Behold a Pale Horse

Front cover of Behold a Pale Horse, depicting Bellerophon riding Pegasus toward the sun. Beneath Pegasus is Death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, atop his pale horse.

Some dare call it Conspiracy

What THEY don't want you to know!

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“”[It] has the look of a scrapbook kept by a not too tightly wrapped mind.

—Michael Barkun, author of A Culture of Conspiracy

Behold a Pale Horse (ISBN 9781519691101) is a book written by conspiracy theorist William Cooper in 1991. The book was purportedly a manifesto for the militia movement at around the time that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were tried for mass murder in the Oklahoma City bombing. It is still popular among the credulous, who will regularly pay $200 to $300 on Ebay for an unsigned/unremarkable copy even though it is widely available at public libraries, can be bought cheaply, and be downloaded free from the Internet Archive. Subsequent editions of the book deleted the antisemitic Chapter 15, possibly because Cooper's heir(s) and/or publisher were too embarrassed to keep publishing it but still wanted to own a cash cow. The missing chapter apparently makes the earlier edition more valuable for kooks and antisemites. The original and only publisher of the book is Light Technology Publishing, which is owned by Melody O'Ryin Swanson, who channels under the name 'Vywamus'. This was despite Cooper hating channellers, and anything associated with 'light' extraterrestrials.

The book is a dreary and disjointed read.^{[citation NOT needed]} You will however find exhortations to do your own research throughout the book, all the while Cooper is showing you a map to crazy-land in case you get lost and wind up in reality-land.

Behold a Pale Horse begins with a quote from the Bible (Revelation 6:8), from which the title of the book comes. The quote refers to death, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ("…behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death."). The second quote is by a 'Delamer Duverus' — real name: Edward Aloysius Roberts (1910–1986) — an antisemitic conspiracy theorist and ufologist who was a publisher of the American Sunbeam in Springdale, Arkansas.

Introduction

The introduction peculiarly begins with one anonymous page referring to the author in the third person, then immediately goes into three pages by Cooper.

Foreword

This is thirty pages about Cooper's family and his autobiography. In the autobiography, he alleges second-hand knowledge of UFO abductions during his tour of duty in Vietnam, the existence of a One world government/New World Order (NWO), and that John F. Kennedy had been accidentally shot by a Secret Service Agent. Cooper weaves in various conspiracy theory elements, assassination attempts, and death threats against himself.

Cooper defensively and fallaciously (friend argument) claims that he is not racist because his wife is Chinese and that "most of my close friends and acquaintances consider themselves to be liberal democrats." Belying this however, he reprints the debunked antisemitic tract Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Chapter 15), which smears both Jews and liberals for society's ills.

Each of the 17 chapters and the appendices have the page footers marked as "Top Secret", but whatever few documents might have been top secret were declassified before Cooper published them.

Chapter 1: Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars

This chapter consists of excerpts of a document allegedly obtained from the purchase of a surplus photocopier in 1986. The document was allegedly dated 1979, and is allegedly a technical manual from the Bilderberg Group, a frequent target of conspiracy theorists. The writing style, however is not particularly professional ("Welcome Aboard…). Duverus either obtained the original copy or more likely fabricated the whole thing. Among conspiracy theorists, there has been some speculation about the actual author, including Cooper, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski (suggested by "Joan d'Arc", ex-editor of the conspiracy theory magazine Paranoia), and convicted felon Hartford Van Dyke (conspiracy and counterfeiting), who wrote a confessional letter to Paranoia magazine. Van Dyke claimed to have been influenced by Nobel Prize winner in economics Wassily W. Leontief. Van Dyke is also the author of a conspiracist self-published book on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and pseudolaw. The internet version of Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars includes peculiar electrical-circuitry-type diagrams, but Cooper's version does not contain any illustrations. Given that there is really no clear chain of custody of the document, it remains unclear who was the fabricator.

The main premise of the document is the absurd idea that socioeconomic interactions function just like electricity and the same physics formulas and circuit diagrams used to explain electricity can be used for economics. If this were actually true, economists would have by now found out about this 'brilliant' discovery and have begun using it in their publications (since this book has been publicly and widely available for 33 years).

