Kerry may be being smart - Democratic Underground

emcguffie

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Mon Dec-20-04 12:44 PM
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Kerry may be being smart

I know this looks like it shouldn't be here, but in this intv., from Democracy Now!, Robert Parry alludes to Kerry's investigative skills. And the whole thing is a funny-but-sad parallel of the situation with this investigation and the mainstream media. Sorry if this is a double.

From Amy Goodman interview with Robert Parry about the recent suicide of investigative journalist Gary Webb, who reported the CIA-contra-cocaine connection, and then watched his career go down the tubes.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/13/1457240&mode=thread&tid=25

AMY GOODMAN: we're joined on the telephone now by Bob Parry, veteran investigative journalist, wrote for AP and Newsweek. His reporting led to the exposure of what's now called the Iran-Contra scandal. His latest book is called Secrecy and Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty to Watergate and Iraq. Welcome to Democracy Now!

ROBERT PARRY: Hi, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: I heard it from you this weekend that Gary Webb had died of an apparent suicide. Can you talk about Gary?

ROBERT PARRY: Well, I received a call Saturday from the Los Angeles Times asking if I could comment about Webb’s death. I went on and explained that the Country owes a huge debt to Gary Webb. What he did was revive a story that some of us at AP and then later Senator John Kerry looked into in the mid-1980s of how the Reagan-Bush Administration had financed the contra war in part by allowing the Contras engage in cocaine trafficking. The evidence even in the mid 1980s was quite strong. Kerry did a fairly good investigation that was published in a report in 1989, but throughout this, the Washington Press Corps, the Washington Times, L.A. Times denigrated the story. The Reagan-Bush stories denied them by and large and that's where the story was left. Kerry was ridiculed for being a conspiracy theorist for following the leads. It was Gary Webb who revived that investigation in 1996 with his series in the San Jose Mercury News, and again, he was assaulted by these same news elements, the New York Times, the Washington Post, L.A. Times, and what he did was he provoked an internal investigation at justice, at the CIA, and those investigations while they -- the press releases tended to be protective of the agencies, the information contained in the long reports was devastating. Essentially, the CIA admitted that it was involved with the Contras, who were actively participating in cocaine trafficking. The CIA Inspector General said more than 50 Contras and Contra units were implicated in the cocaine trade, that the CIA knew about it in real time, that it hid the evidence, that it obstructed justice. All of these things were admitted by the CIA itself, by 1998, in response to Webb’s series. The great tragedy, I suppose, of the personal tragedy and professional, is that despite these admissions, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the L.A. Times still refused to deal with the facts. It seemed almost like the editors had more of a stake in covering up the truth than the CIA did. So, Gary Webb’s career was allowed to be ruined. The people who were involved in these -- in protecting the CIA from those major papers, their careers blossomed. Jerry Seapost, the executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, who sold out Webb and his series received an award from the Society of Professional Journalists for ethics because of what he did. So, it seemed like all of the people that did the wrong thing got the benefits, and Gary Webb and people who -- including John Kerry, who did honorable work on this topic, received no benefits at all, and in fact were damaged.