Such was enough to get me googling, and after some research, I'm inclined to say that, NO, Saddam and Osama did not have access to a program that enabled them to monitor our intel gathering efforts. If they did have a copy of PROMIS (a decades old piece of software written in COBOL), it certainly wouldn't have done them much good. This is pretty much the opinion of Scott Jordan of the Sierra Times: "The Puzzling Persistence of PROMIS"

So this whole tale depends on the wild notion of Saddam et fils taking clandestine possession of a piece of antediluvian software with no connectivity, no support of recent hardware, no compatibility with recent operating systems or network architectures, probably no graphics and with an obscure text-oriented user interface, running on obsolete computers whose makers stopped supporting them years ago and may no longer be in existence. It's a fascinating story, but more fascinating is the credulity of those who perpetuate it as a scandal without even noticing these obvious technical potholes. Saddam and bin Laden huddling in a bunker using PROMIS in hopes of hacking into our intelligence net? We should be so lucky. The frustration would kill 'em faster than we could.

There is a scandal here, however, and it was nasty enough to spark a congressional investigation. Reading House Report 102-857: The Inslaw Affair leaves me thinking that calling the BATF "jackbooted thugs" was too specific. The term should be applied to the DOJ as a whole. So what happened? A small firm with a nifty (then) piece of software that the DOJ wanted, and some friends of high-ranking officials at the DOJ could stand to make oodles of money on, ended up going bankrupt shortly after they made the mistake of getting in bed with the DOJ. From the House Report:

there appears to be strong evidence, as indicated by the findings in two Federal court proceedings as well as by the committee investigation, that the Department of Justice "acted willfully and fraudulently" and "took, converted and stole" INSLAW's Enhanced PROMIS by "trickery, fraud and deceit." It appears that these actions against INSLAW were implemented through the project manager from the beginning of the contract and under the direction of high level Justice Department officials.

The project manager was a former Inslaw employee who had left the company on unhappy terms - a clear conflict of interest. And in fact, one of his first actions was to explore the feasibility of terminating Inslaw's contract out of 'convenience to the government'. The rest of the story just gets more tangled. The DOJ proceeded to withhold vital contract payments to Inslaw, eventually forcing them to declare Chapter 11. There's evidence to suggest that the DOJ attempted to force Inslaw to convert their Chapter 11 to Chapter 7, which would have forced the sale of PROMIS to a competitor (and it just so happens that one of the interested buyers was a good friend of Ed Meese.) Two bankruptcy courts agreed with Inslaw that the DOJ had deliberately screwed them over, but the decision was overturned on a second appeal over jurisdictional grounds. After that, the DOJ conducted an internal investigation led by retired federal judge Nicolas Bua, which, of course, cleared the DOJ of any wrongdoing. Essentially, the DOJ succeeded in bullying a smaller kid into giving up their lunch money, and got away with it clean. The conspiracy theories about 'backdoors' into the system, and the possibility that there are special chips installed in PROMIS systems that will broadcast directly to NSA satellites, dark whispers of connections between Inslaw and Vince Foster's death, all strike me as material for the tinfoil hat crowd, but the DOJ was clearly the bad guy in this instance. The fact that the DOJ consistently puts itself in situations like this is precisely why these conspiracy theories take root and prosper. The House Report best explains why this matters:

The Department of Justice is this nation's most visible guarantor of the notion that wrongdoing will be sought out and punished irrespective of the identity of the actors involved. Moreover, its mandate is to protect all private citizens from illegal activities that undermine the public trust. The Department's handling of the INSLAW case has seriously undermined its credibility and reputation in playing such a role. Congress and the executive must take immediate and forceful steps to restore public confidence and faith in our system of justice, which cannot be undermined by the very agent entrusted with enforcement of our laws and protections afforded every citizen. In view of the history surrounding the INSLAW affair and the serious implications of evidence presented by the Hamiltons, two court proceedings in the judicial branch and the committee's own investigation, there is a clear need for further investigation. The committee believes that the only way in which INSLAW's allegations can be adequately and fully investigated is by the appointment of an independent counsel. The committee is aware that on November 13, 1991, Attorney General Barr appointed Nicholas Bua, a retired Federal judge from Chicago, as his special counsel to investigate and advise him on the INSLAW controversy. The committee eagerly awaits Judge Bua's findings; [ed: he cleared the DOJ of any wrongdoing] however, as long as the investigation of wrongdoing by former and current high level Justice officials remains under the ultimate control of the Department itself, there will always be serious doubt about the objectivity and thoroughness of the inquiry.

In a world post Waco, Ruby Ridge, Joseph Salvati, Inslaw and countless others, I think it is past time that we had an enforcement agency unaffiliated with the DOJ, with firing authority over DOJ employees, tasked specifically with kicking out the sorts of folks who engage in this kind of conduct.... I have a sneaking suspicion that would leave the DOJ completely without management and leadership, but maybe we'd have a chance at pruning out some of the institutional corruption evident in this department.