It is not everyday you find an email in your email box telling you someone you know is a real, honest to goodness spy, but that is what happened to me this morning. According to The Huffington Post:
Nozette allegedly informed the agent that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information, the affidavit said.
The scientist also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The agent explained that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, would arrange for a communication system so Nozette could pass on information in a post office box.
Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information and asked for an Israeli passport, the affidavit alleged.
Personally I find it difficult to become exercised over someone passing information to an ally who may well use that information to do horrible things to people who really, really deserve it. It would be rather different had he sold information to China, North Korea, Iran or one of the other current or potential future enemies.
Oh, and the personal connection? I have crossed paths with Stu off and on over the last thirty years as he was once active with the L5 Society and was a leading figure in the Clementine lunar mapping project for which we (the National Space Society) awarded him one of our highest honours.
Stewartt Nozette receives the National Space Society’s Space Pioneer Award at the 1994 International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Toronto for his work on Clementine.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
I still hold Stewart in the highest esteem and if I have anything to do with it, we will still reserve that space for his name on the Luna City wall of “Heroes of the Frontier” .
“Personally I find it difficult to become exercised over someone passing information to an ally who may well use that information to do horrible things to people who really, really deserve it.”
That may be so, but remember that was also the line taken by Fuchs, May, Burgess, MacLean, and others of that kidney.
Brian,
I know I’m splitting hairs here, but they (Burgess & co) were passing information to an enemy. True, some of them started during the war against Hitler – when Stalin was an ally – but the information flow continued after it was clear to anyone who wanted to see that the Soviets were our enemies.
Their subjective justification of their actions does not equate to the objective fact that Israel is an ally of the West – although the West all to often acts as if that alliance doesn’t exist.
I am yet to hear anywhere that he actually passed or offered to pass any information to anyone other than said FBI agent (who, if I understand correctly, approached him on his own accord) – am I missing much here?
Another strange thing in all this is that reportedly, in exchange for information, Nozette asked for an Israeli passport (in addition to money). Being Jewish, he could have gotten this automatically by simply showing up here and asking for it.
There’s at least one version that has him shopping the information around, and the feebie was just the first to take it.
The same account has Nozette treating this as a cash business, rather than spying for ideology or conscience. FWIW.
I’m waiting for when the indictment gets unsealed. The press is terrible at getting details right, and what little faith I have, I reserve for the Denver Post, The Onion, the National Enquirer, and other outlets that are not HuffPo.
As for who is and is not an ‘ally…’
I consider you a friend, if I may be so bold. But governments spy in order to gather information that advances their own interests. Personal loyalties of the kind that bind individual friendships are, IMHO, not a factor between governments. And people in governments aren’t necessarily able to interact with people on a simple “person-to-person” level. (Words like “Narcissist” and “Sociopath” come to mind when I think of most of them here.)
“But Sunfish, you are a part of a government, and the mailed fist part at that.”
Perhaps, thus the cynicism.
Oh, if true, he broke the law and should probably get some time. I just don’t rate his alleged crime as being particularly heinous. If, for example, his actions were to help Israel at some future date when they need to take Iran down a notch or five, then his actions will have been in the national interests of the US.
I also wrote this so that during the ensuing press hatchet jobs there is a least one article on the net to note that Stu has been an exceptionally valuable person in terms of what he has given the US, the space movement and the world.
He is basically a very good person who has done a lot of good and that should not be lost in the frenzy of spins that is to come.
Frankly, I would not rate as a “very good person” anyone who would give away information placed in his custody out of trust and especially to another government. And this is material whether that is a friendly government or not. The guy appears to have intended to cheat his employer and that’s indefensible. This situation merely demonstrates that he perhaps would release that information to an enemy with sufficient incentives. If he commits himself beforehand to not pass out information, then he should not at all. He owes that to his employer, even if that employer is government.
Sunfish: thanks for the info, I am not nearly as glued to the news lately as I used to be. (That is, if I may be so bold as to presume that you comment was addressed to me?:-)) I feel the same about the government angle in this (and I don’t really care if he broke the law or not), but I also tend to agree with owinok to the extent that this is an ethical issue. He allegedly betrayed someone’s trust and that is a big deal.
