gary webb wife

His career ended, his livelihood was destroyed and certain games were started to be . But the tragedy had a deeper meaning. It reads: "There should be no fetters on reporters, nor must they tamper with the truth, but give light so the people will find their own way." Ross, currently serving life, was already infamous; he had been profiled in the LA Times in December 1994, by writer Jesse Katz, at a time when Ross was at liberty and in penitent mood. [57], The report covered actions by Department of Justice employees in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the DEA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and U.S. Webb's condition exacerbated his natural recklessness. It was an amazing scoop - but one that would ruin his career and drive him to suicide. "[2], Ceppos noted that Webb did not agree with these conclusions. "They use the giant corporate press rather than saying anything directly. Call 911 for assistance. Webb - whose article had never alleged that the CIA deliberately targeted any ethnic group - became a national celebrity. Newsweek called Kerry a "randy conspiracy buff". "He thought I was being cowardly. He is survived by his loving wife, Wendie, of Elgin; grandmother, Eileen Carrier of Elgin;. "[80], Not all writers agree that the Inspector-General's report supported the series's claims. Gary Webb on the CIA's Role in the 1980s LA Crack Epidemic - Citizen Truth It also examined "how CIA handled and responded to information regarding allegations of drug trafficking" by people involved in Contra activities or support. color: #ddd; padding-left: 10px!important; His erstwhile editors on the Mercury News, meanwhile, saw their careers thrive. Actor Jeremy Renner portrays Webb.[83]. Gary Webb - Biography - IMDb [46] Overholser was harshly critical of the series, "reported by a seemingly hotheaded fellow willing to have people leap to conclusions his reporting couldn't back up." Ceppos initially defended Webb, and reportedly showed up at an in-house party wearing a military helmet. Webb had become, as somebody put it, "radioactive". One of his last articles examined America's Army, a video game designed by the U.S. The third article, by Mitchell and Fulwood, covered the effects of crack on African-Americans and how it affected their reaction to some of the rumors that arose after the "Dark Alliance" series. [5], After high school, Webb attended an Indianapolis community college on a scholarship until his family moved to Cincinnati. Who Is Gary Webb's Wife? "I am scared," the voice replies. It also stated that the Contras may have acted with the knowledge and protection of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. It noted that Blandn and Meneses claimed to have donated money to Contra sympathizers in Los Angeles, but found no information to confirm that it was true or that the agency had heard of it. Ricky Ross (drug trafficker) - Wikipedia I mean - please.". "Which was that, if he wanted a future within the political establishment of the United States, then he should concentrate on other aspects of life.". Eli Tomac on track during Media Day at Daytona International Speedway, Friday, March 3, 2023. Webb took a modestly paid, low-profile job as an investigator with the California State Legislature. Webb's experience came as no surprise to Jack Blum, senior prosecutor for the Kerry Committee. There were no offers. Should these editors subsequently deem the story to have been fatally flawed, they take the consequences. Gary Webb was born in Corona, California, in 1955. He was born June 18, 1943, in Appleton, son of the late Wilford and Helen (Hauskey) Webb. By this stage, he was prepared to work as a jobbing reporter. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. LOS ANGELES, Dec. 12 - Gary Webb, a reporter who won national attention with a series of articles, later discredited, linking the Central Intelligence Agency to the spread of crack . Shortly before his death, his motorcycle had been stolen (it was recovered by his family after his death). Gary was born May 5, 1954, to his parents Worley and Margaret Webb, who preceded him in death as well as his brother, David Webb. After introducing the three, the first article discussed primarily Blandn and Meneses, and their relationship with the Contras and the CIA. He told me: 'If I can't do what I want to do, what's the point?' The attack on Gary Webb and his series in the San Jose Mercury News remains one of the most venomous and factually inane assaults on a professional journalist's competence in living memory . [51], The editors met with Webb several times in February to discuss the results of the paper's internal review and eventually decided to print neither Carey's draft article nor the articles Webb had filed. On one road trip, in 2001, he came off the motorcycle and split his helmet open. An editorial in the Times, while criticizing the series for making "unsubstantiated charges", conceded that it did find "drug-smuggling and dealing by Nicaraguans with at least tentative connections to the Contras" and called for further investigation. .article-native-ad svg { Because Blandn cooperated with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), he spent only 28 months in prison, became a paid government informant, and received permanent resident status. Why bring up old white people atrocities against black people now? [65], After leaving The Mercury News, Webb worked as an investigator for the California State Legislature. In February last year he was laid off by the State Legislature. Gary Webb's Death Confirmed as Suicide | Editor and Publisher Dr. Gary A. Webb is a geriatrician in Marco Island, Florida. California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein also took note and wrote to CIA director John Deutch and Attorney General Janet Reno, asking for investigations into the articles' allegations. "[76] Scott Herhold, Webb's first editor at The Mercury-News, wrote in a 2013 column that "Gary Webb was a journalist of outsized talent. We are in the living room of Bell's house just outside Sacramento, California. After the announcement of federal investigations into the claims made in the series, other newspapers began investigating, and several papers published articles suggesting the series' claims were overstated. [4] When Webb's father retired from the Marines, the family settled in a suburb of Indianapolis, where Webb and his brother attended high school. [39] The Post refused to print his letter. Steven Webb . The legendary civil-rights activist Dick Gregory was arrested while he protested outside the CIA's headquarters; Gregory began referring to the organisation as "Crack in America". He was born August 27, 1968 in Saginaw, Michigan to Taylor Jr. and Loretta Webb. "Do you think that a part of him did this out of revenge?" Jimmy Webb's battle with ex-wife Patsy Sullivan continues - New York Post [63]Dark Alliance was a 1998 Pen/Newman's Own First Amendment Award Finalist, 1998 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, 1999 Bay Area Book Reviewers Award Finalist, and 1999 Firecracker Alternative Booksellers Award Winner in the Politics category. Family (1) A Celebration of Life will be . In 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of stories exposing the connection between the CIA and the crack cocaine that was being sold in So. How Gary Webb Linked The CIA To The Crack Epidemic - All That's Interesting [62], Examining the support that Meneses and Blandn gave to the local Contra organization in San Francisco, the report concluded that it was "not sufficient to finance the organization" and did not consist of "millions," contrary to the claims of the "Dark Alliance" series. We had this huge team of people at the L.A. Times and kind of piled on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California." But as Krim told Webb's biographer Nick Schou, "The zeal that helped make Gary a relentless reporter was coupled with an inability to question himself, to entertain the notion that he might have erred. By the time Webb began researching Dark Alliance, Bell was 38 and they had three children. Do something else with your life," the voice urges. He was a writer, known for Kill the Messenger (2014), Filming in Georgia (2015) and Crack in America (2015). GARY WEBB OBITUARY Gary Frank Webb Sept. 27, 1944 - Oct. 23, 2022 Gary passed away peacefully of complications following cardiovascular surgery. [18], Webb began researching "Dark Alliance" in July 1995. Investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of stories in 1996 for the San Jose Mercury News that documented the US-government-backed Contra insurgents' drug pipeline into Los Angeles. According to Corn, Webb "was wrong on some important details, but he was, in a way, closer to the truth than many of his establishment media critics who neglected the story of the real CIA-contra-cocaine connection." Watkins and Debbie (John) Foutch; grandchildren, Makenzie and Ashlynn Fogg. He died by suicide on December 10, 2004. When Attorney General Janet Reno determined that a delay was no longer necessary, the report was released unaltered. It found that "the allegations contained in the original Mercury News articles were exaggerations of the actual facts." When it did, beginning with The Washington Post, it shocked Webb's critics as much as his many admirers. "[55] In June 1997, The Mercury News told Webb it was transferring him from the paper's Sacramento bureau and offered him a choice between working at the main offices in San Jose under closer editorial supervision, or spot reporting in Cupertino; both locations were long commutes from his home in Sacramento. The coroner's staff concluded that the second shot hit an artery.[70]. "But that," pointed out Blum, who is now a Washington attorney, "in no way - in no way - diminishes the wrongness of what these bastards did. margin: 0 45px; "If there was an eye to the storm," Katz wrote, "if there was a mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw most responsible for flooding LA's streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick. It sounds like a Tom Clancy novel, right? The reports rejected the series's main claims but were critical of some CIA and law enforcement actions. Today, Narco News, with support from The Fund for Authentic Journalism, is pleased to announce that the Dark Alliance website has a new, and this time permanent, home at Narco News. He wrote that the series likely "oversimplified" the crack epidemic in America and the supposed "critical role" the dealers written about in the series played in it. Leen, who covered the cocaine trade for the Miami Herald in the 1980s, rejects the claim that "because the report uncovered an agency mindset of indifference to drug-smuggling allegations", it vindicated Webb's reporting. Man Donates Liver To Ex-Wife - CBS News Gary Webb - Spartacus Educational Army. Ross was a major drug dealer in Los Angeles. [19] The series was published in The Mercury News in three parts, from Sunday, 18 August 1996 to 20 August 1996, with a first long article and one or two shorter articles appearing each day. Gary Webb: Vindicated - Narco News Five years ago, a tragedy occurred in American journalism: Investigative reporter Gary Webb - who had been ostracized by his own colleagues for forcing a spotlight back onto an ugly government scandal they wanted to ignore - was driven to commit suicide. [36] McManus wrote that Blandn's and Meneses's contributions to Contra organizations were significantly less than the "millions" claimed in the series, and stated there was no evidence that the CIA had tried to protect them. I first heard about Webb eight years ago, I tell Bell, from the Paris-based journalist Paul Moreira. Webb, one of the boldest and most outstanding reporters of his