Gary Webb person
also: Webb, Gary, the author, me, reporter
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Related entities (most co-mentioned)
CIAintelligence service · 22Dark Alliancebook · 17Contrasorganization · 14Don Yaegerperson · 14Daniel Blantonperson · 12Floyd "Freeway" Rick Rossperson · 11Los Angelesplace · 11San Jose Mercury Newsorganization · 10Craig Creightonperson · 8Norwin Menendezperson · 8Charles Boydperson · 7United Statescountry · 6Maxine Watersperson · 5U.S. Department of Justiceorganization · 5San Diegocountry · 5Crack Epidemicevent · 5Chuck Jonesperson · 4Paul Van Slambrockperson · 4Pete Brewtonperson · 4Danny Casolaroperson · 4Nicaraguacountry · 4Washington, D.C.place · 4George Hodelperson · 3Iran-Contra affairevent · 3
Claims (20)
Gary Webb exposed
Iran-Contra affair documented
“And what happened when Gary Webb released the information about the crack cocaine epidemic and the CIA and its connections to Iran-Contra and just how really pissed off the public was. And it got, as Tim suggested, got, you know, hit the pu…”
▶ The Colonels corner president’s secret war chapter 8 @ 2:19:33
Gary Webb exposed
CIA book_quoted
“and funneled millions of drug profits to a Latin America guerrilla army ran by the U.S. CIA, a Mercury News investigation has found, unquote. The Dark Alliance story documented a network of collusion in the 1980s that joined together the cr…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance by Gary Webb Part 1 @ 4:48
Gary Webb exposed
Daniel Blanton book_quoted
“with the story that led to all of this research that we've gone over over the last few weeks. And it says that Gary Webb was swept into Ross's decade-long relationship with Daniela Blanton in late September 1995, two months into his investi…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 23 @ 4:56
Gary Webb exposed
Norwin Menendez book_quoted
“Menendez or confirm or refute these claims. Headquarters trace Menendez reveal extensive entries, unquote. These extensive entries were not revealed in the declassified version of the CIA's IG report because they were damning. The DEA's pub…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 23 @ 22:03
Alan Finster exposed
Gary Webb book_quoted
“and exposed the Mercury's investigation in his motion. And now the LA Times was onto it because it was all a setup. I should have known better.…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 23 @ 37:20
Gary Webb exposed
Dark Alliance book_quoted
“I was at a party at my best friend's house in Indianapolis. I excused myself, went to the bathroom, plugged in my laptop, and dialed into the Mercury's website. A picture of a man smoking crack superimposed upon the seal of the CIA drew its…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 24 @ 18:13
Gary Webb exposed
Dark Alliance host_asserted
“was over a million. People in Japan, Bosnia, Germany, and Denmark all emailed him. Meanwhile, we continued advancing the story. I teamed up with Pamela Kramer, the Mercury's reporter in Los Angeles, and we wrote several stories about the 19…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 24 @ 32:32
Gary Webb member_of
San Jose Mercury News documented
“The unprecedented attack by three major newspapers alarmed the Mercury editors. I was called to a meeting with Cepos and the other editors and told that I should quit trying to advance the story. We needed to start working on a written resp…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 24 @ 1:01:30
Gary Webb exposed
CIA book_quoted
“proverbial lynching, that is. And Bowden wrote in Esquire magazine the following. Two years ago, Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that had some things about the CIA and drug traffickers. The CIA denied the charges and every major newspa…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner The Great Pretense Part 1 @ 28:50
Jerry Ceppos removed_from_power
Gary Webb guest_asserted
“In Washington, D-Day Joe Madison, who'd been making hay with the story for months, urged the listeners of his 5,000-watt station to call Seppos and demand he print the stories that he was suppressing. Letters and emails flooded in. Seppos, …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 24 @ 1:23:20
Jerry Ceppos reassigned
Gary Webb guest_asserted
“It was a very one-sided discussion. Reading from a prepared statement, Cepos told me that my editors had lost faith in me and I needed closer supervision, which I couldn't get in Sacramento. I needed to regain their faith and their trust, a…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 24 @ 1:24:08
Gary Webb exposed
Iran-Contra affair host_asserted
