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Danny Casolaro
Last Updated: June 16, 2010

In August 1991, journalist Danny Casolaro was elated about going to West Virginia to meet a key figure, and possible icing on the cake source, before completing the manuscript of what he called the most explosive investigative story of the 20th Century. The focus of his year-long probe was the hidden, illicit ownership and use, of the most powerful, secretly intrusive and controlling software on earth.

Three days after his arrival, Casolaro's body was found in his hotel room bathtub, wrists slashed at least twelve times, to his tendons. The box of documents, notes and phone contacts he'd brought with him was gone.

Before and soon after his death, Court and Congressional findings supported much of his unfinished outline describing a government connected, multi-group subsystem, and its malevolent role in world events at the 20th Century's end. He'd nicknamed the nexus of this spectral force "The Octopus".

Numerous direct connections to later events, some with global impact, point to a national story of even greater magnitude in the 21st Century. Whether all its elements can ever be fully known, the clear implications of its already verified disclosures point to what seems the most important current matter, in urgent need of public awareness.

Promis

The core of Casolaro's project took shape twelve years before his involvement. The US Law Enforcement Assistance Agency (LEAA), funded the development of next-generation software for data collection and use. The result was a breakthrough in the creation of artificial intelligence, by a National Security Agency non-profit firm named Inslaw.

When the LEAA was phased out in 1980, Inslaw became a for-profit firm, and owners Bill and Nancy Hamilton created an enhanced version of the software program named PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information System).

The system enabled prosecutors to merge criminal case data from across the nation, to a depth that actually produced valuable new information. It could virtually put two and two together and make five.

In 1982, the Justice Department signed a $10 million contract with Inslaw for PROMIS installation in US Attorneys offices. The contract recognized that the enhanced PROMIS features were Inslaw's property, to be later compensated in good-faith negotiation.

The enhanced PROMIS software was spectacular. It could reveal every minute bit of information throughout any operation with which it made contact. It produced an omniscient blueprint of the host's innermost workings, down to details never before known possible.

Realizing its potential for profit and power, top Justice officials, as later proven, plotted with others to pirate the software for covert use, and to market it commercially themselves.

An untraceable backdoor code component was then installed. It provided the ability, via satellite, to covertly transfer, or even alter information, within any system linked to it. Ultimately, entire systems' content could be secretly replaced by"parallel reality� information, chosen by those in control of the hidden back door. This quickly became the ultimate tool/weapon for clandestine intelligence operations, whether legitimate or not. Only those with hidden access to the genuine data have real operational control.


Computer scientists familiar with PROMIS reported its ability to create new paths for its own improvement, potentially increasing its power indefinitely.

Continuously enhanced over the years, all-knowing PROMIS software became the progenitor of the Defense Department's understandably controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) program in 2003. It was headed by John Poindexter, former Reagan official convicted in the Iran/Contra scandal. His stated TIA goal was the unlimited collection of US citizen data from all possible sources. Public outrage caused the program's shutdown one year later, It resurfaced in '05 under the NSA, jointly with IBM. Poindexter formed a global data-mining firm named Cognitive Edge, headquartered in Singapore.

Back in the early '80s, once the Justice officials got the (enhanced) goods, as internal memos put it, they refused any negotiations, and simply stopped payments on the Inslaw contract. The Hamiltons firm filed for bankruptcy in 1985, then launched a lawsuit against the Justice Department.

Despite a decade of Trial and Appeals court decisions in its favor, as well as two Congressional reports calling for Inslaw's compensation, the company never received a penny. Starting surreptitiously in the early '80s however, PROMIS has been illicitly sold to, and imbedded in government, company, organization and agency systems around the world. Estimated dollar sale totals are at least several hundred million.

Ordinary computer users know that the latest intrusion protection is quickly challenged by spammers and hackers latest innovations. Those involved with military and global finance systems are locked in unending, no holds barred spywar, whether predator and/or prey. Beyond devising improved cyber weapons, and labyrinths of electronic decoys and disinformation, criminal methods and tactics have often included bribery, collusion, threats and homicide.

Cutting edge IT scientists can keep their adversaries guessing and uncertain. However, the total design and ability of a Trojan Horse, such as the original backdoor within PROMIS, remains known only to those with full knowledge of its first installation.

