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Heroin
is "Good for Your Health": Occupation Forces support Afghan Narcotics Trade
(May 10, 2007)
"The occupation forces in Afghanistan are supporting the drug trade, which
brings between 120 and 194 billion dollars of revenues to organized crime, intelligence
agencies and Western financial institutions."
U.S.,
allies seen as losing drug war (May 7, 2007)
"The United States and its Latin American allies are losing a major battle
in the war on drugs, according to indicators that show cocaine prices dipped
for most of 2006 and U.S. users were getting more bang for their buck."
101-year-old
Zambian man nabbed over cannabis cultivation, trafficking (May 3, 2007)
"DEC spokesperson Rosten Chulu confirmed the arrest of Timothy Chilekwa,
a peasant farmer of Namembo village in Southern province who was born in 1906.
Chulu said the old man was nabbed for alleged unlawful cultivation of cannabis
weighing 1.2 tons. He was also found trafficking two sacks of cannabis weighing
6. 95 kg, Chulu said. The spokesperson said the 101-year-old would appear in
court soon."
Was
Timothy Leary Right? (May 3, 2007)
"Are psychedelics good for you? It's such a hippie relic of a question
that it's almost embarrassing to ask. But a quiet psychedelic renaissance is
beginning at the highest levels of American science, including the National
Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Harvard, which is conducting what is thought
to be its first research into therapeutic uses of psychedelics (in this case,
Ecstasy) since the university fired Timothy Leary in 1963. But should we be
prying open the doors of perception again? Wasn't the whole thing a disaster
the first time? The answer to both questions is yes."
The
Farce of the War on Drugs (May 1, 2007)
"My brother Howard Wooldridge served as a decorated police officer and
detective in Lansing, Michigan for 18 years. During that time, he collared killers,
drunk drivers, child molesters, rapists, wife beaters and drug dealers. What
he learned launched him on a crusade to stop the federal government’s useless
35 year 'War on Drugs.'"
Coca
Growers Shake the Andes Once Again (April 27, 2007)
"During the last few days, coca growers, especially in Peru and Colombia,
have been in the news again, as their actions have given the media something
to talk about."
LSD as Therapy?
Write about It, Get Barred from US (April 27, 2007)
"BC psychotherapist denied entry after border guard googled his work."
No
Jail for Willie Nelson on Drug Charge (April 25, 2007)
While the editor of DrugWar.com applauds this decision by the judge, I can't
help but wonder how hard the judge would have thrown the book at me for the
exact same offense.
The
War on Salvia Divinorum Heats Up (April 14, 2007)
"Middlebury, Vermont, this week declared a public health emergency to prevent
a local business from selling it. It's already illegal in five states -- Louisiana,
Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Delaware -- and a number of towns and cities
across the country, and now politicians in at least seven other states have
filed bills to make it illegal there. For the DEA, it is a 'drug of concern.'"
Book
Offer: Lies, Damn Lies, and Drug War Statistics (April 14, 2007)
"Normally when we publish a book review in our Drug War Chronicle newsletter,
it gets readers but is not among the top stories visited on the site. Recently
we saw a big exception to that rule when more than 2,700 of you read our review
of the new book Lies, Damned Lies, and Drug War Statistics: A Critical Analysis
of Claims Made by the Office of National Drug Control Policy."
Plant
growers served search warrant (April 11, 2007)
"Three WSU students were surprised when a plant they were growing in their
closet was mistaken for marijuana."
California
in bid to impose 7.25% sales tax on cannabis (April 10, 2007)
"For decades, smoking marijuana has been an illicit affair, a key anti-establishment
ritual for America's counter-culture underground. But the legalisation of the
drug for medicinal purposes in California has presented its advocates with a
dilemma: to remain firmly on the wrong side of the law or accept a demand to
pay taxes on its sale."
The
Other War: Democratic Candidates are Deafeningly Silent on the Drug War
(April 9, 2007)
"There is a major disconnect in the 2008 Democratic race for the White
House. While all the top candidates are vying for the black and Latino vote,
they are completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting those
constituencies: the failed War on Drugs, a war that has morphed into a war on
people of color."
Ex-officer
likens drug war to Prohibition (April 8, 2007)
"Retired police officer Peter Christ on Tuesday compared the contemporary
war on drugs to National Prohibition of the 1920s."
Minnesota
drug laws: Are they too harsh? (April 8, 2007)
Momentum gathers for review of sentencing rules
Drug
Czar Blasted for Lack of Leadership (April 8, 2007)
"During the course of research for this series, it became apparent that
many prominent players in the war on drugs don't have many compliments for the
current drug czar, John Walters."
Is
the Drug War Nearing an End? (April 8, 2007)
"Little by little by little there is some hope that the "war" on drugs
is becoming a political issue - the first step in undoing a set of policies
that make little sense no matter how you look at them."
Law
Enforcement Group Visits Maine To Advocate For Legalization Of Drugs (April
8, 2007)
"LEAP, or Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, says it has 5,000 members,
made up mostly of retired and active law enforcement professionals. The group
tours the country speaking to various civic groups about what they call a $60
billion failed war on drugs."
Afghans
pin hopes on a new economy (April 8, 2007)
"As a competitive economy awakens in one of the world's poorest countries,
the residents of Kabul are jockeying to get ahead in a city flush with cash
from US soldiers, foreign aid workers, new investors, parliamentarians, and
drug traffickers."
Salvadoran
Murders in Guatemala (April 8, 2007)
"If the trip to Guatemala was a fiasco, Colombia was no better, Bush's
arrival in Bogotá couldn't have happened at a worse time as every moment ticked
off another scandal, some of them leading in the direction ofo President Uribe's
office, and nothing that Bush or Uribe president could say concealed the fact
that the Colombia phase of the U.S. anti-drug war was more dead than alive,
which was even more certain when it came to extraditing Colombian suspected
felons to the U.S."
Analysis:
U.S. anti-drug war in Afghanistan (April 8, 2007)
"In a bluntly worded letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice, the lawmakers said inter-agency rivalry and U.S.
policy failures in Afghanistan risked allowing it to slide back into chaos."
Law
Enforcement: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories (April 7, 2007)
"A Georgia fire captain gets caught peddling coke, a pair of New Haven
narcs lose their jobs, a former Mississippi police chief cops a plea, and a
former Ohio cop goes back to prison. Let's get to it...."
Methamphetamine:
Feds Make First Cold Medicine Bust Under Combat Meth Act (April 7, 2007)
"An Ontario, New York, man last Friday won the dubious distinction of being
the first person arrested under the 2005 Combat Meth Epidemic Act. According
to a DEA press release, William Fousse was arrested for purchasing cold tablets
containing more than nine grams of pseudoephedrine within a one month period."
Harm
Reduction: New Mexico Governor Signs Overdose Death Reduction Measure (April
7, 2007)
"New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) Wednesday signed innovative legislation
that would protect friends or family members who seek medical attention for
drug overdose victims. The law is the first of its kind in the country."
Pot-Growing
Takes Root in the Suburbs (April 1, 2007)
"In Coldwater Creek, a middle-class housing development outside Atlanta,
the neighbors mind their own business and respect each other's privacy - ideal
conditions, it turns out, for growing marijuana in the suburbs."
Bob
Barr Flip-Flops on Pot (March 28, 2007)
"Bob Barr, who as a Georgia congressman authored a successful amendment
that blocked D.C. from implementing a medical marijuana initiative, has switched
sides and become a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project."
What
the heck is Sibel Edmonds' Case about? And why should I care? (March 28,
2007)
"Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive
one... But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking
officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar
drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory
regimes, you name it... You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from
the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same
place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people."
Mexican
Envoy Highly Critical of U.S. Role in Anti-Drug Effort (March 23, 2007)
"The United States has contributed 'zilch' to Mexico's efforts to combat
the nations' joint problem with criminal narcotics gangs, Mexico's new ambassador
to Washington said yesterday."
Colorado
Has Song in Its Heart, and Not Drugs on Its Mind (March 14, 2007- Free NYTimes
registration required)
"The Colorado General Assembly wants to be quite clear on this point: When
the singer-songwriter John Denver praised the joys of Colorado and sang about
'friends around the campfire, and everybody’s high,' in 1972, he was not referring
to illicit drugs. Definitely not. Don’t even think it. The high in question,
lawmakers say, is really about nature and the great outdoors — the tingly feeling
you get after a nice hike, perhaps."
U.S.
faults friends, foes in drug war (March 5, 2007)
"The United States said top anti-terror allies Afghanistan, Pakistan and
Colombia had fallen short in the war on drugs despite enhanced counter-narcotics
efforts and it criticized perennial foes Iran, North Korea and Venezuela for
not cooperating."
Cuba’s
War on Drugs (March 5, 2007)
"A review of the main results of the Cuban efforts against illegal drug
trafficking as well as prevention during 2006, shows a marked reduction in the
presence of drugs on the island, with 1.7 tons of narcotics seized, the lowest
figure of the past 11 years and almost four times less than the amount detected
in 2003."
Drug
War Corrupting Cops In Hawaii and Elsewhere (March 5, 2007)
"Claiming to be the 'world’s leading drug policy newsletter,' the Drug
War Chronicle publishes a regular online feature called, 'This Week’s Corrupt
Cops Stories.' The typical Hawaii newspaper reader probably comes across these
cops-gone-bad stories pretty rarely. But, when hundreds of reports compiled
over the past year from around the nation are read at one sitting, they add
up to a hidden cost of America’s ill-fated drug war -- widespread corruption
inside local police departments, prisons and jails."
Drug
war rips apart Mexico (March 5, 2007)
"More than 250 people were executed last year in Acapulco as the sweltering
Pacific resort became the latest battleground between rival cartels battling
for supremacy of the multibillion-dollar drug trade."
In
Guatemala, officers' killings echo dirty war (March 5, 2007)
"The two sets of brazen killings set off a vicious diplomatic conflict
between Guatemala and El Salvador — heightened by news reports suggesting that
the congressmen were indeed drug dealers — and ignited a political scandal here.
It shed light on how corrupt the National Police has become, and raised questions
about links between drug dealers and high-level police officials, as well as
whether the government can contain drug trafficking without international help."
Collision
Course: Bolivia's "Coca, Si; Cocaine, No" Policy Runs Afoul of the International
Drug Control Board and, Probably, the United States (March 1, 2007)
"A confrontation is brewing over Bolivian President Evo Morales' effort
to rationalize coca production in his country and expand markets for coca-based
products....Now, the Morales government is also pushing for expanded legal markets
for coca products and, in a joint venture with the Venezuelan government, is
preparing to begin coca product exports to that country."
Ga.
Reconsiders No - Knock Warrant Rules (March 1, 2007)
"A group of lawmakers wants to make it harder for police to use ''no-knock''
warrants in the wake of a shootout that left an elderly woman dead after plainclothes
officers stormed her home unannounced in a search for drugs."
Here
we go again (Feb. 22, 2007)
"We're happy we could help with that, Mr. Vice President, but Colombian
cocaine is still readily available in U.S. cities, so we have a difficult time
thinking we got a good deal for our $4 billion. In fact, we don't believe Americans
are getting their money's worth for any of the cash the government has thrown
into the bottomless pit of the drug war. Court dockets are packed and prisons
are overcrowded, yet illicit drugs are still readily available to anyone who
wants them."
