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Dead men tell no tales.

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.

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.

Perhaps his mistake was not that he didn’t realise what he was getting into, but 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 – and always will – 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 film ‘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. “

Anyone who has spent significant 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? Or was he being manipulated by clever disinformation agents, 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 difficult to begin when 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 firm 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), which allowed the consolidation of information from courts, law enforcement agencies and financial institutions. Back in the early 1980s this allowed an unprecedented level of information management, the potential power of which did not go unnoticed.

The DoJ realised that PROMIS would be an attractive asset for any gobal entity to own, be it 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 the potential to allow the US to spy on any entity that used the software. But Inslaw would not be part of the DoJ’s plan and, through withholding payments and generating huge legal costs, they forced Inslaw into bankruptcy. The Hamiltons did not go down without a fight, especially once they found out that their creation was being illegally modified.

The first frayed threads start to unravel.

That was when Bill Hamilton turned to investigative journalist Danny Casolaro to help him look into the case. As the prior owner of several computer technology publications and an investigative writer covering the USSR and China, he seemed a natural fit. 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.

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 and 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 scientific credentials are beyond question, and his name appears in many official documents.

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.

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 and 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, a role that Michael Riconosciuto was employed to carry out. By 1991 when the House Judiciary Committee began investigating the Inslaw case, Riconosciuto filed an affidavit and testified before Congress that he had made the modifications to PROMIS. He also made contact with Danny Casolaro and must have been a gold-mine of information to the journalist.

Eight days after filing the affidavit, Michael Riconosciuto was arrested for the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamine and methadone. He insisted that the factory he used was for the refining of precious metals and nothing more. The investigation found traces of barium (used in the metals refining industry) and no traces of illegal narcotics. To my knowledge, he is in prison to this day despite no evidence that he was ever involved in drug manufacture.

Wackenhut & The Cabazon Indians.

With Robert Nichols running Wackenhut, it is a strange coincidence that the man managing the Cabazon Reservation’s finances was named John Nichols.

Picture: flag of the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians.

I can find very little information on either man outside of the Octopus case, and 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 modifications 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.

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. By secretly selling arms to Iran (which was under international embargo) the administration could fund the right-wing Contras in Nicaragua. The Contras were fighting the incumbent left-wing socialist regime and had little money. In return for the US funding, they were shipping cocaine back to America through Mena airport, Arkansas. It is believed that then-senator Bill Clinton was aware and complicit in this arrangement.

The Cabazon Murders.

Fred Alvarez (pictured, left) was vice-chairman of the Cabazon Tribal Council and very unhappy with the direction John Nichols was taking the tribe. He also suspected that Nichols was embezzling tribe income.

Alvarez contacted a reporter in June 1981 after voicing his opinion that John Nichols should be removed from his post. He believed his life was in danger, noticed his motorcycle had been tampered with, and reported that people had been driving past his house firing guns.

He made an appointment with an attorney for 1st July 1981 with the aim of getting rid of Nichols, but he would never make that meeting. Instead, he was found outside his house alongside girlfriend Patty Castro and friend Ralph Boger. All had been shot in the head, execution-style.

Jimmy Hughes, Rachel Begley & Nathan Baca.

In 2005, investigative journalist Nathan Baca won an Emmy for his 35-part, year-long series for KESQ-TV on The Octopus Murders. He has a Youtube channel showcasing his work which I highly recommend to anyone studying this case. Considering what happened to Danny Casolaro, one has to wonder if he thought it was all a load of rubbish when he started, or why risk it? I highly doubt he is a sceptic these days.

One of the cases he covered was the Cabazon murders and he made contact with Rachel Begley, daughter of Ralph Boger. She had been resilient in trying to find out what happened to her father, and the trail had led her to Jimmy Hughes. A self-confessed hitman-turned-preacher, Hughes agreed to meet with Begley and was unaware she was secretly recording. The tape is not available in its entirety, but what she released through Baca includes some bombshell quotes from Hughes:

"Your parents were involved in some very dangerous things... that's the only thing I can tell you. Your dad and I were friends but he touched somebody. They gave an order and that was what happened to him."
...
"I killed people all over the world, right or wrong, because the government ordered me to. It's a lot bigger than the murder of this guy or the murder of that guy. It's big - you're talking political people."

