Thinking Sideways: Danny Casolaro and The Octopus

mystery was suggested to us by Brian on Facebook. Oh god, it was like a year ago, and weirdly enough, as I was doing all of my research, suddenly there was a resurgence and we must have got another three or four or five suggestions. I think I said I've said to someone recently. You know, sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where somebody suggested something that we're literally about to record. I'm not saying this is one of those situations.

But I'm not not saying this is because sometimes we just have to say, Okay, yes, we're doing it. I'm sure you made their day anyway. Maybe probably not, probably maybe they don't care, maybe not, maybe it's a mystery. What are we coming next week? That right there, that's what we're covering. I'm on it man, aw yeah, we need a short episode. Okay, Today, what we're gonna be talking about is we are going to be talking about the death of writer Danny Castillo and his investigation into

what he called the octopus. He's not the only one who calls it that know that the term of the octopus has been around for quite a while. He really liked the octopus. And I'm gonna warn everybody, uh to strap in. This is kind of a eighties history roller coaster. We're going to go through a whole bunch of stuff. So get your penn, get paper, take notes, because it be a quiz at the end you're gonna be glad you did it. I'm not taking notes. I have notes

in front of He's already Yeah. He always says that though flight. So let's talk about Danny for a minute for a little bit here. He was a freelance writer at the time of his death, which was in he wrote for During the eighties, he wrote for a number of tabloids and and some other different magazines, and then he got on at computer age publications which reported on personal computing, which this is the eighties. Computers are awesome and cool and there's you know, I mean even today,

tech writing is a big thing. Yeah, he and he worked there for a long time until he eventually he became part owner in the publication, until he's sold off his portion of the company in decided, I guess, I never I don't know why he did that, but he just he'd had enough wanted to move on, which we all do with jobs. I guess it's interesting that he wouldn't retain his ownership of it though, despite not writing

for it. Yeah, it's almost like it'd be easy incomes. Well, here's the thing is, actually, I think I remember reading that the value of the company was going up, and it looks like he saw it as a bit of a cash cow. Hey i'm gonna I'm gonna take the money and run before this bubble bursts. And he sold probably six months to a year too soon. If he'd waited longer, he would have made a whole bunch. He waited longer, he would have been dead. So maybe not,

Well that's true. We don't know, we don't know, Okay, Okay, Well, so he does that, and then Cassolero goes ahead and looking around on for something else to do. He's talking to. Reportedly, he talks to another friend who is also a journalist in the same field and says, hey, I want to get back into writing. I want to find a good story. And this friend suggests that he looked into the inns law case, which at the time had been going on

for a decade. It's totally forgotten to history. I feel, yeah, really, I don't hear people talking about it. And then the way that people talk about a lot of other stuff, which is kind of scary because it was kind of a big thing several decades that we're not for a long time. And frankly, I gotta tell you, it's hard to understand. It's really hard to get a handle on the case. It is a muddy, muddy mess. And we're going to go into, at least to a certain degree,

the case. But I do want to stick just kind of with Danny here. So he looks at it and he says, hey, this this is right up my alley, because the ins lack case is all about technology. So he goes ahead, he starts doing his investigation, and he started it not too long after he had sold his portion of the publication, so it's starts doing this work.

It didn't take too long in his investigation though, for him to start seeing and I'm using air quotes when I'm saying seeing, or his sources to start telling him about a lot of crazy connections to the in's law case. They were really it seems coincidental. Does that make sense? I mean, you two know this, but it seems coincidental,

and then it just kind of grows in spider webs. Well, I think it's one of those situations right where if if there was one coincidence, you'd say, oh, that's just a coincidence, but when there's ten coincidences, you start to think, Okay, that's a lot of coincidences to just be coincidence. Yeah,

it's just right. I mean that was my sense was that it was just kind of if it had just been one or two things, it would have been nothing, but not one or two things similar name, the same name pops up in this and other air is you know that kind of thing? Yeah? Yeah, And and what the coincidences or the connections or whatever you want to call it, it is what he began to refer to as the octopus, which is all of these crazy connections that seem to indicate that there's some secret network that's

responsible for terrible acts espionage, murders, assassinations, laundering drugs. I mean, it kind of runs the full gamut here. I almost I almost want to think of it less of a network and more of kind of a cabal, one of the ways I've always kind of seen the octopus. Yeah, we can call it that. The Nights templar the Illuminati, you know, No, I mean the Illuminati would fall into

the umbrella of the of the octopus. Yeah. Well, that's the weird part is that this is technically going to be a conspiracy theory, and there are tons of things that whenever you read about one conspiracy theory, you're going to find a whole bunch of things linked to it. And it's amazing how they all tend to have commonalities that all run through common stories, which is, yeah, we probably don't need to go to FIR to this, but it's always interesting to me. I'm going to do a

little bit of it anyway. It's always interesting to me, you know, when you it's it's similar to when you look at ancient history, and you see all of the depictions of things that look a lot like flying somethings in like prehistoric times, right, and it's kind of like, okay, well, if one one group of people would come up with that on their own, okay, But when you start seeing it in a lot, you kind of think, well, something must have been you know, maybe it was meteors or whatever.

But same with this to me, where it's kind of like, well, there's all these theories of this thing in different iterations, so like ancient aliens. Yeah, I mean that's why I know, that's where well with that, yeah, But with this, you know, there's so many shadowy organizations that almost you kind of think, can this many people be crazy? Yes, this many crazy? But again I don't know, and we're going to keep

talking about that. I'm pretty yeah. I think that that our brains are kind of hardwired to find patterns and things. That's the way are the human mind works, and so we're naturally we're constantly constructing things like this. But I have a question for you guys, and that is this. Okay, we've got the octopus, and then we have this other shadowy conspiracy called the Illuminati, what happens when they when they collide? Squid squid? Is that what it is that's

kind of curious about it? Do they have a shadow war or they just like to get together in a little room it's hydra. Yeah, they make some other ce creature or do they drop treaties between them between each other? What do they do? I don't know, No, I mean that that's kind of what I was alluding to, is that, like, there can't be all of the ones that are theorized, but it's it's certainly possible that there's one of them as Yeah, pretty sure. Alright, let's let's let's get back

to the story here. We've done enough about the balls and crazy conspiracy theories for the moment. Anyway, I'm gonna say we're going there that we we are going to kind of go there today. So we're gonna move forward. So Danny began his work in we're going to jump forward in time. We're gonna jump forward to the eighth of August. Castelero goes to Martinsburg, West Virginia. He's going to go there to meet several sources. He meets one of them, for sure, but he it appears that he

was going to go to meet more than one. But while he's at his hotel, he bumps into this guy who he's never met before, by the name of Mike Looney.

They meet in the hallway, they start to chat, and then later on they meet in the hotel bar that night, and I bring up Looney because he's talked about a number of times to validate Danny's state of mind, because when they were in the bar, he was very chatty, and he told him all about his research and all this stuff that he was going to do, and it sounds like I got the impression that they talked over drinks for several hours. So he didn't display any kind

of abnormal behavior. He just seemed like a guy who was really excited about what he was doing. It's interesting some people bring up they bring up Looney because in this kind of shadowy way, right that he just happens. They just happened to meet, even though it was a coincidence that both of their rooms were right next to each other. But I guess I hadn't, you know, it makes more sense. Of course, Yeah, they ran each other

in the halls, like of course they did. Yeah, and then they went and got a drink or happened to see each other and connected. Fine. Yeah, but there are those people out there who were like the looney he just happens to meet. It's crazy. Yeah, I think it looney had murdered him. I think that he wouldn't be saying that he was cheerful, excited. Yeah. Well, let's move

forward to the next day. So now we're on the ninth of August and Castolero meets a source at two o'clock that afternoon, and then from there he goes to a place called the Stone Crab in and has dinner and a couple of beers. And we know this because he left at five twelve pm, which is the time he paid with his credit card, so we've got the credit card record there. He then went to a pay phone and called his family sometime around six o'clock to

say that, yeah, I went to a pay phone. Yeah, he went to a pay phone and he called his family because they seem to have had a standing thing where they would do dinner together, and he was notorious for bagging out, so he was calling to say he wasn't gonna make it. Where did he live? Oh, it's it's uh, it's Virginia, McLean Virginia. Okay, so not too awful. Okay, yeah, so it's reasonable that he could have been trying to

get home. Yes, okay, So, like I said, it was about six o'clock that night that he made the call. He then disappears from the radar for about four hours. He shows up about ten o'clock that evening, so it's ten o'clock at night. He's seen at a convenience store, which is it's either next door it's right next door to his hotel. I think he was staying at a

shared in, remember correctly. Yeah, he goes in, he wants coffee, He has to wait for the coffee to be made, gets a cup of coffee, and then he walks back to his hotel. Interesting. I'm sorry, it's just interesting to me. Most hotels in the lobby have free coffee, especially Sheridan's twenty four hours a day, So it's interesting that he felt like he had to go to the Communian store to pay for coffee instead of just walk the extra

like the coffee they had. Yeah, I mean it wasn't good, but the convenient store coffee going to be that much better. Most hotels have coffee out to a certain point in the day, but I don't I mean, do they always have conn Not always? I guess that's fair. I I just always assumed they have coffee in a lot, because you know, if you get in late and whatever. I don't know what he was doing drinking coffee at ten pm, though, I don't know because it's a little weird he's going

