Space scientist charged with espionage - October 20, 2009
posted on behalf of Geoff Brumfiel
A prominent scientist who led a mission to find water on the Moon has been arrested on charges of espionage by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Stewart Nozette, a 52-year-old former government physicist, allegedly tried to sell details of US missile detection satellites in exchange for cash. Nozette's worked for pretty much every military shop in the US government including the Air Force's Phillips Laboratory, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Naval Research Laboratory, and the Defense Advanced Research Project's Administration (DARPA). He also served on president George H. W. Bush's space council and worked with NASA.
He's well known in scientific circles for conceiving the 1994 Clementine mission, which used a military test satellite to discover some of the first traces of water on the Moon's South Pole. More recently, he has been a co-investigator on Chandrayaan-1, the Indian Moon mission, and on an instrument aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
This isn't the first time Nozette has been in trouble with the government. According to press reports, a small non-profit Nozette ran came under investigation by NASA in 2006 for misusing funds to pay for utilities, three mortgages and use of the La Jolla Tennis Club.
This time the charges are more serious. According to a 16th October affidavit signed by FBI agent Leslie Martell, Nozette was contacted last month by an undercover officer posing as an agent working for the Israeli Intelligence Agency, Mossad. According to transcripts reprinted in the affidavit, Nozette agreed to accept money in exchange for his past access to top secret documents.
Work for Israel was nothing new for Nozette, the affidavit says that between 1998 and 2008, an Israeli aerospace company "wholly owned by the Government of the State of Israel" paid Nozette some $225,000. "I thought I was working for you already," Nozette told the agent in a transcript reproduced in the affidavit. "I mean that's what I always thought, the [foreign company] was just a front."
In September and October, Nozette allegedly provided details of a "prototype overhead collection system" to the FBI agent in exchange for cash payments of $2,000 and $9,000 dollars. He will appear later today in United States District court for the District of Columbia to face a single charge of attempted espionage.
NASA
