Inslaw
Encyclopedia
Inslaw, Inc. is a small, Washington, D.C.-based
, information technology
company. In the mid-1970s, Inslaw developed for the United States Department of Justice
a highly efficient, people-tracking, software program known as: Prosecutor's Management Information System
(Promis). Inslaw's principal owners, William Anthony Hamilton and his wife, Nancy Burke Hamilton, later sued the United States Government (acting as principal to the Department of Justice) for not complying with the terms of the Promis contract and for refusing to pay for an enhanced version of Promis once delivered. This allegation of software piracy
led to three trials in separate federal courts
and two congressional hearing
s.
During ensuing investigations, the Department of Justice was accused of deliberately attempting to drive Inslaw into Chapter 7
liquidation; and of distributing and selling stolen software for covert intelligence operations
of foreign governments such as Canada, Israel, Singapore, Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan; and of becoming directly involved in murder.
Later developments implied that derivative versions of Enhanced Promis sold on the black market may have become the high-tech tools of worldwide terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden
and international money launderers
and thieves.
business created in 1974 by William Anthony Hamilton, "a former analyst with the National Security Agency
and onetime contract employee of the CIA
." Inslaw's original software product, Promis
, was a database designed to handle papers and documents generated by law enforcement agencies and courts. Promis was a people-tracking program which had the power to integrate innumerable databases regardless of their languages, or regardless of their operating platforms. "Every use of Promis in the court system is tracking people," explained Hamilton. "You can rotate the file by case, defendant, arresting officer, judge, defense lawyer, and it's tracking all the names of all the people in all the cases."
Promis was funded almost entirely by government funds; therefore versions created prior to January 1978 were in the public domain
. On January 1, 1978, amendments to the Copyright Act of 1976
took effect, automatically conferring upon Inslaw as the author of Promis five exclusive software copyright rights, none of which could be waived except by explicit, written waiver. The federal government
negotiated licenses to use but not to modify or to distribute outside the federal government some but not all versions of Promis created after the January 1978 effective-date of the copyright amendments. In 1981, after Congress liquidated the Justice Department's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration
(LEAA) (which had been the primary source of funds for Inslaw's development of Promis), the company became known as Inslaw, Inc., a for-profit corporation created to further develop and market Promis and other Promis-derivative software product(s).
The newly created corporation made significant improvements to the original software. The resulting product came to be known alternately as Promis '82 or Enhanced Promis, a 32-bit architecture VAX 11/780 version.
In 1981, Edwin Meese
, then an advisor to President Ronald Reagan
, announced an $800 million budget in an effort to overhaul the computer systems of the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI), and other law enforcement agencies. The following year, the Department of Justice awarded Inslaw a $9.6 million, three-year, cost-plus-incentive-fee contract to implement a pilot program in 22 of the largest Offices of the United States Attorney
s using the older 16-bit architecture Prime version (as in Wang, or IBM), which the government had a license to use.
While Promis could have gone a long way toward correcting the Department's longstanding need for a standardized case-management system, the contract between Inslaw and Justice quickly became embroiled for over two decades in bitter controversy. The conflict centered on whether or not the Justice Department owed Inslaw license fees for the new, 32-bit architecture VAX version if the government substituted that version for the older 16-bit Prime version which had been the subject of the original contract.
. The purpose of that meeting was for a Promis briefing and demonstration; the Israeli Ministry of Justice intended to computerize its own prosecution offices. Although it was believed that the Israeli government official was a prosecuting attorney, it was later discovered upon closer examination that the official was really Rafi Eitan
, "Director of LAKAM
, a super-secret agency [within] the Israeli Ministry of Defense responsible for collecting scientific and technical intelligence information from other countries through espionage." Herein is where Inslaw's case becomes convoluted.
Following the Israeli meeting, the Justice Department obtained Inslaw's new, 32-bit, Enhanced Promis from Inslaw at the start of the second year of their Implementation Contract by modifying that contract and by promising to negotiate the payment of license fees. One month later, the U.S. government began to find fault with some of Inslaw's services, and with negotiated billing rates. The government then began to withhold unilaterally each month increasing amounts of payments due Inslaw for implementation services. The Justice Department agent responsible for making payments was a former, fired Inslaw employee, C. Madison Brewer. Brewer would later claim in federal court that everything he did regarding Inslaw was approved by Deputy Attorney General D. Lowell Jensen. "Brewer was aided in his new DoJ job by Peter Videnieks
," wrote Wired (magazine)
, "Videnieks was fresh from the Customs Service
where he oversaw contracts between that agency and Hadron, Inc., a company controlled by [Edwin] Meese
and Reagan-crony Earl Brian
. Hadron, a closely held government systems consulting firm, was to figure prominently in the forthcoming scandal." Both Brewer and Videnieks had obtained their positions under suspicious circumstances, according to the Chicago-based weekly, In These Times
. Furthermore, "Before moving over to the Justice Department and taking charge of the Promis program in September 1981," wrote In These Times
, "Videnieks had administered three contracts between the Customs Service and Hadron...[Hadron] was in the business of integrating information-managing systems such as Promis into federal agencies."
