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In reply to the discussion: Jeremy Renner Ready To ‘Kill The Messenger’ In Film About CIA-Smeared Journo Gary Webb [View all]777man
(374 posts)125. 9.25.14 Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb By Ryan Deverea
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-media-destruction-gary-webb/
Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb
By Ryan Devereaux
@rdevro
Eighteen years after it was published, Dark Alliance, the San Jose Mercury Newss bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaraguas Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism.
The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. It also sparked an aggressive backlash from the nations most powerful media outlets, which devoted considerable resources to discredit author Gary Webbs reporting. Their efforts succeeded, costing Webb his career. On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head.
These days, Webb is being cast in a more sympathetic light. Hes portrayed heroically in a major motion picture set to premiere nationwide next month. And documents newly released by the CIA provide fresh context to the Dark Alliance saga information that paints an ugly portrait of the mainstream media at the time.
On September 18, the agency released a trove of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agencys in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story. Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of Dark Alliance, the document offers a unique window into the CIAs internal reaction to what it called a genuine public relations crisis while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry. Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as a ground base of already productive relations with journalists, the CIAs Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.
(Dujmovics name was redacted in the released version of the CIA document, but was included in a footnote in a 2010 article in the Journal of Intelligence. Dujmovic confirmed his authorship to The Intercept.)
Kill the Messenger Jeremy Renner
Actor Jeremy Renner stars as investigative journalist Gary Webb in the upcoming film Kill the Messenger.
Webbs troubles began in August 1996, when his employer, the San Jose Mercury News, published a groundbreaking, three-part investigation he had worked on for more than a year. Carrying the full title Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion, Webbs series reported that in addition to waging a proxy war for the U.S. government against Nicaraguas revolutionary Sandinista government in the 1980s, elements of the CIA-backed Contra rebels were also involved in trafficking cocaine to the U.S. in order to fund their counter-revolutionary campaign. The secret flow of drugs and money, Webb reported, had a direct link to the subsequent explosion of crack cocaine abuse that had devastated Californias most vulnerable African American neighborhoods.
Derided by some as conspiracy theory and heralded by others as investigative reporting at its finest, Webbs series spread through extensive talk radio coverage and global availability via the internet, which at the time was still a novel way to promote national news.
Though Dark Alliance would eventually morph into a personal crisis for Webb, it was initially a PR disaster for the CIA. In Managing a Nightmare, Dujmovic minced no words in describing the potentially devastating effect of the series on the agencys image:
The charges could hardly be worse. A widely read newspaper series leads many Americans to believe CIA is guilty of at least complicity, if not conspiracy, in the outbreak of crack cocaine in Americas cities. In more extreme versions of the story circulating on talk radio and the internet, the Agency was the instrument of a consistent strategy by the US Government to destroy the black community and keep black Americans from advancing. Denunciations of CIAreminiscent of the 1970sabound. Investigations are demanded and initiated. The Congress gets involved.
Dujmovic acknowledged that Webb did not state outright that CIA ran the drug trade or even knew about it. In fact, the agencys central complaint, according to the document, was over the graphics that accompanied the series, which suggested a link between the CIA and the crack scare, and Webbs description of the Contras as the CIAs army (despite the fact that the Contras were quite literally an armed, militant group not-so-secretly supported by the U.S., at war with the government of Nicaragua).
Dujmovic complained that Webbs series appeared with no warning, remarking that, for all his journalistic credentials, he apparently could not come up with a widely available and well-known telephone number for CIA Public Affairs. This was probably because Webb was uninterested in anything the Agency might have to say that would diminish the impact of his series, he wrote. (Webb later said that he did contact the CIA but that the agency would not return his calls; efforts to obtain CIA comment were not mentioned in the Dark Alliance series).
Dujmovic also pointed out that much of what was reported in Dark Alliance was not new. Indeed, in 1985, more than a decade before the series was published, Associated Press journalists Robert Parry and Brian Barger found that Contra groups had engaged in cocaine trafficking, in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua. In a move that foreshadowed Webbs experience, the Reagan White House launched a concerted behind-the-scenes campaign to besmirch the professionalism of Parry and Barger and to discredit all reporting on the contras and drugs, according to a 1997 article by Peter Kornbluh for the Columbia Journalism Review. Whether the campaign was the cause or not, coverage was minimal.
Neverthess, a special senate subcommittee, chaired by then-senator John Kerry, investigated the APs findings and, in 1989, released a 1,166-page report on covert U.S. operations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. It found considerable evidence that the Contras were linked to running drugs and guns and that the U.S. government knew about it.
Nicaragua Contras 1983
1983, Anti-Sandinista Contra forces move down the San Juan River which separates Nicaragua from Costa Rica.
From the subcommittee report:
On the basis of this evidence, it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter.
The chief of the CIAs Central America Task Force was also quoted as saying, With respect to (drug trafficking) by the Resistance Forces it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people.
Despite such damning assessments, the subcommittee report received scant attention from the countrys major newspapers. Seven years later, Webb would be the one to pick up the story. His articles distinguished themselves from the APs reporting in part by connecting an issue that seemed distant to many U.S. readers drug trafficking in Central America to a deeply-felt domestic story, the impact of crack cocaine in Californias urban, African American communities.
Dark Alliance focused on the lives of three men involved in shipping cocaine to the U.S.: Ricky Freeway Ross, a legendary L.A. drug dealer; Oscar Danilo Blandón Reyes, considered by the U.S. government to be Nicaraguas biggest cocaine dealer living in the United States; and Meneses Cantarero, a powerful Nicaraguan player who had allegedly recruited Blandón to sell drugs in support of the counter-revolution. The series examined the relationship between the men, their impact on the drug market in California and elsewhere, and the disproportionate sentencing of African Americans under crack cocaine laws.
And while its content was not all new, the series marked the beginning of something that was: an in-depth investigation published outside the traditional mainstream media outlets and successfully promoted on the internet. More than a decade before Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, Webb showcased the power and reach of online journalism. Key documents were hosted on the San Jose Mercury News website, with hyperlinks, wiretap recordings and follow-up stories. The series was widely discussed on African American talk radio stations; on some days attracting more than one million readers to the newspapers website. As Webb later remarked, you dont have be The New York Times or The Washington Post to bust a national story anymore.
But newspapers like the Times and the Post seemed to spend far more time trying to poke holes in the series than in following up on the underreported scandal at its heart, the involvement of U.S.-backed proxy forces in international drug trafficking. The Los Angeles Times was especially aggressive. Scooped in its own backyard, the California paper assigned no fewer than 17 reporters to pick apart Webbs reporting. While employees denied an outright effort to attack the Mercury News, one of the 17 referred to it as the get Gary Webb team. Another said at the time, Were going to take away that guys Pulitzer, according to Kornbluhs CJR piece. Within two months of the publication of Dark Alliance, the L.A. Times devoted more words to dismantling its competitors breakout hit than comprised the series itself.
The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webbs reporting. Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of Dark Alliance, and Dujmovic in Managing a Nightmare cites the CIAs success in discouraging one major news affiliate from covering the story. He also boasts that the agency effectively departed from its own longstanding policies in order to discredit the series. For example, in order to help a journalist working on a story that would undermine the Mercury News allegations, Public Affairs was able to deny any affiliation of a particular individual which is a rare exception to the general policy that CIA does not comment on any individuals alleged CIA ties.
The document chronicles the shift in public opinion as it moved in favor of the CIA, a trend that began about a month and a half after the series was published. That third week in September was a turning point in media coverage of this story, Dujmovic wrote, citing [r]espected columnists, including prominent blacks, along with the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun, The Weekly Standard and the Washington Post. The agency supplied the press, as well as former Agency officials, who were themselves representing the Agency in interviews with the media, with these more balanced stories, Dujmovic wrote. The Washington Post proved particularly useful. Because of the Posts national reputation, its articles especially were picked up by other papers, helping to create what the Associated Press called a firestorm of reaction against the San Jose Mercury News. Over the month that followed, critical media coverage of the series (balanced reporting) far outnumbered supportive stories, a trend the CIA credited to the Post, The New York Times, and especially the Los Angeles Times. Webbs editors began to distance themselves from their reporter.
By the end of October, two months after Dark Alliance was published, the tone of the entire CIA-drug story had changed, Dujmovic was pleased to report. Most press coverage included, as a routine matter, the now-widespread criticism of the Mercury News allegations.
This success has to be in relative terms, Dujmovic wrote, summing up the episode. In the world of public relations, as in war, avoiding a rout in the face of hostile multitudes can be considered a success.
dark_alliance_540
Artwork that accompanied the original Dark Alliance series published in the San Jose Mercury News.
Theres no question that Dark Alliance included flaws, which the CIA was able to exploit.
In his CJR piece, Kornbluh said the series was problematically sourced and criticized it for repeatedly promised evidence that, on close reading, it did not deliver. It failed to definitively connect the storys key players to the CIA, he noted, and there were inconsistencies in Webbs timeline of events.
But Kornbluh also uncovered problems with the retaliatory reports described as balanced by the CIA. In the case of the L.A. Times, he wrote, the paper stumbled into some of the same problems of hyperbole, selectivity, and credibility that it was attempting to expose while ignoring declassified evidence (also neglected by the New York Times and the Washington Post) that lent credibility to Webbs thesis. Clearly, there was room to advance the contra/drug/CIA story rather than simply denounce it, Kornbluh wrote.
The Mercury News was partially responsible for the sometimes distorted public furor the stories generated, Kornbluh said, but also achieved something that neither the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, nor The New York Times had been willing or able to do revisit a significant story that had been inexplicably abandoned by the mainstream press, report a new dimension to it, and thus put it back on the national agenda where it belongs.
In October, the story of Gary Webb will reach a national moviegoing audience, likely reviving old questions about his reporting and the outrage it ignited. Director Michael Cuestas film, Kill the Messenger, stars Jeremy Renner as the hard-charging investigative reporter and borrows its title from a 2006 biography written by award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou, who worked as a consultant on the script.
Discussing the newly disclosed Managing a Nightmare document, Schou says it squares with what he found while doing his own reporting. Rather than some dastardly, covert plot to destroy (or, as some went so far as to suggest, murder) Webb, Schou posits that the journalist was ultimately undone by the petty jealousies of the modern media world. The CIA didnt really need to lift a finger to try to ruin Gary Webbs credibility, Schou told The Intercept. They just sat there and watched these journalists go after Gary like a bunch of piranhas.
They must have been delighted over at Langley, the way this all unfolded, Schou added.
At least one journalist who helped lead the campaign to discredit Webb, feels remorse for what he did. As Schou reported for L.A. Weekly, in a 2013 radio interview L.A. Times reporter Jesse Katz recalled the episode, saying, As an L.A. Times reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News and kind of wonder[ed] how legit it was and kind of put it under a microscope. And we did it in a way that 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 on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California.
Schou, too, readily concedes there were problems with Webbs reporting, but maintains that the most important components of his investigation stood up to scrutiny, only to be buried under the attacks from the nations biggest papers.
