Michael James Riconosciuto

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Michael James Riconosciuto

Postby JM » Sat Oct 10, 2009 6:55 pm

MJR needs a closer look.

Nothing much was written about him until he was incarcerated.
http://www.michaelriconosciuto.com/

I can't help but be fond of Michael.

His determination to allow gunderson to be his spokesperson has not helped him and has most certainly hurt him.

He is a definitely a genius.
My father was one and I recognize the traits.
One characteristic is the inability to know who to trust.
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Postby American Dream » Sat Oct 10, 2009 7:06 pm

Here is something to get things started:


WHO IS PUPPET MASTER MICHAEL RICONOSCIUTO?
by Virginia McCullough



If one feeds ‘Michael Riconosciuto’ into Google, the search engine pulls up over 31,000 hits in .38 seconds. The Internet is a wondrous place! The first ‘hit’ on Michael Riconosciuto is the information supplied by Wikipedia, the free internet encyclopedia’. This site contains some inaccurate information about ‘Magic Mike’, but it also contains a great deal of very accurate information about the many high profile news stories Riconosciuto has been involved in over the past decades. The man Wikipedia describes as “an American activist advocating for several conspiracy theories, and claiming to have expertise in computers, electronics, and explosives” has been in prison since 1991 on what many people believe are falsified drug charges. Wikipedia states Michael Riconosciuto claimed he was involved in the following:

The Inslaw affair (a legal case in which the U.S. Government was charged with illegal use of computer software), the so-called October Surprise and other plots. Riconosciuto claims to be an electronics and computer expert and to have been hired to alter Inslaw's PROMIS software to allow for clandestine tracking of individuals. Riconosciuto claims his knowledge of PROMIS made him a threat to the United States Government particularly the Justice Department, and that this resulted in his incarceration. Some of his supporters see his prosecution as a means of interfering with his ability to agitate about Inslaw, and thus describe him as a political prisoner.

Before Michael Riconosciuto became famous for his involvement in the Inslaw story, he was acknowledged to be a gifted child. An article from the Village Voice published shortly after investigative reporter Danny Casolaro’s death in August of 1991 stated:

When he was just 10 years old, Michael wired his parents’ neighborhood with a working private telephone system that undercut Ma Bell; in the eighth grade, he won a science fair with a model for a three-dimensional sonar system. By the time he was a teenager, he had won so many science fairs with exhibits of laser technology that he was invited to be a summer research assistant at Stanford’s prestigious Cooper Vapor Laser Laboratory. Dr. Arthur Schalow [sic], a Nobel laureate, remembers him even now. “You don’t forget a 16-year-old youngster who shows up with his own argon laser.
Image

While all these details of young Riconosciuto’s technical abilities were true, Michael also possessed a darker side that severely limited his ability to maximize his scientific talents.

While attending a private school on the San Francisco peninsula ‘Magic Mike’ became fascinated with the “Summer of Love” philosophy of free sex, rock and roll, and readily available drugs. Michael wove many webs about the years he spent in and around San Francisco in the late 60’s and early 70’s. This reporter was told by those friends and family closest to Michael that he claimed to have been a partner with Chet Helms, Lori Helms and Bob Cohen in the famous Avalon Ballroom. This claim was disproved. Michael claimed to have played an important part in ‘Family Dog’, Chet Helms concert promotion company. Members of that organization had never heard of him. Michael also stated that he had played a prominent role in San Francisco’s Straight Theatre on Haight Street. One person involved in the management of that site said that ‘Magic Mike’ might have been around the theatre for a brief period of time, but he disappeared shortly after the theatre opened in 1967.

In fact, during his years in the Bay Area, Riconosciuto loved to experiment with the chemical structure of certain drugs such as LSD. Many who knew him said that he was one of the renowned chemists or cookers of the hippie era. There were also rumors that Riconosciuto was playing the drug scene from both sides of the law. During these years Riconosciuto became an informant for the FBI and he claims credit for supplying information that jailed a California State Bureau of Narcotics officer and a sergeant in the narcotics unit of the San Francisco Police Department.

The Wizard from Washington State was walking a tight rope balancing between complying with law enforcement personnel, who were using him as an informant to entrap high profile drug dealers, and keeping his powerful intelligence sources happy by working on secretive new technology. He would not be the first scientist to succumb to the lure of the three letter agencies nor would he be the first product of the hippie era to covet the perks easy drug money supplied.

Riconosciuto abruptly left the Haight scene and returned to his home state of Washington. This reporter has unpublished manuscripts written by Michael. The first, hand written in December of 1970, details events between 1970 and 1973. The second document is a 7-page handwritten essay on legal paper entitled “The Underground Underwater Laboratory”. These manuscripts might well have been prepared with an eye toward any future drug problems the author might be facing. In fact Riconosciuto was charged and brought to trial on possession and manufacturing of drugs in the US District Court, Western Division of Washington State, [Case no. 128-7302] in 1973.

Before he was brought to trial Michael Riconosciuto’s mental capability was brought into question by his own attorney and he was subjected to an examination by three local psychiatrists. The three doctors differed in their analysis but the final consensus was that Michael was capable of participating in his own defense. On January 16, 1974 doctors at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Springfield, Missouri had the final say when they declared Riconosciuto to be “without mental illness” in report No. 11919-116.

However by this time Michael had already lost the legal battle and on October 5, 1973 the 25-year-old was found guilty of two counts of manufacturing methamphetamine and one count of possession of an illegal firearm. Because of his youth the court found that he was a young adult offender under 18 U.S.C.A. Statute 4209. He was sentenced to two years, designated a “protection case” and on September 24, 2974 the federal prison system approved transferring Riconosciuto to FCI Terminal Island, California were he was placed in the segregation unit.

The years between the time that Riconosciuto was released from federal prison and 1979 are clouded with mystery. What little documentation exists about this time period shows that Michael Riconosciuto worked at a mine in Maricopa, California. The mine was owned by W. Patrick Moriarty and was managed by his long time friend Marshall Riconosciuto, Michael’s father. During his son’s second trial for drug manufacturing in 1991, Marshall declared under oath that Michael had also been employed at Moriarty’s mine as an engineer

In 1979 W. Patrick Moriarty and Marshall Riconosciuto and 10 limited partners formed Hercules Properties. The company raised $7,000,000 and purchased 380 acres in the East Bay half way between Richmond and Vallejo. The property fronted on San Pablo Bay and initially consisted of 50 acres residential and the remainder commercial. Hercules Properties owned virtually all of what is now known as the City of Hercules. Michael Riconosciuto was soon employed as a scientist at a company called Hercules Research and Development.

However “Magic Mike” had also re-entered the San Francisco drug scene as an informant for the SFPD and the FBI. Many say that he was also a drug dealer in partnership with a man named Paul Morasca. Riconosciuto had met Morasca at the Moriarty mine when Morasca submitted a bid on demolition and the subsequent purchase of salvage. Riconosciuto would later refer to Morasca as his “banker” and would form several companies with him. Together the two men would often visit the Cabazon Indian Reservation in Indio, California. There Riconosciuto became acquainted with a man known as “Jason Smith” whose real name is Philip Arthur Thompson.

In January 1981 Philip Arthur Thompson’s name would make headlines in San Francisco when law enforcement alleged that Thompson and two other men executed a series of crimes designed to raise money for the purchase of automatic weapons to be used by the Contras and other right-wing plotters in South American countries. The headlines increased when a 26-year-old named Valerie MacDonald disappeared from San Francisco on November 9, 1980. She was last seen getting into a car outside an apartment complex managed by Thompson. The publicity tying these activities in San Francisco to the Contras were similar to what was taking place on the Cabazon Indian Reservation in Indio, California.

The early 1980s found Riconosciuto also involved in the intrigue and free federal money supporting the infancy of the Iran Contra operations at the Cabazon Reservation. There Contra activities ranged from night vision goggles demonstration to the development of arms and biological warfare weaponry. Covert activities at the Cabazon nation were derailed by the June 1981 triple assassination of Cabazon tribal member, and many say Cabazon hero, Fred Alvarez and two of his friends. Alvarez had been publicizing the nasty background and devious nature of the Cabazon’s Business Manager “Dr.” John Philip Nichols. When Alvarez delivered documents exposing the international connections he told reporters, “You are speaking with a dead man.” The triple killings remain unsolved.

In January of 1982, just six months after the unsolved murders, another strange homicide occurred. Michael Riconosciuto found the body of his “banker” Paul Morasca hog-tied in a San Francisco apartment. When Riconosciuto discovered Morasca’s body, he did not report his find to law enforcement. Instead he requested assistance from a man known as “Jason Smith”. Smith arranged for Riconosciuto’s wife Phyllis and Michael’s son and step-son to be immediately moved from their home in Hercules, California to safety in “The Desert”. Then Riconosciuto drove over 500 miles in 7 hours to the Cabazon Reservation and reported Morasca’s murder to his controller, “Dr.” John Philip Nichols. Nichols and Jason Smith took care of the problem by referring Riconosciuto to a very high profile and competent attorney. The attorney, in turn, notified the proper authorities. Riconosciuto then blamed “Jason Smith,” also known as Philip Arthur Thompson, for killing Paul Morasca. San Francisco impaneled a grand jury and it failed to bring back any indictments in the Morasca murder which remains unsolved.

For the next six years Michael Riconosciuto kept a very low profile. Then in 1989 he had a run in with a girlfriend who had broken up with him. The incident took place in Normandy Park, Washington. In a fit of anger, Michael broke down the woman’s front door, forced the woman to accompany him and sped away from the scene nearly hitting a crowd of 10 bystanders. The local police issued him Citation #0005934 and mailed it to his address at 4 Kings Way, Hercules, California. He was charged with reckless endangerment and the ticket also listed separate violations in 1988 and 1989. Other citations were issued to Riconosciuto’s address at 3515 SW Ocean View Drive, Seattle, Washington. Riconosciuto hired attorney John M. Rosellini to defend him at trial. Riconosciuto’s presence at his September 1990 arraignment in the “Normandy Park Incident” was waived by his attorney.

In November 1990 this reporter was contacted by Bill Hamilton, president of an east coast company called Inslaw. Hamilton wanted any information I had about Michael Riconosciuto. Hamilton told me that Riconosciuto was going to submit a declaration in the Inslaw bankruptcy stating that he had “back-doored” Inslaw’s proprietary software called Promis while working for United States intelligence agencies. Riconosciuto told Hamilton that he had altered Promis on the orders of covert operators so that the software could be sold internationally in order that the United States could spy on its friends and enemies alike. Government retaliation against Riconosciuto was swift and effective. Seven days after the declaration was filed on March 21, 1991, Washington state law enforcement arrested him and several days later, a search warrant was executed on property controlled by Riconosciuto. Law enforcement stated that evidence of a “clandestine laboratory believed to be operated by defendant and others” was seized. The government denied any connection between the allegations Riconosciuto had made in his Inslaw declaration and his arrest in Washington State for the manufacture and distribution of drugs.

Michael continued to detail the many historic high profile cases he had participated in over the years. He claimed to be a member of the McKee team that went down in the Lockerbie crash of Pan Am 103. He played a part in the infamous October Surprise. He had developed explosives similar to those used in the Oklahoma City bombing. He controlled the millions stolen in the Nugan Hand Bank scandal. However, no amount of tale tales diverted the government from his prosecution. Riconosciuto’s trial moved forward and ultimately he was found guilty as charged. He was sentenced to 30 years in a federal prison. Michael Riconosciuto will remain in jail until 2017 unless he can strike a deal that gives give him an earlier release date.


Virginia McCullough © 2/17/08
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Postby Percival » Sat Oct 10, 2009 7:19 pm

Good stuff Jackie, glad to see you taking part in the forum. MR is certainly a very interesting character and this thread should be fun to read as it develops. Lets see if we can dig up some fresh stuff!
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Postby chiggerbit » Sat Oct 10, 2009 9:07 pm

I have no clue how credible this is, but for what it's worth:

http://tinyurl.com/ylm9l8u

....Robert Booth Nichols, a CIA agent who headed Meridian International Logistics, was a business partner of Riconosciuto and associated with him for about twenty years. Bob Nichols was not related to Dr. Nichols. Their relationship probably began in 1967 when Michael was sent to Lebanon as part of a drug sting operation. Nichols was also tied to Music Corporation of America. He testified that Riconosciuto was frequently in contact with Admiral Bobby Inman, who was at different times head of the National Security Administration and Assistant Director of the CIA. According to Bobbie, Michael’s wife, Bob Nichols was a long-time friend of Bill Hamilton, the ex-NSA man from whom Justice stole the PROMIS software. This tie probably had something to do with Michael’s eventual decision to help Hamilton seek redress in the federal courts. However, his critics say he knew nothing about the Hamiltons until 1990, when a Lyndon La Rouche follower introduced him to them....
Last edited by chiggerbit on Sat Oct 10, 2009 9:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby chiggerbit » Sat Oct 10, 2009 9:08 pm

Which, you know, is kind of suspicious when a Larouchite is involved with the Hamiltons.
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Postby chiggerbit » Sat Oct 10, 2009 9:30 pm

Here's who the Laourchite was:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Danny_Casolaro

....Casolaro and Hamilton began pooling their resources to share information as they learned about the Inslaw scandal. One of Casolaro's major sources was Michael Riconosciuto (pronounced Riconoshooto), who Casolaro had dubbed "Danger Man." Riconosciuto had been introduced to Hamilton by Jeff Steinberg, a longtime top aide in the Lyndon LaRouche organization. Riconosciuto contacted Hamilton in May of 1990. Riconosciuto asserted 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." For his help in this so-called October Surprise conspiracy, Earl Brian allegedly was allowed to profit from the illegal pirating of the Promis system.Corn also notes that Earl Brian, a close friend of Attorney General Ed Meese, denied any involvement in the October Surprise or the Inslaw Affair....
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Postby JM » Sun Oct 11, 2009 1:18 pm

That all looks good to me. I had no idea La Rouche (Jeffery Steinberg) was involved in Inslaw or Caselaro.
After I refused to meet with the LaRouchies prompting gunderson to twist my finger (spiral fracture) they never mentioned them around my house again. There were some very anxious times regarding Mike and his arrest, you'd think if LaRouche was very involved, I'd have heard about it.
Hamilton introducing Caselaro to Nichols makes sense.

I talked to Danny almost every day. We'd talk about going surfing when he made it to the West Coast. He was VERY upbeat and excited about his project. He was excited about seeing the Pacific.He was very environmentally conscious.
He had 2 phones going at one time-I'd hear the other one ringing in the background when we talked.
I liked him and even though he was a few years older I called him a kid.

When he was killed, we were all astounded. There was evidence of wrongdoing.
Here's what I remember.
In a neighboring room, they heard a loud scuffle that night-furniture being moved around. There were blood soaked rags under the sink. His body was embalmed before his family was notified. The authorities said they could not find any relatives (CASOLARO-give me a break!). Also Danny was Jewish, embalming is against their beliefs. In his "suicide note" addressed to his son. it said (paraphrasing) Don't worry, God will let me in [to heaven]. If he had committed suicide, in his belief, he would not be accepted into Heaven, a way of telling his us that he was murdered.
His brother, a doctor, whom I talked to a few times, was distraught and angry and was arguing with the authorities.
The site you reference:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Danny_Casolaro
is excellent.

Sorry, a bit off topic.
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Postby TheDuke » Mon Oct 12, 2009 2:54 am

JM wrote:Also Danny was Jewish, embalming is against their beliefs.


Really, I assumed he was of Italian Catholic heritage
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Postby JM » Mon Oct 12, 2009 5:40 pm

Maybe his Mom is Jewish?
I'm just relaying what I knew at the time.
BTW the term Octopus was coined by Michael Riconosciuto. when he talked to Danny before that fatal trip to Martinsberg. Michael asked him if he was sure he wanted to pursue this. It is like an octopus whos tentacles stretch out all over the world.
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Postby Stephen Morgan » Sat Oct 17, 2009 4:48 pm

Is it true that one of his childhood friends was Fred L Crisman, of JFK, Shaver Mystery and Maurey Island fame?

Is it true that he knew Crisman through his father, a reputed Nazi and Nixon associate?

And from this article by the same personage:


Anita Langley immediately published an anonymous article on RuMills, a blog site run by RayeAlan Russbacher, who Michael Riconosciuto titled the Black Widow. Again Langley brought Michael Riconosciuto front and center in a current major news story.

Dateline May 14, 2005:

How many more people have to die before this black blight on America is healed?

David McGowan and his family have paid the ultimate price for truth and justice.

In 1982, Fred Alvarez and two friends were found murdered shortly after Alvarez publicly protested the activities of John P Nichols and Wackenhut on the Cabazon reservation. Alvarez wrote a disgruntled letter to Ronald Reagan which provided details of the October Surprise, among other things. He was up front about the danger to his life and was quoted that he believed is life was in danger. The same year, Paul Morasca was murdered after confronting John P Nichols about the illegal activities going on at the Cabazon reservation. Political prisoner Michael Riconosciuto was present during the confrontation; Dr. Sid Siemer was also present and made direct threats to Paul Morasca. Riconosciuto told Police Chief Sam Cross that Nichols was planning more murders, Nichols was caught attempting to hire contract killers and was sentenced to 5 years in jail as a consequence. At the Morasca grand jury murder investigation, Marshall Riconosciuto testified that Sid Siemer had used extortion tactics to force him to pay service contracts for John Nichols.

The Cabazon reservation was being used to sponsor several black programs, conveniently getting around Congressional oversight due to special status granted native bands.

Recent efforts have been made to shine light onto the handling of the Morasca murder investigation and the Alvarez murders. David McGowan was the investigator who was looking into the Alvarez murders.

And the moral of the story... don't mess with these people unless your family is tucked safely away.

Dr. Sid Siemer is struggling to hold back a landslide of information which has been surfacing since his daughter, Susan Hamlin went public with the sexual molestation she endured from him since she was a toddler. Her husband is now in jail after he went after Sid, who somehow managed to turn the tables and had Richard Hamlin charged with torturing his wife. Clearly a victim of mind control, Susan Hamlin's story is best understood by reading her letters, posted here http://www.newsmakingnews.com/vm,hamlin ... ,10,05.htm. is a steaming cauldron, and like the landslide that took out Riverside Drive in New York, Riverside County CA is on the verge of meltdown as sordid details of Wackenhut's nefarious activities surface in more places than can be suppressed.

Author Gary Webb was suicided shortly after he began investigating the Hamlin case as it relates to Indio (many of Susan Hamlin's allegations revolved around activities at Indio).

How many more people have to die before this black blight on America is healed?

Name Withheld For Obvious Reasons
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
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Postby American Dream » Wed Nov 18, 2009 12:51 pm

I thought this might be relevant here. I don't really know much about "Mary Hartman" but one obvious question concerns how she might have obtained tapes of Michael Riconosciuto talking about "warehouses full of heroine and cocaine"...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cia-drugs/message/47840

From: Mary Hartman <hartmanmary98@...>
Reply-To: <cia-drugs@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:12:21 -0800 (PST)
To: <cia-drugs@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: Re: [cia-drugs] Connecting the dots from Jimmy Hughes to the Octopus - aka the Enterprise



Here are a few nuggets. Hubert Humphrey was a business partner with Marshall Riconosciuto in Management Sciences of Health - a narcotics operation running under cover of pharma for Third World countries. It is still in existence and as ballooned and bloated as ever. Hubert was also in bed with AMPI executives, including Dwayne Andreas, who has a history of bribery.

"AMPI’s situation got much worse; its political operations were soon tied in with the Watergate investigation. In 1974, two high-ranking AMPI officials pleaded guilty to a range of charges concerning campaign contributions. First, David Parr, special counsel to AMPI, admitted that he had authorized illegal contributions to Hubert Humphrey’s unsuccessful 1968 presidential campaign. Parr also admitted authorizing payments to several other lesser campaigns, as well as allowing co-op employees to work on these campaigns while on the AMPI payroll. Nelson pleaded guilty to a series of campaign-fund violations shortly thereafter. While the company’s legal entanglements were unfolding, Nelson was succeeded as general manager of AMPI in 1972 by George L. Mehren, a former assistant secretary of agriculture under President Lyndon Johnson."

In fact, Article 22 of the Impeachment Articles for Nixon was meant for Humphrey, but he was dying of cancer and so was let off the hook. Nixon and Humphrey were both involved with Patrick Moriarty, who was another partner of Riconosciuto.

Re: the dope for arms sales, I have some recordings of conversations between Michael Riconosciuto and another individual, perhaps slimeball Ted Gunderson (have to dig them out if you want to listen to them) where Riconosciuto is very clear about the warehouses full of heroine and cocaine. I guess we had as much of that backed up as we did cheese in the 90's - surplus, because US consumption had not yet kept up with demand and distribution networks were not what they are today.

