A review by booksrockcal
Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy by Craig Whitlock

adventurous challenging dark informative tense fast-paced

5.0

This book is the story of a Navy contractor operating in the Far East to service ships as they came into port- to supply them with food, fuel, and other necessities - while bilking the Navy for millions of dollars. To obtain these lucrative contacts, Leonard Francis -or Fat Leonard- wined and dined Navy officials with gifts, lavish dinners, alcohol, hotel rooms, first class flights and prostitutes - all in contravention to government laws and ethics rules.  Fat Leonard kept files on these officials to assure they stayed on his side. When law enforcement caught up with him, Fat Leonard named names and created a huge black eye for the Navy. The first part of the book is filled with jaw dropping descriptions of the dinners, gifts, and women lavished on the Navy officials. I am a Navy lawyer who provides ethics advice to commanding officers regarding interactions with contractors and acceptance of gifts and I read this book with my jaw dropped open, incredulous at the actions taken by these Navy officials who blatantly disregarded ethics rules and the code of conduct requiring integrity and honor by Naval officers. Even more incredible were the events occurring after Fat Leonard was apprehended and started naming names of Naval officials involved in his schemes.  Those who were punished by the law with prison were mostly civilians. Only one Admiral went to jail. The rest were allowed to retire with their pensions in place including the Director of Naval Intelligence who was on administrative leave for three years while under investigation and prohibited from looking at classified documents and the Admiral in charge of the Naval Academy whose duties including teaching integrity and honor to incoming plebes- both of them and others in similar positions accepted gifts from Fat Leonard. None were disciplined or lost their pensions.  Meanwhile Fat Leonard while serving as the source of information to supposedly convict these bad actors lived in a mansion in San Diego under house arrest from which he escaped to Venezuela. He has been apprehended and returned to the US but still not sentenced. In addition, the lower level Naval Officers convicted of accepting bribes had their convictions thrown out due to prosecutorial misconduct. One of them went to law school and teaches at a San Diego law school. You can’t make this up. Every American and every govt lawyer should read this book.