Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, 79, a former scientist at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been sentenced to five years in prison for trying to pass nuclear secrets to Venezuela.
Mascheroni, a naturalized American citizen who was born in Argentina, worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for almost 10 years in the laboratory's nuclear weapons design division before being laid off in 1988. The laboratory had rejected Mascheroni's ideas on nuclear fusion, namely his ideas that a hydrogen-fluoride laser could produce nuclear energy. He also tried to sell his ideas to Congressional officials, but to no avail.
Mascheroni began corresponding with individuals he thought were Venezuelan intelligence officers. He went by the codename "Luke" and wrote all his letters in code. He met with an official he thought was a Venezuelan officer three times, not realizing that the officer was actually an undercover FBI agent and that many of their meetings were recorded.
During their covert meetings, Mascheroni told the officer he could help Venezuela build a secret, underground nuclear reactor and develop a nuclear bomb within 10 years. Mascheroni said that if Venezuela detonated a bomb in the Pacific Ocean, it would deter the U.S. from invading South America. Other ideas Mascheroni mentioned during the meetings included detonating a nuclear bomb above New York City that would produce an electromagnetic pulse big enough to wipe out the city's power grid, and using hydrogen-fluoride lasers to blind American "spy" satellites over Venezuela. In return for his expertise, Mascheroni asked for $793,000 and Venezuelan citizenship.
After the evidence of his espionage activities piled up, Mascheroni's house was searched by the FBI in 2009. He as well as his wife were indicted in 2010. Mascheroni argues that the information he gave to the undercover agent was information that could be found online and purely "science fiction." Mascheroni maintains that his goal was to find someone who could financially support him so that he could continue his research on fusion energy.
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