Fat Leonard
A Very Disturbing Scandal
I nearly vomited.
Quite literally, I almost threw-up. It was the first time in my life that reading a book made me physically ill.
I am referring to Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked and Seduced the U.S. Navy. Washington Post investigative reporter Craig Whitlock did a masterful job of reporting on Leonard Glenn Francis and his years of corruption that involved nearly 700 naval officers and government civilians. The Malaysian became known as Fat Leonard because he tipped the weight scales at nearly 500 pounds before slimming down to 350.
Leonard turned a modest family business into a behemoth marine services company in the western Pacific and southeast Asia. His Malaysia-headquartered company, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, provided husbanding services including logistics, maintenance, and support services to US Navy ships. Support services ran the gamut from water taxis to ferry crews between anchored ships and shore, fuel, sewage and trash disposal, and anti-terror safety measures.
Glenn Marine supplanted the competition by bribing officials to select his firm over long-established businesses. According to Whitlock’s reporting, Francis bribed officials to change port visit schedules and to request services not previously contracted to charge more than reasonable rates. Officials paying invoices looked the other way when Glenn Marine padded its bills or charged two, three or four times the going rate. Some officials leaked classified documents to give Fat Leonard an unfair advantage over his competition by prepositioning his services in ports in order to be johnny-on-the-spot for a short-notice visit.
Fat Leonard bribed officials with cash, expensive bottles of fine wine, Cuban cigars, 5-star hotel stays, all-expenses paid vacations, lavish meals costing more than $1,000 per person, designer gifts, and prostitutes. Lots and lots of prostitutes. Fat Leonard trafficked prostitutes to satisfy individual tastes and fetishes: Filipino, Thai, Malaysian, Russian, and Mongolian, just to name a few.
Fat Leonard’s accomplices were mostly men, but there were women, too. There were also the wives. Usually it was captains’ and admirals’ wives. Sometimes wives would meet their husbands in port visits in exotic locations such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Yokosuka, Japan. The wives were given exorbitant gifts such as designer handbags costing as much as $3,000. The bribery had become so commonplace that some officers and wives solicited gifts to be given at upcoming port visits. Occasionally, entire Navy families were gifted all-inclusive vacations.
A Navy birthday ball in Singapore included a matching pair of his and hers Rolex watches valued at $30,000 that were to be given to one officer in a rigged door-prize lottery. All of this was funded by Glenn Marine. And didn’t seem to bother the 4-star admiral in attendance.
Nearly a decade ago, I addressed the Fat Leonard scandal in a television news commentary. News coverage elsewhere was spotty, at best. Back then, I winced as the revelations arrived in dribs and drabs. It was disturbing to me as a retired Navy officer. It was also very upsetting because I knew many of those caught up in the corruption ring. Yes, I look at them differently now.
It is absurd when some of those caught claimed they didn’t know accepting gifts from a government contractor in return for favors was illegal.
Forty years ago, I was assigned as the Flag Lieutenant to Vice Admiral Edward Martin for his assignment in London. In 1967, Martin’s A-4 Skyhawk was shot down over Vietnam. He was captured and remained a prisoner of war for nearly six years. He was subjected to gruesome treatment for much of his captivity. Both of his shoulders were broken in an inhumane rope torture.
Joining Ed in London was his wife, Sherry. I loved that couple dearly. My job was to accompany them everywhere all the time. Shortly after arriving in London, we jetted around Europe visiting US and foreign military dignitaries. At nearly every stop, we were greeted on the tarmac oftentimes with a bouquet of flowers for Sherry. Personal gifts were offered to the admiral at most visits. We didn’t take possession of a single gift. I instructed the dignitaries’ staff to ship each gift to our headquarters in London addressed to the protocol officer. A determination would be made on what could be personally accepted and what became the property of the US government. That was the process. The rules were known.
Fat Leonard was eventually caught and spirited to the US. He cooperated with federal officials. He not only named names, but he also kept detailed records including receipts, thank you letters, emails, text messages and photographs of Navy personnel in compromising situations. Only a handful of officers faced the US justice system, and those were nearly all mid-level officers. Almost to a man, flag officers (admirals) escaped serious consequences. Most flags received a letter of reprimand, the Navy’s equivalent of a frowny face in their record.
As I noted earlier, I read the news about the Fat Leonard scandal in real time, as it occurred. To read it all in one book – Fat Leonard – was truly jolting. It made me physically ill on a couple of occasions. More than once, I had to close the book.
It has also given me pause. Why did so many commissioned officers abandon integrity and honor in the last couple of decades? Have we become a reflection of society? I always thought we were cut from different cloth. Or was this business as usual and I was truly naïve for much of my 35 year military career?
These questions will trouble me for a while.
Mark Hyman is the Chief Strategy Officer of New Sapience, a deep-tech, zero-to-one synthetic intelligence company that doesn’t use large language models nor is dependent on massive data centers. He is a 35-year military veteran and a retired television investigative journalist. Follow him on LinkedIn.