The Business Plot: Behold a Pale Horse pp. 90-92

"The goal of the Council on Foreign Relations is a New World Order. George Bush is a member of the CFR. Knights of Malta play a powerful role in this scenario. In the 1930s they recruited General Smedley Butler to help take over the White House." 

This is three sentences and it's just so packed with claims that it does a good job of elucidating how difficult it is to read these books. I've done some unpacking of the CFR in the Gary Allen book, but it's not a secret society, you can go to their website and read their list, they publish a magazine. The reason that accusing the CFR of anything other than a slight political leaning works is because the magazine is boring to people not used to reading this kind of material. It makes sense in the same way that a child not understanding how a phone works will settle on magic. Was George Bush a member of the CFR? I don't know, but it also doesn't matter. Bush (I'm assuming he means George H W Bush) as a director of the CIA and business leader may actually have some kind of input on international business relations, economic development, and cooperation between the US and the world.

So then who are the Knights of Malta? Just another fraternal organization that tepidly traces its lineage to the Hospitalier of the Crusades. Think Templar/Mason only more Maltese. 

Then we get to Butler and the Business Plot. This claim by Cooper is one that I had never heard of until after my conspiracy theory days. The first time I had ever encountered it was on a Cracked listicle. The article itself is just a glib summary missing any kind of detail. There are two huge problems with the "Business Plot." The first is that the only evidence we have of this plot is General Smedley Butler's testimony that he was approached to lead the rebellion. Let me stress this point: there is no, and has never been, any independent evidence of Butler's claim. The other problem is that Butler's character seems unimpeachable. He was a lifelong Marine and served in almost a dozen different countries and campaigns. Butler also enforced prohibition in Philadelphia using tactics of questionable Constitutionality. Butler earned (because you don't "win" them) two Congressional Medals of Honor. After his military career, he published a book: "War is a Racket" in which claimed that his role as a Marine Commander was nothing substantially different than a gangland enforcer. He wrote that his wars in South America were conducted for the sake of banks and fruit companies (which is where the term "Banana Republic" comes from); that the US involvement in the Boxer Rebellion was for the sake of Standard Oil, and that wars were for the benefit of arms manufacturers. If we place these two problems together we are left with the possibility that this could have occurred, but without evidence, we simply don't know. We should also be cognizant of a growing fascist movement in the US in the 1930s and the people like Henry Ford were admirers of Hitler and Mussolini. A House investigation said that while there was no evidence of the plot, a fascist march on Washington was contemplated with Butler at its head. However, this could have just been a political rally; or the idle chatter of business leaders upset at FDR. It seems like it could have been true, but again, as a skeptic, I would need better evidence.  

When Cooper writes of the Business Plot, he's being about as accurate as I just was. Cooper is not a skeptic and the claim of Butler is too good for him to let stand as a possibility so it becomes a thing that definitely happened. Cooper claims that a member of General Motors, John J. Raskob, was at the top of the list of people involved in the plot. Cooper doesn't have a list, but he does have a list of people involved in the Knights of Malta. The link becomes all the evidence he needs, Raskob was a business leader in the 1930s and a Knight so, therefore, the Maltese Knights were in charge of the Business Plot. It is a fun game that Cooper can play here, but until he proves the Knights are a nefarious organization we have no real claims here. 

Cooper then moves onward to an attempt at parallel plots. He claims that "It is significant that the Iran-Contra episode has many similarities to the 1930s plot...You must understand that tremendous power was involved in both attempts to overthrow the United States Government." 

I don't feel, so far, that Cooper is this much of a liar. One thing that pervades Cooper's writing is that, while he is not telling the truth I believe that he thinks it is in service to the greater good. Modern shills like Alex Jones would never dare incriminate Trump or Reagan in a conspiracy without providing an excuse. It's not expedient for them to do so because their base is the type of person that gives them money. Cooper is at least an honest liar in that he's willing to put Reagan and Clinton in the same basket as both being puppets of the New World Order. This is why I think Cooper does not understand the Iran-Contra affair. 

In short, the entire affair was a plot by the Reagan administration to sell weapons to Iran in order to funnel the money used to fund covert actions in Nicaragua. There is obviously considerably more details here but there is no parallel even if we assume the Business Plot was a real effort to overthrow Franklin Roosevelt and install a fascist dictator. The Constitutional illegality of the Iran-Contra conspiracy was that Iran was under a trade embargo and the US appropriating funds for rebels in Nicaragua. The Reagan administration violated the law, but they weren't trying to subvert Democracy in the US. 

Cooper's focus is to draw a connection between the Knights of Malta and the Iran-Contra affair. This is done via William Casey, director of the CIA during the Reagan administration. Casey was a Knight, but as far as parallels go that is really the only overlap. In fact, what we actually have is a claim that Raskob and Casey served the same positions under the direction of the Knights of Malta, thus both conspiracies have their fingerprints in it. The flaw in Cooper's conspiracy theory is that no one can prove the Business Plot was real. The second flaw is that the two are not comparable, Iran-Contra was successful aside from the coverup part. 

Cooper believes Casey was murdered. This claim is just par for the course, and if Cooper had been alive, he would probably make the claim that "they" killed him the same way they assassinated John McCain--with brain cancer. 

The entire reason that Cooper brings these examples up is because they are real examples. Whether the Business Plot was a real conspiracy, there was an actual House investigation into it. There is a congressional record of Butler's testimony. There is a record of Iran-Contra. Casey was involved in it, and Casey was a Maltese Knight. Cooper is priming the pump here. He can point to these facts when we doubt his more fantastic claims.