New to ufology?

Want to know about some of the more sordid events that have
occurred in this troubled field? Read on . . .

November 22, 2003 will mark the 40th anniversary of one of the darkest days in
American History. Because of that, UFO Magazine wants to start reminding everyone
of this important piece of history NOW....in 2002, so that we can avoid the media
frenzy likely to take place next year. We also want to remind readers just how
easily both facts and minds can get twisted when UFO and conspiracy thinking gets
out of hand. We fervently hope that the real story about this American tragedy
will finally be told. Until then, consider the following another step in clearing
the record, which in the case of the JFK killing has been remorseless skewed by
everyone from UFO charlatans to high level members of the Senate and judiciary.

Another version of the following article appeared in the April and May, 1999
issues of Fortean Times.

On Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, the will of the American people was thwarted by a
murderer's bullet fired from ambush. That date re-enforced the idea that "it can
happen here" and tore away the distinctly American illusion that we all wore
"white hats." This was truly the end of the illusion of innocence for Americans
for the rest of the century.

Vietnam, Watergate, the Senator Frank Hearings on the CIA, the October Surprise,
Iran-Contra, wars and Sept. 11, 2001--the scandals and shock to sensibilities
continued, but the assassination of President Kennedy is viewed as the "jump-gate"
for the end of innocence. No other single act of criminality has produced as many
theories of conspiracy as the assassination of JFK. For 35 years it has produced
more books, talk shows and even Congressional hearings than almost any other
conspiracy subject.

More secret files have been opened, but the public stance of the government is
still holding to the single assassin theory. Not many believe this, of course, but
just 13 years ago another theory was pitched as fact to the world and for several
years it was to create a firestorm unlike what many would have believed. It tied
in not only a government conspiracy to murder a President, but also tied in
several other areas of esoteric research. It included UFOs, the Illuminati, the
Masons, the President's limousine driver, the U.S. Navy and much-much more.

Bill Cooper
BILL COOPER

One major player in this drama, Milton William Cooper, was shot and killed on Nov.
5 of last year. Incredibly, many people still believe the disinformation that he
purveyed--That the Secret Service driver who drove President John F. Kennedy that
day in Dallas fired the fatal head shot into JFK. The first version had him using
a nickel plated .45 caliber automatic pistol, later this was changed to an airgun
firing a pellet filled with toxic shellfish poison. Confused yet?

The genesis of this story actually begins in the dawn of the personal computer
revolution. In late 1985 a young man named Jim Speiser became interested in the
new device that was to take over the world. At that time the internet was
virtually reserved for the real "computer geeks." Everyone else used public
bulletin board services. (BBS)

Almost without exception all BBS's in those early days catered to interest in and
about computers. Speiser had a different idea, one that basically can be credited
with helping put UFOs and other oddities on the internet. Speiser, living in
Fountain Hills, Arizona, decided to operate a bulletin board, but his would be
geared to the paranormal. Beginning on January 1, 1986, the Paranet Bulletin Board
system would set the new computer operating public on its ear.

Speiser attended the MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) symposium in July, 1987, held in
Washington D.C. At that time, the recently released MJ-12 papers were the current
flavor of the month. Suddenly the UFO subject, after years of neglect, had become
respectable. According to Speiser, one of the participants he met there was a very
quiet John Lear. Lear was the son of Lear Jet founder, the "stormy genius" Wm.
Bill Lear. What made John Lear an exciting addition to this gathering of the UFO
faithful was his biography as a pilot and former contract employee of the Central
Intelligence Agency. Holding every airman certificate issued by the FAA, winning
numerous speed records in the Lear Jet, flying for a CIA contract airline during
the Vietnam War, Lear, in a very low key way, brought a level of excitement and
desperately needed respectability to the UFO field.

John Lear
JOHN LEAR

In December, 1987 Lear called up Jim Speiser and informed him of a paper he had
just written. He sent a copy to Speiser and asked him if he would upload it to the
Paranet BBS system. He also warned Speiser "If you don't get a call from the Air
Force Office of Special Investigations upon transmitting the letter, I will buy
you dinner at Caesar's Palace." Speiser did not get a call from the Air Force, but
perhaps he should have. The Lear document was enough to scare hell out of anyone
at first glance.

