vault backup: 2026-09-22 16:48:54
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@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ summary: "The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is Canada's national police force, w
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start: 1920
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location: "Ottawa, Canada"
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---
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The [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] is [[Canada]]'s national police force, which became significantly involved in the investigation of the [[PROMIS Software Scandal]]. In February 2000, [[Sean McDade]], an [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] national security investigator, secretly entered the [[United States]] to investigate evidence that the [[Canadian Government]] was using a modified version of the [[PROMIS]] computer software, which purportedly allowed the [[United States|U.S.]] to eavesdrop on [[Canada|Canadian]] intelligence secrets through a "back-door." His investigation was code-named Project Abbreviation, and his email handle, "simorp," was [[PROMIS]] spelled backward.[1]
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The [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] is [[Canada]]'s national police force, which became significantly involved in the investigation of the [[PROMIS Software Scandal]]. In February 2000, [[Sean McDade]], an [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] national security investigator, secretly entered the [[United States]] to investigate evidence that the [[Canadian Government]] was using a modified version of the [[PROMIS]] computer software, which purportedly allowed the [[United States|U.S.]] to eavesdrop on [[Canada|Canadian]] intelligence secrets through a "back-door." His investigation was code-named [[Project Abbreviation]], and his email handle, "simorp," was [[PROMIS]] spelled backward.[1]
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The [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] probe, code-named Project Abbreviation, was authorized at the highest levels of the organization and was well-funded. The investigation was prompted by the discovery of an invoice for the purchase of [[PROMIS]] from Strategic Software Planning in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which contradicted earlier denials by [[Canada|Canadian]] authorities regarding the Hamiltons' claims about the pirated software. [[Sean McDade]]'s investigation reportedly traced banking transactions that supported the claim that high-ranking [[Canadian Government|Canadian]] officials might have unlawfully purchased the software from officials in the [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]]-[[George H.W. Bush|Bush]] administration.[1]
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@ -6,37 +6,46 @@ aliases:
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- Justice Department
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- U.S. Department of Justice
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created: 2026-05-17
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updated: 2026-05-17
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updated: 2026-09-22
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tags:
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- Organization
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- USGovernment
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- LawEnforcement
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- PROMIS
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- INSLAW
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- BCCI
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- BNL
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- TheFinders
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- CIA
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- DarkAllianceInvestigation
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category: "U.S. Government"
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summary: "U.S. federal law enforcement and legal agency whose prosecution of the INSLAW-PROMIS case, 1982 drug trafficking exemption for CIA assets, and 1993 internal inquiry into CIA involvement with The Finders make it a central subject of this vault."
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summary: "The federal department of prosecutors, the FBI, the DEA and the U.S. Attorneys, in the vault the defendant in the INSLAW case, the obstructor found by the BCCI and BNL inquiries, the CIA's partner in the 1954 and 1982 understandings on prosecution, and the investigator of The Finders."
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start: 1870-07-01
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location: "Washington, D.C."
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---
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The Department of Justice launched an internal inquiry in 1993 into CIA involvement with [[The Finders]] and a potential FBI coverup of the group's operations. The inquiry was initiated after the Department received a copy of the U.S. Customs memo compiled by Special Agent [[Ramon J. Martinez]] on the raids of The Finders properties in February 1987.[^1]
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The Department of Justice, established in 1870 under the Attorney General, contains the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]], the [[DEA]], the [[Executive Office for United States Attorneys]] and the ninety-odd [[U.S. Attorney's office|United States Attorneys]], the Criminal, Civil and Civil Rights Divisions, the [[Office of Special Investigations]], the Office of Legal Counsel, the [[Office of Professional Responsibility]] and, until 1982, the [[LEAA]], whose grants funded the case-tracking software that became [[PROMIS]].[^1]
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The inquiry focused on multiple intelligence connections: [[Marion Pettie]]'s late wife [[Isabelle Pettie]] had been a CIA employee, one of his sons had worked for [[Air America]], and [[Future Enterprises]] had provided software training for CIA employees. The investigation's findings were not publicly released in full.[^1]
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### INSLAW and PROMIS
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### Dark Alliance Investigation
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In March 1982 the Executive Office for United States Attorneys contracted with [[INSLAW]], the company of [[Bill Hamilton]] and [[Nancy Hamilton]], to install PROMIS in the largest U.S. Attorneys' offices; within a month the department's project manager [[C. Madison Brewer]] and contracting officer [[Peter Videnieks]] were disputing INSLAW's proprietary claims, payments were withheld, and in 1985 the company entered Chapter 11. Deputy Attorney General [[Arnold Burns]] told the Office of Professional Responsibility in 1986 that INSLAW's claim was "legitimate" and that the government "would probably lose the case in court," yet the litigation continued. On September 28, 1987, Bankruptcy Judge [[George Francis Bason, Jr.|George Bason]] found that the department had "taken, converted, stole, INSLAW's enhanced PROMIS by trickery, fraud, and deceit"; the district court affirmed in 1988 and the D.C. Circuit reversed on jurisdiction in 1991. Bason was not reappointed, the transcript of his ruling having reached the selection panel's chair, Judge [[Norma H. Johnson]], from the U.S. Attorney's civil chief [[Royce Lamberth]]. [[Elliot Richardson]], retained by INSLAW, called the affair "a high-tech Watergate." The [[House Committee on the Judiciary]] under [[Jack Brooks]] opened its investigation in 1989 and reported in September 1992 "strong evidence" that the department "acted willfully and fraudulently"; INSLAW alleged that [[Earl Brian]], a friend of Attorney General [[Edwin Meese]], had been given the software to sell to foreign intelligence services, and a document on department letterhead dated May 14, 1985, and signed by [[William Bradford Reynolds]] was later produced as a plan to distribute a modified PROMIS in the [[Middle East]]. [[Ronald LeGrand]] of the [[Senate Judiciary Committee]] relayed a career department source's judgment that INSLAW "is a lot dirtier for the Department of Justice, in its breadth and depth, than Watergate." Attorney General [[William Barr]] appointed [[Nicholas J. Bua]] special counsel in 1991; his report of March 1993 found no credible evidence of wrongdoing, and Attorney General [[Janet Reno]]'s review of September 1994 concurred, after Associate Attorney General [[Webster Hubbell]] had announced a nationwide investigation of [[Danny Casolaro]]'s death. The Senate referred INSLAW's claims to the [[United States Court of Federal Claims]], where Judge [[Christine Odell Cook Miller]] ruled in July 1997 that every version of PROMIS was in the public domain. [[Rafael Eitan]] of [[LAKAM]] is said to have acquired a copy through back-channel contacts with the department in the early 1980s, and the department's own successor system, the Integrated Case Management System, employed one of PROMIS's original designers, [[Dennis W. Wright]].[^2]
