THE NORMAN THESIS

Recap and Update

January, 1996

For those who are tuning in late, here is "our story thus far":

Back around March 4th, 1995, Mr. Sherman Skolnick of the Citizens' Committee to Clean Up the Courts came out with a story about a company called Systematics and alleged high-tech spying being done on foreign banks. (This was covered in CN 4.22 and, so far as I can tell, Skolnick's phone message, Hotline News at 312- 731-1100, was first to break the story.)

Here is how Skolnick's story appeared in Conspiracy Nation:

A telephone company in Arkansas is called ALLTEL. They have a subsidiary called Systematics which is a proprietary espionage operation of the National Security Agency [NSA]. Developed was a highly refined version of the Inslaw software called PROMIS. Originally designed to keep track of the caseloads of federal prosecutors, it was adapted to be used by spy agencies to track people worldwide, by satellite. The software has a trapdoor" built into it. So, the NSA arranged to sell it or give it to supposedly friendly or other spy agencies: France, Sweden, Israel, and others. The "trapdoor" was a sort of "Trojan Horse", enabling U.S. espionage to spy on other spy shops. Systematics [allegedly] adapted it to be used through low-orbit satellites, to spy on the computers of central banks...

Perhaps a better word than "trapdoor" would be "backdoor". The software sold or given to the unsuspecting banks is said to have had a hidden "door" through which prying eyes could enter unannounced. This is worth emphasizing, because some have said it would be impossible for a hacker or group of hackers to get into, for example, a Swiss bank. What these critics are neglecting to factor in is this "backdoor" through which electronic burglars possessing the "key" could easily enter. This last has not, to my knowledge, been refuted.

The late White House aide Vince Foster is said to have had about $2.73 million stashed away in a Swiss bank account. CIA hackers, perhaps taking advantage of a "backdoor" in the bank's software, are said to have stumbled across not only Foster's hidden account but also hidden accounts belonging to members of Congress and other high government officials. This, it seems, is where these "public servants" were hiding bribe money they had illegally received.

But apparently it was feared that breaking such a huge scandal publicly would cause Grandpa and Grandma USA to fall out of their rocking chairs. Yet something had to be done. These congresspersons and others could not be allowed to get away with their crookedness. While the CIA hackers, known as the "Fifth Column", are said to have cleaned out the accounts of the offenders, still it was obvious that some punishment was in order. Then too, you can't just leave these bribe-takers in office -- what's to stop them from accepting more bribes?

So it is reported by several independent sources that these bribe-takers are being told to leave their jobs, or else have their alleged rotteness revealed. As former Forbes senior editor James R. Norman put it in the December 1995 issue of Media Bypass magazine (1-800-4-Bypass):

There has been an unusually large number of veteran congressmen and senators announcing their resignations, retirements or switching parties... The official explanation: It's no fun now that the Republicans control Congress.

But sources claim the real reason is that some of these departees have been quietly confronted with evidence that they took bribes or payoffs through Swiss or other offshore bank accounts. Rumor has it that about 30 current members of the House and Senate have been identified as having such foreign slush-fund accounts...

Richard L. Franklin, writing in his monthly newsletter, "Franklin's Focus" (Focus Press, 1820 Palisades Drive, Appleton, WI 54915), confirms the charges. He reports that he has checked with several of his sources and that, "as they say in the trade, the story now has legs." According to Franklin, a so-called "Angel of Death" is visiting the various congressional representatives and informing them that they have just 24 hours to announce their retirement. It is beyond dispute that a record number of Senators and Representatives are suddenly announcing their respective retirements from public office. What is more, the Norman article which appeared in the December 1995 Media Bypass is on record as predicting many of these retirements before they actually occurred. If Jim Norman's name was Jean Dixon or Irene Hughes, he would be everywhere on the talk shows by now, hailed for his amazing "psychic" abilities. Yet we hear nary a word of this remarkable story in our "free" press. To me, the very fact that this story is not being allowed into the public dialogue -- that, in itself, says something. Aren't the networks at least hungry for ratings? Why won't they draw in viewers with these intriguing and widely-believed allegations? Why too aren't members of Congress furiously demanding the opportunity to defend their impugned "honor"? The silence is deafening.

Reporting on the phenomena of the disappearing Congress critters, the Washington Times, National Weekly Edition (Jan. 8-14, 1996) declares that "Congress is going through a shakeout." There have been, says the Times, 49 announced retirements or resignations since the November 1994 elections. And, it adds, a dozen of them have bowed out just recently, since Thanksgiving. Well, Times, here are two more names to add to your "trickle that has grown into a stream" of retirements: Associated Press reports ("Clinger to Retire", Jan. 15, 1996) that Rep. William Clinger "said Monday he will leave Congress after serving 18 years." The AP story adds, as if it is an afterthought, that Rep. Pat Williams, Montana Democrat, announced retirement plans on Saturday, Jan. 13th. Clinger says, "It's probably time for me to move on." Says Williams, "he's homesick." The AP article also notes that the high number of congressional retirements is the "most in a century."

So that's the story thus far. Now, thanks to an east coast source whom I will call "Mr. Mercedes", I have received an audio tape of Jim Norman's recent appearance on New York radio station WBAI, marked on the cassette as having been January 10, 1996.

Says Mr. Norman: "This country is in a major political crisis." According to the ex-Forbes senior editor, it is "unfolding right before our eyes."

"For many years," he says, "[Vince Foster] had been a behind-the- scenes go-between between the NSA, the National Security Agency, and a company in Arkansas called Systematics -- a bank and data processing company now owned or controlled by a telephone conglomerate called ALLTEL... He may have had access to very high-level code, encryption [and] other kind of computer intelligence systems."

According to Norman, "More important than that: when [Foster] arrived in the White House he -- according to sworn testimony by his executive assistant, Deborah Gorham(sp?) -- somehow or other, he came to have possession of at least two, inch-thick ring binders from the NSA, from the White House offices, which my sources tell me would have been extremely sensitive code materials -- probably the codes, and more important than that, the protocols, by which the President authenticates himself when he calls up the Pentagon and says, 'Let's go nuke somebody.'"

"Plus the fact," adds the controversial but respected journalist, "that we have documented evidence of Foster making periodic, one-day trips to Geneva. Over every 6 or 8 months he had been making a one-day trip to Geneva. And multiple sources have confirmed that he had at least one, if not several, Swiss bank accounts."

Mr. Norman charges that Vince Foster, and Hillary Clinton, were both under surveillance for espionage at the time of Foster's so-called "suicide". Norman wonders, "Where would Foster have gotten access to these very sensitive documents [e.g. the ring binders with the authentication codes] within the White House?"

This last rings true when it is recalled that Foster and Mrs. Clinton had been widely reported as being lovers.

According to Mr. Norman, significant national security issues are lurking beneath the surface of the otherwise dropsical Whitewater hearings. "Vince Foster, as problematic as his death is, it's small potatoes compared to what we discovered... In fact, former intelligence people who have been involved in computer surveillance of foreign accounts have found hundreds of Swiss, [Grand] Cayman [and] other off-shore bank accounts, coded bank accounts, maintained on behalf of high-level U.S. political figures. Both parties. Many members of Congress. Elected officials. Appointed officials. Military officers. Intelligence community big-shots. Wall-streeters. Bankers."

"There's a massive scandal here, about to blow up. And, in fact, we're already starting to see it."

Here are further excerpts from the program:

JAMES NORMAN:
[Hillary] had actually been an attorney of record for Systematics which at the time was owned by the Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens, who tried to take over a Washington bank holding company on behalf of the BCCI [Bank of Credit and Commerce International] crowd and install Systematics as the data processing manager of that entire operation. Which is extremely curious, because BCCI itself was essentially a huge money- laundering, arms-finance and drug-finance/drug-money laundering operation.

In the process of going through all this, I actually came across what turned out to be a Swiss bank account number: it was a 10-digit, encrypted series of letters... When I turned it over to some of the intelligence sources who I'd been using on this story, they ran it through their system. And, actually a couple of months later, when I asked them, "Gee. Is it possible [that] Cap Weinberger might have money in these accounts?" They said, "Well, yeah. Don't you know? That account number you gave us was Cap's!" In fact, they mentioned that a relative of Howard Metzenbaum, former Senator from Ohio, was another co-signatory to that account; that Weinberger had multiple accounts -- not implausible to me at all.

I mean, here was Weinberger, Secretary of Defense throughout the Reagan era, during which we had one of the biggest defense build- ups in history. We also participated in the massive illicit arming of Iraq with high-technology weapons systems capabilities, plus the armaments themselves. It was an environment fertile for kickbacks. Payola. Corruption. And, in fact, Weinberger was eventually indicted by Iran-Contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh for lying to Congress, for failing to turn over his diaries. He was pardoned by George Bush just as Bush was leaving office. And so he never had to stand trial -- which was probably a merciful reprieve for Colin Powell, who was Weinberger's chief assistant at that time, chief advisor.