Simultaneously with the withholding of payments in the 1983 Modification 12 agreement, the government then substituted the enhanced VAX version of Promis for the old Prime version originally specified in the contract. However, the government failed to negotiate the payment of license fees as promised, claiming that Inslaw had failed to prove to the government's satisfaction that Inslaw had developed the enhanced version with private, non-government funds and that the enhanced version was not otherwise required to be delivered to the government under any of its contracts with Inslaw—that is, Inslaw had provided it voluntarily.
Yet beneath the surface of this background was a belief that the primary focus of certain top-level individuals within the DoJ was to perpetuate international, covert intelligence operations—for example, to enable Israeli signal intelligence to "surreptitiously access the computerized Jordanian dossiers on Palestinians."
Enhanced Promis was eventually installed in a total of forty-four federal prosecutors' offices following the Modification 12 agreement.
According to affidavits filed by William Hamilton, as the contract details were modified, Hamilton then received a phone call from Dominic Laiti, chief executive of Hadron. Laiti wanted to buy Inslaw. Hamilton refused. According to Hamilton's affidavits, Laiti then warned him that Hadron had friends in government and if Inslaw did not want to sell willingly, Inslaw could be coerced.
By February 1985, the government had withheld payment of almost $1.8 million for Inslaw's implementation services, plus millions of dollars in Old Promis license fees. Inslaw filed for Chapter 11
bankruptcy protection. Meanwhile, the government began highly suspicious activities to force Inslaw into Chapter 7
liquidation.
, formerly the United States Attorney General
under President Richard Nixon
.
Two different federal bankruptcy courts
made fully litigated findings of fact in the late-eighties, ruling that the Justice Department "took, converted, and stole" the Promis installed in U.S. Attorneys' Offices "through trickery, fraud, and deceit," and then attempted "unlawfully and without justification" to force Inslaw out of business so that it would be unable to seek restitution through the courts.
Three months after the initial verdict, George F. Bason, Jr., the federal judge
presiding over the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia, was denied reappointment to a new 14-year term on the bench by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the appointing authority. His replacement, S. Martin Teel, took over shortly after Judge Bason announced his oral findings of malfeasance against Inslaw by the Justice Department; Teel had been the Justice Department Tax Division attorney who had argued unsuccessfully before Judge Bason for the forced liquidation of Inslaw. Leigh Ratiner (of Dickstein, Shapiro and Morin, which was the 10th largest firm in Washington at the time) was fired in October 1986; he had been the lead counsel for Inslaw and had filed the suit against the Justice Department in federal bankruptcy court. His firing came reportedly amidst "back channel" discussions involving the DoJ, his law firm's senior partner, and the Government of Israel; moreover, there were rumors that the Mossad
had arranged a payment of $600,000 to Ratiner's former firm as a separation settlement.
Then, in September 1991, the House Judiciary Committee issued the result of a three-year investigation. House Report 102-857 Inslaw: Investigative Report confirmed the Justice Department's theft of Promis. The report was issued after the Justice Department convinced the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals
on a jurisdictional technicality to set aside the decisions of the first two federal bankruptcy courts. The House Committee also reported investigative leads indicating that friends of the Reagan White House
had been allowed to sell and to distribute Enhanced Promis both domestically and overseas for their personal financial gain and in support of the intelligence and foreign policy objectives of the United States. The report even went so far as to recommend specifically further investigations of both former Attorney General Edwin Meese
and businessman Earl Brian
for their possible involvement in illegally providing or selling Promis "to foreign governments including Canada, Israel, Singapore, Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan." The Democratic majority called upon Attorney General Dick Thornburgh
to compensate Inslaw immediately for the harm that the government had "egregiously" inflicted on Inslaw. The Republican minority dissented. The committee was divided along party lines 21–13. Attorney General Thornburgh ignored the recommendations, and reneged on agreements made with the committee.
, appointed a retired federal judge, Nicholas J. Bua
, as Special Counsel to advise him on the allegations that high-ranking officials had acted improperly for personal gain to bankrupt Inslaw.
By June 1993, a 267-page Bua Report was released, clearing Justice officials of any impropriety. Inslaw's attorney, Elliot Richardson
immediately wrote Inslaw's 130-page Rebuttal with evidence suggesting Bua's report was riddled with errors and falsehoods. On September 27, 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno
released a 187-page review concluding "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." Yet, according to Wired (magazine)
, "Reno's report was released the same day [that] the House Judiciary Committee passed HR 4862, a bill which would have bound the U.S. Court of Federal Claims legally to independently investigate the Inslaw case—thus circumventing the Department of Justice's claims of innocence;" however, HR 4862 was defeated by a partisan committee-vote later that night before it was set to go before the full House.
