Jerry Ceppos person
also: Cepos, Seppos, Kepos, Setpost, Jerry Kapos, Jerry Seppos
Explore in graph → Export claims (CSV) ↓
Related entities (most co-mentioned)
San Jose Mercury Newsorganization · 8Dark Allianceevent · 5San Joséplace · 3Peter Careyperson · 3CIAintelligence service · 2Pamela Kramerperson · 2Los Angelesplace · 1The Washington Postorganization · 1Cupertinoplace · 1U.S. Department of Justiceorganization · 1Jonathan Krimperson · 1Howard Kurtzperson · 1Los Angeles Timesorganization · 1
Claims (5)
Jerry Ceppos 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
Jerry Ceppos covered_up
Dark Alliance guest_asserted
“and Peter Carey, an investigative reporter, to gather information with the L.A. crack market. He also made another decision. He was changing the logo of the series that we had used and the CIA seal was coming off. What's the point of doing …”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 24 @ 1:02:58
Jerry Ceppos covered_up
Dark Alliance guest_asserted
“If there was ever a chance of getting to the bottom of the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking, it died that day. New York Times, which hadn't found the original series newsworthy, splashed Seppo's apology on the front frickin' page. Howa…”
▶ The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 24 @ 1:19:25
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
Mentions (22)
▶ 1:01:30
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…
▶ 1:02:31
agreed we should continue developing the story. The best way to answer our critics, they said, is to advance the story. Let's go out and get some more evidence of drug money being sent to the Contras. Let's get more evidence of this drug ri…
▶ 1:02:58
and Peter Carey, an investigative reporter, to gather information with the L.A. crack market. He also made another decision. He was changing the logo of the series that we had used and the CIA seal was coming off. What's the point of doing …
▶ 1:03:26
But Cepos wouldn't budge on that issue. Thousands of reprints with the CIA crack logo were gathered up and burned, and a CD-ROM version of the series, which had been pressed and was ready for distribution, were all destroyed. The Post and t…
▶ 1:08:31
Kerry, the editors, and I met three times in February to argue about the timeline of the LA crack market. The amount of money sent to the Contras, the level of CIA involvement at the end, Kerry informed me that he was canning his crack stor…
▶ 1:12:09
Gary Webb was aesthetic. Now we had a story about the DEA aiding and abetting the escape of a CIA agent accused of drug trafficking with the Justice Department intervening to protect the DEA agent who had done it. The further I dug, the mor…
▶ 1:12:45
Gary Webb was astonished. He said, is this a done deal? Or do I get a chance to say something? Eppo said the decision was made. I'll fact you a draft of what we're considering. According to Seppo's proposed column,…
▶ 1:12:59
We should have said Blanton claimed he quit dealing with the Contras in 1983, something the editors had cut to save space. We had insufficient proof to say millions went to the Contras. We should have said it was an estimate. We should have…
▶ 1:13:27
And finally, Kepos wrote, the experts were unanimous in saying that the Contras had not played a major role in the crack trade and that the series had oversimplified how crack had become a problem. Strangely, Kepos had borrowed conclusions …
▶ 1:13:56
The next day, when I met with Cepos and the other editors in their conference room, the, quote, the experts would disagree with the findings of original research is one of the perils of doing it, as any researcher can tell you. But just bec…
▶ 1:14:42
I then described how the editors themselves had requested an increased emphasis on the CIE's involvement, how cutting the series from four parts to three parts had damaged it, and how the last-minute assignment of new editors had weakened i…
▶ 1:15:10
I don't think we should make this personal, he said. That's easy for you to say. You're not the one being hung out to dry. No one's going to hang you out to dry, he insisted. The editor, who'd been the most strided critic of the series, Jon…
▶ 1:16:05
Gary Webb said, we are running those stories, aren't we? Kepo said, we're not. He said, why not? They're a quarter turn of the screw. We're not going to print anything else unless it's a major advance. Gary Webb exploded. You think the fact…
▶ 1:16:33
An accused CIA drug trafficker escaped criminal charges is a major advance. You've got to be kidding me. Are you even going to pursue it? Kepo said no. Gary Webb then proceeds. Let me get this straight. You're killing the other stories. We'…
▶ 1:17:04
That's what you have in mind? He quietly said, the editor, you and I have different views on the situation. Gary Webb says, you got that right. The result of the stormy meeting was that Cepos rewrote his column, removing the obvious factual…
▶ 1:17:32
you're sitting on information that supports what I wrote and pretending you're not aware of it. Again, he objected. But again, Seppos recast it, this time as a personal column at Don's insistent, disclosing that I disagreed with him, that h…
▶ 1:18:57
as Jesse Jackson put it, threatened the moral authority of the government. In nine months, we had gone full circle and crawled into bed with the rest of the apologists who wanted the CIA drug story to go away. Seppos asked, do you have anyt…
▶ 1:22:24
We've got four more stories sitting in a can, and I intend to try to get them in the newspaper. I've been told that we're still running them. Curse called me back a short time later. I just got off the phone with Jerry Seppos, and he says, …
▶ 1:22:53
and I know he's read them because we discussed them. Maybe you misunderstood. Kurt said, they're not notes? No, of course not. They've got a beginning, middle, and end. Those are stories where I come from. The controversy raged for another …
▶ 1:23:20
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, …
▶ 1:24:08
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…
▶ 1:26:46
would be an act of defiance. Reluctantly, I went, spending July and August in the Supantino Bureau under protest. I was assigned such pressing matters of the death of a police horse. To the chagrin of my editors, who were under orders to ke…