generation, was the journalist who, in 1996, established the connection between the CIA and major drug dealers in Los Angeles, some of whose profits had been channelled to fund the Contra guerrilla movement in Nicaragua. He concluded, "How did these shortcomings occur? The second article described Blandn's background and how he began smuggling cocaine to support the Contras. GARY WEBB: His wife's office was burglarized. The first article, by Katz, developed a different picture of the origins of the crack trade than "Dark Alliance" had described, with more gangs and smugglers participating. Webb chose the second option. "[72] California Representative Maxine Waters, who was Webb's strongest supporter in Congress after the "Dark Alliance" controversy broke, issued a statement after Webb's death calling him "one of the finest investigative journalists that our country has ever seen. He was sentenced to life in prison, though the sentence was shortened on appeal and Ross was released in 2009. What was new about Webb's reports, published under the title "Dark Alliance" in the Californian paper the San Jose Mercury News, was that for the first time it brought the story back home. American racer Cooper Webb is married to his wife named Mariah Williams Webb. The series ran from October 2022, 1996, and was researched by a team of 17 reporters. [48] Despite the controversy that soon overtook the series, and the request of one board member to reconsider, the branch's board went ahead with the award in November. [81], Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at George Washington University's National Security Archives, also does not agree that the report vindicated the series. Webb's ex-wife, Stokes, now remarried and still living in Sacramento, had heard it all before, too. ", As Webb would tell a friend, after he had been ostracised: "You have to look out, when the big dog gets off the porch.". Gary Webb Obituary (2009) - Elgin, IL - Elgin Courier News - Legacy.com He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California, USA. "That's right," says Blum. In May 1997, after an internal review, Ceppos stated that, although the story was right on many important points, there were shortcomings in the writing, editing and production of the series. [66] ", The significant legacy of the Webb case, "the reason this whole affair remains so significant today," Blum says, "is this: the knowledge that, if one individual dares raise such serious issues, they risk confronting a tremendous apparatus that is prepared to whack them hard, and there is very little they can expect by way of support. The CIA, the drug dealers, and the tragedy of Gary Webb - The Telegraph But while calling the flaws in the series "unforgivably careless journalism," Overholser also criticized the Post's refusal to print Ceppos' letter defending the series and sharply criticized the Post's coverage of the story. For two years, Blum and Kerry supervised the interrogation of dozens of witnesses who described CIA-related drug deals in central America. [41], When the Los Angeles Times series appeared, Ceppos again wrote to defend the original series. When his body was found, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was on the DVD machine, and his favourite CD, Ian Hunter's live album Welcome to the Club, was in the CD player. The story they printed was just awful. If you work through friendly reporters on major newspapers, it comes off as The New York Times saying it and not a mouthpiece of the CIA. Gary Webb's painstaking investigation and the incindiary conclusions he drew from it were based mostly on public records, as detailed in the "notes on sources" section in "Dark Alliance", including: undercover audio tapes, declassified government documents from the CIA, DEA, FBI, L.A. Sheriff's Department, files from the Iran-Contra . And he finallyyou know, they finally left the country. The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua. ". When he was engaged, he worked hard. Webb followed up Baca's leads at the California State Library, examining Congressional records and FBI reports. The Department of Justice Inspector-General's report was released on July 23, 1998. She kept crying about how terrible it all was - by which I mean that she was, physically, crying. My wife has kept me grounded for . Join iconic brands and world-class marketing leaders at Brandweek to unlock powerful insights and impact-driven strategies. [65], Within "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On" essay Webb stated he believed there was an active "collusion between the press and the powerful" to report freely on inconsequential matters, "but when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff We begin to see the limits of our freedoms". Film of this encounter survives. 4) The series "created impressions that were open to misinterpretation" through "imprecise language and graphics. Sue remarried two years ago. Am J Mens Health, 2018 Mar 1:1557988318758788. doi: 10.1177/1557988318758788. The article resulted in a lawsuit against Webb's paper which the plaintiffs won. In an unprecedented move, the then CIA director John Deutch was dispatched to address community leaders in the Watts district of LA. He wrote well. This did not happen in Webb's case. News coverage noted that there were widespread rumors on the Internet at the time that Webb had been killed as retribution for his "Dark Alliance" series, published eight years before. Within weeks, the site was attracting up to 1.3m hits per day. He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a strong reputation for investigative writing. "[64] Webb's longest response to the controversy was in "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On," a chapter he contributed to an anthology of press criticism: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been.

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