Carolyn Baker: Mike, I want to thank you for taking time out of your incredibly busy schedule to answer these questions for Vermont Commons. Many of our readers are familiar with you and read From The Wilderness during the years it was being published from 1998-2006.

I’m sure that everyone familiar with your work is thrilled that you are returning to public life, especially with the publication of A Presidential Energy Policy, now available at Amazon, and a forthcoming movie, entitled Collapse. You have some very impressive reviews of the book, which can be read at the “From The Wilderness” site, and soon the movie will be released.   

Most of our readers know that you are a former Los Angeles Police Department narcotics investigator and were approached several times by the Central Intelligence Agency to collude in their operations to traffic and launder illegal drugs within the U.S. We also know that your harrowing experiences with all of this compelled you to begin speaking out and publishing FTW.   

author and activist Michael Ruppert's new book.

My first question for you is this: What are three or four of the most important things you’ve learned since you began your public work in 1998?

Michael Ruppert: That there is a God and that God knows who I am; that the “love of money is the root of all evil”; and that until you change the way money works, you change nothing.

CB: I recall that back in 2001-2002, you became interested in Peak Oil and began writing and speaking about it. The End of Suburbia had some very significant footage of you on the topic which, having watched so many times, I can almost recite from memory. I’m curious though, what initially drew you to researching Peak Oil?

MCR: It was just after 9/11 when the whole world was turning inside out. I was contacted by a geologist named Dale Allen Pfeiffer, a truly brilliant guy, who sent me a very well-organized draft of a story about Peak Oil and what it meant. This was just maybe ten days after 9/11 when I had already figured out two things. First I knew that the government’s account of events on 9/11 was absolutely not-credible. The second was that 9/11 was an epochal event in human history. When I read what Dale sent me it was just so incredibly well-documented and… logical. Both Peak Oil and 9/11 were epochal events and I intuitively understood that they were somehow connected. It took me roughly two and a half years to understand and prove how they were connected. The rest is a matter of very large record.

CB: Soon after 9/11, you began working on your first book, Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of The American Empire at The End of The Age of Oil. I must tell our readers that Rubicon is absolutely essential reading for understanding the decline of Western civilization. Trying to understand collapse without having read it is like trying to grasp astronomy without understanding the Copernican revolution. In Rubicon you stated that the events of 9/11 may well affect the world for the next 500 years. Many people do not grasp the full significance of the role of fossil fuel energy in the orchestration and cover up of 9/11. Can you summarize for our readers how you connect those dots?

MCR: It’s so easy in hindsight. Developments right after 9/11, especially vis-à-vis Iraq, pointed directly at the connection. Cheney was torturing people all over the world – in part to “extract” information that could be used to justify the invasion. The USA PATRIOT Act was passed. Paul Wellstone was murdered. I started digging deeper into Peak Oil and discovered great souls like Colin Campbell, Kjell Aleklett, and Jean La Herrerre. I don’t think I met Rich Heinberg and Julian Darley until late 2002 or early 2003. Some big dots fell into place quickly. Iraq had the second-largest oil reserves on the planet (maybe 90-100 Mb of recoverable oil) and they had not been over-produced. In fact, due to the sanctions following Gulf War I, they had in effect been sequestered from a time when oil was around $20 a barrel until it was (then) approaching $50.   

At FTW we started mapping out troop deployments, and not only was it clear that we (the “coalition”) were literally surrounding the Persian Gulf where 60 percent of the known oil on the planet is, we were going to invade. That’s about the time I met the brilliant Stan Goff (U.S. Army Special Forces, Ret.), who was this brilliant, passionate, pissed-off soldier/writer. It took about six to eight weeks after 9/11 to get that it was all about oil. It took maybe another two years to really build a readable “map” of how it had been played.

CB: In 2006 the offices of From The Wilderness in Ashland, Oregon were vandalized, and you left the country for a while. At the time, you and FTW’s military affairs editor, Stan Goff, were working on a series about the murder of Pat Tillman and the subsequent cover-up called The Tillman Files, which I highly recommend to our readers. You’ve stated that that series could have been the catalyst for the attacks on FTW because of its far-reaching impact. Can you say more about the impact of that series in the media and in the higher echelons of the U.S. government?

MCR: I’m glad you asked this. As it turns out there was another great motive for the smashing of all seven of FTW’s computers followed by a really stupid attempt in the press and elsewhere to imply that I had done it myself. On June 14t, 2006, I wrote and published FTW’s fourth and last-ever Economic Alert, called “The Abyss Awaits” (http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/061406_abyss_awaits.shtml).    

In that alert I reported that the Bush Administration had just issued orders allowing an unknown number of unnamed major companies to stop reporting their financials to the SEC – on grounds of national security! By that time I and most of us were well aware that collapse was not only inevitable, but likely going to be preceded by a complete collapse of the economy… the ultimate demand destruction. I gave my last and final warning to FTW readers to get their “s---“ together and stated clearly that the Bush Administration intended to loot the U.S. economy. I could not have been more clear, and I was right. Eleven days after publishing this direct attack on Bush-Cheney our offices were burglarized and all of our computers smashed beyond recognition.   

At the same time we had just run either Part IV or Part V of the seven-part Tillman series. Stan Goff, who wrote it, did just a brilliant job and had just directly implicated Donald Rumsfeld in felonious criminal activity connected with the cover-up. At the time you were helping me edit that series, and you actually edited the last two (I believe) parts and made sure they got published after I fled to Venezuela in fear for my life.   

