SIGHTINGS



Does Echelon Murder US
Scientists Who Challenge
The Special Collection Service?
By Virginia McCullough <virginia.mccullough@netzero.net>
Copyright 2000 by Virginia McCullough
3-20-00

 
In January of 1992 a committee investigating "Scientists and Human Rights in Guatemala" met with the Guatemalan Ambassador to the United States, Juan Jose Caso-Fanjul. Among other concerns they expressed to him was their interest in seeing those responsible for the murder of anthropologist Myrna Mack brought to justice. Members of the committee gave the ambassador the committee's list of colleagues who were believed to have been killed for political reasons or who had simply disappeared.
 
 
One issue the committee addressed was "the attached list of 32 scientists, engineers, health professionals, and students of these disciplines, who are reported to have disappeared or have been murdered -- in some cases after being abducted". [For the complete report please go to: http://www.nap.edu/html/guat/mission.html ]
 
It would be very interesting to have just such a committee appointed to look into the kidnappings, disappearances and murders of scientists executed in the United States. What type of outrage would be generated if just two of the murders connected to the Echelon technology could be examined? Would there be justice for the family of Dr. Eric Rosskoss who was killed on June 29, 1960? Would law enforcement suddenly find the killer of Alan David Standorf murdered in January of 1991?
 
This author was an associate and friend of investigative reporter, Joseph "Danny" Casolaro. Danny was hot on the trail of what he called "The Octopus", an intricate web of black operations ranging from drugs-for-arms to pornography-for-control. The common denominator was profit. The gold and money was laundered through a variety of banks from Nugen Hand to BCCI, commonly called the Bank of Crooks and Criminals Inc.
 
Casolaro shared information with many reporters around the world and interviewed numerous CIA/DIA/DEA/NSA operatives in his quest for the truth. He called me one evening and sounded very excited. He said that he was going to meet a source at the Sheraton Inn in Martinsburg, West Virginia. He claimed that the source was very close to Senator Byrd, the patron of the CIA. He announced that this source was going to "give me [the solution to] the Inslaw case on a silver platter".
 
Two days later I received a call from a mutual friend who was crying. She told me she had just talked with the owners of the Inslaw Corporation, Bill and Nancy Hamilton. They were in shock and told her that Danny Casolaro had been found dead in his room at the Sheraton Inn. His naked body was found in a bathtub filled with bloody water. Both wrists had been slashed to the bone numerous times, drugs were found in his body, a 'suicide' note allegedly written in his own handwriting was found nearby. His clothes were found neatly folded on the bed. All of his countless files and reporter's notes were missing. No files or paperwork was found in his car. His body was embalmed before his family was notified as though someone was in a hurry to cover up a murder eventually labeled a suicide. The vast majority of reporters who had worked with Danny believe to this day that Casolaro was executed by the very forces he was investigating.
 
The last person to see Danny Casolaro alive was a man named Bill Turner. I interviewed Turner many times over the phone before he was arrested and jailed on phony bank robbery charges. In one such interview, Turner told me that the only time he had seen the reporter depressed was in January of 1991, about six or seven months before his murder. Turner said Danny was sad and told him that he had "lost a very important source" whose body was discovered "stuffed in the trunk of his car at the Washington Airport."
 
Pursuing that lead led to a conversation with Detective Joseph Young of the Airport Police. Young acknowledged that a man named Alan David Standorf, 34, of Warrenton, Virginia, had been found in his car by an airport patrolman on January 29. Young stated that Standorf had apparently been beaten to death several weeks earlier and his body was covered with luggage and personal effects. Later Dr. Stephen Sheehy of the Medical Examiner's office in Northern Virginia would confirm that Standorf had died from a blunt force blow to the back of the head around January 4.
 
Police said that Standorf was a civilian employee at Vint Hill Farm, a military installation near Manassas, Virginia. That facility is a US Army Information Systems Command Center that gathers electronic intelligence from spy satellites and other sources around the world. It operates in top secrecy under the National Security Agency. Standorf oversaw the repair and distribution of electronic equipment at Vint Hill.
 
Standorf's family stated that he had resigned from his civilian job the previous month because his Army Reserves had been called up for Persian Gulf War training at Fort Bragg, N.C. Family members last saw him alive on December 28 and he was last seen alive by his landlady on January 2.
 
Standorf's mother would worry when Alan told her he might get out of military work to become a policeman. Most of Standorf's military career has been spent in intelligence divisions around the world. Alan's mother, Jeanette, told him that a policeman's job was dangerous and her son responded, "What I do now is dangerous".
 
Within hours the Airport Police could or would no longer talk to reporters. When told that Standorf had been a source to murdered Danny Casolaro, Lt. Norman Ford, of the airport police, said, "This is not strictly a police investigation anymore. The government is involved too". He acknowledged to this reporter that the FBI and Army authorities were working together with police from the airport and Martinsburg, West Virginia.
 
It was later confirmed that Standorf and Casolaro had been meeting and copying documents in a hotel room in Martinsberg. Someone did not appreciate their communicating and both men ended up murdered within the same year. Did Echelon kill a reporter and the man working at Vint Hill?
 
Investigating the Standorf murder led to sources who wish to rename anonymous. These sources independently confirmed that another source of Casolaro's had been killed in June of 1990. All that was known, at that time, was that he had been run over on Highway I-95 near the Imporia, Virginia exit.
 
The man turned out to be Dr. Eric Rosskoss who worked for the National Computer Security Center at the time of his death. Rosskoss had been a boyhood genius who earned his PhD from Vanderbilt and soon began working for the CIA, NSA, and the IDA [International Defense Agency]. The IDA was identified by an associate of Rosskoss's as a "spook agency".
 
Dr. Rosskoss had worked at the National Computer Security Center since 1988 on a three year program entitled "The Trusix Papers". This was a trusted computer system for UNIX designed to develop security systems for large companies, according to another employee of the Center. The Trusix Papers had been criticized by several large companies who publicly stated that the development was really a front for the NSA that would allow the agency to install a 'back door' or 'Trojan Horse' in order to monitor the 'companies' private product development.
 
In March or April of 1990, Eric told his parents that his employer or someone at the Center had injected errors into a paper he had written and was trying to get him to sign reaffirming his authorship of the paper. He sounded very upset.
 
The last time his parents heard from their son, Eric, was at 2:00 a.m. on June 27, 1990. He called his parents and said, "There are strange goings on and I am going to get to the bottom ot it -- I know what I have to do".
 
On Saturday, June 30, 1990 at 11:00 a.m., Eric's parents received a call from law enforcement. They were told that Eric was dead. He had apparently been seen walking naked down the center divider of Highway I-95. Someone called police who said they arrived within 45 seconds but it was too late. A man who said that he had been driving all night had hit and killed Dr. Rosskoss at 3:30 a.m. the night of Friday, June 29, 1990. Of course, the determination was that Eric had committed suicide.
 
 
Rosskoss had been staying at the Comfort Inn where he had checked in to attend a meeting. None of his clothes were found; his shoes were gone; the glasses he needed to see were missing; no paperwork was discovered. It was as if Dr. Rosskoss had never been there.
 
Eric's parents went to Virginia to pick up his car and drive it back. It behaved funny on the trip home. They took it to their mechanic who told them the lug bolts and pins were missing from the front wheel. The mechanic told them someone had tampered with the car. The parents contacted the local FBI and expressed their concern. The FBI responded to them by advising them "to stay out of Virginia" for their own safety.
 
 
So this, then, is how America treats its scientists who work on the project called Echelon. Certainly it is not unreasonable to request a committee be formed to investigate the issue of Scientists and Human Rights in the United States. The results would determine just how free we are in this country.
 
 
 
(c) 2000 Virginia McCullough First published by NewsMakingNews http://www.newsmakingnews.com

 
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