Scientist who tried to spy for Israel gets 13 years
Former US space scientist Stewart Nozette admits to trying to sell space and defense secrets to Israel
Appearing in federal court in a prison jumpsuit, Stewart Nozette said he is "paying for a fatal lack of judgment."
"I accept full responsibility," Nozette told US District Judge Paul Friedman.
Related stories:
- US scientist pleads guilty to attempted espionage
Nozette is Jewish and previously served as a technical consult in Israel's Aerospace Industries.
Prosecutors and Nozette's lawyers agreed to the 13-year sentence, with credit for the two years that Nozette has spent behind bars since his arrest.
Nozette had high-level security clearances during decades of government work on science and space projects at NASA, the Energy Department and the National Space Council in President George H.W. Bush's administration.
Nozette pleaded guilty to one count of attempted espionage, admitting he tried to provide Israel with top secret information about satellites, early warning systems, methods for retaliating against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information and major elements of defense strategy.
In court, prosecutors played a videotape of Nozette telling an FBI undercover agent posing as an Israeli spy that "I've sort of crossed the Rubicon," or passed a point of no return. On the video, Nozette said he would charge Israel "at most 1 percent" for passing information about an unspecified program that Nozette said cost the US government $200 million.
Nozette, 54, was a "traitor" who engaged in attempted espionage with "unbridled enthusiasm," Assistant US Attorney Anthony Asuncion told the judge.
At the time of Nozette's arrest for attempted espionage in 2009, he was awaiting sentencing on fraud and tax evasion charges.
On Wednesday, the judge sentenced him to 37 months on those charges, to be served concurrently with the sentence in the espionage case.
Space mission, 'Start Wars'
Nozette was known primarily as a defense technologist who had worked on the Reagan-era missile defense shield effort, nicknamed "Star Wars" and formally called the Strategic Defense Initiative.
As a leading scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the 1990s, Nozette came up with the concept behind the Clementine space mission, which ultimately discovered ice on the moon, according to the sentencing memo in the espionage case by Nozette's legal team.
One of Nozette's lawyers, Bradford Berenson, called the espionage case "vindictive" and an illustration of "overreaching government conduct" at a time when Nozette was already enmeshed in the tax and fraud case.
Nozette also was ordered to pay $217,800 in restitution for fraudulent claims he made to the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Va., and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Yitzhak Benhorin contributed to this report
- Follow Ynetnews on Facebook
and Twitter
- Receive Ynetnews updates
directly to your desktop
