Contras and did not want to stop the He had also lost his house the week before his suicide. Then, in August the same year, the first of three instalments of "Dark Alliance" appeared. There were no offers. * The agency's response was to try to prevent him from getting his doctorate, then block his advancement in the academic world. I realise now he was thinking about suicide.". In the final few months of his life, Bell says, Webb became increasingly withdrawn. Call 911 for assistance. A 1988 Senate subcommittee report noted that certain CIA-backed contras did smuggle drugs to make money. U.S. during the 1980s. "It was like someone had made a terrible noise, or a terrible smell, in a small room," recalls Jonathan Winer, Kerry's chief senate staff investigator . After being reassigned to the Mercury News's office in Curpertino, where they had him writing death notices, Gary Webb resigned and fell into depression. Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. story of Gary Webb, a journalist who wrote He was so depressed. Gary was born Sept. 4, 1947, to Percy and Pauline (Haas) Webb. "It says the CIA helped introduce poison into our children. {{#verifyErrors}} {{message}} {{/verifyErrors}} {{^verifyErrors}} {{message}} {{/verifyErrors}}. "Do not quote me. With hindsight, Bell says, "the signs were there. After a local paper reported that he had died from multiple gunshots, the coroner's office received so many calls asking about Webb's death that Sacramento County Coroner Robert Lyons issued a statement confirming Webb had died by suicide. Journalist Gary Webb's three-part 1996 series "Dark Alliance" asserted that the Central Intelligence Agency turned a blind eye to accusations that some of the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras made money by smuggling drugs into the U.S. 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. If he could have chosen his own epitaph, it might have been a line from the letter he posted to Bell, immediately before he killed himself: "I do not regret," Webb told her, "anything that I have written." Childhood. The staff of the San Jose Mercury News won a Pulitzer Prize "for its detailed coverage of the October 17, 1989, Bay Area earthquake and its aftermath" (Pulitzer.org). "But Gary thought that if something was true, it should be told. By this stage, he was prepared to work as a jobbing reporter. When Webb's body was discovered last December, Bell says, this last item had been dumped in the trash. Dark Alliance Interviews & the Kill the Messenger Trailer, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb, Official Website of Drug Boss "Freeway" Rick Ross. For example, Webb asserted that the Blandon-Meneses-Ross drug ring opened "the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles," helping to "spark a crack explosion in urban America," but his article offered no evidence to support such a claim. Gary Webb. With heavy hearts, we announce the death of Gary Webb of Sunbury, Pennsylvania, who passed away on December 2, 2020 at the age of 73. "You sound very scared," Moreira remarks. To pay off his mounting debts, Webb sold the Carmichael property, where he was living alone, and arranged to move in with his mother. The media had contorted Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" article, accusing Webb of making allegations that were nowhere to be found in his piece. . Ceppos failed to reply to one phone message and six emails. Gary and Karla James Webb married and blended their families on January 7, 1989 in O’Donnell, Texas. At the commemorative service for Webb, held at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento, Bell read out the letter Webb had written to his son Eric, now 17. Webb's corpse was found in the bedroom, with two gunshot wounds to the head. "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.". Webb drew a line from the drug boss Ricky Ross to the contras, writing, "The cash Ross paid for the cocaine, court records show, was then used to buy weapons and equipment for a guerrilla army named the Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense," or the FDN. 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." This isn't to say that "Dark Alliance" didn't garner Webb any awards. No distinct feature that hints at the potential for greatness, or his ability to help inspire revolution. Webb's condition exacerbated his natural recklessness. -The Independent. A month ago, Gary Webb, a retired U.S. Air Force veteran, was enjoying his family, fishing and preparing for the hunting season. -LATimes.com After bearing the brunt of the attacks, his own newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News, distanced itself from his article and published an apology letter to its readers. Garcia is deputy director of the John S Knight Fellowships in Journalism at Stanford University. "Gary Webb was left to fend for himself. Gary Webb planned his death with polite precision. Born in Corona, California, son of a conservatively minded Marine, he met Bell, whose father was a university lecturer, at high school in Indianapolis. Webb joined the Mercury News in 1988, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. ", She pauses: "That said, he did sleep with a gun under his bed.". They failed because the climate was more sceptical then. If the antagonism of competing publications was predictable, what happened to Webb within his own newspaper was not. She said the paper wanted to make up for what it had done in the past. 