The following May, the United States Senate
asked the U.S. Court of Federal Claims The U.S. Court of Federal Claims has exclusive jurisdiction over copyright infringement claims against the U. S. Government. to determine if the United States owed Inslaw compensation for the government's use of Promis. On July 31, 1997, Judge Christine Miller, the hearing officer for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that all of the versions of Promis were in the public domain
and that the government had therefore always been free to do whatever it wished with Promis. The following year, the appellate authority, a three-judge Review Panel of the same court, upheld Miller's ruling; yet, it also determined that Inslaw had never granted the government a license to "modify Promis to create derivative software" although Inslaw was automatically vested with the exclusive copyright rights to Promis. The Review Panel then held that the United States would be liable to Inslaw for copyright infringement damages if the government had created any unauthorized derivatives from Promis, but noted that Inslaw "had failed to prove in court that the government had done so;" moreover, the Board held that the issue of "derivative works" was "of no consequence." Inslaw challenged this interpretation but the Review Panel refused Inslaw's request to reopen discovery. In August 1998, Chief Judge Lorin Smith of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims sent an Advisory Report to the Senate, noting that the court had not found that the United States owes Inslaw compensation for the government's use of Promis, and enclosing the decision of the hearing officer and the decision of the Review Panel.
On the other hand, according to William Hamilton, the government flatly denied during all court proceedings what it later admitted, i.e. that agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) and other U.S. intelligence agencies used a Promis-derivative to keep track of their classified information.
titled Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad. The book quotes detailed admissions by the former long-time deputy-director of the Mossad, Rafi Eitan
, about the partnership between Israeli and U.S. intelligence in selling to foreign intelligence agencies in excess of $500 million worth of licenses to a trojan horse
version of Promis, in order to spy on them.
In 2001, the Washington Times and Fox News each quoted federal law enforcement officials familiar with debriefing former FBI Agent Robert Hanssen
as claiming that the convicted spy had stolen copies of a Promis-derivative for his Soviet KGB
handlers.
They further alleged that the software was used within the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies to track internal intelligence, and was used by intelligence operatives to track international interbank transactions. These reports further stated that Osama bin Laden
later bought copies of the same Promis-derivative on the Russian black market (blat
) for $2 million. It was believed then that al Qaeda used the software to penetrate database systems to move funds throughout the banking system, and to evade detection by U.S. law enforcement.
pleaded guilty to passing top-secret classified information
to plotters trying to overthrow the president of the Philippines. Leandro Aragoncillo
, an FBI intelligence analyst at the time of his arrest, was believed to have operated his deception using archaic database software manipulated by the FBI in order to evade the 1995 finding of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims with regard to Inslaw's rights to derivative works. Additionally:
In 2006, there were further allegations of the misuse of Promis. Writing in the Canada Free Press, the former Polish CIA operative and now international journalist, David Dastych alleged that "Chinese Military Intelligence (PLA-2) organized their own hackers department, which [exploited] Promis [database systems] [in the] Los Alamos
and Sandia
national laboratories to steal U.S. nuclear secrets"; however, the prima facie
value of that allegation was lost in a realization that the U.S. Government could not convict the suspected 2001 spy.
The U.S. Government has never paid Inslaw Inc. for any of these unauthorized uses of Promis.
"Inslaw deserves to be compensated," wrote nationally syndicated columnist, Michelle Malkin
, in The Washington Times
. "More importantly, the American people deserve to know the truth: Did government greed and bureaucratic hubris lead to a wholesale sellout of our national security?"
died in what was twice ruled a suicide. Prior to his death, Casolaro had warned friends if they were ever told he had committed suicide not to believe it, and to know he had been murdered. Many have argued that his death was suspicious, deserving closer scrutiny; some have argued further, believing his death was a murder, committed to hide whatever Casolaro had uncovered. "I believe he was murdered," wrote former Attorney General Elliot Richardson in the New York Times, "but even if that is no more than a possibility, it is a possibility with such sinister implications as to demand a serious effort to discover the truth." Kenn Thomas
and Jim Keith
discuss this in their book, The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny CasolaroThe Octopus was the name that Casolaro had intended to title his book. (See also: Alfred W. McCoy
and Claire Sterling
.) Writing on behalf of a majority opinion in House Report 102-857, Committee Chairman, Jack Brooks
(D-TX) wrote, "As long as the possibility exists that Danny Casolaro died as a result of his investigation into the INSLAW matter, it is imperative that further investigation be conducted."
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
company. In the mid-1970s, Inslaw developed for the United States Department of Justice
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
a highly efficient, people-tracking, software program known as: Prosecutor's Management Information System
Prosecutor's Management Information System
The Prosecutor's Management Information System is a database system developed by Inslaw Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based, information technology company....
(Promis). Inslaw's principal owners, William Anthony Hamilton and his wife, Nancy Burke Hamilton, later sued the United States Government (acting as principal to the Department of Justice) for not complying with the terms of the Promis contract and for refusing to pay for an enhanced version of Promis once delivered. This allegation of software piracy
Copyright infringement of software
Copyright infringement of software=The copyright infringement of software refers to several practices which involve the unauthorized copying of computer software. Copyright infringement of this kind varies globally...
led to three trials in separate federal courts
United States federal courts
The United States federal courts make up the judiciary branch of federal government of the United States organized under the United States Constitution and laws of the federal government.-Categories:...
and two congressional hearing
Congressional hearing
Congressional hearings are the principal formal method by which committees collect and analyze information in the early stages of legislative policymaking. Whether confirmation hearings — a procedure unique to the Senate — legislative, oversight, investigative, or a combination of these, all...
s.
During ensuing investigations, the Department of Justice was accused of deliberately attempting to drive Inslaw into Chapter 7
Chapter 7, Title 11, United States Code
Chapter 7 of the Title 11 of the United States Code governs the process of liquidation under the bankruptcy laws of the United States...
liquidation; and of distributing and selling stolen software for covert intelligence operations
Special Activities Division
The Special Activities Division is a division in the United States Central Intelligence Agency's National Clandestine Service responsible for covert operations known as "special activities"...
of foreign governments such as Canada, Israel, Singapore, Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan; and of becoming directly involved in murder.
Later developments implied that derivative versions of Enhanced Promis sold on the black market may have become the high-tech tools of worldwide terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
and international money launderers
Money laundering
Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...
and thieves.
Origins
Inslaw, once called the Institute for Law and Social Research, was a non-profitNon-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
business created in 1974 by William Anthony Hamilton, "a former analyst with the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
and onetime contract employee of the CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
." Inslaw's original software product, Promis
Prosecutor's Management Information System
The Prosecutor's Management Information System is a database system developed by Inslaw Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based, information technology company....
, was a database designed to handle papers and documents generated by law enforcement agencies and courts. Promis was a people-tracking program which had the power to integrate innumerable databases regardless of their languages, or regardless of their operating platforms. "Every use of Promis in the court system is tracking people," explained Hamilton. "You can rotate the file by case, defendant, arresting officer, judge, defense lawyer, and it's tracking all the names of all the people in all the cases."
Promis was funded almost entirely by government funds; therefore versions created prior to January 1978 were in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
. On January 1, 1978, amendments to the Copyright Act of 1976
Copyright Act of 1976
The Copyright Act of 1976 is a United States copyright law and remains the primary basis of copyright law in the United States, as amended by several later enacted copyright provisions...
took effect, automatically conferring upon Inslaw as the author of Promis five exclusive software copyright rights, none of which could be waived except by explicit, written waiver. The federal government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
negotiated licenses to use but not to modify or to distribute outside the federal government some but not all versions of Promis created after the January 1978 effective-date of the copyright amendments. In 1981, after Congress liquidated the Justice Department's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration
Law Enforcement Assistance Administration
The Law Enforcement Assistance Administration was a U.S. federal agency within the U.S. Dept. of Justice. It administered federal funding to state and local law enforcement agencies, and funded educational programs, research, state planning agencies, and local crime initiatives.The LEAA was...
(LEAA) (which had been the primary source of funds for Inslaw's development of Promis), the company became known as Inslaw, Inc., a for-profit corporation created to further develop and market Promis and other Promis-derivative software product(s).
The newly created corporation made significant improvements to the original software. The resulting product came to be known alternately as Promis '82 or Enhanced Promis, a 32-bit architecture VAX 11/780 version.
Enhanced Promis contract
Edwin Meese
Edwin "Ed" Meese, III is an attorney, law professor, and author who served in official capacities within the Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Administration , the Reagan Presidential Transition Team , and the Reagan White House , eventually rising to hold the position of the 75th Attorney General of...
, then an advisor to President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
, announced an $800 million budget in an effort to overhaul the computer systems of the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
(FBI), and other law enforcement agencies. The following year, the Department of Justice awarded Inslaw a $9.6 million, three-year, cost-plus-incentive-fee contract to implement a pilot program in 22 of the largest Offices of the United States Attorney
United States Attorney
United States Attorneys represent the United States federal government in United States district court and United States court of appeals. There are 93 U.S. Attorneys stationed throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands...
s using the older 16-bit architecture Prime version (as in Wang, or IBM), which the government had a license to use.
While Promis could have gone a long way toward correcting the Department's longstanding need for a standardized case-management system, the contract between Inslaw and Justice quickly became embroiled for over two decades in bitter controversy. The conflict centered on whether or not the Justice Department owed Inslaw license fees for the new, 32-bit architecture VAX version if the government substituted that version for the older 16-bit Prime version which had been the subject of the original contract.
Espionage
In February 1983, an Israeli government official scheduled a meeting with Inslaw through the Justice Department's contract agent, Peter VidenieksPeter Videnieks
Peter Videnieks is a Commissioner with the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He was recently reappointed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a second two-year term expiring December 31, 2010....
