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Journalism of Courage
A physicist and his wife,who both once worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico,were arrested on Friday and charged with a criminal conspiracy to help Venezuela build an atom bomb. The arrests of P Leonardo Mascheroni and Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni and a 22-count indictment came after a sting operation by the FBI from 2008 to 2009. A raid on the couples home in Los Alamos last October hauled away cameras,computers and hundreds of files.
If I were a real spy, Mascheroni told a reporter,declaring his innocence,I would have left the country a long time ago.
After their arrests on Friday,the couple appeared in federal court in Albuquerque. They were charged with handing over secret weapons information to an FBI agent posing as a Venezuelan spy. The government did not accuse the Venezuelan government of seeking weapons secrets. President Hugo Chávez has denied interest in developing nuclear arms.
The defendants,if convicted of all the charges,face potential life sentences. Mascheroni worked for Los Alamos,the nuclear laboratory,from 1979 to 1988,and his wife from 1981 until the raid on their home last year.
Mascheroni has long criticised the governments nuclear policies as misguided and has accused federal agents of harassing him for his views. The indictment says that Mascheroni,75,a naturalised citizen from Argentina,and his wife,67,a US citizen,handed over weapons secrets in exchange for $20,000 in cash and the promise of nearly $800,000 in all.
The conduct alleged in this indictment is serious and should serve as a warning to anyone who would consider compromising our nations nuclear secrets for profit, said assistant attorney general for national security David Kris.
Mascheroni told an undercover agent in March 2008,that he could help Venezuela develop a nuclear bomb within 10 years and that under his programme,the country would use a secret nuclear reactor to make plutonium.
According to the charges,the physicist delivered to a post office box that November a disk holding a 132-page document,in code,that contained restricted data.
Written by Dr Mascheroni and edited by his wife,the document was titled A Deterrence Program for Venezuela. Mascheroni said that the information was worth millions of dollars,but that his fee for producing the document was a mere $793,000,according to the indictment.
