Thread: Firm admits allowing foreign student access to military info

Firm admits allowing foreign student access to military information
AGT faces $10 million fine; retired UT prof's trial Monday
By Jamie Satterfield (Contact)
Originally published 12:47 p.m., August 20, 2008
Updated 12:47 p.m., August 20, 2008


A Knoxville technology firm admitted today to allowing a foreign national University of Tennessee graduate student access to information on the inner workings of military defense devices.

Atmospheric Grow Technologies Inc. pleaded guilty via a corporate representive at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan to 10 violations of the Arms Export Control Act.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Will Mackie said the firm could face a total fine of $10 million, although a plea deal struck with the firm through attorney Ralph Harwell, gives the publicly-traded business the right to try to convince Varlan it cannot afford to fork out that kind of cash.

Mackie said each of AGT's crimes also could put the firm on probation for as much as five years.

According to the plea agreement, the firm's board of directors is now admitting company officials knew UT Professor Emeritus J. Reece Roth and former AGT employee and ex-UT physicist Daniel Max Sherman were allowing Xin Dai of the People's Republic of China to work on munitions systems for the U.S. Air Force without notifying the Department of Defense.

Roth, who has denied charges in the case against him, is set to stand trial Monday in Varlan's court on allegations he lied to the Defense Department about using Dai and an Iranian graduate student on the technology AGT hired him to develop, gave them unfettered access to technical data on the project and even took that material to China in May 2006.

Varlan set a Dec. 8 sentencing hearing for AGT.

AGT was founded by, among others, Roth and Sherman but later went public. AGT's specialty involved the use of plasma technology created and developed by UT. The UT Research Foundation, a nonprofit owned and controlled by UT, held patents on the technology.

When AGT won contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, Roth, 70, was hired as a subcontractor to research and develop plasma actuator dynamic technology for use in the Air Force's unmanned air vehicles, or drones.

Sherman has pleaded guilty to conspiring with Roth to hide from the defense department that two foreign national students were being used in the research effort without government approval and given access to classified military information.

The News Sentinel first reported the story when authorities, including the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigation, seized Roth's laptop when he returned to Knoxville from a trip to China.



http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/aug/2 ... _headlines

CONTRACTS DON'T WANT TO E-VERIFY......COME ON, NOW

The News Sentinel first reported the story when authorities, including the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigation, seized Roth's laptop when he returned to Knoxville from a trip to China.

LAPTOPS ARE USED TO OFTEN THESE DAYS.... MAYBE SOME PEOPLE DON'T NEED LAPTOPS IN THE WORK SITES AND BODY SECURITY CHECKS OF EMPLOYEES ARE NEEDED.