. "[77], Webb's reporting in "Dark Alliance" remains controversial. Webb undeniably made mistakes of detail and emphasis in the newspaper version of "Dark Alliance". Meneses, an established smuggler and a Contra supporter as well, taught Blandn how to smuggle and provided him with cocaine. The CIA Inspector General's report, commissioned in response to the allegations in "Dark Alliance", was published in the autumn of 1998. Edmund Webb: Birthdate: estimated between 1751 and 1805 : Death: Immediate Family: Son of Edmund Webb and Nancy Webb Husband of Milly Clark Brother of Daniel Gary Webb; Nancy Lester; Polly Webb; John Webb; Elizabeth "Betsey" Webb and 1 other. Like the CIA and Justice Department reports, it also found that neither Blandn, Meneses, nor Ross were associated with the CIA. He was a writer, known for Kill the Messenger (2014), Filming in Georgia (2015) and Crack in America (2015). [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". In an unprecedented move, the then CIA director John Deutch was dispatched to address community leaders in the Watts district of LA. Actor Jeremy Renner portrays Webb.[83]. [34], The Los Angeles Times devoted the most space to the story, publishing a three-part series called "The Cocaine Trail." The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress. He was taken to hospital by air ambulance. Many writers discussing the series point to errors in it. Garry Webb wrote the 1996 "Dark Alliance" series for the San Jose Mercury News. Gary Webb was an investigative reporter, focusing on government and private sector corruption and winning more than 30 journalism awards. 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. "[64] Webb's longest response to the controversy was in "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On," a chapter he contributed to an anthology of press criticism: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. Should these editors subsequently deem the story to have been fatally flawed, they take the consequences. "Looking back," she says, "I think Gary had been obsessed with suicide for some time. Beth Ann Webb May 10, 1962 - May 22, 2019. The Media Turns On Gary Webb. "But Gary thought that if something was true, it should be told. 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. But, Ceppos wrote, the series "did not meet our standards" in four areas. [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. With hindsight, Bell says, "the signs were there. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". Video courtesy of documentary FREEWAY: CRACK IN THE SYSTEM premiering on Al Jazeera America in early 2015. 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. Although Blandn's cartel was undoubtedly one of the first to bring crack to LA, Webb was almost certainly suffering a rush of blood when he described the group as "the first pipeline" into the city. He wrote well. When he told me, I said it sounded crazy. So, how much is Gary Webb worth at the age of 49 years old? Jeff Leen, assistant managing editor for investigative reporting at The Washington Post, wrote in a 2014 opinion page article that "the report found no CIA relationship with the drug ring Webb had written about." 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 Crack Explosion." [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. Relationships with other women ended badly. [31] In their front-page article, reporters Roberto Suro and Walter Pincus wrote that "available information" did not support the series's claims and that "the rise of crack" was "a broad-based phenomenon" driven in numerous places by diverse players. 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. And it ruined that reporter's career. If the antagonism of competing publications was predictable, what happened to Webb within his own newspaper was not. When Webb's body was discovered last December, Bell says, this last item had been dumped in the trash. [69], Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. 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. Webb's research took a year, in the course of which he received death threats. [5], After high school, Webb attended an Indianapolis community college on a scholarship until his family moved to Cincinnati. The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua. [21] This artwork proved controversial, and The Mercury News later removed it. When Gary originally broke this mind blowing story, the arrogant authority's assumed they could simply ignore him and hope he'd go away. So he blew her off. 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. [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. Irene's character a reminder of an old controversy about Gary Webb. 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. California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein also took note and wrote to CIA director John Deutch and Attorney General Janet Reno, asking for investigations into the articles' allegations. "Gary Webb was left to fend for himself. The first shot went through his face, and exited at his left cheek. Gary Webb, Into the Buzzsaw, CH 13, Prometheus Books. And when he got something in his head, he was determined to do it. "[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." Two years later, he was promoted to Vice President of Knight Ridder, the Mercury News's parent company; he retired from this position last month. The passing of Gary ends more than 50 years with his best friend and loving wife, Marilyn J. [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." Webb strongly disagreed with Ceppos's column and, in interviews, was harshly critical of the paper's handling of the story. He also defended the series in interviews with all three papers. According to Schou, the investigation "confirmed key chunks of Webb's allegations." "Which was that, if he wanted a future within the political establishment of the United States, then he should concentrate on other aspects of life.". GARY WEBB OBITUARY. We were dismissed as a bunch of nuts." So, this is not something you really make a career out of, nor would you want to. ", As Webb would tell a friend, after he had been ostracised: "You have to look out, when the big dog gets off the porch.". 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. "Ross," his report went on, dealt "on a scale never before conceived," with "a staggering turnover" of "50 to 100 kilos of cocaine a day". The story was picked up by black talk-radio stations. Webb resigned from The Mercury News in December 1997. 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. After examining the investigations and prosecutions of the main figures in the series, Blandn, Meneses and Ross, it concluded that "Although the investigations suffered from various problems of communication and coordination, their successes and failures were determined by the normal dynamics that affect the success of scores of investigations of high-level drug traffickers These factors, rather than anything as spectacular as a systematic effort by the CIA or any other intelligence agency to protect the drug trafficking activities of Contra supporters, determined what occurred in the cases we examined. But Webb had one huge blind side: He was fundamentally a man of passion, not of fairness. "[38], Surprised by The Washington Post article, The Mercury News's executive editor Jerome Ceppos wrote to the Post defending the series. According to Walt Bogdanich, a former colleague on the Plain Dealer who has won two Pulitzers and now works for The New York Times, Webb was the best retriever of information from public records he has ever seen. 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. When removal men arrived, on the morning of 10 December 2004, they found a sign on his front door, which read: ''Please do not enter. March 13, 1954 December 19, 2021 Gary Lynn Webb, 67, entered the kingdom of his heavenly father in the early morning of December 19, 2021. He was so depressed. We had been here before." Ross was a major drug dealer in Los Angeles. To show this, the series focused on three men: Ricky Ross, Oscar Danilo Blandn, and Norwin Meneses. "Gary didn't take her seriously," says Susan Bell, "because he was always getting calls alleging weird stuff about the CIA. "It says the CIA helped introduce poison into our children. Begun 1996, the divorce and battle over cash of Grammy winner Jimmy Webb age 75, father of six, wed 22 years to Patsy, 64, daughter of late actor Barry Sullivan is getting longer. 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. He is survived by his loving wife, Wendie, of Elgin; grandmother, Eileen Carrier of Elgin;. He placed his keys and ID cards on the kitchen table, together with a cremation certificate he had purchased for himself. [29] Waters urged the CIA, the Department of Justice, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate. "[78], While finding this part of the series unsupported, Schou said that some of the series's claims on CIA involvement are supported, writing that "The CIA conducted an internal investigation that acknowledged in March 1998 that the agency had covered up Contra drug trafficking for more than a decade." Webb - whose article had never alleged that the CIA deliberately targeted any ethnic group - became a national celebrity. 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. "He started having motorcycle crashes," Bell says. "Back then. [67], Webb later moved to the State Assembly's Office of Majority Services. When he was engaged, he worked hard. After a local paper reported that he had died from multiple gunshots, the coroner's office received so many calls asking about Webb's death that Sacramento County Coroner Robert Lyons . 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". But the report was correct. 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). 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.. 1) It presented only one interpretation of conflicting evidence and in one case "did not include information that contradicted a central assertion of the series." 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. This did not happen in Webb's case. The Real Housewives of Atlanta The Bachelor Sister Wives 90 Day Fiance Wife Swap The Amazing Race Australia Married at First Sight The Real Housewives of Dallas My 600-lb Life Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. It noted that Blandn and Meneses claimed to have donated money to Contra sympathizers in Los Angeles, but found no information to confirm that it was true or that the agency had heard of it. [20] The website artwork showed the silhouette of a man smoking a crack pipe superimposed over the CIA seal. "Look at what happened to Gary Webb. ", Many of these are in the series archive at. According to Corn, Webb "was wrong on some important details, but he was, in a way, closer to the truth than many of his establishment media critics who neglected the story of the real CIA-contra-cocaine connection." Webb's continuing reporting also triggered a fourth investigation. "For the better part of a decade," it began, "a San Francisco drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funnelled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the US Central Intelligence Agency.". ", In contrast, the series received support from Steve Weinberg, a former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors. The claim that the drug ring of Meneses-Blandn-Ross sparked the "crack explosion" has been perhaps the most criticized part of the series. In and out of work, he had a reputation for taking risks. Unable to get work from any major US newspaper, he spent the four months before his death writing for * a free-sheet covering the Sacramento area. 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. By a fortunate coincidence of timing, the report was released on a day when the Monica Lewinsky scandal dominated every front page in the country. [39] The Post refused to print his letter. The series revolves around the first crack epidemic and its impact on the culture of the city. But his central thesis - that the CIA, having participated in narcotics trafficking in central America, had, at best, turned a blind eye to the activities of drug dealers in LA - has never been in question. [39] Carey's critique appeared in mid-October and went through several of the Post's criticisms of the series, including the importance of Blandn's drug ring in spreading crack, questions about Blandn's testimony in court, and how specific series allegations about CIA involvement had been, giving Webb's responses. "He walked in one day," Bell recalls, "and said, 'You are not going to believe what I just found out.' As a result, some major US newspapers ignored its findings completely, while others relegated a brief summary to their inside pages. After divorcing his wife, being unable to obtain work from newspapers and facing increasing debts, Gary was forced to sell his home. Webb's corpse was found in the bedroom, with two gunshot wounds to the head. ", "After Gary died," she says, "a reporter from the LA Times came here. [54] Editors at the paper, on the other hand, felt that Webb had failed to tell them about information that contradicted the series's claims and that he "responded to concerns not with reasoned argument, but with accusations of us selling him out. [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. Webb's ex-wife, Stokes, now remarried and still living in Sacramento, had heard it all before, too. This is why Webb's "Dark Alliance" series is an essential source, a primary text that every journalism student should study. 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. Both Gary's ex-wife Susan and his brother Kurt viewed the body and they confirmed the location of the wounds to me when I met them. He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. [7] After transferring to Northern Kentucky, he entered its journalism program and wrote for the school paper, The Northerner. Writing on the Los Angeles Times opinion page, Schou said, "Webb asserted, improbably, that the Blandn-Meneses-Ross drug ring opened 'the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles,' helping to 'spark a crack explosion in urban America.' He had a tight circle that included almost no one from the Mercury News, says his former wife, Susan Bell, and a sensitive side he rarely showed outside the bounds of his close friends and family. When Attorney General Janet Reno determined that a delay was no longer necessary, the report was released unaltered. ". 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. Uncharacteristically, Persia added her vocals to her father's 2017 song, 'My Name is Ruin'. Last December Webb committed suicide. The drugs went to South Central LA. "He was sleeping more, he hated to get up in the morning, he started having a lot of motorcycle. In 2015 Gary Webb, from Gatehouse of Fleet in Dumfries and Galloway . But you say - dear God. He was no villain: He genuinely believed his thesis about the CIA. He crashed and shredded his clothes, face and body on a barbed-wire fence." The coroner's staff concluded that the second shot hit an artery.[70]. The first detailed article on the series's claims appeared in The Washington Post in early October. After divorcing his wife, being unable to obtain work from newspapers and facing increasing debts, Gary was forced to sell his home. Webb came late to the. While police were preparing the case against her boyfriend, Baca alleged, officers had disclosed documents which revealed that one of her lover's associates had been working for the Contras. He made that very clear. Gary Webb sums up the story in his last major interview just days before his death. [81], Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at George Washington University's National Security Archives, also does not agree that the report vindicated the series. "It was terrible," said Price. Every year since investigative journalist Gary Webb took his own life in 2004, I have marked the anniversary of that sad event by recalling the debt that American history owes to Webb for his. He cites the case of Alfred McCoy, now Professor of South East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin. Gary Webb is dead. "[80], Not all writers agree that the Inspector-General's report supported the series's claims. "Do you think that a part of him did this out of revenge?" 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. After police brought the three passengers back to the station, the news had come: John Grachek died at the hospital. They were outraged by the series's charges.[27]. "As a PhD student, McCoy went to Vietnam and built an absolutely damning case about the CIA's involvement with trafficking heroin. I ask Bell. Can these things possibly be? Do something else with your life," the voice urges. 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 . He concluded, "How did these shortcomings occur? GARY WEBB: His wife's office was burglarized. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. He was a former member of Bethlehem . In a long review of the series' claims in The Baltimore Sun, Weinberg said "I think the critics have been far too harsh. A 1985 series, "Doctoring the Truth," uncovered problems in the State Medical Board[12] and led to an Ohio House investigation which resulted in major revisions to the state Medical Practice Act. After Ceppos' column, The Mercury News spent the next several months conducting an internal review of the story. Kill the Messenger, a movie starring Jeremy Renner, just opened, about the life and death of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb, who committed suicide in 2004. Webb's then-wife Sue remembers coming home from the shops and finding her. (Strawser) Webb. His corpse was discovered on the seventh anniversary of his resignation from the Mercury News. 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.". 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 response from the American press took two months to arrive. His wife is Sue Webb (m. 1979-2000) Gary Webb Net Worth His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. 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? gary webb obituary WEBB, Gary W. Age 67, passed away Monday, March 27, 2017 in the home he built in Madison Township. And this is not a happy story - or," she adds, "a little one.". For two years, Blum and Kerry supervised the interrogation of dozens of witnesses who described CIA-related drug deals in central America. Contact Scott Herhold . [45], The Post's response came from the paper's ombudsman, Geneva Overholser. "They had him writing obituaries," she said. The Sad Saga of Gary Webb . By the late spring of 1996, Webb was ready to publish. "Do not quote me. Instead, he found work in 1978 as a reporter at the Kentucky Post, a local paper affiliated with the larger Cincinnati Post. [68], In August 2004, Webb joined the Sacramento News & Review, an alternative weekly newspaper, where he continued doing investigative writing. "[2], Ceppos noted that Webb did not agree with these conclusions. 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. 3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. Gary divorced from his wife in 2000, though the two remained close during his final years. He was one of six reporters at the San Jose Mercury News to win a 1990 Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting for a series of stories on the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct during northern California's 1989 earthquake. But the biggest loss he had was the writing. * The agency's response was to try to prevent him from getting his doctorate, then block his advancement in the academic world. 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. 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. WEBB, Gary T. - Age 55, of Goodrich, died Thursday, May 15, 2003 at his residence. "They use the giant corporate press rather than saying anything directly. Celebrity. What he found, he wrote later, "nearly knocked me off my chair". Do not quote me on anything.". Webb established incontrovertible links * between Ricky Ross and Blandn who, two years later, would betray Ross to the authorities. Webb, a Pullitzer prize winning journalist, exposed CIA drug trafficking operations in a series of books and reports for the San Jose Mercury News. The men were identified as 29-year-old Gary Webb and 24-year-old Jacob Gipson. Here's the section from Wikipedia: Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. Call 911 for assistance. When it did, beginning with The Washington Post, it shocked Webb's critics as much as his many admirers. "He told me, not long before he died, that he didn't want to get up in the mornings," she says. When his medical insurance expired, he stopped taking his antidepressants. 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. "[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. It also sparked an . [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. [15], In 1988, Webb was recruited by the San Jose Mercury News, which was looking for an investigative reporter. He received his medical degree from American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine and has been in practice for more than 20 . Ceppos failed to reply to one phone message and six emails. In 1996, the award-winning journalist Gary Webb uncovered CIA links to Los Angeles drug dealers. Work with a bunch of drug dealers to run guns? And loving wife, Marilyn J Kerry a `` randy conspiracy buff '' and shredded his clothes face. 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