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Yeah and nowt O Media March eighteen, twenty twenty four. Allegedly, according
to that thing we call a calendar, this the o'celly effect. You hearing
us, whether you're catching it live on the stream or you know, on
a Monday, I'm broadcasting here, which is unusual, but here we go.
It is the first broadcast day of the week, and you guys will
probably be hearing it mostly on the podcast anyway afterwards, because that's where most
of you get the o'celly effect. So anyway, welcome to it, no
matter how you came to it. What are we discussing tonight, Well,
I have a return guest who has been on the show numerous times to discuss
quite a diverse array of topics. We've gone through unsolved mysteries. We've talked
about the murder of some well, you know, rock stars of pasts out
there. Not really a rockstar though, more of like a soul singer.
But you know what, that's okay. Take a look at what Albert Lanier
and I have discussed in the past. He's a veteran journalist and currently can
find him on substack, and in fact, what we're going to talk about
tonight you can find by going to Albertlineer dot substack dot com. And what
is it about, Well, tonight's show is going to be about that thing
we talked with Ed Oppermann about recently, that thing that quite honestly, whenever
I touch upon it, I sit back and I have to listen to most
people because a very complex thing is out there in let's call it conspiracy culture,
let's call it the media in general. And now even Netflix has gotten
in on the act this month, indeed, they released a documentary series.
Now, those people that are deeply steeped in conspiracy culture have had a lot
to say about this. The regular press has had a bit to say about
it. Indeed, I've got an article in front of me right this moment
from uh, what is this The Guardian? I don't know. Do you
consider the Guardian mainstream? I guess you do at this point. But other
places have covered it. Why because it's a highly successful documentary series on the
Octopus. And indeed the headline on the Guardian article is extreme power and secrecy
inside shocking Netflix hit the Octopus Murders. Okay, there's the murder, there's
the software, there's the worldwide net of conspiracy, and all of these things
we're gonna have to touch upon with veteran journalist Albert Lanier. So first off,
how are you doing tonight, mister Liney? I'm fine? And how
are you took? I'm doing okay. But I'll tell you every time I
tear open this subject with anybody, it is complexity stacked on top of complexity,
and then you know what another code of complexity. Like I'm payton the
House and I'm not sure how many times somebody's rented it. You know what
I mean? It is an amazing store. So I'm curious almost to start
with a question for you. That might be strange because I don't think of
you as covering these sorts of topics generally. I know you'll touch upon conspiracy
stuff, You'll look into the general conspiracy culture. It's not like you haven't
done Alex Jones show before, just saying you've been there, You've been around
it, but it's not really your bailliwick. It's not your thing usually to
get into this kind of stuff. So is it Netflix inspired or was there
some other reason? I know the answer to that, But tell us about
how it is that you even wanted to cover this topic at all, and
tell me how you came into it. Well, it's interesting you start out
with this question because I actually found out about Danny Cassilero and the octopus,
and of course the firm inslaugh and it's Rietterry Software promise back in the nineties.
I know the last time I was on this show, I think was
last year, when I was talking about my Unsolved Mysteries article titled you may
be able to help solve the mystery. It's interesting because I was talking about
that at a great time. But how I found out about Danny Castellarro and
the octopus and all of this was actually from an Unsolved Mystery segment back in
the nineteen nineties. That's where I first found out about the death of Danny
Castilero, what he was investigating, which he called the octopus, this group
of individuals, this sort of shadowy collective, and it was learning about that
when I believe I was still in college. I can't remember when the segment
came out on Unsolved Mysteries. That made an impression in my mind. And
years later, back in March of twenty ten, I was interviewed on a
show called Medium Monarchy, and I did a two and a half hour interview
talking about Danny, Octopus, inslaw promise, Michael Riccona, Shudo, William
Hamilton, all of this. And I cite that because not only because I
had actually started doing research. This is actually a personal research project. As
a writer and as a journalist. What I would sometimes do outside of work
is if I got interested in a subject, if I was intrigued about something,
I'd go get a bunch of books from library or read a bunch of
magazine articles. I do research. So this actually began for me, not
as work. I was not assigned to write an article about any of this,
Octopus, Daddy Catilero, any of this. I actually took this on
as a personal research project because I had seen the Unsolved Mystery segment on the
death of Danny Castilero and learned about this, and so when I started researching
this. I guess I started researching this back in twenty ten, at least
because I was on Media Monarchy doing the interview, and that was the first
interview I did. That was March of twenty ten, and people are interested
in that they can go to Internet archives and it's been there for a number
of years. It was archived, I believe March fifth, twenty ten,
and they can listen to that interview where I lay out, bit by bit,
point by point, detail by detail, the aspects of Danny Castilero's questionable
debt. I talk about promise, I talk about inslaw, the firm behind
it, Bill and Nancy Hamilton, Michael Racconashudo, a whole bunch of things.
Okay, just pause right there for a second. Yeah, just pause
for a second there. Because Media Monarchy is somebody that I'm familiar with.
James Evan Plato is the guy behind that still going today, by the way,
and I especially yeah, and I especially point to his series with James
Corbett which they do something called a New World Next Week once a month,
and a great segment where they round up you know, the news. And
of course James has always been a unique producer of well, let's call it
a typical media outside of the mainstream. And James has also done work with
you know, other collaborators over the years. I appreciate his work. So
I just want to give a quick shout out to that. I'm certain that
you could probably find it somewhere in his archives as well. But also,
yeah, internet archives is a great resource and media monarchy as well. I'm
recommend it. But if you can't, go ahead and internet archives as well,
Yeah, one way or another, it's probably well worth getting a hold
of because this is well ahead of the recent interest. Now what's fascinating to
me is you're telling me that you got into this extremely early. Now I
add very little exposure to it. I had sort of vaguely heard about it.
I had heard about Castellaro's death, and there was a question there because
again, this is one of these suicides maybe and so on and so forth,
and there were others that I thought, you know, were more plainly
even more questionable than Castilaro's death regarding journalists. So you know, I'm not
going to get into that too deeply, but there was a guy out there
writing for the San Diego what was at the Mercury Sun Times that died allegedly
of a suicide as well, who was working on, you know, some
things that had to do with the drug war that I was a whole lot
more concerned with than say, Danny Castellaria. But it's weird because over the
years, the octopus is not only this thing that Danny described starting with this
software and this one nefarious group, but has taken on I don't know,
other meanings. Let's say, in I'm going to just describe it again as
conspiracy culture, and the octopus is now now gone on to describe well kind
of the world Wide Web, if you will, pardon the pun, so
to speak of interconnected nefarious groups and how the software is at the heart of
it. Yes, but that this has become something that has evolved over time
as snowballed et cetera, et cetera. But I like how we're going to
begin with the beginning here where you're interested in it in the nineties on your
own, and you know, again, I just wouldn't think of it as
something that you would have covered, Like you said, you weren't assigned to
cover it back then. I mean, what kind of writing were you doing.
Let's see, if you're coming out of college and whatnot. I mean,
what were you doing right out of college writing wise? What were your
assignments? Like, well, I was a local and regional freelancer. It's
interesting, you notice because I didn't write for national publications throughout my career,
I was strictly local and regional. I worked in Honolulu, Hawaii, which
is where I'm from. I worked in Seattle, Washington in the nineties,
and Los Angeles, California. So I lived and worked in both Seattle and
LA and mostly in Honolulu, which is where most of my career has been
based. And I was always local regional, So I wrote for publications in
the cities that I lived in. So you live in Seattle, you write
for Seattle publications. Los Angeles the same thing Honolulu was saying. So yeah,
I didn't. I wasn't. I didn't write for national publications during my
career, So this was That's why this was a kind of personal research.
Also was in my personal interest. So I had seen on Solve Mystery segment
and I was curious and I did the research into it. It looked it
up. Now, when I talk about the research, I want to be
very specific. I primarily looked into not only what I could of Danny's death,
but also primarily in slaw promise. And the reason I did that primarily
was because number One, there was a congressional investigation into what was termed the
Inslaw Affair. The House Judiciary Committee. So I got their report. I
read their report. I don't know, I don't recall if I read any
more documents, I may I might have. I think I also looked at
the federal bankruptcy proceedings that involved Inslaw in their lawsuit against the Department of Justice.
So a lot of a lot of my research, or a good shock
of my research was Promise and Inslaw, primarily because they were in the public
record. And that's very important because you mentioned, you know, I'm not
somebody who's affiliated in the realm of conspiracy, right right, and that the
reason is number one. I was a freelance journalist and I wrote for basically
mainstream publications for the most part. You know, I wrote for smaller publications,
but also somewhat major publications during my career in writing for newspapers and magazines.
So I wasn't somebody who I hate to compare myself to him, but
like Danny, who wrote for kind of a lot of I guess not well
known publications as a freelance writer. I think that's why the Octopus was so
important to him. It was his chance to break into the mainstream of the
news medium and the major news media. And the sad thing about Danny was,
you know, he never really got to I don't think he really got
to do the kind the things he wanted to do as a writer. That's
just my take as another writer, as another freelancer, and as another journalist.
He also did have a lot of tools at his disposal. I think
that's something that people have to understand. There was no substack back in nineteen
ninety one. There really wasn't even what you would consider an Internet in nineteen
ninety one, other than maybe at Darba and maybe in terms of the government,
in terms of bulletin boards and all of that. You know, maybe
amongst some computer programmers or some computer people. I'm not a computer expert,
but so Danny doesn't didn't have the options, and I think people should really
understand this. He didn't have the options that I do. Now, even
as a retired freelance journalist, I can come on your program, The o'celli
Effect and talk about this. I can write an article for substack, which
I have the title of. My new article, of course, is the
Long Tentacles of the Octopus, and I deal with Danny Casilearro and the octopus
itself that was his name for this shadowy collective of ex intelligence operatives ex Alphabet
agency people. That's what I call them, Alphabet Agency. Again, he
didn't have a lot of options, and so I think what Danny needs to
be seen in is context. He needs to be seen in the context of
his times, and I think he needs to be seen in the context of
what was available to him. You know, many of us who are freelance
writers, who are freelance journalists, who are local and regional people. We
never really got the exposure that a national reporter could get someone writing for the
New York Times, Washington Posts, the Wall Street Journal, or obviously someone
who was a reporter on ABC or NBC or CBS or later on of course
CNN. So I think that's an important when I think about this, it's
important to contextualize this, especially in light of this brand new docu series from
Netflix. And before I go further, I do want to point this out.
Yes, I did do research into Danny Castilearro and the Octopus, and
I was interviewed about it. I've been interviewed, I guess over more than
a decade on I guess about three or four shows, including the O'Kelly effect.
I was interviewed on this show about Danny Castelero and the octopus and promise
I believe in twenty fifteen, although don't hold me to that. Yeah,
it makes sense. So yeah, and that was an interesting interview. Well,
look, I appreciate it. And yeah, clearly we've talked about this.
You know, we did talk about this a bit before, but i'd
never seen you actually write something about it at length. And that's I I
just want to write about it, right, I'll be honest with you.
Let me just come out and say this. I didn't want to write about
this, but I did research into it. I understood that it was dangerous
and I haven't said this before, but I'll say it now. When it
comes to Danny, my position then as now has been very clear he was
murdered. He was killed. I never bought the suicide ruling. I thought
it was utter nonsense. It was very clear that he was murdered. I
don't think it's a debate. I don't think it's something that shouldn't even really
be discussed. Anybody who looks at the details, and I won't go into
detail about them, you can look up my other interviews and listen to those
where I go into detail about that. But anybody who knows what or understands
that Danny's relatives have said he was afraid of blood. He didn't want anything
to do with blood, not to mention that he was someone who was very
modest, didn't want to be seen naked around people. So someone who's afraid
to be naked is going to be found naked, and someone who's afraid of
blood is going to be found in a bloody tub of water and is in
the bathroom of his hotel room with blood on the floor, mostly on the
wall, bloody towels. That makes no sense. According to the medical examiner's
form, it was an exanguinating hemorrhage with multiple incisions, right, multiple incisions
to the arm. That was what Castelero had died from. And so to
expect that this is going to be seen as I guess on you know,
as self deletion or suicide makes absolutely no sense. That having been said in
regards to Castilero and in regards to other aspects, it was very clear Danny
what Danny's death was. I was never really interested in Danny's death because I
understood it was a murder. The person that I was really interested in looking
into was not Danny. It wasn't even Bill Hamilton or Nancy Hamilton or even
Michael Riconoscudo. It was a guy by the name of Robert Booth Nichols.
That was the guy that I was really interested in doing research into. And
actually I was considered looking into and examining. And the reason that I did
it was because I understood how very hot this was, how dangerous all of
this is. And unfortunately, from what I'm hearing of this docu series,
I think a lot of this actuality and factuality is going to be lost in
the weeds now because this has become so public. I think it's being or
at least from what I'm hearing, it's kind of being seen as the dangers
of conspiracy. I had to be pretty honest in upfront here. When I
looked at it this, I was looking into Inslaw, a real firm.
I was looking into Promise, a real case information software or piece of software.
I was looking into what happened to Inslaw, which is very real in
relation to the Department of Justice for whom they had a contract, a ten
million dollar contract. They were not paid in the remaining two years all true,
the fact that they were driven into bankruptcy and filed suit in federal bankruptcy
court, and the Federal Bankruptcy George George Bason said that what happened in this
case was through trickery, fraud, and seat. Those are true statements uttered
in that ruling, right, So where is the danger of quote conspiracy?
And I would argue, and I would ask these people that are making these
claims in these articles, whether it's Guardian, whether it's teach you and all
of this, where's the conspiracy? Well, can you tell me where the
conspiracy is? You know, where's the crazy conspiracy? Where is the non
factual, speculative rabbit hole? Because from my research years ago and looking into
this, maybe a rabbit hole, but it's a real rabbit hole right now.
That's what I wanted to get to you here. Look real quickly,
the idea that there's trickery, deceit and problems and bankruptcy. Got to tell
you that is not even close to being part of the conspiracy world. That's
just hum another day of business in America. This is normal. And when
it comes to contractors and disputing all of that, not part of the conspiracy
web. It's just part of the criminal or the dishonor or the nefarious part
of business whatever. And that is well, that's above board. I mean,
that's reality. That's all there is to it, is that everybody's business
goes this way. No, but we know it's kind of commonplace, all
right, now Castilero's you know, death and all of this, like I
you know, I sub mentioned Gary Webb's death at the beginning here, which
is you know what ten ten years after they run the ten or eleven years
after they run the segment on Unsolved Mysteries, which, by the way,
I wanted to look up while you were talking to remember when it ran.
It was ninety three they ran that. Gary Webb dies in two thousand and
four. But anyway, just to keep our dates straight here. But here's
the thing, the business part of it. No, there's no dispute about
it. It is what it is. It's on record, it's in court
papers. We can all see that. Now. The nature of use of
this software, how it was utilized, how there was you know, knockoff
versions of this sold the diff different countries, and how this becomes an interconnected
again, this is starting in the nineties. So this is not at the
time where we have the Internet we have today. This is not at the
time where we have the cyber threats we have today. But it seems to
me like the back door into every computer system in the world, if you
listen to some people's descriptions, is laid out in a software package. Here.
It gives leverage to anybody who decides to use it. And you know,
every time we seem to place something like this in the hands of the
intelligence community, what do we get, uh, chicanery, dark money flowing
around anything from you know, Iran contra, which is not conspiracy theory,
it's a real thing, you know, on and on to you know,
exactly what goes on with the tracking and tracing of foreign countries against their adversaries
or their allies when it comes to everything from cell phones to computers to you
know, go back in time, then people used to be able to figure
out a way to track phone lines with a particular piece of hardware where they
could track down and you know, basically collect anything they wanted. A whole
lot more sophisticated in this case, so that there are actually multiple aspects here.
There is the technological aspect. There is the business you know, shadiness
and darkness and whatever went on there, theft by deception and so on and
so forth, and then there's the strings of debts. These to me are
three separate things, and if you convolute them together, I guess you could
end up in conspiracy theory land, as opposed to being in a place where
you're talking about facts like you were with the court case and all of that.
But I think these things coexist and co mingle in this entire story,
or am I wrong about that? Well, what's important is to know the
term conspiracy. See, so the problem with this docu series again, let
me just I don't know that I mentioned this at the beginning, but I
should say that when it comes to this part of the reason that I'm that
I wrote my article The Long Tentacles of the Octopus, which was the first
time I actually wrote about Danny and the Octopus twenty twenty. I had done
a blog piece called Laborrith, Inslaw and the Octopus where I look at both
Inslaw, Promise and the octopus. Okay, right, so that was twenty
twenty twenty, so I wasn't looking to write again about this. I didn't
even want to write that blog piece, but I thought would be interesting to
have a lean, script down standard article. I did that very satisfied with
it. So what happened is I find out in February. Now get this.
