Podcast Episode #158 - Unraveling the Octopus: Espionage, Conspiracy, & Murder with Christian Hansen

Transcript

[Music] since the dawn of civilization Spies of every nation and culture have worked to infiltrate their adversaries and glean the information that will give their side the advantage the stakes are Skyhigh the strategies varied and imaginative and the ultimate sign of success is that no one ever even knew you were there in each episode we will explore the moral and ethical gry zones of Espionage where treachery and betrayal go hand in hand with cunning and courage this is the spycraft 101 podcast welcome to your clandestine classroom this is episode number 158 of the spycraft 101 podcast joining me today is Christian Hansen Christian is a graduate of Western Kentucky University and now lives in New York City where he has worked as a photojournalist since 2007 his work has previously appeared in the New York Times in 2013 he began to follow a thread of a story about the Unexpected death of a writer pursuing a story in West Virginia in 1991 that turned into a decade long quest to uncover an enormous story that connects the intelligence Community military the Reagan Administration private corporations an unsolved triple homicide in 1981 near Palm Springs California and another unsolved murder in San Francisco in 1982 his years of research culminated in a four-part documentary series which premiered on Netflix this past march called American conspiracy the octopus murders I invited Christian onto the podcast to discuss his 10-year-long investigation into the death of journalist Danny castellaro and the work he was engaged in leading right up to the day of his death but before we get into this story I want to thank all my patrons over at patreon.com including Jeff M and Nathan H if you're interested in supporting this program all my other efforts you can subscribe to my page on patreon.com my patrons get exclusive access to long form blog posts that dive deep into some of the most amazing stories in the history of Espionage and receive free or discounted books and products from the spycraft 101 store that includes a free PDF copy of my own first book spy shots volume one and 101 true Tales from the world of Espionage you can also listen to some of my exclusive podcast episodes where I review films and TV series from the Espionage genre just click the link in the show notes of this episode to see some of my free articles there and sign up for more exclusive content as well Christian thank you for joining me today thanks so much for having me of course of course this is a wonderful opportunity honestly the documentary series was terrific and as soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to talk to you about it and helped share that story with a new audience and now here you are yeah thank you so much of course so can we go back to your personal entry into the story when did you first learn about this and how yeah yeah we left that question out of the documentary because we just try to keep things you know really tight and to the point in our documentary because if your viewers see it it's a very kind of complex and expansive story ultimately truly but I was like you said in my bio I I went to Western Kentucky University and I was studying journalism and I was writing a paper for like a final journalism class like get an investigative style magazine article about any topic which show the theme of the role of money in politics and so I ended up getting ass signed by the New York Times to photograph a clothing Factory in Kentucky that was going to close it was going to lose its government contract to make shirts I I think for the Navy you know for underwear for another branch of the military I I can't remember the specifics it was so long ago and so they were going to lose it to a prison like prisons were going to be allowed to compete against them for their bid and so that's how I had the the idea oh I'll res search prison factories or It ultimately became you know the private prison industry and so I'm researching that and I that's when I came across this company called The wacken Hut corporation which had gotten involved in private prisons the first private prison which was a immigration Detention Center was a wacken Hut Corporation contract but before that they had a giant kind of private Espionage and private security company and that had a lot of close connections with Elite conservative people kind of hawkish political people generals and and so their board of directors ended up being like kind of a revolving door of former heads of the Air Force and the FBI the NSA the CIA and other kind of like corporate big wigs and they ended up doing kind of bunch of interesting secretive stuff with the US intelligence community and one of the things was a collaboration with a Native American tribe in the Coachella Valley which brings us further along in the timeline of the story of my film but that was my entry point into this world and then I discovered that Danny castelo was investigating this wackenhut Corporation and this Cabazon band of mission Indians where there were weapons demonstrations took place and there were plans for manufacturing kind of exotic military technology and there were a lot of colorful characters involved and then you know so I just kind of stumbled into it while I was writing this paper then I was just like okay like I need to revisit this and figure out who this journalist that was investigating it who died under mysterious circumstances was and what was going on with this reservation there's in the early days I'm scanning these different articles and there's software involved and Iran Contra and a hostage crisis like what is this I've never heard of any of this before I've got to know more and then that became a 10y year long thing so a kind of an innocuous start that I sometimes don't even want to say how I got into it because it's so kind of like pedantic and boring you know oh man well I have to be honest with you it's the opposite for me because it's unexpected but you come at from an unexpected angle and then you kind of I guess you're what's that metaphor about seeing an elephant you know like you're just seeing one tiny part of the elephant you can't step back and see the whole thing and of course you've got the the octopus metaphor which is you know clearly a central theme of the documentary and it's perfect because there are so many tentacles going everywhere with this story and I have a feeling that the listeners they're a little bit confused right now by your explanation but apologize such no it's it's a perfect intro to the your documentary series because everywhere you look it just raises more and more questions about what is going on but very little of it feels like a dead end you know what I mean like it truly feels all connected in a real way so let's try to clear the air a little bit for them over the course of this interview and then the documentary series can do the rest of that for them afterwards if they haven't seen it already so yeah you find these very very tantalizing threads was there a specific time or a specific way that it really sort of like took over your life in in a sense I mean was it just like a side project for the first year for example or how did that happen exactly well I mean pretty quickly the paper that I was writing about the prison industry became a side project and I was like fully consumed with this story like right away but you know I did have kind of like academic obligations that I had to deal with but I yeah I was like just really kind of I I couldn't pull myself away then I I took a short break and worked as a reporter at a newspaper in Gillette Wyoming writing about local politics and I left my box of research behind I was like I'm just going to investigate you know conspiracies in Wyoming I and I'm just going to develop my craft and not be distracted by this thing but pretty quickly you know I kind of quickly got a handle on the local political minations in Gillette Wyoming and did my articles pretty quickly and found myself spending the rest of my time investigating this Casto Etc series of cases and that was also right around the time that the Snowden Revelations came out so I believed at that point that I had a real hook via the promise software element like this you know could possibly be the origins of this like you know story that Edward Snowden revealed so we have this like giant data collection thing but where did it come from like maybe it came from promise so I had kind of like a hook to you know that so what who cares why now getting an article published hook and then that's when I started calling at that point in W while I was living in Wyoming and this is like in 2013 IID read everything that I could find you know every article and every kind of book that dealt with the like kind of Main cases related to this story and that so then I you know kind of started calling um kind of the main players that were involved in this and then ultimately I went from there to an archive in Missouri where all of the reporter who is kind of the main character in this that died under mysterious circumstances Danny Castello I went to this archive where his the bulk of his research on this case exists it's like thousands of pages and like I think six boxes you know archive boxes and so I photocopied all of that and then I headed out and continued on the road and and met with kind of like a bunch of his early sources and started networking with friends of his and it was tough to get in close with his family but that eventually happened and I kind of like would work on this thing in faces you know because the archival materials the the research materials came in like for I got a huge dump from the National Archives three years in so that kept me like very into it then it took me all this time to process and read those thousands of pages of documents then seven years in four years later I got the Martinsburg Police Department files the Netflix funding you know it just sort of like I did work always in the early days as a photographer to just support myself but I when I wasn't photographing I was researching understandable yeah I I totally get that drive to find the real story no question about it so because you were following in the Footsteps in a very real sense of a reporter who died in the midst of researching all of this did you personally ever feel any sense of danger of personal risk at all in in following all of this any warning signs or any weird gut feelings anything like that yeah besides like having like just general feelings of creepiness after reading like dark and creepy documentary evidence or whatever you know the only time that I'm feel really kind of spooked is when I have to like if I can't get a hold of someone or they don't seem like they want to talk like just trying to do my due diligence I'll eventually knock on their door and that's really the only time that I really kind of feel like really spooked and you know me and Zach will pull up to the house and and then Zach won't be able to find his notebook or whatever we'll be sitting there in the driveway and I'm like I look calm I'm sitting there calm but I'm I'm so mad that we can't just like pull up go up knock on the door make the contact and then leave you it just it sometimes is scary you know you've seen this person it's like criminal record or you don't know anything about them and but so far it's just a little nerve-wracking but yeah yeah nobody's like really like harassed me or okay okay that's good to know and nothing happened after the documentary came out because it was extremely popular upon debut as I understand it so a lot of people found this story and you know it maybe exposed a lot of things that haven't been talked about scen really in 20 plus years so were there any concerns or any backlash of any sort for you or the production team at all thank God no okay good good good to hear it so yeah that was six months ago so I think that you know if anything had would have occurred it probably would have occurred by now so yeah but then you also like the thing's out I mean the wor like even if I died like if I died in a bike accident like on my way here to do this interview people would maybe think that I got killed by the CIA you know like yep yep yep exactly so hopefully nothing happens to you one way or the other for so many re too like mysteriously like murder me like kind of I think went away when the when the show came out at least for a little while right right exactly but all again all this stuff happened like a super long time ago and who is still enforcing the will of William Casey or you know whatever before that exactly yeah they're all out of government service they're all retired this stuff is behind them for the part yeah we dead exactly exactly sure so we've mentioned Danny several times so can you tell us who he was exactly and and what happened to him yeah Danny Castello was a reporter from Northern Virginia DC area he lived in Fairfax County he's from a prominent family of of like doctors and he kind of was a little bit of a rebel in the family and that he spit SP his life pursuing writing fiction poetry music and he worked you know as a Stringer for different Publications in the 70s he been actually spent a little bit of time investigating the Watergate case and you can look at the FBI's file on the on the Watergate matter and find kind of some interesting documents referencing castello's like wild take on on the Watergate scandal unfortunately we didn't weren't able to get into that in the film but so then a story that I had heard was that because he kind of like took a very non Washington Post version of the story take on the event I was loud about it as a young you know 20-some year old reporter he felt like he was kind of like banished from the mainstream Washington press scene and he started but he also had a had a son when he was 20 or 21 years old so he had to work you know like so he ended up working for this series of newsletters they owned by Two Brothers one brother published crime newsletters for police and intelligence agencies that they would read about you know kind of what's going on in the world of drugs and the world of you know technical newsletter for police about National Crime stuff and then the other one was called computer age which was a series of newsletters about the fledgling computer computer industry and you know Danny started there in the mid to late 70s and eventually bought the newsletter from the from the one brother about computers and and kind of was like a publisher reporter editor of these series of Publications for people that worked in the computer industry about computers and this is you know wired Magazine's first issue was 1993 and their first issue had a very good article about Danny Cleo's death so he was just like in a writing about computers in an era where you know people would laugh about how they didn't know anything about computers journalists politicians you know it was kind of a very Niche thing but then a really fascinating spy Scandal involving stolen computer software crosses his desk shortly after he kind of sold his stake in the computer industry newsletter was looking to do something else and he basically starts talking to this guy Bill Hamilton who founded a computer company in DC and his background is with the NSA and a little bit with the CIA he had developed this software called promise and Danny goes and meets him and from there and he becomes fascinated by the story that that that this guy Bill Hamilton tells him and from there you know Danny dives into this world of what he later Bealls the octopus which involves unsolved Mur ERS in California and arms dealers and Iran Contra and the Cold War and you name it kind of everything kind of fit under the oct you know BCCI Edward Wilson case yeah truly you name it because and honestly the documentary series one of the things I like so much about is how it does its best to kind of clear the fog of this because it is such a confusing story for anyone even someone who has read quite a few of these individually like I have but the your graphic design team I guess whoever I would call them you know actually putting together octopus and showing it's really just hundreds and hundreds of data points that oh okay fantastic well wonderful well I put I put all the data in and then you know then a designer made it look cool and in an octopus yeah actually the the lawyers were really concerned about that thing and so it had to be vetted oh wow really yeah yeah wow wow wow because someone sees their name their name is on a chart and a line goes to another thing and it's it's inherently implicating them in something yeah yeah yeah very true so who vetted it was it the law firm then or what I I was not aware of that at all it was our production our lawyers at whatever okay okay gotcha no lawsuits yet or anything or I guess not you wouldn't be able to tell me anyway probably but that's good to know but yeah just hundreds of data points spread across time and space and they're all connect or you show so many of those connections at least in the documentary and there's a lot that are implied as well which I I think was great but yeah I mean this story will drive you nuts and I think it did drive you a little bit nuts was my impression you know along the way as it would yes yes yes so I want I want to skip ahead a little bit in Danny's personal story can you tell me obviously he winds up dead can you talk about what exactly happened like where was he what was he doing or thought he was doing yeah I mean basically by the time okay so he starts he has his first meeting with this founder of the software company who gives him all sorts of leads at in this initial meeting that's in August of 1990 in August of 1991 he's recently told his brother and several close friends that he is scared for his life earlier that summer he had a another sibling living with him he had the sibling move out because he was scared that heat that was coming for Danny would affect his his sibling then he was checking his car for bombs he had become close to a number of pretty shady characters people who had been convicted of major drug crimes people who were clearly underworld characters with long FBI files and he was kind of investigating these people but also bouncing ideas off of them and and getting like very intimately involved in their lives and he's clearly like actually like pretty over his head like I'm astounded at how much information he was able to unearth in the course of one year but also like I'm astounded at how careless he was and his attitude of like Oh I'm a journalist nothing will happen to me you know I can do this I can just pretty Brazen acts of like and these characters that I'm referencing them like Robert R Nichols and and Michael Rono who are kind of I don't know in a certain world household names but at the time were like totally obscure totally unknown but equally fascinating to Dany then as they are fascinating now to all of the kind of people in the research community that are uh fascinated by these people Danny was kind of the one of the first people to really start networking with these obscure fascinating mindboggling characters and so he basically tells several people that he's going to have a meeting in this town in West Virginia called Martinsburg which is the last stop on the commuter rail line to Washington DC it's it's an hour and a half drive to DC it's you know in the West Virginia handh handle and Danny goes there and he stays several days he's clearly waiting for someone eyewitnesses and people that spoke to him while he was there you know he was saying he was waiting for someone waiting for someone he got there on I think Thursday we pretty much know where he was mostly on Thursday there's some dispute in the police files as to whether he was completely alone or whether he was with someone talking to him because the two different waitresses have contradictory stories one of them remembers like the guy he was talking to at the restaurant being rude remembers them paying only in cash either way maybe he was meeting with someone maybe he wasn't then that's on Thursday then on Friday we know that he met with another person this guy William Turner who I lat later tracked out and met with and they exchanged some documents and then the guy was like let's get food let's get dinner and Danny was like no I got to go I'm going to go meet someone then we don't know where Danny was for most of the evening on most of the afternoon early evening and late evening on Friday he pops up again at a gas station that's in walking distance to his hotel it's like I think it's a Pilot gas station and he asked for a a cup of coffee the staff says well we don't have any it's midnight we don't have any coffee but they brew a pot so that they can give him a cup and they feel bad they had to wait and he sat there waiting so they didn't charge him and he walks back to the hotel with the coffee and then by checkout time the next day the hotel maid finds him in the room with a turly written unsigned suicide note you know it's basically one sentence and then he's in the in the hotel bathtub having bled out in a pretty or horrific bloody mess but there's no forced entry to the room there's no fingerprint or there's no sign of a struggle and the cas is pretty quickly ruled a suicide then the cas is like reopened by the local police it's ruled a suicide again then the doj reviewed the police department's investigation and they determined that it was a suicide although they admitted that there was a lot of doubt within the investigation that that was actually the case you know so that's I'm sorry that was a little bit long-winded but that's all right that's all right I mean you go much more into depth in the documentary as well and it's it is very odd there's definitely some what's the word I'm looking for some indicators you know some idiosyncrasies about the the scene you know as you described there even if there's not someone else's fingerprints or or anything like that no Witnesses and you could also wear gloves you know of course yeah it's a tough case you know but there's also so like you have a really good case on both sides like Danny was in debt yeah yeah it's it's easy sometimes or it's very tantalizing sometimes to build something up into more than it actually is but there are truly a lot of really you know make you think kind of indicators here especially considering the scope of what he's looking at and all the people that had died you know through the course of these events that he was researching as well so which you know you get into very thoroughly of course so Danny passed away you eventually got many years later you got hold of his notes and everything like that and you were able to recreate a lot of work but you were also able to find even more that he had not found you able to take it another step further than he had before his passing so you did mention this name Michael ranoso a moment ago can you tell me a little bit about him and I think you said Robert Booth Nichols as well yeah when Danny went to meet with the Hamilton's in DC in this initial meeting which is in August of 1990 they had had a like a 2-hour long telephone conversation with Michael in the the previous spring and he said all kinds of stuff because sorry so this story is so complicated the H can't there's it's impossible to say briefly tell me about Michael R I know that yeah the Hamilton were suing the Department of Justice claiming that the Department of Justice had stolen this software product that there was their intellectual property the promised software and in in the course of this like years long ongoing series of lawsuits you know with appealing to higher courts before we go on I want to tell you all about a new podcast from Tenderfoot TV called to die for imagine you were a fly on the wall at a dinner between the Mafia the CIA and the KGB that's where this unprecedented podcast begins brought to you by the makers of the hit podcast To Live and Die in LA to die for marks the first time a Russian trained Honey Trap has told her Story from beginning to end taught to seduce men for their secrets in sometimes their lives Aliyah Rosa was trained to believe that her body no longer belonged to her it belonged to the state she was meticulously trained to be the perfect weapon able to seduce her targets into compromising situations that have ended careers and sometimes lives from Tenderfoot TV the studio that brought you up and vanished and To Live and Die in LA make sure you check out to die for available beginning on March 26th wherever you get your podcast the Hamilton learned through their investigation that the software had been sold around