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From The Wilderness Journalism Milestones
and Achievements – Six Years of History
March 1998 – FTW mails first issue to 68 people. It doubles its size in one month. As of 2004, its subscription base exceeds 12,000.
March 1998 – FTW predicts that promised open congressional hearings into the CIA's role in drug trafficking during the Contra era will never occur. In the summer of 2000 the investigation is closed without a single public hearing on the evidence.
July 1998 – FTW takes up the case of fired CNN producer April Oliver, fired over her Tailwind stories reporting that, in 1970, the CIA had used Sarin gas during the Vietnam conflict on the orders of Henry Kissinger. In July FTW becomes the first publication to publish the deposition of retired Joint Chiefs Chairman Thomas Moorer in the case. In that deposition Moorer admitted that Sarin gas had been used and a multitude of suits and countersuits involving CNN, John Singlaub, Oliver and her co-producer were quietly settled in secret. FTW reported that although Oliver could not disclose the terms of the settlement she bought a new house and car and then paid her tuition to a prestigious law school in cash. FTW also reported on a similar settlement for Oliver's co-producer, veteran journalist Jack Smith (the deposition and Sarin stories are still on the web site).
Sept. 1998 – FTW publishes a detailed account of how Osama bin Laden had been created, protected, trained and funded by the CIA and that bin Laden had been a guest of British intelligence in London as recently as 1996.
Oct. 1998 – FTW publishes detailed excerpts from Volume II of a CIA Inspector general's report, including declassified records proving the CIA 's direct role in the drug trade.
Dec. 1998 – FTW publishes a detailed investigation, including copies of US government documents, describing how twenty-eight C 130 aircraft had been funneled through the Forest Service into the hands of private contractors. Instead of fighting forest fires, many of the aircraft wound up smuggling large quantities of cocaine and heroin. Court records established a CIA link and confirmed the details of this covert operation.
April 1999 – FTW reports on the role of a young Assistant DA named John Kerry in Middlesex County Massachusetts in the questionable 1979 prosecution and murder conviction of Special Forces soldier Bill Tyree after Tyree threatened to expose covert CIA operations moving cocaine into Panama.
April 1999 – FTW publishes a detailed account of NATO/CIA alliances with the Kosovo Liberation Army and Osama bin Laden under the direction of NATO commander Wesley Clark. At the time, law enforcement sources had documented that the KL A was controlling 70 per cent of the heroin entering Western Europe.
May 1999 – FTW publishes a story by former Assistant Housing Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts on ethnic cleansing in America. Using data obtained from HUD, FTW becomes the first to publish a map clearly connecting the 1980s crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles to a systematically planned and executed operation to create thousands of single family mortgage foreclosures in the area.
August 1999 – FTW publishes a two-part investigation, including interviews with state and federal officials as well as the publication of “sensitive” DoJ documents showing the direct funneling of drug money into Democratic Party campaign chests.
August 1999 – With the help of former Assistant HUD Secretary Fitts – also a past managing director at Dillon Read – FTW becomes the first news agency to report on a series of documents showing massive financial fraud at HUD connected to covert operations and the manipulation of financial markets.
August 1999 – FTW begins three years of extensive coverage on “Plan Colombia,” including plans to engineer US military involvement to secure control of drug cash flows and untapped oil reserves on land occupied by FARC rebels.
Also reports on a “cold call” by NYSE Chair Dick Grasso to rebel leaders asking them to invest their cocaine profits in Wall Street.
Sept. 1999 – FTW breaks an exclusive story tying the Bank of New York (BoNY) to the laundering of up to $15 billion in stolen IMF funds and organized crime proceeds from Russia. This cash flow nearly quadrupled the Bank's share prices and resulted in three successive 2:1 stock splits. In a prelude to the Enron scandal FTW also shows how the compensation packages for BoNY execs increased by 600%.
Oct. 1999 – With journalist Dan Hopsicker FTW breaks an exclusive story – later picked up by the Associated Press – showing that Texas Governor George W. Bush routinely flew in a state airplane previously owned by the legendary drug smuggler Barry Seal. Ownership records of the airplane tied it to covert CIA operations during the Iran-Contra era.