I find out about this docuseries last month. I'm on an Unsolved Mysteries
Facebook group. Someone puts up a post showing the trailer from the Netflix documentary
or docuseries. That's how I found out about it. And so I did
not know anything about this docu series. Just to make that very clear,
certainly, these two guys didn't contact me. The name of these two are
Zachary Tritz and I believe Christian Hansen. They're the two I don't know filmmakers
are the right word for it, involved in this American conspiracy the Octopus Murders,
which I believe is the name of the docuseries right now. You had
recently on Dan. I think it's Dan Opperman who I've been on the Operaan
Report. He's also the Operaman Report. I had been on the Upperman Report
to talk about my blog piece. I think it was a couple of years
ago or so a few years ago about Gary wabb and what happened to his
career, right, And so I've been on the show and it's very clear
he wasn't aware of this docusaries either. He was. I would actually recommend
that people listened to that episode of The o'celli Effects as well. I would
recommend that I appreciate that, because you know what, He's not the only
one who contacted me and was surprised. Apparently, other people that had offered
material to this docuseries, other people that had participated in some small way with
this docuseries, were not kept in the loop regarding when it was going to
be released or anything else. A lot of them found out like pretty much
looking at their own Netflix account and you know how they tell you like here's
an upcoming show or whatever that you might be interested in. There were people
that literally contributed to this thing that were unaware that it was a out to
hit. And you know, as early as maybe the soonest anybody seemed to
find out about it was January, which is very unusual because normally when people
know that a documentary's coming out, I mean, I get offered interviews with
people two months before they say, hey, look were this guy This documentary's
coming. You know, maybe they send me an advanced copy, or they
send me clips from it, whatever. I mean. Generally speaking, there's
usually a medium plans even where they try to promote this, and clearly this
is the kind of thing that they might approach. Not necessarily me, but
some people who are similar to myself. Ed should have known about it because
he knows some of the people involved. There's a bunch of people that could
have been informed ahead of time. So you're not alone in kind of being
surprised that all of a sudden this thing came out. And some people that
had directly contributed to it told me in messages that they didn't know about it
until, you know, days before or the week it released, you know.
Uh So it seems to me like, I don't know if this was
you know, fully planned out or you know, they wanted to hold it
back for one reason or not. It's deliberate. There's no doubt in my
mind it's deliberate because they you have to look at the you have to look
at the material that they're dealing with here. First of all, I decided
at first when I found out about this, I would ignore it because I
thought, hey, fair game, anybody can look into this. And then
later on I started looking into these two guys. You know, Zachary Tritz
is a filmmaker, Christian Hansen is a photo photographer for the New York Times.
And these guys are not journalists, These are not reporters, these are
amateurs. Zachary Tritz was interviewed. I think both Trites and Hanson were interviewed
in a publication called Hellgate. Okay, I think it's the New York based
publication. I was on the website and Trite himself admitted quote. The point
is, we're not trained investigative journalists, if there is such a thing,
we just had on the job training. So first of all, you have
to ask yourself, why are two guys who are not reporters, who are
not or journalists who are not writers of any sort. Why are these guys
looking into Danny Castelero, the so called octopus in slaw and promise you also
then have to look at what I've been hearing over the past I don't know,
a week or two or what have you in looking at you know,
not only for people, but from what I'm leading from their own what they've
said in their own interviews and also in sort of text interviews, magazine so
forth, and what I've been hearing from others, these guys went on road
trips and actually went to people's houses and knocked on doors. Now, considering
what I just mentioned earlier about this material and how dangerous it is, let
me tell you how dangerous this material is or what this whole subset of stories,
if you want to call it this I've called it in the past.
I've called it a kind of universe, and every little element is a galaxy.
Right so it's I say that in my article. It's like a universe,
and every aspect, whether it's inslaw, whether it's Raconoshuto himself, whether
it's you know, everything else is like a galaxy, a different galaxy,
different part of this immense universe. Right now, just for the listener's edification,
I put in a chat room. I put a link to that is
the week that is your substack article, The Long Tentacles of the Octopus.
I put in the link there at the Ocelli chat room, as well as
a link to the Hellgate interview and a YouTube video with you speaking about this
article, as well as the IMDb for the Unsolved Mysteries episode which had uh,
you know which which featured the Castello murder. Anyway, just saying there's
a lot to tackle here now, Odd questioned mister Lanier, just really fast,
and then I want you to go on. Isn't it kind of suspicious
to begin with because I've done this sort of like uh interview thing where I've
gone on road trips to do interviews on a focus and I mean I chased
down stuff with the JFK assassination this way, I got a chance to get
to sit down with with District Attorney Henry Wade in the nineties, right,
So of course I went on that road trip and went and met with him
stuff like this. I've done that, and you know, it takes some
money, and these guys obviously had some money from somewhere to work with because
they went on a pretty extensive road trip. But short road trips like this
by researchers and such are used to be commonplace. I don't know about today,
used to be rather commonplace. But it is a hell of a topic
to pick up for your first effort as a documentary filmmaker. If this is
indeed their first efforts, and all indications here I don't know about their past.
Maybe I should look into it a little more, but it doesn't seem
to me as though they have any sort of long standing track record with documentary
filmmaking. Like you said, they're clearly not journalists in the conventional sense.
