A Giraffe has been sighted
in D.C. |
Bunnatine Greenhouse knows her numbers. She earned a magna cum laude in mathematics and she’s got decades of experience in analysing and overseeing the contracting and procurement operations of government agencies. In 1997 she took charge of the US Army Corps of Engineers’ contracts with private businesses, at home and abroad. The dollars on the table run in the billions, and they all come from US taxpayers. So when Greenhouse saw that during our military operations in Bosnia the dollars were moving repeatedly—without competitive bidding and in suspiciously high amounts—to one company, she challenged those contracts. Her protests were ignored by Army brass. When the same company began getting huge non-competitive contracts during the buildup to the attack on Iraq,* Greenhouse challenged again and found herself removed from the decision-making process. Her persistent efforts to go through channels to stop the abuses earned her a demotion in rank, a negative fitness report, and an invitation to retire.Greenhouse was not silenced; she hired an attorney and began a battle that’s making it known that not only is Bunnatine Greenhouse getting a raw deal, so are millions of American taxpayers. She’s formally requested that the Department of the Army launch an independent investigation of the huge, non-competitive contracts. The Army retaliated by removing Greenhouse from all contracting operations, allowing those operations to continue without her oversight—and her objections. |
Federal law says that government business must be conducted in a manner that is impartial, non-preferential and above reproach. Ms. Greenhouse is a public servant who takes that directive seriously. Moved from her comfortable Pentagon office into a tiny cubicle there, Bunnatine Greenhouse told us the only thing she’s hanging on that cubicle wall is her commendation as a Giraffe Hero. *This process is being repeated in the reconstruction work on the US Gulf Coast. |
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