PROMIS SOFTWARE: A Tale of Government Corruption, Part s 5 and 6

In 1991, Congressman Jack Brooks began a three year investigation that concluded that there was a conspiracy to steal Inslaw's technology. The Brooks Committee recommended that a special prosecutor be appointed, but Attorney General William Barr refused to do so. John Cohen, one of the committee=s lead investigators believed the software was being used to track money laundering and also to carry out illicit money operations. He also thought some of the latter was tied to drug trafficking. PROMIS had the capacity to jimmy the two Banking systems, SWIFT and CHIP, enabling users to move drug money around the world without detection. The staff was also looking into how a certain large entertainment corporation, with alleged mob ties, could have been using PROMIS to move drug money. However, none of the laundering concerns appeared in the final report. Some who have written about the schemes connected to Promis have tried to tie them to prominent Democrats, but it should be noted that not one Republican voted to support the Brooks Committee Report.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police eventually began investigating the Inslaw case on the pretext that Canada may have purchased stolen property. Their main concern was probably that the software was being used to spy on them. Interest was heightened by the double murder of Neil Abernathy and his 12 year-old son, Brendan. The Canadians thought Riconoscuito had given him, through PROMIS, information on US law enforcement and US Bureau of Prison records. Some of Riconosciuto=s files on how the system was stolen, improved, and used were carted up to Canada by an Canadian Mounties investigator . Janet Reno investigated Canadian complaints and said that the PROMIS system was not the one used in the US. It was a coincidence in names. Private investigator Larry Guerrin, who was working for Riconosciuto in connection with the Inslaw case, was found dead in the Mason County, Washington in February, 1987. Other Riconscuito associates were to turn up dead around this time: David Eisman, who was working on the Inslaw Case; Tony Burkett, found dead of a gunshot wound in the mouth, and Alan May, who had been involved with Riconoscuito in the Iran Contra scandal. May had multiple pharmaceuticals in his blood. Burnett had been meeting with Riconosciuto, and a pathologist hired by his parents found considerable physical damage to his body. Ian Spiro, who was gathering documents for Michael, was found dead by his own hand in his truck, after he had apparently killed his wife and children. Later, Joseph Aguilar, who sometimes did manual work for Spiro, shot himself. In 1994 the body of Vali Delahanty turned up in Lake Bay, Washington. She had been trying to warn Riconosciuto that the DEA was preparing to free him on drug charges.



PROMIS SOFTWARE: A Tale of Government Corruption, Part 6



In the mid-1990s, Debra von Trapp, a high technology communications specialist, reported that she had been connected with a CIA operation in a Xerox-owned plant in Shugart, Germany which was selling Japanese hard drives to the Eastern Bloc and KGB even though this was illegal. It is possible, but she did not say so, that the drives were equipped with software that US intelligence could access. Later, she was forced to help a task force in Washington working to develop software that could be used to gather enormous amounts of information on people's private lives. This was probably the beginning of the Total Information Awareness Program that was developed under the administration of George W. Bush. The team was headed by Robert Goetzman, he told her he worked in the office of President George H.W. Bush. He also held a high position in the FBI, but was a "dual agency" person, working also for the CIA. Through threats, he forced her to use her connections to help develop what he called "black hole technology." Also involved were Peter Stanley of the CIA and DIA's Jim Cofield, an expert on banking software. These men constituted the core of the Bush plumbers unit that was assigned to the Ross Perot campaign. Probably as part of another operation, Linda Tripp retained a job in the White House monitoring possible security breaches. She had been an operations assistant for the Delta Force and later administrative assistant for Army Intelligence at Fort Meade.

When George H.W. Bush lost the election, the program was shut down, but the team working on it were successful in replacing the computer and communications software in the Executive Branch so that the CIA could keep track of what the Clinton administration was doing. She also thought that the Japanese government through MCA Corporation had been used to finance the operation in return for receiving vital economic intelligence via these bugs. In addition to planting bugs in the White House, Democratic National Committee, and Executive Office of the President offices, the team inserted another agent in the purchasing office of the Executive Office of the President. Sarah McClendon, who was well informed about what went on behind the scenes in Washington, agrees that these people bugged the White House, but she thinks von Trapp was also fed some disinformation about the Oklahoma City bombing.


Riconscuito's career will be discussed in a series that will appear in several days.

Also coming is a short series on Ptech software