the world through kind of front companies and people with close Association to the Reagan government and also by a separate channel in Israel to intelligence and police and investigative agencies and banking organizations around the world and that this software this pered version of the software package had a secret back door in it so that you know the CIA or probably the NSA could penetrate these databases that other people were using the software to manage their internal databases so it would kind of turn this software product into like this theoretically you know into this Oracle into like all of the you know deepest most remote databases all around the world which were otherwise impenetrable and basically offline and you would need to like send in a human in there to like go and try to retrieve but it it's already I think then in the 80s so much information it would have been you would have had to have known what you were looking for and get an agent in there you know whatever so that's the sort of theory that they're kind of working on by this time and this guy Michael rudo comes and says yeah you know what I I installed the back door on one of the versions of the software and I did it on this Indian reservation in the California desert and he says all this stuff and he names all these names and the Hamiltons took meticulous notes and they spent that whole summer vetting the stuff that Michael had told them and and kind of building upon it and calling different people that he had mentioned and and trying to verify the credentials of this guy and and and all this other stuff and in that course of that investigation that the Hamiltons did that summer this other guy Robert Bruth Nichols who knew Michael rudo also emerges and so basically Danny comes in there and they give him this memo which records the result of their investigation into the claims that Michael ranidu has made which also include the fact that one of the guys that was selling the software for the US government was awarded that that software for his efforts in Iran in the you know late 1970s during the Iran hostage crisis helping the Reagan and Casey Camp to make a deal with the Iranians to hold on to the hostages until after the election of 1980 between the incumbent Jimmy Carter and Ronald re governor of California famous actor which who knows I mean I believe that the October surprise certainly happened but I I don't necessarily know if Earl briyan was involved he may have been I don't think there's much evidence to suggest that Michael or keso was involved but either way that's the story that that Daddy was hunting down okay I see so Michael were they able to actually vet a lot of what he says because he his his claims are incredible right and I know that he's a major factor and you've met with him personally and and communicated with him a lot but were they able to vet a lot of what he did say right from the start yeah I mean they were they were able to event a lot of it I mean there's no question that he was at this Cabazon wacken Hut joint venture in the California desert there's no question that he was involved with stuff in San Francisco in the 1960s 1970s 1980s like yeah I mean the kind of rule of thumb for me about Michael what I've learned is that like a lot of the bigger more outlandish things he says end up being true or mostly true and the some of the more mundane things here points that he really insists upon turn out to be very hard to verify I see which is a wild kind of psychological thing to go through as a researcher yeah yeah I bet like why would you potentially be lying about the small stuff you know when this verifiable big stuff to talk about but so as the documentary viewer exclusively you know he he did not make a great impression on me as a as a person throughout you know it might he just seems like a very Shifty guy in some ways but you know clearly as you go through you continue to develop and Danny developed a lot of this stuff and yeah he's really knows what he's talking about in so many ways but I know and you know not to spoil too much of it but he spent a large portion of his life between 1991 and 2013 in prison right7 yeah yeah 2017 okay yeah so he was he was in prison for many many years was that in any way related to this hacking or this work with weapons or anything like what was that about I mean it's tough to tell eight days before he was arrested for what would ultimately be a 30-year stin prison for methamphetamine manufacturing charges he had sent an affidavit to the inslaw legal team making all of these claims about the October surprise with the wacken corporation about the promised software about the back door you know making his claims like legally providing that for their lawsuit and at the same time he had agreed to meet with in investigators from the house Judiciary Committee who are investigating in a separate investigation the inslaw you know claims against the Department of Justice and he also I believe says in the affidavit that like he's been warned not to to go public like this and that there's going to be repercussions and then he eight days later he gets busted for this meth thing and then it and then that turns into a 30-year sentence which also you know smacks is odd you know other people are probably getting charged for making and selling a little bit of meth and and not doing nearly that much time yeah yeah yeah saying you know writing a document that says you're willing to meet with government investigators at the same time that you're manufacturing methamp fomine is is not a smart move so it really begs a question of you know was he doing any of that at all and the timing is clearly very concerning there so you ultimately you met with him I mean I guess you communicated with him while in prison and then you met with him when he got out as well so that I picked him up from prison you were the person waiting for him when he got out after so many years that's incredible yeah yeah that was you know and that's that's in I think that's in episode three but yeah we spent the day together he knew who I was by that point ended up being like a really long drive to go meet with his lawyer in the Inland Empire we picked him up in he he was stationed in Lao and we we picked him up at a train station in Santa Maria and we drove down 101 to Riverside County some I can't remember the name of the town right now but and and met with his his lawyer who was like I've always been curious to learn more about who this guy was this desert lawyer you know like tan leathery skin and long gray hair and yeah yeah when you showed him on camera I said that's the lawyer yeah yeah so yeah so that was the first meeting and then we you know Michael and I continue talking to this day he's having some major health problems right now okay dang understandable has he I mean has he continued to open your eyes you know to what's going on as he continue to add detail and that sort of thing I mean this is an enormous story but have you do you feel like you've drawn everything that he knows at this point or is he still bringing up things or or digging up things I should say it's always fascinating to talk to him and I don't really want to get into too specific of like what our later conversations are about but it's basically along the same lines but definitely it always kind of like changes and grows and it's hard to be vague about it but he claims he hasn't watched the show but he has listened to a lot of the podcast okay okay I see yeah he's he's quite a character that much I can I keep trying to tell him to watch the show I you know I think he comes off ultimately pretty pretty cool like I think he seems like a very interesting person I think we portrayed him in a very realistic and very cool way anyways yeah the the scene where you pick him up from prison honestly was very very intense which you know even though it's broad daylight on public streets and all that it it was intense yeah we were pretty we were we didn't know what to expect it yeah yeah I can I could tell that really comes through as well so as I mentioned earlier you picked up and you know there's no way to tell this entire story in this ass single interview and there's no way really even to tell it in your in your documentary series and that's kind of a central tenant of it is there's so much out there that is known or unknown or incorrectly documented you know there's so much going on so it's it's yeah something it's very hard to get really get your arms around of course but if I'm not mistaken correct me if I'm wrong here Christian but I believe that you were able to ultimately track down the person who Danny was probably meeting with in West Virginia is that right yeah I mean that could be a damn shame that this person Joseph quar and I overlapped by one year where I was aware of who he was and he was alive but you know I kind of have the thing where you know I want to try to read more and know more and be in a better position before I rege him and then he you know as a young healthy man went into the VA hospital in I think Georgia and for kind of some routine thing and and died and so I mean I it's one of my great regrets that I didn't really ask this guy like what was going on with him and Dany did he meet with him that we have allegations from other witnesses that he threatened them basically who was he what was going on and and yeah there's is a possibility that he met with Danny in in West Virginia yeah we talk about that in the show so why would Danny have wanted to meet with him like who was Joe exactly well Joe was a a CIA operative and Special Forces operative and Danny at that point was desperate to have some sort of on the record official explanation a confirmation of this complicated series of crimes that he was looking into and he had several meetings with Joseph qua he would always bring like a girl like a a friend of like that was a girl to join kind of to keep the conversation more friendly and light or something or maybe it wasn't that necessarily but it was like the having the triangle maybe I I don't know what I don't exactly know what that invest ative technique of Danny's was but thankfully we have those people that can confirm kind of basically what was being discussed and they were you know talking about the the octopus this series of of crimes qu had two Alibis as to where he was on the day of Danny's death and he threatened another one of the women that was at one of these meetings like to because she was a friend of Danny's and she was like what's going on here do you know anything and he he's like don't look into it you don't want to know what Danny was investigating was a business and you got two kids and you got your own life and unless you want to seriously disrupt that just stay out of it wow wow wow and then he tells you know the family that you know he's so sorry I'll help you guys investigate what happened to Danny doesn't do that it's all just it's just like he's a weird character that came out of nowhere Danny also told do you know the Nam Carl shuffler he was one of the Watergate the DC police he was the detective who served as kind of like the leaon from the DC police to the CIA and he was there the night of the arrest at the Watergate he was one of the arresting officers he was an old friend of Danny's and Danny told him that he was really scared at the end of his life of Robert rth Nichols okay yeah you you did mention Robert earlier briefly and he's he was connected to Michael as you said I found him to be very unusual character as well but I'd like to hear from you you know just briefly what you thought about him as well I don't think you had the chance to meet him yourself did you no he supposedly died in the early a to I can't remember the date off the top of my head but in Switzerland right before he would have gotten in a lot of trouble for his involvement in this Ponzi scheme oh yeah yeah yeah yeah with this guy Sam Israel but yeah Robert Ru Nichols he's from a very he's from I I think Beverly Hills California his dad was a very prominent surgeon his brother is an attorney his siblings and his other his sisters ended up you know living all all over the world and his father was kind of a socialite and kind of a world traveler and involved in different NOS different projects and and so the kids like I think I think one of the stories I heard was that Robert Bruth Nichols had a Porsche you know at 16 and the kids just were able to kind of like run a muck in in Beverly Hills in the 60s and then when Robert Booth Nichols was in his early 20s he ended up not reporting for the draft and he got in trouble in Honolulu and according to the story he basically met the the judge that presided over his not going to Vietnam case recruited him into basically the CIA and whether or not that's true I have no idea but he then falls under the mentorship of this guy named Harold okamoto who was a allegedly an organized crime connected kind of player in in Hawaii when Robert Bruth niggles married his first wife Harold okamoto was like played the part of his father like Robert Bo Nichol had basically like alienated his family and and taken on this new father figure of Herold and then he according to his FBI report he goes to Switzerland and studies Swiss banking for several years and then he kind of reemerges as this tall handsome Clark G looking Shady businessman Thug with ties to organized crime and ties to the intelligence Community supposedly and certainly like involved in arm stealing and moneya laundering operations he was because he had a patent on this submachine gun that would the wacken nut Corporation was in interested in developing at this Cabazon weapons plant they were going to build he ends up intersecting with the story and and meets Michael ranoso at the Kazan Indian reservation and they go on from there and start like a business together in like 1985 called Meridian International Logistics but they end up having like a major falling out or supposedly and they kind of go their separate ways and like by the time Danny meets both these guys and in 1990 you know they're bitter enemies yeah he has he has such an unusual story and a unique story and in the documentary you include this footage from his his deposition I guess it was his filmed deposition position and to me it was very telling because he seems he's got some very veiled he's got there's a lot of veiled threats during this Des deposition and he's such a like a theatrical guy like he's totally in control of all of his you know movements and he's all of his you know facial expressions are with a purpose you know like almost like it was rehearsed in a little bit of a way or maybe he's just a natural at that but just a drastically different guy from Michael drastically different guy from almost anybody out there in my opinion as well and you know then he appears in Switzerland and his body is immediately cremated I think they said so there's no remains or anything just just a lot going on with this guy no question about it yeah so yeah fascinating guy I mean wow and that was that deposition footage was like a real battle like we worked so hard to get that I mean no one had ever seen that before other than the you know plaintiffs or whatever the people involved in that case yeah it's it's a wonderful addition it really it really hits the mark in my opinion really draws you in no question because it there's so much going on but how much of it is you know how much of it is a what's the word I'm looking for like a cover you know what I mean like how much of this is not real and how much of it is real you know some of it can be verified some of it is still up in the air it's it's just so hard to know which way is up you know with this story so many times totally amazing yeah nobody knows that better than you of course so I have a feeling honestly that right now the listeners are hearing this and they're like wait what is this about what is this what is the story here and the story is all of this because we're we're talking about oober surprise Iran Contra hostages in Iran weapons experimentation California desert there's you know covert Financial stuff going on it's just it's everything that's why it's called The Octopus because there are these tentacles leading everywhere so but I do want to ask you now that all this is out and now that you've looked at it for so long is there any sort of like a central pillar to this story in your opinion is there something that kind of ties it all together in any way or is this just a giant mass you know what I mean just like all these interconnected things that are all feeding off of each other and off of all of us as well so to speak I think that it's a really good question I think that the overall pillar is the kind of takeover of the you know basically the kind of like new deales US government by these Sinister like fascist corporate Elite forces with total tie in connections to like Wall Street banking circles and intelligence circles and it's very paranoid but yeah I mean people to look at are like Alan Dulles and John Foster Dulles I don't know I mean that's like kind of I'm what I'm studying now is kind of I'm going further back in time and looking at the origins of the CIA and and these like corporate fat cats who who hated a US government that was like really like for the people and and they thought the New Deal they wanted to paint the new deal with a communist brush and undo all all that that Roosevelt had done with that and yeah I and basically it's this attitude of the best thing for all of us is for the corporations to like secretly control the US government and that we'll all be better off if the corporations are able to maximize their profits or whatever it doesn't actually matter if we'll all be better off it just matters that the corporations will be able to maximize their profits in the guise of like this is supposedly helping us or whatever or they don't care it's like covert anyways Kennedy assassination it's like kind of part of all of that and I don't know man that's I I think that's what I'm taking away but really what I'm taking away from it is that I'm still continuing to study the secret History of the United States and it never ceases to terrify me and and severely disappoint me but I think it's a worthwhile job yeah I I do know that feeling to a certain extent no question I don't have a a multi-art you know documentary like you do but I spend a lot of time reading about this and talking about this you know and learning more about it and there's there's truly a a mostly secret or mostly unknown you know History of the United