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

20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/INTERNATIONAL/Royal Canadian Mounted Police.md

@@ -1,25 +1,29 @@
 ---
+category: "Foreign Government"
 tags:
   - Organization
   - Government
   - Canada
-  - Intelligence
-category: "Foreign Government"
-summary: "The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is Canada's national police force, which became significantly involved in the investigation of the PROMIS Software Scandal."
-start: 1920
+  - LawEnforcement
+  - PROMIS
+summary: "Canada's national police force, twice drawn into the PROMIS affair: by a mistaken 1991 software inventory and by its own 1999-2000 inquiry, Project Abbreviation."
 location: "Ottawa, Canada"
+created: 2025-08-05
+updated: 2026-09-22
 ---
-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]
 
-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]
+The [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] is [[Canada]]'s national police force. It figures twice in the [[PROMIS Software Scandal]].
 
-During his investigation, [[Sean McDade]] learned that a meeting had taken place in December 1999 at the [[Los Alamos National Laboratory|Los Alamos facility]] in [[New Mexico]], attended by intelligence heads from the [[United States|U.S.]] ([[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]]), [[United Kingdom|Britain]] ([[British Intelligence]]), [[Israel]] ([[Mossad]]), and [[Canadian Security Intelligence Service|CSIS]]. The discussion, labeled "Unique Elements," touched upon questions related to Y2K computer problems and a glitch in the British computer system. A source suggested that all four allied countries shared the same computer system, possibly [[PROMIS]], due to its mutual integration capabilities. Furthermore, [[Sean McDade]] was informed that the [[Mossad]] might have modified the [[PROMIS]] software to create a "two-way" backdoor, potentially granting [[Israel]] access to top [[United States|U.S.]] weapons secrets at [[Los Alamos National Laboratory|Los Alamos]] and other installations.[1]
+### The 1991 Inventory
 
-The [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] investigation, with assistance from Detective [[Sue Todd]] of Hercules, California, revealed that [[United States|U.S.]] investigators who had previously probed the [[PROMIS]] affair faced significant obstruction from the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]. Many were fired, suspended, or resigned when their inquiries into drugs and money laundering reached high-level connections. The text highlights that [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]] investigators, among others, still feared punitive action for coming forward, even if they were no longer in the public sector.[1]
+In November 1990 and January 1991 officials of the Department of Communications and the Canadian Workplace Automation Research Centre told [[Patricia Hamilton]] of [[INSLAW]] that [[PROMIS]] was running at "more than 900 locations" in the federal government, and one said the RCMP was among the users; an RCMP officer in [[Ottawa]] told her on February 1, 1991, that he knew of no PROMIS in the force. The officials later said they had confused INSLAW's product with a project-management package of the same name sold by the Strategic Software Planning Corporation of Cambridge, Massachusetts. On December 4, 1991, the Canadian ambassador wrote to the [[House Committee on the Judiciary]] that "the RCMP and CSIS report they do not use any case management software," a letter the committee called "conclusory." The [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]]'s review of 1994 concluded that the Canadian "PROMIS" was "a totally different program developed by a different company."[^1]
 
-The [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police|RCMP]]'s involvement in the [[PROMIS]] investigation also brought to light the use of [[ECHELON]] technology. [[Sean McDade]] himself became a target of [[ECHELON]] during his investigation in the [[United States]], forcing him to take extraordinary measures to communicate securely. He noted that the [[NSA|NSA]] was spying on [[Canada|Canadian]] citizens while [[Canada]] spied on [[United States|American]] citizens, both utilizing [[ECHELON]] and exchanging data.[1]
+### Project Abbreviation
 
-Despite the exposure of [[Sean McDade]]'s investigation in the *Toronto Star* in August 2000, he reportedly returned to police work in his hometown.[1]
+In 1999 and 2000 the force ran its own national security inquiry, [[Project Abbreviation]], under [[Sean McDade]], an Ottawa-Carleton regional police officer on secondment, into whether software used by Canadian agencies was a version of PROMIS with a hidden access point for American and Israeli intelligence. When the *Toronto Star* disclosed it on August 25, 2000, Sergeant Marc Richer said, "I cannot either confirm or deny what you're looking into"; Staff Sergeant Mike Gaudet said the next day that it had been under way "for some time" and had found "absolutely nothing to indicate that national security has been compromised in any way." On September 16, 2000, Gaudet announced its end: "We're saying today that we do not have Promis software."[^2] The account of the inquiry from McDade's side, including a meeting of allied intelligence chiefs at [[Los Alamos National Laboratory|Los Alamos]] in December 1999 and his belief that he had been targeted by [[ECHELON]], comes from [[Cheri Seymour]].[^3]
 
 ### Footnotes
-[1] Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal*. First Edition. TrineDay, 2010.
+
+[^1]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. *The INSLAW Affair,* H. Rept. 102-857, September 10, 1992, section on Canada; Hamilton, Patricia C., affidavit, February 1991, *INSLAW, Inc. v. United States,* Adv. Proc. No. 86-0069 (Bankr. D.D.C.); U.S. Department of Justice, *Report on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report,* September 27, 1994, "The Alleged Distribution of Enhanced PROMIS to Canada."
+[^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.
+[^3]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010.