Milton William Cooper

Milton William "Bill" Cooper (May 6, 1943 – November 5, 2001) was an American Navy intelligence veteran, conspiracy theorist, shortwave radio broadcaster, and author whose 1991 book Behold a Pale Horse became one of the most influential — and widely-read — conspiracy texts of the twentieth century, warning of multiple global conspiracies, some involving extraterrestrial life. Cooper allegedly read classified documents while serving on the naval intelligence briefing team of the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, describing a government cover-up of extraterrestrial contact that included documentation of Majestic 12 and a secret treaty signed at Edwards Air Force Base in 1954. He also described HIV/AIDS as a man-made disease used to target blacks, Hispanics, and homosexuals, and claimed that a cure was made before it was implemented. He has been described as a "militia theoretician". Cooper hosted the Hour of the Time shortwave broadcast from Eagar, Arizona from 1992, and was killed in 2001 by Apache County sheriff's deputies after he shot one of them during an attempted arrest.

Early life, military service, education, and employment

Little is known about Cooper's background beyond his own accounts. He recounted being raised in a military family — his father was U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. (Ret.) Milton V. Cooper — and graduating from Yamato High School in Japan in 1961. He claimed to have enlisted in the United States Air Force that fall, receiving training at Lackland Air Force Base and the Aircraft & Missile Pneudraulics School at Amarillo Air Force Base. He was assigned to the Strategic Air Command, working with B-52 bombers, KC-135 refueling aircraft, and Minuteman missiles under a Secret-level clearance. While stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base with the 495th Bomb Wing, Cooper socialized off-duty with sergeants who, he claimed, told him about being attached to a special unit that recovered crashed flying saucers. He stated that he did not believe these stories at the time.

Cooper described witnessing the John F. Kennedy assassination on live television while on duty as Charge of Quarters (CQ) for the Field Maintenance Squadron. He detailed the tense three days that followed, including the triggering of a DEFCON Two alert. He left the Air Force with an honorable discharge in 1965.

He then enlisted in the United States Navy in December 1961 and volunteered for submarine duty; upon completion of basic training he was assigned to the USS Tiru (SS-416), a submarine stationed at Pearl Harbor. During a test dive off the coast of Oahu, Cooper and the crew allegedly witnessed a massive UFO emerging from the ocean, tumbling, and ascending into the clouds. Cooper claimed that following the sighting he was debriefed by a Naval Intelligence commander and signed a secrecy agreement under which any disclosure could allegedly result in a $10,000 fine and up to ten years' imprisonment. Following his submarine service, Cooper was transferred to the USS Tombigbee (AOG-11), a gasoline tanker. Later, he attended the Naval Security and Intelligence School and trained as an Internal Security Specialist.

During his deployment to Vietnam, Cooper claimed to have commanded a patrol boat and alleged witnessing significant UFO activity, including reports of mysterious blue light attacks, village disappearances, and mutilations of soldiers. After leaving Vietnam aboard the USS Charles Berry (DE-1035), Cooper was assigned to a three-month Naval Investigative Service detail before being transferred to the staff of the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet (CINCPACFLT) under Admiral Bernard A. Clarey. At CINCPACFLT he claimed to have received a Top Secret, Q, Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance and, serving as petty officer of the watch in the command center as the "designated speak-out operator" — a role he described as covering top-secret crypto communications received under a specialized compartmentalized category — giving him access to communications routing, to have read classified documents stating that extraterrestrial life was real, that unidentified flying objects were piloted by extraterrestrials, and that the United States had recovered crashed alien craft — beginning with the 1947 Roswell crash in New Mexico. Cooper stated that during this time, while serving on the CINCPACFLT Intelligence Briefing Team, he learned details implicating the Office of Naval Intelligence in the Kennedy assassination, alleging that a Secret Service agent in the presidential limousine fired the fatal shot. He was honorably discharged in 1972.

Public records confirm only a period of service in the Navy, where he held the rank of Petty officer second class and participated in a tour of duty in Vietnam, during which he received two service medals.

According to his account in the foreword of Behold a Pale Horse, after his military career, Cooper attended a junior college in California, earning a degree in photography. He worked at technical and vocational schools, including serving as Chief Instructor at the Coastal School of Deep Sea Diving and leading the Mixed Gas Deep Saturation Diving Department. He also taught underwater photography at the College of Oceaneering. Cooper later held administrative roles at several institutions, including Airco Technical Institute, Adelphi Business College, Pacific Coast Technical Institute, and National Technical College.

