Steven Seagal: CIA Hitman?

 

In Steven Seagal’s first film vehicle, 1988’s Above the Law, he portrays Nico Toscani, a mob-connected Italian-American who trained in aikido in Japan, where he was recruited by the CIA to carry out top-secret missions in Southeast Asia before becoming disillusioned and abandoning intelligence work to join the Chicago Police Department. Since then, uncertainty has surrounded Seagal’s background, the degree to which Above the Law mirrors the impiously Jewish Seagal’s own origin story being a matter of dispute, alleged fabrication, and ridicule from elements of the press. Barna William Donovan, author of The Asian Influence on Hollywood Action Films, writes that “the actor did participate in spreading a colorful line of rumors and insinuations in his early rounds of publicity interviews,” continuing:

Since the plot of Above the Law involves a CIA drug-running conspiracy, Seagal and the Warners publicity department started suggesting that, while in Japan, the future actor worked with the CIA as an anti-terrorist operative. The CIA, according to the PR campaign, was aware of the fact that Seagal was one of the deadliest Aikido practitioners in Japan and they recruited him into the fold to train operatives and carry out missions throughout Asia. On other occasions, Seagal would add to his own mythology by claiming that while in Japan, he liked to hone his fighting skills by provoking members of the Yakuza organized crime families into fights. In fact, he claimed that the dojo he ran was at one point gambled away by his father-in-law and he had to fight Yakuza gangsters to get it back. His first wife, Miyako Fujitani, has bitterly disputed this.

Such claims could be dismissed as the usual Hollywood publicity hype taken to new, perhaps absurd, levels. But they did take on a darker edge when GQ writer Alan Richman made claims about Seagal’s harassing and threatening him. According to the writer, after Seagal was angered by an unflattering article Richman wrote, questioning the actor’s CIA ties, Richman started receiving a series of death threats. As Richman alleges, Seagal claimed to have close friends in the Mafia and he would put a hit out on the writer in retaliation for the humiliating GQ piece. Although nothing ever happened to Richman, years later journalist Anita Busch also claimed to have been under surveillance by private investigators in Seagal’s employ following her stories about the mob connections of Seagal’s business partner, [Julius or] Jules Nasso. [1]

Seagal told “vague stories of having a ‘CIA godfather’ in Japan” [2] – probably a reference to CIA veteran Robert Strickland, who befriended the future action star when he lived in Japan in the seventies. Strickland has accused Seagal of appropriating his biographical details in crafting his persona [3], but a scathing 1993 profile in Spy acknowledges the actor’s “real association with people of distinctly murky background”. Among these are Army Ranger and mercenary Gary Goldman, a technical advisor for Above the Law, and Jerry Ciauri – stepson of organized crime figure Robert Zambardi – whom Seagal hired to play a small role in 1991’s Out for Justice [4]. Most prominent among Seagal’s shady connections is pharmaceuticals seller and Gambino family associate Julius Nasso, who broke into the film business as an assistant on Arnon Milchan’s 1984 crime epic Once Upon a Time in America [5].

Seagal with Robert Strickland

In Spy journalist John Connolly’s assessment, there is “an outside chance that all of Seagal’s posturings […] are the result of nothing more than obsession – that Steven Seagal has never been even remotely involved in the profession of war or murder; that he would never follow through on a threat or even a plan to whack someone; that he associates with the murky ones simply because that’s the way he gets his kicks” and because he is “one sick hombre – a violence groupie.” [6] In his heyday, the actor was reputed to carry “a .45 in his belt, not just loaded but cocked and chambered.” [7] Spy cites two occasions on which Seagal allegedly attempted to hire intelligence veterans to murder enemies [8], and the actor himself reportedly claimed to have done work as a hitman-for-hire before he made it big in the movie business:

His pal Mark Mikita, who runs a dojo in LA and has known Seagal since his days as a martial-arts instructor, says that on at least two occasions a flat-broke Seagal disappeared for a week and returned flush with cash. (This claim has been corroborated by [Hollywood writer] Joe Hyams.) According to Mikita, Seagal once returned with a new car and a stack of $100 bills six inches high. Seagal boasted to Mikita and Hyams that he had pulled a hit for the mob to get the money. [9]

Seagal with Julius Nasso

Seagal’s ex-wife, actress Adrienne La Russa, told Spy that she was “afraid of Steven and his friends.” [10] The association with Nasso and the CIA has even led to speculation that Seagal had a hand in the 1982 murder of Gambino family money launderer Paul Morasca, “whose hog-tied body was found next to his computer, from which the hard disk had been ripped out.” [11] The victim was found “lying on a mattress with his hands and ankles tied. Officers said he was fully clothed. Coroner’s officers said he had been dead perhaps two weeks,” the Oakland Tribune reported at the time [12]. Morasca had been partnered with John Philip Nichols, who managed business affairs for the Cabazon Indians, initiating them into gambling, mob affiliation, and a weapons manufacturing venture, Cabazon Arms, with CIA contractor Wackenhut. Fred Alvarez, who handled security for the Cabazons, was murdered along with two friends in 1981 after purportedly threatening to expose the unsavory goings-on at the reservation [13] – murders of which hitman-turned-evangelist Jimmy Hughes was accused before the charges were dropped in 2010 [14]. Wares produced by Cabazon Arms were to be delivered to “mystery military-types from Central America”, i.e., Nicaraguan Contras [15].

Justice was also elusive in the Morasca case, as Solano Beach’s North County Blade-Citizen reported:

Paul Morasca, 31, who San Francisco detectives say was a business colleague of Cabazon director John Phillip [sic] Nichols, was found strangled to death Jan. 14, 1982, in a San Francisco condominium.

Grand juries in San Francisco and Riverside counties investigated the killings but did not return indictments, officials said. San Francisco homicide detectives interviewed Nichols on the Morasca murder.

Riverside County homicide Detective Jess Gutierrez said he has questioned Nichols, who had served prison time on a solicitation-of-murder charge, in connection with Morasca’s death.

Both [San Francisco homicide Inspector Eddie] Erdelatz and his colleague, homicide Inspector Jeff Borsch, said federal authorities appear to be stonewalling the investigation into the deaths.

Erdelatz said they funneled information uncovered in their investigation to the FBI and the state Department of Justice.

“We just kept getting rebuffed,” Erdelatz said. [16]

James Ridgway de Szigethy, in a 2002 article for American Mafia, gives this account of the murder:

On January 13, 1982, [drug trafficker and scientific genius] Michael Riconosciuto […] entered the San Francisco apartment of his friend Morasca. Morasca was dead, having been bound with wire in a murder technique popular with the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia, that causes the victim to slowly asphyxiate. Instead of calling the cops, Riconosciuto hopped in his car and drove 500 miles south to the Cabazon Indian Reservation outside Palm Springs, California. There Riconosciuto informed the Reservation’s Manager, Dr. John Phillip [sic] Nichols, that Morasca had been murdered.

A few years earlier, Dr. Nichols had convinced the impoverished Cabazon Indians to hire him as their Administrator, after which Nichols brought in a gambling casino to generate income. As Indian Reservations are “sovereign [territory]”, State and Federal laws against gambling do not apply. The Cabazon experience with gambling, upheld by the US Supreme Court, would soon become common on Indian Reservations nationwide, with the Italian Mafia usually involved. […] In March 1985, the FBI arrested Dr. Nichols, charging he tried to hire a hit man to murder 5 people. […]

As to who murdered Morasca one report had three suspicious men seen near the apartment that night, one of whom appeared to be an American Indian. […]

For Szigethy, Seagal is among “the more interesting characters” connected to the Gambinos: “As a young man Seagal studied the martial arts while living in Japan. After becoming an action movie star he became a favorite on the talk show circuit, telling stories of having worked for the CIA, although never actually mentioning what he did for the intelligence community,” Szigethy writes, noting that the actor “at one time was known to wear American Indian attire” and observing that Seagal is also close with the Dalai Lama, an ally of the US foreign policy establishment against the Chinese Communist Party [17]. The Dalai Lama, who enjoyed a long association with the CIA [18], bestowed his spiritual blessing on the actor, and Penor Rinpoche, the “supreme head of the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism” headquartered in Maryland, proclaimed Seagal himself to be a high lama, “the reincarnation of Chungdrag Dorje”, in 1997 [19]. Orville Schell, in an irreverent profile of Hollywood Buddhists published in the San Francisco Examiner in 2000, says of Seagal:

He is accompanied by hefty, gum-chewing retainer/bodyguards in dark suits, a retinue that makes him look like a cross between a ‘50s banana-republic potentate and a mutant Gilbert and Sullivan Mikado.

Seagal is among the most extravagant self-styled Tibetan Buddhists in the Hollywood pantheon.

“My involvement has been quite secret up until now,” he says in a hushed tone, when I question him later. “There are still many things I cannot talk about, actions to be taken in real life on behalf of the Tibetans that will not just be in movies.”

His eyes narrow as he fixes me with a well-rehearsed look that mixes self-importance with a hint of menace. [20]

The Tibetan connections could indicate that Seagal’s relationship with the world of intelligence and international intrigue, if substantial, is an enduring one. The actor’s dabblings in Buddhist affairs rather cast him in a comical light, however, and are less interesting than his mob-intelligence connections. More pertinently, a Cabazon-implicated figure with whom Seagal’s Hollywood career intersects is Robert Booth Nichols, who worked as a technical advisor on Arnon Milchan’s 1992 production Under Siege and appears briefly in the film along with Dale Dye, a Marine Corps veteran who had been involved in the training of Nicaraguan Contras [21]. Nichols, “who has been identified in federal wiretaps as associating with the Gambino crime family”, was “asshole buddies” with Seagal according to Joseph John, a retired Navy captain who also worked as an advisor on Under Siege [22]. Whitney Webb, in her recently published One Nation under Blackmail: The Sordid Union between Intelligence and Organized Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, has the following to say about Robert Booth Nichols – not to be confused with the aforementioned John Philip Nichols:

[…] one of the key figures involved in the PROMIS [spyware] scandal was Robert Booth Nichols. Nichols served on the board of First Intercontinental Development Corporation (FIDCO) alongside Clint Murchison Jr., a business tycoon with organized crime connections; and Robert Maheu, the private investigator who was an intermediary between the CIA and organized crime and who author Lisa Pease has linked to the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Maheu was FIDCO’s vice president while Nichols was the company’s Senior Vice President […]

In 1981, Nichols formed Meridian Arms with a man named Peter Zokosky. Meridian would later join Wackenhut in its Cabazon-related activities. Michael Riconosciuto had also been Meridian’s vice president on the board of directors alongside Nichols and Zokosky for a brief period. Meridian Arms was a subsidiary of Meridian International Logistics, and that company’s board of directors included Nichols, Zokosky and Eugene Gianquinto. Gianquinto was notably the president of the Home Entertainment Division of MCA, the entertainment giant that was later acquired by the Bronfmans’ Seagram Company and reincorporated as Universal Studios. […]

According to Cheri Seymour, both Gianquinto of MCA and Nichols of Meridian “had a close working relationship with the Justice Department” and Gianquinto, in a recorded FBI wiretapped conversation referenced by Seymour, took credit for contacting [Reagan administration Attorney General Ed] Meese to have the DOJ’s MCA-organized crime probe quashed in the early 1980s. One of the special prosecutors for the Justice Department who had worked on the MCA case, Richard Stavin, obtained documents that identified Nichols as “a money launderer with ties to the Gambino crime family and the Yakuza [Japanese organized crime].” […]

Nichols also loomed large in the tragic fate of journalist Danny Casolaro. Casolaro had been investigating an international crime syndicate he termed “the Octopus” at the time of his death in 1991. Casolaro believed that this “Octopus” involved powerful individuals in the private and public sectors as well as the criminal underworld and that they were collectively responsible for some of the biggest scandals of the 1980s, including Iran-Contra, BCCI and the theft of the PROMIS software. [23]

It is likely that one or more of these “Octopus” connections within the Department of Justice intervened to stifle the investigation of Paul Morasca’s murder, whomever the culprits were. Seagal, for his part, testified in 2002 to being a victim of Julius Nasso’s gangsterism after the two had a falling out and Nasso allegedly extorted money from Seagal, demanding $150,000 per film. “If anyone was threatened it was Jules, by Mr. Seagal and his friends,” Nasso’s lawyer counter-charged [24]. Nasso finally pled guilty to extortion conspiracy charges in 2004 and served a year in prison. Interestingly, however, Seagal agreed to sign a letter requesting a presidential pardon for his erstwhile partner [25]. Whatever the actual nature of the personal and professional history of Seagal’s partnership with Nasso, the only thing that seems certain is that the whole truth remains to be told.

Rainer Chlodwig von K.

Rainer is the author of Drugs, Jungles, and Jingoism.

Endnotes

[1] Donovan, Barna William. The Asian Influence on Hollywood Action Films. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2008, p. 157.

[2] Lieberman, Paul. “When Life Imitates a B-Movie”. Los Angeles Times (July 12, 2002), p. A26.

[3] Connolly, John. “Man of Dishonor”. Spy (July-August 1993), p. 63.

[4] Ibid., p. 66.

[5] Ibid., p. 64.

[6] Ibid., p. 66.

[7] Ibid., p. 61.

[8] Ibid., pp. 58-59.

[9] Ibid., p. 61.

[10] Ibid., p. 60.

[11] Fricker, Mary; and Stephen Pizzo. “Outlaws at Justice”. San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle [“This World” section] (June 14, 1992), p. 12.

[12] “Strangling Baffles Cops”. Oakland Tribune (January 17, 1982), p. C-5.

[13] Strasser, Fred. “Tribe’s Vision of Empire Died in Bankruptcy Court”. Miami Herald (May 29, 1983), p. 23A.

[14] Willon, Phil; and Robert J. Lopez. “Prosecutors Drop Charges in 1981 Deaths”. Los Angeles Times (July 2, 2010), p. AA4.

[15] Hussar, John. “Details Surface on Nichols’ Role in Security Test”. The Desert Sun (March 26, 1985), p. A1.

[16] Alfonso, Mirna, et al. “Death Surrounds Spiro’s Connections”. The North County Blade-Citizen (April 9, 1993), p. A-8.

[17] Szigethy, James Ridgway de. “The ‘Last Don’ and the ‘New Media’”. American Mafia (June 2002): http://www.americanmafia.com/Feature_Articles_217.html

[18] Mirsky, Jonathan. “The Dalai Lama on Succession and on the CIA”. China File (June 10, 1999): https://www.chinafile.com/library/nyrb-china-archive/dalai-lama-succession-and-cia

[19] Schell, Orville. “Dalai Lama in Lotus Land: Stars Trek to Meet a Cuddly Religious Icon”. San Francisco Examiner (April 5, 2000), p. A-17.

[20] Ibid.

[21] https://archive.ph/mln2d

[22] Connolly, John. “Man of Dishonor”. Spy (July-August 1993), pp. 65-66.

[23] Webb, Whitney. One Nation under Blackmail: The Sordid Union between Intelligence and Organized Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein. Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2022, pp. 402-404.

[24] Blumenthal, Ralph. “A Mafia Case, and a Scene Straight out of Hollywood”. The New York Times (July 13, 2002): https://archive.ph/JmcWr#selection-1983.206-1983.275

[25] Bombay, Brandon. “The Real Reason Steven Seagal Got in Trouble with the Mob”. Nicki Swift (March 27, 2021): https://www.nickiswift.com/367386/the-real-reason-steven-seagal-got-in-trouble-with-the-mob/