Gary Webb (1955-2004)

[back] Dope Inc

"Authentic journalism is telling people something that the government doesn't want them to know."--Gary Webb

[Gary Webb exposed, in his Dark Alliance series , how CIA-led Nicaraguan rebels brought cocaine to poor L.A. neighborhoods in the early '80s--and started the crack epidemic. P rofits earned from this crack market allowed the Los Angeles-based Crips and bloods to expand into other cities and spread crack use to other black urban areas, turning a bad local problem into a bad national problem. The San Francisco Bay Area drug ring then funnelled profits to the Contras for the better part of a decade. The series traced the drugs to dealers Danilo Blandon and Ricky Ross, leaders of a CIA-run guerrilla army that terrorised Nicaragua for 10 years. The milestone in exposing government drug dealing which ended his career as a mainstream media journalist , and his life.]

See: Propaganda journalism

[2014 Oct] The Ghost of “Dark Alliance”

Gary Webb

[2005] Taking a Dive on Contra Crack. How the Mercury News caved in to the media establishment By Gary Webb

[2004] THE MIGHTY WURLITZER PLAYS ON by Gary Webb Chapter 14 from In the Buzzsaw

[2001] Silencing the Messenger. Censoring NarcoNews by Gary Webb

[1999] Gary Webb Speaks on CIA Connections to Contra Drug Trafficking (and Related Topics)

[1997] Speech

[1997] Interview

[1996] The Dark Alliance series

Articles re Gary Webb

[2009] Gary Webb, The CIA, and Cocaine Trafficking

[2009] Gary Webb: Do What He Did by Al Giordano

[2005] America's Debt to Gary Webb. Punished for reporting the truth while those who covered it up thrived By Robert Parry

[2005] THE DEATH OF GARY WEBB [Is the government sending us a message?]

[2004] Evidence Begins To Indicate Gary Webb Was Murdered

[2004] Webb 'Suicide' Looking More Like Murder

[2004] From Kobe Bryant to Uncle Sam. Why They Hated Gary Webb By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

[1998] "Are You Sure You Want to Ruin Your Career?" Gary Webb's fate a warning to gutsy reporters

[1997] Snow Job. The Establishment's Papers Do Damage Control for the CIA By Norman Solomon

See : Nicaragua Cocaine

Quotes

What I've attempted to demonstrate in my book was how the collapse of a brutal, pro-American dictatorship in Latin America, combined with a decision by corrupt CIA agents to raise money for a resistance movement by any means necessary, led to the formation of the nation's first major crack market in South Central Los Angeles, which led to the arming and the empowerment of LA's street gangs, which led to the spread of crack to black neighborhoods across the country, and to the passage of racially discriminatory sentencing laws that are locking up thousands of young black men today behind bars for most of their lives. [1999 Jan] Transcript: Gary Webb Speaks on CIA Connections to Contra Drug Trafficking (and Related Topics)

The Gary Webb murder. Impossible to commit suicide by shooting yourself TWICE in the head. The second shot was just to make sure everyone knew this was a state sanctioned hit, and to leave it alone. Which everyone did. Old news, I know, but what the hey. CBSWORK

The three-day series was, at its heart, a short historical account of the rise and fall of a drug ring and its impact on black Los Angeles. It attempted to explain how shadowy intelligence agencies, shady drugs and arms dealers, a political scandal, and a long-simmering Latin American civil was had crossed paths in South Central Los Angeles, leaving behind a legacy of crack use. Most important, it challenged the widely held belief that crack use began in African American neighborhoods not for any tangible reason but mainly because of the kind of people who lived in them. Nobody was forcing them to smoke crack, the argument went, so they only have themselves to blame. They should just say no.

That argument never seemed to make much sense to me because drugs don't just appear magically on street corners in black neighborhoods. Even the most rabid hustler in the ghetto can't sell what he doesn't have. If anyone was responsible for the drug problems in a specific area. I thought, it was the people who were bringing the drugs in. [2004] THE MIGHTY WURLITZER PLAYS ON by Gary Webb Chapter 14 from In the Buzzsaw

Do we have a free press today? Sure we do. It's free to report all the sex scandals it wants, all the stock market news we can handle, every new health fad that comes down the pike, and every celebrity marriage or divorce that happens. But when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff -- stories like Tailwind, the October Surprise, the El Mozote massacre, corporate corruption, or CIA involvement in drug trafficking -- that's where we begin to see the limits of our freedoms. In today's media environment, sadly, such stories are not even open for discussion.

Back in 1938, when fascism was sweeping Europe, legendary investigative reporter George Seldes observed (in his book, The Lords of the Press) that "it is possible to fool all the people all the time -- when government and press cooperate." Unfortunately, we have reached that point. [2004] THE MIGHTY WURLITZER PLAYS ON by Gary Webb Chapter 14 from In the Buzzsaw

External

Did The Israelis Pay Gary Webb A Visit? The Real Truth - There Are No Colombian Cartels. Drugs are a $400 billion dollar a year business, and it has always been controlled by Jewish traders since the days when Sassoon ran the Chinese heroin trade in the 1700's. South America has a $50 billion dollar per year cocaine and marijuana trade.



Book

Dark Alliance by Gary Webb



Gary Webb on C.I.A. Trafficking of Cocaine