Corroboration: Behold a Pale Horse pp. 186-196

The Knox contribution is finished and now we move on to another thing that Cooper didn't write--I'm being a little unfair because this is the transcription of a phone interview he did with Randall Terpstra. Cooper does not give any background of Randall Terpstra, so the chapter begins and we are just thrust into the conversation with this individual. 

Cooper explains in the very brief preface that in his "Secret Government" video from May 1989, he was tempted to remove his claims about the Nixon resignation. Cooper's claim, along with a variety of UFO claims that he subsequently retracted, that the resignation was a coup against the US. However, he then claims that three people came forward to confirm his belief, and this Terpstra is one of them. Of course, this doesn't mean anything because there's no indication about who Terpstra is. As far as we know, he's just a guy who thinks that Cooper was right...and in the conspiracy world that's good enough. 

The interview begins with Cooper and Terpstra (referred to as Bill and Randy respectively) having an awkward opening. Randy begins by explaining that he's missing pages from a document called "Operation Majority" that Cooper has written. The story of the paper is like our first chapter, "Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars" in that it's a leaked document about a secret government program this one involves UFOs. This is prime X-Files stuff (and series Chris Carter has admitted some of his ideas came from documents just like this) and I love it...or at least I would if it didn't ultimately lead to the January 6th failed coup.

Randy explains his engagement with the document, "When I first started reading, my first reaction was, 'Gee, this is National Enquirer material, up until a point when I came across something that startled me a little -- in the same document your final release document. You used two terms that I've only seen one other place, and that was MAJESTY and MAJORITY."

Randy explains he was a Naval operator during the Apollo-Soyuz mission. Randy calls it a "Moon-shot" but he's wrong there. This mission was to dock an American and a Soviet spacecraft, which successfully occurred on July 17, 1975. The mission represented a cooling of Cold War hostilities and showed the cooperation that both rivals could partake in...and it's just a pretty cool step forward in our space exploration. 

Randy reveals he was a radio cryptographer and then proceeds to explain the process of cryptography using a KL-47 device, which is a rotor-based Teletype encoding machine. If you are aware of the history of cryptography, this machine was no doubt inspired by the legendary Nazi Enigma machine. 

Randy, using plenty of military acronyms, says that most of his transmissions were using the heading "MAJESTY ADVISORY." We might be tempted to think that this corroborates something in Cooper's claim but all this means according to Randy is that messages were routed to the President to inform him of the process of an important ongoing operation--you know, like a joint operation between the USSR and the US for which the president, Ford, would make a phone call to the spacecraft upon successful docking. 

This is all quite boring, to be honest. The story that we are being told is that Cooper's document (linked above) claims that Majestic, Majesty, etc. is proof of UFO contact. Randy is saying that he heard the words, but those words refer to something else...then Cooper confirms that like it means something important to his UFO conspiracy. 

Randy then reveals the other thing that made him believe Cooper, the term "IAC." He heard this repeatedly throughout the mission. Cooper is ecstatic: "Identified Alien Craft!"

To which Randy replies: "They...that was never...they never spelled out the acronym. It was just IACs.

Bill: Fantastic!"

Cooper acts like this is the final smoking gun which confirms his UFO hypothesis. Notice that Randy has not said anything about aliens, in fact, he very reasonably explains that he didn't know what that means. IAC could mean so many things, especially in the context of a joint space operation between the US and the USSR. Instead of aliens IAC could be an analysis operation being used in real-time during a historic moment. Randy does not know but Cooper is more than happy to fill in the blanks here because it confirms his claims. Sure, the greys came to watch the Apollo-Soyuz mission in a similar manner to how I watch my 4-year-old build a tower with blocks. 

What is important, and the point of the chapter (allegedly), is that Randy was working with the USMC at the time of Nixon's resignation. They've discussed the possibility of alien identification and then out of the blue Cooper asks about Nixon's resignation. Randy claims he saw a directive to the Marines that said to no longer accept orders from Top Hat. Top Hat was supposed to be the Nixon White House. Cooper claims that his version said "White House."

I understand that Watergate and the Nixon resignation was a historical moment but it would be nothing compared to confirmation of extra-terrestrial intelligence that visited this planet. The entire conversation is leading with Cooper prodding Randy a little and then Randy agreeing to something Cooper says which Cooper segues into one of his conspiracy theories. 

Randy and Cooper bullshit around a bit after this. They talk some right-wing conspiracy stuff about Delta Force, and the NRO, and then they return to the UFOs. The content of the conversation is less interesting than the meta-conversation that is happening. 

Randy isn't a believer. He's a guy on the tipping point. According to this conversation, he's an avid reader of "Soldier of Fortune" magazine who "vicariously living adventures through other people," he's not into new age stuff like "the chakras and all the rest of it," but the woman he dates is into it. What we have here is someone who has one toe in the conspiracy world through the militarism (and fantasy) of Soldier of Fortune and the other toe in the New Age world. Cooper is only too happy to push him over into his world. We're watching a conspiracy theorist form in real-time which is both exciting and depressing at the same time. 

Randy even admits, "And until I read your material, it never really galvanized me into thinking things. Now, like I said, the only thing I can really relate to you is what I experienced during the Apollo-Soyuz shot."

Unless he's left something out of the story, he didn't experience anything but relaying coded messages and seeing the phrase which indicated that messages were going to President Ford. I find it rather depressing that this man worked on a history space mission and now he thinks it was a big deal because someone used the IAC acronym and that means aliens.  

The conversation continues but we don't read any of it, "Randy: You just kicked off another memory..."

Cooper closes the chapter with a post-script that a radio show re-aired this conversation on November 4th, 1989. On the 5th Cooper played the tape of the conversation to attendees at a talk he gave. 

Then he writes this, "When President Nixon gave his farewell speech, he said he would tell the American People the truth about UFOs. Like James Forrestall, Richard Nixon found himself a prisoner on the mental ward of Bethesda Naval Hospital. Unlike Forrestal, Nixon survived. He has remained silent. 

I do not know who Forrestall is, but every claim about Nixon is false. What's important is that Cooper has opened the door for UFO discussions and a 90s conspiracy theorist would be incomplete without them. In the next chapter, we take a much deeper plunge.