-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: March 28, 2007 11:48:51 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Where Were the NEOCONS During INSLAW/PROMIS (under VP
George Bush)?
Spy Probe Scans Neocons
by Jim Lobe
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6830.htm
09/01/04 "IPS" -- The burgeoning scandal over claims that a
Pentagon official passed highly classified secrets to a Zionist
lobby group appears to be part of a much broader set of FBI and
Pentagon investigations of close collaboration between prominent
U.S. neo-conservatives and Israel dating back some 30 years.
According to knowledgeable sources, who asked to not be identified,
the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) has been intensively
reviewing a series of past counter-intelligence probes that were
started against several high-profile neo-cons but never followed up
with prosecutions, to the great frustration of counter-intelligence
officers, in some cases.
Some of these past investigations involve top current officials,
including Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz;
Undersecretary of Defence for Policy Douglas Feith, whose office
appears to be the focus of the most recently disclosed inquiry; and
Richard Perle, who resigned as Defence Policy Board (DPB) chairman
last year.
All three were the subject of a lengthy investigative story by
Stephen Green published by Counterpunch in February. Green is the
author of two books on U.S.-Israeli relations, including Taking
Sides: America's Secret Relations with a Militant Israel, which
relies heavily on interviews with former Pentagon and counter-
intelligence officials.
At the same time, another Pentagon office concerned with the
transfer of sensitive military and dual-use technologies has been
examining the acquisition, modification and sales of key hi-tech
military equipment by Israel obtained from the United States, in
some cases with the help of prominent neo-conservatives who were
then serving in the government.
Some of that equipment has been sold by Israel – which in the last
20 years has become a top exporter of the world's most
sophisticated hi-tech information and weapons technology – or by
Israeli middlemen, to Russia, China and other potential U.S.
strategic rivals. Some of it has also found its way onto the black
market, where terrorist groups – possibly including al-Qaeda –
obtained bootlegged copies, according to these sources.
Of particular interest in that connection are derivatives of a
powerful case-management software called PROMIS that was produced
by INSLAW, Inc in the early 1980s and acquired by Israel's Mossad
intelligence agency, which then sold its own versions to other
foreign intelligence agencies in the Middle East, Asia and Eastern
Europe.
But these versions were modified with a "trap door" that permitted
the seller to spy on the buyers' own intelligence files, according
to a number of published reports.
A modified version of the software, which is used to monitor and
track files on a multitude of databases, is believed to have been
acquired by al-Qaeda on the black market in the late 1990s,
possibly facilitating the group's global banking and money-
laundering schemes, according to a Washington Times story of June
2001.
According to one source, Pentagon investigators believe it possible
that al-Qaeda used the software to spy on various U.S. agencies
that could have detected or foiled the Sep. 11, 2001 attack.
The FBI is reportedly also involved in the Pentagon's
investigation, which is overseen by Deputy Undersecretary of
Defence for International Technology Security John A. "Jack" Shaw
with the explicit support of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
The latest incident is based on allegations that a Defence
Intelligence Agency (DIA) career officer, Larry Franklin – who was
assigned in 2001 to work in a special office dealing with Iraq and
Iran under Feith – provided highly classified information,
including a draft on U.S. policy towards Iran, to two staff members
of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of
Washington's most powerful lobby groups. One or both of the
recipients allegedly passed the material to the Israeli embassy.
Franklin has not commented on the allegation, and Israel and AIPAC
have strongly denied any involvement and say they are co-operating
fully with FBI investigators.
The office in which Franklin has worked since 2001 is dominated by
staunch neo-conservatives, including Feith himself. Headed by
William Luti, a retired Navy officer who worked for DPB member Newt
Gingrich when he was speaker of the House of Representatives, it
played a central role in building the case for war in Iraq.
Part of the office's strategy included working closely with the
Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by now-disgraced exile Ahmad
Chalabi, and the DPB members in developing and selectively leaking
intelligence analyses that supported the now-discredited thesis
that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had close ties to al-Qaeda.
Feith's office enjoyed especially close links with Vice President
Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, to whom it
"stovepiped" its analyses without having them vetted by
professional intelligence analysts in the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), the DIA, or the State Department Bureau for
Intelligence of Research (INR).
