The PROMIS software scandal is a labyrinthine tale of high-stakes espionage that transformed a domestic legal battle into a global surveillance operation. At its heart is the allegation that the U.S. Department of Justice misappropriated a revolutionary case-management tool from Inslaw Inc., only for the NSA and Israeli Mossad to modify it with a secret "trapdoor". This backdoor supposedly allowed intelligence agencies to remotely siphon data from any foreign government that installed the software, effectively turning their national security infrastructure into a digital Trojan Horse. From the mysterious death of journalist Danny Casolaro—who was found in a hotel bathtub while investigating a "shadow government" he called "The Octopus"—to the role of media mogul Robert Maxwell as the ultimate salesman for bugged software to the KGB and China, we explore how a single piece of code may have become the most powerful spying tool of the Cold War.

00:00 Introduction and Background