American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders (2024) s01e03 Episode Script
The Game
[wind whistling]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Zachary] June 27th, 2017.
Michael Riconosciuto has finally
been released from prison.
Twenty-six years earlier,
Michael gave an affidavit
describing his role
in hacking the PROMIS software.
Eight days later,
he was arrested on drug charges.
[Zachary] What's your plan now?
[Michael] First order of business,
I have to call the US probation officer
that's assigned to my case,
or else I'm gonna be back in prison
for the next 11 years.
[Zachary] In 72 hours,
he is supposed to be in Washington state
for a federal court hearing
on the conditions of his release.
But he says he's afraid
of who might be waiting for him there.
[Michael] Uh, hello, Miss Johnson.
This is Michael Riconosciuto.
I was picked up at the bus station,
uh, by a journalist.
I will keep you advised
as to what my location and itinerary is.
[Zachary] Instead, he's heading south
to find his lawyer
who will advise him on what to do next.
In the meantime,
Christian now has unfettered access
to Danny's key source.
[Christian] I've been wanting to ask you
these questions for a really long time.
Do you remember how you first met Danny?
- Danny Casolaro?
- [Christian] Yeah.
[Michael] Danny was a serious player,
and we knew some of the same people and
started talking about Inslaw.
And then Danny
started digging into things.
And I told him
not to talk to certain people,
not to raise certain issues,
and he says, "I'm a journalist.
I can ask any questions I want."
Well, he learned,
as did a number of other journalists
that I dealt with directly.
So you just introduced yourself
to Bill Hamilton.
How did this come about?
I was a little hesitant to actually get
myself involved in all of this, but, uh
[Michael] A little scary?
Yeah, it's a little scary.
- [Michael] Should be a whole lot scary.
- Yeah, it's [laughs]
Yeah.
You know, people have second-guessed
what I was trying to warn them about,
and they all met the same fate.
There's just too many people dead
in this case.
[Tony] I talked to Danny
when he got back from Washington state
to meet with Michael Riconosciuto.
Apparently, he was
He was in search of a tape
that supposedly Michael Riconosciuto had
that would prove his story,
and he couldn't find it.
After that, I think he was
beginning to get less convinced
that Michael Riconosciuto
was going to be a valuable source.
How about this? A reliable source.
I think he was valuable.
Not sure how reliable he was.
[intriguing music playing]
Once you get involved with these people,
it's a world that makes no sense
to the average person.
[phone ringing]
[automated voice] This is LocTel.
You have a collect call from
[Michael] Mike.
[Michael] Dr. John Nichols
and Wackenhut, they, uh,
tried to rope me into
all of their government projects,
and then people started questioning
what Wackenhut was up to.
And first, Alvarez gets murdered,
and then Paul gets murdered.
[Zachary] Who is Paul?
Uh, Paul Morasca was my business partner.
[Michael] You know, anybody
that's cooperated or helped me,
they've just been mercilessly fucked with.
We're dealing with some nasty,
gruesome people that will stop at nothing.
Murder ain't nothing to these people.
[narrator] Michael told me
of his best friend, Paul Morasca,
who had been murdered in San Francisco
six months after Fred Alvarez.
Among the Cabazon associates,
Paul Morasca was the money trader,
with access to offshore bank accounts
amounting to over a billion dollars,
according to Michael.
But no one is supposed to talk about it.
[reporter] We are getting new details on
a homicide investigation in San Francisco.
It was a cold-blooded killing
that took place
in what residents say was a quiet area.
[man] During my 23 years in homicide,
I worked quite a few serial killings,
a lot of high-profile homicide cases,
but the murder investigation
of Paul Morasca in San Francisco
was the most uh, bizarre,
convoluted, and frustrating
murder cases that I ever worked on.
On January 14th, 1982, I received a call
from an attorney in Los Angeles.
[phone ringing]
[man] Hello? Yeah.
Okay, will you be
And he had information from a client
who he didn't identify
that if police were to go to an address
on Kearny Street in San Francisco,
they would find a body.
We found the body of Paul Morasca.
His wrists were bound behind his back,
and then there was a wire running
from around his neck to his ankles,
and that wire strangled him when he was
no longer able to keep his legs bent.
It appeared to be a form of torture.
I called this attorney.
He said his client was a guy
by the name of Michael Riconosciuto.
That he had found this body.
And that he panicked
and drove all night
from San Francisco to Indio, California,
to the Cabazon Indian Reservation,
which is about 500 miles away.
And it was all very unusual.
All very strange.
[Zachary] What do you remember about Paul?
Uh, we've known each other
since we were teenagers.
[Zachary] What was he like?
Well, Paul was a financial guy.
What I was to technology,
Paul was to economics.
And, um,
we got sucked in.
And, you know, Paul figured it out first.
I was too engrossed in my work.
[Eddie] Riconosciuto told us
that he had been working with this man
by the name of Dr. Nichols.
And so my partner and I
went down to Indio,
where we interviewed Dr. Nichols,
who was running this casino.
[Eddie]
Today's date is February 16th, 1982.
Uh, Dr. Nichols,
I wish to ask you some questions
regarding the death of Paul Morasca.
Were you in business with Paul and Mike?
[Nichols] Not really.
The way the thing came about, uh
I do some work with Wackenhut.
- You know who Wackenhut is?
- [Eddie] Mm-hmm.
[Nichols] Mike came in
because he's an inventive genius,
but he has certain problems
psychologically.
- [Eddie] And you're a psychiatrist?
- [Nichols] No, sir. I'm a social worker.
- [Eddie] A social worker.
- [Nichols] Psychiatric social worker
[Eddie] My question was,
are you in business with these fellas?
[Nichols] I'm explaining all these people.
He was a very difficult guy to
to pin down.
Strange guy.
Told me that he was
working with Michael Riconosciuto,
developing weapons with the government.
And then we found out
that Michael's friend,
Paul Morasca, had invested
hundreds of thousands of dollars
into this operation.
So there was a lot of money
connected with Morasca.
[Nichols] I got involved
in setting this thing up with them.
[Eddie] Mm-hmm.
[Nichols] Mike was brought to me
by his father, originally.
[Christian] How did you end up at Cabazon?
Well, I've known John Philip Nichols
since I was very young,
through family friends.
George Wackenhut, since I was very young.
This is just the circles my father was in.
He was doing a lot of lobbying
in Washington, D.C.
for various government agencies.
Do I need to say any more? He was
[Zachary]
In the intelligence world, I guess?
Well, obviously, yes.
[Christian] I have found government files
that corroborate that, actually.
We talked to a number of people
that vouched for Nichols
as being somebody who had
worked with the government before,
that he had contacts
and connection with the CIA.
We began to wonder,
is this case
some kind of a government operation
that we're not aware of?
The FBI told us that, as far as they knew,
it wasn't.
But they also candidly said if it was,
and if the CIA's involved,
they're not gonna tell us either.
Back in San Francisco, my partner and I,
we spoke to Morasca's girlfriend.
[woman] He was afraid for his life.
Something was coming down.
[Eddie] She told us that there was
a man by the name of Jason
that Paul was very frightened of.
Paul had told her
this guy was a, uh, CIA hit man.
[woman] He was introduced
by either Dr. Nichols or Michael.
As we begin hearing about all of this,
we go back to the FBI.
We tell 'em that we're interested in a guy
by the name of Jason.
He said, "Why?"
I said, "Well, we think he's likely
a suspect, one of our suspects."
And he said,
"That's our informant,
and his real name is
Philip Arthur Thompson."
He had a very lengthy arrest record.
Many violent crimes.
Kidnapping, robbery,
rape, escape,
murder, attempted murder.
No doubt a violent individual.
But served very little time.
That would certainly
be indicative of the fact
that he was an informant for the FBI.
[Zachary] Can you describe him?
You've met him.
- Thompson?
- [Zachary] Yeah.
Yeah. I never knew him
until he showed up on my doorstep.
He had committed several murders
while he was under the control
of his FBI handlers,
and the FBI let him stay out of jail
and authorized, uh, using him against me.
[Eddie] The funny thing about Michael is
you just never knew
when he was telling the truth
because some of the stuff
was kinda so outlandish,
you tended to think,
"Well, that's just crazy."
And then we would find out
he was telling the truth.
In fact, the FBI had introduced
Philip Arthur Thompson
into an investigation of Paul Morasca
and Michael Riconosciuto.
They told us that these fellas are dealing
in millions and millions of dollars
in the manufacture of methamphetamine.
And Michael Riconosciuto was a chemist.
This was a major drug operation
with banks in the Bahamas and Switzerland.
[Zachary] So Thompson was
investigating you for drugs?
Well, the FBI sent him
with a cockamamie story,
and I immediately called Nichols.
I was still trusting the Wackenhut group.
And they checked him out, and they said
he was okay. They vetted him.
[Eddie] Mike told you that Philip Thompson
came to his house and said,
"The FBI is asking me to look into you."
[Nichols] To set him up.
Everything, you know,
seemed strange about this thing,
and then where it really gets crazy,
we find out Dr. Nichols recommended
that Michael's father,
Marshall Riconosciuto,
hire Philip Arthur Thompson.
He was paying a monthly salary
to look after Michael.
[Eddie] You recommended Mr. Thompson
to look after Mike?
[Nichols] Mike is not a well person.
Mike has all these imaginary fears,
and I felt he needed to get somebody
that he could relate to.
Because, you see,
a sociopath can help a psychopath.
"Sociopath can help a psychopath."
[laughing] Yeah.
[Nichols] The FBI seems to have
a good relationship with Phil.
[Michael]
Uh, Philip Thompson bragged to me
that what he did to Paul
was one of the most horrible things
that he'd ever done in his life,
the way he killed Paul.
[Michael] I believe John Philip Nichols
directed him to do it.
As best we could, we're trying to
concentrate on the murder of Paul Morasca,
but we keep being led down these trails
involving other issues and other crimes.
Um, so what was it
that Danny was looking into?
- He was looking into so many things
- Well, I've got it all figured out.
I've got a matrix link analysis,
and it's impossible to sit here
and talk about it piecemeal.
- [Christian] Okay.
- Okay?
- It would take days to go through it.
- [Christian] Okay.
I think I've made
enough of a showing to you
that I've got enough
objective evidence here,
and it just takes a lot of time
to go through it.
[Eddie] We have the drug operation,
the Wackenhut Corporation.
We have organized crime figures
involved with the casino.
We have murders of Alvarez
and two of his friends.
And we have an FBI informant.
To get to the bottom of that,
it's beyond what a couple
of local detectives can do.
If the federal government says,
"We don't know what you're talking about"
this case remains, uh, unsolved.
[Michael] These are the people
that are putting pressure on me,
and nobody wants to listen to my story.
They want me to put myself in harm's way.
So I have to choose between
putting myself in harm's way,
or going back to prison.
- [Zachary] There it is.
- Where are we meeting George at?
[Christian] Place called Duke's.
[Zachary] Okay.
[Zachary] We arrived at our destination
to meet Michael's lawyer, George Granby.
[Michael] George?
[all exclaim]
[Zachary] Michael told us
he'd rather go back to prison
than return to Washington state
for his parole hearing
without protection from the people
he had once worked with.
[Michael] 'Cause I'm fighting for my life.
What happens in front of the judge
in the next 48 hours is what matters.
- All right.
- [Christian] All right, Michael.
Let me come back to you.
[Zachary] Michael left us
to discuss his next moves
in private with George Granby.
Christian seemed overwhelmed
by the answers he extracted from Michael.
[Christian] What's your takeaway?
- From today?
- [Christian] Yeah.
About Michael's life? I think
that that guy has a lot of problems.
And many of them
are imposed on him from the outside,
and I think some of them are self-created.
And it's really hard
to parse what is what.
I feel bad for him.
[sighs]
[tense music playing]
[Eddie] As time went on,
information was harder to come by.
But years later, I got a phone call
from a man by the name of Danny Casolaro.
He had come up with
quite a bit of information on his own.
[Christian] If you look at the outline
for Danny's book,
it starts with the death of Paul Morasca.
And Danny refers to his murder
as "the link."
But, like, the link between what?
When Michael told me, in the car,
after we picked him up from prison,
that there were dozens of murders
up and down the coast of California
that Philip Arthur Thompson had committed,
it sounded like total lunatic raving.
But I went through old newspapers
and investigative files
from the decade before Paul's death,
and I found a string of murders
and violent crimes
where Philip Arthur Thompson
was the lead suspect in each one.
Thompson doesn't ever do any real time
for the crimes that he commits,
and the FBI's helping him stay free.
What is he providing
the federal government
that's of such value
that he is allowed to walk the streets
raping, robbing, and killing people?
[Eddie] Mr. Thompson,
we wish to ask you some questions
regarding the death of a Paul Morasca.
Do you know Dr. John Nichols,
who resides in Indio, California?
[Thompson] I've met him.
[Eddie]
And what is your relationship with him?
[Thompson] Uh
You'd have to ask him that.
[Eddie] How long have you known Nichols?
[Thompson] I won't comment on that either.
[ominous music playing]
[Christian] The thing
that nobody's putting together
is that John Philip Nichols' casino
is bankrupt.
They filed for bankruptcy
in December of 1981,
one month before Paul was murdered.
And John Nichols knew
Paul had all these drugs
and all this money.
That same month,
there's a meeting at Vanessi's restaurant,
which is right here on the corner.
[Nichols] He invited me
to an Italian restaurant on, uh, Broadway.
- [Eddie] Vanessi's.
- [Nichols] Yes, that's correct.
And all of the key players
in Paul's murder
are in attendance at this meeting.
It's Michael's father,
his name's Marshall Riconosciuto,
John Philip Nichols,
and Philip Arthur Thompson,
all people that seem to have connections
to the intelligence world.
And when I learned about this meeting,
I recognized Vanessi's.
Like, "Wait, they all met at Vanessi's?"
And I realized, "Oh shit, you can see
Paul's house from Vanessi's,
and he wasn't at the meeting."
I think they were just like,
"That's the apartment. Go up"
"Go up there and get him."
And as he was slowly dying,
I'm sure he was promised that, you know,
"We'll untie you. Just tell us where the
where the chemicals are."
"Tell us what the bank codes are."
He was tortured when he was murdered,
and then all of his shit disappeared.
His Swiss bank accounts were drained.
His drugs disappeared.
I mean, that's the motive.
That's the link.
Covert operations
funded by Paul's drug money.
That's the connection
Danny was trying to make.
[Zachary] Where does that leave you
with Michael? Sort of
Yeah, I mean, it brings me back to
a lot of conversations I had with Michael
that I thought were totally insane,
but they were actually pretty lucid,
you know, um,
and he was telling me the truth.
I mean, some of the stuff, though, it's
I do know that he does tell untrue stories
in a way that he seems to believe them.
They're just stories
that don't make sense.
Like him saying
he's never been involved with drugs.
So it's like, do you just ignore
everything he says because he's a liar,
or do you try to dig in deeper
and try to figure out
what's real and what's not?
[somber music playing]
[Christian laughing softly]
It never ends!
It never ends. It's
You know, you set out
to try to finish this story,
and it just never fucking ends.
[music fades]
[woman] There's a picture
of Philip Arthur Thompson.
- [man] Yeah, I've seen it.
- [woman] Yeah.
Jason. All right. That's interesting.
Forgot about that one.
When you start talking
to Michael Riconosciuto,
he spins this web of intrigue,
and it becomes a mystery,
then it becomes a puzzle.
And ultimately, before you
even understand it, it becomes a game.
