How a Mossad Spy Stole the U.S. Government's PROMIS Software | Chris Hansen & Zach Treitz

Transcript

what was so special about the promise software that made all these different nations around the world want to buy it I and I understand the logic of selling it to all these nations and creating a back door so that was created by Michael rudo right allegedly allegedly we always have to throw the a word in there I understand using that selling the software to everybody and creating a back door so you could go in there and gather all the information that they have but how did the promise software help them on the uh Cabazon reservation and specifically with the arm sales well that that's problematic because um I mean we've got done a we did a lot of reporting about what sort of the facilities the weapons development facilities we have the blueprints they never got built you know they did build a casino but the um the the tank ammunition shell plant that they wanted to build and the chemical and biological weapons manufacturing facilities that they wanted to build they never got built because probably because John Philip Nichols was hiring all these murders and uh wagen hunt got spooked and pulled out it got it got too hot because John Philip Nichols just couldn't help but kill people and and speaking of got too hot I mean in order to run those vax computers that that um that the promise software ran on these DEC vax mini computers there I don't think they could fit they could fit in this they would take up a huge portion of this room but you need like vacuum tube computers yeah they're they play we show them in the film they play like this m they run on this Magnetic Tape it's after real to real the real to real computers yeah yeah and you basically you need to like kind of raise floors you look at the deck V uh 11 11780 mhm you know basically there were some dusty old uh there was a a a card room and there were some trailers out out on this reservation look at these you know look at this room where look or type in 117 11/780 deck VX 11780 after at the after V even that's fine yeah 117 it's suggested right there boom we actually found a working one of these and filmed it which was sick in our Recreation we can't find any evidence that a these machines were on the reservation or B uh that they could have even supported that's a great sales sales envelope right there that one that says skip Walter if like yeah down it just looks cool I like their sales marketing stuff and even even Bill like all he as he went through factchecking that stuff that Michael had initially told him and you know talking to all these people and networking with all these people initially he was able to like corroborate everything Mike said about the kavison wagin hot and all these murders and all this stuff stuff that's actually like much more incriminating and crazy but he couldn't get nailed down the promise story being out there which which doesn't mean I mean we remain pretty open to it it also there's also other sort of stories about other avenues through Israel and all kinds of other things that that that promise was hacked by those guys but the story about Michael specifically doing it at cabison we've never been able to like nail that one down it's Dan Danny said many times throughout his notes possession of a secret is no guarantee of its truth I think I think that's a really important you know people tell you just because someone tells you in confidence or whatever tells you the secret and this like thing it's doesn't mean it's true right right and and I think some people might say well like well then what do you guys doing here like what's your documentary about like if you don't think some of this stuff is true it's like well what we found was that that might have been you know true or not there was this weapons like exploration thing going on out there there was a series of unsolved homicides that I think Christian does a pretty good job of laying out what actually happened and that they were for were people working with intelligence agencies and all the other stuff uh that that that Danny was on to turned out to be um pretty right on about how these intelligence networks work and people like you know how people like Robert Wood Nichols and Michael Rono the stuff that they were involved with that was true was equally if I would say not more chilling and strange and bizarre than just like what was going on with promise at at at Cabazon I think it's a really interesting open question of like well then what's the point of Michael saying all this stuff about promising Cabazon and why would he bother um and you know we don't truly get into like the the wise and where force of that but I guess in answer to your question like so there's the Mike Rono promise thing but I think it it is important to kind of like lay out Bill's vision and maybe not even Michael's vision of why promise right what what would it what because he's not Michael's not the only one like Ary Ben minashi another slightly slippery character isra spy we mentioned him in the show he has a whole other take on on what's going on with related but other take on what's going on with promise and Israeli intelligence and the sort of worldwide distribution of promise right and it's related it's essentially that um promise here's like the kind of canonical story right promise was developed to organize information uh files for the justice department that that this is this is true right in it's a database in an era when there's not that many similar programs right um you know sort of early to mid Computing when you're using giant $2 million machines like the deck VX right but that's like early 80s um by the time this is happening promise is a pretty powerful very powerful According to some definitely Bill Hamilton like 500,000 lines of code that can that that what's special about it is uh it can organize all this information but it can sort the information and it can like find patterns within information right so you're looking for if you're in the criminal system you're looking for uh what like you're sorting the basics of like the the judge on the case is the same and here's this defendant who's the same but then you can track other cases and be like oh there's a pattern of crime here here's how here's how this this criminals actually involved with all these other crimes and here's the here's like the kind of information Network and promise is good at sorting that and they one of it early findings found that 10% of police police detectives in DC closed 100% of 90% 90% of the cases that were closed in in in that so basically like 90% of the detectives didn't weren't able to take their cases from arrest to conviction only 10% of the uh DC detectives were able to do that and that was just that was unclear until they were able to take hard data it's called the super cop study so promise in outside of even our documentary we don't really get into the details on this but it was a powerful research tool right in addition to its work for the justice department I think Charles W who we interviewed who is who was one of the kind of I don't know Godfathers of this project who brought bill into the justice department to do it um wanted to do research so they could make the criminal you know ostensibly make the criminal justice system more just or more effective and and and find out patterns in law enforcement that would be better for victims for fi you know fi closing cases and things like that um and so they had these pretty cool big um papers that were written from research done on these massive databases of promis information so then it's like okay well then how does that come how do you get to go from that to a global surveillance Network right well the idea at least is according to people like Ary or Michel rudo and other people is well it's just a you know it's just a matter of what information you're throwing in there so if you're throwing in uh as a as a comparison say instead of law legal cases you're throwing in the phone bills and the water bills and the uh utility bills of people in um Palestine you could sort those names or you know or Jordan or whatever it was you could sort those names and find out oh this person has like a spike in their water bill for like the last 2 weeks maybe that means that more people are staying there maybe that means there's unreported people staying in there there's some sort of like operation going on in in like an Insurgent like you know in their minds like Insurgent uh essentially military campaign right right that that's happening within the population so um you can find patterns just depends on what you're looking for and those can be very you know valuable um the sort of next layer is then so say you you are Israel and you sell that to to Jordan and you're finding out you're seeing that you're then tapping into Jordan's information they're tracking this information and then you're pulling that information out and you're sorting it against what's going on in right Syria Palestine Egypt whatever and you're seeing even bigger picture keeping tabs on what's going on so Aries point that he says in interviews that we have is that this was like he's the Mad spy well he was IDF IDF okay but but is really intelligence operative that they just I mean man we should tell his story it's like there's so many amazing sort of like things that we we didn't even get into like he was he was separately one of the reasons that we know about Iran Contra he leaked he leaked um the the first article about Iran Contra was an article that or was based on information that he leaked um so it's like to a Lebanese news magazine I think right so um so you know years later he was arrested in 1990 or ' 89 or something like that for selling like10 three c130s that were illegally being sold and he gets arrested in in and tried in Manhattan he gets a public defender Israeli the Israel uh disavows him says that that he has nothing to do with the idea for Israeli intelligence and then he has and then he gets a bunch of letterhead and stuff that shows oh yeah he is working for Israeli intelligence they're like oh well he's just a low-level translator then he gets his passport and it's like as thick as the Bible full of like travel to North Korea travel to like Peru to like visit The Shining path you know it's like low-level translator who's going to 90 countries in this thing um and so he actually argued his way out with a public defender argued his way out of federal charges got off uh not guilty uh for illegal arms ship AR illegally shipping these these c130s and he's so annoyed he starts telling anyone who will listen to everything he knows about everything he knows right is his story and so so his point is that promise software was this like better than cheaper and better than satellites for gathering information on whatever Israeli intelligence wanted to know about in the early 80s early to mid 80s and the story of how it got to Israel um from basically inslaw or the doj was that this um this guy Dr Ben or who is an emissary from the ministry of Justice in Israel comes to um this is Bill Hamilton's perspective this is Bill Hamilton's Story the lead the president of insula I'm just throwing that out there comes to insula and uh basically wants like a show and tell he you got this new doj supporting you know prosecution software like let's maybe we W it over in Israel this this is in the early 80s this is before all the problems all the lawsuits and all that stuff Dr come he comes and kick the tires on on inslaw and promise and basically they you know spend whatever the day together and the guy uh the guy leaves he leaves and Bill never hears from him again at the ministry of justice and then and through the course of I think their lawsuits against the Department of Justice I believe somehow they get a document that shows that that the justice department did actually give Dr Ben or a copy of promise that he took back with him to Israel but then somehow Bill figures out that Dr Ben or Elliot Richardson the former Department the former Attorney General who's now Bill's lawyer fighting against the Department of Justice does this like photographic lineup or something something where he's like showing people in inlaw like pictures of people you might know and and one of them is a picture that Bill's like I know that guy that's Dr Benjamin or he came and looked at our software years ago and Elliot Richardson is like that's not Dr Benjamin or that's a guy named rafian who's a legendary Israeli mad spy who was part of the operation to was the in charge of the operation to get out of Argentina when they like brought him back for trial the Nazi back for trial like he's a he was called Rafi the stinker in in Israeli uh intelligence because he had been a uh some operation early on that he had done he had like go through the sewers or something and he got this moniker I think he was like a little dude who according to people who knew him was just a hard noos right-wing like tough As Nails you know we got his number from one of our friends in Israel and like you know we were a little bit we basically wanted to like really button up our knowledge supposedly late like years later supposedly Rafa etan claimed that the seizure and implementation of this basically this Israeli promised software operation um spy you know signals intelligence operation was like the greatest achievement that of Israeli intelligence during his tenure you know he told this to a journalist named Gordon Thomas who has a lot of you know just basic factual factual inaccuracies in in his books so it makes me like Wonder like what we're what's really going on cuz it's not vet it's like you know he says Danny ker died in 1990 it's just SL just sloppy you just as just as you're kind of skimming through you're just like that's wron mhm that's wrong right you start to doubt like it's like so did is it true that rafon took you aside and like said like don't turn turn the cameras off and like let's let me tell you my my greatest achievement which have it's like the only time that rafie tells this to any journalist like is is my theft of the promised software it's like what is he even going what is true what is not and that's part of the reason I think another one was just we're condensing so much that's part of the reason none of that the rafy Eon story did not end up in our documentary because it was just became too much of like wait what is real what is not like we have no way of verifying this but we did we got our friend in Israel and we we took likeo long too long we we didn't call him and he died like 2 months after we got his cell number felt so stupid we just didn't expect him to die you know right then [Music] yeah