based firm.
Career civil servants repeatedly raised objections to contracting decisions that benefited Halliburton, only to be overruled by higher-ups.
Here was a particularly good example:
In fall 2002, a group of top Pentagon civilian officials began meeting to plan how best to prevent the destruction of oil wells and infrastructure in the days after an invasion.
They decided to give Halliburton a job worth $1.9 million as part of an existing contract to draw up a plan to protect the oil infrastructure. An Army lawyer at the time objected to the decision, saying it was outside the scope of the contract.
The lawyer was overruled by a higher-up in the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel.
The unusual treatment also applied to Halliburton’s gas prices.
Over time, contracting officials grew concerned that Halliburton was paying too much for the gasoline, which was being supplied by a Kuwaiti company called Altanmia Commercial Marketing Co. Halliburton replied that Kuwait’s oil company was preventing it from buying oil from other suppliers.
In December, an Army Corps contracting official said she had located at least two other companies that could supply the fuel, potentially allowing for better prices. Halliburton, however, asked her to allow it to continue buying only from Altanmia.
“Since the U.S. government is paying for these services, I will not succumb to the political pressure from the [Kuwaiti government] or the U.S. Embassy to go against my integrity and pay a higher price for fuel than necessary,” wrote Mary Robertson, an Army Corps contracting officer, in a December 2003 letter to KBR obtained by The Times.
Halliburton’s busted.