I was a reporter
in a small town in California.
This is me in Mariposa.
I had been investigating
why drugs were so prevalent
in central California.
In my mind, what I was chasing after,
and I told this to Michael Riconosciuto,
was government-sanctioned drug operations.
That's basically who I was
when I was speaking to
and taking information from Riconosciuto
on the phone.
[Zachary] Right.
- Not who I am today.
- [Zachary chuckles]
And one day,
I started reading about Danny Casolaro,
right after his death in 1991.
I'd found out we were running parallel
in our investigations.
Danny delved deeper into areas
that I chose not to,
because I was mostly interested
in the drug aspect,
but no matter what direction he went in,
Danny hit drugs again,
because the intelligence operations
were basically involved with drugs.
And so I jumped on to Danny's trail.
And then, on December 1st, 1991,
Michael Riconosciuto contacted me
at 7:30 in the morning.
And I was introduced
to my first contact with the Octopus.
[Michael] Hello? Cheri?
[Cheri] Yeah. You authorize me to tape it?
[Michael] That's correct.
I asked him why he called me.
And he said because the media
and the government
were making him out to be
nothing more than a drug dealer.
He said, in fact, he had been involved
in many government operations,
and he wanted people to know about it.
[Michael] The thing is, the government's
on the hook for the death of Paul Morasca.
And the whole operation got out of hand.
[Cheri] Yes?
[Michael] That's all there is to it.
[Cheri] He said,
after Paul Morasca's death,
he left Cabazon in a hurry.
He felt threatened. He felt
that he was gonna be the next one to go.
[Michael] I left the orbit of Wackenhut
and John Philip Nichols.
And it just turned into
a Kafkaesque nightmare
from that point on.
And that's when he went with
Robert Booth Nichols.
[Michael] And, uh,
my life hasn't been the same since.
[Michael] There's two Nicholses here,
I've gotta clarify.
There's John P. Nichols,
and there was Robert Booth Nichols,
and they're not related.
[Cheri] Riconosciuto said
that Robert Booth Nichols
was the key to Danny's Octopus.
[Michael] The Indian Reservation
was small potatoes, okay?
But he said repeatedly,
over and over told Danny,
"Do not talk to Robert Booth Nichols."
[phone ringing]
[Michael] I was around Bob for years,
and I know how the man operates.
The guy is absolutely scary.
[phone continues ringing]
[tense music playing]
My name is Robert Nichols.
Have you heard that name?
Evidently, Michael wouldn't want
you speaking with me.
[Cheri] Once you jump on the board with
Riconosciuto and Robert Booth Nichols,
they definitely, pardon the expression,
"screw with your mind."
They certainly did with me,
and I have no doubt
that they did this with Danny.
That's part of the game.
[Robert] You can't be shy.
You have to ask questions,
or how do you know?
[Cheri] One of his operations was
out at Cabazon,
retrofitting and developing arms
for the Contras.
That's where Michael Riconosciuto
became involved with him.
But he was also doing all sorts
of other operations all over the world.
[Robert] It's amazing what the government
will do if you're of value to them.
I mean, look the other way, right?
[woman] Raise your hand.
Do you swear the testimony
you're about to give today
will be the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth so help you God?
- Speak.
- Yes.
[man] Mr. Nichols, since you were
22 or 23 years old to the present date,
your primary way of making money
was to be employed by people
who claim to be associated
with government intelligence?
That's correct.
I was told that this,
what is taking place today,
would not happen to me.
I do what I'm told to do.
I'm a facilitator.
It is a very sensitive matter.
Very sensitive to this country.
And under no circumstance
can this reach the public.
And you will never, ever be bothered
by your government ever.
Period.
[man] And what did you do
while working for these people?
Achieved objectives
that they set out for me.
[eerie music playing]
Danny recognized he was talking to
a dangerous person.
[Robert]
See, I have to be extremely careful
because I am involved
You know, when I say "involved,"
I have knowledge
of the darker areas of US intelligence.
But he felt that it was worth it
for this unfolding story.
I had heard from numerous sources
that he's worked for
all these various agencies.
He was telling everybody
he worked for the DOJ.
All his friends said
he worked for the NSA, NSC.
[Robert] There are many reasons
for doing things that, uh,
are usually very veiled.
He was a part of a cutout corporation,
a front corporation
created for the National Security Council
to work in Lebanon.
And there are documents
from the White House about it.
Documents showing all these
important, high-ranking people
that are on this board of directors.
They are directly connected to each other
and the intelligence world
and to Robert Booth Nichols.
[Robert] I was, you know, involved in
certain project financing and funding.
[Cheri] Robert Booth Nichols told Danny
he was going to show him
all of the operations
that he had been involved in.
Basically, show him the larger picture.
[Robert] See, things were described to me
as being in the national interest,
and somewhere, something went wrong.
And, you know,
what is the national interest?
I mean, it's whatever interest
they want it to be.
I remember that Danny thought he was
central to the story he was working on,
so they decided to meet.
[narrator] "Robert Booth Nichols arrived
in Washington, D.C.
on a three-day stopover."
"I picked him up at the airport,
and we drove to the Four Seasons hotel,
where he stayed."
"That evening,
we went out to dinner and then drinks,
as we would each night
for the rest of his stay."
"Though he was never outwardly drunk,
he became talkative
as the night progressed."
[Robert] Wackenhut are the backwaters
of US intelligence.
You usually see
anyone in the intelligence community
that's high up laced in there somewhere.
[narrator] "He instructed me
not to take notes,
but I collected names and operations
on cocktail napkins
that I would stuff into
my jacket pockets."
[Robert] You know, the activities
that I've been involved with,
I can tell you very clearly,
an effort for many years was made
to benefit a lot of important people.
[narrator] "'The cloak-and-dagger
arrangement at Cabazon
between the criminal world
and the intelligence world
was not an isolated venture, '
Nichols said."
"It was simply my first glimpse
of a hidden network of operations
that spans the globe,
enlisting banks"
[Robert] You know, this is like BCCI.
The bank that is now under the biggest
criminal investigation in banking history.
BCCI stands accused of dirty dealing
around the world.
[reporter] Allegedly involved in illegal
arms deals, drug-running, kidnapping,
and bribery of US officials.
[reporter 2] In fact, BCCI had CIA money.
[Robert] The Nugan Hand thing.
[reporter 3] A bank in Australia
known as Nugan Hand.
[reporter 4] Illegal currency
transactions, big-time drug operations,
and the Central Intelligence Agency.
[Robert] Money laundering.
[reporter 5] The Savings and Loans scandal
could cost half a trillion dollars.
[reporter 6]
The CIA may have used the proceeds
to help pay for covert operations
that Congress was unwilling to support.
[narrator] "Gunrunners"
[reporter 5] The sale of arms to Iran
and the diversion of profits
to the Contras,
it's hard to believe that it stayed
a secret as long as it did.
[narrator] "Former spies"
[reporter 7] Edwin Wilson,
the former CIA agent.
[reporter 8] Under federal indictment for
selling weapons and explosives to Libya.
There have also been charges
that Wilson recruited Americans
to go to Libya and train terrorists.
[Robert] Those are just a few things.
But, uh, all these stories are related.
[narrator] "'These scandals
that bubbled to the surface,
they're all connected
through a rogue intelligence network
that goes back decades, ' Nichols said."
[Robert] I'm speaking about people
that are in the intelligence areas
internationally, across the board,
not just the CIA.
[Cheri] For Danny, this expands,
and expands, and expands.
And it branches into
so many different aspects and tentacles.
And now the story has become
something completely different
than what it was originally.
Now Danny was pursuing
these claims of international spy networks
going back decades.
[Robert]
Pender I knew very well from Beirut.
[Cheri] Danny started focusing on
the good ol' boys
before the CIA was created,
and he was gonna bring it forward.