to stay up and write. I mean, it makes sense to me that if he had, especially if he had met with a source in that four hours, which is totally possible that he did, or he met a source at two o'clock, right, but that it's possible that he had another source that he managed to meet with in

those four hours that he went missing. Maybe because he did that bagged out on him on the day before the eight he was supposed to meet a source who just flaked on, right, And I wouldn't necessarily come forward if I was a source that was giving information about something like this and had seen him in those four hours and then he showed up dead close after that, I wouldn't necessarily be like, oh, yeah, I was with

him four hours. Probably not, but it makes sense to me that he would be going back to write that he would be inspired, or even if it was just based on the source earlier, that he would be trying to stay up and collect his thoughts and all that stuff. Maybe maybe, I don't know. I mean, it's it's peculiar because you know, when he was at the Stone Crab in he ate dinner and he had a couple of beers I think it was bud Lights or something like that he was drinking. So he's drinking a couple of

beers and then four hours later he's having some coffee. So, I mean, I can see why he's waking himself up. But do you not do that? How did I start drinking beer? I don't start drinking he was, so it wasn't like he was a young guy. Sure, I don't know. It just that makes sense to me. Okay, well, we're trying to sober up. We're going to move past that, and we're going to move to the next day, which

is August ten. It's twelve thirty in the afternoon and the maid enters his hotel room and she finds Danny dead in the tub. Sorry to keep interrupting, when was he meant to check out? Do you know? I don't I'd never have seen that anywhere to either. Stupid amount of reading that and I have not seen anywhere that ever said he was expecting to check out yet yeah, I haven't either. It's maybe that he wasn't expecting to check out for another day or too hot, I don't know.

But the thing is, the maid comes in, she finds him in the tub. His wrists have been slit. There's the places covered in blood, the bathroom, it's all over the walls, the tub in the water, all over the floor. There's towels soaked in blood underneath the sink, like it's not a pretty scene under the sink on the floor. Yes, so it's just like it wasn't the impression there could have been towels on the floor that the blood soaked

into potentially, Yes, yes, that is absolutely a possibility. Okay, I just need to clarify that because I think that's going to come into play later. Well. And no, that's a great thing because I've never really gotten any good photos of the crime scene and the descriptions they leave a lot to be desired. Yet the descriptions you get of this crime scene aren't that great, And a lot of that is because it is not considered a prime scene.

It's considered the scene of a suicide. I think there are two reasons, right, that reason, and then also there's always that reason of hoping to spare people the trauma of really detailed descriptions of how horrific a suicide it was orme. But there are definitely some things that are are pointed out that give me some question marks for sure. Yeah, now the coaster, for one thing. Well, let's that's a good thing to bring up, Joe, And let's bring up all of the stuff that's in the room. So there's

a little bit of a laundry. Listen, we're gonna go through here in the bathroom itself, so not in the tub with Danny, but in the bathroom, the police find a bottle of red wine that's half full. They find an ashtray sitting on the toilet and smoke. Was he a smoker? You know? Again, I don't know. I don't know. We've never seen reference to the fact of if he was or was not a smokers. The nineties, I mean, a lot of people still smoke. So I've got a guess that if he's got an ashtray in the bathroom,

with him. He's a smokers, because that's what smokers do when they get in the bath. They opened the window and you have a cigarette drunk or if you're drunk. But we don't know if there's any there were any butts in the ash tray. No, no, again, never referenced. It's the ash tray, but not the contents of said ash tree. Also in the bathroom itself is broken glass. From what I don't know. I okay, I got the bit about the broken glass. There's a guy named Ken Thomas.

He wrote the book The Octopus. He went out, he picked up all of Castolero's notes, he went through it all, and he reconstructed all of his research and then he built on the theories from there and then put out a whole new book. And he didn't do it himself. There was another guy, but the addition that I had read was mainly under his name. But he's the only place that I've seen that references this other piece of

broken glass. And I don't know what it is because I was rereading this today going wait, where the hell was it? Broken glass? What was it? I can't All it is is broken probably well, hotels in the bathroom they usually have a couple of glasses, and that's that's probably he said he knocked over the stupid cheaper hotel glass. Well, it's hard to tell. Yeah, it's hard to tell with

that level, with a Sheridan level hotel. Nowadays it's all plastic, right, it's just the plastic cups, like solo cups or whatever. I don't know if in the nineties they had actual glasses, glasses glass, remember that in most hotels up until i'd say the last decade. Okay, okay, see, and that's good information. I was a kid, so I don't. I hate to sound like I'm like like a snob or anything like that, but I still stay in hotels occasionally even these days

that have glass in there. No, I do too, Yeah, certainly, But I'm just thinking there are different levels of hotels, and nicer ones always have glass, and the kind of crappier ones very rarely do. So I just didn't know. Maybe it was glass, Maybe it was the broken glass from a wine glass or something. I don't know. Again, don't know. Let's continue on with what was there in the tub. So this is in the tub with the body, they find a two plastic trash bags, which I don't get.

I don't understand. There's a single edge razor blade which makes sense, a can of Old Milwaukee that really doesn't make sense, why would anybody drink that? And a paper coasters Joe had mentioned a little bit ago. They also, this is another weird thing. They find a shoelace tied around his neck, which is just weird. Again, nothing the shoelace, I know that. I think I read it in The Octopus, and I swear I've seen it in a number of websites.

You know, somebody's gonna yell. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing it on the wiki, but it may not be or maybe I don't know, but I know I've read it in more than one place. It could have just been a necklace. I mean, I've seen guys with necklaces that really kind of look like shoelaces. It was the we Now, the terrible thing for the investigation here is, of course, that what does what do the police do when they get there? They drained the tub by to

drain the tub, I mean, they pulled the plug. Why they don't save any water, They don't strain it to try and catch anything. I don't know why other than they just went he did it himself. Why would we bother? The only thing I can I can or they're under the pair exactly. Maybe this is gonna happen this entire story. I can tell you what about the maid. This is interesting, you know, I can kind of explain away some of

this stuff. I guess. I mean, it doesn't it's not consistent with what we've heard about his mood and state of mind around that time. Suicide is not absolutely right, but but in a into that, you know, I can kind of say, Okay, they found two plastic trash bags. Okay, maybe he tried to suffocate himself before. Yeah, maybe he just tried to and it didn't work, so he just you know, dropped it in the tub with him. I don't know about the coaster. Maybe the coaster was on

the I'm sorry, I'm just going there. Yeah, maybe it was, you know, with the beer and that he like flailed after he cut himself and actually knocked it in. It could have been the source of the broken glass. He's got a glass of something sitting on the edge of the tub on the coaster and the beer can apparently or maybe, but maybe he didn't want to drink out of can. I know people who don't drink out of cans. They don't want to drink out of can. So maybe he had it in a glass and was pouring the

can into it. I don't know. I just think that was the first place my mind went to when I heard about the plastic bags, was, oh, well, he probably was trying to asphyxiate himself or somebody was trying to make it look like he as fixated himself, or somebody did asphyxiate himself him and then because risk, but that's where my mind goes with the trash bags. Well, it might have been that. You know, he planned after he slid his wrist, he planned to bag up his hands

so that wouldn't it wouldn't make a huge mess. It's a tub of water. Yeah, but gonna start, you gotta start squirting blood all over the place. There was blood on the walls everywhere. Let's let's talk about that and then we'll go into some of this stuff to try and flesh it out. Not to make a terrible pun, but he had. Danny had over a dozen cuts in his wrists, so he cut both risks. The medical examiners said there were seven. This drives me crazy every time.

It's not an exact count on both risks, which is infuriating, but it is seven or eight cuts on the right wrist and three or four cuts on the left. The medical examiner also said that the cuts were much deeper than you would normally see in a suicide. There was and there was no hesitation marks, and there's a lot of cuts. That's a lot of that. And the examiner said he didn't know how he could have continued on through the sheer pain based on how deep the cuts were.

And by the way, it was Danny right handed or left handed, I don't know, never looked that up, didn't even think to look that up. I think he was right handed. Guessing from this, but why it's eight right wrist? Yeah, if you're yeah, if you're gonna if you were going to slash your wrist, you almost if you're right hand dominant, you're probably gonna cut your left wrist first. Right, He had the most cuts on the right wrist. Right, because he's he's cut himself on the left wrist. He's already

starting to lose blood at this point. He's probably getting light headed, and then with his left hand, he's not as dextrous, and he's also lightheaded because he's losing blood where you're going, you know. And and also he's his left handed in all kinds of pain, so that may be cause it's a dispassed out a little bit, So

that would explain. But that would seem like there would be hesitation marks there where I know that you would kind of you would be stuttering with it almost on your left when you're cutting your left wrist, yeah, or that if you're losing blood and you're kind of you know, you're you're stuttering. You're not. It's not going to be nice. Perfect,

That was a weird way to refer to that. I'm sorry, Perfect, It's not going to be those clean cuts that are really really deep, especially because they didn't find any any pain killers or anything in his system, right, they weren't drugs or anything. Now, let's um, let's talk about that for a second. Okay, So we know that that afternoon he went out and when he had dinner, he had

a couple of beers and then he came back. We know that he had a can of beer in the tub with him, and apparently half a bottle of wine and half a bottle of wine. When they did the autopsy, they found that in his system he didn't have alcohol. How much blood was left in his body, by the way,

enough to test apparently, I can't. I don't remember. I think it wasn't a blood test that they couldn't just use a rank They did tissues him, yes and so, but presumably they would have looked at the contents of his stomach as well, I would imagine, so he would have also metabolized some of that before he died. He had at dinner. But he had some a seat amnifit in his system from some Thailand. All three that he had taken, but something like negligible, right, A normal dose? Yeah,

nothing major he had. He had a antidepressant in his system, but it was such a small amount of the antidepressant that they can't They couldn't even tell what it was specifically, just oh, this is an antidepressant. We don't know which one it is because yeah, I couldn't figure it out. Okay, So no booze Thailand all. It's weird that he had no booze. I know. This was the weirdest part. On the antidepressants, anybody, anybody know what antidepressant he was taking.

He had been prescribed in antidepressant several years prior, and it was a very small dose of it, and they don't know. Nobody has been able to figure out if what he had taken was from that not really sure, or if if it had been a recent I mean that stuff kind of sticks around in your system sometimes, true.

Certain certain things stick around in your system. True. And again depending on what they were testing, if it were more of a tissue thing, that stuff is going to stick around on your tissues certainly more then it's gonna you know, your blood stream or anything like that. So that'd be the other question too, would be how long ago they think the dose was taken and they're still

taking it daily or well? And I know that a lot of people will be hearing what we're saying and they're going to be going, well, how do you not know? What do you mean? And the problem is is there is a ton of conjecture on this point, so much has been written about it. When you dig into this case and it is all over the map. So that's why I know, I we've had this kind station before.

I don't want to say it was this because there's no way and you know, additional to that, as you were saying it was ruled a suicide case closed, they the investigation was not thorough. They just kind of assumed that it was what it looked like and that was it. And so a lot of things got missed. You know, they certainly didn't dust for Prince, for instance. They didn't do a lot of the things they would do if they encountered this and thought, oh this is this is

a murder. And it was ruled a suicide twice. Yeah, because the first time it was ruled and a stink was raised, and so they went ahead and the medical examiners checked the body again, somebody else did another examination and then Ken said, no, it was how long after the death was the second one. I wonder if that went, if the police and medical examiner records are still around, or if they've been thrown away by this time, well

this was the suicide. I you know, I don't know what West Virginia law is for how long they have to keep those kind of records. Yeah. I guess it's just interesting to me that a medical examiner would say something like these cuts are deeper than anyone would ever expect from a suicide. There's no hesitation marks, and I don't know how he could have kept cutting himself from the pain, but he definitely just kept cutting himself. To

be fair, I don't think the person that made that statement. Actually, I'm almost positive the person that made the statement of I don't know that these are way too deep and the person who judged it a suicide were not the same person. There were two separate people that made those states. And there was a note too that helped people think that it was a suicide. Right, Yes, there was so

Casslero did. He did leave a note, and it was a really short note, was a handwritten It was tewritten, handwritten absolutely, and it was his handwriting, his handwriting on a legal pad of his sitting. I think it was on the nightstand or on the desk, one of the two. But Penn was there. It was all, It was all him. The note read to those 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 end of note. Yeah, that sounds like a suicide note. It really does it. It totally totally sounds like a standard suicide note. And there's more about a lot of these things that we've talked about. We're going to get into them, but I want to now, and this is gonna be a weird case because we're gonna turn away from the subject for a good little bit here and we're gonna

now start running down a completely different path. So the first thing we're going to talk about is the one of the first things that got Danny's interest, which is the in law case. And you'll see it referred to as ins law or Promise, and I'll give you the spelling on that in a minute, because it's not the regular spelling of Promise was a company. Promise was their product exactly. So in his law stands for Institute for Law and Social Justice, which was a company. Devon's rolling

your eyes. It's just I mean, like knowing the product they made and knowing what they may or may not have done. It's just like you, guys, that's a bad name. It was the seventies. It's a bad name, bad people. It was. Yeah, it was a company that was started in nineteen seventy four by a guy named William Hamilton's. He was a former n s A employee. He also

evidently contracted with the CIA for a while. When he got out of the government sector and he started his own business, he created a piece of software which called PROMISE. PROMISE stands for Prosecutors Management Information System. It's a people tracking program. Okay, here's I'm gonna I'm gonna just try and summarize this the best way I can in the

simplest language, because this piece of software is kind of complex. Basically, every legal arm would use a different database and have people logged in it, and in the seventies, those things were not connected in any way, shape or form. So if the FBI wanted to look for you, they couldn't look in the local law enforcement database to call, or had to call or do or send a letter or whatever. Promise was a way to connect all of those databases,

regardless of what their OS was. Apparently, I get the feeling that is because there was very simple os is. These things still worked on computers that were the size of bookcases, big bookcases. So it wasn't the it wasn't the most evolved computer. I mean, we're still talking about the late seventies computing is not amazing sing yet. Yeah, I got to say, as a as a former coder, I'm kind of amazed that anybody could write a piece

of software that could actually do this. Yeah, I mean, leave it, leave it to a former an essay, let's be fair. I mean really know they however, they went about it and made that work. It is an amazing accomplishment. And then they upgraded it, right, they managed to upgrade

it for they did a lot of things. So first off, what happens here is before we get to the upgrade, is you need to understand that ins Law was essentially funded because it was a not for profit company basically funded entirely by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, which is a government body. It doesn't exist anymore, but that was

the government body that paid them all, paid all their bills. Well, some copyright rules win in effect on the first of January eight which said that any at all software created prior to that date was in the public domain, but any software created after that was not in the public domain. But I mean you could sell it and license it, but you just couldn't take it and use it. That makes sense. That's keeping up with the times it is, well,

this is and what I'm about talking here. We totally understand this today because this is how software works now, but this is not the way you saw. Nobody understood or had I shouldn't say understood, but they hadn't gone down the road yet to know what this was gonna look like in terms of selling and licensing software because it was also new, very new. Yeah, it's like it's like the debate. I would frame it like the debate

with three D printing. Right now, you can go and download the three D printing matrix for like almost anything, and pretty soon that's going to have to start being regulated because you can't. You wouldn't download a car, you guys, right, It's going to be kind of hard to regulate that though, certainly, but there will be there will certain there will be more of a process probably for that. And I want the Feds to know that I have not red printed any kins car or cars, a computer or two, but

nothing else, nothing else. Yes, anyway, That's how I would kind of frame it is there's always that new horizon, and the laws are pretty slow to catch up to that. Usually this is when it caught up well, and you know, of course, the US government, liking Promise, wants to continue to use it, so they go ahead and they get

a license for it. The license they get, though, it's a basic user license, that means that they don't have the they're not um entitled to make any changes or modification of the software, and they're also not allowed to distribute it. Again, like we talked about before, very very common stuff for US today. All right, I'm sorry, just does this side note. It's always baffling to me that the US government doesn't just develop our own stuff, like

they have a lot of programmers. Why don't you just like make your own software instead of buying stuff from some maybe kind of shady third party. You know, I think they've found that it's much more efficient to go to the market and get those things yourself. It really I don't know about Well, yeah, you just don't like Promise. I just don't. I really just don't promise, Okay. I tend to think that the capabilities of Promise maybe perhaps have been exaggerated just a little bit. I don't think

that's actually the case. I think that it was the first of its kind and it was revolutionary, and that's what the big deal was. It probably wasn't that great, but it was the first which made it amazing. I really think that's what gave it its toe hold and what started this whole thing that we're about to go into here, because what you folks at home need to know is that in one the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, uh they were, they were dissolved. It went away, it

was no more. At which point in his law realized that they needed to make money, so they went from a nonprofit to a for profit model, and at the same time they upgraded promise to enhanced promise. Great naming thing. But the thing that they did is again these are really old computers. They went from sixteen bit to thirty two bit in their in their software and it was a great leap forward. Again, US government, this is awesome. We wanted, we're totally going to make a contract with you,

which they do. They make a contract that is worth nine point six million dollars in money, and they're going to pay that money out over the course of three years too. In his law. Now, and this is the thing I don't quite understand is that they're not just buying the software, they're paying them to develop the software. Correct, they were doing. There's a lot of things. There was

maintenance things. There's a lot of stuff in the contract that it's minutia that I don't want to go into because again, in law case, what we're I mean, we still got a lot to go through and this thing took twenty years almost to settle out there. But when they signed this contract, the overview is like, not only are we getting the software, but also you will continue to develop it and you will provide support for it

over the span of years. Right, Just to be clear, it's not like when you go buy the Adobe Suite and they're like, this is what you get. Yeah, exactly, there's a phone that we won't answer, or you can click on the chat button. But by the way, all the representatives are busy because there are no representatives. Yes that okay, we all use Adobe Suite apparently, you know, I think it gets me about when you click on the they say no representative, so busy is I know

those representatives are bots for Christ's sakes. Yeah, So anyway, I just thought that was probably worth mentioning that it wasn't just like buying the software, you're also getting the development. It's a service package. As well. Absolutely, And this what happens from here is there's a lot of contention around it. Like I said, it's a huge case, twenty years in the making, but I'm going to give you kind of

the version. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly where I'm headed. The Department of Justice is one of the people who are one of the groups that was using Promise and enhanced Promise, and they supposedly went ahead and made changes to the software and began to distribute it to other US agencies

and quote unquote foreign allies. Of what they did when they did that is they again this is supposedly added a back door to the program that I had to say that I find those charges kind of less incredible because I would bet you anything I had already added a back door. You know, I don't I don't know that. I don't know. I can't say that if they would or would not, I don't know what the benefit would be.

It's not as if the you know, the Internet was a main way of communication for accessing software, you had to go to the site. That's part I'm sure that was part of the contract. Is my terminal in Baltimore, Maryland has crashed. Send your guide to Baltimore, Maryland to fix my terminal. It's not like they were going to remotely long in it's the what was this? This all happened in? It began Okay, so the darknet was already up and running. They would have, but I don't know

that they would have needed it. I mean, I really get the feeling that they wouldn't have been doing it remotely. But I you know, I don't know the technology well enough to say that with any degree of certainty. You know, it's hard. It's hard to we're back exactly when did this start happening? And when did that start happening? You know what I mean? Yeah? When? What was their internet? When was my first my first computer? When was that

mid Eddies your first computer? Something like that? I don't know. I think we had a computer when I was growing up, and the way that we accessed was a O l oh no, no, no, it was Netscape first, when you had to like log on only to do with certain things. We had an escape and we had all they had to the disk for because they always sent you a

hundred in the mail. Yeah, but you had to have the disc and you had you could only log on to you know for many yeah, or something like that, and you know, tied up the phone line and all that stuff. But it's the back door thing is so

troubling to me. It's so troubling to me, and it's you know, either with actually it's more troubling obviously if in slaught like they just had that programmed in and then it was every copy, which, to be honest, I don't think I'm so cynical at this point with technologies that it's just my sumption that of course they programmed a backdoor, and of course they did, of lest they did, But even if it was just the Department of Justice that developed it and then had the backdoor and then

sold it to the quote unquote for an allies, it's so troubling and also so typical of things that we've seen come to light in the last ten years. It's just so this is like the precursor David. David, not me. Den is obviously very jaded about technology. Well, and here's the thing. If you're if you're if you're selling or giving copies to your allies, and if you've you've altered it or gotten it made that way so that you can spy on them, well, let's standard up already procedure.

Have you ever heard of the ultra secret This sounds familiar, but yeah, it was all about the all that early on, I don't remember if it was before or in the early years of World War two, the Polish government actually captured some Enigma machines from the Germans. And now remember the like those were those are the things that were kind of like they look like suicide. They look like a typewriter and they had the three dials and them so you could set the set a key and everything.

And they were supposedly that they would create an unbreakable cipher and then they managed to reverse the engineer those basically takes to take them apart, especially at Bletchley Park Park, England, and they had early prototypes of computers Torry and all that, and they and they were using those machines and their their their computers to break the German code. And then after the war and this is what happened that they kept that secret. The British kept that secret for many

decades after the end of the war. And the reason they did it was because after the war they captured a bunch of Enagment machines from the Germans, and they gave them out to their Commonwealth allies. They gave them to the Canadians and the New Zealanders and the Australians and anybody else you could name, simply because that enabled them to read all their communic their diplomatic communications. Yeah, and that's that's why the Ultra secret was kept the

ultra secret for so many decades. It was I don't remember when it was. I think it was clear into the seventies before they finally revealed what was happening. Yeah, this is I'm just saying, this is the history that I've inherited, is like totally normal. And then you know, growing up with the whole wiki leaks, revelations and all of that stuff, you just kind of that's you just assume this is what's going on. So for me, this is this is the the genesis of that. Almost Well,

let's go ahead and tell everybody what happens. Oh yeah, yeah, I guess we're kind of I think it's related and it makes total sense. And I'm glad we went there because I wasn't sure where that was going at first. But until there, But let's continue on with in law because and this is this. I know that Steave is going to come out of your ears here in a minute, Devon,

because I know that you hate this. But what happens is not too long after, like within months of this contract and then getting being signed and the program going out, the govern the U. S Government begins to withhold payments to ins law. Uh, they make all kinds of claims of breach of contract and all these problems that are

going on. The court case begins. This is the court case begins in the early eighties, and eventually it drags on for so long that in the law runs out of money to keep going, and so they try to file for bankruptcy. And they want to file for Chapter eleven bankruptcy, which lets them simply stand their debts off and restructure. Well, somebody has a friend at the I R S. I think it was the I R S, and they were pushing them to go into Chapter seven bankruptcy,

which would have liquidated the company. So there's some hinky Shenanigan's back room weirdness going on. Long story short, eventually in the ruling comes out and the US government has to pay nothing. They win. The case takes almost twenty years, but they win the case against in his Law, and they're they're off the hook. I still don't quite understand

their case against Inslaw. It's like, you know what I mean, because there was like I don't get the cliff notes of it, would be the d J got a software from Inslaw, they modified it and then sent it out and then I think their modifications didn't work super great, and so they said, oh, hey, Inslaw, you sold us some faulty stuff, so we're not actually going to pay you anymore. Yeah, we're not gonna pay you. And Inslaw said, no, no, you altered it, so yeah, we're not gonna guarantee your

alterations to it. And then that was the case, and of course, shockingly, the Supreme Court was like, oh yeah, no, absolutely the I don't think I think it to the Court of Appeals as far as it went, sorry, okay, so we're whatever court it made it too, shockingly the US run court to win. Oh what, no, the no, of course the government didn't do anything wrong. No, of course they didn't. You they don't know you anything. Yeah, well that's a good reason to not give these people

too much power. Huh. Yeah, Well, if if this kind of case really gets you going like it does YouTube. You got to do it because we both were like, this is going to be a episode if I do. If you this stuff really gets you going. Though there is tons of information out there about this case. It really it's super interesting, but it's it's huge. You can't see how accurate all that information is. Well, you know,

so there's more stuff, right, there's more stuff. Let's keep moving forward because we are only on step one of seven, so I supposed to invest gating besides okay, well yeah, let's let's before we get into the next link in the chain, I want to talk about one of Castleros sources, and that is a guy by the name of Michael J. Rekono Scuto, a k A. Danger Man. Can we just call him danger Man for the rest of the time. Well, it's notes, that's what he called him. We can call

him danger Man from here on. It's way easier to say. Okay, Well, danger Man was a whistleblower on the In's law case, and he surprisingly he is. He claimed on record that he was the one that had programmed the back door into Promise at the direction of the U. S. Government. And of course, you know Danny talks to him, and danger Man tells him a lot of things. Danger Man tells anyone who will listen to him a lot of things. He um, he says a lot of things with a

high degree of certainty. And uh, yeah, he he really knows what he's talking about, Like he is confident in the things that he says and shares. That's all you have to do to fool most people. Though, Well, here's here's problem. Um is he really he really really really really got Danny going on a lot of the things that he shared with him. Evidently they spent a lot of time talking. But as Joe said, uh, danger Man

is in jail. He went to jail. He was arrested eight days after coming forward as a witness in the End's law case. Uh. He was arrested for possession of methane, famine and methodone and was charged with ten different counts. Us set up. Obviously they're trying to keep him quiet. He says it was a setup. Um. Oh, by the way, just as a fun little bit of things that he's claimed he was he went to jail in the eighties. Okay,

he's been in there for a long time. He claimed that he had knowledge that nine eleven was gonna happen, and had had his lawyers reaching out to make contact with government agencies, but they didn't listen to it. Well, he made contact before, just before eleven months ahead. He needed, uh, nine eleven, what's gonna happen? Because how I don't know that. Nobody seems to know that. We don't know how he gets his information. He just seems to have a lot

of information something. Yeah, Okay, Well that's danger Man, and danger Man is going to come up a number of times in our story. So I wanted to bring him to everybody's attention. Let's uh, let's go to a completely different thing, which is the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians. They're a American Indians. They it's a their reservation is in California, and it's it's in your coach Coachella. Of course, it is all right, everybody's Riverside County. All you have

to do is find the white girls in weird rave wear. Okay, people probably know about this tribe of Indians in this country without knowing who this tribe of Indians are. And there's a really good reason for it. The in the nineteen eighties, the Cabazon and there's another tribe, the Morongo. I really hope I'm saying that right. They both they

were on a completely different reservation. They both had small bingo parlors on their land and the State of California came in and said, you are violating gambling laws and we are going to shut you down. And they said, screw you, this is our land. And that's exactly what they said. And they went to court and in nine seven, uh, they won against the State of California. And it wasn't too long after that that you started seeing Indian gaming

casinos pop up all over the United States. This is a weird thing because to me, that seems so ubiquitous because it's been around my entire life when I was When when I was a kid, they weren't he didn't see that stuff, so weird. It's weird. It's weird where I grew up, the casino starting just as I was graduating from high school, Like there was none of them there, and then all of a sudden, they were all over

that portion's totally weird. Yeah, because when we would drive, you know, to family vacations and things like that, we would pass a bunch of them and for me, it's just always been a thing. Yeah, it's weird. I guess they didn't realize it was that recent. It has this pretty recent. Yeah. According well, according to Ken Thomas, that's the guy who wrote the Octopus. That book he read. Yeah, boy,

that was a great book. According to him, the tribe was greatly influenced by outsiders, both before the case and after. And um, those outsiders kind of took control of the leaders of the tribal council. They got all the power and from from the notes that Danny Lepp, one of the people who was of interest was a guy by

the name of John Nichols. And according to danger Man, Nichols, who was involved doing all this stuff on the reservation was bringing international business associates to the reservation to talk business. I'm guessing illegal business. And I'm guessing because they were on sovereign land, they were okay to talk about illegal things. The reason for that, I don't, I don't understand it. I'm I'm gonna be very honest when it comes to the stuff that happens with this tribe on this reservation.

Based on the claims by Ken Thomas, I am a little dubious because I can't back them up anywhere else. I will tell you the things that I have read, but I cannot substantiate any most stuff. And again, this stuff, I believe it wasn't this stuff stuff that danger Man ak a told him. Yes, yeah, yeah. So this again, this is the source, is driving him to some strange links that he is then either making the connection of on his own or being told very directly that there's

a link. Well, they would be hard to substantiate too well. And if it's on sovereign land, I can kind of get that. I can also see when it's coming from Danger Man, it's hard to substantiate. But here's here's what's going on on the reservation according to Thomas. According to Thomas A trying, they were into Danny. According to danger Man, correct, it's a game of telephone. Okay, absolutely, Uh there were illegal dealings and I don't know exactly what those dealings were. Uh.

There was arms manufacturing. There was and this is evidently true. They were selling cigarettes by mail off the reservation, so there's no taxes, and they started to sell booze by mail without taxes until they got shut down for that. I like these guys. Uh, they set up a partnership with Wackenhut Corporation. It's why I'm pretty sure it's Wackenhut. Well, the this group is known for security work with just about everybody, and they also do security at prisons, so

they're so they're really upstanding gentlemen. Yeah, and it's a giant corporation that has just recently in the last five years been taken over by another corporation. And I went to their website. I was trying to do reading on them, like an image hosting site that had like some weird It is amazing how sanitize their website is like the whoever writes their stuff. It's great pr because I'm reading something here and going what that doesn't what These people

don't sound like those people at all. That they might not actually beat those people. They might not, You're right, but they probably are possibly. Well. The point about the tribe that really got really got Cassolero going was a murder. There was a gentleman by the name of fred Alvarez.

He and two other people were murdered. Ino Alvarez at the time was a tribal leader and again this is according to Kent Thomas, and he was killed because he wasn't supporting all of the changes that were taking place on the reservation and with the vibe based on the direction of Nichols. So he kind of tried to stand up to him and was killed for it is the line that I understand. But that was he on reservation

land when he was murdered, I believe. So, yeah, because I got to say, I mean Riverside Counties in southern California, So of course he was killed. Well, um, yeah, no, it did it? Uh did happen? I'm pretty sure it did happen on there. But but the point is this whole thing with the reservation can't substantiate any of it. But I'm going to tell you about it because you will. You will read about it in different places. We're going to move forward to the next step in the puzzle. Yeah,

I'm a little off the reservation on this particular. We're gonna go to the next one, which I know, if we don't control him, Joe is probably going to have a field day with and that October surprise. People may or may not have heard of the October Surprise. And let me let me give you the basics on this nine. It's seventy nine and the US embassy in Tehran is

stormed by revolutionaries. Familiar, they were students, the revolutionaries. It was the Iranian revolution which began in like October eight. But then the people who ran overund the embassy were students, right, but it's more radical for the revolution. But it is part of the revolutionary day technically revolution American diplomats are taken hostage at this time and the it's November nine

is the exact day. Seriously, this sounds so familiar. Well, that is probably because you're familiar with the story because of the movie Argo. Yeah, Argo something yourself, which I don't know, why is it. I always have references the Ben Affle like movie. You just like him? Yeah? Okay,

you keep talking about Batman versus Superman. Okay, Well, so these people have been taken hostage, and this is where the surprise eyes portion of the story comes in because if you remember US history, you will know that was a presidential election year and Jimmy Carter was running against that silly actor Ronald Ray who is California well, in a bid to stop Carter from pulling the political version of a rabbit out of a hat. According to the

conspiracy of the October surprise. What the Reagan campaign does is they get ahold of the the Iranians and they say, hey, don't release those people no matter what. And that way he can't Carter can't come out as the hero. And since the election at the end, which would be in October, which would make an October surprise, I guess I would

not to yeah, go ahead on lean into it. I guess the argument there would be then that Reagan was already selected by if we're talking about it, there's like this weird octopus octopus thing, right, that the octopus had already selected that Reagan was going to be president, and there were more supported Carter so much they were willing to yes. But but it's the same thing either way.

But I mean, these alleged contacts between the Reagan campaign didn't take place until I mean, they didn't start right after the hostages received We're talking like, you know, late summer, when it was when it was clear that if Carter was able to negotiate the release that he would become presidents. Here would be he would Here's the thing is that Carter probably would not have been reelected even if the

hostages have been freed. If they'd been freed early on, then yeah, but the hot but this thing drug on and on, right, But I just mean that the theory is that, yeah, if if Carter had that, that's that's the basis of the October surprise. Serious that if the hostages had been freed, let's say in October then or months beforehand, yeah, well a month before something like, yeah exactly.

But now he would not have been I'm pretty sure because because here's the deal, Carter almost certainly wouldn't have been reelected anyway, because the thing about it is is that the hostages are free, but that doesn't make the whole The thing about it is is graded on the American people very much. That this thing went on and on and Carter was not able to do anything about it. It did. Yeah, and you know, you could argue that

his hands were kind of tired. That's fair, but the you know, the hostage thing doesn't just go away if the hostages are released. The other thing is is the economy was in the crapper. The Iranian revolution had caused had caused oil production to drop worldwide, which had caused oil prices and gas prices to go up. There were shortages, there were gas lines of gas stations. In the year, the average inflation rate was thirteen point five percent. Unemployment

was really high. Carter, No, not gonna win that election now. And but here's the deal. If you want to read some really good research about the October Surprise theory, read a book called Guests of the Aetola by Mark Bowden, who you may have You may have heard of one of his books, at least he wrote black Hawk Down. Yeah, great book, by the way, and Guests of the Aetola

is really good too. And he wanted Iran and he interviewed tons of people, officials and a lot of the students that there were hostage shakers and everything, and he asked them about the October Surprise and they all laughed. They all just said, no, our motivation was not anything to do with the Reagan campaign. Our motivation was we really hated Carter's guts. No, and it and it's it's not it's not rational in their part, but for them, this is Bowden's words. For for those people, Carter was

the personification of the Great Satan. For that reason, they hated him so much that they held out of the hostages until inauguration day when Reagan was inaugurated, they let the hostages go because it was a final insult to Carter, a final thumb in his And last of all, they really loved the idea before and after the election. They really loved the idea that they were the force that was toppling the leader of the free world, and they

kind of got them. They really liked that idea. There's I think there's yeah, there's definitely something to be said for movements in general, the people who are on the ground, the boots on the ground, saying like, no, we're empowered

by this thing. But if there's something that is managing to control the way that those boots on the ground are viewing whatever issue they're protesting or whatever, I think oftentimes that it's not recognized, right, So it's totally possible that in situations right you would be like, well, that's not our motivation at all. It was this thing. But it was like, well, but where did you hear that it was that thing? Look, look's I'm not look confused.

So so you're saying they were confused when they thought. No, I'm not saying that they specifically were confused. I just

mean in general, those movements. It's very interesting to watch how the boots on the ground, people who are actually doing the protesting and the holding and all that stuff are influenced by You have the impression in your brain as one of those people, because I've been one of those people who say, you know, where there's it's just this is the movement and we're there that you're operating

under versus the belief of the actual group. Is that where you're having I guess I'm saying all lost, It's okay, I'm saying that the people who are doing the thing, who are acting out the movement, very often are influenced

by some overarching something. And right now it's really easy to kind of say, well, it's the social media movement, but there's often the really loud voices of people who are more yeah, the spokespeople almost of that movement that are that influence where that movement goes and what focus it takes. And it's always really interesting to look, even before social media, where those influences came from, and how they may not be as pristine as many people think

they are. Is where did that clarify at Interestingly about the students, the government itself that eventually came out on top was Islamist and and but the students themselves are actually left wingers for the most part, they were. They were kind of socialist types and everything. And but there they were united with the Islamists and hating the Shaw

and the show. Yeah, and of course united in hating Americans, even though actually they treated the hostages reasonably, not perfectly, but they better than we treat them often they Yeah, I mean it's not like it's not like they killed anybody, you know, and and so and uh and actually let one guy go because he was sick. I'm just yeah. So my argument is phrasing it kind of in this broader conspiracy that we're talking about in the Octopus, that it would be really easy for an octopus agent to

influence the movement itself. So let's let's move forward before we get too far off on this, because the point is that for the theory or the of the October Surprise, it is, of course, as we've said that you know, Reagan was involved, or the Reagan administration in some version was involved and negotiated with them to not let the hostages go until it was all done. And the proof

that is approaching people who believe in this theory. Is that, as you said, when they got let go, because the hostages were let go on the twentieth of January, which

is also a lecture orderation day in the United States. Yeah, and that's and that's and that's one thing that kind of actually shoots a hole in the whole October surprised thing, because if the Reagan campaign it approached them and just said, hey, just hang on to him, just that just after election day and then you can do whatever you want, then they probably would have let them go, because here's the deal.

