American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

1
There were a lotta
very bad, and very dark,
and very evil people
involved in this story.
[tense music playing]
People that Danny couldn't recognize,
'cause he had never been around
people like that,
so he thought they were characters.
[phone ringing]
[Tony] Danny started with Bill Hamilton,
who said the Justice Department
had taken his software, PROMIS software.
And then Bill told him
there was this person,
Michael Riconosciuto,
who seemed to know about it.
[Bill] I was talking
to Michael Riconosciuto the other day.
This guy clearly knew a lot about PROMIS.
And he had technical knowledge.
And I scoffed at it at first.
I just thought, "How the hell would
Riconosciuto know something like that?"
[intriguing music playing]
Danny began talking to him
as a source.
[Michael] The Justice Department claims
this is just a glorified contract dispute.
Not quite the case.
Michael had been employed by
Whether it was the
Which agency, which three-letter agency,
I don't know.
And he seemed to insert himself
into many of the avenues
that Danny was looking into.
[Ann] Danny was just a suburban dad,
and all of a sudden,
he's in this international intrigue
and getting on a plane
to visit this creep, Riconosciuto.
[Michael]
Uh, I'm getting calls from this reporter,
Danny Casolaro.
And, uh,
he's nosing into things.
[man] Mr. Riconosciuto, um
Danny Casolaro died
under, um, unclear circumstances.
Do you think, um, it was a suicide?
This is an area
- Can you turn the camera off?
- [man] Yeah. Cut.
Take all your equipment.
[dramatic music playing]
[Christian] So in Danny's files,
there's all these notes
about Michael.
Um, some of them are taken
in conversation with Michael,
and some of 'em, he's talking
to other people about Michael.
In all of it, he's trying to figure out,
you know, is Michael a scientist?
Is he a spy? Is he a computer hacker?
Is he a criminal?
You know, who is this guy,
and how does he know so much about PROMIS?
[intriguing music playing]
[narrator] "It is a pale moon that
illuminates the characters in this story."
"Michael Riconosciuto's mind is as willful
and fragmented as the script he lives
and the land he travels."
"There was an article written about
Michael when he was ten years old,
after he strung up
an alternative telephone service
in his neighborhood."
"At 16 years of age,
he had worked with a Nobel laureate
at Stanford's physics lab,
who remembered him well."
"'You don't forget a 16-year-old youngster
who shows up with his own argon laser, '
Doctor Schawlow told me."
[machine whirring]
[narrator] "This was a person who made
very powerful people take notice of him
when he was a boy."
"But by the age of 24,
he was arrested
for manufacturing LSD and PCP,
which he had created in an underwater lab
to avoid detection."
"After two years in federal prison,
Riconosciuto was released
back into the wild."
"His knowledge of chemistry,
laser physics, and computer software
made him an object of obsession
for those in US intelligence
eager to work with the wayward prodigy."
"But why, I asked,
would this group pursue him?"
"Everyone, including Michael's father,
would tell me
'to control him.'"
[music intensifies]
[Christian] I wrote Michael Riconosciuto
a letter in early 2014,
and about three weeks later,
he wrote me back.
[Zachary] Do you remember
the moment you got this?
[Christian] Yeah.
It was exciting.
This mysterious character
who had talked with Danny so much
writes my name, you know?
"This is not an old story,
as you can see."
This is what he's telling me about
in this letter.
"Items inside."
"This is a complete, working,
functional archive
of all the PROMIS development work."
It was, like, "Okay."
And so I kept writing to him,
and he wrote back, like, 20 or 30 letters.
You know, Michael was Danny's
real entrance into The Octopus,
and I wanted to get his story
directly from him.
[tense music playing]
Just like Danny did.
[Michael] You have to understand
that the PROMIS scandal
started in the early '80s
with the Ronald Reagan election.
The real story here is
just nothing short of incredible,
and this has never come out.
[Christian] Michael told Danny
that the PROMIS scandal
actually started with Ronald Reagan
stealing the 1980 presidential election,
the so-called October Surprise.
