In 1997 Ceppos was awarded the US Society of Professional Journalists' National Ethics Award. For two years, Blum and Kerry supervised the interrogation of dozens of witnesses who described CIA-related drug deals in central America. color:rgb(46,179,178); So, this is not something you really make a career out of, nor would you want to. "The first story he had to file was about a police horse which had died of constipation.". [33] Golden also referred to the controversy over Webb's contacts with Ross's lawyer. "I had to warn Gary that what he was looking at was probably true, but that he would run very big risks," Parry recalls. Webb - whose article had never alleged that the CIA deliberately targeted any ethnic group - became a national celebrity. So, how much is Gary Webb worth at the age of 49 years old? 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. [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. . 4) The series "created impressions that were open to misinterpretation" through "imprecise language and graphics. [7] After transferring to Northern Kentucky, he entered its journalism program and wrote for the school paper, The Northerner. Gary Stephen Webb was a Pulitzer prize winning American investigative reporter who exposed cocaine trafficking by the CIA.He wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, which initially backed his articles but later dropped him.Webb was put under pressure most certainly from the CIA under John Deutch for his reporting. Ross was a major drug dealer in Los Angeles. [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. Then, on 10 December, he resigned. Regarding issues raised in the series's shorter sidebar stories, it found that some in the government were "not eager" to have DEA agent Celerino Castillo "openly probe" activities at Ilopango Airport in El Salvador, where covert operations in support of the Contras were undertaken, and that the CIA had indeed intervened in a case involving smuggler Julio Zavala. He was born Sept.10, 1957 in Willcox, Ariz. to RG Webb and Winnie Mae Shelton. Webb resigned from The Mercury News in December 1997. Save 50% with early-bird passes. 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. 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's income source is mostly from being a successful . Relationships with other women ended badly. By the end of September, three federal investigations had been announced: an investigation into the CIA allegations conducted by CIA Inspector-General Frederick Hitz, an investigation into the law enforcement allegations by Justice Department Inspector-General Michael Bromwich, and a second investigation into the CIA by the House Intelligence Committee. 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. [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. By the time Webb began researching Dark Alliance, Bell was 38 and they had three children. 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. [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. When she got indignant," she adds, "he went to meet her.". She was a homemaker and a member of Hunters Chapel Baptist Church. [44], Ceppos' column drew editorial responses from both The New York Times and The Washington Post. . 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. Webb, whose plans to become a journalist had begun when he was 13, but never included equine death notices, resigned from the Mercury News a few months later. ", 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. Today, Narco News, with support from The Fund for Authentic Journalism, is pleased to announce that the Dark Alliance website has a new, and this time permanent, home at Narco News. We were dismissed as a bunch of nuts." In the final few months of his life, Bell says, Webb became increasingly withdrawn. 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. While working at the legislature, Webb continued to do freelance investigative reporting, sometimes based on his investigative work. His erstwhile editors on the Mercury News, meanwhile, saw their careers thrive. "[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. [11], In 1983, Webb moved to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he continued doing investigative work. Instead, he found work in 1978 as a reporter at the Kentucky Post, a local paper affiliated with the larger Cincinnati Post. [35] The second article, by McManus, was the longest of the series and dealt with the role of the Contras in the drug trade and CIA knowledge of drug activities by the Contras. It also stated that the Contras may have acted with the knowledge and protection of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The CIA Inspector-General's report was issued in two volumes. 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. The couple got married recently in November of 2020 after dating for some time. 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. 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. Webb disagreed with this conclusion.[1][2]. 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. line-height:1.5; They were outraged by the series's charges.[27]. Despite some hyped phrasing, "Dark Alliance" appears to be praiseworthy investigative reporting."[47]. } It was an amazing scoop - but one that would ruin his career and drive him to suicide. After Webb's death, a collection of his stories from before and after the "Dark Alliance" series was published. "[62] It also found no evidence to support Webb's suggestion that several other drug smugglers mentioned in the series were associated with the CIA, or that anyone associated with the CIA or other intelligence agencies was involved in supplying or selling drugs in Los Angeles.[62]. The link between drug-running and the Reagan regime's support for the right-wing terrorist group throughout the 1980s had been public knowledge for over a decade. 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. Webb, according to Bell, was a man who, more than most, found that his mood and self-esteem fluctuated in accordance with his professional fortunes. I mean - please.". [17] The Mercury News's coverage of the earthquake won its staff the Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting in 1990. 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. 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. And yet, for all his Easy Rider tendencies, he was also a dedicated family man with an extraordinary appetite for researching minutiae. "Gary was given the choice of relocating either to San Jose," says Bell, "or to Cupertino". On the last day Webb was alive, his motorbike broke down while he was moving to his mother's house. [60], It found no information to support the claim that the agency interfered with law enforcement actions against Ross, Blandn or Meneses. According to the report, the Inspector-General's office (OIG) examined all information the agency had "relating to CIA knowledge of drug trafficking allegations in regard to any person directly or indirectly involved in Contra activities." [60], The House Intelligence Committee issued its report in February 2000. [21] This artwork proved controversial, and The Mercury News later removed it. Webb joined the Mercury News in 1988, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. [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. 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.. [63]Dark Alliance was a 1998 Pen/Newman's Own First Amendment Award Finalist, 1998 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, 1999 Bay Area Book Reviewers Award Finalist, and 1999 Firecracker Alternative Booksellers Award Winner in the Politics category. The reports of the three federal investigations into the claims of "Dark Alliance" were not released until over a year after the series's publication. 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. He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. "Looking back," she says, "I think Gary had been obsessed with suicide for some time. ", As Webb would tell a friend, after he had been ostracised: "You have to look out, when the big dog gets off the porch.". 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. Ceppos and Garcia have long since lost any taste for public discussion of "Dark Alliance". [73], On the other hand, many of the writers and editors who worked with him have had high praise for him. 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 Stephen Webb(August 31, 1955 - December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. That was just the way he was.". The series provoked outrage, particularly in the Los Angeles African-American community, and led to four major investigations of its charges. 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. [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. 3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. Poor Gary Webb. "[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." Gary Webb sums up the story in his last major interview just days before his death. But ultimately, the responsibility was, and is, mine.". Gary Webb's family says his death was Suicide. Gary Webb, Into the Buzzsaw, CH 13, Prometheus Books. The whole business, I suggested to Blum, has echoes of a classic Alfred Hitchcock plot. He was a former member of Bethlehem . His was the story of a man who gains information of wrongdoing, then, attempting to act in the public interest, seeks protection from his superiors, and the forces of law, and does not receive it. In addition, Gary left multiple suicide notes to family members which were confirmed to be in his own hand by them. [51] After discussions with Webb, the column was published on May 11, 1997.[53]. This drug ring "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles" and, as a result, "The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America."[23].