478 | Craig Whitlock: The Story of "Fat Leonard" - How One Man Seduced and Corrupted the U.S. Navy

The Realignment

Technology, News Commentary, National Security, Marshall Kosloff, International Relations, News, Public Policy, Economics, Politics, Saager Enjeti, U.s. Politics, Policy

4.8 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2024

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Craig Whitlock, Washington Post reporter and author of Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy & The Afghanistan Papers, joins The Realignment. Marshall and Craig discuss how a Malaysian defense contractor, Leonard Francis (nicknamed "Fat Leonard"), bribed scores of high-ranking U.S. Navy officers across three decades, defrauded the Navy out of tens of millions of dollars, exposed vast security and counter-intelligence gaps in the military, and the reforms needed to prevent future corruption scandals.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Marshall here. Welcome back to the realignment.
0:08.1	Everyone, welcome back to the show. I'm joined today by the Washington Post Craig Whitlock.
0:12.8	He has a great new book out.
0:13.9	It's called Fat Leonard.
0:15.5	How One Man Bribed, Built, and Seduced the US Navy.
0:20.0	You may have heard of Craig's work before.
0:21.7	A few years back, you wrote a book called The Pentagon Papers,
0:24.0	which was an excellent recounting of 20 years
0:26.6	of failure in corruption during the US war and Afghanistan.
0:30.8	You all know the realignment spends
0:32.1	a more of a decent amount of time covering the
0:33.8	U.S. military, the Pentagon, and America's foreign policy and national
0:37.5	security objectives. Obviously a lot of those stories and interviews we tell are
0:40.9	very positive. They're focused on the mission and what we can do to
0:43.7	actually preserve America's global presence and our overall national security. All that said, though,
0:48.7	I think it's really important that we examine the underside of that story, that we look at corruption, incompetence, and bad
0:55.9	behavior so that moving forward, the listeners and viewers of this show, we know how we can do better
1:00.1	and prevent these things from happening.
1:01.5	So the Fat Leonard scandal was one of the biggest scandals
1:03.8	in the history of the US military.
1:05.2	Lots of fascinating stuff for which the story.
1:07.2	Really recommend the book.
	...

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