COOPERMAN

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000201300007-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 6, 2010
• Sequence Number: 7
• Publication Date: November 9, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201300007-0
UNl'l'ra YK155 INlLKNATIONAL
9 November 1984
COOPERMAN
BY SHEILA GRISSETT-WELSH - STAT
FULLERTON, CA.
Colleagues of Cal State Fullerton physicist Edward Cooperman Friday called
for a full investigation into the 'strong possibility'' that the scientist's
ties with Hanoi led to his political assassination.
Vietnam's official news agency has decried Cooperman's Oct. 13 shooting death
as a CIA -backed plot, a theory rejected by local investigators and the
attorney for Minh Van Lam, a Vietnamese refugee charged with the killing.
Cooperman, 48, maintained strong., well-known ties with Hanoi through his
scientific research into Agent Orange and attempts to help rebuild war-torn
Vietnam.
Defense attorney Alan May, a former high-ranking member of the Nixon
Administration, has dismissed Hanoi's allegation as ''election year
propaganda. "
May has argued that the shooting in Cooperman's office was either an_ accident
or a set-up in which Cooperman "used" Minh to stage his own suicide.
Colleagues of Cooperman called the news media together Friday to tell a
different story.
Latin American History professor Sheldon Maram said Cooperman's activities
were ''viewed as abhorrent to some far-right elements of the Vietnamese
community in the United States.
We know that Professor Cooperman told many of his friends and colleagues,
including those present here today, of threats to his life made because of his
involvement with Vietnam, " Maram said.
He referred to recent testimony before the President's Commission on
Organized Crime that organized Vietnamese gangs in the United States have both
criminal and political motives.
The Cal State professors urged Orange County's district attorney and grand
jury to investigate reputed organized Vietnamese gang activity in the area for
any link to the killing.
Continued
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And if they are without resources, a federal grand jury be empaneled, Maram
said.
Maram and Physics Department chairwoman Dorothy Woolum said Cooperman's fear
of a political assassination caused a change in his recent work and personal
'habits.
He told colleagues about the threats, bought and learned to use firearms,
watched self-defense movies, varied his normal routine and trimmed hedges in
front of his home that could be used as cover by a potential assailant.
Cooperman hoped he might be protected because he was a native American.
"Nevertheless, he indicated he feared that assassins might try to kill him
in such a way that it would appear the killing was not politically motivated,"
Flaram said.
They urged that police not ''abandon'' the strong possibility of political
assassination for May's ''implausible theories,'' which include Suggestions that
Cooperman might have harbored homosexual leanings toward Minh and other studenti,
he befriended.
''(These theories) have tended to blame the victim for the crime and cast
aspersions on the character of a person whose voice has been stilled by a
bullet," Maram said.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/06: CIA-RDP90-00552R000201300007-0