Welcome back to the classics. Fellow conspiracy realist. If you are a longtime listener, there is a name that you know and know very well. No, not Intern Steve, although shout out to him. Instead, we're talking about Gary Webb. Who is Gary Webb? Or who was he?
Yeah? How is he connected to Freeway? What is it Rick? Not the Rick Ross rapper, but Freeway Rick Ross?
Yeah?
Yeah, the guy who was actually moving lots and lots of drugs allegedly according to his story for the government.
Yeah. Gary Webb's an investigative journalist who for a long time worked for an outfit called the Mercury News. And he is the guy who brought to the American public the idea that the CIA was fueling the crack cocaine epidemic in the United States. Ultimately, Gary Webb died from two gunshots to the heads.
Deemed a suicide, well officially, but come on now, well this feels weird to me. Let's look into it. By the way, when every time I see the phrase Dark Alliance, thankfully now I have this association to Gary Webb. But it was a Balder's Gate video game that came out a long time ago. That's right, called Balder's Gate Dark Alliance. So then I imagined an isometric action adventure RPG. But thankfully again Gary Webb is here to help us.
Now I'm imagining both of them. What is Dark Alliance really trying to tell us?
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
Hey, guys, I love the podcast and I'm usually a huge fan of your work, but I have to say I just listened to the Cryptids of Australia episode and I was very disappointed. At the beginning you mentioned that you did the Cryptid math. I can't believe no one took this opportunity to say you did the monster math. I expect better.
That wasn't dad joke, missed opportunity.
That was from Devin.
My name's Matt, my name's Nol.
They call me Ben. We are joined with our super producer Paul Decktt. Most importantly, you are you. You are here that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Matt.
That was new was that you're trying something out, just messing around.
It's like a cold open kind of in a weird way, unrelated entirely.
Just you know, calling us out for not doing the monster math. It's cool.
Well, also calling us out for maybe not doing our due diligence, which is something that's going to come up a lot in this episode in particular. Right, you can say all sorts of things, but can you prove them? I don't know. Maybe let's start this way. So the four of us live and record in the Atlanta area, and Atlanta, in a huge burst of good news, has
a tremendous drug problem. Yeah, Like, as we're recording and be sarcastic, but as we're recording this, not more than three or four hundred yards away from the studio we're in right now, there is more than likely someone on a backstreet doing a hard drug of some sort, and maybe on a main street. There are also probably several people on street corners in the same vicinity selling these drugs.
And if you live in a large American city, areas of your local metropolis almost definitely have areas where drug problems are endemic and there are huge issues with trying to address it. But here's the big question, where does all of this come from? You know what I mean, The local corner drug dealer is almost certainly not flying to the Golden Triangle or flying to South America on a weekly basis to sell somebody like heroin or cocaine at ten bucks a pop. It's just the plane tickets
too expensive. It economically doesn't make sense.
Yeah, and that person or group of people selling drugs on the corner aren't also on those flights purchasing the large quantities of cocaine or whatever, then flying all of that stuff back to the United States, then processing it into let's say, crack cocaine, which is a process, and then like you said, selling it for that low amount of money.
Right. And there's an excellent study that Freakonomics did a while back. We're big fans of Freakonomics that busted the myth the drug dealers make tons and tons of cash. Actually you would be. You might be incredibly surprised by how little drug dealers, most drug dealers actually make.
It kind of reminds me of that thing we talked about ben off Mic about how little money bank robbers probably make. You know, it's this notion that they're just cleaning it up, but in fact, banks don't keep that much money on hand, and to make a decent living, like even like a relatively decent living, you would have to your success rate would have to be one hundred percent, and you would have to, you know, do a certain amount of heists every.
Year with a certain amount of people, a certain amount of people.
Not that it's related one to one, but you'd think that drug dealers, you know, there's this cliche notion that they're raking in the cash. But I'm interested in your stats, Ben, Oh.
Well, yeah, there's there's the article from La Times that it's literally titled why drug dealers live with their moms, and it goes into what you're talking about here, how very little most of the people actually selling the drugs make.
Now I don't want to. I can toot my own horn a little bit on the bank heist thing too, which I think they are related, mainly because I wrote the video, but I think someone else appeared in it. We did a brain stuff video way back in the day about why you shouldn't rob a bank and you can find the bank stats there, but they're they're sobering and somber, and we see the same thing with drug dealers.
There's a quick excerpt we could read here the top one hundred and twenty men on the Black Disciples pyramid. That's the hierarchy of the gang. Right, we're paid very well, but the pyramid they sat at top was gigantic. So if you use this franchise from a guy named JT. They mentioned earlier in the article, the franchise had three officers and fifty foot soldiers. There were about five three hundred people working for those one hundred and twenty bosses
at the top of the pyramid. And then there were twenty thousand unpaid rank and file members, most of them who were just vuying to become a foot soldier. And how well did that foot soldier dream job pay when just.
Foot soldier job that these twenty thousand people.
Want, right, three dollars and thirty cents an hour, but you don't have to pay taxes.
And again this is written in two thousand and five, and this is I believe that's when they were out actually speaking with these people.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, So two thousand and five dollars.
So clearly not enough for regular international travel. Where does this stuff actually come from? How does cocaine enter the US? How does heroin into the US and on and on with these other drugs, especially when Uncle Sam ostensibly spends billions and billions of dollars just trying to stop the drug trade. How does it get here? One person thought he found the answer, and he was an investigative journalist named Gary Webb.
So.
Gary Webb was born on August thirty first, nineteen fifty five, in Corona, California, and he wanted to be a writer from a very early age, where for the student newspaper at his college in Indianapolis. He ended up getting married to him and named Susan Bell, and they went on to have three kids together. And he first started getting into investigative reporting when a piece appeared in the Kentucky
Post in nineteen eighty called The Coal Connection. It was a massive series, a seventeen part series that he collabed on with a guy named Thomas Sheffey that looked at ben you might know more about this the conspiracy surrounding a coal company. So he was already kind of early on into whistleblowing and kind of like this sort of deep dive truth telling, trying to expose the ills of society.
Right right, similar to that wonderful journalist we interviewed a while back, Mark Periskia I believe his name was correct, Yeah, who did some fantastic work on the US government's arrangements with spies in the era of civil rights. This guy was a small town reporter who was breaking big stories, and that.
Was a big deal, specifically about the assassination or the murder of a president of this coal company, and how this guy perhaps had some or he did have ties to organized crime. Like that's no small thing. You don't write about that and then not worry about writing about that.
And as our friend Mark established earlier, the thing about being an investigative journalist that's worth your salt is that so much of the actual work is just verifying and triple checking every single syllable of every single sentence that is fit to print, and you have to do it before it goes out to the masses. It turned out that Gary Webb seemed to have a gift for this,
and that was just the beginning. His major work, the one that most of us listening and probably familiar with, is something called The Dark Alliance, And over the years, several people have kind of muddied the water of his research and what he actually claimed. So it's very important for us to look at what he did do and then also look at what he did not do precisely.
So here's here's the gist. In nineteen ninety six, Gary Webb writes a series of three articles for The Mercury News, which I believe was out in San Jose, San Jose. So in these these three articles are pretty lengthy, and later they're all collected into a book named The Dark Alliance. This it's difficult to explain how much of an impact this made, so let's just go with what he says.
In this series of articles. Gary Webb alleges and claims that Nicaraguan contras are responsible for the Los Angeles crack cocaine epidemic of the nineteen eighties.
It's a bold claim.
Well, yeah and yeah, that they're responsible, but they're a bunch of other hands.
Involved too, right, They're not working alone. He claims that the US's Central Intelligence Agency, your CIA, knew this was going on, knew there was an active and elaborate and very very robe bust drug trafficking network there, and at the very least, he says, the CIA ignored it. At worst, he says they may have helped them actively covered up the crimes, met with the drug.
Lords, provided transportation.
Provided transportation. Shout out to what Air America, that's the one. So these allegations were pretty harsh, as you said, a bold claim, But the thing is they weren't far fetched. In South and Central America, it's not unusual for these separatist or revolutionary groups to turn to the drug trade as a way to raise some cash. Other groups have done it too, like FARC or the Shining Path and actually met FARK representatives who were very much against that process.
So all goes back to documentation, right, Gary Webb builds this case and he argues, somehow, as opposed to all the other drug running operations on that continent, somehow the contras are able to get cocaine into the US and then most importantly get cash out with a lot less of a hassle than other cartels or drug runners.
Well, yeah, so they're saving a ton of money somehow in this whole process, in the transportation, right hm. And what that's allowing them to do, and this is where it gets really bad for people who live in the United States. This allows these groups to sell their product at a much much lower price than their competitors.
Right, so you can't. It's like what a mom and pop store is trying to compete with a huge, big box chain grocery store. They have the economy of scale that allows them to sell an apple for fifty cents, whereas the mom and pop stores to sell it for a dollar.
And why would you buy your apple for a dollar when you know you can get it for fifty cents.
Maybe it's some more delicious apple.
It's the exact same apple, my friend.
I don't know. Maybe if you pay more for it, it tastes better.
There's a study with wine that absolutely proves that, Yeah, that is true, calling out all samall yea's we'll go ahead and maybe publish that study on wine on Here's where it gets crazy later.
But what if you're addicted to apples? Like, addicted to apples? Are you still going to pay a dollar?
Well?
I don't know, I mean it depends right, Like are you a connoisseur.
Of apples or are you just eating like any old crab apple to scratch that unscratchable itch.
Yeah, there's different layers, there's different there's a hierarchy of addiction.
Right, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the crack epidemic probably was going more towards.
The crab apples.
Yeah yeah, crack apples also just an unnecessary point here. I feel like red Delicious Apple is like a terribly ironic name because those are terrible apples.
I don't like them either.
They're kind of mushy. Yeah, you know, I don't get it. Fuji apples all day.
For me, it's Granny Smith.
Andy Smith. I would not have figured you for a fan of tartness.
It's my favorite.
What about that? Mean, man, it's a it's a tart apple.
No, I know, but why would you? Why would you not think that Matt was a fan of tartness.
Because Matt's Matt's palette runs more toward spicy. He's exploring extremes.
That's exactly what it is.
Interesting.
My favorite tart is a Carl tart.
Though it's well done, well done, but uh but the character the argument still stays the same, right, Like he says, obviously this, obviously someone is influencing the game that the cartels are playing down there, and I have he says proof that the CIA is either again either ignoring it, maybe helping it, has met with cartel leaders and so on. But what before we get too far, let's ask her ourselves what he actually did not do After a word from our sponsors.
And we're back. So, the one thing that Gary Webb did not do by discussing these things in his three part series that would become The Dark Alliance, what he didn't do is break this story. He wasn't the first person to talk about America's crack coming from other places, perhaps the contras, like specifically the Nicaraguan Contras, with perhaps the CIA's approval. This was something that had already been kind of floating around. It was a theory in a way.
He was just backing up these beliefs with some facts, or at least with as close to facts as he could.
Get, kind of fleshing out the picture.
Right, Yeah, he's given you the details. He's zooming in with the camera a little bit.
There we go. I like that he never claimed to have evidence that the CIA engineered the entire thing correct, only that they knew something was going on, they tacitly approved of it, and that they met with contra leaders and funders to talk about the money.
Yeah, the fact of the matter is that there were a lot of kind of wild theories that shot off from this reporting. And I know we'll get into some of this little bit more, but Web was sort of discredited and then sort of indicated, and he's been a very divisive figure in terms of like how rigorous his
fact checking was for some of this stuff. There's a piece an op ed in the Washington Post by they named Jeff Lean from twenty fourteen, who was their assistant managing editor, and he basically you should read it for yourself.
It's very interesting, but he kind of goes through in shreds Web in terms of his abilities as a investigative reporter and said that he makes all of these incredible claims and that in order to make incredible claims like that, as a journalist, you have to have incredible evidence, right, and he doesn't exist well.
And then also what role do the editors play in that. I'm glad you mentioned twenty fourteen because that's an important year. But let's let's get to the reaction of the initial publication too. So the media does conflate what Web is saying, as as we mentioned, they say that Web is saying the CIA did it. Did it all smoking gun caught red handed. It was the CIA with the crack cocaine in the living room.
As though they invented the substance for some nefarious purpose, to try to manipulate in the population into behaving a certain way, or to incarcerate black men unfairly.
Right, the biggest thing is that they were saying that Web was saying. The news is saying that Web is saying that the CIA is literally the drug dealer, which he did not. He did not say that. I totally get that.
I mean, it's and you know, it's kind of what we're experiencing now with the quick turnaround of like internet reporting, where it's very easy to conflate something in a properly research story and turn it into something else for your own purposes. Wouldn't have thought that would have been happening quite to this degree back then, But yet here we are.
This is back when the news was all made by like organic meatbags called humans rather than bots and botnets, you know what I.
Mean, and the day but then the days before deep fakes, which is a scary thing, right, Yes, so you're absolutely right, guys. He he did get conflated.
Now.
Well, and there's a whole other thing we're gonna talk about in there about Gary web sources, right, and the people he was talking to that he couldn't actually cite as being the source.
Because they were so off the record. And then also on a related thing that we have to get to maybe in a future episode, it's pretty easy to prove that on some level, the federal government, through multiple agencies, has been targeting the black community for a long time. I mean, the same amount of cocaine and the same amount of crack cocaine carry wildly different minimum mandatory incarceration terms, right, Why would that.
Be Hmmm, Matt's making sort of a smushed up face right now.
It's very Hollywood. That's your Charlie Day in front of the conspiracy law chain smoking accusation. I mean, it's a good question though, and the reaction is immense. This is actually one of the first national security stories to really blow up online to get people in the normal mainstream America intensely interested. It's twenty thousand words long. It enrages black communities who are wondering, why are these epidemics happening?
Why does it seem like there's more government punishment or harassment of the community rather than government assistance of a community in trouble. And then there are congressional investigations excuse me, congressional hearings.
Yeah, congressional hearings. But some of the biggest, at least most widely seen hearings or seen on television occur just within smaller communities within LA and other cities like that, where there are people filling a room, a huge room, and they are just asking people how long have you known about the CIA dealing drugs? Like did you know that CIA was dealing drugs? And they're asking their city officials, and they're asking big names who are supposed to be in charge of things.
And again, Webb is in his you can see interviews with him as well, where he essentially says that he doesn't think the CIA was like wringing its hands Monty Burn's style and saying, oh you know what I mean. Yeah, He says, instead, they just really wanted money, and they wanted off the books money anyway, Like if it hadn't been this, it would have been something else.
They couldn't officially use the government's money to pay for what they were trying to do.
Because that's back when that kind of policy or law actually stopped people from doing that sort of thing.
Have we talked much about what the Contra affair was and why they were interacting with these militants who were like they were kind of like rogue militants. Basically, what was the benefit there?
Mentioned in a previous episode, But I think you're right, we should go ahead and just just give you the quick and dirty.
Right.
It's also called Iran Gate, which is interesting, but here in the US we usually call it.
The Iran Contra affair at the Thomas Crown affair.
Yeah, So essentially, what are the contras.
Men, Well, they were a group in Nicaragua and their whole point, or at least for the United States purposes, they were going to at least attempt to throw the Sandinista government.
Which were socialist exactly. These are right wing rebel groups. So the US government tends to support right wing insurgents much more often than say left wing or anti capitalist insurgents. Basically, people are pro resource extraction tend to historically, I'm not saying now, but tend to historically get more support from the US government.
Yeah, and it's one of those things if everyone, if everyone in a country is getting to kind of share the wealth in a more you know, sometimes communists, sometimes socialists structures that occurs where everyone gets a little peace. It's not so great when you could just control it from top.
Down, oh man. Of course, the top down approach.
Of course, the infamous top down. So that sounds weird when you see it that way. Yeah, sorry, miss top down, But all right. So the Iran contra affair occurs when the National Security Council of the US gets involved in secret weapon transactions and other activities that are prohibited by Congress. So Ronald Reagan, the Reagan administration, that's probably a better
way to say it. The Reagan administration at the time is very concerned that communism will spread throughout Central America and challenge the capitalists or liberal hierarchy, that is, you know, challenge the hegemonic status. So the people of Nicaragua were particularly the Satinista Liberation movement they mentioned earlier in nineteen seventy nine, they overthrow the president who is actually a dictator. And now the Reagan administration is having there come to
Jesus moment, as they would say in the South. So he thought this would eventually threaten the security of the United States. Remember we're still in the Cold War era at this time, and so the Reagan administration pushed huge amount of some military aid into not just Nicaragua, but other governments and other places that have civil wars and gorilla fighting in hopes of preventing a left wing government. And in the case of Nicaragua, they wanted to destabilize
that government and engineer and overthrow. So why is Iran in there, right?
Iran? I don't understand.
So they sold anti tank and anti aircraft missiles to Iran, believing that if they sold the missiles to Iran, Iran, through its PROXYHBLAH, would allow hostages in Lebanon to be released. This is already very rupe. Goldberg sat so much, and so a portion of the money that Iran paid for was diverted and then given to the contrast. A lot of this occurred under the supervision of a man who's very familiar to everyone, Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North.
You may remember him from that famous hearing. Yeah it wasn't a hearing. I don't even know exactly what it was, but you can see video of him just admitting to this stuff.
And feels like he did the right thing to stop the the ultimate war of ideology between the West and the communist countries. So the problem with this stuff is that while they're raising this money for the Contras, they're violating something called the Bowland Amendment BOLA and D, a law that was passed in nineteen eighty four that banned direct or indirect military aid to the contrast. So they're moving money in a sleazy way, yep, but they think they're doing the right thing.
It's just a different kind of shell game.
It's kind of like, Yeah, it's kind of like the idea that the ends justify the means, or that there is a difference between what is legal and what is morally correct, and they felt like they were doing the moral thing. Okay, so that's around. Does that?
Yeah, man, Yeah it does. And I knew some of
that but not all of that. But it sounds to me like the accusation here is that they would go to any means necessary to prop up this militant group that was potentially going to do good for our government in deposing this kind of pesky regime that was in place that was inconvenient regime, right, absolutely, and that would extend as far as Web's concern to funneling drugs in the United States knowingly in order to funnel some of that money into this cause that needed to be off
books money, right, great.
