Thread by @finalcauser

⚡️🤯🧵: The Maxwells, Inslaw Inc. and PROMIS

The saga of PROMIS and the Maxwell family uncovers a shadowy chapter where espionage, technology, and influence intertwine. From the covert manipulation of PROMIS software to the downfall of Robert Maxwell’s empire, this story is a study in secrecy and high-stakes maneuvering. The abrupt halt to investigations and the subsequent emergence of new ventures like Research on Demand illustrate a persistent pattern of evasion and adaptation.

In today’s world, the echoes of this narrative resonate strongly. The complexities of modern surveillance, data privacy, and corporate influence are profoundly shaped by the legacies of past espionage operations. The clandestine nature of PROMIS and its entanglements serve as a precursor to contemporary issues surrounding data control and international intrigue. As we grapple with the challenges of digital surveillance and the power dynamics of big data, the lessons of PROMIS remind us of the enduring and evolving interplay between technology, intelligence, and global politics.

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In the annals of Israeli intelligence, few operations have matched the audacity and global impact of the scheme involving a compromised software program sold to governments, corporations, and the elite of financial and scientific institutions worldwide. This program, the Prosecutor’s Information Management System, known by its acronym PROMIS, was not just another piece of software. It was the brainchild of Inslaw Inc., a firm established by Bill Hamilton, a former NSA official, and his wife, Nancy.

In 1982, Inslaw introduced PROMIS to the U.S. Justice Department, then under the iron hand of Edwin Meese III, Ronald Reagan’s trusted confidant, who would later lend his influence to Donald Trump after the 2016 election. PROMIS was revolutionary, capable of integrating disparate databases and performing complex information analysis, feats that were previously unimaginable.

This innovation did not go unnoticed. Rafi Eitan, a figure as notorious as he was legendary, soon turned his attention to PROMIS. Eitan, infamous for his role as the handler of Jonathan Pollard, the most damaging spy in American history, was at the helm of Lekem, Israel's now-defunct intelligence service that specialized in the espionage of scientific and technical secrets.

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Eitan's introduction to PROMIS came through a man with a reputation as dark as the shadows in which he operated—Earl Brian. Brian, a fixture in Ronald Reagan's orbit, had cut his teeth in the murky world of CIA covert operations before overseeing California’s healthcare system under Reagan, a role that earned him the chilling moniker “the man who walked over the dead.” By 1982, however, Brian had traded in the cloak-and-dagger for the ambition of empire-building, his ventures bolstered by investments from none other than the wife of Attorney General Ed Meese. It was during one such venture, an attempt to peddle a healthcare system in Iran, that Brian first crossed paths with Eitan.

When Brian spoke of PROMIS, his tone was more bitter than admiring. He recognized the software's groundbreaking ability to sift through oceans of data, pinpointing illicit financial activities with an efficiency that had made it a powerful tool for U.S. federal investigators.

But Brian's focus was not on its innovation—it was on his exclusion from the financial windfall he believed should have been his. He had watched the development of PROMIS closely for years, only to find himself sidelined when the profits began to flow. His frustration simmered, a sentiment that would undoubtedly find resonance with the Israeli spymaster.

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As their dialogue deepened, Eitan and Brian conceived a scheme as cunning as it was perilous: they would insert a “trapdoor”—what we now call a back door—into PROMIS. This covert entryway would turn the software into a tool of espionage, a Trojan horse marketed to governments and institutions across the globe. With PROMIS in place, Israeli intelligence, and its clandestine allies within U.S. intelligence, would gain unfettered access to the inner workings of both adversaries and supposed allies. F

or Eitan and Brian, the plan promised more than strategic advantage; it promised immense financial gain. And for Brian, it offered a means to outmaneuver the very authorities who sought to curb financial crimes.

The plot thickened with the involvement of Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Mossad official whose testimony sheds light on the dark underpinnings of this operation. According to Ben-Menashe, Israeli military intelligence, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice, secured a copy of PROMIS. On Eitan’s orders, Ben-Menashe reached out to an Israeli-American programmer in California.

This programmer, a ghost in the machine, embedded the trapdoor, ensuring that Lekem could slip undetected into any database linked to a device running PROMIS. The software, once a marvel of technological innovation, had been transformed into a silent weapon, its true purpose hidden beneath layers of code.

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With the back door in place, Brian set his sights on global markets, using his company, Hadron Inc., as the vehicle to distribute the compromised PROMIS software. His first move, however, was to try and acquire Inslaw outright, a bid for control that ultimately failed. Thwarted but undeterred, Brian leveraged his close relationship with then-Attorney General Ed Meese. In a maneuver as brazen as it was underhanded, the Justice Department suddenly halted payments to Inslaw, despite the clear stipulations of their contract. The government, under Meese's direction, continued using PROMIS without compensating Inslaw—a move the company would later describe as outright theft.

The consequences were devastating for Inslaw. Forced into bankruptcy, the Hamiltons took legal action, suing the Justice Department. In a rare instance of judicial candor, a U.S. court later ruled that Meese’s department had "took, converted, stole" the software through "trickery, fraud, and deceit." With Inslaw out of the picture, Brian moved swiftly, peddling the compromised PROMIS to intelligence services in Jordan and Iraq—a windfall for Israeli intelligence—and to a select number of corporations.

Yet, for Eitan, Brian’s efforts were lacking. The promise of PROMIS, in his eyes, needed someone with more reach, more audacity. That someone was Robert Maxwell, a man whose ambitions and connections made him the ideal candidate to sell PROMIS to the very governments that Eitan most wanted to penetrate. For Eitan, Maxwell was not just a businessman; he was the key to spreading PROMIS across the globe, turning a sophisticated piece of software into a weapon of unparalleled espionage.

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Robert Maxwell's relationship with Israeli intelligence began in the shadowy corridors of the early 1960s, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that his ties to Mossad deepened to an almost symbiotic level. By then, Maxwell had acquired a network of Israeli companies, many of which served as unofficial arms of the Mossad, camouflaged behind the veneer of legitimate business. Among these was Degem, a computer firm with a sinister backstory—long a cover for Mossad operatives executing kidnappings and assassinations across Latin America and Africa.

Maxwell, ever the master of manipulation, leveraged Degem and his other enterprises to peddle PROMIS on a global scale. His efforts bore fruit, as the software found its way into the highest echelons of power—governments, corporations, banks, and intelligence agencies—granting Israeli intelligence an unprecedented glimpse into their most guarded secrets.

Maxwell’s talent for salesmanship was nowhere more evident than in his dealings with dictatorships across Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. After the deals were struck and Maxwell pocketed his lucrative commissions, the real work of PROMIS began. The software's unrivaled capacity to track everything from financial flows to the movement of people was swiftly co-opted by these regimes, used not only to grease the wheels of corruption but also to locate, silence, and eliminate dissidents with chilling efficiency.

And all the while, Israeli intelligence watched, not as passive observers, but as orchestrators of a scheme that reshaped the global landscape of surveillance and control. Through Maxwell, PROMIS had become more than just software; it was a weapon, wielded by tyrants, but controlled by the unseen hand of Israeli intelligence.

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In Latin America, Robert Maxwell’s dealings took on a macabre dimension as he sold PROMIS to military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina, regimes notorious for their brutal repression under Operation Condor. PROMIS, with its chilling efficiency, became a tool of terror, enabling these governments to swiftly identify and eliminate dissidents and their families.

The software’s reach was so profound that within days of Maxwell delivering PROMIS to Guatemala, the U.S.-backed dictatorship there orchestrated the disappearance of 20,000 "subversives," souls swallowed by the machinery of state violence, never to be seen again. And in the twisted logic of power, Israeli intelligence, through its hidden back door in PROMIS, knew the identities of Guatemala’s disappeared long before their families did. These were not passive bystanders; Israel had been deeply involved in arming and training the very dictatorships that were now using PROMIS to tighten their grip on power.

Yet, for Israeli intelligence, this was merely the beginning. The real treasure lay not in the classified information streaming in from Latin America, but in the secrets buried deep within the top-secret laboratories of the United States. Eitan, ever the strategist, saw an opportunity to penetrate the heart of America’s nuclear ambitions. He tasked Maxwell with selling PROMIS to the laboratories within the Los Alamos complex, including Sandia National Laboratory, the nerve center of the U.S. nuclear weapons program.

This sale, consummated in 1984, was no coincidence; it coincided with Eitan’s directive to Jonathan Pollard, Israel’s nuclear espionage prodigy, to extract U.S. nuclear secrets for Israel. In the span of a few months, PROMIS had gone from a weapon of political repression to a gateway into the most guarded corners of American power, all while Israeli intelligence watched, listened, and learned.

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To navigate the treacherous waters of selling PROMIS to America’s most sensitive laboratories, Robert Maxwell turned to a figure of considerable influence and even more shadowy reputation—Henry Kissinger.

It was Kissinger who laid out the blueprint, advising Maxwell to enlist the help of John Tower, the Texas Senator who, as head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, held the keys to the kingdom. Maxwell wasted no time, striking a deal with Tower and lubricating the wheels of this covert operation with $200,000 in Mossad funds.

Tower’s role was pivotal; he didn’t just unlock the gates to the Los Alamos complex, but also opened doors to the Reagan White House itself. Through Tower’s influence, Maxwell secured a visit to Sandia National Laboratory, where he would pitch PROMIS. This particular transaction, however, was an anomaly—it bypassed Maxwell’s usual Mossad front, Degem, and instead funneled through a U.S.-based company, Information on Demand.

The saga of Tower doesn’t end with this act of treachery. Despite his clear betrayal of U.S. national security, Maxwell’s other high-profile connection, George H.W. Bush, saw fit to nominate Tower as Secretary of Defense. The Senate, perhaps sensing the undercurrents of scandal, refused to confirm him, leading Bush to settle on Dick Cheney, who would later steer the Pentagon through the First Gulf War. But the tale takes a darker turn.

Not long after Tower’s failed nomination, he perished in a suspicious plane crash—a fate eerily mirrored by Robert Maxwell’s own mysterious death. The timing of these tragedies, so close on the heels of their entanglements with PROMIS and each other, only deepened the aura of conspiracy that clung to their names, suggesting that some secrets are too dangerous to live with.

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In a move that underscored the intricate web of Robert Maxwell’s operations, he acquired Information on Demand from its founder, Sue Rugge, in 1982 through the Pergamon Group—the same year that plans to compromise PROMIS were set in motion by Rafi Eitan and Earl Brian. Information on Demand was no mere acquisition; it was strategically located just a few doors down from the residence of Isabel Maxwell and her first husband, Dale Djerassi, whose claim to fame lay in his role in developing the birth control pill. This proximity to the Maxwell household was not merely coincidental but emblematic of the tightly knit and meticulously orchestrated nature of Maxwell’s business ventures.

The relevance of Information on Demand drew the scrutiny of federal authorities. In October 1983, just a year after Maxwell’s purchase, the FBI in San Francisco launched an investigation into the company. Records obtained by Inslaw Inc. through a FOIA request in the 1990s reveal that Rugge was interviewed about the company’s operations. During the interrogation, she detailed the expansive nature of Information on Demand’s capabilities.

The firm was reportedly a conduit to over 250 computer databases, utilizing this vast reservoir of information to answer both simple and intricate queries. The company’s services spanned comprehensive marketing research, custom data summaries, advanced literature searches, current awareness services, and global information capabilities.

In the broader context of Maxwell’s operations, the acquisition of Information on Demand was more than a strategic asset; it was a key component in a covert enterprise that extended from the depths of espionage to the highest echelons of global power. The FBI’s interest in the company hints at the unsettling intersection of business and intelligence, where the pursuit of information becomes a tool of influence and control.

