{"id":47988,"date":"2014-09-29T12:00:53","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T11:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=47988"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:42","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:42","slug":"managing-a-nightmare-how-the-cia-watched-over-the-destruction-of-gary-webb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/09\/managing-a-nightmare-how-the-cia-watched-over-the-destruction-of-gary-webb\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"gary<\/a><\/p>\n

Eighteen years after it was published, \u201cDark Alliance,\u201d the San Jose Mercury News\u2019<\/em>s bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua\u2019s Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial expos\u00e9s in American journalism.<\/p>\n

The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. It also sparked an aggressive backlash from the nation\u2019s most powerful media outlets, which devoted considerable resources to discredit author Gary Webb\u2019s reporting. Their efforts succeeded, costing Webb his career.\u00a0On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head.<\/p>\n

These days, Webb is being cast in a more sympathetic light. He\u2019s portrayed heroically in a major motion picture<\/a> set to premiere nationwide next month. And documents newly released by the CIA provide fresh context to the \u201cDark Alliance\u201d saga \u2014 information that paints an ugly portrait of the mainstream media at the time.<\/p>\n

On September 18, the agency released a trove<\/a> of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agency\u2019s in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence<\/em>, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled \u201cManaging a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story<\/a>.\u201d Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of \u201cDark Alliance,\u201d the document offers a unique window into the CIA\u2019s internal reaction to what it called \u201ca genuine public relations crisis\u201d while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry. Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as \u201ca ground base of already productive relations with journalists,\u201d the CIA\u2019s Public Affairs officers 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.<\/p>\n

(Dujmovic\u2019s name was redacted in the released version of the CIA document, but was included in a footnote in a 2010 article<\/a> in the Journal of Intelligence<\/em>. Dujmovic confirmed his authorship to The Intercept<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

\"Actor<\/a>

Actor Jeremy Renner stars as investigative journalist Gary Webb in the upcoming film \u201cKill the Messenger.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

Webb\u2019s troubles began in August 1996, when his employer, the San Jose Mercury News,<\/em> published a groundbreaking, three-part investigation he had worked on for more than a year. Carrying the full title \u201cDark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion<\/a>,\u201d Webb\u2019s series reported that in addition to waging a proxy war for the U.S. government against Nicaragua\u2019s revolutionary Sandinista government in the 1980s, elements of the CIA-backed Contra rebels were also involved in trafficking cocaine to the U.S. in order to fund their counter-revolutionary campaign. The secret flow of drugs and money, Webb reported, had a direct link to the subsequent explosion of crack cocaine abuse that had devastated California\u2019s most vulnerable African American neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

Derided by some as conspiracy theory and heralded by others as investigative reporting at its finest, Webb\u2019s series spread through extensive talk radio coverage and global availability via the internet, which at the time was still a novel way to promote national news.<\/p>\n

Though \u201cDark Alliance\u201d would eventually morph into a personal crisis for Webb, it was initially a PR disaster for the CIA. In \u201cManaging a Nightmare,\u201d Dujmovic minced no words in describing the potentially devastating\u00a0 effect of the series on the agency\u2019s image:<\/p>\n

The charges could hardly be worse. A widely read newspaper series leads many Americans to believe CIA is guilty of at least complicity, if not conspiracy, in the outbreak of crack cocaine in America\u2019s cities. In more extreme versions of the story circulating on talk radio and the internet, the Agency was the instrument of a consistent strategy by the US Government to destroy the black community and keep black Americans from advancing. Denunciations of CIA\u2013reminiscent of the 1970s\u2013abound. Investigations are demanded and initiated. The Congress gets involved. <\/em><\/p>\n

Dujmovic\u00a0acknowledged that Webb \u201cdid not state outright that CIA ran the drug trade or even knew about it.\u201d In fact, the agency\u2019s central complaint, according to the document, was over the graphics that accompanied the series, which suggested a link between the CIA and the crack scare, and Webb\u2019s description of the Contras as \u201cthe CIA\u2019s army\u201d (despite the fact that the Contras were quite literally an armed, militant group not-so-secretly supported by the U.S., at war with the government of Nicaragua).<\/p>\n

