The article quotes Prof. Troian as saying, "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."
There's tension between the openness that a research university (Caltech) needs, and the secure handling of information that a lab doing some classified research (JPL) requires.
This tension exploded in 1952, when Caltech took government money for PROJECT VISTA. After that, Caltech decided that having faculty working on things they couldn't talk about was antithetical to the purpose of a research university [1]. Today, Caltech says [2]:
"The Caltech Way: Caltech policy does not allow the acceptance of grants or contracts supporting the conduct of classified research or other classified projects on campus. Exceptions to this restriction may be considered by the President of Caltech in times of national emergency or critical need upon an urgent request of the government." ("Standards of Conduct for Research on Campus," Chapter 1, Section 1.1).
At JPL, there has always been some classified research. In the 1980s, JPL almost become a weapons lab (it did not) [3].
Even if Dr. Gat's electrospray work wasn't classified, one can imagine how different attitudes to classified research feed over to different attitudes to ITAR violations.
I'm a former Caltech postdoc and a research associate at JPL. I know neither Gat nor Troian.
There's tension between the openness that a research university (Caltech) needs, and the secure handling of information that a lab doing some classified research (JPL) requires.
This tension exploded in 1952, when Caltech took government money for PROJECT VISTA. After that, Caltech decided that having faculty working on things they couldn't talk about was antithetical to the purpose of a research university [1]. Today, Caltech says [2]:
"The Caltech Way: Caltech policy does not allow the acceptance of grants or contracts supporting the conduct of classified research or other classified projects on campus. Exceptions to this restriction may be considered by the President of Caltech in times of national emergency or critical need upon an urgent request of the government." ("Standards of Conduct for Research on Campus," Chapter 1, Section 1.1).
At JPL, there has always been some classified research. In the 1980s, JPL almost become a weapons lab (it did not) [3].
Even if Dr. Gat's electrospray work wasn't classified, one can imagine how different attitudes to classified research feed over to different attitudes to ITAR violations.
I'm a former Caltech postdoc and a research associate at JPL. I know neither Gat nor Troian.
[1] http://www.patrickmccray.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/2... [2] http://researchadministration.caltech.edu/theguide/tableofco... [3] "Into the Black": http://www.amazon.com/Into-Black-American-Program-1976-2004/...