The following transcript was made from a broadcast over WBAI-FM 99.5 in New York City on September 20, 1991:

Bill Hamilton is the chief executive officer of the Inslaw Corporation (a software company) and the developer of its PROMIS software package.

BILL HAMILTON: Danny [Casolaro] was found dead in West Virginia. He had conversations with three confidants–three separate conversations which I found out about later. And he told each of these three confidants the same thing; that he had just then returned from West Virginia where he had met with a source and that he now knew everything that had happened to the PROMIS software and to Inslaw, but that he had to go back for one final meeting to pick up the last piece of evidence. And he was quite euphoric about his breakthrough. And he said to each of these people that Bill and Nancy Hamilton (My wife is named Nancy–works here with me.) were going to be quite excited.

One of the confidants said: "I’ve had fifty telephone hours talking to Danny." (This is someone who lives on the West Coast.) "During the past year I’ve spent about fifty hours speaking to him on the phone. Normally, he plays chess with me. Monday night, he was like the cat who had swallowed the canary. He knew he had broken this thing!

So, if he was murdered–and I believe he clearly was–he was murdered because he had found out too much. The other thing I should mention to you is that, in the final three or four weeks of his life, several different people with backgrounds in U.S. covert intelligence operations, who I talk to on a regular basis, and who Danny also talked to on a regular basis, directly told me that they had told Danny that his life was in jeopardy because he was having such success in breaking this corruption open. And they told me that some specific inquiries that Danny was making could get him killed. And the West Virginia authorities have never shown any interest in finding that kind of thing out from people like me and others who knew professionally what Danny was doing.

So, to rule a suicide without examining this kind of information, is a ruling which does not deserve to be taken seriously.

PAUL DeRIENZO: Can you give me some idea of those very specific things that Danny Casolaro was inquiring about?

BILL HAMILTON: Danny was planning to go to a particular facility in the Washington, D.C. area, owned by the United States Government, a facility with connections to one or more of the people who run "the Octopus". I think you can assume it’s a covert intelligence facility, from the way that it’s presented. And just going to this facility, I was warned, could get him killed. The other thing that he was doing was making inquiries, over the telephone, to the Syndicate in Los Angeles. And those inquiries had rattled the cages of some people out there. And there was some concern that they might respond to the rattling by killing Danny. The claim that I have heard from some sources is that someone with mob responsibilities (I guess you’d call it)–some person in the mob–is a member of the leadership of "the Octopus." And it’s someone from the Los Angeles mob. And Danny was onto it.

PAUL DeRIENZO: Are you familiar with any of the research that was done by the Christic Institute in Washington, D.C. concerning the Iran-Contra scandal?

BILL HAMILTON: Yes. I have read it.

PAUL DeRIENZO: To your knowledge, are there any parallels there? Are some of those same people involved, to your knowledge?

BILL HAMILTON: Yes. Danny’s belief about who was running "the Octopus"–about seven or eight people–some of them are people who the Christic Institute identified: Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines…. Danny also had people like George Pender, John P. Nichols, E. Howard Hunt [JD: Hunt was one of the people named in Nixon’s burglary of the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate office building.], the former Director of the CIA Richard Helms, Ray Cline. Those are the people that Danny had identified as the people running "the Octopus."

PAUL DeRIENZO: Anything you’d like to add to this?

BILL HAMILTON: I think it’s important that reporters try to get to the bottom of this because Danny was investigating corruption in the U.S. Department of Justice itself. It makes problematical any possibility that there could be a Federal investigation, unless there’s an independent counsel appointed. So, the press and the Congress are really the only hopes that we have to try to prove whether Danny was murdered or not.

PAUL DeRIENZO: I know that you won your suit and that there were some appeals by the government. Has that been completed yet–the legal proceedings?

BILL HAMILTON: No. The government appealed from the bankruptcy court to the U.S. District Court. The U.S. District Court, in November, 1989, affirmed the bankruptcy court saying that the evidence was sufficient to support the findings (quote) "under any standard of review." (closed quotes). Then the Justice Department appealed again to the United States Court of Appeals this time. And a three- judge panel in May said, on a narrow jurisdictional ruling, that we won the case in the wrong federal court. We should have tried it in a different federal court. We are currently seeking certiorari from the U.S. Supreme Court because we think that the U.S. Court of Apppeals jurisdictional ruling was in error. But when the U.S. Court of Appeals made its jurisdictional ruling, it left undisturbed the findings of the bankruptcy court that had already been upheld by the district court: that the Justice Department stole six million dollars worth of our software through "trickery, fraud and deceit", and then tried covertly to drive Inslaw out of business.

PAUL DeRIENZO: Have you received any settlement on that?

BILL HAMILTON: I’ve never received a penny! And the forty-two largest United States Attorneys’ offices are still running their caseloads with software that two federal courts said was deliberately stolen by the U.S. Department of Justice headquarters in Washington.

PAUL DeRIENZO: And that was Bill Hamilton, the chair of Inslaw, a software producing company in Washington, D.C. that has been battling the United States Government since the early 1980’s and whose case led to another window into the workings of the secret team, "the Octopus", and the death of Danny Casolaro.

contact: Paul DeRienzo