…and scoops a big newspaper…look out.       (**edited to clarify)

I can’t say that I remember the Gary Webb episode.  And you would think this would have been huge enough to be covered in my journalism classes or any of the communications classes I had at the university I attended.  Nope.  Perhaps it was too new at the time–and the facts were not well known.

The story is so compelling.  Not only for the bullying of Webb, but how crack cocaine was spread through the country.

Webb was vindicated by a 1998 CIA Inspector General report, which revealed that for more than a decade the agency had covered up a business relationship it had with Nicaraguan drug dealers like Blandón.

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If you click on the Dateline video on the fdl website, the reporter asks Rick Ross  if he had any responsibility in what happened (his pushing drugs among African Americans?)   And he answers that it was his responsibility for it.

The question arose about whether Webb thought the CIA wanted to get the African American community hooked on drugs….Yes, it is someone’s responsibility for taking drugs…if you don’t take it, then you can’t get addicted to it.  I don’t do drugs, but from what I have heard, cocaine is highly addictive—so…if the drug pushers know this (and I’m pretty sure if they were selling it in Nicaragua, they knew of its addictive qualities)—then they knew all they had to do is to get someone to take it once, and they had a customer for life…kind of like the tobacco industry trying to get people hooked on cigarettes.

…and why aren’t the “ruthless billionaires” in jail, too??

The  Webb story is a sad commentary on competitiveness, bullying, exposing criminal activity and doing what you think is the right thing…makes one wonder if we truly want to do good in this country?

I just wish Webb could have seen that what he did was important.  But to not get his ego wrapped around his career–that he had much to contribute in whatever path he took.  If he would have held on a couple more years, he would have been amazed at the internet, and perhaps his investigative skills would have been used for internet reporting.  (I’m also wondering why LAWeekly didn’t give him a job after the bullying episode left him unable to secure a position with other papers?)