He wanted to know who is involved.
[Robert] I'd stay away from that.
[narrator] "'You are not
to see the lies we tell, ' said Nichols."
[Robert]
That's something I wouldn't wanna
wouldn't wanna say.
[narrator] "At the end of the three days,
Nichols said,
'I wish you weren't a writer.'"
"'You know too much,
and now you're gonna have to die.'"
"Was this a sinister joke
or a friendly warning?"
"I couldn't tell the difference."
When Danny told me about the threats,
it was hard to tell how to interpret that.
I just know that he tried
to keep Danny on edge,
but I don't know what was driving that.
February 13th, 1992.
I met with Robert Booth Nichols.
I ultimately got this appointment
through a friend of his.
This friend warned me. He said,
"When you get into Nichols' apartment,
they're gonna sit you on a couch
next to a lion,
a stuffed lion,
and the lion has a bug inside of it,
a listening device,
and they're gonna be taping you."
[doorbell rings]
[footsteps approaching]
[Cheri] When I walked in the door,
Ellen Nichols was there, his wife.
[tense music playing]
[Robert, faintly] You know, court needed
Both sides are involved in projects
[Cheri] There was anaconda snake skins
on the wall,
pictures of him with Saudi Arabians
and high-ranking officials,
government officials.
I got the feeling it was a safe house,
to tell you the truth.
And then he sat me right down on the couch
next to a lion. A big stuffed lion.
Nichols was very controlled
but very dramatic.
And he would be very assertive
in his way of letting you know,
"Don't ask me that question again."
I asked him about Danny Casolaro.
He believed Danny was murdered.
He did not believe
that he committed suicide.
He said that Danny was
very excited about going overseas.
I pursued questions about why he died,
how he died, and Nichols said,
"No journalist has done enough work
to deserve to know that answer."
And then he invited me to go overseas
and do exactly
what he invited Danny to do,
and I would get my answers.
And I said, "I'll think about it."
Oh, the Zapruder Tape.
He stands up,
and he starts playing this tape.
It was the Zapruder Tape
of the Kennedy assassination,
but then he slowed it way down.
And it was so slow
that you could almost see the air moving.
Then you saw the driver take a gun
and go like this
and shoot Kennedy.
And the bullet comes out of the gun
this slow.
Very, very, very slow.
And it hits Kennedy in the head,
and you see everything
flying out of his head.
And I'm thinking,
"This isn't the tape I ever saw before."
So I said, "Is this a doctored tape?
What's this about?"
And he said, "This is the original one."
And I said, "Uh, no," you know?
He says, "I'm gonna show you
the one that you've seen on the media."
The next tape is your typical one
where the driver just keeps driving.
He never even flinches with the gun.
And he stops the tape.
And he says, "Look at the tree."
And there's the top of a tree
growing in air.
And he says, "This is the one
that you're seeing on the media,
and it's been doctored."
He looked very, very intently at me,
and he said,
"Nothing is as it appears to be."
That tape was the last thing he did
before I left.
It occurred to me that that was shown
so that it would provide deniability
for Robert Booth Nichols.
He had to have doctored that,
to have put half a tree in that film,
so that, you know,
my ability to see the truth
or to report the facts
kind of goes out the window
when you start describing that film.
Especially if you say you believed it.
I can tell you right now, I saw it.
There's no question what I saw.
But, like he said,
"Nothing is as it appears to be."
In this world, their world.
[people laughing on video]
- [woman 1] Did he get in?
- [woman 2] On your right.
[woman 3] Mary Ellen, you have
[indistinct chatter]
[Tony] I remember Danny seemed tired,
and he just said, "I'm working a lot."
Which is true. I know that was accurate.
[somber music playing]
[Ann] Danny's life
used to be filled with fun,
and laughter, and drinks,
and wine, and food.
And then
that life took a turn.
It was filled with this story,
which changed him totally.
[Tony] He was making calls late at night
to various people
he thought might be related.
[man] Having been trained
to fight communism,
I saw an opportunity
to get aboard the secret agenda.
He talked on the phone with these creeps
just about every night.
It's almost like they were a network.
[man 2] Little bit of background,
if I may.
I do not exist.
[man laughs]
There were hundreds of calls.
[man 3] Five years from now,
when Danny's with somebody else
[Ann] I remember one remark
at a dinner party.
He was talking about the story,
and we changed the subject.
People just didn't wanna hear it anymore.
That's the only thing Danny talked about.
And he just lashed out, like,
"You guys don't know."
"People don't know what I know."
[indistinct chatter]
[Ann] That is how
conspiracy people talk to you.
Like, "You really don't understand
what's going on,
and I feel, you know, really bad for you."
Which was not like him.
He left this wonderful life that he had,
and he went with them.
[Tony] I knew that he was
consumed with pursuing this story.
And, you know,
if I just said to you, "Here are
the things that related," I'm more of a
I'm kinda like, "Uh, really?"
But when he walked me through them,
I was like,
"Actually, that doesn't sound
so unreasonable."
[intriguing music playing]
[narrator] "What you're about to read
is as unbelievable to me
as it will be to you."
"This story will rewrite American history
over the last 30 years."
"Over the last 40 years."
"Over the last 50 years."
"This story will rewrite American history
over the last 50 years."
"What started as a brief look-see
into the PROMIS software scandal
has revealed a web of thugs and thieves
who roam the Earth
with their weapons and espionage."
"This cabal was spawned 30 years ago,
in the shadow of the Cold War,
in the backwaters of US intelligence."
"It was formed
by the alliances of 12 people."
"It was formed by
the alliances of seven people."
"Eight people."
"It was formed by
the alliances of eight people."
"I've come to call this group
'The Octopus.'"
[intriguing music playing]
"What you're going to learn."
"These eight men
came together in the 1950s."
"A loose collection rising from
the spy networks of the Second World War."
"They're not government officials."
"No longer government officials."
"But their tentacles can reach
into any part of government,
in almost any country."
"They're not known criminals,
but they have successfully penetrated
all factions of organized crime."
"They gained momentum
in the late '60s and early '70s in Laos
before moving into Australia, Angola,
Rhodesia, Iran, and Nicaragua."
"The Cabazon operation
and the PROMIS software scandal
were merely tentacles of the Octopus,
which moves money and power
around the world
to achieve its evolving goals."
"My contacts from this world
are riddled with contradictions
and hidden motives."
"So a research trip is needed
to pierce the shrouds of secrecy."
"A key source has offered his services
as a guide."
"The itinerary for research completion is,
Lexington, Kentucky, two days."
"Indio, California,
to the Indian reservation,
and to meet with homicide investigators,
three days."
"San Francisco,
to meet homicide investigators, one day."
"Seattle, to meet again with
Michael 'Danger Man' Riconosciuto,
in his jail cell, presumably,
one or two days."
"Santa Monica and Long Beach, California."
"Thailand, Burma, and Laos,
to meet with tribal leaders and scholars."
"Kuwait City, Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Tunisia, Israel,
Brussels, Zurich, London."
"Fourteen days." "Two days."
"One day." "Three days."
"Possession of a secret
is no guarantee of its truth."
"And while these allegations
are indeed remarkable,
they're also raw,
with undocumentable details
that make a traditional
journalistic effort impossible."
"It is for this reason
The Octopus is subtitled,
'A True Crime Narrative.'"
"I propose a book
that tells the ageless story
of greed and envy, fear and hate,
what simple men have always known to be
the real enemy, which is selfishness."
"This is the only real secret
of the temple."
"If I keep asking questions,
the answers will gradually fit together."
"With best regards"
"Danny."
[line ringing]
[clicking]
[Cheri] Danny's Uh, do you know
have any idea Do you even
Can you even speculate
on why, let's say, he was murdered?
Uh, what would he possibly have
that could have caused that?
You know, uh,
something on the Justice Department?
[Robert] I would say,
time will tell.
Time will tell.
[intriguing music playing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Zachary] June 27th, 2017.
Michael Riconosciuto has finally
been released from prison.
Twenty-six years earlier,
Michael gave an affidavit
describing his role
in hacking the PROMIS software.
Eight days later,
he was arrested on drug charges.
[Zachary] What's your plan now?
[Michael] First order of business,
I have to call the US probation officer
that's assigned to my case,
or else I'm gonna be back in prison
for the next 11 years.
[Zachary] In 72 hours,
he is supposed to be in Washington state
for a federal court hearing
on the conditions of his release.
But he says he's afraid
of who might be waiting for him there.
[Michael] Uh, hello, Miss Johnson.
This is Michael Riconosciuto.
I was picked up at the bus station,
uh, by a journalist.
I will keep you advised
as to what my location and itinerary is.
[Zachary] Instead, he's heading south
to find his lawyer
who will advise him on what to do next.
In the meantime,
Christian now has unfettered access
to Danny's key source.
[Christian] I've been wanting to ask you
these questions for a really long time.
Do you remember how you first met Danny?
- Danny Casolaro?
- [Christian] Yeah.
[Michael] Danny was a serious player,
and we knew some of the same people and
started talking about Inslaw.
And then Danny
started digging into things.
And I told him
not to talk to certain people,
not to raise certain issues,
and he says, "I'm a journalist.
I can ask any questions I want."
Well, he learned,
as did a number of other journalists
that I dealt with directly.
So you just introduced yourself
to Bill Hamilton.
How did this come about?
I was a little hesitant to actually get
myself involved in all of this, but, uh
[Michael] A little scary?
Yeah, it's a little scary.
- [Michael] Should be a whole lot scary.
- Yeah, it's [laughs]
Yeah.
You know, people have second-guessed
what I was trying to warn them about,
and they all met the same fate.
There's just too many people dead
in this case.
[Tony] I talked to Danny
when he got back from Washington state
to meet with Michael Riconosciuto.
Apparently, he was
He was in search of a tape
that supposedly Michael Riconosciuto had
that would prove his story,
and he couldn't find it.
After that, I think he was
beginning to get less convinced
that Michael Riconosciuto
was going to be a valuable source.
How about this? A reliable source.
I think he was valuable.
Not sure how reliable he was.
[intriguing music playing]
Once you get involved with these people,
it's a world that makes no sense
to the average person.
[phone ringing]
[automated voice] This is LocTel.
You have a collect call from
[Michael] Mike.
[Michael] Dr. John Nichols
and Wackenhut, they, uh,
tried to rope me into
all of their government projects,
and then people started questioning
what Wackenhut was up to.
And first, Alvarez gets murdered,
and then Paul gets murdered.
[Zachary] Who is Paul?
Uh, Paul Morasca was my business partner.
[Michael] You know, anybody
that's cooperated or helped me,
they've just been mercilessly fucked with.
We're dealing with some nasty,
gruesome people that will stop at nothing.
Murder ain't nothing to these people.
[narrator] Michael told me
of his best friend, Paul Morasca,
who had been murdered in San Francisco
six months after Fred Alvarez.
Among the Cabazon associates,
Paul Morasca was the money trader,
with access to offshore bank accounts
amounting to over a billion dollars,
according to Michael.
But no one is supposed to talk about it.
[reporter] We are getting new details on
a homicide investigation in San Francisco.
It was a cold-blooded killing
that took place
in what residents say was a quiet area.
[man] During my 23 years in homicide,
I worked quite a few serial killings,
a lot of high-profile homicide cases,
but the murder investigation
of Paul Morasca in San Francisco
was the most uh, bizarre,
convoluted, and frustrating
murder cases that I ever worked on.
On January 14th, 1982, I received a call
from an attorney in Los Angeles.
[phone ringing]
[man] Hello? Yeah.
Okay, will you be
And he had information from a client
who he didn't identify
that if police were to go to an address
on Kearny Street in San Francisco,
they would find a body.
We found the body of Paul Morasca.
His wrists were bound behind his back,
and then there was a wire running
from around his neck to his ankles,
and that wire strangled him when he was
no longer able to keep his legs bent.
It appeared to be a form of torture.
I called this attorney.
He said his client was a guy
by the name of Michael Riconosciuto.
That he had found this body.
And that he panicked
and drove all night
from San Francisco to Indio, California,
to the Cabazon Indian Reservation,
which is about 500 miles away.
And it was all very unusual.
All very strange.
[Zachary] What do you remember about Paul?
Uh, we've known each other
since we were teenagers.
[Zachary] What was he like?
Well, Paul was a financial guy.
What I was to technology,
Paul was to economics.
And, um,
we got sucked in.
And, you know, Paul figured it out first.
I was too engrossed in my work.
[Eddie] Riconosciuto told us
that he had been working with this man
by the name of Dr. Nichols.
And so my partner and I
went down to Indio,
where we interviewed Dr. Nichols,
who was running this casino.
[Eddie]
Today's date is February 16th, 1982.
Uh, Dr. Nichols,
I wish to ask you some questions
regarding the death of Paul Morasca.
Were you in business with Paul and Mike?
[Nichols] Not really.
The way the thing came about, uh
I do some work with Wackenhut.
- You know who Wackenhut is?
- [Eddie] Mm-hmm.
[Nichols] Mike came in
because he's an inventive genius,
but he has certain problems
psychologically.
- [Eddie] And you're a psychiatrist?
- [Nichols] No, sir. I'm a social worker.
- [Eddie] A social worker.
- [Nichols] Psychiatric social worker
[Eddie] My question was,
are you in business with these fellas?
[Nichols] I'm explaining all these people.
He was a very difficult guy to
to pin down.
Strange guy.
Told me that he was
working with Michael Riconosciuto,
developing weapons with the government.
And then we found out
that Michael's friend,
Paul Morasca, had invested
hundreds of thousands of dollars
into this operation.
So there was a lot of money
connected with Morasca.
[Nichols] I got involved
in setting this thing up with them.
[Eddie] Mm-hmm.
[Nichols] Mike was brought to me
by his father, originally.
[Christian] How did you end up at Cabazon?
Well, I've known John Philip Nichols
since I was very young,
through family friends.
George Wackenhut, since I was very young.
This is just the circles my father was in.
He was doing a lot of lobbying
in Washington, D.C.
for various government agencies.
Do I need to say any more? He was
[Zachary]
In the intelligence world, I guess?
Well, obviously, yes.
[Christian] I have found government files
that corroborate that, actually.
We talked to a number of people
that vouched for Nichols
as being somebody who had
worked with the government before,
that he had contacts
and connection with the CIA.
We began to wonder,
is this case
some kind of a government operation
that we're not aware of?
The FBI told us that, as far as they knew,
it wasn't.
But they also candidly said if it was,
and if the CIA's involved,
they're not gonna tell us either.
Back in San Francisco, my partner and I,
we spoke to Morasca's girlfriend.
[woman] He was afraid for his life.
Something was coming down.
[Eddie] She told us that there was
a man by the name of Jason
that Paul was very frightened of.
Paul had told her
this guy was a, uh, CIA hit man.
[woman] He was introduced
by either Dr. Nichols or Michael.
As we begin hearing about all of this,
we go back to the FBI.
We tell 'em that we're interested in a guy
by the name of Jason.
He said, "Why?"
I said, "Well, we think he's likely
a suspect, one of our suspects."
And he said,
"That's our informant,
and his real name is
Philip Arthur Thompson."
He had a very lengthy arrest record.
Many violent crimes.
Kidnapping, robbery,
rape, escape,
murder, attempted murder.
No doubt a violent individual.
But served very little time.
That would certainly
be indicative of the fact
that he was an informant for the FBI.
[Zachary] Can you describe him?
You've met him.
- Thompson?
- [Zachary] Yeah.
Yeah. I never knew him
until he showed up on my doorstep.
He had committed several murders
while he was under the control
of his FBI handlers,
and the FBI let him stay out of jail
and authorized, uh, using him against me.
[Eddie] The funny thing about Michael is
you just never knew
when he was telling the truth
because some of the stuff
was kinda so outlandish,
you tended to think,
"Well, that's just crazy."
And then we would find out
he was telling the truth.
In fact, the FBI had introduced
Philip Arthur Thompson
into an investigation of Paul Morasca
and Michael Riconosciuto.
They told us that these fellas are dealing
in millions and millions of dollars
in the manufacture of methamphetamine.
And Michael Riconosciuto was a chemist.
This was a major drug operation
with banks in the Bahamas and Switzerland.
[Zachary] So Thompson was
investigating you for drugs?
Well, the FBI sent him
with a cockamamie story,
and I immediately called Nichols.
I was still trusting the Wackenhut group.
And they checked him out, and they said
he was okay. They vetted him.
[Eddie] Mike told you that Philip Thompson
came to his house and said,
"The FBI is asking me to look into you."
[Nichols] To set him up.
Everything, you know,
seemed strange about this thing,
and then where it really gets crazy,
we find out Dr. Nichols recommended
that Michael's father,
Marshall Riconosciuto,
hire Philip Arthur Thompson.
He was paying a monthly salary
to look after Michael.
[Eddie] You recommended Mr. Thompson
to look after Mike?
[Nichols] Mike is not a well person.
Mike has all these imaginary fears,
and I felt he needed to get somebody
that he could relate to.
Because, you see,
a sociopath can help a psychopath.
"Sociopath can help a psychopath."
[laughing] Yeah.
[Nichols] The FBI seems to have
a good relationship with Phil.
[Michael]
Uh, Philip Thompson bragged to me
that what he did to Paul
was one of the most horrible things
that he'd ever done in his life,
the way he killed Paul.
[Michael] I believe John Philip Nichols
directed him to do it.
As best we could, we're trying to
concentrate on the murder of Paul Morasca,
but we keep being led down these trails
involving other issues and other crimes.
Um, so what was it
that Danny was looking into?
- He was looking into so many things
- Well, I've got it all figured out.
I've got a matrix link analysis,
and it's impossible to sit here
and talk about it piecemeal.
- [Christian] Okay.
- Okay?
- It would take days to go through it.
- [Christian] Okay.
I think I've made
enough of a showing to you
that I've got enough
objective evidence here,
and it just takes a lot of time
to go through it.
[Eddie] We have the drug operation,
the Wackenhut Corporation.
We have organized crime figures
involved with the casino.
We have murders of Alvarez
and two of his friends.
And we have an FBI informant.
To get to the bottom of that,
it's beyond what a couple
of local detectives can do.
If the federal government says,
"We don't know what you're talking about"
this case remains, uh, unsolved.
[Michael] These are the people
that are putting pressure on me,
and nobody wants to listen to my story.
They want me to put myself in harm's way.
So I have to choose between
putting myself in harm's way,
or going back to prison.
- [Zachary] There it is.
- Where are we meeting George at?
[Christian] Place called Duke's.
[Zachary] Okay.
[Zachary] We arrived at our destination
to meet Michael's lawyer, George Granby.
[Michael] George?
[all exclaim]
[Zachary] Michael told us
he'd rather go back to prison
than return to Washington state
for his parole hearing
without protection from the people
he had once worked with.
[Michael] 'Cause I'm fighting for my life.
What happens in front of the judge
in the next 48 hours is what matters.
- All right.
- [Christian] All right, Michael.
Let me come back to you.
[Zachary] Michael left us
to discuss his next moves
in private with George Granby.
Christian seemed overwhelmed
by the answers he extracted from Michael.
[Christian] What's your takeaway?
- From today?
- [Christian] Yeah.
About Michael's life? I think
that that guy has a lot of problems.
And many of them
are imposed on him from the outside,
and I think some of them are self-created.
And it's really hard
to parse what is what.
I feel bad for him.
[sighs]
[tense music playing]
[Eddie] As time went on,
information was harder to come by.
But years later, I got a phone call
from a man by the name of Danny Casolaro.
He had come up with
quite a bit of information on his own.
[Christian] If you look at the outline
for Danny's book,
it starts with the death of Paul Morasca.
And Danny refers to his murder
as "the link."
But, like, the link between what?
When Michael told me, in the car,
after we picked him up from prison,
that there were dozens of murders
up and down the coast of California
that Philip Arthur Thompson had committed,
it sounded like total lunatic raving.
But I went through old newspapers
and investigative files
from the decade before Paul's death,
and I found a string of murders
and violent crimes
where Philip Arthur Thompson
was the lead suspect in each one.
Thompson doesn't ever do any real time
for the crimes that he commits,
and the FBI's helping him stay free.
What is he providing
the federal government
that's of such value
that he is allowed to walk the streets
raping, robbing, and killing people?
[Eddie] Mr. Thompson,
we wish to ask you some questions
regarding the death of a Paul Morasca.
Do you know Dr. John Nichols,
who resides in Indio, California?
[Thompson] I've met him.
[Eddie]
And what is your relationship with him?
[Thompson] Uh
You'd have to ask him that.
[Eddie] How long have you known Nichols?
[Thompson] I won't comment on that either.
[ominous music playing]
[Christian] The thing
that nobody's putting together
is that John Philip Nichols' casino
is bankrupt.
They filed for bankruptcy
in December of 1981,
one month before Paul was murdered.
And John Nichols knew
Paul had all these drugs
and all this money.
That same month,
there's a meeting at Vanessi's restaurant,
which is right here on the corner.
[Nichols] He invited me
to an Italian restaurant on, uh, Broadway.
- [Eddie] Vanessi's.
- [Nichols] Yes, that's correct.
And all of the key players
in Paul's murder
are in attendance at this meeting.
It's Michael's father,
his name's Marshall Riconosciuto,
John Philip Nichols,
and Philip Arthur Thompson,
all people that seem to have connections
to the intelligence world.
And when I learned about this meeting,
I recognized Vanessi's.
Like, "Wait, they all met at Vanessi's?"
And I realized, "Oh shit, you can see
Paul's house from Vanessi's,
and he wasn't at the meeting."
I think they were just like,
"That's the apartment. Go up"
"Go up there and get him."
And as he was slowly dying,
I'm sure he was promised that, you know,
"We'll untie you. Just tell us where the
where the chemicals are."
"Tell us what the bank codes are."
He was tortured when he was murdered,
and then all of his shit disappeared.
His Swiss bank accounts were drained.
His drugs disappeared.
I mean, that's the motive.
That's the link.
Covert operations
funded by Paul's drug money.
That's the connection
Danny was trying to make.
[Zachary] Where does that leave you
with Michael? Sort of
Yeah, I mean, it brings me back to
a lot of conversations I had with Michael
that I thought were totally insane,
but they were actually pretty lucid,
you know, um,
and he was telling me the truth.
I mean, some of the stuff, though, it's
I do know that he does tell untrue stories
in a way that he seems to believe them.
They're just stories
that don't make sense.
Like him saying
he's never been involved with drugs.
So it's like, do you just ignore
everything he says because he's a liar,
or do you try to dig in deeper
and try to figure out
what's real and what's not?
[somber music playing]
[Christian laughing softly]
It never ends!
It never ends. It's
You know, you set out
to try to finish this story,
and it just never fucking ends.
[music fades]
[woman] There's a picture
of Philip Arthur Thompson.
- [man] Yeah, I've seen it.
- [woman] Yeah.
Jason. All right. That's interesting.
Forgot about that one.
When you start talking
to Michael Riconosciuto,
he spins this web of intrigue,
and it becomes a mystery,
then it becomes a puzzle.
And ultimately, before you
even understand it, it becomes a game.
I was a reporter
in a small town in California.
This is me in Mariposa.
I had been investigating
why drugs were so prevalent
in central California.
In my mind, what I was chasing after,
and I told this to Michael Riconosciuto,
was government-sanctioned drug operations.
That's basically who I was
when I was speaking to
and taking information from Riconosciuto
on the phone.
[Zachary] Right.
- Not who I am today.
- [Zachary chuckles]
And one day,
I started reading about Danny Casolaro,
right after his death in 1991.
I'd found out we were running parallel
in our investigations.
Danny delved deeper into areas
that I chose not to,
because I was mostly interested
in the drug aspect,
but no matter what direction he went in,
Danny hit drugs again,
because the intelligence operations
were basically involved with drugs.
And so I jumped on to Danny's trail.
And then, on December 1st, 1991,
Michael Riconosciuto contacted me
at 7:30 in the morning.
And I was introduced
to my first contact with the Octopus.
[Michael] Hello? Cheri?
[Cheri] Yeah. You authorize me to tape it?
[Michael] That's correct.
I asked him why he called me.
And he said because the media
and the government
were making him out to be
nothing more than a drug dealer.
He said, in fact, he had been involved
in many government operations,
and he wanted people to know about it.
[Michael] The thing is, the government's
on the hook for the death of Paul Morasca.
And the whole operation got out of hand.
[Cheri] Yes?
[Michael] That's all there is to it.
[Cheri] He said,
after Paul Morasca's death,
he left Cabazon in a hurry.
He felt threatened. He felt
that he was gonna be the next one to go.
[Michael] I left the orbit of Wackenhut
and John Philip Nichols.
And it just turned into
a Kafkaesque nightmare
from that point on.
And that's when he went with
Robert Booth Nichols.
[Michael] And, uh,
my life hasn't been the same since.
[Michael] There's two Nicholses here,
I've gotta clarify.
There's John P. Nichols,
and there was Robert Booth Nichols,
and they're not related.
[Cheri] Riconosciuto said
that Robert Booth Nichols
was the key to Danny's Octopus.
[Michael] The Indian Reservation
was small potatoes, okay?
But he said repeatedly,
over and over told Danny,
"Do not talk to Robert Booth Nichols."
[phone ringing]
[Michael] I was around Bob for years,
and I know how the man operates.
The guy is absolutely scary.
[phone continues ringing]
[tense music playing]
My name is Robert Nichols.
Have you heard that name?
Evidently, Michael wouldn't want
you speaking with me.
[Cheri] Once you jump on the board with
Riconosciuto and Robert Booth Nichols,
they definitely, pardon the expression,
"screw with your mind."
They certainly did with me,
and I have no doubt
that they did this with Danny.
That's part of the game.
[Robert] You can't be shy.
You have to ask questions,
or how do you know?
[Cheri] One of his operations was
out at Cabazon,
retrofitting and developing arms
for the Contras.
That's where Michael Riconosciuto
became involved with him.
But he was also doing all sorts
of other operations all over the world.
[Robert] It's amazing what the government
will do if you're of value to them.
I mean, look the other way, right?
[woman] Raise your hand.
Do you swear the testimony
you're about to give today
will be the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth so help you God?
- Speak.
- Yes.
[man] Mr. Nichols, since you were
22 or 23 years old to the present date,
your primary way of making money
was to be employed by people
who claim to be associated
with government intelligence?
That's correct.
I was told that this,
what is taking place today,
would not happen to me.
I do what I'm told to do.
I'm a facilitator.
It is a very sensitive matter.
Very sensitive to this country.
And under no circumstance
can this reach the public.
And you will never, ever be bothered
by your government ever.
Period.
[man] And what did you do
while working for these people?
Achieved objectives
that they set out for me.
[eerie music playing]
Danny recognized he was talking to
a dangerous person.
[Robert]
See, I have to be extremely careful
because I am involved
You know, when I say "involved,"
I have knowledge
of the darker areas of US intelligence.
But he felt that it was worth it
for this unfolding story.
I had heard from numerous sources
that he's worked for
all these various agencies.
He was telling everybody
he worked for the DOJ.
All his friends said
he worked for the NSA, NSC.
[Robert] There are many reasons
for doing things that, uh,
are usually very veiled.
He was a part of a cutout corporation,
a front corporation
created for the National Security Council
to work in Lebanon.
And there are documents
from the White House about it.
Documents showing all these
important, high-ranking people
that are on this board of directors.
They are directly connected to each other
and the intelligence world
and to Robert Booth Nichols.
[Robert] I was, you know, involved in
certain project financing and funding.
[Cheri] Robert Booth Nichols told Danny
he was going to show him
all of the operations
that he had been involved in.
Basically, show him the larger picture.
[Robert] See, things were described to me
as being in the national interest,
and somewhere, something went wrong.
And, you know,
what is the national interest?
I mean, it's whatever interest
they want it to be.
I remember that Danny thought he was
central to the story he was working on,
so they decided to meet.
[narrator] "Robert Booth Nichols arrived
in Washington, D.C.
on a three-day stopover."
"I picked him up at the airport,
and we drove to the Four Seasons hotel,
where he stayed."
"That evening,
we went out to dinner and then drinks,
as we would each night
for the rest of his stay."
"Though he was never outwardly drunk,
he became talkative
as the night progressed."
[Robert] Wackenhut are the backwaters
of US intelligence.
You usually see
anyone in the intelligence community
that's high up laced in there somewhere.
[narrator] "He instructed me
not to take notes,
but I collected names and operations
on cocktail napkins
that I would stuff into
my jacket pockets."
[Robert] You know, the activities
that I've been involved with,
I can tell you very clearly,
an effort for many years was made
to benefit a lot of important people.
[narrator] "'The cloak-and-dagger
arrangement at Cabazon
between the criminal world
and the intelligence world
was not an isolated venture, '
Nichols said."
"It was simply my first glimpse
of a hidden network of operations
that spans the globe,
enlisting banks"
[Robert] You know, this is like BCCI.
The bank that is now under the biggest
criminal investigation in banking history.
BCCI stands accused of dirty dealing
around the world.
[reporter] Allegedly involved in illegal
arms deals, drug-running, kidnapping,
and bribery of US officials.
[reporter 2] In fact, BCCI had CIA money.
[Robert] The Nugan Hand thing.
[reporter 3] A bank in Australia
known as Nugan Hand.
[reporter 4] Illegal currency
transactions, big-time drug operations,
and the Central Intelligence Agency.
[Robert] Money laundering.
[reporter 5] The Savings and Loans scandal
could cost half a trillion dollars.
[reporter 6]
The CIA may have used the proceeds
to help pay for covert operations
that Congress was unwilling to support.
[narrator] "Gunrunners"
[reporter 5] The sale of arms to Iran
and the diversion of profits
to the Contras,
it's hard to believe that it stayed
a secret as long as it did.
[narrator] "Former spies"
[reporter 7] Edwin Wilson,
the former CIA agent.
[reporter 8] Under federal indictment for
selling weapons and explosives to Libya.
There have also been charges
that Wilson recruited Americans
to go to Libya and train terrorists.
[Robert] Those are just a few things.
But, uh, all these stories are related.
[narrator] "'These scandals
that bubbled to the surface,
they're all connected
through a rogue intelligence network
that goes back decades, ' Nichols said."
[Robert] I'm speaking about people
that are in the intelligence areas
internationally, across the board,
not just the CIA.
[Cheri] For Danny, this expands,
and expands, and expands.
And it branches into
so many different aspects and tentacles.
And now the story has become
something completely different
than what it was originally.
Now Danny was pursuing
these claims of international spy networks
going back decades.
[Robert]
Pender I knew very well from Beirut.
[Cheri] Danny started focusing on
the good ol' boys
before the CIA was created,
and he was gonna bring it forward.
He wanted to know who is involved.
[Robert] I'd stay away from that.
[narrator] "'You are not
to see the lies we tell, ' said Nichols."
[Robert]
That's something I wouldn't wanna
wouldn't wanna say.
[narrator] "At the end of the three days,
Nichols said,
'I wish you weren't a writer.'"
"'You know too much,
and now you're gonna have to die.'"
"Was this a sinister joke
or a friendly warning?"
"I couldn't tell the difference."
When Danny told me about the threats,
it was hard to tell how to interpret that.
I just know that he tried
to keep Danny on edge,
but I don't know what was driving that.
February 13th, 1992.
I met with Robert Booth Nichols.
I ultimately got this appointment
through a friend of his.
This friend warned me. He said,
"When you get into Nichols' apartment,
they're gonna sit you on a couch
next to a lion,
a stuffed lion,
and the lion has a bug inside of it,
a listening device,
and they're gonna be taping you."
[doorbell rings]
[footsteps approaching]
[Cheri] When I walked in the door,
Ellen Nichols was there, his wife.
[tense music playing]
[Robert, faintly] You know, court needed
Both sides are involved in projects
[Cheri] There was anaconda snake skins
on the wall,
pictures of him with Saudi Arabians
and high-ranking officials,
government officials.
I got the feeling it was a safe house,
to tell you the truth.
And then he sat me right down on the couch
next to a lion. A big stuffed lion.
Nichols was very controlled
but very dramatic.
And he would be very assertive
in his way of letting you know,
"Don't ask me that question again."
I asked him about Danny Casolaro.
He believed Danny was murdered.
He did not believe
that he committed suicide.
He said that Danny was
very excited about going overseas.
I pursued questions about why he died,
how he died, and Nichols said,
"No journalist has done enough work
to deserve to know that answer."
And then he invited me to go overseas
and do exactly
what he invited Danny to do,
and I would get my answers.
And I said, "I'll think about it."
Oh, the Zapruder Tape.
He stands up,
and he starts playing this tape.
It was the Zapruder Tape
of the Kennedy assassination,
but then he slowed it way down.
And it was so slow
that you could almost see the air moving.
Then you saw the driver take a gun
and go like this
and shoot Kennedy.
And the bullet comes out of the gun
this slow.
Very, very, very slow.
And it hits Kennedy in the head,
and you see everything
flying out of his head.
And I'm thinking,
"This isn't the tape I ever saw before."
So I said, "Is this a doctored tape?
What's this about?"
And he said, "This is the original one."
And I said, "Uh, no," you know?
He says, "I'm gonna show you
the one that you've seen on the media."
The next tape is your typical one
where the driver just keeps driving.
He never even flinches with the gun.
And he stops the tape.
And he says, "Look at the tree."
And there's the top of a tree
growing in air.
And he says, "This is the one
that you're seeing on the media,
and it's been doctored."
He looked very, very intently at me,
and he said,
"Nothing is as it appears to be."
That tape was the last thing he did
before I left.
It occurred to me that that was shown
so that it would provide deniability
for Robert Booth Nichols.
He had to have doctored that,
to have put half a tree in that film,
so that, you know,
my ability to see the truth
or to report the facts
kind of goes out the window
when you start describing that film.
Especially if you say you believed it.
I can tell you right now, I saw it.
There's no question what I saw.
But, like he said,
"Nothing is as it appears to be."
In this world, their world.
[people laughing on video]
- [woman 1] Did he get in?
- [woman 2] On your right.
[woman 3] Mary Ellen, you have
[indistinct chatter]
[Tony] I remember Danny seemed tired,
and he just said, "I'm working a lot."
Which is true. I know that was accurate.
[somber music playing]
[Ann] Danny's life
used to be filled with fun,
and laughter, and drinks,
and wine, and food.
And then
that life took a turn.
It was filled with this story,
which changed him totally.
[Tony] He was making calls late at night
to various people
he thought might be related.
[man] Having been trained
to fight communism,
I saw an opportunity
to get aboard the secret agenda.
He talked on the phone with these creeps
just about every night.
It's almost like they were a network.
[man 2] Little bit of background,
if I may.
I do not exist.
[man laughs]
There were hundreds of calls.
[man 3] Five years from now,
when Danny's with somebody else
[Ann] I remember one remark
at a dinner party.
He was talking about the story,
and we changed the subject.
People just didn't wanna hear it anymore.
That's the only thing Danny talked about.
And he just lashed out, like,
"You guys don't know."
"People don't know what I know."
[indistinct chatter]
[Ann] That is how
conspiracy people talk to you.
Like, "You really don't understand
what's going on,
and I feel, you know, really bad for you."
Which was not like him.
He left this wonderful life that he had,
and he went with them.
[Tony] I knew that he was
consumed with pursuing this story.
And, you know,
if I just said to you, "Here are
the things that related," I'm more of a
I'm kinda like, "Uh, really?"
But when he walked me through them,
I was like,
"Actually, that doesn't sound
so unreasonable."
[intriguing music playing]
[narrator] "What you're about to read
is as unbelievable to me
as it will be to you."
"This story will rewrite American history
over the last 30 years."
"Over the last 40 years."
"Over the last 50 years."
"This story will rewrite American history
over the last 50 years."
"What started as a brief look-see
into the PROMIS software scandal
has revealed a web of thugs and thieves
who roam the Earth
with their weapons and espionage."
"This cabal was spawned 30 years ago,
in the shadow of the Cold War,
in the backwaters of US intelligence."
"It was formed
by the alliances of 12 people."
"It was formed by
the alliances of seven people."
"Eight people."
"It was formed by
the alliances of eight people."
"I've come to call this group
'The Octopus.'"
[intriguing music playing]
"What you're going to learn."
"These eight men
came together in the 1950s."
"A loose collection rising from
the spy networks of the Second World War."
"They're not government officials."
"No longer government officials."
"But their tentacles can reach
into any part of government,
in almost any country."
"They're not known criminals,
but they have successfully penetrated
all factions of organized crime."
"They gained momentum
in the late '60s and early '70s in Laos
before moving into Australia, Angola,
Rhodesia, Iran, and Nicaragua."
"The Cabazon operation
and the PROMIS software scandal
were merely tentacles of the Octopus,
which moves money and power
around the world
to achieve its evolving goals."
"My contacts from this world
are riddled with contradictions
and hidden motives."
"So a research trip is needed
to pierce the shrouds of secrecy."
"A key source has offered his services
as a guide."
"The itinerary for research completion is,
Lexington, Kentucky, two days."
"Indio, California,
to the Indian reservation,
and to meet with homicide investigators,
three days."
"San Francisco,
to meet homicide investigators, one day."
"Seattle, to meet again with
Michael 'Danger Man' Riconosciuto,
in his jail cell, presumably,
one or two days."
"Santa Monica and Long Beach, California."
"Thailand, Burma, and Laos,
to meet with tribal leaders and scholars."
"Kuwait City, Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Tunisia, Israel,
Brussels, Zurich, London."
"Fourteen days." "Two days."
"One day." "Three days."
"Possession of a secret
is no guarantee of its truth."
"And while these allegations
are indeed remarkable,
they're also raw,
with undocumentable details
that make a traditional
journalistic effort impossible."
"It is for this reason
The Octopus is subtitled,
'A True Crime Narrative.'"
"I propose a book
that tells the ageless story
of greed and envy, fear and hate,
what simple men have always known to be
the real enemy, which is selfishness."
"This is the only real secret
of the temple."
"If I keep asking questions,
the answers will gradually fit together."
"With best regards"
"Danny."
[line ringing]
[clicking]
[Cheri] Danny's Uh, do you know
have any idea Do you even
Can you even speculate
on why, let's say, he was murdered?
Uh, what would he possibly have
that could have caused that?
You know, uh,
something on the Justice Department?
[Robert] I would say,
time will tell.
Time will tell.
[intriguing music playing]