Milton William Cooper

Milton William "Bill" Cooper (May 6, 1943 – November 5, 2001) was an American conspiracy theorist, radio broadcaster, and author known for his 1991 book Behold a Pale Horse, in which he warned of multiple global conspiracies, some involving extraterrestrial life.[1][2][3] Cooper also described HIV/AIDS as a man-made disease used to target blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals, and that a cure was made before it was implemented.[4] He has been described as a "militia theoretician".[5]

Milton William Cooper
Born(1943-05-06)May 6, 1943
Long Beach, California, U.S.
DiedNovember 5, 2001(2001-11-05) (aged 58)
Eagar, Arizona, U.S.
Cause of deathGunshot
Resting placeSpringerville Cemetery
Springerville, Arizona
NationalityAmerican
Other namesBill Cooper
OccupationConspiracy theorist, radio broadcaster, author

Early life

Cooper was born in 1943 to United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Milton Vance Cooper (1922-2012) and his wife, Dovie Nell Cooper (née Woodside) (1923-2001).[6][7]

Career

Little is known about Cooper's background and education, beyond the information supplied in his own accounts. He claimed to have served in the United States Navy, the United States Air Force, and Naval Intelligence until his discharge in 1975;[8] however, public records only indicate a period of service in the Navy with a ratings code of E-5/Sergeant (Petty officer second class in the Navy), including a tour of duty in Vietnam with two service medals.[9] He then attended a junior college in California, and worked for several technical and vocational schools before making his conspiracy theories known, beginning in 1988. Cooper expanded the speculations of earlier conspiracists by incorporating government involvement with extraterrestrials as a central theme.[10]

From 1992 until November 2001, he broadcast his radio show, The Hour of the Time, via satellite hookups and shortwave frequencies from a studio in his house atop a hill in the small White Mountains town of Eagar, Arizona, 15 miles from the New Mexico border.[11]

Behold a Pale Horse

Cooper produced and published Behold a Pale Horse in 1991.[5] The book has been influential among "UFO and militia circles".[12] Just prior to the trial of Terry Nichols in 1997, The Guardian described it as "the manifesto of the militia movement".[13]

According to sociologist Paul Gilroy, Cooper claimed "an elaborate conspiracy theory that encompasses the Kennedy assassination, the doings of the secret world government, the coming ice age, and a variety of other covert activities associated with the Illuminati's declaration of war upon the people of America".[5] Political scientist Michael Barkun characterized it as "among the most complex superconspiracy theories", and also among the most influential due to its popularity in militia circles as well as mainstream bookstores.[8] Historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke described the book as a "chaotic farrago of conspiracy myths interspersed with reprints of executive laws, official papers, reports and other extraneous materials designed to show the looming prospect of a world government imposed on the American people against their wishes and in flagrant contempt of the Constitution."[14]

HIV/AIDS

In Behold a Pale Horse Cooper proposed that AIDS was the result of a conspiracy to decrease the populations of blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals.[10] In 2000 South Africa's Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang received criticism for distributing the chapter discussing this theory to senior South African government officials.[15] Nicoli Nattrass, a longtime critic of AIDS denialists, criticized Tshabalala-Msimang for lending legitimacy to Cooper's theories and disseminating them in Africa.[12]

UFOs, aliens and the Illuminati

Cooper gained attention in Ufology circles in 1988 when he claimed to have seen secret documents while in the Navy describing governmental dealings with extraterrestrials, a topic on which he expanded in Behold a Pale Horse.[8] (By one account he served as a "low level clerk" in the Navy, and as such would not have had the security clearance needed to access classified documents.[16]) UFOlogists later asserted that some of the material that Cooper claimed to have seen in Naval Intelligence documents was actually plagiarized verbatim from their research, including several items that the UFOlogists had fabricated as pranks.[17] Don Ecker of UFO Magazine ran a series of exposés on Cooper in 1990.[18]

Cooper linked the Illuminati with his beliefs that extraterrestrials were secretly involved with the United States government, but later retracted these claims. He accused Dwight D. Eisenhower of negotiating a treaty with extraterrestrials in 1954, then establishing an inner circle of Illuminati to manage relations with them and keep their presence a secret from the general public. Cooper believed that aliens "manipulated and/or ruled the human race through various secret societies, religions, magic, witchcraft, and the occult", and that even the Illuminati were unknowingly being manipulated by them.[8]

Cooper described the Illuminati as a secret international organization, controlled by the Bilderberg Group, that conspired with the Knights of Columbus, Masons, Skull and Bones, and other organizations. Its ultimate goal, he said, was the establishment of a New World Order. According to Cooper the Illuminati conspirators not only invented alien threats for their own gain, but actively conspired with extraterrestrials to take over the world.[8] Cooper believed that James Forrestal's fatal fall from a window on the sixteenth floor of Bethesda Hospital was connected to the alleged secret committee Majestic 12, and that JASON advisory group scientists reported to an elite group of Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations executive committee members who were high-ranking members of the Illuminati.[2][3]

Cooper also claimed that the antisemitic conspiracy theory forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was actually an Illuminati work, and instructed readers to substitute "Sion" for "Zion", "Illuminati" for "Jews", and "cattle" for "Goyim".[3][19][20] The publisher removed the chapter that was a reproduction of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion document from later printings of Behold a Pale Horse.[21]

Kennedy assassination

In Behold a Pale Horse, Cooper asserted that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated because he was about to reveal that extraterrestrials were in the process of taking over the Earth. According to a "top secret" video of the assassination that Cooper claimed to have discovered, the driver of the presidential limousine, William Greer, used "a gas pressure device developed by aliens from the Trilateral Commission" to shoot the president from the driver's seat.[16] The Zapruder film shows Greer twice turning to look into the back seat of the car; Cooper theorized that Greer first turned to assess Kennedy's status after the external attack, and then to fire the fatal shot. Conspiracy theories implicating Greer reportedly "snowballed" after publication of Behold a Pale Horse.[22] Cooper's video purporting to prove his theory was analyzed by several television stations, according to one source, and was found to be "... a poor-quality fake using chunks of the... Zapruder film."[16]

Death

As Cooper moved away from the Ufology community and toward the militia and anti-government subculture in the late 1990s, he became convinced that he was being personally targeted by President Bill Clinton and the Internal Revenue Service. In July 1998, he was charged with tax evasion; an arrest warrant was issued, but Cooper eluded repeated attempts to serve it. In 2000, he was named a "major fugitive" by the United States Marshals Service.[8]

On November 5, 2001, Apache County sheriff's deputies attempted to arrest Cooper at his Eagar, Arizona home on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and endangerment stemming from disputes with local residents. After an exchange of gunfire during which Cooper shot one of the deputies in the head, Cooper was fatally shot. Federal authorities reported that Cooper had spent years evading execution of the 1998 arrest warrant, and according to a spokesman for the Marshals Service, he vowed that "he would not be taken alive".[1]

Works

Books
  • Cooper, Milton William (1991). Behold a Pale Horse. Light Technology Publications. ISBN 0-929385-22-5.

Radio broadcast

Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, notes that Cooper was well known within the militia movement for his anti-government shortwave radio program. Reportedly, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was a fan.[24][1][25] The program, broadcast from 1993 to 2001, was titled The Hour of the Time.[26]

References
  1. "Arizona Militia Figure Is Shot to Death". Los Angeles Times. November 7, 2001. p. A24. Retrieved October 17, 2010.
  2. Richard Allen Landes (August 4, 2011). Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience. Oxford University Press. p. 418. ISBN 978-0-19-975359-8. Retrieved January 4, 2012.
  3. Arthur Goldwag (August 11, 2009). Cults, Conspiracies, and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Black Helicopters, the New World Order, and Many, Many More. Random House Digital, Inc. ISBN 978-0-307-39067-7. Retrieved January 4, 2012.
  4. "Bill Cooper interview CNN Uncut original". Event occurs at 39:00. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
  5. Gilroy, Paul (2000). "Planetary Humanism". Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 352–353. ISBN 9780674000964. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  6. Shiver (May 17, 2004). "Dovie Nell Cooper". Find a Grave. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
  7. Hays, Paul (January 22, 2013). "Milton Vance Cooper". Find A Grave. Retrieved January 10, 2019.
  8. Michael Barkun (May 4, 2006). A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. University of California Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-520-24812-0. Retrieved January 5, 2012.
  9. Milton William Cooper. aad.archives.gov. Retrieved November 24, 2014.
  10. Carroll, Robert Todd (2003). "Illuminati". The Skeptic's Dictionary: A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p. 175. ISBN 9781118045633. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  11. Jacobson, Mark (August 22, 2018). "The Granddaddy of American Conspiracy Theorists". Rolling Stone. Retrieved August 6, 2019.
  12. Nattrass, Nicoli (2012). The AIDS Conspiracy: Science Fights Back. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 4, 23–27. ISBN 9780231149129. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  13. Vulliamy, Ed; Dirks, Bruce (November 3, 1997). "New trial may solve riddle of Oklahoma bombing". The Guardian. London. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  14. Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas (2002). "Conspiracy Beliefs and the New World Order". Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity. New York: New York University Press. pp. 284–285. ISBN 9780814731550. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  15. "SA Government steps into Aids row". BBC News. September 14, 2000. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  16. Kirk, Paul (September 8, 2000). "Govt Aids nut linked to Ku Klux Klan". Mail & Guardian. Johannesburg. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  17. Doherty, Brian (December 7, 2001). Death Wish: How rebels punch their own ticket. Reason.com archive. Retrieved February 5, 2013
  18. Ecker, Don. Bill Cooper. Skeptic Tank archive. Retrieved February 5, 2013
  19. Milton William Cooper (January 1, 1991). Behold a pale horse. Light Technology Publishing. p. 267. ISBN 978-0-929385-22-8. Retrieved January 5, 2012.
  20. Jeff Chang (February 1, 2005). Can't stop, won't stop: a history of the hip-hop generation. Macmillan. p. 438. ISBN 978-0-312-30143-9. Retrieved January 5, 2012.
  21. Richard Ruelas; Rob O'Dell (October 1, 2020). "How William Cooper and his book 'Behold a Pale Horse' planted seeds of QAnon conspiracy theory". Arizona Republic. Retrieved January 13, 2020.
  22. "Did Stewartstown native kill JFK?". Tyrone Times. Dungannon, Northern Ireland. July 17, 2008. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  23. https://www.vulture.com/amp/2018/08/how-behold-a-pale-horse-influenced-hip-hop.html
  24. Eirikur Bergmann (August 20, 2018). Conspiracy & Populism: The Politics of Misinformation. Springer International Publishing. pp. 72–. ISBN 978-3-319-90359-0.
  25. Michael Barkun (August 15, 2013). A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. University of California Press. pp. 11–. ISBN 978-0-520-95652-0.
  26. "Hour of the Time. Complete Cooper MP3 Collection". hourofthetime.com. Retrieved January 17, 2013.

Further reading
  • Barkun, Michael (2003). A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23805-2.
  • Jacobson, Mark (2018). Pale Horse Rider: William Cooper, the Rise of Conspiracy, and the Fall of Trust in America. Blue Rider Press. ISBN 9780399169953.
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