by Kenn Thomas

The following article appeared in issue 6.4 (Oct. 97) of Lumpen, Chicago's magazine for 
the disenchanted proletariat. The current issue of Lumpen contains the second article in 
this series, "PROMIS and Computer Paranoia."

     Because circumstances have shrouded Danny Casolaro's death in mystery, the single
aspect of his research that led to it may never be known for certain. Hotel workers in
Martinsburg, West Virginia found the writer dead in August 1991 in what looked like a faked
suicide. The "head's up" warning flashed among students of the conspiracy culture when the
learned files he had on him were missing and the details of his investigative work slowly
emerged from freinds, family and fellow investigators. Casolaro previously had previously
warned these same people not to believe any reports that he might have fallen victim to an
"accident." The fishy circumstances of his death and the probable motivations of his possible
killers remain obvious.
     In its "Pig System Analysis" issue, Lumpen treated its readers with a chart outlining
some of the many aspects of Casolaro's investigation of the Inslaw/PROMIS case, a topic that
could fill several pages with similar charts. It has done that, in fact, in places like Time and
Village Voice, with many mainstream magazines attempting to make it look like a crazy
patchwork of nonsense while also back-pedaling on the investigative tributaries that Casolaro
opened up. To its credit, Lumpen followed and publicized the case very early on. In that spirit,
the following report summarizes its main outline and brings readers up to speed on some
current developments.

THE OCTOPUS

     Danny Casolaro sought to document and expose sea of covert operatives, super-
surveillance software and transnational spies. He called the monster he saw swimming in that
sea "the Octopus." It consisted of a group of US intelligence veterans that had banded together
to manipulate world events for the sake of consolidating and extending its power. Of course
it involved the Kennedy assassination, but that was just one of many coups and assassinations
pulled off by the Octopus since the end of World War II. The group had come together over
a covert operation to invade Albania that was betrayed by famed British turncoat Kim Philby.
The Octopus had overthrown Jacob Arbenz in Quatemala in 1954. It had targeted operations
against Fidel Castro culminating in the Bay of Pigs. It also had tentacles in the political
upheavals in Angola, Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Nigeria, Chile, Iran and Iraq.
Casolaro had as his main concern Octopus involvement with putting Ronald Reagan in power
--the infamous October Surpise--and the role that played in introducing the PROMIS software
into police systems around the world.
     Casolaro's catalogue of membership in the Octopus included such notorious spooks as
John Singlaub and the late CIA director William Colby. As heads of the Phoenix assassination
program in Vietnam they had implemented an early version of the PROMIS tracking software
to keep tabs on the Viet Cong. Other Octopus tentacles included characters like E. Howard
Hunt and Bernard Baker, who later emerged as Watergate burglars. Casolaro focussed on  one
person in the periphery of the Octopus as it had developed in the early 1980s, a man named
Earl Brian, crony to Reagan's attorney general Ed Meese. Brian had been given  PROMIS to
sell illegally as a reward for paying off Ayatollah Khomeini to hold on to American hostages
until the Carter presidential re-election campaign clearly was doomed. According to Casolaro,
Meese used the US Justice department to steal PROMIS from its developers, the Inslaw group,
which had its connections to the Phoenix program and also had developed the software at least
in part on public money. Two congressional committees eventually agreed, however, that
Inslaw was the legal private owner of PROMIS when the US Justice department shanghaied
it and Earl Brian profiteered by selling it to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Interpol, the
Mossad and other international police agencies as well as to the military. One application of
the modified PROMIS included the ability to track Soviet submarines in previously
untraceable marine trenches near Iceland.
     If coded correctly, PROMIS could interface with other databases without
reprogramming, giving it great ability to ostensibly track criminals--but also, potentially,
political dissidents--through the computer systems of various police agencies. Casolaro's main
informant, Michael Riconosciuto added to this the claim that he had personally reprogrammed
PROMIS with a backdoor, so it could spy on the methods of the police agencies that were
using it for tracking. This gave it added appeal as a covert tool. The US could spy on the very
agencies it was selling the software to illegally.

BRIAN GOES DOWN
 
     Earl Brian's role in the PROMIS theft was spelled out explicitly by Inslaw lawyer Elliot
Richardson, another Watergate figure in the New York Times in 1992.. Richardson was the
attorney general who actually stood up to Richard Nixon's corruption during the Saturday
Night massacre.  Brian sued over the New York Times article and lost. Richardson had written
the article to encourage investigation of the case, but Brian used the opportunity to start a
nusiance libel suit. On November 29, 1995, the New York Court of Appeals dismissed Brian's
claim and declared that Richardson's assertions came under free speech protections. 
     Although never prosecuted over the PROMIS allegations, Brian survived only one more
year after the libel suit before other past shady deals began to catch up with him. In October
1996 a California jury convicted him of Federal bank fraud, conspiracy and lying to auditors.
Prosecutors charged that Brian had drafted false documents to conceal the losses of the
Financial New Network and United Press International, for whom he served as chief
executive, in order to obtain $70 million in bank loans for his other concern, a biotechnology
firm Infotechnology.

MARKET AND MIND CONTROL

     Interestingly, the pattern of financial impropriety in the case was identical to one that
happened on assassination day, November 22, 1963. Someone named Tony DeAngelis
misrepresented his holdings of thosuands of tons of salad oil with faked American Express
warehouse receipts in order to get bank loans. Exposure of the fraud was the top news story
in the New Tork Times editions that came out before the assassination on that date. Many
people profiteered from the short-selling spree on the markets consequent to that and news
of JFK's murder, including American Express magnate Warren Buffet and a transnational
entity called Bunge Corporation, known in the financial literature of the time as The Octopus.
In a classic work on the JFK assassination, Were We Controlled, psuedonymous author Lincoln
Lawrence argues that DeAngeles, Ruby and Oswald were all mind-controlled in their actions
on that day. (Adventures Unlimited Press is reprinting this book with annotations,
bibliography, photographs and index by Kenn Thomas. Write to POB 74, Kempton, IL
60946.) Add to that the fact that Earl Brian at one time was a brain surgeon, and the other
Watergate-Inslaw connection, E. Howard Hunt, who had a phone relationship with Casolaro,
has also been connected to mind control operations, and the story takes some extremely
interesting speculative turns.

AREA 51 REVISITED

     Michael Riconosciuto claimed that he had made his modifications to PROMIS on the
tribal lands of the Cabazon Indians in Indio, California as part of a joint project the tribal
administrators had with a private security firm known as Wackenhut. Wackenhut provides
security services to the notorious secret airbase Area 51. After Danny Casolaro turned up dead
and his current research file missing, other notes found at his apartment later clearly indicated
his interest in this Nevada super-spook facility. The base, of course, had been around since
before it was used to develop the U2 spy plane in the late 1950s and early 1960s, later the
SR71 Blackbird and now the mysterious Aurora super-plane. As Casolaro made his notes about
it, however, it had not yet become the subject of popular lore that it is today. Nevertheless,
Casolaro devoted pages of notes to Area 51. 
 
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