Chapo Trap House - BONUS: The Octopus Murders feat. Christian Hansen & Zachary Treitz

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

Blowback’s Noah Kulwin joins Will in talking to filmmakers Christian Hansen and Zachary Treitz about their new Netflix series “American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders”. Centered around the mysterious death of journalist Danny Casolaro, the sprawling story eventually touches on everything from spy software, the CIA, Native American Reservations, the mob, Iran-Contra, rail guns, and more. Catch American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders streaming now on Netflix.

Hello and greetings friends. We've got a bonus choppo episode for you. Today, I'm backed up by Noah Cohen, our friend from Blowback. You might remember from such choppo episodes as when he helped me interview journalist Tom O'Neill about his book Chaos, which explores the many connections between the CIA and the Manson murders. On today's show, we have a similar case that is sure to induce mental illness if you think too hard about it. We are pleased to be joined by Zachary Treatz and Christian Hansen, the creators of a new Netflix documentary series, The Octopus Murders. Zachary Treatz and Christian Hansen. Zachary and Christian, thanks for being with us. Thank you so much. Thanks so much.

Zachary and Christian, thanks for being with us. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. Okay, so I've seen the first two episodes of this series and it is terrifying and fascinating. And it's like, this is a story that goes back to the 1980s, 1990s, but basically it starts with the, I could say alleged suicide, but it's my show. So I will say the murder of an investigative journalist named Danny Castellero.

And Christian, I want to start with you. How did you first come to know about Danny Castellero's case and the subject he was investigating at the time of his death? I really just stumbled upon it. I was researching the private prison industry, and one of the major players in that is this company called the Wackenhut Corporation. In the early 80s, Wackenhut, which is basically a huge private security conglomerate, had formed a joint venture with an obscure, tiny Native American tribe in the Coachella Valley. They had plans to manufacture biological weapons and night vision goggles and automatic submachine guns for the Nicaraguan conscious and proxy wars like that.

Danny Castellero was looking into the Wacken Hut Corporation and its connections to the Cabazon Reservation. So that's how I just stumbled upon the story of Danny. And he seemed like a really cool and interesting guy. And his book that he died writing sounded wild. And from what I could tell, nobody really tried to pick up all the pieces where they fell when he passed away. And it's just been sitting there. And I'm a photojournalist. I'm not a, I guess I am now an investigator, but I was like, well,

somebody's got to, somebody's got to tell this, this guy's story. I mean, he died right again. And you know, just the pieces fell on the floor and I reluctantly kind of, but also I was excited and intrigued. I, just the pieces fell on the floor and I reluctantly kind of, but also I was excited and intrigued. I picked up the pieces and here we are now like 12 years later. And Zachary, how did you become involved in this project and what can you tell our listeners about who Danny Castellero was before his untimely end? Right. Well, when the agency assigned me to be Christian's friend, I just knew that he was

heading to the big time and my job was just to steer him in the wrong directions. So, Christian and I grew up together in Kentucky. So, we're friends from Louisville. We met in middle school, friends in high school. And so, he's always just been my homie. And he told me about this story. He was working as a photojournalist, usually working for the New York Times. That's how I knew Christian's kind of professional interests. But he started telling me about Danny and all the other stuff he's just mentioned. And it gets weird and weird. This is 11, know, it's 11 12 years ago and I just thought it was you know an interesting story and then Christian got more and more into it. I was like a little me and our friends and sisters. We are all a little worried about Christian at certain points just getting you know first off from his own

obsession with it and then when he started talking about talking to the people that he had told us about, it was an element of no matter whether these guys are reliable or not, they don't seem like they're all great, upstanding citizens. They might be dangerous, perhaps. So there's a worry on that front. And then when Michael Ricanichuto was getting out of of prison who's one of Danny's key sources one of the people that Christian was talking to he was getting out of prison in 2017 after 26 years in in in federal prison and Christian and I were talking about it and you know, we were just like I mean my opinion was

We had no you know, no intention of making a documentary I was just like if we ever wanted to do anything you want to write your book or anything We are going to regret it for the rest of our lives if we don't just take a chance on going out there and picking him up from prison. And Michael, you know, luckily for us was interested, was okay with that, you know, 26 years in jail. Suddenly he's in a car with these two dudes. And we put it on Zach's credit. We flew to Los Angeles, drove around Los Angeles for like a day or two days trying to Scrap together the right gear that we needed audio kid and a camera and lintels and we're just driving around

LA putting it on Zach's credit card and then and we took our friend Alejandro's broken down car out to California remember didn't the trunk, there's some issue with the trunk on the way out there? The trunk closed, but the car broke down on the way to the prison. I mean, this documentary essentially is one piece of a Honda Civic away from not existing. Well, like a real documentary film, you know, you have to devote your resources to the camera and audio, not the car, per se. Yeah. Zachary, like when you started, like, filming this project, was it like, did you think you

were going to be making a movie about how your friend turned into Jake Gyllenhaal's character from Zodiac and not just the movie Zodiac that both of you are now starring in? Well, I mean, Zodiac is a great reference point, by the way, for this. And I just want to throw one quick Zodiac story in there, really quick. It never makes it into our movie, which is, it was a great reference for us when Robert Downey Jr.'s character is living on the boat, you know? Christian, while we were pitching this story, was living on a boat in the boat basin in New York City. Wow, like MacG would, I would like, you know, call him, I was writing the treatment or

whatever. And I would call him be like, who's this person or whatever. And then I, and then we were watching, I was watching Zodiac and the line is like, he's looking at you. He's looking for files or whatever. He's looking for files years later. Years later. And, and, and Robert Downey's years like, I don't know, I moved on to a boat.

