Persecution of Truth-Tellers Part III

Alliances of Darkness Brought to the Light

This being one of my early pieces—I’m writing a piece that refers back to it—I took a look at this and was embarrassed by how poorly edited it was so this will be rightfully edited now. When I wrote this, I had no clue how important it was to proof-read and edit. I hope this is much better once I finish it. I guess I need to do this with all me early pieces because I even had misspelled words! UGH!!!!

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This story marks the moment that the industry of journalism started its decline. The Information-Gatekeepers started to lose control, and in an act of desperation, threw everything in their power at someone threatening this power, destroyed the reputation and ability to support his family. By the way, not because he was a liar, a grifter, or a charlatan as they would like you to believe. Because he told the truth on a chapter that they would rather keep forgotten, memory holed, just a lost thought of the many. Gary Webb was a truth-teller, and a great journalist.

For this, he faced a contemporary demise. Gary didn’t deserve this, and American citizens didn’t deserve the crack epidemic, both things came from the same hands . This is Gary’s story.

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In 2003 I started high school, and there were different groups that everyone broke into, I was really into the punk/skater group. I wanted so bad for them to accept me. One of them was wearing a shirt that said Anti-Flag, with a big white circle and an X through it, pictured below, apparently that is now a $150 shirt. I ended up buying the same shirt, and my aunt threw it away, she swears she didn’t but, I know.

In the pursuit of getting these people to accept me I started looking up the music on their clothes. I was an instant fan; The first punk rock cd I ever bought was “Mobilize”, it had the coolest Anti-War symbol, five broken rifles in the shape of a star. This cd was a response to the militarism we were facing at that time, post-9/11. This cd was everything to me. I held onto every word of every song. There is a song called “Mumia’s Song”, for the journalist, Mumia Abu Jamal, a political prisoner serving life in Pennsylvania for capital murder of an officer. In the second verse he calls on the names of many political prisoners throughout the years. I had no idea who they were, but I wanted to know! So, I went digging around on my neighbor’s dial-up internet, in my scour of the net I ran across the story of the Iran-Contras and the CIA. I remember reading that story and thinking, “This is a GREAT story, but not a chance, that it really happened! No way. Our government is messed up and crooked, but they wouldn’t do that, it’s like the plot to a crazy movie”. It was many years later when the Tom Cruise movie Made in America came out that I revisited this story, and realized, not only was it possible, there were Senate hearings about it, resignations, and the media, all except for one brave AP reporter, Robert Parry, who would go on to start Consortium News, still breaking stories that other media outfits wouldn’t DARE to break, the rest were mute. Until one reporter, for San Jose Mercury News, broke the blockbuster story of Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion.

First some background on what exactly was the Iran-Contra Affair, explained by PBS on their website:

Ronald Reagan's efforts to eradicate Communism spanned the globe, but the insurgent Contras' cause in Nicaragua was particularly dear to him. Battling the Cuban-backed Sandinistas, the Contras were, according to Reagan, "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers." Under the so-called Reagan Doctrine, the CIA trained and assisted this and other anti-Communist insurgencies worldwide.

This was a belief that started at the beginning of the Cold War, the only way to protect us from communism over here is by stopping it over there. Which led us into losing several wars in Vietnam, Korea, and many regime change wars. This was a madman assumption, led to untold deaths and destruction worldwide. Protect us from the “Ghost of Communism Past”.

PBS continues:

“Assisting involved supplying financial support, a difficult task politically after the Democratic sweep of congressional elections in November 1982. First Democrats passed the Boland Amendment, which restricted CIA and Department of Defense operations in Nicaragua specifically; in 1984, a strengthened Boland Amendment made support almost impossible. A determined, unyielding Reagan told National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, "I want you to do whatever you have to do to help these people keep body and soul together."

So, it was made illegal for American dollars to be sent by Congress to support these anti-communist rebels. And basically, Reagan said without saying, you do whatever you got to, to continue supporting them.

Back to PBS:

In 1985, while Iran and Iraq were at war, Iran made a secret request to buy weapons from the United States. McFarlane sought Reagan's approval, in spite of the embargo against selling arms to Iran. McFarlane explained that the sale of arms would not only improve U.S. relations with Iran, but might in turn lead to improved relations with Lebanon, increasing U.S. influence in the troubled Middle East. Reagan was driven by a different obsession. He had become frustrated at his inability to secure the release of the seven American hostages being held by Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. As president, Reagan felt that "he had the duty to bring those Americans home," and he convinced himself that he was not negotiating with terrorists. While shipping arms to Iran violated the embargo, dealing with terrorists violated Reagan's campaign promise never to do so. Reagan had always been admired for his honesty.

There was a low-key request to buy weapons from the U.S. by the Iranian Government. McFarland turned to Reagan, who had sworn to uphold the weapons embargo on Iran, placed there by President Carter on the grounds that Iran supports Terrorism. Reagan hoped that this deal could ease relations with the Iranian Government and Lebanon and would help bring the American hostage’s home. There was a plan put in place of ‘arms for hostages.

PBS:

The arms-for-hostages proposal divided the administration. Longtime policy adversaries Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Secretary of State George Shultz opposed the deal, but Reagan, McFarlane and CIA director William Casey supported it. With the backing of the president, the plan progressed. By the time the sales were discovered, more than 1,500 missiles had been shipped to Iran. Three hostages had been released, only to be replaced with three more, in what Secretary of State George Shultz called "a hostage bazaar."

There was an Exposé released by Lebanese Newspaper Al-Shiraa in November of 1986 which exposed these dealings.

While probing the question of the arms-for-hostages deal, Attorney General Edwin Meese discovered that only $12 million of the $30 million the Iranians reportedly paid had reached government coffers. Then-unknown Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council explained the discrepancy: he had been diverting funds from the arms sales to the Contras, with the full knowledge of National Security Adviser Admiral John Poindexter and with the unspoken blessing, he assumed, of President Reagan.

What’s not mentioned here is the money diverted directly to the Contras wasn’t enough, and CIA assets here and in Nicaragua started using the money made by cocaine traffickers involved with Noriega and the Medellin Cartel to fund the Contras losing war against the Leftist Communist Government of Nicaragua. When this discrepancy is discovered, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North is put on the burner, he eventually gets fired, John Poindexter resigns. There was an investigation of this spanning 8-years, there was convictions, and cover-ups, resignations, and pardons, but no talk of the cocaine, now being converted to crack and blowing up the inner cities all across America. Until Gary Webb ran across this story, reading through some Senate Judiciary transcripts. This turned his world, and the Black Community upside-down.

Before we go any further, I think it would be prudent to explain “Operation Mockingbird”. If you don’t know this about Mainstream News Publications it might seem unbelievable to think all the biggest news publications, with the greatest credibility would do what comes next, but they did. And Operation Mockingbird explains why, During the Cold War, the CIA launched its “Operation Mockingbird”, which aimed to collect intelligence by bribing journalists and institutions around the world and affecting public opinion by manipulating news media.

Carl Bernstein, the investigative journalist of Watergate fame, the first of the GATES, broke this story in Rolling Stone in 1977, here it is for free, this exposed how the CIA recruited journalists that were put on a payroll by the CIA and instructed to write fake stories, with the plan of changing hearts and minds. The CIA admitted that at least 400 journalists and 25 large organizations around the world had secretly carried out assignments for the agency. These fake stories weren’t like, “I see a blue dog walking down the street”. More like this:

“Available information” did not support the series' claims and that “the rise of crack” was “a broad-based phenomenon” driven in numerous places by diverse players. The article discussed Webb’s contacts with Ross’s attorney and prosecution complaints of how Ross’s defense had used Webb's series.”

That was from The Washington Post. “The CIA and Crack: Evidence Is Lacking Of Alleged Plot”. Washington Post.

The New York Times described the series' evidence as thin. None of them said it didn’t happen. Or came even close to saying that.

From the subcommittee report seven-years before Gary Webbs story:

On the basis of this evidence, it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter.

To this day, the CIA still attempts to monitor and manipulate public opinion through this practice. The so-called truth that underpins a news story, from the perspective of the U.S. government, is not worth mentioning at all, with news media just being used as a tool to safeguard the country’s hegemony in the world.

The Intercept 18-years later reported on the attack against Gary Webb and his reporting in Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb, they explained:

“Newspapers like the Times and the Post seemed to spend far more time trying to poke holes in the series than in following up on the underreported scandal at its heart, the involvement of U.S.-backed proxy forces in international drug trafficking. The Los Angeles Times was especially aggressive. Scooped in its own backyard, the California paper assigned no fewer than 17 reporters to pick apart Webb’s reporting. While employees denied an outright effort to attack the Mercury News, one of the 17 referred to it as the “get Gary Webb team.” Another said at the time, “We’re going to take away that guy’s Pulitzer,” according to Kornbluh’s CJR piece. Within two months of the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the L.A. Times devoted more words to dismantling its competitor’s breakout hit than comprised the series itself.”

This is especially despicable. Bitter because he beat them to the story, and it should be one of Special Interest to them, since it’s in their home, they should be the paper of record for Los Angeles. No doubt their pockets were padded with funding from the CIA.

Intercept:

“The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webb’s reporting.”

The CIA watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.

In 2013, Jesse Katz, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, said of the newspaper's coverage

“As an L.A. Times reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News and kind of wonder[ed] how legit it was and kind of put it under a microscope, and we did it in a way that most of us who were involved in it, I think, would look back on that and say it was overkill. We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California." And we really didn't do anything to advance his work or illuminate much to the story, and it was a real kind of tawdry exercise. ... And it ruined that reporter's career.”

The Caving of Ceppos

In a brilliant act of cowardice The Mercury News's executive editor Jerome Ceppos totally caved to the scrutiny put on the publication over this story. On one hand, Gary Webb put Mercury News on the map with this. If you visited their website during this time, Gary Webbs’s “Dark Alliance” was the biggest thing on the screen, it took up the entire homepage and brought over a million visitors a day to the page which was UNHEARD of in the late 90’s. Can you imagine a million dial-up connections, all dialing to this page all in the same day. It sounds like chaos!!! In Ceppos defense he responded to the criticism with letters and interviews, as was Gary. This story went to the Moon real fast. The Senate blew up, the black community, it was loud and clear what this story implied. This is just 2-years out from the controversial ‘94 Crime Bill, which changed the laws on cocaine so that a person who had powder cocaine would get a slap on the wrist but, a person with crack cocaine was looking at a life sentence. And OUR GOVERNMENT helped funnel some of it in.

Then he caved, and threw Gary Webb under the bus, Ceppos wrote a column in response to all the criticisms they had gotten. In the column, Ceppos defended parts of the article, writing that the series had “solidly documented” that the drug ring described in the series did have connections with the Contras and did sell large quantities of cocaine in inner-city Los Angeles.

“But,” Ceppos wrote, the series “did not meet our standards in four areas. 1) It presented only one interpretation of conflicting evidence and in one case, did not include information that contradicted a central assertion of the series. 2) The series' estimate of the money involved was presented as fact instead of as an estimate. 3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. 4) The series created impressions that were open to misinterpretation through imprecise language and graphics.”

The series never claims that the blame of the crack epidemic lays solely at the feet of the CIA. No one giving this a serious look could ever claim that. This is one area of the country and crack was a nationwide epidemic, but this is the hill they decided to take the story down on.

Gary was very upset about this, his view was Ceppos had sold him downstream and so is mine. In June 1997, The Mercury News responded to his criticism of Ceppos by transferring him from the paper's Sacramento bureau and offered him a choice between working at the main offices in San Jose under closer editorial supervision, or spot reporting in Cupertino; both locations were long commutes from his home in Sacramento. 150-miles from his home where his wife and three children were. They were pushing him out, and He knew it. He resigned from the paper in November 1997.

In interviews after leaving The Mercury News, Webb described the 1997 controversy as media manipulation. The government side of the story is coming through the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, he stated. They use the giant corporate press rather than saying anything directly. 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 longest response to the controversy was in The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On, a chapter he contributed to an anthology of press criticism:

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. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress.

Within this chapter, Webb stated he believed there was an active “collusion between the press and the powerful” to report freely on inconsequential matters, “but when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff... We begin to see the limits of our freedoms”. He also stated, “the series presented dangerous ideas” by suggesting “crimes of state had been committed” (such as the “federal government bore some responsibility, however indirect, for the flood of crack that coursed through black neighborhoods in the 1980s")

He told the Truth.

In the years that follow, Gary works a couple jobs but eventually gets a divorce. His reputation is destroyed so the jobs aren’t great, he can’t pay his mortgage, so he sells his house, and pre-pays for his cremation.

December 10th, 2004. He is found dead in his home. Two gunshot wounds to the head, it seems the first shot missed but the second didn’t. It sounds fishy, but no one doubts it. Not his family, not his friends. They seen him seemingly depressed, unable to make ends meet. He took out a life insurance policy. And ended his suffering, so he could no longer be a burden to his family.

Make no mistake, Gary Webb was murdered but not like you think, they don’t have to sneak in like assassins in the age of technology, that’s so 1900’s. They have Psychological Operations; they don’t even need to get dressed for…

Thank you for reading, this REMASTERED version of Persecution of the Truth-Teller’s Part III

Jordan Lee, Editor-at-Large, Declaration of warLiberty