Tony Casolaro saw his brother on Monday, and thought that he looked tired. Danny said that he had been getting threatening calls in the middle of the night, and that they were ruining his sleep. Danny stated that the calls had been going on for about three months.
A close friend, Ben Mason, showed up at Casolaro's house around 3:30 pm, and although Mason was anxious to go to a restaurant and eat, Casolaro insisted on showing him some of his latest investigatory acquisitions. He took Mason downstairs and retrieved five pages of material from a box. The first page was information on contra arms transfers, allegedly involving Adnan Khashoggi. Two more pages were photocopies of BCCI checks for one million and four million dollars, drawn on Adnan Khashoggi and Manucher Ghorbanifar accounts -- these checks had been known to researchers since 1987 or earlier. Another page was a passport photo of Hassan Ali Ibrahim Ali, said to be the manager of Sitico, allegedly a front for Iraqi arms deals. From the way Casolaro spoke to Mason, it seemed that he had met Ibrahim. Doug Vaughan's research determined that the pages had come from Bob Bickel, who had gotten them from Richard Brenneke, another figure prominent in Casolaro's research, someone who had provided testimony about the October Surprise.
...
On August 5, Casolaro had called Texas oil engineer Bob Bickel, who at one time worked as a Customs Bureau informant, apparently to talk about Robert Booth Nichols and his association with a former Justice official named Michael Abbell and Columbian drug lord Gilberto Rodriquez, both of whom were being investigated for their connections to the Cali drug cartel. Bickel previously had aspired to blow the whistle on CIA chief Robert Gates' role in shipping weapons to Iraq in the late 1980s. He had given Danny photocopies of one million and four million dollar checks drawn on the BCCI accounts of Iran-contra go-betweens Adnan Khashoggi and Manucher Ghorbanifar. He also gave him the passport photograph of Hassan Ali Ibrahim Ali, a front man for Iraqi weapons sales. (Doug Vaughan traced these papers back to Richard Brenneke.) The check photocopies had circulated among researchers for years but when matched with the passport it seemed to represent a great breakthrough to Danny. Was Hassan Ali Ibrahim Ali the "maybe Arab or Iranian" man that a waitress saw Casolaro with at the Sheridan that night?
From Casolaro's clippings files:
DOC TYPE: PRESS DOC SUBJECT: ARMS INDUSTRY DOC FILE: KHASHOGGI, ADNAN DOC NO.: PR\AI\KA-01 DOC YEAR: 90 SUMMARY: THE HOUSTON POST- NEW YORK JURY CLEARS IMELDA MARCOS AND KHASHOGGI OF LOOTING AND CONCEALING FILIPINO ASSETS. KEYWORDS: GERRY SPENCE, OTTO OBERMAIER, PHILIPPINES
DOC TYPE: PRESS DOC SUBJECT: ARMS INDUSTRY DOC FILE: KHASHOGGI, ADNAN DOC NO.: PR\AI\KA-02 DOC YEAR: 90 SUMMARY: POST ENERGY- KHASSHOGI ANNOUNCES JOINT VENTURE WITH NRG RESOURCES INC. KEYWORDS: OIL, NATURAL GAS, PHOENIX OIL & GAS CO.,BILL TURNEY, JERRY ALLEN
DOC TYPE: PRESS DOC SUBJECT: ARMS INDUSTRY DOC FILE: KHASHOGGI, ADNAN DOC NO.: PR\AI\KA-03 DOC YEAR: ? SUMMARY: UNKNOWN MAGAZINE- PROFILE ON KHASSHOGI'S ROAD FROM RICHES TO RUIN KEYWORDS: TRIAD AMERICA CORPORATION, SALT LAKE CITY, EMMANUEL FLOOR, TRIAD INTERNATIONAL
DOC TYPE: PRESS DOC SUBJECT: ARMS INDUSTRY DOC FILE: KHASHOGGI, ADNAN DOC NO.: PR\AI\KA-01 DOC YEAR: SUMMARY: KEYWORDS: