Guilty Plea in Missile Parts Smuggling Case

A former executive of an aerospace defense company Friday pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge in a scheme to smuggle components of a sophisticated U.S. missile system to Egypt.

James Huffman, 47, of Lexington, Ohio, Midwest marketing representative for Teledyne, McCormick, Selph until his arrest last June, entered the plea to a charge of conspiring to export restricted munitions.

In a plea bargain with federal prosecutors, other charges in a 12-count indictment were dropped. Huffman, who faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 27.

Guilty Plea

A co-conspirator in the case, rocket scientist Abdelkader Helmy, a native of Egypt who is a naturalized American citizen, pleaded guilty in a plea bargain June 9 to a single count of attempting to smuggle the highly secret missile components to Egypt a year ago aboard an Egyptian military cargo plane.

Missile components in the case, prosecutors said, included such high-tech items as a heat-resistant carbon fabric with low radar detectability that is used in rocket nose cones and super-secret stealth aircraft, a synthetic rubber used in rocket fuels and two swept-back parabolic UHF antennas.

Actual shipment was thwarted by U.S. Customs Service agents, federal authorities have said. Two Egyptians, Col. Hussam Al-Din Khairat and Fuad Algamal, were also indicted but claimed diplomatic immunity and have left the country.

Federal prosecutors charged that Huffman was in charge of procuring components of the missile system for export and Helmy, a former Aerojet Solid Propulsion Co. research engineer, was the “technical expert.”