Upcoming Book On Gary Webb Hits Critics of CIA Series
By Joe Strupp
Published: August 08, 2006 12:15 PM ET NEW YORK Nearly two years after the death of former San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb, uncertainties remain over exactly what drove him to suicide, who was to blame for the problems with his controversial CIA/crack series, how much of the reporting was accurate, and how the harsh reactions to the series affected its impact.
An upcoming book by a veteran investigative reporter who knew Webb and reported on many of the same drug-related issues seeks to clear up some of the uncertainties, while defending much of Webb's reporting, criticizing the major newspapers that attacked him, and pointing out several new facts related to his infamous series and tragic death.
Webb, who died Dec. 10, 2004, from a gunshot wound to the head after a long-running bout of depression, is known to most as the hard-driving veteran investigative reporter who overstepped some facts in the three-part series that the Mercury News ran in 1996, titled "Dark Alliance." The series sought to link the CIA and its Nicaraguan Contra supporters of the mid-1980's to the burgeoning crack epidemic that exploded, at first, in Los Angeles.
Soon after the series ran, three of the country's major newspapers sought to debunk Webb's assertions of a strong CIA link to the crack scourge, while The Mercury News eventually admitted mistakes and all but hung Webb out to dry. After leaving the paper when he was banished to a bureau police beat, and failing to find a reporting job at any other major news outlet over several years, Webb took his own life, amid other personal problems.
Since his death, Webb's story has often been seen as a simple case of a reporter going too far in a complicated story, being knocked down by critics, and succumbing to a dark depression that followed. But according to author Nick Schou, and his book, "Kill the Messenger," which is due out in October via Nation Books, the truth is not as clear.
While Schou admits major mistakes on the part of Webb and his editors, he saves his harshest vitriol for The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, which severely criticized the series in the months after it ran. "So much of the reporting was personal and an attack on Gary Webb, it was unbelievable," Schou tells E&P.
Among the revelations or claims by Schou in the book:
• Mercury News editors, allegedly against Webb's request, focused the series and its lead more on the CIA link to the crack epidemic in Los Angeles than the reporter had wanted. In general, Schou suggests, editors let Webb down in not being more vigilant before the series saw the light of day.
• After attacking the series for allegedly failing to prove its premise -- that the CIA, via Nicaraguan contra-supported covert operations, had helped boost the crack epidemic in the Los Angeles area -- other newspapers under-covered a CIA Inspector General's report in 1998 that admitted certain CIA connections to drug trafficking.
• Webb told a former girlfriend just weeks before his death that he had planned to commit suicide, claiming in a phone call to her that he was holding a gun to his head and had already bought a cremation ticket.
• Dawn Garcia, the former Mercury News' state editor who worked closest with Webb on the stories, spoke publicly for the first time on the series, telling Schou that the basic premise of the series was solid, but its presentation was poor. "The core of the series was correct," she says in the book. "But the conclusions Gary drew were too sweeping. We could have had almost as strong or stronger a story by being more explanatory in what we thought and why we thought so."
Schou, an investigative reporter with OC Weekly in Orange County Calif., also seeks to debunk the conspiracy theories that Webb was murdered. Because he had to shoot himself twice in the head to end his life, speculation has surfaced in many corners that Webb might have been bumped off. But Schou raises various pieces of evidence to kill that theory.
Finally, Schou spends an entire chapter essentially backing up Webb's reporting on several figures in Los Angeles with ties to the crack trade and the CIA, most notably a former police officer and convicted drug dealer, Ronald Lister. "Lister's business deals with powerful Salvadoran officials, his role in supplying the contras with arms, his relationship to retired CIA officials and his ties to [two prominent Nicaraguan drug smugglers] all suggest that the 'Dark Alliance' drug ring had closer ties to the CIA than even Webb could have known," Schou writes.
In all, the book paints Webb's career as that of a dogged investigative reporter, but with the occasional over-reach or mistake. His personal life, meanwhile, included a broken marriage and a history of both affairs and emotional problems.
"Nobody really seemed to understand the guy and what his story really was," Schou tells E&P about his reasons for writing the book. "Most of the (Dark Alliance) story was very solid." But Schou stresses that in the editing is where many of the problems occurred.
"You cannot get around the fact that there were major errors in how it was put together," he claims. "The main problems were that it failed to prove the (CIA-connected) drug ring sparked the crack epidemic." He says there was a CIA link to the crack trade, which he called "significant," adding that that CIA link alone would have been worth the series.
Schou contends that the Mercury News editors, including former executive editors Jerry Ceppos and David Yarnold, should have done more to properly organized and edit the series, and should not have made the CIA-connection so prominent.
"Gary was a very aggressive reporter and the type of guy you needed to reign in," Schou said in an interview. "That said, he was in an atmosphere with editors who did not have a lot of editing experience." Ceppos and Yarnold both declined Schou's requests to be interviewed for the book.
Schou goes through Webb's entire career, noting past mistakes and early successes. Among the examples were two stories that prompted libel suits during his time at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, which were ultimately settled out of court, but were both based on misleading headlines Webb did not write.
But the majority of the book concerns the Dark Alliance series, both before and after its publication and later controversy. "There is no other example I can think of where three major newspapers went after the work of one reporter so inline," he says. Adds Schou, "The LA Times alone had 30,000 words debunking the [series] and something like 20 reporters listed."
In the book, Schou includes comments from some of the top people involved in those papers' criticisms, quoting Managing Editor Leo Wolinsky of the L.A Times as saying today that he wished Webb had worked for him, and noting then-Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser writing at the time that the Post and other papers, "showed more energy for protecting the CIA from someone else's journalistic excesses." She also wrote that the topic Webb had taken on was one "the Post and the public had given short shrift."
Schou then tracks Webb through the eight-year downward spiral that followed, from Dark Alliance's 1996 publication to Webb's 2004 suicide. From the Mercury News' sudden withdraw of support for the series to Webb's banishment to a suburban cops beat, his eventual resignation from the paper, his divorce, and final death at the hands of his own gun.
Still, in the end, Schou makes clear that much of Webb's road to suicide was based on his own mental state, a victim of depression whose death cannot be blamed on the Dark Alliance series or the response by others. But he contends that Webb's death might have been avoided if his life had not been so impacted by the series, and his outlook for a future not so darkened.
Joe Strupp ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is a senior editor at E&P.
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