From: "Reflection" bernert
PROMIS software was modified to allegedly include the back door
"eavesdropping" capability but also enhanced with one form of AI and
subsequently applied to examining development of new weapons systems
including "ethnospecific" biowarfare agents capable of attacking specific
races, and individuals who might threaten the security of such research.
PROMIS has been transformed into the ultimate government spyware!
----------
Promis
by Michael C. Ruppert
[The following story appeared in the September, 2000 Special Edition of
From The Wilderness for paid subscribers only. Read it now, free, for the
first time ever on the web. © Copyright 2000, 2001. All rights reserved.
Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness Publications. See Homepage for
Reprint Policy]
"U.S. journalist Mike Ruppert, a former Los Angeles police officer who now
runs a Web site that seeks to expose CIA covert operations, said he met
with RCMP investigator McDade on Aug. 3 in L.A. Ruppert said the RCMP
officer was anxious to see documents he received three years ago from a
shadowy Green Beret named Bill Tyre [sic] detailing the sale of rigged
Promis software to Canada." - The Toronto Star, September 4, 2000.
Only the legends of Excalibur, the sword of invincible power, and the Holy
Grail, the chalice from which Christ took his wine at the Last Supper
begin to approach the mysterious aura that have evolved in the world of
secret intelligence around a computer software program named Promis.
Created in the 1970s by former National Security Agency (NSA) programmer
and engineer Bill Hamilton, now President of Washington, D.C.'s Inslaw
Corporation, PROMIS (Prosecutor's Management Information System) crossed a
threshold in the evolution of computer programming. Working from either
huge mainframe computer systems or smaller networks powered by the
progenitors of today's PCs, PROMIS, from its first "test drive" a quarter
century ago, was able to do one thing that no other program had ever been
able to do. It was able to simultaneously read and integrate any number of
different computer programs or data bases simultaneously, regardless of
the language in which the original programs had been written or the
operating system or platforms on which that data base was then currently
installed.
In the mid 1970s, at least as far as computer programs were concerned, the
"universal translator" of Star Trek had become a reality. And the realm of
Star Trek is exactly where most of the major media would have the general
public place the Promis story in their world views. But given the fact
that the government of Canada has just spent millions of dollars
investigating whether or not a special version of Promis, equipped with a
so-called "back door" has compromised its national security, one must
concede that perhaps the myths surrounding Promis and what has happened to
it need to be re-evaluated. Myths, by definition, cannot be solved, but
facts can be understood and integrated. Only a very few people realize how
big the Promis story really is.
It is difficult to relegate Promis to the world of myth and fantasy when
so many tangible things, like the recently acknowledged RCMP investigation
make it real. Canadians are not known for being wildly emotional types
given to sprees. And one must also include the previous findings of
Congressional oversight committees and no less than six obvious dead
bodies ranging from investigative journalist Danny Casolaro in 1991, to a
government employee named Alan Standorf, to British Publisher and lifelong
Israeli agent Robert Maxwell also in 1991, to retired Army CID
investigator Bill McCoy in 1997, to a father and son named Abernathy in a
small northern California town named Hercules. The fact that commercial
versions of Promis are now available for sale directly from Inslaw belies
the fact that some major papers and news organizations instantly and
laughably use the epithet conspiracy theorist to stigmatize anyone who
discusses it. Fear may be the major obstacle or ingredient in the myth
surrounding modified and "enhanced" versions of Promis that keeps
researchers from fully pursuing leads rising in its wake. I was validated
in this theory on September 23rd in a conversation with FTW Contributing
Editor Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D. Scott, a Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley
and noted author. Peter, upon hearing of the details of my involvement,
frankly told me that Promis frightened him. Casolaro, who was found dead
in a West Virginia motel room in 1991, had Scott's name (Scott is also a
Canadian) in a list of people to contact about his Promis findings. He
never got that far.
A close examination of the Promis saga actually leads to more than a dozen
deaths which may well be why so many people avoid it. And many of those
deaths share in common a pattern where, within 48 hours of death, bodies
are cremated, residences are sanitized and all files disappear. This was
certainly the case with my friend Bill McCoy, a legendary retired Army CID
investigator who was also the principal investigator for Hamilton in his
quest to recover what may be hundreds of millions in lost royalties and to
reunite him with the evolved progeny of his brain child. Those progeny now
have names like SMART (Self Managing Artificial Reasoning Technology) and
TECH. I will never forget hearing of McCoy's death and his immediate
cremation and then trying to reconcile that with the number of times he
had told me, while sitting in his Fairfax Virginia home, that he wanted to
be buried next to his beloved wife in spite of the fact that he was a Taoist.
I have tried to avoid becoming involved in Promis even though I have been
in possession of documents and information about the case for more than
six years. Reluctantly, as I realized that recent developments gave me a
moral imperative to write, I gathered all of my scattered computer files
connecting the case into one place. When assembled they totaled more than
seven megabytes and that did not include maybe 500 printed pages of
separate files.
In researching this story I found a starkly recurring theme. It appeared
first in a recent statement I tape recorded from probably one of the three
best informed open sources on the story in the world, William Tyree. I
also came across the same theme, almost verbatim, in a research paper that
I discovered while following leads from other sources
Tyree is no stranger to FTW. A former US Army Green Beret, framed in 1979,
he has been serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife Elaine
outside of Fort Devens Massachusetts, then home of the 10th Special Forces
Group. I have written of him in no less than six prior issues of FTW. He
has, from his prison cell in Walpole Massachusetts, been a central if
little known figure in the Promis case for many years, like a monk
mysteriously possessed of information that no one else could obtain. If
the story is ever fully told his role may be even more significant than
anyone has ever supposed.
