{"id":48171,"date":"2014-10-06T12:00:09","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=48171"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:29:41","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:29:41","slug":"the-ciamain-stream-media-contra-cocaine-cover-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/10\/the-ciamain-stream-media-contra-cocaine-cover-up\/","title":{"rendered":"The CIA\/Main-Stream-Media Contra-Cocaine Cover-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Hollywood set to release a movie about the Contra-cocaine scandal and the\u00a0destruction of journalist Gary Webb [\u201cKill the Messenger\u201d (Official Trailer 2014<\/a>)], an internal CIA report has surfaced showing how the spy agency manipulated\u00a0the mainstream media\u2019s coverage to disparage Webb and contain\u00a0the scandal.<\/em><\/p>\n

In\u00a01996 \u2013 as major U.S. news outlets disparaged the Nicaraguan Contra-cocaine story and destroyed the career of investigative reporter Gary Webb for reviving it \u2013 the CIA marveled at the success of its public-relations team guiding the mainstream media\u2019s hostility toward both the story and Webb, according to a newly released internal report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Entitled \u201cManaging a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story,\u201d the six-page report describes the CIA\u2019s damage control after Webb\u2019s \u201cDark Alliance\u201d series was published in the San Jose Mercury-News in August 1996. Webb had resurrected disclosures from the 1980s about the CIA-backed Contras collaborating with cocaine traffickers as the Reagan administration worked to conceal the crimes.<\/p>\n

\"Journalist<\/a>

Journalist Gary Webb holding a copy of his Contra-cocaine article in the San Jose Mercury-News.<\/p><\/div>\n

Although the CIA\u2019s inspector general later corroborated the truth about the Contra-cocaine connection and the Reagan administration\u2019s cover-up, the mainstream media\u2019s counterattack in defense of the CIA in late summer and fall of 1996 proved so effective that the subsequent CIA confession made little dent in the conventional wisdom regarding either the Contra-cocaine scandal or Gary Webb.<\/p>\n

In fall 1998, when the CIA inspector general\u2019s extraordinary findings were released, the major U.S. news media largely ignored them, leaving Webb a \u201cdisgraced\u201d journalist who \u2013 unable to find a decent-paying job in his profession \u2013 committed suicide in 2004, a dark tale that will be revisited in a new movie, \u201cKill the Messenger,\u201d starring Jeremy Renner and scheduled to reach theaters on Oct. 10.<\/p>\n

The \u201cManaging a Nightmare\u201d report offers something of the CIA\u2019s back story for how the spy agency\u2019s PR team exploited relationships with mainstream journalists who then essentially did the CIA\u2019s work for it, mounting a devastating counterattack against Webb that marginalized him and painted the Contra-cocaine trafficking story as some baseless conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n

Crucial to that success, the report credits \u201ca ground base of already productive relations with journalists and an effective response by the Director of Central Intelligence\u2019s Public Affairs Staff [that] helped prevent this story from becoming an unmitigated disaster.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis success has to be viewed in relative terms. In the world of public relations, as in war, avoiding a rout in the face of hostile multitudes can be considered a success. \u2026 By anyone\u2019s definition, the emergence of this story posed a genuine public relations crisis for the Agency.\u201d [As approved for release by the CIA last July 29, the report\u2019s author was redacted as classified, however, Ryan Devereaux of The Intercept identified<\/a> the writer as former Directorate of Intelligence staffer Nicholas Dujmovic.]<\/p>\n

According to the CIA report, the\u00a0public affairs staff convinced some journalists who followed up Webb\u2019s expos\u00e9 by calling the CIA that \u201cthis series represented no real news, in that similar charges were made in the 1980s and were investigated by the Congress and were found to be without substance. Reporters were encouraged to read the \u2018Dark Alliance\u2019 series closely and with a critical eye to what allegations could actually be backed with evidence. Early in the life of this story, one major news affiliate, after speaking with a CIA media spokesman, decided not to run the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, the CIA\u2019s assertion that the Contra-cocaine charges had been disproved in the 1980s was false. In fact, after Brian Barger and I wrote the first article about the Contra-cocaine scandal for the Associated Press in December 1985, a Senate investigation headed by Sen. John Kerry confirmed that many of the Contra forces were linked to cocaine traffickers and that the Reagan administration had even contracted with drug-connected airlines to fly supplies to the Contras who were fighting Nicaragua\u2019s leftist Sandinista government.<\/p>\n

However, in the late 1980s, the Reagan administration and the CIA\u00a0had considerable success\u00a0steering the New York Times, the Washington Post and other major news outlets away from the politically devastating reality that President Ronald Reagan\u2019s beloved Contras were tied up with cocaine traffickers. Kerry\u2019s groundbreaking report \u2013 when issued in 1989 \u2013 was largely ignored or mocked by the mainstream media.<\/p>\n

That earlier media response left the CIA\u2019s PR office free to cite the established \u201cgroup think\u201d \u2013\u00a0rather than the truth \u2014 when beating back Webb\u2019s resurfacing of the scandal in 1996.<\/p>\n

A \u2018Firestorm\u2019 of Attacks<\/strong><\/p>\n

The initial attacks on Webb\u2019s series came from the right-wing media, such as the Washington Times and the Weekly Standard, but the CIA\u2019s report identified the key turning point as coming when the Washington Post pummeled Webb in two influential articles.<\/p>\n

The CIA\u2019s PR experts quickly exploited that opening. The CIA\u2019s internal report said: \u201cPublic Affairs made sure that reporters and news directors calling for information \u2013 as well as former Agency officials, who were themselves representing the Agency in interviews with the media \u2013 received copies of these more balanced stories. Because of the Post\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CIA\u2019s report then noted the happy news that Webb\u2019s editors at the Mercury-News began scurrying for cover, \u201cconceding the paper might have done some things differently.\u201d The retreat soon became a rout with some mainstream journalists essentially begging the CIA for forgiveness for ever doubting its innocence.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne reporter of a major regional newspaper told [CIA] Public Affairs that, because it had reprinted the Mercury-News stories in their entirety, his paper now had \u2018egg on its face,\u2019 in light of what other newspapers were saying,\u201d the CIA\u2019s report noted, as its PR team kept track of the successful counterattack.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the end of September [1996], the number of observed stories in the print media that indicated skepticism of the Mercury-News series surpassed that of the negative\u00a0coverage, which had already peaked,\u201d the report said. \u201cThe observed number of skeptical treatments of the alleged CIA connection grew until it more than tripled the coverage that gave credibility to that connection. The growth in balanced reporting was largely due to the criticisms of the San Jose Mercury-News by The Washington Post, The New York Times, and especially The Los Angeles Times.\u201d<\/p>\n

The overall tone of the CIA\u2019s internal assessment is one of almost amazement at how its PR team could, with a deft touch, help convince mainstream U.S. journalists to trash a fellow reporter on a story that put the CIA in a negative light.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat CIA media spokesmen can do, as this case demonstrates, is to work with journalists who are already disposed toward writing a balanced story,\u201d the report said. \u201cWhat gives this limited influence a \u2018multiplier effect\u2019 is something that surprised me about the media: that the journalistic profession has the will and the ability to hold its own members to certain standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report then praises the neoconservative American Journalism Review for largely sealing Webb\u2019s fate with a harsh critique entitled \u201cThe Web That Gary Spun,\u201d with AJR\u2019s editor adding that the Mercury-News \u201cdeserved all the heat leveled at it for \u2018Dark Alliance.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The report\u00a0also cites with some pleasure the judgment of the Washington Post\u2019s media critic Howard Kurtz who reacted to Webb\u2019s observation that the war was a business to some Contra leaders with the snide comment: \u201cOliver Stone, check your voice mail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither Kurtz nor the CIA writer apparently was aware of the disclosure \u2014 among\u00a0Iran-Contra documents \u2014 of a March 17, 1986 message about the Contra leadership from\u00a0White House aide Oliver North\u2019s emissary to the Contras, Robert Owen, who complained to North:\u00a0\u201cFew of the so-called leaders of the movement . . . really care about the boys in the field. \u2026 THIS WAR HAS BECOME A BUSINESS TO MANY OF THEM.\u201d [Emphasis in original.]<\/p>\n

Misguided Group Think<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet, faced with this mainstream \u201cgroup think\u201d \u2013 as misguided as it was \u2013 Webb\u2019s Mercury-News editors surrendered to the pressure, apologizing for the series, shutting down the newspaper\u2019s continuing investigation into the Contra-cocaine scandal and forcing Webb to resign in disgrace.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0Webb\u2019s painful experience provided an important gift to American history, at least for those who aren\u2019t enamored of superficial \u201cconventional wisdom.\u201d CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz ultimately produced a fairly honest and comprehensive report that not only confirmed many of the longstanding allegations about Contra-cocaine trafficking but revealed that the CIA and the Reagan administration knew much more about the criminal activity than any of us outsiders did.<\/p>\n

Hitz completed his investigation in mid-1998 and the second volume of his two-volume investigation was published on Oct. 8, 1998. In the report, Hitz identified more than 50 Contras and Contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations throughout the 1980s.<\/p>\n

According to Volume Two<\/em>, the CIA knew the criminal nature of its Contra clients from the start of the war against Nicaragua\u2019s leftist Sandinista government. The earliest Contra force, called the Nicaraguan Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ADREN) or the 15th of September Legion, had chosen \u201cto stoop to criminal activities in order to feed and clothe their cadre,\u201d according to a June 1981 draft of a CIA field report.<\/p>\n

According to a September 1981 cable to CIA headquarters, two ADREN members made the first delivery of drugs to Miami in July 1981. ADREN\u2019s leaders included Enrique Berm\u00fadez and other early Contras who would later direct the major Contra army, the CIA-organized FDN. Throughout the war, Berm\u00fadez remained the top Contra military commander.<\/p>\n

The CIA corroborated the allegations about ADREN\u2019s cocaine trafficking, but insisted that Berm\u00fadez had opposed the drug shipments to the United States that went ahead nonetheless. The truth about Berm\u00fadez\u2019s supposed objections to drug trafficking, however, was less clear.<\/p>\n

According to Hitz\u2019s Volume One<\/em>, Berm\u00fadez enlisted Norwin Meneses, a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine smuggler and a key figure in Webb\u2019s series, to raise money and buy supplies for the Contras. Volume One<\/em> had quoted a Meneses associate, another Nicaraguan trafficker named Danilo Bland\u00f3n, who told Hitz\u2019s investigators that he and Meneses flew to Honduras to meet with Berm\u00fadez in 1982. At the time, Meneses\u2019s criminal activities were well-known in the Nicaraguan exile community. But Berm\u00fadez told these cocaine smugglers that \u201cthe ends justify the means\u201d in raising money for the Contras.<\/p>\n

After the Berm\u00fadez meeting, Contra soldiers helped Meneses and Bland\u00f3n get past Honduran police who briefly arrested them on drug-trafficking suspicions. After their release, Bland\u00f3n and Meneses traveled on to Bolivia to complete a cocaine transaction.<\/p>\n

There were other indications of Berm\u00fadez\u2019s drug-smuggling tolerance. In February 1988, another Nicaraguan exile linked to the drug trade accused Berm\u00fadez of participation in narcotics trafficking, according to Hitz\u2019s report. After the Contra war ended, Berm\u00fadez returned to Managua, Nicaragua, where he was shot to death on Feb. 16, 1991. The murder has never been solved. [For more details on Hitz\u2019s report and the Contra-cocaine scandal, see Robert Parry\u2019s Lost History<\/a><\/em>.]<\/p>\n

Shrinking Fig Leaf<\/strong><\/p>\n

By the time that Hitz\u2019s Volume Two was published in fall 1998, the CIA\u2019s defense against Webb\u2019s series had shrunk to a fig leaf: that the CIA did not conspire<\/em> with the Contras to raise money through cocaine trafficking. But Hitz made clear that the Contra war took precedence over law enforcement and that the CIA withheld evidence of Contra crimes from the Justice Department, Congress and even the CIA\u2019s own analytical division.<\/p>\n

Besides tracing the evidence of Contra-drug trafficking through the decade-long Contra war, the inspector general interviewed senior CIA officers who acknowledged that they were aware of the Contra-drug problem but didn\u2019t want its exposure to undermine the struggle to overthrow Nicaragua\u2019s\u00a0Sandinista government.<\/p>\n

According to Hitz, the CIA had \u201cone overriding priority: to oust the Sandinista government. . . . [CIA officers] were determined that the various difficulties they encountered not be allowed to prevent effective implementation of the Contra program.\u201d One CIA field officer explained, \u201cThe focus was to get the job done, get the support and win the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hitz also recounted complaints from CIA analysts that CIA operations officers handling the Contras hid evidence of Contra-drug trafficking even from the CIA\u2019s analysts.<\/p>\n

Because of the withheld evidence, the CIA analysts incorrectly concluded in the mid-1980s that \u201conly a handful of Contras might have been involved in drug trafficking.\u201d That false assessment was passed on to Congress and to major news organizations \u2014 serving as an important basis for denouncing Gary Webb and his \u201cDark Alliance\u201d series in 1996.<\/p>\n

Although Hitz\u2019s report was an extraordinary admission of institutional guilt by the CIA, it went almost unnoticed by major U.S. news outlets. By fall 1998, the U.S. mainstream media was obsessed with President Bill Clinton\u2019s Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. So, few readers of major U.S. newspapers saw much about the CIA\u2019s inspector general admitting that America\u2019s premier\u00a0spy agency had collaborated with and protected cocaine traffickers.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 10, 1998, two days after Hitz\u2019s Volume Two was posted on the CIA\u2019s Web site, the New York Times published a brief article that continued to deride Webb but acknowledged the Contra-drug problem may have been worse than earlier understood. Several weeks later, the Washington Post weighed in with a similarly superficial article. The Los Angeles Times, which had assigned a huge team of 17 reporters to tear down Webb\u2019s work, never published a story on the release of Hitz\u2019s Volume Two<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In 2000, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee grudgingly acknowledged that the stories about Reagan\u2019s CIA protecting Contra drug traffickers were true. The committee released a report citing classified testimony from CIA Inspector General Britt Snider (Hitz\u2019s successor) admitting that the spy agency had turned a blind eye to evidence of Contra-drug smuggling and generally treated drug smuggling through Central America as a low priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end the objective of unseating the Sandinistas appears to have taken precedence over dealing properly with potentially serious allegations against those with whom the agency was working,\u201d Snider said, adding that the CIA did not treat the drug allegations in \u201ca consistent, reasoned or justifiable manner.\u201d<\/p>\n

The House committee still downplayed the significance of the Contra-cocaine scandal, but the panel acknowledged, deep inside its report, that in some cases, \u201cCIA employees did nothing to verify or disprove drug trafficking information, even when they had the opportunity to do so. In some of these, receipt of a drug allegation appeared to provoke no specific response, and business went on as usual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the release of Hitz\u2019s report in 1998, the admissions by Snider and the House committee drew virtually no media attention in 2000 \u2014 except for a few articles on the Internet, including one at Consortiumnews.com.<\/p>\n

Killing the Messenger<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because of this abuse of power by the Big Three newspapers \u2014 choosing to conceal their own\u00a0journalistic negligence\u00a0on the Contra-cocaine scandal and to protect the Reagan administration\u2019s image \u2014 Webb\u2019s reputation was never rehabilitated.<\/p>\n

After his original \u201cDark Alliance\u201d series was published in 1996, I joined Webb in a few speaking appearances on the West Coast, including one packed book talk at the Midnight Special bookstore in Santa Monica, California. For a time, Webb was treated as a celebrity on the American Left, but that gradually faded.<\/p>\n

In our interactions during these joint appearances, I found Webb to be a regular guy who seemed to be holding up fairly well under the terrible pressure. He had landed an investigative job with a California state legislative committee. He also felt some measure of vindication when CIA Inspector General Hitz\u2019s reports came out.<\/p>\n

However, Webb never could overcome the pain caused by his betrayal at the hands of his journalistic colleagues, his peers. In the years that followed, Webb was unable to find decent-paying work in his profession \u2014 the conventional wisdom remained that he had somehow been exposed as a journalistic fraud. His state job ended; his marriage fell apart; he struggled to pay bills; and he was faced with a forced move out of a just-sold house near Sacramento, California, and in with his mother.<\/p>\n

On Dec. 9, 2004, the 49-year-old Webb typed out suicide notes to his ex-wife and his three children; laid out a certificate for his cremation; and taped a note on the door telling movers \u2014 who were coming the next morning \u2014 to instead call 911. Webb then took out his father\u2019s pistol and shot himself in the head. The first shot was not lethal, so he fired once more.<\/p>\n

Even with Webb\u2019s death, the big newspapers that had played key roles in his destruction couldn\u2019t bring themselves to show Webb any mercy. After Webb\u2019s body was found, I received a call from a reporter for the Los Angeles Times who knew that I was one of Webb\u2019s few journalistic colleagues who had defended him and his work.<\/p>\n

I told the reporter that American history owed a great debt to Gary Webb because he had forced out important facts about Reagan-era crimes. But I added that the Los Angeles Times would be hard-pressed to write an honest obituary because the newspaper had not published a single word on the contents of Hitz\u2019s final report, which had largely vindicated Webb.<\/p>\n

To my disappointment but not my surprise, I was correct. The Los Angeles Times ran a mean-spirited obituary that made no mention of either my defense of Webb or the CIA\u2019s admissions in 1998. The obituary \u2013 more fitting for a deceased mob boss than a fellow journalist \u2013 was republished in other newspapers, including the Washington Post.<\/p>\n

In effect, Webb\u2019s suicide enabled senior editors at the Big Three newspapers to breathe a little easier \u2014 one of the few people who understood the ugly story of the Reagan administration\u2019s cover-up of the Contra-cocaine scandal and the U.S. media\u2019s complicity was now silenced.<\/p>\n

No Accountability<\/strong><\/p>\n

To this day, none of the journalists or media critics who participated in the destruction of Gary Webb has paid a price for their actions. None has faced the sort of humiliation that Webb had to endure. None had to experience that special pain of standing up for what is best in the profession of journalism \u2014 taking on a difficult story that seeks to hold powerful people accountable for serious crimes \u2014 and then being vilified by your own colleagues, the people that you expected to understand and appreciate what you had done.<\/p>\n

In May 2013, one of the Los Angeles Times reporters who had joined in the orchestrated destruction of Webb\u2019s career acknowledged that the newspaper\u2019s assault was a \u201ctawdry exercise\u201d amounting to \u201coverkill,\u201d which later contributed to Webb\u2019s suicide. This limited apology by former Los Angeles Times reporter Jesse Katz was made during a radio interview and came as filming was about to start on \u201cKill the Messenger,\u201d based on a book by the same name by Nick Schou.<\/p>\n

On KPCC-FM 89.3\u2032s AirTalk With Larry Mantle<\/em>, Katz was pressed by callers to address his role in the destruction of Webb. Katz offered what could be viewed as a limited apology.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an L.A. Times reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News and kind of wonder[ed] how legit it was and kind of put it under a microscope,\u201d Katz said. \u201cAnd 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 and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katz added, \u201cWe really didn\u2019t do anything to advance his work or illuminate much to the story, and it was a really kind of a tawdry exercise. \u2026 And it ruined that reporter\u2019s career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, with the imminent release of a major Hollywood movie about Webb\u2019s ordeal, the next question is whether the major newspapers will finally admit their longstanding complicity in the Contra-cocaine cover-up or whether they will simply join the CIA\u2019s press office in another counterattack.<\/p>\n

________________________<\/p>\n

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, <\/em>America\u2019s Stolen Narrative,<\/em> either in\u00a0print here<\/a>\u00a0or as an e-book (from Amazon<\/a> and barnesandnoble.com<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n

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

With Hollywood set to release a movie about the Contra-cocaine scandal and the destruction of journalist Gary Webb, an internal CIA report has surfaced showing how the spy agency manipulated the mainstream media\u2019s coverage to disparage Webb and contain the scandal.<\/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-48171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48171","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=48171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}