DRUDGE: RIDDLE AS SPY-CATCHER QUITS [PROMIS]

Matt Drudge ^ | 7/6/03 | Matt Drudge

[Incorrigible]

From Matt Drudge:

 

RIDDLE AS SPY-CATCHER QUITS: America's top spy-catcher, Paul Redmond, has suddenly resigned in the middle of his secret investigation into how Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden allegedly obtained [Promis] US computer software... Developing...

Redmond's Bad Day On The Hill...

 

[Incorrigible]

1. US Accused of 'Promis' Information Warfare (Echelon) [Free Republic]
   U.S. Accused of 'Promis' Information Warfare Program An Aspect of Echelon ... US Accused of 'Promis' Information Warfare (Echelon). Crime/Corruption Extended News Opinion (Published) Keywords: ...
   www.freerepublic.com/forum/a376d0c1a13d8.htm
   
    
2. PROMIS/INSLAW AGAIN? German armed forces ban MS software citing NSA snooping [Free Republic]
   Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management.
   www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ab59d5a6a06.htm
   
    
3. Bin Laden and Promis Software
   Posted on 10/16/2001 3:13 PM PDT by artios Foxnews, Carl Cameron just reported - Spy Hansen sold software to Russinas who sold it to Bin Laden. Promis allows him to monitor all the opeartions against him including financial.
   www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/549567/posts
   
    
4. ~~ PROMIS Spins Web of Intrigue ~~ (Part IV of IV) [Free Republic]
   Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. ... about decades-old allegations concerning stolen software called PROMIS and its relation to suspected breaches in ...
   www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a73cef232b0.htm
   
    
5. ~~ PROMIS Trail Leads to Justice ~~ Part III of IV) [Free Republic]
   Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. ... high-ranking Justice Department official alleged to have been involved in the theft of the PROMIS computer program. ...
   www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/394207/posts
   
    
6. Software Likely In Hands of Terrorist (Promis/Inslaw) [Free Republic]
   Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. ... to be an upgraded version of a program known as "Promis" developed in the 1980s by a Washington firm, the software ...
   www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b28933d7f22.htm
   
    
7. A PROMIS Software---Filegate Connection? [Free Republic]
   Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. ... Service group is in the process of conversting (sic) Promis from Cobol to ADABAS/Natural and has just started doing the ...
   www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3878bf083ff1.htm
   
    
8. TALE OF SPIES AND CONSPIRACIES [INSLAW and PROMIS return to the news] [Free Republic]
   Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management.
   www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39a9ee697be7.htm
   
    
9. ~~ The Plot Thickens in PROMIS Affair ~~ (Part II of IV) [Free Republic]
   Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. ... were using an allegedly pirated software program called PROMIS that had been modified to be monitorable by shadowy ...
   www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/390456/posts
   
    
10. Nothing Is Secret (re: PROMIS..spy probe in United States by Canadian government) Part I of IV [Free Republic]
    Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. ... to accept it, is to establish whether this is the PROMIS software reportedly stolen in the early 1980s from William and ...
    www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/387650/posts
    
     
11. Firm says stolen software helped bin Laden plot 9/11 (PROMIS CHARGES APPARENTLY CORROBORATED)
    "The national commission may wish to examine whether the Justice Department's misappropriation of Promis was, at a minimum, linked indirectly to pre-September 11 performance problems of U.S. intelligence," he said. ... bought the U.S. intelligence community's version of the Promis database software on the Russian black market, after ...
    www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/817792/posts
    
     
12. Microsoft's 'Promis': French Intelligence [Free Republic]
    Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management.
    www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38b07517765b.htm
    
     
13. US Accused of 'Promis' Information Warfare (Echelon) [Free Republic]
    U.S. Accused of 'Promis' Information Warfare Program An Aspect of Echelon ... US Accused of 'Promis' Information Warfare (Echelon). Crime/Corruption Extended News Opinion (Published) Keywords: ...
    freerepublic.com/forum/a376d0c1a13d8.htm
    
     
14. ~~ PROMIS Trail Leads to Justice ~~ Part III of IV) [Free Republic]
    Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. ... high-ranking Justice Department official alleged to have been involved in the theft of the PROMIS computer program. ...
    www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a6a29d746a8.htm
    
     
15. ~~ The Plot Thickens in PROMIS Affair ~~ (Part II of IV) [Free Republic]
    Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. ... were using an allegedly pirated software program called PROMIS that had been modified to be monitorable by shadowy ...
    www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a6135d73974.htm

 

[Incorrigible]

Developing...

[marron]

I thought we were giving Promis out to everyone, because it supposedly had a back-door in it...

Oh...

Never mind.

[angkor]

PROMIS, again?

If you read the story linked to "Paul Redmond" at the top, it seems pretty clear he quit because his assignment at Homeland Security was an unfunded, unstaffed joke. Redmond was hammered by a Congressional committee less than three weeks ago for a situation clearly not of his own making.

As for PROMIS, in nearly 10 years of stories we've yet to hear from a single authoritative source who's sat down and actually used the software. Even Grabbe's stories have been second- and third-hand.

There's something strange about PROMIS allright, in that the same circle of folks keep promoting an obvious hoax.

[Former Proud Canadian]

bump

[aristeides]

There's a lot of new information about PROMIS in Robert Maxwell: Isreal's Superspy, by Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon. The book contains as an appendix facsimiles of several pages of a memorandum by Elliot Richardson that documents a lot of the charges about PROMIS.

[DAnconia55]

If you're still around....... bump

[HAL9000]

The book contains as an appendix facsimiles of several pages of a memorandum by Elliot Richardson that documents a lot of the charges about PROMIS.

Richardson was Inslaw's attorney during their dispute with the Department of Justice over the Promis case management software for prosecutors. That case was arguably the only Promis scandal with any basis in fact. It became widely know after a series of articles in Barron's. They got their day in court and lost.

The later descriptions of Promis from Skolnick, Grabbe, et al gave it incredible powers to crack into any bank account anywhere and grab the money, detonate computer chips embedded with tiny thermite explosives, use a secret chip built into mainframe computers to upload data up to spy satellites, etc. A surprisingly large number of gullible people actually believed that stuff. It's fiction - taken from an novel written about the NSA before the existance of the agency was officially acknowledged.

[MattAMiller]

Given what I know about Promis Bin Laden and Saddam should fire their IT guys. It's utterly ancient technology. If we still actually have any vital information that can be accessed with Promis then we have bigger problems than some old software getting leaked.

[Prodigal Son]

Sunday Express [UK]
July 6, 2003
**Exclusive**

AMERICA'S top spy catcher, Paul Redmond, has suddenly resigned in the middle of his secret investigation into how Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden allegedly obtained US computer software, the SUNDAY EXPRESS claimed this weekend.

The software is said to enable the two most wanted men in the world to avoid capture because it can pinpoint every move in the global manhunt.

Redmond's departure last week was accepted "without discussion" by President Bush, the man who had brought the spy catcher out of retirement to conduct the investigation.

Hours after Redmond had cleared his desk, Bush ordered a GBP 25million bounty on Saddam's head. He wants Saddam "dead or alive" and the same goes for bin Laden. Already Bush has agreed to either man forgoing a trial and being shot after interrogation. The official reason given for Redmond's abrupt departure was "health reasons." But stunned colleagues in the Homeland Security department in Washington, where Redmond had his office, insist the former Associate Director of the CIA was in perfect health. His departure has led to intense speculation that he may have begun to uncover embarrassing details of how the software came into the hands of Saddam and bin Laden.

Documents obtained by the respected International Currency Review, a London-based newsletter for the financial community, allege that the software was provided for Saddam on the authority of President Bush's father when he was in the White House - a time when relations between Iraq and Washington were close during Baghdad's war with Iran. The Review's publisher, Christopher Story, a former financial adviser to Lady Thatcher, said: "The documents are extremely sensitive and raise some very serious questions."

He confirmed that they had originally been in the possession of Barzan alTakriti, Saddam's half-brother, when he was managing Saddam's estimated GBP 40billion fortune.

A Paris intelligence source said the documents were copied by operatives of DGSE, the French intelligence service, earlier this year when al-Takriti made a visit to several banks in Geneva.

He is now in American hands, one of the key names on the famous "deck of cards" list.

Shortly after the documents reached Washington on the eve of the war with Iraq, President Bush brought Paul Redmond out of retirement.

