Depressed, he became increasingly unpredictable in his behaviour and embarked on a series of affairs; he was divorced from Bell in 2000, though he remained close to her throughout his life and lived in a house in nearby Carmichael. "He had six in a short period of time." By the time Webb began researching Dark Alliance, Bell was 38 and they had three children. Critics view the series' claims as inaccurate or overstated, while supporters point to the results of a later CIA investigation as vindicating the series. Both sides were left angry and disappointed. Contemporary discussions of the series are discussed in the section on, Webb 2011, "Caltrans Ignored Elevated Freeway Safety. 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. He told me: 'If I can't do what I want to do, what's the point?' "The cause of death was determined to be self . 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. [67], Webb later moved to the State Assembly's Office of Majority Services. The article discussed Webb's contacts with Ross's attorney and prosecution complaints of how Ross's defense had used Webb's series. His erstwhile editors on the Mercury News, meanwhile, saw their careers thrive. He was assigned to its Sacramento bureau, where he was allowed to choose most of his own stories. In August of 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb broke the biggest story of his life. '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. In the final few months of his life, Bell says, Webb became increasingly withdrawn. His father was a Marine sergeant, and the family moved frequently, as his career took him to new assignments. In a three-part series published in the San Jose Mercury News, "Dark Alliance," Webb alleges that not only was the CIA aware cocaine sold in the U.S. during the 1980s was funding the Nicaraguan Contras, they were complicit in its distribution. Jack Blum, who was the lead investigator for Senator John Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, which produced a highly damning 1989 report on drug-smuggling in the guise of national security, is one of several commentators to have questioned aspects of Webb's original reporting. 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. She said the paper wanted to make up for what it had done in the past. Baca claimed that a drug dealer with close links to the CIA had framed her boyfriend, who was also in the cocaine business. It found that "the allegations contained in the original Mercury News articles were exaggerations of the actual facts." Gary E. Webb, a dedicated husband, dad, pappy, coach, mentor, teacher, supporter, hero, and best friend, was called home by the Lord while surrounded by family. He was previously married to Sue Bell. 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. According to the report, the Inspector-General's office (OIG) examined all information the agency had "relating to CIA knowledge of drug trafficking allegations in regard to any person directly or indirectly involved in Contra activities." He concluded, "How did these shortcomings occur? [51] After discussions with Webb, the column was published on May 11, 1997.[53]. [35] The second article, by McManus, was the longest of the series and dealt with the role of the Contras in the drug trade and CIA knowledge of drug activities by the Contras. 71K views 8 years ago Gary Webb's son Ian talks about the film in which Jeremy Renner plays his late journalist father. It sounds like a Tom Clancy novel, right? Going to the CIA to ask if they've ever profited from drug sales in Los Angeles, I suggested to Kornbluh, is rather like asking Fagin if he has ever picked a pocket. [65], After leaving The Mercury News, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature. But Webb had one huge blind side: He was fundamentally a man of passion, not of fairness. According to the report's "Epilogue," the report was completed in December 1997 but was not released because the DEA was still attempting to use Danilo Blandn in an investigation of international drug dealers and was concerned that the report would affect the viability of the investigation. Webb, Bell explains, had written four letters explaining what he was about to do - one to her, one to each of their three children - and mailed them immediately before he killed himself. [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. "It says the CIA helped introduce poison into our children. [14] In 1984, Webb wrote a story titled Driving Off With Profits which claimed that the promoters of a race in Cleveland paid themselves nearly a million dollars from funds that should have gone to the city of Cleveland. The response from the American press took two months to arrive. "[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. Gary Hays (304) 778-7090: 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. Who Is Gary Webb's Wife? 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. The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua. And yet, for all his Easy Rider tendencies, he was also a dedicated family man with an extraordinary appetite for researching minutiae. It was also posted on The Mercury News website with additional information, including documents cited in the series and audio recordings of people quoted in the articles. George Webb and Paul Cottrell have begun a weekly series on CoronaVirus now, Mondays at 5PM, EST on paul Cottrell's Rumble Channel. And "we really didn't do anything to advance his work or illuminate much to the story, and it was a really kind of tawdry exercise. Actor Jeremy Renner portrays Webb.[83]. He was so depressed. 