Ms Greenhouse: Just too damn honest to work at the Pentagon…
On Monday, a US government audit report (prepared by the Defense Contract Audit Agency) revealed systematic abuses of the Pentagon’s procurement protocols by Halliburton, the energy firm once run by US Vice President Dick Cheney. But this report is absurdly anticlimactic. And, it does not adequately address the collusion between Halliburton and Pentagon officials to gouge the American people out of billions of dollars – under the guise of supporting American soldiers at war.
Soon after America’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Halliburton became synonymous with unconscionable corporate greed, war profiteering and political corruption – and deservedly so. Indeed, even during the frenetic march to war, numerous investigative reports presaged Halliburton’s corporate mission to profit from America’s misguided search for WMDs in Iraq.
Those reports, however, did not expose the extent of the Pentagon’s role in helping Halliburton fulfill its mission. Because the machinations by Pentagon officials in this regard make the accounting schemes cooked-up by crooks at corporations like Enron seem like nickel and dime stuff.
Therefore, it hardly seems fair that the US Congress would lift Sherry Watkins into national prominence for blowing the whistle on Enron, but leave Bunny H. Greenhouse languishing in litigation obscurity for blowing the whistle on the Pentagon and Halliburton. But, that is exactly what has happened.
Nevertheless, with all due respect to Ms Watkins, Ms Greenhouse seems a far more worthy American Hero. For Ms Greenhouse did not merely expose misdeeds concerning the loss of money. Instead, she exposed misdeeds concerning the use of American soldiers as a pretext for making gross amounts of money.
During this period in question, Ms Greenhouse was the top civilian procurement officer for the Army Corps of Engineers. Her main duty was to ensure fair competition among corporate bidders in the awarding of lucrative Pentagon contracts.
But, as war planning gathered steam, Ms Greenhouse began to question why her bosses at the Corps kept awarding lucrative, no-bid contracts to Halliburton (amounting to over $10 billion) over her strenuous objections.
Eventually, Ms Greenhouse suspected top brass at the Corps of engaging in unethical, if not criminal, conduct by repeatedly bending rules to favor Halliburton. Indeed, she ultimately concluded that “[i]t was the worst abuse of the procurement and contracting system that I have ever seen”.
(As the former National Procurement Director for the Clinton-Gore ’96 Reelection Committee, my exposure to about 1 % of what Ms Greenhouse must have witnessed was enough to trouble my conscience.)
And, what were some of the more egregious abuses Ms Greenhouse saw?
Pentagon officials citing “war emergency powers” to award Halliburton a no-bid contract valued up to $7 billion to restore Iraqi oil fields. (The ones they expected Sadaam to blow up as part of his desperate scorched earth military strategy. But, just as they did not find the WMDs they claimed Sadaam possessed, the US military did not find the oil fields destroyed as the Pentagon forecasted to justify this contract. In fact, they found the oil fields mostly untouched by Sadaam’s fleeing army – clearly requiring Halliburton to find other costs to justify “earning” that $7 billion.)
Pentagon officials failing to demand accounting from Halliburton for $108 million in fuel overcharges by its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) which is one of the abuses highlighted in the belated government audit report. (When finally questioned by the auditors, Halliburton claimed that war zone dangers and exigencies justified the additional charges. But, in one case, Halliburton claimed additional charges of $27 million to transport liquefied petroleum gas it had purchased in Kuwait for just $82,000. Clearly this is price gouging that borders on extortion.)
Pentagon officials approving Halliburton’s no-bid hiring of a Kuwaiti company, Altanmia, to buy and deliver various fuels from Kuwait into Iraq – at equally extortionate mark-ups. (But, under its “cost plus” contract with the Pentagon, Halliburton could pass along Altanmia’s fees, then receive awards for itself ranging from 2 percent to 7 percent beyond its actual costs. Even more, officials of Altanmia asserted that Halliburton executives demanded kickbacks for the awarding of the lucrative fuels contract. Halliburton denied the charges.)
Ms Greenhouse maintains that top brass at the Corps ignored all of her objections to these abuses of the procurement process. In fact, she claims that – in order to avoid her oversight – they instructed her assistants to cut her out of key procurement decisions.
But this end run around Ms Greenhouse did not quiet her objections. After all, as she would later lament, she was not merely trying to enforce rules like an automaton. Rather, she was determined to ensure that some of those lucrative contracts where shared by minority-owned and other small business as Congress intended.
It is worth noting here that Ms Greenhouse is a woman of strong religious faith. And, that her siblings include 2 doctors and the former NBA star, Alvin Hayes. Therefore, she clearly had more faith in her convictions and strength of character than top brass at the Corps could’ve imagined. So, she persisted.
It did not help her cause, however, that Ms Greenhouse made no effort to curry favor with the mostly white good ole boy network of commanding officers at the Corps. And, for their part, her commanding officers probably did not care much for Ms Greenhouse’s no nonsense, self-righteous professionalism. Indeed, her own colleagues observed that she’s “a real stickler for the rules”. And, her former boss (notably no longer with the Pentagon), Ret. Commanding General Joseph Ballard, observed that “there were those that wanted to take short cuts in the contracting process, she didn’t allow short cuts.”
Many people have argued that Pentagon officials took those short cuts in favor of Halliburton because of political pressure from VP Cheney and the White House. But Ms Greenhouse rejects that notion insisting that she did not observe any undue influence in that respect.
Nevertheless, her persistent objections were interfering with the longstanding relationship between the Pentagon and Halliburton that went back 10 years to when VP Cheney was Halliburton’s procurer in chief. So, finally, her bosses pulled out the old corporate canard of the bad performance review to get rid of her; notwithstanding her unblemished record of high performances before the Iraq war.
Last October, the Corps presented Ms Greenhouse with a demotion letter that was intended to not only humiliate her but also reduce her pay substantially. Yet, in an obvious attempt to just have her go away, the letter included an offer of early retirement with full benefits.
But Ms Greenhouse found neither demotion nor retirement acceptable. And, after finding no support for her position among the ranks of Corps commanders, she filed an official complaint under the Congressional Whistle Blower Act of 1989, which prevents federal workers from being fired or demoted until the merits of her complaints are fully investigated. Then she hired a lawyer and sued the Corps.
Whatever the outcome – which may take years given the nature of such litigations – Ms Greenhouse has already won. Because, whether they will admit it or not, she stood up for Duty, Honor and Country in ways that many of the compromised
commanders at the Corps wish they could do in their dealings with the Pentagon.
For standing on principle against war profiteering, Bunny Greenhouse, you are an American hero!
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