US intelligence agencies have surely scored major, legitimate coups with it, though understandably unreported. What is known from voluminous, direct and undisputed circumstantial evidence, is that PROMIS-sired installations have been lynchpins in international financial scandals, domestic political travesties, and US security disasters.

During the twenty year creation of toxic streams formed by organized deceit, and US security trade-offs for personal power and wealth, PROMIS appears as a navigation guide for the forces converging for the cataclysmic attack on US soil, in 2001.

One observer of increasing danger of tyranny by technology, pined that Its not now too late , but rather that its always been too late to avoid the inevitable information monolith. The extent of PROMIS progenies centralized control, and by whom, is now somewhat apparent. Its potentially absolute power in the near future, and therefore its consequences, can only be imagined.

A FEW OF THE ORIGINAL MAJOR PLAYERS

Lowell Jensen, the Deputy Attorney General during the contract period, previously owned a company that lost a large contract award to Inslaw.

Madison Brewer, the Justice Department manager of the Inslaw contract, Madison Brewer, once worked for Inslaw, and had been fired.

Edwin Meese, Counselor to President Reagan, secretly invested in a firm that was pressuring (reportedly threatening) Inslaw to sell, owned by a financier (later convict) colleague of Meese. In 1985, Meese became US Attorney General, and secretly tried to get the bankruptcy court to order total liquidation of the Hamiltons firm. Meanwhile the rival company hed invested in, headed by fellow career Reaganite vassal Earl Brian, had begun selling the pirated software around the world.

Earl Brian coordinated the secret modification and marketing of the stolen PROMIS software through his company, named Hadron Inc. Several witnesses and documents identified Brian as a key figure in the 1980 election October Surprise Iran hostage outrage. The PROMIS bonanza was reportedly in reward for his services. A skilled political and financial manipulator, Brian eventually gained control of United Press International and the Financial News Network. A decade later he served four years in prison for fraud.

Elliot Richardson was Inslaw's attorney. His integrity was legendary since, as President Nixon's Attorney General, he'd resigned rather than obey Nixon's order to fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor. In the Inslaw case, he eventually called for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor, since the Justice Department, as Defendant, had also been in charge of investigating itself. No such independent office was ever created.

George Bason, Federal Bankruptcy Judge, who after refusing to order Inslaw's liquidation, was the first to rule in its favor, declaring that the Justice Department had used trickery, fraud and deceit to steal the PROMIS software. the first to rule in Inslaw's favor. Following his ruling, of the 142 Federal Bankruptcy Judges up for reappointment that year, he was one of four who were denied. His replacement, in fact, was the lawyer who'd unsuccessfully argued the Justice Departments case before him.


All this was repeatedly documented in Federal Trial and Appeals Courts, as well as a Congressional Report in 1992

House Committee Investigation

The year after Danny Casolaro died, the House Judiciary Committee confirmed the courts Inslaw findings and more. Its report also stated it was imperative that further investigation be conducted into the cause of Danny Casolaro's death.

Local West Virginia police had immediately declared it a suicide, without an investigation or full autopsy. His body was embalmed and the room professionally sanitized within 24 hours, though it was 2 days before his family was notified.

It wasn't till months later that it was revealed Danny had bruises on his arm and head. There'd been blood splashes outside the bathroom and bloody towels neatly folded. Those Danny said had arranged the scheduled meeting weren't contacted. Nor were his recent incoming and outgoing calls followed up.

All those close to him are certain it wasn't suicide. He'd been exuberant about actually meeting one of the main subjects of his investigation, and then finalizing the project. He was worried however, about the phone threats, and suspicious about a chance encounter with a stranger, who coincidentally was able to arrange the scheduled meeting with the key PROMIS theft operative. Six months earlier, one of his major inside sources, NSA electronics expert Alan Standorf, had been murdered. He was also well aware of the murders of other insiders trying to expose US security breaches in PROMIS' distribution.

Nonetheless, Casolaro planned to keep the appointment, though he told his friends that if anything happened to him, not to believe it was an accident.

They didn't believe the suicide claim either. The documents he'd brought to reveal at the meeting were gone, along with his note, address and phone books. None of those whose "Octopus" involvement he'd been openly tracking, none of those he'd been contacting, or planned to meet and confront, none of the records of calls to his home,none of the preliminaries of a thorough investigation had taken place.

Six months later, yielding to his family's public insistence, a full autopsy was conducted, and suicide was declared consistent with the cause of death, namely loss of blood. Other medical examiners stated that little could be learned from a body embalmed six months earlier.

The House Judiciary Committee duly noted the unanswered, indeed never asked, questions about Danny Casolaro's last days, and intoned the obvious need for further investigation.

The report referred to documents, and what it deemed credible sworn testimony, about the people and methods used to perpetuate what it termed "an abuse of power of shameful proportions." Justice officials, it said, had obstructed the committee's inquiry, their individual testimony contradicted one another. Government documents were reported lost or destroyed.

As a result, the report said, wrongdoers had been "shielded from investigation and possible prosecution." Public confidence and faith in our system of justice had been undermined by the very agent entrusted with its enforcement. Further action, it dutifully noted, was "essential to restore that confidence."

And...

To date, the situation remains as it was in 1992. Inslaw and the Hamiltons still wait for justice denied by the Justice Department. The deepening dust over Danny Casolaro's brave, but naive dealings with jackboot, black ops outlaws remains undisturbed.

Continuously enhanced PROMIS though, might well be the "Second Coming." Not rough beast but specter. Not slouching but slithering, and actually born in the desert, as it happens.

What Casolaro Learned

At 43 years old, Danny had sold his interest as co-founder of ComputerAge magazine, and was free-lancing for a year before introduced, in 1990. to his first Inslaw/PROMIS source, referred to in his notes, as "Danger Man".

Michael Riconosciuto, (Michael R.) is a seriously tainted, truth stretching, technology wizard, who became well known among rogue intelligence factions. At age 10 he'd wired his neighborhood with a private phone system, bypassing MaBell. At 16, he was physics lab assistant to Nobel Laureate Arthur Schalow at Stanford. "You just don't forget a kid who shows up with his own argon laser," Dr Schalow later remarked.

As a young man in the '70s however, Michael R. served two years in prison for manufacturing methamphetamine. Soon after, he entered the schizophrenic world formed by covert agencies and global commerce, where legitimacy is less defined than it is justified, or just not considered. His lucrative expertise, confirmed in Federal Court and Congressional findings, was in the secret creation of communication and weapons technologies.

Throughout the '80s, Michael R's primary business connection was acknowledged CIA contract agent Robert Booth Philips, who became Casolaro's second and most constant sounding board, in the weeks before his death.

Vice President of Philips Meridian Arms company, Michael R. claimed that by the late '80s he regretted, and had become frightened by his life in officially controlled criminal operations. More than one of those he recounted in detail involved Earl Brian, Attorney General Meese's cohort choice to rake in the PROMIS bonanza.

Michael R. decided his best protection was public disclosure, and in 1990, he contacted Inslaw, saying that he was the one who actually installed the hidden "back door" in PROMIS software. In his sworn Court, and later Congressional testimony, with no other apparent motive, he stated that the project took place at the small Cabazon Indian Reservation, in the desert outside of Indio, California.

Reservations are outside the jurisdiction of regular US law enforcement, and Cabazon was managed by another acknowledged CIA alumnus, non-Indian John Phillip Nichols, (no family relation to Michael R/Meridian Arms' Robert Booth Nichols).

John Phillip had been bringing in the bucks with Government grants, non-taxed cigarette sales, and one of the first Indian gambling casinos. He also arranged a joint venture with Wackenhut, the nation's largest security contractor (its board replete with former CIA, NSA and FBI officials), to test experimental and prohibited weapons systems undisturbed.

Michael R's testimony and documentation, found credible by two Federal Courts, the House Judiciary Committee, and corroborated by other witnesses, stated that:
  • Along with information technology, new secret weapons, including biological and "fuel-air" explosives were developed and tested at Cabazon. Meridian Arms produced the prototypes. Aspects of the Iran/Contra (guns and drugs shipments) were also planned there.
  • Earl Brian, owner of Hadron Inc, marketer of the stolen PROMIS, paid several visits. Though Brian denied ever being there, the local sheriff's office recorded his presence at a weapons demonstration. In fact, they also identified the person with him as Wayne Reeder, partner of Neil Bush, George W's brother, in the Silverado Savings and Loan scandal. The extent of the 1980s S&L losses were in the $billions and shook the nation's economy. Many banking conspirators went to jail. Neil Bush admitted his crooked deals and got a $50,000 fine.
  • In 1981, a native Cabazon leader, Fred Alvarez, was shot to death along with two others, when they threatened to expose various criminal activities by the John Phillip-led management. Afterward, a Wackenhut security official named Jimmy Hughes voluntarily went to the local DA, and confessed he'd delivered the money to pay for the murders. He said he'd also been involved with John Phillip in other CIA linked assassinations, but couldn't take it any longer.
When the case dragged on without any arrests, and he heard he was next to be hit, Jimmy Hughes fled to Guatemala. A reporter for the London Financial Times, Anson Ng, traveled to Guatemala to interview him, and was shot dead there.

Four years later, John Phillip Nichols pled "no contest" to murder "solicitation" charges, and spent eighteen months in jail.

Hughes eventually became a Christian evangelical speaker, identifying himself as a former killer-for-hire, who found salvation in Jesus. There is an extraordinary tape produced in 2008 by Fred Alvarez' son and the daughter of another victim, in which they track Hughes to an evangelical event in California. After his keynote speaker address, they confront Hughes about the Cabazon murders. The tape can be seen at deseartfae.com.

Several allegations found credible, in Court and Congressional testimony from Michael R, Danny's "Danger Man" source, were supported by evidence from those with less tainted histories:
  • Ted Gunderson, FBI Senior Agent In Charge Dallas '73-'77, Los Angeles '77-'79.
  • Thomas Gates, FBI Special Agent investigating John Phillip Nichols and major drug dealings.
  • Ari Ben-Menasche, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) official '77-'87 swore that Earl Brian had sold PROMIS to Israel in 1983.
  • Chuck Hayes, Retired Air Force Colonel and CIA officer later submitted an affidavit, that he'd been present when Earl Brian offered PROMIS to the government of Brazil.
  • Letters from the Canadian government, and the CIA itself, each claiming to have purchased PROMIS in the mid '80s, from the same company in Cambridge, Mass.(Strategic Software Planning Corp). Information about this company is not readily available.
Casolaro never got to visit the Cabazon Reservation, about which he'd received much, but not all of his information. His body was found the month before he planned to go. The outline for his unfinished work included a partial list of those he believed were the go-to operatives closest to what he called "the head" of the Octopus.

Certain corporate entities, mafia figures, drug cartels, bi-party government kingpins and rogue agency groups were listed as its structural components. He focused on a major hub - Mid-East based, White House connected, global bank fraud BCCI, whose $ 20 billion collapse came just months after Danny's death. The 1980s VIP money laundry for dictators, terrorist backers, illegal weapons brokers, drug wholesalers, covert CIA and other agencies' operatives, lost only its innocent depositors' money, worldwide.

Permitted, often assisted by Reagan/Bush appointees, BCCI was finally prosecuted in 1992 by Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau, who called it the "worst financial scandal in world history."

In the late '70s, BCCI also made an American best friend who pulled Democratic Party strings, as well. Arkansas Billionaire Jackson Stephens had graduated from Annapolis with then President Jimmy Carter, and was Bill Clinton's biggest backer for Governor, on up to President.

Stephens' company, scheming for years with Carter's former Budget Director Bert Lance, in 1987 secured a beach head for BCCI in the US banking system. Their straw-man, till the scandal erupted, was Democratic luminary and former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford. Their attorneys were Hillary Clinton and her Arkansas law firm partners.

That didn't stop Stephens, during the same year, from brokering a $25 million bailout for George W. Bush's failing oil company, the principals of BCCI. Nor did it impede BCCI from being the Reagan-Bush clearing-house for weapons, cash and narcotics in the Iran/Contra operations.

From high risk-taking sources, Casolaro reported he also had evidence linking BCCI to 1980 "October Surprise" payoffs to Iran, and to PROMIS software's insertion into global banking systems. His last planned meeting, he told friends, was with a culpable government official, to exchange incriminating documents for the full account of PROMIS' installations.

This official, he told friends, was related to the Chief of Staff of Senator Robert Byrd (D-Va). A bastion of power in both political parties, Byrd, according to witnesses, was part of the deal with Iran, to hold US hostages until after the 1980 election.

