Truth lights up 'Dark Alliance'Re "The truth in 'Dark Alliance,' " Opinion, Aug.
18 I am glad to see The Times run this important piece about an untold story that has shaped our current global situation. Nothing stated factually in the book has been disproved. Previous to the Iran-Contra coverup, there was Gary Webb investigating drug forfeiture episodes that eventually led to the creation of some oversight in that area. We need many more Webbs in this season of disinformation and secrecy.JOHN WEYAND Santa Monica Nick Schou's opinion piece on Webb is right on the mark. But there is a deeper issue in the decision of the mainstream newspapers to gang up on Webb. The fact is that Webb's main arguments about the linkages between drugs, insurrection and intelligence operations were well documented in the work of Alfred McCoy ("Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia") with regard to the Vietnam War. The linkage between opium production and insurrection was well known in Afghani operations against the Russians and is part and parcel of the political economy of Lebanon, particularly in the Bekaa Valley. The historical evidence is that drug-production linkages between opposing forces in insurrection and counterintelligence forces are fairly frequent in part a reflection of the extreme need for a high-value cash crop to finance weapons in extreme conflict situations. The journalists who jumped on Webb were ignorant of a major theme of international politics. If Webb made errors, it was in the details; his broad theses were already known to be correct in the scholarly literature even before the San Jose Mercury-News published his series. Kudos to Schou for setting the record straight, but the tragedy is that the record was not straight from the get-go. GREGORY P. NOWELL Associate Professor of Political Science State University of New York Albany Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
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