Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. His victory in the event last year gave him . His. Few reporters I've known could match his nose for an investigative story. OR was he like Epstein? border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd; For two years, Blum and Kerry supervised the interrogation of dozens of witnesses who described CIA-related drug deals in central America. [54] Editors at the paper, on the other hand, felt that Webb had failed to tell them about information that contradicted the series's claims and that he "responded to concerns not with reasoned argument, but with accusations of us selling him out. "If I had one dream for you," he wrote, "it was that you would go into journalism and carry on the kind of work I did - fighting, with all your might, the oppression and bigotry and stupidity and greed that surrounds us. After his resignation from The Mercury News, Webb expanded the "Dark Alliance" series into a book that responded to the criticism of the series and described his experiences writing the story and dealing with the controversy. [65], After leaving The Mercury News, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature. [67], Webb later moved to the State Assembly's Office of Majority Services. And when he got something in his head, he was determined to do it. "Gary Webb was left to fend for himself. He received his medical degree from American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine and has been in practice for more than. He also stated "the series presented dangerous ideas" by suggesting "crimes of state had been committed" (i.e. "But Gary thought that if something was true, it should be told. The film broadened the debate which led to the decriminalisation of . By a fortunate coincidence of timing, the report was released on a day when the Monica Lewinsky scandal dominated every front page in the country. The third article, by Mitchell and Fulwood, covered the effects of crack on African-Americans and how it affected their reaction to some of the rumors that arose after the "Dark Alliance" series. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. .article-native-ad { But, Ceppos wrote, the series "did not meet our standards" in four areas. She acted opposite Dirk Bogarde in the groundbreaking film Victim (Basil Dearden, 1961), as the unsuspecting wife of a barrister who is a closet homosexual. Age 43 years. Actor Jeremy Renner portrays Webb.[83]. Why bring up old white people atrocities against black people now? In the six years he worked at its Sacramento office, he won the HL Mencken award, for a story exposing corruption in California's drug enforcement agency, and his Pulitzer prize - won jointly, as part of a Mercury News team covering the 1990 Loma Prieta earthquake. "Looking back," she says, "I think Gary had been obsessed with suicide for some time. "Which was that, if he wanted a future within the political establishment of the United States, then he should concentrate on other aspects of life.". He was laid off in February 2004 when Assembly Member Fabian Nez was elected Speaker. To show this, the series focused on three men: Ricky Ross, Oscar Danilo Blandn, and Norwin Meneses. Attend in Miami or virtually, Sept. 1114. The drugs went to South Central LA. [52] Webb was allowed to keep working on the story and made one more trip to Nicaragua in March. 3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. Relationships with other women ended badly. "[75], Jonathan Krim, The Mercury News editor who recruited Webb from The Plain Dealer and who supervised The Mercury News internal review of "Dark Alliance," told AJR editor Paterno that Webb "had all the qualities you'd want in a reporter: curious, dogged, a very high sense of wanting to expose wrongdoing and to hold private and public officials accountable." He was found dead on Friday morning in what the police said was an apparent suicide. Emma Lee Webb, age 75, of Crossett, AR passed away Monday February 27, 2023, in her home surrounded by her family. "[64] Webb's longest response to the controversy was in "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On," a chapter he contributed to an anthology of press criticism: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. When she got indignant," she adds, "he went to meet her.". When Webb's body was discovered last December, Bell says, this last item had been dumped in the trash. Talking about his wife, Mariah Webb is a nurse who also educates about essential products . On one road trip, in 2001, he came off the motorcycle and split his helmet open. "I told Gary not to go near this story," his source replies, in an emotional voice. [31] In their front-page article, reporters Roberto Suro and Walter Pincus wrote that "available information" did not support the series's claims and that "the rise of crack" was "a broad-based phenomenon" driven in numerous places by diverse players. The first article, by Katz, developed a different picture of the origins of the crack trade than "Dark Alliance" had described, with more gangs and smugglers participating. The reports rejected the series's main claims but were critical of some CIA and law enforcement actions. "They had him writing obituaries," she said. And it was ignored by the US media, for all of those reasons. He was preceded in death by his wife, Melody Webb; parents and three brothers, Albert, Duane and Ronald. The other article, citing interviews with current and former intelligence and law-enforcement officials, questioned the importance of the drug dealers discussed in the series, both in the crack cocaine trade and in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras' fight against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The review was conducted primarily by editor Jonathan Krim and reporter Pete Carey, who had written the paper's first published analysis of the series. [9], Webb's first major