Remember Gary Webb?

[Octafish]

The Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist documented how CIA-connected drug runners helped usher in the crack cocaine epidemic in The San Jose Mercury News.
Read the series here. Webb discusses his work in this video.

For his trouble, meaning good reporting, Corporate McPravda , led by the L.A. Times and New York Times, raked him over the coals.

Telling the truth cost Webb dearly. He lost his career, family and life.

[Taverner]

1. He got Suicided if I remember

You know, I was in grad school for Journalism at that time. When Dark Alliance came out, and Webb was subsequently destroyed, it made me decide then and there that Journalism was not the career for me.

[Octafish]

7. R.I.P. Gary Webb -- Unembedded Reporter

Being a truthteller is in one's genes and a function of one's upbringing.
Is it any wonder our democracy is threatened by, eh, filtered reporting?

R.I.P. Gary Webb -- Unembedded Reporter

by Jeff Cohen
Published on Monday, December 13, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

EXCERPT...

The Post and others criticized Webb for referring to the Contras of the so-called Nicaraguan Democratic Force as "the CIA's army" -- an absurd objection since 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 Post devoted much ink to exposing what Webb readily acknowledged -- that while he could document Contra links to cocaine importing, he was not able to identify specific CIA officials who knew of the drug flow. The ferocity of the attack on Webb led the Post's ombudsman to note that the three national newspapers "showed more passion for sniffing out the flaws" in the Webb series than for probing the important issue Webb had raised: U.S. government relations with drug smuggling.

The L.A. Times' anti-Webb package was curious for its handling of Freeway Ricky Ross, the dealer Webb had authoritatively linked to Contra-funder Blandon. Two years before Webb's revelations, the Times had reported: "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." In a profile of Ross headlined "Deposed King of Crack," the Times went on and on about "South-Central's first millionaire crack lord" and how Ross' "coast to coast conglomerate was selling more than $550,000 rocks a day, a staggering turnover that put the drug within reach of anyone with a few dollars."

But two months after Webb's series linked Ricky Ross to Contra cocaine, the L.A. Times told a totally different story, now seeking to minimize Ross's role in the crack epidemic: Ross was just one of many "interchangeable characters" -- "dwarfed" by other dealers.

The reporter who'd written the 1994 Ross profile was the one called on to write the front-page 1996 critique of Webb; media critic Norman Solomon noted that it "reads like a show-trial recantation."

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/vie...

I completely understand why you wouldn't want to be part of an industry that puts profits before truth, Taverner.
Thanks for giving a damn. Thank you for remembering.

[Taverner]

8. Definitely - if the paper isn't willing to go to bat for their reporters, what's the point?

Why not just blog?

Besides, although many reporters are Dems, only the Repubs get promoted to Editors.

[madokie]

28. All I know for a fact is

shortly after the Reagan administration took the reigns cocaine and pot was easy to find. Don't know about the other drugs but I do know about these two as I later lost several friends due to heart attacks due to enlarged hearts due to their liking and doing of cocaine, that they became addicted due to its readily availability and their weakness for it. During the Carter years pot or coke were not very easy to come by around here but that changed with the Raygun goons.

[nostalgicaboutmyfutr]

73. Then they were totally successful. EOM

[Taverner]

77. Yes they were EOM

[leveymg]

2. "Only the good die young." eom

[Octafish]

12. Remember Celerino Castillo?

The DEA official brought up CIA drug running with Poppy. Big mistake.



Seems a friend of Junior's has railroaded him.

[leveymg]

31. That was like telling Lucifer there's sin and suffering in Hell.

I hate to say it, but what did Cele expect that Poppy was going to do with that information about Oliver North and the contras?

[formercia]

91. He's now in Federal Prison

They set him up on gun violations.

http://www.powderburns.org/revenge.html

[pleah]

3. K&R

[Octafish]

17. Remember Michael Levine?

Like Celerino Castillo III, Levine's another star DEA officer who reported evidence of CIA-drug connections.

"For decades, the CIA, the Pentagon, and secret organizations like Oliver North's Enterprise have been supporting and protecting the world's biggest drug dealers.... The Contras and some of their Central American allies ... have been documented by DEA as supplying ... at least 50 percent of our national cocaine consumption. They were the main conduit to the United States for Colombian cocaine during the 1980's. The rest of the drug supply ... came from other CIA-supported groups, such as DFS (the Mexican CIA) ... other groups and/or individuals like Manual Noriega."

-- Ex-DEA agent Michael Levine, author, "The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic"

http://ciadrugs.homestead.com/files/outline.html#Michea... Levine

Thank you for remembering, pleah.

[pleah]

24. I posted them on my facebook page, too.

There are people there that remember. Thanks for both.

[dotymed]

106. OUR COUNTRY IS RUN BY GANGSTERS

It has become a corporate/police state. Unless we REVOLT SOON
it will be too late. It is only too late if PATRIOTS refuse
to battle against these injustices.

[JHB]

80. Levine's radio show...

http://www.expertwitnessradio.org /

In the archives the last show is from July 2008, so I don't know what's happening with him now, but it's worth checking the site.

[formercia]

92. I have corresponded at length with Mr. Levine.

I have serious questions about his true affiliations. To be quite honest, he's a royal assh0le.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. kick. I remember this story

[Octafish]

21. Remember Hector Berrellez?

Like Castillo and Levine, he’s another good DEA officer who reported CIA drug connections.

Gary Webb

(1955-2005)

Esquire Magazine

EXCERPT…

I had been thinking about looking into the claim that during the civil war in Nicaragua in the eighties, the CIA helped move dope to the United States to buy guns for the contras, who were mounting an insurrection against the leftist Sandinistas. So I called up Hector Berrellez, a guy who worked under Mike Holm in Los Angeles, a guy known within the DEA as its Eliot Ness, and he said, "Look, the CIA is the best in the world. You're not going to beat them; you're never going to get a smoking gun. The best you're going to get is a little story from me."

SNIP…

After a while, the San Jose Mercury News series disappeared except on a few byways of the Internet, Gary Webb was ruined, and things went back to normal. Things like Oliver North's diary entry linking dope and guns for the contras, like Carlos Lehder, a big Colombian drug dealer, testifying as a prosecution witness in federal court during the Noriega trial about the Medellín cartel's $10 million donation to the contras, like the entire history of unseemly connections between the international drug world and the CIA--all this went away, as it has time and time again in the past. A kind of orthodoxy settled over the American press that assumed Webb's work had been thoroughly refuted. He became the Discredited Gary Webb.

SNIP…

HECTOR BERRELLEZ STUMBLED ONTO GARY WEBB'S STORY YEARS before Gary Webb knew a thing about it. ….

In September 1986, Sergeant Tom Gordon of the Los Angeles sheriff's narcotics strike force pieced together intelligence about a big-time drug ring in town run by Danilo Blandón. A month later, on October 23, Gordon went before a judge with a twenty-page detailed statement documenting that "monies gained from the sales of cocaine are transported m Florida and laundered.,.. The monies are filtered to the contra rebels to buy arms in the war in Nicaragua." He got a search warrant for the organization's stash houses. On Friday, October 24, there was a briefing of more than a hundred law-enforcement guys from the sheriff's office, the DEA, the FBI. That was the same day that President Ronald Reagan, after months of hassle, signed a $100 million aid bill that reactivated a licit cash flow to the beleaguered contras. And on Monday, October 27, at daybreak, the strike force simultaneously hit fourteen L. A. area stash houses connected with Blandón.

That's where just another day in the life of Hector Berrellez got weird. Generally, at that early hour, good dopers are out cold; the work tends toward long nights and sleeping in. As Berrellez remembers, "We were expecting to end up with a lot of coke." Instead, they got coffee and sometimes doughnuts. The house he hit had the lights on, and everyone, two men and a woman, was up. The guy who answered the door said, "Good morning; we've been expecting you. Come on in." The house was tidy, the beds were already made, and the damn coffee was on. The three residents were polite, even congenial. "It was obvious," says Berrellez, "that they were told." The place was clean; all fourteen houses were clean. The only thing Berrellez and the other guys found in the house was a professional scale.

But there was a safe, and Berrellez got one of the residents to open it reluctantly. Inside, he found records of kilos matched with amounts of money, an obvious dope ledger, a photograph of a guy in flight dress in front of what looked to be a military jet, and photographs of some guys in combat. Hector asked the guy who the hell the people in the photographs were, and the guy said, "Oh, they are freedom fighters."

CONTINUED…

ORIGINAL LINK DEAD: www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/041217_mfe_webb_...

ARCHIVED:

http://community.allhiphop.com/go/thread/view/12501/555...

Thank you for remembering, Liberal_in_LA.

[laststeamtrain]

5. K & R. I do. n/t.

[Octafish]

25. Remember Catherine Austin Fitts?

She's a former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner in Poppy Bush's administration who reported evidence of Wall Street-Big Drug connections.

Narco-Dollars For Beginners: How The Money Works In The Illicit Drug Trade

a 13 Part Series
By Catherine Austin Fitts
First published by Narco News

Part 1 Narco Dollars For Dummies
Part 2 Sam & Dave Do White Substances
Part 3 The Ultimate New Business Cold Call
Part 4 On Your Map
Part 5 Getting Out of Narco Dollars HQ
Part 6 Georgie And West Philadelphia
Part 7 Dow Jones Up, Solari Index Down
Part 8 Fast Food Franchise Pop
Part 9 At the Heart of the Double Bind
Part 10 Drugs as Currency
Part 11 In Defense of American Drug Lords
Part 12 We Have Met the Enemy and It is Us
Part 13 Americans Love A Winner



Richard Grasso, former Chairman of the NY Stock Exchange,
greeting a Colombian FARC commander

The FARC rebels provide security for some, if not most, Columbian cartels.
Mr. Uri D. says that deal in the hug above might be worth the guy's $140 million compensation.

[laststeamtrain]

27. Oil & Dope / Bush Family / No false notes in that song. / True haiku. n/t.

[truth2power]

46. Seems like Hopsicker's book (pub. 2001) is corroboration of Webb's

findings. One of Hopsicker's sources alleges that "We found a drilling rig moored in Mexican waters that served as a safe harbor for drug smuggling,..." "When we set up a sting out at Tammiani Airport in South Florida, it was aborted--way higher up and at the last possible minute--upon discovery that the Bush brothers were flying in on the King Air we were tracking." (p. 7)

[Judi Lynn]

82. Wow. Had no idea.This thread is going to be bookmarked by many, no doubt about it. Thanks. n/t

[ljm2002]

6. I do remember him...

...this was one of the stories that brought home to me how far we had come as a country into a place where truth was actively fought at every turn, and the truth tellers were always in danger.

Not that I didn't already know that governments lie, etc. etc. But this was a new thing. Back in the day, a hard hitting reporter would make the report and it would stand or fall on its own merits. This time, the man lost his job almost immediately. That was the first thing. Then it just went from bad to worse for him, poor thing -- yet over the years, we have found that his report was accurate and on the money. Of course, it's that "on the money" part that spelled doom for Mr. Webb. Truthfulness and exposing the rich and powerful, especially taking on the CIA -- risky business indeed.

And it all serves to illustrate what a scary society we have become, where truth is actively fought at every turn by an unholy alliance of government / corporations / military / secret services.

[Octafish]

58. America's Debt to Gary Webb

The individuals who have the most to fear from the people of the United States learning the truth about the CIA drug connections are members of the same class who can order the media to play the tune they desire. What makes it so infuriating is that some of the very people entrusted and charged with enforcing the law are the ones breaking it. They are traitors. And they should be scared.

America's Debt to Gary Webb

Punished for reporting the truth while those who covered it up thrived

By Robert Parry
FAIR.org
Extra! March/April 2005

EXCERPT...

CIA’s Volume Two

Despite the remarkable admissions in the body of these reports, the big newspapers showed no inclination to read beyond the press releases and executive summaries. By fall 1998, official Washington was obsessed with the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, which made it easier to ignore even more stunning Contra/cocaine disclosures in the CIA’s Volume Two.

In Volume Two, published Oct. 8, 1998, CIA Inspector General Hitz identified more than 50 Contras and Contra-related entities implicated in the drug trade. He also detailed how the Reagan/Bush administration had protected these drug operations and frustrated federal investigations, which had threatened to expose the crimes in the mid-1980s. Hitz even published evidence that drug trafficking and money laundering tracked into Reagan’s National Security Council, where Oliver North oversaw the Contra operations.

Hitz revealed, too, that the CIA placed an admitted drug money launderer in charge of the Southern Front Contras in Costa Rica. Also, according to Hitz’s evidence, the second-in-command of Contra forces on the Northern Front in Honduras had escaped from a Colombian prison where he was serving time for drug trafficking.

In Volume Two, the CIA’s defense against Webb’s series had shrunk to a tiny fig leaf: that the CIA did not conspire with the Contras to raise money through cocaine trafficking. But Hitz made clear that the Contra war took precedence over law enforcement and that the CIA withheld evidence of Contra crimes from the Justice Department, the Congress and even the CIA’s own analytical division.

Hitz found in CIA files evidence that the spy agency knew from the first days of the Contra war that its new clients were involved in the cocaine trade. According to a September 1981 cable to CIA headquarters, one of the early Contra groups, known as ADREN, had decided to use drug trafficking as a financing mechanism. Two ADREN members made the first delivery of drugs to Miami in July 1981, the CIA cable reported.

ADREN’s leaders included Enrique Bermudez, who emerged as the top Contra military commander in the 1980s. Webb’s series had identified Bermudez as giving the green light to Contra fundraising by drug trafficker Meneses. Hitz’s report added that the CIA had another Nicaraguan witness who implicated Bermudez in the drug trade in 1988.

CONTINUED...

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2818

This is old news to you, my Friend. Thank you for remembering, ljm2002. Thanks also for putting it into words so eloquently. I wish I could Kick & Rec your post.

[Rex]

9. It makes one wish Kennedy would have successfully shutdown

the CIA and made the military accountable for the people it 'accidentally' kills. Sigh, we all know how that turned out.

[Karenina]

15. COULD have...

[Rex]

20. Sorry you are correct, could have

not would.

[Freddie Stubbs]

10. People with a history of being crazy sometimes do kill themselves

Just saying

[hootinholler]

37. How often do they accomplish the deed with a double-tap from a .38? n/t

[Freddie Stubbs]

115. If someone wanted to make it look like a suicide, why would they shhot him twice?

[warren pease]

126. Because the usual suspects in the corporate and intel communities wanted to make damn sure that...

every investigative reporter bold enough to dare to do his/her job knew this was a state-sanctioned hit, and to leave the subject alone. Which pretty much everyone did.

But coroners are always impartial, eh? They just want to speak for the dead, and so they devote enormous skill and resources to make certain they end up getting the verdict right, yeah? Maybe not...

Here's how Charlene Fassa, writing in December 2004, put it:

(Sacramento County) Coroner Robert Lyons said his office had been swamped with calls. "It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots," he said, "but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility."

This milquetoast declaration sounds like the pathetic utterance of someone who's trying to cover his career ass, all the while crossing his fingers behind his back. Maybe - just maybe, it's also indicative of someone who wants to keep his own life intact. I'd say it's a distinct possibility!

While the coroner spews his Webb suicide fallacy to the numbed down and distracted (pre-holiday) masses - he simultaneously implores any doubters of the official mythology to immediately discard their tin-foil hats along with their conspiracy theories and just move on cause there's nothing to see here. Nope, there's nothing to SEE or KNOW here.

And incredibly, this hilariously lame kindergartenish statement opened the door wide enough to invite a little revisionist history over for dinner and watch it replace the truth over dessert and coffee.

- Editors all over the United States found it necessary to amend the original reports of 'shots' to the head to emphasize that he died of a single gunshot wound to the head. As we all know, editors regard themselves as the watchdogs against conspiracy theory, amending the record when they feel Americans won't be able to handle the truth. In this case, they were caught red-handed.

- The multiple-gunshot suicide occurs often enough to people whose lives are inconvenient to the establishment (a senior Enron exec, whose name escapes me, who was about to turn whistle-blower comes to mind) that rather than seeing these ridiculously improbable scenarios as accidents or incompetencies, they function as signals, sent to those in the know, that this is professional work. It's like a signature on a work of art. It is also a warning.

Which begs the question: Do we have a free press today? Sure we do. It's free to report all the sex scandals it wants, all the stock market news we can handle, every new health fad that comes down the pike, and every celebrity marriage or divorce that happens.

But when it comes to the real sewage and filth we swim in and walk through daily -- stories like Tailwind, the October Surprise, the El Mozote massacre, corporate corruption, or CIA involvement in drug trafficking -- that's where we begin to see the limits of our freedoms. In today's media environment, sadly, such stories are not even open for discussion.

And if some advocate for a media-discredited "conspiracy theory" manages to sneak onto mass media for a few precious seconds, they're quickly gang-tackled by pundits, official story defenders, corporate and government apologists, professional spin meisters and -- worst of all -- the general public, which has been taught to respond with hostility to these "lone nuts" who don't happen to see eye-to-eye with the notoriously biased powers-that-be.

People like Steve Kangas, Danny Casolaro, Dorothy Kilgallen, James Hatfield, Iris Chang -- all unfortunately dead and unable to continue the narrative or defend their hypotheses. Or expose themselves as fools, for that matter, if that's the way it all shakes out.

Anyway, this "expose federal or corporate nefariousness; go to your grave" stuff is nothing new to various politically volatile spots on the planet. It is, however, being updated with the gloss of good ol' American efficiency and ruthlessness -- with enough merc orgs running around to misdirect attention and shoulder the blame -- and has now become that most American of institutions: a profit center.

RIP Gary Webb.



sf

[L. Coyote]

130. Journalists commit suicide by two shots to the head so other journalists know how to commit suicide

That's fairly obvious if you are a journalist too!!

[kenfrequed]

38. Right...

So all the subsequent evidence that came out and all the insiders in the CIA and FBI that came out and wrote books and turned evidence over and Senator Kerry's investigations that proved much of this was all some kind of crazy conspiracy just to make Webb look nuts.

Gimme a friggin break.

[Freddie Stubbs]

116. Crazy, as in his family admitted that he had mental problems

[troubledamerican]

42. Don't project.

[Freddie Stubbs]

117. I don't. Do you?

[MessiahRp]

54. I'd expect this reply from you...

Since you're probably the most pro-establishment person on the boards.

Rp

[rhett o rick]

98. He supports the Blue Chickens. They call themselves dogs, but they are cowards nonetheless.

Throw the bastards out of office. Make them run as the repukes they are.

[d_b]

102. "pro-establishment"

you mean "biggest, troll dip-shit".

[Kingofalldems]

107. So the republican posing as a blue dog trashed Webb?

I am shocked.

[MessiahRp]

112. I was trying my hardest to be diplomatic...

So "Pro-establishment" was as nice as I could get. Even though I think the Establishment sucks ass and needs a massive overhaul because it is corrupt to the core.

Rp

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

104. The Blue Douche strikes again! nt

[dionysus]

152. o..m..g...

[Freddie Stubbs]

118. We Democrats are the establishment now. And I support that. Do you?

[MessiahRp]

128. Democrats ran to change the establishment because it was broken...

you seem to be against those who want that change enacted.

Rp

[spooked911]

87. he wasn't crazy

shame on you for saying that

[Freddie Stubbs]

120. I call them like I see them.

[Octafish]

94. IS ANYONE APOLOGIZING TO GARY WEBB?

From Michael Levine, former DEA officer:

IS ANYONE APOLOGIZING TO GARY WEBB?

by Michael Levine
July, 1998

Gary Webb, just in case you've already forgotten him, was the journalist who, in a well researched, understated article entitled "The Dark Alliance," linked the CIA supported Contras to cocaine and weapons being sold to a California street gang and ended up literally being hounded out of journalism by every mainstream news peddling organization in the Yellow Pages. Even his own employer The San Jose Mercury piled on for the kill.

And guess what? The CIA finally admitted, yesterday, in the New York Times no less, that they, in fact, did "work with" the Nicaraguan Contras while they had information that they were involved in cocaine trafficking to the United States. An action known to us court qualified experts and federal agents as Conspiracy to Import and Distribute Cocaine—a federal felony punishable by up to life in prison.

To illustrate how us regular walking around, non CIA types are treated when we violate this law, while I was serving as a DEA supervisor in New York City, I put two New York City police officers in a federal prison for Conspiracy to distribute Cocaine when they looked the other way at their friend's drug dealing. We could not prove they earned a nickel nor that they helped their friend in any way, they merely did not do their duty by reporting him. They were sentenced to 10 and 12 years respectively, and one of them, I was recently told, had committed suicide.

I have spent three decades as a court qualified expert and federal agent and am not aware of any class of American Citizen having special permission to violate the law that we have been taxed over $1 trillion in the past two decades to enforce; the law that every politician, bureaucrat and media pundit keeps telling us protects us against the most serious danger to American security in our history.

The interesting thing to me, about the Webb article is that the CIA is provably (and now admittedly) responsible for much larger scale drug trafficking than Webb alleged or even imagined in his report. In fact, according to a confidential DEA report entitled "Operation Hun, a Chronology" that I used as part of the proof to back up the undercover experiences detailed in my book The Big White Lie, (optioned for a movie by Robert Greenwald Productions) the CIA was actively blocking DEA from indicting many members of the ruling government of Bolivia, from, 1980-83—during a time period that these same people were responsible for producing more than 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States.

As CIA Inspector General Hitz himself stated before congress, it was during this time period that Nicraguan Contra supporters were buying large amounts of cocaine from these same CIA protected Bolivians.

Do you think Congress wants to see this proof?

The gang that can't spy straight, as they are known to my listeners and about whom President Lyndon Johnson once said, "When Rich folks don't trust their sons with the family money they send them on down to the CIA," certainly did a lot more damage to this nation than, for example, computer company owner Will Foster who was sentenced to 93 years in prison for possession of 70 marijuana plants for medicinal use.

CONTINUED...

http://www.physicaldream.com/Eyeonsam/Is%20Anyone%20Apo...

People, too, can drive people to do crazy things.

[Freddie Stubbs]

121. Which further supports the theory of suicide

[L. Coyote]

131. Good that you acknowledge it is a "theory"

I imagine you are not contending with the dark side in you life. If you knew first-hand what they do to people like Webb .....

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

108. Hey, shouldn't you be all over those Sibel Edmonds threads making asinine comments

just like you used to back in the day?

[Freddie Stubbs]

122. My comments, although not popular with some, are always pertinent

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

123. In your own mind, sure. nt

[L. Coyote]

129. And, people who are a threat are fed crazy pills, just sayin'

That way their murders are not investigated, just sayin' ...

[Echo In Light]

11. I remember him re Iran/Contra...and the Coverup doc film on said topic

[BuyingThyme]

13. Whether or not he killed himself, the CIA is responsible for his death.

Gary proved that Ronald Reagan was the most prolific cocaine dealer in the history of mankind (my words, not his).

Under the leadership of people like Ronald Reagan and the Bush Family, the CIA has been importing drugs into Black communities all my life, and, with the help of the Taliban, they are going as strong as ever.

Republicans understand that one more person on the pipe is one more person off the voter roles. One more person in prison is one more vote for Republicans.

Gary Webb is a true American hero. In addition to outing Reagan, the Bushes, and the CIA, he proved that the Drug Enforcement Agency is actually a Drug Distribution Agency.

Thank you Gary.

[Brother Buzz]

34. Gary's own words don't support your statements

from a transcript of a talk Webb gave in 1999 in Eugene, Ore.

