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Army. Its pointed to as one of the clearer cases of CIA intervention as revenge for Webb revealing damaging secrets about the agencies involvement in drug smuggling. The follow-up reporting in the Los Angeles Times and other papers has been criticised for focusing on problems in the series rather than re-examining the earlier CIA-Contra claims. "It sounds crazy," says Bell, "but having his motorbike stolen was the last straw. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? [65], Within "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On" essay Webb stated he believed there was an active "collusion between the press and the powerful" to report freely on inconsequential matters, "but when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff We begin to see the limits of our freedoms". Cleveland Plain Dealer film critic Clint OConnor had a solid featurethe other day about Kill the Messenger, the journalism true-tale movie opening Friday with Jeremy Renner starring as the late Gary Webb. "He had six in a short period of time." One article, dealing mostly with the response of the Los Angeles Black community to the stories, described the series's evidence as "thin". He had also lost his house the week before his suicide. In and out of work, he had a reputation for taking risks. [49], The paper also gave Webb permission to visit Central America again to get more evidence supporting the story. 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. Baca claimed that a drug dealer with close links to the CIA had framed her boyfriend, who was also in the cocaine business. Some editors regarded him as stubborn to the point of insolence. [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." "Look at what happened to Gary Webb. Jack Blum, who was the lead investigator for Senator John Kerry's Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations, which produced a highly damning 1989 report on drug-smuggling in the guise of national security, is one of several commentators to have questioned aspects of Webb's original reporting. Gary Webb (304) 778-2546: Jamie Webb (304) 778-2546: Status: Homeowner. Ceppos initially defended Webb, and reportedly showed up at an in-house party wearing a military helmet. The first detailed article on the series's claims appeared in The Washington Post in early October. LOS ANGELES, Dec. 12 - Gary Webb, a reporter who won national attention with a series of articles, later discredited, linking the Central Intelligence Agency to the spread of crack . A passing motorist - a heavily tattooed young man - gave him a lift home, then returned and stole the motorcycle, which police recovered from him three days after Webb's death. Webb was born in Corona, California. The character reporter Irene Abe is said by fans of the show to be a stand in character for the real life Gary Webb. Few reporters I've known could match his nose for an investigative story. [3], Webb was born in Corona, California. [60], It found nothing to support the claim that "the drug trafficking activities of Blandn and Meneses were motivated by any commitment to support the Contra cause or Contra activities undertaken by CIA." "Gary was 18 and I was 16 when we first met and started dating in Indianapolis," said Sue Stokes. line-height:1.5; A flood of inquiries about Gary Webb's shooting death prompts statement. 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 GARY WEBB: His wife's office was burglarized. But Webb had one huge blind side: He was fundamentally a man of passion, not of fairness. [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. In an unprecedented move, the then CIA director John Deutch was dispatched to address community leaders in the Watts district of LA. [52] Webb was allowed to keep working on the story and made one more trip to Nicaragua in March. They were outraged by the series's charges.[27]. The room is decorated with his trophies: a Pulitzer prize hangs next to his HL Mencken award; also on the wall is a framed advertisement for The Kentucky Post. "You sound very scared," Moreira remarks. I felt weak and distressed; the whole thing was so fresh. By 1997, Bell tells me, Webb - whose 30-year career had earned him more awards than there is room for in her study - had been reassigned to the Mercury News's office in Cupertino. 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. Watkins and Debbie (John) Foutch; grandchildren, Makenzie and Ashlynn Fogg. [66] When Ross discovered the market for crack in Los Angeles, he began buying cocaine from Blandn. Sue remarried two years ago. He also stated "the series presented dangerous ideas" by suggesting "crimes of state had been committed" (i.e. In 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of stories exposing the connection between the CIA and the crack cocaine that was being sold in So. Blandn and Meneses' high-volume supply of low-priced high-purity cocaine "allowed Ross to sew up the Los Angeles market and move on. [5], After high school, Webb attended an Indianapolis community college on a scholarship until his family moved to Cincinnati. Family and friends will gather to celebrate his life of 59 years at 10 a.m. on Thursday, March 7, 2019, at Lamesa Continue Reading Leave a Message, Share a Memory [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. It was accurate. When Webb pressed the Mercury News to allow him to investigate the LA connection further, his own newspaper issued a retraction which earned its editor, Jerry Ceppos, wide praise from rival publications, but effectively disowned Webb, who then suffered the kind of corporate lynching that reporters are usually expected to dispense rather than endure. [39] The Post refused to print his letter. Webb's reports prompted three official investigations, including one by the CIA itself which - astonishingly for an organisation rarely praised for its transparency - confirmed the substance of his findings (published at length in Webb's 1998 book, also entitled Dark Alliance). Gary Webb's painstaking investigation and the incindiary conclusions he drew from it were based mostly on public records, as detailed in the "notes on sources" section in "Dark Alliance", including: undercover audio tapes, declassified government documents from the CIA, DEA, FBI, L.A. Sheriff's Department, files from the Iran-Contra . Attorneys' Offices. 