Redmond was a legendary CIA spy catcher who helped unmask some of the most infamous spies before he retired in 1998.

He was told to investigate how Robert Hanssen, the renegade FBI computer specialist who was a longtime Soviet agent, had handed over a copy of the software - known as Promis - to his KGB controllers for $ 2million.

Hanssen, now serving a life sentence, has yet to reveal all he knows about how the KGB sold on a copy of the software to Osama bin Laden for $ 4million shortly before the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

"But until Redmond's abrupt resignation, increasingly the documents relating to Saddam's use of Promis - and his relationship with President Bush's father - were what Redmond had begun to focus on", said a source close to the departed spy catcher.

Originally developed by a small company in Washington called Inslaw, there are now a number of versions of the software. One was installed by MI6 early in the 1990s. After Hanssen's arrest it was removed.

William Hamilton, president of Inslaw, said that top Bush aides and FBI director Robert Mueller had met to discuss the "implications" of Redmond's investigation.

"Redmond has said that Hanssen did hundreds of billions of dollars worth of damage. I have been told that Redmond's health is fine and there is a much more important reason for his resignation", said Mr Hamilton.

Like Mr Story, Mr Hamilton did not want to elaborate. But both men conceded that Redmond's investigation could have caused embarrassment to President Bush and his family.

END

[Wallaby]

I'm still around. Thanks for the bump, though I lost interest in the PROMIS affair after I read Octopus, by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith, and found no coherent thesis. I'm willing to believe Danny Casolaro was murdered, but I have no idea what he once knew.

[rubbertramp]

Hmmmm. Let me see. Robert Hanssen goes to prison for giving Promis to the Russians and George Bush doesn't for giving it to the Iraqis who could give it to the Russians if they wanted to.

The story about Robert Hanssen giving Promis to the Russians came after the puzzlement about how the hijackers knew the code to Air Force One. It didn't pass my smell test....seeing as the Israelis had it all along.

[Tribune7]

My favorite was the one where the rogue CIA agents were cruising the interstates in a disguised tractor-trailer containing a Cray supercomputer which they were using to electronically empty the Swiss bank accounts of corrupt Congressmen.

You can't get much better than that. It'd make a great movie.

[ovrtaxt]

It's utterly ancient technology. If we still actually have any vital information that can be accessed with Promis then we have bigger problems than some old software getting leaked.

That's my problem with the story. This all happened over ten years ago, when George the First was prez? What, it ran on the hot 64K TRS-80? Or were Amigas out by then? They had 256K. Woo hoo. This is pretty hard to believe.

[Tlaloc]

The Octopus!

[rubbertramp]

So you read Gordon Thomas' book too. Don't you think it is a stretch that Mossad pulled up in a boat and attached a grappling hook to a luxury yacht, then jumped a 300 lb. resistant man?....just can't picture it.

Mossad wasn't responsible for that one....MI6 did it. Even his wife was skeptical. The Israeli autopsy disproved it....and Maxwell was buried on Israeli ground...unlike Safra. If he was on the outs with Israel that wouldn't have happened.

Makes me wonder about Thomas' affiliations.

[mewzilla]

Didn't Michelle Malkin have on article relating to PROMIS this week? I'll see if I can find it.

[mewzilla]

Here's a link to the Malkin thread.

[aristeides]

They got their day in court and lost.

They (Inslaw) won at the bankruptcy court and district court levels. They lost on appeal in the D.C. Circuit. If you look at the opinion of the D.C. Circuit in reversing, you will see that the reversal had nothing to do with the merits of the case, but only with a technical issue having to do with the interpretation of a statutory provision as to whether the courts had jurisdiction over the issue. In fact, the D.C. Circuit's opinion contains language that can be interpreted as being critical of the government.

So, two courts found that the facts Inslaw alleged were correct. And the D.C. Circuit reversed for reasons having nothing to do with those facts.

And the way the bankruptcy judge who had ruled in favor of Inslaw was not reappointed for a new term as judge really smelled. I have clerked on the U.S. Tax Court, which has similar limited terms for its judges, and reappointment to a new term on that court, as on the bankruptcy courts, is routine.

[youknow]

cover-up