P.97
Gary Webb, commenting on the CIA's selling crack cocaine to raise $ to pay for arms for the contrast in El Salvador:
" 'I became convinced that the whole war on drugs, 50 years from now, we're going to look back on it like we look back on the McCarthy era, and say, "how the f*** did we ever let this stuff get so out of hand?" ' Webb told author Charles Bowden in 1998. 'How come nobody stood up and said this is b*******?' "

P.143
Alexander Cockburn, author, speaking of MSM's attack on Webb's story, thus covering up for the CIA and Reagan:
" 'I've never taken the view that the mainstream press in the u.s. is to be redeemed,' Cockburn says. 'The rhetorical pose is always that the New York Times could be doing a better job and so could The Washington Post and then we would have a responsible press. My view is that the official corporate press is there to do a bad job. That's its function and nobody should be surprised. The miracle is that the Mercury news was asleep at the wheel and didn't realize what Webb was doing--and printed his story.' " [Referring to the sloppy editing on his story that allowed it to be attacked.]

P.168:
The CIA went through the motions of an "investigation" into drug trafficking by its agents.
"Former CIA officer Duane R. Clarridge, who ran the agencies covert war against the Sandinistas, refused to answer any questions, and told the LA Times he wrote the CIA a letter describing its investigation as 'bullshit.' Pete Carey covered the release of the report for the Mercury News. His story reported that CIA investigators had argued with a witness who claimed the CIA knew about drug trafficking by people the agency had used on various assignments. 'You guys don't want to know the truth,' Carey quoted the witness as telling the CIA."

P.186:
"David Corn of the Nation magazine says the CIA report only 'partially' vindicated Webb. 'It didn't vindicate his story,' he says. 'It vindicated his interest in the subject and his belief that this was important and that something terribly rotten had happened.' Nonetheless, Corn feels that the reports contained 'tremendous admissions' of wrongdoing by the CIA. 'While Nancy Reagan was saying "Just say no," the CIA was saying, "Just don't look," ' he says.
Corn is still amazed that the fact that the CIA finally admitted it had worked with and protected from prosecution Nicaraguan Contra drug traffickers--and then lied about it for years--wasn't a major scandal. 'Here you have the CIA acknowledging they were working with people suspected of drug dealing and it got nary a peep,' he says. 'I think in some ways that's journalistic neglect --criminal neglect. In what definition of news is it not a front - page story that the CIA was working with drug dealers?' "

P.224
French journalist Paul Moreira filmes a 45-minute documentary about Webb.
" 'It was much, much more grave than Watergate,' Moreira says. 'The report comes out precisely in the middle of all the noise around Monica and Bill, and no one pays attention! That's when I discovered that media - noise is the new censorship.'

An amazing book that makes you realize how f***** up our government is, that small-time recreational drug users and small-time drug dealers, in the 80s, were made totally Paranoid by the persecution they got from law enforcement, when all this time our own government was dealing drugs big-time and flooding South Central L.A. with crack cocaine, so they could raise money to send to a guerilla force that tortured and disappeared people, all so they could control a central American country whose government was attempting to serve its own people.
( )

A biography of investigative journalist Gary Webb and the series of articles which simultaneously catapulted him to fame and ended his career.

Webb's 1996 "Dark Alliance" series in the San Jose Mercury News revealed connections between Los Angeles drug dealers and the "Contras", a loose coalition of US-backed terrorist groups seeking to overthrow the Nicaraguan government. Webb unearthed evidence that the CIA was turning a blind eye to Contra drug trafficking, which, he argued, had contributed to the surge in crack-cocaine use in LA in the 1980s. The article sparked controversy as some readers held it up as "proof" that the CIA had deliberately started the crack epidemic, while mainstream newspapers published vicious attack articles seeking to discredit the series and Webb himself. Ultimately, Webb lost his job at the Mercury News and was effectively pushed out of journalism altogether.

While the book did a good job of explaining the story and the controversy around it, parts of the book felt like filler. I thought the book spent a little too long on Webb's early life, which was largely irrelevant to the main story, and went into excessive sordid detail about Webb's personal problems following his departure from the Mercury News, culminating in his suicide in 2004. However the core of the book felt very thorough, balanced, and well-researched, incorporating quotes from numerous sources both supportive and critical of Webb's work.

Overall, an interesting, though somewhat depressing, case study on the workings of the US news media system. ( )