Two movies are due to be released about Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance” newspaper series. Webb exposed the connections between the CIA, a crack cocaine explosion in the African-American neighborhoods of South Los Angeles, and the Nicaraguan Contras during the 1980's all under the authority of the Reagan White House. Follow below for a brief summary of the excellent Huffington Post article written by Ryan Grimm, Matt Sledge and Matt Ferner, or better yet read their infinitely superior original post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
All quotes in this diary are from this article.
As a young adult, I remember clearly the Iran Contra affair where the Reagan administration illegally traded arms for hostages and secretly funded the Nicaraguan Contras. And I had heard a little bit about a drug ring that had sold millions of dollars worth of cocaine in the U.S. and that the profits were also funneled to the CIA’s army in Nicaragua. But I knew absolutely nothing about the mainstream media's complicity in discrediting the journalist who exposed the whole sordid business, Gary Webb, driving him to an apparent suicide in ten years ago.
Major media, led by The New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, worked to discredit his story. Under intense pressure, Webb's top editor abandoned him.
Now, Webb’s bombshell expose is being explored anew in a documentary, “Freeway: Crack in the System,” directed by Marc Levin, which tells the story of “Freeway” Rick Ross, who created a crack empire in LA during the 1980s and is a key figure in Webb’s “Dark Alliance” narrative. The documentary is being released after the major motion picture “Kill The Messenger,” which features Jeremy Renner in the role of Webb and hits theaters on Friday.
I plan on seeing both films.
It is incredible that this whole story has gained so little traction since Webb's 1996 series published in the San Jose Mercury News and his subsequent 1998 book on the scandal, especially since both John Kerry and Gary Hart were involved in an investigation and that in 1989 "Kerry released a detailed report claiming that not only was there “considerable evidence” linking the Contra effort to trafficking of drugs and weapons, but that the U.S. government knew about it."
Witnesses who have come forward now directly implicate the Reagan administration. Oliver North, the White House National Security Counsel official in charge of the Contra operation, clearly knew about the drug-running and the sale of goods provided by the U.S. government.
North’s own diary, originally uncovered by the National Security Archive, is a rich source of evidence as well. “Honduran DC-6 which is being used for runs out of New Orleans is probably being used for drug runs into the U.S.,” reads an entry for Aug. 9, 1985, reflecting a conversation North had with Owen about Mario Calero, Adolfo’s brother.
An entry from July 12, 1985 relates that “14 million to finance [an arms depot] came from drugs” and another references a trip to Bolivia to pick up “paste.” (Paste is slang term for a crude cocaine derivative product comprised of coca leaves grown in the Andes as well as processing chemicals used during the cocaine manufacturing process.)
Webb’s story “posed a genuine public relations crisis for the Agency.”
In December 1997, the CIA told reporters that an internal inspector general report exonerated the agency.
An important key to Webb's story was testimony from Danilo Blandon, one of the most significant Nicaraguan drug importers in the 1980s.
Webb’s series connected the Contras' drug-running directly to the growth of crack in the U.S., and it was this connection that faced the most pushback from critics. While Blandon may have been operating on behalf of the Contras early in his career, they charged, he later broke off on his own. But an October 1986 arrest warrant for Blandon indicates that the LA County Sheriff's Department at the time had other information.
Apparently the crack was originally pedaled in predominantly black neighborhoods in Los Angeles and then spread to other U.S. cities.
Levin's film not only explores the corrupt foundations of the drug war itself, but also calls into question the draconian jail sentences the U.S. justice system meted out to a mostly minority population, while the country's own foreign policy abetted the drug trade.
“I knew that these laws were a mistake when we were writing them," says Eric Sterling, who was counsel to the U.S. House Judiciary Committee in the 1980s and a key contributor to the passage of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws, in the documentary.
In 1980, there were roughly 40,000 drug offenders in U.S. prisons, according to research from The Sentencing Project, a prison sentencing reform group. By 2011, the number of drug offenders serving prison sentences ballooned to more than 500,000 -- most of whom are not high-level operators and are without prior criminal records.
"There is no question that there are tens of thousands of black people in prison serving sentences that are decades excessive,” Sterling says. “Their families have been destroyed because of laws I played a central role in writing.”
The height of the drug war in the 1980s also saw the beginning of the militarization of local law enforcement, the tentacles of which are seen to this day, most recently in Ferguson, Missouri.
Reading this story really got me pissed off. The Republicans have time and time again been willing to deliberately cause damage to the country in order to advance their goals. There behavior is inexcusable, morally corrupt, often illegal and in my opinion treasonous. Republican administrations have given us the Great Depression, the Southern Strategy, Watergate, Trickle Down Economics, tax cuts for the wealthy and ever widening income inequality, the Iraq War, the Great Recession, the Sequester and the war on women and the poor. They have fanned the fire of drug abuse in a deliberate attempt to discredit black and minority communities, overwhelming our prisons and courts and are now doing everything they can to suppress the right of people to vote. The elections are only three weeks away and we have to do everything we can to stop them from taking the Senate. Complacency is the enemy of Democracy. Go see the movies. Take a Reaganite with you. Then go vote.
3:22 PM PT: It was suggested that I add this movie trailer to the diary. Hopefully I did it right. If not it is in the comments below.
https://www.youtube.com/...