Behold A Pail Of Horse Manure

Bill Cooper contre la réalité

Dans le livre de Bill Cooper, Behold a Pale Horse, en haut de la page 216, il indique :

En décembre 1988 j'ai eu une conversation téléphonique durant laquelle j'ai dit à John Lear ce que j'avais vu dans la Marine concernant l'assassinat de Kennedy. Je lui ai dit que les documents Top Secret indiquaient que l'acte était clairement visible dans un film non montré au public. J'ai dis à John que j'avais cherché pendant 16 ans un film qui montrait Greer tirer sur JFK, mais n'en avait pas trouvé. Je fus choqué et agréablement surpris lorsque John me demanda, "Vous voudriez le voir ?". Je répondis, bien sûr, par l'affirmative et John invita Annie et moi chez lui à Las Vegas. Nous passâmes 4 jours avec John. Non seulement il me montra le film mais m'en donna une copie. Je montrais la video chaque fois que je parlais à un groupe de gens. Le film est intitulé Dallas Revisité. John me dit qu'il l'obtint d'une connaissance de la CIA qu'il n'était pas libre de nommer. Je découvris plus tard que l'origine de cette version du film de Zapruder était Lars Hansson. John Lear montrait le film à chaque réunion qu'il faisait .

Pour réponse d'abord à l'insinuation particulièrement farfelue (via Lear) de Cooper : je jure devant Dieu et les hommes, devant tout ce qui est sacré, que je ne suis pas actuellement, ni n'ai jamais été, ni n'envisagerai jamais à aucun moment de devenir un agent de renseignement de quelque sorte que ce soit pour le gouvernement de ce pays ou d'un quelconque autre, ou toute version cachée ou parallèle. Bien au contraire, j'ai travaillé sans relâche et ouvertement pendant plus d'une décennie à exposer publiquement leurs opérations illégales et traîtres. I have ample documented proof of those efforts, as does the Agency, I have little doubt, particularly after the appearance of the article in the San Luis Obispo, Calif., Telegram Tribune in late 1986. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a liar or a government agent himself. Unless Cooper has very good pull with the Agency in order to fabricate such records, there will be found no such employment file anywhere on me, in any capacity, though I have little doubt they have a growing file on me concerning my efforts to expose their depredations.

I am also very proud to say that -- by conscious choice -- I have purposefully not served in any capacity in the U.S. Armed (Corporate Mercenary) Forces or those of any other nation at any time in my life. As the son of a U.S. Marine who later became an NCO in the USAF (I was born in a Naval hospital in Memphis, TN on the Marine Corps anniversary in 1952) I have indeed lived on a number of military bases in different parts of this country and the world, and have traveled extensively since leaving home at 17. However, I was very early on in life put off by the military's swaggering macho bullshit, and early on deduced that warfare and "military defense" are for the most part an absolute waste of the nation's (and the world's) resources. I realized early on that it was also an unnecessary and brutal exploitation of the underprivileged classes by the weapons- manufacturing tyrants and their mindless uniformed henchmen, along with their "advance men" in the shadows -- people like John Lear and the men he works for.

It would be many years later, after majoring in college in American (Diplomatic) History and Journalism, and an extensive study of the history of other nations and of (overt and covert) warfare, that I would come to understand the true reasons for war's propagation -- despite the nauseating propaganda that invariably paves the way -- and the continuing role of international bankers and industrialists in its promotion -- despite the overwhelming popular opposition that is so uniformly misreported and de-emphasized in the corporate media. I have never hesitated to inform any audience of mine, both in print, on the radio, and in public, that I did serve as a deputy sheriff in North Idaho for several months in 1975, and as a seasonal customs/immigration agent in Montana in 1976 and 1978, while I was still young enough and optomistic enough to believe that I could "make a difference" by working through mainstream channels -- but that's it. Neither of those positions had any connection at all to the intelligence community.

In fact, I nearly became involved in an unfair labor practice lawsuit in 1978 against the U.S. Treasury Department in the process. My supervisor had persuaded me to file a complaint with the Treasury Employees' Union attorneys as a result of highly questionable policies to which I was being arbitrarily subjected. Although the complaint never came to court, the union attorneys raised such a stink over the issue that numerous inspectors and agents nationwide were provided redress for related grievances. I was reinstated to my former grade of GS-7 and received back pay, but was thereafter subjected to every form of harassment and intimidation by my supervisor and his bosses.

All of this occurred in the immediate aftermath of the death of my beloved sister -- my best friend in the world -- and the loss of my 40-acre ranch on the Flathead River, and shortly before my divorce from my wife of nearly seven years. I made it very clear to my supervisor in front of all the other officers assembled to hear me get chewed out and threatened into resigning, that he himself had better get down on his knees in his USG-subsidized apartment and pray that he had a job the next week, after I filed an unfair labor practice lawsuit with the union attorneys who were itching for it. I told him that if he wanted to threaten or intimidate anyone, he had better direct his venom against the other chumps -- it was entirely wasted on me.

Years later I would find reaffirmation of this spirit of perseverance in the face of adversity from the most unlikely quarter -- John Lear's pal G. Gordon Liddy, who stated so eloquently upon his release from prison a quote by the philosopher Nietzsche in German: "That which does not destroy me makes me stronger." On his photograph with Lear which is hanging on the wall of Lear's study, Liddy wrote "John, I told 'em fuckin' nothin'..." Liddy should have been kept in prison much, much longer, but I admire his spirit of defiance.

My experience with U.S. Customs, coupled with my academic background in American History and subsequent discoveries about USG covert (i.e. drug and weapons) operations around the globe, convinced me once and for all that I had no desire to continue pursuit of a long-planned career in the U.S. Foreign Service and International Law, nor to continue any involvement -- much less employment -- with any other agency of the U.S. Government.

I find it particularly notable that William Cooper, who claims to have been so unnerved by his discoveries in 1971 while in the Navy that he had to go AWOL for ten days to sort it out, after having his term of service extended by the Navy for a year in punishment, nevertheless chose to continue working for the "intelligence community" from 1975-1980 -- according to his own resume!

When I confronted Cooper on KFI Radio on August 4, 1990 about this fact he claimed that he decided after his exposure to the UFO-related briefing papers in 1971, or was it 1972? or 1973? -- I think he changes the dates every time he's asked -- that he wanted no further involvement with the U.S. Government or intelligence services following his discharge in 1975. Yet in his own resume he lists his "service with the intelligence community from 1975-1980" -- a pure and simple baldfaced lie, however you slice it! In my one meeting with him at his home in Fullerton, California in August 1989, during our two subsequent phone conver- sations in November 1989 and January 1990, and during our joint appearance on KFI Radio, he refused to answer any of my questions as to what his activities were on their behalf.

Cooper has attempted to make a second career for himself exposing "the greatest coverup in human history," denouncing anyone as a CIA agent or an agent of the secret government who has questioned him in any way. I find this very disturbing and believe that anyone who is inclined to take any of Cooper's charges seriously should also demand and receive a detailed answer from him regarding his post-service intelligence-related functions.

Given the Agency's unwillingness to disclose association with anyone, a disavowal from them of Cooper is a virtual certainty. Other than the period I have mentioned earlier, from 1975-1978, I, however, have never at any time since served as an agent, witting or unwitting, of any other organization, in this country or elsewhere, official or otherwise. I wholeheartedly support the work of a number of organizations such as the Christic Institute, Greenpeace, the Center for Action, the Association of National Security Alumni (ANSECA), and a number of others. However, I do not belong to a single organization on earth, nor do I plan to. I neither pay dues nor receive checks from any of them -- period.

I will not hesitate to lay down my life to preserve the America created by our founding fathers -- I have risked it many times, with the scars and bullet holes to prove it -- but not for the corrupt, multi-national corporate thugs, murderers and drug-runners who run the American Fourth Reich.

I am also -- and have never tried to deny it -- the creator of the short video of the Abraham Zapruder film entitled, "The Truth Betrayed: Dallas Revisited," concerning the theory that Secret Service Agent/Presidential limousine chauffeur William Greer turned and fired the fatal head shot at President John F. Kennedy. As I have stated numerous times already, the only reason I made the videotape was that I felt there was enough circumstantial evidence, after consulting with two other long-time researchers of the "theory" who are still convinced that is what actually took place, to warrant looking into it further. Had I been able to prove that Greer did fire at Kennedy, I would be the first person to lead the charge to re-open the investigation on that basis, since Greer's culpability would have ripped the lid off the Lee Harvey Oswald as assassin lie once and for all. If I were as devious and unscrupulous as Bill Cooper, I certainly could have sold thousands of copies of the video myself, but it simply isn't true. Bill Greer did turn around twice to look back at the President, and he did step on the brakes instead of accelerating like a bat out of hell from Dealey Plaza, and for those two undisputed reasons alone, I do certainly believe he was in on the plot to kill Kennedy.

But I don't believe, nor do virtually all other sincere researchers besides Cooper and the two others I mentioned earlier, that Greer fired anything at Kennedy, and the Zapruder film is but one of many proofs of that. God knows, I wish it were actually true that it was Greer who fired the fatal shot -- it would certainly make all of our efforts to get to the truth behind the conspiracy much easier. As convenient as it might be to force that falsehood into our scenarios, I am convinced, however, that it simply didn't happen. I am equally convinced that Bill Cooper could care less what actually happened as long as he can keep milking my videotape and this manufactured conflict between us to keep selling tickets to his events.

I made the video in February 1988 in Santa Barbara, Calif., three months before I first met or spoke with retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Bo Gritz and three months before I had ever even heard of John Lear. I gave Col. Gritz a copy of the video in mid- May 1988 hoping that he could help me secure funds or other technical support through Mr. H. Ross Perot to conduct a thorough, professional forensic/ ballistic investigation of the theory. Gritz was very candid at the outset in informing me that he and Perot were not in close communication at that point, and that I would have to seek another avenue of contact with Perot if I was intent on meeting with him.

Gritz was visibly moved by what the Kennedy videotape purported, but as a veteran of many years of handling all manner of small arms, he quickly noticed as I had that there was no apparent recoil from the alleged weapon, nor any apparent muzzle-blast. I told him that I hoped that obtaining a far better copy of the film than what we began with would clear up that mystery in short order.

Although Cooper claims he read in his supposed Navy briefing papers that the weapon was an electronic device firing a self-propelled exploding projectile loaded with shellfish toxin, I believe that is absolute hogwash. Now that I have pulled part of the underpinning out of his "story," I have heard from some of his supporters that they now believe the weapon employed was now a remotely-triggered weapon on the floor of the vehicle. While it is true that the back seat of the limousine was actually raised hydraulically as high as 10 inches above the others to provide better viewing of the President, and that Greer actually had control of the switch, I believe this new story about some remote-control weapon is also complete B.S., whether Cooper originated the story or not.

I did not give a copy of the JFK videotape to John Lear, but rather gave him the location of the studio where it was produced so that he could acquire one -- to my knowledge he is the only person who has ever done so. I never gave a copy of the Kennedy videotape to Cooper either, nor did I direct him to anyone else to obtain one. I myself have never sold a single copy of the Dallas Revisited JFK videotape to anyone. I made it very clear to both Gritz and Lear from our first meeting onward that I was by no means convinced that the driver had actually fired a weapon, but was intent on obtaining the best copy of the film available and having it analyzed at the best facility available to determine once and for all whether the reflection in question was, in fact, a weapon, or the sunlight bouncing off Agent Roy Kellerman's head. I made it very clear to both of them in November 1988 that I no longer believed there was any validity whatsoever to the driver theory; I showed Gritz much clearer footage proving this in the video studio where I was at work editing his documentary, A Nation Betrayed, at that time, and put Lear in touch with people who could provide the same footage to him.

According to his statements in an audiotaped interview I conducted with John Lear in August 1990, and according to Cooper's own computer bulletin board statement, they actually spoke over the phone in late October 1988. At that time Lear packaged up a number of UFO-related documents and videos, including my JFK video, and Federal-Expressed them to Cooper. Since they are both demonstrated liars, I certainly would not take either of those statements as gospel, but I believe this time frame is far more accurate. Whether or not Cooper saw it in October or December of 1988 is quite important, since I had made it very clear during what I had planned to be my last meeting in late November 1988 with Lear that I no longer subscribed to the driver theory, and had become pretty well convinced that it was simply not valid, and pointedly steered him to obtain a clearer copy of the Zapruder film from a local video studio, and to consult with Robert Groden, the respected and preeminent authority on the film. Although I gave him Groden's phone number and address at that time, Lear did not meet with Groden until Nov. or Dec. 1990, two years later! If, in fact, both Lear and Cooper are lying in their earlier statements, and Cooper first saw the video at Lear's home in December 1988, Lear was already then well aware that I had completely discarded the theory.

Cooper says that I called him shortly afterward, but the truth is that I did not call him until August 1989, at least 8 - 10 months after her received a copy of my tape from Lear. I would not have called him even then if it had not been for the urging of several friends who were very distrubed about this actions. There are several witnesses who can and will verify this time frame, particularly since I put Lear in touch with two of them in order for him to obtain the clearer footage of the Zapruder film.

The graphics on the JFK videotape, which was hurriedly produced in 45 minutes at a studio in Santa Barbara, Calif., for immediate presentation to a small group of possible funders of the investigation, clearly identify it as The Truth Betrayed: Dallas Revisited. If anyone notes a similarity with the title of Gritz's memoirs and the title of my videotape, it is because I initially suggested the title of Mission Betrayed, but Gritz settled on A Nation Betrayed: likewise with two of the chapters which include Revisited in their title. I also contributed heavily to two of the chapters in his new book, Called to Serve, and created their titles -- Profiles in Conspiracy and The Third-World War. Whatever my contributions to the text and the editing, however, Gritz is the author of that book, he is the man who has lived its contents, and I have never attempted to claim otherwise.

While Cooper claims that he had been trying for 16 years to obtain a copy of the Zapruder film, anyone who has been a serious researcher in the JFK assassination case has been able to obtain the same 8mm film copies that I used directly from the U.S. National Archives, and super-8mm film copies from a number of private researchers around the country and in Canada quite easily, quickly, and at a very reasonable cost. Had Cooper made any kind of serious effort during those 16 years, or since, he could have easily acquired his own copy. It took me exactly one day to obtain one of each once I decided to have my own copies, and they came from each of those two sources. There is nothing about either of the two versions of the Zapruder film I worked with that is any different from the ones anyone else could easily obtain from the same sources, despite all the hype and other bullshit circulated by Lear and Cooper.

I seriously doubt Cooper had spent much time at all pondering the whodunit of JFK's murder until he saw my videotape, given his lack of familiarity with so many of the thousands of other crucial details involved in the assassination, and I do believe his main consideration at that point was primarily related to the financial possibilities my videotape carried for him. God knows, he's certainly sold an ungodly number of tickets on the sensational attraction of that videotape, and has unloaded at least hundreds of copies of the tape itself which I produced bearing his label. I must again emphasize that I made it clear to Lear during our first meeting at his home in June 1988, and ever since, and to Cooper in late October 1989, after I had discovered he was showing and selling the tape, that my JFK videotape was merely a crude and rushed research aid probably seven generations down from the original.

I took pains to make it very clear to Cooper that my videotape was by no means a clear or high-quality finished production -- and that it was never intended to be shown or distributed publicly for that reason. Both Lear and Cooper, as well as Gritz, knew this very clearly from their first conversations with me. Lear's letter to me which is included here demonstrates that clearly. I also made it very clear to Cooper at that time all the reasons why I no longer supported the driver theory and that it simply did not hold up. I ordered him to cease and desist in showing the videotape, and insisted that if he was so intent upon misinforming the American public, he should cough up $40 and buy his own film and edit it to his liking.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if Lear hinted or even claimed directly to Cooper that he obtained The Truth Betrayed: Dallas Revisited from a CIA agent, since he does have a uniquely twisted sense of humor, and likes to play at being the mysterious and secretive spy type. He actually is regarded as a kind of Walter Mitty of the intelligence set, as it were, by anyone's estimate who knows him very well at all. Anyone who has ever been to visit Lear's home and entered his "Shrine," whose four walls are completely covered with photographs from his flight exploits around the world, and whose bookshelves are stocked with the likes of Will by G. Gordon Liddy, The Secret Team by Col. Fletcher Prouty, Lost Victory by William Colby, and America in Search of Enemies by John Stockwell, knows only too well Lear's penchant for the esoteric, covert and clandestine, as well as the practical joke. I still have several copies of letters sent with a Washington, D.C. postmark on Central Intelligence Agency stationery to SA Lars Hansson. It is very obvious by comparing them to other letters from him that the type is identical to that of the old typewriter in Lear's study in Las Vegas.

Lear knows as well as Gritz that I am no agent -- there is no way in the world given my politics and record of patriotic action that any intelligence agency of the U.S. government, or even a shadow government would ever consider hiring me in any capacity, much less attempting to co-opt me. It is far more likely, given the success of my efforts, that they would enlist someone like John Lear or Bill Cooper in an attempt to discredit me. Lear knows that he has had tremendously much to fear by my disclosures, and it is not at all surprising that he has been taking steps for some time to try to embarrass me or diminish my credibility, all the while pretending to be my "pal."

I have no doubt Cooper would attempt to make an "iron-clad case" against me if he was able to purloin Lear's notes to me, as he has other material from other researchers. He would have an absolute heyday if he were ever able to paw through the moving-box-full of recorded telephone conversations Lear has compiled over the last few years, as well. Since I have nothing to hide, I am including Lear's letters to me with this packet, along with the CIA ID I finally picked up to make idiots like Cooper happy. You should have little trouble judging for yourself what's authentic and what's contrived, I would certainly hope. To the uninitiated, such humor, given the depraved and murderous record of CIA actions worldwide, might justifiably seem a bit macabre, if not sordid: In fact, I several times became completely disgusted with Lear's callousness in his humor regarding the suffering inflicted on the third-world victims of his lethal cargos.

However, given the implicit threat involved in any serious effort to expose such ongoing operations, such sarcastic humor, within limits, often served as an escape valve for the repressed rage and disgust experienced by many of us who research these activities. Even so, given Lear's admitted involvement for many years in the transport of weapons and God knows what else for the CIA and other related agencies throughout the world, I often felt that he was much too glib about the number and brutality of the deaths that resulted from his lethal cargos and from CIA operations in general.

Despite his outward hospitality and what appeared to be genuine camaraderie that developed between us in mid-1988, and again in mid-1990, I was never able or willing to completely trust him or relax my guard, as much as I might have wanted to. As much as I came to truly appreciate his dry and sophisticated wit during the time I spent with him, and during our phone conversations and mutual correspondence over a period of two years from June 1988 to August 1990, I never felt entirely comfortable with his motivations or basic allegiances, and often felt a serious uneasiness about his actual values or the possible reasons for his apparent preoccupation with exposing the UFO cover-up. His activities since his meeting with Bill Cooper -- whenever that actually occurred -- have certainly not been beneficial to me.

Cooper continues, "Shortly after Lear gave me a copy of the film, Lars Hansson called and asked if he could drop by to meet with me at my home in Fullerton, California. I told him he could and asked him to bring a better copy of the film if he had one. Lars said that he would. He stated that he would also bring a film on a man named Bo Gritz, of whom I had never heard. Mr. Hansson informed me that he had made the video for Bo Gritz and John Lear and that both were using it in their lectures. I found out much later that Bo Gritz was selling the tape for $10 per copy.

Lars came to the house, brought the films on videotape and we spoke for about an hour. His main purpose was to tell me that he wanted me to expose the people to the film but did not want me to connect him to the film in any manner. I agreed not to divulge my source and I kept my word. I began to use the tape in my lectures. When I found out that Bo Gritz was making it available, I bowed to public pressure and also made it available."

This entire paragraph is a complete, bald-faced lie. Cooper says that I called him shortly after Lear gave him a copy of my film, but the fact is that, whether he received it in October or December of 1988, I did not call him until August 1989, at least nine months later, and only after several friends of mine urged me to check him out personally following his talk in Long Beach. This was shortly after I had been advised that I had been referred to erroneously on KPFK Radio as an FBI agent by John Judge, during a discussion about Cooper and Lear and UFOs, which Judge refers to as Unrecognized Fascist Observatories.

Cooper did not mention the Kennedy tape at all during our phone conversation, much less during our meeting at his home, nor did I agree to bring him anything, since I did not know nor had I ever spoken to the man, and had only seen a couple computer messages of his at that point. Since I had dropped the "driver theory" entirely almost a year before, and had made that clear to both Lear and Gritz, I not only did not have a better copy of the videotape around, I most certainly would not have given a copy to Cooper, whom I didn't even know -- much less trust -- at that point. Since I had dropped my support for the theory almost a year before -- and everyone close to me was well aware of this fact -- I had no reason whatsoever to ask Bill Cooper to promote it or anything else for me.

At no time -- I repeat, at no time -- did I ever give a copy of the JFK videotape to Bill Cooper nor authorize him to show it -- with or without my voice -- nor did I ever discuss the matter with him at all until late October 1989 by phone, when I discovered from the group of people promoting his Nov. 5 event that he had acquired a copy from John Lear and was showing it to whoever would watch. I had been so preoccupied with my own work in Santa Barbara that I was largely unaware of what had been happening with both Gritz and Lear, much less Cooper, during that time period.

That first discussion/confrontation with Cooper regarding the JFK videotape occurred some two months after my first and only meeting with Cooper at his home in August 1989 -- not shortly after his meeting with Lear, as he claims. Contrary to his statement here, he immediately recognized my name when I identified myself, and claimed that he had had me "checked out thoroughly" and that he knew I was "on the level," and had been expecting my call. I made it very clear during our brief conversation that I had originally heard about him from his computer messages to Lear back in November 1988, and that the main reason I was calling was because several acquaintances of mine had attended his lecture in Long Beach, including Barbara Honegger, and were actually pretty shook up about some of his statements, and wanted me to go and check him out.

At no time in this conversation, or during my subsequent meeting with him and his wife at his home did we discuss the Kennedy assassination at all, nor did I agree to bring him any videotapes of anything. I was simply going to meet with him to discuss his experiences and claims, and to examine whatever evidence he had. Since I had dropped all involvement or belief in the possibility the "Greer shot Kennedy" theory nine months before, as many people can and will attest -- including Bo Gritz and John Lear -- it would have been absolutely ludicrous for me to have even considered doing so, especially with someone I did not even know, much less trust. In fact, I did not even have a copy of the tape on hand at that time, and would have had to pay $12 for another copy. Cooper's statements in this regard are absolute, bald-faced lies.

I spent about 1 1/2 to 2 hrs. at Cooper's home in the late afternoon in mid-August 1989, and we actually did not even discuss the Kennedy assassination, since I spent most of the time there watching a videotaped copy of his presentation at the July 1989 MUFON convention in Las Vegas. I made a point of taking notes and then asking him to clarify certain statements he made in the presentation afterward. During our conversation, completely on the spur of the moment, I did go out to my car and get him a copy of the 10-min. video of Col. Gritz's trial which I had recently co- produced, and I did pen a short note of encouragement on the cover. I certainly did not give him authorization to show that videotape, either, at his public presentations, nor has Gritz.

Just as I was about to press Cooper for some hard documentation of his claims, the new editor for the Whole Life Times, a woman, showed up to do an interview with him, and I left to meet with four friends in Santa Monica for dinner. They will not hesitate to verify my statements regarding the timing of this meeting as completely accurate.

The first time I ever discussed the Kennedy assassination, or my videotape, with Bill Cooper was in late October 1989 over the phone, after I discovered in a meeting with some of the organizers of his event in Hollywood on Nov. 5, 1989 that he had shown what sounded like my videotape to them and to other people. Although he claims publicly that I gave the JFK tape to him -- an absolute bald-faced lie -- when I actually demanded to know where he obtained a copy of the tape during the aforementioned phone conversation, he repeatedly refused to tell me. His deceit in this instance would be quickly revealed by a certified lie- detector test, though I have little doubt he will find any number of excuses to avoid submitting to one.

I not only did not know the man well enough after one meeting at his home to entrust him with anything of any importance, I did not like him well enough after that one meeting to even consider showing it to him, since it was irrelevant and inaccurate, anyway. In fact, it was never discussed at all until I confronted him about it over the phone in late October 1989. Any statements he has made or is making to the effect that I gave him the JFK videotape, authorized him to use it, or even discussed the assassination with him prior to this time are outright, bald-faced lies, and will readily be proven as such if he does submit to a certified lie-detector test.

If Cooper actually believes that is what happened, then there is little doubt he is definitely slipping gears, and given his record of heavy drinking and calling people late at night to threaten them or leave threatening messages on their answering machines, that is a very good possibility as well. Whatever the case, as he has stated in his book, he has no qualms about charging people to see my videotape without my permission; according to his crony, Stan Barrington, he has also sold at least several hundred copies as well under his own label for at least $20 each.

I am not alone, as a private citizen researcher and investigator, in declaring Bill Cooper a fraud and a liar -- and those are two of the nicest things I can say about the man.

When I demanded during our face-to-face encounter on Las Vegas Radio KVEG in late July 1990 that he produce this JFK tape which he claimed I had inscribed and given to him at our joint appearance on Aug. 4 at KFI Radio in LA, he not only did not produce it -- how could he? -- but then insisted he didn't have to produce anything. I repeat -- the man is a charlatan and a liar.

Let me make it clear also that my dealings with Gritz and Lear were virtually entirely separate from the other -- that is, I don't think to this day that they have even physically met each other, nor am I aware that they have even spoken over the phone together more than once or twice, if that. Gritz was never particularly interested in Lear and his off-the-wall ideas and pretty well wrote him off as a flake early on, while Lear generally derided Gritz for being "slow-on-the-draw" for taking so long to realize the actual nature and extent of USG involvement in the worldwide drug trade, as well as the actual nature of the UFO situation. After Lear deliberately failed to show up at the one meeting I had tried to facilitate between them in August 1988, I thereafter made little discussion of one when I was in the company of the other. I know only too well that however Gritz may choose to project himself publicly, and despite his occasional lapses in terms of misplaced trust, he is incredibly sincere, dedicated, and astute in his planning and execution of goals, and is perhaps the most utterly fearless individual I have ever had the privilege of meeting in my entire life.

I believe I have already made my view of John Lear crystal clear. Although taking his girlfriend into the cockpit during at least one of his commercial flights to San Francisco and Los Angeles, or securing employment for her with the same airlines -- based in his hometown! -- may not have led directly to his alleged firing by American Trans Air -- he claims they were upset about a UFO lecture he gave in Texas -- lapses of this type in judgment and restraint are probable factors in his release. They were certainly major factors in my decision to terminate contact with him for a year in November 1988.

The one lecture of mine on September 1, 1988 which Lear attended, during which I showed the JFK video along with a great deal of other material, which he has since publicly referred to in a feeble attempt to prove that I have "flip-flopped" on the issue, was, in fact, simply used as an excuse by him to spend the evening with his girlfriend by claiming to be with me. They proudly sat together in the front row, no less, and were clearly captured on video, as well as observed by numerous witnesses in attendance. I thought it was incredibly tacky on both of their parts, but particularly his, considering his asinine and irresponsible behavior prior to that evening. It was but one of several instances in which Lear has used me as a convenient cover and/or scapegoat for his own half- assed activities, as I described in Part One.

As I have also indicated earlier, I did not know Bo Gritz at the time I made the JFK video, and had never even heard of John Lear, either, and never authorized either one of them to show it at their lectures, much less sell it. Included in the Appendix is a letter I received from Lear in early 1990 advising me that he had seen my tape being sold with Bill Cooper's label on it at a lecture by Bill Hamilton in Palmdale, Calif., and asking if I had changed my position on not having it distributed by making an agreement with Cooper. He asked if he could also, since he had had numerous requests for it. I have little doubt Lear has dubbed dozens of copies for his friends, and that what he wanted then was the ability to actually charge money for them.

The only time I authorized Lear even to show it was in April 1989, after he at least had called to request permission. I didn't know that he had actually been showing it all along. I made it very clear to him he could do so on the condition that he made it a point to emphasize very clearly at the outset that the man who made it -- and I told him he could use my name -- absolutely did not subscribe to the theory any longer and that he, Lear, apparently still did. I have yet to see the footage of that interview, but given the number of Lear's other lies and prevarications, I seriously doubt he added that proviso, and he would probably deny now, after I make these disclosures, that I made such a stipulation -- a lie detector would show his deception, however.

I remember distinctly feeling at the time that it was the beginning of a set-up to discredit me, since he had had little interest in actively pursuing the theory for nearly a year before. As you have read in Part One, he had extreme ulterior motives to try to embarrass or discredit me, given what I had come to know of his scandalous and/or criminal activities in 1988. I was not surprised, however, when I refused to "help him out" at the July, 1989 MUFON convention, to learn several months later that he again used my video as part of his "bootleg" presentation. I seriously doubt he would have had the balls to have shown it if I had been there. Although he made a great display to me of keeping the videotape "under wraps" until at least August of 1990, I have since discovered that he went ahead and showed it at least several times publicly at some paid events in Las Vegas and Dallas -- again without my permission and contrary to our trust.

I have had it confirmed as well from the producers of the show that it was, in fact, John Lear who also made my videotape available to Nippon TV for broadcast without my permission, even though he was well aware of how to contact me at the same address I had had in California for over two years at that point. Although Cooper has touted Nippon's version as "computer-enhanced," the display at his Beverly Hills High program in August 1990 showed only a poorly colorized ("neonized" is perhaps more accurate), doctored version of my own videotape -- with my own voice clearly evident in the background -- and dubbed-in sound effects to indicate the gun blasts. It was even cheaper and shoddier than I had been led to believe by his grandiose claims when I challenged him on KFI Radio a few days before.

Regarding this time period Cooper states in his book, "Some time later I read an L.A.-based newsletter (forgot the name) in which Lars Hansson stated that he did not know that I had the film and did not know that I was showing it at lectures. Hansson stated in the newsletter that he was at my Hollywood High lecture on November 5, 1989, and that he tried to protest my use of it during the question-and-answer period but that he never had a chance to be recognized. We videotaped that event, and at the end I asked anyone with questions or comments to walk to a microphone that we had placed in the aisle. I have examined every inch of that videotape and Lars Hansson never got up from his seat, nor did he ever raise his hand, nor did he attempt in any way to be recognized.

Lars later called me again and asked me not to use his voice on the tape, his voice where he says with no hesitation or qualification whatsoever, as he narrates the videotape, 'The driver of the car turns with his left arm over his right shoulder with a pistol and fires. You see the .45 automatic, .45 caliber nickel-plated automatic weapon in his left hand. He's firing over his right shoulder; you see it in relief. You see his head pointing backwards toward the President. In this enhanced close-up you see the impact of the bullet upon the President. The force of the shot drives him violently backward against the back of the seat. You see Mrs. Kennedy react in horror." Then later in the film Hansson makes this statement: 'You can clearly see his [the driver's] head turning and his arm, and the weapon extending into view over his right shoulder.' I agreed not to use his voice. In subsequent lectures I showed the tape with no audio. As it turned out, people were able to see it better with no narration."

I have never disputed that the words on the videotape attributed to me are indeed mine, but as I have stated earlier, and will discuss in more detail further on, the tape he has been using was thrown together in 45 minutes in a studio, in a rushed attempt to prepare a riveting "trailer," if you will, for a presentation to some potential investors in the investigation. Even as I made it, I chided myself for hurriedly stating it as an actual fact, instead of emphasizing that "it appears as if", or "it looks like the driver is doing this," because that was all I knew for certain at that point. I consoled myself at the time with the certainty that I would only give a few copies to trusted individuals who could be relied upon not to let it out until it was either confirmed or disproved. Putting those particular words on tape was a monumental mistake I have admitted publicly a number of times -- in print, on television, and on the radio -- but the biggest mistake was entrusting it to John Lear, which will become mightily evident by the end of this statement.

Cooper, however, continues lying in the first line of this quote by saying he did not remember the name of the magazine, when he has referred to it repeatedly in his CAJI newsletter, on the radio, and in public -- UFO Magazine -- as a "trashzine," and has spared no effort in thoroughly castigating its editor, Vicki Cooper, and several of its present and former writers, including Martin Cannon, Barry Taff, and Don Ecker. He continues the lie by saying that I stated in the magazine that I tried to protest his use of my videotape at his Nov. 5, 1989 lecture. You can read my letter to UFO in the Appendix yourself, and see that I claimed that I had called him prior to the event and again in January 1990 to do so.

My comments regarding the sequence of events at his presentation were actually edited from my letter before printing due to space limitations. Given Cooper's technique of "accessing secret information," perhaps he actually pawed through their trash cans to come up with that claim. What he obviously can't keep straight is that I did call him prior to the Nov. 5, 1989 event to insist that he cease and desist using my tape, and to advise him for the first time directly that I did not support the driver theory since at least Nov. 1988. I also informed Cooper that I felt it was highly irresponsible as well as unethical for him to be deliberately promoting a falsehood publicly which he knew next to nothing about. He insisted that I had no copyright on the material and that he would show it or sell it to whoever he liked, with or without my permission. I acknowledged that I had no copyright on the Zapruder footage -- that much was true -- but that I certainly did on my narration. I emphasized that since it was never intended for public distribution, was not accurate, and I had shelved the theory nine months before, if he was so intent on showing the film, he should at the very least remove my narration. He did so at that event, knowing that I would probably be in attendance. I told him then that if he was so intent upon getting out the "truth," why didn't he at least cough up $40 and buy his own copy of the film, and make his own edited version, instead of having to use mine without my permission, when I myself didn't support its contents?

I asked him who gave him the copy of my tape and he refused, point-blank, to tell me. I again demanded to know, and he mumbled something about some ex-CIA person, and I suspected for a minute that he had perhaps slipped, and that the Agency probably had gotten hold of a copy and may well have given it to him to go out and discredit me. I still think that may be the case, given Lear's long-term direct ties to the Agency, and his (and their) many reasons to try to shut me up, one way or the other. On the other hand, in both their cases, they have not hesitated to flippantly accuse any number of other researchers or activists of being "closet" CIA agents or "plants."

I explained to Cooper that all the research I had done up to November 1988, and since, had pretty well convinced me that Greer could not have fired a weapon because both his hands never left the steering wheel, nothing crossed his chest, and despite the apparent protrusion behind the reflection from Kellerman's head -- which Adams and Evans believe indicates the presence of a gun barrel -- there is no apparent recoil or muzzle blast from a weapon, and no apparent cuts in the film at that point either. Cooper then proceeded to tell me that he had read in the Top-Secret Navy documents he had had access to that the weapon was an electronic device firing a self-propelled explosive projectile filled with shellfish toxin.

When I countered that as an ex-deputy sheriff and customs agent I believed that was simply bullshit, and that even if such a weapon existed -- which was highly possible -- and even if it was left up to Greer to finish what others had failed to accomplish -- which was also within the realm of possibility -- nobody in Naval Intelligence would write that down, much less leave it anywhere that a lowly petty officer like him would have access to it. I told him that regardless of what his cow-eyed followers were willing to swallow, he and I both knew that was complete bullshit.

It is truly a shame I didn't record that conversation, because Cooper's next words were something to the effect that "I don't give a shit what actually happened. We are under so great a threat of takeover that if that's what it takes to shake people up, I'll go ahead and use it, and I don't give a damn whether it's true or not, or what you or anyone else says about it."

I accused him then of doing it for sensational purposes just to sell tickets to his own events and accused him of being a demagogue and a cheap huckster who was just trying to cash in on the UFO hysteria that had been generated by Lear. I made the statement to him at that time that the only aliens Kennedy was about to expose -- as was the first Pope John Paul before he was poisoned -- were the Nazis and fascists who had infested our aerospace and defense industries and intelligence agencies as well as the worldwide drug trade, along with their willing American accomplices. I reminded him of several glaring examples, such as the fact that Ruth and Michael Paine, who just happened to speak Russian fluently and were so kind in "looking after" Marina Oswald at their home in Irving, Texas while Lee worked in Dallas, were almost certainly CIA agents themselves. Michael Paine worked directly under (former) Nazi General Walter Dornberger, judged one of the most vicious of the war criminals in the dock at Nuremberg, who was the director of research and Development at Bell Helicopter in Dallas. Anyone familiar with Kennedy's actions in office knows that he had pledged to end U.S. participation in the Vietnam conflict by the end of 1965, following his certain re-election, and had also vowed to close advisers to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." I reminded Cooper that Bell Helicopter stood to lose billions of dollars in contracts if Kennedy had followed through with either promise, and that it was Warren Commission member John J. McCloy, the former High Commissioner in Germany, who had pardoned Dornberger and literally thousands of other Nazis and facilitated their insertion into U.S. defense industries, intelligence agencies and the military.

I pointed out that it just happened to be Ruth Paine who had so conveniently found the nice job at the School Book Depository for Lee, and later found his alleged rifle in her garage. I reminded him that the man whom Oswald supposedly took a potshot at shortly before the entire hit team took Kennedy out, General Edwin Walker, placed a call immediately after the shooting of JFK to Munich. Finally, I reminded Cooper that the Warren Report itself was written by Otto Winnaker of the U.S. Army Historical Division, who also happened to be one of 26 official historians to Hitler's Third Reich before being provided with a nice job in the U.S. Army through McCloy's "compassionate" efforts.

I emphasized that it was these "aliens" who deserved our scrutiny, whom Bo Gritz and the Christic Institute have brought out of the shadows into the spotlight. I emphasized that this is the biggest cover-up in modern history, but with the revelations about Bush's forced firing of several Nazis on his campaign staff, and the revelations brought out in such books as Trading With the Enemy and American Swastika by Charles Higham, Blowback by Christopher Simpson, Inside the League by Scott and Jon Lee Anderson, and The Great Heroin Coup by Henrik Kruger, a Danish journalist, it cannot be held back any longer.

As a matter of record, it should also be pointed out here that even though Cooper was unable to provide any supporting documentation for his allegations regarding George Bush's involvement in drug smuggling through his Zapata Oil Co. based in Midland, Texas, when put on the spot by a representative of the Christic Institute, numerous revelations on this subject have emerged from other credible sources. Many of my associates, as a matter of course, point to the glaring fact that drug smuggling into the U.S. rose by at least 1000% during George Bush's watch as "drug czar" (and is bound to rise by at least that much under the "control" of the current occupant of that slot -- given his abysmal record in the state of Florida). It is well known that Bush's son, Jeb, was intimately involved with the anti-Castro Cubans who were the recipients of at least $250,000 in State Department funds for an obvious cocaine- smuggling front called Ocean Hunter in Miami, along with its sister operation in Costa Rica, Refrigorificos Puntarenas. That particular story was examined in detail in a 1987 CBS West 57th Street program by Leslie Cockburn and Jane Wallace.

CIA agent Felix Rodriguez AKA Max Gomez, who ran the contra re-supply operation through Ilopango air base in El Salvador directly under Bush's right-hand man Donald Gregg, is alleged by several sources, including the cartel's chief accountant and money-launderer Ramon Milian-Rodriguez, to have solicited and received a $10 million cash contribution directly from the Medellin, Colombia, cocaine cartel for the contras. One of my own sources claims, with considerable veracity, to have actually worked directly under Ted Shackley from 1979 to 1984 and to have visited Shackley's home in Medellin, where he has lived with his common-law wife, a sister to cartel kingpin Jorge Ochoa, for years and actually ran the Medellin Cartel! Despite his claims to the contrary in the Iran/Contra hearings, it is a matter of record that Oliver North's personal notebooks contained 550 entries directly concerning drugs!

Former CIA Director under President Jimmy Carter, Admiral Stansfield Turner, stated publicly just prior the the 1988 elections that he had taken Gen. Manuel Noriega off the CIA payroll in 1977, where he had been placed by former Agency Director George Bush, only to watch Noriega be reinstated in 1981 to the tune of $200,000+ per year -- the same amount we pay our president! -- by Vice President George Bush. The Cutolo Affidavit and accompanying documents (reproduced in the Appendix) which was sent to Lt. Col. Gritz in Aug. 1986 provides tremendous additional support for the allegations that Noriega was directly involved with the Israeli Mossad, through agent Michael Harari, the U.S. Army and the CIA in the establishment of direct routes of air transport of cocaine from Colombia into the United States. Gritz has stated publicly many times and in his books and videos that as Commander of Special Forces in Panama in 1976 he had prepared an assassination team to "terminate with extreme prejudice Manuel Noriega" before he was ordered -- in person at Task Force Hawk Communications Center at Ft. Gulick -- by Maj. Gen. Harold R. Aaron, Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, to stand down his team, "because of Noriega's immense value to the Director of Central Intelligence -- George Bush!"

Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court itself ordered Vice President George Bush personally -- who had been placed at the head of the Eli Lilly drug company by Dan Quayle's father! -- to cease and desist in his lobbying efforts to enable the drug companies to continue dumping drugs into third-world countries which were not allowed here. In fact, the public relations specialist hired to perform damage control on Dan Quayle's "backfiring" vice-presidential candidacy in 1981 was none other than Stuart Spencer, a political harballer who had just before that been serving in virtually the same capacity for none other than Manuel Noriega, on a $350,000 contract! Perhaps now you can understand why so many of my associates claim George Bush paraphrased his instructions to his agents in the War on Drugs from Nancy Reagan's "Just say no!" are "Just fly low!"

In a recent conversation with retired USAF Col. Fletcher Prouty he told me that, in his capacity as chief liaison between the USAF and the CIA at the Pentagon from 1954-1963, he had personally "sanitized" two freighters for use in the Bay of Pigs invasion, which were re-named Barbara and Houston. A picture of the latter is included in Peter Wyden's excellent book, Bay of Pigs. Prouty noted in the same conversation that he, himself, had been one of the U.S. military officers directly responsible for arranging air transportation for the relocation of the Nazis described in Blowback.

Joseph McBride, in a series of articles in Nation Magazine in 1988, detailed his verification that George Bush actually worked for the CIA as early as 1961 himself, and had filed reports concerning activities by the YAF (Young Americans for Freedom), a right-wing youth group in Houston. Although the Agency attempted to claim that the George Bush in question was another man with the same name, a lowly clerk, McBride dug further and proved that the Bush in question was, in fact, a George H.W. Bush and that his address listed at that time was the same address in the which the current President resided during that time period.

Regarding Bush's involvement with Nazis, the Village Voice reported on Nov 1, 1988 in "The Real Nazis Behind Every Bush," that "the seven protofascists given the boot by his campaign team two months earlier had been part of the GOP's systematic recruitment of the most extreme rightwing elements in the Eastern European ethnic communities of the United States... The Bush ally with perhaps the closest ties to Hitler's Germany was Yaroslav Stetsko, whose group, the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations [ABN], was a prominent participant in a 1983 White House meeting featuring talks by both President Reagan and the vice president. Bush signed a photograph taken at that meeting 'To the Honorable Yaroslav Stesko, With Best Wishes, George Bush.' ...Stetsko (who died in 1986), was an extreme Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the Nazis in World War II as the very short term "prime minister" of the "independent" Ukrainian puppet government set up in the Western Lands of the Ukraine, or Galicia. Within two years of the establishment of Stetsko's regime, more than 100,000 Jews were exterminated in the Galician capital of Lvov, according to captured Nazi documents."

Cooper snickered about the entire suggestion about the cover-up of post-war Nazi involvement with UFOs, the aerospace and defense industries, drug smuggling, assassinations and political repression. He retorted that fools like me and John Judge and Dan Sheehan were complete idiots to think that "goose-stepping Nazis in Wehrmacht uniforms" were piloting the UFOs. He snarled that he was going to tear them apart on the Tom Leykis KFI Radio show in LA that very afternoon. When I questioned him as to why he had such a hard-on for them, he complained about some disparaging remarks John Judge had made about him recently on KPFK Radio. Cooper was also enraged about a letter written by L.A.-based researcher Martin Cannon to Daniel Sheehan expressing concern about the Christic Institute's contact(s) with Cooper, Lear and even myself. Cannon, I learned later, did not even know who I was at that point and mistakenly assumed I was part of the confederacy, thanks to some rather insidious and two-faced gossip-mongering from a disaffected former legal activist in LA.

For the record, this man was one of the first people I showed the raw, unedited JFK videotape to and was the person who insisted that I contact John Judge regarding the issue, which I did in short order by mail. Judge was apparently too busy or too unconcerned to reply, but later referred to me on the same radio program which I mentioned earlier as "a former FBI agent who was hanging around the Christic office in LA promoting the erroneous driver theory" -- or words pretty much to that effect -- much to the concern and consternation of a number of my associates in that area. That particular gaffe was particularly unfortunate on Judge's part, since everyone I dealt with there and Judge himself had been informed that I had been a Customs agent, and that I had never promoted the driver theory as certain, but rather was attempting to quietly secure the funding necessary in order to confirm its truth or falsity. I had actually sent him a copy of the news article about me which clearly states that I was a Customs agent.

Unfortunately, Judge's distaste and mistrust for any kind of bureaucrat or agent runs so deep that he foolishly jumped to that conclusion. Be that as it may, Judge and I have since clarified the issue, and I was instrumental in producing an appearance by him a few months later in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. The legal activist, on the other hand, scrupulously avoided facing me after that, and contented himself with accusing Father Bill Davis, and the Christic Institute in general, of being agents of military intelligence. Oh well.

Cooper began to rant against Judge, calling him a "communist" and an "agent of Western Goals," and accused Christic of being "funded by the KGB." Remembering his slavering adulation of Gritz at that point, I calmly reminded him that even Bo Gritz had repeatedly publicly denounced that charge against Christic as absolute hogwash. Since I had seen neither Cannon's letter nor Sheehan's reply, I encouraged him to call or meet with these people in person to try to resolve whatever disagreements they had privately, since open sniping over the airwaves only did further damage to the overall effort.

Cooper insisted that he was going to rip them both to shreds on the program, and at that point I realized that the man was either profoundly ill-informed, a deliberate agent provocateur, or a complete lunatic. I cut the conversation off, and hastened to contact the Institute in LA and Washington to warn them of his plan, as well as to ascertain exactly what Sheehan had written back to Cannon regarding Cooper and me. After several hours of phone tag, I reached Wayne Nelson, Sheehan's brother-in-law, who works at the Institute. He quickly informed me that he had indeed met with Cooper following an off- the-air phone conversation between Sheehan and Cooper initiated by Carol Hemingway while Cooper was a guest on her radio program. Cooper had apparently claimed that he had all kinds of evidence of George Bush's involvement in long-term drug smuggling and other nefarious activities. However, when Nelson met with Cooper in order for him to deliver the information, all he could produce was the same tired old inuendoes and insinuations which had been extant in the alternative media for several years -- basically recycled dirt, but nothing of sufficient substance to add anything new or useful to the equation. As I indicated earlier, however, Cooper had attempted to insinuate himself under Christic's umbrella of credibility, and when they rejected him as the fraud that he is, he immediately resorted to reviling them as agents of the KGB.

A number of us monitored the KFI radio program very carefully that afternoon, and Cooper never brought up Sheehan or Judge once. When asked by a caller what he thought about Robert Groden's research and books, however, Cooper indicated not only that he did not know who Groden was, but was not even sure if he existed. I have his exact words on tape. Anyone who has done any research at all on the Kennedy assassination will quickly encounter the pioneering, self-sacrificing and courageous work of Robert Groden who has devoted over 25 years to intense study of the assassination. In fact, he is the first person ever to present the Zapruder film to the public on Geraldo Rivera's Goodnight America show in 1975. He worked diligently to persuade the House Select Committee to bring William Greer back on the stand for further questioning and shares with me the conviction that Greer knew far more about the plot to kill Kennedy that he was made to tell publicly, that he did indeed step on the brakes of the limousine in the middle of the fusillade -- instead of getting the hell out of there -- and that he did turn around twice to look back at Kennedy, but that he did not take his left hand off the steering wheel during the crucial time period when Kennedy was hit by the fatal shot(s).

Regarding my action or inaction at his Nov. 5, 1989 presentation at Hollywood High, what Cooper apparently failed to notice was that after our heated phone conversation of a few days before, I determined to attend and videotape his entire presentation, and was, in fact, out of my seat most of the time running the video camera. I also set up my audio recorder to record, but Cooper's henchman running the sound and video system repeatedly shut it off when I walked away. I certainly took note of the fact that Cooper did not include my narration when he played the tape that evening. What he also fails to mention is that, out of courtesy, I allowed the various other questioners to precede me in line while I carefully recorded those interchanges, hoping that someone else might take him to task regarding the driver theory. One person actually did begin to bring up the issue, but did not go into that specific angle.

Although I have taken a great deal of flak from friends and foes about this issue since that night, it should be apparent to anyone who has known me or seen me in action before or since that I have no problem standing up to anyone who is lying about me or many other issues that I feel strongly about, on the radio, in print, on TV or in person. There are so many examples I can cite -- with literally thousands of witnesses -- that it is actually absurd to even consider that I was afraid or unwilling to confront Cooper. In fact, it was the main reason I drove with two friends 200 miles round-trip with a borrowed video camera to record every word from Bill Cooper's mouth for documentation purposes in the event I had to file a lawsuit.

A few examples, among many, of my penchant for taking liars to task include my confrontation in the summer of 1984 with former Presidential Press Secretary (under Jimmy Carter) Jody Powell at the University of Washington (Seattle) about President Carter and the true situation with the embassy takeover in Iran and the Shah's entry through the good offices of Henry Kissinger himself into the United States in 1979. The moderator actually refused to let Powell answer my question and when I confronted him in the hallway (still nursing a broken shoulder from my experience in El Salvador) a huge crowd gathered around us pressing him to answer my question. He managed to slither around it fairly deftly, though -- he must have had losts of practice in the White House. I took Robert Scheer and Alexander Cockburn to task in front of well over 1,000 people at UCLA regarding their failure to report major allegations from several sources (including U.S. Green Berets who were assigned to provide security) concerning George Bush's secret meeting with the Iranians off the island of Antigua in August 1988 on board the yacht Christina after I had sent the editors the entire story, and once again the moderator cut off my microphone when both of them refused to address the question. Cockburn used my query to launch into a diatribe against the Christic Institute, for which I was later blamed. Fortunately, one of the people who recorded the event was an acquaintance of mine, who played the tape to Father Bill Davis of the Institute after he reported that a number of people had misinterpreted my question as a set-up to slam Christic. Davis very quickly realized my true intent.

I have confronted Contra apologists at several different events in California, including Elliott Abrams at the Miramar in Montecito and another Contra apologist at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. I have appeared on a growing number of radio programs across the country naming names in the Kennedy assassinations and others and naming some of the principals in the worldwide drug trade. I made a point of confronting Cooper on Las Vegas KVEG in late July 1989 in no uncertain terms, as well as a week later on prime-time KFI Radio in LA. Then and now, I have absolutely no qualms about confronting Cooper, or Lear, or any of these other disinformation specialists in private, or in public.

The simple truth is that on the night of Nov. 5, 1989, with only a couple of questioners left in line, I actually began to move from the corner of the floor where I was attending my video camera to join the line and take Cooper to task. Suddenly, with no advance warning at all, he announced he had been informed that he had to cut the program right then, with no more questions. At most events of this nature, the speaker or moderator will usually announce that they will take one or two more questions, and had that been the case, I would have certainly persuaded one of the other questioners to step aside. However, because of Cooper's abrupt termination of the Q & A, even that was not possible. I briefly considered shouting out my question from the floor, but have had enough experience in producing such presentations that I knew I would have succeeded only in being characterized as a heckler, and passed on that option.

Anyone who was there that evening who observed me, and my comments throughout, will verify my statements here. Cooper is simply lying when he says I never got up from my seat, since I was on my feet most of the time running the camera, and was on my feet en route to the questioners' line when he called the meeting to a halt.

I met with my attorney shortly afterward to outline the situation with Cooper for him. He recommended immediately sending a "cease and desist" letter, and possibly filing a copyright violation action, but I unwisely held off, since we had another action already underway, and I was in arrears to him at that time. I reluctantly decided that I needed to square up accounts before taking on another potentially long, time-consuming and costly legal action. This, of course, is exactly what I believe Cooper and his cronies are deliberately provoking a number of serious researchers and activists to do in order to tie them up in costly, exhausting and ultimately futile leagl wrangling.

Following the holidays, in mid- January 1990, I called Cooper again in an attempt to reason with him and put a stop to the disinformation, but he was adamant that he had seen the information verifying Greer's shooting role in his Navy papers. I reminded him that he wasn't talking to some naive housewife; that no one would have written that down and that it was complete bullshit. He insisted that I didn't know what I was talking about -- that I was actually right when I made the tape. Cooper claimed that now I didn't have the balls to take the credit, but he did, and he was going to carry the truth forward. I demanded to know again where he got his copy of the tape and he again refused to tell me.

I knew there was little point trying to reason with him, but I tried a different tack by emphasizing to him that it certainly was important to rattle peoples' cages and get them to look at the situation. I countered, however, that the potential harm done by misleading them on an issue with something that is later disproven far outweighs the good, and that if he was really sincere in his belief that Greer fired the fatal shot, he should collaborate with me in a complete investigation to verify it once and for all, instead of continually referring back to some secret papers no one else had seen. He refused to bite, and insisted that was all the proof he needed and there was no way I could stop him from showing the tape any time he wanted.

I then made it clear that if he was so intent on doing so, why didn't he at least pop for $40 or $50 bucks and get his own copy of the Zapruder film, and edit his own version, so that I, at least, would not be blamed for continuing to disinform people? He pleaded poverty (as he did in his August 1990 presentation at Beverly Hills High) and since I didn't know at that time that he and his partner, Stan Barrington had already sold hundreds of copies of my tape at $20 each, I then ordered him to remove my narration from the tape he was showing and that if he did not, I would certainly bring legal action against him. He became even more belligerent, and at that point I simply signed off. Whether he did or did not remove it in his subsequent showings, I don't know, though my narration was clearly evident in the re-worked version of my tape by Nippon TV which was furnished to them by John Lear, again without my knowledge or permission.

Cooper's statment in his book that "people were able to see it better with no narration," is just too ridiculous in light of all this to even address.

Conversations With A Ufo Mechanic

The very next morning after Cooper's talk, I received an early call from Lear at home, telling me that "Bob" had finally decided to go completely public and would be appearing on several segments of a 9-part UFO series produced by George Knapp at Channel 8 TV in Las Vegas. He was very excited about the prospect of the entire story coming out, and seemed sincerely pleased that so much of what he had been trying to bring forth would now be vindicated. When I questioned him as to whether "Dennis" was going to tell the entire story, he corrected me and explained that Dennis was the name of Bob's boss at the Test Site, and was used mainly as a cover, and to deliberately embarrass him after the threatening treatment Bob had received at his hands.

I told Lear about the large crowd that showed up for Cooper's event the night before and he was apparently impressed enough to ask me again if I would be willing to set up similar events for him, since I was the only guy he "could trust not to screw" him. I was still very gun-shy after the events of the previous year and the snafu with Honegger, but reassured John that he would have no problem marketing himself with any reasonably competent promoter. After we hung up, I finally put two and two together and realized that "Bob" was Bob Lazar, the young whiz-kid who had given me his business card when I met him at Lear's home the last time I had visited there almost exactly one year before.

Since I believed Lazar might actually have been under a continuing threat, and the program might even have been yanked, I decided to call him directly and verify that he actually had had the experiences Lear had been describing for the last six months. Bob answered and was very friendly and upbeat. I sensed that he was actually somewhat relieved that his entire story would finally be made public. When I explained that I had not really taken Lear all that seriously after what had happened before, and had never really made any attempt to find out who "Dennis" was, he chuckled, since he had certainly known who I was all along. As he admitted later, he had secretly videotaped all of us at our meeting at Lear's house the year before, just to cover himself.

During our brief conversation Lazar was very candid and straightforward in verifying everything Lear had told me that I brought up to him down to the last detail. The various aspects of his story described by Lear included: their being apprehended watching UFO maneuvers at the Test Site and his being threatened at gunpoint by security personnel; his being shot at on the freeway by assailants unknown; the assistance provided by Dr. Edward Teller in helping him obtain his job at S-4 and the presence of each of their pictures in an issue of the Los Alamos paper -- his on the front and Teller's on the back; his clear working understanding of the UFO's propulsion technology, and his acquisition of solid proof that he had had such employment.

Following his answers to those questions, I cautiously figured that since either or both of our phones were probably monitored, I had heard enough for that time. I thanked him for his candor and offered to provide him with a place to land if he needed one. Just as we were signing off, there appeared to be some kind of commotion taking place there, and I asked him if he was alright. He assured me everything was O.K.

A few minutes later, Lazar called back and asked me what I knew about OSI and how much power they had. As a former Customs agent, I knew from additional research that OSI (Air Force Office of Special Investigations) agents have equally if not more extensive powers that transcended standard law enforcement since they deal so heavily with "national-security" matters and told him as much. I asked why he wanted to know, but he replied that he'd rather not say right then and assured me everything was alright. I was quite concerned, but decided to respect his wishes and drop it for then.

I woke up early the next morning, Tuesday, Nov. 7, with the matter still on my mind and called Bob back to make sure he was still safe. He explained that the girlfriend of one of his associates at the Test Site had come by to tell him that her man had been questioned at length that day regarding his association with Lazar and would probably lose his Q-clearance as a result -- the kiss of death in terms of potential advancement within the high/lethal-tech scientific community within the military-industrial complex. I again expressed my concern for his safety and reiterated that there were several safe sites he could avail himself of in California if he needed to before signing off.

On Friday morning, Nov. 10 -- my birthday -- Lear called me early to begin chewing me out in extremely harsh terms for "setting Bob up." He railed at me that I should not have called Bob at all and wanted to know how I had gotten his number. When I was finally able to calm him down enough to get a word in edgewise, I patiently but firmly made it clear to him that Bob himself had actually given me his business card a year before when we met at John's house, and that I only decided to call Lazar after listening to John regale me with their joint exploits for the last six months and after he had informed me that Bob was going public. I carefully explained that it hadn't concerned me enough until then to even bother putting two and two together to realize Bob's identity.

Lear then explained that the reason he was so upset was that the day after my last call to Lazar, Wed., Nov. 8, someone broke into Lazar's house and stole a number of things, including samples of the "Element 115" UFO fuel that Lazar had removed from the Test Site to prove his allegations. Lear implied heavily that I might have had something to do with it, or that Bob and I had discussed it over the phone, tipping off the jerks who were listening in.

I told Lear in no uncertain terms that I purposely did not discuss anything along that line with Lazar: I had actually cut the call short when he began to mention his having "proof" just in case anyone else was listening. I emphasized that if he wanted to blame anybody for anything, he had better get off my line, since I had "eaten shit" for him far too long already, while he lied to me or about me repeatedly to cover up his own asinine behavior. I emphasized again that he was the one calling me repeatedly for the last six months to blab about Lazar, and that I only called to hear Lazar confirm the basic story from his own mouth before he might have disappeared.

This calmed Lear down considerably and he then fell all over himself apologizing, but emphasized that he was just so unnerved and distraught about Bob's safety, and the number of people who had already gotten Lazar's number and were calling him incessantly. I reassured him that I had pretty much blown the entire story off until he had called a few days before to say that Lazar would be on the George Knapp program, since I knew and respected Knapp as a serious reporter with integrity who would not have risked his professional reputation on a hoaxer.

Lear then invited me to come out to visit with him and Lazar at his home by way of conciliation. I reminded him that I did not feel very comfortable with that after all that had transpired the year before, but he assured me that it was all water under the bridge with him and his wife and that I was very welcome to visit. Given the monumental ramifications of Lazar's revelations -- if true -- I had no choice as a reporter and investigator to say yes, and I made arrangements to head out to Las Vegas the next weekend.

When I arrived, I met a friend who accompanied me up to Lear's home where we met with Lear, Lazar and his friend Gene Huff, whom I also remembered from our meeting there a year before. Then and since I found both Lazar and Huff extremely friendly, sincere and agreeable people, and have developed a great appreciation for their sophisticated sense of humor, along with a rarified perspective on a variety of issues. The conversation that ensued between the five of us was freewheeling, centering primarily, of course, on Bob's incredible UFO-related experiences. At one point during the conversation the name Gordon Novel came up, and I took great pains to emphasize to Lazar, Huff and Lear that the man had been in the middle of a number of major national scandals, including the assassination of John Kennedy, and that Lazar and Lear would be wise to keep contact with him to an absolute minimum. I emphasized to Lazar that as often as Novel had worked on behalf of the "agencies," that he was probably there masquerading as a propulsion-technology entrepreneur in order to find out just exactly how much Lazar actually knew, or to entice him into some kind of compensated business agreement which could be manipulated around into espionage charges with little difficulty.

When they asked me point-blank how dangerous I thought Novel actually was, I reminded them that he was the man who had bragged about screwing up the Jim Garrison investigation on the radio five years before, he was the man hired by Charles Colson to de-gauss the Nixon Watergate tapes, and he was Larry Flynt's director of security when they obtained the Vicki Morgan sex tapes -- she was killed not long afterward -- and one of his underlings was shortly after implicated in the death of LA producer Roy Radin. I emphasized that I had no way of knowing if he was actually the kind of guy who would pull the trigger, but that he knew intimately the kind of guys who do.

Lear retired early that evening, so the four of us went to have dinner and continue the conversation at a nearby Mexican restaurant. Lazar expanded in great detail on his activities at S-4 and provided extensive description of the craft he worked on as well as the extreme security measures involved in working there. He and Huff emphasized that certain of the things Lear had been saying about his experience were not accurate, particularly statements Lear attributed to him during their first conversation at Lear's home following Lazar's decision to tell him about his employment at S-4, specifically concerning an alleged "gravity phone" and an alleged "ultimatum" sent by the U.S. Military Command back to the "masters" of the aliens Lear alleged we had been dealing with for the last 40 years. Rather than going into further detail regarding these disclosures, I would simply recommend that anyone consumed with such interest contact Lazar, if possible, through George Knapp at Las Vegas TV Channel 8, or perhaps through Don Ecker at UFO Magazine in California, both of whom have met with and written about Lazar.

Lazar and Huff then began to tell me about how Lear and his wife had bad-rapped me about several issues, including the "stolen" phone and sunglasses, along with the navigation map and photograph. I was not surprised at the Lears' pettiness after all the crap I had endured on their behalf and the hundreds of dollars worth of work I had performed on their house for which I was never compensated. I pointed out to my dinner companions that Lear actually had to borrow the money from his mother to pay me. We talked a while longer, and then headed toward our cars in the parking lot.

Oddly enough, as I was cautioning Lazar one last time to be extra careful, all four of us noticed an unusual large, absolutely brilliant white object moving fairly slowly across the sky in a horizontal trajectory from south to north, coming almost directly overhead before veering off to the northwest, over Nellis Air Force Base. All of us saw it clearly for at least 15-20 seconds, and all agreed that whatever it was, it was not an airplane or any conventional aircraft, nor was it a meteor. After the evening of intense revelations, I jokingly remarked to Lazar that he could tell the boys back at special- effects that I was convinced already -- this was definitely overkill. We all laughed, somewhat nervously, and went our ways.

Lear called me the next morning to invite me up to his home to continue the discussion, and obviously got quite a charge out of our UFO "encounter" the night before, having already talked with Lazar by phone. Lear was apparently favorably impressed with my continuing efforts on Gritz's behalf to publicize his discoveries in the Golden Triangle, and repeatedly asked me to help him set up speaking engagements once or twice a month to help him boost his income, since he was falling about $2000 short every month. I was already uneasy after the events of the previous year, but knowing well that he truly did not have the money that everyone believed him to have inherited, I replied honestly that he should have no trouble at all getting out on the circuit with his name and background. I recommended that he should simply contact one of the better-known speakers' bureaus. Lear countered that I was the only person he trusted who knew the names and the players and knew the issues inside out, and that he would only be able to do one or two a month at best, which would not make it worthwhile to a regular bureau.

Rather than be overly blunt, I indicated that I really did not want to be associated publicly with the UFO field, but preferred to keep tabs on new developments while I continued my investigations into known ongoing covert operations. I again smelled a set-up, and despite my genuine concern for his well- being, figured it was not my problem how well he made his living. Nevertheless, since I was actually pretty serious throughout this time about trying to develop the UFO material into an action/adventure feature film project, which would at least pay me for the effort, I did humor him by offering to make some inquiries about both areas, and he didn't hesitate to prepare a "preliminary authorization" for me to do so on his behalf (see attached copy).

When I returned to LA with a copy of the Knapp 9-part TV special provided by Lear, I was at first very excited about contacting several news and film production groups. Gradually over the next few days, however, I convinced myself that, lacking the means to fully verify most of the contents to my own satisfaction, and having been thoroughly burned already by Lear and Cooper, I would rather simply let the situation unfold before making any serious moves with the material.

Dallas Revisited

Following the holidays, in early January 1990, Lear called me again to question me at length about the Kennedy tape. He explained that his wife had bought him a new hi-powered VCR for Christmas with slow-motion and stop-frame function, and that he was able to stop the tape right after Kennedy was shot in the head and Greer was turning around. We discussed it for quite some time over the phone, during which I emphasized to him again that the NOVA footage clearly showed that Greer's chest was unobstructed, and his entire shirt and tie were completely unobscured during the entire sequence. He countered that you could still see Greer withdrawing something from his shoulder. I began to get pretty impatient with his insistence, particularly after his "lies" about the October Surprise flights and the "Lear Leap of Logic" about the creation of AIDS. In spite of that, I decided to humor him, figuring that he might finally be willing to go to Pennsylvania and meet with Groden and perhaps finally help me track down the supposed remaining two witnesses in Dallas to hear what they actually had to say.

Lear was emphatic that Greer really did kill Kennedy and pressed me very hard to give him the address and phone numbers of my original sources for the driver theory, Perry Adams and David Evans. I smelled a rat, but contacted Adams, whom I'd spoken to several times throughout this period, and he agreed to speak to Lear if he wanted to call. Evans, on the other hand, remaining adamantly convinced that the ddriver theory was correct, and thoroughly untrusting of anyone with ties to the intelligence community, also smelled the rat, and insisted on forgoing communication with Lear. I have respected his wishes and protected his identity to this day.

Lear was emphatic also that he was expecting a large loan to clear on his house, and was prepared to spend several thousand dollars to obtain a pristine copy of the original Zapruder film and have it thoroughly analyzed. After all the garbage I had had to endure at the hands of Cooper, I was actually hopeful that Lear might actually finally get with it and help us clarify the truth once and for all. He was also quite boastful about a phone conversation he had had at length with Gordon Novel, which he recorded and wanted to share with me as soon as I could get over to Las Vegas. Again, I was pretty flabbergasted that he would actually do so, but after all that had preceded this, I decided that if he wanted to share something like that, by God, I'd be there to listen!

I drove over that weekend in early January and Lear quickly set up the sequence to show me how the supposed weapon/reflection off Kellerman's head, immediately after the fatal head shot to JFK, moved back down toward the dashboard at a sharp angle, which actually did seem to be pretty incompatible with Kellerman's movements at that point, at least upon first viewing.

I asked Lear to play it several more times, during which it became very apparent that that is, in fact, exactly what Kellerman did do: he literally hunkered down -- ducked and covered -- right after the shot, and so did Greer, probably fearing another final volley from the grassy knoll, perhaps to finish them all off. I asked Lear why he didn't cue up the close-up footage I had seen at the studio back in 1988, the real clear footage where Greer's chest can be seen clearly throughout the entire sequence. I asked him to shuttle through the program to bring up that sequence, but he insisted that this was the only segment that showed the driver in close-up, and impatiently refused to "waste time" going through the rest of the tape. I thought it was rather odd at the time, since I had made the arrangements for him to obtain the videotape in the first place, and I myself had never gotten my own copy, and we ended up spending several more hours afterward discussing a number of other issues, anyway. It was very clear to me, however, that the segment he was playing was not the best close-up I remembered seeing in the NOVA special, and I resolved to get my hands on a copy as soon as possible. Lear's behavior pretty well reinforced my earlier conviction that his concern with the driver theory at this late date was part of a continuing set-up.

I resolved that as long as that was likely the case, I would "play" Lear along as far as possible, and noted to my friend later that evening that it was only a matter of time before Lear and I would part company once and for all, that I believed he was stringing me along for some reason, and that sooner or later we would inevitably "burn the bridges" between us. I decided that, until then, I would milk him for all that he cared to blab about. We both agreed that given the crap I had endured already on his behalf, I was more than justified in taking that approach. With the continuing reporting of details related to the Marcos trial and the missing gold, I thought that perhaps Lear might finally be more forthcoming about his activities with Warton than he had been earlier. Fortunately, I was not wrong.

At this point, he asked me if I wanted to hear his conversation with Novel. Their early- morning tete-a-tete, which has since been transcribed, was startling, to say the very least. Once again, I was completely amazed after all that had transpired that Lear would even consider letting me know he was in touch with Novel or that he had taped their conversation, much less that he would actually play it for me and then give me a copy. If it had been anybody else, or at any other stage of our association, I might have said, "No. Keep it to yourself," or begged off in some other way. But after all the bullshit and the game-playing and the grief that his giving the JFK tape to Cooper had already caused, I figured that if Novel had anything new to add to the story of Kennedy's death, it would help to make up for all the other bullshit. And I felt that if anyone was in a position to know after all these years, given his background, Gordon Novel was certainly a prime candidate. Whatever disgust I might have for many of his actions over the years, one has to give the man credit for simply staying alive through all the incredibly heavy situations he had moved through in his life.

I had already listened to Novel on an audiotape I had just acquired at that time of a radio program in the SF Bay area in 1983. Gordon had called the studio at about 3 a.m. after hearing his name come up on the program while he was driving up to San Jose. It was talk radio at its finest to hear him openly admit that he had been recruited by Lyndon Johnson himself to destroy the Garrison investigation from the inside, where he was serving as Garrison's chief of security at his request, then admit later that he had actually been hired by Charles Colson to de-gauss the Watergate tapes for Richard Nixon, and would have "succeeded in erasing them all if they had been willing to pay me more money." After listening to the self-anointed Kennedy "expert," Dave Emory, accuse John Judge of being a closet agent of Western Goals, a rabid right- wing outfit, shortly before in Los Angeles, it was actually quite amusing to hear him squirm on the earlier program once he realized Novel was actually the person he claimed to be. Emory repeatedly stammered out his assurance that "I'm not gunning for you, Mr. Novel," and bleated about his "healthy respect" for Novel's capabilities and his fervent hope that Novel wasn't inspired to be gunning for him.

I had actually developed a begrudging respect for Novel, who probably deserved to have been hung long before, but had craftily managed to end up on his feet numerous times and still remain a player in a number of major national political scenarios. Although he was and is a criminal of the first order, I cannot help but admire his audacity in claiming that "I'm the only guy who's ever stod up to and caused the Company to say uncle. Okay? Say Uncle... I did it by a very super-sophisticated dirty trick that didn't even have to be performed which convinced the priesthood, i.e. the council consisting of all the ex-directors, that they should leave me the fuck alone and I would not interfere in their business as long as they weren't constantly trying to banana me... And the threat I had to lay down of what I'd do to the Company if they didn't get out of my fucking hair... I must have gotten everybody's funny bone because the threat was taken as very serious and one of the funniest ideas ever to come up for putting the Company out of business. I mean literally putting it out of business for at least a couple of weeks -- the whole magillah."

Novel claimed also that he had attempted to actually blackmail J. Edgar Hoover, but apparently his ploy backfired in that case. He was convicted on a fabricated arson charge as a result, but managed to get himself out and back into action after serving two years. Whatever the final judgment that will be rendered against him, the man certainly has an intimate familiarity with the forces swirling around the death of John Kennedy.

Later that afternoon while I was still at Lear's, he suggested that we "step out for a cup of coffee." I thought that was rather odd, since we easily could have gotten some coffee from the kitchen, but no sooner had we entered the car than he began to speak in hushed tones about a trip he had made the night before with Lazar to Los Alamos, N.M. He continued by describing how Lazar had become involved in a brothel operation in Las Vegas by supplying all kinds of high-tech electronic features that made it truly "space-age sex." I was completely stunned, as Lear continued to relate how he had purposely ridden over to Los Alamos to talk the whole thing over with Bob. I asked Lear if he had actually been to visit the place, and he gave me that knowing look, nodding that it really was "an incredible set- up."

I responded that "set-up" was exactly the right word. Lear seemed to indicate concern that word of Lazar's involvement in the operation getting out could undermine all their efforts to get the UFO story out, to which I added a hearty AMEN, but then he asked me whether I thought he should tell his wife about it.

I shot back: "You've got to be kidding, John! After all that shit in 1988, she'll go completely nuclear about this! I can't believe you haven't jerked Lazar completely out of there already! It's just absolutely asinine for him to have anything to do with something like that, not to mention illegal!"

Lear responded, "Well, if I don't tell her and she finds out, then she'll be even more angry. Besides, Gene already told his wife. If I don't tell her, she'll think I've been hiding something when she does find out."

I countered: "And if you do tell her, she's going to jump to the same conclusion anyway and blow the whistle on the whole deal and toss you out on your ass! I can't believe Lazar would do something so goddamn stupid with all the legitimate options he has in front of him. And I can't believe you'd even risk going over there after all that crap in '88. How many times have you been?"

Lear gave me that knowing look again with a smile and I just shook my head at the monumental stupidity of both of them. As we returned to the house, he made me promise that I would not say anything to anybody else about it, especially his wife and Lazar, and I nodded disgustedly, thinking to myself once again that these are all merely overgrown idiots, spoiled little Mama's boys with too many toys to play with. After we were back in his study I made a point of almost grabbing Lear by the shirt to tell him firmly that if he had any regard whatever for his wife and family, as well as Bob Lazar, he would insist that Lazar completely remove himself from the operation IMMEDIATELY, and go and help him do it himself if necessary and never return. I insisted that with all the media -- not to mention military intelligence -- attention focused on Lazar, it was not a matter of IF he would be caught, but WHEN, and told Lear to mark my words. I asked him again if he hadn't learned anything from his fiasco in 1988, and he just sloughed it off. Once again, I was so completely disgusted that I completed other small talk and left shortly afterward.

I returned to California, and reimmersed myself in several upcoming public events I was involved in presenting and tried to put the entire matter out of my mind. While I was thus engaged, at the repeated urging of a number of people in Santa Barbara who had seen the Channel 8 series on UFOs, I did begin to make arrangements to present a "trial-run" event with Lear at the local movie house, and actually printed flyers, etc. in preparation. He was actually quite thrilled about them and the event, but I was having a hard time sleeping at night. I couldn't help but reflect over all the garbage that had occurred already in relation to him and Cooper, including the brothel operation, and how difficult it would be -- as had already been graphically demonstrated by Cooper -- to undo any distortion or disinformation Lear might propagate during the event. I knew only too well how many people would eat up his every word, given his illustrious family name and public image, but I knew only too well the dark side behind it.

Following Lear's confirmation in person during my visit that he had indeed given Cooper a copy of the JFK tape in October 1988, I called Cooper again to insist that he honor my demand to stop showing the video, to which he replied as before. When I pointed out that he was setting himself up for some very serious copyright-violation litigation, he scoffed at the suggestion, insisting that he didn't "give a damn" about violating my copyright or anyone else's. I acknowledged that I probably had no copyright claim on the tape, but that Zapruder and Groden certainly did. I asked him again why he was so insistent on using my video, when he could easily obtain his own copy of the film and edit it to his own satisfaction, without continuing to make me appear to be promoting a theory I had given up on over a year before. He insisted it was "too bad," but that if I "didn't have the guts to stand up for the truth" he would tell it for me. When I insisted once again that the driver theory was not true, he retorted again that "I don't give a shit. If your tape is what it takes to wake the American people up, I'll use it, whether it's true or not!" I told him then in no uncertain terms that he was welcome to "go screw himself," but that he would learn soon enough that he already had, and signed off. That is the last time I have called Cooper or spoken to him on the phone since.

In the immediate wake of Cooper's distortions, I finally decided that my already strained credibility could not withstand another such onslaught, nor did I want to waste any more time or effort trying to undo any further damage that might occur through Lear's deliberate propagation of disinformation to open-minded but unsophisticated citizens in my hometown. A week before the event was scheduled to take place in late February, I cancelled it, much to the disappointment of Lear and the dozens of people who were already planning to go. I called Lear to tell him then that he would have to find someone else, that it was just too costly for me to do at the time, and that I had my hands full with several other events. He was disappointed, but handled it surprisingly good- naturedly, then began to tell me about some heat researcher Martin Cannon had received following the printing of his article about Lear which included some quotes about Novel that Novel apparently became quite irritated about.

Cannon, as I mentioned earlier, had written a letter a few months before to Daniel Sheehan, expressing well-justified concern about apparent contacts between the Institute and Cooper. It had concluded by stating that I was an "associate" of Lear's and Cooper's, who had been misleading the "naive Christic volunteers about UFO-related issues "into the depths of Cooperism," implying that I was somehow stumping for Cooper, when I had never even mentioned him to anyone at the Christic office. The legal activist had taken Cannon's letter and Sheehan's reply from the Christic files and had allowed them both to be copied and circulated around LA -- an unconscionable act, by anyone's standards-- which ended up causing me a great deal of grief with my true associates in California.

I jokingly told Lear that maybe Cannon should get to know Novel a little better before he began taking potshots at him, since Novel was clearly the type who would shoot back. What Lear didn't know was that I had written Cannon a lengthy letter a couple of months before explaining my activities in detail and he and I had pretty well resolved the misunderstanding. What he also didn't know was that another friend of mine had written to Mary Ferrell, a highly respected Kennedy researcher in Dallas, to ask her a number of questions about Novel, along the lines of issues I've mentioned earlier, only to have his letter pique Novel's interest to the extent that he was ready to catch a flight out to Denver immediately to check out my friend. Since he is an absolute novice at this research and not at all used to threats and counter-threats, I had contacted Ferrell myself immediately to have her relay to Novel that I was the person he needed to question, not R., who was entirely harmless. Up to that time, no one else had yet heard Lear's tape of Novel, nor had I had it transcribed.

Patriots For Profit

Lear continued calling me on a weekly basis, usually at work during the day to share the latest "nugget" or new development in the UFO/covert operations arena. I went along with the discussions for the most part, figuring that perhaps he really was making a sincere effort to cultivate a friendship in the wake of considerable damage in the past. I never was able to lose the suspicion, however, that it was primarily an effort on his part to keep tabs on what I was up to and to make sure that we remained on at least "even" terms. I figured that he was probably still fearful that I might go public with the stories about the 1981 weapons flights to Iran and the 1988 plans for shipment of the Marcos Gold. As a matter of fact, at that very time I had sent out an updated version of my original memo on the gold shipments to a selected variety of national media and law enforcement in the midst of the trial of Imelda Marcos in New York, but again received not a single acknowledgement of receipt, much less a concerned response.

In the middle of one of these conversations, precisely as I had anticipated two months before, Lear told me that the other TV station in Las Vegas, Channel 13, had tracked Lazar to the brothel, and that he had already admitted his involvement on a preemptive newscast on Channel 8. As clearly as I had foreseen this turn of events, it still was startling to actually hear of it unfolding, and I kicked myself for not taking the liberty of confronting Lazar about it as soon as I had found out. Although we have never been close friends, I believe my credibility with Lazar and Huff has always been very strong precisely because I have never tried to "buddy up" to them or to capitalize off their story, but merely treated them like the regular people they are -- with perhaps a couple of exceptions. I am actually pleased to say that, as far as I know, our relations are still on the same level today, despite all the crap that has ensued since, and no doubt lies ahead, after these revelations.

I became very concerned about Lazar's situation, since I knew that any excuse to arrest him could lead to a possible mandatory imprisonment and a likely MK-ULTRA-style "liquid lobotomy" which would leave Lazar wondering who he ever thought he was, much less what planet he was on. I have seen too many victims of the American Gulag to have any doubt whatsoever of the likely scenario. I again made arrangements to go back to Las Vegas to meet with them, since I was also preparing to begin working with Gritz again on his new book, Called to Serve, and video-documentary Reflections, and wanted to try to talk some sense into Lazar. Much to my disgust, I found that not only had he been charged with at least five separate counts, but that he had already pleaded guilty to one count of felony pandering! I was absolutely stunned, and asked who he had for an attorney, Donald Duck?

I was not only extremely disgusted that Lear had not followed my advice, after all the grief his sexual escapades had caused him (and me), but that no one had helped Lazar prepare any kind of adequate defense, since a felony conviction for pandering in Clark County, Nevada is about as ridiculous as a felony conviction for skiing in Aspen, Colorado! It is well known that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of hookers and cathouses operating openly in Vegas, and the only ones which ever are shaken down by Metro are the ones that don't pay their "juice" to the Mob, or "share their juice" with Metro. It didn't surprise me at all, in fact, when I learned that the number three man at Metro had been a boyfriend/regular customer of the madam at Lazar's "bordello" for eight years! So much for justice in Clark County.

The real irony is that Metro had actually staged a bust at the motel operation a few months before and actually knew about Lazar's presence, but had no intention of busting him until he apparently was given bad advice and decided to admit his involvement on prime-time local TV, leaving them no choice.

When I arrived at Lear's house he had a hard time containing his mirth about something, and I asked him what he could possibly think was so funny at a time like that, with his friend looking at a prison term and/or lobotomy. He asked me if I'd seen Bill Cooper's new newsletter and I replied that I didn't even know he had one. Lear then said, "Sit down. You've got to see this."

Apparently, in the aftermath of Lazar's admissions, George Knapp felt honor-bound to address the UFO issue from the "other side" -- that is, pointing out all the inconsistencies and weirdness that has pervaded the issue, and giving more time to the critics. His second nine-part series, entitled UFOs: The Best Evidence? was, if anything, better than the first series, which was excellent. Lear "cut to the chase" initially in showing me a humorous segment poking fun at Knapp which was produced by local radio hosts Johnson & Tofte entitled "The Boob on the Tube," which Knapp had the class to include in his program. The next segment was a carefully edited examination of Bill Cooper which was absolutely scathing in exposing him for the fraud he truly is. Knapp must have taken some non-reportorial delight in purposely selecting clips of Cooper which showed him with particularly stupid expressions on his mug.

I was actually so inspired by his genius in this regard that I followed suit in my selection of similar footage of former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs "Big Dick" Armitage in Gritz's new video. Armitage has been alleged by many investigators, including Gritz and H. Ross Perot, to have been massively involved for years in large-scale opium and heroin trafficking. Armitage was one of the key officials in the Defense Department who expedited weapons sales to Saddam Hussein for years prior to the invasion of Kuwait, all the while being directly responsible for the recovery of American Prisoners of War and Missing in Action from Southeast Asia. I had no qualms whatever in selecting, much less dificulty in locating, particularly dim- witted shots of him.

After his wife had left, Lear then showed me a copy of Cooper's latest CAJI (Citizens' Agency for Joint Intelligence) Newsletter, in which he excoriated Knapp, Lazar, Lear and others, accusing Lear of being not only a CIA agent and "Condor," the OSI agent in the UFO COVER-UP ... LIVE! television special from the year before. Cooper had also accused Lear of having a hooker at his house during a meeting with him, Gordon Novel, Paul Shepherd and some other gentleman. As I read Cooper's charges, as much as I had come to loathe the man, I couldn't help but reflect upon how similar his charges seemed to my own experiences at Lear's. When I asked John if there was any truth at all to what Cooper was alleging, he became evasive, and mumbled that there were a few people at the house, but the situation was much different than Cooper described. I let the issue lay for then, but noted that Cooper -- no matter what class of liar and fraud he was -- certainly had every right to feel outrage at the way he was represented on the program, without any chance to directly rebut the charges, particularly by an admitted government disinformation agent such as William Moore (no matter how he tries to justify his actions).

Although I have nothing but contempt for Cooper, it was easily understandable why he would grab any dirt he could get his hands on to fling back at his accusers. Yet again I was reminded of how petty and asinine are most of the personalities in the "forefront" of the UFO issue, and all the reasons why I preferred to stay completely out of it. Lear admitted also that he was very worried that Cooper's allegations about the hooker, and his involvement with Lazar in an alleged "speed" (e.g. methamphetamine) lab could seriously affect his employment if carried any further, "even though they were untrue."

I asked him why he didn't just go on the air and deny Cooper's accusations or take legal action, but he countered by questioning, "Would you want to have someone like Bill Cooper owing you money for the next 20 years?" I got his point, but sensed strongly that there were other reasons for Lear's reluctance to press Cooper. I certainly understood, however, his reluctance to drag his family name into any kind of serious public scrutiny, no matter the extent of his professed blamelessness.

I assured Lear that I was only warming up to do battle with Cooper concerning his appropriation and sale of the Kennedy tape. Lear himself had written to advise me about the situation shortly before, after attending a lecture by Bill Hamilton in Palmdale, California, where copies of my tape were on sale for $20 each with Bill Cooper's label on them. I assured Lear that whatever his beef with Cooper, it would have to wait until I set the record straight with the man once and for all. I made it clear that I would not be taking any major action until after I completed work on Gritz's new book and video and his Freedom Call convention was over. I made it clear that their successful completion without interruption was of first priority, but that after that Cooper was going to "feel the heat and see the light," precisely as I had advised him during our last conversation a few months before.

I then began to question Lear closely and obtained a highly detailed briefing on Lazar's situation. I asked him point-blank how he could have allowed Lazar to continue in the brothel operation after all that had happened before, and especially after my own heated insistence that he simply pull Lazar out of there bodily if necessary. He simply shrugged his shoulders and said "No one can tell Bob Lazar to do anything. I tried, but he wouldn't listen to me."

When I asked him why no one had helped Lazar to obtain more effective legal representation, Lear simply shrugged and said, "What could I do? I don't know any good attorneys."

I interrupted his limp excuses to remind him that a classic railroading was underway and that Bob Lazar would probably be lobotomized within three days of incarceration. When I asked him why he wasn't doing anything more to help Lazar, he feebly protested that "When I got into this [UFO] thing, I said I would take it as far as I could go, just to find out what the truth was. I've been through all the information all these guys have dug up, including Bob, and if he gets put away now, I just can't be too concerned about it. I have to just keep moving on." After all his professed love and concern for Lazar over the previous year, and all the mileage he had tried to obtain through his association with Bob, I was just amazed at his cynical disconnection from Lazar's plight. I swear before all that is sacred that these were his words and intent, which I recall virtually verbatim. I was truly stunned.

During this same time period, I received another call from Lear to come up to his house to meet Paul Shepherd, who had been a "traveling companion" of Gordon Novel's and was at Lear's house the night of the alleged incident with the hooker. Since I had good reason at that point to find out whatever I could about Novel, I accepted the invitation and spent several hours in conversation with the two men about a variety of subjects, including Novel. Although I had been forewarned to be careful around Shepherd, who was characterized as a "slippery, snaky" kind of guy, I found him to be refreshingly down-to-earth and candid, and despite his obviously intense interest in the UFO phenomena, he seemed to have a very balanced and mature approach to the situation for a 35-year- old man.

I did find it quite odd, however, when Lear appeared to be guiding Shepherd through a carefully-choreographed, step-by-step retelling of the "Night with the Hooker" story, in which both admitted that the woman actually was present, but that it was simply impossible for "anything" to have happened. Up to that point I really hadn't given the matter all that much thought, but now began to seriously question exactly why Lear was going to so much trouble to try to convince me that nothing happened, when he and I both knew damn well that such activity was SOP for him, especially if he had several other men around to try and impress.

Prior to Shepherd's arrival, Lear had been very excited about sharing with me the audiotape of his more recent conversation with Novel. Gordon elaborated at twice the length as before upon all the issues discussed in the previous conversation, including some "wetwork" he claimed to have recently performed in the Caribbean "for the last time." He described his being ordered by Gen. Daniel Graham to "get the hell away from the UFO business," after he had repeatedly assured Lear previously that he had Graham's full backing in the UFO pursuits.

Lear then brought up Cooper's allegations, to which Novel launched into a lengthy recounting of the situation from his perspective, admitting the woman's presence, but denying that Lear had had enough time alone with the woman to have "consummated" anything. I did find it pretty amusing, considering Cooper's outraged charges, that the woman apparently, according to all accounts, bummed all of Cooper's cigarettes before opening up a fresh pack of her own. As I said at the outset, in this line of work, hearing about a cigarette moocher right after hearing someone confess to "wetwork in the Caribbean" is not all that unusual, even for someone who is not a CIA agent. I speak only for myself in this regard, but I am inclined to believe Novel when he claims to have pushed the Agency to a stand-off, since whatever he may lack, the man certainly seems to have no shortage of cojones, unlike Lear.

Lear offered to make a duplicate of the second conversation with Novel, apparently in a continuing attempt to "impress" me, or to at least keep me "inside the tent pissing out," but I declined, telling him that the last one was serious enough, and I didn't want to compound the error in the event Novel ever decided to go on the rampage. I would have very much liked a copy of the conversation, but felt the issues had become far too serious at that point to risk carrying in my baggage anything more damaging concerning Novel. My apprehension was particularly heightened at that point following a fortuitous discovery sometime in July during a meeting with an Australian film producer in Beverly Hills who had adapted part of Gritz's story into the opening segment of a planned film entitled A Murder of Crows. I was stunned to discover on his dining-room table a giant front-page article in the Australian Sydney Morning Herald about the indictment of a former Australian government official in the attempt to move 550 tons of gold -- no doubt all or part of the Marcos hoard! I had little doubt then or now that those responsible would eventually surface direct connections to the Secord-Clines-Colby clique involved in the Nugan-Hand banking scandal in Australia which resulted in the death of Frank Nugan and the disappearance of (former Green Beret and CIA agent) Michael Hand in late 1980. I highly recommend Jonathan Kwitny's excellent book The Crimes of Patriots for a detailing briefing on this miasma.

I had more than enough on hand concerning Novel, and any more of that nature could qualify as literal overkill. At that point, I would not have put it past Lear to have notified Novel that I had secretly taped their conversation (instead of him), in an effort to have Novel himself neutralize me. Stranger things have happened, many times.

For that reason, following his sending to me a copy of the inscription to him by William Colby in his book Lost Victory, I had actually made an elaborate show of presenting Lear with a humorously (but in deadly earnest) typeset version of the transcript of his previous conversation with Novel. It was intended to be a subtle reminder that the game -- if it was to be a game -- was equally matched. I have no doubt he got the message when his eyes bulged out of his head, and he whispered, "My God, I didn't realize how serious this looks in print! He'd kill us both if he ever saw this! Who else has a copy?"

Desert Solitaire

Sometime during this period, while I was plugging away on the Profiles in Conspiracy chapter of Gritz's new book, Lear called up and asked me if I would like to go with him out to the Test Site to try to watch UFO maneuvers that evening. I immediately responded that I was too busy and couldn't risk losing time the next day by staying up too late. He was extremely insistent that I join him, since he had so few opportunities to get out there and had a lot he wanted to talk over with me. I was extremely apprehensive about the situation, and really had no particular desire to sit out in the desert all night, particularly within range of national- security goon squads, but figured that maybe he wanted to get something off his chest.

Despite all the apprehension and mistrust that had come to swirl beneath the surface of our dealings with each other, I still felt then, and now, that Lear is basically one helluva nice guy, who really wants to be a friend, but just doesn't know how to remain discreet about matters that should remain private and/or confidential -- with anybody. Worse yet, his long-term connections with the Agency, coupled with the preponderance of weapons cargos, gives the giant lie to any "humanitarian" impulses he might profess in dealing with UFO or covert-operations issues.

However reluctantly, I did accompany Lear out to the Test Site, but decided to borrow the .45 he keeps hanging behind his desk just in case he or anyone else decided to pull anything "squirrelly" out in the desert. Since I had not had time to let anyone at all know where I was going -- which they would have thought was screwy anyway -- I figured I had better prepare for the worst. Although the evening was totally uneventful, the .45 still provided a giant measure of comfort in the event that anyone unexpected might have come roaring up.

Throughout the night, Lear and I discussed a variety of issues, both of a personal nature and concerning the vast panoply of UFO and shadow government activities. I must confess that the time was somewhat poignant, much like the time I was able to spend with my sister a couple of months before she was killed in a freak car accident, since I already sensed that something would be happening fairly soon to completely eliminate further contact between Lear and me. I certainly didn't foresee anything morbid occurring, but sensed strongly that some issue would surface to irrevocably sever our communication. Consequently, I made it a point to talk as honestly, forthrightly and directly with Lear as possible, and focused repeatedly on his true beliefs about the reasons for our oppressive operations throughout the world, particularly in the third world, and his true reasons for pursuing the UFO issue so obsessively. There were no revelatory confessions, either.

One item, though, stands out: After hours spent discussing the wide range of UFO incidents and individuals, I asked Lear, "If all these things have happened that you believe concerning the secret treaties with aliens and Eisenhower, etc., and the establishment of the intelligence agencies in the post-war world to try to counter the alien threat, and given the incorporation of thousands of 'former' Nazis in these structures, why would these agencies have spent so much time and effort brutally suppressing so many small, weak countries throughout the world and overseeing the drugging of our own people by the tonnage? Why, if we're facing such a huge threat from Zeta Reticuli or Alpha Timbuktu, would they waste even an hour tormenting peasants in Guatemala, Bolivia, or Indonesia?"

Lear's only reply was "That's all just a smokescreen."

When I pressed him about it to clarify his meaning, he said he had nothing to add, and I thought that the only smokescreen operation underway was the one he and those agencies were actively involved in -- keeping Americans from knowing about those operations, and now using some contrived "alien threat" to replace the dreaded "commies" who were now our trading partners. The only smokescreen was the one that concealed massive increases in expenditures for the weapons industries while we had smoke blown up our posteriors about the "peace dividend."

The rest of the way back to Las Vegas Lear chose to reflect on his affair with the mistress mentioned earlier, whom I had come to know fairly well in the interim. I found her to be an intelligent and attractive woman myself, and certainly could not fault him for his interest in her, but had a hard time understanding how he could have rationalized dragging out the affair so close to home for the length of time that he did, even after she made concerted moves to end it. Since I've never been a great fan of his wife's, I think I actually would have had more respect for him if he had been more up-front about the affair and simply gone with the other woman if he was dissatisfied with his wife, rather than sneaking around as long as he did, even for months after the episode to which I was a witness.

Lear insisted he had always lived "close to the edge" and that if he had it all to do over again, he would have made entirely the same moves. Since I also knew the girlfriend's version of events at that point, unbeknownst to him, I simply shook my head in pity, since he obviously accorded the affair far more depth than she did, at least after a certain point, when she actually had to threaten to call his wife if he didn't leave her alone. As we parted company that morning, I assured him that I would be setting the record straight once and for all about Cooper and the videotape, and would do my best to set the record straight on his behalf also. Somehow I knew that even if Cooper didn't resort to any cheap shots at Lear on the radio, it was only a matter of time before his sleazy lifestyle caught up with him.

By the time this actually took place, in late July 1990, I had already made plans to confront Cooper on Las Vegas and LA radio and at his event in Beverly Hills in early August, and had written a short piece on our dispute for UFO Magazine. As Cooper tells it in his book: "... in the late summer of 1990, after I had been showing the film for over a year and a half, Lars Hansson began to show up on the radio proclaiming that Greer, the driver, did not shoot the President. Lars Hansson showed up at my fall 1990 Beverly Hills High School lecture and disrupted the lecture, yelling out taunts and otherwise making an ass out of himself. When the lecture ended, he accosted people in the lobby, and along with David Lifton, attempted to convince members of the audience that they really didn't see Greer shoot Kennedy. To their credit, most of the audience told Hansson and Lifton to stick it where the sun don't shine. Once people see it with their own eyes they can no longer be fooled. Hansson, Lifton, Grodin [sic], and the other agents of the secret government are running out of time. Americans are catching on to the scam. I shudder to think what will happen to these people when Americans finally get angry. Do not forget that Lear informed me that his source for the film was a CIA agent who later turned out to be Lars Hansson."