The information from Tyree, recorded in a phone conversation on August 28,
and the research work on "block-modeling" social research theory uncovered
while researching other leads both describe the same unique position or
vantage point from hypothetical and actual perspectives. Tyree described
an actual physical point in space, further out than ever thought possible
and now used by US satellites. This distance is made possible by Promis
progeny so evolved that they make the original software look primitive.
The social research, which included pioneering mathematical work -
apparently facilitating the creation of artificial intelligence -
postulated that a similar remote hypothetical position would eliminate
randomness from all human activity. Everything would be visible in terms
of measurable and predictable patterns - the ultimate big picture. Just
one of the key web sites where I found this information is located at
<http://web.syr.edu/%7Ebvmarten/socialnet.html>http://web.syr.edu/~bvmarten/socialnet.html.
One of FTW's guiding principles is our incessant drive to separate that
which is important from that which is merely true. The purpose of this
article is to provide leads and insights, some very concrete, for the
continued investigation of the Promis saga. While we do not claim to be
worthy of pulling Excalibur from the stone we do hope to be divorced
enough from egotistical motivations and dreams of Pulitzers or glory to
avoid being led into the trap that has befallen so many seeking the Holy
Grail. FTW believes that the Promis story will only be solved by a group
of people working together selflessly for a greater good. Maybe there is
legend here after all. Put simply, from the vantage point of a child actor
in 1970s Burger King commercials, "It's too big to eat!"
What would you do if you possessed software that could think, understand
every language in the world, that provided peep holes into everyone else's
computer "dressing rooms," that could insert data into computers without
people's knowledge, that could fill in blanks beyond human reasoning and
also predict what people would do - before they did it? You would probably
use it wouldn't you? But Promis is not a virus. It has to be installed as
a program on the computer systems that you want to penetrate. Being as
uniquely powerful as it is this is usually not a problem. Once its power
and advantages are demonstrated, most corporations, banks or nations are
eager to be a part of the "exclusive" club that has it. And, as is
becoming increasingly confirmed by sources connected to this story,
especially in the worldwide banking system, not having Promis - by
whatever name it is offered - can exclude you from participating in the
ever more complex world of money transfers and money laundering. As an
example, look at any of the symbols on the back of your ATM card. Picture
your bank refusing to accept the software that made it possible to
transfer funds from LA to St. Louis, or from St. Louis to Rome.
The other thing to remember is that where mathematics has proved that
every human being on the earth is connected to every other by only six
degrees of separation, in covert operations the number shrinks to around
three. In the Promis story it often shrinks to two. It really is a small world.
The First Rip Off
Reagan confidant and overseer for domestic affairs from 1981 to 1985 Ed
Meese loved Promis software. According to lawsuits and appeals filed by
Hamilton, as well as the records of Congressional hearings, the FBI and
dozens of news stories, the legend of Promis began in 1981-2. After a
series of demonstrations showing how well Promis could integrate the
computers of dozens of US attorneys offices around the country, the
Department of Justice (DoJ) ordered an application of the software under a
tightly controlled and limited license. From there, however, Meese, along
with cronies D. Lowell Jensen (also no stranger to FTW's pages) and Earl
Brian allegedly engaged in a conspiracy to steal the software, modify it
to include a "trap door" that would allow those who knew of it to access
the program in other computers, and then sell it overseas to foreign
intelligence agencies. Hamilton began to smell a rat when agencies from
other countries, like Canada, started asking him for support services in
French when he had never made sales to Canada.
The Promis-managed data could be anything from financial records of
banking institutions to compilations of various records used to track the
movement of terrorists. That made the program a natural for Israel which,
according to Hamilton and many other sources, was one of the first
countries to acquire the bootlegged software from Meese and Company. As
voluminously described by Inslaw attorney, the late Elliot Richardson, the
Israeli Mossad under the direction of Rafi Eitan, allegedly modified the
software yet again and sold it throughout the Middle East. It was Eitan,
the legendary Mossad captor of Adolph Eichmann, according to Hamilton, who
had masqueraded as an Israeli prosecutor to enter Inslaw's DC offices
years earlier and obtain a first hand demonstration of what the Promis
could do.
Not too many Arab nations would trust a friendly Mossad agent selling
computer programs. So the Mossad provided their modified Promis to
flamboyant British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, a WWII Jewish
resistance fighter who had assumed the Anglo name and British citizenship
after the war. It was Maxwell, capable of travelling the world and with
enormous marketing resources, who became the sales agent for Promis and
then sold it to, among others, the Canadian government. Maxwell drowned
mysteriously in late 1991, not long after investigative reporter Danny
Casolaro was "suicided" in West Virginia. Maxwell may not have been the
only one to send Promis north.
In the meantime, after winning some successes, including a resounding
Congressional finding that he had been cheated, Bill Hamilton hit his own
buzz saw in a series of moves by the Reagan and Bush Justice Departments
and rigged court decisions intended to bankrupt him and force him out of
business. He survived and fought on. In the meantime hundreds of millions
of dollars in royalties and sales fees were going into the wrong pockets.
And, as was later revealed from a number of directions, this initial
tampering with the software was far from the only game in town. Both the
CIA, through GE Aerospace in Herndon Virginia (GAO Contract #82F624620),
the FBI and elements of the NSA were tinkering with Promis, not just to
modify it with a trap door, but to enhance it with artificial intelligence
or AI. It's worth it to note that GE Aerospace was subsequently purchased
by Martin-Marietta which then merged to become Lockheed-Martin the largest
defense and aerospace contractor in the world. This will become important
later on.
Confidential documents obtained by FTW indicate that much of the AI
development was done at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia Labs
using research from other US universities, including Harvard, Cal-Tech and
the University of California. And it was not just Reagan Republicans who
got their hands on it either. As we'll see shortly, Promis came to life
years before the election of Ronald Reagan. It was also, according to Bill
Tyree, an essential element in the espionage conducted by Jonathan Pollard
against not only the US government but the Washington embassies of many
nations targeted by Israel's Mossad.
The Last Circle
For more than a year and half, members of the National Security Section of
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have been travelling through the
US, often in the company of a savvy female homicide detective from the
small California town of Hercules named Sue Todd. Even now questions
linger as to what the Canadians were really after. But there is absolutely
no question that while surreptitiously in the U.S. the Mounties spent more
time with author and investigative reporter Cheri Seymour than with anyone
else. And for good reason.
Seymour, under the pen name of Carol Marshall is the author of a
meticulously researched e-book entitled The Last Circle located at
<http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/index.htm>http://www.lycaeum.org/books/
books/last_circle/. So meticulously researched and documented is the book
that FTW's researcher "The Goddess" has fact checked it and found it
flawless. Same with Bill Hamilton and the Mounties, who have also told me
of its precision. Anyone seeking to understand the Promis story must
include this book as a part of their overall research.
I first met Cheri in person this spring after she had contacted me via the
Internet. I traveled to her home, some three hours outside of Los Angeles
and viewed acres of documentation for a saga that started with drug
related murders and police corruption around methamphetamine production in
northern California in the 1980s. That investigation later connected to
politicians like Tony Coelho and major corporations like MCA and
eventually led to a shadowy scientist named Michael Riconosciuto. Familiar
names like Ted Gunderson and relatively unknown names like Robert Booth
Nichols weave throughout this detailed epic that takes us to the Cabazon
Indian Reservation in the California Desert and into the deepest recesses
of the 1980s Reagan/Bush security apparatus.
Gunderson, a retired FBI Special Agent in Charge (SAC) from Los Angeles,
and Nichols, a mysterious Los Angeles man, exposed through court documents
obtained by Seymour as being a career CIA operative, connected with
scientist/programmer, Riconosciuto in a sinister, yet now very well
documented phase of Promis' development. In affidavits Riconosciuto
claimed that one of the tasks he performed at the Cabazon reservation was
to install a back door in the version of Promis that was sold to Canada.
In August of this year the RCMP investigators told both Seymour and me
that they had traveled to the reservation several times and had confirmed
many details of Seymour's research. They had also interviewed Riconosciuto
on more than one occasion. As with everyone else I have ever met who has
spoken with him, both the Mounties and Seymour kept a reserved distance
>from him and always "counted their fingers after every hand shake."
By using treaties between the U.S. Government and Native American peoples
that recognize Native American reservations as sovereign nations, the CIA
has long and frequently avoided statutory prohibitions against operating
inside the United States. The financial rewards for tribal nations have
been significant and the extra security afforded by tribal police in
remote areas has been a real blessing for covert operatives. The Last
Circle describes in detail how Promis software was modified by
Riconosciuto to allegedly include the back door "eavesdropping" capability
but also enhanced with one form of AI and subsequently applied to the
development of new weapons systems including "ethnospecific" biowarfare
compounds capable of attacking specific races. Riconosciuto, now serving
time in a Federal prison in Pennsylvania has a cell a very short distance
>from fellow espionage inmates Edwin Wilson and Jonathan Pollard. While his
tale is critical to understanding what has happened to Promis, the fact
remains that Riconosciuto has been out of the loop and in legal trouble
for eight years. He has been in a maximum security prison for at least
six. What was surprising was that in 1998 he contacted homicide detective
Sue Todd in Hercules and told her that the murder of a father and son,
execution style, was connected to the Promis story. One connection was
obvious. Hercules is a "company town" connected to a weapons manufacturer
described in Seymour's book that also connects to the Cabazon Indian
Reservation.
The Three Bills
I lived in Washington, D.C. from August 1994 until late October of 1995.
It was during that time that I was a semi-regular visitor at the Fairfax,
Virginia home of Bill McCoy, a loveable sixty-something giant, always
adorned with a beret who complained ruthlessly about what had happened to
the United States since "The Damned Yankee Army" had taken over. Writers
were "scribblers." People who thought they knew something about covert
operations without ever having seen one were "spooky-groupies." "Mac," as
we called him, had his investigative fingers in almost everything but he
was most involved with Promis. McCoy was a retired Chief Warrant Officer
>from the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division. He had broken some
of the biggest cases in Army history. It was Mac who first introduced me
to both Bill Tyree and to Bill Hamilton in 1994. I recall scratching my
head as I would be sitting at Mac's dinner table when a call would come in
>from Hamilton asking if there was any new information from Tyree. "Not
yet, " McCoy would answer, "I'll call as soon as I get something."
"How," I asked, "could a guy in a maximum security prison like Walpole
State Penitentiary in Massachusetts be getting information of such quality
that someone like Hamilton would be calling urgently to see what had come
in?" "That," answered McCoy was the work of someone known only as "The
Sergeant Major," and alternately as "His Eminence" who fed the information
to Tyree, who in turn fed it to McCoy, who then passed it on to Hamilton.
Sometimes however, Tyree and Hamilton communicated directly. To this day
the identity of the Sergeant Major remains a mystery and the puzzle piece
most pursued by the RCMP when they visited me in August, 2000.
It was also not by coincidence then that, in the same winter of 94-95,
McCoy revealed to me that he was using former Green Berets to conduct
physical surveillance of the Washington, D.C. offices of Microsoft in
connection with the Promis case. FTW has, within the last month, received
information indicating that piracy of Microsoft products at the GE
Aerospace Herndon facility were likely tied to larger objectives, possibly
the total compromise of any Windows based product. It is not by chance
that most of the military and all of the intelligence agencies in the U.S.
now operate on Macintosh systems.
