I am happy that, after all this time, Gary Webb’s amazing investigative work will finally be vindicated — but sorry the journalism establishment helped push him to suicide:
Kill the Messenger, an actual film coming soon to a theater near you, is the true story of Sacramento-based investigative reporter Gary Webb, who earned both acclaim and notoriety for his 1996 San Jose Mercury News series that revealed the CIA had turned a blind eye to the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contras trafficking crack cocaine in South Central Los Angeles and elsewhere in urban America in the 1980s. One of the first-ever newspaper investigations to be published on the Internet, Webb’s story gained a massive readership and stirred up a firestorm of controversy and repudiation.
After being deemed a pariah by media giants like The New York Times, Los Angeles Timesand The Washington Post, and being disowned by his own paper, Webb eventually came to work in August 2004 at the alt-weekly Sacramento News & Review. Four months later, he committed suicide at age 49. He left behind a grieving family—and some trenchant questions:
Why did the media giants attack him so aggressively, thereby protecting the government secrets he revealed? Why did he decide to end his own life? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Gary Webb?
Like others working at our newsweekly in the brief time he was here, I knew Webb as a colleague and was terribly saddened by his death. Those of us who attended his unhappy memorial service at the Doubletree Hotel in Sacramento a week after he died thought that day surely marked a conclusion to the tragic tale of Gary Webb.
But no.
Because here comes Kill the Messenger, a Hollywood film starring Jeremy Renner as Webb; Rosemarie DeWitt as Webb’s then wife, Sue Bell (now Stokes); Oliver Platt as Webb’s top editor, Jerry Ceppos; and a litany of other distinguished actors, including Michael K. Williams, Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia and Robert Patrick. Directed by Michael Cuesta (executive producer of the TV series Homeland), the film opens in a “soft launch” across the country on Oct. 10.
Members of Webb’s immediate family—including his son Eric, who lives near Sacramento State and plans a career in journalism—expect to feel a measure of solace upon the release of Kill the Messenger. “The movie is going to vindicate my dad,” he said.
Hopefully somewhere in this movie the general public will learn all about “Freeway” Ricky Ross who was very much a part of Webb’s investigation. Nicaraguan drug merchants, Danilo Blandon and Norvin Meneses delivered huge quantities of cocaine to LA’s “Freeway” Ricky with the blessing of the CIA, and then showed him how to turn it into crack for bigger profits. The cocaine was off loaded at the Mena, Arkansas airstrip from CIA planes under the watchful eye of Larry Nichols, Gov. Bill Clinton’s right hand man. John Kerry knows all about this but chooses to keep his mouth shut.
Meanwhile, Webb’s former paper, the San Jose Mercury News, has gone bankrupt, both financially and journalistically. It keeps shrinking in size and ambition, and has become a mouthpiece for the local right wing. Its only properly functioning component is its sports section.