He gathered intel. She grew even more distant. Then, in early , she walked out on him. After she left, Ruppert said, he became the victim of harassment: phone calls with dead silence on the other end; apartment searches while he was out; cars tailing him.
He began sleeping with a gun under his pillow. Ten weeks later, Teddy finally called Ruppert and said that she was in the New Orleans area. Ruppert broke off the relationship and returned home. Overwhelmed, he checked himself into a psychiatric hospital for a "much-needed" monthlong rest. Though he was eventually reinstated as an officer, both his reputation and interest in the job vanished.
In November , he resigned. With paltry professional prospects , Ruppert drifted. He worked at a 7-Eleven, but was fired on his first day for selling alcohol to a minor. He declared bankruptcy and moved in with his parents. He developed a drinking problem. By , he began attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and got sober. But he still struggled to find a new career. He told friends that he held a number of disparate jobs: as an amplifier assemblyman, a UPS driver, a gun shop clerk, a manager for a private security firm.
In his spare time, he worked as a freelance writer — even landing a byline in the Los Angeles Times. In , at the age of 43, Ruppert met a year-old woman, Mary, at an AA meeting. The two got married — his first and only marriage — but divorced less than two years later.
Distraught and aimless, he told Mary he was suicidal. Then, Ruppert read a story that would change his life. It was a groundbreaking investigative report — a series of articles connecting the CIA to Nicaraguan drug runners. But that mattered little to Ruppert. The uproar over "Dark Alliance" was also an opportunity for Ruppert to have his suspicions heard. The audience erupted. When the din subsided, Deutch suggested that Ruppert report his findings to the authorities.
The crowd jeered Deutch. Ruppert looked on with a satisfied grin. In a matter of minutes, he had become a heroic figure battling the CIA, willing to stare down authority. News of the confrontation spread, and Ruppert capitalized on the publicity.
He started a muckraking, conspiratorial newsletter called From The Wilderness FTW that would eventually boast more than 22, subscribers. FTW reported on stories many mainstream news organizations overlooked.
Bush routinely flew in an airplane once owned by drug smuggler Barry Seal. FTW obsessed over questionable government activities. At nearly pages, not including endnotes and appendixes, Crossing the Rubicon is not a breezy read. In May of that year, Cheney sent fighter planes from military bases in the northeastern US to Alaska. Ruppert concluded that the move was a calculated effort to leave the northeastern US vulnerable.
The ultimate goal: to start a war and secure unfettered access to Middle East oil. His star rose, and FTW grew. Crossing the Rubicon became a cult hit. Ruppert was asked to give lectures all over the world, he said. But soon thereafter, FTW imploded.
Ruppert initially told readers the break-in was " the work of an organized meth ring that I prevented from infiltrating my business. Ruppert suggested the meth ring was connected to the CIA. Either way, Ruppert told staff, friends, and readers, his life was in danger. But he likely had more sordid reasons for fleeing. Rather, she "felt shocked and scared" by his advances.
Among the allegations:. He also accused her of "being a meth addict and facilitating the use of [his] office to smuggle meth. But by the time that decision was reached in , FTW had long ago ceased operations.
The fine remains unpaid. And who knows if his life was in danger? After four months in Venezuela, Ruppert fled there, too. Ruppert was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, he said. Miller said his friend shot himself after taping his last show for Progressive Radio Network, an Internet radio station.
A longtime Californian, he had also lived in Sebastopol. Napa homeless to be evicted from "the Bowl" camp in south Napa by Nov. The collision occurred shortly before p. The year-old Napa resident was doing tree work in the Circle Oaks community at the time of the incident, according to authorities. Check it out.
A person was hospitalized after a car ran off Highway 29 onto Napa Valley Corporate Drive on Saturday night, authorities reported. Several prominent downtown Napa buildings remain vacant more than seven years after sustaining severe damage from the South Napa Earthquake. After several failed efforts, Napa County has wrapped up the sale of 8. A jury found the man drove his wife up Mount Veeder Road, where he beat her and hit her with his car, and left her seriously injured in a cold December rain.
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Sign in. Terms of Service Privacy Policy. Back to homepage. The life and final days of Michael C. For Smith, however, the documentary was as much about Ruppert the man as his work. In an interview with Brandon Harris, Smith said:. To me, the film was about who he is and how he ended up here and the effect that this process has had on his life. There are so many of those films that have come out over the last couple of years.
I find that they can feel somewhat educational. I find Michael to be an incredibly entertaining person. That was what we wanted to focus on, on him.
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