Robert Parry: 'America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb'

[Octafish]

Here's what a REAL journalist -- one who's interested in the TRUTH -- has to say:

America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb

By Robert Parry
December 13, 2004

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy – the Reagan-Bush administration’s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s.

For his brave reporting at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb paid a high price. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the American Journalism Review and even the Nation magazine. Under this media pressure, his editor Jerry Ceppos sold out the story and demoted Webb, causing him to quit the Mercury News. Even Webb’s marriage broke up.

On Friday, Dec. 10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide, a gunshot wound to the head.

Whatever the details of Webb’s death, American history owes him a huge debt. Though denigrated by much of the national news media, Webb’s contra-cocaine series prompted internal investigations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department, probes that confirmed that scores of contra units and contra-connected individuals were implicated in the drug trade. The probes also showed that the Reagan-Bush administration frustrated investigations into those crimes for geopolitical reasons.

Failed Media

Unintentionally, Webb also exposed the cowardice and unprofessional behavior that had become the new trademarks of the major U.S. news media by the mid-1990s. The big news outlets were always hot on the trail of some titillating scandal – the O.J. Simpson case or the Monica Lewinsky scandal – but the major media could no longer grapple with serious crimes of state.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/121304.html

[monarch]

1. Why are we not taking better care of guys like him?

Even IF it was suicide, why did he have to sacrifice everything to pursue an important story like this?

[Octafish]

3. Perhaps like Valerie Plame outing, BFEE wanted to set "an example"

Webb's death may be a lesson to all who are interested in freedom of the press and free speech. As when the White House outted CIA N.O.C. Valerie Plame to silence her husband, Amb. Joseph Wilson IV and all who dare cross the Bush Machine, the reason for his death is to "make him an example."

One thing is for certain: The Bush Machine did all it could to DESTROY Gary Webb. Here's what Parry referred to:

Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" Ignored by Dailies

Alternatives Sole Source for Continued Investigation of the CIA/Contra/crack connection.

By Cory Zurowski

Gary Webb's Woodward-esque stint was fleeting.

In the months following the publication of his series "Dark Alliance" in the San Jose Mercury News in August 1996, Webb saw his stock fall from giant slayer to sewer rat inside the pages of the daily papers.

Led by the big three -- Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times -- Webb's "Dark Alliance," which suggested that the CIA helped Nicaraguan Contras introduce crack cocaine to South Central Los Angeles, was dissected and damned. His own paper didn't take the heat well. Mercury News editors were quick to disown Webb's story. He eventually quit the paper.

Two years later, Webb has re-emerged. His book, "Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion" was released in June.

But you wouldn't know about it by reading the dailies. When it comes to Gary Webb or the feds-as-drug-dealing-enablers story, daily papers have shown little interest and few column inches.

CONTINUED...

http://www.aan.org/gyrobase/Aan/viewArticle?oid=oid%3A889

[Carl Brennan]

2. I just hope that Robert Parry is taking care

to protect himself. He is another muckraker who could be a target of these bastards.

[Minstrel Boy]

4. It's war. And it has been for a long time.

Some thoughts from my blog

I'm inclined to believe Webb's death is unrelated to his current work in Sacramento, and is more likely attributed to the Agency setting an example, and sending a message to America's investigative journalists who've held Webb as a role model. The message: You fuck with us, you're fucked forever. You'll never be safe, and we'll get you on our own time.

Why kill him now? If he'd been killed when the story had just broken, the CIA would look to have blood on its hands even to some dyed-in-the-wool coincidence lambikins. So it's partly about plausible denial. But it's also about all the darker secrets that must be hidden now. Never have there been so many of them.

Still, most people will say, Let's not jump to conclusions...you're sounding paranoid...this isn't fascism...they're not THAT evil...it's just coincidence....

How much cognitive dissonance will it take for some people to wake up? Let's not wait to find out. Let them enjoy their sleep. By the time they tumble out of bed it'll probably be too late for them to make a difference. They'll just stumble about, groggy and uncomprehending, rubbing their eyes and mumbling "This can't be happening!"

As Leonard Cohen sings, "There's a war between the ones who say there is a war, and the ones who say there isn't." Well, there is a war, and we're the only side taking casualties.

Someone added this comment:

I believe this is a clear-as-day message about the new, post-'election' Order of things. Webb, though a hero, wasn't gonna bring down the Cabal - but for such a (relatively) high-profile truthseeker to cop it leaves little ambiguity in the minds of vulnerable truth-seekers.

[Octafish]

9. Cockburn and St.Clair reprising Webb's 'Counterpunch' work...

You're quick, Minstrel_Boy. It took me much longer to get over the shock. This morning I understood the "shock and awe" nature of this tragedy.

Trashed by the CIA's Claque
Gary Webb: a Great Reporter

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

News came over the weekend that Gary Webb had died Friday from a gunshot wound to the head in his home in Sacramento, California. It appears to have been self inflicted. The news saddens us, and rekindles our anger at the fouls libels he endured at the hands of his colleagues.

Webb was a great reporter whose best-known work exposed the CIA'S complicity in the import of cocaine into the United States in the 1980s, during the US onslaught on the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. His devastating series Dark Alliance, published in the San Jose Mercury News in 1996, provoked a series of wild attacks in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, purporting to demolish Webb and exonerate the Agency.

The attacks were without merit, but the San Jose Mercury News buckled under the pressure and undercut its own reporter with a groveling and entirely unmerited retraction by its publisher. It was a very dark day in the history of American journalism. We described the entire saga in detail in our book Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press which sets the story in the larger context of the Agency's complicity in drug smuggling since its founding.

Webb left the Mercury News, and expanded his series into his excellent book Dark Alliance. He also did other fine journalism, notably ­ in Esquire ­ the definitive expose of what came to be known as "driving while black", about the system program of racial profiling by cops across the country. For now, here is Webb's own, briskly robust account, which he sent us and which we ran on this site in March, 2001, of the storm over his series, along with his generous appeal to help a crusading journalistic enterprise, Narco News.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12132004.html

[seemslikeadream]

13. Sander Hicks just mentioned Webb in an interview last week

SH: Reality is a construction. We’re told what to believe by the government and media. Most people play along, pay taxes, support the troops and the wars that are part and parcel of capitalism. But there are some who drop out and fall away from the death machine. God bless them.

MZ: For those who fall away from the death machine, what actions or steps can we take to do something about this? What can the average person do to help bring out the truth and how does that fit into the larger activist picture?

SH: Jeez, it’s hard to answer that and not come off as a holier-than-thou Pharisee who’s telling people what to do. For my own part, I was working on houses, for the past couple years. I was listening to Democracy Now every day in New Mexico (out in the mountains up north there you can get it on like 3 different channels). It got to a point where I felt like things had gotten too weird, I had to get back into independent media, in a whole new way, try to present an alternative to the alienation and paranoia by creating media and community empowerment systems that showed the world how much we all have in common. So that’s what I’m doing, Vox Pop, the coffee-house/bookstore/publishing company. I’d like to order the world to come participate, but all I can do is open the door.

MZ: Can you offer some resources for readers to follow-up?

SH: These are the guys/gals I like: Daniel Hopsicker, Mike Ruppert, Robert Parry, Peter Dale Scott, Gary Webb, Lois Ann Battuello, Anthony Lappé, and Rep. Cynthia McKinney.

more
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/mickeyz12062004/

[LeftyMom]

17. Can't say I agree

I wouldn't be surprised as a Sacramentan to find out that the local law enforcment community had something to do with this. They have a long-running feud with the News and Review. I don't doubt that higher-ups may have been complicit, but I don't think they'd have a hard time finding local bad guys to do thier dirty work.

SNR did do a good expose about the county coroners office that's supossed to tell us the scoop about Webb's death. Since that's a potential conflict of interest shouldn't they have someone from a neighboring jurisdiction do the examination?

