Remembering Gary Webb

January 19, 2024

Gary Webb was a Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist who worked for the San Jose Mercury News in 1996 at which time he wrote one of the most explosive news pieces ever published. Given the title Dark Alliance, the series of articles connected the United States Central Intelligence Agency with drug trafficking and the crack cocaine epidemic that would envelop Los Angeles. The story would eventually cost Gary his job, his marriage and, ultimately, his life.

Although the Mercury News was a local paper in San Jose, California, the Dark Alliance series gained national attention in the United States and would spread across the world. Initially Webb's work was regarded as an accurate, groundbreaking bit of investigative journalism. It was also the first time a news company published the source material used to write the articles on the internet which made it difficult to debunk Gary's work. Nevertheless, mainstream "news" publications such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and the the Los Angeles Times, viciously attacked both Gary and his work in a futile effort to discredit it.

Video: Dark Alliance - Gary Webb

Video: Gary Webb In His Own Words (2002) - CIA Cocaine Dark Alliance

One highly likely reason why Webb's work was attacked by the corporate press is due to the CIA having people embedded in mainstream media, a practice which continues to this day. This fact was admitted by the CIA in 1975 during the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Known simply as the Church Committee and headed by Frank Church, the committee was organized in order to investigate government corruption and abuses in various sectors including the NSA, CIA, FBI and IRS.

Church Committee - Wikipedia

The Church Committee (formally the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) was a US Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church (D-ID), the committee was part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses in 1975, dubbed the "Year of Intelligence", including its House counterpart, the Pike Committee, and the presidential Rockefeller Commission. The committee's efforts led to the establishment of the permanent US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The most shocking revelations of the committee include Operation MKULTRA involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens as part of human experimentation on mind control;[1][2] COINTELPRO involving the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil-rights organizations;[3] Family Jewels, a CIA program to covertly assassinate foreign leaders.[4][5][6][7]
It also unearthed Project SHAMROCK in which the major telecommunications companies shared their traffic with the NSA (while officially confirming the existence of this signals intelligence agency to the public for the first time).

Interestingly, the Wikipedia article fails to mention what is arguably the most important revelation resulting from the hearings, that being the CIA's Operation Mockingbird which was a black propaganda program designed to influence mainstream media, however the article does link to another which is dedicated to the subject.

Operation Mockingbird: The CIA's Influence on Media and Public Perception - Live Trading News

Operation Mockingbird stands as one of the most controversial covert programs in U.S. history, revealing the depths to which intelligence agencies sought to influence media narratives and shape public opinion during the Cold War era. This clandestine operation, primarily orchestrated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), raises critical questions about journalistic integrity, government transparency, and the blurred lines between information dissemination and propaganda.

Video: Operation Mockingbird, CIA Media Control Program

CIA Funding and Manipulation of the U.S. News Media
Operation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence domestic and foreign media beginning in the 1950s.
According to the Congress report published in 1976:
"The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets."
Senator Frank Church argued that misinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year.
In 1948, Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects (OSP). Soon afterwards OSP was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."
Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic and foreign media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham from The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. According to Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great; "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."
In 1951, Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s. According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird's "principal operative."
In 1977, Rolling Stone alleged that one of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists alleged by Rolling Stone Magazine to have been willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), William C. Baggs (The Miami News), Herb Gold (The Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times). According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman), these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank Wisner. The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work.
After 1953, the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run by people with well-known right-wing views such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time and Life Magazine), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham, Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal), James Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (Christian Science Monitor).
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning of funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers. Frank Wisner was constantly looking for ways to help convince the public of the dangers of communism. In 1954, Wisner arranged for the funding of the Hollywood production of Animal Farm, the animated allegory based on the book written by George Orwell.
According to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, "some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts". Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran (See: Operation Ajax) and Guatemala (See: Operation PBSUCCESS).

Further C-SPAN coverage of the Church Committee hearings regarding its investigation of the CIA, including admittance of the CIA's "heart attack" gun, a weapon capable of firing frozen poison projectiles, can be found in the video, Church Committee Hearings CIA William Colby 1975.

Eventually the San Jose Mercury News sacrificed its credibility by succumbing to pressure from the larger publications. Gary was ostracized and transferred to another Mercury News outlet over a hundred miles from his home where he was tasked with mundane stories and thus effectively silenced by his employer. His wife, Susan Bell, would divorce him in 2000. Having lost everything important to him, Gary put a gun to his head and committed suicide on December 10, 2004. His death is often regarded as murder given that there were two bullet wounds to Gary's head near his right ear, however it was indeed a suicide for which he prepared. For the first shot, Gary held the pistol at a non-optimal angle which caused the bullet to miss his brain, thus a second shot was required.

Gary Webb's work and integrity was an inspiration to many, including Michael Ruppert, a former Los Angeles Police Detective who would also take his own life. Having been accused of being involved in drug trafficking by Webb, and given the associated crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles, John Deutch, then director of the CIA, was compelled to meet with Los Angeles families in Locke High School on the 15 November, 1996, where Ruppert confronted him. In what can be regarded as a historic moment, Ruppert accused the CIA of direct involvement in drug trafficking, which was step further than Webb had done, and attempting to recruit him for related purposes. Broadcast live on C-SPAN, Deutch, who rubbed his hands together nervously while replying to Ruppert's accusations, was eventually forced to relinquish his position at the CIA as a result of the embarrassing confrontation.

Video: Michael Ruppert - Confronts CIA Director John Deutch on Drug Trafficking by the CIA on C-SPAN

Regarding the controversy surrounding the Webb's suicide, Ruppert wrote the following in an article titled Dispelling the Rumors: Gary Webb's Death Confirmed As Suicide:

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.
[...]
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.
[...]
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.

The CIA often performs illegal and wholly unethical, clandestine operations with little or no congressional oversight and such operations require massive funds which the illegal drug trade can provide. One of the first tasks assigned to the Marines when the U.S. government decided to invade Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks upon the United States, was to secure the poppy fields which the Taliban had apparently been eliminating by convincing farmers, perhaps forcefully, to grow food instead of drug crops. Today the flow of heroin from Afghanistan apparently exceeds the pre-invasion level by a substantial margin. According to Sibel Edmonds, the bulk of this heroin makes its way through Turkey before being distributed throughout Europe and the United States.

While i'm not aware of any concrete proof, it seems quite logical that the CIA would also be involved in human trafficking, including children, for the purposes of sex and potentially other reasons. It is estimated that the global human trafficking trade generates approximately $150,000,000 annually with approximately 25,000,000 people being trafficked, many of them children. It is practically inconceivable that the CIA isn't dipping into this extremely lucrative market in order to finance their dirty tricks, however exposing such activities, such as Gary Webb had done, can be a dangerous undertaking.

Ten years after his death, the film Kill the Messenger was released in 2014. Based on a book of the same name, the film details the story of Gary's life and is well worth watching.

Resources used to write this article: