When it comes to insulting Michael Ruppert, his enemies simply cannot hold their ink.
Knowing who they are, their ocean of character assassination is the greatest possible tribute anybody could give him. I won´t attempt to match it here.
So, who are they?
For those readers who did not undergo certain knotty life experiences, the Ruppert-hater telltale heart is not what it is for us who were less fortunate: obvious. Hence, for the lucky ones, a brief digression is in order.
Call it a 101 class in oligarch appreciation, a la music appreciation.
* * *
Academically, my local public high school was so rotten it didn´t even stink. After it almost lost its accreditation, my worried parents made me go to a private boarding school for tenth grade. They told me that after one year I could decide if I wanted to stay.
The school was Ransom in Coconut Grove, Miami.
Academically, Ransom was excellent. However, an education involves other things. Among them was whom I was sitting next to in class. I would tell you who they were but you would accuse me of shameless name-dropping -- and you would be right. Let´s just say my classmates were the scions of the haute Miami, the toute Florida, the beau monde of America North and South. They make more money in one minute watching an iCarly rerun than you do working hard all year.
In the first week at Ransom something hit me smack-dab in the kisser about those kids. They had zero curiosity. Learn -- why? What for? With their birth certificates came lifetime chairs in the nonstop cocktail circuit flowing from Miami to Houston and all points west. East, too. All they had to do was nod, wink, and, for heaven´s sake, not actually say "Duh."
In my second week at Ransom, something else hit me. No point beating around the bush: my classmates were barnstormingly stupid. Indelibly, relentlessly so.
I will never forget an exasperated history teacher informing the kid in front of me that he was "nothing but a Brontosaurus. A Brontosaurus -- you hear me?" During the ensuing silence, I contemplated the boy´s longetudinous neck terminating in a friendly pin head; rontundatus legs; slow blinks; laborious chewing gestures. By god, the teacher was onto something.
As for just how Brontosaurus my class was, let me put it this way.
To maintain its reputation, each year Ransom had to send at least one graduate to the Ivy League. The headmaster, Mr. Cameron, called me into his office the last day of the school year. Cognizant of the earthly delights I was indulging in, I braced myself for a paddling.
"We hope you will come back," he said. I will never forget his wide/wider/widest smile. I had been pegged for Harvard.
Mr. Cameron was unaware he had in front of him a consummate 16-year-old who had read Catcher in The Rye and On The Road and pronounced both works to be as exciting as a wet tortilla. Phony, over-hyped, boring but scary "rebel" stories served up by the system to keep the children close to the campfire: with Mr. Cameron I was determined to be consistent...
"Me? Harvard?" I offhandedly inquired. Cat/canary: it was my turn to be relentless. "You gotta be kidding."
I think it was probably the first and last time a student gave Mr. Cameron a hard time. I didn´t encounter the same picante don´t-play-ball-with-the-system attitude until some 40 years later, when Michael Ruppert capsized CIA Director John Deutch in a public meeting. More on that confrontation shortly.
What Ransom taught me: if you want to have the sensation of prolonging your life, spend time among America´s oligarchy. 50 minutes will seem like 50 years.
We come to the telltale heart of Michael Ruppert´s enemies. They never offer arguments against his arguments. Never. They do not because they cannot. Unlike you and me, dear reader, the fact of the matter is they didn´t have to learn anything in school; all they had to do was pass. For members of the oligarchy that´s how life works, and it explains why as adults their criticisms cannot go beyond ad hominem attacks: crank, crackpot, stooge, ad nauseam.
Sidebar: I used the expression ad hominem knowing full good and well the oligarchs and their Girls Friday, Saturday and Sunday don´t have foggiest idea what it means. Result: they tune this blog out, stay away in droves.
While collecting invectives hurled at Ruppert, I realized something. There they were -- my Ransom classmates. I´d know them anywhere. The only significant change they had undergone since 10th grade is that today they sit atop the largest corporations in America.
Those fortunate readers mentioned above who lack direct experience with oligarchs and their sundry sidekicks and hangers-on undoubtedly think I am over the top when I accuse America´s wealthiest of barnstorming stupidity. And so, to hear an honest-to-god oligarch speak, I invite those readers to listen to this video. When it comes to America´s archi-rich, the level of conversation you will hear from the 1.9-billion-dollar man Donald Sterling is the rule, not the exception. I know -- I had to put up with it for nine months.
Like it or not, the simple fact is over 95% of Americans directly or indirectly work for oligarchs. You disagree? There is an infallible indicator that men like Sterling are irrefutably and firmly in control: not that they pay peanuts for taxes or own yachts and racehorses but that you have to laugh at their jokes.
My Ransom history teacher sure knew his history. Think Brontosaurus: you´ve got it.
* * *
Michael Ruppert burst onto the American scene on November 15, 1996. CIA Director John Deutch was attending a town hall meeting at Locke High School in Los Angeles. Ruppert stepped up to the microphone and confronted Deutch, saying that as a former LAPD narcotics detective he had evidence the CIA "has dealt drugs throughout this country for a long time."
The Ruppert/Deutch face-off is on YouTube. Deutch stumbled and fumbled; a month later, President Clinton fired him. Watch Deutch´s hands in the video; all I can say is, he had better not play poker.
If you wonder how a man like Deutch, who couldn´t handle a simple question and answer session with the public, could ever become the head of the CIA, please revisit our oligarch appreciation class. Corollary: if you condemn President Clinton for appointing Deutch, I say au contraire, the appointment was excellent. The CIA directorship was the perfect place for him. He was supposed to represent the agency and he did.
Do you wonder where Deutch is now? Don´t. The oligarchy takes care of its own. He is safely ensconced as a professor at MIT and chronic board member of a plethora of companies and institutions, including Harvard´s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
To readers who believe I was grievously mistaken in giving Harvard the old heave-ho, John Deutch is my reply.
* * *
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds,
to seek out new life and new civilizations,
to boldly go where no man has gone before.
-- William Shatner, Star Trek --
This blog will boldly go where no Ruppert foe has gone before.
Strange new worlds. We will seriously consider Michael Ruppert´s methodology and major arguments in his book, Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of The American Empire at The End of The Age of Oil.
We start with the most frequent charge hurled at Ruppert: conspiracy theorist paranoid.
Right? Wrong? There is a reasonable way to confirm or deny the allegation.
Either (i) conspiracies really exist in the political world or (ii) they do not. If they do not exist then obviously the allegation of "conspiracy theorist paranoid" has merit. Considerable merit, in fact.
But what if political conspiracies exist?
Machiavelli thought they did; he wrote at length about them. After decades of working in political campaigns and with leaders in all three branches of government, I too think conspiracies exist.
"Oh yeah?" some readers will ask/answer: "Show me a single, undisputed, certified, Federal Government conspiracy."
Glad to. Ït´s called Watergate.
If conspiracies exist then the allegation of conspiracy theorist paranoid is unwarranted at least some of the time. To wit:
If political conspiracies actually occur then we have no other choice but to decide on a case by case basis if a conspiracy was present. The JFK assassination is an example. For me there was never any doubt a conspiracy existed.* That conclusion is based not on books, movies, documentaries, speculations, folklore, he-said-that-she-said tweets, government reports or learned academic treatises but on the following fact: as a certified NRA Expert Marksman, I can tell you there is no way Lee Harvey Oswald could have done what the Warren Commission said he did. I must note that what I just said flies in the face of the Commission´s conclusions (see its Report, p. 20). To clear up this matter once and for all, I challenge any fellow Expert Marksman to step forward and, with a straight face, refute my statement.
Sidebar. Oswald would be low on the NRA totem pole, perhaps a Sharpshooter Bar 3, with an even lower $29.95 (plus postage and handling) 6.5 Carcano rifle. Translation for non-gun enthusiasts: I can go to any busy street corner, select at random a kid with 20/20 eyesight, give him a decent rifle, and in three weeks he will outshoot Oswald. Make that two weeks if the kid has talent. He won´t, however, be able to match what happened in Dallas. I know I couldn´t and I won a stack of medals.
What it boils down to: if there actually was a conspiracy in a specific case then a conspiracy theorist researching it may be right or may be wrong; however, he will be on the right track. Nonconspiracy theorists, on the other hand, ipso facto will be misguided, lost, wrong.
* * *
New Civilizations
Only rarely will we find undeniable proof of a conspiracy, e.g., the famous smoking-gun tape in the Watergate conspiracy. A lack of irrefutable proof is inherent in the very nature of conspiracies.
When I first cracked open Michael Ruppert´s book, I was curious to see how he would cut through that lack which is every inch a Gordian knot.
Here, I believe, is the answer:
Irrefutable proof aside, what we sometimes find in the real world is facts and/or events running together -- a syndrome. The term is common in medical science. Post-polio syndrome is a specific example. There are no laboratory tests -- no smoking gun -- to confirm PPS; its cause is unknown and there is no cure. PPS can only be diagnosed via numerous, rigorous physical exams and a comprehensive medical history of each individual patient. The physician looks for a concurrence of symptoms -- growing muscle weakness, joint pain, difficulty swallowing, etc. -- which, to complicate matters, can vary widely among individuals.
Despite all the vagaries and complications there is universal agreement among doctors and researchers that PPS exists. When all is said and done, something is there.
Crossing The Rubicon´s methodology centers on a syndrome. It would be reasonable to expect the syndrome approach to be common in criminology for the following reason: to establish that someone is guilty beyond a REASONABLE doubt -- which is different from saying ANY doubt -- may entail the lack of a smoking gun but a trainload of other evidence, much of it more or less circumstantial. Even if we invoke criminology´s strictest standard of clear and convincing proof, we are still looking at high probability, not absolute certainty.
In criminology, medicine and other sciences, then, syndromes are an acceptable analytical tool. The Ruppert haters want you to believe otherwise: no absolute certainty; no case. All I can say is, their position is out of step and out of touch with the twenty-first century (among other things).
Brontosaurus reasoning, if there ever was one.
* * *
Ruppert´s core argument in Crossing The Rubicon: 9/11 resulted from a conspiracy by the U.S. Government.
Absurd? Crazy? As we noted above, there is only one way any particular conspiracy theory can be rationally rejected out of hand: no conspiracies exist. That position is at best naive. Let´s move on.
9/11 was a Federal Government-owned and operated enterprise: how could Ruppert seriously make such a claim? A lot is at stake. He either discovered the story of the century or fabricated the hoax of the decade. This blog will present an iron-clad way to determine, once and for all, which is true.
Ruppert´s thesis in a nutshell:
To survive, industrial societies are totally dependent on petroleum. Globally, new discoveries of oil peaked in 1964. (p. 30) In 1979, world oil production per capita peaked and is now declining. (37)
To preserve its way of life -- Ruppert´s argument goes -- the U.S. must secure its sources of oil. The sine quo non of that securement is a U.S. military presence where most oil reserves are located: the Middle East.
There was, however, a seemingly insurmountable barrier to that military presence: it was unacceptable to the American people. Only a clear-cut ideological justification of enormous proportions could change their minds and hearts -- nothing short of an attack of the magnitude of Pearl Harbor.**
9/11 was that attack.
Detective-style, through hundreds of pages Ruppert marshalled evidence to support his case for a 9/11 Washington conspiracy. That evidence consists of many items which at first glance appear to be independent and unrelated. No single item alone conclusively proves a conspiracy -- just as no single symptom conclusively proves the existence of a disease syndrome such as PPS.
Whenever a syndrome is involved, it is necessary to painstakingly collect and connect dots.
Here are the bigger dots Ruppert worked with. I must note that he relied heavily on secondary sources of information -- notably books and media reports -- that may be right or may be wrong. That amorphous, ambiguous condition goes with the turf in social science research.
1. The U.S. Government knew in advance 9/11 was coming (220) and did nothing to stop it. French, German and Russian intelligence warned Washington of the attacks (185, 233); ditto Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency (256). Finally, the NSA had intercepted ominous al-Qaeda messages, e.g., "Tomorrow is zero hour." (232)
2. But Ruppert went beyond saying that the U.S. knowingly sat back and let 9/11 happen. He wrote
"the United States government not only had complete foreknowledge of the attacks of September 11, it also needed them and deliberately facilitated them, and even helped plan and execute them using techniques long understood in the world of covert operations." (15)
The U.S. Government perpetrated Pearl Harbor II? Literally, quite a charge.
Among Ruppert´s evidence of facilitation and execution: the CIA helped finance the attacks via Pakistani intelligence chief Mohmound Ahmad who sent $100,000 to hijack ringleader Mohammed Atta (115-122); two months before 9/11 CIA agents met with Osama bin Laden in a Dubai hospital (147); finally, that "at least five of the hijackers had received US military training at bases in the US, including flight lessons. Among the latter was Mohammed Atta, who apparently received his training while wanted for terrorist activities." (223-4)
3. Suspicious trading in stock options immediately prior to the 9/11 attacks. (Chapter 14) In particular, the volume of "puts" -- options purchased if you think a stock will go down -- was significantly higher than normal for United and American Airlines whose planes were hijacked.