When I knew him in 1984 he told me how good he was at mimicking a “good guy” and that deep down he was only interested in money. I saw him cheating people with oil well speculation. He laughed about it, saying “most people thought he was a nice guy, and couldn’t tell from his name that he was Jewish.” He cynically thought he was thus entitled to take advantage of people.
Over the years he donated HEAVILY to Republican senatorial and presidential candidates, and no doubt he was rewarded with fat government contracts.
With these thoughts in mind, I am not surprised at all with the news that he would sell secrets for money.
He told me how, while attending a private high school in Chicago, he had stolen an expensive microscope and later sold it just to see if he could get away with it. He did. Even though his family was fairly wealthy and he didn’t need the money, he deprived all the other students of the microscope.
His dad owned a company that made little plastic containers for makeup, etc. A worker was badly injured and he was laughing about how they’d “bought off the dumb nigger for practically nothing”. I was horrified.
These indications of his true character are consistent with his actions recently.
Well, at least anex avoided the blood libel and the connection with the Bilderbergers.
Me? I’ll wait to see the indictment, and probably, until he has his day in court before I’ll pass judgment.
BTW Dale, you might want to correct his first name under that picture to ‘Stewart’.
A spy is a spy, Dale. Today’s friend may be tomorrow’s enemy. This is exactly the same line used by the atomic spies in WWII when the Soviets were our allies. Why shouldn’t they have that technology too? It’s not up to you to decide.
Maybe they will put him in the same cell as Jonathan Pollard, who I am told hangs with Bernie Madoff.
anex: I have no idea who you are and thus have no idea whether to take your claims seriously or with a grain of salt. They run very contrary to everything else I know of the man.
Busta Capps: I know well of the ship incident you speak and I have waffled back and forth over the facts for years and most evidence seems to indicate it was more a royal screwup than intent.
Further I do not condone the act of breaking confidences; I merely do not put his act in the same category as say, the Rosenbergs. I do not see any serious chance of Israel’s long term interests being significantly different from ours unless our have become seriously skewed in evil directions.
If the allegations are true, he should serve time for it. And then we will hope he has learned a lesson and suggest that perhaps he become and aerospace writer since he’s certainly not going to be working in the industry directly again. He is going to pay a very high price for his actions and I am not going to get in line and say I never knew him, or that I always thought he was a bad guy, or make him an un-person.
There is another interesting discussion here as well. The way he went about things sounds really incompetent, as any long time reader of Tom Clancy can probably note. Why did he accept people as Mossad without having a way to check? If he had done work with the Israeli service starting from the alleged incident, why did he not have pass codes set up? If he did have pass codes, then did the sting already have them via other sources? If he went to Israel with secret data on a pair of USB drives, why did he not return with them after passing the data, or get replicas to come back with him?
One of the big problems here, and one of the reasons why, if guilty, he should get some years in prison, is ‘pour encourager les autres’. Even if working for Israel is not terribly damaging to US security (and likely to put american citizens at risk), the problem is that if a couple agents doing a sting could get data from him, then a couple NoRK or Chicomm or god only know who else could have done the same and kept him thinking he was helping Israel while in fact he was doing anything but.
If he was indeed spying, then one has to say this has all the earmarks of someone having all too much confidence in their own smarts and all too little of the care and paranoia that only the true spy type would have. Perhaps one of our more interesting readers might comment anonymously on his lack of craft. 😉
People reveal lots of closely held secrets during pillow talk, Dale. If you don’t believe what I have written, it’s no skin off my nose, because I know it to be the truth. I could tell so much more–but why waste it on you?
N ozette loved to brag about his 165 IQ. As mine is 160, he could not fool me. He evidently thinks he is way too smart to ever get caught by the cretins in law enforcement.
well anex, as you have not given us any reason to believe you are anything other than a drive by commenter flapping their pixelated lips, why should we take you seriously? Either establish some credibility or get lost.
Few years ago, a Chicom national, in the US 48, downloaded Air Force maintenance records. Got 60 days
community service. Look into what nation states US
defence contractors have facilities. Interesting. Most new developments are weapons that can have non- warfare, social control applications.
Won’t bother with the Huff’n’Puff full story. Been there,
dung with that.
Modern warfare is aimed at civilians. If they “deserve” it
that is not due to their willing or knowing participation.
Those willing and knowing will protect themselves at the
expense of the civilians. Like the US civil defenselessness.
The only people governments don’t want to know anything, are the populations. The governments are in the same bed.
Dale-
Let’s assume for a moment that the facts are essentially as HuffPo reports.
The parts of the story which condemn Stewart are the holding of top secret clearances, the willingness to share information presumably gotten through those clearances for money, and the request for a foreign passport in connection with said sharing.
Those all add up to treason regardless of how nice a guy he might have been, how much he did to advance space exploration, that he is sharing such information with an ally, that the FBI might have entrapped him, or that you know him personally.
I am rather shocked that you would give him such a pass, under the circumstances.
I don’t think my comments exactly categorize as ‘giving him a pass’. If guilty, I see no problem with him serving time for it. He allegedly broke trusts with people he worked for and whether State or company one should not do that. This is all still alleged, but whether he gets off or not, his career is over. As a friend of mine put it in a phone conversation a half hour ago, “The Russians just sent their spies to Siberia and kept them working”. He really was pretty good.
Where I part company with what I expect will be a combination of Judas types (I never knew him!) and baying hounds (I always knew he was evyul! Hang him!) is that I am willing to state that I did know him and greatly admired his accomplishments. I am saddened to hear he did something so utterly stupid and I’d not give him a cold shoulder a decade from now when he gets out. I would of course tell him he was a total idiot, no matter how high his IQ might be, for throwing it all away.
If anything needs proof this is it: a high IQ does not mean you are smart where it matters.
I hope he has a really good lawyer… since he came from a very well to do family (a spoiled rich kid as one person told me on the phone in confidence today), he probably will.
I might add, just for the record, that if he had wittingly sold secrets to the Iranians or North Koreans and it were proven in court, I’d be suggesting we lose the key to his cell.
Um, no. That’s not actually the principle at work here.
An organization entrusted with sensitive material can not afford to ignore something like this–to do so is to admit chaos into its’ workings. Such an organization cannot let its’ members make their own decisions about who is cleared to see material, as they see fit.
“Oh, you gave some of our stuff to the Israelis? Well, how did you know they were working for the Israelis? Oh, I see, they spat in their palm and shook hands on it, swearing on their mother’s grave that they were working for the Israelis, with a pinky swear for good measure. I see nothing wrong with that–as long as you’ve got someone’s personal assurance that they aren’t working for terrorists, you just keep right on acting above your authority. Sorry I bothered you.”
Others above have stated it, I will restate it–if you have a clearance, and you are caught leaving a secure area with the burn bag, expect Bad Things to happen.
Absolutely. But I believe Dale’s comment, as well as the entire discussion here, is centered on the man, not the organization, although I do think that the fact that he may have sold secrets to Israel rather than Iran should at least somewhat mitigate the severity of his crime. In any case he will pay the price if found guilty, and that should satisfy the organization’s need to deter others from similar behavior in the future as much as possible.
For the record, I’m a fan of our allies, the Israelis, myself. I find them to be admirable, just as I find our common enemies to be the loathsome scum of the earth, with all their screaming and throat-slitting and ululating and all.
But I like to think that if the position were reversed, that the State of Israel would come down just as hard on someone who passed some of their secrets to the CIA. Just for the sake of knowing that our friends were running a tight ship.
The big problem for Mr. Amon’s friend is the Current Occupant, whom I believe to be, if not hostile, at least indifferent to the fate of the Israelis. This is a perfect opportunity to conduct a big, splashy diversion from the blossoming fiasco which characterizes the rest of his miserable damned Administration.
“Personally I find it difficult to become exercised over someone passing information to an ally who may well use that information to do horrible things to people who really, really deserve it.”
What a revolting attitude towards a traitor who’d sell his country’s secrets for money! How do you know what Israel would do with this information? Do you know that the data that spy Jonathan Pollard gave to Israel was given by them to the Soviets in return for allowing Russian Jews to emigrate to Israel?
Nozette is just the latest in a string of traitors serving Israeli interests and as such he deserves the punishment reserved for his kind. And you would transform him into some sort of hero? What an example for loyal Jewish Americans!
I hope that Nozette spends the rest of his life in jail for what he did. He agreed to sell his nation’s secrets for cash.
I believe that there is a concerted effort by US and British intelligence services to nail known libertarian sympathizers. I’ve been getting schmoozed online by a person in one of these agencies over the past year, asking me to spy on the US government for Britain on the logic that “we should bloody well not have any secrets between each other anyways”.
My response to that was, well, that sounds like a personal problem in the special relationship you folks have with each other….
The Israelis are only loyal to themselves.
Trusting the Israelis is like trusting Hank Paulson with your money.
Remember, they sold US secrets to Russia.
The people who blindly defend Israel make me puke.
And you make me puke Relugus – no one is “blindly defending Israel”.
And if supporting the Soviets is a crime (and I do not not recall even the Labour party in Israel doing that) then why were not Barack Obama’s mother and father (who both supported the Soviet Union, indeed they met at their Russian language and Soviet studies class) put in prison?
“They did not have national security secrets to give to the Communists” – yes but their son Barack does.
This would be the same Barack Obama whose postgrad thesis on “Soviet Disarmament Policy” we are still not allowed to see. And who has had Marxist connections (the conferences he went to, the people who employed him……..) his whole life.
You like the blunt truth Relugus so I will give you some.
I will give the you the name of a person who really is a security risk to the United States – indeed someone who has been an anti American fanatic his whole life (someone who would not pass any background check in order to get a security clearance).
Barack Obama.
And he is President and Commander in Chief – possibly the worst joke in history.
Barack Obama being President and “leader of the free world” really is something to puke over.
Regulus
.
Nothing I’ve read here can lead me to your conclusion. Do we have some deepseated animosity towards Jews that is being manifested here?
Keep in mind that Isaelis, in particular, and Jews, in general, are judged globally by different standards in everything that they do. Israeli national security may demand extraordinary measures that Americans might never consider ‘kosher’, but when one’s security and borders are constantly challenged extraordinary may be all that can be done. Witness the legal proceedings against Olmert, the past problems of Sharon and President Katsav; when there is rot, the Israeli government goes after it. What other govt in the recent past has done as much?
Just my .02
Furd
I have a different attitude towards people who do things like this depending on the danger they put me in by doing so. Giving information to close allies of long standing I rate as somewhere at the level of industrial espionage. It is a crime and its actual impact on me may be either slightly positive or slightly negative in the long run but more likely neutral (unless I happen to be a part of the burgled company).
A second class are those sorts who give information to people who are competitors of ours in the international arena and may become a threat at some time in the future, but whose leaders are for the most part sane.
The worst class are those who sell to people who are a clear and immediate danger to myself, other Americans, our armed forces or even the whole of civilization.
I think the first sort should get 5-10 years; the second type perhaps 10-20; and the third type should get the old style execution if it is provable that they were intentional, willing
traitors; and anything from 20 to life for less culpable, and
*maybe* less if there were extreme extenuating circumstances,
although I would rather leave that sort of thing up to a judge to
decide.
So someone like Stu, if convicted, gets anywhere up to a decade to think about his stupidity; but a journalist who would say, pass information to the Taliban about where a US patrol is going to be so that they can be ambushed gets the firing squad.
Dale for the win.
I don’t have a problem with the man spending a few years in Atlanta or Terre Haute to ponder his judgment calls or with the black mark that will follow him after his release. What he did was a crime, and I personally don’t have a problem with leaving this particular piece of law on the books.
If nothing else, he held a public trust and violated it. Most uncool.
But the secrets he was shopping around weren’t the plans for the CRM-114 Discriminator or the GMC EM-50. I suspect that the threat to the USA posed by his crime is more hypothetical than actual.
Julius Rosenberg or Kim Philby or Aldritch Ames, he ain’t.
Well, I also knew Stu and, from my experience, he was a pretty bad guy.
He was great to those who saw him from a distance or who were among his entourage of sycophants.
But Stu was all about Stu. If you had the ability to question what he wanted or the direction he was trying to go–you would be threatened and, if possible, destroyed. I myself was on the receiving end of some threats. There was another guy, who managed the lunar program, who tried to enforce some ethical rules about the selection of instruments. Those rules eliminated Stu’s pet project from consideration. Stu pulled some strings and dropped some names–and eventually got his way. In the process, he arranged to have a distorted story about the other manager “leaked” to the Washington Post–which almost cost the other manager his job.
Stu wanted to be famous and rich and he had very few scruples about doing whatever he thought would help him get there.
As to spying–Stu wasn’t spying to help Israel, based on the evidence in the charging documents. He was spying to get money. He didn’t care who would pay–but he had opportunities with both Israel and “country A” (as it’s noted in the affidavit–probably India). This was pure greed aggravted by the arrogance of believing he was too important and too smart to be subject to normal ethics and law.
“Busta Capps: I know well of the ship incident you speak and I have waffled back and forth over the facts for years and most evidence seems to indicate it was more a royal screwup than intent.
Further I do not condone the act of breaking confidences; I merely do not put his act in the same category as say, the Rosenbergs. I do not see any serious chance of Israel’s long term interests being significantly different from ours unless our have become seriously skewed in evil directions.”
I think we’re talking about two different things — you the attack on the US ship Liberty, me about Jonathan Pollard, who was convicted in 1987 for spying for Israel and given a life sentence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard
Not up to Pollard or us to decide what’s okay to give out and what’s not. A spy is a spy.
That rather depends. In this case, well yeah, I do not really see much of an ethical dilemma… if the alleged spying was as presented by the prosecution, it is hard to see how it was not just a case of betraying a trust in return for money. Bad.
But that does not mean it is always and automatically bad to “betray” a country. It very much depends on the issue and circumstances as nations themselves are hardly irreproachable institutions deserving of *unthinking* loyalty. People are responsible for reasoning through moral choices and “my country, right or wrong” is not a very good moral theory.
That said, flogging some secrets to someone for cash is hardly a act of high principle 😀
More in India connection:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KJ23Ak01.html
The guy is lucky that he will have as close to a fair trial and perfect legal representation as possible.
I have a recollection, that in cursory research I can’t verify, that other countries set up “Israeli” handlers to get well placed people to supply information “to Israel”, when in fact the data was going to countries actively hostile to the US.
The info given to the Israelis by Jonathan Pollard was passed on to the Soviet Union in exchange for Russian Jews being allowed to emigrate. Perhaps your loyalty is with Israel agains the USA, fair enough. But it is a dangerous assumption that Israeli and US interest always converge.
Not too excercised eh??
Well bunky the Israelis sold US classified radar technologies to China.Another 1980’s Israel Spy,convicted US Navy Jonathan Pollard passed on classified info to Israel that sold same to former USSR.Are you excesised yet….NO????In 1967 attack on USS Liberty which saw Israel slaughter 34 Americans,attacking Israeli forces were attempting to jam Liberty’s classified USN frequencies.Those were stolen as well.
Nozette had some bad prior experience with the Feds, including embezzling from NASA. And bragged to some colleagues that he’d flee the country if the Feds tried to put him in jail on the $265K in overbilling.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/25/AR2009102502055.html
It was mentioned that a spy is naturaly cautious earlier. Well here’s a fun fact, if he was a real spy he wouldn’t have been so – uhm – stupid. I have a feeling he was a meul. . . Like the drug dealers do. And if this is so, then someone got screwed over and the real spy gave harder information and more classified. . . Hey, i might be wrong. . . Im just saying that if it was me – – i would have had a trained proffessional do the job.