Part Two: Bill Cooper: The Man Who Killed Truth

a file cabinet back in the sixties. Imagine if everyone had that foresight to be like, no, no, no no, you didn't understand. I used to work at a comptroller's office, and I feel like a real missed opportunity. Yeah, it's not too late. I hate that word, by the way, comptroller, because it's supposed to be pronounced controller, not the way the Massachusetts controller pronounced it. But funny. Yeah, I mean we've been talking about Boston a lot, and that's just

one more reason they're bad. Um anyway, outside of boss parties. Yeah, Jamie, welcome back to the story of Bill Billiam Cooper. Are you are you ready to can? I see you've got your beanie baby. Um, I just got my e Babyanie baby in the mail. I'm so excited. And that's a death themed beanie baby, is it not? It's well, that's no, that's this one. This is the the end. Yeah, you do have a death themed beanie baby. Yeah yeah, that theme is the death of beanie babies. Um yeah, I

got a you know mint condition the mail. And before anyone bothers me about it, that they're like because there's like this myth that beanie babies are expensive, They're not. I got these two for eight dollars together. So I'm good. I have a I have a I have an animal familiar, and I'm ready to go. Alrighty, well, let's some do some ships, all right. On July four, nineteen eighty nine, Bill Cooper commit did marriage for the very last time.

Uh yeah. Yeah. This wife would be his most successful adult relationship, and depending on who you believe, their relationship may be evidence that he did grow as a person. Um, although that may not be true either. Yeah. She was a twenty year old Taiwanies a woman named Annie Mordhost. Bill was forties six years old at the time. Um yeah. In the grand tradition of all wonderful love stories, Annie and Bill were married in a Las Vegas Boulevard wedding chapel,

and we know very little about their courtship. Bill would claim that Annie was the daughter of a nationalist Chinese official who had fled the country when Mao and his Communists won the Civil War. Uh, but you know, who knows what the funk happened really about her life? Annie came into perhaps like everything Bill says. Yeah. Um, Annie came into Bill's life just as his career and conspiracies was really starting to take off. She defended her new

husband fiercely. At one point during a lecture at the Showboat Hotel and Casino, fight broke out between two uf O nerds, and he stepped in front of her husband with a hand on the hilt of an enormous kitchen knife she always kept in her purse. Um. Okay, actually they maybe found each other. Yeah, she was kind of right or die for a while there. Yeah, definitely seems to have been willing to stab a man for for

this guy. Yeah. Bill had relatively few real innovations he could claim to have brought to the world of ufology. Most of what made him unique was his ability to carve off chunks of other people's work and weave them into explicitly political theories that tied directly into the contemporary world. And this is what builded best. Yeah, but also like making UFOs political, like tying tying alien not just alien conspiracies exists, but like tying them into things that are

fucked up in the modern world. Um. His work was unique in the notoriously scatter brained and chaotic world of uf O nerds. Uh Norio Hayakawa, one of the most famous ufologists in this period, ran into build during a UFO convention in West Hollywood. Vote. A lot of UFO meetings can be dull, but on this night they had Bill Cooper. I hadn't heard of him. He looked like a normal middle aged guy, huge but paunchy, with receding hair. He could have been anybody. He made a couple of

remarks and then read his secret government paper. He didn't look up, just read for an hour and a half. But what he was saying, the authority with which he said it was very interesting. Most of upology avoids politics, but with Bill Cooper everything was political. He was the first person to really take the UFO phenomena and extended out as a way to talk about global politics, history, religion, and society. It sounded so fresh to me, so intriguing.

The most important thing I thought was to get Bill bigger and better vinues so more people could hear what he had to say. Again, it's like he's using that military cloud and that military delivery tot. If you've ever watched if you've ever spent hours watching UM lectures from different UFO conventions in the nineteen nineties, and yeah, most of them aren't great at talking. Uh. A lot of people who never should have been in front of a

crowd to crowd public. Yeah, okay, Yeah, Bill does have right like he presents himself in a way that people take him more seriously than they do most people in this world. Um. So, this Hayakawa guy was responsible for booking Bill one of his first big speaking gigs at Hollywood High Um. And after this Bill went through a brief spell as one of UFOlogy's leading luminaries. He probably, like in the world of UFOs, is like having a talk at a high school a big deal. This one

was because it's a big high school. That's true, that's Hollywood High School for crying child start exactly, UM, pat them in basketball all the time in high school. Yeah, you know what I didn't do just there, Sophie selfish. I didn't selfishly plug yourself. No, I didn't make a joke about the horrible pedophile ring that has existed in Hollywood for decades. Um, you did bring it up right now, though, I did bring it up right now. So we want to throw in a show where it is like really

difficult to lower the mood further. We really did just find a way to do it. Yeah, and that's evidence that growth only goes so far, right. You know, we we we can, we can make some movements towards progress, but we always remain the people that we we were born. Um, anyway, shout out to which one of the Corries is the one who's been talking about Oh wait no, the Cory is the one that killed him. Um, I'm just going to multiple corries. Yeah, this this, this shouldn't have happened.

I'm solving my beanie baby in a vice script. Yeah, so Bill Bill becomes kind of like a big name on the UFO circuit in like nineteen nine, uh, nineteen ninety, and his speaking skills improved, and you know, during this period he drew the attention of a pair of Hollywood managers,

Douglas Kane and Michael Callen. So, like, these guys are going to record in license Bill's lectures, and there's kind of talk about, like, oh, Bill might become kind of like a major a major media figure, like something like Alex Jones kind of Winda was briefly, um if you remember what Alex Jones was in movies and stuff. Um, So there there's talk about this happening. But Bill kind of immediately gets into a giant fight with these guys

and proved himself very difficult to work with. And the fight this, the dispute arises over the rights to the master recordings of some of his lectures. Um. And rather than like deal with this the way that an adult in a professional context would, Bill calls Michael up drunk, um just just absolutely hammered and threatens to murder both men.

Um uh, he tells them, quote, I'd suggest you be real careful, don't write no bucking broncos, don't do nothing you haven't done before, because I guarantee you no one is going to hurt me and get away with it. Take care, Mike, love you, and we're gonna make sure you amount to something, even if it's a pile of dogshit. We miss you, we really do. And the next time we see you, we're going to get you a real good present. Like god, yeah, it sounds like he's on

an eight chan board. Yeah. And the next morning Diana wa wakes up to find out that his tires have been slashed. And since Bill lived nearby, like, it's kind of not a grid not a mystery, No, Bill, I mean not not a subtle man, not a subtleman. So um yeah. Dean reported Cooper to the sheriff, and Bill later wrote that this was all part of a scheme to disrupt his work and stop him from educating the American people. Um. Yeah, and that's you know, kind of

what Bill. Bill is big into the UFO scene until like the early nineties, really ninete is when he starts to undergo a change of heart around the whole issue of UFOs and extraterrestrials. Um, so, what that makes it like less than ten years that he's heavy into that. Oh wait, it's only it's only really a couple of years that he's so it's just really a passing interest

for him. Yeah, he's always partly in it. So basically, he claims that he starts to become like convinced in the early nineteen nineties that like, rather than uh UFOs being like the hoax being around the government trying to cover up UFOs, the existence of UFOs is itself a hoax. He calls it the greatest hoax in history, and it's being perpetrated by the government to give people something to focus on while they ignore the real conspiracies that are

going on. Um, which there's actually some evidence that stuff like that was going on that like the CIA and ship we're um, we're kind of pushing conspiracy theorists to discredit in general, like anti government sentiments and stuff anyway. Um. But Bill becomes convinced that like there's this grand conspiracy and and pushing fake UFO beliefs to sort of confuse and discredit people who are going to speak out against the new World Order. Um, it's like that's that's really

what's going on. Um. And the root of his new theory came from a nineteen seventeen speech given by John Dewey, the famous educator and psychologist the Dewey Decimal System. Guy. Bill became convinced that the Dewey decimal system guy is kind of at the heart of the coming New World Order.

Um So, in this nineteen seventeen speech, Dewey had made the historic error of idly speculating that an alien invasion might be the only thing that could force humanity to unite and like save itself from you know, wiping itself out in horrible war. And since this was coming at the end of World War One, you get where Dewey's coming from. Like, it's a pretty hopeless time to be a human being. He's like, uh, if only aliens would invade and we could all unite against something that like

wasn't murdering each other. Um But Bill Cooper was convinced that Dewey's words weren't just like the idol and somewhat desperate hope of an intelligent man staring out at the devastation of war and hoping for a way to prevent more death. Instead, he became convinced that those words were a flagrantly clear signal of the secret plans of the New World Order. Oh see, I guess that that's where

we we divert in our in our thought. Yeah, yeah, and it is kind of like I think Dewey you could probably argues kind of like the root of where like that whole theory, that whole part of The Watchman comes from. Like I think Dewey's kind of the first guy to really be like, it'd be nice if aliens came, Like maybe we'd stop murdering each other for a single second.

Is it is so? For it is so like you can understand where it comes from and where the desire to want it to you know, deflect the blame on what's going wrong in the world and in the country onto literally anything except the people that are already there and running it. Yeah. Yeah, so Bill gets you know, increasingly starting in like really into the New World Order conspiracy theory. And the New World Order conspiracy theory was

like you'd call it a super theory. It was really more of a whole conspiracist mindset rather than like a discreet conspiracy theory. So we're well outside of like the realm of you know, JFK was murdered by the c I A. Right, that's a simple conspiracy theory. You can explain it to every anyone who's curious in a sect. Yeah, the New World Order conspiracy theory is a mindset, and every new thing that happens in the world, you like a believer is going to kind of filter like file

in somewhere in that conspiracy theory. It kind of takes it's one of it. Yeah, and you could see the n w O as kind of an evolution of Majestic twelve. You know, Majestic twelve starting in like the late eighties. Is this theory about this, you know, secret government that gets set up after Roswell and the New World Orders just kind of really an evolution of this, and it it comes at the end of the Cold War for

a good reason. Michael Barkun writes that the theory came to quote constitute a common ground for religious and secular conspiracy theorists, um, because you could tie in these kind of apocalyptic Christian millenarian conspiracy theories, but you could also tie in like completely a religious conspiracy theories, like you know, the jfk assassination, like it all fit underneath the New World Order, just kind of depending on your own personal

beliefs um. And Bill Cooper was kind of the guy who very first plugs Majestic twelve and Roswell Alien nonsense into the n w oh UM And depending on the point in his career, he either did it to claim that like the New World Order um existed to kind of hide the existence of aliens from people, and then later that like, oh, the n w oh is is his pushing fake UFO conspiracy theories to distract people whatever.

Like he takes both tax over the course of his career um very like large umbrella of conspiracies to yeah, it's all about bringing people together. Really, well, that's the thing Bill and all these other Bill is one of these guys who's just talking constantly for like fifteen years, and everything he says is adding something to the conspiracy theories. So if you actually really try to like to map out everything Bill believes and pushes in his life, like

we would be here for days. Um, we're going to gloss over too much of this stuff to be honest, Like he invent to He not invented, but he's the reason people know about the FEMA death camp conspiracy theory. Like he's the origin point for that one. Yeah, we're not even really going to talk about it because it's just one of a billion different things. He's the origin point for Yeah, he's the first guy to published that. Yeah,

so fucking Bill Cooper. Um. Yeah, the n w O really took off after nineteen ninety and Bill was its most influential profit. His pivot away from aliens didn't isolate him from his fans. Instead, it opened up a whole new segment of the population to conspiratorial beliefs. Vast swaths of the country who would never have been caught dead at a UFO convention start, but it started to feel like something was wrong with the way the country was going.

Like these kind of people would listen to Bill Cooper. They never would have shown up to a mouf On convention, but they listen to this stuff because it rang true to them, because they were looking for an explanation as to why things were wrong. Um that didn't involve like reading left wing political theory. Well that's just a waste

of time, as we both know. Yeah, the left wing guys get into this too, Like this is really That's one of the things that's interesting about the New World Order conspiracy theory is that it's very influential in a number of sides. Um and Michael Barkin writes, quote, New World Order theories seem to provide a graceful way of exiting the domain of international relations and refocusing upon domestic politics. This is in the wake of the Cold War ending.

Although the forces of the New World Order are international, they are assumed to be concentrating on domestic agendas, particularly the alleged destruction of American liberties. So Bill was savvy enough to see that, like, as you know, part of what's happening here. Why the New World Order conspiracy theory gets so popular is that there's a lot of people like Bill who are will permanently be anxious for the

rest of their lives because of the Cold War. We call these people baby boomers, and they cause a lot of problems. Um, and when the Cold War ends, a lot of these guys needed something else to justify the fact that they were always paranoid because they've grown up under the shade of constant imminent nuclear annihilation and the New World or they're troubled. Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is

are having a tough time. And this is what Bill taps into is the fact that all of these guys know that everything, like I can't not expect the end to come at any moment. And once the Soviet Union ends. They can't just lose that anxiety, right like they and and then they need an explanation for like, why don't I feel better now that the Soviets are gone? Could

it be that up? Most of the problems that people were blaming on the Soviets were actually just like the fact that my own culture is fucked up and we need to deal with No, no, no, there's a different conspiracy.

It's not the communist conspiracy. It's another one. Yeah. So Bill was savvy enough to see that he was watching the birth of a new movement in American culture, and he knew that movement was going to need a bible, and so in nineteen ninety he sat down to write One Behold a Pale Horse, would be published in nineteen one through bizarre little new age occult press called Light

Technology Publishing. The book itself was four hundred and thirty four pages of documents and memos, all purported to be top secret missives from inside the secret Government working to bring about the new World Order. The centerpiece of it all, the primary document upon which Bill hung his ideology, was called Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, which is another great title. Say both of these kicked the ship out of the

title of Bible. Yeah, fuck the Bible, I mean behold of pale horses from the Bible kind of but yeah, so uh yeah. Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars Bill claimed it was an introductory programming model for new employees of Operations Research, a secret military intelligence organization tasked with preparing

the country for authoritarian rule. And the document opens with welcome aboard and informs its reader that they are will be taking part in the Third World War, which has been going on for decades and involves the use of silent weapons on an unsuspecting public. I'm gonna quote now from pale horse writer written at the level of an

undergrad paper and electrical engineering. Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars defines a silent weapon as differing from a conventional weapon in that it shoots situations instead of bullets, originating from bits of data instead of grains of gunpowder, and attacks under the orders of a banking magnate instead of a

military general. Because the silent weapon causes no obvious physical or mental injuries and does not obviously interfere with anyone's daily social life, the public cannot comprehend this weapon and therefore cannot believe that they are being attacked and subdued. The public might instinctively feel that something is wrong, but because of the technical nature of the silent weapon, they cannot express their feeling in a rational way. They do not know how to cry for help, and do not

know how to associate with others to defend themselves against it. Huh, yeah, you can see why this, um, this is attractive to some people. Yeah, yeah, and it's I mean, now, it sounds vaguely familiar, but if I had heard this at the time, would have been like, yeah. Interesting. For a very long time, almost everyone assumed that silent weapons had

been created the creation of Bill Cooper himself. He opened the very first episode of his radio series, The Hour of the Time by reading from this, and his favorite line to repeat was a lightened from the papers stating that uninformed Americans were beasts of burden and steaks on the table by choice and consent. Um. He would say it in nearly every episode. Okay, so he's got he's

got that branding. The reality, though, is that Bill was something of a middleman for bringing silent weapons into mass awareness. The whole paper had actually been cooked up by Hartford Van Dyke, a convicted counterfeitter who would essentially cobbled the thing together himself from bits written by other paranoid libertarian thinkers. Um M, paranoid libertarian thinkers are, Yeah, it's it's it's

it's interesting. So Bill, you know, silent weapons for quiet Wars is kind of like that that line, and in particular is kind of why Bill adopts the phrase, you know, wake up sheeple um, because like that he was he was referring to a specific thing. Is that like these New World Order people in their own documents, because Bill

believes this thing is real. Um, like think that you're your beasts of burden, like they that's how they treat you, and like that's what you are if you're not willing to like wake up and realize that you're being played. Bill was very abusive to his audience, so he would regularly like insult and attack the people listening to him for not sure. It's like if his if his whole thing is if you're not participating in what I'm saying, you're a fucking idiot and you're and you're going to

be hurt. Like that's a that's a place to start. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Um. So, through his book Behold of Pale Behold of Pale Horse, Bill injected a lot of a whole host of now common conspiracy theories into the mainstream, not just his theory about JFK, but postulations that AIDS was one of many secret weapons designed by the US government for use against its own people, actually to wipe out black people in Africa. Um and this, yeah, we'll talk more about that in

a little bit. As it turns out, very little in behalor Behold a Pale Horse was original. Bill had just taken a variety of different pamphlets and like hoax papers that had been circulating, you know, over the conspiracy community, and bound them together in a handsome volume with really good cover art. You you should look up the cop book right now to see the cover art. Like it's

it's good. Behold the Pale Horse, Yeah cover okay, okay, So all this stuff has been like circulating in sort of conspiracy nut communities, but you'd get it as like you know, somebody handling up Yes, yeah, yeah, it's pretty, and it's it's it's it's well organized, and you know, this stuff had been existed for a while, but if you if you came across it, it would be like you'd run into someone's poorly mimiographed copies of Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars and a gun show or something next

to it, like Nazi flags. And Bill puts them in this really like good cover art, like well bound, like actual book. And this is again still a period of time in which books means something to people. Um. So this ship takes off, and it's a problem that this ship takes off because everything in Bill's book isn't like Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. Obviously it's nonsense. Um, but it's hard to It's not the most problematic thing in

the world. It's just it's just a fake military document. Um. Bill doesn't just include stuff like that, among other things, Behold the Pale Horse includes the entirety of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Um. Yeah, okay, I want to say that that escalated, but it really is just an ex logical step, and it's really funny. The way he does it is kind of objectively hilarious. So if you aren't aware, the protocols are probably the most influential

conspiracy theory of all time. They purport to be like silent weapons, kind of like a secret document from this organization that got leaked out. And in the case of the protocols, it's this meeting of a group of Jewish elders plotting the overthrow in domination of the gentile world. Now, the reality is that the protocols were a forgery cooked up by the Anon Czarist, Russia's equivalent of the c

I a UM. The protocols like that they were, they were basically this Russian intelligence agencies like disinformation plot Um

and UH. They were incredibly successfully took on a life of their own, spread all throughout Western Europe UM and obviously like helped to spread this kind of specific type of anti Semitic conspiracy theory all across Europe, and most of the Nazis actually knew it was a fake um and they thought it was a pretty clumsy fake at that, but they benefited from the conspiratorial melieu that the protocols helped to create in Europe, which like definitely helped to

enable the Holocaust. So the Protocols of the Elders of Ziland have Zion maybe have the highest body count of any conspiracy theory in history and after World War Two, you know, for obvious reasons, the protocol is kind of languished. People didn't weren't so interested in anti Semitic conspiracy theories for a little while. Um yeah, some bad pr for that. Yeah,

bad pr for anti semitism. Um. So they would only really surface when some Yeah yeah, they would pop up every now and then, but it was only really like neo Nazis who were willing to republish them. Um. And they never got any kind of white distribution. George Lincoln Rockwell was probably like the most prominent guy to try to republish the protocols. And yeah, yeah, yeah, so nobody. You're right, I didn't even Jamie. Yeah, Jamie's onto something

in their name where the evil lies. Yeah, and you know where the evil doesn't lie, Robert and the products and services that support this podcast. Sometimes I'm proud of myself. And yes, yeah, that part all right, we're back. So the Protocols of the Elders of zion Um kind of languish and obscurity for decades after World War Two. Um yeah,

nobody really spreads them. They're not popular in the United States, They're not particularly well known in the United States, and then in nineteen Bill Cooper republishes them in their entirety in his book Um And to make it funnier Bill Bill was not an avowed anti Semite. Bill definitely believed a lot of anti Semitic things, but like it wasn't a motivating factor for him. He didn't believe the protocols

were evidence of a Jewish conspiracy. He thought they were the real minutes of an of the Illuminati, basically of the New World Orders conspiracy theory um. And they've been blamed on Jews to throw the world off of their scent Um. So he really it's even worse to be like, I'm just gonna throw it in because it seems like something that people no, No, he thinks it's true, but it's it's not the Jews, it's the New World Order

and the Jews. The New World Order blamed it on the Jews to hide the reality of what was happening. So Bill, before he publishes the entirety of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he runs this note, and this is the only note he runs with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Every aspect of this plan to subjugate the world has since become reality, validating the authenticity of conspiracy. This has been written intentionally to deceive people.

For clear understanding, the word Zion should be psion. Any references to Jews should be replaced with the word Illuminati, and the word goum should be replaced with the word cattle. So he's like, replace Jews with Illuminati. But this book of this, like this anti Semitic conspiracy document is good stuff otherwise, right there, Like otherwise it's basically right. But just take out yeah, just take out the Jews. And I'm not going to take out the Jews myself. You've

got to do it in your own head. So yeah, he's not willing to do any sort of leg where he makes it sound like a simple clerical error that was made and unfortunate really for the whole world. Behold a Pale Horse went on to become the single most

influential underground publishing hit in history. It's sold well over three hundred thousand copies as of this the publication of this episode, but that number vastly understates its influence because Behold a Pale Horse was and remains one of the most frequently stolen books in the country and in incarcerated people across the nation. UM also started passing it along, so there will be copies of this still are in prisons all over the country that just get like handed

to people when they come into prison. Um. Yeah, and it's it's it's. It spreads through two different chunks of the underground community, the kind of right wing militia community where you'd expect it, but it also becomes incredibly influential among the burgeoning hip hop community of the early nineteen nineties. This unpacked for me. Yeah, I don't yeah, we will,

don't worry. Yeah, So Behold a Pale Horse resurrected the protocols of the Elders of Zion UM and it kind of laundered them through a lens of general distrust with the state of the world, and as a result, Bill Cooper was able to ensure that this once obscure tract spread by like wildfire among segments of the American population it had never reached before, primarily inner city black Americans like obviously the kind of people handing out the protocols

the Elders of Zion and the thirties weren't given them to black people. But now this book starts spreading among like a lot of people who are like a lot of black men in the inner cities who have this again, this this thing that is at the core of Bill Cooper's work. They know ship's fucked up, right, um and Bill Cooper given, here's a whole book on how everything's fucked up, and it happens to include the protocols of

the Elders of Zion Um and yeah. Uh So as this this kind of brings us to, yeah, the thing I've been teasing for a while, which is that Bill Cooper is one of the most influential white men in the history of rap um and Yeah. Biographer Mark Jacobson explains, quote, in nineteen ninety one to five thousand and seventy seven people were murdered in New York, by far the highest two year total in city history. It was the crack play, and a new generation arose to speak truth to the

ongoing trauma of urban life. Many of the rappers who emerged during the early nineteen nineties, the Great Wu Tang's the Formidable Nas of the Queensbridge Houses were deeply influenced by the five Percenters a k a. The Nation of Gods and Earth's. The movement had been founded in the late nineteen sixties by Clarence Edwards Smith a k A. Clarence thirteen X, and eventually Father Allah kicked out of

Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam forget heresy and gambling. Father Allah had said that it was necessary for black men and women to become lyrical assassins. The tongue was the sword, Father Allah said, and when properly sharpened, it could take more heads with the word than any army with machine guns could never do. And for many lyrical assassins, Bill

Cooper's Behold a Pale Horse became a key text. Rappers who have mentioned Cooper in his book or his book include the Wu Tang Clan, Big Daddy, Kane, Busta Rhymes, Tupac, Shakur, Talib Quelli, nas Rakim, Poor, Righteous Teachers, Gang Star Goody Mob, suicide Boys, Boogie Monsters, Wise Intelligent, public Enemy, Miss math Aslan, Lord Allah, ras Cass, and the Lost Children of Babylon, who told their listeners to prepare to meet your fate

like William Cooper when the stormtroopers breach your Gate a little bit of foreshadowing there. Um, old, yeah, that's like, yeahbuddy, yeah, that's everybody. He's here the fucking One of the first albums that the Wu Tang Clan like produces is called Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. Yeah, God is like the side thing. It's it's nas, it's nas. I'm sorry, clearly I'm not on Mark Jacobson, Bill's biographer, actually talks to a lot of these guys and like, is really knowledgeable

about hip hop? I am not, and I apologize. Um, that is like old dirty bastard of the Wu Tang Clan explained, behold a pale horses appeal better than anyone else. Everybody gets fucked. William Cooper tells you who's who's fucking you. And unfortunately, one of the things he tells these people is it's the juice, Like you just have to like he said, yeah, yeah, that's an unfortunate aspect of his influence.

So you can see why black guys in particular, living through inner city crime waves and like police, you know, crackdowns and violence and stuff, would find documents like Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars compelling Bill's framework of conspiracies fit in with things that many black folks already believed, like that the CIA had introduced crack to the inner cities, and there's obviously there's actually a decent amount of truth

to that. Um In an interview before his own death, Prodigy told Mark Jacobson, William Cooper wrote, what everyone kind of new, and that's like a big part of his influences that he's He's giving people this really cohesive, um bound guide to all of the different things, all of the like, hey, your life is fucked, Like here's what Like, here's you can pick and choose which conspiracy theories you believe, explain why, and just by like putting together it sounds

like the greatest hits, uh conspiracy theories of like hey, if this one doesn't work for you, go to the next chapter. Maybe this one will work for you. Yeah, okay, okay, yeah, And he introduced his new followers to a whole world of other conspiracy theories, not just the protocols of the Elders of Zion, but some of Bill's more modern paranoia, like the idea that AIDS had been created in a test to by the US government to wipe out Africans.

