Punishing the Whistleblower

I haven't seen much elsewhere on it, but this should be relatively big news as a prime example of Bushco in action:

A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton Co. a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq, was removed from her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday.

Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, commander of the Army Corps, told Bunnatine H. Greenhouse last month that she was being removed from the senior executive service, the top rank of civilian government employees, because of poor performance reviews. Greenhouse's attorney, Michael D. Kohn, appealed the decision Friday in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, saying it broke an earlier commitment to suspend the demotion until a "sufficient record" was available to address her allegations.


The Army said last October that it would refer her complaints to the Defense Department's inspector general. The failure to abide by the agreement and the circumstances of the removal "are the hallmark of illegal retaliation," Kohn wrote to Rumsfeld. He said the review Strock cited to justify his action "was conducted by the very subjects" of Greenhouse's allegations, including the general.

The above paragraphs summarize the story pretty well, but even they underestimate the injustice of Greenhouse's dismissal. Later on, the WaPo article says the following of Greenhouse's work record:

Greenhouse has developed a reputation among those in both government and industry as being a stickler for the rules. To her critics, she's a foot-dragging, inflexible bureaucrat. To her supporters, she's been a staunch defender of the taxpayers' dime.

The striking question to me is this: what better quality could there be in a contracting official than an insistence on making sure that transactions are properly conducted? Nothing in the article indicates that there was any problem with Greenhouse aside from an unwillingness to lend her approval to questionable contracts. That's exactly the kind of employee who can help to prevent and root out corruption. But apparently such skills are considered a negative at the moment.

Only in the Bush administration could following the rules be grounds for dismissal. We can only hope that an organization with a higher ethical standard will recognize Greenhouse's skills...and that there won't be too much more harm done now that Bushco has made itself even less accountable.