The Mysterious 1980s Spy Software People Forgot About | Ian Carroll
Transcript
pro. So like the promise software and the Insaw affair is sort of the impetus for Castileo's original investigation. The journalists give people context who haven't seen the doc. So back in um statistic but there like back during the British Empire um when they were uh smuggling opium from India into China and then later the opium wars came up like I think I forget the stat but it was something like 20% of the British Empire's money was income from opium sales. huge percentage.
Like double check those numbers. Um that's it is in one of the Wikipedia pages about that whole thing, but obviously you need to go deeper to get like there's I'm sure there's var variance on the stats. Um but it like either way the British Empire made a fuckload of money off of opium back in their colonial days and that still is a story to this day. Yeah, it's especially when you get into like today with like what you brought up the Sackler stuff, it just it makes your stomach turn because again that's where you we've been talking about the corporate interests having deep ties to be able to get things done. Like there's a prime example right there.
And that one's personal to us, but like you go to, you know, Nicaragua and the Iran Contra scandal and the crack cocaine epidemic and if you're a black person, that's probably deeply personal to you, right? I didn't grow up around crack. What's the headline there? It was like, "The CIA investigated itself in the crack epidemic and found no wrongdoing." Yeah. Whoopsies. Gary Webb shot himself in the back of the head two times. I mean, it wasn't the back of that.
He shot himself in the head two times and it was a suicide. Yes. Nothing suspicious about that. He's the journalist that reported on it all. And there's a great documentary called Dark Alliance.
Um, same name as his book about it. Same name as the original reporting about it. Uh, Jeremy Rener, I think, starred in that, right? Great movie about it. uh very close to fact. Um and yeah, rest in peace, Gary Webb, because it's those types of journalists that push the narrative a little closer and a little closer.
Um do you see the uh Netflix documentary series called The Octopus Murders? Oh, did you talk to them? No. Um Danny talked to them, right? Super interesting documentary. Very well done. Did you also notice that they probably intentionally um I don't think Danny asked them about this. Talking about Danny Jones, by the way, great podcast from Great Podcaster.
Good dude. Um, they purposely, I assume, left out all of the myriad connections directly into the Epstein network that come up in that storyline. Well, why don't you bring them up right now? And well, there's a lot of them that I have not had the time to even fully tease out, but like the most obvious one is the promise software, right? The whole prom so like the promise software and the Insaw affair is sort of the impetus for Castileo's original investigation. The journalists give people context who haven't seen the doc. So back in um this is uh Promise Software was 90s or 80s, right? It was 90s 80s.
It was one of the first uh computer programs before we even had home computers. And it was this software that um was developed by this company named Inslaw, owned by this dude whose name I'm forgetting. Um that it was designed to be like a um a legal system catchall. So you is the first time when you could have a database of all the criminals and all the things they done and all your court cases and all your investigations. You kind of search things and find information back before computers were a thing.
Fix this whole paper records problem, right? And that's revolutionary. Changed the game for law enforcement and justice in all ways. And this private company owned by this dude invents it and is going to sell it. And there's this whole like weird attack where like the American government basically like legally attacks him until he just d like dies of lawfare and they steal the company from him, steal the the software from him and then it kind of gets passed around in dark in dark hands and Epstein is in that storyline a little bit but I don't have enough on the top of my head to really elucidate it. It is deeply explained.
Well, it is well covered in Whitney Webb's book um and in other places and he's involved, but uh Israel gets in it there a little bit. Um, and the CIA is in there a little bit and Israel actually bugged and you know maybe there are high level CIA guys involved in the bugging of the software too, but Israel bugged that software and then it was sold to all of these ally nations and they were then using it to spy on all the ally nations like their Trojan horse justice program software so that they can then see all of their databases and all that [ __ ] And it's one of the first examples of sort of like uh tech espionage. Yes. Um, and it ties in deeply to the whole Octopus murders case because Castillo got onto that investigation. He's this journalist back then and he start Well, I guess he was like 90s, right? Yeah.
I think he started looking at it in the '9s if I remember correctly. Please correct us in the comments section. I haven't seen the doc in like a year, but yeah. and he got on it and he got too deep because it goes all the way deep down into all these other directions into Iran Contra and and really what I think so I rewatched it recently with more context because every time you I learn every day and I always learn more when I rewatch these things when I reread things because um Rand Contra was a cocaine smuggling operation designed to fund the arms trafficking to the Contras right and they because they need the CIA these intelligence operations in general they need secret money in order to fund programs they're not supposed to have. And the arms trafficking they were doing, they weren't supposed to be doing that.
They weren't supposed to be funding the Contras. Um, and so they needed money and they were selling drugs to get it because that's money that you never had for arms you never sold, right? And so what I'm pretty sure that documentary elucidates is that it was a meth operation that was involved in the same funding. as in the the cocaine and the Contras was all South and Central America kind of stuff, but this meth operation, um, Michael Reconudo, there's allegations involved in that case that are mentioned in the documentary that talk about meth and about like drugs and stuff like that and and it's like out in the desert and stuff like that. And it it starts to imply to me when I rewatched it all, it's like it looked like that was an uncovering of another arm of the similar operation of selling drugs to fund that weapons system, black, whatever was going on there. And there are bodies that drop everywhere, too.
Tons of bodies that drop. Weird murders that never get solved, you know, covered up all all over the place. And Ricosto is sort of the main weirdo kind of you don't know who he is star of the show. Um, he's ky as hell in every direction. And it's cuz he's like deep in the middle of all this and knows what's going on.
And just to go back to the beginning so I understand the context, you're saying Epstein came into contact with the promise software. Epstein was deeply involved in the promise software. Um, well, deeply involved is probably an overstatement. Um, well, it would have been in the like I think it was the 80s. It's it's been a while since I've looked into Promise.
Um, I think it was late 80s or early 90s and it's and it's my understanding and I'm I am misremembering. Whitney will probably correct me on this. Um, is that he was a little early in his career when the promise software was happening, but he arises in that story. Um, and then that's just one element and I'm I don't I would need to do a dig and like make the video to have it deep in my memory, but there's a number of times that documentary when you're like, "Oh, that also ties a little bit to the Epstein network there and oh, that name comes up in the Epstein network there." And it's it's like um because all of these intelligence agencies so often are working together and all the organized crime units are so often working together that when you get deep into these kind of holes, you often start to see little windows out into other directions. And you never know like concretely what you're seeing.
You just know like this is the evidence in front of me and that implies some things. But like you would need to follow that and dig and do like that Castillo style journalism that is really dangerous to do to actually like you know get concrete about what really is going on there. But the shape is definitely um one that and it's just a documentary that's really fascinating, really well done. Everyone should watch it. Um and it's it's a shape of where it's like if you kind of know what you're seeing, it's like whoa.
But the more you know, the more you start to see other stuff that they, you know, touched on but didn't quite open up. Thank you guys for checking out this clip. If you haven't already subscribed, please subscribe and hit the like button on this video. It is a huge, huge help. And if you'd like to check out this clip's full podcast episode, that link is in the description below or right here.
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