The ridicule also had a predictable effect on the executives of the Mercury News. By early 1997, executive editor Jerry Ceppos was in retreat.
On May 11, 1997, Ceppos published a front-page column saying the series "fell short of my standards. He criticized the stories because they "strongly implied CIA knowledge of contra connections to U.S. drug dealers who were manufacturing crack-cocaine. "We did not have proof that top CIA officials knew of the relationship, Ceppos wrote.
The big newspapers and Reagan's defenders celebrated Ceppos's retreat as vindication of their own dismissal of the contra-cocaine stories.
Ceppos next pulled the plug on the Mercury News' continuing contra-cocaine investigation and reassigned Webb to a small office in Cupertino, California, far from his family. Webb resigned the paper in disgrace.
For undercutting Webb and other Mercury News reporters working on the contra investigation, Ceppos was lauded by the American Journalism Review and was given the 1997 national "Ethics in Journalism Award by the Society of Professional Journalists.
While Ceppos won raves, Webb watched his career collapse and his marriage break up.
Still, Gary Webb had set in motion internal government investigations that would bring to the surface long-hidden facts about how the Reagan administration had conducted the contra war.
The CIA published the first part of Inspector General Hitz's findings on Jan. 29, 1998. Despite a largely exculpatory press release, Hitz's Volume One admitted that not only were many of Webb's allegations true but that he actually understated the seriousness of the contra-drug crimes and the CIA's knowledge.
Hitz acknowledged that cocaine smugglers played a significant early role in the Nicaraguan contra movement and that the CIA intervened to block an image-threatening 1984 federal investigation into a San Francisco-based drug ring with suspected ties to the contras, the so-called "Frogman Case.
On May 7, 1998, another disclosure shook the earlier presumptions of the Reagan administration's innocence. Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, introduced into the Congressional Record a Feb. 11, 1982, letter of understanding between the CIA and the Justice Department.
The letter, which had been requested by CIA Director William Casey, freed the CIA from legal requirements that it must report drug smuggling by CIA assets, a provision that covered both the Nicaraguan contras and Afghan rebels who were fighting a Soviet-supported regime in Afghanistan and who were implicated in heroin trafficking.
Justice Report
The next break in the cover-up was a report by the Justice Department's Inspector General Michael Bromwich. Given the hostile climate surrounding Webb's series, Bromwich's report also opened with criticism of Webb. But, like the CIA's Volume One, the contents revealed new details about government wrongdoing.
According to evidence cited by Bromwich, the Reagan administration knew almost from the outset of the contra war that cocaine traffickers permeated the paramilitary operation. The administration also did next to nothing to expose or stop the crimes.
Bromwich's report revealed example after example of leads not followed, corroborated witnesses disparaged, official law-enforcement investigations sabotaged, and even the CIA facilitating the work of drug traffickers.
The report showed that the contras and their
supporters ran several parallel drug-smuggling operations, not just the one at
the center of Webb's series.
The report also found that the CIA shared little
of its information about contra drugs with law-enforcement agencies and on three
occasions disrupted cocaine-trafficking investigations that threatened the
contras.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
