September 30, 2021, 02:53 PM
ZSMICHAELThe Man at the Center of a Shocking U.S. Navy Scandal
Interesting read on Fat Leonard.
Procurer, protector, supplier for all needs: Leonard Francis claims that he made himself indispensable to the U.S. Navy. Then he became the star witness in a sweeping corruption probe.
On May 22, 2008, six U.S. Navy officers allegedly piled into the presidential suite of the Shangri-La hotel in a posh suburb of the Philippine capital of Manila. The men, among the most powerful military officers in the Pacific, were on shore leave from the U.S.S. Blue Ridge, the flagship of the Seventh Fleet, based in Japan. They were there to indulge in 36 straight hours of drinking, accompanied by a “carousel” of sex workers, according to U.S. federal court documents.
The organizer of this bacchanal was Leonard Glenn Francis, a Malaysian contractor for the Navy who would come to occupy the center of a sweeping criminal probe. The “Fat Leonard” scandal—known by the 350-pound Mr. Francis’s nickname—would lead to the investigation of hundreds of Navy personnel and the indictment of dozens on charges related to corruption and the endangerment of national security.
Mr. Francis, now in his mid-50s, has spent eight years in prison and home detention in San Diego. Having pleaded guilty to charges of bribery and conspiracy, he has yet to be sentenced and is now the star witness in the cases of seven Navy officers, some of whom allegedly attended the party in Manila. Their trials for bribery and obstruction of justice, among other charges, are set to begin in February in federal court in San Diego.
In recent months, in contravention of his plea deal, Mr. Francis has been talking to me for a podcast, disclosing new details of the events behind the scandal. He told me just how deeply he was embedded with the Navy, helping to protect the fleet after the attacks of Sept. 11 and going on secret missions to fight al Qaeda affiliates. He also claimed that he videotaped orgies involving Navy officers and was courted by Russian and Chinese spies—a serious national security risk.
“I played professional. I played sexual. Whatever you needed, anything,” Mr. Francis said.
During our 20 hours of recorded conversation, Mr. Francis indicated that he was eager to tell his story because he was sick with kidney cancer and furious with the Navy for what he saw as a coverup. He claimed that the Navy targeted only junior officers and failed to prosecute Navy admirals who he says took prostitutes and other gifts from him. “They didn’t want to charge any of their senior leadership,” Mr. Francis insisted. “That’s how the military is.”
The Navy and Justice Department declined to comment for the story, citing ongoing investigations. But former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in 2019 that the Navy had taken the probe seriously: “It took in a huge percentage of flag officers, and it really hamstrung the Navy in terms of promotions, in terms of positions,” he said.
Born into a commercial shipping family in Malaysia, Mr. Francis is a superficially charming man who speaks English with an American accent and punctuates his conversation with an uproarious laugh. He told me that he grew up with an abusive father who hit his mother and brought other women home, a likely precursor to Mr. Francis’s own extremely troubling treatment of women.
His Singapore-based company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, or GDMA, was a trusted partner of the Navy for three decades, providing fuel, food and security for Navy ships in the Pacific and Indian Oceans starting in the 1990s. For nearly a century, the U.S. had operated a Navy base at Subic Bay in the Philippines, but the base closed in 1992, creating logistics and security needs that Mr. Francis’s operation deftly filled. The bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 in Yemen, and the Sept. 11 attacks the following year, led to a surge in U.S. military spending that opened still more opportunities. Mr. Francis offered to protect warships, anchoring steel barges as a cordon around them, and he started to make hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues. By the late 2000s he had a near monopoly on supplying the Navy in the Pacific.
He also became a pimp for Navy officers. In return, they overlooked inflated bills and helped him win multimillion-dollar contracts, ensuring that U.S. ships docked at ports that Mr. Francis controlled, according to Justice Department indictments. In our conversations, he boasted of the power he came to wield over the Navy. “I’m nonmilitary, I’m just a civilian, I’m not a U.S. citizen, and all these senior naval officers would just snap on my command: ‘Do this,’ and they’ll move the ships for me,” Mr. Francis said.
The sex that Mr. Francis procured—and the constant flow of Michelin-starred dinners, paid vacations, Cohiba cigars and Dom Pérignon—became perks of the job for scores of Navy officers, according to 34 federal indictments, of which 26 led to guilty pleas. “Everybody has their needs,” Mr. Francis noted shrewdly, and he was there to provide for them: “And it was safe, and they could trust me, and I never let them down. I played professional. I played sexual. Whatever you needed, anything,” he said.
In fact, however, he wasn’t to be trusted. Mr. Francis told me that he regularly videotaped sex involving Navy officers. He said that he hid cameras in karaoke machines, including that night in the Shangri-La hotel in Manila, and that he still has the tapes under lock and key. He claimed that he took the videos for fun and never handed over compromising material to U.S. adversaries. But he was a prized target for foreign intelligence services and said that the Chinese and Russian military attachés courted him as an informant.
Whether or not Mr. Francis ultimately used the kompromat he says he collected on these officers, he had made himself a powerful man—a foreign national who possessed both classified information about U.S. military movements and material that could be used to blackmail senior officers.
He had also made himself rich. He rented a mansion in Singapore valued at $130 million and owned a fleet of 20 luxury cars, paid for almost entirely by the U.S. taxpayer, he said. “I mean, if you’ve got a defense contract, you’re good for life,” Mr. Francis explained, because the military “doesn’t do due diligence, because it’s not their money. It’s Uncle Sam’s money.”
In fact, over the years, Navy whistleblowers did periodically complain about Mr. Francis’s high costs and fake invoices. But they were ignored. Reporting for my podcast has revealed that finally, in 2012, the estranged wife of a Navy commander made a complaint to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS, about her husband’s connection to Mr. Francis. NCIS agents pored through the commander’s personal emails, which revealed that he had been passing classified ship schedules to Mr. Francis and enjoying parties full of sex workers, court documents show. They lured Mr. Francis to San Diego and arrested him there in 2013.
Mr. Francis pleaded guilty and began to cooperate, providing the names of hundreds of people with whom he was involved over the years. The Justice Department has indicted more than 30 Navy officers, enlisted men, contracting specialists and employees of Mr. Francis’s firm, many of whom are in prison or have already served terms. Eight holdouts, including some of the attendees at the Shangri-La hotel, continue to plead not guilty. Their lawyers haven't responded to requests for comment.The Navy has also investigated more than 400 other people, disciplining a handful of admirals, pushing some into early retirement and issuing written reprimands. One admiral, Robert Gilbeau, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for lying to investigators, the first serving admiral in U.S. Navy history to be incarcerated.
But Mr. Francis wasn’t satisfied. His relationship with the military ran deep, he insisted to me. He had his own fleet of more than 180 boats, including a warship, the “Braveheart,” which he deployed to keep the Navy safe. One former Navy officer I talked to corroborated Mr. Francis’s claim that he used his fleet to refuel Navy SEAL Mark V boats during missions to help fight al Qaeda affiliates in the Philippines. According to both Mr. Francis and former officers I spoke with, when the U.S.S. Nimitz, one of the world’s largest nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, wanted to dock in India, signaling U.S. supremacy in the region to China, the Navy relied on Mr. Francis for logistics.
“So we were a part of the auxiliary,” as Mr. Francis recalled the relationship: “I come under the flag of the United States.”
LINK:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...00?mod=hp_lead_pos13May be behind a paywall.
