- The "Dark Alliance" contra-crack series, which
I co-reported with Gary Webb, has died with less a bang or a whimper than
a gloat from the mainstream press.
-
- "The San Jose Mercury News has apparently had enough
of reporter Gary Webb and his efforts to prove that the CIA was involved
in the sale of crack cocaine," announced Washington Post media critic
Howard Kurtz, who has written some of the harshest attacks on Webb. "Editors
at the California newspaper have yanked Webb off the story and told him
they will not publish his follow-up articles. They have also moved to transfer
Webb from the state capital bureau in Sacramento to a less prestigious
suburban office in Cupertino." [Washington Post, June 11, 1997]
-
- Webb got the news on June 5, 1997, from executive editor
Jerry Ceppos, who had publicly turned against the series several weeks
earlier with a personal column declaring that the stories "fell short
of my standards" and failed to handle the "gray areas" with
sufficient care. [San Jose Mercury News, May 11, 1997]
-
- In killing the new stories, Ceppos said Mercury News
editors had reservations about the credibility of a principal Webb source,
apparently a reference to convicted cocaine trafficker Carlos Cabezas,
who has claimed that a CIA agent oversaw the transfer of drug profits to
the contras. Ceppos also complained that Webb had gotten too close to the
story.
-
- Ceppos then ordered Webb to the paper's San Jose headquarters
the next day to learn about his future with the newspaper. On June 6, 1997,
as that final decision was coming down, I called Ceppos to protest. I wanted
him to understand the human as well as journalistic costs of what he was
doing, not just to Webb but to other journalists associated with the story
in Nicaragua where I have worked for more than a decade.
-
- I thought he should know that his decision to distance
himself from the "Dark Alliance" series -- combined with earlier
attacks from major American newspapers -- had increased the dangers to
me and others who have been pursuing this story in the field.
-
- Just as Webb has been under personal attack in the United
States, I have faced efforts from former contras to tear down my reputation
in Nicaragua. Ex-contras also have harassed Nicaraguan reporters who have
tried to follow up the contra-cocaine evidence.
-
- In one paid advertisement, Oscar Danilo Blandon, a drug
trafficker who has admitted donating some cocaine profits to the contras
in the early 1980s, called me a "pseudo-journalist" and accused
me of having some unspecified links to an "international communist
organization." Blandon also accused Nicaraguan reporters from El Nuevo
Diario of "trying to manipulate" members of the U.S. Congress
looking into the contra-cocaine charges.
-
- Former contra chief Adolfo Calero declared in an article
in La Tribuna what he thought should be done to these politically suspect
Nicaraguan and foreign reporters. He used metaphorical language that refers
to leftist Nicaraguan journalists as "deer" and fellow-traveling
foreign reporters as "antelopes." "The deer are going to
be finished off," Calero wrote on Feb. 2, 1997. "In this case,
the antelopes as well." As a Swiss journalist, I would be an "antelope."
-
- Less subtly, there have been threatening phone calls
to my office. In late May 1997, a male voice shouted obscenities at me
over the phone and threatened to "screw" my wife who is a Nicaraguan
lawyer representing Enrique Miranda, one of the Nicaraguan cocaine traffickers
who has spoken with congressional investigators.
-
- Earlier I had sent Ceppos a letter which complained that
his May 11 "column provoked ... a series of very unfortunate reactions
that seriously affect my working environment and exposes unintentionally
everybody here who has been involved in this investigation." In the
phone conversation on June 6, 1997, Ceppos first denied having received
the letter, but then admitted that he had it. Still, he refused my request
that the letter be published.
-
- A Clear Message
-
- My appeal also did not stop Ceppos from informing Webb
later that day that the investigative reporter would be transferred to
a suburban office 150 miles from his home where he and his wife are raising
three young children. That would mean that Webb would have to relocate
from Sacramento or not see his family during the work week. The message
was clear and Webb did not miss its significance: he saw the transfer as
a clear message that the Mercury News wanted him to quit.
-
- The retributions against Webb were a sad end to the "Dark
Alliance" series which has been enveloped in controversy since it
was published in August 1996. The series linked contra-cocaine shipments
in the early 1980s to a Los Angeles drug pipeline that first mass-marketed
"crack" cocaine to inner-city neighborhoods.
-
- The series drew especially strong reactions from the
African-American community which has been devastated by the crack epidemic.
In fall 1996, however, The Washington Post and other major newspapers began
attacking the series for alleged overstatements. The papers also mocked
African-Americans for supposedly being susceptible to baseless "conspiracy
theories."
-
- The furor obscured the fact that "Dark Alliance"
built upon more than a decade of evidence amassed by journalists, congressional
investigators and agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration who found
numerous connections between the contras and drug traffickers. Some of
that evidence was compiled in a Senate report issued in 1989 by a subcommittee
headed by Sen. John Kerry. Other pieces came out during the Iran-contra
scandal and still more during the drug-trafficking trial of Panamanian
Gen. Manuel Noriega in 1991.
-
- But the contras were always defended by the Reagan-Bush
administrations which saw the guerrillas as a necessary geo-political counterweight
to the leftist Sandinista government that ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s.
With a few exceptions, the mainstream media joined the White House in protecting
the contras -- and the CIA -- on the drug-trafficking evidence. [For details,
see Robert Parry's Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project
Truth.']
-
- Contra Cocaine
-
- Still, from time to time, even The Washington Post has
acknowledged legitimate concerns about contra drug trafficking. In fall
1996, for instance, after initiating the attacks on "Dark Alliance,"
the Post ran a front-page article describing how Medellin cartel trafficker
George Morales "contributed at least two airplanes and $90,000 to"
one of the contra groups operating in Costa Rica. The story quoted contra
leaders Octaviano Cesar and Adolfo "Popo" Chamorro as admitting
receipt of the contributions, although they insisted that they had cleared
the transactions with their contact at the CIA. [Washington Post, Oct.
31, 1996]
-
- The Post did not mention the name of that contact, an
omission that angered Chamorro. He told me that the CIA man was Alan Fiers,
who served as chief of the CIA's Central American Task Force in the mid-1980s.
Fiers has denied any illicit involvement with drug traffickers, although
he testified to the congressional Iran-contra investigators that he knew
that among the Costa Rican-based contras, drug trafficking involved "not
a couple of people. It was a lot of people."
-
- While admitting some truth to the contra-cocaine allegations,
the Post story stopped short of any self-criticism about the newspaper's
failure to expose the contra-drug problem in the 1980s as the cocaine was
entering the United States. In the Oct. 31, 1996, story, the Post only
noted that "a broad congressional inquiry from 1986 to 1988 ... found
that CIA and other officials may have chosen to overlook evidence that
some contra groups were engaged in the drug trade or were cooperating with
traffickers."
-
- The Post then added obliquely: "But that probe caused
little stir when its report was released." With that indirect phrasing,
the Post seemed to be shunting off blame for the "little stir"
onto the congressional report. The newspaper did not explain why it buried
the Senate report's explosive findings on page A20. [Washington Post, April
14, 1989]. Instead, last fall, the Post and other big papers focused almost
exclusively on alleged flaws in "Dark Alliance."
-
- When that drumbeat of criticism began, Ceppos initially
defended the series. He wrote a supportive letter to the Post (which the
newspaper refused to publish). But the weight of the attacks from major
newspapers and leading journalism reviews eventually softened up the Mercury
News. Inside the paper, young staffers feared that the controversy could
hurt their chances of getting hired by bigger newspapers. Senior editors
fretted about their careers in the Knight-Ridder chain, which owns the
Mercury News.
-
- New Leads
-
- In the meantime, Webb and I continued following contra-drug
leads in Nicaragua and the United States. The new information eventually
became the basis for Webb's submission of four new stories to Ceppos. Webb
has described these stories as completed drafts although Ceppos called
them just "notes."
-
- Though I have not seen Webb's drafts, I know they include
two stories relating to witnesses in Nicaragua who were part of the cocaine
networks of Norwin Meneses, a longtime Nicaraguan drug trafficker who was
based in San Francisco and who collaborated closely with senior contra
leaders.
-
- Meneses's operation surfaced with the so-called Frogman
case in 1983 when the FBI and Customs captured two divers in wet suits
hauling $100 million worth of cocaine ashore at San Francisco Bay. The
federal prosecutor ordered $36,020 captured in that case be given to the
contras who claimed it was their money.
-
- For the new "Dark Alliance" stories, we interviewed
Carlos Cabezas who was convicted of conspiracy in the Frogman case. Cabezas
insisted that a CIA agent -- a Venezuelan named Ivan Gomez -- oversaw the
cocaine operation to make sure the profits went to the contras, not into
the pockets of the traffickers.
-
- Last year, Cabezas outlined his claims in a British ITV
documentary. "They told me who he [Gomez] was and the reason that
he was there," Cabezas said. "It was to make sure that the money
was given to the right people and nobody was taking advantage of the situation
and nobody was taking profit that they were not supposed to. And that was
it. He was making sure that the money goes to the contra revolution."
-
- The ITV documentary, which aired on Dec. 12, 1996, quoted
former CIA Latin American division chief Duane Clarridge as denying any
knowledge of either Cabezas or Gomez. Clarridge directed the contra war
in the early 1980s and was later indicted on perjury charges in connection
with the Iran-contra scandal. He was pardoned by President George H.W.
Bush in 1992.
-
- The new "Dark Alliance" stories also would
have examined the claims of other contra-connected drug witnesses in Nicaragua
as well as the career problems confronted by DEA agents when they uncovered
evidence of contra drug trafficking. But prospects that the full contra-cocaine
story will ever be told in the United States have dimmed with the shutting
down of "Dark Alliance."
-
- I am also afraid that Ceppos's decision to punish Webb
will strengthen the campaign of intimidation inside Nicaragua. But beyond
the personal costs to Webb and me, Ceppos's actions sent a chilling message
to all journalists who some day might dare investigate wrongdoing by the
CIA and its operatives.
-
- What's especially troubling about this new "Dark
Alliance" tale is that the investigative spotlight was turned off
not by the government, but by the national news media.
-
- Editor's Post-Script: For more on the aftermath of this
betrayal of the contra-cocaine investigation, see Consortiumnews.com "America's
Debt to Journalist Gary Webb."
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