American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders

This is another Netflix documentary I tackled, this time from 2024: 

I don’t know if 100% of the stories told here were legit, but… what a wild conspiracy this purportedly is. This four episode documentary covered the 1991 death of journalist Danny Casalaro; he investigated a shady dealing involving the United States government (the Department of Justice, specifically) and a computer company, and via interviewing a variety of shady characters, came to believe that there was a vast conspiracy encompassing most of the 80’s major American scandals (the Iran-Contra affair, the savings & loan scandal, The October Surprise, etc.) were all connected together as if it was a giant octopus w/ many tentacles. It does sound like the plot of one of those 70’s paranoid conspiracy thrillers.

My opinion… at least some of the events depicted were true and more than once, the American government appeared to protect certain people, likely for nefarious reasons. It was fascinating hearing those tales, and from some of the innocent parties who attempted to investigate. It all tying together into something massive… neither me nor the filmmakers were fully convinced. However, the official ruling that Danny Casalero took his own life in his motel room can certainly be questioned.

Octopus is a documentary where the filmmakers (Christian Hansen, who did the investigation, and director Zachary Trietz) are often shown on camera. That didn’t bother me too much in this case. An asset was that they had interviews with many of the important players in this sordid saga, alongside audio and video recordings from the past. The viewer will ultimately have to decide what they believe or don’t believe, re: those scandals and how they do or don’t relate to each other. Whether or not they have biases concerning some of the players rumored to be involved (Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Sr.) is up to them as well.

I do have to mention arguably the most dubious of the characters covered: Robert Booth Nichols. He was allegedly involved in many clandestine activities, involving and not involving the federal government… furthermore, there are claims he was involved with both the Gambino crime family and Nichols was undoubtedly involved with Samuel Israel, the leader of a Ponzi scheme. He even is (was?) the sort of guy to professedly fake his own death; whether he is still alive, passed away in ’09, or died sometime between then and now is unknown.

Most importantly for people like us, he was involved w/ a famed 90’s action picture as a “technical advisor”; my presumption is that he presented the producers a bill of goods of phony accolades to earn such a position… and have a brief speaking role on camera. The punchline is that the movie was UNDER SIEGE and this documentary produced on-set photos of Nichols with both Steven Seagal and Gary Busey. That was just perfect in my eyes.