A scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center pleaded guilty May 6 to a federal crime involving the use of a government computer to access child pornography in Maryland. The plea comes just three months after another NASA/Goddard scientist pleaded guilty to a similar charge. ("Dirty Look?" Mobtown Beat, Jan. 8).

Neither scientist was accused of a sex crime; instead, they were charged with breaking NASA regulations. If the recommended sentence in the latest case is adopted at a hearing scheduled for August, both defendants will have received probation without jail time. In other recent cases of child-porn prosecutions involving NASA workers in California, those convicted received long prison sentences.

The latest Maryland case involves Per Gloersen, an 81-year-old retired senior scientist at the Oceans and Ice Branch of NASA's Laboratory for Hydrospheric Sciences. Gloersen received a doctorate of physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1956, has long done important research on polar sea ice, and made significant contributions to understanding global climate change. According to court documents, Gloersen retained access to NASA after retirement due to his emeritus status. Information on NASA's web site indicates that, until recently, Gloersen was coordinator of NASA/Goddard's Summer Institute in Earth Sciences, a program aimed at providing college juniors with research opportunities.

On April 6, Gloersen was charged federally with one misdemeanor count of violating a NASA regulation that prohibits willfully damaging "any property or equipment" in NASA's custody, according to the charging papers. At the time, City Paper attempted to learn details of the allegation, but was met with silence from Gloersen (who was reached by phone at his Severna Park home), his attorney, Charles Waechter, and the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Since the vaguely worded charge, without clarifying details, could easily be misinterpreted to involve a wide range of alleged criminal conduct on Gloersen's part, City Paper's reporting on Gloersen's case was delayed until his first court appearance on May 6. At the appearance Gloersen--a short, thin man in a light brown suit, with a full head of tussled gray hair, who is hard of hearing and, as he told the judge, is on 11 prescription drugs to treat a variety of medical conditions--pleaded guilty.

According to a statement of facts included in his plea deal, Gloersen cruised for internet pornography on his NASA computer last year, resulting in the introduction of malicious code that caused more than $1,000 worth of computer damage. On Dec. 5, 2008, warrant-bearing investigators searched Gloersen's home, where they found 86 images of child pornography and listened to Gloersen admit that he had been downloading the images from his NASA computer to a thumb drive.

Under Gloersen's guilty-plea agreement, both the prosecution and the defense will recommend to the judge that he receive five years of probation and pay $1,000 in restitution. During his period of probation, Gloersen will be required to participate in mental-health and sex-offender treatment; prohibited from using an internet-enabled computer without prior written permission; and barred from being in the unsupervised company of minors. He also agrees to withdraw all of his rights to appeal the sentence, and to submit to forfeiture of property seized during the raid.

Gloersen's agreement mirrors the one approved by a judge on Feb. 6 for Alfred B. Schultz, a NASA/Goddard planetary scientist whose long career included collaborations with the Hubble Space Telescope, based in Baltimore ("Guilty as Charged," Mobtown Beat, Feb. 10). The only difference between the two is that Schultz is not required to pay restitution. Though both men committed essentially the same acts, the charge against Schultz--breaking a NASA regulation that "prohibits use of a NASA computer account to view child pornography"--was different than the one against Gloersen.

U.S. Attorney's Office spokeswoman Marcia Murphy explained in a May 11 e-mail that her office took several factors into account when handling Gloersen's case, including "the age and health of the defendant, the relatively small number of images, the absence of sadistic or masochistic images, the relatively brief period of time during which the images were downloaded, and the absence of any evidence that the defendant molested children or transmitted images." NASA did not respond by press time to e-mails and phone messages for this article.

Last year, three ex-NASA workers in California pleaded guilty to similar, computer-based conduct involving child pornography. Two received five years in prison, and the other got three years. When Schultz's sentence was handed down in February, a lawyer for one of the California defendants told City Paper that the scientist was "very lucky." The lawyer, who has handled dozens of such cases, added that he'd never before seen a child-porn case involving the use of government computers that resulted in charges for breaking regulations rather than for sex crimes. That makes Gloersen's case the second. Neither Gloersen nor his attorney would comment.

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