This theory spread like wildfire and even reached Manteo Sha la la simoon. Um, I'm gonna pronounce that wrong. I'm terribly sorry. South Africa's health minister, the New Republic Rights that he quote, while still in office and at the height of that country's AIDS crisis, distributed copies of the chapter that argue that AIDS was introduced into the African population by a global conspiracy with the goal of reducing the continents population. Bill Cooper is very influential because well

it's as is always the case with this ship. We can talk. We'll talk about the crack epidemic at some point and how they're the real conspiracy there differs somewhat from the ones that most people believes. But like the basic idea of it is true, which is that um, in large part due to the c I a crack got to the United States and huge amounts like that, they played a major role in getting here. It's just

a different role than a lot of people think. Um. Likewise, the AIDS crisis gets so bad worldwide in large part due to the US government's complete refusal to give a shit about it. Um. Yeah, it's just not the reason. But like something is fucked up there, and people want like if you provide people with the convention like a compelling theory that ties together what is really just inexplicable hatred and and like a lack of fox given about

huge chunks of the population. Um, yeah, I mean it's it's it's I'm not saying it's rational in any way, but but for you know, people who already perhaps have some held prejudices, who are looking for an explanation to something that is like the commonly held truth of like, uh, there are things going on in the government that we have made not made aware of, very intention annoyed. But then it's just like, well, what's a what's a funked

up reason I could make up for why that may be? Yeah? Yeah, So Behold a Pale Horse would probably see its most lingering impact on the hip hop scene. Um, there's still actually a modestly popular artist named William Cooper who goes by that name today. Um. But Bill's personal popularity as a showman would only grow narrower in the years following

his books publication. The Hour of the Time, his radio show earned a sizeable audience for what it was propaganda for the nation's growing militia movement, and The Hour of the Time did not, although now it is. It is a little more. You can find in like a lot of fringe SoundCloud rappers and stuff. They'll they'll cut in bits of The Hour of the Times, but um, a good fringe SoundCloud. I want to play you just a

segment from one episode. This is the introduction, and this is how every single episode of The Hour of the Time started. Just you have an idea of kind of how Bill show like the emotional tenor it takes right from the beginning. Okay, this does sound like sand clock, rab and chess. It's so long. Yeah, it's really long. Oh I think I saw I heard Santa Claus. I don't like it. Oh, dog the dog, up the dog.

What you have just heard listeners all over the world is warning, and you will hear this warning from here on out. You've been listening to your leaders tell you that there's a great move towards democracy in the world. You witnessed the parting of the Iron Curtain, the fall of the Balloon Wall, the fracturing of the Soviet Union, and this is all supposedly toward a new worldwide democracy. Democracy is a code word for socialism, and that's why

our forefathers established a republic. Okay, so you can I just love imagining flipping on that set on the radio by accident, just like barking dogs and like trumpict. Yeah, but you also hear like Bill's delivery. He's he's figured out how to be a radio host in this time. Yeah, he's definitely improved. Yeah, his cadence is really good. He knows how to like it's he knew how to He

knew how to put together a radio show. He would also put in like he would broadcast like entire songs that were like kind of popular songs that fit in with the theme of like what he was saying that episode, Like he would have like musical interludes and ship. He was a good broadcaster, um and he like yeah he was. He was able to um draw in a lot of listeners, maybe even for a lot of folks who wouldn't have listened to most other people in kind of like the

crazy militia person radio sphere. Um. And as a result, his work still resonates today, but unfortunately not with a group of people. Bill would have been happy to resonate with um. If you look up on where that that SoundCloud link I sent you. Um, it's hosted by someone named conscious Sounds. Uh. They have twenty followers. And look at that photoshop logo that they designed for Bill's show

that wasn't his. No notice the Israeli flag sandwiched right in between George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden and then the watermark Iron Volke, iron Reich printed at the bottom of the mh okay I did it's not it's not. Oh yeah, these guys they're learning there's Nazis who are

trying to be a little bit subtle about it. And I think they see they kind of recognize Bill Cooper is a good way to get people kind of on board with once you once you're listening to Bill Cooper, you can be convinced that like, actually he was wrong when he said it wasn't the Jews, Like because you already believe all this stuff, you just replace them with Illuminati. We just got to switch the Jews back in there, and then you're good to go. Um, yeah, fucking dark.

It's weird because yeah, Bill again was absolutely whatever else you can say about him, and again it's mostly negative. He wasn't a Nazi, although he did work in the company of Nazis the hour of the time. Has that improved the situation? Well, he just catered to Nazis and worked with them free. He didn't he I don't think he catered to them. We'll listen to something in a bit. You may change your mind about that. He's more complicated

than that. But he He was broadcast by the shortwave radio station w w c R UM and by the time Bill got into his groove, his his competition were guys and what's called the Patriot Community UM basically early preppers UM, including two guys named Chuck Harder and Tom Valentine UM and and Bill didn't get along with either UM for a number of reasons. One of them is that Valentine had a better primetime slot than his He

was nine to eleven PM. Uh yeah. But also valentine show was sponsored by The Spotlight, which was Willis Carto's Liberty Lobbies Holocaust denial newsletter. We talked about that in the War on everyone some yeah. UM. Other competition included like celebrity host guys like William Pearce did radio stuff in this time, UM, you know, g Gordon Liddy and

stuff like would be on the same network. So Bill is kind of in and among a bunch of like really bad dudes right like his his the other people who are kind of on the radio in and around him are like very violent and often have ties to Nazis. Um. Like fucking William Pierce is a guest on some of the shows that are that are hosted in and around

Bill show. Bill himself was probably the most palatable individual personality in the patriot movement at this stage, because he was like he was kind of the first person in this movement. Like everyone's talking about the boogleoo movement and whether or not it's racist, and like a lot of these guys focus on like no, we're you know, we're pro gun and we're we're libertarians, but we're like anti racist and stuff. Bill was the first guy in right

wing media to thread that needle. Um. He was really the first one to do it in like a practical way, um.

And this helped broaden the appeal of the early malicious scene and the patriot movement whatever you wanna call it, by drawing in these more libertarian Americans who wouldn't have listened to a show that was putting fucking William Pierce on but would listen to Bill Cooper, Well, it's it sounds like the fucking YouTube algorithm, where it's like, Okay, here's something that is like, you know, a little like it's some stuff, you know, and then some radical ideas

being snuck in and Okay, this is a familiar this is a familiar model, I guess. Yeah. And and Bill himself did go to like when I say that he wasn't a Nazi, I don't think I'm giving him too much credit here. And for an example of like why I think that, I want to play a segment from one of Bill's relatively few shows that touched on race to a significant extent. And this was the episode that he put out in the immediate wake of the LA riots um which were of course sparked by the acquittal

of the cops who beat the ship out of Rodney King. Right, that happens, and you get the l A Riots. And here's Bill Cooper's part of Bill Cooper's response to the LA Riots. The entire nations in the world had been viewing an amateur videotape that had been taken on the scene, which showed over fifty blows. I believe the correct number was fifty six blows in eighty seconds to a man who was lying on the ground, who had no weapon, who posed no threat, who did not attack anyone during

this term. But nevertheless, fifties six blows from clubs what the office is called the turns. That's a polite name for a club a stick. Can I believe no one believed if those officers would be firm innocent? Okay, that is that is not what I would have expected from him, right, No, that's that's a pretty reasonable thing to say about the Rodney King beatings. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's basically the only way, like an honest person could could, which Bill was not.

But he you can't really fault what he's saying there. Um, And he went on like he went on to complain about the looting and rioting by people in Los Angeles and say that, like, you know, it was they were making a really dumb call by like destroying their own neighborhoods.

But he's catering to boomers, of course. Yeah. He reserved the bulk of his anger for white Americans, as embodied by his listeners telling them a quote, when you sit in front of your television on Friday and Saturday night and watch cops, Top Cops, Lady cops, Cops, swat cops, detective cops, Grandma cops. You watch them break down doors without identifying themselves, without a search warrant, without a court order,

rip people's mattresses apart, throw up away their clothes. If they don't find anything, all they have to do is drop a little bag of white powder. You sit there cheering them on. Get those scummies so and so's, And the reason you do it is because you're watching. It happened to blacks, to minorities, poor white trash, Puerto Ricans, everyone who was a threat to you. So like Bill wasn't the always He wasn't always the guy you expected

him to be, right. That was one of the things that makes him interesting is like he would there would be these moments where you'd like, be okay, Bill is going to have like a real fucked up take, and be like, no, he was kind of He was more or less right about that. This one, Bill pretty firdly comes down on the right side of history. Now. He also went on to complain that the judge who acquitted those LAPD cops was a Mason and like like the thread, Yeah,

so you started strong. Yeah, but you can see you can see a lot of the same kind of discourse and the same the same style that like the same kind of ideological statements that are being made by like the boogaloo folks today, right like, um, you know, yeah, Bill sounds a lot like a lot of the fucking guys that was watching on Facebook and the immediate wake of the George Floyd protests, he would have been well at home in that organization or in that not organization,

