Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-media-destruction-gary-webb/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.
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)The book came from a series of columns that Webb wrote in the Mercury News.
The columns can be found here:
http://www.narconews.com/darkalliance/shock/start.htm
His follow-up reporting in 1996-7 may be found here:
http://web.archive.org/web/19961220021057/http://www.sjmercury.com/drugs/postscriptstart.htm
In book form, free down load here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/98863510/The-CIA-The-Contras-And-the-Crack-Cocaine-Explosion-by-Gary-Webb-amp-Maxine-Waters
A shorter version of the columns/book can be found here:
http://circumspectnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/4-CIA-Drugs-Webbs-DARK-ALLIANCE.pdf
Shooting self in head TWICE seems to be a pretty effective suicide method.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)The CIA considers the American black community to be collateral damage.