The Colonels Corner Dark Alliance Part 24

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Transcript

0:04 Okay, I think Bridget will be here with us in just a minute. Let me go ahead and get us started over here on Rumble. And Bridget told me they had done an update and it still kicked me out of the space again, of course. So I don't know what they're updating because everything's still screwed up. Can you hear me, SR? I can hear you absolutely fine, Colonel. Awesome. Okay, I'm going to...

0:41 Go ahead and get started because this is probably going to be a long show. I'm not sure we're going to get through. This is the last chapter and there's an epilogue that it's very short that I will want to do. We definitely will not get to it as well today. So we're just going to play it by ear. If there's a logical place to stop at the one hour mark, I will. And we will go from there.

1:12 because it's a very long chapter. It's also a very sad part of the book. But anyway, we're going to go ahead and get started. So let SR just break in if Bridget shows up. Ross and all but one of his co-defendants were convicted in the spring of 1996 of conspiring to sell the DEA's cocaine.

1:45 You heard that right. The DEA's cocaine. Not Blanton's, not anybody else's. It was the DEA that set up Ricky to shield the actual drug dealers. That sentence alone should make your blood boil. They did it on purpose the way they did it in order to shield.

2:13 the people that they used through the CIA, the DEA, the FBI, all of them. Considering the facts that were presented and the evidence that was withheld, there was little else the jurors could do. In interviews with the Federal Public Defender's Office afterwards, most of the jurors expressed total disgust with the, I see her, with the government's case.

2:44 Here are some quotes. Ricky was the hardest one for us to decide, the juror said. 29-year-old data entry person from San Diego. None of us liked Blanton. A few jurors were very upset that he was used by law enforcement. Another juror that was 46 years old said Blanton made us all so angry that we, even those of us that were used to those kinds of sleazeballs, we wanted to acquit.

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 story now had an ending, one that seemed to exemplify the hypocrisy of the entire government's war on drugs.

3:43 The crack dealers went to prison while the men who actually set it up walked away whistling. I laid out the series in just those terms, beginning in the early 1980s with the critical role played by the Nicaraguan quote-unquote freedom fighters, the actual criminals, in founding LA's crack market and ending in the 1990s with the passage of the anti-crack law that

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 editors with no clue as to how they would be received. They were like nothing I had ever written, he said.

4:40 and probably unlike anything my editors had ever had to grapple with. A tale spanning more than a decade that attempted to show how two of the defining issues of the 1980s, the Contra War and the crack explosion, seemingly unconnected, were actually intertwined, thanks to the government. The full four-part series that he turned in

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 all about it. I never believed and never wrote that there was a grand CIA conspiracy behind the crack plague. Indeed.

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 plan, which I disagree with that assessment because we were forewarned by the people down in Bolivia that that's exactly what was going to happen.

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 lesser extent all over California and the rest of the United States goes a long way towards explaining why crack developed such deep roots in the Black community. Looking back, I can barely believe I was permitted to write such a story.

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 newspapers in the country that had courage. There were no sacred cows, they pledged, and for nine years, they had been true to their word. Not one of my stories had ever been spiked or significantly watered down.

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 walk, disclosed that some of the biggest and most profitable companies in California were milking a state training program for soon-to-be unemployed by claiming that they were

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 subsidize the purchase of a new printing press. The story ran on the front page. So when Don called me with the official,

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 thought it was too long. It needed to be cut. The four main stories range from 2,400 words to 3,200 words apiece. And for a major metropolitan daily, that's not a lot of space.

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 reminded her. I can't do it in less than four parts. I've gotten the thing down as far as I can get it. You're going to start cutting into the spinal cord if you cut any more.

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 managing editor, had decreed that it had to be three parts or nothing. Fine, I said. I spent a lot of time.

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 creating sidebars, smaller stories that ran alongside the main one, so we could hit the magic number, the maximum length the editors had set for the story, even though they said they wouldn't do that. Okay, Don said.

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 fine, but they want the first part rewritten. They think it's too featurey. It should have a harder edge on it, more news.

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 L.A. crack market. That's the story I want to tell. If we turn this thing into a Contra cocaine story, everyone is going to say, oh, that's old news. That's what they want, Don said.

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 want a hard edge on this thing, I'll give them one. He sat down at his computer and in a few minutes, hammered out a new paragraph with a few changes. And this is part of...

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 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found. This drug network, Federal Records Show, opened the first pipeline between Columbia's

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 gangs in Los Angeles. I hit the transmit button, he said. Don called the next morning. This is perfect. This is exactly what they wanted.

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 good news and some bad news, Don said. The bad news is that David Yarnold is no longer the editor on the series. He took a new job.

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 time today? You're shitting me. So what does that mean? Well, unfortunately means it's not going to run on the 18th. He had some changes he wanted to make. Jack?

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 you should talk to Paul. Van Slambrock, the Mercury's national editor and a smart, thoughtful journalist, was epileptic.

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. It needed to come down in length, he said, and we needed more CIA stuff in the first day. I was basically back to square one, Gary Webb said.

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 inches of fat left in those stories, he wrote Don, we ought to resign.

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 rewrote the series on a laptop while I was on quote-unquote vacation, first in the beach house at the Outer Banks in North Carolina, then at a hotel in Washington, D.C., and finally in the basement of my in-law's house in Indiana.

15:19 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't they realize the importance of what we're printing? I eventually realized that for the most part, they did not, which may have been the reason the series got in the paper to begin with.

15:47 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 exaggerating the story significantly, trying to gobble up more space. It is a common sight in newsrooms. I knew reporters.

16:18 who worked their editions and editors like PR agents or lobbyists pimping a bill in Washington, D.C. But I had never worked that way. I figured my editors knew how to read as well as anyone. My paycheck was the same every week, no matter how much I wrote or what page my story appeared on. But I also knew from my research what kind of backlash would result from a story that dirtied up the CIA.

16:47 And I stressed it repeatedly to my editors. New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh's 1974 expose of Operation Chaos, a massive illegal CIA domestic spying operation, had brought on attacks from the Washington Post. They said he had no hard proof. And the New York Times, where they said there is a strong likelihood that Hersh's CIA story is considerably exaggerated. Neither were true.

17:17 CBS newsman Daniel Shnor, Shor, was demonized by the CIA and conservative commentators for leaking a copy of the secret congressional report of CIA abuses to the village voices in 1976 after CBS had declined to make it public. Eventually, Shor was dumped by the network and virtually blackballed. A decade later, a similar fate befell Robert Perry.

17:47 and Brian Barger of the Associated Press, which you guys have heard Illini talk about repeatedly, after they broke several stories on the Contra involvement in drug trafficking and Oliver North's secret resupply operation. In both cases, the mainstream journalist community never said a word. At 2 a.m. midnight in San Jose on August 18th,

18:13 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 itself on the screen. After more than a year of work, Dark Alliance was finally out. I emailed George with the news, went back out to the party, and got drunk. The next morning, I flew back to Sacramento.

18:41 Initially, the silence was deafening. Then we realized why. They had unintentionally ran the series the week between the Republican-Democrat national conventions. The national media and the nation's politicians were on vacation. Nobody was paying attention. By August 21st, though, some radio stations began calling. What was this CIA story we've been hearing about on the web?

19:06 That combination, talk radio and the internet, is what saved Dark Alliance from slipping silently below the surface and disappearing without a trace. The internet wizards at Mercury Center, Mark Hall, Donna Yanish, and Albert Poon, had done a brilliant, eye-popping job on Dark Alliance's webpage. It was something right out of the movies. Full-color animated maps. One-click access to source documents.

19:35 unpublished photos, audio clips from undercover DEA tapes and Daniello Blanton's federal court testimony, a bibliography, a timeline, all in far more depth and detail than they were able to get in the newspaper. For investigative reporting, the web was a dream come true. No longer did the public have to rely on the word of sources or reporters' versions of what a document meant.

20:03 The web made it possible to share your files directly with your readers. If they cared to, they could read and hear exactly what was being said and make up their own minds. Traditionally, reporters jealously guarded their notes and their files. In that sense, journalism had something in common with the cocaine business. You are only as good as your sources. Lousy journalists tend to hide behind unnamed sources, blind quotes, and unrevealed records.

20:31 But as far as I was concerned, my best protection was for everybody to see everything I found. I had it on paper, and most of it was public record. We scanned as many of my documents as possible into the computers at Mercury Center and uploaded them onto the internet. A reader anywhere in the world would have instant access. Cleverly, Mercury Center had sent out an advanced email alert to various...

21:02 Use net news groups the day before the series appeared, tipping them off about the unveiling of the page. The cyber journalists were as proud as their revolutionary handiwork as I was and wanted to make sure that the net world knew what they had just pulled off, the first major online expose in newspaper history. The unlimited space of the web allowed Mercury News to move forward.

21:32 in a whole new kind of journalism. Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia would later write of Dark Alliance, quote, the Mercury News used the web to let intelligent readers review the source material and draw their own conclusion. This step, far beyond the traditional role of newspapers, attracted attention and readers from all over the world, unquote.

21:58 At the end of the first week, I returned to San Diego for Ricky Ross's sentencing. That was where I had my first inkling of the firestorm I'd touched off. Radio stations were blanketing the newspaper with interview requests. Before heading to the courthouse that morning, I had done radio shows in Washington, D.C., Austin, and Detroit. A haggard-looking L.J. O'Neill, the assistant U.S. attorney,

22:30 and bastard, my words, spotted me in the hallway. Hey there, I said. You see the story? He scowled at me and pushed by without saying a word. He had already fought his way through television camera crews outside the courthouse, and he clearly wasn't pleased with all the attention. Inside the courtroom, reporters jostled for seats. Fenster asked for a postponement of the sentencing, saying the series had raised significant questions about Blanton.

22:59 and his connections to the CIA. O'Neill protested angrily, accusing Ross of dreaming up the whole CIA plot and feeding it to gullible journalists who were spreading ridiculous conspiracy theories. But Judge Hoff looked troubled and told O'Neill she wanted some answers from the CIA before she passed sentence on Ross and his co-defendants. And she also wanted the Justice Department to begin deportation proceedings against Blanton immediately. The news made...

23:29 The wires and the switchboard at Mercury News lit up. This place is going crazy, Don reported. The web page had over 500,000 hits in one day. The Mercury News executive editor, Jerry Kepos, called and congratulated me. The TV networks were calling the paper. They were getting phone calls from all over the world. Let's stay on top of this, he said.

23:58 Anything you need, let us know. We want to run with this thing. A few days later, I got a $500 bonus check in the mail and a note from the editor. Remarkable series. Thanks for doing this for us. I was on a national public radio the following Monday and always gave out the website address so people could read the series and see our documents. That day, it had over 800,000 hits.

24:25 This energy was amazing. For the first time, people could hear about the story on the radio, even one that appeared several weeks earlier and thousands of miles away and immediately read it. Unlike all of the previous stories about the Contras and cocaine, this one couldn't be killed off in the traditional manner by big media, ignoring it or relegating it to news briefs. Millions of people were finding out about Dark Alliance anyway, even though not a word.

24:54 had appeared in a single national news source. That was newsworthy itself. The story had serious legs, moving rapidly through the African-American community via email and file downloads, and then into the living rooms, offices, churches, and onto the streets. It went into black newspapers, black radio broadcast.

25:23 Hot Wired magazine wrote in October 1996, for the first time, my grandmother asked to go online and read something. I couldn't believe it. She wouldn't look at a computer before. One black government lawyer emailed the magazine. This story is causing a sensation among blacks. It's all they're talking about. They are enraged about it and they can't believe it isn't on every front page in America.

25:53 Dark Alliance, Hotwire wrote, is making digital and media history. The Mercury News is demonstrating for perhaps the first time how the web and traditional press can fuse to great effect and that there's a chance to break modern media's parochial instincts and return some power to journalists outside of Washington and New York. The story may alter black consciousness about the web.

26:20 and further the web's reputation as a powerful, serious information medium. Associated Press noted that while no one had been able to track specific numbers of Blacks who might have been online because of the Mercury News series, many felt it was a watershed event. A Boston Globe reporter arrived in Los Angeles in early October 1996.

26:45 and breathlessly reported that the story was pulsing through LA's black neighborhood like a shockwave, provoking a stunning growing level of anger and indignation. Talk radio stations with predominantly black audiences were deluged with calls on the subject. Demonstrations, candlelight ceremonies, town hall meetings were becoming regular affairs. If there was one thing scarier to corporate journalism than

27:15 the series itself. It was the image of the future where big media was unable to control the national agenda. Irrespective of what the series said, Dark Alliance proved that the stranglehold a relative few East Coast editors and producers had on what became news was broken forever. This story suddenly raises suspicions that the internet had changed everything. In the case

27:48 In this case, the blend of the Internet and talk radio had made the traditional media irrelevant. The public was marching on without them, and the message got clear to California's top politicians. The L.A. City Council unanimously approved a resolution calling for a federal investigation. Both California senators and a half dozen congressmen wrote letters to the CIA director, John Deutch.

28:14 and Attorney General Janet Reno demanding an official inquiry. Deutch agreed to conduct one, which infuriated the right-wing Washington Times. Remember, the Washington Times is owned by Reverend Moon and Operation Gladio, i.e. the CIA. Deutch was lambasted on the front page by unnamed critics. Quote, his efforts to curry favor with liberal politicians.

28:46 Unquote. And on the editorial page, the editor at large, Arnold D. Bushgrave, a quote unquote journalist with a long history of connections to the CIA and the Contras, fumed that the same old pro-Marxist CIA bashers are at it again and quoted unnamed former colleagues at another paper describing Gary Webb as an activist journalist.

29:14 who would dearly love to see the CIA scuttled. I happen to be one of those people, too. In his column, he claimed Congress had given the Contras $100 million before the Boland Amendment went into effect and chided Gary Webb for being too young to remember that the CIA had no need for illicit Contra funds in those days. When I appeared on a political tart,

29:39 talk show with Chris Matthews live on CNBC that evening, Matthews eagerly sprung this crazy timeline on me, demanding to know how I could have written what I did, given the fact that the Contras had plenty of money. After Jack White of Time and I pointed out that his facts were backwards, Matthews, during the commercial break,

30:05 was screaming at his production assistants, loudly accusing them of attempting to sabotage his show. Soon after Deutsch's ordered an internal investigation, Attorney General Janet Reno, at the urging of the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich, followed suit. Finally, the national media dipped a toe in the water. Newsweek devoted an entire page to the story in late September.

30:34 calling it a powerful series that some black leaders were ready to carpet bomb Langley. Time that month called it the hottest topic in black America and said the website provides a plethora of court documents, recorded interviews and photographs. This is the first time the Internet has electrified African-Americans. And what's the travesty of all of this? Why isn't white America pissed off?

31:06 Soon, 60 Minutes called. Don't talk to anyone a producer told me. We want the story to ourselves. I got an identical call from Dateline NBC. I told both of them I thought it was unethical for a reporter to refuse to talk to the press. The 60 Minutes producer said that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. Dateline ended up doing the story. Over the next few weeks, we got interview requests from Jerry Springer, Geraldo Rivera,

31:35 Tom Snyder, Jesse Jackson, Montel Williams. I was on CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, the CBS Morning News. The Mercury printed up 5,000 copies of the series, and they were gone in a matter of weeks. An employee from the marketing department was assigned full-time to handle press calls. Each evening, she would email me a request for interviews, and by early October, the list was three pages long and growing.

32:03 The London Times did a story. Le Monde in Paris wrote something. Newspapers in Germany, Belgium, Spain, Colombia, and Nicaragua had called for interviews. It's hard to imagine how many radio stations there are in the United States until they start calling. At home, my phone began ringing at 6 a.m. and didn't stop until 10 p.m. Talk radio was burning up the airwaves, spreading the story in the web address from coast to coast. One day, the hits on the web

32:32 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 1986 police raids on Blanton's house. We came up with an entire Gordon search warrant.

32:57 which showed that the police had several informants telling them the drug money was going to the Contras. Our sources provide us with case file numbers and supposedly non-existent investigatory files at the L.A. County Sheriff's Office. And Congressman Maxine Waters and her staff matched it and demanded to see it. Marched in, sorry, and demanded to see it.

33:24 I told them the only way that we were going to get me out of your office was to give me the file or arrest me, she said. She got the file. And in it, the police reports about the search of Ronald Lister's house, his claims of CIA involvement, and the inventory of strange items seized at his house. NBC News did a strong follow-up, finally exposing the drug-related entries in Oliver Knorr's notebooks.

33:52 to a national television audience, but it was the only network attempting to advance the story. The establishment papers, the New York Times, Washington Post, and the LA Times, the same newspaper that tried to one-up him, all were silent. Where was the rebuttal? Why hasn't the media rose in revolt against this story and exasperated Bernard Kolb?

34:21 Former spokesman for the Reagan State Department demanded on CNN's reliable sources. It isn't a story that simply got lost. In fact, it has resonated and echoed the question is where is the media knocking it down? When that, too, is a journalistic responsibility. You couldn't knock it down because the source documents were there. Kalb's guest, former Reagan Justice Department spokesman Terry Eastland.

34:51 that he would expect to see this kind of a story in a magazine like In These Times, not a mainstream newspaper such as the San Jose Mercury News. No one on Kalb's show bothered to mention that Eastland had a history of trying to cover up the ContraLink. In May of 1986, his office had planted a false story in the New York Times stating that the Justice Department had cleared the Contras of any involvement in gun running and drug smuggling.

35:20 A statement the Justice Department later had to recant. One question I was frequently asked during radio appearances was whether I thought the national news reaction would be different if the series had appeared in the Washington Post or New York Times. My stock answer was that it hadn't appeared in those newspapers because they decided in 1986 there was no story. My feeling was that those newspapers, very familiar with the story,

35:49 made it more difficult for them to report it. How could they come back 10 years later and admit everything that they had denied? In early October, I was in New York City getting ready for an appearance on the Montel Williams show, which was doing a two-day special on Dark Alliance. About 2 a.m., Jerry Seppos called. The Washington Post had just moved a story onto the wires.

36:16 It would be in the morning edition and it was highly critical of the series. He asked me to take a look at it and give him my reaction. What did they say was wrong? They didn't say anything was wrong. They just don't agree with your conclusions. And their evidence is what? A lot of unnamed sources, mainly. It's really a strange piece. I'll send you a fax of it and we can talk in the morning. The story was headlined, quote, the CIA and crack.

36:46 Evidence is lacking in the alleged plot, unquote. Gary Webb laughed and asked, what plot? The reporters, Walter Pincus and Roberto Cerno, people we've come across that are 100% mockingbird, wrote that their investigation does not support the conclusion that the CIA backed the Contras or Nicaragua in Nicaraguan.

37:16 Contras in general, nor that they played a major role in the emergence of crack as a narcotic in widespread use in the U.S. Instead, the available data from arrest records, hospitals, drug treatment centers, and drug user surveys point to the rise of crack as a broad-based phenomenon driven in numerous places by players of different nationalities, races, and ethnic groups. Aha!

37:45 The old tidal wave theory. Here it goes again. I wondered what available data Pincus and Surow had gathered from the 1982-83 error, the dawn of the LA crack market. Since the DEA and the National Database for Drugs had admitted a decade earlier, there was no such data.

38:09 The story grudgingly and often backhandedly admitted that the basic facts presented in the series were all correct, and it buried key admissions deep inside, such as the fact that the CIA knew about some of these activities and did nothing about them. Toward the end, Pincus and Surow confirmed that Menendez and Blanton had met with Enrique Bermudez in Honduras.

38:35 but without disclosing Bermuda's relationship with the CIA. CIA agent Adolfo Calero, whom the Post euphemistically described as someone, quote, who worked closely with the CIA, unquote, also admitted to the Post reporters that he had met with Menendez. Overall, it was a carefully crafted piece of disinformation

39:06 notorious for the CIA's authorship, that would set the stage for the attacks to follow. It falsely claimed that the series made a radically charged allegation that the CIA's army of Contras deliberately targeted black communities in an effort to expand market for a cheap form of cocaine. And despite Blanton's testimony that he sold two or three hundred kilos of cocaine for Menendez in L.A. and that all of the

39:37 Profits were sent to the Contras. The Post quoted unnamed law enforcement officials as saying Blanton sold $30,000 to $60,000 worth of cocaine, which is a bold-faced lie. The story also drove right through the window that O'Neill had opened at the Ross trial. If the whole of Blanton's testimony is to be believed, then...

40:03 There is no connection between the Contras and African-American drug dealers because Blanton said he had stopped sending money to the Contras by the time he met Ross. No mention was made of the DEA reports, the Sheriff Department's affidavits, that said Blanton was selling Contra cocaine through 1986, nor of the fact that Ross had been buying Blanton's cocaine long before they actually met. The Post also said,

40:35 The mere idea that any one person could have played a decisive role in the nationwide crack epidemic is rejected out of hand by academic experts. Put air quotes over that. And law enforcement officials put air quotes over that. But they identified neither the academic experts or the law enforcement officials. In other words, they're just making shit up the way the CIA does.

41:03 I wrote, set post, a memo pointing out the holes in the post story. The pinkest piece I wrote, quote, is just silly. It's the kind of story you'd expect from someone who spent three weeks working on a story as opposed to 16 months, unquote. The fact that the post unnamed experts would reject our scenario out of hand, I wrote, was the whole problem. None of them, whoever they are, have studied this before.

41:30 To his credit, Setpost fired off a blistering letter to the Post, pointing out the factual errors in the piece and calling Pincus' claim of racially charged allegations a complete and total mischaracterization. The most difficult issue, this is a quote, the most difficult issue is whether a casual reading of our series leads to the conclusion that the CIA is directly responsible for the outbreak of the crack epidemic in Los Angeles.

41:59 While there is considerable circumstantial evidence of CIA involvement with the leaders of this drug ring, we never reached or reported any definitive conclusion on the CIA involvement. We reported that men selling cocaine to Los Angeles met with people on the CIA's payroll. We reported that they received fundraising orders from people on the CIA's payroll. We reported that the money raised was sent to CIA operations.

42:26 but we did not go further and took pains to say that clearly, unquote. CEPOS posted the letter on the staff bulletin board along with the memo defending the series. We strongly support the conclusions the series drew and will until someone proves them wrong. What is even more remarkable is that four experienced post reporters re-reporting our series could not find a single significant factual error.

42:54 The Post's conclusions are very different, and I believe flawed, but the major facts aren't. I'm not sure how many of us could sustain such a microscopic examination of our work, and I believe Gary Webb deserves recognition for surviving unscathed. The Post held Seppo's letter for weeks, ordering him to rewrite it, and then refused to print it. What?

43:22 Shortly afterwards, I got an email message from a woman in Southern California. There was a story in the Mercury archives that I needed to see, she wrote, and provided a date and a page number. I sent it to our library and got a photocopy of the story in the mail a day later. It had ran on February 18th, 1967. Quote, how I traveled abroad on CIA subsidy, unquote, was the headline.

43:51 The author was none other than Walter Pincus in the Washington Post. After disclosure of CIA infiltration of American student associations had exploded that year, Pincus had written a long, smug confessional on how posing as an American student representative, he had traveled to several international youth conferences in the 1950s and 60s, secretly gathering information for the CIA and smuggling in anti-communist propaganda.

44:21 And if you recall, we talked about him as a part of that operation. That's where we first came across Tim. A CIA recruiter had approached him, he wrote, and he agreed to spy not only on the student delegations from other countries, but on his American colleagues as well. Quote, I had been briefed in Washington on each of these. None was remotely aware of the CIA's interest, unquote.

44:51 That just cannot be true, I thought. The Washington Post veteran national security reporter, a former CIA operative and propagandist. Now, for us, because of all the research we've done, we know most reporters fit that category. Unwilling to believe this piece of information until I dug it up myself, I went to the state library and got out microfilm. The story was there.

45:20 This was the man who was questioning my ethics for giving Alan Fenster questions to ask a government witness about Contras and drug operations? Jesus. I'd certainly never spied on American citizens. Looking into Penka's background further, I saw that he had popped up in another situation where the CIA's reputation was under attack.

45:41 In 1975, he had been the person at the New York Times selected to review ex-CIA officer Philip Agee's best-selling expose called CIA Diary. In an unfavorable review, Pincus strongly suggested that Agee was in the league with Cuban intelligence services in a joint conspiracy to destroy the CIA. Pincus's previous association with the CIA was not disclosed by the Times.

46:09 He merely identified himself as a Washington journalist. When the Post found itself under rare criticism by the CIA in 1986 for allegedly printing classified information, Pincus went on McNeil-Lair NewsHour and stated his newspaper wasn't so irresponsible as to pass along government secrets. The Post often shielded itself

46:37 and its readers' eyes from such things, Pincus asserted frequently in consultation with the government. We've been dealing with it for a long time, and I think we have withheld a great deal of information, Pincus said. It ought to be made clear to people that we, in determining what we're going to do with a lot of stories, go to the administration, meaning the CIA, and tell them what we have and listen to what their arguments are, and then we make a decision.

47:07 of what we're going to report. Pincus would later play an important role in helping to impede the Iran-Contra investigation, according to independent counsel Lawrence Walsh. In his memoirs, Firewall, Walsh wrote that at a critical moment in the Iran-Contra probe, Pincus had published a story claiming Walsh was planning to indict Ronald Reagan. A report that made worldwide news

47:35 and reduced Nancy Reagan to tears. Of all the sideswipes that we suffered during that period, the false report that we were considering indicting the nation's still-admired former president hurt us the most, Walsh wrote. It infuriated the congressional Republicans, even some who were moderates. Walsh suspected that Pincus had been fed the story by Boynton Gray, attorney for then George Bush.

48:04 senior, which of course would be CIA. Gray, Walsh wrote, had been known to float stories through persons close to the publishers at the Washington Post. Pincus had sometimes been asked to write these stories. I suspected Gray or someone else in the White House had played a role in disseminating the misinformation, but I did not have proof. The Post, of course, never acknowledged what history had proven.

48:33 Pincus' big scoop was completely bullshit. The LA Times and the New York Times struck next. On October 20th, 1996, both ran stories attacking my reporting in the series. They took the same tact as the Washington Post, admitting that the basic facts were all true, but complaining that the facts didn't mean anything. Relying again mostly on unnamed sources.

49:02 These two newspapers of record claim Blanton and Menendez hadn't had official positions with the Contras. Another lie. Drug money had been sent, but not millions. It was only in the tens of thousands, according to, quote, unnamed sources. And experts scoffed at the notion that one drug ring could have supplied enough cocaine to feed a tidal wave of crack throughout America. The papers found no need to mention the mass.

49:33 of historical evidence that supported the series findings. Without anything approaching documentation, the papers just flatly declared I was wrong with no evidence. The crack epidemic in Los Angeles followed no blueprint or master plan, they wrote. It was not orchestrated by the Contras or the CIA. No one trafficker, even kingpins, who sold thousands of kilos and pocketed millions of dollars ever came close to monopolizing the drug trade.

50:04 How else do you explain that all of that drugs came into the United States and the CIA, FBI, and DEA didn't do a damn thing about it? It literally makes no sense. The first part on the genesis of crack in LA was written by Jesse Kratz, though Kratz himself

50:26 starting in 1994 and continuing through the summer of 96, had repeatedly referred to Ross as the first and biggest crack dealer in South Central, the master marketer whose activities were key to the spread of crack. He now found that Ross was just a pygmy who had little or nothing to do with the crack explosion. He completely changed his story. Instead,

50:52 Kratz trotted out a number of other cocaine dealers he'd apparently missed the first time he'd written his issue. He named several of them, none of which were the major players. Gary Webb went on an L.A. radio station and said, this is like reading Pravda. History means nothing to these people. Syndicated columnist Norman Solomon described Katz's story as a show trial recantation.

51:21 The next day, the LA Times absolved the CIA of any involvement with Blanton and Menendez. Its authoritative sources was a former CIA director, Robert Gates, former CIA official, Vincent Castorero, and current CIA director, John Deutsch. All the guys paid to lie. Like good little boys and girls, the Times, the Washington Post trotted off.

51:50 to the CIA and asked the agency if they'd ever done anything wrong. When the CIA said no, the paper solemnly printed it, just as though the CIA hadn't previously denied any other number of illegal operations until they were caught red-handed. Buried deep within the LA Times story were admissions by CIA officials that Contra supporters were involved in drug running, but they bought villas and didn't buy weapons.

52:18 And the story conceded, quote, the allegations that some elements of CIA-sponsored Contra Army cooperated with drug traffickers has been well-documented for years. You know, old news. But the story dismissed the idea that millions went to the Contras from the Nicaraguan drug sales. Unnamed sources, again, said that it was around, you know, $50,000 or $60,000. No big deal.

52:46 $60,000, he scoffed. You can raise that in an afternoon. According to another unnamed source, the Times quoted, Blanton and Menendez were making only $15,000 a kilo. Unmentioned was Blanton's testimony that he had sold 200 to 300 kilos for Menendez during the time they were sending money to the Contras, and his admission that all of the profits were being sent

53:15 to the Contras. Using the Times' own profit figures, that would mean between $3 and $4.5 million went to the Contras just from Blanton's sales. And that didn't include the money from Menendez in San Francisco. Lost in the debate over whether it was millions or tens of thousands, which the CIA does all the time, look over here. Let's talk about this. Let's not talk about what I'm actually doing.

53:46 the idea that a reasonable, accurate number could ever be found in an illicit drug trade. No solid, this is a quote, no solid evidence has emerged that either Menendez or Blanton contributed any money to the rebels after 1984. The story declared, ignoring the 1986 sheriff affidavit and the 1986 DEA reports. The story also,

54:13 quoted another unnamed associate who claimed apparently with a straight face that the profit margins in the cocaine business from 82 to 84, when Coke was selling for $60,000 a kilo, was just too slim to allow millions of dollars of donations to the Contras. What kind of journalist would unquestionably accept such a statement? And then I saw it in...

54:43 saw it in a box inside. Doyle McManus, the chief of the LA Times Washington Bureau, that explained it. In 1984, McManus had played a central role in spreading CIA's leaks about Barry Seale and the Sandinista dealing cocaine. Just in time for Ronald Reagan's request to Congress for additional money and the notes in Oliver North's book.

55:11 contained several references to conversations he personally had with McManus and the White House shortly before and shortly after details of the CIA DEA sting was being fed to the press. So in other words, another mockingbird guy. McManus talking to the White House, North wrote on July 12th, 1984, unhappy with negotiations.

55:41 On July 17, 1984, the CIA leak appeared in the Washington Times. Again, owned by Reverend Moon, Operation Gladio. It was written by Jeremiah O'Leary, a longtime Washington Press Corps reporter, described by investigative reporter Carl Bernstein as having a valuable personal relationship with the CIA that dated back to the 1960s. O'Leary insisted that they had been more helpful to me than I was to them.

56:11 meaning he's basically on their payroll. O'Leary's story in the Washington Times, which had supported the Contras both editorially and financially, gave McManus the excuse he needed to rush the CIA's leak into the LA Times. According to Norse notebooks, McManus called the White House that morning and informed officials that the National Security Council would be cited as his official source for the information. McManus

56:40 L.A. Times says national security. This is a quote from North's notebook. McManus, L.A. Times says National Security Council to source claims. George H. Bush has pictures of Borge loading cocaine in Nicaragua, which is what they use to frame the story that it was Nicaragua trafficking the drugs and not Colombia and not Costa Rica.

57:09 and El Salvador. The following morning on the front page of the Times, McManus wrote that high-ranking members of the Nicaraguan government have been linked to the scheme involving Colombia's largest cocaine trafficker, U.S. intelligence sources say. So, in other words, he's on the CIA's payroll too. The story declared that Interior Minister Thomas Bourget and Defense Minister

57:40 Umberto Ortega of Nicaragua were among officials the source had implicated. All of that's a lie. A day later, McManus co-author Ronald Ostro reported that U.S. intelligence sources have obtained a photograph standing next to Pablo Escobar, one of the two Colombian nationals being sought as a plane was being loaded with duffel bags of cocaine.

58:09 at a Nicaraguan airport. Unfortunately for the Times, no such photograph ever surfaced, and the DEA later admitted that no such information implicated any Sandinista official in any drug trafficking. The story was a hoax, lock, stock, and barrel, and McManus had been willing to participate and dupe America. So strident in defending the U.S. officials against such charges,

58:38 The Times never admitted that it had wrongly accused two Nicaraguan government officials of cocaine trafficking based solely on unnamed intelligence sources. McManus and Ostro later teamed up to review allegations of contra-drug trafficking in 1987, just as the issue was threatening to go national. On a front page story bearing a cautionary deckhead, no

59:08 Supporting evidence, DEA says. The Times reported that a Senate committee investigating reports that Nicaraguan rebels and their American supporters had helped smuggle cocaine into the United States. But DEA officials says they have no evidence. Because the DEA is doing it. The story went through a litany of accusations. El Apengo, the Frogman case, the Southern Air Transport shipments.

59:38 to Columbia, devoting a sentence or two to each and surrounding them with abundant denials by the DEA and CIA agent Calero. The reporters made no attempt at an independent investigation because they knew it would expose everything. In a prison cell in Boron, California, Contra drug courier Carlos Cabreza read McManus' story and couldn't believe his eyes.

1:00:06 He banged out a letter to the reporter on February 27, 1987, stating, I am going to tell you that there was indeed supporting evidence hidden by the government. The receipt of drug money by the Contras, he wrote, is absolutely true, at least in my case. Cabraza told McManus of his trip to Costa Rica with $250,000.

1:00:31 and noted that the FBI made no attempt to stop him, even though he was traveling with an FBI informant. He also told McManus the FBI had tape-recorded conversations between the former ambassador of Nicaragua in Guatemala, Mr. Fernando Sanchez, and Trulio Sanchez, and myself. Both of these gentlemen are brothers of Mr. Adolfo Calero's top aide, Mr. Aristide Sanchez.

1:01:02 These conversations were related to drug transactions. McManus replied too much later, asking Cabresa to provide him with names and documents to substantiate his quote-unquote allegations. And by the way, he asked, can you give me any further information about the Sandinista drug trafficking? Cabresa said he sent McManus the documents about the Contras and never heard another thing.

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 response to the other newspapers. He said, Gary Webb vehemently disagreed. The best way to shut them up is to put the rest of the story out there.

1:02:01 Let's run a story about Walter Pincus' CIA connections. Let's write about how the LA Times has been booting this story since 1987. I told them my discovery that the LA Times Washington Bureau had been sent a copy of notes found in Ron Lister's house in 1990 and had thrown them away. Seppos disagreed. I don't want to get into a war with them, he said. Fortunately, both Don and Paul Van Slambrock.

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 ring with the Contras. Cepos relented authorizing another reporting trip to Central America. He also assigned LA Bureau reporter Pamela Kramer

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 that, I ask? We documented these traffickers had meetings with CIA agents. If you change the logo, the rest of the media is going to say you are backing away from the story.

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 the LA Times immediately crowed that the Mercury was retreating from their story, just as Gary Webb had said.

1:03:52 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 network on the Southern Front. In Managua, we interviewed police and Blanton's suspected money launderer, Orlando Morella. I flew back and started writing the follow-up stories. George continued hunting for other members of the Menendez drug ring.

1:04:22 He called me in December of 1996, barely able to contain his excitement. He'd found Carlos Cabreza, who admitted that he had, in fact, delivered millions of dollars in drug money to the Contras. Cabreza had names, dates, and amounts, George said, and pages from his drug ledgers. He'd identified a CIA agent, Ivan Gomez, as having the direct knowledge of all of it. We've got it. Cabreza is willing to talk on the record.

1:04:52 A week later, George called with more good news. Enrique Miranda, the former Menendez aide who had escaped a year earlier, had been found in Miami and tossed on a plane to Nicaragua. George had visited him in prison. Miranda started talking. Menendez's relationship with the CIA and the Contras was deeper than we ever realized, George said. We didn't know how right we were. I can't wait to see what the Washington Post does with this.

1:05:21 I could have kissed him, Gary Webb said. In January of 1997, I sent first drafts of four follow-up stories to Dawn, written as a two-day series. The first part dealt with Menendez's DEA connections and his Costa Rican operation, along with interviews George had done with Carlos Caprese and Enrique Miranda. I wrote a sidebar about the drug dealing.

1:05:45 Costa Rican shrimp company North and the Cuban CIA operatives were using to funnel aid to the Contras. The second part was a story about the parallel investigation of Contra drug trafficking done in the summer of 1986 by DEA agent Castillo at Ilopango and the L.A. County Sheriff's Department Tom Gordon, drawing on recently declassified FBI and CIA records at the National Archive.

1:06:15 and 3,000 pages of one secret document about the Blanton raid that had just been released by L.A. County Sheriff's Office. I also wrote a sidebar on Joe Kelso's attempt to investigate allegations of DEA drug trafficking in Costa Rica, although the drafts ran about 16,000 words. We'd done it. We had an eyewitness on the record who delivered the drug money.

1:06:42 We had DEA records saying Blanton had sent the money to the Contras far longer than we had previously reported. We had a top CIA official admitting that the agency had reports of drug trafficking at Ilopango. We had evidence of Ronald Lister had been meeting with the CIA former head of covert operations. I expected the editors to be beside themselves. I heard absolutely nothing from them.

1:07:12 Aside from Don, no one called me. They'd read the news stories. No one called with any questions. No one even suggested they'd begin editing them. In early February, Don sent me a copy of the story Peter Carey and Pam Kramer had written on the origins of the LA crack market. It was astonishing. A virtual repeat.

1:07:36 of the LA Times story. It quoted police and drug experts opining that the Contra drug ring couldn't have been supplied with enough cocaine to have a major impact because the crack had serviced all over the United States at about the same time, which was not true. It drew no distinction between the LA crack market in 1982 and the market in 1986. As far as the story was concerned, it sprung from the ground fully formed.

1:08:03 Three men, the story concluded, could not have created the drug epidemic. The details of the trio's activities, who did what and when, cannot change the overall story of the crack epidemic. I couldn't believe it. I respected Kerry as a reporter, and he and I had co-authored a story in 1989 and won a Pulitzer Prize. But here it seemed he had taken the government's explanation and swallowed it.

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 story. What I told CEPOS was that we should just continue to work on this and what we had from the official investigations. Kramer said much the same thing.

1:09:01 The problem I had with that story, she told me, is that no one knows what really happened back in those years because no one is looking at it. Their crack story never appeared. With that settled, I plunged back into the investigation. In March, I flew to Florida to interview former CIA pilot Ron Lippert, who had flown drug missions for the Contras in 1986. I spent two days at his home near Tampa, pouring through his voluminous files and picking his brain.

1:09:32 My interview with Lippert, jailed for 10 years by Fidel Castro for flying explosives into Cuba for the agency, solved one of the final mysteries of the Southern Front. How CIA operative John Hall, that's the guy that had the big ranch in Costa Rica.

1:09:53 Bill Casey's friend and Oliver North's liaison for the Contras had escaped from Costa Rica after he was indicted there for drug trafficking in 1989. After being thrown in jail, Hall was let out on bail for health reasons and vanished. The DEA office in Costa Rica, the corrupt guys, had gotten Hall out, Lippard said. Lippard had flown the mission himself in a decoy plane hopscotching from Costa Rica to Haiti.

1:10:22 and then shuttling Hall to Miami, where Hall hid in an apartment of a Cuban CIA operative and suspected drug dealer, Dagoberto Nunez, who had helped North in the CIA in Costa Rica, the DEA officer who had recruited Lippard for the escape flight. J.J. Perez was another Cuban anti-communist, Lippard said. In an interview,

1:10:50 Hall confirmed Lippert's story, as did Anthony Rasbuto, a former DEA inspector who'd investigated Perez's role in Hall's escape. Rasbuto believed Perez set up Hall's escape on his own initiative without official DEA sanction, but Hall disputed that. Hell,

1:11:14 You don't get a DEA pilot and a DEA airplane to fly you around without the DEA knowing about it. The DEA panel recommended Perez's dismissal. Rasputo said, but the Justice Department provided Perez with an attorney and much of the case was dispensed on national security grounds. Perez ended up being suspended for one day. Perez would not return phone calls and the files of his disciplinary hearing was sealed.

1:11:46 as a national security secret. The U.S. refused repeated Costa Rican requests to extradite Hall and the drug charges were eventually dropped. Murder charges that were filed against him shortly after his escape are still pending. Hall denied both accusations.

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 more amazing the story became. And then, just like that, it was over. Executive Editor, Jerry Kapos.

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 said that we didn't find proof of involvement of the CIA decision makers, whatever that meant. We should have said Ricky Ross wasn't the only crack supplier in LA, but we hadn't.

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 from P. Carey's article that was never printed. I wrote a written response to San Jose.

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 because they have a differing opinion when you get down to it, that's all it is. It's a pretty shoddy reason to take a swan dive on a story, quote.

1:14:25 Do I think there were no mistakes made in the execution of this story? Unquote, no. But this draft doesn't mention them. If we want to fully air this issue and be honest with our readers, I request that the following failures be included.

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 it further. Finally, I asked the paper to print my own response to this retraction. I thought it needed to be said as a reporter. I stood by my story. Seppos flushed as he read my memo.

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, Jonathan Krim, in all likelihood the author of Kripo's apology, we all got in this together and we're going to get out of it together.

1:15:35 How can we honestly say that we don't know millions went to the Contras or that the CIA didn't know about this when we've got an eyewitness telling us that he personally gave drug money to a CIA agent? What are we going to do with all of the inconvenient information in the follow-ups? We're going to look awful GD stupid running this apology and then printing stories that directly contradict it. The other editors looked uncomfortable.

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 that the head of the Contra drug ring was working for the DEA is a quarter turn of a screw? You don't think that the fact that the DEA helped

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're not going to do any more investigation on this topic. And you're going to run a mealy-mouthed column that pretends we don't know anything else. Tuck our tails between our legs and slink off into the sunset.

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 errors, but leaving the rest virtually unchanged. No matter how many times the words and phrases are tweaked, the end result is still a sham, was Gary Webb's response.

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 he also asserted some statements that acknowledged the series was largely accurate and the basic elements were solidly documented. And to my shock, he reversed his earlier decision to kill the follow-up stories.

1:18:01 Don asked me to prepare a memo on what we needed to do to get the stories in shape, because Setpost was now leaning towards running them. At a final meeting before the column ran, I predicted that the mainstream press would read the column as a retraction, one that covered everything the series had revealed. You run this, and all we'll hear is the Mercury News has now admitted it's not true.

1:18:26 The Contrants weren't dealing in cocaine. The CIA did nothing wrong. And you know as well as I do, that's not true. Well, Krim said, you're the one who's always saying that we can't be held responsible for what other people read into things. There it was, the truth. We want the public to think there's nothing here. We want it all to go away. They're tired of fighting. Tired of being a journalist outcast for standing by a story that,

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 anything else to say? Yes. You're taking a dive on a true story, and one day you're going to find out. Seppos' column ran May 11, 1997.

1:19:25 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. Howard Kurtz, the media critic who now works at Fox News, called the comment, it's nauseating. I had never been more disgusted in my professional life.

1:19:58 Gary Webb said. It wasn't because such outrage was unknown in the newspaper business. They weren't. Shortly before I arrived at the Plain Dealer, the paper printed a front page retraction of a story that appeared more than a year earlier, revealing that the former Teamster Union president, Jackie Presser, was an FBI informant. Presser was indeed an FBI informant, and the FBI confirmed it years later. But the truth had taken a backseat to real politic.

1:20:27 Court records later revealed that the paper had been pressured into retracting the story by the New York mob boss, Anthony Salerno, who had asked his attorney, Roy Cohn, to intercede with the Newhouse family who owned the paper. Whether similar pressures were applied to setposts from outside the newspaper is something I will never know. Don, his direct editor.

1:21:00 suggested that Seppos' treatment for prostate cancer in the winter of 1996 had been a factor. It's a plausible explanation because there really is only two ways the newspaper could have gone. Dark Alliance at that point, forward or backwards, the series had created a superheated controversy that was becoming impossible to simply do nothing. Seppos had stood by the story bravely at key moments and simply may have not had the endurance to write it out.

1:21:30 If Mercury continued pursuing the story and publishing follow-ups, editor John Krim worried in a memo, the editors needed to be ready to deal with the firestorm of criticism. The other way out was to back up, confess shortcomings, take a lump, and move on. Had I done what my editors wanted, kept my mouth shut, and gone along with the charade, I probably would be working at the newspaper. But I had no desire to hang around.

1:21:58 place that's so easily cowled by the opinions of others. A reporter's job is to pursue truth. I still believed, no matter how unpopular the pursuit became. And the truth of the matter, as I saw it, was that my editors had tried to rewrite history. When Howard Kurtz asked me what I intended to do next, I told him about the stories the Mercury News was suppressing.

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, you never turned in any story. He said the only thing you gave him was a memo and some notes. Gary Webb laughed. Notes? I've never given an editor notes in my life. I turned in four fully written stories in January.

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 month, and the issue gradually became what Seppos reportedly had dreaded. He was being accused of suppressing information. He was covering things up. Talk radio had a field day.

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, who had not spoken to me since he ran his column, called me at home in early June. He was killing the follow-ups, he shouted. I was off the story for good.

1:23:47 He couldn't trust me anymore because I'd aligned myself with someone with one side of this issue. Which side is that, Jerry? I ask. The side that wants the truth to come out? He wasn't getting into a debate. He told me. It was to report. I was to report to his office in two days to discuss my future.

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, and the only way to do that was to accept a transfer to San Jose, which I refused. I would be transferred against my will to the West Bureau in Cupertino, the newspaper's version of Siberia.

1:24:34 a training ground for new reporters, and a pasture for older ones who had fallen out of favor. It made little sense because the reporters there had no direct supervision. Whichever I decided, I had to report in 30 days. And by the way, Seppo said, Pete Carey was going to take over the Contra drug story, and I was to give him all the cooperation. That night, I sat down with my wife, Sue, and my children and gave them the news. In one month, I was going to have to start working in

1:25:04 Supatino, 150 miles away. I'd have to drive there on Mondays and come home on Fridays. And meanwhile, I'd fight the transfer through the newspaper guild. My six-year-old daughter looked at me strangely and said, are you still going to sleep here? No, I won't be able to. I'll have to live in another place during the week, but I'll be home on the weekends. As the deadline approached, I became despondent and told my wife I didn't feel comfortable leaving her and the kids alone.

1:25:32 George had been getting death threats in Nicaragua. My wife's law office had been burglarized and ransacked twice. The power lines to his house, his law, I'm sorry, George, the guy in Nicaragua. His wife's law office had been burglarized and ransacked twice. The power lines to his house had been cut. His brother-in-law was being threatened by armed thugs. He was leaving the country and taking his wife and moving to Switzerland. It's too dangerous to leave you and the children alone.

1:26:00 Gary Webb said. Maybe I should just quit. I didn't want to work there anymore anyway. That's just what they want you to do. Don't you dare give in to those cowards. I know it's a lousy situation. We'll just have to put up with it. The Guild says you'll win in arbitration.

1:26:18 Winning the arbitration seemed very likely because the union contract the newspaper had with the Newspaper Guild, which represented much of the staff, expressly prohibited transferring reporters out of a bureau against their will. But it would take months for a hearing to occur. And then what? I'd get my old job back working for the same editors? It hardly seemed worth the fight. On the other hand, going through it held its own attractions. Every day that I show up at the bureau, they would have...

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 keep me away from any decent assignments, I turned in a press release rewrite for a San Jose landfill into a front page story. It was the last piece I wrote for the Mercury.

1:27:13 A one-page story with no one's name on it, which reportedly infuriated Cepos. Occasionally, Pete Carey would call with a question or two. He wasn't having much luck cooperating with Carlos Cabrese's statements. He told me he was trying to locate the Venezuelan CIA agent. Cabrese said he had worked with Ivan Gomez, but he couldn't. He tried directory assistance in Caracas and complained about how many Ivan Gomez's there were in the phone book.

1:27:43 I never heard another word from him about it, and none of the follow-up stories ever ran. On November 19, 1997, the Mercury News agreed to settle my arbitration, but amusingly required me to sign a confidentiality agreement saying I would never disclose the terms. Nineteen years after becoming a reporter, I quit the newspaper business. Bob Perry, an AP reporter who broke the...

1:28:06 Contra's drug story in 1985 sent me a note of condolence. Like you, I grew up in the business thinking our job really was to tell the truth, he wrote. Maybe that was the mission at one time. Maybe there was that awakening in 1970s with Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the CIA scandals. But something very bad has happened to the news media in the 1980s. Part of it was the public diplomacy pressures from the outside.

1:28:34 But part of it was the smug, snotty, sophomoric crowd that came to dominate the national media from the inside. These characters fell in love with their power to define reality, not their responsibility to uncover facts. By the 1990s, the media had become the monster. I wish it weren't so. All I ever wanted to do was report and write interesting stories while getting paid to do it. But that...

1:29:02 really isn't possible anymore. And there's no use crying over it. He reassured me just to hang in there. He wasn't alone. That's it. I know that was long. It was a long chapter, but I wanted to get it in. So tomorrow we can do a much shorter version because I'm going to be at a different location and we will do the epilogue tomorrow and it'll be a shorter show tomorrow. That's it. And Bridget's got knocked down again.

1:29:34 So, Bridget, riddle me this. How do they keep doing updates and the same damn shit happens every single day? What are they fixing? SR71, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel, and thank everyone for attending on Rumble and here on X. I'm wondering if Bridget needs to reboot her router again, but whatever the case. Anyway, I was looking at this from the standpoint of where we started talking about indictments, going to indict the president.

1:30:08 Of all things. Well, gee whiz, what happened to Trump? It's like, oh, my God. Oh, we can't do that. Now all of a sudden with Trump, it's, oh, we got to do that. It just blows my mind. Thank you, Colonel. Sure. Yeah. Obviously, that was put out there to enrage and evoke emotion to.

1:30:37 Get people to look over here instead of at the Iran-Contra stuff that was actually going on and to orchestrate a circus. Another kabuki dance, if you will. Bridget? Again, I have to say that I am so glad, I'm so thankful that he wrote a book. Because you see how we've been fed and led along and only allowed to get.

1:31:07 And we saw it when we did the research. You know, you'd get a little bit of the story from one news article, a little bit of the story from another news article, but you could tell that they were always only allowed to print so much. And he also illustrates something very telling. When he talks about how those articles were written, very deep into the article,

1:31:38 is some very important factual information they're hoping people never get to. And immediately when I read that part of the book, I thought about that New York Times article about the CIA operations that were set up in 2014 in Ukraine. Because you have to read through the entire article until you get down to almost the very end where they admit they're setting up stay-behind units.

1:32:06 for intelligence and deployment of paramilitary along the border into the Donbass region. And you literally had to read through the whole article because the entire first several paragraphs is like, there's nothing here. There's no big deal. Oh, by the way, we're setting up stay behind units in Ukraine. Okay. End of story. Yeah. Right. And it was probably published as far as in the print on the back page.

1:32:36 buried underneath obituaries and for sale or for rent, you know. Yeah, something like that. Go ahead, SR. Thank you, Colonel. I'm waiting for the day when these journalists start investigating the editors. That'll never happen. And I wonder if that would make a difference. That'll never happen. Given the internet and what we got to get information out there, that might make a difference. It'll never happen.

1:33:15 And it really isn't even the editors. It's the owners of the paper who hired the editors. Well, that's true. But I mean, I would look at it from the standpoint of, OK, who got to who to pressure the editor? They work for the CIA, SR. All of them do. I mean, look at The Washington Times. They were literally owned by the criminals.

1:33:42 They were owned by Reverend Moon. Understood, Colonel, but I want names to go with who did it. Reverend Moon. Who in the CIA did it? Who in that kind of deal? Reverend Moon is a product of the CIA and the KCIA. He bought the Washington Times. If you look at the Washington Post, I have posted about this numerous times. It is not a coincidence.

1:34:13 that the CIA gave Bezos a $600 million cloud storage contract, and within a few weeks, Bezos bought the Washington Post for $400 million. That's not a coincidence. Nope, you're right on that point, Colonel. And you have to fit a profile in order to be hired into these...

1:34:47 media corporations. And if you start looking just like what we just talked about, if you start researching these reporters, you find out that repeatedly, and it was like plastered all over with Russiagate, the same reporters were being fed CIA talking points and reporting on them. I mean, for God's sake, the one guy was sleeping with the one reporter and

1:35:15 faxed from the SCIF in the Senate, the Steele dossier. So they're all part of it. The reporters are part of it. They're never going to report on their editors. The editors are part of it because they're hired by the corrupt business owners and the corrupt business owners are all in on it too. I mean, you don't even have to look at the United States. If you go to all of these foreign countries,

1:35:48 The owners, like the one in Chile, obviously comes up the most often. The New York Times version in Chile in the early 70s was literally owned by the CIA. It was just a front company. So there is example after example all over about how this works.

1:36:13 They're not going to hire an honest reporter. If a reporter actually wrote an honest story, it's never going to get published. So the best you get is somebody like Gary Webb, who would never be hired by them to begin with, which is why he was at the Mercury. But the best you're ever going to get is a disgruntled reporter.

1:36:40 that works at one of these places and gets fired and then goes public with information um that's probably the best you'd ever get um but what happened to the guy that did that in germany the reporter over there that wrote an entire book i have his book about being on the intelligence payroll they killed him um all along go ahead yeah um

1:37:14 Colonel, I agree with your comment to SR-71 about, you know, the impossibility of going after editors. At the same time, I think it's kind of a question going in the right direction, because to me, that question implies, you know, the broader point of, look, are we just going to sit back and take it from big legacy media that still, you know,

1:37:45 In spite of, you know, the alternative media and in spite of the great things that are available, you know, on the Internet, they still have the ability and the sole ability to create critical mass. And what I mean by that is, you know, it's like Monday morning. Everybody saw it. Your tongue will flap about a story if you think everyone else saw it, but it will not flap if you think.

1:38:13 You're the only ones that saw that on the Internet. But if you don't have an inside source to reveal that the editors are actually doing that, you're never going to be able to expose the editors. I'm just being realistic about it. Right. I'm not I'm not disagreeing with that. But what I'm saying is that it's the question is headed in the right direction in the sense that we have.

1:38:44 The citizens of this country have to develop a means of imposing a political cost on legacy media for these monumental lies that just shape all education. You know, we're still teaching checks and balances from New York to California when there ain't none. And, you know, they're at the same time you have these mega revelatory stories.

1:39:13 Like, OK, CBS just, you know, CIA just went into CBS's four part special in 1967 and they put the daughter of John J. McCloy as the editor. And just, you know, these are the things that could be, you know, toppling legacy media. And I think it's a question. It's a legitimate question of why the heck is legitimate is legacy media still even here?

1:39:40 And I think the problem the problem is that we can't develop a critical mass. And this is the direction that we need to move. And we need to say, hey, we can't. It's not enough to just know stuff. We have to be able to impose a political cost on the biggest media. We have the ammunition. Why? What is preventing us from spreading that and actually, you know, imposing a political cost for their mega lies? OK, so I think that's actually happening right now.

1:40:10 Trump suing these media companies, Trump defunding USAIDs whose money was going to legacy media. And as soon as he unfunds them, several of them collapse. In addition to that, I said this the other day, not on one of our four o'clock shows, but if you, one of the most fascinating things that I noticed.

1:40:39 As soon as any of the current administration officials. It's almost like they are the media now. They are on media so much. And I know people think that that's a bad thing. It is not a bad thing at all. Them appearing and communicating directly with the American citizens.

1:41:10 has completely destroyed legacy media. They cannot control it. You have Pete Hegseth on social media and talking directly to every American. You have the Secretary Noem on social media, on news, talking directly to American people.

1:41:36 I think we, over the next 12 months, you are going to see the implosion of much of what people think the legacy media is because they are running an in-run around all of them. You could not have picked a better PR.

1:41:59 press campaign, what the SECDEF did of outing every one of those people whose only agenda was go into the Pentagon and leak information from people in the Pentagon. I think we are literally watching what you just said. And I don't think most people understand that. Why are you? Go ahead. Yeah, I completely agree with what you said. We're going to have the most transparent,

1:42:37 administration to where they're not going to be able to lie anymore. I mean, with the amount of people in the administration that are on social media, I mean, when they say we are the news now, I mean, we're the news. I mean, it's a direct line of communication to the citizen. I wanted to point out that

1:43:02 My grandmother, she worked for the Orlando Sentinel and also the Herald. And she wound up getting gradually pushed out and her stuff not being printed as well to the point where she literally had to go to the star and write for the star, which wound up being where she could dump.

