Altruistic World Online Library

by **admin** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:12 am

Excerpt Re Paul Morasca
From The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Casolaro documented the most grisly of the Cabazon murders in his notes, that of Riconosciuto associate Paul Morasca: "In 1982, the body of the thirty year old Paul Morasca was found hog-tied and fatally strangled in his condominium on San Francisco's Telegraph Hill. Morasca, who had been working among the Cabazon Arms confidantes, reportedly had the access codes for offshore accounts containing hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money ostensibly for covert operations (Casolaro's notes, p. 88).

Michael Riconosciuto offered his own comments on Morasca's death" "And then my associate Paul Morasca 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...Paul was dead! He'd been slowly strangled to death." (Casolaro's notes, p. 104).

Three days after Paul Morasca's murder, a woman named Mary Quick--63 years old, a school teacher and Women's Auxiliary president of Fresno's American Legion--was headed toward Legion Post 509 when she was killed by a single gunshot to the head, an apparent unrelated mugging. A year after the murder, however, police learned that Riconosciuto claimed a business association with Mary Quick's nephew, Brian Weiss. Police sources told the San Francisco Examiner that Weiss gave his aunt a bank card with secret account numbers, perhaps the same access codes that may have led to Paul Morasca's murder. According to the police, "She had no connection (to any of the principals) and could be trusted. Mary Quick was to be instructed to give information only to Paul (Morasca) or Michael Riconosciuto. She was not aware of what the computer card was for and had never received the card." Riconosciuto claimed that Mary Quick's murderers were probably trying to recover the card. (Littman and Taylor).

p. 34-35

by **admin** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:13 am

Excerpt Re Jonathan Moyle
From The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

More than a year earlier, on March 31, 1990, a British journalist named Jonathan Moyle was found dead, hung in a hotel room closet in Santiago, Chile. "Although Casolaro and Moyle were probing different leads, their investigations involved some of the same people," said columnist Jack Anderson. (Anderson). Moyle, an editor at London's Defense Helicopter World, had been investigating the weapons trade, specifically the alleged sale of non-military U.S. helicopters to Iraq for re-fitting as attack choppers. The notes Moyle left behind contained reference to a sophisticated missile guidance system that held Iraqi interest, although whether or not it used the system in its disastrous SCUD attacks during the Persian Gulf War is unknown. Instrumental in the arms-dealing Moyle had investigated was Carlos Cardoen, the same man Ari Ben-Menashe identified as the intermediary between Iraq and Earl Brian for the PROMIS software deal. (Ben-Menashe, p. 239). Initial reports called Moyle's death a suicide, but evidence, including the presence of a strong sedative in his system and possible asphyxiation, suggested otherwise. ("The Riddle of Room 1406," The Sunday Times).

p. 54-55

by **admin** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:13 am

Excerpt Re Anson Ng
From The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Anson Ng, a reporter for the Financial Times of London, pursued Jimmy Hughes, the Wackenhut security guard central to the Alvarez murder case, to South America in an attempt to get an interview. While in Guatemala during July 1991, Ng was murdered by a single bullet to the chest. His death was ruled a suicide. The Guatemalan government was asked to retrieve Ng's floppy discs and personal papers regarding his investigation. It did so and turned them over to a U.S. intelligence agency. In a press conference a few weeks later, Senator Alan Cranston requested that these items be returned but they never were.

p. 54

by **admin** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:14 am

Excerpt Re Frank Nugan
From The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

After removing Whitlam from office, the Octopus was still not finished with Australia. At 4 A.M. on January 27, 1980, the body of banker Frank Nugan was found in his Mercedes in Lithgow, Australia. He had died from a single gunshot from the .30 caliber rifle which lay on the seat beside him. Nugan had been half owner, with partner Michael Jon Hand, in Nuhan, Ltd., a group of banks founded in 1973, whose most visible subsidiary was Nugan Hand bank in Australia (and whose name is usually applied to the enterprise). Hand had been a Green Beret in Vietnam, working closely with Air America, his commanding officer at the time being William Colby. Hand is also alleged by former associates to have been a drug-runner. The deceased Frank Nugan had been a lawyer in Australia. Others connected to Nugan Hand included the president of the bank, U.S. Rear Admiral Earl P. "Buddy" Yates; the president of Nugan Hand, Inc., Hawaii, Brigadier General Edwin F. Black; and a number of other senior CIA officials. Black had served in the OSS, been a member of the National Security Council, and had commanded all U.S. troops in Thailand during the Vietnam War. The company also retained as a lawyer William Colby, former head of the CIA. Black had been Colby's OSS commander. Inquiries additionally showed that the majority of shareholders in Nuhand, Ltd. were connected to the CIA in some capacity. (Kwitny).

p. 91

by **admin** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:14 am

Excerpt Re Mary Quick
From The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Three days after Paul Morasca's murder, a woman named Mary Quick--63 years old, a school teacher and Women's Auxiliary president of Fresno's American Legion--was headed toward Legion Post 509 when she was killed by a single gunshot to the head, an apparent unrelated mugging. A year after the murder, however, police learned that Riconosciuto claimed a business association with Mary Quick's nephew, Brian Weiss. Police sources told the San Francisco Examiner that Weiss gave his aunt a bank card with secret account numbers, perhaps the same access codes that may have led to Paul Morasca's murder. According to the police, "She had no connection (to any of the principals) and could be trusted. Mary Quick was to be instructed to give information only to Paul (Morasca) or Michael Riconosciuto. She was not aware of what the computer card was for and had never received the card." Riconosciuto claimed that Mary Quick's murderers were probably trying to recover the card. (Littman and Taylor).

p. 35

by **admin** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:15 am

Excerpt Re Adler Berriman Seal
From The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

The Mena story begins with a drug dealer named Barry Seal who apparently began smuggling drugs through the airstrip in 1982. The operation continued past Seal's 1984 drug conviction in Miami. As Seal began working deals with the Drug Enforcement Agency and Ollie North's network after that conviction--trading undercover work against the Sandinistas for leniency--a second wave of questionable businesses descended upon Mena. These businesses described themselves variously as aircraft and parts delivery services but stories of drug traffic continued. In 1989, new allegations were made by a former investigator for the U.S. military, Gene Wheaton, that the airfield was also used for commando training. The Arkansas state police investigated and reported to the U.S. attorney but expected indictments were never returned, leading to the suspicion that the Reagan administration could add one more small cover-up to its tally.

It seemed originally that Bill Clinton did not become involved with the story until a pair of students at the University of Arkansas, Mark Swaney and Tom Brown, appealed directly to their then-governor to investigate. The appeal, and another call for a state grand jury from Arkansas' deputy state prosecuting attorney, met a stonewall. When Arkansas representative Bill Alexander met with Governor Clinton, he was told that $25,000 in state money had been set aside to investigate Mena. The amount was slight enough for an effective investigation but even that was never delivered. The prosecuting attorney in Mena's Polk County at the time said he never received the offer from the then-governor's office.

The IRS began an investigation of Barry Seals' operation in Mena after Seal was murdered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana by Columbian drug traffickers, but according to Bill Duncan, a former IRS investigator, the investigators were warned off, causing Duncan to quit and testify before a House committee about all he had learned of money laundering, cover operations and drug smuggling in Mena.

The claim that Clinton was remiss in not investigating Mena was first made publicly by Larry Nichols in a defamation suit against the governor. Clinton had hired Nichols as marketing director for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA) but fired him when his alleged contacts with the contras became too apparent, citing the charge that Nichols had made unauthorized phone calls to Central America as a reason for the firing. In Nichols' subsequent lawsuit contesting that charge, he also first publicized the claims of Gennifer Flowers.

Another court case, that of Terry Reed, also added much to the Mena story. In 1988 Reed was charged with postal fraud for receiving insurance money on a false claim. Reed claimed that his airplane had been stolen as part of an Ollie North-styled project called "Projection Donation," wherein "donations" to the contra cause were filed as lost or stolen with insurance companies and then reimbursed. According to Reed, he had no awareness of "Project Donation" at the time of his plane's disappearance, and so reported it as a legitimate loss. The plane reappeared after Reed learned of the Donation project and warned his contacts in the Ollie North network that he would have no part of it. Reed tells his story with co-author John Cummings in Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, recently published by SPI Books/Shapolsky.

The person who first reported the discovery of what turned out to be Reed's plane to the National Crime Information Center was Raymond L. "Buddy" Young, then working for Bill Clinton as security chief and since chosen by Clinton to head the Dallas regional office of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Federal Judge Frank Thels later said that Young and an associate "acted with reckless disregard for the truth" in their version of how they came to realize the plane was not stolen, charges against Reed were dropped.

p. 138-139

by **admin** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:19 am

Excerpt Re Ian Spiro and Family
From The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

The mysterious death list came also to include the execution-styled slaying of Ian Spiro and his family, a wife and three daughters, in San Diego on November 1, 1992. Spiro reportedly worked for U.S. and British intelligence agencies on operations that included the October Surprise, Iran-Contra, and the hostage crisis in Lebanon. Spiro spoke with Riconosciuto, for whom he was helping collect documents to present to a grand jury, only a few days before his death. (Thomas, Kenn, "Inslaw Revisited," Steamshovel Press #9, Fall 1993, p. 44).

p. 56

by **admin** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:19 am

Excerpt Re Alan Standorf
From The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

"In the beginning of 1991 Casolaro was investigating the Inslaw case almost frantically. One of his contacts, supplied by Riconsociuto, was Alan Standorf, who worked at the secret military electronic listening post at Vint Hill Farm, near Manassas, Virginia. Standorf supplied Casolaro with classified information and, in order to quickly return the materials to avoid detection, Casolaro set up high speed commercial duplicating and collating equipment in room 900 at the nearby Hilton Hotel.

Danny Casolaro may not have known what he was getting into when he began the investigation of PROMIS and the conspiracy tributaries that ran from it. But the truth was brought home to him on Jan 31, 1991. Alan Standorf's body was found on the back floor of his car at the Washington National Airport. He had been murdered by a blow to the back of his head."

Pg. 11-12, referencing Stich, p. 408; Contact, May 10, 1994, p. 19.

It is unclear whether or not Moyle kept contact with Casolaro, although his notes include references to Carlos Cardoen and the Iraqi missile deal. Casolaro knew about Alan May and he also had learned about Anson Ng's death shortly after it took place, which he was developing his Octopus thesis. He also remembered the January murder of Alan Standorf. Riconosciuto had introduced Casolaro to Standorf as an electronic intelligence operative of the NSA, working at the Vint Hill military installation in Virginia that gathered information from espionage satellites and other sources throughout the world. Casolaro agreed that Standorf had important information linking the Justice Department to parts of the various scandals he was researching. After Standorf's death, Casolaro mentioned to a friend, Bill Turner, that a key source had vanished. (Stich, p. 407).

p. 55

This was only the beginning of the suspicions that spread out like waves behind an octopus swimming off after an attack. The first involved the recent death of Alan Standorf, the electronic intelligence specialist who, according to Rodney Stich, Casolaro had met through Michael Michael Riconosciuto--someone Casolaro had called a key source. After Danny's death, when Art Weinfield accompanied Casolaro's sister Mary Ellen and son Trey to the Martinsburg police station to recover Danny's car, they ran into detectives who identified themselves as working for the National Airport Authority in D.C. (Ridgeway and Vaughan described the authorities as nothing more than "aggressive, professional suburban public servants." The Com-12 Briefing suggested, however, that "Wackenhut Special Services Teams, along with NSA officials, informed the Martinsburg Police Department that they would secretly conduct the investigation of Casolaro's death and the police were to maintain this cover," and that "Casolaro had received 60 pages of whistle-blowing documentation on a major defense contractor. The material was repossessed that night by the assignment team from NSA and Wackenhut.") The detectives explained that they were looking into possible connections between Danny's death and Standorf's, a "low-level" civilian NSA employee at the restricted Vint Hill military facility. Standorf was killed by a blow to the head in early January; if not for the sake of stealing the $500 he had just retrieved from an ATM, then his body was made to look that way. It had been discovered at National Airport in late January, wrapped in his coat in the back seat of his car, money missing. The detectives explained that army intelligence officers joined their investigation of the case twice before an anonymous caller mentioned the link to Casolaro. While the detectives never came up with evidence connecting the two cases, according to Ridgeway and Vaughan, they did discover that their anonymous tip came from one of Casolaro's last informants, Bill Turner. (Ridgeway and Vaughan, "Last Days," p. 42).

p. 115-116

by **admin** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:20 am

Excerpt Re Paul Wilcher
From The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

Over time, Michael Riconosciuto lost three lawyers and an investigator under what could be construed as mysterious circumstances. In February 1987 Larry Guerrin, a private investigator conducting Inslaw-connected work for Riconosciuto, was killed in Mason County, Washington. After Eisman's death, in April 1993, another attorney who worked with Riconosciuto, John Crawford, died suddenly from a heart attack in Tacoma. (Stich, p. 407). The decomposed body of a third Riconosciuto lawyer, Paul Wilcher, was found in Wilcher's Washington, DC apartment on June 23, 1993. Wilcher also had been an attorney for the pilot Gunther Russbacher, who claimed to have videotape proof and sixteen witnesses to his having flown George Bush to one of the October Surprise meetings. (Russbacher, Guenther, Interviewed by Alex Horvat and Joe Palermo, 3/17/93). Wilcher belonged to the American Patriot Fax Network and had recently prepared an ambitious 55 page fax summarizing information on circumstances leading to the fiery deaths of David Koresh and his followers in April 1993 that he sent as a challenge to Attorney General Janet Reno. The fax included details of the story of his client, Russbacher, concerning the October Surprise, and a page of information on the Inslaw case, pointing out that an executive assistant to Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat from West Virginia, was the wife of Peter Videnieks, who had threatened Riconosciuto. (Wilcher, Paul, American Patriot Fax Network Fax, 5/21/93, p. 60).

p. 55-56

In an affidavit Attorney Paul D. Wilcher sent to Attorney General Janet Reno he too detailed the existence of a "Shadow Government," parallelling in precise terms the Casolaro Octopus, and their participation in the October Surprise: "...The October Surprise treason refers to the top secret trip then-Vice Presidential candidate and former CIA Director George Bush (along with a planeful of some 25 to 30 other top CIA covert operatives--including a handful of prominent Republican and Democratic Senators and Congressmen) took to Paris on the weekend of October 18th and 19th, 1980. While in Paris, Bush secretly met with representatives of the Ayatollah Khomeini, paid them bribes in the amount of $40 million, and promised to deliver to the man additional $5 billion in arms (the shipments of these arms began flowing even before the election), in exchange for the Iranians' agreement NOT to release the 52 American hostages they held in Tehran until after the November 4th, 1980, U.S. Presidential elections--in order to guarantee the humiliation and defeat of President Jimmy Carter in that election--and in order to cement the CIA's lock on the White House for the next 12 years under George Bush. The Reagan and Bush Administrations, and most recently the Congress--in separate House and Senate October Surprise investigations in 1992--have tried to sell us that the October Surprise NEVER happened--that Bush and his CIA cronies NEVER made this secret trip to Paris on October 18th and 19th, and that NO secret deal with the Iranians was ever struck. But that simply is NOT true--as the 16 covert operatives referred to below will demonstrate in their forthcoming testimony. They will even produce a video tape to prove both the "October Surprise" treason, and George Bush's participation in it--beyond all shadow of any doubt."

The body of Mr. Wilcher, age 46, was later found in his apartment, his death from unknown causes. (Wilcher, Paul, American Patriot Fax Network Fax, 5/21/93).

p. 88-89

by **admin** » Mon Apr 25, 2016 7:35 am

Excerpt Re Leigh Ratiner
From The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

"Ben-Menashe had one more footnote to add to the PROMIS story in his memoir. He claimed that because of Inslaw an attorney, Leigh Ratiner of the Washington law firm Dickstein and Shapiro, was forced into early retirement in an agreement that forbade him to practice law for five years. This happened shortly after Ratiner began representing Inslaw for the firm. According to Ben-Menashe, this also happened after Dickstein and Shapiro received a $600,000 transfer from a CIA-Israeli slush fund for the purpose of getting Ratiner off the case, via Earl Brian."

p. 24, citing Ben-Menashe, p. 141

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