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ugged Computer Software - Ari Ben-Menashe - Peter Myers; date October 26,
2000; update June 28, 2004.
You are at http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/bugs.html.
(1) Ari Ben-Menashe, Profits of War: The Senational Story of the World-Wide
Arms Conspiracy (2) Bin Laden given PROMIS software? (3) PROMIS incident
number: 887890
(1) Ari Ben-Menashe, Profits of War: The Senational Story of the World-Wide
Arms Conspiracy, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1992.
The author, Ari Ben-Menashe, was an Israeli intelligence officer; Rafael
Eitan was a counterterrorism adviser to Menachem Begin. This book broke the
Iran Contra scandal, but was ignored by the media. It also describes the
capture of Mordecai Vanunu, beginning with his approaching the Sydney
Morning Herald about his secret photos; that newspaper, instead of scooping
the story, contacted ASIO (Australia's equivalent of the CIA). Ari
Ben-Menashe is lucky to be alive. The extracts below describe the
development of bugged computer software, and how Israel helped to bring down
the USSR with it.
{p. 129} One of Eitan's pet projects was an anti-terrorist scheme involving
a sinister, Big Brother-like computer program named Promls. It was through
Eitan that I became involved in it. This was not Joint Committee work, per
se, but many of the same people who worked on our arms-to-Iran operation
worked on Promls also. The most prominent of these was British medla baron
Robert Maxwell, who made a fortune out of it. Through some of his companies,
the Israelis and the Americans were eventually able to tap into the secrets
of numerous intelligence networks around the world - including Britain,
Canada, Australia, and many
{p. 130} others - and set into motion the arrest, torture, and murder of
thousands of lnnocent people in the name of "antiterrorism."
The frightening story of the Promis program begins in the United States in
the late 1960s when communications expert William Hamilton, who had spent
time in Vietnam during the war setting up listening posts to monitor the
communist forces, was assigned to a research and development unit of the U.S
National Security Agency. Fluent in Vietnamese, Hamilton helped create a
computerized Vietnamese-English dictionary for the intelligence agency.
While working there, Hamilton also started work on an extremely
sophisticated database program that could interface with data banks in other
computers. By the early 1970s, he was well on the way with his research and
realized he had a keg of dynamite in his hands.
The program he was developing would have the ability to track the movements
of vast numbers of people around the world. Dissidents or citizens who
needed to be kept under watch would be hard put to move freely again without
Big Brother keeping an eye on thelr activities.
When Hamilton saw that the program he was building had so much potential, he
resigned from the National Security Agency and took over a non-profit
corporation called Inslaw, established to develop a software program for
legal purposes. The Inslaw program would be able to cross-check various
court actions and, through cross-referencing, find a common denominator. For
example, if a wanted person moved to a new state and established a new
identity before being arrested, the program would search out aspects of his
life and cases he had been involved in and match them up. Hamilton put his
knowledge to use in Inslaw, and when his bosses at NSA found out, they were
not at all happy. Their argument was that as an employee of the agency, he
had no right to take knowledge gleaned there to another organization. By
1981 Hamilton came up with an enhanced program. What he had actually done
was given birth to a monster. Inslaw was turned into a profit-making
organization, and Hamilton copyrighted his enhanced version.
Believing that Inslaw was invaluable for law-enforcement agencies, Hamilton
sent Promis to the Justice Department in 1981, offering them leasing rights;
the more they used it, the more
{p. 131} profit Inslaw would make. The Hamilton program was sent to the NSA
for study, but in time, through arrangements made with Attorney General
Edwin Meese III, Hamilton got his program back. The Justice Department
declined to lease the program from Inslaw, and, it soon transpired, they
were using "their own" Promis. So was the NSA.
The U.S. government had its own plans for Promis. Some American officials
thought the Israelis might be able to sell it to intelligence agencies
around the world, so in 1982, Earl Brian approached Rafi Eitan. After
studying the program, Eitan had a brilliant idea.
He called me in to see him. "We can use this program to stamp out terrorism
by keeping track of everyone," he said. "But not only that. We can find out
what our enemies know, too."
I stared at him for a moment. Suddenly I realized what he was talking about.
"Ben zona ata tso dek!" - Son of a #@&@
, you're right! I exclaimed. All we
had to do was "bug" the program when it was sold to our enemies.
It would work like this: A nation's spy organization would buy Promis and
have it installed in its computers at headquarters. Using a modem, the spy
network would then tap into the computers of such services as the telephone
company, the water board, other utility commissions, credit card companies,
etc. Promis would then search for specific information. For example, if a
person suddenly started using more water and more electricity and making
more phone calls than usual, it might be suspected he had guests staying
with him. Promis would then start searching for the records of his friends
and associates, and if it was found that one had stopped using electricity
and water, it might
{Footnote, p. 131: Hamilton and his wife Nancy sued the Justice Department,
charging that Justice stole the enhanced Promis program from Inslaw and gave
it to NSA. Justice claimed it did get a program from Inslaw but returned it
unused. NSA said it developed its own enhanced program and gave it to other
intelligence agencies, but not to the Justice Department. Since the stalling
by the Justlce Department had thrown Inslaw into bankruptcy proceedings, the
Hamiltons pursued their legal remedies in Bankruptcy Court. The lower courts
upheld their claims against the Justice Department, but an appellate court
ruled that Bankruptcy Court was the incorrect venue for such claims,
requiring them to refile the suit in District Court. A congressional
investigation into the matter has also been slowly proceeding.}
{p. 132} be assumed, based on other records stored in Promis, that the
missing person was staying with the subject of the investigation. This would
be enough to have him watched if, for example, he had been involved in
previous conspiracies. Promis would search through its records and produce
details of those conspiracies, even though the person might have been
operating under a different name in the past - the program was sophisticated
enough to find a detail that would reveal his true identity.
This information might also be of interest to Israel, which is where the
trap door would come into play. By dialing into the central computer of any
foreign intelligence agency using Promis, an Israeli agent with a modem need
only type in certain secret code words to gain access. Then he could ask for
information on the person and get it all on his computer scr
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