Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni (born 1935) is a physicist who, according to the United States government, attempted to sell nuclear secrets to a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent posing as a Venezuelan spy. [1] "U.S. authorities stressed that the Venezuelan government had no role in the affair." [2]
Mascheroni, originally from Argentina, went to the US in 1963 to study at the University of California, Berkeley, where he gained a doctorate. [3] He became a US citizen in 1972. [3]
He worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1979 to 1987. [3] In the 1980s he was suspected by some of his superiors of being a spy for Argentina, [4] and whilst never charged (and no evidence being found by the FBI),[ citation needed ] was stripped of his security clearance and fired from Los Alamos in 1987. [3]
He left Los Alamos after a controversy surrounding his idea of using hydrogen fluoride lasers to generate nuclear fusion. Since then, he has been critical of Los Alamos and has attempted to lobby the United States Congress to fund his idea. According to the Miami Herald , he has been described as both a "nut" and a "prophet". He is married to Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, herself a former technical writer for Los Alamos. [2]
In 2009, the FBI raided Mascheroni's home on suspicion of his being a spy, an allegation he denied in an interview with the Albuquerque Journal : "I would have left this country already if I were a spy...Spies do not take their case in front of Congress, and they don't leave all their files and computers and everything here for the FBI to just come and take." [2] Some fellow scientists defended Mascheroni at the time, saying he was not a spy. [5]
In 2010, Mascheroni was indicted [6] on suspicion of selling classified information. According to the United States, Mascheroni allegedly told a man whom he believed to be from the Venezuelan embassy that he could help Venezuela develop a nuclear bomb within ten years using a secret underground nuclear reactor. The man turned out to be an undercover FBI agent, and Mascheroni was subsequently arrested. Mascheroni allegedly charged the phony Venezuelan agent $793,000 for the 132-page document, which he titled A Deterrence Program for Venezuela. [1] Mascheroni was also reportedly interested in obtaining Venezuelan citizenship. He denied the accusations, claiming that he was merely "driven by science". Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, who has denied being interested in developing nuclear weapons, [7] has been critical of the United States' conduct in the Mascheroni case, "suggesting the FBI deliberately created a disinformation campaign." [2]
If convicted, Mascheroni and his wife faced potential life sentences. [7]
On June 21, 2013, Mascheroni and his wife pleaded guilty in Federal court. Mascheroni faced a prison sentence of 24 to 66 months. His wife faced a prison sentence of 12 to 24 months. [8]
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons website, he was released in March 2018. [9]
Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who supplied information from the American, British, and Canadian Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after World War II. While at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fuchs was responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and, later, early models of the hydrogen bomb. After his conviction in 1950, he served nine years in prison in the United Kingdom, then migrated to East Germany where he resumed his career as a physicist and scientific leader.
Theodore Alvin Hall was an American physicist and an atomic spy for the Soviet Union, who, during his work on United States efforts to develop the first and second atomic bombs during World War II, gave a detailed description of the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb, and of several processes for purifying plutonium, to Soviet intelligence.
Earl Edwin Pitts is a former FBI special agent who was convicted of espionage for selling information to Soviet and Russian intelligence services.
The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law enacted on June 15, 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18 : 18 U.S.C. ch. 37.
Wen Ho Lee or Li Wenho is a Taiwanese-American nuclear scientist and a mechanical engineer who worked for the University of California at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He created computerized simulations of nuclear explosions for the purposes of scientific inquiry, as well as for improving the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
David Greenglass was an American machinist who worked on the Manhattan Project and served as an atomic spy for the Soviet Union. He was briefly stationed at the Clinton Engineer Works uranium enrichment facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and then worked at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico from August 1944 until February 1946.
Anatoly Antonovich Yatskov, also known as Anatoli Yatzkov – was a Soviet consul in New York as well as an NKVD foreign intelligence officer handling American agents and couriers linked to the U.S. Manhattan Project during WWII. His spy cover was eventually blown by the U.S. Army Venona Program which identified him as a key NKVD spymaster involved in the 1940s Atomic Spy Ring.
Atomic spies or atom spies were people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who are known to have illicitly given information about nuclear weapons production or design to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War. Exactly what was given, and whether everyone on the list gave it, are still matters of some scholarly dispute. In some cases, some of the arrested suspects or government witnesses had given strong testimonies or confessions which they recanted later or said were fabricated. Their work constitutes the most publicly well-known and well-documented case of nuclear espionage in the history of nuclear weapons. At the same time, numerous nuclear scientists wanted to share the information with the world scientific community, but this proposal was firmly quashed by the United States government.
Nuclear espionage is the purposeful giving of state secrets regarding nuclear weapons to other states without authorization (espionage). There have been many cases of known nuclear espionage throughout the history of nuclear weapons and many cases of suspected or alleged espionage. Because nuclear weapons are generally considered one of the most important of state secrets, all nations with nuclear weapons have strict restrictions against the giving of information relating to nuclear weapon design, stockpiles, delivery systems, and deployment. States are also limited in their ability to make public the information regarding nuclear weapons by non-proliferation agreements.
Richard William Miller was an American FBI agent who was the first FBI agent indicted for and convicted of espionage. In 1991, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison but was freed after serving fewer than three years.
Noshir Sheriarji Gowadia is a former design engineer and convicted spy for several countries. He was arrested in 2005 and later convicted on industrial espionage-related federal charges.
The Federal Correctional Complex, Butner is a United States federal prison complex for men near Butner, North Carolina. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. FCC Butner is about 25 miles (40 km) northwest of Raleigh, the state capital. It includes the Bureau's largest medical complex, which operates a drug treatment program and specializes in oncology and behavioral science. Among its inmates was Bernie Madoff, who was convicted for perpetrating the largest Ponzi scheme in history. He died at the prison in April 2021.
This page is a timeline of published security lapses in the United States government. These lapses are frequently referenced in congressional and non-governmental oversight. This article does not attempt to capture security vulnerabilities.
Thomas Patrick Cavanagh is an aerospace engineer who was sentenced in 1985 after being convicted of trying to sell stealth bomber secrets to the Soviet Union.
David Sheldon Boone is a former U.S. Army signals analyst who worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) and was convicted of espionage-related charges in 1999 related to his sale of secret documents to the Soviet Union from 1988 to 1991. Boone's case was an example of a late Cold War U.S. government security breach.
Joseph "Jo Jo" Corozzo, Sr. is a New York mobster who was the reputed consigliere of the Gambino crime family.
Nuclear Secrets, aka Spies, Lies and the Superbomb, is a 2007 BBC Television docudrama series which looks at the race for nuclear supremacy from the Manhattan Project through to Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.
Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid is a Syrian-born naturalized United States citizen and a resident of Leesburg, Virginia who was indicted on espionage-related charges by federal prosecutors in October 2011. Soueid, 47 years old, is accused of passing information about Syrian American protesters in the United States to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who are thought to have arrested and tortured numerous Syrian political refugees' family members and associates living in Syria.