In December 1998, Michael Riconosciuto was serving out a 26-year prison sentence at Allenwood Penitentiary in Pennsylvania on drug charges when he was given information by a rabbi close to his family about an al-Qaeda plot to hijack airplanes and crash them into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and U.S. military bases around the Washington, D.C., area.
Riconosciuto had been a scientist working for U.S. intelligence agencies and CIA consultant whose family had close ties with people working in Israeli intelligence and in high levels of the Israeli government.[1] Riconosciuto himself mowed CIA Director William Casey’s lawn as a child.
There is strong evidence that Riconosciuto had been set up on the drug charges because he knew too much about secret CIA operations, including the theft of computer software known as PROMIS (Prosecutor’s Management Information System) from entrepreneur Bill Hamilton that was used by the CIA to facilitate illegal surveillance and money laundering.
Riconosciuto had helped modify the PROMIS software for the CIA and knew about all kinds of CIA criminal activity, including the CIA’s paying off drug lords with a vast secret cash supply.[2]
According to Daniel Sheehan, an investigator and attorney who interviewed Riconosciuto at length, the rabbi provided Riconosciuto with the information on the al-Qaeda terrorist plot drawn from Israeli intelligence with the hope that Riconosciuto could negotiate a reduction of his prison sentence after alerting federal authorities about it.
The plan did not work because when Riconosciuto reported his tip to agents from the CIA and a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agent, nothing was done. A presidential briefing from CIA Director George Tenet to Bill Clinton on December 4, 1998, did note Riconosciuto’s warnings about bin Laden preparing to hijack U.S. aircraft, though Clinton and the White House did not act on it.
In early 2001, Riconosciuto’s lawyer, Louis Buffardi, reached out to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft, as well as attorney Scott Lassar and Keith Cutri, an FBI Special Agent from the Williamsport, Pennsylvania, office, about the planned attacks involving hijacked planes but was ignored.
Sheehan spoke about all this on February 26 on the “Uncontrolled Opposition” radio program airing on WBAI and the Progressive Radio Network with Peter Osborne, a researcher close to Riconosciuto, whose software company was stolen by the CIA in the late 1990s and whose life was threatened by CIA agent Robert Booth Nichols.
Both Sheehan and Osborne are speaking out now because they want the public to be alerted to the failure of government authorities to act on Riconosciuto’s information and to investigate what happened. They want the public to demand a proper investigation, a real 9/11 commission, unlike the fraudulent official one that failed to investigate so many things.
They are also urging the public to support Senator Ron Wyden’s efforts to force the release of all the Jeffrey Epstein files, including Epstein’s banking transactions with JP Morgan Chase, that should offer an important window into the CIA’s illegal money-laundering operations.
Sheehan and Osborne believe that the 9/11 attacks were enabled by a corrupt cabal of CIA operatives led by Theodore Shackley and George H. W. Bush known as “the Octopus,” whose criminal exploits over decades were financed largely by Japanese gold stolen after World War II that was laundered in U.S. banks through use of the PROMIS software.[3]
Sheehan and Osborne raise questions as to whether it was a coincidence that the plane that struck the Pentagon on 9/11 destroyed the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), which was at the time investigating financial irregularities in U.S. banks. The attacks on the World Trade Center also destroyed government offices investigating financial crimes.
When Osborne interviewed Iran-Contra whistleblower Al Martin, Martin told him that, when he asked Oliver North and Richard Secord—two key members of “the Octopus” implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal—how far they would go, they said that, “if one man is a risk to our business and is on a jumbo jet with 700 people, no question the plane goes down.”
Osborne said that, with this mentality, it is conceivable that the “Octopus” network could have orchestrated the hijacking of planes on 9/11 that killed thousands of people.
A key motivation would have been to cover up massive criminal activity being investigated by the ONI, and to create a pretext for the U.S. to invade the Middle East and to advance secret Caspian oil pipeline deals involving companies owned by George H. W. Bush, James Baker, Dick Cheney, Frank Carlucci (former Defense Secretary), John Deutch (former CIA Director) and Jeffrey Epstein.
The neo-conservatives at the time had been looking for a new Pearl Harbor event that would mobilize public support for a military invasion of the Middle Eastern oil fields and regime-change operations extending to Iran.
Fitting with Al Martin’s maxim, there is strong evidence to implicate “the Octopus” in the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988 in order to silence Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) agents on-board who were heading to Washington, D.C., to report on “Octopus” crimes they had learned about. If they did Lockerbie, then why not 9/11?
Sheehan believes that a reason the CIA may have ignored Riconosciuto’s initial report was because they were intent on recruiting as agents participants in the 9/11 plot that Riconosciuto identified to infiltrate al-Qaeda.
Sheehan said that this plan reminded him of the late 1970s when the ATF infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party and had agents bring in weapons that were used in an attack on participants in a “Death to the Klan” march in Greensboro, North Carolina, that killed five members of the Communist Workers Party.
Riconosciuto and Buffardi had advised FBI and CIA agents that they had direct personal contact with Omar al-Bayoumi, a close aide of Osama bin Laden who said that he was willing to secretly assist the FBI and CIA to prevent the 9/11 attacks, provided he would be granted immunity from prosecution. The FBI and CIA never followed up this offer.
The FBI and CIA also do not appear to have done any investigation into links that Riconosciuto pointed out between Osama bin Laden and the CIA prior to 9/11.
Riconosciuto reported being told by Sir William Denis Kendall, one of British MI6’s top experts on al-Qaeda, that Robert Booth Nichols and others in the CIA provided weapons and training to bin Laden in a black operation financed through money laundered through the Australian Nugan Hand Bank and successor banks under the CIA’s Project Hammer.
Project Hammer was run by former CIA Executive Director Alvin Bernard “Buzzy” Krongard, a former member of the Board of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who, after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, took a “selfie” in Saddam’s palace sitting on his throne. (Beneath the palace was a ton of gold bullion that was added to the CIA’s treasure chest.)
In March 2001, Riconosciuto told Keith Cutri information he had received about a New Jersey man who had information on the movement of Soviet-made shoulder-fired missiles coming into the U.S., was coordinating skyjacking operations, bombings and espionage in the U.S., and knew the identity of “sleepers” in the U.S. and overseas.
Riconosciuto also gave Cutri information about a fake ID ring in Montreal and New Jersey and gave him the fake IDs of 30 terrorists who had been chosen to carry out operations inside the U.S.
Riconosciuto told Cutri that Thabet Aeroplus of Quebec City, Canada, was brokering older DC-9s, 747s, and other high performance military aircraft that could be used for terrorist attacks and he knew the names of terrorists who were taking flight training in the U.S. for those aircraft.
Riconosciuto indicated that Thabet Aeroplus was the company scheduled to receive the 37 Soviet-made, shoulder-fired missiles. Riconosciuto’s only request to the FBI was immunity from government prosecution for himself and his informants.
For the next six months, Riconosciuto told Sheehan that he heard nothing from Cutri. But then on September 13, 2001, two days after the 9/11 attacks, Cutri showed up with another FBI agent to visit Riconosciuto in prison and accused him of being “anti-FBI,” “anti-government,” a “conspiracy theorist,” a “hoaxer,” and a “publicity seeker” who wanted to “bother the FBI and waste its time.”[4]
The same smears were repeated in a 2024 Emmy-winning documentary released on Netflix called American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders that appears to be part of a CIA psychological warfare campaign designed to cover up its crimes.[5]
When he visited Riconosciuto on September 13, Cutri threatened him with criminal prosecution should he speak to the media about his having warned government agencies of the planned attacks by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Robert Booth Nichols also threatened Michael’s wife Bobbi, according to Osborne.[6]
Sheehan specified that Cutri and other federal officials who did not act on Riconosciuto’s warning should be the ones charged with a felony since they knew about a criminal conspiracy that killed thousands of people and did not tell anyone.
The cover-up continues to this day, as Riconosciuto, Sheehan and Osborne continue to be stonewalled. Sheehan recently reached out to an investigator working for a federal government commission whose task is to charge people accused of participating in the 9/11 attacks, though he has not yet heard back.
Related to the motive behind 9/11 that may account for the suppression of Riconosciuto’s tip, Osborne refers to a 2008 essay by E. P. Heidner,[7] “Collateral Damage—U.S. Covert Operations and 9/11,” which noted that the attacks of September 11 were timed to coincide with multiple war games monitored by Vice President Dick Cheney that had been rescheduled from another date in October, which included scenarios of airline hijacking and building attacks.
Heidner wrote that “this coincidence creates a scenario of ‘plausible deniability’ under which Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) officials can argue there was no air response because they were ‘confused’ as to whether the attacks were part of the games or not.”
Heidner continued: “The war games probably included an unreported computer simulation of a financial attack on the U.S. economy (as performed during war games in 1997 and 2000 by Cantor Fitzgerald [financial firm located in the World Trade Center]). It is hypothesized that this simulation computer program was the source of the illegal trades conducted in the minutes preceding the attack, and those illegal trades were meant to cover the settlement of the ten-year Durham/Brady Bonds which came due on September 11.”
Purchased by George H. W. Bush, Oliver North and other members of the “Octopus” using gold bullion and proceeds from the private family trust of Colonel Russell Hermann, a CIA paymaster who was murdered in August 1994, according to Hermann’s wife, Mrs. V. K. Durham, the Durham/Brady bonds had been illegally employed as collateral to borrow $240 billion which was deposited in 175 secret CIA bank accounts.[8]
Mrs. Durham alleges from conversations before her husband’s murder that any ten-year Brady bond payoff for notes due on September 12, 2001, would have led to additional evidence of trillions in stolen funds from the U.S. Treasury and the identity of the perpetrators—providing an important reason to take out Cantor-Fitzgerald offices in the North World Trade Center Tower and a Pentagon ONI file section on September 11.
According to Heidner: “It is only a coincidence, of course, that the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) in the Pentagon and Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center took direct hits from the hijacked airliners on the day those bonds would have matured. It is also only coincidental that the offices of the U.S. Federal agencies that were involved in investigating the related Russian money laundering scandal (U.S. Customs, FBI, SEC, IMF, Export-Import Bank) were also destroyed, and that immediately thereafter, President [George] W. Bush terminated the investigation of the Bank of New York’s involvement in the scandal.”
Riconosciuto had traveled to the Middle East from the time he was eight years old. He worked with the CIA in the Phoenix Program during the Vietnam War, a program which resulted in the killing of 20,000 to 100,000 civilians. ↑
Sheehan said that Riconosciuto told him that William Casey and George H. W. Bush would pocket CIA bribe money, obtained from stolen Japanese gold in World War II, for themselves so they could mount their own private covert operations. It was money from that treasure trove that likely funded the JFK assassination among other “deep-state” crimes that may not have been formally ordered by the CIA as an agency—allowing for easier plausible deniability for it since there is no paper trail or official bureaucratic record. Stolen money was often put into trusts that had to be safeguarded and laundered in banks and other institutions with help from the PROMIS software. ↑
The stolen gold is known as the Yamashita’s gold. It was identified by CIA operative Edward Lansdale after he tortured General Yamashita’s chauffeur. See Sterling and Peggy Seagrave, Gold Warriors: America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold (London: Verso, 2006). ↑
A CIA-connected documentary, released on Netflix and produced by Christian Hansen and Zachary Treitz called American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders, repeated many of the insults hurled by Cutri and his associate as part of a media smear campaign that was no doubt orchestrated by the CIA and “Octopus” network. ↑
Besides Michael Riconosciuto, The Octopus Murders defames principled whistleblower Bill Hamilton and suggests that journalist Danny Casolaro, who was in the process of exposing the crimes of the “Octopus” was depressed and committed suicide when he was very clearly murdered by the CIA. For critical review of the film, see here and here. ↑
Osborne also suggests that one of Robert Booth Nichols’ employees, Cheri Seymour, took some important documents from Michael’s wife, Bobbi, and tried to have Michael’s prison sentence expanded by accusing him of threatening to kill her, which in turn led to him being viciously beaten in prison. According to Osborne, Seymour subsequently wrote a book defaming Michael, The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro’s Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2010). ↑
Heidner is thought to be a pseudonym for Jeff Prager. ↑
See Tom Flocco, “Financial Terrorism Towers Over 9/11,” The Journal of History, Spring 2009. Hermann had also functioned as a CIA money launderer and was involved in CIA dirty-war operations in Central America in the 1980s but objected to the mass murder of women and children. He was tossed into jail, but with the help of Chiapas Indians made his way back to the U.S. Hermann subsequently began probing George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton’s links to narcotics money laundering, according to his wife. He met with Vince Foster, White House Counsel and a former partner in the Little Rock-based Rose Law Firm who died under suspicious circmstances, uncovering that both Clinton and Foster had Swiss bank accounts. The Clinton involvement was about whether Governor Clinton permitted the CIA to fly drugs into Mena, Arkansas, under Operation Black Eagle. On July 1, 1993, Hermann was sprayed with something while mowing his lawn that caused him to bleed from the eyes, ears and nose. He was tortured and frozen to death in August 1994 after being admitted to the Marion, Illinois, Veteran’s Health Care Center. Hermann had told his wife: “If I go to the hospital without that report [an internal CIA report on Clinton, Foster, and Mena, Arkansas, drug smuggling] being finished, I’m a dead man.” The Brady-Durham bonds were never repaid. Donald Rumsfeld had stated that the Pentagon could not account for more than $2 trillion the day before 9/11. ↑
CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptions, orders and donations from readers like you.
Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism
Click the whistle and donate
When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.
CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.
Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.
CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.
We sincerely thank you for your support.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.
Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.
Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.
Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.
By using this site, you agree to these terms above.
About the Author
Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics for radio and TV programs and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Uncontrolled Opposition.”
He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of six books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023); and with Dan Kovalik, Syria: Anatomy of Regime Change (Baraka Books, 2025).
Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency .
He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com and found on substack here.
