Ex-NASA Mars InSight contractor sets legal eagles on JPL over whistleblower sacking
Summary
Lillie said he was encouraged to use a set of illegally obtained, Lockheed Martin-owned MathCAD files as part of a design project for the Mars Insight Lander. After raising concerns that a JPL mission assurance manager had told him to cover his tracks and delete references in his work output to the Lockheed files, Lillie was fired. Now Lillie is pursuing the NASA JPL directly, as recent filings in the Superior Court of the State of California seen by The Register show – and they are, in part, based on information Mantech disclosed during his earlier US federal lawsuit. Lillie alleges that JPL Mars Insight deputy mission assurance manager Chau Brown was the one who told him to delete references to the MathCAD files – and that Brown was told by a senior JPL manager, Linda Facto, not to use them but decided to ignore that and go ahead anyway. After being wrongfully fired by Mantech, the JPL "were committed to punishing [Lillie] for reporting JPLs misuse of documents and information in violation of state and federal law", causing him "significant economic as well as emotional and reputational damage".
