In this U.S. Army photo from March 15, 2010, soldiers at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, prepare for the arrival of 10 Caiman mine resistant ambush protected vehicles.

(Tribune Content Agency) — The picture painted by federal prosecutors is worthy of a spy novel: Globe-hopping trips to clandestine meetings in luxury hotels. Coded ledgers tracking cash bribes shoved in shopping bags. Raucous parties involving drugs, alcohol and prostitutes.

These were the methods by which Montgomery County, Pa., military contractor George H. Lee Jr. hustled for poorly monitored government business during the Iraq War's early days.

On Friday, Lee, the 71-year-old chairman of Kuwait City-based Lee Dynamics International, pleaded guilty to bribery charges, the latest development in a years-long investigation aimed at exposing fraud and graft that emerged in the 2003 run-up to the war.

So far, four high-ranking Army officers tied to Lee have admitted to accepting $1.2 million in cash, jewelry, spa treatments and hotel stays in exchange for steering $20 million in contracts his way.

Stoop shouldered and hoarse, Lee entered his plea in a federal courtroom in Philadelphia, two months after Thai immigration agents detained him in what prosecutors say was an attempt to flee from justice.

Lee was first indicted in 2011 but remained stuck under a travel ban in Kuwait, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. He had pledged to return to Philadelphia as soon as the ban was lifted but instead flew to Thailand in November to visit his wife and daughter and seek medical care, his lawyer, Bryant Banes, said.

"It was never his intent to evade anyone," said Banes. "He has taken responsibility — as he has his entire life. He is ready to assist the government in finding the truth in this case."

The case against Lee stems from the hectic search to supply American and Iraqi troops with equipment and supplies in the early days of the war.

Officials contend a "culture of corruption" emerged at the small office in the Kuwaiti desert outpost of Camp Arifjan that housed the Army Contracting Command.

There, a half-dozen poorly trained officers made decisions on billions of dollars in military spending to aid Iraqi reconstruction efforts.

Former civilian contractors have described Arifjan as a place where cost didn't seem to matter, oversight was next to nonexistent and ordered equipment often disappeared or was never delivered at all.

In that environment, Lee thrived.

A graduate of Hatboro-Horsham High School near Philadelphia, Lee had served as an Army supply clerk in Vietnam and later worked as a military contractor across Southeast Asia and the Middle East. He found himself in Tehran in the late '70s working for Bell Helicopter during the tumult of the Iranian Revolution.

He "was the last person on the bus to leave Iran in '79," Banes said Friday.

When American forces appeared to be amassing for their invasion of Iraq in early 2003, Lee made his way to Kuwait City, where there was money to be made.

Under his plea agreement with prosecutors, Lee pleaded guilty to only one count of bribery — a 2004 instance involving $15,000 cash, a Rolex watch and an attempt to coerce an Army National Guard lieutenant into extending a contract held by Lee's company.

But the conduct alleged in his 2011 indictment details graft of a much wider dimension, first in his role at American Logistics Services, a company he formed with a Kuwaiti partner, and later at Lee Dynamics.

Lee cultivated relationships with a number of Camp Arifjan's contracting officers, including Maj. Gloria Davis.

Davis killed herself in December 2006 in Baghdad, a day after admitting to Army investigators she helped steer $14 million in contracts to Lee to supply bottled water and maintenance on tents, latrines, bunk beds, dumpsters and military vehicles between 2003 and 2004.

In exchange, Lee lavished her with spa trips to Southeast Asia and a 2004 trip to Thailand, where he helped her set up a bank account to which he would later wire $326,000 between 2004 and 2006.

Lee hired her son, Damien, to work for him, after Davis' tour at Arifjan ended and she had returned to work at the Pentagon in 2004.

Later that year, Davis e-mailed Lee saying she hoped to return to Kuwait soon and hoped she could "help out a lot more" because she was "ready to make some real money." In a later exchange, Lee's son responded: "You know if you float back over this way you will be as kept a woman as the princess herself."

But even with Davis gone, Lee found other officers at Camp Arifjan also willing to play his game, according to court filings, including:

Col. Kevin A. Davis, who admitted he leaked secret information to help Lee secure an $11.7 million contract for Baghdad warehouse maintenance in exchange for $50,000 in cash, first-class travel to Venice and the United States and a job after his retirement from the military.

Lt. Markus E. McClain, who turned down offers of drugs, women and a Rolex watch but took $15,000 and a steak dinner to lobby in favor of extending one of Lee's contracts to supply buses in Iraq.

Lt. Col. Levonda Selph, who Lee showered with a "pleasure trip" to Thailand and a stay in Kuwait City's Le Meridien Hotel, when she took over monitoring his company's warehouse work.

And Maj. John Cockerham, the lead defendant in what prosecutors now describe as the largest bribery case to come out of the Iraq War.

Army investigators found coded ledgers during a search of Cockerham's home at San Antonio's Fort Sam Houston, noting bribes from at least six companies collected by his sister and wife. Entries marked "Lee Dynamic" listed $1 million in pledged bribes — including a $400,000 payment from Lee's son, Justin, listed under the alias "Mrs. Julie Landsheen."

Cockerham and his wife pleaded guilty in San Antonio to accepting bribes in 2008. His sister — Carolyn Block, a suburban Dallas schoolteacher who told investigators she quit her job and moved to Kuwait in 2004 to make better money — is serving a prison sentence of more than five years.

But despite all the business Lee's bribes brought in, they appear to have done him little good.

His son pleaded guilty in 2011. And Lee himself is now all but penniless, Banes said Friday.

He spent almost all he had to secure his release from Kuwait, where he had been stuck for the past four years under a travel ban imposed over a $75,000 debt.

"He had to get out of there and basically leave under the cover of night for fear that someone else would place another ban on him before he left," Banes said.

Prosecutors, however, weren't buying that story. Instead of flying to Philadelphia, Lee headed to Thailand and lived there for a month before surfacing at an American embassy seeking to renew his passport in December.

Slomsky, the judge, ordered Lee detained until his sentencing hearing, scheduled for July. Under the terms of his plea deal, prosecutors will recommend a sentence of no more than six years.

©2015 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.