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Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClane Smith, where

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Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes we look at stories

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Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make

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Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In last week's episode, How

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Speaker 1: the End Always Is, we hitched derived with the Gulf

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Speaker 1: Breeze Six, six US Army intelligence analysts who became convinced

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Speaker 1: they had uncovered evidence that the world was about to end.

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Speaker 1: The group, who in nineteen ninety went a war from

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Speaker 1: their listening post in Auksburg, Germany, were eventually captured a

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Speaker 1: week later in Golf Breeze, Florida. Some reports suggested the

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Speaker 1: group had traveled to Florida intending to either kill the

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Speaker 1: Antichrist or to rendezvous with a spaceship that would help

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Speaker 1: them escape the apocalypse. The official explanation later offered by

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Speaker 1: the group, however, was that the only plan to make

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Speaker 1: a brief stop in Florida before heading in land to

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Speaker 1: find somewhere safe and remote to await the end of

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Speaker 1: the world and prepare for the arrival of the Second

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Speaker 1: Coming of Jesus. Little is known publicly about what happened

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Speaker 1: to the Gulf Brief Six after their release with the

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Speaker 1: exception of Vans Davis, who published a book in nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety five titled Unbroken Promises, which details the entire escapade

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Speaker 1: and gives a little more insight into their thinking. For

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Speaker 1: all the groups alleged brushes with psyops training, they're communicating

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Speaker 1: with spirits through a wig aboard to the not only

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Speaker 1: being warned of an apparent intergalactic plot to destroy human kind,

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Speaker 1: but then also actually acting on what they've been told.

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Speaker 1: What stands out most of all for me is how

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Speaker 1: reminiscent it all is of modern conspiracy theory. It's been

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Speaker 1: speculated that before heading off to the hills to hide

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Speaker 1: themselves away, the group had hoped to meet up with

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Speaker 1: a man named Bill Cooper. In the nineteen eighties, Cooper,

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Speaker 1: who'd served in the US Navy, developed a reputation among

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Speaker 1: UFO enthusiasts after he claimed to have witnessed documents showing

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Speaker 1: the United States government were communicating with aliens. A year

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Speaker 1: after the Gulf Breeze six went a War, Cooper, also

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Speaker 1: known as Milton William Cooper, published a book titled Behold

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Speaker 1: a Pale Horse. The book, which is said to have

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Speaker 1: established Cooper as the godfather of modern conspiracy theory was

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Speaker 1: a treasure trove of conspiracy and paranoia, covering everything from

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Speaker 1: the supposed truth about UFOs to secret population control programs,

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Speaker 1: and of course, the Illuminati. Ten years later, he was dead,

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Speaker 1: killed by local law enforcement after drunkenly initiating a shootout

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Speaker 1: on his property, or, as many of his followers might

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Speaker 1: tell you, at least that's what they want you to believe.

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Speaker 1: Milton William Cooper was born in Long Beach, California, in

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty three. Not much is known about his early life,

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Speaker 1: other than the fact he claimed to have served in

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Speaker 1: the United States Navy, Air Force, and Naval Intelligence until

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Speaker 1: being discharged in nineteen seventy five. Public records, however, show

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Speaker 1: only that he served in the Navy, during which he

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Speaker 1: completed two tours in Vietnam as a riverboat captain. It

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Speaker 1: was sometime in nineteen seventy two, surrounded by the chaos

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Speaker 1: of the American Vietnam War, the Cooper developed the distinct

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Speaker 1: feeling that, as his biographer Mark Jacobson would put it,

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Speaker 1: something wasn't right. Cooper would later claim that it was

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Speaker 1: around this time that he came across a series of

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Speaker 1: top secret documents that apparently contained details of an agreement

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Speaker 1: between the United States government and a sinister alien race

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Speaker 1: intent on enslaving entire sections of humanity and creating a

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Speaker 1: new world order. In nineteen seventy five, after his discharge,

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Speaker 1: Cooper claimed he tried to leak the story to a journalist,

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Speaker 1: only to find himself being run off the road by

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Speaker 1: a black limousine while outriding his motorbike one afternoon. A

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Speaker 1: month later, having miraculously survived this first assault, the mysterious

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Speaker 1: Limaux appeared again, only this time Cooper wasn't so lucky,

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Speaker 1: the resulting crash leaving him with only one leg. Having

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Speaker 1: seemingly got the message, Cooper wouldn't resurface again until nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty four, when he sent an essay to write Gray

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Speaker 1: Barker for publication in a newsletter he was putting together

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Speaker 1: at the time. The essay, outlining the secret alien plot

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Speaker 1: Cooper claimed to have uncovered, cemented his reputation among UFO

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Speaker 1: enthusiasts and enabled him to begin hitting the lecture circuit.

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Speaker 1: As noted by Richard Ruellis and Rob O'Dell for the

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Speaker 1: Arizona Republic, it was after conducting a lecture in Sedona

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Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine that Cooper, now touting himself as

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Speaker 1: a former US Naval intelligence member, was introduced to local

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Speaker 1: publisher Melody O'Rion Swanson. Having been impressed by Cooper's talk,

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Speaker 1: Swanson offered him the opportunity to collate all his research

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Speaker 1: and ideas into a book. The result was Beyond a

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Speaker 1: Pale Horse, which was published in nineteen ninety one. Comprised

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Speaker 1: of almost five hundred pages of official looking documents mixed

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Speaker 1: with Cooper's own thoughts and interpretations, the book painted a

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Speaker 1: sinister and to many compelling picture of secret powers and

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Speaker 1: shadow organizations intent on controlling the world and everyone in it, and,

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Speaker 1: as is all too often the case with such conspiracist thinking,

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Speaker 1: antisemitism was never far away. One passage highlighting the Rothschide

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Speaker 1: family as seemingly the only people ever to have run

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Speaker 1: a bank or to have done so for profit, is

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Speaker 1: especially jarring. A little less subtle, however, was the inclusion

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Speaker 1: of a text known as the Protocols of the Elders

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Speaker 1: of Zion, first published in Russia in nineteen o three.

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Speaker 1: The text purports to describe a Jewish plan for global

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Speaker 1: domination except the entire thing is a hoax. Once described

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Speaker 1: as probably the most influential work of antisemitism ever written,

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Speaker 1: Cooper would later claim the text's inherent antisemitism was merely

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Speaker 1: a smoke screen used to hide its true meaning, which

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Speaker 1: is only revealed if you substitute Jews with the Illuminati.

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Speaker 1: Taking a rather different view, publisher Melody O'Ryan Swanson elected

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Speaker 1: to remove the chapter in the most recent edition. Do

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Speaker 1: Cooper's book and the scrawl of ideas laid out within

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Speaker 1: It was slow initially, but before long it started to

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Speaker 1: take off, having appeared to have struck a chord in short,

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Speaker 1: because there was nothing else quite like it, with its

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Speaker 1: mix of sincere rhetoric and reams of supposed evidence suggesting

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Speaker 1: genuine research had been conducted. For anybody with even an

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Speaker 1: inkling that not all was as it seemed in the

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Speaker 1: corridors of power, it was at the very least intriguing,

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Speaker 1: even if some of the ideas were a little more

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Speaker 1: far fetched than others. That Cooper had opened the book

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Speaker 1: with the assertion that some of the conclusions he drew

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Speaker 1: from his work may be wrong only seemed to bolster

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Speaker 1: its sense of authenticity, and as with critics of conspiracy

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Speaker 1: theories in general, the problem for the book's detractors was

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Speaker 1: that occasionally who was more than a little truth to

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Speaker 1: what Cooper was saying. The US government, for example, may

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Speaker 1: not have fabricated the moon landings in partnership with the

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Speaker 1: Hollywood Studio, but they really did have a secret program

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Speaker 1: to investigate and master the use of psychic warfare, despite

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Speaker 1: denying it for years. And though the US government is

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Speaker 1: not concocting a plan with Bill Gates to use a

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Speaker 1: COVID nineteen vaccination drive to secretly implant everyone with a microchip,

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Speaker 1: US doctors did secretly infect around seven hundred people in

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Speaker 1: Guatemala with syphilis in the nineteen forties in order to

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Speaker 1: study the effects of penicillin, none of which is documented

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Speaker 1: in Cooper's book, but is just to say that military organizations, governments,

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Speaker 1: and public officials lie and obfuscate frequently for all sorts

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Speaker 1: of reasons, some benign and some far less so, and

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Speaker 1: for all its antisemitism and promoting of thoroughly debunked nonsense

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Speaker 1: like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Buried within

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Speaker 1: Cooper's text, you might also find proclamation such as how

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Speaker 1: cash quote will be replaced by a cashless system that

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Speaker 1: will allow the government to monitor our every action by computer,

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Speaker 1: and if you attempt to stay out of the system,

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Speaker 1: you will not be allowed to buy, sell work, get

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Speaker 1: medical care, or anything else we all take for granted.

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Speaker 1: Or how quote the sharp increase of prescriptions of psychoactic

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Speaker 1: drugs like Prozac and Rittelin to younger and younger children

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Speaker 1: will inevitably lead to a rash of horrific school shootings,

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Speaker 1: and that these incidents will be used by elements of

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Speaker 1: the federal government as an excuse to infringe upon the

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Speaker 1: citizen reads Second Amendment rights. It isn't exactly how things

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Speaker 1: might be, but when held up against a certain kind

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Speaker 1: of light, it can begin to look to some like

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Speaker 1: maybe he was on to something. To pick just the

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Speaker 1: last quote apart, it seems prescient in light of school

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Speaker 1: shootings such as the Columbine High School shooting of nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety nine. And yet, although children are far too often

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Speaker 1: and too easily prescribed strong psychoactive drugs, it would be

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Speaker 1: by no means the sole reason why a school shooting

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Speaker 1: might occur. Furthermore, where Cooper says that such a school

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Speaker 1: shooting would be used as an excuse for the federal

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Speaker 1: government to infringe on Second Amendment rights, you might just

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Speaker 1: as easily say that such a shooting provides a completely

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Speaker 1: legitimate reason for a federal government to want to question

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Speaker 1: the benefits of Second Amendment rights. There is, as ever,

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Speaker 1: some truth in there, but whatsm you view it through

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Speaker 1: will determine exactly just what you believe that truth to be.

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Speaker 1: Not long after the publication of Behold a Pale Horse,

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Speaker 1: Cooper moved to the quiet town of Edgar, Arizona, where

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Speaker 1: he began a radio show called Hour of the Time.

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Speaker 1: Cooper was a natural behind the microphone and gained many

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Speaker 1: more fans with his innate confidence and authority and lack

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Speaker 1: of any specific political agenda. In nineteen ninety five, however,

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Speaker 1: Cooper's peddling of conspiracy would have a decidedly real world

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Speaker 1: impact when in April that year, Timothy McVeigh and Terry

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Speaker 1: Nichols parked a bomb outside a federal building in Oklahoma City,

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Speaker 1: resulting in the deaths of one hundred and sixty eight people. McVeigh,

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Speaker 1: who was a fan of Cooper's, had committed the attack

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Speaker 1: in retaliation for what he saw as a gradual, unending

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Speaker 1: erosion of citizens' rights by the US government. Then, in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and one, something startling occurred. During the June

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Speaker 1: twenty eighth broadcast of his The Hour of the Time show.

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Speaker 1: That year, Cooper remarked on an old CNN broadcast he'd

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Speaker 1: seen earlier that day, conducted by journalist Peter Arnett in

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Speaker 1: March nineteen ninety seven. It has since become infamous as

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Speaker 1: the first interview in which Asama bin Laden openly declared

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Speaker 1: war on the United States. What had drawn Cooper's eyre, however,

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Speaker 1: was how easily it seemed for Arnett to locate bin

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Speaker 1: Laden when the US government claimed not to be able

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Speaker 1: to find him at the time. It could only mean

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Speaker 1: one thing he thought the government wanted him to be seen,

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Speaker 1: or in other words, they allowed the interview to go

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Speaker 1: ahead so that a new Bogie Man could be beamed

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Speaker 1: into the collective conscious of the Western world. As Cooper

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Speaker 1: would remark later in that day's show, something terrible is

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Speaker 1: going to happen in this country. And whatever is going

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Speaker 1: to happen, they're going to blame it on a Psama

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Speaker 1: bin Laden. Don't you even believe it? The rest is history.

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Speaker 1: Cooper's foreshadowing of the September eleventh attack on the twin

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Speaker 1: Towers of the World Trade Center in New York cemented

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Speaker 1: his reputation in conspiracist circles forever. In the immediate aftermath

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Speaker 1: of the attacks, Cooper took to the airways once more,

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Speaker 1: commenting as the two towers collapsed that might they in

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Speaker 1: fact have been brought down by controlled demolition orchestrated by

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Speaker 1: the US government. This wild speculation would form the flimsy

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Speaker 1: bedrock from which the nine to eleven Truth Or Movement

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Speaker 1: would spring up. In July two thousand and one, Cooper

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Speaker 1: got into an altercation with the local resident of Edgar

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Speaker 1: after accusing him of spying on him. At the time,

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Speaker 1: the man, Scott Hamblin, had merely parked up with his

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Speaker 1: wife and kids to enjoy the view from a hill

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Speaker 1: close to Cooper's house. Cooper had pulled a gun on him,

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Speaker 1: pointed it at his head, and told him to stay

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Speaker 1: away from his property. When Hamblin told the local sheriff's office,

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Speaker 1: a warrant was issued for Cooper's arrest. At the time,

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Speaker 1: Cooper was under investigation for tax of asion and had

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Speaker 1: become increasingly paranoid and erratic, Convinced the government had a

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Speaker 1: vendetta against him. Drinking more and more, he had effectively

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Speaker 1: become a recluse, telling friends and listeners that had been

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Speaker 1: forced to send his wife and kids abroad for their

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Speaker 1: own protection. In truth, they'd simply left him and relocated

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Speaker 1: to California. One night in November two thousand and one,

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Speaker 1: a group of local OF's deputies staged a fake party

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Speaker 1: at the end of Cooper's drive, using loud music, in

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Speaker 1: the hope that it might force him to leave his house,

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Speaker 1: enabling them to arrest him without getting into a standoff.

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Speaker 1: As planned, Cooper duly appeared at the front door, scrambled

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Speaker 1: into his truck, and sped off down the hill to

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Speaker 1: confront the apparent revelers, but Cooper failed to get out

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Speaker 1: of his truck. Realizing it was a trap, he sped

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Speaker 1: off back to the house as the deputies gave chase.

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Speaker 1: In a chaotic scramble to get inside. Cooper had almost

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Speaker 1: made it to the front door when he spun around

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Speaker 1: and opened fire. As a hail of bullets shot out,

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Speaker 1: one deputy took a hit to the head, needing no

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Speaker 1: further invitation. Another deputy returned fire, hitting Cooper in the

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Speaker 1: heart and the head, killing him instantly. When the manner

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Speaker 1: of Cooper's death hit the news, one commentator, more and

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Speaker 1: any other provided the most in depth coverage, a twenty

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Speaker 1: seven year old small time broadcaster from Austin, Texas called

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Speaker 1: Alex Jones. Many years later, a message sent by Q,

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Speaker 1: the supposed originator of the Q and Non Conspiracy movement,

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Speaker 1: or at the very least an iteration of who Q

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Speaker 1: purports to be, tacitly endorsed Cooper's book, sending it immediately

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Speaker 1: to the top of Amazon's best sellers lists, today, having

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Speaker 1: sold well over three hundred thousand copies and often topping

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Speaker 1: the lists of the most shoplifted book in the Usa,

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Speaker 1: it remains as popular as ever. If you enjoy Unexplained

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Speaker 1: All donations, no matter how large or small, are greatly appreciated. Unexplained,

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Speaker 1: the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never

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Speaker 1: before been covered on the show, is now available to

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Speaker 1: buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble,

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Speaker 1: and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements of Unexplained, including

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Speaker 1: the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith.

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Speaker 1: Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts,

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