I think its fair to take a look at the story objectively and say that it could have been better edited, it could have been packaged better, it would have been less inflammatory. And sure, maybe Gary could have, like, actually put in the story somewhere I called the CIA X-amount of times and they didnt respond. That wasnt in there, he said. But these are all kind of minor things compared to the bigger picture, which is that he documented for the first time in the history of U.S. media how CIA complicity with Central American drug traffickers had actually impacted the sale of drugs north of the border in a very detailed, accurate story. And thats, I think, the take-away here.
As for Webbs tragic death, Schou is certain it was a direct consequence of the smear campaign against him.
As much as its true that he suffered from a clinical depression for years and years and even before Dark Alliance to a certain extent its impossible to view what happened to him without understanding the death of his career as a result of this story, he explained. It was really the central defining event of his career and of his life.
Once you take away a journalists credibility, thats all they have, Schou says. He was never able to recover from that.
Kill the Messenger, a thriller based on Webbs story, will be released October 10.
In Managing a Nightmare, Dujmovic attributed the initial outcry over the Dark Alliance series to societal shortcomings that are not present in the spy agency.
As a personal post-script, I would submit that ultimately the CIA-drug story says a lot more about American society on the eve of the millennium that [sic] it does about either the CIA or the media, he wrote. We live in somewhat coarse and emotional timeswhen large numbers of Americans do not adhere to the same standards of logic, evidence, or even civil discourse as those practiced by members of the CIA community.
Webb obviously saw things differently. He reflected on his fall from grace in the 2002 book, Into the Buzzsaw. Prior to Dark Alliance, Webb said, I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests.
And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason Id enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadnt been, as Id assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job, Webb wrote. The truth was that, in all those years, I hadnt written anything important enough to suppress.
Photo: Webb: Bob Berg/Getty Images; Kill the Messenger: Chuck Zlotnick/Focus Features; Contras: Bill Gentile/Corbis
Email the author: [email protected]
Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb
By Ryan Devereaux
@rdevro
Eighteen years after it was published, Dark Alliance, the San Jose Mercury Newss bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaraguas Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism.
The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. It also sparked an aggressive backlash from the nations most powerful media outlets, which devoted considerable resources to discredit author Gary Webbs reporting. Their efforts succeeded, costing Webb his career. On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head.
These days, Webb is being cast in a more sympathetic light. Hes portrayed heroically in a major motion picture set to premiere nationwide next month. And documents newly released by the CIA provide fresh context to the Dark Alliance saga information that paints an ugly portrait of the mainstream media at the time.
On September 18, the agency released a trove of documents spanning three decades of secret government operations. Culled from the agencys in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence, the materials include a previously unreleased six-page article titled Managing a Nightmare: CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story. Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of Dark Alliance, the document offers a unique window into the CIAs internal reaction to what it called a genuine public relations crisis while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry. Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as a ground base of already productive relations with journalists, the CIAs Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.
(Dujmovics name was redacted in the released version of the CIA document, but was included in a footnote in a 2010 article in the Journal of Intelligence. Dujmovic confirmed his authorship to The Intercept.)
Kill the Messenger Jeremy Renner
Actor Jeremy Renner stars as investigative journalist Gary Webb in the upcoming film Kill the Messenger.
Webbs troubles began in August 1996, when his employer, the San Jose Mercury News, published a groundbreaking, three-part investigation he had worked on for more than a year. Carrying the full title Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion, Webbs series reported that in addition to waging a proxy war for the U.S. government against Nicaraguas revolutionary Sandinista government in the 1980s, elements of the CIA-backed Contra rebels were also involved in trafficking cocaine to the U.S. in order to fund their counter-revolutionary campaign. The secret flow of drugs and money, Webb reported, had a direct link to the subsequent explosion of crack cocaine abuse that had devastated Californias most vulnerable African American neighborhoods.
Derided by some as conspiracy theory and heralded by others as investigative reporting at its finest, Webbs series spread through extensive talk radio coverage and global availability via the internet, which at the time was still a novel way to promote national news.
Though Dark Alliance would eventually morph into a personal crisis for Webb, it was initially a PR disaster for the CIA. In Managing a Nightmare, Dujmovic minced no words in describing the potentially devastating effect of the series on the agencys image:
The charges could hardly be worse. A widely read newspaper series leads many Americans to believe CIA is guilty of at least complicity, if not conspiracy, in the outbreak of crack cocaine in Americas cities. In more extreme versions of the story circulating on talk radio and the internet, the Agency was the instrument of a consistent strategy by the US Government to destroy the black community and keep black Americans from advancing. Denunciations of CIAreminiscent of the 1970sabound. Investigations are demanded and initiated. The Congress gets involved.
Dujmovic acknowledged that Webb did not state outright that CIA ran the drug trade or even knew about it. In fact, the agencys central complaint, according to the document, was over the graphics that accompanied the series, which suggested a link between the CIA and the crack scare, and Webbs description of the Contras as the CIAs army (despite the fact that the Contras were quite literally an armed, militant group not-so-secretly supported by the U.S., at war with the government of Nicaragua).
Dujmovic complained that Webbs series appeared with no warning, remarking that, for all his journalistic credentials, he apparently could not come up with a widely available and well-known telephone number for CIA Public Affairs. This was probably because Webb was uninterested in anything the Agency might have to say that would diminish the impact of his series, he wrote. (Webb later said that he did contact the CIA but that the agency would not return his calls; efforts to obtain CIA comment were not mentioned in the Dark Alliance series).
Dujmovic also pointed out that much of what was reported in Dark Alliance was not new. Indeed, in 1985, more than a decade before the series was published, Associated Press journalists Robert Parry and Brian Barger found that Contra groups had engaged in cocaine trafficking, in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua. In a move that foreshadowed Webbs experience, the Reagan White House launched a concerted behind-the-scenes campaign to besmirch the professionalism of Parry and Barger and to discredit all reporting on the contras and drugs, according to a 1997 article by Peter Kornbluh for the Columbia Journalism Review. Whether the campaign was the cause or not, coverage was minimal.
Neverthess, a special senate subcommittee, chaired by then-senator John Kerry, investigated the APs findings and, in 1989, released a 1,166-page report on covert U.S. operations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. It found considerable evidence that the Contras were linked to running drugs and guns and that the U.S. government knew about it.
Nicaragua Contras 1983
1983, Anti-Sandinista Contra forces move down the San Juan River which separates Nicaragua from Costa Rica.
From the subcommittee report:
On the basis of this evidence, it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter.
The chief of the CIAs Central America Task Force was also quoted as saying, With respect to (drug trafficking) by the Resistance Forces it is not a couple of people. It is a lot of people.
Despite such damning assessments, the subcommittee report received scant attention from the countrys major newspapers. Seven years later, Webb would be the one to pick up the story. His articles distinguished themselves from the APs reporting in part by connecting an issue that seemed distant to many U.S. readers drug trafficking in Central America to a deeply-felt domestic story, the impact of crack cocaine in Californias urban, African American communities.
Dark Alliance focused on the lives of three men involved in shipping cocaine to the U.S.: Ricky Freeway Ross, a legendary L.A. drug dealer; Oscar Danilo Blandón Reyes, considered by the U.S. government to be Nicaraguas biggest cocaine dealer living in the United States; and Meneses Cantarero, a powerful Nicaraguan player who had allegedly recruited Blandón to sell drugs in support of the counter-revolution. The series examined the relationship between the men, their impact on the drug market in California and elsewhere, and the disproportionate sentencing of African Americans under crack cocaine laws.
And while its content was not all new, the series marked the beginning of something that was: an in-depth investigation published outside the traditional mainstream media outlets and successfully promoted on the internet. More than a decade before Wikileaks and Edward Snowden, Webb showcased the power and reach of online journalism. Key documents were hosted on the San Jose Mercury News website, with hyperlinks, wiretap recordings and follow-up stories. The series was widely discussed on African American talk radio stations; on some days attracting more than one million readers to the newspapers website. As Webb later remarked, you dont have be The New York Times or The Washington Post to bust a national story anymore.
But newspapers like the Times and the Post seemed to spend far more time trying to poke holes in the series than in following up on the underreported scandal at its heart, the involvement of U.S.-backed proxy forces in international drug trafficking. The Los Angeles Times was especially aggressive. Scooped in its own backyard, the California paper assigned no fewer than 17 reporters to pick apart Webbs reporting. While employees denied an outright effort to attack the Mercury News, one of the 17 referred to it as the get Gary Webb team. Another said at the time, Were going to take away that guys Pulitzer, according to Kornbluhs CJR piece. Within two months of the publication of Dark Alliance, the L.A. Times devoted more words to dismantling its competitors breakout hit than comprised the series itself.
The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webbs reporting. Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of Dark Alliance, and Dujmovic in Managing a Nightmare cites the CIAs success in discouraging one major news affiliate from covering the story. He also boasts that the agency effectively departed from its own longstanding policies in order to discredit the series. For example, in order to help a journalist working on a story that would undermine the Mercury News allegations, Public Affairs was able to deny any affiliation of a particular individual which is a rare exception to the general policy that CIA does not comment on any individuals alleged CIA ties.
The document chronicles the shift in public opinion as it moved in favor of the CIA, a trend that began about a month and a half after the series was published. That third week in September was a turning point in media coverage of this story, Dujmovic wrote, citing [r]espected columnists, including prominent blacks, along with the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun, The Weekly Standard and the Washington Post. The agency supplied the press, as well as former Agency officials, who were themselves representing the Agency in interviews with the media, with these more balanced stories, Dujmovic wrote. The Washington Post proved particularly useful. Because of the Posts national reputation, its articles especially were picked up by other papers, helping to create what the Associated Press called a firestorm of reaction against the San Jose Mercury News. Over the month that followed, critical media coverage of the series (balanced reporting) far outnumbered supportive stories, a trend the CIA credited to the Post, The New York Times, and especially the Los Angeles Times. Webbs editors began to distance themselves from their reporter.
By the end of October, two months after Dark Alliance was published, the tone of the entire CIA-drug story had changed, Dujmovic was pleased to report. Most press coverage included, as a routine matter, the now-widespread criticism of the Mercury News allegations.
This success has to be in relative terms, Dujmovic wrote, summing up the episode. In the world of public relations, as in war, avoiding a rout in the face of hostile multitudes can be considered a success.
dark_alliance_540
Artwork that accompanied the original Dark Alliance series published in the San Jose Mercury News.
Theres no question that Dark Alliance included flaws, which the CIA was able to exploit.
In his CJR piece, Kornbluh said the series was problematically sourced and criticized it for repeatedly promised evidence that, on close reading, it did not deliver. It failed to definitively connect the storys key players to the CIA, he noted, and there were inconsistencies in Webbs timeline of events.
But Kornbluh also uncovered problems with the retaliatory reports described as balanced by the CIA. In the case of the L.A. Times, he wrote, the paper stumbled into some of the same problems of hyperbole, selectivity, and credibility that it was attempting to expose while ignoring declassified evidence (also neglected by the New York Times and the Washington Post) that lent credibility to Webbs thesis. Clearly, there was room to advance the contra/drug/CIA story rather than simply denounce it, Kornbluh wrote.
