By Linda Minor—Coauthor of GANGSTER PLANET

Daniel Hopsicker taught me a lot during the last four years, as we tried to collaborate in writing his last book. He wanted the book to include everything he’d learned during his careers—first, the career spent making videos about business news and second, the career of writing about drug trafficking as an American business.

All his independent works had the same thread running through them: Secrecy makes it possible for American commerce to combine government intelligence operations with political aspirations and to cover up what is done through complicit media control.

He began early on by trying to learn the role of the Federal Reserve, starting with the only research done up to that point in his life, namely Eustace Mullins’ book, The Secret of the Federal Reserve. Daniel produced a video called “Masters of the Universe: The Secret Birth of the Federal Reserve.”

It was one of a five-part series released in 2004 called Conspiracy: The Secret History, which also included:

• The Secret Heartbeat of America: The C.I.A. and Drugs
• In Search of the American Drug Lords: Barry Seal and the Boys, from Dallas to Mena
• The Big Fix 2000: Who Runs the Show
• Welcome to Terrorland: Mohamad Atta and the Venice Flying Circus

These videos tell us all we need to know about who Daniel was. He was an active observer of American society and government, who did not get distracted by what he labels in Gangster Planet as “bread and circuses.”

Sure, he liked to watch pro football on Sundays and Thursday nights, or whenever his favorite teams played.

In earlier, healthier days, he loved to run. Six, or was it seven, marathons! He still yearned for those days, but, after his back was injured in a car accident, inactivity drained muscle tone.

His real life, however, was in his mind. He saw things other people didn’t see, and he wanted to understand what was unstated, hidden—yes, even secret.

His career as a business reporter and videographer ended when he met the mother of a high school senior, whose body was discovered “strewn across train tracks to be dismembered by a speeding train.” That meeting inspired Daniel to produce an almost two-hour documentary, still appearing at Amazon Prime.

That documentary was written into book form as Barry and ‘the boys’: The CIA, the Mob and America’s Secret History (2001).

In the meantime, Daniel observed the election of 2000, which I recall as the farce of hanging chads. A year later he moved to Sarasota, Florida, to be closer to his elderly mother. But he kept working. While defending lawsuits resulting from Barry, he wrote and produced The Big Fix.

He was in Venice when the name Mohamad Atta began to appear in newspapers. He waited, but nothing of consequence was revealed. Somebody had to do it. Daniel did an investigation that led him to produce Welcome to Terrorland as a video, which he then wrote up in book form.

Daniel always wanted to be a writer. He’d been a reader first, of course. He loved literature enough to choose English as his major at UCLA. His first choice, after finishing high school at Ygnacio Valley in California would have been UC Berkeley, of course. Remembering how much he’d loved being freed to go to from Catholic schools in Chicago Heights to public school as a high school senior, he told me a few stories about those first days of freedom. I’ve listened to the same stories on various podcasts as well.

His dad refused to pay for Berkeley, he said, but did agree to fund his education in Los Angeles, apparently not realizing UCLA was equally radical in 1970—even more so by May Day 1972.

Daniel proudly sent me his picture from the UCLA Bruin on May 10, marching in protest to the war in Vietnam. I recalled protesting the opening of the LBJ Library in Austin at about the same time, but had no photos.

That’s when he told me he had dropped out the next semester of college—to study Hamlet. I’m not sure what the whole story was, most likely what many sons and fathers suffered through in the early ‘70s.

Hamlet

Many of us never returned to the ‘morality’ of the ‘60s. We’d already seen too many anomalies by then. I can only speak for myself, but even without Hamlet as a guide, those years are when I made up my mind to be authentic. Daniel had Hamlet.

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

“That one may smile and smile and be a villain.”

“God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.”

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.”

Three Boomers

I was born in 1948, Kris Millegan in 1950, and Daniel in 1951, and basically, we share the same worldview. Kris and I agreed with Daniel over the last few years to form a partnership to keep what began as the Mad Cow News alive and well, and to keep his books and videos available, and to see Gangster Planet in print.

Our partnership was formalized this year as Madcowprod.com, LLC in honor of Daniel’s many years of work and sacrifice (a website without ads) to share his ideas and observations free to anyone who willing to read it.

The best way to obtain his work at this point in time is through TrineDay, the alter ego of Kris Millegan. We can no longer fulfill orders made through Amazon. Previous Amazon orders not yet received should be canceled.

trineday@icloud.com – Talk to Kris Millegan or Julia Cox

(800) 556-2012