My understanding was that PROMIS was a front-end for database information entry and retrieval, and based on that understanding, I dismissed claims that PROMIS would do Osama much good, unless he had also been provided with the databases themselves, a claim that I haven't seen made. However, Mr. Hamilton states the following:

One way a copy of the PROMIS software and data model could help a foreign interest to exploit a PROMIS-derivative U.S. intelligence database is by enabling the foreign interest secretly to task a disloyal U.S. Government user of such a system to retrieve information of particular interest. Robert Hanssen appears to have used the FBI's FOIMS (Field Office Information Management System) and other U.S. intelligence community database systems in this way on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia from 1985 through 1991. Jonathan Pollard reportedly used a computer terminal on his desk at Naval Intelligence in Suitland, Maryland to access remote U.S. intelligence databases on orders from Israeli intelligence. In theory, bin Laden could have one or more U.S. intelligence employees perform similar functions.

This is not quite the same thing as stating that possession of PROMIS software gave Osama access to monitor our intel activities, and it seems to me that the bigger issue here would be with the possible moles (read traitors) within our intelligence community. However, Mr. Hamilton goes on to say:

Former Israeli intelligence officials such as Rafi Eitan and Ari Ben Menashe have admitted that Israel obtained the PROMIS software from the Reagan Administration and sold it to governments throughout the world on computers into which had been inserted a special integrated circuit that copied data from the PROMIS database and transmitted the data to a local electronic listening device, for subsequent transmission to a signal intelligence center. Former U.S. intelligence officials have told me that an NSA integrated circuit manufacturing plant in the Silicon Valley manufactured something called the Petrie Chip, which was installed on computers on which the PROMIS software operated and that the Special Collection Service, a joint CIA/NSA service, also known as the CIA's Division "D," collected the material and transmitted the data by satellite to Fort Meade. Israeli intelligence evidently also sold PROMIS back to at least two U.S. intelligence agencies, i.e., the nuclear intelligence units of the two national nuclear laboratories in New Mexico.

So there is a possibility the systems were corrupted, and a further possibility that information was compromised as a result. I'm not sure how much weight I give these possibilities, but when taken with the memory of the Moscow embassy, and Los Alamos sharply in mind, they do make me reconsider.

Lastly, we have been told by some seemingly reliable U.S. intelligence officials that at least some of the PROMIS-derivative U.S. intelligence database systems were or are accessible by telephone. I obviously do not have any definitive information on this subject but I think there is enough smoke to convince me not to dismiss the claims as infeasible.

Mr. Hamilton has convinced me to go easier on the tinfoil hat charges in the future.