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Robert Maxwell was a British media proprietor and Member of Parliament. He formed ties with Israel in the early 1960s through a meeting arranged with Yitzhak Shamir, then in Mossad operations in Europe. This connection was facilitated by Aviezer Ya’ari of the Mapam (United Workers) Party, aiming to establish links with the Soviet Union, with whom Maxwell had intelligence connections since World War II. Maxwell and Shamir shared an antipathy for the USA and became close friends.1
Maxwell is connected to the PROMIS Software Scandal via allegations of his involvement in the international distribution of the PROMIS software. Rafi Eitan suggested Maxwell was a front for selling PROMIS due to his long association with Shamir and Israel. In 1984, Senator John Tower, a friend of Maxwell and close to George Bush, approached Maxwell on behalf of the Robert Gates group to market PROMIS. Maxwell's Berlitz language schools and his company Degem (an Israel-controlled computer business with operations in Israel, Guatemala, and Transkei) were used to distance him from the spy project.1
INSLAW alleged that the late British publisher Robert Maxwell assisted Israel intelligence agents in the dissemination of PROMIS to intelligence and law enforcement agencies of other governments and to international commercial banks. This theory suggests that Israeli intelligence agents colluded with United States Department of Justice officials to prevent Inslaw from fully litigating its claims against the U.S. government. It was also alleged that an Israeli agent provided $600,000 from a slush fund, jointly controlled by U.S. and Israeli intelligence, to get Inslaw's lead counsel fired, thereby preventing Inslaw from prosecuting its PROMIS proprietary rights and license fee claims against the U.S. Justice Department.2
Maxwell agreed to market PROMIS for the USA and Israel, using his network of companies. He was aware of the general uses of PROMIS for intelligence gathering, though it is unclear if he knew about the hidden trap door. He received a flat fee of $8 million and two percent of the gross whenever his companies were involved in transferring arms money, earning him millions.1
Through Degem, Maxwell sold PROMIS to the East Bloc and other countries, including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Nicaragua. An abridged version was also sold to Credit Suisse in 1985, allowing the Likud Party to track Israeli accounts. He even sold PROMIS to the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, with Robert Gates lifting export barriers for IBM computers to the Soviets, which were then fitted with the trap-doored PROMIS by Degem technicians.1
Maxwell also played a role in the financial operations of the Iran-Israel Joint Committee. He helped open doors for Israel to conduct business deals with Poland, even speaking to the Polish defense minister, Wojciech Jaruzelski. He was a conduit for moving money from the slush fund to the East Bloc, with $450 million transferred from Credit Suisse to the Bank of Budapest in Hungary. His companies were used to funnel money to the East Bloc, and to bring money out for Likud Party purposes, depositing it in bank accounts in Luxembourg and Geneva.1
In 1987, a contribution was made to the West Australian Labor Party from the Central Intelligence Agency, involving Richard Babayan and Earl Brian acting on behalf of Hadron. This money was passed on by one of Robert Maxwell companies in Australia to be held by the Pergamon Press Trust Fund in Moscow.1
During government investigations regarding the INSLAW case, the Special Counsel's investigation found no credible evidence to support the allegation that the DOJ or individuals involved with the DOJ improperly distributed PROMIS software to foreign governments or entities. The investigation found no evidence to support these claims, stating that only public domain versions of PROMIS (Old PROMIS and the Pilot Project version) had been distributed internationally. The report concluded that the allegation of international distribution of enhanced PROMIS by the DOJ was pure speculation, lacking evidentiary support.2
Footnotes
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Ben-Menashe, Ari. Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network. TrineDay, 1992. (Hereafter, "Profits of War") ↩︎
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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. (Hereafter, "Bua Report") ↩︎