There were no offers. "Gary Webb was left to fend for himself. Can these things possibly be? "If I had one dream for you," he wrote, "it was that you would go into journalism and carry on the kind of work I did - fighting, with all your might, the oppression and bigotry and stupidity and greed that surrounds us. 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 . And this is not a happy story - or," she adds, "a little one.". But the tragedy had a deeper meaning. In the column, Ceppos defended parts of the article, writing that the series had "solidly documented" that the drug ring described in the series did have connections with the Contras and did sell large quantities of cocaine in inner-city Los Angeles. According to a description of Webb's injuries in the Los Angeles Times, he shot himself with a .38 revolver, which he placed near his right ear. "Look at what happened to Gary Webb. He went into the bedroom, and picked up a .38 that had belonged to his father. He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. Webb took a modestly paid, low-profile job as an investigator with the California State Legislature. "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.". When he told me, I said it sounded crazy. With Baca's encouragement, he started to investigate a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Oscar Danilo Blandn. By this stage, he was prepared to work as a jobbing reporter. [45], The Post's response came from the paper's ombudsman, Geneva Overholser. When they married, she was aged just 21. While police were preparing the case against her boyfriend, Baca alleged, officers had disclosed documents which revealed that one of her lover's associates had been working for the Contras. Webb chose the second option. Gary Webb became, quite unfairly, the victim of one of the most extraordinary examples of piling on by the mainstream press, ever.". 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. OR was he like Epstein? After Webb's death, a collection of his stories from before and after the "Dark Alliance" series was published. [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. The link between drug-running and the Reagan regime's support for the right-wing terrorist group throughout the 1980s had been public knowledge for over a decade. I mean - please.". He said: 'No. 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. Gary Webb passed away on March 2, 2019. "Which was that, if he wanted a future within the political establishment of the United States, then he should concentrate on other aspects of life.". ". ", In contrast, the series received support from Steve Weinberg, a former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors. [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. When removal men arrived, on the morning of 10 December 2004, they found a sign on his front door, which read: ''Please do not enter. He was found dead on Friday morning in what the police said was an apparent suicide. [11], In 1983, Webb moved to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he continued doing investigative work. "Everyone got out and left the person who had made the noise - issued the report - alone. "But Gary thought that if something was true, it should be told. } Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. He made that very clear. "Gary was given the choice of relocating either to San Jose," says Bell, "or to Cupertino". Gary Webb was born on August 31, 1955 in Corona, California, USA. Webb's corpse was found in the bedroom, with two gunshot wounds to the head. Talking about his wife, Mariah Webb is a nurse who also educates about essential products . 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. 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. "To get back at his editors?". Webb strongly disagreed with Ceppos's column and, in interviews, was harshly critical of the paper's handling of the story. When his body was found, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was on the DVD machine, and his favourite CD, Ian Hunter's live album Welcome to the Club, was in the CD player. "As a PhD student, McCoy went to Vietnam and built an absolutely damning case about the CIA's involvement with trafficking heroin. When it did, beginning with The Washington Post, it shocked Webb's critics as much as his many admirers. line-height:1.5; Age 43 years. Despite some hyped phrasing, "Dark Alliance" appears to be praiseworthy investigative reporting."[47]. He was the much-loved father of Lindsay (Stephen . Cooper Webb Wife Name Revealed. [46] Overholser was harshly critical of the series, "reported by a seemingly hotheaded fellow willing to have people leap to conclusions his reporting couldn't back up." 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. According to Schou, the investigation "confirmed key chunks of Webb's allegations." We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California." She said the paper wanted to make up for what it had done in the past. I first heard about Webb eight years ago, I tell Bell, from the Paris-based journalist Paul Moreira. Cleveland Plain Dealer film critic Clint OConnor had a solid featurethe other day about Kill the Messenger, the journalism true-tale movie opening Friday with Jeremy Renner starring as the late Gary Webb. The normal process is, or should be, that a reporter files a story and is robustly challenged by his paper's lawyers and editors - who, if satisfied that the report is accurate - publish, then defend the writer to the hilt. The second volume, "The Contra Story," was issued in a classified version on April 27, 1998, and in an unclassified version on October 8, 1998. 