Dated December 29, 1987 the Lear Paper began this way. "Note to the Press: The
Government of the United States continues to rely on your personal and
professional gullibility to suppress the information contained herein. Your co-
operation over the past 40 years has exceeded our wildest expectations and we
salute you!" After this small tidbit Lear proceeded with "...we must face the
shocking facts. The "horrible truth" the government has been hiding from us over
40 years. Unfortunately, the "horrible truth" is far more horrible than the
government ever imagined."

What was this horrible truth that Lear alleged? He stated that the U.S. Government
formed an unholy alliance with the alien presence, and in exchange for allowing
the aliens to mutilate livestock and the occasional human, and to abduct
unsuspecting humans, the aliens provided advanced alien technology to the U.S.
There was quite a bit more to the document.

By this time the MJ-12 papers were general knowledge throughout the UFO community.
Lear included the MJ-12 Group as the all-around governing body keeping its eye on
the alien presence. According to Lear, MJ-12 at first thought they made a good
deal but as several more crashed "saucers" were retrieved, MJ-12 "found out" that
the aliens were implanting 3mm devices in the nasal cavity of abductees. The
aliens were also "programming" abductees to carry out post- hypnotic instructions
at some point in the future, that some abducted humans were being "used as
biological material" and food sources. Some humans were murdered by the aliens
because they presented a "threat" to alien activity, and last but not least, the
aliens were conducting genetic experiments on humans and using human females to
"cross-breed" alien-human hybrids.

Later Lear was to explain that he became interested in the UFO subject after
speaking to several U.S. Air Force friends who had witnessed a UFO landing at the
British/American base at Bentwaters-Woodbridge in 1980. He claimed that prior to
this he never had an interest in the subject, although his father, William Lear,
is on record as believing that UFOs were interplanetary. But with this released
document now on the nation-wide BBS system, and soon to circle the globe, the
circus was gearing up and the UFO research community was taking a nose dive into
sensationalism-- and what is now called the darkside. This is the beginning of
what promised to be years of disinformation and factionalism that still divides
the UFO field and its researchers.

Soon on Paranet and then on the CompuServe Information Network Lear was being
questioned by computer users all over the United States. When this writer was
first exposed to the Lear paper after it appeared on Paranet, I telephoned Lear
and spoke to him for several hours. Within a few days he sent me a large package
of his material to support his hypothesis. Included in the package was a video
tape with a number of programs which included Linda Howe's documentary on cattle
mutilations and a Japanese astronomer's video of a "disc" overflying the lunar
surface.

One point that Lear stated as truth was the "fact" that these aliens were residing
in underground bases. Two areas pinpointed were near Dulce, New Mexico and Area 51
in Nevada. Later in 1988, Lear sent me newsclippings of a military project that
was in the process of developing an earth penetrating nuclear missile which
publicly was to "take out" Soviet underground command structures, but which Lear
claimed was actually a defense measure to destroy the alien bases. The plot was
thickening, but now he was coming under very intense questioning by not only
computer users, but others in the research field.

As the year of 1988 moved along, Lear began to garner lots of publicity. George
Knapp, an investigative journalist with KLAS-TV, Channel 8, in Las Vegas, had Lear
guest on his weekly television program. Lear also was being interviewed by various
newspapers in the western and south-western part of the U.S. in regards to his
hypothesis. He had been garnering quite a bit of notoriety.

George Knapp
GEORGE KNAPP

Now we must introduce two more individuals to this story.

In 1986, Lars C. Hansson, a investigative journalist with years of interest in the

JFK assassination, met with two men named Perry Adams and David Evans. Adams and
Evans had been working on a theory that the assassin who fired the fatal head shot
into Kennedy had been Kennedy's own limousine driver, Secret Service Agent William
Greer. At first incredulous, Hansson helped Adams and Evans attempt to enhance a
copy of the Zapruder film. The film was already a fourth or fifth generation copy.
They "washed the color" out of this copy in an attempt to enhance the contrasts.
After proceeding to view the tape, they were amazed that just at the moment
Kennedy was hit in the head, slamming his body back and to the side, what appeared
to look like a pistol flashed by the Secret Service passenger, Roy Kellerman with
the arm "holding the gun" by driver William Greer.

Lars C. Hansson
LARS C. HANSSON

Looking for financing to extend their research, Hansson read about Lear and his
UFO interest in a newspaper article. Thinking that Lear was heir to the Lear
fortune, Hansson gave a copy of the videotape to him in the hope that he would
assist in financing their research. Hansson and Adams and Evans had rented a
production studio to clean up the tape, and placed titles and narration on it by
Hansson. Now called "The Truth Betrayed, Dallas Revisted," the video was very
compelling at first view.
The last character to enter this story in 1988 is Bill Cooper. All during 1988,
Lear was coming under increasing questioning and even in some cases "attack" on
Paranet and CompuServe. Members of the UFO research community were also quite
divided over his paper. There were a number of errors in Lear's paper that people
picked up on, such as calling the crucifixion site where Christ died the "Mount of
Olives" instead of Calvary. It was to later come out that much of Lear's
information about the weirder aspects of his paper came from one "Paul Bennewitz,"
a name that would figure greatly into the overall "disinforming of ufology."

Cooper showed up on Paranet in the summer of 1988 with a story about a sighting he
had while serving as a U.S. Navy sailor onboard a submarine, the USS Tiru, in
1966. The file, called Tiru-1.UFO created quite a stir. The Paranet administrator,
Jim Speiser, was very complimentary of Cooper bringing this to the attention of
the user base. Cooper allied himself with Lear stating that from his own "insider
knowledge", he could VERIFY 50 percent of Lear's hypothesis. Later, Cooper claimed
Lear was 150 percent correct.

Just several days after uploading the submarine story, Cooper re-surfaced on
Paranet claiming that he had been "fired" from his $75,000 a year job because of
the release of his UFO information and having spoken with UFO researcher Stanton
Friedman. Then, over the next two months he began uploading a number of files
dealing with the "top secret" UFO information he claimed to have been privy to
while in the U.S. Navy service. Cooper also took a very intense and supportive
role in regards to Lear and his information.

In Cooper's WARNING.PPB file, he claimed to have held a Top Secret SI Clearance,

and said that after leaving the Navy he had remained involved in intelligence work
until 1980. In these early files he used the same code words and project names
that William Moore and Jaime Shandera did in their MJ-12 release. It was only in
the very late part of 1988 that Cooper began to change and vary these names and
claim that Moore and Shandera were "agents of disinformation."

In October of 1988, a much awaited television program aired in a two-hour special.

It was called "UFO Cover-up Live" and was hosted by television star Mike Farrell.
William Moore and Jaime Shandera appeared in this broadcast in reference to MJ-12,
and included were interviews with two alleged government intelligence officers
identified as FALCON and CONDOR. These two unnamed men were electronically altered
to conceal their identities. However, what they had to say was quite inflammatory.
They claimed that there WAS an extraterrestrial presence on earth, and some E.T.
aliens were "guests" of the American government. After this broadcast, and over
the next several days, Cooper uploaded (through this author) his new position
paper, in which he totally reversed all his previous positions. Much later, Cooper
claimed he was "testing" the UFO researchers knowledge by using the incorrect code
names earlier.

In November of 1988, I was invited to Las Vegas by John Lear to see and hear him
address the Association of Former Intelligence Officers chapter in Las Vegas about
his UFO hypothesis. I had already visited his home to view much of his material.
Prior to his speech, Lear took me into his den to view a film that would "shake
you up" he said.. Once in his den (which seemed more of a shrine to aviation and
the war--Vietnam and the Middle East) he offered me a drink and proceeded to play
"The Truth Betrayed: Dallas Revisted". At first glance, I was simply amazed to see
what appeared to be the driver suddenly with a gun in his hand as Kennedy is
struck in the head by the fatal gunshot. Lear then went on to tell me that part of
the reason Kennedy was murdered was because he had threatened to "tell the truth
about UFOs, and MJ-12 decided to get rid of him!" Lear played this tape for the
retired intelligence audience the next day, and then asked the audience, "who
among you would have assisted with the assassination if you had been ordered to?"
I was shocked when four members of the audience raised their hands. Women were
among the "volunteers."

I asked Lear where he got the tape, but he remained very coy. He simply said it
was through a contact. It was not until the end of 1989 that I discovered his
contact was Lars Hansson, and by then the damage was done. In October of 1988,
Lear had sent a copy of this tape to Cooper who was soon to appropriate it into
his "dog and pony show" and wow audiences at $15 and $20 per head, while selling
it at $25 to $30 per tape, all the while telling audiences that as a Navy enlisted
man in 1972 he saw secret Navy documents that detailed how this Secret Service
agent killed the President.

