This is Later with Lee Matthews The Lee Matthews Podcast. More what you Hear
Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Craig Whitlock is an investigative reporter with The Washington
Post. He's a New York Times number one best selling author of the Afghanistan
Papers. His newest creation is called Fat Leonard. How one man bribed,
Builket and seduced the US Navy. Craig Whitlock, This is the story of
Leonard Glenn Francis. Let's start at the beginning of who he is. Yeah,
Leonard Francis, also known as Fat Leonard, is a three hundred and
fifty pound Malaysian defense contractor. He's also one of the world's top con men.
Over twenty five years, he had contracts with US Navy to service and
supply their ships in ports throughout Asia. One hundreds of port visits a year,
so he's an indispensable part of working with the Navy. But he had
a scam running where he would gouge US government and taxpayers for his services.
In exchange, he would bribe US Navy officers and other personnel with money,
with cash, with prostitutes, with fancy meals, tropical vacations, you name
it. And this really ran unchecked for almost a quarter of the century.
So when did it all start for him? Was it something that came out
of Vietnam or Korea or something along those lines. It came out of the
Cold War. So actually, after the Cold War, the US Navy had
an enormous base in the Philippines at Subic Bay. This was the biggest US
Navy base overseas. But after the end of the Cold War they had to
shut it down. The government of the Philippines wanted to kick the Americans out.
So at that point, the US Navy had, you know, some
bases in Japan and Hawaii, but it didn't have other bases in that part
of the world, which is a really important part of the world for the
Navy with adversary he is, like China and Russia and North Korea. So
the Navy became dependent on private contractors to help them arrange port visits in countries
from Russia to Australia to Singapore and Malaysia. And that's where Leonard Francis and
his company filled that void. And over twenty five years he built himself up
into an enormous company and sort of styled himself as the Aristotle Anassis, a
Greek tycoon of the maritime world in Asia. We're talking to Craig Wetlock,
who is the author of Fat Leonard. How one Man bribed, built,
and seduced the US Navy. It's the story of Leonard Glenn Francis. So
did he start out in just basic shipping and then work his way into arms
training. He didn't actually do any arms trading. It was all servicing ships.
So if of a Navy aircraft carrier or destroyer came into port, you
know, it needed fresh water, it needed tugboats, arges, and somebody
to find a place for the crew to stay. And you know, that's
a lot of work in a port visit that might only last four or five
days. So he was the guy who did that. He kind of described
himself as the Walmart for the US Navy whenever it pulled into port. This
was a, you know, a key role, and he played it well.
It's just he he overcharged the US government through the nose for this by
tens of millions of dollars. And again, you know, the genius of
his scam is he would pay off or bribe or give gifts to the Navy
brass so they would look the other way while he did this, and amazingly
it worked for the better part of two decades while bilking the United States government.
Evidently it's not hard to do because a lot of people do it.
Well, that's true, but Leonard was kind of in a class of his
own. He made up seeds, he made up invoices. He really could
charge whatever he wanted. And again, there were all these systems in place
were designed to prevent it. But he made friends with the admirals and the
ship captains and hosted these over the top thousand dollars a head dinners in the
fanciest restaurants in Asia for visiting officers. He had sex parties and hotels,
he had prostitutes all over the place. So he gave these Navy officers a
case of the high life. And that's really the shocking finding of the book
is, you know, the US public still holds the military in very high
regard. All opinion polls show that the US military is the most highly regarded
institution in America. And for the most part, these officers did have a
very good reputation. I covered a lot of them at the Pentagon. These
were the best and the brightest the Navy had to offer. And yet when
they went to Asia, it's like going to Las Vegas. To them,
they thought they were you know, that they could get away with it.
Nobody would find out, and for the most part, nobody did for two
decades. It was only when Leonard France was finally arrested by the Justice Department
in twenty thirteen that this all started slowly to come to light. And it
took me ten years of digging and reporting to really piece together the whole scope
and extent of this scandal. He brought to the Afghanistan papers Craig Whitlock and
Fat Leonard, how one man bribed, built, and seduced to the US
Navy. I'm chuckling Craig, because in two hundred years of Navy history in
the United States, one thing has not changed. Sailors will be sailors,
that's true. But what's different in this case is it was also a threat
to national security. Leonard Francis, despite seeming like this, you know,
this big, jolly, fat guy who is very pro American, he actually
cultivated and recruited ten US Navy officers to leak him military secrets over a period
of seven years. And the secrets he would give him were the classified ship
schedules showing the movements of all US Navy warships submarines in the Pacific. This
was information that if our enemies or adversaries got a hold of, would represent
a real safety risk to US crews and ships. And Leonard got his hands
on it for seven years, and that there's really no parallel for that in
modern espionage history. For one guy to cultivate ten US officers to leak him
classified information. That was really the shocking part is you know, it's one
thing to talk about his sex parties and dinners, but you know, had
he been a spy for the Russians or the Chinese, this would have been
an enormous, damaging scandal to national security. And I gather he was using
the information just for his own profit or was he selling it to the Russians
and the Chinese. Well that was the whole fear, and we've never really
gotten a clear answer to that. Bat Leonard, he was arrested, said
he didn't give it to the Chinese or the Russians, at least not intentionally.
But it turned out, believe it or not, his IT manager,
the guy guy who was in charge of his computer networks at his company,
was of Chinese descent and was friendly with Chinese military officers, and he admitted
this that by the time he got his hands on these military secrets, he
left them unprotected and unguarded on his computers and in his office, and it
would have been easy for the Chinese or Russians to get their hands on it.
And to this day we don't know whether they did or not, but
it was certainly a big vulnerability. I would imagine Fat Leonard, how one
man bribed, built, and seduced the US Navy. Did any officers lose
their job as a result of this? So this actually paralyzed US Navy leadership
for several years because at a minimum, they couldn't promote anyone who was under
investigation. And just to give you a sense of the high ranking nature of
a lot of the officers who were implicated, Leonard had given gifts to two
chiefs of Naval Operations, that's the highest ranking admiral in the Navy. Also
on investigation was the Chief of Navy Intelligence, the superintendent of the Naval Academy,
and the commander of all US military forces in the in the Pacific.
So these were the highest ranking folks at the Pentagon and elsewhere who had known
Leonard over the years, had gone to his parties, had taken gifts,
and their careers were all frozen or sunk as a result of this scandal.
And you can read all about the scandal in Fat Leonard. How one man
bribed, built, and seduced the US Navy. Craig Winlock has done it
again. And thank you for joining us. You bet glad to speak with
you. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast,
and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven
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