vault backup: 2026-10-09 23:53:07

60 - PLACES/US_STATES/West Virginia.md

@@ -8,14 +8,14 @@ tags:
   - NSA
 summary: "Appalachian state where Danny Casolaro died in a Martinsburg hotel in 1991 and where the NSA station at Sugar Grove was a target of the CIA's early remote-viewing tests."
 created: 2026-09-22
-updated: 2026-09-22
+updated: 2026-10-09
 ---
 
 ### Martinsburg
 
 [[Danny Casolaro]] checked into the Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg on August 8, 1991, to meet a source for his investigation of what he called [[The Octopus]]; before leaving he had told his brother that if anything happened to him there, "it would not be an accident." He was found dead in the hotel on August 10, and West Virginia authorities ruled the death a suicide. A Martinsburg funeral home embalmed the body before officials or his family had authorized it, and the state medical examiner, Dr. Frost, who confirmed the ruling in January 1992, found a fully conclusive examination of the embalmed body impossible. The papers Casolaro had carried to Martinsburg were not found. Martinsburg police records released in 2024 under a request by Zachary Treitz and Christian Hansen showed that another person had visited his room on the night of August 9 and that an eyewitness had given police a statement and sketch of the visitor matching [[Joseph Cuellar]], who had approached Casolaro at a local bar weeks earlier.[^1] The [[House Committee on the Judiciary]] found no evidence that the [[Department of Justice|Justice Department]] had tried to influence the local investigation.[^2] On September 30, 1991, [[Robert Booth Nichols]] told Detective Sergeant Swartwood of the Martinsburg police that he believed Casolaro had been murdered.[^3]
 
-Senator [[Robert Byrd]], in whose office Barbara Videnieks, wife of the Justice Department contracting officer [[Peter Videnieks]], worked, sought to bring [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] administrative offices to Charles Town, near Martinsburg.[^3][^4]
+Senator [[Robert Byrd]], in whose Capitol Hill office the wife of Justice Department contracting officer [[Peter Videnieks]] worked, sought to bring [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] administrative offices to Charles Town, near Martinsburg.[^3][^4]
 
 ### Sugar Grove
 
@@ -27,6 +27,6 @@ In May and June 1973 [[Hal Puthoff]] of [[Stanford Research Institute]] gave [[I
 [^2]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary. *The INSLAW Affair,* H. Rept. 102-857, September 10, 1992. https://archive.org/details/InslawAffairInvestigativeReport
 [^3]: U.S. Department of Justice. *Report on the Review of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua's Report,* September 27, 1994, section on the death of Danny Casolaro. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993
 [^4]: Seymour, Cheri. *The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal.* TrineDay, 2010.
-[^5]: Stanford Research Institute, "Project SCANATE, Exploratory Research in Remote Viewing," 1973, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100480002-4; Puthoff, Harold E., and Russell Targ. *Perceptual Augmentation Techniques,* final report, December 1, 1975, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100410001-2. Read in the archive.org mirror of the CIA FOIA Reading Room STARGATE collection.
+[^5]: Stanford Research Institute, "Project SCANATE, Exploratory Research in Remote Viewing," 1973, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100480002-4; Puthoff, Harold E., and Russell Targ. *Perceptual Augmentation Techniques,* final report, December 1, 1975, CIA-RDP96-00791R000100410001-2.
 [^6]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies.* Dell, 1997.
 [^7]: Snyder, Harry L., and Arlene G. Snyder. "Summary and Critical Evaluation of Research in Remote Viewing," Report RV-79-1, June 1, 1979, as reproduced in the *Report by the Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee,* December 1979, CIA-RDP96-00788R001300120001-5.