Noshir Gowadia, U.S. Stealth Technology Expert, Guilty Of Selling Secrets To China

HONOLULU — The son of a former B-2 stealth bomber engineer who was convicted of selling military secrets to China vowed Tuesday to appeal the verdict.

Ashton Gowadia told The Associated Press an appeal is already in the works but can't be submitted until his 66-year-old father, Noshir Gowadia, is sentenced in November.

The elder Gowadia was found guilty Monday on charges that he designed a cruise missile component for China and pocketed at least $110,000. Prosecutors alleged he used the money to help pay a $15,000-a-month mortgage on a multimillion-dollar oceanview home he built on Maui's north shore.

But the 44-year old son, who works in the mortgage business and lives in Laguna Beach, Calif., said the jury ignored exculpatory evidence that should have cleared his father.

Three defense witnesses with long experience in the U.S. military industry testified that the information Noshir Gowadia provided to China was meaningless or was publicly available, Ashton Gowadia noted.

"They literally got out the textbooks, and they matched the stuff from the government's evidence to textbooks, one published in 1935 and another one published in 1969," Ashton Gowadia said from the Honolulu airport, where he was awaiting a flight to the mainland.

Jurors "had evidence to exonerate him," he added.

"They were actually shown a plethora of evidence to show that all this stuff was in the public domain and was freely exchanged between engineers and professors all over the world."

Prosecutors said the elder Gowadia revealed classified information to foreign powers at least twice: during a PowerPoint presentation on his cruise missile technology, and when he illustrated the effectiveness of his design by comparing it to American air-to-air missiles.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Sorenson said after the verdict was announced that Gowadia's case was unique because he had been prosecuted for and convicted of exporting knowledge derived from work in U.S. classified programs.

"If you can take that and go sell it or market yourself on an international stage in secrecy to other governments and not suffer criminal sanctions for it, then we're in trouble," Sorenson said Monday.

The younger Gowadia said his dad, who remains jailed at the federal detention center near the Honolulu airport, was devastated by the guilty verdict.

"We were stunned," he said.

"This is just absolutely heartbreaking. We were so confident that the truth would get out and that he'd be exonerated, especially when we had such high-profile witnesses," Ashton Gowadia added.

Noshir Gowadia's lawyers and prosecutors did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Comments

[Red King]

08:00 PM on 08/23/2010

Has anybody on Team Obama's counterintelligence squad hit the China reset button lately? Maybe this guy will get the same kind of penalty that was meted out to the Russian Facebook fakes who were bowling for the Kremlin instead of Columbine.

[phlegminglib]

11:18 AM on 08/13/2010

Hmm, so now it's a crime to sell public domain knowledge to China? (if what the son said was true)

[henrypapillon]

12:30 AM on 08/12/2010

This guy looks like Jon Lovitt.

[WorldisMorphing]

05:31 PM on 08/11/2010

What....?
...it's called balancing the universe with free flowing information...
What's wrong with it ...Is the US afraid of a little competition ?
What ? ...you mean the US is all for freedom and competition as long as its leading position is not jeopardized ?
Cowardly and lame by anyone standards if you ask me...
...and what's the US afraid of ? China starting a preemptive war ?
US preemptive wars as just and righteous and China's aren't ?

US needs to learn humility...

[statementOfIncensed]

11:40 PM on 08/11/2010

Name a nation which freely shares Intellectual Property relevant to national security- no, name a corporation which freely shares its Intellectual Property (aside from Microsoft inexplicably sharing it's Intellectual Property with China). I mean, hey, why spend all these tax dollars on training scientists and supporting their research if we can just free-load off of someone else?

And, no, the US's preemptive war in Iraq was unjust, unrighteous, and illegal. The neocons failed to apply the categorical imperative- can we will that all nations wage preemptive war upon eachother? Hell no, unless we can will the extinction of all humanity. It was therefore inethical. Hopefully, minds more enlightened than yours are at the helm in China. But who knows.

[WorldisMorphing]

12:14 AM on 08/13/2010

"...Intellectual Property relevant to national security-..."
You shouldn't repeat like a parrot preordained 'truths'...open your third eye instead.
Bill Hicks and George Carlin can help you...

[Marcus047]

11:07 AM on 08/11/2010

Don't they understand? This wasn't espionage, it was just capitalist. Pure, unbridled American capitalism.

[Veri]

09:02 AM on 08/11/2010

Public information and developing a cruise missile capable of hitting a target a thousand kilometers away are two different things. While the methods may be public domain, the precise technology used to achieve such methods are not quite as available.

The general knowledge is not the matter. The exact methods used to achieve the means mentioned in the 1930's and 60's textbook is another matter. Otherwise, many nations would have cruise missiles capable of achieving pinpoint accuracy at long range.

The conviction is most probably based on the precise technical know-how (materials, design, components) and not publicly available generalized know-how.

Besides, said individual signed a contract that included a secrecy clause. It was violated. He was convicted. That is what happens. Go to jail. No sympathy.

He did it for the money.

[RRK70]

04:22 AM on 08/11/2010

The irony of course is the fact that when the US runs out of money to pay for these expensive weapons systems the defense firms will start marketing them to the people in UAE, Saudi Arabia, India and China that DO have the money for them. At that point it will no longer be considered "espionage" but rather "sound business practice"

[Hard2kill]

03:38 AM on 08/11/2010

This man sounds un American to me.. why US trusted him BTW?

[xiaodashan]

01:19 AM on 08/11/2010

I sell secrets all the time here what s the big deal?I make it all up ....but jeez they are naive about us foreigners... this guy just peddled some secondhand research and used his position to bolster it s veracity...con men abound in Chinese business.,though an American trying to get in on the game is unusual.
As for Chinese intellectuals laughing at America(especially after attending a western university?)Don t be too sure.... they known the myriad problems in their own country and what unstable times we ve entered.I don t see China innovating much at all(rather relying on perfecting or modifying aquired knowledge in the Asian sense),and the openly intellectual clique is tiny and very distant from mainstream chinese society.guanxi and envy appear to hold back even the brighest students here,because at the top there are actually very few places to go,and beinga new member of the elite can be a very risky and constraining.

[mashtoe]

01:00 AM on 08/11/2010

There are immigrants who come here because they love America. Those are the outgoing folks you met and think how great immigration is.

Then there are the work visa immigrants who are here just for money. And they either "just ok" with the US or they quietly despise this place.

You really have wonder what this nation is thinking with it's H-1b programs. Why are we driving down wages, discouraging US students, and risking our national security? Is it just to save some money by not hiring Americans? Who does that benefit?

We need to remember that the reason someone came here matters. I hate to say it but the Bible even warns us about converts interested in money. Just shows this is a very old problem.

[JackTheSkipper]

10:19 PM on 08/10/2010

When he said he liked General Tso and went to the local Chinese restaurants, he wasn't talking about the food.

[speedntktz]

07:34 PM on 08/10/2010

Execute those guilty of treason and the few bad apples might reconsider. Had the situation been reversed China would loose no sleep over making an example of a bad apple.

[oxygen]

07:16 PM on 08/10/2010

soon if not already we will be looking to china for the newest secret technologies I fear

[mech126]

09:11 PM on 08/10/2010

That is, a real good fear to have IMHO......

[oxygen]

09:20 PM on 08/10/2010

thankyou my comrade

[jsarets]

02:37 PM on 08/10/2010

It's a nozzle skirt lined with phenolic-impregnated silica tiles. Big whoop. Everybody knows how these low-observable infrared exhaust ducts work. If you hire a guy like this, you accelerate your testing and validation process, but the Chinese military would have had enough resources to figure it out anyway, especially for a single-use expendable cruise missile. The guy should obviously be severely punished, as we have a clear interest in deterring such behavior, but we're really just delaying the inevitable with stuff like this and, for example, the Iranian nuclear program.

[oxygen]

09:26 PM on 08/10/2010

right, it is more of a scapegoat punishment type thing - the u.s. has had a lead on technology like this but with the educational system in china, their work ethic, the numbers of geniuses, etc - it is only fair to say we are probably behind them now in many things and I can only hope my government is wise enough to deal with these good people in an honest and professional way - the people now running around the globe on behalf of my government and my people are a joke and shamefully incompetent to be representing us or telling others in other countries what they should be doing - we must be the laughing stock of many a Chinese intellectual discussion

[mashtoe]

01:08 AM on 08/11/2010

Oh boy, how quickly we forget. 20 years ago China was 50 years behind the US in space technology. So good old Bill Clinton sent Boeing over to China to do a joint project. Clinton promised that we wouldn't lose our technical secrets to them.

Soon after that China was building it's next generation rockets that matched ours. And we know they were stealing our technology because we caught them.

You people forget so quickly.

Right now we are importing engineers from China, Russia, India, and everywhere in between. They all come here, learn our technology, and go home. We pay for the R

[StopMakingSense2]

01:55 PM on 08/10/2010

True patriots are hard to come by. Beware anybody making the claim! It is bestowed not claimed. Welcome to the era of get rich by hook or crook. Honest buck? Only a fool would..