“to write the story that literally blows Iran Contra out of the water and exposes everything. And, you know, it destroys his life as it has so many other people that have exposed pieces of this entire octopus. So anyway, we're in for a few m…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 21 @ 1:35:45
Kill the Messenger based_on
Gary Webb host_asserted
“And oh, sorry. Also, I just wanted I was trying to look up the name because I knew there was a movie that was based off of Gary Webb's research is called Kill the Messenger. It came out in 2014. Go ahead, Stella. Well, I was going to say, b…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 21 @ 1:16:41
Gary Webb exposed
Iran-Contra affair host_asserted
“the agreement because there is an official recognition partnership with countries in Latin America that supposedly fight drugs. And we had left that arrangement with Colombia for decades. Trump pulled it two months ago. And I said in one of…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Corporate Coup Venezuela Part 12 @ 1:37:58
Gary Webb exposed
CIA book_quoted
“How he was basically pulled into this whole thing because they had one of the distributors in San Francisco that had been held for years without charges in jail in San Francisco. And his girlfriend had contacted Gary Webb. And it was throug…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner The Great Pretense Part 2 @ 1:18:37
Gary Webb exposed
Raphael Correjigo book_quoted
“with reputed ties to Nicaraguan drug traffickers and Panamanian money launderers, was among those indicted for conspiracy to escape. The story called him a longtime drug dealer who was convicted in 1977 of cocaine trafficking in Panama. He …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance by Gary Webb Part 1 @ 29:42
Gary Webb exposed
Operation Gladio host_asserted
“And so you find all different, all the same characters hover around in all of these books. We just see it from a different angle. Like we saw the Gary Webb book gave it to us from the drug angle and specifically how it affected Los Angeles.…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Mafia, CIA & George Bush Part 19 @ 1:07:45
Gary Webb spied_on
Oliver North guest_asserted
“George and I flew to Costa Rica and began interviewing police officials, lawyers, prosecutors, contras about Menendez's activity, fleshing out his role as a DEA informant and his drug operations connections to Oliver North's resupply networ…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 24 @ 1:03:52
Gary Webb authored
Dark Alliance host_asserted
“Really valuable intel you can get in a bar. You think? I've seen that over and over and over again. I just went through it with Gary Webb's book about the gathering of intelligence down in Costa Rica at the bar. Which one of Webb's books? T…”
▶ Operation Gladio meets Secret Societies w_WarHamster Brady @ 18:56
Jesse Katz spied_on
Gary Webb speculative
“There was the ballgame. All the connections between Blanton, the Contras, and the CIA and Ricky Ross were going to come out in public. And the LA Times was going to beat me to my own story. Nine months worth of work down the crapper. I want…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 23 @ 40:45
Mentions (120)
▶ 18:56
Really valuable intel you can get in a bar. You think? I've seen that over and over and over again. I just went through it with Gary Webb's book about the gathering of intelligence down in Costa Rica at the bar. Which one of Webb's books? T…
▶ 1:50:19
And I'm going to answer a couple of questions. That's my dog on the side. First of all, they don't want the border closed because it was really closed when Trump was around, which meant less drugs came into our country. A lot of politicians…
▶ 56:38
You guys, when we were reading Gary Webb's book, you remember what happened when the pilot who lost the plane and then he lost another plane full of cocaine. Well, they're going to come looking for their money. And when things like that hap…
▶ 58:31
is not one right now. And Jamaica is the one that had, what did they call them? We learned the word for them in Gary Webb's book. They had a different word. They don't call them cartels, but they were all in, they were primarily in New York…
▶ 2:00:36
all the stuff related to Epstein and September 11th and the Federal Reserve that's kind of dropping right now? That's a good question. I really want to do Dark Alliance. I think it's important for a lot of reasons of, and I don't know how t…
▶ 2:01:37
that are going to be addressing 9-11 in a very unique way. I don't want to say too much about it. I don't know a lot about it, number one. But that phone call is tonight. And so I'm going to, I'm tentatively scheduled to do Gary Webb's book…
▶ 1:08:59
