The following transcript was made from a broadcast over
     WBAI-FM 99.5 in New York City on September 20, 1991:
     505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
     New York, NY 10018        (212) 279-0707


   If you want to call or write to Paul DeRienzo or Samori Marksman,
   I think they would be interested in hearing your comments about
   this expos`e.


   PART I
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
[Bill Hamilton is the chief executive officer of the Inslaw Corporation
(a software company) and the developer of its PROMIS software package.]


BILL HAMILTON:
Danny [Casolaro] was found dead in West Virginia. He had conversations
with three confidants -- three separate conversations which I found
out about later. And he told each of these three confidants the
same thing; that he had just then returned from West Virginia where
he had met with a source and that he now knew everything that had
happened to the PROMIS software and to Inslaw, but that he had to
go back for one final meeting to pick up the last piece of evidence.
And he was quite euphoric about his breakthrough. And he said to
each of these people that Bill and Nancy Hamilton (My wife is named
Nancy -- works here with me.) were going to be quite excited.


One of the confidants said: "I've had fifty telephone hours
talking to Danny." (This is someone who lives on the West Coast.)
"During the past year I've spent about fifty hours speaking to him
on the phone. Normally, he plays chess with me. Monday night, he
was like the cat who had swallowed the canary. He knew he had
broken this thing!


So, if he was murdered -- and I believe he clearly was -- he was
murdered because he had found out too much. The other thing I
should mention to you is that, in the final three or four weeks
of his life, several different people with backgrounds in U.S.
covert intelligence operations, who I talk to on a regular basis,
and who Danny also talked to on a regular basis, directly told me
that they had told Danny that his life was in jeopardy because he
was having such success in breaking this corruption open. And they
told me that some specific inquiries that Danny was making could
get him killed. And the West Virginia authorities have never shown
any interest in finding that kind of thing out from people like me
and others who knew professionally what Danny was doing.


So, to rule a suicide without examining this kind of information,
is a ruling which does not deserve to be taken seriously.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Can you give me some idea of those very specific things that
Danny Casolaro was inquiring about?


BILL HAMILTON:
Danny was planning to go to a particular facility in the Washington,
D.C. area, owned by the United States Government, a facility with
connections to one or more of the people who run "the Octopus".
I think you can assume it's a covert intelligence facility, from
the way that it's presented. And just going to this facility, I
was warned, could get him killed. The other thing that he was doing
was making inquiries, over the telephone, to the Syndicate in
Los Angeles. And those inquiries had rattled the cages of some
people out there. And there was some concern that they might
respond to the rattling by killing Danny. The claim that I have
heard from some sources is that someone with mob responsibilities
(I guess you'd call it) -- some person in the mob -- is a member
of the leadership of "the Octopus." And it's someone from the
Los Angeles mob. And Danny was onto it.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Are you familiar with any of the research that was done by the
Christic Institute in Washington, D.C. concerning the Iran-Contra
scandal?


BILL HAMILTON:
Yes. I have read it.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
To your knowledge, are there any parallels there? Are some of
those same people involved, to your knowledge?


BILL HAMILTON:
Yes. Danny's belief about who was running "the Octopus" -- about
seven or eight people -- some of them are people who the Christic
Institute identified: Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines ....
Danny also had people like George Pender, John P. Nichols,
E. Howard Hunt [JD: Hunt was one of the people named in Nixon's
burglary of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate
office building.], the former Director of the CIA Richard Helms,
Ray Cline. Those are the people that Danny had identified as the
people running "the Octopus."


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Anything you'd like to add to this?


BILL HAMILTON:
I think it's important that reporters try to get to the bottom
of this because Danny was investigating corruption in the U.S.
Department of Justice itself. It makes problematical any
possibility that there could be a Federal investigation, unless
there's an independent counsel appointed. So, the press and the
Congress are really the only hopes that we have to try to prove
whether Danny was murdered or not.

PAUL DeRIENZO:
I know that you won your suit and that there were some appeals by
the government. Has that been completed yet -- the legal proceedings?


BILL HAMILTON:
No. The government appealed from the bankruptcy court to the U.S.
District Court. The U.S. District Court, in November, 1989,
affirmed the bankruptcy court saying that the evidence was
sufficient to support the findings (quote) "under any standard of
review." (closed quotes). Then the Justice Department appealed
again to the United States Court of Appeals this time. And a three-
judge panel in May said, on a narrow jurisdictional ruling, that
we won the case in the wrong federal court. We should have tried
it in a different federal court. We are currently seeking
certiorari from the U.S. Supreme Court because we think that the
U.S. Court of Apppeals jurisdictional ruling was in error. But
when the U.S. Court of Appeals made its jurisdictional ruling,
it left undisturbed the findings of the bankruptcy court that
had already been upheld by the district court: that the Justice
Department stole six million dollars worth of our software through
"trickery, fraud and deceit", and then tried covertly to drive
Inslaw out of business.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Have you received any settlement on that?


BILL HAMILTON:
I've never received a penny! And the forty-two largest United
States Attorneys' offices are still running their caseloads with
software that two federal courts said was deliberately stolen
by the U.S. Department of Justice headquarters in Washington.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
And that was Bill Hamilton, the chair of Inslaw, a software
producing company in Washington, D.C. that has been battling the
United States Government since the early 1980's and whose case
led to another window into the workings of the secret team,
"the Octopus", and the death of Danny Casolaro.


ROBERT KNIGHT:
This is UNDERCURRENTS. You've just heard Bill Hamilton, a man at
the center of a pattern of deception, corruption and implications
that are so tremendous that it's difficult to even encompass them all.


This is WBAI, New York. before continuing, it is essential that
you call this radio station. Because now, as Bill Hamilton says,
the issue has been joined. What can you expect from the Federal
Government if, indeed, it is involved in such a wide-ranging
conspiracy?


Well, we know that what we're going to do is continue to pursue
this and bring you the kind of information you've been listening
to for a solid half-hour this morning here on UNDERCURRENTS.
(212)279-3400 is the number to call. If you want to have an
independent reportorial investigative arm, support us now and let
us know that this is important to you.


Let me just try and delineate some of the implications of this.
A reporter gets close to the story. A reporter ends up dead.
A reporter looks into something that is so big that it involves
a global conspiracy.


Let's just take one little aspect of that: the case-tracking
abilities of this software. You remember, during this interview
that Paul DeRienzo produced, that Bill Hamilton said that copies
of that software ended up in places like Israel, Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, and around the world. In countries ....


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Iraq, as well, in 1987. As a matter of fact, Richard Secord,
according to an Iranian arms dealer who is now in jail, made the
sales pitch.


ROBERT KNIGHT:
Let's recall who Richard Secord is. The former commander of the
air wing in Vietnam. In it's program, Dang Pao (?), the ambiance
out of which was shipped a crippling incapacitation of heroine
into the United States. He ends up involved with Southern Air
during the Iran-Contra period, and those airplanes are used for
shipping arms out of this country, and are used, according to
various reports that you've heard here and elsewhere, for
shipping cocaine into the United States.


ROBERT KNIGHT:
Well, there is another kind of product that is just as powerful
and just as deadly to the indigenous community. One application --
just very broadly speaking as a former systems analyst myself --
is that tracking software can easily be modified, in terms of the
attributes of description, so that instead of federal cases in
the United States, it can be used to track the activities and to
keep a centralized log of the repression of individuals -- of
citizens within a country. Think about Saudi Arabia; a slave state
that did not officially change its laws regarding slavery; the
indentured servitude of migrant workers who come into that country
and become, effectively, the property of the ownership class, and
cannot leave without an exit visa. They belong to somebody else.


Imagine the applications of software like this! Imagine what
happens to people who don't get their hands stamped at elections
in El Salvador, because not to vote for the pre-selected rightwing
candidates during the mid-1980's was considered by that U.S.-backed
military government as tantamount to treason.


Area code (212) 279-3400.


We're talking about subtle material here, but that which can have
an utterly profound effect on the state of human rights around
the world. Something that illegally and mysteriously and --
through the operations of the National Security Council members,
Robert McFarlane, the "secret team", Richard Secord, and Ed Messe,
Ronald Reagan and cronies -- something that starts turning up
around U.S.-linked repressive governments around the world. And
Iraq is included among them.


279-3400, area code (212)... If we are revealing to you new
dimensions of the operations of your government ... This is not
a federal investigation. This is an UNDERCURRENTS investigation.
This is a WBAI investigation. And we're obviously operating at
the threshold of danger. I say that, not to aggrandize the efforts
of the people at this particular place, but there is the matter
of the death of Danny Casolaro, implying the importance that people
NOT know that this is going on.


279-3400 ... If you want to defy, you can defy with your money.
You can defy with your tax-deductible donations to WBAI, and let
us know that we need to do this. Let us know that YOU need to
know this. We are trying to move the consciousness of this city,
this country, and this world beyond the spy syndrome where only
Robert Gates has a need to know. We're saying that YOU have a
need to know.


I remember, as news director, reporting on how, during the
elections in El Salvador, the Israelis WERE INVOLVED in tracking
individuals vis-a-vis voting. Were they using this software?
We're going to find out! But it's essential that you help us.


Let's look at the astonishing implications of this use of stolen
tracking software to keep track of individuals in repressive
governments, linked with the United States around the world,
using software that was stolen from a company that refused to
roll over to Ed Meese and cronies [JD: i.e. Ronald Reagan].


PAUL DeRIENZO:
I can't wait until I can tell people, over-the-air, the address
of that facility in Washington, D.C. where anybody who goes to it
is threatened with death. Maybe we could all go down there.


     The following transcript was made from a broadcast by
     Pacifica Radio Network affiliate WBAI-FM 99.5 in
     New York City on September 20, 1991. WBAI can afford
     to reveal this scandal because WBAI is not under the
     dictatorship of big business owners and sponsors who
     forbid these revelations in the mass media. WBAI is
     financed with donations from listeners like me who
     realize that you get what you pay for. For instance,
     General Electric, the owner of NBC, gets what it pays
     for in terms of public delusion.

PAUL DeRIENZO:
The next aspect of this case is the connection to BCCI, the Bank
of Credit Commerce International. It turns out that BCCI was
laundering monies that were raised through the illegal sales of
this software. You know, it's very interesting because everybody
is screaming: "Well how could BCCI be operating without the
regulators doing anything about it when obviously there were flags
going up and there was evidence going back seven, eight years that
BCCI was involved in drug-running and in laundering of drug money,
and in various nefarious schemes?" Well, the reason that the
regulators and the Congressional hearings don't seem to want to
touch upon is that, very possibly and probably, BCCI had direct
ties to the Justice Department and to the regulators who were
supposed to be watching the store. In fact, the reason that BCCI
was not investigated and not prosecuted a lot earlier for its
activities was because it was providing necessary services --
a full service bank.


ROBERT KNIGHT:
279-3400, area code (212) .... We need you to say: "Go ahead.
Go further. Take us into the realms of the esoteric knowledge of
a deadly conspiracy." We are in a position to create so many
headaches -- to bring around so much that has gone around. We're
going to make so much trouble! The people who do these things have
tools and techniques and dirty business beyond your imagining.


To help UNDERCURRENTS directly, contact us at 130 West 25th St.,
New York, NY 10001.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Well, what's there to say except: Is this the beginning of death
squads in America? Are journalists fair play now for people who
are afraid of the light of day shining into the events of the
world -- shining into what happens in the distant corners of this
country, out of sight of the majority of the people who don't
realize that their tax money and their representatives are involved
in all kinds of nefarious illegal schemings that cause so much pain
and destruction?


It's a sad story, and one that WBAI and other progressive
journalists are going to stick to, and won't be intimidated and
scared away from because of the death of Danny Casolaro.


ANDREW PHILLIPS:
From our sister station in California, compliments of Pamela Burton
at the Pacifica Archives, just today we received an interview
conducted by a colleague of mine .... His name is Ian Masters.
And he did an interview at KPFK, Los Angeles ....


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Well, this is an interview with Michael Reconosciutto. He is in
the Pierce County Jail in Tacoma, Washington where he was arrested
for allegedly running the largest methamphetamine laboratory in
United States history -- ever busted in United States history.
However, he says he was set up; that his factory was not involved
in drug manufacturing, and that he, in fact, was being punished
for appearing before the Jack Brooks Committee to give testimony
of the involvement of intelligence agencies in the Inslaw matter.
Reconosciutto is a computer expert. He claims to have been an
employee of the Wackenhut Corporation, to have worked on the
Capazon Indian Reservation and to have actually rewritten and
improved the Inslaw PROMIS software after it was stolen for export
to intelligence agencies in Iraq, Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia,
Canada, and a number of other countries -- eighty-eight countries
in all, according to Inslaw CEO Bill Hamilton.


And Reconosciutto gave this interview from jail. He has information
about things that only someone who is close to these events would
know. This is a fellow who, two or three weeks after he gave
testimony to the Brooks Commitee, was arrested on these charges ...


ANDREW PHILLIPS:
Texas Congressman Jack Brooks' Judiciary Committee has been
looking into the affair for the last two years, but only issued
subpoenas last July. Brooks is believed to have interviewed
Edwin Meese, former Attorney General under Reagan and his friends.
According to the Hamiltons -- we're going to hear from Bill Hamilton
later on -- the files of the Justice Department chief litigating
attorney on this case have disappeared.


IAN MASTERS:
He has a background in U.S. Intelligence: you've always got to be
skeptical of that claim, but he certainly does appear to have
knowledge of government contracts and activities. He feels that
he's being framed by Earl W. Brian and Peter Veidnix. They set him
up on a drug charge because he wouldn't cooperate with them.
Veidnix apparently warned him against cooperating with the House
Judiciary Committee on the Inslaw investigation.


Now, the reason I'm going to talk, in a moment, to Reconosciutto
is that he is the individual who allegedly altered this Inslaw
software to give it this extra capability, to make it lucrative
and able to generate all this money and all these sales.

IAN MASTERS:
So let's now go to Michael Reconosciutto in jail in Tacoma,
Washington.


[JD: The dotted gaps below indicate some words that I must have
missed in dubbing this tape. I'll listen to the original tape and
then I'll insert those words in a follow-up to this installment.]


MICHAEL RECONOSCIUTTO:
... and this package worked. OK? I mean it really and truly worked.
And when I got my first copies of it and ran it up, I was
dumbfounded. I have a statistical exercising package where I can
put computer software and/or hardware, and/or hardware/software
systems through their paces. And I can determine at which point it
will become unreliable ....
.... was going to go after information technology and bio-technology.
And here again, you have to realize that we were on the threshold
of a whole new era with bio-technology and with information
technology. Earl Brian had some backing, and he was going to buy
out some well placed start-up companies that already had a running
start, and then he was going to pump money and talent and the
right connections into them, and make them go.


And all of these grandiose plans were going along huckledy-buck
all through 1982. And something went wrong! OK? The first thing
that went wrong down in the Capazon was that the deputy tribal
chairman, Fred Alvarez and a couple of his friends were murdered.
They managed to sidestep that issue, as if it had never happened.
And then my ex-associate, Paul Marosca was found murdered. I was
the one who found him. And Nichols and others tried to keep me
away from our condominium office in San Francisco. It was
suspicious to me. And after almost fourteen days of not seeing
Paul -- and then a day after he missed a critical meeting that
there's no way he would have missed -- that's when I went looking
for him. And Nichols tried to get me down to the desert on an
emergency basis to work on some project so that I'd be otherwise
occupied. And I said that I'd be down there as soon as I found out
what happened to Paul. And he was really pushy and really stressed
out. When he came across to me on this, it made me even more
suspicious. And other people that I talked to tried to dissuade me,
and it was just not normal, the amount of pressure and emphasis
they were putting on this situation. I knew in my gut there was
something wrong.


Paul was dead! He'd been slowly strangled to death.


IAN MASTERS:
But why? Why are they killing people who are working for them?


MICHAEL RECONOSCIUTTO:
Well let me explain. Alvarez was present at all the meetings,
and he was gung-ho behind Nichols (Dr. John P. Nichols), and
everything that was going on there. OK? We were all red-blooded
Americans, and we believed in the things that were going on!
The way things were shaping up with the Reagan Election Committee
and the things that were being orchestrated made us all concerned.
And Alvarez wrote a detailed letter to Ronald Reagan expressing
his concern. All the details of the October Surprise hostage issue
were outlined in that letter. I mean, IN SPECIFICS.


IAN MASTERS:
How did he have this information?


MICHAEL RECONOSCIUTTO:
Well, Senator Abourezk was the tribal advisor. And we had
connections in Saudi Arabia, and we had connections in Iran. And
we were using those connections to try to get through to the
religious regime to put pressure on the group that had the hostages
-- to get them released. We were trying to resolve that question.
You've got to understand that Bill Casey was the outside corporate
counsel for Wackenhut at that time.


IAN MASTERS:
And Wackenhut was in a joint venture with the Capazon Indians.


MICHAEL RECONOSCIUTTO:
That's correct. And William Casey was their [Wackenhut's] outside
counsel. Now, Stansfield Turner, the Carter C.I.A. Director WAS
ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF WACKENHUT! Do you know that Frank
Carlucci [JD: former secretary of defense] is on the board of
directors of Wackenhut? Shall I keep going??
You know, their favorite song at board meetings, after the "Star
Spangled Banner", is "Hail, Hail, The Gang's All Here".


IAN MASTERS:
But tell me how this led up to Ronald Reagan. What was the date
of this letter saying ....


MICHAEL RECONOSCIUTTO:
I can't remember exactly. I'd have to go back to my notes and
stuff. But we've got copies of it and we've got copies of Ronald
Reagan's response. Have you seen any of this?


IAN MASTERS:
No. Of course not.


MICHAEL RECONOSCIUTTO:
OK. It's been spread out to reporters. And I will get a hold of ...


IAN MASTERS:
I'd like to get hold of it. But tell me now: what specifics do
you have on how this October Surprise thing was orchestrated?


MICHAEL RECONOSCIUTTO:
OK. But let me finish. I'm building up to a point here. It's quite
complicated and I'm just about there. Robert Jason, who is the
group vice president of Wackenhut, has an interesting history.
Robert Jason was vice president of International Telegraph and
Telephone. You know -- ITT. During the Allende situation in Chile,
he was the C.I.A. station boss as well as vice president of ITT
for Chilean operations. And his deputy station boss was Dino Pianzio.
And John Philip Nichols was working under Dino John Pianzio at
that time. Jason goes from ITT to Wackenhut. During the Carter
Administration, Robert E. Jason is Commissioner of U.S. Customs
for the entire Carter Administration. As Commissioner of Customs,
he has some interesting projects directly out of his office. One
of them was Fat Albert, the drug interdiction surveillance balloons.
Are you familiar with that technology?


IAN MASTERS:
Yes.

-- the big balloons with radar and other sensors that were doing
the aerial surveillance for drug smugglers flying in, to try to
avoid radar. A very major project! Two-thirds of the companies
that were vendors supporting that project were wholly owned by
Earl W. Brian. The contracting officer handling all of those
companies was Peter Veidnix, out of the BUREAU OF CUSTOMS! OK?
And this was a very large procurement. And Veidnix' job, as
contracting officer, was to deal with industry. And he was the
point of contact for the vendors in industry to deal with the
Government agency. It was his job to communicate and fraternize
with the companies that the Government was involved with. That's
a normal part of his job description.


Now for him to say, in affidavits, denying that he's ever heard of
Wackenhut, that he's ever heard of Earl Brian, and Earl Brian's
denying that he's ever heard of Peter Veidnix is preposterous!


IAN MASTERS:
Well, you've personally had to work with both of them.


MICHAEL RICONOSCIUTO:
You see, but what I'm trying to do is establish, on an undisputed
basis, collateral from me, or totally independent from me, the
fact that these guys do not have a basis to deny knowing each
other, or to deny knowing anything about Wackenhut.


Here the chief operations officer from Wackenhut takes a leave of
absence to go be Commissioner of Customs. And while Commissioner
of Customs, he had routine contact -- he might as well still have
been at his post at Wackenhut. Internal memoranda suport that. OK?
Yet the guy who was Veidnix' boss, and wearing two hats, while
running a Government agency -- which is not proper to begin with --
But for Veidnix to deny he's ever heard of Wackenhut is a bunch
of baloney.


Wackenhut has a working relationship with the Customs Bureau that
is second to none for a corporate entity to have with a Government
agency. These guys are not talking reality. They're hiding behind
a so-called wall of plausible deniability which, if you examine
the facts, it is shown to be just that.


Now, we get back to the Reservation, and we get back to this
three-ring circus conducted by Dr. John Philip Nichols and covert
operators, and arms dealers, and drug dealers, of every stripe
and color coming to meetings over a four-year period on this
Reservation. That's what you had. PROMIS was just one of many acts
in this three-ring circus. And the players were involved, not just
in PROMIS, but in all the rest of it.


So, the Hamiltons, and the scenario of them getting ripped off
while in a formal contractual relationship with a Government
agency, is only one of many stories. And I can pinpoint over a
hundred companies that received the same kind of treatment, and
were defrauded in the same way as Inslaw. And I've gotten over
fifty of them together, and we're all networking, trying to bring
this thing out into the light of day.


IAN MASTERS:
What about the idea that somehow the theft of PROMIS was a reward
to Dr. Earl Brian for brokering the Iran hostage deal?


MICHAEL RICONOSCIUTO:
The ability to run with PROMIS from the inside, on a procurement
track, was part of a benefit reward package to the Capazon position
for what they did in helping the Election Committee. Part of that
was the artillery shells. Part of that was security contracts for
Wackenhut. Wackenhut has security jobs that traditionally the
United States Marine Corps did. OK? Now, it's done on open bid to
private companies, and Wackenhut consistently has gotten most of
those jobs. And all our atomic weapons research and test sites are
all guarded by Wackenhut personnel. In the Reagan Administration,
the shift went abruptly from Marine Corps and military personnel
to Wackenhut personnel. It was an UNPRECEDENTED move. And it's my
position that this was part of the reward benefit package for
cooperation and services rendered during the election situation.

ANDREW PHILLIPS:
We think this is one hell of a story. Just let me read briefly
from the VILLAGE VOICE of this week [Sept. 18, 1991]:


   "Unlike the murky October Surprise scandal with the compromised
    Congressional investigations into Iran/Contra, the facts in the
    Inslaw case are quite clear. Emerging from a low-level bankruptcy
    court, they paint a virtually indisputable case of corporate theft."


This is James Ridgeway writing in this week's VOICE,


   "an indisputable case of corporate theft, political corruption,
    and the very real possibility of international espionage. The
    issue goes straight to the White House and it involves officials
    at the highest levels of the Justice Department in what appears
    to be a deliberate campaign of intimidation, theft and corruption.
    By now, that ought to have led to a serious Congressional
    investigation. Unlike Iran/Contra, no one in this case has pleaded
    national security as a defense, though that is likely before it
    is over. In a sense, it is already too late for that. The facts
    are too well defined. If the opinions of two judges are correct,
    this case ought to result in criminal indictments of past and
    present Justice officials."


(212) 279-3400: That's the number here at WBAI.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Hopefully, people will keep calling through this interview --
as important as it is.


ANDREW PHILLIPS:
We urge you just as strongly as possible to support the radio
station that's doing the work, supporting the journalists who are
doing the work, and supporting ourselves -- each other -- as a
community -- as a listener community. That's what it's about.
We need each other. We are a listener-supported institution here
at WBAI. We are a Pacifica station, and when you subscribe to WBAI,
your dollar goes a very, very long way.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
This is Bill Hamilton, the developer of the PROMIS software, which
was marketed by Inslaw and then stolen, according to a bankruptcy
court judge, from Inslaw.


BILL HAMILTON:
Inslaw has software that it manufactures for case management --
case tracking and workflow management in a professional office.
One type of that software is called PROMIS and is for prosecution
management information systems in public prosecution agencies.


The U.S. Department of Justice contracted with Inslaw, in 1982,
for ten million dollars, to install a 1970's version of PROMIS,
that we had created, in the twenty largest U.S. Attorneys offices.
In 1983, the Justice Department modified the contract to replace
the 1970's version with a 1980's version. That meant that the
Justice Department would have to pay Inslaw license fees because
they had no right, under the contract, to the 1980's version.


As soon as they took delivery of the 1980's version, however, the
Justice Department reneged on the contractual promise to pay us the
license fees, and instead, started to refuse to pay us the bills
for the services we were performing. They withheld payments for
two million dollars of services and drove us into Chapter Eleven
bankruptcy. As soon as we went into Chapter Eleven bankruptcy,
the Justice Department launched a covert effort to convert Inslaw
from Chapter Eleven bankruptcy to Chapter Seven bankruptcy, which
means complete liquidation.


We sued the Department of Justice in Federal bankruptcy court,
and after three weeks of trial, the court ruled that officials of
the Justice Department "stole" forty-four copies of the 1980's
version of PROMIS -- the proprietary version owned by Inslaw --
"through trickery, fraud and deceit", and then tried covertly to
drive Inslaw out of business so that Inslaw could not seek legal
redress in the courts.

PAUL DeRIENZO
Some of these reports said that copies of the software wound up in
other places besides the Justice Department -- in other countries.


BILL HAMILTON:
We have been told, including by people who have been willing to
give us sworn affidavits which we submitted in U.S. District
Court this year (because they only came forward this year),
that what we had been litigating was only the tip of the iceberg;
that what they really had done with the software, in addition to
not paying us for the copies that they put into the U.S. Attorneys
offices, is they copied it and gave it to private sector friends
of Ronald Reagan and Ed Meese, so that those friends could sell
it to intelligence and law enforcement agencies of countries all
over the world. Our software has been illegally sold to Iraq,
Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, France, Germany,
Great Britain, Canada, South Korea, Japan. Supposedly, as many as
eighty-eight countries were induced to purchase our software by
people who had no right to sell it; who were, themselves, supported
in their illegal efforts by the United States Government in the
White House.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Could you go into the story of the Hadron Corporation's coming
forward to offer to buy, or in some way, to try and get that
software from you at an early stage in this?


BILL HAMILTON:
The contracting officer at the Justice Department, Peter Veidnix
whom, we have since learned, had a preexisting relationship with
Hadron in that, before the Justice Department hired him as the
contracting officer for the Government in the Inslaw contract, he
had been Hadron's contracting officer. He had actually been the
U.S. Customs Service contracting officer with Hadron for several
contracts that Hadron had at the U.S. Customs Service.


On April 11, 1983, Veidnix -- the guy we're talking about --
modified our contract, as I was describing to you, so that he
could take delivery of the 1980's version of the software.
Approximately one week later, the chairman of Hadron telephoned
me and told me that they had in his company the political contacts
with Edwin Meese and the White House that would enable Hadron to
obtain the Federal Government's case-management software business,
but that they needed to acquire title to the PROMIS software first.
And for that reason, they were going to purchase our company.
I told them I was not interested in selling Inslaw, and the
chairman at the time, whose name was Dominick Liti, said: "We have
ways of making you sell."


In May of `83, Peter Veidnix -- the guy with the preexisting,
although then unknown, relationship with Hadron -- started
withholding the payments to Inslaw until he could drive us into
Chapter Eleven bankruptcy.


BILL HAMILTON:
Lowell Jensen -- who was the elected District Attorney of Alameda
County, California -- his office developed a case-tracking system
called DALITE. And Jensen was quite interested in promoting that
software for use among the fifty-eight county district attorneys'
offices in California. In 1974, Inslaw defeated Jensen's proposal
for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, and
evidently, Jensen bore a grudge after that for having lost out to
Inslaw in Los Angeles County which has the biggest district
attorney's office in California.


When Reagan was elected, Reagan appointed Jensen to head the
Criminal Division in Washington, in the Justice Department. And
then when Meese became Attorney General in `85, Meese elevated
Jensen to his deputy, to become Deputy Attorney General. Jensen
played a very important role -- the bankruptcy court found --
in allowing the misconduct against Inslaw to go on, and in
declining to stop it, even though he was contacted repeatedly by
lawyers on behalf of Inslaw and asked to intervene to stop the
misconduct. He never did a thing to stop it! In our investigation,
we have been told that Jensen not only did nothing to stop the
misconduct, but that he was in charge, while heading the Criminal
Division, of orchestrating the effort to drive Inslaw out of
business, so that the Justice Department -- once Meese became
Attorney General -- could award the PROMIS software business to
Earl Brian and other friends of Reagan and Bush.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Where does Mr. Casolaro come in? He was doing his own research,
and he -- according to the newspaper accounts -- had developed a
theory which he called "the Octopus". Are you aware of what
Mr. Casolaro was working on at the time of his death?


BILL HAMILTON:
Yes. I spoke to Danny Casolaro on almost a daily basis for the
year that he worked on this investigation. He started August of
1990. And every day, or certainly every other day, I spoke to him.
And what Danny had concluded was that a relatively small group of
people with backgrounds in U.S. covert intelligence operations,
and with contacts high up in the political leadership of the
United States Government, were making a lot of money in a number
of scandals: BCCI, Iran/Contra, October Surprise, and Inslaw.
And they would use the craft that they learned in foreign covert
operations to help themselves to large profits through criminal
activities; and that some of the proceeds from the illegal sales
of our software were laundered through BCCI.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
In West Virginia they're still saying it was a suicide, but many
of his friends and family seem to think it was, in fact, murder.
He wasn't in the mood, or the kind of person to take his own life.


......


HARRY MARTIN [of The Napa Valley Sentinel, Napa, California]:
You can see the same threads in the October Surprise. You can see
the same threads in Iran/Contra. You can see the same threads in
the looting of the Savings & Loans: the same type of people; the
same type of operations. They all seem to be inteconnected. And
Danny Casolaro's theory of an "Octopus" certainly parallels exactly
what we have been working on for some time: that that is all
interconnected.

PAUL DeRIENZO:
Now, you say here that the reason that Casolaro was in West
Virginia when he was found dead was to meet with gentlemen by
the names of Videnieks and Earl Brian.


HARRY MARTIN [of The Napa Valley Sentinel, Napa, California]:
You know, Videnieks is the man who is believed to have threatened
Bill Hamilton, or tried to extort the company from him. And Earl
Brian, of course -- there are many, many affidavits out which say
he has actually been the one who is selling the software and has
basically taken over the software program.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Now just to recap -- Earl Brian is the former head of Financial
News Network, the owner of the Infotech Corporation which owned
the Hadron Corporation, of which the CEO of Hadron at the time
called Bill Hamilton up, as president of Inslaw, and said: "We have
ways of making you sell." When Inslaw refused to sell, they found
that they were then forced into bankruptcy.


HARRY MARTIN:
Judge Basin ruled that the Federal Government owed Bill Hamilton
about eight million dollars. And, of course, right after the judge
basically ruled that, the prosecutor for the Justice Department,
who was trying to prevent any payment going to Inslaw, replaced
the judge on the bench. So the prosecutor in the Inslaw case, and
who was against Hamilton and for Meese, ended up -- of course, it
was Thornburg at the time -- ended up taking over the judge's job
and the judge was not reappointed.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
How did you find out that Casolaro was going to meet Videnieks
and Brian?


HARRY MARTIN:
Several reporters have networked and found certain notes that he
had made certain calls to people. And we have some people now
who had very, very close communication with Casolaro at all times.
And, in fact, they were supplying him with some of the information.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
And so they were able to report to you who he was off to see?


HARRY MARTIN:
That's correct. We didn't take the report from one individual. We
took it from several and they all coincided. In fact, we would
like to know who was at the Hilton in West Virginia. Room 900 is
one of the phone numbers that was in Casolaro's files. We have a
whole list of the different phone numbers that Casolaro apparently
had called just before he died. And these came from the various
sources who were giving that information to Casolaro.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
And did he ever meet with Videnieks and Brian on that trip to
West Virginia?


HARRY MARTIN:
No. He did not. Now, I understand that Michael Riconosciuto, who
I indicated had given the deposition to the Brooks Committee,
had an attorney in Philadelphia. And the attorney was verifying
Riconosciuto's information on the Inslaw case. He was to meet with
a person, and he was found shot to death in his car. And they
considered that a suicide as well.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Right. There have been a number of .....


HARRY MARTIN:
It just goes on and on and on to various people. And, of course,
we had the gentleman from the Financial Times in London who was
trying to find Johnny Hughes -- who was the bagman to the
assassination of the Indian leaders -- to talk to him about that
whole tie-in. And, of course, he was found shot. And they said
that was suicide as well.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Right. That was in Guatemala.


HARRY MARTIN:
Right. And, of course, we have talked with the people who helped
Johnny Hughes get out of the Cabazon Indian tribe reservation at
the time that the murders had taken place. The security people
had talked to us long ago on this. We did a whole series on the
Cabazon before any of this was known. And now they're getting a
lot more focus and it's becoming very interesting.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
What's the conection between Wackenhut and the Cabazon Indians?
What is Wackenhut?


HARRY MARTIN:
Wackenhut is your RoboCop of the future. It has almost four
hundred thousand employees. It has taken over the prisons in
places like San Antonio and Terminal Island, and they are making
a bid now to take over fire departments and police departments.
You'll find it's almost like a private army. If you saw the movie:
RoboCop, the corporation that was running that police department --
this is exactly what Wackenhut is becoming. In other words, it's
taking over the functions of law enforcement on contract base. And
they were formed by former FBI people. And some of the top CIA people
went into that organization when they retired from their system.


HARRY MARTIN [of the Napa Sentinel, Napa California]:
Wackenhut was using the Cabazon Indian tribe because they felt
that the Indian nation was independent, and therefore, they could
manufacture and do whatever they needed to do at that base without
violating any U.S. laws.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Where is that located -- the Cabazon Reservation?


HARRY MARTIN:
It's in Indio [California], near Palm Springs.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
And is it a large tract?


HARRY MARTIN:
It's not a huge thing, but they have been able to convert it into
gambling casinos and manufacturing plants and everything else.
And of course, there has been a major upheaval among the Indians,
trying to take back their tribe.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
How did Wackenhut get into this situation, in control of this tribe?


HARRY MARTIN:
Basically, Dr. Nichols -- who was associated with the assassination
of Allende [JD: the assassination of the democratically elected
President of Chile, circa 1976] and the attempted assassinations
of Castro -- came in and said, "We're going to make money for you",
built the casinos up and then brought Wackenhut in. And he has
subsequently been sent to jail for attempted murders. The California
Department of Justice has a file on him that shows Mafia ties and
C.I.A. ties and everything else. It's EXTREMELY complex.
I mean, it's hard to do [understand] in a few minutes when we've
been doing it for a year.


ANDREW PHILLIPS:
This is WBAI in New York. We're in a membership drive. We're
on a line to California with Harry Martin of the Napa Sentinel.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
It's just so amazing -- this story -- because it really started
with a blurb in the New York Times that said a reporter looking
into a case was found dead. And now we're talking about people
who were involved in the so-called "Secret Team", the "Octopus",
almost like a secret government within a government in the United
States. And Mr. Nichols was one of those people who was mentioned
earlier by Bill Hamilton as a leading member of the "Octopus".
So you're saying that Mr. Nichols is the head of Wackenhut, or
he's connected with Wackenhut?


HARRY MARTIN:
No. Basically, he was put in charge -- in other words, like
chairman of the board, or something like that -- of the Cabazon
Indians. But he has worked closely with them [Wackenhut] and his
ties have been with them for years. And, as I say, you'll find in
some publications and from his own boasts and other documents that
he was instrumental in the assassination of Allende in Chile. So,
in other words, he has been a worker in the company for a long time.


ANDREW PHILLIPS:
Just listening to this presentation, you're giving -- in such a
matter-of-fact tone of voice -- the most incredible information
which you say you've been covering now for many months. And, I
suppose, we've been seeing little bits and pieces of ....


HARRY MARTIN:
You have to understand, I've lived with this for a long time and
perhaps to me it's just commonplace. Now, for instance, the
San Francisco Chronicle, just last week, began a series on the
Cabazon Indians. And it's been a long time before they've done
anything about it. And then they began to bring in all those
areas: the Wackenhut [story], the manufacturing of the biochemical
warfare agents, and so forth. So, they finally caught onto it.
.....
I guess, on the East Coast, you're not hearing that much about it.
But Bill Hamilton has been fighting this. His attorney, Elliot
Richardson [JD: the former Attorney General of the United States],
is very well known. And the courts ruled way back -- Judge Bason
ruled that this whole thing was deceitful, theft. Not only that,
but his opinion was originally upheld by another court. And now,
it has been overturned. And how they overturned it wasn't to say
that he was wrong in the decision that it was theft. What they
ruled was that he didn't have the jurisdiction to make such a
ruling. And Thornburgh has NOT cooperated AT ALL with the Brooks
Committee. When Sam Nunn was doing his own committee [hearings]
on Inslaw in the Senate, there was no cooperation to the point
that they ended up having to, basically, drop the hearings.


HARRY MARTIN:
But one of the Senate investigators is on record as saying that
he was told by members of the Justice Department that Inslaw
[affair] is so dirty and so deep that it is much bigger and more
explosive than Watergate.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
I see, from my investigations over the years -- I understand the
type of organization that Wackenhut is. I've covered them in
writing before and read stuff about them, and I know their
connections to the C.I.A. It's interesting reading your article
here about some of the capabilities of PROMIS, the software that
was stolen from Inslaw. And that there's an updated version in
the works that would allow the deduction of future or potential
actions of a person being traced.


HARRY MARTIN:
It's really frightening to think what the computer age is going
to do to individuality.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Can you tell us a little bit about what this software does? It's
worth a lot of money, on one hand. But, on the other hand, it
seems that this software has a tremendous amount of power.


HARRY MARTIN:
It has power because, again, it was designed by Bill to trace and
track everything. Consider the number of court cases and the
number of witnesses, and the number of people in the witness
protection program, and the number of criminals that exist in the
United States. This was to be a nationwide system that could track
all that. I mean, that's tremendous information. It's tremendous
power. And it's quite an innovation. And, of course, it has been
used by the Israelis and some of the others for tracking military.
Now, we ran into a strange case ourselves. Back in the early `80's
I was the publisher of several defense publications. And the
Israelis came to us with a program to market to the different
defense companies in the United States. It dealt with the complete
military structure, and who's who and what's what. I mean, it even
got down almost to the number of shoelaces: how many handguns --
everything. And the Israelis said that they couldn't market it.
Later on, what we found out was the reason that they couldn't
technically market it -- besides that it was Mossad information --
but it also dealt, probably, with the Inslaw software which they
should not have had. You know, they didn't have the license to it.
I found those military reports and I notified Bill Hamilton. I
found them in a box in storage. I had forgotten all about them,
and the letters that went with them. The fact is, if you see
those reports, it tells you EVERY SINGLE ITEM of any military
organization. I'm talking about: every vehicle, every handgun,
every rifle. It gets into numbers and details. And that's what
this software has this tremendous power to do.


ANDREW PHILLIPS:
Give us a sense of how valuable this is. What sort of dollar value
do you put on this kind of software?


HARRY MARTIN:
Inslaw had a ten million dollar contract just to do the Justice
Department. Mind you now, we're talking about intelligence
agencies throughout the United States and many countries, and
we're talking about even the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. So, if
it's ten million dollars just for the U.S. Justice Department,
what is it to military intelligence and to all these other
organizations around the world? It's got to be mind-boggling. But
remember -- it wasn't because of the particular dollar value of
Inslaw as much as the "Eagle" project to replace all computers in
the whole Justice System. But it required the Inslaw software
program in it. That's where the value was -- in setting up all
that hardware. And they needed to get the Inslaw in order to get
the contract fulfilled.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
It's my understanding that there are a number of companies -- that
were built up along the lines of the Wackenhut security group --
that, in fact, owe their beginnings to intelligence personnel who
were purged in the `70's after the revelations of the involvement
in Chile and with the involvement in the assassination attempts in
Cuba, and the Bay of Pigs, etc. etc.; and that the Brooks Intelligence
Committee led to a certain amount of light being shined on these
activities, and a number of these people were retired early, and
they went into the private security field.


Also, these people, who went into the private security field, made
an alliance with a number of wealthy rightwing individuals who
collected private personal files, tracking liberals and potential
trouble-makers to the numbers of thousands and tens of thousands
of names. As a matter of fact, I did a story a few years ago on a
case where the Los Angeles Police Department was told that they
had to get rid of these files that they had been keeping from the
60's and 70's on radicals or whatever; liberals, really -- judges,
etc. They lied and said they had destroyed this material, and
then it was discovered in one of their officers' storage facility.
And it was then discovered soon afterward that the contents of the
files had been sent to an agency of the John Birch Society that
specifically followed and created its own database on individuals.


So, you can believe that there are out there private organizations,
that are well funded, that keep track of people whom they feel that
the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. have been scared away from following.


HARRY MARTIN:
Yes. For instance, Riconosciuto was shown, by a Congressional
committee, a list from Wackenhut which is a complete (I don't know
if you want to call it a hit list) dossier on various newspaper
reporters throughout the country; for instance, on a newspaper
reporter in Seattle who was successful in blocking two nuclear
power plants from being built. And this is a complete dossier on
all these reporters, as well. So they were tracking those things.
And maybe this is where Danny and some of those names got on
that list. I have not gotten a copy of the list yet. It is in
Congressman Miller's [of California?] office from what I understand.


We're trying to get the list because I think that would be a
pretty shocking revelation for the national media to carry. As you
know, sometimes the national media will not carry anything until
someone like Danny Casolaro, a reporter, goes down. Then they'll
write a story about it. But the main issue is lost. They're more
concerned with the death of a reporter.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
How did this list become publicized? How did it get into the
Congressman's hands?


HARRY MARTIN:
Well, apparently it was part of an investigation. I'm not sure if
it's from the Brooks Committee. But apparently it's a list that
was compiled on the behavior of different journalists. ....
Basically, it has [identifies] people who have not gone along
with the system of what they [the trackers] believe the system
should be.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
But it seems that on the bottom of it, after all the complexity
is stripped away, it's the same old story of following potential
trouble-makers and liberals, investigators, etc., ad nauseum.


ANDREW PHILLIPS:
The question I want to ask is: Do you think the American people
are ready to hear this? Because if we do hear this -- then what
the HELL are we going to do about it?


HARRY MARTIN [of the Napa Sentinel, Napa, California]:
If you get any films -- you rent your films each night for your
VCR -- those same themes are there. For instance, police brutality,
or RoboCop is an example of the Wackenhut Corporation as far as
the private companies taking over law enforcement duties. You get
into movies in the C.I.A. [vein] showing that they're getting away
with these things. You see, the public is constantly exposed to
it, and they probably say: "Yeah, but what's it got to do with me?"
.....
Right now, I think, as long as the economy is fair, and there's
food on the table, and their individual lives are not threatened,
they can accept scandal in government. That doesn't mean they like
it or want it. But it's like: "Well, I'm powerless to do anything
about it." And it's really the responsibility of the media to get
that out. I think there's been a lot of fault in the main media
for ignoring the "Inslaws" and ignoring the "October Surprises",
and for ignoring a lot of these things. They don't have to agree
with the program, but they can certainly start their own
investigations and let their findings be revealed.


You know, if the October Surprise didn't take place -- fine. Then
these major media should come out and say: "The evidence doesn't
show it. Or, here's what we proved, and we found this guy to be
here instead of there." But they totally ignore it because the
corporate board room is controlling the major media now, saying:
"We don't want to bother with it!" And it's a shame.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Mr. Martin -- one final question. When the law enforcement officials
seemed to start -- whether in the Justice Department or the C.I.A.
or the F.B.I. or at local levels -- start taking positions,
political positions in support of certain factions that they feel
comfortable with, politically; what does that mean for American
democracy? Does our democracy ....


HARRY MARTIN:
We had a police chief here, for instance, endorsing candidates
for the assembly, and even for district attorney. Now, the district
attorney's office has got to be somewhat neutral from the police
department. We fought those endorsements and got the district
attorney thrown out of office. But basically, it means that when
partisan politics creeps into the law enforcement field, then we
are going to have some real problems because it means that the
politicians are going to be able to dictate more and more, and
they'll be beholding, also, to the support of the police
departments, and therefore, they'll be less ready to correct bad
situations like in Los Angeles with the King case. It's not good!
It taints the system.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
This whole day's programming really started with a desire to look
into a newspaper clip about a reporter who was killed, and it
turned into one of the more interesting and deep stories that I've
encountered in recent years. At least not since WBAI was involved
in uncovering the Iran-Contra drug connection in which we discovered
that cocaine was being shipped back [to the U.S.A.] in the same
planes that were carrying arms down to the Contras. And you
brought up the question of the Cabazon Indians and their being
taken advantage of by these people who are now manufacturing what
-- chemical warfare [agents]?


HARRY MARTIN:
Chemical warfare [agents] are being manufactured there [on the
Cabazon Indian reservation] to be sent down to the Contras. So it
means that that war down there was not just bullets.


*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *


    The following excerpts are fragments selected from a
    lengthy article published in the VILLAGE VOICE,
    October 15, 1991. The article glances upon a great many
    diverse and fascinating facets of the story surrounding the
    violent death of an intrepid reporter named Danny Casolaro.


~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~
               THE LAST DAYS OF DANNY CASOLARO
             by James Ridgeway and Doug Vaughan


MARTINSBURG, WEST VIRGINIA --
At about 12:30 in the afternoon of Saturday, August 10, a maid
knocked on the door of room 517 at the Sheraton Martinsburg Inn,
just off Interstate 81 on the outskirts of this old mill town.
Nobody answered, so she used her passkey to open the door; though
it had both a security bolt and a chain lock on the inside,
neither one was attached. The bed didn't appear slept in, though
it was turned down, and clothes had been laid out neatly at it's
foot. Then the maid glanced into the bathroom. She saw a lot of
blood on the tile floor and screamed.


Another hotel maid came rushing in to help. When she peaked inside
the bathroom, she saw a man's nude body lying in the blood-filled
tub. There was blood not only on the tile floor but spattered up
onto the wall above as well; she nearly fainted at the sight. One
of the maids called the desk on the room phone and, after sending
up a maintenance man, the desk immediately dialed 911.


Within five minutes, three Martinsburg city police officers were
threading their way past the horrified maids and maintenance man
clustered in the hallway and into Room 517. A team of paramedics
from the local fire department joined them a few minutes later.
Squeezing into the tiny bathroom, they found a white male in his
early forties with deep cuts on both wrists: three or four wounds
on the right and seven or eight on the left, made with a sharp,
bladed object.


There was no other trauma to the body that would indicate any sort
of struggle; there was a half-empty, corked bottle of red wine on
the floor by the tub and a broken hotel glass beside it. When they
lifted the body out, they found a single-edge razor blade -- the
kind used to scrape windows or slice open packages -- at the
bottom of the bloody water in the bath, along with an empty can
of Milwaukee beer, a paper hotel glass coaster, and two white
plastic garbage bags, the kind used in wastepaper baskets.


On the desk in the bedroom the cops found an empty Mead composition
notebook and a legal pad from which a single page had been removed.
The page lay near a plastic Bic pen, and in its ink there was a note:


         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 inside that God
         will let me in.


There were no other papers, folders, documents of any sort, nor
any briefcase in the room, only the man's wallet, stuffed with
credit cards. According to the driver's license, the man's name
was J. Daniel Casolaro of Fairfax, Virginia.


Although his death was tentatively ruled  a suicide, back in
Washington, D.C., his friends and family quickly protested that
decision, and reports in the media were soon suggesting that Danny
Casolaro had been murdered. For in this, the year of conspiracies,
Danny Casolaro happened to be one of a small army of freelance
journalists exploring the possibility that the powers of the
national security state had been used to manipulate domestic
politics. In particular, Casolaro was interested in what he called
the "Octopus," a network of individuals and institutions that he
believed had secretly masterminded a whole series of scandals,
from the Iran-Contra affair and the S&L debacle to the BCCI
collapse and the 1980 October Surprise deal.




In the weeks before his death Casolaro had spoken frequently about
threats on his life, and just before he left for Martinsburg he
had told his brother, "If anything happens to me, don't believe
it's an accident." Many of the friends and sources who spoke to
him in the last days of his life recalled that he seemed euphoric
and quite certain that he was on the brink of proving the existence
of his Octopus; he did not sound like a candidate for suicide to
them. More suspicious, before the family could be told of Casolaro's
death or an autopsy performed, the body was embalmed by a local
funeral home; early press reports added that the hotel room had
been quickly cleaned, perhaps to obscure any trace of a crime. The
wildest story even suggested that the undertaker was an employee
of the C.I.A., hired to clean up after agency assassinations.


Even at Casolaro's funeral, the family felt engulfed by mysteries.
As his mother, brothers, sisters and close friends watched from
beneath a canopy, a man in a tan raincoat and a beribboned black
soldier in Army dress uniform walked up to the casket. the soldier
laid a medal on the lid, saluted and both men quickly walked away.
No one recognized either man; Danny had never served in or covered
the military. The medal was buried with the coffin.

.....


Riconosciuto told Hamilton that Ed Meese had taken PROMIS and
allegedly given it to one of his cronies, Earl W. Brian, who
served as Reagan's Secretary of Health while he was Governor of
California, and later became head of United Press International.
According to Riconosciuto, Brian then sold PROMIS to police forces
-- including secret police -- around the world, from South Korea
to Israel to Iraq. The same qualities that made PROMIS ideal for
tracking criminals in the U.S. courts made it perfect for keeping
tabs on terrorists or, needless to say, political dissidents. As
Riconosciuto claimed to have adapted it, the software could then
operate as a kind of computer network bug -- anything the security
apparatus that used PROMIS knew, the U.S. could know, simply by
linking up over the telephone.


Almost at once, Hamilton says, he told Casolaro about Riconosciuto.
Casolaro's phone records indicate he spent many hours in
conversation with Riconosciuto, and Casolaro's friends say that
for several months in late 1990, Casolaro talked of little else.


The 44-year-old Riconosciuto is -- to put it mildly -- a colorful
character, wilder than anything in "The Falcon and the Snowman".
He was a gifted child: When he was just 10 years old, Michael
wired his parents' neighborhood with a working private telephone
system that undercut Ma Bell; in the eighth grade, he won a science
fair with a model for a three-dimensional sonar system. By the
time he was a teenager, he had won so many science fairs with
exhibits of laser technology that he was invited to be a summer
research assistant at Stanford's prestigious Cooper Vapor Laser
Laboratory. Dr. Arthur Schalow, a Nobel laureate, remembers him
even now. "You don't forget a 16-year-old youngster who shows up
with his own argon laser," he told Casolaro.


In 1973, Riconosciuto had been sentenced by a federal judge in
Seattle to two years in prison for the manufacture of psychedelic
drugs and jumping bail. At the time, his father testified that
Michael was engaged in "underwater research" and had discussed
"using electronic means to clean up pollutants in water." The
narcotics agents who arrested the young Riconosciuto said they'd
had him under surveillance off and on since 1968.


Riconosciuto told Casolaro, as he had told numerous other reporters
before him, that after his release he had become research director
for a joint venture between Wackenhut, the Coral Gables [Florida]
private security outfit, and the Cabazon Indian band of Indio,
California, that was developing and manufacturing arms and other
military materiel -- including night-vision goggles, machine guns,
and biological and chemical weapons -- for export.


Riconosciuto claimed that he had invented the fuel-air explosive;
he also said that he had encountered a variety of famous people
who dropped by the Cabazon reservation from time to time. For
example, he claimed that he had met the Jackal, the famous
assassin; talked on the phone with Admiral Bobby Inman of the
C.I.A.; and even tape-recorded a secret meeting with William Casey
at a Washington, D.C. country club (according to Riconosciuto,
that tape was his insurance policy against getting bumped off by
the big boys in the spook world).


Riconosciuto went on to "reveal" that he was the man who had
"pulled the plug" on the Nugan Hand Bank, the Australian bank
with C.I.A. ties that collapsed in 1980; he also claimed to be an
effective lobbyist on Capitol Hill, responsible for swinging five
key votes to free up $100 million for the secret contra war against
the Sandinistas. Once, after lunch with then F.B.I. Director
William Webster, he had laid plans to launder spook money throuyh
NASA.


This was all a bit much for the Hamiltons to take in, but the
computer company owners listened with fascination and deep
suspicion to his tales involving PROMIS. In an affidavit presented
in federal court, Riconosciuto told them that Casey -- who had
been outside counsel to Wackenhut before joining the Reagan White
House -- had hired him and Brian, as employees of Wackenhut, to
carry out the October Surprise deal. Riconosciuto described how a
Justice Department official had allegedly ordered him to modify
PROMIS for use by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He claimed
that Meese had rewarded Brian for his assistance during the
October Surprise by giving him the software outright, which he
could then sell at a considerable profit around the world. (Brian
has denied any connection to the Inslaw case.)


Casolaro and the Hamiltons thought Riconosciuto's tale was largely
wacko, but they found certain things he told them to be true --
particularly that the Wackenhut joint venture existed, and that
the Mounties had apparently misappropriated PROMIS (the Canadian
police have denied using PROMIS). They theorized that maybe
Riconosciuto was using his contacts with the Hamiltons as leverage
with other people who were threatening him: If his enemies didn't
cooperate with Riconosciuto, then he would spill more and more
secrets to Casolaro and the Hamiltons.


In April 1991, SHORTLY AFTER giving his affidavit in the Inslaw
case, Riconosciuto was arrested for the manufacture and sale of
methamphetamines in Washington state. He has been in jail since
then, often claiming to be a "political prisoner."

.....


At 8:30 that evening, Olga returned to Casolaro's house to look
for him. The phone rang. A man's voice said, "You son of a bitch.
You're dead."
.....
Martinsburg police detective Sergeant George Swartswood called
Danny Casolaro's mother's house and told the family that Casolaro
was dead, an apparent suicide. By the middle of that day, National
Public Radio was broadcasting the first reports about Casolaro's
mysterious death and "the Octopus."
.....
This is how [Danny's brother] Tony Casolaro [a physician] remembers
that day:


    "My mother first called about 9:30 on Monday morning. She called
     me within 20 minutes. When I spoke to [Swartswood], he said,
    `We found your brother at the Sheraton in Martinsburg. It looks like
     he committed suicide.' And I said, `Well how did he do it?' And he
     said, `We're not sure yet. We found some broken glass, and we
     found a razor, and his arms were cut.' I said, `You mean wrists?'
     And he said, `Yeah, wrists and arms.' I said, `Did you know he was
     a reporter working on a story?' He said, `No. What are you talking
     about?' I said, `He told me four weeks ago: if he got killed in an
     accident, not to believe it because he was threatened.' He said, `Oh.'
     I said, `Did you find any of his papers? He had all these papers
     with him.' He said, `I don't think we found any papers.' I said,
    `Are you going to do an autopsy?' He said, `No. I don't think so.'"


    "And then he sort of stepped back and said I ought to talk to the
     medical examiner. I said, `Who decided not to [conduct an autopsy]?'
     He said, `the corrner, Sandra Brining.' I didn't think of all the
     things I should have asked him at the time."


After talking to Sandra Brining, Tony Casolaro finally got through
to Dr. James Frost in the West Virginia Medical Examiner's office.
Frost said he would conduct an autopsy on Wednesday.


    "I told him the whole method of death ..... even if he were going
     to commit suicide ..... I'm not going to say he never would. You
     never say that. Anybody could,"
Tony Casolaro contined.
    "But I said, if you look at the person, if you look at how
     enthusiastic he was, and if you look at the method of dying --
     Danny didn't like needles. He was supposed to have a treadmill
     done about a year ago: he got there and they told him they wanted
     to do a stress Valium test, where they put a needle in his arm.
     He said, `Forget it.' and left. My partner was really mad at him.
     He said, `You're not going to put any needles in my arm.'"


    "And Frost said, `Well, you know, that is kind of curious. We'll
     go ahead and do the autopsy and we'll see.'"


    "[Then {later}] he said to me, `You know, he's been embalmed.' This
     was Monday afternoon. I said, `What? You're kidding. How did that
     happen?' He said, `I don't know.' I said, `Is that something that's
     standard?' He said, `No. It's quite atypical. It's against the
     law, in fact. Weren't you asked?' I said, `No.' [He said], `Well,
     then, I don't quite know. Maybe Ms. Brining authorized it.
     [Brining said she released the body to the funeral home because
     she regarded it as a suicide.] But really, they're supposed to
     notify the family first.' I said, `Well, I can guarantee you
     nobody asked us.' I said, `Doesn't that impede your autopsy?'
    `Well,' he said, `it makes it more difficult.' Those were
     his exact words."


                   THE VILLAGE VOICE
                   36 Cooper Square
                   New York, NY 10003


*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *


      The following transcript was made from a tape of a broadcast
      by WBAI-FM 99.5 in New York City on September 29, 1991.
      I missed the first few minutes of the interview, but the
      background of the story is thus:


      Fred Alvarez, the deputy tribal chief of the Cabazon Indian tribe,
      found out that the monetary proceeds from the Bingo Palace --
      set up on his tribe's reservation presumably to reward the tribe
      for permitting the Wackenhut Security Corporation to use the
      reservation for weapons and biochemical warfare development --
      were being laundered and used to finance the Contras in Nicaragua.


*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
.... and looked at the books he [Alvarez] realized that the Indians
were receiving no money, and in fact, the money was being fairly
evenly split between [members of] a partnership called the Bingo
Palace Inc. As a result of his investigation, there was anger and
outrage by the Nichols family and by those Indians on the reservation
who supported them. Fred experienced death threats. He experienced
sabotage to his motorcycle. He experienced terrorism, and finally
he gave a series of interviews to the Desert Sun which was a
newspaper in the general area. And at the time, he said, "As I give
you these interviews, I'm a dead man."


Shortly thereafter, he and two other men, who just happened to be
in his home at the time, were executed. There was evidence that
Fred had been tortured. And they were shot, execution style.


Now, there was no autopsy done or [investigation] allowed of the
scene. Shortly after that, the house that the murders took place
in was razed to the ground. Linda Streeter Dukic, who is Fred
Alvarez's sister, and his parents, Phyllis and Leroy Alvarez,
succeeded in reopening the investigation briefly. In 1985, Gov.
Dukemejian of California ordered the attorney general's office to
look into it.


But something happened at that time that was very strange because
just shortly after they reopened the investigation, they
immediately closed it. We now know that there was a key suspect
in the contract murders of those three individuals. But no
indictment was brought down. In fact, it's my belief that a
cover-up took place at the state level.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Do you know the name of the person who was the suspect?


VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
Well, I have a three-page letter, that was written June 26, 1991,
that names the suspect. And I'll quote from the letter. You can
imagine our shock when the investigators from the attorney
general's office informed us that the boyfriend was, in fact,
John Paul Nichols Jr., the key suspect.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
That's the son of John P. Nichols, who at one time was the
administrator of the Cabazon Indian reservation.


VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
Yes, and who still holds tremendous power there. Just recently --
I think, in order to justify the distribution of funds -- the
senior Mr. Nichols has been named counselor to the Indians down
there on the Cabazon reservation.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Tell us a little bit about the Cabazon Indians. Where is this
reservation located?


VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
The reservation is located near Indio, California, which is just
outside of Palm Springs. And the reservation itself is a
reservation of large acreage. It has some seventeen hundred acres
in the desert. It has the usual water and mineral rights on the
reservation. But the membership of the tribe itself is very low:
twenty-four members at the time that the Nichols took over around
1978. And there were some changes in Indian land law that took
place at the Congressional level in 1978 that allowed white
managers to come in over the tribes and manage the affairs of the
reservations -- to actually broker the assets of the reservations,
and to enter into contracts with other entities.


As part of the senior Mr. Nichols management of the Indian
reservation, numerous joint ventures were entered into between
the Nichols family, operating for the Cabazons, and the Wackenhut
Security Corporation out of Coral Gables, Florida. The Wackenhut
Security Corporation has heavy C.I.A. ties and ties directly to
the White House.




[JD:]
On October 22, 1991, Robert Knight, the host of UNDERCURRENTS,
conducted an interview, which was broadcast over WBAI-FM (99.5) in
New York City, with the Nixon Administration's U.S. Attorney General,
Elliot Richardson. Richardson will always be remembered in history
as the man who, when ordered by Nixon to fire Watergate Special
Prosecutor Archibald Cox -- which was a reprehensible attempt to
hinder justice and misuse presidential powers -- refused to fire
Cox and, instead, resigned in protest.


Well, ironically, Elliot Richardson is now the legal representative
of the Inslaw Software Company. And in this interview, he said
that Attorney General Thornburgh never even answered his letter
requesting a special investigation, headed by an independent
special prosecutor with no ties of any sort to Administration
circles. Richardson went on to say that two particularly suspicious
details in the Casolaro murder, among others, make it more likely
that Casolaro was murdered than that he committed suicide:


1) Casolaro's briefcase was missing when his body was discovered,
   despite the fact that he always guarded that briefcase with his
   life.


2) His body was embalmed illegally, before an autopsy could
   be conducted.


This story ought to be brought to the attention of the American
people. Save the installments of this ongoing series. Mail them
to conscientious citizens whom you might know. Or find them in
the Yellow Pages of your telephone directory under "clergy",
"senior citizens", and "associations". Urge them to support the
appeal of Elliot Richardson in demanding that their Congressperson
call for a special investigation headed by special prosecutor
to delve into this sinister web of treachery that now undermines
the supposed democratic society which is in our care and which
will be passed on to our children's generation.


    John DiNardo

PAUL DeRIENZO:
Describe some of the projects that were entertained on the Cabazon
reservation. Now, I hear that there was, besides the bingo parlors,
off-track betting, a housing project called Indian Village Housing
that was going to bring in luxury housing for whites on reservation
land, and the construction, also, of a toxic waste dump, a power
plant that, because of the status of the reservaton, would not be
covered by E.P.A. regulations.


VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
There was all of that and much more. There were arms produced and
manufactured, and proposed through a company called the Cabazon
Arms Corporation which, again, was Wackenhut and the Cabazon
Security Corporation. And that arms corporation had demonstrations
of night-vision goggles, and chemical warfare weapons, and machine
guns during the time that these items would be necessary to supply
to the Contras.


Many of the people who were instrumental in, and operatives in,
the Iran/Contra [conspiracy] appeared on a range just outside of
the reservation to view the weapons in the early 1980's. They also
had a Cabazon Trading Company which dealt largely with tobacco
and coffee imports. They had a Cabazon Gas & Oil Corporation that
dealt with research connected directly to Hercules Research
Corporation in Hercules, California, which was partially owned by
Michael Riconosciuto. Michael Riconosciuto is a C.I.A. operative
who was trying to leave "the company" [the C.I.A.'s nickname],
and who has given a declaration [affidavit] in the Inslaw
bankruptcy.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
We played a tape of an interview, that was done at a Pacifica
station in Los Angeles, with Michael Riconosciuto who is now in
jail. And we spoke with Harry Martin earlier a bit about Michael
Riconosciuto. He was involved with the Inslaw case in that he gave
testimony shortly before he was arrested that he was involved in
rewriting this software for intelligence purposes on the Cabazon
reservation, and that he was also involved in selling this software
to various intelligence agencies around the world -- this software
that belongs to the Inslaw Company which Inslaw and bankruptcy
judges maintain was taken illegally from Inslaw by the Justice
Department.


VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
Yes. In fact, I think the words were, "stolen by trickery, fraud
and deceit" from Inslaw Corporation. That's the PROMIS software.
And it's obstensibly in use, as we speak, within the United States
Justice Department, but also in the intelligence communities of Canada,
Austria, Australia, India, Iraq, Iran and parts of Saudi Arabia.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Now, what is the connection between the Inslaw case, the Cabazon
tribe, and Mr. Riconosciuto?


VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
The declaration that Michael Riconosciuto presented, in the Inslaw
case on March 21, 1991, was absolutely devastating because he
alleged that Dr. Earl Brian, who owns UPI and FNN News Network,
actually took the software through an operative by the name of
Peter Videnieks who was the government auditor for the Inslaw
contract with the Justice Department. Mr. Videnieks obtained the
software, gave it to Dr. Earl Brian, and Dr. Earl Brian presented
it to Michael Riconosciuto with instructions that it be altered
or adapted for use by the Canadian and other intelligence
communities. Michael complied and did as he was told and he did,
in fact, alter that software. And he named the locations where
the work took place in the declaration of March 21st.


But in addition to that, he also went into great detail about the
threats that had been made against him by Peter Videnieks who was
the Justice Department employee. And, in effect, what Mr. Videnieks
told Michael Riconosciuto, according to the declaration, was that
he would be subject to prosecution in a case that had yet to be
announced by the Justice Department -- a case involving a Mr.
Robert Ferrante and Consolidated Savings & Loan of Southern
California -- if he continued to cooperate with the Inslaw people
in testifying before Jack Brooks' House Judiciary Committee.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
And he was, in fact, arrested.


VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
Eight days later. He was arrested and he was held on one count of
conspiracy to distribute metaamphetamines. He is being held at
Pearce County Jail in the state of Washington.

VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
Earl Brian was detailed at length by a reporter for the Financial
Post by the name of Eric Reguly on August 19, 1991. Now, Mr. Reguly
had received the same death threats as the slain reporter Danny
Casolaro when he started looking into Mr. Earl Brian. And anyone
who has researched Earl Brian's early life is left with many, many
questions about everything from whether the man is truly a doctor --
he did not finish his internship at Stanford; he left a quarter
short of [finishing] his internship at Stanford University -- to
exactly what role he played in the Vietnam War that would result
in all of the many medals which the United States Government
claims he received in the two years he served there as a physician.


Mr.Reguly's article was entitled: "Questions Grow as Big Daddy
Watches His Empire Crumble". Big Daddy is the nickname for Dr.
Earl Brian. And he had an extensive financial network, from a
company called Biotech Capital Corporation -- where Mrs. Edwin
Meese had invested -- to the Financial News Network where he was
accused of cooking the books by his own auditors. In addition to
that, this article goes into great detail about Dr. Earl Brian's
links to the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities. Many people
have testified in the article that Dr. Earl Brian's nickname in
the intelligence community was "Cash". And that would tie directly
into what Michael Riconosciuto is alleging: that both he and Earl
Brian, together, arranged for the transfer of forty million dollars
for the "October Surprise" to retain the American hostages past
the inauguration of Ronald Reagan.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Could you just cite that article for us one more time?


VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
Certainly; August 19, 1991, in the Financial Post, by Eric Reguly.
Eric Reguly is the bureau chief for the Financial Post which is
Canada's equivalent of the Financial Times. Now, anyone who has
been following the story of the deaths that have occurred since
Michael Riconosciuto began talking on March 21st, might be aware
of the fact that one of Mr. Reguly's compatriots -- a man by the
name of Anson Ng, who was a stringer for the Financial Times --
was executed in Guatemala as he began investigating the links
between the Cabazon Indian reservation and the execution of Fred
Alvarez, BCCI, and the Bank of America.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
We're speaking with Virginia McCollough, free-lance reporter,
here on WBAI. We're in the middle of a pledge marathon, and we're
discussing the Inslaw case and its connection to BCCI and "October
Surprise", and a whole list of activities that seem to be so
intertwined and folding back in all different directions as to make
one believe that the theory of an "Octopus" was true -- that maybe
Danny Casolaro was getting close to something when he was killed
looking for the last link in the chain, the conspiracy, which he
called the "Octopus".


