Speaker 1: What's five in my part, it's part five. Here we'll
Speaker 1: saw five. That's right is actually gang talk, which is
Speaker 1: quite a stretch. But anyway, a little bit. But this
Speaker 1: is our fifth part of what I am now calling
Speaker 1: Brack week, um C I a week. I don't know.
Speaker 1: None of them are quite perfect, but that's what we're
Speaker 1: calling it. In this episode, we'll see what titles we
Speaker 1: come up with. That's very cash money of you. Thank you,
Speaker 1: so yes, it's quite cash money of you to recognize
Speaker 1: that so well, all so embarrassing. I we just got
Speaker 1: through with Iran contra um. But while kind of while
Speaker 1: Iran Contra was spinning up, I want to get to
Speaker 1: another thing that's happening. Also, if you're if you're on
Speaker 1: here and you're listening to this thinking it's part three,
Speaker 1: this is actually part five, and you need to go
Speaker 1: over to the you need to go listen to the
Speaker 1: Hood Politics episodes, which you can find in this speed
Speaker 1: and the Hood Politics Speed. So if you're not finding it,
Speaker 1: then you're wrong. So while all of the ship we
Speaker 1: just talked about in your show was happening, Ali North
Speaker 1: is also doing more ship of his own, and he
Speaker 1: has moved on from Iranian money to finding a new
Speaker 1: way to fund his contra buddies, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega.
Speaker 1: Now Manuel had been a friend of the CIA's for
Speaker 1: a while. He did and George H. W. Bush are
Speaker 1: good buddies. Um. He had been running cocaine through his
Speaker 1: obviously Panama pretty good port, right, pretty good port. Yes.
Speaker 1: Now another um, so another cultural touch point here. Uh,
Speaker 1: you guys know that Drink Champs podcast with DJ Envy
Speaker 1: and Nori, who was a legendary Kean's rapper. Right, Nori's
Speaker 1: name is Noriega referring to this. Yeah, so it's a
Speaker 1: little uh not a little uh, a little little touch
Speaker 1: point here. Also, I think it's important as the listeners
Speaker 1: if this feels a little like the way that this
Speaker 1: series went a little like chaotic and kind of you know,
Speaker 1: not very uh linear, and you're here in parts and
Speaker 1: pieces here and there, imagine living it. This is exactly
Speaker 1: how it felt, because all of this ship is breaking
Speaker 1: at difference. Yes. Um. For example, in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: June of nine six, The Times publish as an expose
Speaker 1: on the Dictator's elicit, money laundering and drug activities. They
Speaker 1: cite an unnamed White House source who claims quote, the
Speaker 1: most significant drug running in Panama was being directed by
Speaker 1: General Noriega. Now Manuel starts to face legal consequences after
Speaker 1: this point, including a ban on selling arms to the
Speaker 1: Panamanian Defense Forces like an international band. So, while ran
Speaker 1: Contra is breaking and all of this ship is going
Speaker 1: nuts and the Reagan administration is battening down, he sends
Speaker 1: a guy into Washington to Wright to get help. Um,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna quote an next from a write up
Speaker 1: in the National Security Archive. Oliver North, who met with
Speaker 1: Noriega's representative, described the meeting in August twenty third nine
Speaker 1: email message to Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter. You
Speaker 1: will recall that over the years, Manuel Noriega in Panama
Speaker 1: and I have developed a fairly good relationship. North rights,
Speaker 1: before explaining Noriega's proposal. If u S officials can help
Speaker 1: clean up his image and lift the ban on arms
Speaker 1: sales to the Panamanian Defense Force, Noriega will take care
Speaker 1: of the Sandinista leadership for US. So North is telling
Speaker 1: point extra that Noriega can assist with sabotaging the Sandinistas
Speaker 1: and gearing out assassination operations, and his suggestion is we
Speaker 1: should pay Noriega, who's under an arms embargo by US
Speaker 1: a million dollars from those Project Democracy funds raised by
Speaker 1: the sale of U S arms for Iran to get
Speaker 1: the Panamanian dictators help, but destroying Nicaraguan economic UH installations.
Speaker 1: So this causes a big old debate within the Reagan inners.
Speaker 1: Racle highlights include point Exter saying he has nothing against
Speaker 1: Noriega other than his illegal activities. Point point Exter is like, well,
Speaker 1: aside from the crimes, he's great if you weren't doing
Speaker 1: all those crimes. We love him. I mean, he's pretty cool,
Speaker 1: excited for the fact that he's a criminal. But besides that,
Speaker 1: I mean equal now, Alan Fears, who's one of the
Speaker 1: c I agents who's heavily involved in everything happening in
Speaker 1: Latin America, is against the idea of arming one of
Speaker 1: the biggest drug lords in the area with illegal armsteel cash.
Speaker 1: And Fears actually maybe one of these guys who's kind
Speaker 1: of kept in the dark specifically so he'll say the
Speaker 1: right thing when he gets questioned later and seem honest, right,
Speaker 1: like that's that's the kind one of the guy's Fears
Speaker 1: is I think, Um, but everyone ignores. So Fears does say, like,
Speaker 1: I don't think giving Noriega a million dollars is good. Um,
Speaker 1: he is ignored. Nobody follows his advice. North meets with
Speaker 1: Noriega in London with the support of Elliot Abrams, John
Speaker 1: Poindexter and George Schultz. So Scholtzi, who's not on board,
Speaker 1: Iran conscious so much. He's like, but giving a million
Speaker 1: dollars to Ma, Well, Noriega sounds like a great plan,
Speaker 1: A little cleaner. I'm gonna go do this. Adults is
Speaker 1: like this little cleaner like we got too little to
Speaker 1: me move apart. Let's against paying foreign people to murder
Speaker 1: and get drugs And I'm not against that. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying you're to be smarter about it. I am. George. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is the call that Schultz makes right before deciding
Speaker 1: to one day become the board of directors for a
Speaker 1: fake blood testing company. Um fucking George. UM. Noriega is
Speaker 1: aling out, man, like you were running. You're running contraband
Speaker 1: across multiple continents. Bro, Come on, man, you wanted a glory.
Speaker 1: So Noriega agrees to attack airports, electric and telephone systems.
Speaker 1: In Nicaragua on the conference behalf and again, part of
Speaker 1: the deal is that he's going to get some cash money.
Speaker 1: Part of the deal is that everyone's going to be
Speaker 1: chill about his continuing moving cocaine through his sports. Right.
Speaker 1: So then the things are going great for all of
Speaker 1: this until in November of six, we get the actual
Speaker 1: Iron Contra story breaks, right, and you know, everything that
Speaker 1: tought we talked about at the in there happens um
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's happening like kind of
Speaker 1: in the wake of this, obviously the big deal, as
Speaker 1: we've talked about earlier, the big deal is that the
Speaker 1: United States was illegally selling missiles to Iran and exchange
Speaker 1: for hostages and then light about it. Right, that's the
Speaker 1: big deal, right, That's what people get in fucking trouble for.
Speaker 1: But the other thing that's happening is the Iran Contra
Speaker 1: deal is tied to everything else that Ali and the
Speaker 1: CIA and the NFC are doing in Nicaragua and all
Speaker 1: this cocaine that keeps getting into the fucking United States.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you're aware of this, but
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan makes a bit of a bit of an
Speaker 1: impact for himself as an anti drug crusade. Ye, there
Speaker 1: are some people you would think that this would have
Speaker 1: been a bigger deal, But the fact that missiles are involved,
Speaker 1: that's the sexier thing. The atoll is involved, right, So
Speaker 1: that's what gets all the attention. But there is a
Speaker 1: little bit of understanding at the time from some people
Speaker 1: in the media that like, kind of seems like the
Speaker 1: bigger story here is all the fucking cocaine you guys
Speaker 1: were letting into the country, right, kind of seems like
Speaker 1: that might be a real big, goddamn deal. Like, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of leads here. I feel like you might
Speaker 1: be burying one of them. You guys are the missiles
Speaker 1: and stuff is important, you guys work on that. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna ask these questions. And there's a guy, a journalist
Speaker 1: who does decide during a press conference to ask, like, Hey,
Speaker 1: are there any connections between these contrasts that you were
Speaker 1: apparently funding with missile money and and drug smuggling people
Speaker 1: bring a cocaine to the United States? And this guy
Speaker 1: gets screamed down not by the press secretary but by
Speaker 1: the New York Times correspondents standing next to him, who says,
Speaker 1: why don't you ask a serious question. Bro, Bro, if
Speaker 1: you're on the New York Times keeps coming up in
Speaker 1: the you know, if you're on the lefttern and the
Speaker 1: New York Times, and that somebody loves that question and
Speaker 1: then someone else in the audience shuts it down like
Speaker 1: that the the relief that must shoot over your body
Speaker 1: at that moment, like, oh my god, that's that is.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a better example of dodging
Speaker 1: a bullet, you know, and like like you're just thinking, Bro,
Speaker 1: if this foll knew, I would I would buy him
Speaker 1: whatever he wanted. Tonight, Mark Times really got me out
Speaker 1: of a sticky. You really got me out of this one. Dog.
Speaker 1: I owe you a rolex. Yeah, they're they're gonna help
Speaker 1: out a lot with the moral panic over the crack
Speaker 1: epidemic too, So they really they really just work in
Speaker 1: hand and glove with with our friends in the CIA.
Speaker 1: Well kind of so obviously. Uh, there are some criticisms
Speaker 1: at the time about the fact that there are very
Speaker 1: clearly and this is revealed by the stuff that comes
Speaker 1: out during a Rand contra. One of the things that
Speaker 1: we get because of Rand Contra is all the North's diary,
Speaker 1: where He's like, help some cocaine get into the US today.
Speaker 1: Whop to do? Um? Yeah, So I found a wonderful
Speaker 1: night right up in the Middle East. Report by Jonathan Marshall,
Speaker 1: which is a contemporary eight is kind of the year.
Speaker 1: A lot of this is blowing up um, which summarizes,
Speaker 1: you know, we have the committee that investigates arand contra
Speaker 1: martial in This is summarizing what the committee found and
Speaker 1: what it didn't quote. The most glaring operational embarrassment neglected
Speaker 1: by the report is the role of drug trafficking and
Speaker 1: financing the contras and the logistic operation that supplied them.
Speaker 1: The only mention of drugs comes in a staff memo
Speaker 1: reprinted in a report appendix that rejects media exploited allegations
Speaker 1: of contra drug trafficking as improbable and unverifiable. Yet other
Speaker 1: congressional investigators have condemned the memo as a fraudulent misrepresentation
Speaker 1: of the facts. Ample and convincing evidence points to the
Speaker 1: existence of a guns for drugs network that brought cocaine
Speaker 1: and marijuana into the United States as the price of
Speaker 1: running arms down to Central America. The Joint Committee itself
Speaker 1: heard testimony from three government witnesses that a high ranking
Speaker 1: Iran Contra leaders trafficked in cocaine. Indeed, the committee introduced
Speaker 1: into evidence a letter from rob Owen, North's emissary to
Speaker 1: Central America mentioning a Contra supply chain used at one
Speaker 1: time to run drugs and part of the crew that
Speaker 1: had a middle records. Nice group of boys the CIA shows,
Speaker 1: I love it. The report's silence on the involvement of
Speaker 1: terrorists in North's Project Democracy is no less deafening. One
Speaker 1: of the logistics agents employed in the Contra cause was
Speaker 1: the Cuban exile and career CIA officer Louis Posada. He
Speaker 1: came to Central America in nineteen eighty five after breaking
Speaker 1: out of a Venezuelan jail where he had been held
Speaker 1: for conspiring to bomb a civilian Cuban jet in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies six. That act, the worst terrorist crime ever committed
Speaker 1: in the Western Hemisphere, killed all seventy three passengers, including
Speaker 1: Cuba's national fencing team. Yet the report mentions Pasada only
Speaker 1: in passing and then by his operational code name Ramon Medina.
Speaker 1: Just give you an idea that kind of folks, who
Speaker 1: who's all He's running drugs with Yeah, this guy who
Speaker 1: blew up a civilian airliner. Cool dude. Yeah. Now, the
Speaker 1: Iran Contra investigation and report plunges the Reagan White House
Speaker 1: into its darkest hours. Public opinion falls through the fucking floor.
Speaker 1: And again, we talked about this little bit, but like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the first time he's dealing with like some
Speaker 1: serious shit. Um, And a bunch of different stuff comes
Speaker 1: out of the fallout, which we've talked about in your episodes.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that happens is that while
Speaker 1: the Reagan White House is in disarray, his opponents in
Speaker 1: Congress start digging up other stuff too that's been going
Speaker 1: on during his two terms in office. And one of
Speaker 1: the things they start to look at increasingly is this
Speaker 1: connection between CIA operations in Latin America and drugs. And
Speaker 1: one thing people who are interested in this find is
Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty five article by Associated Press journalists Robert
Speaker 1: Perry and Brian Barger. Perry and Barger had published an
Speaker 1: investigation this is the very first public evidence that the
Speaker 1: Contras in the CIA were moving fucking drugs into the
Speaker 1: United States, which found that Contra groups had quote engaged
Speaker 1: in cocaine trafficking in part to help finance their war
Speaker 1: against Nicaragua. The article hadn't made much of a splash because,
Speaker 1: according to the Columbia Journalism Review, Reagan's people carried out
Speaker 1: a behind the scenes campaign to attack the professionalism of
Speaker 1: the ap borders and quote discredit all reporting on the
Speaker 1: conference and drugs. That's what the CIA wrote at the time.
Speaker 1: Peter Cornblue, writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, notes that
Speaker 1: whether the campaign was the cause or not, coverage was minimal.
