Webb, Gary. Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine
Explosion. New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998. 548 pages.
As a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, Gary Webb created a
firestorm in 1996 with a three-part series that led to this book. The series
was popular on the Mercury website, where it was backed up with a massive
collection of documents, just a mouse-click away. Then the Los Angeles
Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times seemingly got marching
orders, and bashed the story in three-part harmony. This story is about
Norwin Meneses, Danilo Blandon, and Ricky Ross, and the arrival of crack in
Los Angeles. Behind these three, to some extent, was the CIA's contra war
against Nicaragua. The original series was poorly edited, and cut to fit.
The CIA angle was overplayed to suggest that without the CIA, crack in Los
Angeles could have barely existed. Some of the more imaginative web surfers
then came close to concluding that the CIA was trying to exterminate blacks.
After reading this book, with its shoe-leather reporting and 68 pages
of end notes, no one can deny that Webb is a capable journalist (he lost his
job anyway; the Mercury couldn't take the East Coast heat). In the end, the
CIA's motives and its control over its own contra agents are still open to
question. But don't expect any answers. Just before this book appeared, it
was revealed that in 1982, the CIA was exempted by the Attorney General from
reporting on the drug activities of its agents, assets, and contractors.
ISBN 1-888363-68-1
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