Early whistleblowing and alleged harassment

Cooper described experiencing harassment after his initial attempts to leak information. According to his account, he was forced off a cliff by a black limousine in the hills of Oakland, California. While he was injured and covered in blood, the two men checked if he was still alive before leaving him at the scene. He survived the incident but claimed that a month later, the same limousine forced him into another accident, resulting in the loss of his leg. While recovering in the hospital, Cooper stated that two men visited him, warning him to remain silent or face fatal consequences. He alleged that these events were attempts to intimidate him into silence regarding his knowledge of government involvement in UFO activities and other conspiracies.

Despite these incidents, Cooper continued his efforts to share his information. He described these experiences as pivotal moments that solidified his resolve to disclose what he believed to be hidden truths.

In 1988, Cooper claimed to have read about Operation Majestic 12 in a magazine article by William Moore, Jaime Shandera, and Stanton Friedman. The article described the recovery of a downed saucer, dead alien bodies, and government efforts to conceal these events under a secret program called Majestic 12. Cooper alleged that this information was disinformation intended to mislead UFO researchers but nonetheless aligned with certain elements of what he believed to be true.

That same year, he began publicly sharing his controversial theories, many of which involved government complicity in UFO-related cover-ups. He disseminated his claims through mailings, lectures, and computer bulletin boards to reach a wider audience.

Majestic 12 and the Secret Government

Cooper's most complete account of what he claimed to have read in naval intelligence files was laid out in his audio lecture Majestic 12 and the Secret Government. According to this account, between January 1947 and December 1952 at least 16 crashed or downed alien craft, 65 alien bodies, and one live extraterrestrial biological entity (EBE) were recovered by the United States government. The live EBE — named "Ebe" by Dr. Vannevar Bush, an acronym for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity — was held in captivity; information extracted from him became the foundation of what Cooper called "the Yellow Book." Ebe allegedly died on 2 June 1952 of unknown causes.

The National Security Agency was reportedly created by President Truman on 4 November 1952 primarily to decipher alien communications — a mission code-named Project Sigma — and secondarily to monitor all global communications for intelligence. Early in President Eisenhower's first term (1953), large alien spacecraft reportedly took up high equatorial orbits. Through Project Sigma and a new Project Plato, radio communications in computer binary language were used to arrange a face-to-face landing.

A separate group of human-looking aliens allegedly warned the US government against the gray aliens orbiting Earth and offered to help with humanity's spiritual development, demanding nuclear disarmament in return. Their terms were rejected. In 1954, a race of large-nosed gray aliens originating from a star system in the constellation of Orion purportedly landed at Holloman Air Force Base and later at Edwards Air Force Base. A formal treaty was reportedly reached — President Eisenhower was said to have been spirited from a Palm Springs vacation to Edwards on the appointed day, with the press told he had suffered a toothache and visited a dentist.

According to Cooper, the treaty stipulated that the aliens would not interfere in human affairs and that the United States would not interfere in theirs; permitted periodic abduction of humans for medical examination (with the stipulation that abductees would be returned unharmed and without memory of the event); required the aliens to supply Majestic 12 with a list of all human contacts; and provided for the exchange of 16 personnel each way — humans to the alien homeworld and aliens to Earth — and for the construction of joint underground bases. Joint bases were reportedly to be constructed under Indian reservations in the Four Corners area of Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado, and one in Nevada at a location approximately seven miles south of Area 51's western border — known as S-4 (Papoose Lake).

Cooper described James Forrestal as an early victim of the cover-up, alleging that CIA agents tied a sheet around the Defense Secretary's neck and threw him from a window at Bethesda Naval Hospital in May 1949 after he began talking to opposition-party leaders about the alien problem.

Cooper described the overarching framework as Operation Majority — the umbrella operation, established under President Truman, that he said governed every aspect, project, and consequence of the alien presence on Earth, and under which all subsequent classified business pertaining to the visitors was conducted. Cooper claimed that by secret Executive Memorandum NSC 5410, preceding NSC 5412/1 in 1954, Eisenhower formalized a permanent committee — known as Majority Twelve (MJ-12) — to oversee and conduct all covert activities concerning the alien question. Cooper allegedly named the committee's members as Nelson Rockefeller, CIA Director Allen Welsh Dulles, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Secretary of Defense Charles I. Wilson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Arthur W. Radford, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and six men drawn from the Executive Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations whom he termed the "Wise Men."

Project Redlight

Project Redlight was the code name Cooper assigned to the program of experimental test-flying recovered alien aircraft at Groom Lake. Construction of the super-secret Groom Lake facility — codenamed Dreamland — was allegedly placed under the Department of the Navy, with all personnel clearance requiring presidential approval; Cooper noted the irony that the sitting President did not himself have clearance to visit the site.

Cooper reportedly made six documented trips to the Nevada Test Site area, specifically to the 29½-mile marker on Highway 375 — facing directly toward Groom Dry Lake — to observe and film craft performing maneuvers at night. On one of these visits he claimed to have filmed a boomerang-shaped object that hovered above the mountains, flew across the Tikaboo Valley directly over his head, and later descended vertically back into the test site. He corroborated photographs taken from the same mailbox location by researcher Gary Schultz and a drawing contributed by an anonymous source claiming firsthand knowledge from Norton Air Force Base.

A companion project, Project Snowbird, was allegedly promulgated to provide public cover: conventional-technology craft were reportedly flown for the press on several occasions to explain away sightings of the Redlight craft as Air Force experiments and to debunk legitimate UFO reports.

Cooper also described a large letter on file from a worker at Area 51 who described standard security protocols: when a particular siren sounded, personnel were to run inside a building and not look out the windows; those caught outside were to retrieve a black hood from a pouch on their belt, cover their head, and lie face-down on the ground.

Behold a Pale Horse

Main article:

Behold a Pale Horse (book)

Cooper said he had drafted Behold a Pale Horse over roughly a decade — beginning in the early 1980s and finishing the manuscript in 1989, with minor additions in 1990 — before it was published by Light Technology Publishing of Flagstaff, Arizona in December 1990 (with the cover year 1991). The book combined Cooper's personal naval testimony with reproductions of classified-document fragments relating to Operation Majority, MJ-12, and Project Aquarius, alongside extended commentary on the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the document Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars — which Cooper claimed had been found inside a surplus photocopier. In 1991, Cooper wrote and published Behold a Pale Horse through Light Technology Publishing. The book synthesizes his naval intelligence claims with an analysis of secret societies, the New World Order, AIDS as a deliberate depopulation program, the Kennedy assassination, and the full text of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (presented with Cooper's own commentary). Photographs taken by Gary Schultz from the Highway 375 mailbox location, and a technical drawing of a recovered alien craft furnished by an anonymous source who claimed to have seen the object at Norton Air Force Base, appear in the book's appendix. The book has been influential among "UFO and militia circles". Just prior to the trial of Terry Nichols in 1997, The Guardian described it as "the manifesto of the militia movement". In a 1998 interview with Alex Jones, Cooper described Behold a Pale Horse as "the number one underground bestseller of all time with no advertising whatsoever", noting that the New York City Barnes and Noble had reportedly pulled the book from its shelves as "the most stolen book in their inventory." The book proved particularly popular in African-American communities in the 1990s and influenced a generation of hip-hop artists and political commentators.

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". 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. 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."

Cooper had also read and publicized a document he called "Grudge 13," which he said he viewed together with researcher Bill English; the document reportedly included photographs of Ebe, alien autopsy images, and detailed historical records of UAP recoveries compiled under Project Grudge.

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 expounded in Behold a Pale Horse. A 2000 profile in the South African newspaper the Mail & Guardian, carried under the headline "Govt Aids nut linked to Ku Klux Klan," characterized him as having served only as a "low level clerk" who would not have held the security clearance needed to access classified documents; Cooper's own account placed him on the CINCPACFLT intelligence briefing team holding a Top Secret, Q, SCI clearance, a posting he said was itself classified and thus unverifiable from the public record. In the Summer of 1988, Cooper made his first public comments on the ParaNet Bulletin Board System, an early UFO message board, claiming that in 1966 he was serving aboard the USS Tiru when he and fellow Navy personnel witnessed a metal craft "larger than a football field" repeatedly enter and exit the water. Cooper claimed he was instructed by superiors to never speak about the incident. Biographer Mark Jacobson argues "the Tiru incident itself would not have done much to make Cooper's name in ufology. That opportunity came only a few days later" when he was contacted by fellow ParaNet poster John Lear. Lear, the son of Learjet founder Bill Lear, identified as a pilot who had flown missions for the CIA. Lear was the author of a post titled "The UFO Coverup" which incorporated elements of mythos from Paul Bennewitz, a ufologist who was later revealed to have been fed disinformation by American counter-intelligence agent Richard Doty. Cooper soon visited Lear, and the two spent much time together from 1988 to 1990.

Cooper's views were heavily influenced by Lear and his story of alien collusion with secret governmental forces. In 1989, the two released an "indictment" against the US Government for "aiding and abetting and concealing this Alien Nation which exists in our borders". In 2018, columnist Colin Dickey noted the pair's influence, writing "in the early years [UFO writers] did not, by and large, embrace strong political positions. They were the tip of a spear asserting that the number one thing we had to fear was not little green men, but the government that colluded with them, appropriating their technology against us." Cooper and Lear's collaboration lasted for a few years, after which Cooper accused Lear of being a CIA plant.

Ufologists later asserted that some of the material Cooper claimed to have seen in Naval Intelligence documents was actually plagiarized by Cooper from their own research, including several items that the ufologists had fabricated as pranks. Don Ecker of UFO Magazine ran a series of exposés on Cooper in 1990.

Cooper held that the civilian UFO research community had itself been deliberately compromised. In Behold a Pale Horse he wrote that "all of the major UFO research organizations were targeted for infiltration and control by the Secret Government, just as NICAP was infiltrated and controlled," and that NICAP "was eventually destroyed from within." In the same book he named Philip Klass — the longtime Aviation Week editor who served as the press establishment's foremost UFO debunker — as a CIA asset whose assigned role was to discredit anything connected to UFOs.

Cooper linked the Illuminati with his beliefs that extraterrestrials were secretly involved with the United States government, but later retracted these claims. He held that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had negotiated a treaty with extraterrestrials in 1954 that allowed the aliens to abduct humans in exchange for technological assistance — a position recounted mockingly by the Democratic satirist Al Franken in his 1996 humor book Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. Cooper then claimed that Eisenhower had established an inner circle of Illuminati to manage relations with the aliens 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.

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. 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. In his Behold a Pale Horse lecture, Cooper stated he had "read top secret documents while with Naval Intelligence that stated that President Eisenhower had appointed six of the executive committee members of the CFR to sit on the panel called Majesty Twelve, also known as Majority Twelve for security reasons."

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". 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.

The Bilderberg and the artificial alien threat

Cooper maintained that an international secret society — which he identified as the Bilderberg Group, headquartered in Geneva — had evolved into a covert world government controlling international affairs from behind the scenes. Cooper also warned his audiences that the UFO phenomenon might itself be partly engineered as a pretext for world government, citing a 1917 speech by John Dewey and the Report from Iron Mountain as earlier expressions of the idea that an artificial alien threat could unite humanity and justify the elimination of sovereign nation-states. Cooper was therefore unusual among UFO researchers in simultaneously arguing that some UFO events were genuine and that others — or the overall narrative — might be a deliberate psyop to condition the public toward accepting world government.

In Behold a Pale Horse Cooper presented this hedge as an explicit "fifth scenario" alongside his alien-contact account, writing: "There is always the possibility that I was used, that the whole alien scenario is the greatest hoax in history designed to create an alien enemy from outer space in order to expedite the formation of a one-world government. I have found evidence that this could be true... I advise you to consider this scenario as being probable." Cooper also argued in his audio lectures that aliens had reportedly been "manipulating masses of people through secret societies, witchcraft, magic, the occult, and religion" and that the public Cold War antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union was a charade — that the two superpowers were in fact close allies cooperating under MJ-12 oversight while staging hostility to fund black programs.

