---

By Wayne Madsen [former US Navy officer and official of the NSA] – November 21, 2017 – Source Strategic Culture

History teaches us that when empires expand too much, military commanders become semi-autonomous warlords who introduce systems of corruption and trading in influence. This was the case in the Roman Empire in 193 AD, when the Praetorian Guard of Emperor Pertinax – a personal security force of the Emperor, an elite unit that stood out on the battlefield far away – sold this one to an aspiring emperor, Didius Julianus, in exchange for a bribe. The Praetorian Guard assassinated Pertinax and swore allegiance to the new emperor.

JdN: All photos that follow were added by me to this Madsen article.

Emperor Pertinax

The decay of corruption ensured the fall of other world empires. The fraudulent British East India Company and its Nabob leaders, backed by British military and naval power, helped spark the colonial rebellions in North America in the 1770s and in India in 1857.

George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette in 1776 in the camp at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania during the American Revolution

While the United States has expanded its vast military scope in the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America, corruption within the so-called responsibility became rampant.

In the Pacific Command (PACOM), a major scandal of corruption and fraud has reached the US Navy contracting firm, Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA), based in Singapore and led by Leonard Glenn Francis, a Malaysian 160 kilos, nicknamed Fat Leonard .

In exchange for various gifts – cash; holidays in luxury hotels; first class and business class flights;expensive concert tickets; Rolex watches; Mont Blanc pens; Dom Pérignon champagne; famous wine vintages; Cuban cigars; spa treatments; foie gras; Cognac Bottles and Prostitutes – US Navy officers provided Leonard with virtually unlimited access to Navy intelligence and sensitive contract information, which was then used by GDMA for lucrative logistical contracts with the US Navy.

The Fat Leonard scandal spread to senior officers, including admirals, attached to the seventh fleet in Japan. The US Navy investigation continues and more than 60 admirals are reported to be under investigation by the judicial authorities. For years, the scandal of the US Navy has flourished everywhere, Japan; Philippines; Singapore; Indonesia; Vietnam; Sabah; South Korea ; India; Thailand;Cambodia; Australia; Sri Lanka; Hawaii and Washington DC, reaching naval officers, enlisted personnel, US Marine Corps officers and civilians, including investigators from the Naval Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS).

One of the worst frauds that arose from the neocons of the George W. Bush administration involved the African Command (AFRICOM). On 4 June 2017, the strangulation assassination in Bamako, Mali, of the US Army Green Beret Sergeant Logan Melgar, …

… by two members of the US Navy SEAL, is now linked to the discovery that they were pocketing the official funds used by AFRICOM to pay the informants in this West African country. This type of fraud denotes a culture of widespread malfeasance in US area commanders, including AFRICOM, Central Command (CENTCOM), and Southern Command (SOUTHCOM).

According to reports in The New York Times and The Daily Beast , Melgar’s death at the hands of the two SEAL thieves occurred in a barracks at the US embassy compound in Mali. NCOs Anthony DeDolph and Adam C. Matthews reportedly killed Melgar after he refused an offer to share their ill-gotten spoils, and expressed his concerns in e-mails to his wife in the United States.

The SEALs claimed that Melgar died after fainting during a hand-to-hand combat training session. SEAL also told military investigators that Melgar was drunk when he lost consciousness as a result of strangulation during combat. However, the Special Operations Command and the Army Criminal Investigation Command (USACIC) concluded that the SEALs varied so much in their explanations that they became suspects rather than witnesses in the investigation. An autopsy revealed that there was no trace of alcohol or drugs in Melgar’s body at the time of his death. In addition, Melgar’s friends and family members said that he was abstinent and therefore did not drink alcohol.

AFRICOM and USACIC tried to conceal the details of Melgar’s death until the New York Times was behind the revelation of the story last month. The USACIC has transferred the investigation to NCIS (Navy Service), which is worse than its military counterpart to cover sensitive military criminal cases. None of the two SEALs, sent back to the United States on administrative leave, were charged with the murder of Melgar. They are apparently officers of the US Special Operations Command, whose headquarters are in Tampa, Florida [photo], who warned the press of the concealment of Melgar’s death.

AFRICOM also hesitated to provide full details of the ambush in which a joint US-Nigeria unit, operating near the Nigerian village of Tongo-Tongo, fell in October this year. Four members of the US Army were killed by an armed force that has still not been identified by AFRICOM. Tongo-Tongo is on an important African smuggling road involving humans, drugs, ivory and weapons between West Africa and the failed state of Libya. Later, it was learned that the four American soldiers died in the hands of the attackers, after members of the unit’s Nigerian army fled the scene during the attack. The body of one of the American soldiers, Sergeant David Johnson, showed signs of torture before being executed by the unidentified kidnappers.

The case of Melgar is similar to the murder of West Point Ethics Professor, Colonel Ted Westhusing, in Baghdad in 2005. Like AFRICOM in Mali and other African countries, CENTCOM has been entrusted with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to pay for informants and make local purchases.

Westhusing’s family and friends rejected the army’s claim that he had committed suicide. The army based its decision on a handwritten note, left by Westhusing, with the word “suicide” . At the time of his death, Westhusing was investigating breaches of contract and human rights abuses by US Investigations Services (USIS), a former privatized entity of the US Office of Personnel Management, purchased by The Carlyle. Group , a company closely linked to George HW Bush.

While in Iraq to train the Iraqi police and supervise the contract of USIS, a private police training company, as part of the Pentagon’s civilian police training program, Westhusing received an anonymous letter indicating that a division of the USIS was involved in fraudulent activities in Iraq regarding overbilling the government. In addition, the letter stated that USIS security personnel had murdered innocent Iraqis. After asking the USIS for an explanation, Westhusing reported the problems to the chain of command. After an investigation , the military found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of USIS.

A few days before his “self-inflicted” suicide at Camp Dublin, Iraq, in a truck trailer at Baghdad International Airport, the honorary member of the West Point Board of Directors informed, by an e-mail to the United States, that “terrible things were happening in Iraq” . He also said he hoped to return alive in his country. Westhusing still had three weeks of service in Iraq when he allegedly committed suicide in June 2005.

The camouflage of Westhusing’s death implicated the same criminal investigation command of the army as that which covered the death of Melgar in Mali. The murders of Melgar and Westhusing are not isolated events regarding US military incursions around the world. Corporal Pat Tillman, star player of the National Football League ……

Pat Tillman

… .. who enlisted in the army after 9/11, was disappointed by the war in Afghanistan.

After Tillman shared his personal feelings about the Afghan war with his superiors, Tillman was liquidated by members of his own unit in Khost province on April 22, 2004. Tillman’s diary, his uniforms and more Property was burned by his unit to cover an assassination by his own colleagues.

On September 4, 2006, Lt. Col. Marshall Gutierrez, Chief of Logistics at Arifjan Camp, Kuwait, who was investigating overbilling of goods and services, and other frauds, allegedly committed suicide in its quarters, at the base, by ingesting sleeping pills and antifreeze.

Gutierrez

In December 2006, Major Gloria Davis, a contracted agent from the same Arifjan camp, committed suicide after admitting $ 225,000 in bribes from Lee Dynamics , a logistics service provider for the army. Davis reportedly agreed to cooperate with government investigators in their overall investigation of contractual frauds in Iraq and Kuwait.

In 2007, a senior Blackwater official threatened to kill Jean C. Richter, the US State Department’s lead investigator on Blackwater’s suspicious transactions in Iraq. the State Department canceled the investigation.

The incident occurred while Richter was focusing on issues in a $ 1 billion contract between the State Department and Blackwater . The CEO of Blackwater was Erik Prince, whose sister, Betsy DeVos, is now Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education. Prince then sold Blackwater , which is now known as Academi . Prince was reportedly involved in AFRICOM operations in Libya and Somalia via his company Reflex Responses (R2) , based in Abu Dhabi.

July 2, 2007,   the suicide of Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Mooney [photo, right], US Defense Attaché in Nicosia, Cyprus, was reportedly the result of a “self-inflicted throat cut” .

Mooney’s body was found next to an embassy vehicle parked in an isolated location, about 30 miles west of Nicosia. He reportedly left the embassy in the embassy’s black Chevrolet Impala to pick up a passenger at Larnaca International Airport. Although the United States Embassy and the State Department found Mooney’s death a suicide, the Cypriot police disagreed with these findings, simply pointing out that suicide was illegal in Cyprus. Mooney was, according to our sources, investigating fraud in contracts in Iraq involving companies based in Cyprus, some of which were related to the Israeli mafia.

AFRICOM and PACOM – like CENTCOM, which extends the culture of bribe-takings in the Middle East and South Asia – are now stuck in the same proportions of fraud as those practiced in countries like Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Burkina Faso, where AFRICOM is active. The “Fat Leonard” scandal and the recent murder of Melgar in Mali are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to malfeasance in US global military operations.

The behavior of the American army in its bases overseas, is reminiscent of the expression of the Latin poet Juvenal, probably aware of the corruption of the Praetorian Guard of his time:

«Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? “. “ Who’s supervising the supervisors? “