Navy engineer charged in FBI sting
WASHINGTON – A civilian Navy engineer was named in a federal indictment unsealed Friday, alleging that the Virginia man attempted to steal schematic diagrams of the nuclear aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, for the Egyptian government.
Ahmed Awwad, 35, of Yorktown, Va., is charged with two counts of attempting to export defense material and technical data as part of an elaborate FBI sting operation launched in September.
A detention hearing is scheduled for Dec. 10, in Norfolk, Va. If convicted, he faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years on each count.
About seven months after he began working as a general engineer at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard's Nuclear Engineering and Planning Department, an FBI undercover agent, posing as an Egyptian intelligence officer telephoned Awwad Sept. 18, and speaking in Arabic, asked to meet him the following day in a Hampton, Va., park, according to court documents.
"During the meeting, Awwad claimed it was his intention to utilize his position of trust with the U.S. Navy to obtain military technology for use by the Egyptian government, including but not limited to, the designs of the USS Gerald Ford nuclear aircraft carrier,'' prosecutors alleged. "Awwad agreed to conduct clandestine communications with the undercover FBI agent by email and un-attributable telephones and to conduct 'dead drops' in a concealed location in the park.''
Weeks later, Awwad met with the undercover agent at a local hotel where he allegedly detailed a plan to copy sensitive documents without alerting authorities. At the same meeting, according to documents, the engineer provided the undercover agent with four drawings downloaded from the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Information system.
"During the discussion, Awwad indicated his understanding that the drawings would be sent to and used in Egypt,'' prosecutors allege. "Awwad also asked the undercover FBI agent for $1,500 to purchase a pinhole camera he would wear around the shipyard to photograph restricted material.''
Awwad, according to prosecutors, also provided the the undercover agent with passport photos to help with the production of phony documents so that he could later travel to Egypt.
In late October, prosecutors allege that the suspect retrieved $3,000 in cash from a pre-arranged drop site along a hiking trail and deposited an external hard-drive, which was later seized by the FBI.
As recently as last Friday, according to the documents, Awwad was observed in his office taking photographs of the aircraft carrier's design plans, before leaving his office with the schematics packaged in a cardboard tube.
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