investigative work appeared in 1980, when the Cincinnati Post published "The Coal Connection," a seventeen-part series by Webb and Post reporter Thomas Scheffey. Because Blandn cooperated with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), he spent only 28 months in prison, became a paid government informant, and received permanent resident status. He is from United States. Cuts and amendments were made at the request of Ceppos, executive editor of the Mercury News, and Webb's immediate editor Dawn Garcia, among others. Webb, Bell explains, had written four letters explaining what he was about to do - one to her, one to each of their three children - and mailed them immediately before he killed himself. There is a CIA connection and I can demonstrate it.'". Taken during the London Open House 2014 event. Gary's documentation is awesome and his work ethic is unbelievable. The article resulted in a lawsuit against Webb's paper which the plaintiffs won. } According to Walt Bogdanich, a former colleague on the Plain Dealer who has won two Pulitzers and now works for The New York Times, Webb was the best retriever of information from public records he has ever seen. The first article in "Dark Alliance" that discussed the failure of law enforcement agencies to prosecute Blandn and Meneses had mentioned several cases. The first shot went through his face, and exited at his left cheek. Sue remarried two years ago. Pictured as a teenage fan: Gary Numan with Gemma, his now wife, getting his autograph in 1985 years before they got together Gary was 600,000 in debt, and on the verge of going under in. "He was sleeping more, he hated to get up in the morning, he started having a lot of motorcycle. Webb, whose plans to become a journalist had begun when he was 13, but never included equine death notices, resigned from the Mercury News a few months later. Webb was an assertive figure who drove fast cars and powerful motorcycles, hung heavy metal posters in his office and, at certain times in his life, smoked a fair amount of cannabis. [59], The first volume of the report found no evidence that "any past or present employee of CIA, or anyone acting on behalf of CIA, had any direct or indirect dealing" with Ross, Blandn, or Meneses or that any of the other figures mentioned in "Dark Alliance" were ever employed by or associated with or contacted by the agency. Gary Webb became, quite unfairly, the victim of one of the most extraordinary examples of piling on by the mainstream press, ever.". Webb established incontrovertible links * between Ricky Ross and Blandn who, two years later, would betray Ross to the authorities. When I first heard the news, I tell Bell, I was inclined to believe the conspiracy theories that still proliferate on the internet, suggesting that Webb had been assassinated - either by one of the drug dealers he'd met while writing Dark Alliance, or by the intelligence services who were supposed to police them. Some editors regarded him as stubborn to the point of insolence. .article-native-ad svg { [62], Examining the support that Meneses and Blandn gave to the local Contra organization in San Francisco, the report concluded that it was "not sufficient to finance the organization" and did not consist of "millions," contrary to the claims of the "Dark Alliance" series. [35] The second article, by McManus, was the longest of the series and dealt with the role of the Contras in the drug trade and CIA knowledge of drug activities by the Contras. I ask Bell. Despite some hyped phrasing, "Dark Alliance" appears to be praiseworthy investigative reporting."[47]. His father was a Marine sergeant, and the family moved frequently, as his career took him to new assignments. Webb put in a call to Robert Parry. We are in the living room of Bell's house just outside Sacramento, California. [39] Carey's critique appeared in mid-October and went through several of the Post's criticisms of the series, including the importance of Blandn's drug ring in spreading crack, questions about Blandn's testimony in court, and how specific series allegations about CIA involvement had been, giving Webb's responses. When Ross discovered the market for crack in Los Angeles, he began buying cocaine from Blandn. Part of what makes OConnors article so compelling are the candid thoughts of Webbs former wife Sue Stokes. Look at the way the US press reports on Iraq. In a three-part series published in the San Jose Mercury News, "Dark Alliance," Webb alleges that not only was the CIA aware cocaine sold in the U.S. during the 1980s was funding the Nicaraguan Contras, they were complicit in its distribution. It was also posted on The Mercury News website with additional information, including documents cited in the series and audio recordings of people quoted in the articles. The February 2000 report by the House Intelligence Committee in turn considered the book's claims as well as the series' claims. [10] The series, which examined the murder of a coal company president with ties to organized crime, won the national Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for reporting from a small newspaper. 2) The series's estimate of the money involved was presented as fact instead of as an estimate. During and immediately after the controversy over "Dark Alliance," Webb's earlier writing was examined closely. Investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of stories in 1996 for the San Jose Mercury News that documented the US-government-backed Contra insurgents' drug pipeline into Los Angeles. Webb's then-wife Sue remembers coming home from the shops and finding her. Ceppos and Garcia have long since lost any taste for public discussion of "Dark Alliance". The CIA Inspector General's report, commissioned in response to the allegations in "Dark Alliance", was published in the autumn of 1998. It was just more than he could take.".
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