"[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." border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd; It also stated that the Contras may have acted with the knowledge and protection of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Gary's family found that old, storied, ("priceless to us," as his ex-wife, Susan Bell, described it to me) CDROM among his possessions. Army. His own paper, the Mercury News, criticized the series in 1997 without providing many specifics. Gary was preceded in death by his mother and father, Donna and James Webb of Carpentersville. Garry Webb wrote the 1996 "Dark Alliance" series for the San Jose. 3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. As a result, some major US newspapers ignored its findings completely, while others relegated a brief summary to their inside pages. "He rang me up that day. She was a native of Minden, LA, but a resident of Crossett for 65 years. Do not quote me on anything.". When he was engaged, he worked hard. .article-native-ad strong { Blandn and Meneses' high-volume supply of low-priced high-purity cocaine "allowed Ross to sew up the Los Angeles market and move on. 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. The series revolves around the first crack epidemic and its impact on the culture of the city. 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 . According to Schou, the investigation "confirmed key chunks of Webb's allegations." The story had little immediate impact. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. It was good that his story forced those reports to come out, but part of what made that happen was based on misleading information. GARY WEBB was an investigative reporter who focused on government and private sector corruption and who won more than thirty journalism awards. "He told me, not long before he died, that he didn't want to get up in the mornings," she says. Webb's research took a year, in the course of which he received death threats. It was an amazing scoop - but one that would ruin his career and drive him to suicide. [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." The first detailed article on the series's claims appeared in The Washington Post in early October. When his body was found, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was on the DVD machine, and his favourite CD, Ian Hunter's live album Welcome to the Club, was in the CD player. In an unprecedented move, the then CIA director John Deutch was dispatched to address community leaders in the Watts district of LA. The Mercury News reporter came under sustained attack from the weightier US newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and, especially, the Los Angeles Times, infuriated at being scooped, on its own patch, by what it saw as a small-town paper. His death was especially traumatic to the family since - as the coroner said - it could not be established whether he died instantly, or bled to death. He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. "They tried to make us look like crazies," says Blum. In February, Gary Webb gave his ex-wife. Gary Webb, Into the Buzzsaw, CH 13, Prometheus Books. Gary's story, however, is far from over and could never be killed by something as trivial as a material bullet. Shortly before his death, his motorcycle had been stolen (it was recovered by his family after his death). At the end of March, Ceppos told Webb that he was going to present the internal review findings in a column. 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. The CIA admits used the media to ruin his career. Webb, Bell explains, had written four letters explaining what he was about to do - one to her, one to each of their three children - and mailed them immediately before he killed himself. Call 911 for assistance. And when he got something in his head, he was determined to do it. Webb is best known for his "Dark Alliance" series, which appeared in The Mercury News in 1996. [37], In 2013, Jesse Katz, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, said of the newspaper's coverage "As an L.A. Times reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News and kind of wonder[ed] how legit it was and kind of put it under a microscope, and we did it in a way that most of us who were involved in it, I think, would look back on that and say it was overkill. "I believe that Americans, as a nation, are mainly concerned with living their happy little lives. The series ran from October 2022, 1996, and was researched by a team of 17 reporters. American racer Cooper Webb is married to his wife named Mariah Williams Webb. Age 43 years. }. Osborn, Barbara Bliss (MarchApril 1998). 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. ", "Reporter's suicide confirmed by coroner", "Repercussions From Flawed News Articles", "Herhold: Thinking back on journalist Gary Webb and the CIA", Ex-L.A. Times Writer Apologizes for "Tawdry" Attacks, "Gary Webb was no journalism hero, despite what 'Kill the Messenger' says", "Jeremy Renner's 'Kill the Messenger' Gets Fall Release Date", The CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Controversy: A Review of the Justice Department's Investigations and Prosecutions, United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, Report of Investigation Concerning Allegations of Connections Between CIA and The Contras in Cocaine Trafficking to the United States, Central Intelligence Agency Office of the Inspector General, United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, "Secrecy, Conspiracy, and the Media During the CIA-Contra Affair", Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography, "Inside the Dark Alliance: Gary Webb on the CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion", 'A NATURAL STORY': Tribute to 'Dark Alliance' and Journalist Gary Webb, San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center, Archive of Gary Webb stories at Sacramento News and Review, "Frontline: Cocaine, Conspiracy Theories & the C.I.A. "The cause of death was determined to be self . 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. "He started having motorcycle crashes," Bell says. color: #ddd; Poor Gary Webb. 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. Gary Webb was born on August 31, 1955 in Corona, California, USA. Cooper Webb Wife Name Revealed. "He thought I was being cowardly. "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. 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 The Department of Justice Inspector-General's report was released on July 23, 1998. He was so depressed. 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. Within weeks, the site was attracting up to 1.3m hits per day. The three articles in the series were written by four reporters: Jesse Katz, Doyle McManus, John Mitchell and Sam Fulwood. The first effect of the onslaught was to ease the pressure on the CIA. 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 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? [65], After leaving The Mercury News, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature. Last edited on 10 February 2023, at 03:36, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking, "To readers of our 'Dark Alliance' series", "America's 'crack' plague has roots in Nicaragua war", "War on drugs has unequal impact on black Americans", "Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Inquiry Findings", "The CIA and Crack: Evidence Is Lacking Of Alleged Plot", "Though Evidence Is Thin, Tale of C.I.A. Who Is Gary Webb's Wife? "This is an appalling charge," says a tense-looking Deutch. Webb's ex wife, Susan Bell told reporters that she believed Webb had died by suicide. [29] Waters urged the CIA, the Department of Justice, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate. [60], It found no information to support the claim that the agency interfered with law enforcement actions against Ross, Blandn or Meneses. Webb came home and put his belongings in order, dropping his Kentucky Post poster in the bin. Views on Webb's journalism have been polarized. He told me: 'If I can't do what I want to do, what's the point?' "You sound very scared," Moreira remarks. And it was ignored by the US media, for all of those reasons. [16] As part of The Mercury News team that covered the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Webb and his colleague Pete Carey wrote a story examining the causes of the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct. "He walked in one day," Bell recalls, "and said, 'You are not going to believe what I just found out.' It's . "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.". Look at the way the US press reports on Iraq. [69], Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. Taken during the London Open House 2014 event. In a three-part expos, investigative journalist Gary Webb reported that a guerrilla army in Nicaragua had used crack cocaine sales in Los Angeles' black neighborhoods to fund an attempted coup of Nicaragua's socialist government in the 1980s and that the CIA had purposefully funded it. "I think the behaviour of the media in all of this has been amazing," says Bell. 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 had also lost his house the week before his suicide. He is from United States. GARY WEBB OBITUARY Gary Frank Webb Sept. 27, 1944 - Oct. 23, 2022 Gary passed away peacefully of complications following cardiovascular surgery. 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. This is why Webb's "Dark Alliance" series is an essential source, a primary text that every journalism student should study. It sounds like a Tom Clancy novel, right? He accepted Christ at an early age. [71] When asked by local reporters about the possibility of two gunshots being a suicide, Lyons replied "It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots, but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility." "Gary was given the choice of relocating either to San Jose," says Bell, "or to Cupertino". [49], The paper also gave Webb permission to visit Central America again to get more evidence supporting the story. 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. By the autumn of 1997, on medication for clinical depression, he was given leave of absence from the paper. Attorneys' Offices. Like the CIA and Justice Department reports, it also found that neither Blandn, Meneses, nor Ross were associated with the CIA. His wife is Sue Webb (m. 1979-2000) Gary Webb Net Worth His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. Eli Tomac on track during Media Day at Daytona International Speedway, Friday, March 3, 2023. . They failed because the climate was more sceptical then. Webb's continuing reporting also triggered a fourth investigation. We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California."