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  "map_content": "The Granddaddy of American Conspiracy Theorists\nEven a broken clock is right twice a day; that\u2019s what they say about people who are supposed to be crackpots. It\u2019s the idea that there is a moment in time when even the most outlandish contention, the most eccentric point of view, the most unlikely person, somehow lines up with shifting reality to produce, however fleetingly, what many perceive to be the truth.\nBut to accept the notion of the \u201cbroken clock\u201d is to embrace the established, rationalist parameters of time, 24 hours a day, day after day, years arranged in ascending numerical order, decade after decade, eon upon eon, a forever forward march to an undetermined future, world without end, amen.\nFor some people, people like the late Milton William (Bill) Cooper, collector of clocks, time did not work that way. American shortwave talk\u2010show host, author, and lecturer during the millennial period of the late 1980s onward to the advent of the current century, Bill Cooper chose not to adhere to the mandated linear passage of existence. For Cooper, the entire span of time \u2014 the beginning, the middle, and the end \u2014 was all equally important, but there could be no doubt where the clock had stopped. A minute to midnight, that was Bill Cooper\u2019s time.\nThis wasn\u2019t because Cooper, a voracious reader and self\u2010schooled savant, was anti\u2010science or anti\u2010intellectual. He believed in evolution and, like his philosophical hero Aristotle, Cooper treasured the supremacy of knowledge and its acquisition. He had a massive collection of jazz records. But somewhere along the way, dating at least back to his service as river-boat captain in a hot zone during the Vietnam War, Cooper came to believe that something wasn\u2019t right. What he\u2019d always accepted as truth, what he was willing to give his life to protect, wasn\u2019t true at all. It was part of a vast web of lies that stretched back through the centuries, contrived to rob the common man of his unalienable right to know the reality of his place on the planet. It was a deep-seated conviction that became an obsession \u2014 and a potent bridge to the current environment, where no one seems to believe anything they\u2019re told, where long-respected bastions of truth are thought to be so corrupt as to be what Donald Trump calls \u201cthe enemy of the people.\u201d The idea of \u201cfake news,\u201d along with personages like Alex Jones and QAnon (notably influenced by Cooper) are not unprecedented in American life. But none of them would have manifested as they have without Bill Cooper as an immediate predecessor.\nEditor\u2019s picks\nCooper sought to dramatize the compounding urgency of the moment on The Hour of the Time, the radio program he broadcast from 1992 until November 2001, his resonant, sometimes folksy, sometimes fulminating voice filling the airwaves via satellite hookups and shortwave frequencies. Nearly every episode of The Hour of the Time began the same way, with the show\u2019s singular opening, one of the most arresting sign\u2010ons in radio history. It starts with a blaring air\u2010raid siren, a blast in the night. This is followed by a loud, distorted electronic voice: \u201cLights out!\u201d comes the command, as if issued from a penitentiary guard tower. \u201cLights out for The Hour of the Time!\u2026Lights out for the curfew of your body, soul, and mind.\u201d Dogs bark, people shriek, the bleat of the still half\u2010sleeping multitudes. There is the sound of tramping jackbooted feet, growing louder, closing in.\nNow is the time, a minute to midnight, 60 seconds before enslavement, one last chance. Some citizens will rise, if only from not-quite\u2010yet\u2010atrophied muscle memory. They will shake themselves awake as their forebears once did at Lexington and Concord, heeding Paul Revere\u2019s immortal call. They will defend their homes, families, and the last shreds of the tattered Constitution, the most close\u2010to\u2010perfect political document ever produced.\nThe vast majority, however, won\u2019t even get out of bed. Some will cower under the covers, but most will simply roll over and go back to sleep. They slept through life, so why not sleep through death?\nThis is how it will be at a minute to midnight, according to Bill Cooper. At the End of Time, a broken clock is always right.\nReputed instances of Cooper\u2019s prescience are legion. An early roundup of these forecasts can be found in the August 15th, 1990, edition of the newsletter of the Citizens Agency for Joint Intelligence (CAJI), an organization Cooper created, billing it as \u201cthe largest private intelligence\u2010gathering agency in the world.\u201d Published on a dot-matrix printer, carrying the tagline \u201cInformation, not money, will be the power of the nineties,\u201d Cooper ran an article entitled \u201cEvery Prediction Has Come True.\u201d He listed 16 of his most recent prognostications that had come to pass \u201cor will soon be fulfilled.\u201d\nSee Also\nThese included the disclosure that \u201cthe CIA and the military are bringing drugs into the United States to finance their black projects.\u201d Cooper also predicted that \u201cthe rape of the Savings and Loans by the CIA is only the tip of the iceberg. At least 600 banks will go under in the next two years.\u201d The current monetary structure, Cooper said, \u201cwill be replaced by a cashless system that will allow the government to monitor our every action by computer. If you attempt to stay out of the system you will not be allowed to buy, sell, work, get medical care, or anything else we all take for granted.\u201d\nCooper continued to make predictions in his watershed book, Behold a Pale Horse. Published in 1991 by Light Technology, a small New Age\u2013oriented house then located in Sedona, Arizona, Behold a Pale Horse is something of a publishing miracle. With an initial press run of 3,500 (500 hardcover, 3,000 paperback), by the end of 2017, the book was closing in on 300,000 copies sold.\n\u201cBehold a Pale Horse is the biggest\u2010selling underground book of all time,\u201d Cooper often told his audience. Yet sales figures represent only a fraction of the book\u2019s true reach. For one thing, as its author often bragged, Behold a Pale Horse routinely topped lists of the most\u2010shoplifted books in the country. To this day, Barnes & Noble stores keep BAPH, as it is sometimes called, behind the cashier\u2019s counter to reduce pilferage. This was because, as one clerk at the Barnes & Noble near my house in Brooklyn told me, \u201cthat book has a habit of walking out all by itself.\u201d\nThere is also the captive audience. Since its release, Behold a Pale Horse has been among the most popular \u201cprison books\u201d (in that prisoners read them), a distinction it shares with Robert Greene\u2019s The 48 Laws of Power. During the crack epidemic of the 1990s, it was not unusual for a single copy of Behold a Pale Horse to go through enough hands in the cellblocks of places such as Attica to break the book\u2019s spine.\nSome of Cooper\u2019s best\u2010known predictions appear in Behold a Pale Horse, which runs a densely typed 500 pages. Eight years before the Trench Coat Mafia murders at Columbine High School, Cooper wrote: \u201cThe sharp increase of prescriptions of psychoactive drugs like Prozac and Ritalin to younger and younger children will inevitably lead to a rash of horrific school shootings.\u201d These incidents, he said, \u201cwill be used by elements of the federal government as an excuse to infringe upon the citizenry\u2019s Second Amendment rights.\u201d\nFor many, including those who would later claim that the seemingly endless series of school shootings were part of a plot by gun\u2010control advocates to take away America\u2019s weapons, Cooper\u2019s words took on the air of prophesy.\nBut Bill Cooper never claimed to be a prophet. He never imagined himself in the line of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel, the ancient Hebrew seers carried off by King Nebuchadnezzar II to a 70\u2010year captivity in Babylon. Neither did Cooper compare himself to John, an exile on the island of Patmos, author of the Book of Revelation, which is where the title Behold a Pale Horse comes from. The phrase appears in chapter 6, verse 8, in which John is witness to the opening of the Seven Seals, the preview of God\u2019s secret plan to once again destroy the world prior to its rebirth as the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.\nWhen the Fourth Seal was revealed, John wrote, \u201cAnd I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.\u201d\n\u201cI am no Prophet, I am no Nostradamus, I have no crystal ball,\u201d Cooper proclaimed. He was \u201cjust an ordinary guy.\u201d There was nothing supernatural about his predictions. Anyone could do it. It was all in the methodology, summed up in what he called his \u201cstandard admonition,\u201d the one rule every prospective Hour of the Time listener had to obey, \u201cno matter what.