
How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb (2014) - iamjeff
https://theintercept.com/2014/09/25/managing-nightmare-cia-media-destruction-gary-webb/
======
nowarninglabel
It's really good to see Webb's story reaching a broader audience. I imagine
the current generation may never even have heard of it.

For those interested in further reading, Narco News[1] has been an invaluable
resource over the years continuing on with muckraking reporting on the drug
trade. They broke two big stories over the years with Banamex and with the
"house of death" in Ciudad Juarez. Kudos to Al Giordano and others who have
carried on exposing the players behind the trade in the spirit of Webb.

[1] [http://www.narconews.com/](http://www.narconews.com/)

~~~
gragas
Why is that page covered in seemingly unrelated anti-Trump propaganda? What
does alleged white supremacy have to do with the narcotics trade?

~~~
iamjeff
NarcoNews and Narcosphere (and Giordano) are unrepentantly activist in both
tone and aspiration. I think it would be a great disservice to label the
outfit(s) as anti-Trump; there is a lot of thoughtful criticism of Sanders,
Hillary, Obama, and left-wing movements in both sites. As for intersection
between narcotics and politics, note that NarcoNews is perhaps best known for
its coverage of the reach of narcodollars in the politics of LatAm and
corporate motivation behind the War on Drugs. The pages are littered with this
sort of coverage (in fact, it is mainly how they started out).

------
Lordarminius
Here's a gem that describes a new standard of journalistic rivalry we haven't
seen before or since:

 _Rather than some dastardly, covert plot to destroy (or, as some went so far
as to suggest, murder) Webb, Schou posits that the journalist was ultimately
undone by the petty jealousies of the modern media world. The CIA “didn’t
really need to lift a finger to try to ruin Gary Webb’s credibility,” Schou
told The Intercept. “They just sat there and watched these journalists go
after Gary like a bunch of piranhas.”_

..And a view of the elevated conduct of the CIA

 _In “Managing a Nightmare,” Dujmovic attributed the initial outcry over the
“Dark Alliance” series to “societal shortcomings” that are not present in the
spy agency._

 _“As a personal post-script, I would submit that ultimately the CIA-drug
story says a lot more about American society on the eve of the millennium that
[sic] it does about either the CIA or the media,” he wrote. “We live in
somewhat coarse and emotional times–when large numbers of Americans do not
adhere to the same standards of logic, evidence, or even civil discourse as
those practiced by members of the CIA community.”_

Co-incidentally the second paragraph came near the end of the article when I
was about to stop my reading anyway.

~~~
dandare
Just because the declassified material plays the witch hunt on Webb as a happy
accident of petty jealousy that obviously does not mean it was not an
orchestrated conspiracy.

~~~
Lordarminius
That was the point I obliquely tried to make.

------
binarray2000
If you look in the history you'll see that drug trade was always controlled by
an empire. British have imported opium into China via Hong Kong. French have
joined them in the Second Opium War. And, now the US empire controlls both the
major opium producer (Afghanistan) and major opium derivates distributor
(Kosovo), using it - as the two, now small, empires I just named - to finance
wars and for the benefits of the Oligarchy.

~~~
wutangson1
Isn't Albania the distribution center for heroin for Europe?

~~~
acqq
Albanian Muslims make 95% of Kosovo inhabitants and in connection with drugs
and other crimes a lot is written about "Kosovo Albanian Mafia." It seems it
makes a difference, probably also because the Albanian Albanians effectively
weren't able to travel abroad at least until early 1990-ties.

------
iamjeff
The 3-part installation can be found here [1] and here [2]. Be warned, it is
about 2-3 hours worth of your time, but makes for a really shocking read. [3]
provides exhaustive coverage of the aftermath. Giordano's recount of Webb's
memorial service just a month after the latter's suicide and his eulogy of
sorts is especially moving [4].

1\. The Dark Alliance
([http://www.mega.nu/ampp/webb.html](http://www.mega.nu/ampp/webb.html))

2\. San Jose Mercury News ([https://longform.org/archive/publications/san-
jose-mercury-n...](https://longform.org/archive/publications/san-jose-mercury-
news))

3\. Inside the Dark Alliance: Gary Webb on the CIA, the Contras, and the Crack
Cocaine Explosion
([http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/6/inside_the_dark_allian...](http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/6/inside_the_dark_alliance_gary_webb))

4\. The Life and Times of Gary Webb. His Journalism Was Vindicated, Yet the
Industry Kept Him in Exile
([http://www.narconews.com/Issue35/article1154.html](http://www.narconews.com/Issue35/article1154.html))

~~~
tptacek
The problem is that his journalism _was not vindicated_. It was supported
after his death by the same people who supported it when it was first
published.

Maxine Waters made partisan hay out of Dark Alliance before the story was
vetted by any other news paper (and more power to her! I don't like Waters,
but I'm on her team politically).

Too, Robert Parry defended the story immediately after it was published. Parry
is a very reputable journalist, but if you can find the piece where Parry
connects the dots this eulogy does, I'd really like to read it, because all I
can find are places where Parry writes, in effect, that the government isn't
trustworthy and thus a story like Webb's is plausible.

But nobody's argument is that the story is _implausible_. The problem is that
the story isn't _reported_. There aren't facts that back the accusation up.

It's even worse, because this eulogy _doubles down_ on Webb's original
argument. The dodges employed by The Intercept and the rest of Webb's
defenders are that Dark Alliance is "true enough" \--- that CIA-backed
paramilitaries were involved in drug trafficking, and the CIA knew it. _But
that 's not what Webb argued_. He made a stronger claim: that the CIA
knowingly allowed the Contras to ignite the cocaine epidemic in the US. Even
The Intercept isn't willing to back that claim up --- but this article, which
you're pointing us to as further context for the story, does.

------
walter_bishop
"the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year
downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head."

How did he manage to remain conscious enough to pull the trigger again a
second time?

~~~
junto
I have a family member that was a police officer in a rural location. They
have often had cases of farmers who kill themselves with shotguns, and it
surprisingly often occurs that they have to shoot themselves more than once in
the head.

~~~
halviti
In this particular case you're comparing apples to oranges.

Shotguns are very different from a standard .38

First is the obvious difference in projectiles, which can make a huge
difference.

Second the .38 (in all likelihood) was a pistol, whereas a shotgun is the
length of a rifle. A pistol you can hold it to the side of your head and pull
the trigger.. you can't really do this well with a shotgun, which means you're
more than likely going to put the gun under your chin and try to get to your
brain the long way.

It's somewhat logical that someone might need to shoot themselves twice with a
shotgun, not so much with a .38.

------
tptacek
I'll again volunteer to write the un-fun comment here.

The subtext of this Intercept piece isn't the abuses CIA or the drug war. It
will seem like it is, if you aren't already familiar with the Webb story, but
that's not really what it's about. It's about the Intercept, and the kinds of
people who support the Intercept, and their perspective on the state of
journalism and their distaste for the journalistic establishment.

The basic Webb story is that he published a bombshell piece for the San Jose
Mercury News, establishing a link between the CIA and the crack epidemic of
the 1990s, and then had his career destroyed in retaliation.

The full Webb story is more complex than that; in fact, it's complicated
enough that it's taught in journalism ethics courses.

Webb's "Dark Alliance" story was important, but Webb prosecuted the story
overzealously. The major news outlets of the time --- including the New York
Times, the Washington Post, and the LA Times --- _unanimously_ tore the piece
to shreds. Many of the reporters involved had already been on the national
drug smuggling beat and noticed factual problems with the piece. All the
newspapers involved --- _including Webb 's own paper_, which conceded faults
in the story and eventually disavowed it --- noticed that the piece simply
failed to present evidence for its most important claim.

In the alternate telling of the Webb story, his career fell apart because he
became enraptured with the fundamental truth he perceived in the story he was
telling (the CIA introduced crack cocaine to black America) and stopped doing
the nuts and bolts job of journalism.

The Intercept sees this as heroic. The piece we're reading is from 2014
because it's in support of a hagiographic movie about Webb. Other journalists
don't see it that way. The Washington Post originally had Walter Pincus write
the takedown of "Dark Alliance", but Pincus is himself a highly problematic
figure in American journalism. But this piece by Jeff Leen at WaPo in 2014
doesn't have Pincus's baggage, and goes into detail about the intersection of
Webb's reporting and Leen's own from the same time period:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gary-webb-was-no-
jou...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gary-webb-was-no-journalism-
hero-despite-what-kill-the-messenger-
says/2014/10/17/026b7560-53c9-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html?utm_term=.a4abae46fc2b)

I'll add: pretty much nobody on the left (where I too reside!) likes Leen's
piece. But their criticisms of it are essentially the same as The Intercept's:
there's a deep truth to Webb's story --- surely the CIA must have had some
hand in the crack epidemic, we feel it in our bones! --- and it's immoral for
reporters like Leen to expect Webb to put professionalism ahead of the truth.

Whether or not you believe the CIA of the 1980s could have been involved in
the US drug trade (and I would put very few things past the CIA of the 2000s,
let alone the 1980s), the question of how reporting should work and what the
standards of professionalism are is a vital one. A huge fraction of us believe
in fundamental truths that transcend reportable fact, of the power of first
principles reasoning and of a web of credibility extending from sources to
journalists to our favored analysts. I find this world view terrifying, but I
understand why other people have it.

But it's worth reflecting on a little?

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
> A huge fraction of us believe in fundamental truths that transcend
> reportable fact, of the power of first principles reasoning and of a web of
> credibility extending from sources to journalists to our favored analysts. I
> find this world view terrifying, but I understand why other people have it.

I would argue that there's some (good) reasons to have this kind of belief
though, given what we've seen.

The very basis of the CIA's clandestine operations is to abuse people's usual
reliance on those mechanisms by subverting some part of that process. That's
"plausible deniability" in a nutshell -- that there exists at least one place
you can't actually connect that logical chain you suggested.

Once you "lift" every step of the chain to include the idea of "this step is
likely being manipulated by experts to misinform me", the minimal explanatory
model is often not the same as the minimal explanatory model would be without
that. I would argue that this is the discrepancy that you're pointing out when
people deal with the CIA/NSA/etc: the minimal model people think of must
account for the massive amount of lying, including to their nominal overseers
like Congress; the minimal assumption for lying is that they're up to
something, not that they're just lying, because lying (even for them) does
have a slight cost, and historical data shows that when they were lying in the
past... they were usually experimenting on humans, building up blackmail
profiles of civic leaders, illegally performing their duties, etc.

Ergo, you get people with models that have HUGE priors that those agencies are
up to something targeting various communities, and so stories which doesn't
have the usual amount of evidence are still enough evidence to suggest that
the CIA/NSA/etc is up to _something_ targeting that group. I'm not arguing
that most people are reaching the correct priors -- just that the overreactive
priors are "less wrong" than the null priors your complaint suggests they
should use.

I would argue that the insistence on "background" priors, in the face of
decades of consistent and premeditated behaviors on the part of the
CIA/NSA/etc, is the exactly opposite of journalistic integrity: it's
specifically refusing to report what you know (and is good for the public to
know, too), by getting rid of your knowledge of what the real priors are and
not reporting on that. I find a lot of the same "dishonesty" in reporting on
issues of culture or race, again, often presented behind a veneer of
integrity, when really, it's capitulation to social power -- either to not
offend the government or cultural norms.

~~~
tptacek
I understand what you're saying and I understand why people believe this to be
the case. But help me understand something:

How are you not arguing that journalists should report what they feel, rather
than what they know?

I'm very ready to believe you aren't saying that, but I can't reconcile what
you wrote with that question.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
> How are you not arguing that journalists should report what they _think_ ,
> rather than what they know?

I changed your question slightly, but I hope I preserved the intent of it. If
not, please let me know!

I guess my point is that "knowledge" I have is just a special class of
"thoughts" (or "beliefs") I have, where my surety in them is above some
particular threshold. It's certainly not the case that most of my knowledge is
absolute and couldn't (theoretically) be wrong. (At least, as I think you're
meaning it, we could reasonably say I "know" my bed is in my bedroom, even
though, strictly speaking, I'm in my living room and it might be elsewhere.)

I would argue that the journalists are then reporting knowledge: that they
have good (established, documented) reason to think that the priors are some
particular way (which would be knowledge), and given those priors with some
facts, the CIA/NSA/etc is up to some _class_ of actions, of which the told
story is an _example_ member, which is again knowledge, because we can have a
stronger belief that the class of actions is correct than the particulars. An
example might be: you're not sure that I cut the victim with a knife, but the
slash marks all over his body indicate _some_ kind of cutting instrument. Is
it not useful to talk about me slashing him?

Similarly, I would argue that I expect journalists to report knowledge in the
usual sense, but allow them to present knowledge about things like priors or
that something is in a class of behaviors, rather than just knowledge that a
specific behavior occurred. (Which is what I get out of your text, but I don't
think is actually what you're trying to claim.)

It's certainly common in mathematics to introduce talking about a class of
objects with a few definite examples, and I feel that the reporters telling
"fictionalized but consistent with facts" stories to exemplify the class of
things we know the CIA is up to (or capable of) is meaningful and useful
journalism. That kind of writing helps us picture and understand what the
class of (likely) actions really looks like, particularly if we read multiple
sources which picked different examples from the class. Of course, I think we
both agree that journalists could be clearer about when they're doing that
kind of thing, and the field of journalism could obviously do better on
epistemology in general.

I guess my argument could be summarized as: the knowledge being shared by
those kinds of reports isn't about the specific actions of the CIA being
discussed in the story, but rather, the CIA priors versus background priors
(in context and historical pieces) and the knowledge that the CIA is up to
_something_ of the flavor in the article.

I also have a lot of sympathy for your position, and get where you're coming
from, but let me ask you this: how do you think journalists should
professionally convey information about CIA behavioral priors (eg, that
they're systemic liars and career criminals) and sufficient evidence (in light
of those priors) to suggest the CIA is doing _something_ against a community
when they don't have sufficient evidence for any particular claim, eg, that it
was actually CIA officers selling crack versus enabling selling crack by
claiming drug dealer phone numbers were agency ones to police versus just not
doing anything to stop it because it served their ends?

Surely you agree that journalists should be able to present the claim that the
CIA willfully failed in their duty to protect black communities from foreign
drug interests, and even probably actively worked against them, without having
to get bogged down in the specifics of which actions you think they
perpetrated when if there's sufficient circumstantial evidence that
_something_ unusual occurred.

Otherwise, how would you ever write a story about the actions of experts in
plausible deniability?

------
samstave
So even just recently, we have had several shows " __ _Holywoodizing_ __" the
narco crap:

* Narcos (S1,S2)

* The Infiltrator

in both, the CIA are fucking criminals

now we have this... im confused. there is blatant BLATANT corruption in the US
- and instead of doing anything about it we turn it into ___ENTERTAINMENT_
__???

~~~
sremani
How about finding and killing bin laden? In my opinion CIA acknowledges the
multi-dimensional and grey world, we live in. They are human they make
mistakes, but if past 60 years are a record, they did a good job.

~~~
slim
What if Ben Laden was the instrument of the CIA like the contras were? What if
no jounalist dares to investigate it after what happened to Webb?

~~~
Lordarminius
>

What if Ben Laden was the instrument of the CIA like the contras were? What if
no jounalist dares to investigate it after what happened to Webb?

That's the whole point isn't it? Terrorize the internal opposition to silence