Since the Iraq war, Feith's office has also lobbied hard within the
U.S. government for a confrontational posture vis-à-vis Iran and
Syria, including actions aimed at destabilising both governments –
policies which, in addition to the ousting of Hussein, have been
strongly and publicly urged by prominent, hard-line neo-
conservatives, such as Perle, Feith and Perle's associate at the
American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Michael Ledeen, among others.
Despite his status as a career officer, Franklin, who is an Iran
specialist, is considered both personally and ideologically close
to several other prominent neo-conservatives, who have also acted
in various consultancy roles at the Pentagon, including Ledeen and
Harold Rhode, who once described himself as Deputy Secretary of
State Paul Wolfowitz's chief adviser on Islam.
In December 2001, Rhode and Franklin met in Europe with a shadowy
Iranian arms dealer, Manichur Ghorbanifar, who, along with Ledeen,
played a central role in the arms-for-hostages deal involving the
Reagan administration, Israel and Iran in the mid-1980s that became
known as the "Iran-Contra Affair."
Ledeen set up the more recent meetings that apparently triggered
the FBI to launch its investigation, which has intensified in
recent months amid reports that Chalabi's INC, which has long been
championed by the neo-conservatives, has been passing sensitive
intelligence to Iran.
Feith has long been an outspoken supporter of Israel's Likud Party,
and his former law partner Marc Zell has served as a spokesman in
Israel for the Jewish settler movement on the occupied West Bank.
He, Perle and several other like-minded hardliners participated in
a task force that called for then-Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu to work for the installation of a friendly government in
Baghdad as a means of permanently altering the balance of power in
the Middle East in Israel's favour, permitting it to abandon the
Oslo peace process, which Feith had publicly opposed.
Previously, Feith served as a Middle East analyst in the National
Security Council in the administration of former President Ronald
Reagan (1981–89), but was summarily removed from that position in
March 1982 because he had been the object of a FBI inquiry into
whether he had provided classified material to an official of the
Israeli embassy in Washington, according to Green's account.
But Perle, who was then serving as assistant secretary of defence
for international security policy (ISP), which, among other
responsibilities, had an important say in approving or denying
licenses to export sensitive military or dual-use technology
abroad, hired him as his "special counsel" and later as his deputy,
where he served until 1986, when he left for his law practice with
Zell, who had by then moved to Israel.
Also serving under Perle during these years was Stephen Bryen, a
former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and
the subject of a major FBI investigation in the late 1970s for
offering classified documents to an Israeli intelligence officer in
the presence of AIPAC's director, according to Green's account,
which is backed up by some 500 pages of investigation documents
released under a Freedom of Information request some 15 years ago.
Although political appointees decided against prosecution, Bryen
was reportedly asked to leave the committee and, until his
appointment by Perle in 1981, served as head of the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a group dedicated
to promoting strategic ties between the United States and Israel
and one in which Perle, Feith and Ledeen have long been active.
In his position as Perle's deputy, Bryen created the Defence
Technology Security Administration (DTSA) which enforced
regulations regarding technology transfer to foreign countries.
During his tenure, according to one source with personal knowledge
of Bryen's work, "the U.S. shut down transfers to western Europe
and Japan (which were depicted as too ready to sell them to Moscow)
and opened up a back door to Israel" – a pattern that became
embarrassingly evident after Perle left office and the current
deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, took over in 1987.
Soon, Armitage was raising serious questions about Bryen's approval
of sensitive exports to Israel without appropriate vetting by other
agencies.
"It is in the interest of U.S. and Israel to remove needless
impediments to technological cooperation between them," Feith wrote
in Commentary in 1992. "Technologies in the hands of responsible,
friendly countries facing military threats, countries like Israel,
serve to deter aggression, enhance regional stability and promote
peace thereby."
Perle, Ledeen, and Wolfowitz have also been the subject of FBI
inquiries, according to Green's account. In 1970, one year after he
was hired by Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, an FBI wiretap
authorised for the Israeli Embassy picked up Perle discussing
classified information with an embassy official, while Wolfowitz
was investigated in 1978 for providing a classified document on the
proposed sale of a U.S. weapons system to an Arab government to an
Israeli official via an AIPAC staffer.
In 1992, when he was serving as undersecretary of defence for
policy, Pentagon officials looking into the unauthorised export of
classified technology to China, found that Wolfowitz's office was
promoting Israel's export of advanced air-to-air missiles to
Beijing in violation of a written agreement with Washington on arms
re-sales.
The FBI and the Pentagon are reportedly taking a new look at all of
these incidents and others to, in the words of a New York Times
story Sunday, "get a better understanding of the relationships
among conservative officials with strong ties to Israel."
It would be a mistake to see Franklin as the chief target of the
current investigation, according to sources, but rather he should
be viewed as one piece of a much broader puzzle.
Jim Lobe is Inter Press Service's correspondent in Washington, DC.
---------------------
http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb06?_MEESE_EDWIN_
"Social networking diagram" centered on Reagan’s Attorney General,
main perpetrator in misuse of PROMIS
Notice that "George [HW] Bush" merits a blue connecting line,
indicating "density" in number of connections.
Ben-Menashe, Ari. “Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli
Arms Network.”
New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1992. 394 pages.
If this book is even half true, it means that less than ten
percent of the Reagan and Bush administration double-dealing was
ever revealed to the American public. Ari Ben-Menashe's description
of the U.S.-Israeli arms network can only be described as
"sensational." If you accept his scenario, it's apparent that an
impotent U.S. Congress, once they got a whiff of the dimensions of
the problem and considered their options, had no choice but to
cover it all up. Some journalists who have verified portions of Ben-
Menashe's story have found that his information is excellent.
Others just wish he would disappear and are inclined to discredit
him, because to accept him is to admit that you've been chasing
your tail for ten years and missing it all. With Ben-Menashe, there
doesn't seem to be any middle ground.
Ben-Menashe was one of six on Israel's top-secret Joint
Committee on Israel-Iran Relations, and spent years globe-trotting
for them, setting up fronts and transferring millions in cash. In
1980 he saw George Bush in Paris meeting with a high Iranian
official, and in 1986 he briefed Bush. In 1981 Robert Gates helped
him with his suitcase containing $56 million. Others in this book
include Margaret Thatcher's son Mark, Chilean arms dealer Carlos
Cardoen, and Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner, to name a few. If you
start reading this book, watch out for Mossad hit men and hold on
to your hat.
ISBN 1-879823-01-2
SOFTWARE PIRACY, CONSPIRACY, COVER-UP, STONEWALLING, COVERT ACTION:
JUST ANOTHER DECADE AT THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.01/inslaw.html
The House Judiciary Committee lists these crimes as among the
possible violations perpetrated by "high-level Justice officials
and private individuals" [in the Inslaw case]:
>> Conspiracy to commit an offense
>> Fraud
>> Wire fraud
>> Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies and
committees
>> Tampering with a witness
>> Retaliation against a witness
>> Perjury
>> Interference with commerce by threats or violence
>> Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) violations
>> Transportation of stolen goods, securities, moneys
>> Receiving stolen goods
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inslaw
In early 1999, the British journalist and author, Gordon Thomas,
published an authorized history of the Israeli Mossad entitled
"Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad". The book quotes
detailed admissions by the former long-time deputy director of the
Mossad about the partnersip between Israeli and U.S. intelligence
in selling in excess of $500 million worth of licenses to a Trojan
horse version of PROMIS to foreign intelligence agencies in order
to spy on them.
In 2001, the Washington Times and Fox News each quoted federal law
enforcement and/or intelligence officials familiar with the
debriefing of former FBI Agent Robert Hanssen as claiming that
Hanssen had stolen for the Soviet KGB copies of PROMIS-derivative
software used within the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies to
track the intelligence information they produce, and used by U.S.
intelligence within banks to track financial transactions.
These reports further stated that Osama bin Laden later bought
copies of the same PROMIS-derivative software on the Russian black
market for $2 million and al Qaeda used the software to penetrate
U.S. intelligence database systems so that it could move its funds
through the banking system and evade detection and monitoring by
U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
PROMIS-Gate: WORLD'S LONGEST SPY SCANDAL
STILL GLOSSED OVER / Part I
David Dastych
http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/2726093/
The so called PROMIS affair would never have happened if the
software invented by an American computer specialist, Mr. William
A. Hamilton, had been a technical failure.
But this case management and data mining software, developed in the
early 1980s by a small Washington D.C. company, Inslaw Inc., had
proven itself to be a perfect intelligence tool. Originally made
for the Department of Justice to help the country’s prosecutor
offices in their case management, it drew the attention of corrupt
officials and of Israeli Intelligence. Stolen by ruse from its
owner, Inslaw Inc., the software was hacked and provided with a
"trap door", a sort of a Trojan Horse hacker’s trick, that enabled
the retrieval of information from the foreign intelligence services
and banks it had been sold to on behalf of Israeli and U.S.
intelligence. Without the knowledge of the software’s owner, and in
violation of copyright laws, the PROMIS software was sold to over
40 countries and used in an unprecedented "sting operation", which
yielded huge financial and intelligence benefits to the United
States and Israel.
In February 1985, Inslaw Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
protection because the Justice Department had withheld payments
totaling almost $1.8 million U.S. due Inslaw Inc. under a PROMIS
Implementation Contract for U.S. Attorneys Offices. The PROMIS
affair, broken by investigative journalists, two federal courts,
and a congressional investigation and published in thousands of
media stories and in several books, has never been resolved.
But "blowback" from the U.S. Government's theft of PROMIS in 1982
soon turned into a series of painful losses for U.S. national
security, into criminal financial benefits for corrupt officials,
and into intelligence "scoops" for the secret services of adversaries.
"It’s far worse than Watergate"--commented former U.S. Attorney
General and Inslaw counsel Elliot Richardson.
From KGB to PLA-2
The history of this world-famous computer software goes back a
quarter of a century, and its applications by intelligence,
organized crime and terrorist organizations began almost from the
start. The software helped the United States win the Cold War
against the Soviet Union, but it also served the Russian mafia,
Saddam Hussein’s regime, Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, and an
unspecified number of foreign spies and criminals.
As far back as 1985, when the late British media tycoon and top
[Israeli] Mossad spy, Robert Maxwell, revealed the software’s "trap
door" secret to Chinese Military Intelligence (PLA-2), while
selling them a copy of PROMIS for $ 9 million, the powerful
software was turned against the United States.
The Soviet KGB purchased PROMIS from Robert Maxwell, but they also
[later] received a copy (together with the Trojan Horse secret)
from Robert Hanssen, a spy planted in a most sensitive office of
the FBI.
The Soviets and their East European allies, including Poland, used
PROMIS to spy on the U.S. State Department and 170 American
Embassies and Consulates all over the world. This practice may have
continued as late as 1997, and the post-communist intelligence
agencies of Russia and other countries, including Polish Military
Intelligence (WSI), may have been able to retrieve information from
U.S. Government agencies, because as many as 64 of them [are
believed to have] used modified versions of PROMIS.
Using the same PROMIS software, purchased from Russia, Saddam
Hussein and members of his regime could shift huge sums of money
undetected through the banking system. Some of these funds are
still supporting the anti-Coalition insurrection in Iraq and
terrorists.
In the mid-1990s, Chinese Military Intelligence (PLA-2) organized
their own hackers department, which [exploited] PROMIS [database
systems] [in the] Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories to
steal U.S. nuclear secrets.
No over-all damage assessment has been prepared yet. But the losses
to the U.S. economy may be in billions of dollars, and damage to
the national security of the United States and its allies may be
incalculable.
An American intelligence officer, whose name cannot be disclosed,
made the following comment on the consequences of the illegal
operations performed with the use of PROMIS:
"Yes, we gave PROMIS to the Russians and Chinese to back door their
intel. Worked like a charm. The only problem was ‘blowback’. As we
gave it to our enemies in order to back door them through the trap
door Trojan horse asset in PROMIS, we left 64 federal agencies wide
open in the U.S. Government who also used PROMIS. The powers-that-
be felt that the information obtained far outweighed the damage
done to the security of the federal agencies. Just think -- federal
agents exposed, witness relocation programs compromised, etc. All
just a matter of time."
AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's
free from AOL at AOL.com.
www.ctrl.org
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/
<A HREF="http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
