Israeli occupation forces demolish house in East Jerusalem
Ma’an | January 21, 2015
JERUSALEM – Israeli forces demolished a Palestinian house in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jabal al-Mukabir on Wednesday, locals told Ma’an.
Israeli forces raided the neighborhood and surrounded a house belonging to Ulayyan Jalal Rabaya before a bulldozer destroyed the property.
Rabaya said he had begun renovation work on the interior of the house some months ago to live there with his fiance, who he is due to marry.
Jerusalem municipality workers posted a demolition order on the property last Monday saying that it lacked a building permit.
Two other house belonging to the Rabaya family are also slated for demolition, with a court decision expected Friday.
Local organizations in the neighborhood called for a sit-in protest outside the Israeli Supreme Court to protest the demolition.
Around 150 demolitions orders are pending in the Jabal al-Mukabir neighborhood, a local official Suleiman Shqeirat said. Most are issued under the pretext that they lack building permits.
Israeli forces stormed the East Jerusalem town of al-Isawiya before dawn Tuesday and demolished a Palestinian house allegedly being built without a license from the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem.
Israel rarely grants construction permits to Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and regularly demolishes structures built without permits.
Israeli bulldozers demolished at least 359 Palestinian structures in the West Bank in 2014, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.
During the 1967 war, Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan, occupied it, and later annexed it in a move never recognized abroad.
Also Wednesday, the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem police detained three Palestinians.
They were identified as Ziad al-Qaq, Mousa Audah and his brother Naji.
Applauding Israel’s Transgressions
By AHMAD BARQAWI | CounterPunch | January 21, 2015
So after “headlining” that anti-terrorism joke of a parade last week and basking in the Parisian sun of selective humanitarianism and international solidarity with freedom of speech; the first order of (shoddy) business for Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu was lambasting the International Criminal Court, for merely entertaining the (anti-Semitic?) notion of investigating “possible” Israeli war crimes in Gaza (how dare they?), going as far as threatening to lobby member-states and allies to cut off funding for the tribunal and practically pull a repeat of the UNESCO farce when the Obama Administration, at the behest and for the benefit of its darling Israel, froze funding for the cultural organization, after granting the Palestinians full membership into the agency, plunging the UN body into the worst financial dire strait in its history.
It is more than likely that Netanyahu will get his way this time too.
The second order of business, however, was sending a military helicopter gunship over to Syrian territory and bombing a convoy belonging to the Lebanese Resistance Movement Hezbollah, killing six operatives including the son of assassinated leader Imad Mughnyyieh and field commander Mohammad Issa in addition to one Iranian General, in the Syrian village of Quneitra close to the border area with Lebanon in the Golan heights.
Business as usual for humanitarian extraordinaire Bibi and Co.
Of course this was no terrorist attack, at least not according to the mainstream media; so you won’t be seeing #jesuishizbollah anywhere on social media and no solidarity marches in real life, just another daily recount of internationally tolerable Israeli shenanigans in the region.
Evidently, unless it involves scraggy young men with weird, unpronounceable Middle Eastern names, wearing Keffiyehs, wielding shabby Kalashnikovs and storming the streets of a western city then it’s not terrorism, and in the case of the latest Israel airstrike in the Syrian Golan heights; it was just a military operation, clean and surgical, according to the BBC at least; not forgetting of course to tail the news with the little tidbit that this is not the first time Israel has conducted air strikes inside Syria, to “prevent the transfer of stockpiles of weapons from Syria to Hezbollah”. So, all should be fine and dandy then.
You see it’s completely acceptable for the BBC to venture justifications on behalf of the Israeli army for its various terrorist operations and transgressions in the region, we’ve seen it before in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon; covering Israeli crimes in the complacent mainstream media usually comes with peppered excuses and rationalizations that supposedly give some sort of subtle credence to any act of aggression committed by the Zionist entity, wrapping it with the usual, tattered caveat of “self-defense”; the AP’s report on the latest attack, for instance, highlighted the fact that Hezbollah had recently boasted of its “ability to hit any part of the Jewish state” with rockets, in reference to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s recent interview. Imagine the outrage!
Whereas if one so much as dared to attempt a mildly rational and lucid reading of the Charlie Hebdo massacre; he’d be immediately castigated at best and lumped into the same category as the Kouachi brothers as an Al Qaida sympathizer at worst; that’s the freedom of speech they were marching for in Paris I guess.
Speaking of Al Qaida; do you know who were rubbing their hands with ecstatic glee over the Israeli airstrike against Hezbollah? None other than Al Qaida’s very own Al Nusra Front (or the moderate Syrian opposition force worthy of caches of weapons and funding, according to the west) and other rag-tag, ideologically like-minded militant groups whose evident ironclad alliance with Israel has transcended the widely reported medical assistance and treatment of the injured in Israeli hospitals into providing direct military backing and air cover when needed especially in areas where the Syrian opposition’s tenuous grab is slipping in favor of the Syrian Army along with Hezbollah forces. Areas such as Al Quneitra.
In a sense this latest Israeli attack against a Hezbollah target in Syria serves as a perfect cliff note for the uninitiated to disentangle this seemingly complicated cobweb of alliances in the Syrian war. On the one side you have the Syrian Government of Bashar Al Assad backed by Hezbollah and Iran, while on the other you have a who’s who of the region’s nastiest terrorists; from the mismatched posses of Islamic extremists fighting under the Islamic Army moniker, to ISIS and Al Nusra Front, backed by the deep-pocketed Gulf monarchies along with Erdogan’s Turkey and the U.S., with Netanyahu’s Israel added to the mix for good measure. Talk about a true rogues gallery.
A cursory glance over GCC media and social networks is more than enough to note a certain air of unabashed exuberance over the Israeli airstrike; Syrian “revolutionaries” along with their GCC sponsors could not contain their jubilation as soon as news of the bombing broke; gloating over the assassination and mocking Hezbollah’s rhetoric of vowing vengeance for its slain operatives “at the time and place of its choosing”.
The rotten logic of the “lesser of two evils”, in reference to the Zionist regime, has become such a stable in the armory of the anti-Hezbollah/anti-Iran crowd in the Arab World, invoked every time the Israeli terrorist army commits a new atrocity to soften the impact of its crimes and desensitize the public to Israel’s parasitic existence on Arab lands. And this time was no different; with many reveling in the claim that Hezbollah “had it coming” for backing the government of Bashar Al Assad.
In an article confessedly titled “How Did We End up Applauding for Israel”, published in the Saudi-financed, crude Arabic daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, which by the way, itself exhibited an unmistakable celebratory tone while covering the latest Israel strike especially over the slain Iranian General, Saudi writer Abdel Rahman al-Rashed actually “laments” the fact that there are growing cheerleading voices in the Arab world for Israel and that (some) Arabs have become increasingly more vocal in their support for the Zionist entity just out of sheer “spite” for Hezbollah and Iran, especially on social media websites and even among supporters of Islamic Jihadi groups.
Nonetheless, al-Rashed places the brunt of the blame on… yes you guessed it… Hezbollah, Israel’s arch enemy, for ostensibly transforming poor, gullible Arabs en masse into hordes of hardcore Israel-enthusiasts, through its alleged role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Al Hariri (according to a sham international tribunal anyway), and the Lebanese party’s military involvement in the Syrian civil war. Talk about connecting all the wrong dots.
Never mind that the Lebanese movement has been the subject of an unrelenting smear campaign steeped in vile sectarianism, all manner of character assassination and outright fabrications targeting its leaders, and discrediting its military achievements against Israel ever since 2005, courtesy of Saudi Arabia along with the rest of the GCC club (aka Al Rashed’s sole meal tickets) and their labyrinthine network of media outlets including Al Sharq Al Awsat newspaper where anti-Shiite sentiments run amok and distinct pro-Israel bias reigns supreme.
Never mind the fact that the Arab public has been bombarded with a nonstop barrage of demonization and vilification sprees directed not only at Hezbollah, but also at any movement, party or political group which just so happens to adopt an anti-Israel stance and/or rhetoric, including the Palestinian movements of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, only with the sole endgame of reshuffling the public’s priorities to accommodate the West’s political agenda in our region where Israel gets to sit snugly and comfortably in our midst all the while Iran is being touted and over-hyped as the biggest threat to the stability of the Arab world.
It’s true; we do applaud for Israel. Its transgressions and air strikes on Arab soil no longer provoke a sense of outrage or even the merest of condemnations, but we only have the GCC to thank for that.
Iranian Defense Minister: Iran to Arm West Bank Against Israel
Al-Akhbar | January 21, 2015
Iranian Defense Minister General Hossein Dehqan on Wednesday declared that Tehran will arm Palestinians in the West Bank against the Zionist state, according to the Iranian Fars news agency.
Naqdi stressed, during a memorial service marking the death of six Hezbollah members and an Iranian General killed by Israeli Occupation forces in Syria, that “arming the West Bank is a principal policy of the Islamic Republic and we will use every means and capacity” to fulfill this policy.
Dehqan warned that “the Zionists will receive a crushing response” and added “today the resistance front, as representative of all Muslims, is acting against the Zionists and the Takfiri stream and we will support it in every aspect with all our capacities,” reported Fars news agency.
On Wednesday, at a funeral procession for General Mohammed Ali Allahdadi, killed by Israel in Golan Heights, a Revolutionary Guards commander Major General Ali Jafari said “the path of martyr Allahdadi is unstoppable and will be continued until the liberation of the Holy Quds (Jerusalem) and obliteration of the Zionist regime.”
Jafari also took aim at Israel on Tuesday, saying, “The Zionists should await destructive thunderbolts.”
“They have in the past seen our wrath,” he announced, adding the Revolutionary Guards “will continue its support for Muslim fighters and combatants in the region.”
Mohsen Rezaie, secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, on his part said that Hezbollah would eventually retaliate against “this recent atrocity,” but that the group was “prudent and has a long term plan and will not be infuriated.”
General Mohammed Ali Allahdadi died alongside six fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement in the attack Sunday near Quneitra on the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan Heights.
An Israeli security source told AFP one of its helicopters carried out the strike, but a United Nations’ observer force in the Golan raised the possibility that drones may have been used.
The incident came days after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah threatened to retaliate against Israel for its repeated strikes on targets in Syria, and boasted the movement was stronger than ever.
(AFP, Al-Akhbar)
Israeli forces launch major detention campaign in Nablus camps
Ma’an – 21/01/2015
NABLUS – Israeli forces launched a major detention campaign in the northern West Bank refugee camps of Balata and Askar in Nablus district overnight, Palestinian security sources said.
More than 15 young men were seized after forces ransacked many houses.
Palestinian security sources told Ma’an that more than 20 Israeli military jeeps stormed Balata and Askar refugee camps near Nablus at midnight and broke into dozens of houses.
Locals said most of the houses belonged to Fatah supporters. Among those whose houses which were ransacked are Fayiz Arafat, Nasser al-Khatib Abu Aziz, Ahmad Naji Abu Hamada, Muhammad Abu Dari, Abu Mahyub abu Leil, Muhammad Abu Zaabal, Hatim abu Riziq, Talal abu Thira, Abu Hazim Kharma, Atallah Hashash, Bashir Hashash, Hasan Sharaya, Abu Nasim Arayshi and Mahir Ayyad.
The sources identified some of the detainees as Ayman abu Kharma, Muhammad Saqir, Muhammad Murshid, Shahir Ali Mutlaq, Ammar Mithqal, Abed al-Salam Abu Riziq, Mahmoud abu Ayyash, Muhammad Ali Hashash, Hasan al-Ashqar, Kamal abu Rayya, Mujahid Mashayikh, Zuhdi Abu Kharma and Muhammad Abu Arab.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said she was looking into the reports.