You know, what are these guys outside of an interested party who went on
a road trip and what magically turned it into a Netflix deal? I mean,
there's probably a story within a story here, or unless I'm mistaken,
what's your thoughts? Oh, well, clearly I'm curious as to where their
information about both Tribes and Hanson are coming out. I know what I've heard
from them on interviews. I know what I've read in terms of interviews they've
done with magazines, and some of what I've heard and what I've read about
makes me wonder again with this material they some of this was done in terms
of road trips where they shut up at people's houses supposedly unannounced and talk tried
to talk to them about this subject. And I'll be brutally honest, let's
look at Michael Rocana shooto alone. Look at the number of people that have
died who are connected to him. Now, these guys actually from what I
understand, showed up when Racana Shooto got out of prison and shot an interview
with him. And again again, we're kinda Shooto alone. When you look
at the amount of people in some way connected to him who were killed or
who died very suspiciously, either suspicious deaths or outright murders. It's what I
call the circle of death around Michael Ricona Shuddo. I don't know if I
should mention my nickname for him, but I call him. I think it's
the grim coder or the grim programmer, right, you know? I mean,
is does this seem like some kind of subject worthy of taking road trips
and showing up at people's houses to have discussions about Well, see again,
I mean unannounced. That's suspicious to me. The weird part of saying it
right right off the bat, right, the amazing part is unannounced because look,
like I said, I made an arrangement to go meet with Henry Wade,
right, So I had phone call ahead of time. I tried to
you know, coordinate maybe I can meet with somebody else in the area this
kind of thing, and I ended up with you know, a hot twenty
minutes with Henry wade out of this long road trip I took from New Jersey
to Texas. But anyway, it was but it's odd to say that you're
going to go and do this. And let me just read from the Hellgate
article, which is pretty funny. I just want to read the first paragraph.
You don't mind, because this kind of describes what is itching me as
I sit here feeling a bit like I want to scratch an itch here about
this is making me very curious mentally, I'm saying I'm not saying I'm literally
itchy, guys, I'm saying that something is is peaking my curiosity here as
to what the hell is really going on, because something sounds off about this.
But let's let's look at this article, which is authored by a guy
named Christopher Robbins, which, unless my memory's wrong, isn't that like the
name of the kid who's playing with the Winnie the Pooh in the story?
Anyway, probably it's a made up, made up journalist name, and maybe
he is in whatever Forrest Pooh and Tigger and e or in. But anyway,
forget all that. That's just given credit where credits due, And again
this is from the Hellgate NYC dot Com interview. That's what it says here,
and okay, let's read from it. Five or so years ago when
photojournalist and Hellgate contributor okay, uh, Christilia Hanson, Okay, how Christian
it is? Christian? Sorry it was cut off there for a second.
Christian Hanson first described a vast and haunting conspiracy he'd spent countless hours investigating.
I didn't know what to make of it. I was confused. What did
ancient government software have to do with an Indian casino in California? Question Mark
Powerful Arms Dealers actually named their company Wackenhut. On a six hour road trip,
Christian did his best to unpack it more, but I was still lost.
Weird way to even structure the article. But let's just pick it apart
for a second. Five years ago, this guy got interested and had begun
a journey because he had done extensive research, which they don't really describe here.
And then they followed up with you know. This week, Netflix released
American conspiracy The Octopus Murders, a four part documentary series that opens with the
mysterious death of journalist Danielee Danny Castillaro in nineteen ninety one and expands on the
story he was working on at the time of his death, a story that
involved murder, treachery, and a high ranking and high ranking government officials.
The film, directed by a Christian's childhood friend, Zachary Tretz there, however,
he pronounced his name, follows Danny Castillaro and Christian on parallel well reporting
tracks. I am biased. Christian and Zach are friends I have known for
years, but I think it's pretty damn good. All right, that's another
weird thing. Have you watched the whole documentary? And what is this about
Christian and Cassillaro being on parallel reporting tracks when he's doing this well only a
few years ago, and Casillarro was clearly doing it way earlier. Got you
ahead? Well? Well? Number one, I have not seen the docuseries.
I don't have Netflix, and I have no intention of watching it,
okay. Number two, other than what I have heard from other people in
terms of the feedback I'm getting, I do not know what's in the docuseries.
So what I've been told is what I know. It's all I know,
okay. And number three, I have absolutely nothing to do with this
docu series and I have to come out and say that because I'm carlly going
to get asked at some point. Let me just make this very clear.
That's why I mentioned this before I was interviewed about Castilero and at el in
twenty ten March fifth, twenty ten, right March of twenty ten, I
had done my research either two thousand and nine or maybe early twenty ten.
Right now. The reason I say this is, according to what Christian Hanson
has said in interviews, he found out about Castelero, and I guess eventually
Inslaw in all of this in twenty twelve. I believe he was in college
at the time because he was working on some paper or project in regards to
Wackenhunt. And anyone who's looked into this, who's seen the docu series or
who's looked into this or read about it, knows about the Caabazon Reservation and
wlacken Hut in their role with what was going to be or what I guess
maybe came to be, Cavazon Arms. And so it was twenty twelve,
so I had already started doing research into this before this guy started finding out
about it. And I want to make this point. When I was interviewed
about this, on media monarchy. It's not like I got requests to talk
about this on other shows. I now it's because of this documentaries. I've
begun to think about some things, because I was interviewed about this three or
four times over the years, and I didn't give that much much thought about
it other than going on shows and laying it out. And again that's two
and a half hours on media monarchy. But when I think about it now,
I was probably one of the few people discussing this years ago. I
don't know how many other writers or journalists or individuals researchers even and we're interviewed
about Castilero and the octopus and insul on promise. So right off the bat,
I'm skeptical of this, of Hanson's role in all of this, right,
you know, hey, however he found out about it is however he
found out about it. He said it was in twenty twelve when he first
started finding out. Okay, well, what I observe about this just to
try and maybe help you fill it in, and you could, you know,
take my word any which way you want, is that over the years,
and I'm somebody who started with you know, cassette copies of May Brussel
when I was a kid, right, and shortwave radio later on, and
things like that. So believe me, I've been plugged into the less than
mainstream media for quite a while. This topic started to come up a lot,
you know, after the year two thousand, really that's when it started
to pick up, and generally speaking, it would be commentators like myself who
would come out and discuss this is interesting. And there were a couple of
books, and there were a couple of not documentaries but like short pieces that
people had independently released, and they would state quite often that this is,
you know, this is really the biggest conspiracy in the world that nobody wants
to examine. That was generally the pull, and over the years it's gained
a bit of traction because as the podcast world has expanded, a lot more
commentators came out and said things, talked about it, added it into portions
of their books where and the whole reason why I talked to you about it,
like you said somewhere probably twenty fifteen, was because I wanted to get
journalists views on what they thought of what happened to Castellarro and what this kind
of thing represented. Just like I've asked several journalists to comment and discuss Gary
Way, whether they knew him or they didn't know him, you know,
like I even had friends among people that knew him at certain points. There
was also you know, Mike Rupert, who was a broadcaster for a while,
who ended up taking his life. And I am satisfied he did take
his life because I know certain things about that. I'm fairly certain Michael Rupert
took his own life. He was seen as connected to Gary Webb anyway.
