>From Rayelan Allan, Publisher Rumor Mill News
To: Rumor Mill News Readers and Fellow Investigators
Re: MY PROMISE ABOUT PROMIS
Several months ago, when the Canadian Newspaper and certain Internet
Newsmagazines were running stories about the theft of the Promis software, I
stated that they were putting out disinformation. Needless to say, I was
attacked by certain people, via emails and on their webpage. I chose not to
respond to the attacks because I was afraid that if an Internet war about who
was telling the truth about Promis erupted, that the REAL TRUTH might never
be told.
The REAL STORY had finally been written.
I am including the first part of a four part series. It is extremely well
researched and written. The writing style flows easily and reads like a spy
thriller.
Please send this email to everyone you know. Also send it to all media, and
Congress... MAIL IT -- If you need to!
The story is very long, the email that was sent to me did not have the last
one third of the story. If the article appears to be cut off, I have enclosed
the URL to the article, which appears in INSIGHT MAGAZINE, the weekend
magazine of THE WASHINGTON TIMES!
I thank all of my readers for their patience -- RA
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http://www.insightmag.com/archive/200101307.shtml
Nothing Is Secret
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By Kelly Patricia O'Meara
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Insight uncovers a spy probe in the United States by the Canadian government
into the theft of computer software that allegedly allows surveillance of
top-secret government computer systems.
Good morning, Mr. McDade. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has reason to
believe that the national security of Canada has been compromised. A trojan
horse, or back door, allegedly has been found in computer systems in the
nation's top law-enforcement and intelligence organizations.
"Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to establish whether
this is the PROMIS software reportedly stolen in the early 1980s from William
and Nancy Hamilton, owners of Inslaw Inc., and reportedly modified for
international espionage. As always, should you or any of your associates be
caught, the governments of Canada and the United States will disavow any
knowledge of your actions. This recording will self-destruct in five seconds.
Good luck, Sean."
Sounds like the opening taped message from an episode of the 1960s TV
action series Mission Impossible. But just such a mission was offered - and
accepted - by two investigators of the National Security Section of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The Mounties then covertly entered the United
States in February of last year and for nearly eight months conducted a
secret investigation into the theft of the PROMIS software and whether and by
whom it had been obtained for backdoor spying. PROMIS is a universal bridge
to the forest of computer systems. It allows covert and undetectable
surveillance, and it and its related successors are unimaginably important in
the new age of communications warfare.
In this exclusive investigative series Insight tracks the Mounties and
explores the mysteries pursued by the RCMP, including allegations involving a
gang of characters believed to be associated with the suspected theft of
PROMIS, swarms of spies (or the "spookloop" as the Mounties called them), the
Mafia, big-time money laundering, murder, international arms smuggling and
illegal drugs - to name but a few aspects of the still-secret RCMP probe.
But the keystone to this RCMP investigation is PROMIS, that universal
bridge and monitoring system, which stands for Prosecutor's Management
Information System - a breakthrough computer software program originally
developed in the early 1970s by the Hamiltons for case management by U.S.
prosecutors. The first version of PROMIS was owned by the government since
the development money was provided by the Department of Justice (DOJ), but
something went awry on the way to proprietary development.
For more than 15 years the story of the allegedly pirated Hamilton
software, and how it may have wound up in the hands of the spy agencies of
the world, has been hotly pursued by law-enforcement agencies, private
detectives, journalists, congressional investigators, U.S. Customs and
assorted U.S. attorneys. Even independent researchers have taken on the role
of counterespionage agents in a quest to uncover the truth about this
allegedly ongoing penetration of security.
But each new U.S. investigation has failed fully to determine what
happened. While the Mounties encountered a similar fate, officers Sean McDade
and Randy Buffam have been the most successful to date. Last May, with the
assistance of Hercules, Calif., detective Sue Todd, the Mounties walked away
with a package of startling evidence that many believe will solve the case of
the pirated software and its reported continuing use for international
espionage and a host of other illegal activities.
Insight has spent months retracing the steps of the two RCMP officers
and interviewing their sources, poring over copies of documents they secured,
listening to tape recordings of meetings in which they were involved and
reviewing scores of reports and depositions that have been locked up for
years.
The result is this first installment of a four-part investigative
report about how the Mounties conducted their covert border crossings and
investigation that ranged across the United States and back again before
returning to Canada where they discovered their cover had been blown. By late
summer of 2000 the Canadian press was reporting not only the existence of
this secret national-security probe - "Project Abbreviation" - but that if
the reported allegations prove true "it would be the biggest-ever breach of
Canada's national security." Confusing official comments about the probe
added further mystery. But Insight has confirmed many of the details,
including the fact that the investigation is continuing. And it's serious
stuff.
McDade began his extended trip into international espionage early last
year. It began at least on Jan. 19, 2000, with an e-mail that said: "I am
looking to contact Carol (Cheri) regarding a matter that has surfaced in the
past. If this e-mail account is still active, please reply and I will in turn
forward a Canadian phone number and explain my position and reason for
request." This communication, from e-mail account simorp (PROMIS spelled
backward), was the first of hundreds sent during an eight-month period from
"dear hunter," also known as Sean McDade. It reached Cheri Seymour, a
Southern California journalist, private detective and author of a
well-regarded book, Committee of the States.
Seymour became one of the most important of McDade's contacts during
the Mounties' continuing investigation. Although she had agreed to remain
silent about their probe until McDade filed a report with his superiors, she
changed her mind when news of the probe began to leak in the Canadian press.
It was then that the Southern Californian contacted Insight and offered to
share what she knew about the investigation if this magazine would look into
the story. And what a story it is.
A petite, attractive, unassuming middle-aged woman, Seymour looks more
like a violinist in a symphony orchestra than an international sleuth. But
one quickly becomes aware of the depth of her knowledge not only of the
alleged theft of the PROMIS software, but also of other reported illegal
activities and dangerous characters associated with it.
Seymour's involvement with PROMIS began more than a decade ago while
working as an investigative reporter on an unrelated story about high-level
corruption within the sheriff's department of the Central California town of
Mariposa, near Yosemite National Park, where deputies reportedly were
involved in illegal-drug activity. The dozen or so who were not involved
repeatedly had begged the journalist to conduct an investigation. When she
learned that one of the officers had taken the complaints to the state
attorney general in Sacramento and within weeks was reported missing in an
alleged boating accident on nearby Lake McClure, she launched her probe.
The owner of the local newspaper, the Mariposa Guide, in time
contacted ABC television producer Don Thrasher and the story of the
corruption within the Mariposa Sheriff's Department ran in 1991 on ABC's
prime-time television news program 20/20. Seymour's investigation is
chronicled in a draft manuscript called the "Last Circle," written under her
pseudonym Carol Marshall but made available anonymously on the Internet in
1997. PROMIS then was only a sidebar to the larger story, but it was this
obscure Internet posting that led RCMP investigators McDade and Buffam to
Seymour's living room two years later.
According to Seymour: "Nothing [previously] came of the work I did.
Even though in October of 1992 I had sent a synopsis of my work to John
Cohen, lead investigator on the House Judiciary Committee, looking into the
theft of PROMIS and its possible connections to the savage death of
free-lance journalist Danny Casolaro. But by then the committee had completed
its report and published its findings. It was a closed case. Nothing ever
happened with the connections I was able to make among the players involved
in the theft of PROMIS and illegal drug trafficking and money laundering."
That is, until McDade sent his first cryptic e-mail.
Within a week the Mountie had arranged to meet Seymour at her home to
discuss aspects of his own secret investigation and begin the laborious task
of copying thousands of documents Seymour had collected from an abandoned
trailer in Death Valley belonging to a man at or near the center of the
PROMIS controversy, Michael Riconosciuto, a boy genius, entrepreneur,
convicted felon - and the man who has claimed that he modified the pirated
PROMIS software. The documents provided specific information about
Riconosciuto's connections to the Cabazon Indian Reservation, where he claims
to have carried out the modification, but they also painted a clear picture
of the men with whom Riconosciuto associated, including mob figures,
high-level government officials, intelligence and law-enforcement officers
and informants - even convicted murderers.
Before McDade focused on a three-day copying frenzy, the Mountie
gathered Todd, Seymour and an impartial observer invited by Seymour to
corroborate the meeting around Seymour's dining-room table and began to tell
a dramatic tale of government lies and international espionage.
"I sat there with my mouth wide open and my eyes practically popping
out of my head - you know, that deer-in-the-headlights look," Seymour
recounts. "I couldn't believe what this guy was telling us. It wasn't
anything I anticipated or even was prepared to hear." She says, "McDade told
us his investigation had to do with locating information on the possible sale
of PROMIS software to the RCMP in the mid-1980s. He had found evidence in
RCMP files that PROMIS may have been installed in the Canadian computer
systems, and he said an investigation was initiated by his superiors at the
RCMP."
According to Seymour, "McDade said that the details of his findings in
Canada could conceivably cause a major scandal in both Canada and the United
States.. He said if his investigation is successful it could cause the entire
Republican Party to be dismantled - that it would cease to exist in the U.S."
Hyperbole, perhaps, but bizarre stuff from a professional lawman.
"Then," continues Seymour, "he said something that was just really out
there. He stood in my dining room with a straight face and told us that ...
more than one presidential administration will be exposed for their knowledge
of the PROMIS software transactions. He said that high-ranking Canadian
government officials may have unlawfully purchased the PROMIS software from
high-ranking U.S. government officials in the Reagan/Bush administration, and
he further stated that the RCMP has located numerous banks around the world
that have been used by these U.S. officials to launder the money from the
sale of the PROMIS software."
Seymour was stunned. "First," she says, "I wondered if this guy was
for real and, second, did he have something against Republicans." Just when
she thought things couldn't get any weirder, "McDade detailed a December 1999
meeting at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico attended by the
heads of the intelligence divisions of the U.S. [CIA], Great Britain [MI6],
Israel [Mossad] and Canada [CSIS]. McDade said the topic of the discussion
was UNIQUE ELEMENTS, and that during this meeting it allegedly was revealed
that all four allied nations share computer systems and have for years. The
meeting was called after a glitch was found in a British computer system that
had caused the loss of historical case data."
McDade continued with this scenario by telling the astonished group:
"The Israeli Mossad may have modified the original PROMIS modification [the
first back door] so it became a two-way back door, allowing the Israelis
access to top U.S. weapons secrets at Los Alamos and other classified
installations. The Israelis may now possess all the nuclear secrets of the
United States." According to Seymour, he concluded by saying that "the
Jonathan Pollard [spy] case is insignificant by comparison to the current
crisis."
This was pretty heavy stuff for a foreign law-enforcement agent to be
bandying with complete strangers. And it made those present uncomfortable.
Was McDade making up wild tales for some as yet unrevealed purpose or was he,
in fact, reporting what he knew to be true based on information he had
gleaned from his investigation?
Insight has tried repeatedly to contact McDade and his superiors to
discuss the Mountie's accounts of espionage and other crimes only to be
rebuffed through official channels. But in carefully assembling and
independently checking disparate pieces of the McDade story line Insight was
able to confirm that there was indeed a December 1999 meeting at the Los
Alamos National Laboratory and the topic of the meeting was, indeed,
code-named UNIQUE ELEMENTS.
Seymour never learned further details about that meeting, though she
tried, alerting several U.S. senators, including Charles Robb, D-Va., Jeff
Bingaman, D-N.M., and Richard Bryan, D-Nev., about what McDade had told her
in February - nearly four months before the public was made aware of massive
computer problems at Los Alamos (see "DOE 'Green Book' Secrets Exposed," Jan.
1). Ironically, Congress was probing such lapses, but only Bob Simon,
Bingaman's staff director on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, responded. Simon advised that he would show the letter to the
senator and possibly refer "some or all of the information in the letter to
Ed Curran, director of the Department of Energy's [DOE] Office of
Counterintelligence."
Seymour never had any further communication from Bingaman's office,
the DOE or any federal investigator seeking to discover which "foreign agent"
had told her of severe computer leakage from Los Alamos long before it became
public knowledge.
How McDade knew what he claimed may never be made public. But what is
known can be pieced together from the many contacts he had with individuals
having historical knowledge of the allegations surrounding PROMIS and a host
of other seemingly unrelated criminal enterprises and crimes.
For instance, in January 2000 McDade contacted PROMIS developers and
owners Bill and Nancy Hamilton, explaining what his investigation was about;
what, to date, had surfaced; and what the implications might be. "McDade said
my government made two untruthful statements in 1991 [the year congressional
hearings were held on the theft of PROMIS]," Bill Hamilton tells Insight.
"The first was that they [Canada] had developed the software in-house. McDade
said that wasn't true, it just materialized one day out of nowhere. The
second untruth was that they [the Canadian government] had investigated this.
McDade said that his investigation was the first."
Hamilton further explained that "McDade believed PROMIS software was
being used to compromise their [Canada's] national security." Needless to
say, this was interesting news to Hamilton, given that it was "the second
time the Canadian government has said they have our software, only to retract
the admission later." The first time was in 1991, he recalls. "They contacted
us to see if we had a French-language version because they said they only had
the English version - which, by the way, we did not sell to them. At first we
didn't take it seriously because it was before we were aware that the
software was reportedly being used in intelligence. We just knew that the
U.S. Department of Justice acted rather strangely, took our software and
stiffed us. It never occurred to us that the software was being distributed
to foreign governments," Hamilton tells Insight.
"When they [Canada] followed up their call with a letter saying PROMIS
software is used in a number of their departments - 900 locations in the
RCMP, to be exact - Nancy and I said 'Hey, wait a minute.'"
Of course, laughs Hamilton, "when one of our newspapers in the U.S.
got hold of that information and printed it, the Canadians retracted and
apologized for a mistake. They now said the RCMP never had the software."
It is important to note that the alleged theft of PROMIS software was
well investigated. However, no investigation by any governmental body,
including the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which made public its findings
in September 1992, the Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the
Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw,
Inc., completed in March 1993, nor the Justice Department's Review of the Bua
Report, which was published in September 1993, confirmed that any agency or
entity of Canada had obtained and used an illegal copy of the Hamiltons'
PROMIS software.
A Justice report commissioned by Attorney General Janet Reno concluded
the same but did confirm that a system called PROMIS was being used by
Canadian agencies but claimed that this system was totally different - it was
just a coincidence that the two software programs had the same unusual name
and spelling.
So what happened over the course of 10 years to lead the RCMP's top
national-security investigators to probe the matter anew and to do so with
such secrecy throughout the United States and Canada? Why would McDade, by
all accounts a seasoned and well-respected Mountie, tell whopping tales to so
many people, including not only Bill Hamilton but strangers Seymour, Todd and
others?
The answers may be found in the pattern of people who were questioned
by the Mounties. The information for which they were asked and which they
reportedly provided, may reveal that the alleged theft of the breakthrough
PROMIS software was not, in fact, the focus of the investigation, but was
secondary to how the software has come to be used.
In August 2000, McDade told the Toronto Star's Valerie Lawton and
Allan Thompson, "There are issues that I am not able to talk about and have
nothing to do with what you're probably making inquiries about," which
centered on PROMIS. Was the Mountie revealing that his investigation had
reached the level he had unguardedly revealed to Seymour and friends?
Surprisingly, McDade did not focus his investigation on interviews
with government officials who were involved with the PROMIS software. Rather
he focused on people who claimed to have knowledge of the purported theft,
many of whom also have been connected to other illegal activities, including
drug trafficking and money laundering. And Michael Riconosciuto was at the
top of McDade's list.
With the help of Detective Todd, who had facilitated the Mounties'
meetings with the hope of also obtaining information about the 1997
execution-style double homicide of Neil Abernathy and his 12-year-old son,
Benden, McDade was given access to Riconosciuto and people and information
that even few law-enforcement officers in the United States have secured. In
fact, the assistance the Mountie received secretly from U.S. authorities was
stunning and included access to information from highly confidential FBI
internal files and case jackets (including the names of confidential
witnesses and wiretapping information), U.S. Bureau of Prisons files, local
law-enforcement reports and reportedly even classified U.S. intelligence
data.
It was with this kind of help that McDade was able to walk away with
what many believe to be key material evidence in the PROMIS software legal
case - material evidence of which only Riconosciuto had knowledge. After
extensive interviews with Riconosciuto in a federal penitentiary in Florida,
McDade in May 2000 made a $1,500 payment on a defaulted storage unit in
Vallejo, Calif., that belonged to Riconosciuto. Poring through
floor-to-ceiling boxes, McDade hit pay dirt when he found six RL02 magnetic
tapes that Riconosciuto said were the PROMIS modification updates - the
boot-up system for PROMIS he claimed to have created.
Coupling those storage-unit files with the thousands of pages of
documents Seymour had obtained some years earlier from an abandoned trailer
Riconosciuto had rented in the desert, McDade walked away with the whole kit
and caboodle without so much as a peep out of U.S. law-enforcement or
intelligence agencies. At least until now.
Today, that evidence is in the hands of foreign agents - our neighbors
up north in Canada. When questioned about the magnetic tapes, the RCMP would
neither confirm nor deny that they were in its possession. Michele Gaudet,
the RCMP spokesman, did tell Insight that the investigation is ongoing and it
is very much about the PROMIS software - software that may or may not involve
back-door entrance into the most secret computer systems in the Western
world.
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Overview of Insight's Four-Part Series
By Paul M. Rodriguez
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
This four-part series is about how a foreign law-enforcement agency,
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), covertly entered the United States
and for nearly eight months conducted a secret investigation about the
alleged theft of PROMIS software and the part it may play in suspected
security breaches in Canada, the United States and other nations.
In Part 1, Insight tracks the early movements of two RCMP
national-security officers - Sean McDade and Randy Buffam - to contacts
throughout the United States, including private detective Cheri Seymour, an
author and former investigative journalist. Seymour has spent years
investigating the alleged theft of PROMIS and illegal activities reportedly
associated with it. McDade outlined the nature of his investigation and what
is at stake. He described potential security breaches in his country and
detailed top-level secret meetings at U.S. national laboratories about
similar security problems in the United States. Here, readers also will learn
how with the help of a small-town California detective, Sue Todd, the
Mounties managed to leave the United States with material evidence that may
be crucial to solving a major espionage puzzle.
In Part 2, Insight follows the Mounties to the California desert in
search of confirmation of allegations made by Michael Riconosciuto, the boy
genius who reportedly modified the stolen PROMIS software for international
espionage while working as research director of an alleged Cabazon/Wackenhut
Joint Venture on the Cabazon Indian Reservation in Indio, Calif. It also is
at Cabazon that other "characters" reportedly involved in the theft of the
software were revealed and Riconosciuto's connections to them confirmed. It
is a strange mix of alleged players - the Wackenhut Corp., government
officials, mob-related goodfellows and murderers. Insight also will look at
claimed arms deals and government research at the Cabazon reservation,
including a secret weapons demonstration in Indio attended by many of the
same cast reportedly key to the theft of PROMIS.
In Part 3, readers will watch as the Mounties begin a lengthy review
of a U.S. government official, Peter Videnieks, the Justice Department
employee overseeing the PROMIS contract, who allegedly made the theft of the
software possible. The U.S. Customs Service began an investigation of
Videnieks based on its suspicion that he committed perjury when he testified
at a 1991 trial of Riconosciuto. Based on documents obtained from federal
law-enforcement agencies, Insight looks at a U.S. Customs Service
investigation of Videnieks, which ultimately was dropped. The Mounties also
probed a Customs investigation of reported drug trafficking and technology
transfers over the Maine/Canadian border.
In Part 4, Insight will review the numerous investigations conducted
by law enforcement, beginning with the Mounties, concerning the alleged theft
of the PROMIS software and individuals reportedly associated with that theft.
Readers will see how each investigation began with review of the "theft" but
quickly led into other suspected illegal activities, including technology
transfers. This last part also will review how each new investigation has
overlooked key evidence and seen careers threatened.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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