NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/8305

Text File | 1992-11-11 | 7.8 KB | 158 lines

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Path: sparky!uunet!gumby!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
From: [e-mail] (John DiNardo)
Subject: Part XVII, The Casolaro Murder --> The Feds' Theft of Inslaw Software
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Organization: The Turing Project, Charlottesville Virginia.
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 22:12:27 GMT
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        I made the following transcript from a tape recording
        of a broadcast by Pacifica Radio Network station
               WBAI-FM (99.5)
               505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
               New York, NY 10018       [phone]

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
                        (continuation)
PAUL DeRIENZO:
This is Bill Hamilton, the developer of the PROMIS software, which
was marketed by Inslaw and then stolen, according to a bankruptcy
court judge, from Inslaw.

BILL HAMILTON:
Inslaw has software that it manufactures for case management,
case tracking and workflow management in a professional office.
One type of that software is called PROMIS and it is for prosecution
management information systems in public prosecution agencies.

The U.S. Department of Justice contracted with Inslaw, in 1982,
for ten million dollars, to install a 1970's version of PROMIS,
that we had created, in the twenty largest U.S. Attorneys' offices.
In 1983, the Justice Department modified the contract to replace
the 1970's version with a 1980's version. That meant that the
Justice Department would have to pay Inslaw license fees because
they had no right, under the contract, to the 1980's version.

As soon as they took delivery of the 1980's version, however, the
Justice Department reneged on the contractual promise to pay us the
license fees, and instead, started to refuse to pay us the bills
for the services we were performing. They withheld payments for
two million dollars of services and drove us into Chapter Eleven
bankruptcy. As soon as we went into Chapter Eleven bankruptcy,
the Justice Department launched a covert effort to convert Inslaw
from Chapter Eleven bankruptcy to Chapter Seven bankruptcy, which
means complete liquidation.

We sued the Department of Justice in Federal bankruptcy court,
and after three weeks of trial, the court ruled that officials of
the Justice Department "stole" forty-four copies of the 1980's
version of PROMIS -- the proprietary version owned by Inslaw --
"through trickery, fraud and deceit", and then tried covertly to
drive Inslaw out of business so that Inslaw could not seek legal
redress in the courts.

PAUL DeRIENZO
Some of these reports said that copies of the software wound up in
other places besides the Justice Department -- in other countries.

BILL HAMILTON:
We have been told, including by people who have been willing to
give us sworn affidavits which we submitted in U.S. District
Court this year (because they only came forward this year),
that what we had been litigating was only the tip of the iceberg;
that what they really had done with the software, in addition to
not paying us for the copies that they put into the U.S. Attorneys'
offices, is they copied it and gave it to private sector friends
of Ronald Reagan and Ed Meese, so that those friends could sell
it to intelligence and law enforcement agencies of countries all
over the world. Our software has been illegally sold to Iraq,
Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, France, Germany,
Great Britain, Canada, South Korea, Japan. Supposedly, as many as
eighty-eight countries were induced to purchase our software by
people who had no right to sell it; who were, themselves, supported
in their illegal efforts by the United States Government in the
White House.

PAUL DeRIENZO:
Could you go into the story of the Hadron Corporation's coming
forward to offer to buy, or in some way, to try and get that
software from you at an early stage in this?

BILL HAMILTON:
The contracting officer at the Justice Department, Peter Videnieks
whom, we have since learned, had a preexisting relationship with
Hadron in that, before the Justice Department hired him as the
contracting officer for the Government in the Inslaw contract, he
had been Hadron's contracting officer. He had actually been the
U.S. Customs Service contracting officer with Hadron for several
contracts that Hadron had at the U.S. Customs Service.

On April 11, 1983, Videnieks -- the guy we're talking about --
modified our contract, as I was describing to you, so that he
could take delivery of the 1980's version of the software.
Approximately one week later, the chairman of Hadron telephoned
me and told me that they had in his company the political contacts
with Edwin Meese and the White House that would enable Hadron to
obtain the Federal Government's case-management software business,
but that they needed to acquire title to the PROMIS software first.
And for that reason, they were going to purchase our company.
I told them I was not interested in selling Inslaw, and the
chairman at the time, whose name was Dominick Leiti, said:
"We have ways of making you sell."

In May of `83, Peter Videnieks -- the guy with the preexisting,
although then-unknown, relationship with Hadron -- started
withholding the payments to Inslaw until he could drive us into
Chapter Eleven bankruptcy.

Lowell Jensen, who was the elected District Attorney of Alameda
County, California -- his office developed a case-tracking system
called DALITE. And Jensen was quite interested in promoting that
software for use among the fifty-eight county district attorneys'
offices in California. In 1974, Inslaw defeated Jensen's proposal
for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, and
evidently, Jensen bore a grudge after that for having lost out to
Inslaw in Los Angeles County which has the biggest district
attorney's office in California.

When Reagan was elected, Reagan appointed Jensen to head the
Criminal Division in Washington in the Justice Department. And
then when Meese became attorney-general in `85, Meese elevated
Jensen to his deputy to become deputy attorney-general. Jensen
played a very important role -- the bankruptcy court found --
in allowing the misconduct against Inslaw to go on and in
declining to stop it, even though he was contacted repeatedly by
lawyers on behalf of Inslaw and asked to intervene to stop the
misconduct. He never did a thing to stop it! In our investigation,
we have been told that Jensen not only did nothing to stop the
misconduct, but that he was in charge, while heading the Criminal
Division, of orchestrating the effort to drive Inslaw out of
business, so that the Justice Department -- once Meese became
Attorney-General -- could award the PROMIS software business to
Earl Brian and other friends of Reagan and Bush.
                      (to be continued)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

     This is one of countless stories unveiling the deeply corrupted
     and subverted state of our theoretically democratic Government.
     This story makes disgustingly obvious the fact that patriotism
     is not the waving of flags, the tying of yellow ribbons and the
     mindless support of the Government, just because it happens to be ours.
     You don't support cancer just because you happen to have it.
     Patriotism is telling the truth to the people of our country
     in order that they may unite to conquer the anti-democratic
     cancer that is gradually destroying ours and our children's
     freedom. So please post the installments of this ongoing series
     to other bulletin boards, and post hardcopies in public places,
     both on and off campus.  That would be a truly patriotic deed.

       John DiNardo