Gary Webb

Gary Stephen Webb (August 31, 1955 – December 10, 2004) was an American investigative journalist.

He began his career working for newspapers in Kentucky and Ohio, winning numerous awards, and building a reputation for investigative writing.

Hired by the San Jose Mercury News, Webb contributed to the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake.

Instead, he found work in 1978 as a reporter at the Kentucky Post, a local paper affiliated with the larger Cincinnati Post.

In 1979, Webb married Susan Bell; the couple went on to have three children.

Webb's first major investigative work appeared in 1980, when the Cincinnati Post published "The Coal Connection," a seventeen-part series by Webb and Post reporter Thomas Scheffey.

The series, which examined the murder of a coal company president with ties to organized crime, won the national Investigative Reporters and Editors Award for reporting from a small newspaper.

In 1983, Webb moved to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he continued doing investigative work.

In 1984, Webb wrote a story titled “Driving Off With Profits” which claimed that the promoters of a race in Cleveland paid themselves nearly a million dollars from funds that should have gone to the city of Cleveland.

The article resulted in a lawsuit against Webb's paper which the plaintiffs won.

A jury awarded the plaintiffs over 13 million dollars and the case was later settled.

A 1985 series, "Doctoring the Truth," uncovered problems in the State Medical Board and led to an Ohio House investigation which resulted in major revisions to the state Medical Practice Act.

Webb then moved to the paper's statehouse bureau, where he covered statewide issues and won numerous regional journalism awards.

In 1986, Webb wrote an article saying that the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, Frank D. Celebrezze accepted contributions from groups with organized crime connections.

Celebrezze eventually sued the Plain Dealer and won an undisclosed out of court settlement.

In 1988, Webb was recruited by the San Jose Mercury News, which was looking for an investigative reporter.

He was assigned to its Sacramento bureau, where he was allowed to choose most of his own stories.

As part of The Mercury News team that covered the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Webb and his colleague Pete Carey wrote a story examining the causes of the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct.

Webb is best known for his "Dark Alliance" series, which appeared in The Mercury News in 1996.

The series examined the origins of the crack cocaine trade in Los Angeles and claimed that members of the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua had played a major role in creating the trade, using cocaine profits to finance their fight against the government in Nicaragua.

It also stated that the Contras may have acted with the knowledge and protection of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The series provoked outrage, particularly in the Los Angeles African-American community, and led to four major investigations of its charges.

The Los Angeles Times and other major papers published articles suggesting the "Dark Alliance" claims were overstated and, in November 1996, Jerome Ceppos, the executive editor at Mercury News, wrote about being "in the eye of the storm".

In May 1997, after an internal review, Ceppos stated that, although the story was correct on many important points, there were shortcomings in the writing, editing, and production of the series.

He wrote that the series likely "oversimplified" the crack epidemic in America and the supposed "critical role" the dealers written about in the series played in it.

Webb disagreed with this conclusion.

Webb resigned from The Mercury News in December 1997.

He became an investigator for the California State Legislature, published a book based on the "Dark Alliance" series in 1998, and did freelance investigative reporting.

He died by suicide on December 10, 2004, although conspiracy theories persist that allege that he was murdered.

The "Dark Alliance" series remains controversial.

Critics view the series' claims as inaccurate or overstated, while supporters point to the results of a later CIA investigation as vindicating the series.

The follow-up reporting in the Los Angeles Times and other papers has been criticised for focusing on problems in the series rather than re-examining the earlier CIA-Contra claims.

Webb was born in Corona, California.

His father was a Marine sergeant, and the family moved frequently, as his career took him to new assignments.

When Webb's father retired from the Marines, the family settled in a suburb of Indianapolis, where Webb and his brother attended high school.

After high school, Webb attended an Indianapolis community college on a scholarship until his family moved to Cincinnati.

He then transferred to nearby Northern Kentucky University.

Webb first began writing for the student newspaper at his college in Indianapolis.

After transferring to Northern Kentucky, he entered its journalism program and wrote for the school paper, The Northerner.

Although he attended Northern Kentucky for four years, he did not finish his degree.