Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist.
Webb began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a reputation for investigative writing. Hired by the San Jose Mercury News, Webb contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake.
Webb is best known for his "Dark Alliance" series, which appeared in The Mercury News in 1996. The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua. It also stated that the Contras may have acted with the knowledge and protection of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The series provoked outrage, particularly in the Los Angeles African-American community, and led to four major investigations of its charges.
The Los Angeles Times and other major papers published articles suggesting the "Dark Alliance" claims were overstated and, in November 1996, Jerome Ceppos, the executive editor at Mercury News, wrote about being "in the eye of the storm". In May 1997, after an internal review, Ceppos stated that, although the story was correct on many important points, there were shortcomings in the writing, editing, and production of the series. He wrote that the series likely "oversimplified" the crack epidemic in America and the supposed "critical role" the dealers written about in the series played in it. Webb disagreed with this conclusion.
Webb resigned from The Mercury News in December 1997. He became an investigator for the California State Legislature, published a book based on the "Dark Alliance" series in 1998, and did freelance investigative reporting. He died on December 10, 2004. His death was ruled a suicide by the Sacramento County Coroner’s office, which his family accepts. There were rumors at the time that his death was retribution for his "Dark Alliance" series.
The "Dark Alliance" series remains controversial. Critics view the series's claims as inaccurate or overstated, while supporters point to the results of a later CIA investigation as vindicating the series. The follow-up reporting in the Los Angeles Times and other papers has been criticized for focusing on problems in the series rather than re-examining the earlier CIA-Contra claims.Contemporary discussions of the series are discussed in the section on Response to the series. Later discussions of the series are described in the section Views on "Dark Alliance" series.
Early life and education Webb was born in Corona, California. His father was a Marine sergeant, and the family moved frequently, as his career took him to new assignments., 13-14. When Webb's father retired from the Marines, the family settled in a suburb of Indianapolis, where Webb and his brother attended high school.Schou 2006, 15-16.
After high school, Webb attended a community college in Indianapolis on a scholarship until his family moved to Cincinnati, when he then transferred to nearby Northern Kentucky University.Schou 2006, 22.
Webb first began writing for the student newspaper at his college in Indianapolis.Schou 2006, 20–21. After transferring to Northern Kentucky, he entered its journalism program and wrote for the school paper, The Northerner. Although he attended Northern Kentucky for four years, he did not finish his degree. Instead, he found work in 1978 as a reporter at the Kentucky Post, a local paper affiliated with the larger Cincinnati Post.Schou 2006, 27–29. In 1979, Webb married Susan Bell; the couple went on to have three children.Schou 2006, 33.
Career Webb's first major investigative work appeared in 1980, when The Cincinnati Post published "The Coal Connection," a seventeen-part series by Webb and Post reporter Thomas Scheffey.Webb 2011, "The Coal Connection" The series, which examined the murder of a coal company president with ties to organized crime, won the national Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for reporting from a small newspaper.
In 1983, Webb moved to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he continued doing investigative work. A 1985 series, "Doctoring the Truth," uncovered problems in the State Medical BoardWebb 2011, "Doctoring the Truth." and led to an Ohio House investigation which resulted in major revisions to the state Medical Practice Act. Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards.Paterno 2005, 26. In 1984, Webb wrote a story titled “Driving Off With Profits” which claimed that the promoters of a race in Cleveland paid themselves nearly a million dollars from funds that should have gone to the city of Cleveland. The article resulted in a lawsuit against Webb's paper which the plaintiffs won. A jury awarded the plaintiffs over 13 million dollars and the case was later settled. In 1986, Webb wrote an article saying that the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, Frank D. Celebrezze accepted contributions from groups with organized crime connections. Celebrezze eventually sued the Plain Dealer and won an undisclosed out of court settlement.Schou 2006, 48, 51.
In 1988, Webb was recruited by the San Jose Mercury News, which was looking for an investigative reporter. He was assigned to its Sacramento bureau, where he was allowed to choose most of his own stories.Schou 2006, 54–55. As part of The Mercury News team that covered the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Webb and his colleague Pete Carey wrote a story examining the causes of the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct.Webb 2011, "Caltrans Ignored Elevated Freeway Safety." The Mercury News'''s coverage of the earthquake won its staff the Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting in 1990."General News Reporting" . The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2013-11-09.
