ARCHIVE – Gary Webb: The Man Who Knew Too Much

Source – ultraculture.org

– In January, it was revealed that the DEA allows Mexico’s biggest cartel to traffic drugs in the US in exchange for information. In 1996, investigative reporter Gary Webb broke the prior story that the CIA was implicated in trafficking crack cocaine into the United States. It’s time to take another look at Webb’s revelations.

In mid-January, the Mexican newspaper El Universal alleged that the US DEA allowed the notorious Sinaloa cartel, considered Mexico’s most powerful drug traffickers, to operate with impunity in exchange for informing on rival cartels—smuggling billions of dollars of drugs without interference, previously including nearly 200 tons of cocaine and heroin between 1990 and 2008.

El Universal also alleged that Operation Fast and Furious—in which Arizona ATF agents allowed arms sales to cartel members in order to track them—was part of a larger scheme to arm and finance the cartel in exchange for information on rival cartels.

The DEA’s strategy with Sinaloa is one that America has also allegedly used in Colombia, Cambodia, Thailand and Afghanistan. And while El Universal‘s revelations were barely touched upon by the mainstream media, for those who have followed drug war policy, they come as no surprise.

Gary Webb: The Man Who Knew Too Much

Let’s rewind the clock to August 1996.

Gary Webb is a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News. He’s 41, and he’s been writing for the paper since 1988. He’s made his way to California after dropping out of journalism school to write for local papers in Cleveland and Kentucky. He’s already begun to make a name for himself as an investigative reporter, exposing computer issues at the California DMV and freeway retrofitting issues that surfaced during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

But that’s small stuff compared to what Webb is about to deliver to his bosses, and the public: he has a new three-part, 20,000 word investigation called “Dark Alliance.” For those paying attention, it will radically shock the foundations of what we think of as American politics. It will also effectively end Webb’s promising career—and soon, his life.

According to Webb, the CIA was well aware of what was happening, and allowed shipments of cocaine into the US; he also alleged that White House personnel, including Oliver North, were involved.

Here’s what he reveals: During the 1980s, Nicaraguan cartels were freely selling crack in Los Angeles. The funds they were raising from distributing this most ruinous of drugs were directly funneled back to the Contras in Nicaragua—the Contras that the Reagan administration and CIA were covertly supporting, even though aid had been explicitly banned by Congress. According to Webb, the CIA was well aware of what was happening, and allowed shipments of cocaine into the US; he also alleges that White House personnel, including Oliver North, are involved. North had previously arranged for the clandestine sale of arms to Iran and the funneling of the proceeds back to the Contras (he currently has his own show on Fox News). None of these people informed the DEA about any of these actions.

The article causes immense scandal—it also pushes 1.3 million hits a day back to the San Jose Mercury News website… and this is 1996. That kind of traffic would break many sites’ web hosting now, in Internet-ubiquitous 2014. But this is when most Americans are still on AOL, if online at all.

The spin doctors immediately leap into action, and Webb comes under attack from the big dogs: the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Times all rush to debunk his findings, often attacking Webb directly. (Sound Snowden/Assange/Manning-esque?) The Los Angeles Times plays the race card, claiming that Webb alleged the CIA was trying to addict African Americans to crack, which he did not. Webb claims that the DC, New York and LA papers are acting as mouthpieces for the government (much as Glenn Greenwald has done throughout the Snowden scandal). But they can’t hold the story back: it’s one of the first times the Internet undermines the power of the mainstream media in allowing a story to spread.

Under heavy fire, the Mercury News hangs Webb out to dry. His editors aren’t contacting him about the story by January 1997; the paper’s executive editor writes an editorial criticizing Webb’s work in May. Webb is reassigned to a suburban wing of the paper that’s 150 miles away from where he lives. Unable to handle six hours of commute a day, he quits the Mercury in December 1997. His career in journalism is effectively over: he never gets a job at a daily newspaper again, and though he keeps writing, he can’t support his family. He goes to work for the California Assembly Speaker’s Office of Member Services; after being laid off in 2003, he finally gets a job writing again, at the Sacramento News and Review. But he still can’t keep his family afloat, and loses his home.

Then, in December 10, 2004, he turns up dead. It’s ruled a suicide, due to years of depression from being economically marginalized. The coroner finds a suicide note, and additional notes mailed to his family members.

Oddly enough, however, he’s got two gunshot wounds to the head. Be that what it may.

He Who Shines With the Brightest Light Will Cast the Darkest Shadow

Though an initial investigation into the CIA/Contra link by the Los Angeles County Sheriff failed to substantiate Webb’s findings, later investigations did, including a CIA internal investigation. A 1982 letter between the CIA and the Justice Department, revealed by Representative Maxine Waters in 1998, showed that the CIA had been legally freed from the responsibility of reporting drug smuggling by its assets (including the Contras and the Afghan rebels who would later become Al Qaeda).

A 1998 Justice Department report also revealed that the Reagan administration did nothing to stop Contra drug trafficking, and that the CIA shared nothing of its activities with other law enforcement agencies. Further CIA investigations revealed that the Reagan/Bush White House protected 50+ Contras and drug traffickers, with the CIA preventing information on drug crimes from going to the Justice Department, Congress or factions in the CIA likely to be concerned. CIA internal reporting even found that the pyramid of drug trafficking and money laundering went all the way to the National Security Council under Oliver North, and that this had been routinely covered up.

Even though all of this was validated by 1998, it was already too late for Webb, the shot messenger. Before his death, however, he succeeded in publishing a book expanding his reporting—Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.

(By the way, check out this review of the book by somebody claiming to have been a CIA case officer in Central America at the time of Iran/Contra—if it’s real, it’s almost as shocking as the allegations themselves, painting a horrific picture of “the way things really work.”)

After his death—only after his death—the mainstream media began to change its assessment of Webb and how he had been treated. The LA Times claimed “Gary got too much blame” and called him a “great investigative reporter” in 2006, despite having rushed to hammer in the nails ten years earlier. A movie about Gary Webb and the “Dark Alliance” story, entitled Kill the Messenger, is scheduled for release this year, starring Jeremy Renner as Webb.

If anything, the connection between federal law enforcement and drug trafficking appears to have gotten worse.

So clearly, the Webb scandal is a relic of a darker time, of the long shadow of Reagan, Bush, Oliver North and the Cold War, and we can put this behind us, right?

Not quite, as we see from this month’s revelations about the Sinaloa cartel. If anything, the connection between federal law enforcement and drug trafficking appears to have gotten worse. And as we’ve seen from the treatment of whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, the US government is still no fan of messengers. In fact, the Obama administration has aggressively prosecuted journalists and brought more whistleblowers to trial than any other administration in United States history.

Perhaps the Jeremy Renner movie will go some way towards alerting the American public to what has been done—and continues to be done—in their name. But until the time when the same outrage erupts over covert intelligence agency activities like CIA and DEA drug trafficking that has erupted, say, over NSA spying (and to say that the American public is angry over NSA spying is *highly generous*), the Dark Alliance continues.

(For more: Gary Webb’s Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion)