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/~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/. 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 (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."
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