The Mercury News was partially responsible for the sometimes distorted public furor the stories generated, Kornbluh said, but also achieved something that neither the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, nor The New York Times had been willing or able to do revisit a significant story that had been inexplicably abandoned by the mainstream press, report a new dimension to it, and thus put it back on the national agenda where it belongs.
In October, the story of Gary Webb will reach a national moviegoing audience, likely reviving old questions about his reporting and the outrage it ignited. Director Michael Cuestas film, Kill the Messenger, stars Jeremy Renner as the hard-charging investigative reporter and borrows its title from a 2006 biography written by award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou, who worked as a consultant on the script.
Discussing the newly disclosed Managing a Nightmare document, Schou says it squares with what he found while doing his own reporting. Rather than some dastardly, covert plot to destroy (or, as some went so far as to suggest, murder) Webb, Schou posits that the journalist was ultimately undone by the petty jealousies of the modern media world. The CIA didnt really need to lift a finger to try to ruin Gary Webbs credibility, Schou told The Intercept. They just sat there and watched these journalists go after Gary like a bunch of piranhas.
They must have been delighted over at Langley, the way this all unfolded, Schou added.
At least one journalist who helped lead the campaign to discredit Webb, feels remorse for what he did. As Schou reported for L.A. Weekly, in a 2013 radio interview L.A. Times reporter Jesse Katz recalled the episode, saying, As an L.A. Times reporter, we saw this series in the San Jose Mercury News and kind of wonder[ed] how legit it was and kind of put it under a microscope. And we did it in a way that 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 on to one lone muckraker up in Northern California.
Schou, too, readily concedes there were problems with Webbs reporting, but maintains that the most important components of his investigation stood up to scrutiny, only to be buried under the attacks from the nations biggest papers.
I think its fair to take a look at the story objectively and say that it could have been better edited, it could have been packaged better, it would have been less inflammatory. And sure, maybe Gary could have, like, actually put in the story somewhere I called the CIA X-amount of times and they didnt respond. That wasnt in there, he said. But these are all kind of minor things compared to the bigger picture, which is that he documented for the first time in the history of U.S. media how CIA complicity with Central American drug traffickers had actually impacted the sale of drugs north of the border in a very detailed, accurate story. And thats, I think, the take-away here.
As for Webbs tragic death, Schou is certain it was a direct consequence of the smear campaign against him.
As much as its true that he suffered from a clinical depression for years and years and even before Dark Alliance to a certain extent its impossible to view what happened to him without understanding the death of his career as a result of this story, he explained. It was really the central defining event of his career and of his life.
Once you take away a journalists credibility, thats all they have, Schou says. He was never able to recover from that.
Kill the Messenger, a thriller based on Webbs story, will be released October 10.
In Managing a Nightmare, Dujmovic attributed the initial outcry over the Dark Alliance series to societal shortcomings that are not present in the spy agency.
As a personal post-script, I would submit that ultimately the CIA-drug story says a lot more about American society on the eve of the millennium that [sic] it does about either the CIA or the media, he wrote. We live in somewhat coarse and emotional timeswhen large numbers of Americans do not adhere to the same standards of logic, evidence, or even civil discourse as those practiced by members of the CIA community.
Webb obviously saw things differently. He reflected on his fall from grace in the 2002 book, Into the Buzzsaw. Prior to Dark Alliance, Webb said, I was winning awards, getting raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV shows, and judging journalism contests.
And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason Id enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadnt been, as Id assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job, Webb wrote. The truth was that, in all those years, I hadnt written anything important enough to suppress.
Photo: Webb: Bob Berg/Getty Images; Kill the Messenger: Chuck Zlotnick/Focus Features; Contras: Bill Gentile/Corbis
Email the author: [email protected]
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Apr 2013
#11
YOU're WELCOME! The most up - to -date fake drug war info on the web is here at DU
777man
Apr 2014
#79
3 great interviews with former DEA agent Celerino Castillo III - a True American Hero and Patriot
777man
Apr 2013
#12
Sadly, there will continue to be no shortage of items bearing out that the situation is, in fact,
villager
May 2013
#17
5/30/13 Ex-L.A. Times Writer Jesse Katz Apologizes for "Tawdry" Attacks on Gary Webb
777man
Jun 2013
#18
'Moonrise Kingdom's' Lucas Hedges to Play Jeremy Renner's Son in 'Kill the Messenger'
777man
Jul 2013
#21
'Boardwalk Empire' Star Michael K. Williams May Play 'Freeway' Rick Ross in Jeremy Renner Movie
777man
Jul 2013
#22
7/26/13 Andy Garcia and Robert Patrick (THE Terminator!)Join "Kill The Messenger"
777man
Jul 2013
#29
8/26/2013 Former West Wing Star Richard Schiff to portray Walter Pincus in "Kill The Messnger"
777man
Sep 2013
#31
9/4/2013 KILL THE MESSENGER Filming is now wrapped and the project is in post production
777man
Sep 2013
#32
OCT 19 2013 El Paso Times / Ex-DEA officials: CIA operatives involved in 'Kiki' Camarena murder
777man
Oct 2013
#33
10/10/2013 FOX NEWS / US intelligence assets in Mexico reportedly tied to murdered DEA agent
777man
Oct 2013
#34
12/16/13 Veterans today -- CIA Connection TO DEA Agent’s Murder “TOO HOT FOR FOX NEWS”
777man
Dec 2013
#39
Robert plumlee's original article "I Ran Drugs for Uncle Sam" (1990) - years before Gary Webb
777man
Jan 2014
#46
Proceso articles Camarena murder Hector Berrellez, Tosh Plumlee, Phil Jordan, Mike Holm
777man
Jan 2014
#47
Celerino Castillo III Video Interview Parts 1 to 7 (2009) Drug Trafficking- Central America
777man
Jan 2014
#48
KillTheMessenger w/ Jeremy Renner make @IndieWire’s list of Most Anticipated Films of 2014.