<snip>

So, for the record, let me just say this right now. I do not believe--and I have never believed--that the crack-cocaine explosion was a conscious CIA conspiracy, or anybody’s conspiracy, to decimate black America. I’ve never believed that South Central Los Angeles was targeted by the U.S. government to become the crack capital of the world. But that isn’t to say that the CIA’s hands or the U.S. government’s hands are clean in this matter. Actually, far from it. After spending three years of my life looking into this, I am more convinced than ever that the U.S. government’s responsibility for the drug problems in South Central Los Angeles and other inner cities is greater than I ever wrote in the newspaper.

But it’s important to differentiate between malign intent and gross negligence. And that’s an important distinction, because it’s what makes premeditated murder different from manslaughter. That said, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got a body on the floor, and that’s what I want to talk about tonight, the body.

What I’ve attempted to demonstrate in my book was how the collapse of a brutal, pro-American dictatorship in Latin America, combined with a decision by corrupt CIA agents to raise money for a resistance movement by any means necessary, led to the formation of the nation’s first major crack market in South Central Los Angeles, which led to the arming and the empowerment of L.A.’s street gangs, which led to the spread of crack to black neighborhoods across the country and to the passage of racially discriminatory sentencing laws that are locking up thousands of young black men today behind bars for most of their lives.

But it’s not so much a conspiracy as a chain reaction. And that’s what the series and my whole book Dark Alliance is about, this chain reaction. …

<more>

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content?oid=32816

[blm]

49. More accurately, it's a rogue outfit of CIA loyal to the BFEE and NOT the CIA as an agency.

.

[Brother Buzz]

51. I do not disagree with that statement

[BuyingThyme]

59. That's why I made a point of saying that those were my words.

But I base them on my reading of his book (which everybody here should read).

I am of the persuasion that LIHOP is always MIHOP in situations where the government is required to act but chooses not to.

[BrklynLiberal]

101. Well said!!!

[juno jones]

14. K&R! n/t

[struggle4progress]

16. In the mid 90s, I was surprised that everyone was surprised by Gary Webb's stuff,

because there were plenty of indications in the mid 80s that the White House was covering up contra drug dealing -- there were drug indictments of Central American operatives that the White House quashed and other weirdness: many opponents of the so-called "low intensity conflict" documented it at the time it was occurring and handed out copies of current newspaper articles showing the contras were tangled up in the drug trade

Poor Gary, who looked into this a decade later, after almost everybody had forgotten how much had been known before, really got the shitty end of the stick when the rightwinger apologists kicked back

[blm]

56. Yep, he studied transcripts of narco-terrorism hearings held by Kerry during BCCI investigations

In the American Gangster series on BET, they show commentary from Maxine Waters and John Kerry - it was a lonely battle for anyone in DC taking on this issue....lonely and dangerous.

This was all out there and it should have gone farther after the report's release in Dec 1992, but, the new Dem president had reasons for needing BCCI matters to go away for both Poppy Bush and Jackson Stephens.

[rucognizant]

83. And so.............

Kerry won the Presidency but was denied it, by rigged voting!

[blm]

85. There were powerful people from BOTH parties working AGAINST Kerry in 04 and have for decades.

.

[peacetalksforall]

18. This country is worse than a dictatorship. We are told that we are the most

superior nation in the world, that there is freedom and justice for all. The reality of the truth about what we are makes us multiple times worse than a dictatorship.

Justice in the court system is a travesty for too many. A version of sub-level and ultar lethal non-justice takes over when people get involved in knowing too much. Drugs, weapons, nuclear trade, whistle blowing and exposing the falsities of corporations, wall street, and our leaders.

A phony country - that's us.

[valerief]

39. I think dictatorships get universal health care. nt

[peacetalksforall]

61. good one.

[Echo In Light]

89. The reality and the myth are at stark, opposing ends...yet many abide the un-reality

Given the extent of thought control here, despite a mountainous amount of evidence that *should* dispel the fantasy, it's an amazing psychological model to examine!

[Greyhound]

145. If civilization endures our demise, there may well be an entire field

created in academia devoted to analyzing the mass-psychosis that was The United States of America.

[truth2power]

19. "Barry & the Boys" by Daniel Hopsicker

Barry Seal...drug smuggler, gun runner, CIA asset. From the Preface to the book:

It is the central thesis of this book that following Barry Seal's lifelong government career in 'clandestine services' leads in a straight line from the killing of a President -- Seal's CIA handler Dave Dixon was a 'great good friend' of the only man ever charged with conspiracy to murder President Kennedy, Clay Shaw -- to the ruin of the inner cities of this country by the cocaine epidemic of the 1980's, an epidemic fueled in no small part by the billions of dollars worth of cocaine which Barry Seal's operation imported. (emphasis added)

It's all the same secret, according to one individual interviewed by Hopsicker: Drug smuggling in Mena Arkansas, Whitewater, Watergate, Kennedy Assassination, Iran Contra...

I guess Hopsicker didn't get suicided because his book is not widely distributed, due probably to its cost ($45.00 paperback).

Webb's "Dark Alliance" is next on my list to read.


ETA> No, Gary Webb wasn't "crazy". I wonder why people would say that?

[Rex]

23. You know why they say it.

Helps them sleep easier at night.

[truth2power]

43. Yes, I know very well why they say it. Some things you can't talk about, here.

[Fantastika]

68. Just Reading Webb's Intro

tonight was in my other room reviewing my library and picked
up Barry and the Boys, looking at photos, then Webb's and
finally back to Hancock's book.  I was surprised to find this
thread... I was thinking about Gary independently and wishing
it had all been so different... all of it.

[truedelphi]

96. Welcome to DU. Glad to see you

Had a very sweet and synchronistic arrival here. It's funny how things happen.

[Octafish]

136. Ours is an Associative Universe

Dr. Jacques Vallee says we may live in an "Associative Universe," one in which our minds act as a rudder, guiding us toward destinations we have pre-considered. He describes it in detail in "Messengers of Deception," a study of UFO cults and people who manipulate followers and what it means to the greater society as a whole. He had been studying a group called, iirc, "The Order of Melchizedek" for several months. On an unrelated matter, Vallee flew to L.A. for a conference and hopped aboard a cab. When he finally got to his room, he looked at his receipt for the cab ride and it was signed, iirc, John Melchizedek. Vallee looked in the phone book and he was the only Melchizedek in town.

http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/UFO-info-age.html

Perhaps important thoughts are like the clouds moving across the clear blue sky of the Universal Mind. We both happened to some aspect of the same one, pi.



A hearty welcome to DU, Fantastika. Visualize peace, justice, understanding and love and perhaps this will be the kind of universe good people deserve. I bet you already do that.

[hootinholler]

22. Suicide by double-tap

It was a .38 but I've never verified if it was a revolver or a semi-auto. The semi-auto is believable in that the second shot could have been reflex, the revolver, not so much. The coroner wasn't put off by it though which makes one wonder about if he was spoken with.

The whole fucking thing is dirt and one has to wonder about these cases in the light of Darth's 'death squads.'

Keep up the good work informing and reminding us, Der Fishie!

-Hoot

[Jankyn]

100. It was a suicide...

I knew Gary. I worked with Gary. I saw the autopsy report. The initial wound was a glancing one from hesitation. The second shot was fatal.

It happens often in suicide by gun. You'd be surprised how many take two shots. It's harder to do than most people realize. I know one fellow who tried to use a rifle and succeeded only in removing his upper palate and sinus cavities.

Gary was depressed. There is no doubt in my mind that the way he was treated by the SJ M-N, as well as by the rest of the mainstream media, contributed to that. He was mistreated. But he died of depression, an illness that is often fatal.

[defendandprotect]

26. One of many who got "suicided" . . . !!!

[Octafish]

138. Remember John Kokal!

An official of U.S. Deaprtment of State, expert on Iraq, who also happened to oppose the Iraq invasion.

Mr. Kokal perished in a fall from the roof of the same in 2003.

Like you, defendandprotect, DUer Robert Paulsen remembers:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[RedCloud]

29. Some Post Dispatch reporter "died" in the early 70's.

She was interested in how kids (such as myself) were peacefully making strong strides. We had gathered a huge number of petitions in South St. Louis County to require stores to use returnable containers and work with suppliers to lower the amount of trash produced. We had about a 97% signature success rate in what was once called "George Wallace Country".

Long story short, she was also very concerned how inventors would be bought out if they tried to create a lower polluting engine. She even speculated that they may face death if they don't sell their ideas. Although at the time I was a kid without the details now, I seem to recall after several decades she had told us that one inventor was decapitated, his head found in the trash can and his blueprints stolen.

I wish I could remember her name as she was found dead a few years later.

[Leopolds Ghost]

147. Scary n/t

[MagickMuffin]

30. Yes, I will NEVER forget Gary Webb

I downloaded his article from way back when.


Do you remember Barry Seals?!?!?

He was the drug runner for the CIA and Ollie North. He asked for government protection, was denied and gunned down, and he was found with Poppy Bush personal phone number in his wallet

Daniel Hopsickers book "Barry And The Boys -- The CIA, The Mob, And Americas Secret History"

Based on the author’s three-year-long investigation, this account exposes the story of lifelong CIA agent Barry Seal, the most successful drug smuggler in American history, who died in a hail of bullets with George Bush’s private phone number in his wallet. Revealing Seal’s active role in many of the nation’s most notorious scandals—including the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, and the Iran-Contra Affair—and featuring primary documents previously unseen by the public, this unique history explores the Faustian bargains made by the U.S. government and the secret pasts of some of today’s politicians.

According to investigative reporter and author Daniel Hopsicker, when Seal was assassinated in February 1986, Vice President George H.W. Bush’s personal phone number was found in his wallet. Through Hopsicker's efforts, Barry Seal’s records also divulged a little known piece of smuggling trivia — RJR executives in Central America had helped Seal smuggle contraband into the U.S. in the 1970s.

Or how about Dusty Faggo: Barry Seal and Dusty worked together @ the CIA

Washington Babylon column by Ken Silverstein in Harpers magazine online. It contained new information on Foggo’s years in Honduras in the early 1980s, when, according to the article, “the Agency was using the country as a base both to support the Nicaraguan contras and for a variety of other covert programs in Central America.”

http://www.madcowprod.com/04232007.html

The connections, there are always connections!


Thanks for the reminder.

[truth2power]

48. And Oliver North directed the hit on Seal. n/t

[Fire1]

32. Ushered in under the Reagan/Bush regime, Great

journalist.

[Octafish]

139. Remember Steve Kangas?

The creator of Liberalism Resurgent - A Response to the Right,
he wrote "Origins of the Overclass" that pegged the BFEE and those for whom they toil.

The guy was found dead in Richard Mellon Scaife's building, using a bathroom stall, died from a gunshot wound to the head.
Like Gary Webb, a great journalist and writer and even more, a good man.

[bertman]

33. The list just gets longer and longer. Thanks for keeping us informed, Octafish.

Taverner's comment about deciding against a career in journalism just goes to show how well the bad guys do their job.

Recommend.

[bluesmail]

35. The Bush Body Count has been growing. eom

[EVDebs]

36. I also remember the hit pieces Walter Pincus did on him

""Walter Pincus also led the attack on Gary Webb when he published his series of articles on CIA involvement with the Contras and the drug industry. After Dark Alliance was published Pincus wrote: "A Washington Post investigation into Ross, Blandon, Meneses, and the U.S. cocaine market in the 1980s found the available information does not support the conclusion that the CIA-backed contras - or Nicaraguans in general - played a major role in the emergence of crack as a narcotic in widespread use across the United States."

The Washington Post refused to publish Webb's letters when he attempted to defend his views on the CIA. This included information that Pincus had been recruited by the CIA when he was at Yale University in order to spy on student groups at several international youth conferences in the 1950s. Later, Geneva Overholser, the Washington Post ombudsman, criticized Pincus and other reporters working for the newspaper: "A principal responsibility of the press is to protect the people from government excesses. The Washington Post (among others) showed more energy for protecting the CIA from someone else's journalistic excesses."

When Gary Webb committed suicide, French journalist, Paul Moreira, made a television documentary for France's Canal Plus. He interviewed Pincus and asked him why in October, 1998, he had not reported on the CIA's inspector general report admitting the agency worked with drug dealers throughout the 1980s. Pincus was unable to explain why he and other mainstream journalists completely ignored this report that helped to support Webb's case against the CIA. ""

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/MDpincus.htm

Sadly, even some current journalists still support Walter Pincus no matter what. I just have to see his byline and immediately questions start in my head, what is he shilling for the CIA today ?

[blm]

50. In the newspaper industry WaPost has been called Spook Central. Of course, those real journalists

who would call it that have been marginalized or forced out long ago.

[dmr]

40. Am reading "Dark Alliance" now

I had the hardest time finding it. Have had it on my Amazon list since 2004, each time my order would go through, they'd send me an email saying it wasn't available. (!?!?!) Very frustrating, and curious.

I finally got it last week, along with "The Family".

I'm reading both at the same time.

Rest in peace, Gary, I'm so sorry you had to pay such an ultimate price.

[frylock]

41. it's a good read to be sure

[truth2power]

44. Can you tell me, is the book an expanded version of the newspaper series linked in the OP?

My public library has it. It's currently checked out (good to know someone's reading it).

I put it on hold. Should get it in a couple of weeks.

[SpiralHawk]

45. The k and the r

eom

[Downwinder]

47. Narconews.com now hosts the Dark Alliance web site files.

http://narconews.com/darkalliance/

[Judi Lynn]

81. Thanks. This is a valuable link. n/t

[dorkulon]

52. Unbelievably, Morning Joe cited this as a zany conspiracy theory comparable to brithers

the other day. He and Barnicle were dismissing the birthers, and saying these things happen on both sides, citing 9/11 truthers, and then the "crazy" idea that the Bush 1 admin was selling coke in America.

[blm]

53. Guess Joe forgot that CIA documents were entered into a court case in 1998 - proved Webb right.

Funny how some here at DU take the exact same approach as Scarborough whenever these matters come up.

[dorkulon]

55. Yeah, this one is definitely true.

I don't go in for unsubstantiated conspiracy theories, but this one's no theory. Well-documented.

Speaking of Scarborough's tenuous relationship with the truth, he also said this: “I remember during the Valerie Plame episode. Remember, Bob Novak told us from the beginning, "This wasn't an ideologue that gave me the name. This wasn't Karl – this wasn't a Bush operation." And liberals, ‘Oh, he's lying, da da da da da.’ And then remember earlier this year, Bob Novak -- and, of course, Novak was right.”

[Dinger]

57. K & R For Gary

[flyarm]

60. sure do..

Gary stood for truth..

too much of that lacking these days!

[jonestonesusa]

62. K & R!

Courageous journalist, underreported stories.

[wildbilln864]

63. k&r! nt

[bbernardini]

64. That darn liberal media, again...always covering for Reagan and Bush.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

65. Another tragic demise, completely perpetrated by the corrupt, vicious

corpro-fascist overlords and their political henchmen. This fucking nation needs a real revolt against these assholes.

Octafish - you get my blood up. Truth gets buried far too often. Thank you for your constant unearthing...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

66. Such a deal!

The forces of darkness get to make money importing cocaine into America's inner cities, thus consigning many of its youth to either prison or the graveyard, thus destroying the civil rights movement (which MLK was in the process of turning into a movement for overall economic justice) and providing fuel for racist fears of crime, thus preventing an alliance among working class people of different races.

[leftstreet]

70. +1

Exactly

[Liberation Angel]

67. Remember Paul Sanford

He was a very close friend of mine ...

he was suicided after accusing the white house of treason as a member of the white house press corps:

I loved that guy!

Courageous

murdered for challenging the bastards



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[HCE SuiGeneris]

74. I lived in Santa Cruz for 20 years (82-02).

His death was by assassination. His story has also been disappeared.

One of Cheney's many hits.

[Liberation Angel]

109. fucking great human being

sweet and smart

really pisses me off

[Joe Bacon]

69. That's when I lost all confidence in the American Press

I still remember the last day I bought a copy of the Lies Angeles Times--the day they conspired with the Screw York Times and Whoreshington Post to destroy Gary Webb. I have never bought any of those papers since that day and after seeing their blatant lying, that was the day I woke up and realized that the American Press lied. That's the day I lost all confidence in the American Press. I now read the UK Guardian and Independent, along with The Economist. It's amazing to see what is in the British Press that is never mentioned in the American Whore Press.

[snot]

71. k&r'd & b-marked.

[AzDar]

72. My GOD, how I despise the Bush Cartel.

[scarletwoman]

75. k&r -- thanks for honoring his memory.

Truth-telling is an extremely dangerous job, it's no wonder so few take it up.

R.I.P. Gary, you deserved a medal not a bullet.

sw

[mntleo2]

76. I was talking about him just yesterday ...

...with his death it was the middle of the death of journalism.

The reason I say that is was the "middle of the death of journalism" is because the "beginning" that I saw was in the 1980s I watched lies being told with impunity by the press. I was involved in the Sanctuary Movement. I watched the assassination of Archbishop Romero with the blessings of our CIA thugs along with the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocents just because the poor were beginning to find security in Liberation Theology, which Reagan called "communism" and he sent Negroponte down there to implement the death squads. Coincidently these same death squads appeared when they made Negroponte ambassador to Iraq. I wrote to Joe Biden who was on the committee for Negroponte's appointment to Iraq (and he voted for him). I said:

My church was part of the sanctuary movement. I talked personally to vicitms who fled and Witness for Peace people who were down there and who personally witnessed what happened. As a low income working mom, I knew what a monster Negroponte was back in 1985 when he was in El Salvador and the death squads were dropping nuns from airplanes, killing babies and old people, raping and then horribly murdering nuns, burning priests alive, and annihilating entire villages. All done with the blessings of my government who, when they weren't teaching these things and tutoring people to be thugs at The School of the Americas, they were doing it themselves down there. So why don't YOU know about it sand how can you support such a thug?

People if we learn anything from this history, we should learn that holding people accountable for their deeds is extremely important since all those people got off from the Iran/Contra affair with barely a slap on the wrist ~ if that. Otherwise those thugs or their cohorts WILL come back to haunt you even worse. The SAME PEOPLE involved in Iran/Contra were back in power with Bu$h II and created the hells we now have to try to fix that they left for us. They are responsible for millions of deaths of innocents and as long as we sit silent as Americans with a voice to demand they be held accountable now, the blood is on our hands too and in the years to come, they will only come back to do it again.

My 2 cents ...

Cat In Seattle

[Lydia Leftcoast]

97. Yes, I was involved in the anti=intervention movement, too

and that was the beginning of my skepticism about the U.S. press, especially after I listened to Minnesota Public Radio's rebroadcasts of As It Happens (Canada's counterpart to All Things Considered). U.S. coverage (including NPR's) and Canadian coverage of the same events were so different that you'd think they were talking about two different planets.

I'm sure Canada and the UK have their own sacred cows that their news media never criticize, but their coverage of events in the U.S. is what "fair and balanced" REALLY looks like. That's why, for instance, Greg Palast writes for the Guardian instead of for the New York Times or the Washington Post.

In one way, we're worse off than the residents of the former Soviet Union. They KNEW they were being lied to because the disconnect between what the media said and what their lives were like was too glaring to ignore. Most Americans just accept whatever they hear in their preferred media source instead of bothering to ferret out the truth for themselves.

[opihimoimoi]

78. What did I tell ya? This is spooky shit...

[Norrin Radd]

79. kr

[reprehensor]

84. Gary Webb VIDEOS

Here is a quick way to introduce yourself to Webb's important work, if you haven't read "Dark Alliance";

Robert Parry and Gary Webb: Cocaine and the Contras (1996)

(Octafish lists part 2 in opening post)

Part 1
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-40149408241889...

Part 2
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=856260931516474...

Part 3
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=320968666540918...

Part 4
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-30755062083815...

----------------------

Gary Webb and Martha Honey (1998)

Part 1
http://reprehensor.blip.tv/file/834451 /

Part 2
http://reprehensor.blip.tv/file/835497 /

Part 3
http://reprehensor.blip.tv/file/836189 /

Part 4
http://reprehensor.blip.tv/file/836980 /

[Echo In Light]

90. Thanks for those

[sendero]

86. I'm listening..

... to a story about a media conference where they are working to "reinvent" media.

The reinvention needed is to return to being the fourth estate, to report the news, even the uncomfortable news, fairly and accurately.

That hasn't happened in this country since the late 70s. And now, the networks and the newspapers are crying about their financial situation, blaming bloggers, blaming the net, blaming everything but themselves.

They give us useless product, and we are not willing to pay much for it. Go figure. Cry me a river.

[Greyhound]

88. Yes. Sadly one of the many victims we of what we have become and

don't want to talk about.

"Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice . . . you don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying . . . lobbying, to get what they want . . . Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want . . . they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that . . . that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin' years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers . . . Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it . . . they’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fuckin' place. It’s a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in The Big Club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people . . . white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means . . . continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you . . . they don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you at all . . . at all . . . at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it..."

I wish I could make this my sig line, but too many characters.

[truedelphi]

105. +1 n/t

[peacetalksforall]

113. Exactly right. They have declared war on us. And we don't even know it.

I look at their tv ads with acoustic music and pretty colors or silhouettes and slow motion happy people represented as the future of America and buyers of their products. They believe they have us because they deserve us. A war of arrogance and power on us.

Give us more happy - turn up the music when they turn that corner by the daisies. Yes, that's it.

Actually, they may not want us to or expect us to buy their product - they are probably willing to pay big money for brainwashing - a happy drug of thought transference - the message is we have such a bright future together - yep a lot of money.

[Greyhound]

119. And it works so well that most will still deny it works as we lose everything.

The illusions we cherish are not to be trifled with.

Peace and good luck to us all.

[McCamy Taylor]

93. Yes.

[BlueIris]

95. Thanks, Octa. nt

[redqueen]

99. Yep.

And to think, some people consider all conspiracy theories to be nonsense, and dismiss them out of hand.

[Blue_Tires]

103. i remember him well

k+r

[Kingofalldems]

110. Kick this for the disruptor.

[Liberation Angel]

111. Cheney's assassination squad and freeper cheerleaders on Paul Sanford's murder

Paul did NOT commit suicide

but we can see who might have wanted him dead

:http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1759725/posts

[Liberation Angel]

133. NO ONE ELSE REMEMBERS THIS?

maybe just a moment for Paul

he deserves it...

[Octafish]

135. I remember Paul Sanford. He asked WH press officer about Rove's treason.

Mr. Sanford was a very brave man.

Paul Sanford, first to ask McClellan about Plame/treason link, commits suicide

It is very unlikely his death was a suicide.

Thank you for remembering, Liberation Angel.

[ControlledDemolition]

143. Let's not forget John F. Kennedy Jnr! George Magazine, and his very convenient death (for some). n/t

[ControlledDemolition]

144. Most 'coincidental fatalities' always seem to favour the Bush Crime Family...

... and their enablers.

[ControlledDemolition]

142. Will have to inform myself on Paul. Thanks for the heads up. n/t

[peacetalksforall]

114. I was riding the train about two hours a day in the 80's and followed the NYT and WSJ

religiously. I clipped all the articles and kept them for years. I was captiviated because I saw them edit the news from day to day. There was a big rush of data about Khashoggi. He ended up as clean and delicate as a guy in a pink tutu with a wand. They cleansed him from article to article, day by day. I could see them cleaning it all up. I wish I had kept it all.

They massacred people. They massacred American citizens in those countries.

And now Negroponte is a consultant to Sec. Clinton on the Hondras matter.

So what happened to tho