And then Bowden talks about this again in his book Guests of the I told in case you didn't hear it the first time he talks about this, he said, the students actually, by the time the election was approaching, they were actually getting kind of sick of being prison guards. They were not they were not that thrilled with it anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

the newness was wearing off of it. And also the Iranian is really badly wanted some spare parts because they had a lot of US planes, for example, work planes and stuff, and we were obviously we're not We're not giving them those spare parts, and so they had some motivation to actually let the hostages go earlier than they did. The only possible explanation for them holding the hostages until January twenty was purest bite towards Carter. That is the

only possible explanation. Let's move forward, yes, because we have another big one. Oh yeah, We're gonna move to the next thing, which is actually connected to the October surprise. Oh my god. Connected according to the theories, it's connected to the October surprise. Let me let me clarify that way. Okay, okay, next thing we're talking about is the Iran contra affair. Most I really, I hope. I think most people know about this to one degree or another. I do not.

That's why I know it because I grew up with that phrase, and I used that phrase. You ever want to get it as a kid in high school in the nineties, if you wanted to get in trouble, you use that phrase. Because I used to use that as my way out all the time, and I got into a lot of trouble for it. Okay, so let me should I send this I thought that I can do it pretty concisely. Yeah, yeah, okay because I remember it. Yeah,

you go for yeah, okay. Yeah. So the Ranians after the hostage crisis, they managed to contrive to get some more American hostages. I think they bought most of them have been kidnapped in Lebanon, I think, and they just bought them basically and had them shipped to Iran literally in boxes, and they were holding these guys. Meantime, in in South and South or Central America and Nicaragua, the

Sandinistas came to power. They were a bunch of communists, and then an opposition group of rose called which we're called the Contras, which we're you know, basically freedom fighters, an insurgency against them. And so the Reagaan administration wanted to get the hostages back. And of course, even though ostensibly they had a no negotiations, no ransom policy for that kind of thing. Of course, government's usually honored those only about part of the time, you know, not all

the time. And so they figured out a sneaky way. The r audience were under an arm in arms embargo, so we sold them arms and in order to and also to get our hostages back. So they got they got guns, we've got money in hostages and then the funds were diverted to the contras in Central America. So that was the whole thing. A little bit of illegality, but you know, I mean they were trying to get the hostages back and all that stuff, and so it

was scandalous, you know. But and the way in what people do is they say what we talked about in October Surprise. People say that the Reagan campaign negotiated some kind of future payoff. That's what the payoff was. They're saying, well, what happened in the Around Contra affair, that was the payoff, So it proves it anymore that it actually doesn't prove it though it doesn't because we want to point out here this is this is an important point so that

people don't get confused. At the time of Cassolero's death, the Iron contrafair was basically done it over with, so it's not as it's its outcome had already happened, so he knew about that. What hadn't happened was the officially you're gonna love this, don't don't freak out devon the official government investigation into the October Surprise, which officially said that there was officially no official conspiracy officially officially, but

that could also be the octopus at work. I just love it when a government body comes out and says, oh, no, we didn't do anything right, because that's essentially what we're saying, right, We're saying that this government body came out and said, this government body didn't do anything wrong. Yeah, but of course there were so many. Here's a problem with the October surprises. As Joe said, the facts don't substantiated, that we're bogus. Yeah, we need to keep going. No. One

last thing. Uh. The the actual October surprise theory originated with a guy named Gary Sick, who was a former adviser to Gimme Carter. Do you think perhaps this guy might have had an abstagrind but yeah, and so. But also the idea that that they were probably the Iranians were promised some sort of quid pro quo by the Reagan campaign. Well that's absurd because why would the Reagan administration bother to keep their promise. They don't need to

nations break their promises all the time. Then, so their motivation obviously they wanted to get the hostages back, and they wanted to get some strengths for your cash to give to their buddies. Of contrast, that's that's more than enough motivation, right there. Shall we move to the next link in the chain here? This one's kind of boring. This one's boring. It'll be easy. Then we are going to now move on to the Bank of Credit and

Commerce International. Great name, really really exciting basics. Sexy. Joe would say it's a sexy name in his Hunt for the Octopus. This is one of the things that Danny came across. B c c I was a international bank. It was found in nineteen seventy two. Within ten years, it was worth over twenty billion US had four hundred or over four hundred branches. They were in seventy seven or seventy eight countries. They were the seventh largest bank

in the world. They're frigging hue. That's not that's not nothing. Well, they came under scrutiny in the eight is because there was some concerns that maybe they weren't actually properly being regulated. It's like they raised to the seventh most popular bank in the world in ten years, which is very strange.

That's strange when you got all this octopus money flowing into Well, that's the thing is that the investigations into b c c I found that there was a massive money laundering and a ton of other financial crimes being committed and somehow, and it's it's described as illegally, but I didn't actually do enough reading on b c c I to know what the illegal part was, because this is financial stuff that is a little above my pay grade.

But somehow they illegally gained control or controlling interest, I should say, in a major US bank. The point is they were looked at, they were investigated. On the fifth of July, regulators and law enforcement, Uh, they raided the bank's locations in seven different countries all at once and seized everything and locked him down. So this is U Danny Castilera. How far did he progress in his investigation of b c c I. The well, the lockdown b

c c I happened, Well, that happened in July. Danny died in August, so it was two months before he died. Before he died in AUGUSTU August, oh, it is one month. I really can you can't, wow. But the point is he had he had been looking into them, and he was making a lot of again this is the octopus, a lot of connections to some shady things. Was he making those connections? There was kind of Scioto making those dah Man, you know, I can't I don't know how much of it came from danger Man or how much

of it at least started with him. There have been allegations by unnamed source, unnamed sources who was quoted as saying that they were the go the b c c I was the go to location for people who wanted expensive, slash illegal things and for them to be connected to people who had those things. They were the conduit. And it's claimed that like Oliver North, part of the contra money money went through b c c I. Um, there are claims that Saddam Hussein used them, um, Abu Nadal

used them. Like there's there's some there's some big claims to say anything. People were funneling money through them. But I I it's such a crazy, crazy case. Again, this is just like the other ones. It's way too big to go into all the details. Yeah, um yeah, so bcc I. It's kind of an interesting case in and

of itself. They're all like every single facet of this is kind of an interesting case in and of itself, which it's frustrating, but in a way it's um It's funny is that the bank, at least on the outside, looks like the most boring aspect of it, because who cares.

It's a bank that did some bad things and they got busted, Except that when you get look at it from the perspective of where we're investigating the octopus, it could be that they were instrumental in setting up They were instrumental in its spread, increasing the right palms for them to be able to do the things they did to then find the clients on one or both end

to get the money trades. Like there's suddenly all these avenues that open up that this dirty bank could have been involved with, and it all could have been the thanks to the octopus. The octopus. But here's the here's the reason I don't believe any of that, is that the octopus could easily prevented the bank being investigated and shut down if they had that kind of power. So that's unless unless the bank had ceased to be useful in one way or the other. Either there was something

wrong because like one of the two founders of the bank. Uh, he ran and then subsequently killed himself when the when everything got shut down. I get the feeling that he may have been a bit um what's the word I'm looking for, Not a loose cannon. But he was a little, a little embalanced. He was a bit of a trouble, you know, like this guy could be a problem, so we should probably do this. He was found another way to do it all. They may have found a way to do it all under the radar, so they didn't

need it anymore. Like, you got to be careful in saying, well, you know, with these things, because there's a whole host of ways that could have been. It's also hard as soon as you start being able to say, like, well, this public thing happened, and it was connected to this bank, and then this public thing happened it was connected to this bank. As soon as those right coincidences start coming into play, I think that any smart shadow organization is going to say, I shut it down. We can't do

that anymore. I can't do that. That's true. But when they when they shut it down and seize their assets, what were their assets specifically, I don't know, but again I know that they their assets were worth billion US at some point. At some point, well there was in eight in the early eighties. He was boxes not much today, but it was real money back in those days. So yeah, I mean, that's the way to tell if this was

actually an octopus assets. If the books have been cooked and everything has been embezzled and essentially all the assets are gone when the bank is busted and there's only maybe a hundred million bucks laft at that, well there you know it was the octopus. There's twenty million bucks sitting there ssb sized. Well, it wasn't the occupus unless unless the US government is under the purview of the octopus. They read it, could they look shady? You see the

feedback loop. That really difficult. But there are there's so many other things I want to talk about right now. There are a bunch more things that are in Castlero's notes of connections that he's made. We are, not, however, going to go through them all. I'm just going to list them out for you, really fast, talking fast. We have been over an hour already, so it is we've got to kind of get close herein According to either Danny Cassolero or Ken Thomas, depending on who made that

particular link. We have the Watergate scandal and Nixon's outing as something that the octopus was responsible fort or ousting. Ousting would be correct. Nixon's outing he had a picnic baskets on the lawn. It was a great day. There's another kind of outing to okay, well, we can move on. There is and I really hope I pronounced this correctly, But there's the dismissal of the Australian Prime Minister go Whitlam. We have the well, potentially, according to this, maybe the

revolution in Iran that outed the Shaw outed ousted. You know what, The Shaw went out, he went out for a night on the town. Joe his ousting. There is the murder of the Chilean President Salvador Allende, the assassination of US President Kennedy. There is man There's all kinds of reported shenanigans on the Papago Indian Reservation, uh anywhere, from c i A drug smuggling to golden platinum smuggling to a lot of weird stuff. But then then the list starts to get even crazier, because then we get

area fifty one. We have the Human Genome Project, and we have the death of Princess Diana. I didn't know when we did that episode. Yeah, we know, we might have solved it. But this is how you know that the octopus is real, because they've actually put up a bunch of web pages and they keep grabbing these these all these accusations in tacking on lunear and lunear and lunear things, and so it's got to be the octopus. Well here's this, or it could be just random d

bags on the internet. Yeah, I do. I do have to say that in any good conspiracy theory, if you've got a secret cabal, that is an operation, you have to have a bunch of people who die under mysterious circumstances, and Danny can't be the only one. And indeed there are a good number that are pointed to. Okay, let's do it. Okay. We have a journalist by the name of Anson ng. He was a reporter. He was he

was shot and killed while he was in Guatemala. He was trying to track out a guy named Jimmy Hughes. Jimmy Hughes was actually connected to the Kabazon Indian Reservation. Shot in the chest, it was ruled a suicide. Sure not, probably not the first choice for suicidal people. But you know guy named Jonathan Moyle. He was an editor for

