Federal investigations into allegations of theft

In his court cases, William Hamilton was represented by several attorneys, one of whom was lawyer Elliot Richardson, formerly the United States Attorney General under former-President Richard Nixon.

Two different federal bankruptcy courts made fully litigated findings of fact in the late-eighties ruling that the Justice Department "took, converted, and stole"[nb 7] the Promis installed in U.S. Attorneys' Offices "through trickery, fraud, and deceit,"[nb 8] and then attempted "unlawfully and without justification"[nb 9] to force Inslaw out of business so that it would be unable to seek restitution through the courts.[6]

Three months after the initial verdict, George F. Bason, Jr., the federal judge presiding over the Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia, was denied reappointment to a new 14-year term on the bench by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the appointing authority.[nb 10] His replacement, S. Martin Teel, took over shortly after Judge Bason announced his oral findings of malfeasance against Inslaw by the Justice Department; Teel had been the Justice Department Tax Division attorney who had argued unsuccessfully before Judge Bason for the forced liquidation of Inslaw.[18][19] Leigh Ratiner (of Dickstein, Shapiro and Morin, which was the 10th largest firm in Washington at the time) was fired in October 1986; he had been the lead counsel for Inslaw and had filed the suit against the Justice Department in federal bankruptcy court. His firing came reportedly amidst "back channel"[7] discussions involving: the DoJ, his law firm's senior partner, and the Government of Israel; moreover, there were rumors that the Mossad had arranged a payment of $600,000 to Ratiner's former firm as a separation settlement. [nb 11]

6272497, 6272842, 6273019, 6272967

the Inslaw Inc affair of the PROMIS computer system

Attorney General Dick Thornburgh repeatedly reneged on agreements made with the House committee to provide full and open access to information and witnesses[6]

Then, in September 1991, the House Judiciary Committee issued the result of a three-year investigation. House Report 102-857 Inslaw: Investigative Report[6] confirmed the Justice Department's theft of Promis. The report was issued after the Justice Department convinced the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on a jurisdictional technicality to set aside the decisions of the first two federal bankruptcy courts.[nb 12] The House Committee also reported investigative leads indicating that friends of the Reagan White House had been allowed to sell and to distribute Enhanced Promis both domestically and overseas for their personal financial gain and in support of the intelligence and foreign policy objectives of the United States.[15][3][21] The report even went so far as to recommend specifically further investigations of both former-Attorney General Edwin Meese and businessman, Earl Brian, for their possible involvement in illegally providing or selling Promis "to foreign governments including Canada,[22] Israel,[23][8] Singapore, Iraq,[2] Egypt, and Jordan."[6] The Democratic Majority called upon the Attorney General Dick Thornburgh to compensate Inslaw immediately for the harm that the government had "egregiously" inflicted on Inslaw. The Republican Minority dissented. The Committee was divided along party lines 21–13. Attorney General Thornburgh ignored the recommendations, and reneged on agreements made with the committee.[6]

[edit]

Inslaw Affair divides into two separate issues

On November 13, 1991, newly appointed, Attorney General William Barr, appointed a retired federal judge, Nicholas J. Bua, as Special Counsel to advise him on the allegations that high-ranking officials had acted improperly for personal gain to bankrupt Inslaw.[24]

and now the crescendo, TA DA enter one MRBarr the INSLAW inc affair or is it LIFE LOG

William Barr appointed Special Counsel, Nicholas J. Bua, to advise him on what had become known by 1991 as the Inslaw Affair.

By June 1993, a 267-page Bua Report[25][18] was released, clearing Justice officials of any impropriety.[26] Inslaw's attorney, Elliot Richardson immediately wrote Inslaw's 130-page Rebuttal with evidence suggesting Bua's report was riddled with errors and falsehoods.[19] On September 27, 1994, Attorney General Janet Reno released a 187-page review concluding "that there is no credible evidence that Department officials conspired to steal computer software developed by Inslaw, Inc. or that the company is entitled to additional government payments." [27] Yet, according to Wired (magazine), "Reno's report was released the same day [that] the House Judiciary Committee passed HR 4862[28], a bill which would have bound the U.S. Court of Federal Claims legally to independently investigate the Inslaw case—thus circumventing the Department of Justice's claims of innocence;"[29] however, HR 4862 was defeated by a partisan committee-vote later that night before it was set to go before the full House.

Janet Reno released her review of the Bua Report on the same day that the House Select Committe on the Judiciary brought HR 4862 to the floor for a vote.

The following May, the United States Senate asked the U.S. Court of Federal Claims [nb 13] to determine if the United States owed Inslaw compensation for the government's use of Promis. On July 31, 1997, Judge Christine Miller, the hearing officer for the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled that all of the versions of Promis were in the public domain and that the government had therefore always been free to do whatever it wished with Promis.[30][31][5] The following year, the appellate authority, a three-judge Review Panel of the same court, upheld Miller's ruling; yet, it also determined that Inslaw had never granted the government a license to modify Promis to create derivative software although Inslaw was automatically vested with the exclusive copyright rights to Promis. The Review Panel then held that the United States would be liable to Inslaw for copyright infringement damages if the government had created any unauthorized derivatives from Promis, but noted that Inslaw had failed to prove in court that the government had done so; moreover, the Board held that the issue of derivative works was "of no consequence."[nb 14] Inslaw challenged this interpretation but the Review Panel refused Inslaw's request to reopen discovery. In August 1998, Chief Judge Lorin Smith of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims sent an Advisory Report to the Senate, noting that the court had not found that the United States owes Inslaw compensation for the government's use of Promis, and enclosing the decision of the hearing officer and the decision of the Review Panel.[5]

On the other hand, according to William Hamilton, the government flatly denied during all court proceedings what it later admitted, i.e. that agencies such as the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies[19] used a Promis-derivative to keep track of their classified information.[9]

Later developments

In early 1999, the British journalist and author, Gordon Thomas, published an authorized history of the Israeli Mossad titled Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad. The book quotes detailed admissions by the former long-time deputy-director of the Mossad, Rafi Eitan, about the partnership between Israeli and U.S. intelligence in selling to foreign intelligence agencies in excess of $500 million worth of licenses to a trojan horse version of Promis, in order to spy on them.[23]

In 2001, the Washington Times and Fox News each quoted federal law enforcement officials familiar with debriefing former FBI Agent Robert Hanssen as claiming that the convicted spy had stolen copies of a Promis-derivative for his Soviet KGB handlers.

Robert Hanssen

They further alleged that the software was used within the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies to track internal intelligence, and was used by intelligence operatives to track international interbank transactions.[32] These reports further stated that Osama bin Laden later bought copies of the same Promis-derivative on the Russian black market (blat) for $2 million.[33] It was believed then that al Qaeda used the software to penetrate database systems to move funds throughout the banking system, and to evade detection by U.S. law enforcement. [34]

[edit]

FBI, ACS, and FOIMS

In May 2006, a former aide in the Office of the Vice President of the United States pleaded guilty to passing top-secret classified information to plotters trying to overthrow the president of the Philippines. Leandro Aragoncillo, an FBI intelligence analyst at the time of his arrest, was believed to have operated his deception using archaic database software manipulated by the FBI in order to evade the 1995 finding of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims with regard to Inslaw's rights to

derivative works.[35] [9] [36] Additionally,

The 9-11 Commission called attention to the fact that the FBI did not install the current version of its case management software, called the ACS (Automated Case Support) system, until October 1995 and [to the fact that ACS was obsolete from the time the FBI developed it in the mid-1990s because it was based on "1980s technology". Although the 9-11 Commission offered no explanation for why the FBI used obsolete technology to develop its ACS case mnagement software in 1995, the apparent explanation is that the FBI simply renamed its 1980s technology case management software, which was called FOIMS and was based on PROMIS, and translated it in October 1995 into a different computer programming language in order to obstruct a court hearing that the U.S. Senate had ordered earlier that year. The Senate had ordered the court in May 1995 to determine whether the United States owes Inslaw compensation for the government's use of PROMIS, and the court, in turn, ordered outside software experts to compare the FBI's software with PROMIS, but the FBI modified its software and told the court that it no longer retained the unmodified first 11 years (1985 through 1995) of its own case management software.] —boxed information added by David Dastych

—William A. Hamilton,"FBI's Incapacitating Cover-Up", Wprost[36]

In 2006, there were further allegations of the misuse of Promis. Writing in the Canada Free Press, the former Polish CIA operative and now international journalist, David Dastych alleged that "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"[36]; however, the prima facie value of that allegation was lost in a realization that the U.S. Government could not convict the suspected 2001 spy.[37]

The U.S. Government has never paid Inslaw Inc. for any of these unauthorized uses of Promis.

"Inslaw deserves to be compensated," wrote nationally syndicated columnist, Michelle Malkin, in The Washington Times.[38] "More importantly, the American people deserve to know the truth: Did government greed and bureaucratic hubris lead to a wholesale sellout of our national security?"[36]

Deaths allegedly related to the Inslaw case

While investigating elements of this story, journalist Danny Casolaro died in what was twice ruled a suicide. Prior to his death, Casolaro had warned friends if they were ever told he had committed suicide not to believe it, and to know he had been murdered.[39] Many have argued that his death was suspicious, deserving closer scrutiny; some have argued further, believing his death was a murder, committed to hide whatever Casolaro had uncovered.[7] "I believe he was murdered," wrote former Attorney General Elliot Richardson in the New York Times, " but even if that is no more than a possibility, it is a possibility with such sinister implications as to demand a serious effort to discover the truth."[15] Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith discuss this in their book, The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro[nb 15] Writing on behalf of a majority opinion in House Report 102-857, Committee Chairman, Jack Brooks (D-TX) wrote, "As long as the possibility exists that Danny Casolaro died as a result of his investigation into the INSLAW matter, it is imperative that further investigation be conducted."[6]

Danny Casolaro

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Danny Casolaro

Born

Joseph Daniel Casolaro

June 16, 1947

McLean, Virginia

Died

August 10, 1991 (aged 44)

Martinsburg, West Virginia

Occupation

Freelance writer

Nationality

American

Education

Providence College

Joseph Daniel Casolaro (June 16, 1947 – August 10, 1991) was an American freelance writer who came to public attention in 1991, when he was found dead, his wrists slashed 10-12 times, in a bathtub in room 517 of the Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia. An apparent suicide note was found, and the medical examiner ruled the death a suicide.[1][2]

His death became controversial because his notes suggested he had traveled to Martinsburg to meet a source in connection with a story he had dubbed "the Octopus." It centered around a sprawling conspiracy theory dating back to the 1950s, involving an international cabal of around eight men, and featuring a software manufacturer called Inslaw, whose owner had accused the Justice Dept of having stolen its work product; the so-called October Surprise theory; the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International; the S&L crisis; and Iran-Contra.[3][4][5][6]

Casolaro's family argued that he had been killed; he had apparently told his brother that, if something were to happen to him, it would not be an accident.[1][7] A number of law-enforcement officials also argued that his death deserved further scrutiny, and his notes were passed by his family to ABC News and Time Magazine, both of which investigated the case, but no evidence of murder was ever found.[8][9][3] Casolaro's death and "the Octopus" have since entered conspiracy-theory folklore.

Contents [hide]

• 1 Biography

• 1.1 Early life and career

• 2 His research

• 2.1 Inslaw

• 3 Final days

• 3.1 Last known sightings of Casolaro

• 3.2 Death

• 3.3 Controversy

• 3.4 Re-examination of the case

• 4 Notes

• 5 Further reading

His research

Casolaro had reportedly told people that he was nearly ready to reveal a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy spanning Iran-Contra, the October Surprise Conspiracy, the closure of BCCI, the bombing of Pan Am 103, and the Inslaw case, a conspiracy implicating the Central Intelligence Agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the U.S. Justice Dept, the Wackenhut Corporation, Mossad, and MI5 and MI6 British Secret Services. Writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, Phil Linsalata notes: "Any one of those stories of course is a challenge for America's best journalists. Casolaro wanted to tackle them all."[10]