but in that that community. Um. Now, in his role as the voice of America's new militia movement, Bill saw his main duty as warning good conservative Americans that the government and the form of socialist politicians was coming to disarm them as a prelude to tyranny and mass to population. Bill Show popularized the conspiracy theory that the US government stages mass shootings in order to drum up support for

gun control. And this was before the Columbine shooting. Bill starts this conspiracy theory off in the United States, and I'm gonna the next thing I went have you play is Bill reading a passage of his book on the air. In n So again, this is what seven years before Columbying and like twenty something years before the Sandy Hook shootings. In that conspiracy starts here, here's Bill laying the groundwork

for all of that ship. The government encouraged the manufacture and importation of military firearms for the criminals to use. This is intended to foster a feeling of insecurity which would lead the American people to voluntarily disarmed themselves by passing laws against firearms, using drugs and hypnosis on mental patients in a process called O'Ryan, the CIA and cultated the desire in these people to open fire on schoolyards and thus inflame the anti gun lobby. This plan is

well under way and so far is working perfectly. The middle class is begging the government to do away with the Second Amendment. So Bill starts that mass shootings are a government conspiracy, conspiracy theory and fucking ninety one. Um, yeah, what do you make of that? That's amazing? That is I know, I'm just like I'm trying to build really ahead of it's his time. Um, and he knew what would take off because obviously this conspiracy theory takes off,

and if you look at the YouTube video. It was like a YouTube video of people being like see Bill Cooper revealed the government's planned to stage mass shootings. Yeah, it couldn't have been a lucky guess because file cabinet. Yeah. Interesting, Okay, So Bill had a real gift for weaving far fetched fantasies about the Illuminati and mind control weapons and with down to work, earth like folksy rants about modernity. Like that was his gift. As he would take this crazy

shit and he would weave it into real shit. And it would it would it would that that draws people in. Like he didn't. He didn't, He didn't sound the same way it again, that guy with like a box full of like photographed z or mimiographed zeems at a gun show seems like right like it there there's like a grounded nous to it that you don't usually get. I do kind of wonder, I mean, because you were saying like he just like spoke NonStop for years, like I

mean for everything like this. That feels kind of like a wow. Maybe he you know, this was a pretty like you know, valid comment. How many hundreds of bullshit that makes no sense? Um to counter that? Yeah, I mean Bill was was every day of his life was bullshit. That was that happened. And then I mean, if if you talk that much bullshit, you're bound to hit on

something useful every once in a while. Yeah, I mean it's and it's not like, well, I mean it's not something that's true because obviously mass shootings are a product of a wide variety of unhealthy things in our culture. And I don't think any reasonable person thinks the government is even competent enough to fake that sort of thing. But just hitting on the idea that it would be an appealing idea, Well that that's what he understands, is

like what what people want to believe? And he what people need is like, here's this real problem mass shootings. We need to explain you know, the soaring violent crime rate in the early nineties. I need to explain it with something that blames it on but like makes it a part of this conspiracy. Like that was Bill's talent is weaving that ship together, um, and he would do

it by like yeah, Um. One of I think the most revealing rants that he put together that sort of shows you his appeal was was him sort of complaining about automobiles. He stated, I've gone from driving automobiles that I could take apart and put together blindfolded by myself as a teenager, to cars that I can lift the hood on and not even recognize most of what I'm looking at, except that I know it's an engine in there,

some kind of system that ignites the fuel. And this was like Bill was basically taking with this sort of thing, these kind of feelings of inadequacy that we're very common and increasingly common. And this chunk of American men who's like jobs, good factory jobs, one that had been eliminated, these guys where a lot of them lived in like rural communities that were very rapidly dying as the country

increasingly urbanized. Um, so he would take these feelings of like being bowled over by the complexity of modern technology and feeling left behind, so would weave them into this conspiracy about the new world order. As his biographer notes, Bill basically argued that stuff like, you know, the increasing complexity of automobile engines wasn't just a factor of developing technology. It was quote one more way the controllers separated you from the utility of your person. This was how silent

weapons work. How they stuck the dunce cap of helplessness on your head. And a big part of Bill's appeal was that he provided his listeners with a way to feel as if they were part of the solution, actually fighting back against this new world order, rather than just sitting helplessly and watching it eat everything. Uh. He created the Citizens Agency for Joint Intelligence or CADGY, which Bill marketed as a sort of volunteer civilian answer to the

CIA or the FBI. Yeah, citizen Joint intelligence. Citizen Agency for Joint Intelligence. Yeah, I mean I both made the same. Any of his listeners could join CADGY and start collecting and submitting intelligence would which Bill would read on air if he liked it. And so this had a couple

of benefits. Never one let his listeners feel like they were part of this like insurgent movement fighting back against the new world order, and it filled up airtime because Bill could just read bullshit that his audience sent in as if it was intelligence that his agency had brought another like twenty four hour news cycle, A little head of the curve there. It's very smart, very smart, And CAGY wasn't just like an institute off on its own.

It was the intelligence wing of the Second Continental Army, which Bill claimed was a secret nationwide militia dedicated to the preservation of the values that the US had been founded under. Bill refused to give up the name of the commanding general of this August Force because it was him, but many of the promotion papers that he handed out were signed by George Washington. Yeah, it was always like, really k g about who was in charge. It was

obvious was built. Yeah, because it was him. Yeah, because it was him, he was the whole army. Yeah. But then he's like, but who knows. It's hard to say. Yeah. So, over his years on the air, Cooper engaged in a number of objectively ridiculous stunts, like all right wing ideal logus. Bill Nurson abiding hate for the mainstream media, but he tried to do something about it, organizing his listeners in a scheme to buy up millions of shares of Ghanet Media,

owner of USA Today. And the plan was that all of his listeners would buy enough of Ghanette Media to have a controlling voting interest um and then they would basically put Bill in charge, and he would fire everyone who didn't want to put out right wing propaganda. It didn't it didn't work. No, but christ yeah, you know what, will buy up all of the shares of Ghanett Media to put out right wing propaganda the products and services that support this podcast. Oh I hope, so yeah, and

we're back um okay so uh. In nineteen four, Bill threw his support behind the newly formed Constitution Party, which had been made by some Hollywood libertarian dude. I think it was part of a grift, but anyway, U. Bill announced his like new membership and support of this movement, essentially acting as it's like the voice of the Constitution Party by announcing America is no longer a two party country, Ladies and gentlemen. Um. Problems obviously cropped up almost immediately.

The chief issue was that Bill and the party he joined were pretty much straight up libertarians. Meanwhile, many of his listeners were hard right religious nutfox uh. They hated two major planks of the Constitution Party, which were and again, Jamie, this is another place where you'll be surprised legal legal abortion and the right to be homosexual. Um. And in another surprising turn, Bill took to the airwaves to defend both planks on the matter of abortion. He said, we

are firm ladies and gentlemen. God put us here to make choices, and the moral choices the woman's. And if she fries in what some of you would call hell for eternity, that is her choice. For it is she who will fry. But it's not. But it is not the business of the state to say yes, no, maybe, or anything. But it's a woman's choice. Like he's he's he's whatever, Okay, I mean him being like, you know what, let the lady burn in hell if she wants to.

I don't guess saying that. I think he's saying that, like if you think she's going to hell, it doesn't matter, Like it's still not the states, but it's not the state's business to say if she does it or not. Right. I actually don't think Bill cared at all about abortion, clearly, I mean clearly not there I can't. I mean, it's like, you know, personally, you know, we don't we don't claim this man, but I guess it's nice to not have

him actively against reproductive rights. That's yeah, it's with this guy. It says a lot that that, like he has to yell at his listeners over ship like this because like they're all such bigots, um, and Bill is just not quite as bad Um, and actually like his defensive bigotry a little more focused in yeah, yeah, I mean he just hates the government. That's really Bill's whole thing is he hates the government and wants wants to destroy it

because he thinks it's an evil quasi Satanist conspiracy. Um, it's weird. He's a weird guy. Like his defensive homosexual homosexuality was actually like pretty good, um telling. He told his very religious listeners quote, the most you can never hope to do is force them back into the closets so that you cannot see them, and then you will be living a lie, just as we have been living

lies throughout our history. And lies must stop. Which is interesting because he's also he's he's still putting the like it's your you who will be living a lie by denying these people exist, and like that's why you shouldn't do it. It's a weird defense of not criminalizing gay people. Um builds a weird guy. There's a lot of like moments like that with him, where it's like what the

funk are you? Yeah, and I don't want to be washing him here because these are like, these areas where he's surprisingly decent um kind of just have been used sometimes by folks to obscure the fact that he was fundamentally a man who believed that anything that vaguely smacked of socialism was tyranny and had to be violently opposed

by men with guns. Um. And so while he would be doing stuff like saying, hey, it's fine if you're gay, he would also be saying, you should have as many guns as possible so that you can kill people who try to, I don't know, give healthcare to folks. Like what Yeah, okay, I I mean I still hate the man, but you should. But but there are some there are

some twists here there. Yeah, it is, I mean, do you think it is just like it has to do with like he wants to keep the focus on what he really cares about, and it's like, you know kind of like okay, like I get that this is something that bothers you, but like, don't worry about that, ye worry about like look over here, this is my show, and we're worrying about the things that I hate. God, you have a radio show. You can hate your own ship. There's a there's a shitty radio show for that other

hateful thing, you think on the same network. Like you don't have to wait long. Oh yeah, you don't like it, wait forty five minutes. Yeah. Bill's show hosted an eighteen hour long series called Treason, making the case that US government officials were committing a daily barrage of unconstitutional acts that demanded some sort of response. Um. He also told his listeners to watch two thousand one of Space Odyssey because it included secret messages hidden by the illuminati. Um yeah, um.

And this is like this is the thing you're here in Q and on stuff. Now, there's this like widespread belief that like the Cabal, this like elite group of Satanic demon worshippers hide like the secrets of their Like there's all these weird Hollywood movies that are real, Like the Bourne Identity is like there's act like there's real, Like it is like fundamentally real. It's just yeah, yeah, because the the elite have to hide the truth about what they're doing in plain sight. It's this thing that

they need to do. Um. And Bill thought that it was because of like this weird kind of occult tradition that where you basically have to in order to like provide power to your occult rituals, you have to like tell people about the evil things you're doing in the open, and so like they would hide all this stuff in Hollywood. Like that was an innovation of Bills. That is like one of the things that the core of Q went on today. And he's the first guy to be like

and it was Billy with Billy Bailey. He would watch a movie he liked and then would be like, and here's why, Like this is reveal some truth about the Illuminati. Conspiracy is the thing Alex Jones does too. Um yeah. Now, it was the Waco siege that really made Bill Cooper, the multi week assault by the A t F and the FBI on a peaceful religious compound in the middle of nowhere. It was exactly the kind of violent overreach

that he'd spent his career warning people about. It was like the perfect thing for Bill Cooper to focus on, right, Like he's been saying for years, the government's going to come to like kill all Christians and stuff and you know, institute this new world order. And here they go after this compound of weirdos in the middle of nowhere, Texas. Um So, for weeks, Bill would you know, basically tell his listeners that Waco was a test case to see if Americans would put up with the n w o's

plans to eliminate millions of people. Um, like they're seeing if you're going to rise up. You know, if a bunch of militiamen would just show up at Waco and like stand around it, they would back off and like then you know, we could we could turn the tide. But of course nobody was willing to actually do that.

Um So, for weeks, Bill would cover the federal government's treachery and when the real victim like in you know, the government, by the way, was committing a ton of horrible crimes Waco, Like the whole thing was one horrible crime pretty much. Yeah, this is like, you know, attached to something where it's like, well, yeah, there is something

clearly very bad going on here. Um yeah. Yeah. But he would also because he was a liar, it wasn't enough the actual funded up ship that was going on, so he would he would like he invented this claim that the FBI had sent in tainted milk that had killed two children um, which he would repeat for weeks, which is like there had no basis in fact, Um, it wasn't necessary because the FBI killed seventies something children at Waco, Like you don't have to lie about tainted milk.

They burnt kids to death, Like it's not it's not necessary Bill. Um. He was also adamant that David Koresh was monogamous and does not play around on his wife, which is what's the point. I think that's like mon he had. Koresh had to be a good guy, and the people at Waco had to be like fundamentally heroic rather than like a bunch of flawed and fucked up people themselves who still didn't deserved to be burnt alive. Yeah.

So obviously Bill was as horrified as the rest of the world when the David Koresh that David Koresh was not just defending David Koresh but picking to Hill, David Koresh was faithful to his wife, Like that's what we all know about David. He didn't a ton of random women. Oh my god. Yeah, I mean, especially since we all know David Koresh had incredible abs. I mean, just stop David Koresh's abs were as cut as Bernard Sanders was good at shooting people in a moving vehicle. Cut my

own beanie baby's arm off. This is so stressful. So Bill was as horrified as the rest of the nation when the FBI's final raid on the Branch Davidian compound ended in you know, dozens of children burning to death. Um in just horrible, horrible, literal war crime. Um. Yeah. On his first broadcast back after the siege, Bill opened the show by declaring, America the Beautiful is no more. He told his listeners that the second battle of the

Second American Revolution had ended, and folks, we lost. The first battle was Ruby Ridge, So I mean, you know it it that was you know, Waco was. One of the things that's interesting about Waco is that for a lot of people who had been kind of reflexively pro America and pro the government just because it was America and they were kind of like patriotic bumble fox, um,

Waco was the thing broke a lot of them. Um. And there's it's like like it's kind of the foundational movement of the patriot movement in the militia movement that exists with US today. For there's a reason the Boogaloo boys put the names of like the Weavers who died at Ruby Ridge um and share Waco meetings so much. It's because, like this is where that starts. This is where like the insurge right in this country really starts to grow. And Bill Cooper is the one nursing it.

Like the violent right had not been a big thing since the end of World War two that had really put an into it. Pretty much like you've had the KKK in some parts of the South during the Civil Rights movement, but like not an insurgent force aimed at overthrowing the government. That that starts now, and Bill Cooper is its first profit right um, Like he's directly saying, like you the listeners are like part of a war

against your government now because of Waco. Oh yeah, yeah, okay, I mean and and it's unfortunately, like you can see what he's like creating these pins for people that you can understand why people are taking the opportunity. I mean, whether if you believe Bill Cooper, the only thing to do is kill people in the government, is murder members of the government. And by the way, his most famous

listener decides to do just that. Becau is. Bill's biggest fan in this period of time was a young military veteran named Tim McVeigh. Yeah, yeah, Timmy McVeigh. Baby, yeah uh, Tim McVeigh. Always a pleasure when we get to you, Timmy. So Tim loved Tim loved the hour of the time, and then the months prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, there's even evidence that he visited Bill Cooper's, the place where Bill Cooper recorded, and like met with Bill Cooper

um and like this almost certainly happened. It's it's pretty widely believed, and the most credible version of the story suggests that basically Bill was kind of sketched out. It was like Tim and some other guy and they were like clearly weird and unhinged. And Tim asked him, like, if I get stopped by a cop, should I shoot him rather than accept a speeding ticket? And Bill was like, no,

you shouldn't shoot a man over a speeding ticket. But like, yeah, it's this really sketchy story where like there are a couple of people who were around Bill at the time. While we're like, yeah, this guy who after the Oklahoma City bombing, we all recognized as Tim McVeigh came by and was like, I'm your biggest fan, Bill and asked

him weird questions about shooting cops. Um. And it's worth noting that the reason Tim got caught is that he got pulled over driving away from Oklahoma City and he had a gun on him and chose not to shoot the officer who was pulling him over, which is why he got caught. So wow, So listening to Bill is what got him caught. It's saved one guy's life and got like a hundred and sixty eight other people killed. Well, I mean, obviously we talked a lot about Tim McVay

in the War on Everyone. There was a shipload going on in Tim mcveah's ideological development, including a lot of Nazis ship. I think people do tend to put too much of the blame on Bill, but in the immediate wake of the bombing, Bill actually does get a lot of the blame just because he It kind of immediately comes out that Tim mcveigh's favorite radio host is this

like right wing nut job Bill Cooper. Like I think the President mentions Bill Cooper and stuff, so like Bill becomes Bill gets a lot of the immediate blame for radicalizing Tim McVey when really things like the Turner Diaries that like, there's a lot of other things, I mean, for people who are inclined to agree with Tim McVey. A lot of free press. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is a lot of free press. And it's yeah, it's

an interesting tale. Um. So when McVeigh, you know, did that thing that McVeigh did, Bill Cooper immediately knew what was really going on. This was not you know, a right wing militia dude carrying Bill's ideas to their logical extent and declaring war on the government, which is what actually happened. Uh, this was a false flag attack aimed

at taking down the militia movement and justifying a government crackdown. Um, which is actually kind of the obvious opposite of what happened really, but yeah, um so Bill had one of his cadgy agents start collecting stories for a book on the first twenty four hours after the blast to document how the media spun events to fit their narrative, and they actually like published up like put together like this whole gigantic book about the first day after Oklahoma City

that they thought was going to be like the new the next you know, the the rightful follow up to Behold a Pale Horse, But nobody bought it because it was like boring and dumb. Um. Yeah. Now, Bill grew increasingly unhinged in the days and weeks after the Oklahoma City bombing. He warned his listeners that the end was nigh. Uh. He told them that mock American cities were being built in the desert for the military to train in to

