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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JF Quinnelly who wrote (14321)	11/19/1998 1:21:00 AM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

Follow The Money... Gary Webb, author of a controversial series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News about the CIA's supposed role in introducing crack cocaine to America's inner cities, has teamed up with one of the subjects of his stories on a movie deal. Each man stands to make $175,000, and possibly more. Webb's partner is Freeway Ricky Ross, convicted in Federal court in San Diego of being a crack cocaine kingpin in South Central Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and the Washington Post did exhaustive stories finding Webb's articles inaccurate, inflated, or misleading in major respects. The series nonetheless touched a raw nerve among African-Americans seeking an explanation for the crack epidemic. Congressional committees, the CIA and the Justice Department embarked on costly investigations. The lack of evidence to support his thesis has not deterred both book and movie contracts. Webb's deal with Freeway Ricky Ross is spelled out in a letter to Ross from Jody Hotchkiss, of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc., a New York literary agency. Hotchkiss wrote: The one and only movie offer for your life story is good. Touchstone, a division of Walt Disney Studios, is offering you the following money for dramatic rights to your story. '$25,000 for 18 months, during which time a screenplay will be written. Plus $25,000 more for another 18 months if they need more time to write the screenplay, plus $125,000 when they make the movie.' Gary Webb has been offered and has accepted the same deal for the dramatic rights to his story....The full-length contract will include more money for you if sequels, remakes, television movies and/or television series are made after the movie. I am doing the same thing for Gary Webb now. Webb's series, entitled "The Dark Alliance," was illustrated with a logo featuring a crack smoker superimposed over the CIA emblem. He claimed that crack "was virtually unobtainable in black neighborhoods before members of the CIA's army started bringing it into South-Central [Los Angeles] in the 1980s at bargain-basement prices." The documented time-line and other facts disprove Webb's thesis. Ross was first arrested for selling crack in 1979, two years before he made any contact with his claimed Contra contact, Oscar Danilo Blandon. By 1979, crack was already widely available in LA and other cities. Ross's deals with Blandon spanned only a few months. Further, the CIA swore in court filings in San Diego on Nov. 5 that it had no record of any contacts whatsoever with Blandon. Webb has since waffled on the CIA link. He told The Washington Post that his articles don't actually say the CIA knew that persons in the Contra movement were dealing crack, and he accused talk radio hosts of blowing his series out of proportion. The Mercury News offered the same disclaimer. Nonetheless, Webb repeated the charge in interviews, agreeing with a statement that CIA stands for "crack in America," and alleging that crack was not available to black Americans until the "CIA army" started selling it. A Webb book proposal obtained by the Los Angeles Times states that he intends to "explore a theory" that the Contra war "was not a real war at all. It was a charade, a smoke screen...to provide cover for a massive drug operation" by criminal CIA agents and others. Court filings in San Diego document that Webb coached Ross on using a "CIA defense" commencing in October 1995, six months before his trial. Previously, Ross told the Los Angeles Times (Dec. 20, 1994) that God "put me down to be the cocaine man." Not until prompting by Webb did he shift responsibility from the deity to the CIA. In a motion opposing Ross's demand for a new trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney L.J.O'Neale attacked the partnership. "Ross and Webb share more than a passion for this story; they also share a business interest in promoting it," he wrote. "They seem to share an agent, just as they seem to share an agenda. Each stands to gain from spreading the CIA story, but only so long as it lasts. If the story is discovered to be false, each loses." The code of business ethics of Knight-Ridder, Inc., the Mercury News's owner, states that no employee "should become involved in any situation where he or she might profit or benefit as a result of any relationship or act that is not in the best interests of Knight-Ridder." salonmagazine.com