"Kill the Messenger" Resurrects Gary Webb, Journalist Maligned for Exposing CIA Ties to Crack Trade

[KoKo]

"Kill the Messenger" Resurrects Gary Webb, Journalist Maligned for Exposing CIA Ties to Crack Trade


Published on Oct 9, 2014
http://democracynow.org - The new Hollywood film "Kill The Messenger" tells the story of Gary Webb, one of the most maligned figures in investigative journalism. Webb's explosive 1996 investigative series "Dark Alliance" for the San Jose Mercury News revealed ties between the CIA, Nicaraguan contras and the crack cocaine trade ravaging African-American communities. The exposé provoked protests and congressional hearings, as well as a fierce reaction from the media establishment, which went to great lengths to discredit Webb's reporting. We revisit Webb’s story with an extended clip from the documentary "Shadows of Liberty," and speak with Robert Parry, a veteran investigative journalist who advised Webb before he published the series.

Hear all the Democracy Now! interviews with Gary Webb from 1997 and 1998 in our archive:
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014...

Democracy Now!, is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on 1,200+ TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9am ET at http://democracynow.org.

WEBSITE HAS FULL VIEW AND EXTRAS at http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014...

?list=UUzuqE7-t13O4NIDYJfakrhw

[newfie11]

1. I'm eager to see it

Hopefully it will be in Rapid City soon.

[billhicks76]

16. I Read Dark Alliance.

Great book. All the idiots who dismiss conspiracy theories because they can't handle the truth should be ashamed as they are just pawns played by biggie criminals with an agenda.

[newfie11]

19. Michael Ruppert wrote about the CIA

Years ago. When he was an LAPD narcotics officer in East LA he was arresting/interfering in lots of drug deals.
He was approached/asked by the CIA to look the other way on drugs being sold. He refused. It's an interesting read.
He committed suicide recently unfortunately.

[cantbeserious]

2. Saw The Film This Evening - Very Good - Highlights The Duplicity Of The Reagan Administration

eom

[JohnyCanuck]

3. How the Washington Post Censors the News - a letter to the WP ombudsman from 1992

April 25, 1992
Richard Harwood, Ombudsman
The Washington Post
1150 15th Street NW
Washington, DC 20071

Dear Mr. Harwood,

Though the Washington Post does not over-extend itself in the pursuit of hard news, just let drop the faintest rumor of a government "conspiracy", and a klaxon horn goes off in the news room. Aroused from apathy in the daily routine of reporting assignations and various other political and social sports events, editors and reporters scramble to the phones. The klaxon screams its warning: the greatest single threat to herd-journalism, corporate profits, and government stability -- the dreaded "CONSPIRACY THEORY"!!

It is not known whether anyone has actually been hassled or accosted by any of these frightful spectres, but their presence is announced to Post readers with a salvo of warnings to avoid the tricky, sticky webs spun by the wacko "CONSPIRACY THEORISTS".

snip

Professional conspiracy exorcist Mark Hosenball was hired to ridicule the idea that Oliver North and his CIA-associated gangsters had conspired to do wrong (*1). And when, in their syndicated column, Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta discussed some of the conspirators, the Post sprang to protect its readers, and the conspirators, by censoring the Anderson column before printing it (*2).

But for some time the lid had been coming off the Iran-Contra conspiracy. In 1986, the Christic Institute, an interfaith center for law and public policy, had filed a lawsuit alleging a U.S. arms- for-drugs trade that helped keep weapons flowing to the CIA-Contra army in Nicaragua, and cocaine flowing to U.S. markets (*3). In 1988 Leslie Cockburn published Out of Control, a seminal work on our bizarre, illegal war against Nicaragua (*4). The Post contributed to this discovery process by disparaging the charges of conspiracy and by publishing false information about the drug-smuggling evidence presented to the House Subcommittee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. When accused by Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY). of misleading reporting, the Post printed only a partial correction and declined to print a letter of complaint from Rangel (*5).

http://www.american-buddha.com/CIA.wa.post.censor.htm

[whereisjustice]

4. Gary Webb was labeled a traitor for embarrising the President during our war

on Central American terro -err- communists. He exposed unconstitutional and illegal behavior by our state security forces.

He paid a heavy price for his excellent work.

If there is anything to learn, it's that history repeats itself. This time we see that the modern defenders of our surveillance state, many who claim to be model Democrats, have learned nothing. The same mistakes are being made today.

[ailsagirl]

5. Oh yes, the journalist who ("ahem") committed suicide

I'm always a little leery when a victim of suicide goes to the trouble of typing out a note.

Apparently he then shot himself in the head. Twice.

[navarth]

6. +1

[ailsagirl]

8. Thank you

There have been so many...

[OnyxCollie]

20. Double tap to the head.

It's the only way to be sure.

[ailsagirl]

21. I wonder if the autopsy showed each wound to be fatal...

in and of itself.

Dead people rarely shoot themselves twice.

[OnyxCollie]

22. I bet that connection never came to mind.

Nope, not at all. La dee da, doo doo.

[MrScorpio]

7. It's about time that the truth got out

[ailsagirl]

9. +1

So true

[snot]

10. Thank you! K&R'd!

[Enthusiast]

11. K&R! This post should have hundreds of recommendations!

Before this our nation had problems. But this decision, to do what the Reagan/Bush intelligence community did, was a downward turn that the nation has never recovered from.

[Babel_17]

12. Kick (RIP) nt

[tclambert]

13. That is a very determined suicide, shooting yourself in the head twice.

Nothing suspicious here. Move along. Move along.

[newfie11]

18. +1

Yeah that does take lots of determination but more likely it was someone else's determination.

[eridani]

14. Robert Parry: The Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/26326-focus-the-sordid-contra-cocaine-saga

The movie, “Kill the Messenger,” is forcing the mainstream U.S. media to confront one of its most shameful episodes, the suppression of a major national security scandal implicating Ronald Reagan’s CIA in aiding and abetting cocaine trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contra rebels in the 1980s and then the systematic destruction of journalist Gary Webb when he revived the scandal in the 1990s.

Hollywood’s treatment of this sordid affair will likely draw another defensive or dismissive response from some of the big news outlets that still don’t want to face up to their disgraceful behavior. The New York Times and other major newspapers mocked the Contra-cocaine scandal when Brian Barger and I first exposed it in 1985 for the Associated Press and then savaged Webb in 1996 when he traced some of the Contra-cocaine into the manufacture of crack which ravaged American cities.

So, when you’re watching this movie or responding to questions from friends about whether they should believe its storyline, you might want to know what is or is not fact. What is remarkable about this tale is that so much of it now has been established by official government documents. In other words, you don’t have to believe me and my dozens of sources; you can turn to the admissions by the Central Intelligence Agency’s inspector general or to evidence in the National Archives.

For instance, last year at the National Archives annex in College Park, Maryland, I discovered a “secret” U.S. law enforcement report that detailed how top Contra leader Adolfo Calero was casually associating with Norwin Meneses, described as “a well-reputed drug dealer.”

Meneses was near the center of Webb’s 1996 articles for the San Jose Mercury-News, a series that came under fierce attack from U.S. government officials as well as major news organizations, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. The controversy cost Webb his career, left him nearly penniless and ultimately drove him to suicide on Dec. 9, 2004

[KoKo]

15. Recommend!

[mother earth]

23. Gary Webb, a brave journalist who actually exposed the truth & later was ostracized, unable to work,

whose death was somehow ruled a suicide with not one, but two bullets to the head...

[swilton]

24. Bio here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb