A former scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory has been sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to pass nuclear bomb-making secrets to Venezuela. Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni pleaded guilty in 2013 to delivering classified information to an undercover FBI agent, whom he believed was a Venezuelan official.
Mascheroni was under investigation for about a year before being charged. The FBI seized computers, letters, photographs and books from his home. According to court documents, Mascheroni told the undercover agent that he could help Venezuela develop a nuclear bomb within ten years, including setting up a secret underground reactor to produce and enrich plutonium.
Mascheroni worked for around a decade in a nuclear weapons design division at Los Alamos, where the first atomic bomb was developed. He was laid off in 1988. In an interview, he said he had approached other countries after his ideas on cleaner nuclear power were rejected by the laboratory and later by congressional officials.
He claimed he approached Venezuela after the United States rejected his theories that a hydrogen-fluoride laser could produce nuclear energy. The US government has stated it does not believe Venezuela was actively seeking US nuclear secrets.