[reporter 1] They refer to it as
the October Surprise.
[reporters 2 and 3] October Surprise.
If true, it would be an act of
political treachery bordering on treason.
[crowd clamoring]
[reporter 4] The US Embassy in Tehran
has been invaded
and occupied by Iranian students.
The Americans inside
have been taken prisoner.
[Christian] At the end
of Carter's first term,
there were dozens of American hostages
taken in Iran.
[Carter] With each day that passes,
our concern grows
for the health and for the well-being
of the hostages.
[reporter 5] The hostage issue,
if successfully handled,
could be a political boon
for President Carter.
If bungled, however,
it could help deprive him of reelection.
[man] The Reagan campaign
was obsessed with the issue.
They believed a hostage release
was the only way
Jimmy Carter's election could be saved.
[presenter] Do you really think
Iranian terrorists
would have taken Americans hostage
if Ronald Reagan were president?
[Christian] Michael says
that the Reagan campaign
wanted the hostages to stay in Iran,
which would make Carter look weak
and give the Reagan campaign an edge.
[Michael]
They said, "We gotta do something."
And I had a lot
of personal connections in Iran.
[Bill] Michael said that he went to Iran
in 1980 with Earl Brian.
[Michael] Earl Brian,
he's a Farsi language specialist,
and he had the juice
with the Reagan administration.
[Bill] He said the two of them transferred
in excess of $40 million.
[Michael] This money was used
to buy off the new Iranian government.
And the hostages were kept
until after the election.
[reporter 6] Good morning, everybody.
The surprise landslide election
for Ronald Reagan.
[reporter 7] A large number of Reagan
voters saying that they cast their votes
because of Mr. Carter's handling
of the hostage situation.
[applause]
[curious music playing]
I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear
[man] That I will faithfully execute
the office of President
[Michael]
The hostages from the US embassy,
they were released within hours
after he was sworn in.
[man 2] The timing did strike
many, many people
as peculiar.
And a lot of people suspected that
some kind of a deal had been done.
[man 3] Was there a deal?
Did the Reagan campaign
tamper with the hostages' fate?
Every effort on my part was
directed toward bringing them home.
[reporter 8] Does that mean contacts
with the Iranian government?
Well, not by me, no.
[reporter 8] By your campaign perhaps?
Well, I can't get into details.
Some of those things are still classified.
And this is where PROMIS comes in.
[Michael]
Earl Brian made the election happen,
and he wanted his payoff.
There was some kind of deal made
in the Justice Department.
And the source code for PROMIS
was awarded to Earl Brian.
[Bill] That just sounds astounding,
though, right?
Why PROMIS?
No matter how wonderful the software is,
something doesn't make sense.
In Michael's story,
the Justice Department tells Earl Brian
he can have the source code
for the PROMIS software,
which is worth millions of dollars.
But there's a catch.
Early on, when all this began,
I certainly didn't have
an understanding of how unusual
the software was
in terms of its power.
[Michael] Bill Hamilton didn't understand
what he had.
This technology was cutting-edge.
And gaining that understanding
made the international security
dimension of this much more plausible.
[Michael] When the PROMIS software was
initially brought to me by Earl Brian,
this was an intelligence operation.
[Bill]
Michael said it was part of a larger
classified and compartmentalized
arrangement
which can explain
why it's so damn sensitive.
[Michael] I was asked to modify
this existing software
and develop a trapdoor.
Danny told me he talked about some kind of
altering the software of PROMIS.
[Michael] A trapdoor is
any type of a function
that a third party can use
to break into a system.
He called them trapdoors,
I think, back then,
but a back door into the software
so that the government
would have the means
to do whatever they want with it.
[Michael] They wanted to sell PROMIS
to other governments
and spy on what they were tracking.
So that's what I did.
[Christian] He says
you put the back door in,
you sell it
to foreign intelligence agencies,
and then you can spy on
whatever they're using the software
to spy on.
This story involves
America's Central Intelligence Agency
selling computer programs
to foreign nations.
These programs allegedly allowed the CIA
to spy on the intelligence agencies
that bought it.
We've been able to track down
two key witnesses to those dealings,
witnesses who are now
in fear of their lives.
[reporter 9] His name is
Michael Riconosciuto,
and he says he was in charge
of modifying the PROMIS program
so that it could be accessed
by American intelligence.
After that, there was information that
came from all kinds of different places.
We had information from
former Israeli and US
covert intelligence sources.
[reporter 9] Ari Ben-Menashe.
He's a former Israeli intelligence agent.
[man] This PROMIS program
created a revolution
in intelligence gathering.
The whole idea was the Americans
would sell it to our neighbors,
and then we could get into
our neighbors' computers
without them knowing.
It's very simple. And it works.
But then our American friends
just took it a step further.
They sold it to their allies as well.
[Michael] I don't have the complete list.
I know of some of the countries
that it was sold to.
The first package went to Canada.
I always said back then, if we could
just prove that PROMIS is somewhere else,
really prove it, then, you know,
half our battle is over.
And then, out of the blue,
Canadian officials wrote to Inslaw.
They said,
"We've got this system called PROMIS,
and we need it translated in French,"
because they had to use it in Quebec.
[Bill] The Canadian government
obtained our PROMIS software
from illicit channels
and installed it in
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
and the Canadian Security
and Intelligence Service,
which is the CIA of Canada.
We could finally prove that it left
the Department of Justice inappropriately.
[Bill] Fucking Riconosciuto is
telling the truth!
See, that makes this thing
unbelievably big.
[machine whirring]
[beeping rapidly]
[Christian] So this starts to make sense.
PROMIS is part of
this global surveillance project.
Essentially the birth
of digital surveillance as we know it.
That's why there's
so much secrecy behind it.
[Bill] It's so awful that none of us
wanted to believe it initially,
'cause it makes a mockery
of a lot of what we believe
about our country.
[man] That I will faithfully execute
the office of President
[Tony] Before all of this,
Danny was the least political person.
He had little zero interest
in politics or politicians.
He was interested in writing
and being with his family.
[Ann] Danny's whole life
was in the suburbs.
This was Danny's stomping grounds.
He was very happy here.
Very happy. With Trey, his son.
[children talking indistinctly]
He raised Trey alone.
- [Danny] Trey, you missed that song.
- I watched it downstairs.
[Danny] You were watching?
[indistinct chatter]
[Ann] He didn't come off, to me at least,
as someone who was
particularly turned on by,
you know, writing something,
an exposé.
But this story
it all kind of fit together.
It seemed like, "Okay, this could be
my future."
[indistinct chatter]
[Ann] Danny became obsessed
with this story,
just like everyone who investigates Inslaw
and the PROMIS software and the DOJ.
Even you guys
are just obsessed with this story.
[pensive music playing]
I mean, you remind me of him.
And when we first met,
and you started going on and on about
the conspiracy, I just said, "Stop it."
I feel very protective of the two of you
because you have the same curiosity
that Danny had.
And I love it, and I I
and I hate it.
And then, it's very freaky,
but Christian looks like him
when Danny was young.
[camera clicking]
You know, it makes me
a little uncomfortable.
I think it's very weird.
I thought last night,
"Did you send this kid down to do this?"
"You picked someone who looked like you?"
"I mean, am I in a parallel universe?"
[dramatic music playing]
[Zachary] That's good enough.
All right, Christian. One more time.
Keep writing at the top of the page
'cause I think you're progressively
tilting your head down.
Okay, cut.
[typewriter keys clacking]
[narrator] "It was during the last year
that I began calling Michael
'Danger Man.'"
[Michael]
What you don't seem to understand is,
all my involvements were
under close, controlled situations.
We were working on
high-technology projects
on an Indian reservation
in Indio, California.
And PROMIS was one of the projects
that was brought to me.
[narrator] "During hours
of telephone calls,
Danger Man told me
that the PROMIS software modification
was just one tentacle
of a larger intelligence operation
in Southern California."
[Michael]
Earl Brian brought it out to Cabazon.
[narrator]
"Here at the Cabazon Indian Reservation,
a team of gunrunners, gamblers,
and covert intelligence operatives
would find sanctuary from all state laws."
[reporter 10] This tiny tribe has managed
some big connections,
from international arms dealers
to the Mafia.
The investigation ranges
from a local Indian tribe
to the top levels
of the federal government.
[narrator] "He had told me
in exotic detail
of his participation in an enterprise
that worked its way around the world
trading in dope, dirty money,
weapons, biotoxins, and murder
for the underground empire he described."
[reporter 11] Nicaraguan arms deals,
weapons testing
on local Cabazon Indian land,
and conspiracy from the highest
federal officials in the 1980s.
If these allegations are true,
then, of course, it's going to be
a very explosive situation.
[Michael] John Philip Nichols.
He was the one who was in charge
of the Indian reservation.
[narrator] "The architect of this
rogue desert operation
was an enigma named John Philip Nichols."
[reporter 12] John Philip Nichols has been
the center of controversy
since he came to the Cabazon
Indian Reservation eight years ago.
[Michael] You need to get a background
on John Philip Nichols
and the crew that hung around
the reservation.
[man] In November of 2007,
I was told by my sergeant
that I would be getting
a cold case, uh, to look into,
and it was a 1981 triple murder.
Sometimes referred to as one of
the tentacles of the Octopus murders.
I investigated it. I solved it.
I arrested the person
who was responsible.
And nine months later,
they let him go.
And still to this day,
it's a mystery why they let him go.
This particular box
has most of the main people
involved in this investigation.
You've got a file on Michael Riconosciuto.
You've got Dr. John Philip Nichols,
one of the main players in this case.
Why was John Philip Nichols
out at Cabazon Indian Reservation
with a very small band of Indians?
There were only, I think,
26 members of the Cabazon tribe.
Why was he there?
Time code, time code. Check, check.
You excited to see Bobby?
[Zachary] Yep.
Christian found
Dr. John Philip Nichols' youngest son
in the desert
outside of Indio, California.
He was the only one
of the Nichols children
willing to speak to Christian
about their father's past.
[Christian chuckles]
- [Christian] It's so nice.
- Good to see you, sir.
- You're looking tan. You always do.
- [man] I am? I don't know.
[Zachary] How you doin'?
It's awesome.
- Got a few nice shots of it.
- [Zachary] Wow.
I like to do a selfie
with that in the background.
[Zachary] Let me get you guys in here.
Nice.
[man] I loved my father.
I think he was cooler than shit.
The ones who do speak about him
are the ones who have the
don't have the full picture.
[Zachary] What is that full picture?
If you wanna talk about
the agents of social change,
I think, more than anything,
that's what my father was.
And for the good.
But for someone who had
such a colorful life,
he never really reflected on the past.
[crowd shouting]
Initially, he started
working with labor unions,
getting his training as an organizer.
But all of a sudden,
we find ourselves moving to South America.
[curious music playing]
[Bobby] I'm really not sure why
[camera shutter clicking]
but he was definitely involved in
something that was US policy
in some way or another.
[reporter 13] In Brazil, the communists
are blatantly on the offensive.
There's a great struggle in this world
between communism and freedom.
[Bobby] My father seemed to know
a lot of people in the halls of power.
But he liked to operate in the
I hate to use the word "shadows." [laughs]
And then we moved to Chile,
and he started
organizing Indigenous people
to become a voting bloc.
[reporter 14] Chile's Marxist president
nationalized American copper mines.
[Bobby] He probably thought
he was doing a good thing.
[reporter 15] The Central Intelligence
Agency authorized millions of dollars
to undermine the leftist
Chilean government.
[Bobby] Next thing you know, we're moving
to the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
But he was gone a lot.
There was a lot of travel.
He sent a lot of postcards, which I liked
'cause I was a stamp collector as a kid.
Then we moved to a small town
in southwestern Minnesota.
Then we moved
to right outside of Pittsburgh.
I remember he was also in Belgium,
trying to sell gold.
Then we went to Lexington, Kentucky.
Based more out of Washington, D.C.
Back to South America.
We'd go to Sioux Falls quite a bit.
He was working with Indigenous people.
Working with soft drink companies.
He started working with
mental health centers.
[Zachary] He's taking these jobs
obviously prompted
by some other organization.
- [Bobby] Mm-hmm.
- [Zachary] What is that?
Well, that's the mystery
of John Philip Nichols.
Whoever was sending him to these places
had a long-range plan in mind for him.
[Zachary] What organizations
could fit that bill?
Well [laughs]
You know, I'm just a
I'm a musician. [laughs]
I like to keep it that way.
Not that many years later,
we moved to California.
My dad was working with the Cabazons.
[presenter] They're the inheritors
of a proud and sometimes fiery past
and the architects
of a more prosperous future
for all Native Americans.
They're the Cabazon Band
of Mission Indians.
As recently as the mid-1970s,
the Cabazon Band was struggling
to survive at the poverty level.
Their future appeared bleak at best.
Tribal leaders had heard of an economist
and a resource developer
and an international social worker
with a special interest
in the Native American Indian.
That man, Dr. John P. Nichols.
In any society,
you will find a resistance
between those that have
and those that have not.
It really is not a sense purely of racism.
Money buys equality.
He established real human relationships
with Native Americans.
'Cause he wasn't
he wasn't a typical white dude.
He just wasn't, man.
Nichols signed a contract
to help develop the Cabazon's resources.
He arrived on the landlocked reservation
with his wife, four sons, and one daughter
in June of 1978.
[woman] He spoke of $10,000 a week income,
no taxes.
He promised buildings, um
Hotels, and casino, and airport,
and golf course, and condominiums.
[John] What Doc Nichols was interested in
was the sovereignty
that an Indian reservation actually holds.
His theory was that the reservation
was like another country
with their own laws.
He told the tribe,
"You can start selling cigarettes
without paying any taxes."
By 1979, the smoke shop was operating.
And everything was running smoothly.
[John] Their little smoke shop
was very popular,
but Doc Nichols wanted it bigger.
[Phyllis] By 1980, they were talking about
an X amount of dollars
and a huge building complex
on the reservation.
[John] He wanted more.
And so did the Indians. They wanted more.
So Doc Nichols was planning
a brand new stage.
[Bobby] We'd opened up
the very first poker casino
on an Indian reservation.
This was a small, corrugated building.
Put a little carpeting on the floor,
put some poker tables in there,
put a bar in.
That was quite an education, to be around
card players.
[reporter 16] Gambling is
a lucrative cash business.
And historically, those piles of money
have acted as a powerful magnet
for organized crime.
With the help of a fast-talking character
named John Philip Nichols,
the Cabazons did manage
to get into the gambling business.
But it's also included
some organized crime connections.
Yeah, my dad knew that certain people
had connections, yeah.
But how do you start a card room?
Who the hell knows
how to run a card room? Come on! [laughs]
These guys do.
[Phyllis] Nichols said the casino
was making some money,
but it didn't seem to be
bringing any money to the tribe.
The Indians themselves,
they weren't really getting any money.
Nothing was coming in yet.
And he kept telling everyone,
"It takes time. It takes time."
But some members of the tribe
started asking questions.
And Fred Alvarez was one of 'em.
Fred was the head of security,
and he was on the tribal council.
He didn't like
the way this was looking,
so Fred started making waves.
[Fred] The doctor had his whole plan.
When we got into the cigarette business,
he said, "We'll make a lot of money."
After a year goes by they say,
"All we got is debts."
"As soon as we get into
the gambling business,
then that's where the real profits are."
So, a year later,
now we're $70,000 in debt.
"How long before we show any profit?"
"Well, it's gonna be another year"
Fred's being quite vocal about the things
that are going on with Doc Nichols.
He thinks Doc Nichols is stealing money
that they should rightfully be getting.
[Fred] That is not an Indian casino,
Indian smoke shop, or Indian anything.
That is a Nichols family business
hiding under the umbrella
of an Indian Reservation.
So they're jeopardizing the whole tribe.
We're gonna do it.
Whatever it takes
to get back the reservation.
So Fred went to an attorney and said,
"Show me how
to kick this guy out of our reservation."
"Show me what I have to do."
The attorney told him,
"Bring me some evidence."
"Show me a paper trail
of the money that he's skimming."
What Fred did was
go into the tribal office
and steal files from the filing cabinets.
But he found more than
what he was looking for.
He's calling me
in the middle of the night.
He'd say, "I'm in the office here,
and I'm going through papers."
"I found this connection
with this person and that person,
and all these connections."
And he was putting these papers together.
[John] He had found Doc Nichols' big plans
with one of the world's largest
security companies, called Wackenhut.
They are the security company in charge
of all these very, very high-level,
top secret government installations,
like nuclear power plants,
and Area 51, the test site.
The board of that company were
all of these people with the NSA,
the CIA, the FBI,
all the three-letter government agencies.
[man] A company called
Wackenhut Corporation
has been the shadow CIA
for a number of years,
doing things the United States government
was prohibited from doing under the law.
And they're starting this joint venture
between Cabazon and Wackenhut.
What was really going on out there?
The Indians had, of course,
some significant land holdings out there.
And one of the things that we pursued
was setting up
an entity on their land out there
where we would be the producing source
for combustible cartridge cases.
These are primarily tank rounds.
[pensive music playing]
This was sovereign land,
and that allowed a lot of protection.
It allowed them to remain secret
and behind the curtain
on a lot of things that they were doing.
And I think
the government liked that as well.
[Bob] John's a character,
I tell you. He, uh
He's got a world of contacts
within and without the CIA.
He was the guy with the ideas.
This was looking like some kind of
government-backed enterprise.
Then Fred, he saw that Nichols was
wanting to manufacture chemical weapons.
Even biological weapons.
I believe this is what Fred found
in the files that he stole.
Fred called the attorney and said,
"I've got your evidence."
"I'll bring it to you.
Let's get this thing going."
So he made that appointment.
On the morning of July 1st,
Joe Benitez and Bill Calloway
were going to Fred's house to pick him up.
We went by to pick him up
to go to see the attorney
and divulge all of this.
[man] Fred!
[man 2] Fred?
[Joe] We found them dead in the backyard.
Fred and Ralph and Patty,
Fred's best friends.
All three of 'em had been shot in the head
one time with a .357 Magnum
at close range.
Based on the fact that the shooter was
standing right between Fred and Patty,
they knew he was there.
So I believe it was somebody
that Fred knew
and trusted.
Very early on in the investigation,
Fred's sister Linda
came out there to the scene,
and she told the police,
"You need to look at Doc Nichols."
[Linda] I'd like to be rid
of this horrible, horrible nightmare.
That's what was responsible
for Fred's death.
I knew that he was capable of it.
I've always known from the day my son died
that he killed him. But I mean
[sighs] I can't prove it.
[Joe] Sheriff's Department, they came out,
did an investigation.
Didn't last very long.
They closed it all down.
They shut it up.
But they know.
They know.
But why they covered it up,
we'll never know.
[John] The investigation just stopped.
No one was ever brought to justice
for the triple murder.
And the more you look at the case,
the more you say, "Why not?"
I mean,
we knew who was involved.
It just opens up this whole can of worms.
[Bobby] Did my father commit murder?
All I can say is that, um,
I hope not.
That's all. I hope not. You know.
[Bob] When Alvarez got bumped off,
John had called.
He said, that helps our cause,
from the standpoint we don't have to worry
about Fred trying to cause dissent
within the tribe now.
