KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 28): Malaysian national Leonard Francis, better known as “Fat Leonard”, who was recently arrested in Venezuela after absconding from his loosely supervised house arrest in San Diego, remains an albatross around the U.S. Navy’s neck.
In a report on Oct 24, American news publication Foreign Policy (FP), which is focused on global affairs, current events, and domestic and international policy said that while his actions hurt the Navy, the service’s own response has done perhaps more long-term harm to the organization than Francis himself.
The news agency said while it is difficult to account for the exact costs suffered by the Navy in Francis’s wake, pointed to the issue of the US$35 million he swindled.
However, it said that to the Navy’s credit, bureaucratic fail-safes were put in place to increase transparency around logistics operations and introduce more rigor into the supply process.
Having said that it highlighted that scores of innocent sailors saw their careers slowed or put on hold simply for association with those who were engaged in wrongdoing, with some still waiting for overdue promotions to be approved.
It said these kinds of delays can put a sailor off the career timing required to stay on the “golden path”—the Navy’s colloquial term for the succession of assignments that are required to achieve higher rank.
Those admirals who found themselves under the magnifying glass could not retire, nor could they really do their jobs as their security clearances were suspended, but their successors could not take over either.
FP said this logjam reverberated across the entire Navy, and many individuals who could or should have risen to positions of prominence were unable to do so because their careers were held hostage to the wheels of bureaucracy and a slow-moving investigative process.
The report added that at the end of the day, the Navy’s process seems to have hurt good sailors along with the bad and made scandal look eminently survivable.
It said the most senior officers involved in the scandal were simply put out to pasture after three decades in service, untouched by federal indictment, without reduction in rank, and with healthy taxpayer-funded retirements intact—a strongly worded letter their harshest punishment.