The Gary Webb story

Progressive Review, 1996 - A stunning series in the San Jose Mercury News reports that a San Francisco Bay area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods and funneled the profits to the CIA-backed Contras in Nicaragua. Wrote reporter Gary Webb, "The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America ~ that provided the cash and connections needed for LA's gangs to buy automatic weapons."

Progressive Review, 1997 - Gary Webb, who lost his west coast reporting job after spook-cozy papers like the Washington Post and The New York Times beat up on his series on the CIA-drug connection, is writing a book. It'll be out in the spring.

Progressive Review, 1998 - The CIA might be in a little trouble if it had to fill out income tax forms. Under its definition, a non-employee of the agency includes "assets, pilots who ferried supplies to the contras, as well as contra officials and others." Under such absurd rules, even though the CIA was slipping Noriega payments greater than the president's salary, the Panamanian boss remained an independent agent.

Not only would the average IRS agent look askance at such a transparent argument, the CIA would find little relief in product liability law either. Its denial of connection to the spread of drugs in the US is analogous to a major automobile manufacturer denying liability for a defective car part because it came from a sub-contractor.

In recent testimony before Congress, CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz did admit something. Here's what he said:

"Let me be frank. There are instances where CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships with individuals supporting the contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug-trafficking activity or take action to resolve the allegations.. . .[But investigators] found no evidence . . . of any conspiracy by the CIA or its employees to bring drugs into the United States."

If you deconstruct the newspeak of this statement, Hitz almost admits a key point of repeated charges concerning CIA involvement with drug dealers since the end of World War II: namely that the agency simply looked the other way when it came across a drug trafficker who might be useful. It did not "in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relationships" with these traffickers nor did it "take action to resolve the allegations." While the agency may not have conspired to bring drugs into the country, it certainly has been criminally negligent in permitting people who are -- verbal contortions notwithstanding -- de facto employees or sub-contractors continue their trade with impunity.

Progressive Review, 1998 - Asked recently by the San Francisco Bay Guardian whether he had found a smoking gun, Webb sensibly replied, "When you're dealing with the CIA, you're lucky to find any fucking paper at all, much less a smoking gun.  You're never going to find a CIA memo that says, 'Go sell crack in L.A.' So you have to gather as much evidence as you can, take a good hard look at what you've got, and a legitimate conclusion can become very obvious."

Since Webb's troubles we have learned from the agency itself that between 1992 and 1995, the Justice Department and the CIA formally agreed that the latter would not be required to report on any allegations of drug trafficking by CIA agents, assets, or non-government employees.

In other words, until three years ago -- by the CIA's own admission -- the agency had a free pass on just the sort of activities Webb reported. In light of the Justice-CIA cover-up agreement, some retractions and apologies concerning Webb's work also seem to be in order. 

Progressive Review 1998 -  Consider the case of Gary Webb, the San Jose Mercury News reporter who broke the story of the CIA-crack connection. It was a good, important story that complemented documented evidence of CIA involvement in the drug trade dating back to the end of the World War II. The counter-attack from the traditional media, led by the Washington Post, was vicious and resulted in Webb being given a lousy beat miles from his home in apparent effort to force him to quit. Worse still, the life of his co-reporter, Georg Hodel, has been threatened by ex-contras in his native Nicaragua.

Progressive Review, 2001 - YOU ARE BEING LIED TO. Edited by Russ Kick. Your editor joins Noam Chomsky, James Ridgeway,  Michael Parenti, Gary Webb,  Howard Zinn in an anthology of articles of how things aren't quite as the media and the government would have you believe.

Progressive Review, 2001 -  In the 1950s, Katherine Graham's husband, Philip, played an important role in Operation Mockingbird, a major and remarkably successful effort by the CIA to co-opt journalists. Some 25 major news organizations and 400 journalists were seconded by the agency for its purposes during this period, as admitted by the CIA itself during the Church committee hearings. As one agency operative put it, "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." A number of Post editors and reporters, including Mrs. Graham's own choice for Managing Editor, Ben Bradlee,  and Bob Woodward, came out of CIA or intelligence backgrounds. Mrs. Graham continued the paper's close relationship with the agency.

The Washington Post joined in the vicious attack on reporter Gary Webb, who dared to reveal aspects of the relationship between the CIA and the drug trade. Typical nasties came from Howard Kurtz: "Oliver Stone, check your voice mail." And from Mary McGrory: "The San Jose story has been discredited by major publications, including the Post." And why? Well, in part because the Post and other papers simply took the CIA's word. Wrote Marc Cooper in the LA New Times: "Regarding the all-important question of how much responsibility the CIA had, we are being asked to take the word of sources who in a more objective account would be considered suspects."

Progressive Review, 2004: GARY WEBB: THE OFFICIAL STORY

LA TIMES - Gary Webb, an investigative reporter who wrote a widely criticized series linking the CIA to the explosion of crack cocaine in Los Angeles, was found dead in his Sacramento-area home Friday. He apparently killed himself, authorities said. Webb had suffered a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Sacramento County coroner's office. He was 49.

His 1996 San Jose Mercury News series contended that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold tons of crack cocaine from Colombian cartels in Los Angeles' black neighborhoods and then funneled millions in profits back to the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras. Three months after the series was published, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said it conducted an exhaustive investigation but found no evidence of a connection between the CIA and Southern California drug traffickers.

Major newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post, wrote reports discrediting elements of Webb's reporting. The Los Angeles Times report looked into Webb's charges "that a CIA-related drug ring sent 'millions' of dollars to the Contras; that it launched an epidemic of cocaine use in South-Central Los Angeles and America's other inner cities; and that the agency either approved the scheme or deliberately turned a blind eye."

"But the available evidence, based on an extensive review of court documents and more than 100 interviews in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington and Managua, fails to support any of those allegations," The Times reported. Months later, the Mercury News also backed away from the series, publishing an open letter to its readers, admitting to flaws. "We oversimplified the complex issue of how the crack epidemic in America grew," wrote the paper's executive editor, Jerry Ceppos, adding, "I believe that we fell short at every step of our process — in the writing, editing and production of our work.". . . Webb continued to defend his reporting, most notably in a 548-page book, "Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion," which was published in 1999.

GARY WEBB: THE BACK STORY

CHRISTOPHER REED, GUARDIAN, 1996 - In 1992, when reports were appearing in the alternative press about alleged drugs and arms smuggling flights into Arkansas, I asked a senior news executive at the Los Angeles Times if his paper had investigated. "Yes," he replied, "but nobody in authority would confirm it." Well, they wouldn't, would they?

The reputation of the US press for fearless muckraking has declined severely in the quarter-century since Watergate. After the servitude of the Reagan years, it can now be accused of compliance, and never more so than in its response to an explosive series in August by Gary Webb in the San Jose Mercury News of California. . .

The LA Times's series quotes drug "experts" to back its debunking. One is University of California professor Ronald Siegel, who says: "This was not some grand design of the drug cartels or someone at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, who was sitting around thinking up ways to raise money for the Contras." Webb never made such a claim. The LA Times only mentions later that Prof Siegel worked as a consultant to the Reagan administration, the very people organizing the illicit Contra war.

Back in August, Katz quoted another expert, Richard Millet, a Latin America scholar, who said: "Did some people involved with the Contras deal drugs? Yes. Did some officials in the US government know about it? Undoubtedly . . ."

All three papers skirt the central charge: that the CIA must have condoned selling crack in America. When they wish to demolish this hypothesis, they blandly quote officials and experts to the contrary. The LA Times even resorts to asking former CIA director Robert Gates about his agency's performance. "Did someone turn a blind eye?" Gates asks incredulously.  "I would be quite surprised by that. To me it's inconceivable."

The paper does not mention that Gates, the CIA deputy director for intelligence during the Contra war, pressured staff analysts to alter intelligence estimates to conform with his own political line. This was revealed at his own confirmation hearing as CIA chief, when one staffer testified: "Mr Gates'  role was to corrupt the process and the ethics of intelligence."

Why did the big three combine so cozily to rubbish the Mercury? Papers dislike being scooped, particularly by what Newsweek called "well-thought of but sometimes overlooked papers like the Mercury". The LA Times was especially annoyed because none other than [major drug figure in the series] Ricky Ross had warned them of the Mercury series, and it ignored him. It was also scooped in its own backyard. The Post regards itself as the premier CIA expert and was similarly miffed. The NY Times presumably thought its 1987 series dismissing Contra drug trafficking was the last word on the subject.

A nasty tone also intruded. LA Times journalists who wrote the October series were reported as gloating that they had "taken away the guy's Pulitzer. . . Perhaps the most worrying explanation was offered to In These Times magazine by Keith Scheinder, author of the NYT's 1987 piece: "I think it's so damaging, the implications are so extraordinary, that for us to run the story it had better be based on the most solid evidence." It would have to come from someone in authority.  Perhaps even the CIA itself. We will be waiting for a long time.

Progressive Review, 2004 - Gary Webb's apparent suicide has hit the independent investigative and activist community hard, in part because of the understanding in this group of the internal and external dangers inherent in challenging the system with the truth. An example is this from Celerino Castillo who was the lead  DEA agent in El Salvador during the Contra supply efforts in the 80s. Castillio is described by the Drug War web site as having "documented massive CIA sanctioned and protected drug-trafficking, and illegal Contra-supply operations at Illapango Airbase in El Salvador. . . 'I've got them [CIA] personally involved in 18 counts of drugs trafficking. . . I've got them on 3 counts of murders of which they personally were aware, that were occurring, and. . . to make a long story short, I [also] came out with money laundering, 3 or 4 counts.'"

Preston Peet recalls that "Castillo reported the goings on at Illopango to his superiors as well as to George Bush I himself, only to be shoved out of the way and charged with misdeeds and such. Such is the way often for those who step on big people's toes. Big people don't like that very much at all and often make life hell for those who do step on their toes, like Webb and Castillo, among others."

Celerino Castillo - It is clear that anyone who has dared to speak out about the CIA and the drug traffic has risked losing his job. . . When Gary was absurdly abused by a pack of attack dogs at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post, Gary's editors at the San Jose Mercury-Tribune failed to stand by him; and in the end virtually they forced him off the paper by reassigning him to a trivial suburban post.

The guilty consciences of the major newspapers is reflected now in the demeaning obituaries they have written about him. Gary's treatment of the CIA-drug story was not flawless; no one's is or can be. But he deserved far better than he got; and it is the other journalists who attacked him who should now hang their heads in shame.

It is difficult to be the victim of injustice, and not become obsessed by it. As someone else has observed of this tragedy, it is important that we resist the changes imposed on us by the world, by responding instead to the truth that is within us. For those of us who have had the luck to survive in this struggle while others have died, some of them murdered, our response must be to carry on.