What's five in my part, it's part five. Here we'll saw five. That's right is actually gang talk, which is quite a stretch. But anyway, a little bit. But this is our fifth part of what I am now calling Brack week, um C I a week. I don't know. None of them are quite perfect, but that's what we're calling it. In this episode, we'll see what titles we come up with. That's very cash money of you. Thank you, so yes, it's quite cash money of you to recognize that so well, all so embarrassing. I we just got through with Iran contra um. But while kind of while Iran Contra was spinning up, I want to get to another thing that's happening. Also, if you're if you're on here and you're listening to this thinking it's part three, this is actually part five, and you need to go over to the you need to go listen to the Hood Politics episodes, which you can find in this speed and the Hood Politics Speed. So if you're not finding it, then you're wrong. So while all of the ship we just talked about in your show was happening, Ali North is also doing more ship of his own, and he has moved on from Iranian money to finding a new way to fund his contra buddies, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Now Manuel had been a friend of the CIA's for a while. He did and George H. W. Bush are good buddies. Um. He had been running cocaine through his obviously Panama pretty good port, right, pretty good port. Yes. Now another um, so another cultural touch point here. Uh, you guys know that Drink Champs podcast with DJ Envy and Nori, who was a legendary Kean's rapper. Right, Nori's name is Noriega referring to this. Yeah, so it's a little uh not a little uh, a little little touch point here. Also, I think it's important as the listeners if this feels a little like the way that this series went a little like chaotic and kind of you know, not very uh linear, and you're here in parts and pieces here and there, imagine living it. This is exactly how it felt, because all of this ship is breaking at difference. Yes. Um. For example, in nineteen eighty six, June of nine six, The Times publish as an expose on the Dictator's elicit, money laundering and drug activities. They cite an unnamed White House source who claims quote, the most significant drug running in Panama was being directed by General Noriega. Now Manuel starts to face legal consequences after this point, including a ban on selling arms to the Panamanian Defense Forces like an international band. So, while ran Contra is breaking and all of this ship is going nuts and the Reagan administration is battening down, he sends a guy into Washington to Wright to get help. Um, and I'm gonna quote an next from a write up in the National Security Archive. Oliver North, who met with Noriega's representative, described the meeting in August twenty third nine email message to Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter. You will recall that over the years, Manuel Noriega in Panama and I have developed a fairly good relationship. North rights, before explaining Noriega's proposal. If u S officials can help clean up his image and lift the ban on arms sales to the Panamanian Defense Force, Noriega will take care of the Sandinista leadership for US. So North is telling point extra that Noriega can assist with sabotaging the Sandinistas and gearing out assassination operations, and his suggestion is we should pay Noriega, who's under an arms embargo by US a million dollars from those Project Democracy funds raised by the sale of U S arms for Iran to get the Panamanian dictators help, but destroying Nicaraguan economic UH installations. So this causes a big old debate within the Reagan inners. Racle highlights include point Exter saying he has nothing against Noriega other than his illegal activities. Point point Exter is like, well, aside from the crimes, he's great if you weren't doing all those crimes. We love him. I mean, he's pretty cool, excited for the fact that he's a criminal. But besides that, I mean equal now, Alan Fears, who's one of the c I agents who's heavily involved in everything happening in Latin America, is against the idea of arming one of the biggest drug lords in the area with illegal armsteel cash. And Fears actually maybe one of these guys who's kind of kept in the dark specifically so he'll say the right thing when he gets questioned later and seem honest, right, like that's that's the kind one of the guy's Fears is I think, Um, but everyone ignores. So Fears does say, like, I don't think giving Noriega a million dollars is good. Um, he is ignored. Nobody follows his advice. North meets with Noriega in London with the support of Elliot Abrams, John Poindexter and George Schultz. So Scholtzi, who's not on board, Iran conscious so much. He's like, but giving a million dollars to Ma, Well, Noriega sounds like a great plan, A little cleaner. I'm gonna go do this. Adults is like this little cleaner like we got too little to me move apart. Let's against paying foreign people to murder and get drugs And I'm not against that. I'm just saying you're to be smarter about it. I am. George. Yeah. This is the call that Schultz makes right before deciding to one day become the board of directors for a fake blood testing company. Um fucking George. UM. Noriega is aling out, man, like you were running. You're running contraband across multiple continents. Bro, Come on, man, you wanted a glory. So Noriega agrees to attack airports, electric and telephone systems. In Nicaragua on the conference behalf and again, part of the deal is that he's going to get some cash money. Part of the deal is that everyone's going to be chill about his continuing moving cocaine through his sports. Right. So then the things are going great for all of this until in November of six, we get the actual Iron Contra story breaks, right, and you know, everything that tought we talked about at the in there happens um And one of the things that's happening like kind of in the wake of this, obviously the big deal, as we've talked about earlier, the big deal is that the United States was illegally selling missiles to Iran and exchange for hostages and then light about it. Right, that's the big deal, right, That's what people get in fucking trouble for. But the other thing that's happening is the Iran Contra deal is tied to everything else that Ali and the CIA and the NFC are doing in Nicaragua and all this cocaine that keeps getting into the fucking United States. And I don't know if you're aware of this, but Ronald Reagan makes a bit of a bit of an impact for himself as an anti drug crusade. Ye, there are some people you would think that this would have been a bigger deal, But the fact that missiles are involved, that's the sexier thing. The atoll is involved, right, So that's what gets all the attention. But there is a little bit of understanding at the time from some people in the media that like, kind of seems like the bigger story here is all