Speaker 1: So the fact that all this is happening is not
Speaker 1: like pay attention to that. The way they go after
Speaker 1: these journalists and the way their goal is we have
Speaker 1: to discredit reporting on this, and also pay attention to
Speaker 1: the fact that when this first comes up in public
Speaker 1: and eight, it's a New York Times journalist who, as
Speaker 1: far as we know, without any CIA advocacy, shuts down
Speaker 1: a line of questioning on it. That's going to be
Speaker 1: relevant later. Yes. So in nineteen, the last year of
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration, Senator John Kerry as a Senate Foreign
Speaker 1: Relations Subcommittee report, he's the guy running it. They published
Speaker 1: a report on specifically how covert support for the Contras
Speaker 1: undermined the War on drugs, Right, so this does get
Speaker 1: looked into. Uh and I'm gonna quote from the National
Speaker 1: Security Archive. The Kerry Subcommittee did not report the US
Speaker 1: government officials ran drugs. It rather that Mr North, than
Speaker 1: on the National Security Council staff at the White House,
Speaker 1: and other senior officials, created a privatized contra network that
Speaker 1: attracted drug traffickers looking for cover for their operations, didn't
Speaker 1: turn a blind eye to repeated reports of drug smuggling
Speaker 1: related to the Contras, and actively worked with known drug
Speaker 1: smugglers such as the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to assist
Speaker 1: the Contras. The report cited former Drug Enforcement Administration had
Speaker 1: John Lawn as testifying that Mr North himself had prematurely
Speaker 1: leaked the d E a undercover operation, jeopardizing agents lives
Speaker 1: for political advantage in an upcoming Congressional vote on aid
Speaker 1: to the Contras. Awesome, all this ship, all of this,
Speaker 1: all of life. It would be such a different story
Speaker 1: if the Reagan administration didn't go so hard on violence, gangs, drugs, Like,
Speaker 1: if you didn't go so hard about it, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be such a gotcha, you know what, I'm saying, but
Speaker 1: I'm like, like you, like you didn't have to you
Speaker 1: didn't have to create mean, you didn't have to create
Speaker 1: the day program, and like three strikes were they create
Speaker 1: three strikes but just all these different, just very punitive
Speaker 1: laws around drugs, like you don't have to do that,
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't even thought it wouldn't have been so
Speaker 1: like salacious. Yeah, if the if the fucking if Congress
Speaker 1: had not been destroying huge numbers of people because they
Speaker 1: were caught with crack cocaine at the same time as
Speaker 1: they were bringing in the raw cocaine that gets turned
Speaker 1: into crack in order to fund right wing death squads
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world, If that all wasn't
Speaker 1: happening at the same time, it wouldn't seem like such
Speaker 1: a goddamn conspiracy exactly, because it's like it's yeah, if
Speaker 1: this didn't happen, we would be like this is yeah,
Speaker 1: we would be like oil on our head, like because
Speaker 1: of the amount of like how many countries have gotten
Speaker 1: when you add all if this part five, so we okay,
Speaker 1: add the countries together, the amount of countries involved in this,
Speaker 1: the amount of government's street dudes. Beau bureaucracies. There's like
Speaker 1: nine countries involved. Yep. Um, it's a big deals as
Speaker 1: we've as we've tried to unravel. Quite complicated. Yes, So
Speaker 1: this report that Kerry is kind of the guy running
Speaker 1: um does not establish that the CIA is responsible for
Speaker 1: bringing crack to the inner cities, nor does it connect
Speaker 1: US officials directly to drug dealers in the United States. However,
Speaker 1: as the report concluded, it is clear that individuals who
Speaker 1: provided support for the Contrast were involved in drug trafficking.
Speaker 1: The supply network of the Contrast was used by drug
Speaker 1: trafficking organizations, and elements of the Contrast themselves knowingly received
Speaker 1: financial and material assistance from drug traffickers. In each case,
Speaker 1: one or another agency of the US government had information
Speaker 1: regarding the involvement, either while it was occurring or immediately thereafter.
Speaker 1: So the report also quoted the chief of the CIA
Speaker 1: Central America Task Force who said, with respect to drug
Speaker 1: trafficking by the resistance forces, it is not a couple
Speaker 1: of people, it is a lot of people. Now, you
Speaker 1: can't do the bad apple man. It is all y'all.
Speaker 1: This is all damning because we have we have talked
Speaker 1: about this in the context of a rand contract and
Speaker 1: then the context of a bunch of other ship years
Speaker 1: of shady dealings that we know now, but at the
Speaker 1: time a lot of this was breaking and at the
Speaker 1: time that report comes out, a lot of that outside
Speaker 1: information is missing. Right, So most Americans who see the
Speaker 1: headlines around this, the reasonable assumption to make is like, oh,
Speaker 1: some people we armed in an unpopular conflict. We're also
Speaker 1: moving cocaine whatever. The subcommittee report is not big news people.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty damning. People could not give less of
Speaker 1: a ship at the time when it comes up, that's
Speaker 1: nineteen seven, is years later. Gary Webb picks that thread
Speaker 1: back up and he does about a year of digging, uh,
Speaker 1: and he puts together this three part article series for
Speaker 1: The Mercury, which blows the fucking lid off the world.
Speaker 1: In like a couple of days after this thing drops,
Speaker 1: it becomes the biggest story in the country, and it's
Speaker 1: the first massive news story that's gone out primarily over
Speaker 1: the Internet. That's where this thing spreads. And in order
Speaker 1: to kind of talk about how that happens, um, I
Speaker 1: want to quote now from an article in the Columbia
Speaker 1: Journalism Review, the demographics of Web traffic are unknown, but
Speaker 1: some media specialists believe that the rising numbers at Mercury
Speaker 1: Center in part reflect what the Chicago Tribune syndicated columnists
Speaker 1: Clarence Page calls an emerging Black cyber consciousness. Online newsletters
Speaker 1: and other net services made the series readily available to
Speaker 1: African American students, newspapers, radio stations, and community organizations. Patricia Turner,
Speaker 1: author of I Heard It through the Grapevine, The Definitive
Speaker 1: Study on how information travels through Black America, suggests that
Speaker 1: this marked the quote first time the Internet has electrified
Speaker 1: African Americans in this way. The Black Telegraph noted Jack
Speaker 1: While a Time magazine columnist, referring to the informal word
Speaker 1: of mouth network used since the days of slavery, has
Speaker 1: moved into cyberspace. There is I like, I didn't know
Speaker 1: the specifics of what you're saying, but it is true.
Speaker 1: Like like, I don't know how we get information that
Speaker 1: we get. You just find out through the homies or
Speaker 1: your auntie. I don't know how it happens, It just does.
Speaker 1: But I will say when this broke, this was our
Speaker 1: uncles who were like, see there. I tried to tell y'all,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying that we thought was like,
Speaker 1: all right, man, like you know, it hadn't been to
Speaker 1: jail a few times, you know, you didn't read a
Speaker 1: couple of books. You know, you come back and your
Speaker 1: prison smart, you know what I'm saying. So like and
Speaker 1: prison smart is a very specific type of smart, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh so, so they got all kind of informations
Speaker 1: about the government and the CIA conspired to get it,
Speaker 1: and we're thinking, okay, maybe you know, but like you said,
Speaker 1: it wasn't really big news and and it's it seems
Speaker 1: so far fed, but I have no reason to not
Speaker 1: believe my uncle. And then this happens and it was
Speaker 1: like that's a fact check. We'd have tried to tell y'all,
Speaker 1: you know, and all that started happening, and it was like, damn,
Speaker 1: it turns out ain't crazy, Like oh my god, it
Speaker 1: really yeah, you would lie, and what's you know, I'm saying,
Speaker 1: we believed you, but it was like, I don't know, man, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's probably well. And it's you know again, one of
Speaker 1: the things people can used to just credit this is
Speaker 1: pick it like the edges of because it is not
Speaker 1: literally the CIA was not shipping crack directly in the city,
Speaker 1: because that's not a very sensible way to go about
Speaker 1: doing that, right, just like Apple doesn't directly turn rare
Speaker 1: earth minerals into phones. Right, there's a distribution networks exact.
