7 ms·

How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb (2014)

137 points by iamjeff 10y ago

samstave 10y ago
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???
- nowayyeah 10y ago
  What are you doing?
  - samstave 10y ago
    Laying in bed, drinking tea... reading hackerNews... What are you doing? <wink>
- angryredblock 10y ago
  In addition to film being entertainment, it's one of the most effective mediums for communication we have right now. Case in point: way more folks are aware of the Narcos subject matter than previously. Now whether or not we can transition communication to action is another question entirely...
- wz1000 10y ago
  To me, the DEA and the War on Drugs came across as culpable as the CIA in Narcos. The complete and utter lack of self awareness on behalf of the DEA agents made the show, especially the second season, extremely tough to watch. Not once does the show ever introspect and try to figure out the underlying reasons behind all the violence and destruction.
  - samstave 10y ago
    TBH you're correct - I was using the CIA as an umbrella in that statement.... but anyone who even just skimmed the "school of americas" history (read, CIA DEA DELTA BLAH BLAH) would be pretty disgusted with what happened during that period... and it still goes on today.
- sremani 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    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?
    - rrggrr 10y ago
      RJ Hillhouse wrote a book, "Outsourced", that comes close at time to advancing this point-of-view. https://www.amazon.com/Outsourced-R-J-Hillhouse/dp/0786169575 https://www.amazon.com/Outsourced-R-J-Hillhouse/dp/078616957...
    - Lordarminius 10y ago
      > 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
  - gragas 10y ago
    The CIA has had 60 years of "illegal" coups and overthrows of democratically-elected governments. Many would find nearly everything that the CIA has done to be extremely unethical, un-humanitarian. That said, I agree that the CIA has done a great job. Unethical? Sure. Effective? Absolutely. There have a been a few major f*ck-ups, but for the most part the CIA has an extremely good track record of shaping the world to the liking of the US (or at least to the liking of top strategists and leaders of the US).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - samstave 10y ago
    The subtle shill penetrates the shield
- WayneBro 10y ago
  The CIA has been portrayed as the bad guy in movies for a long time and that's the way the want it. Why? Because they want everybody to get used to the idea that they're above the law without having to come out and say it directly. https://www.google.com/search?q=why+are+cia+portrayed+as+bad+guys https://www.google.com/search?q=why+are+cia+portrayed+as+bad...
nowarninglabel 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Why is that page covered in seemingly unrelated anti-Trump propaganda? What does alleged white supremacy have to do with the narcotics trade?
  - iamjeff 10y ago
    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).
- rurban 10y ago
  But it didn't reach a broader audience. Nobody reads books (2006), that's why they made a movie "Kill The Messenger" (2014). But the movie had a horrible US release despite its huge starpower, was successful only internationally and won some prices on US festivals. It opened on 427 screens (medium), had good reviews and stayed 2 weeks big, but gathered only 2.5M USD. That's a horrible number with that many screens and a 5M budget. An explanation would be the complete lack of advertising by the producers Focus Pictures. It was buried. There was a private petition to re-release the movie after several weeks of silence, which gained huge momentum, and was quite a controversy. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_Messenger_(2014_film)#Controversy_over_film_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_Messenger_(2014_film)... - http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=killthemessenger.htm http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=killthemessenger.htm - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/business?ref_=ttrel_sa_3 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/business?ref_=ttrel_sa_3
binarray2000 10y ago
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 10y ago
  Isn't Albania the distribution center for heroin for Europe?
  - acqq 10y ago
    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.
  - binarray2000 10y ago
    Po-tay-to po-tah-to.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Lordarminius 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    That was the point I obliquely tried to make.
tptacek 10y ago
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-journalism-hero-despite-what-kill-the-messenger-says/2014/10/17/026b7560-53c9-11e4-809b-8cc0a295c773_story.html?utm_term=.a4abae46fc2b https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gary-webb-was-no-jou... 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?
walter_bishop 10y ago
"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?
- R_haterade 10y ago
  You would be surprised.
- Overtonwindow 10y ago
  It could happen. Jerk of the hand. Depends on trigger pull maybe but could happen.
- junto 10y ago
  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.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - halviti 10y ago
    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.
  - halviti 10y ago
    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 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.
iamjeff 10y ago
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-news https://longform.org/archive/publications/san-jose-mercury-n...) 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_alliance_gary_webb http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/6/inside_the_dark_allian...) 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 10y ago
  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.

