Canada Press: Promisgate: World's longest spy scandal still glossed over

[PhilipShore]

Canada Free Press
World's longest spy scandal still glossed over
By David Dastych
Tuesday, January 31, 2006

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/dastych013106.htm

The so called PROMIS affair would never have happened if the software invented by an American computer specialist, Mr. William A. Hamilton, had been a technical failure. But this case management and data mining software, developed in the early 1980s by a small Washington D.C. company, Inslaw Inc., had proven itself to be a perfect intelligence tool. Originally made for the Department of Justice to help the country’s prosecutor offices in their case management, it drew the attention of corrupt officials and of Israeli Intelligence. Stolen by ruse from its owner, Inslaw Inc., the software was hacked and provided with a "trap door", a sort of a Trojan Horse hacker’s trick, that enabled the retrieval of information from the foreign intelligence services and banks it had been sold to on behalf of Israeli and U.S. intelligence. Without the knowledge of the software’s owner, and in violation of copyright laws, the PROMIS software was sold to over 40 countries and used in an unprecedented "sting operation", which yielded huge financial and intelligence benefits to the United States and Israel.

But "blowback" from the U.S. Government's theft of PROMIS in 1982 soon turned into a series of painful losses for U.S. national security, into criminal financial benefits for corrupt officials, and into intelligence "scoops" for the secret services of adversaries. "It’s far worse than Watergate"--commented former U.S. Attorney General and Inslaw counsel Elliot Richardson.

PROMIS sold to bin Laden

First, unnamed government sources familiar with the debriefing of Hanssen in 2001 reportedly told the Washington Times, Fox News, and the washingtonpost.com that year that someone in Russia had sold copies of PROMIS-derivative software source codes, which Hanssen had stolen from the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies for the Russians, to Osama bin Laden for $2 million and that al Qaeda had used the stolen U.S. intelligence software to access the U.S. intelligence database systems in order to evade detection and monitoring before 9-11 and to move funds undetected through the banking system.

[bananas]

1. It doesn't even mention Ed Meese

or the programmer that "disappeared"

[WhiteTara]

4. I wondered if I remembered this because there

was no mention of Edwin Meese. Now there was a crook who got to walk away.

[oblivious]

5. Just for the record, Canada Free Press is the ultimate right-wing site.

Super reactionary, right-wing freeperland.

[bananas]

6. Thanks - I didn't know that

I wish we could get one more vote for this, put it on the greatest page.
A lot of people are completely unaware of PROMIS/Inslaw.

[notadmblnd]

10. You got it.

I posted about this very subject the other day and listed two books as reference for the story regarding who was involved and how it was sold.

The post was promptly deleted (not moved, not locked) by the mod. don;t even know why?:shrug:

[bananas]

11. They probably hadn't heard about it

and thought it was a "conspiracy theory".
It really is unbelievable.

[RazzleDazzle]

8. Depressing when the reactionary rightwing gets it right

Isn't it?

[seemslikeadream]

2. PROMIS sold to bin Laden

al Qaeda had used the stolen U.S. intelligence software to access the U.S. intelligence database systems in order to evade detection and monitoring before 9-11 and to move funds undetected through the banking system.

[bananas]

3. k&r

[Pachamama]

7. Crossing the Rubicon by Michael Ruppert, talks about this very topic!

When one starts to connect the dots and realize that all these things interconnect, one ends up either being in shock or in absolute disbelief or the realization just how effing scary things have gotten and how deep shit we are all in....

[lovuian]

9. Everything is connected and There are NO coincidences!!!

And yes we are in deep doo doo!!!