Let’s Go Luna: Behold a Pale Horse pp. 222-239

 When we last left off, a proper post that is, we discussed the weird aside that Cooper takes on the JFK assassination. It appears, almost out of nowhere, in a chapter about aliens. The very gossamer connective tissue is that Cooper claims Kennedy took the presidency, found out about the aliens, then threatened to reveal everything in a year. This was not acceptable to the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) nor the JASON Project, so they had the president assassinated. 

Cooper is going to jump around time more than he usually does. The first thing he brings up is Moonbase Luna. This is a stupid name for it. “Moonbase Moon” is how that translates. Cooper claims he has pictures, but he never shows them to us (I’m willing to leave room for the possibility that they do appear in the print version of the book). Luna is run by the world conspirators, whomeet “on a nuclear submarine beneath the polar icecap.” 

Ok, I’ll give him a point for this one. If you want to hold a secret meeting without the possibility of anyone dropping in, this is a good place to do it. The trouble is that within Cooper’s own conspiracy theory, this is dumb. Earlier, in the same paragraph, he claims that the people who make up the governance committee are the 39 delegates of the executive committee of the Bilderberg Group. The Bilderberg group meets once a year and is invite-only; why not just have the meet there? The same people are in attendance. 

At this point, we know why Cooper is over-complicating the conspiracy theory: because the more layers he can put between the claim and the proof makes it nearly impossible to fact-check it. People who attend Bilderberg are public. Concrete claims about them can be easily refuted. This wouldn’t work, because of course people like Henry Kissinger would deny the existence of a moon base. Yet the attendees all denying that there was a talk of a moonbase would seem a little too coincidental. So even in the ultra-secret conspiracy cabal meeting of the Bilderberg Group–they have to ship out to submarine and dive under the arctic ice to speak about Luna. 

The rest of this page (we still haven’t left page 222) is technobabble about imaginary space vehicles held in Nevada. This is where Cooper begins making claims from two different times simultaneously. He discusses both Eisenhower and the 80s. If we remember, Eisenhower was the one who started Majestic 12 and provided all of the funding. Cooper isn’t adding anything new to this story, he’s just rehashing the stuff we already know. He makes some reference to Executive Orders and their number system because there is an alleged EO 92447 forming Majestic 12, which is absurd. After all, Biden just signed EO 14114 five days ago (12-22-23). This means that MJ-12 is a fraud…but wait, he’s been saying that it’s real this whole time. So what gives? 

Well, this is where the jumping begins to make sense. I’ve mentioned it before and the excellent biography of Cooper “Pale Horse Rider” stresses the point that Cooper was an asshole to work with. Cooper has to leverage a discrediting of the UFOlogy claims because they essentially kicked him out of the club. Cooper’s eye turns to UFOlogy expert Stanton Friedman. Friedman’s biggest claim to fame in skeptic circles is that he threw doubts on the liar Robert Lazar’s claim that he worked at Area 51 and the super duper secret base underneath Area 51. Cooper also throws shade on John Lear and Bruce Maccabee; two other big names in the UFO community. 

In this, I am aligned with Cooper against the common enemy of wishful thinking by UFO people. However, we are not allies, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend usually. Stanton Friedman was grounded enough to call obvious bullshit when it conflicted too much with the established UFO lore. Cooper’s claims for each person, along with some others that I had not heard of, is that they are all government agents. Philip Klass, a UFO debunker, was a CIA plant, and Cooper knows this because he saw the documents in 1970 and 1973 when Cooper was in the Navy. The others, privately admitted to Cooper that they worked for the government. 

I’m covering a lot of pages this week. Much more than usual, but that’s because this chapter is so petty. From 225-233, the majority of the content is Cooper taking petty shots at everyone in the UFO community. Interspersed are a variety of conspiracy claims concerning drugs, AIDS, Prozac, and some other mind-control devices. These conspiracy claims are interesting, but they are very short asides that are definitely the product of stream-of-consciousness writing and an author who is too attached to a perception of his own brilliance to delete anything. I almost feel bad, but I don’t know how to cover his attacks on fellow UFO researchers without it degenerating into gossip, and the varied conspiracy claims are too brief to warrant any attention. An editor would have done wonders for this book. 

Cooper returns to coherence at the conclusion. There are five points: 

1) is that the Earth is going to self-destruct and that is why MJ-12 exists. They believe they are doing the right thing. 

2) The power structure really in charge of the world is a joint operation between humans and aliens. I’m guessing this is all in pursuit of point 1. 

