On this week's episode of Wild Card, Poet Laureate Ada Lamone tells us how to give yourself a little grace.

The nice thing about being in my mid-too-late 40s, yeah, I forgive myself all the time.

Join me Rachel Martin for NPR's new podcast Wild Card, the game where cards control the conversation.

This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies. Few institutions are as revered in the United States as the U.S. military.

Our guest, Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock, has spent much of the last 10 years investigating a shameful and very recent chapter in the history of the United States Navy.

It's a case in which hundreds of senior officers on active duty accepted perks and

payoffs from a defense contractor who in turn made tens of billions of dollars

overcharging for his services with their help.

There's a colorful con man at the heart of this story,

a charming rogue whose company provided services

to ships docked in Asian ports,

including tugboat escorts, security, food, water, bilge pumping, and more.

He had a talent for seducing Navy commanders into helping him, metaphorically and literally, with trips, lavish gifts, gourmet meals, fine wines, and

often sex workers, sometimes in such numbers that one party was described as a Roman

orgy. The contractor, Leonard Glenn Francis, was a six

foot three gladhander who struggled with obesity and was often referred to by his Navy friends,

at least behind his back as Fat Leonard.

In reporting the story, Whitlock doggedly pursued information about the scandal that the Navy did

its best to keep hidden.

He filed dozens of public records requests and a federal

lawsuit and was able through his own sources to accumulate a breathtaking amount of

detail about the revels of Navy officers with the contractor and the sprawling criminal case that followed.

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