Robert Parry remembers Gary Webb, Contra Drug connections, and the "liberal" MSM

[JHB]

Three years ago, investigative reporter Gary Webb committed suicide, his life and career wrecked by a media establishment intent on covering its pals and its own backside, conservative Republicans hell-bent on suppressing any untidy facts about the hallowed Reagan Legacy, and Washington Democrats' mysteriously consistent inability to confront Republican criminality. And we're still paying for it.


Gary Webb's Enduring Legacy

By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
December 11, 2007

Three years ago, I walked into my home in Arlington, Virginia, and checked my phone messages. One was from a Los Angeles Times reporter who was looking for a comment from me about Gary Webb’s suicide on the night of Dec. 9, 2004. It was the first I had heard of the news.
***

The CIA published the first part of Inspector General Hitz’s findings on Jan. 29, 1998. Despite a largely exculpatory press release, Hitz’s Volume One admitted that not only were many of Webb’s allegations true but that he actually understated the seriousness of the contra-drug crimes and the CIA’s knowledge.

***
Bromwich’s report revealed example after example of leads not followed, corroborated witnesses disparaged, official law-enforcement investigations sabotaged, and even the CIA facilitating the work of drug traffickers. The report showed that the contras and their supporters ran several parallel drug-smuggling operations, not just the one at the center of Webb’s series. The report also found that the CIA shared little of its information about contra drugs with law-enforcement agencies and on three occasions disrupted cocaine-trafficking investigations that threatened the contras.
***
In Volume Two, published Oct. 8, 1998, CIA Inspector General Hitz identified more than 50 contras and contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations throughout the 1980s. According to Volume Two, the CIA knew the criminal nature of its contra clients from the start of the war against Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government. The earliest contra force, called ADREN or the 15th of September Legion, had chosen “to stoop to criminal activities in order to feed and clothe their cadre,” according to a June 1981 draft CIA field report.
***

full article at:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/121007.html

[L. Coyote]

1. Gary Webb was investigating the Ohio 2004 election irregularities when he died of two gunshot wounds

[reprehensor]

2. Thanks for posting.

The CIA, drugs, money and Black Ops are all one big happy family.

A really big ugly family.

[KittyWampus]

3. Ah, Gary Webb. How few people ever discuss what Clinton knew about Mena Arkansasscs

Not in the Freeper sense, that he was the moving factor in all that filth.

Just whether he was totally oblivious as Governor. Or he knew and then used that knowledge to turn screws.

[JHB]

4. That whole Freeper take on Mena was a real hoot...

I'd heard about Mena in connection with Contra-drugs years before I'd ever heard the name "Bill Clinton".

I almost couldn't wait for a real investigation of what went on there, because anything worth noting would have lead to Ollie North and St. Ronnie's WH basement.

[Rageneau]

6. Only crazed Freepers and the weak-minded think Clinton had anything to do with "Mena."

Yes, Booby Seale did fly cocaine into the little airport at Mena. And, yes, the CIA did train "contra rebels" in the Ouachita mountains near Mena. But Clinton had nothing to do with any of that. It was Republican right-wingers (as usual) who were behind these sleazy operations.

As Governor, Clinton had no more power to stop these activities than he did when Carter sent thousands of Cuban refugees to Arkansas. Clinton didn't like that, didn't want it, but he was just a governor, not a president, so he couldn't stop it. Same with "Mena."

Now that Jerry Falwell is dead, there are only a few people left who are so misinformed and mind-poisoned that they continue to insist -- against all proof -- that Clinton was involved in the CIA cocaine-smuggling operation that the unsung national hero, Gary Webb, uncovered and ultimately lost his life over.

Make no mistake. "Mena" (as well as the campaign to destroy Gary Webb) was the product of conservative republican thinking and conservative republican power. Moderate Democrat Governor Bill Clinton and Democratic Party thinking had NOTHING to do with it.

[KittyWampus]

7. Oh, I don't think Clinton had anything to do w/Mena. But I do think he knew about it

and used that knowledge to good effect in furthering his career.

[JHB]

10. Dunno about "used" but I do think the feds informed him...

...if only at the level of "We have an operation here that involves national security, Governor. Keep your people away so they don't interfere."

