Gary Webb's "Dark Alliance" Exposes CIA-Contra-Crack Cocaine Connection

Investigative journalist Gary Webb publishes his explosive three-part “Dark Alliance” series in the San Jose Mercury News, examining connections between the CIA, U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contra rebels, and the crack cocaine epidemic that devastated African American communities during the 1980s. The 20,000-word investigation becomes an unprecedented internet sensation when posted on the newspaper’s website with supporting documents and audio recordings, receiving up to 1.3 million hits daily and becoming one of the first major national security stories to gain traction online.

Webb’s reporting focuses on three key figures: Freeway Ricky Ross, a major Los Angeles drug dealer, and Oscar Danilo Blandón and Norwin Meneses, Nicaraguans who smuggled cocaine into the U.S. and supplied dealers like Ross. The series demonstrates how elements of the CIA-backed Contra rebels trafficked cocaine to fund their counter-revolutionary campaign against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, with the secret flow of drugs and money directly linked to the crack cocaine explosion in California’s most vulnerable neighborhoods.

The series provokes fierce outrage in African American communities, prompts Congressional hearings, and triggers an aggressive backlash from powerful media outlets. The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and New York Times assign teams of reporters to attack Webb’s work, with the LA Times alone deploying 17 reporters to discredit the series. This coordinated campaign succeeds in destroying Webb’s career, forcing him out of journalism despite later vindication.

In 1998, CIA Inspector General reports confirm that for more than a decade, the agency covered up its business relationship with Nicaraguan drug dealers and failed to investigate or act upon allegations that anti-Sandinista forces it supported were engaged in drug trafficking. Despite this vindication, Webb remains unable to find work at another daily newspaper. On December 10, 2004, after a long bout of depression, he dies in an apparent suicide—a tragic end for a journalist who exposed one of the most damning intelligence scandals in American history.