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In early 1982, CIA director [[William J. Casey]] and Attorney General [[William French Smith]] signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding that exempted the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] from reporting drug crimes committed by its non-employees, including agents, assets, and non-staff employees. Drug offenses were specifically removed from the list of crimes the CIA was required to report. The agreement remained in effect from 1982 to 1995. CIA Inspector General [[Fred Hitz]] testified that "the period of 1982 to 1995 was one in which there was no official requirement to report on allegations of drug trafficking with respect to non-employees of the agency."[^2]
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### The CIA and Prosecution
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### Protection of Danilo Blandón
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In 1954 the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] "pointed out to the Department of Justice that, in many cases involving CIA, prosecution would require public disclosure of sensitive Agency operations and procedures"; under the understanding that resulted, described in the [[Rockefeller Commission 1975|Rockefeller Commission]] report, the agency's general counsel [[Lawrence Houston]] recorded that if prosecution "would be precluded by the need to reveal sensitive information, then the Agency should so indicate in its files and not refer the case to the Department of Justice." In early 1982 Director [[William J. Casey]] and Attorney General [[William French Smith]] signed a memorandum of understanding under which crimes by people "acting for" an intelligence agency no longer had to be reported, and drug offenses were specifically removed from the list; it remained in force until 1995, and the CIA inspector general [[Fred Hitz]] testified that in those years "there was no official requirement to report on allegations of drug trafficking with respect to non-employees of the agency." In that period the department reduced [[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]]'s sentence from life to about twenty-eight months, dropped the charges against his wife and released him as a "full-time paid informant" on the motions of Assistant U.S. Attorney [[LJ Oneale]], who then prosecuted [[Ricky Ross]] in [[San Diego]] and moved to bar any mention of the CIA at trial: "This matter, if true, would be classified." A former assistant U.S. attorney, [[Eric Swenson]], said [[Norwin Meneses]]'s work with the [[Contras]] was known to the department because he had reported it himself. After 2002 the Office of Legal Counsel gave the CIA its authorizations for "enhanced interrogation techniques." Department lawyer Walter May told a court in the 1970s that [[Hal Hendrix]] of ITT had informed the CIA of his intent to withhold his agency contacts from a Senate committee; the department investigated [[Harold Geneen]], Edward Gerrity and [[Robert Berrellez]] for perjury in 1977 and examined [[Edward Korry]]'s charges of false testimony about [[Chile]].[^3]
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The Justice Department accorded [[Danilo Blandon|Danilo Blandón]] extraordinary treatment, reducing his sentence from life to approximately twenty-eight months, dropping charges against his wife [[Chepita Blandon|Chepita]], and releasing him as a full-time paid informant. Assistant U.S. Attorney [[LJ Oneale]] filed motions to have Blandón's sentence secretly reduced twice.[^3]
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### BCCI and BNL
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O'Neale prosecuted [[Ricky Ross]] in [[San Diego]], filing a motion to prevent any mention of the CIA at trial, writing: "This matter, if true, would be classified." O'Neale admitted he had never checked with the CIA about Blandón's connections but insisted there was "absolutely no connection" between Blandón and the agency.[^4]
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The [[BCCI Kerry-Brown Senate Report|Kerry-Brown report]] on the [[Bank of Credit and Commerce International|BCCI]] concluded that the department had obstructed the investigation. [[Charles Saphos]], chief of the Criminal Division's narcotics section, wrote to Florida's comptroller [[Gerald Lewis]] asking that the bank be allowed to stay open; Manhattan District Attorney [[Robert Morgenthau]] accused federal authorities of hindering his inquiry; Customs Commissioner [[William von Raab]] testified that the department had denied knowledge of the Ali Mirza tapes; the criminal division under [[Robert Mueller]] indicted [[Swaleh Naqvi]], [[Ghaith R. Pharaon]] and [[David L. Paul]] over CenTrust and the Independence Bank in 1991 and 1992. In the [[BNL Scandal]], the Atlanta bank's officers believed in March 1990 that the department had taken the case away from the local U.S. Attorney; Attorney General [[Richard Thornburgh]]'s legislative chief [[Lee Rawls]] advised him on "our best attempt to thwart any further congressional inquiry by the [[House Banking Committee]]" of [[Henry B. Gonzalez]], and Judge Marvin Shoob publicly criticized the department's handling of the case.[^4]
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### Letelier, The Finders and After
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Assistant U.S. Attorney [[Eugene Propper]] prosecuted the [[Orlando Letelier]] murder, and the department sent [[Michael Townley]]'s confessions to Chile with its request for the extradition of [[Manuel Contreras]] and [[Pedro Espinoza]]. [[Walter Sheridan]] had worked under Robert Kennedy at the department before his NBC assignment on [[Jim Garrison]]; Houston recorded of the agency's handling of the Clay Shaw trial that "the Department of Justice has seen and agrees." [[Michael Abbell]], director of the Criminal Division's Office of International Affairs from 1979 to 1982, went on to represent the [[Cali Drug Cartel]]. In 1993 the department opened an inquiry into CIA involvement with [[The Finders]] after receiving the Customs memorandum of Special Agent [[Ramon J. Martinez]] on the 1987 raids; [[Marion Pettie]]'s late wife [[Isabelle Pettie]] had worked for the agency, a son for [[Air America]], and [[Future Enterprises]] had trained agency employees; the findings were never released in full. The Criminal Division's [[Mark M. Richard]] told the Bua inquiry that the Office of Special Investigations worked with intelligence agencies only to locate war criminals. In the 2020s the National Security Division returned no documents on [[Rinaldo Nazzaro]]'s contracting, a State Department source called him a department "matter," and the department disclosed a payment to an informant in the [[2023 Baltimore Power Grid Conspiracy]] six weeks after [[Brandon Russell]]'s conviction.[^5]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Dovey, S. (2023). *Eye of the Chickenhawk*. United States: Thehotstar.
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[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Epilogue: "The damage that has been done"
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[^3]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 24: "They're gonna forget I was a drug dealer"
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[^4]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 26: "That matter, if true, would be classified"
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[^1]: Justice System Improvement Act of 1979, Public Law 96-157; the organizational entries in the *United States Government Manual.*
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[^2]: As cited on the linked pages: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, *The INSLAW Affair,* H. Rept. 102-857, September 10, 1992; U.S. Department of Justice, *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua,* March 1993, and the department's review of September 27, 1994; Richardson, Elliot, "A High-Tech Watergate," *New York Times,* October 21, 1991; Seymour, Cheri, *The Last Circle,* TrineDay, 2010; Thomas, Gordon, *Gideon's Spies,* St. Martin's, 1999; Federal Judicial Center, *1990 Annual Report;* Webb, Gary, *Dark Alliance,* Seven Stories, 1998, ch. 6; and the pages linked.
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[^3]: As cited on the linked pages: Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, *Report to the President,* June 1975; Webb, *Dark Alliance,* chs. 1, 24, 26 and epilogue; Associated Press, "CIA Knew of False Testimony," and "2 ITT Men Charged with Senate Lies," March 21, 1978, CIA Reading Room; Trento, Joseph, "JFK Began Chile Bribes, Envoy Says," *Sunday News Journal,* November 28, 1976.
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[^4]: As cited on the linked pages: Beaty, Jonathan, and S. C. Gwynne, *The Outlaw Bank,* Random House, 1993; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, *The BCCI Affair,* 1992; Gonzalez, Henry B., "The Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Scandal" and "Continuing Saga of Attempts to Thwart BNL Investigation," *Congressional Record,* 1992-93; Friedman, Alan, *Spider's Web,* Bantam, 1993, pp. 193-194.
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[^5]: As cited on the linked pages: Kornbluh, Peter, ed., "The Pinochet Dictatorship Declassified: Confessions of a DINA Hit Man," National Security Archive; Holland, Max, "The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination," *Studies in Intelligence,* 2001; Houston, Lawrence R., memorandum, "Clay L. Shaw's Trial and the Central Intelligence Agency"; Dovey, S., *Eye of the Chickenhawk,* 2023; Wilson, Jason, *VICE News,* 2021, and MuckRock FOIA logs; *The Daily Record,* May 2, 2025.
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@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
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---
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category: "U.S. Government"
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tags:
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- Organization
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- EOUSA
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- DOJ
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- PROMIS
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- INSLAW
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alias:
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- EOUSA
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- Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys
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summary: "The Justice Department office that supervises the U.S. Attorneys, which signed INSLAW's 1982 PROMIS contract and whose project staff, Brewer, Videnieks and Rugh, ran the dispute that Judge Bason found was a scheme to take the software by fraud."
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start: 1953
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location: "Washington, D.C."
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created: 2026-09-22
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updated: 2026-09-22
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---
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The Executive Office for United States Attorneys is the [[Department of Justice]] office, established by Attorney General Order No. 8-53 of April 6, 1953, under Herbert Brownell, that provides executive assistance and supervision to the [[U.S. Attorney's office|United States Attorneys]] in the federal districts. It evaluates their performance, coordinates them with other agencies, maintains the United States Attorneys' Manual, runs their legal training, supports the Attorney General's Advisory Committee, sets policy for collecting criminal fines, handles their budgets, Freedom of Information Act responses, congressional liaison, facilities and security. James R. Browning organized the office as its first chief in 1953. Its directors in the years of the INSLAW dispute were William P. Tyson, from 1977 to 1987, Laurence S. McWhorter, from 1987 to 1992, and [[Anthony Moscato]], acting director and then director from 1992 to 1994, followed by Carol DiBattiste.[^1]
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### The PROMIS Contract
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In March 1982 [[INSLAW]] signed a three-year, ten-million-dollar contract with the office to install [[PROMIS]], the case-tracking system it had developed with [[LEAA]] funds, in the twenty largest U.S. Attorneys' offices and word-processing versions in 74 smaller ones. The office's project manager was [[C. Madison Brewer]], a former INSLAW employee dismissed by [[Bill Hamilton]]; its contracting officer was [[Peter Videnieks]], and Brewer's deputy and technical representative was [[Jack Rugh]]. Within a month of the signing the office and INSLAW were disputing whether the enhanced PROMIS delivered under the contract was proprietary, and in 1983 the office withheld payments and in 1985 INSLAW entered Chapter 11. In September 1987 Bankruptcy Judge [[George Francis Bason, Jr.|George Bason]] found that the department had taken the software "by trickery, fraud, and deceit," a finding the [[House Committee on the Judiciary]] endorsed in 1992 and the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] rejected in 1993. In February 1985, days after the bankruptcy filing, Rugh telephoned the INSLAW programmer [[Gregory McKain]] to offer him a job and, by McKain's account, told him the department had learned from the trustees that INSLAW would be in liquidation within sixty days. The office's later director Moscato was accused by Hamilton of helping to deny Bason's reappointment, which he denied to Bua.[^2][^3]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice, *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua,* March 1993, p. 186 (Moscato "now Acting Director of EOUSA"). The 1953 order, the list of duties (Justice Manual, Title 3) and the succession of directors other than Moscato are as given in reference summaries of the office; the Justice Manual and the *United States Government Manual* entries were not examined.
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[^2]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. *The INSLAW Affair,* H. Rept. 102-857, September 10, 1992. https://archive.org/details/InslawAffairInvestigativeReport
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[^3]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.,* March 1993, pp. 185-186, 211-214. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport
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@ -9,7 +9,7 @@ The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) is an organizational unit within the
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In February 1994, [[INSLAW|Inslaw]] alleged for the first time that OSI was, in fact, the DOJ's own covert intelligence agency, with functions unrelated to its stated mission. These allegations claimed that OSI was at the center of various conspiracies, including the illegal dissemination of the proprietary version of [[PROMIS]] and the murder of [[Danny Casolaro]]. Inslaw asserted that OSI's Nazi war criminal program was a front for this secret intelligence service. Inslaw also claimed to have obtained a "Criminal Division Vendor List," which, according to their intelligence community informants, was actually a list of commercial organizations and individuals serving as "cutouts" for this secret agency. These charges were repeated in an Inslaw press release.[^1]
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The Special Counsel's investigation found these charges to be "fantasy" and "wholly unsubstantiated," lacking any credible corroborative evidence. The report noted that Inslaw relied solely on unnamed "reliable sources" and anonymous "senior Justice Department career officials," none of whom came forward for interviews. The Special Counsel interviewed [[Mark Richard]], Deputy Assistant Attorney General, whom Inslaw suggested oversaw OSI's covert operations. Richard stated that Inslaw's charges were "ridiculous" and that OSI was only involved in its stated mission and related projects. He categorically denied any involvement by OSI in covert operations, the dissemination of PROMIS, or the death of Mr. Casolaro, calling Inslaw's allegations slanderous. The investigation also found no evidence during its tenure that OSI engaged in the types of activities alleged by Inslaw.[^1]
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The Special Counsel's investigation found these charges to be "fantasy" and "wholly unsubstantiated," lacking any credible corroborative evidence. The report noted that Inslaw relied solely on unnamed "reliable sources" and anonymous "senior Justice Department career officials," none of whom came forward for interviews. The Special Counsel interviewed [[Mark M. Richard|Mark Richard]], Deputy Assistant Attorney General, whom Inslaw suggested oversaw OSI's covert operations. Richard stated that Inslaw's charges were "ridiculous" and that OSI was only involved in its stated mission and related projects. He categorically denied any involvement by OSI in covert operations, the dissemination of PROMIS, or the death of Mr. Casolaro, calling Inslaw's allegations slanderous. The investigation also found no evidence during its tenure that OSI engaged in the types of activities alleged by Inslaw.[^1]
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Regarding the vendor list, the Special Counsel showed it to [[Robert Bratt]], Executive Officer for the Justice Department's Criminal Division. Bratt confirmed that the list was exactly what it purported to be: a list of vendors used by the Criminal Division for its automated procurement system, PROCURE. The Special Counsel concluded that the vendor list was nothing other than what it claimed to be, and that the theory that large companies like AT&T, Canon, IBM, and Xerox were fronts for OSI's covert operations was unsupported. The allegations concerning OSI's involvement in Danny Casolaro's death were also dismissed as absurd and lacking corroborating evidence, as the investigation found no credible evidence that Casolaro's death was anything other than a suicide.[^1]
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@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ The DC office became the first PROMIS site and served as the demonstration platf
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### EOUSA Implementation Contract
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The Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA), which administers support for all 94 U.S. Attorneys' Offices, was the entity that signed the March 1982 implementation contract with INSLAW, Inc. for installation of PROMIS in 20 large U.S. Attorneys' offices and word-processor systems in 74 smaller ones. The execution of that contract, and EOUSA's subsequent conduct toward INSLAW, became the central dispute in the [[PROMIS Software Scandal|INSLAW affair]].[^1]
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The [[Executive Office for United States Attorneys]] (EOUSA), which administers support for all 94 U.S. Attorneys' Offices, was the entity that signed the March 1982 implementation contract with INSLAW, Inc. for installation of PROMIS in 20 large U.S. Attorneys' offices and word-processor systems in 74 smaller ones. The execution of that contract, and EOUSA's subsequent conduct toward INSLAW, became the central dispute in the [[PROMIS Software Scandal|INSLAW affair]].[^1]
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### Footnotes
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24
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---
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category: "Private Organization"
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tags:
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- Organization
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- 53rdStreetVentures
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- PROMIS
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- INSLAW
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- VentureCapital
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alias:
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- 53rd Street Ventures, Inc.
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summary: "New York venture fund, managed first by Patricof and Company and from 1984 by Tessler and Cloherty, that put 100,000 dollars into INSLAW in 1982 and whose managers Bill Hamilton accused of pressing him to surrender voting control in December 1984."
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start: 1976
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location: "New York City"
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created: 2026-09-22
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updated: 2026-09-22
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---
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53rd Street Ventures, Inc., was formed about 1976 as an investment company that took capital from shareholders and placed it in "high risk, high reward ventures." It was managed by [[Patricof and Company]], where the Israeli-born fund manager [[Jonathan Ben Cnaan]] handled several of the firm's funds and, around 1982, made the fund's investment of 100,000 dollars in [[INSLAW]], the software company of [[Bill Hamilton]] and [[Nancy Hamilton]], as a "follower" investor with no negotiating role; the stake was less than one percent of the fund's portfolio and gave it about 1.2 percent of INSLAW. In 1984 management of the fund passed to [[Tessler & Cloherty|Tessler and Cloherty, Inc.]], the firm of [[Daniel Tessler]] and his wife [[Patricia Cloherty]], who had left Patricof and Company for the Carter administration's Small Business Administration and returned to Patricof in February 1988.[^1]
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Tessler and Cloherty concluded that INSLAW "had serious operating difficulties," "could not meet its production obligations" and "was heavily in debt." Hamilton's affidavit in the INSLAW litigation alleged that in December 1984 Tessler tried to coerce the Hamiltons into surrendering voting control of their stock on the threat that neither 53rd Street Ventures nor [[Hambro International Equity Partners|Hambro]], the lead investor whose partner [[Richard D'Amore]] sat on INSLAW's board, would help the company raise capital otherwise, and that Cloherty had said she "knew all about" [[Earl Brian]]'s role. Tessler, Cloherty and D'Amore denied the accounts, Tessler adding that he was no relation of [[Allan R. Tessler]] of [[Shea & Gould]], whom Hamilton had described as Brian's merger lawyer, and the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] found the allegation not credible. INSLAW filed under Chapter 11 in February 1985.[^1]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.,* March 1993, pp. 90-94 and the interviews of Ben Cnaan, Tessler, Cloherty and D'Amore. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport
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---
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category: "Private Organization"
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tags:
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- Organization
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- Accumenics
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- Hadron
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- PROMIS
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- INSLAW
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- DOJ
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alias:
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- Accumenics Inc.
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summary: "Litigation-support software company bought by Earl Brian's Hadron about 1983, alleged by Bill Hamilton to have received a 40-million-dollar Justice Department contract in October 1987 through the Meese associate James L. Byrnes, who told the Bua inquiry he knew nothing of it."
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location: "Virginia"
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created: 2026-09-22
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updated: 2026-09-22
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---
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Accumenics, Inc., a maker of litigation-support software, was acquired by [[Hadron]], the company controlled by [[Earl Brian]], together with SIMCON Inc., a police-software firm. In the telephone call of April 1983 that [[Bill Hamilton]] attributed to Hadron's chairman [[Dominic Laiti]], the purchases were explained as part of a strategy "to become the leading vendor in the United States of software for law enforcement and courts," the ambition behind Laiti's offer to buy [[INSLAW]] and its [[PROMIS]] software.[^1]
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|
||||
Hamilton's affidavit in the INSLAW litigation alleged that [[James L. Byrnes]], a deputy assistant attorney general with "close ties to [[Edwin Meese|Meese]]," "spearheaded the award by DOJ in October 1987 to a Hadron subsidiary of a 40 million dollar computer services contract for litigation support" in the Land and Natural Resources Division. Byrnes told the investigators of the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] that he had transferred to that division in November 1987, a month after the alleged award, that he was unaware of any such contract and did not know whether one had ever been made, that he had no knowledge of or contact with Hadron, [[Simeon]] or Accumenics, and that his relationship with Meese was the ordinary one of a [[Department of Justice]] official. Bua's report treats the dollar figure and date as unconfirmed and the Byrnes connection as unsupported. The contract is distinct from Project Eagle, the department's litigation-automation program whose 30-million-dollar systems contract went to Tisoft, Inc., in January 1986, and which INSLAW separately theorized had been intended for Hadron.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.,* March 1993, and the department's review of September 27, 1994, on Project Eagle. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport No procurement record of the alleged 1987 award was located.
|
||||
26
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Allen and Company.md
Normal file
26
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Allen and Company.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Organization
|
||||
- AllenAndCompany
|
||||
- PROMIS
|
||||
- INSLAW
|
||||
- Hadron
|
||||
- InvestmentBank
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Allen & Company
|
||||
- Allen & Co.
|
||||
summary: "Wall Street investment bank of Charles Allen where Hadron's Dominic Laiti and Simeon's Paul Wormeli went for capital in September 1983, and which bought 7.8 percent of SCT for an unnamed client before SCT's 1986 bid for INSLAW, the two facts on which INSLAW built its Earl Brian financing theory."
|
||||
location: "New York City"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Allen and Company is the [[New York City]] investment bank of the Allen family. In September 1983 [[Dominic Laiti]], chairman of [[Hadron]], the company controlled by [[Earl Brian]], and [[Paul Wormeli]], vice president of its public-safety software subsidiary [[Simeon]], went to New York to raise capital for Simeon and met at the bank's offices with the executive [[Mark Kesselman]] and "a young man whose last name was Allen." Kesselman later visited Simeon's Northern Virginia offices; he told the investigators of the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] that he had been asked by [[Charles Allen]] to assist Allen's nephew [[Nathaniel Kramer]] in the analysis, and that he left the firm in February 1984. [[Bill Hamilton]] of [[INSLAW]] held that the trip's purpose was the acquisition of INSLAW and its [[PROMIS]] software; Bua's investigators concluded the thesis was "incorrect."[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
About 1985 or 1986 the bank bought 7.8 percent of the stock of [[SCT|Systems and Computer Technology]] on behalf of an unnamed third party. INSLAW cited the purchase, in its rebuttal to Bua's report, as evidence that Brian was secretly behind SCT's attempted hostile purchase of INSLAW in 1986. The Justice Department's 1994 review rejected the inference as unsupported and noted that on INSLAW's own theory Brian by then already controlled the enhanced PROMIS and was selling it abroad, leaving him no motive to buy the company. Neither the Bua report nor the House Judiciary Committee's report connects the bank to the financing of Brian's later Infotechnology, Financial News Network and United Press International ventures, which collapsed in 1991.[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.,* March 1993, interviews of Dominic Laiti, Paul Wormeli and Mark Kesselman. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of the United States Department of Justice on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report on the Allegations of INSLAW, Inc.,* September 27, 1994 (bound with the Bua report in the archive.org item).
|
||||
|
|
@ -8,6 +8,9 @@ tags:
|
|||
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||
created: 2024-04-25
|
||||
updated: 2026-05-01
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Degem Computers
|
||||
- Degem Systems
|
||||
summary: "Degem was an Israeli-controlled computer company with operations in Israel, Guatemala, and Transkei, alleged to have been the primary vehicle through which Robert Maxwell distributed backdoored PROMIS software to foreign governments worldwide."
|
||||
location: "Israel"
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ Hamilton further alleged that a 1983 Hadron fundraising trip to New York, involv
|
|||
|
||||
Hamilton claimed that [[Edward Hurley]], a Hadron Vice President, stated in June 1985 that Hadron wanted to acquire INSLAW's "court software." An INSLAW employee, Theresa Bousquin, confirmed Hurley's general interest but stated his remark was made in passing and did not indicate an active acquisition effort. The Special Counsel found Hamilton's characterization inaccurate.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
Hamilton alleged that [[James L. Byrnes]], a Deputy Assistant Attorney General with ties to [[Edwin Meese]], spearheaded the award of a $40 million computer services contract to Accumenics, a Hadron subsidiary, in October 1987. Byrnes denied any knowledge of such a contract or any contact with Hadron or its subsidiaries. The Special Counsel found no evidence supporting this allegation.[^2]
|
||||
Hamilton alleged that [[James L. Byrnes]], a Deputy Assistant Attorney General with ties to [[Edwin Meese]], spearheaded the award of a $40 million computer services contract to [[Accumenics]], a Hadron subsidiary, in October 1987. Byrnes denied any knowledge of such a contract or any contact with Hadron or its subsidiaries. The Special Counsel found no evidence supporting this allegation.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
INSLAW alleged a connection between [[Peter Videnieks]], DOJ's PROMIS contracting officer, and Hadron, claiming Videnieks had administered Customs Service contracts with Hadron. While a witness suggested a possible meeting between Videnieks and Laiti, Videnieks denied being the contracting officer for any Hadron contract or meeting Hadron management. The Special Counsel found no evidence of a conspiracy, concluding any connection was "tenuous and insignificant."[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Organization
|
||||
- Hambro
|
||||
- PROMIS
|
||||
- INSLAW
|
||||
- VentureCapital
|
||||
- Boston
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Hambro Venture Capital
|
||||
- Hambro International
|
||||
- Hambro
|
||||
summary: "Boston venture firm that invested about 400,000 dollars in INSLAW in 1983 as lead investor, placing its partner Richard D'Amore on the board, and that Bill Hamilton said joined 53rd Street Ventures in threatening to withhold financing unless he ceded voting control."
|
||||
location: "Boston, Massachusetts"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Hambro International Equity Partners, a [[Boston]] venture capital company "in the business of investing in existing businesses," invested approximately 400,000 dollars in [[INSLAW]] in 1983. As lead investor it placed its partner [[Richard D'Amore]] on the company's board of directors, and in 1984 its Ed Goodman asked [[Daniel Tessler]] of [[Tessler & Cloherty|Tessler and Cloherty]], who had that year taken over management of the [[53rd Street Ventures]] fund with its smaller INSLAW stake, to meet [[Bill Hamilton]] about INSLAW's cash-flow problems.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Hamilton's affidavit in the INSLAW litigation alleged that in December 1984 Tessler threatened that neither 53rd Street Ventures nor Hambro would help the company raise capital unless the Hamiltons surrendered voting control of their stock, and that [[Patricia Cloherty]] had said she "knew all about" [[Earl Brian]]'s role in the company's troubles. D'Amore told the investigators of the special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] that he had never heard Cloherty say any such thing and knew of no role played by Brian; Tessler and Cloherty denied the ultimatum, and Bua found the allegation not credible. INSLAW entered Chapter 11 in February 1985. The vault's pages refer to the firm as Hambro Venture Capital and as Hambro International Equity Partners; the special counsel's report uses the latter name and the shorter "Hambro International."[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.,* March 1993, interviews of Richard D'Amore and Daniel Tessler. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport The firm's relation to Hambros Bank of London, founded 1839 and sold to Société Générale in 1998, is as given in reference summaries and was not verified against a primary record.
|
||||
|
|
@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ location: "Armonk, New York, USA"
|
|||
|
||||
International Business Machines, or IBM as it’s commonly known, is a multinational tech and research company headquartered in Armonk, New York. It was founded in 1911. The company specializes in computers and computing technologies and has close ties with governments around the world (most infamously with Nazi Germany as part of the Holocaust).
|
||||
|
||||
In 1969, IBM invented the [[Relational Database|relational database]]. During the 1960’s and 70’s, IBM was a major provider of mainframe and later minicomputers. These large, powerful (for the time), and expensive machines were used by organizations like the [[LEAA]] or countries like [[Canada]] to run software including [[PROMIS]].
|
||||
In 1969, IBM invented the relational database. During the 1960’s and 70’s, IBM was a major provider of mainframe and later minicomputers. These large, powerful (for the time), and expensive machines were used by organizations like the [[LEAA]] or countries like [[Canada]] to run software including [[PROMIS]].
|
||||
|
||||
Richard L. Garwin, a prominent scientist, was associated with IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He was a member of an ad hoc panel of distinguished scientists tasked with studying the VELA data related to a probable nuclear explosion in the South Indian Ocean in 1979. Garwin was known for his independence as a government consultant.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -42,15 +42,15 @@ INSLAW's lead litigation counsel, Leigh Ratiner of the Washington firm Dickstein
|
|||
|
||||
### Bankruptcy and Litigation History
|
||||
|
||||
Bankruptcy Judge [[George Francis Bason, Jr.]] presided over two landmark proceedings in the INSLAW case. In June 1987, he found that DOJ had "unlawfully, intentionally and willfully" attempted to convert INSLAW's Chapter 11 reorganization into a Chapter 7 liquidation "without justification and by improper means," based in part on testimony from DOJ official Anthony Pasciuto, who stated that DOJ director Thomas Stanton had pressured U.S. Trustee Edward White to force the company into liquidation. In September 1987, after a two-week liability trial, Bason ruled that DOJ had "taken, converted, stole, INSLAW's enhanced PROMIS by trickery, fraud, and deceit," awarding approximately $6.8 million in damages and attorneys' fees.[^1]
|
||||
Bankruptcy Judge [[George Francis Bason, Jr.]] presided over two landmark proceedings in the INSLAW case. In June 1987, he found that DOJ had "unlawfully, intentionally and willfully" attempted to convert INSLAW's Chapter 11 reorganization into a Chapter 7 liquidation "without justification and by improper means," based in part on testimony from DOJ official Anthony Pasciuto, who stated that DOJ director Thomas Stanton had pressured U.S. Trustee Edward White to force the company into liquidation. In September 1987, after a two-week liability trial, Bason ruled that DOJ had "taken, converted, stole, INSLAW's enhanced PROMIS by trickery, fraud, and deceit," with damages later computed at about 6.8 million dollars and attorneys' fees.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
The D.C. Circuit Court affirmed Bason's ruling in November 1989, with Judge William Bryant finding "convincing, perhaps compelling support" for the bankruptcy court's conclusions. The Court of Appeals reversed all lower court rulings in May 1991 on jurisdictional grounds, finding the bankruptcy court lacked jurisdiction because DOJ held PROMIS under a claim of right at the time of the bankruptcy filing. The Supreme Court declined review.[^2]
|
||||
Senior District Judge [[William Bryant, Jr.|William Bryant]] of the district court affirmed Bason's ruling on November 22, 1989, finding "convincing, perhaps compelling support" for the bankruptcy court's conclusions and reducing the damages by 655,200 dollars. The D.C. Circuit reversed on May 7, 1991, on jurisdictional grounds, finding the bankruptcy court lacked jurisdiction because DOJ held PROMIS under a claim of right at the time of the bankruptcy filing. The Supreme Court declined review.[^2]
|
||||
|
||||
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) issued a report in September 1989 finding "no proof" that [[Lowell Jensen]] and [[Edwin Meese]] had conspired to ruin INSLAW or steal its software. The Senate report nonetheless found that DOJ official Thomas Stanton had improperly sought special handling for INSLAW's bankruptcy and criticized the Department for placing Brewer in charge of the implementation contract given his prior employment by INSLAW.[^3]
|
||||
|
||||
The House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Representative [[Jack Brooks]], conducted a three-year investigation from 1989 to 1992. Its September 1992 report (House Report 102-857) found "strong evidence...that the Department of Justice 'acted willfully and fraudulently,' and 'took, converted and stole,' Inslaw's Enhanced PROMIS by 'trickery fraud and deceit.'" A key basis for this conclusion was testimony from Deputy Attorney General [[Arnold Burns]], who had told DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility in 1986 that INSLAW's proprietary rights claim was "legitimate" and that the government "would probably lose the case in court on this issue," yet DOJ continued litigating against INSLAW for another decade.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
Special Counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] issued a 267-page report in March 1993 finding no credible evidence that any DOJ official had committed criminal wrongdoing in connection with the INSLAW matter. The Senate subsequently referred INSLAW's remaining claims to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in May 1995. Judge Christine Miller ruled on July 31, 1997, that all versions of PROMIS were in the public domain and that the government had always been entitled to use the software as it wished. A three-judge Review Panel upheld that ruling in August 1998. INSLAW received no compensation from the federal government.[^2][^6]
|
||||
Special Counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] issued a 267-page report in March 1993 finding no credible evidence that any DOJ official had committed criminal wrongdoing in connection with the INSLAW matter. The Senate subsequently referred INSLAW's remaining claims to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in May 1995. Judge [[Christine Odell Cook Miller|Christine Miller]] ruled on July 31, 1997, that all versions of PROMIS were in the public domain and that the government had always been entitled to use the software as it wished. A three-judge Review Panel upheld that ruling in August 1998. INSLAW received no compensation from the federal government.[^2][^6]
|
||||
|
||||
### FBI Systems Analysis
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
34
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Ora Group.md
Normal file
34
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Ora Group.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,34 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Organization
|
||||
- OraGroup
|
||||
- BenMenashe
|
||||
- IranIsrael
|
||||
- ArmsTrade
|
||||
- PROMIS
|
||||
- Likud
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Ora Limited
|
||||
- Ora
|
||||
summary: "The holding company that, in Ari Ben-Menashe's account, the Israeli Joint Committee created about 1981 to hold the slush fund of its arms sales to Iran, run in London through Nicholas Davies as Ora Limited, and through which he says 600,000 dollars went to Earl Brian's Hadron for INSLAW's law firm."
