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Promisgate: World's longest spy scandal still glossed over / Part I

David Dastych – The so called PROMIS affair would never have happened if the software invented by an American computer specialist, Mr. William A. Hamilton, had been a technical failure.

But this case management and data mining software, developed in the early 1980s by a small Washington D.C. company, Inslaw Inc., had proven itself to be a perfect intelligence tool. Originally made for the Department of Justice to help the country’s prosecutor offices in their case management, it drew the attention of corrupt officials and of Israeli Intelligence. Stolen by ruse from its owner, Inslaw Inc., the software was hacked and provided with a "trap door", a sort of a Trojan Horse hacker’s trick, that enabled the retrieval of information from the foreign intelligence services and banks it had been sold to on behalf of Israeli and U.S. intelligence. Without the knowledge of the software’s owner, and in violation of copyright laws, the PROMIS software was sold to over 40 countries and used in an unprecedented "sting operation", which yielded huge financial and intelligence benefits to the United States and Israel.

In February 1985, Inslaw Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection because the Justice Department had withheld payments totaling almost $1.8 million U.S. due Inslaw Inc. under a PROMIS Implementation Contract for U.S. Attorneys Offices. The PROMIS affair, broken by investigative journalists, two federal courts, and a congressional investigation and published in thousands of media stories and in several books, has never been resolved.

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

From KGB to PLA-2
The history of this world-famous computer software goes back a quarter of a century, and its applications by intelligence, organized crime and terrorist organizations began almost from the start. The software helped the United States win the Cold War against the Soviet Union, but it also served the Russian mafia, Saddam Hussein’s regime, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, and an unspecified number of foreign spies and criminals. As far back as 1985, when the late British media tycoon and top [Israeli] Mossad spy, Robert Maxwell, revealed the software’s "trap door" secret to Chinese Military Intelligence (PLA-2), while selling them a copy of PROMIS for $ 9 million, the powerful software was turned against the United States. The Soviet KGB purchased PROMIS from Robert Maxwell, but they also [later] received a copy (together with the Trojan Horse secret) from Robert Hanssen, a spy planted in a most sensitive office of the FBI.

The Soviets and their East European allies, including Poland, used PROMIS to spy on the U.S. State Department and 170 American Embassies and Consulates all over the world. This practice may have continued as late as 1997, and the post-communist intelligence agencies of Russia and other countries, including Polish Military Intelligence (WSI), may have been able to retrieve information from U.S. Government agencies, because as many as 64 of them [are believed to have] used modified versions of PROMIS. Using the same PROMIS software, purchased from Russia, Saddam Hussein and members of his regime could shift huge sums of money undetected through the banking system. Some of these funds are still supporting the anti-Coalition insurrection in Iraq and terrorists. In the mid-1990s, 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.

No over-all damage assessment has been prepared yet. But the losses to the U.S. economy may be in billions of dollars, and damage to the national security of the United States and its allies may be incalculable.

An American intelligence officer, whose name cannot be disclosed, made the following comment on the consequences of the illegal operations performed with the use of PROMIS:
(…) "Yes, we gave PROMIS to the Russians and Chinese to back door their intel. Worked like a charm. The only problem was ‘blowback’. As we gave it to our enemies in order to back door them through the trap door Trojan horse asset in PROMIS, we left sixty-four federal agencies wide open in the U.S. Government who also used PROMIS. The powers-that-be felt that the information obtained far outweighed the damage done to the security of the 64 federal agencies. Just think, federal agents exposed, witness relocation programs compromised, etc. Just a matter of time."