Cracktoberfest Part Five: How the CIA and the L.A. Times Killed Gary Webb

Robert and Prop finish out Cracktoberfest with the story of the journalist who broke the CIA / cocaine story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
What's five in my part, it's part five. Here we'll
saw five. That's right is actually gang talk, which is
quite a stretch. But anyway, a little bit. But this
is our fifth part of what I am now calling
Brack week, um C I a week. I don't know.

(00:22):
None of them are quite perfect, but that's what we're
calling it. In this episode, we'll see what titles we
come up with. That's very cash money of you. Thank you,
so yes, it's quite cash money of you to recognize
that so well, all so embarrassing. I we just got
through with Iran contra um. But while kind of while

(00:46):
Iran Contra was spinning up, I want to get to
another thing that's happening. Also, if you're if you're on
here and you're listening to this thinking it's part three,
this is actually part five, and you need to go
over to the you need to go listen to the
Hood Politics episodes, which you can find in this speed
and the Hood Politics Speed. So if you're not finding it,
then you're wrong. So while all of the ship we

(01:09):
just talked about in your show was happening, Ali North
is also doing more ship of his own, and he
has moved on from Iranian money to finding a new
way to fund his contra buddies, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
Now Manuel had been a friend of the CIA's for
a while. He did and George H. W. Bush are
good buddies. Um. He had been running cocaine through his

(01:32):
obviously Panama pretty good port, right, pretty good port. Yes.
Now another um, so another cultural touch point here. Uh,
you guys know that Drink Champs podcast with DJ Envy
and Nori, who was a legendary Kean's rapper. Right, Nori's

(01:53):
name is Noriega referring to this. Yeah, so it's a
little uh not a little uh, a little little touch
point here. Also, I think it's important as the listeners
if this feels a little like the way that this
series went a little like chaotic and kind of you know,

(02:15):
not very uh linear, and you're here in parts and
pieces here and there, imagine living it. This is exactly
how it felt, because all of this ship is breaking
at difference. Yes. Um. For example, in nineteen eighty six,
June of nine six, The Times publish as an expose
on the Dictator's elicit, money laundering and drug activities. They

(02:35):
cite an unnamed White House source who claims quote, the
most significant drug running in Panama was being directed by
General Noriega. Now Manuel starts to face legal consequences after
this point, including a ban on selling arms to the
Panamanian Defense Forces like an international band. So, while ran
Contra is breaking and all of this ship is going
nuts and the Reagan administration is battening down, he sends

(02:58):
a guy into Washington to Wright to get help. Um,
and I'm gonna quote an next from a write up
in the National Security Archive. Oliver North, who met with
Noriega's representative, described the meeting in August twenty third nine
email message to Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter. You
will recall that over the years, Manuel Noriega in Panama
and I have developed a fairly good relationship. North rights,

(03:20):
before explaining Noriega's proposal. If u S officials can help
clean up his image and lift the ban on arms
sales to the Panamanian Defense Force, Noriega will take care
of the Sandinista leadership for US. So North is telling
point extra that Noriega can assist with sabotaging the Sandinistas
and gearing out assassination operations, and his suggestion is we

(03:40):
should pay Noriega, who's under an arms embargo by US
a million dollars from those Project Democracy funds raised by
the sale of U S arms for Iran to get
the Panamanian dictators help, but destroying Nicaraguan economic UH installations.
So this causes a big old debate within the Reagan inners.
Racle highlights include point Exter saying he has nothing against

(04:03):
Noriega other than his illegal activities. Point point Exter is like, well,
aside from the crimes, he's great if you weren't doing
all those crimes. We love him. I mean, he's pretty cool,
excited for the fact that he's a criminal. But besides that,
I mean equal now, Alan Fears, who's one of the
c I agents who's heavily involved in everything happening in
Latin America, is against the idea of arming one of

(04:24):
the biggest drug lords in the area with illegal armsteel cash.
And Fears actually maybe one of these guys who's kind
of kept in the dark specifically so he'll say the
right thing when he gets questioned later and seem honest, right,
like that's that's the kind one of the guy's Fears
is I think, Um, but everyone ignores. So Fears does say, like,
I don't think giving Noriega a million dollars is good. Um,

(04:45):
he is ignored. Nobody follows his advice. North meets with
Noriega in London with the support of Elliot Abrams, John
Poindexter and George Schultz. So Scholtzi, who's not on board,
Iran conscious so much. He's like, but giving a million
dollars to Ma, Well, Noriega sounds like a great plan,
A little cleaner. I'm gonna go do this. Adults is

(05:05):
like this little cleaner like we got too little to
me move apart. Let's against paying foreign people to murder
and get drugs And I'm not against that. I'm just
saying you're to be smarter about it. I am. George. Yeah.
This is the call that Schultz makes right before deciding
to one day become the board of directors for a
fake blood testing company. Um fucking George. UM. Noriega is

(05:31):
aling out, man, like you were running. You're running contraband
across multiple continents. Bro, Come on, man, you wanted a glory.
So Noriega agrees to attack airports, electric and telephone systems.
In Nicaragua on the conference behalf and again, part of
the deal is that he's going to get some cash money.

