Conspiracy Theory

MY INTRODUCTION to conspiracy theorist Mike Ruppert came at the Take Back America conference in early June, when I met Steve, a bearded man in a lumberjack shirt and worn jeans who runs Creative Spirituality booksellers, a roving book mobile that specializes in stocking book sales at meetings of progressive activists. As I waited for a breakout session to begin I browsed through Steve's book racks, looking at the collected works of former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, at Ambassador Joseph Wilson's The Politics of Truth, at the most recent offerings of Eric Alterman and Michael Moore. Finally my eye settled on The New Pearl Harbor, a book by David Ray Griffin, who teaches at the Claremont School of Theology, and who, his bio says, "is the author and editor of more than 20 books."

The New Pearl Harbor is a skeptical take on the "official account" of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, based on the work of Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, Paul Thompson, and Thierry Meyssan, the author of 11 Septembre 2001: L'Effroyable imposture, the French bestseller that argued that an American missile, not an airliner, hit the Pentagon on September 11. Griffin goes on to suggest that the Bush administration knew about the attacks in advance--indeed let them happen. The book caught my eye because it was being sold--displayed quite prominently, in fact--at a conference where Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, George Soros, and other Democratic eminences appeared.

I picked up a copy and headed over to the cash register, where I introduced myself to Steve, whose eyes grew wide when he saw the book I was carrying. "That's a great book," he said. "You know, it's doing very well on Amazon.com." (As of June 17, incidentally, The New Pearl Harbor ranked 583 on Amazon.)

"I'm eager to read it," I said.

"Do you know who Mike Ruppert is?"

I shook my head.

Steve reached into an unmarked basket of videotapes that lay at his side next to the cash register. He said, "He was the guy who uncovered CIA drug running in L.A. And he was kicked off the force because of it." He picked up a tape and held it up so that I could see it clearly, tapping the blue case with his index finger. The white label read "The Truth and Lies of 9-11." "This tape has everything that's in this book" (meaning The New Pearl Harbor), Steve said. "And more. I think it's a great companion."

I asked if the tape was for sale as well.

"Five dollars." Steve's eyes were watery. He clutched the tape, holding it out to me, as though it were a holy book. All this was terribly important to him, it seemed.

I bought the book and the tape and went to the next breakout session.

THE TRUTH AND LIES OF 9-11 is a videotaped lecture Mike Ruppert delivered at Portland State University on November 28, 2001. The lecture is 138 minutes long, but feels much longer. The production values are not high. The audio cuts in and out. Sometimes Ruppert mixes up the transparencies that he displays on his overhead projector. When he's not using transparencies he uses a dry erase board to spell out the names of all the former CIA directors and their connections with Wall Street. When he's not using the dry erase board he shows video clips from politicians and academics, including Reps. Ron Paul of Texas and Barbara Lee of California, former Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, and professor emeritus Peter Dale Scott of U.C.-Berkeley.

It's quite a motley crew of guests and experts. But then Ruppert has been in the business of uncovering conspiracies for sometime. He has a reputation. When I called Ron Paul's congressional office on Thursday and asked a spokesman if Paul had ever talked with Ruppert, the spokesman knew immediately who I was talking about. "Ruppert's very aggressive," he told me. "He came around and spoke to a few different members." As for Rep. Paul's appearance on The Truth and Lies of 9-11, in which it is alleged that the September 11, 2001, attacks had been planned for over a decade by the U.S. government, the spokesman said he had never seen the tape, and "I'm sure [Paul] hasn't even seen the videotape," either.