How Kill the Messenger Will Vindicate Investigative Journalist Gary Webb For instance, he published an article on racial profiling in traffic stops in Esquire magazine, in April 1999. His former wife, her voice lowered to a whisper, explains that Webb missed with the first shot (which exited through his left cheek). Obituary | GARY HAYS WEBB of Neenah, Wisconsin | WESTGOR FUNERAL HOMES There is a CIA connection and I can demonstrate it.'". [20] The website artwork showed the silhouette of a man smoking a crack pipe superimposed over the CIA seal. Thank you." 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. Some might consider it an inappropriate assignment for a man with responsibilities. "[58], It also concluded that "the claims that Blandn and Meneses were responsible for introducing crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles and spreading the crack epidemic throughout the country were unsupported." 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. Then, on 10 December, he resigned. 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. The first shot went through his face, and exited at his left cheek. 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. Why bring up old white people atrocities against black people now? The Open Mic: A Few Words with Cinematographer Ian Webb Lynn Rd, Ranger WV - Rehold Address Directory Shortly before his death, his motorcycle had been stolen (it was recovered by his family after his death). 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. Many writers discussing the series point to errors in it. 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. When his body was found, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was on the DVD machine, and his favourite CD, Ian Hunter's live album Welcome to the Club, was in the CD player. 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." "He was sleeping more, he hated to get up in the morning, he started having a lot of motorcycle. "The government side of the story is coming through the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post", he stated. Eighteen Years Ago Today, Journalist Gary Webb Was Murdered After [35] The second article, by McManus, was the longest of the series and dealt with the role of the Contras in the drug trade and CIA knowledge of drug activities by the Contras. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. Gary Webb - Spartacus Educational That wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been willing to stand up and risk it all.". The story was picked up by black talk-radio stations. Few reporters I've known could match his nose for an investigative story. [16] As part of The Mercury News team that covered the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Webb and his colleague Pete Carey wrote a story examining the causes of the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct. In August of 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb broke the biggest story of his life. I remain astounded by the editorial decisions they made.". "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.". Gary Webb's income source is mostly from being a successful . He was a writer, known for Kill the Messenger (2014), Filming in Georgia (2015) and Crack in America (2015). In February, Gary Webb gave his ex-wife. Gary Douglas Webb of Radnor, PA, passed away on October 19, 2021. An investigative journalist, Webb became interested in the covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. "I think the behaviour of the media in all of this has been amazing," says Bell. I felt she really trashed me. padding-bottom: 20px; A perceptive, engaging woman of 48, she has turned an adjoining study into a small shrine to her late husband, who would have celebrated his 50th birthday five weeks ago. 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. [63]Dark Alliance was a 1998 Pen/Newman's Own First Amendment Award Finalist, 1998 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, 1999 Bay Area Book Reviewers Award Finalist, and 1999 Firecracker Alternative Booksellers Award Winner in the Politics category. The series provoked outrage, particularly in the Los Angeles African-American community, and led to four major investigations of its charges. 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.. The coroner's staff concluded that the second shot hit an artery.[70]. He was a former member of Bethlehem . "[80], Not all writers agree that the Inspector-General's report supported the series's claims. They failed because the climate was more sceptical then. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department began its own investigation into the "Dark Alliance" claims.[30]. "That's right," says Blum. Dispelling the Rumors: Gary Webb's Death Confirmed As Suicide Gary Webb Obituary (1944 - 2022) - Portland, OR - The Oregonian [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." I mean - please.". "He thought I was being cowardly. In a 2013 article in the LA Weekly, Schou wrote that Webb was "vindicated by a 1998 CIA Inspector General report, which revealed that for more than a decade the agency had covered up a business relationship it had with Nicaraguan drug dealers like Blandn. Gary Webb - Lake Ridge Chapel & Memorial Designers "[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. 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. 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. 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. Webb resigned from The Mercury News in December 1997. As it turned out," she adds, "that was not their intent.". ", Webb had already been cremated and his ashes scattered in the bay off Santa Cruz two weeks before. He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California, USA. He went into the bedroom, and picked up a .38 that had belonged to his father. Gary Webb | Okanogan Valley Gazette-Tribune "[55] In June 1997, The Mercury News told Webb it was transferring him from the paper's Sacramento bureau and offered him a choice between working at the main offices in San Jose under closer editorial supervision, or spot reporting in Cupertino; both locations were long commutes from his home in Sacramento. It found that "the allegations contained in the original Mercury News articles were exaggerations of the actual facts." After introducing the three, the first article discussed primarily Blandn and Meneses, and their relationship with the Contras and the CIA. ", The report called several of its findings "troubling." 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. Sue remarried two years ago. 