Chapter 2: Secret Societies and the New World Order

In this chapter, Cooper attempts to weave together various organizations and secret societies with little to no evidence: Brotherhood of the Snake, New World Order, Maitreya, and Gnosticism (that Plato was initiated inside the Great Pyramid of Egypt).

Chapter 3: Oath of Initiation of an Unidentified Secret Order

This short chapter claims to be taken from "A mother who states that her son took this oath (who must remain unidentified) and Congressional Record — House, 1913, p. 3216". The oath is in fact reproduced verbatim from the Congressional Record, but Cooper did not give any of the full context. It was entered into the record by Champ Clark, then-Speaker of the House as evidence of anti-Catholic bigotry and a conspiracy of forgery perpetrated by supporters of a candidate in a Pennsylvania election for Congress (between Eugene C. Bonniwell and Thomas S. Butler). The forged document purports to be an over-the-top Knights of Columbus oath for total war against Protestants and Masons ("… I do further promise and declare that I will, when opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly and openly, against all heretics, Protestants, and Masons, as I am directed to do, to extirpate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex, nor condition, and that I will hang, burn, waste, boil, flay, strangle, and bury alive these infamous heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women, and crush their infants' heads against the walls in order to annihilate forever their execrable race. …")

Though the Congressional Record entry clearly states that it was intended to be perceived as coming from the Knights of Columbus, Cooper claims that based on the wording of the oath alone (and no evidence) that it may have been from from the Jesuits or the Knights of Malta.

Chapter 4: Secret Treaty of Verona

The subtitle of this chapter is "Precedent and Positive Proof of Conspiracy from Congressional Record — Senate, 1916, p. 6781 and The American Diplomatic Code, Vol. 2, 1778-1884, Elliott, p. 179", and Cooper quotes both documents without commentary. The 1822 Treaty of Verona or Congress of Verona was part of a series of congresses following the Napoleonic Wars, which instituted a balance of power within Europe (Concert of Europe). The treaty was entered into the Congressional Record by Senator Robert Latham Owen, in support of his argument for women's suffrage. Secret treaties were common in 18^th- and 19^th-century Europe, but have become rare with the rise of democratic states.

Cooper misquotes the title of the treaty in the Congressional Record as "American Diplomatic Code, 1778-1884". The actual title in the Congressional Record is "Secret Treaty of Verona", with an immediately preceding citation of "American Diplomatic Code, 1778-1884, vol. 2; Elliott, p. 179" as the source. In other words, Cooper seems to be falsely implying that the treaty was a part of the American Diplomatic Code, whereas it was only referenced there. Note: Owen, himself misquoted the title as "…1778-1884"; the actual date range is 1778-1834. The book is primarily just a compilation of known treaties, published by historian Jonathan Elliot.

Chapter 5: Good-bye USA, Hello New World Order

Cooper claims that the US has been under martial law since 1863 when Abraham Lincoln declared it during the Civil War. This is despite the 1866 Supreme Court ruling that the declaration was unconstitutional in Ex parte Milligan (which Cooper does not mention). Cooper raises concerns about the large number of secretive presidential national security directives, particularly since the Ronald Reagan administration. Cooper was not alone in this particular concern, as it is a reasonable one, for example Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists has raised concerns about the excessive secrecy of national security directives. Cooper then refers indirectly to Rex 84, a Reagan administration scenario developed with Oliver North to implement martial law should there be widespread opposition to a hypothetical invasion of Central America.

Cooper then describes Mount Weather, a federal relocation center run by FEMA. A government relocation center is perhaps a sane thing to have should the Russkies ever decide to nuke Washington, D.C. Cooper claims personal knowledge that Mount Weather holds "dossiers on at least 100,000 Americans", whom he calls 'patriots'. He then claims that these 100,000 patriots (members of the patriot movement, a descendant of the John Birch Society) will be easily rounded up on a holiday, most likely a Thanksgiving after being stuffed like turkeys and boozed up like rum cakes. Thus will begin martial law (even though it started in 1863) and the New World Order. Cooper then claims that because of an executive order by Richard Nixon, FEMA (created post-Nixon) can suspend the Constitution for any reason at all. He claims that because he cannot find any plans for restoring the Constitution, it will not be restored. This ignores the fact that martial law (suspension of habeas corpus) has been declared multiple times in US history and has been terminated multiple times. Furthermore the use of martial law has been limited several times by court decisions, as well as by the Posse Comitatus Act.

Chapter 6: H.R. 4079 and FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency

Cooper continues his paranoid never-get-caught-at-home-during-holidays rant… was he a paid shill of travel agents? He starts the chapter out with:

“”Patriots and tax protesters: You must never be found at home on any holiday. Your life depends upon how well you can obey that rule.

H.R. 4079 of 1990, the National Drug and Crime Emergency Act, was introduced by Newt Gingrich, of all people, and died in committee. The bill was still being considered as Cooper wrote the book, but not by the time the book was published — never mind!

The Act, which never became law, did spell out limitations to habeas corpus that went beyond those in the US Constitution, primarily by expanding the war clause to include the so-called War on Drugs and by details set forth by segregationist Strom Thurmond in Section 152, the "Strom Thurmond Habeas Corpus Reform Initiative". Even if the bill had become law (not very likely since Bill Clinton was president at the time and the bill was basically a Republican wish list), it would have faced some serious constitutional challenges as has been the case for most other non-wartime abridgements of habeas corpus.

Chapter 7: Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, H.R. 5210, P. L. 100-690

This chapter is subtitled "Preparation for the Police State, An Analysis" and focuses on the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. Cooper at one point seems confused about whether he's referencing some draft of the legislation (H.R. 5210) or the legislation that actually passed (Pub. L. 100-690). He also does not seem to understand that legislation cannot ultimately contravene the Constitution (specifically the Fourth Amendment and Article 3 in the case of this chapter), though it may take some time and legal wrangling to prove that legislation is unconstitutional. Cooper's main concern with this law is that somehow things were snuck into it (both unrelated amendments, i.e., normal earmarks or pork. and language that allegedly enabled warrantless searches and eliminated trial by jury. While warrantless searches has been a real concern in the US, this law is not actually significant in that issue. Cooper is also concerned about a 'World Currency Control' section (which sounds NWOish, but it's actually called 'International currency transaction reporting', section 4701). The law that actually initiated reporting of bank transactions above $10,000 was the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970.

Cooper then goes on to claim that because the law asked for a study on the relationship between mental illness and substance abuse, it would lead to increases in involuntary commitment to mental institutions and to mind control, just like the Soviet NKVD. Cooper concludes that the law "has nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with the IRS." This is sad and ironic considering Cooper's own paranoia, conspiracist thought patterns, and his stupid death (shooting at the police while having an open tax-evasion warrant before being shot to death by the police).

Cooper concludes the chapter by warning that because the law recommends establishing an international criminal court (Section 4108), the US would relinquish its sovereignty and the New World Order would be established. The International Criminal Court was established in 1998 and came into force in 2002, As of 2024, the US still seems to be sovereign.

Chapter 8: Are the Sheep Ready to Shear?

In this short chapter, Cooper tried to panic his sheep by relying on fellow-conspiracy theorist Gary North's analysis of Oklahoma House Bill 1750 from 1989. The claim was that the bill would have allowed tax assessors to enter people's houses to assess property taxes, and ultimately lead to the elimination of private property, a police state, and the NWO.

While the bill contained language to that effect that tax assessors could enter people's houses, it was always the case in Oklahoma that assessors could enter people's homes for such purposes. HB 1750, however required that assessors received homeowners' permission or to obtain a court-ordered search warrant before entering their houses. Since statehood, it had never been the case that a tax assessor had entered a home for the purposes of assessment. The crankery surrounding the bill caused such a national furor that the legislature passed a different law to restrict the power of tax assessors.

Chapter 9: Anatomy of an Alliance

The subtitle of this chapter is "The Logic for the New World Order: The Glue That Binds the Alliance of Power and the Consequences". Cooper likely misattributed a quote to Edmund Burke ("All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.").

This chapter builds up the Unified conspiracy theory, attempting to unite a variety of disparate entities or imagined entities (Illuminati, aliens, Bilderberg Group, Club of Rome, and Jesuits) as being being responsible for nefarious types of population control: starting wars and creating AIDS.