In 2009 Hughes was arrested by Riverside police for the murder of Alvarez, Boger, and Castro in 1981. What happened next was as farcical as it was predictable. The Riverside District Attorney admitted to being related to Hughes and therefore could not take the case. The California state Attorney General took over and assigned the case to another D.A. . That D.A. quit after receiving death threats, and another investigator would only speak to Nathan Baca after a promise of anonymity. He feared for his life, and said:

“I do not wish to continue investigating this case… due to the number of people who have met an untimely demise whilst doing so.” He may have had the case of David McGowan on his mind when he said that (see below).

The Riverside P.D. cold-case division also advised Baca that “there is major pressure for the department to drop the case.” Hughes himself pled not guilty, the Attorney General requested the case be dismissed on lack of evidence, and the judge agreed. Hughes walked away a free man.

Nathan Baca himself contacted the California Attorney General for comment but they never responded.


David McGowan – murder or suicide?

David McGowan was an investigator for the Riverside D.A who had been asked to investigate the conduct of certain police officers in Desert Hot Springs, California.

Desert Hot Springs is only 20 miles from the Cabazon Reservation, and Nathan Baca suspected that McGowan had uncovered a link between police corruption there and the Cabazon murders in 1981. In fact, the highest ranking officer implicated in McGowan’s investigation left his post once he heard Nathan Baca had started his own enquiries.


After Internal Affairs found evidence of officers stealing drugs, colluding with gangs and stashing illegal firearms, they assigned David McGowan and his partner Luis Bolanos to investigate. They built a strong enough case to involve the FBI once they thought the chief investigator Clay Hodson was also implicated.

Days before David McGowan was due to testify to the FBI, he decided to shoot his mother, wife and two children before taking his own life in an apparent murder-suicide. Three neighbours told police that they had seen a van parked at the back garden of the McGowan’s house, flashing its headlights on the night of the murder. When a neighbour approached, it sped off. Despite three witnesses to that event the lead was never investigated.


Luis Bolanos fought to have the investigation reach a trial by jury to uncover the corruption prevalent at the Riverside D.A’s office – in return for this loyalty to McGowan, he found himself suddenly charged with spousal abuse and perjury. In a rare case of fair hearing, a California judge found him innocent as there was no evidence or case to answer.


Bank of Credit and Commerce International.

At one time the 7th largest bank in the world, the BCCI became involved in money laundering for international drug cartels and arms dealers. By the 1980s this would include activity relating to Mena Airport in Arkansas, the primary transport hub for moving goods in the Iran-Contra affair. Time magazine refered to it as “the largest corporate criminal enterprise ever”. It is also certain that BCCI used PROMIS in order to relay the collected information to other branches of The Octopus.

One of the men who ran the US branch of BCCI was Jackson Stephens, who also happened to own Systematics Inc.


Following the DoJ’s legal victory over Inslaw, the proprietary rights to PROMIS were obtained by Systematics Inc, through their intellectual property right lawyer… Hillary Clinton.



By 1991 enough international pressure was applied and BCCI was forced to pleas guilty to racketeering charges, in return for the DoJ dropping all other charges of drug and arms dealer collusion. But through BCCI we start to glimpse the possibility that, just maybe, this was the central hub in the operations of The Octopus.

The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

One of the more popular (and credible) theories surrounding the Lockerbie disaster in December 1988 involved a heroin drug route overseen by the CIA. They protected the transport of drugs through the Middle East, Europe and the USA in exchange for information on terrorist groups and US nationals being held hostage. In a later investigation by the DEA it was found that the operation, codenamed ‘Khourah’, was utilising controlled delivery methods to trace the drug cartels involved.

The CIA agents’ role was to ensure drug packages landing in Europe from Syria were loaded onto US-bound planes without being searched. On that fateful day in December terrorists swapped out the drug suitcase for a bomb, which was then stowed on Pam Am flight 103 by the unwitting agents. The bomb would explode over Scotland, with what remained of the plane and passengers landing on the small town of Lockerbie.


