The UNSOLVED Murder of Journalist Who Exposed The Shadow Government | The Octopus Murders

Summary

Podcast Summary: The UNSOLVED Murder of Journalist Who Exposed The Shadow Government | The Octopus Murders

Podcast Information

• Title: Camp Gagnon
• Host/Author: Mark Gagnon
• Episode: The UNSOLVED Murder of Journalist Who Exposed The Shadow Government | The Octopus Murders
• Release Date: July 22, 2025
• Description: Home to the most interesting conversations on the internet. I'm Mark Gagnon and welcome to Camp!

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Introduction to the Documentary

In this episode, Mark Gagnon hosts Zachary Trites and Christian Hansen to discuss their collaborative work on the Netflix documentary series "American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders." This four-part series delves into the life and mysterious death of journalist Danny Casalero, unearthing a complex web of government espionage, software conspiracies, and unsolved murders.

Notable Quote:

• Mark Gagnon [00:00]: "American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders. This is a four part series that goes through the life and suspicious death of researcher Danny Casalero."

Background on Danny Casalero

Danny Casalero was a dedicated researcher whose investigations into government conspiracies ultimately led to his untimely and suspicious death. The documentary explores his relentless pursuit of truth and the possible motives behind his murder, suggesting that his findings could have threatened powerful entities.

Notable Quote:

• Mark Gagnon [00:00]: "...he was on his way to breaking this whole case open and sort of the mystery around his murder, which is fascinating."

The Inslaw Software Conspiracy

A significant focus of the documentary is the Inslaw Promise Software Conspiracy, which alleges that the government, possibly in collusion with foreign powers, misappropriated software developed by Inslaw for espionage purposes. This software was purportedly used to spy on other governments, raising questions about the extent of governmental surveillance and misuse of technology.

Notable Quote:

• Zachary Trites [00:00]: "...the ins law promise software conspiracy and how foreign governments, or maybe our own government was using it to spy on other governments from around the world."

Iran-Contra and Government Operations

The discussion extends to the Iran-Contra Affair, drawing parallels between historical government operations and the current conspiracy theories surrounding the misuse of software and espionage. The hosts consider how such clandestine activities necessitate the elimination of whistleblowers like Casalero.

Notable Quote:

• Christian Hansen [10:35]: "*...the Iran Contra really started...organizations like these were involved in..."

Robert Maxwell and International Intrigue

A pivotal figure discussed is Robert Maxwell, a publishing magnate with alleged ties to intelligence agencies like Mossad. Maxwell's mysterious death and his involvement in international arms deals tie into the broader narrative of governmental overreach and covert operations.

Notable Quote:

• Christian Hansen [33:36]: "...Robert Maxwell was distributing it internationally where Earl Bryan was doing it sort of domestically."

Circumstances of Danny Casalero's Death

Danny Casalero's death is at the heart of the documentary. Official reports labeled it a suicide, citing deep wrist cuts and isolation in a hotel bathtub. However, inconsistencies in the investigation and Casalero's fearless pursuit of dangerous truths fuel speculation that his death was orchestrated to silence him.

Notable Quotes:

• Zachary Trites [10:22]: "...Danny was found dead in a hotel room, you know, wrist cut deep to the tendons on both arms in a bathtub alone."
• Christian Hansen [53:19]: "...it was a murder by pros, you know, just because of that."

Challenges in Investigation

The hosts highlight the numerous obstacles faced while investigating Casalero's death, including limited access to critical phone records, resistance from law enforcement, and the difficulty of verifying sources tied to intelligence agencies. These barriers underscore the complexity of uncovering truths buried by powerful entities.

Notable Quote:

• Christian Hansen [55:10]: "...We petitioned the phone company to get all the records, but they didn't even ask for all the bills."

Impact and Reactions

Following the documentary's release, there has been a surge in interest from individuals connected to the case, including family members seeking answers about their relatives' mysterious deaths. The documentary has validated the concerns of many, fostering a community united by unresolved investigations into shadowy government activities.

Notable Quote:

• Christian Hansen [90:17]: "There's a large group of people who are all united by relatives who died in very strange circumstances related to what Danny was investigating."

Future Projects and Spin-offs

Zachary Trites and Christian Hansen hint at future projects, including a potential prequel exploring earlier conspiracies and operations that set the stage for the events surrounding Casalero's death. These spin-offs aim to further dissect the intricate networks of power and secrecy that continue to influence modern society.

Notable Quote:

• Christian Hansen [99:56]: "Our next project is a sort of a prequel... but it's still in the research phase."

Conclusion

The episode provides an in-depth look into the unsolved murder of Danny Casalero and the expansive conspiracy theories that surround it. Through meticulous research and compelling narrative, Zachary Trites and Christian Hansen shed light on the dark intersections of journalism, government power, and international espionage. While many questions remain unanswered, the documentary serves as a crucial examination of the forces that may seek to suppress inconvenient truths.

Notable Quote:

• Zachary Trites [103:04]: "It's like a miracle that the records even still existed in what we got."

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Additional Notes:

• The conversation is interspersed with various advertisements which have been excluded from the summary.
• The transcript includes candid discussions and speculative theories, reflecting the investigative nature of the hosts.
• The summary captures the essence of the episode, making it accessible and informative for listeners who have not experienced the full podcast.

Transcript

[Zachary Trites]

This is Zachary Trites and Christian Hansen. And together they researched and directed one of the most interesting Netflix documentaries I have ever seen. American Conspiracy the Octopus Murders. This is a four part series that goes through the life and suspicious death of researcher Danny Casalero. And we go through everything from the in slaw promise software conspiracy and how foreign governments, or maybe our own government was using it to spy on other governments from around the world. It has spycraft, espionage, murderers, murder, assassinations. We touch on jfk. We touch on the Iran contra affair and how governments sometimes have to take out people that speak against them. Zach and Christian are the best. They've been longtime friends. And so this episode has a very casual, fun energy where we just sit around and chop it up about some of my favorite conspiracy theories ever. And they have all the research and data to really back up why these things are even more credible than they may seem on the surface. So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed having it. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp.

[Christian Hansen]

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[Zachary Trites]

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[Christian Hansen]

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[Zachary Trites]

Zach and Christian, how are we?

[Christian Hansen]

Great. How are you?

[Zachary Trites]

I'm excellent. Thank you guys. Thanks for joining me. I really appreciate it. This is going to be a lot of fun.

[Christian Hansen]

Can I just get something out of the way, please?

[Zachary Trites]

I was hoping you would.

[Christian Hansen]

Me and Zach are about the same height. He's sitting on a cushion, so he looks tal taller. So, yeah, in case anybody was like.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Get another lie from Christian, the conspiracy goes deeper.

[Zachary Trites]

You know what I mean? It's like, how can we trust this guy's research?

[Unnamed Speaker]

You want me to slouch?

[Christian Hansen]

No, I just want to, like, set the table.

[Zachary Trites]

I was curious, actually, before we even really began. Do you guys always match when you do these kinds of things, or is this.

[Unnamed Speaker]

We get up every morning, we sleep in the same bed. So I look over to him and I say, look, I'm. I'm thinking blue T shirt.

[Christian Hansen]

Oh, my gosh.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, Same pants.

[Christian Hansen]

Oh, my God.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Bummer.

[Zachary Trites]

Similar walk.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I haven't.

[Zachary Trites]

Black band.

[Unnamed Speaker]

No.

[Zachary Trites]

With a gold bezel.

[Christian Hansen]

This is a Timex.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It's a vintage.

[Zachary Trites]

Some. Some light just to flex on the people at home.

[Christian Hansen]

But no, it is weird. Like, we do end up showing up wearing, like, almost the same.

[Unnamed Speaker]

The real problem is that we. People say on the phone that we sound the same.

[Zachary Trites]

Interesting.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So. Or podcasts, which is this environment. You're not looking at us because we're both from Louisville. We grew up together, and it becomes a candid thing where people are like, who. Who. Who just said that? You know?

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Which.

[Christian Hansen]

And like, when we will call sources together and we'll be on speakerphone, and.

[Zachary Trites]

It'S like just one person dialed in.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Or a lot of times people being like, Christian, that sounds great. And it's like, that was me.

[Christian Hansen]

Even some sources have.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Or the.

[Christian Hansen]

My number saved as Zach. And you're never saved as Christian.

[Zachary Trites]

You grew up in Louisville with our mutual friend Renan Hirschberg.

[Christian Hansen]

Yes.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, we went. I went to high school with Ronan. Yeah, he's like a year older than me, I think.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

Brilliant comedian.

[Christian Hansen]

It was hilarious in high school.

[Zachary Trites]

Now, you said when we were on text that you were schwitzing. Are you Jewish as well?

[Christian Hansen]

No, no. But it just sounds weird to say that from outside.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Is that where you got that from? Yeah, I think just grow.

[Zachary Trites]

He's been in New York too long, dude. That's what happens. You grow up in New York, you just start, you know, schlepping everywhere, you know, I mean.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

Happens. Now if people don't know. You guys are the proprietors of a wonderful. Of a wonderful documentary series that came out on Netflix about a year ago, American Conspiracy, the Octopus Murders, which is fascinating and kind of ties in every sort of element of, like, I think what people really enjoy about conspiracies, you know, I mean, like, uncovering the truth. Sort of like a silenced hero that was on his way to breaking this whole case open and sort of the mystery around his murder, which is fascinating. I would love to talk about updates as that goes. Zack, you directed it, and Christian, you were sort of the lead investigator that kind of was really tying together the web of all the details of the story. I'm curious, how do you even get involved in this type of a project? Where does it start?

[Christian Hansen]

I mean. Ah, it's like. I mean, I've told this. We don't.

[Unnamed Speaker]

We.

[Christian Hansen]

You know, we try to make the film as efficient as possible. So we didn't. We. We talk a lot about how I'm Zach's crazy friend and I got obsessed with this story, but we. We don't say how so like every podcast, everyone's like, so how did you get into it? Like, wish we would have put it in the movie because then, you know. But I also. I know why we didn't because it's such a. It's so random. It's like I was researching the private prison industry and this company, Wackenhut, was the second biggest private prison company it had. By the time I started looking into it, it had changed its name to Geo Group. But you know, I was just sort of like 2am like doing research for this paper. Like college paper. Like, why. Why is this company called Wacken Hut? That's such a weird name. What the fuck is Wacken Hut? And then just kind of started like looking into this company and like it had this. I mean, whatever it was doing in the private prison space, like, came way later. It was founded in the. I think in the 50s by this ex FBI guy.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And it.

[Christian Hansen]

It's also unclear whether he was an actual agent or if he was the PE guy. Right, the PE guy. The physical education, keeping the agents in shape.

[Zachary Trites]

Interesting.

[Christian Hansen]

Either way.

[Unnamed Speaker]

George Wackenhutt.

[Christian Hansen]

George Wackenhutt, he moves down to South Florida and with a couple of other guys, they found this private security company and they had really good connections in the local Republican conservative government. And they were getting like state contracts and eventually they, you know, there was some like. And all this anti communist stuff. They were doing like getting files on communists and kind of illegal research that the government couldn't do. Like they could do like shady.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I think at one point they had the largest collection of files on private citizens interesting. In America.

[Zachary Trites]

And this was like 60s 70s time.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah, got it. And you know, and then eventually they have, you know, huge national contracts. They've got offices all over the globe. They've got there. They guard NASA facilities, they guard the like Area 51, you know, area in Nevada.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And did they do Los Alamos too? I forget.

[Christian Hansen]

I can't remember. But they have like those kind of like big contracts like that. And. And then they also. The board of directors is all of these like department heads from the nsa, the Air Force, the CIA, you know, and it's sort of like bigwigs at these agencies kind of roll out into the private sector, being on the board.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Of the directors and filtering contract, presumably filtering contracts from their old agency. And then like the allegation would be like, whatever the CIA or whatever agency can't do or won't do gray area work.

[Christian Hansen]

You can't FOIA a private security. Like their files are Private forever. And so they would do stuff that you could in other. That the CIA maybe wouldn't want to be attached to. So they. They were kind of like a cover for those type of things then, you know, I'm just still, like, digging into this company, and I find, like, an article in Spy magazine about this journalist who was looking into Wacken Hut among other things, like. And all these things I knew nothing about it. Didn't know anything about the Iran Contra affair. I mean, barely anything. And then this thing called the October Surprise, and then this, you know, spy software called Promise and this company called Insaw that developed it and their problems with the government. And, you know, I thought that it was like a fan fiction Iran Contra thing because it was all just so insane. But the article was really well researched, and it. Names, names and everything checked out. Everybody that they were talking about was real. And, like, apparently this journalist named Danny Casalero, who, you know, had died looking into all this stuff, like, was real. And.

[Zachary Trites]

And your crazy ass was like, I'll do the same thing.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah, well, no, I was like, this guy, like. And then the more I kind of learned about the guy, like, I was like, this guy's pretty cool. And the story that he was writing seems exciting and interesting, and it just sort of, like, literally died on the vine, like, when he died. And it's like, I don't know. I was like, I should write a book. I should write the book that he never wrote, and I should write a book about him. And so I just kind of started.

[Zachary Trites]

And you were doing this full well, knowing that he had died under some mysterious circumstances.

[Christian Hansen]

Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, that's like, you know, the start of every kind of magazine article about him is about his mysterious death. You start with the death scene, and then you, you know, backtrack to, like, how he got to that hotel room.

[Zachary Trites]

Fascinating. So you kind of go on the same sort of journey that Danny went on, and then you get to his part, and you're like, oh, shit, he's found dead in a hotel room, you know, wrist cut deep to the tendons on both arms in a bathtub alone.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

And that is sort of like the precipitating factor that then leads to people digging into his story, but then also trying to dig into his research as well.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah, I see. Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

So I guess just for context, for the audience that doesn't know, could you explain Iran Contra and kind of how that ties in with, like, promise and what Danny was ultimately trying to uncover?

[Unnamed Speaker]

I know this is obviously in 30 words or less.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, 30 words or less. I know this is obviously the, the main bulk of this four part documentary series on Netflix, but you know, just for the audience to kind of be abreast as we go forward in the conversation.

[Christian Hansen]

Okay. After a July 4th weekend, let's see here if I can like get my brain in order. So I mean Iron Contra is like actually pretty difficult to explain because there's something called a limited hangout which is where you cop to less than what was really going on. But the less seems so egregious. Like it's this big admission and. But in order by copying to the. The less bad thing that's also bad, you co. You kind of are able to obfuscate or cover up all this other that was going on.

[Zachary Trites]

It's like the lying biomission almost.

[Christian Hansen]

And so the IRA and Contra story for me is so big, it's like I'm like wondering like where I even.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, that's hard. That's like the, the hardest start to an Iran Contra thing because you haven't even started with like the what the normal story is, which is already so hard to do because it's, it's almost like two interrelated but very distant places. Iran and Nicaragua and. But Nicaragua, but also Costa Rica and like it's that whole area, but it's like ostensibly Nicaragua. And then you've got like what's going on with like weapon sales? What's going on with like us wanting to influence the like politics of Nicaragua. Like using Israel as a conduit for, for selling like munitions to our on quote unquote enemies in Iran which had just become like a quote unquote like rogue nation or whatever after, in late.

[Christian Hansen]

70S, after the CIA tampering in the.

[Unnamed Speaker]

We're not doing any basically. It's. I mean as far as I know and can cobble together, it's like in the middle of the Reagan administration there was a small group mainly run out of the National Security Council using Oliver north who was a Marine lieutenant colonel or colonel. I forgot to try to accomplish multiple things at once outside of the mainstream of what Congress would allow. So Congress said, hey, Reagan administration, no more meddling in like Central American.

[Christian Hansen]

It was a Democrat majority Congress.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. No more meddling with like their elections and trying to like do like CIA operations down there and all that stuff. We're cutting off all the funding and it's illegal if you do it. And so, so they're like, we'll just.

[Christian Hansen]

Raise the money ourselves.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. So they Were like, okay, well how do we get like money and supplies down to like our freedom fighters who are like, you know, hanging out just over the border in like Costa Rica or whatever, and that we're training and it's like, okay, well we're going to like sell a bunch of weapons through, I believe mostly through Israel to Iran, used that money to then funnel it to people we were supporting, trying to overtake the newly installed regime in Nicaragua. Interestingly, both of those countries had, had turned against the United States in 1979. Yeah, I think that's what's like kind of an interesting, like parallel between the two of them.

[Zachary Trites]

Right. But otherwise they're like the shah, Iran in 79.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Christian Hansen]

Right. I. But also. Okay, but then, and, but then it was like journalists like, like Bob Perry and, and other journalists started to write about these specifically in Central America. These like illegal weapons sales. Like, you know, they're documenting, you know, military transport or like Air America, like CIA proprietary planes going into Central America and arming these people. And you know, the, the government's official stance and Reagan is going on TV and his fireside chat saying this is not happening. Like, it's simply not. This is a lie. I don't, you know, then this transport plane with this guy named Eugene Hasenfuss who used to do, he was a paratrooper, I think in Vietnam and then he was retired. He was working construction in Milwaukee and like the economy was really bad at that time and he was. So he got a job for this company to do airdrops down in Central America. And one of the things that they said, part of his agreement when he was hired on was that you can't bring a parachute. And he smuggled his own parachute onto the plane and a Sandinista, which was like the left wing group that the right wing dudes were fighting in Nicaragua, shot down his plane with a shoulder rocket and he parachuted down. Everybody else died and they captured him. And so it was like obvious that, you know, and he started talking like they were like, you know, they couldn't keep lying about what was going on in Nicaragua anymore.

[Zachary Trites]

Right. And so by the late 80s, I mean, this is only part of the story.

[Christian Hansen]

And there's also a guy, Barry Seal, they made that movie American made with Tom Cruise about. He was. That's all. Because there's this whole drug smuggling component to it.

[Zachary Trites]

There's also like the hostages thing that happens. Like the, like Iran withholds hostages.

[Christian Hansen]

Oh, that's the October.

[Zachary Trites]

Oh, that's. Yeah.

[Christian Hansen]

So, but that's when I think the Iran Contra really started. Oh, there were, there was hostages in Lebanon.

[Unnamed Speaker]

There was this. The second hostage crisis happening during. Yeah, man, people are going to.

[Christian Hansen]

Sorry.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Sail us for like our shitty version of like Iran.

[Zachary Trites]

I do. We were all having a great time this weekend, you know, celebrating American independence.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, yeah. Well, the. Whatever. The October surprise which we get into it, which was like the lead into the administrative like could be considered like the. One of the reasons that Reagan got elected surreptitiously is an interesting parallel. And there's also kinds of interesting parallels of like this network that was. That was discovered in. In what, 86. Hasenfuss goes down. 85, 86, maybe 87.

[Christian Hansen]

I think it was 86.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Our show is largely. And Danny's investigation is largely about similar parallel operations with the same group of people. I mean, he talks about Iran Contra, but the stuff that was happening in the years and decades before that, that basically set up the template for Iran Contra, which is that you have a bunch of dudes in the government and outside of the government who used to work with the government working together to funnel money and arms to places and people who they want to support that are being supported outside of like US Law. Right, Right. So it's like it's happening in the Cabazon Desert with people who became involved with Iran Contra when in part of our story that takes place in Southern California, it's happening with allegedly with the hostages that were taken in. In Iran during the takeover of the embassy, which was used allegedly to, you know, tilt the favor against Jimmy Carter in the US presidential election in 1980 and then even before that in the 70s, like parallel operations. So it's like, it's basically about a network of people, right, who do shit for money and politics, specifically at the.

[Zachary Trites]

Behest of the US Government to do.

[Christian Hansen]

Regime change or coup d' Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think that they also, some of these jobs are little get rich quick schemes, you know, like it's doesn't matter and they're doing it on their own accord. I think it does have international repercussions.

[Zachary Trites]

But certainly there's middlemen along the way getting rich the whole time, right?

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

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[Christian Hansen]

In the family chat or trading those late night voice messages that could basically.

[Zachary Trites]

Become a podcast, your personal messages stay.

[Christian Hansen]

Between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

[Zachary Trites]

So there's a whole confluence of power and money that is kind of creating this web. And Danny Costellero at this time in the late 80s, you know, the American society sort of done the wiser to kind of how the US affairs and how the CIA sort of operates in these different countries. And he's kind of piecing together this story, huh?

[Christian Hansen]

And he's also, maybe we could bring.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It back to how you originally started, which is you were like a little bit the concept of a limited hangout. Right. Which comes from the Nixon administration. Right. But Dan, you know, it's like all this stuff was known that we know now about Iran Contra had already come up on 1990. 1990. When Danny started this investigation.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah, most.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But what he's writing about and what people, I think it subsequently wrote about and were correct is, is what I was saying, like these larger networks, that this is actually part of a larger pattern, goes back years and involves the same crimes, the same criminals and that. And that the Iran, in that view, Iran Contra itself was a limited hangout. Coincidentally, sometimes people say that our show is a limited hangout because they. It's a concept that, like, it's hard to, you know, disprove a negative. Like it's, it's just a hall of mirrors.

[Christian Hansen]

Well, and it touches a lot of the like octopus as it exists on, you know, Reddit or wherever online. Like there are other tendrils and tentacles and storylines and subplots and plots that we weren't able to fit into a four episode show. And so because our favorite part or their, because their favorite parts of, of the case, like didn't get featured.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Like, we must something they read about somewhere.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Get featured. It's like, well, these guys are like one of them that I saw the other day. It was on IMDb. It's like obviously a limited hangout, but informative nonetheless.

[Zachary Trites]

Interesting. So was it that obvious they're accusing of just being like disinformation agents that you guys are kind of leading people down, like a limited truth.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, that we're just like, kind of covering up for our like handlers back at the agency. Which would be awesome if it were true. Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

You guys, you guys don't strike me as, as agency guys, to be honest.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Agency guys never strike as agency guys. That's the whole point of agency guys.

[Zachary Trites]

Oh, that's a good point, dude. Oh, man, we gotta trick you guys are go have lines all the way back to Langley. I already know it. You're already tapped in. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious. Like, I wonder if being on Netflix also impacts that. Like, I wonder if people see Netflix and they go, oh, this is a sanitizer.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I think so.

