• Peter Wilson 
   
• From:The Australian 
   
• July 22, 2011

• Peter Wilson, Europe correspondent 
   
• From:The Australian 
   
• July 23, 2011

• By Lucy Carne, London 
   
• From:The Daily Telegraph 
   
• July 21, 2011

• From:The Australian 
   
• July 21, 2011 

• From:AAP 
   
• July 21, 2011 

• Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Marie Wool, London 
   
• From:The Australian 
   
• July 25, 2011

• Danny Kemp  From: AFP  July 24, 2011 

• PHONE-HACKING allegations spread beyond the felled News of the World to other British tabloids on Saturday, though the claims were strongly denounced by their proprietors.

  Former journalists at the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror - the main tabloid competitors to Rupert Murdoch's British stable - reportedly said the illegal hacking of voicemails was widespread at their papers too.

  The scandal has also rocked the British police and even given Prime Minister David Cameron a rough ride, but has so far largely been limited to the News of the World, which Murdoch shut on July 7 amid public outrage.

  James Hipwell, a former Daily Mirror financial journalist jailed in 2005 for buying shares before tipping them in the paper, said he was aware of hacking because he worked next to the showbusiness desk where it was rife.

  “You know what people around you are doing,” the 45-year-old told The Independent newspaper.

  “They would call a celebrity with one phone and when it was answered they would then hang up. By that stage the other phone would be into their (the celebrity's) voicemail and they would key in the code.”

  “There was a great hilarity about it.”

  Hipwell worked at the Mirror for two years until 2000 when it was under the editorship of Piers Morgan, himself a former News of the World editor. Hipwell was sacked by the Mirror over the so-called “City Slickers” scandal.

  Morgan, who is now a presenter for US television news network CNN, has denied having any knowledge that phone hacking went on under his editorship and came out fighting on Saturday.

  He made a fresh demand for an apology from Louise Mensch, a British lawmaker on a parliamentary committee which quizzed Rupert and James Murdoch on Tuesday, who claimed during the hearing that Morgan had admitted to phone hacking.

  “Now then Louise Mensch -- will you be making (a) public apology for your lies in parliament about me, or do I have to write to (committee chairman) John Whittingdale?” Morgan said on Twitter.

  “You could just have the guts to accuse me of phone hacking outside of parliamentary privilege, and see how you get on.”

  Separately the BBC quoted an unidentified former Sunday Mirror journalist who worked on the paper in the past decade and claimed to have witnessed routine phone hacking in the newsroom.

  Trinity Mirror, the group which publishes both papers, said its journalists work within the law and the code of conduct of Britain's self-regulatory Press Complaints Commission.

  It said Hipwell's allegations were “totally unsubstantiated”.

  On Thursday it emerged that police had requested files from a British data protection regulator which published a report showing the non-Murdoch Daily Mail, the Mirror and the Trinity Mirror-published The People were the biggest users of private investigators to seek confidential information.

  Meanwhile police are to investigate claims of phone hacking in Scotland, which has its own legal system, and whether witnesses lied during a perjury trial last year.

  Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson -- who went on to become Cameron's media chief before resigning and being arrested this year -- was among those who gave evidence.

  Also the Daily Telegraph newspaper said Saturday that British finance minister George Osborne dined with Rupert Murdoch in New York in December, two weeks before Britain's media regulator was originally due to decide on whether to approve Murdoch's bid for full control of pay-TV giant BSkyB.

  Murdoch's US-based News Corp. was forced to abandon a bid for full control of the lucrative pay-TV satellite broadcaster earlier this month because of the scandal.
  The Treasury refused to discuss who attended, but insisted that BSkyB was not discussed.

  The Daily Telegraph also said that Lord Brian Leveson, the judge in charge of the phone-hacking inquiry, went to two parties in the last year at the home of Matthew Freud, a public relations executive married to Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth.

  The BBC reported that Leveson had told Cameron of his Murdoch connections before he was appointed last week.

  Cameron's Downing Street office said he attended the events in his capacity as sentencing council chair, and “nothing more”.

  Dow Jones editor-in-chief Robert Thomson, the American flagship of Murdoch's media empire, meanwhile reminded journalists that they must follow a code of ethics in a memo to all staff.

  In the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, Thomson said Dow Jones reporters needed to be alert “and hold ourselves to higher standards of probity than other news organizations”.

  “It is clear to every one of you how much emphasis that we collectively place on ethics at Dow Jones, but, in light of recent events in London, it is worth re-emphasizing those principles,” he wrote.

  Thomson, former editor-in-chief of the Times of London another paper owned by Murdoch's News Corp., took up his post at Dow Jones in 2007.

  Dow Jones also belongs to News Corp. and is part of its Consumer Media Group, which also publishes The Wall Street Journal. It employs about 2,000 journalists around the world.

  

  Click Here For INL News Corporation Cheap Domains and Cheap Web Hosting

  

   

  Click Here for INL News Amazon Best Seller Books

   Amazon.com : computers

  Click Here for the best range of Amazon Computers

  

  

  Click Here for INL News Amazon Best Seller Books

  

  Amazon Electronics - Portable Projectors

  Andrew Mallard is a Western Australian who was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1995 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released from prison in 2006 after his conviction was quashed by the High Court of Australia.

  https://lawonlineau.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/the-extraordinary-case-of-andrew-mallard/

  Mallard v R [2005] HCA 68; (2005) 224 CLR 125; (2005) 222 ALR 236; (2005) 80 ALJR 160 (15 November 2005)

  http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2005/68.html

  HIGH COURT OF AUSTRAL17 November 2005IAGUMMOW, KIRBY, HAYNE, CALLINAN AND HEYDON JJ

  ANDREW MARK MALLARD APPELLANT

  AND

  THE QUEEN RESPONDENT

  Mallard v The Queen [2005] HCA 6815 November 2005

   https://inltv.co.uk/index.php/andrewmallardframed

  "I was innocent and framed by former Red Lodge Freemason Western Australian Assistant Police Commissioner, David John Caporn and former Red Lodge Freemason Western Australian Senior DPP Prosecutor Kenneth Bates and others for the murder of Pamela Lawrence...."....Andrew Mallard

  "I am determined that former WA Police Assistant Police Commissioner, David John Caporn, former senior DPP prosecutor, Kenneth Bates and others are eventually charged and prosecuted for a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice for framing me....".... Andrew Mallard

  Australian Cases: Mallard (Andrew) v The Queen High Court December 2005

  Mallard v The Queen [2005] HCA 68; (2005) 224 CLR 125; (2005) 222 ALR 236; (2005) 80 ALJR 160

  15 November 2005 - High Court of Australia

  http://netk.net.au/australia/Mallard.asp

  Andrew Mallard's case: A timeline

  1994: Perth jeweller Pamela Lawrence is brutally killed with a heavy instrument in her own store. The murder weapon has never been found

  1995: Andrew Mallard is wrongly convicted of her murder

  1996: Mallard's appeal to the Supreme Court of Western Australia is dismissed by Justices Kevin Park, Christine Wheeler and Justice Smith.

  The books The Triumph of Truth (Who Is Watching The Watchers?) and other public information, as also show in the Film "The Law Lord".... "When It Is Important to Protect the Legal System of being exposed for corruption and wrongful activities, the carefully appointed Court Listings Manager is told to select Judges of Justices that the System knows will rule a certain way.... Justice Kevin Parker is well known and well exposed as a corrupted former Solicitor General of Western Australia, a former corrupted head of the Barristers Complaints Board, and a former Corrupted Supreme Court Justice ..... and Christine Wheeler was his personal assistant for years when Kevin Parker was the Solicitors General for Western Australia. and it was only a matter of the listing coordinator selecting a third Justice for Andrew Mallard's Supreme Court Appeal, who the System knew would Rule against Andrew Mallard winning his Full Supreme Court Appeal..

  So John Quigley, the now Attorney General Of Western Australia was right when he said to Andrew Mallard..

  "In Western Australia we have tired old judges who hardly have enough energy to pick up their pen to write the sentence of Life Imprisonment ... tried old judges who are too tired and lazy to properly scrutinize what the corrupt police and corrupt prosecution are about ... Andrew, you will only be released from prison and have your wrongful murder conviction quashed, if we can get your case to the High Court of Australia... because no judge in Western Australia will every have the balls to overturn your wrongful murder conviction, because to do so, would identify the whole of the Western Australian legal, police prosecution, court, and justice system as being inherently corrupt ... no judge in Western Australia will have the balls to do that .... Because Perth is too anal....  and the corrupted tentacles of the Western Australian legal, police prosecution, court, and justice system just wrap around your neck, and as you tear one of the corrupt tentacles of the Western Australian legal, police prosecution, court, and justice system off your neck, another corrupt tentacle just slithers around you .. one has no chance in fighting the corrupted Western Australian legal, police prosecution, court, and justice system, from within Western Australia ... to win against them and obtain any sort of justice, one has to go to the High Court of Australia,..".... WA Attorney General John Quigley

  2003: After spending eight years of his sentence of life imprisonment in strict security, he petitioned for clemency

  The Attorney-General for Western Australia referred the petition to the Court of Criminal Appeal, which later dismissed the appeal

  2005: Mallard's appeal is heard in the High Court, his conviction is quashed

  2006: After 12 years behind bars, Mallard is free

  A cold case review is held and uncovers a partial palm print linking British backpacker and convicted murder Simon Rochford to the crime scene

  A week after Rochford is questioned by police, he is found dead in his prison cell from suspected suicide

  2007: A Corruption and Crime Commission investigation into the case leads to two assistant police commissioners, Mal Shervill and David Caporn, being forced to step down

  2009:  Mallard is granted a $3.25 million ex gratia payment for his time behind bars

  2019: Mallard is killed in a tragic hit and run in Los Angeles 

  

  WA Attorney-General John Quigley (pictured) remembered Mr Mallard as a gentle person

  

  Andrew Mallard standing in front of one of his artworks in 2009. Credit- Lee Griffith

   I was framed for murder, says Mallard
  27 Sep 2010
  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-09-27/i-was-framed-for-murder-says-mallard/2275496
  
  The man wrongfully convicted of murdering West Australian woman Pamela Lawrence says he still suffers abuse from members of the public who think he is "some sort of psycho".
  In 1995, Andrew Mallard was convicted of the brutal murder of the Perth wife and mother and sentenced to 20 years in jail.
  He served 12 years in prison until the combined efforts of a journalist, politician and a team of high-profile, pro bono lawyers finally saw him exonerated.
  On ABC 1's Australian Story, Mallard speaks on camera for the first time, describing the circumstances leading up to his wrongful imprisonment and the torment he endured during his incarceration.
  "I was wrongfully imprisoned. There's a stigma that goes with that and still goes with that," he tells the program.
  "I know what they did to me and it's the truth. They framed me for a murder I did not commit."
  
  Journalist Colleen Egan had worked on the Mallard case for two years when she became convinced there had been a miscarriage of justice.
  "There probably are still people out there who believe that Andrew did it. There probably always will be," Ms Egan said.
  "It was just a cruel twist of fate that put him on a collision course with this inquiry and it was just a matter of fact that there were police who were willing to act dishonestly.
  "There was a prosecutor willing to run a case that wasn't quite right, and there were three judges who refused to believe it when evidence was put in front of them, and they saw what the High Court saw."
  
  Desperate in her efforts to find new evidence, she took a risk in seeking the assistance of shadow attorney-general John Quigley, who had been the WA Police Union's lawyer for 25 years.
  Soon Mr Quigley, with his intimate knowledge of policing practices, made a breakthrough, finding crucial evidence never revealed to the defence.
  "There was never a moment that I thought that this is too long or this is too hard," Mr Quigley said.
  "I was by this stage driven by both anger and acute embarrassment - acute embarrassment of the legal profession and the judiciary in Perth, that I'd been part of this whole system for 30 years."
  Mallard's supporters were devastated three years later when, despite the new evidence, a fresh appeal to the WA Supreme Court failed.

  

  Andrew Mallard Endured 12years In Jail For A Murder He Did Not Commit Is Tragically Killed by USA Los Angeles Basketballer  Kristopher Smith On Hollywood's Iconic Sunset Boulevard In A  Car Hit And Run

   

  Statement about the corrupt WA police, prosecution judicial and legal system on a documentary by E M Smith and WA Attorney General John Quigley

  

  John Quigley (left) and Andrew Mallard

   

  "The Andrew Mallard Care is one of the greatest indictments of the Western Australian legal, police prosecution, court, and justice system .. it is not just the corruption in the police and the prosecution, it is also the judges themselves that are obviously corrupted and will go out of their way to protect a corrupt legal system....." .... E M Smith maked of thee Andrew Mallard Documentary 

   

  "In Western Australia we have tired old judges who hardly have enough energy to pick up their pen to write the sentence of Life Imprisonment ... tried old judges who are too tired and lazy to properly scrutinize what the corrupt police and corrupt prosecution are about ... Andrew, you will only be released from prison and have your wrongful murder conviction quashed, if we can get your case to the High Court of Australia... because no judge in Western Australia will every have the balls to overturn your wrongful murder conviction, because to do so, would identify the whole of the Western Australian legal, police prosecution, court, and justice system as being inherently corrupt ... no judge in Western Australia will have the balls to do that .... Because Perth is too anal....  and the corrupted tentacles of the Western Australian legal, police prosecution, court, and justice system just wrap around your neck, and as you tear one of the corrupt tentacles of the Western Australian legal, police prosecution, court, and justice system off your neck, another corrupt tentacle just slithers around you .. one has no chance in is fighting the corrupted Western Australian legal, police prosecution, court, and justice system, from within Western Australia ..... Andrew  to win against them and achieve any sort of justice, one has to go to the High Court of Australia ..".... WA Attorney General John Quigley

  Andrew Mallard dead at 56 after hit-and-run in Los Angeles

  Gabrielle Knowles and Rhianna MitchellThe West Australian

  Fri, 19 April 2019

  https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/andrew-mallard-dead-at-56-after-hit-and-run-in-los-angeles-ng-b881173990z

  EXCLUSIVE: Andrew Mallard, who spent 12 years in a WA jail after being wrongfully convicted of murder, has been killed in a hit-and-run crash in Los Angeles.

  He had been living in the United Kingdom but regularly visited friends in the United States.

  It is believed Mr Mallard was walking across a street in Hollywood about 1.30am local time Thursday when he was struck by a car.

  The driver did not stop to help and despite efforts by a bystander to provide CPR until emergency services arrived Mr Mallard died at the scene, officers in LA say.