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. He leaves behind the love of his life and adoring wife of 41 years, Anne Michelle Phillips. padding:0!important; [31] In their front-page article, reporters Roberto Suro and Walter Pincus wrote that "available information" did not support the series's claims and that "the rise of crack" was "a broad-based phenomenon" driven in numerous places by diverse players. The story had little immediate impact. I realise now he was thinking about suicide.". that the "federal government bore some responsibility, however indirect, for the flood of crack that coursed through black neighborhoods in the 1980s"). Webb, a Pullitzer prize winning journalist, exposed CIA drug trafficking operations in a series of books and reports for the San Jose Mercury News. "[2], Ceppos noted that Webb did not agree with these conclusions. The CIA Inspector General's report, commissioned in response to the allegations in "Dark Alliance", was published in the autumn of 1998. 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. Gary Webb's income source is mostly from being a successful . [11], In 1983, Webb moved to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he continued doing investigative work. "[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. Corrie had primary biliary cirrhosis, a genetic liver disease that already had. 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. (Strawser) Webb. He was born August 27, 1968 in Saginaw, Michigan to Taylor Jr. and Loretta Webb. 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. So he blew her off. Webb's continuing reporting also triggered a fourth investigation. His wife is Sue Webb (m. 1979-2000) Gary Webb Net Worth His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. He said: 'No. "I had to warn Gary that what he was looking at was probably true, but that he would run very big risks," Parry recalls. The Mercury News reporter came under sustained attack from the weightier US newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and, especially, the Los Angeles Times, infuriated at being scooped, on its own patch, by what it saw as a small-town paper. Gary Webb's family says his death was Suicide. She and Gary were married from 1979 to 2000 and had three children. Meneses, an established smuggler and a Contra supporter as well, taught Blandn how to smuggle and provided him with cocaine. In May 1997, after an internal review, Ceppos stated that, although the story was right on many important points, there were shortcomings in the writing, editing and production of the series. I believe that we fell short at every step of our process: in the writing, editing and production of our work. [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. Ross, currently serving life, was already infamous; he had been profiled in the LA Times in December 1994, by writer Jesse Katz, at a time when Ross was at liberty and in penitent mood. His. 1) It presented only one interpretation of conflicting evidence and in one case "did not include information that contradicted a central assertion of the series." To pay off his mounting debts, Webb sold the Carmichael property, where he was living alone, and arranged to move in with his mother. The film broadened the debate which led to the decriminalisation of . Gary Douglas Webb of Radnor, PA, passed away on October 19, 2021. 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. It was just more than he could take.". [52] Webb was allowed to keep working on the story and made one more trip to Nicaragua in March. Webb was born in Corona, California. Although he attended Northern Kentucky for four years, he did not finish his degree. color: #ddd; "They had him writing obituaries," she said. 3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. "For the better part of a decade," it began, "a San Francisco drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funnelled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the US Central Intelligence Agency.". [36] McManus wrote that Blandn's and Meneses's contributions to Contra organizations were significantly less than the "millions" claimed in the series, and stated there was no evidence that the CIA had tried to protect them. He also stated "the series presented dangerous ideas" by suggesting "crimes of state had been committed" (i.e. .article-native-ad strong { OR was he like Epstein? It was written by Jesse Katz, the same reporter who, less than two years earlier, had described Ross's conglomerate as "the Wal-Mart of crack dealing". He received his medical degree from American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine and has been in practice for more than. 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. 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. [56] He resigned from the paper in November 1997. Am J Mens Health, 2018 Mar 1:1557988318758788. doi: 10.1177/1557988318758788. After Ceppos' column, The Mercury News spent the next several months conducting an internal review of the story. Blandn and Meneses' high-volume supply of low-priced high-purity cocaine "allowed Ross to sew up the Los Angeles market and move on. Webb disagreed with this conclusion.[1][2]. "[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. When she got indignant," she adds, "he went to meet her.". I mean - please.". The feeling was that with other news outlets calling for Webb's head, the paper's credibility depended on their joining in on the attacks. Webb became a staff reporter for the San Jose Mercury News in 1988. Webb's experience came as no surprise to Jack Blum, senior prosecutor for the Kerry Committee. [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. Gary Webb's "Approach Split" in the atrium of 20 Triton Street London. [41], When the Los Angeles Times series appeared, Ceppos again wrote to defend the original series. "Allow Gary Webb to be there [in the CIA investigation]," a heckler shouts. The "Dark Alliance" series remains controversial. [49], The paper also gave Webb permission to visit Central America again to get more evidence supporting the story. To Read the Full Story Become an Adweek+ Subscriber. Attend in Miami or virtually, Sept. 1114. "That's right," says Blum. "Gary was 18 and I was 16 when we first met and started dating in Indianapolis," said Sue Stokes. GARY WEBB was an investigative reporter who focused on government and private sector corruption and who won more than thirty journalism awards. He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. "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. His corpse was discovered on the seventh anniversary of his resignation from the Mercury News. Age 43 years. Webb's research took a year, in the course of which he received death threats. "I told Gary not to go near this story," his source replies, in an emotional voice. Moreira - a senior news producer for Canal Plus - has established a reputation for courage and independence of mind in his own foreign reporting, and was recently described by Le Monde as "the Che Guevara of news media". 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. What he found, he wrote later, "nearly knocked me off my chair". In February, Gary Webb gave his ex-wife. [39] The Post refused to print his letter. padding-bottom: 20px; [29] Waters urged the CIA, the Department of Justice, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate. He wrote that the series likely "oversimplified" the crack epidemic in America and the supposed "critical role" the dealers written about in the series played in it. The couple got married recently in November of 2020 after dating for some time. Webb's condition exacerbated his natural recklessness. 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. The story was picked up by black talk-radio stations. This did not happen in Webb's case. "[78], While finding this part of the series unsupported, Schou said that some of the series's claims on CIA involvement are supported, writing that "The CIA conducted an internal investigation that acknowledged in March 1998 that the agency had covered up Contra drug trafficking for more than a decade." "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. Their explosive report, which appeared in 1989, was either ignored, or marginalised, by the American press. . "[82], Kill the Messenger (2014) is based on Webb's book Dark Alliance and Nick Schou's biography of Webb. By the late spring of 1996, Webb was ready to publish. "People told me that," she says. Unfortunately, the railroading of Gary Webb had begun and he was run over. [61] According to the report, it used Webb's reporting and writing as "key resources in focusing and refining the investigation." He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California, USA. His was the story of a man who gains information of wrongdoing, then, attempting to act in the public interest, seeks protection from his superiors, and the forces of law, and does not receive it. He crashed and shredded his clothes, face and body on a barbed-wire fence." [72] A New York Times profile of Webb in June 1997 noted that two of his series written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer had resulted in lawsuits that the paper had settled. Cooper and Mariah were engaged before they finally tied the knot. 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. I felt she really trashed me. At that time, Webb (pictured) was best known for the controversial three-part CIA 1996 expose he wrote the San Jose Mercury News called "Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the . Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? [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. "The government side of the story is coming through the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post", he stated. For instance, he published an article on racial profiling in traffic stops in Esquire magazine, in April 1999. "[75], Jonathan Krim, The Mercury News editor who recruited Webb from The Plain Dealer and who supervised The Mercury News internal review of "Dark Alliance," told AJR editor Paterno that Webb "had all the qualities you'd want in a reporter: curious, dogged, a very high sense of wanting to expose wrongdoing and to hold private and public officials accountable." 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. "He definitely was depressed. A January 1997 article in American Journalism Review noted that a 1994 series Webb wrote had also been the subject of a Mercury News internal review that criticized Webb's reporting. At the end of March, Ceppos told Webb that he was going to present the internal review findings in a column. He was a former member of Bethlehem . The series ran from October 2022, 1996, and was researched by a team of 17 reporters. Webb worked for several newspapers including The Kentucky Post and Cleveland Plain Dealer. But ultimately, the responsibility was, and is, mine.". Last edited on 10 February 2023, at 03:36, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking, "To readers of our 'Dark Alliance' series", "America's 'crack' plague has roots in Nicaragua war", "War on drugs has unequal impact on black Americans", "Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Inquiry Findings", "The CIA and Crack: Evidence Is Lacking Of Alleged Plot", "Though Evidence Is Thin, Tale of C.I.A. In 2004, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb was found dead from an apparent suicide, as Democracy Now! 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 follow-up reporting in the Los Angeles Times and other papers has been criticised for focusing on problems in the series rather than re-examining the earlier CIA-Contra claims. Do something else with your life," the voice urges. "He thought I was being cowardly.

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