Set: Behold a Pale Hose pp. 361-396

 I’m going to be honest, I was a bit surprised but here we are at the last chapter. Yes, the very last chapter in this book. The chapter is going to provide us with documentation, but no commentary, that the US Army Intelligence has some kind of link with the Satanic Church. The documentation that he provides, I’ll assume is legitimate, but this chapter ends up seeming like a waste of time. Well, we haven’t skipped a chapter yet so let’s dive in…

The first document claims that a San Francisco PD officer came across proof that the leader of the “Temple of Set” was a Major in the US Army Reserve’s Intelligence division. Two other members, according to SFPD were also intelligence officers in the Army. The document confirms that the names listed are Army Intelligence Reservists, but “since it was not a criminal matter, military intelligence would be advised and likely contact her.”

The date on the document is 1981. This is important, I’ll mention why later.

The next document is from the director of Counterintelligence, relaying information that the FBI has no documentation that the Temple of Set exists. Document three merely confirms that the names in the document one are real. Document four contains information that the Major Aquino, the person in charge of the Temple of Set, received a favorable adjudication and was granted a security clearance. That clearance was given to him in June of 1981 which was prior to the original document.

Document five claims that the information is inconclusive and is generally “reported telephonically.” I’m not sure if this means that it is usually some private that has to deal with this bullshit, or if communications of such a trivial matter are better left to phone calls.

Document six actually has content. It has content in that there are paragraphs and words but there is no substance. The claim is that the Temple of Set is a splinter group of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, which, ok fine. LaVey’s church was weird, and LaVey himself would be nothing more than an internet edge-lord if he was born later. It points to the fact that Maj. Aquino could exercise better choice in hobbies but nothing more. This memo begins to allege, with no evidence, that the Temple of Set is going to get more violent, that they have a military fascination, and that they may be returning to holding “black masses.” The memo alleges that Aquino may be bi-sexual.

All of this is nothing. Who cares? That the FBI could not even establish that the Temple of Set was real is the most important part of these documents. The SFPD officer may have made a reporting error or perhaps that the FBI just missed this one. However, it’s not a criminal matter, and we probably shouldn’t care at all. Cooper includes an article from the National Enquirer where Aquino “confesses” to being a Satanist and with a condemnation from a member of the Catholic War Veterans Group.

What follows is a long article from Colonel Paul Vallely with Maj. Aquino titled, “From PSYOP to MindWar: the Psychology of Victory.” Right away I’m going to say that there is no provenance for this document. We aren’t told where it comes from. I’ll grant that the authors are the authors, but is this just a thing they wrote? What connection does it have with the Temple of Set? It’s just filler.

It begins by claiming that Psychological warfare can be effective and is why we lost the war in Vietnam. The national will to win was just sapped while the Viet Cong and the NVA took enormous losses they continued to want to fight. This much is true. After the Tet Offensive the Viet Cong were utterly destroyed as a fighting force; but they had taken Hanoi for a brief moment. It’s why Baghdad was so important to protect in the Iraq War; if the capital cannot be secured there is no hope for the war.

The memo essentially argues that psyops (or MindWar) ought to be employed before the enemy reaches the battlefield. Misdirection, lies, slander, and all of the other tactics are great; but the goal should be to win the war without having to fight it. It must be total and absolute against the enemy so that they never want to fight. This is fine, but what are we reading?

Cooper gives no commentary, no addendum to the chapter. There isn’t even a preface. It’s just here. A better writer would be able to tie this chapter into the first chapter, and say that this is proof. A clever conspiracy theorist would then link the Satanic temple to the two chapters, write their own version of it, and then proffer that as an actual conspiracy theory.

The conclusion to his book is…nothing. It’s over.

I mentioned back in paragraph 3 that the date of 1981 is important. The date matters because in the late 1970s is when the “Satanic Panic” begins. In 1980 “Michelle Remembers” is published setting the template for Satanic Ritual Abuse—none of which was ever established to be real. Yet, like Q-Anon, the legitimacy never mattered. The book is published in the 1990s and the panic ends then. Cooper is just drumming up fears, and like most conspiracy theorists—they can’t let anything go. By the point of publication, it would have been a better conspiracy theory to claim that the “Satanic Panic” was manufactured to scare people and control them. Cooper could have claimed that the panic was a test of the “Silent Weapon” but again he’d have to be a much better conspiracy theorist to make those claims.

So the book is over? No. There are 34 pages of appendices here. So we have more to do. However, I’ll say this much I’m going to skip the first Appendix because it is just Cooper’s Naval record. I have no doubts or comments on it aside from the lack of any Air Force credentials. Cooper claimed that he heard about the Kennedy assassination while napping underneath a nuclear equipped B-52. Odd that he has no Air Force discharge papers.