http://www2.nysun.com/article/74830 By JOSH GERSTEIN Staff Reporter of the Sun April 17, 2008 An unusual criminal prosecution concerning a professor's assignment of a Chinese graduate student to work on an Air Force unmanned drone technology project is part of an ongoing federal crackdown on China's efforts to gain American technology through academic exchanges, business deals, and old-fashioned espionage, officials said. The Justice Department's latest case, which originated at the University of Tennessee, is unprecedented, according to several analysts, because it rests on the notion that academic researchers effectively exported sensitive technical information by letting a foreign student have access to it. "It's the first university-based deemed export criminal case I'm aware of," a Washington lawyer who writes a Web log on export control issues, R. Clifford Burns, said. In Knoxville, Tenn., on Tuesday, Daniel Sherman, 37, entered a guilty plea to conspiring to violate the Arms Export Control Act while he served as the director of plasma research at Atmospheric Glow Technologies, Inc. Sherman and prosecutors said the conspiracy also involved a professor emeritus of electrical engineering who ran the plasma laboratory at the University of Tennessee, J. Reece Roth. In court papers, prosecutors said Sherman and Mr. Roth agreed to assign a Chinese graduate student, Xin Dai, to the military project without advising the Air Force or seeking a special export license. Mr. Roth has not been charged. His attorney, Thomas Dundon, declined to comment. The Air Force contracts involved the use of plasma to replace traditional mechanical flaps on the wings of unmanned aircraft. There is no suggestion in court papers that the research was classified, but prosecutors contend it could not legally be exported. "We have had a slew of cases in recent months and years involving illegal export of controlled and sensitive technology to China," a Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, said. In recent weeks, charges have been filed against a former Boeing engineer who allegedly sent space shuttle technology to China and against a former Motorola employee who was arrested after trying to fly to China with sensitive company documents. "There are a number of countries actively seeking out military and dual-use technology, and China is among the most aggressive," Mr. Boyd said. "When universities and others have contracts with the U.S. military to manage sensitive research, they know one of the stipulations of those contracts is not to disclose to foreign nationals." Whether Sherman knew, however, is unclear. At a plea hearing Tuesday, Sherman told a federal judge that he did not know it was illegal to have a Chinese national working on the Air Force research, according the Knoxville News Sentinel. Under federal law, only willful export violations can be prosecuted criminally, but a prosecutor, Jeffrey Theodore, said case law in the 6th Circuit allows a prosecution in cases involving "deliberate ignorance" of the legal requirements. Prosecutors said in court papers that Sherman and others told the Defense Department that they were "not proposing to use any non-U.S. citizen as part of any work" for one Air Force contract. The filings suggest that Mr. Roth made a similar assurance, but they are not definitive. Mr. Burns said those kinds of statements in contracting documents were probably not enough to prove a criminal violation. "That sounds like boilerplate to me," he said. "They probably should have read it, but they didn't." Xin Dai reportedly left the university in 2006. He could not be reached for this article. The charging document filed against Sherman also notes that an Iranian student, Sirous Nourgostar, worked in the plasma lab while the Air Force research was under way. "I'm not in trouble," Mr. Nourgostar, who still works in the lab, said yesterday. He said he has no connection to the Iranian government. "I'm not working for them," he said. The investigation of Mr. Roth has been watched with some concern in academic circles since May 2006, when it was reported that customs agents copied his laptop as he returned from a trip to China and that search warrants were executed at his office and laboratory. In July 2006, Mr. Roth told a Web site, Inside Higher Ed, that Air Force program managers knew he had a foreign student working with him before the contract was issued. "This whole imbroglio has such heavy police state overtures," he said. University officials who monitor compliance with export laws said the Tennessee case may have arisen because of the involvement of the for-profit company. Fundamental research universities do for publication is exempt from export laws, but proprietary data developed for a particular company enjoys no special treatment. "If you're blurring the lines between the work you do at one place and the work you do at another, you can quickly get into trouble," Patrick Schlesinger of the University of California said. Doing only publishable research also allows universities to avoid segregating foreigners, a task that may be impractical in physical science programs where American citizen students are often a minority. "If we want to preserve that safe harbor, we also need to be very vigilant," Steven Eisner of Stanford University said. "This particular case in Tennessee will wake up the university community to export controls if they weren't aware of it already." -==- Let identityLoveSock take your personal information into their wanting hands. http://www.identity-love-sock.com/ Because victims have money too.
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