the fucking cocaine you guys were letting into the country, right, kind of seems like that might be a real big, goddamn deal. Like, there's a lot of leads here. I feel like you might be burying one of them. You guys are the missiles and stuff is important, you guys work on that. I'm gonna ask these questions. And there's a guy, a journalist who does decide during a press conference to ask, like, Hey, are there any connections between these contrasts that you were apparently funding with missile money and and drug smuggling people bring a cocaine to the United States? And this guy gets screamed down not by the press secretary but by the New York Times correspondents standing next to him, who says, why don't you ask a serious question. Bro, Bro, if you're on the New York Times keeps coming up in the you know, if you're on the lefttern and the New York Times, and that somebody loves that question and then someone else in the audience shuts it down like that the the relief that must shoot over your body at that moment, like, oh my god, that's that is. I don't know if there's a better example of dodging a bullet, you know, and like like you're just thinking, Bro, if this foll knew, I would I would buy him whatever he wanted. Tonight, Mark Times really got me out of a sticky. You really got me out of this one. Dog. I owe you a rolex. Yeah, they're they're gonna help out a lot with the moral panic over the crack epidemic too, So they really they really just work in hand and glove with with our friends in the CIA. Well kind of so obviously. Uh, there are some criticisms at the time about the fact that there are very clearly and this is revealed by the stuff that comes out during a Rand contra. One of the things that we get because of Rand Contra is all the North's diary, where He's like, help some cocaine get into the US today. Whop to do? Um? Yeah, So I found a wonderful night right up in the Middle East. Report by Jonathan Marshall, which is a contemporary eight is kind of the year. A lot of this is blowing up um, which summarizes, you know, we have the committee that investigates arand contra martial in This is summarizing what the committee found and what it didn't quote. The most glaring operational embarrassment neglected by the report is the role of drug trafficking and financing the contras and the logistic operation that supplied them. The only mention of drugs comes in a staff memo reprinted in a report appendix that rejects media exploited allegations of contra drug trafficking as improbable and unverifiable. Yet other congressional investigators have condemned the memo as a fraudulent misrepresentation of the facts. Ample and convincing evidence points to the existence of a guns for drugs network that brought cocaine and marijuana into the United States as the price of running arms down to Central America. The Joint Committee itself heard testimony from three government witnesses that a high ranking Iran Contra leaders trafficked in cocaine. Indeed, the committee introduced into evidence a letter from rob Owen, North's emissary to Central America mentioning a Contra supply chain used at one time to run drugs and part of the crew that had a middle records. Nice group of boys the CIA shows, I love it. The report's silence on the involvement of terrorists in North's Project Democracy is no less deafening. One of the logistics agents employed in the Contra cause was the Cuban exile and career CIA officer Louis Posada. He came to Central America in nineteen eighty five after breaking out of a Venezuelan jail where he had been held for conspiring to bomb a civilian Cuban jet in nineteen seventies six. That act, the worst terrorist crime ever committed in the Western Hemisphere, killed all seventy three passengers, including Cuba's national fencing team. Yet the report mentions Pasada only in passing and then by his operational code name Ramon Medina. Just give you an idea that kind of folks, who who's all He's running drugs with Yeah, this guy who blew up a civilian airliner. Cool dude. Yeah. Now, the Iran Contra investigation and report plunges the Reagan White House into its darkest hours. Public opinion falls through the fucking floor. And again, we talked about this little bit, but like, yeah, this is the first time he's dealing with like some serious shit. Um, And a bunch of different stuff comes out of the fallout, which we've talked about in your episodes. But one of the things that happens is that while the Reagan White House is in disarray, his opponents in Congress start digging up other stuff too that's been going on during his two terms in office. And one of the things they start to look at increasingly is this connection between CIA operations in Latin America and drugs. And one thing people who are interested in this find is a nineteen eighty five article by Associated Press journalists Robert Perry and Brian Barger. Perry and Barger had published an investigation this is the very first public evidence that the Contras in the CIA were moving fucking drugs into the United States, which found that Contra groups had quote engaged in cocaine trafficking in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua. The article hadn't made much of a splash because, according to the Columbia Journalism Review, Reagan's people carried out a behind the scenes campaign to attack the professionalism of the ap borders and quote discredit all reporting on the conference and drugs. That's what the CIA wrote at the time. Peter Cornblue, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, notes that whether the campaign was the cause or not, coverage was minimal. So the fact that all this is happening is not like pay attention to that. The way they go after these journalists and the way their goal is we have to discredit reporting on this, and also pay attention to the fact that when this first comes up in public and eight, it's a New York Times journalist who, as far as we know, without any CIA advocacy, shuts down a line of questioning on it. That's going to be relevant later. Yes. So in nineteen, the last year of the Reagan administration, Senator John Kerry as a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee report, he's the guy running it. They published a report on specifically how covert support for the Contras undermined the War on drugs, Right, so this does get looked into. Uh and I'm gonna quote from the National Security Archive. The Kerry Subcommittee did not report the US government officials ran drugs. It rather that Mr North, than on the National Security Council staff at the White House, and other senior officials, created a privatized contra network that attracted drug traffickers looking for cover for their operations, didn't turn a blind eye to repeated reports of drug smuggling related to the Contras, and actively worked with known drug smugglers such as the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to assist the