We are in the living room of Bell's house just outside Sacramento, California. margin: 0 45px; Webb, unlike Blum or Kerry, had to face his difficulties alone. Unable to get work from any major US newspaper, he spent the four months before his death writing for * a free-sheet covering the Sacramento area. Contemporary discussions of the series are discussed in the section on, Webb 2011, "Caltrans Ignored Elevated Freeway Safety. When Ross discovered the market for crack in Los Angeles, he began buying cocaine from Blandn. 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. It was truthful. To Read the Full Story Become an Adweek+ Subscriber. Corrie had primary biliary cirrhosis, a genetic liver disease that already had. With Baca's encouragement, he started to investigate a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Oscar Danilo Blandn. To show this, the series focused on three men: Ricky Ross, Oscar Danilo Blandn, and Norwin Meneses. Sue remarried two years ago. 3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. This did not happen in Webb's case. Gary Webb's Ex-Wife Set to Attend New York Premiere By Richard Horgan October 8, 2014 Cleveland Plain Dealer film critic Clint O'Connor had a solid feature the other day about Kill the. [14] In 1984, Webb wrote a story titled Driving Off With Profits which claimed that the promoters of a race in Cleveland paid themselves nearly a million dollars from funds that should have gone to the city of Cleveland. [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. 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. GARY WEBB: His wife's office was burglarized. 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. Blandn and Meneses' high-volume supply of low-priced high-purity cocaine "allowed Ross to sew up the Los Angeles market and move on. In a 2013 article in the LA Weekly, Schou wrote that Webb was "vindicated by a 1998 CIA Inspector General report, which revealed that for more than a decade the agency had covered up a business relationship it had with Nicaraguan drug dealers like Blandn. "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. Save 50% with early-bird passes. A 1985 series, "Doctoring the Truth," uncovered problems in the State Medical Board[12] and led to an Ohio House investigation which resulted in major revisions to the state Medical Practice Act. Their explosive report, which appeared in 1989, was either ignored, or marginalised, by the American press. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department began its own investigation into the "Dark Alliance" claims.[30]. A revised version was published in 1999 that incorporated Webb's response to the CIA and Justice Department reports. I first heard about Webb eight years ago, I tell Bell, from the Paris-based journalist Paul Moreira. 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. Video courtesy of documentary FREEWAY: CRACK IN THE SYSTEM premiering on Al Jazeera America in early 2015. }. Tara Becker-Gray Lee News Network Jan 17, 2019 0 1 of 2 C. Webb The body found at a house fire at 13308 95th Ave. in rural Blue Grass on Thursday night has been identified as Cynthia Webb, 59.. Gary Webb's income source is mostly from being a successful . Leen, who covered the cocaine trade for the Miami Herald in the 1980s, rejects the claim that "because the report uncovered an agency mindset of indifference to drug-smuggling allegations", it vindicated Webb's reporting. But the report was correct. After a local newspaper reported that Webb had died from multiple gunshots, the coroner's office received so many calls asking about Webb's death that Sacramento County Coroner Robert Lyons issued a statement confirming Webb had died by suicide. [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. [11], In 1983, Webb moved to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he continued doing investigative work. "He definitely was depressed. [26] Other papers were slow to pick up the story, but African Americans quickly took note, especially in South Central Los Angeles where the dealers discussed in the series had been active. It also examined "how CIA handled and responded to information regarding allegations of drug trafficking" by people involved in Contra activities or support. Webb's ex wife, Susan Bell told reporters that she believed Webb had died by suicide. [40] Ceppos also asked reporter Pete Carey to write a critique of the series for publication in The Mercury News, and had the controversial website artwork changed. I mean - please.". Gary Webb, friends say, was a far more combative character than either the Mercury News's executive editor Ceppos or page editor Garcia. Osborn, Barbara Bliss (MarchApril 1998). [16] As part of The Mercury News team that covered the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Webb and his colleague Pete Carey wrote a story examining the causes of the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct. Garcia is deputy director of the John S Knight Fellowships in Journalism at Stanford University. Actor Jeremy Renner portrays Webb.[83]. 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. Within weeks, the site was attracting up to 1.3m hits per day. His corpse was discovered on the seventh anniversary of his resignation from the 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. Critics view the series' claims as inaccurate or overstated, while supporters point to the results of a later CIA investigation as vindicating the series. I ask Bell. 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 . So, how much is Gary Webb worth at the age of 49 years old? He had also lost his house the week before his suicide. The CIA Inspector General's report, commissioned in response to the allegations in "Dark Alliance", was published in the autumn of 1998. WEBB, Mr. Gary Lee, our beloved son, husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle went home with his heavenly Father Monday, August 29, 2011 at University of Michigan Hospital. Gary Hays (304) 778-7090: It was published in 1998 as Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. "Do you think that a part of him did this out of revenge?" In a long review of the series' claims in The Baltimore Sun, Weinberg said "I think the critics have been far too harsh. Instead, he found work in 1978 as a reporter at the Kentucky Post, a local paper affiliated with the larger Cincinnati Post. And yet, for all his Easy Rider tendencies, he was also a dedicated family man with an extraordinary appetite for researching minutiae. During and immediately after the controversy over "Dark Alliance," Webb's earlier writing was examined closely. An investigative journalist, Webb became interested in the covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. I felt she really trashed me. Webb put in a call to Robert Parry. [52] Webb was allowed to keep working on the story and made one more trip to