0:03

Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the show where

0:05

we talk about the worst people in all of history,

0:07

and every now and then, Jamie, we change

0:10

ourselves for the better. Wow,

0:12

we learned something. I got a big file

0:14

cabinet in the background. I've been learning

0:16

a lot of things. Yeah, keep just

0:18

lie about a file cabinet for decades,

0:22

just like, really,

0:25

milk the most out of you could possibly

0:27

can out of the fact that you worked for a guy with

0:29

a file cabinet back in the sixties.

0:32

Imagine if everyone had that foresight to

0:34

be like, no, no, no no, you didn't understand. I used

0:36

to work at a comptroller's office, and I feel like a

0:38

real missed opportunity. Yeah, it's

0:40

not too late. I

0:43

hate that word, by the way, comptroller,

0:45

because it's supposed to be pronounced controller, not

0:49

the way the Massachusetts controller pronounced

0:51

it. But funny. Yeah,

0:53

I mean we've been talking about Boston a lot,

0:55

and that's just one more reason they're

0:57

bad. Um anyway, outside of boss

1:00

parties. Yeah, Jamie,

1:02

welcome back to the story of Bill Billiam

1:04

Cooper. Are

1:07

you are you ready to can? I see you've

1:09

got your beanie baby. Um, I just

1:11

got my e Babyanie baby in the mail.

1:13

I'm so excited. And that's a death themed

1:16

beanie baby, is it not? It's well, that's

1:18

no, that's this one. This is the

1:20

the end. Yeah, you do have a death themed

1:22

beanie baby. Yeah yeah, that theme is the death

1:24

of beanie babies. Um yeah, I got a

1:27

you know mint condition the mail. And before

1:29

anyone bothers me about it, that they're

1:31

like because there's like this myth that beanie babies

1:33

are expensive, They're not. I got these two

1:35

for eight dollars together. So

1:40

I'm good. I have a I have a I

1:43

have an animal familiar, and I'm ready to go. Alrighty,

1:48

well, let's some do

1:51

some ships, all

1:55

right. On July four, nineteen

1:57

eighty nine, Bill Cooper commit

2:00

did marriage for the very last time.

2:02

Uh yeah. Yeah.

2:04

This wife would be his most successful

2:07

adult relationship, and depending

2:09

on who you believe, their relationship

2:11

may be evidence that he did grow as a person.

2:14

Um, although that may

2:16

not be true either. Yeah. She was a

2:18

twenty year old Taiwanies a woman named Annie Mordhost.

2:21

Bill was forties six years old at the time. Um

2:25

yeah. In the grand tradition of all wonderful

2:27

love stories, Annie and Bill were married in a Las

2:29

Vegas Boulevard wedding chapel, and

2:31

we know very little about their courtship.

2:34

Bill would claim that Annie was the daughter of a nationalist

2:37

Chinese official who had fled the country when

2:39

Mao and his Communists won the Civil War. Uh,

2:42

but you know, who knows what the funk happened really

2:44

about her life? Annie came into perhaps

2:48

like everything Bill says. Yeah. Um,

2:50

Annie came into Bill's life just as his career and

2:52

conspiracies was really starting to take off. She

2:55

defended her new husband fiercely. At

2:57

one point during a lecture at the Showboat Hotel

2:59

and Casino, fight broke out between two

3:01

uf O nerds, and he stepped in front

3:03

of her husband with a hand on the hilt of an enormous

3:05

kitchen knife she always kept in her purse. Um.

3:08

Okay, actually they maybe found each other. Yeah,

3:10

she was kind of right or die for a while there. Yeah,

3:13

definitely seems to have been willing to stab

3:15

a man for for this guy. Yeah.

3:18

Bill had relatively few real innovations

3:20

he could claim to have brought to the world of ufology.

3:23

Most of what made him unique was his ability to carve

3:25

off chunks of other people's work and weave

3:27

them into explicitly political theories

3:29

that tied directly into the contemporary world.

3:31

And this is what builded best. Yeah,

3:35

but also like making UFOs

3:37

political, like tying tying

3:40

alien not just alien conspiracies

3:42

exists, but like tying them into things that are

3:44

fucked up in the modern world. Um.

3:47

His work was unique in the notoriously scatter

3:49

brained and chaotic world of uf O nerds.

3:52

Uh Norio Hayakawa, one of the most famous

3:54

ufologists in this period, ran into

3:56

build during a UFO convention in West

3:59

Hollywood. Vote. A lot of UFO

4:01

meetings can be dull, but on this night they had Bill

4:03

Cooper. I hadn't heard of him. He looked like a normal

4:05

middle aged guy, huge but paunchy, with receding

4:08

hair. He could have been anybody. He made a couple

4:10

of remarks and then read his secret government

4:12

paper. He didn't look up, just read for

4:14

an hour and a half. But what he was saying, the

4:16

authority with which he said it was very

4:18

interesting. Most of upology avoids

4:21

politics, but with Bill Cooper everything was

4:23

political. He was the first person to really

4:25

take the UFO phenomena and extended out

4:27

as a way to talk about global politics, history,

4:29

religion, and society. It sounded so

4:31

fresh to me, so intriguing. The most important

4:34

thing I thought was to get Bill bigger and better vinues

4:36

so more people could hear what he had to say.

4:39

Again, it's like he's using that military

4:41

cloud and that military delivery

4:44

tot.

4:46

If you've ever watched if you've ever spent hours

4:48

watching UM lectures

4:51

from different UFO conventions in the

4:53

nineteen nineties, and

4:56

yeah, most of them aren't great at

4:58

talking. Uh.

5:01

A lot of people who never should

5:04

have been in front of a crowd to crowd public.

5:07

Yeah,

5:10

okay, Yeah, Bill does have

5:12

right like he presents himself in a way that people

5:15

take him more seriously than they do most people

5:17

in this world. Um.

5:19

So, this Hayakawa guy was responsible for booking

5:21

Bill one of his first big speaking gigs at

5:23

Hollywood High Um. And after this

5:26

Bill went through a brief spell as one of UFOlogy's

5:28

leading luminaries. He probably, like

5:30

in the world of UFOs, is like

5:33

having a talk at a high school a big deal. This

5:36

one was because it's a big high school. That's

5:39

true, that's Hollywood High School for crying child

5:42

start exactly, UM,

5:46

pat them in basketball all the time in high

5:48

school. Yeah,

5:51

you know what I didn't do just there, Sophie

5:54

selfish. I didn't selfishly plug yourself.

5:57

No, I didn't make a joke about the horrible

6:00

pedophile ring that has existed

6:02

in Hollywood for decades. Um,

6:06

you did bring it up right now, though, I did bring

6:08

it up right now. So we want to throw in

6:10

a show where it is like really difficult

6:12

to lower the mood further. We really did

6:15

just find a way to do it. Yeah,

6:17

and that's evidence that growth only goes so

6:19

far, right. You know, we we

6:21

we can, we can make some movements

6:23

towards progress, but we always remain the

6:25

people that we we were born. Um,

6:29

anyway, shout out to which

6:31

one of the Corries is the one who's been talking about

6:34

Oh wait no, the Cory is the one that killed him.

6:37

Um, I'm just going to multiple corries. Yeah,

6:41

this this, this shouldn't have happened. I'm

6:43

solving my beanie baby in a vice

6:45

script. Yeah, so Bill Bill

6:48

becomes kind of like a big name on the UFO

6:50

circuit in like nineteen nine,

6:53

uh, nineteen ninety, and his speaking skills

6:55

improved, and you know, during this period he

6:57

drew the attention of a pair of Hollywood managers,

6:59

Douglas Kane and Michael Callen. So,

7:01

like, these guys are going to record

7:04

in license Bill's lectures, and there's kind of

7:06

talk about, like, oh, Bill might become kind of

7:08

like a major a major media figure,

7:10

like something like Alex Jones kind of Winda

7:13

was briefly, um if you remember what Alex

7:15

Jones was in movies and stuff. Um,

7:18

So there there's talk about this happening. But

7:21

Bill kind of immediately gets into a

7:23

giant fight with these guys and proved himself very

7:25

difficult to work with. And the fight this, the dispute

7:27

arises over the rights to the master recordings

7:29

of some of his lectures. Um.

7:31

And rather than like deal with this the way that an adult

7:34

in a professional context would,

7:37

Bill calls Michael up drunk, um

7:39

just just absolutely hammered and

7:41

threatens to murder both men. Um

7:47

uh, he tells them, quote, I'd suggest you

7:49

be real careful, don't write no bucking broncos,

7:51

don't do nothing you haven't done before, because I guarantee

7:54

you no one is going to hurt me and get away with

7:56

it. Take care, Mike, love you, and we're

7:58

gonna make sure you amount to something, even if it's a pile

8:00

of dogshit. We miss you, we really do. And

8:02

the next time we see you, we're going to get you a real good

8:04

present. Like god,

8:07

yeah, it sounds like he's on an eight chan board.

8:10

Yeah. And the next morning Diana wa wakes

8:12

up to find out that his tires have been slashed.

8:14

And since Bill lived nearby, like, it's

8:17

kind of not a grid not a mystery,

8:20

No, Bill, I

8:22

mean not not a subtle man, not a

8:25

subtleman. So um

8:28

yeah. Dean

8:30

reported Cooper to the sheriff, and Bill

8:33

later wrote that this was all part of a scheme to disrupt

8:35

his work and stop him from educating the American

8:37

people. Um. Yeah,

8:39

and that's you know, kind of what Bill. Bill

8:42

is big into the UFO

8:44

scene until like the

8:46

early nineties, really ninete is

8:48

when he starts to undergo a change of heart around

8:50

the whole issue of UFOs and extraterrestrials.

8:53

Um, so, what that makes it

8:55

like less than ten years that he's heavy

8:57

into that. Oh wait, it's only it's only

8:59

really a couple of years that he's so

9:01

it's just really a passing interest

9:04

for him. Yeah, he's always partly in

9:06

it. So basically, he claims that he starts

9:08

to become like convinced in the early nineteen

9:10

nineties that like, rather than uh

9:13

UFOs being like the hoax being around the government

9:15

trying to cover up UFOs, the existence

9:17

of UFOs is itself a hoax. He

9:19

calls it the greatest hoax in history, and it's being

9:22

perpetrated by the government to give

9:24

people something to focus on while they ignore

9:26

the real conspiracies that are going on. Um,

9:29

which there's actually some evidence

9:31

that stuff like that was going on that like the

9:33

CIA and ship we're um, we're

9:36

kind of pushing conspiracy

9:38

theorists to discredit in general,

9:40

like anti government sentiments and stuff anyway.

9:43

Um. But Bill becomes convinced that like there's

9:45

this grand conspiracy and and pushing

9:48

fake UFO beliefs to sort of confuse

9:51

and discredit people who are going to speak out

9:53

against the new World Order. Um, it's

9:55

like that's that's really what's going on. Um.

9:58

And the root of his new theory came

10:00

from a nineteen seventeen speech given

10:02

by John Dewey, the famous educator

10:05

and psychologist the Dewey Decimal System. Guy.

10:07

Bill became convinced that the Dewey decimal system

10:09

guy is kind of at the heart of the coming New World

10:12

Order. Um

10:14

So, in this nineteen seventeen speech,

10:16

Dewey had made the historic error of

10:18

idly speculating that an alien invasion

10:20

might be the only thing that could force humanity

10:22

to unite and like save itself from

10:25

you know, wiping itself out in

10:27

horrible war. And since this was coming at the end

10:30

of World War One, you get where Dewey's coming from.

10:32

Like, it's a pretty hopeless time to be a human being.

10:34

He's like, uh, if only aliens

10:36

would invade and we could all unite against

10:38

something that like wasn't murdering each other. Um

10:42

But Bill Cooper was convinced that Dewey's

10:44

words weren't just like the idol and somewhat

10:46

desperate hope of an intelligent man staring

10:48

out at the devastation of war and hoping for a way

10:50

to prevent more death. Instead, he became

10:52

convinced that those words were a flagrantly clear

10:55

signal of the secret plans of the New

10:57

World Order. Oh see, I guess that

10:59

that's where we we divert in our in

11:01

our thought. Yeah, yeah,

11:04

and it is kind of like I think

11:06

Dewey you could probably argues kind of like the root

11:08

of where like that whole theory, that

11:10

whole part of The Watchman comes from. Like I

11:12

think Dewey's kind of the first guy to really be like,

11:15

it'd be nice if aliens came, Like maybe we'd

11:17

stop murdering each other for a single second.

11:23

Is it is so? For it is so like you

11:25

can understand where it comes from and where

11:27

the desire to want it to you

11:29

know, deflect the blame on what's

11:32

going wrong in the world and in the country onto

11:34

literally anything except the people that are

11:36

already there and running it. Yeah.

11:38

Yeah, so Bill gets

11:41

you know, increasingly starting in like really

11:45

into the New World Order conspiracy theory.

11:47

And the New World Order conspiracy theory

11:49

was like you'd call it a super theory.

11:51

It was really more of a whole conspiracist mindset

11:54

rather than like a discreet conspiracy theory.

11:56

So we're well outside of like the realm of

11:59

you know, JFK was murdered

12:01

by the c I A. Right, that's a simple conspiracy

12:03

theory. You can explain it to every anyone

12:05

who's curious in a sect. Yeah, the

12:07

New World Order conspiracy theory is a mindset,

12:10

and every new thing that happens in the world,

12:12

you like a believer is going to kind of filter

12:15

like file in somewhere in that conspiracy

12:17

theory. It kind of takes it's one of it. Yeah,

12:21

and you could see the n w O as

12:23

kind of an evolution of Majestic twelve. You know,

12:25

Majestic twelve starting in like the late eighties. Is

12:27

this theory about this, you know, secret

12:29

government that gets set up after

12:32

Roswell and the New World Orders

12:34

just kind of really an evolution of this, and

12:36

it it comes at the end of the Cold

12:38

War for a good reason. Michael

12:41

Barkun writes that the theory came to quote

12:43

constitute a common ground for religious

12:45

and secular conspiracy theorists,

12:48

um, because you could tie in these kind of apocalyptic

12:50

Christian millenarian conspiracy

12:53

theories, but you could also tie in like completely

12:55

a religious conspiracy theories, like you

12:58

know, the jfk assassination, like it all fit

13:00

underneath the New World Order, just kind of depending

13:02

on your own personal beliefs um.

13:05

And Bill Cooper was kind of the guy who very

13:07

first plugs Majestic twelve and

13:10

Roswell Alien nonsense into

13:12

the n w oh UM And

13:14

depending on the point in his career, he either did

13:16

it to claim that like the New World Order

13:18

um existed to kind of hide

13:20

the existence of aliens from people, and then later

13:22

that like, oh, the n w oh is is his

13:25

pushing fake UFO conspiracy theories

13:27

to distract people whatever. Like he takes

13:29

both tax over the course of his career um

13:32

very like large umbrella of conspiracies

13:35

to yeah, it's all about bringing people together.

13:37

Really, well, that's the thing Bill and all

13:39

these other Bill is one of these guys who's

13:41

just talking constantly for like fifteen years,

13:44

and everything he says is adding something

13:46

to the conspiracy theories. So if you actually really

13:48

try to like to map

13:50

out everything Bill believes and pushes

13:53

in his life, like we would be here for days. Um,

13:55

we're going to gloss over too much of this stuff

13:58

to be honest, Like he invent to He

14:00

not invented, but he's the reason people know about

14:03

the FEMA death camp conspiracy theory.

14:05

Like he's the origin point for that one. Yeah,

14:07

we're not even really going to talk about it because it's just one

14:09

of a billion different things. He's the origin point

14:11

for Yeah, he's the first guy to published that. Yeah,

14:15

so fucking Bill Cooper. Um.

14:18

Yeah, the n w O really took

14:20

off after nineteen ninety and Bill was its most

14:22

influential profit. His pivot away from aliens

14:24

didn't isolate him from his fans. Instead,

14:26

it opened up a whole new segment of the population

14:29

to conspiratorial beliefs. Vast swaths

14:31

of the country who would never have been caught dead at a UFO

14:34

convention start, but it started to feel like

14:36

something was wrong with the way the country was going. Like

14:38

these kind of people would listen to Bill Cooper. They

14:40

never would have shown up to a mouf On convention,

14:43

but they listen to this stuff because

14:45

it rang true to them, because they were looking for

14:47

an explanation as to why things were wrong. Um

14:50

that didn't involve like reading

14:52

left wing political theory. Well

14:55

that's just a waste of time,

14:57

as we both know. Yeah,

15:00

the left wing guys get into this too, Like this is

15:02

really That's one of the things that's interesting about the New

15:04

World Order conspiracy theory is that it's

15:06

very influential in a number of sides. Um

15:09

and Michael Barkin writes, quote, New

15:11

World Order theories seem to provide a graceful

15:13

way of exiting the domain of international relations

15:16

and refocusing upon domestic politics.

15:18

This is in the wake of the Cold War ending. Although

15:20

the forces of the New World Order are international, they

15:22

are assumed to be concentrating on domestic agendas,

15:25

particularly the alleged destruction of American

15:27

liberties. So Bill was

15:29

savvy enough to see that, like, as you

15:32

know, part of

15:34

what's happening here. Why the New World Order conspiracy theory

15:36

gets so popular is that there's a lot of people

15:38

like Bill who are will permanently be

15:40

anxious for the rest of their lives because of the Cold

15:42

War. We call these people baby boomers,

15:45

and they cause a lot of problems. Um,

15:47

and when the Cold War ends, a lot of these

15:50

guys needed something else

15:52

to justify the fact that they were always

15:54

paranoid because they've grown up under the shade

15:56

of constant imminent nuclear annihilation

15:58

and the New World or they're troubled.

16:01

Yeah, yeah, exactly. This

16:03

is are having a tough time. And

16:05

this is what Bill taps into is the fact

16:07

that all of these guys know that everything,

16:10

like I can't not expect

16:12

the end to come at any moment. And once

16:15

the Soviet Union ends. They can't just lose

16:17

that anxiety, right like they

16:20

and and then they need an explanation for like, why

16:22

don't I feel better now that the Soviets are gone?

16:24

Could it be that up? Most of the problems

16:26

that people were blaming on the Soviets

16:28

were actually just like the fact that my own culture

16:31

is fucked up and we need to deal with No, no, no, there's a different

16:33

conspiracy. It's not the communist conspiracy.

16:35

It's another one. Yeah. So

16:37

Bill was savvy enough to see that he was

16:39

watching the birth of a new movement in American

16:42

culture, and he knew that movement was going

16:44

to need a bible, and so in nineteen

16:46

ninety he sat down to write One Behold

16:49

a Pale Horse, would be published in nineteen

16:52

one through bizarre little new age occult

16:54

press called Light Technology Publishing.

16:57

The book itself was four hundred and thirty four

16:59

pages of documents and memos, all

17:01

purported to be top secret missives from inside

17:03

the secret Government working to bring about

17:05

the new World Order. The centerpiece

17:08

of it all, the primary document upon

17:10

which Bill hung his ideology, was

17:12

called Silent Weapons for Quiet

17:15

Wars, which is another great title.

17:17

Say both of these kicked the ship out of the title

17:20

of Bible. Yeah, fuck

17:22

the Bible, I mean behold

17:24

of pale horses from the Bible kind of

17:27

but yeah,

17:31

so uh yeah. Silent

17:33

Weapons for Quiet Wars Bill claimed

17:35

it was an introductory programming

17:37

model for new employees of Operations

17:40

Research, a secret military intelligence

17:42

organization tasked with preparing the country

17:44

for authoritarian rule. And the document

17:46

opens with welcome aboard and informs its

17:49

reader that they are will be taking part in the

17:51

Third World War, which has been going on for

17:53

decades and involves the use of silent

17:55

weapons on an unsuspecting public. I'm

17:58

gonna quote now from pale horse writer written

18:01

at the level of an undergrad paper and electrical

18:03

engineering. Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars

18:05

defines a silent weapon as differing

18:07

from a conventional weapon in that it shoots situations

18:10

instead of bullets, originating from

18:12

bits of data instead of grains of gunpowder,

18:14

and attacks under the orders of a banking

18:16

magnate instead of a military general.

18:19

Because the silent weapon causes no obvious

18:21

physical or mental injuries and does not

18:23

obviously interfere with anyone's daily social

18:26

life, the public cannot comprehend this

18:28

weapon and therefore cannot believe that they are being

18:30

attacked and subdued. The public might

18:32

instinctively feel that something is wrong,

18:35

but because of the technical nature of the silent

18:37

weapon, they cannot express their feeling

18:39

in a rational way. They do not know

18:41

how to cry for help, and do not know how

18:43

to associate with others to defend themselves

18:45

against it. Huh,

18:49

yeah, you can see why this, um, this

18:51

is attractive to some people. Yeah,

18:54

yeah, and it's I

18:56

mean, now, it sounds vaguely familiar,

18:58

but if I had heard this at the time, would have been like, yeah.

19:02

Interesting. For a very long time,

19:05

almost everyone assumed that silent weapons had

19:07

been created the creation of Bill Cooper himself.

19:09

He opened the very first episode of his radio

19:12

series, The Hour of the Time by reading

19:14

from this, and his favorite

19:16

line to repeat was a lightened from the papers

19:18

stating that uninformed Americans were

19:20

beasts of burden and steaks on the table

19:23

by choice and consent. Um. He would

19:25

say it in nearly every episode. Okay,

19:28

so he's got he's got that branding. The

19:31

reality, though, is that Bill was something of a middleman

19:34

for bringing silent weapons into mass awareness.

19:36

The whole paper had actually been cooked up by Hartford

19:38

Van Dyke, a convicted counterfeitter who would

19:40

essentially cobbled the thing together himself from

19:42

bits written by other paranoid libertarian

19:45

thinkers. Um

19:49

M, paranoid libertarian

19:51

thinkers are, Yeah,

19:54

it's it's it's it's interesting. So Bill,

19:57

you know, silent weapons

19:59

for quiet Wars is kind of like that that line,

20:01

and in particular is kind of why Bill

20:03

adopts the phrase, you know, wake up sheeple

20:06

um, because like that he was he was referring

20:08

to a specific thing. Is that like these

20:10

New World Order people in their own documents, because

20:12

Bill believes this thing is real. Um,

20:15

like think that you're your beasts of

20:17

burden, like they that's how they treat you, and

20:19

like that's what you are if you're not willing to like wake

20:21

up and realize that you're being played. Bill

20:24

was very abusive to his audience, so he would regularly

20:26

like insult and attack the people listening to him

20:28

for not sure. It's like if

20:30

his if his whole thing is if you're not participating

20:33

in what I'm saying, you're a fucking idiot

20:35

and you're and you're going to be hurt. Like that's

20:38

a that's a place to start. Yep,

20:41

yep, yep, yep. Um. So, through

20:45

his book Behold of Pale Behold

20:47

of Pale Horse, Bill injected a lot

20:49

of a whole host of now common conspiracy

20:51

theories into the mainstream, not just his theory

20:54

about JFK, but postulations

20:56

that AIDS was one of many secret weapons designed

20:58

by the US government for use against its own

21:01

people, actually to wipe out black people

21:03

in Africa. Um and

21:05

this, yeah, we'll talk more about that in a little

21:07

bit. As it turns out, very little

21:09

in behalor Behold a Pale Horse was original.

21:11

Bill had just taken a variety of different pamphlets

21:14

and like hoax papers that had been circulating,

21:16

you know, over the conspiracy community, and

21:18

bound them together in a handsome volume

21:20

with really good cover art. You you should look up

21:22

the cop book right now to see the cover art. Like it's it's

21:25

good. Behold the Pale

21:27

Horse, Yeah cover

21:30

okay, okay, So

21:32

all this stuff has been like circulating in sort

21:35

of conspiracy nut communities, but

21:37

you'd get it as like you know, somebody handling up

21:40

Yes, yeah,

21:42

yeah, it's pretty, and it's it's it's it's

21:45

well organized, and

21:47

you know, this stuff had been existed for a while,

21:49

but if you if you came across it, it would be like

21:52

you'd run into someone's poorly mimiographed

21:54

copies of Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars and a

21:56

gun show or something next to it, like Nazi

21:59

flags. And Bill puts

22:01

them in this really like good

22:03

cover art, like well bound, like actual

22:06

book. And this is again still a period of time

22:08

in which books means something to people. Um.

22:11

So this ship takes off, and it's

22:13

a problem that this ship takes off because everything

22:16

in Bill's book isn't like

22:18

Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. Obviously

22:21

it's nonsense. Um, but it's

22:23

hard to It's not the most problematic

22:25

thing in the world. It's just it's just a fake

22:27

military document. Um.

22:30

Bill doesn't just include stuff

22:32

like that, among other things,

22:34

Behold the Pale Horse includes the entirety

22:36

of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Um.

22:40

Yeah,

22:43

okay, I want

22:46

to say that that escalated, but it really

22:48

is just an ex logical step, and

22:50

it's really funny. The way he does it

22:52

is kind of objectively hilarious. So if

22:54

you aren't aware, the protocols are probably the most

22:56

influential conspiracy theory of all time. They

22:59

purport to be like silent weapons,

23:01

kind of like a secret document

23:03

from this organization that got leaked out.

23:05

And in the case of the protocols, it's this

23:07

meeting of a group of Jewish elders plotting

23:10

the overthrow in domination of the gentile

23:12

world. Now, the reality is that

23:14

the protocols were a forgery cooked up

23:16

by the Anon Czarist, Russia's equivalent

23:18

of the c I a UM. The protocols

23:21

like that they were, they were basically this Russian

23:23

intelligence agencies like disinformation

23:25

plot Um

23:27

and UH. They were incredibly

23:29

successfully took on a life of their own, spread

23:32

all throughout Western Europe UM

23:34

and obviously like helped to spread

23:36

this kind of specific type of anti Semitic

23:39

conspiracy theory all across Europe, and most of

23:41

the Nazis actually knew it was a fake um

23:43

and they thought it was a pretty clumsy fake at that,

23:46

but they benefited from the conspiratorial

23:48

melieu that the protocols helped to create in

23:50

Europe, which like definitely helped

23:52

to enable the Holocaust. So the Protocols of the Elders

23:54

of Ziland have Zion maybe have the

23:56

highest body count of any conspiracy

23:59

theory in history and after World

24:01

War Two, you know, for obvious

24:03

reasons, the protocol is kind of languished. People

24:05

didn't weren't so interested in anti

24:08

Semitic conspiracy theories for a little

24:10

while. Um yeah,

24:13

some bad pr for that. Yeah, bad

24:15

pr for anti semitism. Um.

24:17

So they would only really surface when some Yeah

24:20

yeah, they would pop up every now and then,

24:23

but it was only really like neo Nazis who

24:25

were willing to republish them. Um.

24:27

And they never got any kind of white distribution.

24:29

George Lincoln Rockwell was probably like the most

24:31

prominent guy to try to republish the protocols.

24:34

And yeah,

24:37

yeah, yeah, so nobody. You're right,

24:40

I didn't even Jamie. Yeah, Jamie's

24:42

onto something in their name where the evil

24:44

lies. Yeah, and you know where the evil doesn't

24:46

lie, Robert and the products

24:48

and services that support this podcast. Sometimes I'm

24:50

proud of myself. And yes, yeah,

24:53

that part all

25:00

right, we're back. So the

25:03

Protocols of the Elders of zion Um

25:05

kind of languish and obscurity for

25:08

decades after World War Two. Um

25:11

yeah, nobody really spreads them. They're not

25:13

popular in the United States, They're not particularly

25:16

well known in the United States, and

25:18

then in nineteen Bill

25:20

Cooper republishes them in their entirety

25:22

in his book Um And

25:26

to make it funnier Bill Bill

25:28

was not an avowed anti Semite. Bill definitely

25:30

believed a lot of anti Semitic things, but like it wasn't

25:33

a motivating factor for him. He didn't

25:35

believe the protocols were evidence of a Jewish

25:37

conspiracy. He thought they were the real

25:39

minutes of an of the Illuminati, basically

25:42

of the New World Orders conspiracy theory

25:44

um. And they've been blamed on Jews to throw

25:46

the world off of their scent Um. So he

25:48

really it's even worse to be like, I'm

25:52

just gonna throw it in because it seems like

25:54

something that people no, No, he

25:56

thinks it's true, but it's it's not

25:58

the Jews, it's the New World Order and

26:01

the Jews. The New World Order blamed

26:03

it on the Jews to hide the reality of what

26:05

was happening. So

26:07

Bill, before he publishes the entirety

26:09

of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he runs

26:11

this note, and this is the only note he

26:14

runs with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

26:16

Every aspect of this plan to subjugate the world

26:19

has since become reality, validating the authenticity

26:21

of conspiracy. This has been written intentionally

26:23

to deceive people. For clear understanding,

26:26

the word Zion should be psion. Any

26:28

references to Jews should be replaced

26:30

with the word Illuminati, and the word

26:32

goum should be replaced with the word cattle.

26:35

So he's like, replace Jews with Illuminati.

26:37

But this book of this, like this anti Semitic

26:39

conspiracy document is good stuff otherwise,

26:42

right there, Like otherwise it's basically right.

26:45

But just take out yeah,

26:47

just take out the Jews. And I'm not going to take out

26:49

the Jews myself. You've got to do it in your own head.

26:52

So yeah, he's not willing to do any sort

26:54

of leg where he makes it sound like a simple clerical

26:57

error that was made and unfortunate

27:00

really for the whole world. Behold a Pale

27:02

Horse went on to become the single most

27:04

influential underground publishing hit

27:06

in history. It's sold well over three hundred

27:09

thousand copies as of this

27:11

the publication of this episode, but that number

27:13

vastly understates its influence

27:16

because Behold a Pale Horse was and remains

27:18

one of the most frequently stolen books

27:20

in the country and in incarcerated

27:22

people across the nation. UM also started

27:24

passing it along, so there will be copies of this still

27:27

are in prisons all over the country that

27:29

just get like handed to people when they come into

27:31

prison. Um. Yeah, and

27:33

it's it's it's. It spreads through

27:35

two different chunks of the underground community,

27:37

the kind of right wing militia community where you'd

27:39

expect it, but it also becomes incredibly

27:42

influential among the burgeoning hip

27:44

hop community of the early nineteen nineties.

27:47

This unpacked for me. Yeah, I don't yeah,

27:49

we will, don't worry. Yeah,

27:52

So Behold a Pale Horse resurrected

27:54

the protocols of the Elders of Zion UM

27:56

and it kind of laundered them through a lens

27:58

of general distrust with the state of the world,

28:01

and as a result, Bill Cooper

28:03

was able to ensure that this once obscure tract

28:05

spread by like wildfire among segments

28:08

of the American population it had never reached

28:10

before, primarily inner city

28:12

black Americans like obviously the

28:14

kind of people handing out the protocols the Elders of

28:16

Zion and the thirties weren't given them to black people. But

28:19

now this book starts spreading among like

28:21

a lot of people who are like a lot

28:23

of black men in the inner cities who have this again,

28:25

this this thing that is at the core of Bill Cooper's work.

28:27

They know ship's fucked up, right,

28:30

um and Bill Cooper given, here's a whole book

28:32

on how everything's fucked up, and it happens to

28:34

include the protocols of the Elders of Zion

28:37

Um and yeah. Uh

28:39

So as this

28:42

this kind of brings us to, yeah, the thing I've been teasing

28:44

for a while, which is that Bill Cooper is one of the most

28:46

influential white men in the history of rap

28:49

um and Yeah. Biographer

28:51

Mark Jacobson explains, quote, in nineteen

28:54

ninety one to five thousand and seventy

28:56

seven people were murdered in New York, by far the highest

28:58

two year total in city history. It was

29:00

the crack play, and a new generation arose to speak

29:02

truth to the ongoing trauma of urban life.

29:04

Many of the rappers who emerged during the early nineteen

29:06

nineties, the Great Wu Tang's the Formidable Nas

29:09

of the Queensbridge Houses were deeply influenced

29:11

by the five Percenters a k a. The Nation

29:13

of Gods and Earth's. The movement had been founded

29:16

in the late nineteen sixties by Clarence Edwards

29:18

Smith a k A. Clarence thirteen X,

29:20

and eventually Father Allah kicked out of

29:22

Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam forget

29:24

heresy and gambling. Father Allah had said

29:26

that it was necessary for black men and women to become

29:29

lyrical assassins. The tongue was the

29:31

sword, Father Allah said, and when properly

29:33

sharpened, it could take more heads with the word

29:35

than any army with machine guns could never do.

29:37

And for many lyrical assassins, Bill Cooper's

29:40

Behold a Pale Horse became a key text.

29:42

Rappers who have mentioned Cooper in his book or

29:44

his book include the Wu Tang Clan, Big

29:47

Daddy, Kane, Busta Rhymes, Tupac,

29:49

Shakur, Talib Quelli, nas

29:52

Rakim, Poor, Righteous Teachers, Gang

29:54

Star Goody Mob, suicide

29:56

Boys, Boogie Monsters, Wise Intelligent,

29:59

public Enemy, Miss math Aslan,

30:02

Lord Allah, ras Cass, and the Lost

30:04

Children of Babylon, who told their listeners to

30:06

prepare to meet your fate like William Cooper

30:08

when the stormtroopers breach your Gate a

30:10

little bit of foreshadowing there. Um,

30:13

old, yeah, that's

30:15

like, yeahbuddy, yeah,

30:18

that's everybody. He's here the fucking One of the first

30:20

albums that the Wu Tang Clan like produces

30:22

is called Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars.

30:26

Yeah, God is

30:29

like the side thing. It's it's nas,

30:32

it's nas. I'm sorry, clearly I'm

30:34

not on Mark Jacobson, Bill's biographer,

30:36

actually talks to a lot of these guys and like,

30:39

is really knowledgeable about hip hop? I am

30:41

not, and I apologize. Um,

30:43

that is like old

30:47

dirty bastard of the Wu Tang Clan explained,

30:49

behold a pale horses appeal better than anyone

30:51

else. Everybody gets fucked. William

30:54

Cooper tells you who's who's fucking you. And

30:56

unfortunately, one of the things he tells these people

30:58

is it's the juice, Like you just have to

31:01

like he said, yeah, yeah,

31:03

that's an unfortunate aspect of his influence.

31:06

So you can see why black guys in particular,

31:08

living through inner city crime waves and like police,

31:11

you know, crackdowns and violence and stuff,

31:13

would find documents like Silent Weapons

31:15

for Quiet Wars compelling Bill's

31:17

framework of conspiracies fit in with things

31:19

that many black folks already believed, like that

31:21

the CIA had introduced crack to the inner cities,

31:24

and there's obviously there's actually a decent amount of truth to that.

31:26

Um In an interview before his own death, Prodigy

31:28

told Mark Jacobson, William Cooper

31:31

wrote, what everyone kind of new, and

31:33

that's like a big part of his influences

31:36

that he's He's giving people this really

31:38

cohesive, um bound

31:40

guide to all of the different things, all

31:43

of the like, hey, your life is fucked,

31:45

Like here's what Like, here's you

31:47

can pick and choose which conspiracy

31:49

theories you believe, explain why, and

31:51

just by like putting together

31:54

it sounds like the greatest hits, uh

31:56

conspiracy theories of like hey, if this one

31:59

doesn't work for you, go to the next chapter. Maybe

32:01

this one will work for you. Yeah,

32:03

okay, okay, yeah, And he

32:05

introduced his new followers to a whole world

32:07

of other conspiracy theories, not just the protocols

32:10

of the Elders of Zion, but some of Bill's more modern

32:12

paranoia, like the idea that AIDS had been created

32:15

in a test to by the US government to wipe

32:17

out Africans. This theory spread like wildfire

32:20

and even reached Manteo Sha la la simoon.

32:23

Um, I'm gonna pronounce that wrong. I'm terribly sorry.

32:25

South Africa's health minister, the New

32:27

Republic Rights that he quote, while still in office

32:30

and at the height of that country's AIDS crisis,

32:32

distributed copies of the chapter that argue

32:34

that AIDS was introduced into the African population

32:37

by a global conspiracy with the goal

32:39

of reducing the continents population.

32:42

Bill Cooper is very influential because

32:47

well it's as is always the case with this

32:49

ship. We can talk. We'll talk about the crack

32:51

epidemic at some point and how they're the real

32:53

conspiracy there differs somewhat

32:55

from the ones that most people believes. But

32:58

like the basic idea of it is true, which

33:00

is that um, in large

33:02

part due to the c I a crack got

33:04

to the United States and huge amounts like that,

33:07

they played a major role in getting here. It's just

33:09

a different role than a lot of people think. Um.

33:11

Likewise, the AIDS crisis gets

33:14

so bad worldwide in large part due

33:16

to the US government's complete refusal

33:18

to give a shit about it. Um.

33:20

Yeah, it's just not the reason. But like

33:22

something is fucked up there, and people want

33:25

like if you provide people with the convention

33:28

like a compelling theory that

33:30

ties together what is really just inexplicable

33:33

hatred and and like a lack

33:35

of fox given about huge chunks of the population.

33:38

Um, yeah, I mean

33:40

it's it's it's I'm not saying it's

33:42

rational in any way, but but for

33:45

you know, people who already perhaps

33:47

have some held prejudices, who

33:49

are looking for an explanation

33:51

to something that is like the commonly held truth of

33:54

like, uh, there are things

33:56

going on in the government that we have made not

33:58

made aware of, very intention annoyed. But then

34:00

it's just like, well, what's a what's a

34:02

funked up reason I could make up for why that may

34:04

be? Yeah?

34:06

Yeah, So Behold

34:08

a Pale Horse would probably see its most lingering

34:10

impact on the hip hop scene. Um,

34:13

there's still actually a modestly popular

34:15

artist named William Cooper who goes by that name

34:17

today. Um. But Bill's

34:19

personal popularity as a showman would

34:21

only grow narrower in the years following his

34:23

books publication. The Hour of the

34:25

Time, his radio show earned a sizeable

34:27

audience for what it was propaganda for the

34:29

nation's growing militia movement, and

34:32

The Hour of the Time did not, although

34:34

now it is. It is a little more. You can find in like a

34:36

lot of fringe SoundCloud rappers

34:38

and stuff. They'll they'll cut in bits of The Hour

34:40

of the Times, but um, a

34:43

good fringe SoundCloud. I

34:45

want to play you just

34:47

a segment from one episode. This is the introduction,

34:49

and this is how every single episode of The Hour

34:51

of the Time started. Just you have an idea of

34:53

kind of how Bill show like

34:56

the emotional tenor it takes right from the beginning.

34:58

Okay,

35:07

this does sound like sand clock, rab and chess.

35:28

It's so long. Yeah, it's really

35:30

long. Oh

35:35

I think I saw I heard Santa Claus. I

35:38

don't like it. Oh,

35:40

dog the dog,

35:44

up the dog. What

35:55

you have just heard listeners all

35:58

over the world is warning, and

36:01

you will hear this warning from

36:03

here on out. You've

36:06

been listening to your leaders

36:09

tell you that there's a great move towards

36:12

democracy in the world. You

36:14

witnessed the parting of the Iron Curtain, the fall

36:16

of the Balloon Wall, the fracturing of the Soviet

36:18

Union, and

36:21

this is all supposedly toward

36:24

a new worldwide democracy.

36:28

Democracy is a code word for

36:31

socialism, and that's why our forefathers

36:33

established a republic. Okay,

36:37

so you can I just love imagining

36:39

flipping on that set on the radio

36:41

by accident, just like barking

36:44

dogs and like trumpict.

36:48

Yeah, but you also

36:50

hear like Bill's delivery. He's

36:52

he's figured out how to be a radio host in this

36:54

time. Yeah, he's definitely improved. Yeah,

36:57

his cadence is really good. He knows how

36:59

to like it's he knew how to He

37:01

knew how to put together a radio show. He would also

37:03

put in like he would broadcast like entire

37:05

songs that were like kind of popular

37:08

songs that fit in with the theme of like what

37:10

he was saying that episode, Like he would have like musical

37:12

interludes and ship. He was a good broadcaster,

37:15

um and he like yeah he

37:17

was. He was able to um

37:19

draw in a lot of listeners, maybe

37:22

even for a lot of folks who wouldn't have listened to most

37:24

other people in kind of like the crazy militia person

37:27

radio sphere. Um. And as

37:29

a result, his work still resonates today,

37:31

but unfortunately not with a group of people.

37:33

Bill would have been happy to resonate with um.

37:36

If you look up on where that that SoundCloud

37:38

link I sent you. Um, it's hosted

37:40

by someone named conscious Sounds. Uh.

37:42

They have twenty followers. And look at that photoshop

37:45

logo that they designed for Bill's show that

37:48

wasn't his. No notice

37:50

the Israeli flag sandwiched right in

37:52

between George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden

37:55

and then the watermark Iron Volke,

37:57

iron Reich printed at the bottom of the mh

38:00

okay I did it's not it's

38:03

not. Oh yeah,

38:06

these guys they're learning

38:10

there's Nazis who are trying to be a little bit subtle

38:12

about it. And I think they see they kind of

38:14

recognize Bill Cooper is a good way to get people

38:16

kind of on board with once you once you're

38:18

listening to Bill Cooper, you can be convinced

38:21

that like, actually he was wrong when he said it wasn't the

38:23

Jews, Like because you already believe all this stuff,

38:25

you just replace them with Illuminati. We just got to switch

38:27

the Jews back in there, and then you're good to go.

38:30

Um, yeah, fucking dark.

38:33

It's weird because yeah, Bill again

38:35

was absolutely whatever else you can say

38:37

about him, and again it's mostly negative. He wasn't

38:39

a Nazi, although he did work in the

38:41

company of Nazis the hour of

38:44

the time. Has that improved the situation?

38:46

Well, he just catered to Nazis

38:48

and worked with them free. He didn't he I don't

38:50

think he catered to them. We'll listen to something in a bit. You

38:52

may change your mind about that. He's more complicated

38:55

than that. But he He was broadcast

38:57

by the shortwave radio station w w

39:00

c R UM and by the time Bill

39:02

got into his groove, his his competition

39:04

were guys and what's called the Patriot Community

39:07

UM basically early preppers UM,

39:09

including two guys named Chuck Harder and Tom

39:11

Valentine UM and and Bill

39:13

didn't get along with either UM

39:15

for a number of reasons. One of them is that Valentine

39:18

had a better primetime slot than his He was nine

39:20

to eleven PM. Uh yeah.

39:24

But also valentine show

39:27

was sponsored by The Spotlight, which

39:29

was Willis Carto's Liberty Lobbies

39:32

Holocaust denial newsletter. We

39:34

talked about that in the War on everyone some yeah.

39:37

UM. Other competition included like

39:39

celebrity host guys like William Pearce

39:42

did radio stuff in this time, UM,

39:45

you know, g Gordon Liddy and

39:47

stuff like would be on the same network. So

39:50

Bill is kind of in and among a bunch of like

39:53

really bad dudes right like his

39:55

his the other people who are kind of on the

39:57

radio in and around him are like very

40:00

violent and often have ties to Nazis.

40:03

Um. Like fucking William Pierce

40:05

is a guest on some of the shows that are that are

40:08

hosted in and around Bill show. Bill

40:10

himself was probably the most palatable individual

40:12

personality in the patriot movement at this

40:14

stage, because he was like he was kind of the first

40:17

person in this movement. Like everyone's talking about the boogleoo

40:19

movement and whether or not it's racist, and like a

40:21

lot of these guys focus on like no, we're

40:24

you know, we're pro gun and we're we're libertarians,

40:26

but we're like anti racist and stuff. Bill

40:29

was the first guy in right

40:31

wing media to thread that needle.

40:34

Um. He was really the first one to do it

40:36

in like a practical way, um.

40:38

And this helped broaden the appeal

40:41

of the early malicious scene and the patriot movement

40:43

whatever you wanna call it, by drawing in these more libertarian

40:45

Americans who wouldn't have listened to

40:47

a show that was putting fucking William

40:49

Pierce on but would listen to Bill Cooper, Well,

40:52

it's it sounds like the fucking

40:54

YouTube algorithm, where it's like, Okay, here's something

40:56

that is like, you know, a little like

40:59

it's some stuff, you know, and then some radical

41:01

ideas being snuck in and Okay, this

41:03

is a familiar this is a familiar model,

41:05

I guess. Yeah. And and Bill himself

41:08

did go to like when

41:11

I say that he wasn't a Nazi, I don't think I'm giving

41:13

him too much credit here. And for an example of like why

41:15

I think that, I want to play a

41:17

segment from one of Bill's relatively few shows

41:20

that touched on race to a significant extent.

41:22

And this was the episode that he put out in the

41:24

immediate wake of the LA riots um

41:27

which were of course sparked by the acquittal of

41:29

the cops who beat the ship out of Rodney King. Right,

41:31

that happens, and you get the l A Riots. And

41:33

here's Bill Cooper's part of Bill Cooper's

41:36

response to the LA Riots. The

41:38

entire nations in the world had been viewing

41:41

an amateur videotape that had

41:43

been taken on the scene, which

41:45

showed over fifty

41:48

blows. I believe the correct number was

41:50

fifty six blows in

41:52

eighty seconds to a

41:54

man who was lying on the ground, who

41:57

had no weapon, who posed

41:59

no threat, who did not attack

42:02

anyone during this term. But

42:05

nevertheless, fifties

42:07

six blows from clubs

42:10

what the office is called the turns. That's

42:14

a polite name for a club

42:16

a stick. Can

42:19

I believe no one believed

42:21

if those officers would be firm innocent? Okay,

42:26

that is that is not what I would have

42:29

expected from him, right, No, that's that's

42:31

a pretty reasonable thing to say

42:33

about the Rodney King beatings. Yeah,

42:35

yeah, yeah, that's basically the only

42:37

way, like an honest person could could,

42:39

which Bill was not. But he you

42:42

can't really fault what he's saying there. Um,

42:45

And he went on like he went on

42:47

to complain about the looting and rioting by people in

42:49

Los Angeles and say that, like, you know, it was

42:51

they were making a really dumb call by like destroying

42:53

their own neighborhoods. But he's catering to

42:55

boomers, of course. Yeah. He

42:58

reserved the bulk of his anger for white

43:00

Americans, as embodied by his listeners

43:02

telling them a quote, when you sit in front

43:04

of your television on Friday and Saturday night and

43:06

watch cops, Top Cops, Lady cops,

43:09

Cops, swat cops, detective cops, Grandma

43:11

cops. You watch them break down doors without

43:13

identifying themselves, without a search warrant, without

43:15

a court order, rip people's mattresses apart,

43:17

throw up away their clothes. If they don't find anything,

43:20

all they have to do is drop a little bag of white powder.

43:22

You sit there cheering them on. Get those scummies

43:24

so and so's, And the reason you do it is because you're watching.

43:27

It happened to blacks, to minorities, poor

43:29

white trash, Puerto Ricans, everyone who was

43:31

a threat to you. So like Bill wasn't

43:34

the always He

43:37

wasn't always the guy you expected him to be, right.

43:40

That was one of the things that makes him interesting is like he would

43:42

there would be these moments where you'd like, be okay, Bill

43:44

is going to have like a real fucked up take, and

43:46

be like, no, he was kind of He was more or

43:48

less right about that. This one, Bill pretty

43:51

firdly comes down on the right side of history.

43:53

Now. He also went on to complain that the judge

43:55

who acquitted those LAPD cops was a Mason

43:57

and like like the

44:01

thread, Yeah,

44:03

so you started strong. Yeah,

44:06

but you can see you can see a lot of the same kind

44:08

of discourse and the same the same

44:11

style that like the same kind of ideological

44:14

statements that are being made by like the boogaloo folks

44:16

today, right like, um, you know,

44:20

yeah, Bill sounds a lot like a lot of the fucking guys

44:22

that was watching on Facebook and the immediate

44:24

wake of the George Floyd protests, he would have been well at

44:26

home in that organization or in that not organization,

44:28

but in that that community. Um.

44:30

Now, in his role as the voice of America's

44:33

new militia movement, Bill saw his main

44:35

duty as warning good conservative Americans

44:37

that the government and the form of socialist politicians

44:40

was coming to disarm them as a prelude to tyranny

44:42

and mass to population. Bill Show

44:45

popularized the conspiracy theory that the US

44:47

government stages mass shootings in order

44:49

to drum up support for gun control. And

44:51

this was before the Columbine shooting.

44:54

Bill starts this conspiracy

44:56

theory off in the United States, and I'm gonna

44:59

the next thing I went have you play is Bill reading a passage

45:02

of his book on the air. In n So

45:04

again, this is what seven years before

45:06

Columbying and like twenty something

45:09

years before the Sandy Hook shootings. In that conspiracy

45:12

starts here, here's Bill laying

45:14

the groundwork for all of that ship. The

45:17

government encouraged the manufacture

45:19

and importation of military firearms

45:21

for the criminals to use. This

45:24

is intended to foster a feeling

45:26

of insecurity which would lead the American

45:28

people to voluntarily disarmed

45:30

themselves by passing laws against

45:32

firearms, using drugs

45:35

and hypnosis on mental patients

45:37

in a process called O'Ryan, the

45:40

CIA and cultated the desire

45:42

in these people to open fire on

45:44

schoolyards and thus inflame

45:46

the anti gun lobby. This

45:49

plan is well under way and so far

45:51

is working perfectly. The

45:53

middle class is begging the government

45:55

to do away with the Second Amendment.

45:58

So Bill starts that

46:01

mass shootings are a government conspiracy,

46:04

conspiracy theory and fucking ninety

46:06

one. Um,

46:09

yeah, what do you make of that?

46:11

That's amazing? That is I know,

46:13

I'm just like I'm trying to build

46:16

really ahead of it's his time. Um,

46:19

and he knew what would take off because obviously

46:21

this conspiracy theory takes off, and if

46:23

you look at the YouTube video. It was like a YouTube

46:25

video of people being like see Bill Cooper revealed

46:27

the government's planned to stage mass shootings.

46:30

Yeah, it couldn't have been a lucky

46:33

guess because file cabinet. Yeah.

46:36

Interesting, Okay, So

46:38

Bill had a real gift for weaving far

46:41

fetched fantasies about the Illuminati and mind

46:43

control weapons and with down to work, earth

46:46

like folksy rants about modernity.

46:48

Like that was his gift. As he would take this crazy shit

46:50

and he would weave it into real shit. And

46:53

it would it would it would that

46:55

that draws people in. Like he didn't. He

46:57

didn't, He didn't sound the same

46:59

way it again, that guy with like a box

47:02

full of like photographed z or mimiographed

47:04

zeems at a gun show seems like right

47:07

like it there there's like a grounded nous

47:09

to it that you don't usually get. I do kind

47:11

of wonder, I mean, because you were

47:13

saying like he just like spoke

47:16

NonStop for years,

47:19

like I mean for everything like this. That

47:21

feels kind of like a wow. Maybe he you

47:23

know, this was a pretty like you

47:26

know, valid comment. How many hundreds

47:28

of bullshit that makes no sense? Um

47:31

to counter that? Yeah, I mean Bill

47:33

was was every day of his life

47:35

was bullshit. That was that happened.

47:38

And then I mean, if if you talk that much bullshit,

47:40

you're bound to hit on something useful every

47:42

once in a while. Yeah, I mean it's

47:44

and it's not like, well, I mean it's not something that's true because

47:46

obviously mass shootings

47:48

are a product of a wide variety of unhealthy

47:51

things in our culture. And I don't think

47:53

any reasonable person thinks the government is even

47:55

competent enough to fake that sort of thing. But

47:57

just hitting on the idea that it would be an appealing idea,

48:00

Well that that's what he understands, is like

48:02

what what people want to believe? And

48:04

he what people need is like, here's this

48:06

real problem mass shootings.

48:09

We need to explain you know, the soaring

48:11

violent crime rate in the early nineties. I need

48:13

to explain it with something that blames it on but

48:15

like makes it a part of this conspiracy. Like

48:18

that was Bill's talent is weaving that ship

48:20

together, um, and he would

48:22

do it by like yeah, Um.

48:25

One of I think the most revealing rants that he put together

48:28

that sort of shows you his appeal was

48:30

was him sort of complaining about automobiles.

48:33

He stated, I've gone from driving automobiles that I could

48:35

take apart and put together blindfolded by myself

48:37

as a teenager, to cars that I can lift the hood

48:39

on and not even recognize most of what I'm looking at,

48:41

except that I know it's an engine in there, some kind of system

48:44

that ignites the fuel. And

48:46

this was like Bill was basically taking with

48:48

this sort of thing, these kind of feelings

48:50

of inadequacy that we're very common and increasingly

48:53

common. And this chunk of American men who's like jobs,

48:55

good factory jobs, one that had been eliminated,

48:57

these guys where a lot of them lived in like rural

49:00

communities that were very rapidly

49:02

dying as the country increasingly urbanized.

49:05

Um, so he would take these feelings of like

49:07

being bowled over by the complexity

49:09

of modern technology and feeling left behind,

49:12

so would weave them into this conspiracy about the

49:14

new world order. As his biographer notes,

49:16

Bill basically argued that stuff like, you

49:19

know, the increasing complexity of automobile

49:21

engines wasn't just a factor of developing

49:23

technology. It was quote one more way

49:25

the controllers separated you from the utility

49:27

of your person. This was how silent weapons

49:29

work. How they stuck the dunce cap of helplessness

49:32

on your head. And a big part of Bill's

49:34

appeal was that he provided his listeners with a way

49:36

to feel as if they were part of the solution, actually

49:38

fighting back against this new world order, rather

49:41

than just sitting helplessly and watching it eat

49:43

everything. Uh. He created

49:45

the Citizens Agency for Joint Intelligence

49:48

or CADGY, which Bill marketed as a

49:50

sort of volunteer civilian answer

49:52

to the CIA or the FBI.

49:56

Yeah, citizen Joint

49:58

intelligence. Citizen Agency for Joint

50:00

Intelligence. Yeah, I mean I both made the same. Any

50:06

of his listeners could join CADGY and start

50:08

collecting and submitting intelligence would which

50:10

Bill would read on air if he liked it. And so this had

50:12

a couple of benefits. Never one let his listeners

50:15

feel like they were part of this like insurgent

50:17

movement fighting back against the new world order,

50:19

and it filled up airtime because Bill could just read

50:22

bullshit that his audience sent in as if it

50:24

was intelligence that his agency had brought

50:26

another like twenty four hour news cycle,

50:28

A little head of the curve there. It's very

50:30

smart, very smart, And

50:33

CAGY wasn't just like an

50:35

institute off on its own. It was the intelligence

50:38

wing of the Second Continental Army, which

50:40

Bill claimed was a secret nationwide militia

50:42

dedicated to the preservation of the values that the

50:45

US had been founded under. Bill refused

50:47

to give up the name of the commanding general of this August

50:49

Force because it was him, but many of

50:52

the promotion papers that he handed out were

50:54

signed by George Washington. Yeah,

50:58

it was always like, really k g about who was

51:00

in charge. It was obvious was built. Yeah,

51:03

because it was him. Yeah, because it was him,

51:05

he was the whole army. Yeah. But then he's like, but

51:07

who knows. It's hard to say. Yeah.

51:11

So, over his years on the air, Cooper

51:13

engaged in a number of objectively ridiculous

51:15

stunts, like all right wing ideal logus.

51:17

Bill Nurson abiding hate for the mainstream

51:19

media, but he tried to do something about

51:21

it, organizing his listeners in a scheme to

51:23

buy up millions of shares of Ghanet Media,

51:26

owner of USA Today. And the plan

51:28

was that all of his listeners would buy enough

51:31

of Ghanette Media to have a controlling voting

51:33

interest um and then they would basically

51:35

put Bill in charge, and he would fire everyone

51:37

who didn't want to put out right wing propaganda.

51:43

It didn't it didn't work. No, but

51:48

christ yeah, you know what,

51:50

will buy up all of the shares of

51:52

Ghanett Media to

51:55

put out right wing propaganda the

51:58

products and services that support this podcast. Oh

52:00

I hope, so yeah, and

52:09

we're back um

52:13

okay so uh. In nineteen

52:16

four, Bill threw his support behind the newly

52:19

formed Constitution Party, which had

52:21

been made by some Hollywood libertarian dude.

52:23

I think it was part of a grift, but anyway, U.

52:27

Bill announced his like new membership

52:29

and support of this movement, essentially acting as

52:31

it's like the voice of the Constitution

52:34

Party by announcing America is

52:36

no longer a two party country, Ladies and gentlemen.

52:39

Um. Problems obviously cropped up almost

52:41

immediately. The chief issue was

52:43

that Bill and the party he joined were pretty much

52:45

straight up libertarians. Meanwhile, many

52:48

of his listeners were hard right religious nutfox

52:50

uh. They hated two major planks of

52:52

the Constitution Party, which

52:55

were and again, Jamie, this is another place where you'll be

52:57

surprised legal legal abortion

52:59

and the right to be homosexual. Um.

53:02

And in another surprising turn, Bill took to

53:04

the airwaves to defend both planks on the matter

53:07

of abortion. He said, we are firm ladies

53:09

and gentlemen. God put us here to make choices,

53:11

and the moral choices the woman's. And if she fries

53:13

in what some of you would call hell for eternity, that is

53:16

her choice. For it is she who will fry. But it's

53:18

not. But it is not the business of the state to say

53:20

yes, no, maybe, or anything. But

53:23

it's a woman's choice. Like he's he's he's

53:25

whatever, Okay, I mean him being like,

53:27

you know what, let the lady burn

53:29

in hell if she wants to. I

53:31

don't guess saying that. I think he's saying

53:33

that, like if you think she's going to hell, it doesn't

53:35

matter, Like it's still not the states,

53:38

but it's not the state's business to say if she does

53:40

it or not. Right. I

53:42

actually don't think Bill cared at all about

53:44

abortion, clearly, I mean

53:46

clearly not there I

53:49

can't. I mean, it's like, you know, personally,

53:53

you know, we don't we don't claim this man, but I

53:55

guess it's nice to not have him

53:57

actively against reproductive rights.

53:59

That's yeah, it's with

54:02

this guy. It says a lot that that, like he

54:04

has to yell at his listeners over ship

54:06

like this because like they're all such bigots,

54:09

um, and Bill is just not quite as

54:11

bad Um, and actually like

54:13

his defensive bigotry a little more focused in

54:16

yeah, yeah, I mean he just hates

54:18

the government. That's really Bill's whole thing is

54:20

he hates the government and wants wants

54:22

to destroy it because he thinks it's an evil

54:25

quasi Satanist conspiracy. Um,

54:28

it's weird. He's a weird guy. Like

54:31

his defensive homosexual homosexuality

54:33

was actually like pretty good,

54:36

um telling. He told his very religious

54:38

listeners quote, the most you can never hope

54:40

to do is force them back into the closets so

54:42

that you cannot see them, and then you will be living

54:44

a lie, just as we have been living lies throughout our

54:47

history. And lies must stop. Which

54:49

is interesting because he's also he's he's still

54:51

putting the like it's your you who

54:53

will be living a lie by denying these people exist,

54:55

and like that's why you shouldn't do it. It's a weird defense

54:58

of not criminalizing gay people. Um

55:02

builds a weird guy. There's a lot

55:04

of like moments like that with him, where it's like

55:06

what the funk are you? Yeah, and

55:08

I don't want to be washing him here because

55:10

these are like, these areas where he's surprisingly

55:13

decent um kind

55:15

of just have been used sometimes by

55:17

folks to obscure the fact that he was fundamentally

55:19

a man who believed that anything

55:21

that vaguely smacked of socialism was tyranny

55:24

and had to be violently opposed by men with

55:26

guns. Um. And so while

55:29

he would be doing stuff like saying, hey, it's

55:31

fine if you're gay, he would also be saying, you

55:33

should have as many guns as possible so

55:36

that you can kill people who try to, I

55:38

don't know, give healthcare to folks.

55:41

Like what Yeah, okay,

55:46

I I mean I still hate the

55:48

man, but you should. But

55:50

but there are some there

55:52

are some twists here there. Yeah, it

55:55

is, I mean, do you think it is just like it has to do

55:57

with like he wants to keep the focus on what

56:00

he really cares about, and it's like, you

56:02

know kind of like okay, like I get that this is

56:04

something that bothers you, but like, don't worry

56:06

about that, ye worry about like

56:08

look over here, this is my show,

56:11

and we're worrying about the things that I hate. God,

56:13

you have a radio show. You can hate your own ship.

56:16

There's a there's a shitty radio show for that other

56:18

hateful thing, you think on

56:21

the same network. Like you don't have to wait

56:23

long. Oh yeah, you don't like it, wait forty

56:25

five minutes. Yeah. Bill's show

56:27

hosted an eighteen hour long series

56:30

called Treason, making the case that US

56:32

government officials were committing a daily barrage

56:34

of unconstitutional acts that demanded some

56:36

sort of response. Um. He also

56:39

told his listeners to watch two thousand one

56:41

of Space Odyssey because it included

56:44

secret messages hidden by the illuminati.

56:46

Um yeah, um.

56:51

And this is like this is the thing you're here in Q and

56:53

on stuff. Now, there's this like widespread belief

56:55

that like the Cabal, this like

56:58

elite group of Satanic demon worshippers

57:00

hide like the secrets of their Like

57:03

there's all these weird Hollywood movies that are real,

57:05

Like the Bourne Identity is like there's act

57:07

like there's real, Like it is like

57:10

fundamentally real. It's just yeah,

57:13

yeah, because the the elite have to hide

57:16

the truth about what they're doing in plain sight.

57:19

It's this thing that they need to do. Um.

57:22

And Bill thought that it was because of like this

57:25

weird kind of occult

57:29

tradition that where you basically have

57:31

to in order to like provide power

57:33

to your occult rituals, you have to like tell people

57:35

about the evil things you're doing in the open,

57:38

and so like they would hide all this stuff in Hollywood.

57:40

Like that was an innovation of Bills. That

57:42

is like one of the things that the core of Q went on today.

57:45

And he's the first guy to be like and it was Billy

57:47

with Billy Bailey. He would watch a movie he liked and

57:49

then would be like, and here's why, Like

57:51

this is reveal some truth about

57:53

the Illuminati. Conspiracy is

57:56

the thing Alex Jones does too. Um

57:59

yeah. Now, it was the Waco

58:01

siege that really made Bill Cooper,

58:04

the multi week assault by the A

58:06

t F and the FBI on a peaceful religious

58:09

compound in the middle of nowhere. It was exactly the kind

58:11

of violent overreach that he'd spent his career

58:13

warning people about. It was like the perfect thing for

58:16

Bill Cooper to focus on, right, Like

58:18

he's been saying for years, the government's going to come to like kill

58:20

all Christians and stuff and you know, institute

58:22

this new world order. And here they go after this

58:25

compound of weirdos in the middle of nowhere,

58:27

Texas. Um So, for weeks,

58:29

Bill would you know, basically tell his listeners

58:31

that Waco was a test case to see if Americans

58:33

would put up with the n w o's plans

58:36

to eliminate millions of people. Um,

58:38

like they're seeing if you're going to rise up. You know, if a bunch

58:41

of militiamen would just show up at Waco and

58:43

like stand around it, they would back

58:45

off and like then you know, we could we could turn

58:47

the tide. But of course nobody was willing to actually do

58:49

that. Um So, for

58:52

weeks, Bill would cover the federal government's treachery

58:54

and when the real victim like in you know, the

58:57

government, by the way, was committing a ton of

58:59

horrible crimes Waco, Like the

59:01

whole thing was one horrible crime pretty much.

59:03

Yeah, this is like, you know, attached to something where

59:05

it's like, well, yeah, there is something clearly very bad

59:07

going on here. Um yeah.

59:10

Yeah. But he would also because he was a liar,

59:13

it wasn't enough the actual funded up ship that

59:15

was going on, so he would he would like he invented this

59:18

claim that the FBI had sent in tainted milk

59:20

that had killed two children um, which

59:23

he would repeat for weeks, which is like there had

59:25

no basis in fact, Um, it wasn't

59:27

necessary because the FBI killed seventies

59:30

something children at Waco, Like you don't have to lie

59:32

about tainted milk. They burnt kids to

59:34

death, Like it's not it's not necessary

59:37

Bill. Um. He was

59:39

also adamant that David Koresh was

59:41

monogamous and does not play around on

59:43

his wife, which is what's the point. I think

59:46

that's like mon

59:49

he had. Koresh

59:51

had to be a good guy, and the people at

59:53

Waco had to be like fundamentally heroic

59:56

rather than like a bunch of flawed and fucked up people

59:58

themselves who still didn't deserved

1:00:00

to be burnt alive. Yeah.

1:00:05

So obviously Bill was as horrified as the rest

1:00:07

of the world when the David

1:00:10

Koresh that David Koresh was not

1:00:13

just defending David Koresh but picking to

1:00:15

Hill, David Koresh was faithful to his wife,

1:00:19

Like that's what we all know about

1:00:21

David. He didn't a ton of random women.

1:00:24

Oh my god. Yeah,

1:00:28

I mean, especially since we all know David Koresh

1:00:30

had incredible abs. I mean, just stop

1:00:34

David Koresh's abs were as

1:00:36

cut as Bernard Sanders

1:00:38

was good at shooting people in a moving vehicle.

1:00:41

Cut my own beanie baby's arm off.

1:00:43

This is so stressful. So Bill

1:00:46

was as horrified as the rest of the nation when the FBI's

1:00:48

final raid on the Branch Davidian compound ended

1:00:51

in you know, dozens of children burning to

1:00:53

death. Um in just

1:00:56

horrible, horrible, literal war crime.

1:00:58

Um. Yeah. On his first broadcast

1:01:01

back after the siege, Bill opened the show

1:01:03

by declaring, America the Beautiful is

1:01:05

no more. He told his listeners

1:01:07

that the second battle of the Second American Revolution

1:01:10

had ended, and folks, we lost.

1:01:13

The first battle was Ruby Ridge, So

1:01:18

I mean, you know it it

1:01:21

that was you know, Waco was. One of the things

1:01:23

that's interesting about Waco is that for

1:01:26

a lot of people who had been kind of reflexively

1:01:29

pro America and pro the government

1:01:31

just because it was America and they

1:01:34

were kind of like patriotic bumble

1:01:36

fox, um, Waco

1:01:38

was the thing broke a lot of them. Um.

1:01:41

And there's it's like like it's

1:01:43

kind of the foundational movement of the patriot

1:01:46

movement in the militia movement that exists with US today. For there's

1:01:48

a reason the Boogaloo boys put the

1:01:50

names of like the Weavers who died at Ruby

1:01:53

Ridge um and share Waco

1:01:55

meetings so much. It's because, like this is where

1:01:57

that starts. This is where like the insurge

1:02:00

right in this country really starts to grow.

1:02:02

And Bill Cooper is the one nursing it. Like the

1:02:04

violent right had not been

1:02:07

a big thing since the end of World War two

1:02:09

that had really put an into it. Pretty much like you've

1:02:11

had the KKK in some parts of

1:02:13

the South during the Civil Rights movement, but like

1:02:16

not an insurgent force

1:02:19

aimed at overthrowing the government. That that

1:02:21

starts now, and Bill Cooper is

1:02:23

its first profit right um,

1:02:26

Like he's directly saying, like you the listeners are

1:02:28

like part of a war against your

1:02:30

government now because of Waco. Oh

1:02:34

yeah, yeah, okay, I mean and and it's unfortunately,

1:02:37

like you can see what he's

1:02:40

like creating these pins for people that

1:02:43

you can understand why people are taking

1:02:45

the opportunity. I mean, whether if you believe

1:02:47

Bill Cooper, the only thing to do is kill

1:02:51

people in the government, is murder members

1:02:53

of the government. And by the way, his

1:02:56

most famous listener decides to

1:02:58

do just that. Becau is. Bill's biggest

1:03:01

fan in this period of time was a young

1:03:03

military veteran named Tim McVeigh.

1:03:08

Yeah, yeah, Timmy McVeigh.

1:03:10

Baby, yeah uh, Tim

1:03:13

McVeigh. Always a pleasure when we get to you, Timmy.

1:03:15

So Tim loved Tim

1:03:18

loved the hour of the time, and then the months

1:03:20

prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, there's even evidence

1:03:22

that he visited Bill Cooper's, the place where

1:03:25

Bill Cooper recorded, and like met with

1:03:27

Bill Cooper um and like

1:03:29

this almost certainly happened.

1:03:31

It's it's pretty widely believed, and

1:03:34

the most credible version of the story suggests

1:03:36

that basically Bill was kind of sketched

1:03:38

out. It was like Tim and some other guy and they were

1:03:40

like clearly weird and unhinged. And

1:03:43

Tim asked him, like, if I get stopped by

1:03:45

a cop, should I shoot him rather than accept

1:03:47

a speeding ticket? And Bill was like, no,

1:03:49

you shouldn't shoot a man over a speeding ticket.

1:03:53

But like, yeah, it's this really sketchy

1:03:55

story where like there are a couple of people who were around

1:03:57

Bill at the time. While we're like, yeah, this guy who

1:04:00

after the Oklahoma City bombing, we all recognized

1:04:02

as Tim McVeigh came by and was like, I'm

1:04:05

your biggest fan, Bill and asked him weird questions

1:04:07

about shooting cops. Um. And it's

1:04:09

worth noting that the reason Tim got

1:04:11

caught is that he got pulled over driving

1:04:13

away from Oklahoma City and he had

1:04:16

a gun on him and chose not to shoot the officer

1:04:18

who was pulling him over, which is why he got caught. So

1:04:22

wow, So listening to Bill is what got him

1:04:24

caught. It's saved one guy's life

1:04:26

and got like a hundred and sixty eight other people killed.

1:04:29

Well, I

1:04:32

mean, obviously we talked a lot about Tim McVay

1:04:34

in the War on Everyone. There was a shipload going on in

1:04:37

Tim mcveah's ideological development, including

1:04:39

a lot of Nazis ship. I think people

1:04:41

do tend to put too much of the

1:04:43

blame on Bill, but in the immediate wake of the bombing,

1:04:46

Bill actually does get a lot of the blame just because

1:04:49

he It kind of immediately comes out that

1:04:52

Tim mcveigh's favorite radio host is this like

1:04:54

right wing nut job Bill Cooper. Like I think

1:04:56

the President mentions Bill Cooper and stuff, so like

1:04:58

Bill becomes Bill gets a lot of the immediate

1:05:01

blame for radicalizing Tim McVey when really

1:05:04

things like the Turner Diaries that like, there's a lot of

1:05:06

other things, I mean, for people who are inclined

1:05:08

to agree with Tim McVey. A lot of free

1:05:10

press. Yeah, yeah,

1:05:12

it is. It is a lot of free press. And it's yeah,

1:05:15

it's an interesting tale. Um. So when

1:05:17

McVeigh, you know, did that thing that McVeigh

1:05:20

did, Bill Cooper immediately

1:05:22

knew what was really going on. This was

1:05:24

not you know, a right wing militia dude

1:05:27

carrying Bill's ideas to their logical extent

1:05:29

and declaring war on the government, which is what actually

1:05:32

happened. Uh, this was a false flag

1:05:34

attack aimed at taking down the militia movement

1:05:36

and justifying a government crackdown.

1:05:39

Um, which is actually kind of the obvious opposite

1:05:41

of what happened really, but yeah, um so

1:05:44

Bill had one of his cadgy agents start collecting

1:05:46

stories for a book on the first twenty four hours

1:05:48

after the blast to document how the media spun

1:05:50

events to fit their narrative, and they actually

1:05:53

like published up like put together

1:05:55

like this whole gigantic book about the first day

1:05:57

after Oklahoma City that they thought was going

1:05:59

to be like the new the next

1:06:01

you know, the the rightful follow up to Behold

1:06:04

a Pale Horse, But nobody bought it because it was

1:06:06

like boring and dumb. Um. Yeah.

1:06:11

Now, Bill grew increasingly

1:06:13

unhinged in the days and weeks after the Oklahoma

1:06:15

City bombing. He warned his listeners that the end

1:06:17

was nigh. Uh. He told them that mock

1:06:19

American cities were being built in the desert

1:06:22

for the military to train in to prepare to like

1:06:24

purge the United States of dissidents. Uh.

1:06:27

He'd started talking about black helicopters circling

1:06:29

areas with too high up population of real Americans,

1:06:32

and of course he started talking about FEMA

1:06:34

camps being set up to incarceerate a newly

1:06:36

disarmed American populace um.

1:06:40

Yeah. And of course a big part of it for for

1:06:42

Bill is that like the government's going to use the whole militia

1:06:44

thing as an excuse to take our guns. And

1:06:46

they did pass an assault weapons ban not too

1:06:49

long after this, So like there's a lot of things keep happening

1:06:51

that make Bill seem really credible to the fringe.

1:06:53

Right, is like Bill said, they're going to take our guns, and then they passed

1:06:55

this law to take our guns, not considering

1:06:58

that it was part of Bill's work that created

1:07:00

the problems. Yes, that really helped create

1:07:02

the system where they were like, oh man, it seems

1:07:04

like a lot of people have military grade weaponry

1:07:06

who are violently unhinged. Maybe let's

1:07:09

try to do which I'm not a fan of the assault weapons

1:07:11

ban either, but like you can maybe

1:07:13

it's not like let's create create

1:07:15

a media yeah show where

1:07:18

Bill were encouraging it. It's

1:07:20

a great way to get a lot. Yeah.

1:07:22

Yeah, he has a big impact on why that happens.

1:07:25

He's a big impact on the growth of the militia feedback

1:07:27

loop developing here with exactly

1:07:30

it's the same thing with like these boogaloo guys who

1:07:32

are obsessed with like being Second Amendment

1:07:35

absolutists and or who are going to guarantee

1:07:38

massive restriction gun restrictive gun

1:07:40

control legislation comes in if a Democrat

1:07:42

ever gets into office again, because you guys

1:07:44

have been such like like violent

1:07:46

lunatics in public, waving

1:07:49

guns around and scaring people and like yeah,

1:07:51

thanks, yeah, yeah, you did a great job and

1:07:53

create the problem that if there is a

1:07:55

crackdown, it's like, well that is you

1:07:58

know, in no small part your fault there. Yeah.

1:08:02

So in August of mcveigh's

1:08:05

old friend Michael Fortier, did

1:08:07

an interview with a far right newsletter where when

1:08:09

asked what led to the bombing, he replied,

1:08:12

I can't say a whole lot, but we heard lots of tapes

1:08:14

and saw videos and read things. There's this guy with the

1:08:16

radio station in Arizona, Bill Cooper. He keeps

1:08:19

calling people sheeple and was mad that they ain't doing

1:08:21

anything to change things. Well, we got to thinking

1:08:23

that's right, things need to change. Tim really

1:08:25

responded to that um. In

1:08:28

nineteen James Nichols testified

1:08:30

in federal court that he, his brother Terry, and

1:08:32

Tim McVeigh listened to Cooper as often

1:08:34

as they could. They called him the voice of the militia

1:08:36

movement. So, yeah,

1:08:39

Bill, Bill helps to cause all

1:08:41

of the things that cause all of the things that he's

1:08:43

scared about. That's right.

1:08:45

So it's I mean with that kind

1:08:48

of like, you know, uh,

1:08:51

looking at it now, you're like, well, of course he

1:08:53

may have seemed right about a lot of these things. He was

1:08:55

anticipating potential consequences

1:08:57

to problems that he was to create. Yeah,

1:09:01

it's like government isn't guilty of the stuff like that themselves.

1:09:03

I just uh yeah, yeah, It's

1:09:05

it's like when when I when the the

1:09:08

f d A eventually raids my compound

1:09:10

and burns dozens of children to death

1:09:12

in our basement, all seem like a profit

1:09:14

for having predicted it, But really, by constantly

1:09:17

engaging in this battle with the FDA

1:09:19

for years, you know, I'm I'm, I'm

1:09:21

in a way creating the situation myself,

1:09:24

which is why should associated with this

1:09:26

clip When it inevitably um surfaces

1:09:30

after after your prediction turns out to have been

1:09:33

true, you know what you should do, Jamie is by one

1:09:35

of our new f d A approved to cure

1:09:37

all diseases masks, which are in

1:09:39

fact FDA approved to cure all

1:09:42

diseases. That's official FDA approval.

1:09:44

Um, So by the mask. He just

1:09:47

did that entire thing to plug his new

1:09:49

merch Just so you know, this

1:09:51

whole episode Bitcoin I am,

1:09:53

I am digging up metaphorically the

1:09:55

corpses of the dead at Waco in Oklahoma

1:09:58

City and Ruby Ridge in order to face

1:10:01

masks and spark a fight with the f d A.

1:10:05

That's that's because I'm a monster too.

1:10:07

I'm just as bad as Bill Cooper. I'm

1:10:11

putting that on your Wikipedia page. Thank

1:10:13

you, thank you. So um

1:10:16

coming up in the biggest trial in American history

1:10:18

as the inspiration behind a mad bomber

1:10:21

was not a great move for Bill's

1:10:23

long term career, especially since he'd

1:10:25

stopped paying taxes in nineteen nine two

1:10:28

and also light on a loan application. UM.

1:10:31

So he starts getting warrants issued for his arrest

1:10:33

for again committing crimes.

1:10:36

Um. And he lives up on top

1:10:38

of a mountain in Arizona at this point in time,

1:10:40

and the sheriff of Apache County

1:10:42

where he lived, was actually a pretty smart guy

1:10:44

and was like, if I try to arrest

1:10:47

Bill Cooper, He's going to go down in

1:10:49

a hail of gunfire and it's going to be just

1:10:51

a terrible It's gonna be another Ruby

1:10:53

Ridge and I'm not gonna fucking do that. Like, he

1:10:56

can live on the top of his mountain for another

1:10:58

fifty years for all I care. And he tells the f eyas

1:11:00

the Sheriff's like, I'm not like arrested this

1:11:02

guy is, and the FBI are like, yeah,

1:11:05

it seems like a really bad idea to arrest this guy.

1:11:07

Anything that happens to Bill Cooper, to him

1:11:10

is like a confirmation that what he was saying was right.

1:11:12

He's like, well, I'll probably be you know, taken

1:11:14

out or arrested. It's like, well, yeah, because you're evading

1:11:16

your taxes. But yeah, yeah, the

1:11:18

problem you've created. Well, and that's exactly

1:11:20

what Bill does with it. So like the actual law enforcement

1:11:23

in his area just kind of leaves him alone. Like he regularly

1:11:25

will go to a local Mexican restaurant and get enchiladas

1:11:28

and ship and like nobody tries anything because again,

1:11:30

nobody wants the bullshit that would come with trying

1:11:32

to bring Bill Cooper in being

1:11:34

so annoying. Yeah,

1:11:37

but Bill becomes a massive drama queen

1:11:39

about the whole thing, breathlessly talking about the siege

1:11:42

of his compound and like bragging about it, like how

1:11:44

he and his wife and his his little daughter like aren't

1:11:46

leaving and you know, won't leave. They don't leave for years

1:11:49

and are like living under and he'll talk

1:11:51

about how like they've got anti helicopter

1:11:53

countermeasures and like secret militiamen

1:11:55

guarding his compound with him, and you

1:11:57

know, he'll vaguely discussed all his security men

1:12:00

shars and ship which was all bullshit. He had one

1:12:02

friend who was like a vet who would like hang

1:12:04

out with a gun with him sometimes when he got scared,

1:12:07

and he had like some cans strung up like he had

1:12:09

no there was no like security network set

1:12:11

up like he was canned. His security

1:12:13

was I maybe I may be making

1:12:16

that one up, but it was he didn't have

1:12:18

any sort of meaningful security

1:12:20

network because he was broke and living in a crumbling

1:12:23

house on top of a mountain because he he

1:12:25

had no money. Um. Yeah,

1:12:28

and you know, it's we don't know a lot.

1:12:31

We don't know a huge amount about his situation with

1:12:33

his wife, but at least one of his friends catches

1:12:35

him having like this really vicious, screaming

1:12:38

fight with her where he's like at least mentally

1:12:40

abusive, and you get the feeling

1:12:42

he was probably physically abusive to her, and

1:12:45

we're taking his past history accounts

1:12:48

almost certainly. At the same time,

1:12:50

it becomes really clear to anyone listening that like,

1:12:52

really the only thing keeping Bill kind

1:12:55

of tethered to reality is his daughter. Um,

1:12:57

and he'll have she's a little kid at this point, he'll

1:12:59

have her on the show. A bunch. She hosts it

1:13:02

with him sometimes and

1:13:04

he's like really, um, yeah,

1:13:07

like it's it's it's kind of heartbreaking. I don't

1:13:09

want to go into too much just because it's a real bummer

1:13:11

to listen to them together because

1:13:14

eventually Bill's abusiveness

1:13:18

forces his wife to leave him, and she like flees

1:13:20

with their daughter and he never sees her again.

1:13:23

Um, because of what happens next.

1:13:25

But yeah, and that, like yeah,

1:13:27

that's that. Like again, she

1:13:29

did absolutely the right thing because Bill at

1:13:32

this point is a hardcore alcoholic. He's

1:13:34

continued to be mentally and

1:13:36

probably physically abusive. He's locked

1:13:38

them away in a mountaintop compound hiding

1:13:41

from the fucking Feds, directly

1:13:43

tied to the Oklahoma City BOS,

1:13:45

directly tied to the Oklahoma City

1:13:47

bombing. Like Annie

1:13:50

makes the right call in getting their kid

1:13:52

the funk out of there eventually, And again

1:13:55

Annie deserves some pome because she stays for a long

1:13:57

time and she's a pretty at least for a chunk

1:13:59

of his career, a very willing participant

1:14:02

in the Bill Cooper thing. Um also

1:14:05

a victim to but also like, I

1:14:07

don't know, it's a fucked up story. Everything about this

1:14:09

guy's relationships are fucked up. Um,

1:14:11

thankfully she doesn't get the I and I

1:14:13

don't know anything about his daughter today. Um,

1:14:16

and I'm not going to look it up because she deserves

1:14:18

to have some chance to get away from Yeah.

1:14:23

Bill's last remaining years were

1:14:25

spent putting out a series of increasingly morose

1:14:27

broadcasts and occasionally watching

1:14:29

the conspiratorial seeds he'd sown bare

1:14:31

fruit, like when he watched the nine X

1:14:34

Files movie and recognized huge chunks

1:14:36

of Behold a Pale Horse served up his entertainment

1:14:39

um, which he found very exciting.

1:14:44

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. As Bill's

1:14:46

life shrank to the confines of his increasingly decrepit

1:14:48

home, he himself sunk into alcoholism.

1:14:51

But many of the ideas he popularized we're

1:14:53

working their way into popular culture. They just grown

1:14:55

beyond him at this point. On

1:14:57

June two thousand one, Bill Cooper

1:15:00

made what would be his greatest prediction yet. He

1:15:02

told his listeners that a major attack on the

1:15:04

United States was coming, and then it would be blamed

1:15:07

on Osama Bin Laden. Really

1:15:10

yep, yep. June one,

1:15:12

names been Laden in the broadcast. Now, again,

1:15:15

not much of a prediction, because Bin Laden had bombed

1:15:17

the World Trade Center a couple of years earlier

1:15:20

and was one of the most famous terrorists in the world at

1:15:22

the time. Wait, hold on, wait what year is this? This

1:15:24

is two? This is

1:15:27

but like before right before

1:15:29

nine eleven, but after the first World Trade

1:15:31

Center bombing, like Ben

1:15:33

Latton bombed it before, right,

1:15:36

Yeah, So it's so that isn't okay,

1:15:38

okay, okay, you're right here. So he gives

1:15:40

this prediction and then in the immediate wake of the attack,

1:15:43

like he's obviously really horrified, but he also kind

1:15:45

of he's the very first truther, Like

1:15:47

he's one of the very first guys who starts talking about

1:15:49

like how the thing, the building shouldn't have fallen

1:15:51

the way it did, and like Steele doesn't work that way.

1:15:53

All the all this stuff that like with like like

1:15:56

a jet fueld doesn't melt. In

1:15:59

fact, a lot of folks will argue that loose change

1:16:01

that documentary, a huge amount of it was plagiarized

1:16:03

from stuff Bill Cooper had started saying in the

1:16:05

immediate wake of nine eleven because because

1:16:08

he dies like two seconds after he

1:16:10

dies two seconds after nine eleven, but he

1:16:13

but that's the way Bill's mind works, he's immediately

1:16:15

spinning conspiracies. He can't not do it, So

1:16:17

he leaves the world with

1:16:19

nine eleven Trutherism. Um,

1:16:22

and he leaves the world with Alex Jones,

1:16:24

who Jones in his early career talked about

1:16:26

Bill Cooper a lot, clearly admired

1:16:29

him, deeply had Bill on as a guest

1:16:31

once. Um, and Bill fucking hated

1:16:33

Alex Jones and ranted about him

1:16:35

a couple of times on his own show and basically saw

1:16:38

him as a charlatan and everything that was wrong

1:16:40

with America. I mean

1:16:43

yeah, which is ironic because like a lot of like Alex

1:16:46

Jones made a bunch of money in his earlier selling

1:16:48

like Golden Ship two People over the Radio,

1:16:50

and Bill Cooper was the first guy to do that, or

1:16:53

not the first gay, but like the first conspiracy not to

1:16:55

do that. Um, so

1:16:58

yeah, that's cool. Uh,

1:17:01

that's that's that's neat. Yeah.

1:17:03

So Bill, you know

1:17:06

it starts nine eleven Trutherism as kind

1:17:08

of a last hurrah. And in July

1:17:10

of two thousand one, so less than a month after

1:17:12

you know, his big prediction, Uh, Bill

1:17:15

makes the stake mistake of threatening a local

1:17:17

doctor named hamblin Um and

1:17:20

so yeah, like basically

1:17:22

Bill lived on top of this mountain, and the

1:17:24

mountain most of it was like public property, Like

1:17:26

anyone could come onto Bill's mountain if they wanted.

1:17:29

But Bill thought it was his mountain, and people who

1:17:31

drove up onto it perfectly within their

1:17:33

rights to do so. Um, we're like

1:17:37

damaging his security measures. Um.

1:17:39

So he would regularly come out with a handgun and

1:17:42

threaten to murder people for driving onto public

1:17:44

land. Um. And

1:17:46

yeah, this got him in trouble. Uh. And

1:17:49

in in two thousand one, you

1:17:51

know, the county had a new sheriff. The guy who

1:17:53

had been like it's not worth it to go after him, um

1:17:56

is gone. And this new sheriff is like an

1:17:58

idiot. He's like a rec this dumbass. And it's

1:18:01

like we can it's time to finally do

1:18:03

something about Bill Cooper. It'll be big news if

1:18:05

we do it, like it'll be good for my career. Um.

1:18:08

So not all that long after nine eleven,

1:18:11

Uh, this sheriff launches a raid

1:18:13

on Bill Cooper. And like the idea is to basically

1:18:15

pretend to be you know, a motorist who's

1:18:17

like wandered up to his mountain. Bill comes out and

1:18:19

you kind of can surround him and arrest him. Um,

1:18:23

And it kind of relies on Bill not being

1:18:25

the most paranoid man alive, which

1:18:28

Bill work very well. No, Bill

1:18:30

immediately realizes that like the cops

1:18:32

are trying to trap him, um, and he

1:18:35

tries to like run him down in his car and Yeah,

1:18:37

the whole thing degenerates into a gunfight and

1:18:39

Bill shoots an officer dead before going

1:18:41

down himself in a hail of gunfire. Um.

1:18:44

Well, ye, I

1:18:46

feel like if

1:18:48

he had to go, I mean he I'm

1:18:50

not he went down, but

1:18:53

I feel like he was probably satisfied with

1:18:56

Yeah. I think on an emotional level,

1:18:59

Bill Cooper need too needed

1:19:02

to go down being murdered by cops

1:19:04

and like a dawn like in like a raid,

1:19:06

like that was the way he expected to go for

1:19:09

years, And it also validates

1:19:11

his own like perception of himself.

1:19:15

Yeah, and he's he was clearly he was

1:19:17

sick. He probably wouldn't have lived that much

1:19:19

longer. Um, it's a shame he killed

1:19:22

a random guy on his way out,

1:19:24

but also it was a cop who was fucking

1:19:26

with him, So whatever, it's whatever.

1:19:29

Kind of a wash, it's kind of a wash.

1:19:31

It's if you're looking at like how

1:19:34

most of these guys leave the world,

1:19:37

Like Alex Jones is going to have a much more

1:19:39

depressing ending than Bill Cooper. Bill Cooper

1:19:41

kind of got what he wanted in the end, which is he gonna

1:19:44

like die of like gout or something. Yeah,

1:19:47

I know he's going to live to be a hundred and fucking twenty

1:19:50

and become a Secretary of State. I don't

1:19:52

know, Um, just like you're

1:19:54

just going to live to be the grand dumb of conspiracy

1:19:57

theories, just rotting in a house. Yeah,

1:20:00

there's a bunch of bummer. Like the book Pale

1:20:02

Horse Writer. Um, it's an interesting biography.

1:20:04

I think it's pretty good. The biographer

1:20:07

is very sympathetic to Bill, probably

1:20:09

more than his ferret points. It's kind of

1:20:11

hard not to be, I think when you get that into somebody's

1:20:13

life. Um, but he definitely gives

1:20:16

Bill more credit than I think Bill deserves in

1:20:18

a number of things. Um. But like his

1:20:20

his last days were sad as ship Like at

1:20:22

one point one of his daughters tries to reconnect

1:20:25

with him and like comes to his house and she lasts

1:20:27

like a week before the like, because

1:20:29

he's an abusive prick um, and he like

1:20:31

scares her away um, like he's

1:20:33

he's down to, like he's he's barely had alienated

1:20:36

all of his remaining friends at that point. He was

1:20:38

just like this lonely, crazy

1:20:40

old man with a bunch of guns at the top of

1:20:42

a hill, threatening passers

1:20:45

by with a pistol whenever they drove too

1:20:47

close to his house. Like those That was the

1:20:49

last days of William Cooper. Well

1:20:52

again, I

1:20:55

mean I will while I do

1:20:58

think that, you know, the the inks to

1:21:00

like his life as a military

1:21:03

brand, and then the very clear

1:21:06

PTSD that like

1:21:09

dogged him throughout his life are

1:21:11

are sympathetic entry points.

1:21:13

Um. He seemed to have really lived

1:21:15

out life full

1:21:17

of problems he created by himself. Yeah.

1:21:20

Bill is a guy who's dealt a rough

1:21:23

hand of cards and throws the cards

1:21:25

away and starts pooping in a box and

1:21:27

then demanding people treat the poop

1:21:29

as if it is a deck of cards. Um.

1:21:32

And when everyone else is like, no, Bill, that's

1:21:34

that's clearly poop um, he gets

1:21:36

angry at the entire world and starts a radio

1:21:38

show that a good

1:21:41

and when has that ever gone well

1:21:43

for anyone? Yeah?

1:21:47

So you know don't become

1:21:49

a conspiracy icon at the cost

1:21:52

of your own happiness and loved

1:21:54

ones. Uh, and instead become

1:21:57

a fashion icon and also render yourself

1:22:00

commune to all diseases with our new

1:22:02

f d A approved f d A approved

1:22:04

to prevent all diseases. Masks. This is a

1:22:06

really good ad. This was this whole episode

1:22:08

was an ad, right, yeah, absolutely, yeah,

1:22:11

okay, just checking. Like Bill Cooper,

1:22:14

I have decided to cash in on the fact

1:22:16

that I'm a fundamentally broken, anti social

1:22:19

person with a head full of ptsd um

1:22:21

and I'm choosing to do it with masks. Oh

1:22:24

good, Well, I'm glad that you could find someone

1:22:26

to connect with on this show. Yeah.

1:22:31

Boy, I also threatened

1:22:33

random people with a gun for driving onto public

1:22:35

land. But that's that's a separate that's

1:22:37

a kind of more of it, more of a kink than

1:22:40

anything, to be honest, Right, that's that's your

1:22:42

that's your little Jackie moment.

1:22:45

Yeah yeah, yeah. So

1:22:49

So Jamie, how

1:22:51

are you feeling? What's

1:22:55

up? He said, how you're

1:22:57

feeling? And You're like, I question,

1:23:00

you know, not thanks for checking in? Uh

1:23:03

not good. I don't feel good about it.

1:23:05

I feel this is this is a this is a more complicated,

1:23:08

not good than I'm used to um

1:23:11

on the on the show. But yeah, he's he's

1:23:14

a complex man, a complex, fundamentally

1:23:17

abusive person who's toxicity, uh

1:23:21

left him alone on a mountaintop. Um

1:23:24

yeah yeah, oh

1:23:26

boy, Yeah, this was a This was a dark one

1:23:29

to tell you what. It's

1:23:31

that great. How do you feel? I

1:23:33

feel? I feel like I'm not at all looking into

1:23:35

my own future? Um, I

1:23:38

have with

1:23:45

each passing day, you know, we get worried,

1:23:47

we worry about you, and we get more worried

1:23:49

about you. That's actually

1:23:51

my full time job. I get closer

1:23:54

to having that mountaintop compound. Um,

1:23:57

you really are edging your way up the mountain

1:23:59

as time goes. Yeah yeah, yeah, so that I can

1:24:01

get into my last great fight with the f d

1:24:03

A. Um, cowards

1:24:07

go down at the hands of the f d A. You

1:24:09

know it'll be

1:24:11

so funny. Oh my god. Yes, what

1:24:14

a great punchline to As

1:24:17

a as a human being, I think you owe

1:24:19

a responsibility to try to like leave

1:24:22

something entertaining for the children, and

1:24:24

like another person dying in an old folks

1:24:26

home, no kid's gonna like. But something you hear

1:24:28

about this this podcast host who

1:24:30

started a war with the FDA that got seventy

1:24:33

kids burnt to death in a basement. Like, that's

1:24:35

a story, people, you really need the kids

1:24:37

cut out of this equation. I everybody,

1:24:42

this is why everyone still loves David Koresh.

1:24:44

Look, he he got seventy kids killed

1:24:46

and now he's the sexy guy with abs

1:24:48

on a fucking Netflix special. So he

1:24:51

did have too many abs on the net. It's

1:24:53

clearly fine to get a lot of kids. Still, I

1:24:55

don't even think it was Netflix. I think it's just on

1:24:58

Netflix. Well that's

1:25:00

where I watched it. Somebody

1:25:03

he didn't have too many apps on the show. At the point

1:25:06

where did, I was also like, whoever says

1:25:08

for him to have this many apps on the show? Whoever

1:25:11

made it? It was like was very

1:25:13

hot and that guy was very not. It

1:25:16

was a bold choice to look at it a man

1:25:18

who fucked fourteen year olds uh

1:25:20

and had illegal child brides

1:25:23

and say, we got to rehab this dude.

1:25:27

We got rehab this dude to

1:25:29

be like, let's make him sexy.

1:25:32

We gotta we gotta have him playing a rock

1:25:34

show right before the FBI kills

1:25:37

it. And it was on Paramount

1:25:39

Network. Somebody told me we were wrong time

1:25:42

when we gave credit to Netflix for

1:25:44

that whatever. Terrible, what

1:25:48

a ridiculous series. It was a

1:25:50

mess. I mean, the fucking the Uni

1:25:52

Bomber series was problematic too, But at

1:25:54

least they like got a guy who looked like

1:25:56

a dangerous shut in to play the Uni

1:25:59

Bomber, Like I didn't have David Koresh

1:26:01

like drop a rap album right as the FBI

1:26:04

comes into his fucking house. He's

1:26:06

just like playing guitar like

1:26:10

just I think the only series

1:26:12

that I think is worse than Waco in terms of

1:26:14

like this genre of TV is the

1:26:17

The Assassination of Gianni Versa.

1:26:20

I haven't even watched that. It

1:26:22

was ridiculous. I

1:26:25

thought the O J one was pretty good, was

1:26:28

great, it was really good. That Giannio

1:26:31

one is a fucking mess. Darren

1:26:34

Cross plays Andrew Knanan. It's

1:26:36

a disaster. Yeah. Ross from

1:26:39

Friends really changed my opinion

1:26:41

of that cart Ashy and guy. Whenever

1:26:47

he says juice,

1:26:50

do you believe it? Do you believe it? You

1:26:52

believe that? Ross from Friends not only

1:26:55

calls his friend that, but because he's such a

1:26:57

fan of his friend, he's so excited to

1:26:59

get to call Juice like you hear

1:27:01

that in him, like this this this, it

1:27:04

was, it's really heartbreaking. It's a great I

1:27:06

like the the I like

1:27:08

that the trial O J. Simpson solid,

1:27:12

that's a great products before

1:27:14

we plug getting more document series

1:27:16

that we don't have claiming I'd

1:27:20

like to plug the the O

1:27:22

J series. I like it. I

1:27:25

watched it, you know, maybe about once a year when

1:27:27

I get sick, when

1:27:29

it's time for you know, Ross from Friends

1:27:32

and his love of O. J. Simpson. It's good

1:27:34

TV for when you get sick. Uh.

1:27:38

Then I also have a Twitter account that you can find

1:27:41

if you want, and you

1:27:43

can listen to my year and Mensa and the

1:27:45

Bechel Cast if you want, And

1:27:48

you can find me on a mountaintop in Idaho

1:27:51

with dozens and dozens of of

1:27:54

of young followers the

1:27:57

violent hands of the f d A. I

1:28:01

don't, I don't. I'm just not allowing this.

1:28:03

Are you trying to protect me for myself?

1:28:05

You're so sam, sir, what

1:28:08

I do? He does

1:28:10

not only do the episode on you when

1:28:13

you're killed by the f d A. Clearly,

1:28:17

I can't stop waycoing. I can't stop

1:28:19

waycoing. There's some

1:28:21

merch. Now, there's some merch. Um.

1:28:25

I think we should end the episode before you do anything

1:28:27

else that upside. Is

1:28:30

there any other way you'd like to perjure yourself

1:28:32

before pretty episode work? Yeah,

1:28:35

let me give you my feelings on UH. And

1:28:38

that's the episode.