Guest Host Richard Syrett Producers Christian Hanson and Zachary Treitz discuss their latest project Netflix’s American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders which investigates the death of US Journalist Danny Casolaro. They also take calls from listeners.
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Welcome back, family and colleagues of Danny Castilau Cassillia of long suspected that he was murdered for investigating a conspiracy he called the Octopus, a hidden organization whose arms reached into stolen spy software, unsolved murders, money laundering, drug trafficking, Ronald Reagan's White House, the Iran Contra affair. And this is the subject of a new Netflix series called The Octopus Murders. It's a four part series, and two of the principles behind the documentary series, Christian Hansen and Zachary Tritz, are with us. Let's go back to or let's go to the phones, and we'll begin with Ron, East of the Rockies in Michigan. Ron, good morning, Welcome to coast.
Hello, Richard, and gentlemen. I remember reading about mister Castelaro in a publication called Covert Action Quarterly in the early eighties, and he talked about his investigation, like Richard just said, about all those things, and have you ever seen the publication or heard of it? I think he went out of business Covert Action, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but anyway, you know, you leave out one name, George Bush, who was president vice president at that time. But I say he was president at that time because Ronald Reagan was slipping into dementia and George Bush was CIA chieftain and that was the cocaine for guns Miami. His son Jeb Bush was in charge of the coordination of arms to Nicaragua. And the contrast and this whole thing, you know, you know, you go back to the JFK assassination and you have the triumph again military intelligence, I A and uh, what's the other one I'm leaving out. I forget the other one now. But you know this is all part of the kudeta that took place when JFK was assassinated with his brother King and to this day they are in control, planning simple the mafia CI A and and I tell you what, It goes back to the old families. I'm reading a book Ashes Smoking Ashes about the opium trade, and people like the early Protestant people came around the Mayflower. They're the ones that started the opium trade. Okay, back in the seventeen the eighteenth century in the United States, which is part of the British Empire. You know, it's all it's all tied to this whole thing that controls the government drugs, and but thank you.
To Yeah, George H. W.
Bush factors heavily and being a story eventually, and.
You can see that.
I hope you'll watch the show and you'll see how that works. He was one of Danny's sort of eight members of the octopus that he that he centered on. And it's an important note to yeah, that George H. W. Bush was president at the time that Danny was writing the book.
He was vice.
President under Reagan obviously, and before that he had been CIA director. And I think that what you say about the connection of drugs and intelligence and organized crime, I mean that that was a key part of Danny's story. And so yeah, thanks for bringing that up.
All right, let's say Hi next to Christine is in Tahunga, California. Christine, Welcome, good morning.
I have a question for you too. Did manor Arkansas ever come up in your investigation?
Hi, Christine, this is Christian. Yeah, Nita Arkansas, obviously it came up. And Mina even is comes up in Danny's notes. He was writing about Mina and Vestigetti Mina and yeah, Mina, Arkansas, for the listeners was a transhiitment or basically a CIA proprietary airport in the mountains of Arkansas where there was a lot of like contra drugs and guns coming back and forth.
All right, Christine, thank you for that. I think Danny at one point in his notes or he confided to friends and colleagues that if the true story of the Octopus organization ever came to light, it would rewrite American history. What do you what do you make of that statement? And do you now believe that it's true.
That's a really interesting question. I do think that there is a retelling of American history that could and should happen. You know, so much has been so much of the of the story has happened covertly. And yeah, I mean, simple answer. I think that you could rewrite American history for the past at least forty years, if not longer.
Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on what your current understanding.
Of US history is.
But I think at the time that Danny was writing in the early nineties, while you know, there was many people who had talked about covert operations and operative I think what was special about Danny's book was that he was tying all these seemingly disparate scandals, political scandals, and intelligence scandals together by tracking the participants. And and you know, a lot of Danny's writing we have, or some of it, is book proposals, And of course, if you're done a book proposal, you really try to sell this thing as like the most important thing that's ever happened to the human race when you're selling a book. But I actually don't think that Danny's being too hyperbolic.
There when you really and maybe this is.
Something that's changed for me over the years. I think that I would have when I started this project, I would have said Danny's being a little overblown. But when you really look into it, at least from my base of knowledge, when you see how important covert action and these covert operations and their potential relationship to organized crime, how much impact that's had on the latter half of the twentieth century, it's a little shocking and it changes your conception of what our combined history is.
All right, let's go back to the phones. Thank you Christine for the call. Bob is an Arizona Bob Good morning, Welcome to Coaster. You're on the line with Christian Hansen and Zacharytriitz. Go ahead, good.
Evening, gentlemen. Have you ever explored the connection to Ederson County, Texas and Clint Murkison Junior? In this case, I used to live there many years ago. I first heard about this story here on Coast the Coast one Christmas long ago. And the thing that I realized then was the activity that was going on in current California was also happening in Henderson County, Texas, involving math, amphetamine production and sheriff's department, etc. So I was just curious if you had looked into that aspect of this story.
Bob, I would love to talk to you. I would love to talk to you further about this, but you don't have that much time. I encourage you to reach out to me on Instagram or Twitter Yo undersquare Christian on Twitter. And also what you called, Bob called on Coast to Coast at you know, at three am, I was I was wondering if it was going to be Robert Booth Nichols, because who has an Arizona connection. But yes, we've looked into Clint Murchison Junior a little bit because he was on the board of directors of Fidco, which was a company that Robert Booth Nichols was on the board of directors that was involved in De Route. We couldn't fit that part into the film, but we would love to know more. We you know, our knowledge base kind of doesn't seem like it's as developed as yours, and we'd love to We'd always love to know more, all.
Right, Bob, thank you for that. Let's see on the wild Card line. Ted is in the San Francisco Ted, good morning, Welcome to coast.
Yeah, I'm from San Francisco. I'm actually driving the Rock and I want to thank you for taking my call. Richard and Christian Zachary, congratulations. You're very courageous for being able to beees together this heavily interlocked story without getting bamboozled, you know, trying to lay out the dark alliance between the gangster planet that married when the mob got.
Involved with the CIA. I want to say a quick healoa to Sherry and my friends and apologize for any miscommunication in the past. And I also wanted to lay out the fact that that term octopus has been going on for a long time, dating back all the way to United Fruit, the banana company whose board numbers we did the d oldest brothers, which would be John Foster, the Secretary of State and his brother Alan, who Kennedy decided to boot out of office, which led to a lot of problems, and it's all related. It's very hard to follow upon that first caller. He was very knowledgeable and and about RBN. I met the ambassador, the Swiss ambassador of the United States, and gave him a ride to his hotel. He handed me his business card, said he'd do me a favor, And the only thing that I could think of six months later was to find out if RBN actually was killed in Switzerland. So I sent him a text and I thought I'd never hear back. Three weeks later I heard from his right hand man, his assistant, who told me he had been tasked with finding out whether RBN.
Well, who is RBN? You keep mentioning RBN tech, You don't know they know who it is. Yeah, but our listeners, okay, and you're speaking to our listeners. They don't know who is RBN.
General Robert bru thinkles here is in episode three of the octopusers are serious. He was a source of Danny Castillo and a endlessly fascinating character who may or may not still be alive.
All right, Ted, thank you for the call.
Let's say to be any way you can.
All right?
Ted?
Yes through Instagram. Clyde is in New Mexico. Clyde, Welcome the coast.
I was I was wondering, Oh you partially answered this, but about connections between these murders and the octopus and all the mysterious deaths surrounding Bill Clinton, which you know we used to call Arkanside, which you know it was about the same time period, and there were like forty eight or they're about people close to Clinton involved, also Mina Arkansas and the c i A you know, cocaine shipments and but a whole lot more so did you find out much about that?
Well, the only I had I hadn't Danny Castillar. There's the listic that's on the Internet of the Clinton death list, one of the versions I've seen Danny Cassel is on. But what as far as Mina, I think one of the most like horrific murders that it was connected to connected to Mina were the story of two young boys who were out hunting at night, and basically it's become evident that they, as far as I understand, stumbled upon a drug you know, transaction involving the Mina airport and were murdered and their bodies to put on a train track. And they were just like two kids at the wrong place at the wrong time, and and probably some coked out maps c I A dudes like you know did away with them, which is just an awful tragedy. That's always like stuck with me. But as far as the other things, you know, I just only have so much time to investigate so much, and I haven't gotten into the Clinton administration yet.
All right, client, thank you for that. I think we can squeeze in one more. James is first time caller from Minneapolis. James, Welcome to Coast Well.
Hello, gentlemen.
I just have a question for UH Christian and.
Zachary Zachary Uh as far as UH targeted Justice the website Targetedjustice dot com. I'm wondering if you're familiar with that website and how UH usion Centers and that type of activity might be related to the.
I don't know the website, but I will look into it Targetedjustice dot Com. I'm writing it downe now.
All right, James, thank you for that. All right. So in the meantime, we have The Octopus Murders four parts on Netflix, and I tell you it's it's such a complex maze, and you've managed to make sense of it all, piece it together, and and and and humanize Danny Cassillo and maybe go a long ways into solving his mysterious death. I think you provide some very compelling evidence in the documentary that it wasn't suicide. And you're both to be congratulated. What's what's next? Very quickly, what's next for both of you? Zachary, do you want to go for.
Well, Richard, that's I just want to say, that's really nice because it took us years to make this thing, and it's nice that we got to the end.
And thank you for saying that.
Christian and I are we're figuring that out. You know, we're not gonna tip our tip our hands quite at this moment. But there's a lot more to this story, and whether it's you know, part of this series or not, we have there's just tons of research that Christian's done and then eventually I got involved with that of stories that need to be told, you.
Know, within this ecosystem.
So we would like to keep keep telling them until somebody tells us not to.
All right, and Christian final word to you very quickly, if you could, I.
Would just say, if they tell us not too, they're gonna have to to tell us. I don't know, I'm not worried. Richard was saying, stop, all right.
Well again, congratulations both the Optopala Murders four part documentary series on Netflix.
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