
The man who seduced the 7th Fleet - JumpCrisscross
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/wp/2016/05/27/fat-leonard/
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danso
I cynically speculated that none of this would show up on USASpending.gov, but
lo and behold, $30.8 million worth of contracts show up on for "GLENN DEFENSE
MARINE (ASIA) PT" on USASpending.gov:

[https://www.usaspending.gov/Pages/AdvancedSearch.aspx?k=Glen...](https://www.usaspending.gov/Pages/AdvancedSearch.aspx?k=Glenn%20Defense%20Marine)

...which is (perhaps coincidentally) close to what the story reports:

> _Francis and his firm have admitted to defrauding the Navy of $35 million,
> though investigators believe the real amount could be much greater._

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yompers888
The thing that strikes me about this is that likely far more people are being
pointed at here than were likely involved in this fraud and cover-up. I'm not
saying that the people who have been charged didn't do anything wrong. But for
most people who were trying to use Fat Leonard, I suspect they did so because
of there being distinctly less bullshit to deal with.

Because this guy was crooked as can be, he probably ignored the bureaucratic
crap, or was able to push it to someone who worked for him because the extra
income from his fraud could take care of it. And everyone in the operational
navy probably loathes bureaucracy, or at least everyone else's. Actually, I'm
guessing that hatred holds true for all people everywhere.

People do stupid shit to avoid paperwork. Guys fail to get paid thousands owed
to them for moving their own stuff because they just got a new command and
don't have time to chase people down to push paperwork to get paid. They sign
off on stuff that didn't actually get done rather than trying to get
priorities changed because they decided that the mission of the ship is more
important than the second SAPR stand-down this year. So if you have this guy
who shows up where you're going to be and just does the work that you need
done, that's probably pretty appealing to people who do battle with
bureaucracy for a living.

Here's a paper on the pervasive ethical numbing in the military (you can find
writeups by various news outlets for a quicker summary):
[http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB12...](http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB1250.pdf)

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venomsnake
>About 30 admirals are under investigation

Couple of questions from a civilian. How many admirals the Navy has? How many
they needed to win WWII? Is there a title inflation?

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hackuser
On one hand, many in the world of foreign policy think the US military has
become top heavy, and the number of admirals/generals is being cut back (I
think both the Sec'y of Defense and congressional leaders are on board with
this).

On the other hand, executives serve an important purpose, and it's always easy
to say 'there's too much bureaucracy' without actually having any idea how
much bureaucracy is needed.

~~~
chris11
And I've heard that US military doctrine is to focus more on reducing the
number of enlisted and lower ranked soldiers than reducing the number of
military leaders when becoming a peacetime army. Because it's easier to get
inexperienced people than military leaders with years of service, and they
will need those experienced leaders when they go to war.

