Whiteout

by Alexander Cockburn

  Blandón’s testimony didn’t end up helping Ricky Ross stave off a conviction that left him facing a life sentence. But it did provide Gary Webb with the centerpiece for his story. Here was a government witness who admitted under oath that he had sold cocaine for the Contras and that he had received his instructions from Col. Enrique Bermúdez, a paid agent of the CIA.

  After the trial, Webb sat down and wrote his story. By the end of March he had turned in to his editor Dawn Garcia about 25,000 words of prose. Then the editors went to work. “The story went through, it seems like 50,000 rewrites,” Webb says. It was shuttled back and forth between Garcia, managing editor Yarnold and the paper’s editor-in-chief, Jerry Ceppos. None of them raised any objections to the articles. Nobody came to Webb and said that this was risky stuff he was writing. Certainly the reaction would have been different if the story had come out at the height of the Contra War or even during the 1992 presidential election pitting Bill Clinton against George Bush. Now, Webb thought, perhaps it was safe to write about these issues.

  The desire to get everything out is one reason Webb came up with the idea of developing an Internet web site for the series. “I wrote a memo saying this story has a very high unbelievability factor built into it,” Webb says. “The best way to protect it is to release other source documents and we can do this easily with hyperlinks on the Net. And management of the paper had been drumming into reporters that they should always think of ways to use the vast resources of the Internet to interface with the reader. They saw the Mercury News as Silicon Valley’s newspaper.” So before the series ran Webb went to talk to the people at Mercury Center, the paper’s web site. Access to Mercury Center was a feature of America Online, the nation’s largest Internet service. Webb told the Mercury Center people that he wanted to use the web site to display all of the source material he had used for the story – the court transcripts, the DEA and FBI reports, and the grand jury transcripts. They even developed sound chips of Blandón’s testimony at Ross’s trial. The web site also featured a detailed timeline, photos and bios of the key players in the story and links to government documents, such as the report published by Senator John Kerry after his 1988 hearing on Contra drug running.

  Webb’s stories finally began appearing on the front page of the San Jose Mercury News on August 18, 1996. At first they didn’t spark much national interest. Webb got a call from syndicated columnist Norman Solomon, who wrote a complimentary piece about the series, and he was asked to appear on Dennis Bernstein’s show on Berkeley’s KPFA radio station. The first bigtime reporter to contact Webb was Michael Jackson, host of a popular syndicated talk show on KABC out of Los Angeles. Webb’s appearance on Jackson’s show was the first time the people of South Central Los Angeles heard the story about the CIA’s ties to the crack plague that had ravaged their neighborhoods. “Then all hell broke loose,” Webb says. “It was suddenly on radio shows all over the country. When I was on the talk shows I gave out the web site address, so that anybody across the country could read the story. The furor really started when people began reading this for themselves.” The Mercury Center web site soon began getting more than 1.3 million hits a day.

  The publication of Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series came just at the start of the Democratic National Convention. That’s one reason the story didn’t get as much initial attention as it might have otherwise received. But when Rep. Maxine Waters, who represents South Central Los Angeles, returned to her district, she found that her office had been flooded with calls about the stories. Her constituents were demanding that she investigate the CIA role in the city’s crack epidemic. Waters called Webb, who accepted her invitation to address a town meeting in South Central about his story.

  So, the first wave of publicity about the “Dark Alliance” stories was extremely favorable. Webb was invited onto the TV talk shows hosted by Jesse Jackson and Montel Williams. And it continued to be a hot topic on radio. Looking back on it, Webb believes that the attack on him was launched just as the story was primed to break out into the mainstream. In late September he had appeared on the CBS Morning News with Maxine Waters and was positively received.

  Then on September 20 he was invited to appear on a CNN program hosted by Lou Waters. Appearing with Webb that afternoon was Ronald Kessler, author of Inside the CIA. Waters opened by asking Webb to describe his story and then pressed him on some of its softer elements, such as how Webb knew the crack money was converted to weapons for the Contras. Webb was in the midst of answering Waters’s queries when the CNN transmission from San Francisco broke down.

