Tuesday, April 15, 2014

An Obituary for Michael C. Ruppert (1951-2014)



THE HUNTER OF INVISIBLE PREY

An Obituary for Michael C. Ruppert (1951-2014)




By Sander Hicks


Mike Ruppert was a friend of mine.

He was an American prophet, a social critic, and a truther. He had his enemies and he had his demons. He confronted the enemies. Not sure he confronted the demons.
But we can’t judge that now.

His death this past weekend is a huge loss for the people. When I say “the people” I mean anyone who cares about a political system out of control, blind to its own corruption, deluded by its sugar-free media.

Ruppert was a trained investigator who sought to expose the shadow elements of the US government involved in drug trafficking and fake terrorism. He had the financial perception to alert the American people to the imminent economic crash, two years before the meltdown of 2008. Mike Ruppert was one of the first to point out the gross anomalies and obtuse leaps of logic in the Bush/Cheney explanations for the 9/11 attacks. In an authoritative book, Ruppert even accused Vice President Dick Cheney as the chief executor of the 9/11 attacks.

We met in 1999 in New York City. Ruppert came into my life like a sentinel from a different reality. I had just gone through a kind of gateway, and he was like Morpheus in the Matrix, welcoming me in.  My red pill had been the disruptive re-print of a certain controversial biography of then Governor George W. Bush. As an immediate result, an entire class of underground whistle-blowers popped up to welcome me into their world. Welcome to Zion. You are in. They introduced me to sets of facts and data that were verboten in the blue pill media. Ruppert was at the center of that gang.

He explained that he had been an LAPD cop and narcotics detective. His Mom had been a Defense Intelligence Agency heavyweight in Moscow, so CIA recruited him while he was at LAPD. He declined the offer. Why? He saw shit.  He began feeding the LA Times info on CIA heroin trafficking as far back as 1979.  LA Times sat on the story.

The drug war was phony. Which meant that both the local criminal justice system and the national intelligence/military apparatus had zero credibility. Wall Street, the White House, and everyone on down needed the drug war like a junkie wants heroin. The system was using. The system was an addict.

“The entire economy, and the entire political system itself, is currently hooked and dependent upon drug money” wrote Mike in 1999, on his main site, FromTheWilderness.com

In the mid 90’s, when Ruppert’s friend Gary Webb broke a huge story in the San José Mercury News, it documented how the CIA and the Nicauraguan Contra network facilitated the crack cocaine epidemic in the 80’s. The CIA sent DCIA John Deutch to spin the story in a public auditorium. Ruppert confronted Deutch and named three specific operations that showed the US agencies were up to their elbows in black market cocaine and heroin. Deutch sputtered, told people to phone the LAPD, and was laughed out of the room. He was swiftly replaced at CIA.

According to Ruppert, in October, 1999, investigators from the House Intelligence Committee came to Los Angeles, and made copies 6,000 pages of his records.

That same year, Ruppert asked me for a $10,000 advance to do a book on the US and drugs. I didn’t have the money, and it’s just as well. Two years later 9/11 happened, and Ruppert had a lot more to say.

It turns out the same parties who pulled off the cocaine sales funding the Contras were at it again. (Those parties being namely, the Bush Family, the GOP, the Democrats, the CIA and other shadowy quasi-government black factions too numerous to list here.)

The book Ruppert eventually brought out in 2004, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil (New Society Publishers).

A reviewer on Amazon called it “The single most important book written in the last fifty years…. The Patriot Act, Homeland Security and the lies about WMDs in Iraq have created a growing sense of unease in the collective unconscious. As a result, a growing number of intellectuals and every day citizens are beginning to see the Truth and more and more people are beginning to wake up every day. Crossing the Rubicon is at the forefront of this new awareness.”

At the end of 2004, however, tragedy struck. Ruppert’s friend Gary Webb, who had followed in Ruppert’s footsteps by taking on CIA drug trafficking, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head.

Reading Ruppert’s heartfelt obituary for Webb today, I am struck:

“I would never have confronted John Deutch at Locke High had it not been for Gary Webb. 