Okay. Like why you can't find the documents. And I was like, this is Christian right now. He's like, I tossed him. I lost him. And Jake's like, what, you tossed him or you lost him? He's like, I moved on to a boat. And yeah, I was living on a sailboat at the time. All right, sorry.

To answer your question. I believe Robert Downey Jr. says in that scene, if it mattered so much, why didn't you do anything about it? And I think like you know Christian I think yeah I think you very much upheld his call to do something about it with this like I said fascinating and terrifying story but yeah to answer your question really quick is you know I knew that we would be in the film in some respect because we were because we just picked him up picked Michael up and there was this real symmetry between Danny meeting Michael

in when he's at the beginning of his, he's just arrested in 1991 and March of 1991. And then 26 years later, us picking him up. You know, we just knew that there was no way to tell it without us in there. I don't love when documentary filmmakers, just as a rule kind of make a story about themselves when it's really about somebody else, you know, when it's like, well,

this is my journey into it. Yeah, with this. And then our producers really actually bear credit or blame for really being like, you guys are a part of the story, whether you want to be or not. So you got to put yourselves in, you know, like we need to see it through your frame. And I was like, I know, you know, I was just like, it was like, it was like a intervention or something. I was like, I know, I know, we'll do it. Did it give you more control as a director, though, Zach? I mean, I love essay films in general, that sort of format, you know, the personalization of it, not necessarily like, this is about something else, but it's really about me.

But when it's when it is a personal story, I love that kind of firsthand thing. So yeah, it's nice to be able to, whenever you have more control over what the thing is, and with a documentary, that's really tough when you're trying to capture things, like you have no idea what somebody's gonna say. When you can say it, or when I can talk to you,

and I know you, Yeah, it was, it's just another layer that I think was really fun to be able to play with. And whatever, it gives a proxy to the audience of a m- of what it feels like to go into this. I mean, there's no doubt about that. Well, yeah, I, I, well, just watching the first two episodes, I feel like I was, uh, definitely getting into it. And before I turn things over to Noah, who has researched this case a lot and sort of comes to it with his own interests and perspective, I guess I just want to begin with

the actual story here, which like your story begins with the alleged suicide of journalist Danny Castellaro in a motel in West Virginia in 1991. But I want to talk about where the story began for him, which like most sort of sprawling narratives begins as something that seems very simple and dry and kind of boring. But in this narrative, sprawls into like a Leviathan level of murder, corruption and crime. And the story that it starts out with a contract dispute. A contract dispute over like very early computer software in the early days of like computer

programming, a company called Inns Law was contracted by the Justice Department to write software that would allow law enforcement agencies essentially to compare just data across like, you know, voluminous files of legal cases to see connections and reference these reference past legal cases very easily. I mean, it was like a really early and sort of a first stab at creating digital databases of government information that could be regularly accessed by government officials across the country at all levels. It just so happened that the data in this case was essentially arrest records and other

criminal information, meaning like criminal records that could be shared between prosecutors. But it's helpful to think of PROMIS as a gigantic indexing tool that was just one of the first-ever ones that was bidding for government Contracting at that scale with a good digital computerized product. So Christian Can you tell us what happened to the company in the law when they created this like quite revolutionary and effective form of software? What happened with them in the Justice Department who contracted them? They were given like an initial pilot project, I think, to install the software into a subset of US attorney's offices

and around the country. And if that pilot project went well, they would expand the software to be the standard US DOJ case management software. And pretty early on in the implementation and installation of the contract, the negotiation, the everything goes tits up. I mean, the DOJ stops paying, they say that there's problems with this, this and this, and they're not fulfilling their end of the bargain. And it's all very confusing. And then the former US Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, who's this lion figure, this famous figure in Washington, DC,

he's representing in slot. He goes to the he's representing in slot he goes to the Justice Department. He's like well, I've got his major cloud. I can I'll settle this for you guys. I'll just go and talk to him and we'll clear this up and you you'll get your money. They're owed about 6.8 million dollars or a you know under 10 million dollars but a significant sum of money in the in the early 80s and uh you know, basically, the cut, Elliot Richardson can't do anything about it. And the company goes goes bank. And just some reference here, Elliot Richardson is a guy who

could became famous because he was the attorney general that resigned rather than fire the prosecutors investigating water gate, correct? That's correct. Yeah. So yeah, he's a guy with a lot of clout who sort of put his integrity on the line for this company that was apparently getting like just having their work stolen by the Justice Department. Yeah. And Danny was a he was a journalist for a trade public computer trade publication. And actually like listeners may not know

this but Silicon Valley was actually only one of two major computer software and programming hubs in the country in the 80s and 90s. The other really big one for especially the purposes of this episode of Choppo was Northern Virginia. And therein, Danny Castellaro comes across this case. He hears about it and he gets in touch with Bill Hamilton directly. And that kind of sets Castillaro on this journey. Bill Hamilton, who is the head of INS law.

