Gary Webb, former investigative reporter for the Mercury News newspaper and award winning journalist who uncovered the nefarious CIA links to the burgeoning cocaine and crack epidemics of the 90s, was found dead in a suburban Sacramento home recently, reportedly of a suicide. Webb, 49, also wrote the best selling book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, which told the sordid tale of how the U.S. government, through the CIA, allowed its assets in a Nicaraguan Contras to smuggle in cocaine to Los Angeles to fund the Contra Wars against the Sandinista government in Managua.
Webb’s body was found on Friday, December the 10th, 2004, about 8:20 in the morning, when a moving company arrived at his home. According to published reports, a note was posted on the front door reading, “Please do not enter. Call 911, and ask for an ambulance.” Webb’s exposé of the CIA crack connection, which began as a Mercury News exclusive, resulted in a flood of criticisms from the nation’s major papers, including the New York Times, the LA Times and The Washington Post. Indeed, after a time, even the editors of the Mercury News critiqued some parts of the story, but over time, many, if not most, of the facts brought to life by his earth shattering series have been either admitted by the CIA itself or supported by other sources.
Webb’s resignation from the newspaper about a year and a half later marked the power of the press to discipline one of its own for committing an unpardonable sin: uncovering the actions of the powerful- in this case, the nation’s intelligence agencies. Once again, the media ate its own to protect power and privilege. It may very well be true that Webb committed suicide, but it seems, at the very least, odd to post a note on one’s door before doing so.
We know that Webb got it mostly right: (a) the CIA-created Contras had been selling cocaine to finance their dirty war against the Sandinistas, (b) the Contras had sold coke in LA ghettos, and they supplied the area’s biggest crack dealer, (c) people in the U.S. government knew about it at the time and did nothing, (d) these sales fueled and powered the first major crack cocaine market in the US, and finally, (e) this crack explosion fueled the growth and national expansion of the Crips and the Bloods as crews to push the crack game across the nation. In Webb’s words, “It wasn’t so much a conspiracy that I had outlined as it was a chain reaction: bad ideas compounded by stupid political decisions and rotten historical timing.” From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio
