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The CIA Inspector-General's report was issued in two volumes. [26] Other papers were slow to pick up the story, but African Americans quickly took note, especially in South Central Los Angeles where the dealers discussed in the series had been active. "Which was that, if he wanted a future within the political establishment of the United States, then he should concentrate on other aspects of life.". He stayed home, playing computer games, and began smoking cannabis heavily. 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. Can these things possibly be? His own paper, the Mercury News, criticized the series in 1997 without providing many specifics. [73], On the other hand, many of the writers and editors who worked with him have had high praise for him. Today, Narco News, with support from The Fund for Authentic Journalism, is pleased to announce that the Dark Alliance website has a new, and this time permanent, home at Narco News. "[25] It also found disparities in the treatment of Black and White traffickers in the justice system, contrasting the treatment of Blandn and Ross after their arrests for drug trafficking. But the biggest loss he had was the writing. One article, dealing mostly with the response of the Los Angeles Black community to the stories, described the series's evidence as "thin". Emma Lee Webb. "Although Ross had become a millionaire by 1984," Katz now wrote, "the market was so huge by then that even a dealer of his stature could seem dwarfed How the crack epidemic reached that extreme, on some level," he continues, "had nothing to do with Ross". He is from United States. 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. Gary's family found that old, storied, ("priceless to us," as his ex-wife, Susan Bell, described it to me) CDROM among his possessions. In August of 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb broke the biggest story of his life. . [18], Webb began researching "Dark Alliance" in July 1995. "To get back at his editors?". According to Schou, the investigation "confirmed key chunks of Webb's allegations." 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. "[2], Ceppos noted that Webb did not agree with these conclusions. He was so depressed. And the importance of exposing them. He also defended the series in interviews with all three papers. For instance, he published an article on racial profiling in traffic stops in Esquire magazine, in April 1999. Look at the way the US press reports on Iraq. In the six years he worked at its Sacramento office, he won the HL Mencken award, for a story exposing corruption in California's drug enforcement agency, and his Pulitzer prize - won jointly, as part of a Mercury News team covering the 1990 Loma Prieta earthquake. "The first story he had to file was about a police horse which had died of constipation.". [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. "The second bullet," adds Bell, who has worked for more than 20 years in the area of respiratory therapy, "struck his carotid artery. Gary Webb (304) 778-2546: Jamie Webb (304) 778-2546: Status: Homeowner. 4) The series "created impressions that were open to misinterpretation" through "imprecise language and graphics. "Gary Webb was left to fend for himself. The series provoked outrage, particularly in the Los Angeles African-American community, and led to four major investigations of its charges. "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 . Dec. 13, 2004. "The government side of the story is coming through the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post", he stated. It's . He crashed and shredded his clothes, face and body on a barbed-wire fence." It was published in 1998 as Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. The first detailed article on the series's claims appeared in The Washington Post in early October. Talking about his wife, Mariah Webb is a nurse who also educates about essential products . It was an amazing scoop - but one that would ruin his career and drive him to suicide. "But Gary thought that if something was true, it should be told. The film broadened the debate which led to the decriminalisation of . News coverage noted that there were widespread rumors on the Internet at the time that Webb had been killed as retribution for his "Dark Alliance" series, published eight years before. His corpse was discovered on the seventh anniversary of his resignation from the Mercury News. "Do not quote me. A Celebration of Life will be . "Exactly," replied Kornbluh, who - referring specifically to the LA Times, said he is "baffled as to how they could be so gullible. "He had six in a short period of time." It was good that his story forced those reports to come out, but part of what made that happen was based on misleading information. Tara Becker-Gray Lee News Network Jan 17, 2019 0 1 of 2 C. Webb The body found at a house fire at 13308 95th Ave. in rural Blue Grass on Thursday night has been identified as Cynthia Webb, 59.. GARY WEBB OBITUARY Gary Frank Webb Sept. 27, 1944 - Oct. 23, 2022 Gary passed away peacefully of complications following cardiovascular surgery. He also stated "the series presented dangerous ideas" by suggesting "crimes of state had been committed" (i.e. Gary Webb's income source is mostly from being a successful . [37], In 2013, Jesse Katz, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, said of the newspaper's coverage "As an L.A. Times reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News and kind of wonder[ed] how legit it was and kind of put it under a microscope, and we did it in a way that most of us who were involved in it, I think, would look back on that and say it was overkill. Cooper and Mariah were engaged before they finally tied the knot. It also examined "how CIA handled and responded to information regarding allegations of drug trafficking" by people involved in Contra activities or support. 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. 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. 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 tried to make us look like crazies," says Blum. By the end of September, three federal investigations had been announced: an investigation into the CIA allegations conducted by CIA Inspector-General Frederick Hitz, an investigation into the law enforcement allegations by Justice Department Inspector-General Michael Bromwich, and a second investigation into the CIA by the House Intelligence Committee. 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. [13] Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards. The story was picked up by black talk-radio stations. Attorneys' Offices. But Webb had one huge blind side: He was fundamentally a man of passion, not of fairness. The series ran from October 2022, 1996, and was researched by a team of 17 reporters. 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. [52] Webb was allowed to keep working on the story and made one more trip to Nicaragua in March. "[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. And it was ignored by the US media, for all of those reasons. [51], The editors met with Webb several times in February to discuss the results of the paper's internal review and eventually decided to print neither Carey's draft article nor the articles Webb had filed. "People told me that," she says. By the late spring of 1996, Webb was ready to publish. Working in San Jose would have meant daily contact with what Bell describes as "people he did not want to be with". But the tragedy had a deeper meaning. Gary Webb was born on August 31, 1955 in Corona, California, USA. "If there was an eye to the storm," Katz wrote, "if there was a mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw most responsible for flooding LA's streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick. Maxine Waters found a govt employee ran the South Central LA drug ring & The DOJ removed that section of the report : r/conspiracy 3 yr. ago Posted by shylock92008 "He started having motorcycle crashes," Bell says. The article resulted in a lawsuit against Webb's paper which the plaintiffs won. 