I've been aware of Bill Cooper since 1991, when I
actually read his book that came out the same year. I was aware of the controversy around Cooper from the mid-90s onward. When he was killed by law enforcement in late 2001, though I had long since realized he wasn't a credible figure on anything he wrote about and in the interim had gone full
"Sovereign Citizen/American Patriot Militia Movement," I was very curious as to the circumstances surrounding his death and over the months and years afterward, I read most everything I could find on the incident on his property in AZ. That's my background coming to this discussion we are now having.
You attach a random PDF that consists of cobbled together information, all from highly dubious sources (Hour of the Time website, really?) and no longer existent sources (no such "SierraTimes.com" news site exists but the link at the end of the article also lists Jeff Rense's Alt News website as the "Main Page"). Jeff Rense! That racist piece of garbage that peddles truly outlandish conspiracy theories... Hey, we're off to a great start in getting the "real story" now! Alternate perspective indeed! That's some quality attribution. Next in your PDF is a section cribbed from Wikipedia, in which Wikipedia itself notes the lack of reliable third-party publications and numerous notifications in the body of the text noting the need for valid citations. As for the interview with Bill Cooper's friend/research partner/tenant (and fellow Patriot Militia Movement member), Doyel Shamley (who is also an Hour of the Time host), the guy makes assertions of facts that he couldn't know, as he was admittedly not even in the same town on the night of the confrontation. He's just riffing and spinning events to fit the "victim of the Federal Gov't" narrative that is commonplace among followers of the "Patriot" Militia and Sovereign Citizen movements.
You've simply waded into an area you knew very little about and posted before doing true due diligence. I respect the fact that you were intrigued by the discussion you and Gene had with
@Decker, the man never disappoints, as he is a true raconteur. However, before making ill-informed and completely speculative and fact-free posts in the forum, do the RESEARCH first, and THEN post, and then ONLY if the research itself appears to be sufficiently credible. Someone as intelligent and meticulous as yourself should have little problem in determining that before just attaching a 97 page PDF full of highly dubious content and presenting THAT as your basis for an "Alternate Perspective."
Also, I don't know what
@Paul Kimball has to do with any of this. I can't find any posts from him on this thread at all. You already irked Don, I'd advise not adding Paul to the list.
I think this short article (
link) from the
Southern Poverty Law Center about the incident sums things up quite succinctly. 17 members of law enforcement were involved in this operation. The plan to get him away from his house was specifically because he was known to have stockpiled weapons and had expressed on numerous occasions on his radio show that he would not hesitate to use them should the government come on to his property and that he would never be taken alive. That certainly factored in to LE's strategy in trying to get him away from the house so that he could be arrested without incident. True to his word, the highly paranoid and heavily-armed Cooper chose not to go out that way. There are consequences to one's own actions. I understand that there are questionable "officer involved shootings" that take place all too frequently in the United States but it begins to stretch credulity, in my opinion, when you are talking about an operation of 17 LE members from local and Federal jurisdictions and the cover-up that would entail if the details of that night were truly in question. Combine that unlikelihood with the facts that Cooper was a highly-paranoid, heavily-armed member of an anti-government militia group that had made repeated claims he would not hesitate to fire on any law enforcement who "trespassed" on what he viewed as his sovereign property, and I think we have our clear and unambiguous outcome for the night of November 5, 2001. Pardon me if I don't lend equal credence to Cooper's "Patriot" militia pal, Shamley.
These are my final thoughts on your initial post and on Bill Cooper in general. Good luck on your journey for more of the "alternate perspective." Sometimes paranoid idiots just get themselves shot when they didn't really have to...