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. And "we really didn't do anything to advance his work or illuminate much to the story, and it was a really kind of tawdry exercise. George Webb and Paul Cottrell have begun a weekly series on CoronaVirus now, Mondays at 5PM, EST on paul Cottrell's Rumble Channel. .article-native-ad { Gary E. Webb, a dedicated husband, dad, pappy, coach, mentor, teacher, supporter, hero, and best friend, was called home by the Lord while surrounded by family. 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". Cooper Webb Wife Name Revealed. We're well aware that they/it (the cia) did do it. The film broadened the debate which led to the decriminalisation of . It would have been our 25th wedding anniversary," Bell recalls. [56] He resigned from the paper in November 1997. A January 1997 article in American Journalism Review noted that a 1994 series Webb wrote had also been the subject of a Mercury News internal review that criticized Webb's reporting. 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 famously died of two gun shot wounds to the head and his death that was ruled a suicide, is the common sense notion that this was clearly assassination true? The new movie Kill the Messenger, based in part on a 2006 book by a former student of mine, eulogizes Webb . Gary-Webb TL, Walker EA, Realmuto L, Kamler A, Lukin J, Tyson W, Carrasquillo O, Weiss L. Translation of the National Diabetes Prevention Program to Engage Men in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods in New York City: A Description of Power Up for Health. [46] Overholser was harshly critical of the series, "reported by a seemingly hotheaded fellow willing to have people leap to conclusions his reporting couldn't back up." American racer Cooper Webb is married to his wife named Mariah Williams Webb. Eli Tomac on track during Media Day at Daytona International Speedway, Friday, March 3, 2023. He is survived by his loving wife, Wendie, of Elgin; grandmother, Eileen Carrier of Elgin;. [65], After leaving The Mercury News, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature. Bell and her children helped Webb prepare 50 packages containing cuttings and his CV which they sent out to newspapers all over the US. margin: 0 45px; It found that "the allegations contained in the original Mercury News articles were exaggerations of the actual facts." With Baca's encouragement, he started to investigate a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Oscar Danilo Blandn. Ross, currently serving life, was already infamous; he had been profiled in the LA Times in December 1994, by writer Jesse Katz, at a time when Ross was at liberty and in penitent mood. [51] After discussions with Webb, the column was published on May 11, 1997.[53]. "Like enjoy it.". Webb's corpse was found in the bedroom, with two gunshot wounds to the head. "If there was an eye to the storm," Katz wrote, "if there was a mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw most responsible for flooding LA's streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick. By the late spring of 1996, Webb was ready to publish. He died by suicide on December 10, 2004. He was taken to hospital by air ambulance. Webb worked for several newspapers including The Kentucky Post and Cleveland Plain Dealer. On Dec. 9, 2004, the 49-year-old Gary Stephen Webb, Pulitzer prize-winning US investigative journalist, typed out suicide notes to his ex-wife and his three children; he laid out a certificate for his cremation; he taped a note on the door telling movers - who were coming the next morning to move him out of his rental house near Sacramento - to [55] Webb eventually chose Cupertino, but was unhappy with the routine stories he was reporting there and the long commute. [44], Ceppos' column drew editorial responses from both The New York Times and The Washington Post. Age 43 years. * The agency's response was to try to prevent him from getting his doctorate, then block his advancement in the academic world. Gary's family found that old, storied, ("priceless to us," as his ex-wife, Susan Bell, described it to me) CDROM among his possessions. Tomac is used to good feelings when it comes to Daytona. By William Kennedy / Jan. 22, 2023 12:00 pm EST. "It was like someone had made a terrible noise, or a terrible smell, in a small room," recalls Jonathan Winer, Kerry's chief senate staff investigator . Webb's then-wife Sue remembers coming home from the shops and finding her. "[55] In June 1997, The Mercury News told Webb it was transferring him from the paper's Sacramento bureau and offered him a choice between working at the main offices in San Jose under closer editorial supervision, or spot reporting in Cupertino; both locations were long commutes from his home in Sacramento. "[75], Jonathan Krim, The Mercury News editor who recruited Webb from The Plain Dealer and who supervised The Mercury News internal review of "Dark Alliance," told AJR editor Paterno that Webb "had all the qualities you'd want in a reporter: curious, dogged, a very high sense of wanting to expose wrongdoing and to hold private and public officials accountable." '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. Gary Stephen Webb(August 31, 1955 - December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. The third article discussed the social effects of the crack trade, noting that it had a disparate effect on African-Americans. In February last year he was laid off by the State Legislature. Webb had become, as somebody put it, "radioactive". [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. Investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of stories in 1996 for the San Jose Mercury News that documented the US-government-backed Contra insurgents' drug pipeline into Los Angeles. [60], The House Intelligence Committee issued its report in February 2000. "[79], Writing after Webb's death in 2005, The Nation magazine's former Washington Editor David Corn said that Webb "was on to something but botched part of how he handled it." 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. [21] This artwork proved controversial, and The Mercury News later removed it. "They use the giant corporate press rather than saying anything directly. Webb - whose article had never alleged that the CIA deliberately targeted any ethnic group - became a national celebrity. The collection, The Killing Game: Selected Stories from the Author of Dark Alliance, was edited by Webb's son, Eric. reports. 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. In 1996, the award-winning journalist Gary Webb uncovered CIA links to Los Angeles drug dealers. Family (1) Work with a bunch of drug dealers to run guns? When Webb's body was discovered last December, Bell says, this last item had been dumped in the trash. 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 . 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 came home and put his belongings in order, dropping his Kentucky Post poster in the bin. Gary was born Sept. 4, 1947, to Percy and Pauline (Haas) Webb. He also defended the series in interviews with all three papers. 2) The series's estimate of the money involved was presented as fact instead of as an estimate. [72] A New York Times profile of Webb in June 1997 noted that two of his series written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer had resulted in lawsuits that the paper had settled. The Department of Justice Inspector-General's report was released on July 23, 1998. It also examined "how CIA handled and responded to information regarding allegations of drug trafficking" by people involved in Contra activities or support. Poor Gary Webb. [43] He did this in a column that appeared on November 3, defending the series, but also committing the paper to a review of major criticisms. Dec. 13, 2004. "[82], Kill the Messenger (2014) is based on Webb's book Dark Alliance and Nick Schou's biography of Webb. The article suggested this was in retribution for Ross' testimony in the corruption case. I have also followed up on key topics raised by Paul Cottrell will leading industry experts like Dr. Peter McCollough on the Tommy Carrigan Show, weekly in 2021 and 2022. 4) The series "created impressions that were open to misinterpretation" through "imprecise language and graphics. By Sam Stanton Bee Staff Writer Published 2:15 am PST Wednesday, December 15, 2004. . He was a writer, known for Kill the Messenger (2014), Filming in Georgia (2015) and Crack in America (2015). "I had to warn Gary that what he was looking at was probably true, but that he would run very big risks," Parry recalls. Do something else with your life," the voice urges. When he told me, I said it sounded crazy. 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. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". He was born June 18, 1943, in Appleton, son of the late Wilford and Helen (Hauskey) Webb. The consensus, insofar as one exists, is that he probably overstated both the amount of drug money made by Ross and Blandn, and the percentage of those profits diverted to the Contras. But ultimately, the responsibility was, and is, mine.". ", The significant legacy of the Webb case, "the reason this whole affair remains so significant today," Blum says, "is this: the knowledge that, if one individual dares raise such serious issues, they risk confronting a tremendous apparatus that is prepared to whack them hard, and there is very little they can expect by way of support. Occupation: Machine Operators, Assemblers, and Inspectors Occupations. GARY WEBB OBITUARY Gary Frank Webb Sept. 27, 1944 - Oct. 23, 2022 Gary passed away peacefully of complications following cardiovascular surgery. "That's right," says Blum. Why bring up old white people atrocities against black people now? 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. If the antagonism of competing publications was predictable, what happened to Webb within his own newspaper was not. Part of what makes OConnors article so compelling are the candid thoughts of Webbs former wife Sue Stokes. 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. "They had him writing obituaries," she said. Webb's continuing reporting also triggered a fourth investigation. 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. Webb, Gary Gary T. Webb, age 67, of Hamilton, Michigan, passed away peacefully surrounded by his loving family Thursday, November 11, 2021. [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. This is why Webb's "Dark Alliance" series is an essential source, a primary text that every journalism student should study. Webb's ex-wife, Sue Bell, discounted theories Tuesday that her husband had been murdered, saying the 49-year-old Webb had been distraught for some time over his inability to get . Webb made his early reputation as a reporter with the Plain Dealer before going on to fame and turmoil at the San Jose Mercury News. [28] Maxine Waters, the representative for California's 35th district, which includes South-Central Los Angeles, was also outraged by the articles and became one of Webb's strongest supporters. And it was ignored by the US media, for all of those reasons. "Gary was given the choice of relocating either to San Jose," says Bell, "or to Cupertino". 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. I believe that we fell short at every step of our process: in the writing, editing and production of our work. A time of fellowship and remembrance is scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6, 2019, at Lake Ridge Chapel and Memorial Designers. The CIA Inspector General's report, commissioned in response to the allegations in "Dark Alliance", was published in the autumn of 1998. 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. 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 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. One instalment of the LA Times's 18,000-word rebuttal of Webb's piece, published in October 1996, sought to minimise the importance of his key witness, Ricky Ross. Born in Corona, California, son of a conservatively minded Marine, he met Bell, whose father was a university lecturer, at high school in Indianapolis. He recently told the American Journalism Review (whose scrupulously researched piece, by Susan Paterno, is the only serious documentation of the Webb case I could find anywhere in the orthodox American media) that Webb's critics in rival newspapers, "quoted these CIA guys - who had a tremendous amount to hide - as though they were telling the truth. Talking about his wife, Mariah Webb is a nurse who also educates about essential products . A revised version was published in 1999 that incorporated Webb's response to the CIA and Justice Department reports. As a result, some major US newspapers ignored its findings completely, while others relegated a brief summary to their inside pages. 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. 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. [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. [9], Webb's first major investigative work appeared in 1980, when the Cincinnati Post published "The Coal Connection," a seventeen-part series by Webb and Post reporter Thomas Scheffey. He was the much-loved father of Lindsay (Stephen . "He started having motorcycle crashes," Bell says. "Allow Gary Webb to be there [in the CIA investigation]," a heckler shouts. I first heard about Webb eight years ago, I tell Bell, from the Paris-based journalist Paul Moreira. 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. And it ruined that reporter's career. He told me: 'If I can't do what I want to do, what's the point?' When he was engaged, he worked hard. [60], It found no information to support the claim that the agency interfered with law enforcement actions against Ross, Blandn or Meneses. His corpse was discovered on the seventh anniversary of his resignation from the Mercury News. It's . The second article described Blandn's background and how he began smuggling cocaine to support the Contras. Ceppos failed to reply to one phone message and six emails. [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. The series follows the stories of several characters whose lives are fated to intersect including CIA operative Teddy McDonald who helps to secure guns for the Contras. 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.. What was new about Webb's reports, published under the title "Dark Alliance" in the Californian paper the San Jose Mercury News, was that for the first time it brought the story back home. During and immediately after the controversy over "Dark Alliance," Webb's earlier writing was examined closely. Gary Webb was born on August 31, 1955 in Corona, California, USA. "The second bullet," adds Bell, who has worked for more than 20 years in the area of respiratory therapy, "struck his carotid artery. [40] Ceppos also asked reporter Pete Carey to write a critique of the series for publication in The Mercury News, and had the controversial website artwork changed. Gary was preceded in death by his mother and father, Donna and James Webb of Carpentersville. "Back then. When Attorney General Janet Reno determined that a delay was no longer necessary, the report was released unaltered. } [68], In August 2004, Webb joined the Sacramento News & Review, an alternative weekly newspaper, where he continued doing investigative writing. The legendary civil-rights activist Dick Gregory was arrested while he protested outside the CIA's headquarters; Gregory began referring to the organisation as "Crack in America". 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. }. It was written by Jesse Katz, the same reporter who, less than two years earlier, had described Ross's conglomerate as "the Wal-Mart of crack dealing". [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. "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 . Snowfall is an American crime drama television series set in Los Angeles in 1983. 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. The story they printed was just awful. Gary is survived by his wife of 48 years, Beverly Webb; children Margaret . .article-native-ad svg { He was born at Emmanuel Hospital in. He made that very clear. [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. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. Gary Webb was born in Corona, California, in 1955. Webb's research took a year, in the course of which he received death threats. As it turned out," she adds, "that was not their intent.". When Gary originally broke this mind blowing story, the arrogant authority's assumed they could simply ignore him and hope he'd go away. Gary's ex-wife Susan Bell states: "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide." An interesting OPINION, but she supplies no convincing evidence to illustrate what she means by this. Emma Lee Webb, age 75, of Crossett, AR passed away Monday February 27, 2023, in her home surrounded by her family. For two years, Blum and Kerry supervised the interrogation of dozens of witnesses who described CIA-related drug deals in central America. After the series's publication, the Northern California branch of the national Society of Professional Journalists voted Webb "Journalist of the Year" for 1996. Webb's pieces were not dealing with nameless peasants slaughtered in some distant republic, but demonstrated a clear link between the CIA and the suppliers of the gangs delivering crack to the ghetto of Watts, in South Central Los Angeles. 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 .

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