Author : Harry Martin
Date : 03/29/91
Desc : Federal Corruption Series Part IV

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BANKRUPTCY COURT EXAMINES SOFTWARE ALLEGATIONS
AGAINST JUSTICE DEPARTMENT PIRATING
By Harry V. Martin
Fourth in a NEW SERIES
(c) Copyright Napa Sentinel
March 29, 1991
Reprinted with permission of the Napa Sentinel


If you own a VCR or rent or buy movies, you will be familiar with the
warning that appears on your screen that the film you are viewing is
protected by a copyright and that the Federal Bureau of Investigations
or Interpol can arrest you for copying the film. The warning is to
prevent "pirating" of someone else's copyrighted material.

But what's good for the goose is not always good for the gander. The
United States Justice Department stands accused of pirating copyrighted
material--having supplied it to the Canadian government, the Israeli
government and Iraqi government . . . and to the FBI, itself.

That is how deep the INSLAW computer software case has become. The
case started out when the Justice Department bought PROMIS, a
copyrighted software program that helps to track criminal cases
throughout the United States. When friends and associates of then
Attorney General Edwin Meese attempted to buy the software company,
INSLAW turned them down and then life was made miserable for INSLAW.
Within 90 days the Justice Department reneged on their contract with
INSLAW and refused to pay for the software program, even though it was
using it. The Justice Department is accused by federal judges of
attempting to bankrupt INSLAW and then hasten the bankruptcy court to
declare them insolvent. Instead, the courts ruled that the Justice
Department used "fraud, deceit and trickery" against INSLAW and awarded
the small computer software company $6.8 million in damages.

The case became deeper when friends of Meese began to sell the
program to foreign military establishments and the Justice Department
began to provide the copyrighted material to other U.S. government
agencies. A man who was once fired from INSLAW was put in charge of
INSLAW's payments--which were never forthcoming. Another Justice
Department official, who is now a Federal Judge in Northern California,
was a direct competitor to INSLAW in California. The Judge who made the
$6.8 million ruling lost his job. The attorney for the Justice
Department who fought against the Judge's ruling was promoted to the
Judge's vacant position. There have been wholesale changes and firings
at the Justice Department over the INSLAW case.

The Justice Department is now under investigation by a House
subcommittee and this committee is receiving many documents to support
the premise that the Justice Department has a skeleton in its closet
that stinks greater than Watergate.

But new documents emerging in the case demonstrate a wider scandal.
In an affidavit dated February 17, 1991, Ari Ben-Menashe describes his
12 year service for the Government of Israel in foreign intelligence
and provides an eyewitness account of a presentation to an Israeli
intelligence agency in 1987 in Tel Aviv, by Earl W. Brian of the United
States.

Brian is a close associate of Meese from his California days. Brian
and Meese were both in Ronald Reagan's California Cabinet when Reagan
was governor.

According to Ben-Menashe's affidavit, Brian stated in his presence
that he had acquired the property rights to the PROMIS computer
software and that as of 1987 "all U.S. intelligence agencies, including
the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and
the National Security Agency, were using the PROMIS computer software."
Ben-Menashe further states in his affidavit that Brian consummated a
sale of the PROMIS computer software to the Government of Israel in
1987.

He further claimed that Brian also sold the PROMIS computer software
to Iraqi Military Intelligence. According to Ben-Menashe's affidavit,
the Israeli intelligence officer learned of this sale from an
eyewitness who helped Brian broker the sale in his office in Santiago,
Chile--Carlos Carduen of Carduen Industries. Carduen has been a major
supplier to the Government of Iraq with weapons and munitions.

The Federal Government of Canada has admitted that INSLAW's PROMIS
software is currently operating in at least two federal departments,
including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Mounties are using the
program in 900 locations in Canada.

INSLAW never sold its software to Canada, Iraq, Israel, the Central
Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency. It also has not
been paid by the Justice Department for its use, despite the $6.8
million ruling in INSLAW's favor.

The Justice Department insists that the FBI is not using the PROMIS
program. Yet FBI Director William Sessions and Deputy Assistant
Director Kier Boyd, have made it clear that the FBI now is unable or
unwilling to provide assurances that pirated software is not included
in the case management information system used by FBI field offices.

And in a startling development, a man named Charles Hayes has
asserted that the U.S. government has pirated the PROMIS computer
program. The Justice Department has sued Hayes in the U.S. District
Court in Lexington, Kentucky, seeking to compel him to return copies of
computer software left on equipment Hayes' salvage business purchased
from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Lexington. Hayes has publicly
claimed that the salvaged equipment contained pirated copies of
INSLAW's PROMIS software.

One cover-up begets another cover-up? This is how Watergate spread.
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