Sibel Edmonds+Ted Gunderson+M. Riconosciuto=Time for class action lawsuit

[Dig]

If there is sufficient evidence that shifts the credibility of Riconosciuto, every single letter, every single word, every single item that he wrote and said MUST BE VIEWED FRESH AS IF IT JUST APPEARED!

[Mike Philbin]

If there is sufficient evidence that shifts the credibility of Riconosciuto, every single letter, every single word, every single item that he wrote and said MUST BE VIEWED FRESH AS IF IT JUST APPEARED!

You know what, credibility-wise, it doesn't matter one jot as long as he has CORROBORATIVE EVIDENCE that can put many, many crooks away. Let him present his evidence in open court. I don't OFFICIALLY care who's giving evidence these days. Pentacon. Riconsciuto. If their evidence is shit, they'll be in contempt of court and can take the flack at the end of the equation. IMHO.

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://web.archive.org/web/20021129170424/http://www.jcs-group.com/what/confidential/forget.html

INSLAW - Inslaw Inc. is a computer software company based in Washington, DC. Inslaw's principal asset is a highly sophisticated software program called PROMIS. Justice Department officials "took, converted and stole" PROMIS through "trickery, fraud and deceit." The Justice Department started sharing the illegally obtained PROMIS software with other agencies, including intelligence agencies where PROMIS was modified for intelligence purposes and sold to foreign intelligence operations in Israel, Jordan, and other places. Michael Risconsciuto of the Wakenhut security firm has testified that he was contracted to install a "trap door" in the software to allow the CIA to tap into PROMIS software worldwide. Webster Hubbell and White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster apparently were linked to both Iran-Contra and Inslaw through two Arkansas companies called Park-on-Meter and Systematics.
______________________________________________________
Excerpt (re: direct references to partial list INSLAW/PROMIS related DEATHS).

Alan Standorf - An Employee Of The National Security Agency In Electronic Intelligence. Standorf Was A Source Of Information For Danny Casalaro Who Was Investigating INSLAW, BCCI, Etc. Standorf's Body Was Found In The Backseat Of A Car At Washington National Airport On Jan 31, 1991.

Danny Casalaro - Was A Free-Lance Reporter And Writer Who Was Investigating The "October Surprise", INSLAW And BCCI. Danny Was Found Dead In A Bathtub In A Sheraton Hotel Room In Martinsburg, Virginia. Danny Was Staying At The Hotel While Keeping Appointments In The Dc Area Pertinent To His Investigation. He Was Found With His Wrists Slashed. At Least One, And Possibly Both Of His Wrists Were Cut 10 Times. All Of His Research Materials Were Missing And Have Never Been Recovered.

Dennis Eisman - An Attorney With Information On INSLAW. Eisman Was Found Shot To Death On April 5, 1991.

Ian Spiro - Had Supporting Documentation For Grand Jury Proceeding On The INSLAW Case. His Wife And 3 Children Were Found Murdered On November 1, 1992 In Their Home. They All Died Of Gunshot Wounds To The Head. Ian's Body Was Found Several Days Later In A Parked Car In The Borego Desert. Cause Of Death? The Ingestion Of Cyanide. FBI Report Indicated That Ian Had Murdered His Family And Then Committed Suicide.

John Crawford - An Attorney With Information On INSLAW. He Died From A Heart Attack In Tacoma In April Of 1993.

Larry Guerrin - Was Killed In February 1987 While Investigating The INSLAW Case.
______________________________________________________
Webb Hubbell and Big Brother (WHODB)
by J. Orlin Grabbe

The role of Webb Hubbell in the creation of the White House "Big Brother" software system (WHODB, for White House Office Data Base) is not well known. Big Brother, you will recall, is used to manage Bill Clinton's master "Christmas card" list by which he keeps track of White House visitors, friends, Democratic party donors, and political enemies.

In a nutshell: it's used to manage the money, the votes, and the dirt.

When a copy of Big Brother was downloaded by the Fifth Column, it was found to contain 2045 FBI files (and some IRS files), mostly of Republicans but also of some Democrats. A complete list of the FBI files were provided to a House committee and to several senators. Many of the individuals whose FBI files were pulled are named in a Clinton White House "hit list," conveniently recorded in Big Brother.

Much of the current information on the funding scandals of the Democratic National Committee came to light because the donors, and donation amounts, were contained in the downloaded copy of WHODB. The presence of Democrat donation information shows there was never, at any time, a separation between Clinton's personal re-election campaign, and the fund-raising activities of the Democratic National Committee.

Well, the Big Brother saga continues, and the story contains all the essential computer-and-dagger story ingredients. We begin with ex-CIA agent Michael Riconosciuto, imprisoned in Florida, who recently told the German magazine Der Spiegel that a German company, Software AG, was converting a version of the PROMIS software to run on mainframe computers.

To put this revelation in context, recall that a GAO report had criticized WHODB for having an inactivated audit trail. This was understandable given that it was running in Windows NT. The conversion to a different computer environment was therefore justified by the GAO request for an audit trail.

The original White House office record-keeping system had been set in motion with a $20 million contract made with Planning Research Corp. in 1992, the last year of the Bush administration. The contract was for five years, ending in 1997. Notably, however, the Clinton White House apparently concealed the WHODB procurement-related activities from the GAO when GAO probed Executive Office of the President procurement in 1993.

Planning Research Corp. had previously produced the TEC II system for Customs. The TEC II system was derived from PROMIS, according to an affidavit given to Inslaw, Inc.

Planning Research Corp. kept the WHODB general maintenance contract for itself, and farmed out the rest of the work to three companies: Pulsar Data Systems, Subsystems Tech Inc., and Integrated Data Systems. Integrated Data did the schematics for setting up WHODB for its intended purposes, while Pulsar Data Systems supplied the actual software.

WHODB was set up to also provide access to other data bases, such as those of the Secret Service and FinCEN. WHODB can log onto the FBI computer, but the FBI system contains a block preventing any direct White House access to its files. To get an FBI file, the White House must submit a "request" in the front end of the FBI system. A designated FBI employee then looks at the request, and uploads the appropriate file directly into WHODB. (No White House request for FBI files has been denied.) No paper records are normally involved in this transfer. If a White House Craig Livingstone-type wants a hard copy of someone's FBI file, he hits the print button and produces one on a White House laser printer.

What was the true role of Pulsar Data Systems in creating WHODB? This question arises because it is common gossip and common knowledge that Jackson Stephens provided Bill Clinton with the Big Brother system. Moreover, the software provided by Pulsar Data Systems contained a "back door" often found in software provided by Jackson Stephens' software firm Systematics. This back door is present in many systems based on PROMIS (including, for example, software used in Goldman Sachs' London office). It is evident that Systematics (now Alltel Information Services) in some sense provided the basic program which Pulsar Data Systems may have modified. Systematics has been a major supplier of banking software, and the recipient of numerous NSA contracts. Systematics was represented at the Rose Law Firm by Vince Foster, Webb Hubbell, and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In short, the WHODB is based on PROMIS, and bears a definite connection to Jackson Stephens. Thus it will come as no surprise to find Stephens' associates involved in the WHODB conversion.

When alerted by Michael Riconosciuto about PROMIS being ported to a mainframe environment, Der Spiegel made inquiries at the headquarters office of Software AG in Darmstadt, Germany. That office, in turn, passed the question to Software AG Americas in Reston, Virginia, who reported back that, yes, they were involved in rewriting PROMIS to use Software AG's ADABAS data management system and its NATURAL client/server application development product.

The Reston office declined to name the client for whom the work was being done, but suggested inquiries be directed to the "U.S. Secret Service". All this led observers to conclude that the PROMIS system being ported was in fact WHODB.

The Clinton White House was irate that the information had leaked out, and subsequently fired a Secret Service Agent named David Butler, who worked in Internal Affairs, holding him responsible for the leak. (His role is not clear, but it apparently involved the transmission of an email message that was considered excessively revelatory.)

The software conversion is said to be taking place not at Software AG's Reston office, but rather at the Reston office of The Analytical Sciences Corporation (TASC). Why is not clear, but a plausible assumption is TASC is also involved in the conversion.

Various names have been reported to me as having something to do with the conversion project. These include Harry Wexler of Boston Systematics (whose daughter is a Forbes Senior Editor) and David Pearson. Two other people said to be floating about are David Blake and Frank Grier, who are described as "rubber ducks" for Jackson Stephens and Bill Clinton. A source reports that Frank Grier was recently seen meeting with spy-handler Rafi Eitan (the same individual who ran the Jonathan Pollard spying operation).

Webb Hubbell has floated in and out of the INSLAW affair for some time, because of his association with Jackson Stephens and Systematics. Let's back up a bit in time.

In the 1980s when Earl Brian made an attempt to buy out Inslaw, the money was to be provided through the investment banking firm of Allen & Co. Sources indicate that half of this money was to be provided by Robert Maxwell, while the other half was to be provided by Jackson Stephens via Web Hubbell.

Later, when the Clinton administration appointed Webb Hubbell to the Justice Department, Hubbell was placed in charge of issues pertaining to the on-going litigation between the Justice Department and Inslaw, Inc. Hubbell authorized a source code comparison between the PROMIS software and the FBI's FOIMS system, one of the systems Inslaw claimed was an illegal appropriation of its intellectual property.

A previous comparison had been assigned to Dorothy Denning, Chair of the Computer Science Department of Georgetown University. Denning is well- known for her support of the Clipper Chip proposal, and her general advocacy of GAK--government access to private cryptographic keys. (See, for example, Dorothy Denning, "The Future of Cryptography," Internet Security Review, October 1995.) Denning, however, said such a comparison "would be a waste of her time and the government's money."

    Because it is extremely difficult to convert software that runs one application into software that runs an entirely different application, the differences in just the FOIMS and PROMIS application domains show almost conclusively that FOIMS was not derived from PROMIS. ("Analysis of FOIMS and PROMIS," by Dorothy E. Denning, January 10, 1993.)

Webb Hubbell decided that this conclusion (which doesn't appear to make much sense in the first place) needed shoring up, and brought in Randall Davis of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Davis had done work at the Laboratory for the Clinton-Gore campaign. He proceeded to compare a 1978 version of FOIMS with a 1983 version of PROMIS, and wisely concluded the former was not derived from the latter.

That someone from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab was used to make the code comparison may, outside the obvious political connections to ensure the "right" conclusion from the point of view of the Justice Department, be coincidental. However, a man named Barry Comnick, who once worked at Systematics, has been identified as having integrated some aspects of artificial intelligence with PROMIS. The result was called SMART--Special Management Artificial Reasoning Tool.

Comnick was one of dozens of individuals that "Octopus"-researcher Danny Casolaro was in communication with at the time of Casolaro's death.

A contract made between Webb Hubbell and the Indonesian Lippo Group, after Hubbell left the Justice Department, has been the subject of much recent speculation as to its purpose and dollar amount. The contract appears to be a pay-off made to Hubbell to ensure his silence, as it involves a $500,000 payment to Hubbell for unspecified "legal services." What is not common knowledge is that Jackson Stephens is also a party to the contract, according to Charles Hayes who turned a copy of the contract over to Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr.

January 25, 1997
Web Page: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/
______________________________________________________
The White House "Big Brother" Data Base & How Jackson Stephens Precipitated a Banking Crisis
by J. Orlin Grabbe

Score another coup for Jackson Stephens' Systematics (Alltel Information Services). It provided the software for the White House's "Big Brother" data base system, and now the White House is in a panic that there may be secret methods of accessing its computer.

The existence of the White House computer system and data base--known as WHODB, White House Office Data Base, and containing as many as 200,000 names--was revealed by Paul Rodriguez in the Washington Times. Some of the information was developed by Insight's Anthony Kimery, soon to be managing editor of the electronic publication SOURCES eJournal. Kimery is a writer whose articles in The American Banker and Wired were among the first to report U.S. government spying on domestic banking transactions. (Kimery was also fired from one magazine for looking into the death of Vince Foster.)

Now things have come full circle. The chief government effort to spy on U.S. domestic banking transactions was directed by the electronic spy agency, the National Security Agency (NSA), working in connection with the Little Rock software firm Systematics. Systematics, half-owned by billionaire Jackson Stephens (of Stephens Inc. fame), has been a major supplier of software for back office clearing and wire transfers. It was Stephens' attempt to get Systematics the job of handling the data processing for the Washington-D.C. bank First American that led to the BCCI takeover of that institution. Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster represented Systematics in that endeavor, and later Foster became an overseer of the NSA project with respect to Systematics.

Working together, the NSA and Jackson Stephens' Systematics developed security holes in much of the banking software Systematics sold. Now we face a crisis in banking and financial institution security, according to John Deutch, Director of the CIA. "One obstacle is that banks and other private institutions have been reluctant to divulge any evidence of computer intrusions for fear that it will leak and erode the confidence of their customers. Deutch said 'the situation is improving' but that more cooperation was needed from major corporations, and said the CIA remains willing to share information with such firms about the risks they might face." (The Washington Post, June 26, 1996, page A19.)

What Deutch failed to mention was that this "banking crisis" in large part was itself created by one of the U.S. intelligence agencies--the NSA in cahoots with Stephens' software firm Systematics. The Citibank heist by Russian hackers, for example, took advantage of a back door in Citibank's Systematics software. (The Russian hackers were apparently aided by the son of one of Jim Leach's House Banking Committee investigators.) Have any major banks thought of instituting lawsuits over this deliberate breach of security on the part of a software supplier?

“It really almost makes you ask the question would it have been better if we had never invented the internet,”

-Enemy terrorist traitor Black Op False Flag EBO/MOOTW collaborator Jay Rockefeller

But “data destruction” is a greater — albeit a lesser known — threat, he insisted. Banks could be prime targets.

It’s all data stored on servers, he said.  “If someone can scramble the data, it could potentially destroy a bank,” he said. “It could have a cascading effect [on the economy],”

-Enemy terrorist traitor Black Op False Flag EBO/MOOTW collaborator Mike Mcconnell

John Deutch has a proposed solution for this and other computer security problems: the creation of an "Information Warfare Technology Center". Guess where he wants to put the Center: in the National Security Agency itself, naturally. That is, the government wants money budgeted for a new bureaucracy to solve the problem another bureaucracy spent money creating. You have to admire the sheer chutzpah of this kind of con--one which would also leave the NSA fox guarding the banking chicken coop.

Meanwhile, over at the White House, senior aides are in a panic. Is the WHODB system related to the PROMIS software? they want to know. Is there a back door into the system? Have files been download?

It just goes to show that given the right incentive, even the White House will begin spouting conspiracy theories. Perhaps Charles O. Morgan (see part 2 of my Vince Foster series) should write the White House a threatening letter.
______________________________________________________

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE LIES!!!

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/Pre_96/September94/555.txt.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                    AG
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1994                                (202) 616-2777
                                                              TDD (202) 514-1888

           NEW REPORT FINDS NO CREDIBLE BASIS FOR INSLAW CLAIMS,
                 RECOMMENDS MATTER BE CLOSED

     WASHINGTON, D.C. --  Affirming findings of a special counsel appointed in the previous Administration, the Department of Justice today concluded that there is no credible evidence that Department officials conspired to steal computer software developed by INSLAW, Inc. or that the company is entitled to additional government payments.

     The report also reaffirmed police findings that the death of J. Daniel Casolaro, a free-lance journalist investigating the INSLAW matter, was a suicide.  It said there is no basis for asking for the appointment of an Independent Counsel, and recommended that the affair be closed.

     The case began in 1982 when the Justice Department awarded a $10 million contract to INSLAW to install case management software called PROMIS in U.S. Attorneys' offices around the country.  Since then, a series of disputes led to allegations by INSLAW that resulted in several lawsuits, two Congressional investigations, a number of internal Justice Department reviews including one by the Office of Professional Responsibility and another by the Public Integrity Section, the appointment of Nicholas Bua, a former federal judge, as special counsel whose six-member legal team issued a 267-page report in March 1993, and today's review of that report which runs another 187 pages.

     Today's report states that the evidence compiled by Judge Bua fully supported the findings and conclusions he reached that there was no criminal wrongdoing in furtherance of the Department on the part of any past or present Justice Department employee.

     Says the report, "(T)here is no credible evidence that employees of the Department of Justice conspired with anyone to steal PROMIS or to injure INSLAW in any other way."

     The report also concluded that the use of PROMIS by the Executive Office of United States Attorneys and in U.S. Attorneys' offices conforms with the contractual agreements that were made, and that INSLAW is not entitled as a matter of law to additional compensation for the use of its PROMIS software.     

     The report says INSLAW's contention that Justice Department officials conspired to destroy INSLAW and secretly profit from its work was based largely on alleged statements of anonymous sources, in and outside the Department.  None came forward despite assurances from Attorney General Janet Reno that they would be protected from reprisals.  Individuals who were identified as sources denied making the statements attributed to them by INSLAW.  Two primary sources relied on by INSLAW were not credible: Michael Riconosciuto, currently serving a 30-year sentence on methamphetamine charges, and Ari Ben-Menashe, found by two Congressional investigations into the alleged "October
Surprise" conspiracy to be totally untrustworthy.

     Additional investigation was conducted into several relatively recent claims by INSLAW, and into matters which a House Judiciary Committee report recommended be subject to further review.  For example, an MIT professor, Dr. Randall Davis, was hired to compare the computer code in INSLAW's PROMIS software with the code in the FBI's FOIMS software, which INSLAW contends is a pirated version of PROMIS.  Dr. Davis concluded that there was no relation between FOIMS and PROMIS.

     The report also concluded that there was no credible evidence that INSLAW's PROMIS was being used elsewhere in the government, or had been improperly distributed to a foreign government or entity, or that INSLAW related documents had been destroyed by the Justice Department Command Center, or that the Department had obstructed the reappointment of a bankruptcy judge who had ruled favorably to INSLAW and was later overturned. 

     The report rebuffed claims that PROMIS was stolen to raise money to reward individuals working for the release of American hostages in Iran, or to penetrate foreign intelligence agencies, or as part of a U.S.-Israeli slush fund connected with the late British publisher Robert Maxwell, or in aid of a secret U.S. intelligence agency concealed within the Office of Special Investigations Nazi-hunting unit which INSLAW asserts participated in illegal trafficking of PROMIS software and in the alleged murder of Mr. Casolaro.

     The death of Mr. Casolaro was extensively investigated because of the allegations that he was murdered and because Judge Bua did not address the issue in significant detail.  Today's report concurs in the conclusion of the Martinsburg, W. Va., Police Department that Mr. Casolaro committed suicide. 

     Extensive forensic evidence, including the autopsy, a blood spatter analysis and the toxicology report, strongly supports that conclusion.  Many of Mr. Casolaro's friends described him as depressed.  He also appeared to be greatly concerned about his professional failures, including his inability to generate income from his investigation into the INSLAW matter.  He was suffering from multiple sclerosis.

     Says the report, "There is no credible evidence that Mr. Casolaro was murdered."

     In recommending that no additional compensation be paid to INSLAW, the report said the Department had adhered to the terms and conditions of its contract with INSLAW.  Furthermore, it said, INSLAW had allowed some of its claims to languish for eight years before they were finally dismissed in late 1992.

Currently, INSLAW is asking Congress to relieve it of the statutory time bar on the basis of an alleged conspiracy by the government, a conspiracy for which no credible evidence exists.

     "INSLAW was provided a full and fair opportunity to litigate its claims," says the report.  "The ability of INSLAW and its counsel to keep this matter in the public spotlight by making a series of unsubstantiated allegations linking this affair to some of the major alleged conspiracies of the last 15 years should not be rewarded by acquiescing to their money demands."


                                   #####

94-555     

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://people.csail.mit.edu/davis/davis.htm


Randall Davis
Stata Center 237
32 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
Phone: (617) 253-5879
Email: send email to my last name at csail.mit.edu

Research Director, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab
Administrative Assistant: Nira Manoharan (617)253-5977
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Research Director ar MIT CSAIL

http://web.archive.org/web/20071118182650/http://www.masstlc.org/abo/trustees/RandallDavis.aspx
http://people.csail.mit.edu/davis/bio.pdf

Randall Davis received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth, graduating summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in 1970, and received a PhD from Stanford in artificial intelligence in 1976.

In 1978 he joined the faculty of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT, where from 1979-1981 he held an Esther and Harold Edgerton Endowed Chair. He later served for 5 years as Associate Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is currently a Full Professor in the Department, and a Research Director of CSAIL, the newly-formed Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory that resulted from the merger of the AI Lab and the Lab for Computer Science. He and his research group are developing advanced tools that permit natural, sketch-based interaction with software, particularly for computer-aided design and design rationale capture.

Dr. Davis has been one of the seminal contributors to the field of knowledge-based systems, publishing some 50 articles and playing a central role in the development of several systems.  He serves on several editorial boards, including Artificial Intelligence, AI in Engineering, and the MIT Press series in AI.  He is the co-author of Knowledge-Based Systems in AI, and was selected in 1984 as one of America’s top 100 scientists under the age of 40 by Science Digest. In 1986 he received the AI Award from the Boston Computer Society for his contributions to the field. In 1990 he was named a Founding Fellow of the American Association for AI and in 1995 was elected to a two-year term as President of the Association. In 2003 he received MIT’s Frank E. Perkins Award for graduate advising. From 1995–1998 he served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the U. S. Air Force.

Dr. Davis has been a consultant to several major organizations, including Digital Equipment Corp, IBM, Aetna, and Schlumberger, and has been involved in the founding of three software companies.

Dr. Davis has also been active in the area of intellectual property and software. In 1990 he served as expert to the Court in Computer Associates v. Altai, (775 F. Supp. 544 (E.D.N.Y. 1991);  982 F 2d 693) a case that produced the abstraction, filtration, comparison test for software copyright. He served on the panel run by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Academy of Science in 1991 that resulted in Intellectual Property Issues in Software, and served as a member of the Advisory Board to the US Congressional Office of Technology Assessment study on software and intellectual property that was published in 1992 as Finding a Balance: Computer Software, Intellectual Property, and the Challenge of Technological Change. A 1994 paper in the   Columbia Law Review analyzed the difficulties in applying intellectual property law to software and proposed a number of remedies.

He has served as an expert in a variety of cases involving software, including the investigation by the Department of Justice of the Inslaw matter (40 Fed. Cl. 843; 1998 U.S. Claims), where he investigated allegations of copyright theft and cover-up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the United States Customs Service, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. From 1998-2000 he served as the chairman of the National Academy of Sciences study on intellectual property rights and the information infrastructure entitled The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age, published by the National Academy Press in February, 2000.

Dr. Davis has appeared on The Macneil/Lehrer Report and Innovations (WNET, NY), and played a major role in This Computer Thing, a pilot for an educational series (WGBH, Boston) about personal computers.  He has been quoted in articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, The Economist, The Boston Globe, High Technology, and Psychology Today.  Interviews have appeared in Computerworld and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He has been a featured speaker in Texas Instrument’s Satellite Symposium, and on Electronic Data Systems’ internationally broadcast “Directions” program.

#  AAAI 1996 Presidential Address

Davis R, What Are Intelligence? And Why? AAAI Magazine, Spring 1998, pp. 91-110. (in pdf)
________________________________________________________
http://web.archive.org/web/20071117170919/www.masstlc.org/abo/sponsors/

Symbol look familiar?

Mass Technology Leadership Council Sponsors
Global Sponsors

    * DLA Piper
    * Foley Hoag
    * IBM
    * Keane
    * The MathWorks
    * Microsoft
    * Novell
    * St. Paul Travelers
    * Silicon Valley Bank & SVB Alliant
    * WilmerHale

Program Sponsors

    * Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts
    * Choate, Hall & Stewart
    * Edgewater Technology
    * Holland & Knight
    * Partners HealthCare
    * PA Consulting
    * PricewaterhouseCoopers
    * NewTilt
    * Nutter, McClennen & Fish
    * UK Trade & Investment

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.io.com/~patrik/promis.htm

“Inslaw, the Continuing Caper”
UNCLASSIFIED
No. 37, Summer 1996

INSLAW UPDATE

Inslaw trial delayed while court panel inspects intelligence agency
software

If you haven’t heard too much recently about the Inslaw case, probably the most significant national security and intelligence scandal of the past several decades, that’s not surprising.  No articles have appeared for a long time in either mainstream or alternative American media about Inslaw’s contention that the Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, NSA and other major U.S. intelligence agencies stole Inslaw Inc.’s PROMIS database management software.

Originally developed in the early 1980’s to provide federal prosecutors with computerization to handle paper-intensive case-management tracking, Inslaw says the government took PROMIS and has used it,  illegally and without license, continually since 1985 on numerous sites in federal agencies throughout the government—including in the offices of the Attorney General of the United States, the Honorable Ms. Janet Reno.

Further, sources speculate that stolen PROMIS is the official, secret database management system which coordinates the entire U.S. intelligence infrastructure, a “plate of spaghetti which connects anything to anything” as one person familiar with the software describes it, and perhaps the single most important computer program in day-to-day use by the national security establishment.

Driven into bankruptcy after the Department of Justice refused to pay its contract with Inslaw in 1985 (with indications that DOJ insiders, including Earl Brian, an Ed Meese crony, intended to buy Inslaw at a bargain-basement price after forcing its demise), the company won a tough legal battle in a 1987 bankruptcy court decision; in it federal bankruptcy Judge George Bason agreed with Inslaw owners Bill and Nancy Hamilton that the DOJ had appropriated PROMIS by “fraud, trickery and deceit.”

Despite Judge Bason’s award of seven million dollars, the Hamilton’s saw their victory quickly evaporate when a three-judge appellate panel of Reagan appointees overturned Bason’s ruling on a technicality.   Judge Bason’s decision also apparently cost him his job: passed over for routine re-appointment in his highly technical bankruptcy specialty, Bason was replaced by a lawyer who had argued against Inslaw in the trial.   The suspicion of many is that Bason only made one mistake: ruling against the Department of Justice.

Now, after years of legal battles, congressional hearings and highly-criticized self-exonerating DOJ reports, Inslaw is back in court, having won a Congressional Reference resolution in a vote of congress last year, to sue the United States, in the case of “Inslaw Inc. and William and Nancy Hamilton vs. the United States and the United States Department of Justice,” scheduled to begin September 4th for a three-week trial in Washington’s U.S. Federal Court of Claims. 
 
Representing Inslaw owners Bill and Nancy Hamilton in their long-awaited federal suit, the Atlanta law firm of Pope, McGlammery, Kilpatrick, and Morrison has advised them not to give interviews about the litigation, a request they’ve honored.  Despite this, UNCLASSIFIED is pleased to offer this exclusive update, a roundup of information from knowledgable sources which may be the only print record in the U.S. on the current status of Inslaw vs. the Department of Justice.   

               *     *    *

MODIFIED PROMIS - A COVERT OPERATION?
Some observers see the alleged PROMIS theft as having implications far beyond the bare claims being made in court.   Over the years sources have alleged that a technically brilliant covert operation transformed the stolen PROMIS program—originally a 500,000 line program written for mainframe computers in the COBOL language  --  into a high-tech spying tool of unprecedented power.

In the early 1980’s the story goes, brilliant CIA programmer Michael Riconoscuito and a development team at the Wackenhut/Cabazon Joint Venture in Indio, California added a secret ‘trapdoor’ access, modifying PROMIS and creating a bugged version which was allegedly sold to foreign government, intelligence, and police agencies, friend and foe, around the world. 
(For the first time in this country, UNCLASSIFIED presents an exclusive report on the first public discussion of technical details on the PROMIS trapdoor modification.  See below).

The availability of a PROMIS-like espionage tool would be a temptation for any spy agency, launching American spycraft into the 21st century and consigning to the past forever the old coldwar cliche of a spy in a gray hat, breaking into an office and photographing pieces of paper with a Minox miniature camera.  The new paradigm: computerized power and efficiency with the silent and undetectable downloading of electronic data from any site where the software is installed, anywhere in the world.
 
PROMIS AND BANKING
As an example of a surprising PROMIS application, allegedly the program allows the NSA to monitor worldwide financial transactions in ‘real time’ -- i.e., to watch money-laundering on the screen while it actually happens, and so to determine all its sources, nuances, destinations, and ultimately, its purposes.  Even more astonishing, the software may itself be used for money-laundering, an application with enormous potential for any covert operations agency.

Understandably, hard evidence of these exotic uses of PROMIS has yet to be established, but ‘sources’ and some reports over the years—such as Anthony Kimery’s 1994 articles for the Thomson Banking Regulator, which cost him his job—have provided consistent indications that the wildest dreams you might have about the PROMIS software, could all turn out to be true.

Kimery’s articles reported evidence of (unlicensed) PROMIS installation in international banking and financial institutions, including banks in Switzerland, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.  If that’s the case, it would be naive to assume that PROMIS is not used in many American banking institutions as well, and indeed Inslaw received information that Systematics Inc., based in Little Rock Arkansas and the largest banking software purveyor in the U.S., has sold banking software based on PROMIS. 

PROMIS AND THE CLINTONS
The political implications of a Systematics/Promis connection are somewhat staggering, since the company’s then-owner, Jackson Stephens, was the first major financial backer of Bill Clinton’s campaign for the presidency.  The Rose Law Firm represented Systematics, and during that era its partner Hillary Clinton became something of an expert in the esoteric legal field of intellectual property rights and patent protection, while personally representing the Systematics firm.  Though no court cases arose against Systematics on those grounds, Mrs. Clinton, we can assume, was fully prepared if they did. 

Even if coincidental, this makes for a very odd coincidence indeed, since the Inslaw theft and modification have long been associated with the Reagan/Bush/Meese/Casey regimes at CIA, DOJ and related federal bureaucracies.  But early in their tenures, Janet Reno and former high ranking Clinton DOJ appointee Webster Hubbell (since convicted and now serving a prison term in a case involving false billing at the Rose Law firm) astonished Inslaw followers by signing off on, and ratifying, the Bush-sponsored, controversial and problematic ‘Report of Judge Bua on Inslaw’—a whitewash, exponents of the case argue, which falsely exonerates the DOJ of any impropriety in the Inslaw “contract dispute.” 

Inslaw’s response, the excoriating “Rebuttal to the Report of Judge Bua” and its “Addendum” are required reading for anyone interested in the Inslaw matter: far from being dry legal arguments, these extensive documents shred the Bua report point by point and provide dramatic evidence of DOJ lying, conspiracy and coverup in the Inslaw case.   They also detail some of the more exotic aspects of the case, including background information, two reports of death threats against the Hamilton’s, reports of unsuspected applications of PROMIS (which is installed, apparently, on all U.S. and British nuclear submarines) and other information which has come to Inslaw over the years, from sources they deem reliable and whose information, over a long time span, has been proven valid.

               *     *     *

INSLAW AND THE MEDIA
While the basic Inslaw allegations may sound like quite a story, the response of the mainstream media over the years has been to completely ignore Inslaw, relegating it to the damning category of  “it’s not news” (as Don Hewitt, producer of 60 Minutes, told this writer), or lately, the post-Clinton election spin, that “it’s an 80’s story,” a catchall aimed at dismissing any government malfeasance earlier than the Whitewater investigation as irrelevant to the concerns of our progressive and forward-looking democracy.
 
Even among those few journalists who are aware of Inslaw, it’s often heard that the topic is just too complex, and by implication, tedious (whether for the writer or the readership isn’t explained), a matter far too esoteric and abstract to merit the attention of a wide public—which might otherwise be reasonably interested to learn whether or not its top law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, as well as its major intelligence agencies, have been guilty of massive felony theft, fraud and coverup for well over a decade. 

DANNY CASOLARO
Well, how boring is the Inslaw case?   Very, if you read The New York Times, which in a few tiny,  buried articles, invariably refers to Inslaw as a “government contract dispute,” playing it down to stultifying blandness, while consistently leaving Inslaw’s more exotic details unmentioned.  The most important of these is the still-mysterious death of investigative writer/investigator Danny Casolaro, who announced to friends in August 1991 just days before he was found dead in a West Virginia hotel room, that after a year of intensive investigation he had “cracked” the Inslaw matter, and was about to meet a key “source” to obtain a final piece of evidence.

That meeting either never occurred, or it resulted in Casolaro’s murder.  Although the death was officially ruled a suicide—and so legally, a ‘case closed’—local police records of the investigation of Casolaro’s death remain unreleased by local police or the DOJ five years later. 

The single Department of Justice report which discusses Casolaro (a followup to the Bua report) lays out the scenario that the ebullient writer and indefatigable investigator was in fact a heavy drinker, depressed, in financial straits, possibly afflicted with a terminal disease, and so, suicidal.   People who knew Casolaro give a different picture, describing him as a “great guy” whom “everybody liked”, with a close family, lots of friends, and who, in solving Inslaw and uncovering the ‘octopus’ as he called the conspiracy, likely had reached a breakthrough in his career.
 
To date, there has never been an official, objective investigation into the many remaining questions and contradictions surrounding Casolaro’s death, despite indications, for example, that his autopsy examination or results may have been altered or falsified.  Nevertheless the Department of Justice has taken considerable pains to reinforce the notion that Casolaro—at what should have been one of the most exhilarating moments in his life—slashed both his wrists an impossible dozen times, and somehow disposed of the sheaves of documents and evidence that he was known to carry with him everywhere he went. 

               *     *     *

INSLAW IN COURT - 1996
The Inslaw trial had been scheduled to begin on May 28th, but was postponed until the September 4th date to give a panel of three software experts time to inspect software now in use in five federal agencies, to determine whether or not it has the “DNA” of PROMIS.   That work, which hasn’t begun yet, has been authorized by the court, but is expected to take several months.
 
Selection of the panel was divided among the three parties: Inslaw chose Tom Bragg, adjunct professor at George Washington University and a professional expert on computer software who owns his own software business.  The Justice Department chose the same expert used earlier by Webster Hubbell, Dr. Randall Davis of MIT’s Artificial Intelligence laboratory.  To represent the interests of the court, those two experts chose a third—a Dr Plauger, a developer of the C programming language, and one of the early developers of Unix. 

The results of the panel’s work, it’s felt, will depend largely on whether or not they can inspect the right piece of software.  Since the DOJ is fighting the case aggressively—with a large team of lawyers who seem to rank Inslaw Inc. somewhere on a moral scale with Aldrich Ames—it isn’t likely that the court panel will be led, directly at least, to the exact place where the smoking-gun PROMIS code might be found.   Likewise for the FBI, also scheduled for inspection, and so on.  However, the feeling is that if the panel is able to focus on any PROMIS-derived code, they will certainly identify it. 

WITNESS DEPOSITIONS - CASE STUDY IN INTIMIDATION
Finding ‘hot’ code may be Inslaw’s best chance of proving government misuse of their property, since sworn depositions taken from long-time secret Inslaw informants in the case—some of them DOJ insiders or other government officials sympathetic to Inslaw over the years, who have slipped them information—have proved to be very disappointing.  “The pressure on them is unmistakeable—they seem scared out of their minds” one source said. 

One witness had given Inslaw a hand-drawn chart of PROMIS in the FBI, PROMIS in the NSA, PROMIS in the CIA, PROMIS in the White House and in the National Security Council, all interacting to exchange data across public telecommunications networks, networks which were identified.  The information is accurate from all accounts, but the witness claimed that while the handwriting looked like it could have been his, he didn’t really know what it was that he wrote.

Another witness suddenly confessed to having “drinking problems” and claimed to have been under the influence of alcohol when giving earlier information.   Yet others deny having communications with Inslaw—though they did, many times, over the years. 

Peter Videnieks, Department of Justice contracting officer for the Inslaw software in the early 1980’s, the executive in charge of the Inslaw contract when it was breached and one of the key people in its alleged theft, is among those who have been deposed under oath.  Videnieks has attracted further interest because of his shadowy role as alleged liason to the Wackenhut/Cabazon Joint Venture—a role that he has denied repeatedly in the past.

Further suspicions about Videnieks were aroused because he has, or had, relatives working in the office of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd—relatives whom Danny Casolaro may have been en route to visit, the last fateful weekend of his life.  Under oath, Videnieks, now retired from government service, denies remembering anything much about the Inslaw case.
 
Apparently it is unlikely that close Reagan crony Earl Brian, another figure long associated with the Inslaw case who has vehemently denied any involvement, will be deposed, since Brian is about to stand trial in June in Los Angeles on multiple federal fraud charges.  One of the more exotic Inslaw-related allegations is that Brian, who became enormously wealthy with great rapidity in the early 1980’s, was given the stolen PROMIS software to resell, as a payoff for brokering initial contacts with Iran which led to the alleged 1980 Reagan/Bush/Casey ‘October Surprise’ conspiracy (see Robert Parry’s website at for revelatory articles about
October Surprise).

Brian, a doctor, developed contacts in Iran in the 1970’s when he traveled there to work on reorganization of the Iranian health infrastructure. 

Among other things, Inslaw is a model study of real-world difficulties in suing a government bureaucracy whose employees, while sometimes brave enough to provide information under the table, can be twisted into pretzels in public and under oath by the enormous pressures that those agencies bring to bear.   All this indicates, however, that it still seems very, very important to the government to try to keep the lid clamped down on the Inslaw case.

But Inslaw’s earlier courtroom victory in 1987 was not built on informants, or on relying on  government witnesses to tell the truth—the case was won on smoking-gun documents which Inslaw got in discovery, documents which the DOJ wasn’t ready to address.  In the earlier case  Judge Bason made astringent comments about the credibilty of government witnesses—not because he was biased, but because he was appalled.  “There is little doubt that government witnesses committed perjury on a massive scale in the earlier case,” one Inslaw watcher said, “and that perjury was suborned by the government.”
 
The same thing, very likely, is happening again now, but there’s nothing Inslaw can do about it.   Perjury, especially in a civil case such as this, can only be prosecuted by prosecutors.  Since prosecutors are the defendants in Inslaw vs. the DOJ, the likelihood of their going after their own agents and employees, who may be lying for the DOJ’s benefit, doesn’t even merit a sick joke.  It’s just one of the prices society pays when the top law enforcement authority is itself corrupted.

