by Mark A. Lecuyer

from TheCatBirdSeat Website

from AlienExistence Website

 

Wackenhut

The history of Wackenhut Corporation is best described from its own literature.

 

An outdated letter of introduction typed on Wackenhut letterhead once sent to prospective clients provided me with the following profile:

 

(Excerpted)

 

"Wackenhut Corporation had its beginnings in 1954, when George R. Wackenhut and three other former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation formed a company in Miami, Special Agent Investigators, to provide investigative services to business and industry.

"The approach was so well received that a second company was formed in 1955 to apply the same philosophy to physical security problems. In 1958 the companies were combined under the name of Wackenhut Corporation, a Florida company. From the outset, George Wackenhut was President and chief executive officer of the enterprise. Wackenhut established its headquarters in Coral Gables, Florida in 1960, extending its physical security operations to the United States government through formation of a wholly-owned subsidiary, Wackenhut Services, Incorporated. This was done in order to comply with federal statute prohibiting the government from contracting with companies which furnish investigative or detective services.

"In 1962, Wackenhut operations extended from Florida to California and Hawaii. On January 1, 1966, the company became international with offices in Caracas, Venezuela, through half ownership of an affiliate.

"The Wackenhut Corporation became public in 1966 with over-the-counter stock sales and joined the American Stock Exchange in 1967. Through acquisitions of subsidiaries and affiliates, now totaling more than 20, and expansion of it contracts into numerous territories and foreign countries, the Wackenhut Corporation has grown into one of the world’s largest security and investigative firms.

"In 1978 acquisition of NUSAC, a Virginia company providing technical and consulting services to the nuclear industry, brought Wackenhut into the fields of environment and energy management. In 1979, Wackenhut acquired Stellar Systems, Inc., a California company specializing in outdoor electronic security.

"The executive makeup of the company reflects the stress Mr. Wackenhut placed on professional leadership. The Wackenhut Corporation is guided by executives and managers with extensive backgrounds in the FBI and other military, governmental and private security and investigative fields.

"The principle business of the company is furnishing security and complete investigative services and systems to business, industry and professional clients, and to various agencies of the U.S. Government.

"Through a wholly-owned subsidiary, Wackenhut Electronic Systems Corporation, the company develops and produces sophisticated computerized security systems to complement its guard services.

"Major clients of Wackenhut’s investigative services are the insurance industry and financial interests. These services include insurance inspections, corporate acquisition surveys, personnel background reports, preemployment screening, polygraph examinations and general criminal, fraud and arson investigations.

"The wide variety of services offered by Wackenhut Corporation also includes guard and electronic security for banks, office buildings, apartments, industrial complexes and other physical structures; training programs in English and foreign languages to apply Wackenhut procedures to individual clients needs; fire, safety and protective patrols; rescue and first aid services; emergency support programs tailored to labor-management disputes, and pre-departure screening programs widely used by airports and airlines.

"The company now has some 20,000 employees and maintains close to 100 offices and facilities with operations spread across the United States and extending into Canada, the United Kingdom, Western Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia, Central and South America and the Caribbean..."

ON THE SURFACE, Wackenhut Corporation seemed innocuous enough, but through documents later obtained from Michael Riconosciuto, I learned there was another, darker side to Wackenhut operations, at the Cabazon Indian reservation near Indio, California.

Because Indian reservations are sovereign nations and do not come under federal jurisdiction, Wackenhut International had formed a partnership and entered into a business venture with the Cabazon Indians to produce high-tech arms and explosives for export to third-world countries. This maneuver was designed to evade congressional prohibitions against U.S. weapons being shipped to the Contras and middle eastern countries.

In the early 1980’s, Dr. John Nichols, the Cabazon tribal administrator, obtained a department of Defense secret facility clearance for the reservation to conduct various research projects. Nichols then approached Wackenhut with an elaborate "joint venture" proposal to manufacture 120mm combustible cartridge cases, 9mm machine pistols, laser-sighted assault weapons, sniper rifles and portable rocket systems on the Cabazon reservation and in Latin America. At one point, he even sought to develop biological weapons.

Again, through Michael Riconosciuto’s files, I later obtained interoffice memorandums and correspondence relating to biological technology.... Meanwhile, in 1980, Dr. John Nichols obtained the blueprints to Crown Prince Fahd’s palace in Tiaf, Saudi Arabia, and drafted a plan to provide security for the palace.

The Saudis were interested enough to conduct a background check on the Cabazons.

 

Mohammad Jameel Hashem, consul of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C., wrote former South Dakota Senator James Abourezk at his offices in Washington D.C. and noted,

"According to our black list for companies, the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians/Cabazon Trading Company and Wackenhut International are not included."

Translated, that meant that neither the Cabazons or Wackenhut were Jewish-run enterprises....

 


 

 

 


Danny Casolaro’s body was found at 12:30 p.m. in a blood-filled bath tub by a hotel maid who called the Martinsburg police.

The body contained three deep cuts on the right wrist and seven on the left wrist, made by a single edge razor blade, the kind used to scrape windows or open packages. At the bottom of the bath-water was an empty Milwaukee beer can, a paper glass coaster, the razor blade and two white plastic trash bags, the kind used in wastepaper baskets.

On the desk in the hotel room was an empty mead composition notebook with one page torn out and a suicide note which read:

"To those who I love the most, please forgive me for the worst possible thing I could have done. Most of all, I’m sorry to my son. I know deep down inside that God will let me in."

There were no other papers, folders, documents of any sort, nor any briefcase found in the room.

 

Danny’s wallet was intact, stuffed with credit cards. The body was removed from the tub by Lieutenant Dave Brining from the Martinsburg fire department, and his wife, Sandra, a nurse who works in the hospital emergency room. The couple, who often moonlighted as coroners, took the body to the Brown Funeral Home where they conducted an examination. Charles Brown then decided to embalm the body that night and go home, rather than come back to work the next day, Sunday.

No one in Danny Casolaro’s family had been notified of his death at that time, nor had they requested the body be embalmed. When Casolaro’s family learned of the death, they insisted it was not a suicide and called for an autopsy and an investigation.

 

Though the body had already been embalmed, an autopsy was performed at the West Virginia University Hospital by a Dr. Frost. The findings indicated that no struggle had taken place because there were no recent bruises on the body. The drugs found in Casolaro’s urine, blood and tissue samples were in minute amounts but they were also unexplainable by his brother, Tony, who is a medical doctor.

According to Tony Casolaro, Danny did not take drugs or have any prescriptions for the drug traces of Hydrocodone and Tricyclic antidepressant that were found in the body. No pill boxes or written prescriptions were found. Dr. Casolaro searched through his brother’s Blue Cross records and found no record of the prescriptions or doctor visits. . . .

On August 6, 1991, Casolaro’s housekeeper, Olga, helped Danny pack a black leather tote bag. She remembered he also packed a thick sheaf of papers into a dark brown or black briefcase. She asked him what he had put into the briefcase and he replied, "I have all my papers ..."

He had been typing for two days, and as he left the house, he said, "Wish me luck. I’ll see you in a couple of days."

By August 9th, Casolaro’s friends were alarmed. None had heard from him and Olga was receiving threatening phone calls at Danny’s home. On Saturday, August 10th, Olga received another call, a man’s voice said, "You son of a bitch. You’re dead."

After learning of Danny’s death, Olga recalled seeing Danny sitting in the kitchen on August 5th with a,

"heavy man ... wearing a dark suit. He was a dark man with black hair he turned towards the door, I saw he was dark-skinned. I told police maybe he could be from India."

At 3:00 p.m. on Friday, the day before Danny’s death, Bill Turner, a friend and confidante, met Danny in the parking lot of the Sheraton Hotel to deliver some papers to him. The papers allegedly consisted of two sealed packages which Turner had been keeping in his safe at home for Danny, and a packet of Hughes Aircraft papers which belonged to Turner.

Danny had appeared exuberant to most of his friends before his death, noting that he was about to "wrap up" his investigation of The Octopus. Casolaro was trying to prove that the alleged theft of the Inslaw computer program, PROMIS, was related to the October Surprise scandal, the Iran-Contra affair and the collapse of BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International).

Turner later admitted to police that he had indeed met with Danny on August 9th, but at that time he refused to specify what time and would not describe what was in the papers he delivered to Danny. I later learned that Turner had been investigating discrepancies involving his former employer, Hughes Aircraft Company.

The documents he had delivered from his safe to Danny had been sealed, with Casolaro’s name written across the seal, and he claimed not to have known what they contained. Nevertheless, it is feasible to assume that Turner may have known who Danny was preparing to meet that evening at the Martinsburg Hotel because, for reasons of his own, Turner apparently wanted Danny to show the Hughes Aircraft documents to whoever he was meeting with.

Turner later noted to reporters that he was "scared shitless" about information he had seen connecting Ollie North and BCCI.

"I saw papers from Danny that connected back through the Keating Five and Silverado [the failed Denver S & L where Neil Bush had been an officer]," he said.

To his friend, Ben Mason, Danny showed a 22-point outline for his book. Included in the information he shared with Mason were papers referring to Iran-Contra arms deals.

 

Photocopies of checks made out for $1 million and $4 million drawn on BCCI accounts held for Adnan Khashoggi, an international arms merchant and factotum for the House of Saud, and by Manucher Ghorbanifar, an arms dealer and Iran-Contra middleman, were presented.

"The last sheet," noted Mason, "was a passport of some guy named Ibrahim."

Casolaro had emphasized that Ibrahim had made a big deal of showing him (Casolaro) his "Egyptian" passport. "Ibrahim" was obviously the informant whom Olga, Casolaro’s housekeeper, had seen sitting in the kitchen with Danny on August 5th.

 

Hassan Ali Ibrahim Ali, born in 1928, was later identified as the manager of Sitico, an alleged Iraqi front company for arms purchases. Casolaro had obtained these papers from Bob Bickel, who in turn obtained them from October Surprise source Richard Brenneke.

Ari BenMenasche, a self proclaimed Israeli military intelligence officer, was responsible for the tipoff to an obscure Lebanese magazine about what later became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. After Casolaro’s death, Menasche called Bill Hamilton, the president of Inslaw Company and creator of the PROMISE software. (Hamilton had been in daily contact with Casolaro until about a week prior to his death).

Menasche claimed that two FBI agents from Lexington, Kentucky, had embarked on a trip to Martinsburg to meet Casolaroas part of their investigation of the sale of the PROMISE software to Israel and other intelligence agencies. Ben Menasche told Hamilton that one of the FBI agents, E.B. Cartinhour, was disaffected because his superiors had refused to indict high Reagan officials for their role in the October Surprise. Ben Menasche claimed the agents were prepared to give Casolaro proof that the FBI was illegally using PROMISE software....

Casolaro was also investigating Colonel Bo Gritz’s expose of CIA drug trafficking, and had requested to meet with a former police officer who had information on Laotian warlord Kuhn Sa’s Golden Triangle drug trade proposal to the U.S. He had learned through a Sacramento Bee newspaper article, dated June 2, 1990 that Patrick Moriarty, the Red Devil fireworks magnate convicted of laundering political contributions and bribing city officials in Sacramento, had been subpoenaed to testify on behalf of Gritz at his trial in Las Vegas where he was tried for using a false passport. Gritz was acquitted of the charges....

Moriarty’s lawyer, Jan Lawrence Handzlik, told the Bee that Moriarty had paid Gritz to make business trips to China, Singapore and other parts of Asia. Gritz said his business trip to Asia in July 1989 was for the purpose of negotiating an oil interest that he and Moriarty had set up between the People’s Republic of China and Indonesia.

It is noteworthy that Patrick Moriarty is the longtime (30 years) partner of Marshall Riconosciuto, Michael Riconosciuto’s father. They owned several California businesses together, two of which were Hercules Research Corporation, of which Michael was a partner, and Pyrotronics Corporation.

Casolaro at one time considered the title of "Indio" for the book he was writing about "The Octopus."

 

His death occurred just days before he planned to visit the Cabazon Indian reservation near Indio, California. Though his notes did not divulge what role the Cabazons may have had in the conspiracy, Casolaro listed Dr. John Phillip Nichols, the Cabazon administrator, as a former CIA agent.

A source of information which Danny may have read is entitled, "DARK VICTORY, Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob," by Dan E. Moldea. Moldea named this unholy alliance "The Octopus" in his book.

Numerous publications reporting on Casolaro’s death corroborated that one of his sources included Michael Riconosciuto, a "44-year-old former high-tech scientist who had connections with Wackenhut Corporation ..."

What brought Casolaro to Riconosciuto was an affidavit signed by Riconosciuto claiming that when he worked on the Wackenhut-Cabazon project, he was given a copy of the Inslaw software by Earl Brian for modification. Riconosciuto also swore that Peter Videnieks, a Justice Department official associated with the Inslaw contract, had visited the Wackenhut-Cabazon project with Earl Brian.

Earl Brian was a businessman and Edwin Meese crony who served in Governor Ronald Reagan’s cabinet in California. The $6 million in software stolen from William and Nancy Hamilton, co-owners of Inslaw Company, was allegedly sold by the Justice Department through Earl Brian to raise off-the-books money for covert government operations.

On May 18, 1990, Riconosciuto had called the Hamiltons and informed them that the Inslaw case was connected to the October Surprise affair.

Riconosciuto claimed that he and Earl Brian had traveled to Iran in 1980 and paid $40 million to Iranian officials to persuade them NOT to release the hostages before the presidential election in which Reagan became president of the United States.

Riconosciuto’s information created a domino effect in Washington D.C., opening numerous investigations and causing a media blitz. At that time, Casolaro headed the Hamilton’s private investigation of the theft of their software and he had regular communication with Riconosciuto.

Former U.S. Attorney General Elliott Richardson, the Hamilton’s attorney, subsequently sent Riconosciuto an affidavit to sign, to be filed by Inslaw in federal court in connection with Inslaw’s pending Motion for Limited Discovery.

The affidavit, Case No. 8500070, entered into court records, resulted in Riconosciuto’s arrest within days. It read as follows:

"I Michael J. Riconosciuto, being duly sworn, do hereby state as follows:

"(1) During the early 1980’s, I served as the Director of Research for a joint venture between the Wackenhut Corporation of Coral Gables, Florida, and the Cabazon Band of Indians of Indio, California. The joint venture was located on the Cabazon reservation.

"(2) The Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture sought to develop and/or manufacture certain materials that are used in military and national security operations, including night vision goggles, machine guns, fuel-air explosives, and biological and chemical warfare weapons.

"(3) The Cabazon Band of Indians are a sovereign nation. The sovereign immunity that is accorded the Cabazons as a consequence of this fact made it feasible to pursue on the reservation the development and/or manufacture of materials whose development or manufacture would be subject to stringent controls off the reservation. As a minority group, the Cabazon Indians also provided the Wackenhut Corporation with an enhanced ability to obtain federal contracts through the 8A Set Aside Program, and in connection with Government-owned contractor-operated (GOCO) facilities.

"(4) The Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture was intended to support the needs of a number of foreign governments and forces, including forces and governments in Central America and the Middle East. The Contras in Nicaragua represented one of the most important priorities for the joint venture.

"(5) The Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture maintained close liaison with certain elements of the United States Government, including representatives of intelligence, military and law enforcement agencies.

"(6) Among the frequent visitors to the Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture were Peter Videnieks of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., and a close associate of Videnieks by the name of Earl W. Brian. Brian is a private businessman who lives in Maryland and who has maintained close ties with the U.S. intelligence community for many years.

"(7) In connection with my work for Wackenhut, I engaged in some software development and modification work in 1983 and 1984 on the proprietary PROMIS computer software product. The copy of PROMIS on which I worked came from the U.S. Department of Justice. Earl W. Brian made it available to me through Wackenhut after acquiring it from Peter Videnieks, who was then a Department of Justice contracting official with responsibility for the PROMIS software. I performed the modifications to PROMIS in Indio, California; Silver Spring, Maryland; and Miami, Florida.

"(8) The purpose of the PROMIS software modifications that I made in 1983 and 1984 was to support a plan for the implementation of PROMIS in law enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide. Earl W. Brian was spearheading the plan for this worldwide use of the PROMISE computer software.

"(9) Some of the modifications that I made were specifically designed to facilitate the implementation of PROMIS within two agencies of the Government of Canada; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). Earl W. Brian would check with me from time to time to make certain that the work would be completed in time to satisfy the schedule for the RCMP and CSIS implementations of PROMIS.

"(10) The proprietary version of PROMIS, as modified by me, was, in fact, implemented in both the RCMP and the CSIS in Canada. It was my understanding that Earl W. Brian had sold this version of PROMIS to the Government of Canada.

"(11) In February 1991, I had a telephone conversation with Peter Videnieks, then still employed by the U.S. Department of Justice. Videnicks attempted during this telephone conversation to persuade me not to cooperate with an independent investigation of the government’s piracy of Inslaw’s proprietary PROMIS software being conducted by the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives.

"(12) Videnieks stated that I would be rewarded for a decision not to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee investigation. Videnieks forecasted an immediate and favorable resolution of a protracted child custody dispute being prosecuted against my wife by her former husband, if I were to decide not to cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee investigation.

"(13) Videnieks also outlined specific punishments that I could expect to receive from the U.S. Department of Justice if I cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation.

"(14) One punishment that Videnieks outlined was the future inclusion of me and my father in a criminal prosecution of certain business associates of mine in Orange County, California, in connection with the operation of a savings and loan institution in Orange County. By way of underscoring his power to influence such decisions at the U.S. Department of Justice, Videnieks informed me of the indictment of these business associates prior to the time when that indictment was unsealed and made public.

"(15) Another punishment that Videnieks threatened against me if I cooperate with the House Judiciary Committee is prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice for perjury. Videnieks warned me that credible witnesses would come forward to contradict any damaging claims that I made in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, and that I would subsequently be prosecuted for perjury by the U.S. Department of Justice for my testimony before the House Judiciary Committee." . . .

 

 


It is necessary to digress here to disclose the magnitude of the apparent government cover-up relative to Riconosciuto’s case.

About two weeks before Riconosciuto’s trial began, I had received a call from Michael asking me to contact Brian Leighton, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Fresno, whom Michael claimed to have provided information to. Michael was lining up his ducks. Essentially his defense rested on his ability to prove he worked for the U.S. government in intelligence operations, but his lawyer was behind schedule in making the contacts.

Brian Leighton had been instrumental in prosecuting 29 members of a drug/arms organization called "The Company." The Company had been written up in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 28, 1982 under the heading "Story of Spies, Stolen Arms and Drugs."

According to reporter Bill Wallace, The Company consisted of (quote),

"about 300 members, many of them former military men or ex-police officers with nearly $30 million worth of assets, including planes, ships and real estate."

 

The article went on to say that "federal drug agents said the organization had imported billions of dollars worth of narcotics from Latin America, and was also involved in gunrunning and mercenary operations."

Specialized military equipment consisting of nine infrared sniper-scopes, a television camera for taking pictures in darkness, 1500 rounds of small arms tracer ammunition for night combat, a five-foot remote-control helicopter, and secret components from the radar unit of a Sidewinder guided missile were stolen from the U.S. Naval Weapons Station at China Lake in the Mojave Desert.

Federal agents said some of the stolen equipment was going to be used to make electronic equipment for drug smugglers and some was traded to drug suppliers in Columbia. Twenty-nine members of the Company were indicted by the Fresno federal grand jury in 1981. Amongst those indicted was Andrew "Drew" Thornton, 40, a former narcotics officer.

On September 13, 1985, the Los Angeles Times published the story of Thornton’s death, entitled,

"Former Narcotics Officer Parachutes Out of Plane, Dies with 77 Pounds of Cocaine."

 

The article said Thornton was indicted in 1981 for "allegedly flying a plane to South America for a reputed drug ring known as ’The Company’ . . ."

Thornton’s mysterious death was discussed at length in a book written by Sally Denton entitled, "The Blue Grass Conspiracy."

Part of The Company was headquartered in Lexington, Kentucky. Prosecutors in Lexington, Fresno, California (Brian Leighton), and Miami, Florida were working together in a joint effort to bring down The Company.

The San Francisco Chronicle noted that in January, 1982, Gene Berry, a state prosecutor in Charlotte Harbor, Florida, was shot in the face as he answered his door. Police subsequently arrested Bonnie Kelly as Berry’s murderer. Bonnie’s husband, Mike McClure Kelly, was a suspected member of The Company who later pleaded guilty in the Fresno, California case.

In Michael Riconosciuto’s documents, I discovered a letter dated March 24, 1982, written on Cabazon letterhead to Michael McClure at Hercules Corporation from Art Welmas, President of the Cabazon Band of Indians. Copies (cc:) were also noted to Marshall Riconosciuto and Michael Riconosciuto. The letter complimented McClure’s competence in presenting a clear and lucid explanation of a power pack under development at Hercules. . . .

Throughout Michael’s documents, I found references to Michael McClure and Bonnie Lynne G. Kelly. Michael’s code word for Mike McClure was "Gopher."

Journalist Danny Casolaro had been communicating regularly with Michael Riconosciuto and obviously learned about The Company.

