Bunny Bugs The
War Profiteers
By Joshua Frank
31 August, 20005
Countercurrents.org
You
most likely haven't heard of a feisty woman named Bunnatine "Bunny"
Greenhouse, even though you pay her salary. For over 20 years now, Greenhouse
has overseen contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers. And up until
last Saturday, Greenhouse was the highest-ranking civilian member of
the Army Corps of Engineers. She has been demoted for "poor job
performance," despite an untarnished career as one of the country's
highest-ranking procurement officers. And from what you'll see, her
performance has been anything but "poor."
So why did she get
shoved out of her position? Well, she did a bad thing. She raised a
little hell over the Pentagon's no-bid contracts to Kellogg Brown &
Root (KBR), the fully owned subsidiary of Dick Cheney's old company
Halliburton. The Greenhouse/KBR debacle all started back in the early
months of 2003, when KBR was awarded a handful of government contracts
in anticipation of the invasion of Iraq. One of KBR's major prewar contracts,
the one that got Greenhouse in hot water with the good old boys, was
allotted to rebuild Iraqi oil fields.
American military
strategists were anticipating that Saddam's oil fields would be set
afire as the U.S. invaded. It never happened. The Pentagon dubbed the
program Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO). They wanted the pipelines to keep on
flowing. Indeed, the lucrative contracts to rebuild the oil fields came
easy for KBR. They didn't even have to bid for it. KBR was handed $7
billion for the RIO contract without a question asked.
Describing the RIO
fiasco in this forthcoming book Grand Theft Pentagon, Jeffrey St. Clair
writes:
"On February
26, 2003, less than a month before the invasion of Iraq, a meeting was
convened in the inner sanctum of the Pentagon. The purpose of this conclave
was to devise a project that would come to be known as RIO or Restore
Iraq Oil. .
"The top priority
on that February morning was to decide which U.S. company would receive
the juicy contract to put out the expected oil field fires and to rebuild
and manage Iraq's oil infrastructure, from the wellheads to the pipelines
to the big oil terminals off the coast near Basra.
"In a way,
this meeting in the bowels of the Pentagon was all for show, a kind
of mating ritual between the government and its favorite contractor.
There was little doubt about who was going to land the deal. So little
doubt, in fact, that a Halliburton executive had been invited to attend
the secret conclave. .
"There were
several other companies that could have done the job that was given
to Halliburton. Fluor-Daniel, Parsons, and GSM Services were all were
just as qualified for the task. Yet, none of these firms were invited
to submit a bid or a plan of action...
"There was
another curious hitch to the Halliburton RIO deal. Instead of being
administered by Douglas Feith's office at the Pentagon (as were almost
all of the other Iraq contracts), the Halliburton RIO contract was pawned
off on the Corps of Engineers, a remote outpost of the Pentagon known,
to
the extent that it is known at all, for the management of locks and
dams on American rivers. Then an unexpected thing happened. Despite
a lot of baiting from the U.S. military and the most bellicose voices
of the Bush administration, Saddam didn't ignite the Basra oil fields."
So back to Bunny
Greenhouse, who argued that the negotiation and preparation of the RIO
contract was unique, and in fact, unheard of. First, procurements of
this type never float through the offices of the Army Corps. Second,
despite the assignment to the Corps, the negotiating process remained
in the hands of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Third, Greenhouse
was critical of KBR's integral role in developing the contract, something
that undermines the process of impartially selecting a government contractor.
And lastly, Greenhouse could not understand why the RIO contract was
written so that any future contractor that wanted to bid on the Iraq
reconstruction had to submit their bid for work in correspondence with
KBR's agreement. This requirement, as Greenhouse saw it, was unattainable,
for nobody had access to the contract but KBR and the appropriate government
offices.
Greenhouse wasn't
about to sit quietly by and let KBR off the hook. But she as careful.
She clearly didn't want to lose her job, so she initially only spoke
out about one of the aforementioned Pentagon idiocies. But Greenhouse
voiced her dissent in an unprecedented fashion. She objected to the
length of the initial contract, which extended for five long years.
Instead of sending
out an internal memo venting her disgust, Greenhouse wrote her objection
directly on the original RIO contract, right next to her signature.
She wanted everyone to know that she was not pleased with the deal.
As she wrote, "I caution that extending this sole source contract
beyond a one-year period could convey an invalid perception that there
is not strong intent for alimited competition."
Needless to say,
the neocons overseeing the contract weren't too pleased with Greenhouse's
point of view. Shortly after she voiced her objection, she received
her first negative evaluation, in which her reviewer commented, "nobody
like[s] her." She was about to be demoted. No longer was Greenhouse
going to have budget authority. No longer would she have any staff under
her. But Greenhouse was savvy. She hired a smart lawyer and her bosses
backed off - for a while, at least.
Then on June 27,
2005, as part of the ongoing investigation into KBR's no-bid contracts,
Greenhouse agreed to testify before the Democratic Policy Committee
that was looking into the Halliburton/KBR contract debacle. Greenhouse
had been warned only three days prior that testifying "would not
be in her best interest." She didn't listen, however. She spoke
frankly to the committee.
"I have been
involved with government contracting for over 20 years," she said.
"[And] I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts
awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse
I have witnessed during the course of my professional career."
Shortly after Greenhouse's
brave testimony, she was placed on a 90-day performance review. She
was being punished for having the valor to expose the fraud of the no-bid
Pentagon contracts. And on Aug. 27, the hammer came down. Greenhouse
was demoted.
As Cindy Sheehan's
courageous campaign against Bush absorbs most of the media attention
these days, it's public servants like Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse
who aren't getting any props, but are really shaking things up in the
halls of power out in Washington.
So we should all
give a nice, hearty prost to Bunny Greenhouse. She deserves it.
Joshua Frank
is the
author of Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, just
published by Common Courage Press. To learn more, or to contact Frank,
visit www.brickburner.org.