Latin
America: Mexico Moves to Decriminalize Drug Possession -- So It Can Concentrate
on Drug Traffickers (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Legislators from Mexican President Felipe's Calderon's National Action
Party (PAN -- Partido de Accion Nacional) have introduced a bill in the Mexican
Senate that would decriminalize the possession of small amounts of drugs for
'addicts.'"
DPS
officials were told of lax lab security (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Texas Department of Public Safety officials were aware of security breaches
in the handling of their drug evidence as recently as 2006 and as far back as
at least 2003 — problems such as failure to log evidence out of storage, containers
of marijuana left open and the lack of a monitoring system for a high-security
drug vault — according to the agency's internal audits."
'Safest
city' now has drug war (Feb. 22, 2007)
"From the shopping malls and the fashionable clothes of its residents,
this could be any affluent U.S. suburb. Residents pride themselves on their
prosperity. But in recent weeks, drug-related violence has shattered the tranquillity."
Mexican
president gives soldiers pay hike as drug war intensifies (Feb. 22, 2007)
"Soldiers waging a nationwide offensive against drug traffickers will get
a pay hike of nearly 50 percent this year in a bid to insulate them from corruption,
Mexican President Felipe Calderon announced Monday."
New Federal
Study Shows Methamphetamine Use Decreased Between 2002 and 2005 (Jan. 31,
2007)
"A new analysis of data from The National Survey on Drug Use and Health
(NSDUH) shows that past-year use of methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant,
declined between 2002 and 2005 among persons age 12 or older....The study also
shows that the number of persons who used methamphetamine for the first time
in the 12 months before the survey remained stable between 2002 and 2004 but
decreased between 2004 and 2005."
Tell
Governor Spitzer to Support Rockefeller Drug Law Reform (Jan. 31, 2007)
"The Rockefeller Drug Laws require extremely harsh prison terms for the
possession or sale of relatively small amounts of drugs. Most of the people
incarcerated under these laws are convicted of low-level, nonviolent offenses,
and many of them have no prior criminal records. Today 14,139 people are locked
up for drug offenses in NY State prisons, comprising nearly 38% of the prison
population. This costs New Yorkers over half a billion dollars a year. Send
a message to Governor Spitzer now, urging him to support real reform."
Mexico
eyes Colombian experience in drug battle (Jan. 27, 2007)
"Mexico's top prosecutor on Thursday looked to Colombia's experience in
counter-narcotics and conflict for lessons to help his government battle drug
cartels whose violence has engulfed parts of the country."
Rio
gang kills seven as drug war spreads (Jan. 27, 2007)
"The mutilated bodies of seven youths, some with their heads and legs chopped
off, have been found in an abandoned car in a notorious Rio de Janeiro slum.
They appeared to be the latest victims of a long-running drug war that has made
Rio, which depends heavily on tourism, one of the most violent cities in the
world."
Drug
Policy Reform Group to Partner with State of New Mexico in Federally-Funded
Meth Prevention Education Program (Jan. 27, 2007)
"In a first for drug reform organizations, the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA)
New Mexico office has been designated to create a statewide methamphetamine
education and prevention program directed at high school students, thanks to
a $500,000 grant obtained by US Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) as part of a Justice
Department appropriations bill. The grant is the result of years of close collaboration
between DPA and New Mexico state and local officials dating back to the administration
of former Gov. Gary Johnson (R), a prominent voice for drug law reform."
Spot
in brain may control smoking urge (Jan. 27, 2007)
"Damage to a silver dollar-sized spot deep in the brain seems to wipe out
the urge to smoke, a surprising discovery that may shed important new light
on addiction. The research was inspired by a stroke survivor who claimed he
simply forgot his two-pack-a-day addiction - no cravings, no nicotine patches,
not even a conscious desire to quit."
Case
highlights medical-pot dilemma (Jan. 23, 2007)
"'If they didn't arrest me with 1,500, it's not likely they're going to
come back and arrest me for 50,' said Sarich, whose advocacy group, CannaCare,
says it has provided marijuana plants for 1,200 patients all over the state.
Some of his new plants, delivered by patients in Longview, Federal Way and Vancouver,
Wash., are descendants of the plants he lost."
Alleged
cartel members extradited to Texas (Jan. 23, 2007)
"A suspected Mexican drug lord whose cartel allegedly smuggled more than
4 tons of cocaine a month over the U.S. border will stand trial in Texas. Osiel
Cardenas-Guillen, the alleged kingpin of the Gulf Cartel, and three other alleged
drug lords appeared in a Houston court Monday. Mexican authorities delivered
Cardenas-Guillen and 14 other alleged Mexican drug dealers and criminals to
Houston late Friday and early Saturday, the Drug Enforcement Administration
said."
Burdened
U.S. military cuts role in drug war (Jan. 22, 2007)
"Stretched thin from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military
has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs, leaving significant gaps in
the nation's narcotics interdiction efforts."
S.F.
area is No. 1 for regular drug use, study says (Jan. 21, 2007)
"The San Francisco metropolitan area has a higher percentage of people
who are regular drug users than any other major metropolitan area in the USA,
a study from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found."
Executive Order 13420
-- Dismantling the DEA (Jan. 21, 2007)
"This is the order I will sign after delivering my inaugural address,"
says Steve Kubby, who is again running for office this time seeking the nomination
from the Libertarian Party as their Presidential candidate.
Cocaine
found on 99.9% of UK banknotes (Jan. 21, 2007)
"Pretty well every banknote in the UK shows traces of cocaine, forensic
scientists have claimed. According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, 99.9
per cent of the two billion notes currently in circulation have come into contact
with Bolivian marching powder."
A Legacy
of Torture: From Cointelpro to the Patriot Act (Jan. 21, 2007)
"In today's world, the US government's use of torture and complicity in
its clients' use of it is part of the headlines on a regular basis. Yet very
few US citizens believe that methods like waterboarding, beating, and electrical
shocks could be -- and have been -- used on US citizens." But the fact
that torture is used profusely in US jails and prisons is unsurprising to those
who've been inside the US "justice" system.
Reefer
Madness (Jan. 21, 2007)
"I was never an activist until I got busted [noted Tommy Chong]. But it
’s not so much my efforts as the substance itself. Pot lives and dies on its
own reputation....Years ago, people would do booze jokes. Then they start dying
of cirrhosis of the liver and all these alcohol-related car accidents. Alcohol
started out as a fun thing and ended up as this evil thing that kills people.
Pot is the opposite...."
In the
Costly War on Drugs, Who's To Say What Is Right? (Jan. 21, 2007)
"It seems like you lack a certain enthusiasm for the war on drugs, I said.
I do lack enthusiasm for the war on drugs, he said. I asked about legalization.
He shrugged. 'Monday, Wednesday and Friday I think they should be legalized.
Tuesdays and Thursdays I think they should be illegal. I don't like drugs. I
strongly disapprove of them. The costs are great. But it's expensive to incarcerate
somebody. The costs are enormous either way. I don't know what's right.'"
Democracy
and Plan Colombia (Jan. 21, 2007)
Just what effects are the massive spraying in anti-cocaine and poppy efforts
that are one of the main tenents of Plan Colombia, not to mention all the arms
and training given to the Colombian military and governments to combat Colombian
peasents...errr, I mean, dastardly narco-terrorists? No major advancement of
democracy it appears.
Drug
mafia, CIA blamed for sacking of Afghan governor (Jan. 21, 2007)
"As The Washington Post has plainly summarized, 'corruption and alliances
formed by Washington and the Afghan government with anti-Taliban tribal chieftains,
some of whom are believed to be deeply involved in the trade, [have] undercut
the [counter-narcotics] effort.'"
PAST NEWS ARCHIVE
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The
Spy Who Loved Me
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Exciting Videos, Documents, Back Issues and Subscription to From
The Wilderness
Los Angeles HERALD EXAMINER
Sunday Oct 11, 1981
RANDALL SULLIVAN
'The spy who loved me'
An officer's battle with obsession
She quoted from Chaucer at breakfast but had preferred talk of stakeouts,
surveillances and undercover busts over drinks that night.
She bore an exotic name that suited her aquiline features - Theodora
Nordica D'Orsay - but called herself Teddy, wore a red sweatshirt with
the emblem of the New Orleans Police Department on the shoulder, and
was sitting with three patrol cops from the Los Angeles Police Department's
Venice division when Mike Ruppert met her at the bar of Brennen's Pub
in Marina del Ray during December of 1975
"it's not too often you meet a woman who is beautiful, intelligent,
literate and witty siting in a bar with a bunch of police officers,"
Ruppert said. "She was definitely somebody I wanted to see more
of."
Ruppert got Teddy's phone number at breakfast. They went to dinner the
next weekend then spent most of the next 15 months together. Even after
Teddy disappeared in March of 1977, she would remain in Ruppert's life
as the catalyst for his career collapse, his obsession with intrigue
and his eventual doubts about his own sanity.
It was never clear, especially at the beginning, precisely what Teddy
was doing with her life.
She was vastly more versed in the vernacular of law enforcement than
any police groupie Ruppert had ever encountered. And she knew people
or seemed to. Teddy dropped the names of not only undercover investigators
but of suspected organized crime figures like Dan Horowitz and Hank
Friedman. She brought home a story once of a visit to the hotel rooms
of an apparent Mafia weapons dealer who kept a cache of machine guns
in his closet but insisted to Ruppert that she had gone there with friends,
"good guys."
Lacking any visible means of support, Teddy explained that she had saved
money.
["His story was incredibly detailed and with many names and
dates, all of which appeared quite logical. At not time were the patient's
associations loosened or was his story incoherent. His thought processes
were lucid. He appeared fully oriented in all spheres. Clearly, he is
a bright individual with no major weaknesses." -From the Woodview-Calabassas
Psychiatric Hospital "Discharge Recommendation" prepared by
Dr. Robert A. Cole, Feb 2, 1978, regarding Los Angeles Police Department
Officer Mike Ruppert.
"OK, I tried to go along with the idea that I was crazy, since
that's what the department wanted me to do. But my doctor said I was
totally sane. And if I was sane, then something really strange was happening.
And it went back to Teddy." -Mike Ruppert, Sept. 26, 1981]
Late night calls to Teddy from men who asked for her even when Ruppert
answered a phone registered under his own name and what Ruppert described
as "cryptic phone messages" left on the answering machine
went unexplained.
Teddy was out two or three nights a week - off drinking with her friend
Linda Covington, a Brennen's bartender, Ruppert was told. When he heard
from Linda that Teddy had disappeared early in the evening on one of
those nights, Ruppert did not make the obvious assumption that she was
seeing another man. Instead he imagined clandestine operations and undercover
identities.
Not long after Rupert and Teddy moved into the same Culver City apartment
in March of 1976, she left for a vacation in Hawaii. When Teddy returned
to Los Angeles, Ruppert was not interested in stories of waterfalls
and white sand beaches, and certainly not of men with darkly tanned
torsos. Ruppert insisted that she tell him the truth. What was the "deal,"
he demanded to know. He hammered her with questions about the specifics
of the "operation." At 3 o'clock in the morning, exhausted,
Teddy "confessed" that she had been in Hawaii to participate
in an exchange of a huge load of government-issue automatic weapons
for several kilos of processed, uncut cocaine.
Teddy fell asleep to the sound of Rupert alternately chortling and demanding
"further details."
Ruppert had been warned early on by another policeman that Teddy was
"a party girl," but he saw that as "a cover."
The aura of adventure Teddy cloaked herself in appealed to Ruppert's
own sense of singularity.
He was "not your average cop," Ruppert said, and he had plenty
of evidence to support that claim. Ruppert was far more intelligent
than the average LAPD recruit, an honors graduate from UCLA who had
verified his intellectual gifts by obtaining membership in MENSA, the
organization for people whose IQs are in the top 2 percent of the population.
One of the former commanders said he had heard Ruppert had the highest
IQ in the LAPD.
A political science major at UCLA, Ruppert was attracted to the "sense
of mission" that had been inculcated inside a police department
run then by the nations fore-most spokesman for "Don't like cops?
Next time you're in trouble, call a hippie" law enforcement chief
Ed Davis
He had attended college as "a shorthair surrounded by longhairs"
during the early 1970s, Ruppert said, and he was drawn to the sense
of camaraderie shared by the officers of a department that was then
successfully passing itself off as the finest police force in the world.
Ruppert and his closest friend at UCLA, Craig Fuller, now a highly placed
White House aid to President Regan, had frequently discussed -- as they
stood on the sidelines of campus demonstrations - how much more effective
they could be if they got inside the system and became part of its inner
workings before calling for change.
"I entered the police department sincerely believing that someday
I would be chief of police in Los Angeles," Ruppert said.
It did not seem such an unlikely forecast at the beginning of his career.
Ruppert was valedictorian of his Police Academy class in 1973 and earned
solid "outstanding" ratings on his personnel reports over
the next four years.
While his commanding officers praised him with four official commendations
and 13 citations, some of his fellow patrol officers were a bit rattled
by Ruppert. He was obsessed with his career. As a young white man from
Orange County thrown onto the streets of a black ghetto wearing a blue
uniform, Ruppert was known for his relentless pursuit of "hypes,"
heroin addicts. Other officers said he never took the uniform off, that
he worked in his sleep.
Ruppert's field reports, a former sergeant of his said, were the most
elaborate and descriptive in the department., "a pleasure to read
each one a complete story."
His new girlfriend, Teddy D'Orsay, not only accommodated Ruppert's obsession
with police work and his endless extrapolations, she enhanced them,
building on the idea that each small case was spiraled upward into the
criminal organizations she had infiltrated.
[Pull Quote: During the course of the next 10 months Ruppert began
to document evidence - much of it still on file with the FBI, the U.S.
Justice Department and the LAPD - that would support his theory that
he was living with a CIA agent. End Pull Quote]
In May of 1976 Ruppert and Teddy went to Las Vegas, where he was enrolled
in the US Drug Enforcement Agency training program. In Las Vegas Ruppert
asked Teddy to marry him. There were things she had to discuss before
she could answer, Teddy said. The couple drove to Ensenada, Mexico,
for a short vacation.
In the Bahia bar, Ruppert loudly demanded to know where Teddy got her
money. In a stage whisper that was overheard by people at nearby tables,
Teddy told him that Rupert had already assumed, that she was "working
for the government in an intelligence capacity involving organized crime."
Ruppert pounded on the table, shouted in triumph. Teddy began to shake
her head, looking frightened. It was just a joke, she said, Didn't he
get it? But Ruppert was still pounding the table, repeating again and
again, "I knew it. I knew it."
Teddy shrugged her shoulders and finished her drink. OK, she said, you
knew it.
During the course of the next 10 months Ruppert began to document evidence
- much of it still on file with the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department
and the LAPD - that would support his theory that he was living with
a CIA agent.
The intrusions on their home life, the phone calls and Teddy's disappearances
increased.
Ruppert bought Teddy a present, a pistol, an off make F1 Garcia 380-caliber
automatic.
"She had it field stripped in 10 seconds," he recalled. He
took Teddy to a practice range and discovered "she was as good
a shot as I was."
She had been trained by the government, Teddy told him, and smiled.
One night during the fall of 1976 according to Ruppert, he was awakened
by a phone call from a man who asked for Teddy. He handed the phone
to her, lying in bed next to him. When Teddy hung up, she told Ruppert
that Carlo Gambino, the Mafia don of dons, had died that night and the
West Coast mob was meeting in San Francisco. She would have to fly up
there that night, Teddy said.
For once, it occurred to Ruppert: to secret business, national security,
undercover assignments, what better cover could a faithless lover have?
The next morning, driving to work, Ruppert heard a radio news announcement
of Gambino's death and of the mob meeting in San Francisco.
Teddy insisted later that the trip to San Francisco had nothing to do
with Carlo Gambino, whoever that was. She had been planning the trip
for a week, she said. It was all a coincidence. She couldn't remember
any phone call the night before she left. She advised Ruppert to take
deep breaths.
Ruppert's speculations upon his live in love's "business"
began to assume international proportions during the last month of 1976.
Teddy had been a childhood friend of Minou Haggstrom's, the American
educated niece of Shah Reza Bahlavi of Iran. Teddy and Minou had carried
on an occasional correspondence between Culver City and Tehran during
the early months of 1956, but at the end of the year the letters from
Iran began to arrive more frequently. Teddy talked about the danger
Minou was in, how important it was to get her out of Iran soon.
Ruppert decided that the envelopes arriving from Tehran did not contain
personal letters but rather encoded messages.
He began to see that it all fit. Even the bullet hole in Teddy's car
fit.
He discovered the bullet hole on March 1, 1977, one year to the day
since Ruppert and Teddy had taken the apartment in Culver City. Their
relationship was deteriorating. Teddy was out more, gone overnight occasionally.
Ruppert was complaining more about "the disruptions of our home
life."
"I'm blowing your cover, right?" Ruppert said.
Teddy showed him the bullet hole in the driver side door of her 1965
Ford Comet - a perfect car for a secret agent, Ruppert had decided,
because it was "sound mechanically on the inside, a heap on the
outside, the kind of car you don't notice." Someone had tried to
kill her in her Comet, Teddy said, she had to get out of town.
Ruppert now believes Teddy put the bullet hole there herself, with the
gun he bought her, but at the time he believed her story.
Two days later Teddy was gone without a goodbye. A month passed without
word from her.
One week after Teddy's disappearance, Ruppert's mother, a marginally
successful realtor in Fountain Valley, was approached in her office
by four men with Italian surnames who asked her to help arrange the
purchase of a $45 million parcel of real estate.
Mrs. Ruppert, who made her living selling occasional $70,000 tract houses,
calculated that her commission on the deal proposed by the Italian gentlemen
would be $750,000. Panicked, she called her son and told him she thought
she was becoming involved in something illegal.
Mike Ruppert took the names of the men who had proposed the $45 million
deal to two members of LAPDs Organized Crime Intelligence Division,
Lee Goforth and Charles Bonneau.
Goforth and Bonneau ran checks and informed Ruppert that one of the
four men did have "an association with an important organized crime
figure" but that it was not a close association. They scheduled
another meeting with Ruppert.
At this gathering, Goforth said he noticed that Ruppert appeared "agitated."
"I asked him if there was something else besides his mother's deal
and he said, yes, there was," Goforth recalled. "Then he went
into all this weird stuff, this theory about his girlfriend, the double
agent, being behind it all.
He and Bonneau attempted to check out the name Teddy D'Orsay with "at
least one federal intelligence agency," Goforth said, and "nobody
had heard of her, they said." Mike Ruppert's name had been passed
along during these inquiries as well.
It was after his initial meeting with Goforth and Bonneau, Ruppert said,
that "the harassment started." Hang up phone calls and cars
tailing him to and from work. He found his apartment searched, he said,
and the only things missing were two photographs of Teddy. He began
to drive with his gun on his lap and slept at night with it under his
pillow.
Five weeks after Teddy's disappearance, Ruppert received a post card
from a small town outside Atlanta, Ga. - "Having a great time,
wish you were here, Teddy."
One more month after that, 10 weeks after her disappearance, Teddy called
Ruppert from New Orleans, where she was "working on something important,"
and gave him a phone number and an address in suburban Gretna, near
the Belle Chase Naval Air Base.
(Part two continues the story of Ruppert's obsession with Teddy, which
leads eventually to his resignation from the LAPD to "save my life.")
Teddy D'Orsay's phone call from New Orleans in May 1977 was Mike Ruppert's
first voice contact with her since Teddy disappeared from their Culver
City apartment 10 weeks earlier. During that conversation, Ruppert wrote
Teddy's new phone number and address in Gretna, La., on a sheet of paper
already filled with information regarding his mother's pending $45 million
real estate deal. He had that paper in his jacket pocket, Ruppert said,
the next evening when he finished his shift at the Police Academy and
drove to Brennan's Pub in Marina del Rey where he had met Teddy 17 months
earlier.
While Ruppert was drinking in Brennan's, his car door was unlocked by
someone who used a metal shim, according to the official police report,
and the jacket, the sheet of paper and Ruppert's service revolver all
were stolen.
The next day Ruppert was back in the office with LAPD organized crime
Investigators Lee Goforth and Charles Bonneau, attempting to convince
his increasingly remote fellow officers that Teddy's life was in danger.
"They" were going to kill her with Ruppert's own service revolver.
Goforth and Bonneau told Ruppert he looked tired. They advised him to
take some time off.
In July 1977 Ruppert took a weeks vacation and drove to New Orleans
pulling Teddy's furniture behind him in a U-Haul trailer.
During his six days in New Orleans, Ruppert reported, he was shot at
as he and Teddy stood outside a bar. He and Teddy were followed by car
and on foot. In Teddy's apartment he discovered more than a half-dozen
phone jacks, including one complicated electrical hookup unlike anything
he had ever seen before. He called a friend, a naval and communications
officer, described the phone and hookup, and was told it sounded like
the KY3 model scrambler phone, which required top secret clearance.
Teddy was cold and stony. She would not sleep with him. She told Ruppert
that the smartest thing he could do would be to forget that he had ever
met her.
Teddy was visited at night by a friend who wore a 44-caliber Magnum
pistol in his boot and talked about the work he was doing for Mafia
don Carlos Marcello. During the day, Teddy was visited by an Air Force
sergeant named Johnny who brought her Manila envelopes from Belle Chase
Naval Air Base filled with what he described as "communiqués."
Another friend who was employed by a company specializing in offshore
oil rig communications systems said he was helping Teddy see that "some
things got moved off the mainland."
Teddy and Johnny gobbled speed and smoked grass that they described
in Ruppert's presence as "issued," laughed crazily at Ruppert's
ardent, attentive expression.
He left New Orleans at the end of that week, Ruppert said, "borderline
suicidal."
Back in Los Angeles, Ruppert notified Goforth and Bonneau that he now
wanted to "drop the whole thing."
Shortly after Ruppert's return from New Orleans, his father Ed, an Orange
County businessman, received a phone call from Teddy.
"She said she was worried about Mike," Ed Ruppert recalled.
