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. When Attorney General Janet Reno determined that a delay was no longer necessary, the report was released unaltered. [32], The New York Times published two articles on the series in mid-October, both written by reporter Tim Golden. E&P Staff. Occupation: Machine Operators, Assemblers, and Inspectors Occupations. "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. He accepted Christ at an early age. Webb moved his wife and two young children to a suburb and continued a tradition he had started in Cleveland, restoring their small house with the help of how-to books, installing wainscoting and custom tile, new cabinets and gardens, while putting in overtime at the paper. He was found dead on Friday morning in what the police said was an apparent suicide. Few reporters I've known could match his nose for an investigative story. 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. The first effect of the onslaught was to ease the pressure on the CIA. The new movie Kill the Messenger, based in part on a 2006 book by a former student of mine, eulogizes Webb . 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 . Gary Webb | Okanogan Valley Gazette-Tribune border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd; 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. Gary Hays (304) 778-7090: [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. "I'd get discouraged," she said, "but I never really gave up hope." Back in 1997, SN&R brought the controversy about Gary Webb to readers with "Secrets and Lies," a cover story about why the mainstream media attacked . Talking about his wife, Mariah Webb is a nurse who also educates about essential products . The other article, citing interviews with current and former intelligence and law-enforcement officials, questioned the importance of the drug dealers discussed in the series, both in the crack cocaine trade and in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras' fight against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. [50] By January, Webb filed drafts of four more articles based on his trip, but his editors concluded that the new articles would not help shore up the original series's claims. She kept crying about how terrible it all was - by which I mean that she was, physically, crying. In 1996, the award-winning journalist Gary Webb uncovered CIA links to Los Angeles drug dealers. OR was he like Epstein? 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. 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. Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. Gary Webb, Into the Buzzsaw, CH 13, Prometheus Books. It sounds like a Tom Clancy novel, right? "He thought I was being cowardly. Gary Webb's family says his death was Suicide. Age 43 years. After a local newspaper reported that Webb had died from multiple gunshots, the coroner's office received so many calls asking about Webb's death that Sacramento County Coroner Robert Lyons issued a statement confirming Webb had died by suicide. ", Webb had already been cremated and his ashes scattered in the bay off Santa Cruz two weeks before. Like the CIA and Justice Department reports, it also found that neither Blandn, Meneses, nor Ross were associated with the CIA. [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. 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.". "He started having motorcycle crashes," Bell says. 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. Gary Webb's Ex-Wife Set to Attend New York Premiere By Richard Horgan October 8, 2014 Cleveland Plain Dealer film critic Clint O'Connor had a solid feature the other day about Kill the. Maxine Waters found a govt employee ran the South Central LA drug ring & The DOJ removed that section of the report : r/conspiracy 3 yr. ago Posted by shylock92008 How Kill the Messenger Will Vindicate Investigative Journalist Gary Webb But Webb had one huge blind side: He was fundamentally a man of passion, not of fairness. As it turned out," she adds, "that was not their intent.". 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. Watkins and Debbie (John) Foutch; grandchildren, Makenzie and Ashlynn Fogg. In 2004, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb was found dead from an apparent suicide, as Democracy Now! Although he attended Northern Kentucky for four years, he did not finish his degree. . His was the story of a man who gains information of wrongdoing, then, attempting to act in the public interest, seeks protection from his superiors, and the forces of law, and does not receive it. [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. In 1986, Webb wrote an article saying that the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, Frank D. Celebrezze accepted contributions from groups with organized crime connections. After the series's publication, the Northern California branch of the national Society of Professional Journalists voted Webb "Journalist of the Year" for 1996. He is from United States. On one road trip, in 2001, he came off the motorcycle and split his helmet open. Cooper and Mariah were engaged before they finally tied the knot. Sheriff: Fatal Blue Grass house fire rule 'undetermined, but accidental' [11], In 1983, Webb moved to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he continued doing investigative work. [41], When the Los Angeles Times series appeared, Ceppos again wrote to defend the original series. At the end of March, Ceppos told Webb that he was going to present the internal review findings in a column. Contemporary discussions of the series are discussed in the section on, Webb 2011, "Caltrans Ignored Elevated Freeway Safety. Webb strongly disagreed with Ceppos's column and, in interviews, was harshly critical of the paper's handling of the story. Save 50% with early-bird passes. American racer Cooper Webb is married to his wife named Mariah Williams Webb. Actor Jeremy Renner portrays Webb.