The official, Peter Videnieks (Peter V.), had rotated through multiple postings at Customs, the IRS, NASA and the Justice Department. While at Customs he oversaw several contracts with Wackenhut (the CIA/Cabazon combo), and with Hadron Inc., owned by AG Meese cohort Earl Brian. Peter V's wife was Senator Byrd's Chief of Staff.

While at Justice, Peter V, was facilitator of the "deceit, theft and fraud", as described by Federal Judge George Bason, to steal PROMIS from the Inslaw company, and pass it over to Earl Brian and Hadron Inc. Brian, according to several witnesses, also helped route the payoffs to Iran for holding their US hostages until after the 1980 election. Brian's assistant at Hadron reported he'd received many calls from PeterV.

According to Casolaro source Micheal R.(sworn creator of PROMIS' "back door"), Peter V. had phoned and warned him against testifying in the Inslaw v Justice Dept. case. He claimed Peter V. threatened to get him arrested if he went ahead with it. In March 1991 Michael voluntarily submitted his sworn affidavit, and two weeks later he was arrested in connection with a methamphetamine lab operation.. As of June 2008, he remains in prison. Michael R also claimed Peter V. Had visited the Cabazon reservation, though ten years later he could not describe what Peter V. looked like.

Casolaro had been suspicious about a chance tavern chat with former Special Forces officer Joseph Cuellar, who just happened to know Peter V, and could arrange a meeting. Still, Danny told friends, he couldn't pass it up. The meeting was set for August 12, 1991, the day after Casolaro's body was found.

If Danny Had Lived

Whether or not he'd have immediately gone public with what he had, subsequent disclosures and events would have kept him more than busy.

In 1992, the House Judiciary Committee concurred with court rulings that Justice officials and their cohorts stole PROMIS, and started selling it themselves. The report, did not delve into specifically alleged transactions, CIA involvement (rogue or otherwise), BCCI's possession and criminal uses, or the installation of PROMIS' omnipotent "back door". Rather it concluded that further inquiry was necessary.

Later that year, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released its report on BCCI's decade of unimpeded global growth, including US bank ownership in eight states. The Senate report noted BCCI's US entrance in the '80s through Jimmy Carter's former Budget Director, but didn't follow the key role played during those years, by billionaire Jackson Stephens, Carters former classmate.

Stephens, whose IT firms received national security contracts, raised $millions for Bill Clinton while he was still Governor , and also arranged for BCCI principals to provide a $25 million bailout for one of George W. Bush's oil companies.

The Senate report listed BCCI business ties with top CIA officials. It described how Agency officials obstructed, and in fact misled Senate investigators about BCCI/CIA dealings. It declared it "incontestable" that BCCI was the Iran/Contra clearing house for cash and weapons trades. It recounted evidence of BCCI's money laundering for drug cartels and terrorists, as well as tracking its role in nuclear technology theft. Though it stated that BCCI had infiltrated IT systems worldwide, the report did not pursue testimony that BCCI was an early customer, then conduit for the pirated PROMIS software. As did the House report, the Senate report duly called for further investigation.

Danny Casolaro would surely have wanted to pick up where the two government probes left off. He'd already catalogued links between BCCI and PROMIS, BCCI and narcotics/weapons traffic, BCCI and the CIA, FBI and top government officials. He showed friends documents of enormous arms and drug deals profiting CIA, Customs and Wackenhut officials, The interlocked structure of these ongoing operations, formed a main part of the dark image Danny had named "The Octopus".

Much, though not all, of what amoral tech wizard Michael R told Danny was supported by others or documents. He warned that his former partner, CIA operative Robert Booth Nichols, was extremely dangerous, and Danny found good reason to believe him. Nichols himself had told Danny about his often lethal career in the CIA, and Danny told of Nichols once threatening to kill a man, over some perceived disrespect in a bar.

Nichols' Meridian Arms was the covert weapons contractor at the Cabazon reservation where three would-be whistleblowers were murdered. One of its Directors was Eugene Giaquinto, who the FBI charged with funneling money for the Mafia. He was also on the Board of another Nichols company named FIDCO, comprised of highest level CIA contractors, the Reagan White House Counsel, the CEO of the Howard Hughes empire, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, and a reputed Yakuza boss.

FIDCO had a US-backed contract for the rebuilding of war-torn Beirut, and Michael R, later supported by DIA agent Lester Coleman and FBI agent Thomas Hayes, testified that FIDCO also fronted for $ billions of CIA, Iran/Contra and BCCI cash, covert IT and protected heroin transactions, through FIDCO's hub in Cyprus.

Just weeks before Danny's death, Michael R told him that the green light for certain global drug operations came from the Justice Department's Director of International Affairs, a man named Mike Abbell.

It had become Danny's habit to call Nichols after hearing from Michael R, and "bounce off him" whatever new information Michael R had claimed. Though he realized the danger, Danny enjoyed talking with the debonair Nichols, a charismatic "Clark Gable" type, who tantalized with partially told tales of his lurid adventures. He'd befriended actor Stephen Seagall, and actually tried selling a movie script version of his frightening career. He reportedly has a bit part in Seagall's movie "Under Siege".

Nichols had also warned Danny about some of the people he was looking into, including another Justice official, PROMIS theft enabler Peter Videnieks (Peter V). However, Danny told friends, when he asked about Michael Abbell, Nichols was furious. His explosive tirade ended by flatly stating "If you continue you will die."

Friends said Danny never lost a teenager's sense of invincibility. He continued openly relaying the latest incriminating evidence he had about those he believed were operatives of the "Octopus". He blithely sent word that he�d meet with any one of them, perhaps trade some documents for information on the extent of PROMIS globally.

Danny said he'd arranged just such a meeting for the week after Robert Booth Nichol's mortal warning. In fact, it was with Abbell's former colleague at Justice, Peter V. Danny's body was found the morning before the scheduled meeting.

Four years later Mike Abbell was indicted. The former Justice Department Director of International Affairs, who, as rogue-genius Michael R had told Danny, acted as traffic guard for protected narcotics deals, was convicted as the consigliere for the Cali cocaine cartel. He received a seven year jail sentence

Since Danny's death in 1991, there have been numerous disclosures of government officials' involvement in large-scale drug traffic. Opium from the Mid East, cocaine from South America, most often CIA connected, throughout both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

PROMIS software has turned up in connection with illegal global enterprises including drugs, weapons and money laundering. By the end of the century, there was undisputed evidence that it had been sold to, or stolen by more than one hundred national governments, criminal cartels and militant groups. At first a super-tool for US intelligence agencies, it soon became a, if not the, key weapon in world-changing espionage against the United States.

For Bill Clinton's 1992 Presidential campaign, through Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens, he accepted $millions in loans (never repaid) from the Lippo Group conglomerate, in partnership with the Chinese government. Stephens had also arranged a multi-$million bailout for George W. Bush's failing oil ventures. Stephens' company, named Systematics, already held classified software contracts (PROMIS originated) with the National Security Agency.

Through his first term, the US-China trade imbalance grew from $11 to $52 billion, and starting mid-term, Clinton unilaterally gifted China with cutting-edge information and defense technology, ignoring alarmed protests by the Pentagon and Congress. In 1994 he installed a China-partnered Lippo official, John Huang, as Deputy Secretary of Commerce, with top security clearance. Huang, it was later learned, met regularly with Chinese officials, while raising $millions for Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign. More than half the money was later traced to illegal foreign sources, mainly China.

During that same period, as reported by the 1998 House Committee on National Security, China was able to hack into the nation's most vital, classified information systems. With unprecedented success, Chinese software spies repeatedly breached the IT safeguards at defense, intelligence, space and nuclear weapons facilities. There was no official attempt to explain how the nation's most advanced, top-secret technologies were so easily accessed and stolen. It was as if the intruders knew of some "back door" means of entry.

Also unexplained, was why the top White House, Defense and Security officials all testified they'd been briefed about the massive and continuing electronic espionage, but each of them thought someone else had told the President. Clinton concurred, saying he was sorry he wasn't informed of these national security disasters. No mention from anyone, not once, in two years.

Even less known, from its startup in 1994, is the horrific history of a small, software company near Boston, named Ptech.

It was funded by several Mid East billionaire bankers, including those who'd controlled the criminal conglomerate BCCI. Most notably was BCCI principal Sheikh Khalid Mahfouz. He was also personal banker for the Saudi royals, and partner of Clinton top contributor /George W's oil company savior, Jackson Stephens.

The newborn Ptech, for reasons not only unexplained, but effectively never asked, was contracted to manage information technology for the US government's most sensitive systems. Included was top-secret software control of Defense, Energy, Justice, Commerce, Transportation, Intelligence, and the White House itself.

Several related facts, which if presented as fiction, would not seem believable.

Ptech 's principal owner, Yassin Al-Qadi, was known as one of Osama Bin Laden's main financiers. Beginning in 1996, the FBI's Bin Laden Unit Chief, Robert Wright, presented evidence of al-Qadi and his associates' use of charity fronts, to directly fund Al Qaeda. Justice Department top officials denied his repeated requests to arrest al Qadi and warned him to back off the case.

Instead, al Qadi's small company was chosen to create the FAA's new National Airspace System, which was completed, praised by quasi government agency Mitre, and in operational control on 911.

Ptech's IT Chief was Felix Rausch, formerly INTERPOL's IT Chief, and also Deputy IT Chief at the White House.

It wasn't until the WTC buildings came down that Yassin al Qadi was declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist( SDGT). Since then a fugitive from US justice, he's reportedly living in Saudia Arabia. Agent Wright never did back off, and after 911 he publicly charged that that the Justice Department had long-shielded Saudis from terror-finance investigations. He was fired in 2006

Another Senior FBI Agent, Robert Hanssen, was a high level counter-intelligence chief until February 2001, when he was arrested and later found guilty of espionage. For fifteen years he'd reportedly sold critical security information to the Russians, including to him, the FBI's very own PROMIS software version and "back door" instructions.


An IT expert, Hanssen in 1984-5 was actually among those who installed the Bureau's new data system (later learned to be enhanced PROMIS), and so was one of the few who knew its original codes. Perhaps justifying his own treason, Hanssen's memos from the �90s condemn the Clinton White House for ignoring China�s massive IT espionage at US nuclear labs.

Four months after Hanssen's arrest, but still three months before September 2001, the Washington Times and Fox News Network quoted counter-intelligence officials saying that Bin Laden had also purchased PROMIS software on the black market.

Nonetheless, one of Bin Laden's major donors, Yassin al Qadi, continued to own the small software company in charge of the US Government�s top-secret IT security systems. It had been three years since the FBI�s Bin Laden-Unit Chief, Robert Wright, presented the direct evidence to arrest al Qadi. Instead, the Clinton Justice Department had warned him to "leave it alone", and sought to crush him when he refused.

Glaring questions remain unanswered, and obviously conflicting information remains unresolved, among much more, about how our most vital technology was so available and easily used to effect a disaster in our country.

As of late 2007, former Attorney General Edwin Meese, who'd spearheaded PROMIS' theft and profiteering, was still a political functionary. Along the way, he'd headed a pornography study commission, been director on various corporate and conservative foundation boards, and in 2006 was appointed by George W. to the Iraq Study Group, advising on which US companies should get the contracts to rebuild Iraq.

Also in 2007, Peter Videnieks (Peter V) the government official who Danny Casolaro had told friends he was scheduled to meet, the day after his body was found, was appointed Board Director of the Government's US-China Commission

Peter V, the go-to official coninuously rotated to handle favored contracts for Justice, Customs, NASA and the IRS, was named personally by Federal Judge George Bason as the operative who fraudulently 'converted and stole" PROMIS' software from its rightful owners, Inslaw.

Customs' Internal Affairs Special Agent Scott Lawrence had spent two and a half years investigating Videnieks role in the illegal distribution of PROMIS, and whether he'd perjured himself during the Inslaw trials. Lawrence's Supervisor, John Kelly, called for the convening of multiple Grand Juriies, but the Customs Department dropped the probe in 1993, explaining that Peter V had been transferred, again, from the Department, and so was no longer its concern.

Peter V's official bio is sketchy from '93 through '06, besides staff positions on two US Trade and Economic Review Committees.

Announcing his Board Appointment in January 2007, the powerful US China Commission listed Peter V as former staffer of Senator Robert Byrd (D-WVa). Actually, that's where Videnieks' wife was Chief of Staff in 1991.

Its also where Danny Casolaro told friends he was about to meet with a key staffer's relative, to trade information about "the most explosive story of the 20th Century".

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Injured Parties | Information Technology | Suspicious Deaths | Good Guys

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