But yes, the Mena fantasies of the Ding Dong Brigade are a load of crap. The point was any serious investigation would have quickly led to Reagan's Washington, not Clinton's Little Rock. I have very little doubt that that's the reason why the one horseshit "Clinton Scandal" Starr's widely-meandering witchhunt never went near was Mena.

[blm]

8. Mena HAPPENED and Poppy Bush got a small state governor to look the other way.

But, why did that governor turned PRESIDENT continue to protect Poppy Bush's secrecy and privilege on every outstanding matter that came up throughout the 90s on IranContra? On Iraqgate? On BCCI? On CIA drugrunning?

Have fun even finding some CYA paragraphs on those matters in Bill's book.

[karynnj]

11. I assume the phrase that was used above, that he turned his head

was accurate. Not, that he initiated, set up, or further their actions - just that he didn't have the integrity to stand up against stuff he had to know was illegal - even if the government was doing it. True, that would have taken a hero ..... like John Kerry, who really did risk his political career.

What is interesting is that after Kerry's exposing it ended it - even if most of the media didn't admit it happened - that on a personal level, Clinton preferred Weld, who stonewalled the invesigation to Kerry who rid Arkansas of a drug source. As governor, you would think that especially if he was oblivious he would have been grateful.

[AntiFascist]

12. I have a slightly different take...

I think the Arkansas Project was all intended to be smoke and mirrors, focusing on Clinton corruption while distracting from the much larger operation at Mena. People don't seem to realize the huge scale of the operations at Mena, compared to the relatively minor allegations against the Clintons - which included a small cocaine ring operating out of Mena. There also seems to be evidence that Clinton was involved with the CIA in other operations prior to being governor. Some authors go so far as to say that the CIA took control of the Executive wing during the Bush Senior and Clinton years.

[karynnj]

16. I don't think there were many years between law school and

Clinton becoming Attorney General and then Governor. He sounded pretty anti-military in 1969, so this really doesn't sound believable.

[AntiFascist]

18. According to Roger Morris...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0707/S00058.htm

Roger Morris: I don’t know about the notes. There was a recommendation Clinton made. And as the book explains, Clinton’s connections with the Agency go back a long way. Since the book was published, I’ve had people come forward and tell me that they knew much more than even the informants I was talking to, and I was talking to people who were retired from the Agency, who were quite categorical about Bill Clinton having been a source for Operation Chaos and for informing on American students abroad while he was at Oxford and all the rest.

Since then I’ve had people come to me and say, well don’t you know you missed the story, he was actually recruited at Georgetown. Georgetown was a veritable recruiting center in those days for the CIA – not just for Americans but for the large number of foreign students, the sons of foreign wealthy who were at Georgetown. So Bill’s contact with the Agency went back for years and years.

[karynnj]

19. OMG, I really do not want to believe this

I am not disputing your source and if true it does totally change the way this looks. It might explain his lack of real enthusiasm for Kerry. (I know a lot of the CIA guys were from Yale, but it is very clear that Kerry investigated them when no one else was willing to.)

[AntiFascist]

29. There's also Hillary...

the Rose Law firm "a CIA proprietary" with ties to BCCI?

[blm]

23. And why Clinton sides with Bush's secrecy and privilege over open government

that is accountable to the people and the truth of the historic record.

The black community should have gotten the message loud and clear that Clinton sided with Bush's privilege over their right to know that Bush's illegal operations dumped TONS of cheap IranContra cocaine into their neighborhoods - and did so in a TARGETED way.

[leftchick]

34. yes, all one big happy fucking crime family

The BFEE includes the Clintons.

[JackRiddler]

37. Who's got the wishful thinking here?

Sorry to intrude with obvious questions about your totem Clinton but...

How did Gov. Clinton not know this Mena operation was going on for years?

How did he not find out about it, once the Seale case went public?

Why didn't he make a stink as governor?

As president, he let the Mena criminals - who had been in the Bush Administration, who in fact WERE the Bush admin, as you say - get off. He did nothing to stir investigation or release the documents now under his control. He also did nothing about the related plunder of the banking system by Bush/CIA/mob cronies (whitewashed as the "Savings and Loan crisis").

Why?

Clinton hangs out with them today. No one forces him to do that. He flies around the world with Papa Bush. Buddy buddy.

It doesn't matter that Clinton obviously didn't run the Mena coke or the Contras. He covered for the operation, as governor and then president. He was a faithful soldier, and if he hadn't been he wouldn't have become president.

Clinton is complicit. He is one of them.

And none of this is ideological. Don't you dare wave those words around like protective magic spells. You show where in "Republican" or "conservative" doctrine it says it's good to sell cocaine to fund counterrevolutionary armies. That's not a function of "Republican," that's gangster. Or conversely, show me where "moderate Democratic" doctrine ever makes a fuss about the crimes of the secret state.

No. It's not about ideology. It's about money and power.

These are gangsters - the Bush mob and their Arkansas satraps.

Now the next act in this clown act is being set up - Hillary, who is likely to create the conditions for a Jeb Bush landslide in 2012.

[blm]

38. Clinton and Mena reminds me of Siegelman case in Alabama - by CHANGING the election fraud headline

to being Siegelman's crime, it successfully distracted from the REAL CRIMES committed by Rove and RNC in that state.

By making Mena all about Clinton - a most MINOR player at the TIME - the message machine successfully distracted enough from the very real and seriousiously criminal CIA drugrunning operations by VP and PRESIDENT BUSH.

Even many Democrats have been played to the point where they dismiss every fact about Mena along with the RW drivel.

[L. Coyote]

21. I though they closed the Arkansas Project, and don't cut checks any more!

I also thought that, with the propaganda money drying up, people were no longer deluded about Mena.

Bush vs. Gore, the 'Arkansas Project,' the USA firings, and the Swiftboat Admiral
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1029113

[blm]

28. Arkansas Project switched it to a Clinton scandal, but it was a POPPY BUSH operation

that only peripherally involved informing the Arkansas governeor at the time.

But, Mena's CIA cocaine running still happened - and Clinton did protect Poppy Bush on that operation, even when more evidence came out in Webb's 1996 report.

You just will never hear a RWer tell the TRUTH about Mena and that it was Clinton accomodating Poppy Bush's operations.

[L. Coyote]

30. Where are you reading your version of pseudo-history, the American Spectator?

[blm]

31. Are you saying you never heard of Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Gary Webb's

report on CIA drugrunning?

Are you saying you never heard that Poppy Bush was running IranContra cocaine dealings out of Mena?

Are you familiar with IranContra and the cocaine connections at all?

Why on earth would the American Spectator be a source for anyone concerned with Poppy Bush's CIA Drugrunning operations in IranContra when they twisted the story to claim that Bill Clinton was in charge of it?

Do you understand the difference between the RW version of Mena that it was Bill's deal - an apparent lie of distraction, and the TRUTH, which is that it was part of CIA drugrunning operation of Poppy Bush's that USED Mena airport as a hub? That Bill Clinton would have been INFORMED of the operation as governor still makes it part of Poppy Bush's illegal IranContra operation.

It's absurd to think that Mena drugrunning didn't happen when CIA documents have already proven it did.

American Spectator? I doubt they like Robert Parry much there - and I prefer National Security Archives, Parry, Webb, Gonzalez, Kerry-Brown reports, Bill Moyers....

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/100307.html



I don't get why you would defend Poppy Bush on this or think that he wouldn't have beseeched a young, ambitious governor to ignore the traffic at Mena. especially a centrist Dem governor who sided with Reagan-Bush contra policies.

[L. Coyote]

32. NO. If you don't understand what I said, read it again.

[blm]

33. Why do you think American Spectator has anything to do with my postings on CIA

drugrunning and Poppy Bush's MAJOR role in those operations while Bill Clinton's MINOR role at that time was as governor of the state used as a hub for the drugrunning?

[JHB]

35. Delusion about Mena is trying to make Clinton the villain...

...not that there were CIA operations going on there.

[AntiFascist]

36. I would agree that it is important to look out for...

right-wing reports that attempt to demonize Bill Clinton. The facts, however, may be much more complex than is being relayed here. Bill Clinton may be relatively innocent, but Hillary's law firm may also have had CIA ties related to BCCI. Also, her father may have had mob connections involving money laundering (and airport operations?). See my post under OctaFish's thread for evidence that there was often a close relationship between the mafia and CIA.