3) The government has been totally deceived and we are being manipulated by an alien power, which will result in the total enslavement and/or destruction of the human race. We must use any and every means available to prevent this from happening. I quote this in full because it runs in opposition to 1 and 2. Aren’t the aliens helping us? 

4) Or none of this is happening and what truly is, is so advanced that we cannot comprehend it. We’re not educated enough to understand it.

5) Or this is all bullshit and Cooper is being used. The claim here is that MJ-12 and all of it is a distraction so that people look for it while the one world government takes over. The weird thing is that Cooper claims he has proof of this, he’s included it in the appendix. In the appendix, there isn’t such evidence. The appendix is Cooper’s service record from the Navy, some photos of UFOs (very bad ones), and some long documents about UFOs. Nothing that would constitute evidence that Cooper is being used to discredit the conspiracy movement or distract people from the one-world government. 

The chapter ends with a quote from Reagan where he tells Gorbachev “we’d forget all the little local differences that we have between our two countries and we would find out once and for all that we really are all human beings on this Earth.”

I would have agreed with us, but people like Cooper couldn’t set aside their bullshit during the pandemic so even if the saucer people invaded. I don’t think we would suddenly get along. 

Interlude: Behold a Pale Horse

It’s the time of year when the snow is falling, or it should be, and the days are going to be getting a little longer as the solstice approaches. This also means that my semester has ended and there is plenty of cleanup to do. 

For new people: I am a lecturer in the Philosophy department at SUNY Geneseo. My semester just ended, I have three classes, two of which need to be taken care of by the end of the week. All in all, this is a very short post to say, there is no content this week because of it. I was hoping to get through this chapter of Cooper, but that will have to wait until next week. 

For those of you who celebrate: Happy Honda Days. For those of you who don’t: have a Merry Toyota-thon. And for you, orthodox weirdoes: Happy Lexus December to Remember Sales Event. 

Kennedy: Behold a Pale Horse pp. 217-223

Last week Cooper was droning about the aliens and in between the section we covered he introduced his theory about the Kennedy assassination. Then after a few pages, he went right back into his conspiracy theory about the UFOs. I’ve been saying this for a while now, but Cooper needed an editor. Keep the Majestic 12 conspiracy in its own thing, and place the tangents somewhere else. Perhaps, he could have devoted a chapter to the Kennedy assassination, when this book comes out Oliver Stone’s movie would have been in the cultural Zeitgeist. An entire chapter detailing his own theory might have gotten him coverage on a newsmagazine show. 

Kennedy is a weird figure in right-wing extremist circles. They tend to lionize him even though he was their opponent during his presidency. They claimed he was soft on Communism because he had discussions with Khrushchev. One of the John Birch Society’s central conspiracy theories was that the civil rights movement was a Soviet Plot to undermine “Real America (read that as: White America);” and Kennedy was a supporter of the civil rights movement. He was also, famously, Catholic and while it seems odd today–Catholic is the wrong kind of Christian for these people. However, a lucky break on a third shot from a Marine Sharpshooter erased all of the sins of President Kennedy. Follow the assassination with the disastrous war in Vietnam, then Watergate, and it starts to look like the government doesn’t have the citizens’ best interest in mind. 

All of that being a prelude: the Kennedy stuff doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s just odd that it is such an important event for conspiracy theorists that four-ish pages aren’t enough. By burying his theory in the Majestic chapter we should understand the theory is connected to the alien invasion. 

Cooper writes, “At some point, President Kennedy discovered the portions of the truth concerning the drugs and the aliens. President Kennedy assured them that if they did not clean up the drug problem, he would.“

Once again (not for this book but in all of the conspiracy books I’ve covered so far), we have a problem of internal conspiratorial consistency. The CFR (or whoever the name is irrelevant) is using the drugs to fund the alien program, but they also control the elections and everything else. If President Kennedy was not going to play ball they could have prevented him from being elected. Instead, he gets elected in 1961 and at some point in 1962 he finds out (we know this because Cooper tells us that he was going to reveal the aliens to the US within a year), so they have him killed in public with Oswald as a patsy. 

This is irresponsible of the conspirators. Kennedy had a series of health complications. He suffered from two endocrine conditions (Addison’s disease and hypothyroidism) as well as chronic back issues. His health was bad enough that only a cocktail of drugs kept him functioning when the back condition was severe enough. If the conspirators wanted him dead, a public assassination is just stupid. 

