When Webb's body was discovered last December, Bell says, this last item had been dumped in the trash. And "we really didn't do anything to advance his work or illuminate much to the story, and it was a really kind of tawdry exercise. Gary is survived by his wife of 48 years, Beverly Webb; children Margaret . Attorneys' Offices. When they married, she was aged just 21. Garcia is deputy director of the John S Knight Fellowships in Journalism at Stanford University. "People told me that," she says. The character reporter Irene Abe is said by fans of the show to be a stand in character for the real life Gary Webb. } Gary Webb was born in Corona, California, in 1955. [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. "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.". [65], Within "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On" essay 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". And this is not a happy story - or," she adds, "a little one.". 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. [56] He resigned from the paper in November 1997. "He started having motorcycle crashes," Bell says. "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. [9], Webb's first major investigative work appeared in 1980, when the Cincinnati Post published "The Coal Connection," a seventeen-part series by Webb and Post reporter Thomas Scheffey. So, how much is Gary Webb worth at the age of 49 years old? "[38], Surprised by The Washington Post article, The Mercury News's executive editor Jerome Ceppos wrote to the Post defending the series. color: #ddd; The CIA admits used the media to ruin his career. This support "was not directed by anyone within the Contra movement who had an association with the CIA," and the Committee found "no evidence that the CIA or the Intelligence Community was aware of these individuals support. Relationships with other women ended badly. That was just the way he was.". He leaves behind the love of his life and adoring wife of 41 years, Anne Michelle Phillips. When he told me, I said it sounded crazy. Instead, he found work in 1978 as a reporter at the Kentucky Post, a local paper affiliated with the larger Cincinnati Post. He went into the bedroom, and picked up a .38 that had belonged to his father. Video courtesy of documentary FREEWAY: CRACK IN THE SYSTEM premiering on Al Jazeera America in early 2015. A flood of inquiries about Gary Webb's shooting death prompts statement. It would have been our 25th wedding anniversary," Bell recalls. *, 'Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion' is published in the UK by Seven Stories Press, priced 11.99, Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. [5], After high school, Webb attended an Indianapolis community college on a scholarship until his family moved to Cincinnati. The first article, by Katz, developed a different picture of the origins of the crack trade than "Dark Alliance" had described, with more gangs and smugglers participating. In city after city, local dealers either bought from Ross or got left behind."[24]. He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. When his medical insurance expired, he stopped taking his antidepressants. ", She pauses: "That said, he did sleep with a gun under his bed.". "Do you think that a part of him did this out of revenge?" . He was taken to hospital by air ambulance. A revised version was published in 1999 that incorporated Webb's response to the CIA and Justice Department reports. He wrote well. Because the gentile (european caucasian, lepers, fake jews) or white folks agenda has always been to destroy the black man, ever since pharaoh tried to murder Christ by murdering Hebrew babies, until now. "Like enjoy it.". Many writers discussing the series point to errors in it. In 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of stories exposing the connection between the CIA and the crack cocaine that was being sold in So. Gary Webb, 64, Oroville, Wash., died Oct. 30, 2021. Gary Webb, friends say, was a far more combative character than either the Mercury News's executive editor Ceppos or page editor Garcia. 3) The series oversimplified how the crack epidemic grew. If he could have chosen his own epitaph, it might have been a line from the letter he posted to Bell, immediately before he killed himself: "I do not regret," Webb told her, "anything that I have written." But as Krim told Webb's biographer Nick Schou, "The zeal that helped make Gary a relentless reporter was coupled with an inability to question himself, to entertain the notion that he might have erred. 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. Like the CIA and Justice Department reports, it also found that neither Blandn, Meneses, nor Ross were associated with the CIA. He died by suicide on December 10, 2004. After the announcement of federal investigations into the claims made in the series, other newspapers began investigating, and several papers published articles suggesting the series' claims were overstated. Both sides were left angry and disappointed. Unfortunately, the railroading of Gary Webb had begun and he was run over. Gary Douglas Webb of Radnor, PA, passed away on October 19, 2021. line-height:1.5; The couple got married recently in November of 2020 after dating for some time. But as his ex-wife told the . Dr. Gary A. Webb is a geriatrician in Marco Island, Florida. The story had little immediate impact. The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress. But you say - dear God. When she got indignant," she adds, "he went to meet her.". [11], In 1983, Webb moved to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he continued doing investigative work. 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. 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. He had also lost his house the week before his suicide. Gary's story, however, is far from over and could never be killed by something as trivial as a material bullet. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". padding-left: 10px!important; . What was new about Webb's reports, published under the title "Dark Alliance" in the Californian paper the San Jose Mercury News, was that for the first time it brought the story back home. .article-native-ad p { His erstwhile editors on the Mercury News, meanwhile, saw their careers thrive. [18], Webb began researching "Dark Alliance" in July 1995. 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. "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. The CIA Inspector-General's report was issued in two volumes. 'Dark Alliance' - both as journalism and as a book - is a convoluted narrative, but the crucial link it establishes is between the "agricultural salesman" Oscar Danilo Blandn, a Contra sympathiser with close CIA links, and his best customer, an LA drug dealer known as "Freeway" Ricky Ross. . Webb began to shift from cynicism to curiosity. He was preceded in death by his wife, Melody Webb; parents and three brothers, Albert, Duane and Ronald. His father was a Marine sergeant, and the family moved frequently, as his career took him to new assignments. Corrie had primary biliary cirrhosis, a genetic liver disease that already had. Webb chose the second option. [41], When the Los Angeles Times series appeared, Ceppos again wrote to defend the original series. 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". "Ross," his report went on, dealt "on a scale never before conceived," with "a staggering turnover" of "50 to 100 kilos of cocaine a day". Some might consider it an inappropriate assignment for a man with responsibilities. 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. For instance, he published an article on racial profiling in traffic stops in Esquire magazine, in April 1999. 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. Few reporters I've known could match his nose for an investigative story. Film of this encounter survives. [7] After transferring to Northern Kentucky, he entered its journalism program and wrote for the school paper, The Northerner. She said the paper wanted to make up for what it had done in the past. Webb had become, as somebody put it, "radioactive". It was truthful. Webb's ex-wife, Stokes, now remarried and still living in Sacramento, had heard it all before, too. That wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been willing to stand up and risk it all.". padding-bottom: 20px; But they underestimated the paradigm shifting power of the internet, and the intelligence of Webb, who not only listed the explosive story online . 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. His own paper, the Mercury News, criticized the series in 1997 without providing many specifics. Gary Webb was a journalist of outsized talent. Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst with the George Washington University's National Security Archive, was one of the first to suggest that Webb had overplayed his hand in the Mercury News version of "Dark Alliance". One article, dealing mostly with the response of the Los Angeles Black community to the stories, described the series's evidence as "thin".