The Stars and Stripes offers Craig
Whitlock’s piece on the Fat Leonard U.S. Navy bribery scandal and the 7th
Fleet Flagship, the USS Blue Ridge (seen in the above photo).
As the flagship for the
Navy's 7th Fleet, the USS Blue Ridge plays a critical role in national security
by overseeing all U.S. maritime operations in Asia and the western Pacific. The
venerable warship is the Navy's second-oldest active-duty vessel and has
survived the Vietnam War, the Cold War and tensions with China and North Korea.
But there is one foreign
threat against which the Blue Ridge proved utterly defenseless for many years:
a 6-foot-3, 350-pound tugboat owner known as "Fat Leonard."
In a case that ranks as the
worst corruption scandal in Navy history, the Justice Department has charged 15
officers and one enlisted sailor who served on the Blue Ridge with taking
bribes from or lying about their ties to Leonard Glenn Francis (seen in the below photo), a
Singapore-based tycoon who held lucrative contracts to service Navy ships and
submarines in Asian ports.
For the better part of a
decade, as part of a massive scam to defraud the Navy, Francis systematically
infiltrated the Blue Ridge to a degree that is only now coming into focus, more
than four years after the defense contractor's arrest, according to the
documents from federal court and the Navy, as well as interviews with Navy
officials and associates of Francis.
Prosecutors say nine sailors
from the 7th Fleet flagship leaked classified information about ship movements
and other secrets to Francis, a Malaysian citizen, making the Blue Ridge
perhaps the most widely compromised U.S. military headquarters of the modern era.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
You can also read my
Counterterrorism magazine piece on the Fat Leonard scandal via the below link:
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