|
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS,
US STYLE
Who killed Gary Webb?
BY JEAN-GUY
ALLARD—Special for Granma International—
LIKE no
other journalist before him, he exposed the CIA’s evil schemes in the
drug world and revealed to the US public how the
country’s black neighborhoods were inundated with
crack as part of drug trafficking designed to supply
the Nicaraguan Contras with money and weapons.
He
denounced narco-terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and
his accomplices who were involved in that criminal
transaction. And he ended up being shot in his home
with two bullets in his face. A suicide, reported
the judicial authorities.
US
reporters are in mourning. Gary Webb, who was
discovered dead on Friday, December 10, in his
Carmichael home in California, was for many a model
of professionalism and integrity. He was 49 years of
age.
In
August, 1996, when he worked at the San José
Mercury News, Webb disclosed how the CIA sold
tons of crack in Los Angeles neighborhoods and
afterwards used the money from this trafficking to
finance the operations of the Nicaraguan Contras who
were then trying to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista
government.
His
revelations were published in all the Knight-Ridder
papers. All of them… except the Miami Herald,
the paper that has ties with the Cuban-American drug-trafficking
terrorist mafia.
His
investigation, impressive for its seriousness and
scope, caused a national stir.
In their
book Whiteout:
the CIA, Drugs and the Press,
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair,
journalists from the well known web site
Counterpunch.com, detailed how Webb was the victim
of a veritable campaign aimed at destroying his
reputation.
The
Washington Post,
The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times
distinguished themselves in this dirty work.
“The
attack on Gary Webb and his series in the San
Jose Mercury News remains one of the most
venomous and factually inane assaults on a
professional journalist’s competence in living
memory. In the mainstream press he found virtually
no defenders, and those who dared to stand up for
him themselves became the object of virulent abuse
and misrepresentation.”
Webb
resigned from San José Mercury News in 1997.
You could no longer read his work in any well known
newspaper.
In 1990
Webb was among a group of reporters selected for the
Pulitzer Prize, the most prestigious in the world of
US journalism, for a work on the Loma Prieta
earthquake, but according to his relatives, he never
recovered from the scandal caused by his series
denouncing the CIA.
In 1999
he defended his famous investigation by publishing a
book entitled Dark Alliance:
the CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine
Explosion,
which made a strong impact.
POSADA, DRUG TRAFFICKER
Among the
most interesting revelations is the case of Luis
Posada Carriles.
In
Dark Alliance, relying on some of the CIA’s
declassified documents, Webb revealed how in January
1974 the CIA rejected Posada’s request for “a
Venezuelan passport” for one of his buddies because,
the author wrote in all seriousness, “a control
agent could not be allowed to get involved in drug
trafficking.”
That same
year, the CIA was advised by the Drug Enforcement
Agency
(DEA)
that Posada was exchanging arms for cocaine with a
person “involved in political assassinations, “ a
reference to Félix Rodriguez Mendigutia, a CIA agent
who ordered the assassination of Che.
As a
secret element of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA
organized Operation 40, in which Posada and dozens
of Cuban Americans participated together with hired
assassins from the Italian-American
mafia.
Operation
40’s network was used for terrorist activities
against Cuba until 1970 when one of its planes
crashed in southern California with a huge quantity
of heroin and cocaine on board. This same year, the
FBI arrested 150 suspects in the “biggest anti-drug
operation in the history of the federal police.”
At that
time Attorney General John Mitchell indicated that
the network controlled 30% of the country’s heroin
trade and 70 to 80% of cocaine sales. But he did not
mention the fact that several of those arrested
belonged to the gang of Juan Restoy, a former
Batista politician, distinguished “alumni” of
Operation 40 with ties to the Havana capo Santos
Traficante.
Two of
the Restoy’s most entrusted hired assassins
were…Ignacio and Guillermo Novo, “members” of the
Cuban Nationalist Movement, a terrorist group with
cells in Miami and Union City, New Jersey. These two
assassins, who served four years in prison with
Posada in Panama, recently returned to the United
States with the blessings of the CIA and the FBI
office in Miami.
In June
1976 Guillermo Novo and Posada participated in
forming the terrorist organization CORU, whose ranks
were comprised of the likes of Félix Rodriguez,
Frank Castro and other criminals involved in drug
trafficking operations authorized by the Reagan
administration in support of the Nicaraguan Contras,
which Gary Webb had covered.
In 1983,
Frank Castro was accused of importing 500 tons of
marijuana “then, as if by magic, the charge
disappeared following his establishment of a Contras
training camp in 1983.” Fortunately, Rodriguez left
George Bush’s father’s office, which had appreciated
his ”talent.” And Posada, illegally pardoned by the
former president of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, has
preferred “to disappear” with the “protections” that
were left to him.
After the
assassination of the Chilean foreign minister
Orlando Letelier, the Novo brothers were
hired as "public relations officers" with the Cuban-American National
Foundation, while the life-appointed
”chairman” of that organization, Jorge Mas Canosa,
paid $26,000 for the “release” of Posada when he was
imprisoned in Venezuela following an explosion on
board a Cubana passenger airline, which killed 73
people.
THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
IS OUTRAGED
Webb’s
series in the San José Mercury News explains
in detail how the CIA network sold tons of cocaine
to criminal gangs and demonstrates how the White
House’s anti-communist
fanaticism was so fervent that it was willing to
engage in the propagation of the most hideous drug
epidemic of modern times.
The
African-American community in the United States was
shocked by the news disseminated by Webb’s
articles.
His role
in disclosing the CIA’s sinister plot made Webb a
very famous figure in the black community.
When the
House of Representatives finally agreed to take up
the issue, after a report was issued by the CIA
inspector general concerning drug trafficking by the
agency, Porter Goss, who had directed the
Intelligence Committee since the previous year,
decided at a preliminary hearing that the
allegations were “false.”
Goss, a
former CIA agent who in 1972 participated in
operations at the JM/WAVE base in Miami including
terrorist operations against Cuba, ended up being
named director of the CIA by George W. Bush.
Ricky
Ross, one of Gary Webb’s most reliable sources,
spoke with him a few days before his death. Webb
told him that he had seen some men examining the
pipes outside his house, and that it was evident
that they were not thieves but “government people.”
He added that he had received death threats and was
routinely followed.
It was
known that Gary Webb was working on a new
investigation on the same subject concerning the CIA
and drug trafficking.
On
December 10, Webb’s corpse was discovered in his
home in Carmichael. Two bullets from a Caliber .38
revolver had destroyed his face.
Coroner
Robert Lyons was the judicial official who carried
out the investigation into Webb’s death. He quickly
announced his conclusion: Gary Webb committed
suicide. |
