- Not long after I wrote a series for the San Jose Mercury
News about a drug ring that had flooded South Central Los Angeles with
cheap cocaine at the beginning of the crack explosion there, a strange
thing happened to me. I was silenced.
-
- This, believe it or not, came as something of a surprise
to me. For 17 years I had been writing newspaper stories about grafters,
crooked bankers, corrupt politicians and killers -- and winning armloads
of journalism awards for it. Some of my stories had convened grand juries
and sent important people to well-deserved jail cells. Others ended up
on 20/20, and later became a best-selling book (not written by me,
unfortunately.)
I started doing television news shows, speaking to college journalism
classes
and professional seminars. I had major papers bidding against each other
to hire me.
-
- So when I happened across information implicating an
arm of the Central Intelligence Agency in the cocaine trade, I had no
qualms
about jumping onto it with both feet. What did I have to worry about? I
was a newspaperman for a big city, take-no-prisoners newspaper. I had the
First Amendment, a law firm, and a multi-million dollar corporation
watching
my back.
-
- Besides, this story was a fucking outrage. Right-wing
Latin American drug dealers were helping finance a CIA-run covert war in
Nicaragua by selling tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods in LA, who
were turning it into crack and spreading it through black neighborhoods
nationwide. And all the available evidence pointed to the sickening
conclusion
that elements of the US government had known of it and had either tacitly
encouraged it or, at a minimum, done absolutely nothing to stop it.
-
- And that's when this strange thing happened. The national
news media, instead of using its brute strength to force the truth from
our government, decided that its time would be better spent investigating
me and my reporting. They kicked me around pretty good, I have to admit.
(At one point, I was even accused of making movie deals with a crack dealer
I'd written about. The DEA raided my film agent's office looking for any
scrap of paper to back up this lie and appeared disappointed when they
came up emptyhanded.)
-
- To this day, no one has ever been able to show me a
single
error of fact in anything I've written about this drug ring, which includes
a 600-page book about the whole tragic mess. Indeed, most of what has come
out since shows that my newspaper stories grossly underestimated the extent
of our government's knowledge, an error to which I readily confess. But,
in the end, the facts didn't really matter. What mattered was making the
damned thing go away, shutting people up, and making anyone who demanded
the truth appear to be a wacky conspiracy theorist. And it worked.
-
- As a result, the CIA was allowed to investigate itself,
release a heavily censored report admitting that it had worked with cocaine
traffickers, and simultaneously declare itself innocent of any wrongdoing.
And that's where our firebrand national news media has let the matter lie
to this day.
-
- Now it's NarcoNews' turn for the silence treatment. And,
if I had to guess, I'd venture to say that it's probably more important
to the folks selling us the Drug War to shut up Al Giordano than it is
to silence mainstream reporters who, in my father's eloquent words,
wouldn't
say shit if they had a mouth full of it.
-
- No one can lean on NarcoNews's editors, or their bosses,
or its board of directors to reign Al in or, failing that, reassign him
to the night copy desk. The only person they can lean on is Al, who doesn't
take to being leaned on. And they can't shut down the Internet either.
So two choices remain.
-
- They can grit their teeth and suffer Al's reporting,
day after aggravating day, as he exposes the ugly underside of this endless
war on drugs - and actually makes things happen, like real journalists
are supposed to do. Or they can try to make it impossible for him to do
his job by harassing him with specious lawsuits, bedevil him with lawyers
and depositions and interrogatories and subpoenas, and reduce him to
penury.
Why? To silence him. To make him go away. To keep him from looking under
rocks that reporters aren't supposed to look under.
-
- Make no mistake. This court fight isn't about any
particular
story NarcoNews has done. It's about ALL of them, and all of the ones yet
to come. And it's a battle over the continued independence of Internet
journalism as well. The silencing of Al Giordano and NarcoNews isn't a
theoretical possibility that might happen a couple years from now. It's
already happening. Al and his volunteer lawyers are hip-deep in it right
now. And they need our help.
-
- Narco News and Al Giordano face an April 9th deadline
to respond to the Banamex censorship lawsuit or they will be declared in
default - guilty without a single fact being heard in a case where the
facts prove them right.
-
- A civil lawsuit is different than a criminal case:
complex
legal issues require trained lawyers to dig through the law books on
procedural
issues so far from the basic truths about photographs of cocaine
trafficking
on the coast of Mexico. The bank's lawyers at Akin Gump are paid astronomic
fees to raise every small point of process and delay the day when the facts
come to light in New York City court.
-
- If this case goes to trial, that's when Narco News will
triumph. And all of us will win with it as the real facts of the corruption
of the international drug war come to light in the media center of New
York.
-
- The hard part comes right now, in navigating the maze
of irrelevantprocess issues, as any reporter who has covered the courts
has seen. Narco News will either be able to have skilled attorneys get
them through this complicated phase or - I can see it coming - Al will
have to take a long trip to the law library himself, abandon reporting
for the coming weeks or months in order to wage his own defense. Then you
and I will not be able to read new reports on Narco News at this key moment
when Plan Colombia explodes regionally and more Latin American voices are
raised against the drug war, like the Mexican police chief yesterday, who,
if not for Narco News, would never be heard by those of us who speak and
read in English.
-
- That is what is at stake: Whether a skilled reporter
has to retire for months to become a pro se lawyer, or whether he can
continue
reporting the facts to us.
-
- I was silenced but am not silenced any more. When, the
other day, the film rights to my book Dark Alliance about US complicity
in the cocaine trade were purchased for a television movie, I wrote Al
to pledge part of those proceeds to his defense. In the years to come,
there is no question that Narco News will be proven right and will be
helping
the next generation of reporters fight efforts to censor them.
-
- But wouldn't it be wonderful if this time the censors
failed entirely to take Al and Narco News out of circulation, for a year,
for months, even for a week? Wouldn't that be the best deterrent against
bankers and lobbyists from waging these frivolous lawsuits against Free
Speech on the Internet? I understand that Narco News needs only about
$13,000
more to be able to have the most difficult stage of the lawsuit process
- that which it faces immediately - handled with professional legal
assistance,
thus allowing Al to continue expending his energy and time in reporting
to us the facts. One person of means could solve this problem with a check.
Two dozen people giving $500 could do it. 130 people giving a hundred
dollars...
you can do the math: If half of Narco News' readers give one dollar each,
Narco News will keep publishing.
-
- The hard part is that it must be done now, today. Please
join me in sending a check to:
-
- Drug War on Trial
- C/O Thomas Lesser, Esq.
- Lesser, Newman, Souweine & Nasser
- 39 Main Street
- Northampton, MA 01060
-
- Al often says that Narco News never wanted to ask its
readers for a cent, and I sense that it pains him to ask the readers who
benefit from his reporting to support his defense in court. That's why
I'm writing you.
-
- This lawsuit is bigger than the fate of one Internet
publication. It is larger than, but it will decide, free speech issues
in cyberspace for years to come. What is at stake here is nothing less
than whether the public knows the truth and the facts about the war on
drugs in our hemisphere.
-
- If we don't all act today, we will be in the dark again
tomorrow.
-
- For information about the lawsuit and its defense:
- http://www.narconews.com/warroom.html
-
- http://www.counterpunch.org/narconews.html
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