WASHINGTON (October 22, 2009)--A former government scientist arrested earlier this week tried to provide Israel with classified information on satellites and early warning defense systems, according to the grand jury indictment.

Stewart Nozette spent 16 years doing sensitive defense work for the Energy Department, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Earlier this week, a former colleague said that Nozette was primarily a defense technologist who had worked on the Reagan-era Star Wars missile shield effort, formally called the Strategic
Defense Initiative.

The former colleague, Stanford University professor Scott Hubbard, said Nozette worked on the Star Wars project at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

According to the indictment, Nozette worked there from 1990 to 1999.