-Caveat Lector- From: "Michael C. Ruppert" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed May 8, 2002 6:16 pm Subject: Your Four Points of Intellectual Dimness
PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY… AN OPEN LETTER TO STEVE RENDALL May 8, 2002 Dear Mr. Rendall: I have monitored sporadically your immature rantings regarding my writings. Inasmuch as I gather that you have now distilled your critiques of my work to their four most salient points and that your hysteria has diminished somewhat, I will now respond to each of those four points so that you can get some much needed rest. Frankly, I am somewhat disappointed that these critiques are the best that you can muster for either yourself or your colleague Norman Solomon. However, in advance of a much needed and anticipated KPFA radio appearance scheduled for May 15th featuring Mr. Solomon and Delmart “Mike” Vreeland, wherein Mr. Solomon will be held accountable in his own right for some horrendous accusations and assumptions, I think it best now to put your feeble attacks off to one side so that when the broadcast airs, Pacifica listeners can at last have unfettered access to the direct-source information that you and Mr. Solomon have been so assiduously attempting to prevent. I turn now to a quote from one of your most recent email attacks. I will also address your position that these items are “central” to my case – a blatant distortion and falsehood. The misspellings therein are yours and have been left in place: “As for evidence of Ruppert's fraudulent argument I have listed at least 4 items that are absolutely central to Ruppert's "case" that Ruppert has utterly misrepresented. “The Le Figaro piece, the Toronto Star piece, his baseless claim that military intelligence officers are working inside at CNN (video on Ruppert's cite), and his claim that the nonsenseical Vreeland scribbles are a "detailed warning" and an "accurate warning" about the September 11 attacks. As for the scribbles, Mark: Does the date September 11, 2002 appear anywhere on this "accurate warning"? the dates 96-97 appear (if those numbers indicate dates) and the dates 2007 and 2009 appear. And that's just the one major problem with the dopcument that you Mark, apparently accept as an accurate warning. I have asked Ruppert's friends here to get him to defende these points. I get no response. Nither you nor any of your co-Ruppertites have offered a single defense of his on these substantive issues.” Point 1 – Le Figaro: You state that I have misrepresented the Le Figaro piece. I assume here that you are parroting the argument made by Bill Weinberg – a freelance writer. Please note that Weinberg corrected his accusations and agreed that I had not misrepresented the Le Figaro piece. This issue at that point was whether or not Le Figaro had “confirmed” a statement by a hospital administrator that bin Laden had been there. The first thing I received regarding the Le Figaro was a translated version of the story from a researcher which contained the following quote, “A member of the administration of the American Hospital of Dubai confirms that the public enemy number one stayed in the hospital from July 4th to July 14th.” I then looked at the original French version which stated, “Un homme, partenaire professionnel de la direction administrative de l'hôpital américain de Dubaï, affirme que l'ennemi public numéro un a séjourné dans cet établissement hospitalier du 4 au 14 juillet." The verb in question here is affirmer. A French speaking reader rose to the challenge by writing, “With respect to the correct translation of the French word "affirmer," je suggère que vous vous trompez. Your mistake is to rely on a French-English dictionary, the effect of which is to take a word out-of-context and give it the nearest English equivalent. You would have been better advised to consult a French dictionary. For example, here's the primary definition for ‘affirmer’ as provided by Dictionnaire Universel Francophone (Hachette/Edicef, 1997): Soutenir qu'une chose est vraie. [State that a thing is true.] “When the definition is translated into English, it sounds a lot like ‘confirm,’ doesn't it?” Weinberg wrote back to a fellow journalist on March 12, “There is no way I am publishing a letter which is far longer than most of the blurbs I run in my newsletter. Yeah, to an extent the affirm-confirm debate is a semantical one.” Webster’s Dictionary defines “misrepresent” as: “to represent incorrectly: to give a false, imperfect or misleading representation of.” Therefore you have utterly failed on this assertion. And I can guarantee you that, had you published this assertion on anything other than an e-mail list you might well feel the same legal response that will be coming soon for others. The rest of your points are as feeble as this one. Nonetheless, for the benefit of those who are slow to see, I will go through the exercise of addressing them. Point Two: The Toronto Star story on Vreeland In my “Oh Lucy Timeline I wrote: “August 11 or 12 [2001] - US Navy Lt. Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an officer in U.S. Naval intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope which he gives to Canadian authorities.” As a source for the story I used a Toronto Start article by Nick Prom, dated, October 23 which stated, “The 35-year-old American claims to be a lieutenant in a U.S. Navy intelligence unit — a spy who says he knew in advance about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “In his affidavit, he says he tried to warn Canadian intelligence about possible terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, along with targets in Ottawa and Toronto, but was written off as a petty criminal. “So he wrote the warning on a piece of paper, sealed it in an envelope, and handed it to jail guards a month before the attacks. They opened the letter Sept. 14 and immediately forwarded the information to Ottawa.” So where is the misrepresentation? Here you appear to be following the unfounded logic of David Corn, Editor of The Nation which was easily refuted in my response to his March 1 attack which took place on the same day that your colleague Norman Solomon was part of an unannounced (attempted but unsuccessful) ambush of me at KPFK. Corn’s position was that I had not discussed all of the other negative stories about Vreeland in the timeline. It’s a “TIMELINE” stupid! When people list events in a timeline, (e.g. – Dec 7, 1941 – The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor) they do not go into lengthy dissertations as to whether it was the Japanese Navy or Army, whether the Americans had foreknowledge, or whether there were economic provocations for the attack. The Toronto Star confirmed that Vreeland wrote the warning BEFORE the attacks and that it was opened AFTER the attacks and sent to Ottawa. That was my point. Just for a moment, I will digress and remind you that: -- From The Wilderness has published six stories specifically on the Vreeland case; I have hired a Canadian Correspondent who has been in court hearings three times; I have traveled to Toronto twice, been to the Court, obtained court records, interviewed Vreeland, his mother and BOTH of his attorneys, printed a significant amount of derogatory material about him; and that I also uncovered material like a 1986 L.A. Times story in which he is described as a friendly-witness in a major cocaine seizure that links him to known intelligence operatives in LAPD. Point 3 – Military Intelligence Officers Working in CNN’s Newsroom In 2000 a French intelligence newsletter revealed that U.S. Army Psyops personnel had been placed as “interns” in CNN’s newsroom. I don’t think this fact is in dispute. I was unaware that they had been removed. As much as I try, I just cannot read every press story printed everywhere in the world. Does the fact that I was unaware of the removal prove me guilty of misrepresentation? Gee, I apologize for not knowing everything. But does this change the fact that, according to author and Emmy winning former CNN News producer, Kristina Borjesson (who has a great new book out about the work that people like you do), CNN uses military satellites (to this day) for their live feeds? Does it change the fact that military intelligence personnel WERE placed in an American newsroom. Even you and Mr. Solomon have written heavily how the mainstream media serves the interests of the military, intelligence services and big business. Are you now telling me that you no longer believe that to be the case and are retracting your own writings? And please tell me how my failure to be aware of the removal of the “interns” is “central” to my positions on 9-11. I don’t think even YOU can bend a pretzel that far. Point 4 – Nonsensical Scribblings on Vreeland’s 9/11 Warning Note I could go into a refutation of your and Mr. Solomon’s assertions that all of the entries on his letter are a nonsensical mishmash of unrelated data that have nothing to do with September 11th. That is not the case and we have done a significant amount of research showing that many of those entries are related to 9-11. Only a portion of it has been published as yet. Both Vreeland’s mother and his attorneys, former Canadian federal prosecutors of impeccable reputation, have all said consistently that, as Sept 11th approached, Vreeland’s sense of urgency increased dramatically and that he kept warning his mother, who was scheduled to go to New York in early September to, “stay out of tall buildings.” Previous stories FTW has published leave no doubt that both Vreeland and his attorneys knew that he was referring to the events that ultimately occurred on September 11th. He has never said and I have never said that he knew the exact date in advance. Read my interview with him! The warning letter has a context which you have deliberately chosen to ignore. That context has been established in several FTW stories including interviews with Vreeland and his attorneys as well as a court record documenting numerous rebuffed attempts to reach Canadian and U.S. intelligence officials which increased in both frequency and urgency before the attacks. To take the letter out of that context and to refuse to examine our reporting is worse than disingenuous. It is dishonest and unethical. I could go on here and break down the items in Vreeland’s letter which are 9-11 specific. Research is something that is apparently beyond your capacity or that of Messrs. Solomon and Corn. However, I prefer at this point to see if Mr. Solomon shows up for his agreed-to radio appearance with Mike Vreeland and his lawyer on May 15th [7 PM on “What’s The Verdict” www.kpfa.org hosted by Wendell Harper]. I am offering 2:1 odds in my office that he won’t. Mike Vreeland has earned the right to speak for himself about all the things that are specific to 9-11 in that letter and he deserves the satisfaction of putting Mr. Solomon in his justly-earned place at that time. Of course, if you won’t read or address the previous research I have done on that issue it’s a moot point here. Your refusal to read FTW’s research does not make me inaccurate. For the record: I have written or published 53 stories pertaining to 9-11 and the events since. Only six of those have been about Vreeland. There is much more that needs to be investigated and documented in the case and I have continually called for other authentic journalists to jump into the case and do “real” journalism. There’s a lot of work remaining and much more to be learned. Conclusion Absolutely none, zero, zilch of your four points are central to my 9-11 position, nor are they even “substantive” as you allege. With the exception of the fact that I was unaware that the interns had been pulled from the CNN newsroom, (which is not a misrepresentation) all of your points fail to hold any more water than a colander. And on the basis of these grand arguments, you and your colleague Norman Solomon wish to argue that I should not be allowed on Pacifica airwaves and that Pacifica listeners should be deprived of the right to hear direct evidence and make judgments for themselves? You should really be ashamed of yourself. I am going to make it a point to not distract myself from further correspondence with you unless and or until your childish and hysterical rantings develop into something more credible. I think that means I’ll have a lot of time to write and publish the stories that provide FTW’s growing readership with what they are so hungry for – solid food. Michael C. Ruppert Publisher/Editor “From The Wilderness” www.copvcia.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substancenot soap-boxingplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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