Danny Casolaro & the Octopus
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12/12/2020 Danny Casolaro & The Octopus - Suicide or Assassination? Welcome to DarkIdeas.net DANNY CASOLARO & THE OCTOPUS The story of Danny Casolaro’s investigation into what he termed ‘The Octopus’ is strange and fragmented. There is divided opinion on whether he knew what he was uncovering when he stumbled upon the threads that pulled the tentacles together. Conversely, there is almost no divided opinion on the cause of his death. Privacy https://darkideas.net/true-crime-articles/assassinated/danny-casolaro-the-octopus/ 1/20 12/12/2020 Danny Casolaro & The Octopus - Suicide or Assassination? Why would it be in anyone’s interest for a failing writer to be ‘suicided’ ? In Danny Casolaro’s own words, from the early pages of his draft book: They are not government officials but their tentacles can reach into any part of government in almost any country including legitimate and rogue spy networks. They are not notable industrialists but they can pull the strings of the oil and banking empires at will. They are not known criminals but they have successfully penetrated all factions of organized crime including the Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, the secret Chinese societies and the terrorist underground. With its tag-team compartments, its exploitation of hundreds of people and its formidable stealth, The Octopus will help to unravel the most compelling puzzles of the twentieth century. Know your prey Perhaps his mistake was not that he didn’t realise what he was getting into; it was that he didn’t understand what he was hunting. When leaving for his ill-fated trip to Martinsburg, he proclaimed in a phone call : “I am going to bring back the head of The Octopus.” But what he had uncovered was not just an octopus; it was a Hydra. There would be no bringing back any heads, no big reveal. If, as his and other investigators’ research suggests, there is such an organisation, the stakes are too high. Remaining heads would ensure that they remain in the shadows, no matter how many heads you cut off. Does The Octopus even exist? Whenever I approach a subject such as this, a quote from the brilliant Sci-Fi lm ‘The Cube’ comes to mind: “There is no conspiracy. Nobody is in charge. It’s a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan. “ Privacy https://darkideas.net/true-crime-articles/assassinated/danny-casolaro-the-octopus/ 2/20 12/12/2020 Danny Casolaro & The Octopus - Suicide or Assassination? Anyone who has spent signicant time researching true crime will have come across cases that match the quote. This case alone can show that organisations like the FBI often can’t lie very well once you peel back the paper-thin veneer of truth. The ‘headless blunder’ part is perfectly believable. So we are left with a connundrum. In the cases I examine here there is usually, at the very least, good circumstantial evidence for some sort of cover up. But are they all linked in the way that Danny Casolaro believed? Was he being manipulated by clever disinformation agents? Are they happy for people to believe in the ‘illusion of a master plan’? One thing is for sure : this case is the mother of all rabbit holes. When faced with such a labyrinth it can be difcult to know where to begin. One part makes little sense without the others. And therein lies the strength of The Octopus, if it exists. It is hard to focus on when you don’t know what part you are looking at. We should start with the story that might be the linchpin – PROMIS and the Inslaw scandal. Inslaw & PROMIS Inslaw was a small information technology rm set up by Bill and Nancy Hamilton. Whilst working with the Department of Justice (DoJ) in 1982, the company developed data analysis software known as the Prosecutors Management Information System (PROMIS). This allowed Privacy https://darkideas.net/true-crime-articles/assassinated/danny-casolaro-the-octopus/ 3/20 12/12/2020 Danny Casolaro & The Octopus - Suicide or Assassination? the consolidation of information from courts, law enforcement agencies and nancial institutions. Back in the early 1980s this allowed an unprecedented level of information management. Its potential power did not go unnoticed. Bill & Nancy Hamilton – founders of Inslaw Inc. The DoJ realised that PROMIS would be an attractive asset for any gobal entity to own; be they national, corporate or secret. But no government would sanction giving away such powerful knowledge at any price… unless there was something of greater value that could be taken in return. Taken in secret, and via a back door into the software. All of a sudden, PROMIS grew into something that had global potential. It would allow the US to spy on any entity that used the software. But Inslaw would not be part of the DoJ’s plan. Through withholding payments and generating huge legal costs, they forced Inslaw into bankruptcy. The Hamiltons did not go down without a ght, especially once they found out that their creation was being illegally modied. The rst frayed threads start to unravel That was when Bill Hamilton turned to investigative journalist Danny Casolaro to help him look into the case. As owner of several computer technology publications and investigative writer covering the USSR and China, he seemed a natural t. Whatever people today may think of the validity of Casolaro’s evidence, there was less scepticism at the time. Enough, in fact, for two Congressional hearings on the matter over concerns with the DoJ’s behaviour towards Inslaw. Privacy https://darkideas.net/true-crime-articles/assassinated/danny-casolaro-the-octopus/ 4/20 12/12/2020 Danny Casolaro & The Octopus - Suicide or Assassination? Certainly, as far as PROMIS is concerned, it is unlikely that Danny Casolaro was exaggerating. A House Judiciary Committee report released in 1992 after his death found that: There appears to be strong evidence supporting Judge Bason's findings that "the Department of Justice acted willfully and fraudulently when it took, converted, and stole Inslaw's enhanced PROMIS software by trickery, fraud and deceit." And on the subject of Danny Casolaro’s ‘suicide’ : The suspicious circumstances surrounding his death have led some law enforcement professionals and others to believe that his death may not have been a suicide. Despite this, Inslaw lost their case on appeal. They went bankrupt as per the original plan of the Department of Justice. Irony in action. Michael Riconosciuto A highly talented scientist and engineer, Riconosciuto was entering and winning science fairs with laser and sonar equipment when just a child. He has the look of a crazy paranoid who sees conspiracy around every corner. But his scientic credentials are beyond question, and his name appears in many ofcial documents. Privacy https://darkideas.net/true-crime-articles/assassinated/danny-casolaro-the-octopus/ 5/20 12/12/2020 Danny Casolaro & The Octopus - Suicide or Assassination? At the age of 16 he was invited to be a summer research assistant at Stanford. Nobel-prize winning physicist Dr Arthur Schalow remembered meeting him there. It is also worth remembering that his name appears on too many tentacles to be a pretender inserting himself in a crazy story. A role of questionable legality Riconosciuto’s talent was recognised by a man named Robert Nichols, who hired him to work at his company Wackenhut Corp. The operation was sited rather conveniently on the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians reservation near Riverside, California. This location falls outside of Federal jurisdiction. It enabled Wackenhut to engage in activities that would normally cause law enforcement to come calling; more on that later. Wackenhut Corp were sub-contracted by the DoJ to build the back door into PROMIS. Michael Riconosciuto was employed to carry it out. By 1991 when the House Judiciary Committee began investigating the Inslaw case, Riconosciuto led an afdavit and testied before Congress that he had made the modications to PROMIS. He also made contact with Danny Casolaro and must have been a gold-mine of information to the journalist. Privacy https://darkideas.net/true-crime-articles/assassinated/danny-casolaro-the-octopus/ 6/20 12/12/2020 Danny Casolaro & The Octopus - Suicide or Assassination? Eight days after ling the afdavit, Michael Riconosciuto was arrested for the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine and methadone. He insisted that the factory he used was for the rening of precious metals and nothing more. The investigation found traces of barium (used in the metals rening industry) and no traces of illegal narcotics. To my knowledge, he is in prison to this day. There was no evidence that he was ever involved in illegal drug manufacture. Wackenhut & The Cabazon Indians With Robert Nichols running Wackenhut, it is a strange coincidence that the man managing the Cabazon Reservation’s nances was named John Nichols. Picture: ag of the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians. I can nd very little information on either man outside of the Octopus case. Therefore I have been unable to verify if they were related. John Nichols is accused of leading the reservation down a pathway of tax-free alcohol and tobacco trading, gambling… and allowing Wackenhut to operate there. And there is far more to their story from before the software modications to PROMIS. Cabazon Arms, Iran-Contra and the Cabazon murders Cabazon Arms was a subsidiary of Wackenhut and also operated on the reservation. They built and tested weapons there, all of it illegal. Those weapons were destined to be traded as part of the Iran-Contra affair. Privacy https://darkideas.net/true-crime-articles/assassinated/danny-casolaro-the-octopus/ 7/20 12/12/2020 Danny Casolaro & The Octopus - Suicide or Assassination? Iran / Contra Affair In brief, the Iran-Contra Affair was an arms-deal scandal in the USA that broke during the second Reagan administration through 1985- 1987.