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"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. He was sentenced to life in prison, though the sentence was shortened on appeal and Ross was released in 2009. Family and friends will gather to celebrate his life of 59 years at 10 a.m. on Thursday, March 7, 2019, at Lamesa Continue Reading Leave a Message, Share a Memory [44], Ceppos' column drew editorial responses from both The New York Times and The Washington Post. Age 43 years. "Do you think that a part of him did this out of revenge?" The response from the American press took two months to arrive. He then transferred to nearby Northern Kentucky University. 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. 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. I realise now he was thinking about suicide.". [34], The Los Angeles Times devoted the most space to the story, publishing a three-part series called "The Cocaine Trail." Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst with the George Washington University's National Security Archive, was one of the first to suggest that Webb had overplayed his hand in the Mercury News version of "Dark Alliance". Snowfall is an American crime drama television series set in Los Angeles in 1983. And the importance of exposing them. And he finallyyou know, they finally left the country. But while calling the flaws in the series "unforgivably careless journalism," Overholser also criticized the Post's refusal to print Ceppos' letter defending the series and sharply criticized the Post's coverage of the story. Webb followed up Baca's leads at the California State Library, examining Congressional records and FBI reports. He was born Sept.10, 1957 in Willcox, Ariz. to RG Webb and Winnie Mae Shelton. Few reporters I've known could match his nose for an investigative story. When Ross discovered the market for crack in Los Angeles, he began buying cocaine from Blandn. And when he got something in his head, he was determined to do it. 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. 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. His erstwhile editors on the Mercury News, meanwhile, saw their careers thrive. 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. "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.". "They had him writing obituaries," she said. In 2004, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb was found dead from an apparent suicide, as Democracy Now! .article-native-ad svg { He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. "I believe that Americans, as a nation, are mainly concerned with living their happy little lives. font-size: 34px; [19] The series was published in The Mercury News in three parts, from Sunday, 18 August 1996 to 20 August 1996, with a first long article and one or two shorter articles appearing each day. The complete lack of desire to ask the difficult questions makes me want to scream. The feeling was that with other news outlets calling for Webb's head, the paper's credibility depended on their joining in on the attacks. Eli Tomac on track during Media Day at Daytona International Speedway, Friday, March 3, 2023. "Do not quote me. 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. He was born at Emmanuel Hospital in. He was a former member of Bethlehem . [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 truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress. "[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." margin: 0 45px; [5], After high school, Webb attended an Indianapolis community college on a scholarship until his family moved to Cincinnati. [17] The Mercury News's coverage of the earthquake won its staff the Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting in 1990. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? 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. That was just the way he was.". I ask Bell. [71] When asked by local reporters about the possibility of two gunshots being a suicide, Lyons replied "It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots, but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility." Jeff Leen, assistant managing editor for investigative reporting at The Washington Post, wrote in a 2014 opinion page article that "the report found no CIA relationship with the drug ring Webb had written about." The series revolves around the first crack epidemic and its impact on the culture of the city. [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. [13] Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". It's . Webb came home and put his belongings in order, dropping his Kentucky Post poster in the bin. Am J Mens Health, 2018 Mar 1:1557988318758788. doi: 10.1177/1557988318758788. In an unprecedented move, the then CIA director John Deutch was dispatched to address community leaders in the Watts district of LA. We are in the living room of Bell's house just outside Sacramento, California. There was no coffin, casket or tombstone. What he found, he wrote later, "nearly knocked me off my chair". 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. So, this is not something you really make a career out of, nor would you want to. I mean - please.". "Gary Webb was left to fend for himself. 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. 