As 1988 drew to a close, American ufology was turning into a shambles. A firestorm
had ignited concerning the claims and counterclaims surrounding the MJ-12
documents and the Lear paper. The debate over the legitimacy of both MJ-12 and the
Lear document had often degenerated into little more than name calling and
recriminations.

The "UFO Cover-up-Live" TV program heated up the debate up even more. Shadowy
agents FALCON and CONDOR leaked the "news" that aliens were guests of the U.S.
government. One of the most memorable moments of this broadcast were when "Falcon"
claimed the "grey aliens" liked strawberry ice cream. For his part, Cooper was now
claiming that the MJ-12 documents were a hoax designed to mislead UFO researchers
off into disinformation as to conceal the real UFO information.

On October 26, 1988 in a public position statement on the ParaNet Alpha BBS,
ParaNet founder Jim Speiser issued a public statement that ejected John Lear and
William Cooper from the ParaNet system. The four-page document explained Speiser's
reasons which listed in detail William Cooper's contradictions and obfuscation,
such as: "The documents you are looking for are for the most part labelled TOP
SECRET MAGIC-RESTRICTED DATA"-- Bill Cooper, August 22, 1988. "EVERY DOCUMENT YOU
SEE WHICH USES...'MAGIC' IS A FRAUD!"-- Bill Cooper, October 15, 1988. "The
documents produced by Mr. Moore, et. al., are photographic copies of genuine
documents which were procured at great risk." - Bill Cooper, August 22, 1988. "I
CAN PROVE BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT TO ANYONE THAT MOST OF THE INFORMATION
RELEASED BY WILLIAM MOORE, ET AL...ARE OBVIOUS AND DELIBERATE FORGERIES.".-- Bill
Cooper, October 15, 1988.

Speiser also mentioned a casual user of ParaNet named Jeff Felix who contacted him
to request a meeting. A young man of about 24 years of age met Speiser in a Tempe,
Az. restaurant and proceeded to relay a bizarre tale of being a NSA cryptology
technician, and while "fooling around" on the NSA computer had stumbled across the
Majestic and Aquarius files, "the whole ball of wax!" Several days later, Speiser
had another chat with Felix and asked several questions he had been given by
several people with an intelligence background. Felix failed this simple test but
mentioned something called "Project X-calabur" (sic). Speiser spoke with Cooper,
who told him he had heard of it, but that it was very top secret and he had no
more information on it. Then later that day, Cooper called Speiser back and to
Speiser's surprise told him that Project Excalibur was real, and it was a project
by MJ-12 to extract technology from the aliens. As Speiser was to later say, "My
thinking on Cooper and Felix at this time began to center on the thought that the
two of them were scamming me behind my back. I had visions of having ParaNet
become a home for unwed paranoids."

Not to come out until much later during an interview with John Lear was the fact
that in October, Lear had sent Cooper a large package of information that included
the information that Lear had collected in his research into UFOs. The information
consisted of Lear's paper, writings from "Val Valerian" aka John Grace, a then
U.S.A.F. active duty NCO with a UFO interest. Lear also sent Cooper a copy of a
tape of the John F. Kennedy assassination that Lars Hansson had given him when
Hansson thought that Lear might help finance his JFK research, with the proviso
that Lear not give it out to anyone. This ultimately proved to be catastrophic.

In April of 1989, KLAS television journalist George Knapp presented a multi-part

series on UFOs which shot the TV station's ratings through the roof. In one
segment, Knapp interviewed a man in electronic blackout only identified as
"Dennis" who claimed to have worked at the super-secret Nevada test site known as
"Area 51, "but also in an even more secret site called S-4. What he claimed was so
fantastic that the station was to get calls from all over the world. "Dennis"
claimed he worked on "real flying saucers," alien or ET spaceships. Dennis would
prove to be the enigmatic Bob Lazar, but at the time no one except Knapp and the
security people working for Area 51 knew who he was.

Bob Lazar
ROBERT (BOB) LAZAR

Knapp also did a weekly local show called "On The Record" where he had already
interviewed John Lear. Lear had shown Knapp the "JFK tape," and Knapp had Lear
come back for another show. But this time Bill Cooper also appeared. While on the
air, Knapp asked Lear about the tape and what it appeared to show, and then asked
Cooper if he knew anything about it. Lear later remarked that up to that point
(contrary to what Cooper later claimed) Cooper had never mentioned much of
anything about the tape. However, on this day Cooper said that not only did he
know of it, but had read about it in secret Naval files while he was attached to
the U.S. Navy's Briefing Team in Hawaii!

In Las Vegas at this time a radio program hosted by Billy Goodman aired Monday
through Friday on KVEG radio. Broadcast from a powerhouse 50,000-watt station,
Goodman's show was heard all over the western United States. As more public
interest was displayed on the subject of UFOs, Goodman's program began to take a
decided interest in UFOs. Eventually, both Lear and Cooper appeared on Goodman's
program. The sensational nature of their information further heated public
interest.

In May of 1989, Lear and Cooper were asked to appear on a tabloid television
program, "PM Magazine." The TV crew showed up at Lear's home to interview both
Lear and Cooper. Later, Lear heard Cooper telling the interviewer that while he
was on the Naval briefing team in Hawaii, he saw the "O.H. Krill" documents in
secret files, documents I received from John Lear in his original package of
material in early 1988. I knew that the documents were written by one John Grace,
a then-active duty U.S. Air force NCO who had a UFO interest. The name Krill was
an inside joke taken from a late 1950s case where the U.S. Navy had interviewed a
woman who claimed to channel an alien named Cyrll. Lear and Grace made up the
initials O.H. out of thin air. Grace did not want his name on these papers,
because he was still in the Air Force and did not want adverse publicity. The
actual O.H. Krill papers were only a little over a year old at the time of this
television program, and would have been totally impossible for Cooper to have seen
them in 1972 or 1973.

Lear said, "When I heard Bill tell the interviewer he saw the Krill papers while
he was in the Navy, I motioned him over and asked him, ` what in the hell are you
doing?' He said, ` what do you mean?' I said, ` Bill, John Grace and I did the
Krill papers. We named them after a 1950s case, and we pulled the O.H. out of thin
air.' Well, Cooper insisted he saw them in the Navy. That is when I really began
to wonder about Cooper."
During 1989, John Lear was the state director for Nevada for the Mutual UFO
Network (MUFON). He hosted MUFON's 1989 symposium in Las Vegas, which proved to be
one of the most hotly debated proceedings in MUFON's existence. By June of 1989,
Lear's paper on the "evil grey aliens," Bill Moore and the MJ-12 paper, and now
Coopers twist and spin on both subjects caused rifts throughout all of American
ufology. At the very last minute, Walt Andrus, then International Director of
MUFON, dis-invited John Lear to speak at his own event. Lear as state director had
invited Bill Cooper, Bill English and this writer to all speak about our own
research. Because of the nature of Lear, Cooper and English's papers, MUFON and
Andrus had decided to delete the Sunday event. By Saturday July 1, there was an
open revolt within MUFON. Lear had threatened to take his speakers down the street
to another location, and if he had, most of the conference would have followed
him.

That Saturday an even more outrageous event was in the making. William Moore's
speech ran over two hours in length and had the audience calling for his blood.
Moore admitted that he had worked hand in fist with military intelligence during
the 1980s, in an attempt to "get on the inside" of the military's knowledge on
UFOs. During his speech he admitted participating in the disinforming of Paul
Bennewitz, a civilian UFO investigator. Bennewitz later had to be hospitalised for
severe mental problems. When Moore's talk was complete, he refused to take
questions and rushed from the room, leaving the conference and the proceedings in
turmoil.

During the conference, Lear seemed under severe stress and was mostly
uncommunicative. Later he was to say, "Bill Cooper came to my house on Friday
before the talk and was drinking heavily. He demanded to know who I was working
for. He said he was afraid that either I or someone else was setting him up. The
more he drank, the louder he became and started slamming his hand down on my desk.
His girlfriend was there and I thought she might try to temper him but did
nothing. He then told me that anyone that tried to cross him would regret it. I
moved to the other side of my desk, not sure what he might do. Finally his
girlfriend led him out, and that was the last time I spoke to him until after the
talks on Sunday."

On Sunday July 2, 1989 the "alternative" MUFON event began. Lear spoke first and
then Cooper. By this time, Cooper had refined his talk and for the most part left
the audience in shock. He told them of a vast U.S. government conspiracy that
dwarfed anything before or after. The government had recovered dozens of UFO
crashes and alien pilots, the aliens were abducting people and killing them, etc.;
the U.S. has a "secret" space program where the U.S. and Russians and the aliens
have secret joint bases on Mars and the Moon. Cooper even claimed there were areas
on the Moon with free-standing water and vegetation. "Man can walk on the Moon
with just an airpack," Cooper confidently told the audience. Then Cooper told them
that President Kennedy was murdered by his secret service driver as part of a huge
conspiracy plot-- and he had read all about it in his secret Navy documents!

The next eruptions in 1989 happened close together. In November, Cooper conducted
a lecture at Hollywood High School, where the "Dallas Revisited" tape was the main
draw. About a thousand people attended the event. Cooper was now a regular on the
"Billy Goodman Happening" broadcast out of Las Vegas. George Knapp had completed
another series on UFOs for KLAS-TV and Bob Lazar, the physicist who had worked on
UFOs at Area 51, came out of the closet! This created a firestorm that literally
circled the globe within days.

Billy Goodman
BILLY GOODMAN
Knapp interviewed not only Lazar but John Lear, Whitley Strieber and Stanton
Friedman. Bill Cooper appeared briefly. Within days, Goodman's "Happening" had
Lazar and his very good friend Gene Huff on several times. Suddenly the
"Happening" became a well-known radio program within the U.S. With the appearance
of Lazar and a number of call-ins by Bill Cooper, and Cooper's unqualified
endorsement of Lazar, Cooper's message suddenly hit nation-wide.

Gene Huff
GENE HUFF

This was Cooper's shot at a new occupation. Following the MUFON conference, he
hired an agency that began booking speaking engagements for him. He also met two
men with very strong Hollywood credentials who formed a partnership with him,
movie actor Michael Callan and Callan's very close friend, Douglas Deane. Callan
and Deane heard Cooper on the radio and wanted to meet him. They felt his message
was important and wanted to "package" him the Hollywood way. Callan proceeded to
set up a number of speaking engagements, and the three of them signed a contract
forming Need To Know Productions.

By January 1990, Cooper was one of the hottest tickets on the UFO scene. After his
numerous appearances on the "Billy Goodman Happening," an extravaganza was pushed
with Cooper as the main attraction at the Showboat Hotel in Las Vegas. Cooper was
billed as the "most knowledgeable UFO researcher in the world today!" A production
put on by Michael Callan and Doug Deane, the Cooper presentation catered to the
conspiracy and paranoia then rampant in the UFO field.

Near the end of the lecture the 'Dallas Revisited tape was run. The sound track
with Lars Hansson narrating was cut, and Cooper provided all the "details." He
baldly claimed that John Lear had gotten the tape, but he had no idea where it
originated from. He had searched for it for 17 years. Cooper also mentioned the
"Project Excalibur" device that he claimed to have read about in secret briefing
documents during 1972-73.

During my investigation on Cooper I tracked down this Project Excalibur document

to John Lear, who received it from Bob Lazar in September, 1988. Lear sent a copy
to Cooper in October, 1988. This seemed to be another point to suggest that Cooper
was borrowing other's material and adding it to the overall conspiracy as time
moved along.

During the early months of 1990, George Knapp and management at KLAS-TV decided to
do another UFO special during the "sweeps wars" (where television stations and
networks attempt to outdo one another to garner ratings.) By now, many researchers
and media were asking some very hard questions of Bill Cooper, especially
concerning the Kennedy tape. George Knapp had interviewed John Lear again, and
Lear told the Cooper story involving "O.H.Krill" and how Lear was shocked and
began to wonder if Cooper was for real. Knapp also planned to do another interview
with Bob Lazar and his information. However, a rival TV station had hired private
investigators to follow Knapp and Lazar around and report back anything
questionable. One PI followed Lazar to an illegal brothel where he seemed to have
a relationship with the "Madam." Knapp found out about the rival station, and
convinced Lazar to go public first and report why he was involved with a brothel.
According to Lazar's interview, he knew the Madam and she had hired him to set up
a computer and software for her. Unfortunately for Lazar, Las Vegas was in the
middle of a local political campaign year, and the District Attorney saw an
opportunity to garner some notoriety.

In the interim, Cooper found out about Lear's admission on camera and knew that
Lear and Lazar were friends. Cooper quickly embarked on a pre-emptory strike
against Lear, Lazar, and George Knapp by claiming on his computer BBS that Lazar
had been arrested on drug charges, and that Lear and Knapp were involved.

Lazar has a hobby of working with "jet cars," and would often mention his speed
shop in connection with his own jet vehicle. Cooper, seeing a way to "get back" at
everyone he thought had wronged him, said Lazar, Lear, et. al, were using the shop
as a front to manufacture and deal illegal drugs. This was a complete fabrication,
and at this point I began an investigation and expose on William Cooper.

Lazar's Jet Car

LAZAR'S JET CAR

Lars Hansson had made several phone calls to Cooper asking him to refrain from
showing the "Dallas Revisted" tape, but Cooper refused. Cooper now began to call
Hansson a disinformation agent and government asset. He also claimed John Lear was
an agent, along with Bill Moore, Stanton Friedman, this writer or anyone else who
happened to disagree with him. Hansson confronted Cooper on the "Billy Goodman
Happening" radio show in July of 1990. By this time, I had published my first
expose on Cooper's material when he began leaving late night calls on our
answering machine. I was then contacted by Deane and Callan, who had another facet
to add. Cooper, in an attempt to break his contract with Callan and Deane and keep
all the profits himself, badgered them to release the master tapes to him.

At 4 a.m. on the morning of July 28, 1990, Deane began receiving a series of six
telephone calls from a very drunken William Cooper. Using a series of fake voices,
Cooper threatened Deane's life and personal property if he did not release the
tapes to Cooper. That morning Michael Callan also received a series of calls from
Cooper claiming he had bodyguards looking out for him (Cooper) and that Callan
"better do the right thing and hand over the tapes." Cooper at the time was living
within a few miles of Deane in Arizona. Both Deane and Callan called and reported
this to the police. Deane was concerned, and called a friend to spend the rest of
the night with. Then in his late '60s, Deane had no intention of being there if a
drunk Cooper came to his house.

That morning, Cooper did arrive at Deane's home and Deane's gardener witnessed
Cooper attempt to pry his back door open. Later that day, Deane arrived home and
found all four tires slashed on his second car.

Shortly afterwards, Cooper distanced himself from the UFO field. He had burned all
bridges in the field, and most of American researchers found his information
unreliable at best or deliberately twisted to support his own paranoid
conspiratorial claims at worst. Time and again, the "driver shooting JFK" tape was
shown to be fraudulent. Cooper had sent one to Japan, where the color was re-added
to it, and again attempted to sell it around the world.Lars Hansson, the man who
originally produced the tape had by now (1990) spent over a year explaining that
the whole thing was an invalid theory. Cooper had been calling for the driver,
William Greer, to be brought before a court of law and charged with murder, not
even knowing that Greer had died in the 1970s. Cooper slandered many very
prominent JFK researchers while pushing this theory, but it was obvious he had
very little investigative experience with the JFK case. In a typically sudden and
arbitrary switch of loyalties, he began to ally himself with the ultra right-wing
militia movement.

Shortly before his death, he was claiming that all UFO cases are actually part of
a vast one-world conspiracy, secret government operations that will end up with
everyone subjugated as slaves under a tyrannical New World Order.

Since the era of confusion and chaos detailed here, the UFO field has continued
suffering from hoaxes, deception and disinformation, but never quite as overt. By
a steady effort and stating truth, perhaps one day the field will be enriched and
supported instead damned and demeaned.
Cooper Meets Violent End

On November 6, 2001 I turned on my computer to check my e-mail and was met with
the headline, "Militia Leader Killed in Shootout." Milton William Cooper, 58, was
killed in a shootout with Arizona police.

I was not surprised by the news. Cooper left UFO research in the very early '90s,
and over the years I had observed his entry into the ultra right-wing "patriot"
movement, his battles fought with other "patriots" within the movement, his
extreme attacks upon the government and ultimately his feud with the IRS. The Feds
filed tax evasion and bank fraud charges against Cooper, and it was only a matter
of time before a confrontation was to take place.

Not long before Cooper was killed, he threatened a local Arizona man with a
handgun for driving too close to his (Cooper's) property. The police were
notified, and they filed a felony warrant. They knew of Cooper's volatile nature,
and in the late hours of November 5 into early hours of November 6, attempted to
lure Cooper out of his home in order to serve the warrant. Cooper responded with a
gun, shooting a police officer in the head. That victim survived.

Cooper was not so lucky. The police returned fire, killing him instantly. Cooper's
story is ended, but his type of thinking and those who buy into it go on.
D.E.
The article came from UFO Magazine, Volume 17, Number 01, February/March 2002. Los
Angeles, California, USA
UFO Magazine's website is at: http://www.ufomag.com
Don Ecker
Director of Research
UFO Magazine
Los Angeles, Ca. USA