The complaint alleges that the award of contracts without competition to restore Iraq's oil industry and to supply and feed U.S. troops in the Balkans puts at risk ''the integrity of the federal contracting program as it relates to a major defense contractor.''
It also asks protection from retaliation for the whistle-blower, Bunnantine Greenhouse, chief contracting officer of the Army Corps of Engineers.
In a letter to Greenhouse's lawyer, an Army attorney said that the matter is being referred to the Defense Department's inspector general for ''review and action, as appropriate.'' It also said the Corps had been ordered to ''suspend any adverse personnel action'' against Greenhouse ''until a sufficient record is available to address the specific matters'' in her complaint.
Copies of the letter and complaints, documents which were provided to some members of Congress, were obtained Sunday by The Associated Press.
Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said, ''KBR doesn't have any information on what Bunny Greenhouse may or may not have said to other Pentagon officials in early 2003. Certainly we can't address any threatened legal action she may be considering against her employer.''
Michael D. Kohn, who is Greenhouse's lawyer, in a letter to acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee charged that in the Balkan contract, a deputy assistant secretary of the Army had ordered changes in documents to legitimate the contract ''for political reasons.''
Kohn's complaint said contracts were approved over Greenhouse's reservations, handwritten on the original contracts, and extensions were awarded because underlings signed them without her knowledge and in collusion with senior officials
After her superiors signed off on the Iraq contract and returned it for her necessary approval, the complaint said, Greenhouse wrote beside her signature: ''I caution that extending this sole-source effort beyond a one year period could convey an invalid perception that there is not strong intent for a limited competition.''
The contracts under investigation grew out of a $7 billion multiple-year award to Halliburton's KBR subsidiary to rehabilitate Iraq's oil industry after the U.S.-led invasion last year; and an 11-month extension, which cost $165 million, of a $2 billion services contract the Army awarded in May 1999.
The Iraq contract was awarded in February 2003, before the invasion, under a clause specifying no-bid contracts in cases of ''compelling emergency.'' The complaint said Greenhouse objected to the five-year term, asking why the certainty that the emergency would continue for five years.