  At that point, Waters said, “OK. We have a little satellite problem there. So let’s call on Ronald Kessler, who’s in our Washington Bureau. Perhaps there are no satellite problems there. Are you buying this?”

  Kessler, who has a reputation as a liberal investigative reporter, leaped into a denunciation of Webb that would prefigure the attacks to come, claiming that Webb had “no evidence” to back up his story.

  Webb, now relinked, responded fiercely. “He says there was no documentation. We posted it all on the Internet. We’ve got declassified FBI reports; we’ve got DEA reports. The thing to bear in mind is that there are no facts in dispute. Danilo Blandón admits selling cocaine for the Contras. Freeway Rick Ross admits buying it and turning it into crack and selling it to the gangs. We have pictures of Meneses meeting with Adolfo Calero. And we have testimony that they met with Enrique Bermúdez, who are the top CIA officials running the Contras. So to claim there’s no documentation is idiotic.”

  Then Kessler quickly shifted the angle of his attack, stating that “there’s no evidence to begin with to show that there’s any reason to go into CIA involvement.”

  “That’s absolutely, flatly untrue,” Webb said. “I mean clearly the guy hasn’t looked at the documents. We’ve got a 1986 FBI report. We’ve got a sworn statement that was filed in Los Angeles by a detective who was investigating Blandón in 1986. So this isn’t a convicted drug dealer. This is a cop saying it; this is the guy’s own attorney saying it. And this is a guy admitting it under oath.”

  “Admitting what?” Kessler prodded. “Admitting what? What’s the connection with the CIA?”

  “Admitting the CIA ran the operation,” Webb replied. “Blandón said that before a federal grand jury. He testified in San Diego that he met with Enrique Bermúdez to discuss this, and Enrique Bermúdez clearly was on the CIA payroll.”

  Webb may have won that skirmish. But the battle was just beginning.

  Sources

  This chapter is largely based on three sources: the “Dark Alliance” stories by Gary Webb and his colleagues at the San Jose Mercury News, Pete Carey, Pamela Kramer, and Thomas Farragher; an extensive interview by the authors with Webb and off-the-record interviews with several of his editors and fellow reporters at the Merc; and stories by Nick Schou, a fine investigative reporter at the Orange County Weekly. Schou was also extremely generous in sharing information he had excavated on the arms operation of Ronald Lister and Tim LaFrance. Other sources for this chapter were the several legal cases involving Ross, Danilo Blandón and other Nicaraguan exiles. The source for the Ricky Ross trial in San Diego, which includes the testimony of Danilo Blandón, is United States v. James. Also useful was Blandón’s testimony before a federal grand jury investigating the Meneses drug ring and the transcripts and motions from the trial of Julio Zavala.

  Associated Press. “Ex-Contras Say CIA Cleared Planes, Cash From Narcotics Suspect.” San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 31, 1996.

  Bernstein, Dennis, and Robert Knight. “Federal Court Cases Offer Plenty of Leads on CIA–Contra Drug Trafficking.” Pacific News Service, Nov. 15, 1996.

  Blum, Jack. “Former Senate Special Counsel Discusses Controversy.” Baltimore Sun, Oct. 23, 1996.

  Carey, Pete. “ ‘Dark Alliance’ Series Takes On a Life of Its Own.” San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 13, 1996.

  Diamond, John. “CIA Promises Independent Probe of Drug Link.�
� San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 20, 1996.

  Early, David. “MN Series Stirs National Debate.” San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 6, 1996.

  Farragher, Thomas. “Capital Hill Probes of Alleged CIA–Crack Link Begin.” San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 24, 1996.

  Kramer, Pamela, and Pete Carey. “Results Released from Los Angeles Sheriff’s Investigation.” San Jose Mercury News, Dec. 11, 1996.

  Kramer, Pamela. “Cheers, Jeers at ‘Crack’ Inquiry.” San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 20, 1996.

  ——. “CIA Chief Braves South-Central’s Anger.” San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 16, 1996.

  Kramer, Pamela, and Gary Webb. “No Proof of CIA–Drug Link, Sheriff Says.” San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 8, 1996.

  Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office. “Report on Nov. 19, 1996 Interview with L. J. O’Neale.” Los Angeles Times, staff report. “CIA Says It Finds No Link to Nicaraguan Cocaine Ring in Its Records.” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 6, 1996.

  New York Times, editorial. “The CIA and Drugs.” New York Times, Nov. 5, 1996.

  Perry, Tony. “Ross Gets Life; His Case Fueled CIA Crack Furor.” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 20, 1996.

  San Jose Mercury News, editorial. “Another CIA Disgrace: Helping the Crack Flow.” San Jose Mercury News, August 21, 1996.

  Schou, Nick. “Secret Agent Men.” Orange County Weekly, Nov. 5, 1997.

  ——. “Who Is Ron Lister?” LA Weekly, Nov. 22, 1996.

  ——. “New Dope on the Contra–Crack Connection: Mystery Man Lister Had Ties to US Intelligence, as Did His Partners.” LA Weekly, Dec. 20, 1996.

  ——. “Tracks in the Snow.” LA Weekly, May 22, 1997.

  United States District Court, Northern District of California. “Grand Jury Testimony of Danilo Blandón.” Federal Grand Jury Investigation 9301035. Feb. 3, 1994.

  United States District Court, Northern District of California. United States v. Julio Zavala, et al. No. 83-CR-0154.

  United States District Court, Southern District of California. “Testimony of Danilo Blandón.” United States of America v. Curtis James, Ricky Ross, Michael Ross. Case No. 95-0353-H-Crim. March 6 and 7, 1996.

  ——. “Motion in Limine to Preclude Reference to the Central Intelligence Agency and for Reciprocal Discovery.” United States of America v. Curtis James, Ricky Ross, Michael Ross. March 4, 1996.

  Webb, Gary. “America’s ‘Crack’ Plague Has Roots in Nicaraguan War.” San Jose Mercury News, August 18, 1996.

  ——. “Testimony Links US to Drugs-Guns Trade.” San Jose Mercury News, August 18, 1996.

  ——. “Shadowy Origins of ‘Crack’ Epidemic.” San Jose Mercury News, August 19, 1996.

  ——. “Drug Agent Thought She Was on to Something Big.” San Jose Mercury News, August 19, 1996.

  ——. “Drug Expert: ‘Crack’ Born in SF Bay Area in ’74.” San Jose Mercury News, August 19, 1996.

  ——. “War on Drugs Has Unequal Impact on Black Americans.” San Jose Mercury News, August 20, 1996.

  ——. “SF Bay Area Man Tangled in Drug Web.” San Jose Mercury News, August 20, 1996.

  ——. “ ‘Dark Alliance’ Series Leads to CIA Probe.” San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 6, 1996.

  ——. “Dealer’s Sentencing Postponed; Lawyer Gets Time to Seek Documents on Alleged CIA-Crack Link.” San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 14, 1996.

  ——. “Legendary Drug Dealer Gets Life.” San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 20, 1996.

  ——. “US Gave Visa to Nicaraguan Drug Trafficker.” San Jose Mercury News, Dec. 31, 1996.

  Webb, Gary, and Pamela Kramer. “Black Groups Seek Probe of CIA Drug Links.” San Jose Mercury News, August 24, 1996.

  ——. “Gag Order Concealed Possible Drug Link.” San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 29, 1996.

  ——. “Affidavit: Cops Knew of Drug Ring.” San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 3, 1996.

  ——. “Drug Raid Documents Reveal Allegations of CIA Involvement.” San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 6, 1996.

  Webb, Gary, and Thomas Farragher. “Ex-Contras: We Saw No CIA Link to Drugs.” San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 27, 1996.

  2

  Counterattack

  The attack on Gary Webb and his series in the San Jose Mercury News remains one of the most venomous and factually inane assaults on a professional journalist’s competence in living memory. In the mainstream press he found virtually no defenders, and those who dared stand up for him themselves became the object of virulent abuse and misrepresentation. L. J. O’Neale, the prosecutor for the Justice Department who was Danilo Blandón’s patron and Rick Ross’s prosecutor, initially formulated the polemical program against him. When one looks back on the assault in the calm of hindsight, what is astounding is the way Webb’s foes in the press mechanically reiterated those attacks.

