The Fairy-Tale Allure of Conspiracies

On June 28 2001, the notorious conspiracy writer and broadcaster Milton William Cooper gave a broadcast from his hilltop Arizona studio. “Can you believe what you’re seeing on CNN today, ladies and gentlemen?” he asked. Wasn’t it strange, he suggested, that after the CIA had failed for years to find Osama bin Laden, somehow a regular camera crew had found his secret hideout and conducted an interview? Bin Laden was a US intelligence asset, Cooper asserted, and something was now afoot. “I’m telling you to be prepared for a major attack!” he declared.