Gary Webb, Pulitzer Prize winner and investigative reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, was maligned and discredited by the CIA (the very people he was investigating), other government officials and eventually he was sold out by his colleagues. The San Jose Mercury News published "Dark Alliance," a 20,000 word, three-part investigative series which alleged that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold and distributed crack cocaine in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and that drug profits were used to fund the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras.
In 1998, Webb was vindicated by a CIA Inspector General report. It revealed that for more than a decade the agency had covered up a business relationship it had with Nicaraguan drug dealers. The Associated Press finally came clean and admitted that they worked over-time to bring Gary Webb down; it was jealousy. Later he was vindicated by the Department of Justice. Webb, however, never could get hired as an investigative journalist again, the only profession that he loved. With no way to pay his bills, this Pulitzer Prize winning journalist killed himself in 2004 with two bullet holes to his head.
What happened to Gary Webb was on a big scale and a character assassination played on the big boys ball park but it is happening throughout our country in towns and cities across the country by people exposing the ills of local governments...bringing down the messenger. Don't miss this movie. Jeremy Renner has another award winning performance. To me, this is the best movie of the year.
1 comment:
Thanks. I heard this was an excellent movie and am going this afternoon.
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