1:43:31 A lot of truth. Of course, that was the one thing that she told me. She was like, you will find more truth in these rags than you will in this. These so-called newspapers, because when she was working on the SunTrust Bank in Florida and that kind of thing, she got so much pushback and death threats that they pushed her out. So, yeah, I mean, so it's great to see that.

1:44:00 I want to just kind of reiterate this. You guys gave me a platform and I was just invited to an independent media event. That is so awesome. What world does that happen in? See, you are the news now. I mean, this is what I'm talking about. Decent people.

1:44:30 I think you should get paid, okay, for the amount of work and effort that you and Bridget have done in the research alone in the last three years. I mean, you absolutely should get paid. I mean, this should be like the beginning of a new career for you. I don't want a new career. I want to go back to my retirement and being a grandma. I get it. I get it. I am here as long as I needed to be here.

1:44:57 And then I'm not going to be here. I do not want this to be a career. I never pictured myself. Just the other day, I sent my daughter the copy of that redacted show. And I'm like, what is happening? Because again, this is just never a role that I felt like I would be in. It's very uncomfortable for me. But I love my country so much that I'm not going to not step up.

1:45:26 Also, I want to reiterate something. For those of you who subscribe to my Rumble channel, that subscribe to my X thing, thank you and God bless you. It allows me the ability to not take a step back from a retirement that I feel like I earned. And it does make a huge difference in what I'm able to do. And Bridget, I think, agrees with that part.

1:45:55 But I want to say, you guys are already paying me. You paid for every educational course that I ever took from 1979 until my last degree. That's six degrees. You guys all paid for that. You are paying for my retirement today. I am just simply returning your investment that you chose to sacrifice for and enabled me.

1:46:25 to have an education that I would have never been able to do on my own. It took me on my own going to school part-time with you guys paying for it, eight years to get my first bachelor's degree. But I was damn sure going to get it. And I owe a debt of gratitude to my country. And I feel like that that is why.

1:46:49 I experienced all of the things that I did while I was in the military. I was just on a long phone call with someone that I had never worked with today, which you're going to be seeing a lot more of in the future. And I tried explaining that to him. The assignments that I was able to have in the Air Force put me in the middle of missions that I would have never been exposed to.

1:47:19 being a support officer. And now looking back in hindsight, I know why I went all of the places I went and most of them were out of my control. I didn't get to, that's not true for SIGCOM. That was definitely a reward for having the job that I had, which was a thankless job in the Pentagon. And that was my request. But other than that, I had no control over any of the assignments.

1:47:46 But I look back on every one of them and I was put in them for a reason. And this is the reason. I didn't understand it at the time. I grumbled about it. But I am forever thankful that the bosses that I had put the faith in me, that I was able to take the opportunities that you guys provided with your tax dollars to be able to be in the place that I am. And I feel an obligation to do what I'm doing. And I will do it as long.

1:48:15 as necessary um but i will not be here forever um i want to go back um a lot i spent the entire afternoon we bought my grand um son one of those remote control big cars and seeing his face that's why i'm here this is why i'm doing it i don't want him to grow up in the america that they had planned for us and over my dead body will they so um no

1:48:43 That's awesome. And absolutely, that was money well spent. And maybe one day I'll get out of the whole bitterness I have wasting my time getting a political science degree, which just actually just made me angry instead of anything else. Who knows, right? I'm not angry about any of it. I want to use every bit of it against them.

1:49:09 Bridget, go ahead. Well, you know, maybe I will. Maybe I will. Because the one things that I'm learning is that, you know, the one thing that I did learn in my degree is that we have not followed the Constitution. Gosh. The one thing you better never do is piss me off. Because I won't stop. I won't stop. And they piss me off. Bridget. That's so awesome. Go ahead. You know, and.

1:49:40 The other night I posted for Alpha something that, you know, in just a brief way is God doesn't call the equipped. He equips the called. And looking back, even when you and I first met, I knew when we met virtually, so to speak. I'm like, this is what I was made for. This right here.

1:50:10 This is what comes naturally to me, research. I've done it as a hobby, as something that, it's something that I can do as easily as I can breathe. And it's amazing how God, all I'm doing is following his footsteps, telling me, you know, he's telling me where to go. And it's easy, it's easy. But, and also, why are you so angry? To your point, they never should have locked us down.

1:50:40 They never should have pissed us off. They never should have exposed their hand. Because now that they have, I'm going to use every ounce of every God-given gift that I've got, so long as I have energy and ability to put them under. Because that's what I was called to do. And your political science degree, that may be yours. That may be your way to expose, this is a lie, this is a lie, this is a lie. Look at this and expose it to the people around you.

1:51:10 Just like a ripple in a pond, boy, this has developed. We didn't set out to do this. Not at all. But this became this. And when you keep your eyes fixed on him and it's like you realize all of a sudden you turn around and look and it's like, oh, that's why I had to go through that. That's why I had to go through this. That's why I had to. They never should have locked us down. When they did it, they woke us up and they pissed us off.

1:51:39 And if you guys aren't, Shelly the Kiwi is just knocking it out of the park over there. Oh my God, she's making me crack up. Oh yes, you pissed me off. Expect a fistful of fucks coming your way. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's where we are. And I'm glad we're on this journey together, all of you.

1:52:09 that supports us and Maker Sarge, my PR man over there, telling me to remind everybody that we do have a merchandise if you guys do want to support. We have t-shirts that say it says Operation Gladio. We have Gladio coins and we do have coffee mugs. And I always forget to mention that, but the store is on Shopify. All you have to do is go search the Colonel's Corner and it will pop up.

1:52:37 Thank you, Major Sards, for being there. And it's also on your pin post. It's also on my pin post. Thanks to Bridget. Teamwork. All right, guys. Thanks for everybody being there or being here. I appreciate it. We will finish this book tomorrow. And next week, because of the trip to Washington, D.C., it's going to be a very weird week.

1:53:05 But I will try to do shows in the evening while I'm up there because I don't plan on doing anything else. Because even though Washington, D.C., I'm told, is completely safe or safer.

1:53:25 I'm not going to be roaming around the streets by myself. So we are starting the book on Venezuela next week that I think you guys are going to really find insightful. There's a lot of information in there that I did not know. And it's definitely pertinent to everything that we've been exposing. So anyway, take care. You guys have a nice evening. I will be back tomorrow.

1:53:51 And we will have a shortened program, like I said, because we have dinner plans with our friends. We're going down to Anna Maria Island to spend the weekend with them. And I'm really, really looking forward to that. So anyway, everybody take care. Thanks for being here.

Entities here

CIA42 Dark Alliance25 Gary Webb25 Contras25 San Jose Mercury News24 Jerry Ceppos22 The Washington Post18 Los Angeles17 Walter Pincus14 Don Yaeger13 Los Angeles Times13 Ray Blanton12 Norwin Menendez10 The New York Times9 Nicaragua9 United States8 Costa Rica8 Oliver North7 Washington, D.C.7 Jerry Seppes6 Crack Epidemic6 John Hall6 Doyle McManus6 U.S. Department of Justice6 Daniel Blanton6 Carlos Cabezas6 Washington Times5 Peter Carey5 Floyd "Freeway" Rick Ross5 Ron Lippert5 George Anderson5 Riverside County Sheriff's Department5 John Deutch4 Paul Van Slambrock4 Vaughn R. Bobby Ross4 Colombia4 Pamela Kramer4 San José3 Ron Lister3 Jesse Katz3

Claims made here

CIA funded Contras book_quoted ▶ 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 …”

Seymour Hersh exposed Operation Chaos book_quoted ▶ 16:47

“And I stressed it repeatedly to my editors. New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh's 1974 expose of Operation Chaos, a massive illegal CIA domestic spying operation, had brought on attacks from the Was…”

Daniel Schorr exposed CIA book_quoted ▶ 17:17

“CBS newsman Daniel Shnor, Shor, was demonized by the CIA and conservative commentators for leaking a copy of the secret congressional report of CIA abuses to the village voices in 1976 after CBS had d…”

Bob Perry exposed Oliver North book_quoted ▶ 17:47

“and Brian Barger of the Associated Press, which you guys have heard Illini talk about repeatedly, after they broke several stories on the Contra involvement in drug trafficking and Oliver North's secr…”

Brian Barger exposed Oliver North book_quoted ▶ 17:47

Gary Webb exposed Dark Alliance book_quoted ▶ 18:13

“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 superi…”

Judge Hoff ordered_assassination_of Daniel Blanton book_quoted ▶ 22:59

“and his connections to the CIA. O'Neill protested angrily, accusing Ross of dreaming up the whole CIA plot and feeding it to gullible journalists who were spreading ridiculous conspiracy theories. But…”

U.S. Congress targeted_for_regime_change CIA book_quoted ▶ 27:48

“In this case, the blend of the Internet and talk radio had made the traditional media irrelevant. The public was marching on without them, and the message got clear to California's top politicians. Th…”

L.A. City Council targeted_for_regime_change CIA book_quoted ▶ 27:48

Sun Myung Moon secretly_owned Washington Times host_asserted ▶ 28:14

“and Attorney General Janet Reno demanding an official inquiry. Deutch agreed to conduct one, which infuriated the right-wing Washington Times. Remember, the Washington Times is owned by Reverend Moon …”

Operation Gladio front_for CIA host_asserted ▶ 28:14

John Deutch covered_up CIA book_quoted ▶ 28:14

Arnold D. Bushgrave member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 28:46

“Unquote. And on the editorial page, the editor at large, Arnold D. Bushgrave, a quote unquote journalist with a long history of connections to the CIA and the Contras, fumed that the same old pro-Marx…”