[Zachary Trites]

Studio notes that tell them not to go too far. Is any of that true?

[Christian Hansen]

I mean, I thought it was really. I mean, our executives that we worked with were. I mean, we were trying to make the show make sense to a broad audience and it's a complicated story. It's a complicated story. And really like, the executives were like, well, we don't understand it, so you guys understand it. So do the thing, but just make it good, you know, and make it understandable.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, that was usually what they were asking for. Which is, like, make it understandable.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Which is extremely difficult.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah. With, like, a true crime case, it's, like, pretty clear, you know what I mean? It's like this woman got murdered, and these are the three suspects, and let's figure out who done it. You know what I mean? But something like this, it's like an interconnected web that's already quasi conspiratorial on its face, plus a death that is also inherently conspiratorial.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And then multiple deaths that are tied to that that he's investigating. And then, like, not talking about, like, oh, just like, a year of time. Not talking about a decade of time, but it eventually goes into, like, multiple decades.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It's just like, well, what is this story even? You know? Like, what the hell is so diffuse? Right.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But what is kind of exciting about it is, like, that feeling, that feeling of being, like, lost in this, like, what Angleton famously called the wilderness mirrors. I think that we actually do kind of capture that feeling, which is meant to be. I hope we do. Is meant to be invoked by actual operations as they happen, which is like infinite layers of deniability and obfuscation.

[Christian Hansen]

It's also interesting to think about it from Danny Casolaro's perspective, because Anne Klink, who's his friend and she's in the film, she's like, always reminds us that he was a suburban dad in D.C. you know, in the suburbs of D.C. and he's like, you know, it's 1990. Eugene Hassenfuss was shot down four years earlier. I mean, this stuff's, like, pretty fresh. And, you know, he's just, like, driving around D.C. and it's like he's, like, kind of in the. In the thick of it, you know, with, like, actual spies lurking around that he kind of meets and whatever. I mean, well, and he's.

[Unnamed Speaker]

We never really even dwell on this in the show. It's like he's born in McLean, Virginia, which is where the CIA is, you.

[Christian Hansen]

Know, And Angleton, who you mentioned earlier was his neighbor growing up, James Jesus Angleton, like, a really, really legend, like.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And he had friends who are in nsa.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I mean, we. There's. It is a limited hangout, and I wish we had been able to go into so many things, you know?

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I'm curious, I guess, why we. Come on. We did tell ourselves, like, we can go onto podcasts when it's done and, like, tell all the rest of the stories. We didn't get to fit in. Yeah. I don't know if We've really done that.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah. I mean, open forum, like, before we jump to like Dany and like sort of his death and the fallout from that. What are the details from the doc that didn't make it? Like, if there was an episode, you know, 6, 7, 8, what other threads and tendrils would be discussed?

[Unnamed Speaker]

I mean, there's so much stuff.

[Christian Hansen]

And we're working on a spin off.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, we'd like to do more on it, but like the things, like we haven't even talked about stuff in the desert, but things that Danny was looking into at the Cabazon Indian Reservation and things that like Doc Nichols got into and.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, what is that?

[Unnamed Speaker]

And Phil Thompson. Oh, God, there's like so many.

[Christian Hansen]

But there's also the, you know. Well, there's that boat in Mallorca, you know, the Lady Ghislaine.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, oh, I've heard of that. Yeah. Cause that is a big. Okay. Yeah, that's a good place to start. Right. Because it's like.

[Zachary Trites]

Tell me about Robert Maxwell.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right, right. He starts with. Danny started with Promise Software. And there's a whole other world way that we could have taken it and been much more topical successful.

[Christian Hansen]

Where.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Where the Promise software that he's investigating because he's in D.C. that company Inslaw, which made the Promise Software is in D.C. this guy Bill Hamilton, that owns the company is in D.C. and they're going into all this stuff about, oh, my software was stolen by the Justice Department, used this buy software repackaged, hacked with the back door, and now it's being used all over the world to like, you know, spy on people and other intelligence agencies and corporations and whatever. Right. And then if we had gone, it's so confusing because you get this guy Michael Reconnoitciuto, and he brings the story kind of out to the desert and with what was going on out there in California. But there's another way you can go with it, which is the Maxwell angle.

[Christian Hansen]

Right. But we were telling Danny's story and Danny was fascinated by what was happening in the desert. And Robert Maxwell was still alive. Like he. Danny died in August 1991. Robert Maxwell died in November 1991. So, like that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Should we really quickly just talk about who Robert Maxwell was? Right. So it's like he's a publishing magnate at the time who was, I don't know, born in like Czechoslovakia. Right.

[Christian Hansen]

Or.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But he lived in London in uk.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And. But he had ties to Mossad. Well, Israel at least. He's buried in Israel. He was Jewish and he Was like the kind of this power broker much in the mold of what we think of as like Rupert Murdoch. Now he's a publisher. They were competitors, but he, he. We know was ferrying information between different countries. Right. I mean, would you say we know that, like there's that.

[Christian Hansen]

I think like super spy confirmed that he was a spy, I think.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But because he had access to like he could talk to people in the USSR at the time, in this. In the 70s and 80s, this is how the story goes. He. He could like move between these different worlds because he was a larger than life figure. One of the.

[Christian Hansen]

It's like Earl Bryan, who was a. There's another. This American publishing guy who we mentioned in our show was in charge of the. Or allegedly in charge of the distribution of promise for the United States. Israel was also involved. And their version of Earl Bryan, their publisher that's, you know, using, you know, that's distributing the software for them, supposedly is Robert Maxwell and his daughter is Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Jeffrey Epstein's girlfriend and confidant. Yeah, yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But two more facts about Robert Maxwell. That's interesting. Number one, he only wiped his ass with actual towels. Like never toilet paper.

[Zachary Trites]

That's true.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, or, or, or often. Okay, that was like. I don't remember that one reading along.

[Zachary Trites]

The way in hotel or at his home?

[Unnamed Speaker]

No, I think it is home.

[Zachary Trites]

And at hotels you can kind of look past.

[Christian Hansen]

How about on that boat?

[Unnamed Speaker]

I wonder about the boat. It's like, what are you doing on. Yeah, his boat was named the Ghislaine Lady Ghislaine.

[Zachary Trites]

Right. So take us to the boat. What happens to this guy?

[Unnamed Speaker]

So 1991, he suffers like allegedly what, a heart attack or something.

[Christian Hansen]

He went overboard, body gone, I think. Right?

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah. And then, yeah, I believe he falls overboard and drowns. It's just my understanding.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I thought it was like cardiac arrest, but maybe it's a combination. Your heart eventually stops at some point. Um, so and, and, and one of.

[Christian Hansen]

The, you know, like I'm picturing footage of his funeral and I'm picturing a closed casket, but maybe there was. I don't know if there's a body in it or not. I don't know.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But, but one of the. The. It turned out that he had been doing this like pension for. On fraud at the time. And he was like, his empire was kind of going under. Under at the time. And I think his son or sons went to jail or were definitely indicted for being a part of that at the time. So there was this Whole, like. Well, he maybe committed suicide or like, he knew it was the end because, like, the. The jig was up on his. His, like, fraud that he had been perpetrating for a long time. And his. His media publishing empire was in a lot worse shape than. Than he made it seem. Right? Then there's this thing. There's this whole other theory that, like, Mossad took him out on the boat and that it was all potentially even tied to, like, his dissemination of the Promise software. And there was like, a spy named Rafi Itan who claimed that he had been involved with the. Not the assassination, but the distribution of.

[Zachary Trites]

Software and that he was maybe, like, a double agent. Like, Robert Maxwell was maybe playing both sides.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Playing all sides? Yes, I believe. Well, I mean, he would never be on, like, the US's side, I don't think.

[Christian Hansen]

One of my great regrets, just as a. As an aside, this guy that he mentioned, Rafa Itan, is like, this legendary Israeli spy.

[Unnamed Speaker]

He got Adolf.

[Christian Hansen]

Adolf Eichmann.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Eichmann out of his. That was his big operation. But he was also called Rafi the Stinker. Not that I'm, like, totally fascinated by scatological stuff, but he was called Rafi the Stinker.

[Zachary Trites]

For what reason?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Because some operation he was involved with involved him going through the sewer.

[Zachary Trites]

Whoa. I mean, that's kind of fucked up, right? Like, you do this whole thing for your nation, and then they call you the Stinker. You know what I mean? It's like, dude, like, I'm willing to go through shit for my people. Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Literally.

[Zachary Trites]

You know what I mean?

[Christian Hansen]

And then he. So, you know, through a third party, I got information that he said, supposedly that his greatest achievement as a spy was. Was the backdoor and the distribution of the promised software. So it would be a major coup to get him to confirm it for sure, because it's like some affidavit that some author had him sign. But it's like, let's hear him say it.

[Zachary Trites]

Fascinating.

[Christian Hansen]

I got his cell number and I. Or we got it. I have a friend out in Israel who somehow knew somebody who knew some. Knew his neighbor or whatever, small country, you know, and. And. But then I, you know, I wanted to have my ducks in a row, you know, and so put off calling him to do a little bit more research. And then he died.

[Zachary Trites]

Whoa.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Month later.

[Christian Hansen]

So you never know what state he was in, you know, when I finally got the number. But I do regret not just calling him.

[Zachary Trites]

Damn. This must have been pretty recent, right?

[Christian Hansen]

No, this is a long time ago. This is like 2018, 2019.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It was like when we were first starting the doc, really? And it was like kind of kicked us into gear of like, okay, we got to move. All these people are old as hell. Like, there will be more people who die while we make this. And that was true.

[Zachary Trites]

Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You know, and it's like you just got to like go. When the story's this old, tell me.

[Zachary Trites]

When you say, oh, we could have gone to Robert Mac Maxwell angle. It would have been topical, kind of tied into, you know, obviously Epstein and. And that whole, you know, scandal, that whole ring that. That went on, which turns out he killed himself, by the way. You guys saw the news, right?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Epstein?

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah. Cash Patel and Bongino said that he killed himself.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, is that just like the other day or today?

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, so.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, cool.

[Zachary Trites]

On the book. So rip to him and we wish him well. But how does that tie in with what, you know, Danny Castellero was working on directly? Was. Was that a part of the Octopus?

[Christian Hansen]

He was kind of promised distribution, the.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Software that got Danny started on the whole thing. The allegation would be that Maxwell was distributing it internationally where Earl Bryan was doing it sort of domestically.

[Christian Hansen]

Or he was doing it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

They divided up the. Or he was doing it for Israel. Sorry, sorry.

[Christian Hansen]

Right. He was selling. Maxwell was selling it for Israel. Brian for the United States.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right.

