It's Saturday, April 13th, 2002 -- 3pm. We're here in Portland, OR with Mike Ruppert, a former LAPD narcotics investigator who discovered CIA trafficking in drugs in 1977 and is now one of the most prominent investigators of the September 11th attacks.

josie: I just want to verify it's ok to use this footage in whole or in part in audio, video or transcript form.

MIKE RUPPERT: IMC can do anything with this footage they want to, with my complete blessing.

josie: Critics ask: Why would the US government bomb its own people?

MIKE RUPPERT: Let's rephrase the question to say, "Why would the US government allow its own people to be bombed?" I never said that there were American pilots crashing the planes into the World Trade Center. I have said specifically and clearly that there's evidence that the US government knowingly allowed the attacks to happen as a pretext for generating a war that it could not have secured the blessings for under any other means. Historical precedents include Pearl Harbor. We know that the Roosevelt administration knew that the Japanese were going to attack and allowed it to happen. The FOIA'd documents released clearly indicate that. There are several good books. History Channel is running a story on it. We have Operation Northwoods' top secret, declassified documents from 1962 showing that the Joint Chiefs [of Staff] had a plan to attack American aircraft and facilities and blame it on Castro. So, this is real politics, the way wars have always been played throughout history. This is nothing new. Here, what was at stake was Central Asian oil and control of the drug trade.

josie: You mention the project Northwoods. I have seen people assert that was just a plan by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that was eventually vetoed by the government, and they use that to assert that is proof that the government would not allow such a thing to happen.

MIKE RUPPERT: The fact that it was drafted into a complete operational plan and in classified, top secret, is proof in and of itself that members of the government think that way.

josie: Do you see certain factions of the government having more power these days that would allow them to carry out such operations instead of having them circumvented by some sort of moral code?

MIKE RUPPERT: I think it's probably better to say that circumstances have changed.

josie: What circumstances?

MIKE RUPPERT: The imperative has changed. Castro was an inconvenient nuisance to conservative elements in the government in the '60's. He was not a threat to American national security. However, as we enter the 21st century, the access to vast untapped Central Asian oil fields, at a time when the world was on the edge of a monstrous global oil crisis, made it a completely different risk issue. There was much more at stake. It was essential the major oil companies like Exxon/Mobil, Chevron, Texaco, BP/Amoco to get access to that oil, without which the global economy might have collapsed. So the stakes were much higher.

josie: Besides Cynthia McKinney, have other legislators (like Barbara Lee) or officials come out and asked for a far-reaching investigation of possible gov't operative complicity in 911?

MIKE RUPPERT: None have officially or publicly yet. I can tell you that I've traveled to Washington, and I have 20 members of congress who subscribe to my newsletter. I was in Washington last December and met with several members of the House of Representatives who certainly didn't discount the possibility, who made private nods, saying that, yes, they believe that was the case. None have come out publicly yet and said so. But, they may.

josie: Do you criticize Congresswoman McKinney for not having supported Barbara Lee on 20th September last, when Bush got his blank check from Congress?

MIKE RUPPERT: No, I don't criticize Congresswoman McKinney at all. It was clear that Barbara Lee's vote was not going to make a difference in the outcome. Cynthia McKinney has constituents to answer to, and she knows that her voting or not voting with Barbara Lee, who took a very courageous stand, would not have made a difference in the outcome. When you're in politics, members of congress have to judge when and how to fight their own battles on their own time. Cynthia has just bitten off a huge chunk with this.

josie: How long do you believe Cynthia McKinney will survive politically?

MIKE RUPPERT: She's tougher than anybody thinks. This is not a bad issue for her at all. This is the old political axiom "Build it and they will come." There are many, many millions of people in this country who are totally suspicious about the government line about September the 11th. That she was the first to take a step, I think you will see a lot of support building for her, both at home in her own district but also around the country. Because she's right on the money.

josie: Is there any way besides letters and contributions we can help legislators and officials who do speak out against the official 911 story?

MIKE RUPPERT: I think we're seeing a huge groundswell. I think one of the things that I'm very emphatic about is that we have to try new things.

Approaching activism or progressive issues the same way that had been done throughout the '60's, '70's, '80's and '90's doesn't apply in the post-911 world. Yet there are a whole lot of new things that are available. We have Independent Media. We have the internet. We have my newsletter From the Wilderness. We have lots of alternative or independent media sources now. And, we encourage people to vote with their money to support IMC's, to support From the Wilderness because the stronger we get, the more readers we get, the more viewers we get, the more people we can reach to really tell accurate stories that build support for these members of congress. That's a very important thing to do.

josie: So, do you see the primary battle right now being getting the real story out?

MIKE RUPPERT: Yes, that's the only battle... that counts.

josie: Do you think legislators such as Cynthia McKinney and Senator Daschle are in real danger of treason charges?

MIKE RUPPERT: No. That would be too politically dangerous for the Bush administration. And, I need to say very clearly that I view the Bush administration now as being in deep trouble. I think that the Bush administration is extremely vulnerable both on corruption charges from Enron, some grand juries that I've been writing about in From the Wilderness and all kinds of events around September 11th... and campaign fundraising and so on and so forth. The Bush administration is much more vulnerable than people know that it is.

josie: Are there other grand juries on things besides Enron going on right now that you feel are making the Bush administration vulnerable?

MIKE RUPPERT: Yes. We have broken a major story in From the Wilderness. Seymour Hersch wrote a great piece in the New Yorker in July of 2000 called "The Price of Oil." Following up on that, I've done my own investigation. There are two sitting federal grand juries, one in New York and one in Washington, investigating, among others, Exxon/Mobil and BP/Amoco on charges of bribery to secure Kazakh oil from Kazakhstan... bribing government officials... and conducting an illegal oil swap through Iran in 1997. What's interesting is that both Exxon/Mobil and BP/Amoco were major campaign donors to John Ashcroft. Now, we know that John Ashcroft immediately recused himself from the Enron investigation. Yet I have sources who are telling me that John Ashcroft is interfering with both of these grand juries, when in fact Exxon/Mobil gave Ashcroft more money than Enron did, a total, potentially criminal, conflict of interest.

What's interesting is that both Exxon/Mobil and BP/Amoco got into Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force, the one about which we have all the secrecy and around which President Bush is refusing to release the records. He has now redacted so many pages you don't know what's in there. What we know now is that two targets of federal felony grand jury investigations got into the Vice President's task force, which is the same as having Manuel Noriega consult on the War on Drugs. What's worse is the Kazakh government was involved in all of these crimes, the bribery and the oil swap. During the period in time that this happened, Vice President Dick Cheney was sitting on the Kazakh government's Oil Advisory Board. The Bush administration is criminally exposed all over the map. This is what politicians are seeing in Washington, and I think Cynthia McKinney made a very wise move knowing how vulnerable the Bush administration really is.

josie: What do you think our chances are of opening up the records once more, ie: the Presidential records and all the records that have been sealed to try to conceal complicity and crimes that have occurred within the administration or among the people involved in the administration?

MIKE RUPPERT: That kind of depends on how far The People want to go, how much courage The People muster, how much voice we can muster to demand that. President Bush did break the law when he refused to release the presidential records from the Reagan presidency and from the Bush presidency; he is obligated by law to do so. So, he has released some but held back some, and that still breaks the law. That will be a tougher fight because it's not before the public's eyes right now. The Vice President's Energy Task Force, however, is the subject of a GAO [General Accounting Office] suit that may go to the Supreme Court. But, bear in mind Bush owns the Supreme Court. So, this will be primarily a political fight that will be fought on a partisan level. I'm not partisan one way or the other, but this is a fight that can really drag the Bush's out and make them look really bad.

josie: You mention the need for public outcry. What type of outcry would be effective? Letter writing? Campaign contributions?

MIKE RUPPERT: It's a combination of things. Again, when I was in Washington in December most members of congress were still not getting their mail. Yes, that's a good thing, but it's not something that should be totally relied upon. I think the outcries through independent media sources are very important, and we're at a point in time now where the crisis in this country is so serious that we need to start thinking about things like going back to the streets like we did in the '60's and '70's.

josie: How helpful are those questioning unbridled war-mongering and corporate influence while still accepting the official 911 story? For example, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas? ("Those who enjoyed seeing the U.S. hit are too numerous to count and impossible to identify. To target and wage war against all of them is like declaring war against an idea or sin.") Or Rep. Kucinich (D-Ohio), who vociferously questioned the Patriot Act?

MIKE RUPPERT: They're both great men. They're both subscribers to my newsletter, so I'm not going to say too much bad about them. Ron Paul has been very brave. Both of them I think have serious questions about the official government line, but they have to walk the line of answering to their constituents who may not be ready to digest those kinds of issues yet. I think they're fighting selective battles where they can. But, they shouldn't be discounted. They've both said some wonderful things since September 11th.

josie: How do the powers-that-be deal with your very vocal and public exposure of their lies? (in other words: Why are you still alive?)

MIKE RUPPERT: I don't worry about why I'm still alive. I mean, now I have 20 members of congress who subscribe to my newsletter. I'm read in 30 countries around the world and professors of 12 universities, so if I were to suddenly turn up dead that would be an affirmation that I was right. That would cause more trouble than it would solve. It's not something that I even think about. I will not die one minute before God, whoever she is, has decided. Aside from that, there is no more time for half measures. You've raised a point earlier that I wanted to touch on: This is not a time to be a so-called "safe progressive." This is not a time to pick up a primer and look and see what some progressive pundit decides your opinion should be. This is a time to examine the facts and see where they lead you on your own and to speak fearlessly based upon the facts, upon the evidence that has been unearthed around September the 11th and nothing else. No time for pedagogy or ideology at this time.

josie: Is it true your site has been repeatedly hacked recently?  

MIKE RUPPERT: Yes. We've had two major, very professional hackings of the From the Wilderness website within the last five weeks, one of which was so professional and so ruthless that they took out 150 websites just to get to mine. We have since moved to a very expensive, hi-tech site, and we doubt we're going to have any more problems. But, we've also had physical burglaries of our offices within the last six weeks, an outside storage area.

josie: Have you experienced any other recent harassment. Is there a pattern?

MIKE RUPPERT: That and some very nasty, unfounded emails and a campaign that is utterly meritless within the so-called left or progressive movement with some completely inaccurate statements.

josie: Who do you think is primarily behind the harassment?

MIKE RUPPERT: There's two ways to look at it, and I'm not sure I've reached a total conclusion. One is: We know from the COINTELPRO area and the great work done by the activists in the '60's and '70's to unearth the records of the COINTELPRO program, that the powers that be, the government, the military, the FBI, CIA have gone to the utmost lengths to infiltrate the so-called left or the progressive with people who become wolves in sheeps' clothing for the specific purpose of being able to contain or control debate. Certainly I think I've seen some of that here recently. On the other hand, there are those within -- and I totally don't understand this, but... -- there are some people who get caught up in petty or small turf interests or little kingdoms and fiefdoms who feel threatened.

That's not my issue at all. I don't come from that place. This is too critical a moment in human history. There's only one thing to do and that's to talk about the evidence, not about personalities. It's truly about principles more than it is about personalities. It should be.

josie: What is the source of your obvious passion in doing this work. What keeps you going?

MIKE RUPPERT: You would have to go into the long history of what happened to some 25 years ago in LAPD. The fact that the woman I was in love with was a CIA agent betrayed me. Of course I found out she was dealing drugs, and I wouldn't get involved. Again, this is all extremely well-documented in major papers. A police department that I believed in at the time betrayed me. But, after I made my stand based upon principle, I was forced into poverty. I was homeless for three years, arrested, driven into bankruptcy. That was a pattern of harassment that lasted for a long time. I couldn't get a job anywhere. This was seen to because I was a whistle-blower. Over the course of time, in the years since, I have seen too many brave men and women who were within, either in the military or law enforcement or various places, stand up and say the right thing at the right time and be utterly victimized for it. I reached a point across the Rubicon at some time, and it didn't matter to me anymore. There was nothing more they could do to hurt me. I didn't care. As I've seen the situation get progressively worse and worse, there has just been basically no other choice for me than to do this. I have kind of a Taoist or Buddhist viewpoint, that this is the path that I was supposed to walk, so I surrender to it.

josie: Do you think that's what it will take to get the American public to decide to stand up and start paying more attention and produce the outcry that will be necessary to expose the corruption... and how deeply it goes... and change it?

MIKE RUPPERT: It's a coin toss right now as to whether the American people will wake up. I am traveling all over the country now. I'm lecturing all over the country and soon Australia and Germany. I'll be traveling quite a bit. My experience is that the people are waking up much more than people really suspect that they are. I see the awakening taking place quickly. The question is one of commitment, and people realizing the real peril that we're in since September the 11th and the fact that we're now dealing with an open dictatorship, operating like a fascist dictatorship, that's operating like organized crime... and that it's a very serious state of affairs, much more so than the comfort that people had in the '60's, '70's and '80's as they protested their causes.

josie: Why do you think so many Americans, including progressives, are resistant to looking for the truth about September 11th?

MIKE RUPPERT: Denial is not a river in Egypt. The American system operates like a dysfunctional family, and I have seen this throughout the progressive movement too, with two symptoms.

A dysfunctional family, where the father is molesting the young daughter in the basement and everybody in the family keeps quiet because they're afraid of the shame. They're afraid of what will happen. They wind up scapegoating, and they don't want to look at the whole issue because it requires a level of inward searching, struggle, conflict... that people are not willing to accept.

The other is an issue of co-dependency, where I have seen within the progressive movement. It's an old joke about the wife showing up for treatment for co-dependency, and the therapist says, "How do you feel about coming to treatment." And, she says, "I don't know. I'll ask my husband." Within the progressive movement, I have seen some, not all... I have seen a great many clear-headed thinkers, very courageous reporters and activists, willing to look at the evidence ruthlessly... but then I've seen some who say, "Well, wait a minute. I have to see how I feel about 911. Let me read So-and-So and see what he says. And, that will be my politically correct position." That's not healthy to me at all.

josie: Has Noam Chomsky, to your knowledge, ever made any comment on you and/or what you are saying?

MIKE RUPPERT: I have heard people tell me that Noam Chomsky has said, first, that he's never heard of me, which I know is not true... because people have been carbon copying me emails that they have sent to him. And then I've heard someone tell me, and again this is hearsay... second hand, that he said there is no merit to my research. Well, he's ok to say that if he wants to, but he still has to look at the evidence which I have presented which is all documented. He has to deal with the facts. And, if the facts contradict a vested interest, then he needs to prove himself to be the great thinker that people believe him to be... and deal with the facts.

josie: I recently read David Corn's article and it seemed that his main point was that the US Government simply couldn't do such a thing. He spent a lot of time saying that, but he seemed to say prima facie that it simply wasn't true... so none of your facts were valid.

MIKE RUPPERT: Again, this is a classic case of attacking me, rather than looking at the evidence that I have presented which is documented. Anybody who has seen my Portland video tape knows that everything is sourced. I put the source information there. So, you need to deal with the facts. And, the issue in question was Delbert Mike Vreeland in Canada, a former US Naval Intelligence Officer who was jailed in Canada. He was recently released on bail and granted refugee status in Canada, fighting extradition to the US because he knows he's going to be killed here. Corn's attack had nothing to do with the fact that I had traveled twice to Toronto, gotten the court record, interviewed his attorneys, interviewed Vreeland, gone through the documentation, printed derogatory stuff about Vreeland -- but I relied on the court record. Corn's attack didn't even look at that.

Now, Corn is a case where I have to come back and say, and if I'm asked honestly, that I will say that I have an opinion that David Corn is one of the establishment CIA/FBI operatives who has long been planted within so-called progressive circles. The primary argument I use for that is that he was chosen by one of the most venal characters in American history, Ted Shackley – who ran the CIA station in Laos, who overthrew Salvador Allende, who was part of the anti-Castro operations -- to be his chosen biographer. Out of all the people available, David Corn was picked to be the biographer for the man, and Corn completely covered up Shackley's history of drug trafficking. So, again, we have had some very interesting developments as a result of that.