  The 56-year-old was exonerated by the High Court in 2006 of wilfully murdering Mosman Park jeweller Pamela Lawrence in 1994.

  He later received a $3.25 million settlement from the State Government.

  Attorney-General John Quigley, who led the fight to clear Mr Mallard’s name, said today he was terribly saddened by the tragedy.

  “It’s just fortunate that he got to spend 13 years of freedom after so much time wrongfully imprisoned,” he said.

  Mr Mallard’s family are being assisted by the Australian consulate in the US.

  On Friday afternoon, WA Police released a statement extending their condolences to Mr Mallard’s family.

  “WA Police have been advised of the death of Mr Andrew Mallard in Los Angeles,” the spokesperson said.

  “We have notified Mr Mallard’s family in Western Australia and we extend our condolences to them at this difficult time.”

  

  • 
  • Michael Craig Ruppert 

  • Michael Craig Ruppert (February 3, 1951 – April 13, 2014) was an American writer and musician, Los Angeles Police Department officer, investigative journalist, political activist, and peak oil awareness advocate known for his 2004 book Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.^[2]

    From 1999 until 2006, Ruppert edited and published From The Wilderness, a newsletter and website covering a range of topics including international politics, the CIA, peak oil, civil liberties, drugs, economics, corruption and the nature of the 9/11 conspiracy. It attracted 22,000 subscribers.^[1]

    Ruppert was the subject of the 2009 documentary film Collapse,^[3] which is based on his book A Presidential Energy Policy^[4] and received The New York Times "critics pick". He served as president of Collapse Network, Inc. from early 2010 until he resigned in May 2012. He also hosted The Lifeboat Hour on Progressive Radio Network until his death in 2014.^[1]

    In 2014, Vice featured Ruppert in a 6-part series titled Apocalypse, Man;^[5] and a tribute album, Beyond the Rubicon was released by the band New White Trash,^[6] of which he had been a member.^[7]

    Early life and education

    Michael Ruppert was born on February 3, 1951, in Washington, D.C. According to Ruppert, his father, Ernest Charles Edward Ruppert III, had been a pilot in the US Air Force during World War II and later worked for Martin Marietta, functioning as a liaison between the company, the CIA, and the Air Force.^[1] He said that his mother, Madelyn, was a cryptanalyst at the National Security Agency, working in a unit that cracked Soviet codes in order to track their nuclear physicists.^[8]

    The family moved fourteen times, living in seven different states, eventually settling in Los Angeles where Ruppert attended Venice High School, graduating in 1969.^[8] He then attended UCLA,^[1] earning a B.A. in Political Science in 1973.^[8] Ruppert said that during his senior year, he applied and interviewed for a position with the CIA but ended up turning down the subsequent offer, instead accepting a position with the Los Angeles Police Department.^[1]

    Los Angeles Police Department (1973–1978)

    

    Ruppert joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1973. He was assigned to handle narcotics investigations in the most dangerous neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Beginning in 1976, he made discoveries that led him to believe that he had stumbled onto a large network of narcotics traffickers and that the US military and the LAPD might be involved. He resigned from the force in November 1978.^[1]

  • Michael Craig Ruppert

    Born Michael Craig Ruppert February 3, 1951 Washington, D.C., US

    Died: April 13, 2014 (aged 63) Calistoga, California, US

    Other names: Tracker of Truth

    Education: B.A., UCLA, 1973

    Occupations: Investigative journalist, Publisher, Talk show host LAPD Police officer

    Employer: Los Angeles Police Department (1973–1978)

    Known for: Whistleblower and author of Crossing The Rubicon

    by Matt Stroud Jul 22, 2014

     

    Michael c. Ruppert had strong evidence of the CIA Being Involved in Illegal Drug Trafficking

  • Michael Craig Ruppert (February 3, 1951 – April 13, 2014) was an American writer and musician, Los Angeles Police Department officer, investigative journalist, political activist, and peak oil awareness advocate known for his 2004 book Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.^[2]

    From 1999 until 2006, Ruppert edited and published From The Wilderness, a newsletter and website covering a range of topics including international politics, the CIA, peak oil, civil liberties, drugs, economics, corruption and the nature of the 9/11 conspiracy. It attracted 22,000 subscribers.^[1]

    Ruppert was the subject of the 2009 documentary film Collapse,^[3] which is based on his book A Presidential Energy Policy^[4] and received The New York Times "critics pick". He served as president of Collapse Network, Inc. from early 2010 until he resigned in May 2012. He also hosted The Lifeboat Hour on Progressive Radio Network until his death in 2014.^[1]

    In 2014, Vice featured Ruppert in a 6-part series titled Apocalypse, Man;^[5] and a tribute album, Beyond the Rubicon was released by the band New White Trash,^[6] of which he had been a member.^[7]

  •  

    CIA Drug Trafficking Allegations Hearing (1998) | w/ Maxine Waters Gary Webb

    CIA Drug Trafficking Allegations Committee members heard testimony concerning allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency facilitated the introduction and spread of crack cocaine in U.S. urban areas in order to fund Contra activities in Nicaragua. Representative Millender-McDonald testified that the report by the CIA Inspector-General was ...

    youtube.com   2019 

  •  

    

    Michael Craig Ruppert 

    Early life and education

    Michael Ruppert was born on February 3, 1951, in Washington, D.C. According to Ruppert, his father, Ernest Charles Edward Ruppert III, had been a pilot in the US Air Force during World War II and later worked for Martin Marietta, functioning as a liaison between the company, the CIA, and the Air Force.^[1] He said that his mother, Madelyn, was a cryptanalyst at the National Security Agency, working in a unit that cracked Soviet codes in order to track their nuclear physicists.^[8]

    The family moved fourteen times, living in seven different states, eventually settling in Los Angeles where Ruppert attended Venice High School, graduating in 1969.^[8] He then attended UCLA,^[1] earning a B.A. in Political Science in 1973.^[8] Ruppert said that during his senior year, he applied and interviewed for a position with the CIA but ended up turning down the subsequent offer, instead accepting a position with the Los Angeles Police Department.^[1]

    Los Angeles Police Department (1973–1978)

    Ruppert joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1973. He was assigned to handle narcotics investigations in the most dangerous neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Beginning in 1976, he made discoveries that led him to believe that he had stumbled onto a large network of narcotics traffickers and that the US military and the LAPD might be involved. He resigned from the force in November 1978.^[1]

    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.^{[9][full citation needed][10]}

    He went on to become an investigative journalist^[11] and established the publication From The Wilderness, a watchdog publication that exposed governmental corruption, including his experience with CIA drug dealing activities.^[12]

    Ruppert is the author of Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil,^[2] published in September 2004. Crossing The Rubicon suggests 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.^[2]

    Ruppert correctly predicted the 2008 financial crisis in the US three years early.^[11]

    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 with weekly updates online.

    In mid-2006, claiming government harassment, and fearing for his life, Ruppert left the United States with Raul Santiago for Venezuela, vowing not to return.^[13] The Ashland Daily Tidings reported that, in June 2006, Ruppert had accused a former female employee of burglarizing the offices of From The Wilderness, a case in which Ruppert was considered a potential suspect. Around the same time, the former female employee accused him in turn of sexual harassment.^[14] She said that Ruppert had fired her after she refused his sexual advances. Ruppert denied that he had sexually harassed her,^[15] and said that "the case was based on a deliberate attempt to discredit his work, a movie coming out about his views and his former newsletter, From The Wilderness."^[16] In 2009, Ruppert was ordered to pay a $125,000 fine by the Oregon labor board in the case.^[15]

    The end of From The Wilderness was announced and explained in a post at the website on November 7, 2006. Ruppert cited his bad health, glitches that disabled their web store, "problems of human origin", and his departure to Venezuela.^[17] After shutting down, From the Wilderness was sued by their landlord for unpaid rent owed on their Ashland office space.^[14] 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.^[18]

    Collapse and the Collapse Network

    Ruppert and his theories on peak oil were the subject of the 2009 documentary film Collapse,^[3] which was based on his book A Presidential Energy Policy^[4] and received The New York Times "critics pick".^[11][19] The book, Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World^[20] was released in December 2009.

    Peak oil, an event based on M. King Hubbert's theory, is the point in time when the maximum rate of extraction of petroleum is reached, after which the rate of production is expected to enter terminal decline. Peak oil theory is based on the observed rise, peak, (sometimes rapid) fall, and depletion of aggregate production rate in oil fields over time.

    In early 2010, Ruppert launched the Collapse Network to build sustainable communities across the world. 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. He left the Collapse Network in May 2012, leaving it in the hands of former From the Wilderness associate and longtime friend, Jenna Orkin. Ruppert continued to occasionally contribute to the Collapse Network news desk.

    Musical projects

    After leaving CollapseNet, Ruppert moved to Crestone, Colorado, and pursued Native American and indigenous teachings (adopting the name "Tracker of Truth") and started putting more time into music, recording with the band New White Trash, described as a "downtempo acoustic rock outfit".^[1]

    New White Trash

    New White Trash was a downtempo acoustic rock band. Michael Ruppert was a founding member,^[21] along with singer Kristen Vigard, drummer Andy Kravitz, and guitarist Doug Lewis.^[22] The band released two albums, Doublewide (2011)^[23] and Age of Authority (2013).^[24][7] Following Ruppert's suicide in 2014, the band announced its intention to release a tribute album.^[7] Beyond the Rubicon was released on December 11, 2014.^[6]

    Media coverage and criticism

    Numerous documentary films have featured Ruppert, including The End of Suburbia (2004),^[25] Liberty Bound (2004),^[26] American Drug War: The Last White Hope (2007),^[27] The 911 Report You Never Saw - The Great Conspiracy (2008),^[28] Collapse (2009),^{[29][full citation needed]} Zeitgeist: Moving Forward (2011),^[30] and Apocalypse, Man (2014).^[5]

    Ruppert was termed a "conspiracy theorist",^{[19][31][32][33][34]} to which he has said he "deals with 'conspiracy fact' rather than theory".^[35] According to The Wall Street Journal, his book Crossing the Rubicon was a "favorite among conspiracy theorists."^[36] After writing it, and subsequently moving on to peak oil, he said "I walked away from 9/11 five years ago. I have nothing to do with the 9/11 truth movement."^[36]

    Critic David Corn argued that Ruppert occasionally veered off into making unsubstantiated conspiracy theory claims^[37] and has criticized Ruppert's methodology, dismissing 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."^[38] Ruppert responded with an open public letter to Corn stating that Corn is not able to disprove any of Ruppert's claims.^[39]

    The New York Times, in its review of Collapse, wrote "the majority of his premises are verifiable, any weakness in his argument lies in inferences so terrifying that reasonable listeners may find themselves taking his advice" and that in it, Ruppert "emerges finally as an authentic human being, sympathetic even when the film that embraces him is not."^[11]

    In 2014, Vice featured Ruppert in a 6-part series titled Apocalypse, Man.^[5]

    Death

    On April 13, 2014, Ruppert was found dead in Napa County at home just outside the Calistoga, California, city limits. Ruppert died of a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. This was confirmed by close friend and property owner and landlord Jack Martin.^[40] Martin found Ruppert's body and suicide note.^[41] According to his business partner and last attorney of record, Wesley Miller,^[42] Ruppert shot himself after taping his final broadcast of The Lifeboat Hour with friend and colleague Carolyn Baker, Ph.D.^[43]

    On the subject of his own death, Ruppert said:

    The question I am asked most frequently at my lectures is why I haven't been killed yet. I have two answers. First, it is not cost-effective, and the response would cause more problems than it would solve. I am not important enough to kill.

    Secondly, I will not die one minute before God has decided.

    — Mike Ruppert, Crossing the Rubicon^[44]

    Works

    Bibliography

    Books

    • Ruppert, Michael C. (2004). Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. New Society Publishers. ISBN 0-86571-540-8.
    • Ruppert, Michael C. (2009a). A Presidential Energy Policy: Twenty-Five Points Addressing the Siamese Twins of Energy and Money. Los Angeles: New World Digital Publishing. ISBN 978-0578021560.
    • Ruppert, Michael C. (2009b). Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World. Chelsea Green Publishing. ISBN 978-1-60358-264-3.

    Selected articles

    • Ruppert, Michael C. (n.d.). "C.I.A. & Drugs". From the Wilderness Publications. Archived from the original on 2015-04-18. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Ruppert, Michael C. (March 1, 2002). "NATION editor David Corn attacks Mike Ruppert with bad information. Read Mike's reply to corn". From the Wilderness. Archived from the original on October 8, 2009. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Ruppert, Michael C. (August 16, 2006a). "By the Light of a Burning Bridge". From the Wilderness. Archived from the original on April 10, 2015. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Ruppert, Michael C. (November 7, 2006b). "Evolution". From the Wilderness. Archived from the original on 2006-12-11. Retrieved 2015-05-02.

    Appearances

    • Booth, Kevin (2007). American Drug War: The Last White Hope (video). Passion River.
    • Capper, Andy (2014). Apocalypse, Man—Part 1 (video). Vice. Archived from the original on 2014-10-12. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Greene, Gregory (2004). The End of Suburbia (video). The Electric Wallpaper Co.
    • Joseph, Peter (2011). Zeitgeist: Moving Forward (video). GMP LLC.^{[45][better source needed]}
    • Rose, Christine (2004). Liberty Bound (video). Christine Rose Productions.
    • Smith, Chris; Ruppert, Michael (2009). Collapse (video). Bluemark Productions.
    • Zwicker, Barrie (2008). The 911 Report You Never Saw - The Great Conspiracy (video). Retrieved 2015-05-02.

    New White Trash discography

    • New White Trash (2011). Doublewide. Venice Arts Club. Archived from the original on 2015-04-26. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • New White Trash (2013). Age of Authority. Venice Arts Club. Archived from the original on 2015-05-05. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • New White Trash (2014). Beyond the Rubicon. Venice Arts Club. Archived from the original on 2015-05-05. Retrieved 2015-05-02.

    Music videos

    • New White Trash (2011b). Realize the Lie. Venice Arts Club. Archived from the original on 2021-12-20. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • New White Trash (2012). Hello Life. Venice Arts Club. Retrieved 2015-05-03.

    Video interview

    • Blake, Doug (2010). Michael C. Ruppert and the New White Trash. Venice Arts Club / Smartchannel.TV. Archived from the original on 2021-12-20. Retrieved 2015-05-02.

    See also

    • Counter Misinformation Team – United States Department of State office
    • John Michael Greer – American writer and druid
    • James Howard Kunstler – American writer, social critic, blogger
    • Dmitry Orlov – American engineer and writer
    • Gary Webb – American investigative journalist (1955–2004)

    References

    1. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g h} Stroud 2014.
    2. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Ruppert 2004.
    3. ^ Jump up to:^a b Smith & Ruppert 2009.
    4. ^ Jump up to:^a b Ruppert 2009a.
    5. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Capper 2014.
    6. ^ Jump up to:^a b New White Trash 2014.
    7. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Lewis 2014.
    8. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Ruppert 2010.
    9. ^ Lowery 1996.
    10. ^ C-SPAN 1996.
    11. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Catsoulis 2009.
    12. ^ Ruppert n.d.
    13. ^ Ruppert 2006a.
    14. ^ Jump up to:^a b Plain 2006.
    15. ^ Jump up to:^a b Specht 2009b.
    16. ^ Specht 2009a.
    17. ^ Ruppert 2006b.
    18. ^ Kohlman 2006.
    19. ^ Jump up to:^a b Ebiri 2009.
    20. ^ Ruppert 2009b.
    21. ^ Ruppert 2012.
    22. ^ Blake 2010.
    23. ^ New White Trash 2011.
    24. ^ New White Trash 2013.
    25. ^ Greene 2004.
    26. ^ Rose 2004.
    27. ^ Booth 2007.
    28. ^ Zwicker 2008.
    29. ^ Capper 2009.
    30. ^ Joseph 2011.
    31. ^ Indiewire 2009.
    32. ^ Nelson 2009.
    33. ^ Stahl 2011.
    34. ^ Gleiberman 2014.
    35. ^ Jenkins 2009.
    36. ^ Jump up to:^a b Kaufman 2009.
    37. ^ Corn 2007.
    38. ^ Corn 2002.
    39. ^ Ruppert 2002.
    40. ^ Speak 2014a.
    41. ^ Speak 2014b.
    42. ^ Miller 2014.
    43. ^ Todorov 2014.
    44. ^ Ruppert 2004, p. 135.
    45. ^ Zeitgeist: Moving Forward at IMDb

    Bibliography

    • Blake, Doug (video interview) (2010b). Andy Kravitz and the New White Trash. Venice Arts Club / Smartchannel.TV. Archived from the original on 2021-12-20.
    • Catsoulis, Jeannette (November 5, 2009). "Single Focus: An Outsider With Doomsday Vision". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-05-01.
    • Corn, David (February 28, 2002). "When 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Go Bad". Alternet. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Corn, David (October 22, 2007). "The September 11 X-Files". The Nation. Archived from the original on March 18, 2006. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • C-SPAN (November 15, 1996). Allegations of CIA Involvement in Drug Trafficking (video). Archived from the original on 2021-12-20.
    • Ebiri, Bilge (November 6, 2009). "Collapse Director Chris Smith on His New Doc and the Impending Fall of Civilization". New York. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Gleiberman, Owen (December 5, 2014). "Toronto: The buzz film 'Collapse' showcases a gripping pundit of economic doom". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Indiewire (November 6, 2009). "'Collapse' Director Chris Smith: 'It was all an attempt to get the audience inside Michael's head'". Indiewire. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Jenkins, Mark (November 5, 2009). "Michael Ruppert, Explaining The Coming 'Collapse'". NPR. National Public Radio. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Kaufman, Anthony (November 4, 2009). "Sounding an Alarm on Oil". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Kohlman, Ray (November 26, 2006). "Mike Ruppert In Canada". From the Wilderness. Archived from the original on February 22, 2015. Retrieved 2015-05-02.^{[unreliable source?]}
    • Lewis, Doug (July 20, 2014). "Beyond The Rubicon – StartJoin Hosts Fund Drive For Mike Ruppert Tribute Album". Venice Arts Club. Retrieved 2015-04-30.
    • Miller, Wesley T. (April 16, 2014). "CollapseNet's founder, Michael C. Ruppert, has committed suicide". Collapse Net. Archived from the original on May 27, 2014. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Nelson, Rob (September 17, 2009). "Collapse (Documentary)". Variety. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Plain, Robert (December 4, 2006). "From the Wilderness taken to court". Ashland Daily Tidings. Archived from the original on 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Ruppert, Michael (2010). "Autobiography". Collapse Network. Archived from the original on 2015-03-17. Retrieved 2015-05-01.
    • Ruppert, Michael C. (March 10, 2012). "New White Trash Music Project". New White Trash: Music of the Post-Paradigm. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Stahl, Jeremy (September 6, 2011). "Where Did 9/11 Conspiracies Come From?". Slate. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Stroud, Matt (July 22, 2014). "The Unbelievable Life and Death of Michael C. Ruppert". The Verge. Retrieved 2015-04-30.
    • Speak, Cheri (April 16, 2014b). "Michael C. Ruppert Suicide Note Released". Cheri Speak. Retrieved 2015-05-02.^{[unreliable source?]}
    • Specht, Sanne (September 24, 2009a). "Man says he's innocent of sexual harassment". Ashland Daily Tidings. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Specht, Sanne (September 25, 2009b). "Businessman fined in sexual harassment case". Ashland Daily Tidings. Archived from the original on 2015-09-23. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Todorov, Kerana (April 16, 2014). "Sheriff: Author Michael Ruppert dies of self-inflicted gunshot wound". Napa Valley Register. Retrieved 2015-05-01.

    Obituaries and memoria

    [edit]

    • Lewis, Doug (April 19, 2014). "Michael C. Ruppert – Memoriam.1". Venice Arts Club. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Lewis, Doug (August 6, 2014). "Michael C. Ruppert – Memoriam.2". Venice Arts Club. Retrieved 2015-05-02.
    • Speak, Cheri (April 15, 2014a). "Crossing over the Rubicon - R.I.P. Michael C. Ruppert". Cheri Speak. Retrieved 2015-05-02.

    Further reading

    • Orkin, Jenna (2014). Scout: A Memoir of Investigative Journalist Michael C. Ruppert, with Against the Dying of the Light. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN 978-1500771614.
    • Speak, Cheri (2 May 2014). "From the Wilderness Forward, What Really Happened to Michael C. Ruppert". Cheri Speak. Retrieved 2015-05-03.

    Reviews of Collapse

    • Baker, Carolyn (November 9, 2009). "From The Wilderness To The End Of Civilization". Countercurrents.org. Retrieved 2015-05-03.
    • Ebert, Roger (December 9, 2009). "Collapse Movie Review & Film Summary (2009)". RogerEbert.com. Retrieved 2015-04-30.

    External links

    • Official Collapse website
    • Official Collapse Network website forwards to CollapseNet

    Videos

    •  

      

       

      24:42 youtube.com

      The Death Of Michael C. Ruppert - Narrated by Jack Martin

      28 Apr 2014

    •  

      

       

      1:20:46 youtube.com

      Collapse by Michael C Ruppert 19 Jul 2020 

    •  

      

       

      1:20:35myoutube.com

      Michael Ruppert - Collapse NL subs n6 Apr 2017 

    View all 

    Features

  The unbelievable life and death of Michael C. Ruppert

  After decades of struggle, the notorious doomsayer finally found fame and recognition. Then he shot himself. by Matt Stroud Jul 22, 2014

  By the second Sunday of April this year, Michael C. Ruppert was broke. The 63-year-old cop-turned-writer and firebrand gained fame by starring in Collapse, a 2009 documentary in which he predicts society’s destruction. Publicity from the film was great — he went on a countrywide promotional tour — but compensation had fizzled out. By April, he was receiving just a couple hundred dollars per month in royalties to supplement his meager Social Security checks.

  In an effort to simplify his life, Ruppert had gradually sold, tossed out, or given away nearly all of his possessions, which included an arsenal of guns, countless books, and government documents. All that remained was a collection of sentimental knickknacks, along with clothes appropriate for a man in his 60s: button-up shirts, dark-colored slacks, a few flannels, a couple of L.L. Bean jackets, and a gray cowboy hat. Everything he owned fit into his burgundy 2000 Lincoln Continental.

  For the last eight years, Ruppert had largely lived off the goodwill of friends and followers. When he made public requests for money — either through his weekly podcast, “The Lifeboat Hour,” or in posts to more than 5,000 Facebook followers — he received checks in the mail. When he needed a place to stay, people opened their homes. And it’s no surprise why: to subscribers of his elaborate theories — that the CIA trafficked drugs; that the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks; or that the human race will face extinction by 2030 — Ruppert was a soldier who fought under the banner of truth. In exchange for exposing dark secrets, he was persecuted by authorities and shadowy organizations: he’d received death threats — both explicit and covert, he said — because he knew too much.

  So when he made a plea for a place to stay early this year, a follower and friend named Jack Martin in Calistoga, California, offered up a modest trailer. That’s where, on the evening of April 13th, Ruppert committed suicide with a gunshot to the head. According to Ruppert’s friends, his suicide at first seemed sudden and unexpected — a brash decision during a dark moment. But looking back over his life and final days, Ruppert’s suicide resembles a grand finale — the end of a trail he’d been following for decades.

  

   

  An only child, Ruppert’s family had close ties to the military and federal government. His father was a US Air Force pilot during the Second World War and later worked for Martin Marietta — which became Lockheed-Martin — "as a liaison between the CIA, the US Air Force, and Martin for booster programs," Ruppert wrote in a 2010 online autobiography.

  Ruppert interviewed to be a CIA operative during his senior year at UCLA in 1973, he wrote, but turned down the subsequent offer. He became a cop with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and handled narcotics cases in some of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. The hours were long, and the job eventually got to him. He would later write that his work with the LAPD saddled him with "combat fatigue."

  It was during his tenure at the LAPD that Ruppert met a woman named Nordica Theodora "Teddy" D’Orsay. Ruppert later wrote that their 15-month relationship "determined the course of my life…."

  Teddy wasn’t a cop, but she and Ruppert met at a Marina del Rey cop bar in 1975. The two became infatuated with one another, and quickly moved in together. Early in their relationship, however, Ruppert became suspicious of Teddy. For a civilian, she was, he thought, a little too knowledgeable about guns and stakeouts and the day-to-day work of officers on a beat. She dropped names of LAPD cops as well as crime bosses and undercover agents.

  When Teddy started staying out several nights per week and taking trips to San Francisco and Hawaii, Ruppert’s suspicions mounted. He treated Teddy as though she were a suspect in a crime. He gathered intel. It’s unclear what evidence he compiled, but Ruppert concluded that Teddy had ties to a San Francisco mobster and the shah of Iran. She grew even more distant. Then, in early 1977, she walked out on him.

  After she left, Ruppert said, he became the victim of harassment: phone calls with dead silence on the other end; apartment searches while he was out; cars tailing him. He began sleeping with a gun under his pillow.

  He became the victim of harassment: phone calls with dead silence on the other end; apartment searches while he was out; cars tailing him. He began sleeping with a gun under his pillow

  Ten weeks later, Teddy finally called Ruppert and said that she was in the New Orleans area. Ruppert drove to Louisiana and found her, he later wrote, "equipped with a scrambler phone and night-vision devices, and working from sealed communiqués delivered by Naval and Air Force personnel." He concluded that "she was involved in something truly ugly" — "arranging for large quantities of weapons to be loaded onto ships leaving for Iran." She was also working with "associates" of a New Orleans mafia boss bringing "large quantities of heroin into the city." Ruppert would later say that he and Teddy had even been shot at outside a New Orleans-area bar — retribution, he concluded, for discovering too much about Teddy’s covert actions. Ruppert broke off the relationship and returned home.

  When he shared what he’d discovered with LAPD intelligence officers, they "promptly told me that I was crazy," he wrote. Overwhelmed, he checked himself into a psychiatric hospital for a "much-needed" monthlong rest. Though he was eventually reinstated as an officer, both his reputation and interest in the job vanished. In November 1978, he resigned. In time, Ruppert came to believe that the LAPD was part of a larger narco-trafficking network.

  Through the press, Ruppert tried to expose what he’d discovered. In 1981, he made persistent calls to a Los Angeles Herald-Examiner columnist in an effort to expose Teddy’s trafficking network. The columnist ultimately published a two-part series, "The Spy Who Loved Me." But the series’ findings were, at best, inconclusive. It cited "a retired LAPD intelligence officer, another FBI agent, and [a psychiatrist]" who agreed that Ruppert’s story may have been "what he believes to be the truth," but that there was scant evidence to prove it. "Each of these three professionals professed both a measure of admiration and a measure of fear of Ruppert," the series read.

  

   

  With paltry professional prospects, Ruppert drifted. He worked at a 7-Eleven, but was fired on his first day for selling alcohol to a minor. He declared bankruptcy and moved in with his parents. He developed a drinking problem. By 1984, he began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and got sober. But he still struggled to find a new career. He told friends that he held a number of disparate jobs: as an amplifier assemblyman, a UPS driver, a gun shop clerk, a manager for a private security firm. In his spare time, he worked as a freelance writer — even landing a 1985 byline in the Los Angeles Times. In 1994, at the age of 43, Ruppert met a 23-year-old woman, Mary, at an AA meeting. The two got married — his first and only marriage — but divorced less than two years later. Distraught and aimless, he told Mary he was suicidal.

  Then, Ruppert read a story that would change his life. It was a groundbreaking investigative report — a series of articles connecting the CIA to Nicaraguan drug runners. Published in August 1996 in the San Jose Mercury News, Gary Webb’s three-part series, "Dark Alliance," provided compelling evidence that drug traffickers peddled cocaine on Los Angeles streets to fund CIA-supported Contras embroiled in a Nicaraguan civil war. The series’ assertions — that CIA officials aligned themselves with criminals and "helped spark a crack explosion in urban America" — inspired protests in black communities nationwide.

  He worked at a 7-Eleven, but was fired on his first day for selling alcohol to a minor. He declared bankruptcy and moved in with his parents. He developed a drinking problem

  "Dark Alliance" drew harsh criticism for overreaching in its conclusions from several national outlets, including the New York Times. But that mattered little to Ruppert. In his eyes, Webb provided credible evidence that the CIA was involved in drug trafficking: "Dark Alliance" legitimized his accusations against Teddy, the CIA, and the LAPD.

  The uproar over "Dark Alliance" was also an opportunity for Ruppert to have his suspicions heard. In November 1996, CIA director John M. Deutch agreed to address the allegations in Webb’s series during a town hall meeting at a high school in South Los Angeles. The interaction was broadcast by C-SPAN, and Ruppert seized the opportunity to step into the spotlight.