Alternatives 1, 2, and 3

In Behold a Pale Horse and in his Majestic 12 & The Secret Government lecture, Cooper described what he called "Alternatives 1, 2, and 3" — three contingency plans allegedly commissioned by Eisenhower through the Jason Society to address an imminent global population and environmental crisis. Alternative One reportedly proposed using nuclear devices to blast holes in the stratosphere through which heat and pollution would escape into space; Alternative Two called for the construction of a vast network of underground cities and tunnels to house a representative selection of cultures and occupations; and Alternative 3 proposed the use of alien and conventional technology to evacuate a select few off-world to establish colonies on the Moon and Mars. Cooper claimed that on May 22, 1962, a space probe purportedly landed on Mars and confirmed an environment capable of supporting life, after which construction of a Mars colony allegedly began in earnest; he asserted that by the time of his broadcasts cities populated by specifically selected people from various nations and occupations already existed on the planet. Cooper further asserted that a joint extraterrestrial, United States, and Soviet Union base already existed on the Moon at the moment President Kennedy publicly committed the nation to a crewed lunar landing.

Kennedy assassination

In Behold a Pale Horse, Cooper asserts 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. 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. Cooper's video purporting to prove his theory was analyzed by several television stations, according to the same Mail & Guardian profile, and was found to be "... a poor-quality fake using chunks of the... Zapruder film."

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. 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.

Hour of the Time radio show

From 1992 until his death in November 2001, Cooper originated his radio show, Hour of the Time, from a studio in his house at the top of a hill in the small White Mountains town of Eagar, Arizona, 15 miles from the New Mexico border. Cooper sent his show via audio cassette, satellite patch, or direct telephone link to WWCR in Nashville where it was broadcast by the station's 100,000-watt shortwave transmitter. Cooper described the show as the "Mystery Babylon" series, and it was among the most influential shortwave broadcasts in America during the 1990s, reaching listeners across the western United States. Cooper used the platform to read and analyze primary documents, discuss secret societies, and advance his critiques of government secrecy. His broadcasts attracted a devoted following and were widely bootlegged on cassette tape before becoming available on the internet.

Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center — an advocacy organization that monitors and campaigns against militia and right-wing movements — said Cooper was well known within the militia movement for his anti-government shortwave radio program. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was reportedly a fan. McVeigh was reported by The Daily Beast to have ordered from Cooper a cassette, Waco, The Big Lie, which the radio host marketed. Cooper broadcast conspiracy theories on the Waco siege in early 1993, which he believed had been the opening battle in a new Civil War. He later participated in the early radio shows of Alex Jones, who was an admirer of his broadcasts. In one of their few joint appearances, from Jones's show in 1998, Cooper described what he called "the Nazi Gestapo police state which has taken over this country" and attributed what he regarded as an unresponsive public to "the stupidity of the vast herd of American people out there."

June 28, 2001 prediction broadcast

On the evening of June 28, 2001 — Episode 1896 of Hour of the Time — Cooper told his audience that the U.S. was about to suffer a major terrorist attack, that Osama bin Laden would be blamed, and that the real perpetrators were the forces behind the New World Order who wanted to seize guns and erode civil liberties as a pretext for world government. Cooper framed the warning explicitly: "We're being bombarded with messages that Osama bin Laden is planning to attack the United States of America... I'm telling you, be prepared for a major attack. But it won't be Osama bin Laden. It will be those behind the new world order. Who once again want to take the guns and the freedom away from the American people." Cooper dismissed as absurd the idea that U.S. intelligence agencies capable of global surveillance could not locate bin Laden, pointing to a CNN reporter who had just walked into bin Laden's compound with a camera crew as evidence that the CIA knew exactly where he was, since "the CIA created Osama bin Laden, they recruited him, they trained him."

Cooper drew an explicit comparison to the Reichstag fire, arguing that the coming attack would be used — as Hitler's arson of the German parliament was — to round up patriots, declare martial law, and consolidate power. In the same broadcast, Cooper addressed the Oklahoma City bombing in detail, claiming to have personally met Timothy McVeigh and "John Doe Number Two" (whom he identified as Michael Brescia, a federal informant) at his research center, and argued that the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building could not have been brought down by the fertilizer truck bomb attributed to McVeigh — it allegedly required shaped charges on the building's columns, as demonstrated when the building was subsequently demolished. Six weeks after the broadcast, the September 11 attacks occurred; The Fact Hunter described Cooper as having been "proven correct" — and the episode was subsequently archived as one of the most significant broadcasts Cooper ever made.

Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks, he predicted the U.S. would soon be at war in 'two or maybe three countries'. He began broadcasting the "controlled demolition" conspiracy theory on the day of the attacks, which eventually became a center of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Influence on Alex Jones and the far-right media ecosystem

Historian and journalist Garrett Graff, writing a 500-page history of the US government's UFO research, identified Cooper as the direct progenitor of the American far-right conspiracy media ecosystem. According to Graff, it was Cooper's Hour of the Time broadcasts that first introduced the concept of the deep state — a secret government cabal of military and intelligence professionals lying to elected leadership — into mainstream American discourse in the 1970s and 1980s; this concept, emerging from UFO conspiracy, subsequently became the foundational framework for right-wing political conspiracy theory more broadly. Cooper was Timothy McVeigh's direct inspiration: McVeigh and Terry Nichols drove to Cooper's compound in Eagar, and as they left his driveway McVeigh reportedly told Cooper, "Watch Oklahoma City" — a warning Cooper apparently did not report to authorities. Cooper's broadcasts also served as the mentor and creative origin for a young Austin, Texas, public-access talk show host named Alex Jones, who adopted Cooper's framework of government UFO secrecy as a gateway to broader secret-government conspiracy theory; Graff characterized Cooper as having "launched the modern era of government conspiracies with Alex Jones and passed the torch to a new generation." Graff concluded: "I don't think you get January 6th in America without the intellectual foundation laid by the UFO conspiracy of the 1980s."

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 a 1998 appearance on the Alex Jones show Cooper characterized the warrant as politically motivated, saying that newspapers were describing him as an "Arizona militia man, tax fraud and bank fraud" who was "refusing to come into the loving arms of Janet Reno." In 2000, he was named a "major fugitive" by the United States Marshals Service.

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". The shooting occurred less than two months after the September 11 attacks, about which Cooper had broadcast warnings on his June 28, 2001 broadcast.

In popular culture

• Cooper's writing holds enduring popularity in hip hop, being referenced by artists including Public Enemy, Tupac Shakur, and Jay-Z.
• The rapper William Cooper took his stage name from Milton William Cooper.
• The X-Files incorporated numerous elements of Cooper's mythos of a secret government in collusion with alien beings. In one of the most famous episodes, "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", John F. Kennedy is assassinated to prevent him from revealing the existence of aliens. The 1998 X-Files film uses phrasing from Cooper (e.g. "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars") and features the name Cooper in apparent homage.
• In 1997, hip hop group Killarmy released their debut album, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, a title drawn from Cooper's work.

Books

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

Lectures

• Truth vs Deception (Undated, audio only), 1h 14m
• Sedona Speech (September 24, 1989), 3h 26m
• The Secret Government: Origin, Identity and Purpose of the Real MJ-12 (1989), 1h 28m
• UFOs, Aliens and the Black Government (1990), 2h 2m
• Behold a Pale Horse (1991), 4h 40m
• UFO Alien Agenda Conference (September 9, 1991), 3h 37m
• The Little Ale'Inn (July 9, 1993), 1h
• Wembley Speech (January 9, 1993), 2h 45m
• Lansing, Michigan (1996), 1h
• The Porterville Presentation (1997), 11h

Self-produced videos

Produced as "Shining Star Productions":

• Project Redlight (1991), 2h 2m
• Project Redlight II (1992), 1h 38m
• JFK: Assassin Unmasked (1993), 45m
• Kennedy, The Sacrificed King (1993), 1h 14m
• Luxor (1994), 54m

Media appearances

• Interview with Ellie Crystal (Undated)
• UFO Investigations-The Cover Up (1989)
• On the Kennedy Assassination, KUTV (May 15, 1991)
• Dimensions in Parapsychology (1991)
• Shane Eden's The UFO Connection (1991)
• NYC Public Access Interview (April 24, 1992)
• The CNN Interview (May 3, 1992)
• Reichstag '95 (1995)
• The Land of the Lost Story (1999), dir. Anna Zetchus Smith
• The Hour of Our Time: The Legacy of William Cooper (2006), dir. Jim Jankiewicz

See also

• Project Aquarius
• Eisenhower–ET meeting
• John Lear

References

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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. ＋

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to

Milton William Cooper

.

• www.hourofthetime.com—official site
• A collection of lectures at the Internet Archive
• A collection of self-produced documentaries at the Internet Archive
• A collection of media appearances at the Internet Archive
• Complete catalog of the Hour of the Time radio program

This article incorporates material from the Wikipedia article "Milton William Cooper", as of 2024-11-12, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.