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. 71K views 8 years ago Gary Webb's son Ian talks about the film in which Jeremy Renner plays his late journalist father. "Do you think that a part of him did this out of revenge?" On Dec. 9, 2004, the 49-year-old Gary Stephen Webb, Pulitzer prize-winning US investigative journalist, 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 move him out of his rental house near Sacramento - to A flood of inquiries about Gary Webb's shooting death prompts statement. [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. Gary was preceded in death by his mother and father, Donna and James Webb of Carpentersville. 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. The story they printed was just awful. Webb resigned from The Mercury News in December 1997. Am J Mens Health, 2018 Mar 1:1557988318758788. doi: 10.1177/1557988318758788. 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. Gary Stephen Webb(August 31, 1955 - December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. In May 1997, after an internal review, Ceppos stated that, although the story was right on many important points, there were shortcomings in the writing, editing and production of the series. .article-native-ad strong { Gary Webb was born on August 31, 1955 in Corona, California, USA. He leaves behind the love of his life and adoring wife of 41 years, Anne Michelle Phillips. He is the oldest son of Pulitzer Prize-winninginvestigative journalist Gary Webb, the subject of the 2014 film "Kill the Messenger," starring Hollywood heavyweight Jeremy Renner. . He then transferred to nearby Northern Kentucky University. He concluded, "How did these shortcomings occur? In addition, Gary left multiple suicide notes to family members which were confirmed to be in his own hand by them. Working in San Jose would have meant daily contact with what Bell describes as "people he did not want to be with". Dec. 13, 2004. [3], Webb was born in Corona, California. Army. "They tried to make us look like crazies," says Blum. 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. 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. And it ruined that reporter's career. 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. According to Corn, Webb "was wrong on some important details, but he was, in a way, closer to the truth than many of his establishment media critics who neglected the story of the real CIA-contra-cocaine connection." His. The film broadened the debate which led to the decriminalisation of . But, Ceppos wrote, the series "did not meet our standards" in four areas. 1) It presented only one interpretation of conflicting evidence and in one case "did not include information that contradicted a central assertion of the series." Gary Webb became, quite unfairly, the victim of one of the most extraordinary examples of piling on by the mainstream press, ever.". But Webb had one huge blind side: He was fundamentally a man of passion, not of fairness. "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. His wife is Sue Webb (m. 1979-2000) Gary Webb Net Worth His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. Webb, unlike Blum or Kerry, had to face his difficulties alone. 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. [55] Webb eventually chose Cupertino, but was unhappy with the routine stories he was reporting there and the long commute. As it turned out," she adds, "that was not their intent.". [51] After discussions with Webb, the column was published on May 11, 1997.[53]. One article, dealing mostly with the response of the Los Angeles Black community to the stories, described the series's evidence as "thin". "It says the CIA helped introduce poison into our children. By: E&P Staff The death of investigative reporter Gary Webb has been confirmed as a suicide, according to a coroner's statement. font-weight:500; "I believe that Americans, as a nation, are mainly concerned with living their happy little lives. 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. Instead, he found work in 1978 as a reporter at the Kentucky Post, a local paper affiliated with the larger Cincinnati Post. Webb was an assertive figure who drove fast cars and powerful motorcycles, hung heavy metal posters in his office and, at certain times in his life, smoked a fair amount of cannabis. He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California, USA. GARY WEBB OBITUARY Gary Frank Webb Sept. 27, 1944 - Oct. 23, 2022 Gary passed away peacefully of complications following cardiovascular surgery. The CIA Inspector-General's report was issued in two volumes. Webb strongly disagreed with Ceppos's column and, in interviews, was harshly critical of the paper's handling of the story. The third article discussed the social effects of the crack trade, noting that it had a disparate effect on African-Americans. Gary Douglas Webb of Radnor, PA, passed away on October 19, 2021 Born January 3rd, 1943 in Montreal, Quebec, he was the son of the late John Douglas Webb and the late Jeannie (Penny) Hardie. Cooper and Mariah were engaged before they finally tied the knot. 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. } In an unprecedented move, the then CIA director John Deutch was dispatched to address community leaders in the Watts district of LA. Gary Hays Webb, 78, passed away on Monday May 9, 2022, at ThedaCare Regional Medical Center, Neenah. 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 . [52] Webb was allowed to keep working on the story and made one more trip to Nicaragua in March. The feeling was that with other news outlets calling for Webb's head, the paper's credibility depended on their joining in on the attacks. Steven Webb . '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. in Central America", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_Webb&oldid=1138520387, This page was last edited on 10 February 2023, at 03:36. "[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. 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. He was born August 27, 1968 in Saginaw, Michigan to Taylor Jr. and Loretta Webb. His father was a Marine sergeant, and the family moved frequently, as his career took him to new assignments. 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. It was accurate. Carey ultimately decided that there were problems with several parts of the story and wrote a draft article incorporating his findings. Gary Webb famously died of two gun shot wounds to the head and his death that was ruled a suicide, is the common sense notion that this was clearly assassination true? After Ceppos' column, The Mercury News spent the next several months conducting an internal review of the story. We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California." Gary Webb, Into the Buzzsaw, CH 13, Prometheus Books. 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". 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. They were outraged by the series's charges.[27]. Hired by the San Jose Mercury News, Webb contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He was born Sept.10, 1957 in Willcox, Ariz. to RG Webb and Winnie Mae Shelton. Ceppos initially defended Webb, and reportedly showed up at an in-house party wearing a military helmet. "He walked in one day," Bell recalls, "and said, 'You are not going to believe what I just found out.' In 1986, Webb wrote an article saying that the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, Frank D. Celebrezze accepted contributions from groups with organized crime connections. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". Emma Lee Webb. It was good that his story forced those reports to come out, but part of what made that happen was based on misleading information. In 1996, the award-winning journalist Gary Webb uncovered CIA links to Los Angeles drug dealers. At the end of March, Ceppos told Webb that he was going to present the internal review findings in a column. "You sound very scared," Moreira remarks. In city after city, local dealers either bought from Ross or got left behind."[24]. [32], The New York Times published two articles on the series in mid-October, both written by reporter Tim Golden. [29] Waters urged the CIA, the Department of Justice, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate. Cleveland Plain Dealer film critic Clint OConnor had a solid featurethe other day about Kill the Messenger, the journalism true-tale movie opening Friday with Jeremy Renner starring as the late Gary Webb. "[2], Ceppos noted that Webb did not agree with these conclusions. So, this is not something you really make a career out of, nor would you want to. 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. [81], Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at George Washington University's National Security Archives, also does not agree that the report vindicated the series. 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. }. Eli Tomac on track during Media Day at Daytona International Speedway, Friday, March 3, 2023. "As a PhD student, McCoy went to Vietnam and built an absolutely damning case about the CIA's involvement with trafficking heroin. He was previously married to Sue Bell. Can these things possibly be? [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. "Look at what happened to Gary Webb. By Sam Stanton Bee Staff Writer Published 2:15 am PST Wednesday, December 15, 2004. . He was laid off in February 2004 when Assembly Member Fabian Nez was elected Speaker. Family and friends will gather to celebrate his life of 59 years at 10 a.m. on Thursday, March 7, 2019, at Lamesa Continue Reading Leave a Message, Share a Memory [5], After high school, Webb attended an Indianapolis community college on a scholarship until his family moved to Cincinnati. Gary's documentation is awesome and his work ethic is unbelievable. "He started having motorcycle crashes," Bell says. There was no coffin, casket or tombstone. 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. Contemporary discussions of the series are discussed in the section on, Webb 2011, "Caltrans Ignored Elevated Freeway Safety. "[78], While finding this part of the series unsupported, Schou said that some of the series's claims on CIA involvement are supported, writing that "The CIA conducted an internal investigation that acknowledged in March 1998 that the agency had covered up Contra drug trafficking for more than a decade." Walter Bogdanich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who worked with Webb on The Plain Dealer, told American Journalism Review editor Susan Paterno "He was brilliant; he knew more about public records than anybody I've ever known. "[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. Occupation: Machine Operators, Assemblers, and Inspectors Occupations. 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. It would have been our 25th wedding anniversary," Bell recalls. ", "Reporter's suicide confirmed by coroner", "Repercussions From Flawed News Articles", "Herhold: Thinking back on journalist Gary Webb and the CIA", Ex-L.A. Times Writer Apologizes for "Tawdry" Attacks, "Gary Webb was no journalism hero, despite what 'Kill the Messenger' says", "Jeremy Renner's 'Kill the Messenger' Gets Fall Release Date", The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions, United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, Report of Investigation Concerning Allegations of Connections Between CIA and The Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States, Central Intelligence Agency Office of the Inspector General, United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, "Secrecy, Conspiracy, and the Media During the CIA-Contra Affair", Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography, "Inside the Dark Alliance: Gary Webb on the CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion", 'A NATURAL STORY': Tribute to 'Dark Alliance' and Journalist Gary Webb, San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, Archive of Gary Webb stories at Sacramento News and Review, "Frontline: Cocaine, Conspiracy Theories & the C.I.A. 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? 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. "[82], Kill the Messenger (2014) is based on Webb's book Dark Alliance and Nick Schou's biography of Webb. Born in Corona, California, son of a conservatively minded Marine, he met Bell, whose father was a university lecturer, at high school in Indianapolis. He had also lost his house the week before his suicide. 