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opinion editorialsThis editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by editorial page staff and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers
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Monday, October 26, 2009
Insiders Should Not Decode Nuclear Secrets
Insiders Should Not Decode Nuclear Secrets
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out you could get into trouble trying to sell sensitive nuclear information to a hostile foreign government.
No, it just takes a former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist who says he provided a report to a purported Venezuelan he says told him the country wants to develop a deterrent to nuclear weapons. P. Leonardo Mascheroni, a longtime critic of the management of U.S. nuclear weapons labs, said the report included only nonclassified information from the Internet. But there's a lot of information on the Internet, and knowledge of what's accurate can be very valuable but shouldn't be shared. He turned the $20,000 he got for the report over to the FBI. But he didn't get a promised $800,000 payment.
Mascheroni worked in LANL's X Division, which designs nuclear weapons. He was laid off in 1988. He says he's not a spy and was just trying to interest Venezuela in laser fusion, a process he advocates.
So, it's no surpise the FBI seized his computers, cellphones and records. And now Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is crying foul, that someone is trying to make his country look like the bad guy who wants nuclear weapons.
This is the stuff spy movies are made of, but in this case, a happy ending looks unlikely.
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