Ruppert has a new article out on Gary Webb suicide story.

[JohnyCanuck]

Webb's August 1996 series Dark Alliance for the San Jose Mercury News pulled deep covers away from US covert operations and American denial about connections between the CIA and drugs. Gary left a bigger historical footprint than anyone who has ever touched the subject including among others, Peter Dale Scott, Alfred McCoy, Jonathan Kwitny and me.

His footprint was made possible in large part for two reasons. First, his reporting was meticulous and produced hard records that could not be effectively denied. Second, prominent African-American leaders like Jesse Jackson and representatives Maxine Waters and Juanita Millender-McDonald of Los Angeles and Compton respectively took up the torch lit by Gary and ran with it just before the 1996 presidential election which saw Bill Clinton win his second term just eight weeks after the stories broke. I was there at that time and it is not an understatement to say that much of this country was "up in arms".

Waters at one point vowed to make the CIA-drug connections, fully documented by Webb, her "life's work" if necessary.

In death the major press is beating him almost as ruthlessly as they did in real life. No part of the major press has acknowledged that Webb's work was subsequently vindicated by congressional investigations and two CIA Inspector General's reports released in 1997 and 1998. FTW did report on Webb's vindication and his legacy has - at least at the level of authentic journalism - not been lost.


Edited to add another snip. (Note to Mods, author gives ok to reproduce his article for non profit purposes)

Of the six obituaries I have seen on him, the one from the L.A. Times was the most brutally Soviet in its attempt to crush out his memory as thoroughly as his work. Of course the Times would have to do that. It was in Los Angeles where Webb dug up and documented the direct connection between the CIA and cocaine smuggling/trafficking as crack cocaine ravaged this city in the 1980s and the Contra war decimated Central America.

The Times already had known of this for decades. Starting in 1979 I dealt extensively with the Times trying to report the same connections with regard to heroin smuggling by the CIA. Cocaine did not become a national epidemic until around 1980. By 1996 I had 17 bitter years of funneling hard evidence to the Times and watching as staff writer David Rosenzweig -- among others including Ron Soble and David Johnston (now of the New York Times) - kept taking the information, promising to do something, and then spiking the stories in exchange for promotions.

When Gary autographed his 1998 best-seller Dark Alliance to me he wrote: "To Mike. You were there before I was."

Richard Heinberg, author of The Party's Over and Powerdown observed after reading the Times' obituary, "The LA Times obit is disgusting. 'What's our attitude toward investigative journalism? Well, of course we try to discourage it wherever we can, but sometimes it happens anyway. Then we get especially nasty--we have to, naturally, to protect our reputation.'"

More....

[peacetalksforall]

1. Why is it that some people feel the injustice and do something about it,

some deny everything that isn't mainstream and claim you're wearing a strange hat, and others perpetuate and carry out the injustices?

They shouldn't teach kids that they are the government and that their parents representatives in Washington takes care of things for them, that our representatives are honest and expect us to be, that injustice is wrong.

Let us know if there was anything in his life other than disappointment with our justice system that would have caused him to commit suicide this past fine weekend?

Keep us updated on the facts and rumors of the death - were there really multiple shots?

[Octafish]

2. DEA Agent Celerino Castillo confirmed Webb's reporting.

“Ollie’s Contra-band”

by Celerino Castillo
March 8, 2003
posted at DrugWar.com
March 21, 2003

For several years, I fought in the trenches of the front lines of the Reagan-Bush’s drug war. I was trying to stamp out what I had considered American’s greatest foreign threat. While our government shouted, “Just Say No”, entire Central and South American nations fell into what was known as “Cocaine Democracies”.

The man that brought us this epidemic is none other than former Lt. Col. Oliver North. Recently, I read an advertisement in the Monitor where an invitation was extended to Oliver North to speak at the annual meeting of the McAllen/Hidalgo County Salvation Army. The fundraiser is to be held on April 5, 2003 at the McAllen High School.

Oliver L. North, a Marine lieutenant colonel, was assigned to the National Security Council staff beginning in 1981 until he was fired on November 25, 1986. He was the White House official most directly involved in secretly aiding the Contras by selling arms to Iran. It was best known as; “the Iran-for-Hostages” weapons deal. The allegation was that he diverted Iran arms sales proceeds to the Contras' accounts. However, it was later determined that the diversion was not to the Contras but from the Contras to our governments' agents own Swiss bank accounts. It was also clear that North’s job at the NSC was to implement two of the President’s (Reagan) most important policy goals: the sustenance of the Contras despite the Boland prohibition on U.S. aid, and the release of American hostages being held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Beirut. It was clear that North worked tirelessly in pursuit of these goals.

During the Contra operation, Vice-President George H. Bush designated North and CIA Director William Casey, to coordinate the re-supply operation out of Ilopango airport in El Salvador. This he did, using assets already in place around General Richard Secord’s airlift operation at Ilopango. Former CIA agent Felix Rodriguez, and Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles ran the operations out of hangars 4 and 5. In October 1976, after an explosion sent a Cuban jetliner plummeting into the sea off Barbados, it was revealed that the mastermind behind the bombing was no other then Luis Posada. In late 2000, Luis Posada was arrested in a plot to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro.

At the height of the Contra war, I was stationed in El Salvador for 5 years as the only DEA agent. It was there that I came face to face with the contradictions of my assignments. I started to record intelligence on how known drug traffickers, with multiple DEA files, utilized hangars 4 and 5 to transport monies and drugs. The Contra supply operations utilized the most readily available capabilities: drug-smugglers, who had the planes and pilots to conduct clandestine flights from South and Central America to all parts of the United States. “Guns down, drugs back,” was the formula.

CONTINUED...

http://www.drugwar.com/castilloollie.shtm

[JHB]

4. Don't forget Mike Levine's classic "I Volunteer to Kidnap Ollie North"

Don't forget ex-DEA undercover agent Mike Levine's 1992 classic "I Volunteer to Kidnap Ollie North":

Excerpt:
My first question to Colonel North—under oath—would be: Why did you campaign to obtain the release of Honduran army general, José Bueso-Rosa from a federal prison, after his arrest for smuggling 763 pounds of cocaine and murder?<9> Bueso-Rosa's partner in the venture was international arms dealer Felix Latchinian, who in turn was an ex-business partner of C.I.A. agent Felix Rodriguez, who, in turn, was in charge of the contra's supply network in El Salvador. If this sounds complicated just remember that all this drug trafficking activity was paid for by U.S. taxpayer dollars.

In North's efforts to spring the drug dealing general, whose case the Justice Department described as "the worst case of narco-trafficking in history," he asked for President Reagan's support, and got it —I would want to know, why?<10>

North, when he wasn't shredding was not too good at covering his tracks. He wrote several damning prof notes to National Security Advisor, Admiral John Poindexter that wound up in the hands of Senate investigators. In one such note he wrote that if Bueso-Rosa was not made happy he could "sing songs that nobody wants to hear." <11> North's actions and the notes prompted former Ambassador to Costa Rica, Francis McNeil to state, "What were those songs? Were they about narcotics or possibly something else? " <12> If this were my drug case I'd begin a real narcotic conspiracy investigation that wouldn't end until I knew every note and every verse of every song Bueso-Rosa had to sing.

Colonel North appeared on a radio show—Michael Jackson KABC, Los Angeles California, 11/11/91— to promote his book. I was telephoned at home in New York City and asked to participate in the discussion. I listened while Colonel Ollie lied on the air by claiming General Bueso-Rosa had been arrested for "some political reasons." When I confronted him and asked him about those "songs" he referred to, and Ambassador McNeil's comments, he indicated that the answer to my question would be a violation of national security.<13>

Full essay at http://www.expertwitnessradio.org/essays/e1.htm

[Octafish]

5. Couldn't happen to a nicer felon.

Much obliged, JHB! Here's some more stuff to remember, thanks to DUer major_rager:

PASS THIS INFO ALONG.....

The National Security Archives: (Awesome site!) http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB2/nsaebb2.htm

Ollie North?s diary entries, memos, email (2/26/04) http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/index.htm

Gary Webb?s Dark Alliance Home Page http://home.comcast.net/~gary.webb/wsb/html/view.cgi-ho...

Congressional Testimony of Celerino Castillo: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/hall/contra1.html

Photographs and additional notes from Castillo?s career: http://www.drugwar.com/castillo.shtm
http://mediafilter.org/MFF/DEA.35.html

U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters? website: http://www.house.gov/waters / (see press releases 1996-2000)
http://www.house.gov/waters/ciareportwww.htm and http://www.house.gov/waters/volii.press1198.htm

A Chronology From Mother Jones Magazine: http://www.motherjones.com/total_coverage/coke.html
http://www.motherjones.com/sideshow/cia.html

Actual copy of the CIA agreement allowing drugs:


and



and http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/ex1.html

FAIR covers media cover-up http://www.fair.org/issues-news/contra-crack.html

California State University Northridge (CSUN) Professor of Communications Ben Attias?
Cocaine Import Agency website: http://www.csun.edu/CommunicationStudies/ben/news/cia /

Retired Federal Agent Michael Levine: http://www.expertwitnessradio.org/essays/e1.htm

Former Associated Press & Newsweek writer Bob Parry: http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/crack.html

Knight and Bernstein CIA-drug allegations 1987-1997 http://www.flashpoints.net/ArticleArchiveIndex.html

Interview with Professor Alfred McCoy: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/heroin/mccoy1.htm

Former law enforcement agents comment on drug war: http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files /
Website of Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D., a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America.
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/index.html

The Media Cover-Up: (excellent article) http://www.copi.com/articles/darker.html

The Kerry Commission?s report online: http://www.webcom.com/pinknoiz/covert/contracoke.html
http://www.thememoryhole.com/kerry /

Testimony of Lt. Col. James ?Bo? Gritz http://www.aiipowmia.com/ssc/gritz.html and http://www.dcia.com/trimmer.html

http://www.supremelaw.org/authors/gritz/index.htm and http://www.serendipity.li/cia/gritz1.htm  

SOURCE:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2819427#2824201

[Aries]

3. Suicide...with 2 shots to the head?

http://sacbee.com/content/news/story/11772749p-12657577c.html

Facing a barrage of calls from the media and the public, the Sacramento County Coroner's Office issued a statement Tuesday confirming that former investigative reporter Gary Webb committed suicide with two gunshots to the head.

"The cause of death was determined to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head," the coroner's statement said.