Ex-Northrop Engineer Gets Life for Spying

Former Northrop Corp. aerospace engineer Thomas Patrick Cavanagh was sentenced today to life in prison by a federal judge who described Cavanagh’s efforts to sell secrets of the U.S. “stealth” bomber to the Soviets as “the most grievous crime one can commit.”

U.S. District Judge Matthew Byrne Jr. actually imposed two life terms to be served concurrently after Cavanagh, on the verge of tears, threw himself on the mercy of the court and apologized for betraying “the country that I love, my fellow Americans, the company I enjoyed working for and the people I worked with by my desperate and disgraceful acts.”

Cavanagh slumped down in his chair when he heard the sentence imposed. His attorney, Manuel Araujo, later told reporters: “He couldn’t believe it. He twice asked me, ‘Did I really get life?’ He was just shocked.”

Araujo had asked Byrne to give Cavanagh a 10-year sentence, “which is a considerable amount of time to a man who is 40 years old but would allow him to still rebuild his life.” Outside the courtroom, the defense attorney said he had hoped for “nothing worse than 25 years.” Assistant U.S. Atty. Percy Anderson had urged imposition of a 99-year sentence, telling Byrne: “Frankly, Mr. Cavanagh is a traitor. I know that is a rather harsh description, but I think it is an accurate one.”

Cavanagh, an engineer at Northrop’s Pico Rivera facility, was arrested in December after contacting the Soviet consulate in San Francisco and the Soviet Embassy in Washington in an effort to sell secret documents about the “stealth” bomber program, which is designed to make U.S. planes invisible to Russian radar systems.

He was intercepted by FBI agents posing as Soviet operatives. The agents arrested him Dec. 18 after he accepted $25,000 in exchange for secret documents that Byrne today described as “relating to one of the most significant military projects in this country.”