University of Tennessee emeritus professor J. Reece Roth, 71, was sentenced to four years in prison last week for breaking the Arms Export Control Act reports the Knoxville News Sentinel
Roth was prosecuted for allowing two graduate research assistants—one from Iran and one from China—to access sensitive military arms information related to a US Air Force contract on studying the use of plasma technology on unmanned military aircraft. Roth also disclosed some of his research in lectures given abroad in China.
US District Judge Tom Varlan said Roth's actions could have caused "harm to the security of the United States." The Air Force scrapped the research project, although there was no testimony at Roth's trial last year that any foreign government had accessed the information or that Roth ever had tried to sell or give the information to foreign governments says reporter Jamie Satterfield.
Roth was twice warned by UT officials about the following law before he was arrested.
Paul Guinnessy
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Ex-UT prof gets 4 years for mishandling defense secrets