Former DEA agent Lester Coleman wrote a book entitled “Trail of the Octopus” in which he builds on this theory but publishers failed to find a market in the US. In it, he also claimed that he was part of the intelligence cell in the Middle East that handled the hostage information flowing through Operation Khourah.


Danny Casolaro spoke with Coleman a mere 7 days before he died – was he getting too close to the source of the tentacles? When the former DEA agent heard of Casolaro’s death, he provided an affidavit to Bill Hamilton of Inslaw, no doubt worried that if he did not he too would be silenced. It makes for interesting reading and is available in the book “The Last Circle” by Cheri Seymour. Some particularly pertinent parts are shown below (edited for clarity):

Pt 2: Between February-September 1987 I was seconded by the Defense Intelligence Agency to the DEA in Nicosia, Cyprus...

Pt 6:...During my two stints as a DIA covert intelligence officer... I became aware of the fact that the DEA was using its proprietary company, Euramae Trading Company Ltd, to sell computer software called PROMISE or PROMIS to the drug abuse control agencies of various countries...

Pt 8: The DEA objective in inducing the implementation of this computerized system in the drug abuse agencies of the Middle East countries was to... make it possible for the US government to access sensitive drug control... and intelligence files of these Middle East governments. 

Pt 12: I became aware in 1991 that Michael Riconosciuto, known to me as a long-time CIA asset, was arrested... for the manufacture of illegal drugs. The arrest of Riconosciuto should be regarded as suspect. The probability is that (they) manufactured a case against him to prevent him becoming a credible witness about the US government's covert sale of the PROMIS software...

Pt 14: The investigative journalist Danny Casolaro... had leads about things I know about, including Department of Justice groups operating overseas, the sale of PROMIS... the BCCI and Iran-Contra scandal.

Thus, via the unlikely route of a terrorist airplane bomb plot, we have one sworn affidavit linking PROMIS, the CIA, BCCI, DoJ, and Iran-Contra. It also lends credence to the status of Michael Riconosciuto as a genuine informer.

I highly recommend the documentary ‘The Maltese Double-Cross’ as a good starting point into this particular aspect of the Octopus labyrinth. Film-maker Allan Francovich released it in 1994 to a barrage of smear campaigns and legal threats, to the extent that it was never publicly released in the USA.

Three years later Francovich tried to enter the USA for the first time since making the film. He happened to die of a heart attack whilst going through customs at George Bush airport, Houston.

Eight years later, on the other side of the Atlantic, TWA Flight 800 would also come down in suspicious circumstances. Although probably not related to The Octopus, it is a another example of a possible cover-up involving a passenger airplane. Check out my long-read article on it here (opens in a new window).


The death of Alan Standorf.

Lt. Alan Standorf worked for the NSA via the US Army at an intelligence-gathering listening post. In 1990 he contacted Danny Casolaro and gave him copies of classified documents related to BCCI and PROMIS. These documents also corroborated what he was being told by Michael Riconosciuto. If Casolaro was being played, then it was one hell of a prank to pull off.


Standorf was last seen shortly after new year 1991. 25 days later, on January 28th, he was found beaten to death in the back seat of his car at Reagan National Airport. It appeared that he had been killed on the 3rd or 4th of January and his car driven there post-mortem to make a statement. Despite this odd behaviour, his murder is considered to be a ‘street robbery gone wrong’. The FBI, however, consider the case to be open and therefore (conveniently) not eligible for FOIA requests.


The death of Danny Casolaro.

Danny Casolaro Octopus

By the time Danny Casolaro booked his hotel room at the Sheraton, Martinsburg (West Virginia), it seems impossible that he was not well aware of the dangers he was exposing himself to.

His housekeeper described him regularly checking his car for bombs and receiving threatening phone calls in the days before his death. She herself answered the phone on one occasion to be told, “You son of a bitch, you’re dead.” She also said that, on the day he left for Martinsburg, he had with him a briefcase of documents and an accordion-type file holder.

Most tellingly, in a phone call to his brother, he even stated:

“If something happens to me in Martinsburg, it will not be an accident.”

Notes he left behind suggest he had contact with former CIA agents, arms dealers, and extremist groups. His phone records also showed he had been in regular contact with Robert Nichols of Wackenhut Corp.

Bill Hamilton of Inslaw says that he was told by Israeli intelligence that Danny was meeting the FBI at the Sheraton. Whoever he was meeting, and whatever he had in those papers, must have been proof that none of the other informants had. Otherwise, why were people like Riconosciuto, Coleman, and Begley not killed as well?


A poor investigation.

On 10th August 1991 a cleaner entered room 517 to find Danny Casolaro dead in the bath, floating in a mixture of bath water and blood. It appeared that he had slit his wrists 10-12 times. The cleaner noted the odd fact that towels had been used to mop up blood from the floor. Had someone needed to hide their footprints?


When police arrived, the bath was drained without filtering for any evidence. Nevertheless, seemingly pointless items such as a beer can, coaster, and two trash bags were found, along with the razor blade used. A suicide note was written on the notepad by the phone, which read:

To those who I love the most, please forgive me for the worst possible thing I could have done. Most of all, I'm sorry to my son. I know deep down that God will let me in.

Casolaro was a Catholic so may well have pleaded to his God. But he would also have known that it is a sin to commit suicide. Those facts aside, it is a very dull note for a flamboyant writer to leave and does not fit with the personality his friends knew.


The large accordion-file and the briefcase were both missing from his room, despite a front-desk clerk and a cleaner both confirming that they too had seen them.


The room was cleaned and the body embalmed before his family were even notified of his death. On hearing that he had slit his wrists, they felt confused that he had chosen that method; he had a fear of blood to the point of avoiding blood tests. They insisted on an autopsy, which was carried out at the West Virginia University Hospital.


The pathologist noted that the cuts to one hand were deep enough to cut tendons, rendering his fingers useless and unable to perform the other cuts. There were also no ‘hesitation’ marks common with this method of suicide. Traces of hydrocodone and an anti-depressant were found, despite Casolaro have no prescription for either drug.


The disappointment of the Bua Report.

In 1993, Special Councel Nicholas Bua produced a report to the Attorney General that covered Inslaw, PROMIS, and the death of Danny Casolaro. It will come as no surprise that it is regarded as a whitewash. The website www.muckrock.com has done great work with FOIA to collect many useful documents, including a full copy of the Bua Report. In it, we find a perfect example of the headless blunder in action as investigators admit their flawed process:

Our discussion here of the factual background of the 1982 (Inslaw) contract does not purport to be exhaustive. Instead, we have attempted to focus on those facts that are relevant to the conclusions we have reached.

If you ever wanted an example of investigators making the facts fit their theory, look no further. Did Bua even realise that he was admitting to a half-baked investigation?

Conclusion – and my attempt to draw the tentacles of The Octopus.

Presented with the information above, I cannot believe that Danny Casolaro killed himself. He will have known he was in danger but, with characters such as Michael Riconosciuto still alive, he would also have reason to think the danger was less than fatal. And yes, he had a less-than-stellar career, but why kill yourself when on the cusp of a great discovery? That makes no sense at all.


I can also believe that every single case mentioned here, and all the others that branch off (the murders of Kevin Ives and Don Henry come to mind) are cover-ups to some extent or other. But are they all linked by one master plan? That is harder to believe. Could any organisation really be that efficient when we see such buffoonery on a regular basis?


I can’t make up my mind on this one, and I took up the challenge of trying to illustrate the inter-connected tentacles of the cases in this article. I am aware that others are missing, but it is a start. It can also help those new to the case in orienting themselves to the relationships between the players.

Will we ever see any resolution to these individual murders? I suspect more information will emerge over the years as individual strands become eligible for further FOIA requests. According to muckrock.com there are still over 20,000 pages at the National Archives relating to Danny Casolaro and the PROMIS affair that are not yet available to the public.

Maybe the answers are buried in there.


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