Although she was warned against it by supervisors, she blew the whistle on national TV in front of a Senate committee. “My name is Bunnatine H. Greenhouse. I have agreed to voluntarily appear at this hearing,” she addressed the committee.
Bunny Greenhouse was an unlikely whistleblower. In 2005, Greenhouse was the highest-ranked civilian at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“When I took my oath of office it said that you will conduct the business of contracting impartially … and with preferential treatment toward none. I saw preferential treatment toward KBR,” she told “Whistleblower” host Alex Ferrer in “Bunny’s War: The Case Against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”
KBR was Kellogg Brown and Root — back then, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the oil services firm Halliburton. In the weeks prior to the invasion, Greenhouse learned that KBR was being considered for a massive no-bid contract known as Restore Iraqi Oil, or RIO.
“What was the size of this contract?” Ferrer asked.
“Seven billion dollars,” she replied.
What Greenhouse didn’t know is that even more powerful forces may have been involved.
“A lot of attention fell on Dick Cheney, the vice president, and the fact was that he had been the head of Halliburton for … six years,” Vanity Fair journalist Michael Shnayerson explained. “So, the suspicion began to grow that perhaps Cheney was steering government contracts to KBR.”
A spokesperson for Dick Cheney told CBS News that the former vice president severed all ties with Halliburton and KBR in the summer of 2000 when he became candidate for vice president.
A representative for KBR said “it’s unfortunate that misinformation and myths about KBR’s role in supporting the military in Iraq continue to be circulated. These assertions have repeatedly been shown to be false.”
For Greenhouse, biting her tongue was never an option. “I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career,” she told the Senate committee.