US: Defense Contractor Tried to Smuggle F-35 Blueprints to Iran

[unhappycamper]

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/us-defense-contractor-smuggle-35-blueprints-iran/story?id=21526270



US: Defense Contractor Tried to Smuggle F-35 Blueprints to Iran
Jan. 14, 2014
By LEE FERRAN

An engineer for a major American defense contractor tried to smuggle thousands of secret documents, including blueprints, on America's multi-billion-dollar F-35 stealth fighter to Iran in boxes labeled as "household goods," U.S. prosecutors say.

Mozaffar Khazaee, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, was reportedly arrested late last week as he was attempting to travel to Germany and then on to Iran. Weeks earlier, Khazaee had arranged for a shipping company to take boxes containing "sensitive technical manuals, specification sheets, and other proprietary material" related to the F-35 and its engines to a contact in Iran, according to an affidavit filed by a Special Agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations.

The reams of documents were discovered in November when Customs officers inspected a truck shipment Khazaee had sent from Connecticut to California, which was intended to go on to Hamadan, Iran, the affidavit said. The 44 boxes, which had been described to the shipping company as containing "books and college-related items, two suitcases, a vacuum cleaner and some other items," actually held "thousands of pages contained in dozens of manuals/binders relating to the JSF [F-35 Joint Strike Fighter] program."

Court documents describe Khazaee as having worked as an engineer for several defense contractors, leaving his most recent employer last August. None of the contractors are identified in the court documents, but the latest employer, Company A, is described as a Connecticut-based contractor that produced the F-22 Raptor's F-119 engine.

[Scuba]

1. Sounds like a diversion. The media for smuggling the docs is more likely a flash drive.

[Victor_c3]

2. As a federal employee who doesn't work in any semblance of a top secret area

thumb drives are very very very restricted where I work. You can't just plug one into any computer here. They have to be issued to you and all of them that are used here have thumb-print readers are them.

If you were to smuggle secret documents, I believe that you'd be stuck doing the old fashioned paper way.

[Scuba]

3. If you have crates of paper, it might be easier/less risky to scan them before smuggling.