Does anybody remember Danny Casolaro?

[salvorhardin]

Danny Casolaro was the journalist who died under mysterious circumstances (apparently faked suicide) back in 1991 after telling various friends and colleagues that he had uncovered a "giant octopus" swimming in sea of conspiracy whose tentacles reached everywhere. Some of the elements of Casolaro's octopus include the BFEE, Iran-Contra, BCCI, and even Saddam Hussein.

Seeing a few MIHOP threads popping up on DU tonight gave me cause to wonder if perhaps all that we're seeing now with PNAC and a new Pearl Harbor, the lies and deception concerning WMDs in Iraq, all of it might have been part of the truth that Danny Casolaro got too close to. A truth whose knowledge of he paid for with his life.

Please note: I'm not arguing for or against MIHOP or LIHOP. It just struck me as odd that while Danny Casolaro's story sounded like a Tom Clancy spy thriller back in the early 1990s, now it just all seems so eerily familiar.

Some background on the Casolaro story. I do not vouch for the credibility of either of these sources. It's just background for what I'm talking about for those who might not know.
http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/octopus.html
http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id901/pg1

So DU. Danny Casolaro. Early witness to the evils of the BFEE or tinfoil hat material? Does anyone remember?

[Minstrel Boy]

1. Every day I think of Casolaro, because 15 years ago

he was sniffing out the global network of money laundering, gunrunning and drug trafficking that Sibel Edmonds alludes to with her carefully chosen words.

This is on the shelf above my computer (the blurb at the top reads: "This book is the key for uncovering probably the greatest threat to freedom for the 21st Century" - Vince LoDato):

[salvorhardin]

2. It's nice to know

I'm not the only one who remembers. I've posted before on other threads that the thing that troubles me the most is that no one seems to remember anything that isn't constantly regurgitated by the corporate media these days.

I wasn't aware that Sibel Edmonds made any allusions to the "Octopus". Can you elucidate?

[Minstrel Boy]

7. She hasn't called it that, but it seems to amount to the same thing.

I'm thinking of quotes like these (pulled from here):

"There are certain points...where you have your drug related activities combined with money laundering and information laundering, converging with your terrorist activities"

"Intelligence is also gathered by certain semi-legitimate organizations --to be used for their activities. It really does not boil down to countries anymore.... When you have activities involving a lot of money, you have people from different nations involved.... It can be categorized under organized crime, but in a very large scale...."

"...specific information implicating certain high level government and elected officials in criminal activities directly and indirectly related to terrorist money laundering, narcotics, and illegal arms sales."

The night he died, Casolaro was expecting to meet an Arab contact, whose information, he believed, would "bring him the head of the Octopus."

I think what Casolaro was uncovering was this very same international network of intelligence gathering, money laundering, drugs and arms.

[salvorhardin]

16. Hey, thanks

I hadn't heard or read those quotes yet.

[salvorhardin]

3. You know, I'm surprised

I would have thought the mere mention of Danny Casolaro's name on DU would evoke a flood of responses, if only to quickly dismiss this all as the stuff tinfoil hats are made of. :-)

[Eloriel]

6. DU is the strangest place --

It's hard to predict which subjects will get attention and when. I think it just depends on the ebb and flow and who happens to be online at the time any given post appears. But you're right -- normally D.C.'s name would evoke a flood of responses. Just wait. Kick it again tomorrow if you need to.

[timtom]

8. This is no "tinfoil hat"

I guess I was a MIHOPer very early in the game. I've posted on the subject of MIHOP before and have a tendency to repeat certain points.

It started in late November, 1963. It just felt like a true conspiracy. Especially when nothing added up. For the next 30 years, I was not particularly politically astute, but I do remember in the eighties my reaction to the sudden infusion of crack cocaine on the streets. I literally shook my fist at the sky (in lieu of in the face of Ronalt Reagan) screaming "I lay THIS at your feet! YOU are solely responsible for this." At the time, I felt as though I was being unreasonable, but I felt there was a strong element of truth, as well.

Around 1995, I picked up a book at Barnes & Noble (or something like it) called, "The Big Book of Conspiracy." Do you remember that "The Big Book of..." series? They covered several topics and were usually kept in the humor section of bookstores. Anyway, I bkought "The Big Book of Conspiracy," and it was there that I learned of the Danny Casolaro, PROMIS, etc. I was fascinated by all the conspiracies presented in comic book form. The "wraparound" was a shadowy cartoon figure who acted as a guide (slouch hat, never saw his face, etc.) The most significant thing that I take away from that book is the final narrative of our cartoon host. The message was something like, "But what if these weren't a bunch of conspiracies? What if these were merely parts of the same overall conspiracy?"

That floored me.

I didn't think about any of this until September 15-20 of 2001. That's when I said, "Wait a minute! Why does this smell so much like the Kennedy Assassination?!!"

That's when I discovered www.whatreallyhappened.com, www.democraticunderground.com and several other sites. I visit these sites daily.

Because of the strident and inflexible unwillingness of the * cabal to provide any cooperation, any sharing of information, I have, for the past 3 years been in an "automatic presumption of guilt" mode concerning the government.

At this point, I would have to be seriously de-programmed from believing that this IS all one vast conspiracy.

[Minstrel Boy]

9. I like Peter Dale Scott's term "deep politics"

to explain the criminalization of the state. What we've witnessed are not sequential, discreet conspiracies. They aren't even, in the popular sense, conspiracies at all. Because the conspiratorial behaviour is no longer an aberration in the system; it has become the system.

It's no coincidence that many of the same names reappear in America's shadow history, one decade to the next. That the name Bush turns up in damn near every one would be funny, but for all the dead people.

Great post, by the way.

[smirkymonkey]

22. Kick!

:kick:

[Media_Lies_Daily]

43. Actually, you have to go back to the days following WWII to....

...understand the roots of today's NeoCon movement. The U. S. government, together with the military-industrial complex, determined that communism was the next major enemy of Big Business. That led to the nearly simultaneous formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the CIA to "contain" the "communist threat".

The forerunner of the operations branch of the CIA, the OSS, had been involved in a number of operations during WWII, primarily in the Pacific Theater. But, the operations in which the OSS participated in the European theater included close cooperation with the French Mafia, as well as organized crime in the U. S.

As far as I can determine from my readings, the cooperation with organized crime was the beginning of the U. S. intelligence community's long association with the drug trade. They discovered that the drug trade produced a large quanity of cash that was not accountable to any budget oversight and could be used for any purpose whatsoever. Some experts have estimated that today's drug trade produces an amount of money equal to a minimum of 10% of the total combined budget of all of the intelligence agencies. That is a substantial amount of money, to say the least.

The association with organized crime also gave the intelligence community a means to conduct certain operations that could never be traced back to the U. S., such as assassinations of foreign heads of state and other operations requiring absolute deniability.

If you look closely at the combination of forces used in the late 1950s-early 1960s clandestine war against Cuba, you will find the following elements:

*the U. S. intelligence community, primarily the CIA;

*organized crime in the form of representatives from the Marcello (Louisiana/Midwest), Giancana (Chicago/Midwest), and Trafficante (Florida/Caribbean) "families";

*the U. S. military;

*and the various anti-Castro Cuban organizations.

Nearly every port along the Gulf Coast was involved in activities including but not limited to raids on Cuban holdings, gun-running, and the drug trade. Some of the more notable individuals involved in the anti-Castro operations included Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, E, Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Richard Nixon (one of the original planners of the Bay of Pigs), George H. W. Bush, Col. Lansdale, and others too numerous to mention. You may notice that these names have been connected to a number of events in recent U. S. history such as the Cuban Task Force, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK Jr., Indo-China/Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra....the list is endless.

IMHO, the NeoCons are direct political descendants of the people described above...and they are MUCH more powerful and therefore, MUCH more dangerous.

[annabanana]

24. is this book still in print?..............................n/t

[Minstrel Boy]

25. yes it is

Available from Amazon, and I see it in some larger bookstores.

[LizW]

26. Jim Keith also died young

Went into hospital for surgery to fix a broken leg and died suddenly of a blood clot.

[anarchy1999]

4. Thanks for remembering him, and yes, just another person to add

to the very long list of mysterious deaths and suicides.

He was on it all a long time ago.


RIP, Danny, your death was not for nothing.

[Eloriel]

5. Very conveeeenient mysterious deaths and suicides

Definitely not for nothing, tho I sure wish we had access to what he knew. Maybe we actually do, or close enough. There's a ton of information out there. In some ways, we might even have more info than he did.

Anyway, I find myself mentioning his name here at DU at least once a week recently.

[Pallas180]

10. " In some ways, we might even have more info than he did."- I think

so. He may have given us the BIG clue by his death, but I do think we
have gone far past what he knew in 1990/1.

And I speculate that because it's been all over the internet and openly
talked about and reported for several years, that they thought what the hell - it wouldn't matter that they came out of the shadows - in fact they probably needed to come out of the shadows and in control of all openly so that they wouldn't be in a position to be charged, arrested, and sentenced to death.

I also think that all of this would have happened beginning in 1992 if
Clinton hadn't gotten in their way by being elected...causing a delay because they had no power to implement pnac and Reagans' "FEMA" aka dictator plans.

If you think about it, Big Dawg may have been smarter than we knew. What if the attack in Somalia or on the Cole, was the hired hands attempt to
bring Clinton to react with warships and marines? But he didn't react that way.

[grasswire]

11. don't forget Steve Kangas

...and also James Hatfield, although his research was not as deep.

It's amazing that Pete Brewton escaped after writing about Bush the Mafia and the CIA. They forced the publisher to quit the contract; it was published elsewhere, but I haven't heard anything about Brewton in a long, long time.

[Pallas180]

13. Iasked about Kangas on another thread some time ago but

nobody answered.

What happened to him?

[lostnfound]

14. He turned up dead in billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife's bathroom.

"Suicide"

[grasswire]

21. he was found dead...

...in a bathroom outside the office of Richard Mellon Scaife in Pittsburgh, under very suspicious circumstances. Here's a page of articles written at the time. The first, please be aware, is by Tony Snow from FOX News. It will give you an idea how afraid the right wing was of Kangas.

http://www.politicalamazon.com/articles.html

[Pallas180]

29. I remember now, thanks. No one investigated Scaiffe in Pa.-now he's in Fl

moved a non profit company here about 4 months ago, I think to Boca...

My thought is : in time for the elections.

[Zan_of_Texas]

51. Pete Brewton

I've heard through a journalist that he's still around.

[soothsayer]

12. His brother, Tony, is my dad's doctor (and Redskin's team Dr.) and

my dad used to teach him at Gtown when he was in medical school too. He of course thinks Danny was murdered. But his girlfriend at the time thought he had really committed suicide. Hard to understand since the circumstances were so bizarre (didn't they cremate his body before the family could come claim it, etc.?)

His brother says Danny was DEFINITELY not using or abusing prescription drugs, as was claimed at the time.

[Minstrel Boy]

15. bizarre circumstances

For instance, Danny's housekeeper received strange calls the day he died, including from a man who said only "I will cut his body and feed him to the sharks." And an anonymous tip to the police linked Casolaro's death to that of one of his contacts, Alan Standorf, an NSA employee.

And of course, Danny's papers were missing.

[jmowreader]

49. Please make one change to this graphic

INSLAW and PROMIS belong on the same tentacle--PROMIS (Prosecutor's Management Information System) was INSLAW's product.

Change the tentacle labeled "Promis Software" to "BFEE" and you've got it. Good work.

[Zan_of_Texas]

52. new John Sayles movie has a web researcher by the name of Danny.

SILVER CITY.

Anybody seen it yet? Just opened here last week. I think it's a good movie.

And, I definitely enjoyed that there was a character in it (named Danny) who did major web research, and carefully constructed a story out of the various pieces, eventually with a mainstream journalist coming in to pick it up.

[burythehatchet]

17. Let us not forget that John Kerry's

greatest accomplishment, imo, was his investigation into BCCI

[deutsey]

18. Yes, I remember him

His "suicide" left him with a number of cuts along his forearms (were there eight cuts? That's the number I recall), with at least one cut so deeply that it nicked the bone.

Then, his body was embalmed before his family was notified of his death. From what I remember, this is illegal in West Virginia.

Just a typical suicide here, though. No need to probe any deeper.

:eyes:

[Octafish]

19. A brave man who wanted to know the Truth.

By himself, Danny Casolaro did more to investigate the Bush Organized Crime Syndicate than almost all of the "big name" reporters and news organizations put together.

At his funeral, I read, a man in the uniform of the US Army took a medal off his chest and placed it on the coffin and saluted.

[Minstrel Boy]

28. It's a scene to give one hope:

that an unrecognized officer appeared at Danny's funeral, placed a medal on his casket and saluted.

Casolaro never served in the military. Still, his service was recognized.

The villains don't have everything their way, nor everyone in a uniform on their side.

[Octafish]

42. Those in uniform are very aware of the BFEE

Some stuff from an excellent Village Voice article I can't find online:

The Last Days of Danny Casolaro

Although his death was tentatively ruled a suicide, back in Washington, D.C., his friends and family quickly protested that decision, and reports in the media were soon suggesting that Danny Casolaro had been murdered. For in this, the year of conspiracies, Danny Casolaro happened to be one of a small army of freelance journalists exploring the possibility that the powers of the national security state had been used to manipulate domestic politics. In particular, Casolaro was interested in what he called the "Octopus," a network of individuals and institutions that he believed had secretly masterminded a whole series of scandals, from the Iran-Contra affair and the S&L debacle to the BCCI collapse and the 1980 October Surprise deal.

In the weeks before his death Casolaro had spoken frequently about threats on his life, and just before he left for Martinsburg he had told his brother, "If anything happens to me, don't believe it's an accident." Many of the friends and sources who spoke to him in the last days of his life recalled that he seemed euphoric and quite certain that he was on the brink of proving the existence of his Octopus; he did not sound like a candidate for suicide to them. More suspicious, before the family could be told of Casolaro's death or an autopsy performed, the body was embalmed by a local funeral home; early press reports added that the hotel room had been quickly cleaned, perhaps to obscure any trace of a crime. The wildest story even suggested that the undertaker was an employee of the C.I.A., hired to clean up after agency assassinations.

Even at Casolaro's funeral, the family felt engulfed by mysteries. As his mother, brothers, sisters and close friends watched from beneath a canopy, a man in a tan raincoat and a beribboned black soldier in Army dress uniform walked up to the casket. The soldier laid a medal on the lid, saluted and both men quickly walked away. No one recognized either man; Danny had never served in or covered the military. The medal was buried with the coffin.

CONTINUED...

http://www.american-buddha.com/danny.last.htm

From the Catbird Seat:

An Octopus Named Wackenhut

EXCERPT...

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.

SNIP...

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."

CONTINUED...

http://electromagnet.us/mirrors/octopus.html

[gratuitous]

20. I remember John Connolly's piece on him in Spy

Titled "Did Somebody Want Danny Casolaro Dead?" It went into the circumstances surrounding his suicide, some of the stranger details of the death scene, and a few profiles of some of the shady characters Casolaro was gathering information on at the time of his death. It was a pretty in-depth piece for Spy, which tended more toward humor and satire, and persuaded me that Casolaro was indeed killed for getting too close to something that preferred the shadow to the sunlight.

[Beam Me Up]

23. Do you mean "Dead Right"? link

DEAD RIGHT
Site Map
------------------------------------------------------------------------
by John Connolly

Spy Magazine, January 1993

<snip>

It is almost an axiom among official agencies: First the screwup, then the cover-up. The authorities' initial acts-removing the door, draining the tub without straining the water to preserve evidence, not sealing the room as a crime scene-compromised the investigation from the start; so did the unauthorized embalming. Still, on January 25, 1992, five months after Casolaro died, the Martinsburg police, in conjunction with the West Virginia State Medical Examiner's Office, the Berkeley County Medical Examiner and the Berkeley County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, issued a press release reaffirming their original conclusion: Casolaro had killed himself.

Since issuing their report, the police have refused to say anything further about the case. SPY repeatedly called the chief of the department, as well as the county prosecutor; neither would comment. All that speaks for the local investigation, then, is the police department's press release. It says that officials reaffirmed the original conclusion for several reasons. First, they somewhat tautologically cite the conclusion of the original autopsy that Casolaro had committed suicide and maintain that the embalming of the body in no way hampered the subsequent autopsy and toxicological studies. Second, neither the police nor the coroner were able to detect evidence of foul play. They found no signs of forced entry or a struggle. The room was neat, and neighbors had heard nothing. Third, they had the suicide note, and were convinced through handwriting analysis and fingerprints that Casolaro had written it.

Finally, they conclude that he'd brought the implements of his self-destruction with him. The razor blades are sold around where Casolaro lived but not near Martinsburg. The alcohol and trace amounts of a painkiller, oxycodone, that were found in his bloodstream seemed self-ingested. There was a half- empty bottle of Portuguese wine in the room, and Casolaro had more of it at home; the oxycodone could have come from Vicodin, a painkiller prescribed for him after dental surgery in 1987 and an empty vial of which was found in the room. The plastic bags in the tub were from a box of plastic bags that he had in his luggage, and the shoestrings may have been from a pair of laceless sneakers found in his home.

It's hard to argue with these conclusions based on the material the police have made public. However, the work of Martinsburg's Finest inspires little confidence. It's understandable that they treated the initial Casolaro investigation so lackadaisically-Hey, it's hot, it's Saturday, it looks like the guy did himself, let's go home-but you'd think the national press scrutiny in the aftermath of Casolaro's death would have inspired a little more conscientiousness, if only temporarily. It didn't. Twenty days after Casolaro's death, a Martinsburg man was found by the police with a .22 caliber bullet wound in his left temple. His fiancée told them he had suddenly pulled out a gun and shot himself. Without conducting a simple and rather standard paraffin test on the girlfriend to detect gunpowder residue, the police ruled it a suicide. For some reason, they ignored the fact that the previous evening, officers had been summoned to the home by a call that shots had been fired. Nor did they question neighbors. If they had, they might have found-as I did when I talked to them-that the night before he died, the man told two people his girlfriend was after him with a gun.

Here, then, is what we've been able to discover. Most of our findings amount to highly anomalous facts and unanswered questions. But we also found relevant physical evidence that the police have simply ignored. Let's begin with the police department's proof.

</snip>

http://www.american-buddha.com/dead.right.htm#DEAD%20RIGHT

[gratuitous]

27. That reads about right

Maybe the "Did Somebody Want . . ." line was the subhead to the title "Dead Right." I may have the old issue of Spy kicking around somewhere. Connolly was/is a darn good writer. As I recall, he used to be either a police investigator or a private investigator, and he really knows his stuff when it comes to writing about police procedure and where the cops got it right and where they got it wrong, usually with a plausible explanation for why.

[Aries]

30. Mark Lombardi mapped "The Octopus"

in his art. He also died too soon.

http://www.steamshovelpress.com/altmedia18.html

Mark Lombardi: Global (Conspiracy) Networks

Mapping criminal corporate-government connections is a dangerous occupation. Exposing the players and their front companies is even more hazardous. These are the subjects of Mark Lombardi's art -- the hidden global realities of money and power. His artwork, literally as well as figuratively, connects the dots of international high-level white-collar crime networks.

Lombardi's drawings are mandalas of conspiracy, flow charts of shady deals and shaky agents, and org charts of world-class con men, revealing the genealogy of wickedness in the highest places of corporate and government power.

"Mark Lombardi: Global Networks" is a traveling exhibition of 25 drawings, some as large as 4' x 12,’ organized by New York-based Independent Curators International (ICI) and curated by Robert Hobbs of Virginia Commonwealth University. In graphic terms, the drawings document the major financial and political frauds of the late 20th century. They are flow charts of illicit money and power, solid and dotted lines and curves as well as broken arrows denoting the flows of illicit financial operations and covert revenues.

