Esquire executive editor Mark Warren wrote this introduction for an anthology of Gary Webb's work at the magazine and many other publications, published in 2004.

It was a late summer evening in 1998, over dinner at a fancy New York restaurant where the waiters dote on you, that my boss, Esquire editor in chief David Granger, and I presented Gary Webb with the Pulitzer Prize he had earned for the "Dark Alliance" series that he had published in the San Jose Mercury News exactly two years previous. That the honor was long overdue was obvious, and to say that the oversight was egregious is no small understatement. Even as the tortured separation from his newspaper was still being negotiated (for reasons that the profiles in courage who ran the paper had never found the words to articulate), the CIA's own inspector general had earlier that summer largely validated Webb's findings. Big news, you might think! But the major newspapers from coast to coast — from the Washington Post and The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times — had somehow neglected to cover this seismic news, at least not with the same vigor they had put into savaging the "Dark Alliance" series two summers before.

I will never forget that when the Merc published the series and the CIA had emerged from the shadows to take the unprecedented step of issuing a strongly worded denial, those same pillars of American journalism had simply taken the Agency's word for it. Yes, official denials are always to be heeded, because as we know they are always true. And I.F. Stone, Webb's north star, spun madly in his plain pine box.

And so it was that by the evening of our private award ceremony at the Four Seasons, Gary Webb, certainly one of the greatest investigative journalists of his time, had, at age forty-three, been shunned and abandoned by his profession, and all the mewling cowards in it.

But the good cheer in the room! For Webb was undaunted and unbowed, and the evening was such a buoyant and inspiring celebration of the very idea of noble journalism — Investigate the bastards! All the bastards! — and the wine — selected with solemn purpose by Granger — flowed freely, even though Webb was really a Maker's Mark kind of guy.

Okay, so I lied. We presented no haughty prize to Gary that night, as it wasn't ours to give, and what the fuck's a Pulitzer anyway, really? But we did bestow a small token of appreciation to Gary on behalf of the profession to which he had devoted his life, and might have actually given him something better: an assignment.

The talk turned to stories we might do together — which had been the whole purpose of the dinner in the first place — and Granger excused himself to the men's room. Gary mentioned that he had found work with am investigative committee of the state assembly in Sacramento, and that through this work he had discovered a secret federal program, administered by the Drug Enforcement Administration, by which the Agency had taken to training law enforcement agencies nationwide in the art and science of racial profiling. Probable cause of pulling somebody over reverted to what it had been in the bad old decades, overwhelming anecdotal evidence notwithstanding, state and local governments had denied that black people were more likely to be suspected of crimes solely on account of their race, and here Gary Webb had given the lie to that assertion, revealing in the process that not only was a lie, but there was a federal program — applied in forty-eight states, paid for by taxpayers (of all races, presumably) — whose business it had been to institutionalize such profiling. And had been doing so since 1986. It was an explosive story. "Holy shit, David," I said to Granger as he returned to the table. "Gary, tell him what you just told me." And just like that, Gary Webb got the assignment that returned him to the ranks of working journalists.

"Driving While Black" was published in the April 1999, issue. It contains groundbreaking reporting and its writing is riveting. But the whole profession of journalism seemed so determined to erase Gary Webb that on publication the story was manifestly ignored. Nineteen months later, in late November 2000, I received a call from Cynthia Cotts, who was then a columnist for the Village Voice. The New York Times, it seems, had just published a blockbuster story about racial profiling. The Times was running it prominently and in several parts. It contained explosive revelations about a federal program, administered by the DEA, called Operation Pipeline. Cotts noted that it was indeed a big story, but that it wasn't news: Gary Webb had broken the story more than a year and a half earlier in Esquire. In their account of Operation Pipeline, the Times pretended not to know about this, and gave Webb no credit whatsoever for his pioneering work.

Thinking back to our dinner together — can you tell in that moment whether what seems like a glorious new beginning is just a pause in a man's decline? No, you can't. Because as God my witness, it was a new beginning, the next chapter in the life of a man dedicated to fearless journalism, to poking a stick in the eye of power. Except here's the part where we — where I — also abandoned Gary Webb. Over the next couple of years, he and I would talk regularly about stories, many stories. But for a thousand good and couple not very good reasons, nothing came out of our talk. We talked about a regular investigative column. As the 2000 election approached, we conceived of covering Bush and Gore not as the herd typically covers them, but by thoroughly and pitilessly investigating them as only a hawkeyed investigative reporter could — and as anyone who presumed to ask for such power deserved — issuing our findings in a series of reports. Again, nothing. And then, over time, Gary and I simply lost touch. And so we of course, never said a proper goodbye.

READ: Driving While Black by Gary Webb in Esquire

ALSO: Charlie Pierce on Gary Webb's Accusers

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