CIA Hackers vs. Vince Foster: Feeding Frenzy on the Net
- Daniel L. Brandt
NameBase NewsLine, No. 11, October-December 1995

In the opening scene of the movie The Net, released last summer, a government official tells his chauffeur to "take the Parkway" this time. At the park he puts a gun in his mouth and commits suicide. As the movie develops, a Bill Gates look-alike is encouraging everyone to install his "Gatekeeper" security software, recommended to avoid the mysterious computer glitches that are threatening important systems around the country.

But a Trojan horse is embedded in Gatekeeper that allows his people to secretly alter data on the computers that use it. The heroine, an innocent hacker-type recluse, downloads some software that could reveal the secret. Suddenly she discovers that she has a new identity, complete with a criminal record, and she's wanted by the police. It turns out later that the Vince Foster character in the beginning of the movie had his computer test altered to show incorrectly that he had AIDS. Thus the main opposition to the government's proposal to install Gatekeeper in all their agencies was conveniently eliminated.

Scene two, take one: hold on to your hat -- this time it's for real. A senior editor at Forbes, James R. Norman, is working on a story about Inslaw, Inc. He discovers that another senior editor has a father, Harry Wechsler, who is a former CIA officer and now heads a company called Boston Systematics. This connection leads to Israel, then from Israel back to the famous PROMIS software by Inslaw, then to a different Systematics, Inc. in Little Rock, a firm that sells banking software all over the world. Jackson Stephens was behind the Little Rock Systematics, and once tried to buy into the American end of BCCI.

This second Systematics uses the Rose Law Firm, and Vince Foster, according to Norman, is their liaison with the National Security Agency. This brings us back to PROMIS, which the NSA, through Systematics, is installing all over the world. PROMIS has a back door that is used by the CIA to shift secret funds to their proprietaries, and by the NSA to secretly monitor financial transactions.

Meanwhile, back at Langley, a small group of CIA hackers with a Cray finds Foster's name in a Mossad database. This database points them to Foster's Swiss bank account, where the hackers simulate a withdrawal and suck out $2.73 million. Foster is about to go to Switzerland again, but discovers that the account is empty. He finds out that he's under investigation for spying for Israel and gets depressed. Either he commits suicide or is murdered -- Norman doesn't know which.

The CIA hackers, who call themselves the "Fifth Column," proceed to clean out the offshore accounts of some 200 leading lights of the Republican and Democratic parties, for a total of more than $2 billion. All of this is unauthorized hacking, but it all goes back into the U.S. Treasury. Luckily for the hackers, the guilty parties aren't in a position to complain. Eventually Jim Norman is on the case, and Forbes is set to publish his story. At the last minute the story is spiked. Norman thinks he knows the reason: Caspar Weinberger, publisher emeritus at Forbes, is one of those who had his Swiss account emptied.

Over several months, Norman feeds the story by bits and pieces into an Internet newsgroup. J. Orlin Grabbe, a confederate of Norman's, contributes some new morsels during this period. One is that the NSA binders that Foster kept in Bernie Nussbaum's safe were presidential authentication codes for the use of nuclear weapons. Grabbe suggests that Israel, by getting this information from Foster, was able to become a virtual nuclear power by hacking their way into the U.S. arsenal. Norman is invited to leave Forbes in August. His "Fostergate" story that never ran in Forbes, plus a follow-up story on a key source of his (former CIA operative Charles S. Hayes), are published in the August and October issues of Media Bypass magazine.

While this was developing on the Internet, Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post wrote a page-one article (4 July 1995) that mentioned the Norman story and other Vince Foster theories. She added that Systematics, Inc. in Little Rock (now called ALLTEL) had previously denied every aspect of Norman's story and then hired a libel lawyer. And Richard Mellon Scaife was financing some of the effort behind the drive to open up the Foster investigation. For Schmidt and the Post, all this is evidence that conspiracy theorists are wacko.

Most of those who have been actively pushing the Foster case, such as Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Reed Irvine, are merely interested in showing that either Foster committed suicide and then the body was moved to the park, or he was murdered. Although it's true that Foster made trips to Switzerland on occasion, the theory that he was an Israeli spy is not considered credible by them.

Norman and Grabbe may have the best of intentions. But it's also possible that they are relying on disinformation sources. A friend of Grabbe's in this caper is Jack Wheeler, a right-wing adventurer who writes for "Strategic Investment," a newsletter with Scaife links that has been pushing the Foster matter. Wheeler considers himself one of the fathers of the "Reagan Doctrine," which he credits with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since 1966 he has been friends with Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a former Reagan speechwriter. During the 1980s, Wheeler supported all manner of anti-communist insurgencies, including RENAMO of Mozambique -- a brutal creation of South Africa's apartheid government. In one Internet post dated 8 July 1995, Grabbe writes the following: "I recalled the words of my friend Jack Wheeler, who told me: `We created a doctrine to do in the Soviet empire. And it worked. It's now time to do in the Washington empire.'" This suggests that one influence on Grabbe is the well-connected Wheeler, who may be motivated by an agenda.

If the Norman-Grabbe episode proves anything, it shows that it's inadvisable to deal with today's flood of information at face value. From both ends of the process -- the information producer with possible hidden agendas, and the Internet consumer seeking reinforcement for political prejudices -- the entire linkup is dicey at best. Moreover, some on the Internet hide behind anonymity. Both Norman (since early July) and Grabbe sign their names to their posts, but several of their boosters use first names only or even pseudonyms.

For the information age to work at all, the power of access it offers must be coupled with new responsibilities. Otherwise it will surely collapse of its own weight, with the little guy under all the rubble. There's more riding on this than a plot turn in a Hollywood movie.