reports. Emma Lee Webb, age 75, of Crossett, AR passed away Monday February 27, 2023, in her home surrounded by her family. But you say - dear God. Its pointed to as one of the clearer cases of CIA intervention as revenge for Webb revealing damaging secrets about the agencies involvement in drug smuggling. GARY WEBB: His wife's office was burglarized. "[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." Webb is best known for his "Dark Alliance" series, which appeared in The Mercury News in 1996. [63]Dark Alliance was a 1998 Pen/Newman's Own First Amendment Award Finalist, 1998 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, 1999 Bay Area Book Reviewers Award Finalist, and 1999 Firecracker Alternative Booksellers Award Winner in the Politics category. "Because of Gary Webb's work," said Senator John Kerry, "the CIA launched an investigation that found dozens of connections to drug runners. "[80], Not all writers agree that the Inspector-General's report supported the series's claims. With hindsight, Bell says, "the signs were there.
Gary Webb: Murdered For Exposing The Truth - A New Kind Of Human [60], It found nothing to support the claim that "the drug trafficking activities of Blandn and Meneses were motivated by any commitment to support the Contra cause or Contra activities undertaken by CIA." Gary Webb passed away on March 2, 2019. Gary was born May 5, 1954, to his parents Worley and Margaret Webb, who preceded him in death as well as his brother, David Webb. } He was previously married to Sue Bell. When I first heard the news, I tell Bell, I was inclined to believe the conspiracy theories that still proliferate on the internet, suggesting that Webb had been assassinated - either by one of the drug dealers he'd met while writing Dark Alliance, or by the intelligence services who were supposed to police them. According to Schou, the investigation "confirmed key chunks of Webb's allegations." Webb - whose article had never alleged that the CIA deliberately targeted any ethnic group - became a national celebrity. 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. line-height:1.5; Start your Independent Premium subscription today. An editorial in the Times, while criticizing the series for making "unsubstantiated charges", conceded that it did find "drug-smuggling and dealing by Nicaraguans with at least tentative connections to the Contras" and called for further investigation. So, this is not something you really make a career out of, nor would you want to. When facts didn't fit his theory, he tended to shove them to the sidelines. He wrote well. [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. [60], It found no information to support the claim that the agency interfered with law enforcement actions against Ross, Blandn or Meneses. Then, on 10 December, he resigned. He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California, USA. [20] The website artwork showed the silhouette of a man smoking a crack pipe superimposed over the CIA seal. One instalment of the LA Times's 18,000-word rebuttal of Webb's piece, published in October 1996, sought to minimise the importance of his key witness, Ricky Ross. Webb joined the Mercury News in 1988, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Gary Webb, (born August 31, 1955, Corona, California, U.S.died December 10, 2004, Carmichael, California), American investigative journalist who wrote a three-part series for the San Jose Mercury News in 1996 on connections between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the U.S.-backed Contra army seeking to overthrow Nicaragua's leftist Her husband began his career on The Kentucky Post, and rapidly proved himself to be the sort of character who can be a secretive agency's worst nightmare: a full-blooded provocateur who liked to put the hours in at the library. [61] According to the report, it used Webb's reporting and writing as "key resources in focusing and refining the investigation." A perceptive, engaging woman of 48, she has turned an adjoining study into a small shrine to her late husband, who would have celebrated his 50th birthday five weeks ago. He was a writer, known for Kill the Messenger (2014), Filming in Georgia (2015) and Crack in America (2015). [18], Webb began researching "Dark Alliance" in July 1995. The response from the American press took two months to arrive. I'm glad that I didn't dissuade him, because it was important to get the truth out but for Gary Webb, there was a very high price to pay." Webb undeniably made mistakes of detail and emphasis in the newspaper version of "Dark Alliance". . His wife is Sue Webb (m. 1979-2000) Gary Webb Net Worth His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. Dr. Gary A. Webb is a geriatrician in Marco Island, Florida. Why bring up old white people atrocities against black people now? 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 Gary Hays Webb, 78, passed away on Monday May 9, 2022, at ThedaCare Regional Medical Center, Neenah. 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. Gary Webb, friends say, was a far more combative character than either the Mercury News's executive editor Ceppos or page editor Garcia. By a fortunate coincidence of timing, the report was released on a day when the Monica Lewinsky scandal dominated every front page in the country. 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. They failed because the climate was more sceptical then. He also had this inherent belief that the truth could not harm him. E&P Staff.
Gary Webb's Death Confirmed as Suicide | Editor and Publisher 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. "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. "He started having motorcycle crashes," Bell says. He had also lost his house the week before his suicide. 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. He stayed home, playing computer games, and began smoking cannabis heavily. 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.
Return of the messenger: How Jeremy Renner's new film Kill The . His. 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. [22], The lede of the first article set out the series' basic claims: "For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." After the announcement of federal investigations into the claims made in the series, other newspapers began investigating, and several papers published articles suggesting the series' claims were overstated. Because the gentile (european caucasian, lepers, fake jews) or white folks agenda has always been to destroy the black man, ever since pharaoh tried to murder Christ by murdering Hebrew babies, until now. . Webb took a modestly paid, low-profile job as an investigator with the California State Legislature. For instance, he published an article on racial profiling in traffic stops in Esquire magazine, in April 1999. 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 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 .
Voices: The Gary Webb saga still has lessons today [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.
[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 - Biography - IMDb But his central thesis - that the CIA, having participated in narcotics trafficking in central America, had, at best, turned a blind eye to the activities of drug dealers in LA - has never been in question. Bell and her children helped Webb prepare 50 packages containing cuttings and his CV which they sent out to newspapers all over the US. Some editors regarded him as stubborn to the point of insolence. The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress. It was truthful. n 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles under the title "Dark Alliance" for the suggesting a CIA connection between anti-government contras in Nicaragua and monies raised from. He had sold his house the week before his death because he was unable to afford the mortgage.[71]. "Do you think that a part of him did this out of revenge?" [54] Editors at the paper, on the other hand, felt that Webb had failed to tell them about information that contradicted the series's claims and that he "responded to concerns not with reasoned argument, but with accusations of us selling him out. As a result, some major US newspapers ignored its findings completely, while others relegated a brief summary to their inside pages. Famously known by the Family name Gary Stephen Webb, was a great Engineer.He was born on August 31, 1955, in Carmichael, California.Carmichael is a beautiful and populous city located in Carmichael, California United States of America.. Gary Webb Early Life Story, Family Background and Education. But, Ceppos wrote, the series "did not meet our standards" in four areas. 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 significant legacy of the Webb case, "the reason this whole affair remains so significant today," Blum says, "is this: the knowledge that, if one individual dares raise such serious issues, they risk confronting a tremendous apparatus that is prepared to whack them hard, and there is very little they can expect by way of support. He is survived by his loving wife, Wendie, of Elgin; grandmother, Eileen Carrier of Elgin;. He was the much-loved father of Lindsay (Stephen . "Gary was 18 and I was 16 when we first met and started dating in Indianapolis," said Sue Stokes. George Webb and Paul Cottrell have begun a weekly series on CoronaVirus now, Mondays at 5PM, EST on paul Cottrell's Rumble Channel. 4) The series "created impressions that were open to misinterpretation" through "imprecise language and graphics. Look at the way the US press reports on Iraq. Investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of stories in 1996 for the San Jose Mercury News that documented the US-government-backed Contra insurgents' drug pipeline into Los Angeles. It sounds like a Tom Clancy novel, right? The story was picked up by black talk-radio stations. By the late spring of 1996, Webb was ready to publish. '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. Jeremy Renner as Gary Webb How Kill the Messenger Will Vindicate Investigative Journalist Gary Webb Melinda Welsh September 29, 2014 This one has all the ingredients of a dreamed-up Hollywood. He accepted Christ at an early age.
How the Press and the CIA Killed Gary Webb's Career That was just the way he was.". After his resignation from The Mercury News, Webb expanded the "Dark Alliance" series into a book that responded to the criticism of the series and described his experiences writing the story and dealing with the controversy. 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.
Sheriff: Fatal Blue Grass house fire rule 'undetermined, but accidental' ", She pauses: "That said, he did sleep with a gun under his bed.". In interviews after leaving The Mercury News, Webb described the 1997 controversy as media manipulation.
Obituary | GARY HAYS WEBB of Neenah, Wisconsin | WESTGOR FUNERAL HOMES Webb's continuing reporting also triggered a fourth investigation. 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.
Gary Webb - Spartacus Educational The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department began its own investigation into the "Dark Alliance" claims.[30]. Relationships with other women ended badly. "[77], Webb's reporting in "Dark Alliance" remains controversial. Thank you." 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 other article, citing interviews with current and former intelligence and law-enforcement officials, questioned the importance of the drug dealers discussed in the series, both in the crack cocaine trade and in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras' fight against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. I first heard about Webb eight years ago, I tell Bell, from the Paris-based journalist Paul Moreira. "I think the behaviour of the media in all of this has been amazing," says Bell. . Meneses, an established smuggler and a Contra supporter as well, taught Blandn how to smuggle and provided him with cocaine. color: #ddd; in Central America", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gary_Webb&oldid=1138520387, This page was last edited on 10 February 2023, at 03:36. [9], Webb's first major investigative work appeared in 1980, when the Cincinnati Post published "The Coal Connection," a seventeen-part series by Webb and Post reporter Thomas Scheffey. "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". A flood of inquiries about Gary Webb's shooting death prompts statement. I have also followed up on key topics raised by Paul Cottrell will leading industry experts like Dr. Peter McCollough on the Tommy Carrigan Show, weekly in 2021 and 2022. .article-native-ad p { [21] This artwork proved controversial, and The Mercury News later removed it. He then transferred to nearby Northern Kentucky University. With Baca's encouragement, he started to investigate a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Oscar Danilo Blandn. A time of fellowship and remembrance is scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6, 2019, at Lake Ridge Chapel and Memorial Designers. Webb resigned from The Mercury News in December 1997. 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.
American Journalism Review - Archives WRITTEN IN PAIN - Los Angeles Times The reports of the three federal investigations into the claims of "Dark Alliance" were not released until over a year after the series's publication. Should these editors subsequently deem the story to have been fatally flawed, they take the consequences. The third article discussed the social effects of the crack trade, noting that it had a disparate effect on African-Americans. Because Blandn cooperated with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), he spent only 28 months in prison, became a paid government informant, and received permanent resident status. "Back then. It found that "the allegations contained in the original Mercury News articles were exaggerations of the actual facts." [65], After leaving The Mercury News, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature. [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. "They had him writing obituaries," she said. 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. Instead, he found work in 1978 as a reporter at the Kentucky Post, a local paper affiliated with the larger Cincinnati Post. [50] By January, Webb filed drafts of four more articles based on his trip, but his editors concluded that the new articles would not help shore up the original series's claims.
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