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. Gary Webb was a Virgo and was born in the Baby Boomers Generation. But the tragedy had a deeper meaning. ("Dark Allance" p.113) Webb continued " . "It really shows how serious he took his job and how important it was to never stop fighting for the truth. Webb came home and put his belongings in order, dropping his Kentucky Post poster in the bin. 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. -Collider.com. When they married, she was aged just 21. Yes, but it didn't have anything to do with his "Dark Alliance" story. "He was never really the same after that," said Sue Stokes, Webb's former wife. Ten years later in 1998, Frederick P. Hitz, the CIA inspector general, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that following a thorough review of the matter, he believed that the CIA in the least acted as a bystander with regard to the war on drugs. turning a blind eye to the cocaine coming But his central thesis - that the CIA, having participated in narcotics trafficking in central America, had, at best, turned a blind eye to the activities of drug dealers in LA - has never been in question. He said: 'No. Look, he's killing himself. But such is the elusive nature […] 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. "They tried to make us look like crazies," says Blum. "To get back at his editors?". The room is decorated with his trophies: a Pulitzer prize hangs next to his HL Mencken award; also on the wall is a framed advertisement for The Kentucky Post. We had been here before." "If you were going to kill Gary Webb, you would have killed him five years before he died. Webb focused on the Los Angeles-based drug kingpin "Freeway" Ricky Ross, portrayed by Michael Kenneth Williams in the movie. Working in San Jose would have meant daily contact with what Bell describes as "people he did not want to be with". Can these things possibly be? The trigger slips. By Sam Stanton -- Bee Staff Writer Facing a barrage of calls from the media and the public, the Sacramento County Coroner's Office issued a statement Tuesday confirming that former investigative reporter Gary Webb committed suicide with two gunshots to the head. Should these editors subsequently deem the story to have been fatally flawed, they take the consequences. When asked by local reporters about the possibility of two gunshots being a suicid… Despite being largely thrown under the bus by media outlets, including the newspaper that had employed him (the San Jose Mercury News), the Kill the Messenger true story reveals that a few journalists did come to his defense. He typed out four lengthy suicide notes and put them in the mail to family members. -NYTimes.com. 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. "That's right," says Blum. "There are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity, or take action to resolve the allegations." This included his own newspaper, the An extraordinary claim requires extraordinary proof. him. When it did, beginning with The Washington Post, it shocked Webb's critics as much as his many admirers. -NYTimes.com, Yes. Webb profiled the relationship in his 1996 three-part article "Dark Alliance," where he showed that the Nicaraguans had CIA connections. Her husband began his career on The Kentucky Post, and rapidly proved himself to be the sort of character who can be a secretive agency's worst nightmare: a full-blooded provocateur who liked to put the hours in at the library. Gary Webb is dead. He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California. "He was crying. He became known for his 1996 Dark Alliance publication that alleged that the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles, Califonia was aided by members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua and supported and protected by the Central Intelligence Agency and United States government.. Webb's Dark Alliance series gained notable … story and the media's desire to kill it. And this is not a happy story - or," she adds, "a little one.". "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. He had also lost his house the week before his suicide. While police were preparing the case against her boyfriend, Baca alleged, officers had disclosed documents which revealed that one of her lover's associates had been working for the Contras. What he found, he wrote later, "nearly knocked me off my chair". traffickers from reaping huge drug -LATimes.com, According to the true story behind Kill the Messenger, Webb wrote the 1994 piece "The Forfeiture Racket" that exposed California's drug asset forfeiture laws, which enabled the police to seize homes and various other property of suspected drug dealers. He resigned from the San Jose Mercury News after spending several months at the new location (LATimes.com). "He thought I was being cowardly. Baca claimed that a drug dealer with close links to the CIA had framed her boyfriend, who was also in the cocaine business. The story they printed was just awful. As for how much, we may never know. Their explosive report, which appeared in 1989, was either ignored, or marginalised, by the American press. He ends up going down and shooting through his jaw. Exposed CIA Nicaragua/drugs angle. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? And the importance of exposing them. Five years ago, a tragedy occurred in American journalism: Investigative reporter Gary Webb – who had been ostracized by his own colleagues for forcing a spotlight back onto an ugly government scandal they wanted to ignore – was driven to commit suicide. Cuts and amendments were made at the request of Ceppos, executive editor of the Mercury News, and Webb's immediate editor Dawn Garcia, among others. With Baca's encouragement, he started to investigate a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Oscar Danilo Blandón. He cites the case of Alfred McCoy, now Professor of South East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin. Webb put in a call to Robert Parry. His corpse was discovered on the seventh anniversary of his resignation from the Mercury News. "Because of Gary Webb's work," said Senator John Kerry, "the CIA launched an investigation that found dozens of connections to drug runners. Both sides were left angry and disappointed. That was just the way he was.". Gary Wayne Webb, 73, of Blanchard, died Monday, July 20, 2020, in Anadarko. Depressed, he became increasingly unpredictable in his behaviour and embarked on a series of affairs; he was divorced from Bell in 2000, though he remained close to her throughout his life and lived in a house in nearby Carmichael. There is a CIA connection and I can demonstrate it.'". Killing him in 2004 did nothing for you because he was already out. "Do you think that a part of him did this out of revenge?" One time he called me and he said: 'I have this plan that will benefit us both.' It took him a long time to sign a resignation letter, and I don’t blame him,” recalls Sue Bell Stokes, Webb’s widow, ex-wife and enduring friend — since they began dating in high school. Gary Webb was born on March 21, 1959 to Wayne and Peggy Davie Webb in Lamesa, Texas. ", Read our full mailing list consent terms here. "I feel like it depicts him very well," says son Ian Webb. "For the better part of a decade," it began, "a San Francisco drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funnelled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the US Central Intelligence Agency.". Look at the way the US press reports on Iraq. No. When he told me, I said it sounded crazy. By a fortunate coincidence of timing, the report was released on a day when the Monica Lewinsky scandal dominated every front page in the country. Mr. Webb was … "This is an appalling charge," says a tense-looking Deutch. But you say - dear God. The link between drug-running and the Reagan regime's support for the right-wing terrorist group throughout the 1980s had been public knowledge for over a decade. Gary Webb's son Ian talks about the film in which Jeremy Renner plays his late journalist father. Ceppos and Garcia have long since lost any taste for public discussion of "Dark Alliance". "As a PhD student, McCoy went to Vietnam and built an absolutely damning case about the CIA's involvement with trafficking heroin. On the last day Webb was alive, his motorbike broke down while he was moving to his mother's house. He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California. movie trailer for the movie that tells the The 73-year-old Sunbury resident contracted COVID-19 … The media, then consumed by the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, largely ignored the findings. 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. "The second bullet," adds Bell, who has worked for more than 20 years in the area of respiratory therapy, "struck his carotid artery. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". Like in the movie, the real Gary Webb attempted to uncover the connection between L.A.'s biggest crack dealer, "Freeway" Ricky Ross, and two narcotics suppliers and Nicaraguan Contra sympathizers, Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon. He was a writer, known for Kill the Messenger (2014), Filming in Georgia (2015) and Crack in America (2015). Then, on 10 December, he resigned. "He had six in a short period of time." "I had to warn Gary that what he was looking at was probably true, but that he would run very big risks," Parry recalls. Gender: Male Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orien. "The first story he had to file was about a police horse which had died of constipation. The passing of Gary ends more than 50 years with his best friend and loving wife, Marilyn J. The story was picked up by black talk-radio stations. It is the salient lesson of the Gary Webb affair. "I know it's a much better story if he were murdered," says screenwriter Peter Landesman. 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". I'm glad that I didn't dissuade him, because it was important to get the truth out... but for Gary Webb, there was a very high price to pay." "Let me be frank about what we are finding," Hitz said. Webb then took out his father’s pistol and shot himself in the head. . ", "After Gary died," she says, "a reporter from the LA Times came here. What was new about Webb's reports, published under the title "Dark Alliance" in the Californian paper the San Jose Mercury News, was that for the first time it brought the story back home. government had been backing the Nicaraguan "He lost his spark" (Cleveland.com). He stayed home, playing computer games, and began smoking cannabis heavily. As a result, some major US newspapers ignored its findings completely, while others relegated a brief summary to their inside pages. The son of Wayne S. Webb and Ruth May Mars Webb, he was born November 26, 1946 in Blanchard, Oklahoma. He made that very clear. "I think the behaviour of the media in all of this has been amazing," says Bell. ". When you first take a look at Gary Webb, there’s nothing particularly intriguing about the guy. So, he's sweating. And when he got something in his head, he was determined to do it. He was taken to hospital by air ambulance. 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. Bell and her children helped Webb prepare 50 packages containing cuttings and his CV which they sent out to newspapers all over the US. ", Webb had already been cremated and his ashes scattered in the bay off Santa Cruz two weeks before. According to Webb, CIA-backed Nicaraguan guerrillas were funding their war by selling drugs in the U.S. — but the CIA did nothing to stop it. I felt she really trashed me. Thank you." "Gary was given the choice of relocating either to San Jose," says Bell, "or to Cupertino". Originally shared by Guerrilla News Network on archive.org. I mean - please.". "Exactly," replied Kornbluh, who - referring specifically to the LA Times, said he is "baffled as to how they could be so gullible. Coral Baca's boyfriend was one of those dealers, a Nicaraguan by the name of Rafael Cornejo. Gary Webb’s Ex-Wife Set to Attend New York Premiere. This is why Webb's "Dark Alliance" series is an essential source, a primary text that every journalism student should study. "I think Kerry learnt a lesson from all this," reporter Robert Parry says. For example, Geneva Overholser, who at the time was the ombudsman of The Washington Post, wrote that the Post "showed more passion for sniffing out the flaws in San Jose's answer than for sniffing out a better answer themselves." 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. 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. 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. Our research into the Kill the Messenger true story reveals that the real Gary Webb's three-part series called "Dark Alliance" was published in August 1996 by the San Jose Mercury News, the newspaper that employed him. ", 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. government's refusal to respond to his "I am scared," the voice replies. It was accurate. Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. "They had him writing obituaries," she said. "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". Starring Jeremy Renner, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Sheen, Copyright © 2021 HistoryvsHollywood.com, CTF Media. started since getting out of prison. He also discusses his He crashed and shredded his clothes, face and body on a barbed-wire fence." "Dark Alliance" was the first significant attempt to document a connection between the CIA's anti-communism efforts and drug trafficking in Central America. The first effect of the onslaught was to ease the pressure on the CIA. Baca, portrayed by Paz Vega in the movie, phoned Webb and wanted him to write about how the government had framed her boyfriend on bogus charges. He's nervous. His death was ruled a suicideby the Sacramento County coroner's office. I ask Bell. So, on Dec. 9, 2004, the 49-year-old Webb typed out suicide notes to his ex-wife and his three children; he laid out a certificate for his cremation; he taped a note on the door telling movers – who were coming the next morning – to instead call 911. Overview Gary Webb was American investigative journalist. He was never again hired by a daily newspaper. Gary Webb was … There are no indications that this seemingly ordinary human being carries with him an extraordinary message. I first heard about Webb eight years ago, I tell Bell, from the Paris-based journalist Paul Moreira. "Dark Alliance" controversy, including the That's survivable. Some editors regarded him as stubborn to the point of insolence. The story had little immediate impact. He was married to Sue Bell. "And to an extent, they succeeded.". When she got indignant," she adds, "he went to meet her.". Webb, unlike Blum or Kerry, had to face his difficulties alone. first supported him, then turned against is interviewed and discusses his days as a In February last year he was laid off by the State Legislature. He told me: 'If I can't do what I want to do, what's the point?' When I first heard the news, I tell Bell, I was inclined to believe the conspiracy theories that still proliferate on the internet, suggesting that Webb had been assassinated - either by one of the drug dealers he'd met while writing Dark Alliance, or by the intelligence services who were supposed to police them. By the autumn of 1997, on medication for clinical depression, he was given leave of absence from the paper. (Strawser) Webb. Webb undeniably made mistakes of detail and emphasis in the newspaper version of "Dark Alliance". current legit businesses that he has "But that doesn't mean he was wrong, and it certainly doesn't mean he deserved what he got." "Gary didn't take her seriously," says Susan Bell, "because he was always getting calls alleging weird stuff about the CIA. $3 million dollars a day. Webb began to shift from cynicism to curiosity. The movie never clarifies whether such complaints about Webb's reporting were just. In turn, the article claimed the contras used that money to buy weapons to fight the socialist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, which the U.S. government opposed. It would have been our 25th wedding anniversary," Bell recalls. Webb profiled the relationship in his 1996 three-part article "Dark Alliance," where he showed that the Nicaraguans had CIA connections. "He rang me up that day. Part of the San Jose Mercury team that won the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for reporting over the Loma Prieta earthquake. Some might consider it an inappropriate assignment for a man with responsibilities. 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. Shortly before his death, his motorcycle had been stolen (it was recovered by his family after his death). In the midst of a bout of depression, Gary Webb, 49, was found dead in his home on December 10, 2004. We were dismissed as a bunch of nuts." It found that CIA officials ignored information about possible Contra drug dealing; that they continued to work with Contra supporters despite allegations that they were trafficking drugs, and further asserted that officials from the CIA instructed Drug Enforcement Agency officers to refrain from investigating alleged dealers connected with the Contras. Going to the CIA to ask if they've ever profited from drug sales in Los Angeles, I suggested to Kornbluh, is rather like asking Fagin if he has ever picked a pocket. Early life. Birthplace: Corona, CA Location of death: Carmichael, CA Cause of death: Suicide. His series of articles - which prompted the distinguished reporter and former Newsweek Washington correspondent Robert Parry to describe Webb as "an American hero" - incited fury among the African-American community, many of whom took his investigation as proof that the White House saw crack as a way of bringing genocide to the ghetto. The response from the American press took two months to arrive. His death, in 2004, was ruled a suicide. story "Dark Alliance," which criticizes Video courtesy of documentary FREEWAY: CRACK IN THE SYSTEM premiering on Al Jazeera America in early 2015. The real Gary Webb talks about his 1996 At first Webb wasn't interested, but then she told him about one of the government's witnesses, a drug trafficker named Oscar Danilo Blandon, who was working for the CIA. According to Walt Bogdanich, a former colleague on the Plain Dealer who has won two Pulitzers and now works for The New York Times, Webb was the best retriever of information from public records he has ever seen. It was truthful. This emotive last phrase refers to Webb's experience in the immediate aftermath of publication of his three lengthy articles, in the summer of 1996. The Los Angeles Times estimated his conglomerate sold half a million crack rocks per day at its peak. As it turned out," she adds, "that was not their intent.". with regard to the cocaine coming into the We pride ourselves on the professional and … The drugs went to South Central LA. It really shows how loving of a father he was and how fun he was. Ross' coast-to-coast operation flooded U.S. streets with crack. The videos below shed more light on the Kill the Messenger true story. Gary Webb, friends say, was a far more combative character than either the Mercury News's executive editor Ceppos or page editor Garcia. 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. Please accept Echovita’s sincere condolences. Yes. narcotics suppliers and Nicaraguan Contra sympathizers, Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon. There was no coffin, casket or tombstone. 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 the biggest loss he had was the writing. I felt weak and distressed; the whole thing was so fresh. Former drug kingpin "Freeway" Ricky Ross Gary “Goose” Wayne Webb, age 67, of Beckley, passed away at the Harper Mills Nursing Home in Beckley on Monday, January 12, 2015. Ceppos initially defended Webb, and reportedly showed up at an in-house party wearing a military helmet. We are in the living room of Bell's house just outside Sacramento, California. Watch the Kill the Messenger At the same time, the article's points about the CIA knowingly doing business with drug-trafficking Nicaraguans had become lost in the controversy.
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