Investigative journalist Gary Webb speaks to a packed house on the CIA's connection to drug trafficking, and the failure of the media to expose the truth.
25 2015-06-14 by [deleted]
When the Nicaraguan contras began to covertly fund their war against the Sandanistas by selling drugs and guns to California street gangs, the Central Intelligence Agency turned a blind eye. While black neighborhoods were being ravaged by the crack cocaine plague, CIA operatives actively participated in this devastating drug explosion, protected from prosecution by a secret agreement between the Department of Justice and the CIA. The bastards knew it was happening, and they did nothing to stop it. Once again, human rights and human life took a back seat to "national security" considerations.
Nevertheless, thanks to investigative journalists like Bob Parry and Gary Webb, the story got out. When Webb's "Dark Alliance" series was released on the Internet by the San Jose Mercury News, the scandal ripped across USENET and the Web like a wildfire. Yet three years later, we're still fighting to get all the answers from a government that would prefer to flush the whole matter as quickly as possible.
On January 16, 1999, Webb spoke to a packed house at the First United Methodist Church in Eugene, Oregon. Approximately 300 people listened with rapt attention as Webb recounted his investigation of the CIA's connections to contra drug trafficking. Webb's presentation was followed by an intense question-and-answer session, during which he candidly answered questions about the "Dark Alliance" controversy, his departure from the San Jose Mercury News, and CIA/contra/crack secrets that still await revelation.
3 comments
3 untumulted 2015-06-14
This is what wiki used to say under Gary Webb:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb
Webb alleged that the 1997 backlash was a form of media manipulation. "The government side of the story is coming through the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post", he stated. "They use the giant corporate press rather than saying anything directly. If you work through friendly reporters on major newspapers, it comes off as The New York Times saying it and not a mouthpiece of the CIA."[19] In 2004, Webb wrote a long piece, "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On", describing the role the Internet played in bringing the "Dark Alliance" story to international attention in 1996, and describing at length the backlash against the story, at first externally through the larger newspapers, later internally by the paper's editors:
I found myself involved in hours-long conversations with editors that bordered on the surreal.
"How do we know for sure that these drug dealers were the first big ring to start selling crack in South Central?" editor Jonathan Krim pressed me during one such confab. "Isn't it possible there might have been others before them?"
"There might have been a lot of things, Jon, but we're only supposed to deal in what we know," I replied. "The crack dealers I interviewed said they were the first. Cops in South Central said they were the first. and that they controlled the entire market. They wrote it in reports that we have. I haven't found anything saying otherwise, not one single name, and neither did the New York Times, the Washington Post or the L.A. Times. So what's the issue here?"
"But how can we say for sure they were the first?" Krim persisted. "Isn't it possible there might have been someone else and they never got caught and no one ever knew about them? In that case, your story would be wrong."
I had to take a deep breath to keep from shouting. "If you're asking me whether I accounted for people who might never have existed, the answer is no," I said. "I only considered people with names and faces. I didn't take phantom drug dealers into account."[20]
James Aucoin, a communications professor who specializes in the history of investigative reporting, wrote: "In the case of Gary Webb's charges against the CIA and the Contras, the major dailies came after him. Media institutions are now part of the establishment and they have a lot invested in that establishment."[19]
They've changed the page completely, now instead of saying the major papers went after him and then later apologized (the apology went to great lengths to refute his claims), it says they kind of supported him. I copied the text just over six months ago.
2 [deleted] 2015-06-14
[deleted]
1 IanPhlegming 2015-06-14
We should organize a team of people to monitor a few key entries, and keep changing them. And maybe we can go after a few others as well. All of these changes have to be monitored. We should demand that peoples' real names be used, etc.
3 TheAmericanPharaoh 2015-06-14
RIP