Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb [Paperback]

Nick Schou (Author), Charles Bowden (Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2006

Kill the Messenger tells the story of the tragic death of Gary Webb, the controversial newspaper reporter who committed suicide in December 2004. Webb is the former San Jose Mercury News reporter whose 1996 "Dark Alliance" series on the so-called CIA-crack cocaine connection created a firestorm of controversy and led to his resignation from the paper amid escalating attacks on his work by the mainstream media. Author and investigative journalist Nick Schou published numerous articles on the controversy and was the only reporter to significantly advance Webb's stories. Drawing on exhaustive research and highly personal interviews with Webb's family, colleagues, supporters and critics, this book argues convincingly that Webb's editors betrayed him, despite mounting evidence that his stories were correct. Kill the Messenger examines the "Dark Alliance" controversy, what it says about the current state of journalism in America, and how it led Webb to ultimately take his own life. Webb's widow, Susan Bell, remains an ardent defender of her ex-husband. By combining her story with a probing examination of the one of the most important media scandals in recent memory, this book provides a gripping view of one of the greatest tragedies in the annals of investigative journalism.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Schou personally knew Gary Webb, the reporter with the San Jose Mercury News whose 1996 series of articles linked the CIA to the nation's crack-cocaine plague. Schou, who had spent eight years following a similar story, worried that Webb's suicide in 2004 would cause reporters to shy away from uncovering government involvement in drug trafficking. Schou offers a portrait of a dogged reporter, a motorcycle-driving rebel who was occasionally arrogant and had a history of depression. But Webb, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, also had a reputation for meticulous research. Schou retraces Webb's exhaustive research, which connected crack cocaine sold on the streets of L.A and CIA operations in Nicaragua. Schou also recalls other reporters who faced attacks by the government, lack of support by editors, drug-possession setups, and death threats for investigating CIA involvement in drug trafficking. He also details the personal ruin Webb suffered when his series was greeted first with silence by the journalistic community and later attacked, a series that Schou maintains was on target. An impressive look at the intersection of clandestine government operations and a free press. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Nick Schou is an investigative journalist who worked with Gary Webb on "Dark Alliance." He writes for the LA Weekly and OC Weekly and lives in Long Beach, CA.

Product Details

• Paperback: 278 pages
• Publisher: Nation Books; 1 edition (September 29, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560259302
• ISBN-13: 978-1560259305
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #595,270 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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54 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Kill the Messenger a moving tribute to a great reporter, December 4, 2006

By 

Diana L. Barahona "Diana Barahona" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Paperback)

Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb

by Nick Schou

Since it was the country's major newspapers who did in Gary Webb, it is not surprising that Nick Schou's book about Webb's life and "Dark Alliance," his controversial story about the CIA and crack cocaine, has yet to be reviewed by any of them.

Unlike most of his critics, Gary Webb was a real investigative reporter with a Pulitzer to his name. He dug relentlessly into corporate and government corruption and by all accounts had I.F. Stone's gift for researching documentary evidence. He was also not afraid to seek out sources and question them until he got answers: "One of the ways people would harass each other in Columbus was by saying that Gary Webb of the Plain Dealer wants to interview you. It was a way of giving people heartburn," said a former co-worker.

Webb's instinct for the big story led him to investigate a scandal which had been all but ignored by the media for a decade: the CIA's knowledge of drug trafficking by people linked to its counterrevolutionary war against Nicaragua in the 1980s, and its protection of those traffickers even as they peddled crack in the inner cities of the United States. The story, "Dark Alliance," was published in three parts by the San Jose Mercury News in 1996. It sparked outrage in African American communities, which had been devastated by cheap crack cocaine in the 1980s, and where many suspected the government was behind the epidemic.

Then the backlash began: The Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times all assigned teams of reporters to investigate Webb and find fault with the series. When the executive editor of The Mercury News caved in to the pressure and backed off from the story, Webb felt humilliated by his paper and eventually resigned. He never got a job at a major newspaper again, and fell into a depression which ended with his suicide in 2004.

Schou was moved to write Kill the Messenger because, as an investigative journalist himself, he wanted to set the record straight. He had worked with Webb, investigating a retired Laguna Beach cop, Ronald Lister, who proved to be the crucial link between the CIA and Los Angeles crack wholesaler "Freeway" Ricky Ross. It was this point, more than any other, that newspapers had seized on to discredit Webb--the lack of a "smoking gun" that tied sales of crack in the inner cities to the CIA. While Webb had high hopes that the discovery of Lister's role would clear his name, the Los Angeles Times chose to dismiss Lister as a "con artist."

Webb's series forced the CIA Inspector General to do an investigation, much of which vindicated Webb; but by the time the final report was released in 1998 the big three newspapers had destroyed his career as a newspaperman.

At the same time that Kill the Messenger illuminates the CIA-cocaine connection, it paints an intimate portrait of Webb through interviews with his former bosses and colleagues, family and friends. This is an honest but respectful tribute to a hardworking and talented man who broke the story that many thought would never be told, and who paid the ultimate price.

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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CIA trained and funded Contra death squads also coke dealers, February 20, 2007

By 

Drew Hunkins (Madison, WI United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Paperback)

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - William Colby, former CIA Director

Kill the Messenger does a tremendous service by providing the reader with a detailed account that touches on all the issues that led to Gary Webb's downfall and ultimately his suicide. Also the book delves into the CIA/Contra cocaine smuggling that went on under the radar during the counterinsurgency war that raged in Nicaragua. Of course Webb unearthed much of the story.

One thing the mainstream press liked to do was treat the Contras as if they were a mutually exclusive entity separate from the CIA. Thus when the establishment media reported that the Contras dabbled in drug smuggling they could simultaneously report that at worst the CIA just turned a blind eye. Unfortunately for the CIA and the powers that be, the Contras were wholly trained and funded by the CIA. The CIA and the Contras were essentially one and the same. If the CIA never existed the Contras never would have even been conjured up and never would have been able to wage a bloody war against civilian targets, raping and pillaging throughout the Nicaraguan countryside and sending massive quantities of cocaine into the United States; much of which landed at the doorstep of Los Angeles and other major cities that had just started to feel the sting of Reaganite socio-economic policies.

Webb was basically the first journalist who truly blew the lid off the CIA's Contra cocaine smuggling operations that went on during the early and mid 1980s. Kid glove treatment does not one receive when exposing one of the most powerful and violent institutions in world affairs. Webb was basically vilified by the pillars of establishment journalism for having the temerity to report the truth. The Washington Post and New York Times attacked Webb's work once they realized Dark Alliance was gaining traction among the American public due to it being given extensive coverage via the Internet and black talk radio. The Post even went so far as to have a journalist who was in the pocket of the CIA write a story highly critical of Webb's findings. Being that the Post and Times more or less ignored much of the CIA skullduggery that went on during the 1980s it's not surprising to see the treatment they dealt to Webb because of his chutzpah. Kill the Messenger lays all this out for the reader to dissect. It's interesting to note that the same Post reporter who bashed Webb had decades ago written a highly critical review of Philip Agee's excellent book Inside the Company, a book which exposed CIA lawlessness and abuses.

Webb unearthed that one Contra (CIA) fundraiser, Norwin Meneses, was actually considered the "King of cocaine" in Nicaragua. Kill the Messenger provides the outline in which L.A.'s street gangs were at the end of a chain of a covert action to equip and arm the CIA's Contras. Meneses, and other thugs, play a major role in the book and in the covert action outlined therein. Of course cocaine was a primary funding source. Narcotics often play this role when money must be drummed up in a secret fashion. Of course during the 1980s was when coke was turning to crack and sweeping up the lives of much of the underdogs and poverty stricken.

One technique the mainstream media used in attacking Webb's story was to lament the fact that he often relied heavily on the testimony of criminals under oath. Apparently these sources never talked to a prosecuting attorney, since DAs often rely on such testimony in order to arrive at justice. Kill the Messenger addresses the fact that a respected French journalist who had covered Nicaragua in the 1980s, rushed to Webb's aid because he knew the core of Webb's work was genuine and true. He felt the U.S. media attacks against Webb were completely unjust. It should be remembered that in highly charged issues of this type there often is no proverbial smoking gun. What serious researchers are forced to do is put together a case based on the best available evidence in order to construct a highly probable scenario.

This book should be required reading; it exposes a dark side of American foreign policy that had obvious domestic implications as well. What went on with United States involvment in Central America 25 years ago was ostensibly a modern day extension of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine. Webb was a courageous person who did the American public a great service by weaving the pieces together and providing this incredibly important story. In a just world he'd now be chilling out on the beach with a cold drink in his hand and Pulitzer at his side.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The scary truth, April 7, 2007

By 

Weston Taussig "Weston Taussig" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Paperback)

As the editor of the Applegator Newspaper, I have many books crossed my desk. I was captivated from the beginning to the end. And the story confirmed many of my fears. If one has any interest on the CIA, I highly recommend this book.

J.D. Rogers

Editor of the Applegator Newspaper