Here's the article about the coroner's office I had in mind: http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2003-07-10/news2...

Here are Gary Webb's recent articles. The most recent relates to the Sherrifs Department and thier handling of red light cameras.
http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/authors/garywebb...

[CornField]

5. Another writer commits suicide.

They don't go after the writers... well, they do... but they don't do it directly. The families of the writers are used as leverage.

A good journalist wants the truth more than anything in the world -- personal threats don't work. What does work, however, is threats against loved ones.

[Minstrel Boy]

6. Rommel's choice

it's called:

Kill yourself, and your family lives.

Refuse, and we kill your family, then kill you.

"Assisted suicide," you could call it.

Another Nazi tactic adopted stateside.

[SeveneightyWhoa]

8. Verrry interesting post.

The latter option brought to mind the Wellstone's plane crash.

[Carl Brennan]

10. The repugs didn't want Wellstone's wife running in his place

like Carnahan's wife did after he died during the 2000 election. In 2000 Ashcroft ran against the dead Carnahan and lost. That goes to show how much the people like Repugs in that neck of the woods.

[Minstrel Boy]

7. Parry was interviewed on Democracy Now this morning

about Gary Webb.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/13/1457240

[G_j]

11. heard the show, excellent interview

transcript is up already. ...recommended reading!

[kohodog]

12. Webb has a chapter in "Into the Buzzsaw" Edited by Kristina Borjesson

It's titled "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays on" and describes how "Dark Alliance" was discredited.

>Snip<

"The scary thing about this collusion between the press and the powerful is that it works so well. In this case, the governmwnt's denials and promises to pursue the truth didn't work. The public didn't accept them, for obvious reasons, and the clamor for an independant investigation continued to grow. But after the government's supposed watchdogs weighed in, public opinion became divided and confused, the movement to force congressional hearings lost steam and, once enough people came to believe the stories were false or exaggerated, the issue could safely be put back at the bottom of the dead-story pile, hopefully never to rise again". --Gary Webb


The book is fantastic. and we see this technique being used all the time now.

[RBHam]

14. When do we fight back?

What the hell is going to take?

[seemslikeadream]

15. Gary Webb-evidence of murder

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/141204webbmurdered.htm

[Octafish]

19. Why would the Press want to keep the people from knowing the Truth?

Who benefits from lying to "We the People"? An unelected moron? Possibly, but the coked-out sock puppet's backers, more likely.

The nation's Founders thought the Free Press was so important, they named it in the First Amendment to the Constitution. It is the only BUSINESS mentioned by name in the nation's charter.

From seemslikeadream's link:

Evidence Begins To Indicate Gary Webb Was Murdered
Webb Spoke Of Death Threats, 'Government People' Around His Home

Alex Jones & Paul Joseph Watson | Updated December 15 2004

UPDATE: Coroner: Gary Webb's Death Confirmed as Suicide

First it was multiple gunshot wounds, then it was just one and now it's multiple again. Would somebody stealing your motorcycle really drive you over the edge?

UPDATE: Do you really think someone can shoot themself in the face twice? How stupid do they think we are? (WARNING EXTREMELY GRAPHIC)

Credible sources who were close to Gary Webb have stated that he was receiving death threats, being regularly followed, and that he was concerned about strange individuals who were seen on multiple occasions breaking into and leaving his house before his apparent 'suicide' on Friday morning.

Webb, a Pullitzer prize winning journalist, exposed CIA drug trafficking operations in a series of books and reports for the San Jose Mercury News. He was found dead on Friday morning in what the police said was an apparent suicide.

Webb's 1996 series in the Mercury News alleged that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold tons of crack cocaine in Los Angeles and funneled millions of dollars in profits to the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980s.

Today's Alex Jones Show, aired on the GCN radio network featured interviews with Chico Brown and Cele Castillo. Castillo is author of "Powder Burns", Cocaine, Contras & The Drug Connection. A retired DEA agent, Castillo personally witnessed CIA drug smuggling operations. Chico Brown, was former business parter and co-defendent with 'Freeway' Ricky Ross, the biggest drug dealer on the west coast supplied by the CIA.

CONTINUED MENDACITY...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/141204webbmurdered.htm

Wonder what George Washington would have to say about Corporations?

Wonder what Thomas Jefferson would have to say about the Military-Industrial complex?

Wonder what Thomas Paine would have to say about a Secret Government?

It may be that it comes down to us remembering Nathan Hale. Better still, we must do what Benjamin Franklin suggested.

[RBHam]

16. I got throught to the Mike Webb show and brought this up...

We must not let his death be in vain...

Get the story out! His work must be kept alive!

[Octafish]

18. 'Do What He Did'

You are absolutely right, RBHam. We must do the work ourselves. And while a man or woman may be murdered, no real human dies -- or lives -- in vain.

Gary Webb: Do What He Did

By Al Giordano,
Posted on Wed Dec 15th, 2004 at 06:47:24 PM EST

LACANDON JUNGLE, CHIAPAS, MEXICO, DECEMBER 15, 2004: I keep imagining the last moments of Gary’s life. He is looking down the barrel of a gun. His eyes are puffy from the swell of too many tears. The moving van is coming to his house near Sacramento, a place he never wanted to be in the first place, to which he was exiled years ago for the crime of telling a powerful but uncomfortable truth. Everyone he has ever trusted or loved has abandoned him: By that I mean everyone, including you and me. What he is about to do requires the utmost in courage: to pull the trigger and plunge into the unknown, perhaps into nothingness, never to write or report or tell his truth to the post-human mortals who couldn’t handle his truth anyway.

The hand on the trigger at that moment – his – is not the first, nor is he acting alone. Gary had to wait in line and take a number behind all those who set his suicide in motion years ago. It was a miracle he didn’t do this back when San Jose Mercury News editor Jerry Ceppos, now 58 and vice president of the Knight-Ridder news company, cocked the shotgun and pulled the trigger on the most authentic journalistic career of the late 20th Century. That was the day that the bullet flew out of the cartridge and, as if in very slow motion, took years to reach Gary’s head...


Gary never wrote with mere ink or pixels. Gary opened up a vein every time he sat down to tell us a new truth and he signed his byline, always, in blood. If you think that his suicide did not send as powerful a message as the stories he investigated and penned in life, think again: Gary was The Last North American Career Journalist. He presided over a transitional era and his death marks the end of that era. Fellow and sister journalists: The canary has died in the coal mine. Run out of that mine now, and seek alternate routes to truth-telling. There is no longer room for us inside the corporate machine.

All over the world he is mourned today. The compañeros here in Chiapas came to me last night. “You knew him. He worked for you. Did he ever come here? Did he know about us?” As they peppered me with questions I retreated far into myself. Time and space stopped, as it has before in this deep green tropical jungle. I could see it – the bullet (two bullets say the coroner: Gary was nothing if not thorough and persistent; imagine for a moment what strength it took to get off the second round) off in the distance somewhere over California, those bullets, the first one fired by that traitor-to-journalism-and-truth Jerry Ceppos in San Jose, those bullets that came out the other side of Gary’s cranium in Sacramento last week and took a southern turn toward me. And when they are done with me they will come for you. I could see and hear them heading my way last night and so today I type these words in a hurry so as to shoot back before my brains, too, are splattered on the page of history.

To be an Authentic Journalist in 2004 is to be a soldier at war. When a hero dies in battle first we must drape the coffin, sound the slow, sad bugle song of Taps, and remember this great man who died fighting for all of us. Among the soldiers I have known in my foxhole, there were none finer, more effective in a firefight, than Gary. He was a god among insects, and a particularly important god among gods (shortly before his death, Gary told our colleague Bill Conroy that he had applied for a reporter’s job at the San Antonio Express-News and that the newspaper never even acknowledged his application: In the immortal words of Jonathan Swift, “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.”)

CONTINUED...

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2004/12/15/184725/08