William Cooper - The UFO Cover Up

Cooper caused a sensation in UFOlogy circles in 1988 when he claimed to have seen secret documents while in the Navy describing governmental dealings with extraterrestrial aliens, a topic he expanded on in Behold a Pale Horse.[6] (By one account he served as a "low level clerk" in the Navy, and as such would not have had the security clearance needed to access classified documents.[12]) UFOlogists later asserted that some of the material that Cooper claimed to have seen in naval intelligence documents was actually plagiarized verbatim from their research—including several items that the UFOlogists had fabricated as pranks.[13] Don Ecker of UFO Magazine ran a series of exposés on Cooper in 1990.[14]

Cooper linked the Illuminati with his beliefs that extraterrestrials were secretly involved with the US government, but later retracted these claims. He accused Dwight D. Eisenhower of negotiating a treaty with extraterrestrials in 1954, then establishing an inner circle of Illuminati to manage relations with them and keep their presence a secret from the general public. Cooper believed that aliens "manipulated and/or ruled the human race through various secret societies, religions, magic, witchcraft, and the occult", and that even the Illuminati were unknowingly being manipulated by them.[6]

Cooper described the Illuminati as a secret international organization, controlled by the Bilderberg Group, that conspired with the Knights of Columbus, Masons, Skull and Bones, and other organizations. Its ultimate goal, he said, was the establishment of a New World Order. According to Cooper the Illuminati conspirators not only invented alien threats for their own gain, but actively conspired with extraterrestrials to take over the world.[6] Cooper believed that James Forrestal's fatal fall from a window on the sixteenth floor of Bethesda Hospital was connected to the alleged secret committee Majestic-12, and that JASON advisory group scientists reported to an elite group of Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations executive committee members who were high-ranking members of the Illuminati.[2][3]

Cooper also claimed that the Protocols of Zion was actually an Illuminati work, and instructed readers to substitute "Sion" for "Zion", "Illuminati" for "Jews", and "cattle" for "Goyim".[3][15][16]
Kennedy assassination

In Behold a Pale Horse, Cooper asserted that John F. Kennedy was assassinated because he was about to reveal that extraterrestrials were in the process of taking over the Earth. According to a "top secret" video of the assassination that Cooper claimed to have discovered, the driver of Kennedy's limousine, William Greer, used "a gas pressure device developed by aliens from the Trilateral Commission" to shoot the president from the driver's seat.[12] The Zapruder film shows Greer twice turning to look into the back seat of the car; Cooper theorized that Greer first turned to assess Kennedy's status after the external attack, and then to fire the fatal shot. Conspiracy theories implicating Greer reportedly "snowballed" after publication of Behold a Pale Horse.[17] Cooper's video purporting to prove his theory was analyzed by several television stations, according to one source, and was found to be "... a poor-quality fake using chunks of the ... Zapruder film."[12]
Death

As Cooper moved away from the UFOlogy community in the late 1990s and toward the militia and anti-government group subculture, he became convinced that he was being personally targeted by President Bill Clinton and the IRS. In July 1998 he was charged with tax evasion and an arrest warrant was issued but not executed, resulting in his being named a "major fugitive" by the US Marshals Service in 2000.[6]

On November 5, 2001 Apache County sheriff's deputies attempted to arrest Cooper at his Eagar, Arizona home on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and endangerment stemming from earlier disputes with local residents. After an exchange of gunfire during which Cooper shot one of the deputies in the head, Cooper was fatally shot. Federal authorities reported that Cooper had spent years trying to avoid capture on the 1998 tax evasion arrest warrant, and according to a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service, he had vowed that "he would not be taken alive".[1]