The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro
Danny Casolaro was a journalist who worked for a small computer magazine in the 1980s. One day, his boss suggested that he write an article about the PROMIS software that had been put out by a company called Inslaw. PROMIS was basically database software that was designed to make it easier for lawyers to cross reference different cases and suspects. It was extremely powerful stuff in comparison to what came before it, and the United States Department of Justice bought the software. Some very sketchy dealings went down, and essentially the DOJ stole the software, edited it and began selling the edited version to other governments. The edited version was hacked so that the US government would be able to monitor what the new users were using it for.
Danny Casolaro started looking into the shady dealings regarding the PROMIS software, and the contacts and discoveries he made during this research led him into far shadier dealings. The guys who were responsible for stealing the PROMIS software were also involved in a bunch of other major political scandals. The guy who they had edit the PROMIS software, a very strange man named Michael Riconosciuto, also designed weapons and explosives for an arms company named Wackenhut on the lands of the Cabazon Tribe in California. Wackenhut was a bizarrely sketchy company set up by ex-high ranking FBI men, and its whole sordid history is worth looking into, but the events on the Cabazon land were really wild. Wackenhut basically took over the Cabazon’s land because there would be less interference from authorities on Native American reservation land. The organizers of this takeover murdered anyone who got in their way. When Michael Riconosciuto came out to publically denounce these events, he was immediately put in prison on drug charges.
The more Danny looked into this stuff, the more links he saw with other scandals, and he concluded that a small group of men were involved in Watergate, the October Suprise, The Iran Contra Affair, the collapse of BCCI, and several other scandals, potentially including the assassination of JFK and the cover-up of aliens. Danny named this conspiracy the Octopus because it had so many arms reaching in different directions.
After years of researching “The Octopus”, Danny went to West Virginia to meet with a mysterious individual who was supposedly going to give him some damning proof of the conspiracy. Before leaving on this trip, he warned his brother that he had been getting death threats and that if anything happened to him, that it would not be an accident. After a couple of days in West Virginia, he was found dead in a bathtub with his wrists badly slit. All of his research materials were missing. His family and friends found it very difficult to accept the idea that he had killed himself, especially after finding out that his body had been embalmed before an autopsy could be carried out. Many people believe that Danny was murdered for getting too close to the truth.
I’ve come across this story quite a few times over the last few years. I watched the Netflix documentary when it came out, and in truth, I did not learn very much from reading Thomas and Keith‘s book. A lot of it is actually very boring. The authors spend a lot of time hammering home cases that show that various government agencies are corrupt. Reading this kind of thing in 2026 is redundant. The US government doesn’t even try to hide that stuff anymore. Also, I’ve read quite a few books by these authors, and while I don’t buy many of their claims, their writings convinced me of the US government’s absolute mastery of disinformation campaigns. (Fred Crisman was a friend of Michael Riconosciuto.)
Casolaro may not have known exactly what was going on, but he was on the right track. There are rich and powerful men at work in America who rig things for their own advantage. The first edition of this book came out in 1996, and while there are plenty of new scumbags on the scene, quite a few of the degenerates discussed in this book are still kicking about. Donald Trump shows up briefly to buy a yacht off his buddy Adnan Khashoggi, a guy who famously sent a bunch of weapons to the Iranians. Haha. Robert Maxwell, father of child trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, also shows up in relation to the PROMIS software. He was giving it out to American nuclear facilities to get information for Israel’s nuke program. Another Israeli that shows up in here is Ari Ben-Menashe. Now this is just one name from hundreds that show up in this book, but it popped out at me because I had only recently been reading about this individual. At a recent event, Ari Ben-Menasche claimed that Jefferey Epstein had been recruited as an Israeli intelligence asset by Robert Maxwell. Maxwell had strong ties with Mossad. Apparently Epstein collected dirt on many influential people, including Donald Trump, to use as leverage in the future. Menasche claims that the Israeli prime minister has those materials relating to Donald Trump and that he is threatening to release them unless Trump does what he says with Iran. Honestly, it’s hard not to believe this given what’s happening in the world. I think most people who are paying attention have suspected something along those lines for a while now.
Danny Casolaro is dead, but the Octopus isn’t.
Nocturnal Revelries 