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. Webb established incontrovertible links * between Ricky Ross and Blandn who, two years later, would betray Ross to the authorities. He is survived by his loving wife, Wendie, of Elgin; grandmother, Eileen Carrier of Elgin;. "But that," pointed out Blum, who is now a Washington attorney, "in no way - in no way - diminishes the wrongness of what these bastards did. It noted that Blandn and Meneses claimed to have donated money to Contra sympathizers in Los Angeles, but found no information to confirm that it was true or that the agency had heard of it. I believe that we fell short at every step of our process: in the writing, editing and production of our work. In addition, Gary left multiple suicide notes to family members which were confirmed to be in his own hand by them. It was good that his story forced those reports to come out, but part of what made that happen was based on misleading information. [13] Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards. 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. color:rgb(46,179,178); Webb made his early reputation as a reporter with the Plain Dealer before going on to fame and turmoil at the San Jose Mercury News. 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. It was accurate. The story was picked up by black talk-radio stations. GARY WEBB: His wife's office was burglarized. Parry, the first reporter to write about the US authorities' drug-running on behalf of the Contras, had survived a campaign by the White House to discredit first his story, then his reputation. "It was like someone had made a terrible noise, or a terrible smell, in a small room," recalls Jonathan Winer, Kerry's chief senate staff investigator . But as Krim told Webb's biographer Nick Schou, "The zeal that helped make Gary a relentless reporter was coupled with an inability to question himself, to entertain the notion that he might have erred. [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 rang me up that day. 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. Garcia responded by email but declined to speak on the record about the editing process of Webb's series. One time he called me and he said: 'I have this plan that will benefit us both.' 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. . His death was especially traumatic to the family since - as the coroner said - it could not be established whether he died instantly, or bled to death. 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. 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. They failed because the climate was more sceptical then. He placed his keys and ID cards on the kitchen table, together with a cremation certificate he had purchased for himself. His corpse was discovered on the seventh anniversary of his resignation from the Mercury News. Gary Webb, Into the Buzzsaw, CH 13, Prometheus Books. Both Gary's ex-wife Susan and his brother Kurt viewed the body and they confirmed the location of the wounds to me when I met them. But "Dark Alliance" was also posted on the Mercury News's website, with the image of a crack smoker superimposed on the CIA badge. On Dec. 9, 2004, the 49-year-old Gary Stephen Webb, Pulitzer prize-winning US investigative journalist, typed out suicide notes to his ex-wife and his three children; he laid out a certificate for his cremation; he taped a note on the door telling movers - who were coming the next morning to move him out of his rental house near Sacramento - to Webb's ex wife, Susan Bell told reporters that she believed Webb had died by suicide. 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. [33] Golden also referred to the controversy over Webb's contacts with Ross's lawyer. It was just more than he could take.". Leen, who covered the cocaine trade for the Miami Herald in the 1980s, rejects the claim that "because the report uncovered an agency mindset of indifference to drug-smuggling allegations", it vindicated Webb's reporting. He was assigned to its Sacramento bureau, where he was allowed to choose most of his own stories. Nobody who heads a government agency can let such an allegation stand.". Gary Webb was a journalist of outsized talent. 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. [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. "They had him writing obituaries," she said. He then transferred to nearby Northern Kentucky University. 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. 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 After the series's publication, the Northern California branch of the national Society of Professional Journalists voted Webb "Journalist of the Year" for 1996. .article-native-ad { ", Many of these are in the series archive at. Gary's ex-wife Susan Bell states: "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide." An interesting OPINION, but she supplies no convincing evidence to illustrate what she means by this. 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. [10] The series, which examined the murder of a coal company president with ties to organized crime, won the national Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for reporting from a small newspaper. His career ended, his livelihood was destroyed and certain games were started to be . The room is decorated with his trophies: a Pulitzer prize hangs next to his HL Mencken award; also on the wall is a framed advertisement for The Kentucky Post. "Because of Gary Webb's work," said Senator John Kerry, "the CIA launched an investigation that found dozens of connections to drug runners. 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. He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California, USA. But Ian Webbknows all too well the emotions that come with that experience. 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. Dec. 13, 2004. 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 February 2000 report by the House Intelligence Committee in turn considered the book's claims as well as the series' claims. "[38], Surprised by The Washington Post article, The Mercury News's executive editor Jerome Ceppos wrote to the Post defending the series. Webb worked for several newspapers including The Kentucky Post and Cleveland Plain Dealer. He leaves behind the love of his life and adoring wife of 41 years, Anne Michelle Phillips. Save 50% with early-bird passes. Webb's pieces were not dealing with nameless peasants slaughtered in some distant republic, but demonstrated a clear link between the CIA and the suppliers of the gangs delivering crack to the ghetto of Watts, in South Central Los Angeles. The passing of Gary ends more than 50 years with his best friend and loving wife, Marilyn J. "Do not quote me. Gary's documentation is awesome and his work ethic is unbelievable. (Strawser) Webb. "[77], Webb's reporting in "Dark Alliance" remains controversial. Sue remarried two years ago. [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. 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. This support "was not directed by anyone within the Contra movement who had an association with the CIA," and the Committee found "no evidence that the CIA or the Intelligence Community was aware of these individuals support. "[2], Ceppos noted that Webb did not agree with these conclusions. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. Ricky Donnell "Freeway Rick" Ross (born January 26, 1960) is an American author and convicted drug trafficker best known for the drug empire he established in Los Angeles, California, in the early to mid 1980s. Gary was preceded in death by his mother and father, Donna and James Webb of Carpentersville. This did not happen in Webb's case. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. A revised version was published in 1999 that incorporated Webb's response to the CIA and Justice Department reports. Webb disagreed with this conclusion.[1][2]. The article suggested this was in retribution for Ross' testimony in the corruption case. Unable to get work from any major US newspaper, he spent the four months before his death writing for * a free-sheet covering the Sacramento area. It also examined "how CIA handled and responded to information regarding allegations of drug trafficking" by people involved in Contra activities or support. There was no coffin, casket or tombstone. ", The report called several of its findings "troubling." To pay off his mounting debts, Webb sold the Carmichael property, where he was living alone, and arranged to move in with his mother. color: #ddd; Connie Webb (304) 778-2546: Status: Homeowner. Calling the Post's overall focus "misplaced", Overholser expressed regret that the paper had not taken the opportunity to re-examine whether the CIA had overlooked Contra involvement in drug smuggling, "a subject The Post and the public had given short shrift. [43] He did this in a column that appeared on November 3, defending the series, but also committing the paper to a review of major criticisms. ", "Reporter's suicide confirmed by coroner", "Repercussions From Flawed News Articles", "Herhold: Thinking back on journalist Gary Webb and the CIA", Ex-L.A. Times Writer Apologizes for "Tawdry" Attacks, "Gary Webb was no journalism hero, despite what 'Kill the Messenger' says", "Jeremy Renner's 'Kill the Messenger' Gets Fall Release Date", The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions, United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, Report of Investigation Concerning Allegations of Connections Between CIA and The Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States, Central Intelligence Agency Office of the Inspector General, United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, "Secrecy, Conspiracy, and the Media During the CIA-Contra Affair", Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography, "Inside the Dark Alliance: Gary Webb on the CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion", 'A NATURAL STORY': Tribute to 'Dark Alliance' and Journalist Gary Webb, San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, Archive of Gary Webb stories at Sacramento News and Review, "Frontline: Cocaine, Conspiracy Theories & the C.I.A. The first shot went through his face, and exited at his left cheek. "He had six in a short period of time." Occupation: Machine Operators, Assemblers, and Inspectors Occupations. They were outraged by the series's charges.[27]. His former wife, her voice lowered to a whisper, explains that Webb missed with the first shot (which exited through his left cheek). "You sound very scared," Moreira remarks. "It says the CIA helped introduce poison into our children. Dr. Gary A. Webb is a geriatrician in Marco Island, Florida. On the last day Webb was alive, his motorbike broke down while he was moving to his mother's house. Born January 3rd, 1943 in Montreal, Quebec, he was the son of the late John Douglas Webb and the late Jeannie (Penny) Hardie Penman. 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. Am J Mens Health, 2018 Mar 1:1557988318758788. doi: 10.1177/1557988318758788. Thank you." A secret deal allowed drugs to go unreported by the DCI. A flood of inquiries about Gary Webb's shooting death prompts statement. If the antagonism of competing publications was predictable, what happened to Webb within his own newspaper was not. Webb, according to Bell, was a man who, more than most, found that his mood and self-esteem fluctuated in accordance with his professional fortunes. 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. [44], Ceppos' column drew editorial responses from both The New York Times and The Washington Post. [61] According to the report, it used Webb's reporting and writing as "key resources in focusing and refining the investigation." "[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. That was just the way he was.". reports. American racer Cooper Webb is married to his wife named Mariah Williams Webb. The series follows the stories of several characters whose lives are fated to intersect including CIA operative Teddy McDonald who helps to secure guns for the Contras. Carey ultimately decided that there were problems with several parts of the story and wrote a draft article incorporating his findings. Blandn and Meneses were Nicaraguans who smuggled drugs into the U.S. and supplied dealers like Ross. 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. 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. She and Gary were married from 1979 to 2000 and had three children. He became an investigator for the California State Legislature, published a book based on the "Dark Alliance" series in 1998, and did freelance investigative reporting.
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