Flamboyant Executive of Possibly Defective Military Body Armor Convicted of Fraud

Paul Solman: Another day, another update to follow the Mott’s applesauce strike. This, an update to one of our rare NewsHour investigative reports — on arguably deficient body armor for our troops, and corruption in the contracting process.

A key figure in the story: one David H. Brooks, who exceeds qualifications as the polar opposite of our own Friday pundit of the same name, minus the middle initial. Best known for the estimated $10 million bat mitzvah he threw for his daughter in 2005, David H. was convicted Monday of various white collar crimes. The New York Times account of his trial will astonish many. Especially surreal is this closing tidbit:

bq. “Perhaps the most unusual testimony of the trial occurred out of earshot of the jury. A veterinarian who cared for Mr. Brooks’ stable of racehorses said that Mr. Brooks had pressed repeatedly for him to provide a ‘memory-erasing pill’ that he planned to use on Dawn Schlegel, the former chief financial officer of his company. The pill was never provided and Ms. Schlegel testified for 23 days as the government’s star witness”

I can’t say the story surprised me, though. I’ve done a fair amount of investigative reporting in my career, almost all of it as a print journalist in the ’70s. I’ve been threatened, even advised by the FBI to watch my step. But never had I run into so many sources – half a dozen or more – who spoke only on condition of anonymity because, they said, they were genuinely afraid for their lives.

See this Huffington Post article for further details about Brooks. And you might check out Talking Points Memo for Colbert-ian mockery. Finally, you might take a gander at davidhbrooks.net, the website for the self-described “noble foundation,” a website subtitled “the man, the myth, the legendary humanitarian,” in which someone (DHB himself?) offers this defense:

‘People seem to forget the thousands of lives saved through his ‘not so defective body armor.’”

The key issue that prompted our story – defects in Point Blank body armor – has never been fully resolved. But according to an inside source who would never go on camera, the defects were all too real.