ELLIOT RICHARDSON - WITNESS FOR INSLAW
Former Attorney General Elliot Richardson, who has for many years represented Bill and Nancy Hamilton in Inslaw matters, has testified for Inslaw and was cross-examined by DOJ attorneys for some five hours in late spring.  Richardson’s involvement is important to the case: since his resignation at the height of the Watergate scandal during the infamous ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ he has a virtually unassailable, impeccable reputation for honesty and ethics in government. 

While Richardson won’t participate in the case as a trial lawyer (he didn’t function as trial lawyer in the earlier Inslaw litigations either), his involvement and cooperation on behalf of Inslaw is an important factor to all involved, especially to the attorneys, to whom he’s a revered figure.  Three years ago Richardson wrote a stunning op-ed editorial about Inslaw, published in the New York Times; in it, he said that the Inslaw case was “dirtier than Watergate”—strong words, coming from a principal observer of the earlier scandal. 

DAMAGES AND RESULTS
Inslaw hasn’t placed a dollar value on the damages it’s seeking; that will depend on the extent of illegal usage of the software which can be established in court.  Calculating those damages will be based on a per-site license fee for all the unauthorized uses which can be demonstrated, but in any case, the figure is bound to be way too low.

Inslaw’s unproven—and perhaps unprovable—damages are likely very much higher: informal estimates of illegal foreign sales of PROMIS, those used for intelligence and banking activities, run into the high hundreds of millions of dollars.  Even if it wins, it’s unlikely that Inslaw will ever recover anything like that larger amount, unless it can be demonstrated that those sales took place in the service of the U.S.  government, the defendant in the case, or by its employees or agencies.

A question Inslaw watchers have all wondered is—what’s the catch this time?  How will the Department of Justice weasel out of revelations of its own corruption?  What concrete results can we expect to come out of the suit, and what will be glossed over? 
Even supposing the government loses somehow, it’s also very likely that most of the national security aspects of the PROMIS theft—the foreign sales, the CIA bugging, the international banking applications—will be remain untouched.

Foreign illegal sales of PROMIS are beyond the subpeona power of the U.S. court—you can’t subpeona the ASIO, Australia’s counterpart to the CIA and one alleged PROMIS purchaser—and without U.S. witnesses to corroborate such sales, Inslaw will have to take what it can get.  Then, even if it loses, the government doesn’t have to pay.  Typically congress appropriates such funds in special bills, but nothing is certain in the tangled history of the Inslaw case. 

               *     *     *

Washington D.C. residents might like to attend the Inslaw trial, which will be held in the U.S. Federal Court of Claims, across from the White House at Lafayette Park.  All proceedings will be open to the public unless they touch on trade secret issues (a possibility for part of the trial), or unless the government invokes National Security.  Ironically, invoking National Security is the one ploy the DOJ hasn’t resorted to and probably won’t—because doing so would admit guilt, and reveal that the PROMIS software had in fact, after all, been bent to secret and covert purposes by the national security state. 

(Inslaw’s complete ‘Rebuttal to the Bua Report’ can be downloaded from http://www. copi.com>. Garby Leon has been following the Inslaw case closely over the past five years and has spoken extensively with several of its principals.  He can be reached by email at )

RICONOSCUITO: TRAPDOOR TECHNOLOGY REVEALED
German scientists validate Michael Riconoscuito’s description of radical PROMIS technology.

Michael Riconoscuito, CIA research scientist and computer programmer who served as Project Director for the Wackenhut/Cabazon Joint Venture, has long claimed that he headed up the research team which modified the Inslaw PROMIS software with a ‘trap door’, allowing the computer program to be used for espionage.  This spring, from a federal prison in Estill, South Carolina where he’s serving a 20 year term for drug trafficking, Riconoscuito gave a video interview to German journalist Egmont Koch, discussing for the first time the specific technology used to ‘bug’ the Inslaw PROMIS software.

The interview, recorded in video, was broadcast on German ZDF public television channel 2 in April as a major part of a 45 minute documentary entitled “Hackers on Secret Missions,”—a title Riconoscuito says he doesn’t particularly like.  Former UNCLASSIFIED editor David MacMichael was also interviewed for the program.

The most startling revelation in Riconoscuito’s discussion is that the PROMIS software wasn’t ‘bugged’ by any ordinary means (say, by providing a secret telephone line access).  Instead, it utilized a radical new technology Riconoscuito developed that actually enabled the ‘bugged’ computer to broadcast—without wires or phone connections—signals which could be picked up at a remote site, “say from an Elint satellite,” Riconoscuito explained later.

The software modification forces the computer to produce non-sinusoidal waveforms called “Walsh functions,” waveforms different from radio waves or other kinds of transmission media.   “All the files were read out, all the files were broadcast constantly,” Riconoscuito said.  He added that the technique has vast commercial applications, and will “allow wireless computer networking, with very small amounts of power, over very large distances.” 

Egmont Koch, unsure whether or not he was being treated to some interesting science fiction, took the Riconoscuito interview and some supporting technical articles Riconoscuito provided through writer Jack Colhoun, to show to twelve German computer experts and scientists.  To his surprise, they validated Riconoscuito’s unusual scientific innovation.  “This guy knows what he’s talking about,” said Andreas Pfitzmann, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Dresden.

Harmut Pohl, Professor at the University of Bochoit and former computer expert in the German intelligence community, confirms “All what I heard and read does make sense, absolutely!”  “After I had spoken to at least a dozen scientists and other experts I have no doubt that Riconoscuito is credible about PROMIS and that technique,” Koch said when introducing his TV program to the press. 

Riconoscuito, a controversial figure around the Inslaw case for some time, alleged he was threatened by Peter Videnieks, Department of Justice contract officer for the Inslaw software, in 1991 if he revealed anything about the secret PROMIS project.  “Back off or else,” he quoted Videnieks as saying.  Riconoscuito went ahead anyway and provided Inslaw with a sworn affadavit some days later, and within two weeks he was arrested and imprisoned.  The resulting trial—one which students of that case claim contains many irregularities—sent Riconoscuito to prison for 20 years on a drug trafficking charge which he vehemently denies. 

The validation of the German experts, however, gives Riconoscuito a major jump in credibility; for the first time, there is objective, scientific information which corroborates an important part of his story.  Koch is currently preparing to interview Riconoscuito again, this time for a cover article for the popular German magazine, DER SPIEGEL. 

While the Inslaw case has suffered a press blackout in the United States, interest in Europe has been heating up.  A Dutch television program was made about it last year, recently a Japanese program as well, and reports indicate that a French program is in the works.   Although the complete transcript of the Riconoscuito interview was unavailable by press time, we hope to bring further updates on the Riconoscuito/PROMIS story. 

(Thanks to Jack Colhoun, who has been working with Egmont Koch, for information used in the preparation of this article.  Garby Leon can be reached by email at ).

[Mike Philbin]

The interview, recorded in video, was broadcast on German ZDF public television channel 2 in April as a major part of a 45 minute documentary entitled “Hackers on Secret Missions,”—a title Riconoscuito says he doesn’t particularly like. 

anyone have access to the film or know where it's uploaded to?

[Mike Philbin]

I'll add this to the Sibel Edmonds PILE:

TIMES HEADLINE: FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft
The FBI has been accused of covering up a file detailing government dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3216737.ece

[what's the date of this amazing new revelation?  January 20, 2008. And not a peep from the USA Free Press.]

TIMES CONTENT: THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.

Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.

“I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations,” she said.

The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.
 
The letter says: “You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office.”
It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file – many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.

Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion.

She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.

The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.

It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish “targets” talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of “operatives” at the ATC.

Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed.
“I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders,” she said, “but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.

“This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.”

An FBI spokesman said he was not familiar with the case file but he added: "if the FBI says it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist."

[ramallamamama]

I'll add this to the Sibel Edmonds PILE:

TIMES HEADLINE: FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft
The FBI has been accused of covering up a file detailing government dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3216737.ece

...

That's a carefully worded piece. I bit of obfuscation. That whole Plame dealio, rear view, years after, more and more looks like a PSYOP. It's not like the talent wasn't in place. Russert has (NOT)sustainability issues and is friends with Matt Simmons, peak oil kook.

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/6583/bases078.html

Top Secret Military Bases

Security Force

Wackenhut

The history of Wackenhut Corporation is best described from its own literature. An outdated letter of introduction typed on Wackenhut letterhead once sent to prospective clients provided me with the following profile: (Excerpted) "Wackenhut Corporation had its beginnings in 1954, when George R. Wackenhut and three other former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation formed a company in Miami, Special Agent Investigators, to provide investigative services to business and industry.

"The approach was so well received that a second company was formed in 1955 to apply the same philosophy to physical security problems. In 1958 the companies were combined under the name of Wackenhut Corporation, a Florida company. From the outset, George Wackenhut was President and chief executive officer of the enterprise. Wackenhut established its headquarters in Coral Gables, Florida in 1960, extending its physical security operations to the United States government through formation of a whollyowned subsidiary, Wackenhut Services, Incorporated. This was done in order to comply with federal statute prohibiting the government from contracting with companies which furnish investigative or detective services.

"In 1962, Wackenhut operations extended from Florida to California and Hawaii. On January 1, 1966, the company became international with offices in Caracas, Venezuela, through half ownership of an affiliate.

"The Wackenhut Corporation became public in 1966 with overthecounter stock sales and joined the American Stock Exchange in 1967. Through acquisitions of subsidiaries and affiliates, now totaling more than 20, and expansion of it contracts into numerous territories and foreign countries, the Wackenhut Corporation has grown into one of the world's largest security and investigative firms.

"In 1978 acquisition of NUSAC, a Virginia company providing technical and consulting services to the nuclear industry, brought Wackenhut into the fields of environment and energy management. In 1979, Wackenhut acquired Stellar Systems, Inc., a California company specializing in outdoor electronic security.

"The executive makeup of the company reflects the stress Mr. Wackenhut placed on professional leadership. The Wackenhut Corporation is guided by executives and managers with extensive backgrounds in the FBI and other military, governmental and private security and investigative fields.

"The principle business of the company is furnishing security and complete investigative services and systems to business, industry and professional clients, and to various agencies of the U.S. Government.

"Through a whollyowned subsidiary, Wackenhut Electronic Systems Corporation, the company develops and produces sophisticated computerized security systems to complement its guard services.

"Major clients of Wackenhut's investigative services are the insurance industry and financial interests. These services include insurance inspections, corporate acquisition surveys, personnel background reports, preemployment screening, polygraph examinations and general criminal, fraud and arson investigations.

"The wide variety of services offered by Wackenhut Corporation also includes guard and electronic security for banks, office buildings, apartments, industrial complexes and other physical structures; training programs in English and foreign languages to apply Wackenhut procedures to individual clients needs; fire, safety and protective patrols; rescue and first aid services; emergency support programs tailored to labormanagement disputes, and predeparture screening programs widely used by airports and airlines.

"The company now has some 20,000 employees and maintains close to 100 offices and facilities with operations spread across the United States and extending into Canada, the United Kingdom, Western Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia, Central and South America and the Caribbean."

On the surface, Wackenhut Corporation seemed innocous enough, but through documents later obtained from Michael Riconosciuto, I learned there was another, darker side to Wackenhut operations, at the Cabazon Indian reservation near Indio, California.

Because Indian reservations are sovereign nations and do not come under federal jurisdiction, Wackenhut International had formed a partnership and entered into a business venture with the Cabazon Indians to produce hightech arms and explosives for export to thirdworld countries. This maneuver was designed to evade congressional prohibitions against U.S. weapons being shipped to the Contras and middle eastern countries.

In the early 1980's, Dr. John Nichols, the Cabazon tribal administrator, obtained a department of Defense secret facility clearance for the reservation to conduct various research projects. Nichols then approached Wackenhut with an elaborate "joint venture" proposal to manufacture 120mm combustible cartridge cases, 9mm machine pistols, lasersighted assault weapons, sniper rifles and portable rocket systems on the Cabazon reservation and in Latin America. At one point, he even sought to develop biological weapons.

Again, through Michael Riconosciuto's files, I later obtained interoffice memorandums and correspondence relating to biological technology, but more on that in chapter 10. Meanwhile, in 1980, Dr. John Nichols obtained the blueprints to Crown Prince Fahd's palace in Tiaf, Saudi Arabia, and drafted a plan to provide security for the palace.

The Saudis were interested enough to conduct a background check on the Cabazons. Mohammad Jameel Hashem, consul of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C., wrote former South Dakota Senator James Abourezk at his offices in Washington D.C. and noted, "According to our black list for companies, the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians/Cabazon Trading Company and Wackenhut International are not included." Translated, that meant that neither the Cabazons or Wackenhut were Jewishrun enterprises.

George Wackenhut's political leanings were once described in a book entitled, "The Age of Surveillance, The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System," by Frank J. Donner (Knopf, 1980), pp. 424425 as such: "The agency's [Wackenhut] professional concerns reflect the political values of its director, George Wackenhut. A rightist of the old blood, he selected as his directors an assortment of ultras prominent in the John Birch Society, the ASC, and other rightwing groups. The agency's monthly house organ, the `Wackenhut Security Review,' systematically decried the subversive inspiration in virtually all the protest movements of the sixties, from civil rights to peace. This vigilance earned the publication the accolade of rightwing organizations, inluding (in 1962) the George Washington Honor Medal and the Freedom Foundation Award at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania; and (in 1965 and 1966) the Vigilant Patriots Award from the AllAmerican Conference to Combat Communism."

Of all the articles written about Wackenhut Corporation, probably the most provacative was written by John Connolly for SPY magazine, published in September 1992, pp. 4654. Connolly, a former New York police officer turned writer, began his story with the following introduction: "What? A big private company one with a board of former CIA, FBI and Pentagon officials; one in charge of protecting nuclearweapons facilities, nuclear reactors, the Alaskan oil pipeline and more than a dozen American embassies abroad; one with longstanding ties to a radical rightwing organization; one with 30,000 men and women under arms secretly helped Iraq in its effort to obtain sophisticated weapons? And fueled unrest in Venezuela? This is all the plot of a new bestselling thriller, right? Or the ravings of some overheated conspiracy buff, right? Right? WRONG."

Connolly highlighted George Wackenhut as a "hardline rightwinger" who was able to profit from his beliefs by building dossiers on Americans suspected of being Communists or leftleaning "subversives and sympathizers" and selling the information to interested parties. By 1965 , Wackenhut was boasting to potential investors that the company maintained files on 2.5 million suspected dissidents one in 46 American adults then living.

In 1966, after acquiring the private files of Karl Barslaag, a former staff member of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities, Wackenhut could confidently maintain that with more than 4 million names, it had the largest privately held file on suspected dissidents in America.

Connolly wrote that it was not possible to overstate the special relationship that Wackenhut enjoys with the federal government. Richard Babayan, claiming to be a CIA contract employee, told SPY that "Wackenhut has been used by the CIA and other intelligence agencies for years. When they [the CIA] need cover, Wackenhut is there to provide it for them."

Another CIA agent, Bruce Berckmans, who was assigned to the CIA station in Mexico City, but left the agency in January 1975 (putatively) to become a Wackenhut internationaloperations vice president, told SPY that he had seen a formal proposal submitted by George Wackenhut to the CIA offering Wackenhut offices throughout the world as fronts for CIA activities. In 1981, Berckmans joined with other senior Wackenhut executives to form the company's Special Projects Division. It was this division that linked up with exCIA man Dr. John Phillip Nichols, the Cabazon tribal administrator, in pursuit of a scheme to manufacture explosives, poison gas and biological weapons for export to the contras and other communist fighting rebels worldwide.

SPY also printed testimony from William Corbett, a terrorism expert who spent 18 years as a CIA analyst and is now an ABC News consultant in Europe. Said Corbett, "For years Wackenhut has been involved with the CIA and other intelligence organizations, including the DEA. Wackenhut would allow the CIA to occupy positions within the company [in order to carry out] clandestine operations."Additionally, Corbett said that Wackenhut supplied intelligence agencies with information, and it was compensated for this "in a quid pro quo arrangement" with government contracts worth billions of dollars over the years.

On page 51, in a box entitled, "Current and Former Wackenhut Directors," SPY published the following names: "John Ammarell, former FBI agent; Robert Chasen, former FBI agent; Clarence Kelly, former FBI director; Willis Hawkins, former assistant secretary of the Army; Paul X. Kelley, fourstar general (ret.), U.S. Marine Corps; Seth McKee, former commander in chief, North American Air Defense Command; Bernard Schriever, former member, President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; Frank Carlucci, former Defense Secretary and former deputy CIA director; Joseph Carroll, former director, Defense Intelligence Agency; James Rawley, former director, U.S. Secret Service; Bobby Ray Inman, former deputy CIA director."

Danny Casolaro's body was found at 12:30 p.m. in a bloodfilled bath tub by a hotel maid who called the Martinsburg police. The body contained three deep cuts on the right wrist and seven on the left wrist, made by a single edge razor blade, the kind used to scrape windows or open packages.At the bottom of the bathwater was an empty Milwaukee beer can, a paper glass coaster, the razor blade and two white plastic trash bags, the kind used in wastepaper baskets.On the desk in the hotel room was an empty mead composition notebook with one page torn out and a suicide note which read: "To those who I love the most, please forgive me for the worst possible thing I could have done. Most of all, I'm sorry to my son. I know deep down inside that God will let me in."

There were no other papers, folders, documents of any sort, nor any briefcase found in the room. Danny's wallet was intact, stuffed with credit cards.The body was removed from the tub by Lieutenant Dave Brining from the Martinsburg fire department, and his wife, Sandra, a nurse who works in the hospital emergency room. The couple, who often moonlighted as coroners, took the body to the Brown Funeral Home where they conducted an examination.Charles Brown then decided to embalm the body that night and go home, rather than come back to work the next day, Sunday.

No one in Danny Casolaro's family had been notified of his death at that time, nor had they requested the body be embalmed.When Casolaro's family learned of the death, they insisted it was not a suicide and called for an autopsy and an investigation. Though the body had already been embalmed, an autopsy was performed at the West Virginia University Hospital by a Dr. Frost. The findings indicated that no struggle had taken place because there were no recent bruises on the body. The drugs found in Casolaro's urine, blood and tissue samples were in minute amounts but they were also unexplainable by his brother, Tony, who is a medical doctor.

According to Tony Casolaro, Danny did not take drugs or have any prescriptions for the drug traces of Hydrocodone and Tricyclic antidepressant that were found in the body. No pill boxes or written prescriptions were found. Dr. Casolaro searched through his brother's Blue Cross records and found no record of the prescriptions or doctor visits.

During the autopsy of the body, Dr. Frost had found lesions within the brain which were characteristic of Multiple Sclerosis. It was possible that Danny was having blurring of vision, but Dr. Frost downplayed the possibility that this contributed to any suicide. Of particular interest, was Frost's observation that the deep razor wounds on Danny's wrists were inflicted "without any hesitation marks." However, the lack of hesitation did not indicate one way or the other whether they were or were not selfinflicted.Investigators and police never found Danny's missing briefcase.

On August 6, 1991, Casolaro's housekeeper, Olga, helped Danny pack a black leather tote bag. She remembered he also packed a thick sheaf of papers into a dark brown or black briefcase. She asked him what he had put into the briefcase and he replied, "I have all my papers ..." He had been typing for two days, and as he left the house, he said, "Wish me luck. I'll see you in a couple of days."

By August 9th, Casolaro's friends were alarmed. Noone had heard from him and Olga was receiving threatening phone calls at Danny's home. On Saturday, August 10th, Olga received another call, a man's voice said, "You son of a bitch. You're dead."After learning of Danny's death, Olga recalled seeing Danny sitting in the kitchen on August 5th with a "heavy man ... wearing a dark suit. He was a dark man with black hair he turned towards the door, I saw he was darkskinned. I told police maybe he could be from India."

At 3:00 p.m. on Friday, the day before Danny's death, Bill Turner, a friend and confidante, met Danny in the parking lot of the Sheraton Hotel to deliver some papers to him. The papers allegedly consisted of two sealed packages which Turner had been keeping in his safe at home for Danny, and a packet of Hughes Aircraft papers which belonged to Turner.

Danny had appeard exhuberant to most of his friends before his death, noting that he was about to "wrap up" his investigation of The Octopus. Casolaro was trying to prove that the alleged theft of the Inslaw computer program, PROMISE, was related to the October Surprise scandal, the IranContra affair and the collapse of BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International).

Turner later admitted to police that he had indeed met with Danny on August 9th, but at that time he refused to specify what time and would not describe what was in the papers he delivered to Danny. I later learned that Turner had been investigating discrepancies involving his former employer, Hughes Aircraft Company. The documents he had delivered from his safe to Danny had been sealed, with Casolaro's name written across the seal, and he claimed not to have known what they contained.Nevertheless, it is feasible to assume that Turner may have known who Danny was preparing to meet that evening at the Martinsburg Hotel because, for reasons of his own, Turner apparently wanted Danny to show the Hughes Aircraft documents to whoever he was meeting with.

Turner later noted to reporters that he was "scared shitless" about information he had seen connecting Ollie North and BCCI. "I saw papers from Danny that connected back through the Keating Five and Silverado [the failed Denver S & L where Neil Bush had been an officer]," he said.

To his friend, Ben Mason, Danny showed a 22point outline for his book. Included in the information he shared with Mason were papers referring to IranContra arms deals. Photocopies of checks made out for $1 million and $4 million drawn on BCCI accounts held for Adnan Khashoggi, and international arms merchant and factotum for the House of Saud, and by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an arms dealer and IranContra middleman, were presented. "The last sheet," noted Mason, "was a passport of some guy named Ibrahim." Casolaro had emphasized that Ibrahim had made a big deal of showing him (Casolaro) his "Egyptian" passport. "Ibrahim" was obviously the informant whom Olga, Casolaro's housekeeper, had seen sitting in the kitchen with Danny on August 5th. Hassan Ali Ibrahim Ali, born in 1928, was later identified as the manager of Sitico, an alleged Iraqi front company for arms purchases. Casolaro had obtained these papers from Bob Bickel, who in turn obtained them from October Surprise source Richard Brenneke.

Ari BenMenasche, a self proclaimed Israeli military intelligence officer, was responsible for the tipoff to an obscure Lebanese magazine about what later became known as the IranContra scandal. After Casolaro's death, Menasche called Bill Hamilton, the president of Inslaw Company and creator of the PROMISE software. (Hamilton had been in daily contact with Casolaro until about a week prior to his death).

Menasche claimed that two FBI agents from Lexington, Kentucky, had embarked on a trip to Martinsburg to meet Casolaroas part of their investigation of the sale of the PROMISE software to Israel and other intelligence agencies.Ben Menasche told Hamilton that one of the FBI agents, E.B. Cartinhour, was disaffected because his superiors had refused to indict high Reagan officials for their role in the October Surprise. Ben Menasche claimed the agents were prepared to give Casolaro proof that the FBI was illegally using PROMISE software.

It is highly unlikely that the two FBI agents were enroute to Martinsburg to GIVE anything to Casolaro, but they may well have been on their way to obtain HIS documents and those belonging to Bill Turner. If, in fact, Danny had disclosed to any one of the many "sources" he had developed during his investigation, that he was turning over his documents to the Lexington FBI, that may well have alarmed a few of them.

Casolaro was also investigating Colonel Bo Gritz's expose of CIA drug trafficking, and had requested to meet with a former police officer who had information on Laotian warlord Kuhn Sa's Golden Triangle drug trade proposal to the U.S. He had learned through a Sacramento Bee newspaper article, dated June 2, 1990 that Patrick Moriarty, the Red Devil fireworks magnate convicted of laundering political contributions and bribing city officials in Sacramento, had been subpoenaed to testify on behalf of Gritz at his trial in Las Vegas where he was tried for using a false passport. Gritz was acquitted of the charges.

Moriarty's lawyer, Jan Lawrence Handzlik, told the Bee that Moriarty had paid Gritz to make business trips to China, Singapore and other parts of Asia. Gritz said his business trip to Asia in July 1989 was for the purpose of negotiating an oil interest that he and Moriarty had set up between the People's Republic of China and Indonesia.

It is noteworthy that Patrick Moriarty is the longtime (30 years) partner of Marshall Riconosciuto, Michael Riconosciuto's father. They owned several California businesses together, two of which were Hercules Research Corporation, of which Michael was a partner, and Pyrotronics Corporation.

Casolaro at one time considered the title of "Indio" for the book he was writing about "The Octopus." His death occurred just days before he planned to visit the Cabazon Indian reservation near Indio, California. Though his notes did not divulge what role the Cabazons may have had in the conspiracy, Casolaro listed Dr. John Phillip Nichols, the Cabazon administrator, as a former CIA agent.

A source of information which Danny may have read is entitled, "DARK VICTORY, Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob," by Dan E. Moldea. Moldea named this unholy alliance "The Octopus" in his book.

Numerous publications reporting on Casolaro's death corroborated that one of his sources included Michael Riconosciuto, a "44yearold former hightech scientist who had connections with Wackenhut Corporation ..." What brought Casolaro to Riconosciuto was an affidavit signed by Riconosciuto claiming that when he worked on the WackenhutCabazon project, he was given a copy of the Inslaw software by Earl Brian for modification. Riconosciuto also swore that Peter Videnieks, a Justice Department official associated with the Inslaw contract, had visited the WackenhutCabazon project with Earl Brian.

Earl Brian was a businessman and Edwin Meese crony who served in Governor Ronald Reagan's cabinet in California.The $6 million in software stolen from William and Nancy Hamilton, coowners of Inslaw Company, was allegedly sold by the Justice Department through Earl Brian to raise offthebooks money for covert government operations.

On May 18, 1990, Riconosciuto had called the Hamiltons and informed them that the Inslaw case was connected to the October Surprise affair. Riconosciuto claimed that he and Earl Brian had traveled to Iran in 1980 and paid $40 million to Iranian officials to persuade them NOT to release the hostages before the presidential election in which Reagan became president of the United States.

Riconosciuto's information created a domino effect in Washington D.C., opening numerous investigations and causing a media blitz. At that time, Casolaro headed the Hamilton's private investigation of the theft of their software and he had regular communication with Riconosciuto.

Former U.S. Attorney General Elliott Richardson, the Hamilton's attorney, subsequently sent Riconosciuto an affidavit to sign, to be filed by Inslaw in federal court in connection with Inslaw's pending Motion for Limited Discovery. The affidavit, Case No. 8500070, entered into court records, resulted in Riconosciuto's arrest within days. It read as follows:

"I Michael J. Riconosciuto, being duly sworn, do hereby state as follows:

"(1) During the early 1980's, I served as the Director of Research for a joint venture between the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Florida, and the Cabazon Band of Indians of Indio, California. The joint venture was located on the Cabazon reservation.

"(2) The WackenhutCabazon joint venture sought to develop and/or manufacture certain materials that are used in military and national security operations, including night vision goggles, machine guns, fuelair explosives, and biological and chemical warfare weapons.

"(3) The Cabazon Band of Indians are a sovereign nation. The sovereign immunity that is accorded the Cabazons as a consequence of this fact made it feasible to pursue on the reservation the development and/or manufacture of materials whose development or manufacture would be subject to stringent controls off the reservation. As a minority group, the Cabazon Indians also provided the Wackenhut Corporation with an enhanced ability to obtain federal contracts through the 8A Set Aside Program, and in connection with Governmentowned contractoroperated (GOCO) facilities.

"(4) The WackenhutCabazon joint venture was intended to support the needs of a number of foreign governments and forces, including forces and governments in Central America and the Middle East. The Contras in Nicaragua represented one of the most important priorities for the joint venture.

"(5) The WackenhutCabazon joint venture maintained close liaison with certain elements of the United States Government, including representatives of intelligence, military and law enforcement agencies.

"(6) Among the frequent visitors to the WackenhutCabazon joint venture were Peter Videnieks of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and a close associate of Videnieks by the name of Earl W. Brian. Brian is a private businessman who lives in Maryland and who has maintained close ties with the U.S. intelligence community for many years.

"(7) In connection with my work for Wackenhut, I engaged in some software development and modification work in 1983 and 1984 on the proprietary PROMIS computer software product. The copy of PROMIS on which I worked came from the U.S. Department of Justice. Earl W. Brian made it available to me through Wackenhut after acquiring it from Peter Videnieks, who was then a Department of Justice contracting official with responsibility for the PROMISE software. I performed the modifications to PROMIS in Indio, California; Silver Spring, Maryland; and Miami, Florida.

"( The purpose of the PROMISE software modifications that I made in 1983 and 1984 was to support a plan for the implementation of PROMIS in law enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide. Earl W. Brian was spearheading the plan for this worldwide use of the PROMISE computer software.

"(9) Some of the modifications that I made were specifically designed to facilitate the implementation of PROMIS within two agencies of the Government of Canada; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). Earl W. Brian would check with me from time to time to make certain that the work would be completed in time to satisfy the schedule for the RCMP and CSIS implementations of PROMIS.

"(10) The proprietary version of PROMIS, as modified by me, was, in fact, implemented in both the RCMP and the CSIS in Canada. It was my understanding that Earl W. Brian had sold this version of PROMIS to the Government of Canada.

"(11) In February 1991, I had a telephone conversation with Peter Videnieks, then still employed by the U.S. Department of Justice. Videnicks attempted during this telephone conversation to persuade me not to cooperate with an independent investigation of the government's piracy of Inslaw's proprietary PROMIS software being conducted by the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives.

"(12) Videnieks stated that I would be rewarded for a decision not to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee investigation. Videnieks forecasted an immediate and favorable resolution of a protracted child custody dispute being prosecuted against my wife by her former husband, if I were to decide not to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee investigation.

"(13) Videnieks also outlined specific punishments that I could expect to receive from the U.S. Department of Justice if I cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee's investigation.

"(14) One punishment that Videnieks outlined was the future inclusion of me and my father in a criminal prosecution of certain business associates of mine in Orange County, California, in connection with the operation of a savings and loan institution in Orange County. By way of underscoring his power to influence such decisions at the U.S. Department of Justice, Videnieks informed me of the indictment of these business associates prior to the time when that indictment was unsealed and made public.

"(15) Another punishment that Videnieks threatened against me if I cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee is prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice for perjury. Videnieks warned me that credible witnesses would come forward to contradict any damaging claims that I made in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, and that I would subsequently be prosecuted for perjury by the U.S. Department of Justice for my testimony before the House Judiciary Committee."

It is noteworthy that in January, 1992 when I obtained boxes of Michael Riconosciuto's hidden documents, included in those documents were handwritten pages of telephone numbers belonging to various Washington D.C. dignitaries. One number, "(202) 4260789" was listed as belonging to "PV," but it was no longer in service.

Danny Casolaro was, of course, intent on interviewing Peter Videnieks. A strange coincidence occurred during the week prior to his death. While sitting in a pub, having a beer, a man named Joseph Cuellar approached him and they began talking. At some point during the conversation, Danny disclosed the contents of his investigation and expressed a desire to interview Peter Videnieks.

To Danny's astonishment, Cuellar, claiming to be a Special Forces operative, said he could arrange a rendevous between Peter Videnieks and Casolaro. Cuellar's connection to Peter Videnieks allegedly came through Videnieks' wife, Barbara, who was the executive assistant to the powerful West Virginia Democratic Senator, Robert Byrd. Byrd played a major role in the effort to have the CIA move some of its administrative offices to Charlestown, 20 miles from Martinsburg, on the Virginia border. It was apparently through Barbara Videnieks that Cuellar intended to arrange the interview.

Casolaro confided to friends that he was unnerved by this supposedly chance meeting. He met with Cuellar at other times that week, but it is unknown whether he ever spoke with Videnieks. To date, that question remains unanswered.

Significantly, Elliot Richardson, the respected former U.S. Attorney General representing Inslaw, called for the appointment of a special counsel to look into the death of Casolaro.

At Michael Riconosciuto's trial in Tacoma Washington, Peter Videnieks testified that while working for the Justice Department he had contact with the PROMISE software. He "conducted the competitive contract competitive procurement for acquisition of the services to implement PROMISE."Under cross examination he testified that "it required preparation of a request for proposals issuance of that document to industry ... negotiating, selecting, and awarding the contract. Then after award, administering the contract to see that the work that the government paid for was properly performed."

So, essentially, Videnieks administered the Inslaw contract with the government. His employment record included work with the Internal Revenue Service as a revenue officer from 1964 to 1967. From 1967 to 1972 as a contract specialist with NASA. From 1972 to 1973 with Customs as a contract specialist. From 1973 through 1975 back at NASA as a contract specialist. >From 1975 through 1981 as a contract specialist with Customs, supervisory at this time. From 1981 through September, 1990, with the Department of Justice as a contract specialist. And from September 1990 through present (January 1992) as a supervisory contract specialist at Customs again.

Thomas Olmstead, Riconosciuto's attorney, showed Videnieks the Inslaw affidavit signed by Riconosciuto. Videnieks said he had seen the affidavit prior to court, but testified that he'd never heard of the WackenhutCabazon joint venture and never visited the WackenhutCabazon facility in Indio, California. He also testified that he'd never met Earl Brian.

Olmstead asked Videnieks if he knew Robert Chasen [Executive Vice President of Wackenhut]? Videnieks testified that he knew him "by name since he was head of Customs for about a threeyear period, from about 1977 through 1980. I met him once in the line of my duties."

Interestingly, according to his resume, Robert Chasen was Commissioner of Customs in Washington D.C. from 1969 to 1977, then Executive Vice President of Wackenhut from 1981 to present (1991). And Peter Videnieks, a contract officer at Customs in Washington D.C. from 1972 to 1974, then again at Customs from 1976 to 1981, said he did not know Robert Chasen. How could that be? Videnieks had worked in the same department with Chasen, off and on, for at least three years.

Videnieks also testified that he met Chasen in the line of his duties sometime between 1977 and 1980. Yet, Chasen no longer worked at Customs between 1977 and 1980?

Olmstead asked Videnieks to reiterate his position with the PROMISE software. "I worked on the [PROMISE] contract. ... The procurement was assigned to me by a lady named Patricia Rudd. ... My function was to conduct a competitive procurement, negotiate an award of contract, and then administer the contract."

Olmstead: "What time frames are we talking when you were ...?"

Videnieks: "We're talking about from the day that I reported for duty at Justice, which was in September 1981, through about 1985."

Olmstead: "Are you familiar with Hadron Company?" (This was a loaded question because Earl Brian, who Videnieks testified he did not know, owned Hadron Company at the time of the court proceedings.)

Videnieks responded, "Yes, I am."

Olmstead: "Have you done work for Hadron Corporation in your procurement contract?"

Videnieks: "I supervise currently a contract specialist who is administering a contract with Hadron."

Olmstead: "Prior to supervising someone, did you personally handle that particular contract?"

Videnieks: "I have administered well over a hundred contracts, maybe a couple hundred or several hundred over my career, and I don't recall whether I have or not."

Olmstead: "And you have never given a deposition in regards to the Inslaw matter?"

Videnieks: "My recall is not that good. Like I said, I have administered hundreds of contracts, and I may or may not have administered one with Hadron."

Again Olmstead asked Videnieks if he knew Earl Brian?Videnieks responded, "No, sir."

Olmstead: "Do you know who owns Hadron?"

Videnieks: "I really don't. I've heard I mean, I don't want to speculate now. He may be an officer with Hadron. He may be."

Olmstead: "You don't recall any questions in any depositions at all regarding that?"

Videnieks: "I do recall questions along these same lines. But again, from general knowledge, I think he is an officer or has been an officer with Hadron."

Olmstead: "In fact, in your deposition, you admitted you knew that he was an officer of Hadron, didn't you?"

Videnieks: "I would like to see my transcript from my deposition as to what I said ..."

Olmstead went on to question Videnieks about "Modification No. 12" of the PROMISE software. Videnieks stated that he knew what Modification No. 12 was, but repeatedly refused to discuss it until someone produced the original Inslaw contract. Finally, under pressure to give a general recollection, he said it dealt with the twelfth modification to the PROMISE software.

Olmstead asked, "Were you personally chastised as a result of Modification No. 12 in the way you handled that?"

Videnieks: "Please define `chastised.'"

Olmstead: "Were you told that you took, converted, and stole six million dollars worth of Inslaw software through the way you handled Modification No. 12?"

Videnieks: "A judge in the bankruptcy court ruled that. Since then the record was erased. And that language should not be the way a nonlawyer like me understands, it is no longer in existence ..."

It is necessary to digress here to disclose the magnitude of the apparent government coverup relative to Riconosciuto's case. About two weeks before Riconosciuto's trial began, I had received a call from Michael asking me to contact Brian Leighton, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Fresno, whom Michael claimed to have provided information to. Michael was lining up his ducks. Essentially his defense rested on his ability to prove he worked for the U.S. government in intelligence operations, but his lawyer was behind schedule in making the contacts.

Brian Leighton had been instrumental in prosecuting 29 members of a drug/arms organization called "The Company." The Company had been written up in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 28, 1982 under the heading "Story of Spies, Stolen Arms and Drugs." According to reporter Bill Wallace, The Company consisted of (quote) "about 300 members, many of them former military men or expolice officers with nearly $30 million worth of assets, including planes, ships and real estate."

The article went on to say that "federal drug agents said the organization had imported billions of dollars worth of narcotics from Latin America, and was also involved in gunrunning and mercenary operations." Specialized military equipment consisting of nine infrared sniperscopes, a television camera for taking pictures in darkness, 1500 rounds of small arms tracer ammunition for night combat, a fivefoot remotecontrol helicopter, and secret components from the radar unit of a Sidewinder guided missile were stolen from the U.S. Naval Weapons Station at China Lake in the Mojave Desert.

Federal agents said some of the stolen equipment was going to be used to make electronic equipment for drug smugglers and some was traded to drug suppliers in Columbia. Twentynine members of the Company were indicted by the Fresno federal grand jury in 1981. Amongst those indicated was Andrew "Drew" Thornton, 40, a former narcotics officer.

On September 13, 1985, the Los Angeles Times published the story of Thornton's death, entitled, "Former Narcotics Officer Parachutes Out of Plane, Dies with 77 Pounds of Cocaine." The article said Thornton was indicted in 1981 for "allegedly flying a plane to South America for a reputed drug ring known as `The Company.'" In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Brian Leighton said, "I'm glad his parachute didn't open. I hope he got a hell of a high out of that ..."

Thornton's mysterious death was discussed at length in a book written by Sally Denton entitled, "The Blue Grass Conspiracy." Part of The Company was headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky. Prosecutors in Lexington, Fresno, California (Brian Leighton), and Miami, Florida were working together in a joint effort to bring down The Company.

The San Francisco Chronicle noted that in January, 1982, Gene Berry, a state prosecutor in Charlotte Harbor, Florida, was shot in the face as he answered his door. Police subsequently arrested Bonnie Kelly as Berry's murderer. Bonnie's husband, Mike McClure Kelly, was a suspected member of The Company who later pleaded guilty in the Fresno, California case.

In Michael Riconosciuto's documents, I discovered a letter dated March 24, 1982, written on Cabazon letterhead to Michael McClure at Hercules Corporation from Art Welmas, President of the Cabazon Band of Indians. Copies (cc:) were also noted to Marshall Riconosciuto and Michael Riconosciuto. The letter complimented McClure's competence in presenting a clear and lucid explanation of a power pack under development at Hercules. (Hercules was owned by Marshall Riconosciuto, Michael Riconosciuto and Patrick Moriarty, the Red Devil fireworks mogul. More on Moriarty later.)

Throughout Michael's documents, I found references to Michael McClure and Bonnie Lynne G. Kelly. Michael's code word for Mike McClure was "Gopher."

Journalist Danny Casolaro had been communicating regularly with Michael Riconosciuto and obviously learned about The Company. It is not to be overlooked that coincidentally or not, Ari BenMenashe (a former Israeli intelligence agent who lived in Lexington, Kentucky) told Bill Hamilton that two Lexington FBI agents had been enroute to meet with Danny at the Martinsburg Hotel on the day of his death. The Company was headquartered in Lexington. Danny was not meeting with the FBI relative to PROMIS, he was preparing to turn over drug trafficking information on The Company.

BenMenashe further told Hamilton that one of the agents, E.B. Cartinhour, was angry that the Justice Department was not pursuing Reagan administration officials for their role in the October Surprise.

Meanwhile, it was necessary to contact Brian Leighton to corroborate Riconosciuto's story that he had been instrumental in helping Leighton identify members of The Company.

I did not directly contact Leighton, who had resigned from the U.S. Attorney's office shortly after the prosecutions and entered into private law practice, but asked the Secret Service agent in Los Angeles who had visited my home regarding the "Queen's accident" in Mariposa (mentioned in the first chapter of this book) to run a check on Riconosciuto.

Instead, he called Brian Leighton and when I checked back with him, he acknowledged talking to Leighton about Riconosciuto. Leighton confirmed to the Secret Service agent that he recalled a threehour facetoface meeting with Riconosciuto and remembered him well. He gave specific details of Riconosciuto's cooperation with the U.S. attorney's office. I thanked the Secret Service agent and hung up.

I next contacted a retired police officer and colleague in the Mariposa investigation, and asked him to put me in touch with someone trustworthy in government who could corraborate Leighton's information. The contact was made and this individual agreed to call Brian Leighton to see if he could glean further details of Michael's cooperation with the U.S. attorney's office. For purposes of anonymity, this source will be identified as "R.J." When I checked back, he confirmed that Leighton did indeed remember Michael's help with the case and, in fact, said Michael led law enforcement officers to a marijuana cache belonging to members of The Company.

At that point I was satisfied that Michael had been operating within the framework of The Company and had spoken accurately about his cooperation with Brian Leighton. I called Thomas Olmstead, Michael's attorney, and related the above information.

Two weeks later, on January 15, 1992, at Michael's trial in Tacoma, Washington, Brian Leighton testified that the case in question involved the theft of military equipment from the China Lake Naval Weapons Center in California. "The FBI and Naval Intelligence Service began the investigation," he said, "and there were several people that were targets of the investigation. One of those targets began cooperating with us and then it became a DEA and FBI investigation. The thefts occurred in 1979 and 1980, and the case continued on for a couple of years."

Leighton testified that he "could not recall ever meeting personally with Mr. Riconosciuto and he didn't know if he spoke to him personally or spoke to him through a government agent." Under crossexamination, Leighton testified that he thought Riconosciuto was brought to him by an agent Barnes from the Oakland or San Francisco office of the FBI, but he couldn't remember exactly ..."

After Leighton's testimony, Michael called me and asked, "What happened?" I was astonished at Leighton's testimony. What was at stake here? Michael speculated that Leighton was operating out of fear. He said Leighton retired from the U.S. Attorney's office shortly after prosecuting members of The Company, and recalled that the prosecuting attorney in Florida had been shot in the head.

I called the Secret Service officer and R.J. individually and asked them to repeat what Leighton had told them before the trial. They both repeated verbatim what Leighton had told them the first time about Michael Riconosciuto. I said it appeared Leighton had perjured himself in court. Neither could understand why?

In August 1994, I received from a friend of Bill Hamilton's (President of Inslaw) a Declaration, signed by Hamilton, which stated that " ... On or about April 3, 1991, I spoke by telephone with Mr. Brian Leighton, an attorney in private practice in Fresno, California. He stated that during the early 1980's, while serving as an Assistant United States Attorney in Fresno, California, he had investigated a nationwide criminal enterprise known as `The Company,' which was engaged in illegal drug trafficking on a massive scale.

"Mr. Leighton told me that (A) Michael Riconosciutohad furnished Mr. Leighton `valuable intelligence' on illegal drug activities and The Company; (B) Mr. Leighton had been unable to use the information in prosecution but (C) the failure to use Mr. Riconosciuto's intelligence information was not because of any fault of Mr. Michael Riconosciuto."

Also mentioned in the affidavit was corroboration of Riconosciuto's work in the defense and national security fields. Section six of the affidavit noted that during the course of a telephone conversation with Robert Nichols on or about April 18, 1991, Hamilton learned that Nichols had attended a meeting that had been organized by a Colonel Bamford, an aide to General Meyer, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Others participating in the meeting were department heads from Department of Defense scientific facilities.

Michael Riconosciuto was the principal presenter to this group of seniorlevel national security research and development officials. According to Nichols, Riconosciuto made a day long presentation to this meeting of scientists lasting from approximately 9 a.m. until approximately 4 p.m., answering questions from the participants and filling the halls of the conference facility with his handprinted notes on the scientific and technical issues that arose in the course of his presentation.

I was able to locate in Riconosciuto's files, a letter written on July 20, 1983 from Tom Bamford, Vice President of Research and Development at FMC Corporation in Santa Clara, California to William Frash in Escondido, California. At that time, Frash, a retired USMC Colonel, was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Lilac Corporation.

Essentially, the letter expressed enthusiasm for the potential application of technologies being proposed to FMC Corporation by Meridian Arms, and called for a list of all active participants in the joint venture. At that time Riconosciutowas vice president of Meridian Arms. Bamford added, " ... You may want to do this only for Mike at this stage."

Frash hastened to respond to Bamford on July 27, 1983 to apprise him of a meeting between himself and Michael Riconosciuto, Robert Booth Nichols, Peter Zokosky and Patrick Moriarty (Michael's father's business partner) regarding "energy transfer phenomena." A proposal was underway to outline technology in the form of patents applied for jointly between Meridian Arms and FMC. Frash noted that the technology would "supercede all existing world patents in the field."

"Had we patented previously, it would only have announced our `edge' in the field," he wrote. Three of the four major patents that would be forthcoming were (1) the application of Perturbation Theory to enhanced energy transfer, (2) the application of stationary methods with powders and aerosols to enhanced energy transfer and (3) the application of Perturbation Theory to hydrodynamic flow regimes.

It is noteworthy that the submarine propulsion system depicted in the movie, "Hunt for Red October" utilized this theory. Frash concluded, "Tom, as you well know, Mike's tried and true value is in the field of high voltage and electrostatics and their application. The meetings in San Jose highlighted application of this technology in over one hundred areas that are inhouse FMC." He added, " ... Per your reference to meetings in Washington, D.C., I assume the meetings with Dr. Fair, Admiral Renkin and the ACCOM people will suffice in this matter. In closing we are very enthused, Tom, and we look forward to an expeditious closing. Sincerely, William Frash."

Frash's payment for putting together the above referenced joint venture, if successful, would be $500,000 for the first fifteen million invested, or $166,666.66 for only five million invested, a onehundredthousanddollar per year salary for a period of 20 years, and a 2% share in the gross profits. This, according to a Letter of Understanding sent to and signed by Robert Booth Nichols and Michael Riconosciuto in July, 1983.

In questioning Michael Riconosciuto about the FMC agreements, he said he attempted to break away from Robert Nichols in 1984. "The guy nearly got me terminated," declared Riconosciuto. "At the time I was working with Nichols on a proposal to FMC Corporation, which is Food Machinery Corporation, they produced the Bradley Personnel Carrier. I've got a complete papertrail on the technology that was being presented. We conducted a test demonstration of an enhanced airfield device which I developed. We also conducted a test of a hydrodynamic implosion type of explosive device.

"The implosion device settled the Nevada Test Range by about 30 feet. The Lawrence Livermore Labs and the Gallup Ordinance people built a prototype of the device, but they overbuilt it because they wanted an impressive demonstration. It created an international incident because the demonstration was picked up by Soviet monitoring satellites.

"Anyway, the bona fides were established. The next thing was to get the business done and get me into harness in a program. I was all for it, but Bob [Nichols] started getting spooky on me. He wanted to receive the setup of our end offshore, in Singapore. He wanted to receive $20 million dollars in cash in Singapore, and he wanted to use certain of the technology overseas, namely in Australia, OK?

"Bob started drinking a lot. He was obviously under a lot of pressure from somewhere, and his fascade of respectability started to crack. About that time Bob began pressuring me to do things a certain way. We'd already been approved at the executive level by FMC. But we still had to go through the legal department and FMC is a publicly held stock corporation. So we still had to go through the shareholders for about eight months, which put us about a year away from consummating the deal.

"So, I asked Bob for some extra money to meet my everyday expenses, but Bob said, `Hurry up and get the business done and then you'll have plenty of money.' I tried to explain to Bob that there was no way he could expedite this thing, and so on and so forth. Well, Bob became really overbearing. And that's when he demanded that I state things in the contract proposal to FMC which would have been misstatements, to the point of being illegal. That's when I started having second thoughts about it.

"There were other people involved in the development of that technology. Bob wanted me to pay him out of my share and make no reference to the other people in the agreement. But when you've got the University of California and the University of Chicago having 16 percent of your company, having 16 percent of Hercules Research and Interprobe, you know, how could I misrepresent the interests of my dad, Moriarty and [Admiral] Al Renkin in a deal with a U.S. publicly held corporation [FMC]?

"At that time, Riconosciuto had been Vice President of Meridian Arms, a subsidiary of Meridian International Logistics. But he was also technical advisor for F.I.D.C.O. (First Intercontinental Development Corporation) of which Nichols was on the Board of Directors. Noted Riconosciuto, "I walked into F.I.D.C.O. in equal good faith. And that also turned sour because Bob wanted me to illegally take embargoed technology out of the United States, to run an operation with embargoed armaments and high technology outside of the United States.

"So I walked out on Bob. And Bob put the heat on me and they wouldn't leave me alone. When I got remarried [to Bobby Riconosciuto], they continued to harrass me by putting out false intelligence reports on me to law enforcement ..."

I asked Michael why he didn't fight back? Michael responded, "You don't seem to understand. All my involvements were under closely controlled situations. There's only one time in my life when I was planning on doing something offcolor, and it never went anywhere. All the rest of the time, everything was under complete controls. I never took any elective actions. Everything was, you know, on direct orders. And I got to the point where I balked with Bob Nichols and that's when he went ballistic on me."

Riconosciuto said he was in the process of cleaning up his life in Washington state when a private investigator from Inslaw contacted him. "I didn't want to get nailed for piracy of that software, so I talked to my attorney, who talked to the Inslaw attorneys, and I gave them a declaration. And about that time, Peter Viedenieks, who was an associate of both Robert Booth Nichols and Dr. John Nichols, called me and told me I was my own worst enemy. He said if I didn't cool it, if I didn't stonewall any further requests for information from the House Judiciary Committee, I was going away forever. I told Viedenieks that I was already in too deep, and he repeated that `I was my own worst enemy.' Seven days later I was arrested on drug charges."

Ted Gunderson was one of the few "cooperating" witnesses at Michael's trial. Through his affidavit and testimony, Ted hoped to supply the defense with needed corroboration of Michael's covert government sanctioned activities. Unfortunately for Michael, Ted could not disclose numerous activities which had included Robert Booth Nichols. At one time Gunderson, Nichols and Riconosciuto had been inseparable, like the three musketeers. But, Nichols was currently under investigation by the Los Angeles FBI for alleged involvement in organized crime in the U.S. and abroad.

Fortunately, however, Gunderson's resume added credibility to the provocative affidavit he entered into court on Michael's behalf. He had been Senior Special Agent in Charge (SAC) at Los Angeles FBI headquarters from 1977 to 1979 when he retired from the FBI and went to work as chief investigator for F. Lee Bailey, Esq. Prior to that, from 1960 to 1965, Gunderson was Special Agent Supervisor at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.. Interestingly, amongst a prestigious list of positions nationwide, he was also SAC from 1973 to 1977 in Dallas, Texas (where he became friends with Clint Murchison, Jr., according to his livein partner, J.M.. J.M. stated in phone interviews that she and Gunderson attended parties with Murchison in Dallas, and Gunderson phoned him often from their Manhattan Beach home).

In 1979, Gunderson received the Alumni Highest Effort Award in the Field of Law Enforcement from Sigma Alpha Epsilon Social Fraternity at the University of Nebraska. In 1979, he also received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the University of Nebraska in recognition of distinguished and devoted service to his country.
_________________________________________________________
Source

U.S. Armed, Promoted Accused September 11 Terrorist Mastermind

New details are coming out about the origins of the alleged terrorist mastermind of 9-11. It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone where that trail leads.

By Mike Blair

Further details have emerged on the cozy relationship that existed between the U.S. government and Osama bin Laden, the shadowy leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network.

In the Jan. 20 issue, American Free Press carried an exclusive report that federal officials were aware of the terrorist attacks six months in advance, facts unearthed by retired high-ranking FBI official Ted L. Gunderson.

That story detailed the part played by bin Laden in America's support of Afghan freedom fighters, who in the 1980s were resisting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

In 1986, U.S. officials claimed that aiding bin Laden's network would translate in a drop in terrorist activity.

In an exclusive interview, Gunderson told how a high-level official in the administration of President Ronald Reagan approached him in 1986 to see if he could arrange, outside of government channels, a means to provide help to the Afghanis fighting the Soviet invaders.

Details of the arrangements established by Gunderson were first reported in the Jan. 7 and Feb. 11, 2002 issues of American Free Press.

Gunderson contacted scientist Michael Riconosciuto, who at the time kept close ties to key Middle East moneymen and Red Chinese and other weapons for the U.S. through his work with the CIA.

Subsequently, Gunderson arranged a meeting in the spring of 1986 at the Hilton Hotel on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, Calif., between himself, Riconosciuto, Ralph Olberg, who covertly represented the State Department at the meeting and served on its Middle East desk, and a man identified as “Tim Osman.”

As Gunderson would discover only last year, “Osman” was bin Laden, dressed in ordinary casual Western attire and traveling on a Turkish passport.

Gunderson has also since found that there is a real Osman, who is a Turkish official.

Gunderson was asked to set up the meeting because of his knowledge of international terrorism, having retired from the FBI in the late 1970s. At the time he was senior special agent in charge, a post equivalent to assistant director, of the 700-plus-man Los Angeles bureau.

He immediately approached Riconosciuto, with whom he had previously worked on several classified projects, including the development of a devastating new fuel-air ex plosive device.

AIDING THE REBELLION

Gunderson says the only part he played in the deal was to put the key players in touch with Sir Dennis Kendall, who lived in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Kendall had been known by Gunderson for years and maintained the “right contacts” to help set up an operation to aid the rebels in Afghanistan.

According to Gunderson, Kendall, a former member of the British parliament, was a double agent during World War II. He worked for both the Germans and the British.

Among other things, Gunderson said, Kendall was able to garner top-secret German intelligence for British MI-6 intelligence agency through a relationship with a secretary of the German ambassador in Madrid, Spain.

Kendall made arrangements to aid the Afghan rebels through a Saudi Arabian front organization known as Maktab-al-Khidmat, which provided the funding for aiding the rebels.

After leaving Gunderson in California, Riconosciuto, bin Laden, Olberg and Kendall traveled to Boston, where they met with Abdulah Assam, a leader of the Egyptian Islamic Brotherhood, and details of the aid plan were further formulated.

Kendall had contacts with the international police organization, Interpol, which he had probably gained due to its close ties with German intelligence during World War II, Gunderson said.

Interpol provided secure communications and kept the operation from being compromised or discovered, he said.

Gunderson said he understands that the operation involved travel by Riconosciuto and others to England, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The operation was formalized in Boston with a number of unnamed congressmen.

The project ultimately provided the Afghani resistance with 600 stinger surface-to-air, shoulder-fired missiles, which had been modified so they could not be used against American aircraft if captured.

The project also provided thousands of Red Chinese 107-millimeter rockets with aerial proximity fuses.

Gunderson said that these weapons turned the tide of battle in Afghanistan against the Soviets, whose aircraft, and particularly attack helicopters, fell victim to the missiles.

The rebels were also supplied armor-piercing ammunition, demolition charges, remote detonators and intelligence information on the Soviets, which probably, Gunderson said, was funneled from the CIA, particularly through satellite imagery.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Hi Initiated! Long time no see!
First, I have multiple documents on the octopus which aren't up at my site .. yet. Over 15,000 actually.
One of the documents that Danny was killed over was this:
http://www.desertfae.com/img/image002.gif
(below)
I also want to have you guys read something that Ed Encho wrote. Bill Hamilton and I worked with him on this based on documented, vetted evidence we both have: http://www.opednews.com/articles/3/US-Spying--Main-Core-PRO-by-Ed-Encho-090202-224.html
I will let you guys know that the KESQ series has not ended, but is stalled due to safety issues for those of us involved. It will continue when it's safe to do so.

(pasted document)

Initiated,
You know JJ from jtv? When I was on my month long journey across the US gathering evidence recently I met with him, and showed him a tiny portion of my evidence-stuff that is not public. Next time you see him, ask him what his reaction was when I showed him some of it lol.
He cracked me up.. every other word was "OMG", "JEEEZE!" haha
I mainly showed him to have a witness to some of what I have, because most wouldn't believe I have these documents. I've since given them to multiple trusted sources incase anything happens to me or my family, but those sources are staying in hiding unless something happens.
JJ can confirm I have some extremely damning evidence, and the head of the octopus.

(edit) added part of one of my documents on the subject of Tim Osmand. Keep in mind, I had to blank out some of this due to open murder cases.[/I]

I have no such limitations, and this is public information besides.  

Continuation previous post top link which includes text (excerpted) transcribed from the scanned official handwritten documents:  http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/6583/bases078.html

Gunderson's handwritten affidavit, submitted to Michael's lawyer on September 27, 1991, read as follows (excerpted):

I, Ted L. Gunderson, make the following free and voluntary statement. No threats or promises were made to get me to make this statement. I was born 11/7/28 at Colorado Springs, Colorado.

"In early 1986, I met one Ralph Olberg through a friend of mine, Bill Sloane. Sloane is a former official with HUD. Sloane was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the HUD position after the president was elected in 1980.

"Olberg is a prominent American businessman who was spearheading procurement of U.S. weapons and technology for the Afghanistan rebels.

"In late Spring or early summer of 1986, Ralph Olberg, one Tim Osman, Michael Riconosciuto and I met in a room at the Hilton Hotel, Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, California. I accompanied Michael Riconosciuto, and Osman and Olberg were together. We were there to discuss Olberg's role with the worldwide support network involving the Mujahaden, Afghanistan Resistance Movement against the Soviets.

"In particular we discussed the ability of


the Mujahaden's willingness to field test weapons, new and esoteric in the field and to return a research report, complete with photos.

"We also discussed the capture and/or defection of high ranking Soviet military personnel who had sensitive compartmentalized information and the availability of their briefings. We discussed one person who was a Soviet defector and was a communications officer who had detailed information of the highest levels of Soviet military C3I (Command Control Intelligence and Communications).

"We also discussed the Soviet directed weapons system referred to in the conversation as `Blue Death.' Michael and I were told by Olberg that witnesses stated the corpses did not decay even after being exposed and unburied for six months.

"We discussed the possibility of Michael analyzing one of these units captured in the field by the Afghan rebels for the purpose of having Michael help their technical experts develop effective countermeasures.


"We discussed a military joint venture in Turkey to produce specialized ammunition. We discussed a lobbying effort to legally obtain Stinger II missiles as well as the various Stinger post and Stinger alternates. Michael was to formulate a plan to sanitize the electronics of any Stingers that would be at risk of Soviet capture so any information gained from a captured Stinger could not be effectively used against the U.S. or NATO forces.

"This report was to be presented to a Congressional position as support for the lobbying effort to convince Congress to legally sanction the shipment of these missiles to the Afghan rebels.

"We discussed Michael's proposed modification of Chinese 107 MM rockets and how to reconfigure the package into a backpack portable effective artillery counter battlery system.

"We discussed Michael's connection with the Chinese weapons position, Norinco, to provide the basic components for the unassembled rocket system. We discussed the modification and assembly


of these 107 MM rockets and their launchers at a facility in Pakistan known as the Pakistan Ordinance Works.

"It was my understanding from the discussion that we were working on a legally sanctioned arms assistance project to the Afghan rebels and that Ralph Olberg was working through the Afghan desk at the State Department as well as through Senator Humphreys office. "This was subsequently confirmed by journalist Danny Casolaro who was recently `suicided.'

"Olberg indicated a potential turf battle problem with certain factions of the CIA and his group MSH (Management Science For Health). In negotiations and/or lobbying efforts with Congress, the CIA MSH people were arguing that Ralph and Tim Osman's group did not truly represent the leadership of the Afghan rebel resistance.

"Tim and Ralph proposed calling their people and having an unprecedented leadership meeting in Washington D.C. to prove that their group did in fact represent the full leadership of the Mujahaden.

"When I recently called


Ralph, he denied that the above meeting had taken place and then after prodding, he finally admitted to it and he asked me not to talk about it. This five page statement is true and correct to the best of my knowledge. Ted L. Gunderson."
_________________________________________________________________________
Continued:

Later in my investigation, I obtained from Michael Riconosciuto's files in the desert, a handwritten note from "T.G." to "Michael" which read as follows: "Raymond is arriving at LAX 7:55 p.m. Air Canada via Flight 793 from Toronto. Will have to go through Customs. This will give us another member for our drug/arms operation." The note gave a telephone number where "T.G." could be reached. "Raymond," referred to in the note, is presumably Raymond Lavas, Gunderson's former forensic's expert during his tenure in the FBI.

Michael's trial was not going well. He called and asked me to contact R.J. and bring him to my house. Michael was ready to talk he wanted me to set up a phone conversation in which he could preliminarily open negotiations for entry into the Federal Witness Protection Program. I was out of my depth here. I had no idea whether R.J. would cooperate with such a request. Nevertheless, I called him and related Michael's proposal. He said he had no authority to approve such a request, but he would take the information and pass it along.

He arrived at my home early the following week and Michael called as scheduled. Excerpts from that first taperecorded conversation went as follows: (Michael did most of the talking) " ... In the Fresno area, there was a group of people known as the Fresno Company, and the Bernard brothers were involved in it and Jamie Clark was involved and all of these people seemed to have charmed lives ...

"The Company was originally out of Lexington, Kentucky and Mena, Arkansas. Brian Leighton was the assistant U.S. Attorney who was the most effective person in formulating a strategy in the Justice Department to go after these people.

"We recognized what they were, for what they were, at that time, and there were a few ATF guys down in Los Angeles that recognized them for what they were, OK? Here was a group of over 300 people, most of them exlaw enforcement and exmilitary, exintelligence people involved in a major drug and smuggling operation. And they were involved in compromising activities. The bottom line was espionage.

"And all Leighton served to do was vaccinate the group against further penetration. Just hardened them. And all the major sources that were developed from inside turned up dead. A federal judge in Texas turned up dead.

" ... This is a nasty bunch of people. And they're still alive and well. Now where that dovetails into my current situation, is in 1984 I was involved with Robert Booth Nichols who owns Meridian Arms Corporation and is a principle in F.I.D.C.O., First Intercontinental Development Corporation. The CEO of FIDCO is George Pender and Bob Maheu was Vice President ...

"FIDCO was an NSC [National Security Council] corporate cutout. FIDCO was created to be the corporate vehicle to secure the financing for the reconstruction of the cities of Beirut and Damour in Lebanon. And they were working out of an office in Nicosia, Cyprus.

" ... And here I got involved with a group of people that were all high profile and should have been above reproach. FIDCO had a companion company called Euramae Trading which operated througout the Middle East. I came in contact with the PROMISE software (unintelligible). Euramae had a distribution contract with several Arab countries and I was asked to evaluate the hardware platforms they had chosen. That was IBM/AS400 stuff ...

" ... That had come from IBM Tel Aviv but it came through a cutout, Link Systems, because they couldn't deal directly with the Arabs.

"And I came across a guy named Michael T. Hurley and I thought he worked for the State Department but it turned out he was incountry attache for the DEA in Nicosia, Cyprus. [Nicosia is the capital of the island of Cyprus, off the coast of Lebanon]. Now, the DEA had no real presence in Lebanon. Neither did anybody else, including the Israelis. They had their usual network of contacts but it was very ineffective. The only way to penetrate that situation, was to get into the drug trade.

"Euramae got into the drug trade and I was told that it was a fully sanctioned NSC directed operation, which it turns out that it was ... All those operations were bonafide and all the people who were in them were definitely key government people, although they were not who they said they were.

"They all worked for different agencies other than was stated. Probably part of the normal disinformation that goes with that. And I was technical advisor for FIDCO and we had auspices through the government of Lebanon to get in and out of Lebanon.

"But as far as going to the eastern part of Lebanon, unless you were connected with the drug trade, your chances were slim coming out unscathed ... They built a network throughout the Bekaa Valley, and [Robert Booth] Nichols ... he is under Harold Okimoto from the Hawaiian Islands.

"Harold Okimoto was represented to me as being an intelligence person, which he is. He has worked under the auspices of [Frank] Carlucci for years. [Carlucci was former CIAdeputy director and former Defense secretary]. Apparently Harold performed services for the U.S. government during World War II. He's of Japanese ancestry. I guess he was rewarded for services well done.

" ... Harold operates through a company called Island Tobacco Corporation. He has contracts for all the condiments at all the casinos in Atlantic City, in Reno, in Vegas, in Macao, China ... he's got contacts in Honolulu, the Orient ... a couple of Jews he knows in Bankok ... and there is a casino, no a city about 15 miles north of Beruit that Harold has his fingers in.

"When FIDCO was wheeling and dealing on financing for the reconstruction of the infrastructure of Beirut, they were making sweetheart deals with Syrian mobsters and the brother of the president of Syria, Hafez Assad.

" ... The intelligence people in their infinite wisdom decided to capitalize on the longstanding battle between Rifat Assad and his group and the Jafaar family. Selectively they were backing both people, but they were also playing them off against one another, developing networks. They got a bunch of prominent Syrians thoroughly compromised and they were in tow in the intelligence game. And they had people that could get me in and out of the Bekaa Valley, even out of certain areas of Syria.

"From an intelligence standpoint, it was a success. But to maintain the credibility of those intelligence operations the heroin had to flow. To make it real. And the stuff was starting to accumulate in a warehouse outside of Larnaca. "I personally was in a warehouse where Hurley and George Pender and George Marcobie (phonetic spelling) told me there was upwards of twentytwo tons. And even though it was packaged for shipment, the smell of it in that closed warehouse was overpowering. You know, white heroin like that has a certain odor because of the way it's processed.

"They had authorization for what they called `controlled deliveries' into the United States. And they would target certain cities and then follow the stuff out, ostensibly unmasking the network and conducting prosecutions.

"However, the operation became perverted at the U.S. end of the pipeline. Controlled heroin shipments were doubled, sometimes tripled, and only one third of the heroin was returned to the DEA.

"At a certain transfer point at the airport in Larnaca, the excess baggage from the original controlled delivery would be allowed to go through. I was given the names of the narcotics people who were handling that. But there were a couple of agents who were on the up and up, and they had suspicions.

"An intelligence agent who worked with DIA is now deceased. His name was Tony Asmar and he got on to the operation early on, and started going toe to toe with Hurley [DEA]. He died in a bomb blast and it was ascribed to terrorists. And it actually was terrorists who did it, but his cover was deliberately blown. Myself and others suspected Hurley and Bob Nichols and Glen Shockley were responsible for that ... "

After researching Michael Riconosciuto's information, R.J. noted to me that Michael gave mostly valid information, but he could not prove that Michael had been involved. He did, however, verify (through Customs) that Michael HAD been in Lebanon, but he could not verify the details of the drug operation.

Michael responded (on a taped message to R.J.) by visually recounting the DEA apartment/condo in Nicosia, Cyprus: "The DEA had a condo, I think it was on Columbra (phonetically spelled) Street, in Nicosia, Cyprus [off the coast of Lebanon].

"They had a ham radio station there. It was an ICOM single side band amateur radio setup, with a linear ..."

"Were you actually there?" I asked. Michael quipped, "Yes, I was there," then continued. "I can describe the antenna system, on the top floor and the way it's wired up and everything. Unless you were there, you wouldn't know it was ICOM equipment.

"Now, the game plan with Euramae and Hurley's operation ..." Pause. " ...

You need to understand that the airport in Lebanon was closed down. I took the ferry from Larnaca to Jounieb. Now Jounieb was slightly south of where the casino city was and the casino city was intact. Beirut was a nightmare, and so was Damour, because the PLO destroyed the infrastructure by burrowing bunkers, and there was no water, electricity or phones. It was a combat zone.

"The Syrian mob controlled the Casino du Liban in a little city north of Beirut. It was used as a front by narcotics people. Island Tobacco, owned by Harold Okimoto, sells all the cigarettes there. Now, I could give you the names of the families. They pitted them off against one another. F.I.D.C.O. was to finance the reconstruction of the infrastructure of the cities of Beirut and Damour. Deals were cut as to who got what concessions. There were certain families, like the ElJorr family that had to be placated. And there was Rifat Assad and his group. "Tony Asmar figured out what was going on with Hurley, that they were shipping `noncontrolled' loads of heroin back to the U.S.. They killed Tony ..."

"What were the names of the people you were working for over there?," I asked. Michael's time was always limited on the phone.

"Ok, there was a man named Maurice Ganem. He had a relative, either a brother or a cousin, who is a senior DEA official with Michael Hurley. I can't remember his name right now. Anyways, Maurice was agency, you know, in country, in Lebanon. And Maurice and I and George Pender worked together."

"Which agency? CIA or DEA?," I asked.

"CIA." Michael continued. " ... And then there was Danny Habib. Danny Habib and Bob Nichols worked out of Cario (phonetic spelling) and Italy."

"And Bob was NSA or ..." "No, Bob was NSC at that time."

"George Pender and Bob Clark were the high level contacts on all of this. Bob Clark got drummed out because he was clean. And McFarland then took over, OK?"

"Uh huh."

"So, it was George Pender and McFarland and Michael McManus[Assistant to President Reagan at the White House]."

I asked, "What was your involvement with that particular operation?"

"I handled communications protocol. All the communications and financial transactions. If I could get my records on line I could show all the money flows, everything."

Michael called back later that day and we continued our conversation. He was intent on talking to someone in FinCen (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network). " ... The keystone cops are working on my defense. You know it's really an ordeal. Have you talked to R.J. again?"

"No Mike, he's not giving much information."

"Listen, tell him that not only am I willing to polygraph, but I need some expert help and I think he needs some expert help. In the league we're playing in, the only guys we can get that have the wherewithall are with FinCen. That stands for Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Get me a technical guy that speaks my language."

"Alright, Mike ..."

"I'm talking about Swift Chips. That stands for Clearing House Interbank Payment System, Ok?"

"Right."

"Im mad, OK?"

"Uh huh."

"I'm real mad. The government has all my files and records. They've got all of my optical storage disks. Each of those optical storages, 130 of them, contains 20,000 plus pages. They jacked me around so bad ..."

"Mike ..."

" ... Get an expert that speaks my language, and I'll tell him everything I know and he can do so much damage, they won't need my testimony or anything else."

"Mike, everything you know about what?"

"Tell R.J. it goes all the way back to the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas and Castle Bank. Norm Caspar ... Resorts International Bank ..."

"How'd you get this stuff?"

"I handled the money for them, OK?"

"For who?"

" ... For the Wackenhut people. For Norm Caspar who was a Wackenhut employee during all of this. Now, there was the Workers Bank in Columbia. I can't pronounce the Spanish name for it, I just know it as Workers Bank. I set up their virtual dead-drops ..."

"What's that?"

"It's a way to get around A.C.H. reconciliations on a daily basis. It'll take an expert, you know, I can't even talk to a normal human being about this ..."

"O.K."

" ... And the bottom line here is Bob Nichols and Gilbert Rodriguez, Michael Abbell, whose now an attorney in D.C., but he was with the criminal section of the Justice Department and Harold Okimoto, and Jose Londodo, and Glenn Shockley are all in bed together. (Three years after this conversation, Michael Abbell was indicted for laundering money for the Cali Cartel).

"Now Ted Gunderson ..."

"Mike, have you got any paperwork on that?"

"Now, wait a minute. Gunderson was physically with me when Wayne Reeder, Peter Zokosky and his wife and several of Wayne Reeder's lieutenants, Bob Nichols and his wife, Harold Okimoto, George Pender, Deborah Pender, Dill Pender, and myself were all together ..."

" ... Where?"

" ... At Wayne Reeders country club, golf club, in Indio, California. And Bob discussed openly in front of Ted Gunderson and myself and everyone present bragged about Glenn Shockley and Jose Londono having 3,500 soldiers. It's now almost double that ..."

"What does that mean? What are the soldiers?"

Mike: "R.J. will know what it means."

"Alright. OK."

"This took place in 1983. I have correspondence on the things we were doing. But I was in fear of my life because Bob was starting to act irrational. The guy was getting drunk all the time, waving a gun out of the car window, shooting in the air, you know, just really doing a mind trip on me. I've been on the run ever since ..."

"Listen, Mike, what do you need from FinCen?"

"If I had help from the FinCen people, I could reconstruct my files. Tell them that I need two types of computers. I need a VAX 11730 set up with two RLO II disks; one RA80 and a TU80 tape drive. That's one package. And then I need a VAX 3900 computer. Now the reason why I need the older, slower VAX and I know where to get all this stuff, no problem, I've got the VAX's in Southern California, but I need a place to set them up and somebody to operate them, and just follow my instructions."

"Alright."

"Now, the VAX Series 3900 machine ... it's too complicated to go into what mass storage devices, but those are the two levels of machines I need.

"Ok, I'm thinking about going to visit your wife in Southern California, do you want us to bring those computers up here?"

"No, No! No, leave them where they're at. Tell R.J. to find someone at FinCen. If we move them around, we're going to wreck them. I'm not trying to talk down to R.J., but this is too far above him."

"Mike, Raymond Lavas turned some of your disks over to the Jack Brooks investigative committee (House Judiciary Committee on Inslaw)."

"Yeah, I know. There's no data on those disks. What that is, is that is a subset of VAX B.M.S., OK? What I do is I modify some of the VAX BMS routines to activate a one time pad encryption scheme. That's why I have to have two RLO2 drives on the VAX 11730, because one RLO2 Platter is a system planner, the other one is the one time pad. The data is on a 1625 BPI 9 track tape on the TU80 tape drive. That's the system configuration."

"If you say so."

"Now, R.J. needs to put me in touch with somebody he trusts at FinCen. There's about 120 experts there. There are a few guys there that speak my language.

"What's the encryption key?"

"Well, they're ten digit numbers ... it's a one time pad, but it has a pseudorandom, prime number expansion system ..."

"Mike, do you have access to PROMISE through this system?"

"What? Oh, I've got access to PROMISE, I've got access to FOIMS ..."

"Well, PROMISE is the one that's going to get you off the hook in court."

"Ok, I understand that. But PROMISE and FOIMS are one and the same. Now they will say no, that's not true, but in Virginia where the FBI has their center, and where the Justice Department has a center in D.C., they're both Amdahl mainframes, OK?"

"Yes."

" ... You see, I want that RLO II Platter out of the hands of the Brooks Committee and into the hands of somebody who'll do with it what I tell them to do. I don't want somebody to run it up without first getting my instruction."

"Does it have to be that particular one?"

"Yes, either that or it will take me six months to rewrite the subset. They want me to give them the codes to unravel everything. If I did, they wouldn't know what to do with it anyway. They'd make a mess out of things."

"Mike, what are you going to provide to FinCen?"

"I'm going to show them how these boys handled the life blood of the cash flow on a day to day basis. I'm going to unmask the whole operation ..."

"Anything specific on Robert Booth Nichols?"

Mike: "Nichols is Harold Okimoto's godson. He's also Renee Hanner's (phonetic sp.) boy, and Wolfgang Fosog's (phonetic sp.) boy."

" ... And who are they?"

"The FinCen people will know. There's also Octon Potnar."

"Alright. Well, if I'm going to play around with this, I don't want to be in the dark ... I could end up like Danny. I've got to know what I'm dealing with."

"If you get the right guy at FinCen, he'll jump at this, OK? We've got to start right now. We're talking about some time getting things up and rolling to where we're fluid and flexible and functional in their system internationally. They'll be able to watch the daily transactions ..."

Michael continued to request of R.J. that he be connected with someone "trustworthy" at FinCen, to no avail. He also requested to be placed into a Witness Protection Program, again offering to assemble his computer equipment in a secret location and provide FinCen with a day by day view of Mob (and MCA Corporation) illegal banking transactions.

According to Michael, before his arrest, he had been handling gold transfers, money laundering, "virtual dead drops," altered ACH daily reconciliations and other transactions for various underworld figures including Robert Booth Nichols, Harold Okimoto, George Pender, Wayne Reeder, Michael A. McManus, Norm Caspar, Gilbert Rodriguez, Jose Londono, Glen Shockley, and others.

Michael continued to call and give me taperecorded (at his request) messages to pass on to R.J. The man accepted the messages, but they just went down the big, black hole and never emerged again.

One message in particular later became significant to me. The message from Michael to R.J. went as follows: (Quote) "There are three dozen C130's down at the Firebird Lake Airstrip on the Gila Indian Reservation in Arizona. Check out J & G Aviation, it's an FBO. The Fresno Company is alive and well down there.

"The real activity is not at Mirana, it's at Firebird Lake Airstrip. Other airlines operating at Firebird are Beigert, Macavia International, Pacific Air Express, Evergreen and Southern Air.

"Question to R.J.: How much cocaine or heroin can be transported in a C130? Do you want the C130, or do you want the guys who orchestrate it?

"Do a matrix link analysis, then sit down and pick the targets. Otherwise, you will tip off the others and the proof will dry up.

" ... Brian Leighton made 29 arrests out of five hundred within the Fresno Company. All Leighton succeeded in doing was to `vaccinate' the Fresno Company against further penetration."

Riconosciuto said he had a fragile window into this organization (The Company), but Leighton and others were causing the window to close by being too public about their investigation.

The message continued regarding Robert Booth Nichols: "Bob Nichols runs Glen Shockley. Glen Shockley runs Jose Londono. I [Michael] sat with Bob Nichols and Mike Abbell. Bob handed him $50,000 cash to handle an internal affairs investigation that the Justice Department conducted which would have led to the extradition of Gilbert and Miguel Rodriguez and Jose Londono.

"Bob Nichols told me [Michael] that it was necessary to `crowbar' the investigation because they were `intelligence people.'

"Michael wanted to hand The Company and Bob Nichols over to FinCen in exchange for entry into the Witness Protection Program, but nothing was forthcoming from R.J.

It was two years before I learned who Mike Abbell, Gilbert Rodriguez and Jose Londono were. Abbell had worked in the criminal division of the Justice Department, according to Bill Hamilton. Hamilton added that, to his knowledge, Abbell had left the DOJ in 1982 and went directly into the Bogota, Columbia law offices of Kaplan and Russin.

A member of our loosely coalesced investigative team, George Williamson, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter, obtained Abbell's background from library directories: From 1973 to 1979 Abbell was staff assistant to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General. From 1979 to 1981 he was the Director of the Office of International Affairs of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice.

After leaving the Department of Justice in 1982, Abbell became counsel at the law firm of Kaplan, Russin and Becchi, with offices in San Francisco, California Bogota, Columbia Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic Bangkok, Thailand Tapai, Taiwan New York Madrid, Spain and Miami, Florida.

As of this writing, Abbell was listed as working in his own firm with a partner named Bruno Ristau (Ristau and Abbell) in Washington D.C. Ristau was also formerly with the law firm of Kaplan, Russin and Becchi. And from 1958 to 1963 he was an attorney in the Internal Security Division and Civil Division of the Department of Justice. He was also with the DOJ from 1963 to 1981 where he was Director of the Office of Foreign Litigation. Ristau speaks German, Polish, Spanish and French. He was Chairman of the Division of International Law of the Washington D.C. Bar from 1971 to 1973. In the American Bar Association from 1981 to 1984, he was Chairman of the Committee of Private International Law Practice. He is also a member of the American Society of International Law. Ristau is obviously a heavyweight in the field of international law.

A TIME magazine article, dated July 4, 1994, described Gilbert Rodriguez as a "leader of the Cali [Columbian drug] cartel, which controls 80% of the world's cocaine trade." The newly elected president of Columbia, Ernesto Samper Pizano, was accused of taking $3.7 million in campaign funds from Rodriguez, which in effect, put Samper in league with Columbia's drug lords.

Three audio tapes of conversations between Rodriguez and Samper's campaign manager, Santiago Medina, had been handed over to U.S. State Department officials before the election, but nothing was done. DEA officials were furious, stating to TIME that "No one did anything. They [the State Department] allowed this travesty to take place. Everybody, including the U.S. government, is participating in this coverup."

The State Department responded, "We can't interfere with elections."

I pulled out a book from a dusty corner of my library entitled, "Cocaine Politics" by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, and looked up the name Gilbert Rodriguez. On page 83, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela and Jose Santacruz Londono were mentioned as part of the early leadership of the Cali cartel. On page 88 it was noted that the "Calibased Ocampo and Gilberto Rodriguez had been the principal targets of a major DEA Centac investigtion that resulted in indictments of Rodriguez in Los Angeles and New York in 1978."

At that time, President Jimmy Carter's Human Rights foreign policy in Latin America distanced the CIA under Stansfield Turner (later a Wackenhut Board Director) from any deathsquad interdiction. The Carter administration was also reportedly reluctant to go after Ocampo because of its determination in 1977 to sign a Panama Canal treaty with General Torrijos, even though Torrijos and family members were heavily involved at the highest levels of the world cocaine trade.

The Cali cartel, described in a 1983 Customs report, laundered its profits through Miami banks, one of which was Northside Bank of Miami, owned by Gilberto Rodriguez. Rodriguez popped up again as the leader of a delegation to the "cocaine summit conference" in Panama City in the early 1980's. Yet, Rodriguez's name was subsequently removed from DEA reports under the Ronald Reagan administration. In fact, according to disgruntled DEA agents, some of whom suspected they were stumbling into a CIA connection, the case was never pursued past the indictment level and the Centac 21 task force was totally dismantled when Reagan and Bush came to office.

So, Gilbert Rodriguez and Jose Londono were revealed to be high ranking members of the Cali drug Cartel in Columbia. I wondered if they were also CIA intelligence operatives? Or CIA drug operatives? Or both, as Manuel Noriega had been? Noriega had ultimately been ousted when he chose to back the violent Medellin cartel, George Bush's target. If in fact Gilberto Rodriguez had been compromised and forced to cooperate with U.S. officials after his 1978 indictment, and taking into account his strategic position of leadership in the Cali cartel and his alleged funding of the newly elected president of Columbia in 1994, it would indeed place the U.S. government in a powerful controlling position within the cartels today. In fact, it would place CIA drug operatives behind the election of the president of Columbia! The implications were earthshaking.

It is important to point out here that, on August 5, 1991, Michael Riconosciuto had called Bill Hamilton at Inslaw and asked him to obtain information on former DOJ official Mike Abbell. Riconosciuto planned to trade information on Abbell, Rodriguez, Nichols and others to the FBI in exchange for entry into a Witness Protection Program.

But Hamilton, pressed for time and not comprehending the significance of the "drug" connection, had turned the investigation over to Danny Casolaro. Riconosciutohad stressed to Hamilton that Abbell's activities might be risky to track and he should not take the information lightly.

That same day, August 5, Casolaro called Bob Bickel, the Texas oil engineer who once worked as an informant for the Customs Bureau, to discuss Mike Abbell. Bickel later confirmed that Casolaro had in fact discussed Abbell, Nichols and Rodriguez at length during that last phone conversation. And he added, "Danny confronted Robert Booth Nichols about his relationship with Mike Abbell."

Hamilton and Casolaro secretly devised a plan whereby Danny would conduct an inquiry with the Department of Justice, but would couch a number of other inquiries in with the Mike Abbell inquiry to avoid alerting authorities to the real "focus" of their search.

An October 15, 1991 Village Voice investigative piece, entitled "The Last Days of Danny Casolaro," by James Ridgeway and Doug Vaughan, shed further light on Casolaro's investigation during those last five days: (Note that most of Danny's last calls focused on "drug connections.") On Monday, August 5th, "Riconosciuto called Bill Hamilton from his jail in Tacoma. He wanted some information about a former Justice Department attorney [Mike Abbell], and warned Hamilton that getting the information might be dangerous. Hamilton called Casolaro to help him find out about the attorney.

"That same day, Danny called Bob Bickel to say that he was "getting close to the source, and he would soon go to Martinsburg and bring back the head of the Octopus."

Tuesday, August 6: Casolaro had been typing steadily since Monday, and by afternoon, he'd finished. Olga, his housekeeper, helped him pack a leather tote bag. She also remembered him packing a thick sheaf of papers into a dark brown or black briefcase. Danny walked out the door saying, "I have all my papers ... Wish me luck. I'll see you in a couple of days." That was the last time Olga saw Casolaro alive.

Wednesday, August 7: According to Inslaw records, Casolarocalled the Hamiltons in the afternoon, and was put on hold. Before Hamilton could get free, he had hung up. At some time on that same day, Riconosciuto called Hamilton again to ask for the information about the Justice Department lawyer [Mike Abbell]. Hamilton called Casolaro, but he had already left for Martinsburg.

Thursday, August 8: Casolaro called Danielle Stalling and asked her to set up appointments for him the next week with a former police officer, now employed as a private investigator, to learn more about the Laotian warlord Kuhn Sa's proposed Golden Triangle drug trade.

Friday, August 9: By now Hamilton was starting to worry. I talk to Danny everyday," Hamilton said. "I had never [gone without speaking to him for so long] before, so I called Bob Nichols in Los Angeles and asked whether he had heard from Danny recently."

Nichols told Hamilton "Yes," he had spoken with Danny late Monday night [August 5th] and he had been "euphoric." Nichols told Hamilton he (Nichols) was taking off for Europe that evening.

It was at that point that Olga, Danny's housekeeper, received four or five threatening phone calls. The first was about 9 a.m., a man's voice, in good English, said, "I will cut his [Danny's] body and throw it to the sharks."About a half hour later, another call came in. "Drop dead," the man's voice said.

Saturday, August 10: At 12:30 that afternoon, a maid knocked on the door of room 517 at the Sheraton Martinsburg Inn. Nobody answered, so she used her passkey to open the door; though it had both a security bolt and a chain lock on the inside, neither one was attached. When she glanced into the bathroom, she saw a lot of blood on the tile floor and screamed. Another hotel maid came into the bathroom and saw a man's nude body lying in the bloodfilled tub. There was blood not only on the tile floor but splattered up onto the wall above the tub as well. The police were called to the scene.

At 8:30 p.m. that night, unaware that Danny's body had been found, Olga, Danny's housekeeper, returned to Casolaro's house to look for him. The phone rang. A man's voice said, "You son of a bitch. You're dead." It was not until Monday, August 12, that authorities notified family and friends that Danny Casolaro was dead.

Had Danny in fact called Robert Booth Nichols on Monday, August 5th, and confronted him about his relationship with Mike Abbell? Had he told Nichols he planned to meet with FBI officials from Lexington, Kentucky? And what about FBI agent Thomas Gates, Nichols' antagonist? SPY magazine's article on Danny Casolaroindicated that he spoke with Gates three days before his death, relating a conversation in which Nichols had warned him to abandon the investigation.

Riconosciuto later conceded that he had tried repeatedly to reach Hamilton and Casolaro between August 5 and 10th to warn them NOT to mention Abbell or Rodriguez to Nichols, but it had been too late. Bill Hamilton told one investigator that he did NOT know WHY Riconosciuto was inquiring about Mike Abbell - until AFTER Danny's death.

Bob Bickel's confirmation that Danny WAS trailing Mike Abbell in the last days before his death indicate that Danny may have unknowingly stepped into the largest narcotics trafficking/intelligence operation the world.

Another indepth article came to my attention which further corroborated Danny's investigation of Gilberto Rodriguez. "The Strange Death of Danny Casolaro," by Ron Rosembaum in Vanity Fair's December 1991 issue included an interview with Michael Riconosciuto. According to Rosenbaum, Danny's investigations were taking him into areas that involved dangerous knowledge and dangerous characters. It was Danny's habit of "bouncing" Riconosciuto's stories off Robert Nichols that put him in peril, Riconosciuto told Rosenbaum. One of the things he reportedly "bounced" involved a major heroin related sting operation.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Another involved Riconosciuto's claim about an "effort by the Cali cocaine cartel to derail the extradition of an alleged Columbian kingpin called Gilberto."

Nichols "went ballistic," according to Riconosciuto, when Danny bounced the Gilberto (Rodriguez) matter off him. Riconosciuto said he tried to warn Danny. "I called from that day on it was on a late Monday Tuesday, Wednesday, all the way through the weekend when they found Danny [dead]," he said. "Every day I was calling the Hamiltons, asking if anybody had heard from Danny. And I was frantic."

Labeled by Rosenbaum as the "resident demon of the labyrinth," Riconosciuto said "Danny's theory was different from the typical megaconspiracy theory. Danny was dealing with real people and real crimes."

Rosenbaum asked Riconosciuto about the germ warfare technology he had found in Danny's notes. Riconosciuto admitted that he had learned about "horrible things" going on at the Cabazon Indian reservation but did not elaborate on the subject. Wrote Rosenbaum, "This is the labyrinth [that] Riconosciuto was leading Danny into the one he died in."

Just days before his death, Danny had planned to visit the reservation. In his notes were cryptic references to slowacting brain viruses like Mad Cow Disease, which could be used against targeted people by slipping the virus into meat pies. Riconosciutotold Rosenbaum that Danny was "concerned" that he may have been a target of this virus. "That was one of the reasons he [Danny] had such an obsession with this story. He felt he had been hit by these people."

Accordingly, Riconosciuto filled Danny's head with allegations of Robert Booth Nichols' sinister, international covertworld connections. He painted a picture linking Nichols to organized crime syndicates, the fearsome Japanese Yakuza, and various CIA and British intelligence plots emanating from Nichols' friendship with "a legendary Bondish Brit known as `Double Deuce' [Sir Denis Kendall]."

Riconosciuto said Nichols was the key to Danny's Octopus. But Danny was receiving warnings from Riconosciuto's counterpart as well. Robert Booth Nichols had flown to Washington D.C. from Puerto Rico to warn Danny to stay away from Riconosciuto.

Danny's girlfriend, Wendy Weaver, had been present at one of the meetings at the Four Seasons Hotel bar when Nichols issued the warning: "You don't know how bad this guy Riconosciutois ... he might not get you today, he might not get you next month. He might get you two years from now. If you say anything against him he will kill you."

Nichols repeated the warning several times, said Weaver. "At least five times." Weaver described Nichols as "very charming, very handsome," but said "it [the meeting] was a weird night, so weird."

Another friend of Danny's met Nichols at a luncheon at Clyde's in Tysons Corner where Nichols allegedly informed them that he had just been asked to become "minister of state security" on the island of Dominica. Reportedly, the island was going to be transformed into a CIA base. The friend, who spoke to Rosenbaum on condition of anonymity, said Nichols was "very slick, very civilizedappearing" ... "oozing intrigue," but he added that he had never witnessed a performance like the one that ensued.

After lunch Danny had pulled his friend aside and showed him a purported FBI wiretap summary on Nichols. The summary was part of FBI agent Thomas Gates's affidavit in Nichols' slander suit against him. The summary linked Nichols to the Yakuza and to the Gambino crime family as a money launderer.

Danny's friend had been shocked. "You just put me in a meeting with this man and didn't tell me what the hell why didn't you tell me before?," he asked Danny. Danny said he wanted to see how Nichols would react. The friend told Rosenbaum, "In other words, he gaffed me with a hook and tossed me in the water to see if the Octopus would move!"

Danny HAD in fact been receiving death threats on the phone. One threat reported by his housekeeper, "You're dead, you son of a bitch," which came hours AFTER Danny's body had been found, ruled out Danny himself as a possible source of the threats. And his prophesy to his brother, Tony Casolaro, "If anything happens to me it won't be an accident," made it unmistakably clear that Danny did, indeed, feel threatened.

Nevertheless, Danny appeared upbeat to most of the people he talked to prior to his death. Dr. Tony Casolaro, a specialist in pulmonary medicine, told Vanity Fair that he didn't believe his brother committed suicide because Danny was so excited and upbeat about his investigation on that last Monday when he saw him.

The autopsy examination of Danny's brain had revealed possible symptoms of Multiple Schlerosis, but friends and family dismissed this as irrelevant because Danny had never complained of symptoms or, to their knowledge, known of the disease, if he had it.

Tony was also troubled by a number of facts, one of which was Danny's current papers and files which he took to West Virginia were missing from his motel room. His body had been embalmed even before family members were notified of the death, and the motel room had been commercially cleaned before any type of investigation, other than a cursory look at the death scene by police, could occur.

In his Vanity Fair article, Ron Rosenbaum wrote that he had obtained one of Casolaro's surviving notebooks and found mentioned under the heading of August 6, four days before Danny's death, the name "Gilberto." It read: "Bill Hamilton August 6. MR ... also brought up `Gilberto.'" Rosenbaum did not speculate publicly who Gilberto might be, but it was obviously Gilberto Rodriguez, head of the Cali Cartel, at that time deeply involved with Michael Abbell, formerly of the Department of Justice.

A dozen or so drafts of Casolaro's proposed manuscript along with notes and phone bills had been sent to the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri by his brother, Dr. Tony Casolaro.Tony Casolaro had sent the material to the University because, at one time, the IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) Association, headquartered at the University, had researched the fatal carbombing of reporter Don Bolles in Arizona.

Bolles had been researching a mobconnected gold smuggling operation in that state. Through Tracy Barnett at IRE, I learned that a graduate student at the University had been assigned to catalog all Danny's material for eventual insertion into a data base. In contacting the graduate student, who by then (September 1994) worked for ABC in Houston, Texas, I learned that few if any journalists had inquired about the notes.

But, interestingly, Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Zipperstein from Los Angeles, working for the Department of Justice, had requested copies of Danny's NOTES, but declined Danny's phone records. The graduate student noted that the notes and drafts of Danny's proposed manuscript focused on a Cabal of intelligence people who, originally consisting of numerous names, were subsequently narrowed down to about eight. One of those names was Glen Shockley. Shockley, of course, was listed on the Board of Directors of F.I.D.C.O. along with Robert Booth Nichols.

Shockley was also a corporate partner in Meridian International Logistics, headed by Nichols. Shockley was also a CIAcontract employee (according to several sources) who allegedly "ran Jose Londono" of the Cali Cartel. This according to Riconosciuto's taped interview with government agents while negotiating for Witness Protection.

I purchased everything of any significance pertaining to Danny's writings and documents, including the FBI wire tap summaries which corroborated everything I had learned to date.

In reviewing the summaries, it became apparent that the FBI had inadvertently stumbled onto a CIA drug trafficking operation which included high ranking La Cosa Nostra figures, the Gambino crime family and the Japanese Yakuza.

One affidavit in support of an application to intercept wire communications over the telephone listed names of those to be intercepted: Robert Booth Nichols, Eugene Giaquinto (then President of MCA Corportion Entertainment Division, and corporate partner with Nichols in Meridian International Logistics), Angelo Commito, Edward Sciandra, Michael Del Gaizo, Joseph Garofalo, and others.

The purpose of the interceptions was to determine "source, type and quantity of narcotics/controlled substances, methods and means of delivery, and the source of funding for purchasing of narcotics/controlled substances."

The intercepted conversations read like a "Who's Who" of organized crime. It was also apparent that Eugene Giaquinto enjoyed a special relationship with John Gotti.

Ann Klenk, a long time friend of Danny Casolaro's and former associate of Washington D.C. columnist Jack Anderson, held all his personal notes which were not sent to the University. In a September 14, 1994 phone interview, she noted that the last time she talked to Danny, that last Monday before his death, he told her he'd cracked the Inslaw case.

I asked her, "Do you think he resolved that?"

Ann responded, "Oh, yes. I KNOW he did. He TOLD me he did. He said, `Ann, I broke Inslaw.' And I said, `Geez, Danny that's great!' But, I never asked him what he found because he was very despondent about it. He said, `You can have it. You and Jack [Anderson] can have the story. I don't even want it.'"

Ann said Danny was disgusted and related their last conversation: "I said, `Danny, you worked on this [so long] and now you don't want it?' He said, `It's just a little piece of the puzzle anyway.' See, Inslaw led him into this, but Danny quickly became more involved with the drug aspects ... with the CIAaspects, with the Wackenhut aspects."

I said, "I know what you mean, because I followed the same trail."

Danny's proposed drafts and notes obtained from Western Historical Manuscript Collection at University of Missouri revealed information never published in mainstream media. Typewritten and handwritten lists of contacts included names and telephone numbers of Ted Gunderson, Raymond Lavas, Robert Nichols, Peter Zokosky, Bob Bickel, Fahim Safar, Earl Brian, Peter Dale Scott, Art Welmus, John Vanderwerker, Jack Blum, Dr. Harry Fair, Bill Hamilton, Bob Parry, Bill McCoy, and numerous others.

Most of Danny's drafts focused on the Southeast Asian heroin connection, CIA drug money used to finance the Contras, and the ability of terrorists to send missiles containing dangerous chemicals and biological diseases into the U.S.

One typewritten draft, entitled, "Behold, A Pale Horse," described an "international cabal [in Southern California] whose freelance services covered parochial political intrigue, espionage, sophisticated weapon technologies that included biotoxins, drug trafficking, money laundering and murder-for-hire." According to Danny, the cabal continues today, "its origins spawned thirty years ago in the shadow of the Cold War."

Casolaro's June - July (1991) phone bills told a story of their own. Having followed Danny's investigative trail for three years, I had an entire directory of phone numbers relating to his inquiries. Most obvious were Danny's numerous calls prior to his death to Robert Booth Nichols in Los Angeles. Most of the calls from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles lasted an average of one to two hours, invariably in the wee hours of the morning 1:50 a.m., 12:36 a.m., 1:13 a.m., 12:18 a.m., etc.

It was also apparent that Danny was riding a seesaw with Nichols and Riconosciuto. He would talk to one, then the other, often on the same day, back and forth for months. Then suddenly, he cut off Riconosciuto and his calls to Nichols increased in frequency.

Other phone numbers matched those of Ted Gunderson, Alan Boyak, a lawyer in Utah, Bo Gritz, Heinrich Rupp and Chuck Hayes, a self-professed (on the Internet) CIA operative. Danny often called Hayes immediately after he spoke with Nichols. Oddly, Hayes never came forward during the official investigation of Danny's death to disclose the content of those conversations.

Within six months of Casolaro's death, Riconosciutowas again attempting to trade information in exchange for entry into a Witness Protection Program. But this time, instead of using Casolaro or Bill Hamilton, he was using me to make the contacts.

At Riconosciuto's request, I contacted a man whom I will identify as N.B. at the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) in San Francisco. Michael had advised me to call this agent because the BATF was "Treasury Department" as was FinCen.

I set up the phone meeting and Riconosciutocalled the San Francisco BATF collect, as scheduled. N.B. listened attentively to Michael, then ran a check on him through the departmental computer system. Shortly thereafter, I received an unnerving phone call.

N.B. advised me in strong terms to "get out of this" while I still could. He said I would end up getting subpoenaed as a witness if I didn't discontinue my investigation. He added that sometimes people got killed or committed suicide when they got involved with Michael Riconosciuto or Robert Booth Nichols.

N.B.'s computer inquiry had bounced back on him. His superior in the BATF had been notified by someone from another agency he didn't say who who had instructed N.B. that he was to have NO further contact with Michael Riconosciuto or me.

When I related this conversation to Michael, he indicated no surprise, but immediately wanted to be put back in touch with R.J. He needed someone in the government with access to his files to verify his credibility and get that information back to Tom Olmstead, his attorney. Regarding the computer inquiry, Riconosciutoexplained as follows: "I know what's happening here. Tell R.J. if he uses FOIMS, Field Office Information Management System, and if he leaves an audit trail, he's going to be exposed. There are all sorts of different levels of flags on my name. Whenever the computer gets a hit, the issuing agency is notified as to who made the request and from where it came."

"Mike," I asked, "how can he get around that? I don't understand ..."

"Listen, whenever there's a hit on one of those flags, whether it's a want or [a] warrant, or whether it's simply an administrative interest, unbeknownst to the user who's making the request, his access is audited. Tell R.J. before he starts making inquiries, no matter how discreet he thinks they are, that he should have someone totally uncoupled from him to enter into FOIMS."

"Alright."

"Now," Michael continued, "if he goes into NCIC or NADDIS, ah, NCIC is the least dangerous as far as making inquiries, because NADDIS can track just like FOIMS ..."

"Alright."

"Now, on NCIC there is a `nonelectric' filing on me and he can make the request that way without alerting anyone. If he has trouble checking anything out, tell him I can help him along."

"He can't call you at the jail. How can he get in touch with you?"

"Through my attorney. The minute he [R.J.] gets a line on me, ask him to notify my attorney. Tell him he can check my attorney out through the government. Tom has excellent records with the government."

"Alright."

"Explain to R.J. that I know PROMISE, I know FOIMS inside out. I helped develop that internal tracking audit trail ..."

I had lost all hope of R.J. rescuing Michael Riconosciuto, and I think in his heart, Michael knew that too, but I passed the information along as requested. R.J. politely accepted the information as he always did, then I never heard from him again.

Through one of Michael's contacts, I was able to obtain the corporate documents on F.I.D.C.O. Corporation (First Intercontinental Development Corporation). This formidable organization lead me straight to the head of The Octopus.The Board of Directors of FIDCO consisted of the following principles:

(1) Robert Maheu, Sr, Vice President, Director former FBI agent, former CEO of Howard Hughes Operations, senior consultant to Leisure Industries.

(2) Michael A. McManus, Director, Vice President and General Counsel to FIDCO former Assistant to the President [Reagan] of the United States at the White House in Washington D.C.

(3) Robert Booth Nichols, Director, Sr. Vice President and Chairman of Investment Committee Chief Executive Officer of R.B.N. Companies, International, a holding company for manufacturing and development of high technology electronics, real estate development, construction and international finance.

(4) George K. Pender, Director former Director of Pacific Ocean area of Burns & Roe, Inc., an international engineering & construction corporation with active projects on all seven continents of the world. Senior engineer consultant to Burns & Roe, Inc.

(5) Kenneth A. Roe, Director Chairman and President of Burns & Roe, Inc., International engineers and Constructors, a family corporation owned by Kenneth Roe and family. Major current project of the company is the engineering design and construction of the U.S.A. Fast Breeder Nuclear Reactor Plant in conjunction with Westinghouse Electric Corporation which is responsible for the nuclear system supply of steam. Construction value of present business backlog of Burns & Roe, Inc. is in excess of six billion U.S. dollar.

(6) Frances T. Fox, Vice President and Director former General Manager of L.A. International Airport, former Director of Aviation for Howard Hughes Nevada operations, now called Summa Corporation, City Manager of San Jose, California.

(7) Clint W. Murchison, Jr. Director Owner of the Dallas Cowboys NFL football team.

(8) William M. Pender, Director and Sr. Vice President licensed contractor, State of California.

(9) Glen R. Shockley, Director Consultant to Fortune 500 Companies in business management. Internationally known as financial consultant in funding.

The list of directors was accompanied by a letter dated January 11, 1983 on FIDCO letterhead originating out of Santa Monica, California addressed to Robert Booth Nichols in Marina Del Rey, California. The letter, signed by George K. Pender, briefly referenced a copy of a resolution resulting from a meeting of the Board of Directors of FIDCO.

On April 13, 1983, Robert Booth Nichols wrote a letter to Joseph F. Preloznik in Madison, Wisconsin, outlining proposed arms projects, one of which was to build a two story building of approximately 7500 square feet with concrete walls and floors to house the "R & D position." (I later found the R & D facility referenced in a 1981 Wackenhut Interoffice memorandum as a companion facility to Wackenhut to be constructed on the Cabazon Indian reservation for the assembly of shell casings, propellants, war heads, fuses, combustible cartridge cases and other weapons systems).

Nichols wrote to Preloznik, "Should there be any questions with regard to my credibility, verification can be made through F.I.D.C.O. I have enclosed a copy of that appointment."

If in fact, F.I.D.C.O. was a vehicle of The Octopus, then the tentacles of its Board of Directors lead straight to the head. Clint Murchison, Jr. of Dallas, Texas was the son of Clint Murchison, Sr. who, according to Dick Russell, author of the book, "The Man Who Knew Too Much," (pp. 521523) was cut from the same political cloth as H.L. Hunt.

Wrote Russell: "Back in 1951, after General Douglas MacArthur was relieved of his Korean command by President Truman, H.L. Hunt accompanied MacArthur on a flight to Texas for a speaking tour. Hunt and Murchison were the chief organizers of the proMacArthur forces in Texas. They would always remember the general standing bareheaded in front of the Alamo, urging removal of the `burden of taxation' from enterprising men like themselves, charging that such restraints were imposed by `those who seek to convert us to a form of socialistic endeavor, leading directly to the path of Communist slavery.'"

According to Russell, Hunt went on to set up a MacArthur-for-president headquarters in Chicago, spending $150,000 of his own money on the general's reluctant 1952 campaign, which eventually fell apart as MacArthur adopted the strident rhetoric of the right wing.

"Still, connections were made," wrote Russell, "Charles Willoughby, for example, was a regular part of the MacArthurHunt entourage and undoubtedly was acquainted with Murchison as well." Both [the Hunts and the Murchisons] cultivated not only powerful people on the far right, but also J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, organized crime figures, and Lyndon Johnson, whose rise to power emanated directly from his friends in Texas oil.

"Like Hunt, Murchison was an ardent supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist crusade. McCarthy came often to the exclusive hotel that Murchson opened in La Jolla, California, in the early 1950's. So did Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover.

"In 1961, after Nixon had lost the presidential election to JFK the previous year, Murchison sold Nixon a lot in Beverly Hills for only $35,000 a lot Murchison had financed through a Hoffa loan which Nixon sold two years later for $86,000.

When Hoover visited the (Murchison) Hotel Del Charro, as he did every summer between 1953 and 1959, Murchison picked up his tab. That amounted to about $19,000 of free vacations for the FBI Director over those years.

Whether Hoover knew it or not, almost 20 percent of the Murchison Oil Lease Company in Oklahoma was then owned by Gerardo Catena, chief lieutenant to the Genovese crime family.

By the autumn of 1963, a major scandal was brewing around Bobby Baker, whom Vice President Lyndon Johnson had made secretary of the Senate Democrats in 1955, when LBJ was majority leader. LBJ called Baker "my strong right arm, the last man I see at night, the first I see in the morning."

On October 8, 1963 Baker was forced to resign, as a Senate investigation of his outside business activities began producing sensational testimony on numerous questionable deals. "Baker's deals were tightly interwoven with the Murchison family and the Mob," wrote Dick Russell. "What first attracted the attention of Senate investigators was a lawsuit brought against Baker in 1963 by his associates in a vending company, alleging that he failed to live up to certain bargains. Those associates were, for the most part, Las Vegas gamblers; one of them, Edward Levinson, was a lieutenant of Florida mobster Meyer Lansky, whose Fremont Hotel in Vegas was financed through a Hoffa loan.

"Baker, it later turned out, did considerable business with the Mob in Las Vegas, Chicago, Louisiana, and the Caribbean. Through Baker, Levinson had also gotten to know Clint Murchison."

"Clint Murchison, Jr. [listed on the Board of Directors of FIDCO] tried to persuade the Senate Rules Committee in 1964 that his ownreal estate dealings with Jimmy Hoffa in Florida were `hardly relevant' to the Baker investigation."

Robert Maheu (Senior Vice President and Director of F.I.D.C.O.), was also mentioned in Russell's book, "The Man Who Knew Too Much," (pp. 190). Wrote Russell: "Back in 1960, with then vice president Richard Nixon serving as the White House's liaison to the CIA's Cuban operations, the CIA had initiated its long series of assassination attempts against Castro. The `cutouts' in the operation started with Las Vegas billionaire Howard Hughes's righthand man, Robert Maheu, who got in touch with organizedcrime leaders Sam Giancana, Johnny Rosselli, and Santos Trafficante, Jr. They in turn enlisted the direct assistance of Cuban exiles ..."

Throughout my conversations with Michael Riconosciuto the names of Robert Booth Nichols, George Pender, Glenn Shockley and Michael McManus (other directors of F.I.D.C.O.) cropped up repeatedly, but I found few references to them in any published books or magazines. Riconosciuto often stated that George Pender and Glenn Shockley were CIA officials, which I later corroborated through Peter Zokosky, a partner of Robert Booth Nichols's.

In August, 1994, I did, however, manage to obtain three significant letters with the signatures of Michael A. McManus and George Pender on them.

The following letters on F.I.D.C.O. confirm its presence in Lebanon.

Letter No. 1 Written on White House letterhead stationary, dated, June 29, 1983, from Michael A. McManus, Assistant to the President (Reagan) to George K. Pender in Santa Monica, California:

"Dear George: It was good to see you again. I appreciate the update you and your associates gave me concerning the status of your efforts in the rebuilding of Lebanon.

"Without question FIDCO seems to have a considerable role to offer particularly in the massive financial participation being made available to the government of Lebanon.

"As you are aware, the United States government is providing financial aid. We are very interested in the success of the rebuilding effort in Lebanon. I will appreciate your continuing to keep me posted. Best personal regards. Sincerely, Michael A. McManus, Assistant to the President."

It is interesting to note that in 1982, one year before the above letter was written, Israel invaded Lebanon in a bid to crush the PLO strongholds there and install the Gamayel family in power. At that time TelAviv was supporting the ultraright Christian Phalange militia . It was the Christian Phalangist militia which first brought Lebanon into the heroin trade. And the powerful Christian Gamayel family which led the way in turning to outside forces for money, guns and political support. Foremost among those sources was the international heroin trafficking network.

This according to Bill Weinberg, editor of High Times magazine, who wrote the indepth article, "The Syrian Connection" in March 1993. Weinberg also noted that as far back as 1955, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings learned that Sami el Khouri, the Gamayel's chief of finances, was importing raw Turkish opium into Lebanon, where it was processed into heroin and then shipped to Sicily for reexport throughout America and Europe.

El Khouri controlled the Gamayel family's shipping lines, trading, trucking and air freight companies. El Khouri's machine was the Lebanese wing of the French Connection the wing that continued to do business with the Sicilians in a bid to propel the Gamayel family to power.

After the Israeli invasion, the Lebanese Parliament elected to the presidency Bechir Gamayel who had long been on the CIApayroll. But before he could take office, Bashir was killed by an assassins bomb, and Bechir's brother, Amin, was installed as president.

The following letter from George Pender, President of FIDCO, to President Amin Gamayel in Beirut is printed in its entirety here.

Letter No. 2 Written on F.I.D.C.O. letterhead stationary, dated July 12, 1983, from George K. Pender, President of FIDCO, to President Amin Gamayel, Presidential Palace, Beirut, Lebanon.:

"Dear Mr. President: I had visited Beirut in February and May, 1983 to discuss FIDCO participation in the redevelopment of Lebanon. These meetings were held with the Chamouns, Maurice Ghanem and Mourad Baroudy. Of particular interest is the fact that FIDCO offered to arrange the financing of projects considered, provided they were in the government sector. Unfortunately, the response, to date, is dragging and a golden opportunity for Lebanon is slowly dying.

"I had made no effort to see you at that time as I thought it more prudent to delay until I had something more tangible to present. I expressed specific interest in the rebuilding of Damour and Alkhyam. FIDCO has presented these projects to an international Trust with whom we have a close relationship, and we are very confident that we can arrange the funding under International Chamber of Commerce format, provided FIDCO can negotiate turnkey contracts on both projects. We are ready, willing and able to proceed immediately on this basis.

"I understand you will be at the White House on July 22nd. Would it be possible for me to meet with you in Washington, D.C. on July 21st briefly so that I may personally present our interest in Lebanon? As per copy of attached letter, the White House is actively interested in our efforts.

"For your personal information, I was a good friend of Bechir. I was with him in Beirut in 1976 when the Syrian Army came in to police. When he later visited the United States on a speaking tour, my wife and I went to Framingham, Massachusetts to meet with him. I miss him tremendously.

"I would appreciate your reply as soon as possible. You can also reach me via telex 652483 RBN [Robert Booth Nichols] ASSOCS LSA. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely yours, George K. Pender."

I cannot stress enough the importance of this letter From George Pender to Amin Gamayel. In the very first paragraph of Pender's letter he noted that "Maurice Ghanem" participated in the meetings held in Beirut in May 1983 to discuss F.I.D.C.O.'s participation in the redevelopment of Lebanon.

Michael Riconosciuto had stated (on page 40 of this manuscript) that he had worked directly under "Maurice Ganem" and George Pender in Lebanon! Riconosciuto had explained that Maurice had a "relative, either a brother or a cousin, who was a senior DEA official with Michael Hurley."

Then, in a 1993 book entitled, "Trail of the Octopus" by Donald Goddard with Lester Coleman, on page 152, I stumbled across the name of Fred Ganem in the following context: "The number of DEA controlled deliveries of heroin down the pipeline to the United States had increased noticeably during the winter as a result of Fred Ganem's special knowledge of the Lebanese communities in Detroit, Houston and Los Angeles."

This was independent corroboration of a link between F.I.D.C.O. (George Pender and Michael McManus) and the very same heroin operation in Nicosia, Cyprus which Riconosciuto had described in detail to me in December 1991!

It also directly connected George Pender with Michael T. Hurley. Goddard and Coleman recounted how "members of the Jafaar clan and other DEA couriers would arrive at Larnaca with suitcases full of highgrade heroin, white and crystal, and be met off the boat ... by officers of the Cypriot Police Narcotics Squad, who then drove them up to the Euramae office in Nicosia."In his interview with R.J. (page 37), Riconosciutohad maintained that "F.I.D.C.O. had a companion company called Euramae Trading ..." Three years later, "Trail of the Octopus," described Euramae as such: "Coleman was given a desk at the Euramae Trading Company., Ltd., a DEA/CIA `front' newly set up by the Cypriot Police Narcotics Squad in a luxury three bedroom penthouse apartment down the street from the US Embassy. It gave him the creeps from the start.

"Intended as a place where DEA and CIA agents could meet unobserved with informants and clients, as a message drop for CIA arms dealers supplying Iraq and the Afghan rebels, as a waiting room for DEA CI's and couriers from Lebanon, and as a transit point, not just for heroin, but for cash, documents and bootleg computer software moving to and fro along the BeirutNicosiaUS pipeline, Eurame, as run by ElJorr, was more like a lowlife social club than a secret intelligence centre." Coleman had complained to Hurley, but Hurley had just brushed it aside.

It is noteworthy that George Pender listed Robert Booth Nichols's "telex" number at the bottom of his letter to Lebanon President Amin Gamayel. During that time span, Nichols and Pender (when they weren't in Lebanon) were operating a NSC listening post from a condo at Marina Del Rey. It was allegedly the U.S. end of the Nicosia, Cyprus operation. Michael Riconosciuto, Ted Gunderson and Allan Boyak, an attorney representing Riconosciuto, all had stories to tell about apartment number "007." More on this in a moment. Next, was the Lebanese response to George Pender's aforementioned letter (No.2).

Letter No. 3 Written on Arab Bank Limited letterhead, dated November 23, 1983, from Abdul Majeed Shoman, Chairman/General Manager of Arab Bank Limited in Amman, Jordan to George K. Pender in Santa Monica, California:

"Dear Mr. Pender: Mr. Ahmad has talked to me about the fund to reconstruct Lebanon and we the Arab Bank together with a group of other banks will be glad to cooperate with you concerning this respect.

"We shall discuss, in future, how this cooperation will be made and on what conditions and plans.

"You have mentioned in your letter to Mr. Ahmad on September 27th that this fund amounts to US$ three billion or more. There is no problem to take care of this by the Arab Bank and the other group of banks as stated above. The terms and conditions will be discussed with you provided the condition is clear in Lebanon and subject to the approval and counter guarantees of the Lebanese Authority. Yours sincerely, Abdul Majeed Shoman, Chairman/General Manager."

It is unlikely any "reconstruction" (funded by F.I.D.C.O.) ever took place in Lebanon. Only a Congressional investigation could determine what the US$three billion dollars was actually used for.

The next document, pertaining to Robert Booth Nichols, Senior Vice President of F.I.D.C.O., originated from an interview between Jeffrey Steinberg, a writer for Executive Intelligence Review, and Allan Boyak, an attorney in Utah whom Michael Riconosciutocontacted immediately after his arrest in Washington state.

Michael T. Hurley had allegedly been transferred from Nicosia, Cyprus to DEA in Washington state shortly before Michael's arrest. Riconosciuto's arrest had taken place with a week after signing the Inslaw affidavit.

It is noteworthy that Danny Casolaro also contacted and interviewed Allan Boyak shortly before his death. According to Ted Gunderson and others who knew Danny, Boyak met with Casolaro in Washington D.C. and provided him with a copy of a transcript of the meeting between himself (Boyak), Riconosciuto, and Ted Gunderson, who at that time was Riconosciuto's investigator.

I later obtained the same transcript from Gunderson's live-in partner, J.M., and have related the contents of that explosive transcript in Chapter 13.

Meanwhile, the following "Memorandum for the File," dated 62591, was written by Steinberg after his interview with Boyak: (Excerpted) "I met at length Saturday, June 22, 1991 with Allan Boyak, an attorney from Utah who is representing Michael Riconosciuto in his pending drug case. Boyak is not the lead attorney and will not apparently be making court appearances in the case.

"Boyak recounted the following personal background information: He was in the U.S. Army in Special Forces and apparently did some contract work for the CIA during the 1960's and early 1970's. At some point in the early 70's, he worked briefly for the Drug Enforcement Administration (or its antecedent agency), being stationed in California.

"Boyak had some falling out with the DEA and left the government service altogether, entering law school. While in law school, Boyak became friendly with Jim Nichols, a classmate. Nichols told him that he had a brother who was heavily involved in organized crime and had been disowned by his family.

"Once out of law school, Boyak joined a Hollywood law firm and became involved in criminal defense work, representing a number of well placed West Coast drug traffickers. At some point, Boyak moved to Utah (he is a practicing Mormon), while retaining his California law practice on a parttime basis.

"In addition to his o.c. [organized crime] clientel, Boyak also maintained contacts and apparently did some legal work for some of his old buddies from his Green Beret and CIAdays. One such pal was Art Suchesk, who ran a CIA proprietary company called Hoffman Electronics.

" ... At some point in the late 1970's, one of Boyak's clients, a Mormon old boy named Cap Kressop, who was a technical wizard, was approached by Robert Nichols and asked to manufacture a prototype laser site for a rifle. Kressop was offered a $200,000 contract for the job but he became suspicious when Nichols wanted to pay him in cash.

"Boyak contacted Nichols at his Marina Del Rey, California home/office [apartment "007"] and the two had a lengthy meeting there. Boyack's description of that meeting is that it was continuously interrupted by telephone calls and telex messages. Boyak came away convinced that Nichols was involved in large scale illegal drug operations.

"After consulting with one of his close friends from Green Beret days, then an assistant U.S. Attorney named Dexter Leitenen (now the Miami U.S. Attorney), Boyak went to the Los Angeles FBI office with the suspicions about Nichols' activities.

"The FBI background check [conducted by Ted Gunderson] on Robert Booth Nichols (born 1943 or 1944 he couldn't remember for sure) revealed that he was `squeeky clean.' In fact, he had a Class I machine gun license.

"Boyak did discover, however, that one of the people Nichols referenced as a business associate and personal friend, Harold Okimoto, was believed by some of his sources to be a top Japanese organized crime figure based in Hawaii. Okimoto was described as a top agent in the Yakuza overseas.

"Over the next two year period, after the L.A. FBI had dropped any interest in the Nichols matter, Boyack's friend, [Arthur] Suchesk, repeatedly ran into Nichols in such places as Singapore, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Suchesk was based out of Zurich, Switzerland during this period, apparently still doing his front man work for the CIA.

"Boyak says that information developed during this period, through Suchesk and others, [indicated] that Nichols was indeed a bigtime drug dealer who was very well insulated from any U.S. law enforcement problems. Nichols operated exclusively overseas. Whenever he came to the United States, he never engaged in any illegal activities.

"However, Boyak described Nichols' rum importing business as a cover for bigtime heroin trafficking from the Golden Triangle. Nichols was also named as `Mr. Big', according to Boyak, in the Medellin Cartel, in drug prosecutions in Utah and Los Angeles.

"Three to four years ago, Boyack received an out of the blue telephone call from Michael Riconosciuto. Michael identified himself as a former employee of Robert Nichols. He also referenced Ted Gunderson as a `mutual friend.' Boyak had only met Ted once very briefly when he was pressing the L.A. FBI to look into the Nichols dope suspicions ..."

" ... Then in April 1991, Boyak received a phone call from Ted Gunderson, informing him that `Michael was in trouble. He was caught in a government frameup.'

"Boyak returned to his background profile of Bob Nichols, parts of which were apparently provided by Bob's estranged brother, Jim Nichols. It seems that as a young man, Robert Nichols wound up in Hawii functioning as a hitman for the Tongs. He was `adopted' as the Yakuza godson of Harold Okimoto, a 67 year old car dealer in Hawaii.

"Nichols grew up to be a big business front man for the Far East syndicate. He reportedly laundered between $50200 million for Ferdinand Marcos. He now owns an estate in Hawaii, a feudal castle outside of Milan, Italy and the referenced Marina Del Ray home in California.

"Nichols has an office in Zurich. At one point, he was reportedly involved in the smuggling of China White heroin into Mexico where it was treated to look like the Mexican brown heroin which was more popular at the time.

"It should be emphasized that all of this information about Robert Nichols comes exclusively from Allan Boyak. None of it has yet been independently corroborated to my knowledge. Bill Hamilton and some other people involved in tracking the Inslaw story have all spoken to [Robert] Nichols and report that he has been straightforward with them and has provided leads and documents re: Michael Riconosciuto.

"Nichols is listed on the board of directors of First Intercontinental Development Corporation (FIDCO) along with George Pender and several officials of the Howard Hughes linked Suma Corporation."

One of the most surprising, and disturbing, documents I found in Michael Riconosciuto's hidden files (see Chapter 9) was an envelope with a notation on it, handwritten and signed by Ted Gunderson, which read as follows:

"Michael: Raymond [Lavas] is arriving at LAX, 7:55 p.m., Air Canada via flight 793 from Toronto. Will have to go through Customs. This will give us another member for our drug/arms operation. Only problem [is] Raymond will probably be using instead of selling. Sorry I didn't get to D.A. office. I tried to call, but no answer. By the time I fought the traffic to the bank and did my banking, it was too late. Will be home tonight (818) 8806238. T.G."

Raymond Lavas was Ted Gunderson's forensic expert when he worked for the FBI. Lavas was in constant contact with Bobby Riconosciuto after Michael was incarcerated. In fact, everyone was watching Michael and Bobby very closely.

[Anti_Illuminati]

See this site for a ton of document scans, I may or may not post them all here, if I do, probably won't be for awhile since you can just view them there for now.

http://www.michaelriconosciuto.com/paper/
__________________________________________________________
http://tomflocco.com/fs/CheneyKnew.htm

Cheney knew FBI, CIA met with bin Laden lieutenant after 9-11

by Tom Flocco

Washington, DC—November 2, 2005—Tom Flocco.com—According to an internal memo sent to Vice President Richard Cheney from former U.S. Ambassador to Somalia Leo Wanta, an FBI special agent-in-charge and a CIA intelligence contractor met with an associate of Osama bin Laden (OBL) in Manila, Philippines 30 days after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.



Under standard chain-of-custody procedures regarding the sensitive document with evidence directly related to the 9-11 attacks, Cheney would have passed it on to then National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleezza Rice who would have delivered the memo to President Bush, according to intelligence sources familiar with the document.

An individual with knowledge of the meetings told TomFlocco.com that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been in possession of the explosive memo which provides evidence that Cheney knew FBI and CIA officials met with one of bin Laden’s associates in the days following September 11.


Given Fitzgerald’s awareness of the memo, serious questions are raised for the grand jury as to why FBI and CIA officials, ostensibly representing the U.S. government, were meeting with a bin Laden lieutenant important enough to be shown with the “terrorist” leader in a White House-produced video not long after the attacks—but also why Cheney and Bush have not publicized the memo which names the agents and why Congress continues to cover up the memo’s existence.

The document names FBI special agent-in-charge Robert Wachtel and CIA intelligence contractor Brad Lee as being present and “in close contact with” a person identified as Datu ben Abu. [Abu is also a Russian KGB agent according to knowledgeable intelligence sources.]

The Wanta-Cheney memo revealed that U.S. Asia intelligence operations advised that Datu ben Abu was “in a wheel chair” and “in observing the video [Bush administration cable news “terror” video] recently released of OBL, intel op is of the opinion that the man against the wall with the blanket over his legs, full face beard, large hands, wide nose and dark set eyes is the same person identified as Datu ben Abu.”

When we last talked with Ambassador Wanta, he was being held under house arrest by the Bush administration.


Wanta has not testified before Congress while the White House is reportedly keeping him away from increasingly inquisitive Democratic senators who are currently feeling constituent pressure to do their job regarding justice and accountability, given the recent publicity and indictment of Cheney’s chief-of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

It is not known whether Wanta has already testified before Patrick Fitzgerald and the grand jury.

The memo revealed that “Datu ben Abu held further meetings (during the same time period—30 days after 9-11) with a Russian group staying at the Pan Pacific Hotel Metro Manila Philippines,” providing telltale evidence of some Russian involvement which Congress and the Bush administration have thus far held in confidence.

Congress is also covering up the fact that Osama bin Laden is a former U.S. intelligence contractor. [ Click here to view an internal memo indicating “previous U.S. government field reports on file and fully documented” regarding “Tim Osman and Ralph Olberg / U.S. Department of State—Afghanistan desk, et. al., Visitation with U.S. government public officials [Osman = Usama/Osama bin Laden/OBL” ]

Besides raising serious questions as to why Congress is not explaining Osama bin Laden’s past U.S. intelligence operative background and how this former—or current—relationship is related to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the memo also alludes to the sale of U.S. stinger missiles to Iraq prior to Gulf War I.

That Congress has continually misled the American people by failing to require Bush and Cheney to explain why FBI and CIA officials met with bin Laden operatives after the 9-11 attacks and why they obstructed justice during the 9-11 investigation may be linked to the “sealed files protected by national security” that Patrick Fitzgerald entered into the court record along with his Scooter Libby indictments last Friday.

Reports are beginning to indicate that Fitzgerald’s sealed files may hold the key to the entire CIA—Valerie Plame leak probe.

[Dig]

Turkish Lobby Group 'Declares War' on Sibel Edmonds' Under-Oath Testimony
Unbylined Turkish Coalition of America blog post slimes FBI whistleblower as 'disgruntled and discredited'...
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7358
By Brad Friedman on 8/14/2009 11:59AM

In a rather extraordinary unbylined blog item posted on Wednesday, the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA), has launched what appears to be an all out assault on FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds and her remarkable, long-awaited under-oath deposition taken over the weekend in the Ohio Election Commission (OEC)'s Schmidt v. Krikorian case.

Called as a witness for David Krikorian (who is Armenian-American), Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH)'s opponent in 2008 and 2010, Edmonds (who is Turkish-American) testified to infiltration, bribery, corruption and blackmail within the U.S. Government, by current and former members of the U.S. House and other high ranking officials on behalf of Turkish interests. Schmidt, the co-chair of the Congressional Turkish Caucus has filed a complaint with the OEC alleging "false statements" by Krikorian during their 2008 contest when he had alleged she had taken "blood money" from those opposed to a Congressional declaration of Armenian Genocide by the Turks during WWI. Schmidt is also said to have taken more money from Turkish interests during the 2008 campaign than any other House candidate.

The TCA seems to have "declared war", according to Edmonds who touched base from out of the country via email on Wednesday. The scathing blog post alleges Edmonds' testimony was "a full-on assault against the national interests of the United States and the integrity of its justice system by the Armenian lobby"; says "Krikorian and his lobbyist backers are getting desperate"; and otherwise attempts to disparage Edmonds' character by describing her as "self-aggrandizing", and a "disgruntled and discredited former federal employee."

The report offers no evidence to support any of its allegations against Krikorian, Edmonds or "the Armenian Lobby". Many of the claims, particularly those concerning Edmonds, are directly contradicted by official reports from the FBI Inspector General's office, as well as senior, bi-partisan members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee...


"[S ]he has a self-aggrandizing imagination inflating her position at the FBI to that of an interrogator of terrorists; and...has a book coming out this fall," the blog post claims about Edmonds. While we've interviewed Edmonds for many hours over the years, in depth, and read an extraordinary amount of reportage on her case, we've never heard or read any such claims of her having interrogated anybody. As to a book coming out, we know nothing of that either, though it would certainly be welcome!

While alleging in one breath that "Krikorian and his lobbyist backers are getting desperate", the blog post then goes on to make the rather, um, desperate, charge that: "The irrelevance and insignificance of Ms Edmonds deposition can be evidenced by the fact that Mr. Geragos, Mr. Krikorian’s attorney of record, did not bother to show up."

Huh? Krikorian himself flew in from Ohio for the deposition, and celebrity-attorney Geragos' firm is, in fact, representing Krikorian, but it's rather common for other attorneys in any law firm to be present for a deposition. While we don't have any particular dog in the Turkish Lobby vs. Armenian Lobby hunt, the use of such a silly claim would seem to suggest the author of the Turkish Coalition's post was fairly desperate themselves.

The TCA post goes on to ask why Edmonds' was called to testify in the case at all, since she admittedly had no specific information on Schmidt's personal involvement with the Turkish lobby or last year's race between her and Krikorian. Schmidt came to Congress in a 2005 special election, several years after Edmonds had left the FBI where she was a translator of pre-9/11 wiretaps.
Why would she testify then? Was the Armenian Lobby merely trying to divert the court’s attention away from the case at hand by introducing a witness who would make further unfounded accusations against the Turkish government, none of which involved the defendant or the plaintiff? Or, one might ask, has there even been a bigger waste of time for the American legal system?

We hate to say it, but this passage seems to offer still more desperation. The case concerns whether or not Schmidt has been unduly influenced by Turkish lobbyists and/or the Turkish government. Edmonds testified on just about a half dozen U.S. Congressmembers, current and former, who, she says, had been bribed, blackmailed and otherwise cajoled or strong-armed into support Turkish causes. Offering up a first-hand witness to such behavior by others in Congress seems a perfectly reasonable part of anybody's defense in such a case.

The TCA continues by then attempting to simply disparage Edmonds' character, describing her as "a discredited former employee of the FBI (who served the federal government for a total of six months before being fired)".

They do not, however, offer any actual evidence for their claims that Edmonds has been "discredited", even as the actual on-the-record evidence suggests quite the opposite.

In 2005, for example, portions of the FBI's own Inspector General's report on her case were unclassified. They reported her allegations to be "credible," "serious," and "warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI."

As far back as 2002, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-NE) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), then the senior members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, co-wrote letters on Edmonds' behalf to Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and DoJ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, calling on all of them to take action in respect to the allegations she's made to Congress and, later, to the 9/11 Commission.

Grassley would discuss Edmonds' credibility on CBS' 60 Minutes in a 2002 report when he said "Absolutely, she's credible...And the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story."

To our knowledge, none of her on-the-record allegations about Turkish influence and/or infiltration in the U.S. government have been discredited. Though the TCA seems to have done a fine job of discredited themselves with such an irresponsible, evidence-free, unbylined attack on an FBI whistleblower.

Here's just a few more snippets from the blog item, which largely speak for and/or discredit themselves:
Saturday’s deposition was nothing more than an opportunity for Ms. Edmonds to make unsubstantiated claims and air conspiracy theories ranging from the tragedy of September 11th, to lurid sexual innuendo regarding unnamed members of Congress, and briefcases full of money. Stories such as this belong in a John Grisham novel rather than a formal legal proceeding.
...
It is astonishing how low ANCA [Armenian National Committee of America] and its officials will sink to impose their view of history on others.
...
Furthermore, it displays the lethal mixture that results from a disgruntled and discredited former federal employee, a single-issue Armenian lobbying organization that serves the interests of a foreign government to the detriment of the security and interests of the United States, and a fringe candidate in a congressional election willing to make unfounded and slanderous accusations against public servants.

Um, speaking of "mak[ing] unfounded and slanderous accusations against public servants"...Hey TCA, Pot is calling on line one, says you're black.

The top of both the TCA website and blog notes their tagline: "Fostering Understand of Turkish American Issues through Public Education."

While noted earlier, we don't have any personal stake in either side of the centuries old Turk vs. Armenian debate, but an outrageous post like that of the TCA's certainly engenders sympathy for the Armenian side of the question. For us, anyway. If that's how the Turkish Lobby is willing to behave, if that is their version of "Public Education", and those are the sorts of scurrilous allegations they're happy to make --- without even putting anybody's name on them, or offering evidence to back them up --- it certainly smells like they're a helluva lot more "desperate" than the "Armenian Lobby" they claim, without evidence, is behind this entire brouhaha.

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://cryptome.org/promis-mossad.htm

Note:  The below links do not work, but the archives of them were retrievable (most if not all, havent checked yet) and will be posted after this.  This is ultra hardcore info.  Which of course is the trademark of cryptome, it doesn't get anymore hardcore than the guy who runs that site and avoids the NSA's tyrannical attempts to stop him to no avail.


28 August 2000.

The Toronto Star is running a series on Canadian investigation of spying by the US and Israel on Canadian intelligence agencies through the use of a powerful search and surveillance software named "Promis," which allegedly had a backdoor installed by Israeli intelligence. This Promis allegation is attributed by The Star to the 1999 book, Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, by Gordon Thomas, Thomas Dunne Books, New York. ISBN 0-312-25284-6. Below are Promis excerpts from Gideon's Spies.

The Toronto Star series (thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe):

    August 25, 2000:
    Spy computer `trap' probed. Rigged software claimed to hack intelligence files

    http://www.thestar.com/thestar/back_issues/ED20000825/news/20000825NEW01_NA-SPY.html

    August 28, 2000:
    'Spy trap' probe now tied to U.S. and Britain. Murdered pair may have links to software plot (URLs may change from current to back issues)

    http://thestar.com/editorial/updates/top/20000828NEW01b_NA-MOUNTIE28.html

    Mounties debugged spy software in '94: Ex-agent. But U.S., Israel drained secrets for a decade before discovery

    http://www.thestar.com/thestar/editorial/news/20000828NEW06_NA-SPY.html

For more on Michael Riconoscuito, the person whom The Star describes as "the American computer whiz who has publicly claimed he helped prepare Inslaw's Promis software for sale to Canada in 1983 and 1984,":

    http://orlingrabbe.com/ricono.htm

See also the William Hamilton/INSLAW Case Archive at the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

    http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/INSLAW/

Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad

Chapter 10

[excerpts, pages 203-219]

In 1967, communications expert William Hamilton returned to the United States from Vietnam, where he had devised a network of electronic listening posts to monitor the Vietcong as its forces moved through the jungle. Hamilton was offered a job with the National Security Agency. His first task had been to create a computerized Vietnamese-English dictionary that proved to be a powerful aid to translating Vietcong messages and interrogating prisoners.

It was an era when the revolution in electronic communications- satellite technology and microcircuitry-was changing the face of intelligence gathering: faster and more secure encryption and better imagery were coming online at increasing speed. Computers grew smaller and faster; more sophisticated sensors were able to separate thousands of conversations; photographic spectrum analysis lifted from millions of dots only the ones that were of interest; microchips made it possible to hear a whisper a hundred yards away; infrared lenses let one see in the black of night.

The fiber-optic sinews of a new society had contributed to operational intelligence: to amass and correlate data on a scale far beyond human capability offered a powerful tool in searching for a pattern and a modus operandi in terrorist actions. Work had started on the computer-driven Facial-Analysis Comparison and Elimi- nation System (FACES) that would revolutionize the system of identifying a person from photographs. Based on forty-nine characteristics, each categorized on a 1 to 4 scale, FACES could make 15 million binary yes/no decisions in a second. Interlinked computers did simultaneous searches to eventually make a staggering 40 million binary decisions a second. Computers themselves had begun to reduce in size but retained a memory that contained the equivalent information of a five-hundred-page reference book.

Still working for the NSA, Hamilton saw an opening in this ever-expanding market; he would create a software program to interface with data banks in other computer systems. Its application in in- telligence work would mean that the owner of the program would be able to interdict most other systems without, their users' being aware. A patriotic man, Hamilton intended his first client for the system would be the United States government.

Just as NASA had given the country an unassailable lead in space technology, so William Hamilton was confident he would do the same for the U.S. intelligence community. Encouraged by the NSA, the inventor worked sixteen-hour days, seven days a week. Obsessive and secretive, he was the quintessential researcher; the NSA was full of them.

After three years, Hamilton was close to producing the ultimate surveillance tool -- a program that could track the movements of literally untold numbers of people in any part of the world. President Reagan's warning to terrorists, "You can run, but you can't hide, was about to come true.

Hamilton resigned from the NSA and purchased a small company called Inslaw. The company's stated function was to cross- check court actions and discover if there was common background to litigants, witnesses and their families, even their attorneys -- anyone involved or becoming involved in an action. Hamilton called the system Promis. By 1981, he had developed it to the point where he could copyright the software and turn Inslaw into a small, profit-making company. The future looked promising.

The NSA protested that he had made use of the agency's own research facilities to produce the program. Hamilton hotly rejected the allegation but offered to lease Promis to the Justice Department on a straightforward basis: each time the program was used, Inslaw would receive a fee. The proposed deal itself was unremarkable; Justice, like any governinent department, had hundreds of contractors providing services. Unknown to Hamilton, Justice had sent a copy of Hamilton's program to the NSA for "evaluation."

The reasons this was done would remain unclear. Hamilton had already demonstrated to Justice that the Promis program could do what he claimed: electronically probe into the lives of people in a way never before possible. For justice and its investigative arm, the FBI, Promis offered a powerful tool to fight the Mafia's money-laundering and other criminal activities. Overnight it could also revolutionize the DEA's fight against the Colombian drug barons. To the CIA, Promis could become a weapon every bit as effective as a spy satellite. The possibilities seemed endless.

In the meantime, one of those characters the world of international wheeling and dealing regularly produces had heard about Promis. Earl Brian had been California's secretary of health during Reagan's time as state governor. Largely because Brian spoke Farsi, Reagan had encouraged him to put together a Medicare plan for the Iranian government. It was one of those quixotic ideas the future president of the United States loved: a version of Medicare would show Iran a positive side of America and at the same time improve the United States' image in the region. In a memorable phrase to Brian, the governor said, "If Medicare works in California, it can work anywhere."

During his visits to Tehran, Brian had come to the attention of Rafi Eitan, who was then one of the helmsmen steering the arms-for-hostages deal ever closer to the rocks. He invited Brian to Israel. They immediately struck up a rapport. Brian was captivated by his host's account of capturing Eichmann; Rafi Eitan was equally fascinated by his guest's description of Californian life in the fast lane.

Rafi Eitan soon realized that Brian could not widen his own circle of contacts in Iran and privately thought Reagan's idea for a Medicare program in Iran was "just about the craziest thing I had heard for a long time." Over the years the two men had stayed in touch; Rafi Eitan had even found time to send Brian a postcard from Apollo, Pennsylvania, where he was checking out the Numec plant. It contained the message, "This is a good place to be -- from." Brian had kept Rafi Eitan informed about Promis.

In 1990 Brian arrived in Tel Aviv. He was more than weary from his long flight; the paleness on his face came from anger that the Justice Department was using a version of the Promis program to track money-laundering and other criminal activities.

Rafi Eitan's instincts told him that his old friend could not have arrived at a more opportune time. Once more conflict had flared between Mossad and the other members of the Israeli intelligence community. The cause was a new Arab uprising, the Intifada. Promis could be an effective weapon to counter its activities.

The revolution had spread with remarkable speed, stunning the Israelis and galvanizing the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The more people the Israeli army arrested, shot, beat, and uprooted from their homes, the swifter the Intifada spread. There was something close to grudging understanding outside Israel when a young Arab boy used a hang glider to evade Israel's sophisticated border defenses with Lebanon and land in scrubland close to the small northern town of Kiryat Shmona. In a few minutes the youth killed six heavily armed Israeli soldiers and wounded seven more before he was shot dead.

The incident became enshrined in Palestinian minds; within the Israeli intelligence community there was furious finger-pointing. Shin Bet blamed Aman; both blamed Mossad for its failure to provide advance warning from Lebanon. Worse followed. Six dangerous terrorists escaped from the maximum-security jail in Gaza. Mossad blamed Shin Bet. That agency said the escape plot had been organized from outside the country -- which made Mossad culpable.

Almost daily, Israeli soldiers and civilians were shot dead in the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. Desperate to regain authority, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced he was implementing a policy of "force, might and beatings," but it had little effect.

Beset by deepening interservice strife, the Israeli intelligence community was unable to agree on a coordinated policy to deal with mass Arab resistance on a scale not seen since the War of Independence. An added thorn was the criticism from the United States over the growing evidence on TV screens of the brutal methods deployed by Israeli soldiers. For the first time U.S. networks, normally friendly to Israel, began to screen footage which, for sheer brutality, matched what had happened in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Two Israeli soldiers were filmed relentlessly smashing a rock against the arm of a Palestinian youth; an IDF patrol was caught on camera beating a pregnant Palestinian mother; children in Hebron were shown having IDF rifle butts smashed against their bodies for throwing stones.

The Intifada coalesced to form the United National Leadership of the Uprising. Every Arab community was postered with instructions in Arabic on how to stage strikes, close shops, boycott Israeli goods, refuse to recognize the civil administration. It was reminiscent of the resistance in the last days of the German occupation of France in World War II.

Desperate to reestablish Mossad's preeminent role among the intelligence community, Nahum Admoni took action. On February 14, 1988, a kidon team was sent to the Cypriot port of Limassol. They planted a powerful bomb on the chassis of a Volkswagen Golf. It belonged to one of the leaders of the Intifada, Muhammad Tamimi. With him were two senior PLO officers. They had met with Libyan officials who had handed over $1 million to continue bankrolling the Intifada. All three men were killed in the massive explosion that rocked the entire port.

The following day, Mossad struck again-planting a limpet mine on the hull of the Soi Phayne, a passenger ship the PLO had just bought for an intended public relations exercise. With the world's press on board, the ship would have sailed to Haifa as a poignant reminder of the Palestinians' "right to return" to their homeland -- and a more pointed reminder of the Jewish boats, immortalized by the Exodus, which, forty years before, had defied the British navy to bring the survivors of the Holocaust to Israel, also under their "right to return." The Soi Phayne was destroyed.

The operations had done nothing to daunt Arab determination. At every turn guerrillas were able to outsmart the Israelis, whose only response seemed to be violence and more violence. The world watched as Israel not only failed to stop the Intifada but also lost the propaganda war. Commentators made the comparison that here was a modern-day David-versus-Goliath conflict, with the IDF cast in the role of the Philistine giant.

Yasser Arafat used the Intifada as an opportunity to regain control over his dispossessed people. Around the world his voice cracked with fury on radio and television that what was happening was the direct result of Israel's policy of stealing Arab land. He urged every Arab to rally in support. One day Arafat was in Kuwait urging Hamas, the terrorist group backed by Iran, to provide its deadly skills. The next he was in Lebanon, meeting with the leaders of Islamic Jihad. Arafat was achieving what had, only a short time before, seemed impossible-uniting Arabs of all persuasions in a common cause. To them all he was "Mr. Palestine" or "Chairman."

Mossad was constantly flummoxed by Arafat's strategies as he flitted between Arab capitals. It had little or no warning where he would turn up, or whom he would next rally to his side.

All this and more Rafi Eitan explained to his houseguest, Earl Brian. In turn Brian described how Promis worked. In his view, there was still work to be done to bring the program up to speed. Rafi Eitan realized that Promis could then have an impact on the Intifada. For a start, the system could lock on to computers in the PLO's seventeen offices scattered around the world to see where Arafat was going and what he could be planning. Rafi Eitan put aside his foraging for scrap metal and focused on how to exploit the brave new world Promis offered.

No longer, for instance, would it be necessary to rely solely on human intelligence to understand the mind-set of a terrorist. With Promis it would be possible to know exactly when and where he would strike. Promis could track a terrorist's every step.

To achieve such a breakthrough would once more undoubtedly make him a powerful figure in the Israeli intelligence community. But the wounds inflicted on him by his former peers had gone deep. He had been turned out into the cold with little more than a modest pension. He was getting on in years; his first obligation was to his family, whom, through his work, he had been forced to neglect for long periods. Promis offered an opportunity to make amends; handled properly, it could make his fortune. However, for all his brilliance, Rafi Eitan was no computer genius; his skills in that area extended to little more than switching on his modem. But his years at LAKAM had given him access to all the experts he would need.

When Earl Brian returned to the United States, Rafi Eitan put together a small team of former LAKAM programmers. They deconstructed the Promis disc and rearranged its various components, then added several elements of their own. There was no way for anyone to be able to claim ownership of what Promis had become. Rafi Eitan decided to keep the original name because it was "a good marketing tool to explain what the system was."

Intelligence operatives, untrained in computer technology beyond knowing which keys to tap, would be able to access information and judgments far more comprehensive than they could ever carry in their own heads. A Promis disc could fit a laptop computer and choose from a myriad of alternatives the one that made most sense. It would eliminate the need for deductive reasoning because there were too many correct but irrelevant matters to simultaneously take into account for human reasoning alone to suffice. Promis could be programmed to eliminate all superfluous lines of inquiry and amass and correlate data at a speed and scale beyond human capability.

But before it could be sold, according to Ben-Menashe, Rafi Eitan needed to add one further element. Ben-Menashe claims he was summoned a played a large part in inserting a "trapdoor," a built-in chip that, unknown to any purchaser, would allow Rafi Eitan to know what information was being sought.

Ben-Menashe knew someone who could create a trapdoor that even the most sophisticated scanners would be unable to detect. The man ran a small computer research and development company in Northern California. He and Ben-Menashe had been schoolboy friends, and for five thousand dollars he agreed to produce the microchip. It was, Ben-Menashe admitted, cheap at the price. The next stage would be to test the system.

Jordan was selected as the site, not only because it bordered on Israel, but because it had become a haven for the leaders of the Intifada. From the desert kingdom, they directed the Arab street mobs on the West Bank and Gaza to launch further attacks inside Israel. After an atrocity, PLO terrorists would slip across the border into Jordan, doing so often with the connivance of the Jordanian army.

Consequently, long before the Intifada, Jordan had become a proving ground for Mossad to develop its electronic skills. In the 1970s, Mossad technicians had tapped into the computer IBM had sold to the country's military intelligence service. The information gained had supplemented that provided by the deep-cover katsa Rafi Eitan had placed inside King Hussein's palace. Promis would offer much more.

To sell it directly to Jordan was impossible because normal business links between both countries were still some years away. Instead, Earl Brian's company, Hadron, made the deal. When the company's computer experts installed the program in Amman's military headquarters, they discovered the Jordanians had a French-designed system to track the movements of PLO leaders. Promis was secretly wired into the French system. In Tel Aviv, Rafi Eitan soon saw results as the trapdoor showed which PLO leaders the Jordanians were tracking.

The next stage was to prepare the sales pitch for Promis. Yasser Arafat was selected as the ideal example. The PLO chairman was renowned for being security-conscious; he constantly changed his plans, never slept in the same bed two nights in succession, altered his mealtimes at the last moment.

Whenever Arafat moved, the details were entered on a secure PLO computer. But Promis could hack into its defenses to discover what aliases and false passports he was using. Promis could obtain his phone bills and check the numbers called. It would then cross-check those with other calls made from those numbers. In that way, Promis would have a "picture" of Arafat's communications.

On a trip he would inform the local security authorities of his presence, and steps would be taken to provide protection. Promis could obtain the details by interdicting police computers. Wherever he went, Yasser Arafat would be unable to hide from Promis.

Rafi Eitan realized that neither Earl Brian nor his company had the resources to market Promis globally. That would require someone with superb international contacts, boundless energy, and proven negotiating skills. There was only one man Rafi Eitan knew who had those requirements: Robert Maxwell.

Maxwell needed little convincing and, in his usual ebullient manner when there was a deal to be profited from, said he had a computer company through which to sell Promis. Degem Computers Limited was based in Tel Aviv and was already playing a useful role in Mossad's activities. Maxwell had allowed Mossad operatives, posing as Degem employees, to use the company's suboffices in Central and South America. Now Maxwell saw an opportunity not only to make a healthy profit from marketing Promis through Degem, but to further establish his own importance to Mossad and ultimately Israel.

On recent visits to Israel he had begun to display disturbing traits. Maxwell told Admoni he should start employing psychics to read the minds of Mossad's enemies. He began to suggest targets for elimination. He wanted to meet kidons and inspect their training camps. All these requests were firmly but politely parried by the Mossad chief. But within Mossad, questions began to be asked about Maxwell. Was his behavior only that of a megalomaniac throwing about his weight? Or was it a precursor of something else? Could the time eventually come when, despite all he had done for Israel, Robert Maxwell became sufficiently mentally unstable and unpredictable to create a problem?

But there was no doubting Maxwell was a brilliant marketeer of Promis -- or, as far as Mossad was concerned, of the effectiveness of the system. The service had been the first to obtain the program and it had been a valuable tool in its campaign against the Intifada. Many of its leaders had left Jordan for safer hideouts in Europe after several had been assassinated in Jordan by kidons.

A spectacular success came when an Intifada commander who had moved to Rome called a Beirut number that Mossad's computers already had listed as the home of a known bomb maker. The Rome caller wanted to meet the bomb maker in Athens. Mossad used Promis to check all the travel offices in Rome and Beirut for the travel arrangements of both men. In Beirut, further checks revealed the bomber had ordered the local utility companies to suspend supplies to his home. A further search by Promis of the local PLO computers also showed the bomber had switched flights at the last moment. It did not save him. He was killed by a car bomb on the way to Beirut airport. Shortly afterward, in Rome, the Intifada commander was killed in a hit-and-run accident.

Meantime, Mossad was using Promis to read the secret intelligence of a number of services. In Guatemala, it uncovered the close ties between the country's security forces and drug traffickers and their outlets in the United States. Names were passed on to the DEA and FBI by Mossad.

In South Africa, a katsa in the Israeli embassy used Promis to track the country's banned revolutionary organization and their contacts with Middle Eastern groups. In Washington, Mossad specialists at the Israeli embassy used Promis to penetrate the communications of other diplomatic missions and U.S. government departments. The same was happening in London and other European capitals. The system had continued to yield valuable information for Mossad. By 1989, over $500 million worth of Promis programs had been sold to Britain, Australia, South Korea, and Canada. The figure would have been even bigger but for the CIA marketing its own version to intelligence agencies. In Britain, Promis was used by MI5 in Northern Ireland to track terrorists and the movements of political leaders like Gerry Adams.

Maxwell had also managed to sell the system to the Polish intelligence service, the UB. In return the Poles, according to Ben-Menashe, allowed Mossad to steal a Russian MiG-29. The operation was a reminder of the theft of the earlier version of the MiG from Iraq. A Polish general in charge of the UB office in Gdansk, in return for $1 million paid into a Citibank account in New York, had arranged for the aircraft to be written off as no longer airworthy, though the plane had only recently arrived from its Russian aircraft factory. The fighter was dismantled, placed in t crates marked "Agricultural Machinery," and flown to Tel Aviv. There the plane was reassembled and test-flown by the Israeli air force, enabling its pilots to counter the MiG-29s in service with Syria.

It was weeks before the theft was discovered by Moscow during a routine inventory of aircraft supplied to Warsaw Pact countries. A strong protest was made by Moscow to Israel -- backed by the threat to stop the exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union. The Israeli government, its air force having discovered all the MiG's secrets, apologized profusely for the "mistaken zeal of officers acting unofficially" and promptly returned the aircraft. By then the UB general had joined his dollar fortune in the United States. Washington had agreed to give him a new identity in return for the USAF being allowed to conduct its own inspection of the MiG.

Shortly afterward Robert Maxwell flew to Moscow. Officially he was there to interview Mikhail Gorbachev. In reality he had come to sell Promis to the KGB. Through its secret trapdoor microchip, it gave Israel unique access to Soviet military intelligence, making Mossad one of the best-briefed services on Russian intentions.

From Moscow Maxwell flew to Tel Aviv. As usual he was received like a potentate, excused all airport formalities and welcomed by an official greeter from the Foreign Office.

Maxwell treated him the way he did all his staff, insisting the official carry his bags and sit beside the driver. Maxwell also demanded to know where his motorcycle escort was, and when told it was not available, he threatened to call the prime minister's office to have the greeter fired. At every traffic stop, Maxwell harangued the hapless official, and he continued to do so all the way to his hotel suite. Waiting was Maxwell's favorite prostitute. He sent her running; there were far more pressing matters than satisfying his sexual needs.

In London Robert Maxwell's newspaper empire was in grave financial trouble. Soon, without a substantial injection of capital, it would have to cease operations. But, in the City of London, where he had previously always found funding, there was a reluctance to go on providing it. Hard-nosed financiers who had met Maxwell sensed that behind his bluster and bully-boy tactics was a man who was losing the financial acumen that in the past had allowed them to forgive so much. In those days he had raged and threatened at the slightest challenge. Bankers had curbed their anger and caved in to his demands. But they would no longer do so. In the Bank of England and other financial institutions in the City, the word was that Maxwell was no longer a safe bet.

Their information was partially based on confidential reports from Israel that Maxwell was being pressed by his original Israeli investors to repay them the money that had helped him to acquire the Mirror Group. The time limit on repayments had long gone and the demands from the Israelis had become more insistent. Trying to fend them off, Maxwell had promised them a higher return on their money if they waited. The Israelis were not satisfied: they wanted their money back now. This was why Maxwell had come to Tel Aviv: he hoped to cajole them into granting him another extension. The signs were not good. During the flight, he had received several angry phone calls from the investors, threatening to place the matter before the City of London regulatory body.

There was a further matter for Maxwell to be concerned over. He had stolen some of the very substantial profits from ORA that he had been entrusted to hide in Soviet Bloc banks. He had used the money to try to prop up the Mirror Group. Maxwell had already stolen all he could from the staff pension fund, and the ORA money would not stretch very far.

And, unlike the Israeli investors, once that theft was uncovered, he would find himself confronting some very hard men, among them Rafi Eitan. Maxwell knew enough about the former Mossad operative to realize that would not be a pleasant experience.

From his hotel suite, Maxwell began to strategize. His share of the profits from Degem's marketing of Promis would not be able to stem the crisis. Neither would profits from Maariv, the Israeli tabloid modeled on his flagship Daily Mirror. But there was one possibility, the Tel Aviv-based Cytex Corporation he owned, which manufactured high-tech printing equipment. If Cytex could be sold quickly, the money could go some way to solving matters.

Maxwell ordered Cytex's senior executive, the son of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to his suite. The executive had bad news: a all quick sale was unlikely. Cytex, while holding its own, faced increasing competition. This was not the time to take it to the market. To sell would also throw skilled people out of work at a time when It unemployment was a serious problem in Israel.

The reaction provoked a furious outburst from Maxwell as his last hope of rescue faded. Tactically he made an error in lambasting the prime minister's son, who now told his father that Maxwell was in serious financial trouble. The prime minister, aware of the tycoon's links to Mossad, informed Nahum Admoni. He called a meeting of senior staff to see how to deal with what had become a problem.

Later it emerged that several options were discussed. Mossad could ask the prime minister to use his own considerable influence with the Israeli investors not only to wait a while longer for their money, but to mobilize their own resources and contacts to find money to bail out Maxwell. This was rejected on the grounds that Maxwell had managed to upset Shamir with his cavalier attitude. Everyone knew that Shamir had a strong sense of self-preservation and would now wish to distance himself from Maxwell.

Another option was for Mossad to approach its highly placed sayanim in the City of London and urge them to support a rescue package for Mossad. At the same time Mossad-friendly journalists in Britain could be encouraged to write supportive stories about the troubled tycoon.

Again those suggestions were discounted. Reports Admoni had received from London suggested that many of the sayanim would welcome the end of Maxwell and that few journalists outside Mirror newspapers would dream of writing favorable stories about a tycoon who had spent years threatening the media.

The final option was for Mossad to break off all contact with Maxwell. There was a risk there: Maxwell, on the evidence of his present unpredictable state of mind, could well use his newspapers to actually attack Mossad. Given the access he had been given, that could have the most serious consequences.

On that somber note, the meeting concluded that Admoni would see Maxwell and remind him of his responsibility to both Mossad and Israel. That night the two men met over dinner in Maxwell's hotel suite. What transpired between them would remain a secret. But hours later, Robert Maxwell left Tel Aviv in his private plane. It would be the last time, it would turn out, that anyone in Israel would see him alive.

Back in London, Maxwell, against all the odds, seemed to be succeeding in holding on to his newspaper group. He was likened to an African whirling dervish as he went from one meeting to another seeking financial support. From time to time he called Mossad to speak to Admoni, always informing the director general's secretary that the "little Czech" was on the line. The sobriquet had been bestowed on Maxwell after he had been recruited. What was said in those calls would remain unknown.

But a clue would later emerge from the former katsa, Victor Ostrovsky. He believed Maxwell was insisting it was payback time; that the huge sum of money he had stolen from the Mirror pension fund should now be returned to him. At the same time, Maxwell also proposed that Mossad should, on his behalf, lobby for Mordechai Vanunu to be freed and handed over to him. Maxwell would e( then fly the technician to London and personally interview him for the Daily Mirror. The story would be Vanunu's "act of atonement," written in a way that would show Israel's compassion. With the chutzpah characteristic of so many of his actions, Maxwell added it would be a huge circulation booster for the Mirror and would unlock those doors still closed to him in the City of London.

Ostrovsky was not alone in believing that the preposterous plan finally decided Mossad that Robert Maxwell had become a dangerous loose cannon.

On September 30, 1991, further evidence of Maxwell's bizarre behavior came when he telephoned Admoni. This time there was no disguising the threat in Maxwell's words. His financial affairs had once more taken a turn for the worse, and he was being investigated in Parliament and the British media, so long held at bay by his posse of high-priced lawyers and their quiver of writs. Maxwell then said that unless Mossad arranged to immediately return all the stolen Mirror pension fund money, he could not be sure if he would be able to keep secret Adnioni's ineeting with Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former head of the KGB. Kryuchkov was now in a Moscow prison awaiting trial for his role in an abortive coup to oust Mikhail St Gorbachev. A key element of the plot had been a meeting Kryuchkov had on Maxwell's yacht in the Adriatic shortly before the coup was launched.

Mossad had promised that Israel would use its influence with the United States and key European countries to diplomatically recognize the new regime in Moscow. In return, Kryuchkov would arrange for all Soviet Jews to be released and sent to Israel. The discussion had come to nothing. But revealing it could seriously harm Israel's credibility with the existing Russian regime and with the United States.

That was the moment, Victor Ostrovsky would write, when "a small meeting of right wingers at Mossad headquarters resulted in a consensus to terminate Maxwell." If Ostrovsky's claim is true -- and it has never been formally denied by Israel -- then it was unthinkable that the group was acting without the highest sanction and perhaps even with the tacit knowledge of Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, the man who had once had his own share of killing Mossad's enemies.

The matter for Mossad could only have become more urgent with the publication of a book by the veteran American investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel, America and the Bomb, which dealt with Israel's emergence as a nuclear power. News of the book had caught Mossad totally by surprise and copies were rushed to Tel Aviv. Well researched, it could nevertheless still have been effectively dealt with by saying nothing; the painful lesson of the mistake of confronting Ostrovsky's publisher (also the publisher of this book) had been absorbed. But there was one problem: Hersh had identified Maxwell's links to Mossad. Those ties mostly involved the Mirror Group's handling of the Vanunu story and the relationship between Nick Davies, ORA, and Ari Ben-Menashe. Predictably, Maxwell had taken refuge behind a battery of lawyers, issuing writs against Hersh and his London publishers. But, for the first time, he met his match. Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner, refused to be cowed. In Parliament, more pointed questions were asked about Maxwell's links to Mossad. Old suspicions surfaced. MPs demanded to know, under parliamentary privilege, how much Maxwell knew about Mossad's operations in Britain. For Victor Ostrovsky, "the ground was starting to burn under Maxwell's feet."

Ostrovsky would claim that the carefully prepared Mossad plan to kill Maxwell hinged on being able to persuade him to keep a rendezvous where Mossad could strike. It had a striking similarity to the plot that had led to the death of Mehdi Ben-Barka in Paris. On October 29, 1991, Maxwell received a call from a katsa at the Israeli embassy in Madrid. Maxwell was asked to come to Spain the next day, and, according to Ostrovsky, "his caller promised that things would be worked out so there was no need to panic." Maxwell was told to fly to Gibraltar and board his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, and order the crew to set sail for the Canary Islands "and wait there for a message." Robert Maxwell agreed to do as instructed.

On October 30, four Israelis arrived in the Moroccan port of Rabat. They said they were tourists on a deep-sea fishing vacation and hired an oceangoing motor yacht. They set off toward the Canary Islands.

On October 31, after Maxwell reached the port of Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife, he dined alone in the Hotel Mency. After dinner a man briefly joined him. Who he was and what they spoke about remain part of the mystery of the last days of Robert Maxwell. Shortly afterward, Maxwell returned to his yacht and ordered it back to sea. For the next thirty-six hours, the Lady Ghislaine sailed between the islands, keeping well clear of land, cruising at various speeds. Maxwell had told the captain he was deciding where to go next. The crew could not recall Maxwell showing such indecision.

In what it claimed was a "world exclusive," headlined "How and why Robert Maxwell was murdered," Britain's Business Age magazine subsequently claimed that a two-man hit team crossed in a dinghy during the night from a motor yacht that had shadowed the Lady Ghislaine. Boarding the yacht, they found Maxwell on the afterdeck. The men overpowered him before he could call for help. Then, one assassin injected a bubble of air into Maxwell's neck via his jugular vein. It took just a few moments for Maxwell to die."

The magazine concluded the body was dropped overboard and the assassins returned to their yacht. It would be sixteen hours before Maxwell was recovered -- enough time for a needle prick to recede beyond detection as a result of water immersion and the skin being nibbled by fish.

More certain, on the night of November 4-5, Mossad's problems with Maxwell were laid to rest in the cold swell of the Atlantic. The subsequent police investigation and the Spanish autopsy left unanswered questions. Why were only two of the yacht's eleven-man crew awake? Normally five shared the night watch. To whom did Maxwell send a number of fax messages during those hours? What became of the copies? Why did the crew take so long to establish Maxwell was not on board? Why did they delay raising the alarm for a further seventy minutes? To this day no convincing answers have emerged.

Three Spanish pathologists were assigned to perform the autopsy. They wanted the vital organs and tissue to be sent to Madrid for further tests. Before this could be done, the Maxwell family intervened, ordering the body embalmed and flown forthwith to Israel for burial. The Spanish authorities, unusually, did not object. Who or what had persuaded the family to suddenly act as it did?

On November 10, 1991 , Maxwell's funeral took place on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the resting place for the nation's most revered heroes. It had all the trappings of a state occasion, attended by the country's government and opposition leaders. No fewer than six serving and former heads of the Israeli intelligence community listened as Prime Minister Shamir eulogized: "He has done more for Israel than can today be said."

Those who stood among the mourners included a man dressed in a somber black suit and shirt, relieved only at the throat by his Roman collar. Born into a Lebanese Christian family, he was a wraithlike figure-barely five feet tall and weighing little over a hundred pounds. But Father Ibrahim was no ordinary priest. He worked for the Vatican's Secretariat of State. His discreet presence at the funeral was not so much to mark the earthly passing of Robert Maxwell, but to acknowledge the still-secret ties developing between the Holy See and Israel. It was a perfect example of Meir Amit's dictum that intelligence cooperation knows no limits.

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://web.archive.org/web/20001018124734/http://www.thestar.com/thestar/back_issues/ED20000825/news/20000825NEW01_NA-SPY.html

August 25, 2000

Spy computer `trap' probed

Rigged software claimed to hack intelligence files

By Valerie Lawton and Allan Thompson
Toronto Star Ottawa Bureau

OTTAWA - The RCMP is conducting a probe related to allegations that foreign spies used rigged software to hack into Canada's top secret intelligence files.

A Star investigation has found the probe revolves around stunning claims that computer software used by the Mounties and Canada's spy service to co-ordinate secret investigations was rigged with a ``trap door'' to allow American and Israeli agents to eavesdrop.

If this proves true, it would be the biggest ever breach of Canada's national security.

Computer experts say a sophisticated trap door - essentially a computer bug - can be impossible to find, even if you know it's there. They can be hidden in either software, as a tiny bit of rogue code, or in the computer's hardware, stored on a microchip.

While Canada already shares a wealth of intelligence information with the U.S. and Israel, there are many elements of Canadian intelligence gathering that the government wouldn't be anxious to share with allies.

`We welcome any credible and serious investigation of this affair.'
- Bill Hamilton
Joint owner of Inslaw Inc., the Washington-based company that developed Promis. He refused to say whether the Mounties have contacted him.

That could include economic intelligence on trading partners, detailed information on the whereabouts of terrorism suspects in Canada or strategic information on the positions Canada intends to take in international relations.

The RCMP would not formally confirm the existence of the probe by its National Securities Investigation section.

``I cannot either confirm or deny what you're looking into,'' RCMP spokesperson Sergeant Marc Richer said yesterday.

But sources close to the investigation say it revolves around Promis, a software program first developed to assist prosecutors in the United States Department of Justice. The case management software also has application for intelligence agencies keeping track of surveillance and investigation files.

The Promis software was at the centre of a major U.S. scandal a decade ago.

Bill and Nancy Hamilton, owners of Washington-based Inslaw Inc., the company that developed Promis, caused a sensation when they alleged the U.S. government had stolen their software and pedalled pirated versions to intelligence agencies around the world.

A former Israeli spy also alleged the software had been fitted with an electronic trap door to allow American and Israeli agents to spy on those who used the software.

After a series of contradictory court rulings and investigations, the story dropped out of the headlines years ago. But now, a Star investigation has found that a number of people linked to the Promis affair have been interviewed by RCMP investigators in recent months.

Louis Buffardi, a lawyer who represents an American computer wizard, who claims he helped prepare Promis software for sale to Canada, said his client was interviewed by RCMP officers who said they are probing a possible breach of Canada's national security.

A former stockbroker, John Belton, who lives in Eastern Ontario and has been tracking the Promis case for years, said RCMP investigators have made repeated trips to his home to conduct interviews on the subject.

Another player in the saga, who asked not to be identified, said RCMP investigators have talked to him about their concerns that Canada's national security may have been breached.

Sources said Bill Hamilton was among those interviewed by the RCMP. Reached in Washington yesterday, Hamilton refused to say whether or not the Mounties had talked to him, but said he was glad to hear there was an investigation.

``We welcome any credible and serious investigation of this affair,'' Hamilton said.

The Promis case was never fully resolved in the U.S. but many regard it as the domain of conspiracy theorists.

In 1987, a U.S. court upheld some of the software company's claims of stolen software and found there was evidence the U.S. justice department used ``trickery, fraud and deceit,'' to steal the Promis software from Inslaw Inc.

That ruling was later overturned on procedural grounds. And in 1993, the report of a retired judge hired to probe the matter concluded there was no credible evidence the software had been stolen by the justice department.

(Inslaw's Promis software is still in use in some U.S. prosecutors' offices and available for sale legitimately.)

The Canadian government entered the story - publicly, at least - in 1991.

That's when a federal bureaucrat called Inslaw with a routine request: Was the Promis software, already in use by some government departments, also available in French?

Trouble was, Inslaw hadn't sold its product to anyone in Canada.

Inslaw started asking questions in Ottawa, where officials quickly backtracked. There had been a mix-up, they said, some confusion about the name of the software.

Officials insisted at the time no government department was using Inslaw's Promis.

Yesterday, RCMP Corporal Glen Kibsey refused to comment on whether the RCMP uses Promis software.

A spokesperson for CSIS, the spy service, also refused to comment on what software the agency uses, or the reports of an RCMP investigation.

U.S. embassy spokesperson Buck Shinkman said he was not aware of any RCMP investigation, or any developments in the Promis file.

``I'm unaware of any renewed interest in this story,'' Shinkman said.

A spokesperson at the Israeli embassy could not be reached for comment.

The former Ontario stockbroker involved in Promis affair said he has been interviewed by the Mounties numerous times over the last 18 months.

Belton said RCMP officers told him they are investigating whether the Mounties have Inslaw's Promis software, if it was stolen, and whether the security of the RCMP has been compromised as a result of trap doors in the software.

He said he's aware some people will regard him as someone who lives in a fantasy world of conspiracy theories and spooks.

``You're not dealing with paranoid crazies, or the UFO guys. I'm very serious about this,'' Belton said.

He said the proof that his allegations are being taken seriously is the fact that RCMP investigators have been coming to see him for 1 1/2 years to discuss the evidence he has to offer.

Belton said RCMP officers have already confirmed to him that they do use the Promis software and have told Hamilton his software was in use by the Mounties.

The chainsmoking Belton unraveled his story at the kitchen table of his sprawling, ramshackle house near Ottawa. The table is stacked with thick binders jammed with documents detailing his allegations.

Court documents, detailed notes of telephone conversations and newspaper clippings are marked up with highlighter and neatly organized.

In addition to Belton, an Illinois lawyer representing Riconoscuito - the American computer whiz who has publicly claimed he helped prepare Inslaw's Promis software for sale to Canada in 1983 and 1984 - said in an interview that RCMP investigators talked to his client.

``I was first contacted by the RCMP, oh geez, eight or nine months ago,'' Riconoscuito's lawyer Louis Buffardi said.

Buffardi said the RCMP investigator told him the matter involved a possible breach of Canada's national security.

Police were interested both in going over Riconoscuito's previous claims about his involvement in modifying the Promis software, as well as asking him about some new information, the lawyer said.

``Some of the modifications that I made were specifically designed to facilitate the implementation of Promis with two agencies of Canada: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service,'' Riconoscuito once said in a sworn affidavit.

Riconoscuito, who is currently being held at a federal prison in Pennsylvania on drug charges, couldn't be reached for comment.

Another player in the saga, who asked not to be identified, also confirmed he has been contacted by RCMP investigators who want to question him about the Promis software.

But another person who sources claimed was on the RCMP interview list - Madison Brewer, who managed the Promis software project at the U.S. Department of Justice in the 1980s - said the allegations were fantasy.

``The people who make these accusations are just crazies,'' said Brewer, insisting he has had no contact with the RCMP.

Brewer said the Promis software wasn't all that it was cracked up to be and that Inslaw fomented the scandal as ``a bunch of public relations crap.''

The lead RCMP investigator working on the file, Sean McDade, was reached by telephone this week but refused to divulge any information about the probe.

``You're putting me in a bad spot here. I can't comment on what's happening right now,'' McDade said.

``There's issues that I am not able to talk about and have nothing to do with what you're probably making inquiries about.

``It's a matter that is under investigation - not that Inslaw is under investigation by any sense, but certain elements have just twigged my interest and that's it. There is no official investigation that I can talk to you about right now.''

McDade also warned reporters to be wary of the web of intrigue surrounding the affair. ``I kind of get a chuckle out of how something so small has been blown out of proportion.''

But a history of Israel's Mossad published last year suggests the software did wind up in Canada.

In his book, Gideon's Spies, Welsh author Gordon Thomas recounts the tale of how Rafi Eitan, former deputy director of operations at Mossad, claimed that both Israel and the United States had sold modified Promis software to other countries through front companies.

Another of the characters linked to the affair is Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli intelligence agent now living in Montreal. He claimed in his book, Profits of War, that he played a role in having a trap door installed in the Promis software, which was then distributed around the world. He wrote that the Americans and the Israelis sold the doctored software to many countries, including Canada, Britain, Australia, South Korea, Iraq, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Nicaragua.

In an interview, Ben-Menashe said Canadian authorities quizzed him about Promis seven years ago in the course of security screening interviews after he applied for Canadian citizenship.

But Ben-Menashe, who now runs a security consulting firm in Montreal, was adamant that he has had no contact with the RCMP in connection with the Promis affair.

While the Promis story line sounds like a Le Carre novel, intelligence experts say it is not entirely implausible that some of Canada's close allies would use software to spy on this country.

Even the RCMP officers investigating the affair use a mysterious electronic mail address to pass messages. The e-mail address includes the word Promis, spelled backwards - simorp.

Experts say a sophisticated trap door can be impossible to find. The trap door code is tucked within hundreds of thousands of lines of programming instructions.

A hacker can activate it with a specific set of key strokes and then use it to download all the information on a database - completely undetected.

A micro-chip trap door would have to be implanted in the computer main frame, likely replacing a chip that's actually supposed to be there.

It allows a hacker to used a modem to dial into the central computer and pull out any interesting information stored there.

[Anti_Illuminati]

ATTN: Desertfae:  Please analyze all of this newly added info and note anything if it is incorrect.  I am slammed to the wall with info right now and I don't have time to vet any of this:

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=4235

DISINFORMATION IS RAISED TO A NEW LEVEL

Posted By: Rayelan <Send E-Mail>
Date: Tuesday, 29-Aug-2000 03:14:23

        Spy trap' probe now tied to U.S. and Britain
        Murdered pair may have links to software plot

        From Rayelan:

        DISINFORMATION IS RAISED TO A NEW LEVEL

        When information that is going to cause powerful people and governments lots of problems is about to be released, the powerful people and governments have to do something to siderail it before it is taken too seriously. One of the best ways is to spread disinformation that will trivialize or discredit the story. It appears this is now being done to the investigation that is currently breaking in Canada.

        For 8 months, Rumor Mill News has know about an investigation that will knock the lid off ALL the crimes and treason that has been committed over the last 50 years.

        We have hinted and hinted -- but we have said absolutely NOTHING that would compromise the investigations in any way

        However, there are other people, who either at the direction of their government handlers or by the direction of their own large egos, have decided to add their two cents to the mix. In so doing, they not only have taken-in the Toronto Star, but they have muddied the waters so badly that other newspapers may choose to drop this story.

        That's okay -- because when the investigation is complete -- I assure you, It WILL be released -- if not in North America, there are newspapers in Europe who are still brave enough to print the truth. When the truth is finally released -- the Rumor Mill will definitely let you know.

        I am enclosing an article that muddies the waters so badly that many people in media are now dismissing the story. It has been thrown in the category of conspiracy theorists, along with Al Fayed and Oswald LeWinter.

        Rumor Mill News knows who is responsible for contacting the Star and muddying the waters. We have known for many years that this woman works with our government. We have chosen to say nothing about her and not even mention her name. She is dangerous. Oswald LeWinter and Les Coleman will vouch for this, as will Rodney Stich and Michael Riconosciuto. I have wanted to ask all four of them to write a short opinion of this woman, but I was advised to keep quiet and stay out of the line of fire.

        I would not even have said this much, if her disinformation had not muddied the waters of the Canadian investigation. She may have muddied the waters -- but given time -- the water will clear and the truth will out.

        I will add more on this later -- here is the article that appeared in the Star

        http://www.thestar.com/editorial/news/20000828NEW01b_NA-MOUNTIE28.html

        By Valerie Lawton
        Toronto Star Ottawa Bureau

        OTTAWA - RCMP investigators probing allegations spies hacked into top-secret Canadian intelligence files are working with at least two foreign police agencies, The Star has learned.

        Sources say the Mounties have joined officers from Britain and a tiny police department in California in interviews connected to their spy probe.

        Those revelations add to the intrigue surrounding the investigation into claims a secret ``trap door'' in doctored computer software allowed foreign spies to hack into Canadian files and download sensitive intelligence information.

        Software debugged in `94

        Oddly, the interest of the other police agencies connects the Mountie spy probe to a double homicide and - coincidentally - to the aftermath of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

        Two Scotland Yard detectives travelled to Canada in late February to interview a former Israeli intelligence agent.

        A father and son who were murdered apparently knew one of the key players in the alleged plot to alter the software program.

        That ex-spy, Ari Ben-Menashe, has said he was involved in a scheme to sell rigged software - known as Promis - around the world.

        The British were interested in talking to Ben-Menashe, now a Canadian citizen, about what police have described as ``an allegation of attempted deception.''

        Sources say Ben-Menashe once met with Mohamed al-Fayed - father of Princess Diana's lover, Dodi, and billionaire owner of the Harrods in London - and that Scotland Yard detectives wanted to talk to him about that exchange.

        Two Mounties investigating the possible breach of national security in Canada, Sean McDade and Randy Buffam, sat in on that interview.

        A Scotland Yard officer insisted the computer spying allegations ``wasn't anything to do with our case whatsoever.''

        Neither Scotland Yard nor the RCMP would explain why members of the RCMP's National Security Investigations Section were present.

        The Mounties have also co-operated with the police department in Hercules, Calif.

        Hercules police are investigating the 1997 deaths of a father and his 12-year-old son.

        Neal and young Brendan Abernathy were each tied up with electrical cable and shot execution-style in the back of the head. They were found dead on their living room floor.

        The Abernathys apparently knew one of the key players in the alleged plot to alter Promis, a computer software program first developed to help the U.S. justice department track cases.

        Hercules police Detective Sue Todd, who is investigating the slayings, didn't return The Star's messages.

        But a source
        (RMNews -- Does anyone suspect this source is the one to whom I referred in the above article?)
        who requested anonymity said Todd has interviewed him and told him she was investigating an allegation the murders were ``somehow connected to the scandal involving Promis.''

        Todd joined the RCMP's McDade at an interview earlier this year with Michael Riconoscuito, an American computer whiz who claims he helped prepare the Promis software for sale to Canada.

        Both Todd and McDade visited Riconoscuito in prison, where he's serving a drug-related sentence, confirmed Louis Buffardi, Riconoscuito's lawyer.

        Buffardi declined further comment about what was discussed during the interview, saying he'd need his client's permission to do so.

        The RCMP confirmed last week they are investigating a possible breach of national security after a story about it was published in The Star.

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://www.newsmakingnews.com/contents8,28,00.htm#The%20%60spy%20trap%27%20scandal

The `spy trap' scandal

Mounties debugged spy software in '94: Ex-agent.
But U.S., Israel drained secrets for a decade before discovery

By Allan Thompson
Toronto Star Ottawa Bureau © 8/28/00

MONTREAL - The RCMP discovered that foreign spies were using rigged software to hack into secret files and eventually fixed the problem by 1994, an intelligence source here says.

The claim that the RCMP managed to debug their computer system - albeit after information was allegedly sucked out for a decade by American and Israeli spies - is the latest twist in the bizarre spy story now making headlines.

The Star revealed last week that the RCMP's national security section is probing allegations that bootleg copies of software used by the Mounties and later the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), were fitted with the trap door.

The spy service denies ever possessing the software and the RCMP refuses comment on the matter, except to confirm it is investigating an alleged breach of national security.

But a former Israeli spy with links to the affair, who agreed to a rendezvous with a Star reporter yesterday, claimed the RCMP rectified the software snafu in 1993-94.

``I know, because they came to me to help them to do it,'' said the source, who arranged to meet in the lobby of Montreal's posh Ritz-Carleton hotel, then insisted on driving across town to a quiet bistro.

``They solved this problem by 1994. The software is now obsolete, even though it was revolutionary when it first came along,'' said the source, who refused to be named.

He insisted he wanted the ``real story,'' to be told.

His uncorroborated version of events includes a cast of characters befitting a spy thriller: Israeli operatives, an American computer whiz later locked up on drug charges, the newspaper tycoon and alleged Mossad agent Robert Maxwell, who drowned in 1991, and others.

``This is a very big story, but the story is not the RCMP investigation,'' said the intelligence source, who has met the two RCMP officers currently investigating the matter.

``I think the RCMP are going through the motions, this is a low-level investigation that will go nowhere,'' he said. ``The Canadian government has known everything there is to know about this since 1994.''

The software in question, called Promis and first produced by a small Washington-based company called Inslaw Inc., was at the centre of a political scandal in the U.S. more than a decade ago.

Inslaw first charged that the U.S. government had stolen its specialized tracking and case-management software and was pirating copies of it to intelligence agencies around the world.

Later, Inslaw and a former Israeli intelligence agent named Ari Ben-Menashe, claimed that Israel and the U.S. had modified the software to fit it with a ``trap door'' to eavesdrop on the end users of the program.

That version of events was confirmed last year by Rafi Eitan, the former deputy head of Mossad, who told Welsh author Gordon Thomas that he was the one behind Israel's plan to rig the Promis software with a trap door.

While bankruptcy courts and a judiciary committee initially upheld some of Inslaw's claims that the software had been stolen, another court overturned the ruling on procedural grounds, and a special prosecutor said there was no credible evidence to support the company's claims.

The source said he had first-hand knowledge that newspaper magnate Maxwell, who was identified by some after his death as a Mossad operative, was instrumental in selling the Promis software to the RCMP in 1983, using a front company.

For the next ten years, Israeli and American agents were able to pull information out of secret Canadian intelligence files, he said. The Star has confirmed that RCMP officers have interviewed Michael Riconoscuito, the computer whiz who claimed publicly that he was involved in modifying the Promis software for its sale to the RCMP and CSIS.

The Mounties have also interviewed the co-owner of Inslaw, Bill Hamilton.

[Anti_Illuminati]

lavosslayer, this is an incredible article.  Thank you for finding this, it is incredibly important.  Therefore it deserves to be displayed here as well.

Again, thank you for this.

http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/pro-freedom.co.uk/promis.html
Ex-intellegence agent exposes the truth behind the Government Agencies

THE MEN WHO SOLD THE WORLD... AND THE MAN WHO TOLD THE STORY.

His book is the book the Israelis tried to stop, written by the man they said didn't exist - the book that George Bush and the CIA tried to sabotage.

For more than ten helter-skelter, hair-raising years, Ari Ben-Menashe was the golden-haired boy of Israel's deadly spy service.

After a year in a US jail on trumped-up charges, Ari Ben-Menashe is ready to tell his story.

Ari Ben-Menashe is a man without a home, a country, or many friends in the cut-throat world of international intelligence. In his recently released book entitled Profits of War, the sensational story of the world-wide arms conspiracy, Ben-Menashe details the unbelievable story of an international cabal of well-connected intelligence community and corporate arms dealers who, as the title of the book suggests, wage war to covertly gain power, influence and personal wealth. Ben-Menashe is the man responsible for leaking the information that eventually led to the Iran-contra investigations and the demise (or sacrifice) of Oliver North who, it turns out, was only a small player in a much much bigger game

.After serving in the external relations department of Israeli Military Intelligence and acting as personal national security advisor to Yitzhak Shamir (former President of Israel) for a total of twelve years, Ben-Menashe has written what must arguably rate as one of the most important political and intelligence exposes ever.

I met with Ari Ben-Menashe twice during 1991 to discuss various issues, including the theft by the US justice department of the most sophisticated data-collecting computer program ever developed, which is known as 'the Inslaw affair', and the subsequent modification and international sale of that program to various countries around the world, including Australia, by a CIA front-company and an Israeli Intelligence front-company owned and run by Robert Maxwell.

The Dossier Society

The computer program we are talking about is called Promis, and its use presents the biggest threat to individual rights by any computer technology in use today. Not only that, it has given US Intelligence agencies access to extremely sensitive information stored in the databases of possibly as many as eighty-eight countries around the globe.

Ben-Menashe devotes an entire chapter of his book detailing the joint American-Israeli initiative to sell Promis to intelligence and law-enforcement agencies world-wide, and gives several examples of how the program has been used to interfere with the political process of various countries and to keep track of citizens.

Since obtaining an illegal copy of the program over a decade ago, the Central Intelligence Agency has, in conjunction with Israeli Intelligence, embarked on a highly successful world-wide initiative to install "bugged" copies of the software in computer systems run by intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, (as well as other government organisations), to which they now covertly have unlimited access.

One of the earliest "leaks" regarding this covert computer double-dealing came out in an article entitled "Spy vs. Spy", (written by Zuhair Kashmeri for the Toronto Globe and Mail), which was published on Saturday 20 April 1991. Devoted entirely to the Promis initiative, the article quotes one of Kashmeri's Canadian Intelligence sources: "Some of our Allies, such as Australia, are furious after they found out from the revelations of the Inslaw Case that they were sucked into buying Promis". Kashmeri confirmed to one of my colleagues that he has had a twelve year relationship with the two intelligence sources who supplied the information for the article, and that they had always proved reliable in the past.

At the time I interviewed Ben-Menashe, it proved very hard to authenticate all his claims. Although Israeli Intelligence denied all knowledge of him for some time, I was informed by a helpful contact within the Australian Democrats that he had indeed worked there for them, and, was given copies of various personal references that supported the claim. After later interviewing Bill Hamilton, the Director of Inslaw Inc., the company that wrote the program, and other individuals familiar with the case, I felt quite confident that Ari Ben-Menashe knew exactly what he was talking about.

On 1 September 1992, an investigative committee of the US Congress released an investigative report on the Inslaw case, which outlines the controversial history of the Promis software. It took three years of investigation to complete the report, due in part to the withholding of evidence by government agencies connected with the theft, modification and distribution of the program, as well as the intimidation of important witnesses. In order to slow down and mislead the investigation there have been arrests, on false charges, of individuals informing the judicial committee, as well as the suspicious death (red murder) of journalist Danny Casolaro, who had been investigating the Inslaw Case and its links to the October Surprise, Iran-contra Affair, and BCCI bank collapse. Far from answering all the questions, the report concludes that a far more thorough and far-reaching investigation must be urgently undertaken.

This committee's report confirms many of |Ben-Menashe's claims. He was, in fact, one of the key sources of their information. I put the following questions to him when we met in 1991:

GK: What is Promis?

B-M: It is the most sophisticated computer database that has ever been developed in the world. Computers are very widely used by the intelligence community; it's the main source of information about people. You can essentially get anything about anybody you want to know.

GK: To what extent would it be used by the intelligence community to collect information about the civilian population?

B-M: It's quite widely used, al over the world, to collect information about dissidents, opposition leaders, and so on. What does it do? I'll give you an example which is very interesting. You have a computer, put this program on it, and connect this computer to the water company, to the electric company, to IATA (International Air Travel Association), to credit card companies, to the tax department, bank accounts, to anything you like to think... phone lines, where someone calls to, which is very important. Other than tapping him, now you can also have a written record of all the telephone numbers he or she dials. So if you want Mr. Joe Smith and everything he does, it's the only program that can bring all this data from everywhere...

GK: Globally?

B-M: Globally, yes, onto one screen! It's a very sophisticated program. I mean, this is the biggest infringement on privacy, on anybody, anything. Is there any privacy? I mean, the government agencies would be able to monitor anybody's activities as they wish. Very quickly, too. Once they have this information, who knows what they do with it.

GK: How quickly can Promis assimilate information and provide a dossier on a person?

B-M: If it's hooked up correctly, in a matter of seconds. It is a better information collection system than any other. I mean, I think it put the satellites out of business.

GK: Have you seen this in operation?

B-M: Oh yeah, You know, this program makes George Orwell's '1984' look like ... (nervous laugh). George Orwell was modest. What this program can do, the only one in the world that can do this, is first of all make sure when you're talking about "Harry Smith" it's the same "Harry Smith", because there could be ten "Harry Smith's. It would compare notes, check common denominators, and it would find Harry Smith. His water usage, his electric usage, how many times he has travelled abroad, what does he do with his credit cards, his car licence number, all sorts of stuff. Put it together, and there you go. You have everything you ant to know about this person. The first version was ready in 1979/80. In '81 he (Bill Hamilton) offers it to the Justice Department, because it's also good for law enforcement. He offers it, and then suddenly the National Security Agency has it. It's given to the Israeli's in 1982, and it's being marketed around the world, given to allies and to non-allies. The reason being, it was bugged as well. What you do is basically set it up for one government, and without letting that government know, have a phone tap on that computer and can pull out information for yourself also. They bugged their allies as well! I'll give you an example. The Americans sold it on our behalf (Israel) to some Arab countries. Jordanian Military Intelligence had it in '82 and they were collecting data on the Palestinians. The Palestinians were threatening the king (Hussein) as well. We were also sharing that information with them.

GK: Without their knowledge?