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. Ceppos initially defended Webb, and reportedly showed up at an in-house party wearing a military helmet. It also stated that the Contras may have acted with the knowledge and protection of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). We were dismissed as a bunch of nuts." The Los Angeles Times and other major papers published articles suggesting the "Dark Alliance" claims were overstated and, in November 1996, Jerome Ceppos, the executive editor at Mercury News, wrote about being "in the eye of the storm". By: E&P Staff The death of investigative reporter Gary Webb has been confirmed as a suicide, according to a coroner's statement. Although Blandn's cartel was undoubtedly one of the first to bring crack to LA, Webb was almost certainly suffering a rush of blood when he described the group as "the first pipeline" into the city. But the tragedy had a deeper meaning. Gary Webb passed away on March 2, 2019. Contemporary discussions of the series are discussed in the section on, Webb 2011, "Caltrans Ignored Elevated Freeway Safety. Join iconic brands and world-class marketing leaders at Brandweek to unlock powerful insights and impact-driven strategies. Like Schou, Corn cites the inspector general's report, which he says "acknowledged that the CIA had indeed worked with suspected drugrunners (sic) while supporting the contras. A 1985 series, "Doctoring the Truth," uncovered problems in the State Medical Board[12] and led to an Ohio House investigation which resulted in major revisions to the state Medical Practice Act. Webb, unlike Blum or Kerry, had to face his difficulties alone. Going to the CIA to ask if they've ever profited from drug sales in Los Angeles, I suggested to Kornbluh, is rather like asking Fagin if he has ever picked a pocket. He kept saying that he would never get another job in journalism.". A passing motorist - a heavily tattooed young man - gave him a lift home, then returned and stole the motorcycle, which police recovered from him three days after Webb's death. [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. 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. margin-bottom: 20px; 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." George Webb and Paul Cottrell have begun a weekly series on CoronaVirus now, Mondays at 5PM, EST on paul Cottrell's Rumble Channel. I first heard about Webb eight years ago, I tell Bell, from the Paris-based journalist Paul Moreira. [26] Other papers were slow to pick up the story, but African Americans quickly took note, especially in South Central Los Angeles where the dealers discussed in the series had been active. The collection, The Killing Game: Selected Stories from the Author of Dark Alliance, was edited by Webb's son, Eric. The follow-up reporting in the Los Angeles Times and other papers has been criticised for focusing on problems in the series rather than re-examining the earlier CIA-Contra claims. 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. Army. Ross was also released early after cooperating in an investigation of police corruption, but was rearrested a few months later in a sting operation arranged with Blandn's help. E&P Staff. "He had six in a short period of time." After examining the investigations and prosecutions of the main figures in the series, Blandn, Meneses and Ross, it concluded that "Although the investigations suffered from various problems of communication and coordination, their successes and failures were determined by the normal dynamics that affect the success of scores of investigations of high-level drug traffickers These factors, rather than anything as spectacular as a systematic effort by the CIA or any other intelligence agency to protect the drug trafficking activities of Contra supporters, determined what occurred in the cases we examined. [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. 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. The attack on Gary Webb and his series in the San Jose Mercury News remains one of the most venomous and factually inane assaults on a professional journalist's competence in living memory . Gary is survived by his loving wife of 41 years, Barbara; their son, Jeff; his nephew, Christopher (Stephanie) Webb; niece, Sara (Gary) Dugan; and . When he was engaged, he worked hard. ", Many of these are in the series archive at. Born in Corona, California, son of a conservatively minded Marine, he met Bell, whose father was a university lecturer, at high school in Indianapolis. The reports rejected the series's main claims but were critical of some CIA and law enforcement actions. Despite some hyped phrasing, "Dark Alliance" appears to be praiseworthy investigative reporting."[47]. 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. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. "You do not understand the power of these people," he adds, referring to the US intelligence services. "People told me that," she says. Carey ultimately decided that there were problems with several parts of the story and wrote a draft article incorporating his findings. Blandn and Meneses' high-volume supply of low-priced high-purity cocaine "allowed Ross to sew up the Los Angeles market and move on. Webb joined the Mercury News in 1988, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. that the "federal government bore some responsibility, however indirect, for the flood of crack that coursed through black neighborhoods in the 1980s"). American racer Cooper Webb is married to his wife named Mariah Williams Webb. According to the report, the Inspector-General's office (OIG) examined all information the agency had "relating to CIA knowledge of drug trafficking allegations in regard to any person directly or indirectly involved in Contra activities." Much of the article highlighted the failure of law enforcement agencies to successfully prosecute them and stated that this was largely due to their Contra and CIA connections. After the publication of "Dark Alliance," The Mercury News continued to pursue the story, publishing follow-ups to the original series for the next three months. In a three-part expos, investigative journalist Gary Webb reported that a guerrilla army in Nicaragua had used crack cocaine sales in Los Angeles' black neighborhoods to fund an attempted coup of Nicaragua's socialist government in the 1980s and that the CIA had purposefully funded it. Ceppos failed to reply to one phone message and six emails. Gary's family found that old, storied, ("priceless to us," as his ex-wife, Susan Bell, described it to me) CDROM among his possessions. The drugs went to South Central LA. 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.