The bottom line is this. I was interested in it as what do regular
working journalists on different levels think about this? So I asked people that had
produced, you know, the mcnail Lair News Hour. I asked people that
had worked for ABC, NBC, the Guardian I had worked. I'd asked
you. I asked anybody who was a practicing journalist at certain points, what
do you think of these stories? And what do you make of them from
your professional standpoint? What does it look like to you happen? That was
my interest in it as far as I could go. I don't fully understand
the software. I don't fully understand I mean, I understand the thing with
the government contracts and how you know blackmail could be used against people and all
that part of it. I do understand that, but I have always said
I don't fully reckon with this entire you know, like you said, a
universe of stuff which has several galaxies in it. I understand parts of those
galaxies, but not the whole thing. And I always saw it as a
rather you know. And there's a guy, well, Charlie Robinson's been on
my show. He wrote about it. Good, right, here's what you
got on Here's so a lot's changed. On the one hand, I'm the
only thing. The only reason I'm glad this docu series has come out,
in one sense is personal. I don't have to do what I used to
call the verbal power play presentation and do bit by bit, detailed by detail,
fact by fact for two and a half hours, laying out everything.
Can watch the docuseriies, They can find out who Danny Cassilero was, what
Promise was, what the inslaw firm was, who Michael Riccona Shudo is.
And I don't have to do that, So that I'm grateful for. But
the problem that we see here is the intent and direction of this docuseriies and
what's behind it in terms of press and media. You know what the feedback
I'm getting about this. So again what people need to understand is this.
I cite my interviews now because at the time I could only talk about you
know, the octopus and promise and all of that. It took a lot
of effort to do that, to lay it all out. Now I can
just talk about what was behind it again, I'll be honest. The guy
I was interested in was Robert booth Nichols. Robert boot Nichols, according to
Ron Rosenbaum, he called him clark Gable when he did it article about the
Strange Death I think it's called the Strange Death of Danny Castilero for Vanity Fair
in nineteen ninety one. Robert booth Nichols was the guy I was interested in
because of his connection to Yakuza, and I was going to look into that.
So it wasn't Danny. Like I said, I understood what happened with
Danny and the problem with focusing on Danny alone, And I think this is
one of the biggest problems that to merge with this docuseries is if you just
look at Danny Castilero alone and focus on him. Then what will happen is
there will be a tendency to discredit him, and I think that's very dangerous
and I think that's very disrespectful to him. Danny did the best job he
could with the Like I said before, you know, he didn't have the
resources. I have more resources now than Danny Castilero had as a freelancer.
You know, he wasn't really able to go on shows and be able to
do this what he could. But it's very dangerous to look at this.
You have to understand Danny Castillo was a writer, and what's important is the
story. What was he looking at? What's in flaws? What's the promo
software? What was this? What was really behind this octopus? Who are
the people associated with octopus? You know who? You know? You know
e Howard Hunt and and the other people that are named. Who are these
individuals? And again the guy for me was Robert Booth Nichols. But that
is a very dangerous road to go down. Well, again, I had
other work to do, you know, It's not like it's not like I
was doing this on my own. I'm going I'd like to look into this,
but there's only so far I can go, I gotta I gotta make
a living. Let's let's cut straight to the heart of this. Well,
for me, I have a different view of it. Because other people are
looking at as a rabbit hole, as a gopher hole, as a sinkhole.
It wasn't that For me, Well, it was Yeah, I'm sorry,
let's cut right to the heart of this because here here's the problem,
right, and and I found it. You know, I thought it was
great when the movie Killed the Messenger came out. Again, I'm drawing a
parallel with Gary Webb here, and I'm gonna keep doing that. The thing
is, I thought it was great that that movie came out and that people
became more aware. That was the positive sign of it. But what happened
because of that, and what happened because of the focus on Gary and what
happened to him, is that a lot of the legitimate work that he did
and led other people to do got undermined because people got stuck on the story
about Gary Webb's death. And I'm not saying it's that it's not important.
It is hugely important. This kind of thing should not be happening to journalists.
Whatever you think happened to Gary Webb tell you the truth. It shouldn't
happened. Okay, no matter how you take this story, and with the
castellarro story, I agree with you. I don't see how anybody could see
that as a suicide the way that that it went down from the limited facts
I know. But here's the here's the thing. Let's cut to the heart
of the matter. What is the important thing that is now going to be
obscured because people are going to undermine the legitimacy of what could have been learned
from this situation, of what should have been learned from what Casillara was working
on with you know best he could, and what could be worked on now
to uncover what this all really means and what this all tracks back to.
What is the thing that people are going to miss? Essentially tell us that
part and uh and and then go go right on ahead and explain to us
the things that we need to know. And I don't care about if anybody
watches that Netflix series. I got nothing to do with it either. I'm
just pointing it out that it exists because this has spern new interest and and
that's the way that I view it. Right, you have to deal with
it and that's why I came out with my article, because my instinct was
telling me, Okay, you're gonna have to probably go on a couple of
shows and talk about this and get something out, even though I had written
Labyrinth. So let me look at Labyrinth at the end of my blog piece
Labyrinth, which can be found at medium dot com slash at the Doctor fifty,
I put it in context. Number one. What I look at in
regards to the Promised software is, in my view, from my assessment,
what it helped set up was what I called the spy state, the surveillance
networks, the increasing importance of penetration of what they call single intelligence, the
use of big data, the use of software and of computer systems to track
people and to track objects and to spy on people. That was important in
regards to because Promise. If we are to believe what Racanas Shooto said that
he had put in this back door to the software and pastor protected and it
allowed this software to be used to gather information, gather whatever it recorded or
was recorded on it, and to also be able to tract people. And
they were trying to use that as a way during the Cold War. Obviously
well at that point it was past the Cold War, but they're trying to
use that as a way to deal with whatever external foreign threats. So what's
important is in that regard to promise. It's what I call the spy state,
and I cite Edward Snowden for example his revelations. The second aspect that
I note in my blog piece is to look at the nature of the nexus
of intelligence ex intelligence even possibly you know, even ongoing intelligence operatives, the
criminal world, and other aspects of that. Now I cite Operation Gladioli as
an example of that. Now, again, Operation Gladio is different because that
is the stay behind armies, but I cite that as a way of secretive
organizations, secretive groups that are engaged in clandestine operations, clandestine affairs, covert
under the table. And so what I try to do in that blog piece
is contextualize it for readers, and I think that's important when we look at
this. Now, what's also important to note is about all of this is
with this documentaries, and I had to come back to the docuentaries. What
I'm getting from people is what left out of it, Like you had the
host of the Opperman Report on your show. He mentioned Alan Stanstroy, Right,
this was the contact that Danny Casilero had who worked for the NSA was
found murdered in his car in Airport, Washington, DC. So if someone
like that was significant is left out, you also have to look at what
else is left out. What I heard is left out is Ken Thomas and
Jim Keith, who wrote a book called The Octopus, The Secret Government and
the Death of Danny Castilero. These guys did a book that Delta of course
with Danny Castilero and all of these details back in the nineties. This is
nineteen ninety five when it came out. But they're not credited in this docu
series, right. I know they interviewed Sherry Seymour who did The Last Circle.
But if you look at what's happening here, I in my article the
Last Tepic, the Long Tentacles of the Octopus, I quote from an article
I not only cite Thomas and Keith, but I cite an article that was
written by Ken Thomas for the website Disinformation called Cassilero's Octopus, which talks about
aspects of Danny Cassilero promise and of course the Octopus and Ken Thomas has done
radio interviews about the octopus as well. Just for the record, yeah,
go ahead, right, right, And so it's important to look at some
of the people that have done this. What you're seeing is it's a matter
of the reason why I cited those two aspects before what I called the spy
state promise in regards to its use for intelligence services. Right, it was
sold to different countries, and it's and it's and its use by either law
enforcement or intelligence services, the so called spy state, surveillance, state signal
intelligence. I also used the the examples of the nexus. This is why
to me, the octopus is no big deal. What Danny called the octopus
no big deal. The problem is that people don't have a sense of what
how government and business and the world really operates, not only in this country
but in other countries. They only get a kind of top only view.
They don't really see what goes on. You know, people have heard of
the dark web. This is what I call the dark world. This is
the carbon based world, the non digital world, the world that we all
live in. And in that world, people like Rakana Shuddo, people like
Robert Booth Nichols, people like like other kinds of operators, operatives, criminals
and others sometimes intersect and they can, and you have to understand that.
It's that unless you have an understanding of how the real world really works,
it's all gonna seem odd to you. It's all gonna seem like a for
lack of a better word, conspiracy. And that's why I think that this
whole conspiracy angle has been pushed, because that's what I'm hearing in regards to
this documentary, that it's about the dangers of conspiracy and the dangers of going
down the rabbit hole of conspiracy. I just pointed out to you, Well,
this is fascinating dance law. There was a promise software you have to
look at the factual and actual details and don't get stuck on all of these.
But I guess it's hard to contextualize that for people. That's why you
get that view because people most people don't understand that well. And there it
is no because just like you mentioned the dark Web, right, a lot
of people reference this. They have no concept to what it is they're talking
about. It is and exist part of the Internet's infrastructure that is just the
unlisted part of the Internet. It is, you know, that's really what
it is. It doesn't come up on a Google search, okay, because
it's not indexed like other things. And the majority of the Internet actually exists
in what people would call the dark web, in the unlisted fashion. There
are tons and tons of pages, backup things, all kinds of stuff that
you don't see surfing the web, okay, and in that dark area that's
not easily accessible unless you know exactly what you're looking for, all right,
people can operate. So it is part of the regular infrastructure. It's sort
of like an underground kalo a city that nobody knows about. It exists,
it's there, there's something built on top of it. It may even be
partially responsible for what goes on above it, but it doesn't mean that people
understand what goes on down there. And so there's that aspect of it.
And then, as you said, there's a lot of people don't understand how
the world works anyway. Like I said, I'm not shocked by any of
this stuff regarding the bankruptcy and oh there was theft, Oh there was some
sort of fraud committed. Oh that's like every day you can go to a
court, you can go sit and listen to things being discharged in bankruptcies and
business courts, okay, every day, and listen to that people were deceived,
people were misled, people were given false numbers, people were you know,
their money disappeared, so on and so forth. It's commonplace actually,
So some of this stuff that you're talking about is very commonplace, right.
The idea that the intelligence agencies and we've certainly evolved since then. You know,
the spying tools that Edward Snowden, you know, allegedly revealed to the
world were generations behind what they actually have at this point, you know what
I mean, it's right since then as well. So there's a lot to
this, But let's try and tie a bow around it, though, you
know, and give people what they should really take away from this discussion.
And I I'm really glad I went through this with you though, because it's
very interesting to me to get as many perspectives as possible. And I know
people are interested in the Castello story, they're interested in what in the hell
the octopus actually is, And as I said, it's become part of the
nomenclature. The octopus is now described by some people as literally the thing that
actually runs the world. It is the dark web, you know, because
it is that part of the infrastructure. Then maybe you don't see in the
daylight, but is definitely there is definitely, has always existed and continues to
be very influential, and if you know how to operate within it, well
you could probably get away with a lot of things you wouldn't want other people
to see in the daylight. And that's just the way it is. Some
people see it that way. All these things could be and Cassillaro's murder is
something that should be investigated, better, should be revealed that people would actually
happen. Is it a satisfactory ruling that he committed suicide? But is that
actually the point of this? In a way, it is from a journalistic
perspective, because as per usual, and as I said with the Gary Web
thing, it should not be acceptable to us that something happens like this to
somebody who is a journalist who is doing that job. We shouldn't just accept
that. But at the same time, a journalist can get themselves into some
dark and dangerous worlds, whether it's the world of drug trafficking, human trafficking.
You know, the intelligence agencies assassinations, murder for higher groups, et
cetera, et cetera. Journalists sometimes go into dark waters and bad things.
Do you know, Pistol, how would you sort of, you know,
put this bottle to gad Danny to a merit extent, Danny Castle, primarily
in terms of his writing and his writing about what he called the octopus.
And the important point that I mentioned, especially near the end of of my
article is what's important is to look at the structure of the story or stories
that are involved here, not so much Danny himself, because again, as
I mentioned earlier, if you focus on it from a personality aspect, then
you can get lost, because then it becomes about judging or affirming whether this
person, what this person was, or what he did or what he didn't
do. What's important is to look at what he examined, what he investigated,
what he looked into. Remember that Danny was a writer who found out
from others in his contact with the it world of computer world, because he
had owned computer publications. He found out about He found out about Promise Inslain.
Promise happened obviously nothing to do with Danny. He found out about it,
and in the course of finding out about it, talking to the Hamiltons,
talking to Riconos Hugo. He then started looking into other aspects that he
called the octopus. And the octopus is again nothing more. If I could
bottle it up in some way, what if the octopus that's his name.
But really it is the intersection and connection. It's what I call the dark
world. It's the intersection and connection of criminal, elements of intelligence, operative
elements of maybe other kinds of business, elements of various types of elements.
We know there are black markets, and we know there are just markets,
just as we know there is a dark web, and we know there is
a you know, a web as we know it, and this is no
different. But of course, this kind of shadowy, murky demimond, this
underworld, this dark world, is something people don't know because they unless you're
involved in it, unless you're a part of it, and unless you become
aware of it, you won't know it. So it may seem like conspiracy
to you, right. So to understand this, you have to understand that
a lot of these events that we've seen may have connections in terms of the
people involved. So if an E. Howard Hunt sounds familiar, it's because
he was involved in the Watergate scandal. And if other people sound familiar,
it's because of their involvement in other events and other scandals and other subrosa events.
That's why people talk about the nineteen eighty October Surprise, That's why they
talk about in rad Cultra. Later on in the eighties, that's why they
talk about BCCI, Bank of Commerce and Credit International. All you have to
understand is that this is an immense universe with different galaxy and that you have
to examine. And when you understand that, you get a sense of the
interstellar nature of all of this. And I say that so that people have
a kind of visual metaphor a kind of way of relating to it. Yes,
it's not easy to understand it first, but to me, this is
the way the real world works. It's not just what's in the light,
it's what's also in the dark. It's what's in the shadow as well.
And so with my new article, The Long Tentacles of the Octopus, the
focus is on this universe and the constellations, the galaxies of different events.
Fair That's how I explain it absolutely. And you know what's important is the
story or stories right, that's what's important. And you can go to substack
dot com. Okay, let's see it's Albert Lanier dot substack dot com.
Go there, check out this article and I'll give you the link in the
show notes if you're listening to the podcast, or you can go in the
Ocelli chat room and roll it back. You'll see it's one of the links
I gave you regarding this, and you can go ahead and read Albert Lanier's
article there. I would say Albert that you know what, the bottom line
here is that there is a legal and real world definition of conspiracy, and
it's not always a bunch of theory. And you have to figure out the
nuances of these things and understand that there is a lot of connective tissue one
way or another, and like you said, a huge, a huge universe
that contains many galaxies, and that kind of describes the real world of conspiracy,
which again, remember it's one of the most common legal charges, is
conspiracy to do something you're conspiring with someone. I've talked about it a lot
of times on here. It's actually the more natural behavioral pattern of human beings
to conspire with one another to accomplish things literally from the uh you know,
from the Greek words meaning to breathe together. Okay, and that's what it
is. There is real conspiracy, there is real connectivity. There is a
real world, and it's not always based on theory. So you know,
I would urge anybody to continue to explore this topic as in any way that
you can. And uh yes, So look to Albert Lanier's article again on
substack. The link is in the show description. And no matter where you
are, who you are, or when you are listening to this, I
want you to remember that I am merely o'ceelly, all of you are indeed
the effect. Albert Lanier was my guest tonight. And hopefully no matter where
you are, and oh Chilly dot com, window Gold, Silver, the
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