Download or read book A Fight for Honor written by Michael Ireland and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2012 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was and remains - the largest public/private contract ever entered into in Michigan. More than $35 million in taxpayer's money was awarded to UPSCO, a company developed to build innovative tug-barge vessels as part of a unique "rails-to-sails" transportation system that promised to revolutionize and transform the U.S./Michigan trucking and shipping industry in the early 1980s. Within seven years, however, two top company officials would be sentenced to prison; the company - and the hundreds of jobs it provided - lay in ruins; political careers were destroyed; and Michigan residents saw millions of their tax dollars disappear in an instant. But now, more than two-and-a-half decades later, federal court records, company documents, secret FBI/U.S. Postal Service Investigation reports and U.S. Attorney records reveal a reality that is hard to believe: Michigan's largest financial investment flop in history never had to happen; one of the nation's most farsighted and talented entrepreneurs never had to see the inside of a prison cell; and the level of FBI, prosecutorial and judicial misconduct, sparked by overreaching federal investigative agencies and greedy union and private shipbuilding company owners, rose to a level that is still hard to believe even in these cynical times. "A Fight For Honor: The Charles Kerkman Story" is an inside look at one of the nation's most outrageous and egregious political and law-enforcement cases told through the life and experiences of Charles Kerkman, the man who lived the governmental nightmare that haunts him to this day.