A new book published by Simon & Shuster by author Craig Whitlock has recently been released.
Whitlock pulls back the curtain describing how one ambitious man used money and charm to bribe senior naval officers for military secrets.
The old adage, “loose lips sink ships” still applies. We’re damn lucky Francis wasn’t providing the Chinese Navy with the information he was receiving from horny and drunken admirals. For all we know, he probably was.
If you’re a sailor on any of the ships in the 7th Fleet, you have no idea just how much your life was placed in jeopardy by drunken scumbag naval officers.
Imagine, losing your ship and entire crew along with your own life all over a blowjob some admiral received from a prostitute courtesy of Fat Leonard.
What kind of loss of life would that be? Modern destroyers, for example, typically have a crew of around 300 people while DDG class destroyers have a standard crew of 175 sailors and an air detachment of 28. Fletcher-class destroyers typically have a crew of 329.
Aircraft carriers have a crew of almost 6,000. That would have been a lot of dead people because naval officers were providing military secrets to Fat Leonard in exchange for all the “gifts” he was spreading around.
Naval officers provided Fat Leonard and his company “Glenn Defense,” with sensitive, classified information so he could make a ton of money from the billions of dollars Congress appropriated to the Navy.
Leonard would use that enormous amount of money to bribe even more naval officers with hookers, parties, free booze and free travel. It begs the question, how many military secrets were passed along to the Chinese and/or Russians?
One flag-ranking officer after another and numerous other senior-ranking naval officers took the bait, giving away military secrets about ship movements which could have been used in a ambush attack. Nobody wants to talk about it.
They called Glenn Francis “Fat Leonard” because he was morbidly obese with weight ranging from 300-500 pounds.
Whitlock says in his extraordinary book that Fat Leonard’s bribes were most effective with his legendary sex parties. Fat Leonard used a Russian-honeypot-scheme that was on steroids.
Whitlock describes how Leonard employed an armada of prostitutes to “entertain” (suck and fuck) naval officers in Pacific ports from Vladivostok, Russia to Sydney, Australia. It was a never-ending global party where all vices of American naval officers were satisfied.
Whitlock wrote that Francis’s talents as a world-class con artist made him a formidable spy. And indeed it did.
Fat Leonard recruited a network of moles inside the United States Navy by targeting officers with personal insecurities, strained marriages, drinking problems and other vices and vulnerabilities.
It as all right out of the playbook for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
The question arises; did Glenn Francis learn these honeypot tactics from the Russians, or did the Russians learn to perfect their intelligence gathering system from Fat Leonard?
It’s a simple system that Whitlock clearly describes with the following words…
“once he (Glenn Francis) reeled ‘naval officers’ in with sex, booze, cash and free travel, he expected favors in return.
Francis’s moles included ten Navy officers who betrayed their country by leaking him classified material, a breathtaking security breach that made a mockery of the Navy’s counterintelligence defenses….
his Navy quislings fed ‘Francis’ dirt on his enemies and rigged multimillion-dollar husbanding contracts to his benefit.”
NO ACCOUNTABILITY ANYMORE
Not long after we received Craig Whitlock’s book we discovered that a Judge dismissed felony convictions of five (5) naval officers involved in the “Fat Leonard” bribery scandal.
A CBS REPORT states that naval officers Donald Hornbeck, Robert Gorsuch and Jose Luis Sanchez, and U.S. Marine Corps Col. Enrico DeGuzman had all admitted to accepting bribes from defense contractor Leonard Francis, nicknamed ” Fat Leonard.”
But, even though all five admitted to committing crimes, the judge decided their convictions should be dismissed. Why?
The report went on to say… ‘In 2022, Judge Janis Sammartino ruled the former lead federal prosecutor committed “flagrant misconduct” by withholding information from defense lawyers.
In September, the felony convictions of four former Navy officers were also vacated. The four men pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and agreed to pay a $100 fine each.’
The scandal had terribly embarrassed the Navy, so the Navy had to find and destroy a few naval officers while they allowed the admirals to skip out the backdoor into retirement.
Zealous military prosecutors had to get a conviction at any cost, so they decided to withhold potential exculpatory information from defense lawyers in order to assure a conviction. Similar tactics were used in the Colonel Dan Wilson and Major Clarence Anderson cases, as well as dozens of others.
We’ve seen this playout over and over again in the military. Underlings are destroyed, while the admirals get a pass. Equal Justice Under Law simply does not exist in the military and never did. Military members are not part of the democracy, they merely work for the democracy.
COMPARE FAT LEONARD SCANDAL TO ANOTHER CASE
We can see how many people who betrayed their country were never held accountable. In fact, they were promoted and retired on full pensions. Compare the Navy’s reaction in the Fat Leonard scandal with other cases of people who blew the whistle on fraud and malfeasance.
