Army Contract Official Critical of Halliburton Pact Is Demoted

[MSgt213]

A top Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday for what the Army called poor job performance.

The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, has worked in military procurement for 20 years and for the past several years had been the chief overseer of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that has managed much of the reconstruction work in Iraq.

The demotion removes her from the elite Senior Executive Service and reassigns her to a lesser job in the corps' civil works division.

Ms. Greenhouse's lawyer, Michael Kohn, called the action an "obvious reprisal" for the strong objections she raised in 2003 to a series of corps decisions involving the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, which has garnered more than $10 billion for work in Iraq.

Dick Cheney led Halliburton, which is based in Texas, before he became vice president.

"She is being demoted because of her strict adherence to procurement requirements and the Army's preference to sidestep them when it suits their needs," Mr. Kohn said Sunday in an interview. He also said the Army had violated a commitment to delay Ms. Greenhouse's dismissal until the completion of an inquiry by the Pentagon's inspector general.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/29/international/middleeast/29halliburton.html

[TomInTib]

1. Check out MSNBC website...this was the number one domestic

story (apart from Katrina coverage). 2nd story was Abramoff, and somwhat later was the Phelps sacrilege. Is MSM growing some balls? September might be fun. With all of the students heading back to school with sharp pencils, might we hope that MSM has sharpened their pencils too?