Global Research

We bring to the attention of our readers the introduction of a 1997 statement by the late Michael C. Ruppert submitted to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 

Michael C. Ruppert was a former LAPD narcotics investigator and author.

Michael Ruppert committed suicide on April 14, 2014.  [M.Ch, GR editor, April 24, 2014]

This document appears exactly as I submitted it to the Select Intelligence Committees of both Houses. To date, it remains only a document submitted in advance of testimony and it has not been placed in the Congressional Record. Although I and Cele Castillo remain on potential witness lists, we have not been allowed to testify. The sheer volume of my exhibits and the disk space required to scan them makes it impossible to include these important documents here. To obtain my full statement, with all 32 pages of exhibits and photographs – CLICK HERE.

Mr. Chairman:

On November 15, 1996, I stood at a town hall meeting at Locke High School in Los Angeles and said to Director of Central Intelligence John Deutch,

“I am a former Los Angeles Police narcotics detective. I worked South Central Los Angeles and I can tell you, Director Deutch, emphatically and without equivocation, that the Agency has dealt drugs in this country for a long time.”

I then referred Director Deutch to three specific Agency operations known as Amadeus, Pegasus and Watchtower.

Most Americans have been led to believe that the purpose of these hearings is to ascertain whether or not there is any evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency dealt drugs during the Iran-Contra era. If these hearings were about evidence, then the most patriotic duty I could perform would be to quote Jack Blum who served as chief investigator for the Kerry Subcommittee on narcotics and terrorism ten years ago. He testified before this committee last year and said,

“We don’t have to investigate. We already know.”

We could save a lot of taxpayer money by just rereading the records of the Kerry hearings. There is more evidence in there than any court in the world would ever need to hand down indictments.

At best, I could just quote you one entry from Oliver North’s diary dated July 5, 1985, which said that $14 million to buy weapons for the Contras, “came from drugs.” I wouldn’t need to mention the two hundred and fifty other such entries in his diary, which refer to narcotics. Or I could quote Dennis Dayle a senior DEA supervisory agent who said,

“In my thirty year history in DEA, the major targets of my investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the C.I.A.”

But these hearings are not about evidence. They are about corruption and cover-up. The CIA did not just deal drugs during the Iran-Contra era; it has done so for the full fifty years of its history. Today I will give you evidence which will show that the CIA, and many figures who became known during Iran-Contra such as Richard Secord, Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, Felix Rodriguez and George Herbert Walker Bush, who was DCI when I first became exposed to Agency drug dealing, have been selling drugs to Americans since the Vietnam era. I have been very careful to make sure that what I tell you today is admissible evidence in criminal proceedings.

In a court of law the testimony of an eyewitness is one of the most prized possessions of a prosecutor. It is direct evidence of a crime. I am an eyewitness. Another form of frequently used evidence is an exception to the hearsay rule in which admissions against the interest of a criminal participant or a material witness are admitted into evidence if given under oath by the person to whom the statements were made. I am under oath and I will provide you today with utterly damning admissions against interest made by people with direct knowledge of these events. There is also documentary and circumstantial evidence and I will present you with that as well.

My evidence will show conclusively that, as a matter of national policy, set at the National Security Council – the White House – elements of the C.I.A., in concert with elements of the military, and other federal agencies, have dealt drugs to Americans for at least three decades. Major defense contractors like E-Systems have also engaged in such traffic. I will not cover the outstanding work of scholars such as Alfred McCoy of the University of Wisconsin and Peter Dale Scott of the University of California at Berkeley who document this activity back to the forties.

Nor will I attempt to deliver the material which should be given to you directly by a great many other heroic witnesses including Celerino Castillo, Mike Levine, Dee Ferdinand, David Sabow, Brad Ayers, Tosh Plumley, Bo Abbott, Danny Sheehan, Gene Wheaton, John Mattes, Jack Terrell, Winfred Richardson (formerly of E-Systems), Michelle Cooper (formerly of E-Systems), Bill Tyree and Dois G. “Chip” Tatum. Also this committee should interview two former CIA employees on the subject. Their names are David MacMichael and Ralph McGehee.

The evidence will also show that the CIA has infiltrated and established illegal relationships with a number of police departments around the country. One of the purposes of this has been to protect CIA drug operations from law enforcement. I have personal knowledge of this activity in Los Angeles and New Orleans and have documented such a case in New York City.

All of the exhibits I will present today are among the two hundred and fifty plus pages of documents I provided to your investigators when they visited me in Los Angeles last year.

This is my testimony: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ssci.shtml