[83]. The complete lack of desire to ask the difficult questions makes me want to scream. He leaves behind the love of his life and adoring wife of 41 years, Anne Michelle Phillips. Gary Webb - Wikispooks "Back then. But as his ex-wife told the . Both sides were left angry and disappointed. [51] After discussions with Webb, the column was published on May 11, 1997.[53]. By Sam Stanton Bee Staff Writer Published 2:15 am PST Wednesday, December 15, 2004. . [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. [60], The House Intelligence Committee issued its report in February 2000. The film broadened the debate which led to the decriminalisation of . Gary's family found that old, storied, ("priceless to us," as his ex-wife, Susan Bell, described it to me) CDROM among his possessions. 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. [7] After transferring to Northern Kentucky, he entered its journalism program and wrote for the school paper, The Northerner. Ceppos and Garcia have long since lost any taste for public discussion of "Dark Alliance". When he told me, I said it sounded crazy. For two years, Blum and Kerry supervised the interrogation of dozens of witnesses who described CIA-related drug deals in central America. "[74] Mary Anne Sharkey, Webb's editor at The Plain Dealer, told writer Alicia Shepard in 1997 that Webb was known as 'the carpenter' "because he had everything nailed down. Because the gentile (european caucasian, lepers, fake jews) or white folks agenda has always been to destroy the black man, ever since pharaoh tried to murder Christ by murdering Hebrew babies, until now. Why Journalist Gary Webb Died - LewRockwell If the antagonism of competing publications was predictable, what happened to Webb within his own newspaper was not. Sue remarried two years ago. [51], The editors met with Webb several times in February to discuss the results of the paper's internal review and eventually decided to print neither Carey's draft article nor the articles Webb had filed. 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. Webb had become, as somebody put it, "radioactive". The CIA Inspector General's report, commissioned in response to the allegations in "Dark Alliance", was published in the autumn of 1998. Gary Webb was at his desk in the Mercury News's Sacramento office, in July 1995, when he received a message to call Coral Baca, a Hispanic woman from the San Francisco Bay area, allegedly connected to a Colombian drug cartel. Occupation: Machine Operators, Assemblers, and Inspectors Occupations. padding-left: 10px!important; Webb worked for several newspapers including The Kentucky Post and Cleveland Plain Dealer. News coverage noted that there were widespread rumors on the Internet at the time that Webb had been killed as retribution for his "Dark Alliance" series, published eight years before. It reads: "There should be no fetters on reporters, nor must they tamper with the truth, but give light so the people will find their own way." [17] The Mercury News's coverage of the earthquake won its staff the Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting in 1990. The passing of Gary ends more than 50 years with his best friend and loving wife, Marilyn J. When Ross discovered the market for crack in Los Angeles, he began buying cocaine from Blandn. Depressed, he became increasingly unpredictable in his behaviour and embarked on a series of affairs; he was divorced from Bell in 2000, though he remained close to her throughout his life and lived in a house in nearby Carmichael. 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. Gary Webb passed away on March 2, 2019. In the final few months of his life, Bell says, Webb became increasingly withdrawn. 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. margin: 0 45px; He made that very clear. Corrie had primary biliary cirrhosis, a genetic liver disease that already had. The article resulted in a lawsuit against Webb's paper which the plaintiffs won. 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. color: #ddd; He then transferred to nearby Northern Kentucky University. On Dec. 9, 2004, the 49-year-old Webb typed out suicide notes to his ex-wife and his three children; laid out a certificate for his cremation; and taped a note on the door telling movers, who were . Noting that most of the activities discussed in the report had nothing to do with the people Webb reported on, Kornbluh told Schou, "I can't say it's a vindication. "I think Kerry learnt a lesson from all this," reporter Robert Parry says. [22], The lede of the first article set out the series' basic claims: "For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." 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 . 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 third article, by Mitchell and Fulwood, covered the effects of crack on African-Americans and how it affected their reaction to some of the rumors that arose after the "Dark Alliance" series. Webb undeniably made mistakes of detail and emphasis in the newspaper version of "Dark Alliance". Gary Webb and 'Kill the Messenger': Reporter played by - cleveland Taken during the London Open House 2014 event. Evidence Begins To Indicate Gary Webb Was Murdered - BSNEWS Attend in Miami or virtually, Sept. 1114. Vivian Corrie, a part of his liver in a life-threatening operation. He was the much-loved father of Lindsay (Stephen . ", She pauses: "That said, he did sleep with a gun under his bed.". Gary Webb on the CIA's Role in the 1980s LA Crack Epidemic - Citizen Truth 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. "I believe that Americans, as a nation, are mainly concerned with living their happy little lives. WRITTEN IN PAIN - Los Angeles Times [49], The paper also gave Webb permission to visit Central America again to get more evidence supporting the story. A flood of inquiries about Gary Webb's shooting death prompts statement. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department began its own investigation into the "Dark Alliance" claims.[30]. Cuts and amendments were made at the request of Ceppos, executive editor of the Mercury News, and Webb's immediate editor Dawn Garcia, among others. [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. 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. Gary Stephen Webb(August 31, 1955 - December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. [35] The second article, by McManus, was the longest of the series and dealt with the role of the Contras in the drug trade and CIA knowledge of drug activities by the Contras. '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. [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. 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. Gary Webb's income source is mostly from being a successful . "Gary was 18 and I was 16 when we first met and started dating in Indianapolis," said Sue Stokes. In and out of work, he had a reputation for taking risks. 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 review was conducted primarily by editor Jonathan Krim and reporter Pete Carey, who had written the paper's first published analysis of the series. 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? 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. Gary Webb was born on August 31, 1955 in Corona, California, USA. After introducing the three, the first article discussed primarily Blandn and Meneses, and their relationship with the Contras and the CIA. Cooper Webb Wife Name Revealed: Who Is Professional SX/MX - Halla News One of his last articles examined America's Army, a video game designed by the U.S. Webb disagreed with this conclusion.[1][2]. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. "Gary was given the choice of relocating either to San Jose," says Bell, "or to Cupertino". The claim that the drug ring of Meneses-Blandn-Ross sparked the "crack explosion" has been perhaps the most criticized part of the series. 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. Celebrezze eventually sued the Plain Dealer and won an undisclosed out of court settlement. [59], The first volume of the report found no evidence that "any past or present employee of CIA, or anyone acting on behalf of CIA, had any direct or indirect dealing" with Ross, Blandn, or Meneses or that any of the other figures mentioned in "Dark Alliance" were ever employed by or associated with or contacted by the agency. 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. [42] The extent of the criticism, however, convinced Ceppos that The Mercury News had to acknowledge to its readers that the series had been subjected to strong criticism. When Gary originally broke this mind blowing story, the arrogant authority's assumed they could simply ignore him and hope he'd go away. Video courtesy of documentary FREEWAY: CRACK IN THE SYSTEM premiering on Al Jazeera America in early 2015. [67], Webb later moved to the State Assembly's Office of Majority Services. "They tried to make us look like crazies," says Blum. Blandn and Meneses were Nicaraguans who smuggled drugs into the U.S. and supplied dealers like Ross. "By the end of his life he was just in a lot of pain," said Webb's ex-wife, Susan Bell. As a result, some major US newspapers ignored its findings completely, while others relegated a brief summary to their inside pages. Emma Lee Webb, age 75, of Crossett, AR passed away Monday February 27, 2023, in her home surrounded by her family. "You sound very scared," Moreira remarks. She and Gary were married from 1979 to 2000 and had three children. Gary Webb - Spartacus Educational He cites the case of Alfred McCoy, now Professor of South East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin. Even 10 years after his tragic death, the media refuse to let him rest. Webb, Gary Gary T. Webb, age 67, of Hamilton, Michigan, passed away peacefully surrounded by his loving family Thursday, November 11, 2021. Eighteen Years Ago Today, Journalist Gary Webb Was Murdered After In city after city, local dealers either bought from Ross or got left behind."[24]. He had sold his house the week before his death because he was unable to afford the mortgage.[71]. On the last day Webb was alive, his motorbike broke down while he was moving to his mother's house. By this stage, he was prepared to work as a jobbing reporter. The series ran from October 2022, 1996, and was researched by a team of 17 reporters. Walter Bogdanich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who worked with Webb on The Plain Dealer, told American Journalism Review editor Susan Paterno "He was brilliant; he knew more about public records than anybody I've ever known. 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. Gary's story, however, is far from over and could never be killed by something as trivial as a material bullet. Webb's ex wife, Susan Bell told reporters that she believed Webb had died by suicide. 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." Look at the way the US press reports on Iraq. Army. 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. Moreira - a senior news producer for Canal Plus - has established a reputation for courage and independence of mind in his own foreign reporting, and was recently described by Le Monde as "the Che Guevara of news media". Webb may indeed be physically dead, but his research is more alive today than ever before, and continues to haunt the shadow government and snowball into a monster that will undoubtedly have its eventual revenge. But they underestimated the paradigm shifting power of the internet, and the intelligence of Webb, who not only listed the explosive story online . Although it did find that both men were major drug dealers, "guilty of enriching themselves at the expense of countless drug users," and that they had contributed money to the Contra cause, "we did not find that their activities were responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic in South Central Los Angeles, much less the rise of crack throughout the nation, or that they were a significant source of support for the Contras. Gary Webb was a journalist of outsized talent. She was a native of Minden, LA, but a resident of Crossett for 65 years. "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. "[58], It also concluded that "the claims that Blandn and Meneses were responsible for introducing crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles and spreading the crack epidemic throughout the country were unsupported." In addition, Gary left multiple suicide notes to family members which were confirmed to be in his own hand by them. Part of what makes OConnors article so compelling are the candid thoughts of Webbs former wife Sue Stokes. He was a writer, known for Kill the Messenger (2014), Filming in Georgia (2015) and Crack in America (2015). Webb was an assertive figure who drove fast cars and powerful motorcycles, hung heavy metal posters in his office and, at certain times in his life, smoked a fair amount of cannabis. It was also posted on The Mercury News website with additional information, including documents cited in the series and audio recordings of people quoted in the articles. [13] Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards. 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. 4) The series "created impressions that were open to misinterpretation" through "imprecise language and graphics. By the time Webb began researching Dark Alliance, Bell was 38 and they had three children. "The first story he had to file was about a police horse which had died of constipation.". Can these things possibly be? Tara Becker-Gray Lee News Network Jan 17, 2019 0 1 of 2 C. Webb The body found at a house fire at 13308 95th Ave. in rural Blue Grass on Thursday night has been identified as Cynthia Webb, 59.. Dr. Gary A. Webb is a geriatrician in Marco Island, Florida. He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. The character reporter Irene Abe is said by fans of the show to be a stand in character for the real life Gary Webb. 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. After the announcement of federal investigations into the claims made in the series, other newspapers began investigating, and several papers published articles suggesting the series' claims were overstated. I ask Bell. 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. [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. "[76] Scott Herhold, Webb's first editor at The Mercury-News, wrote in a 2013 column that "Gary Webb was a journalist of outsized talent. Film of this encounter survives. The February 2000 report by the House Intelligence Committee in turn considered the book's claims as well as the series' claims. It was accurate. The first article, by Katz, developed a different picture of the origins of the crack trade than "Dark Alliance" had described, with more gangs and smugglers participating. Five years ago, a tragedy occurred in American journalism: Investigative reporter Gary Webb - who had been ostracized by his own colleagues for forcing a spotlight back onto an ugly government scandal they wanted to ignore - was driven to commit suicide. Carey ultimately decided that there were problems with several parts of the story and wrote a draft article incorporating his findings. 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". He told me: 'If I can't do what I want to do, what's the point?' Gary Webb - Wikipedia It also examined "how CIA handled and responded to information regarding allegations of drug trafficking" by people involved in Contra activities or support. He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California, USA. .article-native-ad { [71] "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide," she said. Attorneys' Offices. The article discussed Webb's contacts with Ross's attorney and prosecution complaints of how Ross's defense had used Webb's series. 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."