Accused spy scientist due in court; FBI says he tried to sell secrets

Accused spy scientist due in court

WASHINGTON — A space exploration scientist accused of attempted espionage is due to appear in court Thursday to learn whether he will have to stay behind bars while he awaits trial, after authorities say he sought a $2 million payment for spilling secrets.

Stewart Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Md., was arrested last week. He is accused of trying to sell classified information on U.S. defense secrets to an undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer.

In court papers filed ahead of Thursday’s detention hearing, prosecutors say Nozette asked for $2 million to share what he knew about top-secret government programs.

They also say he kept a stash of gold Krugerrand coins worth tens of thousands of dollars in a safe deposit box in California — more evidence, they say, of his risk of flight.

His lawyer, John Kiyonaga, filed papers urging Nozette be released.

“Never having actually dealt with a foreign intelligence service, he lacks any demonstrable connection to the resources presumably available to such an entity for moving people covertly between countries,” the lawyer wrote.

In decades of government work on various science and space projects, Nozette had high-level security clearances. He was known primarily as a defense technologist who had worked on the Reagan-era Star Wars missile shield effort formally named the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Authorities do not charge Nozette passed any classified information to the Israeli government. The charges against him, though, suggest he thought he had.

According to prosecutors, Nozette was paid more than $200,000 by a company that was wholly owned by the Israeli government, and spoke to them regularly.

During one of his secretly recorded conversations with the undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer, Nozette said: “I thought I was working for you already. I mean, that’s what I always thought, (the foreign company) was just a front.”