FURTHER READING (Patreon)

Here is a list of books, some documentaries and a poem we used to inform THE OCTOPUS series. I am definitely forgetting some things, because we've been working on this for over a year. A couple of these books are written by people with whom we had little in common politically but contained valuable info or an interesting perspective we hadn't considered. Beyond that, even if they didn't provide something strictly specific to the series, in some way they offered a certain ambiance or coloured our approach, added to the mood in ways that felt appropriate - to that end, there are a couple of fictional works we read to get into the vibe. Some of them you may recognise from our previous series reading lists, AMERIKAN TABLOID and CASINO.

There is a library's worth of declassified CIA/FBI/government documents we used as primary sources that I cannot even begin to find the patience to list one by one. We also drew extensively upon the declassified documents generated by The Inslaw Affair and Danny Casolaro's death, almost all available at the Internet Archive. Ben Ghazi performed additional miracles with FOIA work and tracking down long-dead websites and obscure documentaries, information films and news clippings.

Anything I got right is thanks to BG and the writers below, some of whom died or nearly died because of what they learned. Anything we got wrong is my fault, but if we did get something wrong, I think we did it with feeling.

Additional thanks to Bill Hamilton for his time and patience. Shout outs to the new friends we made on this journey who provided additional input, advice and laughs - they know who they are.

Thanks also to you, listeners old and new alike, who've shown so much patience and support.

All music used can be found on THE OCTOPUS: Music and Atmospheres from the Sea Floor, available on Bandcamp, except:

Chapter 2: "Magic Arrow" - Timbre Timbre

Chapter 9: "I'll Never Smile Again" - Tommy Dorsey

Chapter 11: "Shook Ones Pt II" - Mobb Deep

Chapter 12: "Election Day" - Blaze Foley

Chapter 13: "Schweine" - Glukoza
"The Growing" - The Haxan Cloak
"The End of the World" - Skeeter Davis

Sources/inspiration:

Drafts, notes, errata, documents - Daniel Casolaro

The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report by The Committee on The Judiciary Together With Dissenting and Separate Views - 102nd Congress House Judiciary Committee

Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro - Jim Keith & Kenn Thomas

The Soul of the New Machine - Tracy Kidder

George Bush, the CIA and the Mafia - Pete Brewton

The Last Circle - Cheri Seymour

The Bluegrass Conspiracy - Sally Denton

Brought to Light: Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, and Covert Action - Alan Moore & Joyce Brabner

A Ballad of Drugs and 9/11 (poem) - Peter Dale Scott

Social Network Analysis in Predictive Policing - Mohammad A. Tayebi

Merchants of Menace - Peter Butt

All Quiet at Mena - Mara Leveritt

Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press - Alexander Cockburn

The Universal Adversary: Security, Capital and 'The Enemies of All Mankind' - Mark Neocleous

Aberration in the Heartland of the Real - Wendy S. Painting

The Road to 9/11 - Peter Dale Scott

House of Bush, House of Saud - Craig Unger

The Darkening Web: The War for Cyberspace - Alexander Klimburg

Disconnecting the Dots: How 9/11 Was Allowed to Happen - Kevin Fenton

Rogue Agents - David Teacher

Octopus: The Secret Market & the World's Wildest Con - Guy Lawson

The Terror Timeline - Paul Thompson

If/Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future - Jill Lepore

Stuffed: A True Story of MCA, the Music Business and the Mafia - William Knoedelseder

Surveillance Valley - Yasha Levine

Overthrow - Steven Kinzer

Chile's Days of Terror: Eyewitness Accounts of the Military Coup - Various

The Drone Age: How Drone Technology Will Change War and Peace - Michael J. Boyle

Converge: A Futurist's Insights Into the Potential of Our World as Technology and Humanity Collide - Catherine Ball

Dark Alliance - Gary Webb

Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades - David Corn

Eyes in the Sky: The Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All - Arthur Holland Michael

The Smartest Guys in the Room - Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind

MI6 and the Machinery of Spying - Phillip H.J Davies

Bombing For Peace: NATO's Humanitarian War on Yugoslavia - George Szamuely

Dreamland - Phil Patton

Defrauding America - Rodney Stich

To Kill A Nation - Michael Parenti

The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group - Dan Briody

The Buyout of America: How Private Equity is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy - Josh Kosman

The 9/11 Commission Report

Capitalist Realism - Mark Fisher

Bleeding Edge - Thomas Pynchon

Second Hand Time: The Last of the Soviets - Svetlana Alexievich

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 - Lawrence Wright

McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers - Misha Glenny

The Neoliberal Paradox - Ray Kiely

"The BCCI Game: Banking on America, Banking on Jihad" - Lucy Komisar (from "A Game as Old as Empire")

Transhumanism: The History of a Dangerous Idea - David Livingstone

The Richest Man in the World - Ronald Kessler

Gideon's Spies - Gordon Thomas

The CIA As Organised Crime - Douglas Valentine

Reaganland - Rick Perlstein

Origins of Mass Communications Research During the American Cold War - Timothy Glander

Crossing the Rubicon - Michael Ruppert

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power - Max Chafkin

Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race and Empire - Pankaj Mishra

The Yankee and Cowboy War - Carl Oglesby

Dark Victory: Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the Mob - Dan Moldea

The Greatest Ever Bank Robbery: The Collapse of the Savings & Loans Industry - Martin Mayer

The Politics of Heroin - Alfred W. McCoy

Spooks - Emma Quangel

Casino - Nicholas Pileggi

The Sydney Connection: Nugan Hand, Murray Riley & the murder of Donald MacKay - John Jiggens

Mirage Men - Mark Pilkington

Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia - Paul Klebnikov

Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story - Sibel Edmonds

We Live in Public Now (documentary)

The Octopus Murders by Nathan Baca (investigate news series now available on YouTube - there are some missing parts but this is NOT because "the CIA deleted them" as people keep insisting, it's because they were "story so far"-style recaps that didn't make sense to include in the era of YouTube playlists)

The Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East - Patrick Cockburn

In Search of Politics - Zygmunt Baumen

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness - Newton Lee

All is Clouded by Desire: Global Banking, Money Laundering, and International Organized Crime - Alan Block and Constance A. Weaver

Masters of Paradise - Alan Block

A Brief History of Neoliberalism - David Harvey

The Outlaw Bank: A Wild Ride Into the Secret Heart of BCCI - Jonathan Beaty and S. C. Gwynne

Totally Wired - Andrew Smith

The Jakarta Method - Vincent Bevans

With THE OCTOPUS completed and this list to give you a starting point, there ain't nothing left to say for now other than: check the exits, mark the sightlines, don't ask me for any more book tips for at least 18 months, and don't get captured.

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