I spoke to Mike Vreeland in Canada. He was extremely offended by criticisms offered on my reporting, both by David Corn and Norman Solomon, which were, again, not based on anything to do with the research in the case, with the evidence. Mike Vreeland drafted a letter, and I assisted him, at his request, which was a direct and open challenge to both Corn and Solomon: "HERE I AM. Come interview me. Talk about the record in the case. Talk about the documentation. Don't attack Ruppert. Here I am. I'm not hiding. Ruppert did the work you should have done." Since that time, both David Corn and Norm Solomon have been forced to contact Vreeland directly and to start addressing the facts of the case.

Again, it's not about me or them. It's about the facts because that's what tells the American people what's really going on behind 911.

josie: Why is this subject heavily censored in the mainstream media? 

MIKE RUPPERT: This is a story which brings into question the legitimacy of the entire US government. The entire so-called dysfunctional family falls apart if you take the issues of 911, as it would have if we would have looked at honestly CIA drug trafficking in the '80's, Iran-Contra, savings and loan, Iraq-Gate, genocide in Rwanda,... John F. Kennedy, all of the issues that should have been dealt with fully years and years ago. Mainstream media has a vested interest in not telling the story because their economic survival depends upon operating in a system that people believe is legitimate... that's not.

josie: The following is a quote from someone on our newswire: "Whoever killed Kennedy was incredibly powerful, and has never been brought to justice. Whoever did it not only was able to kill the most protected man in the world, but has successfully prevented any investigation leading to the identity of the perpetrator(s). So they're still out there, still powerful." What are your thoughts on that? You obviously see connections between the assassination of JFK and the events of September 11…

MIKE RUPPERT: Well, in terms of a model... and one of the things that absolutely just makes me crack up laughing is this artificial framework that's been dumped by so-called progressive leaders onto this. They say, "Well, we talk about systematic wrongs, and Ruppert talks about a conspiracy between bad people." That's a totally artificial construct. It's something that's thrown in that has absolutely nothing to do with the recipe of discovering the truth. Bad systems can create bad people, and bad people can create bad systems. But, somewhere within the operation of a bad system that does bad things, like kill people and run death squads, torture people, deal drugs, etc., there are people who actually have to consciously do bad things. And, somewhere in that mix there has to come one question of accountability. Personal. Individual. Accountability. I don't believe John Kennedy was killed by one man. I believe it was a swarm. There were a multitude of interests that wanted him dead.

josie: Who?

MIKE RUPPERT: Certainly Wall Street had a massive interest. The CIA I think primarily facilitated that. Mark Lane did great work. Peter Dale Scott, one of my all-time heroes, did great work. But, the Mafia had an interest. Madame Trujillo from the Dominican Republic. Madame Nhu from Viet Nam [a member of the South Vietnamese Diem regime who it is said balked at the idea of JFK considering pulling US troops from Viet Nam]. There was a whole multitude of people that benefited from John F. Kennedy's death. There was nobody to put the veto on it. CIA played an operationally coordinating role in the assassination.

josie: What do you see as the primary purpose of a close examination of what really happened on 911? Is it enough to reveal that the government lied rather than having to reconcile the varying theories about what happened and who did it?

MIKE RUPPERT: This goes to the heart of what my editorial policy has been as the publisher of the newsletter. By training I am not an ideologue, so I'm not trying to report from any standpoint of having to justify any philosophical framework. I was a detective by training. I'm a journalist by training. The absolute standard that I have used for post-911 reporting is that I take official documented sources, whether it be the Congressional Record, mainstream reports that people tend to accept, ABC, BBC, Wall Street Journal, ad infinitum, New York Times... I take documented evidence only that mainstream people don't challenge, and I assemble that and analyze it in a way that makes it very clear that the government is lying.

In other words, very clear example, the government says we had no knowledge of the attacks. I have since proven that there was massive insider trading on the stock market involving "put options" and clearly established that the intelligence agencies monitor those trades, knew they were taking place... and we know in the case of United Airlines that the trades were placed through a firm that was once run by a man who is now the executive director of the Central Intelligence Agency. I have produced government records showing that the National Security Agency had broken all Osama Bin Laden's secure communications in January of 2001. I've also produced evidence from US attorneys in financial cases where they admit they got into the terrorists' banking system, so they knew how the money was flowing. Given all that uncontested evidence, you have to ask the government, "Why haven't you told us who placed the insider trades in advance of the attacks?" "What are the connections to the CIA?" "We know that you were watching them, so why didn't you know?" That's a very safe way to report what's going on. That's safe from any kind of speculation. I won't speculate, and that's why my reporting is bullet-proof.

On the other hand, that's why you see guys like Solomon and Corn refuse to debate me on the issue of my reporting. They can't touch the facts because they can't hurt those.

josie: A long-time activist attorney has said he believes that, due to the length and complexity of the Patriot Act, it's unlikely the Patriot Act was written after Sept 11th, at least not in its entirety. Have you heard anything about the Patriot Act being written before Sept 11th?

MIKE RUPPERT: I do know from sources on Capitol Hill who spoke to me off the record that, yes, portions of the act were definitely written before; portions having to do with the money laundering and some of the work done on civil liberties, in the cooperation between the intelligence community and local law enforcement... which, there had been a wall there before. I do know that Congressman Ron Paul was definitely on the record as saying that he was not allowed to read the act before he was asked to vote on it. Many members of congress, most of them never even saw the Patriot Act. Yet they were herded into the House chamber and compelled to vote, and basically told by party leadership how to vote.

josie: Do you see the desire to shape domestic policy (to control public opinion and pass things like the Patriot Act) as a significant incentive for the government to be complicit in an atrocity such as 911?

