Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Who Killed Gary Webb?

By Jordy Cummings

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Posted 12/14 | Add a Comment

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  1. “David Corn and the Democratic establishment killed Gary Webb. With friends like this, the Left needs an enema”

    You really should check yourself before you wreck yourself. How dare you. You are in need of more than an enema. You are crass and classless, the nature of the thought process that would compel you to make such a statement clearly shows a complete lack of eloquence and demeanor.

    Mr. Corn and the dem est. killed Webb, please.

    I would offer you a small education on the matter but you are not worth the energy it would take to type anything else.

    Posted by capt from Albuquerque, NM  on  12/14  at  06:24 PM

  2. Fnord.  Ewige Blumenkraft.

    Posted by j cummings from  on  12/14  at  07:19 PM

  3. Hey Cap’n,

    Please tell us what the Democratic establishment and David Corn did to help Webb when his investigative pieces into nefarious actions by the CIA were under attack? Oh, that’s right. The Dems and the Corn were part of the crowd attempting to discredit Webb. Please, Cap’n, give us a small education on how you think the Dems treated Webb.

    Posted by Izzy Stone from  on  12/14  at  07:23 PM

  4. David Corn has been and will always be a member of the left gatekeepers, who feel it their duty to sedate dissent and protect the establishment.

    Corn is less than human for the way he pounds on Gary Webb after Webb’s death.  Even the title to his article has a mean-spirited tone.

    For me Gary Webb was the light that brought attention not only to the CIA but to all the phony liberals in the press who hurried to protect their Pentagon Masters.

    Posted by Slave Revolt Radio from  on  12/14  at  09:19 PM

  5. Thanks, Jordy. I agree with Izzy Stone and Slave Revolt Radio’s comments. I’m just sick about Gary Webb’s death. One begins to wonder what the hell is going on.

    I’ve read David Corn’s piece and have absolutely no respect for him (I’d actually lost it this summer after reading how he and his Nation co-hort, Eric Alterman,had trashed Nader, but that’s another story).

    I remember sitting glued to my radio, listening to Maxine Walter’s town meeting in South Central LA after the story broke. Hurrah for Gary Webb, I thought, that he’s brought this out.

    I also just read his last story for the SN&R News Review:
    http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2004-11-25/cover.asp

    Posted by JayVos from Burlington, VT  on  12/14  at  09:52 PM

  6. Capt, you know I am a friend - so I disagree with your post with respect.  I have come to believe what Jordy is saying is true.  I know you have seen my posts at Corn’s blog stating that the “left” and so-called respectable publications on the left are really constructs of the right.  Their existence makes it appear that there is debate, that there is representation, and that there is democracy.  Easily pigeonholed by the right, showing no independent thought or action, the left purely performs a function that the right needs.  Supporting the left, as it exists today, plays into the hands of the right.  They’ve got us right where they want us.  Corn demonstrates that he is part of the left’s gatekeepers (as mentioned by Slave Revolt Radio above).  The gatekeepers essentially serve as bookends on thought and discourse such that anything falling outside of their narrow establishment-supporting framework is squashed as whacky conspiracy theory.  Corn has proven this with his unwillingness to dig into election fraud, his unwillingness to dig into 9/11 fraud, and (in this case) his sleazy treatment of Webb.

    Jordy - thanks.  I appreciate your words.  Apparently we are living in a time when those that speak the truth will be killed.  Has it always been this way?  Am I just waking up to see what has always been there?

    Posted by Chris from Scottsdale, AZ  on  12/14  at  11:17 PM

  7. I think that things are far better now than they have ever been in human history, and yet they are terrible.  On one hand, we have more fear and mechanisms for mass death and ecological degradation than at any point in human history.  On another, more important hand were the events of Feb 15 2003 in which people marched against a war before it even started.  This is unique in human history, and shows that time may well be on our side.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  12/15  at  12:20 AM

  8. A friend of mine coined the term “Axis of Weasel” to describe the likes of David Corn in their sentry roles as gatekeepers of the left.  It’s an important concept to understand and recognize.  Ascribing motive to it is more difficult.  There is a significant left/liberal segment that sincerely believes that in order for center or mild left politics to have any success, that the more radical tendencies must be repressed.  They mistakenly believe that demonstrating consistent loyalty to the core needs of the state and ruling class will somehow advance progressive causes.  When African Americans were palpably outraged following Webb’s exposures, it wasn’t any kind of threat to democracy or anything good about the USA.  The only real threat was of serious pressure to reform the CIA.  That Corn chose to abandon the opportunity for reform and instead defend the CIA by joining the attacks on Webb, demonstrates his gatekeeper role clearly. 

    But I’m not going to single out David Corn for ruining Gary Webb.  He’s just a single hack writing for a low circulation weekly on the fringes of the mainstream media.  Far worse were the coordinated and hyperbolic attacks from the LA Times, New York Times, Washington post and others.  Not only did they smear Webb with the greatest intensity they could muster, but with each new government report that confirmed Webb’s story, they ignored the new revelations and repeated their dishonest diatribes against Webb.  Even this week, the short articles about his death describe his reporting as “discredited,” bringing up LAPD and LA Times investigations to back it up.  But they totally ignore the reports from the Inspectors General of the CIA and Justice Department which not only verified Webb, but admitted that the scale of the problem was much worse than what Webb had implied.

    Posted by Yuri from Detroit  on  12/15  at  01:32 PM

  9. The Nation has the highest circulation of any political magazine in the United States.  Corn is also a best-selling author, of both a book about Bush and apparently a sympathetic biography of the founder of the CIA/heroin nexus Ted Shackley

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  12/15  at  01:45 PM

  10. Webb. If taken out. Why now? That would be shutting the barn door after the horses have escaped. There is no motive.

    Posted by Allen from Michigan, USA  on  12/15  at  03:12 PM

  11. I don’t believe that Webb was assassinated.  I believe he was character assassinated, hounded to suicide by an industry that no longer respects journalists.

    Posted by j cummings from Canada  on  12/15  at  05:07 PM

  12. Ok, I stand corrected on the Nation.  It’s not only a hot seller for a political rag, but it’s highly influential as well.  If anything I should pile extra blame on the Nation for joining in on the “discrediting” of Webb because it made the whole ruthless attack complete.  If a paper like the Nation had stuck up for Webb, at least the false consensus that Webb had blundered would have been destroyed.  That alone might have been enough to make him employable in the field he loved.  If not for a major daily, at least something like New Times where he could still dig into serious investigative journalism.  Instead, he was untouchable. 

    But Corn is a hack.  No bestseller changes that.  He’s the worst sort of hack, who snuffs truth from his stories to please his sources and further his career.

    Posted by Yuri from Detroit  on  12/18  at  08:56 PM

  13. December 17. 2004
    Investigative journalist Gary Webb was a friend of ours. And he was a damn fine reporter and writer. Gary was all you could ask for in a journalist: tough, unafraid, and honest as the day is long. He lived his life to be a check on the powerful, like any good investigative journalist worth his salt. Well, in 1996 he wrote a series of articles for the San Jose Mercury-News on the CIA and that agency’s complicity in the cocaine trade in southern California in the 1980s. It wasn’t flawless journalism, but it told a very important story, and in fact it prompted an investigation by the CIA’s inspector general which subsequently confirmed the pillars of Webb’s findings. But the funny thing is that Webb was driven from journalism because of that series. Rather than extending Webb’s story by doing their own reporting, major newspapers instead turned on him and were more determined, it seemed, to attempt to undermine and discredit Webb’s reporting. Indeed, the ombudsman for The Washington Post at the time, Geneva Overholser, wrote that her own paper and other major media had “shown more passion for sniffing out the flaws in the Mercury News’s answer than for sniffing out a better answer themselves.” In so doing, these newspapers relied on many official sources, which is odd considering the subject of Webb’s stories. One can only guess as to their motivations.
    In any event, Webb was abandoned by his own paper and could not find work in journalism after that. In September 1998, this magazine published the story of what happened to Gary Webb. Written by Charles Bowden and entitled “The Pariah,” it is posted below. Esquire is also very proud to have published Webb’s return to investigative journalism, a definitive and exclusive piece on a DEA-run program called “Operation Pipeline” which was a program of official racial profiling, and which involved law enforcement all over the country. Webb’s piece, entitled “Driving While Black,” was followed a year later by a New York Times story on Operation Pipeline in which the Times took credit for the scoop and did not mention that it was Gary Webb who had first broken the story.
    Last week, Gary Webb took his own life. Words cannot express our sympathy to his family and to everyone who loved him. And words cannot express our sadness at the terrible loss, to journalism and to the world.


    (
    The Pariah
    http://www.esquire.com/features/articles/2004/041217_mfe_webb_1.html

    Posted by maynard from  on  12/21  at  10:57 PM
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