Sorry I got distracted by alcohol.
Ok, p. 36
a company Robert Maxwell acquired was Degem Computers, a software manufacturing company in Tel Aviv. Mostly sold its programs in Central and Southern
America. Degem provided cover for kidon, a term for Mossad operatives skilled in wet work to look like accidents, etc. Their travel docs would
identify them as Degem employees.
p. 37-38
Mogilevich ties to Maxwell, amazingly. Maxwell arranged for Mogilevich to enter Western financial world in 1988, when Bank of New York had begun
aggressive preparations to step into the "post-Communist financial world"
Israel arranged for Mogilevich Israel passport and for 23 of his gang members, yet others such as
Edmund Safra, required no such documentation.
Safra dined with Maxwell on board the Lady Ghislaine yacht when it was berthed outside Safra's home in Monte Carlo
By 1991, the year of his death, "investors included the heads of the Russian mafiya, who had positioned themselves for the imminent collapse of the
Soviet Union." One such name, Mogilevich, had invested in Mogilevich "because they believed it would make it easier to run their affairs including
whole-scale drug running, money laundering, trafficking in humans, and gun running.
Side note: I believe Edmund Safra is referenced in that 9/11 2008 doc and also tied to Marc Rich but that's in my head, so I'll need to check if I'm
confusing names.
p. 39-40
Maxwell purchased Lady Ghislaine yacht from Adnan Khashoggi's brother for $12 mil. Has 5 decks, private jacuzzi, gym
p. 54
It was in the USA that Rafi Eitan planned to launch an intelligence assault on that most powerful of Israel allies, the United States of
America.
It would be an opportunity to show that, while Mossad was no longer a beneficiary to his skills, LAKAM had become a serious player in the intelligence
world. The scientific journals published by Robert Maxwell had convinced Eitan that America was the most advanced scientific community in the globe.
For LAKAM to obtain even some of the data would be a tremendous coup.
Of particular interest to Rafi Eitan was a report on a piece of software from one of LAKAM's operatives in the United States. It was called Promis.
More formally it was known as the Prosecutor's Management Information Systems.
12/19/82 - Eitan flew to US as Dr. Benjamin Orr and that night learned more
- Promis had a staggering 570k lines of code
- it had ability to integrate innumerable databases without requiring any reprogramming
Paraphrasing:
Eitan quickly grasped Promis could convert blind data into information, which in the intelligence community is equal to power. "It could do far more
than it had originally been designed for, a device capable of monitoring intelligence operations, agents, and targets."
p.58
By Feb 1983, "Dr. Ben Orr" who was really Rafi Eitan was given a presentation of Promis by Bill Hamilton, Inslaw owner. Given tour of offices where
Enhanced Promis had been created - "chip by chip, microcircuit by microcircuit"
The software went back to Israel with him
p.61 - Still early 1983
Team of former LAKAM programmers deconstructed the Promis program, rearranging its various components, adding several new elements
Even intelligence operatives who knew little more about computer technology beyond which keys to tap, would, using Promis, be able to access
information far more comprehensive than they could ever carry in their heads. A Promis disc could fit a laptop computer and choose from myriad
alternatives the logical one. Promis could make millions of decisions in the blink of an eyelid. It would eliminate the need for deductive reasoning
because there were too many correct but irrelevant matters to take simultaneously into account for human reasoning alone to suffice. Promis could be
programmed to eliminate all superflous lines of inquiry and amass and correlate data at a speed and scale beyond human capability.
The programmers told Eitan there was one final item that needed to be added to the new version of Promis. It required a "trapdoor" - a microchip
that would allow Eitan to know what information was being tracked by any purchaser of the system. In theory he could sit in Tel Aviv and keep tabs on
the world.
Eitan was cautioned that if they installed the trapdoor it could be traced back to them. In the hostile climate prevailing towards LAKAM, that could
cause a problem. They suggested Rafi should use his contacts to find a suitable computer expert outside Israel who could install the microchip.
p.62
Eitan reached out to Ari Ben-Menashe. He needed Ari to find him a computer expert who could insert the microchip and guarantee- "that is crucial, an
absolute guarantee" - that it would never be discovered.
"It must be the perfect self-destruct" if software were ever completely deconstructed
p.64-65
Ari Ben-Menashe went to Yehuda Ben-Hanan who owned small computer company in California. The microchip for the trapdoor was made.
Then Eitan reached out to Dr. Earl Brian. He had learned Brian was ruthlessly ambitious and had been in Vietnam coincidentally when Bill Hamilton
(Inslaw owner) was creating Vietnamese-English dictionary. Brian was involved in Vietnam covert ops. Both Hamilton and Brian ended up in Washington.
Eitan had noted Brian's travels under various aliases coming and going from the White House. Eitan also knew Brian had an open door to Justice Dept.
run by Edwin Meese
Brian had already launched Hadron company, with its sole asset being a copy of Promis.
Janos Paztor, a freelance market analyst Brian recently met in NY became CEO
Ira Gurston Rosenfeld of Nesbitt-Thompson became the guy to find funding
p.66
RCMP - Royal Canadian Mounted Police became Hadron's first client, agreeing to test it in 26 of their field offices across Canada. RCMP field office
testing was already underway using Israel version of Promis when Eitan contacted Dr. Earl Brian and had him flown to Israel
Eitan checked what he already knew against what Brian was telling him about his 30 contracts of Brian's US version of Promis, many of them US intel
agencies incl. the CIA
p.67
NSA was instructed to install Promis in all major wire-transfer clearing houses in the US and Europe, incl. the Clearing House Interbank Payment
System in NY (this would be SWIFT and CHIPS) in order "to penetrate banks to combat money-laundering and other criminal activities, and illegal sales
of high technology to Soviet Union
Within a month of the Eitan-Brian meeting in Israel, Brian had arranged for Hadron programmers to install Eitan's version of Promis.
I'll try to add more this week. I grew bored of the Global Octopus control book but I'll try to get back to it at some point when I can.