It is definitely important that you understand that by the summer of 1990, I had already appeared on the national TV news program INSIDE REPORT to admit my error in producing the tape and allowing it to get out through John Lear, to clarify that I did not and had not supported the driver theory since at least November of 1988, and specifically to confront Cooper's phoniness. When he discovered that I was going to appear on the program, after thinking that he was going to be "the star of the show," Bill Cooper backed out. The producers, apparently lacking a "bad guy" -- completely contrary to their agreed-upon treatment of my testimony -- knowingly and deliberately left out half of what I said, and presented me promoting the driver theory, when, in fact, I was repudiating it. Before I was able to expose their deliberate perfidy publicly, they went out of business.

By July of 1990, after working intermittently on the re-writing and editing of Bo Gritz's new book and video as he was planning his upcoming Freedom Call '90, I had determined to stay entirely out of the planning and execution of the event for a variety of reasons. My associate and I had just put on a very successful series of programs by Gritz, Dan Sheehan, Tony Avirgan and Dr. Bob Strecker in Santa Barbara (for which I received nary a dime) and I was too worn out and financially depleted to go through it again. I felt that after all the crap with Cooper, et al, I would prefer to keep a little distance from the event.

While working on the book, however, I learned that someone named Richard Murry had volunteered himself to act as Gritz's coordinator and had apparently gone to considerable lengths to make sure that Bill Cooper was guaranteed a prominent position in the proceedings. I had never heard of Murry before, but I did not hesitate to let Bo know, as I had during our one meeting at his house the summer before, that Cooper was a fraud and bad news, very much along the lines of three other individuals who had cozied up to Bo and then stabbed him in the back. I emphasized, as I had when Bo had asked me about participating in Cooper's event at the Showboat in Las Vegas in January 1990, that he had everything to lose and nothing to gain by having anything to do with the UFO issue, much less with a phony like Bill Cooper. I reminded him then, and again in July, how he had admonished me back in mid-1988 to stay out of the UFO issue myself when I was first beginning to meet with Lear, and to "stay focused on the immediate target" -- that is, POWs and the drug problem -- and urged him to follow his own counsel, since I knew well, from first-hand experience that Cooper and Lear were both phonies.

I had figured that Cooper would have buried himself in his own bullshit by that time, but like the snake-oil salesman I would accuse him of being shortly thereafter on Las Vegas radio, he keeps moving his dog-and- pony show from town to town and simply accuses his accusers of being agents of the secret government whenever they point out his lies or blatant reversals.

Though I had vowed not to involve myself in Gritz's Freedom Call, along with several of my associates I did make a concerted effort to persuade Gritz to drop Cooper from the program. I indicated to Bo that if he was willing to forego my advice after two years of intense interaction and make the same mistake he had made with Scott Barnes, Chuck Patterson, et al, then I'd have to seriously rethink my own commitments -- I was getting too old to continue fighting obvious losing battles. Apparently we did have some impact, though Gritz still graciously allowed Cooper to present a "side-door workshop" down the hall after the main speakers had concluded. Although someone may accuse me of working behind the scenes to undermine Cooper, I have been open and candid about my efforts along these lines to one and all. I am only sorry I was unable to have him barred from the premises entirely. As could be expected, Cooper apparently made a cheap shot at the Christic Institute, blaming them for his exclusion, when they had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Eyeball - To - Eyeball

I had already determined to take Cooper on over the airwaves as soon as Gritz's event was over, not wanting to taint the proceedings with our "personal feud." I was only able to attend the first evening and half of the next day, but still had occasion to actually be standing right next to Cooper at one point, though he didn't notice me.

It took all the restraint I could muster to keep from confronting him then and there, but as much as I have come to detest Mr. Cooper, I had far greater respect for Gritz than to disrupt his program. I did determine, however, to confront Cooper publicly on the radio at the first opportunity following the conference, and expose his lies. As fate would have it, a close friend happened to have called KFI Radio in LA on my behalf at that time and when Tom Leykis's producer heard I was the person who made the infamous Kennedy tape, he was delighted to have me on the upcoming show with Cooper. With that show already scheduled, I determined to fire the first salvo on the Billy Goodman show on KVEG in Las Vegas, which had promoted Cooper slavishly from the outset.

Goodman was lukewarm about having me on initially, since I had deliberately been maintaining a low public profile in order to facilitate my investigative work. When he heard that I was going to be meeting Cooper head-on on KFI Radio in LA a few days later, he was anxious to "scoop" Tom Leykis and then actually became insistent that I appear on his show. When Bob Lazar also called him to suggest that he have me on, he couldn't get me on quick enough, since "Bob Lazaaaaaar...." had been the primary factor in making the the Billy Goodman show "happen." When Lazar quit calling in, Goodman's ratings evaporated.

I would have preferred to have started much earlier that evening, since I was certain Goodman or someone else would immediately contact Cooper, and I didn't want to take unfair advantage of the situation, but the show was actually delayed an hour in starting until 1 a.m. After I'd made a few opening remarks about Lazar's upcoming sentencing, Goodman asked me something about the Kennedy assassination. Knowing I would probably not be able to complete many sentences afterward, I deliberately stated that Bill Cooper was "a fraud, a liar, a plagiarist, a snake-oil salesman and a third-rate huckster," and that he was completely misusing the videotape I had made after I had told him more than once to cease and desist. The audiotape of the entire confrontation is available to anyone who wants to hear it.

I was tired after a long week, and simply not prepared for Cooper's bald-faced lies. Given my training and natural orientation toward diplomacy, I was more than ready to concede a point to him if it was true, and I did this several times.

My friends jumped me afterward about going so easy on him, and he later crowed that "Everybody who heard the program thought I kicked your ass!" Goodman, who Lear regularly refers to as "Billy Buffoon," shamelessly ran interference for Cooper, who, as he let slip during the program, was one of Goodman's biggest advertisers/sponsors. Even so, I made the main points I wanted to make. Despite Cooper's lies and threats, the ripples I created that evening have certainly rocked his boat, and eventually will engulf him.

When Cooper claimed I had made the tape for Bo Gritz and John Lear -- a bald-faced lie -- and that I had given him an inscribed copy and a written authorization to show it -- another lie -- I emphasized that I did not know either one of the two men at the time I made the video. I surprised him by challenging him to present the copy he claimed I had given him to Tom Leykis as proof when we met on his program five days later in LA. Needless to say, Cooper had nothing to show, because it simply never happened. When I asked him off the air, in front of Tom Leykis and the others present, where the tape I had supposedly given him was, he could only snarl -- "I don't have to show you anything!"

On that program, I did not hesitate to admit that I not only made the tape, but made a monumental error by stating the "driver scenario" as an actual fact in the narration, rather than as an apparent possibility. One man who thoroughly castigated me on the air claimed I had created the tape as a "straw man" -- that is, putting out something that was actually true, but of such poor quality that it could easily be discredited. He called me a fraud, and insisted I had been paid off to change my story. After I managed to get a word in, I emphasized that my intention in throwing the tape together was primarily to preserve our copy of the film and to secure the funding to obtain a pristine copy of the film and perform the best analysis available. I pointed out that there were actually numerous other pieces of evidence besides the film that seemed to support the theory, and that I would have been the first to promote it -- after all, I made the damn thing! -- if I believed it was true. When he accused me of deliberately making a poor- quality tape just to make money, I reminded him that I was not the one promoting it, showing and selling it -- Bill Cooper was! That took the wind out of his sails somewhat, and most of the other callers pretty much tended to side with me, particularly when I was able to bring out a number of the other crucial aspects of the assassination of which Cooper is apparently ignorant.

I was also able to point out the numerous inconsistencies in Cooper's claims about his own background, particularly his statement that he had decided to have nothing to do with the U.S. Government following his military service, even though his own resume claims five more years' involvement with the "intelligence community," from 1975-1980. Cooper claimed to have been so unnerved by his exposure to the Naval briefing papers in 1971 (or was it 1972 or 1973? I think Cooper changes the date every time he's asked) that he had to go AWOL for ten days to sort it out and wanted to have nothing further to do with the military or the intelligence community. After having his term of service extended by the Navy for a year in punishment, he nevertheless chose to continue working for the "intelligence community" from 1975-1980 -- according to his own resume! In my one meeting with him at his home in Fullerton, California in August 1989, during our two subsequent phone conversations in November 1989 and January 1990, and during our joint appearance on KFI Radio, he refused to answer any of my questions as to what his activities were on their behalf.

Regardless of who "won" the encounter, Cooper failed, in front of five witnesses, by being unable to produce the tape he claimed I had given to him, much less the authorization he claimed I had also given him. He reversed himself more than once when I took him to task regarding specific time periods he claimed to have gone AWOL and decided to get out of government service once and for all after seeing the "Top-Secret" documents.

I reminded him publicly that people he had claimed previously to be his staunchest allies told me he had bragged about sneaking the documents from their security lockers and sneaking the copies off his ship in his lunch pail. When I confronted him about the contradiction between his statement on the air regarding his unwillingness to work for the USG after reading the reports, and the fact that he claims on his own resume that he performed services for "the intelligence community" from 1975-1980, he changed the subject; he refused to even discuss it off the air. His statement to me was "That's for me to know -- you'll never find out!" The rest, however, is all on tape -- you can listen to it yourself.

Oh yes, he was very forceful and overpowering, in the bully-boy style he has relied on to intimidate others, shouting his way into control of the discussion, and lying repeatedly whenever I circled in too tightly on him. Some might think he carried the day, particularly when I was willing to concede agreement with the few truthful statements he did make. I know that I scored points with the audience through my willingness to concede I had made the film and that there were numerous other aspects related to the theory, all of which Cooper was entirely ignorant. I pointed out that the two alleged witnesses who were supposed to have been willing to confirm the theory could somehow never be located or identified. I described the mysterious .45- caliber slug found and photgraphed repeatedly on the other side of Elm Street which Cooper had never discussed. I described the extensive participation of "ex"-Nazis in the overall planning and execution of the hit, and named names --none of which he knew. Despite his blustering, bully-boy style of shouting down any unfavorable questioning, most of the listeners I talked to later said they believed I made a far more favorable impact than Cooper on the better-informed audience in Los Angeles.

Perhaps the greatest victory was that, after hearing me out following Cooper's subsequent presentation at Beverly Hills High, the one gentleman who gave me such a hard time on the radio, who also still prefers to subscribe to the driver scenario, has become quite a good friend since. He has also shared some excellent information regarding several related issues with me and my associates. Despite our disagreement on the driver scenario, he has come to know well the depth and sincerity of my research and continuing efforts.

Despite Cooper's claims to the contrary, there were no free seats at his Beverly Hills High program -- everybody had to pay $20 to get in, only to hear more of Cooper's recycled purloined material from the same UFO researchers whose documents and articles I myself had read from John Lear's files two years before. There were also no microphones provided, nor any question-and-answer session after his three-hour harangue, nor were any cameras or recording devices permitted -- hardly the open atmosphere one might expect from someone who was trying to enlighten the world about the imminent global threat facing them. Rather, it had all the hallmarks of a slickly-planned event to insure Cooper held all the cards and controlled distribution of all the recordings.

Perhaps because of the heat I had put on him, he was obviously defensive throughout the talk, and actually did identify some of the many other researchers whose work he was quoting from for a change. The slide show was incredibly slow-moving, hard to read and tedious, and in one case he quickly passed over a quote by Mikhail Gorbachev which appeared to indicate his belief in UFOs, until an alert listener demanded that Cooper go back and read the rest of the quotation, in which Gorbachev said, "For indeed, what could be more alien than war or the threat of war?" Cooper was visibly ruffled by that minor exposure of his deliberate sensationalism.

He used the occasion to heavily slam Don Ecker, Bob Lazar, Budd Hopkins and me, repeatedly referring to Ecker's UFO "trashzine," and claimed that Bob Lazar was as "phony as a three-dollar bill." Only a few months earlier Cooper had gushed all over Lazar on the Billy Goodman, claiming he had "checked Bob out thoroughly" and he was "all he claimed he was" and "a great American patriot." Since no microphone had been provided with which to address Cooper, I had no choice but to shout out from the middle of the auditorium "Is that why he just received a W-2 form from Naval Intelligence for his work at Area S-4?" He did not like that one bit, to be sure.

When he later claimed during the showing of my videotape and the cheap colorized version of my tape by Nippon TV which he claimed as absolute proof of the driver theory, that I had demanded that he remove my narration some time before, but that he "didn't have the money," I again had no choice but to shout out, "Your partner, Stan Barrington, says you sold several hundred copies of my tape. That should have given you plenty of money, Bill."

At that point he tried to restore dominance by stating that "It's my show!" to the obvious approval of a few of his most devoted sycophants and ordered his ushers to eject me from the auditorium if I "made another outburst." A couple of them approached me hesitantly, at which time I told them I had heard enough anyway and I would be happy to leave as soon as they refunded my money. They never returned.

Contrary to Cooper's statement, following his final boring remarks, I did not accost anyone. Rather, a large crowd of people eagerly besieged me not in the lobby, but right in the aisle as I was trying to leave -- not to make any disparaging remarks, but to eagerly question me about the tape and why I did not support my own statements on it which Cooper was promoting so heavily. I told them the simple truth as I have told you here, at which point David Lifton appeared. I neither came with him to the event nor did I know he was present until that point. I had not spoken with him except for one time on the phone regarding the Greer theory two summers before.

Even then Lifton was adamant that he did not believe in the driver theory though he had been exposed to it many years before by Fred Newcomb, who had co-authored the Murder From Within manuscript with Perry Adams. Lifton is well known by serious Kennedy assassination researchers to be no friend of Robert Groden: nevertheless, he stated authoritatively that as much as we all would like to pin the fatal headshot on Greer, after viewing what he claimed was the finest copy of the film available shortly before, he was certain that (as I had been saying for nearly two years) Greer's hands never left the steering wheel, even though he did look back twice and stepped on the brakes -- clear indications, as far as I am concerned, that Greer was probably in on the plot. This crowd of between 50-75 people that Cooper claims was so antagonistic, actually followed us both outside to the patio at my suggestion to facilitate clearing the hall. We continued the intense discussion there for over two hours longer. Without any urging on my part, they also bought over $100 worth of some of the other literature I had brought along with me.

One fellow I met in the lobby during the intermission called me a week later, having tracked me down to tell me he had looked at the much-clearer Zapruder footage from the NOVA special and could clearly see that Greer didn't fire anything, and thanked me for having the guts to admit my error in letting the tape get out and for confronting Cooper. Cooper is right about one thing: once people see actual clear footage of the Zapruder film and not the 8th or 10th generation garbage he drags around, they can indeed no longer be fooled and they will all denounce him for the fraud and shameless demagogue that he truly is.

Cooper's statement that "Hansson, Grodin [sic], and Lifton are running out of time. Americans are catching on to the scam. I shudder to think what will happen to these people when Americans finally get angry. Do not forget that Lear informed me that his source for the film was a CIA agent who later turned out to be Lars Hansson." is simply another outright, bald-faced lie and malicious slander. Though I am not an attorney, it almost certainly qualifies as actual malicious baiting for some lunatic to go out and "terminate" us as agents. The simple fact is that I had actually gotten into an hour-long argument with Lifton regarding the driver theory two years before, and had never written or spoken to Robert Groden until after our appearance on the TV program on which Cooper alone was afraid to appear. Since Groden and I had never met or spoken with each other before, he was unfamiliar with my beliefs concerning the driver theory. I have little doubt he was referring to Cooper's published and videotaped statements when he characterized them on the program as "asinine," even though the producers had deliberately left out the most important half of my testimony and made me appear to be supporting the theory myself.

I have yet to meet Robert Groden personally and met Lifton for the first and only time at Cooper's event. Despite their personal and/or professional differences, however, they have performed 1,000 times the committed research AND sacrifice to bring the truth about Kennedy's murder to the American public than has Cooper. Even my 15-year effort in that regard pales beside their work. For Cooper to even dare to make such a statement about them is utterly shameless and completely asinine. I don't know either of them very well at all, but I would be willing to wager all that I have or will have that the odds are far greater that if anyone works for the "Secret Government" it is Wild Bill Cooper -- he certainly has the most acknowledged service time, and the least time in doing the hard work in genuine research on the Kennedy assassination.

To make such a statement about me is so absolutely, patently untruthful and absurd, after my own record of taking the government on directly on my own and Gritz's behalf, that anyone who has made even the most feeble effort to check me out can quickly see through it. I can easily supply dozens of character witnesses who can verify my activities and lack of income for the last 10 years. As I said before, Cooper is a complete phony and a liar, and his cheap, third-grade technique of accusing anyone who exposes him of being "an agent of the Secret Government" is so petty, childish and disgusting it reeks. And again I ask you, what did Cooper do for "the intelligence community" between 1975-1980?

If he is so intent on alerting us all to the danger of takeover of which we are already acutely aware, and if he had no qualms about committing treason and stealing Top-Secret documents that no one else has ever seen, what could he possibly reveal about his intelligence-related functions for five years that could possibly be any more damaging to our "national security" than the purloined and fabricated gloom- and-doom scenario he is already spewing?

His campaign of smear tactics and vilification reeks of Goebbel's "Big Lie" propaganda techniques. His almost complete ignorance of or unwillingness to discuss the extreme extent of actual Nazi involvement in the post- war heroin and cocaine trade, as well as the true composition of the controllers of Military-Industrial Complex that obviously rules this country and most of the world through planned programs of assassination and genocide, is simply staggering. If, as John Judge says, "Goebbels would have given his saluting arm for the propagandizing power of television," he would certainly have sacrificed his "bird finger" for a bully-boy like Bill Cooper to go out and harangue the masses with his message of fear, smear and confusion.

Considering all that I have related thus far, I do not think I am merely being paranoid in believing that Lear probably used Cooper's interest in the Kennedy assassination initially in a definite attempt to discredit me. Given the unscrupulous hothead and publicity hound that Cooper is, it probably took very little urging to get him underway. Despite widespread suspicion that Lear and Cooper have actaully been working for the same master(s) to spew disinformation since, I do believe that Lear's and Cooper's mutual contempt is as real as mine is for both of them.

Even so, I seriously doubt that Cooper had had any great concern at all about John Kennedy's death, or who was actually involved in effecting it, until John Lear "pimped" him with my rough videotape The Truth Betrayed: Dallas Revisited. It is obvious even to this day that Cooper has done very little research on the subject. In all the presentations he has conducted on the subject which I have heard or seen, his discussion is limited almost exclusively to the "driver-shot-Kennedy" scenario and little else.

Whatever Cooper's actual motives in appropriating my videotape and selling it since he obtained a copy directly from him, John Lear knew clearly that I no longer supported the "driver-shot-Kennedy" theory long before he met with and furnished my tape to Cooper, and I have little doubt also that Cooper knew my stand on the issue well before he began to publicize my tape. They also both knew very well that the videotape I produced was by no means a finished product for display or distribution, but rather a research aid hastily edited from a poor-quality copy of the film to begin with.

Milton William "Bill" Cooper, in my opinion, is not only a liar and a plagiarist, he is a crude, loutish bully boy who would be right at home in a brown shirt, or better yet, in a third-grader's sandbox -- that is precisely his style of threatening and accusation. While Cooper has managed to get his hands on some good information from a variety of sources, he has sown more seeds of discord and dissension amongst a variety of sincere groups and researchers than any government disinformation agent could ever hope to. If he is not on the payroll of Naval Intelligence or some other agency, as he has admitted he was from 1975-1980, he certainly should be receiving checks from them, since he is doing a superlative job of distorting and disrupting the work of a number of dedicated and sincere researchers, and misleading thousands of genuinely concerned citizens who, for whatever reason, will not take the time to verify his claims. The only reason I doubted initially (and still do) that he was an agent was that I couldn't believe after meeting him that they have been reduced to hiring someone so crude, so asinine and so transparent.

Although I was being pushed by him and some of his supporters at that time to help represent and promote him (and actually did provide limited media-related consultation to them for his Nov. 5, 1989 event before I knew better) I decided during our first and only meeting at his home in August 1989 that I did not like his overall "you're either my friend or my enemy" style and was not at all convinced of his veracity or his precision.

Since then, I have come to develop genuine loathing and contempt for the man, and for his alter ego, Mr. Lear, and not without exceedingly good reason, as you have been shown already. Since I first became aware of Mr. Cooper from Lear's computer bulletin board messages in November 1988, I have noted that virtually everyone else that he has initially sucked up to, and slobbered over publicly, has come in fairly short order to completely disassociate from him. Following their disavowal of Cooper, each has also subsequently received the most vicious denunciations from him either on stage, in print, or late at night over the phone. One close friend of mine received two death threats from Cooper at 2:30 a.m. after simply calling to order an audiotape of Cooper from his friend, Richard Murray.

While perhaps in some cases his criticism of others may be partially, or even completely justified -- as in the case of Lear -- Cooper is not at all above resorting to bald-faced lies to shore up his own position when he has been shown to be in error, which is often. Indeed, I have never yet in my lengthy personal and professional experience with military and law enforcement personnel, attorneys, covert operatives and foreign-service snakes, much less used-car dealers, met anyone who will lie as blatantly and shamelessly as William Cooper, though he has indeed many close seconds. This behavior on his part is especially disgusting because I do believe that some of what he is promulgating is accurate and of utmost importance to Americans and all the world's citizens.

The tragic aspect is that he is so far off-base in the rest of his allegations, and so foul-mouthed and crude in his dissembling and attacks on other genuine and sincere researchers such as Robert Groden, that the baby ends up being thrown out with the bathwater when intelligent people finally learn enough to dismiss Bill Cooper as a wild-eyed fanatic at best. Most are far more inclined to view him as an outright disinformation agent and/or wacko.

I have tried to give the man the benefit of the doubt since first hearing of him in Nov. 1988, particularly since some of the information he has accessed and promulgates is true and valid, but after careful study, it becomes apparent that virtually all such material has come from others. After being on the receiving end of his lies, theft and threats, I am steadfastly committed to making sure that people hear "the rest of the story" regarding his allegations and activities before they pass judgment on his veracity, or mine.

One simple case in point regarding Bill Cooper's lack of accuracy, honesty and precision, is the way in which he has crusaded as the great exposer of the U.S. Army's involvement in the creation of AIDS. It is a matter of record that Dr. Robert Strecker and others were lecturing on this tragic fact years before their literature came into Cooper's hands. As a blatant example of Cooper's lack of precision and thoroughness, the excerpt from the Congressional Record concerning the Department of Defense Hearings testimony from Dr. McArthur on July 2, 1969 which Cooper distributes and has printed in his book on page 445 as "proof" of the Army's culpability (which I happen to agree with) he wrongly references back to Part 5: Research, Development, Test and Evaluation. Anyone who had bothered to simply look up the testimony at their local library would quickly learn that nowhere in Part 5 does McArthur's testimony appear, and might quickly conclude that it has been faked. Obviously, anyone who distributes such information under that heading as proof is ill-informed at best and an outright fraud at worst.

On the other hand, anyone who, unlike Cooper, made at least a cursory search of the references before taking it out to grandstand and sell tickets, would quickly learn that there were seven parts to that particular series of Defense Appropriations hearings -- the McArthur testimony actually appears in Part 6: Chemical and Biological Warfare on June 9, 1969, not July 1, 1969, as Cooper's reprint indicates. If it may seem that I'm splitting hairs here, bear in mind that the testimony is in an entirely different book from an entirely different hearing on an entirely different day! If Bill Cooper is that sloppy in his research about a relatively simple reference readily available to the public, how accurate is he with all the alleged meetings and secret documents he claims to have had access to?

According to several of Cooper's former confidantes, he actually bragged about stealing the top-secret documents he claims to have had access to from their lockers, after which he photocopied them and sneaked them out of his duty station in his lunchpail. When I questioned him about this on KFI Radio in August 1990, he was evasive to the extreme. I seriously doubt Cooper had any serious function with ONI while he was in uniform or out of the service, since he lacked the rank, the specific training, much less the record to be legitimately accorded such a high level of trust, nor has anyone come forward to verify such service.

I am certainly no great fan of Naval Intelligence in particular -- Lee Harvey Oswald was one of their agents before his untimely demise. John Walker and his network were Naval Officers and/or intelligence personnel; Christopher Boyce (the "Falcon"), on the other hand, was merely the son of a retired FBI agent. But the fact is that they are serving many years in prison for virtually the same acts as Cooper has bragged about committing, both privately and publicly. If what Cooper is spewing so self-righteously is such a great threat to the world power-brokers, not to mention their hand maidens in the intelligence communities, why has he, like Lear, been so immune from prosecution?

If, as Cooper claims in his book, UFO Magazine writer (former Green Beret and deputy sheriff) Don Ecker lost his leg in a shotgun-training accident, is it not possible -- with as many lies as he has been caught in red-handed -- that Cooper might actually have simply had "one too many" when he rolled his motorcycle off the road and lost his own leg? I don't know and neither, apparently does anyone else for sure, as is the case with almosty all of the rest of his wild-eyed allegations. He certainly must have had several too many when he left the 10 life- threatening messages on the answering machines of his former promoters, actors Michael Callan and Douglas Deane in July 1990. The audiotape of those messages is readily available for anyone to hear for themself.

The first one on the tape gives you quite a feel for the man's subtlety and business acumen when he is failing to accomplish objectives:

Maniacal laughter precedes "Heeeeeey, maaaaaaan -- Somebody just sold me your kneeeeees, and I'm comin' to get 'em. I'm comin' to get those knees, and I'm gonna break them motherfuckers into five million pieces..." Maniacal laughter fades to hangup.

Rudyard Kipling wrote in his poem, If, that one must learn to achieve mastery of life by being able to transcend many types of setbacks, including "having your words twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools." I had no idea at the time I first read those words 20 years ago just how precisely I would come to experience that reality personally. Knave is certainly one of the most complimentary terms I would accord Bill Cooper, who has not merely twisted my words, but has blatantly lied repeatedly about my words and actions, and those of a number of others.

Fortunately, I have far more faith in the strength of the truth and the intelligence of our respective audiences that most will be able to sort out who is telling the truth once they have heard or read at least two sides of the story. Unlike Cooper, I have proof for every single allegation I am making (and witnesses in virtually every instance), and will be most happy to make this available at a reasonable cost to anyone who wants to examine it for themselves. I am also more than willing to submit to an independent professionally administered polygraph test along with this affidavit should anyone request it and be willing to pay for it. AS embarrasing as a few of these disclosures have been for me as well, I have absolutely nothing to hide. I sincerely doubt that Mr. Cooper would be willing to submit to such a test with regard to my charges contained herein. I am absolutely certain that he would not pass if he did.

I find it particularly interesting that even the title of his opus, Behold a Pale Horse, is an outright plagiarism from an earlier novel by the same name written by Lannon D. Reed. Considering the fact that Cooper was so adamant in denying to me during our two phone conversations the involvement of "ex"-Nazis in the Cold-War nightmare we have had to endure since 1945 -- as well as in John Kennedy's assassination -- I found it particularly amusing that the book he stole his title from is actually subtitled "A Novel of Homosexuals' Persecution in the Nazi Holocaust."

To borrow a line from Wild Bill Cooper's book, "I shudder to think of what will happen" to him when the gay community and Holocaust survivors "finally get angry" about his cheap plagiarism and debasing of their experiences. As you can see, plagiarism is the least of his outrages.

Cooper's final statement about Lear's identification of me as a CIA agent, whether Lear actually said it or not, is ridiculous and almost laughable, given Lear's long-term association with the Agency himself, and his fear and trembling since August 1988 about my exposing him for the sleazebucket and gunrunner that he is. It is even more disgusting and hypocritical in light of Cooper's almost slavish attempt to curry my favor during our first phone discussion and my subsequent meeting at his home in August 1989.

If it were not for the general ignorance of most of these issues by his audience, Cooper would probably have been put long ago in an institution where he belongs. Knowing his capacity for turning his own lies around on others, when he does finally go berserk and kill some innocent bystander who also appears to him to be "an agent of the Secret Government" or ends up on the losing end of the lawsuit I may eventually have to file, he will almost predictably claim that the Agency was funding me. Whatever funding I might be able to obtain to prosecute such a suit would come from honest efforts and not from any intelligence sources.

Cooper continues, "Hansson later claimed that I violated his copyright. He had no copyright. Hansson himself violated someone's copyright my making the film and giving it to me Lear and Gritz. I didn't and still don't give a damn about copyright on THIS particular film. If I did, no one would ever know who really killed our President.

Bo Gritz stated on radio that he felt exactly the same way. Hansson never attacked Lear or Gritz who still show the tape, and Gritz still makes it available. I wonder why? Are Lear, Hansson and Gritz working together?"

I didn't "later claim" that Cooper violated my copyright -- I informed him of that fact the first time I called him to confront him about his use of my videotape in late October 1989. I made it very clear to him that whether I had any legal claim to a copyright on the Truth Betrayed video or not, if he had any ethics at all he would obtain his own copy of the film inexpensively from any of the several legitimate sources and make his own tape. I was not aware until several months later until John Lear himself informed me that he was selling it as well. I made it very clear that I had completely given up on the driver theory a year before, and that Lear certainly was well aware of that fact.

As to whether or not I had violated Zapruder's or Groden's copyright, that is certainly debatable; since I had made no copies of the tape for sale, and had only given a very small handful of the tapes to close and trusted associates -- aside from Lear -- I seriously doubted then or now that I had violated any copyright laws. When Cooper says he doesn't "give a damn about copyright on THIS particular film. If I did, no one would ever know who really killed our President," he certainly utters a mouthful. He obviously doesn't give a damn about copyrights on a high percentage of the material he quotes as his own from a number of other researchers -- including the very title of his book, lifted from an earlier novel about homosexuals in Nazi Germany by Lannon Reed. And he certainly doesn't give a damn about enlightening his audience about all the other scumbags who participated in the planning, financing and execution of the fairly-well orchestrated hit in Dallas that day. Whether William Greer was in on the plot in any capacity, he was one of a long list of perpetrators Cooper completely overlooks in his obsessive concentration on the most sensational (and erroneous) aspect.

I have not heard the particular radio broadcast that I referred to earlier and that Cooper refers to here in which he claims that Gritz "stated on radio that he felt exactly the same way."

Bo and I have done one radio program together on the subject and have spoken together publicly twice with references to the JFK murder, and we collaborated on an entire chapter in his new book on the subject. I have little doubt that he probably did say something to the effect that he felt there should be no copyright on the Zapruder film, but I know for certain after a number of discussions on the subject with him that tossing my videotape out to the largely uninformed public with no additional information and references in support of, or contradicting the statements I made on it, is profoundly disorienting to the average person. As a special-forces operative and triggerman for many years, Gritz is occasionally prone to "shoot from the hip" and ask questions later. He admitted when I confronted him about his impulsive decision to make copies of my tape available without advising me in mid-1989 that he did it primarily out of disgust with Cooper's excessively secretive and exclusive approach to the entire matter. He was so put off by Cooper's reliance on his "secret copy of the special uncut version of the Zapruder film" to bolster his own limited credibility -- when the same tape had been gathering dust in Gritz's living room for over a year at that time -- that he impulsively offered to make a copy of it available at the request of one of the callers.

Knowing from our discussions that I didn't support the theory any longer, anyway, and having seen much clearer footage in the studio where I had produced his documentary a few months before, he considered it "no big deal" and offered it primarily to defuse Cooper's messianic approach to the matter. Despite his error in doing so without contacting me first, Gritz at least had the consideration for the eventual recipients to also include another fairly decent documentary on the assassination on the same tape, in order to provide some kind of overall background. He didn't ask the producers of that program for permission to copy it, either, but that was his choice -- I had nothing to do with it, and did not find out until several months later. Gritz immediately discontinued distribution when I found out about it and requested him to stop.

Cooper finally makes a truthful statement when he says that I never attacked Lear, because I certainly should have exposed him for the fraud and lecher that he is over two years ago. Out of respect for John Lear's family, particularly his mother -- since I lost all respect for him over two years ago -- and concern that my disclosures could bring considerable grief upon him and/or them, and my complete disgust with Bill Cooper, it is true that I have given Lear far more leniency than I should have. It is certainly true that he has shown (and probably sold) the tape many times without my permission. In addition to what I have already described, I have had it confirmed as well from the producers of the show that it was, in fact, John Lear who also made my videotape available to Nippon TV for broadcast without my permission, even though he was well aware of how to contact me at the same address I had had in California for over two years at that point. Although Cooper has touted Nippon's version as "computer-enhanced," the display at his Beverly Hills High program in August 1990 showed only a poorly colorized ("neonized" is perhaps more accurate), doctored version of my own videotape -- with my own voice clearly evident in the background -- and dubbed-in sound effects to indicate the gun blasts. It was even cheaper and shoddier than I had been led to believe by his grandiose claims when I challenged him on KFI Radio a few days before.

Cooper has attempted to make a second career for himself exposing "the greatest cover-up in human history," denouncing anyone as a CIA agent or an "agent of the secret government" who has questioned him in any way. I find this very disturbing and believe that anyone who is inclined to take any of Cooper's charges seriously should also demand and receive a detailed answer from him regarding his post-service intelligence-related functions. I honestly have no idea at this point what they were, or if, in fact, he is currently a witting or unwitting agent of any intelligence agency. I would not be at all surprised to discover that he is, but I do not know that for a fact. Given the Agency's unwillingness to disclose association with anyone, a disavowal from them of Cooper is a virtual certainty. Given the number of his demonstrated lies and flip- flopping, however, I am by no means sure that his resume statement is accurate, either -- that's the big problem with liars.

The Best Evidence?

The only reason I elected in the midst of all this to become involved in any way at that point with Lazar's legal case was that Lear, originally, and then Huff and Lazar, had told me in no uncertain terms that as part of Lazar's extensive briefing at S-4, he had reviewed a number of documents related to the development of AIDS as a biological weapon, and had even been so specific as to have mentioned that the Naval Officer who had signed the final report certifying the weapon's operational status in 1972 was an R.M. Donner. Although I had virtually no way of telling if their statements were true, Lazar's credibility and consistency regarding other aspects of his story, bolstered by four lie-detector tests, had held up throughout our limited dealings. Furthermore, the record of U.S. Congressional funding of this specific type of research, at the very least, is available in your library in the Congressional Record from 1969.

My immediate and overriding concern was that if there was any chance whatsoever that Lazar was telling the truth, and had not been fed bogus information, that he may well have been telling the truth about the formula for the antidote which he also claimed to have seen and memorized. If any of that was even remotely true, the risks of embarrassment, much less imprisonment, were far outweighed by the possibility of securing a means to eliminate this man-made scourge. For that reason alone, not out of any regard for Lear, or any necessarily great affection for Lazar and Huff, I worked feverishly for the next few months to secure some of the crucial elements for the formula, as well as to secure maximum media coverage for Lazar's case, virtually all of which he blew off entirely. Despite all of my feverish efforts, however, it was actually the serendipitous and fortuitous occurrence of two things that really kept Bob Lazar from going to prison.

The first was the unfortunate murder by strangulation of a black casino floorman by three Metro policemen who entered his apartment illegally to "question him" about his girlfriend's alleged prostitution, which created a firestorm of well-justified criticism and put the heat on Metro to avoid any other scandals, which madam Toni Bullock's operation would have surely entailed. The second was a supreme blunder by some lowly underpaid file clerk somewhere in the bowels of the Defense Department who accidentally actually sent Lazar his W-2 from Naval Intelligence for the period of his employment at the Nevada Test Site, which actually showed a MAJEST security classification, I'm told. The combination of those two factors running on the evening news days before Lazar's final sentencing stripped bare the hard-ass probation officer's motivations in condemning Lazar as a "con-man" and a "liar" and resulted in his being awarded three years probation by the conservative, but fair, judge presiding over his case.

After attending the next-to-last court hearing for Lazar, Lear asked me to come up to his house and help him with his sewer system. I really didn't have the time to spare, but actually felt sorry for him at that point, since he apparently lacked the money to pay a proper outfit to do it -- who can you call to help you with something as unappealing as that? I had to cancel a couple of key meetings to do so, and ended up spending most of the day helping him try to rout out his clogged drain lines, without success. While we were talking, perhaps because of the "earthiness" of the situation, Lear was especially candid about a number of matters.

Again I found myself almost feeling sorry for the guy for having gotten so far in over his head on the UFO situation, and so far behind in his family situation. He began to express great concern about the fact that he had been laid off from his flight job, as well as about Cooper's continuing efforts to embarrass and discredit him. He was particularly distressed about the threat of Cooper's full disclosure about the woman who had come to the house the night that Cooper and Novel were there. I'd become pretty tired of hearing about it, since I thought it was asinine for her to have been there at all, regardless of what happened, given his past history. When I asked him disinterestedly if anything had actually happened, if she really was there on "professional business," he automatically replied, "Well, yeah, of course. I was just too drunk to do anything."

I didn't have the heart to start lecturing him again, since it was obviously pointless, anyway, if he was still pursuing the same stupid path he should have left behind two years before. I just nodded and decided that now that Lazar was pretty well off the hook, I would just as soon fade into the sunset, and leave the entire sorry mess behind me. Lear asked me to stay for dinner, expressing appreciation for my friendship and understanding, but I just felt it was time to go.

Frankly, despite my disgust for the actions I have related thus far, that is the enduring image I have of the man -- one of pity. Despite all the luster and the awards and the recognition, John Lear is still so much like the little kid in third grade who couldn't do enough pull-ups or sit-ups to make the team, to which he desperately wanted to belong, or to win his father's approval. Even Lazar and Huff, who had taken to calling each other "Gufon" and "Bufon" in sarcasm toward the UFO fanatics involved in MUFON, dismissed John as simply "Lear" when he asked them if he should be called "Lufon."

Following Lazar's sentencing to three years' unsupervised probation on the "weenie charge" (please excuse the pun), in September 1990, I became heavily involved assisting in the production of Gritz's new video and editing of his new book, Called to Serve. When I returned to California at one point to continue editing the video after the owner of the original studio became somewhat panicked at the content and real or imagined surveillance being conducted against him, I contacted the owner of a flight service company which specialized in film work to discuss a film treatment I had in development. He was very receptive, particularly when I mentioned my acquaintance with Lear, and informed me that he had learned of John's layoff from his mother shortly before, and was concerned about his immediate prospects. I told him I was actually anxious to put a film deal together on UFOs, incorporating specific aerial sequences with standard aircraft, that with any luck could include John in both a consultative and a flying capacity. I actually thought that perhaps getting Lear involved in larger creative project might actually help him acquire an entirely new perspective on life. The gentleman thought that would be a great idea as well and I agreed to send him the story treatment I'd just completed in order for him to look it over and discuss it with some of his contacts.

