U.S. Journalism's Shameful Anniversary (Gary Webb - contra-cocaine scandal

One year ago, reporter Gary Webb – his life in ruins – killed himself with a handgun. The tragedy made him the final victim of a long-running cover-up protecting the Reagan-Bush administration’s tolerance of drug trafficking by its client army, the Nicaraguan contras.

But Webb’s death also could be blamed on the fecklessness of modern American journalism. The nation’s leading newspapers had driven the 49-year-old father of three to his desperate act rather than admit that they had bungled one of the biggest stories of the Reagan-Bush era – the contra-cocaine scandal.

Webb might be alive today if the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times had shown the decency to explain the importance of what the Central Intelligence Agency’s inspector general acknowledged in a two-volume report in 1998.

In that investigation – sparked by Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series for the San Jose Mercury-News in 1996 – CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz found that the spy agency hid evidence of contra-cocaine trafficking in the 1980s, even disrupting federal investigations that threatened to expose the secret.

...

With his career shattered, his marriage fell apart. By fall 2004, he found himself living in a rental property on the verge of eviction. On the night of Dec. 9, he typed out four suicide notes for his family, laid out a certificate for his cremation, put a note on the door suggesting a call to 911, and removed his father’s handgun from a box.

Webb then shot himself in the head, though the first shot was not lethal, so he fired once more. His body was found the next day after movers arrived and followed the instructions from the note on the door.


http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/120905.html

Uh...yeah... :tinfoilhat:

but I love hearing all these twisted explanations about how people shoot themselves in the head multiple times on a regular basis.

:eyes:

CONTRA COCAINE
1997 (10 minutes)
Watch NBC news report about drugs and the CIA - features Ricky Ross, Cele Castillo, John Kerry, and Gary Webb. From AmericanDrugWar.com
Download 22MB
http://www.americandrugwar.com/media/source/news/ricky_ross.mov

Site-
http://mysite.verizon.net/res7dhyg/documentaries_2.html

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Gary Webb - In his own words

A tribute to the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who broke the story of the CIA's involvement in the importation of cocaine into the US.

Webb died in December 2004 from self-inflicted gunshots to the head

quicktime player
http://www.guerrillanews.com/videos/viewer.php?id=30&spd=hi

Site-
http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_CIA.htm

and government agencies put every obstacle they could to thwart him.

Alot of the stories that many people used as sources to attack Kerry during the election were PLANTED back at this time to discredit Kerry. This is where all of a sudden, Kerry turned into an aloof loner and then, just as suddemly was turned into a showboat looking for the limelight - all to diminish the import of his investigation and tarnish his credibility with other press and lawmakers not eager to be smeared along with him.

My take has long been that there were two journalists who NEEDED Kerry to take office - Webb and Parry - because, as victims of the BFEE vengeance and smears themselves, they knew that he was the ONLY lawmaker who would open the books on IranContra and BCCI to the public.