Yeah, sorry, Bill Hamilton, yes, the head of INS law. And where does Danny go from INS law? So it's also, it's interesting, like Danny's sort of at it, it's sort of a perfect store because there are very few journalists that have a deep background in computer software. But then also, Danny had investigated the Watergate case in the early 70s. His next door, or one of his neighbors in McLean, Virginia as a child was James Jesus Angleton. So he's sort of interested in the spy and conspiracy world, but then he's also got a like interested in the spy and conspiracy world, but then he's also got a technical background in computer. So he's kind of the guy. He's obscure, but he's ready to go. Like

he's ready to write the book on the inslaw case. And he has a little bit of a chip on his shoulder. I just want to add this in because he thinks of himself as this poet novelist, like a Hemingway like character who of course was a journalist, you know, to support himself when he was writing books. So he's like looking for the big story, something big. And it's like, he just happens to have a background in computers and really know this obscure world better than most people possibly could. So Danny met with the founder of Inslaw in August of 1990. A few months prior to that, this founder, Bill Hamilton, got a call from a guy named Michael Ricanichuto, the same one we meant,

Zach and I mentioned, as having picked up from prison. And he tells, he had told Bill Hamilton that basically a federal bankruptcy judge had ruled that the Justice Department stole the Inslaw software using trickery, fraud and deceit. And then that ruling was then upheld in an appeals court. And at this point in the story in August 1990, there's a third court hearing that's like gearing up and in the works. So yeah, like it's appealed. The judge that ruled in favor of ins law is essentially kicked off the bench and replaced with the guy who prosecuting or like defending on behalf of the government. So the judge is just a federal judge

is basically fired and replaced by the guy who basically helped the Department of Justice steal this promised software. Yeah. And so there's a lot of weird stuff going on. And that's all very clear. That's all very on the surface. The ruling is very clear, trickery, fraud, deceit, couldn't be in more clear terms. But the question of why is not clear at all. Why the Justice Department won't just settle with this company, pay them a few million dollars. It's a tiny contract for the government, and it's like the lifeline of this company. Just pay them, move on, and we'll just keep on going. So Bill is just beating down the door of anything you can find to answer that question of why.

And Danny is kind of stepping in in 1990 to try to answer that question. And then you brought up Mike Ricanichuto, who's also this pretty wild and enigmatic character. He is a child prodigy. His, uh, but he and he, I don't know if you said in the documentary, but I remember he claimed to have gone, you went to Stanford. Yeah. He was 16. Yes. And he was like, he, you know, worked in a lab with the Nobel laureate. He who remembered him as having, you know, specifically as being like a bright guy

The kind of guy who shows up to the first day of college at 16 with his homemade with a homemade Argon laser Exactly. Yes. Thank you. And he and he's also then gets into drug dealing and other criminal rackets and He has a distinctive look in his nickname in the press at several points is fat Mike or as a moniker. At least that's what I was. That's what I was when somebody told me about who he was. They were like, well, you got to know about that Mike. And I thought they meant the no effects guy. But you know, the thing that to me was like super interesting about Rikana Shudo is that he is only like the first in a series of people who exist in this kind of world and in the story you tell who all sound kind of similar and that like they have vague dealings with the government,

they're also criminals, they also tell a lot of lies, you can't totally trust them, but a lot of the times there is some truth in what they say and that truth can be very scary. So what is it that Ronna Shuto says to Hamilton that then gets to Castellero that sort of, I think, is part of the ignition fuel that sets at least Castellero ago? From my recollection of that conversation, Bill documented this two-hour-long call he had with Michael. The first thing he says is, have you ever heard of the Wackenhut Corporation? He talks about the Wackenhut Corporation. Who's on its board of directors?

It's just who's who of the intelligence world, department head, corporate department head. Bill Casey and Frank Carlucci are two people on the Wacken Hut board. Yeah. Listen to Michelle, we'll remember them. Bill Casey was outside council, right? Yeah. So, and then he's like, there was an, and there's this Indian reservation in the Coachella Valley called the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians. And in the early 80s, the Wackenhead Corporation formed a joint venture with this Native American reservation. And I was the head of

research for this joint venture. And among other projects we were working on, which included biological And among other projects we were working on, which included biological weapons and machine guns and night vision goggles, we took your software, the source code for your software, and I put a backdoor into the software, which then we sold to other countries through third party cutouts. And now the US government has been monitoring the whatever the other people who bought the software are using the software to, there's a back door into the databases now. And this was also, I think, like it's worth, like it's twofold here.

Cause this is also Hamilton Learns, like the company Inslaw hadn't known that other foreign governments were using their product Their software until they got a letter in the mail from the Canadian government That was really funny because they had no idea that their software was in the hands of foreign governments until Canada contacted them to ask them. Hey, can you do a... how do we change this into French? Because it has to be, you know, a bilingual for Canada. Yeah. Well, and this also though, however, this is answers the why. Because the why, as to why

something like Inslaw would matter so much is that Inslaw is not just about, you know, making sure that, you know, small contracts go to favored friends, because maybe it's a bit about that But it's also and perhaps really mostly about the fact that Inslaw was a backdoor that the government American government could sell to other governments and then spy on them and could monitor the people in their Systems and the people that they were processing and I think that's a it's a very It's a great idea. It still happens all the time. The NSA has an entire division called the Commercial Solutions Center that is devoted ostensibly. Publicly, they say that their mission is to work with companies to make their stuff secure. When the reality is that, of course, there's an offensive component, and what they're really also trying