A few days later, Lear called me up to chew me out about discussing his employment with the man, much like his bitching about my calling Lazar. Eventually I was able to make it clear that I didn't bring it up at all, but that the man had already learned of his situation from John's mother. I pointed out that I only mentioned that I thought it would be great if he had the chance to have a major involvement in a blockbuster film, since we all knew his flying career was nearing an end, anyway, due to his difficulty in passing the annual physical. When I explained the general discussion regarding the film project, he became even more belligerent, claiming that he would settle for nothing less than co-writer on the script. I replied that he was welcome to be producer and director if that's what he wanted -- all I wanted was to just get something rolling rather than talk and more talk.

After being extremely discreet and supportive of him through over two years of pretty asinine behavior, I was pretty disgusted at his accusations and decided to drop the entire project insofar as he was concerned. I called the flight-service director back the next day and discreetly informed him that Lear preferred to handle the project himself and that they would need to communicate with each other exclusively from that point on -- I was completely bowing out of the loop myself. I was so completely disgusted with Lear, after actually trying to help him out, that I resolved to sever communication with him once and for all, but it was not to be.

A few days later, he called me in LA early in the morning after I had been up until 3 a.m. working on Gritz's new video, to blab about the documents he had just received concerning OPERATION WATCHTOWER. I was still groggy after only a few hours sleep and responded slowly. Lear mentioned a number of details in the Cutolo Affidavit that were being held very discreetly at that point, and I quickly came back to full consciousness as my anger began to rise. I asked him three different times where he obtained the documents, and he lied to me repeatedly each time. I had actually just met with Oliver Stone the day before regarding the documents and the video in progress, and he, in turn, had passed the information on to award-winning reporters Seymour Hersh and David Oberst. I was absolutely aghast that a blabbermouth like Lear, whom I had already decided to sever connections with, now had his hands on them and could disrupt any efforts underway to confirm and substantiate their contents.

Worse yet, when I called back to Lear to try to find out who else he had talked to at that point, and to convince him to keep his mouth shut about it for the time being, I discovered he had left a snide message on his answering machine, heard by anyone who called him, regarding me and the Kennedy tape. After all the crap I'd endured on his behalf, and the hundreds, if not thousands, of miles and dollars I'd spent over a period of nearly two years trying to get him to see the actual truth of that situation, to hear him belittle me and the assassination itself in such a petty and crass manner -- given the multitude of sins I'd been sitting on for him -- was just too much to swallow any further. The fact was that Lear was the very person who had violated my trust in the first place by making the video public when it was never intended as any kind of final statement, and by giving it to Cooper, which in turn led Gritz to foolishly make it available. All the while I was acutely aware of deliberate treasonous/criminal behavior on his part, not to mention scandalous peccadilloes. I was outraged beyond belief.

I called him twice that evening to leave messages to the effect that I thought his behavior was asinine. I stated in no uncertain terms that if he really felt it necessary at that point to deal with such matters in that shallow a fashion, I felt no longer bound to maintain my silence about a number of matters that the media, and the public, had long deserved to know which I had been urging him to disclose throughout. I indicated that I was being questioned by some news agencies about my knowledge concerning the Marcos Gold shipments, and was seriously questioning my decision to keep him out of harm's way by feigning ignorance. He instead chose to interpret my messages first as a threat, and later, as an attempt to extort money from him, but they were neither.

I recorded my third message to Lear on my own tape recorder, which clarified that there was a severe misunderstanding underway, and a serious breach of trust and respect committed, and offered him, in firm terms, the opportunity to meet and talk about it privately before it escalated into open warfare. I made it very clear I was not threatening him or trying to extort money, but merely intent on encouraging him to sit down and talk about the situation.

When he refused to respond directly, but instead called a number of my former acquaintances to misrepresent my statements to them, and apparently implied that I had called to extort money from him, I then wrote him a certified letter, deliberately couching certain "delicate" issues in cryptic terms in case his wife might have intercepted it. I made it very clear I had no desire for any money from him at all, but rather that we sit down and talk and get the problem between us resolved. He then called another friend of mine to complain that his wife had received the letter and was now visiting serious grief on him as a result.

Fortunately, my friend had the presence of mind to ask if that was before or after he had read the letter himself. Lear, fool that he is, admitted that he had actually left the letter laying on his desk and his wife found it there.

What I find especially ironic about this is the fact that I actually took deliberate pains to keep the discussion strictly between the two of us, when I easily could have deliberately dropped all the revelations on his wife, with predictably nuclear results. Instead I had purposely worded the contents so as to avoid any such references, other than a phrase about his "dalliances in the French Quarter," which referred merely to his meeting there with Novel on the Fourth of July 1990. As a matter of fact, I had called him there from Santa Barbara that evening to see what advice Novel had to offer concerning how to keep Lazar from going to prison -- I figured he should know. To my knowledge, Lear actually did nothing at all out of the ordinary while in New Orleans, but apparently just the terminology I chose was enough to set her brain working overtime.

The only time I actually managed to reach Lear, as I described earlier (probably in early October 1990), he was extremely belligerent, immediately reading to me the third in a series of snide phone messages he had prepared to embarrass me, offering my phone messages to him for sale to anyone who called in. He then demanded to know how much I wanted -- claiming he had his checkbook in front of him -- for me to agree to quit attempting to contact him. When I explained that I simply wanted an apology, a retraction of his earlier messages, and to talk and get to the bottom of why this situation had come up in the first place he laughed, and accused me of deliberately creating grief for him at home by leaving the three phone messages.

He accused me of leaving drunken messages on his machine, but I reminded him that I rarely ever drink, and never to excess. I clarified that what he heard in my voice was not drunkenness, but disgust. When I reminded him of all the grief he had caused for me with the Kennedy tape to begin with, of the thousands of people who had been disinformed by Cooper thanks to him, and of the countless people who had heard his phone messages about me, he was momentarily speechless. I emphasized once again that all I was asking for was for us to sit down in some neutral spot, and get to the bottom of the dispute before it escalated any further, because I was sick and tired of being used as the whipping boy for his and Cooper's bullshit. He agreed to call me back later that day but never did, and has ignored or refused to listen to or look at any message I have tried to send him since, much less to talk with me.

In the meantime, I have learned from very reliable sources that Lear has boasted about enlisting another person to try to get me to admit to an attempt to extort money from him while that person was secretly tape-recording our conversation; that he had forged a threatening note and my signature and the end of my letter to him mentioned earlier, which he has copied and distributed to any number of other people; and that he has been stating in his public lectures that he was misled by me about the Greer theory, and only after he decided to go to see Robert Groden on his own did he realize he had been misled. Mind you, this was two years after I insisted that he contact Groden and gave him the number myself so that he could see why I didn't support the theory any longer.

As detailed as this accounting is, I still find it very unfortunate that it has become necessary, since it is completely contrary to my own nature to betray trusts, or unpleasantness related to a friend, but the key word here is friend. If John Lear had ever truly been my friend, he would not only have had more respect than to have conducted his sleazy actions while I was anywhere around, much less begged me to cover for him, much less tried to use me as the scapegoat afterwards. If he had truly been my friend, he would have either been far more forthcoming about some of his other illicit activities and joined me in fully disclosing them to responsible authorities (if there is such a thing anymore), or he would have kept them entirely to himself, and not have tossed them out in the form of braggadocio. If John Lear had truly been my friend, he would have certainly been willing on any of the several occasions that I made the offer to sit down with me and resolve the dispute that has arisen, instead of resorting to lies, inuendo, attempted entrapment, outright forgery, and open statements to others about his desire to kill me. If he had been my friend, he certainly would not have violated my trust by giving the unfinished JFK videotape to Bill Cooper and God knows how many others, and showing it all over God knows where, especially after I had made it very clear to him from the beginning that it was not for public dissemination and later that I no longer supported it at all.

What I am simply trying to say, after all these words, is that, if any of these reports about his recent actions are true, and if Lear actually did characterize me as a CIA agent to Cooper, then he easily qualifies as a bald-faced liar himself. You can believe what you will. If you choose to think that I must be guilty because I have devoted so much space to denial of their charges, that is your prerogative. You can believe me when I say I have far better things to do than waste time on what you have just read, but I have become sick to death of the continuing lies that are spread about me by this man has openly dealt with known weapons smugglers for years to supply guns and explosives to anyone who could borrow enough money to pay for them, anywhere in the world. I would say that a high percentage of the funding for his beautiful home and other wherewithal, if it wasn't given to him by his mother, came from such blood money.

If they're willing, I will be happy to provide statements from any or all of the witnesses I've referred to, or put you in touch with them directly, with their permission. My personal and professional reputation has suffered so heavily from this mess that I seriously doubt even this effort will make very much difference. But my conscience has compelled me to simply state the truth for your benefit as well. Take it as you will. At least now I can go on to more important things with an uncluttered mind.

Epilogue

Since I finally decided to go public with this material, I have been in touch with a number of excellent reporters in this country, in Europe and the Far East who have covered many of these issues for over a decade in some cases, and have received a high level of interest and follow-through, as Lear and Warton have discovered already. I am assured that whatever may come to pass, the important issues contained herein will not be forgotten or pigeon- holed any longer.

Among the numerous excellent sources I have developed over the last several years despite this distasteful series of events, one who is extremely knowledgeable has informed me of the pivotal role played in the arrangement of the October Surprise deals by one Hector Villalon, an Argentinian "diplomat." According to Honegger's reference to him on page 242 of her book, October Surprise, Villalon did indeed play a key role in the arrangement, but Honegger has nothing else to add to that statement. I informed her in early June 1991 as I am informing you now that, according to my source, Villalon was in on the plan from the beginning.

Unbeknownst to Honegger or any of the other journalists investigating the October Surprise, according to my source Villalon was the personal secretary to Fulgencio Batista in Cuba and was, in fact, an OSS officer even after the creation of the CIA in 1947. As outlandish as this may seem, it is verifiable. Finally, according to this source, whom the Iranians contacted early in 1980 for help in obtaining spare parts for their weapons systems, Villalon is old and very bitter about the U.S. betrayal of his country in the Falklands War after all he and his countrymen had done to support our numerous dirty little wars and dirty dealings, and may be very willing to talk about his role -- that is, before he becomes another victim of George Bush's "kinder, gentler nation." The latest news flash I received as I was completing this report indicated that Bush was apparently planning to meet with Villalon sometime during his trip to Europe. Hmmmm.

Americans should be very quick to note the irony that the outright theft of nearly a $1 billion in the Silverado Bank swindle by the President's son Neil Bush has resulted in less than a hand- slapping, while so many who have placed Bush in Paris in October 1980 are either dead or behind bars on trumped-up charges. I have much, much more to report on this matter which is outside the purview of this report and will advise you as soon as the material has been fully verified and printed.

After singling out Lear for such in-depth scrutiny, it is only fair that I fill out the picture relating to Warton to a greater extent. Within the complete scope of the flight operations in which they have both participated for years, Lear, despite his illustrious family name, has really been little more than a "cabdriver," if you will, for the brains and brawn behind the operations, Hank Warton, and his overseer in many operations, Theodore Shackley. This makes Lear no less culpable, however, for he is more than intelligent enough to be fully aware of the ramifications of his choices to involve himself in such flights. I am currently working with a source who is intimately familiar with such operations who was made to serve six and a half years of a ten-year sentence when he deliberately brought a load of 800 pounds of cocaine into an off-limits airport in Georgia in 1984 to bust the Ted Shackley/Oliver North/Michael Harari smuggling network. Although only 600 pounds of the load showed up in court, he succeeded in putting a major dent in the ring, leading eventually to the exposure of the entire operation two years later. But he nearly paid the ultimate price, after being massively drugged for three years with a daily dose of 3,000 mg. of procaine as part of his "rehabilitation therapy."

In addition to the background I've already mentioned, it should in fairness be pointed out that (according to sources who have known him for years) Warton's Jewish parents were killed in front of him in Nazi Germany when he was a teenager. To prove his fidelity to his adopted country, Warton undertook an extremely dangerous behind-the-lines mission in North Africa, before acquitting himself with honor with the U.S. Marines at Guadalcanal.

Since World War II, Warton has flown more air operations -- weapons deliveries for the most part -- than probably anyone would care to remember, especially those who contracted with him to do so. Warton has, by his own admission, also performed a great deal of contract work for the CIA. In one case, according to his own testimony, he had brought a load of East-Bloc small-arms weapons from Sofia, Bulgaria to Dugway Proving Grounds for testing purposes at the behest of his Agency and Pentagon handlers. Another agency became suspicious about one of his planes involved in the flight while it was temporarily parked in Florida prior to returning to his HQ in London, and in short order Warton was looking at a felony charge. When he contacted his people at the Pentagon for backup, they informed him the situation had to be kept "low-profile" and they could not risk an investigation. Warton was promised that if he took the rap and paid the fines, they "would make it up" to him in future contracts. He dutifully pleaded guilty and received a felony conviction and a total of $150,000 in fines.

Warton is now under investigation for alleged illegalities in connection with the planned sale of one of his C-130s, with the government attempting to use his previous conviction as proof of "predisposition." Whatever his actual guilt or innocence may be, Warton is not unlike many other true patriots who probably began and still continue in clandestine operations with sincere, even admirable motives, perhaps seduced to some extent by the payoff and the excitement, but all too readily tossed on the slagheap by their Agency controllers when they got caught in a jam which threatened to expose their controllers.

Like so many others caught in this particular kind of "squeeze," after many years of unquestioning compliance with Agency requests, Warton is now appealing his earlier conviction by employing the equivalent of a "CIA defense," while attempting to prove that his actions in the recent sale were all above board. Currently there is "bad blood" between the CIA -- an unabashedly Catholic organization from its inception -- and the Mossad, out of which rumors have arisen that the latter organization may soon be "surfacing" photographs of George Bush in Paris in October 1980. Unless Israel gets its way in current negotiations, Warton, who has served both masters for decades, may find himself in a uniquely tight squeeze. It remains to be seen how much loyalty will be extended by his masters to a faithful servant. Whatever the outcome, I have no doubt whatsoever that a very close scrutiny of the operations he directed will yield gigantic revelations about the higher-ups who ordered them.

After several consultations with various attorneys regarding Cooper's appropriation of the Truth Betrayed videotape and his unauthorized sale of it internationally, I was persuaded that since I had not intended to distribute it and therefore had not initiated any copyright acquisition, my legal standing in terms of Cooper's copyright violation was shaky at best. This, however, is hardly the case with Groden and Zaruder. Following the publication of Cooper's book, from which I have already quoted at length, I again discussed filing a slander suit, but was persuaded that doing so would simply be a case of "throwing good money after bad," since Cooper barely has a pot to piss in, anyway. After considerable investigation into his limited holdings, whatever resources he does have to engage me in that fashion would probably be provided to him by others, anyway, anxious to draw me into protracted legal wrangling which would only diminish my effectiveness in current efforts. Consequently I have decided, as one shrewd veteran counseled, to "take advantage of the free publicity Cooper's book is generating" and set the record straight publicly. This report, then, constitutes another salvo in that effort, and there remain plenty more revelations about Cooper in reserve.

I recently notified Bob Lazar as a friend that I was preparing to go public with this information, but did not intend at that time to bring him up any more than necessary, and certainly not with any vindictive motivation. At that time, I had no intention of discussing his proximity to the AIDS issue, and I will not be at all surprised if he denies any knowledge of it, or his discussion of Lear's threats against me. Despite his earlier success with the polygraph regarding his UFO-related experiences, he could certainly not pass if he chose to deny my statements here. I can readily understand if he chooses to regard them as a betrayal of trust, but I have felt, and have encouraged him from the beginning of our association that he should have made more concerted efforts to get his information concerning AIDS into a number of responsible hands who would help him get it to the world -- as he himself said about the UFO-propulsion technology -- rather than waiting for some drug company to buy him out. I apologize sincerely if this revelation brings more heat upon him, but I feel the rest of the world deserves for him to come forward without delay. If he can waste his knowledge about anti-gravitational propulsion on a cathouse, he can certainly press his knowledge about AIDS into the service of the entire world, even if it takes a giant shove. We'll see.

Finally, this report would be incomplete if I failed to point out the role of a former Lear executive, George Otis, in "priming" Ronald Reagan for much of his Apocalyptic orientation during his years in the White House. According to a report in the Covert Action Information Bulletin, following his stint at Lear, Otis worked on the climate-control systems for the Minute Man missiles at Vandenberg Air Force Base before heading up his own aerospace contracting business. He was also a leader of the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International (FGBMFI), a Pentecostal organization of business and military men. The FGBMFI actually provided the seed money for several of the television evangelists, including Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), Jim Bakker's Praise The Lord (PTL), and Paul Crouch's Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN).

During a meeting in Sacramento with the Reagans -- he was introduced to them by Pat and Shirley Boone -- Otis and another FGBMFI leader, Harald Bredesen, focused strongly on biblical prophecy concerning "the last days" and the "Second Coming of Christ." Bredesen has been a member of the board of directors of Robertson's CBN since 1962 and a longtime activist in the so-called charismatic movement. Following their discussion, the group formed a circle, held hands and began to pray. Otis was suddenly "ovecome with the Spirit," and appeared to be speaking in the "voice of God" to Reagan, telling him he would reside at "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" if Reagan continued to "walk in my ways." According to reports from people close to Reagan during this period, he took that prophecy and its subsequent fulfillment very seriously. The "missing chapter" from Barbara Honegger's October Surprise, along with some of her other handout material, examine the ramifications of Reagan's apocalyptic orientation in detail, and is highly recommended for review.

While Otis appears to be a staunch believer in "end-time" prohecy, he has been no stranger to more practical material considerations. He operated a short-wave radio "ministry" called "High Adventure" with the four "Voice of Hope" stations in Israeli-occupied Lebanon ("broadcasting from the Armageddon Bowl") along with a Spanish-language program broadcasting from southern California throughout the western hemisphere. Otis also built Middle East Television,then gave it to Pat Robertson's CBN. Both his TV and radio stations in Lebanon have been the targets of bombing attacks, probably owing to his close links with former Phalangist leader Major Sa'ad Haddad, his successor Gen. Antoine Lahad, and the Israeli military authorities.

It is particularly notable that most members of the FGBMFI hold responsible positions in military industries and the nuclear chain of command. Many active members are involved with the military, either active-duty or ex-officers, with experience working with nuclear-weapons systems, and they interface heavily with the civilian side of the military-industrial complex. According to a number of informed and credible sources whom I know personally, it is very possible that much of the Apocalyptic, Armageddon-type ideology being promoted as a background context for foreign policy -- as was graphically evident during the recent Gulf War fiasco -- is merely a cynical manipulation of the masses of "believers" by the weapons manufacturers and their agents such as George Otis and Harald Bredesen.

Now that the hated Communists of yore have become essentially our trading partners, it is not at all surprising that people like John Lear and Bill Cooper, with long- established family and professional ties to either the military or these industries (or both), are pushing the "Alien Armageddon" line. Currently, daily revelations of damaging testimony concerning the role of Robert Gates in the Iran/Contra scandal from formerly staunch CIA damage-control specialists such as former Saigon station chief and Iran/Contra Committee investigator Thomas Polgar (as seen on Nightline recently) are a harbinger of things to come. If my sources are correct that George Otis worked directly under Bob Gates himself, his possible -- if not probable -- connections to Lear and especially Warton, could yield even more profound revelations. Stay tuned.

End of Statement

SIGNED UNDER THE PAINS AND PENALTIES OF PERJURY ON THIS 18TH DAY OF JULY, 1991.

____________________________ Lars C. Hansson Date SWORN to Before this _______ day of __________________, 19____. ____________________________ Notary Public I am a registered Notary Public in the State of Florida with a commission that expires on the _______ day of ________________, 19____.