A Maryland scientist who once worked in the White House and at NASA has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for attempting to provide Israel classified information on satellites and early-warning defense systems.
Stewart Nozette pleaded guilty in September and was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Washington. He was arrested in October 2009 after authorities say he provided an undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer with some of the nation’s most guarded secrets for $11,000. The Chevy Chase resident held security clearance as high as “top secret” for nearly 20 years as he helped develop satellite and other advanced technology for the U.S. military.
Nozette, 54, wore an orange prison outfit to the sentencing, and told U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman that he “accepted full responsibility” for poor decision making.
Nozette’s attorneys said the U.S. government ruined him through the sting.
The government “became the co-author of this story,” defense lawyer Bradford Berenson said, calling the sting “functional entrapment.”
The government knew Nozette hadn’t been involved in espionage, his attorneys said, and didn’t have evidence that he had been contacting Israel’s intelligence agency to provide classified information before the sting.
According to a document supporting Nozette’s guilty plea, during a 2007 search of Nozette’s home in Chevy Chase, law enforcement found classified documents and a 2002 email threatening to take a classified program he was working on “to [a foreign country] or Israel and do it there selling internationally.” Nozette’s counsel said the material authorities found had only later become classified.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Asuncion played video clips totaling about four minutes of Nozette talking to an undercover agent. Asuncion said these clips showed that Nozette was a “traitor.”
In the video, Nozette sounded confident and said he had “crossed the Rubicon” and was prepared to give up more information. At one point in the videos, Nozette laughed.
A plea deal in the attempted espionage case stipulated that Nozette was to be sentenced to 13 years. Nozette has been in custody since his arrest, and he’ll be credited with time served.
Nozette worked at the White House on the National Space Council in 1989 to 1990, then worked at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for a decade, designing highly advanced technology. He then continued to develop technology for the government through his private company, doing research and development at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in the District, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.
