https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/ex-lanl-scientist-pleads-guilty-to-lying-to-government/article_85c1b06c-3ec6-11ea-b962-0bde11da0101.html
ALBUQUERQUE — A former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist accused of lying about his contact with a Chinese recruitment program pleaded guilty Friday to one count of making a false statement to the U.S. government.
Turab Lookman of Santa Fe accepted the plea as part of an agreement with federal prosecutors that includes dismissal of two other charges.
Lookman will be sentenced at a later date, probably within 60 to 90 days, federal prosecutor George C. Kraehe said.
He could face up to five years in federal prison and be fined as much as $250,000.
Lookman, who was 67 when he was arrested, admitted to lying to a LANL investigator in 2018 about his contact with a program that prosecutors said had been “established by the Chinese government to recruit people with access to and knowledge of foreign technology and intellectual property.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge B. Paul Briones told Lookman that the 10-month sentence the defendant had discussed with attorneys was “on the low end” and would not be binding to the U.S. district judge who will decide whether to accept the terms of the plea deal.
25 comments:
What was the motive? Was it just about money or ego?
Same thing happened to the head of the Harvard Chemistry department:
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/28/800442646/acclaimed-harvard-scientist-is-arrested-accused-of-lying-about-ties-to-china
China is getting very aggressive in its efforts. Makes the Wen Ho Lee and Peter Lee cases look amateurish.
Maybe some ego but mostly money, I think. A Harvard University chemistry professor (Charles Lieber) was also in the news recently after being arrested for lying about his involvement in this same “Thousand Talents” Chinese program to lure American scientific talent and knowledge.
-Doug
This is bad, if you want the Chinese researchers to go home, you’ll only have Americans and that’s a major losing scenario as far as the economic competition goes. If you go to CS ,math and STEM graduate programs around the US, you’ll see they are dominated by Chinese students, who are much better than the American students. It’s a double edged sword. Chinese are also at the top places in the UK and Europe. You can run around with FBI agents as you like but your ideas won’t fix the problems of US competitiveness. Already Chinese academic institutions are close to or ahead of the US. For AI, the best place now might be Tsinghua. You know faculty might just be going to China now to bring back their ‘secrets’. hard for you to imagine, I guess.
I like what 7:17 said about the FBI. I would also say that, yes, you can obey the intelligence community, but you’re not going to make any $$$. That’s the dilemma. It’s the reason why Britain is adopting Huawei 5G over the objection of the US Intelligence community. They’re not going to throw away their economy to do what some intelligence analyst in DC recommends they should do. If there is serious money to be made by working with the Chinese, professors in the US are going to go for that. Look at what happened to Google and Facebook. They work closely with the intelligence community and, as a result, they’re banned in China. They always will be banned and their growth will ultimately be limited.
7:17 that's not the point. YOu can work with foreign researchers but if you have a Q clearance and are asked to report all foreign connections to sensitive countries, then you need to comply, and you'll most likely get interrogated. Lying about it and getting caught later will end in the loss of your job or worse.
If you want to play with China and lie about your citizenship, financials and foreign contacts, go do it in academics or industry. You have no business working at a weapon's lab holing a security clearance.
1/30/2020 12:40 PM
You have seriously misrepresented what the Brits are doing with Huawei and 5G. There are plenty of boundaries and controls in effect. Just what the US should be doing if it ever wants 5G at all.
If you want to play with China and lie about your citizenship, financials and foreign contacts, go do it in academics or industry. You have no business working at a weapon's lab holing a security clearance.
1/31/2020 1:25 PM
It looks like academics might not be the best place for this kind of game either. The issue is that 1/2 or graduate students in STEM are Chinese so how are you going to deal with this, since professors prefer Chinese students from US students for a number of reasons.
To be fair to the US Professors I understand why they want Chinese students since they do not have worry about which pronouns to use, diversity issues, or trigger warning. Students from China also don't say "Ok Boomer" when you suggest something.
"If you want to play with China and lie about your citizenship, financials and foreign contacts, go do it in academics"
Oops, what about Charles Lieber at Harvard? I guess even university profs have to follow the law now!
7:17 is either really naive or in complete denial about the Thousand Talents program. This isn’t about collaborating with foreign scientists and publishing papers. This is a recruiting mechanism under the guise of technology, to recruit US scientists for industrial espionage or worse. The fact Lookman and The Harvard professor both lied about their relationship to government agencies, tells you all you need to know.
2/01/2020 6:01 AM
Maybe they where just so dedicated to science that they felt they had to bend a few rules for the sake of mankind. Of course the thousands of dollars does not hurt.
By the way there are hundreds of US professors that have this deal with China, the question is how many are on the up and up and how many are in the grey area? Maybe the Lieber thing is just a way to send a message that this stuff is not going to fly anymore.
Here are a few facts about STEM education in the US
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/10/11/foreign-students-and-graduate-stem-enrollment
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/education/edlife/american-graduate-student-stem.html
81% of graduate student in electrical engineering are international
79% Computer science
62% Mechanical engineering
59% Civil Engineering
57% Chemical Engineering
55% Mathematics
45% Physics
The drop out rate for US students is higher. As for quality that is harder to measure but
if you visit any University they say how much better the international students are and it is true that the scores and grades for them is much higher. I would guess that 2/3 of the international students are from China.
That foreign students come with cash in hand doesn't hurt their prospects for top spots in US diploma mills.
That foreign students come with cash in hand doesn't hurt their prospects for top spots in US diploma mills.
2/01/2020 3:47 PM
I think most of the graduate students foreign or international are paid by the universities for teaching and as research assistants. At the undergraduate level this is a different story and there are indeed lots of students from China paying full price to get bachelors degrees at US colleges.
I am not exactly sure what you mean by Dipolma mills. It is true that guys like Lieber have about 15 graduate students and 10 postdocs so it sort of mass production approach to science and degrees. Once you get big enough the money starts flowing to you. Private donors want to give money to science in some cases but have no real idea where to send it so a safe place is to give to give it to the biggest groups at the top places. This means these groups get even bigger and attract more money...ect. China than wants to say they have the best people working for them so they pay millions of dollars to some professors to come out for a few months every year and so it goes. They then get another group going with 5-10 graduate students going in China leading to more papers which than leads to more money. Eventually a singularity must be reached and you get a Noble prize or someone goes to jail. I think the rap music industry works the same way. Universities commonly refer to professors like these as "Rock star faculty".
I guess no one though about the negative aspects of having such a "rockstar" mentality amongst the faculty.
Don't even get me started with all the professors associated with Jeffrey Epstein and the Epstein money. A professor at MIT (Seth Loyd) is now on leave for not disclosing money given to him by Epstein. Oddly enough this professor used to be at LANL.
Will to power
This former LANL employee is facing up to 5 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000 for lying to authorities about his involvement with a Chinese recruitment program. The former LLNL employee that stole 40 tons of copper from 2011 to 2014 worth $117,000, is ordered to pay back $40,000, allowed to resign, and gets probation.
2/08/2020 8:38 AM
Totally different cases, different people.
"Totally different cases, different people."
Yes. The LANL case may involve an employee adequately disconnected from contractor accountability and ownership. On the other hand, the LLNL material theft that went undetected for 3 years, could be viewed as an extended failure on the part of that contractor. As such, how the LLNL contractor dealt with the $117,000 material thief may have avoided unfavorable consequences to their own bottom line.
Apples and oranges. Just not relevant to a national security case. We can talk about Mustangs and all the the BS low level petty crimes, but it has nothing to do with this case,
2/09/2020 9:58 AM
Totally different case, totally different people. There are issues with pushing the LLNL case that do not arise in the LANL case. You need to get with the times.
Except the Mustang thing never actually happened, except in the minds of LANL haters.
"Except the Mustang thing never actually happened, except in the minds of LANL haters."
Perhaps not, but:
"The (LANL) whistleblowers alleged that other lab employees have used government credit cards to purchase diamond jewelry, customized golf equipment, refrigerators, and televisions and VCRs. Walp and Doran confirmed this, adding that “literally thousands of items” have been bought without authorization. Doran said it would take “six hours” to list everything they had uncovered. The two were particularly disturbed that managers allowed the offenders to repay the lab and then quietly resign. Title 18 of the U.S. federal code authorizes prosecution of such activities as federal crimes."
Walp and Duran were fired for cause. They thought they were hired to be cops instead of security investigators. They weren't. Plus, your quote doesn't mention mustangs.
"Walp and Duran were fired for cause. They thought they were hired to be cops instead of security investigators. They weren't. Plus, your quote doesn't mention mustangs."
The quote did not mention mustangs, pink elephants, unicorns, or any other red herrings. You did not directly challenge the tangible thefts that were quoted. Instead, you wanted to focus on and discredit the messengers. That's fine. It is suggested that LANL management at the time played the same minimize the damages card when they fired Walp and Duran. If you were around at the time of the LANL thefts, you'd know there was an unprecedented growth of TRRs at LANL and LLNL to mitigate future thefts not imagined ones. If in good faith, you offered information that undermined or countered how LLNS was addressing and reporting the recent $117,000 copper theft at LLNL from 2011 to 2014, do you think you might be fired for cause for "unrelated" reasons? Follow the money (PER award fees).
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