MOSCOW, Idaho -- The University of Idaho has agreed to pay $105,000 to settle a lawsuit stemming from what two former
employees contend was a smear campaign.
The out-of-court agreement made last month with Kenneth and Martha Hass was disclosed Friday, a day after the Lewiston Tribune
filed a public records request with the university.
The couple said fellow researcher Gary Maki wrote a draft of a letter critical of Kenneth Hass and sent it to a colleague at NASA with
instructions that it be sent back to the school "close to the way it is" so he could take it to then-UI President Tim White and use it
against Hass. Maki was later removed in 2007 as the director of the school's Center for Advanced Microelectronics and
Biomolecular Research.
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