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.
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.
Ruppert was the subject of the 2009 documentary film Collapse, which is based on his book A Presidential Energy Policy. The film 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.
In 2014, Vice featured Ruppert in a 6-part series titled Apocalypse, Man. A tribute album, Beyond the Rubicon, was released that year by the band New White Trash, of which he had been a member.
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. 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.
The family moved fourteen times, living in seven different states, eventually settling in Los Angeles where Ruppert attended Venice High School, graduating in 1969. He then attended UCLA, earning a B.A. in Political Science in 1973. 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.
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.
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.
He went on to become an investigative journalist and established the publication From The Wilderness, a watchdog publication that exposed governmental corruption, including his experience with CIA drug dealing activities.
Ruppert is the author of Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, published in September 2004. Crossing The Rubicon 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.
Ruppert correctly predicted the 2008 financial crisis three years early.
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. 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. She said that Ruppert had fired her after she refused his sexual advances. Ruppert denied that he had sexually harassed her, 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." In 2009, Ruppert was ordered to pay a $125,000 fine by the Oregon labor board in the case.
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. After shutting down, From the Wilderness was sued by their landlord for unpaid rent owed on their Ashland office space. 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.
Collapse and the Collapse Network
Ruppert and his theories on peak oil were the subject of the 2009 documentary film Collapse, which was based on his book A Presidential Energy Policy and received The New York Times "critics pick". The book, Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World was released in December 2009.