It's just about 2:30 here in New York. And we need some volunteers
to come and help us answer phones for our pledge marathon.


How does this tie in? I've heard it said that these people who
were being named as involved in the "October Surprise", the
situation on the Cabazon reservation, the Iran-Contra affair (and
how that relates to this conspiracy that seems to be developing
with a lot of connections) these are not the real C.I.A. These are
people who seem to be working on the outside of the C.I.A. itself --
people who seem to be associates of Edwin Meese, associates of
Ronald Reagan -- people who seem to be using their positions that
they had, being associates of people in power, to enrich themselves.
Is this, in fact, the case? Or are there any connections to what
we would call the real C.I.A.?


VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
Well, it's my understanding, from talking to a lot of the people
who have come forward to me lately, that there is a war within
the C.I.A. itself. There are two warring factions. There is a
faction they call "B.B.", the Bush Boys, and a faction of (I
guess you could identify them as a faction of) old world C.I.A.
intelligence men. Those men usually come under the heading of the
Naval Intelligence Group. And the Naval Intelligence Group is of
the opinion that the C.I.A. has been prostituted by the Bush Boys
for personal benefit and for directing the political philosophy
of the United States under both Reagan and Bush.


There have been several mysterious plane crashes, that, as you
might be aware, have had many C.I.A. operatives on them. The most
famous of them, of course, was the Lockerbie [Scotland], [Pan Am]
103 crash. And this war seems to have gone on for quite some time.

VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
And this war [within the C.I.A.] seems to have gone on for quite
some time, possibly as far back as the early Reagan years. Maybe
as far back as the Nixon years. Certainly, Michael Riconosciuto's
family and the family of friends -- the W. Patrick Moriarty
group -- were long-time exparte kitchen cabinet members of the
Nixon Administration. When Michael was first arrested on March 28th,
I had been in touch with Bill Hamilton at this time, since November
when Bill first started hearing from Michael. And Bill had phoned
me (Bill Hamilton is the owner of Inslaw) and asked me if I knew
or was aware of Michael Riconosciuto. And I had been because here
in California in 1984 and 1985 there had been a scandal where the
"safe and sane" fireworks king, W. Patrick Moriarty, had been
arrested and put in jail for bribing government officials from
the Governor on down to the Speaker of the House, Willie Brown.
And at that time, we did research into Mr. Moriarty and his "safe
and sane" fireworks kingdom which was Red Devil Fireworks and
Pyrotronics, and was also connected to the Bank of Irvine. And we
found out that his long-time personal friend and operative was a
man named Marshall Riconosciuto. We also found out that when we
wanted to investigate Marshall's son Michael, we came up against
a stone wall. There was no available information other than we
could determine; that he was a child prodigy and was an expert in
both explosives and in computer hardware and software. It seemed
as though he had no previous life. And after I started talking to
Michael after he was jailed in April -- on a fairly regular basis,
sometimes two or three times a day -- the information, that he has
given me and had FAXed to me from third parties, checks out. And
I believe that he is exactly what he says he is. He's a C.I.A.
operative who wants to leave "the Company" and go home to Momma
and the kids. And the Government is going to make sure he doesn't
do that.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
The idea of an "Octopus" or a "Secret Team", on the one had, it
matches. On the other hand, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency's approach .... If we remember, back in 1987 it came out
that Oliver North, in his role as organizer of "the Enterprise",
which was doing the Iran-Contra drugs for arms pipeline, had also
made some contacts with the Federal Emergency Management Agency
[FEMA] in the sense of dealing with [American citizens] opponents
of U.S. foreign policy toward Central America in the case of a
war between the United States and Nicaragua. And it came out that
there were actually plans on file to sweep people up -- sweep
activists up -- in case of a war in Central America.


Although you haven't mentioned anything that directly connects
what we're saying to that, it seems to tie in with the enforcement
arm of .... you mention companies like Wackenhut, for example,
that have a long history of involvement in keeping files on people,
and in tracking dissidents. The Inslaw PROMIS software itself had
that purpose.


VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
Had that purpose, and more important, had the full capability of
doing it. It is the Cadillac of software systems, if you will use
that term, as far as tying directly into the Cabazon with the
Federal Emergency Management Agency's plan to arrest, jail and
hold in detention camps political dissidents of all kinds.


Harry Martin has done an interesting article that appeared in
his paper on the 24th [of September]. And I draw your audience's
attention to the Napa Sentinel which is Harry Martin's paper.
It seems to be at the forefront of a lot of information about all
of "the Octopus's" many tentacles. Harry did an article regarding
Dr. Earl Brian and Edwin Meese, and the origin of the original
mind control, behavior control systems that were used initially in
California, and probably were the forerunners of the FEMA plan to
jail political dissidents. And it goes so far as to surgically
alter their behavior, or to alter their behavior through drugs.


     [JD: Such naziistic crimes against the sovereignty of the human
      individual are portrayed in Woody Allen's SLEEPER and in
      Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.]


And in talking with Linda Dukic, who is Fred Alvarez's sister, she
informs me that virtually every Indian in the Cabazon Indian tribe
has been sent, at one time or another, to various hospitals for
treatment of "drug" or "alcohol" addiction.

VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
I find that particularly interesting because Dr. Paul Nichols is
now an advisor to the Indians. And within the last ten days there
was a white gentleman who had been a longtime employee of the
Bingo Palace, there on the Cabazon reservation, and who refused
to go to Dr. Nichols for treatment. As a consequence, he was fired
from the Bingo Palace. The Nichols family, acting in total
disregard for the Indians' (with whom this white gentleman was
sharing a home) wishes, placed eviction notices on the doors of
all of the "Cabazon dissidents". That's what they call the Indians
who want the Nichols family out of control of that reservation.


The Nichols family can be traced in the old hardback edition of
"INSIDE JOB" by Stephen Pizzo and Mary Fricker. And in that book,
which traces the history of the failing Savings & Loans (It's
considered a bible of what has happened with the Savings & Loans.)
... in that book, Dr. Nichols identifies himself as a C.I.A
operative involved in the assassination of [democratically elected
President of Chile] Allende and the attempted assassination of
[Cuban President] Castro.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
So he has a long history in intelligence matters as an operative
in the intelligence community.


VRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
A very long history. And if I were an American taxpayer, which I
am, I would be very outraged at the amount of grants that the
Nichols family, with known Mob connections, is able to obtain and
go through. Then, when the grant money runs out, they simply
bankrupt the DBA, the company they're doing business as on the
Cabazon reservation. In that manner, they burn the creditors, and
they go on to a new DBA and obtain more grant money.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Where is this investigation heading? Will there ever be actual
indictments and jailings of the people involved in some of these
criminal activities? Or does the fact that the Government in the
Justice Department was the entity that was cited for having stolen
the PROMIS software "through trickery, fraud and deceit" in the
first place preempt any attempt at getting justice regarding this
matter?


VIRGINIA McCOLLOUGH:
Well, I think what has to happen is exactly what Danny Casolaro
intended to happen. And that is to understandably tie all of these
events together because they are, in fact, all linked [together].
And only under those conditions -- and if our Congress and our
Senators regain their intestinal fortitude to do their job
(and I don't mean just make themselves pay raises, but actually
monitor what's going on within the judiciary and within the
executive branches of government, as they are supposed to to
maintain our balance of power), maybe then the citizens can rely
upon obtaining some answers.


It seems that when only a Congressman or a Senator is directly
attacked is that Senator or Congressman able to pursue, for
whatever reason, a proper investigation of what's going on.
I'll give you an example. We have a Congressman by the name
of George Miller here in California. He's out of the Martinez
area. And the Wackenhut Corporation has been maintaining secret
files on reporters around the United States. They call them
"damage-control lists". And they maintain secret files on various
reporters whom they feel are getting too close to the truth, and
they seek to install some form of "damage control" against those
reporters. That was never investigated. But just a couple of weeks
ago, George Miller found that the Wackenhut Security Corporation
had a file on Congressman George Miller because of his involvement
in trying to maintain some environmental controls over the Alaska
Pipeline Service Corporation. And now, finally, the House Interior
& Insular Affairs Committee, last Wednesday, voted unanimously to
subpoena the documents and testimony from that pipeline service
company and the Wackenhut Security Corporation.

PAUL DeRIENZO:
Thank you very much Virginia McCollough, joining us from California,
for that incredibly enlightening view into the inner workings of
the Central Intelligence Agency and its various spin-offs, and
the types of internal divisions that seem to be developing within
the ruling class of the Government.


~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~
.... nonlove is the unwillingness to extend one's self. .... if we
seriously listen to this "God within us" ["conscience", if you will],
we usually find ourselves being urged to take the more difficult
path, the path of more effort rather than less. ....
So original sin does exist; it is our laziness. ....
Evil is laziness carried to its ultimate, extraordinary extreme.
As I have defined it, love is the antithesis of laziness. Ordinary
laziness is a passive failure to love. Some ordinarily lazy people
may not lift a finger to extend themselves unless they are
compelled to do so. Their being is a manifestation of nonlove;
still, they are not evil. Truly evil people, on the other hand,
actively, rather than passively avoid extending themselves. They
will take any action in their power to protect their own laziness,
to preserve the integrity of their sick self. .... they will
actually destroy others in this cause. If necessary, they will
even kill to escape the pain of their own spiritual growth.
As the integrity of their sick self is threatened by the spiritual
health of those around them, they will seek by all manner of means
to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them.
I define evil, then, as the exercise of political power -- that is,
the imposition of one's will upon others by overt or covert coercion
-- in order to avoid extending one's self for the purpose of
nurturing spiritual growth.
Ordinary laziness is nonlove. Evil is antilove.


                                M. Scott Peck
                          -- THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED --
~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~



SAMORI MARKSMAN:
We go to our next guest, Harry Martin, who is the publisher of
the Napa Sentinel [Napa, California] and who has been doing an
extraordinary amount of investigatory work around the Inslaw affair.
We will begin by welcoming Harry Martin back to WBAI. Good morning.
Just to let you know that I'm in the studio with Paul DeRienzo.
.....
       [deleted some previously discussed information]


HARRY MARTIN:
The person who is awaiting criminal prosecution is Michael
Riconosciuto, of course. But mind you, he was not arrested at the
time he made the deposition. He gave a deposition to Congress, and
he indicated to the committee that if he went ahead and testified --
as he did -- therefore, he would be subject to arrest within a
short period of time. Within seven days he was arrested! But Ari
Ben-Menashe is certainly not under any criminal arrest. He is a
member of the Israeli Mossad [intelligence agency]. And the other
people who have come forward and testified to these various things
are not in jail. Michael Riconosciuto is a man who has signed an
affidavit, and yes, he is in jail awaiting criminal charges of
supposedly owning a methamphetamine lab in Pearce Conty, Washington.
However, after he was arrested -- while I was on a Seattle radio
show, I was on hold and the news came on -- there were three
methamphetamine labs broken up in Pearce County, Washington, not
associated with him whatsoever. And it would lead to the suspicion
that perhaps they were all connected to one thing and had nothing
to do with Michael, but they decided to hang one on him right after
his testimony.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Why don't you give us some background on who Ari Ben-Menashe is,
because his name has come up on a number of different issues.


HARRY MARTIN:
His name has turned up on the October Surprise and everything else.
He is a member of the Mossad and he apparently indicates that he
is a witness to the exchange of the PROMIS software to the Iraqis
in Santiago, Chile. Now there was also a British Air Force officer
who was a witness to that thing, supposedly, and he was hung. And
they declared that to be suicide. That was in Chile. Ben-Menashe
has come forward on a lot of things, but you have to understand
that the Israelis, at the present time, are also very irritated
with the Bush Administration. And you cannot be sure how much
information and disinformation is being passed around.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
How about Mr. Riconosciuto? We discussed the legal problems he
got himself in after he spoke out. But what is his history?


HARRY MARTIN:
He's a very brilliant computer scientist. He has worked inside
the CIA for a long time. And nobody can deny this fact.
Nobody is challenging that particular role. He was the man who
had the access keys to almost any computer situation: monies,
who's who and everything else. He's very dangerous in the aspect
that he has all that knowledge of the key players in many, many
things. And, of course, his affidavit stated that he converted
the PROMIS software using the Cabazon Indian reservation, in
Indio, California to do this. And Dr. Earl Brian was very much
involved there. That place was also used for the manufacture of
biological warfare and chemical warfare to be used by the Contras
in Nicaragua. Testimony has come forward from many people that
that whole Indian tribe and those people running it are shown by
the California Department of Justice to have Mafia and CIA ties.
This is a documented situation. But jurisdiction becomes a problem
because it is an independent Indian nation.


.....


PAUL DeRIENZO:
We have reports that have come out in COMPUTERWORLD and other
sources based on these statements made by Mr. Ben-Menashe and Mr.
Riconosciuto that Robert McFarlane, who was the former National
Security Advisor, was involved in giving the Israeli Government
copies of this software. Bill Hamilton says that he found out,
quite by accident, that Canada was using it widely; that the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police were using it in their intelligence facilities.


.....


Now, what was the role of the Indian reservation?


HARRY MARTIN:
Well, there are several Indian reservations that are being used
by the Wackenhut Corporation and intelligence agencies to do
things like manufacture equipment or ..... They can skip a lot of
corners because these nations are technically independent. For
instance, one reservation is in New Mexico, but it also goes
across the Mexican border. Therefore, it becomes an open corridor
where you don't use customs or anything because part of your
properties are in one country and part is in another. And they
have used these Indian tribes for everything from the manufacture
of weapons to the software situation, opening up gambling casinos.
And understand, a lot of the money involved in the savings and
loan scandal came from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Bureau
of Indian Affairs puts out money to be invested on short-term
notices, and this is how a lot of the savings and loans that went
down started up. And that's where a lot of their money came from.


There could be a lot of inter-ties in there. It is so complex,
and of course, Danny Casolaro referred to it as "the Octopus".
You can understand why now, because it gets into .... You see,
the trouble is, you can't isolate Inslaw by itself. Inslaw by
itself is just a minor thing compared with the overall package.
The total corruption that seems to have played around --
Iran/Contra gets involved, and the October Surprise gets involved.
There are just so many players that keep coming across each other,
and it's a really massive story. I don't know anybody who is going
to get the whole picture.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
What I'm trying to get at are the connections that might lead to
an investigation, or try to force an investigation into these
things because it seems that when you have a reporter who is
found dead under mysterious circumstances, by anybody's definition,
it deserves being looked into further rather than a simple ruling
that this was a suicide because .....


HARRY MARTIN:
You have to understand now, Inslaw was sort of on the back burner of
the public limelight. In other words, I'm getting letters now from
your program last week in which people say they haven't heard too
much about this thing on the East Coast. Originally, Inslaw was
carried by the Washington Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and
ourselves. And we're the only three newspapers in the whole nation
giving any credence or concentration to it.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Actually, Barron's also.


HARRY MARTIN:
The Sam Nunn Committee got nowhere because the Justice Department
refused to turn over any records whatsoever. And Jack Brooks's
Committee, which is in our Congress, has already had some hearings
and some of the testimony is from Judge Bason and so forth. But
again, the Justice Department is stonewalling it in refusing to
give documentation up. And, of course, my question is: Who's in
control, the Congress or the Justice Department? The thing is
that the death of Danny Casolaro has opened this to the fact that
you're seeing more and more questions asking: What is this Inslaw
case? And that in itself is going to open up more questions into
other things. See, if they open up the Inslaw case, it's just
going to be the tip of the iceberg, and they may find a lot of
other things involved and interconnected. Perhaps Danny's death
is going to give more impetus to the Brooks Committee. It's
certainly beginning to wake up the national media which really
slept on this thing. These things take time. Look how long it took
Watergate. And Iran/Contra really never got anywhere.


SAMORI MARKSMAN:
We want to let our listeners know that we are speaking with
Harry Martin who is the publisher of the Napa Sentinel, and as
you've been hearing, we're focusing on a rather intriguing story --
which involves some major players in the political affairs of
this society -- but which isn't receiving the kind of attention
that the issue deserves. We here at WBAI are attempting to do so
today and we will continue to do so.
.....
Paul, I want to ask Harry to go back to a point which he alluded
to earlier. We had been talking about the breadth of this issue,
that it's not simply the disappearance of Danny, that there are
many others who have been killed in similarly mysterious
circumstances, although some perhaps less mysteriously than others.
Could you discuss that again for us, Harry Martin, and show what
was a common thread linking these various deaths?


HARRY MARTIN:
Well, much of the common thread is Danny Casolaro himself. We have
Standorf, who worked for a secret [government] communications
division outside of Washington [D.C.]. He was funneling documents
to Danny at all times, and he was found beaten to death in his car
at National Airport in Washington. And of course, Danny indicated
that his sources had [since] dried up. Apparently, they had set up
a thing in the Hilton Hotel, in room 900, in which they had
high-speed equipment, and they were duplicating everything as
quickly as possible to get them back in [returned to] the files.


Then of course, we have Mr. Ng who was in Guatemala. He worked
for the Financial Times of London. He was working on this case,
but he was also working on the Wackenhut Corporation and following
a key witness to the murders of some Cabazon Indians. And he was
found shot to death in Guatemala.


And then, of course, Michael Riconosciuto's attorney -- Eiselman,
I think it is. I don't have my notes in front of me -- from
Philadelphia, was en route to pick up material proving that
Riconosciuto was, in fact, telling the truth. And he was found
shot to death.


All these things, with the exception of Standorf, were written off
as suicides. And Michael May, who we wrote of as being tied into
that, and who had had communications with Casolaro .... and also,
he was the man who supposedly filtered the forty million dollars
to the Iranians as the down payment on the "October Surprise" --
we wrote about him on a Friday in June, and on a Wednesday in
San Francisco he was found dead. They said it was a heart attack.
Later on, the autopsy revealed that it was polypharmaceuticals
that were in his system, and it was not a heart attack.


Michael Riconosciuto's arrest, of course .... It would take me
forever to explain them all, but that gives you a synopsis of
some of the things that have happened to people associated with
that particular case.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Let's concentrate on one of the more outrageous of these murders.
And that, besides Casolaro's death (many people, including
Bill Hamilton call that a murder) ....


HARRY MARTIN:
We refer to them as deaths. We're not taking the total line yet
that they were murders.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
There is conflict on these [deaths], but they are very suspicious.
One actual murder that nobody will deny was that of Mr. Alvarez,
the crusading member of the Cabazon Indians who opposed the ....


HARRY MARTIN:
Absolutely! And he was shot with two other people, execution style.
Jimmy Hughes was a man who worked for Wackenhut and who was the
bag-man to bring the money over [to pay for the contract murders
of Fred Alvarez and company]. And he has testified to the
Riverside County [California] District Attorney's office. He is
now in hiding in Guatemala, of course. That's where Mr. Ng
was down to see him. He also carried a lot of other information
which was extremely damaging. We were able to talk to people who
helped him escape, because he came up this way at first, and now
he's down in Guatemala. The Indian situation itself is its own
scandal. Then there's the Wackenhut Corporation, and you get
into Inslaw .... Like I say, its just so wide you would need a
massive computer just to do a chart.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Can we focus now on Alvarez? Can you tell us that story?


HARRY MARTIN:
Alvarez was basically the head of the Cabazon Indians, and when
Wackenhut and Dr. Brian and people came in to take over and create
the gambling parlors and to convert the Inslaw software and to
manufacture chemical warfare weapons and so forth, he protested.
He wanted control of the Indian tribe back. And he was summarily
executed. The money came from the people who were running that,
according to the testimony of Jimmy Hughes, which is on file with
the State of California in the Riverside County D.A.'s office.
Incidentally now, after all these years they have finally reopened
that case in Riverside because of the publicity associated with
the Inslaw case.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
At first, there was a grand jury investigation and there were no
indictments or suspects mentioned in that first investigation.


HARRY MARTIN:
And yet, Hughes testified to names, places, events, everything.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
Mr. John P. Nichols, who was at that time the head of the tribe
and who now is an advisor to the Cabazon Indians, said that the
death of Mr. Alvarez and two non-Indian companions, who were found
shot to death with him, had nothing to do with what's going on in
the Cabazon reservation.


HARRY MARTIN:
Yet, Jimmy Hughes has testified to the Riverside people that
John Nichols is the one who gave him the money to deliver to the
hit-man in Palm Springs. Also, Mr. John Nichols was later on
convicted for murder-for-hire and his sons are now technically
running the tribe.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
He was actually convicted rather than charged? I heard he was
brought up on charges. But he was actually convicted of that?


HARRY MARTIN:
Absolutely.


PAUL DeRIENZO:
But Mr. Nichols seems to have a tremendous amount of support.
From what I understand, he's getting a lot of support from
liberal figures such as James Aboureszk, the former senator from
South Dakota.


HARRY MARTIN:
You have to understand, Mr. Nichols, by his own boasting and
through other publications, indicates that he was involved in
the assassination of [democratically elected President of Chile,
Salvador] Allende, and he was involved in the attempted
assassination of [Cuban Premier Fidel] Castro. His links as a
C.I.A. contractor -- his links with the Mafia are well documented
with the State of California. Therefore, obviously he's going to
get some support from groups that are probably within that channel.


.....


SAMORI MARKSMAN:
Harry Martin, we'd like to thank you very much for joining us
again here on WBAI. Any closing points that you would like to make?


HARRY MARTIN:
Well, just that Danny's concept of an "Octopus" .... you can see
exactly what he was talking about. The tentacles went everywhere,
and he seemed to be on the verge of breaking a lot of that
information. And then all of his records, everything disappeared.
And he died. To say that a journalist would commit suicide when
he's on the verge of breaking a big story is ludicrous because
anybody knowing a journalist knows that once they are on a drive,
neither food nor anything else matters but to get that story
across. He was very close to it, and you don't cash in the chips
on the verge of winning the jackpot.


SAMORI MARKSMAN:
So true. Harry Martin, publisher of the Napa [California] Sentinel,
thank you very much for joining us here on WBAI, non-commercial,
listener-sponsored Pacifica Radio at 99.5 FM in New York.
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *