Part 10, THE CASOLARO MURDER: Tip of the Octopus
John DiNardo
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T H E P E O P L E'S S P E L L B R E A K E R
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News They Never Told You .... News They'll Never Tell You
DATE: _________ __, ____ PRICE: FREE
THE NEWSPAPER FOR THE PEOPLE OF
ARIZONA
* * * * * MORNING EDITION * * * * *
EDITOR: John DiNardo
Part 10, THE CASOLARO MURDER: Tip of the Octopus
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The following excerpts are from THE VILLAGE VOICE
(a New York weekly newspaper), October 15, 1991.
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LaROUCHIES TO THE RESCUE
Despite his misgivings, Casolaro continued to pursue Riconosciuto's
theories. In mid-June 1991, Casolaro met with a member of the
LaRouche organization in Washington [D.C.]. And all of a sudden
the Octopus seemed to be very much alive.
"I met Casolaro at the House Judiciary Committee meetings on
Inslaw last December,"
wrote LaRouche sidekick Jeff Steinberg, in a memo to the LaRouche
network dated August 14, 1991 (two days after Danny's death became
public, and the same day that the West Virginia coroner pronounced
Casolaro's death to be a likely suicide). On June 24th, Steinberg
wrote that he
"spent about four hours with Casolaro at his home ... reviewing
various leads on the Inslaw and related matters. We met later
that same night for several more hours to exchange some
specific documentation."
Casolaro's June phone records indicate several calls to LaRouche
headquarters in Leesburg, Virginia, and his papers include a
LaRouche "Memorandum for the Files" -- documents that suggest that
Casolaro may have begun to see things much as they did. For one
thing, Steinberg wrote that he arranged for a LaRouche source,
known as CHIPS, to talk to Casolaro. Casolaro's notes identify
this person as a former Customs agent now involved with the
Treasury Department's enforcement work, and Steinberg speculates
that CHIPS may have pointed Casolaro toward big-time drug rackets
tied to the Gambino family. Steinberg's memo says that Casolaro
had traced
"the Inslaw and related stories back to a dirty CIA `Old Boys'
network"
that had begun working together in the 1950s around the Albania
covert operations. These men had gotten into the illegal gun and
drug trade back then and had continued in that business ever since.
In short, Casolaro had stumbled into the vibrant mainstream of
LaRouche thought. Most of this material has long been batted around
on the conspiracy circuit. Casolaro's telephone records show him
making repeated calls to old LaRouche favorites, including supposed
drug dealers with ties to Gambino. Casolaro told friends, for
example, that he had called E. Howard Hunt [infamous CIA officer
involved in the Watergate burglary, and accused under oath by CIA
operative Marita Lorenz of being the paymaster to the assassins of
President Kennedy], who after first evidencing displeasure at
getting a call on an unlisted number, became cordial, even
effusive. Casolaro liked him.
.....
And, in a way, all that was a warm-up for one of the last
web-spinners that Casolaro got to know, William Richard Turner.
Turner was an aerospace engineer for Honeywell in northern Virginia
until his division was acquired by Hughes Aircraft. Turner claims
that he detected fraud on the part of Hughes, and reported this to
superiors who covered it up (the company has denied the charge).
Turner -- who had a house a half-hour's drive away from Martinsburg
[the vicinity wherein Casolaro was found dead with his wrists
hacked] -- contacted Casolaro and gave him the names of Department
of Defense investigators who he said were ignoring his reports.
In subsequent meetings, both in Fairfax and in Winchester, Virginia,
the two men developed what Turner describes as a friendship that
grew out of Turner's alleged knowledge of how the PROMIS [software]
was stolen. Turner left Hughes in April 1991, just as Casolaro was
getting into "the Octopus".
"Danny referred to the tentacles running out from this Inslaw
case,"
Turner said. He claimed that he often kept materials that Casolaro
wanted secure in his [Turner's] safe. And at some point in early
August, Turner and Casolaro agreed to meet in Martinsburg, where
Turner said he would turn over documents that would "prove a vast
Government conspiracy."
.....
Every day inevitably began with a telephone call from Bill Hamilton
at 7:30 in the morning for the latest turn in the Inslaw case and
"the Octopus". Then he'd head into Washington for a Congressional
hearing or a meeting with, for example, Danny Sheehan of the
Christic Institute -- whose [revelations of] "the Secret Team" could
just as easily have been called "the Octopus" -- or with the mayor
of Chinatown.
.....
Casolaro's family and friends were suspicious about his unexpected
death, not only because he was always talking about the "danger"
of his investigation, but also because all through the week before
he went to Martinsburg, he seemed to be breaking his usual habits;
he didn't return phone calls and, more often than not, they
couldn't find him at his usual haunts. The following day-by-day
chronology of the week leading up to his visit to Martinsburg
gives some sense of why they became so worried.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 4th:
Casolaro spent most of the day at real estate agent Danielle
Stallings's pool party. She is among his oldest and closest friends;
..... Danielle remembered that Casolaro was worried about threats
to his life, and he told her that he had persuaded his brother
John, who had been living with him, to move to the house of another
relative. At the party, Casolaro told Danielle,
"You just wouldn't believe what I'm involved in."
MONDAY, AUGUST 5th:
Later that day, Casolaro phoned Bill McCoy, a retired Army C.I.D.
[intelligence] officer who is a private investigator in Fairfax,
Virginia. ..... He said that he had finally boiled "the Octopus"
down to seven people who had started out as idealists, but who had
turned bad along the way; he said he would travel to Arkansas,
Texas, Arizona, California and southeast Asia as soon as the
advance came through. ..... McCoy remembered another call, this one
from Bob Bickel, a Texas oil engineer who worked as an informant
for the Customs Bureau and is best known for his claim that Bush
nominee for CIA Director Robert Gates facilitated weapons shipments
to Iraq in 1988 and 1989. Bickel told McCoy that Casolaro had
called to say that he was getting close to the source, and that he
would soon go to Martinsburg and bring back the head of "the Octopus."
~~ TO BE CONTINUED ~~
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