[13] Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards. Garcia is deputy director of the John S Knight Fellowships in Journalism at Stanford University. "[82], Kill the Messenger (2014) is based on Webb's book Dark Alliance and Nick Schou's biography of Webb. To pay off his mounting debts, Webb sold the Carmichael property, where he was living alone, and arranged to move in with his mother. In 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of stories exposing the connection between the CIA and the crack cocaine that was being sold in So. Hired by the San Jose Mercury News, Webb contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. 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. It was published in 1998 as Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. And it was ignored by the US media, for all of those reasons. A flood of inquiries about Gary Webb's shooting death prompts statement. 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 . Gary Webb's Ex-Wife Set to Attend New York Premiere By Richard Horgan October 8, 2014 Cleveland Plain Dealer film critic Clint O'Connor had a solid feature the other day about Kill the. [6], Webb first began writing for the student newspaper at his college in Indianapolis. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". At the commemorative service for Webb, held at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento, Bell read out the letter Webb had written to his son Eric, now 17. He was born August 27, 1968 in Saginaw, Michigan to Taylor Jr. and Loretta Webb. Film of this encounter survives. 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". padding-bottom: 20px; He is from United States. 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. Gary Webb, friends say, was a far more combative character than either the Mercury News's executive editor Ceppos or page editor Garcia. Every year since investigative journalist Gary Webb took his own life in 2004, I have marked the anniversary of that sad event by recalling the debt that American history owes to Webb for his. "He told me, not long before he died, that he didn't want to get up in the mornings," she says. 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. Am J Mens Health, 2018 Mar 1:1557988318758788. doi: 10.1177/1557988318758788. "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. Gary Webb passed away on March 2, 2019. They were outraged by the series's charges.[27]. When Webb's body was discovered last December, Bell says, this last item had been dumped in the trash. For instance, he published an article on racial profiling in traffic stops in Esquire magazine, in April 1999. Do something else with your life," the voice urges. But Ian Webbknows all too well the emotions that come with that experience. Then, on 10 December, he resigned. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. "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". Webb worked for several newspapers including The Kentucky Post and Cleveland Plain Dealer. Connie Webb (304) 778-2546: Status: Homeowner. He had also lost his house the week before his suicide. Should these editors subsequently deem the story to have been fatally flawed, they take the consequences. He died by suicide on December 10, 2004. Webb took a modestly paid, low-profile job as an investigator with the California State Legislature. "But Gary thought that if something was true, it should be told. "[74] Mary Anne Sharkey, Webb's editor at The Plain Dealer, told writer Alicia Shepard in 1997 that Webb was known as 'the carpenter' "because he had everything nailed down. Gary Webb's wife, Sue Webb (now Sue Stokes), said that he had been depressed for years due to his inability to get hired at a daily newspaper. It's . 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. . 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. 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. } 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. The second volume, "The Contra Story," was issued in a classified version on April 27, 1998, and in an unclassified version on October 8, 1998. Gary Webb's painstaking investigation and the incindiary conclusions he drew from it were based mostly on public records, as detailed in the "notes on sources" section in "Dark Alliance", including: undercover audio tapes, declassified government documents from the CIA, DEA, FBI, L.A. Sheriff's Department, files from the Iran-Contra . Shortly before his death, his motorcycle had been stolen (it was recovered by his family after his death). It found that "the allegations contained in the original Mercury News articles were exaggerations of the actual facts." The first shot went through his face, and exited at his left cheek. Blandn and Meneses were Nicaraguans who smuggled drugs into the U.S. and supplied dealers like Ross. 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. He also stated "the series presented dangerous ideas" by suggesting "crimes of state had been committed" (i.e. That wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been willing to stand up and risk it all.". Webb chose the second option. [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." [7] After transferring to Northern Kentucky, he entered its journalism program and wrote for the school paper, The Northerner. The couple got married recently in November of 2020 after dating for some time. The first effect of the onslaught was to ease the pressure on the CIA. His. 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. The consensus, insofar as one exists, is that he probably overstated both the amount of drug money made by Ross and Blandn, and the percentage of those profits diverted to the Contras. Cuts and amendments were made at the request of Ceppos, executive editor of the Mercury News, and Webb's immediate editor Dawn Garcia, among others. The third article discussed the social effects of the crack trade, noting that it had a disparate effect on African-Americans. 