http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KJ23Ak01.htmlDr Stewart Nozette, American space scientist and noted geophysicist, missile defense expert and leading lunar researcher at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), was arrested this week by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after being swept up in a sting operation aimed exclusively at him. It is a story that started to unfold three years ago.
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When an attempt was made just a few weeks ago to fly ISRO's Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe in tandem with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) so that the synthetic aperture radars on both spacecraft could engage in so-called bi-static observations of the lunar surface, Nozette was standing by to help ensure success on August 20 as these two spacecraft - only 20 kilometers apart - passed high over the Erlanger Crater at the lunar North Pole. He was principal investigator on the LRO's so-called Mini-RF radar system, and he had to go over the pointing problems that arose and ultimately caused this joint mission to fail.
It was left to Nozette to explain what had gone wrong. Readers all across India and around the world caught a brief glimpse of him via numerous newspaper and magazine articles.
"The gyros were drifting 0.8 degrees per hour," Nozette said at the time. "That was about 10 times worse than we thought."
Just prior to the sting operation by the FBI - indeed, the timing seems quite odd - Nozette was telling the global media that "ISRO should be congratulated".
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But it is the timing once again that is perplexing. Yes, there is much more to this than meets the eye. Just ask Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical intelligence at Texas-based STRATFOR, a global intelligence company.
"OK, there is more to it. It must be understood that Israel currently poses one of the most profound espionage threats to the United States - especially pertaining to defense technology - and they are very high on the FBI's list of counter-intelligence priorities," said Stewart.
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Nozette allegedly flew to "Country A" in January, but only after a US Transportation Security Administration screener at a Washington airport was astute enough to log his airline departure along with two computer thumb drives which did not make the return trip.
By September, the FBI came calling. Days after the above-described joint NASA-ISRO mission failure, Nozette's phone was ringing. Mossad was on the other end, Nozette was told. The caller was actually an undercover FBI agent.
Israel is livid about this ill-timed and unwelcome slap in the face by the FBI. On Tuesday, a day after the news broke about the Nozette affair, the Jerusalem Post turned to none other than Steve Rosen, former foreign policy chief at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
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What is known is that Nozette did meet with the Mossad FBI agent, did express his willingness to work for Israeli intelligence, did disclose that that he once held a very high level security clearance, did accept $11,000 in cash, did provide a single document and a single encrypted computer thumb drive, and did delve into sensitive and secret aspects of such things as vital US surveillance satellite systems, missile detection/early warning systems and communications intelligence information, among other things.
What is not known is how US and Israeli defense and intelligence officials reacted to the news.
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Just another strange twist to the tale of Nozette and his twin thumb drives - that are apparently still missing.
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what the heck is a thumb drive?
Metacrawler points me to a flash drive - apparently a thumb drive is a storage instrument?
wonder if the media will even mention this? I didn't even know ISRO and NASA tried a lunar probe together or that it failed. did you?
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