In late 1996 Tyree mailed me a detailed set of diagrams and a lengthy
narrative explaining the exact hows and whys of the murder of Danny
Casolaro and an overall view of the Promis saga that is not only
consistent with what is described by Seymour in The Last Circle but also
provides many new details. Asked about Mike Riconosciuto for this story
Tyree would say only that, "He's very good at what he does. There are
very, very few who can touch him, maybe 200 in the whole world.
Riconosciuto's in a class all by himself." Those documents, as later
described to me by RCMP Investigator Sean McDade, proved to be "Awesome
and right on the money."
The essence of those documents was that, not only had the Republicans
under Meese exploited the software, but that the Democrats had also seen
its potential and moved years earlier. Nowhere was this connection more
clearly exposed than in understanding the relationship between three
classmates from the U.S. Naval Academy: Jimmy Carter, Stansfield Turner
(Carter's CIA director), and billionaire banker and Presidential kingmaker
(Carter's Annapolis roommate), Arkansas' Jackson Stephens. The Tyree
diagrams laid out in detail how Promis, after improvement with AI, had
allegedly been mated with the software of Jackson Stephens' firm
Systematics. In the late seventies and early eighties, Systematics handled
some 60-70% of all electronic banking transactions in the U.S. The goal,
according to the diagrams which laid out (subsequently verified)
relationships between Stephens, Worthen Bank, the Lippo Group and the
drug/intelligence bank BCCI was to penetrate every banking system in the
world. This "cabal" could then use Promis both to predict and to influence
the movement of financial markets worldwide. Stephens, truly bipartisan in
his approach to profits, has been a lifelong supporter of George Bush and
he was, at the same time, the source of the $3 million loan that rescued a
faltering Clinton Campaign in early 1992. There is a great photograph of
Stephens with a younger George "W" Bush in the excellent BCCI history,
False Profits.
In the fall of 1997, Bill McCoy, having recently gone off of his heart
medication was found dead in his favorite chair. In the days and weeks
before he had been advised by Tyree that a Pakistani hit man, on an
Israeli contract had been in the states seeking to fulfill a hit on McCoy.
There had been other hints that someone closer to McCoy might do the job.
Tyree recently told FTW that just before his death, he had given McCoy
information on "Elbit" flash memory chips, allegedly designed at Kir
Yat-Gat south of Tel Aviv. The unique feature of the Elbit chips was that
they worked on ambient electricity in a computer. In other words, they
worked when the computer was turned off. When combined with another newly
developed chip, the "Petrie," which was capable of storing up to six
months worth of key strokes, it was now possible to burst transmit all of
a computer's activity in the middle of the night to a nearby receiver -
say in a passing truck or even a low flying SIGINT (Signals Intelligence)
satellite. According to Tyree this was the methodology used by Jonathan
Pollard and the Israeli Mossad to compromise many foreign embassies in
Washington.
Within 48 hours of his death Bill McCoy had been cremated and in less than
four days all of Mac's furniture, records and personal belongings had been
removed from his home by his son, a full Colonel in the Army. The house
had been sanitized and repainted and, aside from the Zen garden in the
back yard, there was no trace that McCoy had ever lived there.
Harvard and HUD
Former Assistant Secretary of Housing, Catherine Austin Fitts has had
about as much ink in FTW as anyone else. A feisty, innovative thinker she
has seen raging success as a Managing Director of the Wall Street
investment bank Dillon Read and she has been "nuked" into near poverty
after devising software strategies seeking to optimize financial data and
returns for the US taxpayer. While acting as a HUD consultant in 1996,
selling defaulted HUD Mortgages into the private market through her own
investment bank, Hamilton Securities (no relation), she achieved unheard
of taxpayer returns of around 90 cents on the dollar. In doing so she ran
afoul of an entrenched Washington financial power structure feeding
uncompetitively at the HUD trough.
Last month we described how Fitts devised a data optimization method using
hand coding by residents of a HUD Housing project in Washington to produce
Promis-like results. She successfully "mapped" the flow of HUD money and
was about to create proprietary software that would make the job easier.
That software would have integrated billions of pieces of disorganized HUD
financial data. Suddenly, in August 1996, DoJ and HUD InspectorÕs General
investigations started that seized her computers and resulted in a
four-year blatantly illegal campaign to crush everything she stood for. No
charges were ever brought, Fitts, her money and her data are still
viciously separated.
One of the empires Fitts threatened was that of the Harvard Endowment. The
Harvard Endowment is not really a benevolent university fund but an
aggressive investment predator with $19 billion in assets, some from HUD
subsidized housing. Harvard also has a number of other investments in high
tech defense operations and had a big hand in investing George W BushÕs
lackluster firm Harken Energy. "W" has a Harvard MBA. FittsÕ chief nemesis
at Harvard, Herbert "Pug" Winokur, head of Capricorn Investments, and
member of the board of the Harvard Endowment is also a PhD mathematician
>from Harvard where the mathematical breakthroughs that gave rise to
Artificial Intelligence using block-modeling research were discovered. In
the 60s Winokur had done social science research for the Department of
Defense on causes of inner city unrest in the wake of the 1967 Detroit riots.
The pioneering research at Harvard that allegedly gave rise to the
Artificial Intelligence installed in Promis later moved north. According
to a Harvard website
(<http://www.analytichtech.com/mb119/chap2e.htm>www.analytichtech.com/mb119/chap2e.htm)
"Much of the effort of the Harvard group - no longer based solely at
Harvard - was centered on the International Network for Social Network
Analysis (INSNA) at Toronto...". Things grew more suspicious as FittsÕ
research disclosed that Winokur, through Capricorn Investments, had a
decisive role in the 1980s management of the intelligence/government
outsourcing mega-firm DynCorp, of Reston, VA. Winokur served as DynCorp
CEO from 1989 to 1997. DynCorp handles everything for Uncle Sam from
aircraft maintenance, to sheep-dipping of combat troops into private
assault forces in Colombia, to the financial management of HUD records, to
the maintenance of computer security at government facilities. One of
DynCorpÕs most interesting contracts is with the DoJ for the financial
management of assets seized in the drug war. DynCorp also counts among its
shareholders former CIA Director James Woolsey. Pug Winokur made DynCorp
what it is today and he still sits on the board.