It is not to be overlooked that coincidentally or not, Ari BenMenashe (a former Israeli intelligence agent who lived in Lexington, Kentucky) told Bill Hamilton that two Lexington FBI agents had been enroute to meet with Danny at the Martinsburg Hotel on the day of his death. The Company was headquartered in Lexington.

Danny was not meeting with the FBI relative to PROMIS, he was preparing to turn over drug trafficking information on The Company....

"The Company was originally out of Lexington, Kentucky and Mena, Arkansas. Brian Leighton was the assistant U.S. Attorney who was the most effective person in formulating a strategy in the Justice Department to go after these people.

"We recognized what they were, for what they were, at that time, and there were a few ATF guys down in Los Angeles that recognized them for what they were, OK? Here was a group of over 300 people, most of them ex-law enforcement and ex-military, ex-intelligence people involved in a major drug and smuggling operation. And they were involved in compromising activities. The bottom line was espionage.

"And all Leighton served to do was vaccinate the group against further penetration. Just hardened them. And all the major sources that were developed from inside turned up dead. A federal judge in Texas turned up dead.

" ... This is a nasty bunch of people. And they’re still alive and well. Now where that dovetails into my current situation, is in 1984 I was involved with Robert Booth Nichols who owns Meridian Arms Corporation and is a principle in F.I.D.C.O., First Intercontinental Development Corporation. The CEO of FIDCO is George Pender and Bob Maheu was Vice President ...

"FIDCO was an NSC [National Security Council] corporate cutout. FIDCO was created to be the corporate vehicle to secure the financing for the reconstruction of the cities of Beirut and Damour in Lebanon. And they were working out of an office in Nicosia, Cyprus.

" ... And here I got involved with a group of people that were all high profile and should have been above reproach. FIDCO had a companion company called Euramae Trading which operated throughout the Middle East. I came in contact with the PROMISE software (unintelligible). Euramae had a distribution contract with several Arab countries and I was asked to evaluate the hardware platforms they had chosen. That was IBM/AS400 stuff ...

" ... That had come from IBM Tel Aviv but it came through a cutout, Link Systems, because they couldn’t deal directly with the Arabs.

"And I came across a guy named Michael T. Hurley and I thought he worked for the State Department but it turned out he was in-country attaché for the DEA in Nicosia, Cyprus. [Nicosia is the capital of the island of Cyprus, off the coast of Lebanon]. Now, the DEA had no real presence in Lebanon. Neither did anybody else, including the Israelis. They had their usual network of contacts but it was very ineffective. The only way to penetrate that situation, was to get into the drug trade.

"Euramae got into the drug trade and I was told that it was a fully sanctioned NSC directed operation, which it turns out that it was ... All those operations were bonafide and all the people who were in them were definitely key government people, although they were not who they said they were.

"They all worked for different agencies other than was stated. Probably part of the normal disinformation that goes with that. And I was technical advisor for FIDCO and we had auspices through the government of Lebanon to get in and out of Lebanon.

"But as far as going to the eastern part of Lebanon, unless you were connected with the drug trade, your chances were slim coming out unscathed ... They built a network throughout the Bekaa Valley, and [Robert Booth] Nichols ... he is under Harold Okimoto from the Hawaiian Islands.

"Harold Okimoto was represented to me as being an intelligence person, which he is. He has worked under the auspices of Frank Carlucci for years. [Carlucci was former CIA-deputy director and former Defense secretary].

"Apparently Harold performed services for the U.S. government during World War II. He’s of Japanese ancestry. I guess he was rewarded for services well done.

" ... Harold operates through a company called Island Tobacco Corporation. He has contracts for all the condiments at all the casinos in Atlantic City, in Reno, in Vegas, in Macao, China ... he’s got contacts in Honolulu, the Orient ... a couple of Jews he knows in Bangkok ... and there is a casino, no a city about 15 miles north of Beirut that Harold has his fingers in.

"When FIDCO was wheeling and dealing on financing for the reconstruction of the infrastructure of Beirut, they were making sweetheart deals with Syrian mobsters and the brother of the president of Syria, Hafez Assad.

" ... The intelligence people in their infinite wisdom decided to capitalize on the longstanding battle between Rifat Assad and his group and the Jafaar family. Selectively they were backing both people, but they were also playing them off against one another, developing networks. They got a bunch of prominent Syrians thoroughly compromised and they were in tow in the intelligence game. And they had people that could get me in and out of the Bekaa Valley, even out of certain areas of Syria.

"From an intelligence standpoint, it was a success. But to maintain the credibility of those intelligence operations the heroin had to flow. To make it real. And the stuff was starting to accumulate in a warehouse outside of Larnaca.

"I personally was in a warehouse where Hurley and George Pender and George Marcobie (phonetic spelling) told me there was upwards of twenty-two tons. And even though it was packaged for shipment, the smell of it in that closed warehouse was overpowering. You know, white heroin like that has a certain odor because of the way it’s processed.

"They had authorization for what they called ’controlled deliveries’ into the United States. And they would target certain cities and then follow the stuff out, ostensibly unmasking the network and conducting prosecutions.

"However, the operation became perverted at the U.S. end of the pipeline. Controlled heroin shipments were doubled, sometimes tripled, and only one third of the heroin was returned to the DEA.

"At a certain transfer point at the airport in Larnaca, the excess baggage from the original controlled delivery would be allowed to go through. I was given the names of the narcotics people who were handling that. But there were a couple of agents who were on the up and up, and they had suspicions.

"An intelligence agent who worked with DIA is now deceased. His name was Tony Asmar and he got on to the operation early on, and started going toe to toe with Hurley [DEA]. He died in a bomb blast and it was ascribed to terrorists. And it actually was terrorists who did it, but his cover was deliberately blown. Myself and others suspected Hurley and Bob Nichols and Glen Shockley were responsible for that ... "

"You need to understand that the airport in Lebanon was closed down. I took the ferry from Larnaca to Jounieb. Now Jounieb was slightly south of where the casino city was and the casino city was intact. Beirut was a nightmare, and so was Damour, because the PLO destroyed the infrastructure by burrowing bunkers, and there was no water, electricity or phones. It was a combat zone.

"The Syrian mob controlled the Casino du Liban in a little city north of Beirut. It was used as a front by narcotics people. Island Tobacco, owned by Harold Okimoto, sells all the cigarettes there. Now, I could give you the names of the families. They pitted them off against one another. F.I.D.C.O. was to finance the reconstruction of the infrastructure of the cities of Beirut and Damour. Deals were cut as to who got what concessions. There were certain families, like the ElJorr family that had to be placated. And there was Rifat Assad and his group.

"Tony Asmar figured out what was going on with Hurley, that they were shipping ’noncontrolled’ loads of heroin back to the U.S... They killed Tony..."

"What were the names of the people you were working for over there?," I asked. Michael’s time was always limited on the phone.

"Ok, there was a man named Maurice Ganem. He had a relative, either a brother or a cousin, who is a senior DEA official with Michael Hurley. I can’t remember his name right now. Anyways, Maurice was agency, you know, in country, in Lebanon. And Maurice and I and George Pender worked together."

"Which agency? CIA or DEA?," I asked.

"CIA." Michael continued. " ... And then there was Danny Habib. Danny Habib and Bob Nichols worked out of Cario (phonetic spelling) and Italy."

"And Bob was NSA or ..." "No, Bob was NSC at that time."

"George Pender and Bob Clark were the high level contacts on all of this. Bob Clark got drummed out because he was clean. And McFarland then took over, OK?"

"Uh huh."

"So, it was George Pender and McFarland and Michael McManus [Assistant to President Reagan at the White House]."

I asked, "What was your involvement with that particular operation?"

"I handled communications protocol. All the communications and financial transactions. If I could get my records on line I could show all the money flows, everything."

Michael called back later that day and we continued our conversation. He was intent on talking to someone in FinCen (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network). " ... The keystone cops are working on my defense. You know it’s really an ordeal. Have you talked to R.J. again?"

"No Mike, he’s not giving much information."

"Listen, tell him that not only am I willing to polygraph, but I need some expert help and I think he needs some expert help. In the league we’re playing in, the only guys we can get that have the where-with-all are with FinCen. That stands for Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Get me a technical guy that speaks my language."

"Alright, Mike ..."

"I’m talking about Swift Chips. That stands for Clearing House Interbank Payment System, Ok?"

"Right."

"I’m mad, OK?"

"Uh huh."

"I’m real mad. The government has all my files and records. They’ve got all of my optical storage disks. Each of those optical storages, 130 of them, contains 20,000 plus pages. They jacked me around so bad ..."

"Mike ..."

" ... Get an expert that speaks my language, and I’ll tell him everything I know and he can do so much damage, they won’t need my testimony or anything else."

"Mike, everything you know about what?"

"Tell R.J. it goes all the way back to the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas and Castle Bank. Norm Caspar ... Resorts International Bank..."

"How’d you get this stuff?"

"I handled the money for them, OK?"

"For who?"

" ... For the Wackenhut people. For Norm Caspar who was a Wackenhut employee during all of this. Now, there was the Workers Bank in Columbia. I can’t pronounce the Spanish name for it, I just know it as Workers Bank. I set up their virtual dead-drops ..."

"What’s that?"

"It’s a way to get around A.C.H. reconciliations on a daily basis. It’ll take an expert, you know, I can’t even talk to a normal human being about this ..."

"O.K."

" ... And the bottom line here is Bob Nichols and Gilbert Rodriguez, Michael Abbell, whose now an attorney in D.C., but he was with the criminal section of the Justice Department and Harold Okimoto, and Jose Londodo, and Glenn Shockley are all in bed together. (Three years after this conversation, Michael Abbell was indicted for laundering money for the Cali Cartel).

"Now Ted Gunderson ..."

"Mike, have you got any paperwork on that?"

"Now, wait a minute. Gunderson was physically with me when Wayne Reeder, Peter Zokosky and his wife and several of Wayne Reeder’s lieutenants, Bob Nichols and his wife, Harold Okimoto, George Pender, Deborah Pender, Dill Pender, and myself were all together ..."

" ... Where?"

" ... At Wayne Reeders country club, golf club, in Indio, California. And Bob discussed openly in front of Ted Gunderson and myself and everyone present bragged about Glenn Shockley and Jose Londono having 3,500 soldiers. It’s now almost double that ..."

"What does that mean? What are the soldiers?"

Mike: "R.J. will know what it means."

"Alright. OK."

"This took place in 1983. I have correspondence on the things we were doing. But I was in fear of my life because Bob was starting to act irrational. The guy was getting drunk all the time, waving a gun out of the car window, shooting in the air, you know, just really doing a mind trip on me. I’ve been on the run ever since ..."

"Mike, what are you going to provide to FinCen?"

"I’m going to show them how these boys handled the life blood of the cash flow on a day to day basis. I’m going to unmask the whole operation...."

"Anything specific on Robert Booth Nichols?"

Mike: "Nichols is Harold Okimoto’s godson. He’s also Renee Hanner’s (phonetic sp.) boy, and Wolfgang Fosog’s (phonetic sp.) boy."

" ... And who are they?"

"The FinCen people will know. There’s also Octon Potnar."

"Alright. Well, if I’m going to play around with this, I don’t want to be in the dark ... I could end up like Danny. I’ve got to know what I’m dealing with."

"If you get the right guy at FinCen, he’ll jump at this, OK? We’ve got to start right now. We’re talking about some time getting things up and rolling to where we’re fluid and flexible and functional in their system internationally. They’ll be able to watch the daily transactions ..."

Michael continued to request of R.J. that he be connected with someone "trustworthy" at FinCen, to no avail. He also requested to be placed into a Witness Protection Program, again offering to assemble his computer equipment in a secret location and provide FinCen with a day by day view of Mob (and MCA Corporation) illegal banking transactions.

According to Michael, before his arrest, he had been handling gold transfers, money laundering, "virtual dead drops," altered ACH daily reconciliations and other transactions for various underworld figures including Robert Booth Nichols, Harold Okimoto, George Pender, Wayne Reeder, Michael A. McManus, Norm Caspar, Gilbert Rodriguez, Jose Londono, Glen Shockley, and others.

Michael continued to call and give me tape-recorded (at his request) messages to pass on to R.J. The man accepted the messages, but they just went down the big, black hole and never emerged again.

One message in particular later became significant to me. The message from Michael to R.J. went as follows:

(Quote)

"There are three dozen C130’s down at the Firebird Lake Airstrip on the Gila Indian Reservation in Arizona. Check out J & G Aviation, it’s an FBO. The Fresno Company is alive and well down there.

"The real activity is not at Mirana, it’s at Firebird Lake Airstrip. Other airlines operating at Firebird are Beigert, Macavia International, Pacific Air Express, Evergreen and Southern Air.

"Question to R.J.: How much cocaine or heroin can be transported in a C130? Do you want the C130, or do you want the guys who orchestrate it?

"Do a matrix link analysis, then sit down and pick the targets. Otherwise, you will tip off the others and the proof will dry up....

The message continued regarding Robert Booth Nichols:

"Bob Nichols runs Glen Shockley. Glen Shockley runs Jose Londono. I [Michael] sat with Bob Nichols and Mike Abbell. Bob handed him $50,000 cash to handle an internal affairs investigation that the Justice Department conducted which would have led to the extradition of Gilbert and Miguel Rodriguez and Jose Londono.

"Bob Nichols told me [Michael] that it was necessary to ’crowbar’ the investigation because they were ’intelligence people.’

"Michael wanted to hand The Company and Bob Nichols over to FinCen in exchange for entry into the Witness Protection Program, but nothing was forthcoming from R.J.

It was two years before I learned who Mike Abbell, Gilbert Rodriguez and Jose Londono were. Abbell had worked in the criminal division of the Justice Department, according to Bill Hamilton. Hamilton added that, to his knowledge, Abbell had left the DOJ in 1982 and went directly into the Bogota, Colombia law offices of Kaplan and Russin.

A member of our loosely coalesced investigative team, George Williamson, a former San Francisco Chronicle reporter, obtained Abbell’s background from library directories: From 1973 to 1979 Abbell was staff assistant to the Assistant U.S. Attorney General. From 1979 to 1981 he was the Director of the Office of International Affairs of the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice.

After leaving the Department of Justice in 1982, Abbell became counsel at the law firm of Kaplan, Russin and Becchi, with offices in San Francisco, California Bogota, Colombia Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic Bangkok, Thailand Tapai, Taiwan New York Madrid, Spain and Miami, Florida.

As of this writing, Abbell was listed as working in his own firm with a partner named Bruno Ristau (Ristau and Abbell) in Washington D.C. Ristau was also formerly with the law firm of Kaplan, Russin and Becchi. And from 1958 to 1963 he was an attorney in the Internal Security Division and Civil Division of the Department of Justice. . . .

A TIME magazine article, dated July 4, 1994, described Gilbert Rodriguez as a "leader of the Cali [Columbian drug] cartel, which controls 80% of the world’s cocaine trade." The newly elected president of Columbia, Ernesto Samper Pizano, was accused of taking $3.7 million in campaign funds from Rodriguez, which in effect, put Samper in league with Colombia’s drug lords.

Three audio tapes of conversations between Rodriguez and Samper’s campaign manager, Santiago Medina, had been handed over to U.S. State Department officials before the election, but nothing was done.

DEA officials were furious, stating to TIME that,

"No one did anything. They [the State Department] allowed this travesty to take place. Everybody, including the U.S. government, is participating in this coverup."

 

The State Department responded, "We can’t interfere with elections."

I pulled out a book from a dusty corner of my library entitled, "Cocaine Politics" by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, and looked up the name Gilbert Rodriguez.

  • On page 83, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela and Jose Santacruz Londono were mentioned as part of the early leadership of the Cali cartel.

  • On page 88 it was noted that the "Calibased Ocampo and Gilberto Rodriguez had been the principal targets of a major DEA Centac investigtion that resulted in indictments of Rodriguez in Los Angeles and New York in 1978."

At that time, President Jimmy Carter’s Human Rights foreign policy in Latin America distanced the CIA under Stansfield Turner (later a Wackenhut Board Director) from any death-squad interdiction.

 

The Carter administration was also reportedly reluctant to go after Ocampo because of its determination in 1977 to sign a Panama Canal treaty with General Torrijos, even though Torrijos and family members were heavily involved at the highest levels of the world cocaine trade.

The Cali cartel, described in a 1983 Customs report, laundered its profits through Miami banks, one of which was Northside Bank of Miami, owned by Gilberto Rodriguez. Rodriguez popped up again as the leader of a delegation to the "cocaine summit conference" in Panama City in the early 1980’s.

 

Yet, Rodriguez’s name was subsequently removed from DEA reports under the Ronald Reagan administration. In fact, according to disgruntled DEA agents, some of whom suspected they were stumbling into a CIA connection, the case was never pursued past the indictment level and the Centac 21 task force was totally dismantled when Reagan and Bush came to office. . . .

On Monday, August 5th,

"Riconosciuto called Bill Hamilton from his jail in Tacoma. He wanted some information about a former Justice Department attorney [Mike Abbell], and warned Hamilton that getting the information might be dangerous. Hamilton called Casolaro to help him find out about the attorney.

"That same day, Danny called Bob Bickel to say that he was "getting close to the source, and he would soon go to Martinsburg and bring back the head of the Octopus."

  • Tuesday, August 6:

    Casolaro had been typing steadily since Monday, and by afternoon, he’d finished. Olga, his housekeeper, helped him pack a leather tote bag. She also remembered him packing a thick sheaf of papers into a dark brown or black briefcase. Danny walked out the door saying, "I have all my papers ... Wish me luck. I’ll see you in a couple of days." That was the last time Olga saw Casolaro alive.
     

  • Wednesday, August 7:

    According to Inslaw records, Casolaro called the Hamilton in the afternoon, and was put on hold. Before Hamilton could get free, he had hung up. At some time on that same day, Riconosciuto called Hamilton again to ask for the information about the Justice Department lawyer [Mike Abbell]. Hamilton called Casolaro, but he had already left for Martinsburg.
     

  • Thursday, August 8:

    Casolaro called Danielle Stalling and asked her to set up appointments for him the next week with a former police officer, now employed as a private investigator, to learn more about the Laotian warlord Kuhn Sa’s proposed Golden Triangle drug trade.
     

  • Friday, August 9:

    By now Hamilton was starting to worry. I talk to Danny everyday," Hamilton said. "I had never [gone without speaking to him for so long] before, so I called Bob Nichols in Los Angeles and asked whether he had heard from Danny recently."

    Nichols told Hamilton "Yes," he had spoken with Danny late Monday night [August 5th] and he had been "euphoric." Nichols told Hamilton he (Nichols) was taking off for Europe that evening.

    It was at that point that Olga, Danny’s housekeeper, received four or five threatening phone calls. The first was about 9 a.m., a man’s voice, in good English, said, "I will cut his [Danny’s] body and throw it to the sharks.

    "About a half hour later, another call came in. "Drop dead," the man’s voice said.
     

  • Saturday, August 10:

    At 12:30 that afternoon, a maid knocked on the door of room 517 at the Sheraton Martinsburg Inn. Nobody answered, so she used her passkey to open the door; though it had both a security bolt and a chain lock on the inside, neither one was attached. When she glanced into the bathroom, she saw a lot of blood on the tile floor and screamed.

    Another hotel maid came into the bathroom and saw a man’s nude body lying in the blood-filled tub. There was blood not only on the tile floor but splattered up onto the wall above the tub as well. The police were called to the scene.
     

  • At 8:30 p.m. that night, unaware that Danny’s body had been found, Olga, Danny’s housekeeper, returned to Casolaro’s house to look for him. The phone rang. A man’s voice said, "You son of a bitch. You’re dead."
     

  • It was not until Monday, August 12, that authorities notified family and friends that Danny Casolaro was dead. . . .

Just days before his death, Danny had planned to visit the reservation. In his notes were cryptic references to slow-acting brain viruses like Mad Cow Disease, which could be used against targeted people by slipping the virus into meat pies.

 

Riconosciuto told Rosenbaum that Danny was "concerned" that he may have been a target of this virus.

"That was one of the reasons he [Danny] had such an obsession with this story. He felt he had been hit by these people." . . .

Danny’s girlfriend, Wendy Weaver, had been present at one of the meetings at the Four Seasons Hotel bar when Nichols issued the warning:

"You don’t know how bad this guy Riconosciuto is ... he might not get you today, he might not get you next month. He might get you two years from now. If you say anything against him he will kill you."

Nichols repeated the warning several times, said Weaver.

"At least five times." Weaver described Nichols as "very charming, very handsome," but said "it [the meeting] was a weird night, so weird."

Another friend of Danny’s met Nichols at a luncheon at Clyde’s in Tysons Corner where Nichols allegedly informed them that he had just been asked to become "minister of state security" on the island of Dominica.

 

Reportedly, the island was going to be transformed into a CIA base. The friend, who spoke to Rosenbaum on condition of anonymity, said Nichols was "very slick, very civilized-appearing" ... "oozing intrigue," but he added that he had never witnessed a performance like the one that ensued.

After lunch Danny had pulled his friend aside and showed him a purported FBI wiretap summary on Nichols. The summary was part of FBI agent Thomas Gates’s affidavit in Nichols’ slander suit against him. The summary linked Nichols to the Yakuza and to the Gambino crime family as a money launderer.

