How Jacques Vallée Was Targeted by a Tentacle of Danny Casolaro's Octopus

In Forbidden Science Dispatches #10, We Look at a Mystery Caller with a Finance Ploy, Robert Booth Nichols, Bob Lazar, the Sam Israel III Ponzi Scheme, and the Endless Octopus Conspiracy

Find other dispatches in the Table of Discontents.

i.

On July 21^st, 1998 Jacques Vallée makes note of an interesting phone call. “A strange character calls me every day,” Vallée writes. “He claims to have resided in the US some 28 years, working at Société Générale in New York. He offered to invest money for our Fund, placing it at surprisingly advantageous rates.”¹ But this generous proposal was, as Vallée put it, attached to “all kinds of red flags.” Indeed, it sounded too good to be true:

He assured me he was an expert in ‘currency stabilization,’ exploiting schemes through which the U.S. ‘creates money by issuing securities below value and flipping them to leverage international intervention into currencies.’ He claims a few investors get into the deals at huge profit: Up to 50% per year!²

Rightfully sensing “entrapment,” Vallée declines, saying that his “investors were not looking to (him) to hedge their risks, only to achieve a fair return from straightforward technology investments; which is true.”³ At least there’s one honest venture capitalist out there. But the hook did not end there, even if Vallée was not biting. The caller claimed further impressive contacts in Vallée’s other wheelhouse—ufology:

He said he was acquainted with Bob Lazar “through a company run by a mutual friend named Bob Nichols.” He went on to tell me that he knew a government agent (“in the military, higher than the Navy Seals”) who told him in confidence that “all that stuff was real,” meaning Lazar's claims about captured saucers.⁴

While I feel no urge to relitigate the endless Swiss cheese Lazar story, there’s another element in the journal entry that caught me by surprise: The name “Bob Nichols.” There are a few individuals named Bob Nichols in ufology. One was a witness to the 1966 Michigan UFO flap—a series of events later explained away as "swamp gas” by Vallée’s associate J. Allen Hynek.⁵ Another was a collateral casualty of the Heaven’s Gate suicide, buying into the assertion that his soul would transport into a spaceship with the passing of the Hale-Bopp comet.⁶ Yet another was the “doubting Thomas” father of serial fabulist and Montauk Project imagineer Preston Nichols.⁷ Vallée covers all of these topics, but none of these “Bob Nichols” suspects aligns precisely with the odd mystery phone call scenario. The evidence supports a wilder possibility: Could the caller’s supposed “friend (…) Bob Nichols” be Robert Booth Nichols, the shadowy figure connected to Danny Casolaro’s immense Octopus conspiracy?

ii.

UFOs are a weird constant within the expansive information dump that makes up the Octopus case, a probe that started when Casolaro was led to investigate Bill Hamilton’s company Inslaw and the theft of their proprietary PROMIS software. This would inexplicably lead to Casolaro looking into the manufacture of weapons on a commandeered Native American reservation, UFO rumors, cloak and dagger hijinks, and beyond.⁸ In Casolaro’s notes, he mentions “MJ 12—extraterrestrial” as well as “Area #51” as possible avenues in his unravelling of the massive conspiracy.⁹ As Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith note in their exploration into the matter, “Casolaro’s interest in the UFO world began with Michael Riconosciuto,” the so-called “Danger Man” who sent the journalist spiraling into a world of covert activity, tech espionage, and weapons dealing.¹⁰ Riconosciuto is a tough nut to crack. He is an alleged science genius who became enmeshed in an elaborate U.S. government plot to turn Inslaw’s case management software PROMIS into a spying super-tool. While showing some legitimately impressive capabilities in tinkering, his contradictory statements and broad array of conspiratorial claims have left countless individuals—Casolaro included—unable to sort the wheat from the chaff.

His life is a veritable conspiracy corkboard on its own. In addition to claims of knowing Fred Crisman (of JFK assassination and UFO fame) from a young age, a curious newspaper article in Tacoma’s News Tribune paints him as a technological savant at 12 years old, a “modern Da Vinci,” who could MacGyver together small scale telephone networks and other electronic wonders.¹¹ Strangely, the article includes Riconosciuto’s curiosity about plant consciousness. Other sources claim the Navy had in interest in his work on underwater sound, offered scholarships to continue his research.¹² He was later present at the Haight-Asbury “where he went to work on an underground newspaper” and manufactured psychedelic drugs—a hobby that got him sent to prison for two years.¹³ In a recurring theme, Riconoscuito claimed this was a frameup. It was after this point that he became a regular covert operator, at least according to the man himself:

Riconosciuto, in hundreds of collect telephone calls to (Bill) Hamilton (of Inslaw), revealed inside knowledge of the government conspiracy to steal PROMIS from the Hamiltons. He stunned Hamilton further when he told him that he had personally modified the PROMIS software as research director of a joint venture of the Cabazon Indian tribe of Indio, California, and the nation’s third largest private security firm, Wackenhut. Riconosciuto revealed that part of his job in the modification of the software had been to create a “back door access” for spying into the files of its users.¹⁴

In addition to this massive espionage operation, he alleged even crazier shenanigans on the small strip of Native American land: “The Cabazon/Wackenhut venture included the production of advanced weaponry, including biological weapons, and fuel-air explosives (FAX), a new technology supposedly the equal of some nuclear weapons in explosive power.”¹⁵ Riconoscuito also spoke on the MJ-12/Aquarius debacle as if it were real, going as far as to say “he had witnessed the autopsy of an alien body.”¹⁶ Where the truth ends and the exaggerations begin has been the subject of endless debate in the conspiracysphere since the 1990s. Even Casolaro himself, while reliant on Riconosciuto as a source, admitted that he “didn’t totally buy into Riconosciuto’s wild stories.”¹⁷ Rightfully so, Riconosciuto was apparently brought into the Inslaw debacle via Jeff Steinberg who was an aide to Lyndon Larouche—the limited hangout scourge of every conspiracy researcher.¹⁸ But Casolaro followed every lead dutifully, leaving innumerable investigators after him to wonder which one might have led to his suspicious death.

Among the many strange individuals who cropped up in the PROMIS scandal, Bill Hamilton also introduced Casolaro to one Robert Booth Nichols, a figure whose shadowy dealings rivaled even those of Riconosciuto. “Nichols was,” according to journalist John Connolly, “a man as comfortable in the underworld as in the intelligence community and (…) he was associated with people who treated killing as an ordinary part of doing business.”¹⁹ Numerous sources say that Nichols was a James Bond-type who looked like Clark Gable without the mustache, though this suave appearance belied a darker lifestyle, one that included all manner of intelligence activity, money laundering, and arms dealing.²⁰ He allegedly had ties to organized crime networks in various nations, the CIA, and the National Security Council.²¹ He was on the board of a company, FIDCO, that included Ronald Reagan’s Communications Director Michael A. McManus, billionaire Howard Hughes’ right hand man Robert A. Maheu, and another “known CIA operative” Glen Shockley.²² The existence of FIDCO gives evidence that Nichols was indeed a connected man. In her discussion with Peter Zokosky, a onetime director at FIDCO, journalist Cheri Seymour was told that the company “was a NSA front corporation used in Lebanon” for reconstruction projects. But beneath the surface, the LLC was supposedly reallocating funds for prisoner releases. “All the FIDCO corporate directors were intelligence people,” Zokosky continued. “They ‘contracted’ with (Nichols) to do work for them.”²³

This eclectic and dangerous contract work spread its tendrils into the sphere of Casolaro’s investigation. Working alongside Riconoscuito, Nichols (along with another Nichols, John Philip—it gets confusing) claimed involvement in the Wackenhut/Cabazon operation where they allegedly “provided technical assistance to Wackenhut in the proposed development of esoteric armaments at the reservation” through their joint company, Meridian Arms.²⁴ Casolaro, being told that all manner of strange happenings were going down with this group, linked up with Nichols. Many worry that it was his engagement with this supposed shadow operative that killed him. One of Casolaro’s sources, a Justice Department prosecutor named Richard Stavin, told him that Nichols—a man with hypothetical connections to the Gambino crime family—had offered to become an informant in the 1970s. “If John Gotti, for example, had ever found out what Danny Casolaro had found out,” John Connolly writes, “Nichols would be a dead man.”²⁵ Whether by his own hand or in an instance of foul play, Casolaro was killed merely six days after discovering this.

Interpretations of Riconoscuito and Nichols vary, some thinking that they were integral components of a covert activity network, others believing them to be sociopathic con men and pathological liars. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Some of their odd connections are verified and—at the very least—something fishy was taking place within the scattered web. But would someone associated with Nichols really contact Jacques Vallée to persuade him to participate in a strange financial arrangement?

Robert Booth Nichols pictured in SPY magazine next to a description of the Casolaro hotel room crime scene. (Image source: Connolly, John. “Dead Right.” SPY. January 1993. https://archive.org/details/SpyMagazine/Spy%20Magazine%201986-1998/1992/1992-12-DEC-JAN/.)

iii.

Not unlike his onetime associate Riconoscuito, Nichols also had alleged and verifiable connections to the paranoid 1990s UFO scene. According to UFO researcher Norio Hayakawa, Nichols and Riconoscuito attended “a public seminar” for UFO and conspiracy buffs “that attempted to expose WACKENHUT (sic) and its secret dealings with the ‘BLACK PROJECTS’ (sic) programs,” which, Hayakawa suggests, is “indirectly related to the military weapons testing at certain locations within the Nellis Air Force Range.”²⁶ Hold onto that thought.

Writer Lars Hansson, formerly connected with Danny Sheehan’s Christic Institute, also came across Nichols among the era’s conspiratorial circle of researchers, whistleblowers, and wreckers. Along with Gordon Novel—another spooky individual who occasionally crops up in UFO research—Nichols was hanging out with ufology figurehead John Lear.²⁷ Like Nichols himself, Lear claimed to be connected to the CIA, flying planes for Air America, an Agency cutout credibly accused of trafficking drugs in Southeast Asia.²⁸ Hansson mentions that Lear “bragged openly and showed (…) proof that he was involved in the shipment of weapons to Iran in violation of the embargo in early 1981,” a claim which, if true, “ties in closely to what Casolaro was looking into.”²⁹

Despite this spooky background, as per usual, Lear was accepted into the ufology community with open arms because he had scores upon scores of salacious tales to share with the public. “Sensational, terrifying and almost entirely absurd, it was the stuff of science-fiction nightmares,” Mark Pilkington writes of Lear’s UFO narrative.³⁰ It spoke of secret treaties with ETs, breeding experiments on the human populace, antigravity craft, fantastical weapons, and so much more. It constituted, according to Pilkingon, “a perfect synthesis of the Aquarius and MJ-12 disinformation and the chthonic, paranoiac horrors of Paul Bennewitz.”³¹

Lear was also integral to the Bob Lazar story, serving as mutual friend of Lazar and Las Vegas television reporter George Knapp before the stunning allegations hit the headlines.³² Alleging to be an employee at S4, a facility that was part of the Groom Lake/Area 51 complex, Lazar said that he saw and worked on flying saucers. The story was one that Lear was quick to promote, introducing him to Knapp for a television news appearance. Ever since, despite contradictions and a lack of forthcoming evidence, the Lazar story has been rinsed and recycled in the UFO news circuit, more recently being the subject of 2018’s Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers. Returning to Vallée’s mystery caller, they allege that they know of Lazar from a company run by “Bob Nichols.” Lazar and Robert Booth Nichols never did business together to my knowledge, unless Nichols had some unstated engagement with United Nuclear—a supplier of scientific supplies that Lazar has run since 1986.³³ Nevertheless, since Nichols was associated with Lear, there is a decent chance he knew Lazar. Besides, ever the braggart, Nichols would claim to know Lazar based off even the smallest spurious connection. Given the odd background of Lazar, full of strange exaggerations and slight mistruths, he would fit right into the category that contains inscrutable individuals like Michael Riconoscuito and Robert Booth Nichols.

Lazar’s claim of Area 51 employment also holds some slight significance to the Octopus web. Wackenhut, the private security firm charged with guarding the sensitive Nellis Air Force Base facilities, was loaded with former military and intelligence folks. Writer John Connolly noted the “quid pro quo” relationship between Wackenhut and the CIA, specifically in the 1980s and 90s:

We have spoken to numerous experts, including current and former CIA agents and analysts, current and former agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration and current and former Wackenhut executives and employees, all of whom have said that in the mid-1970s, after the Senate Intelligence Committee's revelations of the CIA's covert and sometimes illegal overseas operations, the agency and Wackenhut grew very, very close. Those revelations had forced the CIA to do a housecleaning, and it became CIA policy that certain kinds of activities would no longer officially be performed. But that didn't always mean that the need or the desire to undertake such operations disappeared. And that's where Wackenhut came in.³⁴

These relationships apparently greatly benefited the Octopus network at the Cabazon reservation: The arms research and other projects were done at the behest of Wackenhut via alleged contracting from other intelligence organizations. CIA analyst William Corbett told Connolly that Wackenhut was not only hired for clandestine activities, but also supplied the agencies with information—a supposed “shadow CIA.”³⁵ Being speculative, one wonders if the Lazar story was pushed as some type of intelligence operation—conceivably with Wackenhut involvement in the background—that obscured real aircraft technology from identification. The recent controversial Wall Street Journal article (discussed briefly in Cystic Detective Update #5) spoke of a similar operation, wherein “an Air Force colonel visited a bar near Area 51, a top-secret site in the Nevada desert” and “gave the owner photos of what might be flying saucers” to insert “into the local lore (…) the idea that the U.S. military was secretly testing recovered alien technology.”³⁶ I have my doubts that this disinfo operation went down exactly the way the reporters describe it but regardless: Lazar’s story, boosted by a former CIA pilot, was reinforcing this very same narrative.

Another looser connection is the Hells Angels biker gang. Michael Riconscuito alleged “that the Hells Angels were used by the (Cabazon/Wackenhut group) for drug trafficking operations in Fresno,” and some members were approached to conduct contract killings.³⁷ Lazar, too, has a slight linkage to the infamous group with his late ex-wife Carol being convicted for aiding a murder committed by a Hells Angel biker.³⁸ Their relationship, eventually ending when Carol passed away under hazy circumstances in 1986, was an odd one. Carol’s cousin Renee even suggested that Lazar was intrigued by the association with the Hells Angels:

Maybe (he) was impressed with her. So the one thing that I can say is through my Uncle Dean, there was a lot of connections in the underworld, I guess you would call it the underworld (…) and (the) exciting things that the Hells Angels were doing at that time, which not everybody sees as exciting, but I mean, I was enamored by my uncles.³⁹

When Lazar later ran an illicit brothel with Carol called Honeysuckle Ranch, he approached her cousin Dean for investment in the project—likely knowing of the Hells Angels’ frequenting of Mustang Ranch, a larger, more profitable, and (at one point) legal bordello.⁴⁰ Very few people talk about this shady activity when it comes to examining Lazar’s credibility as a UFO whistleblower, but it brings him closer to the world of underground networks of money and crime than one might expect.

There is another surprise individual possibly connecting Nichols and Lazar: Madcap action star Steven Seagal. Bizarrely, Nichols had been a technical advisor on the 1992 Steven Seagal-led action film Under Siege where he also makes a brief cameo.⁴¹ The controversial actor was deeply interested in covert and special operations, Hansson recalling that Seagal was hanging around lawyer Danny Sheehan to gain inside information in the early 1990s.⁴² Sheehan inserted himself in a bevy of parapolitical topics and lawsuits, including the JFK assassination and Iran-Contra, and nowadays serves as a loud proponent of UFO disclosure. Even before this time period, Seagal had been claiming to have CIA and mob connections at various points in his strange career.⁴³ Robert Booth Nichols was undoubtedly someone who would have fascinated Seagal, making it easy to insinuate himself in the eccentric, narcissistic actor’s life. While this all seems distant from Lazar, Seagal had attempted to buy Lazar’s story but lost in a bidding war to New Line Cinema.⁴⁴ Nichols, depending on his level of influence upon Seagal, may have even convinced him to hire John Lear’s wife as his casting agent—a tidbit that Lear bragged to Lars Hansson about.⁴⁵ Perhaps it was through Lear and Nichols’ relationship that Steven Seagal felt impelled to try and make a film of Lazar story. What a movie that would have been.

A photo exists of one of Lear’s meetings with Nichols, archived on a website put together by Above Top Secret with Lear’s input, captioned with some of Lear’s reminiscences: “I came across a photo of me and Robert Booth Nichols in my den probably just after 911 (sic) but I can't remember exactly. I believe that we are sharing a Cognac and discussing the lunar atmosphere.”⁴⁶ Apparently, Nichols was not averse to Lear’s strange obsessions, certainly being aware of many of the stories he spread across the conspiracyverse. Knowing about Lazar would be simply a drop in the pond. With the tale of a “sports model” flying saucer in a hanger somewhere at Area 51 having a cultural cachet that has allowed it to promulgate into the present, Nichols might have placed it in his back pocket—using it whenever a mark cropped up that he could entrap in a confidence game.

Robert Booth Nichols and John Lear in the latter’s office, apparently sharing Cognac and talking about the moon. (Image source: "John Lear Photo Gallery: John's CIA History.” Pegasus Research Consortium. https://thelivingmoon.com/47john_lear/02files/Gallery_003a.html.)

iv.

While Nichols’ plausible connections to Bob Lazar and John Lear are notable when considering the possibility that Jacques Vallée’s 1998 mystery caller was referring to Robert Booth Nichols, this remains speculation. However, there are other curious alignments that indicate to me that the caller more than likely was an acquaintance of the mysterious secret agent man. Nearly a decade after the death of Danny Casolaro, Nichols would reappear in another harebrained scheme that eventually led to a hedge fund defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. The only reason this sordid tale is not known throughout popular culture is that the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme was revealed the same year—its massive numbers overshadowed the oft-forgotten fraud perpetrated by Sam Israel III and Bayou Hedge Fund Group.

In the late 1990s, Israel was already struggling as a hedge fund manager, deep in the hole from over-promising to investors and faking profits to hide huge losses. Struggling with mental health and drug dependency, he was in desperate need of getting his money back. “I knew no one would care about the fraud if I got the money back,” he told journalist Guy Lawson.⁴⁷ A possible way forward came in the imposing form of Robert Booth Nichols. Israel was introduced to Nichols via a man named Jack O’Halloran who, like Nichols, had a small acting career and claimed ties to the mob—specifically that he was the son of Gambino crime family boss Albert Anastasia.⁴⁸ Together, O’Halloran and Nichols brought Israel into a world of secret riches and covert madness, promising that he’d get huge returns to cover the fraud he had already committed.

