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US scientist Stewart Nozette pleads guilty to attempted espionage

Posted on behalf of Lee Sweetlove.Stewart_Nozette.jpg

A former US government scientist has admitted attempting to sell classified information to Israel and is facing 13 years in prison after making a plea deal with prosecutors.

Stewart Nozette, pictured, a previously distinguished expert on defence and space technology, was arrested in 2009 on two counts of attempted espionage (see ‘Moon scientist arrested on spy charges’). The plea deal ends the case against one of the highest ranking American scientists ever to be caught attempting to spy for a foreign power.

The trial revealed the sensational details of Nozette’s fall from grace. During the 1980s and 1990s he held a series of sensitive positions for US government agencies including NASA, the White House National Space Council and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He had high-level security clearance and retained access to classified information as recently as 2006.


The first inkling that he might have been prepared to sell these secrets came in February 2007, when investigators searched his Maryland home in a tax-and-fraud investigation relating to his non-profit corporation, Alliance for Competitive Technology, which held agreements to develop technology for the US government.

Nozette was found guilty of tax evasion but this was the least of his problems. The search also turned up classified documents as well as an e-mail threatening to sell information about a classified programme he was working on to Israel or another country.

The FBI mounted a sting operation, sending in an undercover agent posing as a member of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Nozette agreed to sell secrets about US satellites, early warning systems and major elements of defence strategy to Israel. He was recorded telling the agent: “I’m prepared to give them the whole thing… all the technical specifications.”

When he was arrested in a Washington DC hotel room, he attempted to hide the US$10,000 in cash he had just received from the FBI agent in the cistern of a toilet.

US Attorney Ronald Machen said in a statement that Nozette had gone from “a once-trusted scientist to a disgraced criminal who was caught red-handed attempting to trade American secrets for personal profit.”

Image via Wikipedia under Creative Commons.

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