In this article Devereaux reviews a recently released CIA document about CIA concerns in relation to Gary Webb and his sensational 1996 series of articles which exposed considerable evidence of CIA involvement in the spread of crack cocaine in California. I found in this article a number of troubling signs of bias with regard to the author's treatment of Gary Webb and the CIA. Devereaux' treatment of the CIA which seems to be based largely on this released CIA document suggests to me that he is engaging in damage control for the CIA. This early paragraph describes in summary form his whole treatment of the CIA's relationship with this incident.
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.While the CIA may have played a minor role in media attacks on Webb's revelations, this criminal agency played a major role in the proliferation of illicit drugs among poor urban areas of the US. By focusing attention on the discrediting of Webb's investigative reporting and the CIA's minor role in it, he deflects attention away from the crimes of the CIA. As far as who was discrediting Webb's work, there were others in the US ruling class directorate that were interested in controlling the powerful influence of his work, and ended up destroying his career. His series of articles in the San Jose Mercury only reached the attention of the wider American public because his revelations corresponded so well with widespread suspicions among people in the African-American urban communities.
Devereaux takes the CIA document as a serious argument that the CIA, and by extension the ruling class, had little to do with the subsequent smearing of Webb's reporting in major newspapers like the NY Times and the Washington Post, which then spread throughout major US news media. Instead he suggests that the discrediting was mostly due to rivalries and jealousies among other journalists in major newspapers.
Discussing the newly disclosed “Managing a Nightmare” document, Schou says it squares with what he found while doing his own reporting. Rather than some dastardly, covert plot to destroy (or, as some went so far as to suggest, murder) Webb, Schou posits that the journalist was ultimately undone by the petty jealousies of the modern media world. The CIA “didn’t really need to lift a finger to try to ruin Gary Webb’s credibility,” Schou told The Intercept. “They just sat there and watched these journalists go after Gary like a bunch of piranhas.”As the German journalist, writer, and former newspaper editor Mathias Broechkers wrote in his book on conspiracies:
The intimate involvement of western intelligence agencies with organized crime and illegal arms and drug dealing may be proven and documented a hundred times over--yet this conspiracy will still not be publicly exposed.I strongly suspect that the recent release of this CIA document was timed precisely because of the upcoming release of the film covering this subject.
