PROMIS stands for Prosecutors Management Information System. It was originally created by the Hamiltons’ company, called the Institute for Law and Social Research (INSLAW), to help law enforcement agencies track court cases and criminal offenders and was adopted by state and local prosecutors’ offices, including in cities like New York and Los Angeles.
In the mid-1970s, INSLAW was awarded a $10 million contract to install the PROMIS software in 94 Department of Justice offices before it was forced into bankruptcy and taken over by officials in the Justice Department working under Edwin Meese, Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General.
Hamilton believes that INSLAW was used by banks to enable NSA and the CIA to track wire transfers of money and letters of credit, and by the CIA to track dissidents and alleged troublemakers in an emergency preparedness program commissioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Then-CIA Director William Casey was the driving force for most of the unauthorized, copyright-infringing uses of INSLAW’s PROMIS, which was carried out by the CIA’s Division-D.
The PROMIS software was so valuable because it enabled collection of a vast amount of personal data on Americans, including NSA intercepts of bank and credit card transactions and the results of surveillance efforts by the FBI, CIA and other agencies.
Lockheed Martin engineers also got a hold of PROMIS and developed sophisticated software for the cockpits of some of its planes, like the F-117 stealth fighter which is invisible to radar.
Throughout the mid to late 1980s, the PROMIS software was sold to intelligence services worldwide by Dr. Earl W. Brian, a veteran of the Phoenix Program in Vietnam and former director of California’s Department of Health Care Services, with close connections to Meese.
Dr. Brian’s holding company, Biotech Capital Corporation, had 40 computer system contracts with U.S. intelligence agencies, and tried to pressure Hamilton into selling INSLAW.
According to various sources, Brian was involved in the “October Surprise” where the Reagan campaign paid the Iranians to delay the release of American hostages during the 1980 election to make incumbent Jimmy Carter look bad and help Reagan win the White House.
CIA whistleblower Michael Riconosciuto claimed that PROMIS software was Brian’s payment for participation in the “October Surprise” and other covert operations.
Riconosciuto told Unsolved Mysteries that Dr. Brian and other men involved in the PROMIS theft participated in the Iran-Contra affair and covert operations in Central America and the Middle East that involved illegal drugs and arms smuggling.