NEWS, FAR OFF THE BEATEN PATH

Michael Ruppert Hasn't Had Much Use For The Mainstream Media. Until
Now.

The former Los Angeles narcotics investigator made his first big
splash at a heated public meeting in L.A. in 1996, when he confronted
CIA director John Deutch with charges that the CIA had engaged in drug
trafficking. Today, he is gaining attention as publisher of a
newsletter called ''From the Wilderness'' and as a leading proponent
of the theory that the Bush administration ''had full foreknowledge of
the 9/11 attacks and did nothing to prevent them.''

Ruppert, 52, holds other unconventional views, too. He wonders if
Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone's death in a plane crash was actually
a murder and thinks SARS may have been a man-made bioweapon.

''I've been called a right-wing conspiracy nut. I've been called
anti-Semitic and a Mossad disinformation agent in the same breath,''
he says. ''People have painted me as a Communist wearing a white
sheet. . . . I learned that politics is inherently self-limiting in
what it can discuss.''

Views this far outside the conventional boundaries of public debate
don't usually get an airing in the mainstream media. ''Primarily
because of their corporate financial structure and their need not to
rock their own financial boat,'' Ruppert says, ''they leave out some
key stories.''

But Ruppert says his lonely voice will soon be magnified through the
megaphone of some of America's largest and most prestigious newspapers
in a nationwide ad campaign that he hopes will make ''From The
Wilderness'' a household word and galvanize public opinion around his
extremely controversial ideas.

He's already had one very eye-catching success.

On May 16, Washington Post readers learned about ''From The
Wilderness'' in a dramatic full-page ad. It was headlined: ''Pay no
attention to that man behind the curtain . . .'' and illustrated with
a drawing of the ''Wizard of Oz'' characters. It informed citizens
that if they read the newsletter, they would learn the following: The
war against terror is a war for oil and will spread to places such as
West Africa, the US economy is bolstered by drug money being laundered
on Wall Street, and the US government is very culpable in the attacks
of Sept. 11, 2001.

Ruppert says the Washington Post ad, paid for by one generous and
anonymous benefactor, tripled the number of visitors to his website,
www.fromthewilderness.com. He was then able to raise almost $114,000
to follow up with an ad blitz in major newspapers throughout the
nation's top markets. According to Ken Levine, the owner of More Than
News Productions who is helping to place the ads, the spots may well
run in the Globe, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Arizona
Republic, and The Miami Herald in the next two weeks.

Levine also says there are plans to purchase ads in papers ranging
from The Hartford Courant to The San Diego Union-Tribune, and possibly
The New York Times and USA Today.

Levine, a former TV news director, supports Ruppert's mission, saying
''I think he's trying to open up people's eyes and at least hear
another side of the story.''

Levine says he secured the ad space at a discounted ''standby rate,''
which means the spots could be bumped for other ads.

Officials at the Republic, Globe, and Journal-Constitution say they
could not locate such an ad in their pipeline, and the Herald declined
to comment.

But Levine says the ''standby'' ads ''will only pop up in the system
when the ad is about to run,'' and he asserts that ''we have signed
contracts . . . for the Globe, Republic, Miami Herald, and
Journal-Constitution.''

Ruppert, who began publishing ''From The Wilderness'' in 1998, has a
staff of three full-time employees and generates about $400,000 a year
from a variety of sources, including subscriptions -- he claims about
10,000 subscribers -- and sales of videos such as ''The Truth and Lies
of 9/11.'' He also has hit the lecture circuit in recent years.

Ruppert's website includes a lengthy timeline in which he attempts to
make the case for what he calls the government's ''criminal
complicity'' in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Its pithy title: ''Oh
Lucy! -- You Gotta Lotta 'Splainin To Do.''

The man whose colorful past includes a stint as a press spokesman for
the 1992 Ross Perot presidential campaign and, by his own account, a
romantic relationship with a female CIA agent, says ''the mainstream
media never connect the dots.'' But even among well-known alternative
journalists who share his concerns about the myopic mainstream press,
Ruppert wins mixed reviews at best.

Al Giordano, publisher of the crusading Narco News Bulletin, which
covers the drug war, is laudatory, saying, ''Ruppert speaks for a
growing constituency of people. . . . My informational neighborhood is
safer from official propaganda because Officer Ruppert is patrolling
the beat.''

Gary Webb, whose explosive 1996 ''Dark Alliance'' series in the San
Jose Mercury News alleged CIA complicity in the Los Angeles crack
epidemic, says, ''Mike is a real conundrum. I think he's a sincere
guy, concerned about the right things, and he was quite supportive of
my efforts to expose the interplay between the CIA and drug
traffickers. But he's also written stories expounding a theory about
the genesis of my Mercury News series that were, quite frankly,
ridiculous.''

Steve Rendall, senior analyst for the liberal media watchdog group
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, says, ''accurate information is the
oxygen of democracy, and when someone is circulating unsupported
conspiracy theories, it detracts from the debate.''

Ruppert says the conspiracy-buff charge is ''intended to detract from
the evidence I present. . . . If that's the only argument they can
muster to me, that tells me in a war of intellects, they are basically
unarmed.''

Soon, millions of newspaper readers across the country may get the
chance to see what's in Ruppert's arsenal.