Stewart Nozette

In 2009, a man who said he worked for Mossad approached Stewart Nozette. They met several times, more than once at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington. Nozette agreed to sell classified American defense information, asked for about two million dollars, and handed over material on three separate occasions. Cameras recorded all of it.

Shortly before his arrest he told the officer that he had been expecting an approach like this for years, that he would be willing to move to Israel, and that he wanted cash and an Israeli passport.

There was no Mossad officer. The man was an undercover FBI agent, and this is what makes the Nozette case unusual in this archive: it documents an American’s willingness to spy for Israel without documenting anything Israel did.

What he had

Nozette was not a marginal figure with a grudge. He was a planetary scientist trained at MIT who helped discover water ice at the south pole of the Moon. He held top secret clearances from 1989 to 2006 and worked for NASA, the Department of Energy, the Pentagon and the White House’s National Space Council, including on the Strategic Defense Initiative. Prosecutors described him as a walking safe deposit box of government secrets.

In court he admitted trying to give Israel information on satellites, early warning systems, methods of retaliating against a large-scale attack, communications intelligence, and major elements of American defense strategy.

Why the FBI built this particular trap

A sting needs a premise the target will believe, and the FBI had one.

Before the operation, Nozette had done paid contract work for an aerospace company wholly owned by the government of Israel. According to the Bureau, during that relationship he had indicated a willingness to provide classified information. That history is what made an approach from a purported Israeli intelligence officer plausible to him, and it is what prompted the FBI to construct exactly that scenario rather than some other one.

The limit of the case, stated plainly

The Justice Department was careful about something, and this article is careful about it too.

The indictment did not allege that the government of Israel, or anyone acting on its behalf, committed any offense under United States law. No Israeli official or entity was charged, because none was involved. The entire operation was run by the FBI. What Nozette was convicted of was his own attempt.

He was originally charged with four counts of attempted espionage carrying a potential death sentence. Under a plea agreement he admitted one count in September 2011, and on March 21, 2012 Judge Paul Friedman sentenced him to thirteen years. The sentence also resolved separate fraud and tax charges involving more than $265,000 in false claims submitted to the government. He was credited with the roughly two years already served since his arrest in October 2009.

Why it belongs here anyway

A case that proves nothing about Israel might look like an odd thing to include. It belongs for two reasons, and both depend on describing it accurately.

The first is that the conviction is real and the conduct was real. A cleared American scientist with access to satellite, early warning and retaliation planning tried to sell it, and the country he chose to sell it to was Israel. That is a documented fact about him.

The second is what the sting reveals about American counterintelligence. The FBI did not pick the scenario at random. It committed significant resources to an elaborate operation built on the premise that a scientist with prior ties to an Israeli state-owned firm could be induced to sell secrets to Mossad, and it built that premise on his own recorded willingness during that earlier relationship. The Bureau’s choice of cover story is itself evidence of what the Bureau considered plausible.

Handled honestly, the limit makes the case stronger rather than weaker. It sits in an archive of documented Israeli operations as the entry that is explicitly not one, and saying so is the difference between a record and an indictment.

Sources

• U.S. Department of Justice, “Noted Scientist Pleads Guilty to Attempted Espionage,” September 7, 2011
• U.S. Department of Justice, “Noted Scientist Sentenced to 13-Year Prison Term for Attempted Espionage, Fraud and Tax Charges,” March 21, 2012
• United States v. Stewart David Nozette, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Senior Judge Paul L. Friedman)
• NPR, “U.S. Scientist Pleads Guilty to Espionage Charge,” September 7, 2011
• NBC News / Associated Press, “Scientist Pleads Guilty in Espionage Case,” September 7, 2011
• RFE/RL, “U.S. Scientist Gets 13 Years in Espionage Case,” March 21, 2012