From Steamshovel Press #7:

The Promis Threat:
 An Octopus Slouches Toward Mena, Arkansas,
Area 51 and The International UFO 
Congress in Las Vegas
by Kenn Thomas

     The first version of the Promis software--the software that
figured prominently in events leading to the suspicious death of
writer Danny Casolaro in a West Virginia hotel room in 1991--had
a simple purpose: to track criminals in prosecutors' offices
throughout the country. With the press of a button Promis
provided district attorneys with up-to-the minute case histories.
Inslaw, the company owned by St. Louisans Bill and Nancy
Hamilton, originally began developing the software using taxpayer
money as part of the Justice Department's Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration in the late 1970s. When the Reagan
White House nixed the LEAA in 1980, Inslaw became a for-profit
corporation and continued modifying Promis as computer technology
evolved. Inslaw signed a contract with the Justice Department in
1982 to supply the software exclusively to all U. S. attorneys
offices. The contract was worth $10 million.
     The Justice Department never paid and in 1985 Inslaw filed
Chapter 11 bankruptcy and began a lawsuit. In 1988 Inslaw was
awarded $7 million in damages. That settlement was upheld by the
federal court but the U. S. Court of Appeals ordered it retried
and Inslaw appealed to the Supreme Court. During these legal
gyrations a software concern owned by Ed Brian, a friend of then
attorney general Ed Meese, made a very hostile buy-out offer to
Inslaw. The last legal action on this case came in the middle of
October when Attorney General William Barr refused to authorize a
special prosecutor to investigate the Inslaw allegations. Bill
and Nancy Sullivan are no doubt studying further appeals.
     The Promis modifications, of course, are what should concern
the defenders of civil liberties. Even before it fell into the
hands of the Justice Department, it had been shanghaied by the
Navy to track and extrapolate Arctic Soviet submarine launches,
which it reportedly did with extraordinary accuracy. Michael
Riconoscuito, now in a Tacoma prison on drug charges and a key
Casolaro informant, reports equipping Promis with a back door
access, so the U. S. could spy on the police agencies to whom it
illegally sold the software. The possible use of Promis in
tracking political dissidents has been pointed out by Ben Price
in the new IllumiNet book, The Gemstone File. It's not difficult
to imagine other applications.     
     According to JFK assassination lecturer Bob Harris, Jack
Ruby's closest contacts with the Dallas police were in the
Criminal Intelligence Division, a division of the Dallas Law
Enforcement Intelligence Unit, versions of which exist in every
city and perforcely one must wonder what kind of software drives
their work. (Harris' lecture notes are available for $8 from him
at Box 4-18, 522 2nd Street, New York, NY 11215) The LEIU
collects information on private citizens and gives it to Military
Intelligence and the Domestic Contacts division of the CIA.
Details of how the Los Angeles police's version, the OCIU, spied
upon and harassed private citizens, can be found in the recent LA
Secret Police Files: Inside the LAPD Elite Spy Network by Mike
Rothmiller and Ivan G. Goldman ($5.99, Pocket Books). The
celebrity status of these citizens, of course, is what made it
book worthy in this instance.      
     Another connection between Casolaro and the JFK
assassination concerns the Banca del Lavoro, a state-owned
Italian bank that apparently the writer was investigating as part
of the BCCI tentacle in his Octopus research. According to
Sherman Skolnick, a researcher in Chicago, the Banca del Lavoro
financed the training of an assassination team in Mexico, some of
whom wound up in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. At present,
Attorney General Barr is considering the appointment of a special
prosecutor in a case involving $5 billion dollars in loans to
Saddam Hussein made by the Atlanta branch of Banca del Lavoro
prior to the Gulf War, the so-called Iraqgate scandal. The Banca
del Lavoro is indeed mentioned in the Torbitt Document,
"Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal" by William Torbitt,
which has circulated among Kennedy researchers for twenty years,
as is Ross Perot. That the Torbitt Document may have originated
in the office of Lloyd Bentsen, now named by Bill Clinton as
treasury secretary, as well as Bentsen's connection to Defense
Industrial Security Command--culprits in the assassination
according to the Torbitt Document--should leave the reader a long
pause to ruminate over the connections spanning the years.
     Back to Michael Riconoscuito: perhaps Don Ecker summed up
Riconoscuito's credibility best when he told Steamshovel, "If he
told me the sun came up it the morning and... 

To read the rest of this article and the others listed on the
contents page of Steamshovel Press #7, order the back issue. $5
post paid from Steamshovel Press, POB 23715, St. Louis, MO 63121

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