(05:52):
Part of the deal is that everyone's going to be
chill about his continuing moving cocaine through his sports. Right.
So then the things are going great for all of
this until in November of six, we get the actual
Iron Contra story breaks, right, and you know, everything that
tought we talked about at the in there happens um
And one of the things that's happening like kind of

(06:14):
in the wake of this, obviously the big deal, as
we've talked about earlier, the big deal is that the
United States was illegally selling missiles to Iran and exchange
for hostages and then light about it. Right, that's the
big deal, right, That's what people get in fucking trouble for.
But the other thing that's happening is the Iran Contra
deal is tied to everything else that Ali and the
CIA and the NFC are doing in Nicaragua and all

(06:36):
this cocaine that keeps getting into the fucking United States.
And I don't know if you're aware of this, but
Ronald Reagan makes a bit of a bit of an
impact for himself as an anti drug crusade. Ye, there
are some people you would think that this would have
been a bigger deal, But the fact that missiles are involved,
that's the sexier thing. The atoll is involved, right, So
that's what gets all the attention. But there is a

(06:57):
little bit of understanding at the time from some people
in the media that like, kind of seems like the
bigger story here is all the fucking cocaine you guys
were letting into the country, right, kind of seems like
that might be a real big, goddamn deal. Like, there's
a lot of leads here. I feel like you might
be burying one of them. You guys are the missiles
and stuff is important, you guys work on that. I'm
gonna ask these questions. And there's a guy, a journalist
who does decide during a press conference to ask, like, Hey,

(07:21):
are there any connections between these contrasts that you were
apparently funding with missile money and and drug smuggling people
bring a cocaine to the United States? And this guy
gets screamed down not by the press secretary but by
the New York Times correspondents standing next to him, who says,
why don't you ask a serious question. Bro, Bro, if
you're on the New York Times keeps coming up in

(07:43):
the you know, if you're on the lefttern and the
New York Times, and that somebody loves that question and
then someone else in the audience shuts it down like
that the the relief that must shoot over your body
at that moment, like, oh my god, that's that is.
I don't know if there's a better example of dodging

(08:04):
a bullet, you know, and like like you're just thinking, Bro,
if this foll knew, I would I would buy him
whatever he wanted. Tonight, Mark Times really got me out
of a sticky. You really got me out of this one. Dog.
I owe you a rolex. Yeah, they're they're gonna help
out a lot with the moral panic over the crack

(08:24):
epidemic too, So they really they really just work in
hand and glove with with our friends in the CIA.
Well kind of so obviously. Uh, there are some criticisms
at the time about the fact that there are very
clearly and this is revealed by the stuff that comes
out during a Rand contra. One of the things that
we get because of Rand Contra is all the North's diary,

(08:45):
where He's like, help some cocaine get into the US today.
Whop to do? Um? Yeah, So I found a wonderful
night right up in the Middle East. Report by Jonathan Marshall,
which is a contemporary eight is kind of the year.
A lot of this is blowing up um, which summarizes,
you know, we have the committee that investigates arand contra
martial in This is summarizing what the committee found and

(09:07):
what it didn't quote. The most glaring operational embarrassment neglected
by the report is the role of drug trafficking and
financing the contras and the logistic operation that supplied them.
The only mention of drugs comes in a staff memo
reprinted in a report appendix that rejects media exploited allegations
of contra drug trafficking as improbable and unverifiable. Yet other

(09:28):
congressional investigators have condemned the memo as a fraudulent misrepresentation
of the facts. Ample and convincing evidence points to the
existence of a guns for drugs network that brought cocaine
and marijuana into the United States as the price of
running arms down to Central America. The Joint Committee itself
heard testimony from three government witnesses that a high ranking
Iran Contra leaders trafficked in cocaine. Indeed, the committee introduced

(09:51):
into evidence a letter from rob Owen, North's emissary to
Central America mentioning a Contra supply chain used at one
time to run drugs and part of the crew that
had a middle records. Nice group of boys the CIA shows,
I love it. The report's silence on the involvement of
terrorists in North's Project Democracy is no less deafening. One

(10:11):
of the logistics agents employed in the Contra cause was
the Cuban exile and career CIA officer Louis Posada. He
came to Central America in nineteen eighty five after breaking
out of a Venezuelan jail where he had been held
for conspiring to bomb a civilian Cuban jet in nineteen
seventies six. That act, the worst terrorist crime ever committed
in the Western Hemisphere, killed all seventy three passengers, including

(10:34):
Cuba's national fencing team. Yet the report mentions Pasada only
in passing and then by his operational code name Ramon Medina.
Just give you an idea that kind of folks, who
who's all He's running drugs with Yeah, this guy who
blew up a civilian airliner. Cool dude. Yeah. Now, the
Iran Contra investigation and report plunges the Reagan White House
into its darkest hours. Public opinion falls through the fucking floor.

(10:57):
And again, we talked about this little bit, but like, yeah,
this is the first time he's dealing with like some
serious shit. Um, And a bunch of different stuff comes
out of the fallout, which we've talked about in your episodes.
But one of the things that happens is that while
the Reagan White House is in disarray, his opponents in
Congress start digging up other stuff too that's been going
on during his two terms in office. And one of

(11:19):
the things they start to look at increasingly is this
connection between CIA operations in Latin America and drugs. And
one thing people who are interested in this find is
a nineteen eighty five article by Associated Press journalists Robert
Perry and Brian Barger. Perry and Barger had published an
investigation this is the very first public evidence that the

(11:40):
Contras in the CIA were moving fucking drugs into the
United States, which found that Contra groups had quote engaged
in cocaine trafficking in part to help finance their war
against Nicaragua. The article hadn't made much of a splash because,
according to the Columbia Journalism Review, Reagan's people carried out
a behind the scenes campaign to attack the professionalism of
the ap borders and quote discredit all reporting on the

(12:02):
conference and drugs. That's what the CIA wrote at the time.
Peter Cornblue, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, notes that
whether the campaign was the cause or not, coverage was minimal.
So the fact that all this is happening is not
like pay attention to that. The way they go after
these journalists and the way their goal is we have
to discredit reporting on this, and also pay attention to

(12:23):
the fact that when this first comes up in public
and eight, it's a New York Times journalist who, as
far as we know, without any CIA advocacy, shuts down
a line of questioning on it. That's going to be
relevant later. Yes. So in nineteen, the last year of
the Reagan administration, Senator John Kerry as a Senate Foreign
Relations Subcommittee report, he's the guy running it. They published

(12:46):
a report on specifically how covert support for the Contras
undermined the War on drugs, Right, so this does get
looked into. Uh and I'm gonna quote from the National
Security Archive. The Kerry Subcommittee did not report the US
government officials ran drugs. It rather that Mr North, than
on the National Security Council staff at the White House,
and other senior officials, created a privatized contra network that