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? A revised version was published in 1999 that incorporated Webb's response to the CIA and Justice Department reports. "The cause of death was determined to be self . GARY WEBB: His wife's office was burglarized. The series revolves around the first crack epidemic and its impact on the culture of the city. 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. He was born at Emmanuel Hospital in. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. When removal men arrived, on the morning of 10 December 2004, they found a sign on his front door, which read: ''Please do not enter. Parry, the first reporter to write about the US authorities' drug-running on behalf of the Contras, had survived a campaign by the White House to discredit first his story, then his reputation. But as Krim told Webb's biographer Nick Schou, "The zeal that helped make Gary a relentless reporter was coupled with an inability to question himself, to entertain the notion that he might have erred. 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. The response from the American press took two months to arrive. The claim that the drug ring of Meneses-Blandn-Ross sparked the "crack explosion" has been perhaps the most criticized part of the series. He then transferred to nearby Northern Kentucky University. ", "After Gary died," she says, "a reporter from the LA Times came here. I mean - please.". "I believe that Americans, as a nation, are mainly concerned with living their happy little lives. After examining the investigations and prosecutions of the main figures in the series, Blandn, Meneses and Ross, it concluded that "Although the investigations suffered from various problems of communication and coordination, their successes and failures were determined by the normal dynamics that affect the success of scores of investigations of high-level drug traffickers These factors, rather than anything as spectacular as a systematic effort by the CIA or any other intelligence agency to protect the drug trafficking activities of Contra supporters, determined what occurred in the cases we examined. "[2], Ceppos noted that Webb did not agree with these conclusions. "I'd get discouraged," she said, "but I never really gave up hope." Back in 1997, SN&R brought the controversy about Gary Webb to readers with "Secrets and Lies," a cover story about why the mainstream media attacked . Webb made his early reputation as a reporter with the Plain Dealer before going on to fame and turmoil at the San Jose Mercury News. Webb's research took a year, in the course of which he received death threats. 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." "They tried to make us look like crazies," says Blum. It was accurate. 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. In an unprecedented move, the then CIA director John Deutch was dispatched to address community leaders in the Watts district of LA. George Webb and Paul Cottrell have begun a weekly series on CoronaVirus now, Mondays at 5PM, EST on paul Cottrell's Rumble Channel. The Los Angeles Times and other major papers published articles suggesting the "Dark Alliance" claims were overstated and, in November 1996, Jerome Ceppos, the executive editor at Mercury News, wrote about being "in the eye of the storm". font-weight:500; Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. Gary Webb was born in Corona, California, in 1955. 3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. He was a writer, known for Kill the Messenger (2014), Filming in Georgia (2015) and Crack in America (2015). But ultimately, the responsibility was, and is, mine.". It noted that Blandn and Meneses claimed to have donated money to Contra sympathizers in Los Angeles, but found no information to confirm that it was true or that the agency had heard of it. Attend in Miami or virtually, Sept. 1114. By the autumn of 1997, on medication for clinical depression, he was given leave of absence from the paper. Five years ago, a tragedy occurred in American journalism: Investigative reporter Gary Webb - who had been ostracized by his own colleagues for forcing a spotlight back onto an ugly government scandal they wanted to ignore - was driven to commit suicide. There was no coffin, casket or tombstone. [60], It found no information to support the claim that the agency interfered with law enforcement actions against Ross, Blandn or Meneses. In the final few months of his life, Bell says, Webb became increasingly withdrawn. "He had six in a short period of time." 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. American racer Cooper Webb is married to his wife named Mariah Williams Webb. On the last day Webb was alive, his motorbike broke down while he was moving to his mother's house. "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. OR was he like Epstein? I realise now he was thinking about suicide.". Relationships with other women ended badly. "[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]. "He was crying. He concluded, "How did these shortcomings occur? Vivian Corrie, a part of his liver in a life-threatening operation. [44], Ceppos' column drew editorial responses from both The New York Times and The Washington Post. Pictured as a teenage fan: Gary Numan with Gemma, his now wife, getting his autograph in 1985 years before they got together Gary was 600,000 in debt, and on the verge of going under in. He stayed home, playing computer games, and began smoking cannabis heavily. One time he called me and he said: 'I have this plan that will benefit us both.' One of these was a 1986 raid on Blandn's drug organization by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, which the article suggested had produced evidence of CIA ties to drug smuggling that was later suppressed. Meneses, an established smuggler and a Contra supporter as well, taught Blandn how to smuggle and provided him with cocaine. They failed because the climate was more sceptical then. 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.
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