To Protect and to Spin

To believe Vreeland's scribbles mean anything -- as does Ruppert -- one must believe his claim to be a veteran intelligence operative sent to Moscow on an improbable top-secret, high-tech mission (change documents to neutralize an entire technology?) during which he stumbled upon records (which he has not revealed) showing that 9/11 was going to happen. To believe that, one must believe Vreeland is a victim of a massive disinformation campaign involving his family, law-enforcement officers and defense lawyers across the country, two state corrections departments, county-clerk offices in 10 or so counties, the Canadian justice system, and various parts of the U.S. government. And one must believe that hundreds if not thousands of detailed court, county, prison and state records have been forged. It is easier to believe that a well-versed con man either wrote a sketchy note before September 11 that could be interpreted afterward as relevant or penned the note following the disaster and convinced prison guards he had written it previously. Michigan detective John Meiers, who's been chasing Vreeland for two years, says, "The bottom line: Delmart Vreeland is a con man. He's conned everyone he comes into contact with . . . He doesn't want to come back here. He knows he's going to prison, and he's fighting. In the interim, he's coming up with a variety of stories."

RUPPERT IS CORRECT TO REMIND PEOPLE THAT official accounts must be absorbed with scrutiny. Clandestine agendas and unacknowledged geostrategic factors -- such as oil -- may well shape George W. Bush's war on terrorism. And there are questions that have gone unanswered. The CIA and the FBI possessed indications, if not specific clues, that something was coming and failed to piece them together. Why did U.S. air defenses perform so poorly on September 11 -- even though there had been signs for at least five years that al Qaeda was considering a 9/11-type attack? But questions are not equivalent to proof. As of now, there is not confirmable evidence to argue that the conventional take on September 11 -- bin Laden surprise-attacked America as part of a jihad, and a caught-off-guard United States struck back -- is actually a cover story. Ruppert, who has been chasing CIA ghosts for over 20 years, offers innuendo, not substantiation. The former cop hasn't made his case.

But this just in: At the end of May, the interim government in Kabul announced it was reviving plans to build that trans-Afghanistan pipeline. Did this mean Ruppert was on target? Did this pipeline revival mark the culmination of Bush's secret 9/11 plot? Not exactly. Unocal, the U.S. oil company that led the old pipeline consortium on whose behalf the U.S. government supposedly allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur, declared it was no longer interested in the pipeline. That hardly fits with Ruppert's they-let- it-happen-for-oil theory. No doubt, Ruppert has an explanation for this. And that explanation likely will supply one more reason for this ex-cop to continue his hell-bent crusade against the spies and thugs who two decades ago broke his heart but opened his eyes to a secret world that he, among only a few, can see.