Managing A Nightmare: The CIA Reveals How It Watched Over The Destruction of Gary Webb

[Luminous Animal]

From The Intercept

Eighteen years after it was published, “Dark Alliance,” the San Jose Mercury News’s bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism.

The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. It also sparked an aggressive backlash from the nation’s most powerful media outlets, which devoted considerable resources to discredit author Gary Webb’s reporting. Their efforts succeeded, costing Webb his career. On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head.

These days, Webb is being cast in a more sympathetic light. He’s portrayed heroically in a major motion picture set to premiere nationwide next month. And documents newly released by the CIA provide fresh context to the “Dark Alliance” saga — information that paints an ugly portrait of the mainstream media at the time.

On September 18, the agency released a trove of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agency’s in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story.” Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the document offers a unique window into the CIA’s internal reaction to what it called “a genuine public relations crisis” while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry. Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists,” the CIA’s Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-media-destruction-gary-webb/

[get the red out]

1. I remember that story coming out

I never doubted it. The CIA is evil. The Reagan Administration was evil.

[pennylane100]

2. I was living in San Jose at the time.

I always felt that Gary Webb was so badly treat by the media. He was portrayed as a conspiracy theorist who was unreliable. How sad that he is not here today to see some vindication. At least we all now know that the CIA was and still is capable of lies and cover ups.

[FiveGoodMen]

3. "having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head"

What's wrong with that sentence-fragment?

[marble falls]

4. Not that unusual with a hair trigger double action pistol.

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. kick nominated..2 not one shot to the head

Gary Webb committed suicide with 2 shots to the head

look it up..... it in the autopsy.

[bobthedrummer]

9. Yep. That is what the shadow government does-even to those in it, Ichingcarpenter.

One spectacular example is the "suicide" of Philip Merrill.

Media/Family Claim Merrill Committed Suicide: Authorities Caution that Investigation is Still Not Complete (6-21-06 Southern Maryland Online)
http://somd.com/news/headlines/2006/3980.shtml

Who Killed Philip Merrill? (6-20-06 Break for News)
http://www.breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=314

K&R

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. It started with Danny Casolaro and the octopus

He was found dead in a bathtub in room 517 of the Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, his wrists slashed 10–12 times


in 1991
Shortly before his death, Casolaro told people that he was nearly ready to reveal a wide-ranging conspiracy spanning the Inslaw case, Iran-Contra, the alleged October Surprise conspiracy, and the closure of BCC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Casolaro

http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/09/25/danny-casolaros-octopus-conspiracy-theory/

New York times;


Dr. Casolaro said he was very skeptical that his brother committed suicide for several reasons, including the facts that his brother had recently received numerous death threats and that none of his notes on the case were found with his body.

Friends of the journalist said he was looking into a connection between the Inslaw matter and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a loosely regulated international banking concern that Federal regulators say is at the center of a worldwide banking fraud. U.S. Inquiry Is Suggested

Elliot Richardson, a former United States Attorney General who now represents Inslaw in its suit against the Justice Department, said Mr. Casolaro's death should be the subject of a Federal investigation led by someone "of unquestioned integrity and independence."

Mr. Richardson said today, "The significant thing about Danny's death is that he was just seeking confirmation of what he believed he already knew." He said that if the informers Mr. Casolaro had already talked to were to be believed, it involved a conspiracy "far worse than Watergate," one that involved B.C.C.I., drugs and the persistent but unproven allegations that in 1980 some members of Ronald Reagan's Presidential campaign team worked to delay the release of American hostages in Iran to damage President Jimmy Carter's re-election chances.

"These are not separate cases if these people are to be believed," he said. As for himself, Mr. Richardson said he did not know whether to believe Mr. Casolaro's far-reaching conspiracy theory, which the reporter dubbed "The Octopus."

Danny Casolaro sought to document and expose sea of covert operatives, super-surveillance software and transnational spies. He called the monster he saw swimming in that sea "the Octopus." It consisted of a group of US intelligence veterans that had banded together to manipulate world events for the sake of consolidating and extending its power.




http://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/17/us/reporter-is-buried-amid-questions-over-his-pursuit-of-conspiracy-idea.html

The Inslaw case was a computer program and code that was said to be corrupted to allow back door spying.
Its another story in itself.

[Blue_Tires]

6. I'm of mixed feelings about the piece

1. I'm grateful that someone is paying attention to this and keeping his name alive as we near the 10th anniversary of Webb's death

2. But neither Glenn Greenwald nor his underlings are worthy to even *mention* the name of Gary Fuckin' Webb, imho...






As an aside to the OP, did any fruits ever come to bear from that mythical Booker-Paul alliance??

[Luminous Animal]

7. The REDEEM Act. It passed the Senate and the House and signed into law by Obama.

[Blue_Tires]

11. That's right...Thanks for reminding me

I'd been saying Paul was batting .000 in his 'outreach' to win over minority voters...I'll amend that to .050

[yurbud]

8. this was the beginning of the end of elite control of journalism and of our financial elite

the drug thread got lost after bigger crimes came to light like cooking up the war in Iraq, and whether they were fighting terrorism or actually flaming it to create excuses to do what they want wherever they want in the world.

We have more Gary Webb's today, but we need enough that the financial elite can't even take a piss without us finding out the sugar content.