Consequences To this day, no editor or reporter who missed the Contra-drug story has been punished for his or her negligence. Indeed, many of them are now top executives at their news organizations. On the other hand, Gary Webb’s career never recovered. At Webb’s death, however, it should be noted that his great gift to American history was that he—along with angry African-American citizens—forced the government to admit some of the worst crimes ever condoned by any American administration: the protection of drug smuggling into the United States as part of a covert war against a country, Nicaragua, that represented no real threat to Americans. The truth was ugly. Certainly the major news organizations would have come under criticism themselves if they had done their job and laid out this troubling story to the American people. Conservative defenders of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush would have been sure to howl in protest. But the real tragedy of Webb’s historic gift—and of his life cut short—is that because of the major news media’s callowness and cowardice, this dark chapter of the Reagan/Bush era remains largely unknown to the American people.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 17:54:33 +0000