Firm Denies Firing Executive for Aiding in N-Trigger Sting

CSI Technologies, a San Marcos electronics firm, Thursday denied that the company’s former president had been fired because he aided a government sting operation to prevent Iraqi for obtaining triggering devices for nuclear weapons.

Jerold Kowalsky, former CSI president, has claimed the firm feared it would be the target of Iraqi terrorists because he had taken part in sting operation directed by the U.S. Customs Service. Kowalsky was fired in April.

Richard Testut, CSI chief executive officer, Thursday refused to detail the reasons for the dismissal of Kowalsky, saying only that the firing came after an accumulation of differences of opinion and wasn’t connected to the sting.

Kowalsky, 58, of Scripps Ranch, had participated in the 18-month sting that led to the arrest last year of five people and charges against two companies. In another development, a British court on Thursday jailed Jeanine Speckman, 41, for 18 months for her part in the plot. Her arrest was a result of the sting. On Wednesday, Ali Ashour Daghir, 49, who worked Euromac, a British-based firm implicated in the scheme, was jailed for five years.

Kowalsky claims that shortly after his dismissal from CSI, officials of the firm sent a letter to Daghir, informing him that Kowalsky no longer worked at the firm.

Kowalsky claims the firm’s action was “an attempt to get the Iraqis to erase what the company perceived to be a big circular terrorist target on the top of its building.”