. The purpose of that meeting was for a Promis briefing and demonstration; the Israeli Ministry of Justice intended to computerize its own prosecution offices. Although it was believed that the Israeli government official was a prosecuting attorney, it was later discovered upon closer examination that the official was really Rafi Eitan
Rafi Eitan
Rafael "Rafi" Eitan is an Israeli politician and former intelligence officer. Today he leads Gil and is a former Minister of Pensioner Affairs. In the past, he was in charge of the Mossad operation that led to the capture of Adolf Eichmann...
, "Director of LAKAM
Lekem
Lekem, an acronym for ha-Lishka le-Kishrei Mada , was an Israeli intelligence agency. It collected scientific and technical intelligence abroad from both open and covert sources. It was disbanded in 1986 following the arrest of Jonathan Pollard for espionage on behalf of Israel...
, a super-secret agency [within] the Israeli Ministry of Defense responsible for collecting scientific and technical intelligence information from other countries through espionage." Herein is where Inslaw's case becomes convoluted.
Following the Israeli meeting, the Justice Department obtained Inslaw's new, 32-bit, Enhanced Promis from Inslaw at the start of the second year of their Implementation Contract by modifying that contract and by promising to negotiate the payment of license fees. One month later, the U.S. government began to find fault with some of Inslaw's services, and with negotiated billing rates. The government then began to withhold unilaterally each month increasing amounts of payments due Inslaw for implementation services. The Justice Department agent responsible for making payments was a former, fired Inslaw employee, C. Madison Brewer. Brewer would later claim in federal court that everything he did regarding Inslaw was approved by Deputy Attorney General D. Lowell Jensen. "Brewer was aided in his new DoJ job by Peter Videnieks
Peter Videnieks
Peter Videnieks is a Commissioner with the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He was recently reappointed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for a second two-year term expiring December 31, 2010....
," wrote Wired (magazine)
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
, "Videnieks was fresh from the Customs Service
United States Customs Service
Until March 2003, the United States Customs Service was an agency of the U.S. federal government that collected import tariffs and performed other selected border security duties.Before it was rolled into form part of the U.S...
where he oversaw contracts between that agency and Hadron, Inc., a company controlled by [Edwin] Meese
Edwin Meese
Edwin "Ed" Meese, III is an attorney, law professor, and author who served in official capacities within the Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Administration , the Reagan Presidential Transition Team , and the Reagan White House , eventually rising to hold the position of the 75th Attorney General of...
and Reagan-crony Earl Brian
Earl Brian
Dr. Earl Winfrey Brian, Jr. was a decorated combat surgeon with an aerial support unit for the United States Central Intelligence Agency's Vietnam War-era Phoenix Program...
. Hadron, a closely held government systems consulting firm, was to figure prominently in the forthcoming scandal." Both Brewer and Videnieks had obtained their positions under suspicious circumstances, according to the Chicago-based weekly, In These Times
In These Times
In These Times is a politically progressive monthly magazine of news and opinion published by the Institute for Public Affairs in Chicago...
. Furthermore, "Before moving over to the Justice Department and taking charge of the Promis program in September 1981," wrote In These Times
In These Times
In These Times is a politically progressive monthly magazine of news and opinion published by the Institute for Public Affairs in Chicago...
, "Videnieks had administered three contracts between the Customs Service and Hadron...[Hadron] was in the business of integrating information-managing systems such as Promis into federal agencies."
Simultaneously with the withholding of payments in the 1983 Modification 12 agreement, the government then substituted the enhanced VAX version of Promis for the old Prime version originally specified in the contract. However, the government failed to negotiate the payment of license fees as promised, claiming that Inslaw had failed to prove to the government's satisfaction that Inslaw had developed the enhanced version with private, non-government funds and that the enhanced version was not otherwise required to be delivered to the government under any of its contracts with Inslaw—that is, Inslaw had provided it voluntarily.
Yet beneath the surface of this background was a belief that the primary focus of certain top-level individuals within the DoJ was to perpetuate international, covert intelligence operations—for example, to enable Israeli signal intelligence to "surreptitiously access the computerized Jordanian dossiers on Palestinians."
Enhanced Promis was eventually installed in a total of forty-four federal prosecutors' offices following the Modification 12 agreement.
By February 1985, the government had withheld payment of almost $1.8 million for Inslaw's implementation services, plus millions of dollars in Old Promis license fees. Inslaw filed for Chapter 11
Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code
Chapter 11 is a chapter of the United States Bankruptcy Code, which permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Chapter 11 bankruptcy is available to every business, whether organized as a corporation or sole proprietorship, and to individuals, although it is most...
bankruptcy protection. Meanwhile, the government began highly suspicious activities to force Inslaw into Chapter 7
Chapter 7, Title 11, United States Code
Chapter 7 of the Title 11 of the United States Code governs the process of liquidation under the bankruptcy laws of the United States...
liquidation.
