The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies (58 page)

What proof, your honour, for the October Surprise conspiracy? It is tantalizing but circumstantial. A congressional probe in 1983 declared that Honest Ron Reagan’s campaign had set up a network to spy on Carter and his negotiations with the Iranian regime. And there are witnesses for the prosecution, the most eminent being former Iranian president Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, who claimed to have received a message from the Iranian foreign ministry about the direction of discussions with the Reagan camp. A host of arms dealers and private spooks over the years have stepped forward to state they organized the discussions between the Reaganites and the Iranians, including Jamshid and Cyrus Hashemi, Ari Ben-Menashe and Ahran Moshell.

It should also be noted on the rap sheet that during the Iran– Contra scandal Reagan grudgingly admitted that the US had ransomed hostages by illegally selling arms to Iran (using the profits to fund Nicaraguan right-wing rebels). If Team Reagan could do a dodgy deal in office why not out of office?

That said, any fair-minded judge would find the spook and gun-runner “witnesses” for the October Surprise theory as suspect a bunch as you could wave a gavel at. Ari Ben-Menashe will serve to damn the lot; this supposed former Mossad agent Ben-Menashe claims to have fitted Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak with a homing beacon – an espionage stunt that would have tested Tom Cruise in
Mission Impossible
mode. A number of the gunrunners on the list are popular with various police forces. And claiming to be the guy that set up one of the arms deals of the century is clearly a good business card.

By 1992, the October Surprise brouhaha had reached such a crescendo that the House of Representatives investigated the charges. The subsequent report, “The ‘October Surprise’ Allegations and the Circumstances Surrounding the Release of the American Hostages Held in Iran”, found that “the credible evidence now known falls far short of supporting the allegation of an agreement between the Reagan campaign and Iran to delay the release of the hostages”. The House investigation did find that William Casey, an ex-OSS/CIA bigwig, had been fishing in very murky waters. There was no “credible” evidence that Casey had been in Madrid when the meeting with Iranians was alleged to have taken place – but then the key pages from his desk diary had been torn out.

The phrase “now known” is the rub. One suggestive piece of evidence was forwarded too late for conclusion. It was sent from Moscow – and disclosed that the Kremlin’s spooks had monitored the October Surprise deal between Reagan’s team and the Iranians.

The stink of conspiracy still hovers over the timing of the release of the US hostages from Tehran.

Further Reading

Robert Parry,
Trick or Treason
, 1993

Gary Sick,
October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan
, 1992

THE OCTOPUS

A “unified field theory” is the Higgs boson of conspiriology, the presumption that there is one entity holds everything together. Danny Casolaro a 44-year-old freelance journalist from Virginia believed that he had found the omnipotent underground cabal that ran the planet. Casolaro called the transnational master conspiracy “the Octopus”.

In the early afternoon of 10 August 1991, a nude male body was found in the bath of room 517 in the Sheraton Inn in Martinsburg, West Virginia. There were a dozen slashes to his wrists, and the blood had sprayed over the walls. Near the corpse was a note that read “Please forgive me for the worst possible thing I could have done.”

The cadaver was that of Danny Casolaro. Martinsburg’s boys in blue immediately concluded that it was a routine suicide, and so the county coroner decided against an inquest and released the body to a mortician. Casolaro’s body was embalmed that evening, before the next of kin had been notified. This was illegal. It was certainly unfortunate, because had Danny Casolaro’s family been notified they would certainly have asked for an autopsy. When eventually informed of his brother’s death, Anthony Casolaro, a medical doctor, announced that Danny had gone to Martinsburg to interview a “Deep Throat” who would give him the final proof of the Octopus’s existence. Danny had also told his brother, “If anything happens to me, don’t believe it was accidental.”

Danny Casolaro had named the Octopus well. He had, he claimed, first discovered its existence whilst researching
October Surprise
, the alleged deal between Reagan and Iran to hold the fifty-two US hostages in Tehran until after the 1980 presidential election so as to embarrass Jimmy Carter, but gradually realized that the mega-cabal had tentacles in the BCCI banking scandal, the Inslaw/PROMIS theft of surveillance software, the Medallin drug cartel, Iran–Contra – to name just a few of its long-reaching arms. In a draft of a book on the Octopus, Casolaro portrayed the Octopus as “a web of thugs and thieves who roam the earth with their weapons and their murders, trading dope and dirty money for the secrets of the temple”.

Casolaro’s overwrought, overexcited manuscript does little to advance his case for the Octopus’s existence. A grandiose, overarching stream of consciousness, the manuscript redefines every event of the twentieth century without a back-up fact. Also, any suggestion that Casolaro was “offed” by the Octopus because he was getting too close to the truth, was damned by the belated autopsy done by the state medical examiner, who concluded that the wounds of Casolaro’s wrists appeared to be self-inflicted. Meanwhile, local officials determined that the suicide note found in room 517 was written by Casolaro himself.

The national media had long dismissed Casolaro as a flake. His suicide was simply proof of his craziness. The fact that the autopsy revealed traces of antidepressant only confirmed his mental fragility.

Not everyone, however, was convinced that Casolaro died by his own hand. There was suggestive evidence to suggest the contrary:

There were other oddities in the case. A waitress in the Sheraton’s cocktail lounge recalled that Casolaro had been drinking there with an “Arab or Iranian” man. He was never located. And at Casolaro’s funeral two unknown figures appeared, one of whom placed a medal on Casolaro’s casket and saluted. Casolaro had never served in the military.

Undoubtedly Casolaro had been mixing with some shady characters towards the end of his life. One of his “informants” was Michael Riconoscuito, a self-professed intelligence operative cum science genius. Riconoscuito claimed to have developed gene warfare for the CIA, along with Gerald Bull’s supergun for Iraq, plus the modifications of the Department of Justice PROMIS software, believed by many conspiracists to be implicated in
October Surprise
. Riconoscuito
was
up to his neck in the PROMIS controversy, because he had been assisting Inslaw, Inc., who were alleging that the DoJ had pilfered the PROMIS software from them. In his notes, Casolaro identified Riconoscuito as “Danger Man”. He lived down to his nickname: aside from being a narcotics trafficker – a little misdemeanour he went to the penitentiary for – he was involved with the Wackenhut Corporation, a CIA subcontractor based at the semi-autonomous Cabazon tribal homeland. Another Wackenhut associate, the smooth Robert Booth Nichols, also provided Casolaro with “intelligence”. Three days before his death, Nichols warned Casolaro, “If you continue this investigation, you will die.” But Casolaro wasn’t sure whether Nichols was threatening him or warning him. Or which investigation he was referring to; Casolaro had recently discovered that Robert Booth Nichols himself was tied to the Gambino mob and, for good measure, the Yakuza. Worst still, Casolaro reputedly knew from the DoJ that Nichols had offered to snitch on the Gambinos – and that was very dangerous information to know.

For the record, Nichols claimed to be out of the country when Casolaro committed suicide, or was suicided.

Although the Octopus as an omnipotent conspiracy theory is more the stuff of thriller than of history, Casolaro was wading in a murky swamp with some dark-hearted creatures. The list of why and who had cause to off Casolaro is almost endless. To all the above can be added: he may have stumbled across information on a Wackenhut–CIA “dirty job” that no one wanted aired; a Judiciary Committee’s Investigative Report on Inslaw/PROMIS declared “As long as the possibility exists that Danny Casolaro died as a result of his investigation into the Inslaw matter … it is imperative that further investigations be conducted.”

While a subsequent report by DoJ Special Counsel Nicholas Bua released in 1993 on the PROMIS case declared Casolaro’s death to be suicide, conspiracists noted that Bua was not the independent counsel requested by the Judiciary Committee.

If Casolaro was “suicided” his death is a grim stop sign to other conspiracy researchers. A point perhaps underlined by the fate of Jim Keith, who wrote (with Kenn Thomas) an exhaustive study of the Casolaro case. In 2004, Keith went into the Washoe Medical Hospital for a mundane knee operation. He died “in mysterious circumstances” from a blood clot on his lung.

Further Reading

John Connolly, “Dead Right”,
SPY,
January 1993

Ken Thomas and Jim Keith,
The Octopus: The Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
, 2003

“The Inslaw Affair: Investigative Report by the Committee on the Judiciary”, 1992

DOCUMENT: HOUSE REPORT 102–85, “THE INSLAW AFFAIR: INVESTIGATIVE REPORT BY THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY”, 1992 [EXTRACTS]

1. THE DEATH OF DANIEL CASOLARO

On August 10, 1991, the lifeless body of Mr. Daniel Casolaro, an investigative reporter investigating the INSLAW matter, was discovered in a hotel room in Martinsburg, WV. Mr. Casolaro’s body was found in the bathtub with both of his wrists slashed several times. There was no sign of forced entry into the hotel room nor of a struggle. A short suicide note was found.

Following a brief preliminary investigation by the local authorities, the death was ruled a suicide. The investigation was reopened following numerous inquiries by Mr. Casolaro’s brother and others into the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death. On January 25, 1992, after expending over 1,000 man-hours investigating his death, the local authorities again ruled Mr. Casolaro’s death a suicide.

The committee did not include the death of Daniel Casolaro as part of its formal investigation of the INSLAW matter. Nevertheless, it is a fair statement to observe that the controversy surrounding the death continues to be discussed in the press and to other figures connected to the INSLAW litigation. These questions appear to be fostered by the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death and the criticism of the Martinsburg Police Department’s investigation.

Other sources have been quoted in the media indicating that Mr. Casolaro did not commit suicide, and that his death was linked to his investigation of INSLAW, Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), and other matters such as the Iran/Contra affair. It has been reported that Mr. Casolaro had confided to several people that he was receiving death threats because he was getting close to concluding his investigation. Furthermore, he told family and friends not to believe that, if he died, it was by accident. According to his brother, Mr. Casolaro’s investigation began to come together during the summer of 1991. Several people indicated he was upbeat and that on the weekend of August 10, 1991, he was in Martinsburg, WV, to receive significant information for his project from a source.