(13:07):
attracted drug traffickers looking for cover for their operations, didn't
turn a blind eye to repeated reports of drug smuggling
related to the Contras, and actively worked with known drug
smugglers such as the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to assist
the Contras. The report cited former Drug Enforcement Administration had
John Lawn as testifying that Mr North himself had prematurely
leaked the d E a undercover operation, jeopardizing agents lives

(13:30):
for political advantage in an upcoming Congressional vote on aid
to the Contras. Awesome, all this ship, all of this,
all of life. It would be such a different story
if the Reagan administration didn't go so hard on violence, gangs, drugs, Like,
if you didn't go so hard about it, it wouldn't

(13:51):
be such a gotcha, you know what, I'm saying, but
I'm like, like you, like you didn't have to you
didn't have to create mean, you didn't have to create
the day program, and like three strikes were they create
three strikes but just all these different, just very punitive
laws around drugs, like you don't have to do that,
and we wouldn't even thought it wouldn't have been so

(14:12):
like salacious. Yeah, if the if the fucking if Congress
had not been destroying huge numbers of people because they
were caught with crack cocaine at the same time as
they were bringing in the raw cocaine that gets turned
into crack in order to fund right wing death squads
in other parts of the world, If that all wasn't
happening at the same time, it wouldn't seem like such

(14:34):
a goddamn conspiracy exactly, because it's like it's yeah, if
this didn't happen, we would be like this is yeah,
we would be like oil on our head, like because
of the amount of like how many countries have gotten
when you add all if this part five, so we okay,
add the countries together, the amount of countries involved in this,

(14:57):
the amount of government's street dudes. Beau bureaucracies. There's like
nine countries involved. Yep. Um, it's a big deals as
we've as we've tried to unravel. Quite complicated. Yes, So
this report that Kerry is kind of the guy running
um does not establish that the CIA is responsible for

(15:19):
bringing crack to the inner cities, nor does it connect
US officials directly to drug dealers in the United States. However,
as the report concluded, it is clear that individuals who
provided support for the Contrast were involved in drug trafficking.
The supply network of the Contrast was used by drug
trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contrast themselves knowingly received
financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case,

(15:42):
one or another agency of the US government had information
regarding the involvement, either while it was occurring or immediately thereafter.
So the report also quoted the chief of the CIA
Central America Task Force who said, with respect to drug
trafficking by the resistance forces, it is not a couple
of people, it is a lot of people. Now, you

(16:05):
can't do the bad apple man. It is all y'all.
This is all damning because we have we have talked
about this in the context of a rand contract and
then the context of a bunch of other ship years
of shady dealings that we know now, but at the
time a lot of this was breaking and at the
time that report comes out, a lot of that outside
information is missing. Right, So most Americans who see the

(16:26):
headlines around this, the reasonable assumption to make is like, oh,
some people we armed in an unpopular conflict. We're also
moving cocaine whatever. The subcommittee report is not big news people.
That sounds pretty damning. People could not give less of
a ship at the time when it comes up, that's
nineteen seven, is years later. Gary Webb picks that thread

(16:47):
back up and he does about a year of digging, uh,
and he puts together this three part article series for
The Mercury, which blows the fucking lid off the world.
In like a couple of days after this thing drops,
it becomes the biggest story in the country, and it's
the first massive news story that's gone out primarily over

(17:07):
the Internet. That's where this thing spreads. And in order
to kind of talk about how that happens, um, I
want to quote now from an article in the Columbia
Journalism Review, the demographics of Web traffic are unknown, but
some media specialists believe that the rising numbers at Mercury
Center in part reflect what the Chicago Tribune syndicated columnists
Clarence Page calls an emerging Black cyber consciousness. Online newsletters

(17:30):
and other net services made the series readily available to
African American students, newspapers, radio stations, and community organizations. Patricia Turner,
author of I Heard It through the Grapevine, The Definitive
Study on how information travels through Black America, suggests that
this marked the quote first time the Internet has electrified
African Americans in this way. The Black Telegraph noted Jack

(17:52):
While a Time magazine columnist, referring to the informal word
of mouth network used since the days of slavery, has
moved into cyberspace. There is I like, I didn't know
the specifics of what you're saying, but it is true.
Like like, I don't know how we get information that

(18:12):
we get. You just find out through the homies or
your auntie. I don't know how it happens, It just does.
But I will say when this broke, this was our
uncles who were like, see there. I tried to tell y'all,
you know what I'm saying that we thought was like,

(18:32):
all right, man, like you know, it hadn't been to
jail a few times, you know, you didn't read a
couple of books. You know, you come back and your
prison smart, you know what I'm saying. So like and
prison smart is a very specific type of smart, you know.
And uh so, so they got all kind of informations
about the government and the CIA conspired to get it,
and we're thinking, okay, maybe you know, but like you said,

(18:54):
it wasn't really big news and and it's it seems
so far fed, but I have no reason to not
believe my uncle. And then this happens and it was
like that's a fact check. We'd have tried to tell y'all,
you know, and all that started happening, and it was like, damn,
it turns out ain't crazy, Like oh my god, it

(19:17):
really yeah, you would lie, and what's you know, I'm saying,
we believed you, but it was like, I don't know, man, yeah,
he's probably well. And it's you know again, one of
the things people can used to just credit this is
pick it like the edges of because it is not
literally the CIA was not shipping crack directly in the city,
because that's not a very sensible way to go about
doing that, right, just like Apple doesn't directly turn rare

(19:40):
earth minerals into phones. Right, there's a distribution networks exact.
But if you were like, Yo, who the plug? Who's
your plug? You like c I A yeah, Like no,
they the government, the government, I get I get the
way from the government, like you know you don't, It's like, oh, wait,
yes you do the Uh. It's easy to see why
people see this as a very concerted conspiracy. Honestly, there's

(20:03):
a way in which it's much more. And I'm not
going to say what happened or not, because I'm sure
there's more we don't. What we know is damning. Um,
if it is as simple as the left hand didn't
know what the right was doing, and nobody gave a
ship about the impacts of these agencies and what they
were doing in Latin America and how it might affect people,
and nobody was watching them while people were like responding

(20:24):
to this media circus the time created violently by destroying
huge numbers of people's lives. And that's why all this happened,
which is what the facts directly suggest that's like, that's
enough to revolt over. That's that's enough to yeah that
I I don't feel like anyway, Let's let's keep telling
the story because there's more to revolt over. Yes, so

(20:54):
Gary Webb puts out this article. It moves through the
black community by way of the Internet. It also a
big part of this is black oriented radio talk shows,
which are huge today and really coming into their own
in this period the mid to late nineties, boost this phenomenon,
and the way in which they spread the story is
by reading out the website address on the air. Never

(21:15):
happened before, not a thing, not a thing in main
stream that that like these big mainstream radio shows drive
time ship as like reading out what is being like,
you need to read this story. Here's a fucking web link. Right.
That's not how journalism got spread before, but it is now. Um.
These call in programs also become a focal point of
information and debate. African American talk show hosts use their

(21:37):
programs to address the allegations of ci A complicity in
the crack epidemic, and the public response is forceful. The
power of talk radio is probably like one of the
best examples of like how big this is is Congresswoman
Maxine Waters goes on a show in Baltimore in September, uh,
and she says that the Congressional Black Caucus is going

(21:57):
to look into this ship. Right, We're gonna like do
a fucking thing on this and it's it's fucking massive. Um.
And and like the fact that Maxine Waters takes this
up is like a big part of why this story
blows out into the mainstream in a big way. Now,
the CIA and the NSC they're watching this ship happen, right, Um,

(22:18):
they are like everyone is on this right, this is
a massive problem. And the agency the first public thing
they do when this starts to go viral is they
announced we're doing an internal investigation. We're gonna look into
whether or not we did anything wrong. Don't worry like
like like you was the vice president, because you were
the vice as president and it's awesome. So the c

(22:45):
i A is like, we're gonna look into ourselves and
see if we're bad people, don't worry. You can trust us.
We're good people. Um. Obviously me, did I smuggle drugs? Yeah?
Well the look I don't want to speak for for
black America here, but the evidence that I have suggests
that this was not taken as overly comforting. I don't

(23:09):
think I believe you like spaces and just like side
eyes like okay, here we go. Um you already know though.
So the Justice Department also launches an investigation. John deuts Choose,
the director of the CIA at this point, has to
go down to Watts and do a town meeting with
concerned citizens to that his organization hadn't smuggled crack into

(23:32):
inner cities to destroy the black community. Um Like, he
has to actually sit down and got to go to
Watts talk him out of this. Uh. Now that is
not precisely what Gary Webbs article had said, right. Gary
Webb had not made those exact claims, right because he
what he was saying is that what we've talked about,
that the CIA is making things easier for these guys
who are moving cocaine into the country. And then separately,

(23:54):
webs articles dealt with how the crack epidemic and things
like mandatory minimums had hurt the black community, right, um,
and how racially disparate the charging was. But a lot
of people interpreted as, oh, the CIA. There's allegations that
the CIA smuggled crack into the black community and then
becomes kind of the popular shorthand for the revelations. Representative

(24:14):
Cynthia McKinney calls the CIA the Central Intoxication Agency on
the floor of Congress. This is a pr disaster. It
is a real threat to the agency's funding. They're worried
about another Church committee, right. They're worried that, like Congress
has going to really fuck them up over this um.
And there's also a possibility that some people might get
criminal charges who had worked in the agency. That's the
thing they're concerned about because of how big a brush

(24:36):
fire this starts. I don't know, man, you think they
should get some criminal charge? I might suggest if anyone
belongs in prison with a lot of these CIA guys
and this sor like day, oh love, you should say
right next to the other drug smuggles. So that's what
you did. The agency spins up a reaction to what
they internally call a crisis, but before they can really

(24:58):
do anything, a save you appeared. Do you want to
know who the savior is? The one who pulls the
CIA is fat out of the Fire'll give you a hint.
It's the same people who did It's it's the legacy
news media. See as we have talked about a surprise
villain here. You know, is it a surprise given the

(25:20):
rest of these episodes, or maybe it's the one we
didn't expect that. Yeah, it's uh, it's John Cena. Not
John Cena. It's a stone cold coming out from the back.
Oh my god. The New York Times has a fooling chair. Yes, yeah,
and that's that's who roll. Well, it's actually the Los
Angeles Times is a big part of this two as anyway, Webbs.
As I've talked about a bunch webb store. It's the

(25:42):
first earth shattering piece of investigative journalism in the US
that came from something that wasn't a major paper of record. Right,
this isn't blowing up in any in like this period
of time, at least, this isn't blowing up in the
places it's supposed to come out of. So the Los
Angeles Times, the Washington Post, in the New York Times,
three of the really the big legacy. Yeah, they're fucking angry.

(26:03):
They're not angry because they don't want this information out.
They're angry that they got fucking scooped and they're angry
that in interviews, Gary Webb is saying stuff like, you
don't have to be the New York Times or the
Washington Post to bust a national story anymore. Now Gary
was well ahead of the time, because we know he's
right right, that's what happens. Washington Post in the New
York Times, big as they are not where a lot

(26:25):
of ship busts anymore. A whole lot of stuff comes
up from the ground these days, and oftentimes the New
York Times in the Post these days make their money
kind of paying editorial writers to comment on shit. Um,
this is the start of that. And and so the
people who are going to like go after them, we're
gonna go apeshit. A lot of them are kind of
editorial writers. But the intercept does a good job of

(26:47):
kind of summing up what happens next here in an
article they wrote quote. Newspapers like the Times in the
Post seemed to spend far more time trying to poke
holes in the series than in following up on the
underreported scandal at its heart, the involvement of a US
back proxy forces and international drug trafficking. The Los Angeles
Times was especially aggressive, scooped in its own backyard. The
California paper assigned no fewer than seven team reporters to

(27:09):
pick up art webs reporting well. Employees denied an outright
effort to attack The Mercury News. One of the sevent
team referred to it as the get Gary Web team.
Another set at the time, we're going to take away
that guy's pulitzer. According to Cornblue c j R. Piece.
Within two weeks of the publication of Dark Alliance, The
l A Times devoted more words to dismantling its competitors

(27:30):
breakout hit than comprised the series itself. It's just so
they throw down. You're it's just like you're guys, You're
you're totally missing the point here. Man, you're missing, and
you're you're missing a bigger story. You're missing a bigger
story here due and it is true, salty, somebody got
there first. We have to Gary webs reporting is imperfect

(27:50):
number one. Any story this big, there's gonna be some errors.
But especially Gary doesn't have a big editorial team. There's
not a huge team of fact checkers. It is not
it is. It is a new were reporter. It is
a newer outlet, and there are some problems with it right,
and some of them are pretty basic errors. And these
errors are not the result of him trying to cook
something up or lie, the result of writing for a

(28:11):
small publisher without a strong editorial team. One of the
examples of a funk up that Webb did make is
he never called the CIA for comment. That may sound silly,
but that is a thing that you do when you're
writing an article like this. You you after you've got
things nailed down, you go for comment. That is when
I would write articles about militias and ship like Jason Wilson,
and I would would wind up ringing up these fucking

(28:31):
militia leaders and shipped to ask the questions about things
they'd said online. It's what you do. You give people
a chance to respond when possible they don't have. You
don't have to wait for them to respond to publish
the article, but you do have to give them a
chance to respond. Webb claims that he did reach out
and they never responded. The CIA denies that he ever
reached out. We just actually don't know who's telling the

(28:52):
truth here. But the thing that he fox up is
he never rights in the story I reached out to
the CIA for comment, and they didn't give it right.
That is that is an issue. Now, a fair minded
person would say, well, that doesn't mean anything about the
veracity of his reporting. It's yea yeah, but the legacy
papers pounce on this ship. There are other issues as well.

(29:14):
The specific drug dealers Web had hung his story on
absolutely did sell coke and absolutely did use proceeds from
these sales to fund the contrast, but they were tiny.
We're talking the guys who were directly tied to the
contrast that he talks about in a storys they got
the contrast something like that, right, not a lot of money.
So from the guys he's focusing on in his article,

(29:36):
there's not enough to say that the CIA or that
the funding of the contrast is making a big dent
on the contrast or are on the crackt right, Like,
there's he's he's he's using the small case and he's
assuming there's more, and he is right, there was a
shipload more, But he is also kind of quoting some
stuff out of context that makes his case seems stronger
than it is what he actually has his evidence that

(29:58):
like there is something really the damning here to look at,
and it ties into these other fund up things that
have been done around sentencing in these other disparities, And
it's possible there's a real like if he it's like,
it's one of those things. If it were a better article,
there would have been some softening of the language. A
good editor would have softened some of the language, and
good legacy media journalists in a responsible media environment would

(30:21):
have seen what he was saying. Even even if they'd
seen in a responsible environment, even saying the articles that
went out, they would have been like, well, what he's
claiming that the CIA brought was responsible for helping to
bring cocaine ing a crack epademic into the United States.
What he's saying isn't entirely supported by the case of
these two guys, because these guys are kind of small fry.
But it's interesting that there's that much evidence, and I

(30:41):
wonder if there's more, And they would have looked into
that article that came out in nineteen eighty five and
got clamped down on by the CIA, right there would
have find found other stuff, including ship in that nine
eight report. There was stuff they could have just found
that would have been that was already out, already reported
already something that the government had said was true and
put that with what Webb had had been, like, oh, ship,

(31:01):
there's a lot here, and then they would have looked
in the more and then they would have fucking found more.
That's not what the legacy media does. Instead, they pounce
on the shortcomings and web series um and when they
start trying to tell the other side of the story,
which is how it gets framed, the c I A
not available for comment earlier, suddenly, yeah, we'll talk to

(31:21):
you about this. Come on in New York Times. You know,
we love giving people access where the CIA so we
know about their efforts. And they're surprised elation at the
willingness of mainstream news outlets to attack web out of
spite because they wrote about all of this and internal
documents that are now declassified down there. They wrote about
how happy they were about what what the what fucking

(31:44):
the l A Times that ship we're doing in a
piece called Managing a Nightmare written by a c I
A fellow named Jumovic, And I'm gonna quote from the
intercept again here. The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating
where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webbs reporting.
Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of
Dark Alliance, and Jomovic, in Managing a Nightmare, cites the

(32:06):
CIA success and discouraging one major news affiliate from covering
the story. He also boasts that the agency effectively departed
from its own long standing policies in order to discredit
the series. For example, in order to help a journalist
working on a story that would undermine the Mercury News allegations,
Public Affairs was able to deny any affiliation of a
particular individual, which is a rare exception to the general

(32:27):
policy that the CIA does not comment on any individual's
alleged CIA ties. Word now, the document chronicles the shift
in public opinion as it moves from like oh my god,
what has the government been doing two in favor of
the CIA's angle, which is like nah, Gary Webbs full
of shit. Yeah. This trend starts about a month and

(32:47):
a half after the series is published. Quote that third
week in September was a turning point in media coverage
of this story, Jumovic wrote, and he cites respected columnists,
including prominent blacks, along with the New York Daily News,
the Baltimore Sun, the Weekly Standard, and the Washington Post.
So that's pretty cool. Huh yeah, yeah, that's it's pretty perfect. Yeah,

(33:11):
didn't even didn't even need to do anything. They got it.
They got back again, they got us. Don't even worry
about it again. If you're on the lecter and the
collective side of like oh yeah, oh oh yeah again no, yeah, yeah, nah.
There's a grand conspiracy and everything is connected, being like, well, okay,
the CIA is doing all this shady ship to bring
cocaine in, and then the New York Times plays a

(33:34):
major role in hyping up fears of a crack epidemic,
which is used to justify arresting a shipload of black
men and breaking up a bunch of families. And then
as soon as the allegations come out that the CIA
was the one that brought in the cocaine, well, all
of these same media organizations who had pushed up the
crack epidemic act to crack down on the story, and
and the journalist who had like broken the story that

(33:55):
they've done this, well, yeah that does kind of seem
like a fucking conspiracy, but it really does. Again, and
all of this actually what I think all of this
is is a mix of different conspiracies. Uh, reckless and
callous disregard for what is happening in Black American for
who gets hurt by this um racist policing and racist
trends in law enforcement. And the fact that the media

(34:16):
is also pretty racist, always searching for like a story
and do not care as much about whether or not
the story is true as whether or not you can
scare people. Um, and just yeah, the fact that they
mostly hire a bunch of fucking upper class white people
from fancy schools who don't know anything about what's going
on in the black community, who gets scared by this

(34:37):
kind of coverage and right racist bullshit, and who are
always going to act to defend other dudes who went
to Yale and just happened to wind up in the
CIA instead. The New York Times editorial desk force or
cool stuff, good, wonderful, great system. Yeah, I think you're you.
You nailed it. Uh, in the sense that you have
all these sort of concentric circles, these these these forces

(35:02):
you know, pressing down on the community that whether it's
police lawn you know, law enforcement, you know, unfair sentencing, uh,
war on drugs, the drugs coming in, the c I A,
the d A, all these things all falling, not to
mention like um, you know, discriminatory housing and just all

(35:23):
these things all happening. It's like you're you're anybody would
think are are all these people sitting around one table
and kind of deciding you know what I'm saying. And
that's that's when you get into the crazy because now
it's just like a plan and it doesn't know it
doesn't have to be a bunch of ship that's really
bad result of a bunch of different gnarly trends and conspiracy. Again,

(35:47):
it's not that there's no those conspiracies all we've been
talking about this week's conspiracies. They're just not the Illuminati.
They're not well, yeah, it's not one big thing that
all spout from. It's all these little dudes that just
happen to have yeah, overlapping interests and whether it's and
it's it's this weird, like this weird power thing to

(36:10):
where it's like it's not so much I'm doing everything
in my power to make sure you suffer. It's more
your success don't matter to me. Yeah, you know what
I'm saying. And that's like, and that's the thing that like,
it's it's it's it's what as as a I mean,
sometimes it is when you're just an out and out

(36:31):
near you know, Nazi, white supremacist, to where you're like,
I am doing everything in my power to make you
suffer versus you're just inconsequential and your success doesn't matter
to me. You're not a part of the country I
think of. And there are some people who are like, no,
I'm actually just super racist and I run a police
union that funds you know, a number of camp and
I want to push for mandatory minimums because I'm racist.

(36:53):
But other people are pushing for mandatory minimums because they're uh,
their voters got scared by the New York Times who
did it, but because it was a good story and
they're incredible and they're kind of races too, and all
of this, all of this feeds together. Um, anyway, let's continue.
But first, you know, what isn't a conspiracy prop show

(37:13):
straight up plans baby, that's right, not a conspiracy is
the products and services that support this podcast. The products
and services that support this podcast do meet around a
big table and they do secretly run the world. But
they're cool, so it's fine. They got nice shoes, they
got great shoes, incredible shoes. Anyway, here's ads. We're back.

(37:43):
We just got back from the secret table where our
sponsors run the world and can't confirm sneaker game. And yeah,
now I want to say, don't revolt and burn things down.
Um that's don't do that, um proper, you want to
take the jet skis out. I want to see if
the ones that are played gold work as well as
the ones with a platinum coating on man, I think

(38:03):
an aspen they work best well, of course without but
not the not the aspen. Our listeners know the secret
aspen that that that exists on on Mars for members
of the conspiracy. There's a space aspen. Yeah, there's a
Euroba aspen that. Oh that's even nicer. So it's incredible.
The fucking shrimp cocktails also better shrimp than you get there,

(38:27):
like the vein of in the in the shrimp that weed.
It's just gold. It's just gold instead of poop. But yeah,
you know, burned down the system anyway. Anyway, So, um,
we're talking about the media response to all of this
ship and how they shut it down. One of the
most useful papers in terms of putting the kabash on
people getting angry about Dark Alliance was the Washington Post.

(38:51):
Uh and I want to quote now again from the CIA.
Because of the Post's national reputation, It's articles especially were
picked up by other papers, helping to create with the
Associated Press called a firestorm of reaction against the San
Jose Mercury News. Now about a month or so after
of this follows kind of of critical media coverage of
the series, and by the end of that first month,

(39:13):
the quote unquote balanced reporting just attacking Gary Webb in
his article outnumbers the stories that are actually taking what
he's talking about seriously and in their right. Up of this,
the CIA credits all of this to the Washington Post,
the New York Times quote, and especially at the Los
Angeles Times um webs webbs editors start to distance themselves

(39:34):
and abandon their reporter. By the end of October, two
months after the publication of Dark Alliance quote, the tone
of the entire CIA drug story had changed. Jumavick was
pleased to report quote. Most press coverage included as a
routine matter, the now widespread criticism of the Mercury News allegations.
I can bet now I don't. I'm not, I wasn't

(39:54):
an adult during this time, but I can bet that
the tone among whatever plugged in or tapped in like
black people in this professional space that would be knowing
all this stuff is like, you know, this is all
the confirmation we need. The fact that you're going after
this man so much it makes us be like, oh,

(40:15):
so he's so he's right. Okay, yeah, I got it.
Thanks guys, Okay, yeah, I got it, Like yeah, yeah,
But now that y'all going through all this to stop him,
now I know. Yeah. Um, And that is how a
lot of people react. And we have now learned to
a point of certainty with all of the stuff that's
come out since that's been classified, that's been reported on.

(40:36):
Gary Webb was right. The claim that he made was
that the CIA deliberately enabled the cocaine trade to fund
the contrast. That was absolutely true. His central thesis, his
central thing that he was trying to show was real. Now,
he didn't have all of the information that we have
in order to prove it, and that is a flaw
in the article. Um, but all of the journalism quote

(40:57):
unquote journalism that was done to attack webs work was
deeply flawed itself, as the Columbia Journalism Review makes clear.
All three papers ignored evidence from declassified National Security Council
email messages, and The New York Times and The Washington
Post ignored evidence from Oliver North's notebooks, which lends support
to the underlying premise of the Mercury News series that

(41:17):
US officials would both condone and protect drug traffickers if
doing so advanced the Contra cause. The October twenty one
New York Times piece didn't even mention the Carry Committee report.
A decade ago, the national media lowballed the Contra drug story.
David Corne observed in the nation, now it's been there,
done that. On October, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

(41:39):
held its first hearing on the controversy surrounding the new
Contra drug allegations. Jack Bloom, former lead investigator for the
Carry Committee, was lead witness. Bloom testified that his investigators
had found no evidence whatsoever that the African American community
was a particular target of a plot to sell crack cocaine,
or that high US official head of policy of supporting

(41:59):
the through drug sales which is not what Web had alleged. Right,
Web does not allege a plot. Web says that the
CIA is helping coke move into the country, which is true. Yes,
and Bloom testifies further quote, if you ask whether the
United States government ignored the drug problem and subverted law
enforcement to prevent embarrassment and to reward our allies in
the contra war, the answer is yes, which you might

(42:21):
recognize as saying Gary Webb was right, yes, right, exactly exactly. Now.
The CIA found, of course, no intent to smuggle cocaine
into the United States or to enable drug smugglers to
do the same. Instead, they blamed all the extremely documented
cases of contrast smuggling coke into the US as something
all their agents had just missed because like g Chucks,

(42:42):
the CIA forgot to mandate that CIA agents had to
report evidence of drug smuggling by their contacts. Right, that's
literally the excuse, Like, well, they missed it because they
weren't told to report it, so they just didn't notice it.
They just missed all this blow right because it was
their job to spot it. Right. Listen, Like I said,
I'm here for the lobsters. I'm not here or the beef. Yeah,

(43:05):
I don't even see those cows. I don't even see
those I don't even see what I'm here for this. Yeah,
I'm gonna quote from PBS again. In the winter of
nineteen two, as the United States was plotting how to
overthrow the Sandinista government that came to power in Nicaragua,
a letter a memorandum of understanding m o U was
being drafted in Washington, d c. The presumptive author was

(43:26):
the U S Attorney General, the late William French Smith.
The recipient was the Central Intelligence Agency Director William Casey.
The subject was a list of offenses that CIA field
officers in the field were required to report if they
witnessed or became aware of a crime, particularly if it
involved an informant or someone the CIA officer wanted to
recruit as an agent. The letter of understanding listed all

(43:47):
kinds of crimes, from murder to passport fraud, but it
omitted narcotics violations because we know, yeah, if he's killing people,
we want to know, But if he's moving blow into
the country, we don't really give a ship. That's literally
that's what it's saying right now. This is too glaring
of an oversight to have left without comment, and weeks
later there's a follow up letter based on internal discussion

(44:07):
in the Justice Department that gets sent to the c I.
A quote, I have been advised that a question arose
regarding the need to add all narcotics violations to the
list of non employee claims. This is something Smith writes
to Casey in February. Uh so you know that sounds good,
but this actually doesn't add drugs to the list of
things that have to be reported. Um because Smith, instead

(44:28):
of adding it to the list, just sites existing federal
policy on narcotics enforcement and writes, quote, in light of
these provisions, and in view of the fine cooperation of
the Drug Enforcement Administration has received from the CIA, no
formal requirement regarding the reporting of narcotics violations has been
included in these procedures. So basically, we're already working so

(44:48):
good together. Federal employees are already required to talk about
this stuff, so we don't need to add. We we
can keep narcotics exempted from the things c I agents
after report because we know they will right which we
know they weren't. Now, Inspector CIA Inspector General Fred Hits
tells the PBS when he's questioned that because they're asking, like,

(45:12):
what do you make of this CIA inspector general? It
seems shady, and he's like, well, it's at best a
mixed message, right these now listen, that's a mixed message. Yes,
six these dudes may not be good at criming, but
they are good at excuses. They're incredible at excuses, and
here they're what had Hattenwim was game is ridiculous, It

(45:33):
hits very this is very funny, claims that he to PBS.
He doesn't believe CIA agents would have enabled drug traffic
to allow the Contrast to fund themselves, because that would
have been bad pr Now you and I know prop
that the Reagan administration and the CIA actively worked to
discredit journalists reporting on the CIA for doing just that.

(45:54):
When the agency took any action to crack down on
the drug trade, it was purely for show. In seven,
CIA Director Robert Gates sent a memorandum to the CIA
Deputy director demanding that CIA officers cease relationships with Contrast,
even suspected of trafficking narcotics. Here's PBS again. Gates's memorandum
instructed George to vet names of air crews. Air Services

(46:15):
employed companies and subcontractors with the d E, a, U, S, Customs,
and the FBI to ensure that none of the contractors
used by the CIA were involved in narcotics. For some reason,
this memorandum quote was not issued in any form that
would advise agency employees generally of this policy. It stated
in his report. It never got to the field agents
who were supposed to use it as a guide. So

(46:36):
it's just like, look, we recognized the problem, and we
made it a rule that they had to run everything
by the FBI in the DA. They had to check
on these guys and vet them to make sure they're
not moving drugs. We noticed there was a problem, and
we took action. What did you tell anyone whose job
it was to vet these people that they had to
do that? Well, no, we forgot to. We sucked that
one up. We really fucked that one. Upp tootles. Hey, Homy,

(46:57):
that's that's clerical, bro. Listen, listen, charge it to my head,
not my heart. I'm not a big deal. We tried
to do the right thing. It just got sucked up
for reasons that were completely unavoidable. Guys, guys, you're looking
at the locker room. Guys, listen, Uh, when the team
comes in, just make sure they know that they gotta

(47:19):
stop grabbing asses. Okay, you gotta stop grabbing asses. Guys.
That everybody's mad at us. So when you see a
juicy ass, you can't grab it. Okay, all right, all
right here come to guys. It's just silence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
we don't need to say any more than that. Um
I said it. Yeah, I said it. At some point,

(47:43):
you guys saw me see it. We put it in
the rule book. Now they're not required to read the
rule book. In fact, they're not allowed to. We didn't
give it to them. The rule books are held on
the top of a mountain in eastern fucking Turkmenistan, and
and none of them can get to it. But it's
in the rule books. You know, what else do you
want for us? You would to track down these agents
and put a paper in their hands. Yeah, I told

(48:05):
him they can't do it, man. Yeah, they're honorable men.
You know they won't do it. And do it anyway. Yeah. So,
as the years have gone on and all this has
come out, it has become clear that Gary Webb was
guilty of being sloppy right. It's not perfect or even
ideal reporting. There's issues with it. His conclusions and allegations,
while not supported by the text of his article, though,

(48:26):
are supported by the facts that we know now and
the facts that have emerged since, and a number of
the facts that Gary didn't bring up but were available then,
and that the Washington Post, in the New York Times
and the l A Times should have brought up, like
the ship from the Cary Report, like the ship from
the AP report and eight five um. Of course, the
fact that Gary has been vindicated by time did not
mean anything for Gary Webb. The damage had been done

(48:48):
to his career. He was disgraced, and the CIA crack
epidemic story had gone from a mainstream outrage to a
conspiracy theory that was widely mocked. The Washington Post even published.
Of the things they do in this period is they
put in an article like a warning about the black
community susceptibility to conspiracy theories. Where's the Washington Post. We
gotta let you know, We've noticed a troubling trend, which

(49:11):
is black people they're sharing conspiracy theories. He's not a
good book. You gotta watch you say around him because
you know, the kind of believe anything. They really think
the whole government's out to get them and the media.
What a silly group of people, do you believe? It? Mean?
Whateverence do they have that that might be happening. Yeah,
it's like, yeah, it's like sucking hitting your friend in

(49:32):
the head with a hammer and being like his real
susceptible to getting hit in the head with a hammer. Boy,
that guy's head can't stop catching hammers. Am I right?
Jesus Jez. Can't do anything around this guy. Man might
get a hammer to his head, can't bring a hammer out.
He keeps getting hit with him. Yeah. Webb's career never recovered.
On December two four, he shot himself in the head
with a thirty eight. Ten years later, David Carr, writing

(49:55):
for The New York Times, wrote an article that serves
as the closest will get to an apology for the
Great Lady. We've quoted from it a couple of times. Here.
There's widespread recognition that it was pretty fucked up, although
you can still find articles in mainstream says Gary Webb
was not, you know, really fucked up, and like we
weren't wrong to go after him and to ignore all
of these problems and act as cover for the CIA,

(50:17):
like it's it's all fucked up prop But that's the story.
That's all the story, man. So it was like seven
seven countries involved mad moving parts people at the highest
level of government. A journalist breaks it, tells the truth,
Polkes's head up the rest of the journalism community, and

(50:43):
then the due A kills himself because he makes him
feel like he's taking crazy pills. It's one of those things.
There's a meme spreading around that's like the the award
for the CIA Award for Excellence in Journalism, and it's
a bullet and that is an accurate joke in like
parts of Latin America rights in Latin America, the c
i a s s it was either directly did or
through there. And in other parts of the world, the

(51:05):
CIA has assassinated a lot of journalists. They don't have
to do that. You don't have to send a guy
with a silenced weapon to kill Gary Webb. New York
Times has got your back. They're just gonna hound him
to suicide because they got scooped. We're good, baby, damn
saves us. The bullet money that's that's that's see. I
didn't know that one because Bud mcmarty killed himself too.
He shared and I'm sure there's yeah, um boy, yeah,

(51:29):
I don't want to get into other It's totally understandable
if you're feeling conspiratorial after this. And I'm not gonna
say much more than that because it's cool and fine,
proper you got anything to plug well, this has been
a phenomenal piece of art we've put together that. Yeah,

(51:50):
so op over to the politics spot man, you know
where hopefully if you had part five, it is when
you know that the pieces that this was altogether was
how come I can't talk and you didn't warn me out?
And and this is and this was my idea to
do this series. You warn me out? But yeah, now

(52:14):
politics pod and uh, what upcoming topics do you have
on politics? Oh man? Besides the other parts of this
I have? Uh did we talk about the queen already?
We already talked about the Queen? We got tapping in
or it's up like lessons on how you need to
tap in before you talk to people? Uh? I got

(52:34):
a book reading list where you can get your weight up.
Talk about a little bit of things like that. Um, yeah,
it's a lot going on over there. Check out hood
Politics and get uh props cold Brew Tear for get
my cold Brew and his book terror Form. Yes, it's
all there. Yeah, and the and the um your music, Yeah,

(52:58):
there's new music. Yeah, all all named Terraform because what's
your what's your website again? It's is it prop hip
hop dot com? Yes it is. Thank you, Sophie prop
hip hop dot com for all the things prop hip
hop dot com terra Form. Check it all out. You
can find me with my novel, which you should read,

(53:18):
called After the Revolution. Go to any place that sells books,
any website that sells books. Type it in After the Revolution.
You can buy a copy the Homie books paperback all that.
You can also type in After the Revolution a k
Books and you'll find it there. Talk to the homie
skull Fucker Mike. Yeah, you can learn the ballad of
skull Fucker Mike uh and more to come in the sequel.

(53:41):
He needs a Yeah, I was like, the goulfucker needs
his own uh side. So you're gonna learn a lot
more about skull Fucker my. But let's all funk our
own skulls right now to chill out after being sad.
Thank you, what a great week, Yes in two