A Fight For Honor

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.