vault backup: 2026-09-22 19:06:17

10 - PEOPLE/(H-M)/Sean McDade.md

@@ -3,22 +3,37 @@ category: "PROMIS Scandal"
 tags:
   - Person
   - PROMIS
-  - CIA
-summary: "McDade's probe was authorized at the highest level of the RCMP and was well-funded."
+  - RCMP
+  - Canada
+summary: "Ottawa-Carleton police officer seconded to the RCMP who ran Project Abbreviation, the 1999-2000 inquiry into whether Canadian agencies used a compromised version of PROMIS."
+location: "Ottawa, Canada"
+relations:
+  - type: employed_by
+    with: "[[Royal Canadian Mounted Police]]"
+    start: 1999
+    end: 2000
+    role: "national security investigator on secondment from the Ottawa-Carleton regional police"
+    fn: 2
+  - type: head_of
+    with: "[[Project Abbreviation]]"
+    start: 1999
+    end: 2000-09-16
+    fn: 2
+created: 2025-08-05
+updated: 2026-09-22
 ---
-[[Sean McDade]] was a national security investigator with the [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] who secretly entered the [[United States]] in February 2000 to investigate evidence that the [[Canadian Government]] was using a computer software program called [[PROMIS]], which allegedly allowed the [[United States|U.S.]] to eavesdrop on [[Canada|Canadian]] intelligence secrets through a modified "back-door." His investigation was code-named [[Project Abbreviation]], and his email handle, "simorp," was [[PROMIS]] spelled backward.[1]
 
-McDade's probe was authorized at the highest level of the [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] and was well-funded. He was deeply committed to ascertaining whether the [[Canadian Government]]'s computer system had been compromised. He learned that a meeting had been held in December 1999 at the [[Los Alamos National Laboratory|Los Alamos facility]] in [[New Mexico]], attended by the heads of intelligence divisions from the [[United States|U.S.]] ([[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]), [[United Kingdom|Britain]] ([[British Intelligence]]), [[Israel]] ([[Mossad]]), and [[Canadian Security Intelligence Service|CSIS]], concerning Y2K computer problems. A source suggested that all four allied countries shared the same computer system, possibly [[PROMIS]], due to its mutual integration capabilities. McDade was also informed by another source that the [[Mossad]] may have modified the [[PROMIS]] software to create a "two-way" backdoor, potentially allowing [[Israel]] access to top [[United States|U.S.]] weapons secrets at [[Los Alamos National Laboratory|Los Alamos]] and other installations.[1]
+Sean McDade, an Ottawa-Carleton regional police officer on secondment to the [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]], ran [[Project Abbreviation]], the force's inquiry into whether software used by Canadian agencies was a version of [[INSLAW]]'s [[PROMIS]] fitted with a "trap door" for American and Israeli intelligence. His email handle, "simorp," was PROMIS spelled backward.[^1][^2]
 
-During his investigation, McDade met with [[Cheri Seymour]], the author of *The Last Circle*, in Southern California on February 19, 2000. He explained that high-ranking [[Canadian Government|Canadian]] officials might have unlawfully purchased the [[PROMIS]] software from officials in the [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]]-[[George H.W. Bush|Bush]] administration, and the [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] had reportedly traced banking transactions supporting this claim. He believed a successful investigation "could cause the entire [[United States Republican Party|U.S. Republican Party]] to be dismantled and more than one presidential administration would be exposed for their knowledge of the [[PROMIS]] software transaction." [[Sue Todd]], a Police Detective from Hercules, California, accompanied McDade to this meeting, as they had discovered they shared the same source and Todd's investigation into a double homicide was connected to the [[PROMIS]] case.[1]
+### The Public Record
 
-McDade spent three days photocopying thousands of supporting documents to *The Last Circle* before returning to [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] headquarters in [[Ottawa]] to set up a "war room." His probe evolved into an eight-month saga of interviews with former investigators, witnesses, undercover informants, and law enforcement personnel across the [[United States]]. He learned that [[United States|U.S.]] predecessors in the [[PROMIS]] investigation had faced obstruction from the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]], with some investigators being fired, suspended, or quitting when directed to cease their inquiries into drugs and money laundering.[1]
+The *Toronto Star* disclosed the inquiry on August 25, 2000. Reached by telephone, McDade said: "You're putting me in a bad spot here. I can't comment on what's happening right now... I kind of get a chuckle out of how something so small has been blown out of proportion." The RCMP's Sergeant Marc Richer said, "I cannot either confirm or deny what you're looking into"; Staff Sergeant Mike Gaudet confirmed the next day that an investigation had been under way "for some time" and had found "absolutely nothing to indicate that national security has been compromised"; the [[Canadian Security Intelligence Service|CSIS]] spokesman Dan Lambert said the service had reviewed the question in 1991 and never held a copy of the software. Louis Buffardi, lawyer for [[Michael Riconosciuto]], said RCMP officers had interviewed his client "eight or nine months" earlier.[^1][^2] On September 16, 2000, the Star reported the end of the inquiry, with Gaudet saying, "We're saying today that we do not have Promis software." McDade had refused the paper's requests for an interview. [[Bill Hamilton]] of INSLAW said he had spoken with McDade "probably dozens" of times and that McDade had earlier told him the RCMP acquired PROMIS "from a company in Massachusetts" and that it "was modified by a Toronto firm"; [[Cheri Seymour]] told the Star that McDade "said that they had a paper trail on the Promis software being purchased by the RCMP. He told me that."[^2]
 
-McDade also described [[Scott Lawrence]]'s deep-cover drug investigation, code-named [[THE INDO-CHINA PROJECT]], on the Maine/Canadian border. Lawrence's investigation was abruptly shut down after he and his supervisor, [[John (Tim) Kelly]], requested to impanel grand juries to depose [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] officials.[1]
+### McDade's Account
 
-McDade found himself a target of [[ECHELON]] technology during his investigation in the [[United States]], forcing him to take extraordinary measures to communicate with [[Sue Todd]] and [[Cheri Seymour]]. He stated that the [[NSA|NSA]] was spying on [[Canada|Canadian]] citizens while [[Canada]] spied on [[United States|American]] citizens, both using [[ECHELON]] and trading data. The RCMP's spokesman Staff Sergeant Mike Gaudet said on August 25, 2000, that the inquiry had produced "absolutely nothing to date to indicate national security has been compromised in any way," and CSIS's Dan Lambert that the service had reviewed the matter in 1991 and never held a copy of the software;[2] the public record of the affair, from the 1991 origin to the 2000 disclosure, is on the [[Project Abbreviation]] page. Although he reportedly left the [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] after his investigation was exposed in the *Toronto Star* in August 2000, [[Sue Todd]] indicated he ultimately returned to police work in his hometown.[1]
+The rest of what is known of the inquiry comes from Seymour, who met McDade in Southern California on February 19, 2000, with the Hercules, California, detective [[Sue Todd]]. In her account the inquiry was authorized at the top of the force and well funded; McDade had learned of a meeting in December 1999 at [[Los Alamos National Laboratory|Los Alamos]], [[New Mexico]], of intelligence chiefs of the [[United States]], [[United Kingdom|Britain]], [[Israel]] and [[Canada]] on Y2K problems, and had been told by sources that the four countries shared one computer system, possibly PROMIS, and that the [[Mossad]] may have built a "two-way" back door into it. He told Seymour that Canadian officials might have bought the software unlawfully from officials of the [[Ronald Reagan|Reagan]] and [[George H.W. Bush|Bush]] administrations, that the RCMP had traced banking transactions supporting this, and that a successful inquiry "could cause the entire U.S. Republican Party to be dismantled." He spent three days copying her files before setting up a "war room" in [[Ottawa]], and over eight months interviewed former investigators and informants, among them [[Scott Lawrence]], whose Customs inquiry on the Maine border, "The Indo-China Project," had been closed after he and his supervisor, [[John (Tim) Kelly]], asked for grand juries to depose [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] officials. McDade believed he had been targeted by [[ECHELON]] while in the United States. Todd told Seymour that he later returned to police work in his hometown.[^1]
 
----
 ### Footnotes
-[1] Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
-[2] Sallot, Jeff. "Mounties probe software allegations," *The Globe and Mail,* August 26, 2000.
+
+[^1]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010. Sole source for the passages attributed to Seymour and McDade.
+[^2]: Lawton, Valerie, and Allan Thompson, "Spy computer 'trap' probed," *Toronto Star,* August 25, 2000; Thompson, Allan, and Valerie Lawton, "RCMP admit they're investigating 'trap'," *Toronto Star,* August 26, 2000; Lawton, Valerie, and Allan Thompson, "Mounties end probe of Promis," *Toronto Star,* September 16, 2000; texts as forwarded to the CTRL mailing list, https://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg49408.html, msg49544.html and msg50988.html; Sallot, Jeff, "Mounties probe software allegations," *The Globe and Mail,* August 26, 2000.