Nelson pointed out that only a small percentage of employees at JPL work in high security areas, that most partner in missions with other countries where information is freely available.
Also, that the directive is not a law and that other government agencies have not interpreted the directive with the strick view that NASA administration has.
Nelson commented on how difficult the lawsuit has been and how the battle continues. Before the employees decided to bring the suit against NASA they contacted many politicians.
“We realized this was not a legal battle but a political one,” Nelson said.
They didn’t get the political response they had hoped for at the beginning of their quest but as the days past they got more support.
Congressman David Dreier threw in his support and Adam Schiff has been very supportive, Nelson said. But they are still political officials that have stayed away from the subject.
The idea to bring a suit against NASA was not the first thing that came to the employees’ minds, Nelson said. The first was to question the JPL and Caltech managers and NASA Administrator Michael Griffin when he visited the campus shortly after the background checks were announced.
“When we asked about [Griffin] the checks he said ‘If you don’t like it I hope you like working somewhere else,” Nelson said. “He was really our best recruiter.”
Nelson and 27 other JPL employees decided to take NASA and Caltech to court.
It wasn’t because they had anything to hide, Nelson added. They had all gone through background checks in the past. It was the SF85 form that they were asked to complete that concerned them.