Dark Alliance series
Webb began researching "Dark Alliance" in July 1995.Schou 2006, 65. The series was published in The Mercury News in three parts, from Sunday, 18 August 1996 to 20 August 1996, with a first long article and one or two shorter articles appearing each day. It was also posted on The Mercury News website with additional information, including documents cited in the series and audio recordings of people quoted in the articles. The website artwork showed the silhouette of a man smoking a crack pipe superimposed over the CIA seal.Schou 2006, 107 This artwork proved controversial, and The Mercury News later removed it.
The lede of the first article set out the series' basic claims: "For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency." This drug ring "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles" and, as a result, "The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America."
To show this, the series focused on three men: Freeway Ricky Ross, Oscar Danilo Blandón, and Norwin Meneses. Ross was a major drug dealer in Los Angeles. Blandón and Meneses were Nicaraguans who smuggled drugs into the U.S. and supplied dealers like Ross. After introducing the three, the first article discussed primarily Blandón and Meneses, and their relationship with the Contras and the CIA. Much of the article highlighted the failure of law enforcement agencies to successfully prosecute them and stated that this was largely due to their Contra and CIA connections.
The second article described Blandón's background and how he began smuggling cocaine to support the Contras. Meneses, an established smuggler and a Contra supporter as well, taught Blandón how to smuggle and provided him with cocaine. When Ross discovered the market for crack in Los Angeles, he began buying cocaine from Blandón. Blandón and Meneses' high-volume supply of low-priced high-purity cocaine "allowed Ross to sew up the Los Angeles market and move on. In city after city, local dealers either bought from Ross or got left behind."
The third article discussed the social effects of the crack trade, noting that it had a disparate effect on African-Americans. Asking why crack became so prevalent in the Black community of Los Angeles, the article credited Blandón, referring to him as "the Johnny Appleseed of crack in California." It also found disparities in the treatment of Black and White traffickers in the justice system, contrasting the treatment of Blandón and Ross after their arrests for drug trafficking. Because Blandón cooperated with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), he spent only 28 months in prison, became a paid government informant, and received permanent resident status. Ross was also released early after cooperating in an investigation of police corruption, but was rearrested a few months later in a sting operation arranged with Blandón's help. The article suggested this was in retribution for Ross' testimony in the corruption case.
Response to the series After the publication of "Dark Alliance," The Mercury News continued to pursue the story, publishing follow-ups to the original series for the next three months.Many of these are in the series archive at Other papers were slow to pick up the story, but African Americans quickly took note, especially in South Central Los Angeles where the dealers discussed in the series had been active. They were outraged by the series's charges.Schou 2006, 112
California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein also took note and wrote to CIA director John Deutch and U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, asking for investigations into the articles' allegations.Schou 2006, 116. Maxine Waters, the representative for California's 35th district, which includes South Central Los Angeles, was also outraged by the articles and became one of Webb's strongest supporters.Schou 2006, 115 Waters urged the CIA, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate.
By the end of September, three federal investigations had been announced: an investigation into the CIA allegations conducted by CIA Inspector-General Frederick Hitz, an investigation into the law enforcement allegations by Justice Department Inspector-General Michael Bromwich, and a second investigation into the CIA by the House Intelligence Committee.
Webb's continuing reporting also triggered a fourth investigation. The first article in "Dark Alliance" that discussed the failure of law enforcement agencies to prosecute Blandón and Meneses had mentioned several cases. One of these was a 1986 raid on Blandón's drug organization by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which the article suggested had produced evidence of CIA ties to drug smuggling that was later suppressed. When Webb wrote another story on the raid evidence in early October, it received wide attention in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department began its own investigation into the "Dark Alliance" claims.
Coverage in other papers After the announcement of federal investigations into the claims made in the series, other newspapers began investigating, and several papers published articles suggesting the series' claims were overstated.