Speaker 1: But if you were like, Yo, who the plug? Who's
Speaker 1: your plug? You like c I A yeah, Like no,
Speaker 1: they the government, the government, I get I get the
Speaker 1: way from the government, like you know you don't, It's like, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: yes you do the Uh. It's easy to see why
Speaker 1: people see this as a very concerted conspiracy. Honestly, there's
Speaker 1: a way in which it's much more. And I'm not
Speaker 1: going to say what happened or not, because I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's more we don't. What we know is damning. Um,
Speaker 1: if it is as simple as the left hand didn't
Speaker 1: know what the right was doing, and nobody gave a
Speaker 1: ship about the impacts of these agencies and what they
Speaker 1: were doing in Latin America and how it might affect people,
Speaker 1: and nobody was watching them while people were like responding
Speaker 1: to this media circus the time created violently by destroying
Speaker 1: huge numbers of people's lives. And that's why all this happened,
Speaker 1: which is what the facts directly suggest that's like, that's
Speaker 1: enough to revolt over. That's that's enough to yeah that
Speaker 1: I I don't feel like anyway, Let's let's keep telling
Speaker 1: the story because there's more to revolt over. Yes, so
Speaker 1: Gary Webb puts out this article. It moves through the
Speaker 1: black community by way of the Internet. It also a
Speaker 1: big part of this is black oriented radio talk shows,
Speaker 1: which are huge today and really coming into their own
Speaker 1: in this period the mid to late nineties, boost this phenomenon,
Speaker 1: and the way in which they spread the story is
Speaker 1: by reading out the website address on the air. Never
Speaker 1: happened before, not a thing, not a thing in main
Speaker 1: stream that that like these big mainstream radio shows drive
Speaker 1: time ship as like reading out what is being like,
Speaker 1: you need to read this story. Here's a fucking web link. Right.
Speaker 1: That's not how journalism got spread before, but it is now. Um.
Speaker 1: These call in programs also become a focal point of
Speaker 1: information and debate. African American talk show hosts use their
Speaker 1: programs to address the allegations of ci A complicity in
Speaker 1: the crack epidemic, and the public response is forceful. The
Speaker 1: power of talk radio is probably like one of the
Speaker 1: best examples of like how big this is is Congresswoman
Speaker 1: Maxine Waters goes on a show in Baltimore in September, uh,
Speaker 1: and she says that the Congressional Black Caucus is going
Speaker 1: to look into this ship. Right, We're gonna like do
Speaker 1: a fucking thing on this and it's it's fucking massive. Um.
Speaker 1: And and like the fact that Maxine Waters takes this
Speaker 1: up is like a big part of why this story
Speaker 1: blows out into the mainstream in a big way. Now,
Speaker 1: the CIA and the NSC they're watching this ship happen, right, Um,
Speaker 1: they are like everyone is on this right, this is
Speaker 1: a massive problem. And the agency the first public thing
Speaker 1: they do when this starts to go viral is they
Speaker 1: announced we're doing an internal investigation. We're gonna look into
Speaker 1: whether or not we did anything wrong. Don't worry like
Speaker 1: like like you was the vice president, because you were
Speaker 1: the vice as president and it's awesome. So the c
Speaker 1: i A is like, we're gonna look into ourselves and
Speaker 1: see if we're bad people, don't worry. You can trust us.
Speaker 1: We're good people. Um. Obviously me, did I smuggle drugs? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well the look I don't want to speak for for
Speaker 1: black America here, but the evidence that I have suggests
Speaker 1: that this was not taken as overly comforting. I don't
Speaker 1: think I believe you like spaces and just like side
Speaker 1: eyes like okay, here we go. Um you already know though.
Speaker 1: So the Justice Department also launches an investigation. John deuts Choose,
Speaker 1: the director of the CIA at this point, has to
Speaker 1: go down to Watts and do a town meeting with
Speaker 1: concerned citizens to that his organization hadn't smuggled crack into
Speaker 1: inner cities to destroy the black community. Um Like, he
Speaker 1: has to actually sit down and got to go to
Speaker 1: Watts talk him out of this. Uh. Now that is
Speaker 1: not precisely what Gary Webbs article had said, right. Gary
Speaker 1: Webb had not made those exact claims, right because he
Speaker 1: what he was saying is that what we've talked about,
Speaker 1: that the CIA is making things easier for these guys
Speaker 1: who are moving cocaine into the country. And then separately,
Speaker 1: webs articles dealt with how the crack epidemic and things
Speaker 1: like mandatory minimums had hurt the black community, right, um,
Speaker 1: and how racially disparate the charging was. But a lot
Speaker 1: of people interpreted as, oh, the CIA. There's allegations that
Speaker 1: the CIA smuggled crack into the black community and then
Speaker 1: becomes kind of the popular shorthand for the revelations. Representative
Speaker 1: Cynthia McKinney calls the CIA the Central Intoxication Agency on
Speaker 1: the floor of Congress. This is a pr disaster. It
Speaker 1: is a real threat to the agency's funding. They're worried
Speaker 1: about another Church committee, right. They're worried that, like Congress
Speaker 1: has going to really fuck them up over this um.
Speaker 1: And there's also a possibility that some people might get
Speaker 1: criminal charges who had worked in the agency. That's the
Speaker 1: thing they're concerned about because of how big a brush
Speaker 1: fire this starts. I don't know, man, you think they
Speaker 1: should get some criminal charge? I might suggest if anyone
Speaker 1: belongs in prison with a lot of these CIA guys
Speaker 1: and this sor like day, oh love, you should say
Speaker 1: right next to the other drug smuggles. So that's what
Speaker 1: you did. The agency spins up a reaction to what
Speaker 1: they internally call a crisis, but before they can really
Speaker 1: do anything, a save you appeared. Do you want to
Speaker 1: know who the savior is? The one who pulls the
Speaker 1: CIA is fat out of the Fire'll give you a hint.
Speaker 1: It's the same people who did It's it's the legacy
Speaker 1: news media. See as we have talked about a surprise
Speaker 1: villain here. You know, is it a surprise given the
Speaker 1: rest of these episodes, or maybe it's the one we
Speaker 1: didn't expect that. Yeah, it's uh, it's John Cena. Not
Speaker 1: John Cena. It's a stone cold coming out from the back.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. The New York Times has a fooling chair. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's who roll. Well, it's actually the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Times is a big part of this two as anyway, Webbs.
Speaker 1: As I've talked about a bunch webb store. It's the
Speaker 1: first earth shattering piece of investigative journalism in the US
Speaker 1: that came from something that wasn't a major paper of record. Right,
Speaker 1: this isn't blowing up in any in like this period
Speaker 1: of time, at least, this isn't blowing up in the
Speaker 1: places it's supposed to come out of. So the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Times, the Washington Post, in the New York Times,
Speaker 1: three of the really the big legacy. Yeah, they're fucking angry.
Speaker 1: They're not angry because they don't want this information out.
Speaker 1: They're angry that they got fucking scooped and they're angry
Speaker 1: that in interviews, Gary Webb is saying stuff like, you
Speaker 1: don't have to be the New York Times or the
Speaker 1: Washington Post to bust a national story anymore. Now Gary
Speaker 1: was well ahead of the time, because we know he's
Speaker 1: right right, that's what happens. Washington Post in the New
Speaker 1: York Times, big as they are not where a lot
Speaker 1: of ship busts anymore. A whole lot of stuff comes
Speaker 1: up from the ground these days, and oftentimes the New
Speaker 1: York Times in the Post these days make their money
Speaker 1: kind of paying editorial writers to comment on shit. Um,
Speaker 1: this is the start of that. And and so the
Speaker 1: people who are going to like go after them, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go apeshit. A lot of them are kind of
Speaker 1: editorial writers. But the intercept does a good job of
Speaker 1: kind of summing up what happens next here in an
Speaker 1: article they wrote quote. Newspapers like the Times in the
Speaker 1: Post seemed to spend far more time trying to poke
Speaker 1: holes in the series than in following up on the
Speaker 1: underreported scandal at its heart, the involvement of a US
Speaker 1: back proxy forces and international drug trafficking. The Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Times was especially aggressive, scooped in its own backyard. The
Speaker 1: California paper assigned no fewer than seven team reporters to
Speaker 1: pick up art webs reporting well. Employees denied an outright
Speaker 1: effort to attack The Mercury News. One of the sevent
Speaker 1: team referred to it as the get Gary Web team.
Speaker 1: Another set at the time, we're going to take away
Speaker 1: that guy's pulitzer. According to Cornblue c j R. Piece.
Speaker 1: Within two weeks of the publication of Dark Alliance, The
Speaker 1: l A Times devoted more words to dismantling its competitors
Speaker 1: breakout hit than comprised the series itself. It's just so
Speaker 1: they throw down. You're it's just like you're guys, You're
Speaker 1: you're totally missing the point here. Man, you're missing, and
Speaker 1: you're you're missing a bigger story. You're missing a bigger
Speaker 1: story here due and it is true, salty, somebody got
Speaker 1: there first. We have to Gary webs reporting is imperfect
Speaker 1: number one. Any story this big, there's gonna be some errors.
Speaker 1: But especially Gary doesn't have a big editorial team. There's
Speaker 1: not a huge team of fact checkers. It is not
Speaker 1: it is. It is a new were reporter. It is
Speaker 1: a newer outlet, and there are some problems with it right,
Speaker 1: and some of them are pretty basic errors. And these
Speaker 1: errors are not the result of him trying to cook
Speaker 1: something up or lie, the result of writing for a
Speaker 1: small publisher without a strong editorial team. One of the
Speaker 1: examples of a funk up that Webb did make is
Speaker 1: he never called the CIA for comment. That may sound silly,
Speaker 1: but that is a thing that you do when you're
Speaker 1: writing an article like this. You you after you've got
Speaker 1: things nailed down, you go for comment. That is when
Speaker 1: I would write articles about militias and ship like Jason Wilson,
Speaker 1: and I would would wind up ringing up these fucking
Speaker 1: militia leaders and shipped to ask the questions about things
Speaker 1: they'd said online. It's what you do. You give people
Speaker 1: a chance to respond when possible they don't have. You
Speaker 1: don't have to wait for them to respond to publish
Speaker 1: the article, but you do have to give them a
Speaker 1: chance to respond. Webb claims that he did reach out
Speaker 1: and they never responded. The CIA denies that he ever
Speaker 1: reached out. We just actually don't know who's telling the
Speaker 1: truth here. But the thing that he fox up is
Speaker 1: he never rights in the story I reached out to
Speaker 1: the CIA for comment, and they didn't give it right.
Speaker 1: That is that is an issue. Now, a fair minded
Speaker 1: person would say, well, that doesn't mean anything about the
Speaker 1: veracity of his reporting. It's yea yeah, but the legacy
Speaker 1: papers pounce on this ship. There are other issues as well.
Speaker 1: The specific drug dealers Web had hung his story on
Speaker 1: absolutely did sell coke and absolutely did use proceeds from
Speaker 1: these sales to fund the contrast, but they were tiny.
Speaker 1: We're talking the guys who were directly tied to the
Speaker 1: contrast that he talks about in a storys they got
Speaker 1: the contrast something like that, right, not a lot of money.
Speaker 1: So from the guys he's focusing on in his article,
Speaker 1: there's not enough to say that the CIA or that
Speaker 1: the funding of the contrast is making a big dent
Speaker 1: on the contrast or are on the crackt right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's he's he's he's using the small case and he's
Speaker 1: assuming there's more, and he is right, there was a
Speaker 1: shipload more, But he is also kind of quoting some
Speaker 1: stuff out of context that makes his case seems stronger
Speaker 1: than it is what he actually has his evidence that
Speaker 1: like there is something really the damning here to look at,
Speaker 1: and it ties into these other fund up things that
Speaker 1: have been done around sentencing in these other disparities, And
Speaker 1: it's possible there's a real like if he it's like,
Speaker 1: it's one of those things. If it were a better article,
Speaker 1: there would have been some softening of the language. A
Speaker 1: good editor would have softened some of the language, and
Speaker 1: good legacy media journalists in a responsible media environment would
Speaker 1: have seen what he was saying. Even even if they'd
Speaker 1: seen in a responsible environment, even saying the articles that
Speaker 1: went out, they would have been like, well, what he's
Speaker 1: claiming that the CIA brought was responsible for helping to
Speaker 1: bring cocaine ing a crack epademic into the United States.
Speaker 1: What he's saying isn't entirely supported by the case of
Speaker 1: these two guys, because these guys are kind of small fry.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting that there's that much evidence, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if there's more, And they would have looked into
Speaker 1: that article that came out in nineteen eighty five and
Speaker 1: got clamped down on by the CIA, right there would
Speaker 1: have find found other stuff, including ship in that nine
Speaker 1: eight report. There was stuff they could have just found
Speaker 1: that would have been that was already out, already reported
Speaker 1: already something that the government had said was true and
Speaker 1: put that with what Webb had had been, like, oh, ship,
Speaker 1: there's a lot here, and then they would have looked
Speaker 1: in the more and then they would have fucking found more.
Speaker 1: That's not what the legacy media does. Instead, they pounce
Speaker 1: on the shortcomings and web series um and when they
Speaker 1: start trying to tell the other side of the story,
Speaker 1: which is how it gets framed, the c I A
Speaker 1: not available for comment earlier, suddenly, yeah, we'll talk to
Speaker 1: you about this. Come on in New York Times. You know,
Speaker 1: we love giving people access where the CIA so we
Speaker 1: know about their efforts. And they're surprised elation at the
Speaker 1: willingness of mainstream news outlets to attack web out of
Speaker 1: spite because they wrote about all of this and internal
Speaker 1: documents that are now declassified down there. They wrote about
Speaker 1: how happy they were about what what the what fucking
Speaker 1: the l A Times that ship we're doing in a
Speaker 1: piece called Managing a Nightmare written by a c I
Speaker 1: A fellow named Jumovic, And I'm gonna quote from the
Speaker 1: intercept again here. The CIA watched these developments closely, collaborating
Speaker 1: where it could with outlets who wanted to challenge Webbs reporting.
Speaker 1: Media inquiries had started almost immediately following the publication of
Speaker 1: Dark Alliance, and Jomovic, in Managing a Nightmare, cites the
Speaker 1: CIA success and discouraging one major news affiliate from covering
Speaker 1: the story. He also boasts that the agency effectively departed
Speaker 1: from its own long standing policies in order to discredit
Speaker 1: the series. For example, in order to help a journalist
Speaker 1: working on a story that would undermine the Mercury News allegations,
Speaker 1: Public Affairs was able to deny any affiliation of a
Speaker 1: particular individual, which is a rare exception to the general
Speaker 1: policy that the CIA does not comment on any individual's
Speaker 1: alleged CIA ties. Word now, the document chronicles the shift
Speaker 1: in public opinion as it moves from like oh my god,
Speaker 1: what has the government been doing two in favor of
Speaker 1: the CIA's angle, which is like nah, Gary Webbs full
Speaker 1: of shit. Yeah. This trend starts about a month and
Speaker 1: a half after the series is published. Quote that third
Speaker 1: week in September was a turning point in media coverage
Speaker 1: of this story, Jumovic wrote, and he cites respected columnists,
Speaker 1: including prominent blacks, along with the New York Daily News,
Speaker 1: the Baltimore Sun, the Weekly Standard, and the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty cool. Huh yeah, yeah, that's it's pretty perfect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: didn't even didn't even need to do anything. They got it.
Speaker 1: They got back again, they got us. Don't even worry
Speaker 1: about it again. If you're on the lecter and the
Speaker 1: collective side of like oh yeah, oh oh yeah again no, yeah, yeah, nah.
