The unbelievable life and death of Michael C. Ruppert

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.

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.

"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."

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 OBESSED OVER QUESTIONABLE GOV 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.... MORE AT THE LINK