Cooper claims that AIDS (HIV) was spread to "'undesirable' elements of society" ("black, Hispanic, and homosexual populations") as a means of depopulation, and that it was spread via the smallpox vaccine in Africa and via the Hepatitis B vaccine among gay men. The reality is that the transmission of the AIDS virus has a known history (that was not fully fleshed out until some time after Cooper's death). The first known transmission to humans was via a chimpanzee in the 1920s in central Africa, and the earliest known US death from AIDS was in 1969. While AIDS has been a devastating disease, it is no longer an automatic death sentence for those people with access to anti-retroviral drugs, and while it is still killing people, it is not causing 'depopulation'.

Cooper claims that convicted war criminal William Calley was actually a scapegoat.

Cooper dismisses some of the things that fellow-kook Bo Gritz was promoting, but nonetheless recommends "that we support his efforts"

Cooper claims that US tobacco crops were fertilized with "radioactive tailings from uranium mines" and thus caused an increase in cancer by misinterpreting both cancer statistics and radiation (which is basically everywhere in small amounts or greater). Tobacco does indeed contain radioactive elements, and it is true that phosphogypsum, a waste product from uranium mining, is processed into a fertilizer, There are many carcinogens in burned tobacco, and radiation is not particularly significant compared to all of the carcinogens in tobacco.

Cooper then goes on to make a bunch of unfounded or just plain stupid claims about a variety of substances (malathion, dioxin, radioactive elements). He claims that people ate "more salt, fat, cholesterol and everything else" 80 years prior, but heart disease was rare then: never mind that medical diagnosis was less rigorous and that people did not live as long back then. He cites fellow-kook Eva Snead as an authority about San Francisco Bay Area having the highest cancer rates in the US, never mind that it's not true.

Cooper claims that "The Protocols of Sion" are authentic, though it was demonstrated to be a forgery before Cooper was even born. Cooper's feeble defense of The Protocols is contained in all editions, even the ones that had the chapter excised.

Cooper repeats the idiotic idea that "Patriots must not be at home on any national holiday…"

Chapter 10: Lessons from Lithuania

Cooper begins this short chapter on guns by reasonably-enough quoting the Second Amendment and Patrick Henry. He then concedes that he could do no better in defending the Second Amendment than by quoting Neal Knox's letter, "Lessons from Lithuania". Knox contends in his letter that Mikhail Gorbachev was able to order the seizure of arms in Lithuania on March 22, 1990 because Lithuania had no Second Amendment and because Lithuanians had been required to register their guns, concluding that it would be bad for Americans to register their guns. The irony of this is despite the lack of Second Amendment and despite the seizure order, Lithuania became fully independent of the Eastern Bloc later in 1990 after Lithuanians defeated Soviet troops without using weapons.

It is also ironic that while Knox was one of the hardline leaders who pushed out the moderates from controlling the NRA in 1991, Knox himself was ousted from power in 1997, and beginning in 2015, Russia corrupted the NRA.

Chapter 11: Coup de Grace

The subtitle for this chapter is "Treason Committed by the Joint Chiefs: Phone Conversation with Randall Terpstra". Cooper presents the transcript of a longwinded phone conversation with Terpstra: Who was Terpstra and so what?

Chapter 12: The Secret Government

This chapter is subtitled, "The Origin, Identity, and Purpose of MJ-12", and begins with a misattributed quote that implies that a Pope saw a UFO or had an alien encounter:

“”The signs are increasing. The lights in the sky will appear red, blue, green, rapidly. Someone is coming from very far and wants to meet the people of the Earth. Meetings have already taken place. But those who have really seen have been silent.

The quote is attributed to Pope John XXII in 1935, but John XXII lived from 1244-1334. Pope John XXIII lived from 1881-1963, but was only pope from 1958 onward. The English-language quote apparently derives from a collection of prophecies by John XXII, and was allegedly given during a secret meeting with ufologist George Adamski in 1963. It is highly unlikely that Adamski ever met with the pope, or that the pope would be sympathetic to ufology, which is rather heterodox to Catholicism.

Cooper claims that he attended a MUFON Symposium on July 2,1989. He proclaims, "I firmly believe that if aliens are real, this is the true nature of the Beast."

Cooper later claims that MUFON was infiltrated by the CIA, and in turn that Whitley Strieber is a CIA asset, in order to suppress evidence for alien contacts.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, according to Cooper, was the last president to know the full details of Operation Majestic (MJ-12), that "aliens have manipulated and/or ruled the human race through various secret societies, religions, magic, witchcraft, and the occult. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission are in complete control of the alien technology and are also in complete control of the nation's economy." Cooper's assertions are based on fraudulent documents.

He concludes the chapter with several points:

1. The Earth may self-destruct in the near future. (Not another one!)
2. Aliens are manipulating humans and will result in a One world government.
3. Humans will be enslaved by aliens.
4. Something else unspecified may happen.
5. If none of those happened, then Cooper says he was totally deceived.

Chapter 13: Treason in High Places

The subtitle for this chapter is "The United Nations Treaty and The United Nations Participation Act vs. The Sovereignty of the United States of America".

Cooper attempts to argue that the NWO/relinquishing-of-sovereignty may have already happened because of the United States joining the United Nations. He does this despite acknowledging that the United States has had veto power on the Security Council since the UN's founding. Since all of the Allied Powers from World War II were given veto power on the Security Council, this was a de facto 'new world order' based upon who the primary victors of the war were, but it was certainly not a relinquishment of sovereignty due to the veto power written into the UN charter for the victors.

Closing the chapter, Cooper quotes the entirety of a 1962 letter to the editor published in the News-Herald from the small town of Borger, Texas. The letter is by Marilyn R. Allen, a public racist and anti-communist of minor note: her main claim to infamy was a book titled Alien Minorities and Mongrelization. In 1966, then-California State Controller Alan Cranston wrote an exposé of the John Birch Society, and noted that Allen's book was for sale at JBS bookstore. Cranston quoted a passage from the book showing that it was both racist and antisemitic (promoting the International Jewish conspiracy). Notably, the book is nowadays promoted by a racialist Christian Identity church. Allen had — conveniently for Cooper — kept her racist rants and anti-communist screeds separate as far as is known, so the letter to the editor stays on the anti-communist/anti-UN tack.

Chapter 14: A Proposed Constitutional Model for the Newstates of America

Cooper reprinted "A Proposed Constitutional Model for the Newstates of America" without any commentary except:

“”Prepared Over a 10-Year Period by the Center for Democratic Studies of Santa Barbara, California, at a Total Cost to the United States Taxpayers of Over $25 Million

The actual source of the proposed constitution is the 1974 book The Emerging Constitution by Rexford Tugwell. As such, the chapter was probably a copyright violation by Cooper. It was also a misattribution by Cooper. The book was created by The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, and "was contributed to not only by Senior Fellows of the Center but by may Visiting Fellows during several years." The general structure of the book is regarding the theory and process of constitution making, not how this proposed constitution is going replace the US Constitution, as Cooper presumably feared. There is no evidence that this cost the taxpayer "over $25 million"; publications that are funded by the US government generally require acknowledgement of funding, and this book does not contain such an acknowledgement.

Chapter 15: Protocols of the Elders of Zion

See the main article on this topic: The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion

Cooper reprints here the entire book, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, with only the following additional preface by Cooper:

“”The Protocols of Zion were referred to in the late 1700s. The first copy available to public scrutiny surfaced in the early 1800s. Every aspect of this plan to subjugate the world has since become reality, validating the authenticity of conspiracy. Author's Note: This is an exact reprint of the original text. This has been written intentionally to deceive people. For clear understanding, the word "Zion" should be "Sion"; any reference to "Jews" should be replaced with the word "Illuminati"; and the word "goyim" should be replaced with the word "cattle."

Contrary to Cooper's feeble attempt at the history of the book, the text of the book that now circulates was originally plagiaristically cobbled together from three sources:

1. The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, an 1864 political satire by Maurice Joly that did not mention Jews
2. A chapter from the anti-Semitic 1868 novel Biarritz by Hermann Goedsche
3. Der Judenstaat, an early Zionist tract by Theodor Herzl (1896)

The earliest known publication of The Protocols was when it was serialized in the Russian newspaper Znamya in August–September 1903, though The Protocols was first mentioned in 1902. The Protocols was first exposed as a hoax in 1921.

Cooper tries to hide his antisemitism behind his trying to claim that 'Zion' is not Zion (i.e., Jerusalem or Israel) but 'Sion', and that 'Jews' are not Jews, but 'Illuminati'. 'Sion' is just an alternative transliteration of 'Zion' from the Hebrew 𐤑𐤉𐤅𐤍‎, so Cooper's statement regarding that is pointless. David Icke was later to try a similar ploy to try to hide his antisemitism by claiming that his "shape-shifting lizard-people" were not Jews, and that The Protocols were true but about the Illuminati. The conflating of Jews and Illuminati is not surprising since Illuminati conspiracy theorists do variously believe that Jews, Freemasons and/or Catholics are members of the Illuminati.