Black budget stuff. Yeah, And so this accusation lights a flame under the American public and in a strange, not unprecedented, let's call it that not unprecedented show of solidarity. Various papers of note excoriate Web, the Washington Post before twenty fourteen, Like back when this was released, the Washington Post is saying, there are huge problems with the reporting, there's huge errors. Why can't you cite who said that? Why can't you
prove this claim that you're making? And then Web would go back and say, why I didn't make that claim? But he can't compete with New York Times.
And in turn, Jerry sepos chepos I believe, who was the executive editor of The Mercury News, the paper that this piece was, the series of pieces were published in kind of threw Web under the bus, and he said, quote, we oversimplified the complex issue of how the crack epidemic in America grew through imprecise language and graphics because there are a lot of infographics in this piece as well, we created impressions that were open to misinterpretation. And that's
the kicker, because it was that misinterpretation. Maybe Web didn't go quite as far as as some people might think if you actually read the work. But there's some quotes in here I I want to throw out too, to see what you guys think. But it was those other more quick to jump on a hot story, news outlets that kind of really just kind of made stuff up from whole cloth.
Right, you can't defend yourself against the claim that you did not make other than saying you did not make that. And if you don't have a large enough microphone or platform, you're just not going to get your rebuttal out there. I mean, rebuttals and corrections are some of the most seldom read parts of any newspaper, and this a lot most of this is occurring in newspapers at the time. Although Web was prescient enough to put his work online real quick.
He made a website. He did the surrounds these pieces like early On, which was which is not as much of a thing back then.
Right, it was very as I say, he's very much an early adopter, and the communities that needed to find out about this, he actually drove a lot of them online. People who ordinarily wouldn't have cared about this found it as a safe way to arrive at information they felt the government was trying to hide. It turns out. I want to go just quick to back to twenty fourteen, where the Washing Post republished or they published another criticism, which I I think is the op ed you're going
to read from NOL. The CIA at the same year, on September eighteenth, released a ton of documents spanning thirty years, three decades, and a lot of it confirmed confirmed stuff Gary Webb had argued. They show at least that there was collusion to in backstage, smoky room style collusion to try to suppress the story. One of the things that was released.
This is in twenty fourteen.
M One of the things that was released was an article that was six pages long titled Managing a Nightmare, CIA Public Affairs and the Drug Conspiracy Story. So this
you can find this online. This looks at how the CIA reacted to what it saw as a huge public relations crisis or catastrophe and then showing that the agency actually didn't have to do much to extinguish the public outcry press the story, because you see, as we said, as I said, there are moments of not unprecedented solidarity among papers of note, at least here in the US,
probably in your country as well. Sometimes that happen, not all the time, but sometimes that happens because they have a relationship behind the scenes that you as the public, will never see with intelligence agencies in that country. So the CIA essentially contacts their higher ups in the world of media and publishing and they say, look, let's all vultroun up together.
On get on the same page everybody.
Like in jfk Assassination.
Can I read a quote from yeah, web Pieces.
Before you do that? Just noting in that same year, twenty fourteen, that's when the Jeremy Renner movie Kill the Messenger comes out. That's right, that's all about the Gary Webster.
Do you guys see that. Yes, I hadn't even heard of it. Oh, it's is again.
I really liked it, but only because we had done a video on it in the past. I knew the story.
We're getting a lot of push I mean, it's I really.
Enjoyed it had a built in audience.
Yeah, fair enough.
I just want to play out a couple of these some of these claims that I think are interesting when you read them. In one place from Gary Webb's Dark Alliance trilogy of articles that ultimately became a book. Quote, thousands of young black men are serving long prison sentences for selling cocaine, a drug that was virtually unobtainable in black neighborhoods before members of the CIA's army started bringing it into South Central in the nineteen eighties at bargain
basement prices. So, I mean, it is hyperbolic as hell. And the guy who wrote this op ed. The guy was talking about earlier, the twenty fourteen anyway, Jeff Leen, who was the assistant managing editor for The Washington Post. He calls that a nut graph, which I had never heard of. And I love this. And this is how
he sums that up. What a nut graph is. He says, this was one of the most difficult things for a reporter to write, because you have to summarize some very out landish, outrageous facts and synthesize you know, the truth behind it, and somehow you know paint in the often contradicting notions behind it.
It's kind of like writing a blurb before the story's telling the audience why should I read this exactly?
But it's also you know, he says, this is kind of where web went off the rails and went a little too far, and he ultimately resigned from his position and was never hired again by any mainstream newspapers of note rights. And he just kind of went rogue and did his own thing. But he already kind of set the tone for doing that by making that website. Now he had this book, and he obviously had people that believed him and probably had a following outside of the mainstream press.
