Parry and Webb: Conspiracy authors or Reputable investigative journalists?

[blm]

Poll question: Parry and Webb: Conspiracy authors or Reputable investigative journalists?

Robert Parry whose investigative reporting helped break IranContra scandal, and Gary Webb (Pulitzer Prize winner) who broke the CIA drugrunning scandal are considered by some Dems to be reputable investigative journalists.

Some Dems have the opinion that these men are 'conspiracy authors' and dismiss their work.

I'm interested in knowing how DU Democrats perceive the two reporters.

[madfloridian]

1. If those two stories they broke were not conspiracies...then they must be credible.

I think some people call most anything a conspiracy, and anyone who talks about anything a conspirator.

Heck, I have been called one frequently. ;)

[blm]

2. well...at the time their stories broke each was slandered as a conspiracy theorist...

one was smeared as such by the WH machine in the mid80s, the other smeared as such by the WH machine in the mid90s.

[blm]

3. Surely there are some here who believe they are conspiracy authors.

They pop up in many threads to say so.

[shanine]

4. Some of us ARE paying attention

I've learned alot reading your posts. The info some want to dispute is easily found - I just reread some of Octafish's postings, there is a ton of information.
I just want the truth. Wouldn't it be great if Hillary, Bill and John Kerry would ackknowledge this? Something sure as shit happened . . and then didn't happen.
Anyone that really cares can learn for themselves.

:yourock:

[blm]

6. Kerry is an open government Democrat - power elite won't let that type of Democrat

gain the power of the oval office.

Kerry needed oval office to get more documents released, as he tried at the time. When you watch American Gangster, the BET documentary that spotlights CIA drugrunning story, it is Maxine Waters in the house and John Kerry in the senate who are demanding the full story.

[Reterr]

5. "Conspiracy authors"

:wtf:
They are top notch investigative journalists...

[ftr23532]

7. Here's a Robert Parry article on the government's own quiet vindication of Webb

Here http://www.consortiumnews.com/2000/060800a.html">we go:

June 8, 2000
CIA Admits Tolerating Contra- Cocaine Trafficking in 1980s

By Robert Parry

In secret congressional testimony, senior CIA officials admitted that the spy agency turned a blind eye to evidence of cocaine trafficking by U.S.-backed Nicaraguan contra rebels in the 1980s and generally did not treat drug smuggling through Central America as a high priority during the Reagan administration.

“In the end the objective of unseating the Sandinistas appears to have taken precedence over dealing properly with potentially serious allegations against those with whom the agency was working,” CIA Inspector General Britt Snider said in classified testimony on May 25, 1999. He conceded that the CIA did not treat the drug allegations in “a consistent, reasoned or justifiable manner.”

Still, Snider and other officials sought to minimize the seriousness of the CIA’s misconduct – a position echoed by a House Intelligence Committee report released in May and by press coverage it received. In particular, CIA officials insisted that CIA personnel did not order the contras to engage in drug trafficking and did not directly join in the smuggling.

But the CIA testimony to the House Intelligence Committee and the body of the House report confirmed long-standing allegations – dating back to the mid-1980s – that drug traffickers pervaded the contra operation and used it as a cover for smuggling substantial volumes of cocaine into the United States.

Deep in the report, the House committee noted that in some cases, “CIA employees did nothing to verify or disprove drug trafficking information, even when they had the opportunity to do so. In some of these, receipt of a drug allegation appeared to provoke no specific response, and business went on as usual.”

...

Normally in investigations, it is the wrongdoing that is noteworthy, not the fact that some did not participate in the wrongdoing.

A close reading of the House report reveals a different story from the “findings.” On page 38, for instance, the House committee observed that the second volume of the CIA’s inspector general’s study of the contra-drug controversy disclosed numerous instances of contra-drug operations and CIA knowledge of the problem.

“The first question is what CIA knew,” the House report said. “Volume II of the CIA IG report explains in detail the knowledge the CIA had that some contras had been, were alleged to be or were in fact involved or somehow associated with drug trafficking or drug traffickers. The reporting of possible connections between drug trafficking and the Southern Front contra organizations is particularly extensive.

“The second question is what the CIA reported to DOJ . The Committee was concerned about the CIA’s record in reporting and following up on allegations of drug activity during this period. … In many cases, it is clear the information was reported from the field, but it is less clear what happened to the information after it arrived at CIA headquarters.”

In other words, the internal government investigations found that CIA officers in Central America were informing CIA headquarters at Langley, Va., about the contra-drug problem, but the evidence went no farther. It was kept from law enforcement agencies, from Congress and from the American public. Beyond withholding the evidence, the Reagan administration mounted public relations attacks on members of Congress, journalists and witnesses who were exposing the crimes in the 1980s.
...

Here's https://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/cocaine/contents.html">Volume II of the CIA's report. It was quietly put up on the CIA's website on October 8, 1998. It didn't get a lot of attention because http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/10/08/impeachment.advancer/">the public was a bit distracted at the time. ;)