A leading NASA scientist credited with helping discover water on the Moon pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges he tried to sell US defence secrets to Israel for two million dollars. Judge Deborah Robinson rejected a bail request from Stewart David Nozette, who was arrested in an October 18 sting operation, saying he was considered a flight risk and should remain in jail pending trial.
Nozette, 52, is charged with two counts of attempted espionage for allegedly trying to sell secrets to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer. Court documents from the prosecution accused Nozette, who for years had a high-level US government security clearance, of seeking "roughly two million dollars as compensation for his espionage."
He "delivered and communicated this classified information to an individual he believed was an Israeli intelligence officer in exchange for an alias, a foreign passport, and cash payments," they said. The FBI also searched Nozette's safe deposit box at a bank in San Diego, California where they discovered 55 gold 'Krugerrand' coins worth a total of 50,000 dollars and 30,000 dollars in savings bonds, the court documents said.