Canada Press: Promisgate: World's longest spy scandal still glossed over
World's longest spy scandal still glossed over
By David Dastych
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/dastych013106.htm 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 Originally made for the Department of Justice to help the country’s prosecutor offices in their case management, it drew the attention of corrupt officials and of Israeli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.
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.
PROMIS sold to bin Laden
First, unnamed government sources familiar with the debriefing of Hanssen in 2001 reportedly told the Washington Times, Fox News, and the washingtonpost.com that year that someone in Russia had sold copies of PROMIS-derivative software source codes, which Hanssen had stolen from the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies for the Russians, to Osama bin Laden for $2 million and that al Qaeda had used the stolen U.S. intelligence software to access the U.S. intelligence database systems in order to evade detection and monitoring before 9-11 and to move funds undetected through the banking system.
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight /
Peter Lance explains the latest in the Able Danger
This link chart was created by Jacob L. Boesen, an analyst contracted by DIAC: The Defense Intelligence Analysis Center. Using Analyst's Notebook, the same high-end program used to design a number of the Able Danger link charts, Boesen created the chart on August 10th, 1999. It shows a direct link between al Qaeda and the New York cell of blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the original WTC bombing and the 9/11 plots.
The chart, produced just over a year after the bin Laden financed African Embassy bombings on August 7th, 1998, is in direct contradiction to the findings of the 9/11 Commission -- per Senior Counsel Dietrich Dieter Snell -- that the original WTC bombing cell was comprised of a loosely organized group of Sunni Islamists and that Ramzi Yousef played no role in the conception of the 9/11 plots even though his uncle Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) was identified by the FBI in 2002 as the "mastermind."
On July 12th, 2004, per the statement of 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean and Co-Chair Lee Hamilton, Dietrich Snell rejected information from Navy Capt. Scott Phillpot, the operations director of the Able Danger unit, as not "sufficiently reliable." No mention of the ground-breaking Able Danger unit's findings was included in the 9/11 Commission's final report.
In Staff Statement #16, supervised by Dietrich Snell, the 9/11 Commission moved the origin of the al Qaeda funded 9/11 plot from Yousef and KSM in Manila in the fall of 1994 to 1996 in Afghanistan; claiming that, at the time, KSM was merely a freelancer not affiliated with al Qaeda and that he pitched the "planes operation" to bin Laden at that time.
Snell based his entire authority for this specious conclusion on the word of KSM who has been in U.S. custody since March, 2003 and subjected to torture.
By removing Ramzi Yousef from the 9/11 plot and distorting the truth behind the origin of the plot, Snell, a former prosecutor in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) exonerated the SDNY and the New York office of the FBI (NYO) from any culpability for failing to stop Yousef in the fall of 1992, during the Presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush or the early weeks of Bill Clinton's presidency just prior to the WTC bombing.
In 1000 YEARS FOR REVENGE we offer probative evidence that the FBY's NYO could have easily stopped Yousef in 1992 and early 1993 prior to that first attack on the WTC which killed six and injured 1000 on February 26th, 1993.
The evidence from the Able Danger unit which has surfaced so far from press reports and interviews with former Able Danger unit members, suggests that the U.S. intelligence community had a much clearer picture of al Qaeda and its violent designs on the United States much earlier than the 9/11 Commission determined.
Americans as politically diverse at Lt. Col. Oliver North and the Jersey Girls -- the 9/11 widows who campaigned for John Kerry -- are united in their conclusion that the 9/11 Commission's report was effectively a whitewash. As such they are calling for a full investigation of the Able Danger allegations.
Presently the Pentagon has prevented key Able Danger sources like Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a Bronze star winner and Navy Capt. Scott Phillpott from testifying about the program in open hearings. Cong. Curt Weldon (R-PA) is leading the drive for a full vetting of the Able Danger program and its findings.
This move for full disclosure represents the last best hope of Americans to re-open the 9/11 investigation and get a full accounting of how the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies overlooked dozens of opportunties to interdict the "planes as missiles" plot in the 12 years prior to the attacks of Sept. 11th.