I don't see what could possibly go wrong here...

[azasadny]

Hiring an Iranian national to work on a sensitive military project... I don't see what could possibly go wrong here...

Ex-Pratt Worker Allegedly Tried To Ship F-35 Files To Iran
Company Says It Is Cooperating With Authorities

Federal authorities arrested Mozaffar Khazaee at Newark Liberty International…January 13, 2014|By BRIAN DOWLING, bdowling@courant.com, The Hartford Courant
Pratt & Whitney said Monday it is cooperating with authorities after federal agents arrested a former employee for trying to ship documents to Iran related to the U.S. military's Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.

The East Hartford defense contractor, the sole manufacturer of the aircraft's engine, declined to comment on how Mozaffar Khazaee, 59, slipped thousands of pages of documents, diagrams, blueprints and technical manuals out the door before he was laid off in August along with hundreds of other employees.

Federal authorities arrested Khazaee at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Thursday before he could board a plane bound for Frankfurt, Germany, to meet a connecting flight to Tehran, Iran, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Connecticut.

Pratt and the Pentagon are highly sensitive about compliance issues after Pratt parent United Technologies Corp. paid $75 million in 2012 to settle charges that Pratt and another UTC unit violated arms control laws and made false statements about exporting military helicopter software to China.

Company spokesman Ray Hernandez said in an emailed statement that the company "has been fully cooperating with the government on this matter and will continue to do so."

The evidence against Khazaee — filed in an affidavit that was unsealed by a federal judge in Bridgeport after the arrest was made — shows how authorities learned of his plan to ship dozens of boxes, labeled as household goods, to western Iran on a large container ship. Documents filed by federal agents do not address a motive.

In October, Khazaee hired a company to ship the boxes from his apartment on Oakland Street in Manchester to the port in Long Beach, Calif., where they were to be loaded onto the NYK Libra, according to court documents.

In late November, customs agents at the port inspected the shipment and found the documents, and days later identified them as belonging to three separate companies. Documents obtained by federal authorities indicated that the ultimate recipient of the shipment would be Khazaee's brother-in-law, Mohammad Payendah in Hamadan, Iran, the affidavit said.

Khazaee became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1991, according to the affidavit. He holds U.S. and Iranian passports and has traveled to Iran five times in the past seven years.

The shipment mainly contained documents related to military aircraft engines, including the F-35 Lightning II built by Lockheed Martin and what federal agents referred to as the J136 engine, which could refer to the F136 engine designed, though ultimately not built, by General Electric and Rolls-Royce for the F-35.

The shipment also included cookware, dishes, an English-Persian dictionary, medicine bottles, college documents, printed emails, an expired Iranian passport and credit card bills addressed to Khazaee's Manchester residence, according to the affidavit.

The bills and medicine bottles identified Khazaee, but so did his fingerprints found on the packaging tape on three of the boxes, according to authorities.

Khazaee worked on a team at Pratt that conducted strength and durability evaluations for components in all of the company's engines, including the F119 engine for the military's F-22 Raptor engine, the affidavit said. He was laid off in August, when Pratt cut about 400 positions throughout the company.

Months later Khazaee left his Manchester apartment and moved to Indianapolis.

Khazaee lived in Indianapolis in 2005, when he filed for bankruptcy after amassing tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. According to court documents, he had $69 in cash and owed $53,681.46 when he filed for bankruptcy.

At the time, he was a contractor for Volt Services, a large, technical staffing and job placement company. He listed his place of employment as Rolls-Royce Avenue in Indianapolis.

[GH85Carrera]

They just need to replace him with a Chinese national or maybe a Russian.

[onewhippedpuppy]

No mention of a security clearance, I would think that anyone associated with those programs would need to have a Secret clearance. Even though he was a naturalized US citizen, I find it hard to believe that anyone with strong ties to Iran would be granted one.

[azasadny]

You would think so, wouldn't you?

[BReif61]

Isn't the agency that does clearances SUPER backed up? I feel like I remember hearing that they're really doing a lot of provisional/temporary clearances right now; maybe this guy just slipped through the cracks?

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by azasadny

Hiring an Iranian national to work on a sensitive military project... I don't see what could possibly go wrong here...

Is that the way it is?

Khazaee became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1991, according to the affidavit. He holds U.S. and Iranian passports and has traveled to Iran five times in the past seven years.

Does holding a passport from each country make you a dual citizen by default?

In October, Khazaee hired a company to ship the boxes from his apartment on Oakland Street in Manchester to the port in Long Beach, Calif., where they were to be loaded onto the NYK Libra, according to court documents.

In late November, customs agents at the port inspected the shipment and found the documents, and days later identified them as belonging to three separate companies. Documents obtained by federal authorities indicated that the ultimate recipient of the shipment would be Khazaee's brother-in-law, Mohammad Payendah in Hamadan, Iran, the affidavit said.

I think they only open about 3% of the shipping containers, relying on manifests and scans of some sort for everything else.

Was this inspection as random as it sounds, or were the authorities on to him?

An interesting case.

[MRM]

In the 1970s when the Soviets were sponsoring Mideast terrorists against western targets, the KGB used to talk about the "Abdul factor," as in, the KGB had to dumb down every plot so that the stupidest Abdul couldn't screw it up. The list of terrorist plots that exploded on their own because of incredibly stupid things done by the would-be terrorists is incredible. I know Iranians are Persian, not Arabic, but it seems the same factor is at work here. Did this man never hear of a scanner and thumb drive? Or how about email? The internet? Digital cameras? Sorry, I don't mean to give the enemy new technology. It just seems a bit slow thinking to pack up boxes of documents and try to ship them with household goods all the way to Iran.

Anyway, if he has US citizenship, he is no longer an Iranian national, he is officially an American and is able to qualify for work on government projects. My wife's company does some defense contracting work. She was born in China but became a citizen years ago. Her boss is a German national who works in the US with all the proper paperwork, but he is not a US citizen. So she is allowed to go to the super secret government contracting facility and he isn't. But they did tell her she was checked out by the FBI before they gave her clearance to enter. So we have that going for us. She travels to China several times a year, mostly for business, but she sees family there too.

You can't just exclude all foreign-born US citizens from defense projects and still get the work done. And even if you did, you haven't taken care of the issue of first generation Americans whose loyalty is to the old country. And then you have American born Americans who convert to some other ideology and become agents against America. And then you have Americans who are desperate for money and become easy prey to foreign interests, people subject to blackmail . . . . In other words, there's no way to eliminate espionage threats by nation of natural origin, ethnicity, or religion. You have to clear each person individually and monitor them carefully.

Still, a defense contractor who makes frequent family visits to Iran, doesn't have a business purpose, and still holds an Iranian passport should have garnered some extra attention, especially when he got laid off and started making plans for a big move back to the mother country. Maybe that's how they caught him.

To answer the final question, the US only controls whether it issues you a US passport or not. The US does not recognize dual citizenship and does not issue companion passports. But the US cannot prevent another country from recognizing an American national as a citizen of that country and issuing a passport. It would be up to the US to decide that holding multiple passports and status constituted sufficient loyalty to a different government to justify revoking the passport and citizenship status. You'd think that maybe holding an Iranian passport would be mutually exclusive to a naturalized US citizen.

[kach22i]

Originally Posted by MRM

Anyway, if he has US citizenship, he is no longer an Iranian national, he is officially an American ............

Thank you for all the information, a good post.

[gacook]

Partially agree/disagree with you, MRM. If you have ties to certain countries, you are NOT granted a clearance, period, until your background and associations have been very heavily vetted; whether you're a U.S. citizen or not. Iran is supposed to be one of those countries. IF this guy had a clearance (and I doubt it), I can pretty much guarantee it was an interim (which means they've checked out a few things, but haven't been thorough enough to grant full clearance, yet), and even then, it was only granted because someone screwed up.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by MRM

Anyway, if he has US citizenship, he is no longer an Iranian national, he is officially an American and is able to qualify for work on government projects. My wife's company does some defense contracting work. She was born in China but became a citizen years ago. Her boss is a German national who works in the US with all the proper paperwork, but he is not a US citizen. So she is allowed to go to the super secret government contracting facility and he isn't. But they did tell her she was checked out by the FBI before they gave her clearance to enter. So we have that going for us. She travels to China several times a year, mostly for business, but she sees family there too.

Originally Posted by gacook

Partially agree/disagree with you, MRM. If you have ties to certain countries, you are NOT granted a clearance, period, until your background and associations have been very heavily vetted; whether you're a U.S. citizen or not. Iran is supposed to be one of those countries. IF this guy had a clearance (and I doubt it), I can pretty much guarantee it was an interim (which means they've checked out a few things, but haven't been thorough enough to grant full clearance, yet), and even then, it was only granted because someone screwed up.

Yup. MRM, it doesn't sound like your wife has a security clearance. Due to ITAR export control restrictions, foreign nationals aren't allowed access to documents and information related to most forms of defense and national security. Hence why her German national boss can't visit these government facilities. A true security clearance is far more comprehensive. You have to fill out a huge questionnaire about essentially your last eight (I think) years of life. Foreign nations you have visited, any and all foreign associates, prior employers, all places of residence, neighbors who knew you, friends, family, legal issues, drug and alcohol use, gambling, etc. You have an interview with a DSS agent who quizzes you on your answers and looks for inconsistencies. In some cases they will personally contact former associates, coworkers, neighbors, and friends to ask about you. It is a process that takes months, IF you are approved. That's just for a Secret, higher levels are far more comprehensive.

[MRM]

Certainly, Matt. I didn't mean to suggest my wife had any clearance or that all US citizens automatically got it. She got "cleared" to enter some factory or another. I just meant that you can't get a security clearance without being a US citizen and once you naturalize you qualify to apply for clearance. I just thought it was funny because she can enter the site since she is naturalized, her boss can't because he isn't. Apparently her association with me didn't cause enough concern to get her red flagged. I think my file has a "mostly harmless" tag on it.