jeff cohen
The Resurrection of Gary Webb: Will Hollywood Give Journalist Last Word Against CIA's Media Apologists?
It's been almost a decade since once-luminous investigative journalist Gary Webb extinguished his own life.
It's been almost a decade since once-luminous investigative journalist Gary Webb extinguished his own life.
It's been 18 years since Webb's "Dark Alliance" series in the San Jose Mercury News exploded across a new medium - the Internet - and definitively linked crack cocaine in Los Angeles and elsewhere to drug traffickers allied with the CIA's rightwing Contra army in Nicaragua. Webb's revelations sparked anger across the country, especially in black communities.
But the 1996 series (which was accompanied by unprecedented online documentation) also sparked one of the most ferocious media assaults ever on an individual reporter - a less-than-honest backlash against Webb by elite newspapers that had long ignored or suppressed evidence of CIA/Contra/cocaine connections.
The assault by the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times drove Webb out of the newspaper business, and ultimately to his death.
Beginning this Friday, the ghost of Gary Webb will haunt his tormenters from movie screens across the country, with the opening of the dramatic film "Kill the Messenger" - based partly on Webb's 1998 "Dark Alliance" book.
The movie dramatizes Webb's investigation of Contra-allied Nicaraguan cocaine traffickers Norwin Meneses and Danilo Blandon (whose drug activities were apparently protected for reasons of U.S. "national security") and their connection to L.A.'s biggest crack dealer, "Freeway" Ricky Ross.
The original "Dark Alliance" series was powerful in naming names, backed by court documents. Webb added specifics and personalities to the story of Contra drug trafficking first broken by Associated Press in 1985 (ignored by major newspapers) and then expanded in 1989 by John Kerry's Senate subcommittee report which found that Contra drug dealing was tolerated in the U.S. frenzy to overthrow Nicaragua's leftwing Sandinista government. Kerry's work was ignored or attacked in big media -- Newsweek labeled him a "randy conspiracy buff."
There were some flaws and overstatements in the Webb series, mostly in editing and presentation; a controversial graphic had a crack smoker embedded in the CIA seal. But in light of history - and much smoke has cleared since 1996 - Webb's series stands up far better as journalism than the hatchet jobs from the three establishment newspapers.
Don't take my word for it. A player in the backlash against Webb was Jesse Katz, one of 17 reporters assigned by L.A. Times editors to produce a three-day, 20,000 word takedown of "Dark Alliance." Last year, Katz referred to what his paper did as "kind of a tawdry exercise" which "ruined that reporter's career" - explaining during a radio interview: "Most of us who were involved in it, I think, would look back on that and say it was overkill. We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled onto one lone muckraker up in Northern California."
Katz deserves credit for expressing regrets about the "overkill."
His role in the backlash was to minimize the importance of Ricky Ross, who received large shipments of cocaine from Contra-funder Blandon. In the wake of Webb's series, Katz described Ross as just one of many "interchangeable characters" in the crack deluge, "dwarfed" by other dealers.
But 20 months before Webb's series - before the public knew of any Contra (or CIA) link to Ross' cocaine supply - Katz had written quite the opposite in an L.A. Times profile of Ross: "If there was a criminal mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles' streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick." Katz's piece referred to Ross as "South-Central's first millionaire crack lord" and was headlined: "Deposed King of Crack."
One of the more absurd aspects of the backlash against Webb - prominent in the Washington Post and elsewhere -- was criticism over his labeling of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), a Contra army supported by Blandon and Meneses, as "the CIA's army." As I wrote in an obituary when Webb died: "By all accounts, including those of Contra leaders, the CIA set up the group, selected its leaders and paid their salaries, and directed its day-to-day battlefield strategies." The CIA also supervised the FDN's day-to-day propaganda in U.S. media.
It was as much "the CIA's army" as the force that invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.
KILL THE MESSENGER - Official TrailerTwo-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner ("The Bourne Legacy") leads an all-star cast in a dramatic thriller based on ...