The idea that 'goyim' are not goyim, but 'cattle', is similarly a thin disguise for Cooper's antisemitism. Cattle, as is made clear in the Silent Weapons chapter, is a synonym of sheeple. This defamatory conflation has been taken up by neo-Nazis, sometimes claiming that the Yiddish word goyim means cattle, when it actuality it means nations.

The first known criticism of Cooper's inclusion of The Protocols within his book came in 1993 when Cooper's book had only modest sales and was relatively unknown. The criticism was in a short article in Omni magazine that criticized antisemitism within the UFO community. This apparently angered Cooper quite a bit because Omni had been his favorite magazine. Cooper subsequently went on a raged-filled attack on Omni, and began to reveal his anti-semitism.

Belying Cooper's feeble protestation that wasn't antisemitic, Cooper:

1. Erroneously stated that the New York Post and the New York Daily News were "owned by Jews, published by Jews, and edited by Jews".
2. Cast doubt on the number killed during the Holocaust, a form of Holocaust denial, "First it's six million, then four million, then nearly a million."
3. Implied that Jews are immoral, and that they don't care about other genocides.
4. Described the gray aliens as having "huge hooked noses that came out of their head to a bump."
5. Provided line drawings for Linda Moulton Howe's book An Alien Harvest that depicted the gray aliens as having big noses.
6. Falsely claimed that the B'nai B'rith is "not a Jewish organization at all but rather a branch of the Illuminati."

Chapter 16: The Story of Jonathan May

Cooper presents the case of another deeply disturbed man, Jonathan May (a.k.a "Jonathan Rex"), originally from England. In a 1990 letter ("Telling Time") to five Congressional Representatives, May presents himself as fighting the Federal Reserve/NWO, claiming as evidence some pseudolaw based on a family document from 1647 indicating that he had a secret trust now worth $1.6 billion. or $152 billion. Cooper believes this horseshit since he presents the entire letter verbatim without any criticism. What Cooper leaves out is that in 1987 May was convicted on four mail fraud counts, "three counts of interstate transportation of forged or counterfeit securities", and "of sending 200 cashier’s checks totaling some $6.5 million to out-of-state associates to buy expensive cars, computer equipment and other goods and services." May could have been sentenced to 50 years in prison and a $1.75 million fine, but he was sentenced to 10 years and no fine because May had no money. May admitted to having fled England after having been convicted of seven crimes.

Chapter 17: Documentation: U.S. Army Intelligence Connection with Satanic Church

Cooper reproduces some documentation:

• An official army letter from several higher-level military officers warning that Lt. Col. Michael A. Aquino is a leader of the Satanic cult Temple of Set (true), which could be problematic for the military.
• A copy of an article from the National Enquirer about Aquino: "Devil Worshipper Holds Sensitve Army Post and Top Army Brass Say 'No Problem'.
• A document ("From PSYOP to MindWar; The Psychology of Victory") written by Col. Paul E. Vallely and (then-Major) Aquino with an unprofessional letterhead ("Headquarters, Imperial Storm trooper Force, Office of the Chief of Staff, MindWar Center Hub Four"). The document sets as its basis a couple of loony pseudoscience concepts: "psychotronics" (parapsychology) and ESP.

Appendices

The appendices are offered essentially without comment, so their exact relevance to the rest of the book is generally unclear.

Appendix A: William Cooper's Military Service Record

This appendix consists of Cooper's army discharge document.

Appendix B: UFOs and Area 51

This appendix consists of:

• An anonymized letter dated June 13, 1987 regarding the author's UFO/Extraterrestrial experiences, including two blurry photos.
• A letter from Gerald Light to Meade Layne dated April 16, 1954 than includes some anti-commie asides, a simple diagram of an 'alien reproduction vehicle', allegedly built by Northrop, two blurry UFO photos, and some satellite images of Area 51.
• An anonymized letter to "Dave" dated April 20, 1980, purportedly from someone who worked at Area 51.
• A message from the Department of Defense regarding UFO sightings that does not say anything about exraterrestrial origin, but does mention the possibility that they are due to stealth aircraft.
• A message from an Air Force commander that defies any obvious relevance.
• A 1978 letter from retired colonel and astronaut L. Gordon Cooper to the ambassador from Grenada describing his UFO sightings and beliefs. The astronaut later wrote an autobiography that expanded on this.
• A 1989 letter from Cooper's friend, Robert J. Swan, testifying that Cooper said that all space flights were accompanied by UFOs and that there was an alien base on the far side of the Moon.
• A section of the 1989 US Code of Federal Regulations (1211) titled "Extraterrestrial Exposure", which if one just reads the section title and not the text might think that the CFR section was about being exposed to extraterrestrial ultrasmart Little Green Men or something. What the text is actually concerned with is the possibility that astronauts could be exposed to extraterrestrial microbes that could cause contagious disease.
• A 1989 report from the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, an open source (non-secretive) branch of the CIA regarding sightings of UFOs in the Soviet Union.
• A bunch of correspondence that proves nothing of particular import.

Appendix C: Alien Implants

See the main article on this topic: RFID

This appendix only consists of three pages:

• A 1-page typescript with no indications of its provenance. It refers to hypnotizing people and implanting information in their nerve complexes using "high frequency microwave emissions". The page also mentions gray aliens.
• A 1990 article about microchipping pets so they can be found again. Cooper's implication is that they're going to do it to people too.
• A 1989 article from The Sun (a fact-deficient British tabloid) titled "Big Brother's Coming! Revealed: Secret plan to tag every man, woman and child" the hyperbolic article claims that everyone in the country (UK) will be microchipped with all their information automatically connected to a government computer, and then enslaved by the government.

Appendix D: AIDS

See the main article on this topic: HIV/AIDS

This section contains only two documents.

• A section of the Congressional Record is reprinted from July 1, 1969 titled "Synthetic Biological Agents", in which the possibility of creating synthetic infectious microorganism is discussed. This is prefaced by Cooper's baseless allegations that the 'AIDS virus' (he means HIV) was synthetic, and that:

“”The World Health Organization started to inject AIDS-laced smallpox vaccine (Vaccina) into over 100 million Africans (population reduction) in 1977. And over 2000 young white male homosexuals (Trojan horse) in 1978 with the hepatitis B vaccine through the Centers for Disease Control/New York Blood Center. And now the AIDS virus is on the streets IN THE DRUGS[.] PLEASE WAKE UP!!

• A 1-paragraph 1990 Los Angeles Times article titled "AIDS Taking Heavy Toll of Children". From the estimates in this article, Cooper deduces that it comes "close to proving that AIDS is transmissible by casual contact and/or insects", something that has been disproven.

Appendix E: New World Order

See the main article on this topic: New World Order

• The title page to the 1798 edition of John Robison's polemic Proofs of a Conspiracy, which accused the Freemasons of being infiltrated by the Illuminati.
• A document purporting to be from September 1, 1973 by the Club of Rome, titled Regionalized And Adaptive Model Of The Global World System: Report on the Progrees in the Strategy for Survival Project written by Eduard Pestel and Mihajlo Mesarovic.} The report is marked as confidential (though it's unclear why it would be given the mundane contents). Also, implausibly, the document is loaded with ALL-CAPS (reminiscent of green ink, but in black), rather unlikely for an international organization.
• A paragraph quoting former-Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion prognosticating a rather utopian and harmonious vision of the future (published in Look, January 16, 1962). Ben-Gurion states, "In Jerusalem, the United Nations (a truly United Nations) will build a Shrine of the Prophets to serve the federated union of all continents; this will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah." From this, Cooper interpreted "world rule from Jerusalem", which does seem to imply that Cooper thought that the NWO would be controlled by Jews in Jerusalem.
• A 1990 photo of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell shaking hands with his counterpart Soviet First Deputy Minister of Defense Michael A. Moiseyev after announcing an agreement to extend a military exchange program until 1992.
• More letters from anonymized or little-known people of no obvious importance.
• A 1963 letter to J. Edgar Hoover from the Director of Naval Intelligence regarding the John F. Kennedy assassination, with no obvious relevance to the purported NWO.
• A snippet of text that states that George H. W. Bush was told that a James Milton Parrott had been talking of killing Kennedy before the assassination took place. Again, so what?
• Cooper reprinted four pages of the 1967 book Report from Iron Mountain by Leonard Lewin. The report was an allegedly secret document coming from the Iron Mountain nuclear bunker.

The book has an amusing publishing history. Initially published in 1967 by Dial Press, it was labelled as non-fiction but the author and publisher refused to answer questions about its authenticity; the book went out of print and was then reprinted without permission in 1980 by the right-wing, antisemitic group Liberty Lobby, claiming that the book was a government document and therefore public domain; Liberty Lobby was sued by Lewin and came to an undisclosed out-of-court settlement. Finally in 1996, Simon & Schuster came out with a new edition, with Lewin stating that the book was fiction and satire. That means that Cooper likely broke copyright law by reprinting four pages without permission, and is using bogus evidence. The book makes the claim "Lasting peace, while not theoretically impossible is probably unattainable; even if it could be achieved, it would almost certainly not be in the best interests of society to achieve it. War was a part of the economy." This was rather obviously a satire on the military-industrial complex and the Vietnam War which was then approaching full-scale.

• Cooper reproduces four pages from a 1918 book published by the Carnegie Institute, The Imperial Japanese Mission.

Appendix F: U.S. Government Drug Involvement

Cooper reproduces two undated newsletters written by Nord Davis, Jr. (1931–1997) Nord was a "patriarch of the racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity religion." Nord alleged that George H. W. Bush was involved in drug dealing and money laundering with CIA asset Manuel Noriega. Nord describes the ways that Noriega and Panama were connected to the Jews and Israel, which appear to be truthful, but coming from an antisemite, he appears to have been trying to insinuate something, particularly as he went on to say that Israel and Egypt are both anti-Christ nations.

Cooper then reproduces four news articles:

1. "Cocaine seized on Air Force Plane" (AP via Orange County Register, November 12, 1989)
2. "Remote island drug prisons part of plan in defense bill" (Los Angeles Daily News, September 19, 1990)
3. "Report links CIA, Pan Am bombing" (Reuters via Orange County Register, November 19, 1989)
4. "Ex-CIA agent says diary referring to Kennedy assassination is hoax" (Reuters via Orange County Register, September 21, 1990)

Mysteriously, the second two articles do not mention drugs, Bush, Noriega or Panama.

Appendix G: Kurzweil vs. Hopkins

This appendix is tangential and seemingly irrelevant to the rest of the book. It consists of legal correspondence relating to a dispute between Stephen J. Kurzweil and ufologist Budd Hopkins. Earlier in the book, Hopkins is briefly mentioned, and Cooper claims that Hopkins is a CIA asset, but there is no earlier mention of Kurzweil.

Foldout chart

The last two pages of the book are unnumbered and consist of a foldout chart titled, "Memorial Edition: The CFR/Trilateral Connection" (referring to the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission). it was created by Johnny Eugene Stewart, founder of "F.R.E.E.", an anti-socialist/anti-NWO of little renown other than being featured in Cooper's book. It is reminiscent of the QAnon map that came much later. The chart however is without all the interconnecting lines between entities of the QAnon map. The chart contains lots of names, some famous, many not so.

Influence

A person claiming to be the Q of QAnon gave an 'intel drop' in 2018 that touted Behold a Pale Horse in 2018.

Many rap musicians (especially those who are members of the Five-Percent Nation) have referenced or been influenced by Behold a Pale Horse, including:

• Big Daddy Kane
• Boogiemonsters
• Busta Rhymes
• CeeLo Green
• Eminem
• Everlast
• Gang Starr
• Goodie Mob
• Immortal Technique
• Jay-Z
• Killah Priest
• LL Cool J
• Lord Allah
• The Lost Children of Babylon
• Miz MAF
• Mobb Deep
• Nas
• Poor Righteous Teachers
• Prodigy
• Public Enemy
• Rakim
• Ras Kass
• Suicideboys
• Talib Kweli (who regretted being influenced by Cooper)
• Tupac Shakur
• Wise Intelligent
• William Cooper (Andrew Kissel)
• Wu-Tang Clan

External links

• Behold a Pale Horse — Cooper reads from his book on his radio show Hour of the Time