Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: La cosca Halliburton colpisce ancora

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/28/news/army.php
Critic of U.S. contract in Iraq gets demotion
By Eric Eckholm The New York Times
NEW YORK
A top U.S. Army contracting official who criticized a large,
noncompetitive Iraq contract with the Halliburton Company was demoted
for what the army called a poor job performance.
The official, Bunnatine Greenhouse, is a 20-year veteran of military
procurement and for the last 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 on Saturday removed her from the elite Senior Executive
Service and reassigned her to a lesser job in the corps' civil works
division.
Greenhouse's lawyer, Michael Kohn, called the action "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 and
Afghanistan.
"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," he said in an interview Sunday.
Carol Sanders, spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers, said
Sunday that the action against Greenhouse had been approved by the
Department of the Army.
And in a memorandum dated June 3, 2005, as the demotion was being
arranged, the commander of the corps, Lieutenant General Carl Strock,
said the administrative record "clearly demonstrates that Ms.
Greenhouse's removal from the SES is based on her performance and not
in retaliation for any disclosures of alleged improprieties that she
may have made."
Known as a stickler for the rules on competition, Greenhouse initially
received stellar performance ratings.
But her reviews grew critical after she began objecting to decisions
she saw as improperly favoring KBR.
Often she hand-wrote her concerns on the contract documents, a
practice that corps leaders called unprofessional and confusing.
In October 2003, Strock, citing two consecutive performance reviews
that called Greenhouse an uncooperative manager, informed her that she
would be demoted.
Greenhouse fought the demotion through official channels, and publicly
described her clashes with corps leaders over a five-year, $7 billion
oil-repair contract that had been awarded - in secret - to KBR.
She had argued that if urgency required a no-bid contract, its
duration should be brief.
Greenhouse had also fought the granting of a waiver to KBR in December
2003, approving the high prices it had paid for fuel imports for Iraq,
and had objected to the automatic extension of a large contract to the
company for logistical support in the Balkans.
Her demotion was delayed when the army's senior legal officials said
they would first seek an independent review of her reprisal complaint.
"The army has reviewed this matter to the Department of Defense
Inspector General for their review and action, as appropriate," said
an Oct. 22, 2004, letter to her lawyer from Robert Fano, chief of
civilian personnel law.

 
Solito titolo del ca**o del solito Namib.
-Stefano