The National Security Agency’s bizarre FOIA response to its involvement in the Inslaw affair and stolen PROMIS software highlight two significant problems that often arises in these types of internal investigations. The first is that the government’s bias and desire to clear itself can undermine the results of the investigation, and erode public faith. The second problem, which arises from the first, is that it indirectly encourages a culture of suspicion and occasionally outright conspiratorial thinking.

A recently unearthed Central Intelligence Agency memo highlights the difficulties with investigating the sprawling “Inslaw affair” and the case of the stolen PROMIS software, showing that the Agency was offered a copy of PROMIS as early as 1981.

Following a FOIA appeal, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has released ten new pages of their investigation into links between the PROMIS scandal, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and the mysterious death of Danny Casolaro. FOIA lawyers and experts are divided as to whether this new release implies the Bureau previously improperly cited the “open investigation” exemption, or whether it had stopped being applicable between the initial FOIA response and the appeal.

The official version of events surrounding Danny Casolaro’s death has been questioned since the beginning, but several recent revelations resulting from the release of government documents have undermined it. While there are still questions about Casolaro’s death, there are over a dozen reasons to doubt the official conclusions.

As part of the investigation into the death of journalist Danny Casolaro, the local police created a videotaped “reenactment” of his alleged suicide. The tape was used later to help an expert conclude the death was a suicide, and then seized along with the other evidence by the federal government. In response to a FOIA request for a copy of the tape, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has declared that it’s exempt from release - but won’t say why.

An examination of the original handwritten police notes about the death of journalist Danny Casolaro contradict the official claims and conclusions of the Justice Department and the Special Counsel investigation led by Judge John Bua. The police notes, originally seized by the federal government and allegedly still under seal, undermine the narrative that Danny Casolaro committed suicide, and appear to provide corroboration that someone took his briefcase containing many of his notes and papers at the time of his death.

From Soviet supersoldiers to shadowy networks, the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified history is often stranger than anything Snake’s encountered.

Justice Department documents recently released by the National Archives confirm what some Inslaw witnesses have been saying for decades: that a copy of PROMIS software was given to Israel.

According to the Department of Justice, not only is some material on the PROMIS affair being withheld to protect wiretap information, the FBI’s material is also being withheld to protect the Intelligence Community’s sources and methods, except where it was lost or destroyed as so often happens with files relating to the PROMIS scandal. In addition, the DOJ also positively affirmed that as of earlier this year, the FBI had an open investigation relating to PROMIS while hinting that part of it remains “pending” even now.

Over two decades after Danny Casolaro died while investigating the PROMIS affair, a recent FOIA response from the National Archives confirms that it truly is “the scandal that wouldn’t die.” Where a previous release saw only 4% of the total redacted and nothing withheld in full, this release sees 23% of the pages redacted or withheld in full. The letter from the Archives’ suggests that the difference is due to the presence of wiretap information in the Casolaro investigation, a fact which has been previously undisclosed by the government.

The Department of Justice appears to have retroactively declared that 98% of the FBI file on the journalist Danny Casolaro was and still is missing, despite the FBI seeming to say they had found it.

Sir Robert Maxwell is mostly remembered as the Czech-born British media mogul who owned the Daily Mirror and was a Member of Parliament. Less remembered is that he was an alleged spy for both the U.K. and Israel, and was accused of ties to the Mossad abduction of Mordechai Vanunu - accusations which he denied shortly before his apparent suicide. All but forgotten, however, are his alleged ties to the PROMIS affair, thanks in no small part to the FBI withdrawing his file from public view.

As the FBI file show, the PROMIS case was not only far reaching, with ties to corruption, murder, and Iran-Contra, but purposely obstructed. While at least some allegations were confirmed by sources and documentation, others were blocked in their entirety - with critical evidence being lost and destroyed by both Congress and the FBI.

The PROMIS affair, once labelled ‘the scandal that wouldn’t die,’ lives on according to a recent FBI FOIA response. The affair centered around the government’s theft of the PROMIS software, a forerunner to the infamous PRISM, and the far-reaching fallout which allegedly included everything from fraud, to covert operations and surveillance, to Danny Casolaro’s mysterious death, and remains the subject of an investigation decades after the Department of Justice declared the matter officially closed.