Dujmovic complained\u00a0that Webb\u2019s series \u201cappeared with no warning,\u201d remarking that, for all his journalistic credentials, \u201che apparently could not come up with a widely available and well-known telephone number for CIA Public Affairs.\u201d This was probably because Webb \u201cwas uninterested in anything the Agency might have to say that would diminish the impact of his series,\u201d he wrote. (Webb later said that he did contact the CIA but that the agency would not return his calls; efforts to obtain CIA comment were not mentioned in the \u201cDark Alliance\u201d series).<\/p>\n

Dujmovic also pointed out that much of what was reported in \u201cDark Alliance\u201d was not new. Indeed, in 1985, more than a decade before the series was published, Associated Press journalists Robert Parry and Brian Barger found that Contra groups had \u201cengaged in cocaine trafficking, in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua.\u201d In a move that foreshadowed Webb\u2019s experience, the Reagan White House launched \u201ca concerted behind-the-scenes campaign to besmirch the professionalism of Parry and Barger and to discredit all reporting on the contras and drugs,\u201d according to a 1997 article<\/a> by Peter Kornbluh for the Columbia Journalism Review.<\/em> \u201cWhether the campaign was the cause or not, coverage was minimal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neverthess, a special senate subcommittee, chaired by then-senator John Kerry, investigated the AP\u2019s findings and, in 1989, released a 1,166-page\u00a0report<\/a> on covert U.S. operations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. It found \u201cconsiderable evidence\u201d that the Contras were linked to running drugs and guns \u2014 and that the U.S. government knew about it.<\/p>\n

\"1983,<\/a>

1983, Anti-Sandinista Contra forces move down the San Juan River which separates Nicaragua from Costa Rica.<\/p><\/div>\n

From the subcommittee report:<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

The chief of the CIA\u2019s Central America Task Force was also quoted as saying, \u201cWith respect to (drug trafficking) by the Resistance Forces\u2026it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite such damning assessments, the subcommittee report received scant attention from the country\u2019s major newspapers. Seven years later, Webb would be the one to pick up the story. His articles distinguished themselves from the AP\u2019s reporting in part by connecting an issue that seemed distant to many U.S. readers \u2014 drug trafficking in Central America \u2014 to a deeply-felt domestic story, the impact of crack cocaine in California\u2019s urban, African American communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cDark Alliance\u201d focused on the lives of three men involved in shipping cocaine to the U.S.: Ricky \u201cFreeway\u201d Ross, a legendary L.A. drug dealer; Oscar Danilo Bland\u00f3n Reyes, considered by the U.S. government to be Nicaragua\u2019s biggest cocaine dealer living in the United States; and Meneses Cantarero, a powerful Nicaraguan player who had allegedly recruited Bland\u00f3n to sell drugs in support of the counter-revolution. The series examined the relationship between the men, their impact on the drug market in California and elsewhere, and the disproportionate sentencing of African Americans under crack cocaine laws.<\/p>\n

And while its content was not all new, the series marked the beginning of something that was: an in-depth investigation published outside the traditional mainstream media outlets and successfully promoted on the internet. More than a decade before Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, Webb showcased the power and reach of online journalism. Key documents were hosted on the San Jose Mercury News<\/em> website, with hyperlinks, wiretap recordings and follow-up stories. The series was widely discussed on African American talk radio stations; on some days attracting more than one million readers to the newspaper\u2019s website. As Webb later remarked, \u201cyou don\u2019t have be The New York Times<\/em> or The Washington Post<\/em> to bust a national story anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

But newspapers like the Times<\/em> and the Post<\/em> 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<\/em> was especially aggressive. Scooped in its own backyard, the California paper assigned no fewer than 17 reporters to pick apart Webb\u2019s reporting. While employees denied an outright effort to attack the Mercury News<\/em>, one of the 17 referred to it as the \u201cget Gary Webb team.\u201d Another said at the time, \u201cWe\u2019re going to take away that guy\u2019s Pulitzer,\u201d\u00a0according to Kornbluh\u2019s CJR<\/em> piece. Within two months of the publication of \u201cDark Alliance,\u201d the L.A. Times<\/em> devoted more words to dismantling its competitor\u2019s breakout hit than comprised the series itself.<\/p>\n

