The CIA Mainstream Media Contra-Cocaine Cover-up

[Octafish]

The CIA Mainstream Media Contra-Cocaine Cover-up

By Robert Parry
Consortium News 26 September 2014

In 1996 – as major U.S. news outlets disparaged the Nicaraguan Contra-cocaine story and destroyed the career of investigative reporter Gary Webb for reviving it – the CIA marveled at the success of its public-relations team guiding the mainstream media’s hostility toward both the story and Webb, according to a newly released internal report.

Entitled “Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story,” the six-page report describes the CIA’s damage control after Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series was published in the San Jose Mercury-News in August 1996. Webb had resurrected disclosures from the 1980s about the CIA-backed Contras collaborating with cocaine traffickers as the Reagan administration worked to conceal the crimes.

Although the CIA’s inspector general later corroborated the truth about the Contra-cocaine connection and the Reagan administration’s cover-up, the mainstream media’s counterattack in defense of the CIA in late summer and fall of 1996 proved so effective that the subsequent CIA confession made little dent in the conventional wisdom regarding either the Contra-cocaine scandal or Gary Webb.

In fall 1998, when the CIA inspector general’s extraordinary findings were released, the major U.S. news media largely ignored them, leaving Webb a “disgraced” journalist who – unable to find a decent-paying job in his profession – committed suicide in 2004, a dark tale that will be revisited in a new movie, “Kill the Messenger,” starring Jeremy Renner and scheduled to reach theaters on Oct. 10.

The “Managing a Nightmare” report offers something of the CIA’s back story for how the spy agency’s PR team exploited relationships with mainstream journalists who then essentially did the CIA’s work for it, mounting a devastating counterattack against Webb that marginalized him and painted the Contra-cocaine trafficking story as some baseless conspiracy theory.

CONTINUED...

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/09/26/the-ciamsm-contra-cocaine-cover-up/

These are the treasonous gangsters, narco-terrorists, warmongerers and huge conservative crap artists Bartcop called the BFEE. The guy in the circle on top was suspected of planting a bomb at a press conference in Costa Rica. If you have time, here's a remarkable web resource on the subject:

http://www.ticotimes.net/LaPenca30Years/

PS: Wish I'd seen this important article sooner. Thanks, unhappycamper!

[reddread]

1. right then and there it became crystal clear

the LA Times, NY Times and Washington Post (and eventually, so very sadly, the San Jose Merc itself)
would sooner lie to their readers than protect an informed democracy (the only kind there can be).
talk about treachery. and they didnt just start fudging news that week.
we are adrift in this country because of the media, no other reason.
THEY are the enemies of our democratic ideals, and should be treated as such.

[gratuitous]

2. It's a good thing those people aren't running things anymore

So we can totally trust whatever our government tells us nowadays.

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. Yeah thankfully they were never pardoned by GHWBush

and had no time or resources to get even more powerful and secretive over the decades to plan for their 'New American Century'

Good thing P. Obama cleaned house and appointed all Democrats and liberals

to all important agencies otherwise things could have gotten fucked up and our rights might have been in jeopardy.

I love opposite day.

[reddread]

4. if Obama had done that the Republicans would have obstructed everything and fought tooth and nail

A wise and Great Compromiser, he avoided that trap handily.

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. Yeah having all those Banksters

on his staff to fix their corruption and the economy was brilliant..and a wise move.... nothing less than 6th dimensional chess underwater

[G_j]

5. yes, it sure is!

[WinkyDink]

6. The more time goes on, the more the tin-foil hats are vindicated.

[malaise]

9. Thread win

[WillyT]

8. HUGE K & R !!! - THANK YOU !!!

[777man]

10. The New York Times’s Belated Admission on the Contra-Cocaine Scandal

The New York Times’s Belated Admission on the Contra-Cocaine Scandal
The Times' review of “Kill the Messenger,” the tragic tale of journalist Gary Webb
By Robert Parry
October 05, 2014
Consortium News

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/10/04/nyts-belated-admission-on-contra-cocaine/

Since the Contra-cocaine scandal surfaced in 1985, major U.S. news outlets have disparaged it, most notably when the big newspapers destroyed Gary Webb for reviving it in 1996. But a New York Times review of a movie on Webb finally admits the reality, writes Robert Parry.