Iraqi Fraud Whistleblowers Say, "It's Just Not Worth It!"

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In my last article, I had listed a number of the many abuses and corruptions that are occurring in Iraq by both the local Iraqis and the private US and foreign contractors. One would hope that if these illegal activities had been witnessed by patriotic Americans, they would notify the appropriate authorities and catch them in the act. Unfortunately, that's apparently not how it works.

Based on the latest results of the efforts of the United States for rebuilding Iraq, since Congress approved the last $30 Billion dollars to rebuild the country, at least $8.8 Billion has just disappeared. Of the few times that corruption has been witnessed and the information turned over to the authorities, those that were the "whistleblowers" are many times the ones that have ended up paying a devastating price for being an American patriot.

Halliburton and the USACE:

Ms. Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse was once the highest ranking civilian contracting executive in the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). Ms. Greenhouse had been previously responsible for passing on $23-billion in Iraq's reconstruction contracts annually. She has a personnel file stuffed with Gold Star employee evaluations that attest to her guardianship of the American public's money. Unfortunately, she ran afoul of the US Department of Defense and the previous Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld who trashed this woman that rose by her own bootstraps from childhood poverty in Rayville, LA.

Today, Ms. Greenhouse sits in a small cubicle in a far corner of an office in the USACE headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C. US taxpayers pay her salary, but today, no work demands are made of her.

In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) was named the sole source contractor for the Restore Oil Contract. This was a contingency plan to douse any oil well fires that might break out in the Iraqi oil fields. However, Greenhouse discovered later that there were other bidders qualified to do the job besides KBR.

Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, KBR officials showed up unannounced at a USACE planning session. As a contract recipient, KBR was allowed to present its planning update, but the session then continued into other budget projections. This was totally against the rules as it clearly gave KBR insider knowledge of future Iraq campaign operations. Greenhouse wanted KBR out of the room, but they were allowed to stay. It was a clear conflict of interest to have a prospective award recipient involved in the planning stages for missions not yet officially announced.

Some weeks later, Greenhouse's worst fears were realized when KBR, received another no-bid, five-year contract award, when a one-year contract would have sufficed. Greenhouse penned her reservations directly on the contract documents. Otherwise, she said, "There would have been a major risk that the five-year strategy never would have been revisited, and no follow-up on limited competition would have been instituted as had been previously promised to the American public." Under the tight contract Greenhouse was asked to sign, even if Halliburton had fouled up, they could not be dropped from the contract.

After crying foul, Ms. Greenhouse was promptly demoted and her salary lowered from her top contracts' oversight job in the Senior Executive Service to a mere Program Manager position.

It should be noted, before the Halliburton / KBR rip-off, Greenhouse single-handedly brought on a revolution in the Defense Base Act insurance law that saved the Pentagon, $20-million in its first six months of operation. Over time, her action may save taxpayers hundreds of millions spent on insurance premiums to cover military contractors working abroad.

Looking back, Greenhouse says, "I was never accused of having engaged in any act of impropriety. I was never called on the carpet to defend my actions or inactions for any business judgment I made during the contracting process."

Ms. Greenhouse was also the cover girl of the July/August 2006 issue of "Fraud Magazine." She was not written up for being on the wrong side of the law, only on the wrong side of the Bush White House, now a law unto itself. "Fraud Magazine" is published by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and Ms. Greenhouse is the recipient of the association's coveted, annual 2006 Robertson Sentinel Award. In any other US Executive Administration, they would have undoubtedly been proud of her. Instead, she has become the highest US contracting civilian in USACE that is made to sit in a corner, punished like a misbehaving child. As she told "Fraud" editor, Dick Carozza, she was demoted because of her refusal to sign off on for billions of dollars worth of no-bid, no-compete contracts that are enriching Halliburton Corp, the government contractor previously headed up by Vice President Dick Cheney.

Right after the demotion, three Congressional Democrats wrote Donald Rumsfeld asking if it wasn't a fact that Greenhouse's demotion was retaliatory. Unfortunately, the Secretary of Defense chose not to respond to the Congressmen. Now, Greenhouse feels that every action toward her is designed to inflict as much humiliation as possible.

Ms. Greenhouse told "Fraud" she is proud to be called a "whistleblower". (She even has a plaque from the Giraffe Society that is given to people who "stick their necks out".) She describes herself as "One who exposes government and corporate misconduct, violations of the law, threats to the public safety, or actions that violate the law." And she also says: "Integrity in government is not an option: it is an imperative." Being a true American, she with the ACLU are suing Donald Rumsfeld.

Absent the honest oversight of Ms. Greenhouse, Iraq has become what one official who served there called a "Free-Fraud Zone". Billions, not millions of dollars have been stolen from both the Iraqi and American peoples. In the words of Rep. Henry Waxman (D.-Calif.): "The largest single recipient of Development Funds for Iraq was Halliburton. This is the company that vastly overcharged to import gasoline into Iraq and to provide other oil-related services." The overcharges have exceed $200-million, just for Halliburton/ KBR.

This fully explains why today, Ms. Greenhouse continues to sit in a corner at the USACE.

Donald Vance, Nathan Ertel and Iraq Corruption:

Mr. Donald Vance, a Navy veteran, went to Iraq in 2004, at first to work for a Washington-based company. He later joined a small Baghdad-based security company called Shield Group Security, where he said, "Things started looking weird to me." He said that the company, which was supposed to protect American reconstruction organizations, had hired guards from a sheik in Basra. However, many of them turned out to be members of militias whom the American companies did not want around.

Mr. Vance said the company had a growing cache of weapons such as guns, ammunition, land mines and rocket-launchers that it was selling to Iraqi insurgents, US State Dept. workers and a steady flow of officials from the Iraqi Interior Ministry. The Ministry also had ties to violent militias and death squads. He said he had also witnessed another Shield Group employee giving American soldiers liquor in exchange for bullets and weapon repairs. He referred to the company as a "Wal-Mart for weapons". All of the sales were for cash with no receipts.

On a visit to Chicago in October 2005, Mr. Vance decided he could take it no longer and he met twice with an F.B.I. agent who set up a reporting system. Weekly, Mr. Vance phoned the agent from Iraq and sent him e-mail messages. "It was like, ´Hey, I heard this and I saw this.´ I wanted to help," Mr. Vance said. A government official familiar with the arrangement has confirmed Mr. Vance´s account.

Mr. Nathan Ertel was a colleague and a contracts manager who knew Mr. Vance from another job in Iraq. He helped Mr. Vance collect and gather photos, sales documents and other evidence against the security company.

In April 2006, Mr. Vance and Mr. Ertel said, they felt increasingly uncomfortable at the company. Mr. Ertel resigned and company officials immediately seized his identification cards that were needed by everyone in order to move around Iraq or to leave the country.

On April 15, feeling threatened, Mr. Vance phoned the United States Embassy in Baghdad. A military rescue team rushed to the security company. Again, Mr. Vance described its operations. (This has all been confirmed according to military records.) "Mr. Vance indicated a large weapons cache was in the compound in the house next door," Capt. Plymouth D. Nelson, a military detention official, wrote in a memorandum dated April 22, after the men were detained. "A search of the house and grounds revealed two large weapons caches."

On the evening of April 15, both men met with American officials at the embassy and stayed overnight. But just before dawn, they were awakened, handcuffed with zip ties and made to wear goggles with lenses covered by duct tape. They were put into a Humvee, Mr. Vance said he asked for a vest and helmet, and was refused. They were then driven through dangerous Baghdad roads and eventually to Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad. They were placed in cells at Compound 5, the high-security unit where Saddam Hussein had been held.

Only days later did they receive an explanation: They had become suspects for having associated with the people Mr. Vance tried to expose. "You have been detained for the following reasons: You work for a business entity that possessed one or more large weapons caches on its premises and you may be involved in the possible distribution of these weapons to insurgent/terrorist groups." Mr. Vance said; "They took off my blindfold and earmuffs and told me to stand in a corner, where they cut off the zip ties, and told me to continue looking straight forward and as I´m doing this, I´m asking for an attorney."

