Inslaw-Octopus Related Deaths

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

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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

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

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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

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

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"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

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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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"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