Michael Ruppert says the United States allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen because of drugs, oil and money, but he thinks there’s something students can do about it.
Ruppert, a former Los Angeles police department narcotics officer who says the CIA tried to recruit him twice, is now a fringe journalist and a man many label a “conspiracy theorist.”
He brought his controversial ideas about the World Trade Center attacks and the war in Afghanistan to the University of Toronto community this past weekend. Ruppert spoke in front of a gathering of 150 and outlined why he feels global circles of power are growing smaller and how important students are in speaking out against globalization.
“The attack on the World Trade Center was perpetrated, facilitated and criminally abetted by the United States government,” says Ruppert. “They deliberately ignored specific warnings from the Israeli government that something was going to happen.”
Ruppert says the U.S. allowed the attacks to happen because of its interest in oil in the Middle East, in particular large investments American companies have in neighbouring Uzbekistan, and because they opposed the Taliban’s rule. He says the Taliban upset American officials when they burned their bumper opium crop last year. The attack pushed public support to a level that allowed the U.S. to move in and take over the region.
Ruppert says that burning the opium was a huge blow to the already faltering U.S. economy, estimating that it ripped millions of dollars of drug money out the system, money the U.S. needed in order to stay out of recession. Ruppert says now that the U.S. has brought back the Afghani warlords, opium production will begin again and there will be a large influx of heroin, the refined drug made from opium, on the streets in North America.
“Mark my words,” says Ruppert. “We’re going to see an explosion of heroin use and deaths this summer.”
Ruppert, a self-proclaimed whistle-blower, says he started down the path he now follows when he discovered, as an LAPD narcotics officer, that the CIA was shipping drugs into the U.S. He says when he tried to alert his superiors he was drummed out of the force.
He now works on his newsletter, From the Wilderness, and does speaking tours. He finds students generally are more skeptical and therefore accepting of his message.
“This generation grew up not believing,” says Ruppert. “The older generation must overcome their beliefs.”
Terry Burrows, Ruppert’s volunteer press liaison, was impressed with Ruppert’s honesty and willingness to back up his claims. Ruppert even goes as far as to offer any person who can prove details of his hypotheses wrong $1,000. Burrows volunteered to help Ruppert on his stop in Toronto, feeling it was a way to help his country.
“I’m just a concerned Canadian citizen jumping in to help out during a crisis of democracy,” says Burrows. Ruppert spoke at U of T’s medical sciences building on January 17 and 19. After Saturday’s lecture, Lysander Zimmerman, a third year music student at McMaster, said, “Just like he said, no one is really addressing these issues. Not even Noam Chomsky. They have people on the mindset that everything the U.S. is doing is retaliatory to September 11th. Anything else is left out completely.”
—With files from Kerry-Ann Taylor
