Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / The Octopus Grows Tentacles: PROMIS, Maxwell, Mossad, and Epstein’s Network (Part 1)

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The Octopus Grows Tentacles: PROMIS, Maxwell, Mossad, and Epstein’s Network (Part 1) · The Vault: The Epstein Files

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  Speaker 1: What's up, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Epstein Chronicles. In this series, we're going to take a
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  Speaker 1: closer look at how the Promised software scandal of the
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  Speaker 1: eighties inter sex and connects with what we're seeing today
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  Speaker 1: with Jeffrey Epstein. At first glance, these may seem like
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  Speaker 1: two very different stories, one about a stolen computer program
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  Speaker 1: used by prosecutors, the other about a convicted sex offender
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  Speaker 1: with ties to some of the most powerful people in
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  Speaker 1: the world. But when you examine the details, some of
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  Speaker 1: the same patterns begin to emerge. Promise was more than
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  Speaker 1: just a piece of software. It became the center of
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  Speaker 1: a major controversy involving Department of Justice allegations of fraud
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  Speaker 1: and eventually claims that it had been modified and repurposed
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  Speaker 1: by intelligence services to spy on governments and financial systems
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  Speaker 1: around the globe, and one of the central figures allegedly
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  Speaker 1: was none other than Robert Maxwell, himself, the media tycoon
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  Speaker 1: and father of Glene Maxwell. His alleged role as distributor
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  Speaker 1: of the Compromise software has raised questions that remain unresolved
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  Speaker 1: to this day. Fast forward to the Epstein scandal and
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  Speaker 1: we see a similar set of questions, powerful institutions looking
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  Speaker 1: the other way, intelligence ties being whispered about but never
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  Speaker 1: fully confirmed, and a cover up narrative that seems designed
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  Speaker 1: to protect the very people who benefited from the operation.
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  Speaker 1: In both cases, we find the same hallmarks of intelligence tradecraft, fronts, leverage, secrecy,
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  Speaker 1: and the sudden silencing of individuals who might have revealed
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  Speaker 1: too much. So in this series, we're going to explore
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  Speaker 1: those parallels. We'll look at how PROMISE and EPSTEIN share
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  Speaker 1: structural similarities in the way power is maintained and how
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  Speaker 1: accountability is avoided, and by the end, hopefully you may
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  Speaker 1: see that these aren't isolated scandals at all, but part
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  Speaker 1: of a recurring pattern and how intelligence networks operate across
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  Speaker 1: the decades. The story begins with PROMISE, short for Prosecutors
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  Speaker 1: Management Information System. Developed in the nineteen seventies by Washington,
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  Speaker 1: DC based company called Inslaw Incorporated. PROMISE was designed to
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  Speaker 1: help prosecutors track criminal cases across complex dockets. At its core,
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  Speaker 1: the program was a case management tool that could link
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  Speaker 1: seemingly unrelated cases and defendants of powerful innovation for the time.
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  Speaker 1: By the early eighties, the US Department of Justice expressed
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  Speaker 1: strong interest, and Promise. Inslaw, run by former prosecutor Bill Hamilton,
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  Speaker 1: signed a contract to install the software in US attorney's
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  Speaker 1: offices nationwide, But almost from the start, tensions arose between
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  Speaker 1: Inslaw and the DOJ over payments, modifications, and ownership rights.
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  Speaker 1: Hamilton insisted that his company had developed an enhanced version
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  Speaker 1: of Promise with private funds, which meant the government would
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  Speaker 1: need to license it properly. The Justice Department, however, argued
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  Speaker 1: that it had rights to the software under federal contracts.
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  Speaker 1: This dispute escalated into a bitter feud that would spill
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  Speaker 1: into the courts and into congressional investigations. By the mid
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  Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, ins Law accused the DOJ of effectively stealing
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  Speaker 1: its software. A bankruptcy court judge later found that officials
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  Speaker 1: had engaged in trickery, fraud, and deceit in dealing within's law.
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  Speaker 1: The court's language was unusually strong, painting a picture of
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  Speaker 1: a government agency in muscling a small contractor out of
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  Speaker 1: its intellectual property. But the Promise scandal didn't stop at
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  Speaker 1: contract law. Soon allegations emerged that the stolen software had
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  Speaker 1: been modified by US intelligence agencies to include secret backdoors.
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  Speaker 1: These alleged backdoors allowed Americans by services to monitor foreign governments, banks,
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  Speaker 1: and corporations who thought that they were merely buying sophisticated
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  Speaker 1: case tracking tools. Stories spread that Promise had been sold
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  Speaker 1: or handed over to allies and adversaries alike, often without
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  Speaker 1: their knowledge of its hidden features. Israel was frequently mentioned
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  Speaker 1: in this context, some alleging that Israeli intelligence had distributed
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  Speaker 1: alter versions of Promise worldwide. The software, according to these accounts,
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  Speaker 1: became a trojan horse and global espionage. Adding to the
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  Speaker 1: intrigue were reports that versions of Promise had been installed
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  Speaker 1: in financial institutions. If true, this would have allowed intelligence
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  Speaker 1: services to track money flows across borders, offering insights into
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  Speaker 1: everything from arms deals to covert funding networks. For critics,
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  Speaker 1: this was less a business dispute than a global surveillance conspiracy.
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  Speaker 1: Throughout the late nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, investigative journalists
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  Speaker 1: dug into the story. Danny Cassilero, a freelance journalist, became
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  Speaker 1: the most infamous. He linked Promise to what he called
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  Speaker 1: the Octopus, a shadowy network of intelligence agencies, organized crime figures,
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  Speaker 1: and corrupt officials. Cassilero died in nineteen ninety one in
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  Speaker 1: a hotel bathtub under suspicious circumstances. His death officially ruled
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  Speaker 1: the suicide. Many, however, believed he had been silenced. Cassilero's
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  Speaker 1: death supercharged the promised narrative for conspiracy researchers. It was
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  Speaker 1: proof that the scandal wasn't just about software licensing, it
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  Speaker 1: was about control, surveillance and the silencing of inconvenient truths.
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  Speaker 1: His notes suggest that he believed Promise tied in to
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  Speaker 1: Iran contra, banking scandals, and even covert assassination programs. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: Congress began to take notice. Hearings were held, reports were written,
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  Speaker 1: and questions were asked about how the DOJ handled its
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  Speaker 1: dealings within law. While some findings criticized the government's conduct,
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  Speaker 1: others stopped short of endorsing the most explosive allegations. Still,
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  Speaker 1: the perception remained that something rotten had occurred. Meanwhile, ins
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  Speaker 1: Law fought for years in court. Though Hamilton scored some
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  Speaker 1: early victories Uphella, Court's later overturned rulings, leaving him without
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  Speaker 1: the vindication that he sought. The legal saga dragged on,
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  Speaker 1: consuming decades of his life and cementing Promise as a
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  Speaker 1: byword for David Verse Goliath battles with the federal government.
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  Speaker 1: For intelligence watchers, the heart of the scandal was whether
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  Speaker 1: Promise truly had been weaponized. The software's ability to cross
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  Speaker 1: reference data across multiple systems was revolutionary, and if implanted
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  Speaker 1: globally with the hidden back door, it could have provided
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  Speaker 1: unparalleled surveillance power. That possibility alone made the story enduring.
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  Speaker 1: Foreign intelligence services were reportedly caught on Some accounts claim
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  Speaker 1: that Canada, Britain, and even the Soviet Union became wary
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  Speaker 1: of Promise. Allegedly hackers and foreign governments tried to reverse
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  Speaker 1: engineer it or strip out its supposed surveillance hooks. Whether
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  Speaker 1: fact or rumor, the story illustrated the paranoia of the
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  Speaker 1: Lake Cole War, even within the US suspicion sworld. Some
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  Speaker 1: whistleblowers claimed that Promise had been used to track not
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  Speaker 1: just criminals, but political dissidents, journalists, and activists. If true,
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  Speaker 1: this would have represented a chilling expansion of government surveillance
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  Speaker 1: under the guise of case management. By the two thousands,
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  Speaker 1: Promise had largely faded from public consciousness, but it never
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  Speaker 1: entirely disappeared. It became a touchstone in discussions about surveillance
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  Speaker 1: technology long before Edward Snowden's NSAY revelations. For many, Promise
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  Speaker 1: was a prototype of software designed to look innocuous but
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  Speaker 1: function as a spy tool. The scandal also left scars
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  Speaker 1: on Inslaw and Hamilton. Despite decades of litigation and lobbying,
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  Speaker 1: he never fully recovered the company's footing. The story of
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  Speaker 1: Promise became a cautionary tell of how small innovators could
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  Speaker 1: be crushed when their technology intersected with national security interests searchers,
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  Speaker 1: Promise became part of a larger mythology. It was said
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  Speaker 1: to link everything from BCCI banking scandal to Iran contra,
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  Speaker 1: from covert arms deals to political assassinations. Whether or not
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  Speaker 1: those links were provable, Promise served as a narrative glue
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  Speaker 1: for an era of deep mistrust in the government. Critics meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: caution that much of Promised lore rests on circumstantial evidence,
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  Speaker 1: conflicting testimony, and speculative leaps. They argue that while the
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  Speaker 1: DOJ likely mishandled its contract within's law, the grand or
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  Speaker 1: espionage tales remain unproven. Still, the persistence of the story
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  Speaker 1: speaks to how plausible such tactics seemed during the Cold War,
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  Speaker 1: and Promise now occupies a strange space in history, part
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  Speaker 1: legal dispute, part espionage thriller, part conspiracy legend. Today, Promise
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  Speaker 1: is remembered less for its technical brilliance than for the
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  Speaker 1: scandal surrounding it, whether it was truly weaponized or not,
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  Speaker 1: the perception that it could have been as shape decades
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  Speaker 1: a suspicion about government software deals and surveillance. That suspicion
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  Speaker 1: has only deepened in the digital age. And so the
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  Speaker 1: Promised scandal lingers a ghost of the eighties, and one
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  Speaker 1: ghost from the eighties that looms is none other than
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  Speaker 1: Robert Maxwell, and this is where he allegedly enters the story. So,
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  Speaker 1: now what we're going to talk about in this section
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  Speaker 1: is from sources and from people that are in the know.
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  Speaker 1: So I just want to make clear that I don't
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  Speaker 1: have the receipts, but this is what people who were
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  Speaker 1: involved in this have to say, including somebody that was
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  Speaker 1: very very very high up in Israeli intelligence who gave
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  Speaker 1: a deposition or an Affidavid I should say, talking about
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  Speaker 1: this very thing. So I'm going to say allegedly here,
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  Speaker 1: and then I'm going to continue reading through the piece
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  Speaker 1: without saying allegedly. The story of Promise takes on an
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  Speaker 1: even darker and more labyrinthine dimension once israe Uel's Massad
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  Speaker 1: and the enigmatic figure of Robert Maxwell entered the frame.
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  Speaker 1: By the late eighties, rumors were already swirling that the
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  Speaker 1: software had already been spirited away from its American origins
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  Speaker 1: and modified abroad. In this version of events, Massad seized
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  Speaker 1: upon Promises cross reverencing power and inserted a hidden back door,
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  Speaker 1: turning the program into a weapon of surveillance far beyond
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  Speaker 1: anything Bill Hamilton of In's Law could have imagined. Robert Maxwell,
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  Speaker 1: the flamboyant and controversial British media mogul, soon emerged as
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  Speaker 1: a key character in this narrative. Known for his towering
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  Speaker 1: presence in Fleet Street and his tangled business empire, Maxwell
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  Speaker 1: was long suspected of intelligence ties. Some researchers insist he
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  Speaker 1: was not only an occasional asset, but a committed operative
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  Speaker 1: for the Masad, leveraging his media holdings and political influence
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  Speaker 1: to advance Israel's interests. When Promise entered the picture, Maxwell
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  Speaker 1: was perfectly positioned to become its global salesman. Robert Maxwell, publisher,
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  Speaker 1: deal maker and long time Israeli asset, was perfectly placed
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  Speaker 1: to become the salesman for this new version. He had
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  Speaker 1: deep relationships with governments, parliament, and security services. He could
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  Speaker 1: show up in Eastern Europe, Africa, or Latin America offering
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  Speaker 1: advanced Western software package without drawing suspicion. Behind the glossy brochures,
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  Speaker 1: Maxwell was acting as a MASAD cutout, seating a compromise
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  Speaker 1: program into the very infrastructure of other states. Now the
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  Speaker 1: operation was elegant. Instead of breaking into embassies or bribing informants,
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  Speaker 1: Massad can now simply watch through the back door of promise.
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  Speaker 1: Court systems, intelligence databases, financial transaction hubs. All of them
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  Speaker 1: became open books. Israeli and CIA analysts could see who
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  Speaker 1: was being prosecuted, which informants were being flipped, and which
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  Speaker 1: shell companies were moving arms money. Maxwell provided the front,
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  Speaker 1: MASAD and the SEA provided the technology, and together they
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  Speaker 1: created a surveillance empire hidden inside of a case management program.
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  Speaker 1: All right, folks, we're gonna wrap up episode one right here,
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  Speaker 1: and in the next episode we're gonna pick up where
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  Speaker 1: we left off. All of the information that goes with
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  Speaker 1: this episode can be found in the description box.