Contras. The report cited former Drug Enforcement Administration had John Lawn as testifying that Mr North himself had prematurely leaked the d E a undercover operation, jeopardizing agents lives for political advantage in an upcoming Congressional vote on aid to the Contras. Awesome, all this ship, all of this, all of life. It would be such a different story if the Reagan administration didn't go so hard on violence, gangs, drugs, Like, if you didn't go so hard about it, it wouldn't be such a gotcha, you know what, I'm saying, but I'm like, like you, like you didn't have to you didn't have to create mean, you didn't have to create the day program, and like three strikes were they create three strikes but just all these different, just very punitive laws around drugs, like you don't have to do that, and we wouldn't even thought it wouldn't have been so like salacious. Yeah, if the if the fucking if Congress had not been destroying huge numbers of people because they were caught with crack cocaine at the same time as they were bringing in the raw cocaine that gets turned into crack in order to fund right wing death squads in other parts of the world, If that all wasn't happening at the same time, it wouldn't seem like such a goddamn conspiracy exactly, because it's like it's yeah, if this didn't happen, we would be like this is yeah, we would be like oil on our head, like because of the amount of like how many countries have gotten when you add all if this part five, so we okay, add the countries together, the amount of countries involved in this, the amount of government's street dudes. Beau bureaucracies. There's like nine countries involved. Yep. Um, it's a big deals as we've as we've tried to unravel. Quite complicated. Yes, So this report that Kerry is kind of the guy running um does not establish that the CIA is responsible for bringing crack to the inner cities, nor does it connect US officials directly to drug dealers in the United States. However, as the report concluded, it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contrast were involved in drug trafficking. The supply network of the Contrast was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contrast themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case, one or another agency of the US government had information regarding the involvement, either while it was occurring or immediately thereafter. So the report also quoted the chief of the CIA Central America Task Force who said, with respect to drug trafficking by the resistance forces, it is not a couple of people, it is a lot of people. Now, you can't do the bad apple man. It is all y'all. This is all damning because we have we have talked about this in the context of a rand contract and then the context of a bunch of other ship years of shady dealings that we know now, but at the time a lot of this was breaking and at the time that report comes out, a lot of that outside information is missing. Right, So most Americans who see the headlines around this, the reasonable assumption to make is like, oh, some people we armed in an unpopular conflict. We're also moving cocaine whatever. The subcommittee report is not big news people. That sounds pretty damning. People could not give less of a ship at the time when it comes up, that's nineteen seven, is years later. Gary Webb picks that thread back up and he does about a year of digging, uh, and he puts together this three part article series for The Mercury, which blows the fucking lid off the world. In like a couple of days after this thing drops, it becomes the biggest story in the country, and it's the first massive news story that's gone out primarily over the Internet. That's where this thing spreads. And in order to kind of talk about how that happens, um, I want to quote now from an article in the Columbia Journalism Review, the demographics of Web traffic are unknown, but some media specialists believe that the rising numbers at Mercury Center in part reflect what the Chicago Tribune syndicated columnists Clarence Page calls an emerging Black cyber consciousness. Online newsletters and other net services made the series readily available to African American students, newspapers, radio stations, and community organizations. Patricia Turner, author of I Heard It through the Grapevine, The Definitive Study on how information travels through Black America, suggests that this marked the quote first time the Internet has electrified African Americans in this way. The Black Telegraph noted Jack While a Time magazine columnist, referring to the informal word of mouth network used since the days of slavery, has moved into cyberspace. There is I like, I didn't know the specifics of what you're saying, but it is true. Like like, I don't know how we get information that we get. You just find out through the homies or your auntie. I don't know how it happens, It just does. But I will say when this broke, this was our uncles who were like, see there. I tried to tell y'all, you know what I'm saying that we thought was like, all right, man, like you know, it hadn't been to jail a few times, you know, you didn't read a couple of books. You know, you come back and your prison smart, you know what I'm saying. So like and prison smart is a very specific type of smart, you know. And uh so, so they got all kind of informations about the government and the CIA conspired to get it, and we're thinking, okay, maybe you know, but like you said, it wasn't really big news and and it's it seems so far fed, but I have no reason to not believe my uncle. And then this happens and it was like that's a fact check. We'd have tried to tell y'all, you know, and all that started happening, and it was like, damn, it turns out ain't crazy, Like oh my god, it really yeah, you would lie, and what's you know, I'm saying, we believed you, but it was like, I don't know, man, yeah, he's probably well. And it's you know again, one of the things people can used to just credit this is pick it like the edges of because it is not literally the CIA was not shipping crack directly in the city, because that's not a very sensible way to go about doing that, right, just like Apple doesn't directly turn rare earth minerals into phones. Right, there's a distribution networks exact. But if you were like, Yo, who the plug? Who's your plug? You like c I A yeah, Like no, they the government, the government, I get I get the way from the government, like you know you don't, It's like, oh, wait, yes you do the Uh. It's easy to see why people see this as a very concerted conspiracy. Honestly, there's a way in which it's much more. And I'm not going to say what happened or not, because I'm sure there's more we don't. What we know is damning. Um, if it is as simple as the left hand didn't know what the right was doing, and nobody gave a ship about the impacts of these agencies and what they were doing in Latin America and how it might