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 The coroner's staff concluded that the second shot hit an artery.[70]. .article-native-ad p { "You sound very scared," Moreira remarks. Age 43 years. "Everyone got out and left the person who had made the noise - issued the report - alone. 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). Gary's story, however, is far from over and could never be killed by something as trivial as a material bullet. Steven Webb . 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. While working at the legislature, Webb continued to do freelance investigative reporting, sometimes based on his investigative work. Webb established incontrovertible links * between Ricky Ross and Blandn who, two years later, would betray Ross to the authorities. Webb's then-wife Sue remembers coming home from the shops and finding her. They were outraged by the series's charges.[27]. As it turned out," she adds, "that was not their intent.". If you work through friendly reporters on major newspapers, it comes off as The New York Times saying it and not a mouthpiece of the CIA. "[72] California Representative Maxine Waters, who was Webb's strongest supporter in Congress after the "Dark Alliance" controversy broke, issued a statement after Webb's death calling him "one of the finest investigative journalists that our country has ever seen. Gary Webb was born in Corona, California, in 1955. Much of the article highlighted the failure of law enforcement agencies to successfully prosecute them and stated that this was largely due to their Contra and CIA connections. Family (1) Leen, who covered the cocaine trade for the Miami Herald in the 1980s, rejects the claim that "because the report uncovered an agency mindset of indifference to drug-smuggling allegations", it vindicated Webb's reporting. When Attorney General Janet Reno determined that a delay was no longer necessary, the report was released unaltered. Webb's ex-wife, Sue Bell, discounted theories Tuesday that her husband had been murdered, saying the 49-year-old Webb had been distraught for some time over his inability to get . "[38], Surprised by The Washington Post article, The Mercury News's executive editor Jerome Ceppos wrote to the Post defending the series. Webb began to shift from cynicism to curiosity. This is why Webb's "Dark Alliance" series is an essential source, a primary text that every journalism student should study. One time he called me and he said: 'I have this plan that will benefit us both.' 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. With hindsight, Bell says, "the signs were there. Born in Corona, California, son of a conservatively minded Marine, he met Bell, whose father was a university lecturer, at high school in Indianapolis. Then, in August the same year, the first of three instalments of "Dark Alliance" appeared. In addition, Gary left multiple suicide notes to family members which were confirmed to be in his own hand by them. It was accurate. '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. [48] Despite the controversy that soon overtook the series, and the request of one board member to reconsider, the branch's board went ahead with the award in November. He was a writer, known for Kill the Messenger (2014), Filming in Georgia (2015) and Crack in America (2015). 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. Gary was born Sept. 4, 1947, to Percy and Pauline (Haas) Webb. ", "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. When Webb pressed the Mercury News to allow him to investigate the LA connection further, his own newspaper issued a retraction which earned its editor, Jerry Ceppos, wide praise from rival publications, but effectively disowned Webb, who then suffered the kind of corporate lynching that reporters are usually expected to dispense rather than endure. [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. His wife is Sue Webb (m. 1979-2000) Gary Webb Net Worth His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. She was a homemaker and a member of Hunters Chapel Baptist Church. But while calling the flaws in the series "unforgivably careless journalism," Overholser also criticized the Post's refusal to print Ceppos' letter defending the series and sharply criticized the Post's coverage of the story. Gary Webb became, quite unfairly, the victim of one of the most extraordinary examples of piling on by the mainstream press, ever.". Film of this encounter survives. [33] Golden also referred to the controversy over Webb's contacts with Ross's lawyer. "I believe that Americans, as a nation, are mainly concerned with living their happy little lives. [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. Even 10 years after his tragic death, the media refuse to let him rest. Webb worked for several newspapers including The Kentucky Post and Cleveland Plain Dealer. [42] The extent of the criticism, however, convinced Ceppos that The Mercury News had to acknowledge to its readers that the series had been subjected to strong criticism. The three articles in the series were written by four reporters: Jesse Katz, Doyle McManus, John Mitchell and Sam Fulwood. 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. The article discussed Webb's contacts with Ross's attorney and prosecution complaints of how Ross's defense had used Webb's series. In interviews after leaving The Mercury News, Webb described the 1997 controversy as media manipulation. [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. A revised version was published in 1999 that incorporated Webb's response to the CIA and Justice Department reports. 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. The story had little immediate impact. She said the paper wanted to make up for what it had done in the past. Webb's corpse was found in the bedroom, with two gunshot wounds to the head. 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. Gary Webb, Into the Buzzsaw, CH 13, Prometheus Books. Connie Webb (304) 778-2546: Status: Homeowner. But they underestimated the paradigm shifting power of the internet, and the intelligence of Webb, who not only listed the explosive story online . 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. Webb, whose plans to become a journalist had begun when he was 13, but never included equine death notices, resigned from the Mercury News a few months later. When his medical insurance expired, he stopped taking his antidepressants. Webb followed up Baca's leads at the California State Library, examining Congressional records and FBI reports. Few reporters I've known could match his nose for an investigative story. Ceppos initially defended Webb, and reportedly showed up at an in-house party wearing a military helmet. He was sentenced to life in prison, though the sentence was shortened on appeal and Ross was released in 2009. I remain astounded by the editorial decisions they made.". At the end of March, Ceppos told Webb that he was going to present the internal review findings in a column. . The drugs went to South Central LA. [7] After transferring to Northern Kentucky, he entered its journalism program and wrote for the school paper, The Northerner.
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