U.S. Scientist Arrested for Allegedly Attempting to Pass Secrets to Israel

Oct. 19, 2009— -- FBI agents arrested a scientist who worked for NASA and other agencies Monday afternoon in a sting operation after he allegedly attempted to sell top secret satellite information to agents he thought were Israeli spies.

Stewart Nozette, 52, was arrested shortly after 4:00 p.m. at the Mayflower Hotel in downtown Washington by counterespionage agents from the FBI's Washington field office after he believed he was meeting with agents from the Mossad to pass information to them in exchange for money, the Justice Department said.

Nozette had been under investigation for some time according to an FBI affidavit and court records involving his firm, the Alliance for Competitive Technology (ACT). In early January 2009 as he traveled overseas, a security check of his personal bags indicated he had two computer thumb drives in his possession; yet, when he returned on his trip, the drives were no longer in his possession, according to the government.

The investigation ramped up in September 2009 when he was approached by an undercover FBI agent who told Nozette he worked for Mossad. During a lunch meeting with the agent, Nozette indicated he was willing to work for Israeli intelligence and provide them information, court documents say.

"I haven't been…involved in a classified work for the last couple of years…but I had everything…all the way to Top Secret SCI [sensitive compartmentalized information], I had nuclear." Nozette told the undercover FBI agents, according to the affidavit. "I had all the nuclear clearances."

Nozette is best known for his work on the lunar Mini-RF probe which recently helped confirm the presence of water on the moon. Nozette is a planetary scientist from MIT who worked for the White House National Space Council and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the 1990s and as a contractor for the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. At the Department of Energy, he worked in the "O" Division and had Top Secret clearance which included nuclear weapon design information, according to an FBI affidavit in the case which was unsealed Monday afternoon in Washington.