Alex Constantine - May 9, 2010
Read the book here.
BuzzFlash Review
"This is the story of the tragic death of Gary Webb, the controversial newspaper reporter who committed suicide in December 2004. It was his 1996 Dark Alliance series--published by the San Jose Mercury News--on the so-called CIA/crack cocaine connection that created a firestorm of controversy and led to his resignation from the paper amid escalating attacks on his work by the mainstream media.
Author and investigative journalist Nick Schou was the only reporter to significantly advance Webb's expose. Drawing on exhaustive research and personal interviews with Webb's family, colleagues, and both supporters and critics, Kill the Messenger argues convincingly that Webb's editors betrayed him despite mounting evidence that his stories were correct. Schou examines what Webb's death and Dark Alliance's aftermath says about journalism in America."
America's mainstream media ganged up and destroyed Gary Webb because he dared to report the truth: that the CIA was turning a blind eye to the U.S. government facilitated transportation of cocaine into the U.S. marketplace (the streets) in return for arming the Nicaragua Contras.
Webb should have become another Woodward or Bernstein when his Dark Alliance series was published in the San Jose Mercury Press in 1996. Instead the establishment press destroyed him and discredited the story, which was true but for some minor points.
"Gary Webb was the epitome of journalistic guts, but instead of winning a Pulitzer he was betrayed by his employers and slandered by his profession. Here is the true story, brilliantly if sadly told, of the reporter who unmasked one of the most evil conspiracies in American history." -- Mike Davis
Have been sharing your fascinating work for some time now, very, very appreciated.