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Among the wealth of databases that Information on Demand tapped into was Lockheed’s Dialog database, and notably, the Defense Technical Center, which was intricately linked to the Department of Defense and held classified information. Yet, in her statements to the FBI, Sue Rugge insisted that the company lacked passwords and had no direct need for such access.

The documentation further elaborates that, to the best of Information on Demand’s knowledge, they did not possess access to classified information. Instead, their claims centered around their capacity to access a broad array of government information and the methods available for tapping into these databases.

The FBI’s investigation zeroed in on a particular client of Information on Demand, though this client’s identity was redacted in the records. What is known is that this enigmatic client had been associated with the company since at least 1973.

Despite extensive efforts by Inslaw Inc. and other parties to uncover the identity of this redacted client, their attempts have met with consistent failure since 1994. The secrecy surrounding this client, combined with the company’s involvement in sensitive databases, adds another layer of intrigue to the already complex narrative of PROMIS and its global implications.

This redacted client remains a ghost in the machinery of Information on Demand’s operations—a reminder of the elusive and often hidden nature of those who maneuver behind the scenes in the vast landscape of espionage and information control.

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A month prior to the FBI’s inquiry into Information on Demand and its operations, another entity under Robert Maxwell’s extensive empire, Pergamon International Information Corporation, had made a notable move. The company sent a letter to then-CIA Director Bill Casey, offering access to patent databases—a gesture that, while seemingly innocuous, hinted at Maxwell’s reach into sensitive domains. The letter's sole redaction was the identity of PIIC’s Executive Vice President, who penned the correspondence.

Interest from the FBI intensified following Sue Rugge’s interview. By June 1984, the Bureau had launched a formal investigation into Information on Demand, spurred by concerns raised by two employees from Sandia National Laboratory. These employees, involved in technology transfer, had been alerted to Information on Demand’s attempts to sell PROMIS to their facility. Their concerns were further fueled by information from the National Security Agency (NSA) indicating that Robert Maxwell, through his ownership of Pergamon International, was behind the acquisition of Information on Demand. This specific data from the NSA was, however, fully redacted in the report.

The urgency of the FBI’s investigation was underscored when one of the Sandia employees sought to prompt a joint investigation by the NSA and FBI. This plea, however, was met with resistance, as the employee was advised to address the issue with FBI headquarters. The redacted details and the reluctance to engage in a broader investigation cast a shadow over the complexity and the potential implications of Maxwell’s operations, suggesting that the true extent of the subversion and espionage linked to PROMIS remained shrouded in secrecy.

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The FBI’s case file, marked as a foreign counter-intelligence investigation, reveals a deliberate focus on the possibility of a foreign intelligence service's involvement in the activities of Information on Demand, particularly concerning the "dissemination, marketing, or sale of computer software systems," with PROMIS as a central element. This classification underscores the gravity of the suspected international espionage and the implications of Maxwell's role in this intricate web of covert operations. The file also recalls that Robert Maxwell had previously been the subject of an FBI “security investigation” from 1953 to 1961—a period concluding just as he was officially recruited by Israeli intelligence, suggesting a longstanding and complex entanglement with American and foreign intelligence operations.

By early August 1984, just as the FBI’s interest was peaking, directives from FBI headquarters and other high-ranking officials within the Ed Meese-led Department of Justice—complicit in the PROMIS debacle—ordered the New Mexico office to cease its investigation into Information on Demand, Maxwell, and PROMIS. This abrupt halt in the investigation signifies a deliberate effort to obscure the truth and protect those involved in the scandal.

Remarkably, the cover-up extends into the present. The FBI continues to withhold documents related to Robert Maxwell and his involvement in the PROMIS affair, maintaining a veil of secrecy over the full extent of the scandal. The ongoing refusal to release these documents ensures that the shadowy aspects of the PROMIS saga remain hidden, leaving a trail of unanswered questions and unresolved mysteries in its wake.

For further read on Robert Maxwell: archive.org/details/thomas…