Want a ticket for the express line to federal prison? Try selling nuclear secrets to another country. A husband and wife duo – former contractors at the nuke-specialising Los Alamos National Lab – are indicted on charges of exporting secrets to Venezuela.
MSNBC reports the couple – Pedro and Marjorie Mascheroni – formed a relationship with an undercover American agent posing as a Venezuelan, who was promised that they could help Venezuela “develop a nuclear bomb within 10 years” using a secret underground reactor. Mr Mascheroni holds a PhD in physics, as well as crucially important access to restricted data after his tenure at Los Alamos. Knowledge he was perhaps not privy to was that Venezuela ratified the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean 40 years ago.
If convicted on all charges, the couple could face life in prison. [MSNBC]
The Gremlin
Sunday, September 19, 2010 at 11:02 AM“Venezuela ratified the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean 40 years ago” Yeah, right, like the current government is going pay any regard to that. If it gets into the president’s head, somebody will try to please him. Not that I think they would succeed, given the their sheer incompetence at anything other than clinging to power.