DECONSTRUCTING CRIMINAL CONNECTIONS

One of the drawings called "George W. Bush, Harken Energy and Jackson Stephens, ca 1979-90" (1999) shows the connections of James Bath, a former CIA spook and business broker, front man for Saudi money who connected the Bush Family and Bin Laden Family (of the Osama bin Laden/ 9-11 legend) in shady deals in Texas and around the world.

Other drawings document the Savings and Loan (S&L) Frauds, IraqGate Fraud (illicit sales of nuclear and biological weapons to Iraqi kingpin Saddam Hussein with a $5 billion US Government-guaranteed phony “agricultural loan” through the Banca Nazionale de Lavoro), Iran Contra Fraud, and the Clinton/ Jackson Stephens Frauds.

Lombardi was an artist and an archivist, not an investigative reporter; he simply used available material from books and newspaper articles (from the public record) for the information “content” of his work.

Viewing his art (mostly un-inked pencil drawings) requires the ability to 1/ see the graphics, 2/ read the names of people and corporate fronts, and then 3/ integrate this content of networks into an epiphany about How the Real World Works.

[Minstrel Boy]

31. Thanks for reminding me - the Lombardi exhibit "Global Networks"

has just opened at Toronto's Art Gallery of Ontario.



The Art Gallery of Ontario presents Mark Lombardi: Global Networks, a retrospective of drawings by the late artist (1951-2000) "exposing the clandestine interconnections between corporations, political organizations and a variety of other international institutions and power players." Opens today and runs to Dec. 5. 317 Dundas St. W. www.ago.net.

A weird aside: I was recently reminded of Lombardi's hypnotic work by a Japanese horror film, Uzumaki (Spiral). Almost as scary as real life. :)

[Eloriel]

36. So, how did HE die?

Somebody needs to publish these in a book. I'd pay a decent sum to have a copy.

[Minstrel Boy]

37. Lombardi's business card: "Death Defying Acts of Art and Conspiracy"

Officially ruled a suicide but, y'know, :shrug:

I'm sure that some of the many convenient deaths must have been true suicides and accidents. Law of averages, and all that. But conspiracy researchers are not such a depressed and unlucky lot that all of them could be.


In a video of the artist shown at the exhibition, Andy Mann asked Lombard in February 1997, “Do you fear for your life?”

Lombardi didn’t answer the question. Instead he said, “This is a way I can map the political and social terrain in which I live.”

According to his friends, Lombardi told them that he was being followed -- just before his death.

...

Lombardi’s legacy is his depiction of geo-political realities, the essence of global criminal conspiracies. No theory, just conspiracy –- conspiracies that continue to haunt the planet into the 21st century.
http://www.steamshovelpress.com/altmedia18.html

[KoKo]

41. Thanks for the repost on Lombardi. I lost my bookmark for his art and

couldn't even remember his name :eyes: (too much reading..) His art is so incredible. It details it all.

I often wonder if the burden of knowing what we all now know is the "Octopus" isn't so overwhelming that it leads to depression. At least here on DU we have support and realize now how true much of the Octopus is but for folks like Casolaro, Kangus and Lombardi the information must have been so overwhelming...and who would listen to them?

Sad..

[Minstrel Boy]

46. I think there's some truth to the burden of knowledge,

and I'm inclined to think Lombardi was a genuine suicide. Casolaro and Kangas, though, I don't think so. Particularly Casolaro. For instance, he died the night he was to meet a contact who promised to supply the missing piece of the Octopus puzzle, and his files were never recovered.

[HEIL PRESIDENT GOD]

32. Look for truehawk on the DNC blog

He posts all the time and says he's a childhood friend of Casolaro.

A federal inmate and ex-CIA agent with the initials MR has something to do with all of this. I've personally seen a notarized letter from him in prison, addressed to Colin Powell, outlining 9/11 type plots, date June 2001.