I myself might have committed suicide in 1996 - broke, divorced and having given up all hope of making people listen -- had it not been for Gary Webb. For some years now it has been the farthest thing from my mind.”
Ten years later, suicide wasn’t far away any more. Ruppert’s struggles with depression, alcohol, and isolation became insurmountable. He moved to Colorado. He did one final radio show last Saturday and then that was it. We are all so fragile.

“Wherever men and women of honor gather together from now on, your name will be spoken with reverence, respect and gratitude.” Ruppert wrote that for Webb ten years ago. The same goes for him.

I prayed hard today to understand why this happened now. What does God want us to know about why this happened? What can we learn. How can this man’s death and life give our lives a brighter, sharper focus?

I remember how Ruppert came back into my life a couple times. The time he was travelling through New York and needed a place to crash. I gave him the damp basement offices of Soft Skull Press, down in the bowels of 100 Suffolk Street, and he was happy to sleep there, on the floor. He was a soldier on a mission. Later, he kidded me about having the worst apartment in New York City.

A few years later, around 2003, Ruppert was drinking beer in a corporate pizza joint in downtown Brooklyn. It was all wrong. Our choice of restaurant, the food, the beer. Ruppert had enjoyed speaking events of 1000 paid attendees, he had bragged from the stage that he had been sober for X number of years. So why drink beer now? He had some murky excuse the exact wording of which is irrelevant.

I look at Ruppert’s life, his hard struggle, his victories and his short-comings. I wish we were closer in his final couple of years. I loved him. I say the following with love. I say the following because I don’t want to know any more great truth loving writers to die this way. If you have a drinking problem, hit a meeting. Reach out. It worked for me, to stop flailing about, running from city to country to city, always moving, thinking a big move is going to change things. Get centered. Pray and meditate. Be still.

Something snapped in Ruppert sometime later in that decade, after the book. He moved to Venezuela, in rushed effort to seek political asylum from the Chavez government. Ruppert probably wasn’t anti-imperialist enough for their tastes, at least not in a leftist way. Oh, and the CIA/DIA family background probably didn’t help.


I wept. I felt rage today. I was mad at you, Mike, going out this way. It was too similar to Gary Webb, to Jim Hatfield the Bush biographer. I don’t want this pattern. Tell me it’s not the fate for writers of deep truth, to die, alone, shooting their brains out, because they went deep and hard after the invisible forces, the slithering stag. The hunter became hunted by the dragon.

No. Mike will be remembered for his discipline, his writing, his development of a critical paradigm. Our society is stronger for the deep analysis. In the same way that Ruppert investigated Gary Webb’s death, it’s up to us now to do the scientific and careful analysis of the crime scene. To pick up where he left off, and wake up to a new view of the matrix.

9 comments:

  1. Mike Ruppert would be damn proud to know the certainty of his legacy, as you have so elegantly described here. The rest of us hunting for truth will reach for and apply his teachings many times in the era of civil strife and government paranoia that's descending on us now.

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  2. Gary Webb was murdered. Obviously, you don't shoot yourself in the head twice. I am sorry Mike chose this way out. Maybe he felt he had done all he could and wasn't getting the results he deserved. Don't we all know that feeling?

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  3. Elizabeth, you're wrong about Gary Webb. The first shot went through his jaw - it was a failed attempt. This is quite common in such suicides - a flinching that causes a mis-shot. Mike Ruppert investigated Webb's death himself. It's when they shoot themselves in the back of the head twice that we know it's not a real suicide. Of course, just like Mike, Gary Webb was of course killed by the Powers that Be. Those powers didn't do the actual act. They didn't need to. The destruction of the victims lives was enough for them to do it themselves in the end.

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  4. Sander, I offer you my deepest and most sincere condolences. I can feel your pain coming through the words you wrote. At a very young age, I too, lost my best friend to suicide. It leaves you with a hole in your soul that can never be filled and a plethora of emotions that rise and ebb inexplicably for many years afterwards. The one emotion I most remember was denial, which was shortly replaced after several years of grieving her, with pure unadulterated rage.

    How dare she take the cowards way out. How dare she be so damn selfish to leave all of us here, wondering what we could have done to save her. And of course the grandest question of all, "WHY? Why would she do that??"

    Looking back, I knew that she had ALWAYS been fascinated with the idea of suicide, as she spoke of it often and I once caught her sitting in her bedroom floor late one night, buck naked, with 38 caliber shells spilled ALL over the floor and the gun in her hand. I knew then what to do and I did it. And I know with certainty that I probably saved her life that night. But I could not be with her 24/7. And sadly, everyone must be alone sometimes, and when someone has "Suicide Ideation" those times are always critically risky.

    I did not know or follow Mike, but many of my Truther friends did. I met you Sander at a 9/11 conference in Phoenix, AZ. in 2005 (in fact, I helped plan your travel accommodations) and I have always been proud to know you and call you "friend" although our paths rarely ever cross.

    So if Mike was someone that you admired and now mourn, I am certain that he was someone really, really special to this movement we call the TRUTH movement. And as such, a loss such as this is not just a loss for his close friends and family, but a loss for us all.

    RIP Mike Ruppert and Condolences to the TRUTHERS

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  5. Sander, your eulogy is profound. Thank you for putting words to emotions that are so difficult to speak. Mike's grasp of the workings of the deep state was formidable. His courage to expose the criminality at the highest levels which he discovered also exemplified his commitment to a single standard of law that should apply to every sector of our society, rather than shadow government types being above the law. His film "Truth & Lies of 9/11" was the first of scores of documentaries on the subject of this heinous crime. Although it was plain as far as production quality, the 3-hours of geopolitical analysis behind the 9/11 events was like a lighting fast PHd course in the global chess game played by the forces of empire. What's just as amazing to me is that I viewed it again many years later and was just as impacted by the range and depth of his research.

    But Mike was an unfortunate combination of a oracle making a clarion call filled with warnings for humanity, and an irrepressible pessimist. Anyone who knew him can relate to this statement. He had to see that there was a global movement for truth and positive change, but instead of seeing cause for hope he saw the power of the global controllers as undermining any possible potential for the power of truth and justice to win out. He didn't consider MLK's statement that although the arc of justice is slow, it is sure. Mike was certain that the world would run out of oil, and therefore a global social collapse was imminent. Other knowledgeable people speak of giant reserves that are being kept in secrecy. I think that for Mike, it wasn't enough to live life educating people and raising consciousness as a contribution that is its own reward. He didn't feel that the cumulative efforts of many agents of change, plus the power of divine guidance available to humanity will surely overcome the forces of darkness in due time.

    So we have a larger responsibility. We have to continue to expose the truth of false flag operations, the truth of bankster crimes against the 95%, and the abject failure of our political system to act in the interest of the many. PLUS we have to convey the hopeful fact that the general public outnumbers the tiny faction manipulating our reality. Therefore, its through our awakening to political reality, shedding the myths we've been duped by, realizing our strength in numbers, and willingness to speak our truth that positive change will ultimately displace the big lie.

    I also want to share that when planning the 2nd "How the World Changed After 9/11" event to be held at the INN venue on Walker Street, I got Mike on the phone somehow. I asked him to come and speak, although I knew he had been keeping a low profile for some time. To our surprise, he consented. He came to the big symposium, was very well received, and basically had a great time. This was just before beginning his radio show. He was also playing music and was hoping to make some recordings! This was a different side of him I never knew existed. It was all encouraging. But apparently he spiraled back into despondency.

    I'll close by adding that Mike's work was followed by lots of people around the world, even beyond the "truth movement". He had a fairly large impact, I'd say. So, thanks again for your sharing and let's do what we can to keep Mike Ruppert's contributions alive.

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  6. Very sad, but not very surprising. Thank you for sharing this.

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  7. Its because of michael ruppert I learned that real information, the crucial kind, the kind that most matters.. is usually not found on the news.

    its because of him i learned that corporate news acts as an impediment to information, the same way that formal education acts as an impediment to knowledge.

    through him i learned that the truth is out there, right out there, hidden in plain sight. Past the news noise, and behind the groupthink.

    and its because of michael ruppert I figured out that ideology had taken the place of critical thinking in our culture. and how lonely it can be once you figure that out.

    so, michael ruppert. michael ruppert.

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  8. I'm also mad at Mike Ruppert as his carefully precalculated "exit." Mad at him for for his chilling ("nobody's gonna talk me outa it this time") "focus" during that last show, for his "I love you more than you will know" comment to Jesse Re, for building up to the point of a "grand exit" for years and years, and openly dragging loved ones and admirers behind him as he headed there. Suicide might be seen as a final act of dispair or it might be seen as an act of supreme self absorption. I see Mike Ruppert's suicide as the latter. No surprise...but sorry, no lament for this pathetic and overdramatic ending .

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  9. Where is Obama and the CIA spreading violence today?

    One revolution for which the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its allied operatives of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the George Soros Open Society Institute have become so infamous, went virtually unnoticed in the English language Western media. Welcome to Obama's Ukraine.

    In 2010, anti-Russian government provocateurs, financed by Western non-governmental organizations (NGOs), staged a number of protests featuring plastic blue buckets. The buckets were meant to symbolize the portable flashing blue lights, known in Russian as migalki, used atop many vehicles for Russian VIPs, including government officials and private businessmen.

    The blue bucket protests were directly linked to the “pro-democracy” activities of USAID in Russia. American-backed provocateurs began placing blue buckets on top of their cars to mock the use of blue lights by officials. In response, three parties represented in the State Duma, United Russia, A Just Russia, and the Liberal Democratic Party, proposed a bill to crack down on the use of the blue buckets by protesters who were intent on causing traffic problems, sometimes resulting in vehicle accidents.

    U.S. NGO support for the “blue bucket” revolution preceded by a year the nomination by President Barack Obama of anti-Russian activist Michael McFaul as the U.S. ambassador to Russia. McFaul began his tenure in Moscow by opening up the U.S. embassy to all sorts of anti-Russian political activists, provocateurs, and troublemakers.

    These political provocateurs, which include People’s Freedom Party leader political blogger Aleksey Navalny, “Left Front” Sergey Udaltsov, chess celebrity Garry Kasparov, Russian “cover girl” Ksenia Sobchak, “Solidarity” co-leader Ilya Yashin, Boris Nemtsov, neo-fascist National Bolshevik Party leader Eduard Limonov, Yabloko Party leader Sergey Mitrokhin, and Lev Ponomarev were all well-schooled in the use of various devices and contrivances to gain media attention for their political causes and protests.

    Street protests were used by Gene-Sharp-trained activists in a number of CIA- and Soros-advanced political operations.

    The United States and the EU created the violence in the Ukraine, supported it, and financed it.

    The Sanctions against Russia and the military build up by NATO and the United States are wrong.

    Fire Barrack Obama and Joe Biden.


    . Shut down the Bureau of Land Management and the IRS.

    The delays in the Most Horrible parts of Obamacrap did not fix anything.

    Quit spending trillions of dollars on the stupid War on Terror to murder civilians.

    End the stupid Sanctions against Russia the violence in the Ukraine is because of the EU and the United States, just like the violence in Syria and the War on Terror and the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War.

    Why did we accidentally invade Afghanistan when the 911 Terrorists were not from Afghanistan and their Leader was not in Afghanistan? Did it have something to do with the multi billion dollar Drug Industry in Afghanistan and the Largest Drug Cartel in the World, our CIA.

    The CIA and NSA are like our Media and Obama, they have no credibility.

    The Sanctions against Russia are Wrong. The build up of NATO and United States Military are Wrong.

    No Incumbents.

    They have not fired Obama and they gave us the stupid War on Terror, vote every one of our fat rich good for nothing Senators and Representatives in Washington, DC out

    The CIA is the Largest Drug Cartel in the World.

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