The world will always remember Bill Cooper as an egotistic paranoia monger. Indeed, to many he was an arrogant, obnoxious, choleric, self-aggrandizing, rude, vitriolic and vengeful person.
Perhaps he was all of this and much more. But no matter how negative his personality is described to be, we must admit the fact that he did indeed make a tremendous impact among hundreds, if not, thousands of his listeners, whether in front of his astounded lecture audiences or through his “shocking” radio programs.
I first met Bill back in 1989 in West L.A. when he was just an unknown speaker and where he spoke for the first time at a gathering called UFORUM. I was quite stunned then with his hypothesis on the Secret Government. It really sounded so fresh at that time because unlike most UFO speakers of that time he convincingly injected “UFOs” to a “one-world government” right-wing flavored conspiracy theory. I was so impacted by his hypothesis that I became a volunteer and helped him organize his first successful major public appearance that same year, which was held at Hollywood High School. That became the historic launching pad for his national lecture circuit. And the rest is history.
Later, in December of that year, I even attended the controversial National MUFON Conference held in Las Vegas in which Bill Cooper was perhaps the most controversial speaker aside from John Lear and Bill Moore and others. The Bill Cooper of then was very much into ufology, it seemed. Even in 1991 when Gary Schultz and I organized the first Ultimate Seminar in Rachel, Nevada (25 miles north of Area 51), we were surprised to see Bill Cooper as an attendee. I remember quite well when we lead the people to the White Sides hill for a climb to see the base, Bill Cooper could not make the climb due to his leg and he was even cracking up jokes about it.
In 1993 Bill Cooper, Eustace Mullins, Jordan Maxwell, Vladmir Terziski, Dr. Robert Strecker, Anthony Hilder, a couple of other conspiracy speakers and myself were all invited to speak at the First International Conference on Global Deception to be held in the famous Wembley Arena in London. Because of concerns for security due to the controversial nature of the conference, the bulk of us decided not to travel to England. Nevertheless, Bill Cooper had the guts to go and speak at the conference. I admired him for that.
By 1993 I had completely abandoned the so-called “extraterrestrial hypothesis” of the origins of the so-called UFO phenomena and began to promote the hypothesis that the entire UFO phenomena was a brilliantly concocted, staged and manipulated man-made deception by elitists to bring about certain agendas. I completely disassociated myself with “ufology”. I was quite surprised to learn that, later on, Bill Cooper also began to depart from “ufology” and was also beginning to hypothesize that the “UFOs” had nothing to do with “aliens” but was a manipulation of the government to bring about fear to create a one-world government. Cooper began to admit that he most likely had been shown disinformation by the government while he was in the service. On this point, I truly commended Cooper for his admission. Cooper began to state that he was not a ufologist. It was Cooper who coined the term “ufoology” and I also commended him for it. However, Cooper had a tendency to label anyone that didn’t agree with him as “agents of CIA”, etc.
After moving to Arizona, he shifted his focus to the Patriot Movement (the militia movement), although in reality he was just a one-man militia, simply promoting his view on the Constitutional Republic through his radio programs to thousands of listeners.
Besides his other numerous negative traits, Cooper had an uncontrollable alcoholic problem. But despite his eccentric, obnoxious personality, deep in his heart I believe that he wanted to be a good person. Unfortunately he brought an end to his tumultuous life by his self-fulfilled prophecy through his violent act. My heart goes out to Annie and the children. But my heart goes out just as much to Deputy Marinez, at the young age of 40, who was shot by Cooper and who is still in a critical condition. Even if the Deputy should recover, he will most likely live the rest of his life with brain damage and paralysis. I feel so sorry for the Deputy’s wife and his children. Cooper will have to answer to God for his actions, no doubt.. May we all learn from this tragedy.
Norio Hayakawa
Retired from—Civilian Intelligence Network