777man
Jan 2014
#49
1/4/14 DEA Case Threatens to Expose US Government-Sanctioned Drug-Running by Bill Conroy
777man
Jan 2014
#51
1/14/14 TIME MAGAZINE--U.S. Government Helped Rise of Mexican Drug Cartel: Mexican newspaper reveals
777man
Jan 2014
#56
1/19/14 ICE Investigation Targeting Drug Planes Plagued by Scandal,Court Records Show by Bill Conroy
777man
Jan 2014
#57
2/22/2014 Ex-DEA Agent Phil Jordan: Chapo funded EPN's Campaign Saturday, February 22, 2014
777man
Feb 2014
#60
3/1/14 Ex DEA Hector Berrellez: Narco-Villain “El Chapo’s” Arrest Packaged for Media Consumption
777man
Mar 2014
#61
2/28/14 Ex DEA Hector Berrellez& Phil Jordan: 'Chapo' Guzman had role in the 'Kiki' Camarena case
777man
Mar 2014
#62
ARCHIVED LINKS ----- Kevin Warren's site www.wethepeople.la , FAIR, COMPLETE KERRY REPORT ONLINE
777man
Mar 2014
#72
3 NYT articles CIA Ignored Tips Alleging Contra Drug Links, Report Says By Walter Pincus
777man
Apr 2014
#80
Billion-Dollar Narco Jr Cuts a Deal -SINALOA CARTEL HAD DEAL WITH DEA (3 YR OLD story on NARCONEWS)
777man
Apr 2014
#83
How Crack Funded a CIA War: Gary Webb cnn Interview on the Contras and Ronald Reagan (1996)
777man
Apr 2014
#85
AUSA ROBERT MERKLE ADMITS Medellin Cartel Leader allowed to keep his fortune - probably freed
777man
Apr 2014
#86
Interview with Retired ISI Chief Hamid Gul names drug lords in Afgahn Government
777man
Jul 2014
#98
5.30.14- 3 Ex-DEA agents+CIA pilot interviewed RE: CAMARENA MURDER - CONTRA DRUGS
777man
Jul 2014
#105
9.10.14 Hollywood’s Gary Webb Movie and the Message that Big Media Couldn’t Kill
777man
Sep 2014
#115
9.17.14 KTM Director Michael Cuesta Interview-New Film Recounts Controversial Reporting on CIA,Crack
777man
Sep 2014
#118
9.25.14 Return of the messenger: How Jeremy Renner's new film Kill The Messenger will vindicate Sacr
777man
Sep 2014
#121
9.26.14 Variety:Jeremy Renner gives his best performance since 'The Hurt Locker' in this assiduous,
777man
Sep 2014
#123
9.22.14 CAPITAL FILE--Jeremy Renner Talks 'Kill the Messenger' Movie, Marriage, and Fatherhood
777man
Sep 2014
#124
9.25.14 Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb By Ryan Deverea
777man
Sep 2014
#125
9.22.14 MPAA CEO,Senator Chris Dodd greets Jeremy Renner at Washington DC KTM screening
777man
Sep 2014
#128
2005 The Life and Times of Gary Webb His Journalism Was Vindicated, Yet the Industry Kept Him in Exi
777man
Sep 2014
#129
9/29/14 Depaulia--- ‘Kill the Messenger': A fantastic, slow-burning political thriller
777man
Sep 2014
#130
9.30.14 Yahoo.com: A Government Conspiracy Unravels in 'Kill the Messenger' Clip (Exclusive)
777man
Sep 2014
#132
9.30.14 Michael K. Williams Clueless of Freeway Ricky Ross Until ‘Messenger’ Role
777man
Sep 2014
#133
Senator John Kerry: US Government Knowingly Hired Drug Traffickers for CONTRA Aid
777man
Sep 2014
#134
10.01.14 ‘Kill the Messenger’ captures story of former Northerner editor’s rich life & tragic death
777man
Oct 2014
#137
10.3.14 LA Times --Jeremy Renner reflects on an unexpected Hollywood trajectory --By Josh Rottenberg
777man
Oct 2014
#139
10.3.14 Suntimes--Jeremy Renner plays reporter whose life was ruined after uncovering Iran-Contra
777man
Oct 2014
#140
10.4.14 Cleaveland Plain Dealer-Gary Webb and 'Kill the Messenger':Reporter played by Jeremy Renner
777man
Oct 2014
#141
10.4.14 - Two New Clips from KILL THE MESSENGER MOVIE - Gary Webb/Jeremy Renner
777man
Oct 2014
#142
10.5.14-The New York Times’s Belated Admission on the Contra-Cocaine Scandal by Robert Parry
777man
Oct 2014
#144
10.5.14-The Resurrection of Reporter Gary Webb: Thanks to Hollywood, Will He Get Last Word Against t
777man
Oct 2014
#145
10.6.14- Sac bee -‘Kill the Messenger’ sheds light on dark time for late Sacramento reporter
777man
Oct 2014
#146
10.6.14-THR- 'Kill the Messenger': Jeremy Renner Deconstructs Journalist Gary Webb's Legacy
777man
Oct 2014
#147
10.5.14- Michael K. Williams on what ‘Kill the Messenger’ says about the drug war
777man
Oct 2014
#149
10.7.14 Huff Post-Why Jeremy Renner's Kill the Messenger Role Is Like Rock Music by Nell Minow
777man
Oct 2014
#151
10.7.14 Roger's Review-- Kill the Messenger – Jeremy Renner & Michael Cuesta by Dean Rogers
777man
Oct 2014
#152
10.6.14 DEMOCRACY NOW-Inside the Dark Alliance:Gary Webb on the CIA, the Contras,&the Crack Cocaine
777man
Oct 2014
#153
10.7.14-REUTERS- For Jeremy Renner, 'Kill the Messenger' is a story that had to be told