Federal investigations into allegations of theft
In his court cases, William Hamilton was represented by several attorneys, one of whom was lawyer Elliot RichardsonElliot Richardson
Elliot Lee Richardson was an American lawyer and politician who was a member of the cabinet of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. As U.S...
, formerly the United States Attorney General
United States Attorney General
The United States Attorney General is the head of the United States Department of Justice concerned with legal affairs and is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. The attorney general is considered to be the chief lawyer of the U.S. government...
under President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
.
Two different federal bankruptcy courts
United States bankruptcy court
United States bankruptcy courts are courts created under Article I of the United States Constitution. They function as units of the district courts and have subject-matter jurisdiction over bankruptcy cases. The federal district courts have original and exclusive jurisdiction over all cases arising...
made fully litigated findings of fact in the late-eighties, ruling that the Justice Department "took, converted, and stole" the Promis installed in U.S. Attorneys' Offices "through trickery, fraud, and deceit," and then attempted "unlawfully and without justification" to force Inslaw out of business so that it would be unable to seek restitution through the courts.
Three months after the initial verdict, George F. Bason, Jr., the federal judge
United States federal judge
In the United States, the title of federal judge usually means a judge appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate in accordance with Article II of the United States Constitution....
presiding over the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia, was denied reappointment to a new 14-year term on the bench by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the appointing authority. His replacement, S. Martin Teel, took over shortly after Judge Bason announced his oral findings of malfeasance against Inslaw by the Justice Department; Teel had been the Justice Department Tax Division attorney who had argued unsuccessfully before Judge Bason for the forced liquidation of Inslaw. Leigh Ratiner (of Dickstein, Shapiro and Morin, which was the 10th largest firm in Washington at the time) was fired in October 1986; he had been the lead counsel for Inslaw and had filed the suit against the Justice Department in federal bankruptcy court. His firing came reportedly amidst "back channel" discussions involving the DoJ, his law firm's senior partner, and the Government of Israel; moreover, there were rumors that the Mossad
Mossad
The Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....
had arranged a payment of $600,000 to Ratiner's former firm as a separation settlement.
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit known informally as the D.C. Circuit, is the federal appellate court for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Appeals from the D.C. Circuit, as with all the U.S. Courts of Appeals, are heard on a...
on a jurisdictional technicality to set aside the decisions of the first two federal bankruptcy courts. The House Committee also reported investigative leads indicating that friends of the Reagan White House
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
had been allowed to sell and to distribute Enhanced Promis both domestically and overseas for their personal financial gain and in support of the intelligence and foreign policy objectives of the United States. The report even went so far as to recommend specifically further investigations of both former Attorney General Edwin Meese
Edwin Meese
Edwin "Ed" Meese, III is an attorney, law professor, and author who served in official capacities within the Ronald Reagan Gubernatorial Administration , the Reagan Presidential Transition Team , and the Reagan White House , eventually rising to hold the position of the 75th Attorney General of...
and businessman Earl Brian
Earl Brian
Dr. Earl Winfrey Brian, Jr. was a decorated combat surgeon with an aerial support unit for the United States Central Intelligence Agency's Vietnam War-era Phoenix Program...
for their possible involvement in illegally providing or selling Promis "to foreign governments including Canada, Israel, Singapore, Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan." The Democratic majority called upon Attorney General Dick Thornburgh
Dick Thornburgh
Richard Lewis "Dick" Thornburgh is an American lawyer and Republican politician who served as the 41st Governor of Pennsylvania from 1979 to 1987, and then as the U.S...
to compensate Inslaw immediately for the harm that the government had "egregiously" inflicted on Inslaw. The Republican minority dissented. The committee was divided along party lines 21–13. Attorney General Thornburgh ignored the recommendations, and reneged on agreements made with the committee.
Inslaw Affair divides into two separate issues
On November 13, 1991, newly appointed, Attorney General William BarrWilliam Barr (politician)
William Pelham Barr is an American attorney who served as the 77th Attorney General of the United States.Barr, the son of Mary and Donald Barr, Columbia University faculty members, was born in New York City and grew up on the Upper West side of Manhattan, attended Catholic parochial school Corpus...
, appointed a retired federal judge, Nicholas J. Bua
Nicholas John Bua
Nicholas John Bua was a United States federal judge.Born in Chicago, Illinois, Bua was in the United States Army in 1943. He received a J.D. from De Paul University College of Law in 1953. He was in private practice in Chicago, Illinois from 1953 to 1963. He was a Presiding Judge, Melrose Park...
, as Special Counsel to advise him on the allegations that high-ranking officials had acted improperly for personal gain to bankrupt Inslaw.
Elliot Richardson
Elliot Lee Richardson was an American lawyer and politician who was a member of the cabinet of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. As U.S...
immediately wrote Inslaw's 130-page Rebuttal with evidence suggesting Bua's report was riddled with errors and falsehoods. On September 27, 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno
Janet Reno
Janet Wood Reno is a former Attorney General of the United States . She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11...
released a 187-page review concluding "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." Yet, according to Wired (magazine)
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...
