In the previous edition we looked at the mysterious death of Danny Casolaro, the journalist who was about to crack the political conspiracy of the century, a plot that he called “The Octopus.” In Part 2 we go in search of the octopus that Casolaro was hunting.

https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-210-hunting-the-octopus/

Danny Casolaro was a freelance journalist who told his friends and family that he was close to cracking a story he called The Octopus, which he referred to as the political conspiracy of the century. In August of 1991 he packed his notes and headed to West Virginia to conduct some final interviews for his forthcoming book. On August 10, 1991, he was found dead in his hotel room. The death was immediately ruled a suicide. Join us this week on The Corbett Report as we go in search of the story behind the story of the mysterious death of Danny Casolaro.

https://www.corbettreport.com/requiem-for-the-suicided-danny-casolaro/

A decade after Congresswoman Abzug had struggled with CIA Director George Bush over the destruction of evidence of CIA wrongdoing, the Agency’s Office of the Inspector General ignored the moratorium on destruction of relevant materials and destroyed several memos from the Iran-Contra investigation. When this was raised with the Agency’s Acting Director, it was played off as no big deal and the employees were praised for responding “remarkably well” to the investigation.

Two years later, the chief Iran-Contra investigator complained to then-President George Bush that secrecy effectively made high officials immune to prosecution.

When the Independent Counsel began its investigation into the Iran-Contra affair and CIA’s involvement, the Agency’s employees were ordered to cooperate by CIA’s Executive Director, James H. Taylor. As part of this, the Agency’s Inspector General’s Conference Room was converted into the Task Force center for the Office of Independent Counsel (OIC) investigation and personnel were assigned to assist the OIC.

https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2017/may/15/cia-iran-contra-evidence/

This is the third of a five-part series exploring the Iran-Contra Affair and its consequences. Part 1 described the Reagan Administration’s secret wars and illegal arms deals exposed in the scandal. Part 2 explained how the constitutional crisis unfolded as a result of Congress’s failure to address the CIA’s power to wage secret wars in the name of avoiding a world-ending nuclear confrontation between the Superpowers. Part 3 exposes the roots of Iran-Contra in the Watergate scandal, but congressional abdication of responsibility and judicial deference backfired in the restoration of the Imperial Presidency, suppressing civil liberties and expanding wars justified as necessary to fighting the Cold War, even as the Cold War ended with collapse of the Soviet Union. Part 4 will survey the era of global insecurity we entered in the second Bush and Obama Administrations, while Part 5 examines the role key members of the incoming Trump team played in creating this permanent state of war by immunizing themselves from the consequences of past criminality.

http://whowhatwhy.org/2017/02/09/dark-shadows-iran-contra-secret-wars-covert-operations-part-3/

As one of the civilian pilots who ran guns for the U.S. government in the 1980s, Tosh Plumlee explains that he made numerous operationally approved trips to Latin America; trips that were described as "sanctioned drug interdiction operations."

"These trips were approved by military intelligence personnel attached to the Pentagon, with CIA logistical support. They were made in total secrecy to the extent that other government agencies were not aware of the existence of these flights, or of the operation. The pilots were given a specific coded transponder number to squawk so their aircraft would not be challenged by U.S. Customs aircraft when patrolling the U.S. border."

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This is the full length 90 min. version of Bill Moyer's 1987 scathing critique of the criminal subterfuge carried out by the Executive Branch of the United States Government to carry out operations which are clearly contrary to the wishes and values of the American people. The ability to exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running operations which flooded the streets of our nation with crack cocaine.