Arnold D. Bushgrave member_of Contras book_quoted ▶ 28:46

Arnold D. Bushgrave member_of Washington Times book_quoted ▶ 28:46

Chris Matthews member_of CNBC book_quoted ▶ 29:39

“talk show with Chris Matthews live on CNBC that evening, Matthews eagerly sprung this crazy timeline on me, demanding to know how I could have written what I did, given the fact that the Contras had p…”

Jack White member_of Time-Life book_quoted ▶ 29:39

Gary Webb exposed Dark Alliance host_asserted ▶ 32:32

“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, a…”

Walter Pincus spied_on CIA book_quoted ▶ 43:51

“The author was none other than Walter Pincus in the Washington Post. After disclosure of CIA infiltration of American student associations had exploded that year, Pincus had written a long, smug confe…”

Walter Pincus covered_up Philip Agee host_asserted ▶ 45:41

“In 1975, he had been the person at the New York Times selected to review ex-CIA officer Philip Agee's best-selling expose called CIA Diary. In an unfavorable review, Pincus strongly suggested that Age…”

The Washington Post covered_up CIA host_asserted ▶ 46:37

“and its readers' eyes from such things, Pincus asserted frequently in consultation with the government. We've been dealing with it for a long time, and I think we have withheld a great deal of informa…”

Walter Pincus framed Lawrence Walsh book_quoted ▶ 47:07

“of what we're going to report. Pincus would later play an important role in helping to impede the Iran-Contra investigation, according to independent counsel Lawrence Walsh. In his memoirs, Firewall, …”

Walter Pincus covered_up Iran-Contra affair book_quoted ▶ 47:07

Boynton Gray supplied_arms_to Walter Pincus book_quoted ▶ 47:35

“and reduced Nancy Reagan to tears. Of all the sideswipes that we suffered during that period, the false report that we were considering indicting the nation's still-admired former president hurt us th…”

CIA funded Contras documented ▶ 52:18

“And the story conceded, quote, the allegations that some elements of CIA-sponsored Contra Army cooperated with drug traffickers has been well-documented for years. You know, old news. But the story di…”

Norwin Menendez trafficked Contras documented ▶ 52:46

“$60,000, he scoffed. You can raise that in an afternoon. According to another unnamed source, the Times quoted, Blanton and Menendez were making only $15,000 a kilo. Unmentioned was Blanton's testimon…”

Ray Blanton trafficked Contras documented ▶ 52:46

Doyle McManus covered_up Sandinistas host_asserted ▶ 54:43

“saw it in a box inside. Doyle McManus, the chief of the LA Times Washington Bureau, that explained it. In 1984, McManus had played a central role in spreading CIA's leaks about Barry Seale and the San…”

Jeremiah O'Leary member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 55:41

“On July 17, 1984, the CIA leak appeared in the Washington Times. Again, owned by Reverend Moon, Operation Gladio. It was written by Jeremiah O'Leary, a longtime Washington Press Corps reporter, descri…”

Oliver North supplied_arms_to Doyle McManus book_quoted ▶ 56:11

“meaning he's basically on their payroll. O'Leary's story in the Washington Times, which had supported the Contras both editorially and financially, gave McManus the excuse he needed to rush the CIA's …”

Doyle McManus member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 57:09

“and El Salvador. The following morning on the front page of the Times, McManus wrote that high-ranking members of the Nicaraguan government have been linked to the scheme involving Colombia's largest …”

Doyle McManus framed Thomas Borge host_asserted ▶ 57:09

Doyle McManus framed Umberto Ortega host_asserted ▶ 57:40

“Umberto Ortega of Nicaragua were among officials the source had implicated. All of that's a lie. A day later, McManus co-author Ronald Ostro reported that U.S. intelligence sources have obtained a pho…”

Los Angeles Times covered_up CIA host_asserted ▶ 58:38

“The Times never admitted that it had wrongly accused two Nicaraguan government officials of cocaine trafficking based solely on unnamed intelligence sources. McManus and Ostro later teamed up to revie…”

Carlos Cabezas trafficked Contras guest_asserted ▶ 1:00:06

“He banged out a letter to the reporter on February 27, 1987, stating, I am going to tell you that there was indeed supporting evidence hidden by the government. The receipt of drug money by the Contra…”

Carlos Cabezas paid Contras guest_asserted ▶ 1:00:06

Aristide Sanchez member_of Adolfo Calero guest_asserted ▶ 1:00:31

“and noted that the FBI made no attempt to stop him, even though he was traveling with an FBI informant. He also told McManus the FBI had tape-recorded conversations between the former ambassador of Ni…”

Gary Webb member_of San Jose Mercury News documented ▶ 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 n…”

Jerry Ceppos member_of San Jose Mercury News documented ▶ 1:01:30

Pamela Kramer member_of San Jose Mercury News documented ▶ 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.…”

Peter Carey member_of San Jose Mercury News documented ▶ 1:02:31

Jerry Ceppos covered_up Dark Alliance guest_asserted ▶ 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 wa…”

San Jose Mercury News covered_up Dark Alliance guest_asserted ▶ 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 distribu…”

Gary Webb spied_on Oliver North guest_asserted ▶ 1:03:52

“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 conne…”

George Anderson spied_on Oliver North guest_asserted ▶ 1:03:52

Orlando Morello laundered_money_for Blanton Raid guest_asserted ▶ 1:03:52

Carlos Cabezas paid Contras guest_asserted ▶ 1:04:22

“He called me in December of 1996, barely able to contain his excitement. He'd found Carlos Cabreza, who admitted that he had, in fact, delivered millions of dollars in drug money to the Contras. Cabre…”

Ivan Gomez spied_on Carlos Cabezas guest_asserted ▶ 1:04:22

Enrique Miranda Jamie spied_on CIA guest_asserted ▶ 1:04:52

“A week later, George called with more good news. Enrique Miranda, the former Menendez aide who had escaped a year earlier, had been found in Miami and tossed on a plane to Nicaragua. George had visite…”

Enrique Miranda Jamie member_of Ron Lister guest_asserted ▶ 1:04:52

CIA trafficked Contras guest_asserted ▶ 1:05:45

“Costa Rican shrimp company North and the Cuban CIA operatives were using to funnel aid to the Contras. The second part was a story about the parallel investigation of Contra drug trafficking done in t…”

Riverside County Sheriff's Department spied_on Contras guest_asserted ▶ 1:05:45

Ron Lister spied_on CIA guest_asserted ▶ 1:06:42

“We had DEA records saying Blanton had sent the money to the Contras far longer than we had previously reported. We had a top CIA official admitting that the agency had reports of drug trafficking at I…”

Ron Lippert member_of CIA guest_asserted ▶ 1:09:32

“My interview with Lippert, jailed for 10 years by Fidel Castro for flying explosives into Cuba for the agency, solved one of the final mysteries of the Southern Front. How CIA operative John Hall, tha…”

John Hall member_of CIA guest_asserted ▶ 1:09:32

Ron Lippert supplied_arms_to Cuba guest_asserted ▶ 1:09:32

John Hall trafficked Contras guest_asserted ▶ 1:09:53

“Bill Casey's friend and Oliver North's liaison for the Contras had escaped from Costa Rica after he was indicted there for drug trafficking in 1989. After being thrown in jail, Hall was let out on bai…”

Ron Lippert covered_up John Hall guest_asserted ▶ 1:09:53

John Hall member_of Oliver North guest_asserted ▶ 1:09:53

Dagoberto Nunez trafficked Oliver North guest_asserted ▶ 1:10:22

“and then shuttling Hall to Miami, where Hall hid in an apartment of a Cuban CIA operative and suspected drug dealer, Dagoberto Nunez, who had helped North in the CIA in Costa Rica, the DEA officer who…”

Dagoberto Nunez member_of CIA guest_asserted ▶ 1:10:22

J.J. Perez covered_up John Hall guest_asserted ▶ 1:10:50

“Hall confirmed Lippert's story, as did Anthony Rasbuto, a former DEA inspector who'd investigated Perez's role in Hall's escape. Rasbuto believed Perez set up Hall's escape on his own initiative witho…”

U.S. Department of Justice covered_up J.J. Perez guest_asserted ▶ 1:11:14

“You don't get a DEA pilot and a DEA airplane to fly you around without the DEA knowing about it. The DEA panel recommended Perez's dismissal. Rasputo said, but the Justice Department provided Perez wi…”

United States covered_up John Hall guest_asserted ▶ 1:11:46

“as a national security secret. The U.S. refused repeated Costa Rican requests to extradite Hall and the drug charges were eventually dropped. Murder charges that were filed against him shortly after h…”

Jerry Ceppos covered_up Dark Alliance guest_asserted ▶ 1:19:25

“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 …”

Anthony Salerno covered_up Jackie Presser documented ▶ 1:20:27

“Court records later revealed that the paper had been pressured into retracting the story by the New York mob boss, Anthony Salerno, who had asked his attorney, Roy Cohn, to intercede with the Newhouse…”

Roy Cohn covered_up Jackie Presser documented ▶ 1:20:27

Newhouse Family member_of The Plain Dealer documented ▶ 1:20:27

Jerry Ceppos removed_from_power Gary Webb guest_asserted ▶ 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.…”

Jerry Ceppos reassigned Gary Webb guest_asserted ▶ 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 …”

Peter Carey spied_on Ivan Gomez guest_asserted ▶ 1:27:13

“A one-page story with no one's name on it, which reportedly infuriated Cepos. Occasionally, Pete Carey would call with a question or two. He wasn't having much luck cooperating with Carlos Cabrese's s…”