Tag Archives: CIA

Founder of Company that Produced Software Later Stolen by CIA Believes Software Was Used to Develop Digital Surveillance in Afghanistan

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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.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/07/31/founder-of-company-that-produced-software-later-stolen-by-cia-believes-software-was-used-to-develop-digital-surveillance-in-afghanistan/

Operation Gladio: The CIA’s Secret Army In Europe

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Throughout Operation Gladio, the CIA relied heavily on the Vatican. According to “The Declassified History of American Intelligence Operations in Europe,” the CIA used sources in the Vatican to gather information not only about Italy, but about countries behind the Iron Curtain as well, such as Poland or Ukraine. Under James Jesus Angleton, the CIA created a “Vatican desk,” which reviewed reports sent to the Holy See from papal diplomats behind the Iron Curtain. Cardinal Domenico Tardini, one of the top aides to Pope Pius XXII and the head of the Foreign Section of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State was “one of the CIA’s top sources.”

In “Operation Gladio,” Paul L. Williams also details the extent to which the CIA funneled money through the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), also known as the Vatican Bank. The Vatican Bank keeps no records or paper trail of any kind. And as a result, “millions can be deposited into the IOR on a continuous basis and channeled into numbered Swiss bank accounts without the possibility of detection,” which is exactly what the CIA did. The Truman Administration funneled over $350 million into the Vatican Bank, and in 1948, the CIA “dumped $65 million of its black money into the Vatican Bank.”

It’s impossible to know exactly how much money the CIA channeled through the Vatican Bank, but the Christian Democratic Party alone received “more than $20 million in annual aid from the CIA.”

https://www.grunge.com/717106/operation-gladio-the-cias-secret-army-in-europe/

The Assassination of U.S. Secretary of Defense James Forrestal with David Martin

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After Truman’s reelection, Truman forced Forrestal to resign on March 28, 1949. Forrestal was then essentially placed under house arrest at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he was murdered in the early morning hours of May 22, 1949, shortly before his brother was expected to arrive to assist him in leaving the institution.

It was the National Security Act of 1947 that created the CIA—but the Agency’s powers were expanded dramatically a month after Forrestal’s assassination. The CIA Act of 1949 was passed by the House on March 7, 1949, by the Senate on May 27, 1949, reported and agreed to by the joint conference committee from June 2-7, and signed into law by President Truman on June 20, 1949. It authorized the CIA “to use confidential fiscal and administrative procedures” and exempted it from many of the usual limitations on the use of federal funds. The Act (Section 6) also exempted the CIA from having to disclose its “organization, functions, officials, titles, salaries, or numbers of personnel employed.” And it created a program called “PL-110” to handle defectors and other “essential aliens” outside normal immigration procedures, as well as give those persons cover stories and economic support.

Forrestal’s death is a case study in fake news and the use of the media to kill a man’s name, making it easier to kill the man. If you look at the policies that Forrestal argued for—against the creation of the state of Israel and for greater transparency regarding the black budget—we would be living in a different world today if he had remained as the Secretary of Defense. Indeed, it is more than possible that there is a direct connection between Forrestal’s death, the deaths of a series of politicians over the following two decades—including Senator Joseph McCarthy, President John Kennedy, and Senator Robert Kennedy—and the steady rise of “secret monies for secret armies” and funds disappearing from the U.S. Treasury.

https://solari.com/the-assassination-of-james-forrestal-with-david-martin/