States and history of the world really that is constantly steered by people that are you know they're unelected sometimes they you know their senior senior bosses don't even know who they are and they they're you know certainly aligned with business interests in many cases no question about it and the same people seem to benefit time and time again you know people in the background all the time it really is incredible story and it sounds so paranoid to say all of that out loud but it's pretty easy to come to those conclusions at the end of your documentary series or at the end of years of research and that sort of thing and you know these are not paranoid ramblings by any means because all of that stuff has now been documented right and more and more comes you know in drips and drabs you know it comes out now that we're 30 and 40 years past when this was current events I do want to like I I obviously want to recommend my show the octopus murders on Netflix and then if viewers are into it if they liked it I I I would highly encourage them to read the book chaos by Tom O'Neal which is about the kind of secret history of the 1960s and then the book The Devil's chessboard by tbit which I think are like the great like two great companion pieces to the octopus murders and they really you know and and they're both page Turners so if I could just recommend that it's like I feel like if you watch the show then you read those two books you'll like you know you'll have like a pretty good head on your shoulders if not like you know it may be spinning in circles but it'll be like also solidly on you know oh I know it solidly there so I have not read the devil's chessboard yet yet uh I have read chaos and I've been trying to get Tom on the podcast as a matter of fact because you're right it really gets your head spinning in a big way and I feel like his kind of his own character Arc matches yours in a way because this you know writing that story documenting that story it took a lot out of him like it came at a cost for him personally I could tell he's a hero of mine and sort of a mentor and we can talk later about oh okay yeah fantastic he and I have been in touch in the past but the interview hasn't happened yet but yeah I do have his email address and and all of that so far but yeah I I would love to talk to him so if you want to put in a good word or anything for me maybe that'll push us over I will I'll say that we had a great conversation okay fantastic fantastic so I mean you you clearly are still very engaged in this story even though the documentary is a finished product so are you still continuing to research do you have any follow-up like another series or anything or are you having to kind of move on to other projects now I mean I'm still deeply involved in the story and my extremely secretive collaborator Zach the director would be I can't talk about it but I'm I'm still deep into it and we've got a bunch of fun amazing mind-blowing [ __ ] coming down the pike I I mean if it all works out I mean it's still hard to get these things off the ground but we have a bunch of ideas and we're super excited and super inspired fantastic to to you know you know take take the full plunge you know we're on the edge of several Cliffs looking at how delicious the water is we okay I'm not sure if I like where this metaphor is going you know with the long jump no we're going to survive the jump you know it's gonna be a nice cool safe height or whatever hopefully great it'll be a crowd pleaser I'm sure of it yeah good well I'm really glad to hear that because you know certainly the documentary it's an incredible product but it also leaves everybody with a lot of questions as it did you clearly so I'm I'm really glad to hear there's going to be some more followup on that and as I understand at the documentary you know not only that I enjoy it person but it was very well received by the audience at large so I hope that that's a good incentive for you know additional you know production funds and and that kind of thing and support as well so yeah I'm looking forward to that I always ask people about what they're working on at the end of these episodes and most of them don't want to talk about it so don't feel bad about that there's a lot of idea thieves out there it's never actually happened to me but I've heard it happened I believe it I believe it besides the documentary can people connect with you online or is there anywhere they can yeah I'm on Twitter on yoor Christian Instagram as Christian height Hansen h t h n senen and I pretty pretty good about responding to people so yeah hit me up if you got any questions great okay yeah we will include that in the show notes if you want and then when I post about this on social media myself I'll definitely tag you in so people follow thanks so much as well well this has been a wonderful talk and sorry about the rambling it's just the nature of the show it's like you know what I mean and I know too much I don't know I'm sorry I think it was a good conversation I tried to be interesting um well you definitely are and you know if the listeners are wondering you know about the rambling or something like that if that's their imp their takeaway they're going to understand fully after they see the series yeah just watch the show we we put great effort into like making this confusing story Le like not confusing and and cinematic so yeah yeah you really accomplished that I I Believe Christian so thanks a lot for your time I really appreciate it hope future have a great weekend all right you as well take care bye if you're interested in more of spy 101 look for my page on Instagram at spycraft 101 you can also find more great articles on my website spycraft 101.com thank you all for listening and I hope you'll stick around because there's lots more to [Music] come disclaimer this podcast is for entertainment purposes only the stories and statements expressed herein are experiences and opinions they may not reflect the views of the host or the Production Studio it's okay if you disagree with our content no piece of media is right for everyone if you love spycraft 101 please check us out 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