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March
21, 2001
Silencing the Messenger
Censoring NarcoNews
by Gary
Webb
Not long after I wrote
a series for the San Jose Mercury News about a drug ring that
had flooded South Central Los Angeles with cheap cocaine at the
beginning of the crack explosion there, a strange thing happened
to me. I was silenced.
This, believe
it or not, came as something of a surprise to me. For 17 years
I had been writing newspaper stories about grafters, crooked
bankers, corrupt politicians and killers -- and winning armloads
of journalism awards for it. Some of my stories had convened
grand juries and sent important people to well-deserved jail
cells. Others ended up on 20/20, and later became a best-selling
book (not written by me, unfortunately.) I started doing television
news shows, speaking to college journalism classes and professional
seminars. I had major papers bidding against each other to hire
me.
So when I happened
across information implicating an arm of the Central Intelligence
Agency in the cocaine trade, I had no qualms about jumping onto
it with both feet. What did I have to worry about? I was a newspaperman
for a big city, take-no-prisoners newspaper. I had the First
Amendment, a law firm, and a multi-million dollar corporation
watching my back.
Besides, this
story was a fucking outrage. Right-wing Latin American drug dealers
were helping finance a CIA-run covert war in Nicaragua by selling
tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods in LA, who were turning
it into crack and spreading it through black neighborhoods nationwide.
And all the available evidence pointed to the sickening conclusion
that elements of the US government had known of it and had either
tacitly encouraged it or, at a minimum, done absolutely nothing
to stop it.
And that's
when this strange thing happened. The national news media, instead
of using its brute strength to force the truth from our government,
decided that its time would be better spent investigating me
and my reporting. They kicked me around pretty good, I have to
admit. (At one point, I was even accused of making movie deals
with a crack dealer I'd written about. The DEA raided my film
agent's office looking for any scrap of paper to back up this
lie and appeared disappointed when they came up emptyhanded.)
To this day,
no one has ever been able to show me a single error of fact in
anything I've written about this drug ring, which includes a
600-page book about the whole tragic mess. Indeed, most of what
has come out since shows that my newspaper stories grossly underestimated
the extent of our government's knowledge, an error to which I
readily confess. But, in the end, the facts didn't really matter.
What mattered was making the damned thing go away, shutting people
up, and making anyone who demanded the truth appear to be a wacky
conspiracy theorist. And it worked.
As a result,
the CIA was allowed to investigate itself, release a heavily
censored report admitting that it had worked with cocaine traffickers,
and simultaneously declare itself innocent of any wrongdoing.
And that's where our firebrand national news media has let the
matter lie to this day.
Now it's NarcoNews'
turn for the silence treatment. And, if I had to guess, I'd venture
to say that it's probably more important to the folks selling
us the Drug War to shut up Al Giordano than it is to silence
mainstream reporters who, in my father's eloquent words, wouldn't
say shit if they had a mouth full of it.
No one can
lean on NarcoNews's editors, or their bosses, or its board of
directors to reign Al in or, failing that, reassign him to the
night copy desk. The only person they can lean on is Al, who
doesn't take to being leaned on. And they can't shut down the
Internet either. So two choices remain.
They can grit
their teeth and suffer Al's reporting, day after aggravating
day, as he exposes the ugly underside of this endless war on
drugs - and actually makes things happen, like real journalists
are supposed to do. Or they can try to make it impossible for
him to do his job by harassing him with specious lawsuits, bedevil
him with lawyers and depositions and interrogatories and subpoenas,
and reduce him to penury. Why? To silence
him. To make him go away. To keep him from looking under rocks
that reporters aren't supposed to look under.
Make no mistake.
This court fight isn't about any particular story NarcoNews has
done. It's about ALL of them, and all of the ones yet to come.
And it's a battle over the continued independence of Internet
journalism as well. The silencing of Al Giordano and NarcoNews
isn't a theoretical possibility that might happen a couple years
from now. It's already happening. Al and his volunteer lawyers
are hip-deep in it right now. And they need our help.
Narco News
and Al Giordano face an April 9th deadline to respond to the
Banamex censorship lawsuit or they will be declared in default
- guilty without a single fact being heard in a case where the
facts prove them right.
A civil lawsuit
is different than a criminal case: complex legal issues require
trained lawyers to dig through the law books on procedural issues
so far from the basic truths about photographs of cocaine trafficking
on the coast of Mexico. The bank's lawyers at Akin Gump are paid
astronomic fees to raise every small point of process and delay
the day when the facts come to light in New York City court.
If this case
goes to trial, that's when Narco News will triumph. And all of
us will win with it as the real facts of the corruption of the
international drug war come to light in the media center of New
York.
The hard part
comes right now, in navigating the maze of irrelevantprocess
issues, as any reporter who has covered the courts has seen.
Narco News will either be able to have skilled attorneys get
them through this complicated phase or - I can see it coming
- Al will have to take a long trip to the law library himself,
abandon reporting for the coming weeks or months in order
to wage his own defense. Then you and I will not be able to read
new reports on Narco News at this key moment when Plan Colombia
explodes regionally and more Latin American voices are raised
against the drug war, like the Mexican police chief yesterday,
who, if not for Narco News, would never be heard by those of
us who speak and read in English.
That is what
is at stake: Whether a skilled reporter has to retire for months
to become a pro se lawyer, or whether he can continue reporting
the facts to us.
I was silenced
but am not silenced any more. When, the other day, the film rights
to my book Dark
Alliance
about US complicity in the cocaine trade were purchased for a
television movie, I wrote Al to pledge part of those
proceeds to his defense. In the years to come, there is no question
that Narco News will be proven right and will be helping the
next generation of reporters fight efforts to censor them.
But wouldn't
it be wonderful if this time the censors failed entirely to take
Al and Narco News out of circulation, for a year, for months,
even for a week? Wouldn't that be the best deterrent against
bankers and lobbyists from waging these frivolous lawsuits against
Free Speech on the Internet? I understand that Narco News needs
only about $13,000 more to be able to have the most difficult
stage of the lawsuit process - that which it faces immediately
- handled with professional legal assistance, thus allowing Al
to continue expending his energy and time in reporting to us
the facts. One person of means could solve this problem with
a check. Two dozen people giving $500 could do it. 130 people
giving a hundred dollars... you can do the math: If half of Narco
News' readers give one dollar each, Narco News will keep publishing.
The hard part
is that it must be done now, today. Please join me in sending
a check to:
Drug War on
Trial
C/O Thomas Lesser, Esq.
Lesser, Newman, Souweine & Nasser
39 Main Street
Northampton, MA 01060
Al often says
that Narco News never wanted to ask its readers for a cent, and
I sense that it pains him to ask the readers who benefit from
his reporting to support his defense in court. That's why I'm
writing you.
This lawsuit
is bigger than the fate of one Internet publication. It is larger
than, but it will decide, free speech issues in cyberspace for
years to come. What is at stake here is nothing less than whether
the public knows the truth and the facts about the war on drugs
in our hemisphere.
If we don't
all act today, we will be in the dark again tomorrow.
For information
about the lawsuit and its defense:
http://www.narconews.com/warroom.html
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