Webb was born in Corona, California. Working in San Jose would have meant daily contact with what Bell describes as "people he did not want to be with". Webb, Bell explains, had written four letters explaining what he was about to do - one to her, one to each of their three children - and mailed them immediately before he killed himself. And "we really didn't do anything to advance his work or illuminate much to the story, and it was a really kind of tawdry exercise. "It sounds crazy," says Bell, "but having his motorbike stolen was the last straw. 'Dark Alliance' - both as journalism and as a book - is a convoluted narrative, but the crucial link it establishes is between the "agricultural salesman" Oscar Danilo Blandn, a Contra sympathiser with close CIA links, and his best customer, an LA drug dealer known as "Freeway" Ricky Ross. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. It was good that his story forced those reports to come out, but part of what made that happen was based on misleading information. When Webb wrote another story on the raid evidence in early October, it received wide attention in Los Angeles. This support "was not directed by anyone within the Contra movement who had an association with the CIA," and the Committee found "no evidence that the CIA or the Intelligence Community was aware of these individuals support. After introducing the three, the first article discussed primarily Blandn and Meneses, and their relationship with the Contras and the CIA. Leen, who covered the cocaine trade for the Miami Herald in the 1980s, rejects the claim that "because the report uncovered an agency mindset of indifference to drug-smuggling allegations", it vindicated Webb's reporting. According to a description of Webb's injuries in the Los Angeles Times, he shot himself with a .38 revolver, which he placed near his right ear. "Allow Gary Webb to be there [in the CIA investigation]," a heckler shouts. "He thought I was being cowardly. "You do not understand the power of these people," he adds, referring to the US intelligence services. Gary is survived by his loving wife of 41 years, Barbara; their son, Jeff; his nephew, Christopher (Stephanie) Webb; niece, Sara (Gary) Dugan; and . He really did believe that," she says. [22], The lede of the first article set out the series' basic claims: "For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." [65], After leaving The Mercury News, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature. reports. Gary Webb, 64, Oroville, Wash., died Oct. 30, 2021. "Ross," his report went on, dealt "on a scale never before conceived," with "a staggering turnover" of "50 to 100 kilos of cocaine a day". He said: 'No. Work with a bunch of drug dealers to run guns? [41], When the Los Angeles Times series appeared, Ceppos again wrote to defend the original series. And it ruined that reporter's career. Vivian Corrie, a part of his liver in a life-threatening operation. His death was especially traumatic to the family since - as the coroner said - it could not be established whether he died instantly, or bled to death. 4) The series "created impressions that were open to misinterpretation" through "imprecise language and graphics. After his resignation from The Mercury News, Webb expanded the "Dark Alliance" series into a book that responded to the criticism of the series and described his experiences writing the story and dealing with the controversy. It's . His career ended, his livelihood was destroyed and certain games were started to be . And the importance of exposing them. Webb chose the second option. Webb is best known for his "Dark Alliance" series, which appeared in The Mercury News in 1996. "Although Ross had become a millionaire by 1984," Katz now wrote, "the market was so huge by then that even a dealer of his stature could seem dwarfed How the crack epidemic reached that extreme, on some level," he continues, "had nothing to do with Ross". I remain astounded by the editorial decisions they made.". In a three-part expos, investigative journalist Gary Webb reported that a guerrilla army in Nicaragua had used crack cocaine sales in Los Angeles' black neighborhoods to fund an attempted coup of Nicaragua's socialist government in the 1980s and that the CIA had purposefully funded it. What he found, he wrote later, "nearly knocked me off my chair". But Ian Webbknows all too well the emotions that come with that experience. [39] Carey's critique appeared in mid-October and went through several of the Post's criticisms of the series, including the importance of Blandn's drug ring in spreading crack, questions about Blandn's testimony in court, and how specific series allegations about CIA involvement had been, giving Webb's responses. We were dismissed as a bunch of nuts." The article suggested this was in retribution for Ross' testimony in the corruption case. Ross, currently serving life, was already infamous; he had been profiled in the LA Times in December 1994, by writer Jesse Katz, at a time when Ross was at liberty and in penitent mood. He was assigned to its Sacramento bureau, where he was allowed to choose most of his own stories. In August of 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb broke the biggest story of his life. Webb resigned from The Mercury News in December 1997. They failed because the climate was more sceptical then. In addition, Gary left multiple suicide notes to family members which were confirmed to be in his own hand by them. ", The significant legacy of the Webb case, "the reason this whole affair remains so significant today," Blum says, "is this: the knowledge that, if one individual dares raise such serious issues, they risk confronting a tremendous apparatus that is prepared to whack them hard, and there is very little they can expect by way of support. News coverage noted that there were widespread rumors on the Internet at the time that Webb had been killed as retribution for his "Dark Alliance" series, published eight years before. He was previously married to Sue Bell. [34], The Los Angeles Times devoted the most space to the story, publishing a three-part series called "The Cocaine Trail." The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress. So he blew her off. But they underestimated the paradigm shifting power of the internet, and the intelligence of Webb, who not only listed the explosive story online . Calling the Post's overall focus "misplaced", Overholser expressed regret that the paper had not taken the opportunity to re-examine whether the CIA had overlooked Contra involvement in drug smuggling, "a subject The Post and the public had given short shrift. "But that," pointed out Blum, who is now a Washington attorney, "in no way - in no way - diminishes the wrongness of what these bastards did. I ask Bell. When Gary originally broke this mind blowing story, the arrogant authority's assumed they could simply ignore him and hope he'd go away. In interviews after leaving The Mercury News, Webb described the 1997 controversy as media manipulation. Webb, one of the boldest and most outstanding reporters of his generation, was the journalist who, in 1996, established the connection between the CIA and major drug dealers in Los Angeles, some of whose profits had been channelled to fund the Contra guerrilla movement in Nicaragua. He went into the bedroom, and picked up a .38 that had belonged to his father. font-size: 34px; By the late spring of 1996, Webb was ready to publish. [62], Examining the support that Meneses and Blandn gave to the local Contra organization in San Francisco, the report concluded that it was "not sufficient to finance the organization" and did not consist of "millions," contrary to the claims of the "Dark Alliance" series. .article-native-ad p { Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst with the George Washington University's National Security Archive, was one of the first to suggest that Webb had overplayed his hand in the Mercury News version of "Dark Alliance". The February 2000 report by the House Intelligence Committee in turn considered the book's claims as well as the series' claims. There has been speculation that he may have met with foul play because he had received two gunshot wounds to the head, The Sacramento Bee reported Wednesday. His erstwhile editors on the Mercury News, meanwhile, saw their careers thrive. "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. "Which was that, if he wanted a future within the political establishment of the United States, then he should concentrate on other aspects of life.". [37], In 2013, Jesse Katz, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, said of the newspaper's coverage "As an L.A. Times reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News and kind of wonder[ed] how legit it was and kind of put it under a microscope, and we did it in a way that most of us who were involved in it, I think, would look back on that and say it was overkill. In city after city, local dealers either bought from Ross or got left behind."[24]. But the tragedy had a deeper meaning. But once the flak really started to fly, from the nation's grandest newspapers, Ceppos - having come under exactly what form of pressure it is difficult to know - printed a retraction which Webb dismissed as spineless. line-height:1.5; It found that Blandn received permanent resident status "in a wholly improper manner" and that for some time the Department "was not certain whether to prosecute Meneses, or use him as a cooperating witness." Webb's condition exacerbated his natural recklessness. The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua. Critics view the series' claims as inaccurate or overstated, while supporters point to the results of a later CIA investigation as vindicating the series. A jury awarded the plaintiffs over 13 million dollars and the case was later settled. 71K views 8 years ago Gary Webb's son Ian talks about the film in which Jeremy Renner plays his late journalist father. Emma Lee Webb, age 75, of Crossett, AR passed away Monday February 27, 2023, in her home surrounded by her family. The character reporter Irene Abe is said by fans of the show to be a stand in character for the real life Gary Webb. Dr. Gary A. Webb is a geriatrician in Marco Island, Florida. n 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles under the title "Dark Alliance" for the suggesting a CIA connection between anti-government contras in Nicaragua and monies raised from. Although it did find that both men were major drug dealers, "guilty of enriching themselves at the expense of countless drug users," and that they had contributed money to the Contra cause, "we did not find that their activities were responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic in South Central Los Angeles, much less the rise of crack throughout the nation, or that they were a significant source of support for the Contras. Gary Webb was at his desk in the Mercury News's Sacramento office, in July 1995, when he received a message to call Coral Baca, a Hispanic woman from the San Francisco Bay area, allegedly connected to a Colombian drug cartel. We are in the living room of Bell's house just outside Sacramento, California. Born January 3rd, 1943 in Montreal, Quebec, he was the son of the late John Douglas Webb and the late Jeannie (Penny) Hardie Penman. Osborn, Barbara Bliss (MarchApril 1998). Gary Webb was born in Corona, California, in 1955. [45], The Post's response came from the paper's ombudsman, Geneva Overholser. He wrote that the series likely "oversimplified" the crack epidemic in America and the supposed "critical role" the dealers written about in the series played in it. Both Gary's ex-wife Susan and his brother Kurt viewed the body and they confirmed the location of the wounds to me when I met them. Gary Stephen Webb was a Pulitzer prize winning American investigative reporter who exposed cocaine trafficking by the CIA.He wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, which initially backed his articles but later dropped him.Webb was put under pressure most certainly from the CIA under John Deutch for his reporting. And he finallyyou know, they finally left the country. "They had him writing obituaries," she said. He was born at Emmanuel Hospital in. The attack on Gary Webb and his series in the San Jose Mercury News remains one of the most venomous and factually inane assaults on a professional journalist's competence in living memory . In 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of stories exposing the connection between the CIA and the crack cocaine that was being sold in So. We had been here before." "[2], Ceppos noted that Webb did not agree with these conclusions. Although Blandn's cartel was undoubtedly one of the first to bring crack to LA, Webb was almost certainly suffering a rush of blood when he described the group as "the first pipeline" into the city. Parry, the first reporter to write about the US authorities' drug-running on behalf of the Contras, had survived a campaign by the White House to discredit first his story, then his reputation. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". With hindsight, Bell says, "the signs were there. A secret deal allowed drugs to go unreported by the DCI. The reports of the three federal investigations into the claims of "Dark Alliance" were not released until over a year after the series's publication. [52] Webb was allowed to keep working on the story and made one more trip to Nicaragua in March. In and out of work, he had a reputation for taking risks. Webb's pieces were not dealing with nameless peasants slaughtered in some distant republic, but demonstrated a clear link between the CIA and the suppliers of the gangs delivering crack to the ghetto of Watts, in South Central Los Angeles. Age 43 years. "[80], Not all writers agree that the Inspector-General's report supported the series's claims. .article-native-ad svg { The drugs went to South Central LA. One instalment of the LA Times's 18,000-word rebuttal of Webb's piece, published in October 1996, sought to minimise the importance of his key witness, Ricky Ross. [71] "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide," she said. The collection, The Killing Game: Selected Stories from the Author of Dark Alliance, was edited by Webb's son, Eric. I first heard about Webb eight years ago, I tell Bell, from the Paris-based journalist Paul Moreira. Gary Douglas Webb of Radnor, PA, passed away on October 19, 2021. A passing motorist - a heavily tattooed young man - gave him a lift home, then returned and stole the motorcycle, which police recovered from him three days after Webb's death. He recently told the American Journalism Review (whose scrupulously researched piece, by Susan Paterno, is the only serious documentation of the Webb case I could find anywhere in the orthodox American media) that Webb's critics in rival newspapers, "quoted these CIA guys - who had a tremendous amount to hide - as though they were telling the truth. Am J Mens Health, 2018 Mar 1:1557988318758788. doi: 10.1177/1557988318758788. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. Gary's family found that old, storied, ("priceless to us," as his ex-wife, Susan Bell, described it to me) CDROM among his possessions. "[38], Surprised by The Washington Post article, The Mercury News's executive editor Jerome Ceppos wrote to the Post defending the series. The passing of Gary ends more than 50 years with his best friend and loving wife, Marilyn J. A 1985 series, "Doctoring the Truth," uncovered problems in the State Medical Board[12] and led to an Ohio House investigation which resulted in major revisions to the state Medical Practice Act. He was laid off in February 2004 when Assembly Member Fabian Nez was elected Speaker. .article-native-ad { "If I had one dream for you," he wrote, "it was that you would go into journalism and carry on the kind of work I did - fighting, with all your might, the oppression and bigotry and stupidity and greed that surrounds us. A series of expose articles in the San Jose Mercury-News by reporter Gary Webb told tales of a drug triangle during the 1980s that linked CIA officials in Central America, a San Francisco drug . If you work through friendly reporters on major newspapers, it comes off as The New York Times saying it and not a mouthpiece of the CIA. Actor Jeremy Renner portrays Webb.[83]. "[79], Writing after Webb's death in 2005, The Nation magazine's former Washington Editor David Corn said that Webb "was on to something but botched part of how he handled it." [13] Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards. "This is an appalling charge," says a tense-looking Deutch. "I think Kerry learnt a lesson from all this," reporter Robert Parry says. [69], Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. In an unprecedented move, the then CIA director John Deutch was dispatched to address community leaders in the Watts district of LA. The story they printed was just awful. [14] In 1984, Webb wrote a story titled Driving Off With Profits which claimed that the promoters of a race in Cleveland paid themselves nearly a million dollars from funds that should have gone to the city of Cleveland. color: #ddd; The consensus, insofar as one exists, is that he probably overstated both the amount of drug money made by Ross and Blandn, and the percentage of those profits diverted to the Contras. One of these was a 1986 raid on Blandn's drug organization by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, which the article suggested had produced evidence of CIA ties to drug smuggling that was later suppressed. [36] McManus wrote that Blandn's and Meneses's contributions to Contra organizations were significantly less than the "millions" claimed in the series, and stated there was no evidence that the CIA had tried to protect them. margin-bottom: 20px; When facts didn't fit his theory, he tended to shove them to the sidelines. It also examined "how CIA handled and responded to information regarding allegations of drug trafficking" by people involved in Contra activities or support. Who Is Gary Webb's Wife? Gary Webb's Ex-Wife Set to Attend New York Premiere By Richard Horgan October 8, 2014 Cleveland Plain Dealer film critic Clint O'Connor had a solid feature the other day about Kill the. "He was crying. Moreira - a senior news producer for Canal Plus - has established a reputation for courage and independence of mind in his own foreign reporting, and was recently described by Le Monde as "the Che Guevara of news media". While working at the legislature, Webb continued to do freelance investigative reporting, sometimes based on his investigative work. An investigative journalist, Webb became interested in the covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. In the final few months of his life, Bell says, Webb became increasingly withdrawn. Webb's corpse was found in the bedroom, with two gunshot wounds to the head. In a three-part series published in the San Jose Mercury News, "Dark Alliance," Webb alleges that not only was the CIA aware cocaine sold in the U.S. during the 1980s was funding the Nicaraguan Contras, they were complicit in its distribution.
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