From: jad@ckuxb.att.com (John A Dinardo)
Subject: New Part V, The Casolaro Murder --> The Feds' Theft of Inslaw Software
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Keywords: CIA = Murder Inc.,  CIA desecrates the People's Constitution
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 20:17:13 GMT

       The following excerpts are from                         
       IN THESE TIMES, May 29 to June 11, 1991.                 
       Back issues and subscriptions can be ordered 
       by calling (312) 772-0100.
       

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
.....

Inslaw's owners now believe that the Justice Department stole 
their software for three possible reasons: to reward businessman
and arms dealer Earl W. Brian with a profitable product for his
part in the alleged arms-for-hostages deal between the 1980
Reagan-Bush campaign team and representatives of Iran's Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini; to provide off-the-book financing for the
Administration's covert operations; and to provide the U.S.
National Security Agency with a computerized Trojan horse to market
to the international intelligence community.

HE'S GOT PROMIS:
In January 1974, the non-profit Institute for Law and Social 
Research, known as Inslaw, received the first in a series of federal
contracts to design a computer program that the Justice Department
could use to track cases through the entire U.S. court system.

Bill Hamilton, company founder and president, is the computer wiz
who developed the statistical database that is at the center of
the controversy. It is known as Prosecutor's Management Information
(PROMIS). PROMIS was designed to help federal prosecutors maintain
a running record of upcoming deadlines and keep track of why cases
were won, lost or dismissed.

But what makes PROMIS unique is the program's adaptability, embodied
in a special subsystem that, among other things, automatically
translates the terminology from one judicial jurisdiction to
another. For example, PROMIS can integrate information from court
proceedings in different states. To PROMIS, Chicago's "cases" are
the same as Los Angeles's "dockets".

The PROMIS potential, however, is not limited to the court system.
Says Hamilton: "Because of that subsystem that allows it to change
the codes, you can change PROMIS so that it tracks clients for
social services."  Or it can track criminals for police departments.
In fact, the PROMIS system makes it easy for any bureaucracy to
monitor a large number of individuals for whatever reason.

One U.S. official who saw promise in PROMIS was Edwin Meese, then-
counselor to President Reagan who later became U.S. attorney-
general. In April 1981, Meese told a luncheon gathering of law-
enforcement officials: "What the PROMIS program and what Inslaw
have done provides one of the greatest opportunities for success
in the future, because it has to do with good planning and good
use of management information."

QUID PRO QUOS?
But the Administration had plans of its own and, according to
Hamilton, was already conspiring to appropriate his invention.

In May of that year, Donald Santarelli, an Inslaw lawyer who had
been a presidential appointee in the Nixon Justice Department,
attended a White House meeting with Meese. Hamilton, in a court
affidavit, said that Santarelli told him that during that meeting 
Santarelli was warned that although the Reagan Justice Department
planned to install PROMIS in all 94 U.S. Attorneys' offices and in 
all of the department's investigative agencies, Inslaw "should not 
expect to automatically receive the contract [to install the software]."
Hamilton says that this exchange indicates that the White House,
and not the Justice Department, was calling the shots, and that
therefore the PROMIS procurement was a political deal.

According to Hamilton's affidavit, the stage was set for the
software company's takeover in the summer of 1981 -- the year that
Inslaw became a for-profit company -- when the Justice Department
removed two key department officials involved in the PROMIS
procurement: Patricia Goodrich, then project manager at the Justice
Department for PROMIS, and Betty Thomas, then contracting officer
in charge of purchasing the PROMIS software and administering the
resulting contract.

Goodrich's position was filled by C. Madison Brewer, a former
Inslaw employee whom Hamilton had fired in 1976. Thomas -- who,
according to Hamilton's affidavit, was told to step aside or be
charged with "non-feasance" -- was replaced by Peter Videnieks,
formerly with the U.S. Customs Service. Before moving over to the
Justice Department and taking charge of the PROMIS program in
September 1981, Videnieks had administered three contracts between
the Customs Service and Hadron, Inc., a company that was in the
business of integrating information-managing systems like PROMIS
into federal agencies. Hadron is a subsidiary of Biotech Capital
Corp., which was owned by Earl Brian. (In the fall of 1987,
Biotech Capital was renamed Infotechnology, Inc., a Brian-owned
holding company that controls Financial News Network and United
Press International.)

In the early `70s, Brian served as California's Secretary of Health
and Welfare under then-Governor Ronald Reagan. He left public
service in 1974 to deal arms to the Shah's Iran.

In April of this year, former Israeli intelligence officer 
Ari Ben-Menashe told IN THESE TIMES that Brian was one of two 1980
Reagan-Bush campaign representatives who, in early 1980, approached
Iran about striking a deal to have the fifty-two American hostages
(seized by Iranian students in November 1979) held until after the
1980 U.S. Presidential Election. (see IN THESE TIMES, April 17.)

Ben-Menashe claims that the second U.S. campaign representative
was Robert McFarlane, who in 1983 became Reagan's National
Security Advisor. Both Brian and McFarlane, according to
Ben-Menashe, "worked very closely with Robert Gates -- a man who
at the time was an aide to then-President Jimmy Carter's CIA
Director Stansfield Turner, and whom Bush has now nominated to
replace CIA Director William Webster.
   [JD: Robert Gates is the new Director of Central Intelligence.]

It has also been reported that Brian and Gates participated in
negotiations in Paris in October 1980 where the alleged arms-for-
hostages deal was finalized.
                        (to be continued)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

       This is one of countless stories unveiling the deeply corrupted    
       and subverted state of our theoretically democratic Government.
       This story makes disgustingly obvious the fact that patriotism
       is not the waving of flags, the tying of yellow ribbons and the 
       supporting of the Government, just because it happens to be ours.
       You don't support cancer just because you happen to have it.
       Patriotism is telling the truth to the people of our country
       in order that they may unite to conquer the anti-democratic
       cancer that is gradually destroying ours and our children's
       freedom. So please post the installments of this ongoing series
       to other bulletin boards, and post hardcopies in public places,
       both on and off campus.  That would be a truly patriotic deed.

       John DiNardo


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