Insider trading?
Ruppert: "The CIA is Wall Street. Wall Street is the CIA." (253). One hand washes the other. He detailed the revolving door between the two entities (53-7), e.g., Bill Casey, Reagan´s CIA director, was a Wall Street lawyer and stock trader. (54)
4. We come to what Ruppert called "the Holy Grail of 9/11 research" (336). It addresses a question that has always bothered me: why were no jets scrambled to intercept the hijacked airplanes? When all is said and done, any 9/11 conspiracy would have crashed and burned if the Twin Towers did not.
"As it turns out, on September 11th, various agencies including NORAD, the FAA, the Canadian Air Force, the National Reconnaissance Office, and possibly the Pentagon were conducting as many as five wargame drills -- in some cases involving hijacked airliners; in some cases also involving blips during (at least) the first attacks; and which in some cases had pulled significant fighter resources away from the northeast US on September 11... How could a NORAD commander have known where to send fighters...? There were clearly many possible hijackings underway. No one knew the exact number. No one knew which were real." (336, 348)
And now, the finish line: who was the controller of the war drills? In his hands rested the ultimate success or failure of any 9/11 conspiracy:
"All of this would have been coordinated through Dick Chaney´s mandate, and the live-fly drill could have been run through the Secret Service´s parallel and redundant communications and information systems inside the PEOC [President´s Emergency Operations Center], where Dick Chaney was involved and issuing orders shortly after 9 a.m." (433)
By controlling the war games, Cheney was the "´maestro´ on 9/11." (426) We will return to him shortly.
As noted, it is difficult to be definitive when a syndrome is involved. At best we have a preponderance of evidence, not absolute certainty. When, for example, post-polio syndrome is suspected, doctors order test after test, perform exam after exam (I speak from experience), and in the end... still aren´t 100% sure. Ruppert closed his 9/11 conspiracy case in the same vein:
"I place this work in your hands so that you may judge it in the ´jury room´ of your own mind, heart, and conscience...You and you alone, must decide for yourself what was proved and what was not. As in a criminal trial, it is a solemn responsibility..." (571)
Faced with Crossing The Rubicon´s barrage of facts, people, places, events, claims, statements, testimonies, stories, trends -- an amassing of symptoms some of which are more probative than others -- but missing a smoking gun in the form of a conclusive laboratory test, what are we to do? How will we decide if 9/11 was or was not a U.S. Government conspiracy?
Ruppert believed we had only two avenues. He quoted approvingly John Judge, 9/11 activist and researcher: "It´s O.K. if you call me a conspiracy theorist, just as long as you call yourself a coincidence theorist." (371)
U.S. Government inaction on intelligence warnings; abnormal stock market trading; war games on 9/11; etc.; etc.: conspiracy or coincidences?
I will add a third option. It was something Michael Ruppert wrestled with.
He wrote that there were
"literally dozens of opportunities for bin Laden´s capture which the US government chose to ignore. Sudanese officials had been keeping real-time surveillance of bin Laden´s movements in the country while he lived there until 1995 and giving the results to US intelligence...In fact, the Sudanese government offered to take bin Laden into custody and was rebuffed. One is compelled to ask whether this is collective, contagious, and continuing stupidity or more evidence of desired outcomes being realized." [My emphasis]
Stupidity -- The Brontosaurus Factor -- must be added to conspiracy and coincidence as a possible explanation of 9/11. For those who cry preposterous, please revisit our oligarch appreciation class.
I would nuance Ruppert´s notion of continuing stupidity with one of the most significant phenomena of our times: incomcruption. Simply put, it is the hopelessly-confounded amalgam of incompetence and corruption.
Our summary of incomcruption in The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion observed
"the ambition of American politicians to be ´realistic.´ They behave and believe as if realism = competence.
The trick is to recognize that realism and competence are not equivalent -- unlike incompetence and corruption. With each passing day, the latter are transforming themselves from fraternal into identical twins. Shakespeare caught the drift:
We came into the world like brother and brother;
And now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.
-- ´The Comedy of Errors,´ Act 5, Scene 1 --
As for distinguishing incompetence from corruption, with time that distinction is becoming less and less important -- indeed, possible." (367)
Conspiracy, coincidence, incomcruption. I think all three were in play on 9/11.*** And beyond.
* * *
Regular readers of this blog know its central thesis. We presented it in The Big Movida: The Third American Revolution available for free on this site.
What you are about to read cannot be read anywhere else in America. Publishers and literary agents from coast to coast -- including phony "rebel" Catcher in The Rye and On The Road guys -- censored it.
"The First American Revolution, 1776-1789, transformed the political system from a monarchy not into a democracy but rather a ´политей´ or polity, i.e., a middle class-moderated, oligarchy/democracy hybrid inclined toward democracy. The Second American Revolution, 2008-2009, changed the polity into an oligarchy with democratic residues, accessories. That change was normal, predictable; Aristotle analyzed it 2000 years ago. The Third American Revolution will resurrect the polity but with greater power for democracy, less for the oligarchy."
Michael Ruppert was not trained in classic political theory, however, he arrived at a conclusion that is fully in keeping with the above framework.
Ruppert summarized "the concerns raised here...the concerns about Peak Oil, militarism, and a fascinating but frightening ride down a steep stairway to fascism." (472) The Source of Terrorism discussed America´s "decaying middle class and an emerging Fourth Reich." (384) What Ruppert and I were both looking at, each in his own way, was nothing less than America´s destiny.
That destiny, we agreed, is here, now.
Source dated the consecration of the Fourth Reich with the Second American Revolution of 2008-9, i.e., the replacement of the democracy/oligarchy hybrid system founded in 1789 with a full-fledged oligarchy. Why I picked 2008-9: in those years Bush/Obama publicly handed over $700 billion TARP public dollars to America´s archi-rich.
Were my Ransom classmates in on the take? Was Bontosaurus Boy among them? GM, Chrysler, Ford, AIG, Citicorp, Bank of America, etc.....better go look at my yearbook...
Ruppert picked September 11, 2001 as the start of the fateful transition to fascism, the frightening ride down. He quoted US Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O´Connor who said only weeks after 9/11: "We´re likely to experience more restrictions on our personal freedom than has ever been the case in our country." Ruppert then cited an AP report published a year later that catalogued 7 freedoms and rights which had disappeared after 9/11, e.g., "RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial." (482)
In our terminology: the post-9/11 loss of democratic rights and freedoms was inherent to the replacement of the polity or oligarchy/democracy hybrid by a pure and simple oligarchy. That is to say: in your lifetime, dear reader, the U.S. underwent a revolution -- a change of, not in, political systems -- in which the widely-heralded democratic component was pushed beneath the waves. Only its flotsam-jetsam remains.
History shows there comes a time in the life of every major society when a decision must be made: which does it want, freedom or power? The United States chose power.
History also shows something else. Societies that choose power will eventually have neither freedom nor power.
* * *
Conspiracy: An agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal. Most U.S. jurisdictions also require an overt act toward furthering the agreement.
-- Cornell University Law School --
The crime of conspiracy, according to its modern interpretation, may be of two kinds, namely, conspiracies against the public, or such as endanger the public health, violate public morals, insult public justice, destroy the public peace, or affect public trade or business...
What the evidence in [a federal] case must show beyond a reasonable doubt is: First: That two or more persons, in some way or manner, came to a mutual understanding to try to accomplish a common and unlawful plan, as charged in the indictment; Second: That the person willfully became a member of such conspiracy; Third: That one of the conspirators during the existence of the conspiracy knowingly committed at least one of the methods (or 'overt acts') described in the indictment; and Fourth: That such 'overt act' was knowingly committed at or about the time alleged in an effort to carry out or accomplish some object of the conspiracy.
-- Diane Harvey, Rense.com --
All legal experts agree that for a conspiracy to exist there must be communication between at least two people. Otherwise, we have a diffuse concurrence of interests, maybe identical but parallel goals -- nothing more. No communication; no conspiracy.
I think that, on a practical level, for more than two people to conspire, a hub is required.
Mike Ruppert found the 9/11 conspiracy hub in the largely forgotten National Energy Policy Development Group, a.k.a., Energy Task Force.
Created in 2001 under President Bush, the NEPDG was headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. He stated the NEPDG´s purpose:
"To achieve a 21st century quality of life -- enhanced by reliable energy and a clean environment -- we must modernize conservation, modernize our infrastructure, increase our energy supplies, including renewables, accelerate the protection of our environment and increase our energy security."
