Two (Americans) Held in Alleged Nuke Bomb Making for Venezuela

[TVDOC]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39235273/ns/us_news-security/

WASHINGTON — A scientist and his wife were arrested and indicted on charges of trying to help make a nuclear bomb for Venezuela, the Justice Department announced Friday.

Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, 75, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Argentina, and Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, 67, a U.S. citizen, were indicted on Thursday by a federal grand jury.

Both had worked as contractors at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the Justice Department said in a statement.

If convicted of all 22 charges in the indictment, the defendants face a potential sentence of life in prison, the department said.

,exerpted>

Balance at link.......

doc

[cavegal]

Wow how bad are they that THIS Justice Dept arrested them? This WH is pro Venezula.

[DLR Pyro]

the 2010 version of the Rosenbergs

[DefiantSix]

Wow how bad are they that THIS Justice Dept arrested them? This WH is pro Venezula.

Oh don't worry.  I'm sure Kaliph Barry _{piss be upon him} will have a word with that Holder guy, get him to plead it down to "improper handling of classified documents" or something.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Of course, at their ages, confinement awaiting trial could be a life sentence...

 

[Godot showed up]

Wow how bad are they that THIS Justice Dept arrested them? This WH is pro Venezula.

Twice as surprising---this WH is pro-US-being-attacked, too.

[true_blood]

Oh don't worry.  I'm sure Kaliph Barry _{piss be upon him} will have a word with that Holder guy, get him to plead it down to "improper handling of classified documents" or something.

HA HA! 
The red diaper doper baby will say next week that they, the DOJ, made a mistake and we'll never hear of it again!

[JohnnyReb]

SO, what's their DU name? You know they have one.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Venezuela apparently wasn't actually involved in this, it was an FBI counterintelligence operative posing as a Venezuelan agent to whom they were going to give the classified info.

[Duke Nukum]

Remember duringthe Clinton years, all the laptops and other thefts of information fomr Los Alamos?

[Mike220]

 

Remember duringthe Clinton years, all the laptops and other thefts of information fomr Los Alamos?

Yes and I always found the thefts strange. All China and their ilk had to do was ask and it would have been hand delivered.

[vesta111]

the 2010 version of the Rosenbergs

That was my first thought too DLR, it just don't pay to be a middle aged or senior scientist in the Government when the powers that be screwed up and need a scape goat.

[DefiantSix]

That was my first thought too DLR, it just don't pay to be a middle aged or senior scientist in the Government when the powers that be screwed up and need a scape goat.

Once again Vesta, you're wrong as a wee li'l ol' body could be.  The KGB's own records (released in the '90s, remember?) showed that Julius and Ethel were as guilty as sin of what they were charged with. 

I only regret that these clowns aren't going to get near the punishment that the Rosenbergs brought upon themselves.

[NHSparky]

Well, given the link between Venezuela and Iran being all buddy buddy, I'm guessing it'll be about 3 days before Holder releases them with the profuse apologies of the DOJ and White House, and Obama will be on television by the end of the week telling us how the FBI "acted stupidly".

[true_blood]

^^Ha ha!! Nice one Sparky.

[vesta111]

Once again Vesta, you're wrong as a wee li'l ol' body could be.  The KGB's own records (released in the '90s, remember?) showed that Julius and Ethel were as guilty as sin of what they were charged with. 

I only regret that these clowns aren't going to get near the punishment that the Rosenbergs brought upon themselves.

The KGB records released in the 90's were scripted by our CIA to prove any darn thing they wanted them to be.

After all those years of Spy vs Spy I do not believe one darn thing the Russians said at any time.

Had the Russian records said that the Rosenberg's had NOTHING to do with their developing their nuclear capability, do you really believe that the CIA or anyone would come out and say WE made a mistake and fried two innocent people ?

Get real,  no way would we admit to elocution of a middle age couple that were most likely innocent.     You want to believe what the Russians say--go for it---I would not trust them or our own CIA to tell us the truth.

Anyway you look at it this is a dirty business, someone has to be set up as a scape goat just in case.  

As for the idiot spy's that were in the military and sold for a pittance our  secretes, why are they still hanging about in prison, why were they not hung as traitors.?

If you wish to believe anything we got from the KGB , that is your choice, but I cannot believe the stuff on the Rosenberg's.

I believe that scientists working for us leaked the information on nuclear bomb making to to the Russians.