[Zachary Trites]

Alrighty. Don't skip forward, guys, because I am on the road. World's fastest ad read coming at you. I'm going to be at Stanford, Levittown, Chandler, Arizon, San Diego. I'm also going to be adding Toronto, Montreal, as well as Washington D.C. and a bunch of other dates. Dates are in the description. Also in probably the comments of this episode. Go see me on the road. Come hang out. I'll be hanging out with everyone after the show. Come shake my hand, call me an idiot, whatever you want to do, I will be there. Additionally, I will be doing my one hour of stand up comedy. I'm very proud of this hour. I'm really excited to share with you guys and it would mean the world if everyone could come on out. And what do you wear to a show on the road? That's a great question. You can go to Camp Goods Co. That's right. We got merch, we got Camp Merch. We got hats, hoodies, T shirts. A lot of stuff is out of stock. Things have been selling like hotcakes. But we're going to be restocking everything in all the sizes. So you can go there right now, get all the merch, get all the coolest clothing in the podcast game. We're going to be updating that site regularly and if you come out to a show, I'd love to see you sporting some of the threads that we got up online. I'll see you guys there. Let's get back to the show. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us we brought in.

[Christian Hansen]

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[Zachary Trites]

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[Christian Hansen]

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Free [e-mail] Spotify greenlight.com Spotify so was the consolidation of the Promise software, was there one singular governing body that was able to access all that information? Was that U.S. intelligence? Was it a joint, joint venture?

[Unnamed Speaker]

I mean this is the sort of also screwy allegation. But like the idea if you believe the allegations was, would be that you know, U.S. intelligence, NSA would have the ability to access like everybody else's thing. But then if you believe the other side of it, the Maxwell side of it, then you, then you'd believe that like Mossad or whatever, Israel would have access to all, all that stuff. Presumably they'd be more interested in what's going on in their neighborhood, you would.

[Zachary Trites]

Think or it's some type of joint venture. Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You know we, we do talk about that. I mean it's not like we don't mention Israel having promise. Like this other guy who we don't get into, here's a good person we don't get into. Arab Menashe. Well we, we talk about him but there's so much like a world, I mean he's still alive. Yeah, there's Such a world of interesting stuff around that guy. It was like a. A spot. A intelligence operative for Israel. Not necessarily a Mossad, but id, part of the idf, who is now living in Canada as what seems like our arms dealing kind of guy. Public relations consulting.

[Zachary Trites]

Consulting's good.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Who, who Danny talked to from our story about, about like Promise, which we mentioned. But he also like at the time had just gotten himself out of a year long prosecution sitting in the. Actually sitting in the same jail. Not to be like this guy, but sitting in the same jail that Epstein died in.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Downtown. He spent a year fighting the US government with a public defender saying I like he had. He. The allegation was like that he had sold three C130s or something like that, three planes to like our enemies, quote unquote, like North Korea, I think, or Iran or something like that. But they arrested him on, on like you know, weapons and, or like material, you know, illegal selling of. Of weaponry. He sits in that jail for a year, gets a public defender and manages to get himself over the course of like what, an 89 to 90. Right before Danny talks to him. He, he. He spends like a year fighting that and wins. He gets the court to like ask Israel like are you. Or whatever his lawyers ask Israel like has this guy ever worked in intelligence? They're like, no, no, no, no. Then he produced translator. He translator. Then he produced this document saying oh no, he worked for Israeli intelligence for idf. And then they're like oh yeah. Like he did. And he like produces his passports like this thick with him going to like North Korea and like all this stuff. And so eventually his defense was I was just working for my country, like.

[Christian Hansen]

And they hung it out dry. So now he's just like pissed and, and talking. Wow, that's.

[Zachary Trites]

That seems messy.

[Christian Hansen]

You know, like he's. He wrote a book called I cannot remember what it. What it might be able to find it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But it's a, it's not God's war war thing.

[Christian Hansen]

War.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Profits of war.

[Christian Hansen]

Profits of war.

[Unnamed Speaker]

P R O F I T S.

[Christian Hansen]

He in, in the book he said there's a chapter on the Promise Software. And he's like, yeah, you know, it came out that, you know, Michael, this guy Michael Rakanesciuto said that the software was the back door was installed on the Cabazon Reservation. Like I know about the Cabazon Reservation. It wasn't out there. It was actually my guy, like this Israeli American guy that he knew in like Southern California. Yeah, who. And he names him and so you Know, me and Zach were like, got the movie contract. We gotta figure out as much as we possibly can about. I mean, or whatever. Obviously, we gotta figure out this whole story. So we go to this guy's house to be like, yo, did you install the back door on the Promise software?

[Unnamed Speaker]

And we got his white. His wife was the only one that would talk to us. Yeah, I think she put him on like, speaker or like she got him on the phone somehow. But basically, like, she was just like laughing. She was just like, harry, like, you're believing that guy. Like, he's. He like, stayed at our house.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Like, my husband has like, like no idea how to like, hack software like that. But then at a certain point you're like, who knows?

[Zachary Trites]

What do we believe?

[Unnamed Speaker]

You know, who do you believe when you deal with all this stuff? And that's the sort of whole problem with the Octopus and that Danny had and that we had is the like, where do you draw the line between, like, who you believe, who you don't. When you don't have, like, you know, something happened. Something happened. Either there's a disinformation campaign happening or something very bad and dark happened, or the combination of the two and it's chide up within like lies and liars and you're trying to weed through. You sort through all the weeds and then you have to say, like, what happened? And like.

[Zachary Trites]

And like, you're just like, we. No one knows really.

[Christian Hansen]

And we weren't about that. Like, we were upfront about the limitations of our investigation. And I think we're also really upfront that we, like, really. She took it as like, further than anybody else. And, you know, like, I, We. I saw some criticism of us for not including a series of ex girlfriends of Danny's, like, talking about their theories about what happened to him. And it's like, they didn't ask this girl what she thought and it's like, she wasn't there.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah.

[Christian Hansen]

She doesn't know. She dated him when they were 19. But I don't. We're not. We can't do that much. Which I think is somebody's opinion. I mean, their opinions matter. Everybody's opinion matters. But it'll just confuse.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah. You know, which I think is credit actually to the work that you guys did. That it's not hyper sensational. Right. Like, you could have gone in a direction that was like, this guy did it and this is why. And this is what he was uncovering. And this is who's implicated and made like, very clear lines and like drawn, smoking guns. Obviously, we know documentary filmmakers can make things seem very, very compelling. And it seems like you guys kind of went in a much more sort of journalistic and in my opinion, like a more honest approach. Like, hey, there's a bunch of different theories. We're tying it together the best we can. And this is more or less what the conclusion that you guys can draw from it is. Which, I mean, maybe for a lot of America is maybe unsatisfying because they're.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Like, yeah, I think it's unsatisfying for people, which is understandable because we were never, like, we were never satisfied. We were like changing things till past the deadlines of like when we were. We were in color grade, swapping out things, trying to like, push the investigation further, you know, like already seven years.

[Zachary Trites]

Seven years into this project, and it's.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Like, you know, we wanted to know. We wanted to know the answer to every single question we asked.

[Zachary Trites]

Of course.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, maybe we could have. There's a thing, you know, that you can do with framing that I think we should. We could have done better, which is at least for our own sanity, which is like, set the goalposts a little lower, you know, and like, make clear, like, how many things we introduced into the public that had never been seen before and make a bigger deal out of that. Like, the pictures that you're seeing are crime scene photographs that no one has had access to before ever, because we FOIA'd them, we fought for those, we got them. Nobody has seen that stuff. The police sketch, the police, these audio, all these like characters that you're hearing. Nobody has ever heard those recordings outside of sometimes law enforcement, sometimes like journalists who are now dead, but like, they'd never been public before. So it's like if, I guess if you're like inside baseball and you know this stuff, it would be extremely exciting to you. But that club is pretty small. It's like us and a few people and they're already disgruntled because they didn't make the documentary.

[Zachary Trites]

Sure.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So. But anyway, what I'm trying to say is like, I think that we did solve a bunch of. This is sounding so self serving, but like, we tried to capture the feeling of going on the adventure that Danny went on with the benefit of 30 years hindsight and taking it as far as we could past the limits that we were given and do it somewhat responsibly, like you said. And I think that like, when it comes to, like, what's going on with. When you go all the way Back to like, okay, we've talked about murders in Southern California that Danny was trying to solve, murder in San Francisco that he was trying to solve, which I think that we push those way further than has ever been public before. Some of us think that we solved it, some of us think that it's open ended, you know, between the two of us, but we're pushed it really far. And then you come back to Danny and it's like, what happened to this guy? You know, was it Robert Nichols? Was it Joe Cuellar? Did he just kill himself? Which is always a possibility, of course. Like the stuff that we presented on that had never been published before about inconsistencies in the, in the federal and local narrative. Right. And it's like, well, when you have inconsistencies, it's a matter of like, is it meaningful or not? Right. And some of these are meaningful in a way that's like, doesn't make sense. Could Joe Cuellar have. I mean, I guess this is like a sort of spoilers alert thing, but it's been announced a year, so whatever. Could Joe Cuellar have been hiding stuff because he was involved with intelligence and you just inherently hide stuff? Yeah, quite possibly. Was he the kind of guy who has, you know, eliminated people for other operations? I think quite likely. So it's like the fact that they were talking so close to the end of Danny's life that Danny told people that he was going to meet him in West Virginia. I don't know. A lot of that stuff just hadn't.

[Christian Hansen]

I feel like, had really been of like, wondered. I mean, not with no basis, just flight of fancy. If it was, you know what if it was like a, like an op, like a training operation, like, let's see if we can actually kill a journalist and make it seem like a suicide. And like, let's, like, let's try it in the field. And like, he's like an unaffiliated journalist and you know, like, he's kind of poking around, he's kind of got it, you know, and just like, let's see if we can like get in, get out, make it clean or.

[Unnamed Speaker]

That's very dark.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, but I mean, who knows? Who knows, right?

[Christian Hansen]

But I mean, I don't actually think that, but that's just like, you know, laying in bed at night, like, wondering like, what. What happened, you know.

[Zachary Trites]

So you mentioned a discrepancy between the two of you perhaps as far as like, who you think maybe actually did kill Dany?

[Christian Hansen]

Well, no, we were talking about the Paul Maraska murder. And I feel like when you see in episode three, I make this case for who did it and why, and, you know, I don't think it's like.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Is likely.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah. And so I like to say I solved it. Zach likes to say, did you solve it? I think, yeah. You know, he's like, you know, he's bully.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, he's so big. I mean, he's so much bigger than you.

[Christian Hansen]

I know.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I mean, like, he's beating up on him.

[Zachary Trites]

Four inches taller than you, as the audience can see. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I'm curious, like, with the death of Danny, he's getting these calls 3, 4 in the morning, you know, people just saying, like, hey, drop dead. Hang up. Random radio on the other side, hang up. Like from like a horror movie, right? Like, like just these ominous looming phone calls as confirmed by his housekeeper at the time, all of the various people, all of this is leading up to his eventual death, which has been ruled a suicide by two different coroner reports. I'm curious in the sort of fallout from this. And as the documentary has been released.

[Christian Hansen]

It'S weird, more people's coming out when you're so, like, aware of the possibility that you will mysteriously die and you're getting death threats regularly. It's weird to then mysteriously die. You know, it's just. Right, obviously, I mean, that's kind of what the movie's about.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You're saying he. If that happened, he was doing that?

[Christian Hansen]

No, she's sort of like, you know, like, it makes you think, like, well, no shit. Like it was a murder by pros, you know, just because of that. Well, who was doing. Who was threatening, who was. Who were making those calls? You know, like, that was another difficult thing. Like, we got his phone records. No, we didn't get his phone records. We got his phone bills. So only we only know the long distance calls that he was making. They don't. You don't get charged at that point for your local calls in D.C. and Northern Virginia, which is like, where all this shit was going down. So there's a huge blind spot in like. And nobody, I mean, it's impossible for us now, but nobody at the time, like, petitioned the phone company. Phone company subpoenaed it to get like, you know. Cause like this. This friend of Danny's been. He could have remembered what. But he was standing next to Danny when this call came in. It was like a threat call there. And Danny just goes, just make it quick, brother. And like, hangs it up. According to Ben. That's what happened. And, you know, so he could remember. He could tell the police, like, on this date at around this time, like, what are the numbers that are coming in? Who are these people that are calling? You know what I mean?

[Zachary Trites]

So.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Or, like, aren't the, like, long distance records that we got? Isn't it, like, up until just, like. Like two days before he dies also?

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And then, like, somehow, like, the police didn't get the records.

[Christian Hansen]

There's another bill that would have come. So, like, I think it cuts off like, a week out and then so like the last week.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, or something like the last two or three days. Which, like, that was so frustrating. You know, it's like we petition we, foia, to get all the records from the police department in West Virginia where he died. And we. We're sort of like, at that point, it's like, we're gonna, you know, this is gonna have everything, you know, and then you're like, damn, you guys didn't even, like, ask for all the bills.

[Zachary Trites]

Like, yeah, the most crucial 48 hours.

[Christian Hansen]

Like, yeah. Danny smoked Carlton Menthol 1/ hundreds from, like, the age of 13 until the age of 44 when he passed away. And he had a carton or like a half carton of Carlton's with him in West Virginia. And there were Carlton cigarettes in the ashtrays. In the ashtrays in the bathroom and in the ashtrays in the main part of the suite. And there were two Marlboro cigarette butts. And supposedly nobody else was in the room with them. Nobody has said they were in the room with them.

[Zachary Trites]

Nobody.

[Christian Hansen]

And, you know, why would you smoke two Marlboros if you're. If you smoke Carltons and have plenty of cigarettes? And that's. Yeah. Why would you bum Marlboro's off somebody?

[Zachary Trites]

Right?

[Christian Hansen]

Why would you.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Wouldn't it be cool to, like, test those Marlboros for DNA?

[Zachary Trites]

But why would you test if it was obviously a suicide?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right?

[Christian Hansen]

And so then when we showed up at the. At that law firm and that. That guy's like, we have no physical evidence, no cigarette butts. Because we asked for. We wanted to get. We wanted to test the cigarette butts, but they threw them away. So there's like, 30 years later, there's so many. It's so hard when it was already hard.

[Zachary Trites]

You know, things that seem obvious in the moment, like, oh, they would have obviously gone through and done their due diligence to tech, you know, test this.

[Christian Hansen]

They might not have had, you know, DNA.

[Unnamed Speaker]

No they had DNA.

[Christian Hansen]

Did they have a DNA then?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, because think about when, like, Phil went to jail.

[Christian Hansen]

That was like 2000.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, really? No, but they had.

[Zachary Trites]

I think it would have been like just before DNA would have been used in court, because I think OJ was like 94, 95, something like that. And I think that was.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Why Google it when you can speculate?

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah, exactly.

[Zachary Trites]

Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But. But either way, the. It wasn't even considered a, a homicide. So it was like kind of a miracle that the records even still existed in what we got. Except for it was such a crazy case for the police department was like the biggest case they ever dealt with.

[Zachary Trites]

Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Wrongful, you know, unattended. Unattended death is what they call it. Right. So they kept it just kind of out of. I don't know why, curiosity or some feeling of obligation.

[Christian Hansen]

But their lack of candor is bizarre. I mean, like the lead detective from that investigation in 1991, and I don't know about today, but at the time we were putting together the film, he was the chief of police of the town, and he won't let any of his. You know, there were like a team of probably like five to seven police officers that did various tasks on the investigation, including this guy. And he kind of of made it clear, don't talk, don't talk about this case. We're not talking about it. There's nothing to be said. And we tried to talk to. I mean, it'd be amazing to have a candid conversation with this guy, just like, you know, just like hearing about all the, like, in, like, things that he did that were helpful. Like he did discover some things and have interesting conversations with people on it. I would love to hear the perspective of a, a small town police detective who's like investigating this case of this guy from out of town who's caught up in all this international intrigue. I mean, it must have been fascinating.

[Zachary Trites]

For them and your outreach to them. Well, I think they were burned.

[Unnamed Speaker]

They were burned by the media. I understand. I feel like. I understand it of just like it has never helped us in the past to talk to the media. Why would it help now? You know, like, we got burned by everybody saying that we were part of a cover up. And then like, now we're gonna like, open this thing up again. We're gonna get seen as a bunch of like, small town knuckleheads who don't know how to investigate a case. Like, I've solved a thousand cases, why am I getting persecuted over this one? You know?

[Zachary Trites]

But like, as far as the suspect, you. You lay out how many of them are still alive, and are you concerned about, you know, how you've represented them in the documentary? Like, what is your. Your feeling on that?

[Christian Hansen]

Now, the main two suspects for me are Robert Booth. Nichol is supposedly dead, and Joe Cuellar, who is dead. But, yeah, I mean, I don't know.

[Unnamed Speaker]

About concern with how we portrayed them, but it's like, would have been awesome to talk to Joe Cuellar. He was alive when Christian started this thing.

[Christian Hansen]

And, like, it was another one of those things where it was like, you know, I was scared to talk to him, and what do I say? And anyway, like, hey, did you, like, kill this dude? Or, like, what was there.

[Zachary Trites]

Were there any details about Jokeway are. That were not included in the doc or anything that you guys uncovered that you couldn't fully substantiate, but you kind of speculated on that. You're like, oh, this would be interesting, but we.

[Christian Hansen]

Biographical things.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. Like, what was the thing about him? Like, his son was like, I know for a fact that he, like, trained the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, right? Like, that was an interesting lot, I feel like. Or Bin Laden.

[Christian Hansen]

Didn't he say that in the doc, though?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Did we say that? I feel like. I feel like maybe we didn't include that because it was, like, too confusing to people or something. But.

[Christian Hansen]

Here.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Here's what, like, we would have loved to do is, like, when you're dealing with these guys. Joe Cuer is a highly decorated, seemingly Special Forces intelligence operator operative who is in a world that, like, is extremely opaque. Were, like, not connected with any, you know, like, near, like, big news thing. Talking to people that knew him besides his son was so difficult. So it's just like, it's, you know, people who worked with him. We tried to reach out through the small network of, like, Special Forces guys on, like, Facebook and stuff like that. It's just nobody would talk, you know, and it's. It's. It's like a. There's a code of silence, which I can understand, I guess, but it just makes it so hard, you know, it's intentionally hard to get to the bottom of people like that.

[Zachary Trites]

Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

What we showed was that, like, he lied to the FBI. The FBI had ample evidence to know that he was lying to them. And nobody called themselves out on it or investigated further. And everybody was just, like, doing a kind of omerta thing around whatever Joe wanted to be out there. And you see that in the. I think you see that in the Martinsburg police files. Right. Because they're like, didn't somebody meet with him? Or maybe it was Anne, but somebody met with him that was like, oh, he's just like a. He's just a fruitcake. Like, they're meeting him at his office in the Pentagon or near the Pentagon.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And they're just like, oh, this guy's just a fruitcake. And it's like, okay, but you're sitting in. You know, he's like, obviously he's a Special Forces intelligence operative. If he's presenting himself as a fruitcake, there's a reason maybe.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah. This is a part of a deliberate sort of character that he's taken on.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You're not meeting him in a mental institution. You're not meeting him at a McDonald's. You're meeting him at the Pentagon. At the Pentagon or in his office in a military.

[Zachary Trites]

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[Christian Hansen]

Or maybe there's a witness in a.

[Zachary Trites]

Case, a guy needs to go, so then a call gets made to some type of like, like hitman for hire that kind of operates in the fringes of, you know, society or is done from a centralized level.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I don't know if we can. I have no idea.

[Zachary Trites]

Like, if you had to speculate, I guess. Like, is it like they work like. I guess I'm wondering how many levels.

[Christian Hansen]

There's a guy named Don Bowles, B O L L E S and he was a investigative reporter in Phoenix, Arizona, I believe. And in like 1972, you know, he was investigating some like mobbed up, like, land deal, shady fraudy land thing, and his car got blown up. You know, he got in the car to start the car, boom, he's dead. So like, you know, that kind of stuff happens. Or like, like, you know, in that book, the Last Investigation by Gaydon Fonzie, there's like all of those like JFK adjacent, you know, knowledgeable people who like mysteriously die. Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I think it's interesting when people say, do you know the kind of cliche almost where people these days, some like pissed off husband or wife, hires a hitman to kill their spouse to get money or get a divorce or whatever, or not avoid getting divorced, I guess, and then they end up hiring like a informant or a fed or something like that.

[Zachary Trites]

Then they inform her and she cries on TV and she's like, oh my God, she died. No way. And like they'll take her to prison. I've saw that one specifically.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Okay, so. So the thing that you always see afterwards is, is somebody in law enforcement says, oh, well, there's actually no such thing as a hitman. Have you noticed that? They're like, there's like, there's nobody who actually, if you try to hire somebody who's like a hitman, it's like a figure of our imagine figment of our imaginations collectively.

[Christian Hansen]

The Richard Linklater movie says that about the movie Hitman. Yeah, like there's actually no such thing as a hitman.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right? But it's like, okay, well if you look at any of the mob stories, right, it's like, like, yeah, those guys aren't just hitman yeah, but they're people that you pay and they kill someone. They also have, like, loan sharking going on. You know, it's just like this. You in America. I mean, I don't want to, like.

[Christian Hansen]

Ghost Dog was based on a true story. Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I don't want to, like, harp on this too much or invite imitators, but it's like this idea that you just can't, like, hire a person to eliminate somebody else in America is like a weird myth to. I mean, this is kind of like, outside of whatever we're talking about. I just find that a very strange concept.

[Christian Hansen]

Like, it is a job.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It is. Yeah, it is. It is. It's a side hustle. Maybe it's not every day.

[Zachary Trites]

Have you seen 95 the website hirehitman.com? this is like a. Would you mind Googling this kid? You can just. You don't necessarily need to do dot com. But there was like, a whole thing where, like, I think someone made it as a joke. And then it became basically like. Like kind of like a large net for people, like, trying to kill people. And, like.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But then it became a federal, I assume.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Then, like, the feds are like, oh, yeah, it's like a honey pot or.

[Zachary Trites]

Whatever rent to him. And it was a. Like a satirical website, then became like an actual website where.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But this is one of these things dumb people say, like, oh, yeah, this is just, like, further proof that, like, there. There is no such thing.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah. It's like, okay, well, there's clearly a market for it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You. You read, like, the Last Mafioso or you read any of those, like, those mob books, and like, like, people are getting hired all the time to kill other people.

