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Article 17558 of alt.conspiracy:
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,alt.society.civil-liberty,alt.individualism,alt.censorship,misc.headlines,soc.culture.usa,misc.activism.progressive
From:
[email protected] (John DiNardo)
Subject: Part 22, The Casolaro Murder --> The Feds' Theft of Inslaw Software
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Keywords: CIA = Murder Inc., CIA desecrates the People's Constitution
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Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1992 19:56:51 GMT
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The following excerpts are from an October 15, 1991
article in the THE VILLAGE VOICE
36 Cooper Square
New York, NY 10003
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
(continuation)
THE LAST DAYS OF DANNY CASOLARO
by James Ridgeway and Doug Vaughan
Although his death was tentatively ruled a suicide, back in
Washington, D.C., his friends and family quickly protested that
decision, and reports in the media were soon suggesting that Danny
Casolaro had been murdered. For in this, the year of conspiracies,
Danny Casolaro happened to be one of a small army of freelance
journalists exploring the possibility that the powers of the
national security state had been used to manipulate domestic
politics. In particular, Casolaro was interested in what he called
the "Octopus," a network of individuals and institutions that he
believed had secretly masterminded a whole series of scandals,
from the Iran-Contra affair and the S&L debacle to the BCCI
collapse and the 1980 October Surprise deal.
In the weeks before his death Casolaro had spoken frequently about
threats on his life, and just before he left for Martinsburg he
had told his brother, "If anything happens to me, don't believe
it's an accident." Many of the friends and sources who spoke to
him in the last days of his life recalled that he seemed euphoric
and quite certain that he was on the brink of proving the existence
of his Octopus; he did not sound like a candidate for suicide to
them. More suspicious, before the family could be told of Casolaro's
death or an autopsy performed, the body was embalmed by a local
funeral home; early press reports added that the hotel room had
been quickly cleaned, perhaps to obscure any trace of a crime. The
wildest story even suggested that the undertaker was an employee
of the C.I.A., hired to clean up after agency assassinations.
[Danny's brother, Tony Casolaro, a physician, recounts this story:]
"My mother first called about 9:30 on Monday morning. She called
me within 20 minutes. When I spoke to [Swartswood], he said,
`We found your brother at the Sheraton in Martinsburg. It looks like
he committed suicide.' And I said, `Well how did he do it?' And he
said, `We're not sure yet. We found some broken glass, and we
found a razor, and his arms were cut.' I said, `You mean wrists?'
And he said, `Yeah, wrists and arms.' I said, `Did you know he was
a reporter working on a story?' He said, `No. What are you talking
about?' I said, `He told me four weeks ago: if he got killed in an
accident, not to believe it because he was threatened.' He said, `Oh.'
I said, `Did you find any of his papers? He had all these papers
with him.' He said, `I don't think we found any papers.' I said,
`Are you going to do an autopsy?' He said, `No. I don't think so.'"
"And then he sort of stepped back and said I ought to talk to the
medical examiner. I said, `Who decided not to [conduct an autopsy]?'
He said, `the corrner, Sandra Brining.' I didn't think of all the
things I should have asked him at the time."
After talking to Sandra Brining, Tony Casolaro finally got through
to Dr. James Frost in the West Virginia Medical Examiner's office.
Frost said he would conduct an autopsy on Wednesday.
"I told him the whole method of death ..... even if he were going
to commit suicide ..... I'm not going to say he never would. You
never say that. Anybody could,"
Tony Casolaro contined.
"But I said, if you look at the person, if you look at how
enthusiastic he was, and if you look at the method of dying --
Danny didn't like needles. He was supposed to have a treadmill
done about a year ago: he got there and they told him they wanted
to do a stress Valium test, where they put a needle in his arm.
He said, `Forget it.' and left. My partner was really mad at him.
He said, `You're not going to put any needles in my arm.'"
"And Frost said, `Well, you know, that is kind of curious. We'll
go ahead and do the autopsy and we'll see.'"
"[Then later] he said to me, `You know, he's been embalmed.' This
was Monday afternoon. I said, `What? You're kidding. How did that
happen?' He said, `I don't know.' I said, `Is that something that's
standard?' He said, `No. It's quite atypical. It's against the
law, in fact. Weren't you asked?' I said, `No.' [He said], `Well,
then, I don't quite know. Maybe Ms. Brining authorized it.
[Brining said she released the body to the funeral home because
she regarded it as a suicide.] But really, they're supposed to
notify the family first.' I said, `Well, I can guarantee you
nobody asked us.' I said, `Doesn't that impede your autopsy?'
`Well,' he said, `it makes it more difficult.' Those were
his exact words."
Even at Casolaro's funeral, the family felt engulfed by mysteries.
As his mother, brothers, sisters and close friends watched from
beneath a canopy, a man in a tan raincoat and a beribboned Black
soldier in Army dress uniform walked up to the casket. the soldier
laid a medal on the lid, saluted and both men quickly walked away.
No one recognized either man; Danny had never served in or covered
the military. The medal was buried with the coffin.
(to be continued)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[JD: On October 22, 1991, Robert Knight, the host of UNDERCURRENTS,
conducted an interview, broadcast over WBAI-FM (99.5) in New York
City, with the Nixon Administration's U.S. Attorney General,
Elliot Richardson. Richardson will always be remembered in history
as the man who, when ordered by Nixon to fire Watergate Special
Prosecutor Archibald Cox -- which was a reprehensible attempt to
obstruct justice and a misuse of presidential powers -- refused to
fire Cox and, instead, resigned in protest.
Well, ironically, Elliot Richardson is now the legal representative
of the Inslaw Software Company. And in this interview, he said
that Attorney General Thornburg never even answered his letter
requesting a special investigation headed by an independent
special prosecutor with no ties of any sort to Administration
circles. Richardson went on to say that two particularly suspicious
details of Casolaro's death, among others, make it more likely
that Casolaro was murdered than that he committed suicide:
1) Casolaro's briefcase was missing when his body was discovered,
despite the fact that he always guarded that briefcase carefully.
2) His body was embalmed illegally, before an autopsy could
be conducted.]
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This is one of countless stories unveiling the deeply corrupted
and subverted state of our theoretically democratic Government.
This story makes disgustingly obvious the fact that patriotism
is not the waving of flags, the tying of yellow ribbons and the
mindless support of the Government, just because it happens to be ours.
You don't support cancer just because you happen to have it.
Patriotism is telling the truth to the people of our country
in order that they may unite to conquer the anti-democratic
cancer that is gradually destroying ours and our children's
freedom. So please post the installments of this ongoing series
to other bulletin boards, and post hardcopies in public places,
both on and off campus. That would be a truly patriotic deed.
John DiNardo
The episodes of this series are retrievable from sites:
ftp.css.itd.umich.edu and red.css.itd.umich.edu
Log in with name "anonymous" or "ftp" and supply your user I.D. as the
password. The files are kept in the directory /poli/essays.d/conspiracy.d
(Instructions for ftp retrieval are dependent upon what sort of system
the user is on. On a UNIX machine, one would do, at the command prompt:
ftp ftp.css.itd.umich.edu This may be different on IBMs and Vax systems.)
Proprietor: Paul Southworth,
[email protected]
