5 KiB
| category | tags | summary | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PROMIS Scandal |
|
McDade's probe was authorized at the highest level of the RCMP and was well-funded. |
Sean McDade was a national security investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police 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 to eavesdrop on Canada 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 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 in New Mexico, attended by the heads of intelligence divisions from the United States (Central Intelligence Agency), United Kingdom (British Intelligence), Israel (Mossad), and Canadian Security Intelligence Service, 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 weapons secrets at Los Alamos National Laboratory and other installations.[1]
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 officials might have unlawfully purchased the PROMIS software from officials in the Ronald Reagan-George H.W. Bush administration, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had reportedly traced banking transactions supporting this claim. He believed a successful investigation "could cause the entire United States 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]
McDade spent three days photocopying thousands of supporting documents to The Last Circle before returning to Royal Canadian Mounted Police 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 predecessors in the PROMIS investigation had faced obstruction from the Department of Justice, with some investigators being fired, suspended, or quitting when directed to cease their inquiries into drugs and money laundering.[1]
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 officials.[1]
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 was spying on Canada citizens while Canada spied on United States 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 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]
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.