In juxtaposition, Harvard and HUD differ in one striking respect according
to Fitts. The Harvard Endowment has enjoyed wildly uncharacteristic above
market tax-free returns for the last decade, (33% in 1999), while HUD, in
the same year, was compelled to do a "manual adjustments" to reconcile a
$59 billion shortfall between its accounts and the U.S. Treasury account.
[This is not a typographical error]. Where did all that money go? $59
billion in an election year is a staggering amount of money Why is no one
screaming? HUD's explanation is that it was loading a new accounting
system that did not work and then did not bother to balance its checkbook
for over a year.
I was not surprised when Bill Hamilton confirmed to both Fitts and to me
that WinokurÕs DynCorp had played a role in the evolution of Promis in the
1980s. One other surprise was to come out of FittsÕ investigations that
had months earlier led her to conclude that she was up against
Promis-related interests. On the very day that DoJ and HUD shut her down
she was discussing software development with a Canadian firm that is at
the heart of the Canadian space program, Geomatics. The term Geomatics
applies to a related group of sciences - all involving satellite imagery -
used to develop geographic information systems, global positioning systems
and remote sensing from space that can actually determine the locations of
natural resources such as oil, precious metals and other commodities.
Apparently centered in Canada, the Geomatics industry offers consulting
services throughout the world in English, German, Russian, French, Arabic,
Spanish and Chinese. Geomatics technology, launched aboard Canadian
satellites via US, European or Japanese boosters can help developing or
industrialized nations inventory and manage all of their natural
resources. There are also several Geomatics related companies in the U.S.
including one not far from the Johnson Space center in Houston.
This situation is custom made for enhanced Promis software with back-door
technology. What better way to map and inventory all of the worldÕs
resources than by making each client nation pay for the work. By providing
the client nation Promis-based software it would then be possible to
compile a global data base of every marketable natural resource. And it
would not be necessary to even touch the resources because commodities and
futures markets exist for all of them. An AI enhanced, Promis-based
program would then be the perfect set up to make billions of dollars in
profits by watching and manipulating the worldÕs political climate to
trade in, letÕs say Tungsten futures. Such a worldwide database would be
even more valuable if there were, for example, a sudden surge in the price
of gold or platinum.
Bill Hamilton readily agreed that this was an ideal situation for the
application of Promis technology. In furthering our research on Geomatics
we discovered that almost everywhere Geomatics technology went we also
found Lockheed-Martin.
Enter The Mounties
Thanks to a strong push in my direction from Cheri Seymour, the Mounties
and Hercules PD Homicide Detective Sue Todd arrived at my door on August
3rd. They had already consumed most of the FTW web site and were well
familiar with my writings. I had let them know, through Cheri, that I did
have information on Promis from Bill Tyree and that I would be happy to
share it. Before getting into details we all went out for lunch at a
nearby Chinese restaurant.
In setting basic outlines for our conversations that day I indicated that,
as a journalist, I viewed our discussions as off-the-record. I took no
notes and did not tape record any of the discussion. I am recounting the
events now only after corresponding with McDade and advising him of my
intention to write. He responded and did not object. I took the same
position with Detective Todd. I warned the Mounties and Todd at the outset
that a sudden termination of their investigations was likely and that they
would all become expendable. It happened to me once.
Over lunch the Mounties were quite candid about the fact that the RCMP had
Promis software and that it even went by the name Promis. I think they may
have also mentioned the name PIRS which is an acknowledged system in the
RCMP network. They stated that they had been given their version of Promis
by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS).
CSIS was an intelligence breakaway from the Mounties in 1984, intended to
be a pure [sic] intelligence agency. It was created largely with the
expertise and assistance of the CIA. All of us understood two things about
that arrangement and we discussed them openly First, there was a question
as to whether or not any intelligence service created by the CIA could be
completely loyal to its native country. Secondly, it was also understood
that there was a rivalry between the two agencies similar to the one that
existed between the FBI and the CIA, or in a larger context, the Clinton
gang and the Bush gang in the US. The chief concern of the Mounties,
clearly, was to ascertain whether or not their version of Promis was one
that was compromised. McDade also described in detail how he knew that
supposedly secure RCMP communications equipment had been compromised by
the NSA. The Mounties acknowledged regular meetings with Cheri Seymour but
evinced none of the interest she said that they had previously shown in
the Mossad. With me their single-minded focus was Bill Tyree and where and
how he obtained his information.
Sue Todd, confirmed for me suspicions that there was an unspoken alliance
between the RCMP investigators and the FBI She said that during the course
of her three years of efforts to solve the double murder in Hercules, she
had routinely visited FBI offices and enjoyed access to FBI files relative
to both the Promis investigation and anything connected to her victims.
That information was obviously being shared with the Mounties and that
implied the blessings of the FBI. In short, a domestic law enforcement
officer was sharing information with agents of a foreign government. In
some cases that could provoke espionage charges but in this case it was
apparently sanctioned. The Hercules murder victims had no apparent
connection to Promis software in any way except for the fact that
Riconosciuto had possessed knowledge about the murders which he had
provided to Todd from prison. The Hercules Armament Corporation, featured
in The Last Circle, was an obvious link. I also noted that the father in
Todd's case had been a computer engineer with passions for both geological
research and hypnosis and no other visible connections to the Promis story.
