July, 1998

Gary Webb Interview by San Francisco Bay Guardian

In August 1996, San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb’s "Dark Alliance" series documented how the CIA helped Nicaragua’s contras sell crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles. The contras used the drug money to finance their war against Nicaragua’s leftist government.

To most readers, the credibility of Webb’s investigation was beyond dispute. The articles spurred congressional hearings and reports from departments such as the federal customs Office corroborating Webb’s allegations, even though many government agencies tried to withhold information from investigators. The northern California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists named Webb journalist of the year for the "Dark Alliance" series.

But the mainstream news media -most prominently the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times - scrambled to discredit his findings. Either they were embarrassed they got scooped or they refused to believe their high-placed government friends were responsible for the nation’s devastating crack boom.

Then the Mercury publicly disowned the story-without ever giving Webb or readers a convincing reason why. The paper’s editors had encouraged Webb in his research, but in the firestorm that followed "Dark Alliance"’s publication they retracted their support for the series. After the controversy, the Merc, which is owned by media giant Knight-Ridder, exiled Webb from its Sacramento bureau to the police beat in Cupertino.

But the mainstream media are ignoring this new evidence too: the Post, the New York Times, and the L.A. Times have all ignored Webb’s book-no reviews, no news stories, no coverage at all.

But as Rep. Maxine Waters (who wrote a strong introduction for the book) told me, "Gary Webb has uncovered one of the dirtiest little secrets of the Reagan administration -that we, as a government, introduced a drug to America’s inner cities that is literally killing thousands of kids, and that we did it purely for short-term political gain in support of a cause that didn’t deserve our support in any way. For reporting that, Webb lost his job. But the book provides vindication."

We interviewed Webb by telephone while he was in Seattle promoting his book.

Bay Guardian: Did you do much new reporting and research for the book after the series ran?

Gary Webb: A lot of stuff came out after the series ran. We got 3,000 pages of new documents from the L.A. Sheriff’s Department’s investigation that was just amazing. Probably 90 percent of the book is new.

BG: What were your most interesting or unexpected new findings?

GW: Some of the most interesting is the stuff the Mercurys News chickened out on and wouldn’t run. What was going on in the DEA’s office in Costa Rica, where the U.S. drug agents were supposed to be investigating drug crimes but were either looking the other way or, as a customs investigation found, were trafficking drugs themselves. This conspiracy went farther than the CIA. It was so liberating to have the chance to lay out everything you have in context and explain to people why it matters.

BG: How did you get the new information?

GW: FOIA requests, tips, and the CIA Inspector General’s January report. And anytime you do a big story people come out of the woodwork, and we had a number of those—specifically this fellow Enrique Miranda, who was an aide to drug lord Norwin Meneses.

BG: One of the main criticisms of the series was that you didn’t have a smoking gun. Do you think you have one now?

GW: When you’re dealing with the CIA, you’re lucky to find any fucking paper at all, much less a smoking gun. You’re never going to find a CIA memo that says, "Go sell crack in L.A." So you have to gather as much evidence as you can, take a good hard look at what you’ve got, and a legitimate conclusion can become very obvious.

BG: Why do you think the mainstream press—from your own paper to the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, and the New York Times—went so far out of their way to discredit your series?

GW: Because it’s a very dangerous story. It makes people think bad things about their country and their government. Newspapers will let you think bad things about a certain politician, but when you start questioning the foundations of our democracy they say, "He’s a troublemaker, a zealot, a maniac."

BG: Were there any valid criticisms that you went back and reconfirmed, or any holes that you subsequently filled?

GW: Sure, absolutely. I’ve said all along that some parts of that series should have been explained more fully. It was accurate but incomplete. What I tried to do with the book is show all the other evidence that we couldn’t get into the newspaper, or were actually prohibited from writing for the newspaper. Initially it was a problem of space, but in the end it was self-censorship on behalf of Mercury News management.

BG: Do you think the decision was made in Knight-Ridder’s super-headquarters, or was it strictly Merc management?

GW: I don’t know, but I do know Knight-Ridder has backed the decision all the way. I think the thing that frightened them the most about my story was that suddenly there was this whole reactivation of activist black groups getting together and demanding some political changes in Washington. And I think, honest to god, that they were more scared by the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings than anything, when hundreds of citizens actually showed up to watch their government in action and started hooting at the antics they were witnessing. It scared the living hell out of them.

BG: So what happens next? Do you hope Congress finally moves to do a full investigations?