US scientist gets 13 years on spy-for-Israel charges

[Scurrilous]

<snip>

"A leading US space scientist was sentenced to 13 years in prison Wednesday for selling classified material to a US undercover agent he thought was an Israeli spy, the Justice Department said.

Stewart Nozette, 54, entered a guilty plea in September as part of a deal with prosecutors that spared him a possible sentence of life in prison. His prison term was for charges of attempted espionage, conspiracy to defraud the United States and tax evasion.

Nozette agreed to provide classified information from his top-secret work as a government scientist after meeting an undercover FBI agent who persuaded him he was an agent for Mossad, the Israeli secret service.

"Happy to be of assistance," Nozette told the agent, according to a Justice Department account of their first meeting at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington in September 2009.

In a second case covered by the sentence, Nozette pleaded guilty in January 2009 to fraud and tax charges stemming from more than $265,000 in false claims he submitted to the government."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hvWvqlsoo8Mw9BCxu634aQQUf7nQ?docId=CNG.c692df26fbf0de5fed67a26eba0263c6.281

[shaayecanaan]

1. I suppose the tax evasion was the sting in the tail...

his attempted spying was so inept that you'd feel sorry for him if he got 13 years just for that.

Bit of background on this chap:-

Foreignpolicy.com ran a piece on the guy:-

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/10/19/why_are_scientists_such_bad_spies

which references a Politico post that is interesting enough. Apparently several spies have been operating out of Israel Aerospace Industries. Nozette himself thought that the company was just a front and that the questions put to him were really being asked by the Israeli government.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/laurarozen/1009/Maryland_scientist_indicted_for_attempted_espionage_for_Israel.html

Also, an interesting blog piece where several of his work colleagues muse on the whole situation and speculate about his motives:-

http://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=22502