Nick Schou - Kill the Messenger: How the CIAs Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb

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Kill the Messenger: How the CIAs Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb

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Copyright Nick Schou 2006

Introduction Charles Bowden 2006

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

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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)

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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

CONTENTS

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. Hed 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 Makers Mark. And I remember idly mentioning conspiracy theories and that he instantly flared up and said, I dont believe in fucking conspiracy theories, Im talking about a fucking conspiracy.

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

Id 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. Ive talked to a DEA agent who saw a plane full of cocaine land at a U.S. Air Force base in the 80s. Ive 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.

Thats 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 Ive ever known. But that hardly matters if you mess with our governments 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 thats 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. Im 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

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 DAubuisson: 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.