It’s a little tough to believe that Dick Cheney’s Halliburton received “no special treatment” when the top civilian contracting official for the Army Corps of Engineers points to all the special treatment the company received.
The top civilian contracting official for the Army Corps of Engineers, charging that the Army granted the Halliburton Company large contracts for work in Iraq and the Balkans without following rules designed to ensure competition and fair prices to the government, has called for a high-level investigation of what she described as threats to the “integrity of the federal contracting program.”
The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, said that in at least one case she witnessed, Army officials inappropriately allowed representatives of Halliburton to sit in as they discussed the terms of a contract the company was set to receive.
In one instance, a Halliburton subsidiary was given “a secret contract” to draw up plans for fixing Iraq’s oil facilities.
Ms. Greenhouse says she argued strenuously that a noncompetitive contract should not be given for more than one year. Instead, the company was given a five-year contract worth up to $7 billion.
As they worked on the final contract, she asserts, Army officials held a meeting on Feb. 26, 2003, to discuss tasks and costs, and Kellogg Brown & Root representatives were invited to attend. “Eventually the discussions turned to matters that Ms. Greenhouse concluded were outside the scope of information K.B.R. should be privy to” before the contract was fully defined, the letter said.
That’s only half of the offensive part of this story. When Greenhouse expressed concerns about Halliburton’s inappropriate role and uncompetitive contracts, did the Army Corps of Engineers step up efforts to be more fair and ethical? Of course not; they punished Greenhouse.
In an Oct. 21 letter to the acting Army secretary, Ms. Greenhouse said that after her repeated questions about the Halliburton contracts, she was excluded from major decisions to award money and that her job status was threatened.
Time, which appears to have broken this story over the weekend, added that Greenhouse would like to offer the public more information through the press, but at this point, isn’t allowed to do interviews.
Greenhouse seems to have got nothing but trouble for questioning the deal. Warned to stop interfering and threatened with a demotion, the career Corps employee decided to act on her conscience, according to her lawyer, Michael Kohn. Kohn, who has represented other federal whistle-blowers, last week sent a letter — obtained by Time from congressional sources — on her behalf to the acting Secretary of the Army…. Kohn charges that Greenhouse’s superiors have tried to silence her; he says she has agreed to be interviewed, pending approval from her employer, but the Army failed to make her available despite repeated requests from Time.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think the Bush gang is more concerned about punishing and silencing those who know the truth about the administration’s schemes than they are effective and reliable government.
I’ve always been a relative skeptic about the Halliburton-corruption story and don’t write about it often, but the administration makes it awfully difficult to not be distrustful. At this point, who could give the White House the benefit of the doubt?