Sidebar from NameBase NewsLine, No. 11, October-December 1995:

          CIA Hackers vs. Vince Foster: Feeding Frenzy on the Net

     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 Smith 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.