Just weeks ago, new light was shed on this old puzzle with the release of a remarkable CIA internal report - which shows that "the CIA's army" phrase was one of the Agency's main complaints about Webb's series. As silly as the CIA's complaint was, it received serious echo in friendly newspapers. In fact, the CIA author of the report seemed to marvel at how compliant major newspapers were in attacking the "Dark Alliance" series, which he attributed to "a ground base of already productive relations with journalists."
The CIA's internal report mentioned that soon after the "Dark Alliance" series was published, "one major news affiliate, after speaking with a CIA media spokesperson, decided not to run the story." When the Washington Post attack on Webb appeared, the CIA aggressively circulated it to other journalists and to "former Agency officials, who were themselves representing the Agency in interviews with the media."
A disturbing feature of the triple-barreled (Washington Post/NY Times/LA Times) backlash against Webb was how readily elite journalists accepted the denials from the CIA - and from unnamed "former senior CIA officials" - of any knowledge of Contra cocaine trafficking. Media critic Norman Solomon noted that the first New York Times piece on Webb's series lacked "any suggestion that the CIA might be a dubious touchstone for veracity."
It's worth remembering that the New York Times and Washington Post editorially endorsed military aid to the human rights-abusing Contras - a position almost as embarrassing now as their faulty coverage in the run-up to the Iraq invasion.
The unfolding of history can be helpful in settling disputes - and it has proved kinder to Webb than eagerly gullible establishment newspapers. "Dark Alliance" and the public uproar over the series in black communities and elsewhere pressured the CIA to order a review of Contra cocaine links by CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz. Although barely covered by the big three dailies, Hitz's final volume (published in October 1998) provided significant vindication of Webb.
Journalist Robert Parry, a Webb supporter who broke the Contra-cocaine story in 1985 while at A.P., concluded that Hitz "not only confirmed many of the longstanding allegations about Contra-cocaine trafficking but revealed that the CIA and the Reagan administration knew much more about the criminal activity." In the 1998 volume, "Hitz identified more than 50 Contras and Contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations throughout the 1980s."
Thanks to the magic of the silver screen, the specter of Gary Webb (brought to life by actor Jeremy Renner) will now be vexing the media heavyweights who savaged him. The script for "Kill the Messenger" - based on Webb's book and Nick Schou's "Kill the Messenger" - was written by Peter Landesman, a former investigative writer himself.
In comments last week to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Landesman offered explanations of the triple attack on Webb's series: "Each one of the papers did it for a different reason. The L.A. Times had an envious, jealous reaction of being scooped in their own territory . . . The Washington Post had a very strong quid pro quo relationship with the CIA . . . The New York Times approach was more professional arrogance."
And there's a unifying factor: All three newspapers had avoided the CIA/Contra/cocaine story in the 1980s - they seemed to be punishing Webb for reviving it in 1996.
With "Kill the Messenger" opening in hundreds of theaters, is it possible Gary Webb will get the last word after all?
Noam Chomsky Continues to Inspire
Happy birthday, Noam!
This month, Noam Chomsky turned 85 - and he's the subject of a new animated movie focused on his scientific and social philosophies. He has actually seen this movie, unlike other works about him: "I can't stand watching myself."
He's one of the world's best-known intellectuals and one of the least vain. Or elitist. Put him in a roomful of a thousand social activists (not uncommon surroundings for him) and you'll see him attempt to meet each of them, one-by-one, until he's physically removed to rush to the airport or next appointment.
Standing at a podium in his usual brown corduroy sport jacket, he laces his lectures with biting sarcasm toward corporate malefactors, warmongers and their sycophants among intellectual and media elites. But with regular folks, he's a model of gentleness and compassion that would make Eugene Debs blush with envy.
I saw Noam Chomsky as my mentor - way before we ever met. When I was in college in the late 1960s/early'70s, he was already a guiding light for me, an exemplar of how those with privilege and principles should live our lives.
