Inslaw-Octopus Related Deaths

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

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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

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

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YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

"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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Excerpt Re Bill Turner
From The Octopus, Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith

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YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

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).

Fearful that he might be the next target of the Octopus, Bill Turner got himself arrested in late September on a bank-robbery charge. (A similar strategy had been used by a spook named Richard Case Nagell when he realized he was entangled in the conspiracy to kill JFK. In September 1963 Nagell shot up a bank in San Antonio, was arrested and thereby removed as a player. (Russell, Dick, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carrol & Graf, 1994). Less than an hour and a half after a bank robbery in the rural town of Gore, police picked up Turner and matched him with images from the bank's security camera.

Was Turner justified in such actions, steering the police to connect Danny's death with Standorf's and fleeing into police custody? Turner failed to make two appointments to discuss this with the authors of this book and thereafter his telephone number became unlisted. One person who would support Turner's fears, though, is Harry Martin of the NAPA Sentinel. "Basically what we're dealing with is Air Force counter-intelligence," said Martin in an interview. "What Casolaro was finding was procurement fraud, manufacturing fraud and kickbacks. He didn't start out in that direction, but that's what he stumbled across. And, of course, that is what did him in...One of my contacts in the Air Force came back from Virginia the same weekend as Casolaro's death. Of course, it hadn't quite been reported. He came back and his knuckles were raw and he had scratches on them and he talked about beating up this guy in a hotel in West Virginia."

"Again," Martin adds, "I didn't have Casolaro on my mind at the time...At the same time the contact indicated that he had gotten ahold of all these papers from this guy and that he destroyed those papers. When you put two and two together--the contact had these papers and he dealt with Hughes Aircraft--and the fact that the guy had been in a fight..." (Interview with Harry Martin by Kenn Thomas, 10/25/94). Martin declined to give the name of his contact.

p. 115-116

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

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The functions of the American Pine Gap installation in Australia include the receipt and transferral of information from spy satellites, the interception of phone calls from Europe, and the relaying of messages to the American nuclear submarine fleet. Gough Whitlam, the Labor Party candidate elected prime minister of Australia in 1972, was concerned about the cozy relationship between the ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, and the CIA, and that ASIO had gone rogue. This in turn caused concern at the CIA. Ted Shackley is said to have gone "paranoid" and to have ordered a diminution of the information made available to them, while Ray Cline mentions "a period of turbulence to do with Alice Springs." Fear the curtailment of their Australian operations due to an approaching renewal date for the Pine Gab base, the CIA flexed their muscles, and perhaps a couple of tentacles. On November 8, 1975, a message of protest about Prime Minister Whitlam was sent by Theodore Shackley to the head of ASIO. On May 11, 1975, the CIA and OSS-connected Governor General of Australia John Kerr removed Whitlam as the head of government, using constitutional pretext. According to CIA analyst Kevin Mulcahy, the CIA effort was headed by Milton Wonus, a friend of Nugan Hand Bank's (and possibly the CIA's) Bernie Houghton. (Kwitny).

p. 90-91