prepare to like purge the United States of dissidents. Uh. He'd started talking about black helicopters circling areas with too high up population of real Americans, and of course he started talking about FEMA camps being set up to incarceerate a newly disarmed American populace um. Yeah. And of course a big part of it for for Bill is that like the government's going to use the whole militia thing

as an excuse to take our guns. And they did pass an assault weapons ban not too long after this, So like there's a lot of things keep happening that make Bill seem really credible to the fringe. Right, is like Bill said, they're going to take our guns, and then they passed this law to take our guns, not considering that it was part of Bill's work that created

the problems. Yes, that really helped create the system where they were like, oh man, it seems like a lot of people have military grade weaponry who are violently unhinged. Maybe let's try to do which I'm not a fan of the assault weapons ban either, but like you can maybe it's not like let's create create a media yeah show where Bill were encouraging it. It's a great way to get a lot. Yeah. Yeah, he has a big

impact on why that happens. He's a big impact on the growth of the militia feedback loop developing here with exactly it's the same thing with like these boogaloo guys who are obsessed with like being Second Amendment absolutists and or who are going to guarantee massive restriction gun restrictive gun control legislation comes in if a Democrat ever gets into office again, because you guys have been such like like violent lunatics in public, waving guns around and scaring

people and like yeah, thanks, yeah, yeah, you did a great job and create the problem that if there is a crackdown, it's like, well that is you know, in no small part your fault there. Yeah. So in August of mcveigh's old friend Michael Fortier, did an interview with a far right newsletter where when asked what led to the bombing, he replied, I can't say a whole lot, but we heard lots of tapes and saw videos and read things. There's this guy with the radio station in Arizona,

Bill Cooper. He keeps calling people sheeple and was mad that they ain't doing anything to change things. Well, we got to thinking that's right, things need to change. Tim really responded to that um. In nineteen James Nichols testified in federal court that he, his brother Terry, and Tim McVeigh listened to Cooper as often as they could. They called him the voice of the militia movement. So, yeah, Bill, Bill helps to cause all of the things that cause

all of the things that he's scared about. That's right. So it's I mean with that kind of like, you know, uh, looking at it now, you're like, well, of course he may have seemed right about a lot of these things. He was anticipating potential consequences to problems that he was to create. Yeah, it's like government isn't guilty of the

stuff like that themselves. I just uh yeah, yeah, It's it's like when when I when the the f d A eventually raids my compound and burns dozens of children to death in our basement, all seem like a profit for having predicted it, But really, by constantly engaging in this battle with the FDA for years, you know, I'm I'm, I'm in a way creating the situation myself, which is why should associated with this clip When it inevitably um surfaces after after your prediction turns out to have been true,

you know what you should do, Jamie is by one of our new f d A approved to cure all diseases masks, which are in fact FDA approved to cure all diseases. That's official FDA approval. Um, So by the mask. He just did that entire thing to plug his new merch Just so you know, this whole episode Bitcoin I am, I am digging up metaphorically the corpses of the dead at Waco in Oklahoma City and Ruby Ridge in order to face masks and spark a fight with the f

d A. That's that's because I'm a monster too. I'm just as bad as Bill Cooper. I'm putting that on your Wikipedia page. Thank you, thank you. So um coming up in the biggest trial in American history as the inspiration behind a mad bomber was not a great move for Bill's long term career, especially since he'd stopped paying taxes in nineteen nine two and also light on a loan application. UM. So he starts getting warrants issued for

his arrest for again committing crimes. Um. And he lives up on top of a mountain in Arizona at this point in time, and the sheriff of Apache County where he lived, was actually a pretty smart guy and was like, if I try to arrest Bill Cooper, He's going to go down in a hail of gunfire and it's going to be just a terrible It's gonna be another Ruby Ridge and I'm not gonna fucking do that. Like, he can live on the top of his mountain for another

fifty years for all I care. And he tells the f eyas the Sheriff's like, I'm not like arrested this guy is, and the FBI are like, yeah, it seems like a really bad idea to arrest this guy. Anything that happens to Bill Cooper, to him is like a confirmation that what he was saying was right. He's like, well, I'll probably be you know, taken out or arrested. It's like, well, yeah, because you're evading your taxes. But yeah, yeah, the problem

you've created. Well, and that's exactly what Bill does with it. So like the actual law enforcement in his area just kind of leaves him alone. Like he regularly will go to a local Mexican restaurant and get enchiladas and ship and like nobody tries anything because again, nobody wants the bullshit that would come with trying to bring Bill Cooper

in being so annoying. Yeah, but Bill becomes a massive drama queen about the whole thing, breathlessly talking about the siege of his compound and like bragging about it, like how he and his wife and his his little daughter

like aren't leaving and you know, won't leave. They don't leave for years and are like living under and he'll talk about how like they've got anti helicopter countermeasures and like secret militiamen guarding his compound with him, and you know, he'll vaguely discussed all his security men shars and ship

which was all bullshit. He had one friend who was like a vet who would like hang out with a gun with him sometimes when he got scared, and he had like some cans strung up like he had no there was no like security network set up like he was canned. His security was I maybe I may be making that one up, but it was he didn't have any sort of meaningful security network because he was broke and living in a crumbling house on top of a mountain because he he had no money. Um. Yeah, and

you know, it's we don't know a lot. We don't know a huge amount about his situation with his wife, but at least one of his friends catches him having like this really vicious, screaming fight with her where he's like at least mentally abusive, and you get the feeling he was probably physically abusive to her, and we're taking

his past history accounts almost certainly. At the same time, it becomes really clear to anyone listening that like, really the only thing keeping Bill kind of tethered to reality is his daughter. Um, and he'll have she's a little kid at this point, he'll have her on the show. A bunch. She hosts it with him sometimes and he's like really, um, yeah, like it's it's it's kind of heartbreaking.

I don't want to go into too much just because it's a real bummer to listen to them together because eventually Bill's abusiveness forces his wife to leave him, and she like flees with their daughter and he never sees her again. Um, because of what happens next. But yeah, and that, like yeah, that's that. Like again, she did absolutely the right thing because Bill at this point is a hardcore alcoholic. He's continued to be mentally and probably

physically abusive. He's locked them away in a mountaintop compound hiding from the fucking Feds, directly tied to the Oklahoma City BOS, directly tied to the Oklahoma City bombing. Like Annie makes the right call in getting their kid the funk out of there eventually, And again Annie deserves some pome because she stays for a long time and she's a pretty at least for a chunk of his career, a very willing participant in the Bill Cooper thing. Um also a victim to but also like, I don't know,

it's a fucked up story. Everything about this guy's relationships are fucked up. Um, thankfully she doesn't get the I and I don't know anything about his daughter today. Um, and I'm not going to look it up because she deserves to have some chance to get away from Yeah.

Bill's last remaining years were spent putting out a series of increasingly morose broadcasts and occasionally watching the conspiratorial seeds he'd sown bare fruit, like when he watched the nine X Files movie and recognized huge chunks of Behold a Pale Horse served up his entertainment um, which he found very exciting. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. As Bill's life shrank to the confines of his increasingly decrepit home, he himself sunk into alcoholism. But many of the ideas he

popularized we're working their way into popular culture. They just grown beyond him at this point. On June two thousand one, Bill Cooper made what would be his greatest prediction yet. He told his listeners that a major attack on the United States was coming, and then it would be blamed on Osama Bin Laden. Really yep, yep. June one, names

been Laden in the broadcast. Now, again, not much of a prediction, because Bin Laden had bombed the World Trade Center a couple of years earlier and was one of the most famous terrorists in the world at the time. Wait, hold on, wait what year is this? This is two? This is but like before right before nine eleven, but after the first World Trade Center bombing, like Ben Latton bombed it before, right, Yeah, So it's so that isn't okay, okay, okay,

you're right here. So he gives this prediction and then in the immediate wake of the attack, like he's obviously really horrified, but he also kind of he's the very first truther, Like he's one of the very first guys who starts talking about like how the thing, the building shouldn't have fallen the way it did, and like Steele doesn't work that way. All the all this stuff that

like with like like a jet fueld doesn't melt. In fact, a lot of folks will argue that loose change that documentary, a huge amount of it was plagiarized from stuff Bill Cooper had started saying in the immediate wake of nine eleven because because he dies like two seconds after he dies two seconds after nine eleven, but he but that's the way Bill's mind works, he's immediately spinning conspiracies. He can't not do it, So he leaves the world with

nine eleven Trutherism. Um, and he leaves the world with Alex Jones, who Jones in his early career talked about Bill Cooper a lot, clearly admired him, deeply had Bill on as a guest once. Um, and Bill fucking hated Alex Jones and ranted about him a couple of times on his own show and basically saw him as a