[narrator] "With Fred Alvarez now quiet,
John Philip Nichols could begin
the next phase of his hidden empire."
"He brought in Mike Riconosciuto
and an elite squad
of sociopathic creatures."
"The angels of life and death."
[eerie music playing]
"Nichols needed the special talents
of Riconosciuto
to unlock the reservation's true purpose,
which would flower like the Joshua tree
in the secret splendor of the desert."
[Nichols] Mike is a very key person
because of his brilliance.
Wackenhut wanted to work with Mike
because some of the ideas that he had
were quite commercially feasible.
Michael is very, very intelligent,
and he was a big part
of what Doc Nichols wanted to do.
[Nichols] Mike has been working on
several devices
which could be quite interesting.
One is a night vision,
which works with microprocessors.
And then he's been working on
a couple of power packs.
And then the third thing
is under security clearance,
so you really can't discuss that.
[John] Just two months
after the Alvarez murders,
there's all these different people
coming into the Cabazon Reservation
to watch weapons demonstrations
by John Nichols and his group.
[intriguing music playing]
[Michael]
This was like a real dog and pony show.
Jimmy Hughes and I
showed up in a station wagon
loaded with fully automatic weapons.
Jimmy Hughes, he was a mall security guard
that eventually became
in charge of security for the casino.
This is just a bizarre cast of characters
who gets together.
You had people from the military
and the CIA.
You've got Michael Riconosciuto
and Earl Brian, a businessman,
owner of Hadron,
close confidant to President Reagan.
[Bill] Earl Brian has denied
that he had anything to do
with bringing the PROMIS software
out to that reservation.
And yet, Indio Police records
showed Michael Riconosciuto
and Earl Brian together
at a demonstration of weapons.
[John] There was also two Contra generals
from Nicaragua out there.
They had automatic weapons,
machine guns, semi-automatic weapons,
and night vision goggles.
[man over radio] One J-41, one J-42.
[shots fired]
[John] Doc Nichols wanted to manufacture
weapons for these Contra generals.
But why? Why there?
It's a very small tribe of 26 people.
Well, this was a time
when the US government
was providing weapons in secret
for countries in Central America.
It's part of the whole Iran-Contra affair
that wound up blowing up.
Testimony just released
by the Iran-Contra committees
indicates the CIA was more deeply involved
in resupplying arms to the Contras
than we knew about up to now.
[John] Very early stages of it.
What we see in Nicaragua is an attempt
to destabilize the entire region
and eventually move chaos and anarchy
toward the American border.
Will we support freedom
in this hemisphere or not?
Will we defend our vital interests
in this hemisphere or not?
Will we stop the spread of communism
in this hemisphere or not?
[Bobby] You know, all I can say is,
that was like a
It came through, and it ended.
But the reverberations of that
were kept alive
and brought forth again
by Michael Riconosciuto
when he, you know, talked about
what he says happened back in those days.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Bill] We got some stuff from Michael.
It's so compelling that our lawyers
could use it to get us paid.
[narrator] "Michael Riconosciuto
has decided to go public
with his story of what happened
at Cabazon."
"He has written a sworn affidavit
to Bill Hamilton,
detailing his role
in the piracy of the PROMIS software
and the link between
the Cabazon operation, Wackenhut,
Earl Brian, and the Department of Justice.
[Michael] Shortly thereafter,
I began receiving threats.
I was told
if I did not desist from cooperating
that I was going to get put away forever.
And then, seven days later
[siren wailing]
[pensive music playing]
[officer 1] Put your hands on the wheel.
[officer 2] Put your hands
where we can see 'em.
They shut him up pretty quickly,
though, didn't they?
That's kind of odd.
[Michael grunts]
He was arrested on federal drug charges.
Precursors to manufacture
of methamphetamine.
I've arrested many people
for that very charge,
and nobody has ever spent
the length of term in prison
that Michael spent.
[Christian] He didn't get arrested
by local police.
He got arrested by the DEA.
The Department of Justice, you know?
[phone ringing]
[interference on line]
[automated voice] This is LocTel.
