Woman sentenced in plot to steal U.S. nuclear secrets

[bananas]

Source: Reuters

A 71-year-old former contractor at Los Alamos National Laboratory has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison after admitting conspiring with her physicist husband to sell U.S. nuclear secrets, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni pleaded guilty last year to plotting to pass classified nuclear weapons data to a person they believed to be a Venezuelan government official. Her husband Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, 79, has also pleaded guilty.

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According to court documents, Pedro Mascheroni, a Ph.D. physicist, worked as a scientist at the facility in New Mexico from 1979 to 1988. His wife was employed there from 1981 to 2010, and her duties included technical writing and editing.

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"The indictment ... did not allege that the government of Venezuela or anyone acting on its behalf sought or was passed any classified information, nor did it charge any Venezuelan government officials or anyone acting on their behalf with wrongdoing," Martinez said.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/20/us-usa-new-mexico-nuclear-idUSKBN0GK2FT20140820

[mackerel]

1. This part:

"The indictment ... did not allege that the government of Venezuela or anyone acting on its behalf sought or was passed any classified information, nor did it charge any Venezuelan government officials or anyone acting on their behalf with wrongdoing," Martinez said.

So was this a set-up to begin with? Or did they just decide not to pursue the purchasing side of this deal?

[Ikonoklast]

2. Or the un-named Venezuelan official contacted the U.S. that he had been approached by the couple.

The language used in the indictment seems to be deliberately circumspect, going out of the way to clear the Venezuelan government or it's representatives of any culpability.


That's a good thing, if true.