As we copied Tyree's papers and went through other materials the next day
I was aware that the Canadians expressed special interest in Jackson
Stephens and anything having to do with the manipulation of financial
markets. They asked for copies of news reports I had showing that General
Wesley Clark, the recently retired NATO Commander, has just gone to work
for Stephens, Inc. in Little Rock Arkansas. I also provided documents
showing that Stephens' financial firm Alltel, heir to Systematics, was
moving heavily into the mortgage market. As the Mounties repeatedly
pressed for information on the identity of the Sergeant Major I referred
them to Tyree directly through his attorney Ray Kohlman and to Tyree's
closest friend, the daughter of CIA bagman and paymaster Albert Carone,
Dee Ferdinand. [For more on Carone visit the FTW web site].
McDade did eventually contact Ferdinand by phone and shortly thereafter
one of the most bizarre twists in the whole story took place.
About a week after meeting the Mounties I heard back from Sean that the
Tyree documents and flow charts from 1996 had been right on the money. A
special recurring theme in those documents that meshes with Seymour's
research is the fact that modified versions of Promis software with both
artificial intelligence and trap doors were being smuggled out of Los
Alamos nuclear labs in containers labeled as radioactive waste According
to Tyree and other sources, after an Indian reservation, the safest place
in the world that no one will ever break into is a nuclear waste dump.
This also applies to containers in transit between countries. The
radioactive warning label guarantees unmolested movement of virtually
anything. Promis software is apparently no exception.
Bill Casey and Al Carone from the Grave
Albert Vincent Carone has also been covered exhaustively in FTW, both in
the newsletter and on the web site. A retired NYPD Detective, also a
made-member of the Genovese crime family, Carone spent his entire working
career as a CIA operative. (FTW has special reports on both Bill Tyree and
Al Carone available from the web site or at the end of this newsletter).
For more than 25 years before his mysterious death in 1990, Al Carone
served as a bagman and liaison between George Bush, CIA Director Bill
Casey, Oliver North, Richard Nixon and many other prominent figures
including Robert Vesco, Manuel Noriega and Ferdinand Marcos. The
Carone-Tyree connection, covered in detail in the Sept. 1998 issue (Vol.
I, No.7) goes back to operations in the mid 1970s when Tyree, serving with
the Special Forces, engaged in CIA directed missions for which Carone was
the paymaster.
Carone's death from "chemical toxicity of unknown etiology" in 1990
resulted in the sanitizing of all of his military and NYPD records as well
as the theft and disappearance of nearly ten million dollars in bank
accounts, insurance policies and investments. Virtually overnight, almost
every record of Carone disappeared leaving his daughter and her family
nearly bankrupt under the burden of tens of thousands of dollars in
medical bills. In 1996, Carone's daughter, Dee Ferdinand, discovered that
Tyree and Carone had known each other and that Tyree could prove
instrumental in helping to restore Carone's lost fortune. Ferdinand filed
suit in U.S. District Court this spring seeking to recover pensions,
insurance policies and benefits in a case which has no known connection to
Promis. I have known Ferdinand and her family for more than seven years.
Never once has she mentioned a connection between her father and Promis
although she was well familiar with the case from Tyree and conversations
with Bill Hamilton. I had referred the Mounties to her because of my
belief that she could possibly help identify Tyree's source, the Sergeant
Major.
On August 10th, exactly one week after the Mounties came to see me, the
DoJ mailed Ferdinand a response to her suit seeking dismissal. Included in
the paperwork was a bizarre document, now in FTW's possession, that, by
the account of both Ferdinand and her lawyer, had absolutely nothing to do
with her case. The document in question was a March 29, 1986 Declaration
>from CIA Director William Casey, a close friend of the Carone family.
Paragraph 6 of that document (prepared for another case) stated, "Two of
the documents responsive to Plaintiffs' Request No 1, specifically the
one-page letter dated 28 March 1979 and a one-page letter dated 8 January
1980, have been released in the same excised form as they were previously
released by the Government of Canada. I independently and formally assert
the state secrets privilege for the information excised from these two
documents."
Dee Ferdinand called me immediately The letter had nothing to do with her
suit. It mentioned Canada. Canada was not even mentioned in her suit. What
was going on?" she asked. "It's blackmail," I answered. "CIA, which is
monitoring everything the Canadians do, everything I do, everything you
do, knows that I will tell the Mounties of these letters." McDade didn't
grasp the concept at first. He was a straight-ahead street cop. But I had
been through something similar when serving as the press spokesman for the
Perot Presidential campaign in 1992. I explained it to Sean, "Sean, you
and I are just the messengers. But I guarantee that at some level of your
government the CIA's reference to these letters will scare people to
death. It is a reminder that CIA has them."
A week later McDade told me that the dates were indeed significant - very
significant. That's all he would say.
FTW has what may be a possible explanation for the dates in question. The
President and CIA Director on these dates the letters were written were
Jimmy Carter and Stansfield Turner. Aside from the then recent Russian
invasion of Afghanistan, a saga in which the Canadian government played a
minor role, the largest drama on the world scene was the overthrow of the
Shah of Iran in January 1979, the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the
seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran later that year. The Canadian
government and the CIA worked very closely in Iran, the Canadian Embassy
even housing some CIA personnel who had escaped the crowds of students.
But that kind of assistance is not something to hide. Another explanation
was needed to explain shock waves in Ottawa.
Recently, a source using a code name known to FTW has surfaced with
information relating to Promis. In his communiqués he describes the use of
Promis software by the Bush family to loot the secret bank accounts of
Manuel Noriega and Ferdinand Marcos. Promis is able to do this because
funds can be transferred out of accounts without a trace. Remember the
trap door? The rule of thumb here is that crooks, especially CIA sponsored
crooks, don't usually go to the cops when somebody steals their stolen
money. From my personal experience in the era, and direct exposure to two
members of the Iranian Royal family, both before and after the overthrow,
I am acutely aware that the Shah, then perhaps the richest man in the
world, was actually targeted by the CIA. His downfall was no accident Once
worth more than $20 billion, the Shah ended his life a refugee in Egypt.