, "Reno's report was released the same day [that] the House Judiciary Committee passed HR 4862, a bill which would have bound the U.S. Court of Federal Claims legally to independently investigate the Inslaw case—thus circumventing the Department of Justice's claims of innocence;" however, HR 4862 was defeated by a partisan committee-vote later that night before it was set to go before the full House.
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
asked the U.S. Court of Federal Claims The U.S. Court of Federal Claims has exclusive jurisdiction over copyright infringement claims against the U. S. Government. to determine if the United States owed Inslaw compensation for the government's use of Promis. On July 31, 1997, Judge Christine Miller, the hearing officer for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that all of the versions of Promis were in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
and that the government had therefore always been free to do whatever it wished with Promis. The following year, the appellate authority, a three-judge Review Panel of the same court, upheld Miller's ruling; yet, it also determined that Inslaw had never granted the government a license to "modify Promis to create derivative software" although Inslaw was automatically vested with the exclusive copyright rights to Promis. The Review Panel then held that the United States would be liable to Inslaw for copyright infringement damages if the government had created any unauthorized derivatives from Promis, but noted that Inslaw "had failed to prove in court that the government had done so;" moreover, the Board held that the issue of "derivative works" was "of no consequence." Inslaw challenged this interpretation but the Review Panel refused Inslaw's request to reopen discovery. In August 1998, Chief Judge Lorin Smith of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims sent an Advisory Report to the Senate, noting that the court had not found that the United States owes Inslaw compensation for the government's use of Promis, and enclosing the decision of the hearing officer and the decision of the Review Panel.
On the other hand, according to William Hamilton, the government flatly denied during all court proceedings what it later admitted, i.e. that agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
(FBI) and other U.S. intelligence agencies used a Promis-derivative to keep track of their classified information.
Later developments
In early 1999, the British journalist and author, Gordon Thomas, published an authorized history of the Israeli MossadMossad
The Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....
titled Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad. The book quotes detailed admissions by the former long-time deputy-director of the Mossad, Rafi Eitan
Rafi Eitan
Rafael "Rafi" Eitan is an Israeli politician and former intelligence officer. Today he leads Gil and is a former Minister of Pensioner Affairs. In the past, he was in charge of the Mossad operation that led to the capture of Adolf Eichmann...
, about the partnership between Israeli and U.S. intelligence in selling to foreign intelligence agencies in excess of $500 million worth of licenses to a trojan horse
Trojan horse (computing)
A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is software that appears to perform a desirable function for the user prior to run or install, but steals information or harms the system. The term is derived from the Trojan Horse story in Greek mythology.-Malware:A destructive program that masquerades as a benign...
version of Promis, in order to spy on them.
In 2001, the Washington Times and Fox News each quoted federal law enforcement officials familiar with debriefing former FBI Agent Robert Hanssen
Robert Hanssen
Robert Philip Hanssen is a former American FBI agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States for 22 years from 1979 to 2001...
as claiming that the convicted spy had stolen copies of a Promis-derivative for his Soviet KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
handlers.
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
later bought copies of the same Promis-derivative on the Russian black market (blat
Blat (Russia)
Blat is a term which appeared in the Soviet Union to denote the use of informal agreements, exchanges of services, connections, Party contacts, or black market deals to achieve results or get ahead....
) for $2 million. It was believed then that al Qaeda used the software to penetrate database systems to move funds throughout the banking system, and to evade detection by U.S. law enforcement.
FBI, ACS, and FOIMS
In May 2006, a former aide in the Office of the Vice President of the United StatesVice President of the United States
The Vice President of the United States is the holder of a public office created by the United States Constitution. The Vice President, together with the President of the United States, is indirectly elected by the people, through the Electoral College, to a four-year term...
pleaded guilty to passing top-secret classified information
Classified information
Classified information is sensitive information to which access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of persons. A formal security clearance is required to handle classified documents or access classified data. The clearance process requires a satisfactory background investigation...
to plotters trying to overthrow the president of the Philippines. Leandro Aragoncillo
Leandro Aragoncillo
Leandro Aragoncillo is a former, FBI intelligence analyst, and a retired, United States Marine Corps, gunnery-sergeant who was convicted of spying against the United States Government in 2007...