The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webb\u2019s reporting. Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of \u201cDark Alliance,\u201d and Dujmovic in \u201cManaging a Nightmare\u201d cites the CIA\u2019s success in discouraging \u201cone major news affiliate\u201d from covering the story. He also boasts that the agency effectively departed from its own longstanding policies in order to discredit the series. \u201cFor example, in order to help a journalist working on a story that would undermine the Mercury News<\/em> allegations, Public Affairs was able to deny any affiliation of a particular individual \u2014 which is a rare exception to the general policy that CIA does not comment on any individual\u2019s alleged CIA ties.\u201d<\/p>\n

The document chronicles the shift in public opinion as it moved in favor of the CIA, a trend that began about a month and a half after the series was published. \u201cThat third week in September was a turning point in media coverage of this story,\u201d Dujmovic wrote, citing \u201c[r]espected columnists, including prominent blacks,\u201d along with the New York Daily News<\/em>, the Baltimore Sun<\/em>, The Weekly Standard<\/em> and the Washington Post<\/em>. The agency supplied the press, \u201cas well as former Agency officials, who were themselves representing the Agency in interviews with the media,\u201d with \u201cthese more balanced stories,\u201d Dujmovic wrote. The Washington Post<\/em> proved particularly useful. \u201cBecause of the Post<\/em>\u2018s national reputation, its articles especially were picked up by other papers, helping to create what the Associated Press called a \u2018firestorm of reaction\u2019 against the San Jose Mercury News<\/em>.\u201d Over the month that followed, critical media coverage of the series (\u201cbalanced reporting\u201d) far outnumbered supportive stories, a trend the CIA credited to the Post<\/em>, The New York Times<\/em>, \u201cand especially the Los Angeles Times<\/em>.\u201d Webb\u2019s editors began to distance themselves from their reporter.<\/p>\n

By the end of October, two months after \u201cDark Alliance\u201d was published, \u201cthe tone of the entire CIA-drug story had changed,\u201d Dujmovic was pleased to report. \u201cMost press coverage included, as a routine matter, the now-widespread criticism of the Mercury News<\/em> allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis success has to be in relative terms,\u201d Dujmovic wrote, summing up the episode. \u201cIn the world of public relations, as in war, avoiding a rout in the face of hostile multitudes can be considered a success.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"dark_alliance_540-300x300<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question that \u201cDark Alliance\u201d included flaws, which the CIA was able to exploit.<\/p>\n

In his CJR<\/em> piece, Kornbluh said the series was \u201cproblematically sourced\u201d and criticized it for \u201crepeatedly promised evidence that, on close reading, it did not deliver.\u201d It failed to definitively connect the story\u2019s key players to the CIA, he noted, and there were inconsistencies in Webb\u2019s timeline of events.<\/p>\n

But Kornbluh also uncovered problems with the retaliatory reports described as \u201cbalanced\u201d by the CIA. In the case of the L.A. Times<\/em>, he wrote, the paper \u201cstumbled into some of the same problems of hyperbole, selectivity, and credibility that it was attempting to expose\u201d while ignoring declassified evidence (also neglected by the\u00a0 New York Times<\/em> and the Washington Post<\/em>) that lent credibility to Webb\u2019s thesis. \u201cClearly, there was room to advance the contra\/drug\/CIA story rather than simply denounce it,\u201d Kornbluh wrote.<\/p>\n

The Mercury News<\/em> was partially responsible \u201cfor the sometimes distorted public furor the stories generated,\u201d Kornbluh said, but also achieved \u201csomething that neither the Los Angeles Times<\/em>, The Washington Post<\/em>, nor The New York Times<\/em> had been willing or able to do \u2014 revisit a significant story that had been inexplicably abandoned by the mainstream press, report a new dimension to it, and thus put it back on the national agenda where it belongs.\u201d<\/p>\n

