Liberty Call with Fat Leonard
Seventh Fleet’s Command Ship USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19)
Dozens of U.S. Navy officials have admitted to being bought off by the rotund Malaysian defense contractor known as “Fat Leonard” who plied them with prostitutes, Cuban cigars and free stays at hotels, among other things.
The case has centered around Leonard Glenn Francis, who admitted in 2015 to offering the bribes to Navy officers. In exchange, the officers passed him classified information and even went so far as redirecting military vessels to ports that were lucrative for his Singapore-based ship servicing company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, or GDMA.
Twenty-nine people, mostly Navy officials, have pleaded guilty to helping Francis in providing classified ship schedules in exchange for the extravagant outings with prostitutes and meal tabs totaling thousands of dollars.
Sadly, all bad things must end. Mick sends.
From Port to Port, Testimony Details ‘Fat Leonard’s’ Alcohol- and Sex-Fueled Parties
The San Diego Union-Tribune | By Kristina Davis
As a lieutenant commander in 2008, Stephen Shedd never considered reporting the gifts and favors that he said some of the senior staff of the Navy’s Seventh Fleet exchanged with the military contractor known as ” Fat Leonard.”
For starters, Shedd himself was engaged in much of the same alleged behavior — accepting hotel rooms, meals and the services of prostitutes from Leonard Glenn Francis, the gregarious contractor nicknamed for his girth.
Besides, even if Shedd had wanted to report misconduct by his superiors, he had no confidence it would go anywhere.
“We had an understanding of mutually assured destruction,” Shedd testified Thursday to a jury. “We’d all go down in flames or we’d all be protected.”
The hammer eventually fell, in 2017, when Shedd and eight other former naval officers were together indicted on bribery and conspiracy allegations, as part of Francis’ ongoing scheme to corrupt strategically placed military members. Francis owned a Singapore-based husbanding company, which serviced visiting Navy ships in ports across Asia, and he counted on the influence and intelligence of naval officials to help him compete for contracts worth millions of dollars.
Shedd and three other co-defendants pleaded guilty before trial. This week, Shedd took the witness stand, testifying against the rest of his past colleagues: Former Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless; former Capts. David Newland, James Dolan and David Lausman; and former Cmdr. Mario Herrera.
What were they serving in Blue Ridge’s wardroom? The Defense will take over after 10 weeks of testimony. That shouldn’t take as long.
Thanks, Mick.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", Guest Link, Navy
Cue the Billy Joel.
And we will all go down together…
May they enjoy the chow at the BTJ&T Deli. I here Man Meat Sammiches and Tossed Salad are Daily Specials. And just like Olive Garden, never ending servings.
Do you think that Fat Leonard will throw a few bucks on their prison commissary accounts?
What a blow to the Gator Navy when I looked at the USS Blue Ridge.
Ol’ Poe’s gonna take the distaff side here, based on his decades of marketing to the military. Wining and dining of decision makers was an expected part of the job and it occurred across the military spectrum, practiced by every company in the industry.
Young Poe was first innocently amazed, then delighted, to learn, upon being selected to be a government sales manager, that he had a virtually unlimited entertainment budget.
The practice was, and probably still is, so widespread, that even when the occasional general officer forbade his subordinates from accepting such gratuities, his ban would be at best observed for a few months before it was right back to the way things had always been.
So, in Ol’ Poe’s opinion, the prosecution of these naval officers is hypocritical at best. He’d wager this business of wining and dining key naval officers by ships’ suppliers is an old, established custom. Fat Leonard was just a showboat who took things several degrees too far.
So, PT – you’re OK with people being “wined and dined” in exchange for divulging classified info? Or in exchange for divulging pre-contract procurement-sensitive information? Because that’s what’s alleged to have happened in many instances here.
Might want to think about it some before you answer. It’s also historically pretty close to how foreign intelligence services reputedly have developed sources.
FWIW: accepting gifts from contractors (current or prospective) by DoD employees may have been dramatically proscribed since you worked in the field. Today, with certain limited exceptions accepting any single gift valued at >$20 or more (or over $50 per year in the aggregate) from a “prohibited source” is verboten. Contractor employees generally fall under the definition of “prohibited source”.
https://dodsoco.ogc.osd.mil/Portals/102/Documents/Training%20Materials/2020%20Employee%20Guide%20to%20the%20Standards%20of%20Conduct%20%20(Final).pdf
It appears the new site comment display system doesn’t like links that contain periods. You’ll likely have to cut and paste the link above into an new browser window to view it.
FWIW: per my recollection, those ethics regs haven’t changed much since the early 1990s. In particular, the $20 single item/$50 annual aggregate from any contractor rule has been in effect at least that long.
Pretty much every Fat Leonard “extra bennie” I’ve heard of would have had a bona fide economic value of >$20.
Re: divulging classified info.
In my estimation, it’s virtually certain that those individual hookers who Fat Leonard deliberately assigned to specific high-ranking Navy officers were each provided with a set of Fat Leonard’s version of RFIs/PIRs.
“Pillow talk” is, and always has been, a highly effective method of collecting intelligence.
Those Navy officers were idiots for falling for this Fat Leonard bullshit.
I’d be willing to bet that some of those hookers were working for two employers, Mick – with the second being a foreign government. My guess would be the PRC.
Shack!
Concur.
Well, Hondo, I’ll be the first to admit, PT’s out of his depth when it comes to foreign ship suppliers. But based on my own experiences, I speculated that wining and dining by such contractors is likely an old naval custom.
FWIW, those DoD proscriptions go back to the late 70’s or early 80’s and have always been largely ignored. There would be periodic crackdowns that seldom lasted more than a few months. And yes, there was the occasional officer who refused to accept any form of gratuity, but they were usually younger, junior officers and definitely in the minority. It wasn’t just officers either; NCO’s were entertained as well.
When I did some post-retirement consulting back in the mid 2000’s, I attended numerous military medical conferences and wining and dining was still in full swing.
Of course, I do not condone the divulgence of classified information under any circumstances and if that is indeed the case, then by all means prosecute.
This seemingly confirms my suspicion that the practice was commonplace–they were all doing it:
“We had an understanding of mutually assured destruction,” Shedd testified Thursday to a jury. “We’d all go down in flames or we’d all be protected.”
From port to port, testimony details ‘Fat Leonard’s’ alcohol- and sex-fueled parties | American Military News
Makes you wonder if it wasn’t commonplace in other areas of the world as well, just not to the sleazy extent of the flamboyant Fat Leonard.
Wining and dining members of congress, OK.
Wining and dining everyone else, not OK.
Wining and dining Congresscritters is “lobbying”, with anyone else it’s bribery!
Exactly, STSC, the hypocrisy of “rules for thee but not for me” is why the prohibition against it is generally ignored.
Does anyone here truly believe that all those flag ranks in DC don’t get wined and dined by all the major defense contractors?
I’ve read everything there is about this case, including a recent book written by one of the Navy contracting officers sent in to investigate. What I carry away from it all is that all of these guys who took Fat Leonard’s money and favors somehow felt entitled to it. A good part of it is the influence of the years of massive massive amounts of money sloshing around during the GWOT. The same Singapore Navy contracting authority covers Burma. Every time we see an RFQ for something here, we bid. But we always lose out to RMA Thailand. Most of what we’ve bid on is related to the DODPAA’s WWII aircrew recovery efforts here. RMA may have underbid us, but I’m aware that due to how the contract is structured, they end up charging 10 times what we would have charged.