Corrie had primary biliary cirrhosis, a genetic liver disease that already had. A January 1997 article in American Journalism Review noted that a 1994 series Webb wrote had also been the subject of a Mercury News internal review that criticized Webb's reporting. "Although Ross had become a millionaire by 1984," Katz now wrote, "the market was so huge by then that even a dealer of his stature could seem dwarfed How the crack epidemic reached that extreme, on some level," he continues, "had nothing to do with Ross". "Looking back," she says, "I think Gary had been obsessed with suicide for some time. She kept crying about how terrible it all was - by which I mean that she was, physically, crying. By Sam Stanton Bee Staff Writer Published 2:15 am PST Wednesday, December 15, 2004. . A perceptive, engaging woman of 48, she has turned an adjoining study into a small shrine to her late husband, who would have celebrated his 50th birthday five weeks ago. She acted opposite Dirk Bogarde in the groundbreaking film Victim (Basil Dearden, 1961), as the unsuspecting wife of a barrister who is a closet homosexual. By: E&P Staff The death of investigative reporter Gary Webb has been confirmed as a suicide, according to a coroner's statement. Dispelling the Rumors: Gary Webb's Death Confirmed As Suicide But Ian Webbknows all too well the emotions that come with that experience. Webb, one of the boldest and most outstanding reporters of his generation, was the journalist who, in 1996, established the connection between the CIA and major drug dealers in Los Angeles, some of whose profits had been channelled to fund the Contra guerrilla movement in Nicaragua. He was sentenced to life in prison, though the sentence was shortened on appeal and Ross was released in 2009. Gary Stephen Webb(August 31, 1955 - December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. [68], In August 2004, Webb joined the Sacramento News & Review, an alternative weekly newspaper, where he continued doing investigative writing. "[38], Surprised by The Washington Post article, The Mercury News's executive editor Jerome Ceppos wrote to the Post defending the series. Its pointed to as one of the clearer cases of CIA intervention as revenge for Webb revealing damaging secrets about the agencies involvement in drug smuggling. Few reporters I've known could match his nose for an investigative story. font-size: 34px; Tomac is used to good feelings when it comes to Daytona. Gary Webb's Death Confirmed as Suicide | Editor and Publisher But the biggest loss he had was the writing. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. font-weight:500; The other article, citing interviews with current and former intelligence and law-enforcement officials, questioned the importance of the drug dealers discussed in the series, both in the crack cocaine trade and in supporting the Nicaraguan Contras' fight against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein also took note and wrote to CIA director John Deutch and Attorney General Janet Reno, asking for investigations into the articles' allegations. A flood of inquiries about Gary Webb's shooting death prompts statement. The reports rejected the series's main claims but were critical of some CIA and law enforcement actions. Within weeks, the site was attracting up to 1.3m hits per day. He wrote that the series likely "oversimplified" the crack epidemic in America and the supposed "critical role" the dealers written about in the series played in it. Celebrezze eventually sued the Plain Dealer and won an undisclosed out of court settlement. [16] As part of The Mercury News team that covered the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Webb and his colleague Pete Carey wrote a story examining the causes of the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct. Emma Lee Webb, age 75, of Crossett, AR passed away Monday February 27, 2023, in her home surrounded by her family. And yet, for all his Easy Rider tendencies, he was also a dedicated family man with an extraordinary appetite for researching minutiae. Two years later, he was promoted to Vice President of Knight Ridder, the Mercury News's parent company; he retired from this position last month. In city after city, local dealers either bought from Ross or got left behind."[24]. Cuts and amendments were made at the request of Ceppos, executive editor of the Mercury News, and Webb's immediate editor Dawn Garcia, among others. The complete lack of desire to ask the difficult questions makes me want to scream. He placed his keys and ID cards on the kitchen table, together with a cremation certificate he had purchased for himself. The feeling was that with other news outlets calling for Webb's head, the paper's credibility depended on their joining in on the attacks. He made that very clear. .article-native-ad strong { The Mercury News reporter came under sustained attack from the weightier US newspapers such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and, especially, the Los Angeles Times, infuriated at being scooped, on its own patch, by what it saw as a small-town paper. Gary Numan's superfan wife had 'body lift' and exploding breasts My wife has kept me grounded for . Return of the messenger: How Jeremy Renner's new film Kill The According to the report, the Inspector-General's office (OIG) examined all information the agency had "relating to CIA knowledge of drug trafficking allegations in regard to any person directly or indirectly involved in Contra activities." Sheriff: Fatal Blue Grass house fire rule 'undetermined, but accidental' The follow-up reporting in the Los Angeles Times and other papers has been criticised for focusing on problems in the series rather than re-examining the earlier CIA-Contra claims. that the "federal government bore some responsibility, however indirect, for the flood of crack that coursed through black neighborhoods in the 1980s"). "They had him writing obituaries," she said. "[74] Mary Anne Sharkey, Webb's editor at The Plain Dealer, told writer Alicia Shepard in 1997 that Webb was known as 'the carpenter' "because he had everything nailed down. .article-native-ad svg { One of his last articles examined America's Army, a video game designed by the U.S. "It sounds crazy," says Bell, "but