Fat Leonard, Friend Of The Sailor

This story from the Wall Street Journal is … hard to describe. It starts like this:

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.”

 

More of Fat Leonard’s derring-do:

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 the 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.

Read it all. There’s going to be a Fat Leonard podcast series too, starting October 5.

Fat Leonard’s drinking and whoring buddies are the only things standing between China ruling the South China Sea? Xi Jinping must be wetting his pants.

UPDATE: By the way, remember Marine Lt. Col. Stu Sheller, who publicly criticized his superiors for the Afghanistan disaster? He’s in the brig now, awaiting charges.  Despite twenty years of failure, including failure to tell Congress the truth about conditions in the failed Afghan war, the only military officer who is paying a price for conduct related to that war’s failure is the one who called out the brass. Note well how things work.

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