Cali cartel plays a major role in the operation I found here, which includes information from a DOJ prosecution called Operation Bermuda Short. OBS wrapped up a man named Jeffrey Ray Senger of Baxter, Banks & Smith. Smith was partnered with a number of individuals, including a man who organized the establishment of fronts to clean money for the Cali cartel through Rampart Securities just north of the Minnesota border.

Minnesota has never had a major public corruption probe because the O'Connor System is still in place: from Wikipedia

Nine of the ten men who served as mayors of Saint Paul between 1932-1972 were Irish.[15] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Irish_in_Saint_Paul#cite_note-14> Domination of the Democratic Party <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Democratic-Farmer-Labor_Party> dates back to 1850s. Around the turn of the 20th century, Irish politicians allied themselves with businessmen and controlled city politics.[16] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Irish_in_Saint_Paul#cite_note-15> A study in 1957 concluded that being Catholic was "almost essential for political success in Saint Paul".[17] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Irish_in_Saint_Paul#cite_note-16> Led by the influential Archbishop John Ireland, the Catholic Church was heavily influenced by the Irish. Other ethnic groups complained of Irish Catholic ways being imposed on their parishes.[9] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Irish_in_Saint_Paul#cite_note-k57-8> The O'Connor System was created by the Chief of Police, John J. O'Connor and his brother Richard. The system allowed known criminals to live in the city as long as they obeyed the law in Saint Paul. As a result, criminals such as Machine Gun Kelly <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Gun_Kelly> , John Dillinger <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dillinger> and Baby Face Nelson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Face_Nelson> lived in Saint Paul. After the O'Connor brothers retired from politics and a series of high-profile kidnappings occurred, the system fell apart.[18] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Irish_in_Saint_Paul#cite_note-17>

The system DID NOT fall apart, as indicated here. When I took evidence and information of serious institutionalized corruption in law enforcement to our local FBI agent he said that there was nothing he could do about it because in the late 60's the city, Mayo, state and federal authorities agreed that this would be a "free zone" for organized crime bosses and the like to come for health care. They would not be arrested, extradicted, harassed....as long as they didn't commit crimes within city limits. I thought Agent Price was joking. Seems he was not joking. I handed the DOJ a MAJOR case with transnational money laundering operations linked to the same Saudi funding network that helped pay for 9/11. They opened a RICO file but Alexander Keith, a corrupt old curmudgeon who used to be a State Supreme Court Justice and Lt. Governor made a phone call to the US Attorney, Rachel Paulose, and the JTTF was disbanded. Seems Judge Keith made the recommendation for Paulose to get her clerkship with the Federal Court of Appeals head, Judge Loken. Another portion of the case was prosecuted, the money laundering front called BEARCAT Hollow, but Judge Ann Montgomery was on hand to give a judicial dismissal to one of the Defendants, Craig Perry, because his prosecution would have unraveled the corruption Keith and crew wanted to be kept in place.

All of this goes back to the O'Connor System and to the days when Meyer Lansky was the intermediary between Lucky Luciano, the CIA and officials in Marseilles; the French Connection. Lansky's operations were based out of Minnesota, where intercepted heroine shipments were let through and he was not harassed, charged, prosecuted. His "empire" was eventually turned over to Alvin Malnik, who is an Israeli. His attorney is Richard Ben-Veniste. His son, Mark, divorced his wife to marry King Abdullah's daughter. Mark and Alvin converted to Islam with Mark changing his name to Shareef. So the heir to the Lansky protected network is an Israeli who is not just Muslim, but is related to the Saudi Royal Family. He comes here for his healthcare and either stays in Sheik Ibrahim's International Hotel or in Prince Alwaleed's Four Seasons Hotel. Ibrahim is wanted in Paris for landing with a jet full of cocaine and Alwaleed is currently under some rather intense scrutiny by some of the remaining "good guys" in the US intelligence apparatus.

I don't need to travel anywhere to find CIA operations. They are running the ops right here, in broad daylight, through our "government" and University of Minnesota. (Like Harold Stassen's Vietnam Project at MSU during the 60's.)

Mary
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Postby chiggerbit » Wed Nov 18, 2009 1:39 pm

I wonder if Paloma is still reading here.
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Postby chiggerbit » Wed Nov 18, 2009 1:59 pm

It's kind of interesting, reading,from AD's post above,

...The system DID NOT fall apart, as indicated here. When I took evidence and information of serious institutionalized corruption in law enforcement to our local FBI agent he said that there was nothing he could do about it because in the late 60's the city, Mayo, state and federal authorities agreed that this would be a "free zone" for organized crime bosses and the like to come for health care. They would not be arrested, extradicted, harassed....as long as they didn't commit crimes within city limits. I thought Agent Price was joking. Seems he was not joking. I handed the DOJ a MAJOR case with transnational money laundering operations linked to the same Saudi funding network that helped pay for 9/11.




considering that some time ago, Riconosciuto claimed through Anita Langley that he needed rather badly to be treated for prostate cancer specifically in Rochester, Minnesota. I'm assuming that the "Mayo" mentioned above in AD's post isn't a reference to mayonnaise, but to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel ... 351&page=2

...Michael may never live to see his wonders put into action. He has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and many delays in diagnosis and treatment have occurred. Prostate cancer is treatable with a high rate of success, but we cannot delay. We are now being told that it will be up to three months before a surgical bed is available.

Considering his contacts in the Mujahadeen and the immediate terrorist missile threat, it is an urgent matter of global security that Michael be treated in a secure facility at once. The safest place for him to be treated is the Federal Medical Clinic in Rochester, MN.

Please help! By contacting the Bureau of Prisons Health Center at 202-307-3055, you can express your concerns for Michael's well being and the immediate need to treat him. Also, by contacting his congressman, Brian Baird, at 360-352-9768 and telling his office of the urgent need to treat Michael, people would be able to pressure him into action. Congressman Baird is one of the people who received letters from Michael warning of the imminent attacks....
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Postby American Dream » Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:47 pm

alt.assassination.jfk



From: Martin Shackelford <msh...@concentric.net>
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: Judyth Baker, Dave Ferrie and Cancer Research: Back to
Reality
Date: 23 Sep 2004 03:47:54 EDT
Organization: Concentric Internet Services


At the age of 12, a young science genius named Michael Riconosciuto was
building listening devices for the detective agency of Guy Banister in New
Orleans. As a teenager, he had his own laboratory, and was doing cancer
research, as Judyth Baker was also doing at the time in Florida. David
Ferrie later mentioned to her that they had been expecting a young cancer researcher on the scene in May 1963, and assumed Judyth Baker was the person they were expecting. It may have been Michael Riconosciuto instead, and Judyth may have fallen into the situation by chance, showing up in New Orleans two weeks before Michael did. At the time, she simply assumed that Ochsner had mentioned her to them. This was brought to our attention recently when a journalist shared with us her recent interview with Riconosciuto. Already aware of his connection to Banister and to his teenage cancer research, the reporter asked if Banister ever gave Michael reading materials on the subject of cancer research--and was told yes, he had. The reporter mentioned names including Judyth Baker and Judyth Vary.

Michael indicated that some of the cancer research materials he had been
shown by Banister were written by a Judyth Vary. Asked if he considered
Judyth to be genuine, he said he did. Later, Riconosciuto became an expert in computer encryption. He was employed by the CIA-funded
Wackenhut-Cabazon Indian joint venture at another point, and CIA agent
Robert Booth Nichols testified that Riconosciuto was in close contact with
Bobby Inman, who served with both the NSA and CIA. He was one of the
architects of the "backdoor" in the PROMIS software purchased by the CIA
for distribution to foreign intelligence agencies, allowing the CIA access
to information from their systems. The Wackenhut-Cabazon organization was also involved in biowarfare, according to a manuscript called "The Last Circle" by Carol Seymour, which mentions it in passing, its primary focus being a Kentucky paramilitary drug-dealing operation. In 1991, during the first Bush administration, Riconosciuto was accused of being involved in the construction of a methamphetamine lab, and sent to prison, where he remains. In case that wasn't enough to quiet him, his wife was accused of child neglect, and their children were removed, using the meth lab charge as a basis.

Martin



Michael Riconosciuto

An example of [Harry V.] Martin's tendency to confuse unproven allegations with established matters of fact can be found in Martin's treatment of Michael Riconosciuto, a computer software technician who has submitted a sworn affidavit in the Inslaw software piracy case. Riconosciuto has claimed that he was threatened by a former staff member of the Justice Department with criminal prosecution on an unrelated charge and with an unfavorable result in a pending child custody dispute if he testified on the Inslaw case. Riconosciuto has also claimed that he made a tape recording of the telephoned threat, two copies of which were confiscated when he was arrested. Although he has not produced it, he claims a third copy exists, which is being held in a safe location. When Martin discusses Riconosciuto, he begins with what appears to be a statement of uncontested fact, "In February, Riconosciuto was called by a former Justice Department official and warned against ooperating with an investigation into the case by the House Judiciary Committee." In fact, while some of what Riconosciuto has alleged can be verified, much cannot. Despite the plethora of details Martin presents, the entire content of Martin's story on Riconosciuto is composed of Riconosciuto's own unverified assertions or other unproven allegations made in the early stages of a lawsuit.

Riconosciuto has also been championed as a source by the LaRouchians who say they introduced Riconosciuto to Danny Casolaro, according to the
Village Voice article by Ridgeway and Vaughan. Anyone reading that article carefully will get the idea that authors Ridgeway and Vaughan think that some of the Riconosciuto/Casolaro allegations are unsubstantiated and reflect undocumented conspiracy theories.

Jerry Uhrhammer of the Tacoma Morning News Tribune covered Riconosciuto's claims and legal battles for that paper, including Riconosciuto's three-week-long drug trial, held in Tacoma in April 1991. "I believe it is significant that Casolaro's theory about a mega- conspiracy he called 'The Octopus' seems to have developed after exposure to Riconosciuto's tales of involvement in nearly every major national and international conspiracy of the past decade," wrote Uhrhammer in a letter to the IRE Journal of the Investigative Reporters & Editors group.

Uhrhammer says it was relatively easy for him to disprove many of
Riconosciuto's claims. "There were other instances in which it was obvious
that Riconosciuto had obtained small morsels of information, then
embellished and expanded those morsels into seven-course feasts of
conspiratorial derring-do that he fed back through the conspiracy network.
The thought of going into print with a story based on such a story makes
me shudder," wrote Uhrhammer.

Any reporter who checked the court file prior to Riconosciuto's trial
could have found documents that offered a psychiatric explanation for
[his] conspiracy tales. Psychiatrists who examined him in 1972, prior to
his first drug conviction, portrayed him as a mentally unstable person who
had trouble discerning between fact and fiction....I have been dismayed
and appalled by some articles in which Riconosciuto is quoted as a primary source, if not sole source, in support of some conspiracy theory, but without any warning to the reader that his credibility is suspect or
nonexistent.

Free-lance reporter Jonathan Littman spent four months investigating
charges regarding the Canazon Indian reservation, including those
circulated by Casolaro, who had been using Riconosciuto as a source.
Littman wrote a fascinating three-part series for the San Francisco
Chronicle on how outsiders were abusing tribal sovereignty. Littman and
Chronicle reporter Michael Taylor also wrote a story about Riconosciuto's
claims about several murders linked to persons associated with the Cabazon reservation. "We had to throw out tons of stuff from Riconosciuto
wholesale...because we ended up trying to prove a negative," said Taylor.


http://www.publiceye.org/media/spooky.html


BIG STORIES, SPOOKY SOURCES

From the Columbia Journalism Review May/June 1993


Posted by permission of the author

By Chip Berlet

For an investigative journalist, reporting on official misconduct
involving covert operations, intelligence-gathering, and national security
issues is like competing in a potato-sack race in a minefield. All
officials tend to be suspicious of the motives of nosy journalists;
government spokespersons frequently deny first and dissemble later;
meanwhile, actual spies tend to keep their mouths shut. As a result,
sources for such stories frequently come from a murky netherworld of
ex-intelligence agents, retired military officers, and self-anointed
investigators. Some offer valuable information along with frustrating
fantasies; some are well-meaning but confused; others are professional or amateur charlatans. A few are brilliant paranoid crackpots. Some people just plain lie.

Over the past three years, this reporter has interviewed or read the
relevant writings of more than fifty investigative reporters and
researchers spanning the political spectrum. Most of them thought one
should not minimize the continuing reality of illegal and unethical
conduct by government and private intelligence operatives. But even those who agreed that tough reporting on these subjects helps defend
constitutional safeguards added that they have grown very weary of hearing the same unproved or debunked conspiratorial stories over and over again.

"A lot of stories with conspiratorial themes have gone a great distance
with very few credible witnesses," says Michael Kelly of "The New York
Times". "Some reporters use a much lower standard of evidence with these stories. They are tempted to take what they can get, and overlook the fact that the source has been convicted twice for perjury and on alternate Tuesdays he thinks he is Napoleon Bonaparte."

If many of the key sources for conspiracy stories are unreliable, why are
so many journalists tempted to use them? One reason is that, in an age of
official denials, many journalists give unofficial sources the benefit of
the doubt. Another is that, in some cases, the tales these sources tell
provide a fairly clearcut explanation of what may otherwise be a confusing
welter of conceivably related events. In short, they provide a story line.
A third reason is that they can usually supply details that seem to
substantiate their version of events. When the details provided by two or
three such sources mesh, the theory gains in credibility and the story
built on it may gain wider attention in the media. Meanwhile, talk radio
shows, interviews on small FM stations, even messages posted on
computerized information networks contribute to keeping theories
alive--and building an audience that wants to hear more.

The following look at a selection of individuals and groups that have
served as sources for recent conspiracy stories may help to point up the
problems they can pose for journalists in both the print and broadcast
media.

Several spooky sources contributed to the October Surprise story line,
according to which the 1980 Reagan-Bush presidential campaign made a deal with the Iranians to delay the release of American hostages until after the November elections, to help assure the defeat of Jimmy Carter.

A key figure in that story, and one whose usefulness as a source has been
attacked and defended in these pages, was former Israeli intelligence
operative Ari Ben-Menashe (see "The October Surprise: Enter the Press,"
CJR, March/April 1992, and "October Surprise: Unger v. Weinberg," Letters, May/June 1992).

One journalist who took Ben-Menashe's allegations more seriously than most was Craig Unger, author of an October 1991 "Esquire" article titled
"October Surprise." Following several attacks on the Surprise theory,
Unger wrote a long, interesting article called "The Trouble with Ari,"
which appeared in "The Village Voice" in July 1992. There, more clearly
than in his "Esquire" piece, Unger explains the dilemma a source of this
kind poses for the journalist. After reminding readers that some of
BenMenashe's claims can be corroborated and that he was "the guy who
started talking about the clandestine American arms pipeline to Iraq's
Saddam Hussein. . . long before the story started breaking in the press
this spring," Unger writes:

"Ari has put five or six dozen journalists from all over the world through
roughly the same paces. His seduction begins with a display of his mastery of the trade craft of the legendary Israeli intelligence services. A roll of quarters handy for furtive phone calls, he navigates the back channels that tie the spooks at Langley to their counterparts in Tel Aviv.

His astute analysis and mind-boggling revelations can stir even the most jaded old hand of the Middle East. . . But trust him at your own risk. . . ."

"Listen to him, trust him, print his story verbatim--then sit around and
watch your career go up in flames."

Another oft-cited source in the October Surprise story was Michael
Riconosciuto, who provided many tantalizing leads to investigative
reporter Danny Casolaro before the free-lancer's death, which was ruled a
suicide (see "The Octopus File," CJR, November/December 1991).

Riconosciuto claimed to have specialized knowledge in computer science and software design, the kind of knowledge that, he said, made him useful to intelligence operatives. Casolaro was looking into the alleged theft by
the Justice department of a privately owned software program called
Promis. Riconosciuto offered an explanation: he told Casolaro that someone in the Justice department had given the software to American intelligence operatives for resale to intelligence agencies in Canada and abroad. One form of payment, he told the journalist, was the orchestration of the release of the American hostages being held in Iran.

Riconosciuto went on to weave a tale involving the Cabazon Indian
reservation in southern California, purportedly the site of a supersecret
research and testing base for weapons of interest to intelligence
operatives. Casolaro began to see the reservation as part of a
globe-spanning entity of untold power, which he called The Octopus.

Jerry Uhrhammer of the Tacoma, Washington, "Morning News Tribune" was the only reporter to cover Riconosciuto's three-week-long drug trial, held in Tacoma in April 1991. In the July/August 1992 "IRE Journal", Uhrhammer wrote:

"Any reporter who checked the court file prior to Riconosciuto's trial
could have found documents that offered a psychiatric explanation for
[his] conspiracy tales. Psychiatrists who examined him in 1972, prior to
his first drug conviction, portrayed him as a mentally unstable person who
had trouble discerning between fact and fiction."


Uhrhammer added:

"I have been dismayed and appalled by some articles in which Riconosciuto is quoted as a primary source, if not sole source, in support of some conspiracy theory, but without any warning to the reader that his
credibility is suspect or nonexistent." Free-lance reporter Jonathan
Littman spent four months investigating charges regarding the Cabazon
Indian reservation, including those circulated by Casolaro, who had been
using Riconosciuto as a source. Littman wrote a fascinating three- part
series for the "San Francisco Chronicle" on how outsiders were abusing
tribal sovereignty. Littman and "Chronicle" reporter Michael Taylor also
wrote a story about Riconosciuto's claims about several murders linked to
persons associated with the Cabazon reservation. "We had to throw out tons of stuff from Riconosciuto wholesale," says Taylor.


<
From: jpshin...@my-deja.com (Jerry Shinley)
Newsgroups: alt.assassination.jfk
Subject: Re: BIG STORIES, SPOOKY SOURCES
Date: 28 Sep 2004 21:00:31 -0400

> > Kenn Thomas reports in his book _Maury Island UFO: The Crisman
> >Conspiracy_ (IllumiNet Press, 1999) that "Riconoscuito also
> >made claims that he witnessed an alien autopsy, before the
> >circulation of the well-known footage of such, as well as
> >knowledge of the group called MJ-12 of UFO spy lore." (p. 149)
> >
> >Jerry Shinley


Here's a somewhat longer version of Thomas' story from a 1997 article:

http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma/ocup.htm
http://www.umsl.edu/~skthoma/ocrev.htm

Octopus Revisited

by Kenn Thomas

The following article appeared in issue 6.4 (Oct. 97) of Lumpen, Chicago's
magazine for the disenchanted proletariat. [...]

[...]

After Casolaro's death, Michael Riconosciuto made claims that Casolaro
had learned nothing more than what one of two intelligence factions wanted him to know in order to embarrass the other faction. One faction was called Aquarius and had a leadership sub-group called MJ-12, the name, of course, of the supposed secret group founded by Harry Truman in the wake of the Roswell flying saucer crash. Riconosciuto even told one writer that he had witnessed the autopsy of an alien body--this long before the famous alien autopsy film began to circulate. Some have suggested that the tales of extraterrestrials that surround areas like Area 51 and Pine Gap serve as disinformation to deflect attention away from serious issues such as gun-running and black project weapons development. Casolaro's own view, and the extent of his knowledge and interest in this tributary from the Octopus research, and whatever he learned that might have brought the truth closer to the surface of the murky waters in which he swam, may have died with him.

<end of excerpt>

Copyright 1991 The Seattle Times Company
The Seattle Times

August 29, 1991, Thursday, Final Edition

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1

LENGTH: 1605 words

HEADLINE: WORLDWIDE CONSPIRACY, OR FANTASY? -- FELON'S
STORY CHECKS OUT - KIND OF

BYLINE: BY CARLTON SMITH

BODY:

[...]

Enter Michael Riconosciuto, offering answers.

Earlier this year, Riconosciuto talked with investigators from the House
Judiciary Committee, which is looking into allegations that the U.S.
Department of Justice stole a computer program from a private company
called INSLAW.

[...]

But from that point, matters involving Riconosciuto turn ever more
weird:

-- Riconosciuto has claimed to have been involved in arms sales to the
Nicaraguan contras.

-- He claims to have invented a breakthrough that would allow a Third
World nation to develop an inexpensive nuclear bomb.

-- He claims to have inside information about a cult of satanists, and
has enlisted the support of a retired FBI agent who once investigated the
unsolved D.B. Cooper hijacking, according to Crawford. A few years ago,
Riconosciuto persuaded a Seattle television station to take him aloft in a
helicopter so he could point out locations where satanic human sacrifices
were supposed to have occurred.

-- Finally, Riconosciuto has claimed contact with forces from outer
space, according to several sources familiar with his statements to House
committee investigators. He has also claimed the U.S. Marshal's office has
hidden a flying saucer in the woods near Tacoma. In an interview with The
Times, Riconosciuto denied telling anyone he had seen a UFO. "No, never,
come on," he said.


<end of excerpts>



http://www.orlingrabbe.com/binladin_timosman.htm


When Osama Bin Ladin Was Tim Osman

by J. Orlin Grabbe

The two men headed to the Hilton Hotel in Sherman Oaks, California in the
late Spring of 1986 were on their way to meet representatives of the
mujahadeen, the Afghan fighters resisting the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan.

One of the two, Ted Gunderson, had had a distinguished career in the FBI,
serving as some sort of supervisor over Special Agents in the early 60s,
as head of the Dallas field office from 1973-75, and as head of the Los
Angeles field office from 1977-1979. He retired to become an investigator
for, among others, well-known attorney F. Lee Bailey. And all along the
way, Gunderson, whether or not actually a CIA contract agent, had been
around to provide services to various CIA and National Security Council
operations, as he was doing now.

In more recent years Gunderson was to become controversial for his
investigations into child prostitution rings, after he became convinced of
the innocence of an Army medical doctor named Jeffrey McDonald, who had been convicted of the murder of his wife and three young children in the 1970s. This has led to various attempts by the patrons and operators of the child prostitution industry to smear Gunderson's reputation.

Michael Riconosciuto was there to discuss assisting the mujahadeen with
MANPADs -- Man Portable Air Defense Systems. Stinger missiles were one
possibility. If the U.S. would permit their export, Riconosciuto could
modify the Stinger's electronics, so the guided missile would still be
effective against Soviet aircraft, but would not be a threat to U.S. or
NATO forces.

But Riconosciuto had another idea. Through his connections with the
Chinese industrial and military group Norinco, he could obtain the basic
components for the unassembled Chinese 107 MM rocket system. These could be reconfigured into a man-portable, shoulder-fired, anti- aircraft guided missile sytem, and produced in Pakistan at a facility called the Pakistan Ordinance Works. The mujahadeen would then have a lethal weapon against Soviet helicopter, observation, and transport aircraft.

Riconosciuto was more than just an expert on missile electronics; he was
also an expert on electronic computers and associated subjects such as
cryptology (see my "Michael Riconosciuto on Encryption").

Riconosciuto was a prodigy who had grown up in the spook community.

The Riconosciuto family had once run Hercules, California, as a company town.
In the early days (1861) a company called California Powder Works had been established in Santa Cruz, CA. It later purchased land on San Pablo Bay, and in 1881 started producing dynamite, locating buildings in gullies and ravines for safety purposes. A particularly potent type of black powder was named "Hercules Powder", which gave the name to the town of Hercules, formally incorporated in 1900. In World War I, Hercules became the largest producer of TNT in the U.S. Hercules, however, had gotten out of the explosives business by 1940 when an anhydrous ammonia plant was constructed. In 1959 Hercules began a new manufacturing facility to produce methanol, formaldehyde, and urea formaldehyde. In 1966 the plant was sold to Valley Nitrogen Producers. Labor problems led to a plant closure in 1977. In 1979 the plant and site was purchased by a group of investors calling themselves Hercules Properties, Ltd.

However, Michael and his father Marshall Riconosciuto, a friend of Richard
Nixon, continued to run the Hercules Research Corporation. In the early
1980s Michael also served as the Director of Research for a joint venture
between the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Florida, and the
Cabazon Band of Indians in Indio, California. Riconosciuto's talents were
much in demand. He had created the a-neutronic bomb (or "Electro-
Hydrodynamic Gaseous Fuel Device"), which sank the ground level of the
Nevada test site by 30 feet when a prototype was tested. Samuel Cohen, the inventor of the neutron bomb, said of Riconosciuto: "I've spoken to
Michael Riconosciuto (the inventor of the a-neutronic bomb) and he's an
extraordinarily bright guy. I also have a hunch, which I can't prove, that
they both (Riconosciuto and Lavos, his partner) indirectly work for the
CIA."

Riconosciuto's bomb made suitcase nukes obsolete, because it achieved
near-atomic explosive yields, but could be more easily minaturized. You
could have a suitcase a-neutronic bomb, or a briefcase a-neutronic bomb,
or simply a lady's purse a-neutronic bomb. Or just pull out your wallet
for identification and -- . The Meridian Arms Corporation, as well as the
Universities of California and Chicago owned a piece of the technology.

But there was more than explosives in the portfolios of the CIA agents who surrounded Riconosciuto like moths around a candle. Both Robert Booth Nichols, the shady head of Meridian Arms Corporation (with both CIA and organized crime conections), and Dr. John Phillip Nichols, the manager of the Cabazon reservation, were involved in bio-warfare work -- the first in trying to sell bio-warfare products to the army through Wackenhut, the second in giving tribal permission for research to take place at Cabazon.

According to Riconosciuto, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) was in charge of the classified contracts for
biological warfare research. Riconosciuto would later testify under oath
that Stormont Laboratories was involved in the DARPA-Wackenhut- Cabazon project. Jonathan Littman, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle would relate: "Cabazons and Wackenhut appeared to be acting as middlemen between the Pentagon's DARPA and Stormont Laboratories, a small facility in Woodland near Sacramento."

The Race Weapon

Riconosciuto would make additional claims about Bio-Rad corporation, a
medical supplier which had gradually taken over Hercules, California. They were also, Riconosciuto would say, covertly engaged in bio- warfare
research -- producing some of the deadliest toxins known to man. The focus of Bio-Rad's research was said to be bio-active elements that could be tailored to attack those with certain types of DNA. Weapons could thus be produced that were specifically designed to wipe out specific races or
genetic classes of human beings. (Alternatively, particular DNA types
could be immunized against a deadly biological agent; the agent could then be released, and everyone else would die.)

A couple of years later, Meridian International Logistics, the parent
company of Meridian Arms, was to farm similar research out to the
Japanese. This included (according to minutes of a corporate meeting dated Aug. 26, 1988) methods for "induction and activation of cytotoxic
T-lymphocytes". Associated with Meridian's Robert Booth Nichols in a
Middle Eastern operation called FIDCO, a company that ran arms into and
heroin out of Lebanon's Beqaa (Bekaa) Valley, was Harold Okimoto, a
high-ranking member of the Yakuza. Okimoto had longed worked under Frank Carlucci (who served as Secretary of Defense and Deputy Director of the CIA before becoming Chairman of The Carlyle Group). Okimoto owned food concessions in casinos around the world -- Las Vega, Reno, Macao, and the Middle East. (Free drinks and anthrax while you play blackjack, anyone?)

Meeting Riconosciuto and Gunderson at the hotel were two representatives of the mujahadeen, waiting to discuss their armament needs. One of the two was named "Ralph Olberg." The other one was called Tim Osman (or Ossman).

"Ralph Olberg" was an American businesman who was leading the procurement of American weapons and technology on behalf of the Afghan rebels. He worked through the Afghan desk at the U.S. State Department, as well as through Senator Hubert Humphrey's office. Olberg looked after the Afghanis through a curious front called MSH --Management Sciences for Health.

The other man, dressed in Docker's clothing, was not a native Afghan any
more than Olberg was. He was a 27-year-old Saudi. Tim Osman (Ossman) has recently become better known as Osama Bin Ladin. "Tim Osman" was the name assigned to him by the CIA for his tour of the U.S. and U.S. military bases, in search of political support and armaments.

Gunderson and Riconosciuto were not on an altruistic mission. They had
some conditions for their help. And they had some bad news to deliver. The mujahadeen needed to be willing to test new weapons in the field and to return a research report, complete with photos.

The bad news was that some factions of the CIA didn't feel that Oldberg
and Osman's group were the real representatives of the Afghans. Upon
hearing this both Tim and Ralph were indignant. They wanted to mount a
full-court press. Round up other members of their group and do a
congressional and White House lobbying effort in Washington, D.C.

"Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name."

-- "The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil


Did the lobbying effort take place? I don't know. There is some evidence
that Tim Osman and Ralph Oldberg visited the White House. There is
certainty that Tim Osman toured some U.S. military bases, even receiving
special demonstrations of the latest equipment. Why hasn't this been
reported in the major media?

One week after giving an affidavit to Inslaw regarding the PROMIS software in 1991, Riconosciuto was arrested on trumped-up drug charges. The Assistant U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case attempted to cover up
Riconosciuto's intelligence background by claiming to the jury he was
"delusional." A TV station came and pointed a camera out at the desert at
Cabazon and said, "Riconosciuto says he modified the PROMIS software
here." Of course Riconosciuto didn't modify the software out between the
cacti and yucca. Sand isn't good for computers. He did the modifications
in offices in nearby Indio, California. The AUSA told reporters
Riconosciuto had been diagnosed with a mental condition, the implication
being "he's making all this stuff up". Yes, there had been a mental
evaluation of Riconosciuto. I have a copy of the report. The diagnosis?
Here it is: NO MENTAL DISORDER. The Department of Justice consistently and maliciously lied to the jury, just as had been threatened by Justice
Department official Peter Viednicks if Riconosciuto cooperated with the
congressional investigation of PROMIS.

If the war against Osama Bin Ladin (Tim Osman) is not a total fraud, then
what is Michael Riconosciuto doing in prison? Why doesn't he have an
office next to Colin Powell so he can give realistic advice on Bin Ladin's
thinking? And where is Ralph Olberg?

Thirty-four days before the East African embassy bombings of August 7,
1998, Riconosciuto notified the FBI in Miami that the bombings were going
to take place. Two days prior to the bombings he requested of BOP (Bureau of Prisons) officials at the Federal Corrections Institution (FCI) in
Coleman, FL., that he be allowed to call ECOMOG security headquarters to
warn African officials. The BOP denied the request. Riconosciuto was
mystified at being ignored by the relevant government authorities. I'm not
mystified. I suspect the reason Riconosciuto was ignored was that the
relevant parties, including especially the Miami FBI office, knew all
along the bombings would take place. And they wanted them to happen.

The same is true with respect to the recent plane bombings of the WTC. It
wasn't an intelligence "failure". The terrorist acts were deliberately
allowed to happen. The actors may have been foreign. But the stage
directors appear to have been all along here in the U.S. Cui bono?

Isn't it time to let Michael Riconosciuto out of prison, and wipe the
slate clean of the trumped up drug charges, and let him be a national
security advisor -- at least with respect to the government's pursuit of
Osama Bin Ladin? Isn't it time to quit pretending Osama Bin Ladin came out of nowhere?

This is not an academic argument. Sources say three dozen MANPADs have been imported into Quebec, Canada, from Colombia (where they arrived from Eastern Europe). The missile shipments followed the "northern" drug route -- from Colombia into Canada. The missiles involved are Russian Strellas and Iglas. These will serve just fine to take down commercial airline flights. Just like TWA 800. Which group of terrorists has the missiles?

Meanwhile, how many biological warfare agents are in the hands of
organized crime? Maybe you should ask Riconosciuto about all this.

Michael Riconosciuto is now incarcerated at the FCI Allenwood, PA. You
know where to find him.

Note: Michael Riconosciuto has just been moved to Springfield, MO. His
address is:

Michael J. Riconosciuto
21309-086 Box 4000
U.S. Medical Center
Springfield, MO
65801-4000

J. Orlin Grabbe's homepage is located at http://orlingrabbe.com.

-30-

from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 5, No 46, November 12, 2001

Dave

http://www.jfk-online.com
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

Postby American Dream » Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:00 pm

Be very, very careful regarding this one:


http://www.users.on.net/~osbornep/


DANNY CASOLARO WAS CORRECT!

BCCI, IRAN CONTRA AND PROMIS SOFTWARE DEALS WERE LINKED


Canadian and Australian researchers Gordon Sivell and Peter Osborne will soon publish their book titled “Born Classified”, detailing the secret life of Michael Riconosciuto and the sale of his modified PROMIS Software designed to eavesdrop on the Governments of Canada and Australia.

The files of Michael Riconosciuto were first classified in 1982 by Presidents Ronald Regan and George Bush Senior and were then mysteriously reclassified in 2003 by President George W Bush.

In 1991, Michael Riconsciuto testified in court, that multiple versions of the PROMIS software were provided to him by the US Department of Justice throughout 1981-1983. Rcionsciuto testified that he was contracted to modify the PROMIS Software with advanced eavesdropping capabilities utilizing a special communications receiver unit in order for CIA and NSA to spy on foreign governments. Riconosciuto testified the PROMIS Software was sold to the RCMP/CSIS in Canada and renamed the “LEAN Software” and sold to the Australian Government.

The authors recently obtained documentary evidence from William Hamilton, CEO Inslaw Inc, revealing the US Department of Justice and intelligence agencies may have knowingly misled the US Congressional Committee investigating the PROMIS Software scandal, and also misled the governments and citizens of Australia and Canada.


PUBLICLY EXPOSED - LETTER FROM US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

Image




THE TEXT READS

US Department of Justice
Civil Rights Division
Washington DC 20530

WBR: DLJ: mb

DJ 173-11-16

16th May 1985


William F Weld
United States Attorney
1100 McCormack Post Office and Courthouse
Boston, Massachusetts 02109

Dear Mr Weld,

“As agreed, Messrs, Manucher Ghorbanifar, Adnan Khashoggi and Richard Armitage will broker the transaction of the PROMISE Software to Sheik Klahid bin Mahfouz for resale and general gifts in his region contingent upon the three conditions we last spoke of. PROMISE must have a soft arrival. No Paperwork, customs, or delay. It must be equipped with special data retrieval unit. As before, you must walk the financial aspects through Credit Suisse and National Commercial Bank. If you encounter any problems contact me directly.”


Sincerely,

WM, Bradford Reynolds
Assistant Attorney General
Civil Rights Division




In November 2006, William Hamilton, CEO of Inslaw Inc confirmed the existence of the DOJ letter in his article posted on the German Website http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/2945207/ . “Six months before the FBI arrested Jonathan Pollard for espionage, Assistant Attorney General Wm. Bradford Reynolds sent the May 16, 1985 letter to William F. Weld, the U.S. Attorney in Boston, about arrangements made by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, and two Middle Eastern middlemen who later surfaced in the Iran/Contra scandal, for the sale and distribution of a trap-door version of PROMIS to governments in the Middle East. The Arab broker identified in the letter headed Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank. INSLAW received a copy of the letter in late 2004 from a U.S. intelligence source, and has since obtained convincing indications of its authenticity”.

In the last weeks of the life of investigative journalist Danny Casolaro, prior to his murder, he was convinced the BCCI, Iran Contra Arms, PROMIS Software Scandals were all connected. It appears from this enclosed Letter that Casolaro was CORRECT!

This Letter reveals the US Department of Justice secretly authorised the theft and modification of the PROMIS Software utilizing a special eavesdropping receiver to be sold to foreign governments by the BCCI and Iran Contra conspirators.

Prior to his murder, Danny Casolaro confirmed to friends that he was going to West Virginia to retrieve the Head of the Octopus given he had documentary evidence that confirms:

? A meeting in April 1986 between Adnan Khashoggi and Tiny Roland

? The transfer of Iran Contra Arms involving Adnan Khashoggi

? BCCI Cheques for $1 Million and $4 Million were drawn on Adnan Khashoggi and Manucher Ghobanifar accounts

? IBM (Tel Aviv) connections linking the PROMIS Software with Israeli Intelligence


Danny Casalaro was investigating the Iran Contra Arms Deal and he flew to West Virginia to meet with an Arab who was involved in guns-and drugs transfers.

Throughout the US Congressional Committee investigation of the alleged theft of Inslaw’s PROMIS Software by the US Department of Justice, the US Government and intelligence agencies repeatedly denied they had ever modified or sold the PROMIS Software to foreign governments and intelligence agencies.

However, in 1991, Michael Riconosciuto confirmed in a sworn affidavit to Inslaw’s Attorneys and testified at his own court trial that he received multiple copies of Inslaw’s PROMIS Software from Peter Videnieks who was working for the US Department of Justice. Riconosciuto also testified that he was contracted to modify the PROMIS Software to utilize a special hardware communications receiver unit for sale to RCMP/CSIS in Canada and ASIO in Australia to permit the CIA and NSA to eavesdrop on foreign governments. Riconosciuto testified the modified PROMIS Software was renamed LEAN Software for sale to the Australian Government.

The designated recipient of the PROMIS software, Khalid bin Mahfouz, is the eldest son of a Saudi entrepreneur who founded the National Commercial Bank in Saudi Arabia, which is the first bank in his country, which is referred to in the recently discovered letter written by Bradford Reynolds. In 1990, Khaid bin Mahfouz acquired Irish citizenship. In 2006, his personal net worth was estimated at $3.2 billion making him one of the richest people in the world. As a non-executive director of the controversial Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) bin Mahfouz was indicted by a New York state Grand Jury for fraud but the charges were dropped.

Despite an exhaustive FOI research by INSLAW’s attorney on further correspondence between William Weld and Brad Reynolds they turned up empty. However, in October 2007 William Hamilton acknowledged that a US intelligence source confirmed to him that this letter is the only copy that was not shredded. The authenticity of the letter has been verified by INSLAW. Beginning in July 1986 William Weld succeeded Stephen S. Trott as Assistant U.S. Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division at the DOJ.

William Hamilton confirms that “Early in 2003, INSLAW Counsel Gray obtained the following explanation for the Bush Administration’s stonewalling of his post-9/11 efforts to settle with INSLAW: Paul Wolfowitz, [Deputy Secretary of Defense], Scooter Libby, [Chief of Staff and National Security Advisor to Vice President Cheney], and Richard Perle, [Chairman of the Defense Policy Board], are opposed to a settlement with INSLAW for fear that any settlement could embarrass Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and complicate U.S. policy in the Middle East. Each is intimately familiar with the INSLAW case because the government gave PROMIS to Israel”.

In 1992, during the US Congressional Committee investigation of the alleged theft of the PROMIS Software by US Department of Justice (DOJ), INSLAW’s counsel confirmed that four witnesses testified the CIA and DOJ installed the PROMIS Software at the World Bank and International Monetary Foundation (IMF).

? Witness #1, a computer systems specialist who worked at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, DC for a number of years in the 1980's and who has been reluctant to come forward publicly because of fear of reprisal, claims to have first hand technical knowledge, supplemented by contemporaneous, handwritten notes, of the implementation at the World Bank Headquarters in 1983 of INSLAW's PROMIS computer software product, on a VAX mid-range computer from Digital Equipment Corporation. According to this individual, the World Bank's implementation of PROMIS was not in support of the traditional PROMIS application domain of legal office case management. Instead, the World Bank implemented PROMIS to track its own "international message flow," as well as the international message flow of its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

? Witness #2. a current mid-level U.S. Government employee with extensive experience in intelligence/national security activities, who is fearful of reprisal. claims to have knowledge, obtained contemporaneously with the actual event in June 1983, of a meeting at the World Bank Headquarters in June 1983 concerning DOJ'S conveyance to the World Bank of the "proprietary VAX" version of INSLAW's PROMIS software. According to this individual (who also claims to have contemporaneous handwritten notes), the DOJ was represented at the meeting by D. Lowell Jensen, then Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. Among others who this individual claims attended the meeting was Stanley Sporkin, then General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). According to this individual, the initiative to implement PROMIS at the World Bank came from the Bank Operations Division of the CIA. This individual, during the course of a recent meeting with attorneys for INSLAW, emphasized repeatedly that anyone who provides information to INSLAW will get into significant trouble, and that there would be swift retribution against anyone in DOJ who even talks about the INSLAW matter. This individual claims that all of the people at DOJ who are responsible for "getting" INSLAW have been promoted and awarded bonuses. Upon information and belief, the objective of the PROMIS implementation at the World Bank was to provide an early warning system to the U.S. intelligence community of signs of planned defaults on international loans. During the first few years of the Reagan Administration, a number of the so-called less developed countries actively considered defaulting on their international debts.

? Witness #3. a current mid-level DOJ career employee who has been in a position to know a good deal about the INSLAW Affair for the relevant period of the 1980's, and who, INSLAW has been told by others, has first-hand knowledge of DOJ's dissemination to the World Bank in 1983 of the PROMIS software, and of the concealment or destruction by DOJ of contemporaneous, written documentation of the conveyance. This individual, during the course of a recent meeting with attorneys for INSLAW, emphasized repeatedly that anyone who provides information to INSLAW will get into significant trouble, and that there would be swift retribution against anyone in DOJ who even talks about the INSLAW matter. This individual claims that all of the people at DOJ who are responsible for "getting" INSLAW have been promoted and awarded bonuses. This individual expresses sorrow and perhaps even shame for what DOJ has done to INSLAW, but declines to acknowledge the validity of any particular claim except through sworn testimony before an independent counsel. This individual states that no one would cooperate with any investigation unless it is truly independent of DOJ, and unless assured of no retaliation. Finally, this individual says that the exodus from DOJ of the Republican Party political appointees will be of some help on the INSLAW matter but that it will not of itself be enough because "too many career people have either been part of destroying INSLAW or have 'winked' at it."

? Witness #4. a former very high ranking DOJ official who told an intermediary in May 1993 that his disclosure of information about DOJ's misconduct against INSLAW would lead to economic reprisals against him by the Republican Party.