to do is find ways into foreign systems. And this also, to the Castillera, just to ask a question on this point, you brought up the Cabazon Band of Mission Indian Reservation. So a listener may be wondering, like, hold on a minute, like, why does an Indian Reservation in the Coachella Valley have anything? Like, why would, why, why are they shacked up with this like renegade computer hacker guy and inslaw software being stolen and Wacken Hut? What's their interest in an Indian Reservation? where being stolen and Wacken Hut, what's their interest in an Indian reservation? I mean, so this in the early 80s or late 70s, a man named John Philip Nichols had wound

up on the reservation. Zach, actually, or okay, this guy named John Philip Nichols had this belief that the Native American reservations are sovereign nations, not just sort of, you know, contiguous to the United States, not part of the United States, their own, you know, islands of sovereignty inside the United States. And so that therefore you can do things on these reservations that you can't do, you know, in California, which is like surrounds the Cabazon reservation on all sides. And so he actually, you know, implementing this belief and sovereign he started selling tax-free cigarettes through mail order and

tax-free alcohol, and then he eventually built the first Native American poker casino on this reservation. And from there, you know, it's like, okay, we got the poker going, let's get some government contracts in here. And so he brings the Wacken Hut Corporation in to start getting like ostensibly minority-favored grants because they formed a joint venture with the Native American Reservation. They get preferential treatment formed a joint venture with the Native American Reservation. They get preferential treatment for certain grants. And then also, they wanted to start doing manufacturing that would be otherwise illegal

in the state of California. And the other thing I want to bring up with Cabazon is that in the Indian Reservation, is that the Cabazon Band of Mission Indian tribe, which is 20-something people strong, was also the tribe whose case to demarcate whose taxes and where the income from casinos, where they would be taxed, went all the way to the Supreme Court. It's an important law in the Khabizan Band of Mission Indians is not

just part of American conspiracy theory, history and lore. It's also a very important part of the actual history, you know, aboveboard history of America. And in telling the story of how it was that Indian casinos were able to, with much less risk, grow and develop over the course of the 80s and 90s because no longer do they have to, you know, there was the states definitively were not getting that income. And what's more, there's another important part of this, which is, you know, if you're in the 1970s and you want to open up a poker room, who do you hire and who do you work with to do that? And so there's a lot

of newspaper reporting from the time of the 70s at the time that Philip, John Philip Nichols shows up and begins working with the Indian Reservation that a bunch of well-known mob as outfit associates are on the premises developing the scambling business. So it's truly like, and it's, you know, this area is like probably like the area of this reservation is probably like maybe like the parking lot at Giant Stadium, like not even. So this is like, this guy created, I mean, and he was a pretty canny, you know, like, like, and shrewd and ultimately, and pretty violent figure. But he figured out that like, you know, with this like sovereign citizen strategy, you know, kind of like Cliven Bundy dressed up, you know in with a like a legalistic Native American

like facade was able to you know end up creating like this really Like a nest of criminal activity throughout the 80s and that lead to the second set of murder, or rather the second murders, the reason that there gets to be a plural for sure in octopus murders, at least as I first learned about them, which is a triple murder that takes place there in the 1980s prior to the Innslaw affair, but also points to, you know, yet another like a crazy set of violence that you know gets gets dealt out in association with the actors of this of this conspiracy so to speak. Could I just kind of back us through this because it gets so complicated but I just

think it's a helpful lens to look at this through who a little bit of who John Philip Nichols is and get to that that triple homicide is like looking at it backwards from now. The Cabazon versus the state of California verdict in the Supreme Court, which took place in the middle mid to late 80s is like you said, an extremely important, what became a law, the Indian gaming law, Indian gaming act. And it's ostensibly, and I think from talking to Native Americans, a really good thing, because it's the first time in the tortured history of US versus Native American relations where you don't just have money that's just doled out to these tribes.

It's a way that the tribes can actually fund themselves and employ themselves. And it's brought a huge boon and maybe people think, oh, gambling, it's shady, it's weird. I have very few opinions on that. But in terms of employment and self-determination, it's really powerful and objectively seeming like I would say good thing, right? It just so happens that our story, and we don't even have time to really get into it in the documentary So it's nice to bring it up here It happens to kind of stem from this guy Dr. John Philip Nichols who has a very odd

Background showing up at this tribe saying I can help you guys and his background that we touch on seems to be in the nexus point between Union Teamsters background and we work in Milwaukee and Washington, DC the Mafia because of its associations with Jimmy Hoffa and his associations in the Mafia and John Nichols own association with the Mafia and the intelligent and the intelligence world and John Nichols is showing up to this tribe saying, I'm like a government grant helper dude, but he's not necessarily mentioning the work that he's done in Chile and Brazil where he was in the forefront of right before

all these anti-communist coups, you got John Nichols down there and Chile hanging out as a evangelical leader, organizing voting blocks of people, peasants mostly, to vote against Ayinde and keep it as a pro-U.S. government. So he's one of the most fascinating people I've ever researched or heard about. But he's got this weird legacy as this Indian gaming law that nobody really talks about is his association with it. But the stew of the world he comes from, intelligence, mob, unions, all that stuff just brings to bear on this tiny tribe in Southern California. Yeah, and think about Doc Phillips, if you'll indulge me in another film reference here.

