Lawyers Look to Exploit a Scientific Error

[sonomak]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/science/24scientist.html

September 23, 2010
Lawyers Look to Exploit a Scientific Error
By WILLIAM J. BROAD

The spying indictment filed late last week against a former Los Alamos scientist contains evidence of tape-recorded conversations, clandestine meetings, confidential places for the transfer of documents and a pattern of false statements.

But the indictment also contains a glaring scientific error, which is prompting debate among legal and nuclear experts on whether the government’s case could be hurt. “At a minimum, it’s incredibly sloppy but it tends to undermine the credibility of the entire indictment,” said Steven Aftergood, a security expert at the Federation of American Scientists. “Anyone who has read a book about nuclear weapons,” he added, would have spotted the mistake.

Federal prosecutors charged the scientist, P. Leonardo Mascheroni, and his wife, Marjorie, with trying to sell classified nuclear information to a foreign power. The two were arraigned Monday in Albuquerque and pleaded innocent. If convicted, both face up to life in prison.

According to the indictment, Dr. Mascheroni told an F.B.I. agent posing as a Venezuelan spy that a secret nuclear reactor could be constructed underground for “enriching plutonium,” the fuel of most nuclear arms. But specialists agree that reactors cannot enrich plutonium. .....

[Jim__]

1. Sloppy document preparation or a bullshit case?

The government will need some strong documentation to prove that the actual transaction that was agreed to was for uranium enrichment. Without that, the mistake, in and of itself, constitutes reasonable doubt.