Instead, they were given six-digit ID numbers. The guards shortened Mr. Vance´s (200343) into something of a nickname: "343". And then the routine began: Five times in the first week, guards shackled the prisoners´ hands and feet, covered their eyes, placed towels over their heads and put them in wheelchairs to be pushed to a room with a carpeted ceiling and walls. There they were questioned by an array of officials who, they said they were told, represented the FBI, the CIA, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

"It was like boom, boom, boom," Mr. Ertel said. "They are drilling you. ´We know you did this, you are part of this gun smuggling thing.´ And I´m saying you have it absolutely way off."

The two men slept in their 9-by-9-foot cells on concrete slabs, with worn three-inch foam mats. With the fluorescent lights left on 24/7 and the temperature in the 50s, Mr. Vance said, "I paced myself to sleep, walking until I couldn´t anymore. I broke the straps on two pair of flip-flops." When asked about the lights, the detainee operations spokeswoman has said that the camp´s policy was to turn off cell lights at night "to allow detainees to sleep." That didn't happen.

The men pleaded with the Camp Cropper Detention Board. "I´m telling them there has been a major mix-up," Mr. Ertel said. "Please, I´m out of my mind. I haven´t slept. I´m not eating. I´m terrified." Mr. Vance said he implored the board to delve into his laptop computer and cell phone for his communications with the F.B.I. agent in Chicago. The hearings lasted about two hours, and the men said they never saw the board again. "At the end, my first question was, ´Does my family know I´m alive?´ and the lead man said, ´I don´t know,´ " Mr. Vance recounted. "And then I asked when will we have an answer, and they said on average it takes three to four weeks."

About a week later, two weeks into his detention, Mr. Vance was allowed to make his first call, to Chicago. He called his fiancée, Diane Schwarz, who told him she had thought he might have died. "It was very overwhelming," Ms. Schwarz recalls of the 12-minute conversation. "He wasn´t quite sure what was going on, and was kind of turning to me for answers and I was turning to him for the same." She had already been calling members of Congress, alarmed by his disappearance. So was Mr. Ertel´s mother, and some officials began pressing for answers. "I would appreciate your looking into this matter," Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois wrote to a State Department official in early May.

On May 7, the Camp Cropper Detention Board met again, without either man present, and determined that Mr. Ertel was "an innocent civilian," according to the spokeswoman for detention operations. It took authorities 18 more days to release him.

Mr. Vance´s situation was more complicated. "Mr. Vance continues to be a security detainee. We are not processing him for release. His case remains under investigation and there is no set timetable for completion." Over the following weeks, Mr. Vance said that he wrote 10 letters to Ms. Schwarz, but that only one ever made it to Chicago. Dated July 17, it was delivered by the Red Cross.

The military has never explained why it continued to consider Mr. Vance a security threat, except to say that officials decided to release him after further review of his case. "Treating an American citizen in this fashion would have been unimaginable before 9/11," said Mike Kanovitz, a Chicago lawyer representing Mr. Vance. On July 20, Mr. Vance wrote in his notes: "Told ´Leaving Today.´ Took shower and shaved, saw doctor, got civ clothes back and passport."

On his way out, Mr. Vance said: "They asked me if I was intending to write a book, would I talk to the press, would I be thinking of getting an attorney." I took it as, "Shut up, don´t talk about this place."and I kept saying, "No sir, I want to go home." They then drove him and dumped him off at the Baghdad International Airport. When he got home, he never called the FBI again, he called a lawyer instead.

Mr. Vance now says; "There's an unspoken rule in Baghdad. Don't snitch on people and don't burn bridges." For doing both, he paid with 97 frightening days of his life.

Mr. Ertel has since returned to Baghdad, again working as a contracts manager. Mr. Vance is back in Chicago, still feeling the effects of having been a prisoner of the war in Iraq. "It´s really hard, I don´t really talk about this stuff with my family. I feel ashamed, depressed, still have nightmares, and I´d even say I suffer from some paranoia."

This is only 2 of the many stories on Iraq "whistleblowers". There are many more, and some with even worse results, if you want to look for them.