#Promis software scandal install#

Ben-Orr was an alias of Israeli spymaster Rafi Eitan. According to retired Israeli spy Ari Ben-Menashe, the name of Dr.

The following year, the DOJ provided a copy of the PROMIS software to an Israeli gentlemen who identified himself as Joseph Ben-Orr. That year, CIA and other federal agencies are offered copies of the software as part of the federal government’s internal software sharing program.

While a more advanced version of FOIMS remained under development, according to the FBI, in 1981 they decided to switch from COBOL, the language PROMIS was written in, to the ADABAS database management system. In 1979, the first pilot project was implemented, consisting of FOIMS “basic”, which only allowed specially trained personnel “to perform word processing and administrative functions,” while leaving agents without access. The history of FOIMS itself is a questionable one, and one with implications for both national security and transparency - by the time FOIMS was fully implemented, it was already out of date.ĭevelopment on FOIMS began in September 1978. The software that the DOJ would’ve had to hand over included the FBI’s Field Office Information Management System (FOIMS), which was alleged to have been based in part on the PROMIS software. According to a news clipping in an FBI file previously marked SECRET, the decision was overturned the day before the deadline for the DOJ to turn over copies of its software to the Hamiltons for independent analysis and comparison. The court’s ruling was later appealed while it was initially upheld, it was ultimately overturned on a technicality. The actual independence of Judge Bua’s investigation and the Bua Report has come into question. Attorney, whose office had withheld documents on the Inslaw affair from Congress, appointed Judge Bua as Special Counsel to address the matter with an independent investigation. Inslaw’s attorneys, which included Elliot Richardson, who had previously resigned from the DOJ rather than comply with President Nixon’s orders to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, repeatedly demanded a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate the matter, along with its numerous connections that implicated officials such as Ed Meese, who were in turn allegedly connected to affairs such as Iran-Contra and Reagan’s October Surprise. The court ruled in Inslaw’s favor, finding that the DOJ’s officials “took, converted and stole” the software through “trickery, fraud and deceit.” As a result, Inslaw was forced into bankruptcy, and eventually sued the U.S. The DOJ began withholding payments to Inslaw in 1983, a month after Inslaw’s owners had refused to sell the company to a friend of the Attorney General, and a year after Inslaw had demonstrated the software to the FBI for use as their new case management software.

While the DOJ would later claim that PROMIS was unsatisfactory and could not keep up with their needs, this is undermined not only by previous reports of PROMIS’ efficacy but by the fact that, as of the publishing of this article, PROMIS is still in use by New Jersey’s court system.

#Promis software scandal install#

According to a summary sent to the FBI Director in 1992, the roots of the Inslaw/PROMIS case went back to 1982, when Inslaw signed a $9.9 million contract with the government to install PROMIS as the Justice Department’s case management software in 94 U.S. The PROMIS scandal began in the early 1980s, though the FBI would wait ten years before opening the Inslaw/PROMIS matter as its 51st “Major Case.” Other things deemed Major Cases by the Bureau included Osama bin Laden, 9/11, the Anthrax scare, and the Oklahoma City Bombing. Most significantly, the file reveals that the Bureau’s sources indicated the allegations about PROMIS were true. The FBI’s response also reveals that the Congressional investigation was compromised, and additional files on the subject have been alternatively lost or destroyed. The affair centered around the government’s theft of the PROMIS software, a forerunner to the infamous PRISM, and the far-reaching fallout which allegedly included everything from fraud, to covert operations and surveillance, to Danny Casolaro’s mysterious death, and remains the subject of an investigation decades after the Department of Justice declared the matter officially closed. The PROMIS scandal, once labelled ‘the scandal that wouldn’t die,’ lives on according to a recent FBI FOIA response.