He really reminded me a lot of Robert De Niro's character and Killers of the Flower Moon as this like very shady guy with a lot of, I would say, suspiciously close relationships with the indigenous communities. As you said, Zachary, in countries that just happen to have right-wing dictatorships imposed on them right after he left town. But like, yeah, like, how do you think like he leveraged this? Because like, you interview his son in the movie, he describes him in a positive light as an agent of social change. Like, how did he like leverage his relationships with these communities to essentially to create a private interzone of like deep state intelligence organized crime weapons manufacturing and crime.

It's so complicated. I mean, I just love this story so much because it's so fascinating. And I love Bobby's view of his dad because a powerful part of his life, obviously. And he looks at his dad as somebody who ultimately, weirdly, whether he even wanted to or not, created the wealth of, ultimately did what he said out to do, right? Now, the cabizons have a shiny casino. They make a lot of money doing that. And it's a good thing for them. So many tribes. So many tribes around the country. And it's almost like an accident of history if you look at it through our viewpoint that that even happened because John Nichols seems to have really been mostly interested in these quasi-intelligence projects.

And also, I think that that's, I think I agree totally. And I think that it also points to one of the things about this case that to me is so like, you know, what makes it so it can fill a full four-part series, for example, is that like, you know, and there's a lot that we won't touch on in this interview, but as viewers will see that there are other kinds of, you know, dimensions or figures who come up who have other connections to seemingly important parts of, you know, like a, you know, major social developments, let's say. And to me, it's not evidence again of like, you know, some like a grand far reaching centralized anything, but just a way of showing how if you do look at these kinds of stories

quite often, I think that it shows that you can find how power structure is all over the country and in a broad work. And it shows how similar they all are in many respects. I mean, along along along those lines lines, like another major thread in American history that the tentacles of the octopus get into and the promise system is connected to, is the Iran-Contra scandal. Because you talk about a man named Ed Bryan, his relationship to the Reagan administration, and how the promise system is, and you're telling the story, essentially a payoff to him for arranging the release of the Iranian hostages right after Reagan's election. Yeah, it's just so you know, it's Earl Bryan.

Earl Bryan, sorry. So Earl Bryan was a guy who knew, oh my gosh, there's actually so much on Earl Bryan that we don't even get into in this. He was a neurosurgeon in California, one of the youngest people, I think the youngest people at the time to be head of California's Health and Human Services, whatever that's called now. Very likely part of the Phoenix operation Phoenix in Vietnam. Allegedly was he was a neurosurgeon who went over to Vietnam as a young man, came back extremely decorated. Wow, a neurosurgeon who went to Vietnam

and worked in the Phoenix program. I mean, the mind only begins to conjure up what that entailed. But the Phoenix stuff is all pretty under wraps. That's been an allegation that's thrown around a lot. And then suddenly he's in Reagan's cabinet as when Reagan is governor of California. And after he left government,

he started a bunch of different companies. And one of them is this company that tried to buy Inslaw and buy the Promise software from Inslaw in the 80s. And Bill refused to sell it. Bill refused to sell it. A representative of the company said, well, we have ways of making you sell. And Bill's like looking at the receiver like,

what's this guy? You receiver like what was this guy? You know, this is it. Yeah, I'm a software company. I'm not running. I'm running numbers in Chicago. Yeah and so but Earl Bryan is close friends with Ed Meese who was who was you know in the Reagan campaign and then became eventually Reagan's attorney general and He's just kind of like a kitchen cabinet member. This is you know, how you say it of eventually Reagan's attorney general. And he's just kind of like a kitchen cabinet member, this is how you say it, of Reagan's entourage, or Brian is. And he owns, we don't even get into this,

at the time he owned Financial News Network, which was eventually sold and became CNBC. He owns the competitor to the AP, a major player in the news industry at the time, which was UPI, United Press International. I don't know if you're listening. He's very much like almost a Robert Maxwell-ish character. Yes, that name will strike a chord with our listeners. There's a bit of the Maxwell in Earl Bryan. And interestingly, Maxwell, the allegation is that Earl Bryan was selling promise software for the US government, the pirated version with the Bactornet, and that his, a doppelganger

in the UK, Robert Maxwell, who was an agent for Israeli intelligence, was selling the problem of software for Israeli interests. So it's interesting. Yeah, there's all kinds of symmetry there. And so anyway, the thing is that Michael kind of puts into context, and I just want to say, it's Michael's view. It's not our view, and it's not, you know,

it's not our view, and it's not, you know, it's not our view. Is that unnecessarily, is that Earl Bryan went to, during the campaign for Reagan to become president when he was trying to take Jimmy Carter's job in 1980, that Earl Bryan was, went over to Iran, because he spoke Farsi and had connections. He already was a vendor to the Iranian government. So he had already had connections there. And that he and Michael put himself into this story that he and Michael went to Iran and were involved with a $40 million transaction where the hostages that had been taken in Iran after the Revolution in 1979, 52 American hostages, would be kept in Iran until after the election.

So the Jimmy Carter would be this weak, weak-on Iran president who couldn't get them out, and then Ronald Reagan comes in saves the day Gets the hostages out and he looks like a hero and and and if you want to look at history Through that lens a lot of it makes sense in that the hostages were released the day within a few minutes of Reagan's inauguration Also worth kind of adding that there's now evidence, including a front page story in the New York Times from this past year, that illustrates that the Reagan-October surprise wasn't one plot. So much as we're seeing the contours of it in time, a deliberate effort, an all-hands-on-deck

kind of thing, with anybody who could have a plausible way of reaching the Iranians to get them to do exactly what they ended up doing. And the New York Times reporter, Peter Baker, their White House reporter, published a story about a former, a Texas politician named Ben Barnes, who was like fantastically corrupt in his day, working in politics there, who copped to being part of this plan, who copped to being part of the plot, just to flip you. It's also the campaign manager for Ronald Reagan was William Casey, who is a legend of the OSS, which preceded the CIA. And then after the election became the director of the CIA during the entire Reagan

administration until he died very conveniently right before testifying in Iran Contra. That is important. The fucking October surprise happened. I'm sorry. I don't give a fuck. I don't care what you say. It, I mean, I think it's, I don't know if Michael was there, but it definitely happened. The 1980 election was rigged. I'm sorry. Yeah But Michael puts himself into this position And I think that's the thing that we don't necessarily vouch for which is that Michael has a tendency to kind of Throw himself into the middle of these giant milia's where you're just like damn dude You're in the desert and you're also in the in

You're in the California desert. You're in Iran, you're in Washington state. You're in an unbelievable amount of places with an unbelievable group of people. The problem for us eventually was that, not necessarily our October surprise, but other stories where he seemed to be in very strange places with very powerful people, he just was. It's like we document it. It becomes hard to figure out what's real and what's not. And when you're watching a movie, like Michael Oriconisuno is not the kind of guy who looks like he would be in a room with Bill Casey or Frank Carlucci or like in that world.

He's a very weird sort of nerdy. Bill Casey is kind of a weird looking dude too. Yeah, I guess so. But I mean, he's sort of a shabby looking individual who also happens to be a genius on a number of levels. There's a story about... They're talking about the case here, Michael. Michael. There's a story that we don't even get into,

which is that John Nichols went to the Picatinny Arsenal, which is the large artillery testing or development lab in New Jersey for the Army. And they go there and Michael walks in. It is very shabby, like you said. I think somebody said that he was just in deep need of a shower. And he's just chopping it up with these physicists about how, you know, ways to do things like the rail gun, which is an experimental weapon at the time, and still

is sort of an experimental weapon with the idea of taking simple electric energy to create a projectile that is, you know, damaging. Michael was looking at it as a way to shoot satellites out of the sky with a projectile. And there he is in Picatinny Arsenal with John Philip Nichols, just doing blackboard exercises, you know, physics exercises. He's not there. He's there. We called the physicists from DARPA and asked him about it. And he confirmed the story. Geez.

And this is a guy, this is a guy who's like the last episode I saw is is the footage of him getting out of federal of out of California prison After doing a 26 year stretch for manufacturing methamphetamine Which is also a bit odd as well that we see you interview a law enforcement officer who says I've arrested Who knows how many people for manufacturing meth and then none of them got 26 year sentences in prison. Yeah, John Powers working as a detective at Riverside County saw a few meth cases. Yeah, I think the federal system is definitely different than Michael's and maybe there's,

I think that there was aggravated stuff on top of that. Just to sort of, I like to give the benefit of doubt as much as possible to every single person in this story. And then even when you're being nice, see what's remaining. And what's remaining is like Michael, uh, did, did himself, I think zero favors in his prison sentence and stuff like that. But, and, and he was claiming that it was retribution for him coming forward about the insular story, the October surprise, what happened in the desert and California, all this stuff.

And, and you know, it's, you'd look at what happened in the desert, in California, all this stuff. And, you know, you look at what happened and the people he was dealing with, and you can definitely see a world in which these people would not want him out in the world talking. That's just, there's every reason for him not to be talking. There's a couple people that I don't think we'll have get to in the in the course of this conversation. But there is one more person who I think you focus on in the story that I think rightfully so. And he's really, really interesting. And he's another guy with the last name Nichols, but unrelated to the Southern Nichols. And this guy is Robert Booth Nichols, or we can just call him Booth. And Booth is somebody who you guys find

may be more, you know, if people are looking at those who may have been connected to the circumstances of Danny's death in West Virginia, Booth may be some place to start looking more than others. So I was a bit curious about how he comes into the picture for you guys researching this and what made him the uniquely menacing figure that he was. I think Christian should answer this, but I just want to say, Rawroot Nichols for me as a filmmaker comes in as Michael's nemesis. They had worked together in Cabazon and they had gone off. Oh, so like Michael's Dwight and Drey Trude and Bo like Michaels Dwight and Dr. Shroot and and booth.

Nichols is Michael Scott. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a sort of classic pairing and they're both talking to Danny and they both hate each other and they're talking about what they had done and their respective and they're they're bouncing off of their information off of Danny and he's like kind of a go-between and so but Christian. Yeah, who is Robert Booth Nichols assisted to the international man of mystery? So Robert you have Robert Booth Nichols enters the story at Cabezon as well. There was a in the effort to sell weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras. There was a weapons demonstration of a, of a, some night vision goggles and some machine guns and Robert Booth Nichols had a patent for a, a small cheap to manufacture, some machine gun that looks very similar to the Mac 10 and called the G77, I think. It doesn't matter. It's not, you can't go to the store and buy one, I don't think.

And so that's how he enters into the story. And then sort of like when Cabazon, Fred Al, one of the tribal members is murdered in a hit hired by all accounts by John Philip Nichols, who had a habit of hiring hits on people throughout the 80s and into the 90s. And so everything kind of falls apart at Cabazon. And Robert Booth Nichols and Michael then start their own company called Meridian International Logistics

and they're trying to get their own government contracts. But then something happens and Michael and Robert have this huge falling out. And by the time, and but Michael had told Danny about this guy, Robert. And so Danny tracks down Robert Booth-Nickels and they start having long, long, long telephone conversations, which we have, you know, we have a lot of Danny's phone bills and you can see that Danny will call Robert at, at, you know, midnight in, in Virginia, which is whatever at 9 p.m. in, in LA and they'll talk until it'll, it's like three in the morning, 330 in the morning for Danny. And then you can see that Danny's back up at six or 7 a.m. like talking to Bill Hamilton. And he's like, you know, he's not

sleeping. He's, he's just like running the phone and running this investigation And yeah, for some reason and it's really hard. It's really unclear but if you now Robert Bruthickles is sort of a famous figure on the internet and in conspiracy lore but in 1991 He was a totally vague guy that he just it was a name that you know He got from Michael and why why though is he a figure because like i think you're selling only slightly short like this guy is like a fucking like he's more than the other people you put on screen he's like you know he is uh he's at once kind of scary but he's also like kind of got like a the sweaty desperation that like a lot of criminals sort of exude

When a microscope or magnifying glass comes anywhere near them like a you know like what is it? What was it like I'm curious for you to take on his like Personality he says he's a money launderer. He's got close connections to the Gambino crime family. He's Got connections to the intelligence community. You know, he's from a very wealthy family in Los Angeles. His dad was a renowned doctor. They lived in the Hollywood Hills. I think it didn't, each of the kids have their own like cars, like nice cars. Yeah. When they were like 16. He was just around the dad- The parents were always traveling.

The kids just like had control of this house in the Hollywood Hills. And then the Robert Brutnickles dodges the dra- None of this even made it into the movie, but Robert Brutnickles dodges the draft supposedly and ends up in Hawaii and gets picked up for, I mean, why would you go, you're not even crossing, you're still in the United States.

And the story goes, that's when he got recruited by the intelligence community. But he does start working with an organized crime, a legend organized crime figure in Hawaii named Harold Acomodo, who, you know, he kind of becomes his mentor. And, you know, when Robert Booth-Nickles was married a few years into his relationship with Acomodo, Acomodo was like served as his father. His father wasn't invited, but Acomodo was like his dad. And so then, you know, he goes to Switzerland and learns banking and he throughout the 70s,

it's hard to say exactly what he does. He always, he has multiple properties all over the world. He always flies first class. He always stays at world-class hotels, but he doesn't have a job. What does he do? I don't know. I don't know what he does. He doesn't do anything, but he's got a lot of money. I mean, I don't think he is disowned by his family. I don't think his, his, maybe his dad was rich. He had a portion of 16 or whatever, but I don't think that, uh...

Can we just tell one story that was like a, like a moment in time for me while we were making this, which is that Christian, we found a name of somebody who knew Robert Nichols and we called this guy up. We won't say any names, but not many people know Michael. I mean, Robert Nichols anymore that are still alive. And this guy, Christian calls up and he's like, oh, Bob, yeah. He was one of the baddest guys in the NSA. He used to go and be sent off as like,

cause he looked kinda like a Clark Gable kinda guy. He used to be sent, you think that when people are, you know, you have spies sent in to seduce prime ministers. Well, what happens when you send Bob over there to seduce prime ministers. Well, what happens when you send Bob over there to seduce the secretary? And that he was somehow this intelligence operative who was not only handling financial crimes and stuff like that, but that he was the super spy guy. And then he had also spent some time in Vietnam. And what's weird is like, it all

kind of checks out because he had this tourism business where he was taking people over to Vietnam. Anyway, but the point is like, this guy's like, oh, you're dealing with Bob, you're dealing with some dangerous folks. Okay, here's what you need to do. He's like, you know, Michael, and we're like, yeah, we know, like, he's like, Michael's a good guy, Bob, not so much. Here's what you need to do. I'm going to send you send you I'm gonna send you a plutonium tip bullets Okay, I'm gonna teach you how to make your own gun because you're gonna need something special to deal with all these people We're gonna come through your door So I need you to get a 10 millimeter not a 9 millimeter a 10 millimeter barrel

And I'm gonna send you the components through the mail because you know when these guys come through the door They're not that smart. Okay, you can take them on, you know, and Christian's like, whoa, whoa, whoa What are we talking about? He's like, he's like they're gonna come after you and you need to be prepared It's like dude We just wanted to talk about Bob's life 40 years ago or 30 years ago now you're talking about plutonium plutonium tipped bullets. Yeah, what is it the terminator? Do you see? Well, I mean this actually this is a really good segue to why I wanted to get to next which was you know that like

Your documentary is about like it begins with the death of Danny Castellero But you there's a neat trick that you guys do is a rather like it's a device You weave not only like the story of yourselves making this and just how complicated and tough it is But also you sort of pose the question, you know like You weave not only the story of yourselves making this and just how complicated and tough it is, but also you sort of pose the question, like, Christian, did he get a little bit lost in the sauce on this? Did he get a little bit too far in the weeds on this? And the thing is, is that rather than portray it actually as a stereotypical rabbit-hole narrative, you guys made a four-part Netflix series out of it.

And I think tell a pretty cogent story and end on a note of saying, you can live your lives too. It's you don't have to be oppressed by the knowledge that bad people do things in dark fields at night. I was kind of curious how you made that, how you got from that place of thinking, this is a crazy obsession I have I'm gonna make a book out of this too. We are gonna make a movie. Well, that's a good question for Zach, but I you know, I was reminded of that there was a New York Times I think podcast about ultimately about the YouTube algorithm and this guy just was like watching YouTube and the and he just never presses off. And the the videos that are playing just get more and more dark.

And he just gets totally his brain gets totally scrambled by like QAnon conspiracy crap. And he goes like totally nuts, just like from watching YouTube videos. And like the sort of then he sees the light, maybe reads, gets a New York Times subscription or something and realizes that like this. They see it. And it's like this, like it really is very literally like a cautionary tale about conspiracy theories. But this is sort of different because I'm like this, this guy who in the footage is

clearly going a little nuts, but, and my friend comes along to document it, but then we like solve murders and like document this like conspiracy that's driving me crazy that like actually is it'll many in large largely real. And you know, we come out okay on the other side. Yeah, I guess like I want to close out the last question I want to ask you guys is like along those lines of perhaps not keeping your sanity. And I guess my question is how do you do a project like this? And like we've touched on like maybe one one hundredth of the scope of What this investigation actually touches on?

Well, like how do you how do you take in all this knowledge or try to sort of metabolize it in a way and not see The tentacles of this octopus like everywhere you look nowadays because I mean like there are a lot of parallels in this story to other high-profile conspiracy-tinged events like for instance the Jeffrey Epstein case who suicided himself on the same day August 10th that Danny Castellero did also happens to be my birthday so easy to remember but like I like I, when you when you see when you see current events or like news stories, like how do you do you do you do you see it through the lens of this octopus narrative? Or do you see do you see the tentacles everywhere? Or do you see them more as like discrete events? That's really a For me, what I haven't done yet, I'm illiterate in the modern machinations

of what I documented that was happening in the 80s and early 90s. I haven't gone into 95, 96, 97, 98 to like trace, to track it. My assumption is that if people didn't really get caught and it was extremely lucrative, lucrative, which it appears to be, it's still going on, but it's evolved and gotten more advanced. And I don't know. But yeah, we do talk about MK Ultra a lot amongst ourselves and apply it to like,

you know, Patty Hearst, for instance, looking at things that happened in the past. And we, you know, that's just rife with like, you know, who, who, what major players in history were actually had their brains scrambled by Jolly West, you know? Who knows. Who among us is not an MK Ultra test subject? Yeah. If you look around the room and you can't tell who the test subject is. Not me, for sure. That's for sure. Just want to be really clear. What about you, Zach?

Do you have a take? You're more measured and practical than I am. I mean, I think that what you said is right is that we do it by keeping a strong, a tight focus on the time period, even though it's broad, that we're researching. And I try not to generalize, you know,ize and just say, well, it's all connected. Epstein is connected. Okay, if it's connected, show me how it's connected.

And actually... Well, August 10th, I spoke to. Yeah, yeah. If you talk about Epstein, we could actually find you. Numerology. Yeah. We could do it. Another way to drive yourself insane. There's really just enough here for us to sit in our little 80s, 90s, 70s sandbox for

the next 20 years and get deeper and deeper into the stuff that we didn't even have time to do in the show. It's not really a worry about seeing it everywhere in the modern world as long as you're sticking with the past, you know, I guess. I'll give one, I'll give my own unsolicited, quicky answer to this one, which is that a few, like last year I wrote this essay about the JFK assassination and one of my favorite subjects for de-factor.

And in the course of one of the books I was reading to research it, I read about this guy who had been a mob lawyer named, or mob affiliate named Gerardo Katina. And I was like, that's really interesting, Katina, because that's like, I've heard that name before. And I realized that I'd heard that name before because Ray Katina is the largest luxury car dealer in the tri-state area.

And Gerardo Katina was his uncle. And so there's a way in which I think that part of what you said about how it's like, well, if somebody doesn't get caught and they made a lot of money, what happens? What happens is they accrue interest. Their kids go to Harvard. You know, they sell more Mercedes. They get a yacht, whatever. They disappear. That's the, you know, like that's the privileged purchase with the, with, you know, with what they've escaped. Robert Maxwell got a yacht. Yes, he did. See what that got him.

Yes, he did. And he got a free trip with it too. Yeah. And his daughter now sells a software in the UK that's extremely curiously similar to Promise. Oh wait, not Gillen. Yeah, the other one. Yeah, you know, if you're a foreign government that's bought the Promise software at any time over the last 40 years, you just may have been backdoored by the NSA. You've just given up the crown jewels to the US government. Well, Zachary and Christian, I want to thank you for your time And I want to thank you for your work on the octopus murderers I'm probably gonna finish it this afternoon, but it is as I'll reiterate a

fascinating and terrifying look into the Secret Empire and this like nexus of crime and intelligence that is sort of underwrites the history of the latter half of the 20th century So thank you. Thank you guys both so much for taking the time. Such a fun conversation. Thanks so much Will and Noah. And I'm down to come back anytime. This was really a lot of fun for me. Thank you all. No problem. Take it easy. Anytime.

Take it easy fellas. Bye. Thanks for watching!