having his motorbike stolen was the last straw. [72] A New York Times profile of Webb in June 1997 noted that two of his series written for the Cleveland Plain Dealer had resulted in lawsuits that the paper had settled. Webb chose the second option. ", The significant legacy of the Webb case, "the reason this whole affair remains so significant today," Blum says, "is this: the knowledge that, if one individual dares raise such serious issues, they risk confronting a tremendous apparatus that is prepared to whack them hard, and there is very little they can expect by way of support. The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress. Army. A Celebration of Life will be . So he blew her off. Steven Webb . "He thought I was being cowardly. Obituary | GARY HAYS WEBB of Neenah, Wisconsin | WESTGOR FUNERAL HOMES He died on December 10, 2004 in Carmichael, California, USA. He was born August 27, 1968 in Saginaw, Michigan to Taylor Jr. and Loretta Webb. Webb began to shift from cynicism to curiosity. Hired by the San Jose Mercury News, Webb contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. The series ran from October 2022, 1996, and was researched by a team of 17 reporters. That was just the way he was.". The Los Angeles Times and other major papers published articles suggesting the "Dark Alliance" claims were overstated and, in November 1996, Jerome Ceppos, the executive editor at Mercury News, wrote about being "in the eye of the storm". The drugs went to South Central LA. Then, in August the same year, the first of three instalments of "Dark Alliance" appeared. [19] The series was published in The Mercury News in three parts, from Sunday, 18 August 1996 to 20 August 1996, with a first long article and one or two shorter articles appearing each day. The article resulted in a lawsuit against Webb's paper which the plaintiffs won. [51], The editors met with Webb several times in February to discuss the results of the paper's internal review and eventually decided to print neither Carey's draft article nor the articles Webb had filed. "If there was an eye to the storm," Katz wrote, "if there was a mastermind behind crack's decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw most responsible for flooding LA's streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick. It noted that Blandn and Meneses claimed to have donated money to Contra sympathizers in Los Angeles, but found no information to confirm that it was true or that the agency had heard of it. "Which was that, if he wanted a future within the political establishment of the United States, then he should concentrate on other aspects of life.". He had also lost his house the week before his suicide. Gary Webb and 'Kill the Messenger': Reporter played by - cleveland "Everyone got out and left the person who had made the noise - issued the report - alone. He was born June 18, 1943, in Appleton, son of the late Wilford and Helen (Hauskey) Webb. I first heard about Webb eight years ago, I tell Bell, from the Paris-based journalist Paul Moreira. The story they printed was just awful. By the late spring of 1996, Webb was ready to publish. For two years, Blum and Kerry supervised the interrogation of dozens of witnesses who described CIA-related drug deals in central America. The February 2000 report by the House Intelligence Committee in turn considered the book's claims as well as the series' claims. In February last year he was laid off by the State Legislature. At that time, Webb (pictured) was best known for the controversial three-part CIA 1996 expose he wrote the San Jose Mercury News called "Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the . And "we really didn't do anything to advance his work or illuminate much to the story, and it was a really kind of tawdry exercise. The second volume, "The Contra Story," was issued in a classified version on April 27, 1998, and in an unclassified version on October 8, 1998. He stayed home, playing computer games, and began smoking cannabis heavily. After a local newspaper reported that Webb had died from multiple gunshots, the coroner's office received so many calls asking about Webb's death that Sacramento County Coroner Robert Lyons issued a statement confirming Webb had died by suicide. "But Gary thought that if something was true, it should be told. Despite some hyped phrasing, "Dark Alliance" appears to be praiseworthy investigative reporting."[47]. Writing on the Los Angeles Times opinion page, Schou said, "Webb asserted, improbably, that the Blandn-Meneses-Ross drug ring opened 'the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles,' helping to 'spark a crack explosion in urban America.' [39] The Post refused to print his letter. He was previously married to Sue Bell. Gary Webb's family says his death was Suicide. OR was he like Epstein Jeremy Renner as Gary Webb How Kill the Messenger Will Vindicate Investigative Journalist Gary Webb Melinda Welsh September 29, 2014 This one has all the ingredients of a dreamed-up Hollywood. His was the story of a man who gains information of wrongdoing, then, attempting to act in the public interest, seeks protection from his superiors, and the forces of law, and does not receive it. The consensus, insofar as one exists, is that he probably overstated both the amount of drug money made by Ross and Blandn, and the percentage of those profits diverted to the Contras. "Exactly," replied Kornbluh, who - referring specifically to the LA Times, said he is "baffled as to how they could be so gullible. [46] Overholser was harshly critical of the series, "reported by a seemingly hotheaded fellow willing to have people leap to conclusions his reporting couldn't back up." American Journalism Review - Archives After Ceppos' column, The Mercury News spent the next several months conducting an internal review of the story. After introducing the three, the first article discussed primarily Blandn and Meneses, and their relationship with the Contras and the CIA. padding:0!important; "[58], It also concluded that "the claims that Blandn and Meneses were responsible for introducing crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles and spreading the crack epidemic throughout the country were unsupported." This did not happen in Webb's case.