Gary Webb Resigns from the San Jose Mercury News Gary Numan's superfan wife had 'body lift' and exploding breasts font-size: 34px; They were outraged by the series's charges.[27]. Writing on the Los Angeles Times opinion page, Schou said, "Webb asserted, improbably, that the Blandn-Meneses-Ross drug ring opened 'the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles,' helping to 'spark a crack explosion in urban America.' } "He thought I was being cowardly. But as Krim told Webb's biographer Nick Schou, "The zeal that helped make Gary a relentless reporter was coupled with an inability to question himself, to entertain the notion that he might have erred. Webb made his early reputation as a reporter with the Plain Dealer before going on to fame and turmoil at the San Jose Mercury News. Going to the CIA to ask if they've ever profited from drug sales in Los Angeles, I suggested to Kornbluh, is rather like asking Fagin if he has ever picked a pocket. Steven Webb . When he told me, I said it sounded crazy. A revised version was published in 1999 that incorporated Webb's response to the CIA and Justice Department reports. The second article described Blandn's background and how he began smuggling cocaine to support the Contras. An editorial in the Times, while criticizing the series for making "unsubstantiated charges", conceded that it did find "drug-smuggling and dealing by Nicaraguans with at least tentative connections to the Contras" and called for further investigation. He was so depressed. The first one, "The California Story," was issued in a classified version on December 17, 1997, and in an unclassified version on January 29, 1998. "As a PhD student, McCoy went to Vietnam and built an absolutely damning case about the CIA's involvement with trafficking heroin. The Warning in Gary Webb's Death - Consortium News When Webb pressed the Mercury News to allow him to investigate the LA connection further, his own newspaper issued a retraction which earned its editor, Jerry Ceppos, wide praise from rival publications, but effectively disowned Webb, who then suffered the kind of corporate lynching that reporters are usually expected to dispense rather than endure. Gary was born Sept. 4, 1947, to Percy and Pauline (Haas) Webb. He crashed and shredded his clothes, face and body on a barbed-wire fence." [43] He did this in a column that appeared on November 3, defending the series, but also committing the paper to a review of major criticisms. "Looking back," she says, "I think Gary had been obsessed with suicide for some time. On Dec. 9, 2004, the 49-year-old Gary Stephen Webb, Pulitzer prize-winning US investigative journalist, typed out suicide notes to his ex-wife and his three children; he laid out a certificate for his cremation; he taped a note on the door telling movers - who were coming the next morning to move him out of his rental house near Sacramento - to Webb's pieces were not dealing with nameless peasants slaughtered in some distant republic, but demonstrated a clear link between the CIA and the suppliers of the gangs delivering crack to the ghetto of Watts, in South Central Los Angeles. After examining the investigations and prosecutions of the main figures in the series, Blandn, Meneses and Ross, it concluded that "Although the investigations suffered from various problems of communication and coordination, their successes and failures were determined by the normal dynamics that affect the success of scores of investigations of high-level drug traffickers These factors, rather than anything as spectacular as a systematic effort by the CIA or any other intelligence agency to protect the drug trafficking activities of Contra supporters, determined what occurred in the cases we examined. He placed his keys and ID cards on the kitchen table, together with a cremation certificate he had purchased for himself. The Los Angeles Times and other major papers published articles suggesting the "Dark Alliance" claims were overstated and, in November 1996, Jerome Ceppos, the executive editor at Mercury News, wrote about being "in the eye of the storm". In a long review of the series' claims in The Baltimore Sun, Weinberg said "I think the critics have been far too harsh. "By the end of his life he was just in a lot of pain," said Webb's ex-wife, Susan Bell. Born January 3rd, 1943 in Montreal, Quebec, he was the son of the late John Douglas Webb and the late Jeannie (Penny) Hardie Penman. Who Is Gary Webb's Wife? [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. Webb was born in Corona, California. The reports of the three federal investigations into the claims of "Dark Alliance" were not released until over a year after the series's publication. [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. 71K views 8 years ago Gary Webb's son Ian talks about the film in which Jeremy Renner plays his late journalist father. And this is not a happy story - or," she adds, "a little one.". Cooper Webb Wife Name Revealed. Dr. Gary A. Webb, MD | Marco Island, FL | Geriatrician | US News Doctors Gary Webb | American journalist | Britannica Webb's series was published on the Mercury News's fledgling website, but it wasn't exactly an instant sensation. At the commemorative service for Webb, held at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento, Bell read out the letter Webb had written to his son Eric, now 17. In the final few months of his life, Bell says, Webb became increasingly withdrawn. Because the gentile (european caucasian, lepers, fake jews) or white folks agenda has always been to destroy the black man, ever since pharaoh tried to murder Christ by murdering Hebrew babies, until now. In and out of work, he had a reputation for taking risks. [63]Dark Alliance was a 1998 Pen/Newman's Own First Amendment Award Finalist, 1998 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, 1999 Bay Area Book Reviewers Award Finalist, and 1999 Firecracker Alternative Booksellers Award Winner in the Politics category. George Webb and Paul Cottrell have begun a weekly series on CoronaVirus now, Mondays at 5PM, EST on paul Cottrell's Rumble Channel. After Webb's death, a collection of his stories from before and after the "Dark Alliance" series was published. margin-top: 10px; He was laid off in February 2004 when Assembly Member Fabian Nez was elected Speaker. 