Nichols was not shy about his checkered past, even using his role in the Octopus conspiracy as alluring proof to Israel that he had deep connections with underworld elements. In psychologically challenging mind games, Nichols would float by any bizarre theory that would cause the listener’s sense of reality to fold in upon itself. Investigative journalist Cheri Seymour noted upon meeting him that “the more I entered the game, the better (Nichols) liked it.”⁴⁹ In Sam Israel III, Nichols had found an audience that was starstruck enough to lap up anything:

Nichols regaled him with tales. An alien really had been captured in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, Nichols said. The creature had died of an overdose of strawberry ice cream, according to Nichols. The annual flu season was a method for the Octopus to cull the human population, Nichols claimed. So it went, as Nichols downed whiskey in the evening and instructed Sam and visitors who happened by the house in alternate world history.⁵⁰

Keen readers might notice that this claim about the alien strawberry ice cream overdose is a bastardization of another (already bastard-ish) story put forth by AFOSI agent Richard Doty. The fable was most famously disseminated on UFO Cover Up? Live, a cheesy live-recorded (but broadcast in syndication) television special where a silhouetted Doty—as the secret high-level source Falcon—also alleged that the extraterrestrials enjoyed Tibetan throat singing.⁵¹ In other words, Nichols was continuing to spread nonsense disinformation, but it makes his awareness of the UFO scene—specifically the lore simmering among the John Lear wing of the subculture—more abundantly clear.

Even the moneymaking scheme (which did nothing but funnel cash to Nichols and his associates) bore the hallmarks of some of the more bizarre sovereign citizen-esque scams. The “shadow market” bears a passing resemblance to the NESARA/GESARA scam, promoted in New Age circles, which claimed that a secret law eliminated all taxes, mortgages, and debts.⁵² Everyone was secretly a millionaire, of course, all you had to do was buy in. And Israel certainly bought in, putting $150 million into the so-called “shadow market,” a nebulous realm of finance where all the occulted truths of the world were secreted and funded:

Nichols told Israel that the most powerful institutions of the modern world—the U.S. government, the U.N., the IMF—were all a front. “There is a secret government operating within the world’s government,” he said. “They run a secret trading program—the high-yield market. Only a few chosen people participate in the program. The returns are staggering. The proceeds are used to fund black operations, fight wars, pay off foreign governments, and conduct good works in the Third World.” (…)

Nichols called the secret society the “Upperworld.” The large banks that were designated primary dealers by the Federal Reserve—Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Union Bank of Switzerland—also operated in the shadow market. The Federal Reserve was a private company, Nichols said, designed to hide the reality that the United States government was bankrupt.⁵³

Through Nichols, his supposed “in” to people who could put his chips in the “shadow market,” Israel was supposed to get treasury bonds bafflingly cheaper than face value. The language of the shadow market—high yield, currency stabilization schemes, buying securities below market value, etc.—also sounds like the rambling declarations of Vallée’s strange telephone caller. Curiously, the “financial engineer” of the “shadow market” scam, Barry McNeil, said that Israel and Nichols’ “first trade would be with Société Générale, a French prime bank,” which happened to be the same institution Vallée’s mystery caller claimed to work.⁵⁴ It could be coincidence, SocGen is a major financial institution, though I wouldn’t call it a household name. It could also be a telling recurring element of a con. There were, after all, so many players making money from this con, it resembled—if not an octopus—a giant squid obscuring itself in black ink.

Israel and his investors never got the money back. Multimillions were wired overseas, amounts that made law enforcement take notice. Seeking some form of escape and still racked by paranoia over his involvement in the “shadow market,” Israel tried to fake his own death but was soon caught. His wild story is recounted in Guy Lawson’s 2012 book, Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street’s Wildest Con, where Israel still believes in Nichols’ story while incarcerated decades later. The shadow market bonds worth millions, the covert operations, the underworld financial system—Israel still thinks there is some truth to it. He even continues to believe that he killed a “Pakistani intelligence operative” as part of his grand adventure with Nichols although, Lawson is quick to point out, “staging a murder is one of the oldest ruses of the grift.”⁵⁵ But the hooks were in—Nichols had enraptured Israel so thoroughly that he continues to trust in his tall tales long after the gig was up.

Nichols died in a “five-star Swiss hotel room” of a heart attack in 2009, just two months after a deposition related to the Sam Israel III case. The timing was suspicious, as was an apparent “blow to Nichols’s head” and his immediate cremation.⁵⁶ Israel certainly did not believe that Nichols was dead, telling Larson: “He’s very much alive and well—somewhere. Bob is the real thing, not a con man like the government says. (…) He is literally the man who does not exist. (…) He left no footprint.” He concludes that Nichols “was seriously connected to American intelligence agencies and the people who really run the world,” reasoning that he would be charged with a crime if it were all fake.⁵⁷ Indeed, Nichols’ was one of those people who seemed to be able to walk between the raindrops. The full truth is not likely to be known unless an elderly and remorseful Nichols pops up in Manila and tells all.

Robert Booth Nichols with hedge fund manager Sam Israel III. (Image source: Lawson, Guy. “Get rich or (pretend to) die trying: The Wall Street trader who faked his own suicide.” The Independent. 3 September 2012. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/get-rich-or-pretend-to-die-trying-the-wall-street-trader-who-faked-his-own-suicide-8092737.html.)

v.

From this compelling circumstantial evidence, I am convinced that Vallée’s mystery caller was an associate of Robert Booth Nichols circa 1998. Their identity remains unknown to me, though based on the many middlemen involved in the Sam Israel case, the scam had a substantial network that could have been cold calling folks with money—Vallée included. A seasoned venture capitalist at this point in his life, Vallée was not going to be the easy mark required for Nichols’ covert or dirty dealings. Nevertheless, he must have presented one hell of a possible catch. Vallée’s interest in ufology was utilized by the caller as a possible lure, the caller being aware that he was a well-known researcher who might have an interest in insider information—bunk or not. The limited details included in the Forbidden Science entry greatly resemble the “shadow market” scam laid out by Nichols and company, and the timing lines up well, in and around the turn of the millennium. There were a great many finance scams of this stripe in the era—utilizing supposed parapolitical money networks and the secret rulers of the world—but this one names a “Bob Nichols” specifically. Like the real-world Robert Booth Nichols, the caller implies some connection to Bob Lazar and high-level military contacts. The number of aligning details goes beyond pure comfortable coincidence.

Jacques Vallée, however, was not naïve enough to fall for this grift. He never held a particularly high opinion of the Lazar stories, so it was folly on the caller’s part to assume this would entice him. Yet, the encounter rightfully shakes him, specifically after he considers how often strange hijinks take place in the field of ufology. The day afterwards, Vallée discusses the theft of two of J. Allen Hynek’s UFO slides some years earlier with mutual friend Fred Beckman, remarking that “obviously, ‘someone’ is interested in such material.”⁵⁸ He notes other odd occurrences, listing the mystery caller among them: “Dr. Jack Sarfatti's notes stolen from his car. And the time when recordings disappeared from the home of a French journalist. Or the recent intrusion into my computer at work. Or the weird fellow who offers me to invest at a 50% annual interest rate.”⁵⁹

Beyond the obvious financial incentive, were there ulterior motives for trying to ensnare a prominent ufologist in the Octopus? Past dispatches have considered the very real possibility that Vallée was the target of counterintelligence or disinformation drips. Given Nichols’ previous association with the Cabazon/Wackenhut operation—not as far removed from Area 51 shenanigans as one might expect—and his tendency to promote the disinformation peddled by John Lear, Vallée may have been targeted for a trap. It would be multifold: He would invest money, buy into UFO disinfo, and possibly promote both the scam and disinfo himself. But to think it was more than a scam, one would have to believe that Nichols was no mere a confidence man. He would have to be an individual who was entrusted with poisoning the well, offering limited hangouts of tantalizing information, and moving illicit money in underground networks, all free from government persecution. Disregard the fact that a confidence man and an intelligence asset have much in common with one another—with the added benefit that you never know what to believe.

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I was recently on Brother Isaac’s podcast COEXIST INC to talk UFOs and the recent Wall Street Journal article if you missed it. My thanks to Jason P. Woodbury over at Range and Basin for the very kind mention on a recent episode of Trillbilly Worker’s Party, a listen that awoke in me lost memories of listening to DC Talk. The incomparable Bradley Plaisier also had a great appearance on the gregarious Steve Berg’s podcast Hi, Strangeness. The shoutout in this one made me blush. Email me at gettingspooked@protonmail.com with any questions, comments, recommendations, leads, or paranormal stories. You can find me on Twitter at @TannerFBoyle1, on Bluesky at @tannerfboyle.bsky.social, or on Instagram at @gettingspooked. Until next time, stay spooked.

1. Vallée, Jacques. Forbidden Science 4: The Spring Hill Chronicles – The Journals of Jacques Vallée, 1990-1999. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 2019. Page 417.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Associated Press. “See Saucer Near Holland: Others ‘Caught’ By Camera.” The Herald-Press (St. Joseph). 25 March 1966. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-herald-press-see-saucer-near-holland/156982104/.

6. Golden, Tim. “Man, 58, With Purple Shroud, Commits Suicide, Noting Cult.” The New York Times. 2 April 1997. https://archive.is/20240522100654/https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/02/us/man-58-with-purple-shroud-commits-suicide-noting-cult.html#selection-6775.0-6775.57.

7. Nichols, Preston B. and Peter Moon. The Music of Time. Westbury: Sky Books, 2000. Page 223. https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/thought_and_writing/mind_control/Nichols,%20Preston%20-%20The%20Music%20of%20Time.pdf.

8. I am not giving a full explanation of Casolaro and “The Octopus” or I would be here all day. Instead, I would recommend the recent documentary American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders (2024) for a quick and dirty version of the narrative or Ghost Stories for the End of the World’s series on the case for a more thorough and complex untangling. As far as textual sources go, Cheri Seymour’s The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into The Octopus and PROMIS Software Scandal is preferred by me, being more in depth and consistent than Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith’s The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro.

9. Thomas, Kenn and Jim Keith. The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro. Port Townsend: Feral House, 2004. Page 43.

10. Ibid., page 44.

11. Merry, Bob. “Quiet Tacoma Boy of 12 Shows Remarkable Knowledge of Sound.” The News Tribune (Tacoma). 6 November 1960. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-news-tribune-quiet-tacoma-boy-of-12/142560934/.

12. Peluso, Mike. “Bellarmine Youth Digs Science.” The News Tribune (Tacoma). 28 February 1965. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-news-tribune-bellarmine-youth-digs-s/142560988/.

13. Thomas, Kenn and Jim Keith. The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro. Port Townsend: Feral House, 2004. Page 12.

14. Ibid., page 10.

15. Ibid., page 11.

16. Ibid., page 44.

17. Ibid., page 12.

18. Ibid., page 10.

19. Connolly, John. “Dead Right.” SPY. January 1993. Page 64. https://archive.org/details/SpyMagazine/Spy%20Magazine%201986-1998/1992/1992-12-DEC-JAN/.

20. Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into The Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. Walterville: TrineDay, 1994. Ebook. Page 169.

21. Nichols was also investigated as part of a probe into mob and intelligence action within the media conglomerate MCA, helping to arrange the purchase and “selling (of) stocks by the use of manipulative or deceptive practices.” (Weinstein, Henry and Paul Feldman. “Trial Offers Murky Peek Into World of Intrigue.” Los Angeles Times. 21 March 1993. https://archive.is/20200722061103/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-03-21-mn-13734-story.html#selection-1735.9-1735.223.) [Though Nichols is not mentioned by name in the book, Dan E. Moldea’s Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob explores this MCA scandal and how it relates to shady clandestine actions by the mob and figures connected to the Reagan White House. It is available on Internet Archive.]

22. Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into The Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. Walterville: TrineDay, 1994. Ebook. Page 345.

23. Ibid., page 397.

24. Ibid., page 29.

25. Connolly, John. “Dead Right.” SPY. January 1993. Page 64. https://archive.org/details/SpyMagazine/Spy%20Magazine%201986-1998/1992/1992-12-DEC-JAN/.

26. Hayakawa, Norio. “Behind the mysterious crash of a helicopter near Area 51 in 1991.” Norio Hayakawa's Civilian Intelligence News Report. 17 September 2010. https://noriohayakawa2020.blogspot.com/2010/09/black-projects-most-important-events-of.html.

27. Thomas, Kenn. “Of Steven Seagal and Bud Culligan: A Conversation with Lars Hansson.” Steamshovel Press #10. 1994. Page 28. https://archive.org/details/Steamshovel_Press_Issue_10/page/n29/mode/2up.

28. See: McCoy, Alfred W., Cathleen B. Read, and Leonard P. Adams II. The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. Available on Internet Archive.

29. Thomas, Kenn. “Of Steven Seagal and Bud Culligan: A Conversation with Lars Hansson.” Steamshovel Press #10. 1994. Page 28. https://archive.org/details/Steamshovel_Press_Issue_10/page/n29/mode/2up.

30. Pilkington, Mark. Mirage Men: A Journey in Disinformation, Paranoia and UFOs. London: Constable, 2010. Page 223-224.

31. Ibid., page 223.

32. Rodrick, Stephen. “Loving the Alien: How UFO Culture Took Over America.” Rolling Stone. 20 August 2020. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/aliens-real-ufo-area-51-nevada-pentagon-history-1046067/.

33. “FOIPA Request No.: 1422606-001, Subject: United Nuclear Scientific Supplies, LLC (1998-Present).” The Black Vault. 29 March 2023. https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/fbifiles/1422606-001.pdf.

34. Connolly, John. “Inside the Shadow CIA.” SPY. September 1992. Page 50. https://archive.org/details/SpyMagazine/Spy%20Magazine%201986-1998/1992/1992-09-SEP/mode/2up.

35. Ibid.

36. Schectman, Joel and Aruna Viswanatha. “The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology.” The Wall Street Journal. 6 June 2025. https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/ufo-us-disinformation-45376f7e.

37. Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into The Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. Walterville: TrineDay, 1994. Ebook. Page 482.

38. SignalsIntelligence. “Bob Lazar: Shadows.” Medium. 6 March 2023. https://medium.com/@signalsintelligence/bob-lazar-shadows-f045a2be1d9c.

39. Ibid.

40. SignalsIntelligence. “Bob Lazar: Red Flags.” Medium. 30 May 2023. https://medium.com/@signalsintelligence/bob-lazar-red-flags-d0a481d35d8e.

41. Under Siege is a guilty pleasure of mine. Nichols can be seen in scenes taking place in the “situation room” where he plays Colonel Sarnac and utters the iconic line: “Approximately one million people will reach ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit in less than a second.” He does indeed look a bit like Clark Gable.

42. Thomas, Kenn. “Of Steven Seagal and Bud Culligan: A Conversation with Lars Hansson.” Steamshovel Press #10. 1994. Page 28. https://archive.org/details/Steamshovel_Press_Issue_10/page/n29/mode/2up.

43. Connolly, John. “Man of Dishonor.” SPY. July-August 1993. Page 57. https://archive.org/details/SpyMagazine/Spy%20Magazine%201986-1998/1993/1993-07-JUL-AUG/.

44. Ayscough, Susan. “New Line nabs gov’t UFO scientist pic.” Variety. 11 June 1993. https://variety.com/1993/film/news/new-line-nabs-gov-t-ufo-scientist-pic-107712/.

45. Thomas, Kenn. “Of Steven Seagal and Bud Culligan: A Conversation with Lars Hansson.” Steamshovel Press #10. 1994. Page 28. https://archive.org/details/Steamshovel_Press_Issue_10/page/n29/mode/2up. (Given Lear’s tendency for stretching the truth and the fact that I cannot find mention of this elsewhere, I doubt it is true—though Seagal’s apparent interest in Lazar’s story gives me pause.)

46. "John Lear Photo Gallery: John's CIA History.” Pegasus Research Consortium. https://thelivingmoon.com/47john_lear/02files/Gallery_003a.html.

47. Lawson, Guy. “The U.S. Government Is a Sham. The Federal Reserve Is Running a Secret Bond Market. Global Finance Is Controlled by an ‘Upperworld’ of Rogue Black-Ops Fixers.” New York. 29 June 2012. https://nymag.com/news/features/octopus-sam-israel-2012-7/.

48. Ibid.

49. Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into The Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. Walterville: TrineDay, 1994. Ebook. Page 216.

50. Lawson, Guy. Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street’s Wildest Con. New York: Crown Publishers, 2012. Page 218.

51. Skvarla, Robert. “The Cover-Up Behind UFO Cover-Up? Live!, Part 2.” Diabolique Magazine. 18 May 2022. https://diaboliquemagazine.com/the-cover-up-behind-ufo-cover-up-live-part-2/.

52. Robinson, Sean. “Snared by a cybercult queen.” The News Tribune (Tacoma). 17 July 2013. https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/special-reports/article25855081.html. (See also: The 2005 documentary Waiting for NESARA.)

53. Lawson, Guy. “The U.S. Government Is a Sham. The Federal Reserve Is Running a Secret Bond Market. Global Finance Is Controlled by an ‘Upperworld’ of Rogue Black-Ops Fixers.” New York. 29 June 2012. https://nymag.com/news/features/octopus-sam-israel-2012-7/.

54. Lawson, Guy. Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street’s Wildest Con. New York: Crown Publishers, 2012. Page 267.

55. Lawson, Guy. “The U.S. Government Is a Sham. The Federal Reserve Is Running a Secret Bond Market. Global Finance Is Controlled by an ‘Upperworld’ of Rogue Black-Ops Fixers.” New York. 29 June 2012. https://nymag.com/news/features/octopus-sam-israel-2012-7/.

56. Lawson, Guy. Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street’s Wildest Con. New York: Crown Publishers, 2012. Page 339.

57. Ibid., page 340.

58. Vallée, Jacques. Forbidden Science 4: The Spring Hill Chronicles – The Journals of Jacques Vallée, 1990-1999. San Antonio: Anomalist Books, 2019. Page 418.

59. Ibid.