\u201d\n\u201cYou must not believe anything you hear on this show,\u201d Cooper declared. Nor was the listener to believe anything they heard from any other shortwave host, \u201cor Larry King Live, Dan Rather, George Bush, Bill Clinton, or anyone else in this entire world, whether you hear it on radio, on television, or from the lips of someone standing right in front of you.\n\u201cListen to everyone, read everything, believe nothing until you, yourself, can prove it with your own research,\u201d Cooper told the audience. \u201cOnly free\u2010thinking, intelligent people who are prepared to root through all the crap and get at the truth should be listening to this show. Everyone else should just turn off their radio. We don\u2019t even want you to listen.\n\u201cListen to everyone. Read everything, believe nothing . . . until you can prove to yourself whether it is true or false or lies between the many shades of gray. If you don\u2019t do this, if you cannot do this, or are just plain too lazy to do this, then I can assure you that you will march into the New World Order as a docile slave.\u201d\nThen Cooper made the sound of a sheep. \u201cBaaa! Baaa! Baaaing all the way.\u201d\nCooper\u2019s most famous prediction was made during the June 28th, 2001, broadcast of The Hour of the Time. A little past his 58th birthday and drinking heavily, Cooper was doing his program from a studio he\u2019d built in the den of his house at 96 North Clearview Circle, atop a hill in the small White Mountains town of Eagar, Arizona, 15 miles from the New Mexico line.\n\u201cCan you believe what you have been seeing on CNN today, ladies and gentlemen?\u201d Cooper asked the Hour of the Time audience that evening.\n\u201cSupposedly, a CNN reporter found Osama bin Laden, took a television camera crew with him, and interviewed him and his top leadership, lieutenants, and his colonels, and generals\u2026in their hideout!\n\u201cNow don\u2019t you think that\u2019s kind of strange, folks?\u201d Cooper asked with his signature chuckle. \u201cBecause the largest intelligence apparatus in the world, with the biggest budget in the history of world, has been looking for Osama bin Laden for years, and years, and years, and can\u2019t find him!\n\u201cBut some doofus jerk\u2010off reporter with his little camera crew waltzes right into his secret hideout and interviews him!\u201d\nThis meant one of two things, Cooper told the audience. Either \u201ceveryone in the intelligence community and all the intelligence agencies of the United States government are blithering idiots and incompetent fools, or they\u2019re lying to us.\u201d\nThe fact was, Cooper told the audience, no one in the U.S. intelligence services was really looking for Osama bin Laden. They knew where he was. They had since the beginning of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Bin Laden, along with his entire family, was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Central Intelligence Agency.\n\u201cThey created him. They\u2019re the ones funding him. They supported him to make their new utopian worlds\u2026and he has served them well.\u201d There were rumors floating around the mass media that bin Laden was planning attacks on the United States and Israel, but this was just subterfuge, Cooper said. \u201cIf Osama bin Laden is an enemy of Israel, don\u2019t you think the Mossad would have taken care of that a long time ago?\u201d Cooper asked.\nSomething else was in the wind. There was no other reason for the government to allow the CNN report but to further stamp bin Laden\u2019s bearded, pointy face upon the collective American mind\u2010set. Bogeyman of the moment, the Saudi prince was being readied for his close\u2010up.\n\u201cI\u2019m telling you to be prepared for a major attack!\u201d Cooper declared. The target would be a large American city.\n\u201cSomething terrible is going to happen in this country. And whatever is going to happen they\u2019re going to blame on Osama bin Laden. Don\u2019t you even believe it.\u201d\nTwo and a half months later, on September 11th, 2001, after two commercial airliners flew into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in a cataclysm that killed 2,996 people, including 343 New York City Fire Department personnel, Cooper\u2019s prediction came to pass.\nBy the time Cooper got on the air that morning, the towers had already fallen. Several hours passed before the name Osama bin Laden surfaced on the BBC feed Cooper was monitoring. The British station, which Cooper regarded as marginally more reliable than the American networks, was doing an interview with the former Israeli Prime Minister General Ehud Barak and Richard Perle, chairman of George W. Bush\u2019s Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee.\nWidely known as the Prince of Darkness, in part for his Reagan\u2010era support of Edward Teller\u2019s $100 billion Strategic Defense Initiative, known as Star Wars, Perle said the attacks on New York and Washington were \u201cclearly an act of war.\u201d\n\u201cAll our Western civilization is under attack,\u201d Barak put in. The interviewer asked Perle if he thought the United States would be justified in firing cruise missiles at Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. Perle, who along with fellow neocons Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld would soon push hard for the reinvasion of Iraq, answered in the affirmative.\nThe Afghani authorities had \u201callowed Osama bin Laden to operate in their territory,\u201d Perle said. That alone was reason enough for a military strike. Bin Laden was involved, no doubt about it. Yes, Barak agreed, there was \u201cevery reason to believe\u201d bin Laden was behind the attack.\nIt was then Cooper interrupted the transmission, shouting, \u201cHow do they know who did it?\n\u201cIf the United States government had no warning like they say, if they didn\u2019t know who was going to mount these attacks, and there are no survivors from the people in these planes, how do they know Osama bin Laden is behind it?\u201d\nSo, yet again, Cooper was right. Events were transpiring exactly as his research had indicated. Osama bin Laden, the Saudi mama\u2019s\u2010boy prince, was about to be officially blamed for the most spectacular foreign attack on America since Pearl Harbor.\nNot that Cooper was gloating about his latest successful prediction. What had happened in New York City \u2014 thousands dead, their bodies crushed beneath tons of twisted rubble, a toxic cloud rising over the metropolis \u2014 was just the beginning of a new torrent of death. On the radio feed, Perle and Barak were discussing logistics; Afghanistan would be a target, possibly, Iraq as well.\n\u201cHow can they determine that they should bomb Afghanistan?\u201d Cooper shouted with alarm. \u201cWho are we going to be bombing? The terrorists, or the innocent people of Kabul?\u201d\nCooper made another prediction. \u201cFolks, I can assure you that 72 hours from now we will be at war. We will be bombing two or maybe three countries\u2026.Because that\u2019s how it works. When governments are attacked, they lash out. Thousands of people who had nothing whatsoever to do with what is happening at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are going to die.\n\u201cNothing will be the same after today,\u201d Cooper said grimly.\n\u201cGet ready for it, folks, because that\u2019s what you\u2019re going to be hearing in the next weeks and months on radio and television: Nothing will be the same after today\u2026.Because I\u2019ll tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that\u2019s what the people who really did this want you to think, that nothing, nothing, will be the same after today.\n\u201cAnd you know what? They\u2019re right. They\u2019re telling the truth about that. Within weeks the Congress will pass draconian legislation aimed at restricting the rights of American citizens. You\u2019re going to have surveillance cameras on every street corner. You think your phones are being tapped now, just wait.\n\u201cNo one is going to gain from this except a very small group of people. Everyone else will lose. No one will lose more than the American people.\u201d This would be the most grievous casualty of the 9/11 attacks, Cooper told the audience, the nation itself, the America that could have been.\nFreedom, the most elusive of qualities, best distilled in the inspired documents of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, had been dealt a fatal blow: \u201cFrom now on, freedom will be whatever the law allows you to do.\u201d\nThat wasn\u2019t going to stop him, Cooper told listeners. He\u2019d stay behind his microphone up in his hilltop studio. He\u2019d keep sending out The Hour of the Time, speaking truth to the ultimate power, if it was the last thing he did.\nIt was soon after that Cooper\u2019s final prediction came true.\n\u201cThey\u2019re going to kill me, ladies and gentlemen,\u201d he told the audience. \u201cThey\u2019re going to come up here in the middle of the night, and shoot me dead, right on my doorstep.\u201d\nAnd, around midnight on November 5th, 2001, less than two months after the 9/11 attacks, that\u2019s exactly what happened.\nAdapted from Pale Horse Rider: William Cooper, the Rise of Conspiracy, and the Fall of Trust in America (Blue Rider Press) by Mark Jacobson, to be published September 4th, 2018. All rights reserved.",
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