Defense Helicopter World, which was a magazine. He was found hanging in a wardrobe in his hotel room with a pillow case over his head in March of Initially, the death was ruled a suicide, even though there was blood on his bed and a needle mark in his leg. Eight years later it was ruled a murder. We have Alan Standorf. His Standoffs job was to oversee security measures at vent Hill, which is described as a listening post um. It would monitor radio communications. He went home for the holidays.

In one for the Christmas holiday, left his family went home and was found dead in the backseat of his car at the airport on the fourth of January two. He died from blunt force trauma to the back of his head. That was ruled a suicide, right, I believe it was ruled suicide or they just had no no leads. I feel listing our next twenty episodes, well I don't

have twenty people. Thankfully we have Larry Garon. Larry was a private investigator who worked for Danger Man and was killed in seven while he was investigating the ins Law case. It's according to danger Man himself. Well, no, I believe that it is known. Because he was a p I. It was known that he was looking into the ins law case. But his death, we don't really know what the deal was. We have another guy by the name

of Paul Wilcher. Wilcher was a lawyer who who died in you see it called disputed circumstances on a regular basis. He died in disputed circumstances a month after he wrote a letter to the then newly appointed U. S. Attorney General Janet Reno. He was saying that the CIA was killing people to cover up its mind control experiments and that Waco was the incident that happened in Waco, Texas was one of those events. The point here is he wrote this letter and he said Waco was a cover up.

On the twenty three of June, he was found dead in his apartment. He was tied in a fetal position. Um oh. And by the way, he also he also had as a lawyer represented Danger Man, as well as another guy who was a pilot who said that he had flown George H. W. Bush to his meeting for setting up the October Surprise. Last guy on the list

is Ian Spiro. Spiro possibly. I don't see any exact stuff on this, but he had worked for both the CIA and the British Intelligence and he's alleged to have worked on or with the campaign for October Surprise, and the and the Iran contra affair. Oh and the the Lebanon hostage crisis. Oh and uh. He also talked to Danger Man, so he has a lot of connections. Well. His wife, his son, and his daughters were found shot

to death on the fifth of October. Four days later, he was found dead behind the wheel of his suv. He died of cyanide poison. Yeah, that's not suspicious at all. No, that's obvious murder suicide. Okay, So, ladies and gentlemen, that is a the story of Danny Casilero and the octopus, and the octopus and a bunch of the pieces that are claimed to have linked the octopus to the death of Danny. I'm not quite seeing all the connections there. So we we have a we have two simple theories,

and our theories are only focused on Casilero. We're not going to go into the octopus, because that I think we've done enough of We're going to just talk about the two theories, which is either a he did kill himself or be he did not, which means somebody else did right well, the first thing that people will turn to in the theory that he killed himself, that he committed suicide is that he had money problems and he

wasn't doing that great financially. Like I said before, he sold his interest in the magazine pretty early and could have gotten a lot more money had he waited longer. He might have been a little depressed about that. Huh. Possibly he also had written a book which was not a seller. In other words, he was not really making any money off of that book. But then again, his family had money, so he could have probably got some

help with from his family. You know. The thing about it is is he don't know how often he's gone to his family for help in the past. He might like just really not relish the idea of going back yet again. I never want to ask my family for money. There are things that you will find about him. He had they they found out in the through the medical examination the autopsy, they found out that he had multiple sclerosis.

And he evidently had been given a diagnosis of that prior to it sounds like at least six months prior to his death. It also sounds like he had a very very mild case of it. But you will see that pointed to as a reason for him to have decided to end his life. It's a very minor, minor

case though. But we also have things that we talked about before, which is there was nothing in his system of any significant amount in terms of drugs or alcohol, which kind of really deals a serious blow to the theory that somebody else did him because did him in because you would think that they would have easy route drugged him or got him drunk so that he was incapacitated and couldn't fight back. Yeah, because that's that's the whole thing. That there's no marks on his body, no

signs of a struggle all. Of course, if they'd been a struggle, they could have straightened things up. I suppose a bit more than left. And then it's hard also, sorry with the plastic bags, if you think, you know, they kind of strangled him almost I don't know how extensive the autopsies were. And if if you were just strangled him until he passed out and then cut his wrists and then left. You know, you would think, but he would he would have struggled back. He plastic bag

over the head, for example. I'll buy that. But there there's gonna be bruises, there's gonna be mark from where somebody gripped his arms and hold them down so that they can hold the bag on his head. Here's the other problem, and this is one of the things that is a major, major mark against the fact that he was killed by somebody else. And that is the investigation that was done and the into the scene in the bathroom, they pathology I think it was. I want to say

it's a pathologist. This guy name I can never remember and I've had a hard time finding his stuff. But basically, they gave all this information to a crime scene investigator and said, look at the blood spray, look at where everything is. And this guy went through and he said, oh yeah, it's pretty obvious that nobody else was there because there was no void, there was no no no shadows in the blood splatter spatter, which means nobody was

standing there to catch that spraying liquid. Now, the weird thing about that guy is that he worked for the octopus. No, there is there is some point in the scene. I think it's the towels on the floor that was not initially given to him and in all of the description of the scene that he got. And it's the weirdest thing is that as soon as he found out about the towels, he retracted the whole thing. I didn't have

all the information. That can't be a correct I can't stand behind what I said because I can't say that it's right, because it's just it's how exactly the towels negate his his observation that there were no shadows. I don't freaking no, I don't get well, okay in fairness right, And maybe it's from a professional stance. I don't want to I don't want to make this clay and yeah, but I guess it's you know again, they're they aren't

really crime scene photos. I haven't gone out to see, but it seems reasonable that there would be a place that one could stand that wouldn't create a shadow, that

would just make blood free. It's not like it's a three and sixty you would have to because in the tub under the water if Yeah, because he's talking like blood spatter not just on the walls but on the floor too, right, So I would I would guess that the towels had something to do with where the blood would have reasonably flowed and how saturated the towels would have been. Really, really would be my guess, if I

had to guess why he would retract that. But you know, the other hand is of maybe he just on a professional courtesy, was like, oh, I didn't actually have all the information. I'm not comfortable doing this anyway a thing.

I mean, it almost I almost got the impression that I mean, I don't know about you, but from the way we've described it, I'm sure a lot of people are thinking, well, he did the deed in the top, but it almost gave me the impression that he did at least the initial cuts while not in the tub, and then kind of had that if you ever done this, you start to make a mess and you have that

initial panic off. I got to at least kind of stem this and clean it up, and tried to clean it up and then realize the foolishness of what he was doing, and then just went ahead and gotten the tub and hung out like he might have been out of the bath standing somewhere in the bathroom when he had did at least one or two of the number one just standard thing that you hear in conjunction with with suicides, as people instantly regretting it and trying to

remedy it. Right, So maybe he was trying to apply pressure or or something. But the other thing that I keep questioning is like, realistically, how much spray are you going to get with cutting your wrists? Like how far up the wall can you reasonably expect spray to go? I don't know. I know that if you hit an heartary or you hit a vein correctly, I know that you can that that blood will flow or spray quite

a disk like a juggular or something. But I just don't know if the blood flow in your wrist necessarily is like going to be spraying Like I don't I don't want to get I don't know about it. I mean I can think about like if you're clenching your fist or something. I mean, there's there's some ways that it possibly could go, but I don't know. I'm not sure.