Oct. 1999 – FTW Publisher/ Editor Mike Ruppert is visited by staff members of the House Intelligence Committee who copy 6,000 pages of FTW records only to bury them from public view.
Nov. 1999 – FTW openly advocates the decriminalization of all drug use to remove an estimated $600 billion in profits from the world's financial markets stating clearly that this cash flow epitomizes an economy which chooses to make profits by destroying life rather than improving it.
Nov. 1999 – Jan. 2000 – In a multi-part exposé, after obtaining court records of CIA documents, FTW breaks an exclusive story showing that the 1982 conviction of former CIA officer Ed Wilson had been secured as a result of perjured CIA testimony and affidavits. A t that time FTW predicted that Wilson 's conviction would ultimately be overturned. The conviction was indeed overturned in October 2003. In December 2003 a criminal probe was launched by the Department of Justice into the conduct of high-ranking officials involved in the case, including a US Appeals Court judge. In February of 2004 it was announced that DoJ would not retry Wilson on the charges.
Feb. 2000 – FTW publishes a detailed analysis of the exploding prison population under Bill Clinton. New inmates include 800,000 non-violent drug offenders. FTW links this explosion in prison populations and boosts in various share prices on Wall Street.
April 2000 – In The Democratic Party's Presidential Drug Money Pipeline (later reprinted in three languages) FTW furnishes documentary evidence from the DEA and the DoJ tracking campaign donations from Dominican Drug lords (controlling most of the cocaine consumed on the Eastern Seaboard) into the Al Gore campaign. Mike Ruppert is subsequently threatened with prosecution over his disclosure of a confidential DoJ memorandum. The story also connects former DNC Charles Manatt's appointment as US Ambassador to the Dominican Republican to drug-connected campaign contributions. FTW 's reporting establishes conclusively that drug money is an essential component of the US economy and a necessary ingredient to both political parties in Presidential elections.
July 2000 – FTW reports on an unpublished 9 th Circuit Court decision confirming a documentary record showing that an Iran-Contra defendant had smuggled cocaine directly for the CIA.
Sept. 2000 – A fter being contacted by members of the RCMP National Security Staff, FTW breaks an exclusive story on the use of PROMIS software by intelligence agencies to monitor financial markets, track terrorists and manipulate sensitive financial, intelligence and natural resources data bases. The story also documented that Canada 's version of the software had been compromised, and tracked the history of US and Israeli use of the software against friend and foe alike. This became critical when, after 9/11, the FBI and DoJ officially acknowledged that they had been using the software after reports had surfaced that the software had been given to Osama bin Laden.
Oct. 2000 – FTW publishes The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire, a scathing exposé of Halliburton; its political corruption, documented connections to drug smuggling, and campaign donations right before the 2000 election. The story predicted that under a Bush presidency, Halliburton, once chaired by Dick Cheney would engage in unheard-of levels of political and economic corruption. This story was cited by author Kevin Phillips in his 2004 best-seller American Dynasty.
Dec. 2000 – Immediately after the contested 2000 election FTW predicts a major economic recession, massive deficits, hostilities in South America and a global conflict.
Jan. 2001 – As the Bush administration takes office FTW describes the regime as a “war cabinet” and states that the US has become an Empire intent on major new conflicts beyond anything imagined up to that point. FTW labels the administration as a bully which would not hesitate to use military and economic bludgeons to manipulate and control world events.
Jan. 2001 – FTW breaks original stories on depleted uranium (DU) poisoning in Iraq and Kosovo, including FAA documents proving that the US government knew that DU was toxic and lethal.
Jan. 2001 – Well before the UN rift over the invasion of Iraq FTW describes new, emerging alliances between Russia and Europe and between Russia and Japan.
March 2001 – After attending an economic conference in Moscow, Mike Ruppert reports in detail on the Taliban's recent destruction of Afghanistan 's opium crop. Calling the move economic warfare against the US, Ruppert predicts that the move by the Taliban – which took an estimated $200 billion out of the world's banks and markets – would result in conflict between the US and Afghanistan. Since the US occupation of Afghanistan in November 2001, Afghanistan has again become the world's largest opium producer with crop yields 18 times larger than on 9/11.
May 2001 – FTW reports that rampant criminality in the US financial markets is out of control as Citigroup pays $12 billion in cash to buy Mexico's largest drug money laundering bank, Banamex. With that purchase Citigroup places drug laundering kingpin Roberto Hernandez on Citigroup's board of directors along with former CIA Director, John Deutch.
July 2001 – FTW begins an explosive two-part exposé on insurance giant A IG showing that the wife of Medellin Cartel co-founder Carlos Lehder is employed in the firm's San Francisco offices. FTW documents AIG's long-standing ties to the opium trade. In February 2004 candidate John Kerry was criticized in the press for receiving allegedly improper “donations” from AIG.
Sept 9, 2001 – FTW issues to its subscribers the first of the only two economic bulletins in FTW 's history thus far. It warns of an imminent collapse of US markets. The 9/11 attacks two days later prompt a massive US Treasury intervention which prevents the collapse. As a result of the attacks George W. Bush is able to tap into the Social Security trust Fund.
Sept. 2001 – Just 7 days after the attacks in New York and Washington FTW publishes stories documenting that the US government had received detailed warnings from at least seven countries and did nothing to prevent the anticipated attacks. The number of countries now known to have warned the US with specific details exceeds 15. FTW reporting, since vindicated by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and in congressional records, was the genesis of current battles over disclosure of Presidential intelligence briefs. These advance warnings and so-called ”failures,” as documented by FTW and forced into mainstream media, have formed the basis for pointed questions and challenges by former Florida Senator Bob Graham, Dennis Kucinich and Congresswoman Cynthia Mckinney.
Sept. 2001 – Again, less than a week after the attacks FTW becomes the first publication to expose and detail long-standing business relationships between the Bush and bin Laden families, including their joint participation in The Carlyle Group.
Sept. 2001 – FTW predicts massive unemployment and economic hardship for Americans.
Sept. 2001 – Less than a week after the attacks of 9/11 FTW predicts that the coming conflicts, described by Dick Cheney as “a war that will not end in our lifetimes” would include wars that had nothing to with terrorism and would spread around the globe.
Sept. 2001 -- FTW predicts that opium production in Afghanistan will soar and that the country will be occupied in time for the planting season which begins in November. Afghanistan was, in fact, occupied in time to plant record crops which were successfully harvested in May-June of 2002.
Oct. 2001 – FTW publishes a detailed exposé of insider trading on the world's financial markets just before the 9/11 attacks involving the stocks of American Airlines and United Airlines as well as other American and European firms which suffered heavy damage. In this report FTW breaks the news that many of the insider trades involving United Air Lines were handled by a firm previously headed by Buzzy Krongard who, on 9/11, was the Executive Director of the CIA. FTW also connects the insider trades with the fact that the head of that company – the Alex Brown unit of Deutschebank – had resigned the day after the attacks.
Oct. 2001 – Using foreign press reports, FTW discloses that the US invasion of Afghanistan had been known of and prepared for long before 9/11. At the same time, FTW was among the first publications to question erratic behavior by George Bush on the day of the attacks that was wholly inconsistent with the official version of events.
Oct. 2001 – FTW expands its coverage of the Carlyle Group and publicizes the Bush family's historical financial ties to both Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein.
Oct. 2001 – FTW is among the first American news sources to publish the fact that $100,000 had been wired to Mohammed Atta just weeks before the attacks by the head of Pakistan's Intelligence Service (the ISI), General Mahmud Ahmad and that Ahmad had been in Washington on 9/11.
Nov. 2001 – FTW publishes a detailed legal analysis and breakdown of the just-passed USA Patriot Act detailing a number of constitutional violations in a story titled The “F” Word.
Nov. 2001 – FTW is the first to break a story highlighting a series of quotations from a 1997 book by former national Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard. These quotations, along with map s reproduced from the book, demonstrate clearly that a major war in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf had been planned for at least four years and that an attack on the order of Pearl Harbor would, in Brzezinski's words, be required to mobilize popular support for a “massive military mobilization”. The Brzezinski quotations are later picked up in dozens of publications and cited by Gore Vidal.
Oct. 2001 – Three years before Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said it, FTW predicts that Social Security would become insolvent and that cuts in benefits would be inevitable.
Nov. 2001 – In dozens of lectures in the United States, Canada and Australia, FTW Editor Mike Ruppert states clearly that the so-called war on terror will be nothing but a sequential war to control the last remaining oil reserves on the planet.
Dec. 2001 – FTW begins its now legendary scientific coverage of Peak Oil, the fact that the world is beginning to run out of hydrocarbon energy, including natural gas. The reality of Peak Oil has since been confirmed by CNN, The BBC, The Wall Street Journal, Nature, The Guardian, ABC News, The Financial Times, and official energy sources including former British cabinet minister Michael Meacher.
2002-2004 – FTW pioneers a groundbreaking series of stories in biological warfare and the mysterious deaths of as many as 15 world-class microbiologists, all of whom have specialties connected to gene sequencing and/or disease agents. Newspapers in Canada, Great Britain and the US follow up and post similar stories. In August 2002 the New York Times expends 8,000 words in a futile attempt to debunk what is obviously a string of related murders.
April 2002 – In a world exclusive called The Elephant in the Living Room, FTW uncovers massive political conflicts of interest involving John Ashcroft campaign donations and two major oil companies (ExxonMobil and British Petroleum) under grand jury investigation. In this special report FTW obtains statements from DoJ attorneys indicating that Ashcroft has intervened in these investigations even though the targets had been major campaign donors.
June 2002 – FTW issues its second-ever economic alert to subscribers warning of an imminent plunge in the Dow, NASDAQ and other markets. A week later the Dow begins an historic plunge which takes away 25% of its value in three months.
Aug. 2002 – Based upon an analysis of troop deployments and oil supply shortages FTW announces that an Iraqi invasion is inevitable, regardless of political opposition, more than six months before it happens.
Aug. 2002 – After a detailed analysis of political and economic instability in Saudi Arabia, along with a discussion of Saudi money in the US markets FTW predicts the coming US-backed destabilization of the Saudi regime and ultimate seizure of the Saudi oilfields by the US military, most likely after the 2004 election. This is almost a year before massive terror attacks and explosions rock the Saudi capital.
Oct. 2002 – A full year before reports in major publications like CNN, the New York Times, The Asia Times and the Financial Times, FTW states that China will be the end game for oil by detailing the skyrocketing levels of Chinese oil consumption and importation, coupled with massive increases in Chinese auto sales and industrial consumption of oil and gas.
Oct. 2002 – FTW is among the first to evaluate a just-released report from the Project for a New American Century showing that plans had been in place for the Iraqi invasion since at least 2000, long before the 9/11 attacks.
Nov.-Dec. 2002 – FTW conducts a detailed investigation into the plane crash killing Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife. The investigation discredits much of the government's official explanation, at the heart of which lie untenable claims about the role of weather in the crash. FTW concludes that Wellstone was murdered, and details of its investigation including weather analyses, interviews with on-scene investigators, and FAA procedures are quoted in Minnesota newspapers.
Dec. 2002 – FTW reports that the anticipated Caspian oil bonanza is a bust after 20 of 25 wells drilled result in dry holes. In an interview with world petroleum expert Colin Campbell, FTW again confirms Peak Oil and what the coming shortages will look like.
Jan. 2003 – FTW predicts $3.00 a gallon gasoline in the near future.
March 2003 – Just before the US invades Iraq FTW predicts that the US occupation of that country will be long-term and that the conflict will degenerate into a Vietnam-like quagmire with heavy US casualties and guerilla warfare.
March 2003 – FTW reports on a methodical move in congress to document impeachable offenses by the Bush administration over forged documents purporting to verify Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium ore in Niger. This was months before the illegal outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA case officer and six months before the empanelling of a grand jury in the case.
March 2003 – FTW reports that energy investment banker Matt hew Simmons, an advisor to the secretive energy task force headed by Dick Cheney, had advised the Bush campaign before the 2000 election that the impact of Peak Oil was imminent and serious.
2002-3003 – FTW pioneers investigations into the development of gene-specific and genetically-modified bioweapons.
April 2003 – FTW continues its in-depth coverage of Colombia, describing covert operations and military aid (post-9/11) intended to destabilize a country with untapped oil reserves. FTW also documents unsuccessful US attempts to destabilize the regime of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
May 2003 – Reporting from an international Peak Oil conference in Paris, FTW details a number of reports from automakers like Daimler-Chrysler, financial institutions like Deutschebank, and world-class oil experts on the certainty and proximity of Peak Oil. It is in Paris that FTW learns from an Iranian oil executive that Saudi Arabia may have already peaked; and if Saudi Arabia has peaked, the earth has peaked.
May 2003 – FTW publishes an exclusive 22-page report on the SARS epidemic suggesting that it may be a bioweapon designed to constrain an exploding Chinese economy. The report documents interesting connections between the specialties of many of the dead microbiologists and the technology need to produce one or more SARS-like viruses.
May 2003 – FTW confirms Saudi Arabia as a coming target for US intervention and adds that West Africa is a growing zone of conflict in the infinite war. This is three months before N A TO announces a policy and strategic shift to West Africa and two months before the US gives six warships to the Nigerian Navy after repeated domestic unrest upsets oil production. This is seven months before the first press reports surface showing that China is increasing military aid to West Africa.
June 6, 2003 – Eight weeks before it happens, FTW Editor Mike Ruppert, while speaking at an economic conference in Mexico predicts a massive US power blackout that will ultimately be shown to be the result of an irreversible natural gas shortage throughout North America.
June 2003 – After a year of evaluating alternative energy regimes, using academic sources, FTW concludes that there is no combination of alternative energy sources capable of sustaining current world population and consumption. FTW publishes nine critical questions to be used in the evaluation of alternative energy sources. Hydrogen is a joke; ethanol a wasteful energy-losing subsidy for agribusiness.
July 2003 – In a special report, Watergate II, FTW describes how the Bush administration has angered financial markets and big business. FTW predicts criminal investigations and a certain impeachment should Bush steal the 2004 election. FTW states clearly that the global economic elite will pursue a policy of “management change” without making any serious revelations about 9/11, economic corruption and instability, or Peak Oil.
August 2003 – In an exclusive interview with FTW, the world's largest energy investment banker, Matt hew Simmons – whose clients include The World Bank, Kerr-McGee and Halliburton – confirms natural gas shortages as a primary cause of the New England blackout along with deregulation. In this interview, a full six months before confirming stories appear in The New York Times, Simmons confirms that Saudi Arabia may have passed its peak of oil production.
Oct. 2003 – In Beyond Bush II – long before the first Democratic primary in New Hampshire and at a time when the press focused its attention on Howard Dean FTW predicts that John Kerry will become the nominee.
Oct. 2003 – FTW 's Dale A llen Pfeiffer, in the “most frightening story FTW has ever published”, confirms the role of oil and natural gas in food production and demonstrates that 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy go into every calorie of food consumed by Americans. The story predicts coming food shortages 60 days before grain shortages are reported in China and a month before CNN's Lou Dobbs reports that Canada and the US may soon be unable to export grain.
Jan. 2004 – In Your Face, Mike Ruppert 's most important article in two years, dissects documents and map s unearthed in a lawsuit from the secretive energy task force headed by Dick Cheney. With a Supreme Court ruling due in the summer of 2004 on the release of the panel's records, FTW documents that, well before 9/11 the energy task force was already discussing ways to carve up Middle East oil deposits.
Feb. 2004 – Documenting military manpower requirements and shortfalls, FTW publishes an exclusive two-part series predicting that the draft will soon be implemented in the US. FTW undertakes to contact the foreign ministries of 75 foreign governments to determine which countries will and will not extradite US draft evaders.
Apr. 2004 - In April, 2004, citing an FTW exclusive published 30 days earlier, BBC names FTW as a source in an artlcle on Peak Oil titled, "When the Last Oil Well Runs Dry."
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