Wanna-Be Venezuelan Spies in New Mexico

From the KOBTV4 video below:
The Venezuelan government was not involved. An FBI agent posed as Venezuelan official Luis Ramirez. Argentine born Pedro Mascheroni and his wife Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni approached the agent with a proposal for a nuclear Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) device to kill power in Manhattan, New York.


NPR reports that Pedro Mascheroni was disgruntled about the Department of Energy decision not to fund his pet project in the 1980's and lost his clearance over 20 years ago.


Other reports mention his pet project was a laser-fusion project and he was laid off during a 1980's reduction of force by the agency. He continued to be disgruntled to the point of calling the Department of Energy his enemy and having that in common with Hugo Chavez, leader of Venezuela.


Both reports say that documents related to the case were unsealed on September 17, 2010. SmokingGun.Com has not posted them yet.


Pedro was still in jail at the time of the reports. Marjorie was released by a judge and is under heavy surveillance.



The Albuquerque Journal covers some additional details:

And Mascheroni had other plans for Hugo Chavez's government, court documents say. He suggested an explosion over New York that could produce an "electromagnetic pulse" to knock out the metropolis' electrical power and a laser that could blind satellites; in Venezuela, a secret underground reactor for enriching uranium below an open, above-ground nuclear power plant, along with an underground facility for undetectable tests of "micro-bombs"; and making Venezuela Latin America's defense "umbrella" able to retaliate against attacks with nuclear bombs.

Read more:ABQJOURNAL NEWS/STATE: Ex-LANL Scientist Accused of Spyinghttp://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/1803123state09-18-10.htm#ixzz0zshO3iw1

In a departure from the other stories, they say the FBI agent used the name "Luis Jimenez".


Update: Even Slashdot beat me by a day :(

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via Slate: Hugo Boss

Hugo Boss



What I learned about Hugo Chávez's mental health when I visited Venezuela with Sean Penn.

By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, Aug. 2, 2010, at 11:11 AM ET

Recent accounts of Hugo Chávez's politicized necrophilia may seem almost too lurid to believe, but I can testify from personal experience that they may well be an understatement. In the early hours of July 16—just at the midnight hour, to be precise—Venezuela's capo officiated at a grisly ceremony. This involved the exhumation of the mortal remains of Simón Bolívar, leader of Latin America's rebellion against Spain, who died in 1830. According to a vividly written article by Thor Halvorssen in the July 25 Washington Post, the skeleton was picked apart—even as Chávez tweeted the proceedings for his audience—and some teeth and bone fragments were taken away for testing. The residual pieces were placed in a coffin stamped with the Chávez government's seal. In one of the rather free-associating speeches for which he has become celebrated, Chávez appealed to Jesus Christ to restage the raising of Lazarus and reanimate Bolívar's constituent parts.

That is the Hitchens introduction. I must confess that I do not read him often enough and a later passage in the article reminds me why:

It did not take long for this hero-obsession to disclose itself in bizarre forms. One evening, as we were jetting through the skies, Brinkley mildly asked whether Chávez's large purchases of Russian warships might not be interpreted by Washington as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine. The boss's response was impressively immediate. He did not know for sure, he said, but he very much hoped so. "The United States was born with an imperialist impulse. There has been a long confrontation between Monroe and Bolívar. … It is necessary that the Monroe Doctrine be broken." As his tirade against evil America mounted, Penn broke in to say that surely Chávez would be happy to see the arrest of Osama Bin Laden.


I was hugely impressed by the way that the boss scorned this overture. He essentially doubted the existence of al-Qaida, let alone reports of its attacks on the enemy to the north. "I don't know anything about Osama Bin Laden that doesn't come to me through the filter of the West and its propaganda." To this, Penn replied that surely Bin Laden had provided quite a number of his very own broadcasts and videos. I was again impressed by the way that Chávez rejected this proffered lucid-interval lifeline. All of this so-called evidence, too, was a mere product of imperialist television. After all, "there is film of the Americans landing on the moon," he scoffed. "Does that mean the moon shot really happened? In the film, the Yanqui flag is flying straight out. So, is there wind on the moon?" As Chávez beamed with triumph at this logic, an awkwardness descended on my comrades, and on the conversation.

Sean Penn actually believes bin Laden is a criminal who should be apprehended? I suspect the only way I read it in Slate is because Hitchens wrote it.

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