Yeah, and also, you know, if the Internet had been more prominent at the time, things might have gone differently for him. He was also notoriously stubborn and at times
difficult to work with. He started blaming his editors pretty quickly, so things became acrimonious between the Mercury editors and himself, but it did lead directly to a Senate subcommittee hearing where John Kerry was a senator at the time, investigated the AP's findings from the Associated Press, and they released in nineteen eighty nine, a report that was more than one thousand pages. It said it found quote considerable evidence that the Contras were linked to running drugs and guns
and the US government knew about it. So that would mean that on that base level, some of what Web is saying is true. But the way that he's using these very highly dramatic phrases like calling the Contras the CIA's army, you know what I mean, that's that for a lot of investigators, that makes it tougher to believe these other claims. So you're probably wondering why we're speaking about Gary Web in the past tense. And I know
we're jumping around a lot right now. I guarantee you that previously we had a nice little timeline for painting the story. We've got a picture here. We're talking about Gary Webb in past tense because after all this stuff is occurring, he is largely considered to have failed his profession. He's essentially blacklisted from any job that he would want, and he's dire need of money. His characters being attacked
and stuff. On December tenth of two thousand and four, he was found dead with two thirty eight caliber gunshot wounds to his head in his home in Carmichael, California, which he had just had to put on the market.
Because he couldn't afford the mortgage.
Right, because he couldn't afford the mortgage. Now, the coroner ruled that this death was a suicide. And Webb's ex wife, remember we noted her earlier, Susan Bell, She said that he had been very depressed after a falling out with his former employers at the Mercury, and a lot of people believe that being professionally discredited drove him to suicide and that his claims in the Dark Alliance were at the very least exaggerated, if not made up. So the
question is, you know what happened. Did he break ethical boundaries? Did he false fi information in order to sell a juicy story, could he not prove his claims his professional failure lead him to take his own life? Or is there more to the story.
And we're going to talk about that right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Here's where it gets crazy, Olhthough not really, because.
We kind of jumped ahead. It's okay, it's okay.
But so Gary Webb was right, he was correct, at least partially but probably but probably not all the way correct, because, as Lean says in that post op ed, you have mentioned nol Gary Webb was no journalism hero. Despite what kill the Messenger says, as Lean pointed out, there are a lot of things that are hyper, a lot of
things he can't support. But we have to mention not only was he at least partially right, but despite the hooplah and the controversy and character assassination, everybody knew that he was right beforehand because two other journalists had figured this out in nineteen eighty five, more than a decade before the Dark Alliance, journalists Robert Perry and Brian Barger or Barker, found and proved that Contra groups were trafficking cocaine to help finance their war in Nicaragua, which the
US also wanted to happen. And then after they came out with that, the Reagan administration launched a behind the scenes campaign to assassinate their character, remove their credibility as journalists. And it was an attempt to discredit any reporting on Contras and drugs. And there's an article by guy named Peter Kornblow who was writing for the Columbia Journalism review from nineteen ninety seven, who says whether the campaign was
the cause of this suppression or not. Coverage of the story was minimal, but it did happen.
Proved and it's crazy to think about this now, But on March fourth, nineteen eighty seven, the then President Reagan came out after not speaking to the American people for a long time during this whole Iran contra just scandal, I guess, is what you would call it. He came out, and he gave a speech, and let's just listen to one tiny little piece of that.
First, let me say I take full responsibility from my own actions and for those of my administration. As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As disappointed as I may be and some who served me, I am still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior. And as personally distasteful as I find secret bank accounts and to funds, and as the Navy would say, this happened on my watch. Let's start with
the part that is the most controversial. A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.
So this was a big deal in Americans' minds. People knew about it. The President is going on television and saying, hey, I didn't know this was happening. It was happening, but I didn't know what was happening. Everybody's cool, Okay, we'll just.
Move forward, like plausible deniability or genuinely sincerely saying this occurred without my knowledge.
Either way, he is already telling you in nineteen eighty seven, this is happening, and.
It's kind of It's interesting. I really appreciate you play that clip because it's something that is somewhat plausible, because if you are at that high level, if you're the president, then a lot of things that you say are directives that are well what sometimes in corporate jargon we refer to as the forty thousand foot view. Yeah, it's like saying, well, make sure that communism doesn't spread in South and Central America. Okay,
that sounds good, but you haven't. If you leave all the details up to other people, you have no idea what they're going to do. You have maybe a reasonable expectation that they will obey the law, but other than that, it's give me results.
How badly does that person want to prove, like, do what you want them to do and make themselves look good in your eyes as the president? Because you just you don't know where that line is for everybody. It's different for everyone.
And this leads to a question that I think a lot of people are still debated. We said, we said that his death was ruled as suicide, right, Yeah, we know that. We know that he died from two gunshot wounds to the head. A lot of people even today believe that Gary Webb was actually murdered and then his death was portrayed as a suicide to cover up further research you might have published. I mean, what do you guys think about that? Ever you've been reading.
This, Yeah, there were a lot of rumors that he was perhaps working on another piece, another story, something bigger. Those are almost all rumors, almost all of them. And then everything you hear from his wife, and specifically from his wife at the time, just about the deep depression that he was suffering from in those moments right before he died. Hm, it does make you think perhaps this was a suicide. It just points to it, right, But let's just take a moment and put ourselves in his shoes.
Imagine that you're a journalist. You're being contacted by people varying people of varying levels of involvement within the United States government and or clandestine organizations. They are telling you stories about things that have occurred. They're giving you specifics about stuff that's already in the public domain. It's stuff that's known, but they're giving you the full story. And simultaneously they're telling you you cannot publish my name you.
No one can ever know that I'm talking to you. This cannot happen. And you are publishing these stories out because this is your big break. This is something that feels very important. There are thousands and thousands of lives being affected by what these people are telling you, right, It is an important story to tell. The pressure that Gary Webb was feeling and must have been feeling to put those stories out that would become dark Alliance. I cannot fathom what that must have felt like, but I
know for sure that it was heavy. It was a heavy burden to bear for him, and it affected his family life and it affected his mental health in some way.
Are there any indications that he got death threats and things? I mean, I would just assume so with being that public and such a divisive anti government story.
That's a good question depending on who you believe.
Right if you watch the movie, is definitely portrayed a lot.
But well also in the movie, in the film Killing the Messengers, I heard it described in a review as it's a retelling of the Gary Web story in a place where everyone in a universe where everyone in the world is wrong except for Gary Web.
Everybody believes Gary. Yeah, exactly exactly where Gary Web is right. But just from in I just I'm trying to identify with him, maybe a little more than I should, But I can imagine a place where being discredited after having such strong feelings about it being real and being important, would take a huge toll on not only your self esteem and self worth, but your ability to continue on.
And one thing that a lot of people see as a smoking gun here is the fact that he died from not one, but two yes shots to the head. You might be surprised by how many people who attempt that sort of process do end up giving themselves ultimately a non fatal injury. But you know, it's never it's never going to be pretty. But one of one of the gunshots was through his cheek. Yeah, so they believe that maybe he missed and then went for a second shot.
But because of that, because of the idea that two gunshot wounds the head, seemed unusual to a lot of people, the majority of whom are not forensic investigators. Obviously, there's this huge outcry and local reporters end up going to Sacramento County and they say, okay, what go on record, tell us what is this? And the coroner at the time, a guy named Robert Lyons, said, it is unusual. It is a suicide. It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots, but it's been done in the past.
It's in fact a distinct possibility. So he's saying it's definitely suicide. This has happened before, and that explanation is not good enough for people who thought there was more to the story, you know what I mean.
Yeah, Well, there are you can hear versions of this story or read them online. Where he was attempting to leave, he was trying to get away, he was trying to sell his house. He was trying to leave and he was cocked before he could leave by whatever in nefarious forces. These claims have a zero evidence to back them up, but it you know, it's tough for me to completely discount them. But at the same time, it seems a lot less plausible than the official story.
So here's yeah, and here's another question, just to show both sides here. If it was some sort of murder and if it was related to his investigations in the Dark Alliance, then why did they wait eight years after the publication of the book for him to take him out of the picture. The timeline is just strange.
Yeah, the claims I've seen were that he was working on something else outside of the Dark Alliance, which is why it got him killed.
And this argument in this discussion, this controversy continues in the modern day in twenty eighteen, as we record this in one of many of the American cities that still battle drug problems. Where's it all coming from? Is someone helping them out? Both sides of the argument. A lot of prominent papers do continue to attack Gary Webb's claims, or attack is a strong word, they take it apart piece by piece and say it didn't prove this. This
is as you said earlier in old hyperbolic statement. And on the other side of this, and these are great valid points too, but on the other side, continuing releases of government documents keep supporting aspects of what he has said.
Yeah, small little pieces.
