Webb asserted, improbably, that the Blandon-Meneses-Ross drug ring opened “the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles,” helping to “spark a crack explosion in urban America.” The story offered no evidence to support such sweeping conclusions, a fatal error that would ultimately destroy Webb, if not his editors.Īt first, the Mercury News defended the series, but after nine months, Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos wrote a half-apologetic letter to readers that defended “Dark Alliance” while acknowledging obvious mistakes. There is no denying that the papers were right on one serious count - “Dark Alliance” contained major flaws of hyperbole that were both encouraged and ignored by his editors, who saw the story as a chance to win a Pulitzer Prize, according to Mercury News staffers I interviewed.
It wasn’t fair, and it made him out to be a freak.”
“It didn’t include the success he achieved or the wrongs he righted - and they were considerable. “That article included virtually none of the good things Gary did,” said Webb’s former Cleveland Plain Dealer colleague, Walt Bogdanich, now a New York Times editor. The Washington Post titled one of its stories “Conspiracy Theories Can Often Ring True History Feeds Blacks’ Mistrust.” The New York Times chipped in with a scathing critique of Webb’s entire career, suggesting that he was a reckless reporter prone to getting his facts wrong. The controversy over this non-assertion obscured Webb’s substantive points about the CIA knowingly doing business south of the border with Nicaraguans involved in the drug trade up north. dailies, The Times included, debunked a claim that Webb actually never made - that the CIA deliberately unleashed the crack epidemic on black America. It dedicated 17 reporters and 20,000 words to a three-day rebuttal to “Dark Alliance” that also included a lengthy musing on whether African Americans disproportionately believe in conspiracy theories.Īll three major U.S. “f there was one outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles’ streets with mass-marketed cocaine,” the article stated, “his name was ‘Freeway’ Rick.”īut after Webb’s reporting tied Ross to the Nicaraguans and showed that they had CIA connections, The Times downgraded Ross’ role to that of one “dominant figure” among many. Two years before Webb’s series, the Los Angeles Times estimated that at its peak, Ross’ “coast-to-coast conglomerate” was selling half a million crack rocks per day. by profiling the relationship between two Nicaraguan Contra sympathizers and narcotics suppliers, Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses, and L.A.’s biggest crack dealer, “Freeway” Ricky Ross. “Dark Alliance” documented the first solid link between the agency and drug deals inside the U.S. Many reporters besides Webb had sought to uncover the rumored connection between the CIA’s anti-communism efforts in Central America and drug trafficking.
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