Teddy said she was "doing some sort of sensitive work involving
organized crime." An organization she referred to alternately as
"my people" and "my company" had considered Mike
for employment, Ed Ruppert remembered Teddy telling him, but had decided
Mike "wasn't ready" for that kind of work.
Because Mike was "worried about bugs," Ed Ruppert relayed
the conversation to his son on the banks of the Santa Monica Beach palisades.
[Pull Quote: "I've never seen anyone as committed to something
as Mike has been to this
Imagine what he could have accomplished
if he had used the energy and the dedication he has devoted to this
over the past five years to further a career" -Ed Ruppert,
Mike's father. End Pull Quote]
Two days later, as he left a theater in Westwood, Ruppert said, he was
chased around the perimeter of the UCLA campus by two men in a white
pickup truck.
Ruppert called Bonneau and Goforth. He had imagined the tail, they told
him. There had been no scrambler phone in Teddy's apartment. Maybe three
weeks vacation wasn't enough.
That week, Ruppert signed in as a voluntary patient at Woodview-Calabassas
Psychiatric Hospital.
A battery of tests and hours of interviews during which Ruppert repeated
his "incredibly detailed story" to staff psychiatrist, Dr.
Robert A Cole, consumed much of the two months that Ruppert was registered
as a day patient at the hospital. Cole noted that Ruppert's "ties
to reality were adequate with no evidence of bizarre thought, processes,
delusions or hallucinations." In Ruppert's official "Discharge
Recommendation" Cole referred to his patient as "an exceptional
individual with no major weaknesses."
On Sept. 9, 1977 Ruppert saw Teddy again at his father's house, where
she had come to pick up the last of her personal possessions.
Ruppert used a hidden recorder to tape most of their conversation. He
played this tape later for Cole, who described what he heard as "a
solid basis for his (Ruppert's) interpretation of events." On the
tape, Cole heard Teddy "admit her involvement in investigative
pursuits of an admittedly vague nature."
Ruppert later turned the tape over to LAPD's Bonneau. He never saw it
again. During the summer of 1978, as the foment in Iran built toward
revolution, Ruppert, now a senior training officer at the Police Academy,
began once again to make those long-distance connections that obsessed
him.
On Aug. 17, 1978, Ruppert went to Bonneau to say that he believed his
ex-girlfriend Teddy was involved in a plot that had something to do
with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran.
Twelve days later Bonneau called Ruppert and asked for details of Teddy's
"associations."
According to Ruppert, the "harassment" began again immediately:
hang-up phone calls, tails, break-ins.
On Sept. 7, 1978, Bonneau said he had been unable to contact Teddy.
What Bonneau did not mention was the FBI in New Orleans had contacted
Teddy. On Sept. 12, Ruppert said, he was followed by a car with a license
plate he checked through the Department of Motor Vehicles. It was registered
to a post office box registered to the U.S. Government.
On Sept. 30, Ruppert was followed again, he said, by two vans bearing
license plates registered to post office boxes.
He ran a check on Teddy's license plate and discovered it was also registered
to a post office box.
On Nov. 17, Ruppert formally requested an interview with LAPD's new
chief, Daryl Gates. The connection was made through Sgt. Virginia Pickering,
who worked in Gates' office. Pickering came to the Police Academy on
Nov. 28 to meet with Ruppert and on Nov. 29 told the young officer he
would get five minutes with the chief the next day.
Five minutes was not enough time to tell his story, Ruppert insisted.
He was lucky to get one minute, Pickering told him. On the morning of
Nov. 30, 1978, Ruppert reported that he has been followed to work by
two vans, a Volkswagen and a Pontiac Firebird. He failed to show up
for his five-minute meeting with Chief Gates. That afternoon, Ruppert
submitted his official resignation from the Los Angeles Police Department.
In an interview with the FBI four days later, Ruppert sad he had left
the LAPD "to save my life."
o
Three years have passed and Ruppert hasn't let go. His fixation on Teddy
and the international intrigue Ruppert believes he was drawn into by
her has become both his vocation and his avocation.
Supported by files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act,
through research into the affairs of Mafia don Carlos Marcello, through
information contained in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency report on the
exchange of drugs for weapons - classified top secret because of a U.S.
government agency's alleged involvement in these transactions - and
through a historical study of the United States' involvement in Iran,
Ruppert insists he now knows what "this incredibly story I stumbled
into" was all about.
It was about suppressing the revolution in Iran,. Ruppert believes Teddy,
useful because of her childhood friendship with the shah's niece, Minou
Haggstrom, was assigned by the CIA to cultivate relationships with organized
crime figures who would assist - in exchange for free access to refined
Mideast heroin - in the transport of weapons to Kurdish counterrevolutionary
forces in Iran.
"The actual transaction went down in New Orleans," Ruppert
assures all who will listen, "under the supervision of Carlos Marcello.
Teddy helped coordinate it all."
What is perhaps most incredible about Ruppert's story is that so many
people in the best positions to evaluate it consider it "plausible."
Aaron Kohen, former deputy director of the FBI and head of the New Orleans
Crime Commission considered the world's foremost legal authority on
Carlos Marcello, found Ruppert's theory "entirely plausible."
Speaking from a lawn chair beneath a shade tree in the back yard of
his home in Lake Ponchartrain, Kohen said he, "would not be at
all surprised" to learn of either Marcello's or the CIA's involvement
in such enterprise.
Ruppert's attorney, Bill McCord, a former FBI agent, noted that "LAPD
probably has had closer connections with the CIA and with SAVAK (the
secret police of the shah of Iran) than any police department in the
country. If Mike had been on to something, a lot of people would have
known about it." What McCord finds less plausible is Ruppert's
portrait of Teddy as a CIA agent. "It sounds like Teddy was a bit
of a party girl who knew law enforcement people and also knew people
on the other side of the law." McCord's friend and former colleague
Buck Sadler, an FBI agent assigned to Los Angeles who conducted the
official agency interview of Mike Ruppert, also found the theory "plausible,"
but added that he had "been offered no facts whatsoever to support
it."
Other FBI agents, ones stationed in New Orleans, interrogated Teddy
during the autumn of 1977. Teddy was almost immediately released, and
the FBI has "no available record" of her statement.
Freedom of information Act petitions concerning the matter filled by
Ruppert with the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. Justice Department
were answered with written statements that "nothing pertaining
to your request" was found in the files of either agency.
o
On the evening of Oct. 9, I reached Teddy by phone at a bar in Honolulu,
and she called back later from her home on the other side of Maui.
All that was incredible abut the story in her mind, Teddy said, was
"that Michael Ruppert is still trying to make something out of
this after all these years. Doesn't it make you doubt the mental stability
of someone who has become so obsessed with things that happened so long
ago?"
"Yes, I knew a lot of people," Teddy said, "I'm friendly,
I smile and I say hello. And if you're a girl (Teddy is 32) and if you're
friendly, you meet people. I didn't always know what those people were
involved in, what they did for a living. Some of them may have been
into strange things."
The problem with Ruppert, Teddy said, was that "he was always making
connections - if I was friendly with two people who he knew or thought
were involved in something together, then I was involved too."
Yes, she had told Ruppert that her vacation in Hawaii during the spring
of 1977 had been cover for her involvement in a government-Mafia exchange
of cocaine for automatic weapons, Teddy said. "He kept me up for
hours the night I got back insisting that I tell him the truth, so finally
I told him what he wanted to hear so I could go to sleep."
Yes, she had gone to San Francisco at the same time the West Coast Mafia
dons were meeting there in the wake of Carlo Gambino's death, Teddy
said: It had been a coincidence, but she had "let Michael think
what he wanted to think."
Eventually it became convenient to play the role Ruppert had assigned
her, Teddy said. Clandestine meetings and undercover assignments were
the best excuses available for getting out of the house, for not coming
home at night, for taking a weekend out of town.
After she ran away to New Orleans and Ruppert followed her, things got
a little out of hand, Teddy said.
She was still a friendly girl and she had met people who were involved
in things she did not quite understand. "Some of them may have
been into - probably were into - - weird things," she admitted.
"But I didn't know about that until later."
Ruppert had come into town and started asking questions of people who
did not want to give answers, Teddy said. Some of her friends "had
kind of done a number on Michael." Some had implied their involvement
in an "operation" of international proportions. Others had
threatened him. Some had shown him government documents and weapons.
"Its all kind of messed with his mind, and I'm sorry for that,"
Teddy said. "I just wanted to get rid of him at that point."
Yes, she had talked of her work as an undercover agent during a taped
conversation with Ruppert, Teddy said.
"I saw him slip this tape recorder behind the couch as I came in
and I figured if he was going to be this ridiculous, so would I."
The one question Teddy would not answer was how she had supported herself
without employment during the 15 months she spent with Ruppert: "That's
nobody's business but my own."
She was sorry Ruppert had been hurt, Teddy said, but it would never
have happened if he had developed a sense of humor.
o
"She's lying, she's lying, she's lying." Ruppert insisted
pounding on the leather arm of a couch in the Herald Examiner lobby
the next morning. "She's very good, I'll admit, and you wouldn't
be the first person she's fooled."
He had been waiting three years to have his story told, Ruppert said.
"Don't cut me off now," he pleaded. "This is the closest
I've come."
o
Mike Ruppert's plight, his story, appeals to a collective paranoia that
has been cultivated in most of us. "They" really are everywhere.
And because we concede that much, we also must concede the possibility
that Ruppert's private obsession is some aspect of responsibility the
rest of us have failed to assume.
Ruppert says he is a victim. We need victims. They put a human face
on the corruption and incoherence most of us are unable to confront.
The inept innuendoes used by LAPD to rebut Ruppert's story only encourage
sympathy for him:
"He came in with a story, I believe, that his mother was a CIA
agent," said the department's official press spokesman, Cmdr. William
Booth. "And you were aware, I'm sure, that he has spent time in
a mental hospital."
Ruppert is a well-educated 30-year old who has been forced to fall back
on the financial support of his mother and father. At least two jobs
he had been promised after his resignation from the LAPD failed to materialize.
Ruppert believes this was the work of "some agency interested in
closing all doors to me."
Broke and beat, this UCLA honors graduate who reportedly possessed the
highest IQ in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department, eventually
took a job as a clerk in a 7-Eleven store. Two hours into his first
shift, Ruppert was arrested for selling liquor to a minor: "A setup,
without question," he says.
o
"I've never seen anyone as committed to something as Mike has been
to this," his father Ed said.
"Imagine what he could have accomplished if he had used the energy
and the dedication he has devoted to this over the past five years to
further a career."
It is Ruppert's "commitment" that has compelled the attention
of others who have helped him along the way.
"Whether or not I buy Mike's theory, I consider his personal credibility
above reproach," said McCord, a former FBI agent. "I have
absolutely no doubt that Mike is telling what he believes to be the
truth."
That same phrase "what he believes to be the truth" was used
by a retired LAPD Intelligence officer, another FBI agent and psychiatrist
Cole to describe Mike Ruppert. Each of these three professionals professed
both a measure of admiration and a measure of fear of Ruppert.
Ruppert has stayed on the case. In a world where so much seems possible
and so little likely, you begin to wonder if the courageous and the
crazy are the same people.
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