The Mysterious Suiciding of Gary Webb.

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Wed Jun-01-05 07:52 AM
Original message

The Mysterious Suiciding of Gary Webb.

I was paroozing Amazon for some new reading material yesterday. I cam across Gary's book and ordered it. But scrolling down I discovered that he had been murdered in December of last year. I went on a mission to find more information and whoa! Anyway for those that missed this strange story, I offer it to you. Would love to have discussion the the subject, that is if things don't move so super fast around here today.

Hope you find it as alarming as I do.

JohnOneillsMemory (1000+ posts) Tue Dec-14-04 08:40 AM
Original message
If Gary Webb was rubbed out, here's why: ARMY RECRUITING EXPOSE.

http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-10-14/cover...
We wonder what new threat he posed if he was still around at this point after exposing the CIA/Cocaine connection, right?

If Webb was rubbed out (likely, not proven), I think THIS IS WHY:

HE EXPOSED HOW THE ARMY PROFILES AND TRAINS TEENS USING PSY-OPS ON THE INTERNET AND VIDEO GAMES!

Lack of not just fodder, but highly-skilled kids who can kill effectively under stress are what the BFEE/PNAC Empire DESPERATELY NEEDS TO CONQUER THE WORLD by operating the machines of war.

A sophisticated 'first-shooter' game called 'Americas Army' was developed by the US military to both train, indoctrinate, and research the young minds they need. Free on line. Very popular.

Webb had the drop on them for using cocaine money and he had the drop on their NEW SCAM-USING THE DRUG OF VIDEO GAMES TO EXPLORE AND BEND MINDS. (Of course, that's what TV has been doing for over 50 years.)

Read it and weep for both our kids and their victims:

>snip<

If, like the U.S. Army, you need people who can become unflappable killers, there’s no better way of finding them. It’s why the Army has spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds developing its very own first-person shooter, and why the Navy, the Air Force and the National Guard are following suit.

>snip<

“I have to laugh when someone says, ‘Oh, the people playing these games know it’s not real,’” said Dr. Peter Vorberer, a clinical psychologist and head of the University of Southern California’s computer game research group. “Of course they think it’s real! That’s why people play them for hours and hours. They’re designed to make you believe it’s real. Games are probably the purest example yet of the Internet melding with reality.”

>snip<

Stanford University psychology professor B.J. Fogg isn’t surprised to see such dedication to a computer game.

“Video games, better than anything else in our culture, deliver rewards to people, especially teenage boys," said Fogg, who studies the effects of computer games. “Teenage boys are wired to seek competency. To master our world and get better at stuff. Video games, in dishing out rewards, can convey to people that their competency is growing, you can get better at something second by second."

>snip<

As the number of people playing Counter-Strike soared into the millions, the U.S. Army could only watch wistfully. For years, Army recruiters had diligently pursued the very same demographic-- middle-class teenage males--with dwindling success.

In late 1999, after missing their recruiting goals that year, Army officials got together with the civilian directors of a Navy think tank at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey to discuss ways of luring computer gamers into the military.

Combat gamers not only happened to target the right age for the Army’s purposes but, more importantly, possessed exactly the kind of information-processing skills the Army needed: the ability to think quickly under fire.

“Our military information tends to arrive in a flood ... and it’ll arrive in a flood under stressful conditions, and there’ll be a hell of a lot of noise,” said Col. Casey Wardynski, a military economist who came up with the idea for an official Army computer game. “How do you filter that? What are your tools? What is your facility in doing that? What is your level of comfort? How much load can you bear? Kids who are comfortable with that are going to be real comfortable ... with the Army of the future.”

From an Army report: “Aptitudes related to information handling and information culture values are seen as vital to the effectiveness of the high-tech, network-centric Army of the future, and young American gamers are seen as especially proficient in these capabilities. More importantly, when young Americans enter the Army, they increasingly will find that key information will be conveyed via computer video displays akin to the graphical interfaces found in games.”

With the vast funding of the U.S. government behind them, the Army/Navy team began developing a game that hopefully would turn some of its players into real soldiers. “The overall mission statement ... was to develop a game with appeal similar to the game Counter-Strike,” wrote Michael Zyda, the director of the Navy think tank. “We took Counter-Strike as our model, but with heavy emphasis on realism and Army values and training.”

An experimental psychologist from the Navy helped tweak the game’s sound effects to produce heightened blood pressure, body temperature and heart rate. It was released in digital double surround sound, which few games are. In terms of game play, it was designed as a “tactical” shooter, slower-paced, more deliberate, but with Counter-Strike’s demanding squad tactics and communications--a “serious” game for kids who took their war gaming seriously.

After two years of development, America’s Army was released to the public on the first Fourth of July after 9/11. The gaming world gasped and then cheered. Contrary to expectations, the government-made shooter was every bit as good a $50 retail shooter and, in some ways, better. Plus, it was free--downloadable from the Internet at www.americasarmy.com . That, too, was a calculation--one the Army hoped would weed out people who didn’t know much about computers. The game and its distribution system were difficult by design, Zyda said.

“That was a very key thing. First, they would have to be smart enough to download the game off the Internet. Then, they would have to become good at , which isn’t easy. To attract those kinds of people, that was the mission. That’s what we were looking for.”

The game does a good job separating the wheat from the chaff. Before you’re allowed to join an online game, you must undergo weapons training and send your firing range scores to the Army. If you’re a lousy shot, you can’t play. Once inside the game, it gets no easier. The virtual battlefield is enormous, and your enemy is often hidden under cover of darkness. “Newbies” are quickly cut to pieces. Unlike Counter-Strike, America’s Army players aren’t allowed to be on the terrorists’ side. Your team always looks like American soldiers, and the other team always looks like terrorists (or “OPFORs” in Army lingo, meaning “opposing forces.”)

In the wake of 9/11, the public and media reaction was, in the Army’s words, “overwhelmingly positive.” Salon’s Wagner James Au, for example, gushed that the game would help “create the wartime culture that is so desperately needed now” and excitedly anticipated the day when youngsters raised on America’s Army would pick up real weapons to cleanse the globe of real terrorists. Most media accounts focused on the novelty of using a video game to help find recruits and carried jocular headlines like “Uncle Sim Wants You.”

“We thought we’d have a lot more problems,” Zyda said. “But the country is in this mood where anything the military does is great. ... 9/11 sort of assured the success of this game. I’m not sure what kind of reception it would have received otherwise.”

There are now more than 4 million registered users, more than half of whom have completed weapons training and gone online to play, making it the fourth most-played online shooter. The Army says there are 500 fan sites on the Web, and recruiters have been busy setting up local tournaments and cultivating an America’s Army “community” on the Internet, hoping to replicate the Counter-Strike phenomenon.

“With respect to recruitment, actual results won’t be known for four or five years, when the current raft of 13- and 14-year-olds will be old enough to join,” Zyda wrote.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2825014

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JohnyCanuck (1000+ posts) Mon Dec-13-04 03:04 PM
Original message
Ruppert has a new article out on Gary Webb suicide story.

Edited on Mon Dec-13-04 03:09 PM by JohnyCanuck
Webb's August 1996 series Dark Alliance for the San Jose Mercury News pulled deep covers away from US covert operations and American denial about connections between the CIA and drugs. Gary left a bigger historical footprint than anyone who has ever touched the subject including among others, Peter Dale Scott, Alfred McCoy, Jonathan Kwitny and me.

His footprint was made possible in large part for two reasons. First, his reporting was meticulous and produced hard records that could not be effectively denied. Second, prominent African-American leaders like Jesse Jackson and representatives Maxine Waters and Juanita Millender-McDonald of Los Angeles and Compton respectively took up the torch lit by Gary and ran with it just before the 1996 presidential election which saw Bill Clinton win his second term just eight weeks after the stories broke. I was there at that time and it is not an understatement to say that much of this country was "up in arms".

Waters at one point vowed to make the CIA-drug connections, fully documented by Webb, her "life's work" if necessary.

In death the major press is beating him almost as ruthlessly as they did in real life. No part of the major press has acknowledged that Webb's work was subsequently vindicated by congressional investigations and two CIA Inspector General's reports released in 1997 and 1998. FTW did report on Webb's vindication and his legacy has - at least at the level of authentic journalism - not been lost.

Edited to add another snip. (Note to Mods, author gives ok to reproduce his article for non profit purposes)

Of the six obituaries I have seen on him, the one from the L.A. Times was the most brutally Soviet in its attempt to crush out his memory as thoroughly as his work. Of course the Times would have to do that. It was in Los Angeles where Webb dug up and documented the direct connection between the CIA and cocaine smuggling/trafficking as crack cocaine ravaged this city in the 1980s and the Contra war decimated Central America.

The Times already had known of this for decades. Starting in 1979 I dealt extensively with the Times trying to report the same connections with regard to heroin smuggling by the CIA. Cocaine did not become a national epidemic until around 1980. By 1996 I had 17 bitter years of funneling hard evidence to the Times and watching as staff writer David Rosenzweig -- among others including Ron Soble and David Johnston (now of the New York Times) - kept taking the information, promising to do something, and then spiking the stories in exchange for promotions.

When Gary autographed his 1998 best-seller Dark Alliance to me he wrote: "To Mike. You were there before I was."

Richard Heinberg, author of The Party's Over and Powerdown observed after reading the Times' obituary, "The LA Times obit is disgusting. 'What's our attitude toward investigative journalism? Well, of course we try to discourage it wherever we can, but sometimes it happens anyway. Then we get especially nasty--we have to, naturally, to protect our reputation.'"

More.... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2822728

"Peaking is at hand, not years away... If I'm right, the unforeseen consequences are devastating" Matthew Simmons, Investment Banker - www.endofsuburbia.com www.globalpublicmedia.com

GARY WEBB IN HIS OWN WORDS

http://www.gnn.tv/videos/viewer.php?id=30&spd=hi

BrotherBuzz (1000+ posts) Tue Jan-11-05 06:26 PM
Response to Original message

3. More words from Gary...

My computer doesn't do video clips so I don't know if I'm repeating anything in the clip, but I found these words in the Sacramento News and Review tribute to Gary Webb. The following is a portion of a transcript of a talk Webb gave in 1999 in Eugene, Ore.

http://www.parascope.com/mx/articles/garywebb/garyWebbS...

http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-12-16/featu...

<snip>

So, for the record, let me just say this right now. I do not believe--and I have never believed--that the crack-cocaine explosion was a conscious CIA conspiracy, or anybody’s conspiracy, to decimate black America. I’ve never believed that South Central Los Angeles was targeted by the U.S. government to become the crack capital of the world. But that isn’t to say that the CIA’s hands or the U.S. government’s hands are clean in this matter. Actually, far from it. After spending three years of my life looking into this, I am more convinced than ever that the U.S. government’s responsibility for the drug problems in South Central Los Angeles and other inner cities is greater than I ever wrote in the newspaper.

But it’s important to differentiate between malign intent and gross negligence. And that’s an important distinction, because it’s what makes premeditated murder different from manslaughter. That said, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got a body on the floor, and that’s what I want to talk about tonight, the body.

<snip>

"The one thing that I’ve learned from this whole experience is, first of all, you can’t believe the government--on anything. And you especially can’t believe them when they’re talking about important stuff, like this stuff. The other thing is that the media will believe the government before they believe anything." - Gary Webb

http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-12-16/featu...

Gary Webb was right: CIA Sold Dope (Cocaine Importation Agency)

Edited on Tue Dec-21-04 01:09 PM by Octafish
Check out the excellent article at Esquire. It mentions Gary Webb's work and the story of a DEA agent who was there, but didn't hear about Webb until he read his work in the newspaper...

Gary Webb, 1955-2004

EXCERPT...

WHEN HECTOR BERRELLEZ SPENT HIS YEAR GOING TO MOVIES IN Washington, he knew he was finished in the DEA. One day in October 1996, a month after he retired, Hector Berrellez picked up a newspaper and read this big story about a guy named Gary Webb. Hector had lived in shadows, and talking to reporters had not been his style. As I read, I thought, This shit is true," he says now. He hadn't a doubt about what Webb was saying. He saw the reporter as doomed. Webb had hit a sensitive area, and for it he would be attacked and disbelieved. Hector knew all about the Big Dog and the Big Boy rules.

SORRY TO SNIP...

Before he retired, Hector was summoned to Washington to brief Attorney General Janet Reno on Mexican corruption. He talked to her at length about how the very officials she was dealing with in Mexico had direct links to drug cartels. He remembers that she asked very few questions.

SORRY TO SNIP...

But he doesn't carry a smoking gun around. The photos, the ledgers, all the stuff the cops found that morning as they hit fourteen sterile stash houses where all the occupants seemed to be expecting company, all that material went to Washington and seems to have vanished. All those reports he wrote for years while in Mexico and then later running the Camarena case, those detailed reports of how he kept stumbling into dope deals done by CIA assets, never produced any results or even a substantive response.

Hector Berrellez is kind of a freak. He is decorated; he is an official hero with a smiling Ed Meese standing next to him in an official White House photograph. He pulled twenty-four years and retired with honors. He is, at least for the moment, neither discredited nor smeared. Probably because until this moment, he's kept silent.

SORRY TO SNIP...

He tells me a story that kind of sums up the place he finally landed in, the place that Gary Webb finally landed in. The place where you wonder if you are kind of nuts, since no one else seems to think anything is wrong. An agent he knows was deep in therapy, kind of cracking up from the undercover life. And the agent's shrink decided the guy was delusional, was living in some nutcase world of weird fantasies. So the doctor talked to Hector about his patient, about whether all the bullshit this guy was claiming was true, about dead men and women and children, strange crap like that. And he made a list of his patient's delusions, and he ticked them off to Hector. And Hector listened to them one by one and said, "Oh, that one, that's true. This one, yeah, that happened also." It went on like that. And finally, Hector could tell the shrink wondered just who was nuts--Hector, his patient, or himself.

CONTINUED...

http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/041217_mf...

Edit: Typo in title

Read the article and weep. For Webb and for America.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2853170

The killing game" by Gary Webb.... RIP

Edited on Sun Dec-12-04 08:41 PM by Tinoire
Chilling. Wish I hadn't had to snip this. The whole article is worth reading.

"Teach your children well..."

October 2004 Cover Story

"The killing game"

For young men, first-person shooters are the hottest computer games around. That’s why the Army’s spent $10 million making one of its own. But there’s a catch. Big Brother gets to watch you play.

By Gary Webb

(snip)

Clan warfare: LANatomas guns down members of a Seattle clan during a round of league play. Carson Loane, foreground, patrols the left flank while clan leader Jeff Muramoto, center, calls out strategies to his squad.

It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but among young males it’s far and away the most popular genre of computer game. Some psychologists and parents worry that such games are desensitizing a large, impressionable segment of the population to violence and teaching them the wrong things. But that depends on your point of view. If, like the U.S. Army, you need people who can become unflappable killers, there’s no better way of finding them. It’s why the Army has spent more than $10 million in taxpayer funds developing its very own first-person shooter, and why the Navy, the Air Force and the National Guard are following suit. For anyone who thinks kids aren’t learning playing shooter games, read on.

(snip)

In late 1999, after missing their recruiting goals that year, Army officials got together with the civilian directors of a Navy think tank at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey to discuss ways of luring computer gamers into the military.

(snip)

An experimental psychologist from the Navy helped tweak the game’s sound effects to produce heightened blood pressure, body temperature and heart rate. It was released in digital double surround sound, which few games are. In terms of game play, it was designed as a “tactical” shooter, slower-paced, more deliberate, but with Counter-Strike’s demanding squad tactics and communications--a “serious” game for kids who took their war gaming seriously.

After two years of development, America’s Army was released to the public on the first Fourth of July after 9/11. The gaming world gasped and then cheered. Contrary to expectations, the government-made shooter was every bit as good a $50 retail shooter and, in some ways, better. Plus, it was free--downloadable from the Internet at www.americasarmy.com . That, too, was a calculation--one the Army hoped would weed out people who didn’t know much about computers. The game and its distribution system were difficult by design, Zyda said.

(snip)

The game does a good job separating the wheat from the chaff. Before you’re allowed to join an online game, you must undergo weapons training and send your firing range scores to the Army. If you’re a lousy shot, you can’t play. Once inside the game, it gets no easier. The virtual battlefield is enormous, and your enemy is often hidden under cover of darkness. “Newbies” are quickly cut to pieces. Unlike Counter-Strike, America’s Army players aren’t allowed to be on the terrorists’ side. Your team always looks like American soldiers, and the other team always looks like terrorists (or “OPFORs” in Army lingo, meaning “opposing forces.”)

(snip)

Very creepy. The article goes on about how the army tracks and collects everything so that when they get their hands on these kids recruiters can look up their statistics and how "the gamers’ brains had the same reaction to computerized violence as they would to real violence".

(snip)

As the man blasted his way through Tactical Ops, the MRI scanner mapped his brain activities with such precision that the researchers could determine what it was doing at any given point in the game, frame by frame. The scientists focused their attention on a sliver called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a beehive of emotional and problem-solving activity. Feelings such as fear, sadness and aggression originate here and send out marching orders to other parts of the brain. One study, for example, revealed that when Vietnam vets with post-traumatic stress disorder are shown words like “bodybag” and “firefight,” their ACCs react far more aggressively than normal.

http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-10-14/cover...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2820177

Interview with Gary Webb about the 'crack epidemic' and the Reagan admin

http://rwor.org/a/v19/910-19/913/webb.htm

RW: Wasn't this the era of "Just Say No," as official government policy? Nancy Reagan and all? So what government agencies were involved in getting this cocaine into the United States and then distributing it?

GW: That's hard to tell because the people who were doing it weren't directly connected. They were always at arm's length. I'll tell you the agencies that I have found links to. It was the State Department, the National Security Council, the CIA and the DEA. And each agency was linked in different ways. There's a significant amount of evidence that shows members of this drug ring were in contact with agents of these agencies while this cocaine trafficking was going on. And they weren't being arrested. So it's kind of hard to explain why since we've gotten a lot of documentation that shows the federal government knew what was going on. At least some portion of it.

RW: What links did you find to the Drug Enforcement Agency?

GW: The DEA links were through Norwin Meneses, the head of the ring. He was working for the DEA. He's been working for the DEA for many years. Which is why it's so astonishing that he's never been arrested in the United States. But also may explain why. It's my opinion that he was protected. And that's the opinion of other people I've talked to--that he was protected.

RW: Have you learned anything since your original series about links between the CIA and this whole operation?

GW: One of the links we found was through an agent in Costa Rica. We talked to one of the couriers for this drug ring who was working for the Meneses organization in San Francisco. And he told us, and identified the agent, gave us the name of the agent, who he said was overseeing the distribution of the funds that he personally took down there. So, there's that.

There's the fact that, as I reported in the original series, they met with a CIA agent and essentially got their fundraising orders from this man, Enrique Bermúdez, who is the head of the FDN, the Contra Army called the FDN.

And we've also found evidence that people in Washington, at least one CIA official in Washington, had fairly specific information on the trafficking that was going on at the Salvadoran air base.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=104

For anyone interested in info on the death of journalist Gary Webb --

there's a lengthy article in the Los Angeles Times:

2003
(Courtesy of Susan Bell)

Written in pain
By Tina Daunt, Times Staff Writer

Gary Webb planned his death with polite precision.

He typed out four lengthy suicide notes and put them in the mail to family members. He placed his prearranged cremation certificate and Social Security card on the kitchen counter of his suburban Sacramento home. He put the keys to his cars and motorcycles in an envelope addressed to his oldest son.

All his belongings — among them numerous awards from his years as an investigative reporter — were packed and neatly stacked in boxes in a corner of his living room. He left a note on the door. "Please do not enter. Call 911 for assistance. Thank you."

Then, sometime during the evening of Dec. 9, Webb, age 49, went into his bedroom. He put his driver's license on the bed next to him and placed an old .38-caliber revolver near his right ear....

http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/cl-et-webb16m...

Editorial on Gary Webb in the Chicago trib

Dangers of questioning government actions

Published January 6, 2005

It has been almost a month since he died and I haven't been able to get Gary Webb out of my mind.
You remember Gary Webb, don't you? He's the investigative reporter who in 1996 produced a series of stories for the San Jose Mercury News called "Dark Alliance," on the connections between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Nicaraguan contras, the right-wing opposition to the leftist Sandinista regime in that Central American nation.
The series' most explosive charge was that a contra-connected drug gang helped fuel the crack epidemic of the 1980s in this country by bringing in large supplies of Colombian cocaine and selling them to black street gangs in Los Angeles, all with the knowledge and, to some extent, the protection of the CIA.
Webb's series, and that allegation especially, touched off a firestorm of criticism in both the government and the media. Not only did the CIA deny his allegations, but three high temples of the American establishment--The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post--all joined in knocking down Webb's stories. Eventually, even his own editor at the Mercury News effectively disavowed him and the series.
Gary Webb himself became radioactive within the newspaper industry and went to work in California state government. When he died last month at age 49, ostensibly of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, he was jobless and, apparently, hopeless.

More at link
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-05010...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2917203

Here's what a REAL journalist -- one who's interested in the TRUTH -- has to say:

America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb

By Robert Parry
December 13, 2004

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that forced a long-overdue investigation of a very dark chapter of recent U.S. foreign policy – the Reagan-Bush administration’s protection of cocaine traffickers who operated under the cover of the Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s.

For his brave reporting at the San Jose Mercury News, Webb paid a high price. He was attacked by journalistic colleagues at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the American Journalism Review and even the Nation magazine. Under this media pressure, his editor Jerry Ceppos sold out the story and demoted Webb, causing him to quit the Mercury News. Even Webb’s marriage broke up.

On Friday, Dec. 10, Gary Webb, 49, died of an apparent suicide, a gunshot wound to the head.

Whatever the details of Webb’s death, American history owes him a huge debt. Though denigrated by much of the national news media, Webb’s contra-cocaine series prompted internal investigations by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department, probes that confirmed that scores of contra units and contra-connected individuals were implicated in the drug trade. The probes also showed that the Reagan-Bush administration frustrated investigations into those crimes for geopolitical reasons.

Failed Media

Unintentionally, Webb also exposed the cowardice and unprofessional behavior that had become the new trademarks of the major U.S. news media by the mid-1990s. The big news outlets were always hot on the trail of some titillating scandal – the O.J. Simpson case or the Monica Lewinsky scandal – but the major media could no longer grapple with serious crimes of state.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/121304.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2821653

Ruppert has a new article out on Gary Webb suicide story.

Edited on Mon Dec-13-04 03:09 PM by JohnyCanuck
Webb's August 1996 series Dark Alliance for the San Jose Mercury News pulled deep covers away from US covert operations and American denial about connections between the CIA and drugs. Gary left a bigger historical footprint than anyone who has ever touched the subject including among others, Peter Dale Scott, Alfred McCoy, Jonathan Kwitny and me.

His footprint was made possible in large part for two reasons. First, his reporting was meticulous and produced hard records that could not be effectively denied. Second, prominent African-American leaders like Jesse Jackson and representatives Maxine Waters and Juanita Millender-McDonald of Los Angeles and Compton respectively took up the torch lit by Gary and ran with it just before the 1996 presidential election which saw Bill Clinton win his second term just eight weeks after the stories broke. I was there at that time and it is not an understatement to say that much of this country was "up in arms".

Waters at one point vowed to make the CIA-drug connections, fully documented by Webb, her "life's work" if necessary.

In death the major press is beating him almost as ruthlessly as they did in real life. No part of the major press has acknowledged that Webb's work was subsequently vindicated by congressional investigations and two CIA Inspector General's reports released in 1997 and 1998. FTW did report on Webb's vindication and his legacy has - at least at the level of authentic journalism - not been lost.

Edited to add another snip. (Note to Mods, author gives ok to reproduce his article for non profit purposes)

Of the six obituaries I have seen on him, the one from the L.A. Times was the most brutally Soviet in its attempt to crush out his memory as thoroughly as his work. Of course the Times would have to do that. It was in Los Angeles where Webb dug up and documented the direct connection between the CIA and cocaine smuggling/trafficking as crack cocaine ravaged this city in the 1980s and the Contra war decimated Central America.

The Times already had known of this for decades. Starting in 1979 I dealt extensively with the Times trying to report the same connections with regard to heroin smuggling by the CIA. Cocaine did not become a national epidemic until around 1980. By 1996 I had 17 bitter years of funneling hard evidence to the Times and watching as staff writer David Rosenzweig -- among others including Ron Soble and David Johnston (now of the New York Times) - kept taking the information, promising to do something, and then spiking the stories in exchange for promotions.

When Gary autographed his 1998 best-seller Dark Alliance to me he wrote: "To Mike. You were there before I was."

Richard Heinberg, author of The Party's Over and Powerdown observed after reading the Times' obituary, "The LA Times obit is disgusting. 'What's our attitude toward investigative journalism? Well, of course we try to discourage it wherever we can, but sometimes it happens anyway. Then we get especially nasty--we have to, naturally, to protect our reputation.'"

More....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2822728

Good God, what a tribute this is, and what writing. It's a lengthy piece, and deserves to be read in whole.

...

I ask the compañeros here in Chiapas – they loved Gary, too - what I should do now: What can be done? I can’t bring Gary back and neither can you. Not even the compañeros, with all the revolutionary magic and ancient knowledge they can muster, can bring back Gary Webb: although they could have, as they brought me back seven years ago, if only we and I had cared enough about Gary to drag him by the hand to them, to have been alert that when he lost his job he was at risk, to have paid enough attention to have seen him sinking toward the grave, to have supported anybody who still loved him intimately to be able to stick with him, to have raised him the money so that he would not have lost his sense of place.

The compañeros gave me the answer to my question. What to do about the early death of Gary Webb? Their answer was so simple, so clear, that I kick myself for not having realized it immediately.

The answer: “Do what he did. Do what Gary would have done today if he were still alive.”

...

Gary Webb is gone, poof! Nothin's gonna bring him back. I can’t fucking take it. But I have to take it. And in order to keep from blowing my own brains out, I’m going to make some changes around here. I may have to cut some of you from the roster: If you’ve betrayed me or this project, if you’ve accepted our camaraderie and generosity, and have promised but not delivered, or if I have caught you in a big lie, self-proclaimed truth-teller, either wise up and explain to me why I should ever trust you again, or start packing your bags and stay far away from me and from this project. I repeat: a network based on honesty is only as strong as its most dishonest link. I’m not going to play with colleagues who don’t give and keep their word anymore. Most of you have nothing to worry about. Those who do – you probably know who you are – have precious few days left to change course or be left behind.

I’m going back into the jungle now, where I have a sense of place, where I am loved as I wish to be loved, and when I return it will be with the beginnings of a plan for how the Authentic Journalism renaissance can continue without Gary, but also with Gary more present, through his memory, than we were able to have him present before.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2004/12/15/18472...

Good God, what a tribute this is, and what writing. It's a lengthy piece, and deserves to be read in whole.

...

I ask the compañeros here in Chiapas – they loved Gary, too - what I should do now: What can be done? I can’t bring Gary back and neither can you. Not even the compañeros, with all the revolutionary magic and ancient knowledge they can muster, can bring back Gary Webb: although they could have, as they brought me back seven years ago, if only we and I had cared enough about Gary to drag him by the hand to them, to have been alert that when he lost his job he was at risk, to have paid enough attention to have seen him sinking toward the grave, to have supported anybody who still loved him intimately to be able to stick with him, to have raised him the money so that he would not have lost his sense of place.

The compañeros gave me the answer to my question. What to do about the early death of Gary Webb? Their answer was so simple, so clear, that I kick myself for not having realized it immediately.

The answer: “Do what he did. Do what Gary would have done today if he were still alive.”

...

Gary Webb is gone, poof! Nothin's gonna bring him back. I can’t fucking take it. But I have to take it. And in order to keep from blowing my own brains out, I’m going to make some changes around here. I may have to cut some of you from the roster: If you’ve betrayed me or this project, if you’ve accepted our camaraderie and generosity, and have promised but not delivered, or if I have caught you in a big lie, self-proclaimed truth-teller, either wise up and explain to me why I should ever trust you again, or start packing your bags and stay far away from me and from this project. I repeat: a network based on honesty is only as strong as its most dishonest link. I’m not going to play with colleagues who don’t give and keep their word anymore. Most of you have nothing to worry about. Those who do – you probably know who you are – have precious few days left to change course or be left behind.

I’m going back into the jungle now, where I have a sense of place, where I am loved as I wish to be loved, and when I return it will be with the beginnings of a plan for how the Authentic Journalism renaissance can continue without Gary, but also with Gary more present, through his memory, than we were able to have him present before.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2004/12/15/18472...

Was Gary Webb murdered?

Gary Webb, a former Mercury News investigative reporter, author and legislative staffer who ignited a firestorm with his controversial stories, died Friday in an apparent suicide in his suburban Sacramento home. He was 49.

The Sacramento County coroner's office said that when A Better Moving Company arrived at Mr. Webb's Carmichael home at about 8:20 a.m. Friday, a worker discovered a note posted to the front door which read: ``Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance.''

Mr. Webb, an award-winning journalist, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head, Sacramento County Deputy Coroner Bill Guillot said Saturday.

Mr. Webb's friends and colleagues described him as a devoted father and a funny, dogged reporter who was passionate about investigative journalism

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/1...

"The CIA’s knowledge and involvement had been far greater than I’d ever imagined. Agents and officials of the DEA had protected the traffickers from arrest, something I’d not been allowed to print. At the start of the Contra war, the CIA and Justice Department had worked out an unusual agreement that permitted the CIA not to have to report allegations of drug trafficking by its agents to the Justice Department. It was a curious loophole in the law, to say the least."
-Gary Webb
http://www.wanttoknow.info/massmediacover-ups

Webb's co-author George Hodel in Nicaragua has received death threats, like one of Webb's sources a decade ago.
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~pdscott/cocpref.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2818916

SAYING GOODBYE TO A GIANT

Gary Webb Memorial Attended by Hundreds

New Information Confirms Suicide - "Open and Shut"

Shabby, Self-Serving Internet Reports by Pseudo Journalists and Activists Cause Webb Family Grief - It's Time for Real Journalists and Activists to Shun Demagogues, Hysterics and Profiteers

by Michael C. Ruppert

Carmichael, California; Saturday December 18, 2004, (FTW) - The world has said its powerful, enduring and loving goodbye to Gary Webb.

Approximately 300 people came from as far away as New Jersey to this quiet Sacramento suburb to honor a man who - against all odds - made the corrupt and venal world of corporations, covert operations and search-and destroy economics blink, stagger and show its true vulnerabilities. Webb's August 1996 Dark Alliance series in the San Jose Mercury News, and his 1998 book of the same name sparked an international outrage that led to congressional hearings, massive disclosures of criminal activity by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Reagan-Bush (I) White House. They also gave brief, if fleeting, hope to the oppressed - from America's inner cities to villages and farms from Mexico to Colombia - that justice might not be the sole province of a parallel universe, untouched and unreachable from the world in which we "the abandoned ones" must live.

But even as his memorial service was a stirring tribute to a man who changed our world, Gary's passing was not without controversy and a just few more cheap shots for which his courageous surviving family has paid the inevitable price. That was the nature of Gary's life and - given his experience since 1996 - he would/should have expected this. To be fair, these follow-on blows are also an inevitable byproduct of all suicides for which the one pulling the trigger must bear some responsibility.

The Los Angeles Times' obituary, published just hours after Webb's body was discovered, drew universal outrage at the service, not only from Webb's family but also from about eight of his long-time former colleagues - professional journalists and writers all - who showed up to defy the way Gary's life had been distorted by corporate press in (as of last count) 73 obituaries published in the US and around the world. Most of Gary's obituaries were cut-and-paste jobs using material from the Times and Associated Press which explains the Times' rush to put their "stink" on Gary's passing as quickly as possible. The L.A. Times obituary was published shortly after midnight on Sunday December 12th.

Emmy Award-winning former CBS News producer Kristina Borjesson, herself a brutal victim of the mainstream media's "buzz saw", sat quietly in the crowded hall paying her respects. She had come all the way from New Jersey and as I was leaving to come home on the last cleared flight out of Sacramento's fog-shrouded airport, she missed her flight home and probably had to spend the night there. This is what friends do for each other.

The Times and the major press had to kill Gary Webb a second time just to make sure it stuck. He, like his incredible and professional journalism, was that hard to kill. Otherwise they might all have all been shamed for their relentless continuing extermination of anything resembling real investigative journalism.

As much as I know that Gary appreciated the many glowing tributes to his work, I also thought I heard him rage at some of the pseudo-journalism and malicious spin that followed his December 11th suicide because it came from people who should have been his friends and behaved like it.

But for those who were present, who spoke, and who sent messages to his family and to the world, it was clear that what Gary Webb accomplished in life was fully appreciated and will never be forgotten. Gary was remembered and honored as he should have been. This is what will endure long after the bitter tastes and painful memories have faded from the consciousness of all who knew him.

Gary Webb was a giant in a village of midgets.
SUICIDE CONFIRMED

Gary's suicide was accomplished with two gunshot wounds to the head. In death Gary proved to be as determined and single-minded as he had been in life.

Because of the rampant and ill-informed speculation that has been traversing the Internet it is a sad necessity to put this issue to rest right up front. What follows should be a warning and a lesson to all activists and progressives; to all those who dare label themselves as "journalists" without ever once following standard journalism protocols designed to ensure fairness and minimize unnecessary harm to the innocent and those already in pain. (clip)

Here are the facts:

Gary Webb fired two shots from a .38 caliber revolver into his own head. The entrance wounds for both shots were at or near the right ear. However, for the first shot Webb had the gun angled downward which produced a through-and-through wound blowing out his lower left jaw. This was obviously not a fatal wound. His second shot, angled upward, successfully reached the brain, killing him instantly.

As a former LAPD police officer and detective I have seen several suicides where multiple gunshots, especially from a relatively weak handgun like a .38, using inappropriate target ammunition, required multiple shots. In most cases the second and sometimes third shots were required because the victim made "hesitation" movements as they pulled the trigger, moving the gun barrel away from a fatal trajectory. There are many places on the human head to which a gunshot wound is not fatal (e.g. the lower and upper jaws, the cheeks, the roof of the mouth, the nose, etc.). Only a shot to the brain usually produces death but even that is not always guaranteed. I have seen attempted suicide and homicide victims survive after a .38 "ball" round had passed completely through and exited the opposite side of the skull.

For the rest of the article, click the link below:
<http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/122004_goodby... >

The Mysterious Suiciding of Gary Webb.

Is there a list of these suspcious "suicides" that are convenient to the Administration?