The Long Tentacles of The Octopus
The complicated story that consumed a freelance writer up until his death by Albert Lanier
The book proposal was billed as a “True Crime Narrative” and was titled “Behold a Pale Horse”. It started off talking about “An international cabal whose freelance services cover parochial political intrigue, espionage , sophisticated weapon technologies that include biotoxins, drug trafficking , money laundering and murder for hire has emerged from an isolated Indian reservation just north of Mexicali “.
Later a book draft was written and the title changed to “The Octopus” and the opening noted “This is the story of Eight men whose real life ‘impossible mission’ intrigues have dominated key events that span the globe for nearly a half century. They are the men who make up the Octopus.”
Both the proposal and the draft were written by a freelance writer named Danny Casolaro.
Casolaro never got to see his proposed book published . He was found dead in a tub of bloody water in the bathroom of Room 517 at a Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia on August 10, 1991.
Both wrists were slashed about a dozen times and a note was found in Casolaro's room that- according to a press release from the County Prosecuting Attorney-read “To my loved ones, Please forgive me. Most especially my son and be understanding, God will let me in.”
The death of Danny Casolaro was eventually ruled a suicide in spite of a number of odd decisions such as the body being taken to a funeral home and embalmed which was against state law in West Virginia and his family not being notified of his death until a couple of days after his body was found.
Also that according to relatives and those who knew him, Casolaro was extremely squeamish about blood. Thus the idea that a man put off by blood would choose to end his life by cutting himself and hemorrhaging to death sounds both implausible and illogical.
Certainly the death of Danny Casolaro remains fraught with controversy and suspicion.
What remains just as controversial if not more so over the years is what essentially brought Casolaro to West Virginia in August of 1991- The Octopus.
THE CABAL
“They are not government officials but their tentacles can reach into any part of government in almost any country” reads part of the description of Casolaro's shadowy Octopus group in his book draft.
The draft further defines them: “They are not notable industrialists but they can pull the strings on the Oil and Banking empires at will.”
“They are not known criminals but have successfully penetrated all factions of organized crime including. the Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, the secret Chinese Triads and terrorist underground” notes the draft.
Beyond this rudimentary spy novel type verbiage which likely was employed by the writer to hype up a manuscript for possible publication, the so-called Octopus appears to be a collection of former intelligence agency operatives and professionals .
These former agency types were likely involved in “off the books” incidents and affairs, operations that are probably not officially sanctioned.
Newsweek in an August 25, 1991 article about Danny called “A Victim of ‘The Octopus'?” called the Octopus Group “a loose network of individuals including some Americans, who did clandestine operations for profit.”
Author Kenn Thomas- who along with Jim Keith wrote the 1995 book “The Octopus: The Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro” dealing with the freelance writer and the story he was involved with and researched obsessively -also wrote a June 7,2001 article for the Disinformation website entitled “Casolaro's Octopus”
In “Casolaro's Octopus”, Thomas notes that The 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.”
This collective was said to have been actively involved “since the end of World War II” with “many coups and assassinations” according to Thomas.
Specifically “it had targeted operations against Fidel Castro culminating in the Bay of Pigs.”
“It also had tentacles in the political upheavals in Angola, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Chile, Iran and Iraq” noted Thomas and reputedly helped overthrow President Jacob Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954.
Domestic and in country affairs like the Watergate burglary and later scandal of the early 1970s may have ties to the Octopus Group in the form of captured burglars Bernard Baker and E Howard Hunt.
Then you had permutations to a scandal ongoing at the time of Casolaro's death in 1991: the Bank of Credit and Commerce International or BCCI affair.
The New York Times in an August 17, 1991 article about the death of Danny Casolaro titled “Reporter is Buried Amid Questions Over His Pursuit of Conspiracy Idea” called BCCI “a loosely regulated international banking concern that Federal regulators say is at the center of a worldwide banking fraud.”
BCCI became scandalous in the early 1990s because it was a nexus for shady dealings including money laundering.
You also have what is popularly known both in 1980 as well as now as the October Surprise affair
Newsweek’s article characterized the October Surprise as “the alleged attempt by Ronald Reagan's 1980 Presidential campaign to delay the US Hostages in Iran in order to prevent Jimmy Carter's re-election.”
Indeed the belief was that individuals working for and with the Reagan Campaign arranged for Senior campaign figures to meet in European cities with Iranian officials. The goal was to get them to stall negotiations with the Carter administration about releasing the group of former US Embassy staff then held as hostages in Iran and not release them if or until a Reagan victory in the November Election
Though the October Surprise is not officially supported as an official conspiracy, there indeed was concern in the Reagan camp that Carter could pull off a late release of the hostages and surge to victory at the polls
Octopus involvement also extends to other events including the 1986 Iran Contra Scandal .
THE END
Thus what Casolaro called the Octopus seems not so much a group of ex intelligence professionals engaged in secretive missions but a constellation of seemingly separate political scandals , regime change operations, financial chicanery just to begin with .
Essentially looking at Casolaro's investigation as a story, a narrative intended as a book, this is more of a universe of secret dealings , developments and deaths with each affair or scandal a seperate galaxy of labyrinthine intrigue and deceit.
What gets lost by writers and reporters who looked into Casolaro's death years ago and who examine the investigation into what he called the Octopus is that viewing this from the standpoint of pure journalism won't work .
Essentially Danny was trying to meld a literary framework along with journalistic reporting in terms of his proposed “Behold A Pale Horse”/ Octopus book and that is ultimately how one rationally needs to see this- as a story. a saga on a grand scale .
Would Danny have succeded ? We dont know. Casolaro couldn't get a book deal with a publisher at the time but soldiered on with his research.
What is understood was Danny was in Martinsburg in August 1991 to meet a source that would help him unravel the last aspects of the Octopus.
What is known for sure is that Casolaro was found dead in his hotel room under suspicious circumstances.
Yet the story remains and that story is still important to consider.
Albert Lanier is a former freelance writer and and journalist . His bylines could be found in Honolulu Weekly. Pacific Business News and Hawaii magazine among other publications
He can be found on Facebook and Tik Tok (@imperiousreader )