Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClane Smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. In last week's episode, How
Speaker 1: the End Always Is, we hitched derived with the Gulf
Speaker 1: Breeze Six, six US Army intelligence analysts who became convinced
Speaker 1: they had uncovered evidence that the world was about to end.
Speaker 1: The group, who in nineteen ninety went a war from
Speaker 1: their listening post in Auksburg, Germany, were eventually captured a
Speaker 1: week later in Golf Breeze, Florida. Some reports suggested the
Speaker 1: group had traveled to Florida intending to either kill the
Speaker 1: Antichrist or to rendezvous with a spaceship that would help
Speaker 1: them escape the apocalypse. The official explanation later offered by
Speaker 1: the group, however, was that the only plan to make
Speaker 1: a brief stop in Florida before heading in land to
Speaker 1: find somewhere safe and remote to await the end of
Speaker 1: the world and prepare for the arrival of the Second
Speaker 1: Coming of Jesus. Little is known publicly about what happened
Speaker 1: to the Gulf Brief Six after their release with the
Speaker 1: exception of Vans Davis, who published a book in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five titled Unbroken Promises, which details the entire escapade
Speaker 1: and gives a little more insight into their thinking. For
Speaker 1: all the groups alleged brushes with psyops training, they're communicating
Speaker 1: with spirits through a wig aboard to the not only
Speaker 1: being warned of an apparent intergalactic plot to destroy human kind,
Speaker 1: but then also actually acting on what they've been told.
Speaker 1: What stands out most of all for me is how
Speaker 1: reminiscent it all is of modern conspiracy theory. It's been
Speaker 1: speculated that before heading off to the hills to hide
Speaker 1: themselves away, the group had hoped to meet up with
Speaker 1: a man named Bill Cooper. In the nineteen eighties, Cooper,
Speaker 1: who'd served in the US Navy, developed a reputation among
Speaker 1: UFO enthusiasts after he claimed to have witnessed documents showing
Speaker 1: the United States government were communicating with aliens. A year
Speaker 1: after the Gulf Breeze six went a War, Cooper, also
Speaker 1: known as Milton William Cooper, published a book titled Behold
Speaker 1: a Pale Horse. The book, which is said to have
Speaker 1: established Cooper as the godfather of modern conspiracy theory was
Speaker 1: a treasure trove of conspiracy and paranoia, covering everything from
Speaker 1: the supposed truth about UFOs to secret population control programs,
Speaker 1: and of course, the Illuminati. Ten years later, he was dead,
Speaker 1: killed by local law enforcement after drunkenly initiating a shootout
Speaker 1: on his property, or, as many of his followers might
Speaker 1: tell you, at least that's what they want you to believe.
Speaker 1: Milton William Cooper was born in Long Beach, California, in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three. Not much is known about his early life,
Speaker 1: other than the fact he claimed to have served in
Speaker 1: the United States Navy, Air Force, and Naval Intelligence until
Speaker 1: being discharged in nineteen seventy five. Public records, however, show
Speaker 1: only that he served in the Navy, during which he
Speaker 1: completed two tours in Vietnam as a riverboat captain. It
Speaker 1: was sometime in nineteen seventy two, surrounded by the chaos
Speaker 1: of the American Vietnam War, the Cooper developed the distinct
Speaker 1: feeling that, as his biographer Mark Jacobson would put it,
Speaker 1: something wasn't right. Cooper would later claim that it was
Speaker 1: around this time that he came across a series of
Speaker 1: top secret documents that apparently contained details of an agreement
Speaker 1: between the United States government and a sinister alien race
Speaker 1: intent on enslaving entire sections of humanity and creating a
Speaker 1: new world order. In nineteen seventy five, after his discharge,
Speaker 1: Cooper claimed he tried to leak the story to a journalist,
Speaker 1: only to find himself being run off the road by
Speaker 1: a black limousine while outriding his motorbike one afternoon. A
Speaker 1: month later, having miraculously survived this first assault, the mysterious
Speaker 1: Limaux appeared again, only this time Cooper wasn't so lucky,
Speaker 1: the resulting crash leaving him with only one leg. Having
Speaker 1: seemingly got the message, Cooper wouldn't resurface again until nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty four, when he sent an essay to write Gray
Speaker 1: Barker for publication in a newsletter he was putting together
Speaker 1: at the time. The essay, outlining the secret alien plot
Speaker 1: Cooper claimed to have uncovered, cemented his reputation among UFO
Speaker 1: enthusiasts and enabled him to begin hitting the lecture circuit.
Speaker 1: As noted by Richard Ruellis and Rob O'Dell for the
Speaker 1: Arizona Republic, it was after conducting a lecture in Sedona
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine that Cooper, now touting himself as
Speaker 1: a former US Naval intelligence member, was introduced to local
Speaker 1: publisher Melody O'Rion Swanson. Having been impressed by Cooper's talk,
Speaker 1: Swanson offered him the opportunity to collate all his research
Speaker 1: and ideas into a book. The result was Beyond a
Speaker 1: Pale Horse, which was published in nineteen ninety one. Comprised
Speaker 1: of almost five hundred pages of official looking documents mixed
Speaker 1: with Cooper's own thoughts and interpretations, the book painted a
Speaker 1: sinister and to many compelling picture of secret powers and
Speaker 1: shadow organizations intent on controlling the world and everyone in it, and,
Speaker 1: as is all too often the case with such conspiracist thinking,
Speaker 1: antisemitism was never far away. One passage highlighting the Rothschide
Speaker 1: family as seemingly the only people ever to have run
Speaker 1: a bank or to have done so for profit, is
Speaker 1: especially jarring. A little less subtle, however, was the inclusion
Speaker 1: of a text known as the Protocols of the Elders
Speaker 1: of Zion, first published in Russia in nineteen o three.
Speaker 1: The text purports to describe a Jewish plan for global
Speaker 1: domination except the entire thing is a hoax. Once described
Speaker 1: as probably the most influential work of antisemitism ever written,
Speaker 1: Cooper would later claim the text's inherent antisemitism was merely
Speaker 1: a smoke screen used to hide its true meaning, which
Speaker 1: is only revealed if you substitute Jews with the Illuminati.
Speaker 1: Taking a rather different view, publisher Melody O'Ryan Swanson elected
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
Speaker 1: It was slow initially, but before long it started to
Speaker 1: take off, having appeared to have struck a chord in short,
Speaker 1: because there was nothing else quite like it, with its
Speaker 1: mix of sincere rhetoric and reams of supposed evidence suggesting
Speaker 1: genuine research had been conducted. For anybody with even an
Speaker 1: inkling that not all was as it seemed in the
Speaker 1: corridors of power, it was at the very least intriguing,
Speaker 1: even if some of the ideas were a little more
Speaker 1: far fetched than others. That Cooper had opened the book
Speaker 1: with the assertion that some of the conclusions he drew
Speaker 1: from his work may be wrong only seemed to bolster
Speaker 1: its sense of authenticity, and as with critics of conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories in general, the problem for the book's detractors was
Speaker 1: that occasionally who was more than a little truth to
Speaker 1: what Cooper was saying. The US government, for example, may
Speaker 1: not have fabricated the moon landings in partnership with the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Studio, but they really did have a secret program
Speaker 1: to investigate and master the use of psychic warfare, despite
Speaker 1: denying it for years. And though the US government is
Speaker 1: not concocting a plan with Bill Gates to use a
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen vaccination drive to secretly implant everyone with a microchip,
Speaker 1: US doctors did secretly infect around seven hundred people in
Speaker 1: Guatemala with syphilis in the nineteen forties in order to
Speaker 1: study the effects of penicillin, none of which is documented
Speaker 1: in Cooper's book, but is just to say that military organizations, governments,
Speaker 1: and public officials lie and obfuscate frequently for all sorts
Speaker 1: of reasons, some benign and some far less so, and
Speaker 1: for all its antisemitism and promoting of thoroughly debunked nonsense
Speaker 1: like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Buried within
Speaker 1: Cooper's text, you might also find proclamation such as how
Speaker 1: cash quote will be replaced by a cashless system that
Speaker 1: will allow the government to monitor our every action by computer,
Speaker 1: and if you attempt to stay out of the system,
Speaker 1: you will not be allowed to buy, sell work, get
Speaker 1: medical care, or anything else we all take for granted.
Speaker 1: Or how quote the sharp increase of prescriptions of psychoactic
Speaker 1: drugs like Prozac and Rittelin to younger and younger children
Speaker 1: will inevitably lead to a rash of horrific school shootings,
Speaker 1: and that these incidents will be used by elements of
Speaker 1: the federal government as an excuse to infringe upon the
Speaker 1: citizen reads Second Amendment rights. It isn't exactly how things
Speaker 1: might be, but when held up against a certain kind
Speaker 1: of light, it can begin to look to some like
Speaker 1: maybe he was on to something. To pick just the
Speaker 1: last quote apart, it seems prescient in light of school
Speaker 1: shootings such as the Columbine High School shooting of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine. And yet, although children are far too often
Speaker 1: and too easily prescribed strong psychoactive drugs, it would be
Speaker 1: by no means the sole reason why a school shooting
Speaker 1: might occur. Furthermore, where Cooper says that such a school
Speaker 1: shooting would be used as an excuse for the federal
Speaker 1: government to infringe on Second Amendment rights, you might just
Speaker 1: as easily say that such a shooting provides a completely
Speaker 1: legitimate reason for a federal government to want to question
Speaker 1: the benefits of Second Amendment rights. There is, as ever,
Speaker 1: some truth in there, but whatsm you view it through
Speaker 1: will determine exactly just what you believe that truth to be.
Speaker 1: Not long after the publication of Behold a Pale Horse,
Speaker 1: Cooper moved to the quiet town of Edgar, Arizona, where
Speaker 1: he began a radio show called Hour of the Time.
Speaker 1: Cooper was a natural behind the microphone and gained many
Speaker 1: more fans with his innate confidence and authority and lack
Speaker 1: of any specific political agenda. In nineteen ninety five, however,
Speaker 1: Cooper's peddling of conspiracy would have a decidedly real world
Speaker 1: impact when in April that year, Timothy McVeigh and Terry
Speaker 1: Nichols parked a bomb outside a federal building in Oklahoma City,
Speaker 1: resulting in the deaths of one hundred and sixty eight people. McVeigh,
Speaker 1: who was a fan of Cooper's, had committed the attack
Speaker 1: in retaliation for what he saw as a gradual, unending
Speaker 1: erosion of citizens' rights by the US government. Then, in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, something startling occurred. During the June
Speaker 1: twenty eighth broadcast of his The Hour of the Time show.
Speaker 1: That year, Cooper remarked on an old CNN broadcast he'd
Speaker 1: seen earlier that day, conducted by journalist Peter Arnett in
Speaker 1: March nineteen ninety seven. It has since become infamous as
Speaker 1: the first interview in which Asama bin Laden openly declared
Speaker 1: war on the United States. What had drawn Cooper's eyre, however,
Speaker 1: was how easily it seemed for Arnett to locate bin
Speaker 1: Laden when the US government claimed not to be able
Speaker 1: to find him at the time. It could only mean
Speaker 1: one thing he thought the government wanted him to be seen,
Speaker 1: or in other words, they allowed the interview to go
Speaker 1: ahead so that a new Bogie Man could be beamed
Speaker 1: into the collective conscious of the Western world. As Cooper
Speaker 1: would remark later in that day's show, something terrible is
Speaker 1: going to happen in this country. And whatever is going
Speaker 1: to happen, they're going to blame it on a Psama
Speaker 1: bin Laden. Don't you even believe it? The rest is history.
Speaker 1: Cooper's foreshadowing of the September eleventh attack on the twin
Speaker 1: Towers of the World Trade Center in New York cemented
Speaker 1: his reputation in conspiracist circles forever. In the immediate aftermath
Speaker 1: of the attacks, Cooper took to the airways once more,
Speaker 1: commenting as the two towers collapsed that might they in
Speaker 1: fact have been brought down by controlled demolition orchestrated by
Speaker 1: the US government. This wild speculation would form the flimsy
Speaker 1: bedrock from which the nine to eleven Truth Or Movement
Speaker 1: would spring up. In July two thousand and one, Cooper
Speaker 1: got into an altercation with the local resident of Edgar
Speaker 1: after accusing him of spying on him. At the time,
Speaker 1: the man, Scott Hamblin, had merely parked up with his
Speaker 1: wife and kids to enjoy the view from a hill
Speaker 1: close to Cooper's house. Cooper had pulled a gun on him,
Speaker 1: pointed it at his head, and told him to stay
Speaker 1: away from his property. When Hamblin told the local sheriff's office,
Speaker 1: a warrant was issued for Cooper's arrest. At the time,
Speaker 1: Cooper was under investigation for tax of asion and had
Speaker 1: become increasingly paranoid and erratic, Convinced the government had a
Speaker 1: vendetta against him. Drinking more and more, he had effectively
Speaker 1: become a recluse, telling friends and listeners that had been
Speaker 1: forced to send his wife and kids abroad for their
Speaker 1: own protection. In truth, they'd simply left him and relocated
Speaker 1: to California. One night in November two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: a group of local OF's deputies staged a fake party
Speaker 1: at the end of Cooper's drive, using loud music, in
Speaker 1: the hope that it might force him to leave his house,
Speaker 1: enabling them to arrest him without getting into a standoff.
Speaker 1: As planned, Cooper duly appeared at the front door, scrambled
Speaker 1: into his truck, and sped off down the hill to
Speaker 1: confront the apparent revelers, but Cooper failed to get out
Speaker 1: of his truck. Realizing it was a trap, he sped
Speaker 1: off back to the house as the deputies gave chase.
Speaker 1: In a chaotic scramble to get inside. Cooper had almost
Speaker 1: made it to the front door when he spun around
Speaker 1: and opened fire. As a hail of bullets shot out,
Speaker 1: one deputy took a hit to the head, needing no
Speaker 1: further invitation. Another deputy returned fire, hitting Cooper in the
Speaker 1: heart and the head, killing him instantly. When the manner
Speaker 1: of Cooper's death hit the news, one commentator, more and
Speaker 1: any other provided the most in depth coverage, a twenty
Speaker 1: seven year old small time broadcaster from Austin, Texas called
Speaker 1: Alex Jones. Many years later, a message sent by Q,
Speaker 1: the supposed originator of the Q and Non Conspiracy movement,
Speaker 1: or at the very least an iteration of who Q
Speaker 1: purports to be, tacitly endorsed Cooper's book, sending it immediately
Speaker 1: to the top of Amazon's best sellers lists, today, having
Speaker 1: sold well over three hundred thousand copies and often topping
Speaker 1: the lists of the most shoplifted book in the Usa,
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,
Speaker 1: the book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never
Speaker 1: before been covered on the show, is now available to
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Speaker 1: the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith.
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