Peak Oil, Stolen Elections, Energy Wars
An Interview with Michael Ruppert

by Tod Foley and Ronnie Pontiac, Newtopia

Apocalyptic fantasy is the heritage it seems of everyone growing up in
a monotheistic culture, and no one of us has avoided the stomach
turning terror of wondering if the next turn around the corner might
lead to disaster. We titillate our fears with movies like The Day
After Tomorrow. Hal Lindsay made a fortune preying on that fear.
History is full of ridiculous stories of whole communities standing
outside awaiting the end of the world on the word of some deranged
bookworm’s interpretation of holy scripture.

But imagine for a moment if you were the child of Holocaust survivors.
Or imagine that you lived in Lebanon when your cosmopolitan street of
cafes was bombed into rubble. Imagine you were the child of one of the
people who died in the World Trade Center. The idea that some dreadful
page of history might be just ahead would not seem so far-fetched.
When you have a born again president in charge of Mideast policy
apocalyptic thinking must be the order of the day….. (read on below)

The concept of Peak Oil seems to exist in a strange parallel universe
where, despite the term having been affirmed by the likes of Cheney,
Bush, and numerous oil company executives, it has not reached the
popular imagination. Peak Oil broken down to its simplest form is the
observation that oil production is limited and that we already are or
are about to experience a decline in oil availability that, coinciding
with ramped up oil demand in China and India and your local Hummer
dealership, will be the end of globalism and the precarious prosperity
we’ve built on the resources of the Third World. If you were among the
first to know about a coming economic calamity, would preserving the
status quo for as long as you could be worth fixing elections and
starting energy wars in the Mideast? Would it be worth orchestrating
the demise of some of your own citizenry? Perhaps you might even feel
that you must be a ruler by divine mandate. It takes a rare individual
to face such an enormous predicament without some crutch of faith.

Mike Ruppert is the publisher/editor of From the Wilderness or FTW, a
newsletter he founded in March 1998 by mailing out 68 copies to
friends and researchers. FTW is now read by more than 16,000
subscribers in forty countries including forty members of the US
Congress, the intelligence committees of both houses, and professors
at thirty universities worldwide. An honors graduate of UCLA in
Political Science (1973), Ruppert is a former LAPD narcotics
investigator who discovered CIA drug trafficking in 1977. After
attempting to expose it, he was forced out of the LAPD in 1978 despite
earning the highest rating reports possible, and having no pending
disciplinary actions. In 1996, after eighteen years of struggle, he
finally achieved one of his deepest wishes in a face to face encounter
with then CIA Director John Deutch on national television. Washington
sources later told Ruppert that Deutch’s mishandling of the encounter
cost him his guaranteed appointment as Secretary of Defense.

In Ruppert’s highly controversial new book “Crossing the Rubicon” he
names Vice President Dick Cheney as the prime suspect in the mass
murders of 9/11 and with copious footnotes works to prove that not
only was Cheney a planner in the attacks but also that on the day of
the attacks he was running a completely separate command, control and
communications system which was superseding any orders being issued by
the FAA, the Pentagon, or the White House Situation Room. He provides
evidence that in May of 2001, by presidential order, Cheney was put in
direct command and control of all war-game and field exercise training
and scheduling through several agencies, especially FEMA. This also
extended to NORAD drills — some involving hijack simulations. Ruppert
finds evidence that the interceptors that should have protected
America were instead over the Atlantic and elsewhere involved in the
TRIPOD II exercise conducted by Cheney. He also provides evidence that
a number of public officials at the national and New York City levels
including then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani were aware that flight 175 was
heading for lower Manhattan for twenty minutes and issued no warning.
According to Ruppert the US manufacturing sector has been mostly
replaced by speculation on financial data whose underlying economic
reality is hundreds of billions of dollars in laundered drug money
flowing through Wall Street each year from opium and coca fields
maintained by CIA-sponsored warlords and US-backed covert paramilitary
violence. America’s global dominance depends on an arbitrage of guns,
drugs, oil and money. Oil and natural gas — the fuels that make
economic growth possible — are subsidized by American military force
and foreign lending. What happens when the oil starts running out?
It’s no coincidence that the Homeland Security Act clears the way for
martial law. Ruppert not only thinks both presidential elections were
stolen, he thinks the electoral process in the United States is dead.

Newtopia: The 9/11 case you present in “Crossing the Rubicon”
eventually leads up to charging the President and especially the Vice
President, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Commander of NORAD,
the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General and the former
Directors of Central Intelligence and the FBI with multiple counts of
premeditated murder. What has been the response (if any) from DC
circles?

MR:The response has been absolute silence. Not a word of reply from
any official source in Washington or elsewhere.

Newtopia: Your findings seem to correlate with many of the “911Truth”
findings, and I know you are on familiar terms with the people there.
Are there any areas in which your findings or theories differ
appreciably from theirs, or do you feel that your investigations are
mutually supportive?

MR: By and large our findings and approaches are consistent. However,
as I described in Rubicon, because of my long experience with
investigative and court procedures, there are some areas of emphasis I
have chosen to avoid or minimize. Legal “proof” is a standard that is
very much misunderstood by many amateur researchers who have no legal
or law enforcement training. This is especially true when it comes to
physical evidence issues which require expertise to analyze in a legal
setting and incredibly strict standards to guard against manipulation
of physical evidence (whether video, photographic, or crime-scene
evidence).

There is an old saying that “For every expert, there is an equal and
opposite expert”, and we have seen this used against physical evidence
proponents as recently as a couple of days ago when the New York Times
presented rebuttal experts on physical evidence to their story about
millionaire activist Jimmy Walker and his ad campaign. I predicted
this kind of response well over a year ago.

I have been at this for 26 years and I have seen all of these mistakes
made before. No such rebuttals can be made against a written record of
statements made by the suspects themselves or to their records and
documents submitted under oath and no scientific analysis is necessary
to evaluate them. Either they said something or they didn’t. Either
the records they submitted were submitted or they were not.

An additional problem is that by focusing on physical evidence
questions only, there is no legal proof offered as to who was
responsible. For example: Lets say that it was definitively
established that no airplane hit the Pentagon. That would still leave
you legally bereft of proof as to who was responsible for that, what
was used instead, and who used it.

In Rubicon I nail the suspects with enough evidence to prosecute and
convict them for murder. If that were to ever happen then a real
investigation with reliable control mechanisms for the analysis of
physical evidence and real penalties for dishonesty might produce some
interesting results that could be legally trusted.

I also believe that it is imperative to get people to the point of
realizing that the government “did” 9/11 as quickly as possible for
the same reasons that I believe that fighting over the 2004 election
is a complete waste of time.

Newtopia: The concept of Peak Oil has been getting more attention
lately, thanks in no small part to your work, and to the work of other
journalists who have taken up the call. On a global level the danger
is obvious and the best way to respond seems pretty clear: to
drastically reduce dependency on oil and natural gas. But oil is
involved in more products than people are aware of, and dependency
reduction (like recycling) begins at home. Think globally, act
locally. So before we get to the point where these products are being
rationed, how can people act *locally* to begin reducing their own
families’ dependence on these resources?

MR: Changes are being implemented all over the world and in very
creative ways. Biodiesel co-ops are forming throughout the Pacific
Northwest and elsewhere. Alternative currencies are springing up. I
could not have conceived of some of the things that are taking place.
This is a good thing. No one is as smart as all of us and I think it
better for me to see what everyone else comes up with based upon their
own situations. The important task will be to identify what works and
what doesn’t and disseminate that information widely. This is going to
be a key priority for FTW’s future efforts.

But people must understand that a solution that works in Minnesota
might be a disaster in Phoenix.

One of the problems here is that every individual has a different
starting place. They are different for people who live in large cities
versus people who live in the country or a small town; different for
renters as opposed to those who own their homes; different for people
who are out of debt and those who are not; different for people with
children versus those who have none. There is no one-size-fits-all
solution.

At FTW we will be getting much, much deeper into possible
post-petroleum lifestyle options in coming years. This is probably the
best return on investment we can give to our subscribers.

However, many experts, including my dear fried Richard Heinberg
(author: The Party’s Over and Powerdown) are in complete agreement
that post-petroleum and Peak Oil solutions will be local and governed
by geography and local communities more than anything else. There will
be no painless magic bullet solutions for anybody.

Newtopia: The previous question notwithstanding, the approach of the
neoconservatives currently in power seems to be quite the opposite:
They seem to have decided on the approach of acting as though nothing
is wrong, meanwhile doing everything possible to place all the world’s
oil reserves under American control, either directly or indirectly.
There is a brutal logic to this approach, although no amount of
military expenditure will ever increase the amount of accessible oil
on Earth. So even if one buys into the neocons’ apparent assessment of
the situation, there has to come a point of diminishing returns. To
put it bluntly: How long could the US remain at current usage levels
if we forcibly seized all of the known oil reserves in the world?

MR: Great question but the answer is uncertain. The question assumes
that somehow the US will be able to “take” all the energy it needs,
whenever it needs it. The truth is that the global energy supply is a
very complex system which as has been recently demonstrated