Gary's documentation is awesome and his work ethic is unbelievable. When removal men arrived, on the morning of 10 December 2004, they found a sign on his front door, which read: ''Please do not enter. Steven Webb . [55] Webb eventually chose Cupertino, but was unhappy with the routine stories he was reporting there and the long commute. The story offered no evidence to support such sweeping conclusions, a fatal error that would ultimately destroy Webb, if not his editors. An editorial in the Times, while criticizing the series for making "unsubstantiated charges", conceded that it did find "drug-smuggling and dealing by Nicaraguans with at least tentative connections to the Contras" and called for further investigation. "I am scared," the voice replies. LOS ANGELES, Dec. 12 - Gary Webb, a reporter who won national attention with a series of articles, later discredited, linking the Central Intelligence Agency to the spread of crack . He was sentenced to life in prison, though the sentence was shortened on appeal and Ross was released in 2009. Can these things possibly be? "Gary didn't take her seriously," says Susan Bell, "because he was always getting calls alleging weird stuff about the CIA. Webb had become, as somebody put it, "radioactive". Webb's reports prompted three official investigations, including one by the CIA itself which - astonishingly for an organisation rarely praised for its transparency - confirmed the substance of his findings (published at length in Webb's 1998 book, also entitled Dark Alliance). Emma Lee Webb, age 75, of Crossett, AR passed away Monday February 27, 2023, in her home surrounded by her family. The story was picked up by black talk-radio stations. By 1997, Bell tells me, Webb - whose 30-year career had earned him more awards than there is room for in her study - had been reassigned to the Mercury News's office in Cupertino. And it ruined that reporter's career. An investigative journalist, Webb became interested in the covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. Webb put in a call to Robert Parry. The first shot went through his face, and exited at his left cheek. After the publication of "Dark Alliance," The Mercury News continued to pursue the story, publishing follow-ups to the original series for the next three months. "Do you think that a part of him did this out of revenge?" It was also posted on The Mercury News website with additional information, including documents cited in the series and audio recordings of people quoted in the articles. In and out of work, he had a reputation for taking risks. 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". In the six years he worked at its Sacramento office, he won the HL Mencken award, for a story exposing corruption in California's drug enforcement agency, and his Pulitzer prize - won jointly, as part of a Mercury News team covering the 1990 Loma Prieta earthquake. Gary Webb's wife, Sue Webb (now Sue Stokes), said that he had been depressed for years due to his inability to get hired at a daily newspaper. "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. Then, on 10 December, he resigned. The new movie Kill the Messenger, based in part on a 2006 book by a former student of mine, eulogizes Webb . Occupation: Machine Operators, Assemblers, and Inspectors Occupations. [18], Webb began researching "Dark Alliance" in July 1995. 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. 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. Gary Webb (304) 778-2546: Jamie Webb (304) 778-2546: Status: Homeowner. By Sam Stanton Bee Staff Writer Published 2:15 am PST Wednesday, December 15, 2004. . The other article, citing interviews with current and former intelligence and law-enforcement officials, questioned the importance of the drug dealers discussed in the series, both in the crack cocaine trade and in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras' fight against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Like Schou, Corn cites the inspector general's report, which he says "acknowledged that the CIA had indeed worked with suspected drugrunners (sic) while supporting the contras. I remain astounded by the editorial decisions they made.". He died by suicide on December 10, 2004. Tara Becker-Gray Lee News Network Jan 17, 2019 0 1 of 2 C. Webb The body found at a house fire at 13308 95th Ave. in rural Blue Grass on Thursday night has been identified as Cynthia Webb, 59.. padding:0!important; The second article described Blandn's background and how he began smuggling cocaine to support the Contras. Within weeks, the site was attracting up to 1.3m hits per day. He also stated "the series presented dangerous ideas" by suggesting "crimes of state had been committed" (i.e. He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California, USA. "I think the behaviour of the media in all of this has been amazing," says Bell. and Drugs Has a Life of Its Own", "Pivotal Figures of Newspaper Series May Be Only Bit Players", "Tracking the Genesis of the Crack Trade", "Examining Charges of CIA Role in Crack Sales", "History Fuels Outrage Over Crack Allegations", "Ex-L.A. Times Writer Apologizes for "Tawdry" Attacks", "Mercury News Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos' Letter to the Washington Post", "Washington Post response to Mercury News Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos", "Despite critics, a good story Crack and the contras", "CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: Epilogue", "CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: Conclusions", United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, "Are You Sure You Want to Ruin Your Career? The film broadened the debate which led to the decriminalisation of . Its pointed to as one of the clearer cases of CIA intervention as revenge for Webb revealing damaging secrets about the agencies involvement in drug smuggling. It's . [28] Maxine Waters, the representative for California's 35th district, which includes South-Central Los Angeles, was also outraged by the articles and became one of Webb's strongest supporters. After examining the investigations and prosecutions of the main figures in the series, Blandn, Meneses and Ross, it concluded that "Although the investigations suffered from various problems of communication and coordination, their successes and failures were determined by the normal dynamics that affect the success of scores of investigations of high-level drug traffickers These factors, rather than anything as spectacular as a systematic effort by the CIA or any other intelligence agency to protect the drug trafficking activities of Contra supporters, determined what occurred in the cases we examined. Webb, whose plans to become a journalist had begun when he was 13, but never included equine death notices, resigned from the Mercury News a few months later. Webb disagreed with this conclusion.[1][2]. The third article, by Mitchell and Fulwood, covered the effects of crack on African-Americans and how it affected their reaction to some of the rumors that arose after the "Dark Alliance" series. ", As Webb would tell a friend, after he had been ostracised: "You have to look out, when the big dog gets off the porch.". Maxine Waters found a govt employee ran the South Central LA drug ring & The DOJ removed that section of the report : r/conspiracy 3 yr. ago Posted by shylock92008 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 . [65], After leaving The Mercury News, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature. Garry Webb wrote the 1996 "Dark Alliance" series for the San Jose. He also defended the series in interviews with all three papers. He was preceded in death by his wife, Melody Webb; parents and three brothers, Albert, Duane and Ronald. Few reporters I've known could match his nose for an investigative story. Emma Lee Webb. Their explosive report, which appeared in 1989, was either ignored, or marginalised, by the American press. [56] He resigned from the paper in November 1997. When he was engaged, he worked hard. He stayed home, playing computer games, and began smoking cannabis heavily. Ricky Donnell "Freeway Rick" Ross (born January 26, 1960) is an American author and convicted drug trafficker best known for the drug empire he established in Los Angeles, California, in the early to mid 1980s. Nick Schou, a journalist who wrote a 2006 biography of Webb, has claimed that this was the most important error in the series. And it was ignored by the US media, for all of those reasons. With Baca's encouragement, he started to investigate a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Oscar Danilo Blandn. In the column, Ceppos defended parts of the article, writing that the series had "solidly documented" that the drug ring described in the series did have connections with the Contras and did sell large quantities of cocaine in inner-city Los Angeles. } 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. [72] A New York Times profile of Webb in June 1997 noted that two of his series written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer had resulted in lawsuits that the paper had settled. Gary Webb, Into the Buzzsaw, CH 13, Prometheus Books. His was the story of a man who gains information of wrongdoing, then, attempting to act in the public interest, seeks protection from his superiors, and the forces of law, and does not receive it. [71] When asked by local reporters about the possibility of two gunshots being a suicide, Lyons replied "It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots, but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility." It reads: "There should be no fetters on reporters, nor must they tamper with the truth, but give light so the people will find their own way." [9], Webb's first major investigative work appeared in 1980, when the Cincinnati Post published "The Coal Connection," a seventeen-part series by Webb and Post reporter Thomas Scheffey. padding-bottom: 20px; In February, Gary Webb gave his ex-wife. The normal process is, or should be, that a reporter files a story and is robustly challenged by his paper's lawyers and editors - who, if satisfied that the report is accurate - publish, then defend the writer to the hilt. But Ian Webbknows all too well the emotions that come with that experience. Regarding issues raised in the series's shorter sidebar stories, it found that some in the government were "not eager" to have DEA agent Celerino Castillo "openly probe" activities at Ilopango Airport in El Salvador, where covert operations in support of the Contras were undertaken, and that the CIA had indeed intervened in a case involving smuggler Julio Zavala. [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. "If there was an eye to the storm," Katz wrote, "if there was a mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw most responsible for flooding LA's streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick. "I had to warn Gary that what he was looking at was probably true, but that he would run very big risks," Parry recalls. He really did believe that," she says. By the autumn of 1997, on medication for clinical depression, he was given leave of absence from the paper. The article discussed Webb's contacts with Ross's attorney and prosecution complaints of how Ross's defense had used Webb's series. "I think Kerry learnt a lesson from all this," reporter Robert Parry says. [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. But while calling the flaws in the series "unforgivably careless journalism," Overholser also criticized the Post's refusal to print Ceppos' letter defending the series and sharply criticized the Post's coverage of the story. "[64] Webb's longest response to the controversy was in "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On," a chapter he contributed to an anthology of press criticism: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been.
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