You have a collect call from
[Michael] Mike.
[automated voice] To accept the call,
please dial nine now.
[Michael] I have serious problems, okay?
Before I delivered that affidavit,
I got a threatening phone call
from somebody in the government
telling me to stand down.
And this was maybe two or three days
before I actually got arrested.
And I recorded that conversation.
[narrator] "Riconosciuto told me about
a tape he had recorded
of the Justice Department official
threatening him with legal consequences
for coming forward."
[Michael] So then I'm driving out,
and that's where the DEA took us down.
And they had us on the ground,
right on the side of the road.
And I had the cassette tapes
in my shirt pocket,
and I flipped them over the bank.
[narrator] "If this tape was retrievable,
I knew this scandal
was about to be publicly born."
What he told me was
Mike was put in jail on drug charges,
and he thought the drug charges
might have been made up.
So Danny flew out there
in search of a tape
that supposedly would prove all of this.
[narrator] "The sun had burned away
the morning fog
when I arrived in Seattle
on Easter Sunday,
two days after Michael's arrest."
"That evening, Danger Man called from jail
with cryptic directions
for the retrieval of the tape."
"The next day,
I found myself on the side of a highway
next to a muddy bog
on the edge of nowhere."
"By the end of the week, I had trucked
back and forth across Puget Sound,
by daylight and nightfall,
in pursuit of the tape."
"Did the tape ever exist,
or was Danger Man testing
how far out on this limb
I was willing to venture?"
"Riconosciuto's associates had warned me
that his objectives were often hidden
behind the layers of a rogue
who had spent the last ten years
running from his past."
"On my final day,
I was able to meet Danger Man in jail."
"With the tape never emerging,
I was more than a little frustrated."
"I said I was doubtful
regarding the existence of the tape."
"'I hope, for your sake, I'm wrong, '
I told him."
"I could sense his feelings grow mute
in embarrassment."
"Everything within him withdrew."
"I returned home the next day."
"In the deepest
and most important matters,
especially if he was telling the truth,
he was unspeakably alone."
- [Zachary] Christian.
- Yeah?
- [Zachary] Where are we?
- [Christian] We're in Lompoc, California.
[Zachary] What are we doing here?
We're here to document the release
of Michael Riconosciuto from prison.
He's been there for 26 years,
since March 1991.
[Zachary] Today, Michael Riconosciuto
is to be released from federal prison,
three hours north of Los Angeles.
Christian wrote a letter to Michael
asking if we could film his release.
He instructed Christian
to meet with his cousin, Anita,
who would be picking him up from prison
and delivering him to safety.
[Anita] He is prepared to stay in jail
because he believes he will be abducted
and murdered for what he knows.
- [Anita] So
- [Christian] One second.
[Anita] We're going to hope
they let him walk out the front door.
[Zachary] Michael said
his communications from prison
were monitored by the authorities.
It's our hope that today,
on his first day of freedom,
he's finally able to speak candidly
about the rest of the Octopus story
and what happened to Danny Casolaro.
[Anita] Michael.
- [Michael] Yes.
- [Anita sighs]
[Michael] Yes.
Let me out of here now, please.
Thank you.
Uh, let's go.
Okay. Uh, what's next?
[Anita] This car right here on the end.
[Michael] Thank you.
[Anita] I think I left this open.
- [Michael] Who are you?
- Christian.
- Pleased to meet you.
- [Christian] Nice to meet you.
Welcome out.
Yeah, well, it's a mess.
Come on, Anita. We gotta jam.
We gotta get out of here.
[Anita] I don't know what way we're going.
[Christian] Should we loop around?
No, no, we we gotta get out of here.
We gotta get out of the area.
[Anita] We have to figure out
which way we're going.
There we go. Good.
We gotta just get out of here.
[Anita] Air conditioning.
I don't know which way we're going.
I have no GPS.
[Michael]
Well, let's just get out of the area.
It's just
Something is really, really wrong.
[pensive music playing]