BEER -- chapters 10 and 23 (possible spoilers) -- PROMIS 1.4

[Thomas Eckhardt]

When Maxine finally finds an opportunity to ask Avi about PROMIS, he at 
first appears relaxed:

"'Kind of an old story in the business. The scheming and counterscheming 
at Inslaw, the court cases, the FBI stealing it away, and so forth. A 
cash cow for Mossad, however. From what people tell me.'
'And the rumour about a backdoor...'
'There wasn’t one originally, but certain customers insisted, so the 
program got modified. More than once. In fact, it’s an ongoing 
evolution. Today’s version, you wouldn’t recognize it. Or so I’m told.'" 
(BE 248)

Avi is not fooling anyone with his "[f]rom what people tell me" and 
"[o]r so I'm told." He is involved with PROMIS, which in BE is about 
Israeli espionage against the US.

Also Avi -- or is it Pynchon? -- is being just a little sloppy here. 
There was no "scheming and counterscheming at Inslaw," as far as we 
know. The scheming took place in the DOJ and between Reagan 
administration officials and former officials like Ed Meese and Earl 
Brian and was directed against Inslaw.


*Highly sophisticated Israeli chips*

But what is it with Windust's

"couple of Israeli chips, highly sophisticated, which
Mossad have been known to install at the same time,
without necessarily informing the client. What these chips
do is scavenge information even while the computer is
turned off, hold it till the Ofeq satellite comes over,
then transmit everything out to it in a single data
burst." (BE 105)

Maxine asks Avi about these chips:

"'(...) somebody also told me about a computer chip, some Israeli 
vendor, maybe you’ve run across it, sits quietly in a customer’s machine 
absorbing data, from time to time transmitting what it’s gathered out to 
interested parties?'
Not that he jumped or anything, but his eyes have begun to roam the 
room. 'Elbit makes one that I know of.'"

And this is all that Avi is going to say about this.

Rafi Eitan mentioned computer chips to Gordon Thomas:

--According to Rafi Eitan, Israeli intelligence also developed a special 
microchip for installation on each computer on which the modified 
version of PROMIS operated, and this microchip enabled Israeli 
intelligence to subvert the security system of the computer
operating PROMIS so that Israeli intelligence could copy and download 
information about terrorists who were being tracked by the foreign 
governments.--

Gordon Thomas, "Affidavit"

But still no mention of chips that send out data even when the computer 
is turned off. As far as I can see, Michael C. Ruppert is the only 
source for the existence of this kind of chip. Ruppert refers to a 
source of his named Bill Tyree (a character who has his own convoluted 
back story, something to do with the CIA and drug trafficking, natch):

--Tyree recently told FTW that just before his death, he
had given McCoy information on "Elbit" flash memory chips,
allegedly designed at Kir Yat-Gat south of Tel Aviv. The
unique feature of the Elbit chips was that they worked on
ambient electricity in a computer. In other words, they
worked when the computer was turned off. When combined
with another newly developed chip, the "Petrie," which was
capable of storing up to six months worth of key strokes,
it was now possible to burst transmit all of a computer's
activity in the middle of the night to a nearby receiver -
say in a passing truck or even a low flying SIGINT
(Signals Intelligence) satellite. According to Tyree this
was the methodology used by Jonathan Pollard and the
Israeli Mossad to compromise many foreign embassies in
Washington.--

Michael C. Ruppert, "Promis"

Reliable or not, this is Pynchon's source.

Thomas
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l