Charlie Hebdo, Zionism & Media Deception – Interview with Hafsa Kara-Mustapha
Brandon Martinez interviews Hafsa Kara-Mustapha on a January 18, 2015 episode of the Non-Aligned Media Podcast.
Hafsa Kara-Mustapha is a London-based journalist and political commentator who has written extensively about the Middle East for publications such as Middle East Magazine, Jane’s Foreign Report and El Watan newspaper. She also appears frequently on Press TV and Russia Today.
Brandon Martinez is an independent writer and journalist from Canada who specializes in foreign policy issues, international affairs and 20th and 21st century history. For years he has written on Zionism, Israel-Palestine, American and Canadian foreign policy, war, terrorism and deception in media and politics. Listeners can contact him at martinezperspective[at]hotmail.com or visit his blog.
Iran’s IRGC confirms killing of its general in Syria’s Golan
Press TV – January 19, 2015
Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) confirms the killing of one of its generals in an Israeli airstrike on the occupied Golan Heights in Syria that also killed six members of the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah.
“A number of fighters and forces of the Islamic Resistance along with Brigadier General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi were visiting the region of Quneitra and were attacked by a military helicopter of the Zionist regime,” the IRGC said in a statement on its website on Monday.
“This brave general and some members of Hezbollah were martyred as a result of this crime,” it added.
It said Allahdadi had traveled to Syria to provide consultation and help the Syrian government and nation counter the Takfiri and Salafi terrorists in the war-stricken country.
He gave “decisive” consultation about ways to stop and thwart the Israeli regime’s plots and crimes, it added.
The statement emphasized that the killing of the IRGC general and Hezbollah fighters would strengthen the movement’s determination to fight the Israeli regime.
“The Zionist regime’s criminal move to violate Syria’s airspace once again showed that the terrorist plot of the ISIL and Takfiri groups has been hatched in line with policies of the arrogant and Zionist system and in coordination with leaders of the White House and the occupying regime of al-Quds against the Muslim community,” the IRGC said.
They are not committed to any international regulations and human and moral principles to achieve their evil goals, it pointed out.
Jihad Mughniyeh funeral procession
Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Monday held a funeral procession for Jihad Mughniyeh in southern Beirut. Massive crowds took part in the event.
Jihad was among six Hezbollah fighters killed in Israel’s missile strike on Syria’s Golan Heights. He was the son of Hezbollah’s slain military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in an Israeli-orchestrated bombing back in 2008.
Painful response
A source close to the Lebanon’s Hezbollah says the movement’s response to Israel’s deadly attack on members of the resistance would be “painful.”
“The attack against six Hezbollah members will have a painful and unexpected response, but it can be assumed that it will be controlled to prevent an all-out war,” the sources told the Lebanese As-Safir Arabic political daily on Monday.
A serious mistake
The Syrian information minister has slammed as a “serious mistake” the recent Israeli airstrike on the southwestern strategic Syrian city of Quneitra.
“Israel has made a serious mistake when it attacked on Syrian soil today,” Omran al-Zoubi said in an interview with Lebanese al-Manar TV on Sunday.
Al-Zoubi said the airstrikes proved the Tel Aviv regime was cooperating with terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front.
The Syrian minister said that Israel needs the terrorist groups to act as a “buffer zone” that separates it from the Syrian army and people.
Whoever fights the Syrian people and army is putting himself in the service of the Zionist project against Syria, Palestine and the Arab nation, he added.
Iran’s condemnation
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has strongly condemned the killing of six fighters of Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah by Israel, Press TV reports.
“We condemn all actions of the Zionist regime as well as all acts of terror,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told Press TV early on Monday, lashing out at Israel for committing acts of terrorism.
Zarif further censured the acts of terrorism against the people of Lebanon and the resistance movement, saying that “this has been a practice followed for a very long time,” the top Iranian diplomat noted. “The policy of state terrorism is a known policy of the Zionist regime,” he added.
Hezbollah statement
Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah confirmed the death of six fighters in the new Israeli airstrike on the southwestern strategic Syrian city of Quneitra.
In a statement issued on Sunday, Hezbollah said 25-year-old Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of slain Hezbollah top commander Imad Mughniyeh, and five other fighters lost their lives in the fresh Israeli aerial assault against Syria.
Hezbollah identified the other victims as Mohammad Issa,42, Abbas Ibrahim Hijazi, 35, Mohammad Ali Hasan Abu al-Hasan, 29, Ghazi Ali Dawi, 26, and Ali Hasan Ibrahim, 21.
The martyrs were reportedly on a field reconnaissance mission in Quneitra when an Israeli military helicopter targeted their vehicle.
Fresh Israeli aggression
On Sunday, an Israeli military helicopter fired two missiles into Amal Farms in the strategic southwestern city of Quneitra, close to line separating the Syrian part of the Golan Heights from the Israeli-occupied sector.
The Israeli military has so far declined comment on the attack.
Press TV reported that the Israeli military has gone on high alert for the fear of a possible Hezbollah response to the regime’s new act of aggression.
Analysts believe the new Israeli assault is yet another attempt by Tel Aviv to change the balance of war in favor of the Takfiri militants fighting against Syria.
The new Israeli aerial raid comes as Syrian soldiers, backed by Hezbollah resistance fighters, have made numerous gains against the militants operating in Quneitra.
The Tel Aviv regime has carried out several airstrikes in Syria since the start of the nearly four-year-old foreign-sponsored militancy there.
Damascus says Tel Aviv and its Western allies are aiding the extremist terror groups operating inside Syria since March 2011.
The Syrian army has repeatedly seized large quantities of Israeli-made weapons and advanced military equipment from the foreign-backed militants inside the Arab state.
Berri reaction
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri has hit out at the Tel Aviv regime for disrupting stability in Lebanon.
“Every time we take steps forward in terms of achieving stability … Israel tries to create chaos,” local Lebanese media quoted Berri as saying on Monday.
“Israelis don’t want Lebanon to relax,” he said.
Lebanon’s al-Manar TV said later in the day that Tel Aviv is “playing with fire that puts the security of the whole Middle East on edge.
Lieberman Threatens To “Dismantle” ICC
IMEMC & Agencies | January 17, 2015
Following the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch a preliminary investigation to determine “whether war crimes have been committed” during Israel’s last war Gaza in the summer of 2014, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened that Israel “would act on dissolving the ICC,” and considered the decision “provocative.”
Lieberman alleged that the ICC decision “only aims at attempting to impact Israel’s ability to defend itself.”
He added that Israel will not cooperate with any investigation, and will act on the international level to dissolve the ICC after describing the decision as hypocritical, and supportive of what he called “terrorism.”
Lieberman also alleged that the decision is an outcome of what he called anti-Israel moves that only aim at “harming Israel and its right to defend itself.”
The Foreign Minister went on to talk about Syria and how the court “failed to intervene,” adding that there is no comparison between the Israeli army, which he called the most moral army in the world, with what he labeled as “terror groups” in Gaza.
He called on his government to officially reject the decision, and refrain from any cooperation with it.
On Friday evening, Lieberman told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that Tel Aviv should act on removing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from his post, and engage in talks with some Arab countries to reach what he called “a peaceful resolution that does not harm Israel’s ability to defend itself.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also angered by the decision, and said that the ICC cannot conduct the investigation because “Palestine is not a sovereign state.”
The latest developments came after the ICC prosecutor Fatou Densouda declared she has opened a preliminary investigation of “possible” war crimes committed during the most recent Israeli war on Gaza.
She also vowed an independent and impartial preliminary investigation, adding that the move comes after the Palestinian Authority signed the founding treaty of the ICC in July of last year, and officially recognized its jurisdiction.
During the summer Israeli escalation on the Gaza Strip, the army bombarded dozens of thousands of Palestinian homes and residential towers, hospitals and clinics, UNRWA schools and facilities, media offices and dozens of other civilian facilities, in addition to destroying the infrastructure in the besieged coastal region.
The Ministry of Housing in Gaza recently said the number of homes that have been destroyed, and partially damaged, during the Israeli aggression on the coastal region is close to 124,000.
The Israeli bombardment and shelling killed at around 2,137 Palestinians, including 578 children, 264 women, and 103 elderly, while[ wounding] more than 11,100, including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly.
US Condemns ICC Preliminary Probe into Israeli War Crimes
Al-Akhbar | January 17, 2015
The United States joined Israel in condemning the International Criminal Court decision to open a preliminary probe Friday into possible war crimes committed against Palestinians, blasting it as a “tragic irony.”
ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said her office would conduct an “analysis in full independence and impartiality” into alleged war crimes by Israel, including those committed during its latest Gaza offensive.
Her decision comes after the Palestinian Authority formally joined the ICC earlier this month, allowing it to lodge war crimes and crimes against humanity complaints against Israel as of April.
At least 2,300 Palestinians, an estimated 70 percent of them civilians, and 72 Israelis, 66 of them soldiers, were killed during last summer’s war in Gaza.
The US criticized the decision late Friday, saying it opposed actions against Israel at the ICC as “counterproductive to the cause of peace.”
“It is a tragic irony that Israel, which has withstood thousands of terrorist rockets fired at its civilians and its neighborhoods, is now being scrutinized by the ICC,” US State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke said in a statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had earlier reacted angrily to the prosecutor’s decision, calling it “scandalous” and “absurd” since “the Palestinian Authority cooperates with Hamas, a terror group that commits war crimes, in contrast to Israel that fights terror while maintaining international law, and has an independent justice system.”
Gambian-born Bensouda had earlier stressed that “a preliminary examination is not an investigation but a process of examining the information available… on whether there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation.”
Bensouda will decide at a later stage whether to launch a full investigation.
Israel began a massive crackdown in June, using the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers to launch sweeping arrests and violent repression of Palestinians in the West Bank, triggering a series of events that led to the seven-week Gaza war.
Palestine’s move to join the ICC is also seen as part of a shift in strategy to internationalize its campaign for statehood and move away from the stalled US-led peace process.
The Palestinians were upgraded from observer status to UN “observer state” in 2012, opening the doors for them to join the ICC and a host of other international organizations.
Israel reacted swiftly on Friday, slamming the announcement.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the sole purpose of the preliminary examination was to “try to harm Israel’s right to defend itself from terror” and he said the decision was “solely motivated by political anti-Israel considerations.”
Lieberman accused the court of double standards for not examining the mass killings in Syria or other conflict zones, investigating instead what he called “the most moral army in the world.”
Israel earlier this month delayed transferring some $127 million in taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in retaliation for the attempts to press war crimes charges against the Zionist state.
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki welcomed the ICC’s move.
“Everything is going according to plan, no state and nobody can now stop this action we requested,” he told AFP.
“In the end, a full investigation will follow the preliminary one.”
‘Justice for victims’
Rights group Amnesty International welcomed the ICC’s announcement saying it “could pave the way for thousands of victims of crimes under international law to gain access to justice.”
But the initial probe could lead to an investigation into crimes “committed by all sides,” Amnesty stressed in a statement.
Friday’s announcement is the second such initial probe by the ICC’s prosecutor into the situation in Palestine.
The Palestinian Authority in 2009 lodged a complaint against Israel, but the ICC prosecutor said in 2012 after “carefully considering legal arguments” it could not investigate because of the Palestinians’ status at the UN.
At the time Palestine’s “observer” status blocked them from signing up to the ICC’s founding Rome Statute.
The ICC, which sits in The Hague in the Netherlands, is the world’s first independent court set up in 2002 to investigate genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
But it can only probe alleged crimes in countries that have ratified the Rome Statute, or accepts the Hague-based court’s jurisdiction for a certain time period, or through a referral by the UN Security Council.
Currently, chief prosecutor Bensouda is also running preliminary investigations in Afghanistan, Colombia, Georgia, Guinea, Honduras, Iraq and Ukraine.
