BEER (possible spoilers) -- PROMIS 2

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Some things regarding PROMIS that I feel are of general interest but 
which are only tangentially related to Pynchon/BE. Please see my 
previous postings for links to the quoted sources (Wired and Insight 
Magazine).


PROMIS has been linked to Iran-Contra, the October
Surprise allegations and also to Oliver North's CoG/FEMA activities 
whichfeature heavily in VL:

--Apparently, Israel was not the only country interested
in using PROMIS for internal security purposes. Lt. Col.
Oliver North also may have been using the program.
According to several intelligence community sources,
PROMIS was in use at a 6,100-square-foot command center
built on the sixth floor of the Justice Department.
According to both a contractor who helped design the
center and information disclosed during the Iran-Contra
hearings, Oliver North had a similar, but smaller, White
House operations room that was connected by computer link
to the DOJ's command center.

Using the computers in his command center, North tracked
dissidents and potential troublemakers within the United
States as part of a domestic emergency preparedness
program, commissioned under Reagan's Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA), according to sources and
published reports. Using PROMIS, sources point out, North
could have drawn up lists of anyone ever arrested for a
political protest, for example, or anyone who had ever
refused to pay their taxes. Compared to PROMIS, Richard
Nixon's enemies list or Sen. Joe McCarthy's blacklist look
downright crude. This operation was so sensitive that when
Rep. Jack Brooks asked North about it during the
Iran-Contra hearings, the hearing was immediately
suspended pending an executive (secret) conference. When
the hearings were reconvened, the issue of North's FEMA
dealings was dropped.--

(Wired, 1993)

Two articles took up the alleged link between PROMIS and
CoG preparations in 2008 and brought it up to date:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19871.htm

The original is here (pdf):

http://www.christopherketcham.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/The%20Last%20Roundup,%20Radar%20Magazine.pdf

http://www.salon.com/2008/07/23/new_churchcomm/

As has been mentioned before, CoG also turns up in BE when Ernie 
explains to Maxine that DARPA, and thus the internet,
was the product of CoG-planning (BE 419). With a view to the narrative 
present Ernie mentions NCIC (BE 420).


More interesting with regard to BE is the potential use of PROMIS for 
money laundering:

 From INSIGHT magazine, referring to the lead
investigators, one of whom was John Cohen, of a 1992 House
Judiciary Committee investigation of the Inslaw affair:

-- The two investigators explored the idea that PROMIS was
being used for illegal activities in the banking system.
According to Seymour, Cohen "didn't mince words. He told
me that he had a theory about why PROMIS was taken and
that it was because it could be modified to track money
laundering--and that it therefore could be modified to
control hundreds of accounts and move money invisibly
through the international banking system. (...) Cohen said
"what a lot of people don't realize is that there are two
banking systems, There's CHIPS and SWIFT, and the phrase
'Swift Chips' has been spread throughout this whole
investigation without a lot of people realizing what that
meant. They do $2 billion worth of banking transactions
per day and if one was able to move accounts through there
[undetected], you could move money invisibly around the
world.--

There seems to be no direct connection to PROMIS here either but the 
problem of moving "money invisibly around the world" is, of course, 
addressed in the novel:

  "(...) they tell me [hawala is] a way to move money around the world 
without SWIFT numbers  or bank fees or any of the hassle you get from 
Chase and them. (...) No paper trail, no regulation, no surveillance." 
(BE 81)

This is one of the things that PROMIS, er, promised to be able to do for 
the people who "misappropriated" it and perhaps eventually did.

Apart from the direct references in chapters 10 and 23, the PROMIS saga 
seems to tie in with various thematic concerns of BE. I am particularly 
interested in the issue of back doors to proprietary software and the 
Russian mob. I will try to find the time to address these subjects in my 
next posting.

Thomas






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