Jeremy Renner Ready To ‘Kill The Messenger’ In Film About CIA-Smeared Journo Gary Webb

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310. 11.15.14 DAILY KOS-Snowden and Webb: A Tale of Two Films by Dan Falcone

Sat Nov 15, 2014 at 08:43 AM PST
Snowden and Webb: A Tale of Two Films

by Dan Falcone for Dan Falcone

Citizenfour is about the actions of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and his aftermath as well as the collective work of reporters, and whistleblowers: Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, Jeremy Scahill, and William Binney.

Laura Poitras produced My Country, My Country in 2006. In that film she explained life for Iraqis under American occupation. In 2010 she produced a film entitled The Oath which covered two Yemeni’s relation to Gitmo and the War on Terror. Poitras also produced The Program, which discusses the domestic surveillance enterprise in Bluffdale, Utah. As a result of this work, Poitras undergoes monitoring by the United States Government, and is harassed routinely by border patrol agents.

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The film, "Kill the Messenger," based on a true story, recounts a California reporter named Gary Webb. It discussed his real life effort to link the CIA with the 1980s crack epidemic and funding of the Contras. Webb implied that drug smuggling by Nicaraguans into American cities was intentionally overlooked by the CIA and a Reagan Administration weapons program, in order to supply right wing anti-democratic fighters in Nicaragua. Webb maintained that the CIA knew of the drug trafficking operation. Reagan needed this to happen since Congress would not help fund any Contra oriented operation with the passage of the Boland Amendment.

A possible defense for President Obama is that he inherited a dog’s dinner from the Bush Administration in the way of American Foreign Policy. A recent argument by Aaron David Miller, an elite liberal propagandist, follows this trajectory. He was left to maintain or heighten all provisions and engaged in a dangerous, perhaps unlawful, search for Osama bin Laden on sovereign Pakistani soil. President Obama pledged to take boots off the ground and vowed to only apply “smart power” to conflict zones and flash-points. He tried, and has succeeded, in making high tech protection a populist position accepted by the mainstream electorate. This is not a compliment.

President Obama helped to save us from a depression and improved health care in moving the country at least to the center. The problem is that the President also doubled down on Bush’s surveillance policies and enhanced them dramatically in forming his strange interdependent political platform. The President relentlessly tries to suppress the image at home that his foreign policy is disliked by of the world. This effort is the main reason for the surveillance and hence the whistle-blowing. I will defend President Obama from the lily white Tea-Party and GOP at large, but that shouldn’t be everyone’s limit.

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The movie essentially shows how Webb took on the world while no one else listened. The San Jose Mercury News decided to let him run his “Dark Alliance” series in 1996 and the story brought Webb notoriety. Other larger newspapers such as the LA Times, New York Times and Washington Post coalesced to marginalize the Mercury’s editors and Webb, claiming that the story lacked credibility. They argued this was justified since Webb never nailed down a completely verifiable CIA source. They thought the story was plausible and interesting, but too circumstantial in proportion to the magnitude of its accusations and assertions. There is however, now evidence, based on the work of Robert Parry, that the CIA used its connections with the major print news publications to undermine Webb's work. Webb put himself out there and the mainstream news media (as well as his own publication) left him hanging out to dry.

A small news outfit like the Mercury was trying to enhance its reputation and the overly enthusiastic journalist Webb launched his efforts forward, based on probability and reliable secondary sources of evidence. The larger newspapers were beaten to the punch and had to be publicly skeptical of the story, based on the fact that they didn’t report it first.

The CIA neglecting a drug cartel set up to distract and cripple marginalized concentrations of African-American people at home, while funding illegal and deadly activities abroad, is a troubling matter. It is disturbing and consistent with the overt nature of neo-liberal and ultra-conservative resentment of the civil rights movement. Recall the subtext of Reagan rhetoric’s in the 1970s regarding “welfare” and “food stamps.” Speculation of the CIA based on probability is understandable. Maxine Waters did important work for citizens when she raised awareness and demanded an inquiry into the matters as an elected official. It was a very serious issue.
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