was, I'm not sure it's a direct Phoenix connection, but he certainly was part of the intelligence apparatus in Vietnam in the early 70s. Isn't that interesting? And that dovetails right in with Gary Webb's book in all of the drug activity, …
▶ 1:37:58
the agreement because there is an official recognition partnership with countries in Latin America that supposedly fight drugs. And we had left that arrangement with Colombia for decades. Trump pulled it two months ago. And I said in one of…
▶ 1:10:07
is not impartial. So all you can go on in those books is the facts and not like an informed opinion because their informed opinion would be completely jaded by you are only writing historical information that happened during Republican admi…
▶ 2:26
George Sr.'s presidency and Reagan. And of course, most of the book we just finished on, Columbia, focused on that period and the setting up of the crystal triangle in Latin America. And by that time, we'd already had the Golden Crescent, t…
▶ 2:56
started putting a few inconvenient pieces together. So in the foreword to this book before Maxine Waters in the 2014 edition, a man by the name of Dan Simon, who later, he wrote in The Progressive, and he originally published…
▶ 3:25
the foreword in 2004, that edition of the book. This book has been put out several times. So Dan Simons, this is his words. I began working as Gary Webb's editor on Dark Alliance, the book, in July 1997, about a year after his newspaper ser…
▶ 3:52
So controversially in the San Jose Mercury News, as recently as one year later, earlier, Gary Webb had been one of the nation's top investigative reporters. His awards included a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 and at least four other major prizes f…
▶ 4:22
apparent suicide, barely seven years later at the age of 49. What would turn out to be the biggest story of his life ran as a three-day series beginning August 18, 1996. Here's how it started. Quote, for the better part of a decade, a Bay A…
▶ 4:48
and funneled millions of drug profits to a Latin America guerrilla army ran by the U.S. CIA, a Mercury News investigation has found, unquote. The Dark Alliance story documented a network of collusion in the 1980s that joined together the cr…
▶ 5:11
But it might have vanished without a trace had the paper not chosen this story to create a splash for its newly revamped website. Complete with graphics and links to the original source documents, it became arguably the world's first big in…
▶ 5:43
off the internet and citizen groups and media watchdogs followed. The CIA launched its own internal investigation. Gary Starr had never shown more brightly. The mainstream print media was ominously silent until October or November of 1996 w…
▶ 6:12
But instead of launching their own investigations into whether the CIA had shielded drug traffickers, these papers went after Gary. Although they could not find a single factual error, as Gary's then editor at the Mercury News, Jerry Kepos,…
▶ 6:42
In and of itself, a CIA operation, folks. Soon the story and Gary himself were spoiled goods. Gary's editor switched sides and penned an apology distancing the paper from the series. Gary was forced out of his job, even though the body of e…
▶ 7:12
So would another internal investigation conducted by the Department of Justice. Gary took solace in the historical significance of these findings, but shamelessly, the mainstream media press barely covered them, whereas the attacks on Gary …
▶ 7:41
In the facts, Gary faulted himself for not seeing sooner the depths of the CIA's complicity. Describing the aftermath in a 2002 for a book called Into the Buzzsaw, leading journalists exposed the myth of a free press. He wrote, quote, when …
▶ 8:09
had been far greater than even I imagined. The drug ring was even bigger than I had portrayed. The agents and officials in the DEA had protected the traffickers from arrest, something I'd not been allowed to print, unquote. Gary had loved w…
▶ 8:39
And in my opinion, one of the few truly great works of political investigative reporter to come out of that era. And a year later, when the government's own two just released investigative reports in hand, Gary and I got together every nigh…
▶ 9:09
It was great fun to get to work knowing that the story hadn't gone away, that it was, if anything, growing. The alternative media, to its credit, was quick to honor and embrace Gary when he began to be attacked by the mainstream media. But …
▶ 9:37
perpetrated against him personally he could never quite get over that betrayal when you're an investigative reporter armed with the truth gary webb learned the hard way the gun often fires at you gary once wrote that the dark alliance serie…
▶ 10:06
Now, when I reread the opening sentence of Dark Alliance series, I grasp with the wisdom or at least, let's say, the clarity of the intervening years that Gary had stumbled onto the biggest story of all of our lives, the one about the betra…
▶ 13:00
that Gary Webb wrote the truth. The establishment refused to give Gary Webb the credit he deserved. They teamed up in an effort to destroy the story and very nearly succeeded. There are a few of us to congratulate Gary for his honesty and c…
▶ 13:24
The editors of the San Jose Mercury News did not have the strength to withstand the attack, so they abandoned Gary Webb, despite their knowledge that Gary was working on further documentation to substantiate the allegations of the series. H…
▶ 13:54
We owe Gary Webb a debt of gratitude for his brave work. No, Maxine, I'm sorry. This book was not the final chapter because no one was ever held accountable. And it's still ongoing today. And you haven't done a damn thing about it. Not one …
▶ 14:32
author's note that Gary Webb wrote. This sadly is a true story. It is based upon controversial series I wrote in the San Jose Mercury News in the summer of 1996 about the origins of the crack plague in South Central Los Angeles. Unlike othe…
▶ 16:31
That was written by I.F. Stone. That pretty much sums up the federal government. OK, so today we're not going to get to chapter one. I'll go ahead and tell you that we're going to read the prologue to the book because there's some very inte…
▶ 18:29
You'd never hear it coming, and almost a decade later, long after Tom A., the plane dealer, and I had parted company, that's precisely what happened. It didn't even take a call. It manifested itself as a pink while-you-were-out message slip…
▶ 19:00
And July of 1995 is the month I arrived at the Pentagon. Just put it in context. There was no message, just a woman's name and a phone number somewhere in the East Bay. I called, but there was no answer. So I put the message aside. If I had…
▶ 19:29
I saw the story you did a couple of weeks ago, she began, the one about the drug seizure laws. I thought you did a good job. Gary Webb says, thanks a lot. She was the first reader who'd called about that story. A front page piece in the San…
▶ 1:20:14
He was. In fact, he was actually at the meeting that they had in L.A. as a result of the Gary Webb article. The CIA actually had to send a guy out to L.A. and basically throw him. He had to send there. And Maxine Waters was there. She was a…
▶ 1:21:40
This is the passion of mine because you're talking about basically L.A. and this is home for me. So this whole thing really, really resonates with me, this whole topic of the Gary Webb thing. And they're right. South Central Los Angeles was…
▶ 1:35:28
sink 10 or 15 different core samples through everything, run everything to the ground, and be able to, if somebody winds up suing me for defamation, at least try to come up with a case saying, hey, we were kind of responsible here on at lea…
▶ 1:22:10
If not, I'm going to jump off here and go eat dinner because I'm starving. Appreciate you guys being here again. We'll pick up tomorrow where we left off and get through this book. This book is crazy and adds so much flavor to all of the st…
▶ 45:07
And his his information we're going to find out later on is he had been dealing with Gary Webb. So Gary Webb, one of the very first things he did in his investigation was to contact Castile after his name came up in some reports. And he fou…
▶ 56:51
officers in the DEA was going into a black hole. And when Gary Webb did a FOIA asking for them, the DEA said they didn't exist. He didn't find them until the Department of Justice issued an IG report that had them in it. So yeah, yeah, the …
▶ 1:07
Guys, we're going to jump right in. I see SR here. Let me get him up here to co-host. And all right. So we've been covering, obviously, Dark Alliance by Gary Webb and the collusion between the CIA, the DEA, the ATF, the State Department, an…
▶ 1:13:43
And what they've been doing internationally as well as nationally. So there's a lot of disparity going on here in my brain. Thank you, Carol. Sure. Well, obviously, in this book, they're using the one with names. And it's full of informatio…
▶ 41:48
He made a copy of the Pyramid International proposal and took it home with him. That decision, Juarez suspects, probably cost his brother-in-law, Manuel Gomez, a 32-year-old Salvadoran jeweler, his life. Juarez took the author, told Jack We…
▶ 54:26
Sergeant Gordon, in fact, was no longer even around. He had been promoted. According to Sergeant Hoffman's note, one of the first things the federal agents did was to put Gordon's bombshell search warrant affidavit under seal, which kept it…
▶ 1:16:41
And oh, sorry. Also, I just wanted I was trying to look up the name because I knew there was a movie that was based off of Gary Webb's research is called Kill the Messenger. It came out in 2014. Go ahead, Stella. Well, I was going to say, b…
▶ 1:34:17
Gary Webb had been called to help that woman with her court case against her boyfriend that had been sitting in jail for years. We will get back to her in a day or two and how that all turned out. Because what Gary Webb has taken us through…
▶ 1:34:46
to help her figure out what was going on with her boyfriend who had sat for years in jail with no charges preferred. We get back to that story. But that simple request for help led Gary Webb through everything that we've just uncovered. Thi…
▶ 1:35:15
talking to Ricky Roth, talking to the attorneys. He is reliving for us his journey based on that one phone call. And we're going to get back to that at the end of the book. And it'll blow your mind. But I can't even imagine living through t…
▶ 1:35:45
to write the story that literally blows Iran Contra out of the water and exposes everything. And, you know, it destroys his life as it has so many other people that have exposed pieces of this entire octopus. So anyway, we're in for a few m…
▶ 4:32
And he gets caught and he gets basically life without parole. That's in a nutshell, chapter 24. And that is where Gary Webb, we get back to the beginning of the book in the story in part two of chapter 25.…
▶ 4:56
with the story that led to all of this research that we've gone over over the last few weeks. And it says that Gary Webb was swept into Ross's decade-long relationship with Daniela Blanton in late September 1995, two months into his investi…
▶ 5:25
Quite unexpectedly, my tipster, which was that lady whose boyfriend had been in jail forever with no charges, allegations that the CIA and the Contras and cocaine had led me to the Metropolitan Correction Center in downtown San Diego, a ble…
▶ 5:52
where the former crack king was being held without bail until his trial. Ross exuded an air of self-assurance and confidence. He appeared unfazed by his arrest. But by the time the interview was over, he had dropped the pretense. Blanton's …
▶ 6:23
that as Gary Webb was packing up all of his stuff. And Ross went on to say, why did he do it? You figure that out yet? Gary replied that after he had looked over all of the court files about Blanton's arrest in May of 1992, how he had faced…
▶ 6:56
It was hard to blame someone for trying to squirm out of a gym like that. Ross nodded. So how much dope did they catch him with, he asked. None, I said. But they had him on tape talking to informants about cocaine deals, bragging about how …
▶ 7:26
Then what would he roll over for? Think about it. You ain't going to pull a live sentence just for talking to somebody about selling dope. That's bullshit. Nobody's ain't. Somebody is not telling you something. The LAPD narcotics detective.…
▶ 12:13
There was an undercover operation, more than four of them, that I was in danger of exposing, putting agents and families at risk. They couldn't give me any details, of course, but I needed to appreciate the seriousness of it. What's your an…
▶ 12:42
and their dealings with Ricky Ross. The agents looked at each other quickly out of the corner of their eyes, but said nothing. That whole Central America thing, Creighton said, I was down there. You heard all sorts of things. There were nev…
▶ 14:09
He testified to it under oath before a grand jury. You're telling me that you don't know that? Jones threw up his hands. Oh, listen, he understands English pretty well, but sometimes he gets confused. And if you ask him a question the wrong…
▶ 14:37
Jones' face and forehead was red. His voice started to get louder. You're telling me that he testified that he sold cocaine for the Contras in the country? He sold it in this country? Gary Webb says, that's exactly what I'm telling you. You…
▶ 16:37
Gary Webb interrupted him. I've got three kids and I don't know how that has anything to do with this. So you screw up an investigation we've been working on for a long time just so you could have a story. Is that it? Jones demanded. You th…
▶ 17:05
So in five months, everyone in the world is going to know he's a DEA informant. Hell, if they want to know now, all they have to do is go down to the courthouse and look it up, like I did. So that's one problem I'm having with all of this. …
▶ 17:35
Creighton finally said, I think we're going off topic here. Please understand, we're not telling you not to do your story, but your interest in Menendez primarily and his association with the U.S. government and the Contras, correct? Gary W…
▶ 18:01
If we got you that information, you could focus your story on him and less on Blanton, and maybe you wouldn't have to mention some other things. That all depends, Gary Webb said, on what that other information is. Creighton smiled and stood…
