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Gary Webb

Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was an American investigative reporter best known for his 1996 Dark Alliance series of articles (about CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking into the US) written for the San Jose Mercury News and later published as a book. In the three-part series, Webb investigated Nicaraguans linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had smuggled cocaine into the U.S. Their smuggled cocaine was distributed as crack cocaine in Los Angeles, with the profits funneled back to the Contras. Webb also alleged that this influx of Nicaraguan-supplied cocaine sparked, and significantly fueled, the widespread crack cocaine epidemic that swept through many U.S. cities during the 1980s. According to Webb, the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of drugs into the U.S. by Contra personnel. Webb charged that the Reagan administration shielded inner-city drug dealers from prosecution in order to raise money for the Contras, especially after Congress passed the Boland Amendment, which prohibited direct Contra funding.Webb's reporting generated fierce controversy, and the San Jose Mercury News backed away from the story, effectively ending Webb's career as a mainstream-media journalist. He committed suicide in 2004. Though he was criticized and shunned by the mainstream journalism community, in 2013 Nick Schou, a journalist writing for the LA Weekly who wrote the book Kill the Messenger, stated that Webb's reportage was eventually vindicated. Since his death, mainstream news organizations, such as the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, have reversed course and defended his "Dark Alliance" series. Esquire wrote that a report from the CIA inspector general "subsequently confirmed the pillars of Webb's findings." Geneva Overholser, who served as the ombudsman for The Washington Post, wrote that major media outlets including the Washington Post had "shown more passion for sniffing out the flaws in the Mercury News '​s answer than for sniffing out a better answer themselves."