Bunnatine H. Greenhouse is one of the whistleblowers against Halliburton scandals. Her background is impressive with a BS and 3 MS degrees. She was the Army Corps of Engineers' top procurement official (a civilian post) since 1997. On Saturday she was demoted for what the Corps of Engineers called a poor job performance.
The Army threatened the demotion October 6, 2004 when she first came public with complaints last Oct but agreed to wait until a "sufficient record" of her allegations is complete. Her demotion now is the Army reneging on that deal. Three congressmen believe that this is illegal retaliation for her testimony to the Senate on June 27, 2005 and have asked Rumsfeld to investigate.
Her testimony was damning: "I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to [Halliburton/]KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career." She describes how KBR wrote the $7 billion contract in such a way that only they could fill it. Normally those contracted to write such a plan are prevented from bidding on it. But in an even more disgusting twist the army didn't just let them bid on it, they awarded it to them with out any competive bids for 2 years with a 3 year renewal, which is completely against policy. Oh and awarding such contracts are normally done by the army, but in this case it was controlled by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office, which is illegal.
How are these crooks getting away with this?
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