I started reading Chomsky's criticism of the Vietnam War when I was 17, and that's when I first heard him speak. It was November 1969. Visiting a friend in Boston, I joined militant demonstrations aimed at shutting down the war research labs at MIT. Chomsky spoke to the activists assembled from across the Northeast; he was one of only a couple MIT professors willing to support the confrontational protests. (A large majority of MIT profs had voted to support an injunction against the protests.)
In Chomsky's political writings of that period, I remember a focus on the sanitized language that accompanied U.S. war crimes in the Vietnam conflict ("a euphemism for U.S. aggression") -- such as strategic hamlets ("concentration camps") to protect the Vietnamese from guerrillas ("whom they were largely supporting").
His press critiques helped turn me into a media critic, and in 1986 I founded the media watch group FAIR. Chomsky was so influential that I sometimes wonder if FAIR would exist if not for him. He was one of the first people I asked to join our advisory board -- he readily said yes, and has supported FAIR ever since. He spoke at the organization's 25th birthday party in 2011.
At FAIR, we continually pointed out that - while mainstream media in Europe and across the globe regularly featured Chomsky as an expert on U.S. and Western foreign policy - he was virtually blacklisted by the mainstream media in his own country.
Today he's still largely blacklisted, but the embargo matters less in the new media environment of Internet and nonprofit publishers able to create bestsellers. His books and speeches are now much more accessible in the U.S. . . . though nowhere close to the intellectual offerings of the Coulters and O'Reillys
In the years that we challenged media decision-makers over the Chomsky blacklist, it was clear they were even less informed about Chomsky than on other issues. A few thought he was some kind of Holocaust denier. Or "Stalinist defender." As any googler can quickly learn, Chomsky is not a Stalinist, but a proud anarchist -- a skeptic of both state and private authority, and of hierarchy. It's another reason he's so supportive of FAIR; he likes that it grew into a collective, with most decisions made by the staff as a whole.
In the late 1980s, I sat with Chomsky before a FAIR fundraiser in Los Angeles and asked him if he was aware that a number of celebrities in movies and music were big fans of his. He was unaware and couldn't have cared less. I ran a few well-known names by him - he'd heard of none of them, and had no interest in meeting them . . . unless it would help FAIR. He had far more interest in mingling with peace and justice organizers.
One of the highpoints for me in all the years at FAIR was watching Noam Chomsky appear as a guest on PBS's MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour in 1990. He was invited after FAIR published our first study of the NewsHour, which revealed that its guest list was even narrower and more conservative than that of commercial news programs. The widely-discussed study proved embarrassing to the NewsHour - and had some impact. A major foundation soon quit funding the show. And, for a while, the program slightly broadened its guest list by making The Progressive magazine's editor a regular pundit.
In another gesture at broadening, Chomsky was asked to make his first (and it turned out, last) appearance on public TV's NewsHour. The date was September 11, 1990. What Chomsky said on the show was totally clear and would not have surprised anyone even slightly familiar with his work. But it seemed to confuse interviewer Robert MacNeil:
CHOMSKY: It's been a leading, driving doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent, indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price. That's been a leading principle of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s, and, I think, it remains so, as we see.
MacNEIL: And a valid principle, in your view?
At hearing MacNeil's question, Chomsky paused, apparently wondering if it was a joke or trick question of some kind. Chomsky then replied: "That principle is not a valid principle in my view."
In fairness to MacNeil, his confusion seemed to stem from never having interviewed a U.S. citizen before on the NewsHour who believed that imperialism and the taking of other people's resources were bad things.
We wrote up Chomsky's appearance (with a chunk of transcript) in FAIR's magazine, beneath the headline:
Chomsky Appears on MacNeil/Lehrer; Western Civilization Survives
Weeks later, I introduced Chomsky at a large FAIR conference in Los Angeles; I mentioned his recent PBS guest spot and got a big laugh by referring to our jokey headline "Western Civilization Survives." Amid the laughter, I could hear Chomsky off-stage behind me, saying, "Oh, heck!" - disappointed by his ineffectiveness.
While he didn't succeed through that one TV appearance in bringing an end to Western imperialism, or what passes for Western Civilization, he goes on trying at age 85.
Happy birthday, Noam!