[blm]

39. We know Rose Law Firm had BCCI figures as clients including

Poppy Bush's good friend Jackson Stephens who was a big part of Arkansas politics as well as national politics, and also staked a little company known as WalMart.

[JackRiddler]

40. Different ideologies (on the surface), one Mob. nt

[blm]

41. I believe RW 'fixers' needed an excuse to go into Rose to do some SCRUBBING for BushInc

and BCCI - and alot of the antiClinton stuff was convenient for the dog and pony show and the press eagerly jumping on those distractions.

[JackRiddler]

42. Honestly, to what extent was Clinton complicit in his own demolition?

I've always been suspicious of the public "I did not have sex with that woman" statement -- impossible he did not know where that would lead. Why did he facilitate the impeachment process? I've wondered the extent to which there was a collaboration to create a distraction away from the larger scandals that would have brought down the secret government (Clinton would have been the least of it), and also to distract from what was actually going on while the country was put on the all-Monika regimen: murder-bombings in Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia...

Another angle: Ruppert has an interesting pre-9/11 video on the impeachment, in which he notes that on the same day the articles of impeachment were introduced, Clinton forced the release of Part 2 of the IG report on CIA drugs. In effect, he may be saying: go far enough with this nonsense and I'll bring out Mena.

[karynnj]

43. Actually, Clinton was effective at misleading there

In spite of all earlier scandals, I believed him. No one would expect that a woman would keep a stained dress - especially at her mother's house. At that point, it was he said, she said and he worked to destroy any little credibility she had.

[JackRiddler]

49. I find it impossible to believe he thought he was going to get away with that.

Especially with that brusque, unfeeling tone - "that woman" - at a point when he would have had a long, long time to consider his words.

At any rate, I'll be the first to admit speculation is usually useless.

[blm]

45. Interesting - One of the points I always make is that we need to find out EVERY

detail of what Congress was changing in our laws, like banking legislation, that was going unnoticed and undiscussed while the dog and pony shows were going on.

[karynnj]

5. The link to Kerry's chapter is fascinating

It really changes the perspective of William Weld, who really stone walled on all of this. In 2006, he tried to get the Republican nomination against Spritzer. He failed partially because of his involement with a fraudulent "college". He was a very popular MA governor, who was really well liked by the Boston Globe.

It is interesting that Clinton spoke highly of him before mentioning the he didn't want to lose Kerry.

[blm]

9. Bill Clinton AND the Boston Globe heralded William Weld - a Bush family fixer

while they would say and do anything to undermine Kerry.

[pberq]

13. thanks for posting - great article

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

14. He was a martyr,...destroyed because he injected truth, something necessary to democracy.

We don't live in a democracy, though.

I sincerely do HOPE his sacrifice and the persecution he suffered will be recorded in human history.

I HOPE.

But, listen people,...we live in an empire, now,...and while the arrogant sickheads 'create' reality, historians will be left to sort it all out, most likely in accordance with whatever the power-mongers say was the truth.

x(

[blm]

20. The closed government protectors are winning because they have convinced enough Dems

that it is OK.

And THAT is why a Bush2 was even able to gain control of the WH....even AFTER Webb's 1996 report on CIA drugrunning.

Funny how official DC protected Bush and targeted Webb then. BushInc should have been destroyed, not Webb and any investigative reporter trying to tell the truth to fellow citizens.

[flashl]

15. Gary was a HERO

[Octafish]

17. DEA Agents Agree: CIA means Cocaine Importation Agency

From ConsortiumNews:

...The CIA inspector general found that not only had the contras helped the cocaine cartels get their goods into the United States, but that the CIA and the Reagan administration had helped cover up the evidence...The CIA published the first part of Inspector General Hitz’s findings on Jan. 29, 1998. Despite a largely exculpatory press release, Hitz’s Volume One admitted that not only were many of Webb’s allegations true but that he actually understated the seriousness of the contra-drug crimes and the CIA’s knowledge...

That's a lot of wrongdoing. Here are three DEA agents on the record, who REPORTED CIA drug running and got fingered as whistleblowers:

DEA Agents Agree: CIA means Cocaine Importation Agency

Robert Parry's pegged these traitors for what they are for 25 years. All he's got for his trouble is broke.

I guess that's better than what Gary Webb got. Such is the fate of a real journalist in today's "democracy": Those who tell the truth get an early grave.

