WASHINGTON - The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices.
The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq, and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the Bush administration showed favoritism to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company.
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=3&u=/ap/20041028/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/halliburton_contractsBeyond the Call of Duty (gov't whistle-blower on Halliburton "No-Bids")
In February 2003, less than a month before the U.S. invaded Iraq, Bunnatine (Bunny) Greenhouse walked into a Pentagon meeting and with a quiet comment started what could be the end of her career. On the agenda was the awarding of an up to $7 billion deal to a subsidiary of Houston-based conglomerate Halliburton to restore Iraq's oil facilities. On hand were senior officials from the office of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and aides to retired Lieut. General Jay Garner, who would soon become the first U.S. administrator in Iraq.
Then several representatives from Halliburton entered. Greenhouse, a top contracting specialist for the Army Corps of Engineers, grew increasingly concerned that they were privy to internal discussions of the contract's terms, so she whispered to the presiding general, insisting that he ask the Halliburton employees to leave the room.
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Greenhouse's objections, which had not been made public until now, will probably fuel criticism of the government's allegedly cozy relationship with Halliburton and could be greeted with calls for further investigation. Halliburton's Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) subsidiary has been mired in allegations of overcharging and mismanagement in Iraq, and the government in January replaced the noncompetitive oil-field contract that Greenhouse had objected to and made two competitively bid awards instead. (Halliburton won the larger contract, worth up to $1.2 billion, for repairing oil installations in southern Iraq, while Parsons Corp. got one for the north, worth up to $800 million.) Halliburton's Iraq business, which includes another government contract as well, has been under particular scrutiny because Vice President Dick Cheney was once its CEO. The Pentagon, concerned about potential controversy when it signed the original oil-work contract, gave Cheney's staff a heads-up beforehand. (TIME disclosed that alert in June.)
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"These charges undercut months of assertions by Administration officials that the Halliburton contract was on the level," says Democratic Representative Henry Waxman. As the Corps's top contract specialist, the letter says, Greenhouse had noted reservations on dozens of procurement documents over seven years. But it was only after she took exception to the Halliburton deal that she was warned not to do so anymore. The letter states that the major general who admonished her, Robert Griffin, later admitted in a sworn statement that her comments on contracts had "caused trouble" for the Army and that, given the controversy surrounding the contract, it was "intolerable" and "had to stop." The letter says he threatened to downgrade her. (As with Greenhouse, the Army did not make Griffin available.) When the Pentagon's auditors accused KBR of overcharging the government $61 million for fuel, the letter says, the Army bypassed Greenhouse. Her deputy waived a requirement that KBR provide pricing data—a move that looked "politically motivated," the letter says.
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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101041101-733760,00.html New audit slams Halliburton work in Kuwait
Contractor could not account for third of items billed
Updated: 3:46 p.m. ET Oct. 28, 2004WASHINGTON - Halliburton unit Kellogg Brown and Root, the U.S. military's biggest contractor in Iraq, could not account for over a third of the items it handled in Kuwait under a work order for the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq, said an audit released Thursday.
The audit by the Inspector General for the Coalition Provisional Authority, said a random sample of 3,032 records of items valued at more than $3.7 million, projected KBR could not account for 42.8 percent, or 1,297, of these goods.
Items that could not be accounted for included three generators valued at more than $172,000 and seven vehicles valued at over $219,000, the audit found.
The auditors recommended the military's Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), which disagreed with the finding as did KBR, should reevaluate KBR'S property control system.
While the numbers are small in the context of billions of dollars of work being done by KBR in Iraq, they add to criticism of the company run by Vice President Dick Cheney until he joined the race for the White House in 2000.
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http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6355144/FBI Investigating Halliburton Contracts
Thursday October 28, 2004 9:46 PM
By JOHN SOLOMON
FBI agents this week sought permission to interview Bunnatine Greenhouse, the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting officer who went public last weekend with allegations that her agency unfairly awarded a Halliburton subsidiary no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars in Iraq, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
Asked about the documents, Greenhouse's lawyers said Thursday their client will cooperate but that she wants whistleblower protection from Pentagon retaliation.
``I think it (the FBI interview request) underscores the seriousness of the misconduct, and it also demonstrates how courageous Ms. Greenhouse was for stepping forward,'' said Stephen Kohn, one of her attorneys.
``The initiation of an FBI investigation into criminal misconduct will help restore public confidence,'' Kohn said. ``The Army must aggressively protect Ms. Greenhouse from the retaliation she will encounter as a result of blowing the whistle on this misconduct.''
FBI agents also began collecting documents from Army offices in Texas and elsewhere in recent weeks to examine how and why Halliburton got the no-bid work in places like Iraq.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4581604,00.html
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