[3], Webb was born in Corona, California. He placed his keys and ID cards on the kitchen table, together with a cremation certificate he had purchased for himself. I felt she really trashed me. *, 'Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion' is published in the UK by Seven Stories Press, priced 11.99, Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. After the announcement of federal investigations into the claims made in the series, other newspapers began investigating, and several papers published articles suggesting the series' claims were overstated. Gary Webb became, quite unfairly, the victim of one of the most extraordinary examples of piling on by the mainstream press, ever.". [81], Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at George Washington University's National Security Archives, also does not agree that the report vindicated the series. "Back then. The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. Should these editors subsequently deem the story to have been fatally flawed, they take the consequences. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". On December 10th, 2004 Gary Webb was found dead of two (allegedly self-inflicted) gunshots to the head. It was just more than he could take.". [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. As we now know today thanks to Gary's . "As a PhD student, McCoy went to Vietnam and built an absolutely damning case about the CIA's involvement with trafficking heroin. What he found, he wrote later, "nearly knocked me off my chair". The response from the American press took two months to arrive. "He told me, not long before he died, that he didn't want to get up in the mornings," she says. One article, dealing mostly with the response of the Los Angeles Black community to the stories, described the series's evidence as "thin". The mainstream press, now known as the legacy. The first shot went through his face, and exited at his left cheek. [46] Overholser was harshly critical of the series, "reported by a seemingly hotheaded fellow willing to have people leap to conclusions his reporting couldn't back up." George Webb and Paul Cottrell have begun a weekly series on CoronaVirus now, Mondays at 5PM, EST on paul Cottrell's Rumble Channel. He also had this inherent belief that the truth could not harm him. 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." [51] After discussions with Webb, the column was published on May 11, 1997.[53]. By the autumn of 1997, on medication for clinical depression, he was given leave of absence from the paper. He was the journalist who wrote a famous-or infamous-1996 series for the San Jose Mercury News that maintained a CIA-supported drug ring based in Los Angeles had triggered the. Celebrezze eventually sued the Plain Dealer and won an undisclosed out of court settlement. [60], The House Intelligence Committee issued its report in February 2000. GARY WEBB OBITUARY Gary Frank Webb Sept. 27, 1944 - Oct. 23, 2022 Gary passed away peacefully of complications following cardiovascular surgery. California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein also took note and wrote to CIA director John Deutch and Attorney General Janet Reno, asking for investigations into the articles' allegations. 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." [13] Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards. He had sold his house the week before his death because he was unable to afford the mortgage. Despite some hyped phrasing, "Dark Alliance" appears to be praiseworthy investigative reporting."[47]. He accepted Christ at an early age. 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 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. "He had six in a short period of time." Webb had become, as somebody put it, "radioactive". Gary Webb was born on August 31, 1955 in Corona, California, USA. Gary was born Sept. 4, 1947, to Percy and Pauline (Haas) Webb. We were dismissed as a bunch of nuts." [4] When Webb's father retired from the Marines, the family settled in a suburb of Indianapolis, where Webb and his brother attended high school. During and immediately after the controversy over "Dark Alliance," Webb's earlier writing was examined closely. He was born in Hammersmith, London. The first effect of the onslaught was to ease the pressure on the CIA. There is a CIA connection and I can demonstrate it.'". "Look at what happened to Gary Webb. "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. On one road trip, in 2001, he came off the motorcycle and split his helmet open. And it was ignored by the US media, for all of those reasons. After divorcing his wife, being unable to obtain work from newspapers and facing increasing debts, Gary was forced to sell his home. 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". He was taken to hospital by air ambulance. Gary Webb was an investigative reporter, focusing on government and private sector corruption and winning more than 30 journalism awards. For instance, he published an article on racial profiling in traffic stops in Esquire magazine, in April 1999. Price placed Webb as the shooter. [55] Webb eventually chose Cupertino, but was unhappy with the routine stories he was reporting there and the long commute. Writing on the Los Angeles Times opinion page, Schou said, "Webb asserted, improbably, that the Blandn-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.' He also stated "the series presented dangerous ideas" by suggesting "crimes of state had been committed" (i.e. "Gary was 18 and I was 16 when we first met and started dating in Indianapolis," said Sue Stokes. "He thought I was being cowardly. "Looking back," she says, "I think Gary had been obsessed with suicide for some time. Gary Douglas Webb of Radnor, PA, passed away on October 19, 2021. He cites the case of Alfred McCoy, now Professor of South East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin. Bell and her children helped Webb prepare 50 packages containing cuttings and his CV which they sent out to newspapers all over the US. * The agency's response was to try to prevent him from getting his doctorate, then block his advancement in the academic world. Webb began to shift from cynicism to curiosity. Wlaf1450. It was good that his story forced those reports to come out, but part of what made that happen was based on misleading information. Army. 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. "I think the behaviour of the media in all of this has been amazing," says Bell. [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." He was no villain: He genuinely believed his thesis about the CIA. ", 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. 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." Webb's ex-wife, Stokes, now remarried and still living in Sacramento, had heard it all before, too. So he blew her off. "[62] It also found no evidence to support Webb's suggestion that several other drug smugglers mentioned in the series were associated with the CIA, or that anyone associated with the CIA or other intelligence agencies was involved in supplying or selling drugs in Los Angeles.[62]. "You sound very scared," Moreira remarks. And when he got something in his head, he was determined to do it. He told me: 'If I can't do what I want to do, what's the point?' Noting that most of the activities discussed in the report had nothing to do with the people Webb reported on, Kornbluh told Schou, "I can't say it's a vindication. "I am scared," the voice replies. 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. [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. 2 years ago, this past week, I sat on a beach in Del Mar with my wife and she asked me, "When you get to the end of your life, what will you regret Webb worked for several newspapers including The Kentucky Post and Cleveland Plain Dealer. Mrs. Suzette Thomas Webb. 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". Because Blandn cooperated with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), he spent only 28 months in prison, became a paid government informant, and received permanent resident status. Such a case normally would have sparked little notice. . [29] Waters urged the CIA, the Department of Justice, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate. 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. Beth Ann Webb May 10, 1962 - May 22, 2019. Kill the Messenger, a movie starring Jeremy Renner, just opened, about the life and death of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb, who committed suicide in 2004. [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. Can these things possibly be? The review was conducted primarily by editor Jonathan Krim and reporter Pete Carey, who had written the paper's first published analysis of the series. 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