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Gary Webb

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For the British musician with the real name Gary Webb, see Gary Numan.
Gary Webb
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Gary Webb

Gary Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was a controversial American investigative journalist, best known for his 1996 "Dark Alliance" investigative report series, written for the San Jose Mercury News. In the three-part series (later published as a book), Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly distributed crack cocaine into Los Angeles and funneled profits to the Contras. Although Webb's claims were never disproven, the story was disowned by the Mercury News, effectively ending Webb's career as a mainstream media journalist.

Contents

Early life

Webb was born to a military family in Corona, California. At 15, Webb began writing editorials for his suburban Indianapolis high school newspaper. At the height of the protests against the Vietnam War, he created his first controversy when he criticized the use of a female drill team to rally students for the war effort.

Webb attended journalism school at Northern Kentucky University, where he was on staff at the student newspaper The Northerner, but dropped out. He started his professional career at the Kentucky Post, then worked as a statehouse correspondent for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Webb found a lifelong passion in investigating government and private sector corruption.

In 1988, Webb joined the San Jose Mercury News as a staff writer. He helped expose freeway retrofitting problems in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and wrote stories about computer software problems at the California DMV.

Dark Alliance

In August of 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published Webb's "Dark Alliance", a 20,000 word, three-part investigative series which alleged that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold and distributed crack cocaine in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and that drug profits were used to fund the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras. Webb never asserted that the CIA directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras, but he did document that the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of cocaine into the U.S. by the Contra personnel (Webb's 1999 book, Dark Alliance, substantiated these allegations with copious references).

"Dark Alliance" received national attention. At the height of the interest, the web version of it on San Jose Mercury News website received 1.3 million hits a day. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the series became "the most talked-about piece of journalism in 1996 and arguably the most famous -- some would say infamous -- set of articles of the decade."

Webb supported his story with documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, including a 450-page declassified version of an October, 1998 report by CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz. According to Webb and his supporters, the evidence demonstrates that White House officials, including Oliver North, knew about and supported using money from drug trafficking to fund the contras, and these officials neglected to pass any information along to the DEA. The 1988 report from the Senate Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism and International Operations of the Committee on Foreign Relations led by Sen. John Kerry commented that there were "serious questions as to whether or not US officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war effort against Nicaragua." [link]

Almost immediately, denials began to emerge of the assertions Webb made in "Dark Alliance". Reports in the Washington Post (Oct 4, 1996), Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times (Oct 21, 1996), tried to debunk the link between the Contras and the crack epidemic. However, as Richard Thieme observed, the major news outlets focused on attacking Webb or less relevant parts of the story, leaving Webb's thesis largely intact. [link]

Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser agreed with critics that her paper's response to Webb's series showed "misdirected zeal" and "more passion for sniffing out the flaws in San Jose's answer than for sniffing out a better answer themselves."[link]

Overholser concluded there was "[s]trong previous evidence that the CIA at least chose to overlook contra involvement in the drug trade...Would that we had welcomed the surge of public interest as an occasion to return to a subject the Post and the public had given short shrift. Alas, dismissing someone else's story as old news comes more naturally."[link]

Robert Parry, former Post journalist (and longtime critic of the Post since leaving) wrote that the Post's denunciation of Webb was ironic because the paper "had long pooh-poohed earlier allegations that the contras were implicated in drug shipments" but now "the newspaper was finally accepting the reality of contra cocaine trafficking, albeit in a backhanded way."[link]

In response to these attacks, Webb created a web site that contained primary documents, transcripts, and audio interviews.

By January 1997, Webb's editors no longer contacted him about his stories. In March, Webb was informed that the paper was going to address the readers about his series.

On May 11, 1997, Mercury News executive editor Jerry Ceppos published an editorial describing the series as an "important work" and "solidly documented," but criticized the series for: a reliance on one interpretation of complicated, sometimes-conflicting pieces of evidence; failing to estimate the amount of money involved; for oversimplifying the crack epidemic; and for creating impressions that were open to misinterpretation through imprecise language and graphics. [link] Webb was reassigned to a suburban bureau 150 miles from his home. Because of the long commute, Webb quit the paper in December 1997, his marriage fallen apart and his career destroyed.

On December 18, 1997, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz's investigation found no links between the CIA and the cocaine traffickers.

Webb alleged that the 1997 backlash was a form of media manipulation. "The government side of the story is coming through the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post," Webb stated. "They use the giant corporate press rather than saying anything directly. If you work through friendly reporters on major newspapers, it comes off as the New York Times saying it and not a mouthpiece of the CIA." [link]

James Aucoin, a communications professor who specializes in the history of investigative reporting, wrote, "In the case of Gary Webb's charges against the CIA and the Contras, the major dailies came after him. Media institutions are now part of the establishment and they have a lot invested in that establishment." [link]

Investigations

Facing increasing public scrutiny from the fallout after Webb's Dark Alliance series, the CIA conducted its own internal investigations. Investigative journalist Robert Parry credits Webb for being responsible for the following government investigations which revealed how the Reagan-Bush administration had conducted the contra war:

Dark Alliance: the book

In 1999, Webb published Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, complete with extensive source citations. The book received mixed reviews.

The book includes an account of a meeting between a pilot (who was making drug/arms runs between San Francisco and Costa Rica) with two Contra leaders who were also partners with the San Francisco-based Contra/drug smuggler Norwin Meneses. According to eyewitnesses, Ivan Gomez, identified by one of the Contras as a CIA agent, was allegedly present at the drug transactions. The pilot told Hitz that Gomez said he was there to "ensure that the profits from the cocaine went to the Contras and not into someone's pocket."

According to Webb, Judd Iverson, a San Francisco defense attorney who represented former Contra Julio Zavala, discovered compelling evidence demonstrating that "agents of the U.S. government were intricately involved in sanctioning cocaine trafficking to raise funds for Contra revolutionary activity". (Dark Alliance, pp. 92-95) Soon after, members of the Justice Department persuaded U.S. District Court Judge Robert Peckham to seal the documents in the case.

Critics

Neoconservative columnist and scholar Daniel Pipes, whose expertise is in Islam and the Middle East, claims that Webb's allegations have been thoroughly debunked. In his book Conspiracy, Pipes notes "In addition to reviews by the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Los Angeles sheriff that found no evidence to support Webb's conspiracy theory, several investigative articles found his evidence lacking. The Washington Post determined that 'available information does not support the conclusion that the CIA-backed contras - or Nicaraguans in general - played a major role in the emergence of crack as a narcotic in widespread use across the United States.' The Los Angeles Times stated flatly that 'The crack epidemic in Los Angeles followed no blueprint or master plan. It was not orchestrated by the Contras or the CIA or any single drug ring.' The New York Times found 'scant proof' to support the allegations. These and other debunkings did force the Mercury News to backtrack somewhat; the editor insisted that 'Dark Alliance' had only stated that individuals associated with the CIA sold cocaine that ended up on the streets of Los Angeles, not that the CIA approved of the sales. In addition, the CIA insignia disappeared from the World Wide Web site."[link]

However, Webb's research was later vindicated by the CIA Inspector-General in two reports dated 1997 and 1998. [link] [link] Four Washington Post reporters detailed to discredit Webb's work were unable to identify any significant errors. [link]

Aftermath

After leaving San Jose Mercury News Webb went to work for the California Assembly Speaker's Office of Member Services and served as a consultant to the California State legislature Task Force on Government Oversight. As a member of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, Webb investigated charges that the Oracle Corporation received a no-bid contract award of $95 million in 2001 from former California Governor Gray Davis. Webb was hired by the Sacramento News and Review, after being laid off in 2003 with the rest of the former Speaker's staff as part of a house-cleaning when the new House speaker took over.

On December 10, 2004, he was found dead from two gunshot wounds to the head. While acknowledging that the two fatal shots that had entered through the back of his head was unusual, coroner Robert Lyons determined that it was suicide.

Awards

Reporting awards

Literary awards

College journalism awards

Bibliography

See also

External links

*[Epilogue] (July, 1998)
*[Executive Summary]
*[Table of contents]
  • ["Gary Webb: In His Own Words (2004)"], Video of Interview with Gary Webb by Guerrilla News Network

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