Earl Brian

Earl W. Brian was a physician, businessman, and California government official who served in Governor Ronald Reagan's state cabinet alongside Edwin Meese. Brian co-founded Biotech Capital Corporation and held a controlling interest in Hadron, a technology and information services company. He later founded Infotechnology, Inc. He had served in Vietnam, where his background in the Phoenix Program reportedly brought him into contact with intelligence networks that would intersect with his later activities.¹

Brian's relationship with Meese predated their time in state government. Both men moved from Sacramento to Washington when Reagan won the presidency in 1980: Meese as presidential counselor and later Attorney General, and Brian as a businessman positioned to benefit from DOJ technology contracts. In 1985, Meese's wife purchased stock in a Brian-controlled company.¹

Role in the PROMIS Software Scandal

Brian became the central figure in INSLAW's allegation that the Department of Justice stole the PROMIS software and distributed it internationally in exchange for political favors. Bill Hamilton and Nancy Hamilton, INSLAW's owners, alleged that Brian had spearheaded a plan for worldwide exploitation of PROMIS after acquiring it, through DOJ contracting officer Peter Videnieks, with the intent to both raise off-the-books funds for covert government operations and to benefit Hadron, which stood to acquire INSLAW's client base if the company were driven into bankruptcy.¹

The scale of the alleged scheme: $6 million worth of software stolen from the Hamiltons was allegedly sold by the DOJ through Brian for use in covert operations.³

Michael Riconosciuto claimed in a March 1991 affidavit that Brian made a copy of the PROMIS software available to him at the Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture in Indio, California, after acquiring it from Videnieks. Riconosciuto stated he subsequently modified PROMIS for global implementation in law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including specific adaptations for Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and that it was his understanding Brian had sold the modified version to the Canadian government.³

Ari Ben-Menashe, in affidavits submitted to the House Judiciary Committee in 1991, alleged that Brian brought PROMIS versions to Israel, and that Brian received several million dollars for selling enhanced PROMIS to Israeli intelligence and to the Singapore Armed Forces. Ben-Menashe also stated that Brian sold public-domain versions of PROMIS to Iraq and Jordan.¹

The House Judiciary Committee's September 1992 report (House Report 102-857) described Brian's alleged role as "intriguing...but without the requisite degree of causation," raising concerns while stopping short of the direct evidentiary finding it reached regarding DOJ's treatment of INSLAW. The committee found that Brian and Meese's long association, Meese's wife's stock purchase, and Brian's position to profit from INSLAW's destruction constituted circumstantial grounds for concern.¹

Hadron and the DOJ Connection

Brian owned Hadron at the time of Riconosciuto's 1992 drug trial in Tacoma, Washington. During that trial, Peter Videnieks testified about his contact with PROMIS software but denied ever hearing of the Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture or meeting Brian. When pressed about his familiarity with Hadron and its ownership, Videnieks was evasive; he acknowledged knowing Hadron existed but declined to elaborate on any connection to Brian.³

The Bua Report investigation surfaced a reference to "Project Eagle," a multi-million dollar DOJ technology modernization initiative, in connection with Brian. Jensen denied any involvement in awarding Project Eagle contracts. The Report noted that the project's Request for Proposals was issued in May 1986 - while Jensen was still at DOJ - though Jensen was appointed to the bench the following month.²

October Surprise Allegations

Riconosciuto further claimed that he and Brian traveled to Iran in 1980 and paid $40 million to Iranian officials to persuade them not to release the U.S. hostages before Reagan's inauguration - an allegation that would link Brian directly to the October Surprise conspiracy. This claim created what Riconosciuto described as a "domino effect" in Washington and generated additional investigations and media attention.³

The Bua Report found no credible evidence to support the Iran trip allegation. Evidence placed Brian in New York at the time of the alleged journey. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations had separately found "no proof" of any connection between Brian or Hadron and DOJ with regard to the INSLAW contract as early as September 1989.²⁴ Brian gave a closed deposition on July 28, 1992, to the Senate Foreign Relations special counsel investigating the October Surprise allegations, Reid H. Weingarten, on the same day as Judge Laurence Silberman, and the counsel's report of November 1992 reproduced his passports among its exhibits.⁸

Official Findings

Both Brian and Videnieks categorically denied ever meeting one another or meeting Riconosciuto, denied having visited Indio, California, and denied any involvement in the alleged PROMIS distribution. The Bua Report found both men to be credible witnesses and concluded there was "overwhelming" evidence of no connection between Brian and anything related to INSLAW or PROMIS. Bua found Riconosciuto's account a "tale of total fiction woven against the background of accurate historical facts" and Ben-Menashe's affidavits contradicted by his own subsequent testimony to Bua investigators.²

Brian was never charged with any crime in connection with the PROMIS affair. His libel suit against Elliot Richardson over the former attorney general's New York Times article of October 21, 1991, "A High-Tech Watergate," which accused him of taking part in an illegal conspiracy, was dismissed; the New York Court of Appeals held on November 29, 1995, that because Richardson had disclosed at the outset that he was INSLAW's own lawyer, because the article's "predominant tone" was "rife with rumor, speculation and seemingly tenuous inferences," and because its purpose was to call for an independent investigation, "a reasonable reader would understand the statements... as mere allegations to be investigated rather than as facts."⁵

Financial News Network and UPI

In July 1993 the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Brian and three others with fraudulently inflating the revenue and earnings of the Financial News Network, the Los Angeles cable channel controlled with United Press International by his holding company Infotechnology, Inc.; he settled without admitting or denying the charges and consented to a permanent injunction. A federal grand jury in the Central District of California returned a 24-count indictment in June 1994, unsealed on September 5, 1995, charging Brian, then Infotechnology's chairman, and its chief operating officer John F. Berentson with lying to obtain 56 million dollars in loans from Security Pacific and Toronto-Dominion in 1989 by falsifying FNN's books through fictitious equipment leases and inter-company billings; FNN's chief financial officer C. Steven Bolen and Gary A. Prince pleaded guilty and cooperated. FNN, which lost 72.4 million dollars in fiscal 1990, and UPI, whose management rights Infotechnology had bought in February 1988, both entered Chapter 11 in 1991. On October 17, 1996, after a four-month trial in Los Angeles, a jury convicted Brian on ten counts including conspiracy and bank and securities fraud, deadlocking on the rest; he was ordered to report to prison on August 18 of the following year to serve a term reported as four and a half years, and appealed. On October 3, 2000, he moved to vacate his sentence under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 in the Central District of California; the motion, assigned to Judge Ronald S. W. Lew, was closed on February 22, 2001.⁷ Hadron continued as a public company, was renamed Analex Corporation in 2002 and ceased reporting in 2007.⁶