B-M: Of course, without their knowledge. Now, the two countries that marketed, the two security forces that marketed this program, one was Israel, and one was the United States. Israel did it through various computer companies owned by Robert Maxwell. The Americans on the other hand did it through a company called Hadron, based in the United States, owned by the owner of UPI (United Press International), a fellow by the name of Earl Brian. He used to be Reagan's Secretary of Welfare and Health in California, when Reagan was governor. Then he was working for the intelligence services. Basically his companies were 'attached' to the CIA. The CIA was marketing it for the National Security Agency . One of the Maxwell companies sold it to the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) and that was bugged. The West knew what was going on in that theatre faster than the Russians. Another example, South Africa. Great place. It was given to them without the bug. It was set up through a company called Degem, owned by Maxwell. This program tracked ANC (African National Congress) people, and what came out of the computer was handed to the Buthelezi people (Inkatha) and then you had 'black on black' violence.

GK: And meanwhile, was this being monitored by the US as well?

B-M: Yes. It's funny, you know, there was also a terminal in Pretoria that was used by the South African Military Intelligence, And the US Embassy and that place share a wall, so...

GK: How widespread is the use of Promis in other countries?

B-M: It's quite widespread. Most of the Western Allies have it; as we said, the South Africans have it, the Nicaraguans have it, even the Guatemalans. The ex - Eastern Bloc countries have it too. I believe that since 1990 most of them have checked it for bugs, but they still use it. MI5, MI6, the Russians.

GK: Who is using it in Australia?

B-M: ASIO (The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation).

GK: Do you know who installed Promis in Australia?

Yes I do. It was Hadron.

GK: Could the use of Promis be seen as a threat to the privacy of the general public?

B-M: Sure. That's what it's all about.

GK: So it couldn't be written off as something that's just there to monitor terrorist groups and so on?

B-M: Sure. That's what they say. But what is a terrorist? I mean, what is national security, what is all this? It's a matter of monitoring people who are getting in the way of the government keeping everybody in line. Once you have this technology and you know everything everybody else is doing, or whomever you want to follow... you can basically control people that way. You can put in disinformation, do all kinds of things, block bank transfers, you know, stop people doing things, or make sure they don't have money, or their money doesn't come through on time, and so on.

There's so much that can be done with this information. Simple things. You don't have to be very sophisticated. Cancel reservations, slow down bank transfers, put in a computer that a credit card is no good. Just imagine, all you have is your American Express card, and you're stuck somewhere around the world and the computer shows that your card is no good! Simple as that. And then when you complain three weeks later, :sorry, mistake". But in the meantime, for three weeks you were in trouble.

GK: I have been told that the National Crime Authority in Australia is setting up a database to monitor every single bank transaction over $5000. I suppose that system might be useful for this purpose as well?

B-M: It's the same database by the way. They just got a condensed version of Proms It's not called Promis, but once the program is out...

GK: How much of a connection is there between intelligence agencies and banks or other private organisations that hold extensive and sensitive computer records?

B-M: Well, I think what happens is that the intelligence agencies become the centre of all of it. You know, the banks monitor the money, other guys monitor stuff, but the intelligence agencies put it all together.

GK: So they have access to banking records?

B-M: Oh sure. They have access to everything. This is why a lot of countries love the idea of ID cards, because this way it makes things easier. Or they use a social security number or a tax file number. Initially the idea was to do it all through law enforcement and that kind of thing, but since it didn't work, because of parliament or congress or whatever, they just had to do it through the back door. It's the same thing, and again, it's governments and bureaucracies trying to control everybody's lives.

GK: When you look at all the intelligence-gathering capabilities, surveillance, eavesdropping, tracking, monitoring and so on, it seems that they are all evolving and interlocking more and more. Is it steamrollering out of control?

B-M: Yes, yes. I've always said this. It is getting out of control. I mean, suddenly you have everything being monitored. Everything.

GK: Do we need it? I mean, what are they going to do with all this information?

B-M: Who knows. But it's bureaucracy. Everybody loves it. Each bureaucrat, or each guy that runs some section of a listening agency wants his empire to grow, and it grows and goes out of control. Remember that intelligence bureaucracies are just like everything else, they get over-zealous. I sometimes wonder how the United States government... I mean, $600 million for a stealth bomber. One stealth bomber! With $600 million you could clean up Los Angeles and all its homeless. But you know, "security", "defence", "the communists are coming". But I guess the communists aren't coming any more. We need to find a new enemy. (Cynical)

GK: The question I get asked all the time is "How do they keep all this a secret?"

B-M: It's easy. Everybody protects his job. And I'll tell you another thing. Most of these guys in national security, what do they do? They either sit down listening all day, or running their computers, or re-listening to tapes. Some of these jobs are very menial. He comes home. His wife asks him something. "It's secret. I can't tell you". It's also a means of protection. It's easy. This guy starts talking publicly... He's gone. And there's another thing. Each person has a very small amount of knowledge, unless you get to a senior level, and once you get there you're part of the system. Each person has this very small thing he does. In twenty years, how many people have broken rank? Not that many who are sufficiently up there to know. But my question today is what is it all for?

GK: That's what we would like to know!

B-M: When you look back at it, it's a whole load of bullshit crap, bureaucrats keeping people in work, and keeping tabs on their opponents.

GK: But is all this surveillance capability so powerful now that it's impossible to resist unfair government practice?

B-M: It's hard to resist unfair government practices. It's very hard. I mean, how do you do it? You're fighting ghosts basically. But bureaucracies can be fought if you know how they operate. It's hard, but you can do it, you know, stay ahead.

GK: You're suggesting it's more bureaucracy out of control than some grand conspiracy, then?

B-M: Yep! That's what it is! I never ran into any "Super-commission". That's what it is. Friends with mutual interests protecting each others powerbases or their own power- bases That's how it goes. I don't see it as one grand conspiracy. It's just there's technology and bureaucrats, they want to do their job well, so the collection becomes larger and larger. More collection and more information

GK: What happens when interests collide then, say, on a national level?

B-M: Then you have a fight. That's what they call a "crisis"!

GK: Are we heading to a point where this is all too fragile, this reliance on technology and a "balance of terror"?

B-M: Would your life be any different if you were not monitored? Probably better. But the average person, what does he care? The way I see it, you go to work, you get your house, you give half of what you earn toward the house, at the age of 60 you own the house and live off your pension.

You stay in line, you get the house. I mean, this whole issue of mortgage is... make sure they get married at a certain age, You have two children, and that's how everybody's in line. You work all your life to pay your mortgage and if you don't work you lose your house. Perform or...

GK: In terms of gathering information on people, are there any moral criteria as far as the intelligence community or bureaucrats are concerned?

B-M: Moral criteria about what? If you're targeting somebody you're targeting somebody.

The National Safety Council Link

Another interesting connection may well lie in the cover-up of the activities of the National Safety Council of Australia, Victorian Division, and the activities and alleged "suicide" of its director, John Friedrich. In the 23 September 1991 issue of the American political newspaper Spotlight, the following passage appears: "Two weeks before Casolaro's death in early August, John Friedrich was found dead in Sale, Australia. He suffered a single bullet wound to the head and his death was termed a suicide. Friedrich was a close ally of Lt Col Oliver North and (Amiran) Nir. He had a lot of knowledge about the Iran-contra and Inslaw cases. Nir died in a plane crash in Mexico."

It is interesting to note that when the current affairs show Page One ran a story on John Friedrich and the NSCA scandal on 27 March 1989, they went out of their way to make it look like Friedrich had engineered the entire fraud perpetrated by the NSCA. They ended their report with an interview with Friedrich's replacement at the NSCA, asking "Is he (Friedrich) the sort of man who would contemplate suicide?" The reply: "I've tried to think that through in my mind, I believe that it would be possible, but I of course can't say if that's what happened. This was seventeen months before Friedrich's alleged suicide actually took place.

Could it be that Friedrich's "suicide" was actually a disappearance planned well in advance due to the heat that was being put on the NSCA by investigators, and the questions being raised by the public? Since when is suicide the expected behaviour of a failed businessman?

It seemed to me to be a very odd question to finish this report with, But it is worth noting that Channel 10, the television station that ran Page One, was owned by Christopher Skase at the time of the report, another of the well-connected and high-flying West- Australian businessmen who has since fallen from grace. In an article written by himself, Friedrich posed questions about how businessmen like Alan Bond and Christopher Skase became so wealthy, so fast. It's likely he knew exactly how and why.

As for the true nature of the NSCA's activities, Friedrich wrote, "If 'intelligence' means the world of covert government action, both Australian and overseas, then yes, we are involved in some intelligence work... I don't know how people can really believe that it was possible for one man to make happen all that existed at Sale and elsewhere. And if I was getting the nod from people above, why were they giving it? There are ten so-called joint United States-Australian government installations in Australia. The Americans want to have people around who can keep an Eye on these installations, who can respond, if necessary, to threats to those installations. The US has valuable and important facilities here. It likes to know they are safe. Much of my career is bound up in this fact. There was considerable interest in the NSCA Victoria Division, in a number of key areas of government and industry, including the Department of Defence, the Federal Police, some State Police forces, the Foreign Affairs Department, and the Attorney General's Department."

No doubt many of these government departments would have been ecstatic to get hold of a computer program with the surveillance capabilities of Promis. Perhaps Friedrich was the man who connected them to the people who were marketing it.

[Anti_Illuminati]

Bugged Computer Software - Ari Ben-Menashe - Peter Myers; date October 26, 2000; update June 28, 2004.

You are at http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/bugs.html.

(1) Ari Ben-Menashe, Profits of War: The Senational Story of the World-Wide Arms Conspiracy (2) Bin Laden given PROMIS software? (3) PROMIS incident number: 887890

(1) Ari Ben-Menashe, Profits of War: The Senational Story of the World-Wide Arms Conspiracy, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1992.

The author, Ari Ben-Menashe, was an Israeli intelligence officer; Rafael Eitan was a counterterrorism adviser to Menachem Begin. This book broke the Iran Contra scandal, but was ignored by the media. It also describes the capture of Mordecai Vanunu, beginning with his approaching the Sydney Morning Herald about his secret photos; that newspaper, instead of scooping the story, contacted ASIO (Australia's equivalent of the CIA). Ari Ben-Menashe is lucky to be alive. The extracts below describe the development of bugged computer software, and how Israel helped to bring down the USSR with it.

{p. 129} One of Eitan's pet projects was an anti-terrorist scheme involving a sinister, Big Brother-like computer program named Promls. It was through Eitan that I became involved in it. This was not Joint Committee work, per se, but many of the same people who worked on our arms-to-Iran operation worked on Promls also. The most prominent of these was British medla baron Robert Maxwell, who made a fortune out of it. Through some of his companies, the Israelis and the Americans were eventually able to tap into the secrets of numerous intelligence networks around the world - including Britain, Canada, Australia, and many

{p. 130} others - and set into motion the arrest, torture, and murder of thousands of lnnocent people in the name of "antiterrorism."

The frightening story of the Promis program begins in the United States in the late 1960s when communications expert William Hamilton, who had spent time in Vietnam during the war setting up listening posts to monitor the communist forces, was assigned to a research and development unit of the U.S National Security Agency. Fluent in Vietnamese, Hamilton helped create a computerized Vietnamese-English dictionary for the intelligence agency. While working there, Hamilton also started work on an extremely sophisticated database program that could interface with data banks in other computers. By the early 1970s, he was well on the way with his research and realized he had a keg of dynamite in his hands.

The program he was developing would have the ability to track the movements of vast numbers of people around the world. Dissidents or citizens who needed to be kept under watch would be hard put to move freely again without Big Brother keeping an eye on thelr activities.

When Hamilton saw that the program he was building had so much potential, he resigned from the National Security Agency and took over a non-profit corporation called Inslaw, established to develop a software program for legal purposes. The Inslaw program would be able to cross-check various court actions and, through cross-referencing, find a common denominator. For example, if a wanted person moved to a new state and established a new identity before being arrested, the program would search out aspects of his life and cases he had been involved in and match them up. Hamilton put his knowledge to use in Inslaw, and when his bosses at NSA found out, they were not at all happy. Their argument was that as an employee of the agency, he had no right to take knowledge gleaned there to another organization. By 1981 Hamilton came up with an enhanced program. What he had actually done was given birth to a monster. Inslaw was turned into a profit-making organization, and Hamilton copyrighted his enhanced version.

Believing that Inslaw was invaluable for law-enforcement agencies, Hamilton sent Promis to the Justice Department in 1981, offering them leasing rights; the more they used it, the more

{p. 131} profit Inslaw would make. The Hamilton program was sent to the NSA for study, but in time, through arrangements made with Attorney General Edwin Meese III, Hamilton got his program back. The Justice Department declined to lease the program from Inslaw, and, it soon transpired, they were using "their own" Promis. So was the NSA.

The U.S. government had its own plans for Promis. Some American officials thought the Israelis might be able to sell it to intelligence agencies around the world, so in 1982, Earl Brian approached Rafi Eitan. After studying the program, Eitan had a brilliant idea.

He called me in to see him. "We can use this program to stamp out terrorism by keeping track of everyone," he said. "But not only that. We can find out what our enemies know, too."

I stared at him for a moment. Suddenly I realized what he was talking about. "Ben zona ata tso dek!" - Son of a bitch, you're right! I exclaimed. All we had to do was "bug" the program when it was sold to our enemies.

It would work like this: A nation's spy organization would buy Promis and have it installed in its computers at headquarters. Using a modem, the spy network would then tap into the computers of such services as the telephone company, the water board, other utility commissions, credit card companies, etc. Promis would then search for specific information. For example, if a person suddenly started using more water and more electricity and making more phone calls than usual, it might be suspected he had guests staying with him. Promis would then start searching for the records of his friends and associates, and if it was found that one had stopped using electricity and water, it might

{Footnote, p. 131: Hamilton and his wife Nancy sued the Justice Department, charging that Justice stole the enhanced Promis program from Inslaw and gave it to NSA. Justice claimed it did get a program from Inslaw but returned it unused. NSA said it developed its own enhanced program and gave it to other intelligence agencies, but not to the Justice Department. Since the stalling by the Justlce Department had thrown Inslaw into bankruptcy proceedings, the Hamiltons pursued their legal remedies in Bankruptcy Court. The lower courts upheld their claims against the Justice Department, but an appellate court ruled that Bankruptcy Court was the incorrect venue for such claims, requiring them to refile the suit in District Court. A congressional investigation into the matter has also been slowly proceeding.}

{p. 132} be assumed, based on other records stored in Promis, that the missing person was staying with the subject of the investigation. This would be enough to have him watched if, for example, he had been involved in previous conspiracies. Promis would search through its records and produce details of those conspiracies, even though the person might have been operating under a different name in the past - the program was sophisticated enough to find a detail that would reveal his true identity.

This information might also be of interest to Israel, which is where the trap door would come into play. By dialing into the central computer of any foreign intelligence agency using Promis, an Israeli agent with a modem need only type in certain secret code words to gain access. Then he could ask for information on the person and get it all on his computer screen.

According to computer experts I have spoken to in Israel, the trap door is undetectable. Nations receiving Promis might wonder if there was any trickery by Israel, but they would not be able to find anything - especially as it was experts provided by Israel who installed the program.

Rafi Eitan did not want to risk having a trap door developed in Israel. Word might leak back that the Israelis had been bugging software and then handing it out to others. He didn't even suggest that the NSA develop the trap door because he had a great sense of national pride. As far as he was concerned, it was Israel's idea and would remain so. Yet it still had to be kept secret. Eitan decided it would be best if a computer whiz could be found outside the country.

I knew just the man for the job. Yehuda Ben-Hanan ran a small computer company of his own called Software and Engineering Consultants, based in Chatsworth, California. I had grown up with him, but I didn't want him to know that I was scouting him for a possible job. I had to sound him out, to find out if he was a blabbermouth.

When I called on him, I told him I was in California on holiday and had decided to look him up. We chatted about our days as kids, and he introduced me to his wife, a Brazilian Jew. I decided he was right for the job - he was not conspiracy-minded, and it was unlikely his suspicions would be aroused. Five days after I left, he was approached by an Israeli man who hired him to build

{p. 133} an external access to a program. Yehuda wasn't told what the program was all about. He was simply given blueprints and set about his work for a $5,000 fee.

With the trap door in place, Rafi Eitan selected Jordan as the nation on which it would be tested. Earl Brian made the sale through his company, Hadron. Brian accurately represented it as a program that would help stamp out the Palestinian dissidents who had long been a thorn in the side of King Hussein. A team of Hadron computer experts went to Amman and began setting up Promis software for Jordanian military intelligence. They also hooked it up with the various computers that had already been sold to Jordan by IBM in the late 1970s. These computers were linked to the water company, the telephone company, and every other public utility.

The Hadron team did one more thing. They hooked the Promis program to a small computer attached to a telephone line in an apartment in Amman. That apartment was occupled by a buslnessman who had close connections with Mossad. From his home, he was able to dial up various public services, as well as the military, and use Promis to find out everything about everybody - as well as to tap into Jordan's military secrets. Because of his business as an importer-exporter, he often had an excuse to fly to Vienna. He would take the New York-bound Aliya Royal Jordanian Airlines flight from Amman and get off in Vienna. There, he would pass computer disks loaded with information to a Mossad contact.

So what Israel and the Americans learned was that the system was workable. The two countries also found out that the Jordanians had a tracking system of their own which was being used against Palestinian movements. Israel and the U.S. were laughing. The Jordanians tracked the Palestinians, our man tapped into their information, and we knew as much about the whereabouts of one terrorist or another as the Jordanians did.

The Americans came up with the idea of selling this valuable program to governments and their intelligence networks all over the world. But first they had to produce their own version of Promis with the secret trap door. The Americans handed a copy of their program to Wackenhut, a Florida-based company that worked for the U.S. intelligence community. The company also

{p. 134} had a computer development unit located on the Cabazon Indian Reservation in southern California. The Indian reservation was used by Wackenhut, which was contracted by the technical services division of the CIA, for developing special equipment such as special-purpose electronics, anti-terrorist devices, etc., as well as hallucinogeric drugs. It was done on an Indian reservation because there was no state jurisdiction and the federal authorities who would have jurisdiction turned a blind eye to the operation.

It was here that the trap door was built into the U.S. version of Promis, based on Israeli information.

The CIA group that was to use Promis had not handed the program back to the NSA to have the trap door fitted by them for the simple reason that they didn't want the NSA to know about it - interagency competition was fierce. Only this small CIA group, headed by Robert Gates - who was to become head of the Central Intelligence Agency in October 1991 - was in on the secret. So we now had a small group in Israel and a small group in the U.S. that knew about the trap door.

The next step for both Israel and the United States was to find a neutral company through which the doctored Promis program could be sold. It was agreed that the head of the company had to be a man who could be trusted to keep intelligence secrets, who had contacts with both Western and East Bloc countries and who had a respected businessman's image. The man they came up with was Robert Maxwell.

Robert Maxwell, whose body now lies in Judaism's most revered burial ground on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem's walled city, formed his ties with Israel in the early 1960s when a meeting was arranged for him with Yitzhak Shamir, who was then in Mossad operations in Europe. Shamir's was an important role, soliciting information from all the European-based agencies employed by Mossad. The rendezvous with Maxwell was arranged through the Mapam [United Workers] Party in Israel which was part of the labor movement and had close connections with Maxwell's leftwing colleagues in the British Labor Party.

The two men were brought together by Aviezer Ya'ari, a kibbutz member and one of the ideological leaders of Mapam. Upper-

{p. 135} most in Ya'ari's mind was making contact with the Soviets, so it was a natural move to put Shamir in touch with Maxwell, who had intelligence links with the Soviets beginning in World War II. Shamir's past as a Stern Gang terrorist appeared to make this an unlikely pairing, but Mossad was keen to make any connections it could with the KGB, and the belief in Tel Aviv was that Maxwell, for all his pride in faithfully serving in the British Army, remained on good terms with "friends" in the East Bloc.

Maxwell, who had been elected a British Labor MP in 1964, and Shamir shared an antipathy for the Americans, and were to become friends of heart and spirit.

Rafi Eitan knew of Maxwell's long association with Shamir and with Israel, so he suggested that the British mogul would be the perfect front for selling Promis. The approach to Maxwell, on Israeli prompting, was made in 1984 by Sen. John Tower, an old friend of the publisher's, who was close to the then vlce presldent, George Bush - in fact, many years before, Tower had helped Bush get into Congress. Always interested in military and intelllgence affairs, Tower had served as chair of the Senate Armed Servlces Committee. According to Maxwell, when Bush was head of the CIA in 1976, Tower approached Maxwell to connect him and Bush secretly on a person-to-person basis with vanous Soviet intelligence people. When Maxwell delivered, Tower became his friend for life. With the relationship strengthening over the years, Tower subsequently was appointed a director of Maxwell's Macmillan publishing company in the U.S.

Tower's approach to Maxwell to use his network of companies to market Promis was made on behalf of the CIA group headed by Gates. But it was Rafi Eitan who mapped out the workings of Promis for Maxwell at a discreet meeting between the two men m Paris in 1984. I do not know whether Maxwell was made aware of the trap door and how Israel and the U.S. could use this to gain external access to the computers of whatever agencies were usmg the program. But Maxwell would have been made perfectly aware of the general uses of Promis and how intelligence servlces could keep tabs on anyone about whom they had cause to be suspicious.

Maxwell agreed he was in a perfect position to market Promis for the Americans and the Israelis. After all, his Berlitz language schools were located all around the world. All he needed to do

{p. 136} was set up or buy computer companies through Berlitz Holdings. This would distance him personally from the massive spy project.

A perfect company for Maxwell to take over already existed. Israeli-owned, Degem was a computer business located in Israel, Guatemala, and Transkei, the Bantustan "homeland" controlled by South Africa. The Transkei connection is particularly interesting.

Menachem Begin, Israel's prime minister from 1977 to 1983, had a long-time friend, Yaacov Meridor, who was running various businesses with South Africa through Transkei. A minister without portfolio in Begin's government, he was raking in a fortune in commissions from whatever country wanted to beat the boycott on South Africa by dealing through Transkei. Everything had to go through Meridor or a company he owned. One of these companies was Degem, which was actually controlled by Israel's military intelligence and was providing computer services to the South Africans and to Guatemala.

Poor Meridor became unstuck - and opened the door for Maxwell - when he was caught up in a huge scandal. Along with a Texan, Joe Peeples, and a Romanian expatriate who claimed to be an energy professor, Meridor drew up a blueprint for using the sun as a source of energy to generate vast amounts of electricity. Although this was theoretically feasible, the Meridor blueprint went far beyond the realm of possibility. However, he and his pals succeeded in selling the idea to the wealthy Hunt brothers of Texas for $2 million. For this price, the Hunts were told they had the rights to sell the scheme in the U.S. Meanwhile, Meridor decided that he would seek a huge loan from the Israeli Treasury, but he slipped up badly. He went on TV and told the nation that he was working on a solar energy system with which Israel would never have to use oil or coal for electricity again. All he needed was a little financial backing.

Expecting the money to come pouring in, Meridor was stopped in his tracks when a scientist from the Weizman Institute went on TV three days later and declared the whole thing a fraud. Joe Peeples, who was not able to give the $2 million back to the Hunts, was jailed for fraud. The Romanian, who had not received any of the money, went free. Meridor lost his job as a cabinet

{p. 137} minister - and his credibility. His Transkei operations were another casualty. And then along came Maxwell who, knowing exactly what he was buying it for, sank his money into Degem.

After the initial success with Promis against the Jordanians, and following Maxwell's agreement to buy into Degem, Promis was put to use in the most horrible way in a number of countries. One egregious example was Guatemala. Pesach Ben-Or, a representative for Eagle, a well-connected Israeli arms-dealing company, had been helping the military regime there set up a computer tracking system to fight the leftist insurgency. But it proved to be inadequate.

In 1984 Israeli intelligence came to an arrangement with the man who was calling himself El Jefe de la Nacion - the Chief of the Nation - General Oscar Mejia Victores. He agreed to allow a warehouse to be used for storing weapons coming secretly out of the U.S. en route to Iran and to allow planes carrying arms from Poland to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua to fly over Guatemala and even land there on occasions. The Israelis, with a wink and a nod from the Americans, had been selling certain arms from Poland to the Sandinistas in their fight against the contras. Of course, there were other factions in the U.S. and Israel - including the Oliver North group - who supplied weapons to the contras.

The price Israel had to pay for this agreement was that the Eagle company, run by Pesach Ben-Or in Guatemala and his associate Mike Harari in Panama, and overseen by Ariel Sharon, would continue selling weapons to the Guatemalan government. On top of that, Israel would install a very sophisticated computer program that would help the military stamp out insurgents. The Mossad chief in Israel, Nachum Admoni, told Sharon not to interfere with the computer program, and in turn the intelligence community would not interrupt Eagle's unofficial sale of arms to the Guatemalan military. It was a case of everyone scratching everyone else's back.

In setting up Promis in Guatemala, Israel employed the services of Manfred Herrmann, a German expatriate in his 60s, who owned an automobile spare-parts company in Guatemala City known as Sedra. It was agreed that Herrmann would represent Israel's arms-running company, Ora, in Guatemala, while his

{p. 138} partner, Baldur K. Kleine, would be the representative in Maitland, Florida, from where he would coordinate all our activities in Central America. Shortly after Maxwell took over Degem, Rafi Eitan asked Earl Brian to meet Kleine in Maitland and give him Promis with the trap door in place.

After Kleine passed the program over to Herrmann, I also provided Herrmann with the Israeli version. If the Americans were going to tap into Guatemala, so were we. Because we were running arms through the country, it was in our interests to keep a general watch on things. However, we soon realized that Guatemala just did not have the computer equipment or skilled operators necessary. For Promis to work, everything in the water company and the electric company had to be computerized. Not only that, lists of identification numbers would have to be updated and a new census conducted. With so much information then available and with suspicious characters going into a central computer, Israel and the U.S. would be able to break in to the central system and learn everything the Guatemalan government knew.

Israel turned to Honeywell, the Israeli franchise of which was owned by Medan Computers Ltd. All the technicians working for Medan were military intelligence reservists and experts on computers. Those at the top were made aware of the Promis program, although they did not know about the trap door. When Medan pointed out that their computers would not be suitable, we arranged for them to act as brokers for IBM equipment in Guatemala.

In that same year, 1984, Guatemala was swept up in a campaign led by El Jefe himself to bring the nation into the computer age. TV radio, and newspapers lauded the move. Computers, it was said, would give jobs to everybody. Common people would no longer have to live in the Dark Ages. Photographs were produced, showing lines of young women sitting behind computers. It was compelling stuff. Every soldier in the army, many of whom could hardly read or write, was taught to use a keyboard. Maxwell's Degem, through Herrmann's Sedra company, moved into offices, railway stations, and airports, and even set up terminals at the most remote roadblocks.

The venture, from the intelligence point of view, was a major success. Suspected dissidents couldn't move anywhere without

{p. 139} Big Brother watching them. Even if they traveled under a false name, various characteristics, such as height, hair color, age, were fed into roadside terminals and Promis searched through its database looking for a common denominator. It would be able to tell an army commander that a certain dissident who was in the north three days before had caught a train, then a bus, stayed at a friend's house, and was now on the road under a different name. That's how frightening the system was. By late 1985 virtually all dissidents - and an unknown number of unidentified innocents - had been rounded up. In a country whose rulers had no patience for such people, 20,000 government opponents either died or disappeared.

And how was it all funded? In 1985 Guatemala started to be used heavily as a drug transit point to the United States from South America. Mejia, the Chief of the Nation, was, in fact, a much bigger drug boss than Noriega. Massive amounts of drugs were shipped into the United States, and part of the revenue went back to Guatemala to help finance the Promis operation. This would all have been impossible without the wink and the nod that the CIA gave.

In Transkei, Degem was of immense help to the white South African regime. Promis was trap-doored because the Israelis were interested in a number of people in South Africa. Promis, in effect, was a killing machine used against black revolutionary groups, including the African National Congress. Almost 12,000 activists were affected by the beginning of 1986 - picked up, disappeared, or maimed in "black-on-black" violence. "Kushi kills Kushi" became a well-known term in Israeli intelligence circles with Chief Gatsha Buthelesi's black death squads doing the dirty work.

It was a simple operation: As a result of Maxwell buying Degem, Promis was installed in the Transkei. It pulled in information on dissidents, and death lists were drawn up and handed over to Buthelesi and his group, who went out on the rampage to finish them off.

At one point a planned strike by black miners was stopped when Promis was used to find the instigators. They all disappeared as Promis tracked them down through their required identity passes. Of course the South African security network just

{p. 140 }loved it. The computer, which had become their ally, had links to the computer in the military compound in Pretoria, and although it was the Israeli version that was being used, the information went straight to the American Embassy for one very simple reason. The embassy has a common wall with the military compound, so it was nothing to string a wire between the two establishments.

The hypocrisy of it all was that Robert Maxwell was officially against any relations with racist South Africa, and his Daily Mirror, which he had bought in 1984 for £113 million, had championed one-man, one-vote, regardless of race. Yet under cover of his Degem company he was actually helping the South African government in a way they had never been helped before. If he had said no to Israel, no doubt some other company would have been used to get Promis going, but at least Maxwell's conscience would have been clear.

Promis was sold all over the world. With their respective intelligence connections, Earl Brian's Hadron and Maxwell's Degem engaged in friendly competition, wiring the world for intelligence purposes. The Americans, through Hadron, sold Promis to a number of countries, including Britain, Australia, South Korea, Iraq, and Canada. Many of the secrets of those nations' intelligence agencies were read through the Promis trap door by the Americans. Moreover, the CIA was making a fortune hawking Promis software. Up to 1989 they had made at least $40 million from that venture alone.

The Israelis, through Degem, sold Promis to the East Bloc and other countries, including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Nicaragua. An abridged version of Promis, including the trap door, was also sold by Degem to Credit Suisse in 1985. The Likud Party, which had control over Israel's intelligence network, was very interested in knowing which Israelis might have opened accounts there. After finding out who had lodged rake-off money there, the party could approach the individuals and ask for a "donation" - or threaten exposure.

Maxwell's Degem even sold Promis to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. The path had been cleared for Degem to get into the

{p. 141} Soviet Union - in 1986 and 1987, a computer company, TransCapital Corporation, of Norwalk, Connecticut, had been allowed to export high-tech IBM computers to the Soviet Union, even though there was a general ban on selling such equipment to the East Bloc. But the CIA's Robert Gates had lifted the barriers. When the Soviets expressed a desire to have Promis, Degem technicians fitted it to the IBM computers, complete with the tell-all trap door. In early 1991, before the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet military intelligence, GRU, was still using Promis. So whether he knew about the trap door or not, Maxwell gave the Americans a direct line into Soviet military intelligence.

I believe that one of the reasons I was arrested in 1989 on a trumped-up arms charge was that I, on behalf of the Israeli government, threatened to expose what the Americans were doing with Promis if they continued their support of chemical weapons being supplied to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Leigh Ratiner, the attorney who was representing Inslaw and the Hamiltons on behalf of his Washington firm, Dickstein and Shapiro, also had something strange happen to him when he began to find out about the real use of Promis. Suddenly, he was called in by his senior partners and told they wanted him to leave the case and the firm, and they started negotiating his severance agreement. Ratiner received $120,000 a year for five years, provided he agreed not to practice law during that period. Ratiner, who was always puzzled by the abrupt dismissal from a firm he had been with for ten years, assumed that the Inslaw case was the reason, but was not sure why. Some time after his dismissal, he saw a memo from his old firm's files which reported that, a week before he was called on the carpet, an assistant attorney general had been talking to one of the firm's partners and had advised that they ought to get rid of Ratiner. That was all Ratiner learned.

He did not know what I knew. A few weeks before Ratiner's dismissal I had seen a cable that came in to the Joint Committee from the United States. It requested that a $600,000 transfer from the CIA-Israeli slush fund be made to Earl Brian's firm, Hadron. The money, the cable said, was to be transferred by Brian to Leonard Garment's law firm, Dickstein and Shapiro, to be used to get one of the Inslaw lawyers, Leigh Ratiner, off the case. Ratiner, it seems, was removed for doing too good a job for Inslaw.

{end}

(2) Bin Laden given PROMIS software?

I was shocked to find that the Australian Police record data into PROMIS software. This, no doubt, is common to police forces throughout much of the world.

The following Christian Fundamentalist site reports that Bin Laden has been given PROMIS software ("spyware"); but they've got the interpretation wrong. Implying that the CIA goofed, they say that Bin Laden can now use this software to carry out missions. Bush snr is implicated, they say.

Ari Ben Menashe explains that PROMIS software is a Trojan Horse, given to hostile governments in an apparent gesture of good faith, but that Mossad and the CIA have their own ways of accessing the PROMIS data.

After the following report, written by Editor@endtimezwarriorz.com, I explain where they have it wrong.

Osama Bin Laden and Promis[e] Software

Bin Laden has obtained top intelligence gathering and data-manipulating software capable of hiding and facilitating financial transfers, personnel travel.

By Eric Jewell Jan. 7, 2003

http://www.greaterthings.com/News/911/OsamabinLaden/promis.htm

Fox news yesterday flashed breaking news, which will undoubtedly be quickly killed in the popular media because of the embarrassing implications on our intelligence agencies and the Bush family in particular. Osama Bin Laden has obtained a version of "Promis[e] software" from the FBI by way of Russia.

The History of "Promis[e]"

Promise software resembles what we know as NCIC, which is software used by police agencies in the U.S., which creates a database with the ability to track or identify individuals. In 1983 under the Reagan administration, Earl Brian, representing the UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, contacted Bill Hamilton, owner of "Inslaw". The Justice Department contracted Inslaw to create and later modify the software so that it could be used by Intelligence agencies and another version to be used by financial institutions such as BCCI.

Michael Riconosciuto was a government operative chosen by the Justice Department who actually made the modifications according to secret government specifications. These modifications were made at the Cabazon Indian reservation where at the same time Robert Booth Nichols oversaw the manufacture of arms and ammunition supplied to Ollie North in his now infamous guns for drugs scandal. One Al Holbert who was also an Israeli Intelligence officer recruited Riconosciuto into the CIA out of Stanford University in the 1960's.

One "modification" Michael was responsible for was the creation of a back door that could be accessed by anyone in the government who knew the code. Of course those who knew were very few and consisted of the darker elements of our government who have been instrumental in moving us toward the New World Order. This made it possible for factions within the US government to access any financial institution or intelligence agency computer undetected with just a few keystrokes giving them the ability to add, change, or delete files at will.

According to Riconosciuto, Wackenhut Security, whose board has for years been occupied by former Reagan and Bush cabinet members, was very instrumental in obtaining high tech software for the government, and what happened later to Inslaw fits perfectly with their mode of operation. While being interviewed by Carol Marshal, author of "The Last Circle", Riconosciuto informed her,É"Basically, what you have is a group of politically well connected people through Wackenhut who wanted to get juicy defense contracts when Ronald Reagan got elected president. And they did! They also preyed on high tech start up companies, many of them out of Silicon Valley in California.

"They saw technology that they wanted and they either forced the companies into bankruptcy or waited on the sidelines, like vultures, and picked them up for pennies after they were bankrupt."

Indeed After "Promise" was finished the Justice Department reneged on payment for the software. Inslaw had invested millions developing "Promise" and was forced into bankruptcy.

In a sworn affidavit (1) Lester Coleman testified for the Inslaw company in their suit against the Justice Department. Coleman lived in Iran and was recruited by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in 1984. He states in his sworn testimony...

"(6) During my two stints as a DIA covert intelligence officer seconded to the DEA in Nicosia, Cyprus, I became aware of the fact that DEA was using its proprietary company, Euramae Trading Company, Ltd. to sell computer software called PROMISE or PROMIS to the drug abuse control agencies of various countries in the Middle East, including Cyprus, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Turkey.

"(7) I personally witnessed the unpacking at the Nicosia, Cyprus, Police Force Narcotics Squad of boxes containing reels of computer tapes and computer hardware. The boxes bore the name and red logo of a Canadian corporation with the words `PROMISE' or `PROMIS' and `Ltd' in the company name.

"(8) The DEA objective in inducing the implementation of this computerized PROMIS[E] system in the drug abuse control agencies of the Middle East countries was to augment the drug control resources available to the United States Government by making it possible for the United States Government to access sensitive drug control law enforcement and intelligence files of these Middle East governments.

"(9) It is also my understanding that third party funds were generally made available for the purchase of these computer software and hardware systems. One third party funding source was the United Nations Fund for Drug Abuse Control in Vienna, Austria.

"(10) As DEA Country Attaché for Cyprus, Michael T. Hurley had overall responsibility for both the Euramae Trading Company, Ltd. and its initiative to sell PROMIS[E] computer systems to Middle East countries for drug abuse control.

"(11) In 1990, DEA reassigned Hurley to a DEA intelligence position in Washington State.

"(12) I became aware in 1991 that Michael Riconosciuto, known to me as a longtime CIA asset, was arrested in Washington State by DEA for the manufacturing of illegal chemical drugs. I had also become aware of the fact that Riconosciuto had made a sworn statement, prior to his arrest, about his participation in a covert U.S. intelligence initiative to sell Inslaw's PROMISE software to foreign governments.

"(13) In light of Hurley's personal involvement in the U.S. Government's covert intelligence initiative to sell PROMIS[E] software to foreign governments and his reassignment to a DEA intelligence position in Washington State in advance of the DEA's arrest of Riconosciuto, the arrest of Riconosciuto should be regarded as suspect. I do not believe that Hurley's posting to a drug intelligence position in Washington State in advance of Riconosciuto's arrest on drug charges is merely coincidental. Rather, the probability is that Hurley was reassigned to Washington State to manufacture a case against Riconosciuto in order to prevent Riconosciuto from becoming a credible witness about the U.S. Government's covert sale of the PROMIS software to foreign governments.

"(14) The investigative journalist Danny Casolaro contacted me in Europe on August 3, 1991. Mr. Casolaro had leads and hard information about things that I know about, including Department of Justice groups operating overseas, the sale of PROMIS[E] software by the U.S. Government to foreign governments, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and the Iran-Contra scandal. I subsequently learned of Mr. Casolaro's death in Martinsburg, West Virginia, one week later, on August 10, 1991. I contacted Inslaw in October 1991, after learning about Mr. Casolaro's death under suspicious circumstances."

Signed and sworn to before me this 10th day of August, 1991. Melissa J. Corbett Notary Public My Commission Expires: June 14th, 1994

August 10, 1991, Danny Casolaro, a freelance journalist died uncovering this information just before completing his book which implicated MCA, the US Intelligence community, BCCI, Promise software and specific men of great power. Ted Gunderson as well verifies many of these facts. Gunderson is by no means someone of questionable reputation. He has served as Special Agent, Special Agent Supervisor, Assistant Special Agent -in-Charge for New Haven and Philadelphia, Special Agent-in-Charge for Memphis and Dallas, and Senior Special Agent-in-Charge for LA. He is also the man who tipped off Riconosciuto's connection to the "Promise" scam and testified for him when he was set up with 900 pounds of methamphetamine after signing an affidavit for the Hamiltons in their case against the Justice Department. He is also the man who forced radio personality Art Bell to retire from his popular radio/internet program "Coast to Coast."

Ramifications

Today, financial institutions and Intelligence departments use Promise software worldwide. This means that factions of the US government can quickly access any computer in these networks. The implications are astounding. This gives the ability to add, delete, or modify any file or files within any given intelligence agency using this software. A picture can be put with any name and any information and make it possible for whole terrorist organizations to travel freely with false papers just because the computers were hacked into and all the information fed into them to effectively change any identity. The possibilities within financial institutions are equally as great. Accounts can be created and funds moved from any account to any account.

The question is, why was Bin Laden recently provided with a copy of this software? The answer may possibly be found in both the intelligence and the financial arenas. Now his men which were trained by the CIA can travel freely with no fear of reprisal. George Bush Sr. was vice president when the software was developed, and is a definite insider of this faction of government that sent Promise worldwide. He is connected to the Bin Laden family through the Carlyle Group, which means that both the Bin Laden fortune and the Bush fortune are greatly increased with every military act. The problem is finances if Osama is to remain armed and create worldwide fear to carry on the Bush Agenda of turning America into a police state and leading us further into the New World Order, he needs further funding. With the "Promise" software Bin Laden need never worry again about how we will further fund him. Bank accounts can be very messy in that they can be traced, and indeed much US money has been traced to him already and then quickly buried. Now he has the ability to just create an account in any name to be collected whenever it is needed to obtain whatever is deemed necessary. ...

{end}

(3) PROMIS incident number: 887890

Promis is an international surveillance database.

The following is from the transcript of my court case in the Canberra Magistrates' Court. I had been booked for riding a bicycle without a helmet; in fact, I had been wearing a padded hat to protect my head from the cold winter winds off the snow.

The policeman who booked me reported that the 2-week blitz against cyclists had a PROMIS incident number:

{Peter M} The police notice about this bicycle campaign, includes a reference to the PROMIS incident number. It says the PROMIS incident number for the campaign is 887890. What does this mean?

{Constable Bailey} Your Worship, the PROMIS incident number refers to the number that that job is on the computer. What it means is, when you want to update the computer that this operational order is involved with, you can get into the job and update it with any information you want.

{Peter M} Is not PROMIS a computer program for surveillance?

{Constable Bailey} Not that I'm aware of.

{Peter M} Can I inform you that it is? There is a book called Profits of War by an author called Ari Ben Menashe, M-e-n-a-s-h-e, was published in Australia, I believe by Angus & Robertson. And it describes how this particular computer software was developed by the CIA and Mossad

MS McKAY: Yes, I believe the defence is making comments now.

MR MYERS: I wish to ask is it as excessive - - -

HER WORSHIP: It's got to be relevant, Mr Myers. Your questions have to be relevant.

MR MYERS: I wish to ask is it as excessive to be entering bicycle riders into a surveillance database?

{Constable Bailey} As I said, your Worship, I wasn't aware - you've given information I wasn't aware of, that it was a surveillance. I was under the assumption that PROMIS was purely a police computer system in relation to police matters, I wasn't aware that it was in relation to surveillance.

{Peter M} If it is a surveillance database, isn't it excessive to be entering bicycle riders into such a database?

HER WORSHIP: Mr Myers, Constable Bailey has said that as far as he's aware it's not a surveillance database.

MR MYERS: No, he said he didn't know. But I can inform you that it is. In fact I should have brought the book. Do you concede that it is suggestive of Big Brother, as depicted in George Orwell's book - - -

HER WORSHIP: I'm not going to allow you to ask that question, Mr Myers, it's not relevant to this. I mean the issue is whether you did or did not wear a helmet. That's really the issue here. ...

{end}

Newer computer operating systems have "background housekeeping". This means that, at times, the computer will do things you didn't tell it to, such as building indexes. But it could also be performing surveillance on you.

Windows, from 95 up, is bugged. This means that it contains a trapdoor, and the NSA has a key: http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/5263/1.html.

To probe this further, search for "windows NSA key" in a search engine.

Not only Windows, but all newer OS may be bugged.

A Mac expert informed me that the Mac OS is bugged from version 9 up. A Unix expert informed me that Unix is probably bugged too - even Open Source Unix. It would be possible to bug it because it's so complex, and written in the cryptic language "C".

Don't trust encryption; and back up your OS & data regularly.

How Big Brother can keep info on your computer: http://www.phaster.com/unpretentious/browsing.html.

But for better protection, switch to Mac or Unix - Department of Homeland Security Standardizes on Mac OS 10 (X): http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07616.

Soviet spies steal a Trojan Horse - causing a gas explosion:

"the Russians were trying to steal Western technology. A KGB insider then gained access to Russian purchase orders and the CIA slipped the flawed software to the Russians." sutton.html.

If Bin Laden has been given PROMIS, it is not a goofup by the CIA, but a plan to trap him and his associates, as Ari Ben-Menashe explains.

To purchase Profits of War from Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1879823012/o/qid=974576959/sr=2-1/t/104-1659122-1959116

More from Ari Ben-Menashe: the Capture of Mordecai Vanunu: vanunu.html.

Gordon Thomas, a writer of political "thrillers", including material about PROMIS being mistakenly "given" to Saddam and Bin Laden by a goofy CIA, is probably a Mossad P.R. agent: wtc.html.

Crying "wolf" in this way disguises the fact that PROMIS is a trojan horse.

Subject: Top Spy Catcher Quits

EXCLUSIVE

AMERICA'S TOP SPY CATCHER QUITS IN MIDST OF SECRET INVESTIGATION INTO HOW SADDAM AND BIN LADEN OBTAINED STATE OF THE ART U.S. SOFTWARE

by Gordon Thomas:

http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/pubarchive_show_message.php?globeintel+137

{end}

Write to me at mailto:myers@cyberone.com.au.

[Anti_Illuminati]

http://cryptome.org/promis-mossad.htm

28 August 2000.

The Toronto Star is running a series on Canadian investigation of spying by the US and Israel on Canadian intelligence agencies through the use of a powerful search and surveillance software named "Promis," which allegedly had a backdoor installed by Israeli intelligence. This Promis allegation is attributed by The Star to the 1999 book, Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad, by Gordon Thomas, Thomas Dunne Books, New York. ISBN 0-312-25284-6. Below are Promis excerpts from Gideon's Spies.

The Toronto Star series (thanks to J. Orlin Grabbe):

    August 25, 2000:
    Spy computer `trap' probed. Rigged software claimed to hack intelligence files

    http://www.thestar.com/thestar/back_issues/ED20000825/news/20000825NEW01_NA-SPY.html

    August 28, 2000:
    'Spy trap' probe now tied to U.S. and Britain. Murdered pair may have links to software plot (URLs may change from current to back issues)

    http://thestar.com/editorial/updates/top/20000828NEW01b_NA-MOUNTIE28.html

    Mounties debugged spy software in '94: Ex-agent. But U.S., Israel drained secrets for a decade before discovery

    http://www.thestar.com/thestar/editorial/news/20000828NEW06_NA-SPY.html

For more on Michael Riconoscuito, the person whom The Star describes as "the American computer whiz who has publicly claimed he helped prepare Inslaw's Promis software for sale to Canada in 1983 and 1984,":

    http://orlingrabbe.com/ricono.htm

See also the William Hamilton/INSLAW Case Archive at the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

    http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/INSLAW/

Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad

Chapter 10

[excerpts, pages 203-219]

In 1967, communications expert William Hamilton returned to the United States from Vietnam, where he had devised a network of electronic listening posts to monitor the Vietcong as its forces moved through the jungle. Hamilton was offered a job with the National Security Agency. His first task had been to create a computerized Vietnamese-English dictionary that proved to be a powerful aid to translating Vietcong messages and interrogating prisoners.

It was an era when the revolution in electronic communications- satellite technology and microcircuitry-was changing the face of intelligence gathering: faster and more secure encryption and better imagery were coming online at increasing speed. Computers grew smaller and faster; more sophisticated sensors were able to separate thousands of conversations; photographic spectrum analysis lifted from millions of dots only the ones that were of interest; microchips made it possible to hear a whisper a hundred yards away; infrared lenses let one see in the black of night.

The fiber-optic sinews of a new society had contributed to operational intelligence: to amass and correlate data on a scale far beyond human capability offered a powerful tool in searching for a pattern and a modus operandi in terrorist actions. Work had started on the computer-driven Facial-Analysis Comparison and Elimi- nation System (FACES) that would revolutionize the system of identifying a person from photographs. Based on forty-nine characteristics, each categorized on a 1 to 4 scale, FACES could make 15 million binary yes/no decisions in a second. Interlinked computers did simultaneous searches to eventually make a staggering 40 million binary decisions a second. Computers themselves had begun to reduce in size but retained a memory that contained the equivalent information of a five-hundred-page reference book.

Still working for the NSA, Hamilton saw an opening in this ever-expanding market; he would create a software program to interface with data banks in other computer systems. Its application in in- telligence work would mean that the owner of the program would be able to interdict most other systems without, their users' being aware. A patriotic man, Hamilton intended his first client for the system would be the United States government.

Just as NASA had given the country an unassailable lead in space technology, so William Hamilton was confident he would do the same for the U.S. intelligence community. Encouraged by the NSA, the inventor worked sixteen-hour days, seven days a week. Obsessive and secretive, he was the quintessential researcher; the NSA was full of them.

After three years, Hamilton was close to producing the ultimate surveillance tool -- a program that could track the movements of literally untold numbers of people in any part of the world. President Reagan's warning to terrorists, "You can run, but you can't hide, was about to come true.

Hamilton resigned from the NSA and purchased a small company called Inslaw. The company's stated function was to cross- check court actions and discover if there was common background to litigants, witnesses and their families, even their attorneys -- anyone involved or becoming involved in an action. Hamilton called the system Promis. By 1981, he had developed it to the point where he could copyright the software and turn Inslaw into a small, profit-making company. The future looked promising.

The NSA protested that he had made use of the agency's own research facilities to produce the program. Hamilton hotly rejected the allegation but offered to lease Promis to the Justice Department on a straightforward basis: each time the program was used, Inslaw would receive a fee. The proposed deal itself was unremarkable; Justice, like any governinent department, had hundreds of contractors providing services. Unknown to Hamilton, Justice had sent a copy of Hamilton's program to the NSA for "evaluation."

The reasons this was done would remain unclear. Hamilton had already demonstrated to Justice that the Promis program could do what he claimed: electronically probe into the lives of people in a way never before possible. For justice and its investigative arm, the FBI, Promis offered a powerful tool to fight the Mafia's money-laundering and other criminal activities. Overnight it could also revolutionize the DEA's fight against the Colombian drug barons. To the CIA, Promis could become a weapon every bit as effective as a spy satellite. The possibilities seemed endless.

In the meantime, one of those characters the world of international wheeling and dealing regularly produces had heard about Promis. Earl Brian had been California's secretary of health during Reagan's time as state governor. Largely because Brian spoke Farsi, Reagan had encouraged him to put together a Medicare plan for the Iranian government. It was one of those quixotic ideas the future president of the United States loved: a version of Medicare would show Iran a positive side of America and at the same time improve the United States' image in the region. In a memorable phrase to Brian, the governor said, "If Medicare works in California, it can work anywhere."

During his visits to Tehran, Brian had come to the attention of Rafi Eitan, who was then one of the helmsmen steering the arms-for-hostages deal ever closer to the rocks. He invited Brian to Israel. They immediately struck up a rapport. Brian was captivated by his host's account of capturing Eichmann; Rafi Eitan was equally fascinated by his guest's description of Californian life in the fast lane.

Rafi Eitan soon realized that Brian could not widen his own circle of contacts in Iran and privately thought Reagan's idea for a Medicare program in Iran was "just about the craziest thing I had heard for a long time." Over the years the two men had stayed in touch; Rafi Eitan had even found time to send Brian a postcard from Apollo, Pennsylvania, where he was checking out the Numec plant. It contained the message, "This is a good place to be -- from." Brian had kept Rafi Eitan informed about Promis.

In 1990 Brian arrived in Tel Aviv. He was more than weary from his long flight; the paleness on his face came from anger that the Justice Department was using a version of the Promis program to track money-laundering and other criminal activities.

Rafi Eitan's instincts told him that his old friend could not have arrived at a more opportune time. Once more conflict had flared between Mossad and the other members of the Israeli intelligence community. The cause was a new Arab uprising, the Intifada. Promis could be an effective weapon to counter its activities.

The revolution had spread with remarkable speed, stunning the Israelis and galvanizing the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The more people the Israeli army arrested, shot, beat, and uprooted from their homes, the swifter the Intifada spread. There was something close to grudging understanding outside Israel when a young Arab boy used a hang glider to evade Israel's sophisticated border defenses with Lebanon and land in scrubland close to the small northern town of Kiryat Shmona. In a few minutes the youth killed six heavily armed Israeli soldiers and wounded seven more before he was shot dead.

The incident became enshrined in Palestinian minds; within the Israeli intelligence community there was furious finger-pointing. Shin Bet blamed Aman; both blamed Mossad for its failure to provide advance warning from Lebanon. Worse followed. Six dangerous terrorists escaped from the maximum-security jail in Gaza. Mossad blamed Shin Bet. That agency said the escape plot had been organized from outside the country -- which made Mossad culpable.

Almost daily, Israeli soldiers and civilians were shot dead in the streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. Desperate to regain authority, Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced he was implementing a policy of "force, might and beatings," but it had little effect.

Beset by deepening interservice strife, the Israeli intelligence community was unable to agree on a coordinated policy to deal with mass Arab resistance on a scale not seen since the War of Independence. An added thorn was the criticism from the United States over the growing evidence on TV screens of the brutal methods deployed by Israeli soldiers. For the first time U.S. networks, normally friendly to Israel, began to screen footage which, for sheer brutality, matched what had happened in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Two Israeli soldiers were filmed relentlessly smashing a rock against the arm of a Palestinian youth; an IDF patrol was caught on camera beating a pregnant Palestinian mother; children in Hebron were shown having IDF rifle butts smashed against their bodies for throwing stones.

The Intifada coalesced to form the United National Leadership of the Uprising. Every Arab community was postered with instructions in Arabic on how to stage strikes, close shops, boycott Israeli goods, refuse to recognize the civil administration. It was reminiscent of the resistance in the last days of the German occupation of France in World War II.

Desperate to reestablish Mossad's preeminent role among the intelligence community, Nahum Admoni took action. On February 14, 1988, a kidon team was sent to the Cypriot port of Limassol. They planted a powerful bomb on the chassis of a Volkswagen Golf. It belonged to one of the leaders of the Intifada, Muhammad Tamimi. With him were two senior PLO officers. They had met with Libyan officials who had handed over $1 million to continue bankrolling the Intifada. All three men were killed in the massive explosion that rocked the entire port.

The following day, Mossad struck again-planting a limpet mine on the hull of the Soi Phayne, a passenger ship the PLO had just bought for an intended public relations exercise. With the world's press on board, the ship would have sailed to Haifa as a poignant reminder of the Palestinians' "right to return" to their homeland -- and a more pointed reminder of the Jewish boats, immortalized by the Exodus, which, forty years before, had defied the British navy to bring the survivors of the Holocaust to Israel, also under their "right to return." The Soi Phayne was destroyed.

The operations had done nothing to daunt Arab determination. At every turn guerrillas were able to outsmart the Israelis, whose only response seemed to be violence and more violence. The world watched as Israel not only failed to stop the Intifada but also lost the propaganda war. Commentators made the comparison that here was a modern-day David-versus-Goliath conflict, with the IDF cast in the role of the Philistine giant.

Yasser Arafat used the Intifada as an opportunity to regain control over his dispossessed people. Around the world his voice cracked with fury on radio and television that what was happening was the direct result of Israel's policy of stealing Arab land. He urged every Arab to rally in support. One day Arafat was in Kuwait urging Hamas, the terrorist group backed by Iran, to provide its deadly skills. The next he was in Lebanon, meeting with the leaders of Islamic Jihad. Arafat was achieving what had, only a short time before, seemed impossible-uniting Arabs of all persuasions in a common cause. To them all he was "Mr. Palestine" or "Chairman."

Mossad was constantly flummoxed by Arafat's strategies as he flitted between Arab capitals. It had little or no warning where he would turn up, or whom he would next rally to his side.

All this and more Rafi Eitan explained to his houseguest, Earl Brian. In turn Brian described how Promis worked. In his view, there was still work to be done to bring the program up to speed. Rafi Eitan realized that Promis could then have an impact on the Intifada. For a start, the system could lock on to computers in the PLO's seventeen offices scattered around the world to see where Arafat was going and what he could be planning. Rafi Eitan put aside his foraging for scrap metal and focused on how to exploit the brave new world Promis offered.

No longer, for instance, would it be necessary to rely solely on human intelligence to understand the mind-set of a terrorist. With Promis it would be possible to know exactly when and where he would strike. Promis could track a terrorist's every step.

To achieve such a breakthrough would once more undoubtedly make him a powerful figure in the Israeli intelligence community. But the wounds inflicted on him by his former peers had gone deep. He had been turned out into the cold with little more than a modest pension. He was getting on in years; his first obligation was to his family, whom, through his work, he had been forced to neglect for long periods. Promis offered an opportunity to make amends; handled properly, it could make his fortune. However, for all his brilliance, Rafi Eitan was no computer genius; his skills in that area extended to little more than switching on his modem. But his years at LAKAM had given him access to all the experts he would need.

When Earl Brian returned to the United States, Rafi Eitan put together a small team of former LAKAM programmers. They deconstructed the Promis disc and rearranged its various components, then added several elements of their own. There was no way for anyone to be able to claim ownership of what Promis had become. Rafi Eitan decided to keep the original name because it was "a good marketing tool to explain what the system was."

Intelligence operatives, untrained in computer technology beyond knowing which keys to tap, would be able to access information and judgments far more comprehensive than they could ever carry in their own heads. A Promis disc could fit a laptop computer and choose from a myriad of alternatives the one that made most sense. It would eliminate the need for deductive reasoning because there were too many correct but irrelevant matters to simultaneously take into account for human reasoning alone to suffice. Promis could be programmed to eliminate all superfluous lines of inquiry and amass and correlate data at a speed and scale beyond human capability.

But before it could be sold, according to Ben-Menashe, Rafi Eitan needed to add one further element. Ben-Menashe claims he was summoned a played a large part in inserting a "trapdoor," a built-in chip that, unknown to any purchaser, would allow Rafi Eitan to know what information was being sought.

Ben-Menashe knew someone who could create a trapdoor that even the most sophisticated scanners would be unable to detect. The man ran a small computer research and development company in Northern California. He and Ben-Menashe had been schoolboy friends, and for five thousand dollars he agreed to produce the microchip. It was, Ben-Menashe admitted, cheap at the price. The next stage would be to test the system.

Jordan was selected as the site, not only because it bordered on Israel, but because it had become a haven for the leaders of the Intifada. From the desert kingdom, they directed the Arab street mobs on the West Bank and Gaza to launch further attacks inside Israel. After an atrocity, PLO terrorists would slip across the border into Jordan, doing so often with the connivance of the Jordanian army.

Consequently, long before the Intifada, Jordan had become a proving ground for Mossad to develop its electronic skills. In the 1970s, Mossad technicians had tapped into the computer IBM had sold to the country's military intelligence service. The information gained had supplemented that provided by the deep-cover katsa Rafi Eitan had placed inside King Hussein's palace. Promis would offer much more.

To sell it directly to Jordan was impossible because normal business links between both countries were still some years away. Instead, Earl Brian's company, Hadron, made the deal. When the company's computer experts installed the program in Amman's military headquarters, they discovered the Jordanians had a French-designed system to track the movements of PLO leaders. Promis was secretly wired into the French system. In Tel Aviv, Rafi Eitan soon saw results as the trapdoor showed which PLO leaders the Jordanians were tracking.

The next stage was to prepare the sales pitch for Promis. Yasser Arafat was selected as the ideal example. The PLO chairman was renowned for being security-conscious; he constantly changed his plans, never slept in the same bed two nights in succession, altered his mealtimes at the last moment.

Whenever Arafat moved, the details were entered on a secure PLO computer. But Promis could hack into its defenses to discover what aliases and false passports he was using. Promis could obtain his phone bills and check the numbers called. It would then cross-check those with other calls made from those numbers. In that way, Promis would have a "picture" of Arafat's communications.

On a trip he would inform the local security authorities of his presence, and steps would be taken to provide protection. Promis could obtain the details by interdicting police computers. Wherever he went, Yasser Arafat would be unable to hide from Promis.

Rafi Eitan realized that neither Earl Brian nor his company had the resources to market Promis globally. That would require someone with superb international contacts, boundless energy, and proven negotiating skills. There was only one man Rafi Eitan knew who had those requirements: Robert Maxwell.

Maxwell needed little convincing and, in his usual ebullient manner when there was a deal to be profited from, said he had a computer company through which to sell Promis. Degem Computers Limited was based in Tel Aviv and was already playing a useful role in Mossad's activities. Maxwell had allowed Mossad operatives, posing as Degem employees, to use the company's suboffices in Central and South America. Now Maxwell saw an opportunity not only to make a healthy profit from marketing Promis through Degem, but to further establish his own importance to Mossad and ultimately Israel.

On recent visits to Israel he had begun to display disturbing traits. Maxwell told Admoni he should start employing psychics to read the minds of Mossad's enemies. He began to suggest targets for elimination. He wanted to meet kidons and inspect their training camps. All these requests were firmly but politely parried by the Mossad chief. But within Mossad, questions began to be asked about Maxwell. Was his behavior only that of a megalomaniac throwing about his weight? Or was it a precursor of something else? Could the time eventually come when, despite all he had done for Israel, Robert Maxwell became sufficiently mentally unstable and unpredictable to create a problem?

But there was no doubting Maxwell was a brilliant marketeer of Promis -- or, as far as Mossad was concerned, of the effectiveness of the system. The service had been the first to obtain the program and it had been a valuable tool in its campaign against the Intifada. Many of its leaders had left Jordan for safer hideouts in Europe after several had been assassinated in Jordan by kidons.

A spectacular success came when an Intifada commander who had moved to Rome called a Beirut number that Mossad's computers already had listed as the home of a known bomb maker. The Rome caller wanted to meet the bomb maker in Athens. Mossad used Promis to check all the travel offices in Rome and Beirut for the travel arrangements of both men. In Beirut, further checks revealed the bomber had ordered the local utility companies to suspend supplies to his home. A further search by Promis of the local PLO computers also showed the bomber had switched flights at the last moment. It did not save him. He was killed by a car bomb on the way to Beirut airport. Shortly afterward, in Rome, the Intifada commander was killed in a hit-and-run accident.

Meantime, Mossad was using Promis to read the secret intelligence of a number of services. In Guatemala, it uncovered the close ties between the country's security forces and drug traffickers and their outlets in the United States. Names were passed on to the DEA and FBI by Mossad.

In South Africa, a katsa in the Israeli embassy used Promis to track the country's banned revolutionary organization and their contacts with Middle Eastern groups. In Washington, Mossad specialists at the Israeli embassy used Promis to penetrate the communications of other diplomatic missions and U.S. government departments. The same was happening in London and other European capitals. The system had continued to yield valuable information for Mossad. By 1989, over $500 million worth of Promis programs had been sold to Britain, Australia, South Korea, and Canada. The figure would have been even bigger but for the CIA marketing its own version to intelligence agencies. In Britain, Promis was used by MI5 in Northern Ireland to track terrorists and the movements of political leaders like Gerry Adams.

Maxwell had also managed to sell the system to the Polish intelligence service, the UB. In return the Poles, according to Ben-Menashe, allowed Mossad to steal a Russian MiG-29. The operation was a reminder of the theft of the earlier version of the MiG from Iraq. A Polish general in charge of the UB office in Gdansk, in return for $1 million paid into a Citibank account in New York, had arranged for the aircraft to be written off as no longer airworthy, though the plane had only recently arrived from its Russian aircraft factory. The fighter was dismantled, placed in t crates marked "Agricultural Machinery," and flown to Tel Aviv. There the plane was reassembled and test-flown by the Israeli air force, enabling its pilots to counter the MiG-29s in service with Syria.

It was weeks before the theft was discovered by Moscow during a routine inventory of aircraft supplied to Warsaw Pact countries. A strong protest was made by Moscow to Israel -- backed by the threat to stop the exodus of Jews from the Soviet Union. The Israeli government, its air force having discovered all the MiG's secrets, apologized profusely for the "mistaken zeal of officers acting unofficially" and promptly returned the aircraft. By then the UB general had joined his dollar fortune in the United States. Washington had agreed to give him a new identity in return for the USAF being allowed to conduct its own inspection of the MiG.

Shortly afterward Robert Maxwell flew to Moscow. Officially he was there to interview Mikhail Gorbachev. In reality he had come to sell Promis to the KGB. Through its secret trapdoor microchip, it gave Israel unique access to Soviet military intelligence, making Mossad one of the best-briefed services on Russian intentions.

From Moscow Maxwell flew to Tel Aviv. As usual he was received like a potentate, excused all airport formalities and welcomed by an official greeter from the Foreign Office.

Maxwell treated him the way he did all his staff, insisting the official carry his bags and sit beside the driver. Maxwell also demanded to know where his motorcycle escort was, and when told it was not available, he threatened to call the prime minister's office to have the greeter fired. At every traffic stop, Maxwell harangued the hapless official, and he continued to do so all the way to his hotel suite. Waiting was Maxwell's favorite prostitute. He sent her running; there were far more pressing matters than satisfying his sexual needs.

In London Robert Maxwell's newspaper empire was in grave financial trouble. Soon, without a substantial injection of capital, it would have to cease operations. But, in the City of London, where he had previously always found funding, there was a reluctance to go on providing it. Hard-nosed financiers who had met Maxwell sensed that behind his bluster and bully-boy tactics was a man who was losing the financial acumen that in the past had allowed them to forgive so much. In those days he had raged and threatened at the slightest challenge. Bankers had curbed their anger and caved in to his demands. But they would no longer do so. In the Bank of England and other financial institutions in the City, the word was that Maxwell was no longer a safe bet.

Their information was partially based on confidential reports from Israel that Maxwell was being pressed by his original Israeli investors to repay them the money that had helped him to acquire the Mirror Group. The time limit on repayments had long gone and the demands from the Israelis had become more insistent. Trying to fend them off, Maxwell had promised them a higher return on their money if they waited. The Israelis were not satisfied: they wanted their money back now. This was why Maxwell had come to Tel Aviv: he hoped to cajole them into granting him another extension. The signs were not good. During the flight, he had received several angry phone calls from the investors, threatening to place the matter before the City of London regulatory body.

There was a further matter for Maxwell to be concerned over. He had stolen some of the very substantial profits from ORA that he had been entrusted to hide in Soviet Bloc banks. He had used the money to try to prop up the Mirror Group. Maxwell had already stolen all he could from the staff pension fund, and the ORA money would not stretch very far.

And, unlike the Israeli investors, once that theft was uncovered, he would find himself confronting some very hard men, among them Rafi Eitan. Maxwell knew enough about the former Mossad operative to realize that would not be a pleasant experience.

From his hotel suite, Maxwell began to strategize. His share of the profits from Degem's marketing of Promis would not be able to stem the crisis. Neither would profits from Maariv, the Israeli tabloid modeled on his flagship Daily Mirror. But there was one possibility, the Tel Aviv-based Cytex Corporation he owned, which manufactured high-tech printing equipment. If Cytex could be sold quickly, the money could go some way to solving matters.

Maxwell ordered Cytex's senior executive, the son of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to his suite. The executive had bad news: a all quick sale was unlikely. Cytex, while holding its own, faced increasing competition. This was not the time to take it to the market. To sell would also throw skilled people out of work at a time when It unemployment was a serious problem in Israel.

The reaction provoked a furious outburst from Maxwell as his last hope of rescue faded. Tactically he made an error in lambasting the prime minister's son, who now told his father that Maxwell was in serious financial trouble. The prime minister, aware of the tycoon's links to Mossad, informed Nahum Admoni. He called a meeting of senior staff to see how to deal with what had become a problem.

Later it emerged that several options were discussed. Mossad could ask the prime minister to use his own considerable influence with the Israeli investors not only to wait a while longer for their money, but to mobilize their own resources and contacts to find money to bail out Maxwell. This was rejected on the grounds that Maxwell had managed to upset Shamir with his cavalier attitude. Everyone knew that Shamir had a strong sense of self-preservation and would now wish to distance himself from Maxwell.

Another option was for Mossad to approach its highly placed sayanim in the City of London and urge them to support a rescue package for Mossad. At the same time Mossad-friendly journalists in Britain could be encouraged to write supportive stories about the troubled tycoon.

Again those suggestions were discounted. Reports Admoni had received from London suggested that many of the sayanim would welcome the end of Maxwell and that few journalists outside Mirror newspapers would dream of writing favorable stories about a tycoon who had spent years threatening the media.

The final option was for Mossad to break off all contact with Maxwell. There was a risk there: Maxwell, on the evidence of his present unpredictable state of mind, could well use his newspapers to actually attack Mossad. Given the access he had been given, that could have the most serious consequences.

On that somber note, the meeting concluded that Admoni would see Maxwell and remind him of his responsibility to both Mossad and Israel. That night the two men met over dinner in Maxwell's hotel suite. What transpired between them would remain a secret. But hours later, Robert Maxwell left Tel Aviv in his private plane. It would be the last time, it would turn out, that anyone in Israel would see him alive.

Back in London, Maxwell, against all the odds, seemed to be succeeding in holding on to his newspaper group. He was likened to an African whirling dervish as he went from one meeting to another seeking financial support. From time to time he called Mossad to speak to Admoni, always informing the director general's secretary that the "little Czech" was on the line. The sobriquet had been bestowed on Maxwell after he had been recruited. What was said in those calls would remain unknown.

But a clue would later emerge from the former katsa, Victor Ostrovsky. He believed Maxwell was insisting it was payback time; that the huge sum of money he had stolen from the Mirror pension fund should now be returned to him. At the same time, Maxwell also proposed that Mossad should, on his behalf, lobby for Mordechai Vanunu to be freed and handed over to him. Maxwell would e( then fly the technician to London and personally interview him for the Daily Mirror. The story would be Vanunu's "act of atonement," written in a way that would show Israel's compassion. With the chutzpah characteristic of so many of his actions, Maxwell added it would be a huge circulation booster for the Mirror and would unlock those doors still closed to him in the City of London.

Ostrovsky was not alone in believing that the preposterous plan finally decided Mossad that Robert Maxwell had become a dangerous loose cannon.

On September 30, 1991, further evidence of Maxwell's bizarre behavior came when he telephoned Admoni. This time there was no disguising the threat in Maxwell's words. His financial affairs had once more taken a turn for the worse, and he was being investigated in Parliament and the British media, so long held at bay by his posse of high-priced lawyers and their quiver of writs. Maxwell then said that unless Mossad arranged to immediately return all the stolen Mirror pension fund money, he could not be sure if he would be able to keep secret Adnioni's ineeting with Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former head of the KGB. Kryuchkov was now in a Moscow prison awaiting trial for his role in an abortive coup to oust Mikhail St Gorbachev. A key element of the plot had been a meeting Kryuchkov had on Maxwell's yacht in the Adriatic shortly before the coup was launched.

Mossad had promised that Israel would use its influence with the United States and key European countries to diplomatically recognize the new regime in Moscow. In return, Kryuchkov would arrange for all Soviet Jews to be released and sent to Israel. The discussion had come to nothing. But revealing it could seriously harm Israel's credibility with the existing Russian regime and with the United States.

That was the moment, Victor Ostrovsky would write, when "a small meeting of right wingers at Mossad headquarters resulted in a consensus to terminate Maxwell." If Ostrovsky's claim is true -- and it has never been formally denied by Israel -- then it was unthinkable that the group was acting without the highest sanction and perhaps even with the tacit knowledge of Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, the man who had once had his own share of killing Mossad's enemies.

The matter for Mossad could only have become more urgent with the publication of a book by the veteran American investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel, America and the Bomb, which dealt with Israel's emergence as a nuclear power. News of the book had caught Mossad totally by surprise and copies were rushed to Tel Aviv. Well researched, it could nevertheless still have been effectively dealt with by saying nothing; the painful lesson of the mistake of confronting Ostrovsky's publisher (also the publisher of this book) had been absorbed. But there was one problem: Hersh had identified Maxwell's links to Mossad. Those ties mostly involved the Mirror Group's handling of the Vanunu story and the relationship between Nick Davies, ORA, and Ari Ben-Menashe. Predictably, Maxwell had taken refuge behind a battery of lawyers, issuing writs against Hersh and his London publishers. But, for the first time, he met his match. Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner, refused to be cowed. In Parliament, more pointed questions were asked about Maxwell's links to Mossad. Old suspicions surfaced. MPs demanded to know, under parliamentary privilege, how much Maxwell knew about Mossad's operations in Britain. For Victor Ostrovsky, "the ground was starting to burn under Maxwell's feet."

Ostrovsky would claim that the carefully prepared Mossad plan to kill Maxwell hinged on being able to persuade him to keep a rendezvous where Mossad could strike. It had a striking similarity to the plot that had led to the death of Mehdi Ben-Barka in Paris. On October 29, 1991, Maxwell received a call from a katsa at the Israeli embassy in Madrid. Maxwell was asked to come to Spain the next day, and, according to Ostrovsky, "his caller promised that things would be worked out so there was no need to panic." Maxwell was told to fly to Gibraltar and board his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, and order the crew to set sail for the Canary Islands "and wait there for a message." Robert Maxwell agreed to do as instructed.

On October 30, four Israelis arrived in the Moroccan port of Rabat. They said they were tourists on a deep-sea fishing vacation and hired an oceangoing motor yacht. They set off toward the Canary Islands.

On October 31, after Maxwell reached the port of Santa Cruz on the island of Tenerife, he dined alone in the Hotel Mency. After dinner a man briefly joined him. Who he was and what they spoke about remain part of the mystery of the last days of Robert Maxwell. Shortly afterward, Maxwell returned to his yacht and ordered it back to sea. For the next thirty-six hours, the Lady Ghislaine sailed between the islands, keeping well clear of land, cruising at various speeds. Maxwell had told the captain he was deciding where to go next. The crew could not recall Maxwell showing such indecision.

In what it claimed was a "world exclusive," headlined "How and why Robert Maxwell was murdered," Britain's Business Age magazine subsequently claimed that a two-man hit team crossed in a dinghy during the night from a motor yacht that had shadowed the Lady Ghislaine. Boarding the yacht, they found Maxwell on the afterdeck. The men overpowered him before he could call for help. Then, one assassin injected a bubble of air into Maxwell's neck via his jugular vein. It took just a few moments for Maxwell to die."

The magazine concluded the body was dropped overboard and the assassins returned to their yacht. It would be sixteen hours before Maxwell was recovered -- enough time for a needle prick to recede beyond detection as a result of water immersion and the skin being nibbled by fish.

More certain, on the night of November 4-5, Mossad's problems with Maxwell were laid to rest in the cold swell of the Atlantic. The subsequent police investigation and the Spanish autopsy left unanswered questions. Why were only two of the yacht's eleven-man crew awake? Normally five shared the night watch. To whom did Maxwell send a number of fax messages during those hours? What became of the copies? Why did the crew take so long to establish Maxwell was not on board? Why did they delay raising the alarm for a further seventy minutes? To this day no convincing answers have emerged.

Three Spanish pathologists were assigned to perform the autopsy. They wanted the vital organs and tissue to be sent to Madrid for further tests. Before this could be done, the Maxwell family intervened, ordering the body embalmed and flown forthwith to Israel for burial. The Spanish authorities, unusually, did not object. Who or what had persuaded the family to suddenly act as it did?

On November 10, 1991 , Maxwell's funeral took place on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, the resting place for the nation's most revered heroes. It had all the trappings of a state occasion, attended by the country's government and opposition leaders. No fewer than six serving and former heads of the Israeli intelligence community listened as Prime Minister Shamir eulogized: "He has done more for Israel than can today be said."

Those who stood among the mourners included a man dressed in a somber black suit and shirt, relieved only at the throat by his Roman collar. Born into a Lebanese Christian family, he was a wraithlike figure-barely five feet tall and weighing little over a hundred pounds. But Father Ibrahim was no ordinary priest. He worked for the Vatican's Secretariat of State. His discreet presence at the funeral was not so much to mark the earthly passing of Robert Maxwell, but to acknowledge the still-secret ties developing between the Holy See and Israel. It was a perfect example of Meir Amit's dictum that intelligence cooperation knows no limits.