On April 2, 1996, Charles S. Hayes--retired CIA operative, Air Force Colonel, and Kentucky salvage dealer--was deposed by the U.S. Department of Justice with respect to the Inslaw case [1]. The attorney for the Department of Justice, Beth Cook, seemed ill-prepared for what turned out to be a brutal assault on the integrity of the Justice Department itself, which Hayes accused of lying, cheating, and stealing.

Hayes has recently acquired the Internet label of AOD ("Angel of Death" or "Angel of Doom") due to his efforts in encouraging the early retirement of corrupt politicians. "Do you know the Angel of Death?" Cook asked at one point. "I know him well," Hayes replied.

Hayes has previously testified with respect to the Inslaw case, most notably before a Chicago grand jury in August 1992. Hayes' extensive testimony in that case was redacted under the National Security Act. The reasons for the redaction are not known, but apparently the grand jury's questions led far afield from the principal topic of the Justice Department's apparently illegal sales of Inslaw's PROMIS software, and got into topics related to a tangled web of freelance arms dealers, drug runners, assassins, and government miscreants--whose murky and disparate interrelationships Hayes dubbed "the Octopus"--a term adopted and popularized by freelance journalist Danny Casolaro [2], who used Hayes as a frequent source of information. Hayes is said to have testified to detailed criminal violations of U.S. law by employees of the Department of Justice and other government agencies.

Although Hayes will not discuss his grand jury testimony, other sources say that with respect to the Inslaw case, he testified to a meeting at which he was present in Brazil in the course of which Earl Brian called Attorney General Ed Meese (then in the United States) to get approval for the sale of PROMIS to the Brazilian government. Hayes is said to have backed up this assertion with an affidavit of Brazilian President Joao Figueiredo.

Earl Brian, who is said to have marketed the PROMIS software to intelligence agencies around the world, is currently under indictment in California. The indictment concerns ten of millions of dollars of fraudulent lease transactions made while Earl Brian was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of three separate companies: Infotechology, Financial News Network (FNN), and United Press International (UPI).

Excerpt from: Angel of Death Gives Deposition to Justice Department in Inslaw Case by J. Orlin Grabbe