David Corn writes in The Nation that the papers he left behind reveal few clues, except that Casolaro was in over his head but was tenacious.[3] His papers included old clippings, handwritten notes that were hard to read, and the names of former CIA officers and arms dealers. Corn alleges that the notes show Casolaro was influenced by the so-called "secret team theory" of the Christic Institute and that he had pursued material "fed" to him by a reporter who worked for Lyndon LaRouche. Richard Fricker wrote in Wired magazine that Casolaro had been led into a "Bermuda Triangle of spooks, guns, drugs and organized crime."[11]

early Barr link he approved a special council under Bush

Inslaw

Main articles: Inslaw and Michael Riconosciuto

Inslaw had been in the news since the mid-eighties. In a previous position with the U.S. Justice Department, Inslaw's founder, William A. Hamilton, had helped to develop a computer software program called Promis, short for Prosecutor's Management Information System). Promis was designed to organize the paperwork generated by law enforcement and the courts. After he left the Justice Dept, Hamilton alleged that the government had stolen Promis and had distributed it illegally, robbing him of millions of dollars.[1] The Dept denied this, insisting that they owned it because Hamilton had developed it while working for them. Hamilton and the dept had been in litigation since 1983. A federal bankruptcy judge ruled in 1988 that the dept had indeed taken the software by "trickery, fraud, and deceit," a decision upheld by a federal district court in 1988, but overturned on appeal in 1991. A conspiracy theory developed around the case, with allegations that "back doors" had been inserted into the software so that whoever was using it could be spied on.[3]

Casolaro's major source on the conspiracy theory aspect of the Inslaw case was Michael Riconosciuto. Riconoscuito had been introduced to a friend of Casolaro's by Jeff Steinberg, a longtime top aide in the Lyndon LaRouche organization.[3] In or around May 1990, Riconosciuto told Casolaro that he and Earl Brian (a director of Hadron, Inc., a government consulting firm) had traveled to Iran in 1980 and had paid $40 million to Iranian officials to persuade them not to let the hostages go before the presidential election, a claim now known as the "October Surprise" theory.[1][8][12] In exchange for his help, Earl Brian was allowed to profit from the illegal pirating of the Promis system, according to Riconoscuito. Brian, a close friend of then-Attorney General Ed Meese, denied any involvement in either October Surprise or the Inslaw case.

In a March 21, 1991 court affidavit submitted to the court in the case,[13] Riconosciuto claimed to have modified Inslaw's software at the Justice Department's behest so that it could be sold to dozens of foreign governments with a secret "back door," which allowed outsiders to access computer systems using Promis.[1] These modifications allegedly took place at the Cabazon Indian Reservation near Indio, California. Because the reservation was sovereign territory where enforcement of U.S. law was sometimes problematic, Riconosciuto claimed that he worked on "semi-legal" and illegal weapons programs for The Wackenhut Corporation, such as a powerful "fuel air explosive".[3] Eight days after submitting the affidavit Riconosciuto was arrested for allegedly distributing metamphetamine and methadone, charges that he said were a set-up to keep him from telling his story.[3][14][15]

On August 8, Casolaro arrived in Martinsburg, West Virginia to meet a source who, he said, had promised to provide an important missing piece of his story.

On August 5, 1991, Casolaro phoned Bill McCoy, a retired CID officer to relate some encouraging news. He said that the mainstream news magazine Time had assigned him an article about the Octopus. He further claimed to be working with the esteemed reporter Jack Anderson, and that publishers Little, Brown and Time Warner had offered to finance the effort. All these claims later were proven false.[1]

Again on August 5, Casolaro's friend Ben Mason agreed to talk to Casolaro about his finances. Casolaro faced some pressing though not catastrophic financial problems, and he and Mason agreed that the best solution would be if the publisher's advance came through. A few days later, Casolaro showed Mason some of his notes and manuscript, including a photocopy of a passport of Hassan Ali Ibrahim Ali, the manager of Sitco, an alleged Iraqi front company. Casolaro showed Mason a 22-point outline for his book and expressed frustration at having been tied up with a literary agent who was unable to sell it for the last eighteen months. He also allegedly complained about his sleep being disturbed for the previous three months by calls during the night.[1]

The following day, Casolaro's longtime housekeeper Olga helped Casolaro pack a black leather tote. She remembered him packing a thick, heavy sheaf of papers into a dark brown or black briefcase. Casolaro said he was leaving for several days to visit Martinsburg, West Virginia to meet a source who promised to provide an important missing piece of his story. This was the last time Olga saw Casolaro.[1]

By August 9, Bill Hamilton was starting to worry: he had not been able to reach Casolaro for several days and never before had encountered such difficulty. He telephoned several mutual acquaintances, none of whom knew Casolaro's whereabouts.[1]

Olga told The Village Voice that she answered several threatening telephone calls at Casolaro's home. One man called at about 9:00 a.m. and said, "I will cut his body and throw it to the sharks". Less than an hour later, a different man hissed: "Drop dead." Then there was a third call, but Olga remembered only that no one spoke and that she heard only music as though a radio were playing in the same room as the caller. "Don't call him no more," she said. She hung up. A fourth call was the same as the third, and a fifth came later that night. "No music…and no one spoke." After this she slammed her receiver down.[1]

Last known sightings of Casolaro

According to Ridgeway and Vaughan, Casolaro's whereabouts between late August 8 and afternoon August 9 are unknown. He met the Honeywell engineer William Richard Turner at the Sheraton at about 2:30 p.m. on August 9. Turner says he gave Casolaro some documents, and that they spoke for a few minutes. Turner later refused to specify the content of the papers, and he claimed that he had been harassed by the police who were investigating Casolaro's death.

Witnesses reported that Casolaro spent the next few hours at a Martinsburg restaurant. A bartender there told the local police, "He seemed lonely and depressed." The police further learned that "Sometime around 5:00 p.m. Casolaro entered Heatherfields, the cocktail lounge at the Sheraton with another man described by a waitress as 'maybe Arab or Iranian.' The waitress remembered because the foreign-seeming man rudely complained about slow service."[1]

At about 5:30 p.m. that night, Casolaro happened to meet Mike Looney who rented the room next to Casolaro's Room 517. They chatted on two occasions—first at about 5:30 p.m. and then again at about 8:00 p.m. Looney later explained, "[Casolaro] said he was there to meet an important source who was going to give him what he needed to solve the case." According to Looney, Casolaro claimed that his source was scheduled to arrive by 9:00 p.m. Around that time, Casolaro left Looney, explaining that he had to make a telephone call. He returned a few minutes later and admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that his source might have "blown him off." Casolaro and Looney talked until about 9:30 p.m. At about 10.00 p.m., Casolaro purchased coffee at a nearby convenience store. That was the last time anyone reported seeing Casolaro alive.[1]

Death

At about noon on August 10, 1991, housekeeping staff discovered Casolaro naked in the bathtub of Room 517. His wrists were slashed deeply. There were three or four wounds on his right wrist and seven or eight on his left. Blood was splattered on the bathroom wall and floor; and according to Ridgeway and Vaughn, "the scene was so gruesome that one of the housekeepers fainted when she saw it."[1]

Under Casolaro's body, paramedics found an empty Milwaukee beer can, two white plastic liner-trash bags, and a single edge razor blade.[citation needed] There was a half-empty wine bottle nearby. Ridgeway and Vaughan write that nothing was placed in the bathtub drain to prevent debris from draining away, and none of the bathwater was saved.[1]

Other than a gruesome scene, the hotel room was clean and orderly. There was a legal pad and a pen present on the desk and there was a single page from the pad torn with a message written on it: "To those who I love the most please forgive me for the worst possible thing I could have done. Most of all I'm sorry to my son. I know deep down that God will let me in." Based on the note, the absence of a struggle, no sign of a forced entry, and the presence of alcohol, police judged the case a straightforward suicide. After inspecting the scene, they found four more razor blades in their envelopes in a small package. Police interviews further revealed that no one had seen nor heard anything suspicious. The Martinsburg police contacted authorities in Fairfax, Virginia, who said they would notify Casolaro's family.