Many of his billions disappeared and the family was very upset about it.
Could the financial power of Promis have been turned loose first through
Canada when Carter was President in the US? The Shah did a lot of banking
in Canada. We may never know the answer. But if the downfalls of wealthy
US supported dictators Noriega and Marcos are any indication the answer is
likely, yes. And the Shah was wealthier than both of them put together.
Where'd all that money go?
Headlines
On August 25th the Toronto Star broke what was to become a series of
stories by Valerie Lawson and Allan Thompson. The cat was out of the bag.
Various figures known to have direct connections to Riconosciuto had been
virtually dogging the Mounties' every move as they traveled in the US. One
even contacted me just days after the Mounties left LA. It was a story
that could not be kept under wraps forever. Most of the Star story was
accurate. It was going to be difficult for the RCMP to move quietly now. A
Reuters story the same day closed with the following paragraphs, "CanadaÕs
national counterintelligence agency said in a June report that friendly
nations were making concerted efforts to steal sensitive technology and
information.
"The Canadian Security Intelligence Service said outsiders were
particularly interested in aerospace, biotechnology, chemicals,
communications, information technology, mining and metallurgy, nuclear
energy, oil and gas, and the environment." That was Geomatics, at the
heart of Canada's space program, Canada's flagship space technology. I
checked the Star story. There had been no mention of high tech or space
related issues. What did Reuters know? In mid September, after receiving
confidential source documents related to the case telling me that one
version of Promis, modified in Canada was handled through the Canadian
firm I.P. Sharp, I got an answer. A quick search on the web revealed that
Sharp, a well documented component of the case, had been bought by a
Reuters company in the early 90s. Hamilton later told me that he had heard
that Reuters possibly had the Promis software. That would explain how they
knew about the aerospace connection.
Michael Dobbs of The Washington Post called and asked what I knew. I
confirmed that I had met with the Mounties but didn't know much else other
than giving them the Tyree flow charts. The Post was never going to tell
the truth. Their business was keeping secrets, not revealing them. The
Mounties had made waves.
On August 28 the phone rang and it was a collect call from Tyree. "Get a
tape recorder and turn it on," he said. Over the course of the next half
an hour Tyree, obviously reading from detailed and copious notes, named
individuals and companies dealing with Promis software and its progeny.
The tape was specific down to naming specific engineers in military and
private corporations doing Promis research. Tyree described specific
Congressional committees that had been infiltrated with "enhanced" Promis.
Tyree described how Promis progeny, having inspired four new computer
languages had made possible the positioning of satellites so far out in
space that they were untouchable. At the same time the progeny had
improved video quality to the point where the same satellite could focus
on a single human hair. The ultimate big picture.
Promis progeny had also evolved to the point where neural pads could be
attached to plugs in the back of the human head and thought could be
translated into electrical impulses that would be equally capable of
flying a plane or wire transferring money. Names like Sandia, Cal-Tech,
Micron, Tech University of Graz, Oded Leventer and Massimo Grimaldi rolled
>from his lips as he tore through the pages of notes. Data, such as
satellite reconnaissance, could also now be downloaded from a satellite
directly into a human brain. The evolution of the artificial intelligence
had progressed to a point where animal behavior and thought were being
decoded. Mechanical humans were being tested. Animals were being
controlled by computer.
Billy saved Canada for last.
"Here's how we fuck Canada," he started. He was laughing as he facetiously
described what was coming as some sort of bizarre payback for the War of
1812. Then, placing the evolutions of Promis in context with the Canadian
story Tyree asked a question as to why one would really now need to go to
all the trouble of monitoring all of a foreign country's intelligence
operations. "There's an easier way to get what I want," he said. "I access
their banks. I access their banks and I know who does what and who's
getting ready to do what," he said. He described how Canada had been
provided with modified Promis software which Canada then modified, or
thought they had modified, again to eliminate the trap door. That software
turned loose in the financial and scientific communities then became
Canada's means of believing that they were securing the trap door
information from the entities to whom they provided their versions of
Promis. But, unknown, to the Canadians the Elbit chips in the systems
bypassed the trap doors and permitted the transmission of data when
everyone thought the computers were turned off and secure. Tyree did not
explain how the chips physically got into the Canadian computers.
"This," Tyree said "is how you cripple everything Canada does that you
don't like. And if you want proof I offer you the fact that we toppled the
government of Australia in 1980." "[Prime Minister] Gough Whitlam and
Nugan Hand [Bank]," I answered. Tyree affirmed. The Labor Government of
Whitlam had been suddenly unseated after making nationalistic noise and
questioning the role of US intelligence agencies in Australian affairs.
The issue of a coming feud between the dollar and the Euro came up. I
suggested that rapidly vanishing support in South America and Europe both
were threatening the military operations of "Plan Colombia" and the
economic boost it would give the US economy. Tyree jumped in, "If I can
put Canada in line and show the Eurodollar, the 'Eurotrash' what I have
already done to my neighbor, whom I value to some degree - remember, these
are not nice people - these are financial thugs at their worst. So what
they are going to do is sit down discreetly and say, 'Look, this is what
we did to Canada. Now, would you like us to do this to the European market
as well?' Mike, they're not going to think twice about itÉ A weapon is
only good if someone knows what its capability is. Prior to using the
atomic bomb it was irrelevant." He continued, "They refer to it as the
Nagasaki Syndrome."
