C. Madison Brewer

C. Madison "Brick" Brewer was a DOJ attorney who served as Project Manager for the PROMIS software implementation contract with INSLAW, a position he assumed in late January 1982, shortly before the contract was formally signed in March 1982. Before joining DOJ, Brewer had been General Counsel for the Institute for Law and Social Research, the non-profit predecessor organization out of which Bill Hamilton and Nancy Hamilton built INSLAW. His transition from the predecessor organization to the government agency administering the INSLAW contract placed him at the center of one of the most contested aspects of the PROMIS Software Scandal.¹

Administration of the INSLAW Contract

Brewer attended negotiating sessions for the March 1982 implementation contract. In April 1982, at a meeting with INSLAW representatives, he called a Hamilton memorandum asserting proprietary rights "scurrilous" — a characterization that Bankruptcy Judge Bason would later cite as evidence of Brewer's adversarial posture. Brewer consistently opposed escrow arrangements that would have protected INSLAW's proprietary claims while the rights dispute was being litigated, taking positions Hamilton characterized as designed to deny INSLAW any protection for its privately-funded software enhancements.¹

When INSLAW disclosed in November 1982 that it had pledged government invoices to the Bank of Bethesda as collateral for a line of credit — a violation of the contract's advance payments clause — Brewer was described as "extremely angry" and supported terminating the advance payments arrangement. INSLAW alleged this decision was used to exacerbate a financial crisis that DOJ had helped engineer; Brewer characterized it as a straightforward enforcement of a contractual violation by a company he believed had been dishonest.¹

DOJ employees who received INSLAW's formal complaints about Brewer's conduct received instructions that Brewer "should not take the point outside the Department" on data rights issues — a restriction on his external negotiating role that INSLAW interpreted as protective of Brewer rather than corrective.¹

Bankruptcy Judge Bason's Findings

In his September 1987 adversary proceeding ruling, Bankruptcy Judge Bason concluded that Brewer had developed "an intense and abiding hatred" for Hamilton and INSLAW and that Brewer "devised a strategy to have the government 'ruin' INSLAW." Bason further found that Brewer's "poisonous attitude" toward INSLAW had infected other DOJ personnel responsible for administering the contract, contributing to a systematic pattern of decisions adverse to INSLAW that went beyond legitimate contract enforcement.²

Bason also found that Brewer had originated a plan to convert INSLAW's Chapter 11 reorganization to a Chapter 7 liquidation and had enlisted Thomas Stanton, Director of the Executive Office of U.S. Trustees, in this effort.²

House Judiciary Committee Findings

The House Judiciary Committee's September 1992 report cited Brewer as a central figure in the DOJ's misappropriation of PROMIS. The committee found that high-level DOJ officials had "deliberately ignored INSLAW's proprietary rights" and misappropriated the software, and that Brewer's documented adversarial conduct was a key mechanism through which this occurred. The report raised the question of whether Brewer's actions were independent or directed from above — specifically, whether Lowell Jensen had knowingly allowed Brewer's campaign to proceed as part of a broader conspiracy with Earl Brian.³

Bua Report Findings

Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua reached different conclusions from Judge Bason. Bua found that Brewer's actions were consistent with his sincere belief that INSLAW's conduct violated the contract and that Hamilton was being dishonest in asserting proprietary rights over software developed largely with government funds. The Bua Report found no credible evidence that Brewer acted from personal hatred rather than a legal assessment of the government's interests, and no evidence connecting Brewer to any conspiracy involving Brian or to the alleged international distribution of PROMIS.¹