WASHINGTON — The United States has charged a leading military engineer with transferring classified information to China, Israel and other countries.
A federal grand jury in Honolulu has indicted Noshir Gowadia for allegedly sending military secrets to China, Germany, Israel and Switzerland. The 18-count federal indictment handed up Nov. 15 does not detail the charges. Gowadia, a 62-year-old engineer who worked for 18 years at Northrop Grumman, could face the death penalty. His trial was expected to begin in January 2007 in Honolulu.
"As charged in the superseding indictment, the defendant in this case attempted to profit from his know-how and his knowledge of sensitive military technology," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein said.
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Former Northrup Corp. engineer Noshir Gowadia has been living in this house in rural Huelo, Maui.
gkubota@starbulletin.com
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"This case demonstrates that the DoJ [Department of Justice] will vigorously prosecute those who illegally transfer such information and services to foreign countries."
Gowadia, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in India, was also charged with sending classified U.S. stealth technology to China. Gowadia, arrested in November 2005, reportedly was involved in designing the B-2 stealth bomber's propulsion system.
The indictment said Gowadia designed for China a low-observable cruise missile exhaust system nozzle to reduce the chances of enemy detection and interception.
Gowadia was also charged with attempting to sell Germany and Israel stealth technology capable of concealing the signature of commercial aircraft.
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Noshir S. Gowadia
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The indictment does not say whether Germany and Israel received the stealth technology.
The indictment has sparked allegations from members of the U.S. national security community that the FBI has played down Israeli espionage. The last person arrested for spying for Israel was Jonathan Pollard, then a U.S. Navy analyst, who was sentenced to life in prison. Israel has denied any link to Gowadia.
"Our closest ally in the Middle East, a recipient of more than $2 billion a year in direct U.S. aid, is aggressively spying on us," said Jeff Stein, national security editor of Congressional Quarterly. "Not only that, Israeli spymasters are largely exempt from U.S. prosecution on espionage charges, say past and present counterintelligence agents, unless their activities cannot be ignored."
CQ quoted a senior FBI official as saying much of Israel's intelligence gathering in the United States has been overlooked. The official said only when "their activities become really egregious do they get prosecuted."
John Cole, an FBI counter-intelligence agent who retired in 2004, said he worked on 125 cases of alleged Israeli espionage from 1993 to 1995. Cole told CQ that this represented nearly half the investigations conducted in his so-called Global Unit, which until 2002 did not include China or Russia. In one case, he said, the Justice Department refused to prosecute a U.S. military civilian suspected of transferring secrets to an Israeli officer.
