[60], The House Intelligence Committee issued its report in February 2000. In city after city, local dealers either bought from Ross or got left behind."[24]. "[64] Webb's longest response to the controversy was in "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On," a chapter he contributed to an anthology of press criticism: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. "Ross," his report went on, dealt "on a scale never before conceived," with "a staggering turnover" of "50 to 100 kilos of cocaine a day". 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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. He recently told the American Journalism Review (whose scrupulously researched piece, by Susan Paterno, is the only serious documentation of the Webb case I could find anywhere in the orthodox American media) that Webb's critics in rival newspapers, "quoted these CIA guys - who had a tremendous amount to hide - as though they were telling the truth. [5], After high school, Webb attended an Indianapolis community college on a scholarship until his family moved to Cincinnati. 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. In 1997 Ceppos was awarded the US Society of Professional Journalists' National Ethics Award. Gary Stephen Webb(August 31, 1955 - December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. Gary was born Sept. 4, 1947, to Percy and Pauline (Haas) Webb. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department began its own investigation into the "Dark Alliance" claims.[30]. When Attorney General Janet Reno determined that a delay was no longer necessary, the report was released unaltered. [69], Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. When he was engaged, he worked hard. and Drugs Has a Life of Its Own", "Pivotal Figures of Newspaper Series May Be Only Bit Players", "Tracking the Genesis of the Crack Trade", "Examining Charges of CIA Role in Crack Sales", "History Fuels Outrage Over Crack Allegations", "Ex-L.A. Times Writer Apologizes for "Tawdry" Attacks", "Mercury News Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos' Letter to the Washington Post", "Washington Post response to Mercury News Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos", "Despite critics, a good story Crack and the contras", "CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: Epilogue", "CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: Conclusions", United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, "Are You Sure You Want to Ruin Your Career? The series ran from October 2022, 1996, and was researched by a team of 17 reporters. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". In the final few months of his life, Bell says, Webb became increasingly withdrawn. Webb, whose plans to become a journalist had begun when he was 13, but never included equine death notices, resigned from the Mercury News a few months later. "[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. 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. She acted opposite Dirk Bogarde in the groundbreaking film Victim (Basil Dearden, 1961), as the unsuspecting wife of a barrister who is a closet homosexual. So, how much is Gary Webb worth at the age of 49 years old? . In a long review of the series' claims in The Baltimore Sun, Weinberg said "I think the critics have been far too harsh. It was just more than he could take.". By the late spring of 1996, Webb was ready to publish. At the commemorative service for Webb, held at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento, Bell read out the letter Webb had written to his son Eric, now 17. Webb put in a call to Robert Parry. A jury awarded the plaintiffs over 13 million dollars and the case was later settled. Why bring up old white people atrocities against black people now? [57], The report covered actions by Department of Justice employees in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the DEA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and U.S. Hired by the San Jose Mercury News, Webb contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. 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 Like the CIA and Justice Department reports, it also found that neither Blandn, Meneses, nor Ross were associated with the CIA. He accepted Christ at an early age. '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. He went into the bedroom, and picked up a .38 that had belonged to his father. . 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. "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. "Exactly," replied Kornbluh, who - referring specifically to the LA Times, said he is "baffled as to how they could be so gullible. "It says the CIA helped introduce poison into our children. According to the report's "Epilogue," the report was completed in December 1997 but was not released because the DEA was still attempting to use Danilo Blandn in an investigation of international drug dealers and was concerned that the report would affect the viability of the investigation. [45], The Post's response came from the paper's ombudsman, Geneva Overholser. There was no coffin, casket or tombstone. "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. For instance, he published an article on racial profiling in traffic stops in Esquire magazine, in April 1999. Emma Lee Webb. According to Walt Bogdanich, a former colleague on the Plain Dealer who has won two Pulitzers and now works for The New York Times, Webb was the best retriever of information from public records he has ever seen. Born in Corona, California, son of a conservatively minded Marine, he met Bell, whose father was a university lecturer, at high school in Indianapolis. With Baca's encouragement, he started to investigate a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Oscar Danilo Blandn. Do not quote me on anything.". Unfortunately, the railroading of Gary Webb had begun and he was run over. He was sentenced to life in prison, though the sentence was shortened on appeal and Ross was released in 2009. It was accurate. "Because of Gary Webb's work," said Senator John Kerry, "the CIA launched an investigation that found dozens of connections to drug runners. It concluded, however, that these problems were "a far cry from the type of broad manipulation and corruption of the federal criminal justice system suggested by the original allegations.". By: E&P Staff The death of investigative reporter Gary Webb has been confirmed as a suicide, according to a coroner's statement. Many writers discussing the series point to errors in it. The whole business, I suggested to Blum, has echoes of a classic Alfred Hitchcock plot. font-size: 34px; Webb became a staff reporter for the San Jose Mercury News in 1988. 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. "You sound very scared," Moreira remarks. It found that CIA officials ignored information about possible Contra drug dealing; that they continued to work with Contra supporters despite allegations that they were trafficking drugs, and further asserted that officials from the CIA instructed Drug Enforcement Agency officers to refrain from investigating alleged dealers connected with the Contras. Dr. Gary A. Webb is a geriatrician in Marco Island, Florida. 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. [73], On the other hand, many of the writers and editors who worked with him have had high praise for him. Taken during the London Open House 2014 event. "He had six in a short period of time." By this stage, he was prepared to work as a jobbing reporter. He is the oldest son of Pulitzer Prize-winninginvestigative journalist Gary Webb, the subject of the 2014 film "Kill the Messenger," starring Hollywood heavyweight Jeremy Renner. In May 1997, after an internal review, Ceppos stated that, although the story was right on many important points, there were shortcomings in the writing, editing and production of the series. Osborn, Barbara Bliss (MarchApril 1998). It found that "the allegations contained in the original Mercury News articles were exaggerations of the actual facts." Gary Hays (304) 778-7090: He was a former member of Bethlehem . Webb's ex-wife, Sue Bell, discounted theories Tuesday that her husband had been murdered, saying the 49-year-old Webb had been distraught for some time over his inability to get . His former wife, her voice lowered to a whisper, explains that Webb missed with the first shot (which exited through his left cheek). [72] A New York Times profile of Webb in June 1997 noted that two of his series written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer had resulted in lawsuits that the paper had settled.