Defense & National Security — Latest twist in Fat Leonard case raises questions

The latest twist in one of the U.S. military’s biggest corruption cases — Fat Leonard’s prison escape — has sparked questions about why the U.S. government was not able to keep him under stricter watch.  

We’ll talk about the prison escape. Plus, we’ll talk about the latest push to end the temporary hold on F-35 fighter jet deliveries. 

This is Defense & National Security, your nightly guide to the latest developments at the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and beyond. For The Hill, I’m Jordan Williams. A friend forward this newsletter to you? Subscribe here.

Prison escape leaves unanswered questions 

In a scene from a thriller, a 350-pound cancer patient at the center of the biggest U.S. military corruption case in the last decade cut off his GPS ankle monitor this past weekend and fled from house arrest, weeks before he was finally set to be sentenced.    

The manhunt for Leonard Francis — the Malaysian contractor known as “Fat Leonard” who pleaded guilty in 2015 to cheating the Navy out of tens of millions of dollars — has quickly pulled in at least 10 federal, state and local agencies and likely reached across the Mexican border.   

The escape has raised myriad questions, such as why Francis wasn’t being watched day-and-night as his Sept. 22 sentencing date approached. 

A quick refresher: Francis, the former president of Singapore-based Glenn Defense Marine Asia, was arrested in 2013 and convicted in 2015 for a decades-long grift in which he plied dozens of top-ranking Navy officers with cash, cigars, top shelf alcohol, sex workers and parties in exchange for bloated supply contracts. 

• The bribery bilked the Navy out of more than $35 million, led to the first active-duty admiral to be convicted for a federal crime, and was a massive embarrassment for the Pentagon. 
  
• Since his conviction, Francis had languished in a legal limbo for seven years. The plea deal he took meant he had to help U.S. prosecutors implicate three-dozen military officials, cases that have played out slowly, with the last one ending in June. 

How was his monitoring? One thing that is clear about his escape is that the U.S. government had less than ideal monitoring of Francis at the time. 

From early 2018 until he fled, the judge in the case allowed Francis to live in a private home in San Diego due to his renal cancer; however, under the deal, Francis was responsible for paying for 24-hour security at his residence and was required to wear an ankle bracelet. 

But that self-funded security detail had its gaps, with the house left unguarded for almost three hours after the guard took a lunch break, according to a court transcript from a Dec. 17, 2020, hearing with Francis.   

So, how did he escape? It is unclear if guards were on duty in the days before Francis fled, but early Sunday morning he hacked off his ankle monitor and caused the device to alert U.S. Pretrial Services, the agency responsible for monitoring him. U.S. Marshals Service officials were then sent to his residence, which they found empty with no guard present.   

• Supervisory Deputy U.S. Marshal Omar Castillo told The Hill that his San Diego office received the call from U.S. Pretrial Services around 2:30 p.m., assembled a team and were at the residence in no more than 30 minutes.   
  
• That means more than seven hours elapsed between Francis cutting off the monitor and authorities arriving at the house.   

The outstanding mysteries: Among the mysteries of the case is how the security around Francis remained so lax, even after officials appeared ruffled by his podcast. 

Another head scratcher is why authorities weren’t tipped off by security about the moving trucks.  

“There’s all kinds of questions in my mind. Did somebody pay off the guards? If not, where were they? And how the hell would this happen? It’s just another black eye for the Department of Justice and the federal government in this case,” said Tom Wright, host of the nine-part “Fat Leonard” podcast.  

“They’ve allowed him to escape in almost a ‘Keystone Cops’ set of circumstances.” 

Read the full story here.  

Pentagon hopes for waiver to restart halted F-35s

The U.S. military does not yet know how long a temporary hold on F-35 fighter jet deliveries will be in place but is working to resolve the issue after officials discovered a part within the aircraft used raw materials from China, the Pentagon’s top acquisition official said Friday.  

• Undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and sustainment William LaPlante said an investigation is underway and “moving quickly” to look into how an alloy made in China ended up in magnets in the turbomachine pumps of the Lockheed Martine-produced F-35. 
  
• The use of the Chinese materials in the F-35’s turbomachine, made by Honeywell, is not allowed under Defense Department regulations, prompting the Pentagon earlier this week to stop accepting new jets from Lockheed. 

What happens now? “They’re looking at two things – one, impact on security, if any, and impact on air worthiness or safety, if any,” LaPlante told reporters. “Right now, so far it doesn’t appear to be either of them.”  

• If the investigation finds neither is a problem, LaPlante can then issue a national security waiver to “get the production line moving again,” and deliver assembled jets that already contain the alloy.  
  
• Issuing such a waiver means the Pentagon would not move to replace the part at issue in already delivered aircraft. 

Why did this happen? LaPlante partly blamed the oversight on issues with the ever-shifting defense industry supply chain. Even major weapons firms aren’t always aware of the details of their supplies, he noted.  

Lockheed, for example, revealed Wednesday that the company that provided Honeywell the Chinese alloy was a fifth-tier supplier to the larger firm.  

“I’ve just seen enough cases of discovering things in supply chains that I wouldn’t be surprised by anything,” he said. “Any company that says they know their supply chain is like a company saying they’d never been hacked, so it’s an endless battle.” 

Read the full story here.  

Austin selects new public affairs chief  

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has chosen Chris Meagher to serve as Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs.  

In a statement, the Pentagon chief said Meagher will oversee the department’s media relations and public outreach efforts, as well as serve as his senior adviser on public affairs and strategic communications.  

Meagher will join the Pentagon from the White House, where he was a deputy press secretary to President Biden. His appointment comes a month after Austin chose Air Force Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder to serve as Pentagon press secretary. 

“Chris has deep and diverse communications experience that will serve the entire Department well,” Austin said. “Chris’s experience and insight will help me and the entire Department effectively communicate our important work to defend the nation, take care of our people and succeed through teamwork.”  

ON TAP FOR MONDAY

• The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies will release a policy paper titled “Decades of Air Force Underfunding Threaten America’s Ability to Win” at 9 a.m. 
• The Stimson Center will host a discussion on “Recalibrating US Extended Deterrence on the Korean Peninsula” at 10 a.m. 
• George Washington University will hold a discussion on “Kabul One Year Later” at 11:30 a.m. 
• The Brookings Institution will hold a discussion on “Technology and the security of democratic societies” at 1:30 p.m. 
• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will host a book launch for “Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control” at 4 p.m. 

WHAT WE’RE READING

• Treasury sanctions Iran’s intelligence ministry for alleged cyberattack on Albania 
• Proud Boys Hawaii chapter founder pleads guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding 

That’s it for today! Check out The Hill’s Defense and National Security pages for the latest coverage. See you next week!

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