So it's there's no two ways about it, no bones about it. It's old beans to say it, but we should admit the Dark Alliance does have several several prominent errors that could be critical to you know, like a critical wound to the argument in the book. But CIA documents released from the agency at least confirmed chunks of it. No one is arguing that the CIA showed often a very strange disinterest in the drug trade. Yeah, but how involved or not involved were they will future declassified documents
vindicate web from Beyond the Grave? Did the was the murder something more indirect by ending his career? You know, it's like, did the CIA commit the murder and it was Gary Webb that pulled the trigger? M M it's I mean, it's a different way you look at it.
But well, something you think about because that strategy of disinformation by giving a lot a lot of information to someone where almost all of it is true but a couple are not true, or almost all of it is untrue, but a couple of things are true, right that, And it makes you wonder if the way, especially if you look at it with the large chunks of unsupported claims that are in there, it makes you wonder if he's speaking to one or two people out of the groups
of people, who is giving him incorrect information on purpose in order to in the future discredit him, which, like you said, Ben would then eventually lead to two gunshots to the head self inflicted.
What do you what do you think?
It's very suspicious circumstances. I really, you know, it's like cobaine level suspicious circumstances. You know, I don't know. I don't care for it.
It's definitely it definitely has something something off about it. But the thing is as well, if you are the central intelligence agency, wouldn't you have the wherewithal to make a death look like an accident?
Yeah?
You know what I mean?
Well maybe, And here's the other thing. If you're taken out by let's say, portions of the narcotics world, so higher ups in the drug you know, the drug I don't want to call them companies. What do you call organizations? Sure, these narcotics organizations. It's probably also not going to be that clean of a murder.
Perhaps there's that it could be maybe sending a message, but it could have just been a suicide. I again, going back to this, make it look like an accident thing. It's a tragic truth that fatal car accidents happen multiple times every single day in this country. Yeah, and in most countries with dense populations and pedestrians and vehicles. So I'm still undecided. I know that the official story says that it was a suicide. His ex spouse said it
was a suicide. It is possible to shoot yourself twice in the act of committing this, But don't I want to Let's what do you think, fellow conspiracy realist, to tell us, tell us your take on this.
It just makes you Here's my plea to anyone listening to this who wants to be an investigative journalist or is an investigative journalist. If if you are working on anything that becomes highly important ever in your life, please whatever the circumstances are, No, it's never bad enough to where you need to take your own life. Just know that it's never going to get that dark. It cannot. You are worth it, stick around and these kind of claims won't have to be looked at in the future.
And of course, I mean if you are feeling even remotely in that way, there are people that can help. I mean, there's the suicide Prevention Hotline, and you can find a social worker or some kind of group where you can talk to people that are going through similar things than you. I mean, at the risk of sounding cheesy and hyperbolic, I mean, you're never as alone as
you might think. And I say that as someone who's dealt with suicide in my life and people with suicidal aviations, and it's absolutely not the end all be all, even if it feels that way.
Well said, and I don't think that's hyperbolic or cheesy at all. I think that was very well said. And if you ever feel like reaching out, if you ever just want someone to chat to, we are all over the internet.
Yeah, you can find us Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter, Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram, Facebook, Conspiracy Stuff. You can find us there. Join our Facebook group if you're interested in you like the show, you want to talk to other like minded people who can have just fantastic discussions. We've been having a lot this past week with everyone there. It's called Here's Where It Gets Crazy. That's our Facebook group Find It and.
All you have to do to be a member is name the three hosts of the show, and occasionally our amazing moderators will send us screenshots of some really funny ones. And here's here's the latest. So who are the hosts of the podcast? Stuff they don't want you to know? Answer? Benjamin Bowtie bowling for soup, bowling matteas Fred Trump was the Lizard King Frederick Noel take me down to Funky Town Brown.
Wow, that's great.
Who was a guy named Tristan?
Tristan McNeill, No different Tristan?
Okay, Yeah, I mean that's true, isn't it? Like Noel Matt. Honestly, if we think an answer is funny enough the Mouds. While you're listening, I apologize, Cat Zach Sam Coop. If if we think there's something funny enough that we'll probably let it in.
Yeah, that's definitely my policy.
And while we're on the while we're on the feel good train here, we would like to give a big shout out to our youngest fan, I believe Eliza and Ray, who was born to Nicholas Ray and his wife just a few days ago as we record this. Wow, and so congratulations Ray family. You asked us for a shout out. And remember you promised the one day you would play this episode for your kid.
Yeah, the whole Gary web story. Why do I have to do that?
Why did I play?
No?
Yeah, just player the end. Just wait until she's wait until she's an adult or if people still listen to podcast at that time, then no. I mean, we're finne with you. You don't have to absolutely, absolutely do not feel obligated to play this for but we just wanted to say congratulations.
Absolutely, and that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call. Our number is one eight three three std WYTK. If you don't want to do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
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