While 123 countries have now ratified the Rome Statute, Israel and the United States have not.
The roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict date back to 1917, when the British government, in the now-infamous Balfour Declaration, called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”
In 1948, with the end of the British mandate, a new state — Israel — was declared inside historical Palestine.
As a result, some 700,000 Palestinians fled their homes, or were forcibly expelled, while hundreds of Palestinian villages and cities were razed to the ground by invading Zionist forces.
The Palestinian diaspora has since become one of the largest in the world. Palestinian refugees are currently spread across the region and in other countries, while many have settled in refugee camps in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel then occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Zionist state — a move never recognized by the international community.
(AFP, Al-Akhbar)
ICC Opens Preliminary Inquiry into Gaza War Crimes
Al-Akhbar | January 16, 2015
Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court said on Friday they had opened a preliminary inquiry into possible war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, the first formal step that could lead to charges against Israelis or Palestinians.
On January 1, a day before requesting ICC membership, the Palestinian Authority asked the prosecutors to investigate alleged crimes committed on territories under Palestinian control since June 13, 2014, the date on which Israel began its latest offensive in the Gaza Strip.
The 51-day Israeli assault on Gaza left at least 2,300 Palestinians dead, at least 70 percent of them civilians, and 96,000 houses destroyed. Reconstruction hasn’t started in the besieged enclave, leaving thousands vulnerable to elecricity cuts, water shortages and harsh winter weather.
“The office will conduct its analysis in full independence and impartiality,” the prosecution office said in a statement, adding that it was a matter of “policy and practice” to open a preliminary examination after receiving such a referral.
“The case is now in the hands of the court,” said Nabil Abuznaid, head of the Palestinian delegation in The Hague. “It is a legal matter now and we have faith in the court system.”
Israel denounced the ICC’s “scandalous” decision.
The sole purpose of the preliminary examination is to “try to harm Israel’s right to defend itself from terror,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a statement.
He said the decision was “solely motivated by political anti-Israel considerations,” adding that he would recommend against cooperating with the probe.
On January 3, Israel froze the transfer of $127 million in tax funds it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in retaliation for its application to join the ICC.
Israel has repeatedly delayed payments to the Palestinians to signal its displeasure with measures to achieve statehood and get accountability for Israeli war crimes.
It did so in 2012, after they won a UN vote recognizing Palestine as a non-member state. And it employed the tactic twice in 2011 – after PA President Mahmoud Abbas announced reconciliation with Hamas and after the Palestinians won admission to UNESCO.
A preliminary examination, which could take many years, involves prosecutors assessing the strength of evidence of alleged crimes, whether the court has jurisdiction and how the “interests of justice” would best be served.
Only if that led to a full investigation could charges be brought against officials on either the Israeli or Palestinian side of the conflict.
An initial inquiry could lead to war crimes charges against Israel, whether relating to last conflict in Gaza or Israel’s 47-year-long occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
It also exposes the Palestinians to prosecution, possibly for rocket attacks by resistance groups operating out of Gaza.
(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
Lawsuit says Caltech Provost and others ignored Israeli spying and then retaliated against whistleblower
Dr. Troian’s allegations describe subversion of one of America’s most important scientific institutions and provide a potential case study of how U.S. taxpayer funded scientific technology is stolen by Israel.
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | January 14, 2015
Following is a deeply disturbing excerpt from a civil lawsuit filed by a Caltech professor against Caltech, often named the world’s top research university. Caltech’s official name is the California Institute of Technology.
According to the lawsuit, a small coterie of Caltech professors and administrators ignored Israeli spying and theft of taxpayer-funded U.S. technology and then retaliated against the professor for reporting it.
Caltech Provost Edward Stolper, who has ties to Israel and received an honorary degree from one of its universities, seems to have been one of those leading the charge.
The lawsuit is by a distinguished physicist named Dr. Sandra Troian, who was recruited from Princeton, has won numerous scientific awards, and serves on national and international scientific boards. In her suit Dr. Troian says that an Israeli post-doctoral student blatantly violated US laws and transmitted information on potential space technology to Israel.
According to Troian, when she reported these violations, some Caltech administrators and professors ignored the Israeli’s extensive violations, and then, enabled by diverse cronies and subordinates, launched an escalating retaliatory campaign against her for trying to stop the Israeli’s illegal activities. Some of the actions described below were remarkably petty, others of considerable significance.
The complaint, filed November 13th, 2014, describes the course of events in illuminating and excruciating detail. The statement also says that Stolper and others worked to impede information from reaching the FBI, which was investigating possible Israeli spying and infiltration at Caltech.
The alleged espionage and theft largely took place at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a top NASA research and development center.
According to Troian’s statement, Stolper repeatedly attempted to intimidate Troian, saying that people at Caltech “feared” him and that she would be “miserable” if she did not cooperate with him. Stolper also seems to have used his power to deny Troian more than a million dollars worth of grant funds, threatened to cut off her access to post-doctoral researchers, and attempted to tar her with (unfounded) accusations of scientific misconduct.
If Troian’s statements below are accurate, they reveal significant subversion of one of America’s most important scientific institutions. They also provide a case study of how U.S. taxpayer funded scientific technology is stolen by Israel. U.S. agencies periodically name Israel as a top espionage threat against the United States.
In a statement announcing the lawsuit, Troian said: “I have committed my heart and soul to Caltech. But I will not violate the law. And, I will not allow Caltech to ruin my career for alerting them to violations of laws intended to protect our greater society.”
The Pasadena Star-News reports that a Troian attorney, Dan Stormer, “said national security concerns are at stake.” The newspaper reports that Stormer seeks punitive damages because Caltech should “be held publicly accountable for their conduct.” Stormer said, “Plaintiffs in similar cases have been awarded multibillion-dollar verdicts.” The Caltech administration has denied culpability.
Two hearings are currently scheduled in Los Angeles Superior Court:
A trial setting conference will be held is on February 24, 2015 at 9:30 am in department 82 at 111 North Hill Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012.
A hearing to consider a motion by Caltech for bifurcation is scheduled for the same location on May 14, 2015. Caltech claims that some of Troian’s claims are not appropriate for legal action because she has not yet exhausted internal remedies.
Below is an excerpt from Troian’s legal complaint, with photos added of the cast of characters. Troian is demanding a jury trial.
FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS
Dr. Troian is a Prominent Physicist and Academic at Caltech.
Dr. Sandra Troian, professor who filed lawsuit.
11. Dr. Troian has been a physicist and accomplished academic scholar for over twenty-five years.
12. Dr. Troian holds a B.A. in Physics from Harvard University and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from Cornell University. Prior to joining Caltech, she was a faculty member at Princeton University, where she was promoted to tenured Associate Professor in 1999 and Full Professor in 2002.
13. Caltech recruited Dr. Troian to join its faculty as a Professor of Applied Physics, of Aeronautics, and of Mechanical Engineering in the Division of Engineering and Applied Science (“EAS”).
14. Dr. Troian began her employment at Caltech in September 2006. Her employment is governed by a contract between her and Caltech, executed on May 3, 2006, and by Caltech’s Faculty Handbook.
15. Dr. Troian is the only female faculty member in Applied Physics at Caltech, and one of only four female physicist faculty members on campus.
16. Dr. Troian has earned numerous awards for her research and teaching from the National Science Foundation, the American Physical Society, the Caltech Moore Distinguished Scholar program, and Princeton and Caltech. She has served on numerous editorial, executive, and advisory boards including the Defense Sciences Research Council, the Annual Reviews of Fluid Mechanics, the Physics of Fluids, the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, the Microdevices Laboratory of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation, the Society of Engineering Science, Inc., and the Institute for Defense Analysis. She has also worked in industry, and consults for government and private sector organizations.
17. Dr. Troian is also a contractor and holds research privileges at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (“JPL”), which is a federally-funded research and development facility managed by Caltech on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (“NASA”).
18. Federal export control laws govern the conditions under which certain information, technologies, and commodities at JPL can be transmitted to other countries, or to unauthorized persons in the U.S. Several federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of State through its International Traffic in Arms Regulations (“ITAR”), administer federal export control laws.
Dr. Troian Reported Apparent Illegal Activity by Her Postdoctoral Scholar, Dr. Amir Gat, to Caltech, but Caltech Refused to Take Action.
Amir Gat, postdoctoral researcher who allegedly illegally transmitted information to Israel. He now works at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.
19. In March 2010, Dr. Troian became Principal Investigator (“PI”) on an export controlled project at JPL known as the Electrospray Thruster Array Technology Feasibility Study Project (“Electrospray Project”). The goal of the Electrospray Project was to design a new type of space micropropulsion system.
20. The Electrospray Project was ITAR-restricted, which meant that Dr. Troian and all other project researchers could not divulge or export any project-related technical data to foreign end users or foreign destinations without U.S. government authorization.
21. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”) funded the Electrospray Project.
22. Dr. Troian hired Dr. Amir Gat to work with her on the Electrospray Project as a postdoctoral research scholar in March of 2010.
23. Dr. Gat is an Israeli foreign national, who, at the time, had recently earned his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (“ITT”).
24. Caltech approved Dr. Gat’s hiring as a Caltech employee.
25. As Dr. Gat’s research supervisor, Dr. Troian had a duty to ensure Dr. Gat’s compliance with ITAR.
26. Both Dr. Troian and Dr. Gat signed a Technology Control Plan (“TCP”) and addendum governing the Electrospray Project. In so doing, they certified their understanding of their obligations not to disclose ITAR-restricted technical data to foreign persons or foreign countries without prior approval from the U.S. Department of State and that failure to comply with this obligation could subject them to criminal fines and penalties.
27. A violation of the TCP constitutes a violation of ITAR.
28. Soon after Dr. Gat began working for Dr. Troian on the Electrospray Project, Dr. Troian began to suspect him of violating the TCP and ITAR provisions.
29. Dr. Gat refused to properly record and safeguard his calculations, numerical simulations, and technical details of the JPL device, as required by DARPA, the TCP, and ITAR.
30. Dr. Gat also stored project-related files and technical information on his personal laptop, rather than on his safeguarded office computer, in violation of the TCP and ITAR.
31. Dr. Gat also repeatedly entered erroneous numbers into the design software code when running project simulations, despite clear instructions from Dr. Troian and JPL researchers on which numbers to use.
32. On May 25, 2010, a virus attacked Dr. Troian’s computer network at Caltech, causing hundreds of project files to be uploaded in rapid succession to an unknown IP address outside of Caltech and causing Caltech to disable Dr. Troian’s network for several days.
33. Dr. Troian traced the virus that caused the network problems to Dr. Gat’s computer, and notified Caltech officials of this fact.
Daniel Weihs, professor at Israel’s Technion and 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.
34. When Dr. Troian questioned Dr. Gat about the virus attack, he refused to disclose the websites he had visited prior to the attack on the network.
35. On May 28, 2010, Dr. Gat admitted to Dr. Troian that he had been sharing details of the Electrospray Project with Dr. Daniel Weihs, his Ph.D. advisor at ITT in Israel, without proper U.S. government approval. Dr. Gat refused to disclose to Dr. Troian the substance or extent of his transfer of information.
36. Dr. Weihs was 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.
37. On June 3, 2010, Dr. Troian found Dr. Gat wandering alone, unauthorized, in one of her access-restricted experimental laboratories. Dr. Gat explained that Dr. Weihs had recommended that he “look around” to see what other aerospace projects were ongoing at Caltech in collaboration with JPL. Dr. Gat said that he was hoping that the Israel Institute of Technology would hire him in the future, after he left the United States and returned to Israel.
Marionne Epallé, Caltech administrator who removed Gat’s papers after Troian reported him, despite the fact that this allegedly violated ITAR regulations. Epallé said she had been ordered to do so.
38. Throughout the summer of 2010, Dr. Troian reported to Caltech, her growing concerns that Dr. Gat was transferring export controlled information without proper U.S. government approval to various Caltech and JPL officials.
39. On June 4, 2010, Dr. Troian met with EAS Division Administrator Marionne Epallé and specifically requested that Ms. Epallé document Dr. Gat’s apparent TCP and ITAR violations. On June 14, 2010, Dr. Troian contacted Ms. Epallé and Dr. Rosakis again reiterating her concerns about Dr. Gat and requesting that they be documented for the record.
40. At least two JPL supervisors also reported Dr. Gat’s apparent illegal activity to the JPL Special Programs Security Manager, who handles espionage concerns.
41. To Dr. Troian’s knowledge, Caltech did not investigate Dr. Gat or otherwise take action in response to Dr. Troian’s or other JPL supervisors’ complaints of Dr. Gat’s TCP and ITAR violations.
42. Upon information and belief, during this period in 2010, Caltech was seeking to renew its contract with NASA to manage JPL, and, as part of the reapplication process, needed to certify that its employees and contractors were not violating U.S. government security regulations, including ITAR.
Ares Rosakis, division chair, was one of the first people informed about Gat’s behavior. Troian says that after the FBI questioned her about the situation, Rosakis warned Troian that her behavior was becoming “dangerous” for the Division and for Caltech.
43. On August 3, 2010, Dr. Troian dismissed Dr. Gat from the Electrospray Project because of her security concerns about him. She instructed Dr. Gat to return all material belonging to the Project, but he refused to do so and threatened to continue working on the project.
44. Dr. Troian did not have the power to terminate Dr. Gat’s employment with Caltech entirely, only to dismiss him from her own research group.
45. On August 4, 2010, Dr. Gat emailed a JPL supervisor and asked for permission to continue working on Dr. Troian’s project or other aerospace projects at JPL. The supervisor denied Dr. Gat’s request and instructed Dr. Troian to secure all material in his possession.
46. On August 8, 2010, a week after Dr. Troian terminated Dr. Gat from the Electrospray Project, she discovered that he had been posting literature pertaining to the Project on a public web site since March 22, 2010, and that users worldwide were linking to the site. Dr. Gat’s more than 65 online postings were unauthorized and revealed the key operating principle of the JPL micropropulsion device, which violated ITAR and the TCP.
Troian says she informed April White Castaneda, Caltech’s Executive Director of Human Resources, that Gat had posted information to a public site that revealed the key operating principle of the JPL micropropulsion device. This violated federal regulations.
47. Dr. Troian immediately reported Dr. Gat’s unauthorized online postings to Ms. Epallé, to a JPL supervisor, to April White, Caltech’s Executive Director of Human Resources, and to Adam Cochran, Caltech’s Associate General Counsel.
48. Throughout August and September 2010, Dr. Troian submitted a series of requests to Caltech to secure and lock down Dr. Gat’s work-related materials and electronic files, and to confiscate his office and building keys and campus ID. Dr. Troian contacted Dr. Ares Rosakis, Caltech’s EAS Division Chair; Susan Connor, a Caltech Senior Human Resources (“HR”) Consultant; Julia McCallin, Caltech’s Associate Vice President of HR; and Dr. Morteza Gharib, Caltech’s Vice Provost of Research, among others.
49. On August 16, 2010, Dr. Troian met with Dr. Gharib. As Caltech’s Vice Provost of Research, Dr. Gharib was responsible for investigating Dr. Gat’s possible ITAR violations and for securing his work-related materials.
Troian says she informed Adam Cochran, Caltech’s Associate General Counsel, that Gat had posted information to a public site that revealed the key operating principle of the JPL micropropulsion device. This violated federal regulations.
50. During the meeting, Dr. Troian explained Dr. Gat’s erratic behavior and his admission that he had improperly transferred ITAR-controlled technical data to Dr. Weihs. She explained that she did not know the full extent of the transfer because Dr. Gat failed to document it, and refused to give her access to his laptop on which the project files were stored. Dr. Troian insisted that Caltech immediately terminate Dr. Gat’s employment and secure all of his material pertaining to the Electrospray Project.
51. Dr. Gharib told Dr. Troian “It’s not my business.” He further told Dr. Troian that he (Gharib) was “best friends” with Dr. Weihs, Dr. Gat’s Ph.D. advisor in Israel with whom Dr. Gat had admitted sharing ITAR-restricted information, and that, as a favor to Dr. Weihs, he (Gharib) had already offered Dr. Gat a postdoctoral research scholar position in his own research group since she had terminated him. [Editor’s note: Gharib had been made vice provost in July.]
Dr. Troian says she submitted a series of requests to Caltech to secure and lock down Dr. Gat’s work-related materials and electronic files. Among those she contacted was Julia McCallin, Caltech’s Associate Vice President of HR.
52. On August 19, 2010, Ms. Epallé went to Dr. Gat’s former office and hurriedly put all of his work materials into a cardboard box. Dr. Troian tried to stop Ms. Epallé, telling her that her actions violated ITAR and Caltech protocol for securing such materials. Ms. Epallé responded that she was under direct orders to remove the material and to give it to Dr. Gat. Dr. Troian tried to physically stop Ms. Epallé, but she rushed out of the room with Dr. Gat’s work materials.
53. No one at Caltech ever made Dr. Gat return his work files, or ever reviewed his laptop for ITAR information. It waited several weeks to request that Dr. Gat return his office keys, and that he remove the project-related information that he had posted online improperly, and likely illegally, after Dr. Troian terminated him from the Electrospray Project.
54. Dr. Gat worked in Dr. Gharib’s research group at Caltech from August 2010 until July 2012.
55. Dr. Gat has since returned to Israel, where he is Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at ITT, an Israeli government institution, and he continues to actively publish with Dr. Gharib.
FBI Agents Approached Dr. Troian about Dr. Gat, and She Truthfully Disclosed His Apparent Unlawful Activities.
56. On June 28, 2012, Kelly M. Sullivan and David Tsang, FBI agents with the Los Angeles County Counterintelligence Division, approached Dr. Troian and told her that there had been several security breaches at JPL.
Morteza Gharib, Caltech vice provost, said he was “best friends” with Dr. Weihs, the Israeli with whom restricted information had been shared.
57. They told her that Dr. Gat was a focus of a larger investigation involving ITAR violations and possibly espionage, and asked her for information pertaining to his activities at JPL and Caltech.
58. Dr. Troian responded to all of the FBI agents’ questions truthfully. She responded that she believed Dr. Gat had, in fact, violated federal export control laws while at Caltech. The agents asked Dr. Troian if she had ever reported Dr. Gat and to whom, and she replied that she had repeatedly voiced her concerns to Caltech officials, including Drs. Gharib and Rosakis, and to JPL supervisors, but Caltech had failed to investigate Dr. Gat. They asked Dr. Troian about Dr. Gat’s whereabouts, and she replied that he was still on campus, because Dr. Gharib had taken Dr. Gat into his own research group immediately after she dismissed Dr. Gat from her own. The agents asked why Dr. Gharib had hired Dr. Gat, and she told the agents about Dr. Weihs’s relationship with Dr. Gharib.
59. The agents urged Dr. Troian to execute an affidavit containing this information about Drs. Gat, Rosakis, and Gharib. Dr. Troian voiced her fear of retaliation by Caltech if she were to execute an affidavit, and declined to do so.
60. On July 3, 2012, Agent Sullivan returned to ask Dr. Troian more questions about illegal activity at Caltech and JPL. Although Dr. Troian answered Agent Sullivan’s questions, because of fear of retaliation from Caltech, she again declined to execute an affidavit.
Caltech Officials Accused Dr. Troian of Calling the FBI, and Launched a Campaign of Retaliation and Intimidation Against Her.
61. On July 18, 2012, two weeks after Dr. Troian’s second conversation with the FBI, Dr. Rosakis, Ms. Epallé, and Dr. Gharib met with Dr. Troian under the pretext of discussing matters related to Dr. Troian’s postdoctoral research scholars.
62. During the meeting, Drs. Gharib and Rosakis accused Dr. Troian of calling the FBI to Caltech and pressured her to divulge the content of her conversations with the FBI. Dr. Troian explained that the FBI had approached her and asked about Dr. Gat. Drs. Gharib and Rosakis insisted that they knew that Dr. Troian had called the FBI. They demanded: “How did they find out? How did they know? And why him [Dr. Gat]?”
63. Dr. Troian reiterated that Dr. Gat had likely violated federal export control laws and that Caltech should have fired him immediately, rather than keeping him engaged for more than two years.
64. Dr. Gharib admitted that he knew Dr. Gat had spoken to Dr. Weihs about the Electrospray Project. He insisted that Dr. Gat had “made a mistake” in violating any laws. He stated that he had asked Dr. Gat about the violations and “he [Dr. Gat] said ‘no’ and we accepted that.”
65. In this meeting, Drs. Rosakis and Gharib also falsely accused Dr. Troian of mistreating former postdoctoral research scholars who had worked with her, including Dr. Gat and Dr. Anoosheh Niavaranikheiri, a postdoc who worked under Dr. Troian from June 2011 to June 2012.
66. Drs. Rosakis and Gharib threatened to bar Dr. Troian from hiring future postdoctoral research scholars, which would seriously impede her ability to perform her research.
67. This was the first time anyone had accused Dr. Troian of mistreating postdoctoral research scholars.
68. When Dr. Troian pushed Drs. Gharib and Rosakis to reveal the basis for any postdoctoral research scholar complaints against her, they admitted that no formal complaints existed.
69. The meeting lasted two hours and ended with Drs. Gharib and Rosakis warning Dr. Troian that her behavior was becoming “dangerous” for the Division and for Caltech.
Edward M. Stolper, Caltech provost who told Troian she would be “miserable” if she didn’t cooperate.
70. On July 22, 2012, Dr. Troian wrote a letter to Dr. Stolper, Caltech’s Provost, asking him to address Drs. Gharib’s and Rosakis’s harassment and baseless allegations. Drs. Troian and Stolper met on July 30, 2012. At the outset of the meeting, Dr. Stolper also accused Dr. Troian of calling the FBI. He stated that Ms.Stratman and “many people” had personally informed him that she had called the FBI.
71. At the meeting, Dr. Stolper told Dr. Troian that Caltech did not like its employees calling the authorities. He said repeatedly, “You’re difficult. That’s what you are and you are going to have to live with that.” He told Dr. Troian that he was “feared” on campus.
72. At the same meeting, Dr. Stolper also accused Dr. Troian of mistreating her postdoctoral research scholars. He told Dr. Troian that Dr. Niavaranikheiri had lodged a complaint against her and that lawyers were involved, but he refused to elaborate or to show Dr. Troian a copy of the supposed complaint. Before Dr. Troian left his office, Dr. Stolper again told her “everybody is afraid of me” and said he wondered why that was so.
73. That same day, Drs. Gharib and Rosakis placed a false disciplinary warning in Dr. Troian’s personnel file without her knowledge. The warning stated that three of her former postdoctoral research scholars — Drs. Gat, Niavaranikheiri, and Dietzel — “had serious complaints about working with [her],” and that they would bar her from hiring postdoctoral research scholars if one more complaint were filed.
74. Caltech has never shown or explained to Dr. Troian any of these supposed complaints, despite her repeated requests. In fact, on a least two occasions, Drs. Gharib and Rosakis have admitted that no such complaints existed, and that Dr. Niavaranikheiri had left Caltech due to personal issues.
75. Caltech has refused to remove the disciplinary letter from her file, despite the fact that it is based on information that Drs. Gharib and Rosakis have admitted is false.
