Scout: A Memoir of Investigative Journalist Michael C. Ruppert, with Against the Dying of the Light Paperback – November 19, 2014

Thank you for writing this book about the man who was my boss and confidant. Here is an insight about early Michael Ruppert that you missed in the book -My paramilitary work began with one incident and one man.The incident was at the LA County Jail about a year before my release in 1979. It was the biggest baddest food fight in history at the cafeteria. A guard disrespected me and a buddy, we were jumped by more, and two goon squads were called in. When the food and utensils had settled, 17 guards and goon squad members were floored with all their shields and weapons piled at their feet. The cafeteria was locked down and my buddy and I waited.The man was Michael Ruppert, a LAPD sheriff, who arrived on the scene. He told me I could kick the ass of a three-dicked dinosaur and followed my progress after the incident through the system. I was taken to the LA Hall of Justice, which was an annex of County Jail located cross-town. It was a top security place that had housed celebrity inmates like Doc Holiday, Charles Manson, and Peg--Leg Morgan. I was kept there in solitaire for a few months until my release, and it was an eerie place.I had the whole floor to myself, except for staff. They were not regular guards, but four men in coats & ties who looked like government agents. They came to my cell daily for months, asking me questions about my past, my psychological profile, where I learned martial arts, and what I thought of certain world politics. I got great food, was let out on the roof to ride a stationary bicycle, and much of the time my cell door was unlocked. I spent the time meditating, exercising, practicing my magic techniques like moving pencils, and talking to Michael Ruppert.He seemed to be preparing me for release, and for something I didn’t know but thought concerned drugs and Latin America. He said it was a shame what drugs were doing to Americans, especially the black population, and that U.S. arms shouldn’t be traded for drugs. He hinted that once I got out of County Jail, there might be something for me to do, but left it at that. The most solid thing I had to go on was, ‘My dog knows all the secrets’. We talked for dozens of hours before my release, and then he accompanied me, along with Brother Gerald, the Catholic Chaplin, to the Los Angeles Mission where I did a martial arts and magic performance, and then they put me on a bus to Salt Lake City. I was free for the first time in four years.In Salt Lake, after about a month, I was contacted by a ‘handler’ who helped me start my dojo, and I became close to him and his family. He was a former Vietnam Captain in charge of what might be called a company of misfits who fought for the USA. Then Ruppert showed up from LA, and it was obvious that he was the superior. He helped me start the James Hydrick U.S. Ninja Academy that trained military and ex-military and law enforcement and ex-cops. Those were the ‘secret’ outings around Utah, and into other states, and to a few other countries.I didn’t know exactly who I was working for, because I didn’t know at the time exactly who Michael Ruppert was. I learned later that he was probably CIA, and a whistle blower on the CIA, and that the 12 guys (ex-prisoners, drug dealers, ex-military) who I trained and traveled with were nicknamed The Dirty Dozen just like the movie.The U.S. Ninja program lasted from 1981-3 and my paramilitary activities with the group between jails and martial arts demos into the mid-eighties. - James Hydrick

I attended the Petrocollapse Conference in New York in 2005 where both Mike and Jenna spoke. Mike was a troubled man but also brilliant and courageous. Jenna tells it like it is in this memoir. We will miss him and clearly, so will she.

GREAT