Will Hollywood Give Him Last Word Against the CIA’s Media Apologists? The Resurrection of Gary Webb [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

October 07, 2014
Will Hollywood Give Him Last Word Against the CIA’s Media Apologists?

The Resurrection of Gary Webb

by JEFF COHEN


It’s been almost a decade since once-luminous investigative journalist Gary Webb extinguished his own life.

It’s been 18 years since Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in the San Jose Mercury News exploded across a new medium – the Internet – and definitively linked crack cocaine in Los Angeles and elsewhere to drug traffickers allied with the CIA’s rightwing Contra army in Nicaragua. Webb’s revelations sparked anger across the country, especially in black communities.

But the 1996 series (which was accompanied by unprecedented online documentation) also sparked one of the most ferocious media assaults ever on an individual reporter – a less-than-honest backlash against Webb by elite newspapers that had long ignored or suppressed evidence of CIA/Contra/cocaine connections.

The assault by the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times drove Webb out of the newspaper business, and ultimately to his death.

Beginning this Friday, the ghost of Gary Webb will haunt his tormenters from movie screens across the country, with the opening of the dramatic film “Kill the Messenger” – based partly on Webb’s 1998 “Dark Alliance” book.

The movie dramatizes Webb’s investigation of Contra-allied Nicaraguan cocaine traffickers Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon (whose drug activities were apparently protected for reasons of U.S. “national security”) and their connection to L.A.’s biggest crack dealer, “Freeway” Ricky Ross.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/07/the-resurrection-of-gary-webb/