Kill the Messenger

by Nick Schou

  NATION BOOKS•www.nationbooks.org•New York

  Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb

  Published by Nation Books

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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  New York, NY 10003

  www.nationbooks.org

  Nation Books is a co-publishing venture of the Nation Institute and the Perseus Books Group

  Copyright © Nick Schou 2006

  Introduction © Charles Bowden 2006

  Portions of Chapter 10 previously appeared in the OC Weekly and the LA Weekly

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information, address the Perseus Books Group, 250 West 57th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10107.

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  Book design by Pauline Neuwirth, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.

  A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

  LCCN: 2007275820

  ISBN 978-0-78673-526-6 (e-book)

  987654321

  To Claudia and Erik, for their love, support, and inspiration

  CONTENTS

  Introduction by Charles Bowden

  Dramatis Personae

  ONEMoving Day

  TWOGuns and Girls

  THREESin City

  FOURThe Big One

  FIVEDrug Stories

  SIXTrial and Error

  SEVENCrack in America

  EIGHTFeeding Frenzy

  NINEMea Culpa

  TENLister

  ELEVENExile

  TWELVEWithdrawal

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Photo section appears after Chapter 7

  INTRODUCTION

  I MET HIM in a bar in Sacramento in April, 1998. His series on the CIA was almost two years old, and officially repudiated by the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post. He’d lost his job and no one in the news business would hire him. I remember he entered the hotel saloon with a kind of swagger. I remember that he ordered Maker’s Mark. And I remember idly mentioning conspiracy theories and that he instantly flared up and said, “I don’t believe in fucking conspiracy theories, I’m talking about a fucking conspiracy.”

  I’d arrived there because early that winter at a New York restaurant I’d told a magazine editor that the only story worth writing about was: What in the hell had happened to Gary Webb? At that moment, I’d also said I thought his series was true and the editor snapped, “Of course, it is.” So I’d spent months interviewing former DEA agents who’d brushed against the CIA, devoured mountains of documents and become convinced that Webb’s discredited series was true. And that the papers and reporters who had destroyed him were wrong.

  I’d spent years bumbling around the drug world and anyone who does that runs into whiffs of the CIA that can never be completely documented and that never seem to really go away. I know a narc in Dallas who had seized over twenty million dollars cash at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport from a courier flying out of Miami and was told by the Justice Department to return the money and let the man continue on his way. I have a friend who witnessed the first non-stop flight of cocaine and marijuana from Colombia to northern Mexico in 1986, a full-bodied plane without seats that landed at a desert airstrip. The pilot was from a CIA proprietary company in Florida. My friend got time in a federal prison. The pilot continued flying. I’ve talked to a DEA agent who saw a plane full of cocaine land at a U.S. Air Force base in the ’80s. I’ve talked to a DEA agent who knew of numerous drug fields in Mexico that handled drug flights from Central America during the contra war and that were never bothered by DEA.

  You either dismiss these stories out of hand as impossible or you look into them and slowly but surely become convinced. I became convinced and accept the implication that the CIA has for decades knowingly dealt with drug dealers and justified these actions by citing national security. Just as they have dealt with other criminal syndicates. Gary Webb stumbled upon one such instance, pursued it with tenacity, willed his account into print, and consequentially, was run out of the news business.

  That’s the guy I talked with in the bar in Sacramento. And that is the person you will meet in this book. He was the best investigative reporter I’ve ever known. But that hardly matters if you mess with our government’s secret world without its consent.

  When I met Webb I was deep into a book on the drug world of the U.S./Mexico border, a book that consumed almost eight years of my life. I amassed a lot of stuff on the CIA and drugs during those years, material I basically left out of the book because I did not want to become another Gary Webb and have my work pitched into the trash for the high crime of calling into question our national security bureaucracy.

  So that’s the deal: we now live in a country where reporters dread becoming Gary Webb. God help us.

  When I first learned of his suicide, I shut down my life for two days, sat in my yard and drank. I’m not sure if I drank for Gary Webb or for the rest of us.

  But I know Gary Webb got it right and that was the worst possible thing he could have done.

  —CHARLES BOWDEN

  2006

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  THE CONSPIRATORS

  Danilo Blandon: Nicaraguan exile and cocaine trafficker, supplier of South Central dealer “Freeway” Ricky Ross. Became government informant against Ross.

  Ronald Lister: Former Laguna Beach police detective, international arms merchant, security consultant and drug dealer with Blandon. Claimed to work for CIA.

  Norwin Meneses: Known as King of drugs in Nicaragua during 1970s, major drug smuggler and supplier of Blandon.

  “Freeway” Ricky Ross: First South Central crack dealer to become millionaire in 1980s. Sentenced to life in prison in 1996, but scheduled to be released from Lompoc Federal Penitentiary for good behavior in 2008.

  THE OPERATORS

  Adolfo Calero: CIA asset and political director of Nicaraguan Contras. Photographed with Meneses in San Francisco. Denied knowledge of drug dealing.

  Roberto D’Aubuisson: Head of paramilitary death squads in El Salvador, business contact of Lister.

  Enrique Bermudez: Contra commander and CIA asset who met with Blandon and Meneses in Honduras about fundraising, allegedly told them “ends justify the means.” Shot to death in 1991 by unknown assailants in Nicaragua.

  Tim Lafrance: San Diego weapons dealer who has worked with CIA. Traveled to El Salvador with Lister.

  Bill Nelson: Former security director at Fluor Corp. in Orange County, ex-deputy director of operations for CIA. Business contact of Lister in 1980s. Died of natural causes in 1995.

  Eden Pastora: Former Sandinista turned contra commander. Associate of Blandon.

  Scott Weekly: U.S. intelligence operative, ex-soldier of fortune. Traveled to El Salvador with Lister.

  THE WHISTLEBLOWERS

  Jack Blum: Lead prosecutor for Senator John Kerry’s probe of contra cocaine activity in 1980s.

  Martha Honey: Former New York T
imes stringer based in Costa Rica. Unsuccessfully sued Reagan administration officials for role in bombing injuries suffered by her husband.

  Peter Kornbluh: Director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which has declassified countless government documents from Iran contra era.

  Bob Parry: Former AP and Newsweek reporter who authored the first stories involving contras and cocaine.

  Michael Ruppert: Former Los Angeles police detective. Claimed he uncovered CIA ties to city’s drug epidemic; confronted CIA director John Deutch at South Central, L.A. town hall meeting.

  Maxine Waters: L.A. Congresswoman who held hearings into CIA complicity with drug traffickers after “Dark Alliance.”

  THE MERCURY NEWS

  Pete Carey: Veteran reporter assigned to investigate “Dark Alliance” after other papers criticized the series. Found no evidence of CIA involvement in drug ring.

  Jerry Ceppos: Executive Editor who defended Webb, then published letter to readers backing away from “Dark Alliance.”

  Dawn Garcia: State Editor who worked directly with Webb on “Dark Alliance.”

  David Yarnold: Managing Editor who supervised “Dark Alliance.” Stopped reading drafts halfway through editing process.

  THE CRITICS

  David Corn: Washington, D.C., editor of The Nation. Both criticized and defended “Dark Alliance.”

  Tim Golden: Former Central America correspondent for Miami Herald, wrote articles for New York Times, critical of “Dark Alliance.”

  Jesse Katz: Los Angeles Times writer who called Ross “mastermind” of crack cocaine two years before “Dark Alliance.”

  Joe Madison: National radio host also known as the “Black Eagle.” Dedicated six months of daily coverage to “Dark Alliance,” arrested outside CIA headquarters.

  Doyle McManus: Washington Bureau Chief of the Los Angeles Times. Directed paper’s response to “Dark Alliance.”

  Walter Pincus: Wrote articles critical of “Dark Alliance” for the Washington Post. Spied on student groups for CIA in 1950s.

  ONE

  Moving Day

  AFTER DAYS OF unrelenting winter rain from a powerful Pacific Storm, the clouds moved east and the skies cleared above the Sacramento valley. The snowcapped peaks of the western range of the Sierra Nevada glowed pink in the glinting early morning sun. On days like this, Gary Webb normally would have taken the day off to ride his motorcycle into the mountains.

  Although it was a Friday morning, Webb didn’t need to call in sick. In fact, he hadn’t been to work in weeks. When his ex-wife garnished his wages seeking child support for their three kids, Webb asked for an indefinite leave from the small weekly alternative paper in Sacramento where he had been working the past four months. He told his boss he could no longer afford the $2,000 mortgage on his house in Carmichael, a suburb twenty miles east of the state capital.

  There was no time for riding. Today, December 10, 2004, Webb was going to move in with his mother. It wasn’t his first choice. First, he asked his ex-girlfriend if he could share her apartment. The two had dated for several months, and continued to live together until their lease expired a year earlier, when Webb had bought his new house. They had remained friends, and at first she had said yes, but she changed her mind at the last minute, not wanting to lead him on in the hope that they’d rekindle a romance.

  Desperate, Webb asked his ex-wife, Sue, if he could live with her until he regained his financial footing. She refused. “I don’t feel comfortable with that,” she said.

  “You don’t?”

  Sue recalls that her ex-husband’s words seemed painfully drawn out. “I don’t know if I can do that,” she said. “Your mother will let you move in. You don’t have any other choice.”

  Besides losing his house, Webb had also lost his motorcycle. The day before he was to move, it had broken down as he was riding to his mother’s house in a nearby retirement community. After spotting Webb pushing the bike off the road, a helpful young man with a goatee and a spider-web tattoo on his elbow had given him a lift home. Webb arranged to get a pickup truck, but when he went back to retrieve his bike, it had disappeared.

  That night, Webb spent hours at his mother’s house. At her urging he typed up a description of the suspected thief. But Webb didn’t see much point in filing a police report. He doubted he’d ever see his bike again. He had been depressed for months, but the loss of his bike seemed to push him over the edge. He told his mother he had no idea how he was going to ever make enough money to pay child support and pay rent or buy a new home.

  Although he had a paying job in journalism, Webb knew that only a reporting gig with a major newspaper would give him the paycheck he needed to stay out of debt. But after sending out fifty resumes to daily newspapers around the country, nobody had called for an interview. His current job couldn’t pay the bills, and the thought of moving in with his mother at age forty-nine, was more than his pride would allow. “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?” he asked. “All I want to do is write.”

  It was 8 p.m. by the time Webb left his mother’s house. She offered to cook him a dinner of bacon and eggs, but Webb declined, saying he had to go home. There were other things he had to do. She kissed him goodbye and told him to come back the next day with a smile on his face. “Things will be better,” she said. “You don’t have to pay anything to stay here. You’ll get back on your feet.”

  The next morning, Anita Webb called her son to remind him to file a police report for the stolen bike. His phone rang and rang. She didn’t bother leaving a message, figuring the movers already had arrived. They had. It’s possible they heard the phone ring inside his house. As they approached his house, they noticed a note stuck to his front door. “Please do not enter,” it warned. “Call 911 for an ambulance. Thank you.”

  When her son failed answer the phone for more than an hour, Anita Webb began to panic. Finally, she let the answering machine pick up. “Gary, make sure you file a police report,” she said. Before she could finish, the machine beeped and an unfamiliar voice began to speak: “Are you calling about the man who lives here?”

  It is normally the policy of the Sacramento County Coroner’s office not to answer the telephone at the scene of a death, but apparently the phrase “police report” startled the coroner into breaking that rule. At some point early that morning, Gary Webb had committed suicide.

  The coroners found his body in a pool of blood on his bed, his hands still gripping his father’s 38-caliber pistol. On his nightstand were his social security card—apparently intended to make it easier for his body to be identified—a cremation card and a suicide note, the contents of which have never been revealed by his family. The house was filled with packed boxes. Only his turntable, DVD player, and TV were unpacked.

  In the hours before he shot himself in the head, Webb had listened to his favorite album, Ian Hunter Live, and had watched his favorite movie, the Sergio Leone spaghetti western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In a trashcan was a poster Webb had saved from his first journalism job with the Kentucky Post. The poster was an open letter to readers from Vance Trimble, Webb’s first editor. Decades earlier, Webb had clipped it from the pages of the paper. Although he had always admired its message, something about it must have been too much to bear in his final moments. Trimble had written that, unlike some newspapers, the Kentucky Post would never kill a story under pressure from powerful interests. “There should be no fetters on reporters, nor must they tamper with the truth, but give light so the people will find their own way,” his letter stated.

  That morning, Sue Webb was at home in Folsom, just minutes away from Carmichael, when her cell phone started ringing. She was about to walk out the door to bring her fourteen-year-old daughter Christine to school. Because Sue was running late for a business meeting in Stockton, she didn’t answer. But when she recognized the number of the caller as Kurt, her ex-husband’s brother, she began to worry. “I was standing in the bathroom,
and when I saw that number, I knew something had happened,” she says. “I kept saying, ‘No, this is not happening, this is not happening.’ I was afraid to pick up the phone.”

  Thoughts raced through her mind. Two days earlier, Webb had taken Christine to a doctor’s appointment. At the doctor’s office, there was a copy of Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, which Webb had loved reading to her years earlier. He jokingly asked her if she wanted him to read it aloud to her. When he dropped Christine off at Sue’s house later that day, Christine said her father made a special point of walking up to the door to kiss her goodbye. “He told her to be good to her mom,” Sue says. “And he handed her some little bottles of perfume and said ‘I love you.’ When she asked him if he wanted to come in, he said no.”

  Sue put her daughter in the car and drove a few blocks to the entrance of the middle-class neighborhood of tract houses where she lives on a wooded hillside on the outskirts of town. “I couldn’t stand it anymore, because the phone kept ringing,” she says. “It was Anita, and she was just sobbing. And I said, ‘Is he gone?’ and she said ‘Yes.’ And I just pulled off the road and started crying and said ‘Christine, your daddy’s dead.’ We had to get out of the car and we sat on the grass together and just started crying. I don’t even know how long we sat there.”

  A woman driving by pulled over and asked what was wrong. Sue gave her the number of the healthcare company where she worked as a sales agent. She asked the woman to call and let them know she wouldn’t be able to keep her appointments that day. Then she called her twenty-year-old son Ian and Eric, her sixteen-year-old, who was already at school, to tell them to meet her and Christine at Anita’s house. “I had to tell them on the phone what had happened because they wouldn’t let me hang up,” she says.

  When she arrived at Anita’s house, Ian was sitting on the front lawn, tears streaming down his face. “The police had already left,” she says. “I told him not to go inside.” A block away from the house was a bench with a view of a duck pond. The tranquil scene seemed surreal, dreamlike, frozen in time. “I remember feeling this sense of loss. It was the weirdest thing in the world. I had moved to California to be with Gary and had left my family behind and suddenly I felt alone. And I knew almost immediately that he had killed himself.”