TIME - Oct. 10, 2014
Investigative reporter Gary Webb linked the CIA to America's introduction to crack cocaine
In a scene from the new movie Kill the Messenger, investigative reporter Gary Webb (played by Jeremy Renner) says that he doesn’t believe in conspiracy theories. He does, however, believe in real conspiracies: “If I believe it, there’s nothing ‘theory’ about it.” The true story on which the movie is based, however, makes it clear that it’s not always obvious what’s a theory and what’s the truth.
It started when Webb wrote a series of three articles for the San Jose Mercury News in 1996 dubbed “Dark Alliance.” In his report, Webb — who had won a Pulitzer in 1989 for a different story — claimed that the CIA was partly responsible for bringing crack cocaine to the United States in the 1980s.
Webb conducted a year-long investigation during which he discovered that a San Francisco-based drug ring, which had ties to a CIA-sponsored Nicaraguan contra group called the FDN, sold cocaine to a dealer in South Central Los Angeles. The millions of dollars made from those sales were later used to fund a secret war against the leftist Sandinista regime. In short, Webb accused the CIA of being complicit in getting thousands of poor African-Americans addicted to crack in order to fund rebels in Central America.
READ MORE...
No comments:
Post a Comment