disinfozone/The_Info_Web
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Packages Wiki Activity Actions

vault backup: 2026-09-22 19:33:49

Browse source
This commit is contained in:
disinfo.zone 2026-09-22 19:33:49 -04:00
parent bdd3b6bbfb
commit c84d8b2dd5
No known key found for this signature in database
72 changed files with 861 additions and 167 deletions
Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

2
10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Ari Ben-Menashe.md
View file

@ -48,7 +48,7 @@ No official body endorsed this account. The [[House October Surprise Task Force]
After the journalist [[Danny Casolaro]]'s death in August 1991, Ben-Menashe called [[Bill Hamilton]], president of [[INSLAW|Inslaw]], and claimed that two FBI agents from Lexington, Kentucky, had been en route to Martinsburg to give Casolaro evidence that the FBI was illegally using PROMIS software, one of them disaffected because his superiors had refused to indict senior Reagan officials over the October Surprise.[^19] In affidavits submitted to the bankruptcy court in February and March 1991, he claimed personal knowledge of Earl Brian's involvement in international PROMIS distribution, alleging that Brian made a 1987 presentation to Israeli Military Intelligence claiming ownership of PROMIS rights, that [[Rafael Eitan]] received PROMIS from Brian and McFarlane in 1982 for Israeli signals intelligence, and that enhanced PROMIS was sold to the Israeli intelligence community, the Singapore Armed Forces, the Soviet Union, and Canada.[^20] These PROMIS-distribution claims were later amplified by [[Seymour Hersh]] in [[The Samson Option]] and [[Gordon Thomas]] in [[Gideon's Spies]].[^8][^9]
The special counsel [[Nicholas Bua]], in his 1993 report on the Inslaw affair, rejected these claims. When interviewed, Ben-Menashe gave a substantially different account, stating that he had no knowledge of the transfer of Inslaw's proprietary software, and that the "PROMIS" in his affidavits referred not to Inslaw's product but to an NSA program he called "Milon," a dictionary-compilation tool developed independently before Inslaw existed; he admitted he had allowed the Hamiltons and others to assume he meant Inslaw's PROMIS "to promote his book."[^20] The NSA confirmed that its own internal Product Related On-line Management Information System, also called PROMIS, was written in M204 rather than COBOL and was wholly unrelated to Inslaw's software. The House October Surprise Task Force, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and the special counsel all found his testimony fabricated and unsupported.[^10][^20]
The special counsel [[Nicholas Bua]], in his 1993 report on the Inslaw affair, rejected these claims. When interviewed, Ben-Menashe gave a substantially different account, stating that he had no knowledge of the transfer of Inslaw's proprietary software, and that the "PROMIS" in his affidavits referred not to Inslaw's product but to an NSA program he called "Milon," a dictionary-compilation tool developed independently before Inslaw existed; he admitted he had allowed the Hamiltons and others to assume he meant Inslaw's PROMIS "to promote his book."[^20] The NSA confirmed that its own internal Product Related On-line Management Information System, also called PROMIS, was written in M204 rather than COBOL and was wholly unrelated to Inslaw's software. The House October Surprise Task Force, the [[Senate Foreign Relations Committee|Senate Committee on Foreign Relations]], and the special counsel all found his testimony fabricated and unsupported.[^10][^20]
### Claims about Robert Maxwell