Survivors include his wife, Karla Webb; their children, Kimberly Ware and husband, Kyle, Laci Higgins and husband, Wesley, Kenna Logan and Heath Webb and . [71] "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide," she said. Do something else with your life," the voice urges. "[78], While finding this part of the series unsupported, Schou said that some of the series's claims on CIA involvement are supported, writing that "The CIA conducted an internal investigation that acknowledged in March 1998 that the agency had covered up Contra drug trafficking for more than a decade." 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Writing on the Los Angeles Times opinion page, Schou said, "Webb asserted, improbably, that the Blandn-Meneses-Ross drug ring opened 'the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles,' helping to 'spark a crack explosion in urban America.' "It was terrible," said Price. WEBB, Mr. Gary Lee, our beloved son, husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle went home with his heavenly Father Monday, August 29, 2011 at University of Michigan Hospital. Celebrezze eventually sued the Plain Dealer and won an undisclosed out of court settlement. There were no offers. His. [55] Webb eventually chose Cupertino, but was unhappy with the routine stories he was reporting there and the long commute. "If there was an eye to the storm," Katz wrote, "if there was a mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw most responsible for flooding LA's streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick. A perceptive, engaging woman of 48, she has turned an adjoining study into a small shrine to her late husband, who would have celebrated his 50th birthday five weeks ago. [14] In 1984, Webb wrote a story titled Driving Off With Profits which claimed that the promoters of a race in Cleveland paid themselves nearly a million dollars from funds that should have gone to the city of Cleveland. When he was engaged, he worked hard. [81], Peter Kornbluh, a researcher at George Washington University's National Security Archives, also does not agree that the report vindicated the series. "The second bullet," adds Bell, who has worked for more than 20 years in the area of respiratory therapy, "struck his carotid artery. He became an investigator for the California State Legislature, published a book based on the "Dark Alliance" series in 1998, and did freelance investigative reporting. Here's the section from Wikipedia: Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. Gary Webb was born on March 21, 1959 to Wayne and Peggy Davie Webb in Lamesa, Texas. He was taken to hospital by air ambulance. Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst with the George Washington University's National Security Archive, was one of the first to suggest that Webb had overplayed his hand in the Mercury News version of "Dark Alliance". Baca claimed that a drug dealer with close links to the CIA had framed her boyfriend, who was also in the cocaine business. 17 years ago, Gary Webb wrote a series of articles that said some bad things about the CIA and drug traffickers. Both Gary's ex-wife Susan and his brother Kurt viewed the body and they confirmed the location of the wounds to me when I met them. ", As Webb would tell a friend, after he had been ostracised: "You have to look out, when the big dog gets off the porch.". Army. After police brought the three passengers back to the station, the news had come: John Grachek died at the hospital. Irene's character a reminder of an old controversy about Gary Webb. By this stage, he was prepared to work as a jobbing reporter. Beth Ann Webb May 10, 1962 - May 22, 2019. In 1986, Webb wrote an article saying that the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, Frank D. Celebrezze accepted contributions from groups with organized crime connections. He was born August 27, 1968 in Saginaw, Michigan to Taylor Jr. and Loretta Webb. He was found dead on Friday morning in what the police said was an apparent suicide. I realise now he was thinking about suicide.". Webb, a former San Jose Mercury News reporter, was found dead in his Carmichael home Friday morning. The hard-charging investigative reporter's career imploded in the wake of his much-criticized "Dark Alliance" series about the CIA and crack cocaine. Webb, whose plans to become a journalist had begun when he was 13, but never included equine death notices, resigned from the Mercury News a few months later. ", In contrast, the series received support from Steve Weinberg, a former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors. So, this is not something you really make a career out of, nor would you want to. On December 10th, 2004 Gary Webb was found dead of two (allegedly self inflicted) gun shots to the head. After gaining access to secret grand jury transcripts in 1996, and following the subsequent paper trail that followed therein, Gary Webb made the shocking discovery that government informant, Oscar Danilo Blandn, was covertly selling tons of cocaine for the Central Intelligence Agency in South Central Los Angeles, and other parts of the country. When it did, beginning with The Washington Post, it shocked Webb's critics as much as his many admirers. After examining the investigations and prosecutions of the main figures in the series, Blandn, Meneses and Ross, it concluded that "Although the investigations suffered from various problems of communication and coordination, their successes and failures were determined by the normal dynamics that affect the success of scores of investigations of high-level drug traffickers These factors, rather than anything as spectacular as a systematic effort by the CIA or any other intelligence agency to protect the drug trafficking activities of Contra supporters, determined what occurred in the cases we examined. Look at the way the US press reports on Iraq. They failed because the climate was more sceptical then. He made that very clear. After divorcing his wife, being unable to obtain work from newspapers and facing increasing debts, Gary was forced to sell his home. But once the flak really started to fly, from the nation's grandest newspapers, Ceppos - having come under exactly what form of pressure it is difficult to know - printed a retraction which Webb dismissed as spineless. Webb came home and put his belongings in order, dropping his Kentucky Post poster in the bin. "He was crying. [32], The New York Times published two articles on the series in mid-October, both written by reporter Tim Golden. By the autumn of 1997, on medication for clinical depression, he was given leave of absence from the paper. Calling the Post's overall focus "misplaced", Overholser expressed regret that the paper had not taken the opportunity to re-examine whether the CIA had overlooked Contra involvement in drug smuggling, "a subject The Post and the public had given short shrift. Osborn, Barbara Bliss (MarchApril 1998). Hired by the San Jose Mercury News, Webb contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. The room is decorated with his trophies: a Pulitzer prize hangs next to his HL Mencken award; also on the wall is a framed advertisement for The Kentucky Post. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. Gary Webb was a US Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who broke the story of the CIA involvement in the importation of cocaine into the U.S. Much of the article highlighted the failure of law enforcement agencies to successfully prosecute them and stated that this was largely due to their Contra and CIA connections. [19] The series was published in The Mercury News in three parts, from Sunday, 18 August 1996 to 20 August 1996, with a first long article and one or two shorter articles appearing each day. His father was a British Airways bus driver based at Heathrow Airport, and his mother Beryl later ran his fan club at the height of his fame. Gary Webb, Into the Buzzsaw, CH 13, Prometheus Books. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department began its own investigation into the "Dark Alliance" claims.[30]. He was born in Jacksonville, Texas, on March 13, 1954, to Carroll and Waldine Webb, the younger brother of Diane Webb. After his resignation from The Mercury News, Webb expanded the "Dark Alliance" series into a book that responded to the criticism of the series and described his experiences writing the story and dealing with the controversy. According to the report's "Epilogue," the report was completed in December 1997 but was not released because the DEA was still attempting to use Danilo Blandn in an investigation of international drug dealers and was concerned that the report would affect the viability of the investigation. It would have been our 25th wedding anniversary," Bell recalls. "Do you think that a part of him did this out of revenge?" "[76] Scott Herhold, Webb's first editor at The Mercury-News, wrote in a 2013 column that "Gary Webb was a journalist of outsized talent. The coroner's staff concluded that the second shot hit an artery.[70]. [22], The lede of the first article set out the series' basic claims: "For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." In a long review of the series' claims in The Baltimore Sun, Weinberg said "I think the critics have been far too harsh. A 1985 series, "Doctoring the Truth," uncovered problems in the State Medical Board[12] and led to an Ohio House investigation which resulted in major revisions to the state Medical Practice Act. Webb, unlike Blum or Kerry, had to face his difficulties alone. But they underestimated the paradigm shifting power of the internet, and the intelligence of Webb, who not only listed the explosive story online . In 2015 Gary Webb, from Gatehouse of Fleet in Dumfries and Galloway . [6], Webb first began writing for the student newspaper at his college in Indianapolis. "I think Kerry learnt a lesson from all this," reporter Robert Parry says. [49], The paper also gave Webb permission to visit Central America again to get more evidence supporting the story. "It sounds crazy," says Bell, "but having his motorbike stolen was the last straw. [46] Overholser was harshly critical of the series, "reported by a seemingly hotheaded fellow willing to have people leap to conclusions his reporting couldn't back up." Many writers discussing the series point to errors in it. "Ross," his report went on, dealt "on a scale never before conceived," with "a staggering turnover" of "50 to 100 kilos of cocaine a day". [65], Within "The Mighty Wurlitzer Plays On" essay Webb stated he believed there was an active "collusion between the press and the powerful" to report freely on inconsequential matters, "but when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff We begin to see the limits of our freedoms". When facts didn't fit his theory, he tended to shove them to the sidelines. It also examined "how CIA handled and responded to information regarding allegations of drug trafficking" by people involved in Contra activities or support. [43] He did this in a column that appeared on November 3, defending the series, but also committing the paper to a review of major criticisms. "He told the guys with him he was fine," she recalls, "got back on the bike, then passed out, half an hour later. Gary Webb's Ex-Wife Set to Attend New York Premiere By Richard Horgan October 8, 2014 Cleveland Plain Dealer film critic Clint O'Connor had a solid feature the other day about Kill the. Webb worked for several newspapers including The Kentucky Post and Cleveland Plain Dealer. This did not happen in Webb's case. "But that," pointed out Blum, who is now a Washington attorney, "in no way - in no way - diminishes the wrongness of what these bastards did. With Baca's encouragement, he started to investigate a large-scale Nicaraguan cocaine dealer named Oscar Danilo Blandn. He was no villain: He genuinely believed his thesis about the CIA. Unable to get work from any major US newspaper, he spent the four months before his death writing for * a free-sheet covering the Sacramento area. Managed by: Pam Wilson (may be slow to respond) Last Updated: [60], The House Intelligence Committee issued its report in February 2000. Jeff Leen, assistant managing editor for investigative reporting at The Washington Post, wrote in a 2014 opinion page article that "the report found no CIA relationship with the drug ring Webb had written about." "I told Gary not to go near this story," his source replies, in an emotional voice. Gary Webb, a hero of authentic journalism, an inspiration to truth-seekers around the world, a friend to all of us at Narco News, but now an unemployable outcast in the world of commercial newspapers, took his own life on December 10, 2004. "He told me, not long before he died, that he didn't want to get up in the mornings," she says. Ross was a major drug dealer in Los Angeles. [26] Other papers were slow to pick up the story, but African Americans quickly took note, especially in South Central Los Angeles where the dealers discussed in the series had been active. So he blew her off. [52] Webb was allowed to keep working on the story and made one more trip to Nicaragua in March. GARY WEBB: His wife's office was burglarized. He recently told the American Journalism Review (whose scrupulously researched piece, by Susan Paterno, is the only serious documentation of the Webb case I could find anywhere in the orthodox American media) that Webb's critics in rival newspapers, "quoted these CIA guys - who had a tremendous amount to hide - as though they were telling the truth. By the time Webb began researching Dark Alliance, Bell was 38 and they had three children. [4] When Webb's father retired from the Marines, the family settled in a suburb of Indianapolis, where Webb and his brother attended high school. "By the end of his life he was just in a lot of pain," said Webb's ex-wife, Susan Bell. Walter Bogdanich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who worked with Webb on The Plain Dealer, told American Journalism Review editor Susan Paterno "He was brilliant; he knew more about public records than anybody I've ever known. 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