Join iconic brands and world-class marketing leaders at Brandweek to unlock powerful insights and impact-driven strategies. The second volume, "The Contra Story," was issued in a classified version on April 27, 1998, and in an unclassified version on October 8, 1998. In city after city, local dealers either bought from Ross or got left behind."[24]. The "Dark Alliance" series remains controversial. He leaves behind the love of his life and adoring wife of 41 years, Anne Michelle Phillips. Gary's ex-wife Susan Bell states: "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide." An interesting OPINION, but she supplies no convincing evidence to illustrate what she means by this. Vivian Corrie, a part of his liver in a life-threatening operation. "Do not quote me. Although it did find that both men were major drug dealers, "guilty of enriching themselves at the expense of countless drug users," and that they had contributed money to the Contra cause, "we did not find that their activities were responsible for the crack cocaine epidemic in South Central Los Angeles, much less the rise of crack throughout the nation, or that they were a significant source of support for the Contras. The passing of Gary ends more than 50 years with his best friend and loving wife, Marilyn J. He was taken to hospital by air ambulance. In a long review of the series' claims in The Baltimore Sun, Weinberg said "I think the critics have been far too harsh. [61] According to the report, it used Webb's reporting and writing as "key resources in focusing and refining the investigation." The three articles in the series were written by four reporters: Jesse Katz, Doyle McManus, John Mitchell and Sam Fulwood. He was assigned to its Sacramento bureau, where he was allowed to choose most of his own stories. The consensus, insofar as one exists, is that he probably overstated both the amount of drug money made by Ross and Blandn, and the percentage of those profits diverted to the Contras. He was sentenced to life in prison, though the sentence was shortened on appeal and Ross was released in 2009. Webb is best known for his "Dark Alliance" series, which appeared in The Mercury News in 1996. "[25] It also found disparities in the treatment of Black and White traffickers in the justice system, contrasting the treatment of Blandn and Ross after their arrests for drug trafficking. He is from United States. Webb's condition exacerbated his natural recklessness. Within weeks, the site was attracting up to 1.3m hits per day. Gary Douglas Webb of Radnor, PA, passed away on October 19, 2021 Born January 3rd, 1943 in Montreal, Quebec, he was the son of the late John Douglas Webb and the late Jeannie (Penny) Hardie. Family (1) A Celebration of Life will be . Gary was born May 5, 1954, to his parents Worley and Margaret Webb, who preceded him in death as well as his brother, David Webb. "Exactly," replied Kornbluh, who - referring specifically to the LA Times, said he is "baffled as to how they could be so gullible. This is why Webb's "Dark Alliance" series is an essential source, a primary text that every journalism student should study. His erstwhile editors on the Mercury News, meanwhile, saw their careers thrive. "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. In 1986, Webb wrote an article saying that the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, Frank D. Celebrezze accepted contributions from groups with organized crime connections. He had also lost his house the week before his suicide. "Gary didn't take her seriously," says Susan Bell, "because he was always getting calls alleging weird stuff about the CIA. Talking about his wife, Mariah Webb is a nurse who also educates about essential products . 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. It was just more than he could take.". Gary Webb was born on August 31, 1955 in Corona, California, USA. 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. With Baca's encouragement, he started to investigate a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Oscar Danilo Blandn. Webb may indeed be physically dead, but his research is more alive today than ever before, and continues to haunt the shadow government and snowball into a monster that will undoubtedly have its eventual revenge. Webb joined the Mercury News in 1988, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. His wife is Sue Webb (m. 1979-2000) Gary Webb Net Worth His net worth has been growing significantly in 2021-2022. He also defended the series in interviews with all three papers. Blandn and Meneses' high-volume supply of low-priced high-purity cocaine "allowed Ross to sew up the Los Angeles market and move on. 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 February, Gary Webb gave his ex-wife. When his body was found, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was on the DVD machine, and his favourite CD, Ian Hunter's live album Welcome to the Club, was in the CD player. [41], When the Los Angeles Times series appeared, Ceppos again wrote to defend the original series. font-size: 34px; 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 . His former wife, her voice lowered to a whisper, explains that Webb missed with the first shot (which exited through his left cheek). His corpse was discovered on the seventh anniversary of his resignation from the Mercury News. Ricky Donnell "Freeway Rick" Ross (born January 26, 1960) is an American author and convicted drug trafficker best known for the drug empire he established in Los Angeles, California, in the early to mid 1980s. Shortly before I left for Sacramento, Moreira, who knew Webb, had shown me unbroadcast footage which shows the French reporter making a phone call to a media commentator in the US, asking him about Webb's death. My wife has kept me grounded for . Webb, one of the boldest and most outstanding reporters of his generation, was the journalist who, in 1996, established the connection between the CIA and major drug dealers in Los Angeles, some of whose profits had been channelled to fund the Contra guerrilla movement in Nicaragua. 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.. 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." [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. On the last day Webb was alive, his motorbike broke down while he was moving to his mother's house. One article, dealing mostly with the response of the Los Angeles Black community to the stories, described the series's evidence as "thin". His victory in the event last year gave him . "Because of Gary Webb's work," said Senator John Kerry, "the CIA launched an investigation that found dozens of connections to drug runners. 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. "I believe that Americans, as a nation, are mainly concerned with living their happy little lives. "[82], Kill the Messenger (2014) is based on Webb's book Dark Alliance and Nick Schou's biography of Webb. He also had this inherent belief that the truth could not harm him. "Gary was given the choice of relocating either to San Jose," says Bell, "or to Cupertino". (Strawser) Webb. What he found, he wrote later, "nearly knocked me off my chair". The follow-up reporting in the Los Angeles Times and other papers has been criticised for focusing on problems in the series rather than re-examining the earlier CIA-Contra claims. 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 was the story of a man who gains information of wrongdoing, then, attempting to act in the public interest, seeks protection from his superiors, and the forces of law, and does not receive it. After the publication of "Dark Alliance," The Mercury News continued to pursue the story, publishing follow-ups to the original series for the next three months. But while calling the flaws in the series "unforgivably careless journalism," Overholser also criticized the Post's refusal to print Ceppos' letter defending the series and sharply criticized the Post's coverage of the story. that the "federal government bore some responsibility, however indirect, for the flood of crack that coursed through black neighborhoods in the 1980s"). "[79], Writing after Webb's death in 2005, The Nation magazine's former Washington Editor David Corn said that Webb "was on to something but botched part of how he handled it." Gary Webb sums up the story in his last major interview just days before his death. But Webb had one huge blind side: He was fundamentally a man of passion, not of fairness. The story was picked up by black talk-radio stations. The reports rejected the series's main claims but were critical of some CIA and law enforcement actions. Gary Douglas Webb of Radnor, PA, passed away on October 19, 2021. "Like enjoy it.". Gary Webb passed away on March 2, 2019. He was born June 18, 1943, in Appleton, son of the late Wilford and Helen (Hauskey) Webb. Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. Poor Gary Webb. The collection, The Killing Game: Selected Stories from the Author of Dark Alliance, was edited by Webb's son, Eric. 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. [72] A New York Times profile of Webb in June 1997 noted that two of his series written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer had resulted in lawsuits that the paper had settled. "Gary was 18 and I was 16 when we first met and started dating in Indianapolis," said Sue Stokes. In the final few months of his life, Bell says, Webb became increasingly withdrawn. She said the paper wanted to make up for what it had done in the past. American racer Cooper Webb is married to his wife named Mariah Williams Webb. "They use the giant corporate press rather than saying anything directly. 71K views 8 years ago Gary Webb's son Ian talks about the film in which Jeremy Renner plays his late journalist father. [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. 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. 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. 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. OR was he like Epstein? It reads: "There should be no fetters on reporters, nor must they tamper with the truth, but give light so the people will find their own way." "You sound very scared," Moreira remarks. For instance, he published an article on racial profiling in traffic stops in Esquire magazine, in April 1999. 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. He wrote well. We're well aware that they/it (the cia) did do it. Webb strongly disagreed with Ceppos's column and, in interviews, was harshly critical of the paper's handling of the story. Gary Webb's wife, Sue Webb (now Sue Stokes), said that he had been depressed for years due to his inability to get hired at a daily newspaper. He then transferred to nearby Northern Kentucky University. So he blew her off. That wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been willing to stand up and risk it all.". Gary Hays (304) 778-7090: He had sold his house the week before his death because he was unable to afford the mortgage.[71]. To pay off his mounting debts, Webb sold the Carmichael property, where he was living alone, and arranged to move in with his mother. [52] Webb was allowed to keep working on the story and made one more trip to Nicaragua in March. ", Webb had already been cremated and his ashes scattered in the bay off Santa Cruz two weeks before. After Webb's death, a collection of his stories from before and after the "Dark Alliance" series was published. It was published in 1998 as Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion. [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. 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. Then, on 10 December, he resigned. 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. A time of fellowship and remembrance is scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6, 2019, at Lake Ridge Chapel and Memorial Designers. When facts didn't fit his theory, he tended to shove them to the sidelines. 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. Dec. 13, 2004. line-height:1.5; E&P Staff. . "[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." Webb - whose article had never alleged that the CIA deliberately targeted any ethnic group - became a national celebrity. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. 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. [49], The paper also gave Webb permission to visit Central America again to get more evidence supporting the story. He kept saying that he would never get another job in journalism.". Cooper and Mariah were engaged before they finally tied the knot. To show this, the series focused on three men: Ricky Ross, Oscar Danilo Blandn, and Norwin Meneses. They were outraged by the series's charges.[27]. By the autumn of 1997, on medication for clinical depression, he was given leave of absence from the paper. "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 the series's publication, the Northern California branch of the national Society of Professional Journalists voted Webb "Journalist of the Year" for 1996. Gary Webb's income source is mostly from being a successful . Gary Webb (304) 778-2546: Jamie Webb (304) 778-2546: Status: Homeowner. When he told me, I said it sounded crazy. 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. I believe that we fell short at every step of our process: in the writing, editing and production of our work. "He had six in a short period of time." In an unprecedented move, the then CIA director John Deutch was dispatched to address community leaders in the Watts district of LA. Then, in August the same year, the first of three instalments of "Dark Alliance" appeared. The article resulted in a lawsuit against Webb's paper which the plaintiffs won. [37], 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. "He was sleeping more, he hated to get up in the morning, he started having a lot of motorcycle. [28] Maxine Waters, the representative for California's 35th district, which includes South-Central Los Angeles, was also outraged by the articles and became one of Webb's strongest supporters. Attend in Miami or virtually, Sept. 1114. Tomac is used to good feelings when it comes to Daytona. Gary was born Sept. 4, 1947, to Percy and Pauline (Haas) Webb. [29] Waters urged the CIA, the Department of Justice, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate. "He thought I was being cowardly. "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.". "By the end of his life he was just in a lot of pain," said Webb's ex-wife, Susan Bell. 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. ", "After Gary died," she says, "a reporter from the LA Times came here. I have also followed up on key topics raised by Paul Cottrell will leading industry experts like Dr. Peter McCollough on the Tommy Carrigan Show, weekly in 2021 and 2022. "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. Many writers discussing the series point to errors in it. Both Gary's ex-wife Susan and his brother Kurt viewed the body and they confirmed the location of the wounds to me when I met them. His career ended, his livelihood was destroyed and certain games were started to be . He was the much-loved father of Lindsay (Stephen . His assignments included investigating racial profiling by the California Highway Patrol and charges that the Oracle Corporation had received a no-bid contract award of $95 million in 2001. On one road trip, in 2001, he came off the motorcycle and split his helmet open. "[78], While finding this part of the series unsupported, Schou said that some of the series's claims on CIA involvement are supported, writing that "The CIA conducted an internal investigation that acknowledged in March 1998 that the agency had covered up Contra drug trafficking for more than a decade."
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