Weinberger had basically elevated Powell to a high-level advisory position, and Powell would have been effecting a lot of the orders that Weinberger was giving him -- about moving arms here, and drugs there.

And in fact... Weinberger's name has come up in connection with a Costa Rican legislative investigation, a two-volume report down there that identifies Weinberger, as well as Ollie North, our former Ambassador to Costa Rica, and various others as being personas non grata for helping facilitate a massive drug and arms operation which helped corrupt that country's society. If those people set foot down there again, they're getting arrested.

So suddenly it starts to make a lot of sense. And when you think in terms of Swiss bank accounts and massive amounts of money -- kickbacks -- it explains a lot of stuff that's going on right now.

What we're looking at here is massive, endemic, high-level corruption of the federal government. Bipartisan. Democrats and Republicans. It's been going on for years -- particularly since the early 1980s. The dollars involved have grown exponentially... I believe from arms and drugs trading. There is huge amounts of money sloshing around here. And it has corrupted the government in a fundamental way. The government cannot police itself. The normal enforcement mechanisms have been compromised: the Justice Department. The IRS. Customs. The intelligence community.

And what has happened is that there are a lot of good people in our government who have watched this happen, have been powerless to stop it -- their protests would go nowhere. There's been no effective investigation by anybody of this stuff. And finally, what had happened was, a small handful of guys -- they call themselves the Fifth Column. Retired intelligence people. One is a former CIA contractor. Another is a former National Security Agency person. I know they're assisted by a variety of other people of the intelligence community -- they were able to acquire their own used Cray supercomputer from Clark Air Force Base. It's apparently an air-cooled and generator-driven machine that can actually be packed into the back of I think what looks like a refrigerated semi-trailer truck with a satellite uplink. And they've got this thing rollin' around the country so it doesn't get nailed.

And so for the last 5 years, they have been downloading, systematically, tapping into foreign bank databases and pulling down reams and reams of account data.

[James Norman goes on to describe how this Fifth Column allegedly raided the secret bank accounts of corrupt government officials, transferring the money into U.S. government accounts.] For two years they've been raiding these accounts. Now they're into Phase II.... Phase I: "Take the marbles." Phase II: "Get them out of government."

Now, how do you do that? How do you get these people out of government in the most time-efficient and cost-efficient manner? ... Apparently they've been hand-delivering brown manila envelopes to people in Congress with actual copies of the transaction records of these Swiss and other off-shore accounts. The people get about a day to read these things, and then they get a call from one of these guys who I have referred to as the "Angel of Death". And then the elected official gets a choice: ... You can either announce your retirement immediately, or you can face immediate prosecution for tax evasion and various other crimes -- the minimum penalty for which, if you are convicted, is 10 years in prison.

Now when a congressman goes to prison, you lose your federal pension benefits. And the pensions on these people are significant. (For instance, Pat Schroeder, congresswoman from Colorado: relatively young, she's been there a long time... She's got, over her expected lifetime, more than 4 million bucks coming to her.) Now I think the implication here is that if you just shut up, go away, get out of the line of fire -- maybe you'll get lucky and get to keep your pension down the road. There's no guarantee that you won't be prosecuted.

But what's happened so far: all of these people have taken the retirement option.

And what you have seen: an unprecedented, record number of retirements of >powerful people from Congress. These are not "back benchers"! Since the end of the last election, until now, more than 50 Senators and Congressmen have announced their retirement. In fact, there were two more in just the last couple of days: a 30-year Republican from Indiana, and a two-term Democrat from Arkansas.

The excuses they give? Utterly bogus, frankly. "Oh, we can't stand the nasty politics." "Oh, I want to spend more time with my family." "Oh, it's just time to go." It strains credulity. It just does not make sense -- until you realize there's something else going on here.

CALLER #2:
...How is it exactly -- I remember when I heard this story first and I was talking to somebody about it and they said, "Well how can they possibly get into these bank accounts?"

DR. MICHIO KAKU [Host]:
O.K. Mr. Norman, how do you get into another person's bank account?

JAMES NORMAN:
Let me begin by saying that bank computer systems are nowhere near as secure as the banks would like you to believe... Granted, there are many security features built into bank communications and software systems. But in most large software systems there are what you call "service entrances" or "back doors" by which software maintenance people would get in routinely to fix "bugs" and so forth. If you take that concept, and then consider the idea that our intelligence agencies, which have an extremely high-priority collection of financial information, would somehow or other see to it that they have perhaps their own "back doors" plugged into these various bank data systems...

That's how I got onto the story, actually, was the proliferation of a customized version of what was called the PROMIS software. This was, it was designed for tracking legal cases, originally, [then] customized for use in tracking wire transfers, sold and promulgated around most of the world's banking system, had "back doors" in it that would allow -- if you knew where the "back door" was, it would allow you to basically dial into a computer system and not leave an audit trail: go in, snoop around, pull down information, and then leave.

DR. MICHIO KAKU:
I think the key thing, at least from my point of view, is that we're not dealing with high school "hackers" who, by trial and error, and guile, try to get into somebody's bank account. We're talking about former intelligence agents.

JAMES NORMAN:
Right. But let me point this out: a couple of months ago, Citibank, there were published stories about how a "hacker" in Russia, armed with no more than a personal computer, apparently had got into Citibank accounts and was doing, essentially, exactly the same thing. He was wire-transferring money out of corporate accounts... to banks in Argentina and Finland -- always in small amounts so that it would not set off the internal alarm system... What I am told is that somehow or other, this guy got hold of the "back door" address at Citibank and was able to use it.

CALLER #3:
Mr. Norman, outside of (radio station) WBAI, has word of this gone out?

JAMES NORMAN:
Actually, this story has become a classic case study in "guerrilla journalism". Because I think it's too hot for any mainstream media to deal with. I mean, it's just loaded with too many problems: first of all, it deals with a lot of background, "deep throat" kind of sources; the attribution, the documents are kind of non-existent at this point -- although I think they'll eventually come out. And you're dealing with a lot of big names and nobody really wants to rock the boat in a big-deal publication.

Media Bypass, this little magazine in Indiana, they came to me and asked me if they could run the story, because they had heard that Forbes [magazine] wouldn't run it; that the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and everybody else I'd talked to about it was scared of it. They [Media Bypass] managed to corroborate a key element of it themselves. One of their investigative reporters knew a guy who used to train IRS agents, who was talking with one of his former students who was assigned to surveil Vince Foster at the time he died. And the guy actually read him some of the surveillance report, off the computer screen, over the telephone.

And it's not that big of a secret, apparently, within the intelligence community. There was a massive counter-intelligence effort going on regarding Foster. It apparently began just after the '92 election, but before the inauguration in January '93. And for about the 6 months until he died, Foster was under pretty intense surveillance.

There's a French intelligence newsletter which has also corroborated the fact that Foster was under counter-intelligence surveillance at the time he died. There's, Sarah McClendon has written about it. (She's an old "war horse" Washington correspondent.)

But the story is just too... It's like the media cannot deal with this. And ultimately I think the media will be on trial as much as the government for not dealing with this story. Instead, we've got Media Bypass, we've got talk radio... And the Internet has actually become a rather successful outlet for this stuff. And in fact, it's amazing: it has brought a whole bunch of other people out of the woodwork, talking about this, including a lot of very literate computer people, financial people.

And I know, particularly, a former Wharton finance professor, Orlin Grabbe, who has posted a series of his own rather revealing exposes' on this stuff. [CN - Archived at ftp.shout.net pub/users/bigred/og] (All the Orlin Grabbe articles are echoed here.) He, after leaving Wharton, started his own software company, making software for pricing derivatives. And the intelligence community came to him! And said, "Hey. Can we use your company to help spy on brokerage houses and banks too? We want some way to insinuate our people into these computer rooms." That's what sent him up the wall. He said, "Holy smokes, we're dealin' with the Surveillance State here." And I think he became a renegade ever since.

Particularly, I think he's also angry about the government's tirade here on money laundering: it's used, basically, as a tax raising measure. I mean, they want to go after every little guy for any kind of cash transaction. But we have, you know, what is so outrageous about this is, you have a two-tier system: you have rampant money laundering, drug dealing and kickbacks for the privileged elite; and you have the government's boot on the neck of everybody else. {P}So there's significant grass-roots rage brewing over all this stuff, and it's gonna find an outlet somehow or other -- even if it's just WBAI, you and me!

DR. MICHIO KAKU:
O.K. Well, let's hope it gets beyond WBAI.

CALLER #5:
It's obvious that Iran-Contra never stopped. But my question is, driving along the interstate I noticed that "Next Six Exits, the NSA." Who are the people at the top of the NSA? Who runs the NSA? Who are they, where do they come from, and how far-reaching is their power?

JAMES NORMAN:
That's a good question. You call up Washington and they say, "NSA? 'No Such Agency.'" That's their nickname.

It's a huge bureaucracy. It's based at Fort Meade, Maryland. Their budget is bigger than the CIA and the FBI combined. Their job was originally signal surveillance.

CALLER #5:
Do we know who the people are, though?

JAMES NORMAN:
When you look it up... I tried to find out, actually, "Who runs the NSA?" They have a list in this two-inch-thick book on federal offices I've got. They merit about a two-inch thing that only has about six names associated with it. And I forget the top guy's name there. I think he's an Admiral who's on assignment to the NSA.

CALLER #5:
But aren't G.E. and Westinghouse and all the networks part of it?

JAMES NORMAN:
Well... Of course the government contracts out vast amounts of work to other countries. But the NSA, for sure, they do a lot of their work through "cut-outs" -- front companies. In fact, that's what this Systematics was -- which is now called ALLTEL Information Systems. (The CEO [Chief Executive Officer] of which just retired, mysteriously, at age 56, last week, and announced plans to go spend more time with his family.) That thing is about to blow up, because I think Systematics, in addition to helping the NSA plant "bugged" software in foreign banks, Systematics also functioned, I'm told (and this is corroborated by various good intelligence sources), for many years they functioned as sort of a "cyber bank" for covert funds.

CALLER #5:
What part did the major corporations play?

JAMES NORMAN:
Well... Let's put it this way: one of Inslaw's partners was AT&T. IBM was involved in this too. Apparently IBM does lots of business with the government and there's... I'm told, one of the applications of this PROMIS software is it was customized to track submarine sounds -- maritime sounds -- catalog the stuff, develop files on foreign ships... IBM was a prime contractor on that system.

[...contention for who will speak...]

CALLER #5:
Ed Meese and Nichols had actually taken away from the owner, and that's who this [unclear] sueing.

JAMES NORMAN:
Well, Inslaw is sueing the Justice Department for damages.

CALLER #5:
'Cuz the owner was a competitor with Nichols, who was a friend of Ed Meese. [CN -- Meese was Attorney General under President Reagan.] When they got to power, that was the deal: to try to get it away from him. Nichols, who worked for Wackenhut...

JAMES NORMAN:
Robert Booth Nichols, I think you're talkin' about, right?

CALLER #5:
And he was a friend of Ed Meese. And he was competing to put this system in for tracking criminals in Los Angeles. I believe the guy's name was "Campbell" or something like that, the one with the Inslaw...

JAMES NORMAN:
Bill Hamilton and his wife own Inslaw...
CALLER #5:
Hamilton! That's it.

JAMES NORMAN:
They... What happened was, the government was desperate to get hold of that source code so they could customize it and re-sell it, with the profits going into private pockets. Like cronies of Ed Meese. Particularly, there's a guy named Earl Brian who has this company called Hadron... Infotechnology. He owned UPI [United Press International] for awhile... He's actually under indictment in L.A. right now. He was [unclear] SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] charges for financial manipulation.

This stuff got customized and sold all over the place. Robert Maxwell was re-selling it, on behalf of the Israelis. Again: the object was to get this software planted into foreign intelligence agencies and particularly into foreign banks. It was basically a version of this software that went into Guatemala. Maxwell's front company sold this software to Guatemala, and basically it was used to help assassinate 30,000 civilians down there: catalogue 'em and find out who is an "enemy of the state" and...

CALLER #5:
We of the WBAI audience are quite familiar with this. But I'm much more interested in the players with the NSA who I think are really running the country.

JAMES NORMAN:
I think you're right. I wish I knew who the bad guys were.

DR. MICHIO KAKU:
Let me also say, for those of you who tuned in: the NSA [National Security Agency] is a very large organization whose budget is reputed to be something on the order of 10 times the size of the CIA budget. And they're, historically, involved with surveilling the Soviet Union. The CIA was mainly interested in spies on the ground and analyzing information. However it takes an enormous body simply to monitor what was happening in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, and that's where the NSA was set up. It's basically a surveillance organization.

However, many people claim that it has since taken a life of its own and it is also part of some kind of secret government.

JAMES NORMAN:
The CIA reports directly to the President. It's a civilian entity. The NSA reports to the Director of Central Intelligence through the Pentagon. It's essentially a military function. And, in fact, it was made up of various elements of the Army, Air Force and Navy; their intelligence, signal gathering entities ultimately became NSA-type entities.

NSA is also responsible for all of the government's activity in terms of encryption. And they're the guys who are behind all the Clipper chip and all that other kind of stuff.

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