But, you might ask, don’t they need to send a message? No. 

Who would that message be for? The next president who gets into office because of the assassination? He would know already what happened. Kennedy could have died in numerous amount of ways, the only thing that the public shooting did was raise suspicions. 

Kennedy was not a member of the CFR, Cooper really stresses this information. Again, conspiracy theorists must stress that Kennedy was an outlier. No one can become president without the Illuminati’s permission, except Kennedy (and contemporarily Trump). We do know that Kennedy was not a member of the CFR because that membership roll is public. However, Kennedy’s father had direct connections to Britain and Nevill Chamberlain (so much so that it was the reason “Umbrella Man” was doing his thing the moment Kennedy was shot); which, in anyone else, would be a damning relationship. 

So, who did it? Not Majestic or the CFR, but who specifically? I always appreciate a unique conspiracy theory. The Illuminati controls Taylor Swift/Katy Perry/Lady Gaga/Britney Spears/etc. yawn. The CIA killed Kennedy with a shot from the grassy knoll? Boring. At least the X-Files but the shooter in the sewer. Here, Cooper gives us a good one:

“President John F. Kennedy was murdered by the Secret Service agent who drove his car in the motorcade and the act is plainly visible in the Zapruder Film. WATCH THE DRIVER AND NOT KENNEDY WHEN YOU VIEW THE FILM.”

Cooper’s claim is that William Greer, the driver, turned around and shot Kennedy in the head. There are many problems with this theory, but it’s different, I’ll give Cooper that. 

The most obvious problem is that it is implausible to the point of impossibility. As a philosopher, I cannot call something impossible unless it contains an inherent contradiction, but this is close. The main issue lies in the film Cooper gives us instructions on how to order from him–The Zapruder film. 

Kennedy is on the passenger side of the limo, and Greer is on the driver’s side (obviously). Cooper’s claim is that Greer turns around and fires a gun (he doesn’t tell us what kind of gun here) at Kennedy which then impacts the back right part of Kennedy’s skull…–the part exactly opposite of Greer. Does Greer have a literal magic bullet? Is he using the gun from the Fifth Element? This shot is physically impossible. 

Two pages later Cooper, still talking about the conspiracy theory, is now airing his grievances of an internal conspiracy schism between himself, Lars Hanson, and John Lear (of Lear jet fame). It’s just petty bullshit about who found what first and this only matters only because it is illustrative of why Cooper was exiled from the UFOlogy/conspiracy circuit. He became too difficult to work with, and here he accuses Lear, Hanson, another man named Grodin, and Leslie Watkins of all being CIA operatives involved in the coverup. 

This aside about Kennedy ends with Cooper discussing his invitation to the nightly tabloid shows “Hard Copy” and “Inside Editions” to discuss his theories. In both cases, the segments never aired. The former, Cooper claims is the result of executive interference from the network while the latter he claims to have turned down. I’ll buy the former before I’ll buy the latter. 

Even if, as Cooper puts it he was being set up by these CIA operatives to be made to look like a fool on national TV, a guy like Cooper would still love the exposure. I’m quite skeptical of this story. 

Then, this whole thing just stops. Cooper challenges anyone to debate him, provided it is in front of a live audience, on his Greer theory. After this, it’s right back into alien minutiae. 

My main problem, to reiterate, is that this could be and should be its own chapter. Cooper’s had two-page chapters already in this book, so it would not be out of place. The theory itself is just odd and however Cooper came up with it, ignores where everyone is sitting. I would like more explanation for how this theory works, perhaps we will get it in a later chapter. 

Non-Sequitor: Behold a Pale Horse pp. 216-218, 222-225

Last week, we covered the three alternatives that JASON suggested to the ruling elites to save the Earth from environmental catastrophe due to overpopulation. The three alternatives were: underground cities (ala Dr. Strangelove), fleeing into space, or blowing a hole in the atmosphere to let the heat out (like in Spaceballs…kind of). I cut the article short because Cooper settles on a strange combination of the two. The third was rejected, not because it’s implausible to him but because it’s objective. We would know if this had happened. Because open nuclear weapons testing had been banned and Starfish Prime had already been detonated which did not blast a hole in the atmosphere–Cooper cannot pretend that this is an actual solution. 

I actually cut the article short because his combination of the two solutions was to accept that a plague was used to get the population down to manageable numbers. Cooper writes, “It was decided BY THE ELITE that since the population must be reduced and controlled, it would be in the best interest of the human race to rid ourselves of the undesirable elements of our society. Specific targeted populations include BLACKS, HISPANICS, and HOMOSEXUALS.“

This claim is familiar to me: it’s AIDS denialism. Cooper is parroting the conspiracy theory, pushed by the USSR in “Operation Infektion” that AIDS was used by the US to get rid of populations of African-Americans and homosexuals. I was rather excited because I know quite a bit about this conspiracy theory, and its Russian origin. It’s quite an interesting tale because the USSR exploited the African American and homosexual populations’ already (very earned) mistrust of the government to push this theory. There are videos of Reagan’s press secretary making fun of a reporter on two separate occasions for asking what the White House response was to an emerging disease. 

I had a whole thing planned here: and then I began reading this week’s section. Cooper has this annoying bit where he introduces topics and then immediately drops them. In the above-quoted section,  Cooper hints at it. He mentions AIDS then writes, “The joint US and Soviet leadership dismissed Alternative 1 (the nuclear solution) but ordered work to begin in Alternatives 2 and 3 virtually at the same time.“

And…that’s it. He’s done and moving on to something else. It’s a bit frustrating because I’m not spending 1k words on three sentences. It also breaks the internal consistency of the entire chapter. Last week was about needing to reduce the population because of resources and climate change, here those exact same solutions are because the population needs to be controlled. 

The next several paragraphs are about drugs. Conspiracy theorists have a weird relationship with drugs. They have all of this “evidence” that X controls the drug trade, and they condemn it, but it seems like they ought to be in favor of total legalization. Cooper, this time (because I’m sure there will be others), indicts George H.W. Bush as being the architect of drug smuggling from South America. He has no basis for this other than the company Bush had been CEO of, also used offshore drilling. That’s it, that is the connection. From here Cooper claims Bush was the one who sold the drugs to children, which is an old canard used to demonize drug dealers; but I am curious as to how many times this actually occurred. A dealer is going to sell to whoever has the money, but children do not usually have money. 

Then Cooper returns to space and how at the very same time Kennedy announced the Moon shot, the US and USSR already had a base on the Moon. I’d be interested in seeing a version of this book that either edits out all of Cooper’s little asides or collects them into their own chapters like Nietzsche’s aphorisms in Beyond Good and Evil. Cooper attempts to link the drug trade with the space program by claiming that the drugs funded the space program. Yet Cooper has got his chronology all wrong. The space program, in Cooper’s version, would have a base on the Moon by 1962. This means that work on it would have started before the CIA was even a thing, and while Bush was still recovering from being shot down and almost killed by the Imperial Japanese army. 

Cooper spends some time on Kennedy, five pages on the assassination to be exact, and I’ll discuss them next week because Cooper has a unique theory on the assassination. 

If we skip forward to page 222 we are back to space. Remember, this chapter is supposed to be about Majestic 12 and aliens. We’ve covered it a bit, but Cooper needs to focus. If we remember, one of the solutions was to flee Earth using alien technology. The problem of consistency comes back because the aliens specifically told us that we needed to solve this problem on our own. Nevertheless, we built the Moon base which is creatively named “Luna.” Cooper claimed that he has pictures of this base and here would be a great time to insert them–but he does not. He describes the base with domes, spires, and large T-shaped mining vehicles. His description sounds like the cover of an “Amazing Fantasy” pulp magazine and I’m assuming that’s where his description comes from unless he provides the photographs. The only evidence that Cooper provides is a reference to pictures in Fred Steckling’s book, “We Discovered Alien Bases on the Moon.” An image search for the book provides blurry pictures where a primed brain through pareidolia will find things that look like structures if you squint hard enough.

What Cooper seems to know is that he never needs to provide the evidence–he just needs to claim that he has it. Of course, he cannot release it, “they” would never allow such a thing. Because Cooper’s worldview has these people as all-knowing and all-powerful it makes sense that we would never be allowed to see these photos–unless you own a copy of the 1981 book. The entire section ends with Cooper referencing the interview with the guy from chapter 11 while Cooper discusses Nixon and Watergate. It’s profoundly uninteresting. Nixon’s impeachment was for the purpose of furthering the alien coverup, a claim that makes little sense.

Because we jumped around, I will explain where we are for the next two posts. Next week I’ll cover 218-222–which is Cooper’s bizarre JFK assassination theory. After that, we’ll go to page 225 and discuss the UFO community infighting that Cooper brings up in order to slander Stanton Friedman.