Danny’s friend had been shocked.

"You just put me in a meeting with this man and didn’t tell me what the hell why didn’t you tell me before?," he asked Danny. Danny said he wanted to see how Nichols would react. The friend told Rosenbaum, "In other words, he gaffed me with a hook and tossed me in the water to see if the Octopus would move!"

Danny HAD in fact been receiving death threats on the phone. One threat reported by his housekeeper, "You’re dead, you son of a bitch," which came hours AFTER Danny’s body had been found, ruled out Danny himself as a possible source of the threats. And his prophesy to his brother, Tony Casolaro, "If anything happens to me it won’t be an accident," made it unmistakably clear that Danny did, indeed, feel threatened.

Nevertheless, Danny appeared upbeat to most of the people he talked to prior to his death. Dr. Tony Casolaro, a specialist in pulmonary medicine, told Vanity Fair that he didn’t believe his brother committed suicide because Danny was so excited and upbeat about his investigation on that last Monday when he saw him.

The autopsy examination of Danny’s brain had revealed possible symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis, but friends and family dismissed this as irrelevant because Danny had never complained of symptoms or, to their knowledge, known of the disease, if he had it.

Tony was also troubled by a number of facts, one of which was Danny’s current papers and files which he took to West Virginia were missing from his motel room. His body had been embalmed even before family members were notified of the death, and the motel room had been commercially cleaned before any type of investigation, other than a cursory look at the death scene by police, could occur.

In his Vanity Fair article, Ron Rosenbaum wrote that he had obtained one of Casolaro’s surviving notebooks and found mentioned under the heading of August 6, four days before Danny’s death, the name "Gilberto." It read: "Bill Hamilton August 6. MR ... also brought up ’Gilberto.’" Rosenbaum did not speculate publicly who Gilberto might be, but it was obviously Gilberto Rodriguez, head of the Cali Cartel, at that time deeply involved with Michael Abbell, formerly of the Department of Justice.

A dozen or so drafts of Casolaro’s proposed manuscript along with notes and phone bills had been sent to the Western Historical Manuscript Collection at the University of Missouri by his brother, Dr. Tony Casolaro. Tony Casolaro had sent the material to the University because, at one time, the IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) Association, headquartered at the University, had researched the fatal car-bombing of reporter Don Bolles in Arizona.

Bolles had been researching a mob-connected gold smuggling operation in that state. Through Tracy Barnett at IRE, I learned that a graduate student at the University had been assigned to catalog all Danny’s material for eventual insertion into a data base. In contacting the graduate student, who by then (September 1994) worked for ABC in Houston, Texas, I learned that few if any journalists had inquired about the notes.

But, interestingly, Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Zipperstein from Los Angeles, working for the Department of Justice, had requested copies of Danny’s NOTES, but declined Danny’s phone records. The graduate student noted that the notes and drafts of Danny’s proposed manuscript focused on a Cabal of intelligence people who, originally consisting of numerous names, were subsequently narrowed down to about eight. One of those names was Glen Shockley. Shockley, of course, was listed on the Board of Directors of F.I.D.C.O. along with Robert Booth Nichols.

Shockley was also a corporate partner in Meridian International Logistics, headed by Nichols. Shockley was also a CIA-contract employee (according to several sources) who allegedly "ran Jose Londono" of the Cali Cartel. This according to Riconosciuto’s taped interview with government agents while negotiating for Witness Protection.

I purchased everything of any significance pertaining to Danny’s writings and documents, including the FBI wire tap summaries which corroborated everything I had learned to date.

In reviewing the summaries, it became apparent that the FBI had inadvertently stumbled onto a CIA drug trafficking operation which included high ranking La Cosa Nostra figures, the Gambino crime family and the Japanese Yakuza.

One affidavit in support of an application to intercept wire communications over the telephone listed names of those to be intercepted: Robert Booth Nichols, Eugene Giaquinto (then President of MCA Corporation Entertainment Division, and corporate partner with Nichols in Meridian International Logistics), Angelo Commito, Edward Sciandra, Michael Del Gaizo, Joseph Garofalo, and others.

The purpose of the interceptions was to determine "source, type and quantity of narcotics/controlled substances, methods and means of delivery, and the source of funding for purchasing of narcotics/controlled substances."

The intercepted conversations read like a "Who’s Who" of organized crime. It was also apparent that Eugene Giaquinto enjoyed a special relationship with John Gotti.

Ann Klenk, a long time friend of Danny Casolaro’s and former associate of Washington D.C. columnist Jack Anderson, held all his personal notes which were not sent to the University.

 

In a September 14, 1994 phone interview, she noted that the last time she talked to Danny, that last Monday before his death, he told her he’d cracked the Inslaw case.

I asked her, "Do you think he resolved that?"

Ann responded, "Oh, yes. I KNOW he did. He TOLD me he did. He said, ’Ann, I broke Inslaw.’ And I said, ’Geez, Danny that’s great!’ But, I never asked him what he found because he was very despondent about it. He said, ’You can have it. You and Jack [Anderson] can have the story. I don’t even want it.’"

Ann said Danny was disgusted and related their last conversation: "I said, ’Danny, you worked on this [so long] and now you don’t want it?’ He said, ’It’s just a little piece of the puzzle anyway.’ See, Inslaw led him into this, but Danny quickly became more involved with the drug aspects ... with the CIA-aspects, with the Wackenhut aspects."

I said, "I know what you mean, because I followed the same trail."

Danny’s proposed drafts and notes obtained from Western Historical Manuscript Collection at University of Missouri revealed information never published in mainstream media.

 

Typewritten and handwritten lists of contacts included names and telephone numbers of Ted Gunderson, Raymond Lavas, Robert Nichols, Peter Zokosky, Bob Bickel, Fahim Safar, Earl Brian, Peter Dale Scott, Art Welmus, John Vanderwerker, Jack Blum, Dr. Harry Fair, Bill Hamilton, Bob Parry, Bill McCoy, and numerous others.

Most of Danny’s drafts focused on the Southeast Asian heroin connection, CIA drug money used to finance the Contras, and the ability of terrorists to send missiles containing dangerous chemicals and biological diseases into the U.S.

One typewritten draft, entitled, "Behold A Pale Horse," described an "international cabal [in Southern California] whose freelance services covered parochial political intrigue, espionage, sophisticated weapon technologies that included biotoxins, drug trafficking, money laundering and murder-for-hire."

According to Danny, the cabal continues today, "its origins spawned thirty years ago in the shadow of the Cold War." . . .

Within six months of Casolaro’s death, Riconosciuto was again attempting to trade information in exchange for entry into a Witness Protection Program. But this time, instead of using Casolaro or Bill Hamilton, he was using me to make the contacts.

At Riconosciuto’s request, I contacted a man whom I will identify as N.B. at the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) in San Francisco. Michael had advised me to call this agent because the BATF was "Treasury Department" as was FinCen.

I set up the phone meeting and Riconosciuto called the San Francisco BATF collect, as scheduled. N.B. listened attentively to Michael, then ran a check on him through the departmental computer system. Shortly thereafter, I received an unnerving phone call.

N.B. advised me in strong terms to "get out of this" while I still could. He said I would end up getting subpoenaed as a witness if I didn’t discontinue my investigation. He added that sometimes people got killed or committed suicide when they got involved with Michael Riconosciuto or Robert Booth Nichols...

Through one of Michael’s contacts, I was able to obtain the corporate documents on F.I.D.C.O. Corporation (First Intercontinental Development Corporation). This formidable organization lead me straight to the head of The Octopus.

The Board of Directors of FIDCO consisted of the following principles:

(1) Robert Maheu, Sr, Vice President, Director former FBI agent, former CEO of Howard Hughes Operations, senior consultant to Leisure Industries.

(2) Michael A. McManus, Director, Vice President and General Counsel to FIDCO former Assistant to the President [Reagan] of the United States at the White House in Washington D.C.

(3) Robert Booth Nichols, Director, Sr. Vice President and Chairman of Investment Committee Chief Executive Officer of R.B.N. Companies, International, a holding company for manufacturing and development of high technology electronics, real estate development, construction and international finance.

(4) George K. Pender, Director former Director of Pacific Ocean area of Burns & Roe, Inc., an international engineering & construction corporation with active projects on all seven continents of the world. Senior engineer consultant to Burns & Roe, Inc.

(5) Kenneth A. Roe, Director Chairman and President of Burns & Roe, Inc., International engineers and Constructors, a family corporation owned by Kenneth Roe and family. Major current project of the company is the engineering design and construction of the U.S.A. Fast Breeder Nuclear Reactor Plant in conjunction with Westinghouse Electric Corporation which is responsible for the nuclear system supply of steam. Construction value of present business backlog of Burns & Roe, Inc. is in e Manager access of six billion U.S. dollar.

(6) Frances T. Fox, Vice President and Director former General of L.A. International Airport, former Director of Aviation for Howard Hughes Nevada operations, now called Summa Corporation, City Manager of San Jose, California.

(7) Clint W. Murchison, Jr. Director Owner of the Dallas Cowboys NFL football team.

(8) William M. Pender, Director and Sr. Vice President licensed contractor, State of California.

(9) Glen R. Shockley, Director Consultant to Fortune 500 Companies in business management. Internationally known as financial consultant in funding.

The list of directors was accompanied by a letter dated January 11, 1983 on FIDCO letterhead originating out of Santa Monica, California addressed to Robert Booth Nichols in Marina Del Rey, California. The letter, signed by George K. Pender, briefly referenced a copy of a resolution resulting from a meeting of the Board of Directors of FIDCO.

On April 13, 1983, Robert Booth Nichols wrote a letter to Joseph F. Preloznik in Madison, Wisconsin, outlining proposed arms projects, one of which was to build a two story building of approximately 7500 square feet with concrete walls and floors to house the "R & D position."

(I later found the R & D facility referenced in a 1981 Wackenhut Interoffice memorandum as a companion facility to Wackenhut to be constructed on the Cabazon Indian reservation for the assembly of shell casings, propellants, war heads, fuses, combustible cartridge cases and other weapons systems). . . .

If in fact, F.I.D.C.O. was a vehicle of The Octopus, then the tentacles of its Board of Directors lead straight to the head. Clint Murchison, Jr. of Dallas, Texas was the son of Clint Murchison, Sr. who, according to Dick Russell, author of the book, "The Man Who Knew Too Much," (pp. 521-523) was cut from the same political cloth as H.L. Hunt. . . .

Wrote Russell:

"Back in 1951, after General Douglas MacArthur was relieved of his Korean command by President Truman, H.L. Hunt accompanied MacArthur on a flight to Texas for a speaking tour. Hunt and Murchison were the chief organizers of the pro-MacArthur forces in Texas.

 

They would always remember the general standing bareheaded in front of the Alamo, urging removal of the ’burden of taxation’ from enterprising men like themselves, charging that such restraints were imposed by ’those who seek to convert us to a form of socialistic endeavor, leading directly to the path of Communist slavery.’"

According to Russell, Hunt went on to set up a MacArthur-for-president headquarters in Chicago, spending $150,000 of his own money on the general’s reluctant 1952 campaign, which eventually fell apart as MacArthur adopted the strident rhetoric of the right wing.

"Still, connections were made," wrote Russell, "Charles Willoughby, for example, was a regular part of the MacArthur-Hunt entourage and undoubtedly was acquainted with Murchison as well."

Both [the Hunts and the Murchisons] cultivated not only powerful people on the far right, but also J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, organized crime figures, and Lyndon Johnson, whose rise to power emanated directly from his friends in Texas oil.

"Like Hunt, Murchison was an ardent supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist crusade. McCarthy came often to the exclusive hotel that Murchson opened in La Jolla, California, in the early 1950’s. So did Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover.

"In 1961, after Nixon had lost the presidential election to JFK the previous year, Murchison sold Nixon a lot in Beverly Hills for only $35,000 a lot Murchison had financed through a Hoffa loan which Nixon sold two years later for $86,000.

When Hoover visited the (Murchison) Hotel Del Charro, as he did every summer between 1953 and 1959, Murchison picked up his tab. That amounted to about $19,000 of free vacations for the FBI Director over those years.

Whether Hoover knew it or not, almost 20 percent of the Murchison Oil Lease Company in Oklahoma was then owned by Gerardo Catena, chief lieutenant to the Genovese crime family.

By the autumn of 1963, a major scandal was brewing around Bobby Baker, whom Vice President Lyndon Johnson had made secretary of the Senate Democrats in 1955, when LBJ was majority leader. LBJ called Baker "my strong right arm, the last man I see at night, the first I see in the morning."

On October 8, 1963 Baker was forced to resign, as a Senate investigation of his outside business activities began producing sensational testimony on numerous questionable deals.

"Baker’s deals were tightly interwoven with the Murchison family and the Mob," wrote Dick Russell.

"What first attracted the attention of Senate investigators was a lawsuit brought against Baker in 1963 by his associates in a vending company, alleging that he failed to live up to certain bargains. Those associates were, for the most part, Las Vegas gamblers; one of them, Edward Levinson, was a lieutenant of Florida mobster Meyer Lansky, whose Fremont Hotel in Vegas was financed through a Hoffa loan.

"Baker, it later turned out, did considerable business with the Mob in Las Vegas, Chicago, Louisiana, and the Caribbean. Through Baker, Levinson had also gotten to know Clint Murchison."

"Clint Murchison, Jr. [listed on the Board of Directors of FIDCO] tried to persuade the Senate Rules Committee in 1964 that his own real estate dealings with Jimmy Hoffa in Florida were ’hardly relevant’ to the Baker investigation."

Robert Maheu (Senior Vice President and Director of F.I.D.C.O.), was also mentioned in Russell’s book, "The Man Who Knew Too Much," (pp. 190).

 

Wrote Russell:

"Back in 1960, with then vice president Richard Nixon serving as the White House’s liaison to the CIA’s Cuban operations, the CIA had initiated its long series of assassination attempts against Castro.

 

The ’cutouts’ in the operation started with Las Vegas billionaire Howard Hughes’s right-hand man, Robert Maheu, who got in touch with organized-crime leaders Sam Giancana, Johnny Rosselli, and Santos Trafficante, Jr.

 

"They in turn enlisted the direct assistance of Cuban exiles ..."