In October, the story of Gary Webb will reach a national moviegoing audience, likely reviving old questions about his reporting and the outrage it ignited. Director Michael Cuesta\u2019s film, Kill the Messenger<\/em>, stars Jeremy Renner as the hard-charging investigative reporter and borrows its title from a 2006 biography<\/a> written by award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou, who worked as a consultant on the script.<\/p>\n

Discussing the newly disclosed \u201cManaging a Nightmare\u201d document, Schou says it squares with what he found while doing his own reporting. Rather than some dastardly, covert plot to destroy (or, as some went so far as to suggest, murder) Webb, Schou posits that the journalist was ultimately undone by the petty jealousies of the modern media world. The CIA \u201cdidn\u2019t really need to lift a finger to try to ruin Gary Webb\u2019s credibility,\u201d Schou told The Intercept<\/em>. \u201cThey just sat there and watched these journalists go after Gary like a bunch of piranhas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey must have been delighted over at Langley, the way this all unfolded,\u201d\u00a0Schou added.<\/p>\n

At least one journalist who helped lead the campaign to discredit Webb, feels remorse for what he did. As Schou reported<\/a> for\u00a0L.A. Weekly<\/em>, in a 2013 radio interview L.A. Times<\/em> reporter Jesse Katz recalled the episode, saying, \u201cAs an L.A. Times<\/em> reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News<\/em> 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<\/em> and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schou, too, readily concedes there were problems with Webb\u2019s reporting, but maintains that the most important components of his investigation stood up to scrutiny, only to be buried under the attacks from the nation\u2019s biggest papers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s fair to take a look at the story objectively and say that it could have been better edited, it could have been packaged better, it would have been less inflammatory. And sure, maybe Gary could have, like, actually put in the story somewhere \u2018I called the CIA X-amount of times and they didn\u2019t respond.\u2019 That wasn\u2019t in there,\u201d he said. \u201cBut these are all kind of minor things compared to the bigger picture, which is that he documented for the first time in the history of U.S. media how CIA complicity with Central American drug traffickers had actually impacted the sale of drugs north of the border in a very detailed, accurate story. And that\u2019s, I think, the take-away here.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Webb\u2019s tragic death, Schou is certain it was a direct consequence of the smear campaign against him.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs much as it\u2019s true that he suffered from a clinical depression for years and years \u2014 and even before \u2018Dark Alliance\u2019 to a certain extent \u2014 it\u2019s impossible to view what happened to him without understanding the death of his career as a result of this story,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt was really the central defining event of his career and of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you take away a journalist\u2019s credibility, that\u2019s all they have,\u201d Schou says. \u201cHe was never able to recover from that.\u201d<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VW4XO-52ubE<\/p>\n

Kill the Messenger<\/em>, a thriller based on Webb\u2019s story, will be released October 10, 2014.<\/p>\n

In \u201cManaging a Nightmare,\u201d Dujmovic attributed the initial outcry over the \u201cDark Alliance\u201d series to \u201csocietal shortcomings\u201d that are not present in the spy agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a personal post-script, I would submit that ultimately the CIA-drug story says a lot more about American society on the eve of the millennium that [sic] it does about either the CIA or the media,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe live in somewhat coarse and emotional times\u2013when large numbers of Americans do not adhere to the same standards of logic, evidence, or even civil discourse as those practiced by members of the CIA community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Webb obviously saw things differently. He reflected on his fall from grace in the 2002 book, Into the Buzzsaw<\/em>. Prior to \u201cDark Alliance,\u201d Webb said, \u201cI was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I\u2019d enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn\u2019t been, as I\u2019d assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job,\u201d Webb wrote. \u201cThe truth was that, in all those years, I hadn\u2019t written anything important enough to suppress.\u201d<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/p>\n

Photo: Webb: Bob Berg\/Getty Images; Kill the Messenger: Chuck Zlotnick\/Focus Features; Contras: Bill Gentile\/Corbis<\/em><\/p>\n

Email the author: ryan.devereaux@theintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 firstlook.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eighteen years after it was published, \u201cDark Alliance,\u201d the San Jose Mercury News\u2019s bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua\u2019s Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial expos\u00e9s in American journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47988\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}