Kill the Messenger (Movie Tie-In Edition): How the Cia's Crack-Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb

Technically, Schou's biography squeaked off the press at the end of 2006, but it was 2007 before it garnered much attention in the jubilant crowing of the alternative media and a few mea culpas from the mainstream newspapers who shunned Gary Webb (ending his career and eventually driving his 2004 suicide), after he broke the story of CIA-backed Nicaraguans who funneled crack cocaine into Los Angeles to fund the Contras. Despite the widespread denouncement of Webb by most of the press, the CIA inspector general confirmed most of his story two years after it first appeared in the San Jose Mercury News in 1996. "We now live in a country where reporters dread becoming Gary Webb," notes the introduction, "God help us."

As the editor of the Applegator Newspaper, I have many books crossed my desk. I was captivated from the beginning to the end. And the story confirmed many of my fears. If one has any interest on the CIA, I highly recommend this book. J.D. Rogers Editor of the Applegator Newspaper

This book should have received far more publicity than it's had since publication. It is essential reading for every American. Decades later, the aftereffects of crack's explosion are still with us: prisons overflowing with low-level drug operatives, destroyed inner-cities and families. Nick Schou should be commended for trying to keep this issue in the public's eye. And, Gary Webb should one day receive the accolades that eluded him in his lifetime.

"The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - William Colby, former CIA Director Kill the Messenger does a tremendous service by providing the reader with a detailed account that touches on all the issues that led to Gary Webb's downfall and ultimately his suicide. Also the book delves into the CIA/Contra cocaine smuggling that went on under the radar during the counterinsurgency war that raged in Nicaragua. Of course Webb unearthed much of the story. One thing the mainstream press liked to do was treat the Contras as if they were a mutually exclusive entity separate from the CIA. Thus when the establishment media reported that the Contras dabbled in drug smuggling they could simultaneously report that at worst the CIA just turned a blind eye. Unfortunately for the CIA and the powers that be, the Contras were wholly trained and funded by the CIA. The CIA and the Contras were essentially one and the same. If the CIA never existed the Contras never would have even been conjured up and never would have been able to wage a bloody war against civilian targets, raping and pillaging throughout the Nicaraguan countryside and sending massive quantities of cocaine into the United States; much of which landed at the doorstep of Los Angeles and other major cities that had just started to feel the sting of Reaganite socio-economic policies. Webb was basically the first journalist who truly blew the lid off the CIA's Contra cocaine smuggling operations that went on during the early and mid 1980s. Kid glove treatment does not one receive when exposing one of the most powerful and violent institutions in world affairs. Webb was basically vilified by the pillars of establishment journalism for having the temerity to report the truth. The Washington Post and New York Times attacked Webb's work once they realized Dark Alliance was gaining traction among the American public due to it being given extensive coverage via the Internet and black talk radio. The Post even went so far as to have a journalist who was in the pocket of the CIA write a story highly critical of Webb's findings. Being that the Post and Times more or less ignored much of the CIA skullduggery that went on during the 1980s it's not surprising to see the treatment they dealt to Webb because of his chutzpah. Kill the Messenger lays all this out for the reader to dissect. It's interesting to note that the same Post reporter who bashed Webb had decades ago written a highly critical review of Philip Agee's excellent book Inside the Company, a book which exposed CIA lawlessness and abuses. Webb unearthed that one Contra (CIA) fundraiser, Norwin Meneses, was actually considered the "King of cocaine" in Nicaragua. Kill the Messenger provides the outline in which L.A.'s street gangs were at the end of a chain of a covert action to equip and arm the CIA's Contras. Meneses, and other thugs, play a major role in the book and in the covert ac

Well-written, direct and serious treatment of a personal as well as national story. It's a page turner for the armchair reader and a must for any student or teacher of journalism for its careful examination of the complex relationship between investigative reporter and editor. Its title exactly reflects the objective treatment Schou gives to a still controversial subject.