▶ 18:26
Could we ask you to please not print anything until we've talked again? Can you give me a week? I told him I'd wait for his call. When Gary returned to Sacramento, he phoned a former DEA agent, Castillo, the guy that was down in El Salvador…
▶ 19:31
I told him of Creighton's remarks that there was no proof the Contras was involved in drugs. He laughed. Oh, that's bullshit. Of all people, he knows perfectly well what was going on. He was reading every one of my reports. He was reading t…
▶ 19:57
Gary was told he no longer works in the office. I was told that he was transferred to Washington, D.C. He was now head of the International Division. He was working there under Robert Neves, Norwin Menendez's old control officer, who had un…
▶ 20:32
Creighton was going to be his replacement. So they knew Neves was going to be outed by Gary Webb. So he, all of a sudden, after having told Creighton what he knew, resigned. And Creighton is now going to take his job. I never spoke to Creig…
▶ 21:03
I was heading. My suspicions on that were confirmed in early 1998 with the release of a CIA inspector general's report, which referenced three CIA cables about Gary Webb. They were titled possible attempts to link CIA to narco traffickers w…
▶ 22:03
Menendez or confirm or refute these claims. Headquarters trace Menendez reveal extensive entries, unquote. These extensive entries were not revealed in the declassified version of the CIA's IG report because they were damning. The DEA's pub…
▶ 24:58
having been moved to a prison in the city of Granada after Menendez hired someone to kill him. He had already had put in a request at the Nicaraguan Ministry of Interior to arrange an interview, George said. I think we can speak to both of …
▶ 28:35
Menendez was willing to talk. George had cleared it through the drug kingpins, wives, and attorneys and urged me to come to Nicaragua as soon as possible. We needed to move quickly and carefully, he warned, because there was something about…
▶ 29:04
I proposed to tell the tale of how the infant's L.A. crack market had been fueled with tons of cocaine from the Contra drug ring that helped spread the deadly drug all over the United States. This series will show that a dumping of cocaine …
▶ 29:34
While there has long been solid but ignored evidence of a CIA contra cocaine connection, no one has ever asked the question, where did all the cocaine come from? Now we know. He met with his editor, Don, and managing editor, David Yarnold, …
▶ 3:14
Ricky Ross, just to give the message to the government that we disagreed with the use of Blanton. Ross was initially sentenced to life without parole. On appeal, that was changed to 20 years minimum up to life imprisonment. Gary Webb's stor…
▶ 4:11
was packing the prisons with thousands of young black men and with Blanton's sudden transformation to an anti-drug warrior on behalf of the federal government. In mid-April, Gary Webb had finished his first draft and sent them to his editor…
▶ 5:07
focused on the relationship between the Contras and the crack king. It mentioned the CIA's role in passing, noting that some of the money had gone to a CIA-ran army and that there were federal law enforcement reports suggesting the CIA knew…
▶ 5:32
The more Gary Webb learned about the agency, the more certain he had became that it was, in fact, behind all of it. That the Contra's cocaine ended up being turned into crack was a horrible accident of history, I believe, not someone's evil…
▶ 6:02
The Contras just happened to pick the worst possible time to begin peddling cheap cocaine in Black neighborhoods. The fact that a government-connected drug ring was dumping tons of cocaine into Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles and to a le…
▶ 6:32
But that was the kind of newspaper the Mercury News was at the time. No topic was taboo. The reason I'd left a much larger paper in Cleveland to work for the Mercury was because its editors convinced me that they ran one of the few newspape…
▶ 7:01
Nearly 300 of them had appeared in the Mercury's front page, including many that couldn't have stood a chance in hell of being printed in a mainstream newspaper. One of the first pieces he had turned in, just to see if my editors walked the…
▶ 7:30
They were ready to lay off hundreds of workers with obsolete job skills, having no intentions of doing so. Among the unethical corporations, my story noted prominently was the paper, San Jose Mercury News, which had used public funds to sub…
▶ 8:00
reaction to Dark Alliance, I was gratified but not surprised. They loved it. She was happy. They couldn't wait to get it in the paper. They thought it was important. Groundbreaking reporting. Congratulations. But there was one hitch. They t…
▶ 8:30
But the mercury, it was as if I was asking for the moon, a raise, a shower in my office, or an executive parking place. They're never going to go for four parts, Dawn warned. Yarnold told me I could have as much space as I needed, I reminde…
▶ 8:59
The problem was that the believability of the story hinged on the weight of the evidence. Every fact that was cut would make the story appear more speculative. For weeks, we went back and forth, and then I got word. David Yodel, the managin…
▶ 9:27
rearranging things, and resubmitted the series. Gee, Don said, the second part is kind of long. We need to cut it. This tug of war continued throughout the spring of 1996. She would cut paragraphs out. I would put them back in. We tried cre…
▶ 9:57
You've made your point. Let's try it again in the original four parts. I reassembled all the bits and pieces and resubmitted it. She read it, approved it, and sent it up the chain. Well, they like it, and Yarnell agreed that four parts is f…
▶ 10:25
They need to go through and pull out all of the information about the CIA and the Contras and put it in the first day. The reason it's got a feature lead is because the series is a feature, I argued. It's about the three men who started the…
▶ 10:55
I'm just telling you what they told me. Well, I'm not rewriting it, he said. Just try it, okay? Give it a quick write-through. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We'll go back to the old way. Gary Webb gritted his teeth. Okay, if they…
▶ 11:27
what he produced. Quote, for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Blood street gangs in Los Angeles and funneled millions of dollars in drug profits to Latin America guerrilla army ran by t…
▶ 11:55
cocaine cartels in the black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, a city now known as the crack capital of the world. The cocaine it brought into the U.S. fueled the crack explosion in urban America and the simultaneous rise to power of murderous …
▶ 12:24
The rest of the editing went fairly smoothly, and by July 26, 1996, the four-part series was done, edited, and ready for print. It was going to be printed August 18. Late one night, towards the end of July, the phone rang. Well, I have some…
▶ 12:53
The good news is that Paul Van Slambrock is the new editor, and I showed him the series today, and he likes it and thinks we've got a great story here. We've got a brand new editor on this, he asked, now? And he just read it for the first t…
▶ 13:23
or excuse me, Gary Webb laughed. Really? What kind of changes? He thinks it's too long. We need to make these, we need to make it a three-part series. Gary Webb laughed. You can't be serious, Don. This is a joke, right? No, I'm sorry. Maybe…
▶ 13:54
It wasn't the way he wanted to do things either, but he thought the series was terrific and he wanted very much to get it in the paper. Don said, you want to make some, so Gary Webb calls him and says, Don says you want to make some changes…
▶ 14:21
I sat down and fired off an angry memo to Don. Van Slambrock asked me to cut 65 inches. He had suggested that I needed to go through the story myself and be ruthless, and I'd be able to find 65 inches to cut, no problem. If there was 65 inc…
▶ 14:50
because we obviously aren't doing our jobs. An additional problem, he reminded Don, was that my family and I were in the midst of moving and were taking our vacation while the new house was being readied. During the next three weeks, I rewr…
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It was horrible. I had no way of telling what was being cut at Mercury, what was being put back in, or what was being rewritten. Five or six different versions were flying around. Don't these people know what they're dealing with here? Don'…
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It was under the radar. Mercury News executive editor Jerry Seppes would later tell Newsweek that he only read part of the story before it appeared in print, which was an amazing admission, if true. Perhaps my editors thought I was exaggera…
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Lots of people talking about Venezuela that aren't very informed. OK, but that's why we're here. All right. So let's go ahead and get started. Let me know if SR comes in. A few days after Gary Webb's resignation was announced, the CIA leake…
▶ 3:07
that said there was no evidence the CIA knew anything about Daniel Blanton, Norwin Menendez, or freeway Ricky Ross. Gary Webb said, I tried to imagine what the reaction would have been had those same reporters gone to their editors with unn…
▶ 17:37
for the miseries they cause. Even if that's all that ever happens, it will be fitting and just because the favorable judgment of history is ultimately what they crave. That's it. So he was completely exonerated in everything he said. And ev…
▶ 18:11
to back him up. It's crazy how they will destroy people's reputation, lives, etc., etc. And then in hindsight, oh yeah, never mind. You were right. Yeah. Yep. I mean, they'll never get that reputation back. They'll never get... I mean, to s…
▶ 18:46
fought back, and published the truth no matter what. Safety be damned. Yeah. And supposedly, just so that you guys know, on December 10, 2004, Gary Webb died at the age of 49 in his Carmichael, California home, supposedly from two gunshots …
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Danny Kosseleric, because to me, the entity that he had labeled the octopus is exactly this. And of course, he, like Gary Webb, was working on real time information about the network, which was definitely.…
▶ 51:20
They could not have done all of this without all of them being implicated. And God bless Gary Webb for doing all of the hard work that illustrates that this is an all-of-government approach with our deep state that corresponds with the deep…
▶ 51:53
Sure. I agree. You know, as soon as I started reading this book, it was amazing how many of the things that we've learned over all of these years start laying. And again, I just can't even imagine somebody like Gary Webb. Gary Webb doesn't …
▶ 52:23
piles and piles and piles of information. He's talking to all of these people and documenting these things that sometimes probably he doesn't even realize the importance of the details that he's providing because he didn't have that pattern…
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about any American law enforcement official doing anything to him. You know, the way you would act if you were representing the CIA. Yeah, he acted just like that. How someone with Menendez's record was ever allowed into the U.S. in the fir…
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It is very well done. I highly recommend watching the series, but I'm just going to warn you ahead of time. Those of us who know will be frustrated listening to episode five from that perspective. I just a heads up, but okay. So we're going…
▶ 12:31
a front company still working for the CIA. That's how they let people go. Because they're not going to let go someone disgruntled at being let go who's got the dirt on them. That does not happen. It is a striking commentary on Webb and ever…
▶ 49:15
that CIA had no hand in canceling the trip. Everybody knew. Years later, when questioned about the case by Gary Webb, the former U.S. attorney, Rosanello, said the only reason he agreed to return the drug dealer's cash was because it would …
▶ 15:27
Gary Webb in 1996, where he got money to pay for the war materials, Menendez gave a slight smile. There was money available for the purchases, he said, with a smile on his face. Menendez's associate, Rafael Corneo, said he attended some of …
▶ 52:30
difficult to corroborate some independent documentation. I mean, it's not difficult for us because this is a repeat of every other story we've ever told, but we're going to go with Gary Webb because he didn't have available all the informat…
▶ 1:05:04
to a Time Magazine reporter that Park on Meter was making rocket launchers. So basically everything that Gary Webb said was true. Everything that Danny Casolaro said was true. And Reed Parker in his book says all of this. Excuse me. What's …
▶ 1:12:36
All of the arms deal stuff gets revealed in 1990 when people started revealing it, like Gary Webb and Danny Casolaro. During the time, none of it was revealed. They didn't want to give that up. And what we're listening to when I'm talking a…
▶ 5:41
He basically said, oh, that happened in 82. No, it happened in 83. No, it happened in 84. Because he's realizing as he's talking that he's lying and it may have conflicted with something else he said. So Gary Webb says, Harry's retirement a…
▶ 7:10
the whole, he had a whole factory of cooking the crack cocaine. He had like a manufacturing line. He didn't leave anything out. And you can tell by the book and the way Gary Webb writes about him that he grudgingly respected his business de…
▶ 1:13:19
And like Congressman Leo Ryan, who we've talked about a million times, he went to Guyana to expose the CIA and the Jim Jones child trafficking and all of that other shit, shot him dead on tarmac. Okay, lock that away. Nobody else is gonna t…
▶ 1:03:35
You know, also Gary Webb was, you know, during the 90s and there were, you know, journalists like the guy in Wendell, Wendell Tracy. I'm sorry, Wendell Stacy of Memphis, who actually did try to investigate the MLK conspiracy trials. And it'…