Increase our energy security: that was the center of the hub, Ruppert contended. Everything else revolved around it.
Energy security -- which means oil security -- was the centerpiece of Ruppert´s key passage from which Crossing The Rubicon derived its title:
"It is my belief that sometime during the period between late 1998 and early 2000, as certain elites became aware of the pending calamity of Peak Oil, they looked at the first highly confidential exploration and drilling results from the Caspian Basis and shuddered...The data would surely come out, and what would happen to the markets then?...The elites began to grasp that the hoped-for Caspian reserves would not even offer a short reprieve form the onslaught of Peak Oil...
Alarms started going off...
Dick Cheney and the neo-cons stepped up with a plan...[They needed to] find out how much time there was before things started collapsing behind high energy prices and dwindling supply...How bad was it really? Who could say?...It was time to find all of it out accurately and quickly, but in secret...
This would explain the urgency with which the Bush administration convened the National Energy Policy Development Group...immediately after taking office in January. What do we do now? That was the bottom line. I believe that this was where the basic motive for 9/11 was fully articulated, understood, and accepted...This would explain why the administration fought all the way to the US Supreme Court to hide [NEPDG] records...
On July 2, 2004, in a little-known ruling, the Supreme Court upheld the right of the administration to keep the NEPDG´s records secret from the American people...
After the NEPDG concluded its work in late April 2001, I think an irrevocable decision had been made to cross the Rubicon, that bloody line between an ailing republic and the empire that irreversibly supervened. In May 2001 President Bush placed Dick Cheney in charge of all planning for a terror attack, effectively giving him complete control over FEMA, the military everything...
From their perspective the Republican neo-cons were faced with a choice of massive panic and collapse on the financial markets; a loss of public faith in the political system; and the loss of most of their own power and wealth if the truth were known.
Within their own mindset and within the parameters of an economic and governmental system that functioned (as it continues to function) in the mode of organized crime -- incapable of transparency, riddled with corruption and cooked books based upon the destruction of life for the sake of net profits and supremacy -- those men, led by Dick Cheney, chose what they thought was their only logical option. I believe it seemed to them the ´right´ thing to do; after all, it was only a few thousand lives. Other rulers have made similar choices in the past. But as all empires learn, once the river is crossed there is no turning back. In front of that decision there lay a continuum of ever more vicious bloodletting, decline, and collapse." (574-5)
If you are curious, dear reader, about what I think of Ruppert´s thesis that 9/11 was the result of a Washington conspiracy, the answer is clear. It consists of the iron-clad way we mentioned to determine if Ruppert was correct or mistaken.
NEDPG: There´s the rub. Michael Ruppert´s entire case for a 9/11 government conspiracy stands or falls on the secret NEDPG records and proceedings. If Washington wants to close Ruppert´s book forever, there is a simple way to do it:
Mr. President, Congress, the Supreme Court: we call on you to lift the secrecy veil and release the NEDPG material. All of it, completely -- no black lines, no missing 18 1/2-minute taped conversations. Big oil knows what is there; it participated in the NEDPG. It´s our turn; we taxpayers want to know what we got for our money.
Washington, you like to talk about transparency: do it. The NEDPG is the acid test, and it has only two grades: pass, fail.
Of course, nobody expects you to do it. Until you open NEDPG records to the public, a consummatory question about a Washington 9/11 conspiracy will lurk in the background:
If you are innocent, why are you behaving as though you were guilty?
* * *
New Life
I cannot end this post without mentioning Michael Ruppert´s death last month.
His friends and associates left no doubt he took his own life -- that the CIA, FBI or other government agency did not kill him.
And yet...
In Crossing The Rubicon, Ruppert disclosed contents of a letter he received from Bradley Earl Ayers, former CIA agent:
"I´m sure you...realize that the ideal ´solution´ for the dark forces is the gratuitous possibility that the target of discreditation, if subjected to the most personally embarrassing and socially reprehensible kind of (false) allegation, might self-destruct -- thus reinforcing the concocted aura of suspicion and negating the necessity for further character assassination.
This is standard MO for the Agency´s counter-intelligence operations and has become a blueprint for other Federal entities as a means of quieting the most threatening whistle-blowers. Lo be it if you have any kind of vulnerability (or skeleton in the closet)! This is particularly the case in matter of sex or moral turpitude. How many have been taken out by suicide, devastated mentally or emotionally and institutionalized, or sought some escape in drugs and alcohol? Lives destroyed in one way or another in the pursuit of truth -- by false accusation." (175)
We return to where this post started -- the ocean of ad hominem attacks against Michael Ruppert. They were not gratuitous.
Likewise, neither is The Brontosaurus Factor.
Boys and girls of the CIA, if you had the slightest understanding of whistle-blowers like Edward Snowden -- virtually all of them exhibit the syndrome of middle class rebellion -- there would be no need for you to spend time and resources cooking up false accusations in the first place.
I ask you directly: did you kill Michael Ruppert via years of puerile innuendo just as surely as if you had pulled the trigger of his gun?
Devoid of imagination and insight, CIA, you have only one recourse: take cues from Hollywood. Example: you learned from a Marlon Brando movie, "Viva Zapata" (1952), about what to do with Che Guevara´s corpse: publicly display it on a platform for washing clothes. To your detriment, you obviously did not watch the entire movie; you missed a classic line from John Steinbeck who wrote the script. Had you heard -- really heard -- that single sentence, instead of decades of ad hominem assaults and high-fiving with your colleagues on learning of Michael Ruppert´s suicide, you would have serious doubts about what you did. Serious doubts indeed...
The dialogue line you missed (or didn´t understand):
Sometimes a dead man can be a terrible enemy.
_______________
*For our debunking of the lone assassin theory, see this blog The Big Movida: The Third American Revoluton, Chapter 2.
**For decades reports have circulated that FDR knew Japan was going to bomb Pearl Harbor but let it take place in order to gain public support to enter World War II.
Ruppert paraphrased Jimmy Carter´s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (The Grand Chessboard) that the "´immediate task´ was to develop and simultaneously control a ´direct external threat´ to manufacture an attack ´like a new Pearl Harbor.´" (575)
Brzezinski was not alone in having Pearl Harbor on his mind...
Brzezinski´s book was published in 1997, the same year neo-cons founded a think tank, Project for The New American Century. Cheney, Perle, Rumsfelt, Wolfowitz, Abrams: many of its members/signatories soon would occupy key posts in the Bush Administration.
A year before 9/11, the Project published a report, "Rebuilding America´s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century":
"To preserve American military preeminence in the coming decades, the Department of Defense must move more aggressively to experiment with newtechnologies and operational concepts, and seek to exploit the emerging revolution in military affairs. Information technologies,in particular, are becoming more prevalent and significant components of modern military systems. These information technologies are having the same kind of transforming effects on military affairs as they are having in the larger world. The effects of this military transformation will have profound implications for how wars are fought, what kinds of weapons wil ldominate the battlefield and, inevitably,which nations enjoy military preeminence.The United States enjoys every prospect of leading this transformation...[T]he process of transformation,even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent somecatastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor." (50-1)
***Fishy stock market action before 9/11 provides one illustration of the triple play.
(i) Conspiracy. The incredible volume of puts purchased on the two 9/11-affected airlines is a significant, quantitative indicator that somebody knew something and decided to cash in. Statistically speaking, it is unreasonable and irresponsible to be a "coincidence theorist" on this point.
(ii) Coincidence. The trend is your friend, any stock broker will tell you. Innocent investors, seeing the surge in put purchases, followed the insiders, thereby exacerbating the already extra-large trading volume.
(iii) Incomcruption. Insiders who engaged in put purchases in the two airlines and other businesses directly damaged by 9/11 were not only corrupt, they were also incompetent.
The reason: to pocket megabucks in 2001, an insider did not have to focus on direct-victim businesses.
Whenever catastrophes occur, stocks in general dive. Case in point: the day the stock market opened after 9/11 the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 684 points, the biggest loss ever. A monkey with a dart board could have successfully picked losers.
Zeroing in on major 9/11-loser companies was not only unnecessary to make a killing, it was incredibly foolish. By focusing on companies directly harmed by 9/11, an insider trader exposed himself; he would have some heavy explaining to do when he showed up to claim his winnings. If properly interrogated, the entire conspiracy would unravel.
So, who were the insider traders? Ruppert reported that nine agencies opened investigations into pre-9/11 insider trading but not one "to this day divulged any information to the public." (253)
One suspicious trade in particular provides quantifiable proof of our incomcruption thesis: somebody left $2.5 million in winnings on the table. (245)