Robert Byrd

Robert Byrd was a powerful West Virginia Democratic Senator. Barbara Videnieks, wife of Peter Videnieks, the Justice Department contracting officer on the PROMIS contract, worked in his office.¹² The suggestion by Michael Riconosciuto and others that Peter Videnieks was involved in the death of Danny Casolaro in West Virginia, the Justice Department's review of 1994 stated, appeared "to rest on the fact that Mr. Videnieks' wife works for Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia"; it found "no evidence whatsoever of Mr. Videnieks' involvement." Joseph Cuellar, an Army Reserve major, told the reviewers that his former fiancée had worked with Barbara Videnieks "in the Capitol Hill office of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd."² Byrd played a major role in the effort to have the CIA move some of its administrative offices to Charlestown, 20 miles from Martinsburg, on the Virginia border.¹