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 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. Views on Webb's journalism have been polarized. When Ross discovered the market for crack in Los Angeles, he began buying cocaine from Blandn. Osborn, Barbara Bliss (MarchApril 1998). Should these editors subsequently deem the story to have been fatally flawed, they take the consequences. The complete lack of desire to ask the difficult questions makes me want to scream. When he was engaged, he worked hard. But you say - dear God. A January 1997 article in American Journalism Review noted that a 1994 series Webb wrote had also been the subject of a Mercury News internal review that criticized Webb's reporting. Last edited on 10 February 2023, at 03:36, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking, "To readers of our 'Dark Alliance' series", "America's 'crack' plague has roots in Nicaragua war", "War on drugs has unequal impact on black Americans", "Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Inquiry Findings", "The CIA and Crack: Evidence Is Lacking Of Alleged Plot", "Though Evidence Is Thin, Tale of C.I.A. Despite some hyped phrasing, "Dark Alliance" appears to be praiseworthy investigative reporting."[47]. Gary's family found that old, storied, ("priceless to us," as his ex-wife, Susan Bell, described it to me) CDROM among his possessions. padding-left: 10px!important; 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. Webb began to shift from cynicism to curiosity. [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. If the antagonism of competing publications was predictable, what happened to Webb within his own newspaper was not. The follow-up reporting in the Los Angeles Times and other papers has been criticised for focusing on problems in the series rather than re-examining the earlier CIA-Contra claims. [39] The Post refused to print his letter. 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 also had this inherent belief that the truth could not harm him. In and out of work, he had a reputation for taking risks. The reports rejected the series's main claims but were critical of some CIA and law enforcement actions. Webb's condition exacerbated his natural recklessness. Gary was born Sept. 4, 1947, to Percy and Pauline (Haas) Webb. After a local newspaper reported that Webb 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. [8] In 1979, Webb married Susan Bell; the couple eventually had three children. 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. 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." The couple got married recently in November of 2020 after dating for some time. Nobody who heads a government agency can let such an allegation stand.". "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 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. He was taken to hospital by air ambulance. } [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." But as his ex-wife told the . He also stated "the series presented dangerous ideas" by suggesting "crimes of state had been committed" (i.e. Asking why crack became so prevalent in the Black community of Los Angeles, the article credited Blandn, referring to him as "the Johnny Appleseed of crack in California. Webb followed up Baca's leads at the California State Library, examining Congressional records and FBI reports. . Then, on 10 December, he resigned. "Do not quote me. He received his medical degree from American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine and has been in practice for more than. Unfortunately, the railroading of Gary Webb had begun and he was run over. [57], The report covered actions by Department of Justice employees in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the DEA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and U.S. It concluded, however, that these problems were "a far cry from the type of broad manipulation and corruption of the federal criminal justice system suggested by the original allegations.". When he told me, I said it sounded crazy. He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. ". ", "After Gary died," she says, "a reporter from the LA Times came here. A revised version was published in 1999 that incorporated Webb's response to the CIA and Justice Department reports. 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. [49], The paper also gave Webb permission to visit Central America again to get more evidence supporting the story. ", The report called several of its findings "troubling." [13] Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards. 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). One time he called me and he said: 'I have this plan that will benefit us both.' "I think Kerry learnt a lesson from all this," reporter Robert Parry says. It's . The legendary civil-rights activist Dick Gregory was arrested while he protested outside the CIA's headquarters; Gregory began referring to the organisation as "Crack in America". "The second bullet," adds Bell, who has worked for more than 20 years in the area of respiratory therapy, "struck his carotid artery. [67], Webb later moved to the State Assembly's Office of Majority Services. Webb moved his wife and two young children to a suburb and continued a tradition he had started in Cleveland, restoring their small house with the help of how-to books, installing wainscoting and custom tile, new cabinets and gardens, while putting in overtime at the paper. And when he got something in his head, he was determined to do it. 3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. "Looking back," she says, "I think Gary had been obsessed with suicide for some time. Gary's ex-wife Susan Bell states: "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide." An interesting OPINION, but she supplies no convincing evidence to illustrate what she means by this. "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.". [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". The first one, "The California Story," was issued in a classified version on December 17, 1997, and in an unclassified version on January 29, 1998. What he found, he wrote later, "nearly knocked me off my chair". "Like enjoy it.". The first shot went through his face, and exited at his left cheek.
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