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---
category: "Private Organization"
tags:
- Organization
- 53rdStreetVentures
- PROMIS
- INSLAW
- VentureCapital
alias:
- 53rd Street Ventures, Inc.
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."
start: 1976
location: "New York City"
created: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-09-22
---
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]
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]
### 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, pp. 90-94 and the interviews of Ben Cnaan, Tessler, Cloherty and D'Amore. https://archive.org/details/InslawPROMISBuaReport

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---
category: "Private Organization"
tags:
- Organization
- Accumenics
- Hadron
- PROMIS
- INSLAW
- DOJ
alias:
- Accumenics Inc.
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."
location: "Virginia"
created: 2026-09-22
updated: 2026-09-22
---
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]
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.

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---
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).

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@ -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"
---

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@ -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]

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---
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.

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@ -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]

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@ -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

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---
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.

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---
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.

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@ -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.

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@ -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]
@ -162,3 +166,4 @@ The Wackenhut/Cabazon Joint Venture was terminated on October 1, 1984, following
[^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.
[^28]: Osborn, Howard J. Memorandum for the record, November 8, 1967, JFK record 104-10133-10076.
[^29]: Ben-Menashe, Ari. *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network*. TrineDay, 1992.
[^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]].