[Minstrel Boy]

33. Michael Riconosciuto

Casolaro called him "Dangerman."

[Minstrel Boy]

38. Riconsciuto figures in "When Osama Bin Ladin Was Tim Osman"

Riconsciuto turns up as one of bin Laden's contacts in the US. So do some other characters from Casolaro's research, like Robert Booth Nichols, the shady head of Meridian Arms Corporation (with both CIA and organized crime conections), and Dr. John Phillip Nichols, the manager of the Cabazon reservation (which was basically a front for Wackenhut).

http://www.orlingrabbe.com/binladin_timosman.htm

[salvorhardin]

34. Thanks for the great replies so far.

It's quite heartening to know that I'm not insane, that I'm not remembering things that never happened. That I'm not alone. :-)

[Eloriel]

35. Hey, I told ya!!

What, you didn't believe me?

:evilgrin:

[bobthedrummer]

48. It sounds crazy, at first-by design, salvorhardin. A kick for the fallen.

:dem::kick:

[Minstrel Boy]

39. morning kick n/t

[Mr. Furious]

40. Uncanny.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

54. That appears to be the only word in your vocabulary

:shrug:

[Media_Lies_Daily]

44. J. H. Hatfield, author of "Fortunate Son" was also supposed to...

...have committed suicide in a motel room.

[Octafish]

45. Why Would Osama Want to Kill Dubya, His Business Partner? (JULY 2001)

That was the last thing Jim Hatfield had published before he was "suicided." Hatfield reported the Osama-Bush ties and the unelected moron Bush's fear of aerial attack pre-9-11 by hijacked airliners! The guy also mentioned the BFEE cash-turd James R Bath. Here's the story...

Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?

By James Hatfield

Editor's note: In light of last week's horrific events and the Bush administration's reaction to them, we are reprising the following from the last column Jim Hatfield wrote for Online Journal prior to his tragic death on July 18:

July 3, 2001—There may be fireworks in Genoa, Italy, this month, too.

A plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders, was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants linked to bin Laden's international terror network were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April.

German intelligence services have stated that bin Laden is covertly financing neo-Nazi skinhead groups throughout Europe to launch another terrorist attack at a high-profile American target—his first since the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last October.

According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives.

Why would Osama bi Laden want to kill, Dubya, his former business partner?

CONTINUED...

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-091901.html

[bobthedrummer]

47. The German prosecutor that headed the investigation of the Hamburg

Al Qaida cell abrubtly cancelled his appearance before the 9/11 Commission.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4207799,00.html

There wasn't any 9/11 "worldwide intelligence failure", such a notion is absurd-there were many specific warnings from many sources.

Just as some DUer's have developed connections and named names historically about the "octopus" other folks have died pursuing the truth about these criminals and traitors imo.

We are not alone nor crazy though, take solace from that fact.

Fear no evil.
:hi:

[Octafish]

50. German Cabinet Minister Blamed Bush for 9-11.

This is probably how the guy became the former minister of Technology...

German Cabinet Minister Denounces WTC Coverup
by ANDREAS VON BUELOW

In a full-page interview with the Sunday edition (Jan. 13) of the Berlin Tagesspiegel daily, former German Minister of Technology, Andreas von Buelow, said he does not buy any of the official theories that have been presented to date, on the events of September 11.

Q: You seem so angry, really upset.

Von Buelow: I can explain what's bothering me: I see that after the horrifying attacks of Sept. 11, all political public opinion is being forced into a direction that I consider wrong.

Q: What do you mean by that?

Von Buelow: I wonder why many questions are not asked. Normally, with
such a terrible thing, various leads and tracks appear that are then commented on, by the investigators, the media, the government: Is there something here or not?

Are the explanations plausible? This time, this is not the case at all.

It already began just hours after the attacks in New York and Washington and--

CONTINUED...

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=89&contentid=481&page=1

SINK the BFEE!



:toast:

EdiT: htmL

[NightTrain]

53. So that was his name!

I've known about that guy for years and years but could never think of his name. So thanks!!! :yourock: