SCIENTIST DID NOT BREAK SECRECY LAWS RUSSIAN HAD NO ACCESS TO STEALTH WORK, PROBE FINDS.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - A Russian mathematician under investigation by federal authorities after he made unreported contacts with a Lockheed Martin Skunk Works employee in Palmdale has been cleared of any wrongdoing.

An investigation of Aleksey Yeremin by the Air Force Special Office of Investigation and the FBI determined that no classified information was lost and that there was no evidence of illegal activity.

Yeremin, the vice president of a Washington state software company and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, had been under investigation since 1997.

Agents were investigating whether Yeremin had gained access to stealth aircraft design technology through U.S. supercomputers.

``The Russian Academy of Sciences did have access to and extensive use of U.S. supercomputers for the purpose of running computations using a modeling code that the Russians developed,'' according to an OSI statement. ``However, at no time did the Russians have access to classified information within the supercomputers.''

Russian use of the supercomputers is not against the law.

``There is no indication in this case that the Russian's use of the supercomputers was detrimental to either the United States Air Force or the U.S. government,'' the statement said.

The investigation began when a Lockheed Martin security manager reported to federal agents that a company computer expert had made contact with Yeremin, but did not report that contact as required by security regulations. The computer expert is no longer employed by Lockheed Martin.

Over a three-year period, the computer expert met with Yeremin in Palmdale at least 15 times, according to a report by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

While with Lockheed Martin, the computer expert's job was to use computers to simulate how a radar wave reflects off the surface of a plane. The idea of stealth technology is to prevent that reflection so the wave echo doesn't return to the radar antenna and get read on a radar screen.

Yeremin's company had done work for Lockheed Martin. Yeremin was e-mailed part of Lockheed Martin's modeling program for designing stealth airplanes, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

In spring 1997, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the OSI launched the investigation, code-named Digital Demon. A short time later, Lockheed pulled the plug on its project with Yeremin: an ultra-high-speed, number-crunching computer program that was supposed to greatly accelerate stealth aircraft design work, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

``This case is an illustration of the tricky balancing act that has always existed in the United States, whereby the security interests of the military must be weighed against the free flow of scientific information, which benefits science and society and has helped make the United States great,'' the OSI statement said. ``While this balancing act is not new, it has certainly gained significance in today's digital world.''