Flutterby™! : Documenting CIA lashback

Managing a Nightmare: The CIA Reveals How It Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb. Webb wrote the 1996 Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion, the exposé for the San Jose Mercury News about the Nicaraguan Contras and cocaine trafficking, and the possible CIA involvement, which echoed the 1989 Senate subcommittee report which found such things, and was driven to suicide by the response and scrutiny over that report.

The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webb’s reporting. Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of “Dark Alliance,” and Dujmovic in “Managing a Nightmare” cites the CIA’s success in discouraging “one major news affiliate” from covering the story. He also boasts that the agency effectively departed from its own longstanding 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 CIA does not comment on any individual’s alleged CIA ties.”