[Zachary Trites]

So I guess I'm tragic. I'm curious, like, how. How many layers, like, does the COVID up need to be? Because I hear these things all the time. Where, like, again, I was telling Zach before, like, I'm. My mom was a conspiracy theorist, and she would always tell me conspiracies, and I'm like, okay, but this person's in on it. She's like, yes. And I'm like. And this person, she's like, yes. And I'm like, okay, so everyone's in on it. And as soon as everyone's in on it, then I don't believe it. You know what I mean? So, like, the coroner says, oh, this was obviously a suicide in the case of Dan. And then a second corner says, it's suicide. So is it possible that a hit can be done so effectively that the coroner's like, yeah, it's a suicide. Or is the coroner in on it?

[Christian Hansen]

So the police are the police with this. And feel free, any of you, any. Either of you, to, like, chime in.

[Zachary Trites]

Gabe, you can chime in too.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, yeah, everybody.

[Christian Hansen]

But like. All right, so it's like a. You know, there are. You can only test for certain things, like forced entry, fingerprints, footprints, you know, and then they're like a series of, like, you know, how do you do it? Do you do it with, like, you inject someone where they have a heart attack, or do you hold the gun in front of their head or do you make. Hang them and make it. Or however you do it. Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You think about with a. With a. With a suicide made to look. A murder made to look like a suicide.

[Christian Hansen]

A murder made to look like a suicide. I assume that's what we're talking.

[Zachary Trites]

Yes, exactly. When people suicide themselves.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah. So basically, you just have to, like, get in and get out without leaving a trace. Right. Hard but not impossible. Will you wear booties, gloves, I don't know, whatever you use some sort of, like, way to inoculate them or, you know, maybe if they're already wasted, like, that helps. Or, you know, maybe you could, like, blow some sort of, like, powders like scopeolamine or something on their face so they become disoriented, you know.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah.

[Christian Hansen]

I don't know, but I assume you could do it because it does.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I think something that we found interesting was that, you know, with medical. It's. There are murders that are made to look like a suicide, and. And there are. And times where they get caught. Right. But it's exceeding. It's exceedingly rare that it happens successfully. And. And it. What we found was, like, talking to a few people in the medical examination world is like, their level of certainty that it's not that some of these cases like Danny's is like, is. Is. Is not a murder. It's sort of like, how many times have you really dealt with something that's. That's such an outlier case? It's so rare. How would you even know? You know, it's. It's very confusing. Right, right.

[Zachary Trites]

And I guess in Danny's case, I mean, he cut both of his wrists to the ligaments, like, in both arms. Like.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, he cut it to the ligament in one arm.

[Zachary Trites]

Okay.

[Unnamed Speaker]

We don't know fully how deep it went on the other arm because, I mean, the. The records just unfortunately were not detailed enough. So that's, like, pretty annoying, right? It's like. Like it's also like certain point we need. You know, if you're doing the autopsy, you need to put the details in there.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, you would think.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And they're very pertinent details.

[Zachary Trites]

And in Danny's case, forced entry is not really seen necessarily.

[Christian Hansen]

Well, the bolt lock was not locked.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right, Right. So there's, there's. Yeah, there's no.

[Zachary Trites]

And then no sign of struggle inside the hotel.

[Christian Hansen]

But that means if somebody had a key.

[Zachary Trites]

Right?

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah, but they even like the. I mean, credit to the Martinsburg police, they put cops up on the roof to look for footprints to see if somebody like rappelled in. And no, they didn't find any fascinating.

[Zachary Trites]

Now I'm curious in the research you guys did because, I mean, it's like how long is the eight year project? Something like that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Like 10 to 12 for Grisha.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, I mean, it's like a remarkable amount of time to spend on one specific story. And at this point, you've gone to deep webs of every single little part of this octopus. Were there any parts of the investigation that you personally felt threatened or you felt like, oh, this is getting. I'm a little in over my head. Maybe I just chill for a little.

[Christian Hansen]

Just like early on when I was on my. Just totally on my own. I mean, you can kind of tell in that early footage of me that I was like whacked out. I was taking a bunch of Adderall to do all this research. And like, I was paranoid, but I don't think that it was like really totally justified. There was one point where I was like kind of researching the origin of promise. It's like this, the software, it's like this thing called Main Core, which was like this early kind of like domestic spying operation that I don't know what department was really running it, but it was being run out of FEMA. And in the 70s it came out in those post Watergate invest hearings. And basically there was this senator, Senator Tuney, who was clearly very knowledgeable about or had information about Main Corps. And he was interviewing, I had transcripts of him interviewing in the 70s, these like generals from, you know, the, or whatever, Navy admirals and army generals and Air Force generals about this like military domestic spying operation and their use of this like computerized software or this computer system called Main Corps. And so I, I was like, well, you know, he's asking these guys and they're like, I don't know. I don't know anything. Like, I don't know what you're talking about. And they're like, denying knowledge of it. But he, like, you can just tell by his questioning that he's been briefed by somebody about this. So it's like I called him one day to, you know, he was like, old, you know, living out in, you know, Idaho or Wyoming or somewhere. And. And, you know, he was basically like. Yeah. I mean, we had inside sources like, that were telling us about it. The weird thing was, like, the call was, like, making these crazy noises and, like, scratchy and like, it was just weird. It was just like a weird sound happening over the line that, you know, doesn't usually happen. I was. I was recording it, and it's like almost an unusable audio clip because there was so much weird, like, feedback and stuff happening. But, you know, he was like, out in Wyoming. I don't know if it was a landline or whatever or if it was a cell phone, but. Or if like, he was like, you know, they put two and two together. Like, don't talk to the. The guy, you know, don't talk to the guy that's looking into the. Or origin of like, domestic spying. Computer. Domestic computer spying or whatever in the. In the United States. I don't know, but he was basically like. Wouldn't tell me who his sources were. And. And that was a wrap on that. Like, that was like. That was the last we talked. And I assume he's probably dead by now. I should have pushed it harder, but.

[Zachary Trites]

But no weird phone calls at 3am with just radio in the background?

[Christian Hansen]

No, I mean, the story's so old. Like, who's, like, I think who's manning.

[Unnamed Speaker]

The Danny Castle road desk?

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah, right. Oh, oh, oh, I know. So I had this source out in Arizona who's a investigator. Fascinating, fascinating dude. And he's got, like, physical archives. I mean, he's doing. Been doing like, deep political research for probably 40 years, and he's almost like a clearinghouse for.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You're like, I want to look more into, like, the China Lake thing.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

He's like, okay, I've got some files on that and then mail them to you.

[Christian Hansen]

And he has a copy machine. He's old school, and so he'll, you know, copy his original files on whatever you want and he'll mail them to you. And he'll be like, just keep checking your mailbox because I'm just going to keep sending stuff, and as I find it, I'm going to keep sending it it. And so basic. He actually investigated that Don Bowles case in Arizona. Basically. Like, I. I got my first you know, packet from him. It's like a normal letter, but stuffed with files, and it's, like, sliced open on the top. And I was like, like, weird. Like, this is so. And, like, did anything. How is everything still in here? Like, who. Why is this? I don't know. Took the files.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Like, how's it possible for it to go from Arizona to here?

[Christian Hansen]

And so then, like, I. But I didn't, like, know what to think about it. Like, is. Did he use, like, a really old envelope and it just kind of in the travel. Like.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Or like, a neighbor, like, found it, thought that was theirs or something like that? Yeah.

[Christian Hansen]

So then, like, three or four more letters arrived, and they were all sliced open. And I called him. I was like, what is going on here? You're mail is open. Are you sending it to me? Open? And just hoping the papers don't fall out. Like, what's going on here? And he's like, oh, I have a mail cover. And I'm like, oh, what? He's a mail cover. I've had it for years. And I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, oh, somebody, you know, opens all my mail and reads it and puts it back in there.

[Zachary Trites]

Wow. I did not know that was a job.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah, right.

[Zachary Trites]

Some guy's job is just mail Cover.

[Christian Hansen]

Cover, Right. So the.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, that was like an old CIA thing.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah. Funny that, like, somebody still. I mean, age together.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Somebody's still working the Don bowl or not Dumbles Devereaux. The Devereaux desk.

[Zachary Trites]

But, like, that old conspiracy or. Not even old. It's kind of a new conspiracy. Like my FBI agent, like, the designated FBI agent, like, watches your webcam to, like.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

You're up to.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

Kind of real in that regard as far as mail cover. You know what I mean? Like, there's a dude that's designated just for, like, this one guy.

[Christian Hansen]

I don't know if it's a dude or whatever.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, let's not.

[Christian Hansen]

Somebody with a knife. Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

A human. Actually, a woman. Probably do way better at the job. You know what I mean? Just, like, going through snooping.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I won't speculate.

[Zachary Trites]

That's fascinating.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

Did that, like, freak you out a little? Like, all right, these guys are tracking my address.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah. It freaked me out. And then. And then it was just like, during the pandemic, our office, it was like, you know, city was kind of desolate. The office was up on 27th street near fit and, like, just like, walk. I would walk home at night, and we'd have super late Nights at the office, I'd be walking home at like 3 in the morning. And, you know, it's just like. Been reading about this, like, eerie, scary, murdery stuff all day. And then like, it's just a weird vibe. Walking home at night, like. Well.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And people are not to harp on this too much, but like, when you are talking to these people who knew Danny's sources or people who knew. Yeah. People in the octopus world, constantly. People were telling us, this is dangerous. Be careful. Watch out.

[Zachary Trites]

People were saying that too.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Christian Hansen]

Be careful is the funniest thing to tell someone. It's like, yeah, yeah. You know. Oh, thanks for.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Christian Hansen]

Reminding me I don't want to live. Oh, but now I do. Because I guess you just like, you gotta say it because you want the instincts.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

Fly safe is the same thing.

[Christian Hansen]

Right, Right, right, right, right.

[Zachary Trites]

Safe travels.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Safe travels. But people. Yeah. So, like, like, there was a guy who told Christian, like, oh, you're looking into Robert Boot Nichols. Like, I knew Robert Nichols. Yeah, you're looking into some really bad stuff. These guys are going to come after you. I'm going to send you a gun. And it was like. And he was like. He was like. He's like, these. These guys, here's the thing. They're not that smart, okay? All you got to do is point, point and shoot, and it takes care of it. And it's like.

[Zachary Trites]

I mean, that's practical advice at least. I mean, it's better.

[Christian Hansen]

He was like.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But he wanted to. He was like. He was like, it's going to be a very specific caliber. And we're like, you know, we're in New York City. We're just like. Christian's like, I don't need a gun. Like, do not send me a gun through the mail. Like, I do not want that. Please don't do that. He's like. He's like, it's going to be a 10 millimeter hollowed out. Hollowed out with a plutonium tip with like some kind of radioactive material in it that was going to help eliminate these. And it's not like we're talking to, like, this is somebody who we found deep in the archives who knew Robert Nichols and Michael.

[Christian Hansen]

It's like he's a real obscure real.

[Unnamed Speaker]

In some way. We're talking to him. Obviously he's real, but he's not like somebody that we found in the, you know, the Yellow Pages are online or something. Right. Like, he's in the files that we had and he like, his certainty that they would come after you and that you needed a plutonium tipped bullet was just like classic octopus, you know.

[Zachary Trites]

Right. It's either an indication you're talking to a, like a kind of a kooky dude or you're investigating kooky dudes or both. And neither one is like a great spot to be in. Yeah, I mean, so what ended up happening? Did he send you a gun?

[Unnamed Speaker]

No, we never gave him the address.

[Zachary Trites]

I mean that is wild. I mean, that would have been enough for me to be like, nah, I'm guessing good.

[Christian Hansen]

I tried to meet him. I tried to go meet him, but.

[Unnamed Speaker]

You know, he wouldn't. I think that after responding, stopped responding.

[Christian Hansen]

So I flew out to California and.

[Zachary Trites]

Literally just waiting around like, hey dude.

[Christian Hansen]

I mean I just doing other, other things. But you know, tried to go out to his place in the Bay Area, you know, from sf, but couldn't go to. He, you know, who knows, maybe he died, you know.

[Zachary Trites]

And then since the doc comes out and now millions of people have seen it and like been on the ride with you guys. Yeah, I'm sure more stuff has come out since, like more people have reached out and more people have more information. Can you share any of that stuff that has come out?

[Christian Hansen]

What, what?

[Unnamed Speaker]

I mean, I would say first thing is when I, when it came out, I was positive that we were just gonna get so many cranks, you know, just reaching out, which we did. I mean, we got some cranks, there's for sure some cranks. But the amount of people who actually knew people involved with the Octopus, who, you know, as you call it, as Danny called it. Right. Who knew people that were involved with what Danny was investigating was like shot was shocking to me. Mostly they contact Christian because he's the face of the investigation. Sometimes they would contact me, but they would be like, hey, my dad, my granddad, my whatever was this person knew this person, whatever, and, and you look into them, it's like, oh yeah, you did know.

[Christian Hansen]

Or somebody know all already because of their last name.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right, right. Gerald Bull, who's a, A guy that we don't go into. You just see a little footage from like something he was, he was in creating the super gun for Iraq. He was a what? A Canadian, originally Canadian, like kind of theoretical munitions guy who was a brilliant.

[Christian Hansen]

Kind of like a real life mad scientist. Like he had this vision for ballistic, you know, projectiles where. And, and his ultimate vision was that if you make a gun, basically a cannon big enough you can shoot capsules.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Into space like that you, it's like In a world in which everybody's so in, in the, in the like Oppenheimer.

[Christian Hansen]

Like the rocket rock age, the sexiness of this. But it's like, it's so much more efficient if you could shoot it into space, like you wouldn't have to like, you know.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right. You just said the propulsion being on board. He's like, no, no, let's go back, let's go back to that first idea, the Napoleonic age of like cannons, you know, and just, just get a cannon that's big enough, you can shoot a satellite into space. You can shoot satellites out of space. You can create, you can shoot across the entire world a projectile that's much more effective, less traceable, whatever.

[Zachary Trites]

Like a ballistic missile in space that then reads.

[Unnamed Speaker]

A missile that doesn't have power. Yeah, doesn't have power.

[Zachary Trites]

On.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It's a bullet, giant bullet shot from an enormous. I mean if you just look up.

[Christian Hansen]

Super gun Gerald Boll, super gun.

[Unnamed Speaker]

The. They. He developed these, they tested them. They're amazing. You know, if you're Gerald. Not good for humanity. But they're, they're B U, L L.

[Christian Hansen]

And supergun, I think is one engineer Gerald Bull.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Right. So look at some of these sketches. And then, and then we have video of their tests. I mean we have footage of their, of them testing them.

[Christian Hansen]

And so, and so the mad scientist part of it is like he has this one thing that he wants to do.

[Unnamed Speaker]

He's kind of like, clearly I'm not going to diagnose, but here I go. Like, like kind of like Asperger kind of, you know, has a fixation. I'm fixated on this thing.

[Christian Hansen]

And so who's. And so he was working for like DARPA for a while and then his lost his contract with darpa. Cuz that, you know, nobody was into the canon thing anymore. And so then he's like, he needs to keep building a bigger and bigger gun. And Saddam Hussein like hires him and he's like, all right, I'll work for these guys. Mossad was bummed. Israel was so bummed that he was making a gun that could shoot from Iraq directly into Israel.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, I mean, I get it.

[Christian Hansen]

And so Canada, they killed him.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

Who's there?

[Christian Hansen]

Mike Mossad, he was assassinated in like Antwerp. Yeah, he was in Belgium.

[Zachary Trites]

What?

[Unnamed Speaker]

And so he's assassinated, I think on the street.

[Christian Hansen]

But that was in a. It was in his hotel.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Okay, let me just add more disinformation.

[Zachary Trites]

Out there in Belgium on his Instagram or on his Wikipedia real quick.

[Christian Hansen]

Click on his Instagram.

[Zachary Trites]

Yo, what's his story?

[Christian Hansen]

Live right now.

[Zachary Trites]

What's his story doing? So, okay, he's. His apartment suffers a non robbery break ins. Okay. He's shot five times in the head and back at point blank range while approaching the door of his apartment in Brussels. He was dead on the scene. Whoa. He was shot by a three man team when he answered the door is what another account says his cooperation between Bull and Saddam Hussein was felt to be an immediate threat by Israel which had engaged in previous military engagements in Iraq during the Arab Israeli war.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So Danny Castilero was interested in this guy obviously because he's part of the sort of like military industrial.

[Christian Hansen]

So he dies March. He dies I think in 1990, like a few months before Danny's investigation started.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So it's interesting already. The crazy thing we don't even go into the show is that Doc Nichols, who is part of. We haven't even talked about this, I realize, but if you've seen the show, the Cabazon. Cabazon. The guy who was like the white dude out of Cabazon who. Who was intelligent CIA guy.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

He had gone to Gerald Bull's facility in Canada trying to buy it. Right?

[Christian Hansen]

Right. Yes.

[Unnamed Speaker]

They wanted to buy it and the sale got blocked, I think.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So it direct relates directly to our story about the octopus. Right. You've got this like mad science. Yet another mad scientist, arms dealer or arms creator, researcher who's somehow tied in with Danny's investigation.

[Christian Hansen]

Right. But also you have Michael telling Danny that he and Bull know each other and worked on projects together, you know. Sure, yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

So then bringing this back to your question after the show comes out, Christian got a message from his granddaughter. Wow.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah. It's just an example, like a lot of kind of people like that came out.

[Zachary Trites]

And what is her interest in reaching out to you?

[Christian Hansen]

She wanted to talk to Michael Reconnoitcuto and so I introduced them and did.

[Zachary Trites]

Was she like forthcoming with documents from.

[Christian Hansen]

She just kind of wanted answers about. You know, she just has questions about who her grandfather really was and what he was up to and trying to find people that knew him and stuff like that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

What we found is that there's. It's a fascinating story, kind of large community. It's not a community, but it's a large group of people who are all united by relatives who died in very strange circumstances related to what Danny was investigating. And they're all. It's like a fraternity, sorority. They're all kind of. A lot of them are aware of each other a lot of them know each other, and the only connection is that they had some relative who died in a really weird way or was up to some really weird business from this same era. And they're all like, they just want to know more.

[Zachary Trites]

And your investigation is ultimately, like, the nucleus of all of this.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, Danny's investigation, which became our investigation.

[Zachary Trites]

Going all the way back to, you know, the 60s, probably even before this, then of all these people that have sort of mysterious circumstances around their family, both in their operations, but also their death, that are now looking at you guys being like, all right, well, tell me everything you found. Whoa. I'm sure this is just one example. I'm sure there's tons.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And I think they feel, like, kind of validated because they're like, oh, I wish I, you know, I tell people about my family. And it sounds crazy, but, like, your show came out and showed that, like, this stuff was happening and talk about kind of thing which is, like, precise.

[Zachary Trites]

Right. So, I mean, you guys kind of block at the idea. Like, you know, like, Danny, you know, Castellaro, he's gone, and no one's manning his desk. But, like, these things don't go away, right? Like, these types of operations and sort of, like the way money and power and crime sort of circle circumpulate around each other, it just sort of changes shape. So I'm curious.

[Christian Hansen]

I mean, it's like, has, like, have things changed or do we know less? Okay, so, like, in the 80s, when all this Iran contrast stuff was going on, there was a team of investigative journalists that worked at the Wichita, Kansas paper. You know, and, like, some weird thing happens in their airfield, and they're over. They're on it, and they're, like, figuring it out and networking and. And just to use that as an example of, like, all over the country, there were these newspapers that had investigators investigating, doing good, boring sometimes or whatever stuff, just looking, digging, churning things up and publishing what they find. Now it's like you have, like, none of that. Nothing. You have, like, this is all that's left. You've got, like, yeah, and like, the New York Times and. But, you know, blogs and papers. But you can only. You can't just like. Like, it was like this churning of information that was just, like, kind of coming out. And we look back into stories in the 80s and 70s and the 90s, and, like, there's like, this. You can, like, rich amount of information that you can kind of, you know, look into people and look into operations and look into things that happened. And so we Have a pretty good sense of kind of like. And, like, what this Reagan era, what they were up to.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And now it's like.

[Christian Hansen]

And they were particularly hawkish. Like, they were particularly, like. And the Cold War was going on, so. And then now we have, like.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And now everything's. Well, number one, electronic. Electronic, which is way less sexy than going out to airfields and then, like, finding caches of weapons and, like, characters like Eugene Hasenfuss who's like, yeah, Barry Seal and all those guys. And then it's like, yeah, what is going on now? It's so buried. I. I don't know. I would just, like, feel bad for anybody who's actually trying to investigate this stuff, because it's just.

[Zachary Trites]

I'm surprised that that's the case. I would figure it's almost the exact opposite. That, like, as information is almost, like, kind of democratized and there's more stuff out there and you can track people's digital footprint, that there would be more info.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But who's paying for the tracking?

[Zachary Trites]

Right? Yeah, I mean, I guess you need.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Who's devoting the research?

[Zachary Trites]

I don't know. I even think, like. Like, the Epstein case was largely blown open by, like. Like, kind of small print journalists in Miami that were like.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Was it. Was it like, fully blown open?

[Zachary Trites]

I guess the investigation starts there, then starts getting picked up by larger conglomerates. But that's only one example I can think of.

[Christian Hansen]

And I'm. And I'm. So also, I don't want to say that, like, nothing's being investigated or whatever. I'm not saying that I'm. And I'm saying, like, yeah, there are specific stories that are being investigated, but I'm saying this, like, because our thing has all these tentacles, and it's like, like a bank, literally, like a banker in Baltimore named Robert Maxwell, different Robert Maxwell, like, got his, like, bank taken over by this, like, shady group that turned out to be an intelligence organization and, like, totally, like, cut him out of his whole thing, and he finds out that he's bankrolling some extremely shady arms deal. You know, it's just like. So I found that in the Baltimore sun. And it's like, I realized that, oh, that's the. Like, that's this Robert Maxwell and Danny's notes. And it's connected to this and. And. And Oliver north or what, you know, whatever. Like, just this kind of, like, general culture of, like, investigation.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Is that Robert Maxwell or Altman?

[Christian Hansen]

Robert Maxwell? I would. I haven't even tell you about this case, you know, but, yeah, Baltimore Breaking news.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I don't know what we're talking about anymore.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah, whatever. You know, it's just better to like, just have like, people also. Right. Like, for me, like, you know, I don't. You. You want to know who's telling you this stuff. And if. If it's a newspaper, it's actually printed, you're kind of like they're sticking their neck out behind it. They could get sued or whatever. If it's just some. You see online, it's just easier to like, take in the information and use it as valuable data if it's been like, actually published rather than on like a message board or something. But that is being a little snobbish. But it seems like it's more time consuming to like, go through information. You find on a message board, who's posting it, what's it mean? And.

[Unnamed Speaker]

But then it's like, oh, it's Time magazine. It's on. You know, then you're right. That's. That's literally an apparatus at that. At certain era.

[Christian Hansen]

I don't even remember what the question was.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

I mean, I guess I'm like, oh, what's happening now? Like, these things don't change, you know? You know what I mean?

[Christian Hansen]

I've specialized in the 80s and 90s.

[Zachary Trites]

Has the promise software changed? Like, does it still exist in some capacity?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Well, just to add a little conspiracy grist to the mill, where we started when we were talking about Robert Maxwell. Is that his daughter? And I'm not saying that this is Promise, but this is one of the fun, funny sort of allegations. His other daughter, not Galen, runs a company that sells a software called Chile Ad C H I L E A D. I think that's strikingly similar to Promise, which is just. And it's like it's sold to governments and stuff like that. It's just like a funny thing. If it was like, yeah, we got basically one business in this family and that's repackaging Promise, you know, like, that's how we make our money.

[Christian Hansen]

But Google Vax VMS11780 on here, Google Image Vax VMS, the computer that ran Promise Vax VMS11 780.

[Zachary Trites]

Is this the probably size of a room?

[Christian Hansen]

Not quite. What hit images?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. So that's what you're.

[Zachary Trites]

Hell, yeah.

[Christian Hansen]

Does Promise still exist? I think they came up with something a little.

[Zachary Trites]

Well, this is my question, right? Like, I don't think it still exists literally, but like, it just is repackaged and change, you know what I mean? Like, I just assume all these, like government ops from the 80s, if there's any modicum of success that they don't go away, they just sort of re.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It's just like became extremely clear, like the stellar wind stuff and the, the Snowden allegations.

[Christian Hansen]

Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Or revelations all these companies have just if, if Promise was doing what people said it was doing, they're doing it obviously so much better and more efficiently now.

[Christian Hansen]

My idea was that like Promise. So it's basically like, I mean, I was already working on this story when the Snowden revelations came out. I've been working on it for about a year or two and I was like, oh, that's how I'll package this story. Because it's like the, the new Snowden, it's all of a sudden like Snowden revelations drop and it's like the government's spying on everybody and Verizon's involved and everything you've ever texted everybody knows. And it's like, okay, okay, so this is happening, right? We all now know that it's happening for sure. But when did it start? You know, and, and like that's like that it didn't come out in that tranche of files that that Snowden smuggled. And so I was like thinking maybe this is like the, you know, the origin of this. I mean, certainly like the right time period because you can't trace computer, you know, data spying too much further back before the era of computers.

[Zachary Trites]

Right, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I'm curious about like Pegasus software. Isn't that sort of doing a similar, A similar job? Right, yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

This stuff just.

[Zachary Trites]

Which I think they got like Bezos phone doing that. Like, if I'm not mistaken, I think like it was Pegasus software from like a phishing link that basically gave. Was it Saudis, I think, like full access to like his personal cell phone.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

If I'm not mistaken. And then I'm sure this ties.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It's like used by all kinds of people to obviously spy on journalists who are looking into whatever government they happen to be looking into.

[Zachary Trites]

Right.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Just. It's pretty ugly world.

[Zachary Trites]

So then, given everything from this, what is a, what is a follow up for like a spin off series that you had mentioned before? Like, what would that look like? Do you think it would follow us kind of a similar track? Is it completely deviating?

[Christian Hansen]

I'll say that it's sort of a prequel as it stands now in the research phase. But, you know, we don't talk about stuff that we're still doing. You know, talk about it when it comes out.

[Zachary Trites]

That makes sense. Is it? I hope this is less. Less dangerous. Dude, I don't know. I read about the stuff you guys were doing. I'm like, I don't. This freaks me out.

[Christian Hansen]

I think this new one is a little bit more hardcore, actually.

[Zachary Trites]

Really?

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah. But it's even earlier, so it's.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Hopefully people are even deader.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

That sounds nice, too.

[Christian Hansen]

Dead.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. So dead that they're totally dead.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Unnamed Speaker]

That's source wise.

[Zachary Trites]

That's always nice. I like to do conspiracies when people are done. You know what I mean? Like when people are out of here, it's like, all right, we'll get into this. We'll get into MKUltra. You know, these people are gone. You know, I mean, that doesn't matter, right?

[Unnamed Speaker]

But he's got lib. Is not even. He's not even a goat farmer anymore. He's that.

[Christian Hansen]

Well, he was suicided.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Golly.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah. Assisted suicided.

[Unnamed Speaker]

His kids did it. Oh, true.

[Zachary Trites]

No way.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Oh, no.

[Christian Hansen]

Is that Jolly or Sydney?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Jolly West. That was Jolly West. Son did it.

[Zachary Trites]

Really? Wait, I didn't realize. Jolly West's son is the one that killed him.

[Christian Hansen]

Or was it Goly?

[Unnamed Speaker]

No, no, it was. I think it was Jolly West's son. Be. I mean, the speculation. Podcasting our knowledge over our memory refuses to Google anything. No, but I think it. No, because this is something. This is stuff that Tom brought up because. Because his son admitted the statue of limitations. Remember, his son was like, after like 20 years or whatever. Is this statute of limitations in. Wherever they were.

[Christian Hansen]

Okay.

[Unnamed Speaker]

And he was like, I helped my dad. My dad was in a bad state. He had some. Some sort of degenerative disease.

[Christian Hansen]

I. I want to. I'm going five bucks. It was golib.

[Unnamed Speaker]

All right. I'm going Jolly West, $5. Money on the table.

[Christian Hansen]

You got both.

[Zachary Trites]

I'm gonna go Jolly West. I feel like it's. There's.

[Christian Hansen]

Who killed Sidney Gottlieb? Because I'm right.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah. Sydney Gottlieb. Do that one first.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Damn. You're just going to be G O.

[Christian Hansen]

T, T, L. Yeah, right there. I, E, B.

[Zachary Trites]

Okay. Died in 1999.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Died on. Nah, dude.

[Zachary Trites]

I'll go to his Wikipedia. We're gonna get to the bottom.

[Christian Hansen]

Hype suicide.

[Zachary Trites]

Leading the witness.

[Christian Hansen]

I've never won a bet against Zach, by the way.

[Unnamed Speaker]

We're never gonna get another project off the ground if we're sitting over here being wrong about.

[Zachary Trites]

Let's find out. Here we go. He died at his home in Virginia. He was reported to have a history of heart problems, but his wife declined to give a cause of death. Well, no. Let's get Jolly West. Let's get Jolly west now.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Let's do Jolly. We can edit this out later.

[Zachary Trites]

The death of Jolly. Come on. Just search Jolly West. Go to his Wikipedia.

[Christian Hansen]

Jolly west, assisted suicide.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah. Jolly West.

[Zachary Trites]

More handsome than I thought. All right, let's go.

[Unnamed Speaker]

All right. Death.

[Zachary Trites]

His family said it was Mic.

[Unnamed Speaker]

There you go. Boom.

[Christian Hansen]

You were right. Wow.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Damn it. And you just have the cash now, or do I have to wait on.

[Christian Hansen]

I do have it.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Okay.

[Zachary Trites]

That is wild, dude. He using prescription medication.

[Unnamed Speaker]

That's gonna rule out Sidney Galliot, but I would just say the public story.

[Zachary Trites]

Yes.

[Christian Hansen]

I get all these guys. Is it okay if it's in Ones?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, that's fine.

[Zachary Trites]

Oh, hell yeah, dude. You carry ones around. What a dog.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Unfortunately, that's all we got.

[Zachary Trites]

What a dog, dude. I mean, that's wild, that. I mean, it's like it wasn't even assisted suicide. It was just prescription meds. Like, he just gave us Park 30s and just said, yo.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I think that he admits in his thing that it was a. Quite literally an assisted suicide, that he was the one who procured his father or created his father.

[Zachary Trites]

Sure. But when you think assisted suicide, you.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Think like, oh, this isn't like a needle jab.

[Zachary Trites]

They're using some type of, like, chemical agent that's designed to kill you in some type of way. This.

[Unnamed Speaker]

He just said illegal.

[Christian Hansen]

Like, after the statute of limitation. I do know. I just. I know about it, but not the. I got the guy confused. After the statue of limitations went up, he could no longer be charged for it. He wrote a memoir about his father and about. About, you know, helping him die.

[Zachary Trites]

I mean, that's kind of ironic. You know, Jolly west, you know, helped using drugs.

[Unnamed Speaker]

We'll have horrible experiences.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, right. Like you get Jack Ruby out of here. You know what I mean?

[Christian Hansen]

Like, yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

I mean, it's kind of funny, right? A little. I mean, Rip. But still, I mean, the idea that, you know, he's using drugs to get people out of here, and all of a sudden, he has drugs and gets him out of here.

[Christian Hansen]

Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

Perfect balance in the universe.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

Well, gentlemen, thank you so much.

[Unnamed Speaker]

I appreciate it.

[Christian Hansen]

Thanks for having us.

[Zachary Trites]

Yeah, this was fun. I'm excited to see what you guys do next. And, yeah, I'm eagerly awaiting. I feel like it'll be on Netflix is my assumption. But who knows, who knows, who knows?

[Unnamed Speaker]

Maybe it'll be on some to be dreamed of streaming platform.

[Christian Hansen]

Yes, we dreamed of.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Zachary Trites]

It has Tubi in the name. I like that.

[Unnamed Speaker]

It'll be on Tubi in the fall.

[Zachary Trites]

I can't wait. Well, I will see you guys there and everyone will be tuning in and I appreciate you all and look forward to doing this again.

[Unnamed Speaker]

Thanks for having us.

[Zachary Trites]

Thanks so much. What's up, people? Quick announcement. If you are a fan of Camp Gagnon or Religion Camp, I have great news because we are dropping History Camp. That's right. This is the channel. We're going to be exploring the most interesting, fascinating, controversial topics from all time throughout all history.

[Christian Hansen]

Right?

[Zachary Trites]

You probably know about Benjamin Franklin, I don't know, Thomas Jefferson, Nikola Tesla, interesting figures from history. And you probably learned about them school and they were pretty boring. But not here. Now, as you know, I was raised by a conspiracy theorist. So I'm going to be diving deep into all of the interesting, strange, occult and secretive societal relationships that all of these famous, influential men from our shared past have. So if you're interested, please go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel. It will be pinned in the description as well as the comments. And if you're on Spotify, this doesn't really apply to you, but these episodes will be dropping as well. Just go ahead and give us a high rating because it really helps the show.