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CAM Exclusive: CIA Adapts Database Software Called PROMIS with Back Door for Cyber-espionage
Did the CIA lie, cheat and betray its friends and business partners in ways that even Donald Trump might envy? A rapidly unfolding intelligence scandal indicates that the answer is yes.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/02/23/cam-exclusive-cia-adapts-database-software-called-promis-with-back-door-for-cyber-espionage/
Little did Crypto AG’s customers know that the encryption company they hired to safeguard their sensitive records secretly downloaded them to the CIA and BND.
The CIA history of the Crypto operation called it “the intelligence coup” of the 20th century. The Agency boasted, foreign governments were paying good money to the U.S. and West Germany to have their most secret communications read by at least two…foreign countries.
According to the CIA history, “Crypto machines supplied roughly 40 percent of all the foreign communications U.S. code breakers processed for intelligence.”[2]
As the Crypto AG scandal unfolded, Swiss public broadcaster SRF revealed that Omnisec, a second Swiss encryption company, also shared the secrets of its government clients with the CIA and the BND.
Reynolds wrote, “As agreed, Messrs. Manucher Ghorbanifar, Adnan Khashoggi, and [Assistant Secretary for Defense] Richard Armitage will broker the transaction of Promise [sic] software to Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz for resales and general distribution or as gifts on his region.”
Reynolds insisted, “Promise [sic] must have a soft arrival. No paper work, customs, or delay.” He added importantly, “It must be equipped with the special retrieval unit. As before, you must walk the financial experts through the Credit Suisse into National Commerce Bank.”[4]
Ghorbanifar, an Iranian, and Khashoggi, a Saudi, were arms dealers. Mahfouz, a Saudi financier, represented the National Commerce Bank.[5]
Unlike Crypto AG or Omnisec, Inslaw, Inc., which developed PROMIS software in the early 1980s, was not owned by the CIA and the BND. Inslaw, which was privately owned, claimed that senior officials in the Reagan administration conspired with the Department of Justice to acquire PROMIS illegally by driving the company into bankruptcy. Inslaw also asserted that modified PROMIS was used in secret U.S. intelligence operations.
The Judiciary Committee report stated, “There appears to be strong evidence, as indicated by the findings in two Federal court proceedings as well as by the committee investigation, that the Department of Justice ‘acted willfully and fraudulently’ and ‘took, converted and stole’ Inslaw’s Enhanced PROMIS by ‘trickery, fraud and deceit.’” Further, the report stated, “It appears that these actions against Inslaw were implemented…under the direction of high-level Justice Department officials.”[6]
There has not been a full official accounting of the PROMIS affair. But the May 1985 letter from Assistant Attorney General Reynolds to U.S. Attorney Weld on PROMIS is a good place to start.
''Hello, frens. Think I located our SA connection from the previous bread.
Check this article out. Holy crap.
[CIA ]collecting everyone's data?''