In early 2005. the authors were warned that Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle were extremely upset about their forthcoming book about the PROMIS Software scandal. A few months later, Paul Wolfowitz was appointed as the President of the World Bank to replace Australian born James Wolfensohn.

The authors welcome any further information relating to the Letter from Department of Justice dated May 16, 1985, from any former and current US, Canadian and Australian government, intelligence, law enforcement officials and corporate officials, who also believe the public has a right to know the Truth about the alleged theft and modification of Inslaw’s PROMIS Software Illegally sold by DOJ and CIA to eavesdrop on the governments and citizens of Australia, Canada, Asia and Middle East.

Please Contact:

Peter Osborne at Email Address: osbornep@internode.on.net

Gordon Sivell at Email Address: gsivell@hotmail.com




William Hamilton’s original article that confirms the existence of the DOJ Letter



http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/2945207/

FBI’s Incapacitating Cover-up

Freitag, 17. November 2006

William A. Hamilton / Washington DC - Resolving the FBI’s persistent and incapacitating information technology problems was one of the main recommendations of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 in its December 2002 Final Report. The “persistence” is the result of efforts to conceal the fact that the FBI’s primary information management system is based on software the U.S. Department of Justice stole from a vendor. Justice covertly disseminated the software beyond U.S. Attorneys Offices, the entities authorized to use it, and the government then converted PROMIS to track wire transfers in banks, to track intelligence information in the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies, and to steal intelligence secrets from foreign governments by selling them a Trojan-horse version.

The FBI’s cover-up of its role in the early 1980s theft of the PROMIS case management software from INSLAW, Inc. prevented the FBI from taking advantage in the mid-1990s of new computing technology that would have enabled dramatic improvements in the software’s ease-of-use. The FBI’s decision to disguise the PROMIS origins of its software, rather than upgrade its ease-of-use, not only fooled experts appointed by a court at the behest of Congress in 1996 but also prevented the FBI from connecting the dots five years later on 9/11 between investigative leads about Arab men coming to the United States for flight training. Connecting those dots might have unraveled the 9/11 plot, according to the FBI. The FBI then wasted the first several years of the war on terrorism on a failed $170 million project to upgrade the ease-of-use on its own.

The cover-up also prompted the FBI to pull its punches when the FBI’s Albuquerque office conducted an investigation into a PROMIS sale in New Mexico during the summer of 1984, the same year the Intelligence Division at FBI Headquarters created the first Bureau-wide case management system using a stolen copy of PROMIS. Employees of New Mexico’s Sandia National Laboratory, one of the two main U.S. intelligence centers on nuclear warfare, complained to FBI Albuquerque that the foreign national who made the PROMIS sale was simultaneously doing business with the Soviet Union. The Intelligence Division supervised all FBI counterintelligence investigations. FBI Albuquerque abruptly terminated its investigation without reversing the illegal PROMIS sale, and advised the Sandia witnesses that they could appeal the decision to FBI Headquarters if they wished.

The example the FBI gave to its own employees in 1984 of the FBI as lawbreaker was not lost on an American spy, an FBI Agent with an unusual interest in software, who worked in the Intelligence Division at FBI Headquarters while it was installing PROMIS. When the FBI’s PROMIS became operational in 1985 under the name FOIMS, FBI Agent Robert Hanssen began the most productive phase of his 20 years of espionage for the Soviet Union and Russia. Hanssen made extensive use of the FBI’s software in his espionage, according to the FBI’s early 2001 complaint against him. The U.S. Government also used Hanssen, a senior FBI counterintelligence agent, to help Germany and England with the installation and use of their stolen copies of PROMIS.

Hanssen also gave the Russians copies of the PROMIS software code used in the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies to track their intelligence information, and installed by in banks to enable U.S. intelligence to track electronic fund transfers. This software later made its way on the Russian black market to al Qaeda, which used it both to find out what the United States knew about al Qaeda’s plans, by accessing U.S. Government intelligence systems, and to move its funds through the banking system.

INSLAW retained attorney C. Boyden Gray in October 2001 to seek a settlement of its PROMIS copyright-infringement claims by having the government buy a license to the new and fully-tested and debugged point-and-click generation of PROMIS for the war on terrorism. The Bush Justice Department stonewalled Gray, while the FBI worked secretly and in vain to upgrade its version of PROMIS, then and now known as ACS, on its own. Two months after Gray became Ambassador to the European Union in January 2006, Gray’s co-counsel wrote to White House Counsel Harriet Miers to arrange to send her a document on a national security case for which Gray had been lead counsel. He also explained the President’s intervention was essential. Miers telephoned to say that she had spoken to Ambassador Gray in Brussels, and that Gray identified the case as the INSLAW case and added that the government owes INSLAW money. Miers emphasized, however, that INSLAW’s problem is with the government, and she represents the President, and, consequently, INSLAW’s only recourse is to Congress.

There were three significant developments during the summer of 2001 on the connection between the PROMIS software scandal and U.S. vulnerability to al Qaeda.

The first development, the debriefing in 2001 of former FBI Agent Robert Hanssen, revealed that al Qaeda had acquired copies of PROMIS used in the FBI, U.S. intelligence agencies, and banks, and was using the software to stay one step ahead of the United States. On June 14, 2001, The Washington Times published a front-page story entitled Software Likely in Hands of Terrorist, attributed to federal law enforcement staff familiar with Hanssen’s debriefing. The story appeared three months before 9/11, on the day Justice submitted its plea agreement with Hanssen in court under seal. Through that agreement, Justice abandoned its demand for the death penalty in exchange for Hanssen’s confession. The article stated that Hanssen gave copies of PROMIS to his Russian handlers, who later sold copies to bin Laden for $2 million, and that the sophisticated software gives bin Laden access to databases on specific targets of his choosing and the ability to monitor electronic banking sources, easing money-laundering …

The second development, also in June 2001, was the FBI’s award of its Virtual Case File contract to retrofit a point-and-click User Interface to the FBI’s case management software. A point-and-click User Interface is as important to software’s ease of use as an automatic transmission is to an automobile’s ease of use. The technology for building a system with a point-and-click User Interface has been available in the computer industry since 1993, two years before the FBI began the development of the current ACS version of its PROMIS software. However, the FBI not only failed to take advantage of the new point-and-click technology under its $67 million ACS Project in 1995 and 1996, but also failed in its unacknowledged effort to retrofit point-and-click technology to ACS under its four-year, $170 million Virtual Case File project that began in 2001. The use of outdated 1980s case management software in the 21st Century leaves FBI agents at a severe disadvantage in performing their duties, according to Justice’s Inspector General.

The third development during the summer of 2001 was the failure of the FBI to connect the dots between a July 2001 lead from its Phoenix office about Arab men coming to the United States for flight training, and the FBI’s August 2001 arrest of al Qaeda terrorist, Zacarias Moussaoui, at a flight training school in Minneapolis. Both FBI Phoenix and FBI Minneapolis had entered leads into ACS about these items. Because the FBI had never upgraded ACS with a point-and-click User Interface, ACS was difficult to use, and the FBI did not bother to search it to find connections. Minneapolis sent 70 messages in the weeks before 9/11 fruitlessly seeking support from FBI Headquarters for a national security warrant to search Moussaoui’s laptop computer. Had Minneapolis checked ACS, it would have discovered the Phoenix lead, and it could have used it to bolster its request to FBI Headquarters. Minneapolis obtained the warrant after 9/11. What it found could have enabled it to unravel the 9/11 plot, according to the FBI.

Approximately a month after 9/11, on October 16, 2001, Fox News reported that it had learned from government officials that Osama bin Laden may have purchased PROMIS from Russian sources after Russia got it from Robert Hanssen and that the concern is that bin Laden or al Qaeda could get on-line and use it to monitor the worldwide criminal investigation and hide themselves, to monitor the worldwide financial investigation and hide their money, or monitor operations of governments that use the software. Fox News also reported that Hansen, on behalf of the U.S. Government, had helped allies like Germany and England with the installation and use of their versions of the PROMIS program, and that both Germany and England had stopped using PROMIS in the several months since Hanssen’s mid-2001 confession. When Fox News asked what the U.S. Government was doing to plug the holes in U.S. security caused by the software being in the wrong hands, the government’s spokesperson replied that the United States had stopped using PROMIS, but refused to say when. This was the first time the government admitted, even indirectly, its use of PROMIS for intelligence applications.

In reality, the FBI never stopped using PROMIS. The FBI used its ACS software development project in 1995 and 1996 to disguise the PROMIS origins of FOIMS, the FBI’s primary information management system, by converting (translating) the PROMIS-derivative FOIMS from the COBOL computer programming language in which INSLAW had written it, to the NATURAL language made by Software AG. The FBI also later changed the name from FOIMS to ACS. The following excerpt from a May 1996 email message from Software AG in Reston, Virginia to its parent company in Germany is about the conversion of the PROMIS-derivative FOIMS:

Subject: Press Q[uery] on Promis
Fritz: To answer your questions, I would say:
1.Yes, our Federal Professional Service group is in the process of conversting [sic] Promis from Cobol to ADABAS/NATURAL and has just started doing the final testing. So the software is not in use anywhere now; it’s just now getting up and running in the test phase.

The FBI has such a large volume of contracts and work orders with Software AG that the FBI cannot retrieve a copy of the requested 1995/1996 FBI contract with Software AG for the conversion of FOIMS from COBOL to NATURAL without the contract number, according to its response to INSLAW’s pending Freedom of Information Act request.

The FBI's primary information management system, designed using 1980s technology already obsolete when installed in 1995, limited the Bureau's ability to share its information internally and externally. This April 2004 9/11 Commission report unraveled at least part of what the FBI did under its mid-1990s ACS software project.

A brief explanation is needed to understand the FBI’s use of its $67 million ACS Project for a PROMIS cover-up. INSLAW, the federal courts, and Congress had been trying for several years to determine the validity of sworn statements, acquired in early 1991, about the unauthorized use of PROMIS in the FBI and intelligence agencies. In April 1991, Chief Judge Aubrey Robinson of the federal district court in Washington, D.C. ordered the FBI to give INSLAW a copy of FOIMS for comparison with PROMIS. One day before the 30-day deadline, a federal appellate court, on a jurisdictional technicality, set aside the fully-litigated decisions of the first two courts about the Justice Department’s theft of PROMIS through trickery, fraud, and deceit. The year of PROMIS’ theft, 1983, was the year the FBI at first said it planned to contract with INSLAW to help its Intelligence Division install PROMIS, but then, a few months later, told INSLAW it had changed its mind and decided to create new software from scratch.

The appellate decision effectively eliminated the scheduled FOIMS/PROMIS software comparison. The following year, the House Judiciary Committee reconfirmed Justice’s theft of PROMIS, and also complained that Justice had obstructed its attempt to investigate the alleged dissemination of PROMIS to the FBI and U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies, and its plan to compare FOIMS with PROMIS. The Committee demanded that the Attorney General immediately compensate INSLAW for the harm egregiously inflicted, and it threatened to pass a Congressional Reference resolution if necessary. In May 1995, the Senate passed a Congressional Reference resolution on INSLAW, automatically waiving technical defenses available to the government, such as sovereign immunity, and ordering the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to determine whether the United States owes INSLAW compensation for the government’s use of PROMIS.

In January 1996, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ordered the FBI to produce copies of FOIMS, from its inception in the mid-1980s, to court-appointed experts for comparison with PROMIS. The FBI stalled delivery of FOIMS for six months, ostensibly to process security clearances. In mid-1996, the FBI suddenly announced that the only version of FOIMS still available was the 1996 version. The FBI delivered to the experts in the second half of 1996 what it claimed was the 1996 version of FOIMS. It was written in NATURAL. The FBI later backdated the NATURAL-language version to October 1995, claiming that it had replaced FOIMS with ACS as of that date. These actions were intended to obscure the nexus in 1996 between the FBI’s introduction of the NATURAL-language version of its software, and the court-ordered comparison between the FBI’s software and PROMIS.

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims has exclusive jurisdiction over software copyright infringement claims against the government. In August 1998, the court’s Chief Judge sent an Advisory Report to the Senate stating that the United States would be liable to INSLAW for copyright infringement damages if the government had made any unauthorized derivatives from PROMIS but that INSLAW had not proved that the government had done so. Although the NATURAL-language version of FOIMS is obviously an unauthorized, copyright-infringing derivative of PROMIS, the experts were unable to find the DNA of INSLAW’s PROMIS through their line-by-line code comparison between PROMIS and the FBI’s newly-created NATURAL-language version. The reason is the conversion had automatically reduced the number of lines of the FBI’s code by approximately 90%, invalidating the line-by-line code comparison.

The court-appointed experts were similarly unable to find the PROMIS DNA in other intelligence community software, including software provided by NSA. CIA Director James Woolsey, however, had informed INSLAW Counsel Elliot Richardson three years earlier that an investigation by the CIA’s General Counsel had confirmed that NSA and the CIA were using the identical PROMIS software to keep track of their intelligence information. Richardson memorialized this in his October 1, 1993 letter to Woolsey.

Because of (1) the catastrophic U.S. intelligence failure on 9/11, (2) the government’s admission to Fox News in October 2001 that it had used PROMIS to track its intelligence information, and (3) the fact that INSLAW had a fully-tested and debugged native, point-and-click generation of PROMIS (New PROMIS) operating nationwide in other large public and private sector enterprises, INSLAW retained C. Boyden Gray, White House Counsel to the first President Bush, as its counsel in October 2001 to seek a settlement of INSLAW’s software copyright claims against the United States.

This effort, the first since INSLAW’s counsel Elliot Richardson’s death in 1999, had two objectives: (1) to offer the government use of the latest, completely revamped but fully-tested, version of INSLAW’s PROMIS software for the war on terrorism, and (2) to realize just compensation for the government’s use of unauthorized derivatives of the 1980’s PROMIS in intelligence applications.

Gray met with FBI Director Robert Mueller in late December 2001 and made INSLAW’s proposal. Mueller responded that the FBI did not have any unmet software needs. When Gray pointed out that the FBI had never paid INSLAW for 1980s PROMIS, Mueller responded that he was confident that there was no longer any of the INSLAW software left at the FBI because of software changes made over the years. Mueller advised Gray that Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson was directly overseeing the FBI’s software problem and that he should direct any INSLAW proposal to him.

Gray had a letter hand-delivered to Thompson on January 8, 2002 requesting a meeting to discuss INSLAW’s proposal. Gray’s letter summarized the government’s misappropriation of the 1980’s generation of PROMIS for intelligence applications and included copies of The Washington Times and Fox News reports. Gray also disclosed in the letter that a former national security colleague of his from the Reagan White House had recently confirmed to him that NSA used INSLAW’s PROMIS to track financial transactions in the banking system. Finally, Gray enclosed two sworn statements from the British author of an early 1999 authorized history of Israeli intelligence concerning admissions about PROMIS made to the British author by a former long-time senior Israeli intelligence official, Rafi Eitan. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon had appointed Eitan in the early 1980s as director of the Israeli intelligence agency that supports Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

The gist of Eitan’s admissions is as follows. A former member of the California cabinet of Governor Reagan arranged for the Reagan Administration to give PROMIS to Israel so friends of that Administration could make money by having Israel sell PROMIS overseas. The version of PROMIS sold overseas was equipped with a trap door to facilitate the theft of intelligence secrets of governments installing PROMIS. The U.S. Justice Department arranged for Eitan to visit INSLAW in early 1983, disguised as a visiting Israeli prosecutor, for a demonstration and briefing on PROMIS. Eitan hired Robert Maxwell, the British publisher, to sell PROMIS overseas, and Maxwell sold over $500 million worth of PROMIS. The CIA also directly arranged the sale of another $30-40 million of PROMIS overseas. PROMIS was a very successful computer-based intelligence initiative. PROMIS was also used by U.S. intelligence in banks, and to track information within such agencies as FBI, CIA, and DEA. Israel eventually exploited PROMIS databases of the U.S. Government in its espionage against the United States.

Deputy Attorney General Thompson, the chief operating officer of the Bush Justice Department, never answered Gray’s letter. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Thompson assigned Gray’s letter to the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Management Division for appropriate handling, and that the Assistant Attorney General decided as early as February 1, 2002 that no action was required and that no response was necessary.

The Bush Justice Department’s stonewalling of INSLAW may be explained by a PROMIS sale that Robert Maxwell made for Eitan in New Mexico in the early 1980s, a sale that apparently had disastrous ramifications for U.S. nuclear security. In interviews for the authorized history of Israeli intelligence, Eitan identified friendly and adversarial governments that bought the trap-door version of PROMIS from Israel through Maxwell, but did not mention Maxwell’s sale of PROMIS in New Mexico. That sale was the subject of a brief foreign counter-intelligence investigation by FBI Albuquerque in the summer of 1984, according to heavily-redacted copies of documents provided by the FBI in response to a Freedom of Information Act request on Maxwell’s sale of PROMIS in New Mexico.

Two technology transfer employees of the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, one of the two main U.S. intelligence centers on nuclear warfare, made a complaint to FBI Albuquerque on June 1, 1984 after learning from NSA colleagues that Maxwell was selling the Soviet Union information obtained from computerized U.S. Government databases, while simultaneously selling PROMIS in New Mexico. FBI Albuquerque’s investigation in 1984 took place while the FBI’s Intelligence Division was spearheading the installation of PROMIS at the FBI. Albuquerque aborted its investigation in August 1984 after advising the complainants that their NSA colleagues could contact FBI Headquarters if they wished to challenge the decision.

A U.S. intelligence employee began that year (1984) to steal U.S. nuclear warfare secrets for Eitan, his Israeli spymaster. Jonathan Pollard used a computer terminal at U.S. Navy intelligence in Maryland to access U.S. intelligence database systems to steal U.S. nuclear secrets. According to press reports, Israel may have traded some of these secrets for the release of Soviet Jews. The New Yorker, in a January 1999 article, reported that CIA Director William Casey gave a CIA station chief the following assessment of the damage to U.S. national security from Pollard’s espionage: … the Israelis used Pollard to obtain our attack plan against the U.S.S.R. all of it. The coordinates, the firing locations, the sequences. And for guess who? The Soviets. How's that for cheating?

Early in 2003, INSLAW Counsel Gray obtained the following explanation for the Bush Administration’s stonewalling of his post-9/11 efforts to settle with INSLAW: Paul Wolfowitz, [Deputy Secretary of Defense], Scooter Libby, [Chief of Staff and National Security Advisor to Vice President Cheney], and Richard Perle, [Chairman of the Defense Policy Board], are opposed to a settlement with INSLAW for fear that any settlement could embarrass Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and complicate U.S. policy in the Middle East. Each is intimately familiar with the INSLAW case because the government gave PROMIS to Israel.

Six months before the FBI arrested Pollard for espionage, Assistant Attorney General Wm. Bradford Reynolds sent the following May 16, 1985 letter to William F. Weld, the U.S. Attorney in Boston, about arrangements made by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, and two Middle Eastern middlemen who later surfaced in the Iran/Contra scandal, for the sale and distribution of a trap-door version of PROMIS to governments in the Middle East. The Arab broker identified in the letter headed Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank. INSLAW received a copy of the letter in late 2004 from a U.S. intelligence source, and has since obtained convincing indications of its authenticity.

As agreed, Messrs. Manichur Ghorbanifar, Adnan Khashoggi, and Richard Armitage will broker the transaction of Promise [sic] software to Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz for resale and general distribution as gifts in his region contingent upon the three conditions we last spoke of. Promise must have a soft arrival. No paperwork, customs, or delay. It must be equipped with the special data retrieval unit. As before, you must walk the financial aspects through Credit Suisse into National Commercial Bank. If you encounter any problems contact me directly.

William A. Hamilton is a computer software specialist, former NSA expert and the inventor of PROMIS software; President of Inslaw Inc. company in Washington D.C.
Contact: w.hamilton(at)inslawinc.com

List of references:
1.The Washington Times article of June 14, 2001.
2. Fox News transcript of October 16, 2001.
3. May 1996 email message from Software AG in Reston, Virginia to Software Ag in Darmstadt, Germany.
4. Elliot Richardson’s letter to CIA Director James Woolsey on October 1, 1993.
5.C. Boyden Gray’s January 8, 2002 letter to Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson.
6. Two sworn statements by Gordon Thomas about Rafi Eitan’s admissions to him about PROMIS while he was researching Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mosssad, published in early 1999.
7. Two documents obtained under Freedom of Information Act about the Bush Justice Department’s stonewalling of INSLAW Counsel C. Boyden Gray.
8. Documents obtained from FBI under a Freedom of Information Act request about Robert Maxwell’s sale of PROMIS in New Mexico.
9. W. Bradford Reynold’s May 16, 1985 letter to William Weld.

Further Reading
Promisgate: World's longest spy scandal still glossed over / Part I
Promisgate: World's longest spy scandal still glossed over /Part II
Promisgate: World's longest spy scandal still glossed over /Part III
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