Michael Ruppert

Michael C. Ruppert (born Feb. 3 1951) is an American author, a former Los Angeles Police Department officer, and investigative journalist and peak oil advocate.

Until 2006, he published and edited From The Wilderness, a newsletter and website covering a range of topics including (international) politics, the C.I.A., peak oil, civil liberties, drugs, economics, corruption and 9/11 conspiracy theories. He is also the author of Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil and was the subject of the 2009 documentary film Collapse.

He was president of Collapse Network, Inc until he resigned in May of 2012, giving 35% of his 55% share back to founders of the company,. He currently hosts The Lifeboat Hour on Progressive Radio Network.

Activism
On November 15, 1996, then Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch visited Los Angeles' Locke High School for a town hall meeting. At the meeting, Ruppert publicly confronted Deutch, saying that in his experience as an LAPD narcotics officer he had seen evidence of CIA complicity in drug dealing.

Ruppert went on to become an investigator and journalist, and established the publication From The Wilderness, a watchdog publication that exposed governmental corruption, including his experience with CIA drug dealing activities.

Ruppert is the author of Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, published in September 2004. Crossing The Rubicon claims that Vice President Dick Cheney, the US government, and Wall Street had a well-developed awareness of and colluded with the perpetrators of 9/11.

Ruppert appears in the documentary films The 911 Report You Never Saw - The Great Conspiracy, Peak Oil - Imposed by Nature, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, The End of Suburbia, American Drug War: The Last White Hope and Collapse.

From The Wilderness
From The Wilderness was a newsletter published from 1998 to 2006 by the media company From The Wilderness Publications. The newsletter covered political and governmental issues. It was published eleven times per year but featured weekly updates online. Critics such as David Corn and Norman Solomon argued that Ruppert on occasion veered off into making unsubstantiated conspiracy theory claims.

In the summer of 2006, claiming government harassment and fearing for his life, Ruppert left the United States for Venezuela, vowing not to return.

The Ashland Daily Tidings would later report that, in June 2006, Ruppert had accused a former female employee of burglarizing the offices of From The Wilderness, a case in which Ruppert himself was considered a potential suspect. Around the same time, the former female employee accused him in turn of sexual harassment. Ruppert would later in 2009 be ordered to pay a $125,000 fine by the Oregon labor board in the case. The female employee claimed Ruppert fired her after she refused his sexual advances, Ruppert denies this and claims he fired her for "disruptive behavior, poor work performance and wearing inappropriate clothing". The former employee further claims Ruppert approached her in her office "wearing only his underwear and a smile", something Ruppert doesn't deny.

The end of From The Wilderness was announced in a post at the website on November 7, 2006. Reasons for the closure were detailed in the article. Ruppert claimed his bad health, glitches that disabled their web store, "problems of human origin" and his departure to Venezuela had led to the demise of From The Wilderness.

Later that year, Ruppert flew to Toronto, Canada, for medical treatment. The following statement was posted on the From The Wilderness website on November 26, 2006: "'Personally, I am through forever with investigative journalism and public lecturing. I am leaving public life. It is my hope that by continuing to repeat this sincere position that many of the inexplicable difficulties which have dominated my life over the past months will ease. It is time to move on. I spent twenty-seven years as a dedicated public activist and that is something which I am no longer able or inclined to do. The price was ultimately too great.'"

After shutting down, From the Wilderness was sued by their landlord for back rent owed on their Ashland office space.

Further activities
Some of his posting from him on the From the Wilderness website said Ruppert was back in New York, receiving treatment from "sympathetic physicians" for a variety of ailments.

Ruppert still occasionally contributes to the Collapse Network news desk run by former From the Wilderness associate and longtime friend, Jenna Orkin.

As recently as 2010, Ruppert lived in Los Angeles, California and launched Collapse Network to build sustainable communities across the world. But in 2011 he announced on his Lifeboat Hour radio show that he was relocating to Sonoma County, California, because he thought that it would be a safer location in the event of societal collapse.

Critics
Columnist Norman Solomon has argued that Ruppert has a flawed analytical model. "Some of the problem is in how he characterizes news reports. These citations can be narrowly factual yet presented in a misleading way. Yes, such-and-such newspaper reported that thus-and-so claim was made by so-and-so. The paper reported on the claim, but that doesn't mean the claim is true."

Columnist David Corn has also criticized Ruppert's methodology, and dismisses the idea that conspiracy theorizing is useful: "In fact, out-there conspiracy theorizing serves the interests of the powers-that-be by making their real transgressions seem tame in comparison." Ruppert responded with an open public letter to Corn saying that Corn is not able to disprove any of Ruppert's claims.