WASHINGTON — A scientist who allegedly tried to sell classified secrets to Israel had worked on the U.S. government’s “Star Wars” missile- shield program, and the Justice Department said he had tried to share some of the nation’s most guarded secrets.
Arrested Monday, Stewart David Nozette was jailed without bail and accused of two counts of attempting to communicate, deliver and transmit classified information.
Had he succeeded in passing classified information, Nozette would have done grave damage to the nation’s security because the information he possesses includes “some of our most guarded secrets,” assistant U.S. attorney Anthony Asuncion said in court Tuesday. He did not elaborate.
Nozette, looking disheveled after spending the night in jail after his arrest, gave his name to the magistrate but otherwise did not speak.
If convicted, the 52-year-old scientist likely will spend the rest of his life in prison, and there is a substantial risk that he would flee now if allowed to remain free, the federal prosecutor told the magistrate. The next court proceeding in the case was set for Oct. 29.
In an interview, Scott Hubbard, a former colleague, said Nozette was primarily a defense technologist who worked on the Reagan-era “Star Wars” effort, formally called the Strategic Defense Initiative, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
At the Department of Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department’s top-secret and “critical nuclear-weapon design information” clearances. Nozette, of Chevy Chase, Md., recently developed the Clementine bistatic radar experiment that is credited with discovering water on the south pole of the moon.
