A U.S. nuclear physicist under investigation by the FBI yesterday told the Associated Press that a study he gave to an ostensible Venezuelan government official on how to establish a nuclear weapons program contained only unclassified information that was intended to discourage the country from such a project (see GSN, Oct. 21).
Leonardo Mascheroni, a former Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear scientist, said he was paid $20,000 in cash with an additional $800,000 agreed to but never received for his work on the report. He said the report contained "unclassified materials found on the Internet," and was delivered last November through a post office box at the Albuquerque, N.M., airport to "Luis," who claimed to work at the Venezuelan Embassy.
Mascheroni said he wrote the report in hopes that the payment would allow him to further examine his hypothesis on nuclear fusion. He also said he hoped that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would see from the document that pursuing a nuclear weapons program would be too costly and unrealistic.
"People are going to say, 'He really wanted the $800,000 and to disappear,'" Mascheroni said. "But those are the guys who don't know my character. ... A person like me is driven by the science. ... I see global security as a very important part of my science."
Chavez has dismissed claims that his government had employed Mascheroni. He said that Venezuela wishes to build a civilian nuclear energy infrastructure with assistance from Russia.
The FBI spent 13 hours Monday combing over Mascheroni's home in Los Alamos. They found the envelope containing the $20,000, which the scientist said he never opened, and confiscated computers, books, cellular telephones and other material.
Investigators said they had caught Luis trying to exit the United States through Miami and had taken possession of the compact disc containing the study. Mascheroni said he was not sure whether Luis was an a actual Venezuelan government official or an undercover U.S. agent (Heather Clark, Associated Press/Google News, Oct. 22).