Well, it looks like Danny would have had enough background in computers to be able to understand what he was investigating:
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Danny_Casolaro
.....He co-founded Computer Age magazine, which was at the time the only American daily publication devoted to computers and to computer business; however, he later sold the magazine for a loss....
....Friends described Casolaro as a "Peter Pan" figure with an obsessive streak, who worked for two years in the late-seventies on an alternative explanation for Watergate.
Inslaw and the Octopus
Casolaro's investigation of Inslaw began in August 1990. Casolaro had worked previously with Terry D. Miller, President of Government Sales Consultants, Inc., on the publication of a newsletter which focused on federal government computer procurement fraud, and Miller had encouraged Casolaro to consider investigating Inslaw. Casolaro hoped to write a true crime book about his investigation.
Inslaw had been in the news from the mid-eighties. In a previous position with the U.S. Justice Department, Inslaw's founder, William A. Hamilton, helped to develop a computer software program called Promis (Prosecutor's Management Information System). Promis was designed to better organize the large amounts of paperwork generated by law enforcement and the courts. After he left the United States Department of Justice, Hamilton alleged that the Justice Department had stolen Promis and had distributed it illegally, robbing Inslaw of millions of dollars. Hamilton was also a friend of Terry D. Miller.
Casolaro and Hamilton began pooling their resources to share information as they learned about the Inslaw scandal. One of Casolaro's major sources was Michael Riconosciuto (pronounced Riconoshooto), who Casolaro had dubbed "Danger Man." Riconosciuto had been introduced to Hamilton by Jeff Steinberg, a longtime top aide in the Lyndon LaRouche organization. Riconosciuto contacted Hamilton in May of 1990. Riconosciuto asserted that he and Earl Brian (a director of Hadron, Inc., a government consulting firm) "had traveled to Iran in 1980 and had paid $40 million to Iranian officials to persuade them not to let the hostages go before the presidential election." For his help in this so-called October Surprise conspiracy, Earl Brian allegedly was allowed to profit from the illegal pirating of the Promis system.Corn also notes that Earl Brian, a close friend of Attorney General Ed Meese, denied any involvement in the October Surprise or the Inslaw Affair.
In a March 21, 1991 court affidavit submitted to the court in the case Inslaw v. United States Government, Riconosciuto claimed to have modified Inslaw's software at the Justice Department's behest so that it could be sold to dozens of foreign governments with a secret "back door" which allowed outsiders to access computer systems using Promis. These modifications allegedly took place at the Cabazon Indian Reservation near Indio, California.Although the book Last Circle is an unpublished internet ebook, its author alleges that it was received favorably by a secret Investigative Committee; and by John Cohen, investigator for the House Judiciary Committee on Inslaw, who became a policy advisor to Dr. Lee P. Brown, Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (1996).
Because the reservation was sovereign territory where enforcement of U.S. law was sometimes problematic, Riconosciuto claimed that he worked on "semi-legal" and illegal weapons programs for The Wackenhut Corporation, such as a powerful "fuel air explosive".
Some of Riconosciuto's claims appear to have been supported by evidence, some of which was uncovered by Bill Hamilton. For example, Riconosciuto reported that Canadian officials had purchased the Promis software illegally.See: House Report 102-857, Section IV, C, 2, "Possible Connection between Earl Brian, Michael Riconosciuto, Robert Booth Nichols, and the Cabazon Indian Reservation", page 72
Casolaro claimed to have located independent witnesses who asserted that Riconosciuto and Earl Brian had been seen together on several occasions at the Cabazon reservation. Additionally, Later, after turning in the affidavit, Riconosciuto was arrested on drug charges. Riconosciuto claimed that the drug charges were a set-up to keep him from telling his story.
Hamilton then introduced Casolaro to Robert Booth Nichols who eventually replaced Riconosciuto as Casolaro's main source. Among other topics, Nichols reported about his contacts with the "subterranean world of the Illuminati": Robert Booth Nichols was long suspected of complicity in various crimes (he had been investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as early as 1978). "If the FBI is right," wrote David Corn, "Nichols is not a man whose warnings should be taken lightly."
By July 1991 however, that "relationship between Nichols and Casolaro began to deteriorate." Casolaro met with William Richard Turner, who was an engineer for Honeywell until his division was acquired by Hughes Aircraft. Turner alleged that he had uncovered evidence of fraud by Hughes Aircraft, and that his whistleblowing was ignored by the United States Department of Defense. (Casolaro seems to have thought that Hughes Aircraft might have been involved in the Octopus as well.)
To further compound the theory of a conspiracy, "Casolaro met with queer coincidences that would feed anyone's paranoia," wrote Corn. "At a restaurant he ran into a former Special Forces operative who had worked for a company involved in the Inslaw case"; and on another occasion, Casolaro and a friend met a woman at a party who claimed to be "close to a former CIA official" who "knowingly" disclosed "some aspects of Casolaro's case."
Final days
On August 5, 1991, Casolaro phoned Bill McCoy, a retired CID officer to relate some encouraging news. He said that the mainstream news magazine Time had assigned him an article about the Octopus. He further claimed to be working with the esteemed reporter Jack Anderson, and that publishers Little, Brown and Time Warner had offered to finance the effort. All these claims later were proven false. McCoy characterized Casolaro's attitude during their conversation as one of misplaced exuberance. "He wasn't getting to the nub of it," he said.
Again on August 5, Casolaro's friend Ben Mason agreed "to consult with Danny on the writer's finances." Casolaro faced some pressing though not catastrophic financial problems, and he and Mason agreed that the best solution would be if the publisher's advance came through. "Otherwise Casolaro would have to borrow from his family as he often had done." A few days later, Casolaro showed Mason some of his notes and manuscript, including a photocopy of a passport of Hassan Ali Ibrahim Ali, the manager of Sitco, an alleged Iraqi front company which was somehow connected to the Octopus. Casolaro showed Mason a 22-point outline for his book and expressed frustration at having been tied up with a literary agent who was unable to sell it for the last eighteen months. Casolaro's brother Anthony met Mason later and said that Mason had remarked to Danny, "You look kinda tired." Danny had replied, "I get these calls in the middle of the night sometimes and it's hard to get back to sleep." Anthony insisted that Danny had claimed to have "been getting odd telephone calls for about three months."
The following day, Casolaro's longtime housekeeper Olga helped Casolaro pack a black leather tote. She remembered him packing a thick sheaf of papers into a dark brown or black briefcase. She tried to pick it up, and recalls saying, "Oof, it's heavy. What have you got in there...?" To which Casolaro replied, "All my papers." Casolaro said he was leaving for several days to visit Martinsburg, West Virginia to meet with a source who promised to provide an important missing piece of the Octopus, but that he would return. This was
the last time Olga saw Casolaro.About three days
before he died, Casolaro talked to Richard Stavin, formerly a special prosecutor for the U.S. Justice Department. In their hour-long conversation, Stavin claimed that Robert Booth Nichols had been under investigation for illegal drug smuggling, money laundering, and connections to the Yakuza and the Gambino crime family. Stavin added that Nichols had offered his services as an informant to several U.S. Government agencies. But when interviewed years later, Stavin pondered if that information had endangered Casolaro since the named agencies denied using Nichols. "Maybe I shouldn't have told him," said Stavin. In Stavin's opinion: "It seemed like a cover-your-ass situation."
By August 9, Bill Hamilton was starting to worry: he had not been able to reach Casolaro for several days and never before had encountered such difficulty. He telephoned several mutual acquaintances, none of whom knew Casolaro's whereabouts.
Olga reported that she answered several threatening telephone calls at Casolaro's home. One man called at about 9:00 a.m. and said, "I will cut his body and throw it to the sharks". Less than an hour later, a different man hissed: "Drop dead." Then there was a third call, but Olga remembered only that no one spoke and that she heard only music as though a radio were playing in the same room as the caller. "Don't call him no more," she said. She hung up. A fourth call was the same as the third, and a fifth came later that night. "No music...and no one spoke." After this she slammed her receiver down.
Last known sightings of Casolaro
According to Ridgeway and Vaughan, Casolaro's whereabouts between late August 8 and afternoon August 9 are unknown. He met the Honeywell engineer William Richard Turner at the Sheraton at about 2:30 p.m. on August 9. Turner says he gave Casolaro some documents, and that they spoke for a few minutes. Turner later refused to specify the content of the papers, and he claimed that he had been harassed by the police who were investigating Casolaro's death.
Witnesses reported that Casolaro spent the next few hours at a Martinsburg restaurant. A bartender there told the local police, "He seemed lonely and depressed." The police further learned that "Sometime around 5:00 p.m. Casolaro entered Heatherfields, the cocktail lounge at the Sheraton with another man described by a waitress as 'maybe Arab or Iranian.' The waitress remembered because the foreign-seeming man rudely complained about slow service."
This sighting was the impetus which gave rise to a theory that Casolaro was investigating a CIA Op called Operation Pseudo Miranda. Miranda was intrinsicly linked to Iran/Contra. Not too coincidentally, Octopus was the pseudonym given to a multi-faceted operation which sought to create a revenue stream needed to run covert operations simultaneously in South America and the Middle East. Many investigators believe that the man with whom Casolaro met on the eve of his death was intimately connected to Operation Pseudo Miranda.
At about 5:30 p.m. that night, Casolaro happened to meet Mike Looney who rented the room next to Casolaro's Room 517. They chatted on two occasions—first at about 5:30 p.m. and then again at about 8:00 p.m. Looney later explained, "[Casolaro] said he was there to meet an important source who was going to give him what he needed to solve the case."
According to Looney, Casolaro claimed that his source was scheduled to arrive by 9:00 p.m.. "But as the appointed hour came and went Casolaro became embarrassed." Casolaro left Looney, explaining that he had to make a telephone call. He returned a few minutes later and admitted, somewhat sheepishly, that his source might have "blown him off." Casolaro and Looney talked until about 9:30 p.m..
At about 10.00 p.m., Casolaro purchased coffee at a nearby convenience store.
That was the last time anyone reported seeing Danny Casolaro alive....