Caltech Falsely Accused Dr. Troian of Research Misconduct.
76. Dr. Troian has investigated the physics of temperature discontinuities at gas-solid and liquid-solid interfaces in nanoscale systems (“thermal slip”) since 2010, and published a paper on the topic in February of 2011. She has been investigating velocity discontinuities at liquid-solid interfaces (“velocity slip”), since 1997, and is well known for a discovery reported in the journal, Nature, in 1997.
77. In June 2011, Dr. Troian hired Dr. Anoosheh Niavaranikheiri as a postdoctoral research scholar to assist her with computer simulations on thermal slip. Because Dr. Niavaranikheiri had no background in thermal slip, Dr. Troian first tasked her with reproducing results that had already been documented in the scientific literature to prepare and train her to work on novel problems with Dr. Troian.
78. Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s simulations produced erroneous results. Dr. Troian notified Dr. Niavaranikheiri of this on several occasions, beginning in November of 2011, but by May 2012, Dr. Niavaranikheiri had not been able to reproduce successfully the results documented in scientific literature. As a result, Dr. Troian began conducting her own computer simulations on the project, using different computing algorithms, techniques, and hardware than Dr. Niavaranikheiri.
79. Dr. Niavaranikheiri abruptly left Caltech in early June 2012. Dr. Niavaranikheiri never gave Dr. Troian notice or an explanation for why she never returned to work, though she later told Dr. Gharib that she was having personal problems and did not like the environment at Caltech. She never progressed enough in her thermal slip simulations to work on the novel problems for which Dr. Troian had hired her.
80. After Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s sudden departure, Dr. Troian began to look for a new assistant on the project.
81. On August 2 , 2012, while still seeking a new assistant, Dr. Troian submitted several online abstracts (approximately 200 words each) to present at the 2012 American Physical Society Meeting of the Division of Fluid Dynamics (“APS DFD”) scheduled for November 2012.
82. APS talks are informal ten-minute reports by members of the scientific community regarding their current research.
83. APS abstracts are 200-word summaries that researchers submit in advance of their talks. The abstracts are not scientific publications; rather, they are informal, not refereed, and they are subject to change at any time. They are also not required to correspond to the eventual talk that the researcher gives at the APS meeting, as research is often developed between the submission date and the presentation date.
84. One of Dr. Troian’s abstracts focused on the simulations she had been conducting on thermal slip (“2012 APS abstract”). The abstract did not include Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s name, because Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s results had not contributed to Dr. Troian’s work on the topic.
85. APS abstracts can list multiple authors, and the APS typically accepts one abstract per first author. Knowing this, and with hopes of finding a new assistant before the conference, Dr. Troian listed herself as second author on the 2012 APS abstract because she was first author on another abstract that year. Dr. Troian used the placeholder name of M. Pucci for the first author, which is her cat’s name.
86. There are many examples in the Physics and Mathematics literature in which names of pets or other humorous objects appear as co-authors on archival, peer reviewed and highly cited journals. Prof. Andre Greim, recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, co-authored a scientific paper in 2001 with his pet hamster, H.A.M.S. ter Tisha. In 1975, Prof. Jack Hetherington co-authored a well-cited paper in Physical Review Letters, a leading physics journal, with his cat F.D.C. Willard. Prof. Doron Zeilberger, recipient of the 2004 Euler Medal in Mathematics, has co-authored over 30 technical papers with Shalosh B. Ekhad, the name of his computer.
87. By November 18, 2012, the date of the APS meeting, Dr. Troian had been unable to find a new assistant and had finished her simulations just shy of the meeting. She informed the APS meeting officials of this change and delivered the ten-minute talk herself.
88. Upon Dr. Troian’s request, APS later deleted the placeholder name from the online scientific program.
89. Dr. Gharib attended Dr. Troian’s presentation.
90. Dr. Gat was also at the APS meeting, and spoke with Dr. Gharib there several times.
91. On December 14, 2012, Drs. Gharib and Rosakis summoned Dr. Troian to the EAS Division Office. Fearing threats and retaliation similar to what she had experienced earlier that year, Dr. Troian requested the presence of a neutral third party in advance of the meeting, but Drs. Gharib and Rosakis refused.
92. At the meeting, Drs. Gharib and Rosakis claimed that Dr. Niavaranikheiri had filed a formal complaint against Dr. Troian two weeks before the 2012 APS meeting alleging that Dr. Troian failed to list her (Dr. Niavaranikheiri) as a co-author on the 2012 APS abstract. Drs. Gharib and Rosakis refused to show the alleged complaint to Dr. Troian, despite her requests, and offered no explanation as to why they failed to notify Dr. Troian of this supposed complaint until after Dr. Troian had presented her talk.
93. Drs. Gharib and Rosakis also questioned Dr. Troian’s use of a placeholder name on the abstract.
94. Dr. Troian explained that Dr. Niavaranikheiri did not contribute to the 2012 APS abstract or to any of the results Dr. Troian presented at the meeting, and that Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s results in fact contradicted those that Dr. Troian presented at the meeting.
95. Dr. Troian also explained that she had used the placeholder name while she was seeking a new assistant on the project, but that she had been unable to find one in time for the conference.
96. Dr. Gharib admitted his familiarity with the informality of APS abstracts, and that it was common practice for presenters to give more than one talk at APS meetings, as Dr. Troian had, but he was not interested in Dr. Troian’s response to his and Dr. Rosakis’ accusations. Instead, Dr. Gharib stated that FBI agents had returned to Caltech two weeks earlier to look for Dr. Gat.
97. Drs. Gharib and Rosakis reiterated that they were upset about the FBI’s visits to Caltech and about having “a faculty member that attracts these situations.” Dr. Rosakis claimed that it was Dr. Gharib’s responsibility as Vice Provost of Research to ensure that the FBI did not come to campus. Both officials accused Dr. Troian of harming Caltech’s reputation.
Dr. Kaushik Bhattacharya, Executive Chair of the Caltech Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and close friend of Dr. Rosakis, emailed Dr. Troian saying he was considering terminating her affiliation within the department.
98. On December 17, 2012, Dr. Kaushik Bhattacharya, Executive Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, of which Dr. Troian is a faculty member, emailed Dr. Troian to tell her that he was considering terminating her affiliation within the department.
99. Dr. Bhattacharya is a close friend and colleague of Dr. Rosakis.
100. Dr. Bhattacharya claimed that Dr. Troian was not sufficiently participating in department activities, even though Dr. Troian has been actively involved in recruiting and advising students in the department since 2007.
101. Dr. Troian responded to Dr. Bhattacharya’s email with a lengthy rebuttal on January 4, 2013, and contacted him again on February 27, 2013, but he never responded.
102. On December 18, 2012, the day after Dr. Bhattacharya’s email, Dr. Stolper notified Dr. Troian that he and the two other selection committee members had denied her proposal for $592,000 in funding from the FY 2013 JPL/Caltech President’s and Director’s Fund for her collaborative research at JPL. Dr. Troian was shocked at the denial because JPL officials had strongly supported her proposal.
103. On December 21, 2012, Dr. Stolper telephoned Dr. Troian to reiterate the “seriousness” of Drs. Gharib’s and Rosakis’s allegations that she had misappropriated Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s work and had used a placeholder name in the 2012 APS abstract. He told Dr. Troian that her actions constituted “research misconduct,” and had “irreparably harmed” the reputation of the Institute.
104. Charges of research and academic misconduct are among the most serious and damaging against a faculty member. Such charges, even if later withdrawn, have far reaching, long-lasting repercussions that can damage an academic and consulting career permanently.
105. Dr. Stolper asked Dr. Troian to send him the slides from her APS presentation, and she immediately did so via intra-campus mail.
Edward Stolper honored by Israel’s Hebrew University in 2012. “Prof. Stolper is a longtime friend of the Hebrew University who also headed the first international academic review committee at the Faculty of Science”
106. On Christmas Eve 2012, Dr. Stolper emailed Dr. Troian that he had not received the APS slides, and insinuated that she was delaying sending them in order to change them. Dr. Troian therefore spent part of Christmas Eve in her office at Caltech, re-transmitting the presentation files to Dr. Stolper.
107. On December 29, 2012, Dr. Stolper wrote to Dr. Troian: “there can be no mitigation [of the alleged misconduct] based on any circumstances I can envision,” which effectively declared Dr. Troian guilty before any investigation.
108. On January 4, 2013, Dr. Troian sent Dr. Stolper a detailed letter explaining that Drs. Gharib and Rosakis’s allegations were in retaliation for her speaking to the FBI, and that she had never engaged in any misconduct.
109. Caltech’s Whistleblower Policy, which is part of Dr. Troian’s contract with Caltech, prohibits “retaliation against an individual who makes a good faith disclosure of suspected wrongful conduct” and provides that if “an employee believes s/he has been the subject of retaliation for making a good-faith disclosure, s/he is encouraged to contact her/his supervisor.” Dr. Troian’s January 4, 2013 letter was the second time she had complained to Dr. Stolper, her supervisor, about Drs. Rosakis and Gharib’s retaliation against her for her disclosures about Dr. Gat to the FBI. Instead of investigating Dr. Troian’s retaliation complaints in accordance with Caltech’s Whistleblower Policy, Dr. Stolper further conspired with Drs. Gharib and Rosakis to silence Dr. Troian and to push her out of her job at Caltech.
109. Caltech’s Whistleblower Policy, which is part of Dr. Troian’s contract with Caltech, prohibits “retaliation against an individual who makes a good faith disclosure of suspected wrongful conduct” and provides that if “an employee believes s/he has been the subject of retaliation for making a good-faith disclosure, s/he is encouraged to contact her/his supervisor.” Dr. Troian’s January 4, 2013 letter was the second time she had complained to Dr. Stolper, her supervisor, about Drs. Rosakis and Gharib’s retaliation against her for her disclosures about Dr. Gat to the FBI. Instead of investigating Dr. Troian’s retaliation complaints in accordance with Caltech’s Whistleblower Policy, Dr. Stolper further conspired with Drs. Gharib and Rosakis to silence Dr. Troian and to push her out of her job at Caltech.
110. On February 26, 2014, Dr. Stolper told Dr. Troian that he intended to move forward with an investigation. He claimed that he had received written documentation related to Dr. Troian’s alleged misconduct from Drs. Gharib and Rosakis, but refused to share it with her.
Caltech Conducted a Sham Investigation into the Charges Against Dr. Troian and Issued False Findings Against Her.
Grace C. Fisher-Adams, Director, Office of Research Compliance. “Caltech denied Dr. Troian the use of counsel throughout the investigation, despite her requests, but it used Dr. Fisher-Adams, a licensed and active attorney in the State of California, to advocate on behalf of Dr. Gharib and Dr. Stolper. Dr. Troian challenged Dr. Fisher-Adams’ role in the investigation from the start because Dr. Fisher-Adams reported directly to Dr. Gharib, and therefore, had a conflict of interest in violation of Caltech policy.”
111. On March 1, 2013, Dr. Grace Fisher-Adams, Caltech’s Director of Research Compliance, emailed Dr. Troian a letter from Dr. Stolper stating that he had instituted an investigation against her to address: (1) your admitted listing of your cat as first author on the submitted and published abstract; and (2) an allegation by Dr. Anoosheh Niavaranikheiri, your postdoctoral fellow from 2011 to 2012, that the work presented in the abstract is, in part, her work for which she should have received credit as a coauthor.
112. Caltech’s charges against Dr. Troian amounted to charges of plagiarism and falsification of the research record, which constitute “research misconduct” under the Misconduct Policy set forth in the Caltech Faculty Handbook. Faculty Handbook at 7/1. Dr. Stolper had in fact already told Dr. Troian that the charges against her constituted “research misconduct.” Dr. Troian was therefore entitled to the protections set forth in the Handbook’s Misconduct Policy.
113. Rather than follow the Handbook’s Misconduct Policy, however, Dr. Stolper’s March 1, 2013 letter said that Caltech was using the Misconduct Policy only as “guidance,” which, in effect, allowed Caltech to bend the rules and find Dr. Troian guilty regardless of the evidence uncovered in the investigation. Throughout Caltech’s investigation, Dr. Fisher-Adams and members of the Investigation Committee repeatedly denied that Dr. Troian had been charged with research misconduct and reiterated that they were merely using the Misconduct Policy as a “framework” for the investigation.
114. Pursuant to the Misconduct Policy, Dr. Stolper assembled an Investigation Committee to investigate the allegations against Dr. Troian. Dr. Stolper hand-picked the committee.
115. Between March 1, 2013 and May 8, 2013, Dr. Stolper’s hand-picked Investigation Committee interviewed witnesses and collected evidence related to the charges against Dr. Troian. On April 19, 2013, Dr. Troian submitted 198 pages of supporting documentation in her defense, though Caltech refused to show her Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s purported complaint or to identify which text, slides, plots, equations, data, or results were in dispute.
“Dr. Stolper hand-picked the individuals on the Investigation Committee. Not a single member of the committee possessed technical competence in Dr. Troian’s field of theoretical physics and molecular simulation techniques… Dr. Konstantinos Giapis is a chemical engineer…”
116. On May 8, 2013, Dr. Troian attended a hearing before the Investigation Committee to address the two charges against her. Dr. Fisher-Adams also attended. Caltech denied Dr. Troian’s request that a neutral third party document the proceedings. The hearing lasted nearly three hours. Towards the end of the hearing, the Committee asked Dr. Troian to immediately turn over the slides for another ten minute talk on thermal slip that she presented at the 2013 APS meeting.
117. Following the hearing, Dr. Troian submitted an additional 200 pages of emails between herself and Dr. Niavaranikheiri to the Committee, all of which definitively proved that Dr. Niavaranikheiri and Dr. Troian had a friendly working relationship, contrary to what Drs. Stolper, Gharib, and Rosakis, and later the Committee, alleged.
118. On July 1, 2013, the same day that Dr. Stolper became Interim President, the Investigation Committee released a Draft Report dated June 25, 2013. The Report ignored Dr. Troian’s exculpatory evidence, and presented new and unfounded allegations that Caltech had never given her an opportunity to address. [Caltech has since named a new president: Thomas Felix Rosenbaum.]
119. The Draft Report also revealed that Dr. Niavaranikheiri had never, in fact, filed a formal complaint against Dr. Troian. She had emailed Caltech’s Human Resources Department six weeks prior to Dr. Troian’s 2012 APS presentation to inquire as to the identity of M. Pucci, the name that Dr. Troian had used as a placeholder while seeking a new assistant. She subsequently responded to an email from Dr. Gharib pertaining to her research with Dr. Troian. Upon information and belief, Dr. Niavaranikheiri thereafter refused to cooperate with the Investigation Committee, refused to be interviewed by the Investigation Committee, and refused to provide the Investigation Committee with actual evidence of plagiarism or misappropriation.
120. On August 19, 2013, Dr. Troian responded to the Draft Report with a 125 page point-by-point rebuttal in her defense.
“Melany Hunt, Vice Provost of Academic Affairs, acting at the direction of Provost and then-Interim President Stolper, ratified the Committee’s findings and issued a decision recommending three sanctions against Dr. Troian…”
121. On September 1, 2013, the Investigation Committee issued a Final Report finding Dr. Troian guilty of wrongdoing, despite clear evidence to the contrary. The Report omitted seventy pages of Dr. Troian’s exculpatory evidence. Dr. Fisher-Adams claimed this omission was an error.
122. The Final Report also included Dr. Troian’s confidential January 4, 2013 letter to Dr. Stolper, which revealed that she had spoken to the FBI about apparent illegal activity at Caltech.
123. On October 17, 2013, Melany Hunt, Vice Provost of Academic Affairs, acting at the direction of Provost and then-Interim President Stolper, ratified the Committee’s findings and issued a decision recommending three sanctions against Dr. Troian: 1) Dr. Troian was to draft a letter notifying APS that she had violated their policies with her November 2012 and March 2013 presentations; and if she refused to do so, Dr. Hunt would notify APS herself; 2) Dr. Troian was to acknowledge Dr. Niavaranikheiri in all future publications related to any of her “work on molecular dynamics simulations at liquid/solid interfaces;” and 3) Dr. Troian was to send “copies of preprints of future papers on this topic to the Office of the Provost and EAS Division Office,” namely Drs. Gharib and Rosakis.
The second and third penalties, i.e. the monitoring of Dr. Troian’s future work, were taken directly from the Handbook’s Misconduct Policy. Dr. Hunt further directed that a copy of her decision be retained in the Office of the Provost and in the EAS Division Office, and it is now in Dr. Troian’s personnel file.
124. Pursuant to the Misconduct Policy, Dr. Troian appealed Dr. Hunt’s decision on November 1, 2013.
125. Dr. Stolper, in his capacity as then-Interim President, was tasked with deciding Dr. Troian’s appeal.
126. On March 18, 2014, Dr. Troian met with Dr. Stolper at his request.
127. At the meeting, Dr. Stolper refused to discuss the facts of her case or the underlying charges, as the Handbook requires at the appeal stage. He instead told Dr. Troian, “I don’t know what the facts are and I don’t care.” He stated that he could “make things go away” if she admitted that she had exercised “poor judgment” and mistreated students, postdocs, and colleagues at Caltech. He told Dr. Troian the exact words he wanted to hear her use to confess to the false allegations of misconduct, and stated it “avoids having to find the truth.” He emphasized there was no point in discussing what happened when or who said what.
128. Dr. Stolper acknowledged that he did not believe that Dr. Troian misappropriated Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s work, but nonetheless asked Dr. Troian to falsely confess to doing so and he would dismiss the report. When Dr. Troian refused, and told Dr. Stolper that crediting Dr. Niavaranikheiri on the abstract would be fraud, he said, “You say it’s fraud – I don’t think it’s fraud. I think it’s just how you make the world go round on something like this.” He quoted lines from the movie Harvey, in which the character stated, “My mother would say ‘Elwood, in this world you can be oh so very smart or oh so very nice.’ For years I tried smart – I recommend nice.”
129. Dr. Troian indicated to Dr. Stolper that the investigation was part of Caltech’s retaliatory campaign against her for her reports to the FBI. Dr. Stolper threatened, “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 told Dr. Troian to call him with her decision and repeatedly directed her not to put anything in writing. Dr. Stolper told Dr. Troian that if she did not cooperate with him, he would affirm the findings against her and she would be “miserable.” On April 11, 2014, Dr. Troian wrote Dr. Stolper a letter that memorialized the appeal meeting and indicated that she would not admit to the false charges against her.
130. On April 14, 2014, three days after Dr. Troian’s letter, Dr. Stolper issued a decision on Dr. Troian’s appeal that affirmed the Investigation Committee’s findings against her. Pursuant to the Faculty Handbook’s Misconduct Policy, Dr. Stolper’s decision was final.
131. Several days later, on April 22, 2014, Dr. Stolper notified Dr. Troian that he had also denied her proposal for $520,952 in funding from the FY 2014 JPL/Caltech President’s and Director’s Fund for her research at JPL, though her proposal had, again, received wide support from top officials at JPL.
Caltech’s Investigation of Dr. Troian Violated Its Misconduct Policy.
132. The Misconduct Policy provides that faculty members accused of research misconduct are entitled to an investigation and hearing, and that, upon recommendation of the appropriate academic division chair (“DC”) and Provost, the President renders a final decision. Faculty Handbook at 7/1.
A. Caltech Denied Dr. Troian an Inquiry into the Charges it Levied Against Her.
133. Charges of research misconduct must proceed through three stages: Inquiry, Investigation, and Resolution. During the Inquiry stage, the Misconduct Policy requires: [T]he DC [Division Chair] [to] notify the respondent in writing of the charges and process to follow. . . . The nature of the inquiry . . . should be worked out by the DC in consultation with the complainant and respondent. . . . A written report shall be prepared that states what evidence was reviewed, summarizes relevant interviews, and includes the conclusions of the inquiry. The individual(s) against whom the allegation was made shall be given a copy of the report of the inquiry. If they comment on that report, their comments may be made part of the record. Faculty Handbook at 7/2 (emphasis added).
134. Caltech failed to provide Dr. Troian with an Inquiry stage.
135. Dr. Troian received written documentation of the charges against her for the first time on March 1, 2013, when Dr. Stolper sent her a letter stating that he had decided to initiate a formal investigation.
136. Dr. Troian protested the lack of Inquiry and Inquiry Report for the first time on March 5, 2013, and again on May 8 and June 11, 2013. In response, Caltech claimed that Dr. Troian’s December 14, 2012 meeting with Drs. Gharib and Rosakis constituted the “Inquiry.” However, Dr. Troian was not presented with any written charges or evidence of misconduct before or during that meeting, during which Drs. Gharib and Rosakis repeatedly accused Dr. Troian of bringing the FBI to campus.
137. The Institute failed to afford Dr. Troian any participation in an inquiry “process.” It further failed to collect any evidence from her, provide her with a written “report of the inquiry,” or give her an opportunity to comment on any such report, even though Dr. Stolper acknowledged on February 26, 2014 that he received the report from Drs. Gharib and Rosakis.
B. Caltech Appointed an Investigation Committee Lacking Technical Competence in Dr. Troian’s Field.
“Dr. Stolper hand-picked the individuals on the Investigation Committee. Not a single member of the committee possessed technical competence in Dr. Troian’s field of theoretical physics and molecular simulation techniques… Dr. Buchwald, the Chair, is a historian of science…” His wife, also a Caltech history professor, is an Israeli who graduated from Technion.
138. The Misconduct Policy states that “[t]he principal criteria for [investigation committee] membership shall be fairness and wisdom, technical competence in the field in question, and avoidance of conflict of interest. ” Faculty Handbook at 7/3 (emphasis added). “Membership of the committee need not be restricted to the faculty of the Institute.” Id.
139. Dr. Stolper hand-picked the individuals on the Investigation Committee. Not a single member of the committee possessed technical competence in Dr. Troian’s field of theoretical physics and molecular simulation techniques. Dr. Buchwald, the Chair, is a historian of science, Dr. Paul Dimotakis is an aeronautical engineer, Dr. Konstantinos Giapis is a chemical engineer, and Dr. Ellen Rothenberg is a biologist. The Policy explicitly permitted Caltech to seek experts outside the Institute to sit on the Committee, but Caltech rejected this option. Dr. Stolper ignored Dr. Troian’s request that at least one of the individuals she identified with experience in her field be added to the Committee.
C. Caltech Permitted Biased Individuals to Serve on the Investigation Committee.
140. The Misconduct Policy states that any “semblance of conflict of interest must rigorously be avoided at all stages,” Faculty Handbook at 7/1, and “[t]he principal criteria for [investigation committee] membership shall be . . . avoidance of conflict of interest,” Faculty Handbook at 7/3 (emphasis added).
“Dr. Stolper hand-picked the individuals on the Investigation Committee. Not a single member of the committee possessed technical competence in Dr. Troian’s field of theoretical physics and molecular simulation techniques… Dr. Ellen Rothenberg is a biologist.”
141. Caltech ignored Dr. Troian’s concerns of bias of the Committee members. One half of the Committee had clear allegiances to Drs. Gharib and Rosakis, the individuals who initiated the complaint and campaign of retaliation against Dr. Troian.