But you know, as far as the suicide theory goes, I would have to say that considering all all the other murders that the octopus has been accused of, this is kind of the most undane. So it's kind of it's the most subtle. It's the only one where they really bothered to try to cover their tracks, I orre to believe those other ones. So we're looking at here, shot in the chest, shot in the chest, hung that had needle marksh in his leg. It was real murders,

shot tied up in a field position. It looks the most like an actual suicide. Yeah, why did it take trouble for Danny Castle. Here's the other thing that leans towards the fact that he he probably did commit suicide for this theory. When we're in this theory, is that Mike Looney, he was in the room adjacent on one side and there was a family on in the room on the other side of him. Nobody reported any noise. There was no I mean, after the fact, when investigators

came to him, nobody's like, you know, it's weird. It sounded like somebody fell out of the bathroom or something like. None, none of that. Nothing. That the family was probably like a family of octopus assassins, just mom, dad, female and then and then a dwarf assassin a little, small, small octopus. Yes, let's move on to the other side of the theory,

which is that the octopus killed Danny um. Well, we talked about the money problems thing, and again it seems a little weird that his family could have helped him out. But we've talked about this. We talked about this earlier. Is that the cuts in his wrist were so deep that it doesn't seem like somebody could have continued on after one or two of them unaided. That does give people the idea that he did it himself, or that

he couldn't done it himself. Excuse me, I have and I don't mean to sound like an a hole here, but I do have a problem with the note that he left. It's only five lines long, and it's kind of written in a prose style the way it's broken up, But if you read any of his writings that way, it's not the guy personally. I think he took way too many words to make a point. So I really feel like he would have written much more about why

he was doing what he was doing. But of course, at the same sign, if he was actually suicidal, he was not in a normal state of mind exactly. That's very true. The other thing that is weird about his suicide note is that he makes a very direct reference

to God. Casslero was Roman Catholic, but he wasn't. He wasn't really religious, wasn't a big deal in a lot in his life, and a lot of the people that knew him didn't didn't understand why he would make a reference to God in his suicide note that God is going to let him in because for all intents and purposes, operated without a care towards that. What do you do you know? If his family was particularly religious, it sounds like some of them were and some of them weren't.

What about his son, He had drifted and I don't know about his son, to be honestly, again, his son, his son is one of the hardest ones to find anything. Yeah, really, I mean not that I tried to pursue that, but I never really saw a lot of them. So I think the explanation for the God thing is that obviously, if you kill yourself, you're a Catholic, and you kill yourself, you're right. And so it might have been his way of saying, hey, family, I don't worry about me. I

think God's gonna let me in. Yeah, it's gonna be okay, it's gonna yeah. I think I might have been. I don't know. It's it's weird. I this is another one of those that I'm just kind of I'm not But he killed himself, well, I really I agree with Joe. I sadly think that he killed himself and for reasons

that I don't understand. I guess that's for me. It's the big question mark that adds that component of he was murdered is that, like, I literally cannot find a single thing that makes me think that he was suicidal. That is the problem that there's people that kill themselves all the time. We had no idea that there was

anything wrong. And I understand your of thinking that he's murdered, because there is always, especially when we're dealing with a conspiracy like this, there's always that thought that they were good enough that there was a shadow and they brought a catchup bottle full of matching blood type or they sprayed it on the left. Would have been so hard to get his blood it was pouring out of him. I mean, there's a lot of there's a. I mean,

we we could talk about all of that stuff. There's a lot of ways that it could go, but that is a that is a hell of a reach. Is consider that these guys were not very subtle in their other murders, right, and so we're busy like running multi national you know, laundering scheme. Right. So we're talking only about that suicide, right, We're not talking about if thought

post is really or not. Well, this is a different thing, Okay, I'll be honest with you, And I think I think Joe is probably gonna be on the same page as I am, because I know we've talked about this on this podcast before. I think that an organization of the size and complexity that it is purported to be is impossible, you can, Okay, that's that's a perfect thing to add in because people are loudmouth idiots, and while they may be able to do something, they would not all of

them be a will to do it in secret. So I personally think that at least at the scale that it's said to be, the octopus isn't real. Maybe it is a very small little group that has a lot of influences that does small things, but nowhere near the scale interesting. Yeah, and also the inter relation between all these different things. It's not it is not at all clear to me. Oh you mean like Princess Die and all of that. I will point the finger right back

at at Kent Thomas for that. I really think. I really think that he got near the end of his book and said, oh crap, I have a word count to meet. Let's pull something else in. Yeah, that's yeah. You obviously have an opinion on the Oh no, I just think I'm curious what it is actually at this point. I just you know, I watched my method of research on this with a lot of YouTube videos into my life right now, um, and I was watching a number of YouTube videos and there were some that were even

referencing these movies. I think you watched this as well. This one movie that was made in nineteen forty six that was talking about global business powers. Eight global business powers that really run everything is still one of it, right, So I think, you know, when we run into things like this, I'm you know, I have a hard time going the full government conspiracy theory route, but I am willing to go the there are there are powers in our world that run our lives that we may not

be totally aware of totally willing to go there. So that's kind of where my hesitation comes in. I'm not fully tin hat on this guy, but I'm also like, I've got tinfoil in my drawer that I'm really to pull out if need be. Well, you gotta keep some of that stuff around. But so that's that's where that kind of comes in for me, that like, I'm not willing to say that any or all of this stuff is conspiracy stuff. I'm not even willing to say the

octopus is real, but I do I don't know. There might be something like it, There might be something similar to it, and it may not be as nefarious or consciously nefarious as we want to assume. But definitely there are things that run our lives that we don't know about. Well, probably I think that most I think the most likely Danny was probably being fed most of the stuff by danger man A K. A. Ricciotto. Yeah, he's amazing with

the things that he said. It really is, and I think that I don't think he was murdered because if he was, if he in his research were such a threat to the octopus, then they obviously would have found his notes and gotten rid of them. They didn't do that. They didn't bother. I mean, here they go, this guy is such a danger to them that the engineer this perfect murder that looks so much like a suicide, and they don't bother to go find all of his notes

and information and destroy that, destroyed that stuff. Yeah, yeah, they didn't. Yeah, that's a good point. So I think I think it was a suicide. Yeah, it's sad that suicide. No, No, I'm not either sadly I doing all of the research

that I did. It's I kind of feel like maybe he went down a track that he shouldn't have gone trapped down, and that was not a good move for him personally, I guess, not from any outside And the other thing that we're not necessarily discussing is that the possibility that he killed himself because someone from an organization said, hey, we know what you're doing, stopped doing that, or you know,

threatened or whatever. And again, like, it's not I wouldn't say that that's a reasonable assumption to you know, and I will I had the very same thought process I had that he committed suicide under duress, somebody prompted him to do it, we're going to murder your family. But I got to be honest with you. If if somebody said, Steve, you have to commit suicide or we're going to kill everyone you know, I would probably do it. But you know what else I would do. I would get blitzed

in the process. I would be so loaded. Yeah, well I don't know, so that I wouldn't to try and make sure I don't feel anything anything. He was not in that position at all in terms of things that he'd ingested. I guess I wasn't assuming the like, Steve, you have to kill yourself, or I'd be like, hey, Steve, we know what you're doing and if you keep doing it,

you were going to kill your family. So like printer attraction for everything you've ever do you know that you would be in that kind of moral quandary of well do I I don't know. I know where you're going. So but the thing about it is is that if you're if you're in that sort of situation, if I was anyway, I would be writing a letter or two to my family last and saying, hey, don't believe my suicide note. But didn't he say that? Didn't he say? At one point if something happens to me, don't buy it.

Don't believe that he did say that to his brother. He didn't say that, but I'm just saying, but I mean he might have. He might have. Actually, he might have been just joking around. Well, I mean, whether the guys. There's a million ways, and we could keep hashing out a bazillion little what ifs, but I think instead I need to do we wrap it up now. It's gone on for too long. I think I think that Danny

committed suicide. Final verdict. Okay, so you are more than welcome to tell us what your theory is, both in relation to the death of Danny Castelero u oh, and you know whether danger Man is telling the truth and what the heck even if the octopus really exists, you can do that you are the octopus, give us a call. If you are the octopus, please stay away from here. He email address email addresses Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. I tell you that because well, I'm afraid

that you're going to hurt us. But they already know our email address, so we're kind of you know everything about us. They're outside the door right now. We have this episode and all episodes on our website, along with links to some of our research, which that website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. We're on social media, so we're on Twitter at Thinking Sideways or Thinking Sideways without the g uh. And we're also on Facebook so you can find us. You can like us and join the group. Again,

don't be sending us friends requests. We want you to go to the group because that's where all the good stuff happens, as well as the regular page we are. We're on ron iTunes. I was gonna I'm trying figureut where Elsten ron iTunes, so you can listen to us on iTunes. You can download us on iTunes. If you do, please take the time to leave a moment and a rating. I checked us out the other day and we just keep moving up into the main banks of the ratings, so it is awesome to see us get that high

up there. What we're doing good, okay good. By the time this episode comes out, what I've seen today will be completely different. So we're we're way up there in there. We are also going to be on just about every streaming service at this point, so whatever service should prefer to use your welcome to look for us. You're probably gonna find the feed in there. We have the subreddit, which Devin again, what is this? Okay, thank you? I

never can I don't know. I still understand. Two weeks later, I still get it as going on there these days just discussions and stuff. Yeah, so there's discussions of episodes and other things. But that is in Reddit. If you're a Reddit union user or you would like to be a Reddit user, that's a good place to go. We uh we are also on Patreon. So if you and you like what we do with the podcast asked and you enjoy it and you would like to contribute, you're

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in U per episode. We love you, guys Afraid the expenses, it really does. Yeah, well that is all that we've got for housekeeping, and that is all that we have on Danny Cassilero. And there's there's more out there. There's much to be said, but I don't think there's any point. Well there's no there's point, but there's a lot to be said. But I think that we're going to try and keep this as concise as we can, and we're

gonna go ahead and wrap this up. So thank you everybody for going through what turned out to be much longer of an episode than I expected, and we will talk to you next week. Hale hydra, hal hydra, did you say hale hydra? Hale hydra. Okay,