WEBVTT

1
00:00:04.040 --> 00:00:09.359
This is Later with Lee Matthews The
Lee Matthews Podcast. More what you Hear

2
00:00:09.519 --> 00:00:15.400
Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Craig
Whitlock is an investigative reporter with The Washington

3
00:00:15.439 --> 00:00:19.440
Post. He's a New York Times
number one best selling author of the Afghanistan

4
00:00:19.559 --> 00:00:24.280
Papers. His newest creation is called
Fat Leonard. How one man bribed,

5
00:00:24.399 --> 00:00:29.839
Builket and seduced the US Navy.
Craig Whitlock, This is the story of

6
00:00:29.960 --> 00:00:36.079
Leonard Glenn Francis. Let's start at
the beginning of who he is. Yeah,

7
00:00:36.119 --> 00:00:40.359
Leonard Francis, also known as Fat
Leonard, is a three hundred and

8
00:00:40.359 --> 00:00:46.320
fifty pound Malaysian defense contractor. He's
also one of the world's top con men.

9
00:00:46.799 --> 00:00:51.039
Over twenty five years, he had
contracts with US Navy to service and

10
00:00:51.079 --> 00:00:55.960
supply their ships in ports throughout Asia. One hundreds of port visits a year,

11
00:00:56.039 --> 00:01:00.520
so he's an indispensable part of working
with the Navy. But he had

12
00:01:00.759 --> 00:01:06.799
a scam running where he would gouge
US government and taxpayers for his services.

13
00:01:07.120 --> 00:01:11.760
In exchange, he would bribe US
Navy officers and other personnel with money,

14
00:01:11.799 --> 00:01:17.680
with cash, with prostitutes, with
fancy meals, tropical vacations, you name

15
00:01:17.760 --> 00:01:21.519
it. And this really ran unchecked
for almost a quarter of the century.

16
00:01:22.079 --> 00:01:25.159
So when did it all start for
him? Was it something that came out

17
00:01:25.200 --> 00:01:30.959
of Vietnam or Korea or something along
those lines. It came out of the

18
00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:34.079
Cold War. So actually, after
the Cold War, the US Navy had

19
00:01:34.120 --> 00:01:40.640
an enormous base in the Philippines at
Subic Bay. This was the biggest US

20
00:01:40.799 --> 00:01:45.040
Navy base overseas. But after the
end of the Cold War they had to

21
00:01:45.040 --> 00:01:48.799
shut it down. The government of
the Philippines wanted to kick the Americans out.

22
00:01:49.040 --> 00:01:51.519
So at that point, the US
Navy had, you know, some

23
00:01:51.599 --> 00:01:55.519
bases in Japan and Hawaii, but
it didn't have other bases in that part

24
00:01:55.519 --> 00:01:57.640
of the world, which is a
really important part of the world for the

25
00:01:57.760 --> 00:02:02.519
Navy with adversary he is, like
China and Russia and North Korea. So

26
00:02:02.680 --> 00:02:08.879
the Navy became dependent on private contractors
to help them arrange port visits in countries

27
00:02:08.919 --> 00:02:15.240
from Russia to Australia to Singapore and
Malaysia. And that's where Leonard Francis and

28
00:02:15.280 --> 00:02:21.120
his company filled that void. And
over twenty five years he built himself up

29
00:02:21.439 --> 00:02:27.199
into an enormous company and sort of
styled himself as the Aristotle Anassis, a

30
00:02:27.280 --> 00:02:31.639
Greek tycoon of the maritime world in
Asia. We're talking to Craig Wetlock,

31
00:02:31.680 --> 00:02:35.960
who is the author of Fat Leonard. How one Man bribed, built,

32
00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:39.360
and seduced the US Navy. It's
the story of Leonard Glenn Francis. So

33
00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:45.919
did he start out in just basic
shipping and then work his way into arms

34
00:02:45.919 --> 00:02:51.759
training. He didn't actually do any
arms trading. It was all servicing ships.

35
00:02:51.840 --> 00:02:57.000
So if of a Navy aircraft carrier
or destroyer came into port, you

36
00:02:57.000 --> 00:03:00.520
know, it needed fresh water,
it needed tugboats, arges, and somebody

37
00:03:00.639 --> 00:03:04.719
to find a place for the crew
to stay. And you know, that's

38
00:03:04.759 --> 00:03:07.120
a lot of work in a port
visit that might only last four or five

39
00:03:07.240 --> 00:03:10.520
days. So he was the guy
who did that. He kind of described

40
00:03:10.599 --> 00:03:15.599
himself as the Walmart for the US
Navy whenever it pulled into port. This

41
00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:19.719
was a, you know, a
key role, and he played it well.

42
00:03:19.759 --> 00:03:23.759
It's just he he overcharged the US
government through the nose for this by

43
00:03:23.879 --> 00:03:29.000
tens of millions of dollars. And
again, you know, the genius of

44
00:03:29.039 --> 00:03:32.879
his scam is he would pay off
or bribe or give gifts to the Navy

45
00:03:32.919 --> 00:03:37.560
brass so they would look the other
way while he did this, and amazingly

46
00:03:37.599 --> 00:03:43.039
it worked for the better part of
two decades while bilking the United States government.

47
00:03:43.080 --> 00:03:45.719
Evidently it's not hard to do because
a lot of people do it.

48
00:03:46.680 --> 00:03:50.639
Well, that's true, but Leonard
was kind of in a class of his

49
00:03:50.680 --> 00:03:54.919
own. He made up seeds,
he made up invoices. He really could

50
00:03:55.000 --> 00:04:00.000
charge whatever he wanted. And again, there were all these systems in place

51
00:04:00.199 --> 00:04:03.240
were designed to prevent it. But
he made friends with the admirals and the

52
00:04:03.280 --> 00:04:10.719
ship captains and hosted these over the
top thousand dollars a head dinners in the

53
00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:16.560
fanciest restaurants in Asia for visiting officers. He had sex parties and hotels,

54
00:04:17.279 --> 00:04:21.720
he had prostitutes all over the place. So he gave these Navy officers a

55
00:04:21.800 --> 00:04:26.680
case of the high life. And
that's really the shocking finding of the book

56
00:04:26.879 --> 00:04:30.079
is, you know, the US
public still holds the military in very high

57
00:04:30.120 --> 00:04:35.360
regard. All opinion polls show that
the US military is the most highly regarded

58
00:04:35.439 --> 00:04:40.800
institution in America. And for the
most part, these officers did have a

59
00:04:40.920 --> 00:04:44.720
very good reputation. I covered a
lot of them at the Pentagon. These

60
00:04:44.720 --> 00:04:47.120
were the best and the brightest the
Navy had to offer. And yet when

61
00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:50.399
they went to Asia, it's like
going to Las Vegas. To them,

62
00:04:50.439 --> 00:04:54.879
they thought they were you know,
that they could get away with it.

63
00:04:54.959 --> 00:04:59.600
Nobody would find out, and for
the most part, nobody did for two

64
00:04:59.680 --> 00:05:03.839
decades. It was only when Leonard
France was finally arrested by the Justice Department

65
00:05:03.920 --> 00:05:09.800
in twenty thirteen that this all started
slowly to come to light. And it

66
00:05:09.839 --> 00:05:15.040
took me ten years of digging and
reporting to really piece together the whole scope

67
00:05:15.079 --> 00:05:18.720
and extent of this scandal. He
brought to the Afghanistan papers Craig Whitlock and

68
00:05:18.800 --> 00:05:21.879
Fat Leonard, how one man bribed, built, and seduced to the US

69
00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:27.439
Navy. I'm chuckling Craig, because
in two hundred years of Navy history in

70
00:05:27.480 --> 00:05:30.759
the United States, one thing has
not changed. Sailors will be sailors,

71
00:05:32.680 --> 00:05:35.879
that's true. But what's different in
this case is it was also a threat

72
00:05:35.920 --> 00:05:41.079
to national security. Leonard Francis,
despite seeming like this, you know,

73
00:05:41.160 --> 00:05:45.240
this big, jolly, fat guy
who is very pro American, he actually

74
00:05:45.319 --> 00:05:50.720
cultivated and recruited ten US Navy officers
to leak him military secrets over a period

75
00:05:50.759 --> 00:05:55.800
of seven years. And the secrets
he would give him were the classified ship

76
00:05:55.839 --> 00:06:01.560
schedules showing the movements of all US
Navy warships submarines in the Pacific. This

77
00:06:01.720 --> 00:06:06.040
was information that if our enemies or
adversaries got a hold of, would represent

78
00:06:06.399 --> 00:06:11.959
a real safety risk to US crews
and ships. And Leonard got his hands

79
00:06:11.959 --> 00:06:15.240
on it for seven years, and
that there's really no parallel for that in

80
00:06:15.360 --> 00:06:21.959
modern espionage history. For one guy
to cultivate ten US officers to leak him

81
00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:27.120
classified information. That was really the
shocking part is you know, it's one

82
00:06:27.120 --> 00:06:30.360
thing to talk about his sex parties
and dinners, but you know, had

83
00:06:30.399 --> 00:06:33.120
he been a spy for the Russians
or the Chinese, this would have been

84
00:06:33.160 --> 00:06:39.759
an enormous, damaging scandal to national
security. And I gather he was using

85
00:06:39.759 --> 00:06:43.639
the information just for his own profit
or was he selling it to the Russians

86
00:06:43.639 --> 00:06:47.199
and the Chinese. Well that was
the whole fear, and we've never really

87
00:06:47.199 --> 00:06:51.439
gotten a clear answer to that.
Bat Leonard, he was arrested, said

88
00:06:51.480 --> 00:06:56.519
he didn't give it to the Chinese
or the Russians, at least not intentionally.

89
00:06:56.639 --> 00:06:59.680
But it turned out, believe it
or not, his IT manager,

90
00:06:59.759 --> 00:07:02.439
the guy guy who was in charge
of his computer networks at his company,

91
00:07:02.920 --> 00:07:10.040
was of Chinese descent and was friendly
with Chinese military officers, and he admitted

92
00:07:10.160 --> 00:07:14.839
this that by the time he got
his hands on these military secrets, he

93
00:07:14.920 --> 00:07:18.879
left them unprotected and unguarded on his
computers and in his office, and it

94
00:07:18.920 --> 00:07:23.800
would have been easy for the Chinese
or Russians to get their hands on it.

95
00:07:24.120 --> 00:07:26.839
And to this day we don't know
whether they did or not, but

96
00:07:26.879 --> 00:07:30.040
it was certainly a big vulnerability.
I would imagine Fat Leonard, how one

97
00:07:30.120 --> 00:07:33.800
man bribed, built, and seduced
the US Navy. Did any officers lose

98
00:07:33.839 --> 00:07:41.759
their job as a result of this? So this actually paralyzed US Navy leadership

99
00:07:41.839 --> 00:07:45.920
for several years because at a minimum, they couldn't promote anyone who was under

100
00:07:45.959 --> 00:07:48.920
investigation. And just to give you
a sense of the high ranking nature of

101
00:07:48.920 --> 00:07:53.879
a lot of the officers who were
implicated, Leonard had given gifts to two

102
00:07:54.079 --> 00:07:59.800
chiefs of Naval Operations, that's the
highest ranking admiral in the Navy. Also

103
00:07:59.839 --> 00:08:05.759
on investigation was the Chief of Navy
Intelligence, the superintendent of the Naval Academy,

104
00:08:05.199 --> 00:08:09.199
and the commander of all US military
forces in the in the Pacific.

105
00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:13.759
So these were the highest ranking folks
at the Pentagon and elsewhere who had known

106
00:08:13.839 --> 00:08:18.279
Leonard over the years, had gone
to his parties, had taken gifts,

107
00:08:18.680 --> 00:08:22.720
and their careers were all frozen or
sunk as a result of this scandal.

108
00:08:22.519 --> 00:08:26.439
And you can read all about the
scandal in Fat Leonard. How one man

109
00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:31.560
bribed, built, and seduced the
US Navy. Craig Winlock has done it

110
00:08:31.600 --> 00:08:35.039
again. And thank you for joining
us. You bet glad to speak with

111
00:08:35.080 --> 00:08:39.960
you. Thanks for listening to Later
with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast,

112
00:08:41.200 --> 00:08:45.639
and remember to listen to The Drive
Live weekday afternoons from five to seven

113
00:08:45.919 --> 00:08:46.679
and iHeartMedia Presentation