LABYRINTH: THE INSLAW CASE AND THE OCTOPUS (3rd Anniversary Article)
by Albert Lanier
“It may be the most bizarre spy story ever. A story of corruption and betrayal at the highest levels of American Government. A Story of Hostages used as pawns. Of the CIA spying on its friends. Of murders made to look like suicides.”
Reporter Michael Holmes. Australia TV’s A CURRENT AFFAIR , early 1990s.
This story begins with INSLAW Inc.
Founded as the Institute for Law and Social Research by former National Security Agency employee William Hamilton and his wife Nancy, INSLAW was the company that owned a software program called PROMIS-Prosecutor’s Management Information System.
Hamilton developed and created PROMIS largely for the US Federal Government’s Department of Justice and specifically for US Attorneys or Federal Prosecutors.
The PROMIS software was case management software that could collate and access a number of files for any user.
Bill and Nancy Hamilton had a Three year contract with the DOJ for PROMIS. However after at least one year of contractually obligated payment, moneys from the client DOJ stopped and no further payment was made.
Even stranger was what Bill and Nancy found out about PROMIS-namely that the program was being used in other countries without the prior knowledge and consent of the Hamiltons.
This could mean only one thing: That the PROMIS software was appropriated and sold illegally to other nations.
Perhaps the oddest development of all at first was that the US Government was likely the party that stole the software program and sold it off.
However, the PROMIS software wasn’t sold in its original version to countries like Canada, Israel and Australia.
Michael Riconosciuto, a man who had been a bit of a technical and scientific prodigy as a child, got in touch with the Hamiltons and admitted he had worked on adapting and changing the PROMIS software for foreign sales. Risconosciuto stated he had modfied the program with a back door function that was password protected. Another party with the right password could unlock the program and read every file or piece of information programmed and placed within the software.
This work on the PROMIS software was reportedly done within the confines of the Cabazon Indian Reservation in California.
Congress convened an investigation into the INSLAW case and also held hearings in the early 1990’s. Riconosciuto was talking to investigators and was providing an affadavit when he was arrested by Federal Law enforcement authorities on narcotics charges and thus wound up a tainted and unusable witness because of the arrest and eventual conviction.
The Hamiltons ended up going into bankruptcy because of the DOJ and thus Federal Government’s refusal to pay off INSLAW’s contract.
Eventually, Bill and Nancy wound up in Bankruptcy Court to contest the Government. Bankruptcy Court Judge George Basen ruled on the matter and found that the Justice Deartment has used in his words “trickery, fraud and deceit” in order to obtain the software and drive INSLAW into bankruptcy. Judge Basen also demanded the Federal Government needed to pay INSLAW $8 million in damages.
If the pirating of software by an agency of the Federal Government was the only aspect of this narrative, it might be intriguing but hardly earth shattering.
The INSLAW case is but one course in a full course meal of secret dealings and shadowy connections.
This can be best be described in a couple of words: The Octopus.
A freelance writer and journalist named Danny Casolaro had begun looking into the INSLAW case. He also started investigated the murky and deliberately obscure junctions of intelligence and finance.
Casolaro’s interest in what was termed the Octopus likely comes from the reasons for why the PROMIS software was stolen.
In 1980 Republican Ronald Reagan was challenging incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter for the Presidency. At the time, former American Embassy personnel were held as hostages in Iran after the embassy had been stormed and such personnel captured in the wake of the Iranian Revolution.
The Hostage situation was a lingering and uncomfortable political issue at the time of the 1980 Presidential Election.
The fear felt within Reagan’s campaign and Republicans in general was that Carter could reach a deal with Iranian authrities to free the hostages and possibly give the boost and edge in securing re-election. This was popularly known as “October Surprise”.
Writer Kenn Thomas who co-wrote the book “The Octopus: The Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro.” with co-author Jim Keith examined the so-called Octopus in an article for the Disinformation website entitled “Casolaro’s Octopus”.
The article dated June 7, 2001 noted “Casolaro had as his main concern Octopus involvement with putting Ronald Reagan in power-the infamous October Surprise and the role that played in introducing the PROMIS software into police systems around the world.”
Casolaro looked into the role played by one Earl Bryan who Thomas wrote his piece was “a crony to Reagan’s Attorney General Ed Meese.”
Bryan ostensibly helped arrange dealings with members of the new regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and officials in the Reagan campaign.
The purpose? To broker a secret deal to prevent the American Hostages from being released before the 1980 Election and thus prevent Jimmy Carter from making a deal and possibly winning the election.
Indeed, Reagan ended up winning the 1980 election and as if on cue, Iran formally released the hostages on the day of Reagan’s Inauguration.
Thus “Bryan had been given PROMIS to sell illegally as a reward for paying off Ayatollah Khomeini to hold on to American hostages until the Carter Presidential reelection campaign was clearly doomed” according to Thomas.
Apparently Casolaro has discarded that Meese as Attorney General had “used the US Justice Department to steal PROMIS from its developers…”
Reputedly Bryan took the pilfered software and sold it to intelligence and law enforcement agencies such as Israel’s Mossad, Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the European police agency Interpol.
Thomas stated that “if coded correctly, PROMIS could interface with other databases without reprogramming, giving ability to ostensibly track criminals but also potentially, political dissidents through the computer systems of various police agencies.”
“This gave it added appeal as a covert tool” added Thomas.
Perhaps the most covert aspect of this saga is the so-called Octopus.
Defined in Thomas’s Disinfo article as a “sea of covert operatives, super surveillance software and transnational spies”, this Octopus ”consisted of a group of US intelligence veterans that had banded together to manipulate world events for the sake of consolidating and extending its power.”
An October 25th, 1991 Newsweek article on Danny Casolaro also defines the Octopus as “a loose network of individuals including some Americans who did clandestine operations for profit.”
Supposedly, the Octopus was involved with such epoch shattering events as the Assassination of President John F Kennedy.
The secretive group was also involved in what could loosely be called “regime change” operations. “The Octopus had overthrown Jacob Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954” writes Thomas “It had targeted operations against Fidel Castro culminating in the Bay of Pigs. It also tentacles in the political upheavals in Angola, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Chile, Iran and Iraq.”
Individuals such as former CIA director William Colby and E Howard Hunt known largely for his involvement in the Watergate Conspiracy were rumored to be members of this shadowy organization.
Casolaro had been assiduously digging into the Octopus and its connections. The New York Times in an August 17, 1991 article defined Casolaro as someone “who was not widely known in the Washington Journalism community and published a novel and some short stories and for a time owned a small group of computer industry trade publications.”
This short precis in a larger article seems a rather minor way to sum up a person’s life. Whatever one thinks of Casolaro, it is clear that the freelancer deserves a great deal of credit for looking into and endeavoring to investigate the Octopus as well as INSLAW.
Unfortunately, Casolaro never got the chance to reveal his findings aboyt the Octopus. In August of 1991, the 44 year old Casolaro was found dead within his room at a Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
According to the August 25, 1991 Newsweek article about Casolaro, the writer had “gone to Martinsburg to interview a pivotal source on the wide-ranging conspiracy he called the Octopus”.
Newsweek later notes that in West Virginia, Casolaro “expected to meet a source who had evidence of computer software thefts from a major defense contracting firm.”
Casolaro’s death was seen as questionable by a number of people even from the beginning.
The August 17th New York Times Article about Casolaro noted that Casolaro’s brother, Dr Anthony Casolaro was “very skeptical that his brother committed suicide.”
Indeed, Casolaros’ death was initially seen as a suicide despite the fact that freelance writer was found with a total of about a dozen slash marks on his wrists while sitting in a pool of blood soaked water in the bathtub of his hotel room’s bathroom.
The problem was that Casolaro was notoriously squeamish when it came to blood,well known amongst his friends and family. Thus it would be unlikely that he could have ended his life like this even if chose to do so.
Also Casolaro had brought number of notes and materials with him to Martinsburg. These had disappeared at the scene of his death when authorities arrived.
Former US Attorney General Elliot Richardson who was representing the Hamiltons and INSLAW in court proceedings told the Boston Globe at the time “Its hard to come up with any reason for (Casolaro’s) death other than he was deliberately murdered because he was close to uncovering sinister elements in what he called ‘the Octopus’”
There are many progressions and digressions of both INSLAW and the Octopus that could fill a number of other articles let alone books. These subject are infinitely maze-like in nature.
What value does examining both INSLAW and Octopus hold for one today?
To begin with, INSLAW and PROMIS presage what I have personally called the Spy State-the nature of government surveillance of not just specific groups but millions of ordinary citizens. Former contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations about spying and surveillance through computer systems and the internet can be viewed from the historical background of PROMIS and the development and creation of software that can categorize, organize and prioritize tracking and snooping on chosen targets.
The Octopus allows one to look further at the dangers of secrecy through hidden. stealthy, shadowy groups who engage in operations both possibly deadly or illegal or both. Take for example, Operation Gladio and stay behind armies in Italy and other parts of Europe organized to fight the Soviet Union after World War 2 as last stand units in case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. When that wasnt likely, such groups engaged in all kinds of secretly sanctioned affairs. The Octopus shows that sub rosa reality of penumbra groups can and are worth viewing skeptically.
It is often said that fact is stranger than fiction. When it comes to INSLAW and the Octopus, fact is murkier, odder and sometimes scarier than fiction.
A former freelance journalist and writer, Albert Lanier served as a contributing writer for Honolulu Weekly, Pacific Business News, Hawaii Magazine and Asian Week in addition to many other publications over a 22 year career.
Since retiring in 2017, Lanier has written a blog for medium.com and serves as an independent commentator and analyst interviewed on numerous talk shows, podcasts and programs. He can be reached on Twitter and Facebook.
