The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(A-G)/Thomas Gates.md

aliases	created	updated	category	tags	summary	location	relations
Thomas Gates Tom Gates Special Agent Thomas Gates Thomas Gates (FBI)	2026-10-05	2026-10-05	Law Enforcement & Legal	Person FBI LosAngeles OrganizedCrime Inslaw Casolaro MCA RobertBoothNichols	FBI special agent in Los Angeles who led the 1987 investigation of Robert Booth Nichols, was sued by Nichols's company, and gave the House Judiciary Committee a sworn statement on Danny Casolaro in March 1992.	Los Angeles, California	type with start role fn employed_by Federal Bureau of Investigation 1987-09 special agent, Los Angeles Division 1 type with start role fn investigated Robert Booth Nichols 1987-09 led the organized-crime investigation of Nichols and Meridian International Logistics 1 type with start role fn subject_of Meridian International Logistics 1989-06-16 defendant in a libel, slander and interference-with-contract suit for $11,000,000; the United States was substituted as defendant 2 type with start end role fn participant_in House Committee on the Judiciary 1992-03-25 1992-03-26 gave a sworn statement on Danny Casolaro and Nichols in the INSLAW investigation 4

Thomas Gates was a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation assigned to its Los Angeles Division, where in September 1987 he began leading the investigation of Robert Booth Nichols, who was suspected, "acting through Meridian," of involvement in organized crime.¹ The Ninth Circuit's opinion in the later civil suit records that Gates learned Nichols "had potential illegal contacts with individuals in both Japan and Australia" and pursued those leads through the Japanese and Australian legal attaches.¹ He is not the same person as Thomas S. Gates (Thomas S. Gates Jr.), the Secretary of Defense under Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Meridian International Logistics v. United States

On June 16, 1989, Nichols's company Meridian International Logistics sued Gates in California state court, in his individual capacity, for libel, slander and interference with contractual relationships, and prayed for $11,000,000. The complaint alleged that Gates had told the Australian Federal Police and various individuals in Australia and Japan that Meridian was involved in organized crime and specific frauds, and that he acted outside the scope of his employment in making those contacts.¹²

On July 20, 1989, the United States Attorney certified that Gates had acted within the scope of his FBI employment, which removed the case to federal court and substituted the United States as sole defendant. The government filed declarations from Gates, his supervisor and a Department of Justice attorney, which the district court sealed on an ex parte application and reviewed in camera. Meridian filed a declaration from the former FBI special agent Ted Gunderson, who stated that the types of foreign contacts Gates made "would never, under FBI policies, be initiated by an agent assigned to the Los Angeles field office." On September 25, 1989, the district court found that Gates had at all material times acted within the scope of his employment and dismissed the action for lack of subject matter jurisdiction under the Federal Tort Claims Act. On July 19, 1991, the Ninth Circuit (Judge Wiggins) reversed the dismissal and remanded.¹

The MCA wiretap, as described by Seymour

The writer Cheri Seymour wrote that Gates conducted a wiretap of Music Corporation of America under the supervision of the Los Angeles Organized Crime Strike Force prosecutors Marvin Rudnick and later Richard Stavin (both Department of Justice attorneys, not United States Attorneys), and that the three believed on the basis of the recorded calls that MCA had been penetrated by organized crime. In Seymour's account the calls were between Nichols and Eugene Giaquinto, then president of MCA's home entertainment division, and showed connections to La Cosa Nostra, including the Gambino Crime Family and the Bufalino Crime Family. Seymour wrote that the Department of Justice sealed the wiretaps, that no prosecutions followed, that the Los Angeles Strike Force was disbanded, and that Gates closed the FBI investigation.³ Seymour is the sole source for the passages so cited.

Stavin gave the House Judiciary Committee a 72-page affidavit that Gates had submitted to a federal court, containing the results of an FBI wiretap on individuals in the entertainment industry suspected of ties to organized crime.⁴ The committee wrote that it "takes no position on any of Gates' assertions or suppositions vis-a-vis Nichols, except to note again that they were duly sworn statements."⁴

Danny Casolaro

Danny Casolaro, the writer investigating what he called The Octopus, was found dead in a Martinsburg, West Virginia hotel room on August 10, 1991, with his wrists cut numerous times. The Martinsburg Police investigation concluded in January 1992 that the death was a suicide.⁴ Three separate people (Riconosciuto's attorney, a private investigator and an FBI agent) told House Judiciary Committee investigators that Gates likely had information on Casolaro's efforts to investigate the INSLAW matter; Director William S. Sessions agreed to let Gates give a sworn statement, which the committee described as the first time it knew of that the FBI permitted a field agent to do so, after "initial resistance from the Bureau."⁴

Gates gave the statement on March 25 and 26, 1992, after Rudnick and Stavin had given theirs on March 13 and 14. According to the committee's summary, Gates stated that Casolaro claimed to have found a link between the INSLAW matter, the activities at the Cabazon Indian Reservation, and the federal investigation of organized crime influence in the entertainment industry in which Gates had been involved; that Casolaro had several conversations with Nichols in the weeks preceding his death; and that Casolaro called Gates several times beginning approximately four weeks before his death. Gates said Casolaro sounded "upbeat" in conversations held even days before the death, that a phone book of Casolaro's containing Gates's number had not been located in the police investigation, that Martinsburg police told him the wounds were "hacking" wounds inconsistent in his view with a self-inflicted wrist cut, and that an open bottle of wine had been reported in the room but not tested when he spoke to the local authorities. He called the Martinsburg authorities and the local FBI office with his suspicions, and concluded under oath that "there is cause for suspicions to be raised."⁴

Throughout the statement Gates tied several strands of his conversations with Casolaro to Nichols, and acknowledged that Nichols had sued him over another crime investigation centered in southern California; he maintained that important information on Nichols's past remained in sealed wiretap and confidential grand jury investigations that by law he could not disclose without a subpoena.⁴ Seymour wrote that Casolaro told Gates that Nichols had warned him to drop his investigation of the Octopus, and that Gates spoke with Casolaro until three days before his death.³ The House report places the start of the calls at about four weeks before the death.⁴

Faith Burton and the Department's transcripts

At the March 25 statement Gates and his attorney Richard Bauer said that Faith Burton of the Department of Justice's Office of Congressional Affairs had told them the committee routinely gave the Department copies of all depositions in the INSLAW investigation, and that "to date, the Department has reviewed all transcripts and no wrongdoing has been found." The committee wrote that the implication was that the Department would know everything Gates said, that this may have had a "chilling effect" on his testimony, and that its policy in fact barred giving the confidential statements to anyone but the witness or the witness's attorney. On March 26 Burton told committee investigators the allegation was "totally false" and that Gates and Bauer must have misunderstood her, which she attributed to their long flight; asked whether he could have misunderstood, Gates answered "It's always possible, but it was fairly clear to me, what she said." Bauer said there had been a clear indication of receipt and review of transcripts. The committee listed the episode under the heading "Department Official May Have Attempted to Influence a Key Witness."⁴

After the House report

Seymour wrote that in early 1992 John Cohen began communicating closely with Gates, and that in October 1992 Gates and Cohen learned of Michael Riconosciuto's statement to the FBI implicating Nichols, Glenn Shockley, Jose Santacruz Londono, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela and Michael Abbell in illicit financial activities.³ Seymour is the sole source for the passages so cited.

The Department of Justice's 1993 report by Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua concluded that Casolaro's death was a suicide, that the physical evidence in the hotel room supported that conclusion, and that there was no evidence of any Justice Department influence on the West Virginia authorities' investigation; the report does not name Gates.⁵ The House committee, for its part, wrote that "the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death have led some law enforcement professionals and others to believe that his death may not have been a suicide" and that further investigation was "imperative."⁴

Footnotes

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1. Meridian International Logistics, Inc. v. United States, 939 F.2d 740 (9th Cir. July 19, 1991) (Wiggins, J.). https://static.case.law/f2d/939/cases/0740-01.json ; also https://openjurist.org/939/f2d/740 ↩︎

2. Same, Facts and Procedural Background (complaint filed June 16, 1989; certification July 20, 1989). ↩︎

3. Seymour, Cheri. The Last Circle: Danny Casolaro's Investigation into the Octopus and the PROMIS Software Scandal. TrineDay, 2010. Sole source for the passages so cited. ↩︎

4. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report, H. Rept. 102-857, September 10, 1992, sections "Additional Questions," "Possible Connection Between Earl Brian, Michael Riconosciuto, Robert Booth Nichols and the Cabazon Indian Reservation," "Department Official May Have Attempted to Influence a Key Witness," and notes 214 to 217 and 323 (citing Gates's sworn statement of March 26, 1992, pp. 10, 56, 61). https://archive.org/details/InslawAffairInvestigativeReport ↩︎

5. U.S. Department of Justice, Report of Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua, March 1993, section "The Death of Joseph Daniel Casolaro," pp. 246 to 248. https://archive.org/details/doj-oip-inslaw-1993 ↩︎