After describing in some detail how the financial powers-that-be had
gutted American manufacturing productivity through globalization he
described a strategy intended to halt any move by the Euro to overshadow
the dollar or even compete with it. It was pure economic hostage taking
and Canada would be the object lesson. Then, chillingly, he described
something familiar to any military strategist. The penetration and looting
of HUD was the test bed, the proving ground, the "White Sands" of the
Promis economic Atom bomb. Once the CIA and the economic powers-that-be
had proven that, over a period of years, they could infiltrate and loot
$59 billion dollars from HUD, they knew that they could do it anywhere.
Said Tyree, "Then they knew they had what it took to go abroad and create
mayhemÉ It was planned twenty years ago."
It took several days to reach Sean McDade who had been on vacation. I
played the Tyree tape for him over an open phone line into RCMP
headquarters. He asked me to make a physical copy right away and send it
to him. After he had had time to listen to it he cautioned me against
sending it anywhere else. I told him that as long as his investigation was
active that I would do nothing more than make the standard copies I make
of any sensitive documents as a precaution. I could tell that the tape had
rattled him. Though I had known from the start that the large and
energetic Mountie, whom I believed to be a dedicated an honest man, would
never be allowed to ride his case out to the end, I still had hopes. But
in my heart I knew that Tyree was right. In all the years he had been
feeding me information I had never known him to be wrong and, apparently,
neither had Bill Hamilton. I did not send a copy of the tape to Hamilton
because I knew how difficult and potentially dangerous McDade's job was
going to be now that the press had exposed him. Having been a cop in
dangerous political, CIA infested waters I knew what it was like to not
know who you could trust.
If keeping the tape quiet would give the Mounties and edge I would do it -
but only as long as they had a case.
Sudden Death
Then it was over.
On September 16th the Toronto Star announced that the RCMP had suddenly
closed its Promis investigation with the flat disclaimer that it did not
have and never did have any version of Bill Hamilton's software. That was
as shocking a statement as it was absurd. "The only way that you can
identify Promis," said a perplexed Bill Hamilton, "is to compare the code.
Sean McDade said that he was not an engineer and couldn't read code so how
did he know?" Hamilton was as emphatic as I was that McDade had said that
RCMP had Promis. So was Cheri Seymour. I offered a fleeting hope that the
Mounties were playing a game, saying that they had terminated the
investigation to shake some of the incessant probing that had been taking
place around McDade's every move.
I was finally convinced when McDade e-mailed me and said that it was his
view that the Mounties did not have any version of Promis and that he had
no objections if I decided to write a story. I then agreed with Seymour
that, whether they had said so or not, both the Mounties and Sue Todd had
left enough visible footprints that it was their intention for us to go
public. It might be the only protection they had.
As I had predicted from the start, they had come too close to bigger
issues and been shut down ruthlessly. I called Sue Todd who lamented that
she was marking her three year homicide investigation, "Closed by the
press." Even though she was convincing I had the feeling that she was
playing back a rehearsed script. I told her that I was not satisfied with
the statements that there was no Promis in the RCMP. I recalled our
lunchtime conversation of August 3rd. She agreed with me that the RCMP
mission was to determine whether or not RCMP Promis was a stolen or
compromised version. She knew that they had it. So did I. I e-mailed
McDade one last time saying that I was going to write it like I remembered
it. He never got back to me.
Bill Hamilton added one last twist when he told me in a conversation that
the Mounties claimed to have developed their software on their own. That,
he said, was nonsense because the Mounties did not have that kind of
sophistication or ability. He thought that the RCMP program had been
specially prepared FBI. That would explain the role of retired FBI agent
Ted Gunderson. Though I didn't tell him at the time I knew that he had
obtained that information from Bill Tyree. And Bill Tyree and his
provider, the Sergeant Major, are two people that Bill Hamilton and I both
have learned to respect.
Diplomacy
Just three days after the Toronto Star announced the abrupt termination of
the RCMP investigation the Canada based International Network on
Disarmament and Globalization (INDG) posted an electronic bulletin on a
speech by former Canadian Ambassador to the US. In an address the night
before, less than 48 hours after the termination of the RCMP
investigation, Derek Burney, current President of CAE, a Canadian firm
manufacturing flight simulators, criticized the U.S. aerospace industry
for being overly-protectionist under the guise of national security. In
addressing the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada, according to
large stories that appeared in CP (Canadian Press) and Toronto's Globe and
Mail, Burney was characterized as sounding unusually tough in his
criticism of American policy that was freezing Canadian firms out of
aerospace contracts. Both stories were ambivalent in that they alternately
made Burney sound critical of the U.S. while championing Canadian
interests and at the same time weak as he noted that Mexico stood poised
under NAFTA to replace Canada as the U.S.'s number one trading partner.
The CP story made two telling observations. It quoted Burney as saying
that Canada needed to do more to "preserve and enhance its access to the
American market." Then it closed it's story on Burney's speech, advocating
a compromise agreement between the US and Canada, by saying that Burney's
position "risks being perceived here at home as a sellout or worse."
A close examination of Burney's remarks, published in the INDG bulletin
revealed something more like an obsequious surrender rather than a mere
sellout. While there were a few tough-talking paragraphs that saved
Canadian face, the essence of the speech was that Burney believed that
American defense firms, the largest of which is Lockheed-Martin, were
poised to transfer the bulk of their contracts to companies in Mexico.
Citing Canada's dependence upon access to American avionics and
"databases," Burney painted a picture that seemingly left Canada over a
barrel. Without access to American technology the Canadian aerospace
industry could not function.
Buried deep in the text of Burney's speech we found the following
paragraph which is, we believe, the best place to end this story.
"That does not mean that we have to agree with everything Washington does
or says or do things exactly as the Americans do. On the contrary, one of
the advantages of being a good neighbor and close ally is that we can
speak freely and forthrightly to the Americans - provided we have a solid
case and are seeking to influence their position and not simply capture a
quick headline. And, never forget, it is always more effective to be frank
in private. Otherwise your motive can be somewhat suspect."