Will Hollywood Give Him Last Word Against the CIA’s Media Apologists? The Resurrection of Gary Webb

[Judi Lynn]

October 07, 2014
Will Hollywood Give Him Last Word Against the CIA’s Media Apologists?

The Resurrection of Gary Webb

by JEFF COHEN


It’s been almost a decade since once-luminous investigative journalist Gary Webb extinguished his own life.

It’s been 18 years since Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series in the San Jose Mercury News exploded across a new medium – the Internet – and definitively linked crack cocaine in Los Angeles and elsewhere to drug traffickers allied with the CIA’s rightwing Contra army in Nicaragua. Webb’s revelations sparked anger across the country, especially in black communities.

But the 1996 series (which was accompanied by unprecedented online documentation) also sparked one of the most ferocious media assaults ever on an individual reporter – a less-than-honest backlash against Webb by elite newspapers that had long ignored or suppressed evidence of CIA/Contra/cocaine connections.

The assault by the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times drove Webb out of the newspaper business, and ultimately to his death.

Beginning this Friday, the ghost of Gary Webb will haunt his tormenters from movie screens across the country, with the opening of the dramatic film “Kill the Messenger” – based partly on Webb’s 1998 “Dark Alliance” book.

The movie dramatizes Webb’s investigation of Contra-allied Nicaraguan cocaine traffickers Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon (whose drug activities were apparently protected for reasons of U.S. “national security”) and their connection to L.A.’s biggest crack dealer, “Freeway” Ricky Ross.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/07/the-resurrection-of-gary-webb/

[Demeter]

1. In a word, YES

There's no way the CIA can overcome Hollywood, if the movie is a blockbuster....let's hope it will be.

This is a hell of a way to run a country, don't you think?

[Judi Lynn]

2. Journalist Gary Webb Gets the Last Word in "Kill the Messenger"

Journalist Gary Webb Gets the Last Word in "Kill the Messenger"

Jeff Cohen from Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College says Webb exposed how the CIA supported the right-wing Contras in Nicaragua by trafficking cocaine, leading to an epidemic of crack use in major US cities - October 10, 14

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COHEN: Well, the important issue is that big elite newspapers and magazines had suppressed the Contra story beginning from its eruption back in 1985 during the Contra War, when the CIA, under Reagan, had organized and funded, supervised a Contra army, a right-wing army to try to overthrow the socialist government of Nicaragua, the Sandinista government.

And beginning in 1985, Brian Barger and Bob Perry at Associated Press had exposed that some of the Contras and their allies were engaging in drug trafficking. And the big newspapers wouldn't pick it up. Move to 1987, where Congressman Rangel, the head the House Narcotics Committee, does a preliminary investigation of whether the CIA's Contras or their allies are trafficking in cocaine. And Congressman Rangel says, we need a more serious investigation. The Washington Post distorted that. He said, here's a letter to the editor that corrects the record, and The Washington Post refused to publish it.

That same year, 1987, Time magazine, two reporters have worked up this story linking the CIA's Contras or their associates to drug trafficking, and they can't get it into the magazine. And one of the reporters is pulled aside by an editor and says, look, Time magazine--this is a word-for-word quote--Time magazine "is institutionally behind the Contras. If this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you'd have no trouble getting it in the magazine."

So you could go on and on. Senator John Kerry did an investigation. He found that Contra allies were engaged in drug trafficking, and they apparently were protected by reasons of so-called national security. That was in 1989. So the mainstream media has--and when that happened, by the way, Newsweek called Senator Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff."

More:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12510