Robert Booth Nichols

Robert Booth Nichols was an American businessman, part-time actor, and alleged intelligence operative. Throughout his life, Nichols was associated with various clandestine activities and maintained connections with high-level government officials, leading to speculation about his involvement in covert operations and alleged conspiracies such as Iran–Contra, the Inslaw affair, CIA drug trafficking, the 1980 October Surprise and the death of Danny Casolaro. Around this time, he was recruited by “parties that claimed to be with or stated they were with U.S. intelligence”, who gave him protection and immunity from federal law.

Business activities Robert Booth Nichols was the founder of Meridian International Logistics, a weapons dealer and logistics company. The company allegedly served as a front for clandestine activities, including intelligence operations, weapons smuggling and financial dealings connected to organized crime and the drug trade. Nichols worked with Wackenhut to arm the Contras in Nicaragua on the Cabazon Reservation. In 1981, a man named Fred Alvarez and two others died on the reservation in an unsolved murder case. Michael Riconosciuto, who was the vice president of Meridian Arms, confessed to have transformed the PROMIS software stolen from Inslaw into spyware.

Robert Booth Nichols was a member of the board of directors of the company FIDCO from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.

Alleged connections to intelligence Nichols stated that he had been recruited by the CIA in the 1960s while living in Hawaii. He purportedly gathered intelligence until 1986 in nations including Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, India, Japan, Mexico, Costa Rica, Haiti, Norway and France. He stated that he had been stabbed in Australia in 1972 and shot in Cameroon.

Nichols was an advisor for MCA in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1987, he was suspected by the FBI of being involved with MCA in a $500 million stock fraud and for his alleged ties to the Gambino crime family. Israel allegedly paid Nichols $10 million to locate a secret treasury note that was an IOU for gold worth $250 billion. Nichols allegedly tried to steal the note. This is said to have destabilized money markets and contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.

Nichols testified as a witness at the trial after the collapse of Israel's hedge fund Bayou. Nichols named John Prescott Ellis as involved in the scheme and claimed that George Soros got his money on this black market.

He also appeared in the book Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street's Wildest Con by Guy Lawson.