These people had friends and politions in high places.  They perhaps liberals  wanted to even the playing ground.  Remember most of our best scientists came from Germany after the war.  Who is to know just how pissed they were with us.  

When it came out that the Russians now were in the nuclear race, someone had to take the blame.   Like the Russians were to stupid to make build a nuclear bomb themselves.  

  Give me a break the Germans were only months behind us in making the A bomb.  [ something about heavy water what ever the heck that is held them back]  

 The game of Spy Vs Spy goes on, no one one either side will ever know the truth, never has never will be.

 

[NHSparky]

The KGB records released in the 90's were scripted by our CIA to prove any darn thing they wanted them to be.

The Verona Cables were "scripted" by the CIA?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project

Senior Army officers, in consultation with the FBI and CIA, made the decision to restrict knowledge of Venona within the government (even the CIA was not made an active partner until 1952).

Some of the earliest detailed public knowledge that Soviet code messages from WWII had been broken came with the release of Robert Lamphere's book, The FBI-KGB War, in 1986. Lamphere had been the FBI liaison to the code-breaking activity, had considerable knowledge of Venona and the counter-intelligence work that resulted from it. MI5 assistant director Peter Wright's 1987 memoir, Spycatcher, however, was the first detailed account of the Venona project, identifying it by name and making clear its long-term implications in post-war espionage.

Once again, FAIL.  You really should learn to know what the **** you're talking about before you post, toots.

[DefiantSix]

And the fact that the KGB documents just happen to jibe with the known data we had from the declassified Verona wiretaps is just a cruel, cruel cowinky-dink I guess?  

Gimme a break.  Julius and Ethel were commies, spied for the Soviets and took a well deserved ride on ol' Sparky when they were found out, ma'am.

[NHSparky]

Give me a break the Germans were only months behind us in making the A bomb.  [ something about heavy water what ever the heck that is held them back]

Actually, no--they weren't.  They were several years away, at least.  They did, however, have a wicked excellent delivery system for one had they ever managed to develop the bomb...

[DumbAss Tanker]

Sparky's on the money, both on the decrypts and the German nuke program, except that the decryption program was 'Venona.'  If anyone interested in this little bit of history is ever in the Fort Meade, MD, area, I strongly recommend they stop by the NSA Museum and have a chat with the guys there.  There is actually a large percentage of the traffic that has never been decrypted.  The fall of the Soviet Union enabled the program and decrypts to be (In large part) declassified, records in the KGB files confirmed a lot of things that the operators had learned from it but couldn't talk about back in the day.

Vesta, if you seriously think the current DOJ and administration wouldn't be all over a shot at discrediting the entire Atom Spy era and the Rosenberg case in particular like white on rice, I want some of whatever you're taking, at least as long as it won't show up on an Army piss test.

[NHSparky]

Whoops--Venona--my bad.  I'll bitchslap myself later.

And more likely than not, the DOJ will step all over their cranks in this case, just like they did with Wen Ho Lee.

[vesta111]

Whoops--Venona--my bad.  I'll bitchslap myself later.

And more likely than not, the DOJ will step all over their cranks in this case, just like they did with Wen Ho Lee.

Sparky, that is one heck of a story, Thank you.

Amazing the stuff I learn when I am wrong, if I were right on all the time I would learn nothing new.

[TheSarge]

Wow how bad are they that THIS Justice Dept arrested them? This WH is pro Venezula.

Given how unimportant things like Nuclear secrets are to the Dems...this one will probably end up like Wen Ho Lee.

[TheSarge]

Actually, no--they weren't.  They were several years away, at least.  They did, however, have a wicked excellent delivery system for one had they ever managed to develop the bomb...

Just when you think Vesta has sobered up...*hic*

[Godot showed up]

Just when you think Vesta has sobered up...*hic*

Well, it isn't like this isn't a topic of some controversy. People still argue about this; and I don't think, from what I've been reading, that the Germans were so far as "several years away"; my overall impression from what I've been able to find is that, had they been unmolested by bombing and not had to prioritize so much for the immediate war effort, that they might have been less than a year away. But even less than a year away is still far beyond nearly having it simultaneously with the US.

Good reading:


http://www.unmuseum.org/nbomb.htm


Some very informed opiners:


http://www.warhistoryfans.com/how-close-ware-the-germans-to-getting-a-nuclear-bomb-181574.html






I post this simply to point out that Vesta's opinion isn't so outre. Many informed people still argue, and in detail, about this.