Navy Chief Petty Officer discovered massive payroll fraud in the naval reserves. He confided in a Navy lieutenant also assigned to the same admin department about how the commanding officer was paying reservists for work they never did and drills they never attended.
In the naval reserves, as opposed to the regular Navy, rank and duty assignments were handed out based on retention numbers. When the commanding officer paid reservists for drills they never attended, then his retention numbers were predictably much higher than those on other bases.
The lieutenant spoke with the commanding officer outlining how the payments were in violation of naval regulations, but the way to resolve it was to bring in those same reservists to drill before the end of the fiscal year. This way the command did not have to ask for the money back.
The lieutenant quickly discovered this type of fraud was ingrained in the naval reserve system. It wasn’t going to change any time soon.
The commanding officer wanted no part of the resolution to the “problem” proposed by the lieutenant. The CO decided the lieutenant was the problem because he wasn’t going along to get along and ordered him out of his office.
To make a long story short, Chief Tufariello was tricked and led off in a paddy wagon by two armed Marines to the military hospital at Carswell AFB where he was incarcerated in their psychiatric ward. It was all trumped up bullshit. The plan was to neutralize him as a threat to their system of organized crime.
The Navy lied to the Air Force doctor and staff saying that Chief Tufariello had threatened to commit suicide. In reality, Chief Tufariello told a co-worker that he was frustrated and felt like jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge.
A tongue-in-cheek remark which was a joke was twisted and distorted by the command to label him as a crazy person.
After decades in the service and combat ribbons from Vietnam, the Navy decided to conjure up a bullshit story and toss Chief Michael Tufariello in a mental ward.
Four days later, the lieutenant was handcuffed and sent to another base to be court-martialed. He was convicted of one count of fraternization and one count of submitting a “fraudulent” travel claim for $75.51.
The travel claim was submitted at another command three years before arriving to his new duty station in the naval reserves. The lieutenant never actually received any money, just filed the claim.
The lieutenant was Dishonorably Discharged and received a felony conviction. Yes, that’s correct, a single count of fraternization is a felony conviction and good for two years in federal prison.
Combining a single count of fraternization and a travel claim for $75.51, the lieutenant could have received seven (7) years in Ft. Leavenworth federal penitentiary.
The benevolent Navy instead awarded him with a Dishonorable Discharge and felony conviction.
The lieutenant became the first naval officer in history to be given a felony conviction over a date with an enlisted woman in the naval reserves.
The harsh conviction meant the lieutenant could no longer use his aviation skills in the civilian sector.
The VP of Delta Air Lines said that even though his conviction was bullshit retaliation, none of the insurance companies for all the airlines would allow a convicted felon in the cockpit of a commercial aircraft.
Because of the felony conviction, his aviation career was over at age 30. Many other jobs went out the window as well.
He was barred from being a loan officer at a bank because he could not be bonded. Homeland Security rejected him from throwing baggage on airplanes.
Many doors of opportunity were slammed shut and he ultimately became homeless living out of his car.
Adding insult to injury his Dishonorable Discharge also denied him all veteran’s benefits. A date with an enlisted woman in the naval reserves resulted in punishment tantamount to a life sentence.
The VA’s Board of Veterans’ Appeals sent the lieutenant their decision on 12MAR24, ‘The character of the veteran’s discharge from service constitutes a bar to VA benefits; your appeal is therefore denied.’
Appealing to the VA for a discharge upgrade was a complete waste of time and money that lasted many years.
Chief Tufariello, was threatened with retaliation and chose to retire as an E-7 even though he should have been promoted to Master Chief of the Navy. After retiring, Tufariello testified in Washington before a House Subcommittee.
His testimony was instrumental in helping to pass the Military Whistleblower Protection Act. Unfortunately, the military has ignored the law and went back to business as usual with routine fraudulent activities.
The five naval officers who conspired to destroy the lieutenant and send his chief petty officer to an Air Force looney bin were promoted “for their outstanding work” and have long since retired on full pensions.
Graft and corruption continues unabated throughout the military, but especially the United States Navy.
At the same time Tufariello and the lieutenant were being attacked for protecting taxpayer money, naval officers were providing Fat Leonard with military secrets that he converted to millions for his personal bank accounts.
For a good look into how the United States Navy really operates behind the scenes, pick up a copy of Craig Whitlock’s remarkable book on antics of Fat Leonard and the criminal misconduct of naval officers.
Read how this chubby piece-of-crap took the Navy to the cleaners, while the admirals were quietly ushered out the backdoor into retirement to avoid any accountability, other than slight embarrassment for a few.
On Amazon: FAT LEONARD
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