Was Journalist who exposed CIA connection to drug importation and sales,a victim of suicide or murder?

By: Chris Stevenson
Life is just a series of left turns, and then you die. That's the way it is for some in journalism. Sure, we can play it safe, make a lot of money dishing out fluff, and lies, but the downside is, you the reader won't know the truth about any damn thing.


Before the villification of Dan Rather, there was another villified figure named Gary Webb. In fact Webb may have passed on long before his official autopsy, after all, he lost his job at a big city newspaper, he lost credibility among major newsprint suits, and was blackballed by them. Perhaps it's the timing of it that looks suspicious to me, an investigative journalist's suicide death during the administration of a President who seems obsessed with settling his fathers's accounts. Webb was an investigative reporter who wrote an extensive newspaper series with the San Jose Mercury News, that should have won him a Pulitzer (in addition to the one he already had on California earthquakes), but instead got him purged, and then blackballed. The story; "Dark Alliance," revealed that there was a link between crack cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He wasn't the first to expose the CIA/illegal narcotics connection, there was ex-DEA undercover agent Mike Levine's book "The Big White Lie: The CIA and the cocaine/crack epidemic," released 5 years earliar.

As if Levine's book didn't ruffle enough suits, Webb did what was then the unthinkable among those in the mainstream. Understand these was the conservative '90's, the decade where White America was tired of shouldering blame and guilt, especially when questioned about it's treatment of Blacks. Just when "the man" was collectively mastering the art of lying to himself, and weathering the storm of racial conspiracy howlers, in comes Webb, accusing the government's best-known spy network, of playing a major role of funneling crack cocaine into LA's Black community. The revelation sparked fury, not so much from Blacks outside South Central LA mind you, it turns out that-like police brutality-this was common knowledge to more than a few of us. The outrage from Whites in major TV and press outlets was more of a "how could you," type of outrage. Much of modern America's Black/White cold war is based on White America wanting to feel good about itself, versus Black America blowing the whistle on them.

This time a White guy blew the Whistle, and he paid dearly. Webb tells why he did that story: "it challenged the widely held belief that crack use began in African American neighborhoods not for any tangible reason, but mainly because of the kind of people who lived in them. "Nobody was forcing them to smoke crack', the argument went, 'so they only have themselves to blame'... that argument never seemed to make much sense to me because drugs don't just appear magically on street corners in Black neighborhoods... If anyone was responsible for the drug problems in a specific area, I thought, it was the people who were bringing the drugs in." This was taken from chapter 14 of a book published in '02 called "Into the Buzzsaw: Leading journalists expose ther myth of a free press." Webbs logic was flawless but he was battling against pure emotionalism, as long as most of the addicts and dealers were Black, it didn't matter to many Whites who was responsible. Proof didn't seem to make a difference with the White mindset at this point, in fact it only pissed them off more. "Dark Alliance" reveals a conversation between 2 Contra-connected dealers regarding their view of exposing drugs to Blacks: "(Danilo) Blandon was telling me (Rafael Cornejo) he'd been doing things with the Black people down there [in LA]... he said I should get into the Black thing. No one cares about them, he tells me. When they start killing themselves no one cares."


So you see, it's very hard for me to believe Webb shot himself in the head. Predictably I'm not the only one who doubts the suicide angle, according to a story by Brasscheck.com on the Conspiracy Planet website, Webb was the fourth "suicide by a researcher who had detailed understanding of the structure and function of the Bush crime family." Mark Lombardi, J.H. Hatfield, and Danny Casolaro. What are the odds against all four men in the same profession meeting such a common ending in such a short period of time (over 13 years)? Further research on the individuals disclosed that Lombardi was an artist who used a pencil and a huge piece of paper to create patterns and curves and arcs to expose illicit deals such as the Iran-Contra scandal, and links between global finance and terrorism. Lombardi was said to have committed suicide in 2000, but his extensive works of "conspiracy art" has been displayed in museums. Hatfield co-wrote the book "Fortunate Son"that raised the question as to why George W. Bush's license number changed, and alleged that in 1972 W was arrested for cocaine possession.

George Sr. used his clout to have his son's record expunged, so the story goes. Hatfield's source of information was said to be none other than Karl Rove, Bush's closest political advisor. Hatfield had credibility issues given that he spent time in prison after being convicted in a killer-for-hire scheme, when St. Martin's Press found out about this, they withdrew 70,000 copies of it from the bookshelves. It was later released by Soft Skull Press. Hatfield's death in 7/01 was ruled a suicide as he was financially rock-bottom. Casolaro was an investigative reporter working on a book no-doubt to be titled "the Octopus;" a vast interlocking network of criminal conspirators that reaches into every branch of government, and other foriegn governments. His death on 8/10/91 left some missing evidence and a lot of questions regarding what one reviewer calls "the most complete and complex conspiracy theory yet developed." Octopus was eventually completed by Kenn Thomas and Jim Keith, and is now out of print. Though Casolaro's death was ruled a suicide, there is evidence that supports murder. But on the other hand, of the four, only Hatfield's death comes closest to really looking like a suicide.

In actuality there is no official proof of a suicide regarding Webb since he was "found" dead by moving company workers who discovered a note posted on his front door that read "Do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance." A Sacromento Coroner ruled the cause as a gunshot wound to the head (there are now reports of more than one wound to the head, which adds more to a case of homicide). Webb's article, and subsequent book did not directly accuse the CIA of dealing drugs, he just offers as detailed a series of circumstantial evidence as any to support his claim. It was enough to garner backlash from the big 3 newspapers NY, and LA Times, and Washington Post. They stubbornly continued to debunk Webb's findings even after the CIA surprisingly admitted to the collusion two years later. What we have is a sickening trend of governmental protectionism, or over-patriotism from the nation's leading press outlets that attempts to put blinders on it's own readers when hard questions arise regarding government.

• Gary Webb: War on drugs has unequal impact on black Americans
• Gary Webb: ODD TRIO CREATED MARKET FOR CRACK
• Gary Webb: America's 'crack' plague has roots in Nicaragua war

Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Criterion. and www.TheBrownWatch.com , his column Pointblank can be read at www.voiceoffreedom.com ,email comments to Stevenson at pointblankdta@yahoo.com