Inslaw-Octopus Related Deaths

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

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Riconosciuto could claim a dark credibility derived from the fact that colleagues in his shadowy world continued to fall. An attorney from Philadelphia, Dennis Eisman, known as the "Fatal Vision lawyer" because of his involvement in the Jeffrey McDonald case, was in touch with Casolaro and was scheduled to travel to Washington to defend Riconosciuto, planning also to meet with a woman who had evidence of the threat to his client. In April Eisman was shot and killed in his car in Philadelphia. According to one source, just prior to Eisman's death indictments were pending against him and other attorneys for narcotics trafficking and money laundering. The indictments never appears.

As soon as Michael Riconosciuto found out that Eisman was dead, he called Virginia McCullough. McCullough says that he was "absolutely panicky in jail." She says that Riconosciuto told her, "They've killed my attorney" and asked her to telephone another attorney working on his case, James Guthrie, and to warn him. McCullough did, and Guthrie told McCullough, "I'm out of here." (McCullough interview).

p. 53

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Excerpt Re Larry Guerrin
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

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

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Most interesting of all the mysterious deaths connected to Inslaw, however, was that of 1960s political activist Abbie Hoffman. Hoffman wrote an early piece on the October Surprise for Playboy magazine and shortly thereafter was involved in a suspicious automobile accident. Most regarded his death on April 12, 1989 as the suicide it was reported as, caused perhaps in part due to depression he suffered from the continued pain resulting from that accident. Others, however, suspected foul play in Hoffman's death, notably David Dellinger, a fellow member of the Chicago 8. Dellinger's suspicions even led him to attempt to retrieve the coroner's report for examination, but he was stopped by a threatened court battle. "They basically would not allow that to go to court," Dellinger concluded, "but [Abbie's] son Andrew and Abbie's first wife Sheila, are convinced he was killed." ("King Co-Opted; Abbie Assassinated," Steamshovel Press #9, Fall 1993, p. 7).

p. 57

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

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Barry Kusnick, a computer engineer who had also worked on PROMIS enhancements, also made the list. According to one report, Kusnick's enhancement was called Brainstorm, an artificially intelligent program that applied the prognosticating ability of PROMIS to individual thought patterns. It ostensibly allowed PROMIS to deduce from personality characteristics the potential action of the person being traced. As in the Inslaw case, Kusnick apparently made the modifications under a government contract that the government failed to pay on, instead attempting to drive Kusnick into bankruptcy. Kusnick had previously done communications and intelligence work for Northrop Corporation and the U.S. military. His body has never been found, and nine months after he was reported missing family members were unable to get a known business partner to acknowledge knowing him. Five boxes of his belongings were found in a lock-up facility. ("Inslaw," Leading Edge, p. 48).

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

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Four days after an interview with Danger Man [Michael Riconosciuto], on June 19, 1991, former Nixon campaign aide Alan Michael May died in his home in San Francisco. During the interview, Riconosciuto had talked about May's involvement in the October Surprise. The initial coroner's report attributed May's death to heart attack, but an autopsy showed the presence of polypharmaceuticals in his body.

p. 54

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

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"With the help of Wackenhut and the Cabazons, according to Ben-Menashe, the U.S. developed its own version of the back-door and the U.S. and Israel began looking for a neutral company through which it could sell the program to foreign intelligence services. The company chosen for the task was Degem, a computer firm with offices in Israel, Guatemala and the South African Bantustan homeland. It had been taken over for the purpose by Robert Maxwell, the publishing mogul who drowned under mysterious circumstances in 1991.

Maxwell's body was found floating in the ocean near his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, off the Canary Islands on November 5, 1991. He had not been seen for hours preceding his death. These types of rumors, of connections to Mossad and other international spy groups, had long circulated about Maxwell, and his publishing empire's finances had come under official review. Nevertheless, Spanish authorities concluded that Maxwell died of a heart attack, although he had no history of heart disease. Maxwell's daughter Ghislaine said the family was satisfied with the investigation, but his sons, widows and lawyers insisted that the death was accidental, perhaps with an eye toward Maxwell's $35.8 million insurance against accidental death. ('Maxwell's Mysterious Death Raises More Questions," MIN Media Industry Newsletter, No. 47, Vol. 44, November 25, 1991.)

One of the forensic specialists who worked on the autopsy later noted that a perforation under Maxwell's left ear could have been caused by an injection of a lethal substance. Labor Party MP George Galloway openly speculated in the British House of Commons that Maxwell was murdered because 'dead men tell no tales.' Britain's PM John Major was even moved to deny publicly that British intelligence was investigating Maxwell's finances after his death. By 1995, however, Britain's Serious Fraud Office had spent $13.9 million tracing Maxwell's web of over 400 companies (Reuters, 2/15/95), resulting in charges against Maxwell's financial advisors, Larry Trachtenberg and Robert Bunn, and his two sons, Ian and Kevin, for defrauding pensioners. A second charge of conspiring with his father was brought against Kevin Maxwell, age 36. The charge claimed that months before the elder Maxwell's death, he and his son used other pension assets and shares in another Israeli company, Scitex Corporation, to illegally raise money for other Maxwell companies (Reuters, 5/26/95). The collapse of Maxwell's empire -- which ultimately led to son Kevin standing in the unemployment line and widow Elisabeth unsuccessfully fishing for a publisher to handle her memoir -- began well before he died, lending credence to the suicide theory."

Pgs. 23-26

"[Robert] Maxwell's role as a cutout for a foreign nation's sale of computer software has been implicitly acknowledged by the actions of the FBI. Robert Maxwell's dissemination of computer software was the subject of an FBI foreign counterintelligence investigation in 1984. Ten years later, in January 1994, Inslaw obtained, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 18 pages relating to an investigation on this subject in New Mexico in June 1984. The FBI furnished the documents to Inslaw in response to a FOIA request for documents relating to Maxwell's involvement in the 'dissemination, marketing or sale of computer software product, between 1983 and 1992.' The FBI heavily redacted the 18 pages and ascribed the redactions to the secrecy requirements of national security. One month before the FBI released the documents to Inslaw, it partially reclassified two of the pages that had been officially declassified in their entirety one year earlier. The FBI redacted the newly reclassified portions in the copies given to Inslaw.

"Robert Maxwell also developed a business relationship during the latter half of the 1980s with two computer systems executives from the Meese Justice Department, at least one of whom had responsibilities relating to the proprietary version of PROMIS. Robert Maxwell set up a tiny publishing company in McLean, Virginia, in August 1985. That company then hired two senior computing systems executives from a unit of the Meese Justice Department that operated the proprietary version of PROMIS. One was the Director of the Justice Data Center, the Justice Department's own internal computer time-sharing facility where the proprietary IBM version of PROMIS was operating for one of the legal divisions under license from Inslaw. The Director of the Justice Data Center resigned his estimated $90,000-a-year Senior Executive Service position to become Vice President for Technical Services at the six-employee start-up national defense company owned by Robert Maxwell." (Richardson, Elliot L., et al., Inslaw's Analysis and Rebuttal of the Bua Report, 7/12/93).

p. 128-129

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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