Speaker 1: There's a grand conspiracy and everything is connected, being like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: the CIA is doing all this shady ship to bring
Speaker 1: cocaine in, and then the New York Times plays a
Speaker 1: major role in hyping up fears of a crack epidemic,
Speaker 1: which is used to justify arresting a shipload of black
Speaker 1: men and breaking up a bunch of families. And then
Speaker 1: as soon as the allegations come out that the CIA
Speaker 1: was the one that brought in the cocaine, well, all
Speaker 1: of these same media organizations who had pushed up the
Speaker 1: crack epidemic act to crack down on the story, and
Speaker 1: and the journalist who had like broken the story that
Speaker 1: they've done this, well, yeah that does kind of seem
Speaker 1: like a fucking conspiracy, but it really does. Again, and
Speaker 1: all of this actually what I think all of this
Speaker 1: is is a mix of different conspiracies. Uh, reckless and
Speaker 1: callous disregard for what is happening in Black American for
Speaker 1: who gets hurt by this um racist policing and racist
Speaker 1: trends in law enforcement. And the fact that the media
Speaker 1: is also pretty racist, always searching for like a story
Speaker 1: and do not care as much about whether or not
Speaker 1: the story is true as whether or not you can
Speaker 1: scare people. Um, and just yeah, the fact that they
Speaker 1: mostly hire a bunch of fucking upper class white people
Speaker 1: from fancy schools who don't know anything about what's going
Speaker 1: on in the black community, who gets scared by this
Speaker 1: kind of coverage and right racist bullshit, and who are
Speaker 1: always going to act to defend other dudes who went
Speaker 1: to Yale and just happened to wind up in the
Speaker 1: CIA instead. The New York Times editorial desk force or
Speaker 1: cool stuff, good, wonderful, great system. Yeah, I think you're you.
Speaker 1: You nailed it. Uh, in the sense that you have
Speaker 1: all these sort of concentric circles, these these these forces
Speaker 1: you know, pressing down on the community that whether it's
Speaker 1: police lawn you know, law enforcement, you know, unfair sentencing, uh,
Speaker 1: war on drugs, the drugs coming in, the c I A,
Speaker 1: the d A, all these things all falling, not to
Speaker 1: mention like um, you know, discriminatory housing and just all
Speaker 1: these things all happening. It's like you're you're anybody would
Speaker 1: think are are all these people sitting around one table
Speaker 1: and kind of deciding you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 1: that's that's when you get into the crazy because now
Speaker 1: it's just like a plan and it doesn't know it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be a bunch of ship that's really
Speaker 1: bad result of a bunch of different gnarly trends and conspiracy. Again,
Speaker 1: it's not that there's no those conspiracies all we've been
Speaker 1: talking about this week's conspiracies. They're just not the Illuminati.
Speaker 1: They're not well, yeah, it's not one big thing that
Speaker 1: all spout from. It's all these little dudes that just
Speaker 1: happen to have yeah, overlapping interests and whether it's and
Speaker 1: it's it's this weird, like this weird power thing to
Speaker 1: where it's like it's not so much I'm doing everything
Speaker 1: in my power to make sure you suffer. It's more
Speaker 1: your success don't matter to me. Yeah, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And that's like, and that's the thing that like,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's what as as a I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes it is when you're just an out and out
Speaker 1: near you know, Nazi, white supremacist, to where you're like,
Speaker 1: I am doing everything in my power to make you
Speaker 1: suffer versus you're just inconsequential and your success doesn't matter
Speaker 1: to me. You're not a part of the country I
Speaker 1: think of. And there are some people who are like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm actually just super racist and I run a police
Speaker 1: union that funds you know, a number of camp and
Speaker 1: I want to push for mandatory minimums because I'm racist.
Speaker 1: But other people are pushing for mandatory minimums because they're uh,
Speaker 1: their voters got scared by the New York Times who
Speaker 1: did it, but because it was a good story and
Speaker 1: they're incredible and they're kind of races too, and all
Speaker 1: of this, all of this feeds together. Um, anyway, let's continue.
Speaker 1: But first, you know, what isn't a conspiracy prop show
Speaker 1: straight up plans baby, that's right, not a conspiracy is
Speaker 1: the products and services that support this podcast. The products
Speaker 1: and services that support this podcast do meet around a
Speaker 1: big table and they do secretly run the world. But
Speaker 1: they're cool, so it's fine. They got nice shoes, they
Speaker 1: got great shoes, incredible shoes. Anyway, here's ads. We're back.
Speaker 1: We just got back from the secret table where our
Speaker 1: sponsors run the world and can't confirm sneaker game. And yeah,
Speaker 1: now I want to say, don't revolt and burn things down.
Speaker 1: Um that's don't do that, um proper, you want to
Speaker 1: take the jet skis out. I want to see if
Speaker 1: the ones that are played gold work as well as
Speaker 1: the ones with a platinum coating on man, I think
Speaker 1: an aspen they work best well, of course without but
Speaker 1: not the not the aspen. Our listeners know the secret
Speaker 1: aspen that that that exists on on Mars for members
Speaker 1: of the conspiracy. There's a space aspen. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: Euroba aspen that. Oh that's even nicer. So it's incredible.
Speaker 1: The fucking shrimp cocktails also better shrimp than you get there,
Speaker 1: like the vein of in the in the shrimp that weed.
Speaker 1: It's just gold. It's just gold instead of poop. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, burned down the system anyway. Anyway, So, um,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the media response to all of this
Speaker 1: ship and how they shut it down. One of the
Speaker 1: most useful papers in terms of putting the kabash on
Speaker 1: people getting angry about Dark Alliance was the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: Uh and I want to quote now again from the CIA.
Speaker 1: Because of the Post's national reputation, It's articles especially were
Speaker 1: picked up by other papers, helping to create with the
Speaker 1: Associated Press called a firestorm of reaction against the San
Speaker 1: Jose Mercury News. Now about a month or so after
Speaker 1: of this follows kind of of critical media coverage of
Speaker 1: the series, and by the end of that first month,
Speaker 1: the quote unquote balanced reporting just attacking Gary Webb in
Speaker 1: his article outnumbers the stories that are actually taking what
Speaker 1: he's talking about seriously and in their right. Up of this,
Speaker 1: the CIA credits all of this to the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: the New York Times quote, and especially at the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Times um webs webbs editors start to distance themselves
Speaker 1: and abandon their reporter. By the end of October, two
Speaker 1: months after the publication of Dark Alliance quote, the tone
Speaker 1: of the entire CIA drug story had changed. Jumavick was
Speaker 1: pleased to report quote. Most press coverage included as a
Speaker 1: routine matter, the now widespread criticism of the Mercury News allegations.
Speaker 1: I can bet now I don't. I'm not, I wasn't
Speaker 1: an adult during this time, but I can bet that
Speaker 1: the tone among whatever plugged in or tapped in like
Speaker 1: black people in this professional space that would be knowing
Speaker 1: all this stuff is like, you know, this is all
Speaker 1: the confirmation we need. The fact that you're going after
Speaker 1: this man so much it makes us be like, oh,
Speaker 1: so he's so he's right. Okay, yeah, I got it.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys, Okay, yeah, I got it, Like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But now that y'all going through all this to stop him,
Speaker 1: now I know. Yeah. Um, And that is how a
Speaker 1: lot of people react. And we have now learned to
Speaker 1: a point of certainty with all of the stuff that's
Speaker 1: come out since that's been classified, that's been reported on.
Speaker 1: Gary Webb was right. The claim that he made was
Speaker 1: that the CIA deliberately enabled the cocaine trade to fund
Speaker 1: the contrast. That was absolutely true. His central thesis, his
Speaker 1: central thing that he was trying to show was real. Now,
Speaker 1: he didn't have all of the information that we have
Speaker 1: in order to prove it, and that is a flaw
Speaker 1: in the article. Um, but all of the journalism quote
Speaker 1: unquote journalism that was done to attack webs work was
Speaker 1: deeply flawed itself, as the Columbia Journalism Review makes clear.
Speaker 1: All three papers ignored evidence from declassified National Security Council
Speaker 1: email messages, and The New York Times and The Washington
Speaker 1: Post ignored evidence from Oliver North's notebooks, which lends support
Speaker 1: to the underlying premise of the Mercury News series that
Speaker 1: US officials would both condone and protect drug traffickers if
Speaker 1: doing so advanced the Contra cause. The October twenty one
Speaker 1: New York Times piece didn't even mention the Carry Committee report.
Speaker 1: A decade ago, the national media lowballed the Contra drug story.
Speaker 1: David Corne observed in the nation, now it's been there,
Speaker 1: done that. On October, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Speaker 1: held its first hearing on the controversy surrounding the new
Speaker 1: Contra drug allegations. Jack Bloom, former lead investigator for the
Speaker 1: Carry Committee, was lead witness. Bloom testified that his investigators
Speaker 1: had found no evidence whatsoever that the African American community
Speaker 1: was a particular target of a plot to sell crack cocaine,
Speaker 1: or that high US official head of policy of supporting
Speaker 1: the through drug sales which is not what Web had alleged. Right,
Speaker 1: Web does not allege a plot. Web says that the
Speaker 1: CIA is helping coke move into the country, which is true. Yes,
Speaker 1: and Bloom testifies further quote, if you ask whether the
Speaker 1: United States government ignored the drug problem and subverted law
Speaker 1: enforcement to prevent embarrassment and to reward our allies in
Speaker 1: the contra war, the answer is yes, which you might
Speaker 1: recognize as saying Gary Webb was right, yes, right, exactly exactly. Now.
Speaker 1: The CIA found, of course, no intent to smuggle cocaine
Speaker 1: into the United States or to enable drug smugglers to
Speaker 1: do the same. Instead, they blamed all the extremely documented
Speaker 1: cases of contrast smuggling coke into the US as something
Speaker 1: all their agents had just missed because like g Chucks,
Speaker 1: the CIA forgot to mandate that CIA agents had to
Speaker 1: report evidence of drug smuggling by their contacts. Right, that's
Speaker 1: literally the excuse, Like, well, they missed it because they
Speaker 1: weren't told to report it, so they just didn't notice it.
Speaker 1: They just missed all this blow right because it was
Speaker 1: their job to spot it. Right. Listen, Like I said,
Speaker 1: I'm here for the lobsters. I'm not here or the beef. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't even see those cows. I don't even see
Speaker 1: those I don't even see what I'm here for this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from PBS again. In the winter of
Speaker 1: nineteen two, as the United States was plotting how to
Speaker 1: overthrow the Sandinista government that came to power in Nicaragua,
Speaker 1: a letter a memorandum of understanding m o U was
Speaker 1: being drafted in Washington, d c. The presumptive author was
Speaker 1: the U S Attorney General, the late William French Smith.
Speaker 1: The recipient was the Central Intelligence Agency Director William Casey.
Speaker 1: The subject was a list of offenses that CIA field
Speaker 1: officers in the field were required to report if they
Speaker 1: witnessed or became aware of a crime, particularly if it
Speaker 1: involved an informant or someone the CIA officer wanted to
Speaker 1: recruit as an agent. The letter of understanding listed all
Speaker 1: kinds of crimes, from murder to passport fraud, but it
Speaker 1: omitted narcotics violations because we know, yeah, if he's killing people,
Speaker 1: we want to know, But if he's moving blow into
Speaker 1: the country, we don't really give a ship. That's literally
Speaker 1: that's what it's saying right now. This is too glaring
Speaker 1: of an oversight to have left without comment, and weeks
Speaker 1: later there's a follow up letter based on internal discussion
Speaker 1: in the Justice Department that gets sent to the c I.
Speaker 1: A quote, I have been advised that a question arose
Speaker 1: regarding the need to add all narcotics violations to the
Speaker 1: list of non employee claims. This is something Smith writes
Speaker 1: to Casey in February. Uh so you know that sounds good,
Speaker 1: but this actually doesn't add drugs to the list of
Speaker 1: things that have to be reported. Um because Smith, instead
Speaker 1: of adding it to the list, just sites existing federal
Speaker 1: policy on narcotics enforcement and writes, quote, in light of
Speaker 1: these provisions, and in view of the fine cooperation of
Speaker 1: the Drug Enforcement Administration has received from the CIA, no
Speaker 1: formal requirement regarding the reporting of narcotics violations has been
Speaker 1: included in these procedures. So basically, we're already working so
Speaker 1: good together. Federal employees are already required to talk about
Speaker 1: this stuff, so we don't need to add. We we
Speaker 1: can keep narcotics exempted from the things c I agents
Speaker 1: after report because we know they will right which we
Speaker 1: know they weren't. Now, Inspector CIA Inspector General Fred Hits
Speaker 1: tells the PBS when he's questioned that because they're asking, like,
Speaker 1: what do you make of this CIA inspector general? It
Speaker 1: seems shady, and he's like, well, it's at best a
Speaker 1: mixed message, right these now listen, that's a mixed message. Yes,
Speaker 1: six these dudes may not be good at criming, but
Speaker 1: they are good at excuses. They're incredible at excuses, and
Speaker 1: here they're what had Hattenwim was game is ridiculous, It
Speaker 1: hits very this is very funny, claims that he to PBS.
Speaker 1: He doesn't believe CIA agents would have enabled drug traffic
Speaker 1: to allow the Contrast to fund themselves, because that would
Speaker 1: have been bad pr Now you and I know prop
Speaker 1: that the Reagan administration and the CIA actively worked to
Speaker 1: discredit journalists reporting on the CIA for doing just that.
Speaker 1: When the agency took any action to crack down on
Speaker 1: the drug trade, it was purely for show. In seven,
Speaker 1: CIA Director Robert Gates sent a memorandum to the CIA
Speaker 1: Deputy director demanding that CIA officers cease relationships with Contrast,
Speaker 1: even suspected of trafficking narcotics. Here's PBS again. Gates's memorandum
Speaker 1: instructed George to vet names of air crews. Air Services
Speaker 1: employed companies and subcontractors with the d E, a, U, S, Customs,
Speaker 1: and the FBI to ensure that none of the contractors
Speaker 1: used by the CIA were involved in narcotics. For some reason,
Speaker 1: this memorandum quote was not issued in any form that
Speaker 1: would advise agency employees generally of this policy. It stated
Speaker 1: in his report. It never got to the field agents
Speaker 1: who were supposed to use it as a guide. So
Speaker 1: it's just like, look, we recognized the problem, and we
Speaker 1: made it a rule that they had to run everything
Speaker 1: by the FBI in the DA. They had to check
Speaker 1: on these guys and vet them to make sure they're
Speaker 1: not moving drugs. We noticed there was a problem, and
Speaker 1: we took action. What did you tell anyone whose job
Speaker 1: it was to vet these people that they had to
Speaker 1: do that? Well, no, we forgot to. We sucked that
Speaker 1: one up. We really fucked that one. Upp tootles. Hey, Homy,
Speaker 1: that's that's clerical, bro. Listen, listen, charge it to my head,
Speaker 1: not my heart. I'm not a big deal. We tried
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. It just got sucked up
Speaker 1: for reasons that were completely unavoidable. Guys, guys, you're looking
Speaker 1: at the locker room. Guys, listen, Uh, when the team
Speaker 1: comes in, just make sure they know that they gotta
Speaker 1: stop grabbing asses. Okay, you gotta stop grabbing asses. Guys.
Speaker 1: That everybody's mad at us. So when you see a
Speaker 1: juicy ass, you can't grab it. Okay, all right, all
Speaker 1: right here come to guys. It's just silence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't need to say any more than that. Um
Speaker 1: I said it. Yeah, I said it. At some point,
Speaker 1: you guys saw me see it. We put it in
Speaker 1: the rule book. Now they're not required to read the
Speaker 1: rule book. In fact, they're not allowed to. We didn't
Speaker 1: give it to them. The rule books are held on
Speaker 1: the top of a mountain in eastern fucking Turkmenistan, and
Speaker 1: and none of them can get to it. But it's
Speaker 1: in the rule books. You know, what else do you
Speaker 1: want for us? You would to track down these agents
Speaker 1: and put a paper in their hands. Yeah, I told
Speaker 1: him they can't do it, man. Yeah, they're honorable men.
Speaker 1: You know they won't do it. And do it anyway. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: as the years have gone on and all this has
Speaker 1: come out, it has become clear that Gary Webb was
Speaker 1: guilty of being sloppy right. It's not perfect or even
Speaker 1: ideal reporting. There's issues with it. His conclusions and allegations,
Speaker 1: while not supported by the text of his article, though,
Speaker 1: are supported by the facts that we know now and
Speaker 1: the facts that have emerged since, and a number of
Speaker 1: the facts that Gary didn't bring up but were available then,
Speaker 1: and that the Washington Post, in the New York Times
Speaker 1: and the l A Times should have brought up, like
Speaker 1: the ship from the Cary Report, like the ship from
Speaker 1: the AP report and eight five um. Of course, the
Speaker 1: fact that Gary has been vindicated by time did not
Speaker 1: mean anything for Gary Webb. The damage had been done
Speaker 1: to his career. He was disgraced, and the CIA crack
Speaker 1: epidemic story had gone from a mainstream outrage to a
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory that was widely mocked. The Washington Post even published.
Speaker 1: Of the things they do in this period is they
Speaker 1: put in an article like a warning about the black
Speaker 1: community susceptibility to conspiracy theories. Where's the Washington Post. We
Speaker 1: gotta let you know, We've noticed a troubling trend, which
Speaker 1: is black people they're sharing conspiracy theories. He's not a
Speaker 1: good book. You gotta watch you say around him because
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of believe anything. They really think
Speaker 1: the whole government's out to get them and the media.
Speaker 1: What a silly group of people, do you believe? It? Mean?
Speaker 1: Whateverence do they have that that might be happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, it's like sucking hitting your friend in
Speaker 1: the head with a hammer and being like his real
Speaker 1: susceptible to getting hit in the head with a hammer. Boy,
Speaker 1: that guy's head can't stop catching hammers. Am I right?
Speaker 1: Jesus Jez. Can't do anything around this guy. Man might
Speaker 1: get a hammer to his head, can't bring a hammer out.
Speaker 1: He keeps getting hit with him. Yeah. Webb's career never recovered.
Speaker 1: On December two four, he shot himself in the head
Speaker 1: with a thirty eight. Ten years later, David Carr, writing
Speaker 1: for The New York Times, wrote an article that serves
Speaker 1: as the closest will get to an apology for the
Speaker 1: Great Lady. We've quoted from it a couple of times. Here.
Speaker 1: There's widespread recognition that it was pretty fucked up, although
Speaker 1: you can still find articles in mainstream says Gary Webb
Speaker 1: was not, you know, really fucked up, and like we
Speaker 1: weren't wrong to go after him and to ignore all
Speaker 1: of these problems and act as cover for the CIA,
Speaker 1: like it's it's all fucked up prop But that's the story.
Speaker 1: That's all the story, man. So it was like seven
Speaker 1: seven countries involved mad moving parts people at the highest
Speaker 1: level of government. A journalist breaks it, tells the truth,
Speaker 1: Polkes's head up the rest of the journalism community, and
Speaker 1: then the due A kills himself because he makes him
Speaker 1: feel like he's taking crazy pills. It's one of those things.
Speaker 1: There's a meme spreading around that's like the the award
Speaker 1: for the CIA Award for Excellence in Journalism, and it's
Speaker 1: a bullet and that is an accurate joke in like
Speaker 1: parts of Latin America rights in Latin America, the c
Speaker 1: i a s s it was either directly did or
Speaker 1: through there. And in other parts of the world, the
Speaker 1: CIA has assassinated a lot of journalists. They don't have
Speaker 1: to do that. You don't have to send a guy
Speaker 1: with a silenced weapon to kill Gary Webb. New York
Speaker 1: Times has got your back. They're just gonna hound him
Speaker 1: to suicide because they got scooped. We're good, baby, damn
Speaker 1: saves us. The bullet money that's that's that's see. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that one because Bud mcmarty killed himself too.
Speaker 1: He shared and I'm sure there's yeah, um boy, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into other It's totally understandable
Speaker 1: if you're feeling conspiratorial after this. And I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: say much more than that because it's cool and fine,
Speaker 1: proper you got anything to plug well, this has been
Speaker 1: a phenomenal piece of art we've put together that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so op over to the politics spot man, you know
Speaker 1: where hopefully if you had part five, it is when
Speaker 1: you know that the pieces that this was altogether was
Speaker 1: how come I can't talk and you didn't warn me out?
Speaker 1: And and this is and this was my idea to
Speaker 1: do this series. You warn me out? But yeah, now
Speaker 1: politics pod and uh, what upcoming topics do you have
Speaker 1: on politics? Oh man? Besides the other parts of this
Speaker 1: I have? Uh did we talk about the queen already?
Speaker 1: We already talked about the Queen? We got tapping in
Speaker 1: or it's up like lessons on how you need to
Speaker 1: tap in before you talk to people? Uh? I got
Speaker 1: a book reading list where you can get your weight up.
Speaker 1: Talk about a little bit of things like that. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a lot going on over there. Check out hood
Speaker 1: Politics and get uh props cold Brew Tear for get
Speaker 1: my cold Brew and his book terror Form. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: all there. Yeah, and the and the um your music, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's new music. Yeah, all all named Terraform because what's
Speaker 1: your what's your website again? It's is it prop hip
Speaker 1: hop dot com? Yes it is. Thank you, Sophie prop
Speaker 1: hip hop dot com for all the things prop hip
Speaker 1: hop dot com terra Form. Check it all out. You
Speaker 1: can find me with my novel, which you should read,
Speaker 1: called After the Revolution. Go to any place that sells books,
Speaker 1: any website that sells books. Type it in After the Revolution.
Speaker 1: You can buy a copy the Homie books paperback all that.
Speaker 1: You can also type in After the Revolution a k
Speaker 1: Books and you'll find it there. Talk to the homie
Speaker 1: skull Fucker Mike. Yeah, you can learn the ballad of
Speaker 1: skull Fucker Mike uh and more to come in the sequel.
Speaker 1: He needs a Yeah, I was like, the goulfucker needs
Speaker 1: his own uh side. So you're gonna learn a lot
Speaker 1: more about skull Fucker my. But let's all funk our
Speaker 1: own skulls right now to chill out after being sad.
Speaker 1: Thank you, what a great week, Yes in two