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. Working in San Jose would have meant daily contact with what Bell describes as "people he did not want to be with". According to a description of Webb's injuries in the Los Angeles Times, he shot himself with a .38 revolver, which he placed near his right ear. The series follows the stories of several characters whose lives are fated to intersect including CIA operative Teddy McDonald who helps to secure guns for the Contras. . Why Journalist Gary Webb Died - LewRockwell The series revolves around the first crack epidemic and its impact on the culture of the city. Gary Webb, 64, Oroville, Wash., died Oct. 30, 2021. But Webb had one huge blind side: He was fundamentally a man of passion, not of fairness. The attack on Gary Webb and his series in the San Jose Mercury News remains one of the most venomous and factually inane assaults on a professional journalist's competence in living memory . Gary Webb's income source is mostly from being a successful . That was just the way he was.". And "we really didn't do anything to advance his work or illuminate much to the story, and it was a really kind of tawdry exercise. According to Schou, the investigation "confirmed key chunks of Webb's allegations." Family and friends will gather to celebrate his life of 59 years at 10 a.m. on Thursday, March 7, 2019, at Lamesa Continue Reading Leave a Message, Share a Memory "Gary didn't take her seriously," says Susan Bell, "because he was always getting calls alleging weird stuff about the CIA. Views on Webb's journalism have been polarized. Gary Webb - Lake Ridge Chapel & Memorial Designers [81], Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at George Washington University's National Security Archives, also does not agree that the report vindicated the series. In a three-part expos, investigative journalist Gary Webb reported that a guerrilla army in Nicaragua had used crack cocaine sales in Los Angeles' black neighborhoods to fund an attempted coup of Nicaragua's socialist government in the 1980s and that the CIA had purposefully funded it. "I think Kerry learnt a lesson from all this," reporter Robert Parry says. Family (1) "The cause of death was determined to be self . His series of articles - which prompted the distinguished reporter and former Newsweek Washington correspondent Robert Parry to describe Webb as "an American hero" - incited fury among the African-American community, many of whom took his investigation as proof that the White House saw crack as a way of bringing genocide to the ghetto. Gary Webb famously died of two gun shot wounds to the head and his death that was ruled a suicide, is the common sense notion that this was clearly assassination true? Return of the messenger: How Jeremy Renner's new film Kill The Their explosive report, which appeared in 1989, was either ignored, or marginalised, by the American press. His former wife, her voice lowered to a whisper, explains that Webb missed with the first shot (which exited through his left cheek). "You do not understand the power of these people," he adds, referring to the US intelligence services. Even 10 years after his tragic death, the media refuse to let him rest. Gary Hays Webb, 78, passed away on Monday May 9, 2022, at ThedaCare Regional Medical Center, Neenah. [60], It found nothing to support the claim that "the drug trafficking activities of Blandn and Meneses were motivated by any commitment to support the Contra cause or Contra activities undertaken by CIA." One of his last articles examined America's Army, a video game designed by the U.S. As it turned out," she adds, "that was not their intent.". It was accurate. "Because of Gary Webb's work," said Senator John Kerry, "the CIA launched an investigation that found dozens of connections to drug runners. A series of expose articles in the San Jose Mercury-News by reporter Gary Webb told tales of a drug triangle during the 1980s that linked CIA officials in Central America, a San Francisco drug . Gary Webb sums up the story in his last major interview just days before his death. "Gary was 18 and I was 16 when we first met and started dating in Indianapolis," said Sue Stokes. Evidence Begins To Indicate Gary Webb Was Murdered - BSNEWS By the time Webb began researching Dark Alliance, Bell was 38 and they had three children. When Webb's body was discovered last December, Bell says, this last item had been dumped in the trash. Some might consider it an inappropriate assignment for a man with responsibilities. Attorneys' Offices. 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. Webb's then-wife Sue remembers coming home from the shops and finding her. Gary Webb was born on August 31, 1955 in Corona, California, USA. We had been here before." But the tragedy had a deeper meaning. "Allow Gary Webb to be there [in the CIA investigation]," a heckler shouts. [22], The lede of the first article set out the series' basic claims: "For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." "[2], Ceppos noted that Webb did not agree with these conclusions. ", She pauses: "That said, he did sleep with a gun under his bed.". "I told Gary not to go near this story," his source replies, in an emotional voice. [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. "He rang me up that day. By the late spring of 1996, Webb was ready to publish. Occupation: Machine Operators, Assemblers, and Inspectors Occupations. ", "After Gary died," she says, "a reporter from the LA Times came here. A January 1997 article in American Journalism Review noted that a 1994 series Webb wrote had also been the subject of a Mercury News internal review that criticized Webb's reporting. Attend in Miami or virtually, Sept. 1114. Susan Bell: a shameful secret history - The Independent [48] Despite the controversy that soon overtook the series, and the request of one board member to reconsider, the branch's board went ahead with the award in November. [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. Webb's ex-wife, Sue Bell, discounted theories Tuesday that her husband had been murdered, saying the 49-year-old Webb had been distraught for some time over his inability to get . Gary Stephen Webb was a Pulitzer prize winning American investigative reporter who exposed cocaine trafficking by the CIA.He wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, which initially backed his articles but later dropped him.Webb was put under pressure most certainly from the CIA under John Deutch for his reporting. Asking why crack became so prevalent in the Black community of Los Angeles, the article credited Blandn, referring to him as "the Johnny Appleseed of crack in California. n 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles under the title "Dark Alliance" for the suggesting a CIA connection between anti-government contras in Nicaragua and monies raised from. [60], The House Intelligence Committee issued its report in February 2000.
Natalie Desselle Reid Funeral Pictures,
Salem, Oregon Rainfall 2021,
Rossendale Police News,
Good Morning Bible Verses Images,
The Onenote Desktop Print Driver Was Not Installed Properly,
Articles G
