Caltech professor claims Israeli spy infiltrated JPL
Two civil rights firms filed a lawsuit Thursday, November 13, 2014,
morning against Caltech in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging that
high-level Caltech administrators retaliated against senior Caltech
Professor Dr. Sandra M. Troian and have made her working conditions
intolerable because she reported violations of federal export laws to
the FBI concerning the handling of sensitive information at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech. She is
photographed with her attorney Dan Stormer. (Photo by Dean Musgrove /
Pasadena Star News)
By Zen Vuong, Pasadena Star-News
POSTED: 11/13/14, 10:49 AM PST
PASADENA >> A physics professor at the California Institute of
Technology filed a lawsuit against the university Thursday, alleging
it allowed a potential Israeli spy on campus for two years even after
she reported that he violated federal laws and shared classified
information with his home country and on the Internet.
Sandra Troian alleges Caltech administrators ignored the school’s
whistleblower policy and retaliated against her for the past four
years because if they had documented her concern, they could have put
an $8 billion contract with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at risk
and put the school in a bad light. Troian said she is frightened for
her career.
“I’m shocked at what happened because I know that I did the right
thing, and I absolutely refuse to break the law,” Troian said. “I’ve
done the right thing all my life. I thought Caltech would appreciate
knowing about certain problems and security leaks. … Caltech is filled
with very many good scientists and very honorable people. I think the
group that decided to come after me — they themselves are very
unethical.”
The lawsuit claims Caltech’s campaign against her started in the
summer of 2010 and revved up soon after June 2012 when FBI agents
interviewed Troian about security breaches at JPL. The federal agents
said her former assistant was the subject of International Traffic in
Arms Regulations (ITAR) violations and possibly espionage acts from
his time at JPL and Caltech, according to the complaint.
In a statement issued late Thursday, Caltech called Troian’s lawsuit
meritless and said the institution always abides by export control
laws and ITAR. It also regularly cooperates with government agencies
such as the FBI, the statement said.
“The plaintiff, who was dissatisfied with the outcome of a recent
internal campus investigation into her decision to list her cat as the
author of a published abstract and omit recognitio of a postdoctoral
scholar who performed related research, suffered no retaliation and
remains an active faculty member of the institution,” the Caltech
statement said.
In her complaint, Troian said she used her cat’s name as a placeholder
because she hoped to find a co-author before she had to present a
10-minute talk. She said using pets’ names was a regular jest among
the scientific community and listed a Nobel Prize-winning physicist
who had his hamster co-author a scientific paper in 2001.
Caltech officials, the suit alleges, threatened to terminate the
tenured professor, denied her about $1.1 million in research funding,
accused her of plagiarism and research falsification, accused her of
mistreating former postdoctoral research scholars, and added
fictitious negative reports in her personnel file, among other things.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior court, demands a
jury trial because Caltech retaliated against Troian, performed a
breach of contract and violated an implied covenant of good faith and
fair dealing.
Pasadena-based attorney Dan Stormer said national security concerns
are at stake. He wants Caltech to remove “false and slanderous
defamatory comments” from Troian’s professional record. Additionally,
he seeks punitive damages because “they’ve got to be held publicly
accountable for their conduct.”
Plaintiffs in similar cases have been awarded multibillion-dollar
verdicts, he said.
“JPL is the cornerstone of Caltech’s financial security,” Stormer
said. “It makes them one of the foremost research institutions in the
world. Without it, Caltech is just a backwater institution with very
bright people. They could not get the people here that they have
without the access to the research facilities at JPL. It is what makes
Caltech Caltech.”
Edward Stolper, Caltech’s provost, allegedly told Troian that if she
did not cooperate with him, he would help make her “miserable,” the
suit says.
“God, if you think you’ve had a bad two years, wait for the next two
years of being confrontational with Caltech. It just won’t be fun,” he
allegedly said according to the suit.
The former Caltech research scholar who is the catalyst for the
lawsuit is identified as Amir Gat. He is in Israel and employed as an
assistant professor of mechanical engineering at ITT, an Israeli
government institution, according to the complaint.
Troian alleges a virus attack in May 2010 caused hundreds of project
files on her computer to be uploaded to an unknown IP address outside
of Caltech. She later discovered the virus originated from Gat’s
laptop and repeatedly notified Caltech officials about her findings,
according to the lawsuit.
Gat admitted he shared details of a top-secret new space
micropropulsion system with his doctorate advisor, Daniel Weihs, at
ITT without first getting permission from the U.S. government. Weihs
is a member of Israel’s National Steering Committee for Space
Infrastructure of the Ministry of Science, chair of Israel’s National
Committee for Space Research and chief scientist at the Ministry of
Science and Technology, according to the suit.
Also without proper approval from the U.S. Department of State, Gat
allegedly made 65 online postings about key operating principles for
the micropropulsion device, according to the lawsuit.
In another breach of federal privacy procedure, Caltech is accused of
knowingly imaging Troian’s entire laptop even after she protested that
it “contained personal medical records, Department of Defense
materials that federal law prohibited from further distribution and
materials pertaining to Dr. Troian’s conversations with the FBI,” the
suit says.
Stormer said Troian has never tried to hide anything, yet Caltech has
done its best to hide everything.
“This is simply an affront to concepts of fairness,” Stormer said.
“She committed her life to science and to Caltech. She is the person
who recognized Caltech’s obligations under the espionage laws, and she
is egregiously punished for her honesty when questioned by the FBI.”
Troian, who has been employed at Caltech for eight years, is the only
female faculty member in applied physics and is one of four female
physicist faculty members on campus, according to the suit.
Women make up nearly 19 percent of professorial faculty at Caltech.
As a faculty member, Troian said her career depends on her reputation
and integrity, which she said Caltech has sought to impugn.
“This has been very humiliating and degrading to me. I’ve been subject
to the most invasive interrogation you can imagine,” she said. “JPL
acted honorably throughout. They did the right thing and filed the
right report. That part of the system worked well. …My complaint is
strictly with Caltech.”