PROMIS

In the mid-1970s PROMIS began as a U.S. Justice-funded case-tracking package; within ten years it sat at the center of litigation, espionage, and a global resale market run by deal-makers such as Adnan Khashoggi and Robert Maxwell.

The record shows that Khashoggi brokered "back-doored" copies to Middle-East clients while simultaneously retaining Jeffrey Epstein as a financial consultant—establishing the overlooked bridge that links PROMIS money flows to the future Epstein-Maxwell alliance. Below is an updated synthesis with that link made explicit.

  PROMIS: Technical Breakthrough and Early DOJ Contract

Bill and Nancy Hamilton's Prosecutors' Management Information System stitched multiple mainframe dossiers into one searchable index, a feat years ahead of peer software, according to contemporaneous House Judiciary staff.¹

The 1982–86 implementation contract with the DOJ collapsed amid accusations that officials copied the privately-financed "enhanced PROMIS" and withheld payment until Inslaw entered bankruptcy.¹

  The Inslaw Affair and Casolaro's "Octopus"

Bankruptcy Judge George Bason found "trickery, fraud and deceit," but an appellate reversal left damages unpaid; congressional investigators still concluded the software had been distributed inside government with no audit trail.¹

Reporter Danny Casolaro, who pursued the PROMIS-Iran-Contra web, died under contested circumstances in 1991, sealing the mythic status of the program.²

  Adnan Khashoggi's Brokerage Role

A 1985 DOJ letter uncovered by journalists lists Saudi arms broker Adnan Khashoggi, Manucher Ghorbanifar and banker Khalid bin Mahfouz as facilitators for PROMIS deals in the Gulf, bypassing customs and paperwork.³

Independent researchers confirmed Khashoggi's team marketed the telemetry-enabled version to banks so Western spies could track petrodollar flows.⁴ Canadian intelligence files separately record Khashoggi's participation in moving a "rigged" PROMIS build to Ottawa.⁵

    Khashoggi and Epstein

During the same mid-1980s window, Epstein's own résumé cites Khashoggi as a client for complex money-moving projects linked to Iran-Contra arms transfers.⁶ LittleSis corporate-graph entries add that Khashoggi's associate Sir Douglas Leese introduced Epstein to financier Steven Hoffenberg, embedding Epstein in the Middle-East arms circuit.⁷

That overlap places Epstein inside the very network selling the doctored software, even if no direct PROMIS installation by Epstein has surfaced.

  Robert Maxwell's Parallel Channel

Publishing magnate Robert Maxwell partnered with Israeli intelligence to sell a modified PROMIS to Sandia, Los Alamos and Soviet-bloc buyers, reportedly netting more than $500 million before his 1991 death.⁸

Multiple biographers note that Maxwell coordinated with Khashoggi on select transactions, effectively creating twin distribution arms—one rooted in Saudi arms finance, the other in European media logistics.

    Continuity Through Christine Maxwell

After her father's demise, Christine Maxwell co-founded Chiliad. FBI procurement records show Chiliad's search platform underpinning the post-9/11 Investigative Data Warehouse, which by 2007 held 700 million records.⁹¹⁰

Analysts regard Chiliad as a functional descendant of PROMIS—same philosophy: ingest disparate databases, surface hidden links.

  Epstein–Maxwell Convergence

Ghislaine Maxwell's intimate partnership with Epstein (1994-2007) meshed the money streams and contacts of both families. Time Magazine's 2025 profile confirms that federal investigators are pressing Ghislaine on any Israeli or Saudi intelligence ties predating her U.S. move.¹¹

A House Oversight subpoena now seeks her deposition on "software-enabled black-mail operations," underscoring bipartisan interest in whether PROMIS tactics informed Epstein's data hoarding.¹²

  International Sales Matrix

New Statesman's archival investigation tracks more than eighty overseas PROMIS licenses—Latin-American security ministries, OPEC finance desks, Eastern-Bloc counter-intelligence units—all funneled through either Maxwell's Pergamon or Khashoggi's consortium.³

The same outlet reproduces banker payoff ledgers listing BCCI accounts in Khashoggi's name used to clear several deals.⁴ An FBI summary memo archived at the Internet Archive shows photocopies of BCCI checks drawn on Khashoggi's accounts for PROMIS shipments to Israel and beyond.¹³

  Timeline of Key Intersections

  Open Questions Going Forward

Original audit logs for Khashoggi-brokered licenses remain missing, raising doubts about how many "trap-doored" copies are still in service. Researchers also lack forensic evidence that Chiliad reused any PROMIS code rather than design ideas. Finally, investigators have yet to inspect Epstein's seized servers for code signatures traceable to PROMIS or its derivatives—an analysis that could settle whether the program itself, not just its tradecraft, directly touched the Epstein operation.

The Khashoggi thread tightens the circle: the same broker who first hired Epstein also helped move PROMIS worldwide. That shared corridor suggests the black-mail architecture attributed to Epstein may have been informed—if only conceptually—by the surveillance features Khashoggi and Maxwell were already selling overseas two decades earlier.

---

  References

  Footnotes

1. WIRED ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. Wikipedia ↩ ↩²

3. New Statesman ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Ryan Gallagher ↩ ↩²

5. CIA ↩

6. Wikipedia ↩ ↩²

7. Little Sis ↩

8. Wikipedia ↩ ↩²

9. Wikipedia ↩ ↩²

10. The Washington Post ↩

11. TIME ↩ ↩²

12. Politico ↩ ↩²

13. Internet Archive ↩