The man who seduced the 7th Fleet

For months, a small team of U.S. Navy investigators and federal prosecutors secretly devised options for a high-stakes international manhunt. Could the target be snatched from his home base in Asia and rendered to the United States? Or held captive aboard an American warship?

Making the challenge even tougher was the fact that the man was a master of espionage. His moles had burrowed deep into the Navy hierarchy to leak him a stream of military secrets, thwarting previous efforts to bring him to justice.

The target was not a terrorist, nor a spy for a foreign power, nor the kingpin of a drug cartel. But rather a 350-pound defense contractor nicknamed Fat Leonard, who had befriended a generation of Navy leaders with cigars and liquor whenever they made port calls in Asia.

Leonard Glenn Francis was legendary on the high seas for his charm and his appetite for excess. For years, the Singapore-based businessman had showered Navy officers with gifts, epicurean dinners, prostitutes and, if necessary, cash bribes so they would look the other way while he swindled the Navy to refuel and resupply its ships.

In the end, federal agents settled on a risky sting operation to try to nab Fat Leonard. They would lure him to California, dangling a meeting with admirals who hinted they had lucrative contracts to offer.

He took the bait. On Sept. 16, 2013, Francis was arrested in his hotel suite overlooking San Diego’s harbor. It was the opening strike in a sweep covering three states and seven countries, as hundreds of law enforcement agents arrested other suspects and seized incriminating files from Francis’s business empire.

A 51-year-old Malaysian citizen, Francis has since pleaded guilty to fraud and bribery charges. His firm, Glenn Defense Marine Asia, is financially ruined...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/wp/2016/05/27/fat-leonard/

How crazy am I to think I actually know wherethat Malaysia Airlines plane is?

The unsettling oddness was there from the first moment, on March 8, when Malaysia Airlines announced that a plane from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, Flight 370, had disappeared over the South China Sea in the middle of the night. There had been no bad weather, no distress call, no wreckage, no eyewitness accounts of a fireball in the sky—just a plane that said good-bye to one air-traffic controller and, two minutes later, failed to say hello to the next. And the crash, if it was a crash, got stranger from there.

My yearlong detour to Planet MH370 began two days later, when I got an email from an editor at Slate asking if I’d write about the incident. I’m a private pilot and science writer, and I wrote about the last big mysterious crash, of Air France 447 in 2009. My story ran on the 12th. The following morning, I was invited to go on CNN. Soon, I was on-air up to six times a day as part of its nonstop MH370 coverage.

There was no intro course on how to be a cable-news expert. The Town Car would show up to take me to the studio, I’d sign in with reception, a guest-greeter would take me to makeup, I’d hang out in the greenroom, the sound guy would rig me with a mike and an earpiece, a producer would lead me onto the set, I’d plug in and sit in the seat, a producer would tell me what camera to look at during the introduction, we’d come back from break, the anchor would read the introduction to the story and then ask me a question or maybe two, I’d answer, then we’d go to break, I would unplug, wipe off my makeup, and take the car 43 blocks back uptown. Then a couple of hours later, I’d do it again. I was spending 18 hours a day doing six minutes of talking.

As time went by, CNN winnowed its expert pool down to a dozen or so regulars who earned the on-air title “CNN aviation analysts”: airline pilots, ex-government honchos, aviation lawyers, and me. We were paid by the week, with the length of our contracts dependent on how long the story seemed likely to play out. The first couple were seven-day, the next few were 14-day, and the last one was a month. We’d appear solo, or in pairs, or in larger groups for panel discussions—whatever it took to vary the rhythm of perpetual chatter.1..

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/jeff-wise-mh370-theory.html

M 370: 'Anger is my main motivator right now'

Does Gen. McInerney stand by controversial Pakistan theory?

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: This is a "Fox News Alert." We have now confirmed tonight that the Malaysian airline pilot's home flight simulator is en route to the FBI headquarters. That's in Quantico, Virginia.

Joining me now to talk about this and much more, Fox News military analyst, Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney. General, welcome back to the program. Always good to see you, sir.

RET. GEN TOM MCINERNEY: Thanks for having me, Sean.

HANNITY: You know, I know that you have a lot of sources. I know that you can't reveal them all to us. We had you on the program the other night, and it got a lot of interest from our viewers, your belief, that, in fact, this plane -- and sources that are -- that you're connected to are telling you that it may very well have landed in Pakistan. In light of this new information tonight, are your sources still confirming the same thing?

MCINERNEY: I can't say anything about that, Sean. all I can say is it would be nice, if we could identify it. But I think those passengers have the potential of still being alive...

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/2014/03/21/does-gen-mcinerney-stand-controversial-pakistan-theory

A Tiny Microchip Was The Likely Motive For Pentagon Hijack Of MH370

HONG KONG - The question tormenting millions of cyber-sleuths is Why? What could be the motive behind the elaborate plan for the midair capture of Malaysian Airlines flight 370?

Among the 200-plus passengers bound for Beijing, the target group for the hijack is narrowing down to 20 tech employees working for Freescale Semiconductors, based in Austin, Texas. Among these programmers and systems designers are 12 Malaysians and 8 citizens of mainland China.

The company is no newcomer but has long-time connections in East Asia, as the former design subsidiary of Motorola, which once dominated the Asian communications market in the postwar era. Freescale has design centers in Kuala Lumpur and in China, including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chengdu and Suzhou.

Besides its lucrative production of microchips for automotive components, Freescale has extensive contracts with the U.S. military, producing wafers and circuits for navigation, periscopes, electronic targeting, self-guided missiles and other weapons systems that require intelligence controls...

http://uprootedpalestinians.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/a-tiny-microchip-was-the-likely-motive-for-pentagon-hijack-of-mh370/