watched “kill the messenger” last night. it’s an incredibly important film based on the life and work of gary webb, an american journalist who wrote the 1996 dark alliance series of articles (about CIA involvement in cocaine trafficking in the US). the articles were written for the san jose mercury news and later published collectively as a book. i wasn’t surprised by the fact that drug trafficking was used to finance an illegal war in nicaragua (against people who wanted to reform their govt and ensure free elections), that the money for this illegal war was raised by selling crack cocaine in impoverished black neighborhoods here in the US, that when the story came out the govt used its private propaganda arm (the NYT and washington post among other venerable media institutions) to “controversalize” gary webb and shift the focus on him rather than his work, and that webb could not work as a journalist after this process of delegitimization was successfully carried out. i know that govts lie, that power corrupts, and that the CIA has damaged the world in ways that we are just beginning to understand. i know that the war on drugs is as dark and dodgy as the war on terror. i know that investigative journalists (who don’t just quote govt officials or ask the CIA to proofread their work) put themselves in great danger when shining a light on govt malfeasance of this scale. the thing that took me off guard was one of the last lines in the film. gary webb died in 2004. he was 49 years old. he was found with *two* gunshot wounds to the head. it was deemed a “suicide” and that’s what we’re still told. since when is a human being able to shoot themselves in the head twice? seriously. i guess the suspension of disbelief doesn’t apply only to magic acts or coleridge’s fantastical tales.
more info on gary webb’s story at democracy now!