Despicable NASA ‘sting’ operation against 74-year-old widow of Apollo engineer draws court rebuke

Agents of the U.S. government are entitled to immunity from lawsuits for what they do in the line of duty, as long as they do it right, in accord with the Constitution.

Despicable NASA ‘sting’ operation against 74-year-old widow of Apollo engineer draws court rebuke UIp4u2

Despicable NASA ‘sting’ operation against 74-year-old widow of Apollo engineer draws court rebuke UIp4u2

But what one NASA investigator did to Joann Davis, a financially distressed widow of an engineer on the Apollo program who was trying to raise a little money, was too much for a federal court of appeals to stomach. And on Thursday, the judges let her suit against him go forward.

Here’s what happened, as described in an opinion issued by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena.

Robert Davis was, by all accounts, a brilliant engineer, employed by North American Rockwell as manager of NASA’s Apollo 11 program.

When he left, he took with him two mementos: One “contained a rice-grain-sized fragment of lunar material, or ‘moonrock;’ the other contained a small piece of the Apollo 11 heat shield.”

According to “family lore,” Neil Armstrong gave the paperweights to Davis in recognition of his service to NASA.

Robert Davis died in 1986. His widow, Joann, who later remarried, fell on hard times in 2011. Her son had become ill, requiring over 20 surgeries. Her youngest daughter died, and she found herself raising several grandchildren in her 70s.

In need of money, she thought of selling the paperweights, only to find that auction houses were uninterested.

She then contacted NASA for help in finding a buyer for what she described as “2 rare Apollo 11 space artifacts.”

Her innocent email inquiry produced a wholly unanticipated result when it arrived in the NASA bureaucracy. It wound up not in the hands of some kindly space veteran but in the office of NASA’s Inspector General at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

There, an agent smelled a crime. Perhaps, he thought, she was trying to unload purloined government property, a crime.

More: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/14/humiliating-sting-operation-against-elderly-widow-of-apollo-engineer-draws-court-rebuke/?tid=pm_national_pop
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Anarcho-Capitalist, AnCaps Forum, Ancapolis, OZschwitz Contraband
“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner
"Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann

Despicable NASA ‘sting’ operation against 74-year-old widow of Apollo engineer draws court rebuke

Despicable NASA ‘sting’ operation against 74-year-old widow of Apollo engineer draws court rebuke

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