affect people, and nobody was watching them while people were like responding to this media circus the time created violently by destroying huge numbers of people's lives. And that's why all this happened, which is what the facts directly suggest that's like, that's enough to revolt over. That's that's enough to yeah that I I don't feel like anyway, Let's let's keep telling the story because there's more to revolt over. Yes, so Gary Webb puts out this article. It moves through the black community by way of the Internet. It also a big part of this is black oriented radio talk shows, which are huge today and really coming into their own in this period the mid to late nineties, boost this phenomenon, and the way in which they spread the story is by reading out the website address on the air. Never happened before, not a thing, not a thing in main stream that that like these big mainstream radio shows drive time ship as like reading out what is being like, you need to read this story. Here's a fucking web link. Right. That's not how journalism got spread before, but it is now. Um. These call in programs also become a focal point of information and debate. African American talk show hosts use their programs to address the allegations of ci A complicity in the crack epidemic, and the public response is forceful. The power of talk radio is probably like one of the best examples of like how big this is is Congresswoman Maxine Waters goes on a show in Baltimore in September, uh, and she says that the Congressional Black Caucus is going to look into this ship. Right, We're gonna like do a fucking thing on this and it's it's fucking massive. Um. And and like the fact that Maxine Waters takes this up is like a big part of why this story blows out into the mainstream in a big way. Now, the CIA and the NSC they're watching this ship happen, right, Um, they are like everyone is on this right, this is a massive problem. And the agency the first public thing they do when this starts to go viral is they announced we're doing an internal investigation. We're gonna look into whether or not we did anything wrong. Don't worry like like like you was the vice president, because you were the vice as president and it's awesome. So the c i A is like, we're gonna look into ourselves and see if we're bad people, don't worry. You can trust us. We're good people. Um. Obviously me, did I smuggle drugs? Yeah? Well the look I don't want to speak for for black America here, but the evidence that I have suggests that this was not taken as overly comforting. I don't think I believe you like spaces and just like side eyes like okay, here we go. Um you already know though. So the Justice Department also launches an investigation. John deuts Choose, the director of the CIA at this point, has to go down to Watts and do a town meeting with concerned citizens to that his organization hadn't smuggled crack into inner cities to destroy the black community. Um Like, he has to actually sit down and got to go to Watts talk him out of this. Uh. Now that is not precisely what Gary Webbs article had said, right. Gary Webb had not made those exact claims, right because he what he was saying is that what we've talked about, that the CIA is making things easier for these guys who are moving cocaine into the country. And then separately, webs articles dealt with how the crack epidemic and things like mandatory minimums had hurt the black community, right, um, and how racially disparate the charging was. But a lot of people interpreted as, oh, the CIA. There's allegations that the CIA smuggled crack into the black community and then becomes kind of the popular shorthand for the revelations. Representative Cynthia McKinney calls the CIA the Central Intoxication Agency on the floor of Congress. This is a pr disaster. It is a real threat to the agency's funding. They're worried about another Church committee, right. They're worried that, like Congress has going to really fuck them up over this um. And there's also a possibility that some people might get criminal charges who had worked in the agency. That's the thing they're concerned about because of how big a brush fire this starts. I don't know, man, you think they should get some criminal charge? I might suggest if anyone belongs in prison with a lot of these CIA guys and this sor like day, oh love, you should say right next to the other drug smuggles. So that's what you did. The agency spins up a reaction to what they internally call a crisis, but before they can really do anything, a save you appeared. Do you want to know who the savior is? The one who pulls the CIA is fat out of the Fire'll give you a hint. It's the same people who did It's it's the legacy news media. See as we have talked about a surprise villain here. You know, is it a surprise given the rest of these episodes, or maybe it's the one we didn't expect that. Yeah, it's uh, it's John Cena. Not John Cena. It's a stone cold coming out from the back. Oh my god. The New York Times has a fooling chair. Yes, yeah, and that's that's who roll. Well, it's actually the Los Angeles Times is a big part of this two as anyway, Webbs. As I've talked about a bunch webb store. It's the first earth shattering piece of investigative journalism in the US that came from something that wasn't a major paper of record. Right, this isn't blowing up in any in like this period of time, at least, this isn't blowing up in the places it's supposed to come out of. So the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, in the New York Times, three of the really the big legacy. Yeah, they're fucking angry. They're not angry because they don't want this information out. They're angry that they got fucking scooped and they're angry that in interviews, Gary Webb is saying stuff like, you don't have to be the New York Times or the Washington Post to bust a national story anymore. Now Gary was well ahead of the time, because we know he's right right, that's what happens. Washington Post in the New York Times, big as they are not where a lot of ship busts anymore. A whole lot of stuff comes up from the ground these days, and oftentimes the New York Times in the Post these days make their money kind of paying editorial writers to comment on shit. Um, this is the start of that. And and so the people who are going to like go after them, we're gonna go apeshit. A lot of them are kind of editorial writers. But the intercept does a good job of kind of summing up what happens next here in an article they wrote quote. Newspapers like the Times in the Post seemed to spend far more time trying to poke holes in the series than in following up on the underreported scandal at its heart, the involvement of a US back proxy forces and international drug trafficking. The Los Angeles Times was especially aggressive, scooped in its own backyard. The California paper assigned no fewer than seven team reporters to pick up art webs reporting well. Employees denied an outright effort to attack The Mercury News. One of the sevent team referred to it as the get Gary Web team. Another set at the time, we're going to take away that guy's pulitzer. According to Cornblue c j R. Piece. Within two weeks of the publication of Dark Alliance, The l A Times devoted more words to dismantling its competitors breakout hit than comprised the series itself. It's just so they throw down. You're it's just like you're guys, You're you're totally missing the point here. Man, you're missing, and you're you're missing a bigger story. You're missing a bigger story here due and it is true, salty, somebody got there first. We have to Gary webs reporting is imperfect number one. Any story this big, there's gonna be some errors. But especially Gary doesn't have a big editorial team. There's not a huge team of fact checkers. It is not it is. It is a new were reporter. It is a newer outlet, and there are some problems with it right, and some of them are pretty basic errors. And these errors are not the result of him trying to cook something up or lie, the result of writing for a small publisher without a strong editorial team. One of the examples of a funk up that Webb did make is he never called the CIA for comment. That may sound silly, but that is a thing that you do when you're writing an article like this. You you after you've got things nailed down, you go for comment. That is when I would write articles about militias and ship like Jason Wilson, and I would would wind up ringing up these fucking militia leaders and shipped to ask the questions about things they'd said online. It's what you do. You give people a chance to respond when possible they don't have. You don't have to wait for them to respond to publish the article, but you do have to give them a chance to respond. Webb claims that he did reach out and they never responded. The CIA denies that he ever reached out. We just actually don't know who's telling the truth here. But the thing that he fox up is he never rights in the story I reached out to the CIA for comment, and they didn't give it right. That is that is an issue. Now, a fair minded person would say, well, that doesn't mean anything about the veracity of his reporting. It's yea yeah, but the legacy papers pounce on this ship. There are other issues as well. The specific drug dealers Web had hung his story on absolutely did sell coke and absolutely did use proceeds from these sales to fund the contrast, but they were tiny. We're talking the guys who were directly tied to the contrast that he talks about in a storys they got the contrast something like that, right, not a lot of money. So from the guys he's focusing on in his article, there's not enough to say that the CIA or that the funding of the contrast is making a big dent on the contrast or are on the crackt right, Like, there's he's he's he's using the small case and he's assuming there's more, and he is right, there was a shipload more, But he is also kind of quoting some stuff out of context that makes his case seems stronger than it is what he actually has his evidence that like there is something really the damning here to look at, and it ties into these other fund up things that have been done around sentencing in these other disparities, And it's possible there's a real like if he it's like, it's one of those things. If it were a better article, there would have been some softening of the language. A good editor would have softened some of the language, and good legacy media journalists in a responsible media environment would have seen what he was saying. Even even if they'd seen in a responsible environment, even saying the articles that went out, they would have been like, well, what he's claiming that the CIA brought was responsible for helping to bring cocaine ing a crack epademic into the United States. What he's saying isn't entirely supported by the case of these two guys, because these guys are kind of small fry. But it's interesting that there's that much evidence, and I wonder if there's more, And they would have looked into that article that came out in nineteen eighty five and got clamped down on by the CIA, right there would have find found other stuff, including ship in that nine eight report. There was stuff they could have just found that would have been that was already out, already reported already something that the government had said was true and put that with what Webb had had been, like, oh, ship, there's a lot here, and then they would have looked in the more and then they would have fucking found more. That's not what the legacy media does. Instead, they pounce on the shortcomings and web series um and when they start trying to tell the other side of the story, which is how it gets framed, the c I A not available for comment earlier, suddenly, yeah, we'll talk to you about this. Come on in New York Times. You know, we love giving people access where the CIA so we know about their efforts. And they're surprised elation at the willingness of mainstream news outlets to attack web out of spite because they wrote about all of this and internal documents that are now declassified down there. They wrote about how happy they were about what what the what fucking the l A Times that ship we're doing in a piece called Managing a Nightmare written by a c I A fellow named Jumovic, And I'm gonna quote from the intercept again here. The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webbs reporting. Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of Dark Alliance, and Jomovic, in Managing a Nightmare, cites the CIA success and discouraging one major news affiliate from covering the story. He also boasts that the agency effectively departed from its own long standing policies in order to discredit the series. For example, in order to help a journalist working on a story that would undermine the Mercury News allegations, Public Affairs was able to deny any affiliation of a particular individual, which is a rare exception to the general policy that the CIA does not comment on any individual's alleged CIA ties. Word now, the document chronicles the shift in public opinion as it moves from like oh my god, what has the government been doing two in favor of the CIA's angle, which is like nah, Gary Webbs full of shit. Yeah. This trend starts about a month and a half after the series is published. Quote that third week in September was a turning point in media coverage of this story, Jumovic wrote, and he cites respected columnists, including prominent blacks, along with the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun, the Weekly Standard, and the Washington Post. So that's pretty cool. Huh yeah, yeah, that's it's pretty perfect. Yeah, didn't even didn't even need to do anything. They got it. They got back again, they got us. Don't even worry about it again. If you're on the lecter and the collective side of