777man
Oct 2014
#154
10.2.14 SCRIPPS MEDIA Inc, --VIDEO-Major Hollywood film has ties to Northern Kentucky
777man
Oct 2014
#157
10.8.14 YAHOO-Michael Cuesta's "Kill the Messenger" deserves your attention this weekend.
777man
Oct 2014
#159
10.8.14 Jeremy Renner - Dead Journalist's Family Stunned By Jeremy Renner's Portrayal
777man
Oct 2014
#160
10.8.14 COLLIDER--Jeremy Renner Talks KILL THE MESSENGER, Balancing Fact and Fiction, Why He Wanted
777man
Oct 2014
#161
10.8.14-INDIEWIRE-Jeremy Renner on How His Famous Friends Helped 'Kill the Messenger'
777man
Oct 2014
#162
10.9.14-DALLAS OBSERVER-The Tragedy of Gary Webb Stings Even When Kill the Messenger Flags
777man
Oct 2014
#163
10.9.14- BUFFALO NEWS-Film depicts reporter’s efforts to break CIA-Contra affair by Jeff Simon
777man
Oct 2014
#164
10.9.14 NARCONEWS-Distribute this Exciting Flyer and Become a Narco News Messenger
777man
Oct 2014
#167
10.2.14-NY TIMES-Resurrecting a Disgraced Reporter ‘Kill the Messenger’ Recalls a Reporter Wrongly D
777man
Oct 2014
#169
10.9.14 Washington POST-‘Kill the Messenger’ movie review: Sticking to Gary Webb’s story
777man
Oct 2014
#172
10.9.14 NY POST-‘Kill the Messenger’turns journalist into unconvincing hero by Kyle Smith
777man
Oct 2014
#175
10.10.14 Pittsburgh Post Gazette- review: 'Messenger' fascinating but sobering by Barbara Vanchen
777man
Oct 2014
#177
10.9.14 LA TIMES -'Kill the Messenger' a cautionary tale for crusading reporters
777man
Oct 2014
#182
10.9.14-EXAMINER.COM-Jeremy Renner still missing "it" factor in 'Kill the Messenger'
777man
Oct 2014
#183
10.9.14 HOUSTON CHRONICLE-Kill the Messenger' raises as many questions as it answers by Mick LaSalle
777man
Oct 2014
#185
10.9.14 Journal Sentinal-Kill the Messenger' tells tale of reporter's clash with CIA by Duane Dudeck
777man
Oct 2014
#186
10.10.14 Jeremy Renner Says 'Kill the Messenger' Hits Close to Home:"It Became Something I Had to G
777man
Oct 2014
#196
10.10.14 Jeremy Renner Was So Invested In 'Kill The Messenger,' He Created A Company To Make It
777man
Oct 2014
#197
Jeremy Renner, Michael Cuesta Spotlight Gary Webb’s Story and Family at ‘Kill the Messenger’ Premier
777man
Oct 2014
#199
10.12.14CNN(VID)Interview with Jeremy Renner& Michael Cuesta 11am "Reliable Sources" Show
777man
Oct 2014
#203
10.10.14 Washington Post Still Trashing Gary WEBB- article by Kristen Page Kirby
777man
Oct 2014
#211
10.12.14 Jeremy Renner,Michael K.Williams, Michael Cuesta Attend ‘Kill The Messenger’ Screening
777man
Oct 2014
#215
10.9.14DEMOCRACY NOW-"Kill the Messenger" Resurrects Gary Webb, Journalist Maligned for Exposing CIA
777man
Oct 2014
#216
10.12.14 EXAMINER-Exclusive:Jeremy Renner and author Nick Schou talk 'Kill The Me
777man
Oct 2014
#217
10.12.14-HawaiiReporter-'Kill the Messenger' Puts Integrity of US Media in Question
777man
Oct 2014
#218
10.12.14 Philly.com-Gary Webb, Jon Stewart, and the stories that are just too true to tell
777man
Oct 2014
#219
10.10.14HUFF POST KillThe Messenger:How The Media Destroyed Gary Webb by Ryan Grimm
777man
Oct 2014
#220
10.11.14-MSNBC- Were there ties between CIA and drug deals? Nick Schou Interview w/Betty Nguyen
777man
Oct 2014
#221
10.13.14-We have to stop killing any 'Messenger' that dares to expose government corruption
777man
Oct 2014
#222
10.13.14 NARCONEWS-P3-Gary Webb "You Could Read this Story Anywhere in the World"
777man
Oct 2014
#223
10.14.14NATION-Gary Webb,a Very Fine Journalist Who Deserved Better Than He Got by Alexander Cockurn
777man
Oct 2014
#224
Almost 20 Yrs After Gary Webb Revealed CIA’s Role in the Crack Epidemic, Some of us Still Can’t
777man
Oct 2014
#226
10.14.14 OnMilwaukee-"Kill the Messenger"uncovers a solid movie in hunt for truth (and Oscars)
777man
Oct 2014
#233
10.10.14 ‘Kill The Messenger’ Movie Revisits the CIA and How Crack-Cocaine Exploded in the US
777man
Oct 2014
#236
Former kingpin Rick Ross talks Gary Webb’s death, C.I.A. complicity, and new doc ‘Freeway: Crack in
777man
Oct 2014
#239
10.18.14COUNTERPUNCH-A Smoking Gun That
 Actually Smoked The CIA and the Art of the “Un-Cover-Up”
777man
Oct 2014
#246
10.13.14-ALJAZEERA-film based on Gary Webb’s book ‘Dark Alliance,’ involving drugs, the CIA and Nic
777man
Oct 2014
#248
10.17.14-MSNBC(VID)Chris Hayes interviews Academy Award Nominee Jeremy Renner about his new movie.
777man
Oct 2014
#249
10.17.14-CLN-(VID)Jeremy Renner’s ‘Kill the Messenger’ Exposes CIA Cocaine Trafficking
777man
Oct 2014
#250
10.17.14 WSWS.ORG-Kill the Messenger: Shedding light on CIA criminality and conspiracy
777man
Oct 2014
#251
10.20.14TICOTIMES-Reviving the messenger:Gary Webb’s tale on film by NORMAN STOCKWELL
777man
Oct 2014
#265
10.20.14HUFF POST-The Gary Webb Story:Still Killing the Messenger by JOSEPH A. PALERMO
777man
Oct 2014
#267
10.10.14 ESQUIRE-Jeremy Renner Talks Inhabiting the Role of Investigative Journalist Gary Webb
777man
Oct 2014
#268
10.10.14 ESQUIRE-How Gary Webb Died A few words on the man portrayed in Kill the Messenge
777man
Oct 2014
#269
10.20.14 FIUSM-“Kill the Messenger,” a film about honest morality By Rafael Abreu
777man
Oct 2014
#270
10.19.14 THE FASHIONISTO-Jeremy Renner Dons Dolce & Gabbana Pinstripe Suit for ‘KTM’ Screening
777man
Oct 2014
#271
10.21.14 FAIR-A 'Worthless and Whiny' Attack on a Genuine Journalistic Hero by Peter Hart
777man
Oct 2014
#273
10.20.14 VULTURE-A Reporter Gets Torn Apart by His Own in Kill the Messenger By David Edelstein
777man
Oct 2014
#276
Looking Back--CH 1 Whiteout The CIA, Drugs and the Press By ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
777man
Oct 2014
#278
10.18.14 Killing the messenger — again: New film arouses new ire from big media
777man
Oct 2014
#279
10.24.14SMH-Kill the Messenger is a quietly intense tale of a journalist and his investigation.
777man
Oct 2014
#280
10.24.14 WASH POST-Undue criticism of Gary Webb by Jeff Epton (Letter to the editor)
777man
Oct 2014
#285
10.25.14 SALON-From Gary Webb to James Risen: The struggle for the soul of journalism
777man
Oct 2014
#287
10.19.14 CEPR-In Context of Accusations of CIA Drug Smuggling, WaPo Calls $10 Million a Week "Relati
777man
Oct 2014
#291
10.29.14 HeraldSun-Jeremy Renner’s crusading reporter Gary Webb wins over audience in movie KTM
777man
Oct 2014
#294
10.29.14 Robert Parry is RIGHT AGAIN- NYT-Nazi's used by FBI.CIA, sheltered in the USA
777man
Oct 2014
#295
10.21.14MOTHER JONES-We Spent $7.6 Billion to Crush the Afghan Opium Trade—and It's Doing Better Tha
777man
Nov 2014
#297
10.25.14 AL JAZEERA-The decline of journalism from Watergate to 'Dark Alliance'
777man
Nov 2014
#298
11.2.14 SMH-Kill the Messenger review: Competent telling of Gary Webb's story shuns detail
777man
Nov 2014
#303
11.9.14 OFF TOPIC- The Insane Story Behind The Largest Drug Cash Seizure Of All Time – $226 Million
777man
Nov 2014
#308
11.12.14 EXAMINER- "Kill The Messenger" is important; Jeremy Renner compelling in it
777man
Nov 2014
#309
11.14.14-TRUTHOUT-"Kill the Messenger" Kills a Chance to Comment on Real Reagan Atrocities
777man
Nov 2014
#312
11.17.14 SALON-Reagan’s hip-hop nightmare: How an ugly cocaine controversy reignited 30 years later
777man
Nov 2014
#314
12.04.14 A friend remembers investigative journalist Gary Webb on the 10th anniversary of his death
777man
Dec 2014
#319
12-16-14 EDITOR &PUBLISHER-Business of News: An Editor with No Regrets-JERRY CEPPOS
777man
Dec 2014
#322
7/1/15 L.A. DEA Agent Unraveled the CIA's Alleged Role in the Murder of Kiki Camarena
777man
Jul 2015
#331
4.17.15 Tucson Sentinal "Why Chuck Bowden's final story took 16 years to write"
777man
Aug 2015
#332
7/28/15-German documentary-'butcher of Lyon' Klaus Barbie became a fixer for drug lords
777man
Sep 2015
#334
11/14/15 CIA-NUGAN HAND BANKER FOUND ALIVE 35 YEARS LATER - John Michael Hand Found in Idaho
777man
Nov 2015
#336
11/6/15 VIDEO- Michael Hand vanished in 1980 amid rumors of CIA and organized crime involvement deal
777man
Nov 2015
#339
12/17/15-ProPublica,David Epstein, Devils, Deals and the DEA Why Chapo Guzman was the biggest winner
777man
Dec 2015
#342
Danilo Blandon Smiled when asked if he had been tipped off about the 1986 raid - Mark Levin
777man
Jan 2016
#343
Creating a Crime: How the CIA Commandeered the DEA September 11, 2015 by Douglas Valentine
777man
Jan 2016
#346
Bank Records Seized at Blandon's House Revealed U.S. Treasury/State Accounts with 9 Million Balance
777man
Jan 2016
#347