MIKE RUPPERT: There's no question. In this book which I reported on and brought a lot of people's attention to, The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski, written in 1997, he talks clearly about how, unless there is a directly perceived external threat, unless the public's sense of well-being is jeopardized, they will not be malleable, they will not be supportive of those programs, those activities which the government deems essential for the economic interests, ie: Wall Street and major banks and oil companies. So, yes. Does the government scare people to make them... yes, it's called Wag-the-Dog, and it happens all the time.

josie: How big of an impetus is controlling dissent within the US in comparison to oil and drugs?

MIKE RUPPERT: Are you asking are oil and drugs the prime reasons why they go to these lengths?

josie: I'm asking if going to these lengths is one of the primary motivators as well as drugs and oil.

MIKE RUPPERT: Well, there's an old saying that GOD equals Gold Oil and Drugs, or Guns Oil and Drugs. Those are the economic ingredients that provide economic control for this new globalized world that we live in, that's run basically by Wall Street and the major banks. It's very funny that the American people don't ask some obvious questions. In 1972, when Richard Nixon started the War on Drugs, the federal budget allocation was $101 million. As we entered fiscal 2001, the federal budget allocation was $20 billion for the War on Drugs. Yet there are more drugs in the country today. They're less expensive, and they're of better quality than they were in 1972.

josie: To me it seems as if the industry around the Drug War might be even more lucrative than the drugs, like the prison industry. I guess I'm thinking in terms as well, are we going to see third world type slave labor in the United States within my lifetime?

MIKE RUPPERT: Well, that was two questions. There's two money-making angles. The powers that be -- and my colleague Catherine Austin Fitts is an absolute genius with this; she has analyzed this; she's a former Wall Street investment banker, former Assistant Secretary of Housing -- There's the money that's spent on law enforcement, which creates its own industry, its own empires: the law enforcement, the people that sell the equipment and so on and so forth. Then there is the prison complex that rises up, and that's another $30 billion a year, to house. We know that we've put a million people in prison in the last ten years. 60% to 70% are non-violent drug offenders. Some of them are doing that kind of slave labor now.

What's even more insidious about that is that you have two corporations, Wackenhut and Corrections Corporation of America, that house some 30% to 40% of all inmates in this country. They are privately owned corporations that trade their stock on Wall Street based on how many human beings are in prison beds. Their net profits are derived by the number of human beings in prison. We know that, post September 11th -- again, this is a story that I broke in From the Wilderness following up on a New York Post story -- is that the stock of these two companies went up 200% in just three weeks after the attacks of September 11th.

We're working on a follow-up story now. I certainly think that if the criminal activities of the government become more egregious -- and I've taken the position that the Bush administration is out of the closet as a criminal regime -- they can't turn back; they have to now go forward to impose a full dictatorship... if they want to keep their hold on power -- that we will see the signs of domestic unrest. We will see people beginning to speak out. I think Cynthia McKinney was just the first foot through the door on the hill, certainly. Then we will see some very repressive moves by the government. And, I think we have to expect that.

josie: Soon after 9/11 there were two planes that went down: On October 4th, while flying from Israel to Novosibirsk, Siberia, commercial jetliner Air Sibir 1812 crashed. There are claims it was shot down "mistakenly" by an "errant" Ukrainian missile but that the Ukraine denied their missiles could reach the location at which the plane was shot down. What do you make of that denial?

MIKE RUPPERT: We've reported on that. We've done a story in From the Wilderness that... now, this number increases. The last time I checked, there may be a bigger number, but there are as many as 15 world class micro-biologists who have died under very mysterious circumstances since September the 11th, the major one starting on the 28th. Again, I'm using open press sources. There were as many as four... we don't know the exact number... of microbiologists. Novosibirsk is the scientific capital of Russia, and it's well-known as the center of scientific research. Air Sibir commercial airliner was shot down. We don't know how many were on it. But, those four were just four of as many as 15. We have Don Wiley of Harvard. That's a totally mysterious event: parks a car in the middle of a bridge, stands next to a rail, has a seizure at the moment that a semi truck comes along, bounces him up in the air and a gust of wind blows him off the edge of the bridge. That's the official story. We have guys beaten to death by baseball bats; the autopsies show no signs of trauma. All of them have in common, as many as 15 -- and this has been continuing at a very alarming rate -- research in DNA sequencing, virology, communicable diseases, germ warfare or treatment.

So there's something very suspicious going on. I've had one of my staff writers place 50 calls to the American Association of Microbiologists asking for comment, and they will not comment. When you have 15 world class microbiologists... this is a small community we're talking about. Something is clearly wrong here.

josie: Yes, I was going to ask what the normal death rate was for microbiologists.

MIKE RUPPERT: I don't think I have to have the information to answer about the normal death rate to tell you that what's going on here is not normal.

josie: In the document I read by you, there were five microbiologists on that plane?

MIKE RUPPERT: Somewhere between four or five. We don't know how many. That passenger list has never been released. There were reports from the region saying that as many as four microbiologists were on the Air Sibir flight. Two [more] were killed in a plane crash in Israel. We had Don Wiley. Vladimir Pasechnik In England who had defected from Russia. Benito Que in Miami. We had Schwartz in Virginia, who was hacked to death at his farmhouse. And then a guy named Nguyen In Australia, who had just perfected a new strain of mouse pox and small pox that was immune to small pox vaccines. He suffocated on some strange gas in his research chamber. Very bizarre events.

josie: Do you see these deaths as part of a cover-up or could they be the work of organizations trying to circumvent the ends of those behind the research? Could it be both?

MIKE RUPPERT: Who knows. These are great questions, all of which would require me to speculate to answer. All I know is that something is extremely suspicious, and the common thread is the DNA sequencing, the communicable disease research. There is some link that we have not yet identified that makes these people either a threat to whoever might be preparing to do a very serious germ warfare attack or might be potential detectives who could identify or who could produce a cure. We don't know yet. We do know that this research has progressed to the point where they can create gene-specific disease agents that will attack only people who have certain genes.

josie: On November 12th, American Airlines Flight 587, headed for Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic crashed in Queens, NY a neighborhood in which a lot of the WTC firefighters and rescue workers lived. It seemed awfully coincidental so soon after 9/11. I recall the story being that the tail fell off. Do you have any thoughts on that?

MIKE RUPPERT: I have lots of thoughts on that; lots of suspicions, lots of questions. Again, the position I have taken as a journalist is that... I have experience as a journalist. I wrote my first piece at the Los Angeles Times in 1985. So, these are what we call "journalistic suicide missions." You can have lots of suspicion. You can go in and find all kinds of anomalies, but you cannot produce a concrete answer. And you still wind up leaving people able to believe one side, the other, or nothing at all. So, for me it's not productive to go in there. Does that look really stupidly suspicious to me? Yeah. It really does. So does the Pentagon crash. I watched all the films. I have yet to see a 757 in any of the pictures, hitting the Pentagon. But, then I have to answer the question, "If that wasn't a 757, where did the airplane go?" This is stuff you have to be careful with as a journalist.

josie: There were reports of a shadow plane that was flying above the plane that flew into the Pentagon. Have you heard anything about that? 

MIKE RUPPERT: I've heard of that, but again I can't prove it. I can't nail it down. That's like questions "did someone place explosives in the buildings to make them collapse straight down... were the planes possibly remote controlled?" The answer is "could be... I don't know." I haven't taken a position. I can't prove it. What I can prove is that the government is lying. That's my job. The government is lying. THE GOVERNMENT IS LYING.

josie: There has been some discussion about whether the complete devastation of the WTC towers could have resulted from just the planes crashing into them. Many say bombs must have been planted to effect the sort of collapse we saw happen. Others say gravity would do the trick. Another point that has been made is that all the metal in the buildings was melted and that additional incendiary devices and fluids would have been necessary to accomplish that. Some assert jet fuel could easily accomplish the task. Based on your experience as a cop and someone who has had experience with covert operations, how would you respond to that?

MIKE RUPPERT: Again, that's one of those suicide missions as a journalist. I've seen compelling evidence that the jet fuel could have been super-heated in the flues of the central elevator shafts to melt. Again, I'm not a scientist. I don't know. That's possible. Although, on the other hand, thinking logically, as someone who has studied covert operations, the amount of explosives necessary to have achieved that kind of controlled demolition... to put those on many, many floors of the building would have required levels of secrecy and penetration... you would have risked compromising smuggling hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of plastic explosives, putting them in the right place. That to me is a very risky operation in a building that is always busy. So that's something that I have to stay away from because there's just no "there" there. There's no out; there's no way to come to a definitive conclusion absent somebody coming forth and saying "here's what happened, and here's what I did." Of course, we know the evidence has been destroyed pretty rapidly, and I know that New York City fire experts were very upset that all the evidence was destroyed at WTC so quickly, but I can't draw a conclusion on that question.

josie: What is PROMIS, and what does it have to do with the dead microbiologists?

MIKE RUPPERT: PROMIS has to do with more than just microbiologists. It was originally a program called Prosecutors' Management Information System. It was developed in the late '70's by Bill Hamilton at Inslaw, who I know. I've been to his offices. I've interviewed him many times. It was originally designed to be a software program that would take data from programs in any number of programming languages -- in those days it was COBOL and I don't know what else -- US Attorneys offices had 17 different systems, in like eight or nine different languages. PROMIS was originally designed to be a software that could be installed in all of those operations that would integrate the information from all these diverse languages and make it readable into one database. It was subsequently mated with artificial intelligence to begin to perform simple reasoning tasks. It was stolen in the early '80's by Ed Meese, Earl Brian, the Reagan administration, and, in intelligence agencies, several different strains, if you will, of PROMIS developed. One was developed by the Israeli's, one by CIA, etc. But, they were incorporated with a backdoor that allowed intelligence agencies to go into somebody's database, while they weren't aware of it, and extract data, manipulate data, to find out what everybody was doing.

PROMIS became very useful in that it could integrate, let's say in terrorist cases, if you had a bunch of terrorist suspects you could incorporate their telephone usage, their water usage, their power usage, their grocery shopping bills off their credit cards, and you would know, for example, that if the power at Terrorist Z's house was off for three days, and the power at Terrorist Y's house had doubled, that he doubled his grocery purchases, that maybe Terrorist Z had gone to visit Terrorist Y... and you wouldn't even need to conduct a surveillance. That's how powerful the software is. It's been applied and enhanced many times. It's been stolen and modified. I was visited by members of the RCMP national security staff in August of 2000, who were in the US. I was just one of people they came to visit, and I still have their cards. I pulled their cards out recently on a one-hour special in Canada, where I was debating the former Canadian Solicitor General, Ron Atkey on September the 11th. And I reached down and pulled out these two cards which say Canadian RCMP National Security Staff... there they are right there. And they admitted to me that Canada's RCMP version of PROMIS software, which they admit was used, among other things, to track stock trades in real time, but used for scientific research, had probably been compromised. They were uncertain as to who had compromised the software, and that was the investigation. Whether it was CIA or CSIS [Canadian Security and intelligence Service -- there are two intelligence services in Canada. CSIS and the RCMP National Security Section]... that's the other intelligence service in Canada.

And that software is everywhere. Israel has had a hand in it. We know, since September 11th, that Osama Bin Laden is reported to have the software. It was a great story that, actually, FOX News broke. I'm sure someone in the progressive movement will call me a right-wing because I quoted something from FOX News, but that's all right. It was a good story. I followed up and got admissions from the FBI who had denied for 18 years that they ever had the software. When I called them they said, "We stopped using it now." Which means that they had it. PROMIS is very powerful. It doesn't need to be applied necessarily to scientific ends. It's very widely used in the financial community worldwide. Picture PROMIS having the ability to integrate the data from a bank in Portland to a bank in Los Angeles to a bank in New York to Bank of America... wherever... so that you can use your ATM card to withdraw cash. PROMIS works the same way. Now, a bank has an incentive to buy the software because it will enable the bank to interface with all the other banks to get more transactions and more fees. So, when you sell it to the bank you don't tell them it has the back door in it. But then you get to read all the banking transactions. That's how the US intelligence community, the Department of Justice, FBI and CIA, tracks money movement all over the world. That's how they penetrate the financial terrorist network. PROMIS is extremely powerful.

josie: Has anyone claimed the $2.5 million made from the just-pre-911 put options on American and United?

MIKE RUPPERT: That was just one particular set of trades. To my knowledge, no. The US government has gone 100% stone-cold silent on all the insider trading around September the 11th. The last time I had somebody call the Securities and Exchange Commission -- these are the only people who can find out who made the trades; I can't -- trading records, brokers, stock trades: they're as protected as medical records -- so a journalist can't go find out who made a particular trade. It's against the law. The only people who are able to find out who purchased stock are the SEC, Department of Justice, US Treasury and Congress. And nobody's saying a word. The SEC has said "We will neither confirm nor deny the existence of any investigation." And yet I know because these records, the fact of the trades, was released through the Israeli Institute for Counter-terrorism, in Herzliyya Israel. That's how I broke the story. I got the records from them. Not saying who made the trades but that they were made. That's proof that the intelligence agencies track the stock trades. But the government can't go there because I've directly linked the trades to the CIA already.

josie: What do you think about stock trades being as private as medical records?

MIKE RUPPERT: That's just the law. I wouldn't necessarily want someone to know to whom I was writing checks. It's none of their damn business. There are also good arguments to prevent insider trading to find out who's making what purchases of stock. If anybody could find out, of course you would have everybody spying on everybody. Of course, the market's totally rigged now anyway. That's my belief. So, there's very good arguments for privacy there. However, the government has clearly failed, totally failed, in its responsibility -- and God bless Cynthia McKinney for speaking out about this -- to tell us who made those trades, because that's proof that somebody knew the attacks were coming.

josie: Have you heard of NESARA and the 29 pentagon traitors? (http: //portland.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=5397 ) 12-14-01 I received notice this morning that these FEW men who are trying to betray us are 29 officers in top positions at the Pentagon. 12-15-01 My top TRUE White Knight sources tell me they are ON MISSIONS to get rid of these traitors and to get our prosperity deliveries and NESARA doneIMMEDIATELY! 12-16-01 Friday, the 29 Pentagon officers got what they deserved for trying to stand in the way of our deliveries and NESARA. They were "totally eliminated" and the locations of their deaths were terrible sights to behold, I'm told.

MIKE RUPPERT: Bogus. It doesn't exist. It's fake. I started getting emails on that. I was in Washington and said, "Look there's no such thing as NESARA"... these "White Knight" idiots. Every bill... any time... this is a great piece of training for your listeners. There's also bill 602P about the internet email tax, which is total garbage. I've known that for years. Any time anybody in this country wants to know whether there is or is not a piece of legislation that's being discussed anywhere, go on the web: http://thomas.loc.gov. That is the master web clearing house for any piece of legislation from the moment in time when it's introduced as a bill by a member of the House or the Senate. It tracks it through committees. It tells you whether the bill is real or not, if it passed, who passed it, what the amendments were. That I use to check every rumor. There is no such thing as NESARA.

josie: What do you think is the most effective way to raise consciousness about what's behind the so-called "war on terrorism?"

MIKE RUPPERT: Aside from proving that the government is lying, which has been very effective for me actually... I prefer not to speak to the choir, although I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the choir and all of the incredible people all over the country who have supported this, some very dear friends who have risked a lot of criticism within the progressive movement, the left movement, or... I actually have people who are conservative who read my newsletter. But, my goal is to reach middle America, the unconvinced, and I do that by following my particular formula which is to demonstrate that the government is lying.

josie: What do you think of the direct democracy and representational reform movements that are gaining momentum? (i.e., Granny D.) Have you been approached by anyone trying to get you onside with direct democratic conceptions?

MIKE RUPPERT: I have been approached actually to endorse an amendment that's being proposed to the US Constitution. I find this stuff very, very interesting, very intriguing. I had to respond to say that I love the concept, but anything that tampers with the Constitution requires an enormous amount of study on my part. And, I would hate to quickly endorse something... because you don't tamper with the Constitution. Well, the Bush administration tampers with the Constitution all the time... I would not tamper with the Constitution lightly. So I have said I basically support the concept. I cannot come out and endorse because I cannot take the time now to research as thoroughly as I need to. I'm at a total triage. We're in a state of emergency here, so I'm doing the journalist/activist thing on a breaking news story basis.

josie: Any comments on Jim Moore's upcoming book "Big Oil, Big War?' 

MIKE RUPPERT: Haven't seen it. But, people have got to get something called the Hubbard Curve and the fact that we are nearing the end of the Age of Oil. World oil production either has or will soon peak on a bell curve never to be exceeded again, and the whole world is going to change. Oil is not just what fuels SUV's. It's 90% of all plastics. It's also the fertilizers and pesticides that allow food production that support six billion people that will be 11 billion people soon, as oil production is going to decrease. We are on the edge of a major world event in human history and oil.

josie: Do you have any idea of how that is going to affect us? Do you see a second American Revolution or anything of that sort on the horizon? 

MIKE RUPPERT: No, this is what I see the Bush administration doing: . This war is presented to us as a war that will not end in our lifetime. Period. Why? "Osama Bin Laden is no longer important" says George Bush. Wait a minute. We thought that was the whole reason. Yet what we're seeing now is a series of sequential moves. We have seen first in Afghanistan to secure the Unocal pipelines and the gas pipelines. We see Iraq is heavily on the plate, and the Bush administration is doing everything to maneuver the world to supporting that. We know that Columbia is next, and I've been writing about Columbia for two years. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela was just overthrown. Hugo Chavez denied US military overflight across Venezuela for Plan Colombia. Now that there's a new government, US military planes can fly directly over Venezuela from Puerto Rico to southern Colombia as we will soon begin the assault on the FARC guerrillas who happen to occupy lands that are rich in oil reserves. 

This is a sequential war to secure the last remaining oil reserves. The strategy of the United States government is to use the US reserves last. We will take them from the rest of the world first. We'll drill in ANWAR last -- the Alaskan National Wildlife and Animal Refuge. We'll use the last remaining US oil reserves only after we have controlled the last remaining oil reserves around the planet. And that's the game that's being played now, to control what happens as the world moves out of the Age of Oil. Parts of the world are going to be burning candles in 15 years because there is no electricity. Remember most of the electricity comes from natural gas not from dams.

josie: Do you believe they have a plan for after the oil is completely gone? 

MIKE RUPPERT: That may tie in to the microbiologist story. I'm not prepared to take the full leap yet, but we are exploring. I have an excellent writer at From the Wilderness, Dale Allen Pfeifer, who was a geologist, a scientist. He's written nine books and some novels as well... that indicates the possibility that the lunatics have decided the problem is not that there's too little oil; the problem is there are too many people. This may be the motivation for the creation of these horrible biowarfare agents and the deaths of these microbiologists. 

josie: What do you say to the leftist argument that focusing on this issue will only further divide people -- or that "no one will ever believe it, so why talk about it?"

MIKE RUPPERT: I say those are the same people who would live in a family where the father is raping the young daughter, and they try to cover up what daddy's doing just so the family looks good.

josie: Are you a government plant? How do we know?

MIKE RUPPERT: A government plant. You mean like a rhododendrum or a bird of paradise? A government plant. Look: there's a great test that I use. Metaphorically, I can show you the scars on my back. Go on my website. You can read front page Herald Examiner stories -- it's a dead paper from Los Angeles -- from 1981 showing that then I had been homeless for two and a half years. I had been shot at. I had been bankrupt. The FBI was calling me crazy. The LAPD was calling me crazy. I have a paper trail going back 20-some years. There are people who know me who saw me homeless, carless, jobless, bankrupt. Arrested for selling liquor to a minor when the only job I could get was at a 7-11 store, and I'm an honors graduate from UCLA. That's the kind of oppression I went through. You judge people by the scars on their back. You say "show me the wounds." It's like Doubting Thomas with Christ. If you're a Christian, remember when he said, "Show me. I want to see the hole." This is the way you judge who the government plants are, one of them, and who they are not. The other way is "by their fruits you shall know them." What have they accomplished? How have they put the government on the spot. What kind of changes have they brought about? So, the answer is "no," but you don't have to believe me. You can go to my website and see the documentation that's been there.

josie: How do you know we're not a government plant?

MIKE RUPPERT: I don't care.

josie: A lot of people would love to make a difference, but don't know quite what to do. What are some methods to best get the word out... to make a difference?

MIKE RUPPERT: Most progressives, in my opinion -- and I have a lot of respect for them and don't want to lump them... because we're seeing a clear split amongst progressives .. from those who are behaving healthily and those who are not... so I don't want to categorize them. But, my belief is that most people would willingly take a bullet and say, "I'll die like somebody in Reds or a big drama," but they won't risk criticism. That's kind of psychologically dumb to me. You've got to be able to risk criticism. You've got to go out and irritate people. You've got to get out and talk to the people that don't want to hear.

You've got to keep putting THE FACTS, -- not "Mike Ruppert says"... I'm irrelevant... not Noam Chomsky, not Norm Solomon, not... I love Howard Zinn. He's great... but don't put the names out there. Put the FACTS out there and keep sticking them in peoples' face.

The other answer is VOTE WITH YOUR MONEY. Stop giving money to Time Warner, AOL, CNN, NBC, the people that lie to you. Give it to Indymedia. Give it to From the Wilderness. Give it to Michelle Chossudovsky, who has a great website in Canada. Give it to Jared Israel. Give it to TruthOut. Give it to the brave activists who are still struggling to liberate the Pacifica Radio Network. That struggle is far from over. There are still people trying to free Pacifica radio from the grips of people who I believe, in some cases, are government operators.

josie: Thank you Mike Ruppert, an inspiration to anyone who even ponders getting off their ass to make a difference.