like oh yeah, oh oh yeah again no, yeah, yeah, nah. There's a grand conspiracy and everything is connected, being like, well, okay, the CIA is doing all this shady ship to bring cocaine in, and then the New York Times plays a major role in hyping up fears of a crack epidemic, which is used to justify arresting a shipload of black men and breaking up a bunch of families. And then as soon as the allegations come out that the CIA was the one that brought in the cocaine, well, all of these same media organizations who had pushed up the crack epidemic act to crack down on the story, and and the journalist who had like broken the story that they've done this, well, yeah that does kind of seem like a fucking conspiracy, but it really does. Again, and all of this actually what I think all of this is is a mix of different conspiracies. Uh, reckless and callous disregard for what is happening in Black American for who gets hurt by this um racist policing and racist trends in law enforcement. And the fact that the media is also pretty racist, always searching for like a story and do not care as much about whether or not the story is true as whether or not you can scare people. Um, and just yeah, the fact that they mostly hire a bunch of fucking upper class white people from fancy schools who don't know anything about what's going on in the black community, who gets scared by this kind of coverage and right racist bullshit, and who are always going to act to defend other dudes who went to Yale and just happened to wind up in the CIA instead. The New York Times editorial desk force or cool stuff, good, wonderful, great system. Yeah, I think you're you. You nailed it. Uh, in the sense that you have all these sort of concentric circles, these these these forces you know, pressing down on the community that whether it's police lawn you know, law enforcement, you know, unfair sentencing, uh, war on drugs, the drugs coming in, the c I A, the d A, all these things all falling, not to mention like um, you know, discriminatory housing and just all these things all happening. It's like you're you're anybody would think are are all these people sitting around one table and kind of deciding you know what I'm saying. And that's that's when you get into the crazy because now it's just like a plan and it doesn't know it doesn't have to be a bunch of ship that's really bad result of a bunch of different gnarly trends and conspiracy. Again, it's not that there's no those conspiracies all we've been talking about this week's conspiracies. They're just not the Illuminati. They're not well, yeah, it's not one big thing that all spout from. It's all these little dudes that just happen to have yeah, overlapping interests and whether it's and it's it's this weird, like this weird power thing to where it's like it's not so much I'm doing everything in my power to make sure you suffer. It's more your success don't matter to me. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. And that's like, and that's the thing that like, it's it's it's it's what as as a I mean, sometimes it is when you're just an out and out near you know, Nazi, white supremacist, to where you're like, I am doing everything in my power to make you suffer versus you're just inconsequential and your success doesn't matter to me. You're not a part of the country I think of. And there are some people who are like, no, I'm actually just super racist and I run a police union that funds you know, a number of camp and I want to push for mandatory minimums because I'm racist. But other people are pushing for mandatory minimums because they're uh, their voters got scared by the New York Times who did it, but because it was a good story and they're incredible and they're kind of races too, and all of this, all of this feeds together. Um, anyway, let's continue. But first, you know, what isn't a conspiracy prop show straight up plans baby, that's right, not a conspiracy is the products and services that support this podcast. The products and services that support this podcast do meet around a big table and they do secretly run the world. But they're cool, so it's fine. They got nice shoes, they got great shoes, incredible shoes. Anyway, here's ads. We're back. We just got back from the secret table where our sponsors run the world and can't confirm sneaker game. And yeah, now I want to say, don't revolt and burn things down. Um that's don't do that, um proper, you want to take the jet skis out. I want to see if the ones that are played gold work as well as the ones with a platinum coating on man, I think an aspen they work best well, of course without but not the not the aspen. Our listeners know the secret aspen that that that exists on on Mars for members of the conspiracy. There's a space aspen. Yeah, there's a Euroba aspen that. Oh that's even nicer. So it's incredible. The fucking shrimp cocktails also better shrimp than you get there, like the vein of in the in the shrimp that weed. It's just gold. It's just gold instead of poop. But yeah, you know, burned down the system anyway. Anyway, So, um, we're talking about the media response to all of this ship and how they shut it down. One of the most useful papers in terms of putting the kabash on people getting angry about Dark Alliance was the Washington Post. Uh and I want to quote now again from the CIA. Because of the Post's national reputation, It's articles especially were picked up by other papers, helping to create with the Associated Press called a firestorm of reaction against the San Jose Mercury News. Now about a month or so after of this follows kind of of critical media coverage of the series, and by the end of that first month, the quote unquote balanced reporting just attacking Gary Webb in his article outnumbers the stories that are actually taking what he's talking about seriously and in their right. Up of this, the CIA credits all of this to the Washington Post, the New York Times quote, and especially at the Los Angeles Times um webs webbs editors start to distance themselves and abandon their reporter. By the end of October, two months after the publication of Dark Alliance quote, the tone of the entire CIA drug story had changed. Jumavick was pleased to report quote. Most press coverage included as a routine matter, the now widespread criticism of the Mercury News allegations. I can bet now I don't. I'm not, I wasn't an adult during this time, but I can bet that the tone among whatever plugged in or tapped in like black people in this professional space that would be knowing all this stuff is like, you know, this is all the confirmation we need. The fact that you're going after this man so much it makes us be like, oh, so he's so he's right. Okay, yeah, I got it. Thanks guys, Okay, yeah, I got it, Like yeah, yeah, But now that y'all going through all this to stop him, now I know. Yeah. Um, And that is how a lot of people react. And we have now learned