|
||||
start: 1981
|
||||
location: "Tel Aviv and London"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
The Ora Group exists in the record almost entirely through [[Ari Ben-Menashe]]. In his account, the Israeli Joint Committee that ran the arms channel to [[Iran]] after 1980 needed "a flagship to hold the slush fund" that was accumulating from a covert procurement office on John Street in [[New York City]], which shipped American electronics under end-user certificates for [[Israel]] and diverted them to Iran. "When the Joint Committee was trying to decide what to call this mother company, the name 'Ora' came to my mind," he writes; the name means light in Hebrew, and was that of a woman in his Tel Aviv office. "Thus was born the Ora Group, which was to handle billions of dollars in the next few years." Israel's arms companies "were all run under our mother company, Ora"; Bank Melli of Iran would issue a letter of credit on behalf of one of them, guaranteed through the foreign transfers department of the National Westminster Bank in [[London]]; where Israel sold American weapons on the Americans' behalf, the money went to a [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] account at the International Bank of Luxembourg, and when funds were needed for [[Yitzhak Shamir]]'s Likud, "Maxwell's companies were used to bring the money out again" to accounts in Luxembourg and Geneva.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### London
|
||||
|
||||
The Daily Mirror's foreign editor [[Nicholas Davies]] "was called in only if we needed to use our 'London office,'" Ben-Menashe writes; when a request came from the Iranians, Davies "would call dealers or the supplier and introduce himself as a representative of the Ora Group, an Israeli company based in London," as in a 1983 sale of 4,000 TOW missiles. [[Rupert Allason]]'s parliamentary motion of 1991 named the company as [[Ora Limited]], incorporated at 41 Becmead Avenue and 1 Trafalgar Avenue, London; Ben-Menashe's book uses only "the Ora Group." A 1985 deal for the [[Contras]] brokered through [[GeoMiliTech]], the Washington company of General [[John Singlaub]] and Barbara Studley, is itemized in the book at 3,242,000 dollars paid to Ora, against 5 million dollars that he says the company's own books showed received from the American side.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### PROMIS
|
||||
|
||||
Ben-Menashe writes that he saw a cable to the Joint Committee from the United States requesting "a 600,000 dollar transfer from the Israeli slush fund" to [[Earl Brian]]'s [[Hadron]], to be forwarded to [[Leonard Garment]]'s firm [[Dickstein, Shapiro & Morin|Dickstein Shapiro]] "to be used to get one of the [[INSLAW|Inslaw]] lawyers, Leigh Ratiner, off the case." The special counsel [[Nicholas J. Bua]] wrote that "we see no reason to reopen our investigation because of this implausible claim"; the bankruptcy court had found INSLAW's related charge that the firm was pressured to abandon it "built upon supposition, suspicion and uncorroborated hearsay." A second witness, the Canadian former stockbroker [[John A. Belton]], told the Justice Department's 1994 reviewers, without producing documents, that "ORA is allegedly the Israeli half of a multi-billion dollar slush fund made up of Israeli and U.S. funds" used to finance arms sales to [[Iraq]], and that "Trans World Arms in Montreal and ORA" had sold [[PROMIS]] to a nuclear facility in [[New Mexico]] in 1983; the reviewers found him "unbelievable."[^1][^2]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network,* Sheridan Square, 1992, ch. 8, "The Ora Group," and ch. 9, "Promis." https://archive.org/details/profits-of-war-1992-ari-ben-menashe ; Allason's motion as quoted on [[Nicholas Davies]].
|
||||
[^2]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua,* March 1993, and *Report on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report,* September 27, 1994, section on John A. Belton. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport ; *In re Inslaw, Inc.,* 97 B.R. 685 (Bankr. D.D.C. 1989), as quoted in the Bua report.
|
||||
23
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Patricof and Company.md
Normal file
23
20 - ORGANIZATIONS/PRIVATE/Patricof and Company.md
Normal file
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
|
|||
---
|
||||
category: "Private Organization"
|
||||
tags:
|
||||
- Organization
|
||||
- Patricof
|
||||
- PROMIS
|
||||
- INSLAW
|
||||
- VentureCapital
|
||||
alias:
|
||||
- Allen Patricof and Associates
|
||||
- Patricof & Co.
|
||||
- APA
|
||||
summary: "New York venture capital firm, formally Allen Patricof and Associates, that managed the 53rd Street Ventures fund and through it made a 100,000-dollar investment in INSLAW about 1982; the firm where Patricia Cloherty worked before and after her government service."
|
||||
location: "New York City"
|
||||
created: 2026-09-22
|
||||
updated: 2026-09-22
|
||||
---
|
||||
|
||||
Patricof and Company, formally Allen Patricof and Associates and known in the special counsel's report as APA, was a New York venture capital firm that managed several funds, among them [[53rd Street Ventures]], formed about 1976. [[Jonathan Ben Cnaan]], a native of [[Israel]] employed at the firm from 1981 to 1987, managed the funds and about 1982 made the firm's first investment in [[INSLAW]], 100,000 dollars through 53rd Street Ventures, describing himself to the investigators of [[Nicholas J. Bua]] as a "follower" investor with no active role in the negotiations. [[Patricia Cloherty]] worked at the firm from about 1970 to 1977, left for the Small Business Administration under [[Jimmy Carter]], ran [[Tessler & Cloherty|Tessler and Cloherty]] with her husband [[Daniel Tessler]] through the 1980s, during which that firm took over the 53rd Street fund in 1984, and returned to Patricof and Company in February 1988. Neither the House Judiciary Committee nor Bua found any wrongdoing by the firm, which entered the [[PROMIS Software Scandal|INSLAW affair]] only through its stake in the company and the handoff of the fund to the Tesslers, whose dealings with [[Bill Hamilton]] in December 1984 became the subject of his affidavit.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
### Footnotes
|
||||
|
||||
[^1]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua to the Attorney General of the United States Regarding the Allegations of Inslaw, Inc.,* March 1993, interviews of Jonathan Ben Cnaan, Daniel Tessler and Patricia Cloherty. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport The identity of the firm's founder with the venture capitalist Alan J. Patricof is inferred from the firm's name and was not separately verified.
|
||||
|
|
@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ Simeon appears in the [[PROMIS]] scandal through allegations made by [[Bill Hami
|
|||
|
||||
Hamilton alleged that a 1983 fundraising trip to New York City by [[Dominic Laiti]] (Hadron's president) and Wormeli was undertaken for the purpose of raising capital to purchase the PROMIS court management software from INSLAW. Hamilton claimed that Titus had told him this was the purpose of the trip.
|
||||
|
||||
Both Wormeli and Titus contradicted Hamilton's account under questioning by investigators. Wormeli confirmed the New York trip took place and that he and Laiti met with [[Earl Brian]] and executives from Allen and Company (including Mark Kesselman) to discuss funding. However, Wormeli stated that neither Laiti nor Brian ever discussed the acquisition of PROMIS or INSLAW with him, and that Laiti never mentioned PROMIS at any of the meetings. Titus denied ever telling Hamilton that the trip's purpose was to acquire PROMIS, and stated she was not present at or party to any conversations about acquiring INSLAW's software or any unethical or illegal activities to obtain it. She noted that the only court-related software company Simeon/Hadron had discussed acquiring was a Southern California company called Responsive Design.[^1]
|
||||
Both Wormeli and Titus contradicted Hamilton's account under questioning by investigators. Wormeli confirmed the New York trip took place and that he and Laiti met with [[Earl Brian]] and executives from [[Allen and Company]] (including Mark Kesselman) to discuss funding. However, Wormeli stated that neither Laiti nor Brian ever discussed the acquisition of PROMIS or INSLAW with him, and that Laiti never mentioned PROMIS at any of the meetings. Titus denied ever telling Hamilton that the trip's purpose was to acquire PROMIS, and stated she was not present at or party to any conversations about acquiring INSLAW's software or any unethical or illegal activities to obtain it. She noted that the only court-related software company Simeon/Hadron had discussed acquiring was a Southern California company called Responsive Design.[^1]
|
||||
|
||||
The [[Department of Justice]] Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua, in his 1993 report on the INSLAW allegations, concluded that the evidence from Titus, Wormeli, and other interviewed witnesses did not support Hamilton's thesis and that there was no evidence Hadron or Simeon ever had any interest in obtaining INSLAW's PROMIS software.
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
@ -73,6 +73,10 @@ The retired FBI agent [[William Hinshaw]] told Connolly: "It is known throughout
|
|||
|
||||
The [[Philadelphia]] filmmaker [[R.C. Horsch]] said in a recorded interview that after leaving high school in 1961 he worked freelance for Wackenhut, "a security firm staffed by FBI agents," until about 1965. "I bugged telephones and committed burglaries for them," he said. "The burglaries were mostly to install electronics or bug telephones or just things like burglarizing a potential client to demonstrate that their security was not up to par." He said one regular client, introduced as "Mr. Smith," was [[Howard Hunt|E. Howard Hunt]] of the CIA, and described jobs at the [[Fairchild Hiller]] plant in [[Hagerstown, Maryland]], in [[Trenton, New Jersey]], and in Philadelphia. Horsch was convicted in later years of forgery, counterfeiting, and passport fraud.[^19]
|
||||
|
||||
### Schaefer
|
||||
|
||||
[[Gerard John Schaefer]], the Martin County deputy convicted of two murders in 1973, worked as a security guard in Florida in 1970, between his dismissal from two teaching posts and his entry into the Wilton Manors police, for Wackenhut by one account and Florida Power & Light by another.[^30]
|
||||
|
||||
### Florida, 1967
|
||||
|
||||
On January 13, 1967, FBI headquarters instructed its Florida offices to give Kirk's investigators nothing: "The Bureau does not recognize the Wackenhut Corporation as a properly constituted law enforcement agency." The order was repeated by telephone on April 3, after Kirk had seen the attorney general. [[Hank Messick]], the Miami Herald crime reporter whose articles had led to the indictment of two county sheriffs in 1966, and to whom the bureau had itself been passing leads, joined Wackenhut that December and left after six weeks. "I quit the Wackenhut Corp. because I have reluctantly concluded a cruel hoax is being perpetrated upon the people of Florida," he said. He objected that the company kept as a private client Sir [[Stafford Sands]], the former Bahamian minister with gambling interests, while it was supposed to be pursuing [[Meyer Lansky]]. Wackenhut replied: "I do not find it necessary to dignify Mr. Messick's remarks with a reply." In September 1967 the Miami office reported the reaction of an informant inside the [[Bonanno crime family|Bonanno family]] to press reports that a "contract" had been let on the Dade County state attorney, Richard Gerstein, a tip that "had been 'leaked' to the press by GERSTEIN'S office, which had received the tip from a Wackenhut Detective Agency source." The informant "stated that this was the biggest laugh to hit Miami in some time, in that GERSTEIN was, and still is, 'their' number one connection in the Miami area." He said: "Them guys, including Wackenhut, and all the locals haven't yet come close to us. The only people who have the proper line on us are those in the FBI."[^20] A former Wackenhut detective, [[Norman Casper]], later worked as an informant for the [[Internal Revenue Service]] against the [[Castle Bank and Trust|Castle Bank]] in the [[Bahamas]].[^21]
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@ -162,3 +166,4 @@ The Wackenhut/Cabazon Joint Venture was terminated on October 1, 1984, following
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[^27]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Domestic Intelligence Division, informative note, April 14, 1967, JFK record 124-10369-10048; Assassination Records Review Board, public hearing transcript, testimony of James DiEugenio, p. 89; FBI Miami, memorandum of May 10, 1967, headquarters file 62-109060, section 129, p. 166.
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[^28]: Osborn, Howard J. Memorandum for the record, November 8, 1967, JFK record 104-10133-10076.
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[^29]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
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[^30]: Lane, Brian. "Gerard Schaefer," *Real-Life Crimes,* Eaglemoss, 1992-93, p. 162, as cited in later accounts and not examined; the Crime Library profile gives "Florida Light and Power." No account describes his duties or names who hired him. See [[Gerard John Schaefer]].
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