, an FBI intelligence analyst at the time of his arrest, was believed to have operated his deception using archaic database software manipulated by the FBI in order to evade the 1995 finding of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims with regard to Inslaw's rights to derivative works. Additionally:
In 2006, there were further allegations of the misuse of Promis. Writing in the Canada Free Press, the former Polish CIA operative and now international journalist, David Dastych alleged that "Chinese Military Intelligence (PLA-2) organized their own hackers department, which [exploited] Promis [database systems] [in the] Los Alamos
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security , located in Los Alamos, New Mexico...
and Sandia
Sandia
-Places:* Sandia, California, community in Imperial County* Sandia, Texas, town in the USA* Sandia, Peru, town in the Puno region of Peru* Sandia Province, province in the Puno region* Sandia Base, nuclear weapons base* Pueblo of Sandia Village, New Mexico, U.S...
national laboratories to steal U.S. nuclear secrets"; however, the prima facie
Prima facie
Prima facie is a Latin expression meaning on its first encounter, first blush, or at first sight. The literal translation would be "at first face", from the feminine form of primus and facies , both in the ablative case. It is used in modern legal English to signify that on first examination, a...
value of that allegation was lost in a realization that the U.S. Government could not convict the suspected 2001 spy.
The U.S. Government has never paid Inslaw Inc. for any of these unauthorized uses of Promis.
"Inslaw deserves to be compensated," wrote nationally syndicated columnist, Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin is an American conservative blogger, political commentator, and author. Her weekly syndicated column appears in a number of newspapers and websites. She is a Fox News Channel contributor and has been a guest on MSNBC, C-SPAN, and national radio programs...
, in The Washington Times
The Washington Times
The Washington Times is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. It was founded in 1982 by Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, and until 2010 was owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate associated with the...
. "More importantly, the American people deserve to know the truth: Did government greed and bureaucratic hubris lead to a wholesale sellout of our national security?"
Death allegedly related to the Inslaw case
While investigating elements of this story, journalist Danny CasolaroDanny Casolaro
Joseph Daniel Casolaro was an American freelance writer who came to public attention in 1991 when he was found dead in a bathtub in room 517 of the Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, his wrists slashed 10–12 times...
died in what was twice ruled a suicide. Prior to his death, Casolaro had warned friends if they were ever told he had committed suicide not to believe it, and to know he had been murdered. Many have argued that his death was suspicious, deserving closer scrutiny; some have argued further, believing his death was a murder, committed to hide whatever Casolaro had uncovered. "I believe he was murdered," wrote former Attorney General Elliot Richardson in the New York Times, "but even if that is no more than a possibility, it is a possibility with such sinister implications as to demand a serious effort to discover the truth." Kenn Thomas
Kenn Thomas
Kenn Thomas is a conspiracy theorist, writer, university library archivist, and editor & publisher of Steamshovel Press, a parapolitical conspiracy magazine...
and Jim Keith
Jim Keith
Jim Keith . American author best known for the books "Black Helicopters Over America" and "The Octopus", co-written with Kenn Thomas, which details conspiracy theories around the death of reporter Danny Casolaro...
discuss this in their book, The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny CasolaroThe Octopus was the name that Casolaro had intended to title his book. (See also: Alfred W. McCoy
Alfred W. McCoy
Alfred William McCoy is a historian of Southeast Asia. He is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. McCoy graduated from the Kent School in 1964. He earned his B.A...
and Claire Sterling
Claire Sterling
Claire Sterling was an American author and journalist whose work focused on crime, political assassination, and terrorism...
.) Writing on behalf of a majority opinion in House Report 102-857, Committee Chairman, Jack Brooks
Jack Brooks (politician)
Jack Bascom Brooks is a retired Democratic politician from the U.S. state of Texas, who served for more than 40 years in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was defeated for reelection in the 1994 election...
(D-TX) wrote, "As long as the possibility exists that Danny Casolaro died as a result of his investigation into the INSLAW matter, it is imperative that further investigation be conducted."
Further reading
- The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro by Kenn ThomasKenn ThomasKenn Thomas is a conspiracy theorist, writer, university library archivist, and editor & publisher of Steamshovel Press, a parapolitical conspiracy magazine...
and Jim Keith (Feral House, US, 2005, paperback ISBN 0-922915-91-1) - The Attorney General's refusal to provide congressional access to "privileged" INSLAW documents : hearing before the Subcommittee on Economic and Commercial Law of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundred First Congress, second session, December 5, 1990. Washington : U.S. G.P.O. : For sale by the Supt. of Docs., Congressional Sales Office, U.S. G.P.O, 1990. Superintendent of Documents NumberUnited States Government Printing OfficeThe United States Government Printing Office is an agency of the legislative branch of the United States federal government. The office prints documents produced by and for the federal government, including the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Executive Office of the President, executive...
Y 4.J 89/1:101/114 - PROMIS : briefing series. Washington, D.C. : Institute for Law and Social Research, 1974-1977. "[A] series of 21 Briefing Papers for PROMIS (Prosecutor's Management Information System), this publication was prepared by the Institute for Law and Social Research (INSLAW), Washington, D.C., under a grant from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), which has designated PROMIS as an Exemplary Project." OCLC Number 5882076
External links
- Inslaw Inc at NameBaseNameBaseNameBase is a web-based cross-indexed database of names that focuses on individuals involved in the international intelligence community, U.S. foreign policy, crime, and business...
- The Inslaw Affair"The PROMIS software, used by police, is bugged"