Nicaragua in March. When Webb's body was discovered last December, Bell says, this last item had been dumped in the trash. } The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress. In the final few months of his life, Bell says, Webb became increasingly withdrawn. "As a PhD student, McCoy went to Vietnam and built an absolutely damning case about the CIA's involvement with trafficking heroin. Family (1) He was born June 18, 1943, in Appleton, son of the late Wilford and Helen (Hauskey) Webb. She said the paper wanted to make up for what it had done in the past. A Celebration of Life will be . The film broadened the debate which led to the decriminalisation of . Five years ago, a tragedy occurred in American journalism: Investigative reporter Gary Webb - who had been ostracized by his own colleagues for forcing a spotlight back onto an ugly government scandal they wanted to ignore - was driven to commit suicide. [4] When Webb's father retired from the Marines, the family settled in a suburb of Indianapolis, where Webb and his brother attended high school. [65], After leaving The Mercury News, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature. 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. [67], Webb later moved to the State Assembly's Office of Majority Services. The Mercury News reporter came under sustained attack from the weightier US newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and, especially, the Los Angeles Times, infuriated at being scooped, on its own patch, by what it saw as a small-town paper. Webb, a Pullitzer prize winning journalist, exposed CIA drug trafficking operations in a series of books and reports for the San Jose Mercury News. [49], The paper also gave Webb permission to visit Central America again to get more evidence supporting the story. 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. 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. "It says the CIA helped introduce poison into our children. A perceptive, engaging woman of 48, she has turned an adjoining study into a small shrine to her late husband, who would have celebrated his 50th birthday five weeks ago. We were dismissed as a bunch of nuts." . It was good that his story forced those reports to come out, but part of what made that happen was based on misleading information. [41], When the Los Angeles Times series appeared, Ceppos again wrote to defend the original series. "He told me, not long before he died, that he didn't want to get up in the mornings," she says. "I believe that Americans, as a nation, are mainly concerned with living their happy little lives. According to the report's "Epilogue," the report was completed in December 1997 but was not released because the DEA was still attempting to use Danilo Blandn in an investigation of international drug dealers and was concerned that the report would affect the viability of the investigation. [6], Webb first began writing for the student newspaper at his college in Indianapolis. 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. Views on Webb's journalism have been polarized. 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. Dec. 13, 2004. ", She pauses: "That said, he did sleep with a gun under his bed.". His death was especially traumatic to the family since - as the coroner said - it could not be established whether he died instantly, or bled to death. Gary Webb was born on August 31, 1955 in Corona, California, USA. Some editors regarded him as stubborn to the point of insolence. Nobody who heads a government agency can let such an allegation stand.". There is a CIA connection and I can demonstrate it.'". ", The report called several of its findings "troubling." His death was ruled a suicide by the Sacramento County coroner's office. Dr. Gary A. Webb is a geriatrician in Marco Island, Florida. There were no offers. Gary Webb's family says his death was Suicide. In 1997 Ceppos was awarded the US Society of Professional Journalists' National Ethics Award. It would have been our 25th wedding anniversary," Bell recalls. The series provoked outrage, particularly in the Los Angeles African-American community, and led to four major investigations of its charges. Gary was preceded in death by his mother and father, Donna and James Webb of Carpentersville. "If there was an eye to the storm," Katz wrote, "if there was a mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw most responsible for flooding LA's streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick. It also stated that the Contras may have acted with the knowledge and protection of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). [36] McManus wrote that Blandn's and Meneses's contributions to Contra organizations were significantly less than the "millions" claimed in the series, and stated there was no evidence that the CIA had tried to protect them. At the end of March, Ceppos told Webb that he was going to present the internal review findings in a column. . He was a writer, known for Kill the Messenger (2014), Filming in Georgia (2015) and Crack in America (2015). "Do not quote me. The passing of Gary ends more than 50 years with his best friend and loving wife, Marilyn J. Many writers discussing the series point to errors in it. "Gary didn't take her seriously," says Susan Bell, "because he was always getting calls alleging weird stuff about the CIA. 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. He also defended the series in interviews with all three papers. And this is not a happy story - or," she adds, "a little one.". But you say - dear God. George Webb and Paul Cottrell have begun a weekly series on CoronaVirus now, Mondays at 5PM, EST on paul Cottrell's Rumble Channel. Relationships with other women ended badly. "[77], Webb's reporting in "Dark Alliance" remains controversial. Gary Stephen Webb(August 31, 1955 - December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. Gary Webb passed away on March 2, 2019. Webb was born in Corona, California. reports. color:rgb(46,179,178); The legendary civil-rights activist Dick Gregory was arrested while he protested outside the CIA's headquarters; Gregory began referring to the organisation as "Crack in America". Its pointed to as one of the clearer cases of CIA intervention as revenge for Webb revealing damaging secrets about the agencies involvement in drug smuggling. Webb joined the Mercury News in 1988, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. margin-top: 10px; So he blew her off. Webb's continuing reporting also triggered a fourth investigation. Gary is survived by his wife of 48 years, Beverly Webb; children Margaret . He placed his keys and ID cards on the kitchen table, together with a cremation certificate he had purchased for himself. "The cause of death was determined to be self . [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.
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