137 points by iamjeff 10y ago

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???

nowayyeah 10y ago
What are you doing?
- samstave 10y ago
  Laying in bed, drinking tea... reading hackerNews... What are you doing? <wink>
angryredblock 10y ago
In addition to film being entertainment, it's one of the most effective mediums for communication we have right now. Case in point: way more folks are aware of the Narcos subject matter than previously. Now whether or not we can transition communication to action is another question entirely...
wz1000 10y ago
To me, the DEA and the War on Drugs came across as culpable as the CIA in Narcos. The complete and utter lack of self awareness on behalf of the DEA agents made the show, especially the second season, extremely tough to watch. Not once does the show ever introspect and try to figure out the underlying reasons behind all the violence and destruction.
- samstave 10y ago
  TBH you're correct - I was using the CIA as an umbrella in that statement.... but anyone who even just skimmed the "school of americas" history (read, CIA DEA DELTA BLAH BLAH) would be pretty disgusted with what happened during that period... and it still goes on today.
sremani 10y ago
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 10y ago
  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?
  - rrggrr 10y ago
    RJ Hillhouse wrote a book, "Outsourced", that comes close at time to advancing this point-of-view. https://www.amazon.com/Outsourced-R-J-Hillhouse/dp/0786169575 https://www.amazon.com/Outsourced-R-J-Hillhouse/dp/078616957...
  - Lordarminius 10y ago
    > 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
- gragas 10y ago
  The CIA has had 60 years of "illegal" coups and overthrows of democratically-elected governments. Many would find nearly everything that the CIA has done to be extremely unethical, un-humanitarian. That said, I agree that the CIA has done a great job. Unethical? Sure. Effective? Absolutely. There have a been a few major f*ck-ups, but for the most part the CIA has an extremely good track record of shaping the world to the liking of the US (or at least to the liking of top strategists and leaders of the US).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- samstave 10y ago
  The subtle shill penetrates the shield
WayneBro 10y ago
The CIA has been portrayed as the bad guy in movies for a long time and that's the way the want it. Why? Because they want everybody to get used to the idea that they're above the law without having to come out and say it directly. https://www.google.com/search?q=why+are+cia+portrayed+as+bad+guys https://www.google.com/search?q=why+are+cia+portrayed+as+bad...

nowarninglabel 10y ago

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 10y ago
Why is that page covered in seemingly unrelated anti-Trump propaganda? What does alleged white supremacy have to do with the narcotics trade?
- iamjeff 10y ago
  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).
rurban 10y ago
But it didn't reach a broader audience. Nobody reads books (2006), that's why they made a movie "Kill The Messenger" (2014). But the movie had a horrible US release despite its huge starpower, was successful only internationally and won some prices on US festivals. It opened on 427 screens (medium), had good reviews and stayed 2 weeks big, but gathered only 2.5M USD. That's a horrible number with that many screens and a 5M budget. An explanation would be the complete lack of advertising by the producers Focus Pictures. It was buried. There was a private petition to re-release the movie after several weeks of silence, which gained huge momentum, and was quite a controversy. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_Messenger_(2014_film)#Controversy_over_film_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_Messenger_(2014_film)... - http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=killthemessenger.htm http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=killthemessenger.htm - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/business?ref_=ttrel_sa_3 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1216491/business?ref_=ttrel_sa_3

binarray2000 10y ago

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 10y ago
Isn't Albania the distribution center for heroin for Europe?
- acqq 10y ago
  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.
- binarray2000 10y ago
  Po-tay-to po-tah-to.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Lordarminius 10y ago

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 10y ago
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 10y ago
  That was the point I obliquely tried to make.

tptacek 10y ago

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

walter_bishop 10y ago

"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?

R_haterade 10y ago
You would be surprised.
Overtonwindow 10y ago
It could happen. Jerk of the hand. Depends on trigger pull maybe but could happen.
junto 10y ago
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.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- halviti 10y ago
  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.
- halviti 10y ago
  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 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.

iamjeff 10y ago

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-news https://longform.org/archive/publications/san-jose-mercury-n...) 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_alliance_gary_webb http://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/6/inside_the_dark_allian...) 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 10y ago
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.