142. Dr. Dimotakis has been close friends with Dr. Rosakis for over thirty years. The two have published together, and they shared a research grant shortly before the investigation commenced. Dr. Dimotakis was also Chief Technologist of JPL during 2010 when Dr. Troian reported Dr. Gat’s possible ITAR violations; he was aware that Dr. Troian had spoken to the FBI.
143. Dr. Giapis is a friend and colleague of Dr. Dietzel’s Ph.D. thesis supervisor. Drs. Rosakis and Gharib had previously accused Dr. Troian of mistreating Dr. Dietzel while he was a postdoc. Dr. Dimotakis recommended to Dr. Stolper that Dr. Giapis serve on the Committee.
144. Dr. Troian complained of the conflicts of interest on the part of Dr. Dimotakis and Dr. Giapis to Committee Chair Buchwald, but he dismissed them.
D. Caltech’s Investigation Exceeded the Scope of the Charges Against Dr. Troian.
“Caltech ignored Dr. Troian’s concerns of bias of the Committee members. One half of the Committee had clear allegiances to Drs. Gharib and Rosakis, the individuals who initiated the complaint and campaign of retaliation against Dr. Troian…” Dr. Paul E. Dimotakis, Professor of Aeronautics Paul E. Dimotakis, “has been close friends with Dr. Rosakis for over thirty years…”
145. The Misconduct Policy requires that the accused faculty member be informed of “all allegations” against her “so that a response may be prepared.” Faculty Handbook at 7/3. In violation of this provision, the Committee investigated additional allegations of misconduct without notifying Dr. Troian of the new charges.
146. Shortly after initiating the investigation, Caltech demanded that Dr. Troian turn over “all materials in connection with the allegations against her.” When Dr. Troian asked the Committee to define the charges with greater specificity so that she could collect the materials for the investigation, Caltech refused to provide further clarification, and instead claimed that it was not constrained by the charges in Dr. Stolper’s letter but rather that, “the committee’s investigation may lead it in other directions depending on their ongoing findings . . . .”
147. In the process of the investigation, Caltech insisted that Dr. Troian’s entire laptop computer be imaged even though 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.
148. Dr. Troian was forced to hire an attorney to protect her privacy and prevent unauthorized access to federally restricted material.
149. When the Investigation Committee issued its Draft Report dated June 25, 2013, Dr. Troian learned for the first time that the Committee had investigated conduct related to an abstract she submitted for an APS meeting held in March 2013. Caltech failed to give Dr. Troian notice that it had charged her with misconduct related to the 2013 APS meeting, and she had no opportunity to rebut this false and unsupported charge at her hearing. The Committee’s Draft Report nevertheless concluded that she had “adopted authorship manipulation a second time for rule-evasion purposes during submission of the 2013 APS March meeting abstract . . . including backdating the abstract submission date to the original submission date, compromising the scientific record.”
E. Caltech Failed to Apply the Appropriate Evidentiary and Mens Rea Standards to Its Findings.
150. The Misconduct Policy provides: [A] finding of research misconduct requires that: There be a significant departure from accepted practices of the scientific community for maintaining the integrity of the research record; The misconduct be committed intentionally, or knowingly, or in reckless disregard of accepted practices; and The allegation be proven by a preponderance of the evidence.Faculty Handbook at 7/1 (emphasis added).
151. With respect to Charge 1, the Investigation Committee made no finding that Dr. Troian’s use of a placeholder name on the 2012 APS abstract constituted a significant departure from accepted practices at APS conferences, or that Dr. Troian engaged in this conduct intentionally, knowingly, or in reckless disregard of accepted practices. In fact, Dr. Troian presented authoritative evidence that APS routinely accommodates its conference participants by permitting alterations to abstracts after submission and multiple talks by a single author. Dr. Gharib even conceded this fact during the alleged “Inquiry” meeting on December 14, 2012.
152. With respect to Charge 2, Dr. Troian produced 333 pages of evidence to the Committee that her ten-minute presentations at the APS conferences did not plagiarize Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s work, but the Investigation Committee found her guilty of this charge without applying a preponderance of the evidence standard to the evidence before it. In fact, there is no evidence that Dr. Troian used or referenced any of Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s work in her abstract or her ten minute presentations. The Committee also failed to find that Dr. Troian’s conduct related to Charge 2 represented a significant departure from accepted practices in her field or that she acted intentionally, knowingly, or in reckless disregard for accepted practices.
153. Dr. Troian submitted a 17-page appeal to Dr. Hunt challenging the Committee’s findings after it issued its Final Report. Neither Dr. Hunt nor Dr. Stolper referred to any of Dr. Troian’s evidence or the appropriate evidentiary standards in affirming the Committee’s findings.
F. Caltech Denied Dr. Troian a Proper Appeal.
154. The Misconduct Policy provides that a charged party may appeal an adverse decision “to the President on grounds of improper procedure or capricious or arbitrary decision based on the evidence in the record,” but any appeals process must be “separated organizationally from the inquiry and investigation.” Faculty Handbook at 7/4.
155. Dr. Stolper drew up the charges against Dr. Troian and hand-picked the Investigation Committee. The Policy therefore prohibited him from acting as the individual to whom Dr. Troian appealed, even though he was Interim President at the time. Further, Dr. Stolper could not render a fair decision in Dr. Troian’s appeal since he admitted that he had pre-determined her guilt before she was charged. His bias was evident in his conduct during her appeal on March 18, 2014, including his prohibition against making a record of her appeal, which violated the Misconduct Policy’s admonition that “all stages of the procedure should be fully documented,” Id. at 7/1, his statements that he did not “care about the facts,” and his refusal to review the Committee’s and Dr. Hunt’s findings.
G. Caltech Violated Dr. Troian’s Right to be Treated with Justice and Fairness.
156. The Misconduct Policy requires that “[a]ll parties must be treated with justice and fairness.” Id. Caltech deprived Dr. Troian of just and fair treatment by denying her the benefit of enumerated rights in the Misconduct Policy and by subjecting her to an inherently unfair process pre-determined to find her guilty.
157. From the initiation of the investigation in February 2013 through the date of her hearing on May 8, 2013, those investigating Dr. Troian, including Dr. Stolper, repeatedly told her that the charges against her arose from a complaint Caltech received from Dr. Niavaranikheiri, Dr. Troian’s former postdoc. In July 2013, when Dr. Troian received the Investigation Committee’s Draft Report, she learned for the first time that the Committee had never interviewed Dr. Niavaranikheiri, and that Dr. Niavaranikheiri had never presented any evidence of plagiarism or misappropriation to the Committee. She also learned for the first time that Drs. Gharib and Rosakis, not Dr. Niavaranikheiri, had pressured Dr. Stolper to initiate the investigation.
158. The Draft Report revealed that six weeks before the APS DFD conference, Dr. Niavaranikheiri had emailed Caltech to inquire about the identity of the first author on Dr. Troian’s 2012 APS abstract. The email contained no accusation that Dr. Troian had engaged in plagiarism or that she had misappropriated Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s work. Dr. Gharib received the inquiry on or about October 3, 2012. Rather than speak to Dr. Troian about the identity of M. Pucci upon receipt of Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s inquiry, Dr. Gharib concealed its existence from Dr. Troian, and requested that Dr. Niavaranikheiri provide additional information on the work that she had performed with Dr. Troian. Dr. Gharib then waited until after Dr. Troian delivered her ten-minute presentation at the November APS DFD conference to bring false charges of misconduct against her.
159. Drs. Gharib, Rosakis, and Stolper used Dr. Niavaranikheiri as the straw-man complainant so they could institute proceedings against Dr. Troian in an effort to push her out of Caltech for cooperating with the FBI. Dr. Niavaranikheiri was never interviewed and did not serve as a witness in the Committee’s investigation.
160. Caltech denied Dr. Troian fairness and justice by willfully misrepresenting or ignoring more than 500 pages of exculpatory evidence she presented to the Investigation Committee.
161. In April 2013, before the Committee issued its Draft Report, Dr. Troian submitted evidence that she had begun her own independent thermal slip simulations in June 2012 and was collecting her own data by July 2012, nearly one month before
she submitted the 2012 APS abstract. The Committee nevertheless falsely stated in its Draft Report that Dr. Troian did not begin her own simulations until after she had submitted the abstract in August 2012. The Committee cited this false factual allegation to support its erroneous conclusion that Dr. Troian had relied on Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s work for the 2012 APS abstract. Dr. Troian highlighted the Committee’s factual misrepresentation in her August 19, 2013 rebuttal to the Draft Report, but the Committee failed to correct it. Instead, in the Final Report, the Committee falsely stated that Dr. Troian had no independent results available to her by the time she submitted the 2012 APS abstract and used this knowing misrepresentation to support its conclusion that Dr. Troian had based her abstract on Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s work.
162. Dr. Troian submitted 198 pages of evidence in advance of the hearing on May 8, 2013. The Committee refused Dr. Troian’s efforts to review this evidence during the hearing, even though it provided answers to numerous questions the Committee posed to her. The Committee also omitted 70 pages of exhibits that Dr. Troian submitted to rebut the Draft Report from the record accompanying the Final Report, and upon information and belief, did not review those documents. Dr. Troian’s evidence definitively demonstrated that her results were consistent with over 30 years of results from the scientific literature. Conversely, Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s results were inconsistent with fundamental laws of physics, which explained why Dr. Niavaranikheiri did not warrant acknowledgement in Dr. Troian’s APS abstracts or presentations. Dr. Troian’s evidence was uncontroverted, but the Committee nevertheless concluded that Dr. Niavaranikheiri warranted acknowledgement, which demonstrated that the Committee willfully disregarded Dr. Troian’s evidence.
163. Dr. Troian also provided to the Committee 70 examples of changes listed in the 2012 APS DFD Program Corrigenda, including changes to abstract authors before and after the conference. Two of these changes resulted in the same researcher presenting twice at the conference, which is precisely what occurred in Dr. Troian’s case. This evidence definitively proved that APS approved such changes, but the Committee failed to acknowledge this evidence in finding that Dr. Troian used a placeholder name to circumvent APS rules.
164. Dr. Stolper explicitly stated that he did not “care about the facts” during Dr. Troian’s appeal.
165. Caltech further denied Dr. Troian a just and fair investigation by crediting the testimony of witnesses it knew were biased against her, including Dr. Manoochehr Koochesfahani, who is a longtime friend and collaborator of Dr. Gharib and who obtained his Ph.D. in Aeronautics from Caltech in 1983, where Dr. Dimotakis was his thesis supervisor.
166. Dr. Fisher-Adams’s role in the investigation also violated Dr. Troian’s right to just and fair treatment. The Misconduct Policy’s provision on Inquiries states that “every effort should be made to make personal legal counsel unnecessary for either complainant or respondent at this and all other stages.” Faculty Handbook at 7/2.
167. Caltech denied Dr. Troian the use of counsel throughout the investigation, despite her requests, but it used Dr. Fisher-Adams, a licensed and active attorney in the State of California, to advocate on behalf of Dr. Gharib and Dr. Stolper.
168. Dr. Troian challenged Dr. Fisher-Adams’ role in the investigation from the start because Dr. Fisher-Adams reported directly to Dr. Gharib, and therefore, had a conflict of interest in violation of Caltech policy. Caltech nevertheless insisted on Dr. Fisher-Adams’s participation and falsely claimed she was merely providing “administrative support” to the Investigation Committee.
169. In fact, Dr. Fisher-Adams advocated on behalf of the Caltech administrators who brought the charges against Dr. Troian throughout the investigation. When Dr. Troian met with Dr. Fisher-Adams for the first time on March 1, 2013, Dr. Fisher-Adams asked Dr. Troian hostile questions about the charges against her under the pretext that her answers would help Dr. Fisher-Adams organize documents for the Committee. When Dr. Troian explained to Dr. Fisher-Adams that it would take her some time to collect the evidence the Committee sought, Dr. Fisher-Adams accused Dr. Troian of stonewalling in an effort to manipulate evidence. During Dr. Troian’s hearing before the Investigation Committee on May 8, 2013, Dr. Fisher-Adams twice interrupted the proceedings, once to defend Caltech’s actions in denying Dr. Troian an Inquiry, and a second time to curtail discussion about the nature of Dr. Niavaranikheiri’s alleged complaint against Dr. Troian, which she and Caltech purposefully obfuscated throughout the investigation. Dr. Fisher-Adams was also responsible for transcribing the hearing proceedings, which upon and information and belief were audio recorded. Dr. Troian was never given a copy or transcript of the audio recording. The “transcript” Dr. Fisher-Adams made of the three hour hearing was an abbreviated and inaccurate 11-page summary that deliberately obscured Dr. Troian’s statements and deleted or omitted facts helpful to Dr. Troian and damaging to Caltech.
170. Dr. Stolper’s stated bias against Dr. Troian before the investigation began renders Caltech’s proceedings inherently unfair. In December 2012, before issuing the charging document, Dr. Stolper wrote the following to Dr. Troian:
[I]n my opinion, there can be no mitigation based on any circumstances I can currently envision (including those that you have offered related to your postdoctoral scholar) for having listed your cat as the first author on a submission for publication. There can be no interpretation other than this was a purposeful misrepresentation of the people involved in the work that you presented. As academics and scientists such behavior cannot be sanctioned; there is no middle ground when it comes to honest and accurate representation of our work and who is credited with having participated in it.
171. Despite Dr. Stolper’s apparent and disqualifying bias against Dr. Troian, he was the official who drafted the charges against her, hand-picked the Investigation Committee, heard Dr. Troian’s appeal, and adopted the Committee’s findings against her as Caltech’s final decision.
Caltech’s Additional, Ongoing Retaliation against Dr. Troian
172. Caltech administrators continue to obstruct Dr. Troian’s work and to impede her career, and have done so since she first reported Dr. Gat’s illegal activity in 2010.
173. On September 18, 2013, seventeen days after the Investigation Committee issued its Final Report, Caltech Property Services sent a notice to eleven administrators and staff implying that Dr. Troian was responsible for a $378,239 missing piece of laboratory equipment. Caltech officials later acknowledged that the equipment had never belonged to Dr. Troian, but did not retract the memos containing the false statements.
174. In January 2014, Dr. Hunt ordered a doctoral student who had been working with Dr. Troian for over two years to exclude all research with Dr. Troian from his doctoral thesis. Dr. Hunt’s actions were highly unusual, because Dr. Troian was the student’s doctoral co-advisor.
175. Caltech deliberately excluded Dr. Troian from all meetings with the Engineering and Applied Sciences (EAS) Visiting Committee during their March 2014 visit to Caltech, even though Caltech invited her to meet with that Committee during their last visit in 2007. The Committee consists of prominent Caltech trustees, business leaders, and faculty from leading universities who visit Caltech every five years and advise the President, Provost, and EAS Division Chair. Dr. Rosakis invited many of Troian’s faculty colleagues to meet with Committee members during their 2014 visit, which allowed them to shape the division’s agenda, but Dr. Rosakis deliberately excluded Dr. Troian.
176. Caltech also deliberately excluded Dr. Troian from a keynote Fall 2014 departmental fundraising event, “Applied Physics and Materials Science in the 21st century,” even though Dr. Troian’s research encompasses the topical areas discussed and she requested to participate. Nearly every senior faculty member in Dr. Troian’s field except her presented. Dr. Troian’s exclusion denied her the opportunity to advertise her work to prospective donors, alumnae, business leaders, heads of funding agencies, and the Director of DARPA.
177. Caltech has systematically prevented Dr. Troian from serving on administrative, advisory, and honorific committees on campus since the summer of 2010, when she first reported Dr. Gat’s illegal activity. Service on such committees is vital to faculty members’ visibility on campus, enhances opportunities for scientific collaboration and funding requests, and is a factor that Drs. Rosakis and Stolper consider in awarding EAS faculty members annual pay raises. As a senior tenured faculty member with extensive experience in both industry and academia, and as a frequent advisor and consultant to universities, government, and industry, Dr. Troian qualifies to serve on Caltech committees, and she has consistently requested to do so. Drs. Rosakis and Stolper refuse to appoint her or to promote her to any administrative posts.
178. On information and belief, Dr. Troian’s annual salary increases have been less than those of her peers since she reported Dr. Gat’s illegal activity to the FBI.
179. On information and belief, Caltech denied Dr. Troian a courtesy appointment in the Physics Department in 2011, though she clearly qualified for the appointment, and it is a routine matter for Caltech faculty to receive courtesy appointments.
180. As a result of the inordinate amount of time and energy Dr. Troian has spent defending herself against Caltech’s baseless charges and retaliation, she has not been able to finalize research she would have otherwise finalized; has had to decline numerous outside consulting opportunities which she would have otherwise assumed; and has had to decline numerous invitations to attend workshops, lectures, and roundtables, which she would have otherwise accepted, including an invitation to spend three-and-a-half months at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, England, an invitation by the Editors in Chief of the Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics to write a review article, and an invitation by the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of World Scientific Publishing Company to write a volume of lecture notes.
Caltech Recently Padded Dr. Troian’s Personnel File with Falsified Documents in Preparation for this Lawsuit.
181. On April 9, 2013, Caltech issued Dr. Troian’s former counsel a copy of her personnel file, at his request.
182. At that time, Dr. Troian discovered that Drs. Gharib and Rosakis had placed in the file a signed disciplinary letter dated July 30, 2012, which falsely stated that three postdocs had “serious complaints” against her and that these alleged complaints were the topic of their July 18, 2012 meeting. The letter omitted the fact that Drs. Gharib and Rosakis had used that meeting to question and rebuke Dr. Troian for speaking with the FBI and for reporting Dr. Gat’s ITAR violations.
183. On September 20, 2014, Caltech again issued Dr. Troian a copy of her personnel file, upon her request.
184. The September 2014 file contains various additional falsified documents that predate April 2013, when Caltech last released her file.
185. Caltech has padded Dr. Troian’s personnel file with false, negative information about her in preparation for this lawsuit.
186. The September 2014 file contains a false summary by Drs. Gharib and Rosakis of their December 14, 2012 meeting with Dr. Troian, which falsely attributes statements to her, and claims: “this latest episode is indicative of ongoing concerns about Prof. Troian’s professional behavior . . . This is not an isolated event . . . we recommend that the Provost assemble a committee to look into her actions in light of potential faculty misconduct.” This document definitively demonstrates that it was Drs. Gharib and Rosakis who initiated the false charges of misconduct against Dr. Troian.
187. The newly-released file also includes a document, dated 2007, that contains wholly false allegations of Dr. Troian’s “abuse” of Caltech staff. Neither of these false documents were in Dr. Troian’s personnel file as of April 2013.
Dr. Troian Has Suffered Emotional and Physical Harm as a Result of Caltech’s Retaliation Against Her.
188. Due to Caltech’s escalating harassment against her, in July 2012, Dr. Troian began experiencing severe chest pains and underwent several cardiac tests in September 2012.
189. Her cardiologist concluded the pain was caused by severe anxiety and sleep loss. The pain became progressively more severe and in November 2013 she underwent an endoscopy and was diagnosed with severe esophageal and stomach ulcers.
190. Dr. Troian now requires daily multiple prescription medications, but the condition has not abated. Her doctor recently indicated that she will likely need surgery to alleviate the pain and progression of this disease.
191. Caltech’s four years of retaliation and harassment have also caused Dr. Troian severe anxiety, stress, sadness and depression, sleep disturbances and other physical ailments.
COUNT I – RETALIATION IN VIOLATION OF CAL. LABOR CODE § 1102.5(b)
192. Plaintiff incorporates and alleges paragraphs 1 through 191 above as if restated herein.
193. Cal. Labor Code § 1102.5 prohibits an employer from retaliating against an employee for disclosing to a government or law enforcement agency, or to a person with authority over the employee or another employee who has the authority to investigate, discover, or correct the violation or noncompliance, information the employee reasonably believes discloses a violation or noncompliance with a local, state or federal statute, rule, or regulation.
194. Caltech violated Labor Code § 1102.5 by retaliating against Dr. Troian for disclosing what she reasonably believed to be violations of federal export control laws, including ITAR violations, by Dr. Amir Gat to the FBI and to Caltech and JPL officials.
195. Dr. Troian reasonably believed that she was disclosing Dr. Gat’s violations of noncompliance with state or federal statutes, rules, or regulations, when she told Caltech and JPL officials and the FBI about Dr. Gat’s apparent ITAR violations.
196. Caltech had knowledge of Dr. Troian’s internal disclosures regarding Dr. Gat because she made them to Caltech officials. Caltech clearly also had knowledge of Dr. Troian’s disclosures to the FBI about Dr. Gat. Drs. Gharib, Rosakis, and Stolper repeatedly questioned, threatened, and rebuked Dr. Troian about her communications with the FBI regarding Dr. Gat, beginning two weeks after her second conversation with the FBI.
197. Based on Dr. Troian’s disclosures of Dr. Gat’s apparent illegal activity, Caltech engaged in a campaign of retaliation against Dr. Troian in an effort to drive her out of Caltech and ruin her career. The retaliation included, inter alia, placing multiple false letters of discipline in her file; threatening to bar her from hiring future postdoctorate students; falsely accusing her of research misconduct; refusing to follow the Handbook’s procedure for investigating research misconduct and instituting sham proceedings that violated her rights as a faculty member; issuing false findings of wrongdoing against her and imposing discipline against her; falsely accusing her of misappropriating lab equipment; thwarting her participation in campus committees, events, and lectures; denying her over a million dollars in grant funds; causing her to waste significant time and money to fight Caltech’s baseless allegations against her; and generally intimidating her and threatening her employment at Caltech.
198. At all times relevant to this Complaint, Caltech was Dr. Troian’s employer for the purposes of Cal. Labor Code § 1102.5(b).
199. At all times relevant to this Complaint, Caltech employed each person who retaliated against Dr. Troian, including but not limited to Dr. Stolper, Dr. Gharib, Dr. Rosakis, Dr. Fisher-Adams, Dr. Hunt, Ms. Stratman, and Ms. Epallé.
200. As a direct and proximate result of Caltech’s conduct, Dr. Troian has suffered special damages in the form of lost earnings, benefits and/or out-of-pocket expenses in an amount according to proof at the time of trial. As a further direct and proximate result of Caltech’s conduct, Dr. Troian will suffer additional special damages in the form of lost future earnings, benefits, and/or other prospective damages in the amount according to proof at the time of trial.
201. As a further direct and proximate result of Caltech’s conduct, Dr. Troian has suffered mental and emotional pain, distress and discomfort, all to her detriment and damage in amounts not fully ascertained but within the jurisdiction of this court and subject to proof at the time of trial.
202. Caltech’s actions were intentional and were taken in willful and wanton disregard of Dr. Troian’s legal rights, and were taken specifically to injure her for her protected disclosure of apparent illegal activity at Caltech, thereby warranting punitive damages against Caltech.
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From the Archives
The Balfour Declaration – A Century of Jewish Power
By Gilad Atzmon | May 17, 2017
This year, Palestinians and their supporters mark the 100th anniversary of The Balfour Declaration, a written statement from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, in favour of the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
For Palestinians, The Balfour Declaration was the beginning of their plight: a century of ethnic cleansing at the hands of European newcomers who claim Palestine as their historic home. Yet, for some reason, supporters of the Palestinians are desperate to suppress discussion of the motivation for the Balfour Declaration – how and why did it come about? … continue
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