Top US Scientist Accused of Espionage

Stewart David Nozette, 52, a prominent scientist from the United States, has recently been arrested and charged with espionage. During his career, he worked at the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Pentagon and NASA, and regularly had access to documents classified as either “Secret” or “Top Secret.” The scientist was arrested recently under charges of attempting to sell state secrets to an undercover FBI agent, the BBC News reports.

US Assistant Attorney General David Kris said, “The conduct alleged in this complaint is serious and should serve as a warning to anyone who would consider compromising our nation's secrets for profit.” Between 1989 and 1990, Nozette worked at the National Space Council (NSC) in the White House, and had regular and frequent access to sensitive documents detailing a large number of very sensitive, national-security issues. Some of the most important include details about the nation's early warning systems, its strategic satellites, and its plans for defense and retaliation against large-scale attacks.

He was willing to sell all these data, plus communication-intelligence information and details about the US defense strategy to an undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer. Nozette said that he would divulge this extremely sensitive information in exchange for an Israeli passport and money, and, over the course of a month, he received more than $11,000 in payments. In return, he supplied the “officer” with letters detailing the classified documents mentioned earlier.

“From 1989 through 2006, Nozette held security clearances as high as 'top secret' and had regular, frequent access to classified information and documents related to the US national defense,” an official statement from the US Department of Justice shows. Because of his connections with the Pentagon and the defense industry, as well as NASA, his company was awarded contracts to develop highly advanced technologies for these institutions. Additionally, he also spent ten years at the LLNL doing precisely that.