Ex-Los Alamos physicist describes meetings

By The Associated Press Comments 0
Published: October 25, 2009

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — It’s a tale of intrigue, involving a nuclear weapons physicist at a national laboratory and a mystery man, supposedly from the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, fluent in Spanish and English.

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Late last year, that mystery man paid the scientist, P. Leonardo Mascheroni, $20,000 in cash left in a drop box at the Albuquerque airport, said Mascheroni, who claims he kept it in a closed envelope that was opened by FBI agents who searched his Los Alamos home Monday.

Mascheroni, in an interview at his home Thursday with The Associated Press, said he wasn’t interested in the money itself — not the $20,000 in the envelope nor the $800,000 he had asked for from the Venezuelan government for his work.

Instead, he said, his motives were pure: He wanted the chance to pursue his theories of nuclear fusion.

"People are going to say, ‘He really wanted the $800,000 and to disappear,’” Mascheroni said.

"But those are the guys who don’t know my character. … A person like me is driven by the science. I am that kind of a person who goes inside my world. I see global security as a very important part of my science.”

The story Mascheroni recounted Thursday seemed far removed from the quiet Los Alamos neighborhood where he lives amid Ponderosa pines and yellow-blooming chamisa in the foothills of the Jemez Mountains.

Last year, the 74-year-old scientist believed the Venezuelan government wanted him to produce a study on how to build a nuclear weapons program. In return, he asked for the $800,000, which he planned to use for his scientific work in New Mexico and persuade Congress to take a look at his theories.

Now, he believes the U.S. government is wrongly targeting him as a spy, an accusation he insisted is not true.

In the raid Monday, the FBI seized computers, letters, photographs, books and cell phones from the home of the former Los Alamos National Laboratory nuclear scientist.

No charges have been filed. An FBI spokesman confirmed the agency is pursuing an "ongoing investigation” in Los Alamos but declined further comment on the probe or on Mascheroni’s claims.

Mascheroni told the AP on Thursday — across a worn coffee table in his living room — that he only provided the mystery man, whom he called "Luis,” with unclassified materials found on the Internet.

He hoped the information would show Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that such a program was too impractical and expensive for the South American country.

Mascheroni said "Luis” was a man in his 40s from the Venezuelan embassy. The man told him: "The less that you know about me is the best for you.”