to a point of certainty with all of the stuff that's come out since that's been classified, that's been reported on. Gary Webb was right. The claim that he made was that the CIA deliberately enabled the cocaine trade to fund the contrast. That was absolutely true. His central thesis, his central thing that he was trying to show was real. Now, he didn't have all of the information that we have in order to prove it, and that is a flaw in the article. Um, but all of the journalism quote unquote journalism that was done to attack webs work was deeply flawed itself, as the Columbia Journalism Review makes clear. All three papers ignored evidence from declassified National Security Council email messages, and The New York Times and The Washington Post ignored evidence from Oliver North's notebooks, which lends support to the underlying premise of the Mercury News series that US officials would both condone and protect drug traffickers if doing so advanced the Contra cause. The October twenty one New York Times piece didn't even mention the Carry Committee report. A decade ago, the national media lowballed the Contra drug story. David Corne observed in the nation, now it's been there, done that. On October, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held its first hearing on the controversy surrounding the new Contra drug allegations. Jack Bloom, former lead investigator for the Carry Committee, was lead witness. Bloom testified that his investigators had found no evidence whatsoever that the African American community was a particular target of a plot to sell crack cocaine, or that high US official head of policy of supporting the through drug sales which is not what Web had alleged. Right, Web does not allege a plot. Web says that the CIA is helping coke move into the country, which is true. Yes, and Bloom testifies further quote, if you ask whether the United States government ignored the drug problem and subverted law enforcement to prevent embarrassment and to reward our allies in the contra war, the answer is yes, which you might recognize as saying Gary Webb was right, yes, right, exactly exactly. Now. The CIA found, of course, no intent to smuggle cocaine into the United States or to enable drug smugglers to do the same. Instead, they blamed all the extremely documented cases of contrast smuggling coke into the US as something all their agents had just missed because like g Chucks, the CIA forgot to mandate that CIA agents had to report evidence of drug smuggling by their contacts. Right, that's literally the excuse, Like, well, they missed it because they weren't told to report it, so they just didn't notice it. They just missed all this blow right because it was their job to spot it. Right. Listen, Like I said, I'm here for the lobsters. I'm not here or the beef. Yeah, I don't even see those cows. I don't even see those I don't even see what I'm here for this. Yeah, I'm gonna quote from PBS again. In the winter of nineteen two, as the United States was plotting how to overthrow the Sandinista government that came to power in Nicaragua, a letter a memorandum of understanding m o U was being drafted in Washington, d c. The presumptive author was the U S Attorney General, the late William French Smith. The recipient was the Central Intelligence Agency Director William Casey. The subject was a list of offenses that CIA field officers in the field were required to report if they witnessed or became aware of a crime, particularly if it involved an informant or someone the CIA officer wanted to recruit as an agent. The letter of understanding listed all kinds of crimes, from murder to passport fraud, but it omitted narcotics violations because we know, yeah, if he's killing people, we want to know, But if he's moving blow into the country, we don't really give a ship. That's literally that's what it's saying right now. This is too glaring of an oversight to have left without comment, and weeks later there's a follow up letter based on internal discussion in the Justice Department that gets sent to the c I. A quote, I have been advised that a question arose regarding the need to add all narcotics violations to the list of non employee claims. This is something Smith writes to Casey in February. Uh so you know that sounds good, but this actually doesn't add drugs to the list of things that have to be reported. Um because Smith, instead of adding it to the list, just sites existing federal policy on narcotics enforcement and writes, quote, in light of these provisions, and in view of the fine cooperation of the Drug Enforcement Administration has received from the CIA, no formal requirement regarding the reporting of narcotics violations has been included in these procedures. So basically, we're already working so good together. Federal employees are already required to talk about this stuff, so we don't need to add. We we can keep narcotics exempted from the things c I agents after report because we know they will right which we know they weren't. Now, Inspector CIA Inspector General Fred Hits tells the PBS when he's questioned that because they're asking, like, what do you make of this CIA inspector general? It seems shady, and he's like, well, it's at best a mixed message, right these now listen, that's a mixed message. Yes, six these dudes may not be good at criming, but they are good at excuses. They're incredible at excuses, and here they're what had Hattenwim was game is ridiculous, It hits very this is very funny, claims that he to PBS. He doesn't believe CIA agents would have enabled drug traffic to allow the Contrast to fund themselves, because that would have been bad pr Now you and I know prop that the Reagan administration and the CIA actively worked to discredit journalists reporting on the CIA for doing just that. When the agency took any action to crack down on the drug trade, it was purely for show. In seven, CIA Director Robert Gates sent a memorandum to the CIA Deputy director demanding that CIA officers cease relationships with Contrast, even suspected of trafficking narcotics. Here's PBS again. Gates's memorandum instructed George to vet names of air crews. Air Services employed companies and subcontractors with the d E, a, U, S, Customs, and the FBI to ensure that none of the contractors used by the CIA were involved in narcotics. For some reason, this memorandum quote was not issued in any form that would advise agency employees generally of this policy. It stated in his report. It never got to the field agents who were supposed to use it as a guide. So it's just like, look, we recognized the problem, and we made it a rule that they had to run everything by the FBI in the DA. They had to check on these guys and vet them to make sure they're not moving drugs. We noticed there was a problem, and we took action. What did you tell anyone whose job it was to vet these people that they had to do that? Well, no, we forgot to. We sucked that one up. We really fucked that one. Upp tootles. Hey, Homy, that's that's clerical, bro. Listen, listen, charge it to my head, not my heart. I'm not a big deal. We tried to do the right thing. It just got sucked up for reasons that were completely unavoidable. Guys, guys, you're looking at the locker room. Guys, listen, Uh, when the team comes in, just make sure they know that they gotta stop grabbing asses. Okay, you gotta stop grabbing asses. Guys. That everybody's mad at us. So when you see a juicy ass, you can't grab it. Okay, all right, all right here come to guys. It's just silence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we don't need to say any more than that. Um I said it. Yeah, I said it. At some point, you guys saw me see it. We put it in the rule book. Now they're not required to read the rule book. In fact, they're not allowed to. We didn't give it to them. The rule books are held on the top of a mountain in eastern fucking Turkmenistan, and and none of them can get to it. But it's in the rule books. You know, what else do you want for us? You would to track down these agents and put a paper in their hands. Yeah, I told him they can't do it, man. Yeah, they're honorable men. You know they won't do it. And do it anyway. Yeah. So, as the years have gone on and all this has come out, it has become clear that Gary Webb was guilty of being sloppy right. It's not perfect or even ideal reporting. There's issues with it. His conclusions and allegations, while not supported by the text of his article, though, are supported by the facts that we know now and the facts that have emerged since, and a number of the facts that Gary didn't bring up but were available then, and that the Washington Post, in the New York Times and the l A Times should have brought up, like the ship from the Cary Report, like the ship from the AP report and eight five um. Of course, the fact that Gary has been vindicated by time did not mean anything for Gary Webb. The damage had been done to his career. He was disgraced, and the CIA crack epidemic story had gone from a mainstream outrage to a conspiracy theory that was widely mocked. The Washington Post even published. Of the things they do in this period is they put in an article like a warning about the black community susceptibility to conspiracy theories. Where's the Washington Post. We gotta let you know, We've noticed a troubling trend, which is black people they're sharing conspiracy theories. He's not a good book. You gotta watch you say around him because you know, the kind of believe anything. They really think the whole government's out to get them and the media. What a silly group of people, do you believe? It? Mean? Whateverence do they have that that might be happening. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's like sucking hitting your friend in the head with a hammer and being like his real susceptible to getting hit in the head with a hammer. Boy, that guy's head can't stop catching hammers. Am I right? Jesus Jez. Can't do anything around this guy. Man might get a hammer to his head, can't bring a hammer out. He keeps getting hit with him. Yeah. Webb's career never recovered. On December two four, he shot himself in the head with a thirty eight. Ten years later, David Carr, writing for The New York Times, wrote an article that serves as the closest will get to an apology for the Great Lady. We've quoted from it a couple of times. Here. There's widespread recognition that it was pretty fucked up, although you can still find articles in mainstream says Gary Webb was not, you know, really fucked up, and like we weren't wrong to go after him and to ignore all of these problems and act as cover for the CIA, like it's it's all fucked up prop But that's the story. That's all the story, man. So it was like seven seven countries involved mad moving parts people at the highest level of government. A journalist breaks it, tells the truth, Polkes's head up the rest of the journalism community, and then the due A kills himself because he makes him feel like he's taking crazy pills. It's one of those things. There's a meme spreading around that's like the the award for the CIA Award for Excellence in Journalism, and it's a bullet and that is an accurate joke in like parts of Latin America rights in Latin America, the c i a s s it was either directly did or through there. And in other parts of the world, the CIA has assassinated a lot of journalists. They don't have to do that. You don't have to send a guy with a silenced weapon to kill Gary Webb. New York Times has got your back. They're just gonna hound him to suicide because they got scooped. We're good, baby, damn saves us. The bullet money that's that's that's see. I didn't know that one because Bud mcmarty killed himself too. He shared and I'm sure there's yeah, um boy, yeah, I don't want to get into other It's totally understandable if you're feeling conspiratorial after this. And I'm not gonna say much more than that because it's cool and fine, proper you got anything to plug well, this has been a phenomenal piece of art we've put together that. Yeah, so op over to the politics spot man, you know where hopefully if you had part five, it is when you know that the pieces that this was altogether was how come I can't talk and you didn't warn me out? And and this is and this was my idea to do this series. You warn me out? But yeah, now politics pod and uh, what upcoming topics do you have on politics? Oh man? Besides the other parts of this I have? Uh did we talk about the queen already? We already talked about the Queen? We got tapping in or it's up like lessons on how you need to tap in before you talk to people? Uh? I got a book reading list where you can get your weight up. Talk about a little bit of things like that. Um, yeah, it's a lot going on over there. Check out hood Politics and get uh props cold Brew Tear for get my cold Brew and his book terror Form. Yes, it's all there. Yeah, and the and the um your music, Yeah, there's new music. Yeah, all all named Terraform because what's your what's your website again? It's is it prop hip hop dot com? Yes it is. Thank you, Sophie prop hip hop dot com for all the things prop hip hop dot com terra Form. Check it all out. You can find me with my novel, which you should read, called After the Revolution. Go to any place that sells books, any website that sells books. Type it in After the Revolution. You can buy a copy the Homie books paperback all that. You can also type in After the Revolution a k Books and you'll find it there. Talk to the homie skull Fucker Mike. Yeah, you can learn the ballad of skull Fucker Mike uh and more to come in the sequel. He needs a Yeah, I was like, the goulfucker needs his own uh side. So you're gonna learn a lot more about skull Fucker my. But let's all funk our own skulls right now to chill out after being sad. Thank you, what a great week, Yes in two