
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, May 14, 1990                   TAG: 9005120433
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JAMES J. KILPATRICK
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THEFT FROM INVENTOR

NOTHING in public life is uglier than the abuse of power. Here in the capital, no recent abuse of power is much uglier than the abuse of power that continues in the lingering Inslaw case. You ought to know about it.

Briefly summarized, the case involves an effort by the Justice Department to steal the software of a young inventor, to drive his small corporation into bankruptcy, to rig bids on $200 million in software contracts, and to stonewall a Senate subcommittee that futilely attempted to look into the affair.

Early in January I wrote of the Inslaw case that it was beginning to smell to high heaven. I asked what Attorney General Dick Thornburgh proposed to do about it. Four months have passed. The stench grows worse. And Thornburgh proposes to do nothing about it.

The attorney general is using every recourse at his command to prevent an independent investigation of the case. One searches for a word to describe the conduct of the Department of Justice. "Unjust" comes to mind, but "unconscionable" is closer to the mark.

Let me go back. The case involves William Hamilton, a brilliant computer programmer who is president of his small firm, Inslaw Inc. In 1973 he began development of software that would enable government prosecutors to keep accurate track of their caseloads. He called the system PROMIS (Prosecutor's Management Information System). With progressive improvements, it worked so well that in 1982 Hamilton won a three-year contract to install the system in 20 of the most active U.S. attorneys' offices. He fulfilled the contract. By withholding payments, the Justice Department pushed him into bankruptcy.

How could this have happened? Hamilton charged conspiracy. The PROMIS contract had fallen into the hands of a deputy attorney general, C. Madison Brewer. Several years earlier, Hamilton had fired him from Inslaw. Hamilton alleged that Brewer had enlisted other officials in a vindictive scheme to discredit the software and to capture his invention. The charges smacked of paranoia.

Bankruptcy Judge George F. Bason Jr. spent months hearing evidence. In September 1987, he sustained Hamilton down the line. Bason found there had indeed been a plot to achieve the inventor's "ruination." The payments had been withheld "in bad faith, vexatiously, and in wanton disregard of the law and the facts." The department "took, converted, stole" the enhanced PROMIS system "by trickery, fraud and deceit." Brewer was motivated "by an intense desire for revenge." The testimony of department witnesses was "totally unbelievable." Bason awarded Hamilton $6.8 million in damages, plus another million in legal fees.

It was a stunning decision - so stunning that Sen. Sam Nunn assigned his permanent subcommittee on investigations to have a look. The subcommittee staff found no proof of a conspiracy, chiefly because the Justice Department made it impossible for the staff to do its work. Nunn was stonewalled all the way by "the department's intransigency."

A department spokesman confidently predicted before Nunn's subcommittee that Bason's decision would be overturned on appeal. He was dead wrong. In November 1989, U.S. District Judge William B. Bryant affirmed the bankruptcy court on every major finding. Inslaw performed its contract, said Judge Bryant, "in a hostile environment that extended from the higher echelons of the Justice Department to the officials who had day-to-day responsibility for supervising its work." There was "convincing, perhaps compelling support" for Bason's findings. Bryant refused to disturb them.

Whereupon Thornburgh announced that the government would take a further appeal, the better to exhaust Hamilton's resources. Hamilton responded by suing for a writ of mandamus to compel the attorney general to appoint independent special counsel to investigate. Such an appointment could lead to criminal charges. Thornburgh last month demanded that the suit be dismissed. He claims an absolute, unreviewable power of "prosecutorial discretion." He will not set an impartial investigation in motion.

Meanwhile, the department has advertised for bids on a case-management system for its Division of Land and Natural Resources. The contract requirements have been so skillfully drawn that Inslaw is effectively barred from even trying for the contract.

There the ugly matter stands. Attorney General Thornburgh has at his command the power of the government's bottomless purse. He is brutally abusing that power. I for one cry shame.

Universal Press Syndicate

by CNB