Jeremy Renner plays Gary Webb, the real life Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose path to expose the connection threatened not only his career, but his family and his life. “I was completely ignorant to Gary Webb, this whole Contra war…I had no idea,” Williams told us during roundtable interviews for the film last week. “I didn’t even know there was a real Rick Ross,” he said. Ross was 18, illiterate and turned down for a tennis scholarship when the government helped flood his community with crack cocaine in 1979. He took advantage, and through the next decade would buy and sell several metric tons of cocaine, earning hundreds of millions in profits. He was exporting product to New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states by the time he was busted for selling 100 kilos to a federal agent and given a life sentence in 96. Later that year, Webb had written several articles in the San Jose Mercury News that revealed a connection between one of Ross’ cocaine sources, Danilo Blandón, and the CIA as part of the Iran-Contra scandal. Ross’ case went before a federal court of appeals, which found he was being over-sentenced and reduced his time to 20 years. He was released from custody on Sept. 29, 2009. Williams, who got to meet with Ross before beginning the role, still can’t understand why he was on the late freight when it came to Freeway Rick Ross and the #CIA’s overall connection to the crack epidemic in America’s inner cities.
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 16:33:07 +0000
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