  "I am a former Los Angeles police narcotics detective, and I worked South-Central Los Angeles," Ruppert said into a microphone during the Q&A session in front of the jam-packed, audibly agitated, mostly African-American crowd. In the video — now legendary among Ruppert’s fans — Ruppert looks like a high-school social studies teacher, with combed-over gray hair, a manicured mustache, and wire-rimmed glasses. "I will tell you, Director Deutch," Ruppert said, "emphatically and without equivocation that the agency has dealt drugs throughout this country for a long time."

  "That’s what I did 18 years ago, and I got shot at for it."

  The audience erupted. When the din subsided, Deutch suggested that Ruppert report his findings to the authorities. "That’s what I did 18 years ago, and I got shot at for it," Ruppert said, referencing the alleged shooting incident with Teddy outside a New Orleans-area bar.

  The crowd jeered Deutch. Ruppert looked on with a satisfied grin. In a matter of minutes, he had become a heroic figure battling the CIA, willing to stare down authority.

  News of the confrontation spread, and Ruppert capitalized on the publicity. He started a muckraking, conspiratorial newsletter called From The Wilderness (FTW) that would eventually boast more than 22,000 subscribers. FTW reported on stories many mainstream news organizations overlooked. The organization dug deeper into CIA activities, reported Osama bin Laden’s ties with the American government in 1998, and broke a national story showing that then-Texas Governor George W. Bush routinely flew in an airplane once owned by drug smuggler Barry Seal. FTW obsessed over questionable government activities. This obsession led FTW to its biggest and most controversial story: the Bush administration’s involvement in the attacks of September 11th, 2001.

   

  

   

  "As I watched the second plane strike the World Trade Center on September 11th, every part of me reacted," Ruppert would later write. Within hours of the attacks, Ruppert was on a radio show insinuating that 9/11 was an inside job. He became a forefather of the 9/11 Truth Movement — a loose contingent of activists speculating about the actual motives of the attackers and the government that day.

  Ruppert mined websites, newspapers, and court records for evidence suggesting the Bush administration’s collusion in 9/11. The outcome was FTW’s defining article, "Oh Lucy! — You Gotta Lotta ‘Splainin To Do," an ongoing list of facts compiled from news stories, press conferences, and other disclosures. In Ruppert’s estimation, the piece "establishes CIA foreknowledge ... and strongly suggests that there was criminal complicity on the part of the US government." The list led Ruppert to publish his first book, 2004’s Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.

  "The US government had deliberately leaked the information to the al-Qaeda 'hijackers' so that the attacks could be carried out effectively." 

  At nearly 600 pages, not including endnotes and appendixes, Crossing the Rubicon is not a breezy read. But its core premise is fairly straightforward: the amount of oil available for human consumption peaked in the mid-’60s and has been quickly declining ever since (a concept known as "peak oil"). In order to reach the world’s precious remaining reserves, the US government was willing to perpetrate unthinkable acts.

  According to Ruppert, then-Vice President Dick Cheney ignored warnings that hijacked planes might be used for terrorism in the US’ northeast corridor in the months leading up to September 11th. In May of that year, Cheney sent fighter planes from military bases in the northeastern US to Alaska. Ruppert concluded that the move was a calculated effort to leave the northeastern US vulnerable. Then, "the US government had deliberately leaked the information to the al-Qaeda ‘hijackers’ so that the attacks could be carried out effectively," Ruppert wrote. The ultimate goal: to start a war and secure unfettered access to Middle East oil.

   

  

   

  Ruppert’s conclusions about 9/11 struck a nerve. His star rose, and FTW grew. Crossing the Rubicon became a cult hit. Ruppert was asked to give lectures all over the world, he said. By 2006, FTW supported Ruppert and a small staff in an office in Ashland, Oregon through sales of DVDs, donations, and an increasing number of subscriptions.

  

  Ruppert and a fellow staffer work in the From The Wilderness offices in Ashland, Oregon.

  But soon thereafter, FTW imploded. The organization’s offices were vandalized in June 2006. Ruppert initially told readers the break-in was "the work of an organized meth ring that I prevented from infiltrating my business." Later, the implications became more sinister. Ruppert suggested the meth ring was connected to the CIA. Either way, Ruppert told staff, friends, and readers, his life was in danger. In July 2006, he fled to Caracas, Venezuela, where he planned to report about life under Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez Frias.

  But he likely had more sordid reasons for fleeing. In the months prior to his departure, Ruppert had grown fond of a new female hire — according to court records, Ruppert "said he was ‘in love’ with [the female staffer] and told her he was willing to have a ‘sexual relationship … if that’s what she wanted.’" The staffer wasn’t interested. Rather, she "felt shocked and scared" by his advances. After Ruppert fired her in June 2006, she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against FTW. Among the allegations:

  One evening in mid-May when Complainant [the female staffer] and Ruppert were alone in the office, Ruppert began complaining that he had a story he needed to get out, that he needed to free himself, and that it would be great if he could just run around the office naked for a minute to get out his "writer’s block." Shortly afterward, Complainant was typing at her desk and Ruppert came to her open door, standing in his underwear in a "wide legged stance" with a "big smile."

  Before he left for Venezuela, Ruppert made allegations to anyone who would listen — including a reporter at a local newspaper in Ashland — that the staffer was a "sexual smorgasbord who engaged in sexual blackmail" and that it was actually she who had burglarized FTW’s offices. He also accused her of "being a meth addict and facilitating the use of [his] office to smuggle meth." None of these assertions were ever supported by police findings. A judge fined FTW $125,000 in damages in the case. But by the time that decision was reached in 2009, FTW had long ago ceased operations. The fine remains unpaid.

   

  Carolyn Baker, a frequent guest on Ruppert’s podcast "The Lifeboat Hour" and now the show’s host, shared many of Ruppert’s fundamental beliefs. But Baker told me she also noticed Ruppert’s pattern of fleeing difficult situations. "My thought was, ‘Why can’t you just put on your big-boy pants, and run a company?’" she told me on a Skype call last month. "He couldn’t run From The Wilderness — he had to leave. And who knows if his life was in danger? … My conclusion was that he couldn’t deal with conflict," Baker said. "Whenever things got really hot in terms of conflict for Mike, he was like, ‘I’m out of here.’"

  

  Gary Webb's investigative series, "Dark Alliance," gave Ruppert an opportunity to have his suspicions about the CIA heard.

  https://theintercept.com/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-media-destruction-gary-webb/

  Managing a Nightmare

  How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb

  • Politics   Justice   War on Gaza   Technology   Immigration  Chilling Dissent   Support Us 

  • Special Investigations   Voices   Podcasts   Videos   Documents   About  Contact Us

  • More Ways to Donate  Impact & Reports Join Newsletter
  • Jobs Become a Source THE INTERCEPT

   

  Managing a Nightmare

  How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb

  Support Us

  

  Ryan Devereaux  September 25 2014, 

   

  Eighteen years after it was published, “Dark Alliance,” the San Jose Mercury News’s bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism.

  The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. It also sparked an aggressive backlash from the nation’s most powerful media outlets, which devoted considerable resources to discredit author Gary Webb’s reporting. Their efforts succeeded, costing Webb his career. On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head.

  These days, Webb is being cast in a more sympathetic light. He’s portrayed heroically in a major motion picture set to premiere nationwide next month. And documents newly released by the CIA provide fresh context to the “Dark Alliance” saga — information that paints an ugly portrait of the mainstream media at the time.

  On September 18, the agency released a trove of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agency’s in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story.” Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the document offers a unique window into the CIA’s internal reaction to what it called “a genuine public relations crisis” while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry. Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists,” the CIA’s Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.

  (Dujmovic’s name was redacted in the released version of the CIA document, but was included in a footnote in a 2010 article in the Journal of Intelligence. Dujmovic confirmed his authorship to The Intercept.)

  Webb’s troubles began in August 1996, when his employer, the San Jose Mercury News, published a groundbreaking, three-part investigation he had worked on for more than a year. Carrying the full title “Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion,” Webb’s series reported that in addition to waging a proxy war for the U.S. government against Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government in the 1980s, elements of the CIA-backed Contra rebels were also involved in trafficking cocaine to the U.S. in order to fund their counter-revolutionary campaign. The secret flow of drugs and money, Webb reported, had a direct link to the subsequent explosion of crack cocaine abuse that had devastated California’s most vulnerable African American neighborhoods.

  Derided by some as conspiracy theory and heralded by others as investigative reporting at its finest, Webb’s series spread through extensive talk radio coverage and global availability via the internet, which at the time was still a novel way to promote national news.

  Though “Dark Alliance” would eventually morph into a personal crisis for Webb, it was initially a PR disaster for the CIA. In “Managing a Nightmare,” Dujmovic minced no words in describing the potentially devastating  effect of the series on the agency’s image:

  The charges could hardly be worse. A widely read newspaper series leads many Americans to believe CIA is guilty of at least complicity, if not conspiracy, in the outbreak of crack cocaine in America’s cities. In more extreme versions of the story circulating on talk radio and the internet, the Agency was the instrument of a consistent strategy by the US Government to destroy the black community and keep black Americans from advancing. Denunciations of CIA–reminiscent of the 1970s–abound. Investigations are demanded and initiated. The Congress gets involved.

  Dujmovic acknowledged that Webb “did not state outright that CIA ran the drug trade or even knew about it.” In fact, the agency’s central complaint, according to the document, was over the graphics that accompanied the series, which suggested a link between the CIA and the crack scare, and Webb’s description of the Contras as “the CIA’s army” (despite the fact that the Contras were quite literally an armed, militant group not-so-secretly supported by the U.S., at war with the government of Nicaragua).

  Dujmovic complained that Webb’s series “appeared with no warning,” remarking that, for all his journalistic credentials, “he apparently could not come up with a widely available and well-known telephone number for CIA Public Affairs.” This was probably because Webb “was uninterested in anything the Agency might have to say that would diminish the impact of his series,” he wrote. (Webb later said that he did contact the CIA but that the agency would not return his calls; efforts to obtain CIA comment were not mentioned in the “Dark Alliance” series).

  Dujmovic also pointed out that much of what was reported in “Dark Alliance” was not new. Indeed, in 1985, more than a decade before the series was published, Associated Press journalists Robert Parry and Brian Barger found that Contra groups had “engaged in cocaine trafficking, in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua.” In a move that foreshadowed Webb’s experience, the Reagan White House launched “a concerted behind-the-scenes campaign to besmirch the professionalism of Parry and Barger and to discredit all reporting on the contras and drugs,” according to a 1997 article by Peter Kornbluh for the Columbia Journalism Review. “Whether the campaign was the cause or not, coverage was minimal.”

  Neverthess, a special senate subcommittee, chaired by then-senator John Kerry, investigated the AP’s findings and, in 1989, released a 1,166-page report on covert U.S. operations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean (summary here). It found “considerable evidence” that the Contras were linked to running drugs and guns — and that the U.S. government knew about it.

  From the subcommittee report:

  On the basis of this evidence, it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter.

  The chief of the CIA’s Central America Task Force was also quoted as saying, “With respect to (drug trafficking) by the Resistance Forces…it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people.”

  Despite such damning assessments, the subcommittee report received scant attention from the country’s major newspapers. Seven years later, Webb would be the one to pick up the story. His articles distinguished themselves from the AP’s reporting in part by connecting an issue that seemed distant to many U.S. readers — drug trafficking in Central America — to a deeply-felt domestic story, the impact of crack cocaine in California’s urban, African American communities.

  “Dark Alliance” focused on the lives of three men involved in shipping cocaine to the U.S.: Ricky “Freeway” Ross, a legendary L.A. drug dealer; Oscar Danilo Blandón Reyes, considered by the U.S. government to be Nicaragua’s biggest cocaine dealer living in the United States; and Meneses Cantarero, a powerful Nicaraguan player who had allegedly recruited Blandón to sell drugs in support of the counter-revolution. The series examined the relationship between the men, their impact on the drug market in California and elsewhere, and the disproportionate sentencing of African Americans under crack cocaine laws.

  And while its content was not all new, the series marked the beginning of something that was: an in-depth investigation published outside the traditional mainstream media outlets and successfully promoted on the internet. More than a decade before Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, Webb showcased the power and reach of online journalism. Key documents were hosted on the San Jose Mercury News website, with hyperlinks, wiretap recordings and follow-up stories. The series was widely discussed on African American talk radio stations; on some days attracting more than one million readers to the newspaper’s website. As Webb later remarked, “you don’t have be The New York Times or The Washington Post to bust a national story anymore.”

  But newspapers like the Times and the Post seemed to spend far more time trying to poke holes in the series than in following up on the underreported scandal at its heart, the involvement of U.S.-backed proxy forces in international drug trafficking. The Los Angeles Times was especially aggressive. Scooped in its own backyard, the California paper assigned no fewer than 17 reporters to pick apart Webb’s reporting. While employees denied an outright effort to attack the Mercury News, one of the 17 referred to it as the “get Gary Webb team.” Another said at the time, “We’re going to take away that guy’s Pulitzer,” according to Kornbluh’s CJR piece. Within two months of the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the L.A. Times devoted more words to dismantling its competitor’s breakout hit than comprised the series itself.

  The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webb’s reporting. Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” and Dujmovic in “Managing a Nightmare” cites the CIA’s success in discouraging “one major news affiliate” from covering the story. He also boasts that the agency effectively departed from its own longstanding policies in order to discredit the series. “For example, in order to help a journalist working on a story that would undermine the Mercury News allegations, Public Affairs was able to deny any affiliation of a particular individual — which is a rare exception to the general policy that CIA does not comment on any individual’s alleged CIA ties.”

  The document chronicles the shift in public opinion as it moved in favor of the CIA, a trend that began about a month and a half after the series was published. “That third week in September was a turning point in media coverage of this story,” Dujmovic wrote, citing “[r]espected columnists, including prominent blacks,” along with the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun, The Weekly Standard and the Washington Post. The agency supplied the press, “as well as former Agency officials, who were themselves representing the Agency in interviews with the media,” with “these more balanced stories,” Dujmovic wrote. The Washington Post proved particularly useful. “Because of the Post‘s national reputation, its articles especially were picked up by other papers, helping to create what the Associated Press called a ‘firestorm of reaction’ against the San Jose Mercury News.” Over the month that followed, critical media coverage of the series (“balanced reporting”) far outnumbered supportive stories, a trend the CIA credited to the Post, The New York Times, “and especially the Los Angeles Times.” Webb’s editors began to distance themselves from their reporter.