charlatan and everything that was wrong with America. I mean yeah, which is ironic because like a lot of like Alex Jones made a bunch of money in his earlier selling like Golden Ship two People over the Radio, and Bill Cooper was the first guy to do that, or not the first gay, but like the first conspiracy not to do that. Um, so yeah, that's cool. Uh, that's that's that's neat. Yeah. So Bill, you know it starts nine

eleven Trutherism as kind of a last hurrah. And in July of two thousand one, so less than a month after you know, his big prediction, Uh, Bill makes the stake mistake of threatening a local doctor named hamblin Um and so yeah, like basically Bill lived on top of this mountain, and the mountain most of it was like public property, Like anyone could come onto Bill's mountain if they wanted. But Bill thought it was his mountain, and people who drove up onto it perfectly within their rights

to do so. Um, we're like damaging his security measures. Um. So he would regularly come out with a handgun and threaten to murder people for driving onto public land. Um. And yeah, this got him in trouble. Uh. And in in two thousand one, you know, the county had a new sheriff. The guy who had been like it's not worth it to go after him, um is gone. And this new sheriff is like an idiot. He's like a rec this dumbass. And it's like we can it's time

to finally do something about Bill Cooper. It'll be big news if we do it, like it'll be good for my career. Um. So not all that long after nine eleven, Uh, this sheriff launches a raid on Bill Cooper. And like the idea is to basically pretend to be you know, a motorist who's like wandered up to his mountain. Bill comes out and you kind of can surround him and arrest him. Um, And it kind of relies on Bill not being the most paranoid man alive, which Bill work

very well. No, Bill immediately realizes that like the cops are trying to trap him, um, and he tries to like run him down in his car and Yeah, the whole thing degenerates into a gunfight and Bill shoots an officer dead before going down himself in a hail of gunfire. Um. Well, ye, I feel like if he had to go, I mean he I'm not he went down, but I feel like

he was probably satisfied with Yeah. I think on an emotional level, Bill Cooper need too needed to go down being murdered by cops and like a dawn like in like a raid, like that was the way he expected to go for years, And it also validates his own like perception of himself. Yeah, and he's he was clearly he was sick. He probably wouldn't have lived that much longer. Um, it's a shame he killed a random guy on his way out, but also it was a cop who was

fucking with him, So whatever, it's whatever. Kind of a wash, it's kind of a wash. It's if you're looking at like how most of these guys leave the world, Like Alex Jones is going to have a much more depressing ending than Bill Cooper. Bill Cooper kind of got what he wanted in the end, which is he gonna like die of like gout or something. Yeah, I know he's going to live to be a hundred and fucking twenty

and become a Secretary of State. I don't know, Um, just like you're just going to live to be the grand dumb of conspiracy theories, just rotting in a house. Yeah, there's a bunch of bummer. Like the book Pale Horse Writer. Um, it's an interesting biography. I think it's pretty good. The biographer is very sympathetic to Bill, probably more than his ferret points. It's kind of hard not to be, I

think when you get that into somebody's life. Um, but he definitely gives Bill more credit than I think Bill deserves in a number of things. Um. But like his his last days were sad as ship Like at one point one of his daughters tries to reconnect with him and like comes to his house and she lasts like a week before the like, because he's an abusive prick um, and he like scares her away um, like he's he's down to, like he's he's barely had alienated all of

his remaining friends at that point. He was just like this lonely, crazy old man with a bunch of guns at the top of a hill, threatening passers by with a pistol whenever they drove too close to his house. Like those That was the last days of William Cooper. Well again, I mean I will while I do think that, you know, the the inks to like his life as a military brand, and then the very clear PTSD that

like dogged him throughout his life are are sympathetic entry points. Um. He seemed to have really lived out life full of problems he created by himself. Yeah. Bill is a guy who's dealt a rough hand of cards and throws the cards away and starts pooping in a box and then demanding people treat the poop as if it is a deck of cards. Um. And when everyone else is like, no, Bill, that's that's clearly poop um, he gets angry at the entire world and starts a radio show that a good

and when has that ever gone well for anyone? Yeah? So you know don't become a conspiracy icon at the cost of your own happiness and loved ones. Uh, and instead become a fashion icon and also render yourself commune to all diseases with our new f d A approved f d A approved to prevent all diseases. Masks. This is a really good ad. This was this whole episode was an ad, right, yeah, absolutely, yeah, okay, just checking.

Like Bill Cooper, I have decided to cash in on the fact that I'm a fundamentally broken, anti social person with a head full of ptsd um and I'm choosing to do it with masks. Oh good, Well, I'm glad that you could find someone to connect with on this show. Yeah. Boy, I also threatened random people with a gun for driving onto public land. But that's that's a separate that's a kind of more of it, more of a kink than anything, to be honest, Right, that's that's your that's your little

Jackie moment. Yeah yeah, yeah. So So Jamie, how are you feeling? What's up? He said, how you're feeling? And You're like, I question, you know, not thanks for checking in? Uh not good. I don't feel good about it. I feel this is this is a this is a more complicated, not good than I'm used to um on the on the show. But yeah, he's he's a complex man, a complex, fundamentally abusive person who's toxicity, uh left him alone on

a mountaintop. Um yeah yeah, oh boy, Yeah, this was a This was a dark one to tell you what. It's that great. How do you feel? I feel? I feel like I'm not at all looking into my own future? Um, I have with each passing day, you know, we get worried, we worry about you, and we get more worried about you. That's actually my full time job. I get closer to having that mountaintop compound. Um, you really are edging your

way up the mountain as time goes. Yeah yeah, yeah, so that I can get into my last great fight with the f d A. Um, cowards go down at the hands of the f d A. You know it'll be so funny. Oh my god. Yes, what a great punchline to As a as a human being, I think you owe a responsibility to try to like leave something entertaining for the children, and like another person dying in

an old folks home, no kid's gonna like. But something you hear about this this podcast host who started a war with the FDA that got seventy kids burnt to death in a basement. Like, that's a story, people, you really need the kids cut out of this equation. I everybody, this is why everyone still loves David Koresh. Look, he he got seventy kids killed and now he's the sexy guy with abs on a fucking Netflix special. So he did have too many abs on the net. It's clearly

fine to get a lot of kids. Still, I don't even think it was Netflix. I think it's just on Netflix. Well that's where I watched it. Somebody he didn't have too many apps on the show. At the point where did, I was also like, whoever says for him to have this many apps on the show? Whoever made it? It was like was very hot and that guy was very not. It was a bold choice to look at it a man who fucked fourteen year olds uh and had illegal child brides and say, we got to rehab this dude.

We got rehab this dude to be like, let's make him sexy. We gotta we gotta have him playing a rock show right before the FBI kills it. And it was on Paramount Network. Somebody told me we were wrong time when we gave credit to Netflix for that whatever. Terrible,

what a ridiculous series. It was a mess. I mean, the fucking the Uni Bomber series was problematic too, But at least they like got a guy who looked like a dangerous shut in to play the Uni Bomber, Like I didn't have David Koresh like drop a rap album right as the FBI comes into his fucking house. He's just like playing guitar like just I think the only series that I think is worse than Waco in terms of like this genre of TV is the The Assassination

of Gianni Versa. I haven't even watched that. It was ridiculous. I thought the O J one was pretty good, was great, it was really good. That Giannio one is a fucking mess. Darren Cross plays Andrew Knanan. It's a disaster. Yeah. Ross from Friends really changed my opinion of that cart Ashy and guy. Whenever he says juice, do you believe it?

Do you believe it? You believe that? Ross from Friends not only calls his friend that, but because he's such a fan of his friend, he's so excited to get to call Juice like you hear that in him, like this this this, it was, it's really heartbreaking. It's a great I like the the I like that the trial O J. Simpson solid, that's a great products before we plug getting more document series that we don't have claiming I'd like to plug the the O J series. I

like it. I watched it, you know, maybe about once a year when I get sick, when it's time for you know, Ross from Friends and his love of O. J. Simpson. It's good TV for when you get sick. Uh. Then I also have a Twitter account that you can find if you want, and you can listen to my year and Mensa and the Bechel Cast if you want, And you can find me on a mountaintop in Idaho with dozens and dozens of of of young followers the violent hands of the f d A. I don't, I don't.

I'm just not allowing this. Are you trying to protect me for myself? You're so sam, sir, what I do? He does not only do the episode on you when you're killed by the f d A. Clearly, I can't stop waycoing. I can't stop waycoing. There's some merch. Now, there's some merch. Um. I think we should end the episode before you do anything else that upside. Is there any other way you'd like to perjure yourself before pretty episode work? Yeah, let me give you my feelings on UH. And that's the episode.