CIA-Crack Cocaine Conspiracy Exposed in "Kill The Messenger"

Focus Features

Two-time Academy Award nominee Jeremy Renner leads an all-star cast in a dramatic thriller based on the remarkable true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb. Webb stumbles onto a story which leads to the shady origins of the men who started the crack epidemic on the nation's streets...and further alleges that the CIA was aware of major dealers who were smuggling cocaine into the U.S., and using the profits to arm rebels fighting in Nicaragua. Despite warnings from drug kingpins and CIA operatives to stop his investigation, Webb keeps digging to uncover a conspiracy with explosive implications. His journey takes him from the prisons of California to the villages of Nicaragua to the highest corridors of power in Washington, D.C. -- and draws the kind of attention that threatens not just his career, but his family and his life.


See more about this film at http://www.focusfeatures.com/kill_the_messenger

PLEASE SUPPORT Independent Media! 

Get perks at our Crowdfunder

Get truth delivered to your inbox every week.
Subscribe to GLOBAL POLITICAL AWAKENING by Email

Investigative Reporter Gary Webb Who Linked CIA to Crack Sales Found Dead of Apparent Suicide

Democracy Now

Gary Webb, Investigative Reporter

Gary Webb, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who wrote a series of stories linking the CIA to crack cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles, is dead at age 49. We hear an 1998 interview with Gary Webb on Democracy Now! and we speak with his colleague, veteran investigative journalist Robert Parry. [includes rush transcript]

Gary Webb, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who wrote a series of stories linking the CIA to crack cocaine trafficking in Los Angeles, is dead at age 49.

Webb was found Friday morning at his home in Sacramento County, dead of an apparent suicide. Moving-company workers called authorities after discovering a note posted on his front door that read, "Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance." Webb died of a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Sacramento County coroner’s office. He is survived by two sons and a daughter.

Gary Webb’s 1996 series in the San Jose Mercury News titled "Dark Alliance" revealed that for the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras.

It provoked a fierce reaction from the media establishment, which denounced the series. Following the controversy, San Jose Mercury News executive editor demoted Webb within the paper. He resigned and pushed his investigation even further in his book "Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion."