American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders - A Review : The Octopus Thrives in Muddy Waters

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A flawed but good enough documentary mini-series that serves as a place to dip your toe into the pool of the villainous conspiracy that is currently ruling the U.S. and the western world.

American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders, is a true crime documentary mini-series on Netflix that explores the mysterious 1991 death of journalist Danny Casolaro and the vast criminal conspiracy – named The Octopus, which he was attempting to uncover at the time of his demise.

The Octopus Murders is directed by Zachary Treitz and Christian Hansen, who act as guides and protagonists while leading viewers through the tangled web of The Octopus and of Casolaro’s death – which was officially ruled a suicide but which is certainly circumspect.

The series opens with Treitz being concerned about his friend Hansen – who is a respected photo-journalist, having become obsessed with Casolaro’s story and the allure of a vast conspiracy.

Casolaro’s story is this…that he was just a regular writer working for a small computer-related magazine when a massive story about government corruption fell into his lap. He investigated the story and discovered a deeper and more complex conspiracy than he ever could have imagined. And then, just as he was on the verge of breaking the story wide open, he goes to meet a source in West Virginia and is found dead, in his hotel room with his wrists slashed a dozen times.  

While the authorities were quick to rule his death a suicide, his family, and many others, disagree. The fact that his body was embalmed without family permission before an autopsy could be done, is a damning piece of evidence in favor of a cover-up surrounding Casolaro’s death.

While Casolaro’s death is certainly pivotal regarding this story, it is also, in many ways, just a sideshow. The real story at the heart of it all is the Octopus he was uncovering.

The Octopus story began in the early 1980’s with a scandal involving a software company named Inslaw and its software PROMIS, which was being used by the Department of Justice to set up a massive database of criminal cases.

The Justice Department then defrauds Inslaw and steals their PROMIS software and distributed it to various other countries for nefarious means (more on that later). Inslaw goes into bankruptcy because the DOJ stole its software and so, led by its founder, William Hamilton, they take the DOJ to court. A federal bankruptcy judge ruled in 1988 that the DOJ had taken PROMIS through “trickery, fraud and deceit” and are liable to pay a massive million-dollar settlement.

The DOJ retaliates by replacing the judge who gave the favorable ruling with one of the DOJ lawyers who worked for the department on the Inslaw case, and then in 1991 they get the ruling overturned and thrown out of court.

This infuriated William Hamilton, and his lawyer, former Attorney general Eliot Richardson, who was astonished at the bold-faced corruption of it all. Eliot claimed this scandal was bigger than anything regarding Watergate…and he knows about Watergate since he resigned rather than fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor at the behest of Richard Nixon.

This is where Casolaro picks up the story and begins investigating it all. One of his primary sources is Hamilton, who guides him through the Inslaw end of things and points him towards various characters who are up to all sorts of no good. Casolaro then starts looking even deeper and finds even more remarkable criminality.

For example, the DOJ gave PROMIS to America’s allies across the globe, and used it to spy on them (a precursor to the modern-day Israeli-Pegasus spyware story).

The story doesn’t end there…as it ends up expanding to include the infamous “October Surprise” where during the 1980 presidential election candidate Ronald Reagan made a deal with Iran for them to refrain from releasing American hostages in order to hurt President Carter politically and thus help Reagan win the 1980 presidential election.

Then there’s the Cabazon Indian Reservation in California used as a CIA base for gun running and drug smuggling, under the direction of CIA cutout security firm Wackenhut. The Cabazon story is filled with multiple “unsolved” murders.

The Cabazon story also expands into Iran-Contra, as it was a way station/money laundering operation for weapons going to Central America and the Middle East, and drugs coming into America.

Casolaro got neck deep into this tangled web of intelligence agency nefariousness back in the early 90s, and Hansen follows in his footsteps in the last few years. Hansen even looks a bit like Casolaro and so he actually plays the role of Casolaro in recreations of his story.

There are lots of side characters in this conspiracy, some are well-known in the world of conspiracies – like Michael Riconoscuito, who is in federal prison on drug charges but who has strong ties to both organized crime and the intelligence community.

Riconoscuito is well-known to conspiracy theorists as being the guy who claimed to have designed a special type of bomb, and that this special type of bomb was used in the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. Most critically thinking conspiracy theorists believe the Riconoscuito Oklahoma City bomb story was a plant to obfuscate and distract from the actual conspiracy involving a second man working with Timothy McVeigh, and from McVeigh’s odd background and motivations. Regardless…Riconoscuito is one of those intelligence agency characters that tells just enough of the truth, and just enough of lies, to completely muddy any waters…as his role in The Octopus Murders shows.

All that said, I found American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders to be an interesting mini-series, but it is also predictably deceptive in how it presents itself.

There’s an investigative reporter featured late in the series whose work shadowed Casolaro’s back in the early 90’s, and she says she dropped the story because she “wanted to live a normal life, and have fun”. Oh…how noble.

For decades and decades, the standard approach for the corporate media was that conspiracy theories are for kooks, and conspiracy theorists are mentally ill. Of course, the establishment press do believe in conspiracies, just not the ones that threaten the establishment.

As a result, you can still count on at least one or two corporate press outlets putting out an article every year that declares that there’s a new study from some expert who found that people who believe in conspiracies are retarded narcissists who have small penises.

That said, a mild shift has been occurring in recent years. Too many conspiracies have proven to be obviously true of late and so the new approach by the gatekeepers is to say that conspiracy thinking is dangerous not only to the institutions accused of wrong-doing, but to the people doing the accusing.

The Octopus Murders uses this approach as it basically takes the position that yes there are obvious conspiracies that occurred back in the 1980s where dozens were murdered and where government agencies and officials lied and committed heinous crimes…but you’d be crazy to look into it…or more accurately, you’ll go crazy if you look into it.

Danny Casolaro looked into it and he went a little crazy and maybe, just maybe, killed himself. And if he didn’t kill himself then he was killed…which wouldn’t have happened if he just “lived a normal, happy life.”

The dramatic premise established at the beginning of this mini-series is that Christian Hansen is in great peril because he too, just like Danny Casolaro, is getting close to falling into the abyss that is The Octopus conspiracy.

Back in 2017-2018 there was a podcast called “The RFK Tapes”, where two hosts dive deep into the RFK assassination. It was an interesting podcast until, at the end, just as things are getting spicy, one of the hosts says that despite the evidence staring him in the face, he can’t accept a conspiracy regarding RFK’s assassination because only bad people like Alex Jones believe in conspiracies. So, this host shuts everything down and basically goes back to sleep so he doesn’t empower Alex Jones. How courageous.

In 2008, famous former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote a book about the JFK assassination titled Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I read this 1,600 page monstrosity and what was amusing about it, I mean besides the tortured reasoning and allergy to logic captured within it, was that Bugliosi concludes that Oswald acted alone in killing JFK…but more importantly, he also concludes that the case is so convoluted and crazy that readers should never even dare look into it. In other words, don’t worry your silly little heads about the JFK assassination…go back to sleep my little pets.

Bugliosi’s admonition to stay away from the JFK assassination is only made all the more delicious when you consider his nefarious behavior regarding the Manson murders and trial…all of which is gloriously laid out in Tom O’Neill’s wonder book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties.

As a brief aside, go read O’Neill’s book and dive into the astonishing “coincidence” that is CIA psychologist Jolly West, the mastermind behind MKUltra, treating Charles Manson before his infamous killing spree, and Jack Ruby following his murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Conspiracies abound, and you don’t have to be some wild-eyed conspiracy theorist to see them clearly.

For example, the reality is that the Octopus Casolaro uncovered, is much bigger than he could ever know. One of his main targets in his investigation was George H.W. Bush, and Bush himself is a lynchpin when it comes to the Octopus and the conspiracy ocean it swims in.

For example, Bush, the former Director of the CIA, and eventual Vice President to Reagan, President of the U.S. and father to a President of the U.S., was integral in the October Surprise, and used the connections he developed with Iran to facilitate Iran-Contra as Vice President.

It should also be noted that Bush was knee deep in the JFK assassination as well. He had longtime ties to George de Mohrenshildt, Oswald’s handler in Dallas, and Zapata Offshore Company, one of Bush’s oil companies, was an asset for the Anti-Castro Cuban movement in laundering money and running guns into Cuba. Bush was alleged to have been in Dealey Plaza the day of the assassination and is also one of the very few people alive at the time who has no recollection of where he was the day JFK was killed.

Bush was also very close with the Hinckley family, whose son John shot Ronald Reagan in April of 1981. If Reagan had died Bush would’ve become president. Bush’s son Neil was scheduled to have dinner with John Hinckley’s brother Scott on the evening of the assassination. What a coincidence.

Speaking of coincidence, George H.W. Bush was at a Carlyle Group meeting in New York City on September 11, 2001. Also at this meeting was Osama Bin Laden’s older brother. Ummm…that’s a strange coincidence. George HW Bush is like the Zelig of intelligence agency shenanigans.

And of course, there’s the deep ties between the Saudi Royal Family and the Bush family, the same Saudi Royal Family which directly funded the 9/11 attackers.

Besides the Bush storyline there’s also the banking scandals, which include but are not limited to BCCI, the Savings and Loan scandal, the 2007/2008 financial collapse and a bevy of banks laundering drug money for cartels over the years.

The point I’m trying to make is that American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders, is a nice little primer despite its flawed and tainted thinking regarding “conspiracies” and how they are dangerous to mental health.

And also that the Octopus isn’t some relic from the remote past, it is alive and well and bigger than ever and feeding off of the misery in the world while lining its pockets and filling in graves.

The Octopus today runs the show – the whole show. It doesn’t matter if Biden or Trump or Obama or Bush are President, because the Octopus is the one pulling the strings.

The Octopus ran a coup in Ukraine and started a war there so it could have a massive money laundering and gun running operation in full effect. The Octopus started a war in Afghanistan for the same purposes and also got the added benefit of an endless supply of drugs to flood into the West…which gave us the Opioid epidemic.

JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X and Fred Hampton were killed by the Octopus. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Congo, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Syria, Ukraine and a host of other wars, coups and slaughters were initiated by the Octopus. BCCI, S&L, Tech Bubble, Housing Bubble and Crash, Bank fraud and drug cartel money laundering, were all Octopus operations. Jeffrey Epstein, the Franklin Affair, Johnny Gosch and all the rest of the sex trafficking and child sex trafficking operations are run by the Octopus.

The Octopus has been doing this and a whole bunch of other insidious and nefarious shit time immemorial, and they’ll continue to do it, and those who point it out will be ridiculed, blacklisted or much much worse. Julian Assange is dying in prison because he exposed the Octopus. Danny Casolaro was killed by the Octopus. Gary Webb was killed by the Octopus.

The bottom line is that American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders is a teardrop in an ocean of misery, and its biggest flaw is that it tells you not to dive in because the waters are treacherous.

I agree that the waters are treacherous, but Truth is the only thing that matters, so grow a pair of balls, gird your loins and dive in…the water is fine.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2024

JFK and the Media: The House Always Wins

Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes 11 seconds

It is always both enlightening and disheartening to get a glimpse into the corrupt and vacuous abyss that is our national news media. Last week the JFK file release was a wonderful opportunity to study just how truly mendacious and manipulative our media has become. 

I usually do not watch much cable news because I feel that every second I do watch, a small part of my soul, and a large part of my brain, dies a painful death. But since I wrote about the topic last week, and also out of a sense of duty to you, my dear readers, I made a foolhardy attempt to try and follow the coverage of the release of the JFK files by switching back and forth between CNN and MSNBC. 

On CNN on Thursday, I caught an interview of an "expert" on all things JFK assassination related. The expert was Gerald Posner, a "journalist" who in 1993 wrote what the establishment media praised as the "definitive" and "authoritative" book on the JFK assassination titled Case Closed. Posner's book was little more than a sycophantic defense of the Warren Report which caused the media to immediately embrace it as the final word on the assassination for that lone reason.

The media's love for Posner and Case Closed started back in 1993, and was less a result of his journalistic and literary talent, which is infinitesimal, but rather was born out of their colossal hatred of Oliver Stone and his 1991 film JFK, which was to JFK conspiracy theories what the Warren Report was to coincidence theory. The media love for Posner was exactly inversely proportional in size and scope to their hate for Oliver Stone, who was loathed with the fury of a thousand suns by the corporate media.

True to form for Posner, who clearly suffers from Stage 4 Norman Rockwell Syndrome, the canned answers he gave on CNN declared that the only reason the CIA had withheld any information from the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the public over the last 54 years was because there might be information in the files that would embarrass the Agency. Apparently, according to Posner, the CIA is REALLY, REALLY afraid of embarrassment. 

In Noam Chomsky's masterwork Manufacturing Consent, he uses a very simple formal when it comes to judging the actions and believability of the American media and government, that formula is this…would we believe it if the Soviets (or any other enemy) and their media did or said the same thing? I find that Chomsky's formula is a surefire way to break through the intellectual rigor mortis and cognitive dissonance that accompanies so much of our political discourse, and so it is with the JFK assassination.

So in applying Chomsky's formula to Posner's contention that the CIA has lied and manipulated every investigation into the killing of Kennedy due to a fear of embarrassment…what would a rational person's conclusion be? Obviously, if the KGB withheld information for 54 years and lied to the public regarding an assassination of someone like Khrushchev in 1963, we would rightly think that it wasn't out of fear of embarrassment but rather because they were covering up their guilt or complicity in the murder. 

Besides Posner's answers in his interview, there was something else that made his appearance on CNN very curious, namely, the fact that it happened in the first place. Why was Gerald Posner on CNN talking about the JFK files when CNN and the other media outlets kept talking about how it was "conspiracy theorists" who were the ones so excited about the document dump? Why have a true-blue establishmentarian supporter of the Warren commission on and not a "conspiracy theorist"? It wasn't only CNN that kept talking ABOUT conspiracy theorists but not TO them…MSNBC did the same thing. Neither channel, at least when I watched them, not only never had a single person on who was even remotely skeptical of the lone gunman theory but never had anyone on who didn't have complete and utter contempt for conspiracy theorists. Not one. What is remarkable about that is that both CNN and MSNBC kept citing the fact that opinion polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans (61%) believe a conspiracy took place. 

To add to the oddity of Posner's CNN appearance was that just an hour later I got to see his painfully taut, surgically contorted, age-defying to the point of mummification, face on MSNBC too. Posner appeared on MSNBC's Meet The Press Daily and gave the same exact talking points to host Chuck Todd that he gave to the CNN host, even reiterating the whole CIA "embarrassment" reason for not releasing documents. Was there no one else that Chuck Todd could get? Did CNN or MSNBC even ask a writer of a JFK conspiracy book to come on? There are plenty of them, were NONE of them available? 

Of all of the curious things about having Posner on both CNN and MSNBC to talk about the JFK files, the most curious thing is that he is a less-than credible and respectable journalistic entity to begin with. Posner has been repeatedly proven to have plagiarized in his work, so much so that he lost his job at the Daily Beast because of a plagiarism scandal. It was later revealed that Posner also was guilty of plagiarism in his books Miami Babylon, Secrets of the Kingdom and Why America Slept.

One of the best things about the Posner plagiarism scandal is that in order to sue his accuser the Miami New Times, he hired attorney Mark Lane, the godfather of JFK conspiracy theories and author of seminal works on the subject Rush to Judgement and Plausible Denial, who back in 1964 was actually hired to represent Lee Harvey Oswald in front of the Warren Commission by Oswald's mother Marguerite after his death (not surprisingly, the Commission declined). 

My favorite thing about Posner's plagiarism scandal is not that Mark Lane defended him, but that Posner, the mainstream media's favorite anti-conspiracy theorist, claimed that the plagiarism scandal was actually the result of a media conspiracy against him. What a delicious piece of irony pie that juicy little tidbit is. 

In a blog post last week (and another a few years ago) I assailed Chris Matthews of MSNBC for his "spittle-flecked" defense of the lone gun man theory. Even though it has only been a few days since I wrote that, Mr. Matthews has since presented even more reason to rake him over the coals for his slavish worship of officialdom and his deceptive framing of stories.

By happenstance, last Thursday I had just watched a segment from Chris Matthews show Hardball from back in 2013 on Youtube. The clip was of Matthews hosting a discussion between he and David Talbot, founder of Salon.com and author of the book Brothers, which is about Jack and Bobby Kennedy in which Talbot claims that Bobby Kennedy did not believe the Warren Report, and Vincent Bugliosi, former prosecutor and author of the most recent (2007) "authoritative" book proving Oswald acted alone titled Reclaiming History (why they didn't go with the title Case Closed II: Electric Bugaloo will forever remain a mystery). Bugliosi's predictable embrace of the Warren Report is not to be confused with the old (1993) "authoritative" book saying exactly the same thing, Mr. Posner's Case Closed. One wonders if these books are so definitive and authoritative, why do they have to keep writing a new version saying the same thing every decade? 

In the segment Matthews buddied up to Bugliosi and the two of them went after Talbot. Unlike Matthews, Talbot is a respected journalist, in fact he was once Chris Mathews' editor many moons ago, so it was interesting to see the contempt with which Matthews held him. The most striking part of the segment was when both Bugliosi and Matthews challenged Talbot by asking him if Bobby Kennedy was lying when he publicly stated that he endorsed the Warren Report. This is a predictable and hackneyed argument, not surprising coming from two repugnant fools and liars like Matthews and Bugliosi, that embraces an intentional obtuseness that makes debate impossible. 

Coincidentally enough, when I turned off the 2013 Hardball discussion I turned on the live show and low and behold the topic was the JFK file release again. What was so synchronistically striking was that it almost seemed as if Chris Matthews had just watched the same old clip of his show on Youtube that I did and wanted to prove a point, for he opened the segment by playing old footage of Bobby Kennedy publicly stating that he believed in the Warren Report. Matthews then turned to his guests, NBC News Justice correspondent Pete Williams, NBC News National Security reporter Julia Ainsley and distinguished presidential historian Evan Thomas, author of the book, Robert Kennedy: His Life, all of whom adamantly stated that Oswald acted alone and that there was no conspiracy. 

Besides the constant reinforcing of the official narrative that Oswald acted alone and that conspiracy theories are "nutty" and the only reason people believe them is out of psychological weakness, one interesting thing did happen on the show. When Matthews turned to Evan Thomas, esteemed author of the "definitive" biography of Bobby Kennedy, and asked him, almost rhetorically, if Bobby Kennedy believed in the Warren Report, Matthews did not get the answer he expected. Thomas actually replied to Matthews that Bobby Kennedy, in fact, did not believe the Warren Report. Sadly, the camera was not on Chris Matthews at this point because I would have loved to see the look on his dopey face when Evan Thomas basically said that David Talbot was right and Chris Matthews, who just wrote a book about Bobby Kennedy that comes out this week, was dead wrong.

Thomas, of course, made haste in reassuring his host that he, Evan Thomas, is a citizen of the Kingdom of Serious People because he believes in the lone gunman theory and Oswald's guilt, unlike Bobby Kennedy who according to Thomas' own reporting apparently would not be allowed into the same Kingdom due to his doubt in the official story. Regardless of Thomas' faith in Oswald's guilt, the damage to Chris Matthews thesis about Bobby Kennedy's belief in the Warren Report was already done. Matthews, as is his penchant when proven wrong, quickly changed the subject and the segment soon ended. No doubt Mr. Matthews will conveniently forget Evan Thomas' opinion because it doesn't fit into the very limited preconceived establishmentarian cosmology from which he operates. I wonder…will Chris Matthews now have David Talbot back on Hardball to apologize to him for his 2013 attack? I have a funny feeling that Mr. Talbot shouldn't hold his breath waiting for that invitation.

In conclusion, let's apply the Chomsky formula to all of the media coverage surrounding the release of the JFK files. First off, if the Russian media were to exclusively have hosts and guests, some of whom are discredited journalists guilty of plagiarism, on their networks that only supported the official story of a lone gunman and belittled and condemn anyone who dared to question the establishment narrative as "nutty" or psychologically unstable, we would rightly believe that was patently absurd and blatant propaganda.

Secondly, if Russian media were to have every host and guest on their networks repeatedly state that the only reason the KGB has lied and withheld information from the public and investigative committees over the last 54 years was because of the KGB's fear of embarrassment, we would rightly call that even more patently absurd and blatant propaganda.

The only logical conclusion we would draw of the Russian media behavior in these instances was that they are thoroughly corrupt and are mere propaganda wings for a nefarious Military-Intelligence cabal headed by the KGB. This is what any rational human being would deduce from these obvious facts. It wouldn't be a conspiracy theory if the Russians did it, it would be a conspiracy fact. So why are we so incapable of seeing the same Truth about our own country and its media that hides in plain sight right in front of our nose? 

The JFK story will soon fade away but our mendacious media will not. The establishment press, both print and television, are diabolically venal, unethical and unscrupulous. They are not in the business of telling you the Truth, they are in the business of protecting and lying for the ruling elite. The mainstream media's only real function, not just with the JFK story but with all stories, is to distract the masses by controlling narrative and limiting debate. Once you realize that the media are just Public Relations for the Military-Intelligence Industrial complex, Wall Street and the ruling elites then you come to understand the Truth that underlies the whole country. That Truth is this…that America is a casino, and the House always wins…and guess what…you ain't the house.

©2017