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. "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.". Gary's story, however, is far from over and could never be killed by something as trivial as a material bullet. He is from United States. "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. By William Kennedy / Jan. 22, 2023 12:00 pm EST. Meneses, an established smuggler and a Contra supporter as well, taught Blandn how to smuggle and provided him with cocaine. The CIA/MSM Contra-Cocaine Cover-up - Consortium News "I believe that Americans, as a nation, are mainly concerned with living their happy little lives. [65], Within "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On" essay Webb stated he believed there was an active "collusion between the press and the powerful" to report freely on inconsequential matters, "but when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff We begin to see the limits of our freedoms". According to Schou, the investigation "confirmed key chunks of Webb's allegations." Celebrezze eventually sued the Plain Dealer and won an undisclosed out of court settlement. [60], It found no information to support the claim that the agency interfered with law enforcement actions against Ross, Blandn or Meneses. There was no coffin, casket or tombstone. margin-bottom: 20px; Gary Webb Obituary (2011) - Saginaw, MI - Saginaw News on MLive.com Gary Webb's Death Confirmed as Suicide | Editor and Publisher "Gary was given the choice of relocating either to San Jose," says Bell, "or to Cupertino". Gary Webb was born in Corona, California, in 1955. She acted opposite Dirk Bogarde in the groundbreaking film Victim (Basil Dearden, 1961), as the unsuspecting wife of a barrister who is a closet homosexual. Webb worked for several newspapers including The Kentucky Post and Cleveland Plain Dealer. [18], Webb began researching "Dark Alliance" in July 1995. He was assigned to its Sacramento bureau, where he was allowed to choose most of his own stories. [61] According to the report, it used Webb's reporting and writing as "key resources in focusing and refining the investigation." Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" Returns to the Internet - Narco News Blandn and Meneses were Nicaraguans who smuggled drugs into the U.S. and supplied dealers like Ross. [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. It was written by Jesse Katz, the same reporter who, less than two years earlier, had described Ross's conglomerate as "the Wal-Mart of crack dealing". "He was crying. [10] The series, which examined the murder of a coal company president with ties to organized crime, won the national Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for reporting from a small newspaper. Join iconic brands and world-class marketing leaders at Brandweek to unlock powerful insights and impact-driven strategies. 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. But ultimately, the responsibility was, and is, mine.". When it did, beginning with The Washington Post, it shocked Webb's critics as much as his many admirers. This drug ring "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles" and, as a result, "The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America."[23]. 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. Ross was a major drug dealer in Los Angeles. "I told Gary not to go near this story," his source replies, in an emotional voice. A flood of inquiries about Gary Webb's shooting death prompts statement. 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. [43] He did this in a column that appeared on November 3, defending the series, but also committing the paper to a review of major criticisms. [81], Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at George Washington University's National Security Archives, also does not agree that the report vindicated the series. And this is not a happy story - or," she adds, "a little one.". Jeff Leen, assistant managing editor for investigative reporting at The Washington Post, wrote in a 2014 opinion page article that "the report found no CIA relationship with the drug ring Webb had written about." "Report on Alleged Involvement: Findings" 43. But the report was correct. The first article, by Katz, developed a different picture of the origins of the crack trade than "Dark Alliance" had described, with more gangs and smugglers participating. Gary Webb's family says his death was Suicide. A revised version was published in 1999 that incorporated Webb's response to the CIA and Justice Department reports. Much of the article highlighted the failure of law enforcement agencies to successfully prosecute them and stated that this was largely due to their Contra and CIA connections. "Everyone got out and left the person who had made the noise - issued the report - alone. It sounds like a Tom Clancy novel, right? The series ran from October 2022, 1996, and was researched by a team of 17 reporters. One of his last articles examined America's Army, a video game designed by the U.S. Hired by the San Jose Mercury News, Webb contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. With Baca's encouragement, he started to investigate a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Oscar Danilo Blandn. Webb, according to Bell, was a man who, more than most, found that his mood and self-esteem fluctuated in accordance with his professional fortunes. WEBB, Mr. Gary Lee, our beloved son, husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle went home with his heavenly Father Monday, August 29, 2011 at University of Michigan Hospital. * The agency's response was to try to prevent him from getting his doctorate, then block his advancement in the academic world. 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. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in, Please refresh your browser to be logged in, Extra 20% off selected fashion and sportswear at Very, Up to 20% off & extra perks with Booking.com Genius Membership, $6 off a $50+ order with this AliExpress discount code, 10% off selected orders over 100 - eBay discount code, Compare broadband packages side by side to find the best deal for you, Compare cheap broadband deals from providers with fastest speed in your area, All you need to know about fibre broadband, Best Apple iPhone Deals in the UK March 2023, Compare iPhone contract deals and get the best offer this March, Compare the best mobile phone deals from the top networks and brands. [7] After transferring to Northern Kentucky, he entered its journalism program and wrote for the school paper, The Northerner. He also had this inherent belief that the truth could not harm him. Webb's corpse was found in the bedroom, with two gunshot wounds to the head. Dark Alliance: Gary Webb, Christian Rummel: 9781522694397: Amazon.com [50] By January, Webb filed drafts of four more articles based on his trip, but his editors concluded that the new articles would not help shore up the original series's claims. It was just more than he could take.". [6], Webb first began writing for the student newspaper at his college in Indianapolis. Gary is survived by his wife of 48 years, Beverly Webb; children Margaret . Nick Schou, a journalist who wrote a 2006 biography of Webb, has claimed that this was the most important error in the series.