Big Media's Guilt in Gary Webb's Death

[Judi Lynn]

Big Media's Guilt in Gary Webb's Death
By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
December 9, 2010

It’s been six years since I received the shocking news that journalist Gary Webb had committed suicide with his father’s pistol.

In the days after his Dec. 9, 2004, death, I was told that he had succumbed to a deep depression brought on by being blacklisted from his profession for a courageous series that he had written about the real-life consequences of a U.S. foreign policy that put Cold War priorities ahead of protecting Americans from the international drug trade.

Instead of rallying to his side when his series appeared in 1996, prominent news organizations – including The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times – had chosen to protect the legacy of Ronald Reagan and to cover up for their own failures in the 1980s to investigate the cocaine trafficking by Reagan’s beloved Nicaraguan contra rebels.

But the ostracism of Gary Webb was part of a larger back story. It was a prelude to the massive journalism failures of the past decade when many of the same newspapers joined the stampede for George W. Bush’s wars, instead of showing professionalism and skepticism.

More:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/120910.html

[Hannah Bell]

1. RIP

[JDPriestly]

2. Thanks for the reminder.

[Mojorabbit]

3. May he never be forgotten. nt

[FiveGoodMen]

4. Let's not forget that he was so depressed he shot himself in the head ... TWICE!

[FiveGoodMen]

5. ...which is no small feat when you think about it

[midnight]

6. This story still has more to say.... I hope it all comes out.

[yurbud]

7. Sibel Edmonds stumbled across another edge of the drug story--it's bigger than just

funding off the books death squads in Latin America.

Mike Ruppert summed it up best:

it wasn't just CIA dealing some drugs to fund covert operations. It is that drug money is an inherent part of the American economy. It has always been so, as it was with the British in the 1600s when they introduced opium into China to fund the triangular trade with the British East India Company.

The point about the drug trade is not that the CIA dealt a few drugs during the Contra years to fund the covert operation that Congress didn't want it to engage in. The CIA has dealt drugs for all 50 years of its existence--50 plus years, even before it was the CIA. And the point is that with 250 billion dollars a year in illegal drug money moved, laundered through the American economy, that money benefits Wall Street. That's the point of having the prohibitive drug trade, which the CIA effectively manages for the benefit of Wall Street.

Just before the Contra war, the annual cocaine consumption in this country was about 50 metric tons a year; let's say back in 1979. By 1985, it was 600 metric tons a year. We are still consuming 550 metric tons of cocaine a year in this country, and the money that's generated from that is used...let's say some drug dealer in Colombia calls General Motors and buys a thousand Suburbans--GM doesn't ask where it came from. Philip Morris is now being sued by 28 departments (the same thing as states) in Colombia for smuggling two billion dollars worth of Marlboro cigarettes into Colombia and getting paid for it with cocaine money! That money boosts Philip Morris's stock value on Wall Street; General Electric the same way...it's documented in the US Department of Justice.

So the purpose of the Agency being involved in the drug trade has been to generate illegal cash, fluid liquid capital, which gives those who can get their hands on it an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

http://www.whale.to/b/ruppert1.html

[Blue_Tires]

8. ttt