Kill the Messenger 8-31-2015

31, August 2015                   Kill the Messenger HPO just released the movie, Kill the Messenger, a story that made global headlines by exposing the CIA’s drug smuggling operations to raise money to support the contras in Nicaragua. Nicaraguan rebels were used to smuggle cocaine into the US which was subsequently sold to predominantly black communities in South Central Los Angeles. The blacks were used as convenient fodder for the greater good of ‘defeating Communism’, ignoring the inconvenient truth that the Contras were the poor indigenous people of Nicaragua who opposed the US backed Sandinista government. In 1996 it was Gary Webb, a reporter at the San Jose Mercury News, who broke the story that the CIA was actively engaged in drug smuggling. Webb tied the CIA action to a crack epidemic among America’s urban poor. Prominent newspapers were incensed that a small town newspaper reporter had beaten them to major scoop.  Aided by a highly embarrassed vindictive CIA, the mega media sought to discredit Webb. Fortunately, Monica Lewinsky arrived on the scene and the CIA scandal vanished from the front pages. Refusing to retract his story, Webb resigned from the Mercury and sought unsuccessfully to find work as a reporter for the next five years. Estranged from his family and falling into a deep depression, he allegedly took his own life in 2004.