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MOVIE REVIEW: Eighteen years after it was published, “Dark Alliance,” the
San Jose Mercury News’s bombshell investigation into links between the
cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and African American [ghetto] neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism.
The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. It also sparked an aggressive backlash from the nation’s most powerful media outlets, which devoted considerable resources
to discredit author Gary Webb’s reporting.
Their efforts succeeded, costing Webb his career [and life]. On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, [allegedly] having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head. [Two bullets suggests an execution not a suicide.]
These days, Webb is being cast in a more sympathetic light. He’s portrayed heroically in a
major motion picture ["Kill the Messenger"] set to premiere nationwide next month. And documents newly released by the CIA provide fresh context to the “Dark Alliance” saga -- information that paints an ugly portrait of the mainstream media at the time.
Looking back on the weeks immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” the document offers a unique window into the CIA’s internal reaction to what it called “a genuine public relations crisis” while revealing just how little the agency ultimately had to do to swiftly extinguish the public outcry.
Thanks in part to what author Nicholas Dujmovic,
a CIA Directorate of Intelligence staffer at the time of publication, describes as “a ground base of already productive relations with journalists,” the CIA’s Public Affairs officers watched with relief as the largest newspapers in the country rescued the agency from disaster, and, in the process, destroyed the reputation of an aggressive, award-winning reporter.
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(mufon.org)
Dan Aykroyd, star of Saturday Night Live and many movies including the Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters, is a MUFON Benefactor (lifetime member) and its official Hollywood consultant.