  By the end of October, two months after “Dark Alliance” was published, “the tone of the entire CIA-drug story had changed,” Dujmovic was pleased to report. “Most press coverage included, as a routine matter, the now-widespread criticism of the Mercury News allegations.”

  “This success has to be in relative terms,” Dujmovic wrote, summing up the episode. “In the world of public relations, as in war, avoiding a rout in the face of hostile multitudes can be considered a success.”

  

  Artwork that accompanied the original Dark Alliance series published in the San Jose Mercury News.

  There’s no question that “Dark Alliance” included flaws, which the CIA was able to exploit.

  In his CJR piece, Kornbluh said the series was “problematically sourced” and criticized it for “repeatedly promised evidence that, on close reading, it did not deliver.” It failed to definitively connect the story’s key players to the CIA, he noted, and there were inconsistencies in Webb’s timeline of events.

  But Kornbluh also uncovered problems with the retaliatory reports described as “balanced” by the CIA. In the case of the L.A. Times, he wrote, the paper “stumbled into some of the same problems of hyperbole, selectivity, and credibility that it was attempting to expose” while ignoring declassified evidence (also neglected by the  New York Times and the Washington Post) that lent credibility to Webb’s thesis. “Clearly, there was room to advance the contra/drug/CIA story rather than simply denounce it,” Kornbluh wrote.

  The Mercury News was partially responsible “for the sometimes distorted public furor the stories generated,” Kornbluh said, but also achieved “something that neither the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, nor The New York Times had been willing or able to do — revisit a significant story that had been inexplicably abandoned by the mainstream press, report a new dimension to it, and thus put it back on the national agenda where it belongs.”

  In October, the story of Gary Webb will reach a national moviegoing audience, likely reviving old questions about his reporting and the outrage it ignited. Director Michael Cuesta’s film, Kill the Messenger, stars Jeremy Renner as the hard-charging investigative reporter and borrows its title from a 2006 biography written by award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou, who worked as a consultant on the script.

  Discussing the newly disclosed “Managing a Nightmare” document, Schou says it squares with what he found while doing his own reporting. Rather than some dastardly, covert plot to destroy (or, as some went so far as to suggest, murder) Webb, Schou posits that the journalist was ultimately undone by the petty jealousies of the modern media world. The CIA “didn’t really need to lift a finger to try to ruin Gary Webb’s credibility,” Schou told The Intercept. “They just sat there and watched these journalists go after Gary like a bunch of piranhas.”

  “They must have been delighted over at Langley, the way this all unfolded,” Schou added.

  At least one journalist who helped lead the campaign to discredit Webb, feels remorse for what he did. As Schou reported for L.A. Weekly, in a 2013 radio interview L.A. Times reporter Jesse Katz recalled the episode, saying, “As an L.A. Times reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News and kind of wonder[ed] how legit it was and kind of put it under a microscope. And we did it in a way that most of us who were involved in it, I think, would look back on that and say it was overkill. We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California.”

  Schou, too, readily concedes there were problems with Webb’s reporting, but maintains that the most important components of his investigation stood up to scrutiny, only to be buried under the attacks from the nation’s biggest papers.

  “I think it’s fair to take a look at the story objectively and say that it could have been better edited, it could have been packaged better, it would have been less inflammatory. And sure, maybe Gary could have, like, actually put in the story somewhere ‘I called the CIA X-amount of times and they didn’t respond.’ That wasn’t in there,” he said. “But these are all kind of minor things compared to the bigger picture, which is that he documented for the first time in the history of U.S. media how CIA complicity with Central American drug traffickers had actually impacted the sale of drugs north of the border in a very detailed, accurate story. And that’s, I think, the take-away here.”

  As for Webb’s tragic death, Schou is certain it was a direct consequence of the smear campaign against him.

  “As much as it’s true that he suffered from a clinical depression for years and years — and even before ‘Dark Alliance’ to a certain extent — it’s impossible to view what happened to him without understanding the death of his career as a result of this story,” he explained. “It was really the central defining event of his career and of his life.”

  “Once you take away a journalist’s credibility, that’s all they have,” Schou says. “He was never able to recover from that.”

  Kill the Messenger, a thriller based on Webb’s story, will be released October 10.

  In “Managing a Nightmare,” Dujmovic attributed the initial outcry over the “Dark Alliance” series to “societal shortcomings” that are not present in the spy agency.

  “As a personal post-script, I would submit that ultimately the CIA-drug story says a lot more about American society on the eve of the millennium that [sic] it does about either the CIA or the media,” he wrote. “We live in somewhat coarse and emotional times–when large numbers of Americans do not adhere to the same standards of logic, evidence, or even civil discourse as those practiced by members of the CIA community.”

  Webb obviously saw things differently. He reflected on his fall from grace in the 2002 book, Into the Buzzsaw. Prior to “Dark Alliance,” Webb said, “I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests.”

  “And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I’d enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn’t been, as I’d assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job,” Webb wrote. “The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn’t written anything important enough to suppress.”

   

  Photo: Webb: Bob Berg/Getty Images; Kill the Messenger: Chuck Zlotnick/Focus Features; Contras: Bill Gentile/Corbis

  The Murder of Gary Webb Investigative Reporter and the Cover Up

   

  Investigative Reporter Gary Webb Who Linked CIA to Crack Sales Found Dead of Apparent Suicide Gary Webb, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who wrote a series of stories linking the CIA to crack cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles, is dead at age 49. We hear an 1998 interview with Gary Webb on Democracy Now! and we speak with his ...

  youtube.com 2005

  https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee_e-26860_3pc-c&p=garry+webbb+death+notice&type=G210IE91105G91867M3d261317fcb0f5d80ae72a3d01f9c0a0#action=view&id=2&vid=b800a9fcdc2a5b04f00552b8c473aac4

   

   

   

  Requiem for Gary Webb - Corbett Report

  https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee_e-26860_3pc-c&p=garry+webbb+death+notice&type=G210IE91105G91867M3d261317fcb0f5d80ae72a3d01f9c0a0#action=view&id=5&vid=eddbf86a0b0ff8ebe0dd7a9e6eb09f32

   

  Sources: https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-117-requiem-for-the-suicided-gary-webb/

  youtube.com8 years ago

  The dark life + death of journalist Gary Webb

  https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee_e-26860_3pc-c&p=garry+webbb+death+notice&type=G210IE91105G91867M3d261317fcb0f5d80ae72a3d01f9c0a0#action=view&id=3&vid=c75282db2c138e791a137e7120b028f1

  "Kill the Messenger" Resurrects Gary Webb, Journalist Maligned for Exposing CIA Ties to Crack Trade

  https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee_e-26860_3pc-c&p=garry+webbb+death+notice&type=G210IE91105G91867M3d261317fcb0f5d80ae72a3d01f9c0a0#action=view&id=1&vid=ec5578db2dab1857470ae742af6e0c86

   

  http://democracynow.org - The new Hollywood film Kill The Messenger tells the story of Gary Webb, one of the most maligned figures in investigative journalism. Webb s explosive 1996 investigative series Dark Alliance for the San Jose Mercury News revealed ties between the CIA, Nicaraguan contras and the crack cocaine trade ravaging African ...

  youtube.com16 years ago

  📲 Instagram: @NoorJasmine7 🕵🏽‍♀️ “HEAR ME OUT” TIN FOIL REPLICA BEANIES: noorjasmine.com 📧 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (don’t make it weird) TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 INTRO 2:14 THE WHOLE THING STARTED WHEN... 8:02 THE STORY OF A LIFETIME 12:50 VIRAL BEFORE VIRAL WAS A THING 16:39 FALLOUT 23:15 SMEAR CAMPAIGN 31:08 GARY S PAST 34:03 ...

  youtube.com3 years ago

  After four months in Venezuela, Ruppert fled there, too. He said he had been poisoned — perhaps at the hands of government operatives. That may have been true (his friends told me he emerged from Venezuela very sick; Ruppert’s lawyer, Wes Miller, described him as "a total fucking mess"). But Baker offered an alternative explanation: after asking her and another colleague to take over FTW — and granting them access to more than $20,000 in the company’s bank account — Ruppert squandered the entire reserve. "He was out of money," Baker told me. "He was like a sieve with money."

  Jenna Orkin, an FTW contributor, housed Ruppert in her Brooklyn home upon his arrival in late 2006. They became lovers, and Orkin helped Ruppert through psychiatric treatments at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for depression and suicidal thoughts. Orkin told me over the phone that Ruppert was adept at what she called "public relations" — bending stories to his interpretation of reality. Oftentimes, that interpretation didn’t conform with the real world.

  Gary Webb — the journalist behind "Dark Alliance," the series that proved so pivotal in Ruppert’s evolution — said as much in an interview with the Boston Globe in 2003: "Mike is a real conundrum. I think he’s a sincere guy, concerned about the right things, and he was quite supportive of my efforts to expose the interplay between the CIA and drug traffickers. But he’s also written stories expounding a theory about the genesis of my Mercury News series that were, quite frankly, ridiculous."

  The US Department of Justice had long ago come to a similar conclusion. After Ruppert’s public appearance at the town hall meeting with the director of the CIA, it sent investigators to meet with Ruppert and dig into his accusations about Teddy, the CIA, and the LAPD. The investigators concluded that "while Ruppert communicates his allegations fervently, they have no firm anchor in reality."

   

  

   

  It wasn’t long after FTW’s closure and Ruppert’s sojourn to Venezuela that director Chris Smith — the man behind documentaries American Movie and The Yes Men — contacted Ruppert to be interviewed for a film. The subject was supposed to be the CIA’s connections to drug smuggling, Smith told Indiewire. But Ruppert didn’t want to talk about the CIA. Instead, he wanted to talk about peak oil, and its critical implications for the future.

  Ruppert told Smith he’d become convinced that the places we live, the cars we drive, the products we buy, the food we consume — the habits that shape industrial human civilization — were leading to our demise. Smith was intrigued. The resulting interviews in late March and early April 2009 became Collapse, a dark, ominous documentary. The film compiled some of the most intriguing facts Ruppert had amassed during his career, along with some of his most dire predictions. Among them: the imminent end of human industrial civilization. Ruppert made "Michael Moore sound like Mr. Rogers," said one reviewer.

  Collapse was well-received and brought Ruppert’s face and message to a wider audience. With his newfound notoriety, Ruppert and a few colleagues built CollapseNET— a reboot of FTW that focused squarely on peak oil and the end of human industrial civilization.

  "He was a sweetheart. He seemed so angry and mean. But that wasn’t him at all. It was hilarious to me."

  But again, Ruppert lost his footing. In 2012, he moved to Crestone, Colorado and divested from CollapseNET — a move driven by financial struggles, as well as his belief that "multiple ‘systemic’ failures in human civilization … cannot possibly be reversed in this world as it currently operates and approaches crises." By 2014, he had divested from pretty much everything else, too. Wes Miller — a lawyer and friend who represented Ruppert following the FTW sex harassment debacle, and then helped build CollapseNET — said the onetime hellraiser "didn’t want to fight anymore. He just wanted to do his thing, work on songwriting, and move on to a different life."

  Ruppert started doing more with his band, a downtempo acoustic rock outfit called the New White Trash, and began studying Native American and indigenous teachings. He adopted the name "Tracker of Truth." Ruppert believed that by divesting from oil and eschewing environmentally harmful practices, humans could forestall extinction. He also spoke publicly about his belief that extraterrestrials were in communication with humans on Earth. Despite his gritted teeth and impassioned declarations about the end of human civilization by 2030 in Apocalypse, Man — the 2014 Vice documentary about him — Ruppert was shaking off his angry persona and settling into a kind of retirement.

  "When I watch Apocalypse, Man, I just kinda laugh," says Jessy Re, Ruppert’s girlfriend at the end of his life. "I was there when he was filming it. And I just remember giggling a little bit because it’s like he was putting on a face — like, his game face. He wasn’t really like that. He was a sweetheart. He seemed so angry and mean. But that wasn’t him at all. It was hilarious to me."

  Re told me that she and Ruppert met while she was working as a bartender in Crestone, Colorado in July 2012. Their relationship began slowly, but they spoke on the phone daily and eventually became lovers. One day in February of this year, Ruppert told Re that he had to leave Colorado; the Rocky Mountain winter, he said, was kicking his ass.

  

   

  So Ruppert put a call out to his friends and thousands of Facebook followers. Jack Martin, a serial entrepreneur and self-described doomsday prepper, responded: his 1955 Spartan Royal Mansion — a classic, metallic silver camper — sat uninhabited on a rectangular, 2.5-acre property near the northern Napa Valley town of Calistoga. The trailer was humble, but it was Napa — surrounded by wineries, miles of open grassland, and the peaks of the Mayacamas Mountains. Ruppert accepted. Re intended to follow him there as soon as she could.

  Ruppert arrived in February with his dog, Rags. A manicured garden and greenhouse sat on the property; Martin and his son grew and sold heirloom tomatoes and watermelons and peppers to local restaurants. They also heeded Ruppert’s warnings about the end of industrial civilization, developing the skills and means to grow their own food and fix their own machines.

  Ruppert seemed inspired living on Martin’s land. During his two months there, he roamed the property: a flat plot with a long, dirt driveway, stocked at its southeast end with tractors and old cars and a 6,000 square foot warehouse where a blacksmith and three other tradesman rented space. On his walks, Ruppert smoked Natural American Spirit cigarettes and chatted with whoever crossed his path. The Martins and their friends became his friends. Photographs from Calistoga show Ruppert standing amid Napa Valley greenery, his face and arms reddened by the Northern California sun, his trimmed gray mustache and soul patch surrounding a smile.

  But inside, Ruppert battled depression. It sometimes emerged in conversation. And it certainly emerged in his final podcast.

  
  

  Just as he had every Sunday evening at 6PM for years, Ruppert sat at his desk on April 13th and began recording "The Lifeboat Hour." "Hello everybody, from that nightclub at the end of the world," he said over music from the New White Trash. After introducing Carolyn Baker, a regular guest, and lamenting yet another environmental disaster in the news, Ruppert got personal.

  A week earlier, a production company filming a presentation for the channel H2 flew Ruppert to the Seattle area for on-camera interviews. Ruppert thought the opportunity would be perfect — a means to re-legitimize himself in the mainstream five years after Collapse. Instead, he was disappointed. The first-class treatment, the attention, and the people he encountered made him feel hollow. "It was a daunting experience," he told his podcast listeners — like "I was in the Matrix." Everyone he encountered was "going through the motions of what they do in their life."

  "There’s a leadenness out there in the world right now that weighs on us like a blanket."

  In the airport, waiting for his flight home, "I didn’t see a smile anywhere," he said. "Everybody looked gray, they looked dead, they looked like robots, like they were going through motions…. My perception was that the reality of the collapse of human industrial civilization — or the reality of their reality — is disintegrating in front of everybody." Later, he said, "There’s a leadenness out there in the world right now that weighs on us like a blanket."

  At 7PM, Ruppert said goodbye to his guests, completing "The Lifeboat Hour." He spent some time on Facebook. He "liked" a shared post from a friend. A guest on his podcast wrote, "Michael, thank you for your show tonight, friend. Thank you. Your light illuminates the night sky." He liked that, too. For a half-hour, he sat at the computer; the monitor’s glow shining through the trailer windows as the sun set. Re, who had been living with him since April, was on a road trip in Oregon. Martin and his son were away. Soon, the blacksmith who rented a garage on the property got into his truck and drove off down Martin’s bumpy dirt driveway. By 7:30, Ruppert was alone.

  At 7:34 PM, in a Facebook post to his friends and followers, Ruppert wrote: "The Truth awaits just on the other side of the ever dissolving veil where all the screaming and the mess is going on." A minute later, he sent an email to close friends. "This is my final offering," he wrote. "I do it for the children so that they might live."

  At 7:45, Ruppert sent an email to Martin. The subject: "Come back to the property right now — urgent." The email began, "Call the sheriff before you come." It ended: "Best not to go to the blue and white GMC unless the sheriffs are with you."

  Ruppert walked to the trailer closet and retrieved the only gun he’d brought with him to Calistoga — a .45 caliber GLOCK G30 Subcompact Pistol. Ruppert used clear packing tape to hang instructive notes — "LET THE SHERIFF GO IN FIRST! DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING" — next to the mobile home’s entrance. He stepped out of the trailer and walked about a hundred feet toward the GMC truck. He stood in front of it, with his back to the truck and the mountains. He placed the barrel of the gun to his right temple. A shot rang out in the valley.

   

  Apart from private emails he sent to friends and Jessy Re, and his final Facebook post, Ruppert wrote a suicide note and taped it next to the door of Martin’s trailer. Written in upper-case block lettering, the note read:

  A FINAL OFFERING OF FLESH
  FOR THE CHILDREN
  ABOUT ALL I HAVE LEFT
  TO GIVE
  MAY IT RELEASE LOVE + LIGHT
  INTO A WORLD DYING
  IN DARKNESS

  He signed it "Tracker of Truth," before adding a last line, written in lowercase letters, seemingly an afterthought: "There is no more time."

  Ruppert’s suicide notes were designed to make it clear that he’d committed suicide and not been killed by CIA operatives or anyone else. Though a few online conspiracy theorists initially speculated that he’d been assassinated, those rumors soon evaporated.

  Ruppert’s friends dismiss the notion that he killed himself as "a final offering of flesh" in preparation for end times. Instead, they told me that suicide was a preoccupation for Ruppert — an impulse that emerged whenever prospects seemed bleak. Cheri Roberts, a Ruppert acquaintance and independent journalist who investigated his suicide before anyone else, said that he saw a kind of dark dignity in suicide; he harbored "suicidal ideations," she wrote. In 2004, when Gary Webb — the author of the "Dark Alliance" series — was found dead with two gunshot wounds in his head, Ruppert went to Webb’s home in Sacramento to investigate and then dispel rumors that Webb had been killed by CIA operatives. Ruppert kept a photograph of the deceased journalist hung on the wall of his FTW office.

  "There is no more time."

  Ruppert talked of suicide so frequently, in fact, that some of the people closest to him dismissed the comments as meaningless. When Ruppert’s ex-wife, Mary — who asked that her last name be withheld from this story — asked Ruppert to sign divorce papers in 1996, Ruppert told her that the mere thought of divorcing her made him want to kill himself. "I just didn’t believe he was serious," Mary told me. "I thought he was trying to manipulate me. So I told him, ‘Sign the papers first.’"

  The thought of Ruppert actually carrying out his own suicide still baffles her. She remembers him as driven toward exposing government corruption and obsessing over his work. But she never took his more recent end-of-the-world doomsaying very seriously. "I thought it was his schtick," she told me. "I thought it was something he did for the cameras."

  

  Ruppert shot himself in front of this blue GMC truck on Jack Martin's property just outside the Napa Valley town of Calistoga, California.

  Wes Miller, Ruppert’s lawyer, casts aside suggestions that Ruppert was bipolar, or that his mental illness, coupled with his decision to start drinking again, might’ve pushed him to suicide. But many of Ruppert’s friends are more open to those ideas. "I never confronted him with one of the main aspects of his emotional turmoil," Carolyn Baker told me, "which was that he left AA in 2004 and told people that his sponsor told him that he was so advanced that he didn’t need to go to meetings anymore." She continued: "Anyone who confronted him about that was pretty much cut out of his life."

  Doug Lewis, Ruppert’s close friend, Colorado roommate, and bandmate in New White Trash, declined to be interviewed for this story. But Baker told me: "About two weeks before Mike left Colorado to come out to California [in February], Doug confronted him and said, ‘Mike you’re an alcoholic.’ And Mike grabbed Doug by the collar and slammed him against the wall and cursed him out. A week later, [Ruppert] gave notice that ‘I’m leaving.’"

  By the end, Ruppert had gone into "full-blown psychosis," the journalist Cheri Roberts told me. He wanted to take his own life, decided he was going to do it, and "he wasn’t going to let anyone argue with him about it."

  Ruppert’s cousin, Sherry Colliton, came to similar conclusions. When he began selling off his possessions in 2012, he told her he was purging himself of unnecessary baggage. But Colliton now believes he was making final plans. Ruppert moved at least five times between 2006 and his last days in Calistoga. In each new place, with each new roommate or landlord, he set up a revised will, and named a new executor to that will.

  He wanted to take his own life, decided he was going to do it, and "he wasn’t going to let anyone argue with him about it."

  In Calistoga, Jack Martin became Ruppert’s final executor. But Jesse Re, his girlfriend at the end, was the person he was closest to.

  Last month, I met Re in the South Portland, Oregon suburb of Lake Oswego, where she’s staying in a bunkhouse behind the rental property where Wes Miller, his wife, and their two kids reside. Calm and thoughtful, Re smiles often and frequently punctuates her sentences with laughter. She now cares for Ruppert’s dog, Rags, and is still unabashedly in love with the man: she told me they were "soulmates" and "meant to be together." Ruppert, she told me, inspired her to try anything, to think about things in new ways. (Though she has no background in journalism, she and Wes Miller are attempting to revitalize CollapseNET as TrackerOfTruth.com, with Re as the site’s star and lead reporter.) That’s why she was willing to uproot her life in Colorado to live with Ruppert in Calistoga merely two weeks before he killed himself.

  Ruppert didn’t seem suicidal to Re; he didn’t seem like a doomsayer. On the contrary, she described him as "deeply spiritual" — a "fun and cool" person to be with. Maybe she saw Ruppert the way he wanted to be seen at the very end — not as a warrior, but as a man who had settled his scores; a man who had served his purpose and had found a reason to live and love.

  But on April 11th, two days before his suicide, Ruppert pulled Re aside for a private conversation at the picnic table near the Calistoga mobile home where they stayed.

  "He said, ‘I gotta come clean with you about something,’" she remembered. "He told me he was terrified of the state of the world and that he felt like all kinds of people were coming to him for answers and that he didn’t have any. And that he just wanted to let me know where his head was at. Then we talked a little bit more. He talked about near-term extinction and that he felt like things were not headed in a happy direction. He was like, ‘What’s the point?’

  "When he said that to me, I told him it reminded me of this line from a Bob Dylan song" — that he not busy being born is busy dying. "Wouldn’t it suck if all 7 billion of us had to go out as though we’d never even been born?

  "Later, we sat there and said a prayer together. He told me, ‘I feel a lot better. I’m glad we talked.’ I think back on that, and I think, ‘Maybe he still had hope.’ But that’s not what he was telling me. What he was telling me was that he was done. He was leaving forever. He was just letting me know in that moment that he didn’t have hope."

  Investigative journalist Michael Ruppert found dead of apparent suicide

  https://kboo.fm/media/16200-investigative-journalist-michael-ruppert-found-dead-apparent-suicide

   

  Produced by:  KBOO Program::  Evening News

  Air date:  Tue, 04/15/2014 - 12:00am

  Investigative journalist Michael Ruppert dead of apparent suicide

  Long time investigative journalist and former Los Angeles police officer Michael Ruppert has died of an apparent suicide at the age of sixty three.

  Ruppert first gained notoriety in 1996 when he showed up at a contentious meeting with C-I-A director John Deutsch.
   

  The news had just broken about the C-I-A’s involvement in trafficking cocaine in the black community throughout the nineteen eighties.

  Michael Ruppert stood up during the question and answer session and said he had evidence of widespread involvement of the C-I-A in drug trafficking.

  Here’s a recording of that 1996 town hall meeting.

   

  The crack cocaine – C-I-A connection became the subject of multiple congressional investigations, and Ruppert’s allegations were proven correct.

  But no prosecutions were ever made of c-i-a officials involved in the scheme.

  Gary Webb, the San Jose Mercury News Reporter who first broke the story, was shunned by the media industry after the release of the story, and unable to get a job – but the facts of the story were never in question.

  Webb committed suicide in 2004.
   

  After the crack cocaine –C-I-A connection was exposed, Michael Ruppert became well known for his exposure of government conspiracies.

  He questioned the official account of what happened in the september eleventh attacks, and became very involved in challenging the global oil industry.

  
  His most recent book and movie were both called ‘Collapse’, documenting the impending collapse of modern capitalism because of the dependence on fossil fuels.  Here’s a clip of a 2010 interview with Michael Ruppert on KBOO, speaking with host Per Fagering.

   

  Ruppert was found dead in his home in northern California this past Sunday of an apparent suicide.

   

  Audio by Topic:

  • Activism
  • COVID19
  • Elections
  • KBOO Volunteer Updates
  • Movement for Racial Justice
  • Public Service Announcements
  • African American
  • Agriculture
  • Animals
  • Arts/Culture
  • Asian Pacific American
  • Civil Liberties

     
  • Civil Rights/Human Rights
  • Class
  • Community Building
  • Corporations
  • Disability
  • Drugs
  • Economy
  • Education
  • Elders
  • Energy/Natural Resources
  • Environment/Climate
  • Faith/Religion/Spirituality
  • Family
  • Fiction
  • Film
  • Food
  • Gender
  • Global Affairs
  • Government/Politics
  • Health
  • History
  • Housing/Homelessness
  • Humor
  • Immigration
  • Indigenous
  • Labor
  • Latino/Hispanic
  • Law/Court/Crime
  • Legislation
  • LGBTQ
  • Media
  • Military/Veterans
  • Music
  • Poetry
  • Police
  • Prison
  • Programmer Blogs
  • Race
  • Radio Theater
  • Recovery
  • Science/Technology
  • Sexuality
  • Social Services
  • Sports
  • Staff Blogs
  • Transportation

     
  • War/Peace
  • Women
  • Youth

   

  The CIA, the drug dealers, and the tragedy of Gary Webb

  In 1996, journalist Gary Webb began looking into links between Nicaragua's drug-running Contra rebels and the CIA. As a recent film shows, what he found killed him

  By Alex Hannaford   21 March 2015 

  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/11485819/kill-messenger-gary-webb-true-story.html

  

  Gary Webb knew his story would cause a stir...
  
  

   

  Gary Webb: In His Own Words (2002) | CIA Cocaine Dark Alliance

  Originally shared by Guerrilla News Network on archive.org. Creative Commons Gary Webb, the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who broke the story of the CIAs involvement in the importation of cocaine into the U.S., died December 10, 2004, reportedly from self-inflicted gunshots to the head. It was a tragic end to a brilliant, and tragic, career ...

  youtube.com   2018  

  https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee_e-26860_3pc-c&p=garry+webbb+death+notice&type=G210IE91105G91867M3d261317fcb0f5d80ae72a3d01f9c0a0#action=view&id=7&vid=39b8d316bc4cb2c12ae28a6c5c07fe70

   

  Gary Webb: The CIA, the Contras, and Crack Cocaine [1999]

  youtube.com    2017

  https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee_e-26860_3pc-c&p=garry+webbb+death+notice&type=G210IE91105G91867M3d261317fcb0f5d80ae72a3d01f9c0a0#action=view&id=11&vid=70f12ce4f1c30f2440b69e9b40737b1a

   

  Remembering Garry Webb's Sacrifice: A Tribute to a Hero

  Join us in commemorating the brave sacrifice of Garry Webb as we pay our respects. #blackoutstrike #usa #CapCut Mansa (@blackoutstrike). original sound - _.661mike. R.I.P Garry Webb. #blackoutstrike remembers your sacrifice. #usa #garrywebb #CapCut

  tiktok.com  2022    

  https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee_e-26860_3pc-c&p=garry+webbb+death+notice&type=G210IE91105G91867M3d261317fcb0f5d80ae72a3d01f9c0a0#action=view&id=8&vid=b8bf6e67927040774b5619aa8d917b13

   

  CIA-Contra Drug Scandal: Gary Webb & Maxine Waters (1996)

  CBS News: CIA-Contra Drug Scandal: Gary Webb & Maxine Waters Interview - Press Conference (1996) For Educational Purposes.

  youtube.com   2023 

   

  https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee_e-26860_3pc-c&p=garry+webbb+death+notice&type=G210IE91105G91867M3d261317fcb0f5d80ae72a3d01f9c0a0#action=view&id=9&vid=a37a2a5ad5b9f98b27ca326e79926b15

   

  Gary Webb in 1998: Dark Alliance, crack cocaine and the CIA.

  The New World Order

   

   https://rumble.com/v2k4nly-gary-webb-in-1998-dark-alliance-crack-cocaine-and-the-cia..html

   

   

   

  Born: Gary Stephen Webb August 31, 1955 Corona, California, U.S.

  Died: December 10, 2004 (aged 49) Carmichael, California, U.S.

  Cause of Death: Alleged Suicide But though to have been murdered by the CIA

  Education: Northern Kentucky University

  Occupation:  Investigative Journalist  1980–2004

  Notable Credits: Cleveland Plain Dealer and San Jose Mercury News

  Spouse:  Susan Bell (Marries 1979, Divorced 2000

   Children: Three

  Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist.

  He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a reputation for investigative writing. Hired by the San Jose Mercury News, Webb contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake.

  Webb is best known for his "Dark Alliance" series, which appeared in The Mercury News in 1996. The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua. It also stated that the Contras may have acted with the knowledge and protection of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The series provoked outrage, particularly in the Los Angeles African-American community, and led to four major investigations of its charges.

  The Los Angeles Times and other major papers published articles suggesting the "Dark Alliance" claims were overstated and, in November 1996, Jerome Ceppos, the executive editor at Mercury News, wrote about being "in the eye of the storm". In May 1997, after an internal review, Ceppos stated that, although the story was correct on many important points, there were shortcomings in the writing, editing, and production of the series. He wrote that the series likely "oversimplified" the crack epidemic in America and the supposed "critical role" the dealers written about in the series played in it. Webb disagreed with this conclusion.^[2][3]

  Webb resigned from The Mercury News in December 1997. He became an investigator for the California State Legislature, published a book based on the "Dark Alliance" series in 1998, and did freelance investigative reporting. He died by suicide on December 10, 2004.

  The "Dark Alliance" series remains controversial. Critics view the series' claims as inaccurate or overstated, while supporters point to the results of a later CIA investigation as vindicating the series. The follow-up reporting in the Los Angeles Times and other papers has been criticised for focusing on problems in the series rather than re-examining the earlier CIA-Contra claims.^[4]

  Early life and education

  Webb was born in Corona, California. His father was a Marine sergeant, and the family moved frequently, as his career took him to new assignments.^[5] When Webb's father retired from the Marines, the family settled in a suburb of Indianapolis, where Webb and his brother attended high school.^[6]

  After high school, Webb attended a community college in Indianapolis on a scholarship until his family moved to Cincinnati, when he then transferred to nearby Northern Kentucky University.^[7]

  Webb first began writing for the student newspaper at his college in Indianapolis.^[8] After transferring to Northern Kentucky, he entered its journalism program and wrote for the school paper, The Northerner. Although he attended Northern Kentucky for four years, he did not finish his degree. Instead, he found work in 1978 as a reporter at the Kentucky Post, a local paper affiliated with the larger Cincinnati Post.^[9] In 1979, Webb married Susan Bell; the couple went on to have three children.^[10]

  Career

  Webb's first major investigative work appeared in 1980, when The Cincinnati Post published "The Coal Connection," a seventeen-part series by Webb and Post reporter Thomas Scheffey.^[11] The series, which examined the murder of a coal company president with ties to organized crime, won the national Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for reporting from a small newspaper.^[12]

  In 1983, Webb moved to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he continued doing investigative work. A 1985 series, "Doctoring the Truth," uncovered problems in the State Medical Board^[13] and led to an Ohio House investigation which resulted in major revisions to the state Medical Practice Act.^[14] Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards.^[15] In 1984, Webb wrote a story titled “Driving Off With Profits” which claimed that the promoters of a race in Cleveland paid themselves nearly a million dollars from funds that should have gone to the city of Cleveland. The article resulted in a lawsuit against Webb's paper which the plaintiffs won. A jury awarded the plaintiffs over 13 million dollars and the case was later settled. In 1986, Webb wrote an article saying that the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, Frank D. Celebrezze accepted contributions from groups with organized crime connections. Celebrezze eventually sued the Plain Dealer and won an undisclosed out of court settlement.^[16]

  In 1988, Webb was recruited by the San Jose Mercury News, which was looking for an investigative reporter. He was assigned to its Sacramento bureau, where he was allowed to choose most of his own stories.^[17] As part of The Mercury News team that covered the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Webb and his colleague Pete Carey wrote a story examining the causes of the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct.^[18] The Mercury News's coverage of the earthquake won its staff the Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting in 1990.^[19]

  Dark Alliance series

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb

  Webb began researching "Dark Alliance" in July 1995.^[20] The series was published in The Mercury News in three parts, from Sunday, 18 August 1996 to 20 August 1996, with a first long article and one or two shorter articles appearing each day. It was also posted on The Mercury News website with additional information, including documents cited in the series and audio recordings of people quoted in the articles.^[21] The website artwork showed the silhouette of a man smoking a crack pipe superimposed over the CIA seal.^[22] This artwork proved controversial, and The Mercury News later removed it.^[23]

  The lede of the first article set out the series' basic claims: "For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." This drug ring "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles" and, as a result, "The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America."^[24]

  To show this, the series focused on three men: Freeway Ricky Ross, Oscar Danilo Blandón, and Norwin Meneses. Ross was a major drug dealer in Los Angeles. Blandón and Meneses were Nicaraguans who smuggled drugs into the U.S. and supplied dealers like Ross. After introducing the three, the first article discussed primarily Blandón and Meneses, and their relationship with the Contras and the CIA. Much of the article highlighted the failure of law enforcement agencies to successfully prosecute them and stated that this was largely due to their Contra and CIA connections.

  The second article described Blandón's background and how he began smuggling cocaine to support the Contras. Meneses, an established smuggler and a Contra supporter as well, taught Blandón how to smuggle and provided him with cocaine. When Ross discovered the market for crack in Los Angeles, he began buying cocaine from Blandón. Blandón and Meneses' high-volume supply of low-priced high-purity cocaine "allowed Ross to sew up the Los Angeles market and move on. In city after city, local dealers either bought from Ross or got left behind."^[25]

  The third article discussed the social effects of the crack trade, noting that it had a disparate effect on African-Americans. Asking why crack became so prevalent in the Black community of Los Angeles, the article credited Blandón, referring to him as "the Johnny Appleseed of crack in California."^[26] It also found disparities in the treatment of Black and White traffickers in the justice system, contrasting the treatment of Blandón and Ross after their arrests for drug trafficking. Because Blandón cooperated with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), he spent only 28 months in prison, became a paid government informant, and received permanent resident status. Ross was also released early after cooperating in an investigation of police corruption, but was rearrested a few months later in a sting operation arranged with Blandón's help. The article suggested this was in retribution for Ross' testimony in the corruption case.

  Response to the series

  After the publication of "Dark Alliance," The Mercury News continued to pursue the story, publishing follow-ups to the original series for the next three months.^[27] Other papers were slow to pick up the story, but African Americans quickly took note, especially in South Central Los Angeles where the dealers discussed in the series had been active. They were outraged by the series's charges.^[28]

  California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein also took note and wrote to CIA director John Deutch and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, asking for investigations into the articles' allegations.^[29] Maxine Waters, the representative for California's 35th district, which includes South Central Los Angeles, was also outraged by the articles and became one of Webb's strongest supporters.^[30] Waters urged the CIA, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate.

  By the end of September, three federal investigations had been announced: an investigation into the CIA allegations conducted by CIA Inspector-General Frederick Hitz, an investigation into the law enforcement allegations by Justice Department Inspector-General Michael Bromwich, and a second investigation into the CIA by the House Intelligence Committee.

  Webb's continuing reporting also triggered a fourth investigation. The first article in "Dark Alliance" that discussed the failure of law enforcement agencies to prosecute Blandón and Meneses had mentioned several cases. One of these was a 1986 raid on Blandón's drug organization by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which the article suggested had produced evidence of CIA ties to drug smuggling that was later suppressed. When Webb wrote another story on the raid evidence in early October, it received wide attention in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department began its own investigation into the "Dark Alliance" claims.^[31]

  Coverage in other papers

  After the announcement of federal investigations into the claims made in the series, other newspapers began investigating, and several papers published articles suggesting the series' claims were overstated.

  The first detailed article on the series's claims appeared in The Washington Post in early October.^[32] In their front-page article, reporters Roberto Suro and Walter Pincus wrote that "available information" did not support the series' claims and that "the rise of crack" was "a broad-based phenomenon" driven in numerous places by diverse players. The article discussed Webb's contacts with Ross's attorney and prosecution complaints of how Ross's defense had used Webb's series.^[33]

  The New York Times published two articles on the series in mid-October, both written by reporter Tim Golden. One article, dealing mostly with the response of the Los Angeles Black community to the stories, described the series' evidence as "thin".^[34] Golden also referred to the controversy over Webb's contacts with Ross's lawyer. The other article, citing interviews with current and former intelligence and law-enforcement officials, questioned the importance of the drug dealers discussed in the series, both in the crack cocaine trade and in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras' fight against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.^[35]

  The Los Angeles Times devoted the most space to the story, publishing a three-part series called "The Cocaine Trail." The series ran from October 20–22, 1996, and was researched by a team of 17 reporters. The three articles in the series were written by four reporters: Jesse Katz, Doyle McManus, John Mitchell and Sam Fulwood. The first article, by Katz, developed a different picture of the origins of the crack trade than "Dark Alliance" had described, with more gangs and smugglers participating.^[36] The second article, by McManus, was the longest of the series and dealt with the role of the Contras in the drug trade and CIA knowledge of drug activities by the Contras.^[37] McManus wrote that Blandón's and Meneses's contributions to Contra organizations were significantly less than the "millions" claimed in the series, and stated there was no evidence that the CIA had tried to protect them. The third article, by Mitchell and Fulwood, covered the effects of crack on African-Americans and how it affected their reaction to some of the rumors that arose after the "Dark Alliance" series.^[38]

  In 2013, Jesse Katz, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, said of the newspaper's coverage "As an L.A. Times reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News and kind of wonder[ed] how legit it was and kind of put it under a microscope, and we did it in a way that most of us who were involved in it, I think, would look back on that and say it was overkill. We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California." And "we really didn't do anything to advance his work or illuminate much to the story, and it was a really kind of tawdry exercise. ... And it ruined that reporter's career."^[39]

  The Mercury News's response

  Surprised by The Washington Post article, The Mercury News's executive editor Jerome Ceppos wrote to the Post defending the series.^[40] The Post refused to print his letter.^[41] Ceppos also asked reporter Pete Carey to write a critique of the series for publication in The Mercury News, and had the controversial website artwork changed.^[40] Carey's critique appeared in mid-October and went through several of the Post's criticisms of the series, including the importance of Blandón's drug ring in spreading crack, questions about Blandón's testimony in court, and how specific series allegations about CIA involvement had been, giving Webb's responses.^[42]

  When the Los Angeles Times series appeared, Ceppos again wrote to defend the original series. He also defended the series in interviews with all three papers.^[43] The extent of the criticism, however, convinced Ceppos that The Mercury News had to acknowledge to its readers that the series had been subjected to strong criticism.^[44] He did this in a column that appeared on November 3, defending the series, but also committing the paper to a review of major criticisms.^[45]

  Ceppos' column drew editorial responses from both The New York Times and The Washington Post. An editorial in the Times, while criticizing the series for making "unsubstantiated charges", conceded that it did find "drug-smuggling and dealing by Nicaraguans with at least tentative connections to the Contras" and called for further investigation.^[46]

  The Post's response came from the paper's ombudsman, Geneva Overholser.^[47] Overholser was harshly critical of the series, "reported by a seemingly hotheaded fellow willing to have people leap to conclusions his reporting couldn't back up." But while calling the flaws in the series "unforgivably careless journalism," Overholser also criticized the Post's refusal to print Ceppos' letter defending the series and sharply criticized the Post's coverage of the story. Calling the Post's overall focus "misplaced", Overholser expressed regret that the paper had not taken the opportunity to re-examine whether the CIA had overlooked Contra involvement in drug smuggling, "a subject The Post and the public had given short shrift."

  In contrast, the series received support from Steve Weinberg, a former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors. In a long review of the series' claims in The Baltimore Sun, Weinberg said "I think the critics have been far too harsh. Despite some hyped phrasing, "Dark Alliance" appears to be praiseworthy investigative reporting."^[48]

  After the series's publication, the Northern California branch of the national Society of Professional Journalists voted Webb "Journalist of the Year" for 1996.^[49] Despite the controversy that soon overtook the series, and the request of one board member to reconsider, the branch's board went ahead with the award in November.

  End of the series

  After Ceppos' column, The Mercury News spent the next several months conducting an internal review of the story. The review was conducted primarily by editor Jonathan Krim and reporter Pete Carey, who had written the paper's first published analysis of the series. Carey ultimately decided that there were problems with several parts of the story and wrote a draft article incorporating his findings.^[50]

  The paper also gave Webb permission to visit Central America again to get more evidence supporting the story.^[51] By January, Webb filed drafts of four more articles based on his trip, but his editors concluded that the new articles would not help shore up the original series's claims.^[52]

  The editors met with Webb several times in February to discuss the results of the paper's internal review and eventually decided to print neither Carey's draft article nor the articles Webb had filed.^[53] Webb was allowed to keep working on the story and made one more trip to Nicaragua in March. At the end of March, Ceppos told Webb that he was going to present the internal review findings in a column.^[52] After discussions with Webb, the column was published on May 11, 1997.^[54]

  In the column, Ceppos defended parts of the article, writing that the series had "solidly documented" that the drug ring described in the series did have connections with the Contras and did sell large quantities of cocaine in inner-city Los Angeles.

  But, Ceppos wrote, the series "did not meet our standards" in four areas. 1) It presented only one interpretation of conflicting evidence and in one case "did not include information that contradicted a central assertion of the series." 2) The series's estimate of the money involved was presented as fact instead of as an estimate. 3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. 4) The series "created impressions that were open to misinterpretation" through "imprecise language and graphics."^[3]

  Ceppos noted that Webb did not agree with these conclusions. He concluded, "How did these shortcomings occur? ... I believe that we fell short at every step of our process: in the writing, editing and production of our work. Several people here share that burden ... But ultimately, the responsibility was, and is, mine."

  Resignation

  Webb disagreed with Ceppos's column and, in interviews, was critical of the paper's handling of the story.^[55] Editors at the paper, on the other hand, felt that Webb had failed to tell them about information that contradicted the series's claims and that he "responded to concerns not with reasoned argument, but with accusations of us selling him out."^[56] In June 1997, The Mercury News told Webb it was transferring him from the paper's Sacramento bureau and offered him a choice between working at the main offices in San Jose under closer editorial supervision, or spot reporting in Cupertino; both locations were long commutes from his home in Sacramento.^[56] Webb eventually chose Cupertino, but was unhappy with the routine stories he was reporting there and the long commute.^[57]

  He resigned from the paper in November 1997.

  Federal investigation results

  The reports of the three federal investigations into the claims of "Dark Alliance" were not released until over a year after the series' publication. The reports rejected the series' main claims but were critical of some CIA and law enforcement actions.

  Justice Department report

  The Department of Justice Inspector-General's report was released on July 23, 1998. According to the report's "Epilogue," the report was completed in December 1997 but was not released because the DEA was still attempting to use Danilo Blandón in an investigation of international drug dealers and was concerned that the report would affect the viability of the investigation. When Attorney General Janet Reno determined that a delay was no longer necessary, the report was released unaltered.^[58]

  The report covered actions by Department of Justice employees in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the DEA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and U.S. Attorneys' Offices. It found that "the allegations contained in the original Mercury News articles were exaggerations of the actual facts." After examining the investigations and prosecutions of the main figures in the series, Blandón, Meneses and Ross, it concluded that "Although the investigations suffered from various problems of communication and coordination, their successes and failures were determined by the normal dynamics that affect the success of scores of investigations of high-level drug traffickers … These factors, rather than anything as spectacular as a systematic effort by the CIA or any other intelligence agency to protect the drug trafficking activities of Contra supporters, determined what occurred in the cases we examined."^[59]

  It also concluded that "the claims that Blandón and Meneses were responsible for introducing crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles and spreading the crack epidemic throughout the country were unsupported." Although it did find that both men were major drug dealers, "guilty of enriching themselves at the expense of countless drug users," and that they had contributed money to the Contra cause, "we did not find that their activities were responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic in South Central Los Angeles, much less the rise of crack throughout the nation, or that they were a significant source of support for the Contras."

  The report called several of its findings "troubling." It found that Blandón received permanent resident status "in a wholly improper manner" and that for some time the Department "was not certain whether to prosecute Meneses, or use him as a cooperating witness." Regarding issues raised in the series's shorter sidebar stories, it found that some in the government were "not eager" to have DEA agent Celerino Castillo "openly probe" activities at Ilopango Airport in El Salvador, where covert operations in support of the Contras were undertaken, and that the CIA had indeed intervened in a case involving smuggler Julio Zavala. It concluded, however, that these problems were "a far cry from the type of broad manipulation and corruption of the federal criminal justice system suggested by the original allegations."

  CIA report

  The CIA Inspector-General's report was issued in two volumes. The first one, "The California Story," was issued in a classified version on December 17, 1997, and in an unclassified version on January 29, 1998. The second volume, "The Contra Story," was issued in a classified version on April 27, 1998, and in an unclassified version on October 8, 1998.

  According to the report, the Inspector-General's office (OIG) examined all information the agency had "relating to CIA knowledge of drug trafficking allegations in regard to any person directly or indirectly involved in Contra activities." It also examined "how CIA handled and responded to information regarding allegations of drug trafficking" by people involved in Contra activities or support.^[60]

  The first volume of the report found no evidence that "any past or present employee of CIA, or anyone acting on behalf of CIA, had any direct or indirect dealing" with Ross, Blandón, or Meneses or that any of the other figures mentioned in "Dark Alliance" were ever employed by or associated with or contacted by the agency.^[61]

  It found nothing to support the claim that "the drug trafficking activities of Blandón and Meneses were motivated by any commitment to support the Contra cause or Contra activities undertaken by CIA." It noted that Blandón and Meneses claimed to have donated money to Contra sympathizers in Los Angeles, but found no information to confirm that it was true or that the agency had heard of it.^[61]

  It found no information to support the claim that the agency interfered with law enforcement actions against Ross, Blandón or Meneses.^[61]

  House committee report

  The House Intelligence Committee issued its report in February 2000.^[62] According to the report, it used Webb's reporting and writing as "key resources in focusing and refining the investigation." Like the CIA and Justice Department reports, it also found that neither Blandón, Meneses, nor Ross were associated with the CIA.^[63]

  Examining the support that Meneses and Blandón gave to the local Contra organization in San Francisco, the report concluded that it was "not sufficient to finance the organization" and did not consist of "millions," contrary to the claims of the "Dark Alliance" series. This support "was not directed by anyone within the Contra movement who had an association with the CIA," and the Committee found "no evidence that the CIA or the Intelligence Community was aware of these individuals’ support."^[63] It also found no evidence to support Webb's suggestion that several other drug smugglers mentioned in the series were associated with the CIA, or that anyone associated with the CIA or other intelligence agencies was involved in supplying or selling drugs in Los Angeles.^[63]

  Dark Alliance book

  Main article: Dark Alliance (book)

  After his resignation from The Mercury News, Webb expanded the "Dark Alliance" series into a book that responded to the criticism of the series and described his experiences writing the story and dealing with the controversy. It was published in 1998 as Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. A revised version was published in 1999 that incorporated Webb's response to the CIA and Justice Department reports. The February 2000 report by the House Intelligence Committee in turn considered the book's claims as well as the series' claims.^[64]

  Dark Alliance was a 1998 Pen/Newman's Own First Amendment Award Finalist, 1998 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, 1999 Bay Area Book Reviewers Award Finalist, and 1999 Firecracker Alternative Book Award-winner in the Politics category.^[65]

  Webb's later views

  In interviews after leaving The Mercury News, Webb described the 1997 controversy as media manipulation. "The government side of the story is coming through the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post", he stated. "They use the giant corporate press rather than saying anything directly. If you work through friendly reporters on major newspapers, it comes off as The New York Times saying it and not a mouthpiece of the CIA."^[66] Webb's longest response to the controversy was in "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On," a chapter he contributed to an anthology of press criticism:

  If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me ... And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress.^[67]

  Within "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On" essay Webb stated he believed there was an active "collusion between the press and the powerful" to report freely on inconsequential matters, "but when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff... We begin to see the limits of our freedoms". He also stated "the series presented dangerous ideas" by suggesting "crimes of state had been committed" (i.e. that the "federal government bore some responsibility, however indirect, for the flood of crack that coursed through black neighborhoods in the 1980s").^[67]

  Webb wrote later that he "never believed, and never wrote, that there was a grand CIA conspiracy behind the crack plague [...] The CIA couldn’t even mine a harbor without getting its trench coat stuck in its fly."^[68]

  Later career

  After leaving The Mercury News, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature. His assignments included investigating racial profiling by the California Highway Patrol and charges that the Oracle Corporation had received a no-bid contract award of $95 million in 2001.^[69] While working at the legislature, Webb continued to do freelance investigative reporting, sometimes based on his investigative work. For instance, he wrote an article regarding racial profiling in traffic stops which appeared in the April 1999 edition of Esquire magazine.^[70]

  Webb later moved to the State Assembly's Office of Majority Services. He was laid off in February 2004 when Assembly Member Fabian Núñez was elected Speaker.^[71]

  In August 2004, Webb joined the Sacramento News & Review, an alternative weekly newspaper, where he continued doing investigative writing. One of his last articles examined America's Army, a video game designed by the U.S. Army.^[72]

  Death

  Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. His death was ruled a suicide by the Sacramento County coroner's office. According to a description of Webb's injuries in the Los Angeles Times, he shot himself with a .38 revolver, which he placed near his right ear. The first shot went through his face, and exited at his left cheek. The coroner's staff concluded that the second shot hit an artery.^[73]

  After a local newspaper reported that Webb had died from multiple gunshots, the coroner's office received so many calls asking about Webb's death that Sacramento County Coroner Robert Lyons issued a statement confirming Webb had died by suicide.^[74] When asked by local reporters about the possibility of two gunshots being a suicide, Lyons replied: "It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots, but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility."^[74] There were widespread Internet rumors at the time that Webb had been killed as retribution for his "Dark Alliance" series, published eight years before.^[73]

  Webb's ex-wife, Susan Bell, told reporters that she believed Webb had died by suicide.^[74] "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide," she said. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. He had sold his house the week before his death because he was unable to afford the mortgage.^[74]

  After Webb's death, a collection of his stories from before and after the "Dark Alliance" series was published. The collection, The Killing Game: Selected Stories from the Author of Dark Alliance, was edited by Webb's son, Eric.^{[citation needed]}

  Legacy

  Views on Webb's journalism

  Views on Webb's journalism have been polarized. During and immediately after the controversy over "Dark Alliance," Webb's earlier writing was examined closely. A January 1997 article in American Journalism Review noted that a 1994 series Webb wrote had also been the subject of a Mercury News internal review that criticized Webb's reporting.^[75] A New York Times profile of Webb in June 1997 noted that two of his series written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer had resulted in lawsuits that the paper had settled.^[76]

  On the other hand, many of the writers and editors who worked with him have had high praise for him. Walter Bogdanich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who worked with Webb on The Plain Dealer, told American Journalism Review editor Susan Paterno "He was brilliant; he knew more about public records than anybody I've ever known."^[77] Mary Anne Sharkey, Webb's editor at The Plain Dealer, told writer Alicia Shepard in 1997 that Webb was known as 'the carpenter' "because he had everything nailed down. Gary's documentation is awesome and his work ethic is unbelievable."^[75] California Representative Maxine Waters, who was Webb's strongest supporter in Congress after the "Dark Alliance" controversy broke, issued a statement after Webb's death calling him "one of the finest investigative journalists that our country has ever seen."^[78]

  Jonathan Krim, The Mercury News editor who recruited Webb from The Plain Dealer and who supervised The Mercury News internal review of "Dark Alliance," told AJR editor Paterno that Webb "had all the qualities you'd want in a reporter: curious, dogged, a very high sense of wanting to expose wrongdoing and to hold private and public officials accountable." But as Krim told Webb's biographer Nick Schou, "The zeal that helped make Gary a relentless reporter was coupled with an inability to question himself, to entertain the notion that he might have erred."^[79] Scott Herhold, Webb's first editor at The Mercury-News, wrote in a 2013 column that "Gary Webb was a journalist of outsized talent. Few reporters I've known could match his nose for an investigative story. When he was engaged, he worked hard. He wrote well. But Webb had one huge blind side: He was fundamentally a man of passion, not of fairness. When facts didn't fit his theory, he tended to shove them to the sidelines."^[80]

  Views on "Dark Alliance" series

  The claim in the "Dark Alliance" series that the drug ring of Meneses-Blandón-Ross sparked the "crack explosion" has been criticized. Nick Schou, a journalist who wrote a 2006 biography of Webb, has claimed that this was the most important error in the series. Writing on the Los Angeles Times opinion page, Schou said, "Webb asserted, improbably, that the Blandón-Meneses-Ross drug ring opened 'the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles,' helping to 'spark a crack explosion in urban America.' The story offered no evidence to support such sweeping conclusions, a fatal error that would ultimately destroy Webb, if not his editors."^[81]

  While finding this part of the series unsupported, Schou said that some of the series's claims on CIA involvement are supported, writing that "The CIA conducted an internal investigation that acknowledged in March 1998 that the agency had covered up Contra drug trafficking for more than a decade." According to Schou, the investigation "confirmed key chunks of Webb's allegations." In a 2013 article in the LA Weekly, Schou wrote that Webb was "vindicated by a 1998 CIA Inspector General report, which revealed that for more than a decade the agency had covered up a business relationship it had with Nicaraguan drug dealers like Blandón."^[82]

  Writing after Webb's death in 2005, The Nation magazine's former Washington Editor David Corn said that Webb "was on to something but botched part of how he handled it." According to Corn, Webb "was wrong on some important details, but he was, in a way, closer to the truth than many of his establishment media critics who neglected the story of the real CIA-contra-cocaine connection." Like Schou, Corn cites the inspector general's report, which he says "acknowledged that the CIA had indeed worked with suspected drugrunners (sic) while supporting the contras."^[83]

  Not all writers agree that the inspector general's report supported the series's claims. Jeff Leen, assistant managing editor for investigative reporting at The Washington Post, wrote in a 2014 opinion page article that "the report found no CIA relationship with the drug ring Webb had written about." Leen, who covered the cocaine trade for the Miami Herald in the 1980s, rejects the claim that "because [the report] uncovered an agency mindset of indifference to drug-smuggling allegations", it vindicated Webb's reporting.^[68]

  Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at George Washington University's National Security Archives, also does not agree that the report vindicated the series. Noting that most of the activities discussed in the report had nothing to do with the people Webb reported on, Kornbluh told Schou, "I can't say it's a vindication. It was good that his story forced those reports to come out, but part of what made that happen was based on misleading information."^[84]

  Films

  Kill the Messenger (2014) is based on Webb's book Dark Alliance and Nick Schou's biography of Webb. Actor Jeremy Renner portrays Webb.^[85]

  TV

  Snowfall is an American crime drama television series set in Los Angeles in 1983. The series revolves around the first crack epidemic and its impact on the culture of the city. The series follows the stories of several characters whose lives are fated to intersect including CIA operative Teddy McDonald who helps to secure guns for the Contras.^{[citation needed]}

  See also

  • Allegations of CIA drug trafficking
  • CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking
  • Iran–Contra affair
  • John Barnett
•  

• Gary Webb, Dark Alliance

  In August 1996, The San Jose Mercury News published a report by Gary Webb about how the CIA worked with the Contras to bring crack to South Central LA.

  youtube.com  2002

https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee_e-26860_3pc-c&p=garry+webbb+death+notice&type=G210IE91105G91867M3d261317fcb0f5d80ae72a3d01f9c0a0#action=view&id=12&vid=07a27c8c5234ce6bf374c6e164bb57bd

Gary Webb: Subject of new 'Kill The Messenger' movie went to NKU, got his start at The Kentucky Post

Find out more information about the movie here: http://www.wcpo.com/lifestyle/gary-webb-subject-of-new-kill-the-messenger-movie-went-to-nku-got-his-start-at-the-kentucky-post

youtube.com 2014

https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee_e-26860_3pc-c&p=garry+webbb+death+notice&type=G210IE91105G91867M3d261317fcb0f5d80ae72a3d01f9c0a0#action=view&id=13&vid=831dd0c5d2b54fb93ac0077f0e1c1b35

Gary Webb's son on new movie "Kill the Messenger"

Gary Webb s son Ian talks about the film in which Jeremy Renner plays his late journalist father. Garry Webb wrote the 1996 Dark Alliance series for the San Jose Mercury News. The series connected aspects of the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles to Nicaraguan drug suppliers who, it maintained, had funneled drug proceeds to the CIA ...

youtube.com  2014 

https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee_e-26860_3pc-c&p=garry+webbb+death+notice&type=G210IE91105G91867M3d261317fcb0f5d80ae72a3d01f9c0a0#action=view&id=15&vid=45a8bb0f52a5eed8c8de94c7a3b84ff8