What we know and have a record of since then is that the Ashland Police Department has admitted to me—in front of two separate witnesses, and on two separate occasions – that the original police report submitted by a since-fired officer was . . . incredibly flawed, unprofessional and biased. (I’m paraphrasing.) Apparently they couldn’t even find a supervisor to approve it. Ashland police apologized profusely to me when I showed up in the summer of 2007. They apologized to me first in front of my lawyer Ray Kohlman and on the second trip in front of the wonderful Jenna Orkin, who accompanied me.   

As far as the Tillman investigation goes, FTW’s series was the basis of every handout given to Congress, especially Henry Waxman’s Government Oversight Committee. It was Waxman’s hearings on Tillman that resulted in the disciplining of nine general officers and – it’s pretty clear – the sudden resignation of Donald Rumsfeld.   

As you were working on Tillman as managing editor in my stead, you remember all this, especially how I spent most of what little money I had left subsidizing Stan Goff’s direct aid to the Tillman family throughout that battle.   

Now that General Stanley McChrystal is back in the news as the new NATO commander in Afghanistan, Pat Tillman may yet again pursue his justice from the grave. I just read that Dannie Tillman, Pat’s mother, is furious… and with good reason. It was McChrystal who dishonorably awarded Pat Tillman a bogus Silver Star in one of the many stages of the cover-up.

CB: You’ve written about the impact that the attacks on FTW had on you personally—physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and the health crises that ensued. Now here you are three years later publishing a book and about to release a movie. We’ve all had crises in our lives, some seeming absolutely insurmountable, and for those who survive such crises it often appears from hindsight that they were enormously teachable moments in our lives. Tell us a bit about what you learned during these past three years that has facilitated your coming back to life, so to speak, and doing so in a manner that may make your work more impactful than ever.

MCR: What happened to me between July 2006 and the middle of 2008 was the most painful death-rebirth initiation of my life. There literally are not words to describe such transitions, and maybe that’s the way it should be. It was truly a completely painful “death” that was followed by a slow, gentle, and profound healing that has changed my consciousness.   

For the first time in the last thirty years I had the opportunity to let my life catch up with me. The timing was spiritually perfect because I had been fighting so hard, for so long, to warn people about collapse and it had finally arrived. It may sound strange, but I have become able to embrace collapse like an old friend. There is no longer any sense of urgency to warn. It’s here.   

That was exactly the place I needed to be in to write A Presidential Energy Policy.

CB: Readers of Vermont Commons are by and large residents of one of the smallest states in the nation, with only 630,000 people, vast stretches of arable land, enormous quantities of water, a population containing a host of independent thinkers – and a significant portion of that population has given considerable thought to seceding from the United States. Even for those who don’t embrace secession, there is a remarkable consciousness in Vermont regarding local economies and self-sufficiency independent of large, centralized systems. What are a few of the most important things you’d like to share regarding localization in the areas of energy, food security, community, civil liberties, or any other topics relating to localization which you think are crucial?

MCR: That’s easy. The last person you want telling someone what to do in Vermont is to ask someone whose home is Venice, California. I have twenty-five points in the book. Almost every one is applicable in one way or another at a local level. You people up in Vermont are smart and have your heads extracted. Take my book, read it, and do what fits your needs. I wrote it that way so that people in Atlanta, Denver, Phoenix or Portland could do the same. A Presidential Energy Policy is the best and most direct answer to this question.

CB: Over the years you have made some amazing predictions which have come to pass with stunning regularity. Sometimes you’ve been wrong, and when you were, you said so. Based on your research as well as that of other researchers I know and respect, I’ve made some projections as well, and as you well know, we have been laughed at many more times than we have been taken seriously. Today, however, we are both seeing the preponderance of our forecasting unfolding before our eyes in ways that – I speak for myself here – are almost mind-boggling. Perhaps what is so stunning is not that they are happening, but the speed with which the unraveling is occurring.   

It seems like ever since you began researching Peak Oil, you’ve been talking about the collapse of civilization. Last year Richard Heinberg wrote an article entitled “So How Do You Like Collapse So Far?” So I want to ask you what you make of the events of 2008, and those in current times? How do you see the next five years unfolding? What are the most important pieces of advice you can give, not only to Vermonters, but to any awake person living in the United States?

MCR: Five years? My map doesn’t go that far. At some point soon chaos will be a larger player at our table. We may not recognize the world in six months or a year even. I am fairly certain that civilization goes off the cliff either this summer or next. The global decline rate is 9.1 percent and was confirmed in an IEA report leaked to the Financial Times last winter. Any kind of ersatz recovery will lead to another dramatic price spike which will pretty much shut everything down. It’s absolutely clear now.   

We will see FDIC insolvency, Treasury default, possibly a Federal Reserve bankruptcy, the dumping of the dollar, and hyperinflation within that time. We’ll see maybe 25 percent to 30 percent unemployment, and after that I don’t think statistics will matter. We’ll see massive starvation begin and maybe a large die-off due to a pandemic of either natural or manmade origins. I don’t need to continue here.   

The thing to do about collapse is not to deny it or try to prevent it. Both efforts are futile. The thing to do is to go inside your heart and soul and embrace it and seek to help those willing to learn how to survive it. It wrote the book, and in a sense have lived my life, for the sake of those under 30. I never had kids; I just adopted a whole generation. What we’re fighting for is what’s going to be left to them, because it is they who will decide what parts of the human character survive and what kind of world might come from that.

Michael C. Ruppert founded From the Wilderness Publications, and is the
author of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at
the End of the Age of Oil and a brand-new book called A Presidential
Energy Policy. The following interview was conducted by Carolyn Baker,
a member of the Vermont Commons Editorial Board and manager of her
website, Speaking Truth to Power. She is a former writer for From the
Wilderness and served as its managing editor in 2006.