[L. Coyote]

22. When I was in C Am, looking into this just before Iran-Contra, all I got was stabbed nine times

My life was saved by locals acting quickly to stop the bleeding.

Fortunately, the CIA and the USA coke cartel (the Contra mercenaries army) did not overthrow the Nicaraguan goverment.
They murdered Americans trying, including Ben Linder and Linda Frasier, and we still need to drag them before the bar of justice.

[CanSocDem]

24. The recent news suggests....

...that they feel quite justified in setting their own "bar of justice".

Just the same, a hearty cheer for your efforts promoting 'the public interest'.


.

[DCKit]

26. Thus leading to St. Ronnie's "War on Drugs"....

A quadrupling of the incarcerated population, a whole new, private, corporate prison industry, a hugely expanded FBI, ATF and DEA and a fast lane to a police state, courtesy of the Rethuglickins.

Even five years ago this was CT/tin foil territory, now....

[L. Coyote]

27. You mean Nixon's War on Political Enemies? Count the missing Florida voters

in 2000. That Nixonian trick, imprisoning and disenfranchising black liberals for their cultural traits, made stealing the 2000 election possible.

[blm]

50. There's also their trick of diverting the attention of crimes onto Democrats -

they commit election fraud and charge a Democrat with it. They run cocaine out of Mena and blamed the Dem governor. All to stop the REAL stories about BushInc's own crimes.

[Blue_Tires]

25. ttt

[riverdeep]

44. Gary Webb, in his own words-

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “We’re killing the other stories. We’re not going to do any more investigation of this topic. And we’re going to run this mealy-mouthed column that pretends we don’t know anything else, tuck our tails between our legs and slink off into the sunset. That’s what you’ve got in mind?”

“You and I have very different views of this situation,” he said quietly.

“You got that right.”

The result of the stormy meeting was that Ceppos rewrote his column, removing the obvious factual errors but leaving the rest virtually unchanged.

“No matter how many times the words and phrases are tweaked, the end result is still a sham,” I responded in a memo. “You’re sitting on information that supports what I wrote and pretending to be unaware of it.”

At a final meeting before the column ran, I predicted that the mainstream press would read the column as a retraction, one that covered everything the series had revealed. “You run this, and all we’ll hear is, ‘The Mercury News has admitted it isn’t true! The Contras weren’t dealing cocaine! The CIA had nothing to do with it!’ And you know as well as I do, that’s not true.”

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2834

A fine excerpt from his book 'Dark Alliance', that shows how cowardly the MSM has been for some time.

[blm]

46. Exactly - and Webb knew there was ONE person who would open the books

and vindicate him....finally. John Kerry - the only senator to acknowledge the truth that Webb wrote because it matched in details many of the revelations he uncovered in his invvestigation hearings - investigations the MAINSTREAM MEDIA ignored. This is what FAIR wrote AT THE TIME in 1988:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1190


Webb would NOT be dead right now if we had a Dem party that secured the election process so Kerry's votes could be counted.

[riverdeep]

47. Gary Webb was a hero, a goddamned, honest to goodness hero.

You want to know why we get journalists who will avoid any story that is controversial according to the party line? Why TV journalists, festooned with flag pins, sit with a frozen smile on their face as the administration lies to them right to their face? Or why what was obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense, that going into Iraq was madness times ten, wasn't to news journalists?

Gary Webb. He and others like him lurk as the bogeyman whenever journalists start to get a shot of courage. His paper left him out to dry, abandoned him, his marriage crumbled, his reputation shot, and eventually, he died-some say self-inflicted, others say he was taken out. So, Mr. and Ms. Reporter, are you really sure you want to run that story?

[blm]

48. Yep. I had that conversation with a heroic reporter from Knight-Ridder's DC desk

in 2005 (now McClatchy :() and what happened to a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter like Webb as a targeted takedown by official DC and their mediawhores in the NYT, LATimes, and WaPost was a lesson in the reality of how ANY honest reporter will get smeared.

Look how the press and official DC turned honest lawmaker Henry Gonzalez into a doddering old man for daring to uncover Iraqgate, and turned Kerry who had uncovered and investigated more government corruption than any lawmaker in modern history into an empty suit senator taking up space in the senate.

The best lawmakers and reporters are also the most vilified.