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Date: Wed Oct 21 2009 - 02:28:52 CDT

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http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/10/what_did_the_moon_scientist_spy_tell_the_israelis_some_clues.php

Politics
Edited by Marc Ambinder
The Atlantic
Oct 19 2009

There's nothing like a good, diverting spy scandal. The FBI today
arrested an eminent space scientist, Stewart David Nozette, and charged
him with espionage. He allegedly agreed to sell information about
American nuclear weapons to an operative of Israel's Mossad -- only the
agent turned out to be an uncover FBI agent. Nozette was the principal
investigator on the NASA team that discovered water on the moon. But he
spent years as a top scientist at the Department of Energy, where he
specialized in satellite technology. According to CBS News, his work for
an Israeli defense/aerospace consulting company owned by the Israeli
government -- work that involved providing unspecified but presumably
sensitive technical assistance -- brought him to the attention of
investigators. The affidavit alleges that Nozette secreted two computer
drives out of the company and brought them to a third country. What he
did with them -- and what was contained on those disks the FBI isn't
saying. From the FBI release, it's hard to figure out what he might
have given the Israelis when he worked for them. Left somewhat vague is
what he tried to sell to the undercover agent. But his resume provides a
clue [1].

Take it as a given that Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile and its half
dozen nuclear facilities in the country are targets for U.S. espionage
-- be it from the the SIGINT satellites tasked by the National Security
Agency to the imagery satelittes run by the National Reconaissance
Office. At the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Agency, Nozette ran
a program that focused on dual-use nuclear compliance monitoring
satellites. The Clementine satellite that discovered water on the moon
was, before it was used by civilian scientists, a platform for a
sohpisticated nuclear compliance sensor. Among the technologies that
Clementine validated was a capacity to peer beneath the ground -- one of
the ways that hidden water was discovered.

No doubt that Nozette would be in a good position to know how easily it
is for U.S. technologies to pierce the veil of Israel's secret nuke
program.

[...]

[1] http://www.c4i.org/nozette.html

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