  There was a disturbing racist thread underlying the attacks on Webb’s series, and on those who took his findings seriously. It’s clear, looking through the onslaughts on Webb in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, that the reaction in black communities to the series was extremely disturbing to elite opinion. This was an eruption of outrage, an insurgency not just of very poor people in South Central and kindred areas, but of almost all blacks and many whites as well. In the counterattacks, one gets the sense that a kind of pacification program was in progress. Karen De Young, an assistant editor at the Washington Post, evoked just such an impulse when Alicia Shepard of the American Journalism Review interviewed her. “I looked at [the Mercury News series] when it initially came out and decided it was something we needed to follow up on. When it became an issue in the black community and on talk shows, that seemed to be a different phenomenon.” Remember too that the O. J. Simpson jury decision had also been deeply disturbing to white opinion. In that case, blacks had rallied around a man most whites believed to be a vicious killer, and there was a “white opinion riot” in response. Now blacks were mustering in support of a story charging that their profoundest suspicions of white malfeasance were true. So in the counterattack there were constant, patronizing references to “black paranoia,” decorously salted with the occasional concession that there was evidence from the past to support the notion that such paranoia might have some sound foundation.

  Another factor lent a particular edge to the onslaughts. This was the first occasion on which the established press had to face the changing circumstances of the news business, in terms of registering mass opinion and allowing popular access. Webb’s series coincided with the coming of age of the Internet. The Miami Herald, another Knight-Ridder paper in the same corporate family as the Mercury News, had been forced to change editorial course in the mid-1980s by the vociferous, highly conservative Cuban American presence in Miami. The Herald chose not to reprint Webb’s series. However, this didn’t prevent anyone in south Florida from finding the entire series on the Internet, along with all the supporting documents.

  The word “pacification” is not inappropriate to describe the responses to Webb’s story. Back in the 1980s, allegations about Contra drug running, also backed by documentary evidence, could be ignored with impunity. Given the Internet and black radio reaction, in the mid-1990s this was no longer possible, and the established organs of public opinion had to launch the fiercest of attacks on Webb and on his employer. This was a campaign of extermination: the aim was to destroy Webb and to force the Mercury News into backing away from the story’s central premise. At the same time, these media manipulators attempted to minimize the impact of Webb’s story on the black community.

  Another important point in the politics of this campaign is that Webb’s fiercest assailants were not on the right. They were mainstream liberals, such as Walter Pincus and Richard Cohen of the Washington Post and David Corn of the Nation, There has always been a certain conservative suspicion of the CIA, even if conservatives – outside the libertarian wing – heartily applaud the Agency’s imperial role. The CIA’s most effective friends have always been the liberal center, on the editorial pages of the W
ashington Post and the New York Times and in the endorsement of a person like the Washington Post’s president, Katharine Graham. In 1988 Graham had told CIA recruits, “We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know, and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.”

  By mid-September of 1996 the energy waves created by Webb’s series were approaching critical mass and beginning to become an unavoidable part of the national news agenda. For example, NBC Dateline, a prime-time news show, had shot interviews with Webb and Rick Ross and had sent a team down to Nicaragua, where they filmed an interview with Norwin Meneses and other figures in the saga. Webb tells of a conversation with one of the Dateline producers, who asked him, “Why hasn’t this shit been on TV before?” “You tell me,” Webb answered. “You’re the TV man.”

  A couple of weeks after this exchange, the program was telling Webb that it didn’t look as though they would be going forward with the story after all. In the intervening weeks, the counterattack had been launched, and throughout the networks the mood had abruptly shifted. On November 15, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell (partner of Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, about as snugly ensconced a member of the Washington elite as you could hope to find) was saying on NBC News in Depth that Webb’s story “was a conspiracy theory” that had been “spread by talk radio.”