PROMIS SOFTWARE: A Tale of Government Corruption, Part 1

The massive expansion of the powers of electronic surveillance was based on two sophisticated software systems. In the late 1970s, the federal government acquired the Systematics system, which enabled it to follow banking transactions of all sorts. In a few years, it obtained the pore powerful PROMIS, the foundation stone of electronic surveillance systems previously existing only existing as the dreams of spymasters and cryptographers.

PROMIS is a data base that includes a sort-of Rosetta stone of computer languages. It could pull and integrate data from any number of languages. Its only limitation is that it is a software package that must exist at the facilities of the target. At first it was to be used by prosecutors to manage their case loads. But it soon was used to monitor and manage banking transactions. It can tract electronic information of any kind, including troop movements. .

It was software developed by William Hamilton, a former NSA employee, and briefly marketed by his private company, Inslaw. Earlier, financier Jackson Stephens had stolen another piece of Inslaw software called Systematics. Systematics was designed to track financial transactions throughout the world. Stephens had been a friend of Jimmy Carter at Annapolis and he gave government a large share of the software and company..He operated one of the largest investment banks outside Wall Street and was to play a major role in helping the international bank BCCI establish itself in the United States. This bank became famous for its involvements with various intelligence agencies, drug dealers, arms traders, and other criminal elements. Bert Lance, a top Carter Aid, was also connected to BCCI, and his attorney Robert Altman, who later became president of Financial General, renamed First America in 1982, a bank owned by BCCI. Hillary Clinton of the Rose Law Firm, according to Vincent Foster of the same firm, handled the intellectual property litigation for Systematics. Kadal Adham, former head of Saudi Arabian intelligence, fronted the BCCI take over of Financial General.


It is unclear if Carter knew where Stephens got the Systematics software of if he knew much about its use. Eventually, it was used in centers in Arkansas , Boston, United Kingdom, and Israel. . The Rose Law Firm in Little Rock coordinated its use for the government. It is likely but unclear whether this system was later combined with PROMIS. Eventually, the NSA spun off Systematics as Alltel Information Systems, and many banks used its services to keep track of transactions. As money today exists largely on computers, possessing the power of Systematics meant one could use other people=s money for short periods or even transfer it to others by just changing ownership codes. The federal program to collect financial data was based on the idea that the Communists were employing terrorism on a major scale. This federal program including tapping into other collection programs such as CHIPS, Fedwire, and SWIFT. The latter was a Belgium-based financial consortium that tracked international banking activity. Some use by NSA was permitted by organizations controlling the software; however, most access based on abuses by so-called software salesmen, repair services, and simple black bag jobs. Much of the financial information scooped up by the NSA is stored at a modern complex in Dallas that is owned by Rayethon. Systematics/Alltel Information Systems was also in the business of money laundering for the intelligence community. Typically, in this age of digital cash, money laundering involves placement, layering, and integration. The latter means getting clean money out of the system, which may come as loans from off shore banks that are never repaid. It became a major computer services contractor for the Atlanta subsidiary of the notorious bank, BCCI. This bank was used to fund the Afghan insurgency and was closely tied to the financing of Pakistan=s nuclear bomb. Its functions were assumed in 1991 by the Bank of England. When BCCI=s Atlanta subsidiary was no longr available, Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh became a hub for covert money laundering, some of which was connected with the nuclear arming of Paskistan. CIA director Bill Casey established a super spy unit called the Squad D. One of its duties was hacking banking transactions and finding secret accounts of other governments. It is likely that they used both Systematics and PROMIS software. One member of that hackers unit was Colonel Charles Hayes.